Chapter 1226: The Will of Astoria
Clara went to rest and fell asleep pretty soon. She was already exhausted from fighting and being wounded, and having avenged her family made her feel a calm that she never felt before.
Ning stayed with Emma by the sand looking at the horizon. She stared at it too, enjoying a world where she didn’t constantly know everything that was happening and had to force no long force herself to not listen to every single conversation that was happening between the billions of humans in the world.
“What’s going on with finding the other planet?” Emma asked. “One where I can have friends.”
“Well…” Ning thought for a bit. “To have a planet where you can make friends, one that will live as long as you, it will have to be a Qi planet. I have asked the system to keep track of a few of them, but right now I don’t even have any energy to collect one if I could find it. I will need to find more.”
“Okay,” Emma said. “So what have you been doing all this time?”
Ning grinned. “You want to hear your father’s journey, do you?” he asked happily. Before Emma would tell him to stop, he started talking about what it was he did in the time that he was missing.
Emma heard it all and nodded. “So let me get this straight. You got recruited by a shady guy in a tavern to deliver something for him, which could’ve been drugged, and 7 months later, you went on to kill the Emperor of another Empire?” she asked.
“Uhh… when you put it like that… I guess that did happen,” Ning said.
“And the sword?” Emma asked. “Where is it?”
Ning brought out the sword from his storage space and showed it off to his daughter. “Can you hold it?” he asked her.
“Let me try,” Emma said and grabbed the sword. She moved it around, slightly confused. “It’s light. You said it was heavy to anyone that wasn’t bonded.”
“Hmm,” Ning thought for a bit. “It isn’t treating you as a human then. It’s treating you as a will, so it doesn’t count you. That or it’s afraid of you.”
The system acknowledged that was the truth.
“What is its story then?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know,” Ning said. “Let’s find out together.”
He asked the system what the truth was, and he got an answer.
“I see,” Ning said with his newfound knowledge.
“What is it?” Emma asked curiously.
“Long ago, a Will formed in this world,” Ning started explaining. “It was during a period of time when the humans were nothing but some primitive beings who didn’t even live in a society.”
“They prayed to their gods back then, the beasts that ruled the world. The Divine beasts. So, as a result, the will that formed was also a beast. It lived for thousands of years until the humans grew so much that they no longer cared much for the beasts.”
“Due to having been created from the souls of those that were born here, the change of their mindset caused a dissonance in the will, which caused it to lose its identity.”
“Without an identity, a Will can’t live for very long. So, it knew it was going to die. Even then, however, they will love every being equally. So, in its absence, it worried the people of Astoria would devolve into mindless wars, killing all the beast and men that were there.”
“So, in an act of what could be called desperation, the Will did something extreme.”
“It went to the smallest continent of all, the Stonehall continent and decided to convert it.”
“There weren’t many people living in the continent as it was a land belonging only to the beasts for the most part, so migrating them was no difficult task.”
“Once no one was there, the Will did what it could to convert half the continent and created a sword out of the Essence in itself. That day, the world of Astoria lost one of its four continents.”
“That was just 500 years ago.”
Emma’s face was wide with shock upon hearing the story. “The will… did it die?” she asked with a worried look.
“I’m afraid it did,” Ning said. “It was already dying in the first place, converting so much essence of the world into a physical object removed the planet from the level of threshold that was required for a Will to exist. As a result, it disappeared after it made the sword.”
Emma was a little worried after hearing that. “Will that… happen to me too?” she asked.
“Unlikely,” Ning said. “Earth is a world that only belongs to humans. Due to the lack of beasts, there isn’t much that souls can imagine about other humans. As long as the humans thrive on Earth, you’ll be fine.”
“Even if that somehow does happen, you are a human before you are a will. If you somehow lose the Will power, you’ll still live as a human,” Ning said. “Besides, with your father here, do you think you have anything to worry about?”
“No,” Emma said, smiling. “Okay, continue that story. What happened to the sword then? How did it arrive on this island?”
“Hehe, that’s where the fun begins,” Ning said. “You see, as I’ve mentioned, Essence souls are like Nascent Souls for a Qi cultivator.”
“Even when a person dies, the nascent soul can live. However, unlike Nascent Souls, Essence souls are much stronger if compared to their body when it was alive. Also, way less intelligent.”
“That is… unless you are at the peak of Essence realms, which the Will was,” Ning said. “As a result, when the will died, its Essence formed from its corpse, becoming another will that was all the same powerful.”
“Then, it went on to finish what it had started,” Ning said. “It went to bring peace to the world that would last for centuries until the next Will hopefully formed once again.”
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