“I guess I’ll see you two later!” She gave Nolan a naughty smile and sent one of the bags his way before she hurried up the stairs with slightly laden steps. She only slowed once she neared the next floor, where she sat down within view and began to meditate.

“That girl…” muttered Avril. “Humph, I’ll settle things with her after.” Though she had begun to sweat beneath the pressure of the tower’s aura, she fought her way up a dozen more steps and then quietly began to cultivate.

Meanwhile, Nolan was stuck in a dilemma. Since the Ancestral Body Technique required a lot of movement, there wasn’t nearly enough room on the stairs for him to cultivate. This made it impossible to deal with the energies that were swarming into his body and spiritual space.

Hey, Uncle Grey. What should I do?

Ah, it was only a matter of time until you had to face the limitations of your core cultivation method.

Come on, tell me you’ve got a trick that’ll help me weasel upstairs.

Humph, it’s got nothing to do with weaseling.

So you do have a method.

What do you take me for? came the offended response. Naturally, I have a quick solution to your problem.

And what’s that?

If your core cultivation method isn’t an option, then simply learn another one. Don’t forget, yours allows for any number of secondary ones.

After all the time that Nolan had spent on Venara, he hadn’t come across any other core cultivation methods. Although Uncle Grey knew plenty, he’d refused all requests to share them. He’d claimed that the most important thing was to establish a strong foundation with his first technique before attempting to incorporate any other ones.

So you’re finally going to teach me the Profound Soul-Splitting Technique, eh?

No, what I’ll be teaching you is called the White Flame Scripture. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

What? Why not the one you taught Nyla?

This ungrateful disciple of mine… Because I say so! Do you want to learn it or not?

Okay, okay. I’m sorry.

Go on and sit down. I’ll explain the circulation routes you’ll need to maintain, and the breathing patterns, too. Trust me, this is a great technique. I obtained it after I slew an old nemesis. Uncle Grey’s voice took on a nostalgic tone. Our sects feuded for a few thousand years, you know. Because of this technique, he was quite difficult to deal with.

Following his teacher’s instructions, he sat down and listened intently to the explanation. He had no choice but to scooch down to the fifth floor so that he could practice amidst a more agreeable aura of oppression. Surprisingly, the White Flame Scripture operated under a very simple set of inner essence circulation routes. The drawback was that he had to circulate his inner energies at about three times the speed that the Ancestral Body Technique required, which called for a completely different sort of concentration than he was used to.

In the end, it took three days for him to get the hand of circulating his inner essence at such a rapid rate.

According to Uncle Grey, the White Flame Scripture was one of the best core cultivation methods from his era, one that dealt with elemental affinity. This technique nurtured the dantian with nine transformations, where each form strengthened the user’s affinity with fire. Apparently, this worked by aligning the energies within one’s body with the patterns and portions that made up a specific sort of flame, similar to if he were to study the energy patterns within a campfire and attempt to mimic them in his inner essence channels.

Dear disciple! You’ve impressed me again, I must say. Even the most talented youths of my day had taken at least a week to make the progress that you just did.

It's not hard though?

Hah, if only that old bastard could hear your words.

Feeling the new strain of inner essence that his dantian had begun to produce, he felt his body temperature begin to rise by a few degrees. Maintaining focus, he raised a curious finger and expelled some of this new energy out of his body in the way that he’d been instructed to. As if he'd just switched on a small lighter, a little flame appeared above his finger. He could actually summon fire, he thought with wonder, as he marvelled at the way that the projected energy reacted to his environment.

Every time the White Flame Scripture prompted his dantian to undergo a fresh transformation, the quality of flames that he could produce would rise to another level. By tempering his body to handle such heat, he would gradually raise its resistance to all sorts of flames, especially those that he was already capable of creating. If Nolan managed to cultivate it to its final form, he'd apparently have complete immunity to all earthly fires. He doubted that he would ever come close, however, since Uncle Grey claimed that the technique's previous master had only reached about sixty percent immunity.

So this is what elemental arts are like...

Be grateful, dear disciple! I've yet to see anyone with elemental arts on this continent, so there's a decent chance that you're the only one with such a cultivation method.

Nolan clenched a fist. I'll teach this to Sean and Esteban after we leave.

Uncle Grey also viewed these two as prodigies, but Nolan was of a different opinion. People on Earth had been educated to a far greater extent than the inhabitants of Venara, and in many different areas of study. He figured that this had a lot to do with why the three of them were so talented at cultivation. Unlike training one's muscles, cultivation was mainly a mental process.

Alright, he told his teacher, time to see what this technique can do!

The White Flame Scripture brought in nearly as much energy as the Ancestral Body Technique did within a peaceful environment, and the filtration speed was just as fast. He didn't bring in as much spiritual energy, only about eighty percent, but he was pleased to find that the cultivation method was perfectly compatible with the ways of arrayment practitioners.

Throughout his travels, Nolan had concocted plenty of medicinal pellets that increased cultivation speed, but he only had a handful that managed to give so much as a twenty percent boost. During the next four days, he consumed most of his stock. He was now midway up the staircase, a few steps above an interested Avril.

"Hey," she finally said, after sending about a dozen furtive glances his way. "I thought you had to move in order to cultivate."

"Think what you want."

"Humph, you're so greedy with your secrets."

"Who isn’t? Anyway, I'm greedy in general."

He began to consume the energies around him at an impressive rate, resuming cultivation without a word. His blood seemed to boil the more that his dantian continued to produce the new strain of inner essence, and by the time he reached the sixth floor, he could produce a tennis-ball-sized flame above his palm.

The irritated disciple from the fifth floor sat quietly at the centre of the room, which was about two-thirds the size of the one below. As if seeing a long-forgotten ghost, the man shifted his stocky figure the moment Nolan stepped onto the sixth floor.

"Impossible..."

Nolan buckled immediately under the tremendous aura that had just assailed him. He showed the man a sage's smile, or at least attempted to. "Yeah, m—my power l—level's over nine thousand."

As much as he wanted to approach Nyla and have a short chat, he’d just fallen into a similar crisis as the one that he had faced when he'd first ascended to the previous floor. He immediately began to cultivate the Ancestral Body Technique, which was extremely difficult to do while under such strain. Blood had already begun to spill out of his every orifice, and his skin was visibly tearing in several places.

The man was in the midst of returning his attention to his own affairs when Nolan's anguished struggle stole away his focus for a second time. His head snapped in Nyla's direction and he sent her a questioning gaze, but otherwise kept to himself.

As the hours passed, Nolan's movements gradually became more stable. The energies on the sixth floor were a lot more chaotic than those of the fifth, to the extent that they caused a dangerous amount of internal bleeding within his body. If it weren't for the constant consumption of blood breeding pellets, he would have risked fainting from blood loss. Thankfully, he was able to burn away the excess with his fiery inner essence, which left him free to cultivate to his heart's content.

Two days after stepping onto the sixth floor, Nolan had progressed enough that he could casually walk around without worry, though he still found the atmosphere very stifling.