Anya's fist opened up and the powdered stone dropped to the floor in front of her. She looked back up to see the happy and proud face of her master. To the side, Halios was in utter shock, something he had not felt ever in his life.
"I… I am free," he said, unable to process what had just happened.
"There you go," Ning said. "You can thank her and go do whatever you want."
"I can leave?" he couldn't help but ask.
"You no longer need to ask. Not only are you free, but you are also the strongest entity in the world, aside from me. Go do what you want to do," Ning said.
Halios looked around with a confused and worried look. "I don't have any," he said. "I have been working for the others for so long that… that I do not know what it's like being free."
"Well, there is no hurry then," Ning said. "Just stick around for a while, mingle with the people in here. I'm sure you will figure out what you want to do soon enough."
"Don't worry, Halios. I will help you figure out what you want to do. I will have my descendants help with that as well," Anya said.
Halios still didn't understand what to do in this situation, but he did understand one thing. He was finally free.
"Thank you," he said. For this one move of destroying his Oathstone, Halios would forever be grateful to Anya.
"Now that that's settled, I will go get Night," Ning said. "Make those pills for the kid. Halios, I hope you will stick around for a while and help Anya here."
"Yes, I will," Halios said with a smile on his face.
Ning left the place unworried and went to see Ely. Since Halios was a will of this world, he was unable to hurt anyone, which dropped the risk of letting him roam freely by a lot.
He met up with Ely and told her that he was leaving again.
"Good, He's the last one and you'll be done, right?" She asked.
Ning smiled toward Ely. "I can tell you for certain that this will be my last trip for a long while," he said. He tore a rift in space, creating a spatial portal between here and a planet that was in the far reaches of the galaxy.
Ely gave a suspicious look. "What are you hiding?" she asked.
"Hehe, you will see," Ning said. "It might take me a few months, so you can go into deep cultivation for a while."
"What? Why so long?" Ely asked.
"Time shenanigan," Ning said. "I will have to be in places where time moves much slower than here."
"Oh, okay," Ely said. "Still try to be quick."
"I will try for sure," Ning said. "See you later."
He walked through the portal which closed behind him. When he arrived on the other side, the sun had already set.
He looked at the patch of the forest he had arrived in and quickly tried to find a way around it. He walked deeper into it, towards where he would be able to find Night, and at some point, he realized that he could no longer see anything else at all.
He was confused for a second before realizing what was happening here.
"Ah! I see," he said to himself before spreading his divine sense all around to look for something.
"There you are."
Ning walked in the direction where the darkness got so thick that even the plants all around had died from the lack of sunlight for many years.
No human or animal wanted to come here either due to the lack of vision and disorientation that came with being around someone of the Midnight Phoenix species.
Ning, however, had no problem at all as he arrived in front of the giant Night that sleep carelessly. Just his sleeping body was larger than most houses Ning had been around, and the soft, black phoenix flames that burned on his body made him pretty much unapproachable.
"Are you going to keep sleeping forever?" Ning asked with a rather loud voice.
Night suddenly opened his eyes and stood up. His massive body got even larger as he opened his wing which spanned nearly 50 meters from tip to tip.
Without any hesitation, he sent down a rain of feathers all of which burned with the black flame that could destroy everything.
Ning remembered these flames from back when he fought the Midnight Phoenix in Genesis' trials. He remembered how afraid he was of the strong Phoneix he had to fight.
He couldn't help but chuckle at how weak he was back then. He moved his hands and the feathers were destroyed, nothing of them remaining at all. Not even the black fire.
"Is that how you greet me after so long?" Ning asked.
Night was about to attack again, but he stopped. He heard the voice and only then did he look at who he was fighting.
His dark, abyss-like eyes grew wide when he recognized him finally. "Master?" he asked. The deep voice that came from the giant beast reverberated throughout the forest.
"Hi, Night. Did I disturb your sleep?" he asked.
"Master, you're back!"
Without missing a single beat, Night got much smaller than before and jumped onto Ning's chest to hug him. "I can't believe you are back, Master. Did you ascend too? I finally don't have to be alone."
Ning patted the bird. "You must have been lonely," he said. "It's good that you slept your way through most of the years."
"Well, there's wasn't much to do here anyway," Night said. "I already reached the peak long ago and have been stuck here this way."
Ning checked his cultivation base and nodded. "You were dealt the wrong end of the stick, I'm afraid. Everyone else went to a world with a very high ceiling, while you ended up here where the highest one can go to is the Low Immortal realm. But don't worry, I am here to fix that."
