Terra didn’t wake up for almost twenty hours, putting it at almost high noon the next day before she’d finally stirred. By that point the local tree dwellers had mostly just accepted her presence. That was, until she suddenly started groaning before sitting up. Whether it was the memories of what had happened before passing out or finding yourself hundreds of feet off the ground on a thick branch with not other restraint, she spent a few minutes screaming, panicking, and otherwise getting a grip on herself.

I might have enjoyed it just a little bit. Any interaction was more than I’d had for essentially as long as I could remember, after all. It wasn’t the distress I specifically delighted in, just the experience of it. I did though, experience her feelings. Which were not pleasant. So to that point...

Yo. Chill out there for a moment.

“Ahh!” was the only response. Well, there was also the whole tipping backwards and falling over. Miraculously Terra managed to grip the branch with her legs at the last possible moment. Rather than falling clear she instead swung a little until settling, dangling upside down and staring with wide eyed terror at the distant ground.

Yeah. Might want to take a few deep breaths...

Terra sucked in a lungful of air, though not to calm herself.

AND DON’T START SCREAMING AGAIN! Yeesh! You’d think hearing a voice in your head was something to be shocked about, the way you go on!

“The-the-the pill! You took over my body!”

Does it seem like I took over to you...?

“I... well, no... but I kind of remember...”

Moving on from my temporary possession of your imperfect vessel in order to save both of our skins, well, your skin, my shiny butt, you probably aught to get to a safer perch.

“Oh, right, yeah.”

Aaaaand several awkward minutes and a couple of short falls and screaming later, we found ourselves on a (somewhat lower) branch, nursing our bruises and scrapes and ignoring the fresh complaints by the local neighborhood association members.

This time I decided to stay quiet and unobtrusive until Terra herself initiated the contact. Thankfully for my impatience to get started, that didn’t take long at all.

“Am I crazy or…?” Hmm. How to answer that one? Given that I could feel the feels she was putting out, though during the night I’d worked on pulling out of her memories and thoughts, I knew she was running a borderline total panic. Oh, why not just keep reading her thoughts? It was tempting, not gonna lie there. It was about a hundred billion times more experience than my cumulative secluded cultivation time, that’s for sure. Each of her thoughts and dreams brought in a floor of her deeper, long term memories.

The truth of it was multiple though. One, it was just, honestly, totally overwhelming. These were thoughts about experiences and impressions made through a totally foreign perspective and body. They came with all the elements of having directly experienced them myself but without that sense of it actually being my own experience. That was terribly unnerving.

Two, it’s just creepy to be reading someone’s thoughts. Yeah, yeah, I’m some kind of parasite now, which is its own kind of creepy.

But seriously, I don’t gotta rise to that level.

Three, or perhaps an extension of Two, I needed Terra to trust me. From her dreams, nay, nightmares, from the running thoughts she’d had during our flight, I knew she was certain. Certain that I far more than her would be hunted down. Right now I was a long way off from actually making myself a fully functional body. I still needed time to completely consolidate my recent breakthrough to Nascent Soul. I also needed to learn how to… uh… make a body. Yeah.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

So I had a few choices. Take over Terra’s body, try to take over a different body, or try to make it as a body-less Nascent Soul until I could make a body.

Take over Terra’s body was a bad choice even if I didn’t care about possibly shattering or consuming her Soul. Namely her body was just too weak. My cultivation method had required me to exert my Will to the maximum endlessly and I just didn’t know yet if I could ‘tone it down’. I’d need to learn. I could practice that with the environmental Qi outside of Terra’s body, but there was also a real concern of attracting Cultivators or a powerful Beast if I started wonking with the local Qi. My Will, it seemed, was no subtle thing.

I could briefly take control, or just get Terra to go somewhere, and take over another body. It would ideally be at least a high Foundation Establishment Cultivator. The issue there was that Terra was super weak and such a Cultivator might actually be able to truly consume me, rather than the case of complete indigestion Terra was facing. Terra tried to eat me and I had to stop myself from simply eating her back. Such was the risk of consuming a Soul so many realms above you.

The last choice wasn’t even worth mentioning. Take about vulnerable. Plus I wasn’t 100% confident I could reform my cultivation base outside of Terra. I was most definitely lodged in some manner in a non-interfering co-located space inside of her, right where her own Dantian sat.

That really left the last choice. The only real choice. The same one I’d flippantly promised Terra on a whim. I’d ride along, build her up so that I could cultivate without destroying her, then I’d make my own body. Which left me with…

No, you’re not crazy. You are though, in a crazy situation. Hunted down to be a Furnace just got massively upgraded to hosting a Nascent Soul Cultivator who is also a cultivation boosting Pill created by some Demonic Immortal. Not only is there that chance that Sect boys are going to come hunting us down with one of their Big Sect Daddies, but eventually some big fat evil Immortal will come looking for his pill.

Was it normal for people to pass out after hearing that? I mean, let’s just face reality with some dignity people! Well, mental cold splash of water it is then…

“AHHHHH!! OH GOD DON’T DO THAT!”

Well, don’t pass out while I’m talking then.

“I! No, wait- alright, alright. I’m- I’m OK, I’m going to… it’ll all be… oh shit this is so much worse.” The hyperventilating was starting right back up. Ugh. Fleshies. Fleshies with all sorts of trauma drama!

I hate to be a pill, but we’re no pushover you know. With me to help your cultivation and to pinch hit in a bad situation, I think we got a shot here. A slim one, but I’m willing to bet on it. The rapid breaths started to slow down a little. I could feel the panic reduce noticeably from her mind. That was nice. It was starting to affect me too even though it was like watching Emotivision rather than experience it directly, it still, you know, can get to a pill.

Think about it. Do you remember what happened after you ate me?

“I…” Terra began, though her voice hitched and her breathing froze. The rapid thundering of her stressed out heart seemed so much louder to her ears than the rather noisy forest life going about their daily business. “…you probably scared those Sect disciples so badly they soiled themselves. That aura!”

I’ll be the first to admit when she sprung to her feet in excitement I was a tad concerned we were about to take another trip down a lever or too. As we get further down the tree the branches were bigger, yeah, but also more spread out, so I was a bit concerned about any repeats on the random drops.

“Oh my god you went so fast! In… in my body! Could I do that? Could I actually be so powerful!?”

Chill, girl, chill! Yeah, sure, if we get your cultivation on track…

“Oh my god, you mean it?”

…and you cultivated a technique that forced you to build up your Will to apparently ridiculous levels compared to other Cultivators for like a few centuries or millennia, then yeah.

The squealing excitement that made me seriously doubt her mental math putting her in mid to late twenties was dramatically flawed died down with such a sobering despair that I realized something.

I was mucking up this whole sales pitch. Badly.

“Oh god. Some super powerful Sect Master is going to hunt me down, rip you out of me, and probably destroy my Soul.”

Wait, hold on, I didn’t mean it like-

“Being hunted to be a Furnace would have been better! At least I could have died and gone into the cycle of reincarnation!”

Oh jeez, not the tears! Oh man, oh jeez, girl…

Oops. Traumatized abused and discriminated minority: 1; My nonexistent memories and knowledge of Psychology: 0. Plus now I was the jerk! When she was the one who ate me!