"Nyla…" said Nolan, shaking her lightly.

  "Uhg…" she mumbled, stirring within his grasp, "this never gets better, does it?"

  "Take a minute."

  "Nyla! My dearest disciple!"

  "Master," she smiled, her attention coming into focus as she pushed herself up into a seated positon. "It's been a while."

  "If only you knew," sighed the old ghost. “If only you knew…”

  "Mr. Grey?" said Sean, who was the next one to wake up. Rubbing at his temples, he sat up and got his bearings. "So we're in this place again."

  Everybody else woke up within the next few minutes.

  "A—a spirit?" said Aine, whose face paled as she hid behind Alicia and stared over the older girl’s shoulder at Uncle Grey. "Is that really a lingering spirit?"

  "Don't ask me…" sighed her friend, who began to look around with growing shock. “What is this place?"

  Ian also greeted Uncle Grey, as did Esteban.

  "Hey," said Lyra, tugging at one of her brother's sleeves, "what's all this now?" Like the other girls, she was looking around in complete confusion. "Why're you all chummy with that old spirit? Is that even what it is? They can't really exist, can they?"

  "They can," said Uncle Grey. "And their ears work just as well as anyone else’s."

  "How though? Your ears aren't actually real, are they?"

  "That's just how it works."

  "Do you live here?" Lyra didn't show the slightest hint of fear in front of Uncle Grey, as if she believed him harmless due to his intangible form. "Well, not live, obviously, hah! According to the legends, spirits can't leave the place they died, right?" She looked over at the dull stone of the nearby courtyard, and then her face took on an apologetic contour. "This couldn't be your grave, could it? Sorry…"

  "Show some respect," snapped Nyla, whose dark eyes settled onto the other girl with an exasperated twinkle to them. "He's our master, so technically he's the grandmaster of our sect."

  "Technically? I am the Grandmaster of your sect.

  "Let me introduce you all," said Nolan, who gestured toward the old ghost. "This is Uncle Grey, a spirit that I met after discovering this world."

  "What do you mean world?"

  "I mean that this place isn't Venara. Right now, we're on a world called Nia." Seeing the mixed expressions of those new to the glade, he cleared his throat and spoke in a serious manner. "Because of some unknown grand arrayment, we can't go anywhere where there isn't colour. Those spots are frozen in time, and we can only access them if our cultivations are high enough."

  "Frozen in time?" said Alicia, who couldn't hide the skepticism from her light, silvery voice. "This can't be real. I mean, I’ve seen you guys do some pretty incredible stuff, but another world?"

  "Nothing’s been normal since we met you guys," said Aine, who gave Nolan an incredulous look. "Still, how can all that space be frozen in time? Does that even make sense?"

  "Oh man, it's so much more than just that. Somehow, time's been frozen here for a few hundred million years or some other ridiculous amount of time. Just not here in this glade.”

  "What are you even talking about?" muttered Lyra, who was fixated on the monochrome boundaries in the distance.

  "I'm serious. I found some special method that lets me come here every so often. How else would we be here?" He cast his spiritual sense about, and for the first time was able to sense the adjacent field where he had obtained the inheritance for the Tranquil Void Step, which he'd barely begun to master. This was despite the fact that the heavy concentrations of Origin Energy on Nia caused his spiritual sense to suffer an insurmountable sense of suppression. "Don't ask me why, but the stronger we get, the farther away from the glade we can travel. It's a mind-fuck, I know, but this is real."

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  Ian paid no mind to the others as he headed away from the group and hopped over the waist-high fence of plain, piled stones that made up the courtyard's perimeter.

  "Dear disciple," said Uncle Grey, the shadow of a blush on his ghostly face. "Why don't you leave the explanations to me? Time is of the essence, after all, so you'd do better to go off and cultivate like young Ian there."

  Even if Uncle Grey’s body wasn’t transparent, Nolan would still have been able to see right through him. Socially deprived and starved for conversation, he was suddenly met with a group of pretty girls that were full of questions.

  Nyla hung back with the rest of the ladies as Nolan led the way into the courtyard, Sean and Esteban at his sides as they began to discuss what they would do in the coming year. Esteban was determined to close the gap between him and Nolan, though Sean was a bit more realistic. The former American wanted to make three breakthroughs, which he felt would be his limit within just a year's worth of time.

  "Yes!" yelled Esteban, jumping into the fountain as soon as it came into sight. "I missed this feeling!" He began to splash around with elated laughter, eyeing the faint rainbows that floated above the light layers of rising mist.

  As Nolan and Sean settled down within the sparkling waters, the latter fixed him with a look of surprise.

  "Weren't you going to cultivate?"

  "I am, but first I'm going to teach you guys something."

  "Teach us what?" said Esteban, who stopped playing and waded over. "Is it a martial skill? No, it's your movement skill, isn't it?"

  "Naw, it's another core cultivation method. Uncle Grey taught it to me back in the tower so I could cultivate without moving."

  "Was it the stairs? That's what got in our way."

  He nodded, and then told them everything he knew about the technique. Both of them were excited to discover that they could learn as many core cultivation methods as they wanted, ecstatic over the prospect of building up immunity to all sorts of flames.

  "So we'll have an affinity with fire,” said Sean. He clenched a fist and looked as if he were holding back a nostalgic tear. "If childhood me had any idea…"

  "I know. It's almost worth how scary our lives are now."

  “Right?”

  "So," said Esteban, who scratched at his chin, eyes curious, “if we learn core cultivation methods of every element, won't we be pretty amazing?"

  They quieted down, each lost in his own thoughts as bits of the girls’ conversation drifted through the soundless glade like wind-borne leaves. It was only after he had fantasized for a few minutes that Nolan looked up with an eager smile.

  "Uncle Grey says he knows thousands of techniques, so I'm sure he'll teach us the best ones. We'll have to cultivate each one for a pretty long time though." With an exertion of his will, a flaming twig floated over from the ever-burning campfire that sat about a dozen metres away from the fountain. "Anyway, just study the makeup of Origin Energy in this flame for about an hour. It's basically microscopic, so you've really gotta focus."

  They immediately began to meditate, no doubt studying the flame with their spiritual senses. Keeping the twig where it was, he traced out a basic construction diagram with subtle movements and activated it about twenty seconds later. A simple post with a wooden-like arm now supported the little flame, which sat atop its undisturbed surface without any signs of wavering.

  Now then…

  Nolan had taken out his pill cauldron, as well as the teal pellet that Drasin had given him before their life-and-death battle. The young man had said that it helped with stabilizing one's aura during cultivation, which meant that it would be of great assistance during and after a breakthrough. If he could find a way to replicate it, or at least to create a pill with similar effects from the herbs that he had on hand, then it would make the coming months more productive for him and all his friends.

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw that Uncle Grey was busy laughing along with the girls. I'll just make more Earth Sect pellets. Of course, he was referring to the pill recipe that Uncle Grey had taught him; the one that created medicines which increased cultivation speed by allowing the user to absorb and assimilate with Origin Energy at a faster pace. He had made hundreds of them at this point, and was now able to produce two medium-grade pellets for every ten that he made, which was about three to four batches. On modern-day Venara, the ingredients for the recipe were very common in most places that he’d travelled, so he had naturally gathered a massive supply in recent months.

  Alright, I'll make a few hundred of these and give them out to the others. At the moment the Earth Sect might have been a motley bunch, but they were slowly gaining more members. By the time they left Nia and returned to the tower, they would be a substantial force. Hopefully one strong enough to escape from the heart of the Grand Isle of Weston, which coincidently was the nucleus of the Falling Rain Sect's territory.

  Taking out several heaps of herbs, Nolan stared down at his pill cauldron with determination and began the long and monotonous process of concocting medicinal pellets.