20 Chapter 20. Traveling to Sapphire city 

A huge vast white space appeared in Leo's unconsciousness.

'Where is this?' Leo thought as he slowly opened his eyes. He instantly got up and looked at himself as heaved a huge sigh of relief once he saw that his body had returned to normal.

'Have I died again?' Leo thought again as he disappointedly looked up into the vast endless white void.

*step* *step*

A pitter-patter of elegant soft steps sounded from behind him and Leo quickly turned back, expecting to see God again as he began thinking of countless things to complain to the old man.

"I didn't expect to meet you again," Leo slowly spoke as he spoke towards the pitter-patter of steps.

"M-mom-" Leo's voice stopped in its tracks as a shocked expression appeared on his face. The person who appeared from the white void was his mother, Ava.

"Leo… Hey there, I left this message for you. If the trapdoor was opened, I set it up so that this message would come to you in your sleep. But opening the trapdoor would probably mean that a threat had come to the village and our family was in grave danger. I am from the Decan family which is a clan that currently runs Sapphire city. Many years back, I was the blood daughter of one of the grand elders of the clan. I was sent outside to a sect to train and that's where I met your father. I fell in love with him there but the sect had other plans as my master there had been secretly planned to have me marry his son. I disagreed but they planned to force me and because of that, your father and I decided to run away from the sect. We ran for countless months and finally ended up in this village where we decided to settle down, away from all the attention. If you ever decide to go to the Decan clan then the badge should help you prove your authenticity, please find your grandfather if you make it in there. I have not talked to him since I left the sect in fear that he would disapprove of me marrying your father. He should take care of you. The badge has an arrow on its back, it should appear if you just infuse a little amount of blood. That arrow will direct you towards the clan. Safe journey. Love you! " Ava spoke in a monotonous voice as she smiled at Leo.

"Mom! I've missed you!" Leo screamed as he ran to Ava with his arms wide open as he prepared to hug her. But just as he touched her, fingers did not feel the silky smooth skin of her mother's arms, and instead, his fingers phased through her as her figure slowly disappeared without a trace.

"Mom… No, mom… Mom!"

"Mom!" screamed Leo as his eyes forcefully opened as he woke up, revealing his beautiful golden brown eyes.

"Where am I?" Leo spoke to himself as he looked around lost. He was on a beautiful fresh field of grass with a thick dense forest of trees to his left and to his right was a beautiful long yellow sandy riverbank that guarded a long winding river that was so long that it continued off into the horizon.

"My-my. I thought you were never gonna wake up," Aurora's relieved voice rang out as she appeared from the dense bushes that were a meter tall with Lex on her back as she carried a large spatial bag which was filled with of heaps of dozens of beautiful red wild berries that she had just recently plucked.

"How long have I been out?" asked Leo lazily as he slowly stretched his tensed sore body.

"About a week. I had to spend the whole of the first-day healing you. Your injuries were not light at all, fortunately, all your inner organs were not badly harmed but there was countless blood and cuts everywhere on your body," said Aurora in a slightly complaining tone as she took out a small mortar and pestle and she slowly started grinding tasty wild berries into an easy to swallow paste to feed Lex when he woke up.

"Thanks, Aurora," spoke Leo as he gave Aurora a sweet warm smile and an energetic thumbs up.

After learning of the situation of what happened after he passed out, Leo forcefully adjusted his state of mind, although he was still in shock, he could not stay shocked right now as there was a newly declared war going on and the place that they were in had a high chance of being caught in the crossfire. Conflicted about whether to head over to Sapphire city or not, Leo eventually gave up and decided that it would be best to ask Aurora of her opinion first and let her decide.

"Aurora, my mom left us a badge that belonged to her. She said we should head to her clan in Sapphire city," said Leo as he started explaining the story as Aurora listened with full interest while grinding the berries.

Her initial reaction was one of complete shock and amazement as she could not believe that such a high noble figure would even want to swoop down to the status of a simple villager. The power of the love of Leo's parents seemed to have a large effect on Aurora as even stopped grinding to listen to Leo.

"So what do you want to do?" Leo asked as he finished the story.

"It's your choice. Whatever you do, I will follow you, as long as I can be by your side then I honestly have no opposing feelings towards what you say," said Aurora as she sweetly smiled towards Leo.

"I see. Well then, our trip begins, we are going to start our journey of this harsh world. Off to Sapphire city we go!" said Leo as he stood up and helped Aurora with grinding the berries, then he activated the badge and they slowly took off in the direction of the arrow.

The journey took two solid months as Leo and Aurora slowly learned how to survive in the wild. They had learned how to make a tent and learned to hunt. But most of their time was spent cultivating or babysitting Lex. Every meal, they would have animal meat and wild herbs for food which Aurora would cook while Leo was in the training hallway, training his Nether God's Nihility Fist.

Another few added bonuses that they acquired were that Aurora broke through to manipulation realm while quickly improve as he broke through to gathering realm. And the most beneficial reward of them all, Leo's killing intent control reached was upgraded to level 4 and he could now control how much he radiated as the killing intent became upgraded into a new stage, enabling him be able to use his killing intent to threaten gathering realm experts.

Alongside training and babysitting, they would often stop by on other villages to obtain news. Most people would often barrage them with a lot of unnecessary questions as a trio of children traveling was not a normal sight. Little did the villager know though, that the children in front of them currently had the strength to completely obliterate this village with a finger. There also was a rumor that a village isolated near the border was destroyed by the Ruby army soldiers but the Lapis army arrived shortly after to stop them from advancing. But little did they know that it was Leo that did this and not the army. But it was indeed confirmed that the Lapis army did indeed arrive at the village so it lowers the stress for Leo as he would not have to worry about the battle arriving at Sapphire city yet. From their journeys through multiple villages they had found out that the Ruby empire was currently stuck fighting on the borders of the two kingdoms.

Thanks to a cultivation concealing art that they looted from the Aranea Sect, Leo and Aurora were able to hide their cultivation from the villagers and a month of research, Leo had somehow managed to upgrade the art's strength which turned it from a white to a black rank. This had completely flabbergasted Leo as he found out another function of the heavenly eyes. When he used them, he could clearly see how the energy flowed in his veins as he used the art and through this, he started to gain insights and after he started adding a few notes to the art, the book no longer had their white glow and instead it had changed to a low black glow that emanated from the book meaning that it had become a black rank.

Having made a black ranked art, this encouraged Leo to start spending a small amount of time each day to study each and every art he was learning so that he could potentially upgrade it and achieve the expert stage. He had reached the final stage of every white art and middle stage of each black art that he was learning, only the Nihility fist and the dual art were still at the beginner stage.