Path of the Ascendant

Four minutes and thirty-nine seconds might seem like a brief time when one is doing something relaxing and safe, but when one had the mental capacity of the Ascendant and was in the middle of a battle that now had her engaging with a total of forty-six opponents, this was a very long time.

She lost several limbs – several times – and might have been disfigured to the point of complete unrecognizability if not for her rapid regeneration and the ability to survive nearly anything. Instead of that, a moment was enough for her vast vitality to reconstruct her body, and a moment more was needed for her loose killing will to reconstruct her Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival. Technically, she could have abandoned those alongside her star metal boots and armour, which now lay in the House of Gold until a time when it could reasonably be used without needing to be replaced every moment, but it didn’t seem right.

Killing something in the nude was only suitable when her opponent was going to bleed so much that she might drown in their blood, and the Leeches were rather devoid of blood in this place.

Of course, that was all under her careful calculation to minimize the wasted energy on recovery while maximising the amount spent on her mental processes. The calculation of the proper arrangement for herself and the otherworldly gifts behind her was a difficult one only because she lacked experience in this exact matter, but it would be forever added to her arsenal afterwards.

As such, she accepted the injuries, and once she had the right method calculated and planned out, she put it into action right away. The previous dozens of red phantoms suddenly multiplied to a thousand, all spreading out before her, some standing on the ground and others high up in the air, and all of them manifested a small black sun that oddly gleamed within the darkness, standing out amidst the returning storm.

The Leeches seemed to be aware of the power of the thing they faced, for all of the figures instantly drew back and set up a series of defensive arrays before themselves. On the surface, this was a good response, but as usual, their thinking was far too mechanical.

Although their quantity of anchors differed, their techniques were effectively the same, and the overall resonance of their energy was very similar. Due to them all doing the exact same thing at the same time, without any of the individual Leeches, or pairs of Leeches, they produced a single defence that, in other circumstances, might have been inordinately effective against someone that lacked the ability to disrupt their resonance, but the Ascendant wanted this exact outcome to occur. As such, she stabilised her footing and brought back the otherworldly gifts, moving them with the greatest speed possible to prevent the Leeches from being able to respond in time to ruin her plans.

All of the otherworldly gifts were placed into the appropriate space right away, and her power was directed towards them and into them without a hint of restraint. A wave of crimson was sent into them from her body, tearing the Crimson Robe of the Third Arrival yet again, but when it collided with the array she had formed, the result was magnificent.

The collision was akin to what might occur if light was passed through a magnifying glass, for it was a relatively small wave that suddenly expanded to a thousand times its original size. Every drop of oblivion essence was not only made vast, but a singular drop of otherworldly nature was somehow inherited upon it and thus acted upon the entire world of Testament, causing space to tremble and planar energy to be disrupted. Although it shook with the rhythm Wei Yi partly copied from the Overwhelming Resonance of the Reclaimed Lands, when one peered upon it with ordinary spiritual perception, the image was very different.

It was akin to a void that was briefly flashing in and out of existence, existing one moment and completely vanishing the next, and yet every single state existed at the same time. From the memories of the otherworldly demons, she could associate this phenomenon with their quantum mechanics, but she didn’t think that either she or the demons she had interacted with so far truly understood whatever it was that their origin worlds had come up with.

The most significant point was that the void did and did not exist at once, meaning that it could bypass the most common of defences, those that were being used to stop the dark suns.

Perhaps the Leeches would have understood what happened and changed their plans to prevent this from proceeding, for planar energy could still influence the otherworldly gifts so long as it was done deliberately, albeit to a lesser extent, but this wave occurred in an instant. One moment, there was only the black storm, but the next an intense crimson cosmos overwhelmed it all.

Both behind and in front of the Leech figures, the stars and nebulae overcame everything. They could not see a single thing around them, so even when their barriers were shattered and the energy traversed towards a target far more vital to them, these former mortal men and women had no idea. Only when something absolutely vital about them suddenly shattered did they recover their ability to perceive the world about them, a flash of human thought reappearing within their minds as they pierced through the overwhelming cosmos and looked upon the source of their distress.

There, the fragments of a hundred anchors scattered across space.

All of a sudden, it was as if the fog in the form of the cosmos cleared, and they recognised the problem, but it was not before the shattering of one anchor caused the collapse of two more beside it. Each one was positioned far away from the other affected anchors, so none were directly connected, and thus each of the hundred anchors affected two individual anchors, which were brought to the brink of collapse just as quickly.

There were countless anchors here, and thus even as the collapse spread once more, it barely affected the total quantity. In fact, there were literal millions of stable anchors here, assisted by the presence of all of the Great Ning’s anchors other than those belonging to the latest of the first generation, allowing the power of the inhuman first generation to equal and surpass the Ascendant’s. This would have been enough to nullify the collapse and return to bringing her down, but their anchors needed to be placed together, and they needed to work together in an incredible resonance that multiplied their ability greatly.

When one anchor in a sequence was broken, the resonance was shaken. After two were damaged, there was a significant effect upon the whole. Best of all, once the first shattered and the second spread its damaging influence outwards, there was a certain degree of damage that could not be undone nor negated even if no more damage occurred.

Thus, over twenty-five million anchors were shaken by the destruction of a mere few hundred, and as a result they caused the distant forms of the past first generation Leeches to become a little less guarded, and a little more prominent.

‘Combining that with the manifestation of emotional thought in those at the front lines, the barrier ought to be weakened by a certain extent. Now, to ensure that this instance produces a downward spiral, and the result I am looking for will occur even if I was to drop dead the moment after and fail to uphold my promises and adhere to my desires,’ Wei Yi concluded, confirming this when the faintest crack formed upon the distant sphere around this battlefield of stone and storm. She used her red phantoms to throw out the black suns, then moved into battle herself.

The suns were incredibly powerful on their own, but with the current otherworldly state of much of her released energy, even their current small states were potentially lethal for any of the Leeches. Of course, while their protective layer of anchors was damaged, not all of the distant first generation Leech bodies were vulnerable yet, a fact that they managed to use to their advantage.

Out of those current first generation members that were threatened by the suns, which was unfortunately not all, the majority moved around to enforce the defences that they had and set up more planar shields wherever they could. The rest moved with the remaining numbers of the first generation to breach the line of the red phantoms, which were already disintegrating on their own, and tried an all-out barrage upon the Ascendant, clearly hoping to overcome her regenerative ability.

In doing so, however, there was a clear dissonance with the aura of the barrier encompassing the battlefield, and so their strength was affected. For far too long had they resided in a state of pure mechanical movement and though, driven in some part by the Law of Testament itself more so than any of their own creations, and even if the operation of their barrier did not rely upon such a state of mind, simply disrupting the current state would lead to negative consequences in the short term, where their mental energy shifted rom the barrier to the current state of the battle. Perhaps it would earn them a tactical advantage – something that seemed to be true so far, since the current attack was already more dangerous than those that came before – but it was too little and too late, with them having too little practise.

Wei Yi waited for all of the point beams and planar constructs to charge and fly towards her before vanishing from the spot and appearing high in the air, reaching part-way into the storms.

From there, she thrust out her hand and unleashed a storm of oblivion essence to confront the storms of Testament, but after a brief while she allowed it to drop into the ground, the quantity vastly overwhelming the surface of the stone. However, not long after, it sank into the ground and seemed to vanish from sight.

The moment after that, a series of cosmic limbs suddenly emerged from the ground. Hands came first, followed by heads without a hint of an eye, only a layer of crimson stars and nebulae peering through the veil of reality, and the torso and legs soon after. In structure, they were very akin to the abyssal monstrosities of Wei Yi’s first working attempt of the Replica Abyssal Eye, but instead of having much offensive capability of their own, they instead had a series of three runes floating before them, all of which took a little longer to form but were ready by the time they got onto their own two feet.

Half of the Leeches on the offensive tried to strike them down, but the hundreds of cosmic entities responded instantly with the touch of one of the runes. Some went for the first rune, and others chose the third, but the second was untouched for the moment.

Those that touched the first rune were those meeting a point beam, and every single one had the rune they touched shatter and expand immensely, growing to a massive crackling sphere of Obliteration energy. It took only a moment to stabilise, and the moment after it shot out in a thick and dense beam to meet the point beams of the Leeches. The collision was destructive and very bright to behold, but the result was somehow completely even, with neither side being hit or damaged.

On the other hand, those entities that reached for the third rune were opposing a planar construct that was being formed in the air before one of the Leeches, and thus their method of response was naturally different. As the third rune shattered and the energy condensed within emerged, it almost seemed to disappear from sight, although the Great Leeches were likely able to recognise that it rapidly moved upward, where it condensed into a massive ball of celestial flame. Just as the Obliteration energy from the first rune, it lingered in the process of condensing for only a brief moments before falling, gaining speed rapidly and turning into a flash of light by the end.

Each mass fell upon a planar construct, and the collision shattered the constructs nearly every time, with the explosion finishing off the rest, while the small clumps of flame that fell away strayed towards other constructs and the huge figures of the Leeches themselves. These flames did little damage physically, but that was not the only form of damage.

“You… ASCENDANT!” Shun Huang suddenly cried out, his eyes igniting with rage as he and all of the hanged figures behind him lunged forward, vast uncontrolled quantities of energy manifesting before him.

In response, all of the celestial entities facing him touched the second rune, and produced a series of projectiles that flew into the ground and executed the first working attempt of the Replica Abyssal Eye. Not five seconds after, before the Leech could even hope to traverse the distance between them, a new wave of abyssal entities composed of crimson stars stood on the stone battlefield. This did nothing to abate his rage, that much was obvious soon after.

“YOU MOCK US, AND YET YOU EMPLOY THE SAME METHODS!”

“I created a series of entities specifically to fight you, whereas you will throw the people of the districts away for your own goals. I fail to see the resemblance!”

“THEIR MINDS ARE CLEARLY NOT WHOLE!”

“Because they are planar constructs, made to fight this battle, with specific instructions that I gave them, and nothing more. On the other hand, your minds are segmented because you decided to form a barrier using thousands of your own generations, which is something that I have no intention of doing.”

“HA… You will do as we had predicted, then, and let the world burn for your pointless war. Is that it, Ascendant?”

“I will make sure you burn, that much I can promise. As for the world… It will endure, I guarantee that.”

By that point, she had descended from the air and landed on the stone, in the middle of the platform, surrounded by the cosmic entities she had formed. She faced Shun Huang and Shun Hui, the latter of whom was also clearly advancing towards the recovery of her human thoughts and emotions, and raised her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, facing her palm towards the two as if she would simply use something like the Elysian Blast.

Instead, she focused her power and tapped into her comprehension of Law, and in the last moment, she shifted one of the otherworldly gifts floating around her and sent all of the built-up energy through her Arm.

‘Strictly speaking, Touch the Heavens doesn’t require the actual act, so…’

In an instant, the Arm scattered as much as it could without outright breaking, and countless cracks spread throughout the air, numerous small gaps within reality exposing the collapse of all kinds of Laws and principles. Light was overwhelming in some, absent in others, time rushed forth in a different set of fragmented cracks and stagnated in others, and it was all directed towards the otherworldly gift she had placed some distance in front of her. The only conscious Leech at the moment, Shun Huang, moved to stop it, but her movement was somehow far slower than any of the slowly crawling cracks.

The collision was oddly calm and slow, even more so than the expansion of the cracks, with the wooden spoon-like objects fracturing slowly, as if one applied paint to the surface and now watched it break apart. This might be something that could be watched in peace and quiet, but simply observing the phenomenon seemed sufficient for it to expand with odd abruptness to fill not only the wooden spoon, but also everything around it, and, most importantly, the area nearest to the Leeches.

From a mostly uniform layer of storm, that open space transformed to a broken and fractured zone that touched Shun Hui and eroded her very existence, tearing open a hole into the Planar Continents that Testament could seal, but not without the Leech’s obliteration.

“YOU-”

“In a way, it works excellently, doesn’t it?”

“… What?” Shun Huang was distracted by the casual manner in which the Ascendant managed to speak while staring upon the numerous cracks in Testament’s fabric.

“By opening a gap in your spatial realm, you do indeed get closer to the heavens, so you Touch the Heavens, in a way… The name still applies, and the full extent of power can be unleashed perfectly, intensified by the fact that Testament is still a spatial realm with limited Laws and lacking stability in comparison to the Planar Continents themselves,” Wei Yi explained, her Arm nearly recovered in full thanks to the peace granted by her summoned cosmic entities distracting the other Leeches, “By the way, what will you choose?”

Shun Huang glared at her as much as it was possible to glare ay anyone, but that alone would not save him from death, or Testament’s operating loop from destruction. Since both would ultimately lead to the same conclusion, even if the Ascendant was to be slain and the process was to be slowed with all of their effort.

He glared at her for a good while, and then finally decided that exhibiting his rage would be best.

The figure rushed forth and appeared above the platform, his size decreasing vastly until he was only twice as high as a normal man should be, standing in the air above the stone, but even when he attempted to attack and end her life – or do some harm to her lifeforce, at the very least – he found her appearing right beside him, Moon Splitter in hand, eyes blazing with killing intent over any of the other four types of energy within her meridian networks.

“If you act with rage, then I shall do the same! Testament shall burn amidst our fury!” she proclaimed, her killing will cultivation instantly leaping up to the sixth stage.

Moon Splitter’s edge crashed into the Leech’s figure, colliding as if a hammer hit solid stone. The weapon could not do more than chip away at the Great Leech, but the force of the impact was permeated to the brim with raging crimson that entered the cracks in his figure and forced the individual pieces apart.

“We are the Great Families! We have been protecting this world for a million years!”

“You are the Leeches, vile and low! You have nearly brought this world to ruin!”

Planar energy and oblivion essence also erupted from them, and although Wei Yi was cut and marred by the power of the Leech, she could recover while every single injury dealt to Shun Huang was nearly permanent, leading to more and more pieces breaking off from his form.

After an effective strike, the dantian of the Leech was exposed just sufficiently for Moon Splitter’s Shard of Warfare to pierce the flesh and strike at the bone structure, crushing it one moment and completely shattering the form of Shun Huang the next. With the dantian gone, all of the anchors supporting his power could no longer exist, crushing his ability to endure the collapse from Touch the Heavens, and then all of the past first generation Leeches of the Shun family suffered as a result, their anchors cracking even when Wei Yi’s first attack didn’t touch them.

“Shun Huang! You… I WILL PROTECT OUR PROJECT!” Shun Hui’s eyes lit up with her will, and she also rushed forth.

Bao Huang followed only moments after, “What… Shun Hui, you mustn’t act alone!”

Bai Hui’s predecessors and anchors were already in danger, so she was also brought out of her mechanical state, and thus three beset the Ascendant with impressive speed and cohesion for those that had not needed to coordinate with one another for as long as one hundred years, all of which were spent in Testament.

Their attacks landed upon her body, but the split shards of Moon Splitter also stabbed into the widening gaps within their existences, forcing them to widen even further. Wei Yi could recover, but they could barely maintain a damaged state even without the effect of Touch the Heavens.

After all, she had hit only Shun Huang, expending an otherworldly gift in the process, leaving a mark in the air that the three currently attacking her were able to avoid. Without something to truly change their states and force their stability further into decline, they could continue to fight on for quite a long while before the Ascendant could put them to an end, or they could defeat her by some impossible miracle.

Perhaps the way forward was clear, but if most others were in her place, they would look upon the otherworldly gifts and ponder whether it was truly wise to expend them in such a manner. Sure, the destruction of one of the Leeches was equivalent to permanent damage to their operation, and would accelerate the destruction of all of the anchors currently linked to their forms, but there was a great deal that could be done with an otherworldly gift. For the moment, she lacked the ability to replicate the powers of otherworldly gifts, and she couldn’t scan their structures and store them for a later point, when she did gain that ability, so anything she shattered would be destroyed permanently and without any hope of return or repair.

Despite that, an otherworldly gift appeared an inch from her Arm, and she struck it with the claws of smoke and imparted the force of Touch the Heavens directly, ensuring that none of the energy would be wasted in shattering Testament on the way.

The otherworldly gift exploded right there and then, the variation in distance clearly making her technique significantly more effective, and the power contained within scattered out to latch onto the injuries of the three she was currently fighting. Thus, their existence became significantly more strenuous, and the moment that the Ascendant had the opportunity to act, she took Moon Splitter and stabbed it right into the body of Bai Hui, whose exclamation of pain was extremely pleasant to hear even as her limbs were constantly barraged by numerous beams and constructs.

“Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do something like this? Ever since you fuckers appeared in my life, I wished I could tear you to shreds!” Wei Yi forced the shards of Moon Splitter just a little further.

That push touched the dantian and broke it, fracturing Bai Hui’s existence while all of the past Leeches connected to her were impacted in much the same way, every single anchor linked to them suffering a fracture at the same time. A few had already been damaged to a certain extent, so they shattered moments after, and it acted as fuel for the Ascendant’s flame.

Each death of a Leech was a wonderful emotional support, but each shattered anchor could also be collected by the Ascendant, and then simply burnt by dedicating it to something that she understood well by this point, like the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow. It had taken her a short while to build up to the current state of the technique, but since it was now at Full Success, she knew exactly what worked and what didn’t. To advance it would be as easy as it had been to push Obliteration to the Dao Ascension state, and so she made sure to invest every single anchor energy point into exactly this, nudging forth the development of the world in the meantime.

She brought out another otherworldly gift and shattered it, finishing off Shun Hui when she attempted to get too near to her, exclaiming, “You should just die! Rid the world of your existence!”

“Do you not understand what you will unleash?” Gang Huang appeared beside her, the planar construct of a sword slashing down upon her, “They are out there, and with each one of us you strike, the barrier trembles!”

Indeed, that was true. A single glance by anyone, even the most unaware and unobservant sort, would be sufficient to notice the cracks and fractures appearing in the sphere consuming this stone battlefield. No light shone through them, not yet, for the moment that it did the things behind it would be free to emerge and invade however they wished, and yet each and every minor fracture was visible with perfect clarity for anyone that deigned to look at them.

“This was a danger of the world, and it is one that we will deal with, just as with hunger, thirst, cultivation, planar beasts, and all those unknown things that must have threatened mankind at first!” Wei Yi replied, another strike with the Arm yielding even better results as the stage of the technique climbed unimaginably quickly, “You, meanwhile, made this issue! You sought to steal away our power, and so a threat that was handled by Kong Shi Meng was now a deadly thing that could not be opposed by the men and women of the Planar Continents! This was your deed, your doing, and the result of your foolish actions, and I will make sure that as much as possible is undone!”

Although her blade and otherworldly power pierced Ze Hui’s abdomen only moments after she regained consciousness, she managed to say, “You have not fought them. You have not heard the requests of the heavens… You-”

“I DON’T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE HEAVENS!” she decapitated the figure before she could say more, “Why should we do anything because they demand it? Why should we ever follow the demands of an entity that does not care to even invest its own abilities into preventing this? The threat you currently seal is one that the heavens could end at any moment if they so desired, but you want me to believe that they left you here to leech away all planar energy until the threat was removed that way?”

“It is the truth!”

“It’s a fucking joke! All of you are the grimmest joke I had ever seen…” the Ascendant’s words punctuated yet another death of a Great Leech, and the advance of her Arm, and the slight but nonetheless notable advance of her own cultivation.

Every single anchor energy point that she expended produced a few drops of planar energy that she was able to absorb for herself. It was slow, extremely slow, but when she was getting hundreds, thousands, and soon, millions of anchor energy points, the droplets turned into a rain that preceded a massive tidal wave, capable of bringing her forth by a stage. Thus, she fought with great effort and intensity, and soon her foes were at half their earlier number, and continued falling with greater speed after each and every strike.

Of course, the otherworldly gifts were still needed to end them fully, and it just so turned out that as she was facing her last foe, she had to expend her last collected otherworldly gift, allowing its otherworldly aura to join the faint mist that had built up at the edges of Moon Splitter. Given that it started life as an otherworldly gift, perhaps this was only natural.

“The Primordial Deities… You cannot defeat them, Ascendant!” Chen Huang was the last one standing, and he spoke with absolute certainty as her blade split his dantian in half.

“Even if that was true, the error would be somewhere in my path, not in failing to take yours!” she slashed one last time, cutting him in half vertically as well, “If you persist in this world, then watch our fight against them. No matter what disaster comes our way, we shall not surrender just because it is the easier or safer choice! We will stand tall, and we will bring Yi City and the world as a whole to a far greater level than either one had ever reached! Perhaps, if you see it, you will realise your error.”

He was closer to dust than a living being at that point, so no reply could be attained, nor would the Ascendant have listened. The collapse of all of the distant figures around her, their anchors breaking and releasing their anchors energy, and the rapid expansion of all cracks in the barrier distracted her, and forced her to invest all of her attention into resolving this in the best possible way.

She took hold of the barrier, replacing the Leeches in stabilising it and doing whatever she could to slow it down. All of the anchor energy that she attained, she used to reach the tipping point of her current stage, and with the vast surge of power that came with a breakthrough, she reinforced the barrier as much as she was possibly able to, so that the world would have a chance to learn of the incoming threat and respond to it with something more than disorganised flailing and unnecessary conflict with one another.

After all that, she and the world still had less than a week of safety from the Primordial Deities.