Path of the Ascendant

Upon touching the furnace, her surroundings warped and twisted, eventually settling on a single table floating in the void. On it lay five pills of different colours, two green, one coppery, one red and one brown.

Above them was a small note that read, ‘Identify which pills are safe for consumption and fulfil their intended functions. Dispose safely of those that do not.’

Beside that note, there was no information regarding any of the pills, not even a false name to give her some idea of what they are supposed to be. If she hadn’t had the chance to read up on pills and didn’t have the appraisal skill granted by her practise of the Cherry Revolving Blossom, which she had read up to the fourth chapter by this point, she would have no method to discover what these ambiguous pills could do.

‘Alright, let’s have a go at this. I’ll have to thank Master Chu for telling me to practise this exact thing the last time I saw her,’ she grabbed a pill at random, selecting one of the green pills, ‘So, the colour of the pills are one of the easiest things to change without much harm to the overall quality, like using a dye on clothes, and thus I can ignore it. The ingredients… this one seems to use a lot of fire elemental ingredients, most of which are volatile, with few to suppress them… The recipe is most similar to… Aberrant Flame Suppressing pill? Now this is just terrible. With this many volatile ingredients, it won’t be able to do what it is meant to, no matter how they put them together.’

For a moment, she considered how to dispose of it, but then quickly dismissed all of them and simply clasped it in her fist and released a small wisp of yang energy.

The pill exploded in her hand, but the only visible sign of it was a small puff of smoke.

“This is considered to be safe, right?” she asked the black void behind her.

“… Did that hurt you?” the voice of the pagoda said begrudgingly.

“Nope,” Yi Wei showed it her smooth skin that had reddened slightly as a result of the yang expulsion but was otherwise as healthy as it ever was. It had a thick medicinal scent on it, somewhat similar to smoke or incense.

“Then it is indeed safe…”

Great Dark was no longer attempting to disguise his voice in the slightest, so she naturally understood that he had also been the one to speak for the pagoda when it gained a strange quality to its voice. Due to this, she took the other four pills and held them tightly, “Just asking, but does the pill have to be perfect in order for it to pass? Should it only have the intended effects?”

“Naturally.”

“Ah, cool,” she said, and, with a smile for her personal satisfaction, she made the other four pills explode unceremoniously.

There was a long period of silence that seemed intent to go on forever. Through the gaps in her fingers, an unpleasant combination of smells wafted out, slowly filling the invisible walls of the illusory space. An earthy scent, combined with a wooden flavour and a slight metallic taste, filled her lungs with every breath. For such small objects, medicinal pills contained more flavour than most of the meals Yi Wei had seen in her life, and yet most of it couldn’t be enjoyed during the regular consumption of the pill as it was typically overwhelmed by the medicinal effect.

Finally, the pagoda’s voice ended up being the entity to break the silence, “Floor complete. Please select your reward out of the following categories: combat, stealth, cultivation, body, detection and great arts. Based on your choice, a jade slip shall be granted.”

This declaration made her eyes widen.

Jade slips are almost legendary in nature. They originated in the ancient days of the Master of Yi City, and had a single purpose: to store vast quantities of information, and to deliver it straight into the mind of another without the need for long periods of reading and comprehension. So long as the insights regarding the topics within have also been stored inside of the jade slip, anyone who uses it, no matter how foolish or lacking in understanding, will gain them all instantly.

Unfortunately, these items were sparse, as they were incredibly difficult to manufacture. Even those who followed every word of the Master of Yi City’s instructions on creating them often failed, not to mention the rest of the world who lacked direct access to the teaching of a genius. After his disappearance, the numbers of capable craftsmen also declined, and thus they were rarely seen.

For someone in the first stage to come across such a wonder was considered a miracle, and yet Yi Wei had the choice between six.

Although, perhaps it was best to focus not on the recipient, but rather on the person capable of giving out one of their six jade slips so easily. As far as she knew, jade slips were usable multiple times until their eventual decay and destruction, much like how a book could be read infinitely before it crumbled into dust from age. However, just like with a book, if it was used often and used carelessly, the jade slip would decay with greater speed, changing its lifespan from thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of years to a far lower quantity.

This was an important choice, so she took her time. Cultivation techniques were the first to be ignored – no matter how good they were, they wouldn’t bring much of an improvement to the energy of the mysterious characters. The great arts followed soon after, as Great Dark and Great Light were already teaching her everything she needed to know about engraving, and she had four other teachers for the four other arts.

Out of the options that remained, stealth and detection were the areas in which she was most lacking, so they were the most appealing to her. Then, out of those two, the area of detection was recently reinforced through her True Ascendant Physique and the ability to project spiritual will outside of the body, thus it seemed best to select stealth, as to reinforce her most lacking area.

It would also be beneficial when it comes to protecting her secrets, and it would allow her to rely on things other than the mysterious characters.

Thus, with a little more consideration, she opened her mouth, and-

“Take all of them. They are one-time use, and are soon going to break. Just take them,” Great Dark declared, and six green jade slips appeared out of the void. Each one contained an inscription of several characters relevant to its stored knowledge, and each one was covered in dozens of large cracks.

In the brief moment that they were in the air, two of the six cracked again, bringing them one step closer to destruction.

“Da Gang! Take them!”

Yi Wei no longer hesitated. She took all six jade slips and sent her spiritual will into them, causing a blinding light to emit from them. Six different globes of condensed words and images broke out of the jade, heading straight for her head, followed by each one of them shattering the very next instant.

“Not all at-”

However, midway there, they suddenly flew down and entered her planar aperture, where the characters reformed into the shape of an open maw and bit down on the globes.

‘These characters can even react to this, huh- wait, why are they-’

The teeth closed down upon the balls of words, but they were completely unharmed, save for a few red symbols that melted away into earth-type planar energy and joined her pool of cosmic energy, dissolving into only a few wisps of her standard of energy. The rest of the glowing words returned to their original trajectory as if nothing happened, entering her mind and dissolving into pure information.

Concepts, techniques, ideas, speculation, facts and anything in between flooded her thoughts. Although they flew past at a staggering pace, even in the eyes of a person who was able to read over a thousand manuals in a day, she still understood every single thing as if she had taken an hour to study each individual sentence with great care. Ideas like personal aura obstruction, planar energy binding modulation, physical alteration and more that she had never come in contact with were suddenly plain as day, even clearer than moving her own four limbs.

Perhaps the most impressive was the fact that she was also able to process what happened with the characters at the same time as reading all of that information.

‘If Wang Ling’s ‘A Compendium of the Dao’ can be believed, then the red characters within each jade slip were a form of a compelling influence, a thought or idea that gets lost among the rest and is then accepted without any further consideration. They could be things as simple as ‘Red is better than blue’ or ‘The Yi family is a powerful force’, but if imbued with enough force to overwhelm the target completely whilst also leaving them unaware of the intrusion, it can be elevated to ‘I am a loyal servant of the Deadly Martial Colosseum’, for example. I can’t be sure what they were, now that the characters have eaten them, nor do I know whether they were even targeted at me, but it is helpful to know that they are keeping me safe from such forms of control,’ she considered while also learning about one of the Thunder Lord’s killing moves, ‘That means that if I ever get into a dangerous situation like this in the future, when someone is attempting to plant certain thoughts in my… mind… Oh, right, the Thunder Lord is still around, and I’ve just learned a bunch of techniques. Oh, dear mysterious characters, can’t you eat him as well?’

The stone symbols remained silent, hovering in their usual fashion, even though her planar energy had grown much more powerful thanks to the influx of techniques, not to mention the additional elements of all of those techniques that she would undoubtably be able to use in a future situation.

She did not get the opportunity to enjoy this, however, as the Seventh of Meng’s memories forced themselves into her head.

 

Great Dark watched as Da Gang took the jade slips, as per his instructions, but then activated every single one of them at the same time. As the one who created these particular items, he knew all too well that some would struggle to handle even a single slip at a time, not to mention six.

“Why have you done this? With how quickly you are able to read, have you not learned of the dangers of the slip?”

The masked man quivered for a second, then replied with perfect clarity, “Sorry. I saw that they were nearly destroyed, and I overreacted for a moment. These were one-time use, correct? I haven’t heard much of such things. As you made them yourself, I assume that you were unable to recreate the full jade slip, and thus resorted to this?”

Seeing that the man’s head hadn’t exploded, he relaxed slightly and considered his response.

“Naturally not... That is also why they were deteriorating so quickly,” Great Dark explained, earning a nod from Da Gang, “Giving them all away at once wasn’t my intention… had I waited, they would have broken down by the end of the day, so I will have to make them again later… You’re free to leave the pagoda again for the day. Take the next few months to process the information and return once you can think with a clear head for longer than one hour.”

“Sorry? Did you say several months to process the information? Is that how long this is meant to take?”

There was a strange note within the man’s voice, but he dismissed it as a side-effect of information overload, “Yes. Based on how quickly your mind is capable of working, the speed of absorption will vary… Your mental resilience is good, but do not overstress yourself.”

“Huh. Fine, I’ll go, but I’ll be back soon, unless I’m busy. I still want whatever rewards you have up there, so if there are any more time-limited things like this, don’t hide it from me.”

“Certainly… there are no more objects as close to destruction as the slips, so you have at least one year before anything is at risk…”

“Alright. Take me out of here.”

He did as the young man asked, then vanished from the pagoda’s illusory world, instead appearing in a world completely devoid of anything but his twin, who was radiating vast quantities of yin qi with every second.

“Brother.”

Great Light turned to the voice, the maddened look in his eyes clearly lesser than it had been before, “Have you spoken with that brat? Did anything interesting happen? Did he die?”

“No, he did not… He got through the sixth floor a little unconventionally, and now we have lost five decent pills… Somehow, he has survived using all six slips at once, and even seemed to… age… a few years as a result…”

“Isn’t that a normal reaction to gaining far more information than your brain is meant to hold? We saw it happen to a number of people who weren’t careful with various inheritances they found before and during the War of Yin. By your comments, aren’t I supposed to be the one forgetting things, or what?”

“I remember… but something seems strange… have you figured out where the Thunder Lord ended up going?”

“How should I know? You’re better at finding the shadows than I am.”

 

Yi Wei didn’t head for her home, but instead for a small bathhouse, where she booked a private room and leapt into an icy pool intended for cultivation of extreme ice or fire techniques. To her yang-infused body, such a thing wasn’t painful nor unpleasant, but she wished that it had been so that it would be able to hide the redness of her face at least a little bit.

‘That Thunder Lord Meng really is too shameless. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it… So, the jade slips. If a man that might have – intentionally or otherwise – planted mental compulsions within his jade slips can be trusted, then it is common for people to take a month to process a single slip – assuming that he did the math for me, and that the total combination of slips results in a longer processing time than a single one would, otherwise…’ her thoughts paused as she glanced down and saw that all of the ice in the bath melted despite two formation arrays still running beneath it, ‘Oh… I guess I can improve the arrays for them…’

 

“Hey, what is this? I nearly froze in there!”

“I’m sorry, customer, but I don’t know. We check the arrays every morning, but there was nothing wrong with them.”

“Then isn’t it natural that someone intentionally sabotaged it, knowing that I would come here? Quickly, tell me who has been in that room before me so that I can chase them down and show them why they shouldn’t mess with the Flaming Demon!”

“S-sir, the last person, who, incidentally, didn’t complain about a thing, was Da Gang…”

“Da Gang? What kind of family is he from? I’ve not heard of any kind of Da family around here, so either the name’s a fake, or there’s a different family backing them! Tell me right now!”

“I… don’t know, but… haven’t you heard about the goings on at the Deadly Martial Colosseum?”

“I don’t believe I- wait, THAT DA GANG? Never mind all that, I’m leaving! Thank you!”