It took a while for Marina to adapt to this weird dream, but she started to enjoy it. It was entirely different from the nightmares that pushed her to forgo sleep as much as possible.

She lay in a wide blue sky filled with clouds. Gravity ignored her and she could freely move around as she wished.

The clouds were stuffed with emotions and sensations both positive and negative that would constantly get scattered and jumbled together through the ever-present wind. It was chaotic and messy, nearly giving her an aneurism trying to make sense of it. But it was also liberated and pure.

The chaotic winds and sights were exciting and fascinating. Before she knew it, she stopped trying to analyze the whole thing and just enjoyed the experience.

She closed her eyes and sighed peacefully, letting the world shift around her. The comfortable feeling of weightlessness and the cool breeze made her relax for the first time in a long time. It didn’t last.

The familiar smell of smoke and ash made her nose twitch. She looked down to see that her hands were aflame. The wrathful flames didn’t harm her at all, and even licked her lovingly. Sadly, its intentions for the sky were not so benevolent.

The sky screamed in pain as the flames spread unbidden of her will. ‘Stop!’ She commanded the flames, but they continued to violently lash out at the environment.

The sky was burning. She looked at her own trembling hands that were still releasing flames. She was burning it. That realization made something inside her snap. “Stop.” Her voice radiated a cold fury that could not be disobeyed.

The flames trembled a little and stopped in their tracks. They were then sucked into Marina’s body without any struggle. The raging flames weren’t troubled by this result, instead they trembled comfortably inside her, like a person stretching once they returned home.

She looked at the sorry state of the burned clouds and scorched sky. A pang of guilt and sorrow shot through her for a moment before she shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll burn as many skies as it takes to get it done.” With that whisper, she slowly faded from that world.

…

Marina opened her eyes slowly. She frowned at the weight on her stomach and looked down to see Raul’s head lying on her. Her frown deepened as she felt his hand in hers and the irregularity in his sleep.

She’d seen Raul sleep countless times for various reasons in the last three months, and she could tell that his current sleep was similar to when he did extreme training, thoroughly exhausted.

A quick check with her qi told her that his body was fine. The injuries he’d received trying to cultivate were still there, but they were healing well and couldn’t have caused his current state. A deeper look showed that his mental energy was almost entirely depleted.

A trace of fear flashed in her eyes as she wondered if they’d been attacked by a mental expert, but she quickly crossed that off upon realizing that neither of them were injured.

Though she didn’t consider the Vault Family powerful, they were particularly hard to infiltrate. Mental cultivators were already rare, and one capable of entering the Vault Household unaware wouldn’t waste time just to knock them out.

Given their current position, it was more likely Raul tried to use the Divine Pairing Hearts Technique on his own. She could only sigh in relief that he didn’t damage his mental roots in the process.

The Pairing Hearts had many functions that weren’t meant to be used at the Refining Realm. If he’d accidentally triggered any he might’ve become an idiot, assuming he didn’t kill them both.

Marina would never imagine that he’d used up his mental energy surviving her mindscape, or that what she’d considered a dream was her own trip into his mindscape.

For as many magical uses as the Divine Pairing Hearts Technique had, granting access to the mindscape was not one of them.

She put him into the bed and popped a healing pill into his mouth while making a mental note to warn him against messing with the technique carelessly. She hadn’t before because she thought there was no urgency to it. She never imagined she’d suddenly fall unconscious.

The frown returned to her face. That was something she needed to get to the bottom of immediately.    

She set up two formations in the living room and sat inside of them. The first was a sealing array, while the second would trigger the alarm on the array around the house, tipping off the guards watching the place. Though she was confident it wasn’t an attack, she couldn’t completely rule it out until she found out why she passed out.

Her focus expanded for a moment before sinking into her own body. After a few minutes of studying herself, she opened her eyes with a complex expression.

A lot of the impurities from her consistent use of pills over the last months were removed, and the ones that were still there weren’t as deep as before. On top of that, her qi flowed a bit smoother than it previously did. She knew these symptoms well. They were the effects of the Natal Physique.

The Natal Physique only showed up in people who removed a large amount of impurities during the smelting period. As a premise, it meant that a person had to have a large number of impurities to begin with to have a chance of getting it.

Marina, being a prominent descendant of the Norn Family, naturally didn’t qualify. The same could be said for most highborn cultivators, it’s the reason why the Natal Physique was often looked down on and called the Pauper Physique. So why did she have it now?

She glanced at the room Raul was sleeping in. The answer was obvious yet unexplainable. If someone told her that this didn’t have anything to do with Raul gaining the Natal Physique, she’d tell them to stop using their brain as a cushion for their ass. All phenomena could be traced to a source she obviously got the physique from him. But knowing there was a connection didn’t tell her how it was possible.

Physiques were still being studied to this day and there was no technique that could instantly replicate the physique of one person in another, not even the Divine Pairing Hearts could do such a thing. There was only one possible explanation for this anomaly.

‘Sharing physiques wasn’t in the artifact description, but who knows what features that lunatic might have hidden in them.’ She thought while looking at the Oni Ring on her finger with narrowed eyes. The two rings were support artifacts specifically tailored to enhance the Divine Pairing Hearts.

The Pairing Hearts were already the strongest dual cultivation technique, at leas to the Norn’s, so an amplification of it might make this impossible feat possible.

No one knew what the rings might be hiding. The creator was dead, and there was no example to follow as they were the only pair in existence.

A complete anomaly that she’d have to figure out piece by piece. As she looked down on the ring, the ancient scribbles looked like they were smiling mockingly at her.

“Even from beyond the grave you manage to give me headaches Father. I wonder what you were really making this for.” She muttered scornfully. She didn’t believe his lies of helping the household for a second, not that she could really judge him there.

She then shook the useless thought from her head. “I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore.” If the rings really did allow the wearers to gain each other’s physiques, then it was simply a pie from the sky for her.

Of course, it’s only speculation currently. Correlation didn’t equal causation, and just because it was a convenient answer for her didn’t mean she could believe in it blindly. Tests needed to be made. Luckily there was a relatively easy way to do that soon.

“Not to worry father, I’ll use everything you left behind. To achieve my goals, I will swallow you up completely.” A creepy smile crawled along her face as sparks of malevolence and madness danced in her eyes.