studiobondurri Chapter 1070: Chasing The Sun
Chapter 1070: Chasing The Sun
Chapter 1070: Chasing The Sun
“When day and night change places, chase the sun. If the light does not fade, then the Radiant Tree you shall see...”
Underneath a tree, Ye Qing suddenly opened his eyes and muttered with a puzzled look on his face.
Then, he seemingly recalled something and produced the branch of the Radiant Tree in his hand.
The branch of the Radiant Tree did not look as lush and full of life as before though. The branch had become dim, and both the flower and the leaf had withered. It was as if the branch had lost the large majority of its life force all of a sudden.
“I knew it... it was a hint after all!”
Ye Qing’s eyes glinted as he inspected the branch of the Radiant Tree.
He already guessed why the branch of the Radiant Tree had withered without warning.
Logic would say that it was because he had taken the branch away from the Kunlun Tomb, but that wasn’t true. It was because he had had a dream—or more accurately, he heard a message while he was catching a small nap earlier.
Yesterday, after he left West Kunlun, he had chosen a random direction and ran for an entire day and night. On the way, he even changed directions at random several times in total.
Therefore, even he did not know where he was right now, much less anyone else!
That said, he did run for a whole day and night. Even with his strength, he could not help but feel a bit of mental fatigue. So, he sought out a random resting place to take a nap.
However, he was just closing his eyes when suddenly, he heard a voice that seemed to hail from a different spacetime. It sounded old and distant.
At first, the words were too blurry to make out. Gradually, it became clearer and clearer until he could hear exactly what it was saying:
“When day and night change places, chase the sun. If the light does not fade, then the Radiant Tree you shall see...”
The message would repeat beside his ears again and again until he finally grew conscious and opened his eyes. At that moment, the voice disappeared like it never happened.
It was quite unusual to say the least.
There was no one, not even a Stranger around him. Clearly, the strange message had nothing to do with his surroundings. It could only have come from something on him.
And what was the one thing on his person that was suspect? The branch of the Radiant Tree, of course.
In fact, he was absolutely right. The branch of the Radiant Tree had undergone a drastic transformation and lost most of its vitality and spirituality. If he wasn’t mistaken, the branch was the reason for the voice.
The meaning and intent of the message were crystal clear. It was a hint of how to find the Radiant Tree and enter the Kunlun Ruins.
“Strange...”
Ye Qing looked at the branch of the Radiant Tree thoughtfully. It was said that the Radiant Tree was a divine tree with intelligence and sentience. There was nothing strange about this. What was strange was why the Radiant Tree branch chose to tell him the way to find the Radiant Tree and enter the Kunlun Ruins.
After all, he was just an outsider.
Was this a trap?
Chasing the sun didn’t sound that difficult in theory, but it was impossibly hard to actually do it.
A few inches of movement in the sky was equal to an untold amount of distance on the ground. To keep pace with the sun, he would have to run thousands of kilometers in just the span of a few breaths. To actually catch up with it, they would have to cover tens of thousands of kilometers in that short time. How could a mortal ever hope to achieve such a thing?
In fact, they couldn’t. Any mortal who claimed they could was either dreaming or overestimating themselves.
After all, not even a Sage would dare to claim that they could catch up to the sun.
But what could Ye Qing do except to give it his all?
Yi Pin would die if he gave up. He had no other option.
At first, the burden was still manageable thanks to his massive repertoire of secret arts, Magia, Strange Artifacts and treasures. He could easily overcome any terrain and cover dozens of kilometers in an instant.
However, he eventually ran out of true qi and spirit and could no longer employ anything. So, he had no choice but to rely on his physical body.
The good news was that he had reached the journeyman level in the Earthly Sovereign True Body. So long as his feet were stepping on the ground, his stamina was theoretically endless.
The bad news was that the stream of stamina he obtained from the earth wasn’t enough to keep up with the energy necessary to travel fifty kilometers in an instant.
And so Ye Qing slowly forgot about the time or the journey. He began to weaken, tire, and grow dizzy.
The hint he received did not mention how long he needed to chase after the sun. Therefore, Ye Qing did not dare to stop even though he was so tired he could die.
After all, he might lose his one and only chance to save Yi Pin if he did.
So, he squeezed out every ounce of strength inside his body and soldiered on through sheer willpower.
He did not know how much longer he could keep this up; how much further he could run. All he knew was that he could not fall or stop no matter what.
Yi Pin would die otherwise.
“Hah... hah... I think... I’m really at my... limit...”
A day passed, or maybe it was a lifetime. When Ye Qing tripped and fell on the ground one last time, he discovered that he had finally reached his limit. He could no longer even lift a finger.
Looking at the departing sun, pain flickered in Ye Qing’s murky eyes.
“I’m sorry, brother Yi Pin.”
“I... did my... best...”
Ye Qing muttered weakly before his head hit a patch of dead grass. His consciousness sank into darkness.
1. A Chinese folklore about a guy who tries to chase the sun and command it to stop scorching the earth and evaporating the water, making it impossible for the people to live. ☜