Path of the Ascendant

She spat out a little more blood, which was no longer boiling, but still released a thin waft of steam while it slowly evaporated on the stone floor.

‘Well… the good news is that it seems to have thrown all of the impurities off,’ Yi Wei observed the black shell falling off her body before she turned to the cave wall, ‘The bad news is that I am now partially lodged in the stone… It seems that this whole process has greatly increased my strength, but since my cultivation and the various fruits and pills couldn’t have possibly brought about such a great improvement, it must be my physique!’

Since it would take some time to extricate herself from her current predicament, she decided to use this opportunity to see what visual effects, if any, her physique brought about, so that she could attempt to discern its name or characteristics.

There were no obvious changes to be noticed in the dark – her body shape seemed to be the same, her breasts were still the smallest of the generation, her hands did not transform into vicious claws nor did her legs change to hooves. By the looks of it, she did not end up getting one of the extreme physiques that makes men look more like demons or beasts.

Although that might have been disappointing to the common man or woman, Yi Wei had done enough research to know that the so-called extreme physiques were a little deceptive, as they were not actually the most powerful. No, the strongest were the likes of the Immortal Mortal, Perfected Form or the Concentrated Humanity Physiques, as they did not attempt to change humans into creatures that they weren’t, instead taking the innate strengths and advantages of man and magnifying them to their absolute limit.

It was difficult to glean any more details in the dark, so she pulled one of her arms free from the stone and clicked her fingers, causing a thin layer of her radiant cosmic energy to wrap around that hand. The violet light was not the most convenient for seeing the subtle changes, so she created a strand of golden lightning to balance out the colours. Pulling up the sleeve of her robes finally allowed her to find a few differences.

For one, her hair gained a certain richness in its colour, transforming from dull red to vibrant crimson. Her skin had also changed. The various blemishes and spots that she was familiar with had disappeared, though it also looked as if she had spent a few days under the scorching sun due to what looked like a deep tan.

‘Odd. Typically, the stories that feature either a unique physique or a general cleansing of the body describe the skin becoming more like snow, and as smooth as jade…’ she recalled, examining her arm more closely but finding few other differences, ‘Perhaps the high quantity of yang energy within the things I consumed had a similar effect to absorbing it from sunlight, though that would also suggest that my new physique is a yang-type. It is unlikely to be the pure Yang Physique, nor the Sun’s Regalia, Bright Star or Golden Form Physiques, as the first would create a glowing mark upon the chest, the second would cause my eyes to glow brightly enough to light up this cave and the third would turn my skin to gold instead of lightly darkening it.

So, to sum things up, the physique I ended up getting is a mixture of a perfected human and yang-type, which should make things more confusing for anyone who is able to sense the yin and yang within me, but I cannot identify the exact nature of it. Hm…’

She sent her spiritual will into her body in an attempt to discover some other difference when she saw the characters within her dantian disperse, leaving behind only a few.

Once they rearranged themselves, Yi Wei saw three words, ‘True Ascendant Physique.’

As if in response to her observing this, the mysterious characters flew back into their original places, displaying their method of advancing to the seventh stage as if they had never moved. Nevertheless, there were some differences that had developed since the first time they activated. They started out as thin lines, drawn in ink onto the empty space within her planar aperture, but now they seemed to be carved from solid shards of obsidian that shone with a fiery-red glow.

Each character seemed to be made from a varying number of shards, with the fewest being two and the most complex incorporating thirty-nine separate pieces of black stone. Their energy also felt different to before, although, since she had no clue what exactly they did besides providing her with the cultivation technique, it was difficult to understand what this difference entailed.

She would have continued with her contemplation, but it was at that moment that the stone holding her loosened, dropping her onto the ground. Before doing anything else, she drew the number ten on her collar, and attempted to subdue her strength before getting up again.

This time, Yi Wei was able to stand up without much incident, leaving behind only a large palm print within the stone. After adjusting the setting of the choker to a twelve, which brought her down to a similar level to what she was used to, she approached the stone blocking the cave’s entrance and found that the arrays she had placed upon it had broken at some point after she began the process of breaking through.

‘Well, it’s fine so long as no-one noticed the extreme planar fluctuations my activity here has caused,’ she thought, placing the mask back onto her face before easily pushing the stone out of the way.

When she had pushed into place, it was the middle of the night. The moon had shone down upon her and the forest on the outskirts of the Yi District, making her feel as if she was somehow doing wrong or forbidden.

Now, however, the sun had fully risen over the horizon, bathing the world in a layer of gold. The trees around her cast long shadows that covered most of the terrain around her in darkness. On occasion, the grass around her rustled, and some beast passed by, sniffing or glancing at her for a moment before retreating with great haste. They were ordinary animals, not ones that had harnessed planar energy through some unknown means, and thus they were not match even for the weakest of those in the Energy Condensation realm.

‘And I am no ordinary person in the first realm,’ she thought to herself with a smile, ‘Should I seek out a planar beast and see how I compare? It will give me a good opportunity to get used to my liquid cosmic energy before I have the misfortune of getting into any fights as well, so it seems like a wise idea.’

She looked around in hopes of seeing some obvious sign of a planar beast, but without much success. Of all the topics she studied, her knowledge of the Yi City’s wildlife was rather lacking, even in comparison to her understanding of dual cultivation methods.

That lack of knowledge caused a proverbial match to be lit inside her head, ‘Wait a minute, if I have achieved the equivalent of the common man’s second realm, then shouldn’t I be able to project my spiritual will outside of my body? My eyes are still incapable of seeing many things, but my spiritual will has far fewer limitations. With it, I should be able to apply the few things that I do know about wild beasts and apply them to find the tracks of a local moss wolf or vine bear.’

Naturally, in a world full of energy that could elevate the level of one’s existence far beyond its original state, humans were not the only ones to harness planar energy. Plants, animals, even certain inanimate objects were able to absorb energy through various means, and then, perhaps through sheer chance or some method embedded into their very souls, they occasionally succeed in finding their own route of cultivation. At other times, those same things are born from planar energy itself, creating things like planar shards, planar beasts and planar herbs…

No, those who discovered these things originally did not consider these names for too long, or else they would have realised that they could have come up with something better. A number had tried, but as with the various systems of grading skills, it was difficult to win over a large number of people who had already gotten used to simply adding ‘planar’ behind everything they say.

Creatures that are born from planar energy are often influenced by their surroundings, though that is not a rule. On occasion, beasts that absolutely do not belong in a particular location are born nonetheless, occasionally due to the influence of powerful cultivators or artefacts, but at other times there are seemingly no reason for their appearance whatsoever. Due to this, the outskirts of the Yi District of Yi City were mostly occupied by wood-type animals with the exception of the occasional fire or ice-type planar beast, like the Flame-Devouring Lion or the Jagged Ice Hyena.

She manipulated her spiritual will and forced it to exit her body, immediately feeling the pressure of the world attempting to destroy it, or otherwise push it back into her.

However, it survived, regardless of the pushback.

‘So, it appears that the strengthening of the spiritual will isn’t purely due to the condensation of planar energy, as there is no way my spiritual will can reach the range of one metre that a cultivator in the second realm would have,’ Yi Wei frowned, though it quickly turned into a more neutral expression, ‘However, the half-metre that I do have is enough.’

To prevent her spiritual will from being exhausted too quickly, she withdrew all but a few thin tendrils of it, which she then used to scan the forest floor. Within her immediate vicinity, there was nothing, so she raised her hand and placed a ball of lightning at her fingertip.

Unlike before, this took little effort – she just needed to execute her version of Storm Blade Wreathing exactly as it was, without assembling a framework of arrays through her unstable planar energy before being able to conjure bolts of lightning for a brief duration. Now, she could keep it going for as long as she wanted, or at the very least for several hours without any significant interruptions. Additionally, the lightning was far more stable than before, flickering entirely in accordance with her desire. This wasn’t to say that there was no room for improvement, but the improvement caused by her breakthrough were far greater than one might have expected.

With the golden light breaking through the veil of shadows cast by the ancient trees, she quickly found the traces of unordinary beasts.

A number of vines grew in the shape of paw prints in the grass, obscured almost entirely by the flora that had since grown. By the looks of it, a creature of the vine variety, all of which were creatively named by prefixing an animal with the word vine, had passed through a week or so ago.

‘Planar beasts tend to be rather territorial, even more so than regular creatures, so this trail is either the sign of a beast moving, or a sign of their territory,’ she knew, ‘Looking at the size of the prints, this particular creature appears to be twice as large as a regular wolf would be, so it might be somewhat dangerous. Certain beasts, though wood-types do this most regularly, grow alongside their cultivation, so this one should be at the peak of the second realm… Should prove to be a good challenge…’

She was well aware that she was slipping back into the mad death-seeking mind-set of growing in strength at any cost, but at this moment in time, fighting a dangerous opponent was the best route for adapting to her current strength. Thus, she did not subdue that mentality, but instead tempered it, or else her rational mind would have found far too many good reasons not to do this.

Using her spiritual will to scout out further vine tracks, Yi Wei was able to slowly discover more and more trails until she came across a recent path of the vine beast – the grass had not yet settled, and the vines were young and light.

In addition, there was a slight aura of killing intent permeating throughout this part of the forest. It was nothing to a cultivator, but any regular man or beast would naturally stay away from this area, even if they did not know why or what they were so afraid of. Killing intent was the preferred method of any planar beast to mark its territory and was undoubtedly more refined than the methods of their regular beast brethren.

However, this also made it easier to track them down. While various scents and smells could be left behind and scattered, killing intent belonged to the creature that produced it. No matter what, it would be bound to the creature, in life and in death, continuously pointing towards it even through barriers of a physical and planar nature.

It made it extremely easy to locate the tombs of ancient warriors that had built up such a great intensity of killing intent that it was able to remain in battlefields long after their deaths, leading those who could withstand it to their final resting places and allowing them to gain great treasure.

Yi Wei had no chance of tracking down such a tomb for the moment, but a planar beast was a good first step.

A few minutes later, she found the nest of the vine beast. It was a cave that was completely overgrown with vines and other foliage, turning the dark grey of stone into a constant green and brown.

Her examination of the cave was interrupted by the strange howling originating behind her. It was unlike the cry of a typical wolf, being deeper, but it also sounded as if it was made with the wind crashing against a wall of leaves on a tree, resulting in an uncanny noise that few would immediately associate with what it imitated.

She turned around and saw the creature upon whose lands she was intruding: a vine dire wolf at the very peak of the second realm, with a body made entirely from green vines and crimson eyes that glowed brighter than the sun.

‘No, that aura… Half-step Emergent Anchor realm!’

The typical path of cultivation would lead one along the route of advancing through nine stages, then ascending to the next layer, the next realm, where one could do the same once more, continuing until they inevitably fall. However, there were exceptions to this, as some had the necessary ability to break through the barrier of their realm, but not enough to reach the next. In that state, their cultivation would be in the half-step stage, where they are able to manifest certain features of the next realm but be much weaker than anyone that had truly reached it.

Someone in the Half-step Planar Pool realm could produce temporary planar constructs, but they would be unable to properly manifest their planar energy outside their body to use it for the purposes of writing, like Jiang Sheng was able to. In the Half-step Emergent Anchor realm, a human cultivator would either be capable of constructing a partial planar anchor, that could then be projected for half of its regular effect, or their planar energy and planar constructs would be significantly strengthened, allowing for fluid planar constructs to be formed, doubling their combat ability. Similar increases in strength would follow in the Half-step Active Core realm, though the details on it were scarcer than on the Half-step Emergent Anchor realm, and scarcer still was information on the Half-step Marked Core realm.

‘The question here is, which ability will this vine dire wolf manifest?’ she wondered to herself, preparing a series of actions to respond to each. The ability to project a planar anchor provided an overall increase in the power of the user, and thus she would have to minimise the attacks that land on her body. However, the strengthened planar constructs would mean that being struck by them could carry a death sentence, but the rest of its attacks would be weaker as a result.

After seeing that the intruder on its land did not run immediately, the vine wolf growled and, with a loud wooden bark, a ghostly tower crashed onto the ground behind it. It radiated illusory timber tendrils and caused the grass around it to grow rapidly. It was slightly taller than three metres and had three sides, with jagged edges and rough corners. Composed of several floating pieces that were joined together with thin branches, this was clearly a wood-type planar anchor of the vine wolf, and it was almost entirely whole.

‘So that’s what it can do… Good to know!’ she exclaimed mentally, recalling a number of fire techniques for this situation.

The next second, the vine dire wolf dashed at her, crossing the gap between them in an instant as it created a human-sized planar construct of a set of jaws that tried to close down upon her. However, she was ready for him and used Storm’s Edge Dash, appearing to the left of the wolf.

‘Sizzling Palm!’

When she had first used it, this technique was only capable of producing a slight red glow, but this strike now created a surge of flame that engulfed the wolf, throwing it into a tree.

The wood cracked and splintered, and the trunk of the tree shattered into two, but the wolf stood back up with ease, the flames slowly dissipating on his body. Ultimately, the attack did little but anger the wild beast, as it recalled the planar anchor and placed it closer to its new position. It snarled, causing the glowing red from its eyes to spread across the entire body, radiating from the shadows created by the vines.

‘Now that my spiritual will can exit my body, I can feel things like the vast increase in planar energy gathered on that vine dire wolf without needing to concentrate,’ she readied an Elysian Palm at full force and met the wolf with it once it pounced at her again.

The bright planar construct met the wolf’s spectral jaws, the liquid planar energy of the former creating esoteric shapes and patterns as it emerged from her palm. Their collision was not as simple as two fists meeting one another, but rather it was akin to a wave of flame being engulfed by water. Elysian energy swallowed up the gaping jaws and pierced through their very fabric, breaking them down from a complex construct into a simple mass of planar energy that quickly dissipated under the pressure of the world.

This time, neither remained static, and stepped around the clashing constructs, deciding to strike with physical force instead.

The vine wolf attempted to bite down on her arm, a set of jagged thorns appearing on its jaw. Seeing that its speed was only greater than hers, Yi Wei channelled her planar energy and her every feature doubled, allowing her to punch the wolf’s nose – or where the nose should have been – with her full strength.

A loud crack echoed through the forest as the entire front half of the vine dire wolf’s head was smashed in, destroying its eyes and causing the red glow to vanish from its insides. However, although it was thrown back with great force, it survived, as any wood-type planar beast would.

Unlike regular creatures, who relied on their brain to think and their heart to live, planar creatures were a little more flexible. Ice maw jaguars, for instance, had no internal organs at all, and used only the planar energy in the air to sustain themselves. So long as a sizeable chunk of their icy flesh remained, they could resuscitate and rebuild themselves entirely, effectively becoming immortal against ignorant opponents. Wood beasts were most notorious for this, as they were like weeds – unless you pull them out by the roots, they will grow back no matter what you do to prevent it. As a result, in order to kill this beast completely, Yi Wei would have to find its root, and destroy it.

Unfortunately, that was somewhat easier said than done. Despite landing three more attacks on the vine beast, each in a different area, she could not locate anything that stood out amongst the vines.

‘With each strike, this thing is forcing more and more effort out of me. Despite being a wolf made up of a bunch of plants, it is rather good at learning…’ she remarked, when her eyes suddenly widened, ‘Of course, it’s a plant! A plant that leaves behind vines where it walks, and even has a lair covered in them! This might not be a vine dire wolf after all, but a vine hungry nest!’

The vine hungry nest was named even more literally than any other planar creature. It was a thing that occupied a tight space, like a cave, passage or even the inside of a house, and grew all over the walls and floors until it covered the entire area in vines. It could then produce monsters that were not inferior to itself to gather food for itself. Once it did so, it would remain stationary, and would only be able to defend itself with the creatures it creates. These things would not have a root, nor a core, and would be linked with the thing that spawned them.

Yi Wei seemed to throw another attack at the wolf, but just as it dodged out of the way, she also disappeared with the Storm’s Edge Dash, appearing before the entrance to the cave. Indeed, according to her expectations, there were hints of teeth-like thorns at the entrance, revealing its true nature.

As soon as she entered the cave, she felt the air become damper, as if she had entered the stomach of some gigantic beast. The vine wolf struggled to chase her, but with the movement technique of the fourth realm, she was able to easily surpass the creature’s superior speed at the low cost of straining her legs. After all, she didn’t truly possess an ability of the Active Core realm, and instead simply imitated the leg movements of an expert. If not for her recently acquired physique, repeating this with enough frequency to escape the vine dire wolf and to progress into the vine hungry nest would have led to the loss of one or both of her feet.

With her progress into the nest, the cave slowly opened up from a narrow passage suitable only for two people walking side by side to a cavern that a dozen tall and wide men could be comfortable in.

The vines also changed from simple growths on the stone to a darker, more crimson shade, with large, sack-like outgrowths on the walls and floor. Presumably, they held the resting spawn of the hungry nest, though the vines were far too tightly packed for her to see through.

She progressed further into the cave and finally came upon the central chamber, where the crimson light was most vibrant. There, held up in the air by a thousand individual vines, was a large red object that resembled a human heart, beating slowly whilst radiating a thin red mist. It flowed downwards and spread out, coating the entire cavern floor with a blood-like layer of fog so thick that it almost felt like liquid as she waded through it.

‘No matter what this stuff is, that heart matches the picture I saw of the vine hungry nest’s root,’ Yi Wei remembered the book that she had read regarding the vine variety of creatures and charged straight for it.

However, just because the wolf was unable to catch up with her, that didn’t mean that the nest could not slow her down. Just as she crossed half of the chamber, a monumental planar anchor crashed down in front of her, occupying half of the width of the room. Contrary to whatever plans the planar beast had, however, she did not turn around, nor did she go around it.

She lunged right at it, lightning gathering within her hand whilst entwining with white energy.

‘Stupid beast, don’t throw out your strongest weapon as a shield! Elysian Storm Burst!’

Two bolts of interweaved lightning shot out, right into the spectral stone of the anchor. This wasn’t a proper planar anchor, no matter how impressive it appeared to be. It was the result of a half-step realm, and thus, it was even more vulnerable to attack than it should have been.

It struck the surface, and instantly spread out, covering the entire monumental anchor in light. Immediately after, it began to crack and splinter, pieces of stone flying off and vanishing into the air.

With what must have been a cry of pain, the hungry nest retrieved the planar anchor back into its aperture, but it was far too late. The lightning followed it, and only seconds later, the inside of the root burst with gold and violet light, and several cracks appeared at the surface as the lightning energy exploded.

The aura of the creature flickered, and then began to decline rapidly until it was no stronger than the sixth stage of the Planar Pool realm. With just a single move of someone who is almost two realms below it, it was crippled.

This time, there was no need to question what the subsequent sound meant – it was a roar. A roar of absolute fury.

From all around the nest’s walls, cocoons and vine eggs burst out, breaking open into all sorts of beasts and monsters. They roared, screeched and howled, each one burning with crimson light as if they had emerged from a sea of blood. Their every breath released a thick cloud of the red mist, and they instantly surrounded her from all directions, with some staying low to the ground and others flying up to the top of the cave.

‘Either this thing has some fondness of the dramatic, or-’ all of a sudden, her train of thought was broken by a sudden cough. Her lungs felt as if they had been set on fire and filled with some foul mixture of fluids that seemed to be melting through her flesh.

‘Or this is all poison! Of course it is! That’s won’t stop me!’ Yi Wei exclaimed, covering her entire body in storm.

As the beasts all launched themselves at her, she too made a move.

Drying Sands Strike! Scarlet Metal Strike! Boulder Pushing Palm! Bestial Palm – Ram! Elysian Palm! Storm Wreathing! Elysian Storm Burst! Seven strikes, seven techniques, all combined into one, were unleashed by her in a circle, targeting all approaching beasts, but mainly concentrated on a single point – the vine hungry nest’s root!

Combining attacks wasn’t significantly unusual in the Planar Continents, but it was typically limited to one movement skill and a combat technique, or something of a similar nature. This was due to two main issues. The first was that it required immense concentration and understanding of the skills being utilised. Most did not create their own techniques, and thus, their understanding of them, no matter how complete it seemed, would lack a few integral components. Yi Wei, on the other hand, faced no such issue as she modified small parts of these skills herself to allow herself to use them without cultivating them. She had even created Elysian Palm in a moment of inspiration, and thus gained knowledge about the structure of techniques that she could apply to all others.

The second issue with trying to use so many techniques at once was obvious to anyone who had ever cultivated. In order to perform any skill, one needed to circulate their planar energy in a particular fashion. However, if you intended to use two or more skills that relied on the same meridians and pathways, you would need to allow the planar energy to clash against itself, forcefully generating two or more flows of energy. In simpler words, the second issue was pain. A lot of pain, and even the risk of permanent damage.

Yi Wei was not worried about the latter. She had cosmic energy, so that was not an issue.

Half-way through her execution of the attack, however, she felt something she hadn’t expected. Before any clashes within her planar energy occurred, something within her second set of meridians moved instead, performing almost every energy circulation that would have caused injury otherwise.

‘What is this? To think I hadn’t noticed it- wait! It’s yang-type energy, meaning… True Ascendant Physique?’ she concluded just as the energy burst out of her.

A sphere of fire, stone, sand, heat, bestial energy, storm and heavenly energy exploded within the cavern, with a secondary beam striking right for the root. In a single second, every vine beast was annihilated, and in the next moment, the hungry nest followed their fate. The vines that covered every single surface of the cave withered in an instant, their vitality flowing away into the world.

The second after, Yi Wei also fell to one knee. Even though she was able to avoid the backlash of executing all of those techniques at once, it still drained a vast quantity of planar energy, though not to the same point as the fight with Jiang Sheng.

She spat out a mouthful of liquid poison, though it looked much like her blood.

For a while, she sat in place and rested, recovering her energy as she watched the vines recede into the central chamber, almost flowing into the ruined root until the vines that held it up also sunk into it, causing it to fall onto the ground with a dull thud. Once it was clear that there would be no more activity from the nest’s core, she was able to focus on what just happened.

‘So, by the looks of it, body cultivation – or, rather, my physique – also provides a form of energy that can be circulated. When I developed the True Ascendant Physique, it must have occupied my secondary meridians without me noticing,’ Yi Wei was able to deduce what happened in a few seconds, ‘However, unless the physique energy… I’ll need to think of a better name for it… is akin to planar energy in that it cannot exit the body without sufficient condensation, then it seems to me that it is only capable of supporting the energy that I already have. Well, I might as well experiment with it now, seeing as my planar energy is almost spent.’

After taking in one more breath of planar energy, she rose to her feet and considered the simplest technique she had, as well as the one she was most familiar with, Gentle Breeze Fist.

‘If my assumption is correct, then the most that I will be able to do with only my physique energy is pull off the movements of the skill,’ she thought, ‘If it does require cultivation in much the same way that one cultivates planar energy, then this will also produce the exact effect of the Gentle Breeze Fist that I would have been able to execute one month ago. In the unlikely event that I simply failed to use the full ability of physique energy the last time, then it could even function as a secondary pool of planar energy.’

Admittedly, the last idea was clearly far too optimistic, considering all of the advantages she already had, but strictly speaking, there was no reason for it to not be plausible at the very least. And if it was plausible, then why couldn’t she make it real?