Path of the Ascendant

Although the battle seemed to be won, the altercation itself was not.

While Wei Yi wanted to watch the spectacle and disaster for every second of its brief presence, she was forced to turn her attention to the book, which flew towards her at great speed and slammed into her body, breaking the defence of the Golden Form without any issue whatsoever. Some kind of strange azure presence emerged from within, seemingly attempting to enter her body and her dantian, but the very second that it emerged, the mysterious characters, which had previously been quivering endlessly throughout the duration of the battle, suddenly moved once again.

Each individual part of the characters separated and flew into a very specific location, forming an array of extreme complexity and impossible ingenuity before the azure presence could even attempt to dig deeper into her body.

The many fragments lit up with a cosmic light, bolts of lightning that seemed to be formed from the very fabric of outer space itself forming and arcing between the obsidian fragments, and an odd form of force emerged from the eye of the array, flying out to meet the azure presence within the spatial book.

When they collided, the azure disappeared in an instant, vanishing not just from her body, but seemingly from the very world itself, while the book fell into her hands.

This entire process was so rapid and sudden, beginning and ending in less than one millisecond, that even Wei Yi’s mind, which was currently working at something that neared the greatest speeds it had ever reached before, could barely understand what had happened, though it was able to remember the entire scene and store it within the Augur’s Library before the magnificent array formed by the mysterious characters broke down and they returned to their previous positions, once more detailing how to break through into the Emergent Anchor realm. Nonetheless, she knew two things with great certainty: that Ding Wen had been an otherworldly demon, just as she had initially assumed, and that there was more to them than simply possessing a unique technique or approach.

Never before had she seen the mysterious characters respond to something with such a great amount of power and such a complex array. Previously, even when consuming the energy of the fourth or fifth realm of planar cultivation to unlock some new aspect of her cosmic energy, they were able to achieve this purely via forming a great maw to consume what they required.

After such things, they would be revitalised, but now, they seemed to be almost entirely exhausted.

‘Of course, all of this may be my imagination, but…’ she could not finish the thought, instead shifting her attention to the pages of the book that she now held within her hand. When she had grabbed it after the strange azure presence disappeared, she had accidentally shut it, so she now opened the book to a random page, uncertain whether the page that it was opened to would change anything of significantly, if anything at all.

The very second that she saw the treasury through the pages of the book, she knew that it had been a good idea to inspect it when she did.

From what she had previously seen of the azure treasury, it was incredibly stable and significantly stronger as a spatial realm than even the prison realm, which also had a significantly greater quantity of natural laws and stability of form than the Kong Holy Grounds, and yet the sight within the treasury was now completely different.

All traces of the azure light had vanished completely, leaving behind only darkness, and the gold that made up the rest of the vault was rapidly being broken down and shattered into nothingness. Many of the items that she had previously seen within the treasury had already vanished, and those that remained were rapidly being pushed towards the centre by the shrinking walls of the spatial realm, though some of them could not fit into the remaining space and were instead devoured and completely eradicated by the rapid compression of the space.

‘How do I retrieve items from this spatial item? I cannot lose such an enormous quantity of valuables!’ she mentally exclaimed, sinking her spiritual will into the item while also inspecting it physically in an attempt to find any trace of instructions or some hint regarding how the items was to be used.

Naturally, she did not expect some kind of instructional manual, for that sort of thing would just be silly and out of place on an artefact created specifically for someone, whether by that person, or by someone else with intimate knowledge of that person, as was likely the case with Ding Wen and his otherworldly inheritance.

The answer turned out to be simpler than she had expected, for the second that she touched the spatial storage with her spiritual will, she found it to be lacking any sort of owner or master, without whom it was unable to maintain a stable for and was thus falling apart even more quickly than the Kong Holy Grounds had. Although this was not a well-documented aspect of storage items, if this sort of thing even happened to ordinary forms of spatial storage, it did not take her much effort to understand that the easiest way to correct this would be by providing the necessary guidance to the spatial realm within.

When her will had resided in the artefact for a few seconds, she felt the item adjust to her presence, and slowly acknowledge her as the owner.

It was incredibly simple, though Wei Yi had an idea as to why this happened.

‘Previously, the master of the spatial artefact was either Ding Wen, or the strange azure presence that had emerged from it previously. If the latter is true, it would explain why the book was able to move on its own and respond to threats that Ding Wen could not, and it might have even been the thing that permitted the artefact to store such an enormous quantity of items. Now that it is gone, there is no-one to maintain it, nor an internal source of power to keep it stable,’ she thought, willing the rapid collapse to slow down and then stop.

When this process was complete, the overall storage area of the artefact had dropped to less than one percent of what it had initially been, and she had the feeling that the only thing that had allowed her to keep it at the current size were the items within, their power maintaining the space they occupied, ‘I should be careful with removing things from here, as I suspect that I won’t be able to place them back into it. Perhaps if I find something like the azure presence and am able to place it into the book, I will be able to bring back some of its overall storage area, but for now the overall storage limit… let’s have a look…’

While she could not make direct modifications to the internal storage space of the book, she was able to feel out the weaker parts of the space in the gaps between items, judging through them when the collapse would have stopped on its own.

‘The current size is roughly one hundred cubic metres, so, let’s see…’ she felt the space and quickly noticed that the outer parts of the spatial storage were incredibly weak, so weak that even her spiritual will alone would be able to break them down, prompting her to go deeper, ‘At fifty metres, it is still weak… thirty metres… ten metres? No? Fi- One metre? There’s only one cubic metre of space in this entire book? It makes sense with how perfect the removal method is, but that must mean that the azure presence was incredibly, absolutely powerful… Otherworldly demons, huh…’

It was frustrating that someone that wasn’t particularly talented in any way, like Ding Wen, could acquire such an incredibly powerful item and use it freely, but there was very little she could do.

Just like the reform of Yi City, it had to be delayed until the day that she had the necessary ability to interact with the otherworldly demons at a more preferable level, rather than waiting for them to appear and decide that they want to kill her due to getting in their way. At that point, she could find out anything she wants from them, whether it is the origin of the azure power or the reason behind their appearance in the world and the reasoning behind their constant attempts to rise to the top. After all, Yi Henghua had expressly stated her belief that not only was she vastly superior to the Master of Yi City, but that she would be the empress of the heavens and the earth, while Ding Wen was clearly claiming all of his troops as his own possessions through the power of the Greed Congregation technique – which, just like the Fairy of Dust manual, was nowhere to be found.

She considered putting the book away, when her intuition told her to view its cover once again. As her intuition and natural senses had been reliable as of late, she did exactly that, finding a new line of text that had previously been absent.

“A book holds a house of gold...!”

There was no opportunity to contemplate the meaning of the statement as the book suddenly lit up and shrunk down into an extremely miniscule shape before sinking into her abdomen, where it reached her dantian and stopped just before coming into contact with the remnant planar energy that still remained within.

No traces of it remained on the outside, though she could still view the inside of the book whenever she wanted to.

‘Spatial storage and the ability to nest within the dantian? That something like this was owned by someone who could not properly comprehend its ability is rather disappointing, though only in so far as the fact that it would have been great to see this wielded by someone competent. Naturally, I am not so masochistic as to desire to be beaten by someone with might that is far superior to mine – with how I’m intentionally letting myself get hit more and more as of late, I suspect that might not remain the case for long, unfortunately,’ she thought, shaking her head as to bring her attention back onto the book, ‘I suppose I could call it the House of Gold for now.’

She took a step back at that second to avoid a large chunk of rubble from falling onto her head, then switched her attention to the remains of the room. Somewhere in the area had to be the man in white, as he would not have otherwise been so disturbed by the azure energy that was limited only to the enormous auction house.

After looking around carefully, she sensed the spiritual will-like energy flowing up from the ground, seeking a candle to appear beside before a faint image of the man in white appeared near it.

Just as she was about to greet him, he said, “Listen, I do not have much time. Whatever you did during your battle- how in the heavens did the ceiling collapse? I thought that even this place hadn’t yet begun to suffer from falling stars and rocks, or anything else of the sort… Ahem, what I was saying is that your battle has damaged my place of residence. Let me into your mental landscape so that I may remain in this world!”

Wei Yi nodded, though she watched incredibly carefully as this avatar of the man in white dispersed and a small wisp of what she could only assume to be pure mental energy floated out of the cracks and treasures in the ground and flew towards her head.

However, just as it came close to her, she grabbed the wisp out of the air by wrapping her hands in a thin film of killing intent in order to be able to interact with the clump of mental energy.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

“Look, even if you aren’t intending to do something stupid, I am not stupid enough to allow random people into my head. The fact that you still wanted to get into my mind, however, tells me that you do have some bad ideas,” she said, “For this reason, I will need you to be in a certain position within my mental landscape. You wouldn’t be opposed to such a thing, would you?”

“Mental landscape? I suppose I can permit such a thing, so-”

Having received his affirmation, she extended the vast quantity of killing intent out of her head and grabbed the wisp of mental energy with it, forcing it into the mental battlefield. There, just as she brought the man in white to his new place, a small tower grew out of the ground beside the Augur’s Library, the vibrant opulence of the latter completely devouring all attention that could possibly be focused towards the former. With no entrances or exits to the tower, and with her mental laws preventing anyone from shifting their form while within it, it meant that the man in white would be completely incapable of leaving nor interacting with the mental world without her permission.

As she threw him into the tower, he initially changed back into his white-covered form. Although there were no issues with it while she had beheld it in the prison realm, now that she could examine his mental energy in greater detail, she knew that this was not his true appearance, and thus she applied her mental energy and killing intent to force him to assume the form that was most true and most appropriate to him.

He clearly wanted to voice some opposition to this, but, seemingly to his surprise, the force upon his was far greater than his own, rapidly breaking down some of the white clothing that obscured every aspect of his form from the world outside.

With the head covering gone and the white clothes transformed into a plain robe, his appearance became incredibly clear to her. The man in white fit his description in two ways, for not only did he appear to prefer white for his clothes, but his long beard was also entirely white, while his face was clearly aged and befitting the old man that made up half of his vocal chorus.

Although he stood with much of the same stability and confidence as his disguised self, the lack of any hair on the upper portions of his head, including his eyebrows, suggested that he had lived for many years, to the point that he had long accepted his baldness and integrated it into his mental perception of himself. This prompted Wei Yi to ponder what her own appearance within the mental realm was like without the intervention of her desires, but she knew that it was not high on the list of priorities and thus remained focused on the present.

“What… what kind of a mental world is this for a savage such as yourself?”

“Savage? I understand why one might call an otherworldly demon that, as they lack most semblances of reason or logic, but such a thing is rather unfair towards a scholar such as myself, no?” she replied, feeling that she fit the description of a scholar rather well.

“Could anyone living in such a terrible place be anything other than a savage?” said the man in white, his words prompting a mental nod from Wei Yi, “Have you seen the conditions of the people around here? Of your culture? All of you are battle-minded savages that walk around while covered in crimson dust and mud, not remembering anything of the way of your ancestors that had initially brought you to this prison realm!”

“That is a surprisingly fair assessment, so forgive me for assuming that you might have some relation to the same world that Ding Wen came from, White. However, you have an issue within your assumptions, namely that I am someone that was born within this prison realm, or that I walk around in mud and dirt like many people here do,” Wei Yi said, willing the hair of her mental self to come undone so that she could display how clean it was, “Furthermore, I have only come here a year ago, and I still recall the way in which the Greats sent me here – hence why I am so intent to leave.”

“What do- Wait a minute, does this mental realm include spiritual will? Are you not a killing intent cultivator that is somehow fusing physique energy with it? How are using spiritual will?”

“Spiritual will? There may be some mental energy within it, but I don’t think I used any spiritual will in the construction process…” she replied in confusion, briefly wondering whether he was referring to the spiritual will with which she interacted with most of her mental landscape, “I get the feeling that you will call me a savage agai-”

“You are a savage then, for how can you fail to notice that mental energy and spiritual will are the exact same thing?”

“Hm?” her eyes widened slightly as she pondered the truth of his words, ‘Spiritual will and the mind are often considered to be improved throughout one’s planar cultivation, and both are conducive to the construction of a mental world such as this one or the Gilded Library… Oh fuck, he may be right!’

Her spiritual will nearly split in half as one portion travelled to the meridians within her body. The first set was reserved for planar energy, and it was the original set that, in comparison to the ones created by the Condensed Formation Body, was seeming to be somewhat inefficient. Her second meridians were filled with physique energy, rapidly attempting to recover from the extreme expenditure she had endured during the battle. Naturally, the third network was home to her killing intent, the deep yet vibrant crimson flowing through her as it was able to return with far greater speed due to being formed from her own mind and mental landscape. The other two appeared to be empty whenever she had looked at them before, and yet, now that she had learn something new about spiritual will, she found that the fourth meridian network was now flowing with a thin, blue and white energy.

It was her spiritual will, without a doubt, and it was incredibly stable, albeit significantly weaker than any other forms of energy at this current time, including the barely stable planar energy.

“So that’s how it is… if only these things weren’t constantly being hidden from me… Then, the spiritual will that I felt from you is indeed that and not a warped form of killing intent?” she asked, silently reinforcing her mental tower so that the man in white had no chance to escape from her no matter what he did.

“Indeed, it is, but I ought to ask the same of you. How do you have two individual forms of energy at once?”

“I see no reason to answer. Instead, share with me your identity. If it is useful, I may be able to put your identity to good use and repay you with some of the information you clearly desire. After all, I can tell you a lot about the situation in the Planar Continents, or as it was roughly twelve days ago. It will be necessary for everyone here the second that I break down the spatial walls of the prison realm and set the world free.”

“Listen to yourself, woman! Breaking through the walls of the prison realm, while an admirable goal, is far easier said than done. Even those on the other side cannot do so without a great deal of effort, not to mention the likes of you…”

“Other side? Of the wall in the middle of the prison realm?”

“A-Ah… All of the killing intent in your realm is damaging my cognitive abilities…” the man in white muttered, “I am Bai Hao, and since you are now technically keeping me alive, I can share a bit with you.”

‘Bai Hao… even his name is white. This man, or his parents, certainly have a certain preference for the colour… However, his surrender is not just obvious, but clearly due to the fact that he is unable to contend with me,’ she thought, removing as much of her killing intent from the inside of the tower as she could, “Sure, I’ll take everything you can tell me.”

“Before I do that, I would suggest that you ensure you are in a safe place, or else you will be too invested in my tales to focus properly.”

“I am not so useless as to be unable to pay attention to two things at once, Bai Hao,” she said, fortifying the tower for a second time before exiting the mental domain so that she could wholeheartedly focus on the matter at hand, that being the slow awakening of the many warriors that had previously been under the rule of Ding Wen. They had all been changed into frozen statues to bolster the man’s wealth and the power of the Greed Congregation, and now, they were slowly coming towards the large whole in the entire building to understand what had happened to them and their leader.

Naturally, when they saw Wei Yi standing amidst the ruins, their gazes quickly focused upon her.

‘In this situation, there is only one thing I could possibly do, isn’t there? For the highest possible chance of discovering the weaknesses of this realm and eventually escaping, I must have as many people standing on my side as possible, and this situation is the best opportunity to get them there.’