Chapter 546 Who Am I?
<nullb><nulli>"To Doubt is to question, but to Understand, it is to agonize over the reason of the world' existence. So, one should question forever, and agonize forever. Only then one would know who they are, in where they exist…"
<nullb> As if a blazing inferno was lit within my mind, a shock with enough force to reel me to the doors of death and back erupted inside my skull.
Pain like nothing I've suffered before, as if the hands of a deity was splitting my brain apart and forcefully unlocking something.
My brain felt like it was being boiled as my eyes saw nothing but red. Then memories, memories I've never thought I had began flooding out of the deepest part of my mind.
Blood surged like a torrent from my nose and ears as the memories surged in and out, revealing themselves to me, and to who I was, who I truly am.
With my blood landing on the ground, the formation I saw Du Shen making lit up once again, it was hidden under the dust and dirt of thousands of years from before, and now that they once again began shining once more.
The corpse holding my dissipated into nothingness as the symbols began shining brighter and brighter and funneled their energy into me further increasing my pain but at the same time developing and further unfolding the rest of the memories.
The entire planet then began morphing, changing and reshaping itself following the laws written into the inscription around this small shack.
The dead winds picked up, and the dark clouds merged together creating even thicker clouds. The skies seemed desolate heralding the end of times itself. And the earth critters began running away in total fear.
The seas boiled, and the rivers dried up, the mountains shook and shuddered then began crumbling, while the earth turned and revolted all over.
The whole planet was in agony and pain, as it was being crushed for all the Qi and Poison it had in it, all being funneled toward the formation, which kept on operating at faster and faster pace bringing me nothing but incredible mind splitting pain.
This would have killed anyone, but there was no killing intention in this formation it wasn't forcing its way into my mind but making what was there resurface.
And suddenly all the pain stopped as if it never was there in the first place.
The memories that I couldn't get anything from nor understand them began clearing in my mind and thus I saw what was needed of me to see.
Du Shen, I'm in his point of view. Crossing through the river of time and space. Without an anchor, without a beacon, and without purpose or goal, crossing it while his soul was being dismantled in the process.
Yet, even though his soul was being dismantled I noticed something, the writings that were on the ground from before are now on his soul, and the more damage his soul accumulate the more the writings intensified around him, as if they were shedding off the useless bits of his soul if that's even possible, and keeping nothing but the pure and most usable.
At one point, Du Shen's soul became nothing more than the size of a pebble that bore through the passage of time and space, detached itself from it, and then headed to a blue planet, the soul moved faster and faster until it saw the dying body of a young child.
My vision swam and came back to me once again, this time, I was looking at the world with my own eyes, I was staring at the skies. Laying supine. My body hurts, uncomfortable. I can also hear some noise, people were shouting everywhere.
I remember this…
Looking around me, this is my home town, back on earth…
And this… I remember this
Looking around me, it was the time when I was hit by a reckless driver. I remember this clearly because of one thing. I was hurt, but surprisingly got up faster than I normally should. My broken joints and limbs easily snapped back to place and that left everyone in utter shock.
People called it a miracle. But now that I think about it… the pebble, the soul pebble went into my body at this exact time.
Ah I see…
Now I understand.
I closed my eyes and opened them to find myself back in the poison planet, the final resting place of Du Shen.
Or, my resting place, in my last life…
I see.
Everything makes sense.
I was never Shen Bao.
I have always been Du Shen…
I failed to cross the Divider to the Beyond. The heavens refused me so, since I had no key, and had no ability to hold the keys.
I searched high and low for a way and a method to obtain the keys or have them acknowledge me but failed and failed again.
So because I was unable to cross to the beyond, I gambled and threw my soul through the wheel of reincarnation. Then ejected myself using the Heavenly Law from being reincarnated into the Vast Expanse.
My goal was to reincarnate into the Beyond, but it seemed that I failed and was reincarnated into Earth, a world without an ounce of Qi in it, somewhere within the folds of space in a dimension so far away not even a thousand lifetimes is enough to even reach it.
My life and death there proved worthwhile. Since it gave me a view like no one else here. And thus after my death, my soul had to come back to its original place.
I prepared the Poison God's Heritage just in case I was to fail, but never thought that fate would have it that I will pick up on my own created book. On my own cultivation, and restart it all over again.
What a fickle and strange thing fate is.
The formation around the house began dying down and slowly dissipating as more and more memories began flooding my mind, reminding me of all of my ventures in the world of cultivation as Du Shen.
Ah, now I see why My Soul Power has always been absurdly high. It wasn't because I was special, but it was because it had always been the Soul of an Emperor Rank cultivator, one above all, one above even the Queen, and thanks to being thrown into the wheel of Reincarnation, instead of weakening, it only got stronger, denser, and more powerful.
No wonder I was able to learn things a hundred times faster than anyone, because I experienced it all before. No wonder My Poison Cultivation needed little to no stabilization to grow, because if I don't remember, my soul remembers.
As for the trinkets, tools and methods I created along my current path, they were all to help me grow to who I used to be, to who I am today, and to who I shall be in the future.
The entire planet began rumbling and crumbling upon itself, as if it had achieved its goal it started self-imploding, and was about to detonate.
'I need to leave,' I muttered as I slowly hovered up and began flying away.
I reached little Cabbage who seemed a bit wary of me. He backed off and stomped his feet twice to warn me.
"Don't worry, I'm still me…" I told him as if I understood what he meant.
"But even if I'm still me… who am I?"
Am I the past life, Du Shen he who ruled yet failed. Or am I the current one, Shen Bao he who struggled and achieved. Or am I a culmination of both?
Am I the Mortal who lived, or the Cultivator who died?
Am I?
I…AM
I…
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