Pursuit of the Truth

‘Something’s not right!’

Su Ming’s eyes shone. When he swept his gaze past the cocoon, a hint of uncertainty suddenly rose in his heart. If the cultivators in the cocoons on the tunnel all came from Yin Death Vortex… then what about Zi Ruo?

When she was Relocated, she was also bound in a cocoon. By the looks of it, she some of her life force had also been absorbed.

Su Ming turned his head to the side and cast a glance at Zi Ruo. He did not voice the question in his heart, but when he looked at her, he found that her face was pale. She was looking around herself, and there was a dazed look in her eyes.

With Su Ming’s experience, no matter how cunning and conniving a person was, he could still see certain clues as to what they were thinking. But Su Ming had not been able to see Zi Ruo harboring any sort of blatant plots against him. She might be scheming something, but she had not overstepped her boundaries all the way to the tunnel.

Most importantly, Su Ming had not detected any sort of danger from her. With his level of cultivation and how strong his will was, he could sense if there was any danger coming from the people beside him. This was similar to instinct, but his senses had already surpassed that basic level.

Su Ming could clearly sense that while Zi Ruo was scheming something, she did not have any ill-intention to harm his life, but it was precisely because of this Su Ming frowned. After contemplating it for a moment, he suppressed his thoughts. He then charged into the depths of the tunnel. Wherever he went, he would spread his will and have it fuse with each cocoon to search whether there were any familiar figures.

He wanted to find his Master and to get to the fourth universe to see the gap. He also wanted to find signs of the Old Man Extermination. Compared to all that, Su Ming did not want to spend too much thought on other trivial matters.

In his eyes, Zi Ruo’s schemes were most probably for her people. She was not specifically targeting him, or else it would have been impossible for him to not notice anything.

Besides, if Zi Ruo truly had some undue schemes, then with his personality, Su Ming would first watch her perform with an aloof heart, and once she finished her performance, he would destroy her.

Zi Ruo felt a little complicated in her heart. Those complicated feelings were because of a dream she had when she lost consciousness when the cocoon bound her. It was a dream that caused her heart to race.

Once she woke up when Su Ming yanked her out of the cocoon, she could clearly sense that a part of her life force had been absorbed… and besides her life force… a bit of her inborn ability of a Heavenly Fox was also absorbed.

In fact, she could sense that when she was dreaming, the methods she wanted set up in Heavenly Fox Tribe had been perfectly carried out by her people.

‘We of the Heavenly Foxes have observed this Old Man Extermination’s tomb for many years. In truth… the tunnel here has already been thoroughly investigated by our people many years ago, but this has always been the greatest secret among our people. No outsider knows about this, and even among our people, only a few are privy to this knowledge…

‘The flesh tunnel here repels other presences, but over the years, we constantly rearranged the layout and even buried quite a number of our people’s corpses in it. With this method, we fused with this tunnel, making it so… that we can partially control it… The flesh tunnel can absorb our people’s inborn abilities… but when we release our inborn ability here, our power will be even stronger…’

Zi Ruo cast a look at Su Ming before her, then gritted her teeth. Women were the majority among the Heavenly Foxes, but it was rather difficult for them to increase their population.

Once an ancestor of theirs explored the flesh tunnel, she thought of a method to use it to absorb the Heavenly Foxes’ inborn ability by using the power in the tunnel that allowed it to absorb life force. When a large number of Heavenly Foxes were sent to fuse with the tunnel, on a certain degree, a form of connection was formed between the Heavenly Foxes and the flesh tunnel.

After all, one of the Heavenly Foxes’ inborn divine abilities was fusion. They could fuse with everything in the universe, which was similar to Su Ming’s Possession, but it was much gentler than it. The effect might not be perfect, but if it was executed by the entire race, as time passed, they could fuse with something without anyone noticing anything.

This was something that even the Old Man Extermination did not expect. After all, no matter how strong his power was, it was impossible for him to pay attention to all trivial matters. The black-robed people had also not noticed the little tricks the Heavenly Foxes had pulled over the years.

Because of that, when the Heavenly Foxes fused with the tunnel over the years, they could use it when they needed it. They could activate the arrangements they left in the tunnel with a method akin to offering sacrifices from the outside world, which would make it release an aphrodisiac aura in a barely discernible manner.

Due to the tunnel being sealed, that aura would become thicker as time went by, and once it reached a certain degree, it would cause the men and women from the Heavenly Foxes to unleash their passion. They would then be in a state of intense passion in the sealed environment for months or even years. With this, the problems of reproduction the race suffered were solved to a certain degree.

That was why Zi Ruo had come and allowed herself to be bound by the cocoon while having her life force absorbed like the other cultivators from Yin Death Vortex.

Even if Su Ming did not save her, once a certain amount of her life force had been sucked away, she would have woken up.

At that moment, almost all the Heavenly Foxes on the various cultivation planets in the Heavenly Foxes’ Expanse Cosmos surrounded and danced around a huge statue of a nine-tailed white fox on their cultivation planets.

Their dance was filled with extremely alluring movements, and when they surrounded the statue, moaning sounds could be heard in the air. They were extremely pleasant to the ears and sounded like pants, but if anyone listened to them closely, they would have the misconception they reminded them of incantations.

This happened in all 739 planets of Heavenly Foxes Expanse Cosmos. All the women of the Heavenly Foxes started dancing faster, and gradually, as sweat covered their bodies, waves of pleasant fragrance spread out. Pink light appeared on each of the women, causing the 739 planets to slowly turn pink. The pink galaxy of the Heavenly Foxes’ Expanse Cosmos became even more dazzling.

An aphrodisiac aura that could make a person lose their consciousness and go mad appeared, and it grew thicker.

All of the Heavenly Foxes’ Expanse Cosmos filled with an amorous air. It also affected the Old Man Extermination’s tomb. Zi Ruo’s eyes soon began to shift between clarity and dazedness.

Pink spots appeared on her body beneath her clothes. They were packed densely together, and there were a total of 739 of them, corresponding to the 739 nine-tailed statues surrounded by countless Heavenly Foxes as they danced on the 739 planets.

Those statues were continuously absorbing the aura from the Heavenly Foxes, and with a unique method, it gathered on Zi Ruo, causing her skin to slowly stop being pale. Instead, as the 739 pink spots spread out, they slowly fused with each other, causing her skin to turn pink.

At the same time, the aphrodisiac aura belonging to the Heavenly Foxes gradually increased in amount in the flesh tunnel. In the beginning, it was incredibly faint, almost unnoticeable, but once it became obvious, it meant that the aura had grown to an incredible denseness.

Su Ming moved very quickly. His will swept past each cocoon as he charged forward into the depths of the tunnel. He did not find Tian Xie Zi, but gradually, as he charged forward, Su Ming felt that his breathing was slowly quickening, and his heart started racing.

At the instant he noticed it, a hint of red appeared on Su Ming’s cheeks, and a rare, vacant look covered his eyes. It only lasted for an instant before it immediately disappeared, and clarity showed up in Su Ming’s gaze once more.

But his expression grew a little darker. This was not the first time he had experienced the racing of his heart. Many years ago, when Su Ming was still in the land of Berserkers, he had experienced it in an event that was incredibly difficult for him to forget.

It was when he had to fight against Madam Ji…

He had been affected by her poison. To the current Su Ming, it was insignificant, but in the past, it was so strong that it could instantly cause his thoughts to scatter due to lust.

Right then, Su Ming felt exactly the way he did when he was affected by the poison. A large number of jumbled up pictures flashed through his mind.

A glint appeared in his eyes. When he turned his head around, he saw that Zi Ruo had a dazed and vacant look. Her body was trembling, and sweat beaded on her skin.

Her exposed skin had already turned pink, and Su Ming saw terror on her face.

Zi Ruo was terrified, because based on her plan, the aura should not have such a great effect on her. After all, she was a Heavenly Fox. The one who should be affected the greatest should have been Su Ming.

Yet at that moment, she found that the aura was slightly out of her control. In fact, her mind was being corroded by it, and she was starting to get confused.

‘How can this be?! No wonder I couldn’t sense any sort of danger from her even though I could feel that she was scheming against me…’

Su Ming frowned. The strange aura was the exact same as he felt from the Heavenly Foxes’ Expanse Cosmos. However, the density far surpassed what he had sensed in the outside world.

Su Ming let out a cold harrumph and swung his arm. A cold gust immediately appeared out of nowhere, and when it swept out, Su Ming’s speed instantly increased. At the instant he charged away, the aphrodisiac aura that could make a person lose their consciousness grew even denser, and the tunnel was instantly shrouded in a pink haze.

The people in the cocoons on the flesh tunnel suddenly started shuddering. As cracking sounds rang out, the corpses instantly had their last traces of flesh and blood sucked out of their bodies. Then, they were reduced to powder.

…..

“Hmm?”

An old voice tinted with a hint of surprise rang out in the space beside the gap to the universe beyond. An invisible figure seemed to be somewhere in space. It lifted his head and cast its eyes into the distance.

“Has he finally noticed? Looks like Arid Triad hasn’t completely assimilated with this place…”