Over the course of the next few years, Ning continued his closed cultivation. Since the entirely focused on his cultivation, in just a couple of years, he broke through to the next realm.
Once he broke through, he started going into timer-based energy absorption. It was incredibly mentally exhausting to go in and out of the body every single time, but slowly, after a few years, he got used to it.
Once enough time had passed, he left the closed cultivation. He went around the sect, met the old people that were there, and met the new people that were there.
Reya and Nilo had already left the academy, along with many, many of the students Ning knew. Similarly, many others had come to join as well. The world was vast, and there would always be enough students to fill the academy.
Ning's name was remembered, but it wasn't revered as it was during the first few months. When he started back his classes, only students that wanted to study joined it and he was happy.
Also, being a Gold Starred teacher, Ning started helping out the academy by making high-grade pills for them. However, he always made sure that the pills were 8th or 9th grade in quality.
As for 10th grade, it would create chaos, so he kept those for himself. Singeer was pretty happy with just that.
His teaching was great, and he was a gold starred teacher, so soon enough, his past fame caught up to him, and he was starting to get students that only came there because of him.
So, once Ning taught for a few years, he went back into closed cultivation again. His only regret during this time was that he didn't get to meet Ely who had also gone into closed cultivation.
The next time he left was about 2 decades later. Once again, he taught and helped the academy. He looked at the change and accepted it. There were a lot of new teachers and students around him, but he didn't let that bother him.
After a few more years, once he felt it was time, he went into closed cultivation again.
The next one was 30 years long.
Then 50.
Then 80
Then 120.
Then 40.
Then 68.
He went in and out of closed cultivation for a lot of time, and in these times many things changed.
Singeer had died of old age by now. The Principal of the academy was Maeve.
Jezeere had gone into his final closed cultivation wherein he would try to break through to the Spirit Transformation realm or die trying.
He learned the news of the 2nd Gold starred Alchemy teacher in sect dying of old age as well.
On the Beast Masters side, teacher Keng had retired of old age. Gonez was the 2nd best teacher in the whole Wing, behind only Ning.
Ender had at some point graduated as well and left the academy. Ning was quite saddened to hear all of this.
However, there was also good news. Many teachers had joined the academy to teach once again. One of them was Reya who was doing incredibly well and was already a silver starred teacher.
Daisin, one of the best students from his Physician classes had also become an Alchemy teacher that started focussing only on being a physician as well.
Ning learned of Nilo's name being rung about as the next Emperor of the Galyra empire.
Ning taught for a few more years and went back to closed cultivation once more.
However, during all of these years, he kept having that one regret. He never got to meet Ely at all.
"Sigh, let's just go on a long one," he thought and entered his room once more.
Time flew by but Ning felt none of it. With most of his days being spent asleep inside his spear, he couldn't feel the passage of time at all.
He cultivated outside for a while, but after every single breakthrough, he only focused on his energy gathering.
Thanks to this, his body hadn't grown much at all. In total, his body was currently less than 300 years old right now.
If he were to tell people that he reached the 7th Nascent Soul realm in 300 years, people would probably start getting ill out of jealousy.
He had also changed his body cultivation technique by now, and it was incredibly effective. Although, it was so painful that he wanted to get rid of his pain receptors at some points.
However, he realized the problems that could cause and didn't do it. Instead, he just fought against the pain with sheer force and finally jumped the hurdle.
He had also passed along the cultivation technique to Hyesi and Anya and told them not to give it to anyone that wasn't already at the 36th level of Body cultivation, or they would die.
Now that he knew they would live for quite a long time, he freely went back into his energy absorption task with no longer a need to care about anyone, mostly.
He went in and out of the spear so many times that he lost count of it. He couldn't tell if it was day or night, or how many months or years had passed.
His mind was numb to the things he was doing and at one point he started doing it on just simple instinct.
Since he was gathering energy through just Qi, he was also in a way cultivating, and before long, he broke through to the final realm possible on this planet as well.
He could tell, his time on this planet was coming to a close very soon.
Finally, Ning stopped the process. He didn't know how long it had been, but it had been many years for sure.
He decided to no longer do the closed cultivation for a while and instead simply live life a little, after all, there wasn't much longer for him.
So, with that decided, he opened the barricade on his door and walked out.
