Path of the Ascendant

By the time Yi Wei tracked down Yi Fenwu’s path and crossed yet another dark gate, appearing in a maze completely made of ice, which made her rather appreciative of the fact that she acquired a yang-type physique, she had discovered that the exact distance between her and Yi Bai that she could maintain comfortably was exactly five metres and two steps.

Naturally, she would have preferred to have a larger gap between them, but it was still enough for her to calmly observe and locate the traces of Yi Fenwu.

Every now and then, the assassin was able to appear beside her and throw a few more strikes in her general direction, which Yi Wei blocked rather easily. This pattern allowed her to quickly gather that, despite Yi Bai possessing an immensely powerful set of techniques that allow her to combat someone in the fourth realm while appearing to be in the second realm, she does not have all too much experience in combat at high levels. To put it simply: Yi Bai may never have been trained.

This was significant because it allowed the thought of a certain possibility to arise within Yi Wei’s mind. If Yi Bai had not received any proper training for the purposes of assassinating those who had a higher cultivation than her, then there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that she was not truly part of any assassin organisation. After all, the thing that controlled Fen Zhi, the dark half of her spiritual will, could theoretically be cultivated by anyone, and thus it follows that other techniques that bind the assassins to their masters could also be found, cultivated by unsuspecting individuals, and then lead to them being bound to those who possess the other technique.

Besides increasing the likelihood of her having shown her true face for the past two years, it also meant that her ability was purely based on the technique’s strength. In addition, it made it all the more likely that she would have no reason to target her if she is able to break the influence over her mind.

‘If only that was easy, but I suspect that regardless of the method she uses, Yi Fenwu will never give it up without a significant amount of persuasion – which here means intense combat – and if she had known about Yi Bai’s practise of the techniques of an assassin organisation, she could have easily made her give up some of them in order to bolster her own combat ability. Since Yi Bai, a person in the seventh stage, can fight on a similar level to me, even if I am holding back as to not harm her, then Yi Fenwu, who seemed to be reaching the peak of the Emergent Anchor realm, could be able to defeat me.’

She deflected another series of attacks and turned another corner, managing to stop herself just before she ran into Yi Tai.

“Yi Tai! Duck right now!” she called out, throwing herself to the ground.

To her surprise, he did exactly that, just in time for Yi Bai’s knife to soar over the top of his head.

“Infighting?” he asked, retreating calmly while Yi Wei stood up and did the same. However, despite his seemingly calm expression, she felt a great quantity of planar energy rising up from within him, covering his skin in a thin layer of stone.

“Not quite. I think she practised an art belonging to an assassin organisation, which is now allowing Yi Fenwu to give her orders. Have you seen that woman?”

“She-” Yi Tai suddenly turned around and struck an incoming arrow-spear out of the air, though his attack was sloppy and left him with a great cut across his arm. Nevertheless, his action revealed the location of the shooter, who calmly stood on the other side of the great icy corridor. The moment that she saw her failure to end him in one shot, Yi Fenwu retreated to behind the wall of solid ice without any hesitation.

He remained standing sideways, as to overlook both sources of danger, and nodded, “I see. Who is the priority?”

“Yi Fenwu is looking for a set of key marks. She has one and needs three more, at which point she will be able to access the treasury of the hidden grounds and possibly attain a number of other privileges,” Yi Wei explained, keeping those other privileges vague as to not bring attention to herself, “Since she wants everyone but her group dead, I would go after her first.”

“Then, agreed. I’ll block her,” was all that Yi Tai said before conjuring a vast quantity of boulders that dropped out of the sky and completely filled up the space between them and Yi Bai, before they turned and ran in Yi Fenwu’s direction.

Half-way down the frost corridor, Yi Fenwu popped out yet again, and did not hesitate to fire a second arrow-spear upon seeing their current location. The instant that the arrow left her grip, she retreated and did not look for the results of her shot. As Yi Tai was more prepared this time, he met the projectile with another great boulder, which completely stopped the arrow, albeit not without collapsing and leaving the arrow-spear lying in a pile of stone dust.

“How many of those arrows does she have?” Yi Wei muttered out loud, not really expecting to get an answer.

Despite that, the walking mountain turned his head to her and said, “The arrows have a special construction that allows them to be compactly placed into a quiver, then removed and used instantly. Typically, a few arrows are kept in their larger form, as to trick enemies and allies alike, if she even had the latter in her eyes.”

For the third time in recent memory, Yi Wei wanted to ask whether someone had misplaced their script and personality, just as with the time that Great Dark started speaking far too quickly and verbosely, but she kept her mouth shut this time.

It really wasn’t the time and the place to complain about someone possessing more knowledge that they were meant to, especially when that benefitted them greatly. After all, now that they knew that she likely had four times the number of arrows that Yi Wei originally thought she had, they wouldn’t have to waste their time on tactics that rely on exhausting their opponent’s ammunition before attacking them.

‘Wait a minute, I copy the arrow-spears almost perfectly with the Living Spear technique, and yet I haven’t noticed such a feature?’ she frowned, creating another replica spear within her hand as she ran, using it briefly to vault over an uneven surface in the frosty terrain. While in the air, she looked at the wooden spear with her spiritual will and found the traces of a mechanism.

Unfortunately, it was only half-present, and so it could not be activated, but it did expose a certain flaw within her personal version of the Living Spear skill.

‘Although I can copy the spear a year after seeing it for the first time, it seems that I cannot replicate an internal structure that I had no awareness of,’ she thought, mentally scanning the book that represented the original technique, ‘Indeed, the original had no such flaw. I suppose this proves that I still have much to learn in this regard.’

They had to run down yet another pathway, on which Yi Fenwu took the opportunity to fire off yet another arrow. This time, she stopped Yi Tai from interrupting and leapt forward at just the right time, grabbing the arrow out of the air whilst ignoring the poison that it had been coated in.

So far as she could tell, the poison was meant to be rather dangerous, but the moment that it came into contact with her physique energy, any trace of it within her body was burnt off and broken down into nothingness, as if it was nothing more than water that had seeped into her body. After that, she examined the arrow-spear a little more closely, in order to understand how the mechanism within worked, and once she was confident that she had learnt enough, she infused it with an excessive quantity of cosmic energy, held it for a moment, and threw it out.

She managed to impale it into the corner of the wall, where Yi Fenwu had previously peeked from, but by the lack of pained screams or splatters of blood, it was immediately obvious that their target had gotten out of the way in time.

“You will teach me that technique later,” stated Yi Tai, without leaving any room for negotiation.

‘Do you really think I’ll just give it to you? It’s not even a technique, but a natural property of my planar energy!’ she thought but did not voice her complaint. She had a slight feeling that he wouldn’t mind.

They ran for a little further, and eventually noticed that there were no more arrow-based attacks, which caused them to accelerate significantly, ignoring the slowly approaching rumbling noises behind them, likely generated by Yi Bai and her attempts to catch up to them as quickly as possible. Since there were no more arrows being fired at them, it had to mean that Yi Fenwu found something that she considered to be more important than them.

Indeed, as they turned yet another corner, they saw a large chamber to their side, within which stood a single obelisk in the middle. Their target of pursuit was standing beside it, raising her hand over its peak.

Yi Wei thought that nothing would happen, but the peak of the Lock Obelisk suddenly lit up and lightning surged into the woman’s wrist, embedding another quarter of the key into it.

‘The inner obelisks don’t require the energy of the Kong Mental Arts?’ she understood immediately, the question of how Yi Fenwu was able to get the first key fragment answering itself within her mind, ‘I suppose that makes sense, depending on the intentions the Kong family had when they were creating this place. If this was all for that Kong Shi Meng, then they might not have been sure that he would be practising the correct technique to access the Lock Obelisks on the outside, and hoped that those who did open the Kong Holy Grounds would not be allied together, thus giving their prodigal child enough time to retrieve four keys from within the hidden grounds and challenge those who would take his legacy… Possibly. If only the Kong Holy Grounds had the echo of their creator, so that they could explain the situation to me.’

Unfortunately, there were no traces of such existences within the Holy Grounds themselves, so she had no choice but to form another Living Spear, using cosmic energy instead of wood and applying Dawn Flowing Light to the inside structure before throwing it at Yi Fenwu.

Just as it was about to hit, Yi Fenwu pulled out a small black token, which she raised into the air.

A piercing sound, like a shriek and a blade cutting through air combined, entered their ears. They saw a flash of darkness suddenly fly past them and appear in front of the cosmic arrow-spear. With an impossibly fast slash of the knife, the figure shattered the spear in mid-air, with their shadow consuming any traces of the Dawn Flowing Light within it.

Yi Wei blinked, and saw the shadow clear to reveal Yi Bai’s figure yet again. She seemed calm, but there were traces of blood beneath her clothes, flowing slowly from her joints.

‘It seems that she wasn’t able to surpass her previous speed to such an extent without some consequences to her health. That thing in Yi Fenwu’s hands is likely the item I am looking for, which has a function to call nearby assassins for aid when the holder’s life is threatened. Based on those injuries, that call forces the assassin to ignore their typical limits, thus leading to severe bodily harm when used without anyone in sufficient proximity,’ Yi Wei theorised, taking into account the fact that Yi Fenwu felt the need to take the token out and didn’t rely on some form of automatic protection, before turning her head and addressing Yi Tai, “We need the token to stop her from giving orders to Yi Bai, and to prevent her from using that life-saving method again!”

He did not nod but frowned, though he seemed to understand her nonetheless.

Yi Fenwu looked at her, then Yi Tai, and then at her assassin, “Kill the weaker one of the two, as quickly as you can.”

As before, Yi Bai did not nod, and instantly went into action. Her figure vanished, and only reappeared once the glint of her knife was right beside Yi Tai’s neck – the very next breath. Yi Tai’s eyes widened, and his arm flew up to block the weapon.

While it pierced his skin and slid a few inches into his flesh, Yi Fenwu’s face contained only confusion.

It was not difficult for Yi Wei to understand the reason for that expression, which she saw clearly due to deciding to charge at her and leave Yi Bai in Yi Tai’s hands, for she had also expected Yi Bai to go after her. The fact that she did not meant that, despite Yi Wei’s constant suppression of her own power, the innocent girl-turned-assassin was able to see through her and choose the higher level but weaker Yi Tai as her target, as per her master’s order.

Thus, Yi Wei decided that it would be best to showcase her full ability at this moment, and to explain and answer any questions that Yi Tai might have after their victory.

She allowed the crystalline structure within her dantian to expand, for all of the compressed ninth-stage energy within its centre to burst out and mix with the rest of her planar energy. As a result, a pulse of energy originating from her abdomen shook the entire hidden grounds, and a faint yet all too obvious layer of dawn light formed around her, with the brightest points being around her meridians.

Naturally, she would not reveal her cosmic cultivation, not until she could be certain that it wouldn’t cause her or anyone else any problems, but even the active channelling of the dawn light was more than enough to significantly raise her strength.

That action directly explained her subordinate’s actions to Yi Fenwu, who used this opportunity to recover from her surprise and slam down her planar anchor behind herself.

“It seems that I am not the only one to have made some decent progress in recent times,” she exclaimed, “Weren’t you in the lower half of the second realm when I first saw you? And now, darling… what heights have you achieved? It’s a shame, though, that no matter what you’ve done to bring yourself up to this level, you won’t be able to compete with me!”

Yi Fenwu raised her bow and impaled it into the ground on her side, before pulling out a unique, golden arrow-spear from the great quiver on her back, which shone as if it had been polished regularly since the first instant it had been forged. Its design was exquisite, far more so than any of the other arrow-spears, and yet it radiated pure power and strength, like the tool of a tyrant, the weapon of a warlord who could conquer an entire district of Yi City.

“Half-Step upper-grade artefact made out of immortal gold,” Yi Wei said with a hint of astonishment.

To see either a weapon made from immortal gold, or any item nearing the upper grade, on its own was impressive enough, but here was a weapon that fit both descriptors. Whether in terms of power or durability, it would be completely unmatched by lower or middle-grade artefacts, and even if someone was able to create a half-step upper-grade artefact out of more common materials – which would require a six-star blacksmith of immense talent – it would not match up with the spear in front of her. She was tempted to grab it out of Yi Fenwu’s hands and check whether it was capable of withstanding her planar energy, though she knew all too well that if she did cause any degree of damage to it, whoever had given the spear to her would want a great deal of compensation.

Still, her recognition of the item caused Yi Fenwu to grin, “So, you’re also familiar with blacksmithing? I must say, darling, you really are a girl of many talents. I’m not going to find out that you were checking me out when you first saw me, am I?”

“No,” Yi Wei refuted, perhaps a little too quickly.

“It doesn’t matter anyway, as learning that you have a crush on me would make killing you ever so slightly difficult,” she said, holding her spear sideways, “After all, I’m not completely heartless.”

Having said that, she slowly drew her hand along the spear’s length, causing a faint crimson light to slowly burst out from the places she touched. Quite clearly, she was activating some sort of inscription within, and although Yi Wei could not determine what the offensive function was intended to be, she felt a certain defensive barrier that would significantly weaken or even reflect her attacks if she attempted to interrupt the process.

Since she could do nothing else, Yi Wei briefly glanced back to confirm that Yi Tai was managing to withstand Yi Bai’s endless attacks, then looked on as Yi Fenwu completed the spear’s activation and slammed its lower end into the ground.

“Two five-star quality and three-star power inscriptions?”

“So, you know about these as we- wait, five-star? Not six-star?” Yi Fenwu caught something strange within the other’s speech, “Honey, are you sure you’re not misinterpreting this?”

Yi Wei looked at the spear a little longer before nodding, “That’s my opinion, yes.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate. Still, the difference won’t be too significant now, will it? Come now, Yi Wei, and give me your heart. Literally.”

They sprung into action simultaneously, with one using the spear and the other relying on nothing but her body, which was lit both with the dawn light of the one hundred and eight dawn stars and the golden yang physique energy that flowed beneath her skin.

Yi Fenwu’s strike seemed to be a simple jab on the surface, but immediately beneath that deceptive impression there was a great degree of strength concentrated on the spear’s tip. It felt almost like a dragon’s might had been concentrated there, to such an extent that if it came into contact with any part of Yi Wei’s body, it would instantly bite down upon it with enough force to crack the very reality they currently stood in.

No matter how confident she was in her own strength, she would never allow something like that to hit her.

With a strange movement of her legs, she suddenly shifted a few metres to the side, and stretched out her arms to the side. Around each hand, four individual vortexes of yang physique energy formed in the air, and after a moment of preparation, they all released a glaring beam of concentrated dawn light. Each beam targeted a different point on the archer’s body.

Despite that, all that Yi Fenwu needed to do was raise her arrow-spear in a defensive position, and a large crimson barrier appeared to block all eight beams, seemingly suppressing them entirely with no effort from the wielder at all.

‘If I am not mistaken, this barrier is cold and metallic, and thus it can be considered to be yin…’

Just half-way through the effective duration of the Dawn Slicing Light, the sturdy shield suddenly cracked, and, without holding on for even a single further second, it collapsed into nothingness, the red light flowing back into the inscriptions on the spear as if it hadn’t nearly withstood the power of the Dawn Slicing Light that same second.

The beams, now that they had no obstruction in their path, burst forth and attempted to strike eight vulnerable points on Yi Fenwu’s body, although two were still blocked by the physical body of the spear.

Five went straight for her clothes, while the last targeted her forehead. That was one of the tougher points on the human body, but at the very least there was no need to worry about the potential effects of destroying the blindfold or risking doing too little damage by targeting the lower jaw.

All of a sudden, Yi Fenwu’s silvery robes lit up, as if someone had poured a pool of earth flame into the fabric, and the beams were suddenly blocked once again, this time with a great force of yang. For another few seconds, the beams burned, but then they fizzled out of existence and scattered into raw energy. The bright orange glow within the archer’s robes disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, sinking back into the unknown depths of the robes.

‘I know that I have a few things down my sleeve, but what is this? How many life-saving methods does she have? Can I even injure her?’ Yi Wei questioned mentally, ‘I suppose I might need to utilise the four combat techniques I acquired in the fourth room. When used by Kong Dong Ming’s echo, they were incredibly powerful, so if anything can get through her defences, it will be them.’

She pulled up the four tomes within her mental library, and, reading through them a little more carefully, she realised what the true meaning of Kong Dong Ming’s declaration of the ways of Kong were – part of the process of using the techniques involved calling out their name.

‘I knew that their ways were absolutely stup- ahem. Keep calm. Exploding with fury in battle may be beneficial to certain barbarian clans, but not if it is only mentally, and it will most certainly not assist someone who relies on their brain more so than their body… That won’t describe me for much longer with how strong my body is getting, will it?’ she thought, ‘My cultivation has been catching up lately, so I should be able to avoid the fate of becoming a large slab of muscle for a little while, and if I am able to refine my physique, it should compress my muscles without damaging my strength, though I don’t know whether I will be able to manage to do that anytime soon.’

She shook her head – mentally – and put her hands together – physically – before circulating her planar energy in the manner described by the manuals. And then…

“The Touch of God!” Yi Wei shouted with an unwilling blush, whilst punching the air before her.

Nobody had the chance to question her strange exclamation before a great mass of dawn light gathered at her hand, and erupted into a great, blinding beam of light. It cut right into the wall in front of her, melting several walls of ice in a single instant.

The main target of the attack only dodged it narrowly, and even then, a large clump of crimson hair was caught within the beam, evaporating it out of existence.

However, the one that was most surprised by this sudden outburst of power was no one other than Yi Wei herself, for there were several major questions she would have loved to ask the world, the heavens or whatever other force had a better understanding of matters. ‘Can I not have a single normal thing? How did that happen? First, it’s my lightning, now it’s this… At the very least this does not seem to be sentient, and is stronger than it should have been, but I can’t say I appreciate the sudden transformation from a water-based technique to whatever it is now. Yang and fire, most likely.’

Before Yi Fenwu could straighter her back and attempt some sort of her own attack, a second beam headed for her from Yi Wei’s other fist, alongside the shout of ‘Touch of God’, while the other was clearly filling up with more energy.

Due to the greater knowledge regarding her attacks, Yi Fenwu was able to dodge without sustaining further damage to her hair, only to see a bright circle forming around her.

“Light of Divinity!”

A great hammer of dawn light formed around her hand, and she immediately brought it down upon the ground, also causing the circle that formed around the archer to brighten and rise into the sky, where, far, far above them, a single solid sheet of ice obscured the sky, or lack thereof. A small glint within the ice was all that preceded a seemingly boundless beam that soared downwards and struck the ground with a deafening boom.

Just before it did, the shawl around Yi Fenwu’s neck lit up, and her figure blurred.

The ice beneath them cracked, with the cracks spreading everywhere, tearing through the ground and floor without ceasing until the entire Lock Obelisk chamber was destroyed.

Some kind of faint energy slowly flowed from the world into Yi Wei’s planar aperture, but she could not focus on it as she felt the font of energy that marked and belonged to Yi Fenwu vanish from the spot she had stood in earlier, moving rapidly past her and towards one pathway of the labyrinth.

‘Damn, again? How many items can she possibly have on her, and which family’s Ancestral Hall did she rob to get them?’ Yi Wei questioned, calling upon the yang physique energy within her, ‘If she gets away like this again, then who knows where she’ll disappear to? I should try and get her here and now, so I will use the strongest thing I can manage.’

While physique energy gathered in one hand, she stretched out the other, causing a great orange circle to appear in front of Yi Fenwu.

‘No, she will be able to evade that. Larger!’

She willed the circle to expand, and that is what it did. Under the stimulation of her mental energy, it doubled and then tripled in size in just a few seconds, changing from covering a few metres to over a dozen metres, passing through Yi Fenwu’s clouded figure in an instant.

‘Even this isn’t sufficient. I require more! More!’

Her eyes lit up with orange light as the targeting circle of the technique grew ever larger, though its growth was slower than before. It felt like her mind was slowly being stretched to its limit, and even the mental library began to tremble, the countless memory books that she had stored within it jittering. Still, she knew that she could go further with the mental and physique energy she had, so she did exactly that.

‘Cover this entire realm!’

The circle grew so large that it seemed inescapable, and just as it neared her own feet, Yi Wei allowed her physique energy to finally form the hammer with which to cast the technique, and activated a bone talisman within her body.

“Behold! THE LIGHT OF DIVINITY!”

In that instant, the entire ceiling of the icy world collapsed inwards, as an absolutely enormous light descended from the heavens. It was as if the sun itself had descended upon the world, surpassing the strange orange point that still hovered in the air, and it was just as destructive. Ice did not crack, it did not shatter – it outright vanished from existence, changing from ice to water and to steam within one breath. The walls and floor of the maze was not shifted – it was absolutely annihilated, every fundamental force within collapsing under the intense pressure of the dawn light.

The force immediately threw anyone nearby, but not beneath the light, far away, and even the one who used the technique with every drop of her physique energy, could not remain on her feet. Furthermore, unlike the common Light of Divinity, this power was not contained to one location, and it spread, scorching everything it came in contact with until more than half of the icy maze was obliterated.