Pursuit of the Truth

Su Ming stared at the Harmonious Morus Alba letting out a panicking and terrified air before speaking faintly. Then, he shut his eyes, and his will, so great now that it could no longer be described with words, instantly left his body and charged to the Harmonious Morus Alba.

If his will was to be compared with Harmonious Morus Alba’s will, it would be the same as comparing a brilliant moon to a firefly. It made the Harmonious Morus Alba unable to struggle and fight back. It could only allow Su Ming’s will to completely cover its body, then fuse into all four of its wings from every angle.

During that moment, the four Expanse Cosmoses contained in the Harmonious Morus Alba’s four wings shuddered. The galaxies instantly froze… While they kept still, Su Ming’s will swept past each life like a violent storm, but he did not harm them. He only searched for the traces and the marks he needed.

After several breaths passed, all four Expanse Cosmoses in the Harmonious Morus Alba returned to normal, and Su Ming’s will faded away, but only the Harmonious Morus Alba knew that the existence which terrified it and which it found somewhat familiar in the depths of its mind, did not remove its will, but instead broke it down into several portions and gathered them within the four Expanse Cosmoses.

The Harmonious Morus Alba was uneasy and anxious because it did not know what marks Su Ming was searching for. It could only hope that he would leave as soon as possible. His terrifying might and strength caused it to be unable to fight back even in the slightest. It knew that if he wanted to kill it, he would only need to point a finger at it.

Time trickled as Su Ming sat on the Feng Shui compass and levitated before the Harmonious Morus Alba. He had been broken down his will into several parts, and each of them were by the side of the people who had the marks he wanted.

He did not take those marks away immediately, but instead stayed beside them. As time passed and a long period of time went by, the Harmonious Morus Alba’s wings started overlapping, and then, the four Expanse Cosmoses started to be destroyed…

When destruction was over and new lives were born, Su Ming left with the marks he needed. He had accompanied them for an aeon. His will left the anxious and uneasy Harmonious Morus Alba, and returned to his body on the Feng Shui compass. Then, Su Ming opened his eyes.

He lifted his right hand, and there were several feeble souls on his palm. Among them were his eldest senior brother, second senior brother, Hu Zi, Cang Lan, Yu Xuan, Xu Hui, his elder… and all the other people from Su Ming’s memories.

Those souls only had a trace of the marks that signified who they were in his memories, and they were not the versions of the people Su Ming wanted.

When the Harmonious Morus Alba spread its wings again, Su Ming left into the distance on his Feng Shui compass. He continued moving forward, alone and isolated in the vast universe for another ten thousand years…

Ten thousand years, twenty thousand years, thirty thousand years… Time passed, but there seemed to be no traces of it in the vast universe. When two hundred thousand years passed, Su Ming opened his eyes again, because right before him… was the ninth Harmonious Morus Alba which was fortunate enough to have never run into Xuan Zang.

It drifted about in the vast universe with an abundant amount of life flowing in it, and countless lives had been born in the Expanse Cosmoses within its four wings.

When it noticed Su Ming’s arrival, that Harmonious Morus Alba even showed hostility, perhaps because it had been alive for so long that it had forgotten its instincts. However, the will that spread out from Su Ming immediately crushed that hostility. The butterfly shuddered, and panic and shock instantly rose within it.

Su Ming did not care about Harmonious Morus Alba’s feelings. His will enveloped the butterfly’s four wings and spread into them. When he swept past the wings, he found the marks, then split up his will and place it next to them.

Despite the Harmonious Morus Alba being wrecked by nerves, Su Ming did not choose to immediately retrieve the marks, just like before, because if he took them directly, it would mean that he would be personally killing them. He could not do it nor did he want to do it. He could wait for the Expanse Cosmoses in this Harmonious Morus Alba to be destroyed, and then, he would take away those marks.

Time passed, and the Harmonious Morus Alba lived in nervousness for an aeon. When it ended, Su Ming did not stay. He brought with him the marks he found and left the Harmonious Morus Alba, which had spread its wings to give birth to four new Expanse Cosmoses. While the Harmonious Morus Alba was still nervous and anxious, Su Ming left into the distance.

One hundred years later, Su Ming met a Harmonious Morus Alba which was born from a pearl after he bestowed life to it, and he began searching for the marks again.

He searched through the butterflies one by one, and it seemed to take an eternity. Ten aeons passed.

Su Ming searched through all the butterflies and found the marks he wanted in all the Harmonious Morus Albas. However… when he had all the marks in his hand, he only let out a melancholic sigh while sitting on the Feng Shui compass and surrounded by an ancient air.

Each of those marks were independent entities. If he forcefully fused them together, the Brands of life which would be formed would still be missing the familiarity from Su Ming’s memories. He could open the Abyss Gate and resurrect them, but once they were resurrected, they would no longer remember each other. In Su Ming’s heart, they would become his most familiar strangers.

Su Ming did not want to do this sort of thing nor see it happening. He longed for the people in his memories to be resurrected, and he yearned for the people who would be resurrected to still be themselves. He wanted them to have their memories, not just their faces. He hoped that their souls would still be the same, just that they would be separated by unfamiliarity.

“The cycles of life and death are like the sea. Only by living through them can I find the marks they left behind when they disappeared in the beginning. Only then will I be able to make the marks fuse together and turn into the Brands marking their lives.”

Su Ming stared at his palm. After a long time had passed, he clenched his palm. Once he placed the marks in his palm into his heart, he unfurled his palm and pushed down gently at the Feng Shui compass beneath him.

With it, the Feng Shui compass jolted, then started rotating on its own. The entire universe seemed to have been drawn in by its movements, and it started rotating as well. As time passed, the boundless universe became a huge vortex which spun with loud bangs until it became a circle.

Every single time the universe spun a circle, a cycle of life and death was completed.

As the universe tumbled about in a vortex, the sediments of time contained in it were dragged to the front of Su Ming’s eyes. The dust that had fallen to the depths of the universe flew before him, and Su Ming left the Feng Shui compass to walk into the vortex. It did not matter how much time would pass and how many cycles of life and death he would have to live through, for he would continue walking forward firmly and resolutely.

He would search for the marks everyone left behind when they disappeared in the passage of time…

In the cycles of life and death were the things and the people he had never forgotten and the promises he never failed to recall.

He kept those people in his mind because he yearned for them,to meet them… and to get to know them again.

When his Harmonious Morus Alba was destroyed and Xuan Zang’s palm fell, causing all the souls to vanish that night, he already knew that if he was not determined, he would not meet them again in their next life.

It was just like how a person would wait for the heavens to fall silent for thousands of years while they stood in the palace in the sky. How many times would they feel lost, and how many times would they cherish others right down to the core of they soul? And from then on, there would no longer be moments in their life when they would find life to be as beautiful as it seemed at first sight…