Path of the Ascendant

‘This is worse than I had initially assumed,’ Wei Yi thought, carefully examining the mark she had left on the wall, ‘Frankly, I don’t know what I expected to achieve from modifying something at the level of five or six stars with a theoretical knowledge of only three. This isn’t like the Condensed Formation Body, which used low-level principles, some luck, the unique elements of cosmic energy and a slight misunderstanding of several elements to create four more meridian networks, but a principle and construction of six stars. The fact that it is still beneficial to me is outright miraculous.’

She carefully placed White Echo onto the ground, making sure that it was facing away from her, ‘My original intent was to create an extension of the actual blade, much like how one might create a few plates of artefact armour that would provide the full resilience and protection of the materials they are made from while not restricting movement as much as real armour would, but I appear to have created…’

Unfortunately, no matter how much she searched for a word or term that would sufficiently describe the effects of White Echo, she was unable to find something satisfactory.

Due to some mishap in the design and creation of the dagger, it now contained and amplified killing intent with a certain property that not only made it exist in one place for longer periods of time, but also allowed it to gather terror or shock at the scene within and use it to reinforce itself. It would do no harm to the owner of the killing intent, as that would be outright absurd, but unless it was specifically aimed not to harm any particular individual, the aura of killing intent would instantly affect them the moment they entered it.

This effect was further amplified against those that the user – in this case, Wei Yi – considered to be hostile, meaning that had Dugu Wei been truly hated by her, she wouldn’t have gotten away with simple mental trauma, but might have even suffered great physical harm as well.

‘With this information, my plans can change a little. I could place down a number of these and easily eliminate large quantities of enemy soldiers, though having all of them die through mysterious means would not be conducive to my plans,’ she thought, briefly considering whether to tear off a few pieces of her crimson robes and fashion them into a sort of scabbard for the knife, ‘Although I can still use this in a number of places… If I am to do so, I should hurry.’

She decided to compromise on the topic of a sheath for the dagger and used a common spare piece of cloth instead, making doubly sure that there was no killing intent stored within the blade before doing anything with it. It would be extremely dangerous of the entire faction if she accidentally left endless pockets of killing intent scattered around the underground passages.

It would have been fine if these spots were noticeable, since even though this would make it far more difficult to use them during battle, it would permit her subordinates to avoid them without her help.

However, the plane of killing intent she left behind upon her first use of White Echo was so difficult to notice, even for her, that she had no clue that it was there until one of her vice-leaders suffered greatly due to it. If all of her abilities had similar repercussions in the future, it would be extremely inconvenient at best, and incredibly dangerous and self-harming at worst. ‘With more practise and more experience, I should learn exactly what caused this strange result, but for now, if I make any more weapons or techniques, I must be incredibly careful with using them lest I forever mar this entire prison realm with deadly pockets of invisible hatred.’

Wei Yi left the room and returned to the armoury, where Dugu Wei had already finished instructing the guards regarding the orders they had been provided. Based on what she overheard, it seemed that Meng Chu had successfully given away all of the truly difficult and dangerous missions to Ding Wen while keeping the easy ones. She stood around to be sure that Dugu Wei did not make any mistakes in her judgement of who to give which missions, then turned around and left the underground passages.

As always, she dressed in her casual clothes, the crimson robes wrapped around her waist in such a manner that made them appear insignificant to most people who looked upon them. This wasn’t the perfect method for concealing it, but it worked on the common majority.

It was the common majority that she could hope to fool, as those in the higher realms, including Searing Torch and Hatred Augur, would be able to detect the concentrated presence of her killing intent with their basic senses. At that point, whether she had the crimson robes on or not, people would naturally assume her to be dangerous, and the possession of the robes would do nothing but amplify that impression.

She travelled to the edge of Beast’s Rest, where one of Shi Luo Feng’s businesses was located and removed White Echo from the cloth sheath, carefully filling it with just enough killing intent before swinging it twice in two very specific locations. Once she was absolutely sure that the plane of invisible energy was in the correct place, she covered it in cloth and left.

After repeating this process in a number of different areas and locations, she was satisfied with her work and headed to the area that had the greatest likelihood of failure to support whoever would be fighting there.

 

“You’ve heard your orders. We’ll be raiding the Cold Grounds Pavilion, and we must be in and out within thirty minutes!” Ru Rong repeated, her lips failing to contain an excited grin underneath the dark cloth that covered all but her eyes, “All of you remember the instructions that you’ve been given, correct?”

None of them said anything, simply nodding as to not alert anyone in the vicinity.

Ru Rong nodded back before making a simple hand gesture for them to begin. Eight figures, all of them dressed in dark and concealing clothing, rushed through the back alleys and empty streets and quickly came up to their target, a small building that primarily traded in a dust that could be poured into blood wine and other drinks to make them colder, but also contained a number of Shi Luo Feng’s stored resources at the same time.

There was nothing exceptionally valuable there, as it could be raided at any time by thieves who wanted to make a small amount of money from selling the dust themselves but intruding and destroying these materials would still make an impact when combined with every other raid.

For a few minutes, they hid in a dark corner, waiting for the workers there to get to the right place, then sprung out and snuck inside quietly.

Obviously, they could not remove every single item from storage and take it with them to bolster the supplies of the faction, so they recalled the list provided to them by Wei Yi and Dugu Wei and picked out the items on them, throwing everything else into an untidy pile and starting a fire to consume it. The process took several minutes, after which they instantly fled the scene with bags on their backs.

Miraculously, they did not locate the small group of body cultivators that Wei Yi had initially predicted, so they were able to get away and move on safely, not knowing that those physique cultivators had been incapacitated on a nearby street due to a strange field of formless energy. When they managed to figure out where it was located, leave it and then recover from its effects, it was far too late to do anything but report it to their superiors, but the second that they wished to do so, their minds were invaded yet again by a second plane of killing intent that they had not foreseen.

 

“Shit! Boss, something’s happening! Our warehouses are being raided by someone!”

Several hours after the raiding had begun, the first report was finally brought to Shi Luo Feng, who didn’t even look at the person reporting it. Instead, she reached out with her killing intent and latched it onto the messenger, draining all of his attributes in a matter of seconds, leaving nothing but a dried husk on the ground.

Her skin gained a slight degree of moisture and the colour of her eyes shifted ever so slightly from a mixture of grey and violet to also include a hint of brown, but no other changes to her otherwise perfect form occurred.

“Those fucking bastards… I thought those two would never dare… What encouraged those fucking cu- That strange woman from a year ago! She must have given away my secret to the other two factions!” she exclaimed, slamming her fists onto her desk as she stood up, “If that’s how it’s going to be, then I see no reason to hold back! I’ll dominate this fucking shitty curse once and for all and escape this prison realm!”

She stepped away from the desk and left the room, not caring that she stepped on the dried husk of a body, scattering it into sickly dust.

After picking up an absolutely enormous hatred blade, which she was only able to bring with her by dragging it along the ground, Shi Luo Feng grabbed one of the closest people to her by the throat and drained him with the Magnanimous Leech right in front of everyone else who was present at the base before tossing the empty shell that remained at them.

“Listen up, you tasteless morsels! We are going to go to war!”

 

A pitch-black hatred blade, enveloped in blue and red light, clashed with a pure manifestation of killing intent summoned by an unknown warrior. Wang Shi pushed him back, but only barely, as her physical strength was significantly inferior to the bulky man that opposed her.

‘Even when he’s poisoned, he’s still this strong?’ she asked herself, narrowly dodging another blow, ‘With all of my men occupied, there’s no way-’

She wanted to hit herself for having such a thought, but she was forced to satisfy herself by stabbing at her opponent instead, her blade narrowly piercing his incredibly powerful flesh and muscle. Before she was able to pull back, the man grabbed it in spite of the dense coat of hatred energy that surrounded it before pulling it out of himself and then pushing it to the side, his strength completely overwhelming Wang Shi’s.

Without any hesitation, she abandoned her sword, allowing it to be tossed aside, and instead took the opportunity to lower one of her hands to her stomach and remove a thick clump of killing intent, which she threw out almost like a stone. It pierced the man’s flesh and lodged itself within him, slowly seeping into every connected blood vessel to spread all over his body.

The man noticed this, and just as quickly as she allowed her sword to be taken from her, he reached down with his empty hand and thrust his fingers through his flesh, grasping the infected part of his body and tearing it away without any expression on his face.

‘Holy shit, that’s insane! I’ve been scarred enough, but I’d never go this far!’

What Wang Shi was unaware of was that he had only recently witnessed the full power of the Magnanimous Leech and deemed that suffering its effects would be a far lesser pain than tearing out part of his stomach. Even if he had been forced to tear off certain private parts, he would probably deem it to be a worthy sacrifice in comparison to being dried into nothing but a set of bones and flakes of skin.

He swung at her once more with the power of the Searing Torch realm, his right hand grasping the blade of pure crimson tightly, without showing any weakness despite his injury.

At this moment, his eyes suddenly dimmed as his mind was pulled into a terrifying realm, a great shadow looking down upon him with a simple-seeming dagger in her hand. However, the instant that it moved, he felt as if his entire being was cut into a hundred pieces before he could even contemplate evasion or escape.

Despite his physical body being completely unaffected, it was more than enough of an opportunity for Wang Shi to thrust another clump of blue and red killing intent into the man’s eyes, instantly flooding them with her energy. He had no chance to consider tearing them out as well before the energy spread to his head and brain, stunning his thoughts further and plunging him deeper into the realm conjured by Wei Yi’s killing intent. The shadow in front of him grew larger and mightier, the knife gained a certain vibrant glint, and the entire realm gained depth and realism.

In such a situation, he had no chance of survival.

 

The team that Ding Wen sent, led by a pale, thin man carrying his weight in valuables and artefacts all over his body, approached their target with confidence. Although they had not been present at the scene of the negotiations between Ding Wen and Meng Chu, they were well aware that their leader had succeeded in taking many of the easier tasks from the latter, leaving them with easy missions only.

As a result, though they sported such an excessive quantity of items on them, the inscriptions and arrays on them ranging from simple defensive ones to incredibly powerful offensive inscriptions, they felt that they would be safe even if they approached their objective naked.

Their target was a simple member of Shi Luo Feng’s faction, a weak and defenceless secretary for one of the training halls that belonged to her faction, and based on the information provided to them by their investigators and some random data owned by Meng Chu’s faction, they knew that they would be travelling on an empty street at a time that most would be resting, or otherwise unavailable, giving them the perfect opportunity to take her out.

If they had the time, they could look into performing some other acts prior to her death.

“There! She’s there!” one of them exclaimed, pointing to a figure that approached the alleyway in which they hid.

After quietening down and waiting for a little longer, the secretary finally neared their position, standing right in front of their hiding places without any recognition of this fact, making her the perfect target for this attack, for they suspected that they could follow behind her from now on without her noticing, but this was not something they could experiment on now.

They leapt out of their hiding spot and surrounded the woman in a single second, pushing themselves to the limit despite the absolute lack of a necessity to do so. She reacted just as slowly as one might expect from a common mortal that had barely touched killing intent cultivation, until that changed.

Without any warning, she tore off her hair, revealing that it was a wig, simultaneously using her other hand to tear off her upper layer of clothing. Besides showcasing that her chest and face were that of a man, it displayed a far more extreme and terrifying sight when every part of his exposed flesh also tore and twisted, his face opening along the middle into an abyss full of blood and otherworldly crimson, from which many tendrils, both real and illusory, shot out.

Before they could react, they latched onto some of them, the real ones siphoning their blood and viscera while the illusory drained away all forms of their energy, seemingly including their lifespan, for with every second that they were connected to a soldier, their features aged and twisted.

“What is this shit? They never said-” the gold and treasure-clad warrior exclaimed, his words being interrupted when he saw another tendril appear from the monster’s open maw and fly towards him.

He did not dare assume that he could withstand it when the rest of his warriors could do nothing, and instead dodged to the side while also slashing at the vile, physical tendril with his blade, hoping that it was not a product of some incredibly disgusting physique or cultivation technique that could make it impervious to bladed weaponry.

 

“Mistress, must I-”

“You worthless chunk of flesh, since when do you think that you have a choice? I need you to practise this technique now, or else you will become sustenance for me!”

“B-But, Mistress, the rest of them turned into such abominations!” the poor old man could no longer keep his voice and emotions under control, “They were all mindless and ravenous, unable to do anything but follow your commands to the letter! I have been serving you for so many years, without any complaints or personal desires! I served your mother when she campaigned to earn the same position as you-”

“And yet you fail to recognise what that bitch did to me! I am only a step away from those abominations, and you will become the same, do you understand? READ THE FUCKING BOOK!” Shi Luo Feng also lashed out, grabbing the man’s head and forcing it into the open pages of the technique manual, her fingers grasping more and more tightly for every second that he did not appear to be reading as she had instructed. He tried desperately to escape her grasp, trying it thrice before he could no longer withstand the rising pressure and was forced to read, his killing intent automatically following the instructions described within.

His expression slowly twisted as his insides warped and twisted, rearranging themselves without any clear logic nor reason. A dull, low cry seeped out of his open mouth as his eyes rolled up and the bones within his body cracked and morphed, transforming into a horrible abomination of humanity.

Shi Luo Feng was able to release her the old man once that occurred, for even before the mental drain to him occurred, he would be in no position to move while all of his internal and external elements were being recklessly twisted. Quickly, his cried elevated to shrieks and constant desperate begging, which she was able to ignore without any effort while she glared down the few subordinates that remained standing around her. Their resistance quickly broke, and they also threw their books open, following the instructions and reaching the same point as the old man.

She waited for them to complete their transformation, at which point she gave them some basic instructions and left them be, leaving to ponder who else would be suitable for the technique.

 

Chun He clashed directly with another warrior in the Condensed Shot realm by colliding their waves of killing intent against one another, as someone in the Fine Piercing realm could do.

His energy was weaker than the opponent, a woman that hid her face beneath a crude mask and sported very large assets that would have otherwise occupied much of his and his warriors’ attention, but it was more plentiful due to his practise of the Violent Third River technique, allowing him to balance his usage of killing intent to prevent her attack from dealing more than minor damage to him and his mind.

Unfortunately, his abilities were most suited for defence, not offence, meaning that although he could withstand the attacks from this masked woman, he could do little before his men completed their battle with their own opponents other than protect himself and keep his enemy from attacking others.

For a second, he considered whether it was a good idea to retreat and to force his opponent to fight with some of his forces but deemed it to be a proposition that was too reckless to proceed with. His troops were already struggling with the enemies they were facing and throwing in such a powerful opponent into the mix would do nothing but provide the opponent with more lives to claim.

He was forced to step back after a particularly serious attack, but some strange sixth sense of danger made him duck down at the last second, prompting his foe to lunge at him with a powerful overhead slash with her axe that would instantly pierce not only his wall of killing intent, but also the vast majority of his body and skull with its immense power and might. For a brief moment, he wondered whether he had made the wrong choice, but her arms suddenly twitched and stopped in place.

The last thought she had was, ‘What just happened to me? Where am I?’

 

Another abomination assaulted one of groups belonging to Meng Chu’s faction, its face opening up sideways as tentacles and tendrils were spat out, latching onto all nearby forces instantly. However, an enormous ball of sunlight suddenly enveloped the tendrils and consumed them all in an instant, crushing them as easily as a cultivator could defeat a mortal.

The extreme yang of the sun-like flame severed the sickly yin that connected these vile appendages to the morphed imitations of humanity, and all that they could bring to them were meagre glimpses of blood and energy, with the rest returning naturally to their owners.

A woman dressed in tight clothing fell from the sky, landing on the ground with ease in spite of the height she fell from. Soft sunlight formed a corona around her, enveloping the ground around her with a rare glimpse of colours other than crimson. The red dirt and the ruby road tiles and the blood-red dust that filled the air were, for that pleasant moment of her simply standing there, lit with orange and yellow, expanding the colour palette of the prison realm a thousand-fold. To all that had never witnessed the light of the sun within reality, this was far greater than anything they could have ever imagined.

‘I must say, I did not imagine this use of the Magnanimous Leech – or, rather, a hastily created derivative of it that can barely keep the human body together,’ Wei Yi thought, removing the hammer from the back of her head, ‘This is the sort of thing that causes discrepancies in my plans, and forces me to get involved. What a sick joke.’

The hammer in her hand expanded to its normal size, with a spear still on her back and two daggers stored away within her pockets. White Echo was unsuitable for a battle with a large number of bystanders, Bone of the Beast used an unnecessarily large quantity of killing intent for what it was able to achieve most of the time, and the slashing and stabbing attacks of the spear would be somewhat lacking against a creature without proper form.

In her mind, the easiest method of dealing with such an abomination was to crush it completely.

She did not bother using her killing intent, for it would lack effectiveness against it, but the warped human was still able to sense her intent. It roared, or perhaps screeched, or performed some other action that resulted in noise, and pulled more tendrils from its body that it launched at her.

‘Even if this does nothing else, it reminds me of what I am trying to avoid with the techniques I practise. Sure, this thing will be stronger than whatever it had been originally, but there is no trace of its original mind. From what I can sense, the only thing that remains is an order from Shi Luo Feng, and even though I cannot perceive the exact order, I know that it is not sufficient for my own path.’

Congealing her physique energy around her free hand, she struck the approaching tentacles directly, dispersing them into harmless dust and ash before charging through it using a movement technique activated through the might of her physique energy.

It wreathed her in bright sunlight, and the next moment, she appeared to the vile creature’s side, striking its former head with an all-out strike, transferring the principles of the Boulder Pushing palm onto the hammer via certain properties of Storm Blade Wreathing, which she manifested in the bright dawn light of her energy. Falling upon the creature, it instantly obliterated its upper half and launched its lower half into the ground, burying its feet in the dirt. Several major organs – or what little remained after the transformation – were absolutely crushed by the impact.

What remained attempted to transform itself into a semblance of an opponent, but Wei Yi struck it once more, this time applying both the Sizzling Palm and the Sweeping Inferno move of the Eight Great Changes onto her hammer at the same time as Storm Blade Wreathing to condense a blinding force upon her enemy.

Exploding with a mighty echo that reverberated throughout the town, all semblance of the creature was gone, as was one third of her physique energy.

‘A third for one of these things… no, I should be able to reduce it down to a quarter if I don’t have to save people from the tendrils first… Still, from the killing intent that remains around this individual, I can only assume that it had been a killing intent cultivator within the first two realms, and it is certainly feasible that stronger cultivators will make for stronger abominations. Furthermore, even if they are all exactly like this one, Shi Luo Feng should be able to produce a hundred with ease, while I would need several hours of rest to recover from killing only three or four… Not the most efficient nor effective of arrangements, it seems,’ she thought, checking that the hammer hadn’t begun to melt beneath the physique energy before storing it away and turning to the forces of Meng Chu’s faction, “Keep going with your original task. These things should take some time to form and be given orders, and there are far too many places being attacked at once for Shi Luo Feng to send another thing here any time soon.”

“Yes, boss!” they shouted, with some of them simply following their partners and allies after having missed her briefing. Nevertheless, after seeing how quickly she was able to dispatch such a terrifying foe, they could never be rude to her, even if she had been some random beggar from the streets.

When they left, Wei Yi re-examined the scene, making sure that there were no living traces of the creature, for, in theory, so long as such a being survived, it could find a living being to leech and drain, using it to grow in size and strength before returning to its original state and possibly growing from there to become something like a hatred automaton or even something greater, depending on what the fragments of the Magnanimous Leech they had been provided would allow for.

Only once she was absolutely sure did she move on, rushing to the next group in danger.