Path of the Ascendant

A day passed, and the forces of Yi City and the Arbiters were met with some successes. In general, the strongest warriors tended to be able to resolve invading waves with minimal casualties, and since they occupied a few major strongholds – the districts, mainly – and funnelled everything towards them, there was no room for weaker holdings to be lost to the initial tides.

The challenge came in the form of actually advancing, as the foes that they faced weren’t particularly weak nor insignificant in number. With walls and powerful combatants standing together and protecting very particular places, it was possible to handle them, but outside, most advantages would be lost. This applied even more so the further away from the districts they went, as the Huang District was not connected to the Yi City Web at the moment and would not grant them the benefits of Wei Yi’s physique abilities and mental energy.

With her current strength, it was possible for her to establish a temporary spatial stabilisation point within the world, especially now that she had gotten to view the world from afar and comprehend some more of its spatial principles. Still, it wasn’t possible while she was focusing on other things.

Hence, her forces had not gotten very far, and thus equilibrium was maintained in their favour.

Fortunately, whether it was due to the interests of certain experts or the time they had spent without someone watching over their every move while Wei Yi had been trapped, they hadn’t just sat around and wasted their time. Having acquired a vast number of bodies thanks to their destructive capabilities being far inferior to their leader’s, all that were interested in understanding what they faced and how such things came to be gathered to dissect the bodies and study them.

This didn’t require combat ability, and it didn’t require people to linger near the battlefield, so the cadavers were moved to the Kong Prison Realm and the experts on the subject gathered there, Long Huang being among the most prominent. Given that her original faction, the Blood Alchemists, weren’t viewed very positively, she acted as the representative of both the Alchemists and Arbiters.

Their conclusions were similar to Wei Yi’s understanding. Sharing the Blood-tinged Church’s methods, the Huang District had influenced their warriors, and so the best methods for handling the opponents had to involve their unique physiques and bloodlines. There weren’t many methods within the army, as Wei Yi’s research into bloodlines was somewhat limited to her own needs, but Long Huang was able to provide her own insights and give a number of warriors and scholars some of their ideas for how to handle their new foes.

For future research, though the expectation was currently that the battle would only take a week at most, the approach split into targeting the bloodline and the abnormalities in the physique of their opponents. One side was looking into the methods of amplifying the weaknesses of the bloodlines, controlling them in some cases, or perhaps even forcing them to go out of control and kill their foes in that manner.

The second approach was focusing upon the physical particularities, and it was not interested in comprehending or modifying the bloodlines themselves. To that side, it didn’t matter what bloodlines even were, as they were more interested in weaknesses introduced by abnormal bodies and internal organs. There was a lot to exploit in that regard, so they were hardly starved of work.

While soldiers fought on the front lines, the researchers stood back and did their best, until the next day, when the common belief that Wei Yi had been sitting at a part of the defensive line and casually destroying any incoming foes was confirmed. As if she was simply coming back from a casual morning walk, she stepped into the large chamber they chose as a meeting room, glanced around with both divine sense and her gaze, then came up to the front of the room and rested both hands upon the lectern positioned there.

“Good morning everyone. Anything interesting happen lately?”

“What have you already observed, Ascen-”

“You can just call me Wei Yi, by the way. Master of Yi City works too, as does Wei Matriarch.”

“Um, Wei Yi, what have you already observed?” Long Huang asked, her hand rising involuntarily to caress the collar on her neck.

“Everything. Mostly, I’m just asking to start the conversation. By the way, do you think everyone else hasn’t noticed that thing you keep doing with your hands? It is absurdly obvious, to the extent that me mentioning it will likely detract interest from it.”

“I don’t care. Also, you’re acting strangely.”

“Am I? It seems to me that I’m the same as always,” she replied, though she knew exactly what the Blood Alchemist referred to, “Isn’t it just like me to point out something random?”

Long Huang’s eyes narrowed, “And that just confirms it. Did something happen while you were fighting Primordial Corruption, or Primordial Yin and Primordial Yang? You suddenly decide to drop the whole Asce- that title, and you’re clearly leaning into some of your tendencies more than usual. I could believe it if you told us you spoke with the heavens and punched them in the face.”

“I wish I had. Anyway, we need to begin the attack on the Huang District, so lingering here won’t be sufficient to allow for any significant advances. Everyone who has any decent ideas will need to come with me.”

“What do you intend to do?”

“Give you a little more time, nothing more. I don’t yet have the power to turn even the vaguest ideas into fully complete inventions, but I will work on that when I have the spare time. I’m going to estimate a thousand years before that happens, and that’s the lowest one I can provide,” she said, though she was trying to hold back the unnecessary commentary now that she noticed it, “Hence, I’m only suggesting that those with an idea in mind opt in, as they will be able to test and complete it in the time they obtain.”

While the people before her gave the matter some thought, she retreated into her mental domain and held back the overcompensation for the mental shock she hadn’t even properly realised she received. In her mind, the meeting with Heaven’s Will had left her rather angry, but not particularly shaken, yet that presumption was quickly challenged.

Her estimate was also affected, though that was also because she knew that with Heaven’s Will being a complete failure of an existence, she couldn’t rely on it for help in improving the world. Thus, unless another with similar power to her own rose and joined in her work, she would need to deal with most upcoming and existing threats alone. Since they were particularly fond of coming in ever-greater strengths and numbers, going from Great Leeches to Primordial Deities and then the Hunger of the Beyond, it was likely that after that would come the Old Ones, then some Older Ones, then whatever else could follow.

It was rather unfortunate, but that seemed to be the way of life. Only a literal miracle could alter that for the moment, and she wasn’t expecting one of those any time soon.

“So, who here wants to have a go?” she asked, and quickly saw hands raise, or other signals be provided via planar or mental energy, “Only sixteen in total? Fine, I’ll risk shattering this spatial realm for just sixteen people…”

Before anyone could ask what she meant, she waved her left hand and vanished, alongside all that expressed interest in having their time accelerated. Although everyone but her had been sitting down at the time, they appeared on their feet within the most remote depths of the Kong Prison Realm, where the Arbiters had not yet had the chance to develop any form of residences or farms, as the spatial realm had grown not that long ago.

The edge of the spatial realm was technically the safest place to conduct experiments, as it wouldn’t shatter the core of the realm and would at most compromise an outer portion that could be discarded in an absolute necessity. There were downsides, but she didn’t have much interest in anything regarding the potential for failure. She had seen the Planar Continents from the outside, and she knew that they were truly the same as any spatial realm, meaning that her experiences with the outside world could easily be applied to the Kong Prison Realm to produce a unique environment most conducive to her goals.

More specifically, she would replicate the outside within the Kong Prison Realm, then impart the effect the spatial realm can have on time upon that territory, allowing her to manifest a two-fold multiplication. By accelerating the whole Kong Prison Realm, a day outside meant thirty days inside, and within the altered space, it would be multiplied to nine hundred days in one.

Given the large lifespans of all within the Planar Continents, this was not too great an investment for any of the people she had brought out, so she didn’t even ask them before beginning.

With a simple wave, most of the energy in her Arm dissipated, and the land before her blurred.

“Wei Yi, the space… Ah, is this intentional?” the mother of the Master of Yi City appeared by her side, “I had taken this for a spatial anomaly of some sort, perhaps caused by some error on my part. Who are the people within?”

“Researchers and clever minds, apparently. I want to let the people of Yi City actually do something in the fight against the Huang District, so I’m getting some ideas from them. Had you come a few minutes later, you would have likely gotten to ask them yourself,” Wei Yi said, as she was the one keeping time distorted and the source of energy she relied upon couldn’t recover at a sufficiently rapid pace. This was even with the peak of the eighth realm, a gaping Entropy Rift, and four other forms of energy supplementing the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, so the task was clearly more difficult than it looked.

Then again, she was also going overboard by not accelerating the entirety of the Kong Prison Realm, and instead letting her power of Law complete both steps at the same time. Without that, she would be able to keep the temporal distortion going for quite a lot longer, not that it was necessary for any of the people currently trapped within.

With just a few minutes, they would be able to spend seventy-five hours inside, and if they didn’t figure anything out in that time, more isolation wouldn’t help.

“Do you need to talk about what happened? I had heard parts of the conversation.”

“Did it fail to block out connection? So, it is not only cowardly, it is also blatantly sloppy and incompetent. If it wasn’t this world’s will that we were dealing with, I would be glad to see my suppositions proven right, but since we are the ones that have to deal with its incompetence, it is rather disappointing,” Wei Yi sighed, brushing back a bunch of hair that had been pushed into the way of her eyes by the wind, “I can’t even reveal this to the people, or else everyone will be demotivated and suddenly begin complaining about all kinds of nonsense, and saying that they have no chance…”

“Are you faring better?”

She raised an eyebrow, “What kind of a question is that? Do I look like I would be doing something like that? My only issue is that we have a chance, but we could have had an excellent chance if Heaven’s Will wasn’t… what it was.”

“He seems to be trying his best.”

“It. It is a worthless thing that has lived far longer than it deserved. Don’t tell me that it has you convinced that it has some aspect of Shi Meng in it.”

“They share a certain helplessness, which my son had developed after encountering the Hunger.”

“You are actively making your son sound worse with every word you speak. For his sake, as one of the few people that’s actually done some good within the last two million years, it would be best if you let his memory go untarnished,” she said, speaking with an immense amount of sincerity, “That thing won’t ever match your son in any positive regard, as far as I can see.”

The mother of the Master of Yi City did not respond, looking back to the site of the temporal distortion, and Wei Yi did the same, waiting for the five minutes to run out in silence.

Five minutes multiplied by thirty, and then thirty again, resulted in seventy five hours spent within the temporal distortion by all that had entered. None of them were at a sufficiently advanced age to fear death from such a brief entrapment, though she suspected that everyone would grow a little bored from spending so much time within a small space with nothing to do other than contemplate and ponder.

It was hardly an ideal space for invention and discovery, given that they had nothing to experiment with, but that was why only those with existing ideas that needed a little while longer to complete them were permitted inside.

The moment they emerged, it was easy to confirm by their expressions that they had been given enough time.

“So… HUNGRY!” one previously quiet researcher proclaimed right away.

“What are you talking about? There’s plenty of grass there.”

“GRASS?”

“It’s a four star medicinal material. Not particularly good for me, seeing as I’m nearly in the ninth realm already, but it should be more than enough to sustain you lot for just over three days. Are you really telling me none of you thought of it?”

The silence was sufficient to answer her question.

“Whatever, this is to be expected when you focus on something other than your immediate survival for a while. I can perceive a number of developed ideas within your minds, so don’t bother telling me about them and get to work. I’ll be assisting the armies in the field, and unless you need me not to obliterate everything that gets in my way, I don’t care what you do… Mostly. Try not to do anything especially strange or disgusting,” Wei Yi added after a while, her mind coming up with a few such ideas on her own.

“May we employ tentacles?”

“Sure. Wait a minute, have you been anywhere near the Dimensional Domain since they began making their picture books?”

He did not respond, his gaze refusing to meet hers, answering her rather quickly, so she decided not to continue the line of questioning. Ideally, there were more efficient manners of accomplishing whatever he had envisioned, but even in the worst case scenario, she had already been exposed to enough weirdness to be able to overcome the mental stress observing such things would cause.

The dragons and phoenixes made plenty of contributions to this fact.

In her mind, it didn’t matter what kinds of things were done and what directions one travelled in, since their foes were all things that had little to no humanity remaining within them, influenced by the Blood-tinged Church and Primordial Blood. As long as it worked, certain unpleasantness could be put up with, and then swiftly disposed of later on, it was acceptable, and unlike the Great Leeches, she didn’t actually have the heavens on her side, meaning that certain wrongdoings were necessitated.

Still, she did have certain limits. The atrocities were to be enacted upon her foes, those who were unfortunately beyond redemption with all known methods, never upon her allies. If the people on her side were to agree to something being done to them, that would be different, but in most cases such a thing was unnecessary.

Her Arbiters and all other forces could benefit from her physique abilities, so there was little that could be done to enhance one’s energy or body that wasn’t already accomplished by her physique abilities.

Thus, she let out the creative minds that had volunteered, and let them do their things while she proceeded to the front lines again. It took a literal second thanks to her movement skills, and after that she was ready to proceed. Her first destination was not the battlefield, however.

At the moment, the encirclement around the Huang District consisted of the districts within her control, but the Ling District was not included. Obtaining it would greatly improve Yi City’s ability to resist the blood fiends – a term that could be used to describe all of the entities brought out by whatever forces were active in the Huang District – by greatly reducing the size of the line they needed to defend and push on.

If they wanted to, they could use their lands even if they didn’t agree to it, but this carried the risk of destabilisation from the side of the Ling District, which wouldn’t be ideal at all. By ensuring that there is some form of cooperation, even if it doesn’t involve the troops and warriors of the Ling District, it would greatly enhance their safety in the region.

There was also a slight chance that their expertise would prove useful in the fight ahead. She couldn’t be sure, as it was a field she hadn’t studied, but the blood fiends were bound to carry resentment.

Resentment would be associated with the spirits that the Ling District claimed to have mastered, and if that resentment could be weaponised against the blood fiends, then she would possess a grand weapon that the entities might not be able to resist with their own capabilities. Thus, she would have a tool that might be usable by the rest of her forces, and if not, she could still bring the people of the Ling District to the front lines and let them add to whatever methods and inventions she had already obtained.

 

Before this, she had heard certain things about the nature of the Ling District, and the gloominess that supposedly surrounds it. Wei Yi had believed it to be an exaggeration, or a complete fabrication, but she had never bothered to cast her gaze in the district’s direction.

It turned out that every single claim had been incredibly accurate. The entire district was washed with a gloom that turned the land around it grey, and the snow around it fared no better, gaining a dead shade as if the very world around it was dying. There was also a faint ethereal nature to everything, as if her sight was muddled and there were unseen entities just beneath the fabric of the world, revealing themselves only in distortions of the air around them.

This was a curious thing to behold, but it was currently marred by the presence of things that bled all over the grey, spilling into the walls of the Ling District, which appeared to be a large network of dead trees that merged together. Small paths were carved through the middle, between branches, providing just enough space for a single person to travel on them at any one time.

Right now, most of the guards that stood atop the walls – who looked as grey and desolate as the lands around them – were positioned on the northern portion, and faced the blood fiends in battle.

They were using strange entities that were faint and feeble in appearance, yet they managed to contend with the sixth realm blood fiends surprisingly well, especially when one considered that the guards conjuring these entities were only at the peak of the fifth realm. However, they fared far more poorly against the seventh realm monstrosities, whose power greatly exceeded that of their inferior counterparts. Perhaps the most fortunate aspect of this was that there were no eighth realm entities attacking the lands of the Ling District.

Had the Huang District and the Blood-tinged Church produced more fearsome blood fiends, then Wei Yi would have come far too late to save anyone, seeing as the Ling District’s Patriarch appeared to lack the ability to protect his lands.

She could have waited, but she preferred not to do so right now. The more time wasted, the more risk to the people in the district, and the more chance that something was pulled out that negated the offensive and gave her less of a chance to show off. Given that she wanted to get the Ling District onto her side as quickly as possible, it was best to make an impression on her future subjects, as one might refer to them.

If she wanted to produce the best results, she might have figured out what the people of the Ling District were most fond of, giving her a good start with the people. There was no time for that, though.

For now, she simply produced a large mass of energy, letting it occupy the skies, illuminating the dreary greyness of the land with her own light. It overwhelmed the crimson intrusion, and it gave light to the darkness, providing colour to places that had refused to let it in. This was due to her power still being a mixture of everything at her disposal, as she was intent on exploring this concept further.

Countless creatures of all shapes and sizes turned to the mass within the air, and they produced a cacophony of responses, seeming to lack any kind of unified perception of it. Some didn’t even see it as a threat – or so she thought, anyway – and only appeared to gaze at it in curiosity. Had there been time for her to inspect these various things and learn more about them, she would have been very interested in doing so, as it was rare to come across such things in the wild, but she did want to avoid letting people die for no good reason.

Thus, she took everything she conjured and brought it down upon the grey land, letting it blow away nearly everything. During the attack, she exerted just enough control to leave a few of the blood fiends at the edges alive, for experimentation reasons.

It was possible to describe the event in great deal, to list the manners in which the enemy was blown away and turned to little more than pure energy to merge back into the endless planar pool of the world, but there was no point. At her current realm, such destruction was not only simple, but meaningless, as the true threats were entities that could not be obliterated in such a simple fashion. Namely, the last Primordial Deity and the things that came after.

“People of the Ling District. My name is Wei Yi, though I have earned the title of Master of Yi City. You might have heard of me by now,” she said, floating in the air beside the northern wall, “I’ll cut to the chase. You are needed to oppose the last living Primordial Deity, so your leader ought to come out and speak with me.”

She didn’t need to wait for very long, as the people she addressed barely recognised her words before a figure emerged in a great rush from a structure near the middle of the district, likely their Ancestral Hall.

He was an old man, with pale skin, white hair and beard, frail-looking body and clothing that resembled rags. Despite that, the rags were incredibly high-quality and value, and they appeared to be torn deliberately, to the extent that they appeared to have been made according to very exacting specifications and made for some purpose that she couldn’t understand. Well, at least not until all of the books she was throwing into the Ascendant’s Library were read and comprehended.

‘On another note, Ascendant’s Library is a name I’m going to have to change…’

“What is the meaning of this? The last Primordial Deity? What are you talking about? Who are you? What are you?”

“I am Wei Yi, as I have already said, old man. Are you the Patriarch?”

“That’s right!” the old man exclaimed, though that appeared to be done with effort and strain on his lungs and throat.

“Then listen closely. I don’t know what you have been doing in this desolate land, but I have fought against the Primordial Deities. I was able to kill each and every one of them, and now our lands are free of their influence and corruption. Since I haven’t kept an eye on you, I won’t pretend to understand what has been happening while the rest of Yi City fought. However, you must join in now. Get it?”

“You would order me around?”

“Yes, I would. I don’t have the patience to deal with the nonsense that Patriarchs like to pull out of nowhere. Your specialty may be noteworthy, but alone you do not stand a chance against the whole of Yi City. There is no reason for us to be opposing one another, especially now.”

The Ling Patriarch looked at her as if she was insane, “Prove it.”

‘… Did he not see what I did outside? Does he have issues with his memory? What exactly am I supposed to prove here?’ Wei Yi couldn’t help but be stunned for a while, though that was only within her mental domain. On the outside, she recovered instantly, and decided that she would take action to guarantee his understanding.