“Are we going to…you know, that place?” asked Esteban, who glanced at Delia uncertainly

Nolan shook his head. “We can’t go back for another two or three weeks. But that’s okay, since we’ve got everything we need here.”

Ian patted Esteban on the head with a laugh. “What’s the rush to return to that place? You really want to be a fourteen-year-old baby by the time we’d be leaving there again?”

The boy shrugged Ian’s hand off of his shoulder with a snort, though deflated a bit after a moment’s thought. “No, I guess I don’t.”

Delia looked confused, but nobody bothered shedding light on the context of the conversation to her.

“Okay,” said Nolan, pulling out the bunch of translucent grapes that Uncle Grey had referred to as divine fruit. “We’ve got all the heavenly dew we could ever ask for—which, by the way, is worth way more than we thought—not to mention these divine fruit, and all of the medicinal pellets that I made the last time we visited Nia. On top of that, most of us can create basic meditation circle arrayments, while me and Nyla can make intermediate ones, so we’ll create one for any of you guys that want to use them.”

Pulling out the dark pellets that Uncle Grey had refined from the lingering soul of the Desolate Spirit Tower’s master, he placed them on the table as well, a total of sixteen. He’d already given two of these to Ian and May, both of which had only used about half of one, which left sixteen for the rest of the group. These were so potent that eating one whole would kill anyone in attendance aside from May and Delia, who would likely survive with terrible internal injuries and no small amount of suffering.

“We’ve also got these, which I think would be better left for Delia and May.”

Delia broke her longstanding silence, her beautiful eyes wide from shock. “That aura… Where did you get those?”

He threw one to her. “My master made them. You can keep that if you want.”

She looked at him as if he were trying to pull a fast one on her, though she eventually stowed the pellet away with anxious eyes.

“There’re these too,” said Nyla, who produced a mountain of pale blue, egg-shaped stones that she had harvested from the Desolate Spirit Tower. “These were stuck in the walls on the top floor of that tower. There’re 415 of them.”

“S—soul stones?” stuttered May, who had returned to her original appearance. “I can’t believe you have so many of them.” When asked what they were, she explained, “These are much more valuable than superior spirit stones. The reason for that is because while spirit stones contain natural spiritual energy that has been absorbed from the environment over long periods of time, these are filled with the souls of dead cultivators. They’re extremely rare, even in the Thebe’s Empire or in the Western Isles, because only the souls of cultivators at the Genesis stage or higher can be stored within them.”

A chill seemed to sweep throughout the room.

Lyra willed one of the soul stones to float over at the behest of a small amount of projected inner essence. “You’re saying that the souls of 415 Genesis-staged cultivators are just sitting here on the floor?”

“Is there ever a normal day with you lot?” muttered Alicia, who was captivated by the egg-shaped stones. “Are there even that many Genesis-staged people alive today?”

Nolan was just as shocked as everyone else. If he recalled correctly, Nyla had also snatched the skeleton of the tower’s deceased master, along with the ornamented treasure chest that had served as his coffin. He couldn’t help but wonder what Tems would think if he knew that such an immense fortune had been snatched from right under his nose.

“According to the Falling Rain Sect’s intel,” said May, pinching her chin with long-nailed fingers, “There are a little over a thousand on the mainland. It seems that whoever it was that created that tower had been an extraordinary figure.”

“And yet this is all that’s left of him,” said Nolan, flicking one of the black pellets into the others as if they were marbles. He gathered them back up with spiritual energy and then cleared his throat. “Okay, so it’s really sinking in here that we’re actually pretty damn rich. I doubt even the Falling Rain Sect can take out so many priceless cultivation resources. Still, money’s useless when you’re dead, so it’s better if he use these up over the next however long.”

“It’ll take years to use all this,” said Ian. “I can barely use up one of those pellets in an entire week, let alone the divine fruit and the heavenly dew. And those soul stones, can they be used just like spirit stones?”

Seeing that Ian was addressing her, May shook her head in a helpless manner. “I don’t know. Not much is known about these. Perhaps your master—ahem, our master can shed some light on this for us?” She looked at Nolan with an expectant, slightly teasing look in her hazel eyes.

“He’s busy right now, so we won’t be able to communicate with him for a while.”

Delia was visibly dumbstruck as she stared at all of the treasures that had been put on display. Even for someone like her, who was one of the most powerful and feared people in the modern day, such wealth was beyond her.

“I bet you’re happy you wound up with us now, eh?” said Nolan, giving her a playful smile. “I mean, not the slave part obviously.” Noticing that his belt had come loose at some point, he tied it back up and readjusted his pants. Delia’s face grew a bit pink at this moment, which was bizarre considering her character, though nobody else seemed to notice as they were all focused on the resources in front of them.

When Delia didn’t respond, Nolan chose to ignore the question marks that were floating around his head and then willed two divine fruits to float over to everyone present. On top of that, he gave everyone their own bag full of medicinal pellets.

“Okay, I’m gonna be a bit of a sect master for a minute here, so bear with me.” He jokingly adopted an imposing pose, looking everyone in the eye one after the other. “Alright. Your sect master orders you to take whatever you need from this table, and focus on raising your cultivation levels as quickly as possible. Nobody’s allowed to leave this room until they make a breakthrough.”

“What about me and Nyla?” asked Lyra. “We’re one breakthrough away from undergoing our heavenly tribulations. We can’t exactly do that here, can we?”

Seeing that she was genuinely asking, Nolan shook his head with a laugh and then put on a cunning look. “You just let me know when you think you’re about to go through it, and I’ll take care of that."

With that, he and Nyla set about creating four intermediate meditation circles, one at each corner of the room. This inn wasn’t nearly as lavish as the previous one, though there were just as many bedrooms and it also had a large bath. The main room was quite spacious as well, which afforded everyone the privacy and personal space that they needed to close off their minds and commit to cultivation.

Once the meditation circles had been completed, May cast an arrayment on the entire suite that hid it from the senses of those outside, this one much stronger than the one that Nyla had initially cast when they had first settled in.

Okay, thought Nolan, getting settled into a crate that was three-quarters full of heavenly dew. Time to get this ball a’rolling. Swallowing down a few medicinal pellets that he had placed into his mouth just before he’d slipped into the crate, Nolan closed his eyes and began to circulate his inner essence throughout his body in the patterns necessary to activate the White Flame Scripture.

He had decided to save the divine fruit and the meditation circles for the latter half of the week, when he planned to practice the Ancestral Body Technique. His core cultivation method, however, had become increasingly painful as he uncovered more of its main functions, so he wasn’t too eager to go through the excruciating anguish that came with cultivating it. Not only that, but he currently had complete immunity to ordinary flames, and about ten percent immunity to all other types. If he could successfully cultivate the White Flame Scripture to its next stage, then he would gain immunity to orange flames on top of his current immunity to red flames. Not only that, but if he should happen upon an elemental-based martial skill in the future with a focus on fire, then he wouldn’t have much trouble learning it.

Slowly but surely the immense amounts of extremely pure Origin Energy within the heavenly dew were drawn into his body, where they were filtered through his dantian and then circulated throughout his inner essence channels as an integrated part of his own energy system, Nolan was seized by the usual elation that came with making progress in real time. As the hours passed, the amount of heavenly dew gradually began to lower as if it were a tank of water sitting out in the hot sun, though by such a negligible amount that he judged that each crate could last him an entire month of nonstop cultivation. Excited to finally break through to the fourth level of Integration, he continued to cultivate within the silence of the suite, his friends doing the same.

***