The area appeared empty. The tempting aura that filled the peaceful environment was the only significant aspect of the sixth floor, and the underground world also seemed devoid of life.
The environment's layout was quite peculiar. The many rivers had random courses, but the mountains stood at the exact center of the floor's edges. That had to be planned, but Noah and June couldn't find anything connected to that detail.
The pack of turtles, Gabrielle, Old Tyrant, Fiery Mountain, and Pellio remained inside the dark world hovering in the sky while Noah and June inspected every corner of the sixth floor. They dived in the rivers and stopped the flow of the waterfalls, but their search for clues remained uneventful.
"We can try using our panions as guinea pigs," June suggested.
"Who did you have in mind?" Noah asked.
"Gabrielle," June responded without showing any hesitation.
Noah shook his head, but a laugh escaped his mouth. The two returned to the dark world to explain the situation to Gabrielle, and the latter immediately agreed to play that role.
The tempting aura that filled the sixth floor had strange effects on Gabrielle. The expert felt attracted by the surface as soon as she left the dark matter, and that feeling only intensified when she descended toward the ground.
Noah and June inspected her reactions and the changes in her aura. Gabrielle slowly fell into a daze, and she instinctively began cultivating near a river. Still, the energy that tried to flow inside her world ended up spreading into the environment.
The sixth floor seemed to use Gabrielle as a tool to improve its overall state. Her world generated energy on its own, but the environment transformed that fuel into four different currents that flew toward the four mountains.
The situation was far more than peculiar. Gabrielle's cultivation method was rather plicated. She had to summon her purple crystals and deploy them into a specific array to enhance the energy released by her figure. She would then reabsorb that fuel after it went through a few enhancements.
In theory, nothing could force the enhanced energy to change its course. External influences would only make that fuel disperse. Yet, the sixth floor managed to take it for itself.
The only possible explanation was that Gabrielle herself had deployed the purple crystals so that the energy would go toward the four mountains. She had decided to give power to the floor, but Noah and June felt sure that she didn't do that on purpose.
The peaceful expression on Gabrielle's face even described how she believed that her cultivation was going well. She didn't sense that theft, which was enough to prove the dangerous properties of the floor. The calm aura appeared able to mess up her senses in ways that even the dark world would struggle to achieve.
Noah and June could find multiple explanations for that event. A simple illusion could be enough to trick Gabrielle so deeply, but their main doubt remained. They couldn't find what made them immune to that influence, and even the experiment with Gabrielle wasn't leading to results.
'What do we have more than her?' Noah wondered.
The answer couldn't concern their cultivation level or path. Noah and June were very different in that field, and their panions also matched their apparent power. Still, a reason had to exist, and the two did everything in their power to find it.
The lack of clues forced Noah and June to interrupt Gabrielle's cultivation to interrogate her, and the expert finally revealed some of the secrets of the sixth floor. She appeared lost but still herself. She wasn't under the effects of an illusion, but there was something strange in her behavior.
"Why, what?" Gabrielle gasped as she inspected her hands.
The expert didn't stop there. Gabrielle bent forward to lay her ear on the ground. She was looking for something, and Noah and June immediately thought about her lost energy.
"The mountains took everything your world generated," Noah explained.
"Oh, that's good!" Gabrielle announced before frowning. "Wait. Why did I say that?"
"Try to find the answer," June insisted.
"I-, I," Gabrielle stuttered before straightening her back and inspecting the four mountains. "I feel a connection with the environment. Well, I felt it. It's gone now."
"What kind of connection?" Noah questioned.
"I don't know," Gabrielle responded as a warm smile appeared on her face. "It felt close, deep, and even personal. I think the floor wanted to fuse our powers."
"We did dual cultivate many years ago," June whispered.
"That wasn't exactly fun for me," Noah recalled, but June promptly laid her head on his shoulder.
"What do you think all of this means?" June asked while taking Noah's arm.
"Maybe the sixth floor is trying to find a lover," Noah joked.
"We can offer Gabrielle then," June played along. "They are already so in love with each other."
"I'm still here!" Gabrielle plained as a tinge of fear appeared on her face. "I will leave now. I can't control myself when I'm here."
Gabrielle basically ran away to return inside the dark world, and the couple inspected her during her flight. Their minds tried to find more reasonable solutions after Gabrielle vanished among the dark matter, and a few ideas inevitably took form.
"The connection was about energy," Noah mented. "I can create avatars that reflect my existence, but I don't know how deep they can go with the fusion. I'd need to cut the connection as soon as something tried to reach my world."
"We can't even sacrifice anyone of our new allies, sadly," June sighed. "What if the floor is offering us a different path?"
"Do you want to do it here?" Noah asked.
"Something might happen if we show the floor our connection," June suggested. "You don't even have problems with your instincts now. We can try to go over the phases of the dual cultivation before going for the real thing."
"It might work," Noah admitted.
Everything was still quite vague on the sixth floor. The search for a connection might have merely been an excuse to steal Gabrielle's energy, but Noah and June wouldn't discover anything if they didn't perform more tests.
"I'll tell the others to hide," Noah declared before shooting toward the dark world and moving it toward the farthest corner from the surface.
Noah explained the plan to his panions, and they naturally remained dumbfounded. Fiery Mountain even felt a bit worried, but the presence of the dark world slightly reassured her about her safety.
"Boss, are you sure you can maintain your focus on the technique in the meantime?" Old Tyrant asked. "I wouldn't dare to see something."
"Don't worry about that," Noah calmly dismissed Old Tyrant. "It wouldn't be the first time with an audience."
Fiery Mountain shook her head and retreated deeper into the dark world while Old Tyrant and Gabrielle found themselves out of words. Pellio didn't hear anything about Noah's explanation, while the turtles didn't care about the approach as long as it worked.
Noah left his panions to return to June at that point. The dark world prevented the experts from studying the outside world, but tremors and shockwaves eventually began to reach it.. The dark matter endured everything perfectly, but the occasional lightning bolts and destructive powers that flew in its direction pierced its surface.
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