Path of the Ascendant

Shi Gong and Entropy were both in the eighth realm, though the eighth realm of a Primordial Deity differed greatly from that of a human being. What defined the eighth realm most of all was the appearance of an Imperfect Rift, and the attainment of infinite energy that could be endlessly refilled without the need for an outside source, letting a cultivator fight on for an incredibly long period of time, so long as they did not exhaust all of their power over a brief period of time and had to wait in a defenceless state to recover.

Entropy was clearly familiar with its abilities, for it acted in simple ways, yet required constant observation to be securely kept away from the dragons, qilins and phoenixes. On the other hand, Shi Gong had only advanced a reasonably brief period of time ago, and it appeared to reflect on his general strategy.

He reserved his power and held back each strike despite having the theoretical ability to take down some of the ancient beasts with a sufficiently well-aimed flurry of attacks, indicating inexperience.

Oddly enough, Wei Yi was not only far more familiar with the right methods to use in this time, but she was also intending to elevate her energy recovery capabilities even further. Her nascent rift was bright as ever within her Endless Monolith, and in order to succeed, she was going to need to increase the opening of this rift and draw out more of its power. Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to break the current stalemate.

Before then, she did have one more thing to do, and that was to take down Shi Gong. Stabbing him directly might be a little difficult, but she was sure that she would be able to kill him – and she had to, if everything was to go smoothly. Letting someone in the eighth realm vanish just like before would be incredibly risky, especially if it just appeared over to the south and met Primordial Yin, or something of similar power. Perhaps there was another Great Worm, this one attuned to the cold and snow, which hid another powerful Primordial Deity in the Absolute Frost.

It was also something she really wanted to do for herself, even if it proved difficult or annoying in some way. She didn’t value her promises too greatly, but it would also be good to actually adhere to one so aligned with her own desires.

‘The phoenixes are powerful enough to perform the deed of killing Shi Gong if Chu Su assisted with the element of wood, feeding the flames, but I need to give them the opportunity to do so. Also, the dragons and qilins need some assistance… Wait a moment, I have their bloodlines, don’t I? One was obtained slightly less regularly than another, but still, bloodlines,’ she brought out the relevant notes in the Ascendant’s Library and confirmed her recollection, ‘I don’t think any of the bloodlines I possess are sufficiently closely associated with phoenixes, but I can attempt to induce resonance with the other two species.’

She had enough reason to believe that she could boost the power of bloodlines that she had absorbed within the bodies of others, including the sources of said bloodlines, so she could elevate the power of the dragons and qilins to a sufficiently high level to grant them the ability to fight against Entropy for a few moments, enough for Shi Gong to die.

After that, the nascent rift could be pried open further, though she didn’t expect to open it fully.

A nascent rift, according to her understanding, was effectively the same as the Imperfect Rift of the eighth realm, except it was tightly held shut at first. She had no clue how the Nine Petals Cosmic Lotus, an object she had only seen once and never again, came to have this rift, nor whether it was natural or manufactured by someone, but she did recall that it had begun in a mostly shut form, releasing a small percentage of her overall energy capacity constantly. Within the Kong Prison Realm, she had been able to open it further, and she had since reached a state of half openness.

The act of fully opening the nascent rift would bring it to the same state as an Imperfect Rift, and as she knew very well, breaching the boundaries of realms was a rather difficult thing. If it was trivial to do so, she wouldn’t have been stuck at fifty percent all this time.

Fortunately for her, she didn’t need to rely on the nascent rift to break through into the eighth realm. Even if she only managed to keep it at fifty percent, the implosion of the Endless Monolith was guaranteed to produce an Imperfect Rift on its own, and with the presence of the nascent rift, she believed that she might even get a better outcome than simply breaking through to the eighth realm. This would fall in line with the various levels of attainment possible with other realms.

‘So, let’s try it,’ she glanced to the dragons and qilins, and proceeded to produce another reverberating wave of Elysian Blasts before exclaiming, “I’ll attempt to empower you. Don’t resist it.”

She wasn’t even sure if resistance to the empowering bloodline resonance was possible, given that she had never had much cause to experiment in this regard before, but it didn’t hurt to add that onto the end of her words just in case.

Having spent more time around her than the flaming birds – phoenixes, to be precise – they trusted her more, and so didn’t question her in the middle of combat, like the phoenix leader, Huang Mei, would have done. In fact, they even formed some kind of shallow, subtle link between themselves, their blood boiling as the power of their bloodline joined them into a slightly more powerful force, one that would be easier to influence in one go. Even then, she had some suspicions about her ability to succeed, given that bloodlines had not been the focus of her studies and research over the years.

Still, as soon as that occurred, she focused her entire comprehension of bloodline power and forced her own bloodline, the mixed Ascendant’s Bloodline which contained the power of numerous others thanks to regular absorption from defeated foes, to activate and resonate with everything around her. Out of all the absorbed bloodlines, she chose the two appropriate ones.

There were differences between dragons and qilins, even if one only looked at the Western Continent, but they were not sufficient enough to prevent the bloodlines from connecting to one another.

Indeed, the moment that she activated her bloodline resonance, she could feel a certain connection to the dragons and qilins on her side, and through it, her dominant blood had the ability to influence theirs. She made full use of that and amplified the resonance, letting her other bloodline attributes appear, and then also attempted to spread her physique abilities and other traits. For instance, the Golden Bone elixir that she had consumed long ago likely couldn’t be passed on, but it didn’t hurt to try.

After a moment of nothing significant occurring, all of the dragons and qilins suddenly froze as a strange wave passed through them. It didn’t lead to them being hit by any attacks nor being harmed in any way, and the moment after, their forms shimmered slightly, and their strength seemed to increase tenfold. The distance generated by the pause was cleared instantly, and then they hastened forth and attacked Entropy with such speed that neither side was quite prepared for it.

Interestingly enough, despite Wei Yi’s expectation that the qilins would receive a greater benefit due to her possessing their bloodline from birth, unlike the bloodline of dragons which was obtained far more recently during some of their closer interactions, it was the dragons that seemed to be affected the most. They didn’t grow larger in their human forms, nor was it certain whether they would if they turned back into dragons, but they did gain significantly more strength, their skin grew tougher, their eyes became deeper and clearer, and their planar energy seemed to shift into something slightly different, and significantly more powerful.

The qilins benefitted, but less so. The phoenixes might have received a different benefit altogether, but the Ascendant had not yet had the time to take their blood and absorb it into her own bloodline, so she had no influence over them.

Although the dragons and qilins had not been prepared for this particular level of strengthening, she didn’t chose to guide them and instead let them wail at Entropy in their own way. It would be better that way, since she wouldn’t need to waste precious time and would allow the Primordial Deity to be as surprised with each attempted strike as the ancient beasts themselves were. Instead, she chose to put her focus on Shi Gong, who had seen this occur and attempted to interfere without success.

He conjured phantoms of the past, ranging from a pack of wolves to vague shades of Primordial Deities themselves, though the latter lasted for seconds, while the weakest entities could exist for quite a while longer, continuing to be annoying pests to the phoenixes that were putting the most pressure upon them.

There wasn’t any attempt to use that strange method that brought everyone’s power level down to their past selves, but Wei Yi was almost sure that she knew exactly why this was. Shi Gong was a mortal man who, at his weakest, would have been without a cultivation, but the phoenixes were not at all weak even when born. Entropy was an even more extreme case, as there was reason to believe that Primordial Deities began in the eighth realm, and existed there forever. That meant that the technique wouldn’t affect Entropy no matter what happened, and there would suddenly be an eighth realm entity against a group that was no higher than the fourth, effectively.

It would be suicide to do something like this even if he was currently on good terms with Entropy, as the Primordial Deity was very likely to use the opportunity to kill them all and grow stronger as a result, proceeding to attack even the history that the Preservers of Eternity wished to keep.

As such, this technique was out of the picture, and whatever else he might do, Wei Yi intended to prevent it ahead of time with one rapid assault that would leave no room for escape, and guarantee the death of Shi Gong before Entropy had the chance to change its current movements and overcome the empowered qilins and dragons.

She waited for a few moments for the man to get into a position that would be most beneficial for her, then commanded, “Stop!”

Her Command of Law echoed throughout the sands of the north, forcing certain chains of Law to snap into place and prevent Shi Gong’s movements for a little while. With his realm and overall ability, she expected him to be able to break free shortly, so she bid the phoenixes to attack with a brief gesture, simultaneously calling upon her oblivion essence to converge into the centre of her dantian, where she forced it to sink into the Endless Monolith and the rift within. In itself, such an action wouldn’t produce any kind of offensive effect, but she knew that the opening of a nascent rift to any extent led to a certain deviation in reality. By amplifying it, she might well have the ability to kill Shi Gong.

If not, then the sudden eruption of additional energy would permit her to execute a series of Commands of Law and Obliteration-infused Elysian Blasts, which would have a good chance of inflicting significant harm.

After that, there would be no chance of survival against the phoenixes, especially as the Ascendant could take a moment to borrow some of their blood, let them recover it with her excess lifeforce, then gain their characteristic and empower them through their bloodline. It would take some time, and it wouldn’t be the smoothest process, but she could guarantee that the strongest of the phoenixes would have the power of a stronger eighth realm cultivator, overpowering Shi Gong completely and permitting her to focus on Entropy, as she had wished initially.

Once her energy had concentrated to the centre of her dantian, she could sense the nascent rift reacting to the vast density and quantity of the oblivion essence she gathered.

As soon as that occurred, before any kind of change could actually happen, she reached out with her left hand and grasped the air, connecting her grip to the many chains of the world, and then attempted to create a kind of reflection, enlarging the scene within her dantian – a space that lacked substance yet occupied a seemingly endless quantity of space – to the world before her, surrounding Shi Gong.

When a fan of flame conjured by a flap of a phoenix’s wings passed through, it was suddenly amplified and distorted in an unpredictable manner, its shape changing with every instant and eventually scorching the left half of the man’s body. He clearly attempted to prevent it with defensive methods, but those methods instead covered the area above him, preventing the air from being heated beyond the average temperature of the north.

At the same time, the nascent rift within her dantian opened just a little bit further, going from 50% to 51%, but that change alone was sufficient to tear numerous openings within the fabric of the Planar Continents. Through them, the fabled planar realm could be seen.

It had to be noted that there was no such thing as the planar world, from which planar energy originated, and the Imperfect Rift and Eternal Gate were instead manufacturing methods of increasing one’s allocated energy density, letting the world recover their energy far more rapidly. Alternatively, it could be seen as a method of generation of bound planar energy within their body, and although Wei Yi leaned towards the former explanation, it wasn’t necessarily accurate. She was partly limited by her understanding of the world in this particular field, so it could be that she had been mistaken all along, but that wouldn’t be answered here.

What could be seen here was instead the vast concentration of planar energy and its source, piercing through the fabric of the world sufficiently to illuminate the world with violet light.

Those particular openings didn’t touch Shi Gong, but their appearance led to a reverberation similar to her earlier uses of Elysian Blast. As the world before her obtained more energy from these ethereal rifts, her dantian also obtained an ephemeral increase in the density of energy, and that increase led to the outside world gaining additional planar openings.

This kind of chain reaction made no sense at all from the perspective of natural Laws that Wei Yi had been able to decipher from the knowledge of the otherworldly demons. It was akin to their concept of a perpetual motion machine, which would drive itself and potentially even generate energy through an infinite loop, and was something that should have been entirely absurd. There were many reasons why, but it came down to the fact that even existing at 100% efficiency was impossible, not to mention manifesting energy out of thin air. It had to come from somewhere, and go somewhere, and there would always be a set amount of matter and energy, albeit in different forms at different times, and even the Planar Continents adhered to this in a certain, though in distorted form.

Planar energy would disperse after being used, and would dissipate into nothingness, so after the fight was over, all of the rifts would seal, and her own dantian wouldn’t have gained a vast increase in energy quantity, with the nascent rift being the only sign that anything had occurred at all.

For now, however, the opening of her nascent rift proceeded. It reached 52% after a slightly longer while, and that prompted the eruption of a small planar opening in just the right place. A violet glow appeared at Shi Gong’s left knee, which moved slightly despite the chains of Law restricting him, but only the upper part of his leg moved. The foot was still, as was everything that had been severed by the violet opening.

Before he could fall, a spectral foot joined up to the rest of his leg, landing on the ground as if nothing had happened, but it was less stable than his own limb would be. Recalling history in such a manner clearly had its limits, whatever the specifics of those limits were, and it wasn’t possible for him to last long if more of his body needed to be replaced in the same manner.

It was far inferior to the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, though that was to be expected. The Arm was absurdly powerful relative to the typical level of techniques achievable at the stage she had been at, and far more complete than any kind of limb replacement she had seen before, especially when it came to those that had to overcome the very severance of reality to exist as a proper substitute for a missing arm or leg. Thus, she couldn’t expect anything from a method of a cultivator that had only risen to the eighth realm thanks to temporal stasis.

“You-” he began, perhaps intending to convince any one of them of their folly and the error of their ways, but his odd voice was sundered instantly as another tear within the world formed.

The opening manifested just a short distance ahead of his mouth, but that alone was enough to prevent him from moving it or his head, as a careless motion could lead to it being sundered into tiny, worthless pieces. Although most of those present wished for an ending like that, Shi Gong was naturally unwilling to perish while his desires history had not yet come to pass.

He sent out a forceful wave of divine sense that was partially devoured by the openings in the world, but it was sufficient to expose a safe escape route, though that didn’t matter as the chain reaction of energy generating energy finally began in earnest. Dozens of additional planar openings formed within the air in moments, and they followed no logical arrangement or physical coherency, causing some to exist within a dozen others.

The irregularity also meant that it was very difficult to estimate a safe passage, as well as whether the area would remain safe for much longer. Even Wei Yi, the cause of this, couldn’t be sure about it.

‘I have to be careful that I don’t have a repeat of the Black Sun incident at the Ping District. Letting something that isn’t quite within my control get out of hand necessitates a lot of work to make up for my error at the best of times,’ she noted, ‘I hope I never have to see the worst of them.’

Still, 55% openness of the nascent rift wasn’t enough for her, so she pressed on.

The percentage rose rapidly until it touched 74%, where it oddly stalled. With this state, the area before her was still full of tears, but it wasn’t to the point that it couldn’t be evaded whatsoever. With some effort, Shi Gong would likely be able to free himself, albeit with a missing foot, ear, two fingers on the left hand and one on the right, two toes on his remaining foot, torn lips, and a haircut that wouldn’t be possible to manufacture without the use of some unnecessarily wild method.

She needed to guarantee that this wouldn’t happen. Therefore, she quickly made a few adaptations to her initial plans, activated Fault Perception, imbued it with her half-step eighth realm mental energy, and then vanished from the spot.

The leader of the Preservers of Eternity didn’t notice, for he was surrounded by plenty of other sources of danger, but he could perceive a sudden change around him. Something made the air turn oddly solid, difficult to take in or exhale. A strange grip unlike the one that has been restricting him formed, but there was no clear origin to it, no proper source. He had no time to process it as a different, seemingly significantly greater threat appeared out of nowhere and joined the endless planar openings in a manner that went beyond mere co-existence. They united together into a far greater danger than either one could be independently.

It took on the form of five distinct lights, though two were far closer together than the others. This power flowed through the region in a manner that partially aligned with the incomprehensible arrangement of planar rifts, but only for a moment, after which it seemed to be disturbed by something and made to flow wildly, in all directions.

A moment later, he suddenly felt a figure standing next to him, completely unaffected by all of the dangers.

He couldn’t stop himself from looking, but regretted it a moment after.

“Hey there! I did say I was going to stab you, right? Thing is, I never mentioned how, or with what, so I’ll make it up to you by doing it a few dozen… nah, a few thousand times. That should be good, right?” Wei Yi spoke without restraining the murderous impulses brought about by her killing will, not just because this man was someone that should perish, but also because it was imperative to ensuring her success with a plan that she had imagined only a moment ago.

The core was simple enough. She was already projecting her dantian’s state out onto the world, mainly focusing upon the nascent rift, so it wasn’t much of an exaggeration to expand that a little further and cover her state as a whole, albeit in a rather abstract sense. As she had the True Existence physique ability, she could perfectly control her energy inside of her body, whether within or outside the meridians, so now that she made the outside space equivalent to her body, she could freely release and control nearly everything within that space. Combining that with a few techniques to form the energy into sharp points, she had everything she needed to stab a certain person a whole lot.

Thus, before Shi Gong had the chance to do something drastic, like disappearing to another remote part of the Western Continent again, she used all of the energy that existed both in the outside world and her own body to attack the man without holding back whatsoever.

One of the many problems with having a lot of energy, that usually prevented someone from being all-powerful against those that do not have the means to disperse their power entirely, was that it had to be guided and travel to the enemy. This led to any opportunities for evasion, negation, weakening and so on, leading to one’s power rarely matching their absolute peak potential.

This was solved in its entirety by letting her flood the controlled zone with her power, and then driving all of it to move as she wished, which matched what she could achieve within her body, appearing and moving instantly and with great intensity, not being supressed by the outside world’s Laws which forced her energy to be wasted on resisting the natural dissipation of energy. Even with an anchor of some kind, an Endless Monolith in her case, there was still some wasted energy that didn’t transform directly into any kind of beneficial force.

She made sure that Shi Gong learned that very clearly when all of her energy, which he might still be unable to identify in its abstract state, shot right into him, piercing every vital organ she could find, and every other one that wasn’t necessary just for good measure.

A single second was all that it took to devastate his form, shredding all but the dantian and some parts of his mind, which were apparently sufficient for him to maintain the historical recollection of his form, though he was doomed to be unable to achieve much with it as her nascent rift made one step forward and reached three quarter openness. On paper, it seemed like an incredibly small increase of exactly one percent, essentially equivalent to nothing at all, yet it was akin to the phenomena generated by a breakthrough. All it took was the crossing of an otherwise insignificant boundary to transform quantitative change to qualitative change.

In this case, the change was the sudden implosion of the zone where Shi Gong had been trapped, swallowing everything contained within the chains of Law and turning the area to naught. Nothing remained, not even the anchor energy point that she would otherwise collect. Furthermore, the implosion didn’t proceed to then erupt outwards to release everything it had taken, resulting in a simple emptiness amidst the sand.

If one hadn’t been present at the scene when the violet void had devoured it, they might have assumed that the desert had somehow manifested a square sunken spot for no particular reason at all, though if they arrived late enough, there wouldn’t be a hint of it at all. The dunes of the north shifted often, making it difficult to rely on them for directions.

“What… was that?” the phoenix leader, Huang Mei, asked in amazement.

“Tell you later,” Wei Yi replied, having never moved from the spot. She had used the ability to manifest herself within her mental domain to appear beside Shi Gong, and so she wasn’t harmed when the entire space surrounding him was swallowed up. “I’ll be dealing with Entropy now. Talk to the others first.”

Since she had not planned for the arrival of the phoenixes, she had not been able to arrange any kind of plans with them, but she had spoken with the dragons and qilins. They knew of some of her ideas, so it would be simpler to get them to talk while she busied herself with opposing the Primordial Deity that represented one of the most basic phenomena in existence. Technically, she could speak with them herself, using her accelerated mental processes to complete any explanations in seconds, but her mental energy was still out of balance with the rest of her powers, and the best chance she had to fix that was to kill Entropy.

This was not an opportunity she intended to waste.

Therefore, before Entropy or the two ancient beast species that were facing it could do anything, she appeared before the Primordial Deity and had to adopt Shi Gong’s fighting methods.

Rather than using his techniques, which she had observed and could replicate if given time and any desire to do so, she was instead limiting the amount of oblivion essence she invoked at any one time. Due to the further opening of the nascent rift, she could recover three quarters of her total oblivion essence pool within four minutes, so she would recover it all within five minutes and twenty seconds, but that was still a long time. She was used to throwing out far more than that every minute, and using other forms of energy and her general power to deal with the problem.

Entropy could not be slain quite as easily, for she did not understand the concept sufficiently to pull it apart into something weak and absorbable. Hence, she either needed to overpower this primordial concept, or pull it apart at the seams.

‘Either way, I should forget about doing anything relaxing for the next week.’