The Emperor slowly turned around to look in the direction of where the voice had come from.
There, on one of the broken crystals that were on the ground, he saw a man sitting on it. The man looked older, in his early 30s, but quite handsome.
He wore weird clothes that the Emperor hadn't seen before. But all of that was sidelined in the Emperor's focus when he saw that sword in his hand.
"Who are you?" the Emperor asked. "Put that sword down. It's mine."
Ning grinned from ear to ear, before looking down on the sword in his hand. "Goddamn, it really is so heavy," he said, moving the sword around a bit. "I've never used something so heavy before."
He looked below him at the crystal that he sat on that seemed perfectly fine. "It's heavy for me, but the weight isn't real, huh?" he spoke. "That's quite fascinating. Should I bond with it?"
"You damn brat! Answer me when I'm speaking to you. Who are you?" the Emperor shouted in a fit of rage that caught the attention of the guards to the side.
"Hmm?" Ning touched his face with his left hand. "Do you not recognize me?"
He leaned to the left and looked at his dead body which looked like a pin sack with the crystal spikes that came out of it. He couldn't even see what his face looked like.
"Well, I did say I needed a slightly different face," he mentioned, turning around to the Emperor again. "In case you still haven't recognized it, it's me, Ning."
"Who?" the Emperor asked.
Ning gasped exaggeratively. "Old man, you just killed me. How do you not recognize the person you just killed? Look at me, I don't even look human anymore because of what you did to me."
"What?" the Emperor asked, a look of confusion on his face.
Ning ignored the emperor and looked to the right where the dome was. "Hey! Stop fighting now. It's over. I died," he shouted at them.
The few guards who were still attacking stopped in confusion and looked around to who had just arrived. They saw the emperor and then Ning.
"Clara, come here," he said, waving the large sword in the air.
Clara could barely hear him, let alone see him. She couldn't even walk because of the lack of leg. And yet, somehow she moved.
Outside of her own control, her body flew from the dome, going past the guards who tried to attack her and arrived next to Ning in an instant.
"Are you alright?" Ning asked her when he was in front of him before grimacing a little. "Ugh, sorry. You're not alright."
He tapped her forehead a little and suddenly her leg that she had lost started growing on its own. The wounds on her shoulder healed, and the other wounds that she had acquired over the course of the battle today healed as well.
The 6 guards of the Emperor arrived next to him and watched in horror at the growing limbs and squirming skin. How was this happening?
The Emperor himself was shocked to see what was happening here exactly. How was he healed?
For one thing, the Emperor was more confused at the fact that he couldn't sense any Essence from this man at all. That was the most confusing part of all. Was that how he managed to come here? But then… how did he heal the girl?
The Emperor was so confused that he had already stopped believing at all in the possibility that this truly was Ning and not a different person that had come from nowhere.
The Crown Prince arrived a moment later than everyone and stood a distance away from them. He saw Clara next to Ning and saw that she was fine, healed completely. He couldn't help but sigh in relief.
"Are you alright?" Ning asked Clara, who looked around in surprise and confusion.
Clara was low on Essence and thus felt pretty lethargic because of it, but other than that, she was fine. She stepped away from Ning, looking around in shock.
What had happened just now? How was her consciousness so clear all of a sudden? How were her arms back?
"Did you hear me?" Ning asked. "Are you alright?"
She turned around and looked at Ning before slowly nodding. "I am," she said. "Who… are you?"
"It's me, Ning," Ning said. "I know I look different but I don't really want to de-age this body. Sorry."
"You're… Ning?" Clara asked.
"Yes," Ning said. "I'll explain it all to you once we go elsewhere. Let's leave."
He jumped off the crystal. He only took a few steps to walk away when the Emperor shot multiple crystal spikes around his feet.
"You won't leave until you hand me over that sword," the Emperor said.
Ning looked at the sword and back at the Emperor. He gave an annoyed look and said, "Old man, you killed me. You ended my adventure in this world, and now I'm back to being myself. Consider that a win for yourself and please leave."
"If you try and force something to happen, you'll only end up killing yourself and your men," Ning said.
"Hah! A bunch of big words for someone without Essence," the Emperor said.
"Oh!" Ning widened his eyes. "Are you sure it's me who doesn't have Essence, and it's not you who can't sense it?"
The Emperor frowned a bit. That had crossed his mind as a possibility but that surely couldn't be possible at all.
For the man to evade his Essence Senses, one of two things had to be true.
He either had no Essence or very minimal essence. Or, he had to have so much Essence that he couldn't sense it at all.
'No, I should be able to sense it even if the man was in the damn Divine realm,' he thought. The possibility remained that he didn't have much Essence.
'He must've wasted it all to make that sword his,' the Emperor thought and smiled. "Hah, your bluff doesn't work here. Hand me that sword, or die."
