Path of the Ascendant

Indeed, the pool of blood was exactly what she had been looking for. If a typical human stepped into it, they would be melted into nothing within seconds, and even if she attempted to enter it without proper preparation, she would also suffer greatly.

However, this was the exact environment she needed to stimulate the potential of her body and physique and to reform it, and it also gave her the opportunity to attempt to use the bloodline of whatever this Beast was to further amplify her power. She would never draw any of it into herself, not before she was certain that she would be able to deal with the repercussions of a bloodline, but by simply being surrounded by it she could force every part of herself to become stronger.

There was even the potential of forcing her planar energy to develop further, ignoring the restriction of the prison realm and raising her cultivation level to the first stage of Emergent Anchor, making every drop of her wondrous cosmic energy to become significantly more valuable than it currently is.

If this method worked, and if it could be repeated multiple times, there was a chance of her reaching the fourth realm, Active Core, and breaking the space of the prison realm with just the percentage of energy she currently possessed. After all, each stage of the Active Core realm was twice as powerful as a stage of the Emergent Anchor realm, which was, in turn, five times superior to the Planar Pool Realm.

Such a thing could only be achieved so long as the nascent rift within her anchor continued to act as it currently did, providing her not with energy that was suited to a particular realm, but energy that would ensure her total pool of planar energy was maintained at a certain level. Wei Yi had no clue how it functioned in such a manner, nor whether this was an infinite process that could be continued all the way to the peak of known cultivation and beyond, but it was certain to carry her to the fourth realm at the very least.

‘This isn’t I can do right now, however. I need to assist in the battles of the day even more so than yesterday, as, in comparison to those raids, today’s will be a dozen times more difficult.’

She confirmed that the pool of blood was suitable for her purposes and left, placing a few other layers of clothing and accessories onto herself to make herself appear less conspicuous. There was already a high likelihood of someone figuring out her identity as both the physique cultivator and user of killing intent, but that was perfectly fine for her, as this news would be restricted to Beast’s Rest no matter who learnt about it. Since she would likely need to invoke both of her energies to deal with the threat of Shi Luo Feng and Ding Wen, especially if any one of them has a spatial storage item or something of a similar power, it was fine for people to get an idea of her abilities now.

As for those that overestimated her and would put in too much force to deal with her level of power… that would be inconvenient, but with the combination of movement techniques, the Eight Great Changes Repealing Spark and White Echo, all of which she had not showcased as publicly as her other abilities, it would be difficult for anyone to harm her.

 

“This does not make any sense at all…” the man in white muttered to himself, sitting in the empty office of Ding Wen, where the candle lit up his body, “I can never see him when he turns around…”

The figure sat in place, doing nothing but drinking from the bottle of blood wine every now and then as it pondered. After making the initial agreement with Ding Wen, it obviously attempted to gain some leverage over him, even attempting a certain scheme that would have won him a significant amount of necessary resources, but not only were his resources somehow inexhaustible, his mind never suffered despite the immense quantities of killing intent he built up.

It was completely nonsensical, and the fact that all signs of his aura vanished the moment that he turned his chair on the spot made the situation all the more confusing. He was someone with an impressive attainment in detection and scanning of his surroundings, so for him to not be able to distinguish the air from Ding Wen meant that he either vanished, or that he was shielded by something.

To make things worse, that something was completely outside of his understanding.

For a person that relied so much on his knowledge and understanding of the prison realm and the processes that occurred within, such a notion was extremely terrifying.

It was like an expert in strength encountering something he could not move, or an expert in arrays finding an array structure that they had never heard of before. It was akin to a fisherman finding a fish that went against all logic and reason, that had its insides on the outside and had countless teeth and tendrils on the outside of the body… which wasn’t an entirely unprecedented situation, actually. Once upon a time, in the eastern Planar Continent, the land of the Daoist cultivators, a lonely fisherman in the third realm was fishing in familiar waters when he managed to find something that they could never forget no matter how much they tried.

The figure in white had read such a story by luck, but he never expected it to apply to him at such a time.

‘Fortunately, the man has some competition in the form of Shi Luo Feng, Meng Chu and that new arrival, which should push him to the edge, whatever the power that is currently allowing him to withstand me,’ thought the figure in white, draining the bottle of blood wine, ‘At that point, it will depend on what he does. I can either continue my work on him, or I could try the redhead or the winner of the general conflict.’

He casually threw away the bottle of blood wine and vanished, seemingly without reason.

 

‘This is the second time today that I’ve felt something strange happening. It isn’t quite spiritual will, I don’t think, but it acts much like it…’ Wei Yi noticed, stopping on the roof of a sturdy building when she was sure that she would not be noticed by any common civilian, ‘Either there is another new arrival with spiritual will, or someone’s killing intent has transformed into something entirely unique.’

She frowned, but there was little that she could do with a simple facial expression, so she turned back around and continued to her destination, another book opening within the Augur’s Library.

It had a small number of details within, every single one being what she had gathered after her few sightings of the spiritual will around her. There was nothing too concrete or useful just yet, which was unfortunate, but she already had a few ideas on how to deal with it.

So far as she understood the natural principles of energy, killing intent in larger, focused quantities subdued spiritual will, so if she specifically targeted the spiritual will in combat, she should be able to negate it for a sufficient length of time to execute an attack that could defeat the opponent. If it was not spiritual will but morphed killing intent, then it would depend on their exact cultivation. Within the first two and a half realms, she was confident about overpowering her opponent, but if they were at a level above that, she would have the highest chance of success through a surprise attack with her full force.

‘Ultimately, I will need to deal with this sort of thing when it becomes a problem and gather as much information as I can in the meantime. Power without knowledge is even less significant than knowledge without power, unfortunately,’ she thought, stopping atop another rooftop.

From that position, she was able to see one of the targets of today’s assault – an official storehouse of Shi Luo Feng’s faction, one that had several guards stationed in front of it with the cultivation of the Fine Piercing realm at the minimum. There were also several guards within, some positioned at key positions and others patrolling the tight passages of the warehouse.

One abomination was placed in a box that was labelled with ‘Motes of Killing Intent’, with whoever put it there clearly intending to catch those who invade off guard either in the warehouse itself or when they steal the box and deliver it to their own base. Naturally, Wei Yi did not intend to give them such a chance, as she understood the power of stealthy and unexpected strikes incredibly well. Without them, she would have never made it to where she was, whether in the Planar Continents or the prison realm, so she prepared a few plans to either expose the contents of the box or to prevent her forces from finding it or trying to touch it.

Other than that, there seemed to be no great preparations made for the attack, perhaps due to the general lack of resources stored within this building.

For this location to be lost would mean nothing to Shi Luo Feng.

‘It does mean something for me, however, as this place stores a large quantity of the Beast’s bones, though most of them are deemed to be useless due to not yet having been processed or converted into something. With them, I could try and replicate the bones that concentrate and direct the flow of killing intent, potentially accelerating my cultivation significantly,’ she scanned through some of the boxes containing black, jagged bones as she was thinking, ‘Might need to take a few myself, though.’

Due to the same reason that Shi Luo Feng did not leave too great of a defensive force at this location, Wei Yi did not send out too many of her own troops, with her squad matching in number with the defence, so long as the abomination was included.

Going by that alone, one might assume that her squad would be at a disadvantage, but apart from the exact positioning of the abomination, which wasn’t a certainty and was only brought into the equation a day ago, she had planned out this particular assault several months ago while cultivating in seclusion. To deal with a simple change like that was incredibly easy.

Wei Yi took a deep breath and used all of her stealth techniques to enter the warehouse while escaping notice.

Within, she saw two of the guards calmly discussing all sorts of things with one another: their personal daily lives, interactions with their leaders and employers, gossip about Shi Luo Feng and her conflict with the other two factions, and even their visit to the brothel.

Boredom radiated from them to the point of becoming visible, like the Beast’s killing intent.

“Do you think those pricks will actually go here? That thing breathes incredibly loudly and unpleasantly, and I don’t like it.”

“No’ne gives a toss, bro. What’ey gonna do ‘bout it, huh?”

‘Excellent, it is a guard that cannot comprehend the basic language of the Planar Continents. That means that the general forces here are as weak and incompetent as I had initially predicted,’ she sighed internally, sneaking away from them, ‘I’d unleash the abomination to devour this lot and leave it to be taken care of by my men, but that would only make it stronger…’

Instead, she went to several boxes and places within the warehouse and adjusted the environment ever so slightly, to the point that if a casual observer compared the scenes before and after her interference, they might fail to notice her effect on them. Nevertheless, these minor changes pushed the upcoming battle heavily into her side’s favour, with several places that Shi Luo Feng’s warriors would overlook being changed into death traps or otherwise serious obstacles that could turn the tide in her favour without any further work from herself.

For this reason, she exited the area about as easily as she entered, then proceeded to the next area of upcoming conflict.

 

“They’re here! They-” the guard’s voice was cut off when a spearhead pierced his throat, blood splattering onto the inside of the warehouse. It coated the hard stone floors, mixing with the dark red colours of the material and the grey dust that had accumulated atop them.

A small squad of fighters rushed into the building, making as much noise as they could.

Whenever they attacked, be it directly at their enemy or at some obstacle in their path, they used their full strength, causing countless empty rotten wood boxes to be crushed into dust in just a few minutes. This approach made every guard on the inside of the warehouse incredibly apprehensive, for even though they suspected that this wasn’t something that they could keep up for a long time, they still knew that if they got hit by Wei Yi’s forces at this time, they would be severely injured or outright killed.

After a second of deliberation, the vast majority decided to run inwards, running away from the weapon-wielding maniacs and attempting to get to a more advantageous position for themselves, in order to get a better chance of defeating them.

The minority that remained proved that the majority’s decision was correct, for they were hacked, slashed and stabbed at viciously until their bodies were more wound than man.

Still, it wasn’t too pleasant for that escaping majority either, for the second that they thought they found a good place to reverse the situation, reality seemed to slap them in the face – sometimes literally. One man, who had a good memory and recalled the layout of the warehouse decently enough, attempted to use his memory to his advantage and turned the corner only to stumble on something that had been placed on the floor, his body flying straight into a box.

It crumbled under his weight, resulting in his landing face-first into a large pile of bright yet dried crimson herbs called the Cherry Oblique Skyroot, or, as it was more commonly known to the common public, the inferno pepper, typically used in extremely small quantities to poison one’s enemies.

Needless to say, that particular individual did not survive.

Another wanted to duck through a gap between two unused boxes that he had frequently traversed before while escaping from his supervisor to drink some cheap blood wine, but when he leapt into it this time, he instantly found himself to be stuck there, in such a position that he could not quite push himself out of either side of the large wall of boxes.

He might have been able to do something if given enough time, but before he could, concentrated killing intent combined with a sharp weapon sliced through his unguarded back.

If Wei Yi had still been there – and was in the mood to lecture the living and dead about their failings, which was not always something she had any interest in – she would have said, “Not everything that turns the tide of battle must be major and extravagant. An enormous planar construct can be impressive, just like the Storm Blade Wreathing twin-lightning storm that I have created several times before, but such things can frequently be beaten by a single knife to the back of the cultivator. In truth, when one’s defences are lacking, all that is needed is one brief second of lowered guard.”

With such simple movements, more than half of the defending soldiers were wiped out before they could even consider retaliating with full force, while the rest were demoralised further. Even though not all of them got along, and despite most of them being fully aware that lives are lost frequently and easily in the prison realm, they couldn’t restrain their fear at the speed of how many of their own perished one after another.

Their judgement was further affected by the fact that the fearsome might of the attackers was miraculously kept up even after several minutes of intense assault and combat. In their eyes, it was almost like their pools of killing intent were bottomless and infinite.

Obviously, neither Wei Yi nor Meng Chu had access to such methods or techniques, but they did have access to motes of killing intent.

The bright red motes of energy were not a limited resource, and can be obtained in one of two ways – either through the death of those with a significant attainment in their killing intent cultivation, like the Black Terror, Xing Chen Yi, or through the purposeful condensation of one’s killing intent in the outside world by a cultivator. Amongst the two, the latter was more efficient, and generally preferable for most, as they did not wish to die to generate their own currency, but it still necessitated an immense amount of work.

Anyone in the first realm could produce minute motes, then minor motes in the second realm, medium motes in the third, great motes in the fourth and titanic motes in the fifth, unless they deliberately adjusted the condensation process to reduce the size of the motes they produced.

The only difference that one’s cultivation would result in is the speed at which these motes would be created. Wei Yi could manufacture one minor mote every few minutes due to the concentration and quantity of her killing intent, so she spared a few for the soldiers on the second day, allowing each one of them to use no more than four in a single day lest they become consumed by her killing intent and lose all semblance of sanity and reason.

Nevertheless, for those in the second and third realms of killing intent cultivation, four motes were sufficient to provide them with several more minutes of energy to use.

In the particular case of this group, those few minutes were more than sufficient.

 

‘Simple, yet effective. If I am not mistaken, that Meng Chu should not be in charge any longer… no, no, what am I saying? Of course he is in charge of his own faction – or so I will tell Ding Wen,’ the man in white stood near a small candle that lit up only his upper body as he looked upon the scene of the warehouse being taken over, ‘Still, to be able to predict the movements of the guards with such precision must mean that she had some understanding of the human mind and the layout of the building, not to mention possessing methods of aggravating those foolish individuals. As much as I would like to target her, I do not think it will be possible…’

Just as suddenly as he appeared on the spot, he disappeared the next second, the candle extinguishing itself.

 

“What do you think you’re doing, you tall bitch? Get out of here!”

“No. Make me,” Wei Yi replied to the short guard, who huffed and puffed for several seconds before rushing at her with an enormous hammer that he was clearly attempting to use to compensate for something.

He swung it at her with all of his strength, not considering the possibility that this woman, as tall as she might be, would be able to evade him. It might have been arrogance, or anger at seeing someone so superior to him in an aspect he had long been ashamed of, or even a mistaken attempt to estimate her strength prior to attacking, which made him think that she might not be a killing intent cultivator.

Whatever it was, he knew that he had been wrong the next instant, when she calmly moved out of the way, pushed the falling hammer onto the ground and then struck back with a force identical to that of the hammer, except magnified significantly and used via her fist, not some weapon.

The Repealing Spark change was incredibly effective against those that could not evade it, especially after Wei Yi used both her strong physical body and powerful killing intent. With a single strike, the short guard’s head was obliterated, and the shockwave from the strike impacted the building behind him, as well as his friend that had stood back initially, incapacitating the latter with the overwhelming force while the outer wall of the structure shook and cracked in many places.

‘Good, the effect of the Repealing Spark move functions even with killing intent, meaning that it is not like my Elysian Palm, which is transformed into the Antithesis Palm. It must be that the latter is somewhat unique in many ways, causing this unusual change in effect from the form of energy that is used,’ Wei Yi thought, entering the warehouse after burning the blood off her hand.

This building contained no abominations and few guards, with nothing that needed to be recovered for her own purposes, so she was able to act recklessly.