Path of the Ascendant

She chose not to attempt to investigate the location described by Ren Xing for now, as she knew that if the woman had left the things she mentioned behind, there was either a high likelihood of them not being accessible by most of the population of the prison realm, or that she wasn’t able to take them either, meaning that if she lacked the resources needed to access them, then it would be a waste of time. Instead, she returned to Beast’s Rest, her newly strengthened and further concentrated physique energy permitting for an even more efficient use of her remaining miracle fluid.

From her brief scan of the city prior to entering the underground passages, it seemed that only a few hours had passed since her departure, meaning that the first teams of the third day had left a short time ago.

This was fortunate, for she had not expected to return so soon.

With so much additional time, she would be able to produce at least one set of pills without any difficulty, unless the laws of this realm somehow led to the artificial lengthening of the refining process.

As she walked through the underground passages of Meng Chu’s faction, carefully walking around the spots that had been marred by her earlier rush through them, she did not conceal her presence, quickly catching the attention of a guard who, after bowing respectfully to her, rushed off to report to Meng Chu or Dugu Wei. She did not stop him, since she wanted one of them to be present while she worked so that she could pass along the resulting product to him for further distribution.

When she got to her destination, she raised her hand and activated the ability of the Concentrated Humanity physique, finding it to act the least like the original physique out of all of the abilities she had absorbed so far. For one, it made no changes to her dantian, like the original was meant to, and when physique energy was manifested in its form, it did not convert her physical body to that of a sun-blessed humanity sprite. Instead, it somehow combined with the Golden Form and Grim Mortality physiques, creating a thin layer of sunlight on top of her skin, which should still be effective when it comes to guarding against spiritual will.

‘I cannot tell whether it is as effective as that woman’s original physique, not without someone else attempting to probe me with an identical level of spiritual will, but it does seem to be sufficient against most regular cultivators that I might encounter when I first emerge from the prison realm,’ she thought, making the energy recede under her skin while she removed several sets of herbs from a box.

Several minutes after arriving to her alchemy room, Meng Chu ended up finding her in the midst of restoring several individual herbs with extreme care. Whenever they seemed to be getting too hot, she limited the quantity of energy within it and adjusted where it was within the leaf.

“You’ve returned, then. Have you acquired such an impressive skill over just a few hours of work?”

“Not exactly, but I did get what I had intended to get from the brief expedition. Somehow, fewer people died than the last time I had gone on one of those,” Wei Yi commented, her expression darkening only for a brief moment before she looked back at Meng Chu as if she hadn’t said anything, “Anyway, I can attempt to create the Hatred Gathering pills in a few minutes, at which point you can pass it along to the groups that require them most.”

“I see. Physiques sure are powerful…”

She remained silent as she fully revitalised the first set of herbs. When the living parts of each leaf touched the crimson light of the world, they quickly attempted to wilt once more, the concentrated killing intent clearly not being beneficial to the plants that had initially existed in a world without it.

That meant that she would need to be fast, which suited her just fine, as she had never intended to take her time for this particular project. Having something else to speed her up was excellent.

“Alright, either get out of here, or stand back. I wouldn’t want to accidentally kill you just yet.”

Meng Chu chose to stand back, naturally being extremely curious about the process of the lost art of pill refining, as well the methods of the Planar Continents and how they would then be applied to the prison realm.

Once she made sure that he was standing at the other end of the room, for she was slightly concerned that she would cause an enormous explosion of killing intent with some flaw in the pill furnace and then instantly obliterate the mind or body of anyone in the vicinity, she turned towards the furnace and lit the coals within the fuel compartment, sealing it immediately afterwards.

For a few seconds, she did nothing, allowing the flame to grow and spread to all of the coals before she continued by taking a few of the base herb for the pill and throwing them into the middle of the upper compartment of the furnace.

The herbs slowly began to boil and melt, the medicinal essence separating from the waste materials under the combined influence of the flame and Wei Yi’s spiritual will, with which she was able to subtly guide the changes within the structure of the herbs. At the same time, she prepared six different grasses and leaves, which she tossed in when the time was right. Each one landed in a particular section of the furnace, for use with the Cherry Revolving Blossom art, which was the most suitable and most complete pill refining technique known to her, and also began to melt.

‘Chu Ling had helped me far more than I had realised, it seems,’ she thought, noticing that several things were already failing to go as she had hoped, ‘If this is the case, I ought to attempt a slightly different method of refinement, using the skills I now possess. In the case of success, it will allow for an entirely different approach in the future, with far more gains and benefits than this current method.’

She glanced towards Meng Chu and said, “You may want to prepare some defensive measures. I am going to attempt a rather dangerous technique, with an even higher chance of explosive failure.”

His eyes widened as he retreated as far into the wall as he could while removing several hatred blades and their defensive equivalents from his pockets, filling all of them with a quantity of killing intent in preparation.

As he had taken her warning seriously, Wei Yi subtly nodded and focused all of her spiritual will and attention on the pill furnace. With an empty hand, she opened the lower compartment of the furnace, then released her physique energy into both parts. She did not restrain it in any way, and even did her best to concentrate the quantity and quality of it as much as she could, not being afraid to damage the medicinal essence – she was seeking it.

Naturally, she had not gone insane because of the semblance of a small failure. She intended to experiment with the reversing property of the Antithesis Palm, which had the potential to invert more than just killing intent or physique energy. Depending on the outcome of this experiment, it might mean that the best method for refining pills would be to create absolute failures, before inverting them.

‘Chances are, this won’t work as I’d like it to, as something this miraculous would allow for the creation of pills that reach the level of the heavens, or ten stars, and would grant me access to pills that are ten times more powerful than typical equivalents, which, in combination with my planar energy and its multiplicative effects on the power of any pill essence I consume, would mean that I am able to reach the likes of fifty stars or more,’ she calculated, fully aware that such a pill would have to shock even the Great Families, regardless of the unique means that they possess, ‘Still, if I have successfully extracted a tenth of the medicinal essence and then convert a tenth to the opposite, then I would still have one tenth, resulting in a successful pill.’

With the addition of her physique energy, she was able to replicate the revolving nature of her refining technique, further accelerating their incineration.

She accelerated the revolution until the six piles of herbs on the outside, which she had supplemented with the remaining ingredients for the Hatred Gathering pill, turned into nothing more than a blur, their rapid movement fanning the physique energy around them and causing it to frequently burst out of the openings in the furnace, occasionally nearing her crimson robes and lightly darkening the crimson threads, though they recovered quickly.

At that point, she willed the six piles of ash and essence into the middle of the upper compartment, causing them to collide with the medicinal essence that was slowly burning there. This impact caused the already fluctuating physique energy to burst out of the furnace at great speed, heading straight out of the opening for Wei Yi’s clothes, but before they reached her, she raised her left hand and lightly pushed her palm forward, striking with the pure essence of the Antithesis Palm and no excessive killing intent.

The initial meeting of the two energies was uneventful, but the second that Wei Yi willed the physique energy to separate from her, the Antithesis energy prevailed, rapidly converting the extreme yang to absolute yin, the vibrant sunlight changing to perfect cold that froze not only the sides of the pill furnace, but also the air itself, creating a large chunk of ice in the shape of flames.

Wei Yi melted the energy with her physique energy and carefully reached into the furnace, removing the resulting pills.

They were made successfully, and although she was unable to determine their exact level from sight and spiritual will alone, as that could lead to the potential deterioration of the outer shell that kept the medicinal essence within, the gem-like appearance and the smooth red colour of the pill implied that it was most certainly above the quality of one star, even if it may not be significantly above that realm. Whatever the truth was, it was extremely satisfying to see.

Furthermore, her work resulted in two dozen Hatred Gathering pills, none of which differed in quality. It was the best that any alchemist could ever expect from any one session of pill refinement, and it was usually achieved only after extensive training and practise of a single recipe and technique, while this instance was the complete opposite.

“I have succeeded,” she said, looking to Meng Chu, “Feel free to have a look.”

“Are you sure? Will there definitely be no explosions?”

“There shouldn’t be any explosions, though, if you want me to, I can cause an explosion or two,” Wei Yi grinned, though she reverted her expression quickly, “You can take sixteen, I will take the remaining eight. Distribute these to the groups I had previously labelled as being at the greatest risk of suffering great danger today, though you may keep a few for yourself if you’re interested in forcing me out of the passages for another hour or two.”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing,” Meng Chu shook his head as he took one pill from her hand and carefully looked at it, “This is very different from what Ding Wen has been selling at his auctions; those pills looked like small pellets of mud put together by an unsteady hand.”

She shrugged, “Not surprising, considering the fact that his craftsmen had no access to spiritual will or equivalent physique energy, nor did they have the opportunity to study under an expert in the Marked Core realm and with immense prowess in pill refining. Had I been unaware of what these pills could have been, I might have approached the creation process in a similar manner to them as well… not that this experiment was significantly more refined.”

“Speaking of your… experiment… it appeared to be very unconventional even to someone who knows nothing of convention. If you do not mind explaining it to me, could I know what you did?”

“Nothing too unique… so to speak…” Wei Yi replied, considering how much she wanted to reveal to the man that she might have to work with for the next ten or twenty years, “You must have noticed the ice that formed from my physique energy, so I will say only this – I have the ability to invert the nature of certain things. Yin to yang, bad to good and so on. Now that I know this technique of mine works on pills, my process in creating them will be significantly different from what you saw here. I might not even need to revitalise the materials, which is a shame, though I’m sure I can put most of the things I had acquired on my trip to work elsewhere.”

He did not understand the situation fully, but chose not to ask for further information, gathering that she did not intend to elaborate, instead taking the sixteen pills that had been offered to him and leaving to distribute them to his men.

Meanwhile, Wei Yi placed seven of her pills onto the work surface in front of her and kept one in her hand, examining it closely to find any potential signs of faults or instabilities. What she was looking for were not major instabilities, ones that could cause the pill to fail or to outright explode upon consumption, but more insignificant ones that would cause the deterioration of the pill’s quality and long-term stability.

It was normal to find a number of these within any regular pill of the Planar Continents, as perfection was something that was nigh impossible to attain, and they were almost inevitable in greater pills, such as those above the three star realm, but perhaps due to the simplicity of the Hatred Gathering pills she had invented, there were no such issues with it.

‘Then again, it might be due to the fact that I had inverted a failing process into a successful one. I did not create any correct aspects of the pill, so they could not be inverted into failures.’

She swallowed a single pill and turned her spiritual will into herself as she watched how it was processed by her body. As she did not include any planar energy within the recipe, there was no need to use it to dissolve the shell of the pill, requiring only the natural ability of the body to break down food. With her amplified bodily function, this was complete in seconds, breaking out the pill essence from within, causing it to be activated within seconds.

At that point, all of the crimson light and killing intent around her slowly drifted towards her, accelerating with each second until her body was surrounded in a thick cloud of hatred, all of which generated a pressure similar to the one caused by the Beast’s bones.

When she absorbed that killing intent, the speed of the effect accelerated even further, growing with every small wisp of killing intent that she permitted into her body for her unique method of refinement. With every quantity of killing intent that she processed, she did gain some understanding of the process that permitted her to accelerate it, which, in turn, led to the further increase of the pill effect and then increased the quantity of killing intent that she could utilise. Furthermore, the pill assisted with her processing of the hatred energy, clearing away some of the Beast’s influence from its essence to prevent her from being overwhelmed by it.

From this experience, she understood that the pill had not only succeeded in accomplishing everything she needed it to, but also that it had reached a level of quality beyond four stars at the very least.

‘I should have probably tested these before giving them out to the guards, but while I’m at it, I suppose I should take the time to raise my cultivation with all of this excess energy,’ Wei Yi thought, getting up and leaving the room, heading towards her personal chambers with great haste, for this veil of crimson around her could significantly harm the mind of common men through raw quantity.

The moment that she entered her office, she closed the door and sat down in the middle of the obsidian bone array. It took a second for the gathering force of the Hatred Gathering pill and the black bones to resonate, but once they did, the killing intent around her was intensified by a dozen times. Her eyes were completely obscured by the bright red light, and her spiritual will was instantly pressed into her body, with her skin rapidly drying and cracking beneath the extreme concentration of killing intent.

She remained calm, quickly separating her mental battlefield to split the Beast’s killing intent across it evenly, preventing it from gathering too much in one place and overwhelming her. As every single wisp of killing intent was processed, it caused the battlefield to grow, with every twelve wisps translating to enough space for one more wisp to be handled.

Eventually, the Hatred Gathering pill could no longer keep up with her increasing rate of cultivation, forcing her to take another one to maintain her momentum.

Almost half an hour after she began, she finally felt her foundation budging and her cultivation breaking through an invisible barrier that marked the gap between the first and second stage of the Fine Piercing realm.

The battlefield briefly manifested within the material realm, covering every corner of the room, with several mighty combatants appeared from one wall and rushing towards an invisible foe through another wall, with some occasionally clashing in the middle of the chamber, beside the cultivating Wei Yi, before one pushed the other out of sight and out of the illusory manifestation of the endless battlefield.

It transformed into pure killing intent that then rushed towards her, giving her just enough time to surround her body in a combined veil of crimson and sunlight.

These two energies clashed, rapidly compressing both of her available forms of energy. Through no influence of her own, her vibrant crimson killing intent flowed to her left while her physique energy focused on her right, with both of them becoming significantly denser with every second she was able to keep the protective layer active.

Before this killing intent returned to her body, although she had crossed into the second stage, she still had one foot in the first stage, prompting the following thought, ‘This great pressure is really helpful when it comes to further amplifying physical manifestations of energy, meaning that every single advancement and breakthrough I have in the future will be significantly more effective and beneficial to me. If I can repeat this effect, then I may be able to push my killing intent into the peak of the second realm while multiplying its power to an incredible level.’

After another second, during which she scanned her entire physique with her spiritual will to confirm that it would be able to endure the process, she released all of her killing intent and physique energy to protect her body while forcing the battlefield to reappear around her.

Without the natural power of the breakthrough keeping it stable, it flickered and fluctuated wildly under the pressure of the surrounding killing intent. However, it was also being tempered in the same fashion as the twin protective energies around her body, and soon it was able to withstand the obsidian bone array and maintain a form for long enough to complete some sort of invisible process of refinement, prompting it to collapse inwards as well.

Two layers of hostile killing intent crashed down on her body and the twin energies surrounding it, but their overall power wasn’t just doubled, but tripled or possibly even quadrupled, causing the protective layer to flicker and waver for the first few seconds that it had to endure the terrible barrage of crimson light.

‘Still, this is something I can endure if I just change the structure of the energies into something a little more stable than a shapeless mass of fluid,’ Wei Yi observed, doing exactly that by weaving the protective layer into individual threads that she united into a thick layer, ensuring that every single thread was being held up by a dozen other threads, while also supporting a dozen threads to maintain balance, ‘I can repeat the process at least twice more, but if I change my route ever so slightly, I will only need to do so once.’

She took the remaining six Hatred Gathering pills and threw them into her mouth before releasing another battlefield… a total of six times. Each one was unstable on its own, but when the layers of the battlefield were interwoven with one another, they gained the same strength and cohesion as the energy around her body, enduring the ever-growing pressure of killing intent on the entire room, causing even the reinforced ground and walls to slowly crack.

For several minutes, she endured the crushing force of the two illusory battlefields until the other six finally began to fall inwards as well, at which point she made both the killing intent and physique energy to burst outwards in order to meet it.

The second that they clashed, her interwoven energy was pushed back onto her body, that single impact falling upon her body with as much force as a hammer would strike something on an anvil, with both the hammer and the anvil being created through the exact same force acting from separate directions.

Many of her bones and internal organs suffered greatly, but by using the spare physique energy that she had left behind within her meridians, she repaired her skin and the core parts of her body just sufficiently to prevent her from perishing from internal bleeding or anything of the sort. That single collision also empowered both energies, allowing them to endure the pressure of the combined eight battlefields for long enough to continually refine them for several seconds, achieving the same amount of work as one battlefield would have achieved in an hour. Immediately after, feeling that neither protective weave could hold on for any longer, she willed them to return to her body, enduring the following entry of an extreme quantity of her killing intent.

As it belonged to her, it was not hostile to her flesh and blood, but the raw quantity of it caused it to tear apart her mortal form as it passed through it, creating countless scars on her smooth skin with each breath, making her resemble an ancient battlefield with countless wounds and craters.

Once again, she knew that she had made the right choice in disrobing after closing the door.

The second that the killing intent had finished entering her body and she was able to mobilise her physique energy, she did exactly that, manifesting all of the powers that she had assimilated into her physique, causing her entire body to light up like the sun, with the soothing glow seeping into every one of her wounds and forcing them to heal as quickly as they possibly could. The Golden Form smoothed the many wounds, the stored vitality of the Restorative Spring and Vitality Siphon accelerated her regeneration and the Concentrated Humanity ability caused her form to return to its former appearance, almost as if she had never even attempted to suffer through such a risky method of cultivation.

When the sunlight cleared, her flesh was almost exactly as it had been before, except her skin had become a little darker again.

‘Alright then, I appear to have succeeded. My killing intent is now in the second stage and my physique has been compressed and strengthened yet again. When I am able to push for the breakthrough to the second realm, I might need to find a way to intensify the blood of the beast if I am to make any genuine progress,’ Wei Yi thought, looking closely at her hands and nails out of some idle curiosity. She had never taken care of her nails beyond trimming them when they got too long for their common uses, but with every additional physique ability and stage, they had gained the same endurance as her bones.

Fortunately, such maintenance could be circumvented via certain techniques and physique methods, or else both her hair and nails would grow endlessly without any materials in the world being able to make even the slightest mark upon them.

Even then, her hands – and her entire body, for that matter – contained a strange mixture of masculinity and femininity, amplified by the general simplicity of her appearance. With her powerful and compressed muscle, as well as the absolute yang physique that had been shaping her for three years, looking at her upper body while she wears a shirt leads to most assuming that she is a man, and yet every single powerful muscle and chiselled feature on her somehow carried the natural beauty commonly associated with women at the same time, shaping her overall appearance to be more feminine overall.

In her eyes, this was fortunate, for she did not appreciate the male form as much as the female, but it did force her to consider whether permitting any further changes to occur to her would prevent her from using one of a woman’s natural weapons – her beauty. After all, she was still intent to create Yi City anew, and she would need to resolve many issues and conflicts on her way there. Having the ability to deal with some things through allure or traditional beauty would be extremely conducive to this.

‘Really, this is all caused more so by the excess of yang within my body than anything that I am personally able to change or influence. If I am someday able to find a method of gaining a second physique, or if I can somehow infuse myself with the yin I require, then- wait, this reminds me of the time I started thinking about people as crops,’ she realised, mentally slapping herself for failing to notice such a thing for a second time in a row, ‘The fact that my mind is still this easily influenced is not good, but it is fortunate that I am not being targeted by a malicious influence. Then, if I-’

She was about to entertain the thought that she could have somehow found another of the strange memory planes when, right after turning around on the spot, she found one floating freely in the air.

Even if she was someone that took luck for granted, this would still be insane to her.

It seemed that reality didn’t want her to ponder this too deeply either, as the memory plane was already breaking down before she even had the opportunity to touch it. Thus, she decided that it would be best to do so before she had no more opportunities to learn more about this prison realm.

Wei Yi got up and rushed towards the memory plane, reaching it with her finger as only a half remained.

The memory burst into existence, covering a smaller area than before in a glass-like dome and converting the area beneath it into a large field of golden wheat, all of which reached to half of her height without any difficulty as it swayed in the wind.

Once again, she saw the two figures, the mother and the child, but they looked very different. Both had aged significantly, with the child now looking thirty years old, with a head of long black hair and silver eyes, with a height that easily put him above his mother, who now appeared to be within her forties, with the same crimson hair and grey eyes as she had the entire time. As before, she was still smiling, except that smile had somehow grown brighter and more cheerful, as if some terrible pressure had been removed from her.

Kong Shi Meng held his mother’s hand while he looked downward with a downcast expression, “… I will have to leave for some time, I’m afraid. Mother, I just wanted to say… thank you for everything you’ve done for me, and for understanding my situation when I had first explained it to you. Do you remember what I had suggested some time ago?”

“I do. I don’t mind doing as you asked, though it will be a shame not to be able to watch over the great things you have created,” Yi Shi Meng replied, pulling the tall man into a hug, “Remember, I can still take care of things for you, just like I did when you were young.”

“R-Right… If… If I cannot return, for whatever reason, you will know when you see a person with my gift. Please take care of them, if they come to you.”

“Mhm…”

The image shattered, leaving Wei Yi with far more questions than answers. What were the great things that Yi Shi Ming wanted to oversee, and could they still be found within the Planar Continents? Had Kong Shi Meng revealed his nature as a person from another world, or is the situation that he refers to significantly different to what she expects? This gift of his, what was it, and where should one go if they happen to obtain it?

‘I’m guessing that it ought to be somewhere within the prison realm, seeing as Kong Shi Meng’s memories have become scattered throughout it, but I cannot even begin to imagine what sort of blessing he might have obtained in this life, for even the Fairy of Dust was incredibly powerful.’

She looked around, and found no more such memory planes, or perhaps echoes, prompting her to dress and exit the room with a grim expression on her face.