Path of the Ascendant

Wei Yi stood up, removing the spear from her back and swinging it aimlessly a few times as to recall the balance and the weight of the weapon. Although the only significant difference between the training hall and the outside was the greatly enhanced gravitational pull, that still resulted in a number of other changes that were useful to keep in mind. Furthermore, with the combination of her understanding of how the spear was wielded in two different conditions, it was possible to extrapolate that information and develop an understanding of the best weapon techniques in every single situation.

Several minutes later, she moved on to the more complex techniques, namely the Eight Minor Changes spear technique, which had the most suitable amount of viciousness and ruthlessness for use in the prison realm.

As one could gather from the name, there were eight primary moves within this technique upon which every variation was based on. Two moves were based upon stabbing motions, four were slashes, one was a defensive manoeuvre that can be used to parry and riposte an attack, while the last one was primarily intended for movement, whether to flee from a stronger foe, or, as was the intention of the technique, to chase down an equal or weaker foe.

None of the eight movements were difficult on first glance, nor on the second or the third. However, this was a low-level technique created by simplifying and weakening the Eight Great Changes technique, and the person that did so did not bother to remove many of the elements that had composed the superior skill.

Due to this, it was the perfect opportunity to use Endless Calculation to decipher the things that were truly omitted.

What made this even better was that every single movement and change was independent of the next, meaning that if someone had the free time and the will to do so, they could split up each movement into individual techniques and spread them across the world in that way without anyone being in the least suspicious about this. It also meant that Wei Yi could work on a single movement at a time, refining and unearthing the potential that had been hidden away within the Eight Minor Changes, without needing to do this with the entire technique while also being able to transfer the progress from one movement to another due to their shared principles.

To put things simply, it might as well have been created specifically for her current situation.

‘First change, Piercing River,’ she read out the name of the attack, stabbing at the target dummy in the middle of the room with extreme speed. A pulse of pure force shot out of the end of the spear, striking a precise point on the dummy with twice her original strength.

With the technique manual within her mental hand, she looked up and willed the process of Endless Calculation to begin, with a hundred thousand variations of the exact same manuals appearing in front of her. In an instant, a thousand vanished when her mind understood that some aspect of the technique could not function in a competent or superior way to the existing version. A few seconds later, another few thousand were eliminated for the same reason.

The next large elimination of manuals came roughly one minute later, when she had experimented with a few of the new variations of the technique and discovered more flaws and imperfections.

She kept this up, eliminating a great quantity of techniques roughly half an hour later, narrowing things down to no more than a hundred mental manuals. Although it was a great improvement, there were still too many books for her to manage, even if they did lack any major flaws and count, in theory, function to confuse the enemy at a critical moment, but her intention had not been to add even more variations to the technique, but to extract the Eight Great Changes spear technique out of it. Thus, she shifted her posture and switched onto the next movement, creating another series of mental manuals from the basic technique and the understanding that she had gathered from the first movement.

‘Second change, Crushing Flood,’ Wei Yi struck out again, moving at a slower speed, almost as if she was pushing a great body of water with only her raw physical strength. When it struck the dummy, it was the exact opposite of the Piercing River, striking the entire body of the dummy and a great area around it.

This simple action allowed her to eliminate a further series of manuals from the crimson Augur’s Library, and with each variation of that attack, she removed even more failed attempts.

‘Third change, Tidal Flame,’ she performed the next movement, ‘not sure why a fire-type technique has so many movements named after water phenomena, but I’m not intending to complain about the names when I won’t shout them out.’

With every one of her movements, she was able to eliminate a great quantity of unsuccessful manuals from her current movement and a few from the previous changes that she could not originally eliminate. Certain changes and attempts would eliminate more failed manuals than others, but her progress remained constant, even if it was not consistent in the slightest.

‘Fourth change, Sweeping Inferno,’ the spear slashed across the dummy’s stomach, shredding the imaginary opponent into pieces.

‘Fifth change, Defensive Blaze,’ as she swiped with the spear, the burst of energy did not burst out as usual, but instead remained in place, sure to weaken or outright stop any incoming foe.

‘Sixth change, Retreating Torch,’ although the attack seemed similar to her last, it hid her rapid retreat.

‘Seventh change, Repealing Spark,’ her brows furrowed when she had to attempt this attack several attempts in order to properly understand and execute this strike without a proper foe to test her defences.

‘Finally, eight change, Ember Switch,’ this attack was far easier, for it required nothing more than to lunge forward at great speed.

When she completed her practise of the eight movements, all eight had under two dozen manuals to work with. Most of them were rather similar to one another, sharing many basic concepts with the manuals of the same movement and with those of other movements, but they were not yet at the level she wished them to be on. One was likely to be the Eight Great Changes, but to narrow it down, she would either need more experimentation, or a burst of inspiration.

As she wanted to focus, she felt an approaching energy drawing close to her. It was incredibly similar to spiritual will, but the presence of a vague crimson light, of killing intent, within it gave away its true nature right away.

‘This particular type of energy has a particularly strange sensation to it, so I can only assume that it belongs to the owner of the training hall, the third leader of Beast’s Rest. Not only do I not want to be interfered during this process, as I need to have complete focus on the remaining variations of the techniques in order to discover the true Eight Great Changes, or my own version of it, but I am not keen on being leeched from, no matter how little harm it actually does to me. I have good reason to believe that I have some decently impressive talents that I do not want Shi Luo Feng to obtain.’

She turned towards the approaching killing intent and stabbed at it with her spear, not using any particular move or technique.

As expected, it did nothing more than split the energy in the air, making it spread out more, without influencing the overall trajectory nor movement of the killing intent. It did, however, showcase that the energy was not under perfect control, as it was directed to flood the room and not to travel directly to her.

‘Very well then, the Antithesis Palm – or spear, in this instance – could work, or it could invert the area of killing intent and get me leeched even more quickly. If the latter ends up being the case, then I should still have enough space to flee from here.’

While channelling killing intent into the spear, she moved one foot back and lowered her entire body, gathering a crimson page from the Augur’s Library and diverting it towards the spear. As it filled up with red light, she gripped the weapon even more tightly, as if she was afraid of it disappearing from her grasp, then slowly pushed it forward at the same time as releasing the killing intent bound within. It rapidly transformed into pure darkness that consumed the light around it and spread.

The moment that the transformation completed, the speed of her spear also accelerated, striking at the killing intent with enormous force and speed.

As the darkness came into contact with the killing intent, it rapidly expanded to cover all of the energy within the chamber, transforming the transparent energies into vibrant blue light that covered half of the entire room. It reached back, into the depths of the training hall, where the owner of the killing intent resided.

When it made contact, Wei Yi’s mental library suddenly witnessed the spare manuals of the Eight Minor Changes vanishing, leaving behind only one set of manuals for every single movement. Furthermore, a different, complete tome manifested within the crimson and gold third floor of the library, with a complete label and fully filled in on the inside with information that one could not possibly obtain through mere observation with sight and spiritual will.

It was labelled ‘Magnanimous Leech’, and it described an extremely grim and worrying technique.

‘So that’s how the technique attains such power…’ she understood as she read the book while her body performed the eight movements of the newly generated Eight Great Changes skill, ‘It seems that power can truly never be acquired without some sacrifice. It is called Magnanimous Leech, but not because it does not take much from its targets during brief encounters, but because it oh-so-kindly keeps the user alive at the cost of forcing them to endlessly consume the might, the talent, the knowledge and the minds of others. Fortunately, my brief interference with it did not allow it to somehow manifest within me, but I will need to take great care not to replicate this part of the skill no matter what I do.’

There were plenty of miraculous abilities and techniques out there, but most were not without their own issues and limitations. As the killing intent rapidly withdrew from the room, she could now see how it simultaneously attempted to absorb everything in its vicinity whilst also pouring away the ability of the user. It was an extremely dangerous phenomena, for the technique manual that Wei Yi now possessed suggested that there was no possibility for the technique to be removed no matter what someone does. Even purging all killing intent or killing the mind itself would still leave it entrenched within the body and would give the energy no choice but to consume only the user.

To accidentally include such a property within her future killing intent cultivation method would be a death sentence, especially if she accidentally put in only the aspect that stole away her talent while forgetting to include a method to recover it.

On the other hand, it did give her yet another opportunity, since if she managed to understand exactly what permitted this talent and ability absorption and comprehension, she could potentially generate a method similar to the Cosmic Dantian Refining skill that could unlock or even generate further comprehensive ability, energy utilisation and mental processing.

Even if that could not occur, it was feasible for her to create a method of viewing her own talents in a clearer form, granting her the ability to compare her own strengths to those of others and further focus on her strengths while patching up the weaknesses.

‘Another thing to calculate, then. It is truly fortunate that time moves slower here, or else I would never have enough time for this… but my physical age is unlikely to be as slow as it typically is on the outside, meaning that even if I retain the longer lifespan from my cultivation, I will only have somewhere between a total of one hundred and fifty and three hundred years to live, and thus roughly fifty-five to one hundred and thirty years to get out of here,’ she estimated, repeating the movements of the Eight Great Changes over and over again as to ensure that her body remembered it just as well as her mind, ‘It may sound like a lot of time, but my experience with planar cultivation suggests that it will be a slow process to progress in the realms of killing intent. I had both the mysterious characters and a number of fortunate encounters on my path of planar cultivation, with both significantly accelerating it, but, so far, I have had no response from the characters nor a miraculous technique to use.’

She had no clue whether there was such a thing as perfected stages or realms within killing intent or physique cultivation, but she would not accept anything other than the best attempt at reaching them within her own cultivation, and would never skip any steps that could lead to greater weaknesses later on. Depending on how difficult it was to cultivate killing intent, how much ability she had for it and how long it would take her to complete her technique, it could take as little as a few years or as many as a hundred in the worst-case scenario.

‘If I do have the life-span of someone in the third realm, I will have enough time to reach the peak of killing intent while remaining in my prime, though I can’t say that I want to age so much within this crimson domain,’ Wei Yi thought while she changed a few minor aspects of her spear technique to make them more suitable for her particular physique and body, which differed from the original creator of the technique in far more ways than one.

Her remaining time within the training chamber was spent on alternating between practising with the spear and performing exercises to build up her strength.

The gravitational force acting upon her stopped suddenly exactly as the second hour passed, nearly causing her to fly into the ceiling with the force she was exerting into her push-up. She stood up, wiped the sweat from her face with her hand while using physique energy to burn away traces of dirt on the parts of herself she concealed with that action, and left the chamber with the spear on her back.

To prevent herself from overusing her strength again, she raised the gravitational effect of the training set significantly higher than before. She had the faint suspicion that she was reaching the end of what the training set allowed for, which made perfect sense as Great Light was a typical planar energy cultivator rather than a body cultivator, so even if he had a powerful physique, he could not develop it like she could, nor did he have the access to cosmic energy, preventing him from growing as quickly.

Almost immediately, she saw the back of the overly muscular man heading up the stairs, and knew, thanks to her ever-vigilant spiritual will, that he had turned around only a second earlier, clearly doing so upon seeing her exit the training chamber.

‘Makes sense, seeing as I had done something extremely strange to Shi Luo Feng’s killing intent,’ she thought, calmly following him, ‘I don’t think it will be a good idea to speak to her for too long, if she does invite me to do so. While I can deal with her killing intent for now, I cannot be sure that there isn’t some method to neutralise or bypass my Antithesis Palm and drain things from me anyway. Furthermore, I could accidentally give her some ideas to improve her own techniques and thus gain an advantage over the other three, which she already ought to have with her superior cultivation.’

When she returned to the reception room, she found that the man had returned to his position and looked at her the moment she came into view.

“The boss wants to speak with you, girl,” the muscular man said, his speech being much clearer without a field of gravity constantly forcing him into the ground, “Also, you have strong muscles. I can appreciate that.”

“Eh… thanks, but I am not interested. You can pass on my apologies to-”

“I’m afraid I cannot let you get away that easily, woman,” an incredibly feminine and alluring voice interrupted her from the side.

It belonged to a woman whose face was covered by a black veil, and whose robes were of a similarly dark colour that hid everything about her figure completely. Through the thin fabric of the veil, Wei Yi was able to see plump red lips and soft skin that nearly matched her own. Furthermore, her stance, although simple, served to make her look significantly more enticing.

Although the portion of her mind that was fuelled purely by hormones and lust – an incredibly small part, naturally – was incredibly interested in this, she suppressed it because she recognised the killing intent that surrounded her, and then realised why her appearance was so oddly flawless.

“Shi Luo Feng. My apologies, but while I am greatly sorry for your plight, I do not wish to stay.”

“What in the world do you mean?” she narrowed her eyes, “I would say your name in a similar manner, but I have unfortunately forgotten to make registering one’s name a necessity.”

“I am Wei Yi, and by your plight, I meant that you are forced to run a training hall to keep yourself alive. That is really unfortunate, but I imagine that you cannot have missed the negative effects of the technique before deciding to cultivate it. Since you keep utilising it fully despite being able to control it all too well, you clearly don’t have any issues with it, and thus I will not show you pity.”

“You… What are you talking about?” Shi Luo Feng asked, but her expression beneath the veil was not of confusion, but of fear, her eyes and mouth widening while the rest of her body trembled slightly.

“Nothing at all, if you don’t want to admit it. Goodbye,” Wei Yi muttered, turning away and exiting through the front door before she could be accosted by the woman again, ‘While there might be a chance of getting along with Ding Wen, being near her would be completely fatal. Even if she was to avoid me with her killing intent, I would still need to feed her constantly with other people that would leech away all other talent and force me to work only with her, and if she is given enough time and effort, she might be able to attain the ability to manipulate my mind through raw and concentrated charisma… by which I do not mean her breasts…’

She left the training hall and used every stealth technique that did not require planar energy to obscure her presence and to lose any potential pursuers. With the rather complicated layout of Beast’s Rest, this was not too difficult for her to do, and so she soon reached a tavern safely.

There, she ordered a large meal to sate the hunger she developed from using up so much of her True Ascendant physique energy on the process of creating the bone shard inscriptions.

After almost an entire hour, she finished consuming her food and leaned onto her chair, consuming the last drops of the blood wine with a loud gulp. Some of the customers looked at her with disapproving gazes due to her lacking manners, but everyone who knew what the crimson robes meant ignored her and the rest received a single killing intent-filled glance from her and also looked away without any complaints.

‘If I am to advance in my path to freedom, I need to find a group to reside in and order around to claim dominance over the town and get whatever resources I need for my cultivation,’ she thought, creating two books within her Augur’s Library that represented Ding Wen and Meng Chu, ‘Those two are the best candidates, as I will not need to create a new faction and will be able to take over their organisations and use them to my advantage. Ding Wen has great riches and far too many treasures, while Meng Chu… I’m sure he does something, and has a number of guards under his control, so if I can provide them with a good plan and techniques, I would have the perfect set of tools to occupy Beast’s Rest. I suppose that it is time to return to the streets and accost more people for information…’