Pursuit of the Truth

Wind stirred and clouds surged in the sky. As the world roared, fog tumbled about in all directions. A gigantic shadow appeared as if he had walked out of thin air to stand in the sky.

This figure was several hundreds of feet tall and dressed entirely in golden armor. He looked like a warring immortal. As his long hair danced in the air, a golden face was revealed. There was not a shred of emotion on that face, for it was as cold as a piece of gold.

However, there was a long chain wrapped around that figure’s shoulder. This was a chain that stretched into the depths of space in the sky!

But the thing that caused old Ya Mu’s pupils to shrink was not the person. His gaze did not rest on him even for a moment. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the depths of space, from where the chain came.

That person… was not Su Xuan Yi!

At that moment, an incredibly powerful will descended on the ground with a bang. Fog tumbled about beside the golden figure, and golden light stretched out to one hundred thousand feet. Then, another golden figure walked out from space.

He was as tall, as dignified, and as emotionless as the other figure. There was also… a chain wrapped around his shoulder.

Almost at the instant the second golden figure appeared, golden light surrounded him as well. When it reached a piercing degree, the third golden figure appeared.

Three golden-armored giants. Three golden figures with chains wrapped around their shoulders. Once they appeared one after another, they roared before bending their backs. Then, as if they were pulling the chains, they started moving forward.

Booming sounds chook the sky and earth, but Su Ming could not hear a single thing as he remained under the fog. In fact, he did not even have time to pay attention to the fog tumbling about above him.

At that moment, his entire body was filled with intense pain as the God Ascension Nectar spilled out from hi. The burst of force had erupted from him in a frenzy once he conformed to the drastic change within his Ecang clone.

As that force erupted from him and the three ferocious spirits let out shrill screams of pain around him, Su Ming’s mind became clear again. With a single glance, he could see that the three ferocious spirits beside him were floating up. Numerous branches had pierced their bodies, and those branches… grew from Su Ming’s body.

Shrill wails tumbled out continuously from the three ferocious spirits. Pained expressions were on their faces, and their bodies were swiftly withering away, as if those branches that pierced through their bodies were rapidly devouring all their blood, flesh, essence, cultivation base, and spirits.

In fact, Su Ming could see veins having popped up on the three ferocious spirits’ bodies. They wriggled about, but that was not because of the blood in them, nor were they wriggling about due to spasms. They were… the branches spreading throughout the three ferocious spirits’ bodies.

In Su Ming’s senses, those branches were a part of his body. They were dense and could not be told apart. He could clearly sense them moving, and in fact, he could even control them slightly.

With that feeling, Su Ming’s heart trembled furiously, because he saw that those branches which had stretched from his body were devouring the three ferocious spirits’ blood, flesh, and cultivation base while they screamed in shrill voices.

The branches were not simply devouring them, however. Instead, they were swiftly disassembling the three ferocious spirits. It was as if… the branches were rapidly looking for flaws within the creatures’ bodies, searching for the parts that were lacking in their lives to use it to their advantage in disassembling them in one go. This scene was similar to how Su Ming had searched for the Waves of Tears’ flaws once he turned into Old Man Extermination after going through endless years of research, which had happened after Su Ming had run into the Waves of Tears in Divine Essence Star Ocean!

Su Ming’s heart trembled, and a scene appeared in his mind. It was the one that he once saw in the Seed of Life Extermination. Within that scene was a gigantic ancient ship. With the various lives offered to him, Old Man Extermination only needed to swing his arm to instantly know what flaws lay in their lives.

This scene had initially shocked Su Ming, and he once desired this, but also knew that this was incredibly far away from him, but right then… a powerful light shone in Su Ming’s eyes. He noticed that he was not that far away from reaching the state of Old Man Extermination in that scene!

‘Ecang’s transformation… is due to the God Ascension Nectar, but the bigger reason lies in the Seed of Life Extermination!’

Su Ming did not know how great of a shock he had brought to the entire Arid Triad Expanse Cosmos when his Ecang clone fused perfectly with his body. He also did not know that Old Ya Mu was looking at the space in the distance while he stood in the world beyond the fog above him.

As the three golden-armored giants bent their backs and pulled the chains forward, booming sounds echoed in all directions within the space. Gradually, a gigantic outline appeared clearly in Ya Mu’s eyes.

That outline belonged to a chariot, one which was entirely gold and looked like the sun!

The chariot was one thousand feet big, and its outline alone brought about a great and mighty pressure on Ya Mu, causing the fifth kiln to roar and seas of fire to surge up in countless dimensions.

“Su Xuan Yi!”

Old Ya Mu lifted his right hand and clenched it in front of himself. Immediately, black light shone in his fist. As he unfurled it and revealed his palm, a black ball of light appeared on his palm.

That black ball of light looked as if it was the abyss that could devour all light in the world. Endless illusory figures shone nonstop within it. Each time this happened, a different mountain would manifest in it, and in just several breaths, more than ten million mountains appeared.

Ya Mu stared at the space. The wariness in his eyes was replaced by a powerful fighting spirit, as if he was waiting for the indistinct outline to gain corporeal form and reveal… the second most powerful person among the Abyss Builders in the Fifth True World – Su Xuan Yi. This person was the prodigy the Abyss Builders’ Progenitor had predicted to be their Chosen that would someday surpass him.

As Ya Mu stared at the space, the booming sounds reached their strongest. Under the loud noise, the three golden-armored giants let out a roar at the same time. They took a swift forward to yank the chain forward, and the indistinct chariot seemed to be pulled out of space, entering the real world.

The world instantly turned golden. Within the gold sky, gold earth, gold fog, and the gold space, a golden chariot was revealed!

Standing on the chariot was a figure dressed in a golden robe, whose fluttering white hair also seemed to be dyed in gold.

This was a man, an incredibly handsome middle-aged man filled with an ancient air. His gaze was icy cold, and his face was like metal. There was a merciless and aloof air about him, as if there was not a single shred of emotion that belonged to a person within that body.

Ya Mu stared at the aloof man on the golden chariot and asked in a low voice, “Which clone of Su Xuan Yi are you?!”

“The third clone,” the middle-aged man said flatly and lifted his right hand. Immediately, endless golden light converged there and turned into a long sword that was around ten feet tall. Its edge was so sharp that with just a light wave, the sound of space tearing apart could be heard.

“Are you the one who wants to harm my Ming’Er?” The icy look in the middle-aged man’s eyes gained an even more freezing edge. He did not speak much, but when his sentence was spoken, the entire world seemed to have been submerged in boundless ice.

As cracking sounds came from the space around him, signs of it being frozen manifested. The world looked to be covered in a spiderweb that spreading swiftly. The sky instantly looked like a giant ice flower!

Old Ya Mu’s expression changed. Just as he was about to open his eyes and speak, the middle-aged man who was at the center of the ice flower while standing on the chariot in the sky lifted the longsword in his hand and slashed at the ground with a simple swing.

That slash froze the world. The ice flower instantly covered the ground, freezing all of it. The sword cut through the law in the world, causing it to roar, as if it had been cut in half.

Fighting spirit sparked in Old Ya Mu’s eyes. The black ball of light in his right hand instantly erupted with black light. It spread along the ice flower, as if it wanted to dye it black. When he lifted his right hand, he swung his arm at the incoming slash.

Immediately, the black ball of light charged at the sky and crashed against the middle-aged man’s slash in midair.

“Mountain Shifter!”

Old Ya Mu formed a seal with his hands. Once he formed the mark of a mountain above his head, he spread his arms wide open. An even darker light erupted from the black ball in the sky. The tens of millions of mountains in it seemed to appear in the sky at the same time. This scene might seem incredibly bizarre in words, but during that moment, the sky was filled with mountains.

Booming sounds echoed furiously in the air. They came from the mountains collapsing, which caused Old Ya Mu’s face to turn increasingly paler. Once he spread his arms wide open, he gathered them in front of himself and pressed his palms together to form the shape of a summit before he stabbed the air in the direction of the sky.

A loud bang that shook the sky rang out once more. The tens of millions of mountains in the air shuddered simultaneously, and a ray of golden light swept through the area. It cut through the mountains one after another as easy as a hot knife cuts through butter. When the mountains crumbled layer by layer, the golden longsword turned into a ray of golden light that instantly went through.

Old Ya Mu’s face was pale. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, and when he staggered backwards, the mountains in the sky crumbled, and the golden light slashing down came to three inches above Old Ya Mu’s head. Then, it stopped moving.

However, the freezing will coming from it froze Old Ya Mu’s entire body. The glare from the tip of the sword also caused a crack to appear at the center of his brows.

“I respect you as someone older than me. Go and fulfill your promise. Let Ming’Er inherit that Mountain Shifter Art of yours, then deliver a serendipity for him,” the aloof voice said from the sky, and the ice flower around Ya Mu became even colder.

“If my real body was not in Arid Traid Expanse Cosmos, then with this Abyss Sword Style of yours, which hasn’t even reached the Fifth Heaven, you wouldn’t be able to fight against my Mountain Shifter Art!” Old Ya Mu lifted his head and did not even spare a glance at the golden sword above his head. Instead, he stared at the indistinct golden chariot as the mountains crumbled around him.

“This is the fifth kiln, and I am only the third clone,” the middle-aged man on the chariot said flatly. His body gradually disappeared, and even the three golden-armored giants slowly fused into space. When all of them were gone, the ice flower also shrank until the world returned to normal. The golden sword above Old Ya Mu’s head vanished.