Path of the Ascendant

The colossal figure of the Great Worm burst through the sands and was met with an enormous dome encompassing the ancient fortress. It was purely composed of smoke interlaced with thin silver threads, and their union produced a barrier that even the entity’s enormous jaws couldn’t break through.

Even the entropic power that flowed from within its numerous holes in the body and corroded the smoke was only able to manifest small holes within the weave, ones that were recovered nearly instantly with the Ascendant’s killing will, which was still far more plentiful than she needed it to be. It was mostly her energy rather than the structure which managed to block the ancient entity, but it was more than enough for the moment.

She did not want to battle with the Great Worm by letting it slam against a barrier enough times to break down its body, as that would simply be inefficient and inconvenient to herself and everyone inside the dome. Instead, she simply wanted to pull the Great Worm out of the ground for long enough to get a good grasp on its location, then get into a fight with it.

Eventually, she would either take it down, or it would eat her, and neither option required much explanation.

“Dragons, qilins, hold that thing down!” she called out, bursting through the spherical barrier and letting her allied ancient beasts emerge behind her, before reforming the obstacle and letting it shroud Paragon in shadow despite it being the middle of the day. It was better than leaving openings.

As soon as she and her forces were out in the sands, they rushed into action, the dragons getting to the enormous worm first, before it even had the chance to recover from its initial collision. They turned to their draconic forms and grabbed onto the more stable parts of the Great Worm’s form, forcing their claws as far into it as they could without actively tearing the worm’s flesh. Their wings gave them the speed advantage, though the qilins came soon after, some assisting the dragons and others grabbing onto their own positions and forcing them to be still, some distance above the sand but not so far that it would be difficult to keep the Great Worm in place.

This set the scene for Wei Yi to manifest above the Great Worm, a vast sea of fractured Obliteration energy bound with unseen chains glowing right above her.

It crackled with great intensity and had a glow bright enough to overwhelm the sun, both in the eyes of those nearby, and the people within the dome of smoke and silver, who only got to see a burst of crimson blackness surging through the smallest openings of the dome and illuminating the streets of Paragon in a most spectacular fashion.

All of it was bound to Moon Splitter a moment later, when it appeared in her left hand’s clawed grip, and brought down upon the ancient worm without any delay, for she had learned from her fight with Primordial Mind. There was no reason to be slow when it came to attacking a foe as dangerous as this one, even if it seemed to have no ability to escape nor to evade her attack. Even if what she was seeing now represented the absolute peak of the Great Worm’s power, there was no loss in taking precautions.

Her power fell down upon the Great Worm and tore into its body, forcing the entropic power back for a few moments and letting her Obliteration attack the physical form of the entity itself, rather than the strange power within.

The outcome was a worm that was even more torn than before, and one that seemed all the more interested in escaping. It thrashed like never before, and a dozen dragons were thrown off in an instant, their grip simply being insufficient to withstand the force of an entity as large as this one. Their loss of grip meant that the qilins had to loosen their hold as well, as they were now at greater risk of being caught by the power of entropy inside the Great Worm. Much like the Ascendant still lacked the ability to restore her original left arm, she couldn’t undo the force of entropy on the ancient beasts.

“Try your various methods! See if you’re able to dispel the entropy, and if not, retreat. I’ll take care of it,” she said, waving her hand and manifesting a series of fractures chains from her killing will, woven around true chains of Law for maximum effect. At the same time, she focused her energy on the creation of a few dozens of totems to project her power from, but did not place them down just yet.

It would be somewhat disrespectful to liken the dragons to common birds that swooped in on their prey, but they most certainly resembled exactly that, effectively pecking at the Great Worm’s flesh and occasionally attempting abnormal methods, many of which needed to be tested within their human forms for the optimal effect of most techniques. After all, techniques were primarily created by humans for human meridians networks, and the dragons were most fond of their human forms for their most common activity, so they were most used to the humanoid forms as well, resulting in this strange situation where dragons are rarely in dragon form.

Regardless, the elements were drawn upon by the dragons, manifesting in all kinds of ways, but when the Ascendant had to rely upon her chains to ensure the Great Worm didn’t slither its way out easily, it became very clear that few of the attacks had success in damaging the entropic energy.

‘What exactly would work to prevent the natural decay of the world? I don’t exactly have access to many such things, as even the time that the warp of a spatial realm was held back occurred only because the decay consumed planar energy, rather than deteriorating reality itself,’ the Ascendant thought, waving her left hand to bring the totems into being around the Worm.

At that moment, she sensed a vast number of powerful auras entering her range of perception, and doing so from above, appearing amidst it as if flying in through a rift in reality that evaded her completely. She looked up and witnessed something rather similar, as a number of magnificent flaming entities flew out of a cloud and descended quickly, leaving behind a bright trail of orange and crimson tongues of fire.

These beings had great wings, flaming feathers, beaks that seemed sufficient to break through mountains, and a general presence that made the world gaze up at them instead of the sun.

To put it far more briefly, they were phoenixes, the last of the three primary species of ancient beasts.

“We come to assist the humans of the Western Continent! This Worm shall be taken down with our combined efforts!” a feminine voice appeared in her ears, as well as those of the dragons and qilins, originating from the descending flaming birds. Both cute and sultry, this voice immediately caught their attention, though the Ascendant somehow had far better resistance to such things.

She would have liked to point out a few things to them, like the fact that only two humans were involved in today’s battle – Chu Su was out of the dome as well, but not involved yet – but the Great Worm wasn’t just sitting still while they had a friendly chat, got to know one another closely, maybe slept together a few times, learnt everything there was to know about one another’s bodies… Whatever the origin and true nature of the Worm was, it had no patience for this.

Thus, Wei Yi forced her chains tighter, then willed them all to rise up, flinging the Great Worm’s extremely lengthy body to ascend with them, though even chains of Law woven with killing will were only able to force it a few metres into the air.

Some of the phoenixes tried rushing to the ground at the greatest speed they could manage, but even then they were able to reach their target a moment after it rose to the highest level it could. Their wings stopped them in place once they flew low enough, and the surge of flame that followed covered the flap of wings swallowed the body of the Great Worm, overwhelming even the entropic power within for a moment. From this alone, one could judge that their powers were at the peak of their Oblivion Halo realm, but they weren’t even the strongest figures in the group of phoenixes.

No, the most powerful was the one that flew highest and slowest, but whose power clearly flowed infinitely from within, surging with the magnificent power of the Imperfect Rift realm.

This phoenix eventually dropped from the skies as well, stalling her flight above her peers, and as the flames cleared, the outstretched wings of the phoenix lit up with numerous runes and brands, which united together into an intricate pattern and fell in a series of beams upon the Great Worm’s body, striking massive openings into it.

Just as her peers, the entropic power was forced to recede for another moment, letting more of the Worm’s hide be burnt by the glorious golden flames of the phoenixes. In this way, the Great Worm had more than half of its body worn away, leaving it in a horrific state that looked worse than most attempts to resurrect the dead, or the least healthy forms of hatred automatons from the Kong Prison Realm, where their bodies barely resembled human ones yet persisted nonetheless.

Whether the Worm would do so at all remained to be seen, as the Ascendant used those numerous totems to channel her energy and employed Omit Attacker through each and every one of them, spitting out blood before she could even see the effects.

A thousand instances of Moon Splitter momentarily flashed in the air and cut down, blazing with Obliteration energy that had never been there. It fell upon the Great Worm, striking the weakest parts of it that could be spotted through Fault Perception, and in many instances, severing weaker parts of the body from one another, causing the already pathetic state of the ancient entity to deteriorate to the point that something within tore and fractured beyond the state of cohesion. With a ripping sound, the entire form of the Great Worm was fractured.

From within broke out a monstrosity that finally gained form outside its boundary, a thing with humanoid form and malice directed towards all of reality. The eighth realm’s aura was obvious.

“That… which one of you is this era’s Master of Yi City?” the leading phoenix questioned, instantly flying over to the dragons, qilins, and subsequently the Ascendant, “That thing is, as we feared, one of the-”

“Primordial Deities, and the only one that doesn’t have the prefix of Primordial – for some reason,” she finished for them, “Entropy, right? I thought this would be the case.”

“And you were fine with unleashing it just like that?” before speaking the phoenix landed beside her and, in a burst of flame, changed from a large bird to a woman of average height, clothed in fine red silk with feather patterns that resembled the dress of a dancer in the north, showing much and concealing only the essentials, “Have you prepared some plan for dealing with it?”

“I have killed Primordial Deities before. This one might not prove that different.”

“In that case, we’ll get to know one another later, once that thing is taken care of,” the phoenix said, her tone a strange mix of sultry and mocking, her own confusion making it through to her words.

Wei Yi paid it no mind, since she didn’t have the time, and because she was expecting such a reaction from a group of phoenixes that had lived in some cloud yet managed to completely overlook events occurring beneath them, presumably due to the same slumber as the qilins and dragons. For someone to announce their ability to do something that the Master of Yi City, Kong Shi Meng, had been unable to do despite easily being the strongest of his time, was naturally seen as unlikely.

Their conversation had occurred at the limits of speed permitted by spoken language, so Entropy had the time to stabilise into a proper form and turn towards them, producing horrific screeches that seemed to be actively eroding their ears and minds.

Fortunately, that appeared to be an illusion, and no actual harm came to them right away.

“Try attacking it again! Its state might have changed after departing from the Worm’s shell,” Wei Yi instructed, extending her command to the Chu Patriarch as well as all those that would hear her.

She did not expect this to be the case, but it had the chance of disturbing the entity enough to weaken it, force it to retreat, or do something else entirely, which would be fine so long as it was in their favour. The Primordial Deity that had newly appeared from within the Great Worm was likely to be rather strong at the moment, and given its unknown nature, she didn’t expect to be able to handle it particularly easily, so forcing its escape or sealing it with Xu Shi Meng’s assistance would also be acceptable.

At the same time, she was focusing upon her own means, which was the powerful Obliteration energy and the principles of Law that might allow the entity to be dissipated into something that she had the ability to harness.

In theory, Entropy belonged to the group of Primordial Deities which lacked a solid state that somewhat matched the typical nature of existence for living things. In more simple terms, it did not have a stable form like Primordial Nature or Primordial Earth, but was more like Primordial Inferno, existing as a phenomenon that should not have any presence in the manner that it did. Primordial Nature could have existed as a statue composed of various abnormal specimens of flora and fauna, put together by some twisted mind, but for flame to simply exist in the air was far more abnormal, though significantly less unpleasant to look at.

Funny how immaterial entities of raw elemental power were more appealing than solid horrors.

The dragons, qilins and phoenixes attacked together, combining their flames into several mighty waves formed by each species in turn. One resembled a dragon’s breath, the next was akin to a charging qilin, and the third was much like the waves produced by the wings of the phoenixes when they descended from the skies, but none of the three proved to have the desired effects upon the entity. The only positive was that Entropy didn’t attack, but it was unknown what the cause was.

Then, Chu Su stepped in, unleashing all of the energy he had built up during his wait to produce a vast forest of trees concentrated right at the ancient entity’s position, entangling it in foliage that seemed so dry that it would be lit by a stray spark from a mile away.

None of the fire-using ancient beasts needed to be told what to do then. With their powers gathered, they unleashed their most powerful techniques in one go, letting their flames unite in perfect harmony.

The forest that appeared in moments burnt down even quicker, not even leaving ash as the flames and Entropy itself effectively joined forces to devour it. Still, the brief exposure to the absurdly dry wood permitted the flames to roar to an extreme temperature, reminiscent of the cooler parts of Primordial Inferno’s flickering form, and had some effect upon the visual form of the Primordial Deity, though it was impossible to make any clear conclusions regarding the harm dealt to Entropy as it did not appear to care at all.

Instead, it looked in the Ascendant’s direction – presumably, as its form was still rather unclear – and then lunged forth. Its movement was nearly instant, as if space and time itself didn’t matter to this Primordial Deity, but Wei Yi had prepared for something like this.

Her totems, with figures with single eyes still glowing atop them, all burst into action at once, their forms igniting and vanishing as the power stored within melted into the form of Law, imbuing the various chains surrounding her and Entropy with as much energy as she was possibly able to muster. Unlike the better form of Law usage, which employed chains of Law to further particular effects to a desirable conclusion, she had to rely on stilling the chains to forcefully stop a certain effect.

In this case, she couldn’t stop the existence of Entropy – the Primordial Deity, not the phenomenon itself – but she could prevent something from reaching its destination. One way to look at it would be as the opposite of her Omit Movement, where she skipped the steps needed to reach a location and simply made it so that she was there.

Against Entropy, she needed to take the steps it made, then make it so that the destination remained beyond it.

The very thought caused some damage to her internal organs and nearly made her spit out a bloody mist, but she forced it to remain inside her body and swallowed it back down before straining her voice and making a command to maximise the power of Law, “Stop!”

Her words imbued the chains with that last drop that suddenly made them go taut, completely stopping the Primordial Deity’s advance. It had been caught a few metres from her, enough to let its entropic influence wear away the air she breathed in at that moment, but the pause was enough for her to raise her Arm and aim her palm at the entity, focusing the energy of Slaughtering Shadow into a ray of absolute light.

The Elysian Blast struck the form of the Primordial Deity and repulsed it, taking advantage of its complete stop in motion to impart an irresistible backward force upon the entity.

All of the distance it had covered was undone in a flash of blinding light, and the flash was immediately followed by the tremble of all the chains of Law that had been forcefully stilled. When they shook, it was like they reverberated what had just occurred here, and soon a series of flashes seemed to emerge out of nowhere, striking Entropy’s form one after another, forcing it back less and less each time, yet nonetheless succeeding in widening the gap to the point that some of the people present lacked the ability to reach it with their energy.

With this sudden opening, the Primordial Deity did not appear to be able to reproduce its previous feat, or at least it didn’t wish to do so. Instead, it turned to the phoenixes and dragons, the two groups nearest to it, and flew at them with a lower yet still considerable speed.

“Attack it! Don’t let that thing get even a single chance to touch you!” Wei Yi announced, though her words were hardly necessary when the ancient beasts would never let themselves be affected by an entity that could deteriorate all of reality to a fundamental level. It would be beyond stupid, to the extent that even the most aroused of dragons wouldn’t forget about it while busy with other things.

Together, the three groups focused on more complex methods than simple flames, forming various planar constructs and arranging a larger array that was rather messy, as none of the three forces had the opportunities to design a proper collaborative formation after being apart and in stasis for many years. Still, they had worked together in the past, both thanks to Kong Shi Meng’s insistence and more personal reasons when the Master of Yi City had not yet been born, and after his disappearance, so there was enough knowledge about one another’s techniques to execute a basic combined attack.

The flaming wings of a phoenix seemed to manifest around a great charging force, though it lacked clear form and seemed to exist more as a concept. Both were wrapped in powerful scales and filled with flaming blood, akin to that of a dragon.

It slammed into Entropy and pushed it back by just a few steps. Nonetheless, it was enough for the Ascendant to reform her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow and release another Elysian Blast.

That threw it back even further, and it seemed sufficient to finally prompt it to cease its rush forth. As quickly as it had first lunged at Wei Yi, it turned and vanished into the desert sands, leaving behind only the spots in the desert where the sand became finer and, in some instances, deteriorated to fundamental particles that could not be put back into their original form without the power of the ninth realm.

Everything was quiet, for a short while.

The leading phoenix sighed, “Well, that was-”

A dome of light suddenly manifested in the distance, completely trapping an entity that was unseen, yet clearly present, but it did not remain for long. Two primary figures, one incorporeal and made of a certain Law, and another clearly composed of flesh and blood, rose into the air and exerted two very different forces upon it.

Normally, a while dome like this, made from Xu Shi Meng’s influence, wouldn’t be broken by something this simple, but from the last few times Wei Yi had spoken with him, she knew that he was able to exert less power than before. The dome had just formed, but it had already been worn away more than any of the other domes, and there was less energy invested into it from the start. Unlike the others, which had received the world’s planar energy readily, this one had taken only the amount that had composed its exterior volume.

Thus, an entity that surpassed a number of other Primordial Deities due to the nature of its existence could erode a weak barrier such as this one with sufficient ease.

Of course, one had to remember the other entity present at the scene, one that the dragons, qilins and phoenixes could not recognise no matter how much they looked, but one that the Ascendant could distinguish instantly with her divine sense and thus connect with one of the many recorded figures in her Ascendant’s Library. So long as she was not fooled by a force beyond her perception, it was a man that led the Preservers of Eternity – Shi Gong.

‘And he is at the eighth realm! Of course, that explains so much!’

When the world changed and the Primordial Deities began their emergence, it had begun due to a sudden breakthrough by someone to the north of the Western Continent. It had remained unclear who it could have been due to the lack of any clear evidence of their existence, but there was one figure that had previously been at the Oblivion Halo realm and seemed to be very near the peak of it.

This man also vanished before he could be taken care of, and left her a little angry at his sudden departure.

“Hey, you! I promised I’d stab you, so get over here!”

Her voice reached the man in the air, and there was an obvious reaction, though it was subdued quickly. With this alone, it was clear that she was not mistaken, and so she had a grasp of what he might be able to do on his own, though not what he could do with Entropy at his side.

In fact, she didn’t really know how those two ended up together, nor whether Entropy was even going to work beside Shi Gong in any capacity. For all she knew, they ended up in Xu Shi Meng’s hastily assembled dome by accident, happened to use a method to break free at the same time, and would now fight one another until one lost and the other was greatly weakened, letting her take on whichever one remained to succeed easily.

That would be far too coincidental and fortunate, so she didn’t dare hope for such a thing.

‘Well, the success of that attack resonance was luck, so perhaps I could… except that my luck has this odd property of showing up most prominently when Xu Shi Meng is not around, or not  paying attention. Perhaps his true purpose is to siphon my luck, or to contribute it from afar… Both would be odd, given that luck isn’t really…’ she paused for quite a while – in terms of her mental domain, not the outside world, ‘Why can’t luck exist? Nothing else here makes sense, so if some force is powerful enough, it can surely nudge things along in just the right ways to ensure the success of another party. This could be called luck easily.’

She had to mentally slap herself for overlooking something so significant, yet so obvious. Clearly, even she could exist as luck for someone at the first realm or below, provided she remained in the shadows and directed events in their favour without directly revealing herself, so why couldn’t a more powerful entity bestow a trace of luck upon her in the same manner?

‘This would imply that Xu Shi Meng is in the ninth realm or above, which, while in line with my observations, is rather odd and concerning. What kind of entity – human or otherwise – would be able to remain active in the world and possess the power of a realm that went extinct?’

A likely answer would be that he was an otherworldly demon, but that would call into question why he lacked any hints of the otherworldly gifts that Wei Yi was able to pick up on. There was no strange absence within the body, no pulse of energy that should not be there, nothing of the sort. If there was no otherworldly gift, and no timeless aura, then there should have been nothing stopping the heavens from causing this man’s cultivation to plummet, or sealing it off like with Long Mingyun.

Unfortunately, she had not obtained enough evidence to understand the truth, so she couldn’t complete her comprehension here.

What was clear with the presence of both Shi Gong and Entropy was that she couldn’t let them go, as they could travel elsewhere and wreak havoc in places where the Ascendant could not target them quite as quickly or effectively as in the northern desert, where she could do as she wished without fear of damaging her people, or Yi City in other words. She needed to take the threat on now, for however long it took, and either become like the warriors of the Wu District, stuck in battle until their vigil was done, or take down Entropy once and for all.

She went straight into action, forming a few sentences for the ancient beasts and Patriarchs with her divine sense and letting them ripple over to them while she rushed forth and waved her right hand, letting her left Arm condense into a ray of Elysian light.

At once, the world’s chains were stopped forcefully, but before they could impart much stress upon her form, the Elysian Blast shot out at Shi Gong, and the chains were let go, causing the world to reverberate what had just occurred. Her words reached the ancient beasts only then, and their contents were simply enough.

‘You cannot defeat Entropy with your power, and so that man, Shi Gong, will also be difficult to defeat, but you must help me. Attack whenever possible in smaller groups, and recuperate in any breaks that you obtain. Entropy must be defeated!’