After that day, no one from the tower came back to stop Ning directly. Ning was free to do whatever he wanted, and that made Ning suspicious.
'What are they planning?' he wondered. However, they never did anything. They didn't even send the nobles to force him to stop.
So, Ning continued sharing his scrolls and fruits all over the city. Once he thought everyone got what they needed, he left.
He went to the other cities around the country and started doing the same things there as well. He got a local publishing company to start publishing and selling the scrolls as well as the fruits to the locals.
'Dammit!' Ning thought. 'The forest is nearly not large enough to have enough fruits for this place.'
By the time he reached the 4th city on his journey, Ning was starting to feel troubled with the fruits. There wasn't an endless supply, and he would have to find one if he wanted to continue with this.
'Hmm… I should go find some Aether ores,' he thought. There was one place in his mind that held Aether ores, but he wasn't sure just how many there were left.
So, one night, he disappeared and arrived at the southern pole of the continent. The place that held ruins of the peak of Afterlife.
Ning saw kids playing on the ground in the dim light of the sun far off on the horizon. Very few houses were in the city nearby and they were lit up brightly with smokes coming out of the chimneys.
The desert-likes landscape with a dry climate that had been previously what Ning expected, had now turned into a cold, winter land with snow all around him.
'Woah!' he thought."This place has changed quite a bit. Is the climate no longer just contained into the peak?"
Thinking of that, Ning looked towards where the peak used to exist. Now, it was nothing but a hill now.
Ning flew towards the destroyed mountain and couldn't believe that he was responsible for this. He felt a bit sad remembering so many people had died from the earthquake and debris.
'It seems the natural seal around this place has also been destroyed,' he thought.
He shook his head and went to the mountain to check if there were any ores left in the place.
The peak no longer has aurora in it with Qi no longer being expelled through the opening. So, Ning could easily stand on top of it and watch inside.
'Did it turn into a volcano?' he wondered when he saw the crusted land in the middle of the crater as well as the rather massive land around it that could only have been formed from a volcanic eruption.
"Sigh, that place must be buried now. How am I going to get in there?" Ning wondered.
Ning could only think of teleporting into the cave that was at the foot of the mountain, and so he did.
However, where he teleported to was actually on top of the mountain.
'I can't go in,' he thought. That means there was no free space for his body to teleport in there.
Ning scratched his head in confusion. "System, does this place even have Aether ores?" he asked.
<There are some below you>
Ning thought for a moment. He did gain one idea, but he wasn't sure how useful it would be.
'Damn, I hope it's solid as a rock and not clumpy like dirt,' he thought and suddenly changed bodies.
His body fell onto the ground, and Ning quickly took it back.
'Hm… this is quite large,' he thought.
'Wait… what happens if I teleport out now?'
Ning decided to try it out. He suddenly teleported and reappeared on top of the crater once more.
As the rock fell, he changed his body back to the human body. "Phew, that worked," he thought and went back to see the massive hole he had created.
"How deep are the ores?" Ning asked.
<12 meters deep>
'I should be able to collect them then,' he thought and went back to doing the same things over and over again until there were no rocks around that area, and the purple Aether ores were finally visible.
'Nice,' he thought and started scraping out the Aether ores with his own hands that were enhanced.
As he had expected, he couldn't just use his Aether arts on the objects that had heavily concentrated amounts of Aether.
After a few hours, Ning was done gathering all the Aether ores that were surprisingly still there.
He decided to leave, but then he remembered that the area around the peak was a place that didn't belong to any countries.
'There should be people here that would love to get some aether arts as well,' he thought and went over to the people to give them a piece of ore as well as the scroll with the information.
It didn't take very long to pass them all up. He didn't stay long enough to see if they believed him or not, but he just needed a single person to do what he said and from word of mouth alone the whole city would start using the technique.
Ning reappeared back in Xandria and continued with his task. Now, he had enough resources to awaken at least 2 more whole countries.
He went through many cities in Xandria, giving people hope and power. He was soon very famous in all the cities, and most cities had people waiting for him to visit.
By now, they had started calling him a savior and hope of humanity. They asked him who he was, but Ning never gave away his name to them, and instead simply told them he was someone working against the Aether tower to loosen their clutch on the normal folks.
He was soon given a name by the people.. Since he went around giving people the ability to use Aether, similar to what the legends said the goddess did, they started calling him the Apostle of Alexis.
