Rest

Bursting out of the thin tunnel, Hao carried Ning'er away from the volcano, his Furyoku concentrated under his feet keeping Hao in the air, while behind them the tunnel collapse under the intensifying vibrations of the volcano.

It seemed Hao's estimation of the slumbering volcano soon awakening was spot on, as it had chosen this exact moment to erupt in all its horrifying glory.

With a mighty boom that seemed to reverberate into the farthest corners of the earth, it top shattered and blew apart into all direction, followed by a shockwave that travelled down the volcanos sides like a tidal wave made of air and dust.

Bursting further away into the distance, Hao had his back to the volcano, but Ning'er was able to see everything that happened. It gave her an unobstructed view of something both beautiful and terrible in appearance.

"Watching something like this from close up is quite a bit different than reading about it in a book, isn't it?" Hao asked the girl slightly trembling in his arms from both exhaustion and adrenaline that was coursing through her veins at the spectacle in front of her eyes.

"I've never seen something so beautiful before, and yet I can't help but want to run as far away as I can at the sight. The rumbling of the volcano…it nearly sounds like a warning to everything alive to stay away or get consumed by it…" At her words Hao grinned a little as he found her description to be quite fitting.

After all, nature had a large variety of warning signs that told its inhabitants to stay the fuck away, though not all beings listened to them of course.

Once Hao deemed them to be far away, he turned around in the air and, while still keeping Ning'er in his arms, watched the spectacle before him together with her.

Now that the initiating shockwave, also known as pyroclastic shockwave, had blown away most things surrounding the mountains, the first rocks blown into the air by said shockwave came back down to the earth. Fiery balls in the form of burning rocks crashed down into the earth's surface, annihilating everything it crashed into causing a staccato of doom that caused even animals that had fled far away to run even further in fright of them.

"And to think we are afraid of demon beasts of all things if those are the most dangers things in this world…" Ning'er muttered, which was understandable to Hao, though not completely true.

"Well, demon beasts choose to attack you on their own volition, which nature doesn't. It simply does as it needs. Hence, why the demon beasts are your more immediate problem. Though, should a volcano ever erupt in Glory city's vicinity it would, without a single doubt, be the greatest catastrophe your city ever experienced." Hao replied, to which Ning'er only nodded in agreement.

"By the way, how are we so far up in the air?" Ning'er asked, her initial shock having worn off slightly, which made her keenly aware of the fact that she was completely drenched in sweat with her clothes sticking tightly to her body, while Hao still carried her close to his chest.

Once again, her head reddened considerably, though this time from a turmoil of emotions instead of befuddlement, hence why she asked him to distract herself from her growing restlessness.

"I'm using my Furyoku to stand on the air below my feet, though you should not attempt something like that yet. First of all it requires quite a bit more soul force than you have inside of you right now, and secondly you lack the understanding of the elements to truly become like the wind in the first place.

You could of course still stand on air without that knowledge, but you would be nothing but an amateur by doing so, and in the process use up way too much Furyoku to do so." He replied while glancing down at the girl in his arms, who had her head bowed slightly to not have to look Hao into his eyes and give away her inner turmoil at her current position.

Not that it mattered, as Hao wasn't some 15 years old boy with no knowledge on the female gender and, after letting her squirm a little longer, had mercy on her and descended back to the ground while in the background all the flaming rocks had rained to the ground, which left only a gigantic tower of smoke rising into the air and magma trickling out of its crater.

Setting Ning'er back onto her feet Hao pulled out his map, which he had considerably refined over their time out in the wild, considered whether they should keep staying out in the wild for a little while longer or return back to Glory city.

'Hmm, what to do…' He thought while glancing at Ning'er, who had sat down and was rummaging through her bundle for a clean set of clothes she could wear, contemplating if she was ready for a demon beast spirit or not. In the end he decided to just go with the flow.

If they found a fitting demon beast on the way back to Glory city, so be it, but he wouldn't go looking for one specifically yet. After all, Ning'er had only just begun circling her Furyoku and it would be better if she learned some more about how her own soul force behaved before integrating another being into her soul-scape which she would then have to nourish and cultivate alongside herself.

"Alright Ning'er, I think its time for us to return to Glory city. Though we'll keep up your training on the way. Before that however, I think we should make a camp and stay the rest of the day here.

I've got my companion to firmly settle in my soul-scape and you should check the results of your impromptu trial inside of the volcano. It should be rather bountiful, considering how long you managed to stay inside there with nothing but your Furyoku as a shield." Hao said while building a small bonfire for them, after which he sat down against a nearby rock and closed his eyes, before sinking into the depths of his soul to join his new partner to get to know him closer.

Ning'er meanwhile nodded in understanding and did the same as Hao, closing her eyes and began to focus on the energy flowing through her. While she still felt rather exhausted it soon became apparent to her that Hao had indeed been right. Her soul force had risen considerably through her trial.

While before her Furyoku had felt simply like a fleeting cloud, now it had a kind of stormy, yet calm feeling to it. Like a newly forming storm in autumn, as it sometimes happened around Glory city, when the days grew longer and colder.

She was a little confused at that change but simply decided to ask Hao about it the next time they would talk about her cultivation. She doubted he didn't know what this was all about, as she had discovered over the last week, Hao's knowledge about practically everything they talked about was incredibly vast and deep. It simply baffled her at times.

Hao meanwhile was in a deep trance inside of his soul, communing with his partner Helios, who he found out was indeed a newly born spirit. Hao found, to his surprise, that Helios, contrary to his former partner the spirit of Fire, possessed something along the lines of a personality. Well, not exactly. It was more in the direction of a set of character traits than an actual personality. But it was a surprise to him nonetheless, as it said a lot about his partner's future development possibilities.

There are a couple ways a spirit can grow through. One is the nourishment through their partners Furyoku, which pretty much everybody does who knows anything about spirits or demon beasts for that matter.

Next would be an ability only a very small percentage of shamans ever learned about, let alone mastered, not to mention the cultivators in this realm. Namely, to shackle a recently deceased spirit to the mortal realm before consuming said spirit with your own, which resulted in the assimilation of the shackled spirit's Furyoku to the spirits own, which obviously furthers its growth.

Then there is the way to simply wait. Many spirits, after a certain amount of time has passed, simply grow into an evolved state of their former selves. That has mostly to do with mental growth or maturity, which is the reason Hao was so happy to discover a few character traits inside of his spirit Helios.

You see, while spirits of nature possess stronger abilities then humanoid or animalistic spirits, they never really possess a character of their own, making it pretty much impossible to evolve them, if you weren't in the know about the ability to feed them other spirits. Hao now, possessed both of them, which made him involuntarily grin in anticipation. His partner would become even stronger than his former partner, given enough time. And if there was one thing Hao had in spades it was time.

Thus, both Hao and his new partner Helios stayed in a deep trance of communion while Ning'er was continuing to explore her newly gained soul force and how it worked and behaved inside her body.

Like this the two of them remained, until the sun fell behind the still roaring volcano in the distance, causing both of them to open their eyes and neither could contain the grin that split their faces. Truly, this day had been one huge success to the both of them.