Path of the Ascendant

When she awoke, it was not within the real world, but within her very own mind. She recognised the library that she had specially constructed all too well to mistake it for anything else. Furthermore, even if the Kong Holy Grounds had collapsed completely, the void between worlds was different from the void within her mind, though she would struggle to explain the reasoning behind it to anyone due to the differences being in her experience of it, rather than its appearance.

The void between worlds was complex and unknowable, but the darkness in her mind was her own, the chaotic memories that had not yet settled down in her library-

‘Wait, where are they?’ she noticed a suspicious absence of thought chunks, so she reached out with her spiritual will, an energy that was limitless whilst she was within her mind, and found no signs of them, ‘Have I been resting here so long that my mind had the time to sort two lifetimes of ideas into this library?’

She turned around. The appearance of the Gilded Library was only identical to before on first glance.

The moment she moved from the spot of her awakening, she saw that the library had fractured, though, miraculously, it was still whole. It was broken into hundreds of chunks, but they were spread apart, with the space in between shelves being stretched up to twice or thrice their original length in order to fit in the books that they now stored. She could walk on that empty void and could even perceive illusory objects and surfaces within it, but those sensations were extremely faint and fleeting, as if they were there and yet not there, akin to objects in a dream or a passing fancy.

‘So, I have filled my library to the brim already. Although I don’t yet know how to progress, logically speaking, unless someone is aware of the structure of the library, nobody should be able to influence my mind without the advantage of an extreme gap in our power.’

She lowered her mental avatar and tapped the ground with her knuckles, finding it to sound – and feel – just like sturdy wood.

‘It seems that my mental energy is also at the limit of what the Gilded Library can offer. That is… very impressive… for someone who hadn’t had much time to cultivate it, and should come in handy when I manage to get out of here and attack someone with the four Kong techniques,’ Yi Wei smiled, standing up and heading to the library’s door, ‘Since I am currently stuck in here, I can only assume that my mind instinctively retreated into this place to sustain itself when it was threatened. Although I can appreciate such a thing, since it seems to have kept me alive after I had wasted all of my forms of energy on almost nothing, I would like to know what the state of my body is currently in.’

Yi Wei opened the door, and as she did, she forced spiritual will to pass through it, stretching into the rest of her body. There was a great deal of resistance, but she persevered until a singular strand reached her dantian. The moment that it touched the illusory barrier that typically existed around it, it was suddenly pulled into the depths, and as it connected to the mysterious characters, a rush of sensations nearly overwhelmed her.

The first thing she noticed was the fact that the illusory barrier had transformed from solid to crystal, much like her energy had done the same. It still seemed to be purely illusory, but as before, it was bound to sustain an attack for a brief instance.

The next was slightly more significant, and it was, unfortunately, not her planar energy or her characters, though the latter of the two had also undergone some changes that she would get to later.

No, the most notable matter was the fact that enormous planar anchor floating right in the middle of her planar aperture, with the characters floating in front of it no matter which perspective she looked at it from.

Unlike every anchor she had ever seen before, it had five individual faces. Each one burned – or, rather, due to the differences within the elements, glowed – with a particular elemental light. One side seemed to be made of silvery and gold metal, with blood stains on one side of it, the second was blue and deep, with a small pool of blood amidst it, the third was like the side of a mountain, tall and impenetrable, the fourth was burning in a curious rune that seemed to have no clear meaning, and the fifth was like the bark of a tree.

Atop the magnificent stone monolith, there was a glowing orb of violet energy, crackling violently as it was barely contained by some force within her planar anchor. Additionally, she occasionally saw crackling on the fire and metal sides of the anchor, switching between violet and gold each time, likely having something to do with her living golden lightning born originally of Storm Blade Wreathing.

However, as it was not complete, it could not fully manifest within her dantian.

‘How in the heavens did I accidentally create a planar anchor like this while I wasn’t conscious? I’m assuming that it originated from the energy that was generated by the Kong techniques, but even the mysterious characters shouldn’t be able to condense a planar anchor-’ her mental brow furrowed as she noticed something about the anchor, ‘Despite how grandiose it looks, it isn’t quite complete, is it? That means that I’m not quite in the third realm yet.’

She wasn’t sure whether she was more worried or relieved about that matter, so she decided to look at the mysterious characters first.

Previously, they were floating shards of dark stone, and while that descriptor still applied, and perhaps was even more accurate, she now saw a certain cosmic glow emanating from them, while a number of violet lightning bolts often struck in the gaps between the characters, stringing them together as if they were strings.

The technique they displayed were of the same quality and same style, so there did not appear to be any changes other than that, but the consistent changes and improvements within the characters gave her a degree of hope that, eventually, they would transform into something amazing, even more so than they currently were. Perhaps they could become weapons, and they would then be usable in combat either in individual shards or as entire characters, at which point she could dominate the world with a bunch of odd, cosmic characters.

‘Cosmic characters? No, that’s not much of an improvement, seeing as I already have cosmic energy and cosmic-type techniques like the Elysian Palm.’

If she was able to learn the true name of the characters, then she would have a small chance of learning about their origin and whatever true purpose they might have, but so far, she had gone through no records that would imply the existence of anything close to the mysterious characters, and she had read through quite the number of historical and mythical records.

‘Anyway, what else is different than before?’ she asked herself, spreading out her spiritual will.

As it passed through her networks of meridians, she saw that the physique energy had undergone a certain change, as did her body. The latter was more of a qualitative change, making her body far stronger, and slightly more muscular, than before, though her breasts were still as small as ever.

Her physique energy, on the other hand, had grown significantly stronger, and she felt that if she was to use it for a similar world-ending beam as before, it could produce an attack one and a half times as large and powerful as her last, which, so long as she was in the same realm with the same structural weakness that the Kong Holy Grounds seemed to have – perhaps due to the rush in which it must have been produced, based on what she knew of it – then she might be able to eliminate an entire world chunk.

‘Alright, I think that’s it. I still have everything that I should have, where I should have it, and I don’t appear to be dead, so… how do I wake up?’

Yi Wei ascertained for a second time that her body was working smoothly and had no obvious wounds within, likely due to the passive flow of her planar energy healing her body of the damage caused by the reckless use of the raw planar energy, and forced her spiritual will out of her body, feeling a smooth fabric surrounding her, and another smooth surface beneath her.

All of a sudden, her spiritual will surged outwards, and her mental avatar, which was casually floating around, was forced into her present physical position.

Her eyes snapped open, and she found her mind and her body functioning in synchronicity once more. She felt her beating heart, the blood pumping through her veins, the planar energy and physique energy residing within her meridians and a soft light flooding into her vision even through her eyelids.

‘Ugh… It feels like I haven’t moved in a hundred years…’ Yi Wei thought, forcing her muscles to awake before opening her eyes.

At the same time as light and colour filled her sight, she also felt sound pouring into her head, the smell of wood sinking into her nose and a faint sense of warmth covering her. She forced her eyes to open and looked around.

Her present location was surrounded by a large sphere of icy planar energy, and it was supported by a distant figure who was holding their palm against it. Beneath her was a large, recently flattened log of wood, atop which was someone’s red and silver robe, which seems to have been beneath her for quite some time, as it was covered by her red hairs and a small spot beside the neck where she might have drooled whilst sleeping. There was no trace of the icy maze in her surroundings, only a solid wooden surface on the ground that had a number of bumps and dips, but otherwise no maze-like walls.

‘I can’t feel my legs, though cosmic energy should fix it… I assume, based on the fact that I am lying safely on someone’s robe, that I am not currently in danger, so…’ she sat up with a great deal of effort, and looked towards the distant figure, who, now that she had taken a second look at him or her, only seemed to be a few metres away, “Excuse me… where am I?”

The figure initially glanced in her direction lazily, but the moment that they saw her sitting up, their movements hastened, and they quickly turned around, keeping only their palm on the spherical barrier of frost.

“You’re awake?” the first thing he – for that was a male voice, without a doubt – said was within her expectations, but the next was… less so, “So quickly?”

“What do you mean, so quickly? It feels like I’ve been here for a year!” Yi Wei unwittingly retorted, forcing her vision to focus on the speaker. It took a few seconds, but she was eventually able to see that he was Yi Guanyu, though his aura and overall appearance seemed different to what they used to be. Since she could not understand the exact reason for this, nor what had changed, so she assumed that it was due to his cultivation level getting far closer to her own.

“Are you trying to comment about your sleeping conditions? It may be somewhat difficult to identify the time down here, but we’re sure that we haven’t spent more than a day in these hidden grounds,” Yi Guanyu said, “With your state, Yi Budian had assumed that you would need more than a dozen days to recover consciousness.”

“Then, I guess I was commenting about these sleeping arrangements. Whose robes am I lying on?”

“One of the people who had been part of Yi Tai’s group was fond of his leader, and wanted to achieve a similar height and presence via body cultivation. He ended up developing a muscular upper body that he is now showing off to anyone who passes by.”

‘Um… Well, that explains why I am not larger than the robes despite my height. Wait, had been part of his group?’ she frowned, and raised her head again, “Did something happen to Yi Tai?”

“That… It seems that Yi Fenwu and I are now the only leaders left. The elder, Yi Tai and Yi Zheng have been confirmed to be dead, and Yi Jiazhi’s arm has been found, though not the rest of the body. I think that it might have been consumed by the void between worlds. Speaking of which, you’re probably curious about where we currently are, aren’t you?”

“Indeed. Is there a reason that there is a large dome above us?”

Yi Guanyu nodded, though his palm was still on the translucent barrier, “Your great beam, the one that you used in the ice realm, seems to have struck some fundamental element of the dimension, or perhaps it was simply so corrosive that it had started to devour not just the endless cold maze, but also a number of small realms without any clear reason behind it. Every one of them has fallen apart almost completely, reduced to little but a few small paths through the void between worlds that leads to the gateways to other small realms, and although that erosion doesn’t seem to travel directly through the gateways, it has slowly started to appear in other small realms.”

He turned around and willed his barrier to become clearer. At first, Yi Wei could not determine what she was meant to see, but then her eyes adjusted to the light and saw… nothingness.

The void between worlds. It was bottomless, and endless, and the only thing keeping it at bay was that feeble-seeming barrier. As she looked on for a little longer, she realised that it wasn’t even that the barrier was holding the void back, but rather that it was feeding it, constantly supplying it with planar energy before being reformed with more of Yi Guanyu’s energy.

“Let me see if I understand things correctly – you are supplying the void between worlds with energy so that it doesn’t consume a certain spot of land?”

“Yes, though I am hardly the only one. Everyone who was still alive has joined into one group, where I, mostly due to my cultivation, am considered the leader. At first, we just ran away from the spreading void, but someone eventually had the bright idea to throw their first stage planar anchor right into it. They lost it, naturally, but it also took the void several minutes to fully consume it, with the process slowing the encroachment of the void significantly,” he explained, “It later turned out that regular planar energy works similarly, and that if we come together to create one barrier, we can protect a significant plot of land with one half of us resting and recovering while the other half supplies their planar energy. We’ve also placed this barrier right at the crossroads of this particular small realm, so, as long as we are able to maintain it, the realm shouldn’t collapse any time soon.”

“Alright then… Why did you bother with me then?”

“Several reasons. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, you are the reason we survived Yi Fenwu’s attack, and it seems that you might even be the reason for her not attacking us since. We’ve seen her twice so far, once with her weird shadowy assassin, but whenever she noticed us carrying you around, she retreated instantly,” Yi Guanyu stated, “I’m not like that bitch. You saved us, even if it was just a coincidence, so I will not let you die to the void between worlds.

“Then, consider the fact that you had enough energy to put an enormous hole within an entire dimension. You’ve got to have enough to keep it together for a little while, right?” Yi Wei asked, “Haven’t you thought about leaving? I’d do that before sitting on the edge of a void. Just saying.”

“We had. The door is locked, and some sort of round symbol is the only hint we’ve had when it comes to opening it. Some of the people who had joined us most recently suggested that it had a connection to the strange obelisks that Yi Fenwu has been looking for. They say that one of them added a quarter of a symbol to her wrist, so we suspect that someone would need all four to open the exit.”

‘If nothing else, I have to commend their information gathering capabilities. If there has truly only been one day since I had fallen unconscious, then to learn so much is very impressive,’ Yi Wei thought, shuffling to the edge of the log she was resting on as her body slowly regained its previous energy, “How can you be sure that is the exit? What if it is the treasury that everyone’s looking for?”

“There is a reason for that as well,” replied Yi Guanyu while he took something out of his pocket. That object was a small compass, with a single needle that was wildly fluctuating, “It’s something that we got to track down the exit of any pocket spaces we found ourselves in.”

Yi Wei did not need to hear any further explanation, as she had previously read about the Planar Wayfarer’s Compass within the same library that she had based her Gilded Library on. They were artefacts that could be made by someone in the fourth realm, without requiring extensive mastery of blacksmithing or inscriptions, and it only had one primary function – to track down the flow of space itself throughout the fabric of reality. When it was far away from any gaps within reality, it would not show anything in particular, but when it neared one such gap – with the exact distance needed varying based on the ability of the one that created it – it would point to it with ever-increasing accuracy.

Although it had no other ability, it was an invaluable and an infallible item for anyone who wanted to explore any other dimension.

“It pointed at that doorway?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that is unfortunate. Have you had no luck in finding any more of those obelisks? If you can get four of them, then you should be able to leave,” Yi Wei said, unconsciously adjusting the metal bracelet on the wrist that held the full key of the Kong Holy Grounds, “Based on the entrance to this place, I suspect that as long as one person can exit, they should be able to keep it open for everyone.”

“Perhaps that’s right, but we have only found hints of three, with one being near the origin of the void erosion, and we theorise that there will be no more than eight. Unfortunately, we can’t explore too quickly unless we decide to forsake this segment of a small realm and rapidly seek out another, and we can’t create new segments of land without wasting even more planar energy,” he said, sitting down while still keeping his hand on the same spot of the barrier.

‘Right. Things like planar anchors won’t help either, as they are stationary and do not increase the quantity of energy, only its power…’ she got up from the flattened log, and although she nearly fell straight back down again, Yi Wei was able to keep herself on her feet.

Now that she was up, she circulated her planar energy at its full strength and efficacy throughout her body, rapidly removing all of the fatigue from every muscle and organ in her body and further elevating them to a higher level of strength. Despite doing all that, on the outside, all she seemed to have done was stand up and regain a great deal of colour and warmth within her features.

After taking a few steps to ensure that everything was as it should be, she addressed Yi Guanyu, “I recall you mentioning a small group of people. Could I speak to them?”

“Sure, do what you want – as long as it doesn’t get us stuck in an illusion!” he replied dismissively.

She shrugged and looked around, quickly locating the only place that could possibly contain a group of people: a small, blocky structure that looked to be someone’s attempt to put together a house without knowing anything about architecture.

Even though she had intentionally avoided quite a large number of books on the subject, reading only the things that were particularly relevant whilst skipping over the more boring parts, as she still had some degree of hope in her future at the time and hadn’t realised quite how little cultivation she would be able to do while the characters had not yet awakened and were still consuming all of her impure energy, she was confident that she would be able to put together something far better with the same materials.

At the very least there was no need to worry about any natural weather conditions, so the absolute lack of a roof made little difference.

Yi Wei shrugged and made her way to it, silently drawing a greater number on the choker than before.

There was no door in the front of this wooden building, so she went around the side, only to find a large gap in the wall where a door should have been. Within, there were a number of shabbily made chairs and tables, though most were far more serviceable than the house they were placed into, and they most certainly didn’t crumble under the weight of those who sat upon them.

Speaking of those sitting on the chairs, there were slightly more than two dozen people within, and most looked incredibly fatigued. Judging by her earlier conversation with Yi Guanyu, she guessed that they were the lot that had been supplying the barrier with energy not too long ago and couldn’t help but pity the fact that they lacked any semblance of a bed or resting place. In comparison, her lazily cut log suddenly looked a lot, lot better than before.

Just as she noticed them, they also noticed her, and one figure stood up immediately.

“Who are you? What are you doing-”

“Don’t you have eyes? It’s Yi Wei, the girl we’ve carried around for a dozen hours!” a familiar voice interrupted the figure, stood up and hit his head with the side of her hand, “Hey, you’re finally awake! How are you feeling?”

Yi Wei had to blink several times before she was finally able to recall where she had seen her face before, “Yi… Meng, right? From the… thing?”

Before the woman had a chance to respond, she checked her library and was able to confirm that the woman was indeed called Yi Meng, and that the last time she had seen her was the time that Yi Jiazhi had brought her to a meeting that was attempting to figure out the identity of the killer that had targeted their entire expedition. As it turns out, that killer was Yi Fenwu, and their entire enterprise was useless, but at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

“Yeah, that one,” the tall girl nodded, “It’s a shame it didn’t go as expected… Out of everyone you saw there, we only have three survivors, me included. Me, Yi Sheng and Yi Cheng, who is part of Yi Guanyu’s party. Those two are supporting the barrier at the moment, so you might not see them for a while.”

“Right, I see. Were you surprised by the identity of the assassin and their master?”

She shrugged, “The fact that it was Yi Fenwu isn’t too strange if you had ever spoken to her in the past, but I’m afraid I still don’t know who the assassin is.”

Yi Wei intended to reply when someone else suddenly barged into their conversation. It was a short girl, one that would be beneath most of the regular men and women in the family, not to mention Yi Wei and Yi Meng, both of whom were equivalent to giants in comparison to her, with striking blonde hair and brown-red eyes. An intricate silver tiara depicting a dragon crowned her head, and a similar silver necklace hung from her neck.

“What are you two discussing? Is it something that I, Yi Ling Tai, can contribute to?” she said, trying to appear as elegant possible but failing miserably due to her exhausted expression and constantly wobbling legs.

“Eh… This is, despite what she has told you, Yi Ling. The Tai is something she came up with herself,” Yi Meng spoke almost apologetically, as if it was her responsibility that this girl was being silly.

“No, I am-”

“We were just discussing the matter of Yi Fenwu and her forceful manipulation of Yi Bai into being her assassin,” Yi Wei ignored the short girl, though she addressed both of them, “I had heard that this group had seen the two of them twice already, and that they had avoided attacking due to me?”

“Yi-”

“That’s been the current theory, yes. We’ve seen her once on her own and she nearly shot at us before she looked in your direction and was immediately scared away, though I can’t say for sure whether it was your presence, or someone else’s,” said Yi Meng, leaning against a wall of the awkward wooden shack as to waste less of her energy, “To be honest, I had almost thought that she was some sort of survivor of the assassin when I first saw her. Her robes were rags, her arrow count had dropped significantly, and she generally looked completely miserable, though she had improved by the second time we had come across her.”

“Did you say Yi Ba-”

“My vision was getting blurry by the time I did any harm to her, so I didn’t realise that she was in such a bad state after my attack. Good to know I didn’t waste my time and energy back then.”

“Do you know what happened to Yi-”

Yi Meng’s eyes and smile briefly widened, “Oh, so that was you? I’d heard it from Yi Cheng, but I had thought that it was exaggerated or something. If that was all you, then I can imagine why she would be too afraid to come at-”

“EXCUSE ME! Did you say that you knew Yi Bai?” the blonde girl shouted, her shrill voice making some of the resting individuals within the ‘room’ cover up their ears.

“Yes, I did. Are you friends with her, or perhaps just acquaintances?”

“We-”

“Look, you lot, I appreciate that some of us invested more of their energy into the barrier than others, I would appreciate it if you could SHUT THE FUCK UP! My cultivation technique can progress faster while sleeping, so take this shit elsewhere!” a man who was laying on the wooden ground shouted at them, before flipping onto his side and starting to snore as loudly as he could.

“H-How about we move this somewhere else?” Yi Meng suggested, “Not that there is much else… Let’s just go.”

“Yeah. Does anyone want me to carry them?” Yi Wei asked, though she primarily looked at the blond girl.

At first, the short girl did not reply, but she quickly noticed that Yi Meng also looked in her direction with some expectation, and she clearly had to restrain herself from saying some choice words on the matter, instead speaking only this through her teeth, “… Sure.”

Yi Wei approached Yi Ling and hooked her arm around her chest, lifting her up with ease before following Yi Meng to a spot outside of the resting area, where she put the girl down with ease, as if she was no heavier than a doll. They found a few bumps within the wooden ground and were about to sit down on them before Yi Wei offered to flatten the wood in order to make resting on them a little more comfortable.

“Alright then, what were you saying?” Yi Wei asked, taking her seat while searching through her library for any hints of previous mentions of Yi Ling’s name by Yi Bai or anyone else.

“I heard you talking about Yi Bai, and I, Yi Ling Tai-”

“Look, I don’t care whether your name is Yi Ling, Yi Tai, Yi Ling Tai or just Yi, but can you not repeat it over and over again?” interrupted Yi Wei, having to bend down in order to get closer to her eye-height, “Otherwise, I can’t really speak to you properly and you’re not going to learn anything.”

“Oh, eh… sorry. I just wanted to know if you had seen Yi Bai in this place,” Yi Ling said, with a hint of sadness and longing within her voice.

“I have, and if you had been part of this group for a while, you would have seen her too. She is the shadow-shrouded assassin that follows Yi Fenwu around,” she replied, and, when she saw the blond girl’s eyes widen in shock, she continued, “Let me explain it to you in greater detail…”