“Just focus on keeping your balance. It doesn’t matter how good you are at manipulating inner essence if you can’t multitask.” Nolan’s voice held a slight impatience as he instructed Sean and Esteban on the intricacies of the hundred and tenth stance of the Ancestral Body Technique, likely the final lesson that he would impart upon them during this stay within the glade.

“Who can multitask like this?” Sean muttered. “Why couldn’t there just be a single inner essence circulation route like the others?” Teetering on his tiptoes with knees bent at ninety degree angles, the short-haired man seemed as if he were sitting atop an invisible chair.

“Yeah,” said a sweaty-faced Esteban, “this one is way harder than the other ones!”

“Nothing comes free in life, buddy. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

The kid sighed and then continued on with his attempts at achieving the transition between inner essence circulation routes that had been troubling him for the past several days. Complaints never yielded sympathy, not from Nolan.

“If you guys get this one down then you’ll be able to take in ten percent more energy than before.” He turned to go, twelve long needles appearing above his head as he willed them to circulate around him in a neat ring of blurred metal. “I’m gonna take a quick dip, but I’ll send Uncle Grey over to help you guys out. Keep it up!”

He jumped into the air and drew an impressive arc that covered about two hundred metres, a peak height of about half that. He landed directly beside the Divine Spirit Fountain with barely a sound, his white tunic and beige pants ruffled slightly by the wind resistance brought on by his momentum.

“Do you even walk anymore?” Ian said quietly from where he sat meditating within the fountain.

“Says the living statue.”

Nolan was now able to reach anywhere within the little glade with a single leap. The past year of ceaseless training had seen his strength increase by an impressive margin. He could now travel over eighty metres farther into the silent woodland than he had been able to at the onset of the current visit to this realm, a remarkable thing to experience after spending so much time within this disturbing pocket of land. The area that he could now access had shed the monochrome curse that still restricted the vast majority of the surrounding region, an odd presence of colour that only Ian and Uncle Grey could experience aside from himself.

The distance that the others were capable of covering on a jaunt into the forest directly coincided with the levels of their cultivations, the same as it was for him. That the land opened up to some while remaining closed off to others was a tremendously disturbing concept, though admittedly it instilled within Nolan a growing sense of admiration for whoever it was that had cast the arrayment.

A significant portion of the peculiar forest had regained its vigour and yet the trees remained still with no wind to ruffle their broad and verdant leaves, beauty soured by a stark absence of sound. He hated the silence that permeated his surroundings, one that he only endured on occasion in an effort to probe the enlivened sections that opened up as his cultivation progressively increased.

“How are those two fairing?” Ian opened his eyes and took a casual sip of the crystal clear water that rippled just beneath his chin.

“They’re still stuck on that same stance, but I’d say they’re doing pretty well.” In truth he was very impressed with the two in question, particularly because he had gained an instant understanding of all one hundred and ninety-eight stances of the Ancestral Body Technique thanks to the inheritance that he’d obtained all those years ago, whereas they had to learn everything on their own. Seeing the extreme amounts of effort that the two had invested since they had settled down in their new environment, Nolan began to appreciate the acquirement of his core cultivation method at a much more intimate level.

“Is something the matter?”

He smothered the subconscious frown that had quietly fought its way onto his face. “I was just thinking about how crazy this place is. It hasn’t even been a year since the Interspatial Migration. I should be turning seventeen in a few weeks. What blows my mind is that I’ve actually spent way more time in this tiny ass field, so technically my consciousness has actually existed for almost twenty years.”

“Ah, now that you mention it I should be nearing my eighteenth year. Just because my body has not changed over the past fourteen months doesn’t mean that I haven’t lived them, right?”

“I guess so.” Did that mean that he was actually nineteen-years-old?

“Take it from me,” said Uncle Grey’s slightly raspy voice after the man suddenly appeared out of thin air like the ghost that he was. “It’s best not to concern yourself with the concept of age. The stronger you become, the more your body will change to accommodate the increase of inner essence that you will continue to accumulate. This will naturally increase your lifespan.”

“By how much though?” Nolan asked. “I’ve been wondering this for a while now. The time that I spend in here aside, my body’s that of a seventeen-year-old. How I am now, if I never came back to this glade then how long do you think I would live? Like if I get super lucky and don’t get killed by anyone.”

“I’ve never seen a core cultivation method like yours before so I can’t say for sure. Some techniques cause different changes within the body, but generally a Profound Entry cultivator at the fourth level should have a lifespan of about a hundred years.”

“What about me?” said Ian. At the fourth level of Integration, he was an entire stage above Nolan.

“A bit over twice that. To put it into perspective for you two, the average age of a member of my sect was about five-hundred-years-old. Most elders were at least a thousand around the time that I was murdered—myself included.”

“Are you being for real right now?” said Nolan. “You’d think everyone would have crazy high cultivation levels if they could just keep breaking through to buy more time to cultivate.” That a place existed where human beings could live for over a thousand years was nothing short of miraculous.

“It’s moments like these when I remember that you’re from another world,” said Ian. “Most people die before they reach the Integration stage, at least back in the Dragon’s Tail. If we’re discussing the Three-River Valley then I’m not sure how many have seen such success with their cultivations but it can’t be over a hundred, at least not after the Towering Eaves clan's invasion.”

“A hundred?”

Nolan had only heard a few names of renown in most cities that he’d been to in the easterly kingdoms, almost always high-ranking individuals of the aristocracy.

“Mr. Grey,” said the other boy, “you often mention the sect that you used to run. Were there a lot of members in it?”

“More than I cared to remember.”

“How many were at the Integration stage?”

“None.” Seeing the disbelieving look in the eyes of his two pupils, the old ghost gave a helpless sigh and waved off their skepticism. “Alright, I will admit that there might have been a fair number, perhaps a few million. Even so, none of them would have gained full membership. Simple house servants are all they were, assistants to the lower members.”

“Oh, you know. Just a few million.” Mutual silence told Nolan that his friend was also having trouble absorbing the old man’s allusion to the fact that every member of his sect had reached the Genesis stage at the very least. “Why did you decide to found a sect anyway?” he eventually asked. “You said you found some treasure, what was it again?”

“The Myriad Arrayment Mosaic,” the old man said quietly, a mist of melancholy swirling within his slightly transparent eyes. “The namesake of my organization, as you well know.”

“The Myriad Arrayment Mosaic Sect—that’s what it was.”

“You forgot?” The old ghost’s sage-like demeanor all but deflated. “Although your admission was only permitted due to the direness of my circumstances, do you not have any loyalty for the sect that you belong to?”

“What?”

An abrupt memory ran through Nolan's mind, a brief conversation that they’d shared on the day of their first encounter. The old man’s eyes had shone with desperate relief once he’d initiated contact with him, the only person to arrive within the glade in the countless millennia since his terrible solitude had begun.

I hereby accept you as my last disciple, the sole successor to the Myriad Arrayment Mosaic Sect! Now, kowtow in respect and proclaim me as your master!

“Give me a break. You’ve seen how life’s been for me back on Venara.”

“Humph. To answer your question, I founded my sect for a single reason.” An odd note of solemnity touched upon the ancient spirit’s countenance. “I simply wanted to be the most powerful man alive, so that I might finally sleep safely at night. Although the secrets contained within that magnificent mosaic were more than enough to catapult an ordinary cultivator like me to the top of the realm of arrayment practitioners, it also allowed me to realize the vastness of my home world and those that inhabited it.”

“Even the greatest Arrayment Master of your time couldn’t live in peace, huh.”

“Since the day that I became the acknowledged peak of my craft, I’ve encountered over a dozen people that could threaten my life. That includes the ones that cornered me here.” His grey eyes settled on the barky cabin that stood quietly nearby, unchanged after untold eons. “It is a great sadness to know that your body rests idly within arm’s reach, perfectly preserved and yet eternally inaccessible to its severed spirit.”

Nolan recalled a memory that seemed to come from a distant corner of his past when Uncle Grey had described to him and Nyla the cost of separating his spirit from his body. Once one’s existence had been split in such a way they were doomed to an eternal deprivation of the joys of physicality. That he had chosen to make this sacrifice knowing that it would strand him in infinite solitude only spoke of the threat that he had been faced with at the time.

“People only team up on someone when they’re worried about getting smashed out. That means they acknowledged that you were stronger than both of them. I’d say that’s something to be proud of.”

The old man’s appreciative frown made the awkward compliment worth its utterance. “It wasn’t just me. The ones that I was wary of—all of them were killed as well.”

“You always reference the guys that killed you. You mind describing what happened?” After everything that he’d heard, he couldn’t help but feel curious about his teacher’s origin story.

“Perhaps one day I shall tell you.” His ghostly visage rose up out of the water without disturbing the contents of the fountain. He stealthily passed through several tiny rainbows that decorated the light sprinkles of drifting mist that dotted the air above. “I am going to check up on those two now. You should continue to cultivate, Nolan. That is, if you want to break through to the middle phase of your current level before our next farewell.”

“Hold up! Just to be clear, you started your sect with a strength in numbers sort of mentality, right?”

“True power doesn’t sit within the hands of a single person. Once I realized this, I tried to adhere to this truth in order to subvert it!”

Their ancient mentor left the courtyard and floated off into the surrounding field.

While Ian scratched at his head in a struggle for understanding, Nolan experienced a newfound respect for the old ghost regardless of any sketchiness that he had displayed in the past. Based upon what he’d been able to piece together from the old man’s constant ramblings, Uncle Grey had been an ordinary person up until he’d found a relic of a forgotten civilization that enabled him to become one of the most powerful people in the known world. To top it off, he even found a second treasure, the same one that had disappeared into Nolan’s chest cavity back when he had discovered it within a pool of demonic beast blood on a day that he should have died several times over. Although his own experiences were still incomparably limited compared to that of his mentor, wasn’t the sad spirit just like him in that respect?

In the end he was basically jumped and then killed. Hadn’t his death confirmed the rationale behind the creed that he had just described? Even the most powerful warrior was useless against a massive army. In a world where war ran wild and rampant, having capable allies could only help one’s situation.