Pursuit of the Truth

That scene caused the world to tremble. The Sovereign of Dawn sucked in a sharp breath, and when he looked at Su Ming, his expression was filled with great wariness and shock. He originally thought that Su Ming and the blood-red figure were equal in terms of strength, but in the end, the blood-red figure had been suppressed by Su Ming.

In Yan Pei’s eyes, suppression was much harder when comparing it to destruction!

“He… He is indeed the strongest… in this aeon. There can be no one else but him,” the Sovereign of Dawn mumbled.

Su Xuan Yi watched all of this with a pale face. His eyes sparkled, but his face became incredibly dark. The blood-red figure was his greatest secret, but right then, even if he had summoned that person, he proved to not be Su Ming’s opponent, and this caused the dark emotions in Su Xuan Yi’s heart to turn into broken laughter.

He did not care about the deaths of the one million cultivators. Even if all the people in the Emperor of Abyss’ True World died, Su Xuan Yi would not feel even a single bit of compassion towards them.

He only felt anguish. The Su Ming before him… had become that strong at some unknown point of time…

When the wills of Su Ming’s four Great True Worlds fused together, they turned into a power of a suppressive seal that was just slightly less powerful than that of Arid Triad. Because of that, there was no way the red figure would be able to fight against it. With a crazed roar and a curse as well as a heinous murderous aura and an unwillingness to admit defeat, he was sent back to the crack in the ground amid loud bangs.

Because of the suppression, he returned to the spot where he slept.

It was just as Su Ming had said—the time for him to wake up had not yet arrived. It did not matter what method he used to make himself wake up ahead of schedule… he could still not avoid the destiny of spending his time asleep.

Su Ming could not kill him. This was something he had sensed earlier. Regardless of whether it was the divine abilities he used or his wills, when they descended on the red figure, it felt like there was a membrane separating them, causing his power to be diminished in an unseen manner. It was as if the membrane was time itself, the difference of the laws between aeons, which was why… as the strongest person in this aeon, he could seal the red figure, but he could not kill him.

‘Unless…’

Su Ming stared at the sea, and a chilling glare appeared in his eyes, but soon, that freezing look disappeared. He could sense that different passages of time existed between him and the powerful warrior from the previous aeon. It was as if they were in two different worlds. Only when the Expanse Cosmos where he was located was about to be destroyed by the disaster and the new aeon was born would the membrane between Su Ming and the red figure no longer exist. At that time, it would be incredibly easy for him to kill that person.

But Su Ming would rather not have that result.

In silence, he stared at the depths of the sea. He could only seal the red figure’s body. The crack on the ground was still around, and the blood from one million cultivators still turned the entire sky crimson.

Su Ming sighed softly. Even if the cultivators had been the Emperor of Abyss’ True World and had practically no connection to him, since he had occupied the Emperor of Abyss’ True World and become the will of the True World, the people in this True World were no longer unrelated to him. They were people of his True World.

With a shake of his head, Su Ming raised his right hand and swung his arm forward.

“Time…” he said faintly.

In Su Ming’s hands, one of the strongest inborn abilities of the Abyss Builders—the Art of Time Reversal—was second only to Arid Triad’s great will. He activated it, and when he did so, the Art in his hands was clearly much stronger than Su Xuan Yi’s.

When he swung his arm, countless threads appeared over the entire cultivation planet. Those threads were like ripples. They flowed slowly and looked as if they were the threads of life of all living beings. At that moment, most of them had shattered. They were connected together to form a rotating vortex, but at that moment, the vortex shuddered and started rotating backwards.

When it did so, the threads gradually connected together. Slowly, the blood that had been scattered away in the sky charged towards the ancient tree. On the tree crown, the crushed bodies of the one million cultivators started being assembled as time reversed.

When the one million cultivators’ bodies became complete, a large amount of blood charged towards them from the sky and returned to their bodies. The cultivators’ unfocused eyes instantly lit up with the shine of life. Their minds and bodies shuddered, and they looked like they had woken up from a nightmare.

The Art of Time could reverse life and death, and also create life…

When this Art was executed by Su Ming, the young man staring at the ancient tree lifted his head and cast a glance at the area above him calmly. It was as if his gaze was everywhere and he could see everything he wished to see.

“He resembles my past self somewhat…” the young man said softly.

When he averted his gaze, the scenes before their deaths appeared in the minds of the one million cultivators on the tree crown. Immediately after, the impact of the scenes turned into shock and surprise on their faces, and they stared at Su Ming with dumbfounded looks…

Su Ming’s expression was calm. He lowered his head and looked at the crack stretching from the sea below him to the land in the distance, and he lifted his right hand to push at it.

Su Ming activated the Art of Time again, and as the power of time filled and enveloped the planet, the crack closed up at an extremely fast speed. The earth became one. The mountains that had crumbled because of the appearance of the crack and everything else that had shattered returned to their original states, as if the crack had never appeared.

All the people could tell the difference in strength between Su Ming and Su Xuan Yi’s divine abilities to manipulate time based on what Su Xuan Yi had cast previously, because the difference was too distinct.

Even when the earth was healed and there was no longer any crack on the ground, Su Ming’s Art of Time did not end. Instead, it continued moving in reverse, and eventually, it affected Su Xuan Yi, causing time to return to the moment Su Xuan Yi had coughed up blood and moved back before he summoned the blood-red figure.

When time returned to that moment, Su Ming turned around swiftly. The purple light from the End of Wills Sword in his hand surged into the sky. It let out a piercing light while it was in Su Ming’s hand, and it looked like the two of them had fused. When Su Ming took a step forward, he looked like a purple long arc slicing through the sky.

Su Xuan Yi moved back with a pale face. There was anguish on his face, but not any unwillingness to admit defeat. He was left with only anguish and regret.

He watched Su Ming coming towards and death falling on his head. He sighed softly, and his expression gradually became calm.

He remembered his wife in the fifth kiln, Su Zhan, and the baby whose soul and body he had gathered together in the shattered empty space in the Fifth True World.

It felt like everything from that time was a dream. When he looked back on it right then, for some unknown reason, mixed feelings appeared in Su Xuan Yi’s heart. Perhaps they had always been in him, but due to his mad desire to make the Abyss Builders rise to power, he ignored and forced them down. He thought that he did not have those complicated feelings, but only at that moment did he realize… that they had always been in him.

“My wife is in deep sleep. My son holds a grudge against me in silence. My best friend died in battle… and his son became a Saint…” Su Xuan Yi mumbled. All his thoughts had fused into a sigh that echoed in his heart.

‘Was I wrong?’

It was not the first time Su Xuan Yi said those words, but it was the only time that he truly asked himself this question.

‘I’m not wrong!’

The calm expression on Su Xuan Yi’s face was replaced by one of determination. The complicated feelings and the confusion disappeared as well.

‘I wasn’t wrong. I, Su Xuan Yi, have never been wrong. I didn’t walk down this path for myself, but for Abyss Builders to rise to power! It was for the Fifth True World to appear once more!

‘It’s… impossible for me to have been wrong! Even if I’m truly wrong, it’s because there are no righteous men when walking down the path to do great things. I sacrificed my wife, sacrificed my best friend, and used Su Ming. All of that… were your destinies… because I am not wrong!

‘Even if I die because of this disaster, I, Su Xuan Yi, have never been wrong!’

Su Xuan Yi’s thoughts raced in his mind until resolve appeared on his face. The entire process might have seemed to have lasted for a long period of time, but in truth, it was only for an instant. When Su Ming’s sword approached Su Xuan Yi, he recovered from his temporary confusion.

He stared at the purple light of Su Ming’s sword, and it seemed to have become everything in Su Xuan Yi’s eyes, but in the end… it could not replace everything in his vision, because ambition burned in his eyes, along with the untamable fire and his pride of a fierce and ambitious person!

Even if he was going to die, he would die standing. He had the confidence to never believe he was wrong. It was the most brilliant light that shone in his life after he had reached his level of cultivation.

While looking at Su Xuan Yi, Su Ming suddenly made his sword stop when it was about to close in on its target… because at the tip of his sword, the third prince… or rather, Lei Chen suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He blocked Su Ming’s sword and stood in front of Su Xuan Yi to protect him.

Lei Chen was silent, and Su Ming was silent as well. The two of them stared at each other with a sword between them as if an aeon separated them. It seemed like everything from their childhood had turned into that one sword separating them.

“Thank you,” Su Ming said softly after a long while.

Lei Chen looked at Su Ming and sighed softly before he spoke. “She is your woman. I knew you would come.”

“Thank you,” Su Ming said again.

“He is also my elder. You don’t need to thank me.”

In silence, he shook his head. Others would not understand Su Ming’s two different ‘thank you’s, but Lei Chen could. His first thanks expressed his gratitude to Lei Chen for letting their elder take Yu Xuan away.

His second thanks was for Lei Chen fusing a wisp of his divine sense in the threads of time that bound their elder. He would not let their elder run into any danger, even if the cause of that danger was the Sovereign of Dawn.

Others would not have been able to see it, but the moment Su Ming saw his elder, he sensed Lei Chen’s divine sense on his body.

Su Ming was silent for a moment. He stared at Lei Chen, and a complicated look appeared on his face. He then spoke again. “Thank you.”

This time, Lei Chen did not answer him. Instead, he fell silent. He knew that Su Ming was thanking him for not telling other people that he had met him in Harmonious Morus Alba Expanse Cosmos.

The two people mentioned by the red figure previously referred to Su Ming… and Lei Chen. He had also fused with his other self from the other Expanse Cosmos and possessed the right to move through two Expanse Cosmoses while being indestructible even in the face of disaster.