Lover's spat

"What are we going to do now?" Ning'er asked Hao while the two passed through the various corridors on their way to leave the Institute, all the while garnering quite the gawking audience in their passing.

"Leave. I've got no intention to waste any more of my time listening to lectures a five years old could have come up with. Go home, pack yourself a bag with clothes and food for a few days. We'll leave Glory city for some time." Hao replied, stunning Ning'er quite a bit. Still, she seemed oddly excited to Hao, which he could understand somewhat, as the girl had never left Glory city before.

"But, uhm, I've not even reached bronze rank yet. And I don't know what your cultivation rank is, but demon beasts are very dangerous, let alone the dark guild roaming outside of Glory city…" Obviously, Ning'er was worried, not much of a surprise to Hao, who simply made to tell her not to worry about it, but was suddenly interrupted by three people at the same time. What a nuisance…

"What the hell are you doing with my fiancé?! Leave her alone or else…!" Rude person number one said, pointing straight at Hao's face, who grew even more irritated by this little boy.

Slapping the lads finger out of his face like an especially annoying fly, Hao regarded the boy in front of him.

Dark hair, fair features, arrogance oozing out of every fibre of his being while his face was contorted in that trademark sneer of someone born with status and money.

'Really… do I really have to deal with this generic teenage drama bullshit? Come to think of it, wasn't that one of the reasons why I stopped courting women back in the day…? Though it's been so long I can't quite remember anymore. Heh, what irony.' Hao thought, tilting his head all the while with a small smile on his face.

In the meantime, rude person number two, the bragging brat from earlier, and rude person number 3, the purple haired girl from class, had also come over, forming some weird circle around the duo.

"Who I spend my time with is none of your business Shen Fei, and we are not engaged yet, so shut up!" Ning'er though replied in his stead while Hao was still contemplating if he should simply incinerate them all right here and now and simply be done with that particular matter.

Unfortunately, he still had a few things he wanted to research in the library, and the aftermath of turning three children to ashes, would bring quite the fallout with it. Hence, he regrettably put that train of thought aside for now.

"B-but Ning'er…!" the boy number one began to stammer, which caused Ning'er to lay into him even more, her words getting more heated by the second.

The spectacle, now officially titled a lover's spat by some bloody girl groups, had also drawn quite the crowd. Whispering and giggling began to grow around them.

Meanwhile, the purple-haired girly had stepped over to stand a little closer to Ning'er, seemingly supporting her passively in her tirade towards her 'future fiancé' who was sweating like a pig in a desert by now.

Turning away from that particularly heated 'conversation' Hao turned around to face the braggart from earlier who stood behind them all with his arms crossed before his chest, trying to possibly look imposing, and failing miserably at it in Hao's opinion.

"And what do you want exactly, what ever your name may be?" Hao asked, and for the first time looked at the boy before him with actual attention.

He had spiky orange hair, turned into a short pony tail at the back, while wearing some brown/orange clothes like many of the other children in the Institute.

His eyes, curiously sly for a boy his age, held a glimmer of curiosity and confidence in them, which managed to awaken some curiosity inside of Hao in return.

'Huh, didn't realise I missed this about this boy. His soul feels quite a bit older, and yet it is in no way stronger than those of the other children around us. Curious…If he were an actual reincarnation, and having passed through the natural cycle of death and rebirth, his soul should be quite substantially stronger, but it isn't. How?' Hao wondered in the confines of his mind, never having seen something quite like it in all of his time alive, which was a lot of time.

"I was curious about you. Tell me, where did you come from?" The boy replied to Hao's earlier inquiry, while the boy's eyes turned even more calculating when he asked Hao, firming Hao's opinion of the boy before him.

Tilting his head to the side without replying, Hao simply let go of the restrains on his Reishi and dove into this boy's heart for a lack of a better word.

Though, unsurprisingly to Hao, his small inspection hadn't gone unnoticed by the boy, who stumbled half a step back with wide eyes filled with surprise.

After gaining back some of his earlier confidence, the boy had raised his guard and seemed ready to fight Hao if necessary, which made Hao nearly snort in laughter at the thought.

"Where did I come from? That's not something you need to concern yourself with, boy. Rather more interesting however is the question: Where did you come from?" Hao asked back, his eye's gaze resting heavily on the boy before him, who had a thin sheen of sweat on the forefront of his head by now, obviously unprepared for this situation.

"Who are you?! How did you do that?!" Instead of answering Hao's curious inquiry however, the boy replied with a question of his own, obviously having no intention of answering Hao's question, which was a pity in his opinion.

'Though, I could simply rip out his soul and consume it to gain that knowledge…' Hao considered that idea for a second before pushing it aside, for now at least, to maybe do so in the future still. Until then though, he would remain a little more silent, with his hunt for knowledge and all that.

"My name is Hao. You, boy, are a curiosity… an anomaly." Hao began, by now having drawn the attention of Ning'er as well as her little girlfriend's and future fiancé's, who had stopped yelling at each other for the moment, for whatever reason.

Unbeknownst to Hao though, the rising tension between Ni Lie and Hao though hadn't gone unnoticed by the people next to them, which had resulted in them quieting down.

Hao though simply didn't notice the subtle pressure, as he was used to quite a bit more lethality contained in simple conversations. Such came naturally once you had to do with demons, shamans and dead beings on a regular basis, with not all of them being of the harmonious kind.

"An…anomaly? What are you on about?!" The boy answered, his forehead scrunched up in a frown while his body remained tense, obviously ready to fight or flee at the first sign of danger to his life.

"Huh, I would have thought that was rather obvious. After all, it doesn't happen every day that someone actually manages to cheat death and go through reincarnation without actually reincarnating and all that that entails." Hao replied, causing absolute silence to fall on the whispering crowd and the small group surrounding them.

"W-what?! Reincarnation?!" the purple-haired girl stammered into the silence, saying something for the first time since appearing on the scene.

"Indeed. You, my boy, are a reincarnation that hasn't actually earned the right to reincarnate with your soul retaining your experiences in a conscious manner. Heh, tell me, how did you do it? I've never met such a peculiarity before…" Hao asked, causing murmurs to erupt around them, while some of the children thought this to be some elaborate joke, and simply began to laugh at Hao, though he didn't really give a rats ass about those nobodies.

Instead, his attention remained focused on the boy before him. Said boy however had gone deathly still at Hao's words. For a few seconds nothing happened before this boy, former man and cheater of death, grit his teeth and simply turned around and walked away swiftly.

'Now, that wasn't a reaction I expected. Whatever, I'll get that knowledge some day. But until then, I've got some more research to finish.' Shrugging his shoulders, Hao simply turned around and walked away from the scene, shortly after followed by Ning'er and her little girlfriend, whatsherface, only leaving behind the thoroughly trashed Shen Fei, who had for the first time experienced the ugly side of women and been shown that which is normally hidden from men's eyes by the veil that is hormones. Nature's sly like that, and cruel in some cases as well.

After all, how could it not be cruel to make men chase the perfectly innocent and gentle woman of their dreams all their lives, only to discover that what they had been chasing was nothing but a hormone induced fever dream all along?

The truth was never gentle, but it freed you at the price of burning away both your innocence and flaws that you had gathered over the course of your life. That had been a lesson Hao would never forget and one Ning'er would one day have to learn for herself.

The truth is like a fire. It burns and leaves only that behind which is strong enough to persist through it. But if you came out on the other side, you would be your better.