Pursuit of the Truth

It was dusk.

Su Ming watched the sun rise in this continent within Divine Essence Star Ocean, watched the sun set, and also saw evening arrive.

He could not explain this. This was supposed to be a completely pitch-black galaxy and was a continent floating in a galaxy, so where did the sunlight come from, and why was there daylight and nighttime?

However, there was indeed a sun here. Strangely, when he stepped into the galaxy, he did not see the sun, but when he stepped onto a cultivation planet or the continent the Ninth Tribe chose, he could see it.

Su Ming had asked Dijiu Mo Sha about this before.

“That is… the light and heat spreading out of the fifth kiln. Before the fifth kiln appeared, Divine Essence Star Ocean was pitch black. The darkness lasted eternally, and the people there had grown used to it.

“When the fifth kiln arrived, it brought light to Divine Essence Star Ocean. However, while we can see it, we can never find it, unless it appears on its own before us once in a while. Some people say that the fifth kiln’s true location is within the world in the void,” he had answered.

Su Ming sat on the mountain rock and looked at the sun that was the fifth kiln gradually set in the distance. When he looked at it, he could tell that the sun was indeed not round. Instead, it contained the outline of a kiln.

The afterglow of dusk shone on the ground with the warmth during the day, fusing together with the freezing wind that blew towards him. When it landed on his body, he could not tell whether it was warm or cold.

Su Ming had been sitting on the mountain rock for two days. His heart was calm, a sight rarely seen ever since he came to the Barren Lands of Divine Essence. He could watch the sun rise and the sun set. Perhaps cultivators would not be used to the lifestyle of the tribes here, but to Su Ming, this place was brimming with familiar sights.

Humans always loved to reminiscence about the past when swathed in a familiar feeling that they might have coincidentally ran into. They loved immersing themselves in that feeling to turn their heads back and look at their own lives.

The sounds of children playing brought back the memories of Dark Mountain Tribe. The friendship between the members of the Ninth Tribe made Su Ming remember the ninth summit. Not for the first time, he became aware that this was the tribe his Master had once lived in for many years.

Perhaps his Master’s image still remained in these people’s memories.

‘If eldest senior brother, second senior brother, and Hu Zi learned about Master and came here as well, it would be great…’ Su Ming shook his head.

The sun set, and night fell.

The area became quiet. The children’s playful laughter turned into even breathing. The elderly slept. The members of the Ninth Tribe started to either meditate or fall into deep sleep one after another, so the mountain became completely silent when night arrived.

Su Ming continued to sit on the mountain rock and look at the dark sky. He could not see the moon, and neither could he see any stars. The only thing he saw was endless darkness, as if he was the only person left in the world at that instant. It was a familiar feeling.

Since he was used to being lonely and knew that this was his grief-laden fate, then why was he still immersed in his memories and unable to free himself from them? Why did he always love to watch the black sky and have the fireworks of those beautiful moments in his memories be set off in his heart?

Since he was already used to walking down the path of his life alone, then if there was such a thing as a person having past lives, he would have definitely reincarnated plenty of times over tens of thousands of years.

Su Ming smiled in the darkness.

No one could tell that this smile was filled with anguish. Only the people who had smiled in this manner before would be able to see the heartache that seemed to have fused into the water when they looked at their own reflection in the lake, and only those who tasted that water before would know just how bitter it was.

“What’s wrong..?” a gentle voice asked. It did not interrupt Su Ming’s thoughts as he sat in the darkness but fused into the air quietly and surrounded him. A lovely figure dressed in a sackcloth walked out from the house and sat down by his side.

“I miss home,” Su Ming replied softly.

“If that is the case, then we can leave tomorrow.” Xu Hui looked at Su Ming in the darkness. She could only see the outlines of his face, but she liked watching him in this manner, because she knew that only at this moment was she looking at that person… and not Dao Kong.

She understood what was going on, but she did not want to say it.

“Do you believe in fate?” Su Ming shook his head.

After remaining silent for a moment as a few pictures flashed through her eyes, she gently said, “I do…”

“There are few cultivators who believe in fate.” Su Ming looked towards Xu Hui.

“I do believe in fate, or else why would I be here?”

“When your wounds are healed, you can head to the nine old Frail Darknesses. I… still don’t want to go home.” An ancient air had seeped into Su Ming’s voice in the darkness.

“Did you stay here to wait for my wounds to heal?” Xu Hui looked towards Su Ming.

“Sleep. I want to meditate alone here.” Su Ming did not answer her, but instead told her to go and rest. There was no longer any ancient quality in his voice, and neither was there any nostalgia.

Xu Hui did not stay beside him. She stood up and walked towards the house, leaving the darkness for him alone.

“Perhaps you miss home, but you miss a person even more,” Xu Hui said from the house, her voice drifting into Su Ming’s ears.

He fell silent and closed his eyes, immersing himself in the darkness, and quietly meditated. He circulated his cultivation base, and in the freezing wind, he felt as if he had returned to the ninth summit, as if he had returned to the spot outside his cave abode, and was meditating there and watching the sun set and rise as he did in the past.

Cultivators did not dream.

Because dreams would only appear when a person was asleep, and deep sleep could be replaced by meditation for a cultivator. However, on that night, when Su Ming was meditating, he dreamed.

In his dream, he returned to the land of Berserkers. In his dream, he saw the ninth summit. In his dream… he also saw Dark Mountain. He saw the figures that existed in the forest, which was where his tribe was located when he was younger.

There was Xiao Hong. There was also… a beautiful girl filled with wild beauty standing alone under a big tree in the snow, dressed in a white mink fur coat. She was waiting in the snow alone.

She was waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. A promise of walking in circles with a boy.

Mountains aligned close to each other in the mountain range could be seen in the distance. The cold moon in the sky was indistinct. With the white snow on the ground and the pine tree as her companions, the girl continued standing in place and waited foolishly.

Snow, wind, and dust blew past her. Years went by. Was there ever any regrets within her?

Yet in those clouds were several galaxies and several layers of sky between them. No form of letters in the world could allow them to speak to each other any longer.

Thousands of years had gone by. No traces of anything could be found when water landed in a lake. The pine tree appeared the same every year. No one known whether beauty will eventually subside, and whether… still water will leave no traces behind when it disappears.

“You left me with a promise saying you will fulfill it tomorrow, and I have been waiting for you for a thousand years, but don’t make me wait too long. Don’t let this silence fade away.”

Su Ming opened his eyes, the soft murmurs from the dream still echoing in his ears. He suddenly came to an understanding. Perhaps he was truly not thinking about his home or that one person, but was thinking… about that promise he’d made one thousand years ago.

‘If this an obsession of mine, or is this an obsession someone placed in me?’ Su Ming watched the sky gradually brighten in the distance and the night be washed away by the streams of time.

‘Or else why would I always remember that promise instead of Bai Ling? Why… would I dream while meditating?!’ Su Ming’s eyes swiftly grew sharp from their previous dazed state. There was a piercing cold look within them, as if an ancient, ferocious beast had woken up from deep sleep and was exuding the presence that allowed no form of transgression against it.

A domineering air spread out from Su Ming’s body. With the first rays of sunlight shining on him, he stood up to move to the bottom of the mountain rock. His body was enveloped by sunlight at that moment, and with a turn, Su Ming trained his gaze towards the sky, from where the sun was shining.

The purple line at the center of his brows opened up and turned into the Malicious Eye. The clouds and fog in it turned into ghosts that looked ferociously towards the sky in the direction of Su Ming’s gaze.

At this moment, another Su Ming appeared in the sky, but in a way that no one else would notice it. This was his clone that practiced the Art of Swallowing Hollow Shadows Whole after he had separated it from his body. The Malicious Eye had also appeared at the center of his brows, and he looked at the sky in the same direction as Su Ming’s cultivation base clone.

In Western Ring Nebula’s foreign lands was Su Ming’s Ecang clone, and he was sitting and meditating in the purple galaxy. Wrapped around his arm was the small Candle Dragon. Soon after both of Su Ming’s clones looked towards the sky, his Ecang clone’s eyes flew open, and the true Malicious Eye also opened at the center of his brows!

Once this happened, Su Ming’s Ecang clone turned his head around and fixed his stare at the spot Su Ming was gazing upon.

This was all three of Su Ming’s great bodies as he walked down the path of cultivation executing the power of the Malicious Eye at the same time. They let out all of their power at to look towards the boundless space.

Their gazes penetrated through space, as if they were moving through the passages of time. They moved past the area which the four Great True Worlds fended, moved past the entrance to the Barren Lands of Divine Essence, and looked towards True Morning Dao World!

They saw the land that belonged to the Immortals in the gigantic galaxy there. At that moment, a war was raging in that place. It was… a war between Immortals and those from Morning Dao Sect. There were countless cultivators casting endless divine abilities.

Behind the boundless battlefield was a Rune formed by a tremendous amount of fragmented continents. At the center of it was a body made of flesh and blood that was just lying there.

There was a figure dressed entirely in a black robe standing beside that body. That person had his slightly withered right hand lifted and pressed against the top of the lying man’s skull. Beside the first figure was another person who was also dressed in a black robe, but based on its shape, it could be seen that this was a woman. She was mumbling softly beside the body, her voice echoing in the area.

“… but don’t make me wait too long. Don’t let this silence fade away.”

The woman’s voice was gentle. There was a hint of nostalgia and a hint of grief within her words. At the instant she finished speaking, the tall person in black who had his right hand pressed on the top of the body’s skull raised his head swiftly to look towards space.

With a bang, a powerful impact spread out of nowhere. The wind stirred up by the impact did not lift the tall person’s robes, but threw off the hood of the woman beside him, revealing a face before Su Ming’s eyes.

It was… Bai Ling’s face!

Her expression and the grief in her voice were not matched at all. There was only an aloof look on her face, a calm expression that contained no shred of emotion.