Path of the Ascendant

The great rift in the air that formed the inhuman figure experienced a series of changes in rapid succession, and each one produced a new phenomenon. Spheres that flew out in an attempt to drown the battlefield, arcs of strange energy, rifts that popped open amidst the air and ground, all of it emerged nearly at once and forced the Heavenly Masters to move with such haste that many barely understood how they even got out unharmed.

With the support of the world’s energy, they were rather familiar with this sensation, so they weren’t too distracted by it. They had just enough focus left to resist the series of a hundred beams that suddenly surged out of the Primordial Deity’s body.

Still, there was only so much that a mind could endure without rest or sleep, especially if they weren’t the Ascendant.

Each moment that passed indicated that there would be an ever-greater chance of their number dropping, and it was becoming clear that one would soon need to sacrifice themselves in order for the others to continue to endure. It wasn’t something that they wished for, of course, but each of the Heavenly Masters had a great deal of experience in combat.

They knew that not all would make it out alive.

Except, they weren’t usually presented with the sudden manifestation of a star directly above their foe, a Primordial Deity that appeared fearsome enough to devour it in one go through some obtuse process. It seemed to wish to do exactly that, the various lines forming the entity’s shape twisting into horrific jaws and teeth that faced the sky and opened wide, many openings appearing in the void simply through their proximity to it. The visual was so distracting that many overlooked the sudden manifestation of a barrier between them and Primordial Invader, as well as the star above.

The star grew, and so did the entity that sought to eat it, but after a certain point, the former changed. It looked to reach some invisible point, some unseen limit, and the growth ceased.

Some of the Heavenly Masters thought it to be a failure on the part of the one that manifested it, others believed that it was a technique that was complete and merely waiting to be unleashed, but none knew what was going to occur when the star suddenly changed, its surface collapsing onto itself with growing speed.

It went from the size of a large manor to the size of a human, and only then did it cease, darkening as the light around it looked to twist and bend, forming a luminous corona around the spectacle.

Only the Ascendant, who begun outside the dome she formed, then appeared within it without the notice of any of the Heavenly Masters, knew that her plan had been successful in that moment, when Primordial Invader did not turn back and flee. She had made a black sun before, and she had formed a star before as well, but both of those appearances were weak relative to what she had now. In particular, the black sun needed to build up quite a bit before it could consume matter at a proper pace, and the stars tended to explode after lingering for a while, before it became more difficult for her to even form one.

Using her understanding of these phenomena, she not only managed to repeat the formation of a star within the Planar Continents, but merged the two concepts into something superior.

The very moment that the corona of light appeared around the black sun, it was complete, and the force that it should have exhibited appeared instantly. A vast force suddenly gripped everything within its range of influence, and pulled it towards the black sun, and as it did so, it deformed the very fabric of reality, not to mention the barrier that Wei Yi had established, which bulged inwardly.

One could see the shape of Primordial Invader twist and become rounded as it was forced closer to the black sun, something that it had clearly recognised as a threat even while its origin was something to be devoured, in some manner.

Its unnatural form twisted and deformed in its own ways, trying to flee, trying to break out of the immense grip of the black sun, but all that its flailing and distorting managed to achieve was letting it discover the Ascendant’s quiet presence, standing below it, her feet being held on with all the chains of Law that she was able to put into place. Even then, she could sense Law twist beneath the black sun, and simultaneously become perfected, achieving yet another paradox that she could only understand as the discrepancy between the Planar Continents and natural reality.

As the Primordial Deity was brought closer to the black sun, it seemed to travel more slowly, yet it neared the black sun with greater speed, resulting in a peculiar sight when the world suddenly snapped to what it should be, the entire jaw of Primordial Invader being strangely wrapped around the black sun and pulled into its depths.

The very moment that one of the many teeth of the entity sank into the infinite darkness, it lurched inward and almost seemed to be bitten by some unseen thing, provoking a horrendous noise that was far worse than any parting cry or howl that she had ever heard before. Somehow, the worst thing about it remained the fact that the entity wasn’t yet dead from something like this, and that it might not die even if she invested her full strength into what came next – for she wasn’t done yet.

By simply removing the binding of chains around herself, she flew up into the air and forced the world’s Laws to bind Primordial Invader, bringing it closer to the area right below the black sun, and then reached out with the right hand and pulled back an invisible chain.

Light and energy surged out of the top and bottom of the black sun, a vast quasar bursting right into the form of the Primordial Deity and pushing the Ascendant away, letting her escape the boundary of her own barrier before she sealed it right back up, ensuring that the only energy that surged out was insufficient to damage any of the Heavenly Masters, though it did produce a vast gash within the landscape that could remain for decades to come even amidst the constant fall of snow. Of course, it would be significantly less impactful than the quasar.

In anticipation of the destruction, Wei Yi spread her energy around every one of the Heavenly Masters and threw them back, letting them handle the landing. At worst, they wouldn’t die, so it was fine.

The screech persisted while the power contained within the black sun rushed out, faster and faster, brighter and brighter, until a final pulse collapsed the black sun and completely obliterated not only her barrier, but also the majority of the things within walking distance of the black sun. Any hints of snow were gone, and the ground had sunk in a great deal, manifesting a vast crater that would be called a large lake or a small sea if water was to fill it.

A slight fissure in the sky indicated the remnants of the black sun, though it recovered slowly but visibly, and Primordial Invader had returned to the ground, likely thanks to the force of the quasar from the black sun, and was finally visibly damaged. Its shape was crooked in a manner that didn’t appear like a deliberate transformation of its form, and there were numerous small rips within its form, celestial blood dripping slowly down. The pleasure that Wei Yi felt upon seeing those marks was lesser than many she had experienced before, but it was extremely welcome regardless.

The Heavenly Spear, who ended up near her, asked the moment she recovered her breath, “Will you be needing our help with this? I’ve reached the eighth realm, and some others have as well, but… I don’t think we can do things like that.”

“It’s fine. Stand back and let me take care of this thing. You deserve a rest.”

“Yes, Matriarch!” the Heavenly Spear exclaimed proudly.

Wei Yi chose not to bring up how the woman looked like she was barely able to stand, or that her attempt to raise a hand in some form of a salute failed so miserably that she simply didn’t bother with the movement at all, leaving her arms hanging by her sides. The Heavenly Master had done her best up to this point, so it was best for her to rest for a little while instead of wasting her time on what were ultimately meaningless gestures.

To ensure the others got the idea without her needing to converse with them, she returned straight to the centre of the battlefield with Moon Splitter appearing upon her reappearance. She slashed sideways, targeting one of the larger openings on the body of the Primordial Deity. However, she did not get far into the strike before she noticed something.

All of the energy that filed the air before this still remained, yet it was fractured into tiny, insignificant pieces and clustered together at the epicentre of the quasar. However, the overall quantity hadn’t remained the same, but leapt up greatly, somehow condensing five or six times the usual amount of energy within the same space. Since much of it was incredibly fine and pure, it meant that it was even easier to absorb it than it usually was thanks to the Ascendant’s Path technique. Just by breathing, the rate at which energy was gained would be multiplied greatly, and that wasn’t all.

It had only begun building up after the quasar ended, and that was a few seconds ago. So far, it did not appear to cease to slow down in the slightest, meaning that the rate of cultivation may climb.

Provided that this continued, she may well be able to jump into the second stage without even needing to defeat Primordial Invader and take its power, and if she ended up accomplishing that – which was necessary, if she didn’t want the thing to rampage through her lands – she might near the third stage. Therefore, she would be only three stages away from the half-way point of the realm, and extremely close to a great boost in strength.

Those half-way points and other aspects of perfected realms were what brought out some of her greater strengths, so it was imperative that she made full use of the opportunity to climb ahead of the Primordial Deities, which have grown in strength alongside her own rise in realm.

Primordial Invader made another noise and distorted its form, producing a hundred rift-like spheres that flew out from its many lines and shapes, but Wei Yi simply cut through them and let the openings that formed afterward be broken in the same manner, the tip of Moon Splitter landing upon the ethereal flesh of the entity, entering the wound and forcefully widening it just a little bit.

She jumped back the moment after and reached out with her right hand, enforcing the Entropy Dao around the wound that she had opened up further.

Her whole right arm instantly experienced a series of internal ruptures, numerous blood vessels tearing open and pouring blood outside of its intended place, but the desired effect took hold, and the area around the wound crumbled, losing stability and structure. Her authority over entropy paled to what the Primordial Deity of the same name was able to accomplish by coming into contact with something, but she could make up for it in part by using something else as her primary weapon.

For instance, she had her newly realised cosmic energy, Obliteration, Elysian Blasts and a number of invocations that utilise Law, so all she needed to do was determine the thing that Primordial Invader was weakest to. Since the last time they fought, this may have changed, so it was best to be cautious.

Last time, she made use of railgun bolts to some effectiveness, so she quickly manifested a few dozen of them and shot them out with the imbuement of all the elements without conversion to Obliteration, letting them fly at different rates and targeted each one at a different injury upon the form of the Primordial Deity, while also including what she learned from the creation of her Replica Abyssal Eye and the totems of Ancestral Call to permit them to guide themselves towards the target if – when – it moved.

After she hit it with her sword, the entity appeared to be jolted awake and no longer stood by quite as casually, instead beginning its typical tactic of breaking apart into smaller entities. One appeared to concentrate the majority of the Primordial Deity’s injuries, bleeding actively and barely retaining stability, but all of the other fragments went around it and created an obstruction in the form of their own rift-like bodies.

They proceeded to target her railgun bolts before they could be fired, taking advantage of the brief moment of charging, and each of the split bodies applied their own method.

Orbs that collapsed into larger stationary rifts were among the most common, but beams, smaller odd spines, lashing limbs, strange pool-like rifts that slithered towards her and the railgun bolts, among other things, making it rather difficult to process the situation, but with a little bit of guidance, she was able to let a little under half of her initial projectiles land upon one of the targets, though many of the others hit the projectiles of Primordial Invader instead and caused them to either activate early, or be broken and therefore nullified entirely, which ensured that none of the Heavenly Masters needed to care.

She did raise a few layers of barriers so that they could properly rest without being at constant risk of death from a random attack, but these kinds of barriers were rather transient. A single proper strike by Primordial Invader would ruin them entirely, and might even pass a few of them rather easily in one go, but it was better than nothing.

While it was divided into many parts, she knew that she had a good opportunity to limit the Primordial Deity’s power significantly by taking out at least one of them, whether she was to target the most damaged one of the lot or a mostly undamaged one.

Thus, as soon as they had released their retaliatory projectiles and went into a brief period of cooling down, so to speak, she vanished from the spot and appeared beside one of the entities, swinging her blade and aiming for the thinnest part of the body. It tried to retaliate quickly, but she simply moved to another point with another Omit Movement, letting her swing continue at full speed. Obviously, the many parts of Primordial Invader cooperated in some manner, so the second divided entity struck back with greater speed, only prompting her to move elsewhere and continue.

By the end of a single swing, she shifted through a dozen places in a single instant, producing afterimages as if she was standing in all places at one, and her final reappearance was right next to one of the divided entities she had already appeared next to, meaning that it had already swung at her and missed, preventing the strange lashing tendril that it produced from performing another attack.

Moon Splitter impacted the entity, breaching only a little before it was stuck, unable to progress much further even when her killing will was imbued into it and the Shard of Warfare within.

Fortunately, she didn’t intend to cut through in one go, especially not when she had used Omit Movement a whole lot and realised she had a perfect opportunity before her. One of the issues with the series of Omit techniques was that she needed to do various calculations in order to properly execute a complex move, but she had just performed a strike against a number of foes that had not yet moved, and which could be hit in the exact same manner easily enough. All that she needed to do was grasp onto the remnants of her previous positions and motions, to repeat their potential consequence within a single instant, then multiply each one a thousand times until her endless strikes pierced the incorporeal flesh of the Primordial Deity.

‘That’s all I truly need when a single blow can hurt my foe. Just repeat it a hundred, a thousand, or even a million times until I achieve my goal!’ chains flashed within her irises as one of the circles within then lit up and almost appeared to illuminate the chains directly.

Within her mental domain, time seemed to stop entirely as the outside world was slowly yet surely illuminated by numerous phantasmal images of her and her blade, all swinging in the same arc as she had been. It would have been possible to proceed with that, simply multiplying the images until she had as many as would be needed, but she had a certain problem about leaving things half-done when she believed there was far more room for improvement.

In particular, she wished to attempt to complete the Omit Attack move entirely. The full variant would allow her to exclude the motion, the attacker, the time taken and the weapon, effectively letting Law cut through whoever she targeted. An instant could penetrate the world and cut into anything and anyone, kill anything and remove any obstacle in her path, granting her something that could be likened to practical omnipotence. Of course, this would only be in matters of slashing and destruction, as even an infinite number of cuts performed within an instant would permit her to heal someone, or save someone from a fatal injury.

That being said, she could still do a lot more with the concept of Omit Attack if she extrapolated it to an absolute limit and extended it to just about everything she could, but that would have to wait until she actually accomplished her goals rather than dreaming about them in the frozen domain of her mind, where time was rendered meaningless.

‘Erase the movement, erase the swing, erase the time, erase the connection between my body and the cut… No, it isn’t…’ the glow within her eyes did not dim, but it also failed to advance, to grow brighter and more intense, as it should have done as her manipulation over Law grew to a greater level.

Of course, that would be difficult, but she thought she had the right path to achieve it.

Despite her admittedly overly hopeful expectations, she couldn’t quite take that final step to cut apart an army within a single breath, and before she could make a mistake within the frozen instant, she switched back to the previous plan. All of the figures had already reached a decent state of completion, and so she executed the semi-complete Omit Attack technique and also executed it upon her own position, vanishing from the spot so that she wouldn’t interrupt the skill or be struck by Primordial Invader at the wrong moment.

A large quantity of her oblivion essence vanished from her dantian and manifested in the air around her, and before her Imperfect Rift could even refill it, the energy from the outside returned rapidly and boosted the state of her cultivation, until she neared the very peak of her current stage.

As she performed the thousand cuts in a single moment, some more energy spilled from the bodies of Primordial Invader, and as she absorbed everything she could as quickly as possible, that joined the energy of her dantian quickly enough. Before the Primordial Deity even had the chance to respond in some capacity, the Ascendant felt her realm rushing forth and staining the Imperfect Rift with even more of her crimson light.

Two more steps were taken to an inevitable perfection, and her power grew as a result, and some aspect of that resonated with her currently amplified vision state of Law and let her repeat her strikes with greater ease than she should have had.

After that, things just fell into place within her mind – though not in a manner that would complete Omit Attack. She understood a way to repeat her partly omitted strikes in greater number, found a way in which to injure each of the separate bodies of Primordial Invader most effectively, and then managed to manipulate her energy in the most efficient manner she could.

Her slashes were repeated the moment after that. Primordial Invader was only able to respond a short while after the second set of strikes landed, widening the previous cut on some of them, and making a completely new cut on others, and chose to merge some of the least injured bodies with the one that had previously acquired the wounds of the main form, doing so in an instant as they vanished into rifts and joined together atop one of the least damaged bodies, though that didn’t nullify the vast number of cuts that were accumulated individually.

They still bled and damaged its form, but that mattered less than it deciding to linger in one place.

‘Railgun Obliteration Grid, gather energy… Omit Manifestation. Omit Charging. Space Distortion,’ Wei Yi quickly gave name to a number of processes as she threw away half of her total pool of energy, using a number of Omit principles in sequence to bypass most of the things that slowed down the use of any railgun bolts, “At this moment, you are still. Railgun bolts vastly surpass the speed of stationary objects, and they cannot miss when aimed precisely and without deviation caused by wind. Therefore…”

She reached out with her Arm and let the energy within it be sacrificed before the life of her body, imbuing another decree upon the world.

“… you shall be hit by every single bolt!”

A swarm of bolts, all roaring and crackling with Obliteration energy that began to tear apart their structure at the same instant, manifested around the group of Primordial Invader bodies, forming a large hemisphere around the region with such great density that they distorted the very fabric of reality in order to exist in the same place at the same time.

They were shot the instant after and their impact occurred even quicker, the sheer force of the impact exploding into a great mushroom cloud that rose slowly and dominated the skies for a few seconds. It rose high only to be destroyed by a slash that severed it in half, letting most of the dust and dirt float away while the rest was forcefully thrown to the ground, clearing the view for those that were still standing in a place where they had a view at all – though the standing part came progressively less easily to the Heavenly Masters.

Some presumed it was due to their exhaustion catching up to them, but a certain change in the air led them to comprehend the truth. All along, they had been supported by the power of Xu Shi Meng, and that was meant purely to seal Primordial Invader. Now, something had cleaved through the cloud that the entity, in its many bodies, seemed to be in, and so there was a good chance that a mortal blow was dealt to it.

Wei Yi understood this just the same as she placed Moon Splitter back into the House of Gold, noting down that the experiment with omitting proper scale from a strike worked much better than expected. It also made for a potential explanation of where the plentiful and fine energy was coming from, in part.

As the dust settled, she confirmed that the form of Primordial Invader was broken beyond repair, and that its power was emerging from its body without any restraint at all, meaning that she didn’t hesitate to absorb it as soon as possible so that it wouldn’t somehow reform the body of Primordial Invader and then permit it to gain some kind of strange power that would then make it impossible for her to defeat the Primordial Deity. Such a thing was unlikely, but it was also true that her very existence was rather unlikely, so she could never take a risk like that.

Besides, the moment the energy entered her body, she claimed an understanding of the entity’s Law – a thing she had been very curious about as she could see no clear correlation to any known Dao so far – and managed to push through to the fourth stage, albeit just barely. It was fortunate that the energy in the air had been sufficiently plentiful up to this point.

‘Let’s see… no new vision state, as far as I can tell… no clear advance in any Dao according to the Truth of the Universe, though the Dao of the Heavens is still blacked out,’ the Ascendant sighed.

This was a problem, as she had no clue how to take advantage of the new authority when she didn’t know what that authority was. Nothing made it entirely clear, and even after a long period of contemplation, she found that she couldn’t gain any hint. Since she didn’t have enough free time to experiment with everything she could possibly test – the possible list was far too great for her to get through it in a day – she instead switched focus to the people of the Wu District, the Heavenly Masters that stood around the battlefield.

Even without knowing the addition to her powers, she could tell that the people around her didn’t have long to live. They looked fine on the outside, for the most part, but their insides were slowly disintegrating, their entire existences being wiped out and turned to primal energy.

“He didn’t tell me about that, either… Everyone, do you know what’s happening to you?”

The initial response was messy, with everyone having their own input from exhausted groans to attempts to decipher exactly what she meant, but she chose to pay the most attention to the Heavenly Spear, who must have noticed it as well. That woman’s response was silent, yet she looked at her own hand and noticed how it was losing stability.

Once another Heavenly Master glanced at her and noticed the problem, the reaction quickly spread, and their internal perception via divine sense let them quickly grasp the issue.

“It seems that despite surviving the Primordial Deity, you won’t last long after this.”

“That’s fine, I think,” Heavenly Spear suddenly said, “We’ve done more than enough for this district…”

“For Yi City. Had you not stopped Primordial Invader for long enough, I wouldn’t have been able to defeat it, and at least one district would have been destroyed. Thank you for your work…” Wei Yi sighed, “If you greet the heavens after your death, tell them to come down and let me hit them in the face. That is all.”

“Heh… I don’t think I’d be able to do that.”

“I will!” one of the other Heavenly Masters proclaimed.

“Uh… Fine, if all of us do it, I suppose I can muster something like that… Also, my throat feels like its disintegrating.”

“It would do that… Should I speed things up?”

The Heavenly Masters shared a few glances, then mostly nodded. Thus, with a wave of her hand, the Ascendant used the power of Entropy combined with her own power to let them decay. Each figure, standing mostly thanks to leaning on their weaponry, broke apart into fine light, mixing into the ambient planar energy of the world and disappearing from history forever.

All of them perished for their land, and she was going to ensure that they had not wasted their lives.

 

A field of light, floor of clouds and no end in sight. Masters of sword, spear, fist and palm stood within, and all that stood out was an entity made up pure white heavenly light, lacking any distinguishing features, not even a face or eyes.

It gazed upon them and they gazed back, and for a moment, they had no clue what to do.

“… So, uh, there’s this woman back there… She wants to hit you in the face.”

Heavenly Spear said and only realised she had done it a few moments afterwards, at which point she couldn’t stop herself from glaring at her fellows with a silent demand that they follow her to an inevitable doom, or whatever their fate would be. After all, if they were anywhere near the entity they thought they were – which they believed to be the case, or else that’s not how they would have greeted it – they were effectively at the mercy of the world.

And yet, a part of her, and all of them, felt slight regret at the fact that the entity did not show an expression of some kind. They wished they could see whatever reaction it would have.