Path of the Ascendant

The plans that the Ascendant created were neither complex nor unusual, for there was no need for either quality. She was working with people that, if she was to describe them politely, were rather dull mentally, in part due to the stressful situation they were currently in. Whether she had a problem with it or not – she did, but there wasn’t much to be done about that now – she needed to make use of them as effectively as possible in order to have the higher chance of success.

Thus, she simply instructed them to move in particular ways, to head to specific places, and to perform certain actions while she and her dragons took advantage of their movements to take out foes.

At the same time, she studied the district and sought answers to some of the questions that she had not been able to pry out of Shi Jing. Mainly, she had been seeking any kind of information about the Gluttonous Leech that were available, but it was a topic that most could not recognise and thought to either be nonsense, or simply couldn’t reply to whatsoever.

There was one thing that she confirmed, and it was that some of the people of the Shi District were in favour of Primordial Ocean when it emerged within the water between the two halves of the western district.

To put it in the words of Shi Jing, “A few weeks ago, some cults and groups that were fond of the ocean didn’t matter much… Now, with the ocean rising up and trying to eat us whole, we couldn’t even stand united. Those people walked to the water and threw themselves in readily… It was horrifying to look at when we thought they were just killing themselves, and now… It hasn’t gotten any better, I will say that much.”

In the Ascendant’s words, “Some idiots figured that their great god has risen from the sea, and jumped into its kingdom. Your father, and the Patriarch by extension, were also idiots for not stopping it.”

The daughter of a guardian lacked a response to that, and the Ascendant wouldn’t have listened to one even if it was provided. She headed off to target more of Primordial Ocean’s forces, and Shi Jing did her best to do as she was asked without losing her life to the monstrous horrors flooding the district’s lands.

Only a few hours passed since the battle was joined by Wei Yi, but those that saw her in action quickly learned that she wasn’t just a woman with dragons on her side. No, some were even considering whether she or Primordial Ocean were more terrifying.

To understand why, one would need to return to the beginning of her experimentation attempts.

When she had finished her first talk with Shi Jing, she went out to the largest crowd of Primordial Ocean’s minions in the eastern portion of the district and began to test out her most powerful elemental Dao, those that bore some unique feature from a Primordial Deity. Grey dust, the power over nature and over heat and flame were what she had, and at least one was bound to be effective against the water of Primordial Ocean.

Her first attempt was with flame, and it proved curiously counterproductive. When the entities of Primordial Ocean’s creation were heated, they only grew more destructive, their fluids boiling and tearing into the terrain with every drop that inevitably poured away from their bodies, while the steam was enough to kill men at the third realm or below.

There weren’t many like that remaining in the district, but it was still damaging to stronger people.

Hence, she was forced to change her approach. The grey dust of Primordial Earth was always effective, but even the minions of the Primordial Deity were somewhat resistant to her influence, forcing her to apply additional energy to dry them.

Thus, the Ascendant switched to her remaining power, appearing in another large group as that one had been expended by her previous two tests, and raised her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow with her palm pointed upwards, her black claws closing as a vast pulse of oblivion essence was released and suffused into the land.

Numerous terrible horrors noticed her by that point, heads and what not, but as soon as one tried to move towards her, a massive root suddenly broke through the ground and pierced it with absolute ease.

Hundreds of others shot out of the terrain and thrust into the bodies of the other water-based minions, but these did not crush them right away, but instead made use of the ability that roots possessed, even those that were not manifested by the power of the Ascendant or a Primordial Deity. Roots fed the plants from which they grew, harvesting fluid and minerals from the earth, and the many tendrils she had summoned could do so at a thousand times the speed of their natural counterparts.

When combining that with the rich presence of water and a lesser quantity of other nutrients that could be found in the body of a human being, the roots had plenty to draw from, and did so without hesitation.

In moments, countless influenced entities were destroyed, and all of that flowed towards the Ascendant’s energy node beneath the ground, which she then used to recover her own energy. This was a partly experimental part of the chain, and could be used to manifest more roots independently or to directly recover her oblivion essence, but when she cleared a hundred minions with the roots and felt the energy that they fed to their origin, she confirmed that both applications would be viable without much difficulty.

Hence, she had to work out one more issue, which was that these roots would inevitably damage the terrain and structures of the district as much as the threats they sought to oppose.

‘If I was to simply give this thing a mind of its own, it would likely cause quite a few problems when it grows powerful enough, and I would somehow need to replicate my own mind’s capabilities in a plant. Considering that neither Yi Shi Ming, Xu Shi Meng, or Long Mingyun have a clue as to how my body and mind work, this will not be a simple task by any metric,’ the Ascendant thought, using this time to send a few more sets of roots into the district’s streets, ‘However, I can’t manage it the whole time, either.’

Inevitably, she would need to fight with Primordial Ocean, and at that time she would not be able to manage to situation herself. Leaving it to the dragons would be difficult without having the coastal areas be devoured in flame, and keeping herself distracted would give Primordial Ocean far too much of an advantage.

‘What could I… Jia Rong.’

She turned towards Paragon and reached out with her divine sense, reaching the demonic woman in an instant and, fortunately, catching her while she was sitting in a small establishment and drinking some fruit juice, made from a red fruit that was famously believed to improve one’s strength.

“W-What? Wei Yi? Did I do something wrong?”

“No. Well, I hadn’t been paying attention to you lately, so you might have done something I don’t approve of, but this is not why I reached out to you,” Wei Yi said, “Rather, I want you to come over and see if your abilities extend to crushing the energy of Primordial Deities as well. I should have asked you about this earlier, really, but I didn’t want to bring you into something like this.”

“I’ll come over right away!”

“Don’t need to shout, by the way. Everyone around you is being rather concerned about your sudden exclamations to the sky.”

“Ah… I’ll come. Where should I go?”

“Just stand there for a moment, and I should be able to make a small gateway for you. Don’t move around too much, and get in as quickly as you can so that there’s no chance of spatial rupturing or something of the sorts.”

“… Can that happen?”

“I haven’t tested it, and I don’t think anyone wants that. The scars caused by Reality Severance and my Touch the Heavens still haven’t healed fully, and those were controlled attacks. Mostly.”

Jia Rong didn’t say anything else, mostly because she did not have the chance to do so before the gateway began to take form before her. Silver and smoke rose up from the ground, slowly widening into an opening just wide enough to fit the woman and her horns. The edges were unstable at first, but the Ascendant sorted it out by improving the structure and making it larger, so that the overall increase in safely traversable space became sufficient for Jia Rong to cross over without issue.

She did so a moment later, stepping through warily. It was her first time using this specific form of transportation, but she was nowhere near as phased as those that watched her exclaim to the sky, then vanish through an opening in the world that opened and shut in seconds.

“So, what do I do?”

“Hit one of those things in the face,” Wei Yi replied, turning in the direction of a Primordial Ocean-influenced minion being delivered by one of the roots that she had been controlling while bringing the demonic woman over here, “If you can’t figure out where that is – not that I would blame you – hit any of the watery bits.”

In theory, it would be fine if Jia Rong struck any parts of Primordial Ocean’s minions, but just to be safe, she instructed her to target the most vulnerable parts to the timeless properties of the demonic woman. If it worked, then she would likely start hitting whatever was easiest in time, and if it did not, she wouldn’t linger on this battlefield for too long, as she would simply be an uncertain liability that might be turned against them at any moment.

Obviously, she would rather not have this million year old woman die simply because she was a little careless, but if her sacrifice could end yet another Primordial Deity, it might be worthwhile.

With the instruction given, Jia Rong rushed into action, the strength she gained simply from existing manifesting itself readily. Since the last time she had been given the opportunity to fight, she had effectively ascended two realms, though neither one generated the typical structure nor offered her any particular abilities. She was still limited to physical force.

That physical force did reach such a level that even the Ascendant might be insufficient to match the sheer speed and power exerted within an instant, unless she made use of Dao and Law and her other forms of cultivation. One moment, she stood in the street, a few metres away from her foe, and the next there would have been a crater in her place, if not for Wei Yi reinforcing the land in a great hurry. There was no reinforcement of the roots or of the minion she targeted, and thus both were turned to naught with her strike, some dust ending up in the skies and forming a faint cloud before the setting sun.

“Was that good?”

“… Yeah, that works too.”

“By the way, do you still need me to mention the particles that I can see? I know you’ve been studying, and that you have something called a… vision state?”

“I do have a Planar Dao and a Dao of the Heavens vision state, both of which do let me view some aspects of planar energy, but it is likely that you can see something I do not. Please, do enlighten me on anything strange.”

“First of all, everything around us seems to be… flowing. Like its in a massive ocean.”

“That much is normal. We’re facing Primordial Ocean, after all, so a bunch of planar energy that’s often referred to as flowing, and so on, would fall partly under its domain. Additionally, we are within the centre of the land that it is attempting to conquer, even if my Conqueror’s Eye is keeping it back, so energy within its domain would conform to its will, just as my conquered territory manifests chains and the like.”

“Although I never really understood the chains thing, I will just trust you with it. So, the second thing is that the particles are… picking up other ones and sort of merging with them?”

“Given that you’re not sure about what you’re seeing, I-” Wei Yi’s eyes widened, and her gaze, which had wandered off into the distance, snapped back onto Jia Rong, “Where is this currently most prominent? Show me right now!”

She jumped, but managed to point in a direction quickly and speak without stuttering, “There.”

The Ascendant turned and focused all of her perceptive abilities upon that area, partly withdrawing her divine sense from everything within her domain until the attention of a seventh realm expert – if such a was even fit for her when she so vastly outranked the vast majority of so-called experts – was placed onto a single wall of a structure that must have had a minimum of four before the other parts collapsed and left it as little more than a reminder of a building’s presence among a pile of ruined building materials.

There, subtle yet most prominent to one that looked for it, she could see the bricks almost melting, smudging a little as invisible winds claimed parts of them and drew those parts away, somewhere into the distance.

“The Gluttonous Leech.”

“… Is that some kind of technique?”

“The Magnanimous Leech certainly is, and the Shi District’s Gluttonous Leech might also be. More importantly, however, the properties of these techniques should match with Primordial Ocean’s power, meaning that the Magnanimous Leech I had come across in the Kong Prison Realm should have been based, directly or indirectly, on the energy of this Primordial Deity!”

“M-Meaning?” the demonic woman did stutter this time, though not too badly.

“It means that Primordial Ocean had influence here before, and at some point the Patriarchs of the Shi District would have been on its side. Back then, they might well have used the Gluttonous Leech actively, leading to their people gaining oddly perfect appearances, devoid of flaws yet rich in variety that shouldn’t have been present from a family that cared about its lineage and didn’t just sleep around with everyone, everywhere.”

There was no comment, likely due to Jia Rong having rather limited experience with matters of the adult variety thanks to being chained in a cave from an age that might have led to her having an interest in such matters. Wei Yi continued regardless.

“Although they do not appear to be actively utilising their Gluttonous Leech now, it is still present and effective upon them. If Primordial Ocean is slain, they might suffer as a result, but that is fine. Rather, it is quite ideal, as they should learn, now and forever more, that attempting to play with such things will never end well,” she said, “Perhaps if I left them on their own, they would go through the techniques of the Great Leeches and try to copy them as well, since both their old techniques and the people so keen to ruin Yi City both featured the word ‘Leech’ in their titles.”

One of those wasn’t voluntary, nor ever embraced by the people that she had attached it to, but she had gladly badmouthed the Great Leeches even when they were still present and at full power. With them now gone, there was no reason to hold back, though there were also few opportunities to say anything against them now that they didn’t irritate her regularly.

Jia Rong was clearly more interested in the energy around them, for she had stopped listening rather quickly and returned her attention to the particles of planar energy that were visible only to her.

“So, what should I do? It doesn’t seem like this Gluttonous Leech property is affecting either you or me, but it is getting progressively more and more unpleasant to look at the more I do it, so maybe it would be a good idea for me to go…”

“Stay. I will pay attention to this draining effect, try to keep it at bay with all of my methods, and make sure that the dragons don’t contribute to the power of Primordial Ocean any more than they might already have done,” Wei Yi said, “Your power is quite helpful here, so long as you keep the physical force down a little. I had wanted to limit the attention I needed to pay to the average minions, but if I have to protect the district from you constantly, it won’t be much of an improvement.”

“Oh, had I used too much strength? It’s been growing lately, and I haven’t had the chance to practise much.”

“Yeah, that can happen.”

The Ascendant remembered how she had managed to lodge herself into a cave wall the first time she had improved her physique, and could understand it entirely, even if her words might come off as rather dismissive by a party that was unaware of this.

“Anyway, let’s go, and I’ll give you a few opportunities to practise your strength before we go off on our own. Is there anything else that you want to point it, or was that everything?”

She shook her head, “I can’t find anything. If I notice something that’s even a little odd, I will point it out immediately! I don’t know if you’ll hear it, though, since you said you will be focusing on other things, and you are rarely ever near me when I might want to reach you, but… I’m sure it would be totally fine!”

“Great enthusiasm.”

“Thank you!” the not-so-young woman smiled and, accidentally or not, presented her head in a manner that made it easy to pat it and praise her for her actions, though the Ascendant resisted the latter part and simply satisfied herself that way.

Then, they set out and split up, Jia Rong going off to the parts of the district that were more occupied by the Primordial Deity’s minions, and the Ascendant heading towards Primordial Ocean itself. In order to force back the tide of its minions, it was necessary to force Primordial Ocean to retreat or otherwise expend all of its power on her instead of its influenced monstrosities. Additionally, she had to figure out a way to take care of its Leech effect as quickly as possible, so that the people of the Shi District weren’t completely drained by it during battle, or something of the sort.

Wei Yi also needed to consider the matter of her own safety, as she had no guarantee that the current power of the Primordial Deity’s leeching would remain constant, nor that it would continue to avoid targeting her or her allies like it currently did. Perhaps all it needed was a concerted effort by Primordial Ocean to focus that power upon her, or the Arbiters, and she would be affected as well.

Such a thing would be absurdly concerning, not because Primordial Ocean would grow more intelligent, but because the Magnanimous Leech was a permanent drain upon its target. Every single drop of anything that Wei Yi lost could never be recovered, at least presumably, and this was something that she could never, ever accept. Perhaps she would only ever lose one thousandth of a percent of her overall intelligence, power, memory or something else, but this could be fatal and completely ruin whatever abnormal power she currently had. It was impossible to know exactly what it would do to her state.

If Primordial Ocean’s leeching somehow took a percentage of an element rather than a quantity, then it might well lead to the worst possible situation of all, which she didn’t even wish to consider.

As she travelled towards the ancient Primordial Deity, she continued to conjure roots wherever there weren’t other forces taking care of oceanic minions, and advanced at a decent pace as a result. It was far slower than if she just moved herself to the destination with Omit Movement, but the result was that the district was slowly cleared of unsightly influences, even if that still lagged behind her own movements. By the time she got to the front, her forces were half of the way through.

She let out a few more sets of vines while she could, ensuring that none of her forces would lose any ground, and then turned to the water, the waves readily attempting to crash into her with enough force to break an ordinary woman into tiny pieces, if not dust.

‘Conqueror’s Eye with Elder Watcher is good enough to resist something this simple,’ the Ascendant thought, forcing her eyes to light up with the power of the two physique abilities.

Their power surged out, chains and tendrils trapping the raging waves and forcing them to stall. It was resisted for a moment by the power of Primordial Ocean, but then the light of her True Existence joined her other powers, stalling the water and letting a pathway form all the way to the Primordial Deity’s body.

Wei Yi stepped on it right away, only waiting for the step before her to stabilise before proceeding. Although the distance between her and the Primordial Deity she was targeting was long, she hardly needed to get close enough to touch before they would have to confront one another. Indeed, only after getting through a tenth of the distance between them, Primordial Ocean lazily turned its head in her direction, water bubbling in place of eyes.

“Mortal thing… Get out of here. Your stench, the aura around you, pollutes my waters simply by proximity,” Primordial Ocean said, being a great change of pace after Primordial Inferno’s insane rambling, “This place does not belong to you.”

“It does not belong to you either, mortal thing,” the Ascendant spoke back, “I have killed two of your peers already, and wield the third’s power, and you will not be any different!”

“How arrogant. I gave you the opportunity to leave, I hope you remember that.”

Until then, Primordial Ocean had been incredibly calm and quiet, as if she was dealing with a random passer-by and not an enemy that was intending to kill her and everything she manifested during her brief stay in the Shi District. It was like conversing with a woman that was half-asleep, and not a strange entity like a Primordial Deity, but rather just an ordinary woman. That all changed after the Ascendant’s reply.

The calm water that made up the entity itself boiled and bubbled, foam forming on the surface, transforming the blue to a pale white. When the foam appeared, a hint of the attributes this monstrosity was taking from the world around it became prominent, for colours not belonging on pure ocean water began to appear like paint seeping through the world.

One could see vitality, strength, intelligence, memory and skills all mixing together on the Primordial Deity’s surface, manifesting visually despite most attributes being abstract in nature and rarely ever visualised. With every bubble of foam that formed, the aura of this ancient entity grew bolder and more mighty, and it changed from this sleepy, tired humanoid to a raging beast that almost generated the element of blaze from the sheer anger that it suddenly bore, though it was not too surprising of a phenomenon.

Primordial Ocean must have taken the people’s mental energy just the same as it took everything else, and one thing that it must have picked up was the people’s anger at, well, just about everything. There was plenty of reason to find rage and hatred in the everyday world, but in a district suddenly ravaged by unknown forces to most of the population, it was only natural that everyone would be furious regardless of their eventual outcome.

Far too many perished before the Ascendant arrived with her dragons and one demoness, and now their anger will be applying to the very thing that had ruined their lives. Of course, that also applied to their skill, speed, intellect and whatever else those people had to spare.

All of these things were turned against Wei Yi the instant after Primordial Ocean’s transformation, a vast tsunami spawning from the moisture of the air and rushing towards her. The wave seemed to encompass the world, forcing her to pay attention to the fact that these Primordial Deities did have stages of their own, although they may never be able to advance on their own, relying on the world to push them back or forth. Some were weaker, some were stronger, regardless of their stage, but Primordial Ocean was most certainly at the peak of what a Primordial Deity could be. This wave was no joke, even to her.

Well, none of the Primordial Deities have been a joke so far. Perhaps Primordial Cosmos could be said to be a joke, for it had not yet appeared or hurt anyone, or Primordial Energy, as it took only a moment to seal it, but when they got the chance to strike, their power had been consistently overwhelming. Thus, even with her every physique power activated, she was forced to guard and evade at once.