A merchant caravan scuttled along a rocky road at night. The horse-drawn carriages were being dragged across a forest in the moonlight. At the final carriage were two people sitting side by side facing the opposite side from where the caravan was moving.
They rocked their feet back and forth as they watched the trees move on either side of them.
"I don't want this to end," the girl said as she leaned on the shoulder of the man next to her. She stroked the little beetle that was on her lap.
The man next to her had a little bird sleeping on his shoulder. He looked towards the girl and sighed as he said, "I want to stay around and help you too, but all good things must come to an end."
He brought his hand to her hair and stroked it gently. He was a little disappointed that it was coming to an end too.
It had been 2 months since Anya broke through to the Golden Core Realm, and that was at the age of 21. She still looked like an 18-year-old girl so it was unlikely she would look old in all of her lifetime.
Thus, Ning had advised her to take life slowly. It was about the journey before the destination.
In addition to that, Anya was starting to get very reliant on Ning and he didn't like that. He didn't want his student to become someone incapable of standing on her own feet.
So, after some thought, he had decided to leave her now. He wasn't sure how soon it would be, but it was going to be very soon.
"You can just stay and watch, I won't ask anything from you," Anya said. She was starting to tear up now. If someone saw a Golden Core cultivator being this vulnerable in front of a Foundation Establishment cultivator, they would surely question their eyes.
Ning didn't speak for a while and just watched the moon in the sky. After a while, he finally spoke, "You have your adventures to look forward to, and I have mine," he said.
"The world is vast and I want to look at everything. Did you know, that this planet has over 2.5 trillion people living here? That's insane. In comparison, the people I've interacted with are nearly negligible, the places I've been to are negligible."
"There are so many places I can go to, find so many different people. I want to do that; I want to see this world. Once I'm bored, I might consider settling down somewhere. I wonder which continent I will settle down in," Ning said. His eyes shone with expectations and desires.
Anya saw it clearly and realized that keeping her master only for herself was the cruelest thing she could do to him. So, she wiped away her tears and said, "Alright, I won't ask you to stay for long. Just a couple of weeks more. Stay with me until I get a foothold in this city."
Ning smiled and patted her head. It wasn't like he didn't understand what it was she really wanted, but that wouldn't happen no matter how she felt about him.
He could only ever see her as a little girl that he decided to teach.
The night was long but like all things, it too ended. The sun rose as the caravan got out of the forest into an open area.
"We're here!" Ning said and dropped out of the moving carriage. Anya followed suit and jumped out as well. She looked at the surroundings and could see nothing but open land.
Ning pointed behind her and she turned around. In front of them was a massive city that was built around a small mountain range. There were 7 mountain ranges from what Ning could see on the map, but he didn't know much else aside from that.
He could blurt out the physical dimensions of the mountains, but not who stayed there. However, he enjoyed the mystery. Finding that out in of itself was an adventure he liked.
There was a massive wall that encircled the entire city, which encircled the 7 mountains.
"There you go, that's the Seven Lights city," Ning said.
"Wow! That looks beautiful," Anya said as she looked at the city.
The city was multicolored in the truest sense of the word. The outer walls, the plants, even the mountain, everything in the city was colored one of 7 colors.
They were white, black, red, blue, yellow, green, and brown.
Segments of the walls were these colors, that matched the mountain they were facing. The plants were naturally different colored, and probably had nothing to do with the theme of the city.
However, the entire 7 mountains were riddled with buildings and plants that were all a specific color, and that couldn't be chalked up to a coincidence.
Ning was as in awe as the person next to him.
"Let's go in and find out more," Ning said and walked in. Despite being a cultivator, they had to walk through the gate as flying seemed to be not allowed in the city like every city ever.
Ning walked in with Anya and looked around the city for someplace to either stay or to learn something. He didn't do anything however, he made Anya do the searching and followed behind her.
It didn't take long for Anya to find an information center where one could buy intelligence on different things using spirit stones as a currency.
She learned about the city she was in and quickly found a place she could open up a small hospital for herself where she could heal people.
Within a few days, her reputation grew exponentially as people learned about a beautiful girl giving treatments for quite a cheap price.
Ning smiled at her success and waited a few more days to make sure the other people didn't try to harm her. Once he saw that she had no problem living on her own, he decided to leave.
"Take this, this is a talisman that will help you communicate with me," Ning said. "Call me if you ever need my help or just want to talk to me."
Anya had her eyes filled to the brim with tears. "I will miss you, master," she said and gave him a hug.
"I will miss you too," he said and hugged her back.
Anya let him go and asked, "Where will you go now?"
"I… think I will go meet an old friend. Goodbye Anya," Ning said with a face full of nostalgia.
Seeing that face, Anya didn't have the heart to stop him anymore. "Goodbye master," she properly sent him away.
Ning smiled back at her and nodded as he said, "Do well Anya, Make me proud." Then he disappeared.
Anya stayed in the room crying for the whole day as a void in her heart was suddenly formed due to Ning's absence.
He had been with her for nearly 8 years now, and suddenly leaving just like that left her as if she just lost a piece of herself. She cried until nightfall and then fell asleep.
The next day, she woke up feeling sad but quickly made a resolute stance to get strong and find her master back. So, she took out the new books Ning had given her the day before.
She opened them and started learning them.
The books were about Alchemy. The people in the Northern Continent were used to eating pills for anything and everything unlike the folks from the Scattered Isles who were too poor to afford it.
She diligently learned and within a month, she was able to successfully make simple pills. Within a year, she was getting famous as one of the most promising up-and-coming individuals in the field of alchemy.
One day, a man came up to her and invited her to Woodlight Mountain, one of the seven light mountains of the Seven Lights sect.
They were people who dealt with Alchemy and other forms of professions that dealt with plants and herbs. She readily accepted the offer and became a disciple of one of the lights.
From there on, her success only grew exponentially. Soon, her name rung throughout the Northern Continent as one of the best Healer and Alchemist of the land.
And it was all thanks to the few books Ning had given her because he felt like it.
Anya returned back to the Deepskull island during the final days of her father. She met with the sect masters and fellow disciples who welcomed her with open arms.
It had been many years and her father was just too old. Had he been a cultivator, he could've enjoyed life a little longer. But, since he was a mere mortal, he only had so many years to live, and he had lived them all.
After she buried her father, Anya brought over her brother to the Seven Lights Sect where he too started gaining success. Soon after, Anya found someone she would later call the love of her life.
Her childish infatuation for Ning had already vanished like snow under the sun. She soon started a family with that man and had some kids of her own that she taught what she learned from Ning.
And in all of her years, she never once forgot to send a message to him, telling him how her day was or how successful she found that day.
Ning would visit from time to time but never stay around long enough for her to feel like she had properly treated him the way she should have.
He was the one that deserved the praise that she was getting and she wouldn't let him forget that ever. She would keep telling him how grateful she was that he took a small street urchin and turned her into who she was today.
She would continue thanking him until the day she died.
******
Ning had just said his goodbye to Anya and appeared on top of a massive forest. The forest was fully white instead of green and the cold air of winter hit his face.
Ning smiled.
"It's snowing huh? Can't say I won't ever like this," he thought. To his back was a massive murky blue ocean that looked daunting to fly over. To his front was an endless expanse of forest covered in snow.
Ning however knew that this endless expanse of the forest wasn't truly endless. There was an end to this, and he looked forward to seeing what was on the other end.
He flew at extreme speed, a speed that normal cultivators would only assign with Golden Core cultivators. He, however, was far from being one.
He was in fact using Super Flight to quickly traverse through the forest, and soon he reached the end of the forest. Once he went past it, he could see a tall, but mostly broken wall that was barely doing its job of protecting the people from the monsters in the forest.
People saw Ning arriving and quickly got into a stance to fight him. Ning looked at the people with Grayish-blue robes with a white sash around their waist and then back at the Purple robe that he took from the Purple Beasts sect.
"Sigh, I do stand out too much," he thought. He slowly got to the ground and looked at the barely teenage cultivators that were actually scared of him more than anything.
"Place your weapons away, I am not here to fight," Ning told them, but the people wouldn't stop just by hearing him speak. They needed orders from people with authority.
A man with a black sash flew up to him from far away and landed before him. He too took out his sword and got into a stance.
"Intruder, who are you and why have you come here?" the man asked.
Ning finally saw the black sash and smiled. An Elder had come.
"Hello, my name is Ning. I have been here once before and was wishing to see a friend of mine before I go somewhere else," he said.
The Elder thought for a while and saw no ill intent from Ning. So, he asked, "Who is this person that you are looking for?"
Finally, he was getting somewhere.
"It was a woman who was a disciple here around 175 years ago.. Her name is Freya."