Path of the Ascendant

Just like the phantoms of the Great Chen, these two had a mechanical reaction to her appearance.

They readied their anchors, placing them in front of themselves as a barrier, put up their cores, ignited a searing mark to make their defences more sturdy, and then looked towards her, their dull eyes lighting up with the most focus that they could possibly display.

“Rethink your deeds before you make any further mistakes!” the two said, although it was clear that their words were more to slow her down than to actually convince her of anything. By this point, if the Great Leeches hadn’t figured out that they were not going to be able to change her mind, then they would have to be impostors or doubles standing in the place of the true force that had been able to suppress Yi City.

Instead, they were likely meaning to simply delay her, not that it would do them much good even if they kept her in place for a whole week.

“I’ve already had this talk with the former Yi Patriarch. Just die already.”

She attacked right away, not letting them prepare anything else even though they were certainly attempting to do so. Unlike their previous counterparts in the Chen District, they were a little faster and more organised in their defence, for once they saw her attack they did not attempt to cease her blows with her ordinary barriers and instead split up, both leaping to the side.

Their speed was also greater, perhaps showing some improvement in their method of manifesting the Leech phantoms, or perhaps it was simply due to these two seeming younger and fitter than the Great Chen. How this could be possible when they seemed to be synchronising their generations with those of the other families, she didn’t quite know, but perhaps they had simply taken better care of themselves due to their leading position in the Great Leech hierarchy, for they did look quite a bit younger than the others.

The third generation had always appeared to be no older than twenty, meaning that she would have been able to avoid their attention had she simply been born a few years earlier. On the other hand, she might have faced the second generation, and they would have been able to kill her with ease.

Since she already thought about it, the second generation were older in appearance – and in actual age by a hundred years, although that much was obvious if one knew anything about them – nearing the appearance of someone in their early forties or later thirties. While the youthful and soft appearances of the third generation could lead to them being mistaken for teenagers, especially in the early days of their term as the third generation, the second generation certainly couldn’t be.

A similar gap was present between the second and first generations, with both the Great Chen and Great Ning presenting those that were physically aged at around seventy. In this, the Great Yi did show the exception that prompted her consideration of all this in the first place, and they were closer to their sixties in appearance, and the earlier sixties at that.

Whether this was due to their true forms having more vitality, or the phantoms being reconstructed from stronger, younger forms, the result was that the pair acted with a notably higher speed than their peers from the other districts. When she slashed at them, they were able to evade with minimal damage to their cores and anchors, and it took nearly a minute for her to take out an anchor without relying on some of her stronger abilities. If she had brought them out right away, the outcome would obviously be drastically altered, but she hardly needed to do anything of the sort against the first two pairs of first generation Great Leeches.

“Finally taking my advice and learning?” she spoke for the first time during the battle, a silence encouraged by the Leeches also managing to keep their mouths shut.

Somehow, the two even managed to respond without pissing her off, “You are a different threat than usual. If we stagnated against you, then everything our families have worked to maintain would be destroyed by your reckless hands.”

Well, it was mostly reasonable, although that last part was certainly pushing it for her. It did a great deal to push her killing will forth to the next stage, albeit was far from enough to accomplish that just yet. Rather than the simple negative remark getting her bothered, it was the extreme contrast to her own careful attempts to ensure that everything she wished to do occurred with minimal incident and harm to those that she did not wish to harm. Since there were so many that did deserve her ire, this wasn’t very difficult, but it was still worthwhile to note.

She wasn’t surprised that the two Leeches failed to notice this, nor did she have any interest in convincing them otherwise.

To put an end to their nonsense, she invoked her Obliteration energy, infused it into her blade, then launched all of the power contained within the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow into Moon Splitter as well and simply cut a full circle around her with a single slash. The Leeches might have wished to evade, and they did try to, but the thin sheet of energy that filled the chamber quickly burst out and covered everything that it hadn’t cut through directly, blasting through their defences.

As if that wasn’t enough to bring them down, the wave of energy then further condensed into two spheres akin to those manifested via the use of the Replica Abyssal Eye technique. Each one condensed near to a Leech phantom, and before they could hope to block them, destroy them or simply flee from them, the masses of power exploded, the sounds of their remaining anchors shattering filling the room.

Even then, they survived, albeit the flesh of the phantoms was clearly beginning to erode with no support being provided by their anchors or core. Their internal halos also had the possibility of being broken, not that it would matter all that much when nothing capable of supporting or working with them remained, nor did they have any power remaining to actually utilise using the effects of their halos. All that remained were two shells of energy that would soon dissipate into the world, and wipe away any traces that they ever existed.

After all, even the room in which they fought was marked only by Wei Yi’s power, not their own.

“So, do you have anything to say before you’re ended as well? I’m still not certain whether you have independent minds or not, but I’m sure there’s something useful you can say either way.”

“Go back onto the right path while you still can!” the two phantoms said, their pained voices still synchronising perfectly, “When you unleash that which we have sealed, you will see that you have made a great mistake, and that you have no chance of dealing with the threat! Do you understand us, Wei Yi?”

“I understand you perfectly. You are all cowards at best, and clearly used to your stagnant states.”

“They are not something you can handle!”

“Try me. I’ve only recently gotten to the seventh realm, and yet I’m able to rival you. I know they are significantly stronger than any of you, that much is obvious by the realm difference, and the difference in the gaps between realms, not to mention that they are concentrated power whereas you are…” she chose not to provide a single word, since she had far too many to choose from – and was already doing them a massive favour by simply conversing with them semi-casually, “Just with everything you’re bound to have in your Testament, I should be able to climb up to the sixth stage and see what perfected stages will offer me this time.”

“You fool!”

“And you have failed to give me any reason to believe you. Hm, given the meaning of the name of your spatial realm, you’d think that you would have plenty of evidence to provide to me regarding the many claims you make. Come, show me your testament – show me that you are speaking the truth, and do so not only to me and to the world as well!” she exclaimed, “Come, let us all see that you are misunderstood heroes- okay, that will make me throw up, so I’m not going any further…”

Even with her incredible control over her body, she wasn’t able to speak such things without wishing to remove whatever foul influence prompted such a thing in the first place.

“Ahem. You should understand what I mean.”

“… You will not realise the error of your ways until you doom the entire world, will you?” the two said suddenly, a pause preceding their words and a very different tone setting them apart from the rest of their drivel, “So be it. Watch the world burn. Once we ascend to the heavens, you will be able to apologise to us.”

“I will not. Even if, by some miracle, I have done wrong, then I will have done it according to my understanding, logic and so on. I will not have had any better option, so I can hardly be blamed.”

They did not reply, for their forms had already greatly decayed by that point. If not for some miracle of planar energy constructs, they wouldn’t have been able to speak at all, and even their last words were already showing a degree of oddity to their speech, as if they were losing their very humanity. Of course, given that she was speaking with the Great Leeches, the fact that they had any humanity to their speech at all was impressive enough.

With them gone, she stepped towards the spatial stabilisation point and held out her hand.

Her energy was mobilised already, having mostly recovered from the minor loss of energy during the brief conversation held with the Leeches, but when she was about to take control of the point, a vast burst of power rushed out of Testament’s location. It crossed the distance in an instant, partly utilising the spatial stabilisation point and partly moving that distance physically, and it crashed into her Arm and forced her back by a step, although she stabilised her footing immediately after that. To prevent further movement, she drilled some of her energy into the ground through her heels.

Given that this spatial stabilisation point was the last one to connect Testament to the Yi City Web, there was little need to question the purpose of such a force, but it was not the only thing that came towards her.

Not only was there a noise reminiscent of a lightning storm mixed with a tornado, as well as a chorus of voices, but she spotted a certain method activating from the location of Testament, independent of this torrent of noise. In structure, it seemed similar to her own method of communicating with the districts within reach of her parts of the Yi City Web, but it obviously lacked the support of such a wide-reaching structure and instead used something else.

“People of Yi City, hold back your Ascendant’s rampage!” the voices of over forty voices suddenly emerged from the chaos, both to her and everything reached by the influence of Testament, “She demands proof of our words, of the truth of our lengthy vigil to protect the world, when she herself is an agent of destruction and chaos!”

“Oh, you’re so original… I suppose, when you have nothing better to do, you might as well try this,” the Ascendant sighed, but she knew that she couldn’t simply let this go.

Her own pride or status didn’t matter quite as much as the chance of the Greats both having something akin to the Proof of People’s Will, and enough ability to convince those unfamiliar with her that it might be better to side with the Leeches than her. However, their method did provide her with the opportunity to do something that she had come up with an extremely long time ago, when the prospect of fighting the Great Leeches was still something beyond her own ability.

Luckily, in the time it had taken for the Leeches to re-stabilise the barrier around the Yi District and their Testament, she had finished developing everything necessary to accomplish this. With both hands, she brought out an amount of energy to match that of the Great Leeches, drawing on however much of the Kong Prison Realm’s supply that she was able to without endangering Yi Shi Ming’s efforts. With it, she filled the skies above the Yi District, stabilising all of her oblivion essence in the form of numerous arrays that interweaved the structures of the World’s Truth and Proof of People’s Will, infusing it all with her killing will shaped to resemble the power of jade slips.

Since the Great Leeches were going to oppose her in this manner, then she would gladly take up the gauntlet and fight them in the exact same way. It helped that she was rather good at this, whereas the Greats were lacking.

The difference lay simply in the fact that she not only had plenty of information she could give away freely, while benefitting her own goals, whereas the Great Leeches were, as her name for them implied, interested only in draining everything from around them and not providing anything back. Although their previous stance on hiding from most of the world was obviously breached by making an announcement to Yi City as a whole, every drop of information they revealed would set them back a hundred years.

That much could be seen with the difference in response when they or the Ascendant was asked for information. She would throw out plenty to satisfy the desires of those asking for it, deliberately throwing out so much that they wouldn’t ever dare ask for more, mostly because they could never process all of it within a reasonable timeframe. Meanwhile, the Great Leeches would assert everything they could, but never provide the proper evidence, as they did not have it.

Thus, while their assertions were always more confident than her own, since she wasn’t as practised as they were in this regard, her evidence was always superior.

Strictly speaking, the Great Leeches could have some decent evidence hidden away somewhere, like if they simply admitted to what they were keeping sealed and made an effort to explain to the world that they were doing everything to ensure that this foe didn’t escape, they would have a lot more support than they currently do. After all, the Ascendant had deliberately kept things to herself quite a bit, and people would naturally feel distrustful of those that hid away anything – hence why the reaction to the Leeches was not generally positive among the districts and families of Yi City that she had visited so far.

The problem with revealing such information, from the perspective of the Greats, was twofold. Although the vast majority of the world was opposed to the things they hid away, on the surface at least, there were still those that were interested in allowed the ancient entities to return and reign supreme once more. In particular, it was a common expectation that the outside of Yi City wanted that.

Most likely, this was just a bit of uninformed prejudice on the part of Yi City’s populace, as most did not like going outside the borders unless it was to the Eastern Continent, but it was impossible to deny the allure of power. Once it was known that the great foes of the past were not slain but imprisoned, even if it had been a million years since they last saw the Planar Continents, there would be those that would eagerly try to get them out, if only to be the first ones to do so and receive their blessings in place of others.

Of course, those kinds of people would always be in a minority, but the majority wouldn’t necessarily align with the Leeches either. When faced with the possibility of a strong threat, the typical first instinct wasn’t to throw away all weapons and strength, but to become as powerful as one possibly could.

This was in obvious conflict with the methods used by the Leeches, and few explanations would suffice. Perhaps if it could be guaranteed that the threat would be removed forever after a thousand years of intentional regression in all elements relating to cultivation, then there would be agreement with it on the surface and a great deal of obvious reluctance for anyone to do anything other than the minimum, like halting development rather than outright reversing it. This was an issue all on its own, for them.

However, there was no such guarantee that could be given. Many forces in the world, like the dragons, were immutable, meaning that they would remain even if all but two humans perished, leaving naught but a man and woman to reproduce and attempt to remake civilization. Once those two had enough time to themselves – whether to imitate a bunch of rabbits or find some manner to have children without that – and cultivation rose to the seventh and eighth realms once more, then the threats the Greats were trying to contain would emerge once more. At that point, even they shouldn’t be present, so at least they would be out of the picture.

Irrelevant tangents aside, once her methods were condensed, her voice was also able to boom into the ears of all that the Great Leeches were also able to reach.

“If you wished for a debate, Leeches, you ought to have informed me ahead of time. You should be very well aware that I’ve wanted to talk to the lot of you directly. However, given that this is in a public setting, with so many listeners, I ought to address your words first,” Wei Yi spoke, managing to restrain herself from flooding her sentences with profanity to an extent that surprised even her, “Do you mind?”

She didn’t bother awaiting any kind of response, since they’ve already said enough.

“So, calling me Yi City’s Ascendant is fair enough, since that is the region I am currently most concerned with, but what rampage am I going on? I have slain far fewer than you have when you simply wanted to catch a single young girl from Yi City that happened to be a child of one of your own sacrificial pawns,” she said, and with this began to expose the abilities of those arrays she set up. Aside from her voice reaching everyone, everywhere within the reach of Yi City, all that heard her words felt oddly convinced by them.

It took people a while to understand exactly why this was. Knowledge that shouldn’t have been present in their minds suddenly was, and after a moment of thinking about it, they found that it did not appear to be false nor misleading. Everything aligned with what the Ascendant said, and the case of them raiding the Yi District was unmistakably in her favour.

The booming chorus of the Leeches attempted to rise, but Wei Yi knocked it down with a boom of her own.

“It is only obvious for me to demand your Testament, in both meaning of the word, for I have been very open in what I do. I will elevate the planar level of the world, I will give out techniques, and, since there are apparently those that still don’t believe me in this regard, let me do it right now. Everyone, think of a type of technique you wish to possess. A body technique, cultivation method, maybe a movement skill,” her voice had the subtle hint of a smile in it that those who stood to lose from her actions were not at all pleased to hear, “Fire, water, wood, earth or metal, perhaps all or none of those – it’s up to you, and it is only the first of the countless techniques you can acquire from my archive in the Kong Prison Realm, once used by the Great Leeches to imprison all those that were against them.

“Before you ask why I might provide such things to you, since it is rather odd for someone to throw away powerful methods without any seeming gains to myself, so I don’t mind saying that I do have some techniques I keep to myself. Even if I was really keen to give everything away, it is nearly impossible for many of my techniques to be cultivated by others. However, this is where the matter of the threat to the world comes in.”

She didn’t have a physical figure of the Great Leeches to turn to in reality, but she did turn anyway.

“If there is a threat, which there is and likely more than one, then we shall be as well-equipped as we can possibly be. Every person in the world has the ability to protect themselves, at the very least, and I intend to guarantee that everyone does exactly this.”

To prove the truth of her words, she entered her Ascendant’s Library and turned towards the doors, which were typically left shut for there were none that needed to leave or enter the place regularly. With a shove of her Arm, she opened up the doors and manifested numerous representations of her own techniques, basing them on the response provided by the Proof of People’s Will element of her enormous array. Through the resonance kindly provided to her by the Great Leeches, which they used to contact Yi City first, she then sent out all of those techniques with the jade slip structure.

The result was that the entire world suddenly had to stop. Even those that had managed to focus on something else up to this point were confronted with the influx of a whole technique, a matter that couldn’t be taken in and understood by most without taking several minutes to process all of the information. That was even if everything was already as simple as it could be.

Luckily, the Ascendant had noted the capabilities of her mind up to this point, and even if she didn’t understand them, she did understand a few methods to let people comprehend information just a little bit more quickly. Mainly, this was by accentuating their strengths via the power of her own mental energy, which was not the most advanced of methods, but it did well enough to allow her to rush that along to a minute or less, passing along a technique to the level of Full Success at an absolutely unprecedented speed for nearly everyone in the world. On its own, without the conflict between her and the Leeches, this might have permitted her to win everyone over to her side with ease.

“You have one technique, and it is for free. You can get any number you wish by visiting any district that has a spatial stabilisation point linked to my spatial realm, then proceeding to my archive in the centre. There is no cost, no charge of any kind.

“Back when I was away from my lands, there had to be a degree of siphoning of mental energy from people to permit the archive to remain, but this practise had been stopped the moment that I returned, so no need to worry about that,” she said, in particular to those who might have noticed something abnormal, “If you have a problem with your mental energy reserves, I have plenty of manuals to offer you to improve it, and I would suggest that all cultivate at least one such method.”

She didn’t go on with this, as most weren’t looking for a lengthy explanation of the best practises of cultivation nor her casual advice on the topic, so she returned to the very reason that she began.

“There is indeed a threat out there, people. It is significant, it is likely to hurt us all quite a bit if we aren’t prepared for it, which is exactly why I am taking action to guarantee that we are prepared. I am giving you techniques, I am going to put up defences around the districts, work with the people of the districts to ensure that they are ready, provide some additional protection in the form of the Ju District’s automatons as well as my Kong Prison Realm’s forces, and the moment that the threat emerges, I promise that I shall be on the front lines, doing everything I can before anyone other than me even has to risk their lives. Of course, there is only one of me out there, so I likely won’t be able to handle everything at once… but I am not the Great Leeches. I will act, even when they are too cowardly to attempt it.”

“Do you truly understand what you speak of? This world could have been safe forevermore if you simply stood by, and yet you now inflict conflict upon all the people of the world simply to sate your own desires! Do you dare to call yourself the hero?”

“I am no hero. I am simply doing that which has to be done. You are mistaken if you honestly believe that the world would decay and remain stagnant, for that is not how planar energy functions! It exists permanently and infinitely, with the Planar Continents and all spatial realms possessing a certain permitted energy quantity that they will maintain. Even if all planar cultivation is abandoned, do you think that there will be no planar beasts? No people that choose the other four facets of cultivation, those being killing intent, spiritual will, physique energy or bloodline power?”

“You understand nothing of the heavens!”

“Fuck me, do you have nothing beside that to say? Don’t understand that, don’t understand this… You would love for the world around you to be mindless fools incapable of even a single coherent thought of their own, wouldn’t you? I have seen your ideal vision of the future under your guiding flame and wind, under your oh so benevolent rule… It is a society that had deliberately broken its legs just to avoid the chance of tripping over, that removed its arms just to make sure that nothing would ever be dropped, that threw away their minds to make sure that they could never make a mistake and then left that to you, perhaps because even you subconsciously realise that your mistakes exceed all others.”

With her killing intent, she broke through the obstruction that had been placed before her, at the spatial stabilisation point. She stole it forcefully, even under their watch and the watch of all in the world, and didn’t hesitate to shift her position to the area where Testament appeared to stand, its light dyed by some heavenly shade completely inappropriate to its true nature.

“If we forgo all risk to ensure safety as mere beasts, then what point is there in living?”

There was an obvious barrier in the way, and an incredibly powerful one for a spatial realm with no proper standing in the Planar Continents, but that didn’t matter.

“We have the potential of reaching the ninth realm, and that is where all of us shall go! If the Great Leeches offer an attractive proposition of becoming something worse than common livestock, then you are free to leave, but since its beginning, Yi City has been founded on the principle of growing beyond the fragmented state of the Western Continents! Kong Shi Meng united countless tribes and factions under one banner, encouraged their growth to a far greater state, and we ought to follow such ambitions while we live!” the Ascendant proclaimed, “Remember that once upon a time, Yi City sat in the ninth realm and lived! All kinds of horrors were at our doors, but we fought back and remained the most powerful nation in the world, even up to this day! Why can’t we do the same today?

“If you would see us return to this great state, then that is enough for me. With your wish, I shall have enough strength to bring the fight directly to the Leeches, to give us back all that they stole, and to let Yi City prosper!”

When she formed a technique to wear away the barrier, the feedback was immediate and obvious. Even with her current incredible power, surpassing all Patriarchs known to her by many magnitudes, could still be multiplied to the extent that a spatial realm with the age and capability of Testament was not going to be able to endure her attack for more than a few days, no matter what they did, no matter what they tried.

Finally, she would have a chance to end the Great Families once and for all.