Path of the Ascendant

Another day passed, though that was hardly an issue while there were no other Primordial Deities to interrupt her. With each step, the energy invested into the meteorite showers was performing more efficiently, seeing as it had to bombard a smaller space, and the intensity and frequency of the showers grew, so the rate at which she could advance only grew despite the Huang District gaining more and more opportunities to strike, with the proximity permitting experts dressed in the garb of the Blood-tinged Church to perform more advanced techniques than what the blood fiends could muster.

What she noticed as she got nearer was that there was still a veil over the district that she could not quite penetrate. It felt as if she knew the full extent of the district’s contents, yet the nearer she was the less certain she became. Things didn’t quite match up, and more importantly she couldn’t track down the most powerful entity inside.

She knew for a fact that Primordial Blood had to be inside, yet she wasn’t able to attain certainty of its position no matter how hard she drove her divine sense to peer inside. It was absurd considering the sheer intensity and power of her mental energy, especially now that she was heading towards the ninth realm of cultivation, yet it was true. Most likely, rather than covering up the Primordial Deity’s position, either Primordial Blood itself, the Huang District’s guardians and Patriarch, or the Blood-tinged Church were producing false information that mimicked the energy of the Primordial Deity and made the land impossible to read.

Regardless, she was undeterred so far. With her power and the combined forces of Yi City, she made it to the walls, almost to the point of being able to merge the walls of the district and the wall she had manifested to push towards them. She didn’t do that, though – she hardly had the chance.

It was expected of the Blood-tinged Church and the Huang District’s leadership to bring out something powerful enough to halt an advance, and although they had brought it out rather late, nobody was surprised about that fact. What caught everyone, including Wei Yi, off-guard, was the nature of this force.

A figure covered for the most part in dark-grey scales leapt out from the inside of the district wall and landed on the top of Wei Yi’s planar construct wall, a pair of eyes glaring specifically at the current Master of Yi City. Although this person appeared to have a humanoid form, a casual glance would not confirm their species, for the scales were the least significant factor that might throw one off. Included were vicious claws on the right hand, horns growing from the forehead, coal-like skin and flaming blood that glowed vibrantly through flesh and skin alike. The eyes were similar.

If one looked closely, they could make out breasts behind a thick layer of scales, though the figure was sufficient to let one deem this individual as a woman. Long, almost ash-coloured hair grew out to her waist, though it was messy and clearly lacking care and attention.

With that and her teeth, which resembled that of a dragon, one might almost conclude that this was a dragon, or a half-dragon of some kind, but there was a rather significant oddity on her left. Her right arm matched the rest of her body, with claws at the tips of her fingers, scales obscuring much of her skin and her flaming blood shining through the rest of it, but the left arm was anomalous in comparison, for it looked far too ordinary.

The left arm was ordinary, with slightly tanned skin, short and neatly trimmed nails, and an appearance so clean and pure that it was almost a complete antithesis to the rest of the figure’s body.

Most would only see the arm as that, but one woman in particular knew its origin.

“What… the fuck is my arm doing on your body?” Wei Yi cried out, for she could feel the Ascendant bloodline within, among other forms of energy and bloodlines, “Also, you’re supposed to be dead, not fighting for the very people that turned you into that!”

She wasn’t just making assumptions here, for she could recognise this woman’s identity the moment she saw her emerge from the Huang District. With signs of a draconic bloodline gone rogue and an obvious trace of timelessness around the woman, there was no documented case that matched other than that of Chao Jianhong, the Lady of Ashes, a woman that thought to prolong her life through partaking in the blood of a dragon. Her body was irrevocably changed, and she was thought to have perished, yet it appeared that only one of those was actually true.

If her draconic blood could be forced back and made to give up Chao Jianhong’s original form, then the Blood-tinged Church might have done so by now, for they had a division specifically focused on purifying blood. However, it seemed that even the stitching of an arm flooded with the Ascendant bloodline could not accomplish this.

That being said, she wasn’t surprised that they had gotten their hands on… well, her hand. What confused her was that they decided that the best use for it would be to attach it to a woman that should have perished a million years ago, rather than literally any other option they might have had.

In her mind, simply putting that thing onto any random ordinary person would be more effective, as they could fully accept the Ascendant bloodline and make better use of it than whatever mess had ended up residing within Chao Jianhong’s veins. Now, the blood that remained within her arm had to contend with a complex mixture of products likely created by the various divisions of the Blood-tinged Church, and there was still an obvious divide between the arm and the person it was now attached to.

Unfortunately, Chao Jianhong was not in a state suitable for answering any kinds of complex questions. The moment she saw Wei Yi, she growled like a wild beast, and pounced.

Her assessment of the Lady of Ashes’ internal state would remain the same no matter what she saw, given that she understood enough about bloodlines to be sure, but it was also true that it must have bestowed vast power onto the woman. That, or the Blood-tinged Church had methods to greatly strengthen a target even without her bloodline’s involvement.

Chao Jianhong’s speed was extreme, appearing in front of Wei Yi in an instant, and her right hand moved even more quickly, the claws descending from the left right onto her face, the sheer force imbued into them threatening to remove half of her face in one go.

Wei Yi met the attack with her Arm, hardening the smoke and strengthening its structure to endure the slash, and thrust her right hand out, imbuing the index finger with as much of her energy as she could to produce an obliteration effect despite the current nature of her energy types making it rather difficult. Her finger struck the abdomen of Chao Jianhong and imparted all of that concentrated power right into the woman’s flesh, letting it explode within the scaled body of the woman surrounded by a timeless aura.

The only response from the Lady of Ashes was a subdued groan followed by a palm strike with the left hand – Wei Yi’s original hand.

It struck in a similar manner, but it mostly contained the bloodline energy that now resided within the arm. Aside from the original Ascendant bloodline, which might have been subdued naturally by her superior variant if that was all that was present, was mixed with some of Chao Jianhong’s draconic blood and three other distinct types of bloodlines, though they could very well be numerous variants that mostly conformed to the three categories.

One was slow and dense, with a blue tint, moving slowly and acting similarly passively yet containing a vast power. It was akin to dealing with a walking corpse that employed all of its original skills without regard for original weakness.

The second was extremely pure, without any variation in colour or shade, radiating a pure crimson. As such, it was a fearsome force in its own right, for there were no flaws to poke at or take advantage of. In return, it did seem to lack the strengths of the other two variants, though having something that is without flaw could be considered equivalent to victory if the opponent lacked sufficient strength to overpower it.

Chao Jianhong’s body contained a third type, which was almost the opposite of the second. It was a mixture and contained so many different and strange elements that one might almost imagine that it was made with the very intention of putting as many things together as was possible.

From more recent interactions with Long Huang, Wei Yi knew that there were four divisions in the Blood-tinged Church, those being the Beating Heart, Corpse Blood, Pure Viscera and Mixed Ichor Divisions. She had encountered the Corpse Blood Division before, but she didn’t have a lengthy chat with them, so all that she could ascertain from them was that she didn’t like them very much. From their names, and the fact that the Corpse Blood Division did clearly interact with bodies and various things thought to be dead, it was clear that their names were very literal.

The Beating Heart empowered the living, but their energy was absent from Chao Jianhong, suggesting that she might indeed have perished at one point. Then, the Corpse Blood Division must have taken her body, which did correspond with the rumours of its loss after her death, and brought her back to life through some means. Their energy was partly subdued by the Pure Viscera Division’s energy, whose apparent pursuit was that of finding the source of all things, purifying blood to an absurd level.

Finally, the Mixed Ichor Division was the least known, but as seen from the energy contained in Chao Jianhong, their interest lay in perfecting blood instead. All kinds of things possessed beneficial traits, so all one had to do – in theory – would be to unify them to attain perfection.

To an extent, they met with success in this regard, as the mixture in the body of the Lady of Ashes was certainly difficult to handle. It invaded Wei Yi’s body viciously, disregarding the fine structure that had been perfected over more than twenty years, and did everything from trying to occupy her body to shredding it wildly.

‘They may have played around with it to an absurd extent, but this is still bloodline energy, one of the five forms of planar essence. We are both at the peak of the eighth realm, but she… if Chao Jianhong can still be considered human… she has no perfected stages, not to mention perfected realms. In this conflict, she will have no choice but to be inferior!’ Wei Yi’s eyes lit up as she activated her physique abilities once again, the Conqueror’s Eye and the Elder Watcher appearing around either pupil and manifesting their power upon the outside world.

Both were empowered by the Blooming Cosmos, and the bloodline power that infiltrated her body was attacked by the True Existence ability, which let her not only drive her energy freely to oppose the invasion, but also to dominate the incoming energy and slowly transform it into her own.

After all, that was the nature of the Ascendant bloodline, and even if she now rejected that path, she had still travelled it for many years. To a certain extent, she still followed it with her Law, attempting to comprehend everything and encompass it within a framework that would eventually lead to an ideal that seems unattainable for now. Indeed, if she so wished, she could transform the very nature of her cultivation, and place the Ascendant’s Dao beneath the Dao of Law, binding everything to a single source and potentially overcoming the heavens in more than just a conflict of words, one that even Heaven’s Will didn’t have a hope of winning.

It was a little late to do such a thing, given that she was in the middle of a battle, so she put that particular idea off and focused.

She raised her leg and kicked the Lady of Ashes back with her knee, before imposing the Conqueror’s Eye to bind her in place and the Elder Watcher to remove any potential for escape. Then, with her left Arm, she manifested an Elysian Blast, releasing it with the full power of her mixed energy types, letting luck carry the final instant of the technique usage process.

A blinding beam shot out at the speed of light, yet it was intercepted by Chao Jianhong in a curious manner.

The woman almost seemed to bite down on it, though the beam passed into her mouth and there was assaulted by everything that had built up inside her, including some malformed organ that produced a breath akin to that of a dragon. From it, pure white flames were spawned in vast quantities, quickly overflowing their humanoid container and soaring out of the mouth of the Lady of Ashes. It spewed all over the walls – both sets of them – and if not for everyone else being removed with some Law-based trickery, there would have been a lot of casualties from what seemed to be an accident.

Accident or not, the beam was swallowed with minimal damage to the internal organs of the Lady of Ashes, and the flames continued to pour out as Chao Jianhong bent forward, bent her knees and spat out a vast sea of draconic flames that surrounded Wei Yi and swallowed her.

Only a moment after, she burst through and punched the Lady of Ashes in the face, using her right hand and applying what remained of her killing will state, causing the skin on her right side to turn pale and grow a dozen times tougher. Even then, her fist faced a great deal of resistance and only pushed Chao Jianhong’s head back by an inch, and it only seemed to encourage her wild side, as she snapped at Wei Yi with her teeth and nearly managed to bite down on her neck, only for those sharp fangs to close around smoke instead.

As Wei Yi let her Arm break up so that she could remove it from the jaws of the beast, she also completed the absorption of the first drops of the bloodlines she had taken in. She had already acquired the blood of a dragon before, so the only new bloodlines were the three that originated from the Blood-tinged Church.

She remembered that her previous encounter with the Corpse Blood Division had granted her some of their work, but a quick comparison with the variant from Chao Jianhong confirmed that they were effectively miles apart. There were certain similarities, which made it easier to absorb it than the other two unique bloodlines, but the differences were sufficient to make the two completely irreconcilable. Fortunately, her own bloodline power didn’t care for such things, accepting yin and yang with ease, so she was able to salvage some of the original power of all three of the newly acquired bloodlines with the small samples she was given.

Her preference would have been to extract the essences of each bloodline and release their abilities, but without assimilating enough reference material, she could only empower herself in a general sense, and used that power right away to deliver a simple strike with her head. She simply lunged forward and smashed her forehead against the scaled head of Chao Jianhong, and finally managed to do more than simply turn the half-dragon’s head this time.

The Lady of Ashes was pushed back several steps, though it didn’t stun her at all. As soon as she stabilised her footing, she lunged forward again, but this time she made use of her left hand, and the energy within was moved more than the last time. Lingering planar energy, killing will, physique energy and bloodline power were all imbued into an otherwise simple punch, and the force reached her seemingly minutes before the fist itself would have had the chance to collide with her body, instantly blurring her vision.

Wei Yi threw out her own energy to meet the strike, letting her superior attainment in all five paths of cultivation weaken the power in her former arm, then used Elder Watcher to distort the motion of her foe’s fist so that it wouldn’t result in a direct collision.

That much was enough, as a grazing hit would only impede her for a few moments before her body would be able to fix itself, so she didn’t move to evade further and instead enforced what little influence her Conqueror’s Eye currently granted her and driving all of the energy around herself to complete the formation of an Ire imitation skill’s channelling.

A chain of Law joined that concept with her Elysian Blast technique, something with connections to Ire but not a direct correlation of principle and method, and thus her execution of the technique with her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow instantly drew upon the vast quantity of energy around her and the Lady of Ashes, focusing all of it upon a single strand as thin as the void, before directing everything into the abdomen of the Lady of Ashes.

Previously, her attack had been absorbed by a method that shouldn’t really have worked, so to make sure that it wouldn’t happen, she chose a different yet still vital position.

Indeed, she had more success this time. The pure white beam of Elysian light struck the half-dragon and audibly burnt flesh, therefore making it past her scales and skin, if only barely. The wound was smaller than the tip of a finger, and began recovering the instant the light faded, but that appeared to change something in Chao Jianhong’s nature, for she glared at Wei Yi for a short while growling – she was growling during most of the battle, so it wasn’t much of a change – and tightly balled both hands into fists, as if Wei Yi’s resistance earned her anger rather than just a primal hunger or desire for battle.

Then, the left arm suddenly changed, gaining a darker shade and claws not dissimilar from her right arm, but it was more akin to something that, once again, belonged to Wei Yi when the left arm was on her body, and not that of a million-year-old woman.

“And you have the killing will state… How?”

Her only response was louder growling, which might have meant something, but the woman’s mind and mental energy was too chaotic for Wei Yi to perceive her intent through her usual method.

What was easy to guess was that this had a more profound effect upon the body of the Lady of Ashes than the transformation of a single arm should have had. The transformative power of killing intent reached beyond the pale flesh of Wei Yi’s arm and was infused into the woman’s whole body, resonating with the existing killing intent, bloodline power and the draconic attributes to manifest a surprisingly vast strength.

Then, Chao Jianhong began attacking again, but she moved far more quickly. To make things worse, as soon as the first swing began, Wei Yi could tell that there were elements of proper technique present within her attacks, though they weren’t her own, fortunately enough. Rather, they seemed to be ancient and somewhat archaic, though undoubtedly effective based on the tide of flame generated with a casual motion of the wrist and elbow. Given that there were only two other sources of techniques for the Lady of Ashes, with one focusing purely on blood and not flame, it was easy to guess what was being displayed.

‘Original techniques of the Lady of Ashes herself. Well, that’s not something I expected to see today, though now that’s just adding to a list… Fine, you asked for it.’

In one go, she activated her killing will’s conduit, manifesting the twin power of killing intent and spiritual will around her in a wreath of flame and a smooth shield at the same time. Her physique veins were also activated beyond their usual state, causing her whole body to attain an almost ethereal appearance.

Through her bloodline’s Final Congregation realm, her current state was amplified, every positive and strength being focused upon her current task and nature, combining with the other cultivation paths only to then be supported by the great flow of oblivion essence from her dantian. Still, she did not think this was enough, so she placed her palms together and then parted them, slowly, with the gap between them mimicking the widening gap in the space behind her, from which a pure and endless sea of stars amidst crimson flowed unto the world.

She positioned the Entropy Rift just a short distance behind herself, and thus the walls of the Huang District, but the moment she did so, the gap widened as she charged at the Lady of Ashes and forced her to retreat with a fierce flurry of strikes that interrupted her own techniques.

Behind each blow was the full force of Wei Yi’s cultivation, as well as the energy from the Entropy Rift that surged out and amplified her every move, simultaneously blocking her from being hit by anything that the Lady of Ashes had been able to muster. The flames of her breath were disrupted and nullified, her strikes were weakened to the strength of an ordinary person, and even the left hand’s superior blows were deflected, making her almost harmless at the moment.

It was important to note that this would only be for the moment, however. In time, Chao Jianhong would likely be able to adapt to some of her methods, and Wei Yi’s current powerful state could not be maintained for longer than a day, or two with some support and luck – and even that was only if she was not interrupted by others.

Hence, while she attacked Chao Jianhong with her full strength, she directed her mental energy to the dragons and phoenixes, letting the qilins remain on the front lines so that they would not bother anyone.

‘Take care of the nearest Blood-tinged Church members so that they don’t interrupt me, and stay out of the reach of Chao Jianhong. She is absurdly powerful in comparison to the others, so most of you won’t have a chance,’ she said simply, not caring for whatever complaints rowdy dragons might have.

Unlike certain members of certain factions, the ancient beasts listened rather well in matters that didn’t involve their genitals, or whatever fetishes the walking antiques had developed over the years, but the dragons were still very keen to fight whenever possible. When facing a human that had attempted to take in some of their blood and failed miserably, at least by common standards, their keenness to take them on was about as obvious as a number of other strong reactions exhibited by the dragons – whether one used mental energy, sight or smell.

Still, they obeyed her instructions and charged into the Huang District, quickly finding a target to fight and engaging them. They quickly cleared out the area around Wei Yi and Chao Jianhong, and kept going while the other warriors on the side of Yi City followed after to ensure the land was kept within their grasp.

As Wei Yi pushed the Lady of Ashes back, so did the others, and soon they were able to observe details about the district that had previously only been heard in rumours. There were various rivers and pools within the lands which flowed out to the west, where it entered a small inland lake that joined the ocean nearly directly, but they were not water. Instead, each one was flooded with blood, and it flowed through in great quantities and turned the earth red as it partly seeped into the land.

The whole land was filled with its obvious stench, and nothing that grew within the walls was left untouched. Crimson, sticky grass and trees that seeped with bloody sap filled most areas that weren’t occupied by structures that almost seemed to be growing upon the land and merging with it.

If one had an issue with blood, innards, flesh or aspects of the mortal form, regardless of the part that offended their senses, the Huang District would be completely uninhabitable for them. Everything was so obsessed with those aspects that it managed to overcome the majority of other districts and their intense focuses, creating something that almost resembled a living being atop the land, pulsing with numerous rivers of blood and breathing the world’s air, and all of it originated from a large cathedral that was barely visible from the part of the district they had entered.

With her slowly drawing nearer to that cathedral as she fought, though each step was hard won, Wei Yi could sense that the aura of Primordial Blood was also strongest there.

Hence, she made her advance in that direction, and Chao Jianhong attempted to resist, though not due to anything resembling a deliberate effort to stop her from going in the direction of the cathedral. Rather, it appeared that she was unwilling to give up the ground she had held at first, and thus her resistance rose with every step taken, regardless of the direction.

To a certain extent, it was fortunate that it was taking the whole day just to clear two thirds of the distance, even if her own gains from fighting at the peak of her ability were excluded. Everyone that followed her into the district was able to benefit from the experience of an unfamiliar foe, and once they set up camps amidst the homes that most were too afraid to even touch, those with interest in examining them and studying them came forward and began to do exactly that. Of course, the Blood Alchemists were at the forefront of this, as they always seemed to be, though they weren’t trying to hide as much as before.

Given that they were able to provide numerous methods for handling the dangers of the district to those with weaker bodies or resistances to the influence of the blood, most had grown to trust the Blood Alchemists and their attempts to save their lives, though most barely even knew about them.

Wei Yi had only learned about the organisation from one of their members, who explained it rather explicitly, so most simply thought the Blood Alchemists to be residents of various districts that had chosen to study blood and various properties of it, and now put their knowledge to use. In truth, it was likely not that different, so even if she was free to talk to them and explain their misunderstanding, she wouldn’t bother with it. After a while, they would be as much a part of Yi City as most other factions, and that was all that mattered for now.

They pushed forward, and Wei Yi made sure to do so with her full effort.