Poison God's Heritage

Chapter 921: True Divinity

"Dusking Sun... I’ve known you for a bit now, but never have I ever thought you were someone who can make jokes. Please tell me this is just a bad one..." I said as I didn’t even want to consider the implications of what the Dusking Sun meant.

Even saying the words felt wrong. The name he dropped still lingered in the room like a stain spreading through water, and the expression on his face made everything worse. Dusking Sun was many things, loud, reckless, impatient, occasionally insufferable, but he was not someone who frightened easily.

Yet now there was a tension in him that refused to hide itself. His shoulders remained rigid. His gaze stayed fixed, not wandering even slightly. There was none of his usual irritation, none of the fiery impulsiveness that defined him. That absence alone made my stomach tighten.

He shook his head, "I would never joke about things like this..."

Of course he wouldn’t, the fucker almost killed him. And brought the Lord of Lords to the brink of madness.

Tonfa remained quiet beside us, which somehow made the atmosphere worse. If even he had nothing to add, then this wasn’t rumor or exaggeration. This was real.

"Is this about the dead planets?" I asked. My mind moved quickly now, connecting pieces that had previously seemed distant and unrelated. The enforcer’s warning. The reports spreading through the Confederation. Entire worlds stripped clean of life. At the time it sounded horrific but abstract, the kind of disaster that belonged far away. Now it suddenly felt personal.

"Yes, exactly, I received report from Tonfa a couple weeks ago, the traces of the Dao of Death were all over one of the planet they investigated. Beasts, creatures, even non-sentient, everything was devoured left like a husk in its place. That’s Situ’s Work, I could recognize it just from the report."

His voice lowered slightly while speaking, not out of fear but grim certainty. The description itself painted enough horror without embellishment. I could already imagine it too clearly. Entire ecosystems stripped empty. Corpses drained dry. Forests standing dead beneath blackened skies. The Dao of Death was not more violent than that of slaughter. It was consumption. Total and thorough.

I thought for a moment. That bastard, I’ve had the unfortunate luck to always end up meeting one version of him everywhere through my journey of cultivation, it’s like a bug that’s hard to get rid of, a dangerous one at that too. No matter how many times fate twisted, no matter how many worlds or realms separated events, Shi Situ always seemed to crawl back into existence somehow. Like mold hidden beneath stone. Like rot refusing to stay buried.

"Fuck..." I cursed out loud.

The word escaped with more sincerity than elegance.

"I’ll be heading there, I need to verify again, do you want to come with me?" he asked.

There was no hesitation in his voice. He had already decided before asking me. The question was courtesy more than uncertainty.

"Yeah, I’ll head with you." I replied.

Refusing never even crossed my mind. If Situ truly was here, then ignoring it would only ensure the problem became larger later. That was the issue with people like him. Delay only benefited them.

The Dusking Sun stood up and walked down, "We’ll take your ship, it’s at the outpost I suppose?"

"Yeah."

"Good, it’s closer that way."

We exited the meeting room together, Tonfa silently stepping aside while watching us leave. The halls outside remained quieter than before, though a few cultivators who passed nearby visibly stiffened when they saw Dusking Sun moving with that level of focus. His reputation alone from the former battle against the Rakshasa carried pressure. Yes the confederation had Yin and Yang stage cultivators. But the ones from the Beyond were a different breed. Far more violent and far more dangerous.

Right now, with his expression darkened the way it was, most people wisely chose not to speak.

"How in the heaven’s name did he even end up in this place? I mean I’m pretty sure I messed up the coordination enough back at the Beyond..." I muttered while walking beside him. My thoughts kept circling back to the same impossible point. The transition from the Beyond, the portal under the Dark Garden he used. I’m pretty sure I messed it up big time.

By all logic, Situ shouldn’t have ended up anywhere near us. And would have had a better chance to find himself in the heart of a giant red planet than here...

"Just luck I guess,"

"But do you know what that means?" I said as I walked next to the Dusking Sun."

"Do tell..."

"If Situ arrived before us and had time to feed..."

I grimaced. "Then he’s no longer the same opponent."

The more I spoke it aloud, the worse it sounded.

"He’s probably at the Yang Stage now, with all that vile Death Qi he gathered..."

The Dusking Sun finished the thought grimly.

A chill crawled through me immediately afterward. Situ with time was already dangerous. Situ with unrestricted access to death across entire planets?

That was something else entirely.

In the beyond he was limited. Unable to act or the Suns would notice him. Here, he could devour as much as he wanted. No one would realize what was happening, or recognize it was his own actions.

"If we end up facing him, I doubt we could escape..."

The statement hung there uncomfortably because neither of us rushed to deny it. We had both seen enough monsters to recognize when confidence became stupidity.

"Don’t worry about that, I got something from Don Ma this morning," he said as he showed me two jades. "Escape Jades."

He held them carefully, and even at first glance I could tell they were extraordinary. The jades shimmered with a deep purple hue that almost seemed liquid beneath the surface. Intricate formations covered them, but calling them formations felt inadequate. The inscriptions curved into one another with impossible complexity, layered so densely they looked less carved and more grown.

The more I looked at it the more confusing it got.

My gaze narrowed instinctively, trying to follow the structure of a single symbol, but the deeper I looked, the stranger it became. It felt wrong in a way I couldn’t articulate. Not broken. Beyond me.

"Stop, you’ll hurt your Sea of Consciousness that way." The dusking Sun placed his hand over the jades.

The interruption snapped me back immediately. A faint ache pulsed behind my eyes before fading.

"What is that? I’ve never seen that type of inscription, it’s like... A whole world is written in a single symbol..."

That was the closest comparison I could make. The symbols didn’t feel like language. They felt dimensional, as if meaning itself had been compressed impossibly tight.

"It’s something from a higher place."

"Ah," I nodded.

At this point, hearing that answer no longer shocked me the way it probably should have.

"You don’t seem surprised that there exists something beyond this place."

I shook my head as we arrived to the bottom floor, "I’d be surprised if there weren’t. I also met someone from that higher dimension."

The Dusking Sun glanced sideways at me sharply.

"The one that shouted earlier?" he asked.

"Yeah,"

Even recalling that pressure made my spine tense slightly. That arrogant bastard had spoken a few words and casually knocked out half a hall full of cultivators.

"I couldn’t even fathom how deep his cultivation was... makes one wonder, how our trials and tribulations are nothing but a play in someone else’s deeper understanding of Dao."

There was no envy in his voice while saying it. Only reflection. A strange exhaustion settled behind those words, the kind cultivators rarely admitted aloud.

We spent our lives clawing upward through impossible suffering, only to discover our greatest achievements might look trivial from a higher perspective.

"Indeed, it does make you wonder," I sighed as we used the gate and returned to the outer post.

The teleportation carried us back instantly, the familiar sensation of compressed space twisting around us before releasing. The asteroid outpost appeared once more around us, bustling with movement despite the distance from Solarous. Cultivators moved through corridors carrying supplies, reports, resources salvaged from the war. Even victory generated endless labor.

Once there, we moved toward the ship.

"You’ll need to rise in cultivation," the Dusking Sun said.

"I know. I’m planning on doing that soon," I said as I rubbed the ring that I got from Tonfa.

My fingers traced its surface unconsciously. The resources inside represented opportunity, perhaps enough to push me far higher than I currently stood. Under ordinary circumstances, reaching Heaven Stage already would have felt monumental. Now it felt inadequate. That realization alone was irritating.

I was planning on sharing this with the Blue Sun, but she already made it to the Yin stage, so it won’t be useful to her right now. I need it though, desperately, especially if I want to see what this higher dimension is... though separating from Liang Yu and Yu Yu again will be something hard to do.

That thought settled heavier than I expected. Cultivation demanded separation constantly. Time apart. Dangerous journeys. Endless pursuits. Yet after everything recently, the idea of leaving them again already tasted bitter.

I’ve already separated from them for a long time, and I don’t even dare think of how they’ll react if they know I’ll be leaving again.

The worst part was knowing they would understand.

And somehow that made it harder.

I sighed.

"You’re a man with many worries Shen Bao, but remember... eventually we all seek the peak."

The Dusking Sun said it casually while boarding the ship, but there was truth buried deeply in those words. Every cultivator claimed different motivations, revenge, protection, immortality, curiosity, but eventually the path narrowed into the same direction.

Higher.

Always higher.

"I know, It’s just," I looked up at the empty space. "It makes one wonder, what’s even at the peak..."

Stars stretched endlessly beyond the shipyard, cold and silent. Somewhere beyond those distant lights existed realms where Yang stage cultivators were treated like children. Somewhere beyond even that stood the enforcer, and according to his own words, even he wasn’t the peak.

The thought alone made me shudder at the reality of this cultivation world.

How far is true divinity?