Pursuit of the Truth

The elder watched the chessboard. With a smile on her face, Yu Xuan remained seated next to Su Ming. Her expression was one of incredible attentiveness. She was also staring at the chessboard.

When Su Ming spoke, a sly look appeared in her eyes. She lifted her hand and tugged a lock of hair dancing in the wind behind her ear. During that moment, Cang Lan suddenly coughed softly by the side.

“Elder.” The elder lifted his head, and the moment his gaze landed on Cang Lan, Yu Xuan put down her hand. She then moved a white piece belonging to the elder on the chessboard.

“Elder, there are quite a number of Berserkers who would like to greet you. Would you let them meet you in the next few days?”

Cang Lan’s expression remained the same. Not a single hint of change of emotion could be detected on her. She asked the elder with a gentle demeanor and looked incredibly respectful.

“You… can make the arrangements as you like.”

The elder smiled amicably. As he spoke, he instinctively wanted to lower his head to look at the chessboard, but at that moment, a smile bloomed on Xu Hui’s face while she was beside Su Ming. She swept her gaze past Cang Lan and Yu Xuan before she spoke.

“Elder, you will need some time before you can continue with the game. Why don’t you tell us things about Su Ming when he was a child?”

“That’s right, elder. Tell us about his childhood! Don’t you agree, big sister Cang Lan?” Yu Xuan said quickly. The three of them did not differentiate themselves by age, but both Yu Xuan and Xu Hui referred to the gentle and elegant Cang Lan as their big sister.

Xu Hui was the second. Regardless of whether it was her personality or the words she usually used, Yu Xuan gave off the feeling that she was young, which was why she was the youngest among the three women.

The elder laughed. He no longer looked at the chessboard but instead lifted his head to look at the three women beside Su Ming. His smile became even more kindly. The three women each had their own talents, and all of them were genii.

He looked at them, then looked at Su Ming, who had closed his eyes at that moment, and he joyfully told them some of the more interesting things Su Ming had done when he was younger.

But he did not know that the game had been changed, causing Su Ming’s original disadvantage to change into an advantage.

Su Ming did not pay any attention to any of it. At the instant he closed his eyes, he spread his divine sense, turned it into his will, and then… sent it to descend in the Fourth True World.

The galaxy there was filled with chaos. Wills belonging to Antecedental Spirits filled the entire True World, and they brought with them the desire to wreak havoc and madness. They had arrogance that made it feel as if they wanted to tear apart the world. When they rose in the galaxy, they filled up the Fourth True World and brought forth a bloody massacre.

The killing even extended to Sacred Yin, and the Emperor of Abyss’ True World. In fact, there were even some Antecedental Spirits who had come from the Fourth True World to True Morning Dao World. As they laughed madly while roaring, they engaged in a fight to the death against people from Dark Dawn and Saint Defier. Once anyone died, the Antecedental Spirits would immediately suck in a breath to absorb the dead cultivators into their bodies, devouring them.

In truth… the Antecedental Spirits who had their seals broken and were released by the Fourth True World did not even care whether their enemies were from Dark Dawn and Saint Defier. The cultivators from the other True Worlds also became their targets, as if they were their food.

With every cultivator they devoured, they would become stronger. Because of it, the Antecedental Spirits who rushed out of the Fourth True World stirred up another disaster in Arid Triad Expanse Cosmos.

The cultivators from Arid Triad, Dark Dawn, and Saint Defier continued dying one after another. The Antecedental Spirit’s release and slaughter during that year caused Arid Triad Expanse Cosmos to be slightly different. Su Ming could also sense that as the people died, the power of his own will rose by quite a large margin. Arid Triad Expanse Cosmos was filled with a brutality and an invisible power that could make people descend into madness.

It was as if a bloody flower that would only appear in the apocalypse was blooming and spreading out. Su Ming could sense that the feeling of Arid Triad Expanse Cosmos moving during the past ten years was faster than before the war began, and it was faster by seventy years.

Everything seemed to happen faster by seven times!

Only by doing so could Arid Triad make the disaster that would originally require three thousand something years to appear when the four wings overlap to be reduced to only five hundred years.

As he watched Arid Triad Expanse Cosmos’ change, Su Ming filed all of this information away as if he had come to understand everything. His heart was calm, and not a single ripple appeared due to the things happening around him. He knew that one hundred years later, he would have to face a disaster, and that disaster would come from Arid Triad.

If Su Ming could not get through the disaster, there would be no future to speak of, but if he could survive, then five hundred years later, Arid Triad’s disaster would arrive, and during the instant the wings overlapped, Su Ming would Possess Arid Triad.

He would not choose to cooperate with Arid Triad. Forget the choice Arid Triad had provided to him. That was not a choice, but a seed planted at the bottom of his heart. One hundred years later, when the seed grew, it would bring him a life-threatening disaster that would end up with him being sealed.

Even if Arid Triad truly wanted to work with Su Ming, Su Ming would still not make that choice, because… it was as the young man had said—their paths were different!

When anyone reached Su Ming and Arid Triad’s level of cultivation, there was no longer a distinction between good and bad between them, and neither were there any sort of grudge… A battle of wills would happen due to their paths being different and because there was little common ground for understanding between them.

In truth, Su Ming was originally not certain of this either… but he had cast three deep glances at the ancient tree on the capital planet of the Emperor of Abyss’ True World before he left, and those three glances had allowed him to understand the meaning of preordained fate.

Su Ming would not hide from the promise he made with Arid Triad under the ancient tree one hundred years later. He would go!

On the vast sea below the ancient tree, the shades of blue and green seemed to connect with the sky. The blue was the ocean, and green was the tree that seemed to melt the line separating the ocean and the sky so that it could make the sky truly connect with the sea and make the sea turn into one with the tree…

‘Perhaps they had always been one…’

Su Ming sighed in his heart. He focused his mind and stopped thinking about those things. Instead, as his will spread out, he had it filled all of Arid Triad. Even if True Sacred Yin World’s will did not belong to Su Ming, even if the Fourth True World’s will tried to reject him, Su Ming had possessed four Great True Worlds, so he could instantly suppress the two great wills, causing them… to not dare reveal their presences. Instead, they allowed Su Ming to sweep through their True Worlds with his will.

In a galaxy to the east of the Fourth True World was a huge swamp. A bloody stench spread out from within it. Submerged in the putrid water were countless corpses of cultivators from Dark Dawn, Saint Defier, as well as Arid Triad. There were a few dozen corpses belonging to disciples from Ninth Summit’s branch sects as well.

Those people had already lost their lives, and as their bodies were submerged in the swamp, they slowly rotted away and absorbed. Surrounding the swamp were nearly thirty thousand cultivators from Dark Dawn and Saint Defier. They people had cautious looks, and under the lead of three Antecedental Spirits from their Expanse Cosmoses, they were engaged in a battle of divine abilities against the swamp.

When booming sounds echoed in the air, a face showed up from within the swamp. There was a ferocious look on it when it looked at the cultivators before it.

“All… of you… must die!”

A muffled roar reverberated through space. The swamp swiftly grew larger, but at that moment, a will so great that it caused all thirty thousand cultivators’ minds to instantly go blank and made the three Antecedental Spirits belonging to Dark Dawn and Saint Defier to instantly feel as if their souls had frozen up appeared. When they lost their consciousness, the huge swamp shuddered, and the face on it swiftly looked up to glare at space. The being’s pupils shrank, and shock appeared on his face.

“Who are you?! WHO ARE YOU??!!”

When his shouts echoed in space, a cold harrumph could be heard. Immediately after, a hand appeared in space. It was not big, and it pushed down lightly, but the swamp immediately roared. It started drying up, and a large number of cracks instantly appeared. Banging sounds reverberated through space, and nearly four-tenths of the swamp crumbled.

“I, Su Ming, do not care about you killing the cultivators from Dark Dawn, Saint Defier, or Arid Triad… but provoking Ninth Summit is not allowed. Do not repeat your mistake.”

Su Ming’s voice traveled into the ears of the Antecedental Spirit in the swamp, intimidating him greatly and causing the swamp to not dare to show even a hint of struggle or resistance as it trembled.

During that moment, Ninth Summit was branded deeply into the divine sense of the Antecedental Spirit in the swamp, and it became a taboo!

Su Ming’s terrifying might had shocked the Antecedental Spirit. No matter how mad he was, in the face of the absolute power that could destroy him with a flip of his hand, he could only lower his head and show respect.

To the west of the Fourth True World,, a crazed laughter shook the sky. A person with a body like a normal person but with two legs that were one hundred feet long walked through the galaxy. His body parts seemed incompatible with each other, and he looked incredibly bizarre, but there was a presence that would bring terror to others spreading out from his body.

The person’s hair was a mess, and his upper body was uncovered. When he took a step forward, he smiled in a way that held a hint of lust. He was chasing after eight cultivators.

Among the eight of them, three came from Dark Dawn and Saint Defier, four from the Emperor of Abyss’ True World, and one was a female cultivator who had entered Ninth Summit’s branch sect from True Sacred Yin World three years ago.

The long-legged strange man laughed and lifted his right hand, which immediately shot forward. As if a vacuum had been formed, the three cultivators from Dark Dawn and Saint Defier were instantly pulled to him. When they fell into his palm, he crushed them, and the three turned into minced meat with a bang.

The huge hand appeared again, and the minced meat turned into the most aggressive Enchanted Vessel that charged towards the remaining five cultivators. As the four from the Emperor of Abyss’ True World screamed in pain, the minced meat shot through their bodies, and they became a part of that minced meat.

As for the female cultivator from Ninth Summit, her face was pale when she was seized by the strange man’s right hand, which was now several times larger than before. She was brought before him, and the lust in the strange man’s eyes grew even greater.

“Not bad, you can be a furnace.”

The strange man laughed loudly and tossed the woman into his sleeve. In that seemingly small sleeve were thousands of female cultivators he had captured.

He turned around and was just about to leave when he suddenly jolted. His expression instantly became grave. He narrowed his eyes and fixed his stare on a white-robed figure who had appeared behind him at some unknown point of time.

“An Antecedental Spirit such as you should not be sealed. You should be wiped off straight away.”

Su Ming frowned. When he said those words, he took a step forward. The strange man roared. He could sense a powerful threat to his life coming from Su Ming. But when he was about to retreat, Su Ming took a step forward and moved past him.

As Su Ming left into the distance, the giant experienced a full body shudder. His head swiftly separated from his body, which withered right after. His sleeve was torn into shreds, and when the thousands of female cultivators in it fled, the strange man’s body crumbled with a bang to turn into waves of aura that fused into the women, becoming the greatest serendipity that could make their cultivation bases increase by leaps and bounds.