Pursuit of the Truth

The Relocation seemed to take an incredibly long time. It was so long that a wave of fatigue would rise in people’s hearts, but at the same time, they would feel as if only a short time had passed. Their vision seemed to have just turned dark for a moment, and when it cleared, all the feelings were gone.

When the conflicted emotions rose in Su Ming’s heart, he could not describe them clearly. It felt as if a long time had passed, but also as if only a short moment had gone by. He could not help feeling that his mind was in a mess.

It was just like how a normal cultivator would feel after they woke up from meditation or when a mortal woke up from a deep sleep. To them, that moment had only lasted an instant, but in truth, an entire night or an even longer stretch of time had passed.

As the world before Su Ming became clearer, his eyes sparkled. What revealed itself before him was not the fourth Expanse Cosmos in Harmonious Morus Alba’s wings, which he had expected, but a semi-transparent layer of haziness!

It made it seem as if the world was covered in a veil, causing everything to become blurry. Su Ming also sensed that his body seemed to be unable to move. As his eyes sparkled, he observed the hazy, semi-transparent layer before him. He saw a huge tunnel beyond that haziness. It seemed to have no end, stretching far into the distance.

The walls seemed to be made of flesh and blood. They looked like a membrane, but possessed life. It… was a living tunnel!

And Su Ming was at the top of the tunnel. He was in a… thin cocoon… that was about thirty feet big!

It seemed to be frozen on the wall of a tunnel. It had not formed for long, which was why it was in a semi-transparent state. Those from the outside could clearly see Su Ming inside. But when he looked out from within, he could only see haziness.

When he swept his gaze across the area, Su Ming saw that Zi Ruo was fixed in another cocoon about ten feet tall on a wall of flesh not too far away from him. At that moment, her eyes were shut, and she was unconscious.

‘The Relocation Rune actually sent us here?’

A freezing glare shone in Su Ming’s eyes. The Relocation might have been strange and the place might terrify people, but to Su Ming, there was no place that he could not go or was forbidden to go.

The cocoon might have stuck Su Ming’s body to the tunnel of flesh, but when the chilling glare shone in his eyes, he moved slightly, and cracking sounds immediately rang out around him. Cracks immediately appeared on the cocoon around him. It shattered inch by inch.

Su Ming walked out of the shattered cocoon and stood in the tunnel. He cast a cold glance at the area around him and spread his divine sense outwards, his expression gradually changing.

Everything around him had appeared indistinct when he was in the cocoon. When he walked out of it and looked around him again, everything became incredibly clear, and he could tell… that there were thousands of huge cocoons in the tunnel that resembled a wall of flesh!

The smaller cocoons were one hundred something feet tall, and the bigger ones were thousands of feet tall. They had varying heights, but were all stuck to the wall of flesh like goosebumps and boils, which would send a chill crawling down anyone’s spines despite it not being cold.

There was a person in each cocoon, but when Su Ming looked at them, he found that they were all mummies. Their flesh, blood, and essence had been sucked dry by the wall of flesh. It seemed like the tunnel had been able to last for so long because it had continuously absorbed the essence from the formerly living people.

Su Ming could sense something strange from the corpses in the cocoons. He could not quite describe what this feeling was. It was as if there was a thin sheet of paper separating him from the answer, but before he tore it down, it would be impossible for him to know the world behind that paper.

A cold glare shone in his eyes. He lifted his right hand and seized the air in the direction of the cocoon holding Zi Ruo. Cracking sounds immediately echoed in the air. An invisible hand manifested to grab the cocoon, and Su Ming pulled it towards him, yanking it straight off the wall of flesh.

With a gentle squeeze, a crack rang out. The cocoon shattered to ash to reveal Zi Ruo, who had her eyes closed and was unconscious. Her face was pale, and she gave off a frail air. It was as if some of her essence had been absorbed during the period of time she was in the cocoon.

Su Ming lifted his right hand and tapped the center of Zi Ruo’s crow gently. She immediately shuddered. When she opened her eyes, a look of confusion flashed through them, but it only lasted for an instant before her gaze returned to normal. She looked around her swiftly, and her expression gradually grew a little sullen. Clearly, she had already noticed the reason as to why her body felt weak.

“This place is…” Zi Ruo hesitated for a moment. When she swept her gaze across the cocoons, a feeling that the place was incredibly strange rose in her heart.

“You’ll know if you observe.”

Su Ming cast a glance at the area around him. The strange feeling kept on growing stronger.

As he spoke, he charged down the tunnel. Zi Ruo quickly followed behind him. The next instant, Su Ming’s heart suddenly trembled!

For some unknown reason, he was reminded of Yin Death Vortex!

When he was there, he had charged down continuously as well, just like what he was doing right then. When he reached the end, he moved from Arid Triad to Harmonious Morus Alba!

And at that moment, the tunnel reminded Su Ming of that time. When the memory rose in his head, he could no longer stop it. The idea practically fused with the strange feeling he had in his heart earlier, causing Su Ming to come to a halt. He no longer descended. Instead, his expression changed while his mind analyzed all possible outcomes.

‘Yin Death Vortex might be a vortex, but in truth, it is also a tunnel. Its structure was a vortex, while the structure of this place is something akin to a tunnel of flesh and blood.

‘There are multiple worlds in Yin Death Vortex, and there are multiple cocoons looking like boils on the tunnel of flesh…’

While Su Ming pondered over his thoughts, he suddenly moved and appeared beside a huge cocoon. When he brought his right hand up, he pierced through the cocoon to touch the spot between the corpse’s eyebrows.

After some time, Su Ming pulled back his right hand. There was a faint wisp of green smoke drifting about his fingertips, but it soon disappeared without a trace. However, Su Ming could sense a familiar presence from the faint green smoke!

It was… Yin Death Aura!

It was a presence from Yin Death Vortex. It might have some other presences, but they came from the mummy, who was of an unknown race to Su Ming, but no matter what, each of the foreign races had one similarity—all of them had Yin Death Aura!

It was Yin Death Aura… the same aura that was present in the lives of all races in all the worlds within Yin Death Vortex! Regardless of whether it was the Berserkers or the other races, all of them had it.

As Su Ming watched his finger—now without any aura drifting around it—his pupils shrank slightly. With one move, he appeared beside another cocoon. With the same movement as before, he pierced the cocoon. His finger reached inside and pressed down on the center of the corpse’s brow, which had died many years ago and whose flesh, blood, and essence had been sucked dry.

When he pulled his finger back, a faint green aura circled his fingers. The faint Yin Death Aura was the same as before, and Su Ming’s expression grew darker. His narrowed eyes showed a hint of killing intent and a chilling glare.

Zi Ruo had witnessed all of it. She might not know what connection the faint green smoke had with Su Ming, but with her intellect, she could see the killing intent on his with just one glance. It was stronger than anything she had seen from him so far.

It looked like all those who were unlucky enough to step on the wrong foot when it came to dealing with the current Su Ming would have to suffer an unimaginable wrath which had the might of a storm.

“Yin Death Aura,” Su Ming mumbled.

He moved a total of seven times, and each time, he would appear beside a cocoon before he extended a finger into it and took it away moments later. He performed this test repeatedly, and every single time, he saw the faint green smoke that contained Yin Death Aura. This allowed Su Ming to understand why he had sensed that strange feeling when he just came over.

All the lives in the cocoons in the tunnel of flesh… were from Yin Death Vortex. It looked like… the tunnel of flesh could only absorb the lives of those from Yin Death Vortex!

When Su Ming cast a glance at the tunnel, he found that his initial guess that there were only thousands of cocoons in the tunnel was still a gross underestimation. There were not just thousands… There were clearly nearly one hundred thousand of them!

There was no end to them. The tunnel was covered in cocoon after cocoon, and within them were all cultivators from Yin Death Vortex. Their lives, their flesh and blood, and their everything had become a part that would allow the tunnel of flesh to grow!

A red glare appeared in Su Ming’s eyes. It symbolized murderous intent and anger. At that moment, if he still did not understand the use of the tunnel, he would have wasted living for so many years!

Someone had clearly created a Yin Death Tunnel by intentionally imitating Yin Death Vortex!

There was only one use for it—to imitate Yin Death Vortex’s ability of connecting Harmonious Morus Alba and Arid Triad. It could connect Dark Dawn and Saint Defier’s universe to that so-called… fourth universe!

Su Ming could not think of any other function besides this, and he was incredibly certain that the tunnel had been created for this purpose.

To create it, the architect needed the flesh, blood, and souls of the cultivators from Yin Death Vortex because of how unique their world was. They would also need quite a large number of them for it to be successful.

Besides Old Man Extermination, Su Ming could not think of another person who had so many resources on hand!

Once he understood it and looked at the corpses as well as the cocoons again, Su Ming shuddered. He did not want to find his Master Tian Xie Zi nor the First God of Berserkers Lie Shan Xiu among the corpses…