Path of the Ascendant

They separated soon after, joining the departing groups as if they had been amongst them all this time. It had been decided that they should randomly scan past every person in their surroundings with spiritual will under the pretence of searching for any potential foes hiding in the area, and memorise those who appear to be exuding earth-type – or dual fire and water-type energy, if their theory was incorrect – energy, in order to compile a list once they come back together the next day.

Yi Wei decided to be more reckless with her own search, as her spiritual will seemed to be more difficult to observe than that of common cultivators, mostly so that she could focus on her own line of thought.

In her opinion, it was still a mistake to get to the investigation so late into the expedition. Now that so many people had died, if those were the only targets, then they would never find anything from now on, and by the time they return to the Yi District, if the elder hadn’t noticed anything, then they would have no chance to discover the identity of the mysterious assassin. Memory sealing and other methods, while rare, do exist, so even if they did track down the culprit, they would have no guarantee of being able to extract any useful information out of them, or who put them up to it.

One thing she did approve of was the fact that they were not getting any of the other group leaders involved. No matter who was involved in the assassinations, nor why, the motivation behind it could not be as simple as revenge or something of that nature. It was likely that it had something to do with the expedition, and thus the one who would benefit the most would be the group leaders, who could easily reward the assassin later, no matter which group they were in.

As a result, if they brought in anyone besides Yi Jiazhi, who initially brought these deaths to their attention, they would significantly increase the likelihood of including the perpetrator in their meetings, allowing the latter to pretend to assist in their investigation while also using the knowledge they gain to guide their assassin away from discovery.

Why was she, and the other investigators, sure that that there were two individuals involved?

The group leader would be under too much observation to do anything on their own, but no ordinary member of their group would benefit from killing someone from every group. The first would also receive the most attention from the elder, while the other could limit themselves either to their own group, or to every other group, as even if suspicion of foul play was cast toward them, it would be aimed at their leader, not them.

‘Actually, following that logic, the assassin would have to be from a different group than the one commanding them, as even if they were caught, the one suspected would be the wrong leader, and any deaths in that leader’s group would be interpreted as intentionally drawing the attention away from them,’ Yi Wei thought, looking forward to where the five team leaders walked near one another.

Yi Jiazhi looked around nervously, attracting the far more subtle attention of Yi Guanyu and Yi Fenwu, who couldn’t help but observe his actions.

Yi Tai and Yi Zheng were less interested, and instead took their time looking around for potential threats. Nonetheless, they occasionally glanced in Yi Jiazhi’s direction, sometimes by accident and other times simply because he made far too much noise with the constant shifting and shuffling of his robe.

She had almost begun to consider walking over and tapping him on the shoulder in order to explain to him why his behaviour seemed so suspicious, but, perhaps having been confronted with one too many gaze and glance, he finally calmed down, having switched his focus to staring straight ahead, which was a small improvement.

‘That man is not cut out for subtlety, which makes it all the less likely that he is involved in the assassination issue,’ she decided, ‘If he was, then he would have accidentally revealed it to everyone by now.’

Advancing a little closer to him, she reached out with her spiritual will.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, she was able to catch the man murmuring under his breath, “Yi Guanyu might not be the one, but his person may have been on the outside…”

He then proceeded to list off various observations and guesses on everyone near him, only barely keeping his voice quiet enough as to not allow those people to hear him. For those accompanying him, the lower-class members of the family that were part of his group and closest to his cultivation realm, it was extremely embarrassing, but they couldn’t say anything without drawing attention to his mutterings, forcing them to speed up slightly as to attempt to step onto his feet and distract him.

“What a moron…”

“What’re you thinking about, Yi Wei?” Yi Bai’s voice emerged from behind her, evidently having heard her murmur.

Since the last time they saw one another, she had ascended all the way to the seventh stage of the Planar Pool realm, making incredible progress for someone without many resources or, so far as Yi Wei had observed, without as much talent as most rapidly rising geniuses of the Yi family. Far more noticeably than that, however, her chest had somehow grown even further.

‘At the very least, it appears to be at the cost of her expression – it looks even fiercer and more aggressive than before, despite that nice smile,’ she noted, ‘And, she is an earth cultivator, isn’t she? Might as well include her on the list…’

“Hey, Yi Bai. Had any luck in the past month?”

“Eh, kinda. You might’ve noticed already,” Yi Bai grinned, letting out a wisp of earth-type planar energy that then quickly dissipated, “I got my hands on a dissipating planar shard, so I had to absorb it.”

“That’s nice. So far, your luck hasn’t been half bad,” she replied, noting how the woman had somehow progressed at a comparable speed to herself, in spite of the environment not being particularly advantageous to one’s cultivation, “Do you think you’ll accidentally stumble into some great treasure chamber or hidden area with someone’s inheritance when we enter the hidden grounds – provided we do enter the hidden grounds?”

“How the fuck would I know? Hope so. If I do, I can promise that I’ll bring you the least shit thing in there, maybe two if there are a lot of them.”

“I’d prefer it if those things were just items that you do not benefit from, like something intended for metal or water cultivators, whichever one I am currently,” Yi Wei said, “Though you don’t have to do something like that if you’d prefer to sell those items off instead. Unless I help you get those things, of course, in which case I do want something.”

Yi Bai nodded, “Sure, I’ll do that. By the way, did you get blamed for the deaths again?”

“Thankfully, no. Have they – I mean, has Yi Jiazhi – found someone else to blame, or to pursue?” she inquired, due to the strange degree of correlation that appeared to exist between the two.

“Eh… Not so far as I can tell. That prick’s been surprisingly quiet on the matter as of late,” the woman frowned, making that angry look appear even more intense than before, “If not for the fact that his thoughts are more obvious than the influence his dick must have on him, then I would have guessed he had something to do with things all along.”

‘So even she has figured things out. Clearly, that gathering is far less secret than they hope, especially considering the fact that Yi Jiazhi is in charge. Had he been literally anyone else, it would have been far more difficult to guess that something was going on.’

“Anyway, what d’ya think is gonna be in there, in the beam? Who do you think it belonged to?”

“Well, speaking in terms of geography, I seem to recall that this valley is in the same direction as the ancient Kong District was. I’m not sure if this is the correct location for it, but if there was one family that this place could belong to, it would be the Kong family. Besides that, the location of the beam, and the connection to two large illusory arrays, would imply some degree of significance, so even if these are not the hidden grounds, then they have to be something worthwhile,” Yi Wei explained, pretending that her theory regarding the Kong family wasn’t founded purely based on her encounter with the illusory replica of Kong Dong Ming, whose techniques she was unable to replicate after all of this time, “Though it is a little strange to have such an enormous beam pointing in the direction of the hidden grounds, it is important to remember that their initial function wouldn’t have been as something for us to loot, but rather as a safe place for the family, or perhaps a treasury to challenge their children with, so it would make perfect sense to point it out to them once they had completed the other tasks.”

“Eh? What other tasks? Was that illusory realm arena thing a task?”

“Who knows? Maybe we were caught in the traps, and someone else managed to activate all four of those beacons that created the beam,” Yi Wei suggested, “After all, three of the four had somehow been activated without our knowledge, and when our group got to the fourth, it seemed to complete on its own.”

Yi Bai nodded, though it didn’t seem like she had understood much, as her eyes clearly radiated confusion while they scoured their surroundings.

‘Actually, this is something to consider. The first, second and fourth Lock Obelisk were easy to access, relatively speaking. When I had entered the third illusory array, however, there were countless illusory realms within, and several layers of challenge, not to mention that strange cave with the sobbing woman. Why was it so different from the rest, and which level of difficulty and complexity will be present within the Kong Holy Grounds?’ she asked herself during the break in the conversation, gazing towards the bright purple beam in the distance.

They continued walking until the end of the day, when it was decided that it would be better to be rested but somewhat late to enter the beam of light, rather than getting there early but without much energy to combat whatever threats might have been drawn to it, or out of it.

Once the camp was set up, everyone hurried to fall asleep as quickly as they could so that they could rise as early as possible the next morning.

For a reason that she didn’t bother explaining, Yi Bai decided to settle down her tent near Yi Wei, where they ended up having a small snack together while having what might be described as ‘girl talk’, which consisted mostly of discussion about their hair, make-up, bodies and whatever else they managed to include within their list of topics.

Ultimately, they fell asleep within their own tents, their stomachs full of dried meat and bread.

Although cultivators had many advantages, they were unable to preserve food for long periods of time without accessing space-related treasures, which could be made in such a fashion that they do not maintain the passage of time, or otherwise allow for it to progress at a rate different to what the world outside experiences. The best example of this is the spatial storage item once used by the Yi City, and is one of the few that is known to cease the progression of time entirely.

Lesser treasures are few and far between, though perhaps the most famous one belongs to the Ning District, where the Horn of Wealth is passed on to the Patriarch of the Ning family. There are many rumours regarding the contents of the horn, but no-one had ever revealed the truth.

All that was known was the fact that it was not something to be shown to the world lightly. Perhaps it had an immeasurably priceless artefact, hence the name of the Horn of Wealth, or a collection of cultivation materials or techniques, or, according to an old rumour by the descendant of the Chen family, all it contains is an ancient set of great arts materials, like a pill refining furnace, regular furnace and anvil, inscription knife and surface, formation array flags – the intended tool for constructing arrays, rather than random rocks and objects found lying around – and a set of talisman papers and ink.

None of those rumours were ever confirmed, even when the Horn of Wealth was once taken from the Patriarch and carried around for over twenty years by a thief.

For whatever reason, this thief never spoke about the things he found within, and even more strangely, he returned the horn after those twenty years, without any reports of anything within having been lost or taken. That same thief was also found dead less than a month afterwards, with seeming signs of self-inflicted harm.

It was all rather peculiar, but the undeniable fact was that it was a spatial artefact, and one that could slow down time on the objects within, with the theorised rate of time being six minutes outside being equal to one minute on the inside.

Even with such an impressive item, it would only be possible to preserve food hunted or found recently, as anything that could last a day would only last a total of six days within the horn, if it could even store food. With such an item, it would be impossible to bring along enough food to eat something fresh every single day for two years. As they rushed here without proper preparation, they lacked the supplies needed to prepare a proper meal, and thus they were forced to rely on what was left of their initial dried food supplies, which they had brought along all the way from the Yi District, and made a little more with the spare meat from their hunts.

The next day, they awoke and set out the moment that their leaders issued the order. That happened more than four hours after she awoke, but she still pretended to be sleepy as to not appear strange.

Having completed a great deal of the journey on their previous day of intense walking, it only took a few hours, during which the initial faint dawn light faded and was replaced with the steadier, brighter sunlight of the afternoon.

It was then that they finally saw the beam up close. Just as expected, it was absolutely enormous, the diameter being equal to a large lake, with it being centred on a hill which seemed far too round and smooth to be natural, to the extent that it was already noted down on every map that had been made of the area, both before and after their arrival. Now, however, in the middle of that endless flood of purple, was a large, floating globe of energy, undulating wildly, without any degree of sense.

Within, a small sliver of light could be seen, bursting out every now and then to illuminate the grass with an amber glow. Yi Wei channelled a wisp of planar energy into both eyes and saw the glimpse of another world on the inside, with dark blue floors and walls and a single, bright point of orange somehow illuminating all of it without any shadows.

The sights, despite how limited her vision of them was, were curious, with perfectly straight edges on every single surface, and with every surface seeming to be made on a perfectly square grid.

This style of construction, besides being highly improbable in the real world to due the limitations of architecture and those who design it, was never seen outside of illusory realms, and they appeared within them at all due to the issue of creating worlds with miniature spaces.

If a blacksmith, inscription master and array arranger came together to create a spatial realm that was identical to the world around it, they could do as little as taking a small portion of reality and placing it into the spatial realm, but the moment one wanted to change the world’s structure in some way, placing a chunk of reality into that world meant risking the collapse of one or the other, the consequences of which can range from something as simple as requiring a quick repair of the spatial array to the destruction of everything involved in its creation, in addition to those who were making it and a large chunk of terrain around the workshop used.

Essentially, it was far, far safer, albeit a little more difficult, to create a world from scratch. It did not need to be as complex as reality and could be focused on performing the one function they needed to perform, rather than existing in a complete state when the vast majority of the world’s natural properties were superfluous.

This philosophy gave rise to the simplified nature of spatial realms. Why recreate gravity in its entirety, when you can apply it only to humans and allow the rest of the world to float casually within a void?

What was the reason for recreating the complexity of any material or object, when it was far simpler and far easier to create something without any restrictions or limitations, and to assign it only the properties that were needed, while simply stating other ones? For instance, if someone wanted to create an arena for themselves to train and battle, then why consider the durability of the floor, or how it would interact with the cold, when it would be far quicker to simply craft a flat plane that is unbreakable without changing the laws of the world itself?

In fact, there is quite a lot of laziness and timesaving within the many practises of cultivators and cultivation, as well as the great arts, which, despite their name, had quite a number of rushed traditions that significantly harm the overall product.

Back to the events at hand, their procession stopped at the very edge of the beam of light, for they could not tell, without pushing someone in, whether this violet glow would be harmful to them.

“So, what do we do now?” Yi Jiazhi asked, almost certainly to suppress the inner excitement and relief from finally being able to distract himself and the others, “Do we have someone here that wants to end their lives?”

“There’s no need for any of that,” Yi Guanyu said, “Yi Ping, did you find something suitable?”

A man stepped out of Yi Guanyu’s group with an object that was covered with a dark cloth, which he removed to reveal a recently manufactured cage that held a small, meek planar rabbit of the first realm.

“Yes, I did.”

“Logically speaking, this shouldn’t have any particular target, so if it specifically harms those with planar energy, or living beings, then this animal should be harmed as well,” Yi Guanyu explained to the watchful gazes of the other four groups, “If it does not suffer, then it can be safe to assume that we won’t be hurt by the light.”

“Fair enough. It’ll be your pet that gets harmed, so go ahead! Toss that fluffy thing in there,” Yi Fenwu ordered, making her way over to Yi Tai, presumably to stuff his arm in between her breasts again.

After receiving a nod of affirmation from his leader, that man moved to the front, stepping up to the very edge of the beam before opening the cage and, rather forcefully, tossing out the planar beast within.

It entered the violet light amidst a collective holding of breath… and was unharmed.

“Phew~, that was tense… for some reason. This means that we can go in, right?” Yi Jiazhi asked, being hesitant to enter before someone else.

“Yes, it does. We must examine the entrance closely first,” stated Yi Tai, reaching into the violet with his free hand. It was also unharmed, so he stepped forward at the same time as Yi Fenwu, who was still clinging onto him.

The others, having seen that none of them suffered from negative effects, followed suit, entering the purple glow and letting it wash over them. The last person to enter was Yi Wei, who was wary of the light but also wanted as much time as possible to investigate it and figure out whether it was in any way connected to the violet energy generated by the Kong Mental Arts, but her scanning via spiritual will provided little information other than the fact that this was mostly a visual aid, rather than a siphon of energy into the hidden grounds.

 

Just like the third Lock Obelisk array, the undulating globe that functioned as the entrance to the Kong Holy Ground was different from every direction. With every step one took, the sight they saw through the small gap within the portal changed, though almost all of them contained the same square surfaces and all could see that one bright spot of light within.

“How should we do things, darling? Would you like my group and yours to come together and proceed through one entrance, or…” she looked around, then spoke in a quieter voice, “Would you like to be alone with-”

“It would be best for everyone to split up and go through each entrance. Whoever finds any treasure can have first pick of it!” Yi Zheng interrupted them and declared, “I believe this will be for the best.”

He looked at the other four leaders, clearly expecting them to agree, which they eventually did, though not without pouting, silence, confusing murmuring and a few dozen luck rituals from Yi Fenwu, Yi Tai, Yi Jiazhi and Yi Guanyu, in that precise order.