"The same reason the sect hands out those spiritual tokens to the participants, and the same reason why it's impossible to sense what's on another floor. The tower seals your senses the higher up you go."

"You act like you've been inside before."

"Both of my brothers reached the fourth floor. According to them, more get sealed on the sixth floor." She bit her lip in a thoughtful manner. "Take a minute if the aura's too strong."

"Stop talking," hissed the closest cultivator, a disciple of the Falling Rain Sect that wore a unique version of their uniform. His robes were the same shade of sapphire as that of the outfits worn by those of the inner court, but the raindrops that patterned his clothes were a vibrant gold. His long, black hair was held in place by a golden circlet, his oblong face clean-shaven. With heavy muscles and broad features, his was a body built for violence.

Ignoring the man, Nolan’s head grew dizzy as the surrounding energies began to dig into his pores at an alarming rate, which diverted his focus and made him more susceptible to the tower's oppressive aura. He stopped about five steps away from the girls when his knees began to buckle, as he was seized by an abrupt sense of crisis. Closing his eyes, he focused on his inner essence channels and centred out the routes with the most turbulence. Purging all thoughts from his mind, he took up the first stance of the Ancestral Body Technique and then calmly began to run through its many sequences.

There were a total of fifteen people on the fifth floor, none of which had taken any notice of his arrival. It was only once he began to cultivate in the corner that a dozen of them looked up in unison and considered him with a mixed bag of expressions. This included the high-ranking disciple from earlier, who quickly gave a snort and returned to his meditations. The only three to ignore his movements were guests from outside of the sect, who didn't seem intent on wasting a second in this lush paradise for cultivation, unlike those disciples that had entered this place at least five times since it was last opened to the public.

"Is that really how you cultivate?" asked Avril, intrigued.

He nodded, and continued on unabated.

“Tch, to think there would be such a distracting nuisance on this floor.” The disciple from earlier stood up and quickly left for the sixth floor, which caused his fellows from the sect to redouble their efforts at cultivation, a fire lit in their eyes they watched him go.

Nolan cultivated for about twenty minutes before he was chilled by a foreboding sense of anticipation, as if it were time for him to do something but he couldn’t remember what. With his heartbeat hammering down the walls of calmness that the Millenial Ring provided, he struggled to maintain focus and continued with his attempt to control the internal storm that was ravaging his physical and spiritual self.

The energies are building up too fast, warned Uncle Grey. You've got to expel some, quickly.

I know!

If his dantian reached its peak capacity without properly filtering the Origin Energy that had invaded it, then he would die here in this tower. Scared of such an outcome, he steadily activated his only defensive martial skill, the Emerald Skin Technique. With such a large and unhindered supply of energy, the protective barrier that enveloped his body was much more substantial than he'd previously seen. A layer of emerald light hovered just above his skin, about a centimetre wide, which gave rise to a slight haze of greenish fog that rose up around him like vapor from dry ice. Blocking everything else from his mind, he kept the martial skill active and began to trace out a basic diagram for a barrier arrayment, which he activated a handful of seconds later.

A large sheet of golden energy appeared before him, though he quickly dismissed it with a frown and allowed it to fall apart. The consumption of creating such simple arrayments wasn’t nearly enough to make a difference in his current situation. His spiritual space was on the verge of popping like a balloon that had been pumped full with too much matter, and he was helpless to stop it. Am I about to die? Just as he rushed to unleash his raw energies, he was seized by a nostalgic memory which completely erased his current sense of crisis. He made a seamless transition from frightened to calm, and quickly focused on cultivating.

While the atmosphere of the fifth floor was considerably superior to that of the glade on Nia, its energies wouldn't be difficult to tame if the tower's oppressive aura weren't giving off such powerful forces of suppression. Now that the hidden gears within his mind had begun to turn, he was no longer intimited by the pressure. For some reason, Nolan was confident that he could condense the invasive spiritual energy into a higher quality source than what currently filled his spiritual space.

What are you doing? Quickly, release the energies!

Not only did he ignore his teacher's words, he increased his body's intake of energy at the most critical moment, which prompted a violent reaction from his spiritual space. The boundaries of the internal realm fluctuated rampantly like the walls of a bubble in the face of an aggressive breeze, though he ignored this.

The strange stock of information that had suddenly surfaced in his mind made him feel as if he'd just recognized a familiar face. The thoughts that stole away his attention were some of those that had been embedded in his psyche back when he'd first obtained the inheritance for the Ancestral Body Technique. It seemed that they had lain dormant up until this moment because this was the first time that he had been exposed to an environment with such a heavy presence of energy. Now that he had, it was clear that the will behind his inheritance wanted him to take advantage of the situation.

The secret to this technique...

"You're going to kill yourself," warned Avril, who failed to appear as firm as intended. "I didn't think you were so foolish."

Nyla fixed a sable stare upon the other girl. “He wouldn’t persist if he didn’t think he could handle it.” Even though she said that, she rose to her feet in the following minutes and reached out to support him. "Nolan..."

"Stop," he grated, maintaining his focus as crimson tears began to spill from his bloodshot eyes. His mouth was now filled with liquid, the taste coppery as he coughed it out with a cry. His entire body was flushed like a steamed tomato, with so many veins surfacing that it almost seemed as if he'd been infected by worm-like parasites.

He'd once again drawn the attention of those on the fifth floor, all of whom had put their training on pause and turned to consider him with different degrees of discreetness.

As countless cells within Nolan's body began to burst apart, his consciousness retreated into the turbulent confines of his spiritual space. Here he existed as a mental projection of himself, which hovered just above a small globe of golden light. Likewise, this was a projection of his dantian, which resided within this realm as a nucleus of sorts that grew along with its environment.

The normally tranquil space was in turmoil, as a windstorm of iridescent energy came to life within the pitch blackness of the undeveloped inner world. The energy within was so thick that it was beginning to condense into a rising mist that was reminiscent of a spray of colourful pollen. The more that Nolan allowed to enter into his spiritual space, the more its contents began to condense within the battered confines. The process was incredibly painful, so much that Nolan almost lost control of the burgeoning energies, which would have made him into just another stain for other people to see along their trek up the tower. Calmed by the Millennial Ring, he carefully began to make use of his core cultivation method. As he did so, a strange sensation took hold of him.

He had gone through the stances of the Ancestral Body Technique thousands of times, and it had always ensured a fast, smooth intake of energy, and a near-instant filtration of it into inner essence. This time around, his dantian, inner essence channels and even his spiritual space were suddenly overwhelmed with deadly excess. Astoundingly, rather than cause him to burst into a bloody mess, he began to absorb the energies directly and without going through the usual filtration process.

This…!

He ignored Uncle Grey's incredulous voice and remained within his mind as his body subconsciously carried on with the deeply-engrained movements.

Compared to the core cultivation methods of the other participants in the tower climb, Nolan's was able to achieve an unprecedented rate of absorption and filtration. Even when contrasted with the best method that the Falling Rain Sect had to offer, the Ancestral Body Technique would be many times more proficient. And right now, his cultivation speed had increased by severalfold.