Along the way, Ning asked the man for some more information.
It had turned out that the man always lived alone and never made any money aside from what little things he sold from his farm.
He was okay with that for a while, but once he fell down a ditch on the side of the mountain, he had broken his legs and was since then not able to work.
He spent many days in his home, waiting for his leg to heal, but during that time, someone else took away his farm since he hadn't worked on it.
There was still some time before he could get a farm of his own, but his resources were running low.
So, he first asked his neighbors to help him a little, which they did. But after a while, they stopped helping him. They would ignore him if he asked for anything.
With no other choice, he had resorted to thievery.
"Sir, please let me go. I have no money to pay the fees at all. If I did, I wouldn't have to steal to live, would I?" the man asked.
He limped as he walked behind Ning. Ning felt a bit bad for this man. Making someone poor pay for trying to survive was not something he would want to punish.
But crime was crime. All he could do was make sure the punishment wasn't too harsh on the man.
He thought of something that seemed to work for the man and said, "If you can't pay the fee, then you will be imprisoned."
"What?" the man sounded frustrated. "Officer, please. I— I swear I won't steal again. Please don't send me to jail. I- I can get the money somehow. I promise."
"Sir, listen to me," Ning said. "Your leg will need some time to heal and you don't have the money to pay the fines. If you do borrow some money, you will only be in further debt."
"There is also the fact that you will have to still survive on your own, which in your case is very hard. So, I suggest that you don't pay and instead accept the jail time."
"In jail, we will take care of your meals and health. You can rest there while you get your body ready to go back to the fields."
"Since your crime is small, you will only spend a few weeks in there. I promise you will want this more than anything," Ning said.
The man limped slowly, lost to his own thoughts for a while before asking, "I really won't have to worry about my food?"
"No," Ning said. He looked at the man as he finally came to the realization that Ning's idea was actually beneficial for him.
"Thank you, officer," he said.
"Don't worry about it. It's my job," Ning said and turned around. A frustrated look appeared on his face as soon as he turned around.
He was getting closer to the tower, and the dreadful task was about to come.
The Paperworks.
Ning would rather get tossed into the most blistering sands or the most freezing ocean than go through that paperwork.
As he was sighing, he heard some sounds coming from far away. It sounded like a bunch of people talking at once… or were they screaming?
He looked up and had his vision magnify directly towards the source of the sound.
He saw smoke and dust rising into the sky around the tower, while many people were running away from it.
'What?' he thought and decided to go see.
"Stay here, something is happening up ahead," He said to the man behind him and ran towards the tower.
He ran through the crowd that was running in the opposite direction but had a hard time as people pushed him while they ran past him.
His speed severely dropped while trying to navigate through the many people that seemed to be running away from the situation.
'What's going on over there?' he thought. He didn't have any more time to waste.
Suddenly, his body lifted as he started flying.
Sounds of gasps of awe rang out from the people underneath as they had rarely seen anyone fly before. Most didn't even know it was possible.
Ning flew, but his speed was slow. After all, he was only an Aether Magister, on the verge of becoming Aether King. Unlike the other times when he flew when he was nearly above Aether Saint.
Still, it was fast enough to reach the tower in a matter of minutes. When he reached there, and looked past the dust and smokes, he saw multiple of the officers, fighting with the people, who by their clothes, looked like escaped convicts.
There were dozens of them.
'Did they somehow manage to leave their cells?' Ning wondered and looked towards the tower, that was destroyed in places.
Ning dropped from the sky and landed to the side of a woman who was fighting a man that had managed to find himself a knife that was entirely made up of metal.
'He probably made it using Aether,' Ning thought when he checked the man and realized he was an Invoker.
The woman to his side knew that he was an Enchanter, so he didn't dare create anything in front of her.
"Terran, can you help?" she asked when she realized he had come.
"Yes," Ning said. Ning put his hands forwards and suddenly made a single point on the ground extremely gravitational towards only the tip of the knife.
In a single instance, the knife dragged itself out of the convict's hands, striking tip first onto the ground.
The convict looked surprised at the red mark on his hand that was left behind by the friction.
While he was distracted, Ning threw out a rope from his storage space and constricted the convict with it.
The convict saw it and was about to create fire to burn it, but the woman to his side suddenly leaped towards him and stabbed him in the shoulders with a sharp object.
It was a syringe that contained the sedating liquid.
