Pursuit of the Truth

Fang Cang Lan did not declare herself as the Berserker Consort. When the Berserkers lost their Fourth God of Berserkers, some of the elderly who lived during the time when Su Ming was still around had decided unanimously that she was needed to placate the entire land of Berserkers.

The Berserkers could not be allowed to descend into chaos. Even though the Immortals were no longer around, the spread of the Dead Sea, the crumbling of the continents, the scattering of the islands that led to them to resemble the stars in a galaxy resulted in Berserkers severely lacking a power that could gather them together.

The islands were all independent forces. There was not a single spiritual symbol among them, and without it, they did not have hope for the future. It was especially so since the Fourth God of Berserkers had went missing. They had practically turned into a plate of scattered sand.

If this lasted for a long time, the Berserkers… would no longer be Berserkers. They would lose their souls and wills. They would only end up dying one after another due to the passage of time and the slaughter of the sea creatures and the ferocious creatures beyond the sky until all of them died, causing the Berserkers to become the dust of history.

Fang Cang Lan did not want to see this sort of Berserkers. Hence, after a period of silence, she chose to agree to their request and become a living statue.

She could no longer have any sort of partner in her life. She could not even show her face to the others. She had to maintain an air of mystery and nobility. All her words and actions had to fulfill the status of the Berserker Consort. Perhaps many people would be able to accept this like Fang Cang Lan if they only had to do it for a year or two, or even eight to ten years… but if this lasted for hundreds or thousands of years, that loneliness was something that a normal person would not be able to withstand.

She stood above all others, and she was a puppet, but at the same time, not. She could not readily venture outside, for she had willingly become a living status to serve as the spiritual symbol for the Berserkers so that she could remind the Berserkers who were born later that… the Gods of Berserkers were not legends. They truly existed. Even if the new generations could not see the Gods of Berserkers, they could still see the Berserker Consort.

With the Berserker Consort around, the missing Fourth God of Berserkers would definitely return some day. He would return to the land of Berserkers and lead them… to power!

This was their hope, a beautiful thought if anything. It was also a firm belief among all the Berserkers.

It was because of Fang Cang Lan’s status and existence that while the islands in the land of Berserkers had ceaseless conflicts and even some rather large-scale wars over the years, they still prided themselves on being Berserkers and would come to worship the palace once in a while.

In their hearts, the Fated Kin was the tribe left behind by the God of Berserkers, and the Berserker Consort… was the most noble existence in their land. With just one word from Fang Cang Lan, they could give up their everything.

It did not matter whether it was the sea creatures or the ferocious beasts from the world beyond. Every single time they invaded during the course of the thousand something years, under Fang Cang Lan’s call to arms, all the Berserkers would gather to fight with the Fated Kin!

Every single time they persevered, it would cause her power to gather everyone to grow stronger, making her status as a spiritual symbol to become part of the soul of the Berserkers.

Besides the God of Berserkers’ influence in the past and the elderly making their plans and arrangements, Fang Cang Lan’s cordial nature was also a very important point for her to be able to do all of this.

Under her persistence, all the islands on the Dead Sea within the Berserkers’ world had a Berserker envoy. Each one of them was like a sage. Their statuses were not like those of the Elders, but their mission was the same. They were to teach the younger generation and help them through their Berserkers’ Initiation so that each young Berserker was filled with the knowledge about the Gods of Berserkers being supreme existences.

Despite the fact that after the land of Berserkers had shattered and turned into the islands that showed signs of splitting during the one thousand something years the God of Berserkers was absent, the Berserkers had managed to remain as a complete unit and even gained a mindset that surpassed what they possessed before. Their racial soul had grown much stronger… which was largely due to Fang Cang Lan!

But when she stood in the palace at the Fated Kin’s holy land and stared at the sky beyond the window, she knew… that it was impossible for Su Ming to return.

Perhaps he would, but it would be an unknown number of years later.

She sighed softly, then quietly turned around to sit beside a Chinese zither placed on the table. She closed her eyes and played a song. The notes of the Chinese zither echoed in the air, bringing with them a hint of loneliness and melancholy.

Su Ming stood in the sky and stared at the endless Dead Sea below him. The seawater was as black as ink. There were plenty of islands on the sea, and there were quite a large number of Berserkers on each island. Su Ming walked through the sky quietly. He stared at the islands and tried to search for the people he was familiar with on the islands.

But in the end… he did not find them. There might be some Berserkers from his era who survived up till then, but they were not the ones he was familiar with. It was as if the familiarity in his memories had turned into ash and scattered into the wind during the course of time. His memories had turned into regrets that he could not locate even if he wanted to.

“The place and people are all different now…” Su Ming murmured.

He walked forward quietly, and by his side, the bald crane had become quiet as well. It stared at the sea in a daze. Even it could not find the Shamans, the tribes, or other people who had worshiped it or had gone after its life in the past.

‘I remember that Southern Swamp Island [1]…’

Su Ming lifted his head in silence and stared into the distance. Just as he was about to take a step forward, his expression suddenly changed, and he turned his head to look at a spot far away from him.

His gaze could see through the distance, and he could clearly see three people on the surface of the sea far away from him. There were two in front and one behind. It was a chase.

The two people in front were a man and a woman while the person behind was an old man. He was chasing after the pair.

Su Ming swept his gaze past the trio, and a strange look gradually appeared on his face. Those three people existed in his memories…

Waves tumbled on the sea. The man from the fleeing duo appeared to be in his middle ages. He had extraordinary power and was already in the later stage of Bone Sacrifice Realm, but his age was clearly not as his appearance suggested. He had to be much older, but he seemed to have practiced some sort of cultivation method to allow himself to appear only as a middle-aged man.

The woman by his side was clearly slightly older than him, but she had a beautiful face and had a strange charm. If she appeared slightly younger, she would definitely be an incredibly beautiful person. Her cultivation base lacked smoothness, but the aura she exuded was also that of those in Bone Sacrifice Realm, just that she was only in the initial stage of that Realm.

The two were fleeing together at that moment, and there seemed to be a connection between them. The man was taking care of the woman, or else he would have managed to flee much faster.

The person chasing after them was an old man. He had an imposing look, and when he exuded his cultivation base, it showed that he was in the initial stage of Berserker Soul Realm. The person’s eyes were flashing brightly with killing intent, which was a telling sign that he had killed for many years.

“I’d like to see where you can flee today, youngsters! How dare you steal the Origin Flower from my island?! You’re just asking for death!”

The old man let out a cold harrumph. There was killing intent in his words as he charged forward.

The middle-aged man’s face was pale. He formed a seal with his hands and coughed up a mouthful of blood to execute a Secret Art. Then, he grabbed the woman, and his speed became faster.

“Senior, why must you persecute us so relentlessly? We just asked for one single Origin Flower. It’s not something valuable to you, but to us, this is a medicine that can save our child.” The woman’s face was bloodless as she spoke in a tone that sounded nearly like pleading.

“What a joke. Even if it’s not something valuable to me, I will not give it out so readily to others, especially since the both of you have such a bad reputation. There is no way I will grant the Origin Flower to people with illicit sexual relations. If I did, I would surely end up as a joke among my peers.

“Hmph, if I was still the left preceptor of Freezing Sky Clan [2], then forget about the matter of the both of you stealing the Origin Flower, even if you had not, if I saw you, I would have killed you! You corrupted morals, you shameless people!”

The old man’s words were cold. His sentences were like blades that cut into the woman and man’s hearts, causing their expressions to turn even paler, but they could not retort.

“We can tell him about your aunt…”

The woman laughed brokenly, then looked at the man who held her hand. Just as she was about to say something, resolve appeared in the man’s eyes. He threw the woman into the distance, using all the force he had, which pushed her thousands of feet away.

“Don’t speak anymore! Yan Luan, I’ll be the rearguard! Hurry up and save Lin Er!” the man cried out loudly and turned around to fix his gaze on the old man swiftly coming down at him. Madness appeared in his eyes; he was about to drag the old man to his grave with him.

“Fang Mu!”

Tears fell from the woman’s eyes. She could not understand why there seemed to be an unchanging barrier between Fang Mu and his aunt. It was a ravine so wide that he’d rather die than acknowledge her as his family. Very few people knew that he was the nephew of the Berserker Consort… and very few people knew the Berserker Consort’s original name as well as her tribe. The woman could only grit her teeth and charge into the distance.

She was Yan Luan, the tribe leader of the Lake of Colors Tribe in the past, and the man was the son of Tranquil East Tribe’s tribe leader, Fang Mu, the child in whom Si Ma Xin had planted the Berserker Seed!

A thousand something years had passed since then, and the child had grown up and become the current middle-aged man. He was tied up with… Yan Luan, and based on the words they shared previously, it was also clear that they had a child.

Perhaps if the Berserkers did not experience such a drastic change, the two of them might not have been together. However, the appearance of the change: the shattering of the mountains, the spread of the Dead Sea, the submersion of Han Mountain… had indirectly changed their destinies.

“Zhou Shan, why do you have to humiliate my wife and I? Yan Luan might have been a member of the older generation in the past, but we are not related to each other by blood, so there is nothing shameful about us!”

Red appeared in Fang Mu’s eyes. As he roared, his cultivation base erupted from his body with a bang and started showing signs of him intending to trigger self-destruction.

The old man was Zhou Shan, the person who was sent by Freezing Sky Clan to kill Han Mountain’s ancestor in Han Mountain City. Many years had passed since then, and this person had already reached Berserker Soul Realm.

Zhou Shan let out a cold harrumph. He did not stop for even a single moment in his charge towards Fang Mu. He lifted his right hand, and at the instant Fang Mu was about to self-destruct with madness shining bright in his eyes, he pushed his hand forward. A hint of derision was in the old man’s eyes.

When the two of them approached each other, tears fell from Yan Luan’s eyes. If it was not because she wanted to go back and save her child, she would have definitely died together with Fang Mu to drag Zhou Shan to his grave.

At that instant, a sigh could be heard. It echoed all around them, and it seemed to have instantly stopped all operations in the world, causing the three cultivators to come to an abrupt halt.

Translator’s Note:

1. Southern Swamp Island: The biggest of all of the islands when South Morning shattered. Fang Cang Lan, Zi Yan, Zi Che, and Ya Mu were there.

2. Left preceptor: Appeared in Chapter: Han Kong.