"What? No, I'm not following you!" the green-haired man named Noren said hurriedly before Saphandra would beat him.
Now that they were on open waters, if either Ning or Saphandra held a grudge against him, he would be as good as dead.
"Then why are you here?" Saphandra asked while secretly looking at Ning to see if she said it correctly. She felt a little happy when Ning nodded.
"I— It was just a coincidence. I boarded the ship without knowledge of you guys coming here. After what happened in the city, I simply wanted to return back to my school," the man said.
Saphandra side eyed Ning and asked, "what is he saying? I only understood 'city' and 'want to return'."
Ning sighed and explained what he said before turning back to the man. "Was this really a coincidence?" he asked.
"Yes, I swear to god," the man said. "In fact, I have been staying in my room the whole the day so I don't have to interact with you."
Ning sighed again. "It's alright, you don't have to do that. Just don't bother us and you can do whatever you want," he said.
"Thank you," Noren said.
Ning explained Saphandra what he said to him and she nodded as well. Then, as if the man in front of them wasn't there, they started eating.
Noren quietly finished his meal and started walking away. However, just as he was leaving, he saw something and turned to look at Ning.
"Umm… I don't mean to bother you, but that is your friend, right?" Noren said while secretly pointing to Taron. "I saw you guys boarding together this morning."
"Yes, why?" Ning asked.
"Well, the woman he's with is called Pamella, and she is just like me, a delegate from a big school called the Thousand Summons school. I believe she's trying to scout your friend as well," he said.
"Why would she? My friend doesn't have any spiritual energy. He's not a summoner," Ning said.
"No spiritual energy?" the man looked at Taron once again. "But he's full of it."
"He is?" Ning looked at Taron, but he couldn't sense anything on him. "Are you sure?"
"I'm using a summon to look at him and he's full of it," Noren said. "Unless that man has eaten dozens of Spiritual Pearl, he's definitely a summoner."
"Ah!" Ning said as he finally understood what was happening. Taron had in fact most likely had his nanosuit eat a bunch of spiritual pearls and that was making him look like a particularly strong summoner.
"Hehehe," Ning chuckled a bit. "She's going to have a particularly bad time when she realizes he's not one."
"Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say. I will leave you two alone now," Noren said and left.
Saphandra as usual didn't understand the conversation, so Ning had to explain to her it all again.
"It's not like he's weak," Saphandra said. "Even if they do take him, they will have succeeded in their search for finding strong individuals."
"You're not wrong there," Ning said. "But he can't summon. At least not for a long time."
"Huh?" Saphandra gave a weird look. "Are you saying he can learn to summon even if he can't use Spiritual energy?"
"No, he will learn to use spiritual energy. As long as you stay in a planet long enough, you will get acclimated to the energy there."
"In fact, for some of the energy like Qi, you don't even need to get acclimated to the energy before you can start your journey in it. Only you won't get very far with just that," Ning said. "I wonder if Spiritual energy is the same. Although there is no absorption technique for it, so we will never know."
"I am going to act like I understood most of what you meant and shut up," Saphandra said.
The two of them quickly finished the rest of their meals and walked out of the dining hall onto the deck.
Vira was up in the sky, lighting the world around them in her silver colors.
"That moon is quite close," Ning said.
"Is it?" Saphandra asked. "My world didn't even have a moon. We only had a large ring of floating rocks around our planet."
"Well this planet has two of them, so you are in luck," Ning said.
He looked back at the water and the sky that was nothing but silver in color and remembered Kumia and its moon.
He was starting to miss it again. More exactly, he was starting to miss its people.
'I never got to see such sights back in Kumia since cultivators had such good vision,' Ning thought. 'This world wouldn't look as majestic if I could see everything as well.'
Ning silently activated his vision skill to see the world as if it was a bright day. The water looked clear and the sky bright blue.
He could see the dark and light clouds and off in the distance he could see some other ship on the water.
Nulwurn was massive and mostly covered in water, so seeing ships in the sea from time to time wasn't so rare. However, this ship in particular was a bit weird.
Ning closed his vision and suddenly the ship disappeared as well. It was invisible in the darkness of the night as there was no light aboard it.
'What the hell?' Ning thought as he zoomed his vision to look at the ship more clearly.
The ship was definitely moving in the water. "An abandoned ship?" Ning wondered out loud.
"A what?" Saphandra asked.
"That ship, there's a ship right there," Ning said as he pointed in the distance. "I think it's abandoned but it doesn't seem that bad and looks maintained. I wonder why there aren't any lights there."
"Maybe they ran out of glowing pearl?" Saphandra asked.
"In the ocean? Yeah right," Ning said. "I think I will go check."
"Wait, I'll come with you," she said and started flying. However, before she could lift much further away from the deck, Ning grabbed her leg and directly teleported onto the other ship.
