Pursuit of the Truth

The word vast means something immense and boundless, and the word expanse means all existing matter and space as a whole. When the two words are grouped together, they meant that there is no end to the universe.

The expanse encompasses the galaxy, the heavens, space itself, and hence… it was the Vast Expanse beyond the gap.

Su Ming had no idea just how big it was. He believed that even the black-robed young man on the Feng Shui compass did not know just how far the Vase Expanse extended.

It was different from the galaxy. The instant Su Ming stepped out of Harmonious Morus Alba’s universe, he felt a weight suddenly press down on him. It was as if a mountain had landed on his shoulders. That mountain was heavy, making it hard for him to breathe. He felt a slight discomfort.

In fact, he felt as if there were invisible shackles on his limbs, which made his movements slightly jerky when he lifted his feet.

There was also a thin fog around him. Su Ming sensed a certain degree of danger from it. It seemed like the fog could devour life and destroy all signs of it.

In silence, Su Ming lifted his right hand and touched the thin fog. His hand began to rot. In fact, gray also appeared at his fingertips, as if he was about to turn to ash. But soon, as Su Ming circulated his cultivation base, his finger reached a state of balance with the world around him.

‘If this is what happened even at my level of cultivation, then people in the middle stage of Avanicaya Realm can stay here for dozens of years while those in the initial stage of Avacaniya Realm… would die in half a year. As for those below Avacaniya Realm… once they stepped into the Vast Expanse, they would instantly be destroyed.

‘And…’

Su Ming frowned. He did not sense any signs of will or power that could allow him to restore his cultivation base in the Vast Expanse, which would mean that… he could not restore his cultivation base in the Vast Expanse. The amount he used up would be the amount he was not getting back.

Most cultivator could not bear it. But to Su Ming, this was not something unfamiliar. After all, be it when he was in the Barren Lands of Divine Essence or the world in All Spirits Hall, he had experienced something similar there.

Su Ming knew well how to use his power in places where he only had a limited supply of his cultivation base. He could do it to an ingenious level… but besides that, while Su Ming did not spread his will through the Vast Expanse, he could still sense it constantly fading.

Based on the rate it flowed away from him, in about a hundred years, his will would completely disappear, as if devoured by the Vast Expanse.

Su Ming let out a soft sigh. Most of his thoughts of avoiding the disaster in the Vast Expanse disappeared. It was not a place where cultivators could exist.

Besides, the thin fog around him was the most common thing. There were also quite a number of existences that even he would need to be wary of, such as vortices and the strange lives that lived in the Vast Expanse.

Perhaps others would not quite understand it, but Su Ming had survived an encounter with the black-robed man in the past. He had seen the mysteries and the terrifying aspects of the Vast Expanse.

When he experienced them with his body, that feeling became even deeper in his heart.

Su Ming remained in pensive silence for a moment before a glint appeared in his eyes that shone with resolution. With a single move, he turned into a long arc and charged into the distance. He was not a person who would easily give up on his choices. He had three paths to take under the threat of the destructive disaster, and he would not give up on any one of them due to a rash assessment.

If the Vast Expanse was inhabitable and people could live in it, it would mean that Su Ming had found a way for his friends and family to live through the disaster.

But he was not certain as to whether Cang Lan and the others could leave Harmonious Morus Alba Expanse Cosmos. After all, their levels of cultivation were not high. Over the years, their experiences and the serendipities they received were different, so their levels of cultivation had grown far apart.

Su Ming had no way of dealing with this. Forcefully increasing their levels of cultivation was only a temporary solution, and he could not make it so that everyone arrived in Avacaniya Realm.

Yet no matter what, the Vast Expanse… was one of the three paths. If he found proof that this plan was executable, then he could think of ways to solve other problems.

With a resolute gaze, Su Ming charged forward and disappeared into the seemingly thin fog that was actually very thick.

As Su Ming left into the distance, the thin fog formed gray marks on his body. They expanded until they practically covered every single part of his body, but once he made his cultivation base reach an equilibrium with the fog, he was perfectly fine even though he looked as if he had died.

If the boy was in his place right then, he would not dare to leave too far into the distance even though he had stepped into the Vast Expanse several times. Instead, he would only move around the area near the gap. Even so, every single time he headed out, he made lots of preparations, and the fog still damaged him greatly. Practically every one hundred breaths, he would need to swallow medicinal cores and forcefully circulate his cultivation base to regulate his breathing.

He was not like Su Ming, who did not stop at all while he charged forward.

Su Ming continued until a glint shone in his eyes. He brought his right hand up and seized the fog to his right. With it, the fog in that region immediately shrank, and a face with three eyes showed up. That face was an illusion which shone with a dark light. It had a ferocious expression, but it gave off a feeling that it possessed no intelligence.

It let out a piercing roar and charged towards Su Ming. He did not hesitate and grabbed it swiftly. With a bang, the face was torn to pieces, but it did not dissipate. Instead, it turned into a dozen portions that charged back at him.

Su Ming frowned. He might not have used his full strength in the attack just then, but he could have killed a cultivator in the initial stage of Avacaniya Realm with it. Yet in the Vast Expanse, he could not even kill the strange life form.

He snorted coldly, then in the face of the dozen faces charging towards him, he swung his arm. This time, he used his will, and as his sleeve fluttered in space, booming sounds rang out in the Vast Expanse. The dozen faces let out shrill screams of pain and disappeared into the wind.

But Su Ming’s expression grew darker. Even though he had noticed that his will was dissipating, he did not expect that the instant he used it, the speed at which it dissipated would become one hundred times faster.

Based on that, in one year… his great will would wither away.

And Su Ming had to use the peak of the power of those in the initial stage of Avacaniya Realm to kill the strange life form. It was also clear that its kind was not rare in the fog…

Su Ming was silent for a moment before he sighed in his heart. There was no longer any need for him to check around. The Vast Expanse… was completely unsuitable for cultivators, because even he could only stay in it for some time. If he was forced to stay for a longer period of time, he would die.

In silence, Su Ming turned around to go back to the butterfly. From the distance, he could only see a wing that was slanted diagonally upwards. It exuded a presence that was completely different from the Vast Expanse.

The wing was so big that Su Ming could not see the end of it.

Looking at something from a different angle would cause the size of something to be different as well. When Su Ming had seen the butterfly through the Art of Time, it hadn’t seemed too big. When he saw Harmonious Morus Alba’s ancient memories under its guidance, it was the same. Back then, the butterflies looked to be only the size of a baby’s palm.

Yet what he saw right then was so huge that it could not be described with words.

Su Ming stood frozen in a daze and stared at the huge butterfly before him. He could not see how it looked like, just its fourth wing. In fact, he could not even fully see the fourth wing.

It was difficult for him to put what he felt into words. It was an incredibly complicated feeling, and there was a strange sentimentality in him. He could see the aura of death on the butterfly, and it was so thick that he would probably feel it even if he was very far away.

He wondered if that thick aura of death had attracted the strange life forms in the Vast Expanse around him, causing a distorted dark shadow that looked like a soul to appear once the fog gathered together.

A determined look suddenly appeared in Su Ming’s eyes. He still did not want to give up on the path of trying to survive in the Vast Expanse. Even if his efforts would end in vain and he would even have to pay a certain price for his perseverance, he still… wanted to see just how big the Vast Expanse was, how many strange life forms it had… and see Harmonious Morus Alba in its entirety from another angle!

His determination at that moment was similar to when he had willingly swallowed a large amount of medicinal herbs so that he could rush out of the house sealed by his elder to help Dark Mountain Tribe, when he persisted to use the grass dolls to record the faces he did not want to forget even though his emotions had been sealed in the Barren Lands of Divine Essence, and when he had picked himself up after falling into depression once he learned that Su Xuan Yi was not his family and wanted him dead.

That was all his determination. If he was not determined, it would have been impossible for him to survive for that long. If he was not determined, Su Ming… would no longer be Su Ming. He would not have reached his level of cultivation and would have been an average person in a sea of people in the universe.

With determination, Su Ming chose to do something that he should perhaps not do in the Vase Expanse… He spread out his will completely.

It was just like what he had declared in his mind: He wanted to take a look at the butterfly!

It was similar to what the Elder of the Berserkers had said—that he could see a world no one else could see when he predicted the Berserker Day!

Su Ming longed to see a world no one else could see when he lifted his head to look at the galaxy!

At that instant, when he spread his will outwards, countless shrill roars suddenly rang out in the Vast Expanse. At the same time, the fog tumbled swiftly, as if Su Ming’s will was a lamp in the dark. When it shone brilliantly, it was deemed as something that should not exist in it!

Su Ming… saw it!

He saw thousands of strange life forms in the Vase Expanse and… that the universe truly had no end, extending beyond the area his will could cover. Su Ming also saw… Harmonious Morus Alba’s complete body!

It was a beautiful butterfly with all four of its wings standing erect. At that moment… they were only a sliver away from overlapping. At first glance, it was even difficult to see the crack between them!