When Ning reappeared, he was in the middle of what looked like a really foggy region. however, it was way too hot to be foggy. There was a massive sun in the sky, but that was likely not the reason for this fog. which lead him to believe that he was actually in the middle of a bunch of steam.
Suddenly, he lost all feelings of gravity in his body as he started free falling.
He immediately caught himself and started flying normally. He looked around to catch the sight of Alexis flawlessly floating through the air, the water vapor parting around her, not daring to taint a single spot on her body with their moisture.
"Let's go down," she said. The two of them floated down until they were atop a small piece of land.
Ning looked around in shock. The land looked like nothing but an island with a single volcano on top of it.
The brown, rocky piece of land was really warm. Ning really believed a volcano would erupt at any moment here.
Most of the area was covered in dense fog and was hard to see.
Alexis took him and walked towards the mouth of the volcano. Ning walked along with her and slowly ascended the mountain.
"Is… this the Origin?" he asked. He had wanted to come here for so long, and finally, he was here. To top it all off, it was the goddess who had brought him here.
Ning took a mental image of the location and tried to find it on the map he had, but he couldn't find it.
'It must be in a folded space as well,' he thought.
"Yes, it is," Alexis said. "Not only is it in a folded space, but there is also a seal around the place as well."
"You might think you will come back here when I take you back, but you won't," she said.
"Eh? A seal?" Ning asked with a bit of surprise. "And you can open this seal?"
Alexis smiled at him. "Of course. I put the seal here after all."
Ning's eyes threatened to bulge out of its sockets. "You put a seal around this place?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "I don't really like it when people come in here, so I made it impossible to get in using any method."
Ning looked around. He wondered if this was the source of her godhood and that was why she didn't want anyone to come here.
"I learned my lesson pretty well last time," she said, almost absentmindedly.
"Your lesson?" he asked.
"Yes," Alexis said. "I had another seal prepared where I didn't want anyone to go to. However, preparing a seal where no one could enter cost me a lot of power. So, I had decided to skimp out a little and let some flaws there."
"I ended up making a seal where no living being could enter," she said.
"And the flaw?" Ning asked, and even as he did, An answer came to his mind.
"Yes," she said, reading the answer in his mind. "Since no living being could enter, people entered using dead people. I was quite distraught when I realized that."
"But the seal was already made, and I couldn't really change it," she said.
"You made the seal around the Peak of Afterlife?" he asked in surprise.
"Yes, and you destroyed it," Alexis said with a hollow voice
Alexis said nothing and continued walking. Ning started thinking about what he had just learned when he realized he had reached the top of the mountain and was now looking into the mouth of the vol—
It wasn't a volcano. Ning was wrong.
"The hell?" he asked in surprise as he tried to peer through the upcoming waves of steam to see what he was really looking at.
Alexis waved her hand and a gust of air took away the steam at the bottom of the crater.
When it went away, Ning could finally see a large pool of shimmering white liquid at the bottom of the crater.
The pool reminded him of the liquid Qi pool in the Origin of Kumia. However, while that was a pool of Qi, this one… wasn't a pool of Aether at all.
There was no energy in that pool aside from a bit of heat to turn it into vapor and…
Ning finally saw it. At the bottom of the lake, there was a large hole that looked like a portal, the same as the one at the bottom of the lake in Kumia.
That was the portal to the world of Energy where even he as an immortal had a very high likelihood of dying.
Ning subconsciously took a step back in fear, but still stuck his head out to look at the slightly purple color of just a small section of the lake.
"Aether is coming from there," Alexis pointed and said. "But… you knew that already, didn't you?"
Ning nodded.
"You keep surprising me with your knowledge," she said. She looked back towards the pool and continued explaining.
"That liquid right there is nothing but water, mixed with a special mineral that can only be found on this mountain."
"The mineral dissolves into the hot spring down there, which then becomes the liquid that absorbs Aether. From what I know, there are many other minerals out there that can make the Aether Liquid, but only this mineral is available on this planet," Alexis said.
Ning nodded as he came to an understanding. "So it the mixture of water and that mineral that makes the liquid that absorbs Aether, huh?" he said.
He would need this liquid to make the things that would stop people from collecting Aether.
"I don't necessarily need the liquid, do I?" he asked as he looked at the side of the mountain. "I just need the minerals."
"Yes," Alexis said.
"Depending on the amount of mineral in the liquid, it may or may not have a really high capacity of carrying Aether. If you want a liquid that gathers a massive amount of Aether, including the one from other Aether liquid already in the air, you will have to make a really concentrated liquid."
Ning nodded while listening to her. He looked at the bottom of the pool once more and realized that the Aether liquid that was supposed to be purple wasn't really purple at all.
"Go and get as many as you can from anywhere on this island," Alexis told him.
Ning nodded and left the place to get the minerals.
It took him no more than a few minutes to realize that the entire land was made up of the same mineral as the one in the crater.
Someplace had a higher amount and someplace had a lower amount, so he went on to find locations that had a lot of it.
He started digging in the rocky ground that was soft as a cake under his Aether King enchanted body. The shovel dug into the rock like a knife entering a bread and easily pulled out the contents inside of it.
Then, he stored the minerals in his storage.
In just a matter of minutes, he had enough mineral to make that pond's worth of Aether liquid of the highest concentration.
He walked back up to the top of the mountain with Alexis still waiting there.
She looked solemn, with not a single smile on her face.
"What's wrong?" Alex asked.
"So beautiful," she said as she looked into the shimmering lights beneath the pool of Aether liquid.
"Don't go in there. That is very dangerous," Ning cautioned her.
"I know," She said. "I've touched it and felt it try to devour me. I won't make that mistake again."
Ning tried to ask her what it was like, but then he saw a teardrop from her face. He stopped.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
As if that were the key to the sea, the floodgates opened and tears streamed down both of her eyes.
"I'm dying," she said. "I have been dying for a while now, and I can't stop at all."
Ning froze. At first, he thought he heard her wrong. How could a god die? Weren't they gods because they couldn't die?
He wasn't a god, and even he couldn't die, without special circumstances.
However, he knew he could trust his hearing and thus the words he heard coming out of Alexis' mouth.
She was dying.
"Are you sure?" Ning asked.
Alexis nodded. She nodded while the tears streamed down her face constantly.
"I don't know what to do," she said. "I have been losing my mind a lot of the time recently. I can't even stay awake a whole day anymore and have to disappear to gather my consciousness before returning back."
"I don't want to regress back to the time when I couldn't think at all," Alexis said.
Ning tried to comfort her. "I'm sure we can find a way around this," he said.
"No, there is no way. I know everything, and therefore, I know that there is no way," she said.
Ning didn't want to believe that. He had never been in a situation where there was no solution to a problem.
Most of the time the solutions were horrible, and the worst choice, but they were still solutions.
"Do you know what is causing you to regress back to this unconscious state then? If we know how it is happening, then maybe we can fix it," Ning said.
Alexis nodded. "I know the reason," she said.
Ning smiled and asked, "What is it?"
She turned towards him, with red eyes full of anger, and said, "YOU!"
