The old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe cast a deep glance at Su Ming, then raised his right foot and took a step into the air. Ripples immediately spread out from beneath his feet. In an instant, he brought the entire area to the spot where the Berserkers' tribe had previously been.
The white mountain stood tall and by its side was the Berserkers' tribe. In the distance was their Spirit Ascension Platform reaching the skies. It was as if Heavenly Spirit Tribe was in the old man's hands, and as long as he wanted to, there was very few things in the world which he could not do.
Moving the mountains and seas, shifting the ground, turning the universe upside down, extracting Arid Triad's memories—all of these opened doors upon doors of possibilities in Su Ming's mind. He was seeing more and more see eye-catching divine abilities.
"You only need to succeed once in spirit ascension. The path of spirit ascension is arduous, but every time you succeed, you will experience extreme changes. With your current level of cultivation, if you succeed in your first spirit ascension, your level of cultivation will increase by ten times!
"This is secondary, however. The main point is that your soul and aura will become out of the ordinary. You will no longer be a Successor Spirit, but an Antecedental Spirit. Even the lowest ranked Antecedental Spirit can stand tall in the world with pride.
"It'll be especially so when you fuse your aura with your cultivation base. You will ascend to another plane of existence, and when you become an Antecedental Spirit, you will be able to bring forth the true power of that ring on your finger. It is the power to kill all those in Death Realm.
"Based on the categorizations of the cultivation systems in the eras after mine, you have only stepped into Fate Realm, but as long as you succeed in your first spirit ascension, you can move slightly past it and master the power of being imperishable, a power that belongs to those in Life Realm!
"In fact, if you can perfect your own laws of fate within a short time while you are in the world outside, your cultivation base will experience a second explosive increase. This will be due to the power remaining in you after the spirit ascension. At that time, it will not be impossible for you to move straight into Death Realm!
"This is a serendipity, but also a matter of life and death. I cannot help you to achieve success. It will entirely depend on you," the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe explained slowly while giving Su Ming a long look.
His expression was grim. He longed dearly for Su Ming to succeed, but it was just as he said, he could only provide Su Ming the chance. Unless he succeeded nine times in spirit ascension and became an Ancestral spirit, there was nothing more he could do. After all, only at that time would he be worthy of helping others in their spirit ascension, since he would be standing at the peak of the entire universe.
"I, Tian Bai, wish you success!" The old man wrapped his fist in his palm, and for the first time, he bowed deeply to Su Ming.
Su Ming stared at the old man, and in silence, he too wrapped his fist in his palm and bowed to him. Then, he swung his arm and charged towards the Spirit Ascension Platform that belonged to Great Berserker Tribe, which was located not too far away from him.
In an instant, he approached it and landed on the platform. Su Ming lifted his head and stared at the sky. His expression was calm. The scene he had seen before appeared in his head. He could see the people who had existed countless years ago right beneath him, and they were all shouting that one word—Berserker.
'I did not choose Great Abyss' Spirit Ascension Tribe because my sense of belonging to the Berserkers is much stronger. I have always believed that I am a Berserker, and I am also… the God of Berserkers!'
When Su Ming lifted his head, an indescribable presence surrounded him and formed a layer of distortions. Once they entered the old man's line of vision, his pupils constricted.
'This junior possesses two different presences, those of Great Berserker Tribe and Great Abyss Tribe. Yet this is not due to interracial marriage, but should have been intentionally done by someone… They placed a person with the blood of Great Abyss Tribe in Great Berserker Tribe and nurtured him until he became an adult. In fact, he even has the true signs of a race's enlightenment about him…'
The old man stared at Su Ming. In truth, when he first saw Su Ming, he had not been as calm as he had appeared to be.
All of this was not because of Great Berserker Tribe's presence about him and neither was it because of his blood of Great Abyss Tribe. Instead, it was because there was a race's enlightenment about him that the old man had never seen before among all those who had entered the place!
It was the Berserkers' Initiation, but it was also their race's enlightenment!
'A race's enlightenment. This is the power to bring enlightenment to an entire race. This is something only the next elder of the race would be worthy of inheriting from the previous elder of the race in the era of the past. In fact, even during the late days of the tribal era, while there were more of these inheritances, most of them were just imitations.
'The value of those who received the imitation enlightenment was to test which of the positions of the Ancestral Spirits were correct so that they could lay out the path for those who truly received the race's enlightenment!
'The true goal of passing down the race's enlightenment was not to give it to the most powerful member of that race, but to present the chosen person… the right to not turn into a red figure even if they failed during the spirit ascension!
'In the current era, those who know of the Art for the race's enlightenment… should be incredibly rare.
'This is a right reserved to only one person in a race. This is… the one and only Ancestral Spirit's Watch… the one that the Ancestral Spirits gave to each race!'
The old man stared at Su Ming, and a raging storm roared in his mind. He could tell that Su Ming possessed the race's enlightenment. This was clearly a hope placed on him, which had lasted from Great Berserker Tribe up till this date.
It was the hope for an entire race to raise to power…
That was why the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe had told Su Ming so many things of the past. It was also why he had asked Su Ming to go through a spirit ascension and had even used his cultivation base to retrieve the memories from Arid Triad's will for him to observe them. This was a treatment that no one who had met him before had experienced.
All those in the past were mostly forced to go through the spirit ascension. He would absolutely not talk to them, and neither would he make any sort of deal with them. Everything had to go according to the old man's will.
But when it came to Su Ming… the old man hesitated. He could not do as he did before.
The race's enlightenment on Su Ming was Great Berserker Tribe's only hope at that point in time. He could not wipe it out. In fact, he was already prepared to give up and even harbored the thought of sending Su Ming away if he failed once.
He... was also one of the races in Wei, and Su Ming could be said to truly be a member of the younger generation from his allied tribes!
Su Ming's arrival also fitted the inheritance. He could be said to be the first one over the course of countless years to have come by completely adhering to the requirements of the inheritance instead of some other methods.
Su Ming's guess had only scratched the surface in regards to the Sun Sinking Talisman. He had guessed that it was activated because of the soul in his clone's body, but in truth, the real reason behind its activation was the race's enlightenment on Su Ming himself!
'Seed of Great Berserker Tribe… Why do I sense an old friend's presence in your race's enlightenment? Is it you? But I saw the illusion of Great Yu you created in the past, and when you were searching for the hope for the future of your race, you died in anguish…' The old man stared ahead in silence.
'It should be you, and I will not wipe off the seed of Great Berserker Tribe. I absolutely won't…'
As the old man watched Su Ming, his heart suddenly shuddered. At that moment, Su Ming had lifted his head to look at the sky, and he looked like he had fused with the world.
More accurately speaking, he did not fuse with the world, but had fused with the Great Berserker Tribe on the ground. It was as if Su Ming's presence had triggered some sort of strange change and some sort of ripple of power from the Berserkers left on the ground. The air which had been as calm as the surface of a lake suddenly started boiling.
Waves of rejecting force instantly appeared. They were not rejecting Su Ming, but projected their own mountain and their tribe on the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe and the white mountain.
The change caused the old man's heart to jump, and at the same time, he became even more certain of his perception towards the race's enlightenment on Su Ming. He even noticed that there was a strong feeling like the Berserkers' tribe… had been waiting for countless years for a person which had finally arrived.
Soon after, the old man's pupils shrank. Wisps of indistinct souls suddenly appeared on the Berserkers' land, which was once home to the Berserkers but was now the ruins of Great Berserker Tribe. Those souls might be indistinct and not even Su Ming could see them, but the old man could tell that they should have disappeared a long time ago in the passage of time. Yet the wisps of Berserkers' will, perseverance, and determination to protect their land had been waiting for the Berserkers to raise to power!
They had remained in the land, not wanting to disappear from the universe. They did not intend to sleep in the emptiness of time. They lay on the land and waited… Now, the person they had been waiting for seemed to have arrived.
More souls appeared. In the span of a few breaths, there were more than one million of them, and more continued to appear. There were quite a few of them who made the old man tremble once he saw them, for he was familiar with them. They had all been his friends in the past.
"Old friend, you predicted the Berserker Day in the illusion of Great Yu to search for a hope for the Berserkers to live through the disaster. Is he the hope you found in the past? Did you execute Eternal Creation for him?"
While the old man mumbled to himself, the number of the souls reached nearly ten million. They quietly surrounded the area and stared at Su Ming quietly, but he could not see them.
Su Ming stared at the sky. His will was burning in his heart at that moment. A great confidence had gathered within him without a single sound.
'I am the God of Berserkers!
'It doesn't matter what my blood is or where I come from since from the moment I remember myself, I was a Berserker. Even though my body is different from the other members of my tribe and even though my soul is not that of a Berserker…
'My will, my spirit, and life belong completely to the Berserkers. I am a Berserker!
'I am the God of Berserkers!'
A powerful light shone in Su Ming's eyes. While standing on the platform, he did not know that there were more than ten million Berserker souls which he could not see in the area below. Yet all of them had an unseen, great power erupt from them.
Their presences mixed together and formed an unheard booming sound, causing the projection of the white mountain from the old man from Heavenly Spirit Tribe to disappear. He had to retreat, and when he cast his gaze at this sight from the distance, his heart trembled. He couldn't help sucking in a deep breath.
The presences of the ten million souls swirled and gathered around Su Ming to turn into a white dragon in the blizzard. It rose into the sky, and when it roared at the heavens, its whole body turned crimson. With a madness and an unwillingness to admit defeat to fate gathered from the wills of countless Berserkers, it charged towards the sky.