Pursuit of the Truth

“Go back to the place you sleep. It is not time for you to wake up just yet,” the white-robed, long-haired Su Ming said flatly while standing in the air.

The presence of the strongest person of the current aeon radiated from Su Ming’s body and swept through the land. When he spoke, a voice that made the entire True World tremble came from his mouth.

As the air around him distorted, it turned into a huge hand that went forth to grab the blood-red figure.

Madness appeared in the blood-red figure’s eyes. He formed a seal with his hands and pointed forward. Immediately, the space where he stood distorted, and the blood fog tumbled about, letting out a roar like a malicious spirit. The blood fog immediately turned into a ferocious face of a ghost. It charged at the hand, and they instantly crashed into each other with a loud bang that shook the sky and earth.

Amid the noise, the hand shattered. The face of the ghost let out a shrill scream of pain and crumbled as well. Su Ming swung his arm, and when a freezing glare appeared in his eyes, the blood-red figure took a few steps back again. When he raised his head, he fixed his stare on Su Ming. A crazed, ferocious smile appeared at the corners of his lips, as if he was completely unbothered even if he was at a disadvantage.

“As expected of the strongest person in this aeon, but aren’t you a little too conceited? You still don’t have the right to make me go back to sleep. You can’t kill me, for not even Arid Triad’s disaster can destroy me. All the people who have reached our status are already indestructible!”

As the blood-red figure laughed madly, he lifted his right hand and seized the air in the direction of the sky.

“Five-Faced Beast Deity, descend in this aeon!”

The world immediately roared. With loud booms, the air was torn, and a huge crack appeared out of nowhere. A boundless, malicious presence surged out from within it. Five waves of mighty pressure intersecting with each other could be detected clearly in that presence, and it was incredibly astonishing.

It was the famous Five-Faced Beast Deity from the previous aeon. This beast was not created by cultivators, but was born from the Essence of the universe. When it appeared, it was already in Avacaniya Realm. It devoured countless cultivators and stirred up a disaster in the previous aeon in which countless lives had died.

Even if they gathered together the might of all the powerhouses from all True Worlds at that time, they were still defeated by the beast, and the more it ate, the stronger it became. In the end, it gained sentience, and its level of cultivation reached its peak. For a period of time, it could be said to have been unbeatable.

When the beast roared at the skies, it sensed the existence of Arid Triad’s will… and it went to challenge him.

It was completely defeated in that battle. Its body was crushed and its soul disintegrated. It perished under Arid Triad’s will, but while its real body died, thousands of years after the aeon in which it was born, gradually, cultivators who could vaguely sense its fragmented soul appeared.

When more cultivators like that were born, the religion of the Five-Faced Beast Deity came into being. Each convert to this religion was someone who killed to a monstrous degree. They were all cruel and merciless and worshiped the Five-Faced Beast Deity.

They built statues and worshiped them every day. As time passed, the leaders of the religion grew to be able to gradually summon the shadow of the Five-Faced Beast Deity, but most of them could only summon three of its heads.

But even if the shadow only had three heads, it was enough for them to obtain the great power equivalent to those in Avacaniya Realm.

That had lasted until the final days of the aeon when a peerless genius had appeared in the religion of the Five-Faced Beast Deity. That person’s potential was so great that it could be said that he was matchless, and he seemed to be born suitable to fuse with the Five-Faced Beast Deity.

His rise to power was so quick that in a short ten thousand years, he managed to form three heads of the Five-Faced Beast Deity. From then on, he searched through the entire Expanse Cosmos and gathered nearly eight-tenths of the Five-Faced Beast Deity’s soul, causing the shadow that he formed to show five heads, which was the first since the Five-Faced Beast Deity had died!

That prodigy was the blood-red figure before Su Ming. The genius of the religion of the Five-Faced Beast Deity had fused with his other self and become the imperishable and indestructible Yr Morkh.

He killed so many people that he gained immense popularity in the previous aeon. He was one of the two strongest people during that aeon, and he managed to survive through Arid Triad’s disaster, but he had to fall into deep sleep in one hundred years. During the first one hundred years of the new aeon, he used all his time to form the religion of the Five-Faced Beast Deity and to pass down its legacy. Hence, most of those who were born later did not know of his existence.

At that moment, the crack that appeared in the world was the sign that the Five-Faced Beast Deity was about to appear. As its malicious presence spread out, a loud roar came from the crack. Immediately after, a huge head of a fierce creature manifested.

The head resembled a snake. It had a forked red tongue that came out of its mouth when a piercing hiss traveled rang the air. The next moment, the huge head charged out like a bolt of thunder from the crack.

The snake head was the first head of the Five-Faced Beast Deity!

When it charged out, it instantly closed in on the white-robed Su Ming. It was large enough to cover the sky and earth, and a foul stench of rotting things came from its breath. It caused a large part of the world around Su Ming to immediately start showing signs of rotting.

Su Ming’s face was calm. It might have been the first time that he ran into a powerful warrior from the previous aeon, but Su Ming was not at all wary. As the strongest person in his aeon, he wanted to see just… who was the stronger between him and a powerful warrior of the previous aeon!

The moment the huge snake head closed in on him and the foul stench came crashing into his face, Su Ming let out a cold harrumph, and he lifted his right hand to swing his arm forward. With it, the world immediately roared. A huge hand swiftly manifested in front of him to seize the snake head and lift it upwards.

At that moment, another roar came from the crack, and a huge wolf head rushed out. With a presence that made it seem that it wanted to devour the sky and earth, it opened its mouth and charged at Su Ming.

Immediately after, the third roar shot out of the crack in the sky and reverberated through the air. A huge head of a tiger with an incredibly distinct mark of the tiger at the center of its brow appeared. It exuded a supreme and domineering air. When it roared, a powerful wave of sound surged into the sky and made the entire planet shudder.

And this was just the third head. At the moment the tiger’s roars traveled through the planet, the fourth head appeared. It belonged to a huge dragon that was entirely black.

Right when the fourth head came out, the fifth manifested as well. It was the head of a child with a contorted face. At the moment it appeared, it let out a piercing howl at Su Ming!

A great, mighty pressure spread from the five heads, and like a Rune, it charged to Su Ming from five different directions.

At the same time, the body of the Five-Faced Beast Deity was revealed from the crack in the sky. It looked… like a human which was incredibly huge, standing nearly one hundred thousand feet tall. Right then, only a small part of it was revealed, but it was still enough to shock everyone.

“Five-Faced Beast Deity, five heads… But I don’t understand… How could something like you be worthy of being called a deity?”

Su Ming watched the five heads charging at him with ferociousness. Each head gave Su Ming the feeling that they possessed the power equivalent to those in Avacaniya Realm, but once they were connected, a power similar to the one Su Ming sensed from the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe erupted from them.

That was a powerful presence equivalent to someone who had had their spirit ascend eight times… but to Su Ming, this sort of presence was still not enough!

After all, while they were both the strongest in their respective aeons, there was still a difference in strength between them. This was something that would definitely not be the same!

At the moment Su Ming spoke and the five heads closed in on him, he seized the air with his right hand. A purple sword immediately appeared in his grip. It let out an indescribably fierce presence, for it was… the End of Wills Sword!

The sword’s level once surpassed Su Ming’s, and the sword had been in control of his actions instead of him being control of the sword, but right then… the sword in Su Ming’s hand was merely his weapon. The sword could not behead the Five-Faced Beast Deity by itself, but when it was in Su Ming’s hands, it could!

Su Ming’s eyes shone with a freezing glare. With the sword in his right hand, he moved forward instead of retreating. At the instant the snake head came to devour him, the sword shone with a monstrous purple light.

It blinded all the cultivators who had been paying attention to the fight. At the moment the purple light pierced the people’s eyes and their field of vision turned black, a shrill scream of pain tumbled out from the snake head’s mouth.

Loud booms filled the area. At the same time, another incredibly shrill roar that sounded like it came from someone who was struggling at death’s door rang out. The booming sounds became even louder, but nothing had ended just yet.

When the third pained scream let out through great struggle was heard and the darkness before the people’s eyes disappeared so they could see normally once more, they saw that the snake head had been cut off from the huge five-headed ferocious beast. The wolf head plunged to the ground as well, and a large amount of red light gushed out at the center of the tiger head’s brow, as if it had been pierced by a sword.

During that instant, shock appeared on the remaining dragon head and the boy’s head, but before they could retreat, Su Ming’s eyes sparkled. He brought his right hand up and pointed into the distance before he flung his arm. The tiger head instantly screamed in pain. Its head shattered to pieces, and purple light shot out from it. It sparkled above the dragon head and the boy’s head before it disappeared.

In an instant, purple light shone in front of Su Ming when the End of Wills Sword manifested. A drop of black blood fell from the tip of the sword, and the dragon head jolted; it had been cut off.

The boy’s head let out a roar filled with the unwillingness to admit defeat, but a gash appeared between his eyebrows, and with a bang, he was cut into two.

The End of Wills Sword trembled because of excitement. After it had been crafted, Su Ming was the strongest master it had ever followed, and because of it, it had beheaded the strongest enemy in its life. Once it absorbed the blood of a powerful being of this calibre, it became excited and exhilarated. In fact, it could sense that before long… its power would increase!

“The Five-Faced Beast Deity is only this much.”

When Su Ming spoke, he lifted his right hand and pushed in the direction of the giant who had lost all five of its heads.

“Go back from where you came. Seal.”

Those words were spoken flatly, and there were only a total of seven of them, but the crack in the sky immediately turned into a vortex. When it rotated with loud rumbles, a huge suction force came from within it, and no matter how the giant struggled, it couldn’t change its fate of being sucked into the vortex. Once it lost the fight, the vortex vanished… and the sky returned to normal!