On the surface of the light membrane, those order runes were pulsing.
Their rhythm shifted from steady to chaotic.
Not fear, not tension, but "resonance."
His power of order had resonated with that dark-gold rune.
Not the peaceful, warm resonance from before, like family reuniting after a long separation, but a "sorrowful" one—heavy, silent, like the silence after losing someone dearest.
Tianheng.
He had fallen in the Abyss Sea.
His Dao Fruit had shattered, his body had dispersed, and his laws had melded into chaos.
But his rune remained.
Embedded in the wall of the Order Heavenly Palace, side by side with ninety-nine other runes.
It had not gone dark.
Not because it could not go dark, but because it "did not want to."
It was waiting.
Waiting for one who came after.
Chu Ming raised his hand and touched the rune with his fingertip.
The power of order surged from his finger, crimson-gold radiance flowing into the rune like water.
The instant they touched, the rune flickered faintly.
It changed from dark gold to gray gold, then from gray gold to crimson gold.
It was not activated by his power, but "awakened."
Like a lamp being lit.
The wick was still the same wick, the oil still the same oil, yet the flame had been kindled anew.
Information from the rune flooded into his sea of consciousness.
Not words, not images, but a "voice."
Tianheng's voice.
It was deep, so deep it seemed to come from beneath the water; hoarse, so hoarse it sounded like a stone scoured by windblown sand; exhausted, so exhausted it was like the final words of a man on his deathbed.
Yet every word was clear, as though carved into a stone tablet.
"Successor.
"I do not know who you are, which Source Sea