The last time that he’d entered this area, it had been about the size of a soccer field, and filled with a heavy mist of raw spiritual energy. As this energy had continued to condense, small droplets had perpetually fallen from this cloud and gathered on the floor of the tiny realm to create an ankle-deep pool of liquid spiritual energy. Nolan's dantian had floated within the centre of this field, about the size of a watermelon, where it had served as a light source of sorts that was continuously nurtured by the energized environment. This time around, however, he felt as if he had arrived in a completely different place.

His consciousness appeared above a small lake that was about a kilometre long and equally as wide, his dantian now the size of a bale of hay where it hovered about fifty metres above the body’s centre. A ferocious storm was currently battering the waist-deep energies that had already been condensed, which drew Nolan’s attention to the fact that there was currently no iridescent mist floating around as he was used to seeing. Violent waves of colourful energy smashed against the invisible borders of his spiritual space as if they were colliding against the rocky base of an ocean bluff. Each time they did so, the borders were pushed back by about a metre, and the surface of the lake would rise by a hand’s length. In place of the usual mist was a field of violet electricity that seemed to reach all areas of this space, with a heavy cloak of energy surrounding his pulsating dantian in the same way that his body was enveloped in the physical world.

Wasting no time, Nolan trusted the information that he had inherited from the original owner of the Ancestral Body Technique, and willed the mental manifestation of his body to fly directly into the centre of his dantian where he immediately began to put his core cultivation method to use. Time passed slower within this mental space by a ratio of about four-to-one so long as he wasn’t focusing on the outside world, so the few seconds that he had until he hit the ground were quadrupled. In that time, the mental cultivation helped in the slightest of ways to bring some order to the violent waves of energy that were currently laying waste to his inner essence channels. This freed up his limbs for limited movement, enabling him to reach out for the paralyzed woman so that he could drag her beneath him just before they hit the ground.

Nolan lost his breath and momentarily, his consciousness. When he blinked his eyes open a second later, it was to find that both of his ankles had been sprained and that his body had suffered instant bruising in multiple places. Thankfully, the white-haired woman—which he now remembered had been referred to as the White Rogue by his friends in Ridgerock—had large breasts, which had perfectly cushioned his head and hands from the impact. He immediately pushed himself off of her and forcefully dragged one foot in front of the other as if he were slogging through a patch of mud that was knee-deep. Once he was a few metres away, he used the energy that he had stolen from the White Rogue to activate the Millennial Ring’s teleportation function, and soon appeared within the courtyard of the glade.

“D—dear disciple!” Uncle Grey was meditating above the barky shack that sat within the central courtyard, a whirlwind of energy swirling around him as he opened his eyes with astonishment.

“No time.”

Nolan ignored his teacher and began to cultivate, the movements extremely discomforting due to his sprained ankles. The ring within his chest was agitated, and he could tell that it might kick him out at any minute. Not only that, he was now vividly aware of the fact that the energy that had surrounded him and the White Rogue was meant for his dantian to absorb, and if it did so before his inner essence channels were destroyed then he would successfully break through to the Integration stage.

It took nearly an hour for Nolan to sort out the situation within his body, but he held off on completely finishing this process due to the large amount of tribulation energy that was still missing. If he wanted to avoid any complications to his cultivation, he had to absorb the energy that had latched onto the woman’s body. This meant freeing her from paralysis, but it was necessary in order to avoid putting his health at risk.

He dangled his feet in the Divine Spirit Fountain for a few minutes to heal them, at which point he noticed Jun’s absence.

“Jun?” stammered his teacher when asked, who had put what he was doing on pause though hadn’t moved from where he hovered. “He’s off exploring the surrounding glades. He said that there’s a good chance that there are other lingering spirits that would be willing to join us, so he…”

“Okay, I was just wondering.” Nolan hopped out of the fountain and went to say something else, but was unceremoniously ejected from the glade and teleported back to Venara.

Unlike most other times when the transmigration effect was deliberately activated, this time around Nolan fell to the earth beside the White Rogue in a disoriented heap. She was still surrounded by his energies, immobile while wearing a mask of rage. Nolan vomited right beside her, not much but enough to stain the ends of some loose strands of her hair.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was thinking about your underwear.” He belched and then drank some water. “Talk about disarming.”

He climbed to his feet and stared down at her with contemplative eyes. If he absorbed the energy that had latched onto her—which was about thirty percent of the total amount—then she would likely regain her freedom while he struggled to complete his breakthrough. The question was; would the energy immediately dissipate if he killed her? Battered by wind and rain as he stood there in the darkness of Weston’s countryside, Nolan pulled out his halmite sword and rested the tip of it against the woman’s neck.

“Damn it,” he muttered, staring down with a conflicted look. “This is your own fault, you know.” He felt greasy about killing somebody that couldn’t move, but he knew that she would do the same to him were their positions reversed.

Just as he steeled his heart to murder the helpless woman, a loud series of unnatural percussions sounded from not too far off.

The White Rogue noticed this as well, her eyes darting around as she redoubled her efforts to shake off the energy that bound her in place. Uncle Grey had mentioned that Heavenly Tribulations were extremely lethal to individuals that weren’t meant to receive them, but Nolan would never have guessed that it was to the degree that somebody as powerful as this woman would be rendered immobile and defenseless after receiving just a portion of one.

“Listen,” said Nolan, who stowed away his sword and put on a thoughtful frown. “I don’t really want to kill you, so I came up with a better idea.” He pulled out a master-slave contract and one of the needles made from the giant sloth’s plated fur, and tried to prick the woman’s thumb in order to draw some blood. “Jesus, are you even human?” Her skin was stronger than tempered steel, which forced him to put a considerable deal of strength into retrieving but a tiny drop of her blood. Still, this was enough to get the job done.

A few moments and a grunt of discomfort later, a black ring appeared around the woman’s fair neck. From this moment onward, the White Rogue would be Nolan’s slave. She was fully aware of the implications of the contract, but seemed too angry to collect herself.

“Alright, so here’s how things are gonna go.” Nolan crouched low and flicked her nose with a finger, schadenfreude seeping from his face as he looked down upon the woman that had caused him so much undeserved strife. “From here on out, you’re prohibited from trying to harm me or anybody I care about. If you even try, then kill yourself in the worst way that you can think of.”

The ring around her neck came to life with a bright flash of light, which immediately caused the woman to go limp as her eyes widened with alarm. She must have been thinking about doing exactly what he’d just told her not to, and so had received a warning from the contract to not attempt to put thoughts into action.

“Now, I’m gonna take my energy back. I’ll have to cultivate for a bit, so guard me until I say otherwise. If not, then kill yourself.”

Taking back the tribulation energy was as simple as extending his hand and willing it to enter his body, which immediately reinvigorated the storm within his spiritual space and inner essence channels. As he set about cultivating the Ancestral Body Technique, the woman remained in place and simply stared up at the sky with shell-shocked eyes. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, but he truly didn’t care.