Pursuit of the Truth

Arc Three: His Name Shakes Through the Eastern Wastelands

It was cold. Just like the feeling he’d had in that dream…

Cold surrounded him. He could not open his eyes. It was dark all around. This was a very familiar feeling from his dream. It was quiet all around him, so quiet it was rather terrifying. There was not a hint of sound that could be heard.

Besides the cold and the dark, there was nothing else.

‘If her voice appears and tells me that the sky is bright now and the clouds look like rabbits… wouldn’t that be wonderful?

‘But there isn’t. That voice still hasn’t appeared. That cold is becoming even more freezing. I can’t move. I can feel pain continuously surrounding me, but I’m slowly becoming numb towards it… Am I asleep..?

‘Who… am I..?’

Time was slowly flowing away. It was unknown just how much time had gone by.

This was a black seabed. There was not a hint of light. This was the deep parts of the sea. There were numerous gigantic ice blocks here. Due to the uniqueness of the seawater, these ice blocks did not float on the sea. Instead, they stayed at the seabed quietly.

Perhaps more accurately speaking, this was not the seabed. This was a glacier… The true seabed was right underneath the glacier. That part… was the deepest part of the sea, and few know exactly how far down it was.

Above that glacier was the black sea. Only the people who had ever been to this place would know exactly how high it was.

There was a protruding ice mountain on the glacier. It was not tall, only about one thousand feet. It was entirely black. No one knew whether that was its original color or whether it was dyed black by the sea.

If anyone looked at it from a closer distance, they would be able to see faintly that there seemed to be something sealed in that ice mountain… If anyone stood there with enough power and a powerful divine sense to see through the ice mountain, then that person would be able to see that there was an oval vortex about one hundred feet in size sealed inside.

That vortex gave people a feeling that it was a gate. It in itself was dark and was sealed within the ice mountain.

By the side of the vortex was a body, which was also sealed within. He was not standing but lying with his eyes closed, and because he was sealed, he was like a statue.

This was a young man with long hair and a pale face. There was a faint mark of a peach blossom at the center of his brows. He wore a torn long robe and there was a dark red patch at his knees. It was frozen blood.

In fact, there were also blood flecks at the corner of his lips. They were also frozen up by the ice.

There was a strand of hair wrapped twice around his right index finger, as well as a red ring on his finger. He looked bitter, but his brows, which were in the shape of blades, gave people a feeling that he was a resolute person.

He lay there quietly and continued to be frozen...

… right up to this day. At the black seabed, within the black ice mountain, cracking sounds rang out from the layers of ice enveloping the young man’s body, though they did not shatter.

Yet clearly, although the young man frozen within the ice mountain did not open his eyes, there was a faint hint of life emanating from his body.

Naturally, that person was Su Ming!

He had woken up, but he could not open his eyes or move his body. The chilling presence had already filled up his entire body.

”Where… am I..?”

Su Ming closed his eyes, and his divine sense slowly spread out. The instant it touched the layer of ice, it immediately sensed an obstructive force. The power of that obstructive force caused Su Ming’s divine sense to only be able to reach several dozens of feet before it could no longer go farther.

‘It’s all ice all around me, and… the Gate to the Void?’ Uncertainty rose in Su Ming’s heart. He remembered Hong Luo mentioning that the Gate to the Void would bring him back to his cave abode, but the ice in this place told him clearly that this… was not his cave abode!

‘Could it be that Di Tian’s final Soar to the White Sky stirred up such a powerful energy after clashing with the power of the God of Berserkers that… some changes happened to the Gate to the Void..?’

Su Ming quickly found the answer. Taking away the possibility of Hong Luo lying, this was the most likely answer.

There was no need for Hong Luo to hide the truth about this, so an answer formed in Su Ming’s heart.

However, when he began to feel certain of his answer, new questions popped up in his heart.

‘The Gate to the Void… why does it exist? From what I understand about this gate and from what Hong Luo said, it should have disappeared after relocating me.

‘But now… even though I can’t send my divine sense too far, I can sense that Gate to the Void near me. What is the reason for this..?’ Su Ming pondered over it, and after a long while, he forced down his doubts and circulated the power in his body quietly.

This was the first time since he woke up that he went to sense his level of cultivation. When he woke up earlier, due to Di Tian’s presence, Hong Luos’s words, and the scenes he saw in his dreams, he did not think about going to sense his own power.

At that moment, as he was surrounded by silence and knew that he should be frozen in ice, Su Ming’s heart gradually calmed down. When he went on to sense his own power, information started flowing into his mind as if it had been pumped into his head...

It was Hong Luo’s Dao during his life, his divine abilities, his Arts, his understanding towards his own cultivation, and all his knowledge towards the Immortal Tribe and their entire cultivation method.

Su Ming’s heart trembled. As he felt through this information, a huge wave stirred up in his heart. It crashed into his soul so harshly that he only recovered after a long while.

‘Is this the Immortal Tribe..? Three Steps to Heaven… It mixes the sources of multiple worlds and turns it to the sun of a timeline…’ More bitterness rose in Su Ming’s heart, but similarly, a wave of resolution also formed!

‘I once said that I would definitely surpass Di Tian… now, that thought hasn’t changed. One of these days, no matter what sort of price I have to pay, I will definitely obtain the power to surpass Di Tian!

‘When the time comes…’ Su Ming’s heart slowly calmed down. He circulated the power in his body, and as time passed by, his flesh gradually did not feel as cold anymore. Life started growing in abundance in his body, and as he recovered, his divine sense also started spreading to a wider area. The power of the obstructive force also became weaker.

Then one day, Su Ming’s divine sense shot out of the ice mountain and started spreading in all directions. It instantly covered nearly ten thousand lis of that black seawater, and that short distance was because there was a similar obstructive force in the black seawater. Over there, besides the obstructive force in the water, there was also a pressure that oppressed divine senses, or else, Su Ming’s divine sense would have been able to spread to an even wider area.

Once he sent his divine sense ten thousand lis away, Su Ming saw where he was. He saw the glacier on the seabed, saw himself in that ice mountain along with the Gate to the Void. Similarly, he also saw the black seawater.

However, his divine sense could not continue spreading until he would send it out of the seawater. It was as if compared to the seawater, the area covered by his divine sense was just a small part of the vast sea.

Su Ming opened his eyes.

The layer of ice enveloping his body was slowly melting, causing him to be able to open his eyes. However, he still could not move. He looked at the black seawater beyond the layer of ice and confusion appeared in his eyes, but soon, that confusion disappeared.

‘Could it be the Dead Sea?!’ Su Ming’s pupils shrank.

He pulled back his divine sense. He then covered the area around his body with his divine sense and sent some of it towards the sealed Gate to the Void. After taking a closer look at it, Su Ming found some clues.

‘When the Gate to the Void was going to relocate me, Di Tian’s power interfered with its energy, causing the destination of the relocation to be thrown off track, and it sent me to the ice under the Dead Sea...

‘However, due to Di Tian’s power and this ice sealing it up, it didn’t disappear. Instead, it’s as if it had gained physical form and was made to stay in the world.

‘If that’s the case… if it is operational, then can it activate its relocating abilities and send me back… to my cave abode?’ A pensive look appeared in Su Ming’s eyes. The power of Berserker Bones erupted from his body and spread through his body. Cracking sounds rang out, and the ice layer encasing him immediately cracked. However, it had only started cracking. He was still a long way from escaping.

Su Ming frowned and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them, and at the instant he did so, profundity filled his gaze. A brilliant light shone in his eyes, and the small person that looked exactly like him sitting at his Dantian region also opened his eyes.

With a bang, the ice encasing Su Ming trembled once again due to the different power that erupted from his body. It was a different power from the power of the Berserker Tribe. While that power did not cause more cracks to appear, the cracks that had originally been there started spreading out.

These two different sorts of power caused two different changes. Su Ming’s eyes sparkled, and he gained a new understanding towards his current level of cultivation.

‘The power of the Berserker Tribe is strong and fierce, that is why it could make the layer of ice crack. The power of the Immortal Tribe is a lasting sort of power and is also gentle, that’s why it made those cracks stretch…’

By changing the types of power multiple times, after a few days, the layer of ice encasing Su Ming’s body shattered, causing him to regain mobility.

However, only the interior part of the layer of ice shattered, the external layer was still around, and it looked like a gigantic shell. The ice around Su Ming was also rapidly growing. Before long, it would turn into a mountain that would seal him up once again.

‘From the descriptions of the Dao Hong Luo gave me as his inheritance, the small human in me is called a Nascent Soul. The level of cultivation belonging to the Immortal Tribe in me should be called the Nascent Soul Stage.

‘However, the Nascent Soul Stage isn’t really that strong. It absolutely can’t compare to Di Tian. But with his powerful divine sense, Hong Luo had allowed this body to cast most of his divine abilities… If that’s the case, then it seems that divine senses are the core of the Immortal Tribe!

‘Hong Luo might have died, but in the Dao he left me, he also passed to me a lot of divine abilities and Arts. It’s a pity… all of them require powerful divine sense before I can execute them.

‘But there are some Arts that can be casted in the Nascent Soul Stage… such as…’

A glint appeared in Su Ming’s eyes. He took a swift step forward, and his body disappeared in an instant. When he reappeared, he was already several dozens of feet away from where he previously was.

It might just be several dozens of feet, and Su Ming could close that distance with that same amount of time with his speed, but he was not using any hint of the power belonging to the Berserker Tribe. He was only using the Immortals’ divine abilities!

”Short distance warping…” Su Ming mumbled softly. As he mulled over it, he spread his divine sense once again. This time, he did not check the black seawater beyond the ice mountain. Instead, he swept his divine sense through the glacier.

Suddenly, his expression changed. Within the area of his divine sense, he saw numerous living creatures frozen and sealed up within the endless glacier!

These creatures were almost always sealed at a certain distance away from each other!