Path of the Ascendant

It was difficult to describe the exact manner in which she experienced such a dedication of the mind to a single task, especially one as mechanical as the nature of Primordial Mind seemed to be, so it was fortunate that she never needed to provide such an explanation to the world. She was able to focus upon sorting out the remaining dozens of tomes within her Ascendant’s Library.

In order to prevent herself from reaching a limited and incorrect conclusion by trying to narrow everything down into a single pathway based upon lacking information, she did not force her derivation to converge beyond a certain level.

Nevertheless, she was able to settle upon a few matters, and that was that two days were more than sufficient when it came to preparation. She was ready to strike, so she took those tomes and opened them up at once with a wave of her mental hand, displaying them before herself as she focused on the outside world once more. It was a little jarring to come back to something resembling a wasteland, but she quickly began the recovery with some of her lifeforce-related physique abilities and used Omit Movement to place herself before the dome of white light.

Then, knowing that her words always reached the mysterious Xu Shi Ming, she said, “Open it up. I’ll take it down before the end of the day.”

“Bold. I shall grant you the smallest passage that I can manage.”

She did not reply to him, and just waited for the opening to form so that she could directly omit her passage through it and appear beside the entity that was Primordial Mind. As before, its form was unclear and strange, but she didn’t wait for her eyes to adjust to it or for it to move in a manner that would permit a response.

Combining the Lion’s Roar technique and physique ability, she produced a deafening sound imbued with the principles of the Invader’s Roar, practically striking Primordial Mind with the sheer force of the mental surge.

As before, she found herself invading the entity’s mind, or rather the network that it formed between itself and countless things around it, but it was more prepared than the time before. A barrier was right in front of her the moment she entered, and it was being built up more and more with strands of thoughts that emerged from the things in the network, weaving a cloth that could not be broken through with ease.

It encompassed a large area around her and left her with room to breathe, so to speak, or to escape if necessary, though she neither wished to do so, nor considered it to be something that would remain.

Sealing off entry into the mental web would be disadvantageous as it would force her to engage Primordial Mind outside of the mental domain – a place where it would be weaker – or to break the barrier first, which would damage it and make it more difficult to trap her inside once she entered and began to attempt to damage the Primordial Deity.

Even though she hadn’t considered a plan like this, it was rather obvious what to expect from the few things she could observe within the mental web. That, or the Primordial Deity just wanted to bar her entry and do nothing more, in which case everything she considers could be put into action anyway and just grant her a victory with minimal risk or intervention from the target of her ire and fury. If it was that foolish, then there would be more questions added to the list of things that didn’t quite make sense, yet simply were.

Within the mental space, mind techniques were the most effective, and so she employed Fault Perception, letting the powers of the mind envelop the land before her and perceive it in full, faint lines appearing upon the weave of mental energy. Some were very thin and faint, and others gleamed more brightly, leading to her making a conclusion after a moment of contemplation.

It wasn’t reasonable to pick the most obvious weaknesses, as she was currently in a battlefield where her foe had an advantage. If one of them was missed, then it was either deliberate, or, again, she was greatly overestimating Primordial Mind’s ability. It was best not to rely on the latter assumption.

She opted to go with the weaknesses that were less significant and noticeable, yet greater than the faintest of fault lines that she simply couldn’t expect to hit even if she invested her full effort into the attack. Imbuing her mental Arm of Slaughtering Shadow with her full focus, she manifested the form of Moon Splitter into it at the last moment and slashed at the weave. Behind it, Primordial Mind shifted a limb, willing the weave to shift, but it was too late.

Her blow tore an opening within the weave, and her form vanished from within it, reappearing outside it and far away from it.

Although it would have been easier for her to appear besides the opening and go from there, she knew that in the mental domain, it would be very easy to take the bunch of mental energy and twist it into the right shape to ensnare her from the outside. Getting closer to the Primordial Deity was also incredibly helpful, as she was able to immediately proceed with the next part of her plan, which involved the manifestation of her own mental domain to oppose that of Primordial Mind. If one wished to, this battle could be compared to the clash of minds that might occur even between ordinary people.

Two ideas needed to clash, and the victor could be determined through the combination of one’s strength of will, as one could simply shout the opponent down, or one could employ a stronger, more sound argument, achieving victory by convincing the opponent of their legitimacy.

Wei Yi had a level of power similar to the Primordial Mind if one looked at their strengths roughly, as her killing will was inferior in realm but seemed stronger and more abundant overall, so she couldn’t rely on victory with something this simplistic. Instead, she needed to manifest a sufficiently stable and powerful image, and that meant that she needed to invoke something that had been building up in her mind since she began to cultivate killing intent.

A wave of her right hand brought out a flood of figures, formed from crimson smoke and silver light, armed with every weapon that could be found under the Planar Continental sun.

They would ordinarily fight one another, but all that she needed was a quick reframing of the situation and the warriors of her mental domain could be set against the common target of Primordial Mind and the minds that existed in its web. By re-contextualising the mental concepts of her opponent, she could manifest them into warriors, and ones that were inferior to her own, she could allow her own ideas to combat that of Primordial Mind, even if it did not see the situation in the same manner as she did.

‘I do like this application of concepts, and I get the feeling that… yep, got a stage of the Mental Dao.’

Whatever influence the heavens had over the Primordial Deities, it appeared to include actions within their mental domains, so that was something she needed to keep in mind in the future. She did not expect to confront another Primordial Deity within their mental domain, as most of those remaining wouldn’t give her the opportunity to do so, but it was just another factor to consider.

“Now, my legions, take down that monstrosity! Bring the world back to the people of the Planar Continents!” she proclaimed.

Her warriors burst out of the space around her and flooded out into the mental web, clashing with numerous entities that were beyond explanation or rationalisation. Each one fought with absurd skill and prowess, executing techniques that even she couldn’t pull off regularly and easily, though as exciting as the visuals ended up being, she knew that this wasn’t quite as straightforward or impressive as it might appear.

The techniques weren’t truly being executed, as she could not manifest a thousand minds and make them act in perfect synergy to oppose Primordial Mind, but she did have the ability to generate thoughts. When in the mental domain, where everything she saw was perceived as something legible, such ideas naturally transformed into attacks and entities that would be able to perform them. She knew of many combat techniques, weapons and battle styles thanks to her extensive studies of everything that was and will be – though it was more of the former than the latter – and so her soldiers had numerous styles with which to fight.

In a way, this was also an aspect of the Mental Dao, as it permitted her to comprehend matters that were rather esoteric in a more agreeable manner, though she didn’t have the time to check the Truth of the Universe for exact confirmation on her progress. While her errant thoughts were taking care of the other concepts that might interrupt her own deeds, she neared the Primordial Deity and launched a mass of her killing will towards it, not bothering with shape or substance but focusing entirely on quantity.

An eruption of raw light, varied and yet monotone, followed when Primordial Mind didn’t take action to prevent the attack from landing. It might have wished for the situation to progress in this manner, or maybe it couldn’t respond – the two possibilities that first came to mind always seemed to boil down to odd planning or incompetence – but it let her drown the mental web in her mental energy.

The light cleared in a moment, and the battlefield that had once been her mental landscape took over the majority of what she was able to see. It was only behind Primordial Mind that the world differed, and the web that had previously surrounded her was present there with even more strands and vibrance. Right now, this landscape was divided between her view and that of the Primordial Deity, making them both stronger than before, but she believed this to be to her advantage.

‘I’m put into an environment I understand, so my effectiveness naturally increases both by the things I can conjure from my imagination and any techniques that would work in the Planar Continents. Meanwhile, it remains where it is, and is not likely to be much stronger than the others.’

She brought out Moon Splitter and gripped it in both hands, tightening her grasp until neither of her limbs felt entirely comfortable using up so much strength, and both of her sets of fingers were pushed to their limits. This wouldn’t help with fighting ordinarily, but despite the success of her mental blob, she was still within a mental domain, so she needed the right mind-set to win.

By putting in her maximum amount of effort into holding onto the weapon, she was connecting it to herself in a way that went beyond simply holding onto it tightly.

Frankly, she was not very fond of the concept, but it seemed to be working so far.

Using her mental blade, she manifested a layer of killing will atop the blade, Obliteration energy atop that, some physique energy atop it, and bloodline power on it, a strange light overwhelming any hint of the physical structure of the shard-forged sword. It was another falsehood of the mind, but that was where she would cease the interventions with reality as she would regularly perceive it and instead permit things to go as they should.

“Primordial Mind, are you incapable of speech entirely, or have you simply been keeping silent up until now?”

The entity gazed upon her, a fact she could only observe due to the sensation of its perception washing over her, and manifested into a form that she could observe with minimal effort. For whatever reason, it chose to take on a form similar to her own, albeit vague and lacking in facial features, resulting in a strange face of smooth skin gazing upon her. Other than that, she also lacked the Arm.

This thing tilted its head at her, and produced a sound from some unknown source.

“What are you? Why are you here?”

“To kill you, obviously. You endanger the Planar Continents, and callously destroy the people that live within. Unless you intend for me to simply ignore this and fuck off somewhere else, I see no reason why you would even ask this question.”

“I do not understand.”

“What part? Do you understand the language of the Planar Continents? You are clearly replying to me to some extent, so that can’t be it. The rest of what I’ve said is incredibly basic.”

“Why would you protect people? Why should some live and others die? Why act like this when you are who you are?”

“What does that mean? What kind of identity should I have that would not protect the people of Yi City, the place where I grew up, where most of my successes and failures occurred, where anyone I know and care about lives? Even if you were to proclaim that I am secretly a Primordial Deity – which would explain a few things, and introduce far more questions – that would not change my past.”

“What is your past? What are you?”

‘At least you’re not calling me a mortal thing, like the others. Would be nice if you actually talked to me,’ the Ascendant sighed, “So, are you going to stand here and let me take your energy, or will you fight me?”

“Fight you? I am you.”

‘… I have no idea whether this thing is serious right now,’ she noticed no abnormality in its tone, speech pattern or anything else, so it was entirely up to her interpretation, and she chose not to believe this entity over all of the evidence that she had seen with her own eyes, and sensed with her own body and mind. There was no reasonable connection between her and the Primordial Deities, whether this one in particular or just the whole lot of them in general, so either she was misunderstanding something or Primordial Mind was trying to confuse her. It didn’t really matter at the moment.

Wei Yi raised her blade above her head, both hands still tightly holding on, and let the power within gather, the vibrance of the sword rising with each mental breath until it was completely blinding.

She was about to bring it down in a mighty slash when Primordial Mind finally moved.

Its figure appeared next to her and swung at her with a fist coated in blazing crimson energy, the world of the mental web coming with it. What had previously been only a small gap within the space made up of her understanding of the world expanded to nearly everything her eyes could see, the Primordial Deity itself aside.

The movement was not just fast, but instant, and there was nothing that could be observed in order to counter or block her strike before it was already landing upon her. All of the force imbued within it went straight into her right arm, the right shoulder to be most precise, and swept the Ascendant off her feet, launching her into the ground of the mental landscape. The grey dust of the ancient battlefield was sent up in a large cloud, though the terrain itself didn’t change.

Nevertheless, she kept hold of her blade and even managed to preserve the collection of energy around it, so that the moment she got some grasp over her position in relation to Primordial Mind, she was able to bring Moon Splitter down, letting the energy surge out in a single mighty slash.

Unlike the last few times she tried attacking it, Primordial Mind seemed to have finally learned of the concept of evasion, as it disappeared from the spot and showed up right above her, a foot descending in a powerful blow that manage to break the mental domain’s static terrain. It plunged Wei Yi into the ground, though only a few metres after the grey sand surrounded her she found herself in the sky above the battlefield, falling back down into the dust and kicking up another massive cloud, though some of it gained a red tint.

‘How is it that strong? Either none of my methods work at all, or I have been approaching this with some wrong assumptions and from the wrong directions…’ she recovered the blood that had burst from her body, as the blood was actually her mental energy, and focused more on her divine sense, since she knew that it would be more effective in this place than anything else.

The moment after, the Primordial Deity appeared before her once more, and the sky above it ruptured afterwards. It was covered entirely in crimson light for a moment, dissipating while it jabbed forward, ready to strike either at her stomach or Moon Splitter, if she moved it in time. However, either one would be bad for her as she was clearly unable to endure the onslaught for too long without some method as yet unseen and undiscovered. One would strike at her directly, and the other would take down the primary weapon she currently had within this mental domain, where she knew not how to obtain another one, whether superior or inferior.

That thought somehow brought her attention to the fact that she had unconsciously limited herself a great deal, not just by her choice of weapon, but also in the application of some Dao.

‘For something to be in the form of shards, it has to be broken, but that also means that anything that is broken up in some way, shape or form could be said to be in shards. I don’t even need to use a sword right here and now, since those aren’t my specialty,’ she chose to do neither of the obvious options and instead let the blade in her hands explode into raw Obliteration energy, spreading out and clashing with the figure of th Primordial Deity.

By some miracle, a blade that was previously easily avoided carried far more strength in the form of energy, and it repelled the entity that seemed to move instantly through the mental domain. The figure, still looking exactly like her back when she had both arms, didn’t seem too perturbed by this.

“What poor skill. Is this the best that I can do?”

“Oh, fuck you. You can’t hit me either-” she managed to reply before a fist met with her back.

This time, she hadn’t even had the chance to perceive the strike coming towards her, as it simply changed from not present to present, but she made sure to release some of the Obliteration energy to strike at Primordial Mind if it remained standing behind her previous position – roughly a mile away from where she ended up, managing to avoid landing face first in the sand by sticking out her arms and hoping for the best.

‘She- It moves far too quickly. How exactly is it doing this?’ the Ascendant pondered for a moment while spreading out her Obliteration energy everywhere she could, putting focus on the space immediately surrounding her. Her goal was to prevent Primordial Mind from striking her, and it seemed that it wasn’t invulnerable in the mental domain, for it coated itself in energy while doing anything that would endanger its body. That meant that it was possible to damage it to some extent, and so anything that would dissuade it from getting closer to her would be beneficial.

Of course, the next thing to happen was for her poor spine to be struck again, with even greater force.

As she was blown through her field of Obliteration energy, she happened to see that there was a phantom of a fist in the air where she had been hit, and that Primordial Mind itself stood elsewhere, not even mimicking the strike.

She wasn’t even able to land before another such phantom showed up, and this time it had the full form of the Primordial Deity, perhaps due to the absence of hostile energy around her.

Of course, Primordial Mind itself still stood calmly some distance away, looking upon her with no literal expression yet conveying a uniquely mocking gaze that, when combined with the ease that it seemed to be able to divide its thoughts to attack with multiple figures at once, struck a particular nerve that Wei Yi had been managing to supress since the time that she learned that the natural form of the Red Phantom Flood simply didn’t work for her.

In essence, she had always been disappointed by the fact that her mind was incapable of splitting up in the manner that would permit this method, among many others, to function as intended. Now, this Primordial Deity that claimed to be her in some form performed the exact same technique seemingly without any issue.

There was little evidence that this was indeed the same type of method, nor was there any reason to doubt that a Primordial Deity of the mental domain would be able to accomplish something that involved the manipulation and division of the mind, but that could not stop a raw emotional outburst fuelled by the endless sea of killing will within her head and heart. Fuelled by it, she had another thought, and the mere concept brought her into action, disrupting this phantasmal world she had created to grant herself a foundation in the mental landscape.

Her mirror image vanished as a result, leaving her facing the unclear form of Primordial Mind, but she didn’t hesitate to unleash all of her killing will directly at it, ignoring anything else.

This was the most raw form of attack that she could possibly execute anywhere, but it functioned excellently, cracking the mental landscape with one mighty blow and fracturing the figure of the Primordial Deity. The instant that these fractures manifested, the Ascendant’s power was amplified against Primordial Mind, and so she simply released more and more of her power, bathing the mental landscape in a choking smoke and overwhelming silver.

In a flash, the mental domain was gone, and the Primordial Deity was before her in reality.

Some kind of sound was produced from it, but outside of its own mental domain, there was no resemblance to the Ascendant, nor any recognisable words emerging from it. If not for her near flawless memory, she would have doubted that she had even seen that attempt at mimicry.

“I don’t know what you had been trying to tell me, but I don’t care. I will stride forward as best I can, and just as I would have never permitted my apparent connection with the Great Leeches to stop me, I shall never stop saving the world from your kind. If the things you said weren’t just nonsense, then rejoice in that fact,” she said, a moment before her killing will returned and turned her eyes to orbs of gleaming crimson, the rest of her body shrouded in smoke as she produced Moon Splitter and raised her left hand into the air, letting the scene from the mental domain to repeat itself in reality.

Primordial Mind offered no reply, and when the blade descended, it did not resist, merely letting itself be struck by her power.

A moment after, the surge of energy and the expansion of yet another vision state told her everything she needed to know about its survival. Her cultivation’s state surged forth yet again, breaking the boundary into the eighth stage, but before her killing will could burst into the eighth realm, the newly acquired domain over the Mental Dao forced the smoke to grow in density instead, compressing a great deal of growth into a slightly smaller quantity, yet a far greater power than she had previously wielded.

In this way, it just barely stayed at the Half-Step Mental Discord realm, or, if put in a way that mattered to her more, below the proper eighth realm, allowing the increase in her cultivation to balance out the negatives of her excessive killing will ever so slightly more than before.

‘I would love to know whether it did speak the truth at any point, but I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Perhaps it won’t matter either way, or I’ll learn that it was trying to tell me that we are all connected due to the nature of planar energy or something along those lines…’ she thought to herself, placing Moon Splitter back into the House of Gold and taking a deep breath.

Unlike the last few battles, her clothing was practically untouched, but the sudden insight into mental energy prompted her to place her hand upon her crimson robes and come into contact with the threads of killing intent within them.

Their origins were something that she had never quite grasped, but given that their overall power was significantly lower than what she was able to produce nowadays. Thus, with the right degree of control over mental energy, she was able to take over many of the threads and replace them with her own energy, letting the threads propagate until they formed a single powerful weave throughout the entirety of the Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival, making them gain a hint of smoke within their interior. A slight change in the fabric’s colour followed, but it only became a little darker.

However, she couldn’t remain in place for long, whether to admire her work or observe the effects Primordial Mind would have with some of its energy dissipating into the world.

There was something to the north, near Paragon, and given that Primordial Inferno had been taken out some time ago, there was one major threat remaining. Frankly, she was far more concerned about it, as the entropic power contained within the Great Worm, as well as the Great Worm’s own prodigious size, made it for a very threatening entity if left unchecked and permitted to roam where it was not supposed to be.

For instance, it could consume Paragon, and then she’d have many problems to address.

In this case, it was best to pre-empt such things, and so she had to rush through things once more.

‘Provided that everything keeps rushing past me like this, I suspect that I will not do as good a job of managing Yi City as I would like,’ she sighed, ‘At this point, I have to wonder whether I can create a clone of myself somehow, though that would just create more problems. If it shared my mind, I would have to control two things at once, and if it had a different one, then we might easily conflict with one another in the long term and cause more problems that we could ever possibly resolve with our cooperation. That, and I would need to split up my power with it.’

She wasn’t able to obtain a single piece of insight regarding the creation of clones throughout her life, so this was not a useful topic to pursue in the first place. All it did was waste a few instants of time that she could have used on literally anything else.

With that on her mind, she headed off to Paragon.