Pursuit of the Truth

It was dusk in Ancient Zang. Far away from the country’s center was Seven Moons Sect. Right then, it was shrouded by snow.

Snowflakes drifted down from the sky and covered the land. The white curtain connected the land to the sky, hiding most of Seven Moons Sect’s splendor.

The exact same amount of time Su Ming had spent keeping Hao Hao company had also passed in Ancient Zang. Two thousand seven hundred years had also gone by in the land before him.

To any country, the period of the two thousand seven hundred years could not be considered as short. Even in the world of cultivators, many people would have come and gone during the two thousand seven hundred years.

Seven Moons Sect, that powerful sect among the seven sects and twelve clans nearly three thousand years ago in Ancient Zang had entered decline. From a distance, it had a depressed air about it. Snow might not have fallen in the Sky Beyond the Sky, but the dying air spreading out from it caused a certain figure who was staring at Seven Moons Sect while standing at the mountain in the distance to sense something ancient and weary.

That figure belonged to a young man who was dressed in a simple long black robe and had a head full of purple hair. He appeared to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old, but there was an ancient air that could not be described about him. He seemed to have lived for far too long.

‘Five thousand something years of practicing Dao… and I walked through worlds after worlds. I met various people, and the corpses of those who died by my hands are too numerous to count… Now, I have become a Great Dao Paragon.’

While staring at Seven Moons Sect in the distance, the young man let out a long sigh.

He was Su Ming, who had returned from the formerly glorious world.

He stared at Seven Moons Sect, and after being quiet for a moment, he lifted his foot and walked towards Seven Moons Sect’s outer sect. He saw the disciples in there, but they were no longer as numerous as he remembered. There were only hundreds of them left.

Su Ming was mostly unfamiliar with them. In fact, some of the attendants of the outer sect were not part of those he remembered either. Many things had changed.

Then, Su Ming walked into the first layer of Sky Beyond the Sky, the second layer, the third layer… and when he arrived at the fifth layer of Sky Beyond the Sky, he did not see Lan Lan, but her memorial.

It was placed in the palace of the mountain that belonged to the third line in the fifth layer of Sky Beyond the Sky. It was a somber memorial worshiped by the disciples in that line, and it was placed in the memorial hall at the back of the palace.

There was a middle-aged woman standing outside the memorial hall. She was dressed in a Daoist robe, and in her hands she held a broom. While dusk approached as snow fell from the sky, she sat under the eaves of the memorial hall and stared into the distance quietly.

Su Ming remembered her somewhat. She was Lan Lan’s head disciple in the third line. However, after two thousand something years had passed, the once young and pretty girl had already become a middle-aged woman.

Su Ming walked into the courtyard outside the memorial hall. He stepped on the snow and left behind his footprints until he arrived next to the middle-aged woman.

As if she had only just noticed that there was someone next to her, the middle-aged woman lifted her head swiftly, and when she looked at Su Ming, she was taken aback.

“Which line do you belong to? Do you have any business here?”

Su Ming’s face was incredibly unfamiliar to the woman, but his presence prevented her from mustering any sort of hostility. In fact, for some unknown reason, she felt a hint of cordiality with him, and hence, instinctively, she said those words.

Su Ming’s gaze landed on the door to the memorial hall, and a hint of melancholy appeared on his face. “I came to see Sect Elder Lan Lan,” he said softly.

When his words reached the middle-aged woman’s ears, she fell silent. She might have felt that Su Ming was unfamiliar, but at that moment, as if her heart had been affected, her expression did not change. Instead, she stared at Su Ming in a dazed manner, as if all his words and actions had fused with the world and everything he did was part of nature’s law.

It was as if his arrival was also predestined.

“You…” The middle-aged woman hesitated for a moment. “Master passed away one thousand nine hundred years ago…” she then said softly.

Su Ming fell silent. After a long while, he lifted his feet and walked towards the memorial hall. Once he stepped inside, the door to the memorial hall slowly fell shut.

There were dozens of memorial plates on the altar. They all belonged to the people from the third line who had the right to be placed there. Once they died, the sect carved their names on memorial plates on the altar so that their descendants would not forget them.

While standing there, Su Ming let his gaze land on the last memorial plate on the altar. Carved clearly on that plate were four words: Sect Elder Lan Lan.

Su Ming stared at the four words in silence, then slowly closed his eyes. In the darkness that descended and the silence of the memorial hall, Su Ming felt like he had returned to the moment many years ago when he had first met Lan Lan.

She… gave Su Ming a feeling that she was Fang Cang Lan, and he later came to understand that she was that world’s Fang Cang Lan. Su Ming had always avoided having much contact with her because he was afraid that he would lose his way in the end.

Various memories rose in his mind at that moment. When the time it takes for an incense stick to burn passed, Su Ming opened his eyes, and once he turned around, he walked out of the memorial hall.

“Why did she die?” he asked faintly.

The middle-aged woman was silent for a moment before she saying softly, “One Dao Sect…”

Su Ming nodded. He did not say anything more, but simply walked out of the palace on the mountain to return to his house in the fifth layer of Seven Moons Sect’s Sky Beyond the Sky. That place had not changed much from what he remembered, but there was now a layer of dust covering everything.

Su Ming stood on the cliff and stared at his former house. After a long while, he turned his head around and saw Ye Wang meditating on the mountain belonging to the first line in the fifth Sky Beyond the Sky.

He appeared to be a middle-aged man, and his power was great. There was a resolute and level-headed look on his face. He… had become a sect elder.

Su Ming moved his gaze away and walked to the sixth layer of Sky Beyond the Sky. Then, he walked to the Seven Moons Sect’s seventh Sky Beyond the Sky. When he arrived there, a brilliant spark slowly appeared in his eyes.

It was one that had not appeared for a long time in his eyes, since he had mostly remained calm over the years. Even though he had told himself many times that Ancient Zang was just the battlefield for the battle of Possession between him and Xuan Zang, at that moment, killing intent emerged from the depths of his eyes.

The seventh layer of Sky Beyond the Sky had become a wasteland…

There were only three continents left out of the thirteen. The others had all been reduced to rubble. What remained of them floated about the world like dust. Waves of mighty pressure belonging to a Great Dao Paragon still filled the place, though it was barely perceptible.

Su Ming could guess that many years ago, a Great Dao Paragon had descended in a monstrous rage and nearly destroyed the place, which was why his presence still remained to that date.

The remaining three continents were filled with a deathly silence. However, Su Ming could still sense three presences from the highest mountains on them.

They belonged to Dao Han and two former great sect elders. Gu Tai was not among them, and neither was Xu Zhong Fan.

The remaining three people’s presences were very faint, since they most likely had been injured gravely. At that moment, they seemed to be resting, but they would need an endless amount of time to recover.

Su Ming gradually suppressed the killing intent in his eyes. He kept it in him and made it fuse with his presence. He swept his gaze past the three continents, then eventually fixed his gaze on the first one. He moved forward and instantly appeared on the tallest mountain of that continent.

There was a huge platform on the summit, and it had a large Rune. At the center of the Rune was a sunken concave the size of a fist. It was like a small pit.

Su Ming stared at the pit, and as a former Seven Moons Sect disciple, he knew how Seven Moons Sect worked. If there was nothing happening, only one great sect elder would be awake in each generation. That great sect elder would be in charge of Seven Moons Sect while the other great sect elders would be asleep to train.

If anyone wanted to wake up the great sect elders, they would need to gather drops of fresh blood with the Seven Lives Art accumulated in them. This was the only way to wake up a sleeping great sect elder, and it was what Lan Lan had done in the past. She had used that method to wake up Xu Zhong Fan.

While standing on the Rune, Su Ming was quiet for a moment. Then, he lifted his right hand and sliced his fingertip. His blood dropped into the small pit under him.

When nine drops of blood fell, Su Ming swung his right arm. No blood dropped from his finger anymore, and he stood there and waited quietly.

The blood in the pit at the center of the Rune instantly vanished. The next instant, blood-red light shone from the Rune, and it surged straight into the sky. At the same time, a loud, thunderous roar that seemed to have come from hell rang out from within the mountain.

The Rune shone and started rotating. Booming sounds echoed in the air, and a huge crack spread out from the center of the Rune. An ice coffin slowly rose from the mountain, then straightened itself before landing on the ground with a bang in front of Su Ming.

Through the ice coffin’s lid, Su Ming saw Dao Han, who was withered and had his eyes shut tightly. There was a hideous wound on his chest. It ran through his body and the heart meridian.

His body was as withered as a skeleton. While Su Ming looked at him, the coffin turned blood red in color. Gradually, the withered corpse slowly started squirming, and in the span of a few dozen breaths, Dao Han returned to how he looked in Su Ming’s memories.

“Who… Who woke me up?!”

With another roar, Dao Han opened his eyes in the coffin. It was the first time he opened his eyes since Seven Moons Sect suffered the disaster two thousand years ago and he fell into deep slumber due to severe injuries.

Almost at the instant he looked up, Su Ming’s figure entered his eyes. At the moment he saw him, Dao Han’s pupils shrank. He could clearly sense… the power of a Great Dao Paragon from him!

It was also at that moment that he discovered that the severed heart meridian in his chest… had started showing signs of recovery.

“You are…”

Dao Han’s expression was grim. He did not relax because his injuries were recovering. Instead, his gaze became even sharper. However, there was a hint of excitement hidden in the depths of his sharp gaze.

He was not unfamiliar with Su Ming’s presence. Even though it belonged to a Great Dao Paragon, he would never forget Su Ming’s presence. However, his appearance had changed considerably. At that moment, the Su Ming who stood before him had Su Ming’s real appearance from Harmonious Morus Alba.