Path of the Ascendant

On the twenty-ninth of the ninth month, the barrier of the Great Leeches was rising to its peak state once more, and just like the last time, it was approaching a vital stage in the reconstructive effort when Wei Yi decided to begin her attack. If the Greats were surprised by this, then they only had themselves to blame, for all of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs understood her actions well enough without the need for a direct explanation.

Furthermore, all of them wished to make use of the benefits granted by her archive within the Kong Prison Realm, so the more time they had before anything requiring their personal involvement, the better. Each one found something worthwhile to read through and absorb in the floating archive, from one of the great arts to some miscellaneous subjects that Gang Xiu Ling in particular found to be particularly interesting. Together, they occupied a significant portion of the archive, although that was remedied by a quick expansion of the space that was especially easy with the Ascendant’s plentiful mental energy.

Her killing will had reached the fifth stage of the Yin-Yang Conduit realm a few days prior, prompting her calm mind to deteriorate slightly, but by the time that she was standing at the barrier, it had not affected her too much. Rather, it wasn’t the reason for her current feelings.

As she looked upon the lands of the Yi District, as well as all of the familiar buildings and streets, she couldn’t help but gaze upon the place where the Yi Patriarch sat, his frowning face clear even from this great distance, regardless of the use of divine sense. Presumably, he had some knowledge of what was coming to him, and was now attempting to figure out how to resolve the situation.

There were a few others to note, mainly a woman that was in the middle of fighting some guards of the Yi District alongside some of her own warriors, although all of them were moving oddly and irregularly, causing their overall power to be diminished. Although she didn’t recognise the exact methods used here, the blood-like energy used by the woman made it obvious that this was Yi Taizhi being up to something unexpected. The last time they saw one another, she had been a rather reasonable and amicable individual, and not one that would earn the ire of the guards of the district.

Clearly, Yi Wei’s impression at the time was wrong, and Wei Yi got to improve her understanding of the woman in this manner.

On one hand, it wasn’t any of her business. Only the Great Leeches mattered at the moment, and she had long ago discarded any relation to the Yi District. Their problems could be handled on their own, and if they weren’t capable of doing it, then she might step in as the future Master of Yi City, for she might as well call herself that at this point. She was doing it with far more power and control than Kong Shi Meng had, so there shouldn’t be any issues in that regard.

However, one of her goals for taking over and defeating the Greats was to improve the world, to prevent situations like her own from repeating, among many others. She hated that people could be so weak and powerless, that it necessitated a power as abnormal as the Truth of the Universe and the otherworldly gifts in order for her to have a reasonable chance of changing it all. The fact that people could do whatever harm they wished to others without repercussions did permit for the greatest freedom, of course, but the concept of justice that she and many others did favour was simply absent from a world like this.

Thus, if the world didn’t provide justice, then someone else had to do the work instead. Currently, everyone else was too busy with cultivation and their own lives, which was fair and perfectly understandable, but it only left one person that could truly overcome both the heavens and the world.

If she didn’t take action and do what she could before her grand plan could come to fruition, then what exactly would she be? She would simply be the same as all others that could promise grand things but never deliver, and although her intentions were indeed some of the grandest she had heard of – imposing a system of justice upon the Planar Continents was not likely to be possible through power alone, after all – she did have the ability to get rid of certain individuals whose actions were rather easy to judge even with her current understanding.

She could have broken through the barrier and went on to the Patriarch and the two Leech phantoms, but instead, when a strike took down the barrier at its vital point, she instead appeared before the guards and Yi Taizhi, with both sides freezing for a few moments as they tried to comprehend where she came from.

“Don’t stand around here and head back to the district. Tell your Patriarch that he’ll be getting a visit from me very soon,” the Ascendant said, glancing at the guards before keeping her gaze on Yi Taizhi, “Meanwhile, I’d like to have a talk with you.”

“What do I… Wait a minute, you-”

“Thanks for instructing a young girl on how to create an identity token. It wasn’t of much use in the end, but it was a decent enough thing to do, besides being your responsibility anyway.”

It was then that the spark of recognition blossomed in her eyes, but despite that, it did not lead to her stopping her attacks or preventing those following her from going towards the guards and Wei Yi. Instead, the recognition was replaced by an immense greed and desire, accompanied by the movement of her arm and the obvious attempt to perform some kind of technique that intended to target the Ascendant.

Although she could have stopped it, the combination of sheer curiosity combined with what one might describe as the intuitive sense of safety stalled her hand. If there was no chance of harm coming to her or the guards, who, at this point, were far enough away for there to be little chance of Yi Taizhi even being able to target them, then there was little harm to indulging her curiosity.

Indeed, it was most entertaining, for she got to see the woman before her gasp in confusion.

“You… You must have practised the Disciple of Blood, I know you have! What technique are you cultivating, Yi Wei?”

“You appear to have recognised one name, but have missed another. Let me tell you something,” the Ascendant took a calm step forward, her eyes narrowing, “One year, three months and eighteen days or so ago, Yi Wei died when the Yi District stood by and watched her be sent to the Kong Prison Realm by the third generation of the Great Yi Family. The district burned simply due to that, and none cared whatsoever. In the Kong Prison Realm, there came to be another, who could do that which Yi Wei never could, and who would not be stopped by the same things that she would be. Her name…”

A large figure rose from behind her, four arms spread apart, a crimson cosmos shrouding it all. Chains surrounded it, coming close but not touching the one that the figure shadowed. They did come into contact with the faint vision of an enormous shattered monolith, a core marked by a hundred astral symbols, three halos that rapidly rotated around the core in a most unbelievable of fashions, and the sparks of crimson that connected the chains on the inside of the core to the halos, all of which seemed to devour the very world until they were all that existed. Even if Yi Taizhi looked away, all that she saw was the vast aura of these objects.

“The Ascendant, Wei Yi. After all, I’m not as kind as Kong Shi Meng, the Master of Yi City. I would never name some of my greater creations after those that couldn’t care less for my existence when I wasn’t strong.”

“W-What are you… that technique…”

“It was helpful of you to provide a weak girl a technique like the Disciple of Blood, even if your intentions were far from good… Your one is likely to turn you into a crimson ghoul, as a few would call it,” Wei Yi said, suddenly appearing only a step away from her, “However, the red eyes, fangs, reliance on blood, all of those are better known as vampires to common folk and otherworldly demons alike.”

That seemed to trigger something in the woman, for she suddenly leapt back and declared, “Even without your blood, I can rise to the sixth realm! Behold!”

She was already in the Half-Step Linked Channels realm, so she wasn’t merely boasting. With a forceful usage of her power, the woman pushed herself into the first stage, even if it left her weaker than if she waited and built up more energy for a proper breakthrough. Immediately, the features of a crimson ghoul marred her face as they became prominent, overwhelming her original appearance completely and making her almost unrecognisable.

However…

“You missed that I am not those guards. Check behind me again.”

Indeed, a gap between realms was difficult to cross in ordinary circumstances, and here was a woman who had barely taken a single step into the sixth realm facing against a woman in the seventh, who had the ability to defeat Patriarch as far back as the fifth realm.

This could be felt from the pressure that the two released simply by standing, and by the manner in which a casual glance of the Ascendant could completely crush the aura of the crimson ghoul. In fact, even if all of that was absent, her attainment in bloodline power meant that with a simple mental command, she could grasp onto all of the blood in the woman’s body and do whatever she wished with it, potentially even converting the bloodline she had developed – for a crimson ghoul was bound to a bloodline, to a certain extent, according to what Wei Yi knew – to the Ascendant’s own blood, forcing Yi Taizhi to obey her instinctively.

She could do that, but what reason did she have to bother? If she hadn’t come across her on the outside of the district, Wei Yi wouldn’t have even looked for her for a long, long time, if ever.

“Given that you tried to drain my power, you must have hunted others, too. For that alone, I will end your life. You can try to persuade me not to, but… I wouldn’t count on that. If you want to have a choice in the matter, kill yourself first via your preferred method.”

“Aura alone doesn’t mean anything-”

“Indeed,” before the Ascendant even finished the word, she had already raised the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow and released a little bit of power in the form of an Elysian Blast, creating an enormous hole in the body of the crimson ghoul, separating the bottom half of her legs from what little remained of her upper half. This was already her controlling her power as well as she could, since she didn’t wish to accidentally destroy a district with an attack like this.

“Y-You… how did… you…”

“I think you would much rather have me forget those lacking final words, but I will not. Instead, I’ll simply avoid telling anyone about them, so it should be good enough for you, right?”

Wei Yi got no response from the body, not that she expected to, and instead vanished from the spot again, appearing on the outer edge of the Yi District and off to the north-east, where she reached out and forced a small collection of items to appear from their hidden spot. Most were utterly useless for her now, but she deliberately reached out with her right hand and grabbed onto the dark mask that had once been the face of Da Gang, for the world had no opportunities to see her own face behind it while she used the name.

On her own, she couldn’t be certain of what this mask was made of, as her divine sense didn’t return anything particularly significant when she scanned it. As such, she made use of the House of Gold, tossing it in and checking the description the otherworldly gift provided.

‘A black mask. Difficult to damage,’ she read, frowning, ‘Right, that is not strange at all.’

She brought it back out and held it using her left hand instead, as she would be able to exert more force through it without needing to be concerned about the state of the star metal gauntlet on her right hand. Gripping the mask tightly in between her clawed fingers, making sure as many of their points were on the mask as possible, she then applied all of her strength at once.

With most materials, such effort would quickly lead to her holding little more than dust in her hand, and covering the floor with much more dust than that, but this did not happen with the mask. Instead, it was completely unaffected even when she ignited her physique energy and bloodline power to stimulate her strength to its limit. Other methods of damaging the mask didn’t have any success either, which could be seen as giving her no useful information at all, but it was also an excellent confirmation that what she held was beyond the vast majority of materials she had previously handled. Thus, it was either an abnormal case, like the time-lost caverns she had visited twice now, or the material was far tougher and, as a result, more valuable.

In this instance, it was likely to be valuable beyond mere currency.

‘Yi Shi Ming, if this is spatial metal, what will happen when I throw this into the Kong Prison Realm? Do you need to process it, or…’

‘Actually, no, there is no need for that. So long as it is spatial metal, Ah Shi Meng’s efforts will ensure that we are able to extract enough of it to improve the density of energy in the spatial realm, expand its borders, make it more stable, and even give you some benefits at the same time… However, it will take me some time to manage it, especially if all of the existing structures and people are to be maintained as they are.’

‘Do keep everything running, please. It would be rather unfortunate if anything was interrupted.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind. Any energy that can be provided to the Kong Prison Realm will accelerate the process somewhat, so if you come across any additional planar stones, it might be best to invest them into this realm.’

‘Mhm, I figured.’

She looked ahead and opened a small gateway to the centre of the Kong Prison Realm, casually tossing the black mask into it. With the possibility of all of that happening even with spatial metal that hadn’t been properly processed, she was now very hopeful to see this occur, in no small part due to all of the knowledge it would bestow her regarding the function of spatial realms and spatial interaction in general, so she was a little more optimistic about this than she really should have been. After all, it was just a random mask she had come across, being sold by a random merchant.

It should have had no chance of being valuable, and yet, the moment it touched the space of the Kong Prison Realm, it was as if the mask broke apart into two. One part was a thin film that had perfectly covered the mask, while the other could hardly be described with any reference to common materials and items.

The mass that emerged quickly spread into the air, dissolving slowly as it expanded further and further out. Before it could get too large, Yi Shi Ming’s figure appeared and held out her hand, containing the expanding cosmos and disappearing alongside it, with the outer edges of the spatial realm trembling as if a wind was passing through a curtain. Most weren’t observing the outer walls of the Kong Prison Realm at the time, and the palpations and trembling calmed once the mother of the Master of Yi City managed to take control of the energy brought in through the old mask, so there were quite a few that didn’t even know that their world was changing.

‘How is it? Will this allow you to do everything you had mentioned?’

‘Yes, this should be fine,’ Yi Shi Ming said, her voice clearly rather strained at the moment, ‘If possible, please let me focus on this, since I wasn’t expecting quite this much spatial metal…’

‘That was a lot of metal? I’m guessing that it isn’t the same size as it appears at first.’

‘To a certain extent… I’ll explain once I’ve managed it.’

Seeing that she was truly occupied far more than she usually would be, Wei Yi didn’t bother her any more than that and turned her attention back to the Yi District, where the guards she had spoken with earlier were only now managing to near the Yi Patriarch’s location. She had a slight hope that she might take a little longer and thus give those people something to do instead of simply running back and forth without any benefit, but now that she had little more to do than meet the Patriarch, she chose to do that right away.

First, though, she did appear before the guards and raised her hand to stop them, not saying anything and simply turning towards the path to the Patriarch as an indication of her intention. Whether or not they understood this didn’t matter, since they stopped and let her go on.

Instead of climbing the steps up to the Patriarch’s chamber, she simply shifted her position over using her fourth realm movement method and appeared right at the doorway to the room in which he sat on a throne. His head was leaned on the balled-up right hand, his right elbow placed on the appropriate armrest, while his left hand rested on the armrest on his left, giving him a tired and aged impression, especially so with his long white beard and wrinkled skin.

He did not immediately respond to her, his gaze rising to meet her own and understanding slowly appearing in his eyes.

“You are the girl that had been thought to have perished within our borders, aren’t you?”

“To be most precise, I’d say that she had perished, just in the Kong Prison Realm instead of this district. Of course, you and your guardians did nothing at all to stop that, so I suppose I ought to take note of your inaction in this regard.”

“There was nothing I could have done.”

The sound of something cracking could be heard with perfect clarity despite nothing in the room being damaged. Both of them knew the source, for the extreme glare the Ascendant sent towards the Patriarch, complete with so much killing will that it could have shredded the Yi City Web barrier all on its own, must have somehow produced such a noise.

“Choose your words very carefully. Of all the defences you could have attempted, this may very well be the worst.”

Her clenched teeth, as well as her tightly clenched fists, made that very clear.

“The Great Families-”

“Leeches. Call them anything else, and you’re dead.”

“… The Greats are simply too powerful a force. For me, or anyone else to take action, would mean endangering the district, harming more people, and even if the third generation was to be defeated, the second generation could best me, not to mention the first.”

Wei Yi took a deep breath before stepping forward, her heeled boots fracturing the ground with a single seemingly light step.

Before she could even say a word, the Patriarch felt as if he was trapped within an inescapable place entirely under her command. Winds of crimson mixed with a thick smoke blew through the chamber, devouring all until only the two of them remained, as well as his throne and the carpeted floor that connected them.

“If a person of your district is in danger, it is supposed to be your duty as Patriarch to, at the very least, instruct the guards to provide aid. If they are not sufficient, you send guardians. If they are not sufficient, you step in yourself and activate the protective methods of the Yi District!” her words got faster and louder as she went on, “You claim that you wished to protect lives, and yet you witnessed numerous innocents perish with your divine sense and did nothing! You claim you want to protect the district, and yet a vast grove and numerous buildings burned under your watch, and like a stone statue sitting in that throne of yours, you did fucking nothing!

“Not once did you attempt to minimize destruction, not once did you try to keep the district safe! With a Patriarch like you, this place might as well have had a statue in your place, for the power emanating from it might have scared away the Great Leeches until they were certain that the statue would not come to life. On the other hand, they have no need to fear you, for you wouldn’t even be able to do less while dead!”

“You are young, so perhaps you do not understand-”

“I am over forty years of age already, thanks to your dedication to your own security. Unlike you, I have managed a faction, I have taken care of district, I am, for fucks sake, a Matriarch already! I am the Wu Matriarch, all because you had to sit on your ass and do nothing!”

“What would you have had me do, huh? What exactly do you expect me to do against them?”

“Exactly what I’ve done! I was stranded in a world that could have easily killed me, but I stood, I protected myself, and I sought to rise back to a state where I could act! In the time you had spent sitting here, doing whatever the fuck it is you do, I had taken over the Kong Prison Realm, I had escaped, I had confronted the Great Leeches, I have brought together several districts together in my War of Ascendancy, and now I am standing before you, telling you that you are a fucking coward!” she was now shouting at him, but he could do nothing about it, “Step in, tell the Leeches to calm their murderous rampage, tell them to focus on those that they have deemed worthy of being attacked if nothing else! No, you did not do that, for I saw the district burning! I saw the Timeless Grove burning! I saw so many die and flee from the Leeches because the Yi District would never step in on their side!”

“… I had no choice!”

“You had a choice! There is always a choice, old man, but both then and now, when faced with a choice, you would much rather sit around and do nothing, simply trying to lie about your failure. Face it, if you are truly regretful! Accept your wrongdoing and change! However, you’re not going to do that, are you? You are simply trying to stop yourself from being hurt by appeasing me…”

His lack of response in the quiet that followed made it clear that she had understood him correctly – a rather simple proposition given the fact that she could scan the surface of his mind even more easily than usual after attaining divine sense.

“Let me demonstrate how one makes a choice, by doing so at this very moment,” the Ascendant said, raising her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, “I have chosen to give the Yi District a new leader, who would actually do what is required of them. To let you learn your lesson and see your mistakes, I also choose not to end your pathetic life, but to instead reduce you to a state akin to the girl who you had ignored when your support could have easily transformed her life entirely. If you will not act with your power, then you do not deserve it. Break!”

The Yi Patriarch tried to leap up at that moment, to do something – anything – to protect himself, or perhaps to attack her, or perhaps to flee, or perhaps to do something entirely different, but he suddenly found that he could not. A single click of clawed fingers led to the vast power under his control to break out of his body, for the halos to shatter, the core to split, the searing marks to extinguish, the anchor to fracture, his planar pool to spill, and his dantian to crack.

With one crack, control over his energy became nearly impossible, and when that crack rapidly consumed the entirety of the dantian, he could only watch his power sink into the world.

He barely felt anything when the bone structure turned to dust, forever robbing him of his ability to cultivate. At that point, his weak body was barely able to breathe, although the vitality he had accumulated up to that point permitted his existence to continue without directly shutting down there and then.

“This is what you deserve, Yi Patriarch.”

Whatever the Ascendant said, he could barely hear her, much less argue with her statement. This wasn’t just because his mind felt impossibly slow in comparison to his usual state, but also because that slow mind suddenly came to the conclusion that she had to be right, at least in a certain way. If he had protected her, if he had stopped the flames and deaths, if he had done anything to prevent the Ascendant from standing before him today, he would have his cultivation and his power. Clearly, he had indeed made a mistake, although he could barely understand what it was.

Wei Yi did not care for him, and instead turned around and broadcast her voice, “People of the Yi District, your former Patriarch was unsuitable for his position. It is up to you to find a replacement within the next seven days. Whatever their realm and current status, I will allow them to reach the seventh realm, and shall not dispute their rule of the district, for that is their duty as personally bestowed upon them by your collective will.”

She didn’t care how her statement would be received, for she had a far more significant matter to deal with, in the form of the Leech phantoms that still resided by the spatial stabilisation point, this one less deep in the ground and more accessible to the common man.

In that regard, it was more convenient for the whole district to access the gateway that she would form atop the spatial stabilisation point, but it also meant that she needed to deal with those that occupy it quickly so that they didn’t have a chance of setting flame to the district once again. Even if this district was no longer her home, and even if she did not share the bloodline of the people living here, she did not need to see the place burn when she could do something to stop it. Although her example may not be appreciated by the former Patriarch, she was sure others would.