Path of the Ascendant

The conversation finished without too many other great revelations, as Kong Dong Ming reported that he and this illusory world was running out of time, so he implored her to receive her key piece as quickly as possible. She did so, gaining the second part of the key symbol. When that was done, the illusory figure sat down on the ground and spoke to her.

“Since thou hath completed this challenge swiftly, I shall grant thee what little remains of the energy of this realm, for thou hath shown the greatest capability in mental techniques that I hath seen since these grounds came to be.”

Yi Wei was in need of some assistance in her cultivation, so she did not turn him down.

Kong Dong Ming sat down onto the ground, holding out his arm towards the obelisk. For once, he remained silent as he willed a large purple crystal to emerge from within it.

“This is a stable planar stone, used as the base for this illusion, storing the energy of a great planar gathering-type array and expending it when necessary. Our confrontation hath expended more power than expected, and perhaps more time has passed than I was aware of, wearing it down further…” he paused for a moment, “As to prevent me from losing my sanity, I hath no concept of time. When no challenger is present, I enter a resting state, and hath no knowledge of the world around me… Now, thou hath planar energy of the water element, dost thou not?”

“I do. Will this be water-type planar energy that I’m receiving, then?”

“Indeed. Now, to ensure that thou doth receive thine energy, I shalt focus,” he said, shutting his eyes and channelling the planar energy. Slowly, radiant blue energy broke out of the crystal, forming a solid stream as it was slowly guided to Yi Wei’s planar aperture.

It passed through her skin and flesh, but the moment it neared her dantian it suddenly accelerated and flew right into the mysterious characters’ open jaws. Within a few seconds, a vast majority of the energy was consumed by them, and once they ceased their consumption, barely a tenth of what she should have initially gotten remained.

Her characters ignited with a blue light, calming themselves quickly, but she understood that her planar energy had once again gained a new property.

‘I will study that later. For now, I should get what little has been left for me,’ she thought, focusing on absorbing the rest of the water-type energy from the illusory world’s planar stone. The energy, albeit dense, was not high in quantity, and so she was able to consume all of it within a minute.

 immediately afterward, the obelisk began to sink down into the earth, while the illusion flickered and slowly collapsed into nothingness.

“Good luck, seeker,” were the illusion’s last words as her surroundings transformed back into the green forest of the Kong valley.

Yi Wei sat in place for a few minutes, claiming the water planar energy within her for herself for an imminent session of cultivation, before she stood up and respectfully bowed to the place where the illusory man had stood a little earlier. He had spent a lot of years within that illusion, so even though his fondness of calling out technique names aggravated her immensely, he still deserved some appreciation.

Once that was done, her vision was involuntarily drawn to a large number of bones around her. Amongst the grass, there were tens, if not hundreds, of skeletons, with their flesh completely decayed and any clothes they might have been wearing rotted into nothing. The only things that survived were small violet shards, no larger than her thumb and with sharp edges; planar shards.

She took every single one that she could find, accumulating a total of fifty-four planar shards that completely filled one of her larger robe pockets.

‘They don’t need these anyway,’ she sighed, absentmindedly counting up the number of lives lost in the area, ‘No fewer than one hundred and thirty-six, possibly more if they lost some of their major bones, died here, presumably on this trial. Indeed, any of the great arts could be deadly, if used or misused in the appropriate manner. Blacksmiths can make armour, but also weapons, formation array masters can create barriers and shields or slaughtering arrays, and if those masters specialise in illusions, they can cause someone to lose their life out of fear or shock when the body fails to understand that an injury is not real.’

There was no reason to bury their remains, so she retreated from the general area as quickly as possible. She had opened the illusory realm by accident some time ago, and the planar energy echo that it created would have likely reached the more perceptive members of the six Yi family groups in the valley, and perhaps any other individuals searching for the Kong Holy Space. If she was to be seen standing right next to that location, it would naturally require them to ask a number of questions.

Her run brought her to the outer areas of the forest, north of her previous location. Naturally, she was attempting to locate the Ancestral Library of the Kong family, or what remained of it, though it was not an immediate priority. There were still two Lock Obelisks to find, thus she would have a lot of time to search for it later, but it doesn’t hurt to investigate it now.

 

Several hours later, there were no signs of a large cave, nor an array that could be concealing one, so she instead put one together herself and sat in the middle of it.

‘First, I need to understand what changes the water-type energy caused to my planar energy,’ she decided, making her dantian erupt in a blue fluid that quickly enveloped everything within her body. She felt the strengthening properties it initially developed from Luo Xiuying’s energy, the toughening properties that came about as a result of Great Light’s unprovoked attack, but the third property was much harder to observe.

When she felt one cycle of the planar energy complete, she returned it to her dantian and did a few stretches to see if anything had changed. There was still no clear increase in strength, nor did her skin seem any stronger than before, but she was able to guess what the third effect was once she noticed that her fingers could move a little more freely than before.

‘By the looks of it, fire gave me strength, earth gave me resistance, and now water has granted me fluidity and flexibility. That’s not too significant, but it could prove essential in the future… maybe.’

Although there were no clear immediate benefits, she underwent a second cycle of the water-type effect before moving on to her cultivation. She would have preferred to allow for a third or fourth cycle, but she was starting to feel more and more bloated as a result of the unprocessed energy within her dantian, which was a clear sign that she needed to hurry up with her cultivation if she didn’t want to explode from the excess planar energy.

The characters had absorbed every drop of energy with impurities, so she didn’t have to do anything beside circulating it once throughout her meridians, converting it to her body’s planar energy, before allowing it to settle down within her dantian.

Before the hour was done, she was experiencing her next breakthrough, almost as if she had returned to the time when the characters first burst into action and could break through at will.

Twice, her energy flooded her body and returned to the planar aperture in a slightly denser and stronger state, eventually settling in within a large sphere that occupied most of her dantian. From the looks of it, the water-type energy of the illusory realm that was not consumed by the characters was sufficient for one and a half stages of her cultivation.

‘Now, I have reached the third stage of the Planar Pool realm. With my disguising techniques, I should be able to pass myself off as someone the second stage, although it wouldn’t be too unreasonable for me to have broken through using some fortunate encounter, perhaps by locating one of these planar shards,’ Yi Wei thought, taking one of them out of her pocket, ‘I could actually use them for that purpose, but their value as currency is too great for that purpose. Thankfully, their usage leaves behind few traces, so no-one could reasonably expect me to present the ash from the stone.’

She decided to lower her aura to the third stage, while also breaking up the outer edge of the solid into liquid, just in case someone inspected her cultivation and noticed that something was amiss. With that issue settled, she moved on to her spiritual will.

‘If I recall correctly, spiritual will is only meant to get stronger every realm, but perhaps I am somewhat of an exception to the rule. It doesn’t hurt to find out regardless of the outcome.’

Yi Wei released a tendril of her spiritual will, quickly reaching the three-metre limit she previously had. However, It quickly became apparent that one of the experiences that had occurred this day had altered it, as it was significantly denser than before, and was able to soar past that limit all the way to four metres, where it stopped right on the edge of going just an inch further.

Having established that figure, she sunk her spiritual will into the ground to check its investigative abilities.

‘Hm… it is a little more detailed than before, and it is easier to see more things with less effort, meaning that I should be able to read a few more books at once in the technique library, but the overall clarity has not increased by much,’ she observed, recalling her spiritual will into her body.

‘Alright, I should get back to my original search location. It is near another corner of the valley, so there is a chance of finding another Lock Obelisk. I will also need to pay far more attention to random discussions in the camp, as someone mysteriously losing their way could be the indication of another array obstructing the location of the obelisk,’ Yi Wei thought, breaking down the illusory array and scattering the various rocks she used to create it.

 

“Get back here! That planar fruit belongs to our leader, Yi Zheng!”

Two groups were running through a large hilly field within the Kong valley. One consisted of three people, two of whom were carrying spears while the last one held a war hammer. They sprinted with great haste, visibly sweating and gasping for air. The second group shouldn’t even be described as that, for it was a single woman who was calmly running with a small leather bag in her hand.

She had incredibly attractive features, long, crimson, radiant hair that was tied into a lazy ponytail with a torn piece of cloth, soft lips that were curved into a slight smile, a strong physique with clear traces of muscles beneath the skin of her exposed arms, but an unfortunately flat chest and moderately large behind, the latter occurring mostly as a result of persistent exercise and the development of those muscles rather than an endowment of her bloodline.

“Since when is that the case?” she replied to them calmly, running just as quickly as they were but without showing any clear signs of exhaustion, “I found it, I retrieved it from the Minor Air Whale beast, and am now carrying it on my own. Where did you participate?”

“Don’t get clever with us!” the first spearman spat out, “Yi Zheng claimed the Metal Fulfilling Pear for himself, and it will be incredibly beneficial to his cultivation! Give it here!”

‘Has no-one here ever learned about negotiation? If that thing is valuable to you, then do not reveal it and try to make me believe that I don’t have much to gain from this, and that you could easily offer me far more by exchanging this fruit for something else. Seriously, are the heavens giving me a gift for my eighteenth birthday?’ Yi Wei wondered, randomly looking about in order to delay the conversation, “Why didn’t your leader come over here and get it himself, then? Why is such a great thing being acquired by three – and I apologise for this in advance – random grunts who are utterly useless?”

“W-We are not random grunts!”

“And we’re not useless, either!” the hammer-wielder added, though he was the one that was falling behind the furthest, ”Are you going to do what we want or not?”

“Let me think about it,” she answered, then shut her mouth and waited for one of them to realise.

She had no hourglass to time them with, but it certainly took them more than a minute to understand that she had no intention of providing them with an answer, so they sped up as much as they were able to, straining their bodies to run at their full speed for even for a second more.

‘Oh, finally. I can speed up as well. I thought I’d fall asleep before I got where I wanted to go,’ she thanked them in her head before leaping into the air and turning around mid-jump, “Oh no, what will I ever do? Three men who are slower than me in every way and are about to collapse of exhaustion are going to catch up to me!”

Without any difficulty, she landed on the ground and kept running.

“That bitch! We’ll… get you!” they screamed, somehow extracting even more energy out of the ash that was their stamina to keep going a little longer.

Yi Wei might have praised them for that, if she hadn’t reached her destination. She stopped abruptly, nearly causing the three pursuers to run past her and exhaust themselves further. They managed to stop themselves in time and imitated some sort of an encirclement.

“We… we…”

“You’re just in time! Hey, Yi Jiazhi, I’ve found another group!”

The heads of the three snapped in the direction that she yelled in, right in time to see a group of five emerge out of the nearby trees, with a figure in the Emergent Anchor realm at the front.

Yi Jiazhi looked at her, then at the ones following her, and spat out the grass he was chewing, “Damn it, do you have a magnet for these people? You three, why are you chasing after one of my team members?”

“Yi J-Jiazhi? Your… your subordinate has s-stolen a miracle fruit from Yi Zheng, a-and-”

“I don’t care. Get your leader if he has a problem,” he stopped him with a wave of his arm, “Tell him that he doesn’t have to worry about losing whatever fruit he wants, unless he gives up on it. Got it?”

“… Understood. May… may we rest here?”

“No.”

They looked at him with misery in their eyes, but he did not back down, so they had no option but to nod and begin their retreat, “Very well… We’ll retreat…”

“Will we? That woman is right th-”

“WE. WILL. RETREAT!” the second spearman said to the hammer wielder before grabbing him by the collar of his robe and dragging him away… or, rather, struggling to do so due to his own weakness, as well as the weight of an exhausted bag of flesh that could barely move on his own.

Yi Jiazhi’s group and Yi Wei looked onto the departing three in silence, waiting for them to disappear from sight before the former began to glare at the latter.

“How do you always attract hatred from the other groups?” Yi Jiazhi questioned her, “What’s that thing you’ve gotten from them?”

“Trust me, it won’t do you any good,” she replied, obscuring the metal energy from the Metal Fulfilling Pear with a thin layer of cosmic energy, “It is not a miracle fruit of the fire element, and will thus not be of much use to a fire cultivator like yourself. That’s even without mentioning the fact that you shouldn’t be using it in the first place, considering what you’ve said to those three.”

“I was simply intending to understand the items value, and if Yi Zheng will be interested in it.”

“Ooh, you’re learning,” Yi Wei said, “You don’t need to know what the item is to know that he doesn’t have too much of an interest in it. It is powerful but has a high risk of damaging the body without strong mastery of both physical and mental techniques. On that topic, you should know the rumours.”

“How have you gotten more insufferable since the first year…” he muttered under his breath, “You’re referring to the idea that he has rather poor self-control, correct?”

“Naturally,” she answered simply, pretending that she didn’t hear that comment, ‘What do you mean? All I did was accidentally resist your charming technique – which, I admit, I would be somewhat annoyed about if I had expected it to work, but I would have gotten over it after a day or two, not to mention multiple months – and now I was just being a little… sarcastic, I suppose. Is that really such a bad thing? I guess this is what four years of only being spoken to when I was being beaten up, then one year and six months of strutting around forests and fields does to one’s communication abilities.’

“Very well then, but don’t you dare consume the miracle fruit and then blame it on me.”

“I would never do something so risky,” Yi Wei claimed, ‘I’ve only risked death multiple times on creating my own body techniques and a physique that could have easily destroyed my body completely. I’ve not yet attempted to transfuse the blood from a dragon or phoenix into my body yet… yet.’

That idea wasn’t completely unfounded. In the Planar Continents, it was generally agreed that blood carried a certain degree of power, and that the blood of more powerful beings naturally carried more. Hence, when cultivators of a high realm have children, especially if their conception is done in an environment rich in planar energy, they will be born either with an initially high cultivation realm, a rare physique or a general greater sensitivity and control over planar energy.

The concept of transfusing blood to gain its abilities is also not a new one. Many experts in high cultivation realms who were unable to progress further resorted to extreme measures to extend their lifespan and get even one more chance to progress, also in order to gain a few more years of life for themselves.

One famous example of this is the Lady of Ashes, Chao Jianhong. She had lived for many years as one of the strongest cultivators in the Bai District, despite not being part of any large family, but she faced the same fate as any other mortal – she was aging, faster than she was able to cultivate. As someone who had lived for many years and mastered countless legendary techniques, eventually settling on building her combat style around the ultimate skill called World of Ash and the cultivation method called Lord of Cinder, and she grew attached to her life even more than most. When ordinary pills and medicines were unable to extend her life sufficiently, she turned to more extreme measures.

She attempted a number of different things, but eventually she latched onto the idea of stealing the blood of a longer-lived species, like one of the remnant dragons or phoenixes, and taking it for herself.

Chao Jianhong got in touch with an old cult that existed before the birth of the Master of Yi City, an organisation named the Blood-tinged Church. Their specialty was the blood of any and all beings, its usage and the various operations that could be done with it, and when they heard her suggestion, they were incredibly eager to attempt it. They worked together with her, after she joined their ranks, and located one of the last nests of a mythical creature within Yi City.

According to tales, the battle was long and hard, but when the remnant dragon fell, all of its blood was taken by the Church, and put to use on various experiments. Some attempted to extract its raw potential, others focused on creating armour and weapons out of it, but the primary focus was on the Lady of Ashes and her request.

It did not go as well as she had hoped. Clearly, she had been blinded by the imminence of her demise and failed to observe a few key flaws with her plans. For one, despite dragons being a hermaphroditic species, they were creatures of great yang, while Chao Jianhong was a woman without any yang-type physique. To inject that blood into her veins was similar to attempting to flood a glacier with earth fire to prevent it from melting, and it is said that the Blood-tinged Church was well aware of that fact but chose to remain silent for their own gains.

For the first few days after the experiment, she was stable, and much stronger than before. Apart from a few minor physical alterations, like her veins becoming more visible and glowing subtly, her eyes changing colour to flaming red, or her nails growing darker and sharper, as if they were slowly becoming claws, no harm was done to her mind or body. Unfortunately, that didn’t last as long as the Lady of Ashes had hoped it would.

After a few weeks, she became more irritable and seemed to be on a short fuse at all times, ready to explode upon any minor mistake by someone around her. Some assumed it to be that time of the month – though they were promptly beaten by Chao Jianhong for the implication – but that irritability persisted.

A month after the blood transfusion, her forehead suddenly began to bleed. She called in some healers from the Church, only for them to tell her that she was growing horns. Over a few undoubtedly slow days for her, small black nubs of bone sprouted from her skin, her teeth sharpened, her nails merged with her flesh to become actual claws and her skin darkened, not like someone who had stayed under the sun for lengthy periods of time, but it turned coal-black, with her flaming blood glowing even more brightly through her veins.

From there, things got worse. The Lady of Ashes’ mental state declined immensely over a few hours, and she lost many of the things she was known for, like her keen intellect and great comprehensive ability. It was like she had gotten the mind of a beast alongside the blood.

It would have been manageable if she had received the mental capacity of a dragon, for they are said to be incredibly clever creatures, albeit a little overly proud and greedy at times, but her intelligence was turning out to be the same as her body – a pale imitation of the true beast, a snake before a dragon, a hill in front of Mt Tai.

Chao Jianhong did not have long to live after that. With each day, she became wilder and wilder, her appetite increased, and her flesh grew ever more malformed. The Bai family had no choice but to put her down, weaving a tale about her having been afflicted by a curse in order to prevent the great hero from being written into the history books as a fool who could not accept their inevitable fate. However, since Yi Wei was able to learn about this, it clearly hadn’t worked as they had hoped.

After the death of the Lady of Ashes, a group of seven-star physicians were permitted to dissect her body. They found that her bones had turned to obsidian black, her flesh and her organs mutated into something between human and dragon and that, had she lived a few more days, she might have begun to grow some imitation of wings. It is said that her blood was extracted from her lifeless corpse, before it was placed within an Ancestral Hall for storage before a suitable method to destroy it was decided upon by the Bai family’s elders. It is also rumoured that it was stolen from that Hall, perhaps by the Blood-tinged Church or some other force, though no rumours of the corpse’s reappearance were known to Yi Wei.

Thus, to attempt the same thing as Chao Jianhong would be the utter height of folly unless she had made the appropriate preparations, whatever they might be.

“Very well then, get back to whatever it is you were doing,” Yi Jiazhi said, turning to his followers, “Prepare another spot near our camp, preferably within our sight. I don’t want another Yi Fenwu watching over us.”

“Understood, leader.”

As the conversation they were having had nothing to do with her, Yi Wei departed, removing a silver pear from the bag and biting off a piece of it.

‘Those three had no direct connection to their leader, I’m sure of that. Despite the time they spent chasing me, not a single one went to speak with Yi Zheng, which they would have done either if they knew that he wanted this fruit, or if they were confident that they could get his help. I’m guessing that they intended to take the Metal Fulfilling Pear to him as a way to get some respect from him,’ she thought, consuming it quickly before anyone had the opportunity to observe her actions, ‘Even if I’m wrong, I have a second pear, so it doesn’t matter whether he wants it or not.’

She placed the bag into her pocket and licked the fruit juices off her fingers. It was slightly bitter, with a strong metallic taste reminiscent of blood, albeit multiplied by a dozen times or so. Had she tasted it prior to throwing up blood with every other breakthrough and technique development, she would have found that to be a little overwhelming, but she had gotten used to it by now.

The fruit’s medicinal properties dispersed throughout her body via the physique meridians, strengthening the metallic aspect of her planar energy before the remaining substance of the pear settled down within her body as impurities.

Calmly, she released her physique energy and circulated it once, utterly annihilating any traces of the fruit.

‘Good to know that my hypothesis was correct,’ she smiled, ‘With how destructive my yang energy is, I am not too surprised. In the future, I won’t have to force myself to break through onto a new stage or realm whenever I decide to consume a miracle fruit or two.’

Her destination was one corner of the valley that she had not yet explored, but the instant she went out of the hearing range of Yi Jiazhi’s group, she passed through a thick brush… right onto the scene of a naked woman stepping out of a lake.

Yi Wei immediately averted her eyes, though the brief glance was sufficient for her to notice the large birthmark on the woman’s cheek, her dust-grey hair and eyes, the woman’s thin body and sickly white skin that belonged on a plague victim or someone who had not seen the light for a hundred years, rather than a young and talented cultivator and a number of scars and red blotches on her stomach, which also exposed her ribcage beneath a thin translucent layer of skin… that identified her as another of the team leaders on this expedition, a cultivator that was now in the fourth stage the Emergent Anchor realm, Yi Henghua.

‘I’m not sure if I should blame that level of attention onto the Thunder Lord or the myriad mental techniques I’ve practised,’ she coughed lightly to ensure that her presence was known, “Excuse me.”

“Had you been a man, I would have killed you without any hesitation,” Yi Henghua stated calmly, though her voice was also sickly and frail, as if it was a struggle to get any of those words out any louder than a whisper.

“Eh… Thank you?” Yi Wei turned around while extending her spiritual will to ensure that the sickly woman is unable to catch her by surprise, ‘Slightly unfair, but I’ll take it.’

“You’re welcome. You are from one of the other groups?”

“Yes. I am one of the servants under Yi Jiazhi, though we have also encountered Yi Fenwu, Yi Zheng, and may have located traces of Yi Tai.”

“Nothing regarding Yi Guanyu?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Shame. I had hoped to pay him back for a few things… Have your lot come together into one camp? Oh, and you can turn around now. I’ve finished changing.”

Yi Wei nodded, turning to find Yi Henghua in the silver robes with red lining and highlights of a middle-class member of the family, “We have, though I think you should talk to Yi Jiazhi about that.”

Her eyebrow rose ever so slightly, “Is he nearby?”

“Relatively. Do you mind if I shout?”

“… Go ahead…”

With the volume enhancement effect of Speaker’s Illusion, the voice-changing technique Yi Wei had used in the presence of Great Dark and Great Light, she raised her head, “YI JIAZHI! I’VE FOUND ANOTHER ONE!”

The shout echoed throughout the forest, slowly fading until it changed to silence.

“Another one? Rude…”

“Sorry, but I’ve found the other two groups as well, so…” Yi Wei shrugged.

Thus, the silence continued. And continued. She felt the gaze of Yi Henghua slowly drilling into her, until a reply was finally heard.

“Are you being serious? Again? In less than an hour? Did you steal another fruit from them?”

“Yes, yes, yes, and I didn’t steal anything!”

“…” a few seconds later, Yi Jiazhi burst out of the same bushes that Yi Wei had gone through earlier, “By the heavens, woman, are you some priceless treasure that constantly attracts people to itself? And, of all people, why have you found this worthless sack of flesh?”

Yi Henghua’s expression did not change, but a thin layer of dust-like energy gathered around her, “Hello to you too, scumbag. I see you haven’t improved in the slightest since we last spoke.”

“Why would I? You’re still at the second- no, I suppose you’d be at the third stage by now, no?”

“You’re that pathetically slow at your cultivation? I am at the peak of the fourth stage, so I’m still two stages below you. So, do you want to repeat our last duel?”

“F-fourth…” Yi Jiazhi suddenly backed down, turning away, “I suppose you’d want a place near our camp to settle down?”

“Yes, I’d like that.”

“Then that girl will bring you there.”

He pointed in the vague direction of Yi Wei, grumbling something under his breath while he stomped off as imposingly as he was able to. The two women watched him leave, before one turned to the other with a weak grin.

“What a coward. He had only been able to defeat me in the past due to the three-stage gap in our cultivation, so now that it has been narrowed… heh…”

The thin layer of planar energy receded into her body as she laughed silently.

‘Indeed, the difference between the two of them is large, and it is not in Yi Jiazhi’s favour. Despite his advantage in terms of stages, he has a lower quantity and purity of planar energy, and so far as I am able to tell from my earlier sparring sessions with him, he is not too skilled at the control of energy, meaning that he is also disadvantaged in that regard, further lowering the effectiveness of his cultivation,’ Yi Wei observed, ‘Meanwhile, Yi Henghua’s ability to finely manipulate her planar energy even under a certain degree of stress means that she will be far more capable in a fight.’

“So, where is that man’s vile nest?”

“Well… Our camp is in that direction,” she pointed towards the camp, “I have no clue where Yi Jiazhi has walked off to, though.”

However, her simple statement seemed to stun the pale woman, who frowned, “Are you certain about that?”

“Shouldn’t I be? I don’t have the best sense of direction, but I know where I’m going.”

“How far away from here?”

“On my typical walking speed, I’d say that it takes around half an hour from here.”

“Heh. I suppose I won’t have to move my tent too far… Where are you in relation to the tiered series of hills?”

“He put down his camp on the second lowest tier.”

“Heh heh… We’ve been walking past one another all this time, have we? In that case, don’t mind me. I know where to go. If you ever want to defect to my side, you’ll be able to find me again, I’m sure…”

She covered her legs with the dust-like planar energy and dashed away, almost as if she was being carried by the wind. Her speed of movement was incredible, especially for someone practising earth-type cultivation, which mostly focuses on damage and disruption with its common movement techniques.

‘So, to sum up my birthday so far, I have found three people who are likely deficient in their spiritual will (damage to, or significant issues within the mind can reduce the quantity and range of spiritual will available to a cultivator, thus implying that they aren’t too bright), one who is in such a poor condition that even the Thunder Lord wouldn’t look at her the wrong way, and I might even stumble across the last two. Not bad.’