Path of the Ascendant

Once she left the Timeless Grove, she was a little less careful than before, though she still applied a stealth technique to herself under the logic that if the threat was genuinely far more powerful than Chu Ling, it wouldn’t matter what she does, but if it is inferior, then she will be able to slip past them with only the Aeon of the Endless Dark.

There were six individuals – and five places, as Great Dark and Great Light lived in one place – that she wanted to visit, and she quickly made the decision to go to the one who was in the most danger from this mysterious threat.

Every few minutes, as she ascended Xiao Mountain, she looked up to confirm that there were no clouds of smoke rising into the air. It was a silly thing to do, and she knew it all too well, as the invisible threat she had been warned of wouldn’t need to burn down the luxurious residence of someone just to kill them, as it they should have no difficulty to end the girl’s life regardless of what cultivation she had achieved by now. Even if there was a fire, and even if she spotted it and rushed to it, what could she even do?

When she finally arrived onto the flattened peak, she saw that the Xiao Mountain Residence was in a perfect, clean state, with no traces of death nor violence.

‘That still doesn’t prove anything, however. Is she even here right now?’

Yi Wei went into the residence and, after checking the floor plan of the home inside of the Gilded Library, she sought out the master bedroom, where she recalled the girl, who acted much like her younger sister, had resided the last time they met.

The door was shut, so, once she listened in for a second to confirm that nothing she shouldn’t barge into was happening on the other side, she opened it and stepped inside.

“Yi Yaling!”

“Eek!” she yelped, flying out of her bed and crashing onto the floor.

“… Sorry.”

“Yi Wei, you’re back!” Yi Yaling exclaimed, getting back onto her feet and tidying up her robes, “Y-You could have knocked!”

“I did say sorry,” Yi Wei said, “There were just a few things going on, and I was a little worried about you. Have you been doing well, and have you encountered any strange people lately?”

“Eh, well, n-not really… The family, and daddy as a result, are receiving a few friends of the family, but other than that, there’s not been anything in particular… A few tutors had also been invited over for me, but none of them could help out with my issue as much as you could, so they had been sent back very quickly,” she listed, “You know, the lightning thing… How have you been?”

“Since you’re okay, that’s great,” Yi Wei let out a relieved sigh and approached her, before dropping unceremoniously on the bed, “These beds are really comfortable... There’s also a really fragrant flowery scent…”

“W-Well, I’m… eh… I’m not using perfume, so… eh…”

‘Wait, does that mean that I…?’ her eyes widened, and she sat up on the bed and pretended not to have said anything, “Sorry for laying on your bed with something this messy and dirty.”

“No, no, it’s fine, I… I’ve missed you a lot, actually.”

“Same here. Earlier, you mentioned your cultivation, right? Could you show me the current state of your planar energy?”

“Sure!” Yi Yaling exclaimed, holding out her hand and summoning a thin strand of golden lightning that playfully arced across her fingers and almost seemed to dance as it did so. Yi Wei recalled how the girl had mentioned that the lightning acted almost like it was sentient and alive, and she saw that it was indeed acting in accordance with that description, as it was impossible to manipulate planar energy with such smoothness and precision without either an immense amount of talent or a great deal of practise.

More importantly than that, she noticed that the energy had developed all the way to the fifth stage of the Planar Pool realm, which was a decent degree of process for someone who had no proper cultivation technique to utilise.

“Alright, give me a second…” Yi Wei narrowed her eyes and focused on the structure of the energy, analysing it from every angle she could with her spiritual will.

Within her mental landscape, she forcefully pushed away the storm of thoughts for a little while and used that time to record it all within her library and compare it to everything else in the cultivation technique section and shelf, throwing them together in some complex manner that even she, had she been in her typical state, wouldn’t have fully understood, before returning her focus to the outside.

“Alright, I’ve got something. Let me explain it to you, and you can see if it works…”

 

“The sixth stage! I’ve gotten to the sixth stage already! Thank you, big sis- I mean, Yi Wei!” Yi Yaling nearly shouted, jumping onto her and hugging her tightly.

“You’re welcome… and you can call me whatever you like… if you want to…” she blushed quietly.

“I’ll think about it. Sorry about making you do this just after you’ve arrived, and while you’re wearing robes that like that, too. I’ve made sure that your room was kept nice and neat, so you can sleep there whenever you want, though I don’t really have a spare set of robes for you…”

“They’re made specifically by the tailors near the Ancestral Hall, so I don’t blame you. I’ll have to pop in while Yi Kun is not around and request a repair or replacement,” Yi Wei said, shrugging her shoulders, “However, you are right in that we shouldn’t be bothering ourselves with things like cultivation. One missed day is unlikely to dictate our lives, so it won’t be too much of an issue to take some time off for relaxation. Still, I do want you to remember that if you see some strange people with an overwhelming aura of strength, or something along those lines, that you should be really careful, alright?”

“Y-Yes, I understand… though I don’t know why you seem so sure that I will meet someone like that…”

“Just be careful, please. I have to mention it to you specifically because you have that bad tendency to do dumb things, and I wouldn’t want you to do so again.”

“I don’t do dumb things! That’s just rude…”

Yi Wei just raised an eyebrow at that, “Really? Who was the person that tried to steal planar shards for me to cultivate with?”

“…”

“And don’t try telling me that you didn’t have a similar idea when I showed up today. Something like taking over the Ancestral Hall to force them to fix my robes, even if it would be much easier to get it done for free and without any harm?”

“H-how did you know?”

“Wait, seriously? I was just throwing that out there… Now I don’t want to let you out of my sight…”

They looked at one another in silence for a while, before Yi Wei stood up in silence and went to the door.

“Wait, Y-Yi Wei-”

“I’m just heading out to speak with a few other people. I’ll be back soon, so don’t rush out looking for me, and don’t try searching for anything to help me cultivate. You’re unlikely to help me too much anyways, as I have already reached the Half-Step Emergent Anchor realm,” she explained, creating a miniature shadow of her planar anchor atop her palm, though she willed it to display only the sides that it would have if it was a pure metal-type anchor, “So, please, stay at home and don’t raid any treasuries or anything of the sort, alright?”

“Okay…”

Yi Wei nodded in acknowledgment and exited, heading to her own room. There, she lay down and, after a moment of awkward hesitation, she inhaled deeply via her nose.

‘That was because of her, then…’ she frowned, shook her head to throw those thoughts out of it, stood back up and left the residence, heading towards the hot springs of Xiao Mountain.

Naturally, it was not part of her original intentions, as five acquaintances were still unspoken to, but there was one thing she had noticed as a result of the first planned conversation on her list. It wasn’t exactly a great revelation, nor one she had wanted to receive, but in order to follow Chu Ling’s advice from when she first consulted with her in regards to her mental state, it was important to consider every such thought clearly, as to be absolutely certain who she is and isn’t.

As for the potential revelation, was there any need to expressly state that it was-

‘Smoke?’ as she approached the hot springs, she absentmindedly looked up and saw the rising smoke from a building in the far, far distance, at the bottom of the mountain and some distance away from it. It was vague, due to how far away it was, but it was difficult to mistake this sight for anything else.

Perhaps a random fire might not be of any significance to her, but the position of the flaming building was strangely close to the position of somewhere where she had been before.

She needed only a second of thought to decide to investigate the matter.

Yi Wei initiated her go-to stealth technique, the Aeon of the Endless Dark, and charged down the mountain, past the hot springs and through the thin wooded area that separated Xiao Mountain from the rest of the Yi District.

Due to the additional boost that channelling her planar energy provided, she cleared that distance in a matter of minutes, slowing down only once she passed the first few random houses.

From there, she navigated using her detailed mental map of the district and realised that this place was indeed familiar – it was in close proximity to the shop that belonged to Luo Xiuying, which partially made her slow down. If it was him, then it wouldn’t be unthinkable for him to have exploded his home in one of his attempts to improve on his talisman arts, and the fire would be one that he is himself responsible for and would quell soon after.

Nevertheless, she approached, and found that the fire did indeed originate from the place she had expected.

The prestigious-looking shop was, once again, in a terrible state, with a small crowd having gathered around it. However, that was the exact oddity that had only unnerved her further. When she first saw the shop explode, there may have been a few spectators who had stopped for a minute or two to see what happened, but the vast majority of the crowd ignored it.

This time, however, the people remained, and the explosive pattern, which Yi Wei had some familiarity with, also differed. She frowned and softly pushed her way through the crowd, but stopped mid-way through when she had seen enough.

At the back of the front room of the shop, just barely within her field of vision, lay an unmistakable body, drenched in blood.

Luo Xiuying did not move nor breathe, and the aura of planar energy around him seemed incredibly faint, nothing like what the cultivation of the fourth realm should feel like. In addition, even that little bit of energy was slowly sinking away, which could only ever mean one thing – he was dead, and his cultivation was ruined by someone.

She restrained the quivering of her body, to appear as ordinary as she could, and rushed out.

“What in the heavens is going on? I’ll help put out the fire!” she shouted, pretending to be some average concerned citizen.

With her cosmic energy transformed into water, she threw it out onto the shop and ran inside, straight to Luo Xiuying. Her action finally stirred a few others, who also emerged from the crowd and began to put out the fire, providing her the perfect cover to examine the shop owner’s body under the pretence of checking his pulse or providing him with a medicinal pill.

Yi Wei wasn’t certain what she had expected to find, or what she wanted to find, but she did stumble across a large, flat and thick book-shaped object in one of his pockets, so she immediately began searching elsewhere while releasing both her spiritual will and planar energy in flame form.

The book was labelled ‘Cursed Talisman Arts’, and she quickly connected the concepts within to those of the technique he had typically used during his displays of his ability to her.

While it burned due to her energy, she scanned every page and stored it in the library, though she had to stop every now and then to tear away one of the stray mental pages that tried to force themselves into the manual. Even with the obstructions, she had collected the entire technique within a minute, at which point she shot up and loudly declared, “He’s dead! This man is dead! By the heavens…”

She ran out of the building and out of the crowd, disappearing behind a random house where she reapplied the Aeon of the Endless Dark and vanished from sight.

‘Damn it, he’s been targeted as well? He died with one attack that didn’t even pierce his flesh, simply crushing the dantian with raw power. It was absolutely brutal. Hopefully, my performance won’t have caught their eyes, if they don’t yet know what I look like – they shouldn’t considering the fact that my muscles had primarily developed during the expedition, as I had previously been attempting to stifle their visual and physical growth – and even if they do, maybe I’ll be able to sneak under the radar due to the way that I acted,’ she thought, heading through the shadows to the nearest acquaintance of hers, though she stopped mid-step as she realised the wording she had used, ‘What’s… a radar, exactly?’

Naturally, there was no answer to that question, nor did she expect one, so she continued on her way.

Several minutes later, she arrived at a small blacksmith’s shop, the one in which she had learnt what she had learnt regarding blacksmithing. There was no smoke rising from it, but, once again, that little detail was the strange one, for the great furnace within the smithy tended to be lit and burning constantly.

After taking a deep breath to calm herself, she acted calm and walked inside, ready to act either as a customer or as a student, depending on what she found within.

“Hello? Is anyone in at the moment?” she called out into the depths of the dark smithy, but the only response was her own voice echoing back at her. The lack of light in the building forced her to walk slowly, and slightly made her miss the ever-present glowing spot of orange light that glowed within the Kong Holy Grounds, which had likely been destroyed alongside it, as that would have allowed her to rely on more than her limited night vision.

There was no answer even as she went into the depths of the structure, into the back, where the silent forge stood without light nor usage. Most was exactly as she remembered, until she had located something by the furthest wall.

On first glance, and on the second and third one, that something looked much like a body.

“Are you alright?” she asked once she took another step forward and confirmed that it did indeed look like a person sitting on the ground, their back pressed against the wall, ‘That’s a dumb question, but it is the best one that I can ask. If someone, even Ning Guanting, has decided to have a rest here, and then I begin to look through their pockets, it could get rather awkward.’

Her primary focus wasn’t on this curious figure, however, as she could sense the planar energy around it being dispersed, exactly in the same manner as Luo Xiuying’s was, but on any potential observer.

She knelt down and reached out to feel the figure’s pulse.

All of a sudden, the figure’s head shot up, and her fist headed straight for Yi Wei’s face. A dim blue light lit up within the figure’s eyes as she moved with speed that should have been impossible for anyone.

Yi Wei leapt back, but before she could even land, she heard and felt another threat appear from the side, forcing her to use the effect of the Floating Whale Lungs to evade that attack as well.

While she was landing on the ground, she glanced up and saw a large, glowing and flaming hammer within the second attacker’s hand, lighting up just enough of that figure’s face to identify who that person was.

“Ning Guanting, it’s me!” she shouted, making both figures stop.

“Young lady, is that you? What in the heavens are you doing breaking into my smithy?” the blacksmith questioned, slamming the hammer onto the nearest surface with minimal damage to either one.

“Breaking in? Didn’t you hear me calling out to you? Imagine what would have happened had I not strengthened my body and increased my cultivation in my absence! Though, based on the fact that you have laid some sort of trap here, I have to assume that you were intending for someone else, someone more dangerous than me to stumble across it.”

“Duh. You would think that someone can survive without some pursuer or another, but no…”

“Tell me about it…” Yi Wei sighed, sitting down on the ground.

“Don’t tell me you’ve got someone coming after you as well? Did you come here to pick something up from me?” Ning Guanting asked, finding her own seat in the dark forge.

“I wasn’t sure whether you would still be alive, so I wanted to investigate it myself. If you were alive, I could inform you about the threat and ask you to be careful, maybe get some tutoring from you, but if you weren’t…”

“You’d pilfer what you could get?”

“Naturally. Then, I’d burn all manuals and techniques so that no-one else can get them.”

The blacksmith shrugged, “Eh, it’d be fine with me. I don’t want my things to get into anyone else’s hands, so if a student of mine gets them, that’s a little better than some random person getting them instead. Say, have you had the opportunity to test your theory about burning wood cultivators a little more?”

“That wasn’t really high on my list of priorities, no. Did you?”

“It worked absolutely great! If only my family had been wood cultivators, I might have been able to get them off by back…”

“Hold up, your family? If this isn’t asking for too much, could you tell me who’s after you?”

“Sure, I could do that. You go first,” the elderly woman said, “especially if those people might be coming after me as well, I would like to know how to deal with them.”

Once again, Yi Wei sighed, “Yeah, so would I. I know that it is two people at least, both of whom are in the third realm, with a power that feels greater than that of someone in the fifth. They seemed to have already killed one person and have been asking around for me for some time, though I evaded them due to the fact that I’ve only come back to the district today. I don’t know what element they use, nor what their appearance is like… I should have asked the one who told me about them, but I sort of forgot about it… That’s about it.”

“You’re in quite the situation, then. Are they after you specifically?”

“That’s what it seems like, though they have also gone after the people related to me, so what do I know.”

“In that case, I should have a chance of avoiding them with my plans. It would have been great to have more to go off of, but I’ll manage. Now, before I tell you about the people after me, I’ll check your knowledge – what do you know of the Ning family and district?”

“Ning family? They don’t allow too much information to leave their particular district, though there is one thing that almost everyone knows about them. The Divine Blacksmiths of the Ning family are renowned for their ability to create some of the most powerful artefacts in the world, but their techniques are unknown to anyone. This is exceptionally rare, seeing as even the techniques of assassins have slowly gotten out of their organisations and gained some fame in the outside world.”

“Well then, I won’t beat around the bush – this old lady is a Divine Blacksmith, believe it or not.”

“Really?” she asked, “Then, am I right in guessing that the people after you are members of the Ning family that don’t want you to release the skills of the Divine Blacksmiths?”

“Not quite. They know that I won’t do it no matter what anyone tells me to do, for the same reason that I don’t wish to be under their control. You see, Divine Blacksmiths are so mysterious and rare because, in addition to the immense difficulty of our training, the reason for our greatest accomplishment, the ability to surpass almost all other blacksmiths, is that we use our very lifeforce for our craft,” Ning Guanting said, resting her hand on the figure with glowing blue eyes, “As a result, we can create all sorts of things, like this living statue, but every powerful item drains our very lives away. At my age, I should be able to live up to six hundred years, but now… Can you guess how old I am?”

“With your appearance, I’d say…”

“Alright, you’re either going to guess too high, making me feel sad, or you’re going to guess too low, doing the exact same thing. I’m only ninety-two years old.”

“… So, does losing one’s lifeforce drain away their lifespan and physical age?”

“Precisely. Every single Divine Blacksmith didn’t willingly seclude themselves, but rather, their lives were drained into their work. The lifeforce of a powerful blacksmith makes for a great crafting material, as it turns out.”

‘Well, that is quite the revelation… I can’t possibly ask her to make something for me then, not that I would have benefitted from it to begin with,’ Yi Wei thought, “That’s also why you don’t want to give out your technique, right?”

“I had no choice when it came to my occupation, but that isn’t the case for you. I won’t let you or anyone else suffer like I had to.”

“Can I get a more common technique then?”

“Your Hammer Semblance Art is exactly that – a technique made for the training of young Divine Blacksmiths, without any involvement of your lifeforce. In fact, it might enhance it somewhat, as a part of the training to ensure that you have enough energy to then make the things that they want you to make. It might not give you too much more time, but a year or two might come as a result.”

“That’s a decent enough outcome for a common forging technique, I suppose. Does the majority of the family practise fire-type techniques?”

“They do, but if you see someone from the Ning family, pretend that you don’t know me, or, better yet, claim that you utterly despise me and that you hated me so much that you quit being disciple and left the district for two years. It would be safer for you and, trust me, I won’t mind.”

Yi Wei wasn’t exactly happy about that request, but she saw no better option, “Fine. Can you give me a little more training on the Hammer Semblance Art then?”

“Sure, though this will be the last time you’ll see me in this district. As a small gift, you can have this,” Ning Guanting lifted the hammer, which had already lost its flame, and gave it to her, “It’s my own creation, so the Ning family can’t trace it to you. Furthermore, it has a small trick that you hadn’t noticed the last few times you looked over it-”

“Is this some sort of spatial dilation inscription? No, maybe a physical volume conversion…”

“Heh…” the aging blacksmith took a deep breath and continued, “Yes, you can make it transform into a far smaller thing. You’ve cultivated your entire body, right?”

“Yes, I have… depending on what you mean, of course.”

“Do you have some place on your body that is covered safely by skin or hair or something that is of equal strength?”

“Well, my hair is pretty tough. I’ve tried cutting it with a regular knife, but I failed miserably.”

“Then you can make this smaller than an earring, then pin it to the back of your head, beneath that mane of hair, and nobody will know about it until you suddenly take it out and smack them in the face with the hammer!” Ning Guanting exclaimed with a rare moment of excitement on her tired face, “The weight won’t be much reduced, but that should be fine for you, no?”

“Let me try it,” Yi Wei said, taking the hammer from her, “Huh, it’s like a feather.”

“Good. Now, pay attention…”