Path of the Ascendant

Her purely theoretical understanding of torture did end up being carried over to reality, mostly due to her spiritual will allowing her to inspect what every single one of her actions resulted in within the body of her victims. Exactly thirty-four minutes after she began her work, all three of the prisoners had revealed their secrets and were now on the edge between life and death, both physically and mentally, for, as it turns out, killing intent in excessive quantities and through prolonged usage can equate the effects of several hallucinogenic substances combined.

They were indeed the subordinates of the third leader of Beast’s Rest, Shi Luo Feng, and were sent to find her and bring her to their leader without killing her. When it was discovered that she had, somehow, ended up within Meng Chu’s underground network, they hesitated to enter and waited to see if she would eventually emerge, but after nearly a month of waiting, they concluded that they would have to risk entry.

While they were aware of the underground corridors and passages, they lacked experience with them and had never understood the true extent of the network, as well as how many secret doors there were.

As a result, they had gotten stuck not long after entry, subsequently being found by Wei Yi while she was feeling a little bored and decided to reach out with her spiritual will to see whether there was anything of interest in her surroundings.

Shi Luo Feng had not told them much about why she wanted to see Wei Yi, so her intentions could not be confirmed, but Wei Yi suspected that the leader wanted to understand where she had obtained the information on her Magnanimous Leech technique, whether there were any others, and whether there was some means of reducing its harmful effects.

‘Unfortunately for her, I have no such thing. The technique was obtained directly from her, and unless there is something extremely obvious within her technique that she has not yet understood, I will be of little help to her,’ Wei Yi thought as she left the prison chamber and relayed what she had learned to Meng Chu, with only the minor details of the Magnanimous Leech as to not give him too much ammunition to use against Shi Luo Feng before she had a chance to take over his faction and make her own decisions.

After cleansing her hands with physique energy, she left the underground passages and went straight into the brothel above, where she found Ah Li and walked with her to a private room. There, the prostitute leapt directly at her, begging her for a repeat of their last time together, much like Meng Chu had told her to expect.

Naturally, she did not refuse.

 

“By the heavens, sound-proofing is apparently far more important and necessary than I could have ever assumed,” Meng Chu sighed, “So, Ah Qiu, anything to report?”

“I need your, eh… what’s it called... the book that ‘as the words in it…”

“Do you mean the dictionary? What did I tell you the last time you complained about not having it?”

“I dunno, I can’t ‘member it now, my head is full of the plan. I need to remember the plan…”

“Right, sure, you can do that. Having seen the plan myself, I see that your limited mental capacity is needed in full in order to retain it in your memory. Make sure that you do not intentionally cause the plan to fail, understand?” said Meng Chu, trying to look as serious as he could over the noise in the background, “My ancestor’s technique, the Storm of Vengeance, is bound to be beneficial to my cultivation, and her chance of acquiring it is far higher than yours.”

“The plan… the plan…”

“We’ll just pretend that you understood. Why did I ever consider you being suitable to become a third vice-leader…”

 

Almost twenty-four hours after their tactical meeting, Wei Yi managed to put Ah Li to sleep with her efforts and exited the town via the underground passages of Beast’s Rest, meeting up with the forces under her command there. She did not ask them about their activities but judging by their tired faces and the smell of other people hanging around them, she had a good idea of where they had been.

“It is time for us to set out. We will first travel to the dried lake beside the battlefield, confirm that we have not been spotted and that no extreme changes have occurred within the camp, then proceed with the plan. Any questions, beside the ones from the illiterate ones?”

“Boss, we were told that you also cultivate killing intent!” a soldier said, “Can we see it?”

“Can you lot guarantee that you will be able to fight properly afterwards?”

“Yes, boss!” was the unanimous reply.

However, she was not convinced in the slightest, for she could compare the difference between her killing intent and that of the soldiers and knew that it was significantly in her favour, even if it was against someone in the Condensed Shot realm. If she was to portray her full ability, then the damage to the weaker individuals would be rather significant.

‘I suppose that if I distil the energy a little bit, then ask them to stand at the edge of my spiritual energy range, then it will be safe enough,’ she decided, “Very well. Stand exactly six metres away, all of you.”

They did not question her and did their best to follow that order, which was rather difficult seeing these people lacked both a formal education and any ability to measure distances without using a specific implement for that purpose.

As a result, Wei Yi had to personally instruct them in the basics of the units of measurement. The smallest unit that was typically used within the Planar Continents, and the prison realm as an extension, was the millimetre, for everything below that was almost indistinguishable to the common human eye. The next unit was the centimetre, but it was the least used as almost every saying and idiom more commonly referred to the inch, which was exactly 2.5 centimetres. It is said that both were introduced in the days of the Master of Yi City, with the first being the centimetre. However, their creator invented the inch shorty after, and spoke of it so much more commonly than the centimetre that the latter was solidified as the unit of choice.

The metre and the kilometre follow, with one kilometre being one thousand metres, while one metre is one hundred centimetres. Although the odd discrepancy in this aspect is well known, not to mention the oddity of the inch being the only common unit of measurement to not include the term ‘metre’, they had gotten so entrenched in every great art that no-one felt confident enough to change them.

One of the units that remained, while being used extremely rarely, was the mile, which was exactly 1.5 kilometres. This one is well-known to have originated straight from the mouth of the Master of Yi City, and it is typically guessed that he wished for a brief, simple term to use while stating extreme distances, for ‘one hundred miles away’ rolls off the tongue much more easily than ‘one hundred kilometres away’ while conveying a larger distance at the same time.

“So, this,” she grabbed her spear and infused it with killing intent, stabbing at the ground in front of her to create a single point in the crimson dirt, “is one metre, while this,” she stabbed five more times, using the projected energy of the Eight Great Changes to mark the ground without moving, followed with one wide slash to draw a semi-circle in the ground at the six-metre mark, “is six of them. Got it?”

“We get it, boss!” they shouted, quickly getting themselves into place, likely to avoid having to hear another lengthy lecture, “Done, boss.”

“Good. Now, don’t hesitate to step away if this gets too difficult for you,” she said, ‘I wouldn’t want to be working with dead weight even more so than I currently am… If it even is possible to have someone who is less intelligent that this lot. Yi Jiazhi, mayb- right, he’s dead. I still feel… odd…’

Once they were sufficiently prepared, she raised her head and willed the battlefield from her eyes into the world, releasing a great crimson tide that burst out of her body and rushed forth, throwing up the dirt around her as it surged uncontrollably into the ground and sky, as well as towards its intended targets. The stone beneath the thin layer of dirt cracked with a single touch of the red energy, marking its path towards them.

When it touched their bodies, the world before them changed. The perpetual crimson was gone, as was the dead body of the Beast in the distance. Smooth red dirt changed to rolling and uneven hills of brown and the sickly grey of dead grass, atop which lay countless bodies in identical armour. Their blood poured down into the lowest part of the field, creating small lakes of dried dark fluid.

They could not control themselves as they looked up to see a few combatants still engaging in battle, with one side wielding deep ruby energy and the other surrounding themselves in vibrant sunlight.

Every slash, stab and hit from every warrior generated a wave of pure energy, and seemed to be executed by such powerful individuals that if any one of the twenty-six faced them, they would be decimated in an instant, before they could ever realise that someone had attacked them in the first place, for their moves were incredibly refined and perfectly executed. The added fact that these warriors must have been extremely exhausted and some of the weakest from both armies did not help any of those that were terrified by their prowess.

Far away, a single building of deep crimson and dark gold stood amongst the dead, radiating tyrannical energy. However, it was not the building itself that drew their collective attention, but what stood behind it.

A single figure, as tall as the deep black clouds that covered up any trace of the sky above them, looked down upon them with no particular expression, but her ruby eyes pierced the veil of the clouds to stare at them like any human might look upon an ant. In front of such a thing, it felt that any actions would be meaningless, and any resistance futile, for it had to contain such immense might that even the warriors on the battlefield could not harm a hair on her body.

Some even realised that this being could undoubtedly kill any one of them with a single blink of her eyes, and the reason behind their conclusion was never challenged – was this fact not obvious?

All of a sudden, all twenty-six warriors saw the figure shift, ever so slightly, perhaps doing so unconsciously. Nevertheless, in their eyes, this simple and utterly insignificant move was the greatest threat they had ever faced. Their bodies shook and their hearts stopped, perhaps due to fear of upsetting that great deity, or due to the belief that they were already dead.

And then… the battlefield vanished. The library vanished. The female deity vanished.

Only Wei Yi remained, but now they could see a hint of the dying world within her eyes. Furthermore, the more they looked upon her, the more they saw the visage of that deity, the great terror that could crush any one of them with a single breath, even if the colour of her eyes differed.

Even that minor movement that had utterly terrified them appeared to have been one that Wei Yi had made, with the exact same speed and in the exact same way.

“Alright, that should be enough,” she said, glancing down at the ruined ground to navigate the cracks safely, ‘I’ve made a slight mistake in terms of the quantity and quality of killing intent to release, but it seems to have worked out well enough. This will give me some perfect material to improve on the technique in the future, which suits me just fine.’

Only when she moved from her place did the others awake from their stupor and realise that they were not in any danger, and that the endless battlefield was a manifestation of her killing intent and nothing else.

“This was my energy at the first realm, while I was holding back. Understand?”

“YES, BOSS!” they cried out, any of their previous hesitation or lacking respect gone due to the sight of the terrible battlefield.

Thus, they followed every single one of her commands closely, not even daring to take a bathroom break without the express statement that they were allowed to stray from the pack and do their own thing. Since she was able to push them to march at their highest speed, they also ended up arriving an hour earlier than originally anticipated. As for how they were able to tell a minute apart from an hour and a day within the prison realm, the truth was that they could not, instead trying to judge the passage of time by the movements of the storm clouds and the occasional but infrequent dimming and brightening of the perpetual crimson light.

Needless to say, neither was connected to any particular consistent phenomena, like the sun and moon were, and so these methods of measurement were rather poor. Even clocks that were created within the prison realm had great inaccuracies, as they could only be calibrated to one’s own personal perception of the passage of time, which varies wildly depending on the sanity and general perception of the creator.

Wei Yi’s rough estimates of time were typically based on her internal clock – which she attempted to manifest within her Augur’s Library as an actual clock – and it typically functioned sufficiently well, though it tended to slow down when she was engaged in personal interactions.

 

“That’s it, boss,” Ah Qiu said, pointing to the structure in the distance, “This is their base ‘ere.”

“Understood. Take a five-minute break and then immediately commence the fourth variation of the initial stage of the plan. I will enter on my own.”

“GOT-”

“Do. Not. Alert. Them.”

“Eh… got it, boss…”

“Good boy. Now, get going and remember, if you fuck this up, you will be the first one I kill. Neither I nor Meng Chu need inept subordinates, understand?”

“Yes…”

She nodded and surrounded herself with intent, concentrated killing intent that completely obscured any hints of her body or features, appearing only seconds later in the outfit that she had purchased from the hatred automaton tailor. Her crimson robe was tied around her body, keeping the spear on her back, with all of the additional weapons that it had held being placed around her waist.

To further distinguish this appearance from her typical one, as to make herself look as common as she could, she let her hair down and placed the string she used for it into her pockets, making her look like some average traveller who had dressed for efficiency and effectiveness, rather than personal comfort.

“If they do spot me and I, by some miracle, am unable to take them out immediately, appearing to be a common person ought to make them less inclined to raise the alarm. Maybe they’ll try and force themselves on me without alerting their peers, giving me the best opportunity to take them out without needing to put much effort into it,” she muttered to no-one in particular, picking up a handful of crimson sand and throwing it over herself to further solidify that appearance, “Alright, this should be sufficient. Going too far would ruin it.”

All of a sudden, she seemed to disappear from sight, using both speed and stealth techniques to evade notice and to approach the fortress of the bandits.

Their base, although it could certainly be classified as a defensive structure, was about as rough as the majority of the buildings within Beast’s Rest, with walls and small defensive towers being built out of dead and rotting wood that had likely been pulled out the ground in the vicinity of their construction effort.

In fact, the towers and the walls between them did not even connect properly to one another. Major gaps in between every single one of them would allow anyone to enter without any issue if the structure was empty, but the sentries that observed the defensive structure were able to overlook the entire vicinity despite there only being a total of six guards, one of whom was female while the rest were clearly male – exactly as Wei Yi had predicted.

She had browsed through all of their information and determined that out of the entire group of bandits, only six were suitable for standing in one place and observing their surroundings carefully, as the rest were far too easily irritable and too impatient to do this task.

Their placement was also accurate to her plans, with the short one amongst them standing on the tallest tower that overlooked the lowest ground.

It just so happened that this guard – the woman, as it just so happens to be – was standing in the exact place that prevented her from seeing the current location of Meng Chu’s warriors within the dried out lake, for while the towers were mostly open on the top, several support beams for the roof obstructed her view in just the right way.

Those who were in the fortress below occupied the internal parts of the towers and walls, with some of them occasionally peeking out of the gaps in the walls for various purposes which were either recreational or for additional security.

She watched the walls for a while and confirmed that the physique cultivators were also split across the six primary segments of the walls, those that were connected to the towers, in the fashion that she had expected. The first tower, if one was to count clockwise from an overhead position, contained four men, with one guarding the area from the top of the tower. The second was defended by another man, but it held one man and one woman, who, according to her estimations, were 78% likely to be in a physical relationship. Besides the third tower being protected by a woman, the same one that would be approached by Meng Chu’s forces in just a minute, it also held two women and one man within, though they stood far apart from one another, suggesting that they were not the best of friends.

Within the fourth tower resided two women who were watched over by an incredibly large man who wore nothing but a rag on his lower body, showing off the common fashion of the physique cultivators of the Great Bone Lake. The last two towers were both guarded by similar individuals and held three and two men respectively. They moved around constantly, with some of them going between the two towers every now and then, though, coincidentally, they maintained their number within the walls by constantly swapping with one another whenever they did so.

‘Excellent. Everything is going according to plan…’ she allowed her lips to form a smile while she willed a series of tomes to appear within the Augur’s Library, which she quickly sorted according to Endless Calculation, ‘The fifth tower seems to have the highest potential for inaccuracy and failure, so that is where I will go first.’