Path of the Ascendant

Yi Wei took her time to slowly examine that energy while it was still present within her head. With every observation that she made, a new line was added to a mental manual that she had created specifically for it. As she proceeded, she noticed that a large number of things that she typically forgot, the seemingly insignificant details, could now be remembered via the Gilded Library, increasing her overall memory capacity two-fold, and allowing her to notice a small collection of things that she would have otherwise looked over.

On their own, these things were not too relevant, but together, she found that they added up to some rather significant details. Because of these, she was able to create a concept of a planar-based technique much more quickly than she had anticipated.

‘Alright, before even attempting to use it, I must compare it with my mysterious character-based technique, or else I will risk exploding or experiencing a form of planar energy deviation.’

While allowing her library to slowly sort out all of the other ideas within her head, she brought herself out of her mind and to reality, where she briefly looked onto the scenes on the wall. Her eyes were immediately drawn to one particular point, where she saw a familiar face. The elder who had followed them into the hidden grounds fought with a darkened figure, obscured in an impenetrable layer of darkness.

Despite the man’s immense cultivation, he had already suffered three significant wounds on his body and was slowly getting pushed back by the great mass of shadow.

‘Well, shit. This is worse than I thought,’ Yi Wei thought as she watched the battle leave her vision, ‘I had anticipated him or her to be within the third realm, but this shows that they are capable of competing with someone in the upper fourth realm, even if that is simply due to their techniques being most suited to countering attacks, rather than withstanding or dodging them.

This means that I have to hurry up and create the most powerful form of planar energy that I can, regardless of the danger it may pose, or else this assassin is almost certain to kill me the moment they come across me.’

In order to accelerate her thoughts, she activated the Kong Mental Arts, observing as its energy mixed with that of the Gilded Library. The space around the two mixing energies seemed to blur and distort, though no actual harm was done, and she did not allow herself to overlook even a single detail while she noted down the process of the energies mixing within her mental library, quickly incorporating everything from it that she could.

When there was nothing else to document, she looked towards the book that represented the Red Phantom Flood skill. Although she was not sufficiently reckless to practise it again, she still opened it and tried to incorporate every small detail that she could without causing an instant destruction of her cultivation.

The moment that was done, she sent those books back into their shelves and looked only onto the new, Mysterious Planar sub-technique.

She didn’t need to show it to anyone else to know that it would be considered completely insane for anyone to practise her creation. This wasn’t simply due to their lack of cosmic energy, nor due to their comparatively weaker bodies, but due to the properties of the technique seeming to be more appropriate for a deadly poison more so than a cultivation technique. In the worst-case scenario, anyone practising this skill would instantly die due to the explosion of their dantian, and even in the best-case scenario, if a person did not have access to a purified planar aperture and strengthened body, this planar-type energy would still eat through them in seconds.

However, this wasn’t something she had a choice about, as anything less volatile would not be beneficial in terms of a power increase. At the same time, she did not want to end her life in vain, so she considered things for a minute and stood up, heading to the exit.

‘This area may have been designed for a genius, who was already powerful enough, but the other doorways may lead to something more suited to regular people… if there is something behind them at all. Logically speaking, they wouldn’t have bothered to make the other three if there wasn’t something there, as the only person who they would have intended to see them would have been their Kong Shi Meng, so there must be something here,’ Yi Wei reasoned, exiting the fourth door and returning to the small chamber.

She headed straight for the third door and passed through it without much difficulty.

It did not contain another bloodied wall, but amongst numerous piles of materials and items lying about, there were two large planar stones, filled to the brim with energy.

‘Well, well. I cannot carry them out of here, but advancing in my cultivation would be greatly beneficial, since it would give me a brief moment of guaranteed safety during which I can convert my energy into planar energy for that short while that I need,’ Yi Wei thought, picking up both stones and bringing them over to the fourth door, behind the wall covered in blood, before exiting again.

This time, she went into the second room, and scoured it for resources. Unfortunately, it did not contain much beyond more crafting materials, all of which she would need a lot of time in order to process and use, meaning that she had no use for them.

She found a few planar shards, which she collected and also threw into the fourth room, then went into the first room.

Ancient pills, low and medium-grade artefacts and far more lined the various shelves on the walls, but most of them were either useless to her, or she was unable to identify them due to their old age. Out of that large collection, she chose a few throwing knives, which could be transformed into explosives whenever needed via cosmic energy, collected the few remnants of planar shards that she was able to find, and returned to her original seat in the fourth room.

‘With this, I can guarantee an increase in one stage, and have a high likelihood of getting two, which will put me at the edge of the third realm. In addition to the planar technique, if it works, I should be able to put up a fight against that assassin. Since the detonation of a middle-grade artefact should, logically, cause a much more powerful explosion, I will likely possess a means of attacking them as well as defending, and the first time it happens, it should catch them off-guard,’ she thought, placing her hands over the planar stones, ‘Now, focus, Yi Wei, focus and don’t kill yourself.’

Tapping into the stones with her spiritual will, she made the energy within rise up and into her body, where she quickly absorbed it and transformed it into her own energy. The pool of planar energy within her body quickly rose, and within minutes, her planar aperture was filled to the brim, and the energy began to tremble as her breakthrough neared.

Her power burst out of her body twice, forming the great crystalline armour twice without any clear reason nor logic behind it, and even as it slowly settled again, the cosmic energy began to increase in quantity as it slowly rose to the tipping point of the ninth stage of the Planar Pool realm.

The two planar stones were nearly empty, so she nudged one towards the other and used that same hand to take every planar shard and hold them in a closed fist.

Their sharp edges were able to cut ever so slightly into her skin, but that was what she intended.

As her blood slowly dripped onto the violet shards, she pulled on the planar energy within, absorbing it a dozen times faster than she otherwise could have done, flooding her meridians and then her planar aperture. It was rapidly converted from regular violet energy into cosmic energy, with seven colours of nebulae glowing within.

Yi Wei wasn’t sure whether there was any correlation between the energies and elements she had available, as the exact colours and shapes of the constellations seemed to differ whenever she looked upon them, but at this exact moment, mid-way through the breakthrough, there were seven distinct shades within the stars: orange-red, crimson, brown, blue, silver, flickering blue and green, mixing with one another to create all sorts of colours. Additionally, if she was to apply some creative interpretations to the shapes of the fields of stars, they could be said to resemble symbols for those elements.

Further adding to that particular theory, the stars that could represent flame and metal were perhaps the brightest, correlating with her ownership of powerful techniques like the Scalding Torch as well as her practise of the Thunder Lord’s skills, which also involve the element of fire. There wasn’t much relevance to her current situation, but she noted it down mentally nonetheless just in case it turned out to be important.

The moment that she felt the second breakthrough approach, she opened her mental book for the Mysterious Planar sub-technique and proceeded with her first steps. For a moment, her heart quaked with worry, but she silenced it and forced herself to continue.

Her entire being trembled as, for a single instant, her cosmic energy flashed pure purple, and every internal organ was scarred by the energy. That wasn’t even a successful manifestation of the pure planar energy she wished to wield, and yet it caused such an enormous degree of harm to herself, the only person who should have always been exempt from its effects.

‘What the fuck is this? I did anticipate this, but how in the world can the temporary appearance of unbound planar energy cause this kind of- right, the Red Phantom Flood. It’s this dangerous even when I am using less than one percent of it? Still, I had expected that something like this would happen, so…’

She stopped talking to herself, as she understood that it wasn’t helping.

Instead, Yi Wei drew in all of her spiritual will, shut her eyes, and focused, healing the numerous internal wounds via the innate effects of cosmic energy before returning to the cultivation process.

The planar energy within her flickered for a second time, without the same disastrous effects, while it flowed through her meridians in a certain pattern. Every few moments, it would pulse violently, tearing through her firm flesh, but she suppressed it every time it occurred, forcing herself to continue. At the same time, since she understood that force of will could only take her so far before her body would no longer respond to her commands, she sought out something that could either ease the pressure on her body, or that could make use of the great destructive force of the pure planar energy and distract herself with it. Her attention was quickly drawn to the numerous dantian bone shards floating a short distance around it.

‘I’ve already made an array with the previous shards, so I suppose the next thing I can create… would be a set of talismans, with which, just like in the fourth realm, I could use up the energy within one or more in order to significantly strengthen my body for a brief time,’ she decided, quickly calculating the feasibility of her idea, ‘That could work, and would be a great place to use up the violent energy from my planar energy. Alright, let’s do this… and hopefully not die.’

As she felt the next pulse of destructive energy rising up from within, she distorted the flow of planar energy from her meridians to the dantian bone shards near her abdomen. That destructive force burst out just as it reached a bone shard, pushing it through her body at the same time as it carved out one stroke of the character for a talisman.

‘First attempt, damage minimal so far,’ she assessed the situation, making a few notes on her execution of it, ‘If I arrange the talismans into a secondary array, it will strengthen my body even further, so the movement caused by the bursts of planar energy isn’t superfluous nor negative, and if I apply the natural energy flow of the Condensed Formation Body to control the movement, then I can influence it with a significantly greater quantity of accuracy than I currently possess. Overall, I can rate this particular endeavour as: not completely hopeless.’

Yi Wei continued, this time splitting her energy into two individual strands, making both of them orbit once around the stars in her meridians in order to gather up the more violent energies while depositing the calmer wisps of cosmic light.

A few minutes passed, during which she had rearranged the second set of dantian bone shards into an array mirroring her first, except with minor differences based on her improved understanding of arrays from studying the four illusory formations around the Lock Obelisks, especially the third one, which contained a great number of extremely interesting ideas despite its immense age.

The last nudge and cut on the last shard occurred the second that her breakthrough to the ninth stage began. Also at that moment, she finalised the conversion to the Mysterious Planar sub-technique.

Her pool of cosmic energy transformed into pure purple, savaging the flesh and organs within her abdomen as it began to soar out. With her spiritual will, she saw the space around it distort, almost as if her cosmic energy had transformed from a simple window into an unknown void, to that very void itself, warping the very fabric of reality around itself. That energy contained an immense degree of power, surpassing the previous purest form of her cosmic energy.

Before it could spread any further and destroy anything else, she suppressed it and transformed it into its previous state, forcing the cosmic energy to regenerate every injury it had caused, applying what little control she had over her breakthrough to guide the energy according to the former shape of her internal organs.

Since they had not been completely obliterated, what remained was rapidly rebuilt via the effects of flame within the cosmic energy, simultaneously strengthening her stomach. Though there was no such thing as absolute immunity to poisons, strengthening the digestive system to this degree was certain to reduce any risk of her receiving any disease or poisoning from anything she consumes, which, in combination with the ability of her yang physique energy and the natural strengthening of the Condensed Arts Body, prevents any chance of falling to common illness or poison.

It continued to flow out, forming the same suit of armour twice without any clear reason behind it, and as it touched each of the inactive talisman shards, Yi Wei controlled it to flood in and activate them with small explosions of power. Bright cosmic light burst out of her body with every such activation, dyeing the dark ground with starlight. Then, the energy returned to her dantian, where it settled back into its crystal state.

However, the talisman shards did not calm down. Due to their activation within the same few seconds, their position beside an existing array, and the one hundred and eight stars within her meridians connecting to them via planar energy, they connected to one another in a complex formation array of their own, and were filled to the brim with power.

Her eyes snapped open.

She stood up, drew back her fist and punched the air, invoking one of the talismans within herself whilst drawing out a small quantity of planar energy out of herself.

The moment that the talisman activated, everything about her attack increased. Her speed and strength both rose by half, and the instant it lost contact with her hand, she switched the form of energy to pure planar energy, causing it to emit a sudden, piercing sound.

It struck the wall at great speed and exploded into an enormous cloud of chaotic energy.

For a few brief moments, it looked as if it might burn into the Kong Holy Grounds themselves, but the violet light dulled before that could occur.

Before it had any chance to harm herself, she switched her planar energy back to its cosmic form and allowed it to heal the damaged portions of her meridians, temporarily calling out the energy from the hundred and eight stars in order to accelerate the process.

‘I had originally wanted the Dawn Star Body to be purely for show, but my planar energy seems to be settling down in my meridians far better than I had initially expected. In general, this can significantly accelerate my healing, as long as the damage is near my meridian network, but if the quantity of energy within each dawn star grows large enough, I could use attacks purely via that energy, saving on the power within my dantian and surprising anyone who thinks they have limited the flow of energy within my body,’ she considered, watching as her planar energy slowly returned to the talisman shard at a speed that suggested that she would need approximately one hour in order to get that talisman back.

Although the great art of talisman drawing typically showcased its consumable, one-time use talismans to the world, there was also a secondary, less frequently used form of a talisman, known as the permanent talisman, whereas the common one can be referred to as the temporary or one-time use talisman.

The primary difference in the creation of the two is the material. Temporary talismans utilise talisman paper and ink, which quickly burns when the planar energy sealed within erupts. As a result, no matter what modifications are made to the characters or ink, it is impossible to get more than a single use of the common, cheap talisman – with cheap being used not in a derogatory format, but rather in a factual one, for temporary talismans are many times cheaper than permanent ones.

In order to produce a permanent talisman, several things are needed. First, the talisman maker has to be sufficiently capable, with a low quantity of impurities within their planar energy. Then, they require an object capable of conducting planar energy, storing planar energy, and yet it must not contain any innate planar energy of its own, whilst also being able to withstand the pressure of a limited cultivation technique constantly operating on it. After that, the material has to be inscribed with raw planar energy of the cultivator, albeit this step is easier than the equivalent within the creation of the temporary talismans, as those require the drawing of characters without any interruption, in a fashion that differs slightly from typical talisman characters.

Simply put, it was difficult, as those materials often resisted cutting via planar energy. Yi Wei’s dantian shards just happened to be appropriate for this purpose, as they naturally conduct and store energy, have no innate energy, and, due to being a part of the planar aperture, have no difficulties with withstanding any form of cultivation technique.

‘Although I could have probably done a slightly better job of this, especially with the experience I currently possess, having forty-eight usable talismans that can add 50% to my combat ability at any time, once per hour, is still pretty good,’ she thought, ‘Of course, in comparison to a searing mark, which can double the power of an attack and be combined with multiple marks at the same time for greater effect, this isn’t all that impressive, but this should still be usable after I reach the fifth realm, and so I will essentially have a primary and secondary set of searing marks.’

Yi Wei dusted herself off and attempted to accelerate the regeneration of the talisman shard by rushing a great quantity of planar energy to it, but to no avail. Instead, she assessed her current fighting strength.

‘I am now in the ninth stage, and have half of the energy needed to reach the next realm, provided that it isn’t too difficult to achieve,’ she considered, briefly checking the mysterious characters without finding anything unusual about the technique they displayed, ‘My planar energy should be on par with someone in the first stage of the Emergent Anchor realm, though I still can’t manifest a solid form of it outside of my body, and when the trump cards of the talisman shards, pure planar energy and exploding artefacts are taken into account, I shouldn’t struggle to combat any typical individual in the third realm… Provided that the assassin relied on a form of illusion to combat the Yi family elder, then I will not lose to them, but if that was their strength and speed and nothing else, then I may need to seek out a pyrrhic victory over a purely beneficial one.’

She looked over the empty remnants of the planar stones and shards, lightly stepping on them in order to disperse them into dust, which then scattered into nothingness.

Turning to the side, she looked for any sign of the assassin or the elder on the bloodied wall. There were countless images to look through, and they were not responsive to spiritual will, so she could only use her eyes for this purpose. She skipped over the countless empty and bloody scenes, including those where corpses still lay, until she eventually found them.

A trace of the shadow slowly departing from one of the images caught her eye. Yi Wei stepped forward and pressed her hand on the picture, although she was not entirely sure what she expected that to get her.

The outline of the image pulsed, then expanded to cover a person-sized doorway within the wall, and her hand, which previously had no ability to pass through it, moved through without issue.

‘Oh, that’s convenient. I wonder if I’ll be able to return in a similar manner.’

She was about to walk through, before she turned around and sliced through the five technique manuals behind her with the Dawn Slicing Beam, turning back around the instant that she observed the pages catching on fire. Every single one of the technique within those books was immensely valuable, and she did not want anyone else to get their hands on it, no matter how or why they would have the ability to reach them, as they would grant anyone who gets their hands on them immense power.

Walking through the doorway, she felt a similar sense of warmth to the time she first entered the hidden grounds, and then found herself within the room that she had been watching earlier.

It was another simple chamber, with three pathways from her point of entrance, which, as she briefly confirmed, had an extremely tiny point on it which grew if she brought her key-marked arm closer to it, suggesting that she could return through it or any other position that had a link to the fourth chamber of the hidden ground treasury.

Since she had seen the shadowy figure departing through the rightmost passage, that was where she went, rushing at the greatest speed she could manage while preventing her footsteps from generating any noise.

‘This assassin is rather quick. Even with my constant use of the Dawn Sunlight Step, they haven’t entered my sight even once,’ she thought, running through corridors and past countless turns, as if navigating a maze, relying purely on the remnants of dust, dirt and the slight scratches or marks left behind by the assassin’s footsteps, ‘If they turn out to be within the second realm, I will have a lot of questions to ask, especially why our Yi family has such terrible cultivation techniques when there are things out there that can reach the level of forbidden arts without any harm to the body or mind.

‘Actually, I already have such questions. If they gave out techniques on the level of those I have acquired from my six teachers back in the Yi District to everyone, the overall level of the family would have increased significantly, but they instead withhold the majority of them for those who come from superior families and can access the greater skills either via their parent’s connections, or by accessing the other technique library within the Ancestral Hall.’

It wasn’t the right time to consider things like that, so she threw them into the library in the form of random pages and began to use the Storm’s Edge Dash to clear longer distances in order to catch up.

Almost ten minutes after she began her chase, she came upon another pure black doorway, charging right into it without much consideration. So far as she could tell, her target had gone through the same passageway, so there would be no reason why she, the holder of all four keys, could not do the same thing.

Just as she had expected, her body was not obstructed in the slightest, although she felt another burst of warmth before she appeared on the other side, standing inside of a grey stone cave that was somehow still lit with the orange light.

The assassin was still nowhere to be found, but there was a number of corpses lying on the ground, blood slowly seeping out of them. There were three wounds on each one of their bodies.

Originating somewhere in the distance, a faint sound reached her ears, so she snapped her head in that direction, choosing to go after it. If the assassin could be found there, then it would be incredibly convenient for her, but if it was someone who had not yet become a target of the assassin, or was someone completely unrelated to their expedition, then she could make use of their support or learn a little more about the situation they had found themselves in after her entry to the treasure chamber of the Kong Holy Grounds.

She conserved her energy and did not use the Storm’s Edge Dash, and it turned out to be a good idea.

When she turned on the last junction of the cave, Yi Wei saw a small chamber with seven corpses of the Yi expedition’s former members pinned to the walls with large arrows, though none were as large as the arrow-spears commonly used by Yi Fenwu.

‘Nonetheless, I am rather certain that this was fired either by her, or by someone with a similar technique, both in terms of planar energy utilisation and shooting style,’ she concluded as she briefly stopped to examine the arrow lodged within one of the members of Yi Jiazhi’s group, whom she had seen Yi Bai speaking to some time ago, ‘Did she directly cause this, or did she defend herself against a sudden attack by another group?’

There were no survivors of this altercation, not so far as she could see, so there was also no one to provide her with an answer, forcing her to continue chasing the sounds in the distance.

As they echoed and reverberated due to the cave walls, it made it very difficult to accurately assess the location of their origin, especially with the multitude of different passages, corridors and chambers within this cave, almost as if this was a continuation of the previous labyrinth, just in a more natural setting.

She was still able to track it down with a little effort and slowed herself down the moment before she was about to turn the corner leading to the noise. If there was indeed some conflict, regardless of the propagator, it would not be a good idea to barge in without warning, or else one or more of the sides might mistake her for an enemy and retaliate before she has any opportunity to explain herself, potentially with enough force to necessitate the usage of her strongest techniques to avoid sustaining heavy injuries.

‘By the sounds of it, two people are clashing with metal weapons, presumably low or middle-grade artefacts. Alright then, I should have a look…’