Pursuit of the Truth

If the time the song was sung was the total time of a world’s birth and subsequent destruction…

… Then when the song ended, it would mark the moment when the world disintegrated… How… would you decide the rhythm for such a song?

If the time the song was sung was the total time of a person’s birth and road into death…

… Then when the song ended, it would mark the moment when the person’s life ended… Who… would you choose to mention in your song? How would you sing it to yourself?

There was a ballad that rang throughout the existence of a universe, until it was destroyed. During that period of time, the ballad was time itself…

The composer of the ballad could add names into the song so that they would be with the ballad and exist eternally. They would… never rot away and die.

In the ancient past, there were nine lives and four races whose names were mentioned in the song, and they became glorious existences during the cycle of their aeon with the ballad.

At the moment, the ballad had reached its coda. It had not ended, but it was nearing that time. The current moment was also the time for Old Man Extermination to write a new piece.

Su Ming looked at the giant in the sky kneeling in front of him. He looked at his gigantic body, but for some unknown reason, he saw a great wave of aura of death around the giant’s body.

This was a living being that was so old he was nearing the end of his life. He was still alive, but at the same time, he was already a candle that had burned to its end. The flames of his life were about to be extinguished.

“Please write my name in your ballad… I am willing to offer you everything in my life…” The giant bowed his head while speaking in anguish.

At the moment he noticed that the person in front of him possessed Old Man Extermination’s presence, he gave up all thoughts of attacking Su Ming. The Seed of Life Extermination was something that could not be snatched or wrestled over. If someone wasn’t acknowledged by that seed, perhaps another could still snatch it.

But once the Seed of Life Extermination was reactivated and fused with the person it acknowledged… then while all people and all forces could destroy the person who was acknowledged, but they could not destroy the Seed of Life Extermination. They would not be able to fuse with it either.

The person who killed the acknowledged person would also lose the right to be written into the ballad eternally.

This knowledge was something that existed in the giant’s memories from the ancient past.

Su Ming fell silent. After a long time, he imitated the actions of the old man he’d seen in the dimension and said in a calm and leisurely manner, “What will you offer?”

When Su Ming said these words, there was an ancient air to his tone. The black fragment in his soul spread out waves of ancient presence. That presence existed in Su Ming’s soul. It had been slowly accumulating over time, and now, when it spread out faintly, he… seemed to have become the old man from the past.

The giant raised his head and cast his gaze on the ground. With a flash, the tens of thousands of Sand Earthlings on the ground let out shrill, pained screams. Their bodies instantly melted, and all of them turned into sand, forming sand dunes on the ground.

The illusory old man trembled. This change had occurred too quickly, not giving him a chance to react. In an instant, all his people had died. As he trembled, he wanted to retreat, but when the God of his people fixed his gaze on him, his body turned into sand, and he scattered into the wind.

His physical body, which was located far in the distance on the statue that was one hundred thousand feet, disintegrated as well. The statue, too, disappeared.

At that moment, there was no more life in the desert.

Grains of sand that looked like crystals flew up from the ground. Each grain of sand symbolized one life. They gathered together to turn into a purification vase that came to float in front of Su Ming.

“This is the source of life for the Sand Earthlings. It is my first offering. Please accept it.” The giant stared at Su Ming with brightly burning eyes.

Su Ming met his gaze. After a moment, he slowly lifted his right hand to seize the purification vase in front of him. At the instant he did so, a black vortex appeared on his palm.

The vortex was not formed by Su Ming’s will, but the black fragment in his soul had manifested it on his palm on its own. Once it devoured the purification vase, it even sent out a black thread.

That black thread instantly charged towards the giant. Once it fused with him, the giant shuddered. Excitement appeared in his eyes. He might have been certain that this person was the one who reactivated the Seed of Life Extermination, but there had still been a hint of uncertainty within him. Yet the moment he saw the black thread he obtained every single time he would get in the ancient past after he made an offering, the uncertainty in his heart disappeared. He became completely certain of the person’s identity.

“My life has reached its end, but I can attack thrice for you. This is my second offering… It is also all that I can do now.” The sand giant’s voice was filled with age. As his words reverberated in the air, he looked as if he was waiting for Su Ming’s reply.

“I can promise you that I will write your name into the ballad, but after you attack thrice, you must offer your Divine Essence… as the third offering,” Su Ming said calmly.

“If my spirit is preserved, then I will have eternal life. I will fulfill my promise,” the giant said in his ancient voice after remaining silent for a moment. His body gradually shrunk down, until he turned into an earth’s yellow sand bracelet. It floated over in front of Su Ming. There was an indistinct face on the bracelet, and that was naturally the Sand Spirit.

Su Ming looked at the bracelet. After some time, he picked it up. Once he placed it in his storage bag, he looked at the space around him. As of then, this place was filled with a dead silence.

After remaining silent for a moment, Su Ming rubbed the center of his brows. Everything had happened too fast and too suddenly just then. Many thoughts rushed past his mind at that moment, but he calmed his heart and started thinking about it with calmness.

After a long while, he instinctively touched the space below his neck. There was nothing there, but he seemed to be able to feel the black fragment. Everything about this stone was slowly revealed before him as he gained more experience.

“Seed of Life Extermination… Old Man Extermination’s reactivation… composing the ballad…” The experiences he had went through in the dimension in the fragment surfaced in Su Ming’s head. The ancient ship should be the Heavenly Ship that the Sand Spirit had mentioned.

After some time, Su Ming took in a deep breath. He no longer thought about the things that that left him confused and lost. He dissipated his Ecang projection and resolved the power he had obtained after fusing with his clones. Then, with the unconscious Xu Hui in his arms, he charged forward.

Several days later, Su Ming reached the end of the desert—now filled with a dead silence—based on the marks he had left in the past. When he stood at the edge, he turned his head around to cast a look at the desert behind him.

He could sense that the desert was moving towards death. There was no longer any life force there, nor any lifeforms.

He kept watching, and suddenly came to understand slightly why the black stone fragment was known as… the Seed of Life Extermination.

He remained silent for a moment before turning his head around and walking out of the desert. In front of him was a galaxy which was incredibly clean. When he cast his gaze on it, he could not see too much dust or rotten matter. It was like a calm swamp. He could vaguely see a planet at the forefront.

This was… a cultivation planet that had been split in two, as if it had been cut in half by someone. There were some parts of it that were still connected together, but when he looked at it, he found that it was a wasteland.

“When you walk out of the desert, what you see in the galaxy… will be my tribe.” Dijiu Mo Sha’s words before he left echoed in Su Ming’s ears. He stared at the broken cultivation planet and walked silently over.

He gradually got closer. In silence, Su Ming stared at the cultivation planet, and his footsteps became faster. He had no idea how much time had passed, but eventually, he closed in.

A decadent air of time filled the galaxy, causing people to be immersed in it, as if they would also become ancient beings from it.

Su Ming walked quietly. As he came even closer to the planet, he saw that there seemed to be endless debris on the left side, and among it was a broken statue.

When he saw the statue from the distance, a sharp stab of pain appeared in Su Ming’s heart. With one move, he instantly appeared on that cultivation planet and stood on a piece of black ground. In front of him was an endless stream of debris.

Death existed in the form of a bloody stench that persisted through the passage of time. The ancient air and silence were the only themes in this place.

The statue that stood erect among the debris had lost its right arm, but it was still… gigantic in size and covered head to toe in black fur. Sitting cross-legged on its head was an old man. He was dressed in a robe whose color could not be determined, and he had his head lifted to look into the distance.

He was also a statue.

Su Ming looked at the old man, then put down the still unconscious Xu Hui from his bosom to slowly walk over to the statue. He descended on the top and stood beside the old man, looking at the familiar face. Various memories appeared in his head.

The old man who loved changing his clothes when he ventured out of the ninth summit, the person who brought him to the land of the Shamans so that he could get used to the battlefield, the person who taught him the Art to clear his mind, and also the person who let him find a home in Freezing Sky Clan.

At that moment, he was right before Su Ming.

He stared at the statue with a dazed expression, then tears fell down from his eyes. He quietly knelt down and kowtowed nine times to the statue.

“Master…”

When his tears fell on the statue, they spread out and sank into the fine cracks, leaving behind only a wet mark.

“One thousand years ago, this was the place where I was born…” A deep voice echoed in the air. It came from an abandoned house below the statue, the thin man who was sitting there with a desolate air.

Needless to say, he was Dijiu Mo Sha.

He lowered his head and touched the house beneath him. His voice spread through the wreckage, and his words were filled with grief, nostalgia, and an anguish that could not be wiped away.

“The old man in front of you is our Patriarch. He did not like to speak, and most of the time, he would just look into the distance silently. The place he watched was the sacred mountain, the symbol of our tribe. Our patriarch called it… the ninth mountain.

“The patriarch said that he had five disciples in his life, and all of them made him proud. He believed that his disciples would someday be the center of attention of the entire universe so that their names would spread through the whole world and reach him even here.

“Which disciple of the patriarch are you?”

“My Master only had four disciples, and the mountain is not called the ninth mountain. It’s the ninth summit,” Su Ming muttered under his breath while staring at the statue.

Dijiu Mo Sha’s body trembled in a barely discernible manner. He raised his head slowly and directed his gaze at Su Ming.

“There are five stones in front of you. You can place your hands on them…”