Path of the Ascendant

When she went down to the shack, everyone who had been paying attention to Yi Guanyu’s words looked at her, then at him, and then back at her.

“Eh… Who’s supporting the barrier?”

“What do you mean, who’s- Yi Wei? What are you doing here?” Yi Guanyu asked, throwing his head up to look at the illusory barrier, his terrified expression suggesting that he expected to see it collapsing. However, all he saw was the fact that it was still holding steadily, with a series of strange lines and symbols within that had no obvious function to untrained eyes.

“Sorry, I just shoved my energy into the dome in one go, and set up an array or two, so it should be safe. Has your discussion finished yet, or should I come back later?”

“You… ugh, fine, we have. I’ll return to check on the barrier, so you should explain your idea-”

“Don’t go anywhere, there’s no need for it. If it falls, I’ll be the first to jump in and you can patch up the barrier, just with a little less land,” she told him, “Since you’re currently at the highest realm out of everyone I’ve seen on this plot of land, I’ll need your help.”

She did not elaborate immediately, but instead grabbed the wall and tore off a large chunk of it, which she placed onto the ground and carved it quickly via cosmic energy. Once it was flattened and smoothed into a large block, the height of the chairs that stood at various places in the four walls, she asked for a knife and carefully wrapped it in energy, making sure to avoid letting any planar energy into the structure of the knife as to prevent its sudden collapse.

Yi Wei proceeded to carve a series of complex symbols and diagrams into the block’s surface, quickly filling it up with so many things that it seemed to be less of a table and more of a sculpture.

 

When that was complete, she wanted to give that ordinary knife back, but found that several inches of the blade had crumbled off as a result of her work, and that it resembled a toothpick more so than it did a bladed weapon that could be put into the hands of an assassin and used to kill people. She shared a glance with the weapon’s owner and tossed the knife away.

“So, uh, Yi Wei, what’re we looking at?” Yi Meng asked, even her experienced gaze quickly getting lost within the marks.

“Probably not the first, but my first void-traversing land ship. It is going to be powered by a number of planar gathering arrays, with a network of inscriptions within for the purpose of piloting it. Once detached from the rest of the land, it will allow for free travel throughout the void between worlds, though not out of it, so we will need to use it to locate the same Lock Obelisks that Yi Fenwu is looking for, gather the keys up, and get out of here.”

“We heard that, but… wait, is this a Networking Web array?”

“I… think so? I’ve learnt this one by observation, so I can’t tell you what the actual name of that particular array is,” Yi Wei said, checking her mental library in order to be sure, ‘Come to think of it, being able to access these automatically would be really handy…’

“Observation? That’s amazing! I want to become your student!”

“N-No?”

“Okay then!”

“…” Yi Wei looked at the woman with a confused expression, before turning to the rest of the listeners in some hope of getting a more reasonable interaction.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t understand a thing about this, so if you want any of us to do something, just tell us,” Yi Guanyu admitted, taking his eyes off the carvings quickly, as if he was afraid of losing himself amongst them, “For this project, you can be the temporary leader!”

“Alright then, I hope you won’t mind if I split all of you into groups. Everyone who has experience with inscriptions, or considers them their best field, stand on the right side of the building. Anyone who specialises in arrays, go to the left. Those who aren’t particularly versed in either one, go to the front of the four walls,” she said, then watched as the tired people who still sat and lay on the ground forced themselves to stand and arranged themselves according to her wishes.

Out of the two-dozen people here, only four made their way to the left wall, and only three went to the right, while the rest stood in front of her.

Though that was not entirely out of her expectations, there was also another problem.

“How high is your achievement in the great arts?” she asked.

Those who considered arrays to be their strongest field, two answered with two stars, and two answered with one star. Only one of the inscribers answered with two stars, while the rest also put their level at one star.

“Technically, that’s all fine, as you don’t need a great degree of understanding or talent in either field to prepare the foundation for these arrays and inscriptions, but in such small numbers…” Yi Wei frowned, and glanced around as she thought. She had not expected to find anything of note in her surroundings, and indeed, she found nothing new, but she did find her attention drawn to the wooden walls and the wooden floor. They were all covered in brown, seemingly ordinary bark, as was the table she had created to relay her plans.

But how could that be? She had carved most of it off just moments ago.

‘In fact, all of the wood in the area seems to be exactly the same. Has no-one noticed this?’ she wondered, voicing the question to everyone, “Does anyone know what type of wood this is?”

Everyone shook their head, while Yi Guanyu said, “Is this significant to anything?”

“Naturally it is,” Yi Wei answered, breaking off a small piece of the same wall that she had used as the table. She examined it closely, holding it within her first for a while, where no one could see what she was doing, but she eventually opened her hand and called out to the group, “Does anyone here practise fire-type cultivation techniques?”

“I do.”

“Then set this thing on fire for me. Don’t worry about my hands – they’re not going to burn easily,” she said, holding out the piece of wood on her palm.

The person whom she had spoken to was more than a little confused, but he nodded and did as she had ordered, creating a flame that he sent onto the piece of wood. It quickly caught fire, but it did not char nor burn, instead seeming not to suffer at all.

However, Yi Wei could see that rather than being burnt by the flame, it seemed to be being moulded by it. With every tongue of flame and burst of heat, the shape of the chunk of wood, which was also miraculously covered in bark despite being taken right out of the wall just now, was adjusting itself to the flame, with the top of the wood changing itself into the same shape as the flame. It was difficult to describe, as the visual was slight even to those present, but this visual gave her the exact information she needed.

“Slight change of plans. Out of those at the front, who has any proficiency in pill refining?”

Out of the seventeen people at the front, only two stepped forward, and to Yi Wei’s surprise, one was that short girl, Yi Ling.

“Are you two aware of a type of wood called adaptive wood?”

“Yes! It is only natural that I, Yi Li- I mean, it’s a material that can naturally withstand all five elements and shape itself according to outside influences without any damage to itself. I think it’s part of a three-star pill as well, though I can’t remember the name…”

“Could you be referring to the Focused Mind pill?” the other pill refiner suggested, prompting Yi Wei to nod.

“Exactly. However, despite being a three-star pill, every step but the last does not require the one creating it to have the ability of a three-star refiner. Someone with only one star of mastery could easily accomplish those steps, and they wouldn’t need anything besides common grasses and herbs,” she explained, taking a few more pieces of the adaptive wood out of the wall before splitting them amongst herself and the two pill refiners, “With the Focused Mind pill, I think that we can make the void-traversing- eh, fuck it, I’ll just say land ship from now. We’ll be able to make the land ship in an even shorter period of time.”

“None of us have our pill furnaces with us, though…”

“You don’t need a pill furnace – we’re standing on an infinite number of them. This is adaptive wood, after all, and so long as you make it into a certain shape and will it to stay that way via your spiritual will and planar energy, it’s not going to deform unless you intend to throw the flame of a dragon into it,” she smiled, easily tearing out three more chunks out of the wall using only her physical strength.

She created an arrow-spear using the Living Spear technique and used it to carve the wood into a vague shape of a pill furnace, ignoring the anguished look of the person whom she had originally borrowed the knife from.

Once the third pill furnace was roughly carved, she looked up to the people waiting for her instructions and said, “Alright then, those who can’t create arrays, inscriptions or pills, please go and cut out a number of tunnels and channels throughout the adaptive wood as shown on the diagram. Prepare the locations of the arrays and inscriptions, but don’t even try setting up their base, or else… it might be a good opportunity to find out what falling into the void between worlds does to you.”

Naturally, she did not mean that threat literally, as she didn’t want to kill anyone for making a mistake that, due to the nature of the adaptive wood, could be rectified in a matter of seconds, but likely due her height and the sight of her muscles beneath her robes, most people were convinced by her threats and went to work immediately.

When they departed, Yi Wei presented the inscription carvers and the array arrangers with the individual arrays and inscriptions they would have to assist her in creating, as to allow them to familiarise themselves with it while she worked on pill refining.

“Alright then, Yi Ling, Yi…?”

“Yi Jiu.”

“Right. Yi Ling and Yi Jiu, since you’ve likely worked with different pill furnaces in your own time, I’ll let you complete designing your own. From there, just utilise the typical dried herbs that an alchemist keeps within their herb bag to prepare a pill foundation in the Seven Violet Steps form, which should take you roughly thirty-two minutes. Do so two minutes apart from one another, and I’ll have enough time to complete both of your Focused Mind pills for you,” Yi Wei said, sending some of her spiritual will into her pill furnace.

It quickly morphed into the shape that she remembered Chu Ling using within her Timeless Grove due to the manipulation of her energy, though the rate at which it did so astounded her yet again.

‘So far, this and the reconstruction of the dome have been surprisingly fast. Even with all of my apparent talent in the great arts and the control of my various forms of energy, there is no way that I could have done either of those tasks as quickly as I have managed to do now, so, what is the cause of this?’ she asked herself, returning her spiritual will into her body and scanning herself with it, ‘There’s nothing unusual about my physical body, as far as I can tell, so has that long rest on a random log, as well as the absorption of all of my memories and thoughts by the Gilded Library somehow significantly strengthened my spiritual will in addition to my mind and memory? Given the fact that I have achieved Full Success with it, that could be the case… If this is something it can do after being fully cultivated, I wonder what reaching the First Stage of the technique, and discovering my own path within it, would allow for. If it is linked to my mental acceleration during the reconstruction of the dome, then it might be more powerful than anything else I have cultivated so far.’

Her mind wandered to the other mental technique she had cultivated, which was so compatible with the Gilded Library that it proved that it originated from the same Kong family, ‘Come to think of it, I don’t think I made full use of the Kong Mental Arts. Since a technique not focused on improving my spiritual will and mind can do this much at its peak, then surely something focused purely on that effect will be capable of even more?’

While the other two moulded their own pill furnaces, Yi Wei started to work on her own pill, though the majority of her focus was on the Kong Mental Arts.

If the library, even in its somewhat frayed state, was a solid object within her mental landscape, then the energy belonging to the Kong Mental Arts was more of a vague cloud that encompassed it, occasionally floating through, over and even below it, as the mental landscape was not dissimilar to the void between worlds, where gravity nor solid surfaces were a concept that even existed.

Since she didn’t have much of an idea on how to develop mental techniques, she decided to start with fixing the great quantity of gaps within the library. Her idea was that, if she was able to somehow mix the energies together and unite them into one technique, she wouldn’t suffer from the result no matter what, and it could potentially result either in a far stronger mind or the opportunity to develop the Gilded Library into some unknown stage, and if that plan was a failure, she would at the very least get a little more experienced in the field of mental cultivation.

 

Twenty-one minutes later, and her Focused Will pills were complete, but the Gilded Library had not developed by much. There were a few faint shadows that resembled bookshelves, but none had gotten even close to solidifying.

‘I’m thinking that I’m doing something wrong, though the Gilded Library is way too different from the rest of the mental techniques that I have studied in the technique library, so I don’t have too much information on what I need to fix. At the very least, I won’t get too distracted during the process of helping those two with their pills,’ she found some vague positive within her failure, and moved her attention elsewhere.

Yi Ling glanced up and gasped, “Wait, have you completed your pill refining already? That’s amazing!”

“Hm? Oh, right, I was too distracted with something that I completely forgot what I was doing. I’ve got twelve pills here, so you two should aim to make a total of twelve as well. We’ll be able to repeat this process by the time the other half of the group get here, and then we will have enough for everyone.”

“Y-You did that while you were distracted? Then, what am I, Yi Ling Tai, supposed to be…” the blond girl sighed.

Yi Wei ignored the girl’s use of her own name in a sentence and watched her and Yi Jiu’s work, to be sure that neither of them messed up by accident. She wasn’t looking down on either one of them, but when it comes to creating something you’ve never seen before, it was wise to be careful and have someone else who is more experienced watching over you.

Unfortunately, Yi Wei was only more knowledgeable in terms of pill refining, and not more experienced. The total number of pills that she had refined was many times smaller than what most people would have done while training, as she had skipped forward by a significant amount due to her acquisition of the Cherry Revolving Blossom technique and the teaching of Chu Ling, but she was still in a better place to observe them than anyone else beneath the protective dome.

A few more minutes passed, and she stepped in to complete the refining of Yi Ling’s batch of pills, then proceeded to assist Yi Jiu two minutes later. While she had managed to produce one perfect set of pills, they were both able to create only six of decent quality, though that was the quantity she had expected, so she simply snuck in a trace of her cosmic energy and set them aside.

“Now, once we make the second set, we can progress onto the next step of the plan.”

 

Some time later, Yi Wei gave out the Focused Mind pills to everyone, giving a single pill to each person. Once they were holding them, she asked Yi Guanyu to call everyone who is supplying the dome to the so-called shack, gave them the same pill and explained things to them with his help.

“Alright everybody, the barrier should keep itself in one piece for two more hours without anyone’s contribution, so we need to set up the base structure of the land ship in that time,” she said, having already checked the progress that had been made so far. A number of tunnels and channels had been dug within the ground, and a large chunk of the protected area’s connection to the wooden world outside had been severed, maintaining only a thin bridge that no more than two people could pass at once. “Are there any questions, silly or otherwise, or any suggestions that I hadn’t considered yet? Anyone?”

“Can you take me in as your student-”

“Great, let’s get to it. Those on the array team, come with me. Those on the inscription team, create the base for inscriptions numbered one, three, four, seven, nineteen and twenty. Everyone else, keep digging and carving. Make it look nice if you want, though it won’t matter to the void between worlds.”

She walked off, leaving everyone to focus on their own tasks.

Inside of her library was a replica of the initial plan that she had drawn, as well as a few other sheets of paper detailing various ideas and plans for the land ship itself, and for things that could be done within the void. For instance, she was very curious to learn whether Jiang Ping Shimeng was right in his theories, and she had no intentions to go to another world anytime soon, so this would be the best opportunity to study the all-devouring darkness.

Depending on what she could learn, she might even be able to submit the information to the family and receive an extremely rare, albeit not entirely unprecedented, promotion in her family status, and guarantee a safe life for herself so long as she doesn’t try to go against the family to an excessive degree. Even if it doesn’t, when she eventually gets to a stage in which she can create such realms on her own, it would greatly improve the rate at which she would progress through the creation process, and significantly reduce the risk of making a mistake that could completely undo all of her work, or possibly even end her life due to an unexpected tear within reality consuming her.

In other words, she had a lot to do.