Path of the Ascendant

She left quickly and located a calm-looking inn for herself to settle down and be left alone for a while. It was placed right in the middle of an intersection on the road, and thus she could be sure that none would be able to sneak up on her while she was studying her new items of interest.

Naturally, those items were the four purchases she had made at the auction, which she removed from her robes one by one in order to minimise the chances of theft.

Although it was tempting to begin with the anchor shard, Wei Yi instead decided to return to the Beast’s Dice, from which she had already gathered everything there was to know. She still went over it with both her eyes and spiritual will, making sure that every minor detail was catalogued within the mental library, before carefully sending a minor quantity of killing intent into them. It flowed into the dice, causing the points on each side to ignite with a red light that somehow overpowered the killing intent flowing in through the windows.

They hovered up, floating into the air, and trembled lightly as if they wished to slaughter someone.

‘Although the structure within is extremely rough, worse than most low-grade artefacts, it has far more to it than the high-grade spear used by Yi Fenwu. I suppose this is more than worthwhile to study, as it might provide some method of creating an artefact that can withstand my cosmic energy,’ she thought, willing them to rise slightly higher, ‘They also make it clear that my grading system needs a rework.’

The black dagger that she had created a book of killing intent to power initially appeared to be a lower-grade item, but even the dice were clearly inferior to it. Furthermore, the gap between the energy required to make the former and the latter function was incredibly large, to the point that she was rather concerned about trying to use even a page of killing intent on the dice.

‘Since the crimson robes are apparently so well-known and uncommon, I suppose it is not too surprising that this black knife is also uncommon, and that she did not take it out to deal with me.’

Once she got used to controlling the dice, she retrieved her killing intent and caught them out of the air, putting them back into her pockets for future use. Although they were certainly inferior to the likes of the black knife and the Yang Elysian Palm that she could manifest in emergencies, they would make for great weapons to surprise her enemies with, and to attack them while they are distracted with other weapons and attacks.

The next item was the bronze mirror, which was the next least likely to contain any particular secrets.

In theory, it should have been the most significant item, due to the message on it matching that of the Kong Mental Arts that could then connect it to the families and powers that came from before the creation of Yi City, but she had already scanned the mirror and found nothing on it. She suspected that the message was left hastily, which made the intent within the message all the more impressive.

‘Creating something like this on short notice would grant me incredible power, for I won’t be limited to letters alone. I could integrate this power into arrays, inscriptions and whatever else, and whenever someone attempts to attack me, I can project this intent while magnifying it significantly, instantly breaking down weaker minds while the stronger ones will still be weakened until they can recover, or if they have a mental library like me, then their numbers would still be lessened.’

She scanned the entire mirror several times to be sure that she had it perfectly within her memory and the library independently, just in case a repeat of the previous mental malaise reoccurred at some point, before putting it away as well.

Her next item to be examined was the Beast’s Rib Bone, which was a black chunk of rock-like bone, much like the Beast’s Dice and the unnamed black dagger that she had obtained from the Black Terror. As it appeared, every single item in this realm that had any power was made from the bones of the ancient Beast, whether in solid or dust form, and it was this that resulted in an even greater quantity of killing intent filling them than if they had soaked under the endless crimson light for a thousand generations.

Whatever the Beast once was, it clearly bore great hatred towards the world.

The inside of the rib bone differed from the last two items of the same origin in that they had no channels on the inside, no structure that would allow one to course their energies through it to bring out some greater power. Instead, what filled it was a pure, undiluted killing intent, far superior to that of the crimson book within her Augur’s Library, and even exceeding that of the Black Terror.

‘Is it, perhaps, that the Beast naturally stores killing intent, but to allow it’s bones to be used effectively, they have to be hollowed out, thus losing their stored energy? Then, why is it that this particular bone is somehow treated as something unique? Couldn’t anyone go to the base of Beast’s Rest and find a loose bone chunk or two to feed themselves with all of the killing intent that they want?’ she wondered, but with no-one to provide information other than herself, she couldn’t answer herself. Instead, she stored the bone chunk in her pockets once again, and instead focused on the techniques she had ‘borrowed’ from the auction.

They followed the same naming style as the rest of the techniques she had found so far, and were, in no particular order, Violent First River, Violent Third River and Fall, Violent Fourth Pool and Violent Fifth Pool.

Out of the potential fifteen techniques that she needed to begin creating her own technique, she only needed to find four more. However, Wei Yi was a little reluctant to create a technique that used the Violent series of techniques as a base, due to her acquisition of the Beast’s Fury and Greed Congregation skills, which were far greater in might. To use the fifteen basic techniques of this world as a foundation now seemed to be akin to using bread – it could feed one for a while, but it would not hold up a house.

Since she did not want just a simple house, but a grand palace that could withstand the might of the greatest forces in the Planar Continents, nothing but the best stone would do.

The issue with using the unique skills of the prison realm as a replacement for the fifteen basic techniques was that they were far less organised. She could be sure that she had attained everything she needed to know about the basic series of skills just by acquiring all fifteen techniques, but if she was to use only the unique techniques, then it might require far more than that just to get a basic, rough idea of every element and its usage. Furthermore, the highest and most powerful techniques appear to be owned by a very limited few, to the point that Xing Chen Yi, the Black Terror, still used or at least carried a common method of killing intent cultivation. There was the chance that there wasn’t a complete set of unique skills, and that she would have to work out the rest of them herself.

‘I could use the basic techniques to patch up the gaps in the unique ones, but that would mean that, for quite some time, there would be a great number of flaws within my every movement and attack, giving the Great Families the perfect opportunity to take me down again,’ she thought, ‘I should continue collecting these, and attempt to use Endless Calculation to complete them later.’

Finally, it was time for the most significant acquisition of the entire auction – the planar anchor shard.

It still looked like an ordinary piece of rock, without a trace of planar energy around it, but her inspection of it with her spiritual will confirmed that it was, without a doubt, identical in basic nature to the anchor that rested within her planar aperture. Perhaps the biggest and most obvious difference was that the planar energy that must have been used to condense this anchor was from a fire-type technique, causing a faint orange light to glow from within the shard.

‘However, that would not explain why it is somehow resistant to the erosion of the prison realm. If this was unique to fire-type techniques, then fire cultivators would reign supreme within the prison, but they clearly do not,’ Wei Yi considered, bringing the stone close to her eye, “It certainly doesn’t help that there seems to be no library around here…”

She paused as she recalled the names and roles of the three leaders of Beast’s Rest. Ding Wen and Meng Chu had already been spoken with, and the last one was a woman by the name of Shi Luo Feng, someone who is apparently responsible for martial training halls and enigmatic ‘other things’.

A training hall could be useful to perfect her combat techniques and usage of the Beast’s Dice, but the other roles that she had were more interesting.

After all, with such a large city and such an enormous world, how could there not be a library?

‘That’s right, from just observation alone, there is a finite amount of information that I can gather. It sufficed within the Planar Continents, but I am no longer there. I need to acquire more information, see if there are any records of certain types of planar energy decaying slower than others, or perhaps certain techniques that allow for killing intent to be fused with planar energy… that’s unlikely, but there has to be a certain reason for the formation of this shard. Once I find it, I can add it to the cosmic energy, and cultivate normally.’

Wei Yi wrapped the stone in the white cloth and hid it in her pockets, before infusing energy into all of her killing intent-based weapons as to be able to employ them in self-defence whenever she needs to do so.

After that, she removed her robes and placed them atop her bed, where she could rest beneath them and constantly observe them with spiritual will, and fell asleep.

 

She awoke in the equivalent of the middle of the night when she heard the faint sound of footsteps approaching from the outside. Although it was not in any way uncommon to approach an inn for to rest, the issue was that these steps were too quiet, and that there was no-one else around, whether because they had been made to leave or if they had been killed.

Either way, it was safer to rouse from her sleep than to risk giving an assassin an easy time.

Without any obvious acknowledgement of the situation outside, she stood up without bothering to cover herself, walking over to the other end of the room as if to take and drink a cup of blood wine that she had left there previously.

As the windows in the inn were foggy and blurry, in order to give their customers some privacy while still letting in light, and the perceptions of public decency were somewhat different in this prison realm, her actions were in no way unusual. In fact, even if she was to walk around openly like that while having the ability to defeat anyone who tries to assault her, there would be nothing anyone could or would want to do.  For those who appreciated the sight, it wasn’t worth risking its disappearance, and for those that did not, they could just ignore her body as if it belonged to any other casual passer-by.

The walk went smoothly, but as she raised the glass of wine, she felt something approaching her at great speed, aiming directly for her neck.

She ducked instantly, causing a spear to fly into the wall in front of her. Attached to it, surprisingly enough, was a man, who she promptly kicked in the chest, crushing most of the ribs and organs within, before throwing him out of the same window he entered through.

‘Violet Kick sure is a useful technique, and kicking people without the restriction of robes is also a pleasant thing,’ she noticed, leaping to the edge of the window to see who else she had to fight, ‘In fact, I should research alternative forms of clothing in the future. Certain assassin organisations clothe their forces in skin-tight equipment, while others manage to achieve complete freedom of movement in other ways. One group is said to create their clothing from energy, allowing them to act freely.’

Apart from the body of the man that had intruded into her bedroom, there were three other individuals standing in the streets. Two were obviously female, based on their bodies, while the other one was far more ambiguous in appearance. All three wore basic masks and baggy clothes to make it more difficult to recognise them, but those things did not stand in the way of spiritual will.

‘Who are these people?’ she wondered, jumping down into the street.

She was not familiar with any one of the four attackers, for she had never spoken with them in person, nor did she ever recall offending them. However, there were a few likely possibilities that quickly entered her mind.

“Old man or young girl?” Wei Yi asked, preparing to strike at the strongest person in the group, who was the ambiguous individual out of the group.

They did not answer, rushing at her without a single sound, but the answer was completely irrelevant to her as she did not intend to allow them to beat her up regardless of the reason behind it. Even if she had previously slaughtered three generations of their family, she would not allow anyone to end her before she had clearly failed to establish Yi City or defeat the Great Families.

She also flew forward, but, at the last moment, she stopped and leapt back, willing the dice to fly out of her room and strike directly at the two women that were present on either side of the ambiguous man – for he was a man, as she determined through a brief physical incursion via spiritual will.

As she determined that the woman on the right was weaker than the woman on the left, she directed two of the dice to fly at the first while three flew at the other woman, with one remaining by her side. She could not be sure how powerful these individuals were, not without more experience in the combat methods of the prison realm, so she felt that it was safest to have one powerful weapon near her at all times, just in case she was attacked by something that she could not predict and evade in time.

All five of the attacking dice struck at once, not employing any special movements or techniques. The first two struck the woman without her being able to put up any resistance, though not due to overwhelming power, but because of the woman’s lacking reaction speed. By the time she managed to register the attack within her mind, they had already struck her twice. The second woman had a little more success, swatting away two of the dice on their initial approach, but the third die hit her right in the throat and pierced the flesh without any difficulty, also incapacitating her. Meanwhile, the third warrior had no dice to contend with, but he saw Wei Yi’s initial feint and the dice that followed and retreated, realising only once both of his allies had been struck that he was not in danger.

“How dare you, improper woman! Give the items you stole back to their rightful owner! Me!”

‘Ah, so it is the old man. He’s much younger than expected,’ she realised, smiling as she willed the dice to surround the man, “Really? Since you want them so much, here you go.”

She made them strike all at once, but not before attempting to execute a certain technique of hers via the killing intent condensed within the dice, bursting it out the dice the moment that she sensed any feasibility of it working. Crimson light emerged from the black surface, and, without any obvious cause from within or without, transformed into pure black, devouring any trace of light that sank into it.

They flew forth, the darkness expanding and contorting into something unknown as it surged out and attacked the man all at once.

Beneath the mask, the man’s expression was calm, though in his heart, he had a suspicion that something was off about the situation. He had seen many killing intent techniques and methods, but this black light was extremely strange. And… why did it appear to come from someone in the first realm?

Nevertheless, he rushed out of the encirclement of the dice, using killing intent to accelerate his movements. In his mind’s eye, he could see how the attack would play out – he would evade her attacks, and while she attempted to return the dice to herself, failing to do so in time due to her lacking experience in controlling this specific hatred blade, he would be able to pierce the indecent woman’s heart and lungs in one go.

For whatever reason, he did not move as quickly as expected… no, he did not move at all!

Furthermore, his legs that should have been full of killing intent were suddenly empty, but the air around them, that should have been rather light in that same energy, suddenly lit up with a baleful light that pressed down upon him, preventing him from making any movements whatsoever.

Instead, the dice accelerated, piercing his flesh and skin without any issues and coming out the other side without a trace of blood on their surface before returning to Wei Yi’s hand.

Just like that, the old-sounding young man perished in the street, uncertain as to how he died.

‘So that’s how it is. Killing intent has somehow warped the image of heaven contained within the Elysian Palm into the shattering sight of the darkest hell, while also gaining the ability to invert energy… somehow. This obviously warrants further investigation and research, but for now, I can call it the Antithesis Palm while looking forward to the day that I can actually use it as an attack of my own, rather than invoking it through the dice or some other hatred blade,’ Wei Yi said in her mind, turning around to find the owner of the inn standing outside of the front entrance with a great deal of confusion in his eyes, “My apologies for the damage to your property, but I expect the windows to be repaired by the time I wake up. Alright?”

Before he could say anything, she knelt down and removed everything of any possible value from the bodies, then hopped back into the inn, where she jammed a few of the larger glass shards back into the window frame and instantaneously cleansed her body with True Ascendant energy, as she did not want to sleep with a layer of dust on her body.

 

When she woke up properly, she found that the window was actually in a decent state once more, and that nothing in her room was touched by whoever put it back together. Even the spear was still stuck into the wall, though it appeared to have been shifted a little so that it was not obviously noticeable from the other side of the wall. She stood up, cleansed herself for a second time to be completely sure, tied up her hair and put on the crimson robe, pulling out the spear from the wall and descending to the first floor of the building, where she paid the innkeeper and left.

After a little bit of experimentation with the hatred blade spear, she figured out a technique that suited it, and placed it on her back before heading for the nearest training hall.

Unlike the auction house, which was absolutely gigantic in comparison with the buildings around it, the training halls appeared to be a more reasonable size, occupying only a single floor above the ground and an uncertain quantity beneath. The horizontal space that it occupied was also far less extreme, matching only three or four houses instead of a dozen brothels.

‘I’ve never been inside of a training hall on my own, so this will be a new experience in more ways than one,’ Wei Yi thought, stepping into the building while attempting to appear as casual and ordinary as possible, ‘My robes may make me somewhat conspicuous, though it seems that the information regarding these Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival, as the guards at the auction house referred to them, is somewhat limited, leading to the common people being ignorant of them.’

The inside of the training hall was made up of grey stone and grey wood, with a small reception room greeting all customers.

Behind a small counter stood a man with enormous bulging muscles and a river of sweat covering his body. At first glance, it seemed as if he had to invest all of his physical might to stand in place, and after a brief moment of contemplation, Wei Yi understood that he was being affected by a gravity-amplifying array that was similar to the training set she was wearing, except the effect was less localised and almost as powerful as the current setting on the training set. Clearly, this man was either being punished for something, or, in the more likely scenario, he was someone who was so fond of training his body that he couldn’t stop no matter what he was doing.

‘They should have gone for the same approach as the brothel, selecting someone who the customer is most interested in to get them to pay more. It’s a shame that they didn’t, as this man also stinks…’ she sighed, getting only as close to the counter as she needed to, “Excuse me, what do I need to pay to get in?”

The man raised his head, his neck muscles straining to an extreme, “How long… and what gravity?”

“Unless there are specific timeframes that your establishment allows, I’ll go for two hours. As for gravity strength… well, what’s the range?”

“Ugh… 1.5 to… 5… the last one… could crush your feeble… bones and flesh…”

“Very well, I will keep that in mind and select the most powerful form of gravity. By the way, are you a body cultivator? I can’t imagine someone practising killing intent looking like that.”

“That’s right… you want… to see… the rest of me?”

“Not interested in the slightest, unless you have a secret forbidden art to transform your body into that of a woman. Now, where should I go?”

“Downstairs… room number… two… four…” he said, giving her a small wooden key.

“Thanks,” she replied as she took it and followed his directions.

After descending to the basement, she found that it resembled the brothel’s underground section far more so than it did any other local basement, with simple stone walls and floors that weren’t particularly comfortable to traverse without any footwear, though she had already wandered the crimson wastes of the prison realm for long enough to get used to something like that. There were a few signs that pointed to different areas, separating the underground portion of the training hall into four sections that were numbered from one to four.

She went towards the second section then found the fourth room there, which opened once she inserted the wooden key into the appropriate slot. Before she could take a single step into it, she felt the increased gravity pressing down upon her.

‘The area is rather poorly controlled, resulting in the gravity field spilling out. I suppose I can say nothing other than ‘as expected of the prison realm’, but it is helpful to know ahead of time that this is a multiplicative, not additive, effect,’ Wei Yi considered, ignoring the faint sound of her bones lightly cracking beneath the pressure, ‘It has been a while since I could develop my body, and I have a significant quantity of information to work with, not to mention Endless Calculation, with which I can practise improving and adding to techniques before I actually do so with the various killing intent skills, to work with. Before I can try doing anything, however…’

After breathing in and out several times to focus, she rapidly performed a series of actions. She leapt into the room while simultaneously grabbing onto the door and sealing it behind her, as she also turned in the air to fall onto the ground on her back. As she landed, she ignored the further sounds of cracking and breaking, instead coursing her True Ascendant energy throughout her body as to strengthen it.

Without the assistance of the seemingly all-powerful cosmic energy, it was impossible to heal and rebuild every aspect of her body as quickly as before, not would the process be as efficient, but she had two hours to work with and a rather generous supply of physique energy.

Ten minutes later, after some quick rearrangement of her physical array’s channels and bone shard locations, as well as the constant force of gravity tearing at her body while simultaneously being rebuilt by physique energy, she had enough strength to stand up and endure the force of gravity while doing nothing else. Since that would not be necessary, nor too effective as if would put most of the pressure on her legs, she sat down instead, enduring the pressure for a little while longer while contemplating the best method to strengthen herself quickly.

Once ten more minutes had passed, she had come up with a satisfactory plan, so she put it into motion while changing her position and posture yet again, deciding to perform a few push-ups and sit-ups at the same time. Her three remaining great arts to integrate into the physique were blacksmithing, pill refining and inscriptions, and the first and second would require a great outside force and pressure completely distinct from gravity in order to refine the bone shards appropriately.

Thus, the last option was the only one that she could create with gravity and physique energy alone.

When the gravity became bearable without the constant input of one hundred percent of her energy, she diverted the spare energy to begin drawing up the lines for the carvings on each one of her dantian bone shards.

Fortunately for her, there were two sets of shards to work with, with one having already been used for talisman creation. The other had been initially used for the creation of the array in her body, and the creation of the original Condensed Formation Body, and has fortunately been left untouched since, giving her the perfect place to work on inscriptions without needing to worry about the talismans.

After another ten minutes passed – neither of the ten-minute intervals were precise, for there was no clock in the room nor a sun to judge the passing of time by – before she was ready. With the vast majority of her energy diverted towards the dantian bone shards, she sank it into every single shard, beginning to carve out a variety of different arrays on every single bone shard. She did not have the most comprehensive collection of inscriptions nor were they the field in which she was most confident in, but the key here was not to create the most powerful nor the most complex inscriptions, but to put them together in such a fashion that it would enhance all of her bodily functions at the same time, whenever needed, just as an inscription was meant to.

The carving process took, to nobody’s surprise, another ten minutes, during which every single bone shard was not only inscribed with a variation of inscriptions, but also infused the shards with so much energy that they began to experience the effects of the Dantian Bone Refining technique she had created a very long time ago now. The shards that had initially come from the incredibly flawed planar aperture had been grey and unpleasant, but with the purifying energies of the True Ascendant physique they turned into pure white.

‘Now, to activate the inscriptions…’

She breathed in, flooding her lungs with as much heavy air as she could, before performing the exact same action with her inscriptions and physique energy.

Sunlight surged into every small groove in the bone shards, filling them with iridescence. Once every segment was filled perfectly and evenly, the light expanded throughout her body, wrapping around every single bone, muscle and sinew without any extreme phenomena. However, Wei Yi knew that something about the physique energy and her very body did change and grow, almost like it had ascended a stage in cultivation.

“Alright, that’s step one. Now, onto step two.”