Ning reappeared in the Aether forest with Alexis' hand still on his shoulder.
He walked away from her and gathered his situation. When he realized he was safe, he turned around towards Alexis.
Her eyes drooped to the side and there was a hint of hesitation in her eyes. Even as the question built up in Ning's heart, she already knew what he was going to ask.
"Why did he call you 'Master'?" Ning asked.
Alexis sighed. She couldn't get out of answering this question no matter if she wanted to or not.
"That's because I taught him the Aether arts, just like you," she said.
Ning felt his heart sink to his stomach. "You taught that bastard how to use Aether? Were you the one who progressed him to Aether Underlord as well?" he asked.
Alexis couldn't help but sigh. "He wasn't all that bad when I met him. He was a young child born into poverty. I found him after he was buried his parents who were killed in a war between two countries."
"I told him that I would help make him strong, and in return, I asked him for the same thing I asked you… to return peace to this world," Alexis said.
"And?" Ning asked.
"I gave him the same task as you too. Defeat the head of the tower and become the head yourself."
"The one at that time was an Aether Supreme, so after a few hundred years of training under me, he reached a level where even as a Saint, he could fight him and defeat him."
"Then, I waited for him to bring peace back to the land… but all he would tell me was that it's a hard thing to do and that I should wait patiently."
"But… I couldn't wait patiently at all. I wanted to see the peace in this world return, and I feared that by the time it had come back, I would disappear."
"After all, you had already broken the Peak of Afterlife, and thus my own life was slowly disappearing," she said.
Ning's eyes changed when he heard that. "Do… do you mean to say that the destruction of the Peak of Afterlife and you dying… are related?" he asked.
"How is that possible?" he asked. "Was there something in the Peak that affected your lifeline?"
Alexis gave a dry smile. "The portal you came through, that was my lifeline," she said.
Ning's eyes sharpened. "How…?
"A few tens of thousands of years ago, when the portal suddenly appeared on that peak, it spewed out an unimaginable amount of energy into the air, which… this planet absorbed."
"As the planet absorbed more and more energy, its intelligence increased as well, and from that intelligence, I was born," Alexis said.
Ning's eyes went wide. "You are the planet Vilmore itself?" Ning asked with shock in his voice.
"In a sense, yes. It would be easier to call it the will of the planet, but you are not wrong either," she said.
Ning looked at her in shock. The will of the planet… he had heard of such a thing existing back in Kumia, but never had he realized that it could give life to such a complex being.
Suddenly, the system spoke.
<Information Unlocked>
<You can now partially learn about Celestial Manifestations>
Ning didn't even hesitate. 'Give it to me,' he said, and suddenly, a vast amount of information embedded itself in Ning's mind.
When a heavenly body existed, at a certain threshold of energy, they acquired wills of their own. most of the time, they will barely have any intelligence.
Celestial Manifestation, otherwise known as Will Manifestation was when a heavenly body with a will was intelligent enough to manifest itself in a physical form.
Beings of such kind had unimaginable power and held a great deal of authority over their own system.
For a Celestial Manifestation to happen, 3 things needed to happen.
First, the Celestial Body needed to have an Origin in themselves somewhere to continuously supply them with energy.
Second, there needed to be a vast amount of soul nearby for the will to even realize it could turn into something else. The most powerful of the souls, the human souls worked best for this. Since the wills were influenced by the souls, most celestial bodies couldn't manifest their wills themselves even if they met the other criteria as their will wouldn't know what to manifest themselves as without any influence.
Finally, there needed to be enough energy above a certain threshold in proportion to the body for the will to even be intelligent enough. This was one of the reasons why planets could almost never manifest wills at all since they would never have enough energy for their intelligence to grow.
Manifested wills usually—
Ning tried to read more, but there seemed to be information missing from his mind.
"There's more right?" Ning asked.
<Yes, but you will have to wait until you learn more about them on your own to unlock that information>
Ning ignored the system for now and thought about what he had just learned.
The first point, having Origin. Almost all planets should have this. At least, the ones with special energies in them. Since Vilmore had it, it passed that point.
For the second point, there needed to be souls around for the will to be influenced. Seeing how Alexis was humanity in its perfect form, it was easy to say that she had indeed been influenced.
Finally, the third point. The planet should have some level of energy in them compared to the planet itself.
Vilmore was quite small in size, and Ning wasn't sure what the threshold was. However, he had just learned one bit of information from Alexis herself.
When the portal started spewing out energies to the planet, she started getting intelligent.
Meaning, Alexis had accidentally got intelligence that she would have likely not received had the planet never acquired enough energy from the massive Kumia.
So it was because of Kumia that Alexis was even alive.
'But now I've destroyed the source of this supply of energy when I destroyed the peak. This means… the planet is returning to the time when it was below the threshold, and as such… her manifested Will will cease to exist,' he thought.
Ning's eyes went wide as he saw Alexis nod in agreement. "So I really am responsible for you dying."
