Path of the Ascendant

Wei Yi extinguished the iridescent physique energy around her hands, bringing it back into her meridians. Although most observers would not notice this, a significant quantity of that energy had been drained in the instant that she pierced the giant’s dark veil of physique energy. It was naturally not as costly to her energy as it would have been if she had an ordinary physique or no semblance of physique cultivation, but it was still more than she would have liked to expend on one person.

She approached the giant man and knelt down, poking his muscular arm while she scanned him with spiritual will.

‘This is what Impermanent Permanence- the third fucking realm looks like? Very interesting-’ her brows furrowed as she noticed that as her spiritual will drew close to some of the physique energy that still remained within his body, there was a slight – almost negligible – response.

Naturally, she brought more of her spiritual will towards that energy, but was met with no greater response, so she attempted this with her other forms of energy. Killing intent had no greater effect, but the instant that her True Ascendant physique energy came into contact with the refined Grim Mortality energy, the latter was drawn towards it, and when she permitted it to come into contact with her physique energy, it was absorbed into it, sinking into the blinding sunlight almost as naturally as light would put out the dark.

Through her physique energy, the Grim Mortality energy entered her body and was seemingly digested by the sunlight. As it was absorbed, her own physique energy was bolstered, slowly growing in density and might until it reached what one might deem the ninth stage of the Stable Form realm. However, she could also tell that it was not the only change.

In order to confirm one of her theories, she brought out her physique energy and willed it to manifest in the same form that the giant had previously showcased.

To her pleasant surprise, she witnessed it forming a thin veil around herself, one that was brighter and thinner that the giant’s, but as sharp, ‘Huh, that is beyond my expectations. Either I am not limited by my physique for whatever reason, or, in the more likely case, this True Ascendant physique is more impressive than something that simply enhances my physical abilities significantly, and burns away pretty much everything within the world… I see it was already impressive, huh…’

She revoked her physique energy and pretended that she had not accidentally discovered an incredible thing, standing up and heading over to the other bodies while instructing Meng Chu’s to collect every book and item of value and collect it in one place to make it easier to bring them away.

At each body, she brought her physique energy into their meridians and drained what physique energy remained, solidifying her current physique stage, but the majority of the remnant physique energies were clearly either insufficiently pure or powerful to give her any new abilities. Nevertheless, it did give her the opportunity to learn that her physique energy had no such effect on yin-type energy, preventing her from absorbing the likes of the Yin Physique. Whether or not that would increase the quantity of yin within her body, it was a shame to miss out on half of the energy within the slain bandits.

Shortly after she was finished with that process, after she managed to loot all of the bodies that she did not burn with her True Ascendant energy, she came to the collection pile of tomes and items.

“Boss, this is everything we’ve found. Is this what we needed?”

“Let me take a look,” Wei Yi replied, though her spiritual will was already half-way through scanning all of the books. After she was done, and when she already knew the answer to the question, she asked, “Was there one called Storm of Vengeance?”

Ah Qiu nodded, passing her one of the manuals, “There it is.”

“Good,” she nodded, flipping through the book quickly, “Stuff these into bags and we will return them to Beast’s Rest. Are there any traces of the excavation sites that they used?”

“Yeah, the… eh… fourth… tower has a basement thing.”

“Uh-huh. Bring me to it.”

The man took her to the fourth tower, where they found a small set of stairs into the ground that brought them into a cave with a set of bones placed around the edges of a round underground chamber. Every single one of the bones was obsidian-black and radiated constant killing intent, acting unlike either type of bone that Wei Yi had previously encountered.

“I will take a look at this myself. Handle the preparation for the transportation of the things we have gathered,” she said, waiting for the man to leave before approaching one of the black bones, ‘These people are not killing intent cultivators, and yet they have such a number of items relating to killing intent, arranged specifically for their own purposes? Furthermore, these bones are neither storing killing intent nor are they able to take it in, and simply focus it onto one place…’

Within her mind, she opened one of the books that described the practises and culture of the physique cultivators of the Great Bone Lake and found a passage that described the incredibly hostile conditions of the Lake.

According to the book, every person within the Great Bone Lake was constantly bombarded by such a great quantity of killing intent that they could be crushed in an instant if they lack a sufficiently powerful physique, and that effect is achieved through the black bones that surround and fill the Great Bone Lake. They also belong to the beast, but they do not hold or allow for the circulation of killing intent, instead controlling its flow and concentration. With such a large quantity of bones simultaneously affecting the crimson energy of the prison realm, that killing intent becomes unpalatable to most killing intent cultivators and functions as an exaggerated and extreme form of a gravity-changing array, applying an identical amount of pressure onto every part of the body at all times.

‘So, they have either borrowed a few of the bones from the Lake, or they have obtained some of their own black bones to construct a sort of array…’

She steeled herself and stepped into the bone array. The deeper crimson light pressed down upon her, acting like the gravity-changing room within Shi Luo Feng’s training hall, although it was only twice as powerful as usual, while those rooms went up to a five-times increase. However, the major difference was that her True Ascendant energy instantly grew excited and accelerated its flow through her meridians. It grew more concentrated, slowly but surely, stabilising her current realm in her physique cultivation.

‘This is not as quick as draining the physique energy from someone in the third realm, but if I collect enough of these, it could certainly prove to be an efficient method of cultivation. If I am, at some point, capable of defeating everyone within the Great Bone Lake, I might take all of those bones and concentrate them onto one point, using all of their power at once.’

Wei Yi came up to each bone and pulled it out of the wall, collecting them into a bag that she then placed on her back, beside the spear. Without a particular arrangement, their effects were scattered and could thus do nothing but cause minor discomfort to those in her vicinity.

Besides these items, everything that could be found with little effort had already been dug up, and her spiritual will could not discover anything within the rock and dirt of the cave, even when she stretched her spiritual will to its limit. Due to the constant winds of the crimson realm, the shifting of the sand and dirt that lay on the world’s surface, most of the items that had been present on the battlefield were now buried beneath the ground, and so if they had the time to dig out the space beneath the other towers, they might be able to find more remains, ancient weapons and armour and technique manuals.

That was not something she could do for now, nor did she have any particular interest in digging through what was essentially an enormous graveyard, so she returned to the surface.

There, Meng Chu’s men had gathered up most of the loot from the six towers into a few large piles, with weapons, armour, books and miscellaneous objects being split into individual piles for the purposes of clarity and organisation. As the majority of the weapons and armour were made from the black bones of the Beast, they were still in good condition, while the books looked slightly worse due to all of their pages being covered in crimson dust and dirt.

‘Still, the fact that the physique cultivators didn’t try to eat the books is good enough,’ she thought, glancing at Ah Qiu for no particular reason, ‘To obtain this much with no casualties and only minor injuries ought to be good enough for that man.’

“So, are you lot done?”

“Yes, boss!” all of the soldiers replied, those few who had not yet brought their findings to the pile accelerating significantly to make sure that their words were true.

Wei Yi naturally noticed this but felt that it wasn’t worth pointing out so long as they were doing their best. If they had been doing something else, perhaps attempting to imitate the physique cultivators and their game of book-cards, at that point she would have most certainly killed a few of them to motivate the rest of them.

“Very well. Let’s get going. Five of you can stay behind and observe – if someone attempts to capture the battlefield again, report back and do not attempt to engage unless you are certain that they are inferior to you in combat. If they’re just some common traveller, you can kill them too.”

 

They returned to Beast’s Rest with all of the items they found, but while Meng Chu’s men went to their leader to report their success and bring the Storm of Vengeance technique to him, Wei Yi slid away into the depths of the underground tunnels and into a chamber that was not currently use and yet was large enough for her purposes. She placed a number of defensive pseudo-inscriptions on the two entrances and then placed her bag on the ground, removing the black bones from within.

She arranged them along the walls in such a way that would concentrate any killing intent within the area onto the place she intended to use for future research, work and experimentation.

After standing on that point for a few minutes, she decided that it was insufficient, so she created a few more arrays all around that central point in the chamber, activating them all with her spiritual will and intensifying them to the absolute maximum.

When she returned to her previous position, the gravity and pressure had intensified from being twice as powerful to almost three and a half times as strong, with the effect on her physique energy being similar albeit slightly reduced. The fact that these bones had a different effect to simple energy-gathering arrays was curious, and something she wished to inspect, but it was sufficient for now.

For a little while, she sat on the spot, raising her physique energy to the outer layer of her body as to temper them more quickly.

Then, she drew the True Ascendant energies out of her body and formed the veil of the Grim Mortality physique, expending several percent of her total pool of energy in order to stabilise it amidst the concentrated crimson light of killing intent.

‘It was not a temporary effect, then. That is fortunate, and extremely nice to learn, as if this is something I can continue to use permanently, I will have an extreme advantage over everyone else. Now, if the effects of the physique are also maintained to the same, or greater, extent as the person I had taken it from, then obtaining the body of someone in one of the upper realms of physique cultivation with an advanced physique could make me nigh invulnerable.’

She took a segment of the veil and forced it into the ground, watching as it cut through the tough stone with minimal difficulty and effort.

‘I haven’t had the opportunity to see how well that giant was able to cut stone, but it is still formidable even if it is inferior,’ she thought, allowing the segment to return to the overall defensive veil, ‘The only other physique that seems to function with what I have absorbed so far is the Golden Form physique, which…’

Retracting the protective veil, she willed her physique energy to transform her skin.

Bright sunlight appeared around her and sunk into her skin, seemingly disappearing completely upon doing so. However, her skin did change, darkening ever so slightly, making her look ever more out of place in a world that had never seen the sun.

‘That… is not how I expected that function. I can’t help but feel that the differences between the two physique effects are rather arbitrary, almost like they were designed by someone who did not want me, or any other True Ascendant physique owners, walking around in golden form a majority of their time,’ Wei Yi thought, despite how silly the very idea seemed, ‘Naturally, that is unlikely to be the case, unless the heavens are very particular about their aesthetic sense. After all, this doesn’t seem to be an effect of the mysterious characters, which are still refusing to react to anything I do.’

The cost of physique energy to maintain the Golden Form – or Tanned Form, in her case – was surprisingly minimal, so she decided to keep it active and stock up on blood wine and dried food.

Although she wanted to use any of the other physique abilities, including the All-Seeing Eye ability to create an illusory eye and observe her surroundings from above, but even if she would eventually be able to activate it after absorbing more energy from other owners of the physique, it was not something she was able to do at this time.

Thus, with nothing more to do, she stood up, left the killing intent concentration point and changed back into the Crimson Robe of the Third Arrival, cleansing her body and tying her hair while she had been undressed.

Wei Yi found her way back to the primary chambers of Meng Chu’s faction, and entered the room where she thought she would be most likely to find him.

“- and now that the redhead isn’t here, we can-”

“Dugu Wei, since you share a character of your name with me, you could at the very least remember it,” Wei Yi interrupted the couple as they were lying on the top of a large table, with Qiu Sheng on the bottom and Dugu Wei on top, their hair and clothing dishevelled, making their intentions about as clear as they could possibly be, “Also, tell me where I can find Meng Chu before you get back to it. Remember, I don’t have an issue with your activities, it is your current boss that does.”

“Ugh… He should be in third meeting room, down to the left. Do you really not care?”

“Why would I? It’s not my time you’re wasting, is it? Now, if I had been your boss, then that would be a completely different situation. Fortunately for you, that is not the case, so pray that I never get placed above you on the ladder, alright?”

She did not wait for their response and left, heading towards the room they had informed her of. Within, Meng Chu sat in the corner, his attention focused solely on the manual within his hands.

It was obviously the Storm of Vengeance technique, for that was the one that he was most interested in from the very start. Due to it being a technique that was created by his ancestor, it would undoubtedly suit him more than others, and since it was also something created by the mighty Meng Qi, the Thunder Lord, the Seventh of Meng and one of the greatest fighters during the War of Yin, whatever that had been about, it was bound to be beneficial to anyone who claimed it. Wei Yi knew that well, for she had a copy of her own, kept safely in the Augur’s Library.

After a while, he finished it and then flipped all the way back to the beginning, where he began to read all the way through again. He did that again and again, repeating the process several times until he slammed the book shut and placed it onto the table in front of himself with a sigh, his head dropping onto the same book soon after.

“Is there something you do not understand within the book?”

Meng Chu did not bother to raise his head, “The writing is difficult to understand, and the principles are clearly written for someone of the Planar Continents, not the prison realm.”

“Not surprising, seeing as your ancestor did not come from this realm. I could explain those parts to you, the things on page 4 in particular, but there is something that I would like to discuss with you first,” Wei Yi said, approaching him, “I seem to recall a certain agreement.”

“So do I… You’re not going to take these things away from me, are you?”

She shook her head, “I would never prevent my forces from growing in power, not when I have such great ambition. Furthermore, I have already scanned through every single book and item obtained from the battlefield, so taking it away from you would simply provoke you for no particular reason. In fact, I have no wish to take away everything from you, as I might have explained before. You’ve been handling things for quite some time, so you will be better at it than me.”

“Truth be told, my memory regarding actual events can be somewhat faulty… In that case, what is it that you want me to do?”

“I want you to keep acting as you currently are, except my orders and intentions will take precedence over yours. When I want you to make a particular decision or purchase, you will. When I need you to fight a certain faction or surrender to a different one, then you will. Naturally, I will give orders to your current subordinates when I see fit, but for now, you may have free reign.”

The man frowned, sitting still for a long time before raising his head just enough to nod.

“That does make sense… As a leader, those are the things you are supposed to do… Very well then, Wei Yi. I did agree to that deal, and I did get the thing that I wanted from your involvement,” Meng Chu said, “I will tell Qiu Sheng and Dugu Wei, who will share your new role with the rest of my faction. If someone refuses to obey your commands, you can naturally beat them up, or get someone else to correct their behaviour. For now, though, could you leave me alone? I want to rest for a while, and your presence is… rather worrying and terrifying.”

“Sure, I can do that. Do remember that I was able to predict almost everything that occurred at the battlefield before going there, and my predictive abilities will improve as I work on them. Have no doubt that under me, your faction will hold Beast’s Rest, and may play a significant role in the new Yi City.”

She left with those words, returning to her future study to incorporate the killing intent methods she had found in the battlefield, and to make use of the few written things she had found regarding physique cultivation.