Pursuit of the Truth

‘If this is the other All Spirits Hall… then would there be another Tian Bai here as well?’

Su Ming stared at the terrified, shocked, and fleeing spirits and mummies in the sky. With a calm expression, he turned his head and looked into the distance.

A contemplative expression appeared on his face. Su Ming took a step forward before he instantly vanished. When he appeared, he was already standing in a place far away. There was a mountain where he stood.

Su Ming was familiar with it. It was precisely the mountain in which the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe had been located. However… when Su Ming swept his divine sense across the area, he did not detect even a single hint of familiarity.

‘Perhaps there is indeed another Tian Bai… but it’s rather unlikely that he is still here.’

Su Ming shook his head. Arid Triad and Harmonious Morus Alba might have two versions of the same lives, but even if they were the same lives, they lived different lives.

It was obvious from the other Su Ming, who was a Child of Morus Alba.

With a shake of his head, Su Ming turned into a long arc that left into the distant sky. When he appeared at the ruins of Great Berserker Tribe, which was the place where he had went through his first spirit ascension, Su Ming moved onto the towering Spirit Ascension Platform. He swung his arm and sat down cross-legged.

The wind was very strong, and it was especially so when on the towering Spirit Ascension Platform. He could even hear the wind moaning in his ears.

Su Ming’s long hair moved in the air. His robes fluttered with loud whooshing of the wind. A brilliant light shone in his eyes, and he lifted his head and stared at the sky with a hint of resolve and determination.

“Spirit ascension!”

As brilliant light shone in Su Ming’s eyes, his voice traveled through the entire world. At the moment he spoke, the power of the Berserkers immediately erupted with a bang from his body. It turned into ripples that spread in all directions.

Based on the path of spirit ascension he had experienced before, Su Ming activated the presence for the All Spirits Hall to descend on his own. The world rumbled, and the sky distorted as if it was about to be torn apart. A huge hall descended with a bang. It was golden and radiating with a piercing light that caused the entire world to tremble.

A broken hall filled with the living spirits who failed in their spirit ascension could also be seen nearby; it was the Spirit Descension Hall! However, compared to the huge golden hall, the difference in size between the two halls was incredibly huge. They were like a child and a huge man standing side by side.

When the golden hall shone with a golden light that reached one hundred thousand feet to envelop the world, Su Ming saw a familiar sign standing tall in front of the hall. Two words were carved on it.

All Spirits!

Su Ming’s pupils shrank slightly. A hint of a smile appeared at the corners of his lips. Only one Spirit Descension Hall appeared, which meant that Su Ming’s assumption was correct. This All Spirits Hall was indeed not the All Spirits Hall he had went to in the past, but the one that existed in Harmonious Morus Alba Expanse Cosmos.

The number of times a person had his spirit ascend would cause a different number of Spirit Descension Halls to appear. The All Spirits Hall was not counted. Right then, there was only one Spirit Descension Hall, which meant… that Su Ming could have his spirit go through the first ascension one more time!

At that moment, as the light from the hall shone at a brilliant degree, thousands of Ancestral Spirits instantly appeared!

There were ten rows of them. There were men and women, and all of them were dressed in ancient, simple robes as they levitated beyond the golden hall.

The person right at the top shone with a golden light that spread one hundred thousand feet. He was filled with a suffocating, mighty pressure. Beneath him were three people, and beneath them were eight, then seventeen, then thirty-nine, then eighty-six, and at the end there were eight hundred and eighty one people.

Two thousand six hundred and three positions of Ancestral Spirits!

Su Ming sat on the Spirit Ascension Platform with brightly sparkling eyes as his gaze moved towards the 781st Ancestral Spirit at the lowest row.

Su Ming had already inherited this Ancestral Spirit when he was in Arid Triad’s All Spirits Hall. But right then, he was going to inherit it again. Confidence appeared on his face, and he slowly stood up.

“Today… I will have my spirit ascend until I reach my limits in this place.”

As Su Ming mumbled to himself, he swiftly flew to the 781st position on the bottom row and instantly drew close to it.

Su Ming touched the Ancestral Spirit, and loud booms surged into the sky. Su Ming jolted. A brilliant light appeared in his eyes. His body shuddered slightly, but his expression remained the same and did not change.

His aura increased swiftly during that moment. The feeling of becoming powerful instantly rose in his body. As he fused with the Ancestral Spirit and absorbed it, an astonishing pressure erupted from him.

The feeling that he was becoming increasingly stronger without stop made Su Ming throw his head back and roar. As he did so, not only did the strength of his physical body increase exponentially, the strength of his soul, his state of being, and his cultivation base also rose until he completely surpassed his previous power and stepped into a new Realm.

Su Ming could not tell what Realm it was, but he could sense that as he grew stronger, the 781st Ancestral Spirit was rapidly disappearing before his eyes.

It was not an illusory disappearance. He was… truly disappearing. It felt like if Su Ming had the Ancestral Spirit fuse with him completely, then from that moment onwards, one of the Ancestral Spirits would be eternally gone from the All Spirits Hall.

From then onwards, no one else could merge with it. This was something that had never happened before since ancient times. Su Ming was completely inheriting and absorbing the legacy of the Ancestral Spirit.

Several hours passed. When the 781st Ancestral Spirit completely disappeared, a powerful presence that was difficult to put to words erupted from Su Ming’s body. It was so strong that it caused everything in the area around Su Ming to distort. If he wanted to destroy the world, he could instantly make it crumble.

Because of that strength, Su Ming felt that even if he had to fight against the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe, he could do so confidently. He had experienced a complete first spirit ascension, and it was equivalent to having his spirit ascend twice in an incomplete manner!

But if that was all, Su Ming could not fight against someone from Avacaniya Realm, much less fight against the old man from Heavenly Spirit Realm… However, Su Ming had the wills of three True Worlds with him. His will was so strong that it could support him in doing everything.

And what could… those in Avacaniya Realm even do to him?!

Spirit ascension was in itself a shortcut, a legacy that was similar to cheating. It turned the powerful warriors of the previous aeon into the cause, and those who received the inheritance were their effect. The legacy created a karmic path that created lives who were incredibly powerful!

This was a legacy. It was also another form of resistance and struggle against the destruction when the disaster descended from the cultivators of the previous aeon. They fought back against heaven, unwilling to admit defeat. Perhaps their method was not as effective as those of the cultivator who became Arid Triad… but this was also a form of resistance, a form of madness.

Since they could not avoid being destroyed, then it would better… that they turned themselves into a legacy so that their descendants, the people of the next aeon, could obtain the power required to struggle and fight back through a shortcut!

This was the reason why the All Spirits Hall was created!

Perhaps… All Spirits Hall seemed to have been created by the Ancestral Spirits of the previous aeon, who were cultivators who survived the disaster of the previous aeon, but Su Ming, who had learned of the secrets of Harmonious Morus Alba and Arid Triad, had his own thoughts about it.

It was likely that the Ancestral Spirits had used a special method to survive through the disaster, but there was also a possibility that they had completely fused with their self from Harmonious Morus Alba Expanse Cosmos.

This was a guess. Su Ming did not know the precise answer, since it was difficult for anyone to know the secrets hidden in the passage of time.

But Su Ming obtained a verification for his other guess, which was that the All Spirits Hall was not created by the cultivators of the Ancestral Spirits’ era. Instead… it was already created a long, long time ago, aeons before the era of the Ancestral Spirits.

The two thousand something Ancestral Spirits in All Spirits Hall were a gathering of all the most powerful warriors from countless aeons. They might have already died, but their power had been passed down through the aeons, accumulating for an endless amount of time so that they could give a chance for their descendants… to rush out of all of this.

This was a strong feeling Su Ming obtained in his head after he completely fused with the 781st Ancestral Spirit. A brilliant light shone in his eyes. With one move and without any hesitation, he chose… to have his spirit ascend a second time!!

563!

The 563rd position in the second to last row was Su Ming’s choice. He instantly touched the Ancestral Spirit there.

It was an old man with an ancient face. At the instant Su Ming’s body touched his, a shocking presence erupted from the position where the Ancestral Spirit that was the old man stood.

“Second spirit ascension.” Determination appeared on Su Ming’s face, and he sucked in a deep breath!

…..

While Su Ming was in the All Spirits Hall in Harmonious Morus Alba Expanse Cosmos to go through his second spirit ascension, the cultivators from Dark Dawn and Saint Defier gathered at the huge gap in True Morning Dao World.

They surrounded the area and formed a huge Rune to make the gap tear further. It grew bigger, and the cultivators could constantly descend from it.

This was Saint Defier and Dark Dawn’s core in Arid Triad. As long as they could defend this place, they could have a continuous stream of cultivators appear in Arid Triad.

Yet during that moment, no cultivators descended from Arid Triad’s gap, which was a rare sight to be seen. All the cultivators from Dark Dawn in the area knelt with zealous expressions. As for the cultivators from Saint Defier, they had dark looks on their faces but were not saying a single word.

Time trickled by. After about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, a loud, world-shaking bang suddenly traveled through all of True Morning Dao World. Once that sound appeared, a sea of white bones descended from the gap with loud bangs.

In the sea of white bones was a middle-aged man in black robes. With a cold and indifferent face, he walked out of the gap and descended in Arid Triad.

At the instant he came down, True Morning Dao World trembled. Even True Sacred Yin World, the Emperor of Abyss’ True World, and the Fourth True World shuddered at the instant this person appeared, as if they could not handle the faintly discernible, heinous mighty pressure spreading out from his body.

“Greetings, Sovereign of Dawn Yan Pei!”

The voices of all the cultivators from Dark Dawn instantly shot into space like thunder. They were like waves filled with great respect and fanaticism. His appearance was the same as the arrival of a sovereign to all the cultivators in Dark Dawn’s camp!