Pursuit of the Truth

“Perhaps even he doesn’t know about this,” Su Ming mumbled. “Perhaps this is just a misunderstanding. Perhaps these are just guesses and this is how the Seed of Life Extermination grows. Once it becomes complete, everything will change. It must be.”

Su Ming fell silent, and he suppressed the anguish and doubts in his heart.

As he remained silent, the pain from his Nascent Divinity continued attacking his senses. Su Ming was forced to shift his attention to his Nascent Divinity again. This time, he did not look at the Seed of Life Extermination, but intentionally ignored it. He did not want to continue thinking too deeply about this problem, so he chose to observe the only other thing he could.

The Abyss Gate, which had devoured a large amount of Su Ming’s life force, countless cultivators, and even planets had began nourishing Su Ming in the world with the ocean of light, thereby allowing his Nascent Divinity to become an imperishable existence.

Su Ming stared at the Abyss Gate formed by crystallization. It gave off a feeling that it was very feeble, that it could be crushed with the slightest squeeze.

It was just like a door which belonged to a poor man’s house in the mortal world. There was a huge difference between it and the doors of those with illustrious statuses or the royal family.

It was not a difference in growth, but a difference in foundation.

Su Ming stared at his rather shoddy Abyss Gate quietly.

As time passed, he averted his gaze and stared at the ocean of light around him. He could not move his body, because the moment he did so, intense pain which was thousands of times stronger than before would course through his body. He had also noticed that the Aura of Abyss spreading out from his Abyss Gate was gradually lessening.

Once it stopped, his Nascent Divinity would stop healing. At that time, what would await him would be his Nascent Divinity being instantly crushed.

And if he moved, he would just speed up the release rate of his Aura of Abyss and shorten the time till his death.

‘Perhaps… I will really need to stay here for eternity. Baldy, you’re late…’

Su Ming believed that the bald crane would come, but perhaps it had gone off to another direction in the vast ocean of light.

But even at that moment, Su Ming did not fear death. He only felt slightly regretful. He regretted that he did not manage to save Yu Xuan, find his senior brothers, and fulfill his wish of creating a home for himself.

These regrets turned into a sigh. As he lay in the ocean of light, he overlooked the amount of Aura of Abyss spreading out from his body and ignored the signs of death because he suddenly realized that the light around him… was actually very beautiful.

This sort of beautiful sight could not be seen in the universe. It could only be seen in this place, and it was an indescribable beauty formed by an innumerable number of light rays.

He paid no heed to what would happen after he died and just watched the lights, admiring the beauty which would become the last thing he saw in his life when his Nascent Divinity vanished.

As he continued watching, Su Ming forgot his current condition. He felt as if he had become a part of the endless light and as if they had fused together. He swam about in the world without restraint.

“This ocean is formed by light which can be seen and wind which can be detected…” Su Ming mumbled. He ignored his imminent death and immersed himself in the strange feeling.

While within it, he felt like he had returned to the past, when he was in the land of Berserkers and gained his epiphany to clear his mind in the ninth summit. During it, he had understood how to clear his mind with drawing and what it meant to have changes of heart.

This time, as he watched the light, he was immersed in a situation akin to gaining an epiphany. However, he was not in a trance as he went through a change of heart. Instead, he was in a trance because of the ocean of light’s magnificence and beauty.

Perhaps only when a person was about to die yet completely forgot its shadow looming over their heads would they be able to observe the beauty of this light so wholeheartedly.

Maybe because Su Ming knew that he would not be able to watch it for much longer, he valued what little time he had.

Time trickled by. As the ocean of light moved about, Su Ming was swept even further away, and he saw more light rays. There was no end to them, and his body was surrounded by light.

He did not notice though that the Aura of Abyss spreading out from his body had become thinner and that it seemed like before long there would be no more Aura of Abyss left to nourish his body.

And his Nascent Divinity was being torn apart even more violently while he was swept about in the ocean of light.

“What a strange light. Once it fuses with the wind, it forms an ocean, and it possesses the power that can destroy everything…” As Su Ming mumbled under his breath, he saw a flash of black among the many lights. He was familiar with it, for it was the Light of Extreme Darkness.

“Then… how was the light formed?”

Su Ming had forgotten that he currently existed only as a Nascent Divinity and was immersed in the strange condition. He stared at the endless light around him with the question in his mind.

He wanted to know the answer, to learn how the light appeared and understand why there were countless variations of it, how it formed the ocean, and how it possessed such an astonishing power which could destroy everything in the world.

Before he came into contact with the Light of Extreme Darkness, Su Ming had not believed that light was a form of energy. It was something which could be seen and was indispensable in the galaxy. However, the Light of Extreme Darkness he encountered in Morning Dao Sect’s Striking Lands had overturned his thoughts. He gradually came to accept… that light was a form of energy.

While he disregarded the problem of his upcoming death, Su Ming had a feeling like he had turned into light. The brightness of the Light of Extreme Darkness among the countless rays of light seemed to have taken away all what remained of his will in the Nascent Divinity, causing Su Ming to feel… as if he had become a part of the light beyond the universe.

He felt like the Light of Extreme Darkness, and he swam about all sorts of other lights. As he continued thinking, he felt like the rays of light were continuously being magnified. He had done it to the limit of his third eye, and what he saw… was no longer light.

Instead, there was nothingness surrounding two huge runic symbols. They were not drawn by man, but seemed to have been born naturally beyond the universe. They also only looked like runic symbols, but were not. Their complexity was definitely not something that cultivators could create or copy.

Su Ming saw the two symbols crash against each other before fusing together. The fusion rate was perfect, and once they become one, he saw that their complexity had increased even more. It was as if the runic symbols Su Ming had seen just then were just a Brand of a lowest grade, and once they fused together, they rapidly rose to a higher level.

As the runic symbol evolved from a lower to a higher form of existence, threads of power that Su Ming could not see but could feel and which terrified him rushed out from the void. They fused into the runic symbols like they were the nourishment the symbols needed during their process of moving from a lower to a higher form of existence.

When the transformation of the runic symbol reached its peak and its absorption of the power seemed to have reached a boundless state, Su Ming suddenly saw that the runic symbol—now so complicated that it was impossible to describe it with words—experience a reversion. It no longer continued improving, but instead started changing from a higher to a lower form of existence.

During the transformation, there was no longer any power from the void fusing into the runic symbol. When it changed from a higher to a lower form of existence, an indescribable, terrifying power was released from within it.

As it was released… light appeared!

When Su Ming saw this, his heart started trembling furiously. He had a vague feeling that he seemed to have understood something, but the simplicity in this complexity was always a hair’s breadth away from giving him an epiphany. He lacked something to connect all of it to himself.

‘Breathing! It’s breathing!’

Su Ming’s mind trembled. During that instant, he found the connection—it was breathing. The feeling he had from the scene he’d just watched was similar to one of his own breathing.

First was inhalation. This action was the runic symbols absorbing a large amount of power from the space around it to transform into a higher form of existence. When it reached the peak, it exhaled, and it was the same as releasing the power from the void which it had absorbed. Then… light would be formed!

At the instant Su Ming came to understand this, a loud roar rang out in his mind. His Abyss Gate no longer released the Aura of Abyss, and his Nascent Divinity was about to be torn apart by the ocean of light.

Yet during that moment, Su Ming closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath of the light. His Nascent Divinity came to a swift halt, and the instant Su Ming exhaled, his Nascent Divinity swiftly started recovering. Strong rays of light also swiftly spread out from it.

His Nascent Divinity shuddered. His eyes flew open, and understanding appeared in them.

‘There isn’t any wind here! The light formed this ocean because it is a type of energy, and it looked like it was being moved because it was being released. This released light is thus strong enough to destroy everything!

‘Light… This is light!’

The light from Su Ming’s Nascent Divinity reached one hundred thousand feet. He moved slightly in the ocean of light and fused completely with the light around him.

Dazzling light shone in his eyes. He sucked in a deep breath, and loud rumbles immediately spread out from his Nascent Divinity. Two faint balls of light appeared within him, and in them were the two complicated runic symbols Su Ming had seen earlier. As he breathed in, they fused together in his body.

Immediately after, a large amount of power from the void turned into the air that he sucked in, causing the fusion of the runic symbols in his body to jump from a lower to a higher form of existence before they swiftly reversed and released a powerful light.

Su Ming’s breathing became more rapid. The light from the runic symbols in his body became stronger as they ceaselessly moved from a lower to higher form of existence before reversing. The light spread out to one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand feet… After a short span of a dozen breaths, Su Ming threw his head back and roared. The light in his body had already reached hundreds of thousands of feet in all directions.

During that instant, Su Ming was the ocean of light. The light he released had already become an ocean. From within it, all the other rays of light were chased away, and only Su Ming’s light remained. It was… the Light of Extreme Darkness!

“This Art is what appears after Mountain Shifter, and it will be known as Ocean Remover [1]!”

At the instant Su Ming’s voice reverberated in the air, he leapt up. From the distance, it looked as if an ocean of light had risen, and with a vast presence, it shook the whole world!

When Su Ming rose to the heavens with the ocean of light, he pushed down fiercely. The space roared, and a rarely seen sight of a loud roar breaking the silence in the world in the ocean of light could be seen!

Translator’s Note:

Mountain Shifter and Ocean Remover: This is so much of a genius it has to be mentioned. It’s actually an idiom known as 移山倒海 (yi2 shan1 dao3 hai3), literally meaning to move mountains and seas, and the real meaning is humans changing nature.