Path of the Ascendant

Wei Yi sat on the edge of an enormous pool of blood, with her clothing hanging from a nearby spike in the wall that had been attached for her convenience. Her feet were literal millimetres from the blood, and she occasionally touched its surface with her skin while she waited for some of her arrays and two more items from the House of Gold to change it in the ways that she required. As this was not something that she could accelerate, she focused on her spiritual will instead.

Following her interrogation of Bai Hao, where she used his tendency to visualise the things he discussed to get a few more details out of him than he expected, she had been able to modify her Ascendant’s Gathering to function simultaneously on both types of mental energy, though she would currently be incapable of using it due to the absence of free spiritual will in the air.

Instead, she had to work with what she already had, and if her mind was any indication of her potential, it meant that she could get far, far more out of her current spiritual will energy than any part of it or its appearance suggested.

The cultivation path of her new Ascendant’s Refining technique – also applicable to both killing intent and spiritual will at the same time, as their natures and the meridians they flowed through were nigh identical – began with the Third Eye, which had long been affected by killing intent and changed to be partially crimson in colour. It had similar effects on both forms of energy, and thus it made for the perfect opportunity to cleanse her energies prior to beginning to circulate it. To alleviate the conflict of the two forms of mental energy, she intentionally split the Third Eye in two for this technique, using only the left side to circulate killing intent and only the right to process spiritual will.

From there, she used the natural endurance that she had built up from cultivating in the middle of several dozen killing intent-attracting black bones, most of which had been relocated to this blood pool to further strengthen it, to circulate that energy as many times as possible, pushing both sets of meridians before supplementing them with physique energy.

Based on what she was able to understand of the realms of spiritual will cultivation, it turned out that she had already gotten into the sixth stage of Focused Will, though any attempts to construct something complex out of her spiritual will at this point failed completely in the two times that she had attempted it. Although the fact that none of the three forms of energy that seemed to be independent of planar energy provided her with any opportunities to gain perfected stages was incredibly disappointing and disheartening, it also meant that it was very easy to develop any one stage to its absolute limit.

The presence of a vastly superior energy in extremely close proximity to spiritual will, namely the killing intent that it began to mirror, caused it to develop more quickly in an effort to catch up, and soon, after just ten minutes of cultivation above a boiling pool of the Beast’s blood, it broke through into the seventh stage, causing her spiritual will to become thicker and denser, gaining another tenth of a metre of range.

‘Hm, the blood pool isn’t quite ready yet. I suppose that I might be able to add the Soul Gem from the House of Gold into the equation and finish my cultivation to the peak of the first realm in one go,’ she thought, glancing at the strange red crystal in her hand.

According to the House of Gold’s description, the Soul Gem stored the soul of some kind of powerful demon or devil, which could be teased out to challenge one’s own mind and spirituality and strengthen it under the pressure. Such a description was certainly a little concerning, but as the behaviour suggested matched her current usage of the Beast’s killing intent, Wei Yi figured that it was worth the risk, especially after considering that every single thing she had found within the House of Gold so far has been both effective against her enemies and harmless to her, despite the overall madness of the otherworldly demons.

Due to the sheer variety of these items, she did not think that there was a high chance of them being the cause of the chaotic insanity of the other world, especially as Yi Henghua did not appear to have a large variety of equipment to choose from while she fought, not to mention the disappearance of a number of the most powerful-looking objects from the House of Gold immediately after the azure presence vanished. If any of them were likely to have hidden dangers, it would be those that had been bound most closely to the other world.

‘As for its usage, it appears to be as simple as the rest of them, just requiring me to send my spiritual will into the gem… The insides, however, include a very interesting set of array-like techniques to keep whatever is within at bay,’ she was able to peek inside of the object with her spiritual will, though her view was not only faint, but very limited, preventing her from seeing the entirety of these symbols, ‘All of these objects still seem to come from worlds other than this one, though nothing I have seen so far matches the absolute madness that was the azure presence… I wonder what happened to the equivalent that ought to have been in Yi Henghua’s possession, and whether it tried interacting with someone other than me, as well as what the result would have been…’

The lack of knowledge and information was, as always, bothersome, but she had spent enough time thinking about it, so she took the Soul Gem and willed the soul within to emerge.

It did so through an incredibly thin crack within the gemstone, a thin crimson mist emerging and floating around the stone itself. Despite that, she instantly felt the storm walls of her mental landscape tremble, as if they were bombarded by some invisible, titanic beast that wished to enter the small world that they concealed.

When she added her spiritual will to the storm walls, this invisible monster instead struck it, crushing every attempt at composing any kind of solid defence. Although a small quantity of that spiritual will energy was lost, everything that remained became a little stronger, allowing her to repeat the process again. After several more instances of construction and destruction, Wei Yi instead formed the energy into something with greater stability, creating basic structures out of it to endure the strikes of the malicious soul with a little more efficiency and reward.

Not a single one of these structures was long lasting enough nor sufficient to skip the gap of stages to breach her into the Strengthened Mind realm, but it did bring her ever so slightly closer, with every wisp of spiritual will energy that recovered from her concentration coming closer to advancing.

She was able to return all of this energy to the Ascendant’s Refinement circulation after the mental storm walls had strengthened sufficiently, eventually creating a cycle wherein the energy of the mental storm walls would deflect some of the soul’s attacks before circulating several times within the body to be refined to their limit before returning to their previous location.

Just eight minutes later, as if she did not just experience another breakthrough, her spiritual will approached the edge of the eighth stage.

‘The blood pool still has ten or so more minutes to go, so I suppose that I can try getting to the ninth stage before jumping into it. Then, I might be able to push for the second realm while I am inside, since the excessive killing intent within the Beast’s blood will be conducive both to the tempering of spiritual will and the cultivation of killing intent itself, meaning that I might also get a stage or two of killing intent while pushing my physique into the second realm,’ she concluded, removing her foot from the pool of blood to avoid suffering too much damage too early.

And so, while keeping her feet away from the blood, as even a single touch would instantly eat through her skin and reach her bones, she permitted a slightly greater quantity of the trapped soul to emerge, replacing the quantity that she had already worn away while allowing the rest to gather around her and attack her mental landscape from all directions.

Perhaps due to her perception of reality and the mental world as being a flat plane, with no detail below the mental battlefield nor any true sky to behold, that did not include the air or ground, meaning that all of the mental attacks were concentrated purely on the white and crimson storm walls.

Almost ten more minutes had to pass before the next breakthrough neared, and this one was not as smooth as her last, though there was no harm or significant strain to her spiritual will energy, though there would likely be only one more stage that she could reach without any clear consequences to herself.

Furthermore, just at that moment, the blood pool shook, quivered and then seemed to freeze, the many waves on the crimson surface stopping completely mid-movement.

She knew that this was a mere illusion, and that the blood was currently in its most volatile state. If an ordinary person jumped in at this moment, the waves they came into contact with would be temporarily animated, then melt all of their flesh, muscles and bones into something equivalent to pure energy, causing it to mix with the Beast’s blood and eventually be inseparable from it. When the blood pool would inevitably return to its typical state, there would be no hope of removing any traces of the dead person from within, and they might even transform into more blood for the dead Beast, even if that seemed to not benefit the ancient creature.

‘Whether or not there is an effect on the Beast, I should obviously avoid turning to nothingness within its veins. Jumping in with anything other than the full protection of my physique energy will be foolish, so I naturally won’t,’ she thought, getting up and stepping up to the edge of the blood pool.

Then, after taking a deep breath with the assistance of several body techniques and shrouding herself in sunlight, she jumped in feet-first.

The very instant that her body came into contact with the blood, it leapt into action – figuratively – and tried to seep through her protective light and into her body – literally. Despite the generally perfect protection of the True Ascendant physique energy, the blood broke through many thinner spots within the uneven parts of the protection, forcing Wei Yi to quickly improve her control over the physique energy in order to limit the burning of her skin.

However, even the True Ascendant physique energy could only protect her for so long.

It soon burst through the sunlight and charred her skin and flesh, though it was surprisingly useless against her hair for no clear reason. Even while her very bones were being threatened by the Beast’s blood and the incredibly powerful physique energy was being beaten into shape constantly, her crimson hair did not suffer.

‘In the future, I ought to see whether I can fashion my hair into clothes or weaponry, or something else of the sort. If I weave some of them into my robes, they might be almost as difficult to damage as the rest of my body, allowing me to not be concerned with the Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival being destroyed completely during any particularly serious encounter,’ she thought for a moment before her mind moved to a more suitable idea, ‘Right, I need to consider my body’s improvement. After all, the only reason I had decided to go in now was because I had finally come to some understanding of what I ought to amend within myself. To not consider it properly would be equivalent to wasting this opportunity completely.’

She separated her spiritual will into the primary energy and the actual spiritual perception, moving the latter into her body to carefully view every single part of herself, putting more focus onto the parts that she had not yet explored fully.

The human body was full of flaws and issues, of course, and it was thus prime for modification during the ascension into the Greater Shape realm. Much of the muscle and organs were designed somewhat inefficiently and without using their full potential, and while it appeared that it would be more suitable to correct such flaws within a further physique cultivation realm, Wei Yi understood that many of the imperfections were far simpler than they appeared and could thus be removed this early.

For instance, she could easily double the strength of her muscles by correcting their form, improve the heart by altering some of its capacity and efficiency, implement some basic functions of arrays and inscriptions within her body to significantly improve almost everything about her physical functions, alter the structure of the eyes somewhat to reduce the size of the ever-annoying blind spot within a human’s vision that allows anyone to pass unseen so long as they exploit it, re-arrange some of the veins, arteries, capillaries, meridians and nerves within her body to optimise the flow of energy – and to cleanse the corruption of the killing intent on the third meridian network, even if it was only to a limited extent – throughout her limbs and features, change some of the bones to suit her current combat style a little more than they currently do…

In short, there was a lot that she had to do, and most of it could only be achieved by outright melting parts of herself to then force them to change during their regeneration.

Thus, as the Beast’s blood seeped into her body, rapidly beating back her three energies, she began to reformation of the body and the reconstruction of the physique – the rapid enhancement of all three forms of power.

She began her breakthrough.

 

Some distance away, within the carcass of the Beast, Dugu Wei shook her head at Qui Sheng’s suggestions, saying, “We can’t just go back to our previous schedule. The second that we fall into it again, we will slip up and she will spot us, and then… She might even be listening to us right now.”

“But it’s been so long! This place is accessible to a limited few anyway, there can’t be any harm in-”

Qiu Sheng’s words were cut short as a thick strand of killing intent suddenly flew past them, its length fluctuating and waving through the air as it travelled. Soon, it was joined by more and more such threads, separating the Beast’s killing intent into many thinner pockets within the air as the threads slowly joined together, replacing the crimson air itself.

With no spiritual will to use to analyse this killing intent, neither of them could get a detailed understanding of this energy, but their instincts told them that this belonged to their new leader.

This was confirmed to Dugu Wei when parts of the crimson air suddenly showed familiar images: the dust and dead ground of the battlefield, countless warriors fighting one another without any clear reason behind their conflict and the hint of a significantly more powerful presence.

However, there were some minor differences within this scene, but they became most clear when several strands of pure white seeped into this new crimson, mixing and yet contrasting with the killing intent as they altered the very image of the endless mental battlefield. Amongst the countless warriors that wielded only killing intent and physique energy, those that also employed some kind of subtle, calm force appeared, their defences being impeccable and their attacks being simple and direct, using no weapon but their own mind.

Some small parts of the ground recovered from the endless battle, thin stalks of grass rising from the earth in those places and growing to a very specific, uniform height.

The sight became even more confounding when this illusory world suddenly cracked once again, splitting into individual strands of white and red, expanding further outwards and crashing into their surroundings, with the most concentrated parts of the crimson killing intent inflicting some minor damage on the stone walls around them.

 

All of the population of Beast’s Rest suddenly found their killing intent going awry as the air around them seemed to break into two distinct parts, with the new segments of the crimson air being highlighted by some kind of white energy. This faint colour, overpowered by either form of killing intent around it, still aroused the curiosity of so many that observed it, for this shade was entirely foreign to their world, and yet it somehow remained in place for longer than a single breath.

Furthermore, this magnificent colour continued to spread out, all of the other parts of crimson moving around to form complex shapes within the air, with those that were a little more experienced in the art of arrays understanding that they were seeing one such enormous array forming around them.

Not a single one of those that saw the arrays had any idea what it was meant to do, however, for every part of it surpassed any of their understanding of the great art, weakened as it was by their lack of access to proper materials and the fact that they could only use killing intent to power their arrays, significantly limiting the ways in which they can function. Individual parts of the array could be deciphered with a significant amount of effort and focus, as they did appear in certain existing killing intent arrays, but the rest were from a system that was entirely outside of their comprehension, making it seem like the gap between them and the array creator was equivalent to the gap between the first and nine-star realms of great art mastery.

This uncertainty was certainly not helped by the activation of this enormous array, which caused all of the killing intent around Beast’s Rest to tremble. Slowly, it was drawn into some internal part of the town, along complicated paths that seemed to partially follow the arrays, like the streams in a tributary joining into a single flowing river.

 

In a land of perfect white, four figures stood at four points at the four sides of a large construct in the middle of a four-sided tower in the middle of Sanctuary.

They were looking at this complex mechanism, with many arrays and inscriptions carved out within to allow it to fulfil its function as a method of detection of aberrant and unusual bursts of energy. After an earlier outburst of killing intent had been caught appearing within the left section of the machine, indicating an unusual spike in foreign energy within the proximity of a local savage settlement, these four figures had been ordered to remain on watch for further oddities.

Now, they found them, in the form of yet another energy spike that covered the entirety of the settlement, prompting their attention yet again.

“Energy flow appears to be following the pattern of savage breakthrough into the upper stages of killing intent cultivation,” the first figure said, his eyes glazing over for a second as he recalled all this information through a thread of spiritual will connected to something beneath the ground.

“Structure of the energy appears to follow basic spiritual will practises common around the time of expedition fifty-seven, led by Bai Hao,” the second figure added, her information coming from a similar source.

“Traces of physique manifestation energy are present, responsible for rapid movement of primordial beast blood throughout the settlement’s basement,” reported the third figure.

“No evidence of previous spatial fluctuations, potential of equipment failure increased by 3.7%.”

As the great energy movement continued, they kept watch, not moving nor even breathing any more than necessary as they paid attention to the occurring events, hoping to discover more information about them as to be certain how to respond. With every significant progression or change, they altered their statistics, percentages and predictions, the chance of their equipment being incorrect being changed several more times alongside a dozen other values. Still, no matter what they did, they made sure to never respond.

They couldn’t do such a thing, after all, unless they invested their full effort into making another breach within the storm walls.

 

Many unpleasant hours passed in something close to silence for Wei Yi, who was still beneath the blood pool, her physique energy becoming sufficiently powerful to handle to immense power of the blood of the Beast and forcing her to manipulate it in a more precise manner to continue correcting her body.

Although she would not emerge any time soon, expecting to remain within the pool for another few hours at the very least, her body had already changed in a manner that could be described as rather significantly.

If she was to emerge at this very moment and ignore the numerous large holes within her flesh, she would stand one and a half centimetres higher than before due to the slight modification in the placement and scale of her bones and muscles in the legs and arms, even with the extreme compression of her musculature that she had decided to undergo in order to allow for further growth in the future, as her previous large form had little form for further improvement.

Truthfully, she was also keen to return to a slightly less conspicuous state, though only slightly.

Most of her blood vessels had also been rearranged to be in their most optimal positions within the body, with the same being done to her meridians. She even wove the physique energy meridians together with the main blood vessels, constantly reinforcing that which flowed through both sets of channels as well as insulating her blood entirely against any kind of poison or toxin through the raw power of her physique energy. Naturally, she could still willingly ingest and allow her body to process some type of poison if she needed to, it would just be more convenient to get rid of them the vast majority of the time.

‘However, still is still not enough. In order to break through, I will need to do so with all three currently accessible forms of energy, stimulating every single wisp and clump of energy around me to cause this to happen,’ she thought, going over her plan in her head, ‘By rapidly compressing the enormous array that I have created with the vague killing intent I have allowed outside of my body, I should also be able to condense the structure of the spiritual will’s Strengthened Mind. That pressure would force the development of my physique energy, adding to my existing work to further enhance my body, and the resulting radiance would solidify both my spiritual will and killing intent into the next realm and stage respectively… I might even be able to convert some of that into development of my planar realm…’

That last idea was the most unlikely to work, though as someone in the Half-Step Emergent Anchor realm, all she truly needed was a push to fully solidify the anchor. In the situation that the nascent rift somehow develops alongside the anchor, this development could be of immense aid to her by significantly shortening the time she needs to spend within the prison realm before being able to force her way out, though whether that would be better than developing all other forms of energy to their peak first was an entirely different question.

‘On the topic of multiple forms of energy, I require something to mitigate the current clash between my spiritual will and killing intent in the mental landscape. At the moment, the conflict isn’t too significant due to the disparity in the cultivation of the two, but as spiritual will catches up, it will start to do more than alter the endless battlefield…’ she frowned, not forgetting to keep the Beast’s blood around her in check, ‘Well, I have already used the storm walls and the general aesthetic, so I suppose that poaching a little more of the overall concept and design from the prison realm wouldn’t be too detrimental to my progress. It is something that I have personally experienced, after all, and I will be able to improve on my impression of the prison realm when I inevitably get onto the other side…’

As she was aware that the prison realm had an eye to the storm walls, she instantly decided that the Augur’s Library would be best placed in her equivalent, while the tower that currently held Bai Hao could be merged with it to grow the size of the library further by adding more wings onto it.

The storm walls would then be supported by the raw power killing intent and the concentrated effect of the spiritual will basic structure array, with the mental battlefield being split in two for the combatants. Each one would be dedicated to the suitable warriors, except both would face off against physique energy-type opponents for their continuous cultivation and refinement.

‘Alternatively, I could easily stage so-called incursions from the other side and make the two parts of the mental battlefield into things that are purely aesthetic, using the storm walls only to enhance the general stability of the battlefield…’

Since things were currently going rather slowly, she was pondering all sorts of things now that she had the opportunity to do so. For once, the ability of her mind to slow time the perception of time for herself was not proving to be convenient or helpful in the slightest, as she had slowly found herself drifting to topics of no relevance to her future whatsoever, like what colour she would prefer her eyes to be if she was able to freely alter them, or whether it was a good idea to add two more strands of hair to her head to even out her hair.

However, she was finally able to move on once she felt her three available energies approaching the next stage, prompting her to shoot out a mental command to the enormous nexus of killing intent and spiritual will that had built up around her and the entirety of Beast’s Rest.

The thick crimson air around the town shook yet again, but this time, it did not remain in place, sinking away in a single instant as it crashed into the underground middle of the Beast’s long-dead body. With it, the white and crimson that belonged to Wei Yi also disappeared, momentarily leaving the entire town mystified as they saw colours and shades that they had never seen before – things other than crimson, for once, stood out to them, and they couldn’t help but be drawn into observing them.

Meanwhile, the blood pool around Wei Yi was compressed by this immense quantity of incoming energy, pressing an immense quantity of blood around a single individual with such great force that the black bones that had been arranged around it cracked from the pressure. Her internal organs and bones also struggled beneath this force, but the very next second, an immense quantity of physique energy burst out of her body, washing over the entirety of her being and rapidly completing the many tasks that she had initially began at the beginning of the process.

When the killing intent and spiritual will returned, their collective power instantly blew the thick mass of blood apart, with both energies sinking into her head and shaking up the mental landscape.

The dense grounds of the mental battlefield shattered into pieces and fell apart, with some being infused with white spiritual will energy while the rest united into one once more, forming one half of the yin-yang symbol out of the terrain that joined up with the other half that was now made entirely of white dust, white grass and white stone.

Around the entirety of the mental battlefield, the array of killing intent stabilised and was replaced with spiritual will, the incredible complexity of it preventing the weak-seeming energy from collapsing onto itself.

Her Augur’s Library moved into the middle of this new battlefield, with the individual tower moving alongside it, and was then surrounded by two storm walls that would prevent any intruder from nearing it even if they were able to breach the first layer of her mental defences. On the other hand, her body, no longer covered in blood, was also revealed to the world in all its glory as she gracefully landed on the floor, opening her eyes and finally taking in a proper breath of air.

“Phew~… Now, I should be in a good enough state to get my name out there.”