Path of the Ascendant

Endless storm clouds of impossible red twisted and flowed within the sky. Through them, or perhaps from them, the same crimson shade fell upon the ground, mixing with the red dirt, scarlet rock and ruby fluids of an unknown nature.

In the far distance, a solid wall of the same clouds moved with the same ferocity, though the actual location remained unchanged no matter how much it moved, with the wall forming a great semi-circle until it disappeared into the distance, a sickly red fog obscuring anything within the distance, starting from a few metres of an observer’s position and becoming far too difficult to look through after a kilometre or so.

Other than that, there seemed to be nothing else within the ruby wasteland. No trees, no great mountains nor severe dips within the ground, nothing.

This was exactly where Yi Wei awoke, with her face in the dirt.

She was able to turn her head just enough to breathe freely, but the rest of her body just didn’t respond to her. Despite knowing exactly how she wanted to move, which muscles she would need to control, she was unable to do so.

However, she did have a clue regarding the source of her unfortunate affliction.

Deep within her mind, inside of the mental library, everything in between the material shelves and floors was filled with that maddening crimson, the same one that grew upon Yi Yaling’s death.

In addition to the ever-present, ever-growing mental storm, she had almost no access to the vast majority of the mental objects stored within. Furthermore, her planar energy just wouldn’t move no matter what she did.

She desperately besieged that wall with her spiritual will, and barely escaped after crashing into the crimson and paper walls several times. When she did, she was able to see that her body was surrounded by a thin, invisible barrier, that was connected to a secondary, far superior set of barriers around her planar aperture, which was slowly attempting to refill itself via the violet portal inside of her nascent planar anchor, as well as the meridians that contained the dawn stars. Something seemed to be attempting to draw away that planar energy, though the constant regeneration of the portal and the slight jittering of her mysterious characters prevented it just enough to surround her planar anchor and the dawn stars with a thin veil of planar energy.

As an experiment, she split off a thin thread of planar energy from within her dantian and forced it towards the barrier. It degraded partially as it moved, doing so at a far slower rate than it had ever previously moved, and when it touched the spherical obstruction it could do nothing but tap against it aimlessly.

If she had a planar aperture full of planar energy, she theorised that she might be able to make a dent on the inner layer of the field, but that was a theory created from a very poor state of mind, with few of the facts at hand, and without any knowledge of what breaking the barrier might cause.

In the first place, if she wanted to do that, she would need a full dantian, but that did not seem to be possible with the current rate of regeneration.

Since she had no chance of testing her hypothesis any time soon, she formed it into a book and kept it close to her mental self, as to prevent the mental storm from devouring it, and to ensure that the crimson light did not prevent her from accessing it. Instead, she diverted all of her will to force herself to move, first lifting her body with one hand, then the other, then getting back onto her feet with a far greater effort than she had ever needed before.

For a brief second, she was glad that she had spent so much time on strengthening her body, allowing her to walk with relative ease even while the choker around her neck and the bracelets around her wrists and ankles amplified the gravity which she experienced, even when her primary meridians ran dry of energy, but that feeling was quickly thrown away into the mental storm.

As for the rest of her clothing, it was only that in name. Her robes had clearly suffered the exact same torture as her body had, and now were nothing more than a few strips of red cloth that could, with a bit of effort, be said to cover her private parts, though not for long.

The sense of shame that appeared as a result was also taken by the mental storm.

Even if it hadn’t, the crimson shade of light would have made it difficult to discern flesh from cloth upon first glance, which would have given her some relief.

Instead of worrying about that, she decided that the most important matter was that of food and drink. Typically, a cultivator wouldn’t need to consume much after reaching the second and third realms, due to the ability of planar energy to assist in their nourishment, but now that she had no energy to spare and lacked the ability to send it outside of the dantian to use it in that way, she would need to eat as much as any other human being. Her physique energy made up for her significantly strengthened body, and if she didn’t have it, she would have needed to eat even more.

However, as she looked around, she saw no signs of flora nor fauna. The landscape was extremely flat with the exception of the smaller bumps and hills on the terrain, almost as if she was standing upon someone’s skin, with their various imperfections and features.

The thought entered her mind and she couldn’t move on until she dug into the ground a little with her foot, just to be sure that no blood would emerge. It did not, though it did turn her foot even more red.

Yi Wei looked around, trying to find the thing that was closest to a sign of civilization, making several turns on the spot before noticing that some of the pools of strange red fluid had a thin stream connecting them, with the crimson pools downstream being slightly smaller than those upstream. It looked like this liquid was flowing from something, and if the law of civilization applied here, then the best place to find life would be at the source.

Then again, there was the issue of whether the liquid was drinkable. She had no idea whether or not it was, and since she could not mobilise her planar energy to resist whatever toxin or poison may be within, she didn’t want to risk it until she had no other choice than to consume it.

‘What a horrid landscape… at the very least it isn’t too hot nor too cold, or else I would have to either strip further or find something to cover myself with…’ she thought, forcing her legs to move forward.

 

It was difficult to tell how much time had passed since her appearance here, as the light and clouds above her did not change no matter how long she waited for them to do so. The red water-like fluid also did not shift nor move no matter she looked at the various pools, meaning that it was so viscous that it resembled blood even more so than before.

Unfortunately, that discovery did not assist her much, as her long walk did not seem to bring her closer or further away from anything. The ground still seemed flat, the sky was still full of a crimson storm and the fog that consumed everything in the distance did not give her any opportunity to glimpse any sign of life, not to mention giving her no opportunity to wonder whether that sign would manifest itself as a building, a long-dead carcass of some local beast, or something that is entirely unknown to her. With the ruby dirt shifting frequently due to the storm above and erasing all of her footprints, she couldn’t even tell how far she had travelled.

She had no choice but to keep going, for she felt that if she stopped, she would not stand up again.

 

’86,395, 86,396, 86,397, 86,398, 86,399, 86,400… So, this should have been a day…’ Yi Wei breathed a mental sigh, for she did not want to waste energy on sighing in physical reality, ‘My lips are so fucking dry… It is not particularly hot, but there is no water in the air at all…’

If her counting was accurate, then she would have been walking for an entire day, and that had finally led to some changes in the landscape around her.

Her path was finally taking her uphill, forcing her to ascend an incredibly slight slope, but it was a slope nonetheless. Each step forced her to raise her feet higher for the same amount of progress, and she was beginning to feel the fatigue within her body, adding up slowly but surely. Although she had a strong body and had survived a great number of things, she was still human. No matter how much strength she had, without a way to replenish it – which she wouldn’t be able to do even if she did risk drinking the crimson fluid, unless it happened to contain all the nutrients that one would need from food – she would fall in time.

‘Come to think of it… my physique energy is better at wiping away poisons than my planar energy, so why did I… No, physique energy also needs to recover… If I randomly drink whatever the red stuff is and receive no benefits, I’ll just waste it…’

In addition to the incline, the pools of ruby fluid were growing, though just as slightly. If the first puddles she saw were only as large as her torso was when she was sixteen, the current pools of red were as large as her current torso. Between every few pools, she saw an incredibly thin string of red connecting them, proving her initial assumption.

As fortunate as that was, she did not benefit much from the affirmation, for the incredibly gradual growth meant that she would need to keep moving for quite some time to get something out of it.

Thus, that is what she did, putting one foot in front of the other while ignored her parched throat.

 

Whether for better or for worse, one of the books she could still access within her mental library was a guide on surviving in the wilderness, as well as a collection of tips and facts regarding the human body and various beasts that one may encounter in the zones between the districts of Yi City.

The majority of it was rather useless, since this desolate crimson landscape contained no familiar flora or fauna, but the topic of surviving without water did catch her attention, and was immensely relevant, for she had still not found water after the second day of walking. According to the book, an average human, at an average level of exertion per day, could survive for three days without any food and water. Whether or not this was entirely accurate didn’t matter, as she had neither food nor water, and was exerting herself a little more than the average person might.

Even under the assumption that the effect of cosmic energy circulating through her body for two years had somehow made it require less sustenance, three days was the most she could possibly risk before resorting to the vile red pools for the drink that she already needed. With two days out of the way, she only had one more to find anything in the barren, ruby wilderness.

 

When she was not searching for nourishment and life, and often times even when she was, her thoughts were focused on the past.

Some of her considerations were on the topic of the things that happened within the Kong Holy Grounds, and many thoughts were the exact same as those she had when she first left the pocket dimension. What she should have done instead of what she ended up doing, which ones of her choices were the primary causes for the complete disaster of the expedition, and how she should have seen it all coming from a kilometre away.

Others were regarding the more recent events, at the same time as the events surrounding the awakening of her mysterious characters and the appearance of cosmic energy. For instance, the fact that she put in so little effort in disguising her identity when speaking to every one of her teachers other than the twins, which more than likely lead to them being found and targeted so easily.

All of these ideas floated around within her mental storm, flooding her vision within her mind with them no matter what she did. Out of all of those thoughts, one that appeared only a single time was the concept of her not being responsible for any of these events. The moment that it did appear, it simply flew away and buried itself within the red light of her library, where it burned itself into nothingness. She wasn’t completely ignoring the possibility – it would be insane to pin every little thing onto herself, after all. However, she had no choice but to discard it for now, as she needed to give herself every chance she could to prevent further harm to herself, and with nobody else around her to keep her safe, she was forced to take care of things on her own.

Her conclusion was further supported by the battle between Yi Yaling and the strange figures. Admittedly, even if she had fought with only one of the figures, and even if they lacked the strange energy that they possessed, she would have still failed to defeat them due to the separation in their realm, as she was in the second realm while either one of the two was in the third. Even then, it showed her that there was a certain boundary between her and the majority of people in the Planar Continents.

She had no impurities within her planar aperture, was not bound by the elements and had, somewhat accidentally, given herself a total of five sets of meridians. Whether in terms of combat power or thinking ability, she exceeded most, and that meant she was the only one who could contend with threats akin to those posed by the strange pair that had thrown her into the crimson landscape, or the manifestation of the void between worlds that she faced within the Kong Holy Grounds, or even Yi Henghua, who had supposedly travelled between worlds.

To throw herself to others and ask them for protection would be akin to inviting a planar beast tide right into their home, and it was not something that she wanted to do.

Even though she thought that way, she also lacked the ability to fully protect herself without involving anyone else. In head to head confrontations, those who wield the full power of a forbidden art or utilise a power that transcends the very concept of planar energy easily surpass her strength, meaning that if she wanted to have any chance of achieving success, she would need to use a different tactic.

As with everything else, there was a problem with that tactic. The vast majority of the time, she engaged in direct combat because she had no other choice. If she was to attack someone before they can attack her, she would have to be certain that they were a threat, and that she had no choice but to kill or otherwise cripple them completely. But how could she ever do anything of the sort without a full understanding of the situation?

What if she mistook an ally for an enemy, and harmed them unjustifiably? What if she received false information from a source she believed to be trustworthy, and staged some sort of ambush to attack them mistakenly?

To make things even worse, she could easily interpret someone’s actions correctly, but misunderstand their intentions and damage or outright kill someone who was actually working to the benefit of a great majority, or maybe someone who was similarly misinformed, with one or both of them doing the job of some third party before they arrive to finish off whoever is left. Such a thing would be absolutely terrible, and she couldn’t possibly dare to act in a way that would lead to it for the fear of harming someone unintentionally.

‘I can’t be sure of this, but doesn’t the brain also use a certain degree of energy and nutrients? Using it more than necessary seems risky…’

 

After some time, she decided that keeping her eyes open was also a waste of whatever it was that her body needed, so she opened them very infrequently, only doing so when she had arrived at the edge of what she had previously seen. With this tactic, she further limited the expenditure of her limited resources, though she was sure that the change was minor in comparison to what she could achieve if she stopped walking.

It was with this tactic that she finally encountered something that could be described either as a large hill, or a somewhat lacking mountain, after nearly two and a half days of walking. Just as everything else within this crimson nightmare, the rock it was made out of was red, though it was distinctly separate from the dirt around it, so she could, at the very least, figure out that it was indeed stone.

She forced her eyes to remain open and changed her direction slightly in order to head to the top.

That small change alone nearly caused her to collapse, but she was able to keep herself going when she saw something within the mountain – a darker spot than the rest of the rather even stone. Whatever it was, she had to get to it.

And get to it she did, albeit after a painfully long walk. She wasn’t sure if the issue was due to her own energy being exhausted or due to the appearance of the mountain somehow being deceptive, appearing far smaller than it actually was, but she did eventually arrive, with the pain from her legs continuously being used finally reaching her brain. This dark spot turned out to be an opening within stone, a small cave that contained just a little less red and was thus immediately more pleasant to view than the rest of the world.

When she got a short way into the cave, she heard a faint sound that was entirely unlike the storm clouds rumbling above. She frowned and listened with all of the focus she could muster.

It was dripping. The faint sound of dripping water.

She forced herself to speed up and barely managed to get to the depths, which got colder incredibly quickly. With every few steps, the temperature dropped by a degree or two, and by the time she reached the end, her breath was visible within the air.

Nevertheless, it was worth it, for she found something that had only a slight hint of red within, and it just so happened to be water, or something that was mostly water, for the only thing that stopped it from being entirely transparent was a slight red hue, either from the rocks or from some other source within the crimson hellscape. Whatever it was, it was the safest thing to consume that she had seen so far, so she stumbled over to it and cupped her hands beneath the dripping liquid, catching a handful of it before drinking it.

The fluid slid down her threat like liquid ice, cold even despite the ever-present yang physique energy within her, but it was absolutely worth it.

That single mouthful seemed to revitalise her entire body, calming the pain from her joints, giving some much-needed moisture to her eyes, lips and mind, and instantly giving new life to her dry skin. It was like she had just consumed an entire meal, full of everything her body might ever need, with just that little bit of red water.

Yi Wei sat down on the ground and shut her eyes. She could finally rest.