The rainy season was still not over. The rain in the world was like a curtain of beads that continued falling without stop, causing most of the people living in the valley to meditate quietly at the entrances to their cave abodes while they looked outside.
With the rain falling on him, Su Ming returned to his own cave abode in the valley. Once he sat down inside, he closed his eyes, and the things that happened when he was in the land of the Sacred Bats flashed in his head.
A long while later, he dipped his head down and flipped his right hand over. The three pearls shone with a dark light on his palm and were absorbing the light around the area.
‘These three pearls should be the soul the third God of Berserkers mentioned. He also asked me to return this to Great Yu. But… Is Great Yu Dynasty still around?’
In silence, Su Ming clenched his fists. Once he put away the three pearls, he recalled the stone monument that was now void of words.
"The first God of Berserkers’ legacy will end at the third... Lie Shan Xiu, what an unrelenting man," Su Ming mumbled. He could somewhat sense how the first God of Berserkers felt when he left all those years ago.
"If that is the case, then it’s impossible for the fourth God of Berserkers to appear. We’ve lost the legacy of the God of Berserkers, now it depends on us Berserkers as to how we’ll go on with our future…" Su Ming lowered his head and looked at the strand of hair on his finger. A sparkle suddenly appeared in his eyes.
‘Has Lie Shan Xiu really completely washed his hands clean of us Berserkers and cut off all blood ties with us..? If that is the case, then how am I supposed to explain the presence of this strand of hair..?’
‘Besides, with how strong Lie Shan Xiu was in the past, how could he not have predicted the crisis that would fall on us Berserkers after he left? If that’s the case, even if the legacy he left for us would end at the third God of Berserkers, there’s no way I would believe that he didn’t leave anything else for us behind!
‘He must have had an incredible amount of confidence before he left nonchalantly… Also, the old skeleton from the Spirits of Nine Yin once said that I am the fourth person who managed to pass through the eight palaces and stand before him. The first must have been the first God of Berserkers, Lie Shan Xiu. Perhaps the third is the third God of Berserkers. Then who… is the second?’
Su Ming frowned and immersed himself in his thoughts.
‘The third God of Berserkers did not mention the second God of Berserkers coming to the World of Nine Yin in the words he left behind. If that’s the case, who could this second person be..? It might be the second God of Berserkers, but it might… also not be!’
Su Ming remained silent for a moment. He did not have a lot of clues about this, and it was difficult for him to discern the truth, which was why he eventually decided to just force down his questions and stop thinking about this matter for the time being.
‘The World Spirit the Spirit of Nine Yin mentioned will wake up earliest in half a month, and latest in a month. Several days have gone by now. We don’t have much time left…’
As Su Ming remained seated, he spread out his divine sense. When he covered the entire valley in his divine sense, he found Nan Gong Hen meditating, and he told the man about him wanting to leave this place.
Nan Gong Hen opened his eyes swiftly as he was in the midst of his meditation. His breathing instantly quickened, and without a single hint of hesitation, he immediately walked out of his cave abode and ran towards Su Ming’s cave.
After a moment, Nan Gong Hen could be found standing respectfully beside Su Ming in his cave abode.
"Keep an eye out on the stars and the sky. A tremendous change is coming. When that moment arrives, I will leave this place, but my journey might be filled with dangers. I might not even be able to come back.
"Tell all the other Fated Kin about this, and then tell me whether you are staying or leaving," Su Ming stated languidly, looking at Nan Gong Hen.
Nan Gong Hen remained silent for a short moment, nodded his head, then turned around and left.
Once he was gone, Su Ming immersed himself in his thoughts for a little longer before he also stood up and left his cave. It was pouring outside. The raindrops that were as large as beans fell on the mountain rocks with light pattering sounds. However, those sounds were very dense and had connected with each other to form a wave of sound, causing it to be difficult to discern just how much rain was falling in an instant from those pattering sounds.
Su Ming walked through the valley in the rain, then along the gorge. He moved towards the deeper parts of the valley. Over there was the altar made of beast bone, and it was also the place that gave birth to Spirit Mediums in the World of Nine Yin.
Since they were about to leave soon, then before Su Ming left, he wanted to go to the beast bone altar and experience the mysteriousness of this place.
When Su Ming moved into the altar’s area, the first thing he saw were the graves that filled the entire place under the veil of rain. The names of all those who had died during the past fifteen years were carved on these stone monuments.
As Su Ming walked past these graves, he saw Tie Mu’s grave. He stood there in silence for some time before he continued walking forward.
Before long, Su Ming heard a soft voice calling to him as he moved forward. It was not a single voice calling to him, but an entire crowd. It gave him the impression that there was an uncountable amount of people calling out to him. The rain around him poured even harder, causing his view to become even more obscured. There were even wisps of fog seeping out of the ground and floating into midair, filling his vision.
Su Ming came to a halt. Right before him was a gigantic altar. It towered into the sky, and because the view here was obscured, he could not see the top of the altar. He could only see a flight of stairs leading up to it.
The stairs were dark and gave off an air of bloodiness, as if a large amount of blood had been spilled and sunk into the altar over an innumerable amount of years. As it dried up, the blood became one with the altar, causing all the rain that fell on them to also turn into red streams of water. Yet the rain could never wash away the blood stains.
Su Ming looked at the altar and the flight of stairs. After a moment of thought, he took a step onto the stairs. The instant he took the first step, a low roar that reverberated in all directions suddenly rang out by his ears.
"ROAR!"
It was just a sound, but it gave off a feeling that it could shake the sky and earth. It sounded like a clap of thunder as rain fell. It also caused wisps of indistinct souls to instantly appear from all the graves in this place. These souls had all howled at the same time, and their howls had merged together into that roar!
‘The birthplace of Spirit Mediums…’
A glint flashed in Su Ming’s eyes. He stepped on the second step and continued onward until he stood on the altar. Over there, he saw a bulky, impaled skeleton. It was fixed to the floor at the top of the altar. There was no longer any flesh and blood on the skeleton. Only its bones remained, and it looked as if it had its head lifted with its mouth to shout at the sky.
Su Ming’s pupils shrank. The skeleton that was impaled on the ground made him remember the old man in yellow robes that had transformed from the skeleton in the ninth palace located on the mountain belonging to the Spirits of Nine Yin!
Su Ming regarded the skeleton a little longer, then cast his gaze in the distance. When he looked over, a shiver suddenly ran down his spine, and his eyes sparkled with a brilliant light.
This was the first time he stood on this altar, and this was also the first time he looked into the distance from this place. In his field of vision, he saw a numberless amount of altars like the one he was standing upon lining up to form a long dragon, and this dragon continued stretching to an incredibly far distance.
Su Ming could not tell just how many altars there were. Each one of them had a skeleton on top, but Su Ming would not have been so shocked if that had just been the case. Besides these skeletons on the innumerable altars, he also saw a person standing on the altars!
It was a person dressed in white with his hair dancing in the air as he looked into the distance!
He was Su Ming!
After a long while, Su Ming averted his gaze to look towards the path he had taken when he came here. Everything was as usual there. He could see the graves under the stairs, along with the gorge behind the graves and the valley behind it.
Su Ming turned around and looked in the distance before the altar once again. He saw the numerous altars and the countless number of skeletons, along with the endless amounts of himself. He frowned. He believed that this was the effects of an illusion.
He turned into a long arc and charged towards the closest altar in his field of vision. However, almost the instant he moved his body, the figures of him on the countless number of altars before him moved together and headed further away. Within that instant, an innumerable amount of new altars were similarly added to the number of altars that were stretching down endlessly.
When Su Ming stood on the second altar, he frowned even more. He might have already guessed that this was an illusion, but he could form an explanation as to how this illusion came to be. It was as if the road ahead was endless, and he could not move to the deepest parts of this path.
‘Is it a Rune..?’
Su Ming moved back, turning into a long arc and returning to the first altar. When he retreated back to the stairs, everything disappeared. Rain continued pouring around him, and the scene he thought was an illusion disappeared.
As Su Ming was immersed in his thoughts with a frown on his face, an ancient voice suddenly spoke beside him. That voice was incredibly weak, and it appeared without a single sign.
"There are still ten days…"
Su Ming turned around, and behind him was a figure that had appeared at some unknown point of time. That figure was the old Spirit of Nine Yin in yellow robes. However, his body was just an illusion. He could be seen through, and he did not seem real.
"Ten days later, the World Spirit will rise from its slumber. You can then take your tribesmen and leave this place. I will also go back home using the path we took in the past once I activate the Enchanted Vessel…" The old man smiled and looked at Su Ming.
"What is this altar?" Su Ming suddenly asked.
"This is a Relocation Rune within the Enchanted Vessel. It is a unique item from the True Sacred Yin World. Over there, we call it… a mirror," the old man answered slowly, looking at the Rune.
"Don’t you think it looks like the world we see when we look into a mirror? We see an innumerable amount of ourselves, an endless amount of scenes that are the same. If you move, it will also move. If you don’t move, then it will remain still." The old man’s voice filled the area and drifted about without a direction.
"Since it is a Relocation Rune, then where does it Relocate?" Su Ming frowned.
"The world in the mirror! There are two sides in the universe and the heavens. This Rune is the line between them. But it’s a pity, because it is still incomplete. This is as much as we can do using the power of the True Sacred Yin World. We can’t make it completely whole.
The old man looked at Su Ming and asked softly, "Do you want to see the world in the mirror?"
"How do I do it?" A spark appeared in Su Ming’s eyes.
"As long as you can surpass the changes in the Rune that are born when you move and you make this last till the moment it is difficult for even all the copies of yourself in the mirror to imitate you, then you will be able to see the world in the mirror.
"This is a hidden rule within the world. We of the Sacred Yin World call it the rule of Man Dun1… In the Sacred Yin World, there are quite a number of powerful warriors who believe that if we manage to examine this rule completely, then we will open the path to the Great Dao," the old man said with a sentimental tone, then cast Su Ming a glance. His body started gradually fading away until he completely disappeared in the end.
"This Rune isn’t dangerous, but you can’t move back. The moment you move back, you’ll have to start over again. I’ve already activated the Rune for you. You are the first person who has the chance to walk through this Rune in the last countless amount of years. This is a friendly gift from us Spirits of Nine Yin to you."
Translator’s Note
Man Dun: 人遁 (ren2 dun4) is actually a part of nine Duns in Qi Men Dun Jia (奇門遁甲), a Chinese divination method. Man Dun is its official (?) translation, aside from Ren Dun. 人 is man/human/people, and 遁 actually means to escape, but 遁 in this case is a special word for this divination method, and it has a completely different meaning from the word’s usual meaning, so Dun must be used. It basically means to put you in the correct position so that you will maximize your talents.