Path of the Ascendant

Now that her mind no longer posed such a great issue, Wei Yi found that exploring the crimson wastes of the new world was far easier than she had originally thought. With some clever control over her own body, she managed to significantly cut down on the energy she used, and with some additional minimal support from physique energy, her overall endurance grew ten-fold.

‘Indeed, the mind is the most important part of the body. Had I understood things sooner, I would have been able to explore with ease,’ she thought, her spiritual will sinking into her abdomen to examine the barrier around her dantian, ‘This barrier is as troublesome as I had initially assumed. It actively drains away planar energy, and while it does not interfere with other forms of energy, it would drain away absolutely everything within the dantian, even the planar anchor and any other structures, leaving any cultivator without any traces of their cultivation.’

Within her mental landscape, she willed a book to appear, warping from the shelf via the crimson void, ‘Whatever the system used within this world is, I know that my cosmic energy can break it down. If I am able to gather ninety-seven percent of my overall planar energy capacity, then pierce the barrier around the dantian with no more than twenty percent, then I should have a chance to initiate a breakdown of the world. However, in order to do so, I will require a means of strengthening the nascent portal within the planar anchor, or something to weaken the barrier, or both at the same time. By using the arrays and inscriptions I already know about as a base, I should be able to create something to do at least one of the two, but I estimate that this will take approximately thirty-seven days to complete in the best-case scenario.’

A number of other books warped in around her, then disappeared only to be replaced with another. She noted them down while she walked through the desolate crimson lands, taking everything she could from each technique and array that might prove to be beneficial.

Three days later, she completed the process, stowing away the resulting tome into one of the shelves on the third floor. Now that everything was in one place, the calculation process could be accelerated by a small degree, but it would still take many days. Furthermore, to go against something that was equivalent to the will of the world itself, for the barrier around her planar aperture seemed to draw power from the very space around her, she would need something more than planar energy or physique energy, the latter of which she did not understand sufficiently to use at its full capacity.

Thus, she willed for the manual of the Violent Third Pool to appear in front of her mental self.

After reading through it once, she saw that it was surprisingly close in nature to a planar cultivation technique, except for the fact that it drew upon, and condensed, killing intent.

‘So that is how things are, then. Killing intent is truly a form of energy… and it is all around me in this world. This cultivation technique can rely on internal killing intent, which I ought to have a lot of, but one of the reasons that this world has decided to cultivate it is due to the extreme quantities of it pouring down from the sky, and contained within the clouds. Then, the motes I have collected…’ she reached into her internal pockets and took out one of the dimmer crimson motes, ‘… can be called motes of killing intent. For some reason, the description of the absorption process is very simple and vague, which implies to me that it isn’t common to absorb them. They could end up being used currency after all.’

She looked to the side and saw that the crimson rivers had grown into one solid and constant stream, with a thick scent of blood emanating from it. Whatever the source of it was, she was clearly nearing it, so she decided to investigate it first before attempting to cultivate the Violent Third Pool. She was relatively confident in defeating, or at the very least escaping, whatever threat the inhabitants of the world posed, so long as they were as unprepared to face her as the Black Terror was.

As impressive as killing intent appeared to be in hampering the mind, it did not seem to possess the same effectiveness and versatility as planar energy, no matter if she looked at the technique itself, or at the Black Terror’s usage of it. This was to be expected from a purely mental energy, which would naturally be weaker against pure physical force like her mighty physique.

Due to this, she thought it wiser to observe how the rest of the crimson world cultivates killing intent, and what other paths they may follow, before potentially damaging her foundations forever by using something like the Violent Third Pool without a full understanding of it. Perhaps that technique is considered to be something that is only stronger than a person who does not cultivate, and thus it was completely unsurprising that she managed to defeat the black-haired woman via her body alone. Alternatively, it might be complicated to practise the technique with only the words written in the manuals and might require the words on each page to be decoded in some way before being used, with the code being simple or incredibly complicated depending on each individual manual.

Most of her ideas were unlikely, but they had to be considered nonetheless, for the very existence of likelihood meant possibility.

Only several hours later, she saw vague, unnatural figures appear out of the crimson fog, and as she approached, she saw the slanted rooves of homes and slightly lowered streets placed amongst thin, feeble trees that have clearly been dead for more than a hundred years.

This town stood atop raised ground, which, upon first glance, she assumed to be stone or a man-made hill. However, just as she made out the homes as she neared, the large rock slate also changed into the figure of some ancient, absolutely enormous beast that made for the entire foundation of the town. Out of its primordial carcass, a dozen gigantic streams of blood slowly flowed out of it, with one pouring down and forming the very crimson river that Wei Yi had been following to this town.

The closer she got to it, the more she smelled the same scent of blood that had initially been faint and nigh unnoticeable, which had originally prevented her from sensing it.

At the foot of this great monstrosity, two figures stood guard on every road that led to it, and although the beast’s innate radiating killing intent overshadowed most other sources of killing intent within the town, despite how long it appeared to have been dead for, those guards still stood out amidst it, radiating their own killing intent that was clearly inferior to that of the beast.

She approached them without allowing herself to show even a glimpse of care about their aggressive and threatening appearances, and they seemed not to look at her beyond an initial glance at her features.

However, just as she scanned them with her spiritual will, they also looked back at her, before one of the guards whispered something to the other and ran off through a different route.

‘Interesting. These people also practise killing intent cultivation, but their techniques appear to be different, yet similar. They make their killing intent circulate through their meridians – confirming the reason that no-one in the Planar Continents appear to have practised this same technique, for planar energy appears to have a fundamental opposition with killing intent – and do so in a manner that almost seems to mirror the typical elements of planar cultivation. The Violent Third Pool would be akin to fire-type techniques, while the guards… perhaps water?’ she guessed, looking back at a few of the techniques she knew of before mentally nodding, ‘Yes, that does appear to be the case. However, their quantity of killing intent, which primarily gathers in the heart in both of the techniques, is vastly lower than what the Violent Third Pool should allow for… it is, however, more concentrated… As I thought, more research needs to be done.’

 

“Boss! Boss! Some newbie gotten into Beast’s Rest!” the guard from the gates yelled, though not too loudly, as he entered the basement of a small tavern, “It’s a chick, though you’d easily guess that they weren’t ‘cause of her abs.”

“Do you mean that she is extremely muscular?” his boss said, dressed like a noble, with a sigh so significant and pronounced that he seemed to be ready to die of exhaustion.

“That be what I said, boss.”

“By the beast, can you not speak like a regular human being for once? Use normal words!”

The guard scratched his bald head, “But, boss, you’re the only one who talks like that. I dunno where you dug up the thing you called a dick-shinary, or wha’ever you called it, but now you won’t even give it to us no more. How’re we supposed to learn without it?”

“That is because you lot tried to eat it the first and only time I offered to give it to you! If something this valuable gets destroyed, I couldn’t possibly rebuild it, not without perfect memory!” the boss said with a raised voice, before calming down and asking, “Alright then, tell me, did that woman look like one of the body cultivators?”

“I dunno, boss. She’s got red robes and isn’t exposing her ti-”

“Breasts, you mean.”

“Yeah, those. If she be a body builder livin’ in the Beast’s Ass, then she wouldn’t be dressed like that.”

“There are so many things wrong with that sentence… First of all, body cultivators, not body builders. Those are two different things.”

“That’s what they call themselves-”

“Shut it, Ah Qiu. Next, I’m guessing you are referring to the Great Bone Lake, where the violent energies of the Beast still persist, constantly forcing the bodies of those who occupy it to function at their very peak. Finally, in terms of their outfits, the women of the Bone Lake have three primary outfits that they tend to choose from – trousers, baggy trousers and long hair to obscure their upper body, and a full-on robe- Wait, did you say red robes?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ crimson, they were.”

The boss stood up and approached the wall on which a single shelf was mounted, with a few books placed atop it. He removed one of them and opened them cautiously, flicking through a number of pages before settling on one for a little longer than the rest.

“Hm… It is as I thought. The everlasting crimson robes of the third arrival were created after the discovery of a source of stable crimson threads, which ignored dirt and automatically healed themselves if the other part of the damaged piece of fabric was in close proximity. However, they miscalculated the quantity of the threads, and thus, only one hundred sets of robes were made. Although they were initially sold, they were then snatched up by killing intent practitioners, who themselves lost their robes to stronger practitioners, until only the strongest were able to keep them… Right, I should have asked – did she have any trace of killing intent cultivation?”

“I dunno-”

“Then have you seen any people leaving Beast’s Rest that were wearing these same robes?”

For a few seconds, the guard stood in a daze, then finally recalled something, “There was that… what’s her name… Xing Chen Li- no, wait… Xing Cheng Yi-”

“Xing Chen Yi? The Black Terror? The one in the fifth realm of killing intent cultivation? The Hatred Augur realm? Well, isn’t that something? Ah Qiu, keep an eye on that woman, but don’t interfere with whatever she does. If there are any minor infractions on our rules, then you can ignore them. Oh, and check the wanted posters, just in case.”

“D’you mean the death slabs?”

“Yes, I mean the death slabs... Basically, if you can, try to rope her in to our faction. Having someone that can beat someone in the Hatred Augur realm will make a huge difference if there’s another conflict with Ding Wen and Shi Luo Feng.”

“Got it, boss!”

 

The streets of the town were not particularly busy no matter where Wei Yi looked, but the buildings were. All of them were labelled with jagged and messy characters, almost a mockery of the common language of the Planar Continents, but with the experience from reading the words of the Kong Mental Arts, she was able to decipher most words with relatively high accuracy.

‘On the topic of the two mental arts, now that they have been transformed with the inclusion of killing intent, and with so much of it, they cannot be said to be the same anymore, and so their names are also no longer suitable. For the Kong Mental Arts, just as their creator respected his family, I will also respect him, and name them the Kong Killing Arts. When I complete my investigation of the Violent Third Pool and begin to cultivate it, I should be able to put the Kong Killing Arts to use to refine the killing intent I gather,’ she thought, walking through a small market where a number of people displayed goods that ranger from random rocks to exquisite but poorly aged items that may, at some point in their existence, have been golden in colour.

‘As for the Gilded Library, though it does still contain gold, it would also benefit from a new name. Hm… In a way, my vision of the world’s future, a new Yi City, is akin to a prophecy in nature, and just as unlikely at the moment. Augur’s Library seems fitting, then,’ Wei Yi decided, applying those labels onto the two appropriate manuals before returning them to the third floor, ‘It should be able to assist in making my killing intent more structured, and therefore more potent and effective. Furthermore, due to me creating both of these during a brief epiphany, I am essentially at the level of Full Success in both. From there on, I can only develop them to break into the First Stage and beyond.’

She walked further, until she saw a tavern on one side, and a building that contained a number of almost naked men and women on the other, doing their best to display the favourable sides of their bodies.

‘Now, this reminds me of a conundrum I’d been having for some time. That damn Seventh of Meng, the Thunder Lord, ignited the seeds of attraction within my mind, and I perceived them to be warped by his memories. Now that all of his memories, and mine, are stored away within the Augur’s Library and are controlled, I can finally figure out what I truly think,’ she looked back to the tavern, ‘I might be able to settle it with sight alone, but if I need experience to confirm it, then I will first need to know how purchases are made in this town.’

Without any care for the random people in the way, she headed straight towards the entrance to the tavern and looked upon the man that stood in the doorway.

“Can I come in?” she asked, crossing her arms while focusing a part of her killing intent onto him.

He looked at her carefully, up and down, his gaze clearly stopping on her chest – which wasn’t perfectly covered due to the robes clearly being intended for someone with larger breasts than a man – for a number of seconds before he answered, “Nah, bitch. Gimme a medium mote if you want-”

‘Medium? There is at least one more before that, so I can’t imagine this place to be worth such a price. He must be used to such limited quantities of killing intent,’ Wei Yi decided, and stepped up to him, before placing her hand onto his shoulder, “You may want to think about that again.”

“You think you’re scary? Nah. Two medium motes-”

She narrowed her eyes and pressed down hard on his shoulder, simultaneously delivering a powerful kick to his groin. Before the pain signals could reach his brain, she lifted him and tossed him away like one might throw a bag of potatoes, doing the tavern owner a small courtesy by not throwing him onto a table. Then, she headed straight for that owner, a short man with tidy, well-kept hair and ash-grey clothes that would have put him above an average peasant even in the Planar Continents. Out of all of the people present within the tavern, she surmised him to be the most likely to be the owner due to the fact that the rest of the people were sitting down and looking away from her actions, while he looked on with some regret in his eyes.

Just as she approached the man in the door, without any trace of caution, so did she approach the supposed owner, stopping less than a step away from him, towering over him thanks to her height.

“Tell me, do I have to pay for entry?” Wei Yi asked, her voice as cool as ice.

“No, madam, you do not. I-I am the owner of this establishment… would you like something?”

“What do you serve here?”

‘Bitch, don’t tell me you barged in without any reason! Most red-robes at least know what they want to steal from me first,’ he complained inwardly, but as he was all too experienced with similar situations, this method of approach being the most popular amongst the people of this world, he remained calm and answered simply, “We serve food and drinks here. Would you like the menu?”

“Sure,” she replied, finding the cleanest and most comfortable table for herself to occupy. The other customers looked at her with a variety of expressions, but a single glare in reply quickly made them look away.

A minute later, the owner returned with a rectangular hide, which he placed onto her table.

“Here are all of your options. You, eh… actually, never mind,” he said, stepping away to allow her to look at the hide without his interference.

She did so, and found that a few dozen lines of the same, rough script were written onto it, detailing a number of dishes and drinks that were clearly inspired by those from the Planar Continents, but with the lacking resources of this world, they had to be simplified in some places, replacing some ingredients entirely due to their absence from the crimson hellscape. As a result, the list of ingredients within the dishes varied between as few as three and as many as five.

To her, there wasn’t much of a difference, as her priority was to recover energy and understand how well these foods compared to the water spring that she relied on, so she selected a few random dishes that wouldn’t cost too much when she inevitably had to pay, and something the tavern called ‘Crimson Fluid’, which had no description beneath it.

The owner accepted her request and went to the kitchen, where he stayed for some time.

Meanwhile, Wei Yi glanced to the outside of the tavern, where she saw both the brothel and a person who quickly looked away from her the moment that he noticed her turning towards him. Unfortunately – or, depending on his intentions, fortunately – for him, she had her spiritual will enveloping the entire tavern, as well as a small area outside, and thus he had been noticed far earlier than she let on.

‘I’ve attracted someone’s attention, have I? Interesting. So long as they do not inconvenience me, I won’t bother stopping them, just like how the man clearly staring at my breasts wasn’t worthy of action in and of itself. Honestly, those who spend so much time covering themselves up clearly have no greater problems to consider,’ she thought, sighing inwardly as she moved her attention to the brothel, with the image of her stalker recorded firmly within the Augur’s Library, ‘If everyone exposed themselves as much as the people there are, I wouldn’t even need to spend so much time trying to figure things out. Speaking of figuring things out…’

She stared intently at the most attractive man she could find, trying to analyse all of her mental and physical reactions as she did so, looking over his entire figure several times.

‘From what I remember of my few conversations with other servants of the Yi family, this person does fit their definition of handsome, with decent body, hair and whatever else… that part seems decently large as well, though I only have the other men out there to compare him to… No, none of them seem appealing in any way. Why… why did the possibility of this fill me with a small degree of dread in the past?’ Wei Yi questioned herself, before switching her gaze to the women, whose similarly limited clothing made it much easier to determine the size of their assets.

Immediately, she felt her eyes being drawn to their figures involuntarily while blood rushed to her cheeks, reminding her of the many times that it had occurred before. She immediately looked away, but even without the usage of the mental library, that image was emblazed into her mind for several minutes afterward.

‘Although this may not be emotional or romantic attraction, there is certainly some physical attraction. It wasn’t a by-product of the Thunder Lord’s memories after all, and I should have noticed that when the library completed itself and I still had the same interests… Good, this makes things clearer.’

“Madam, these are the things you ordered,” the tavern owner came over and placed a number of thin stone and wooden slabs with food atop them onto her table, before turning around and muttering, “Payment can be discussed later…”

Since she never considered that payment would be something that he would ignore, she was not surprised by the matter and simply looked at the food in front of her.

It was, as expected, bland-looking and focused more on being nutritious than looking appetizing, with the meat being burnt and cut into a large slab before being dropped onto the wooden surface that functioned as a plate. The same applied to the so-called salad, which was just a number of random crimson plants cut into pieces and dropped onto the same ‘plate’, and perhaps the only exception was the ‘Crimson Fluid’, which, while it was indeed red like everything else, was put inside of a wooden cup that looked far better than Wei Yi’s attempt to create something similar.

While keeping an eye out via her spiritual will, she consumed the things in front of her quickly, finding out two things simultaneously: the first being that the food of this world was surprisingly decent despite how little effort was put into making it palatable, and the second being that she really couldn’t care about the taste of food, especially not now that she had something more significant to think about.

That was only of note due to how frequent foodies were amongst the fictional heroes of Yi City. Even the Master of Yi City was said to enjoy his meals as more than a means to recover energy.

‘I suppose that there are bound to be some differences between me and him, even if our goals match. In fact, I would like to avoid being too similar, for something about his actions caused him to later disappear and for his project to fall into a state where a bunch of random families can kill whoever they want for being born to the wrong person,’ Wei Yi thought, feeling her killing intent rise at the very thought. With the Kong Killing Arts, she reinforced it and then directed it into the Augur’s Library, where the energy gathered on the left side of the third floor, where she was storing the techniques regarding killing intent.

She lifted the cup of Crimson Fluid, and finished it, assessing its effects on her body.

Compared to the miracle water that she had luckily obtained within the red cave residence, it did not seem to refill as much of her energy, nor was it as pleasant to consume, but there was a similar taste to it, suggesting that their sources were similar.

‘Hm, there is a faint scent of blood from this,’ she observed, sniffing what remained within the cup, ‘If this comes from the great river of blood, then that would explain where these people are obtaining it from. That would then open up the question of why there is such a difference between my miracle water and their Crimson Fluid, with the former seemingly being less concentrated, if the lack of colour is anything to go by.’

As answering that question would require her to complete some analysis in person, she shrugged and placed the cup back onto the table and stood up, going straight to the owner.

“How much should I pay you for that?”

“Eh… Two of the smallest motes.”

Although she kept her eyes on him, she scanned the reactions of the other customers with her spiritual will. Apart from a few brief glances, none of them showed any clear sign that the owner was making her pay more or less than she was meant to, so she took out two of the smallest motes she had and tossed them at the owner, turning around and leaving immediately after.

Her eyes were set directly on the brothel, ‘Since the prices here seem to be rather low in comparison to the funds I have obtained, I might as well invest them into ensuring that I am familiar with the bodies of other people in a slightly different way. It will also assist in confirming my initial impression of my attraction, which, for all I know, could be from mere physical appreciation more so than attraction… That Thunder Lord really should have warned me in advance, so that I could have acquired a mental technique to seal away all of his memories the moment that they appeared, Then, I could have easily learned about my interests in my own time.’

With the issue and the solution memorised in the case of any future mental echoes passing on their ideas onto her without her permission, or something that can be dealt with similarly, she decided on the woman whose appearance interested her the most and entered the brothel.

In comparison to the tavern, which was incredibly bare in terms of furniture and decorations, the interior of the brothel was superior to the most impressive room of the Xiao Mountain residence, with a great collection of rugs, tapestries and incredibly detailed statues that depicted both men and women performing various activities together. There was even a proper front desk besides the stairs to the upper floors, from which she heard vague moans and the collision of flesh against flesh.

She approached the front desk just in time for two of the employees to finish a conversation.

The man walked away, while the woman, dressed about as scantily as one could be while still covering their body, with thin silk fabric wrapping around her chest and a second piece of silk concealing the area between her lower abdomen and her upper thighs.

“Welcome, dear customer. Are you interested in one of our ladies or gentlemen?” she asked, motioning towards the windows to the outside, “Everyone that is available can be found outside, or, if you prefer, you can come upstairs and we will instruct those who fit your preferences to come to you when they are available.”

“No need. How much would I need to pay for the platinum-haired woman?”

The employee nodded, almost like she was expecting that exact response, “A single session will be one minor mote, but as long as you do not harm her or violate our small set of rules, it can last for as long as one day, meaning that you can keep going for as long as you like.”

‘I can’t say that I expect to need that time, but a minor mote…’ Wei Yi reached into her pocket, and took out a mote that was slightly denser than the weakest one she had, “One of these?”

“Precisely. Now, head up to the fourth room on the second floor, and Ah Li will be with you in a moment.”