Time passed some more. Days, months, years, everything was the same to Ning whose life had now grown monotonous.
He had a simple house in a mountain where he lived a normal life, doing normal things. The only thing that was abnormal was that he did not age, and neither did Ely who was living with him.
The two of them hadn’t spoken it out loud, but they were clearly Dao companions now. They cultivated together in their small mud and wood house in the village.
As time passed, Ning felt both happy and sad. He was happy that he was getting closer and closer to making that new body of his that he so desperately wanted.
Time passed again, and finally, Ning felt he was settled enough. So, he decided to do the things he had meant to do for so long and left.
He didn’t know where to start, so he teleported at the edge of the Northern continent.
“If it were anywhere close by, people would’ve noticed it by now. So, it has to be somewhere so far away that no human or beast in the last 12 millennia has ever visited it,” Ning thought. This meant, he had to start by looking at the furthest place from all known lifeforms on all the continents.
So, Ning teleported to the other side of the planet which was nothing but water. He was currently dozens of thousands of kilometers away from land on all sides.
Not only did people have a problem coming here due to the distance, but there were also strong beasts in the ocean that made sea travel nearly impossible out in the open.
“Wait! Oh no, I forgot about that,” he thought when he realized a problem. If the Origin were truly in the ocean, or at least freely existing there, the fishes and other aquatic beasts would’ve been strong as well.”
“Well, let’s just look around for now,” he thought and moved around the ocean. He looked for the strength of the beasts and realized they weren’t that strong. So he was definitely in the wrong location.
“At least, the Qi feels a little denser, but not as much as the island with the beasts from long ago,” Ning thought. He felt the Qi in the air and with that in mind, teleported towards the eastern shore of the Central Continent.
“Oh,” he thought as he felt the new Qi. “This is so much weaker. Hmm…. So I’m in the wrong direction?”
With that, he disappeared towards the western shore of the Central Continent.
“Much better,” he thought when he felt the Qi in the air of the western shore. “I’m close, but… did the first place feel denser?” he thought.
He started doing the same thing over and over, teleporting to different locations around the ocean, trying to figure out where the density was the highest.
Finally, he found a location that felt like the best he had felt anywhere. Even if that was not the correct spot, that was very close.
“It should be around here. I hope so,” he thought and slowly moved around. He searched the Origin for a few hours, but couldn’t find anything at all.
There were two problems he was facing right now. The first one was the obvious case of not seeing any location that was the Origin.
The other problem was that even if Origin was somewhere around here, the beasts weren’t in the Spirit transformation stage yet.
Unless what the book and the beasts in the tomb had said was false, the Origin couldn’t be here.
“Unless…” he thought. His eyes slowly widened as he thought. “What if the Origin is not freely seen, but instead inside a seal or secret realm?”
That was the best idea Ning could gather about the Origin. With no more hesitation, he started looking around signs for something of that sort.
However, he couldn’t find anything. So, he resorted to finding out information from the system instead. Only, he didn’t open up the interface but instead spoke out loud.
“System, is there any sealed locations or secret realms around here?” he asked.
<There is an island hidden in the ocean 4 kilometers to the right>
The system AI answered Ning without asking him or letting him know that energy was being used. It only asked such questions when the information being delivered was big or the cost was above a certain threshold that Ning had set.
The AI had returned to Ning a few years earlier, just randomly notifying him of its return. After the return, Ning had noticed a considerable drop in his ability to emote.
Even though he was already capable of not acting on emotions the majority of the time, it was still good to have normal emotions.
The other added benefits of the system upgrade such as the change in the cap system such that it refreshed every 24 hours, and the system’s auto teleport out of a place if one is stuck there for 10 thousand years wasn’t useful right now.
In fact, the most useful stuff with the system’s update completion was actually the return of the AI itself. With it, Ning no longer had to go into interfaces to look into the different stuff himself.
Ning was quite elated when the AI returned, despite his emotions being less. After a few days, he had tried asking for information about the location of the Origin.
However, the AI told him that the Origin had to do with the release of energy in a planet, and because of that, it was out of the System’s hand to tell him where it was.
Although the system didn’t stop him from finding it, it didn’t actively help him search for it either.
Fortunately, it was telling him where he could find the secret realm or seals around here.
“4 kilometers from here that way right?” Ning thought as he looked into the map. The place had nothing on the map, but Ning wouldn’t know until he checked.
With that, he disappeared.