Path of the Ascendant

The door of the Ancestral Hall was exploded inwards, and a group of those in the sixth and seventh realms stepped inside.

A few defenders on the other side still attempted to prevent their progress inwards, but they were stopped by a few casual waves of the Ascendant’s armoured finger. Each time, she employed Edge Replication, expending more energy than strictly necessary for the task but achieving less needless collateral damage to the various smithing implements and tools that were places around the sides of the first floor of the Ancestral Hall.

Most of them were rather old and of far higher quality than the common items found within the Planar Continents at this time, and so although the world would soon rise in overall power and be able to make things like this, if not better, it would take some time for these items to be replaced.

She had also stated that she wouldn’t harm the district needlessly, and destroying such things was the very definition of needless harm. Even if one tried to reason that the forges of the Ning District could be used to forge weaponry that would then be used against the Ascendant, it would require forgetting about the fact that it would not be done within the day, nor within many even if the greatest of blacksmiths decided to work on making something sensible. After all, even with a complete set of shards that simply needed to be put together, using something as powerful as the Shaper’s Grasp physique, the Ascendant needed quite some time to forge Moon Splitter.

In the middle of battle, without the right materials or preparation, there were none that would be able to make a decent weapon before being killed by the Ascendant or her forces.

They descended to the lower floors easily enough after the first few waves of defenders were scared off, or just killed. Unlike something as absurd as the Qiang District, where mining was at the heart of the district’s traditions and their Ancestral Hall reflected it perfectly, the Ning District did not have much room to go into the hard stone of the ground beneath them.

That there even were three floors to descend was already abnormal in the Ning District, and the lowest one was the largest. It was home to a great forge meant to be used by some of the greatest blacksmiths of the Ning District, namely the Divine Smiths of the Ning family. All of the individual implements and tools were clearly designed for this, and any regular blacksmith that used them would not see as much improvement from using them as they would from using their own tools, even if their tools were of lower quality.

So long as one cultivated the Eternal Anvil Pledge, the technique of the Divine Smiths, they would devote their very body to the great art of blacksmithing, and they would sacrifice a great deal in exchange for the ability to shape metal more freely, almost transforming it with every single strike.

It didn’t match up with the Shaper’s Grasp, as that was a rare and powerful physique, and it came with a greater cost, but that was a small cost to pay for some. Many Divine Smiths sacrificed their lives for this very willingly, at least at first – even with the amount of information that was suppressed about the Eternal Anvil Pledge, tales of Divine Smiths wishing they could feel anything more than the heat of the forge and the texture of metal in exchange for their skills were common – and so that was the best possible method for the majority to approach the level of the Shaper’s Grasp physique and the reforging of metals without needing to expend any additional materials.

This forge was one that she certainly didn’t want to harm right now, as it would worsen whatever impression the Patriarch had of her, but the likes of the Divine Smiths were not going to last long with her around. She did not like techniques that drained some part of a cultivator’s vital sensations, as she was already suffering from simply being unable to taste food, and her experiences with the Magnanimous Leech technique convinced her that any draining of sensations and strengths was something that shouldn’t be permitted to occur, even if all involved knew what they were getting into.

Mainly, this was due to most people not truly being aware of the manner in which the loss of something ordinary would affect them. When every day involves feeling the warm air on one’s skin, the taste of something like authamite wine, or perhaps the gentle – or not so gentle – touch of one’s lover, and they feel this for a dozen, hundred, perhaps even a thousand years, such things become routine.

When the option to throw them away in return for great power was given, there were many that would agree. It would only be some time later that they would comprehend the consequences.

Still, that was a matter for a later discussion with the Ning Patriarch, as well as Luo Na, whose district also had the practise of burning lifeforce to strengthen talismans via the Searing Inferno technique. Lifeforce could be substituted with some of her physique abilities, and likely the physiques of some of the people living in either that district or in the Chao District, but there were few that had access to quite as much lifeforce as the Ascendant had, and few of those people would be willing to share all of it at an appropriate cost. Others, like Wei Yi herself, could spare plenty for free, but she rarely had the time to stand around and supplement lifeforce for those that were lacking in it.

‘And before I have to take note of the fact that my presence and power likely won’t be as eternal as I might wish it to be, I ought to take care of the Ning Patriarch,’ the Ascendant thought, turning to those accompanying her, “Stand by and keep others from getting in. I’ll take care of them.”

The others didn’t provide any commentary this time, so she went forward right away and met the Patriarch’s gaze. It wasn’t quite as angry as one might expect from the situation, so the encounter was bound to go better than with the Ping District’s former Patriarch, but she still prepared a few drops of energy to deal with him quickly and as safely as possible if it became necessary to do so. Then, before she could say anything, he began first.

“Ascendant. I have heard a portion of what you said on the surface.”

“Why are you standing in my way, then? Just to make sure you’re aware, your strength is far inferior to those two, so even if you tried your best to protect them, it’d be pointless.”

“I am no fool, Ascendant. Otherwise, I would have waged war with you a long time ago, and would have also refused to side with any existing faction, and might have attempted to conquer Yi City for myself. I have done none of those things, and refused plenty of other follies as well, so you need not attempt to educate me,” the man stated, his words being diplomatic yet hiding clear jabs at her own actions, “There is one thing that I will ask about, that I believe you have lied about. If you were truthful, explain yourself.”

“What a polite inquiry. I certainly wouldn’t want to simply replace you with some other Patriarch candidate and tell everyone else that the Great Leeches had ended your life while I attempted to stop them… in other words, get on with it.”

“You claim that you would share techniques-”

That was all that she needed to hear before she raised her right hand and performed a simple palm strike forward, targeting the head of the Patriarch. He attempted to block her, but the sudden impact of a wave of information forcing its way into his head stopped his movement before he was able to do anything.

When he managed to figure out what she had given him, his eyes widened and he gritted his teeth before taking the slightest step to the side and addressing her.

“That technique… it’s not full, but it is based on the Shaper’s Grasp, isn’t it?”

“I threw it together just now. It’s better than your Eternal Anvil Pledge already, and it doesn’t rid people of so much. Teach it to whoever you want, because soon a version of it will be available within the Kong Prison Realm, in the central archive, for anyone under the protection of the Arbiters to browse through and comprehend. Now, out of the way, and, if you want to live, up a floor or two.”

He was clearly not happy with the way she spoke to him, but since he had already acknowledged both the truth of her claims and her overall power, he had no choice but to depart, walking past the dragons and the others in as dignified a manner as he could.

The instant that he took the first step onto the stairs up, the Ascendant’s head turned towards the final chamber of this floor, where the two Great Leeches of the first generation of the Great Ning family stood on either side of the spatial stabilisation point. It was lit up with a ghostly green light, as weak as it was for the moment, and they were attempting to do something with it and not doing all that well in this regard. One was Ning Huang, around whom she could still sense and see the broken anchors and the faint trace of the broken edges of his core. The other had similar features, so she was likely Ning Hui, the female member of the first generation of the Great Ning.

Her state was significantly better at the moment, and so she was doing most of the work while Ning Huang was effectively standing by and keeping watch, although both had shifted their attention towards the doorway that the Ascendant occupied. Almost unconsciously, the male Leech receded just a little, and the female one moved forward, also just a little, in preparation for the battle that would inevitably follow.

They tried hard to disguise it, but both attempted to build up something to attack her with, as if the Ascendant wasn’t going to notice something like that.

“Do you idiots think that by hiding it, you would catch me off-guard? It seems that my divine sense finally overpowers yours,” Wei Yi said, taking a step forward while withdrawing Moon Splitter from the House of Gold, “Come on and let me kill you already. Save both of us the effort.”

Naturally, they wouldn’t do that, and the Ascendant wouldn’t skip out on hitting those two in the face a few thousand times either. It would be good practise for the battle against the heavens, if that ever came up, and also an opportunity to develop the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow to its final form via a prolonged battle in which she was truly challenged. If she didn’t manage to take this opportunity now, the stable state of her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow would decay back to its previous condition, and she would need to find a different opportunity with far more effort.

She was ready to take the stronger attack with her sword, letting the shards of Moon Splitter loose to get lodged in the planar construct and shatter, while some of the smoke from her Arm blocked a few point beams sent out by Ning Huang. It was easy enough to do so, for the number of beams he could produce was halved and their overall power also fell greatly.

Although the number of beams was tied to the planar anchors used by a Great Leech, planar energy as a whole was also affected by the number of anchors, and their technique relied on the stabilising effects of multiple anchors working together. In fact, that was what all of their methods, including their cultivation, appeared reliant upon, which was why the Overwhelming Resonance of the outer nations proved to be so effective. They were stuck with a single series of techniques that they propagated time and time again, and none of them could lose them and fail to pass them on to the next generation, so a faction that could never reconnect with the world was created.

It was certainly a shame for the Leeches that she had ended up facing, but she had no problems with taking care of them and ensuring that others were able to learn their lesson.

Since Ning Huang wasn’t going to be much of an issue for her, she ignored him and instead attacked Ning Hui, throwing out the shards of her sword that were already out in the air from her prior attack. They rushed at the woman, striking a series of hastily assembled planar constructs, which did serve their function to force the shards to burst out energy early.

Ning Huang attempted to land a blow on the Ascendant with a weak yet hastily assembled flaming metal hand, but it was only a little larger than her smoking hand and so allowed her to grab onto the construct and crush it, quietly taking advantage of the slight resonance around the construct to attempt a few things with her own Arm and see whether any of the effects of the anchor’s stabilisation could be used to improve the state of the Arm. Unfortunately, this particular planar construct arrangement didn’t suit her.

Thus, she quickly switched up her tactics and brought the sword shards back into her hand and rushed forward using her Arm as her primary weapon. She had already confirmed the strength of her opponents, and she knew that the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow would be sufficient to handle them with the amount of strength they were able to display so far, so it was the best possible time to experiment with it.

The female Leech took a step forward, blocking her brother while she sent out a few basic point beams as an obvious distraction. Her brother placed his hands on the surface of the spatial stabilisation point, his own energy pouring out at a great speed while he attempted to manipulate the energy within.

‘Don’t think that you can get out of this so fast, you irritating leech,’ the Ascendant quickly calculated every possibility she could conceive of, throwing together every option possible via Endless Calculation until she had a few conclusive results, and then decided that it would be for the better to let him do his work, for two simple reasons.

The first was the same as before – she wanted to finish her Arm, and a stronger attack would give her that opportunity. Meanwhile, the second was that the Great Leeches had made a bit of a mistake right here. Instead of having the stronger one of the two use the spatial stabilisation point’s connection with their Testament to unleash something capable of handling her, the weaker one did so instead, and the stronger one exposed herself to the Ascendant to essentially be slaughtered first, while the weaker one would waste their time and end up perishing as well, turning to naught but embers.

In short, this nearly guaranteed her victory, meaning that she was free to do as she wished unless the other Leeches came over.

However, she was nearly certain that this wouldn’t occur. Her divine sense reached to the other districts easily, and even the influence of her soul’s power – something that couldn’t extend forever, but was sufficient to fill at least half of the excessive range of her current mental energy – went far enough to let her take a glance at the actions of the Leeches within the Chen and Yi Districts, albeit not sufficient to penetrate into Testament.

There were no reinforcements coming, as far as she was able to tell. Thus, there would be none that could take advantage of some poor planning on her part, or the weak spots that she would inevitably expose by fighting with her attention on developing a technique rather than defeating opponents.

She did also have to note that she had a brief period of time in which she would be significantly calmer than usual when facing the Leeches. The stabilising effects of the breakthrough still applied to the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, and the primary element of it was mental energy, which was exactly what greatly elevated her aggravation in most situations. In time, even if the stabilising effect persisted forever, she knew that the realm of killing will would climb up to the eighth realm, or do its best to reach it, and there it would sit and destabilise her mind while also acting as its immovable foundation, a series of contradictions that had been the source of her very existence.

At the moment, she knew of no way to amend that than to elevate her other cultivation paths at an even greater rate to catch up to and match the development of killing will, which was simply impossible. Her oblivion essence and its advancement directly affected her physique energy and bloodline power, allowing those to keep up during her breakthroughs, but oblivion essence came from the world and her nascent rift. The rift provided her a constant flow of energy, but it was too slow to allow for consistent cultivation, and the world’s energy quantity was also too low for her to quickly reach the eighth realm without siphoning the energy from the Yi City Web, or some other large repository of energy. For now, she knew of none that would fit her needs.

Thus, every moment was used wisely. She provoked as many attacks from the female Leech as she possibly could, constantly pretending to near her brother only to allow her to get in the way in the last moment and force her to unleash a stronger strike in order to get her to move away. It worked, if only because she let it, and then the attacks were used to check resonance with her Arm.

It worked extremely smoothly, and after five minutes of pointless collisions, she ended up with the glimpse of success. As such, she instantly threw the right method of resonance and shifted the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow into the method of Endless Calculation. She spurred it on with all of the excess killing will that she had in her possession, forcing it to go on and on with the greatest speed that her mind could manage. Of course, for a mind that was odd even in the eyes of a ninth realm dragon from the days of Kong Shi Meng, that was a far greater speed than most could ever hope to experience.

A few years passed within a moment, or at least it certainly felt like that. Her Endless Calculation could make use of each year as if it was a hundred, and this advantage was most obvious in matters that could be settled objectively and with pure logic and mathematics, as her emotions couldn’t catch up to it.

Thus, her solution was found, and she put it to use immediately, scattering the current Arm of Slaughtering Shadow in a single explosion of energy so vast and powerful that it shook the land and forced everyone protecting the Ancestral Hall – Ning Patriarch included, as he had taken up the floor above and gathered everyone capable of reinforcing the floor and walls to do so as quickly as possible – to push themselves to their limits in order to be able to keep the place from collapsing.

Ning Hui was thrown back right into Ning Huang at the vital point, destroying his arrangements.

They landed on the other wall and saw the limb of shadow regenerate, similar to before yet so vitally different that it was impossible to compare them properly. One was a messy combination of energies used to condense a completely deficient limb, and the other was… a perfect arm that could be used in full.

Visually, it was still composed of smoke, with the colours of her energies lying within, but the endless plumes were reduced significantly, for that was always an element of inefficiency, even if it worked flawlessly for her. Each finger had immense detail, as if they were naturally formed and not created to substitute a greater thing. Each muscle, although made from energy and not flesh, was more refined and even more accurate than the strongest results that a physique could ever produce, even with all of the absolute physiques she had discovered.

Most importantly, however, she had achieved eternity.

She did not make herself eternal, obviously, but the Arm could now feel sensation, move as a normal arm would, and she knew that there was a certain connection between it and her state – her nature, the very concept of her being. That connection was feeble, extremely feeble, but it was there, and it was not going anywhere, and it had been formed by her own power, and the combination of several other techniques.

The Overwhelming Resonance of the Reclaimed Lands combined well with the anchor-bound reverberations of energy produced by the Great Leeches, and when she examined the latter, she was able to conclude that just as the Great Leech obsession with their anchors permeated their common techniques, it also spread to the greatest technique they had displayed so far – Reality Severance.

In other words, their method for breaching reality and splitting concepts was technically engrained within their other techniques, although Wei Yi had not figured out a way to make use of the Reality Severance, both because she lacked sufficient information about it, and because she didn’t wish to do so. Touch the Heavens was sufficiently destructive to the world, so adding on something specifically meant to cut through reality would not be particularly beneficial to her intentions of keeping everything stable and intact.

Still, although she now regained the limb that she had lost a long time ago, she was more curious about the actions of the Leeches, so she pointed her left index finger at them and asked them directly.

“Your anchors exist outside of your bodies at all times, and you are able to protect them with your cores. Why do you never bring out your halos, then? That’s something that can be done, just as with all other planar structures… Unless you aren’t able to do so. Are you?”

Obviously, if they responded to her words, they would be incredibly foolish and it would make it very strange that the Leeches had been able to survive for a million years, like they have now. Provided that she was right, there were plenty of repercussions that would be immediately understood about them, and it might very well allow everyone in the world to turn against them now that they understood some significant threat to their current position.

The Ascendant knew that their path had limitations, and she had already suspected that the Leeches had a problem in the seventh realm, but if she was able to confirm it once and for all, it would give her the certainty to act however she wished since she could be absolutely certain that the Greats would never be able to reach the eighth realm. If they cannot do so, then even if their strength proves to be far superior to her own in the moment, they would be overwhelmed once she either gets to the sixth stage, or the eighth realm, both of which were certain to happen, just not right away. On the other hand, if they can get to the eighth realm, then the ticking clock she had resolved by breaking into the barrier would return in a different form, forcing her to rush forth in a manner that was not advantageous to her own plans. Obviously, this wasn’t ideal in any way.

She used Moon Splitter to form walls of shards on either side of the pair of Leeches, then approached them through the open front, covering the spatial stabilisation point in her own energy to prevent them from using it.

“Bring out your halo right now. I know you both have five halos around your dantians, so bring them out and let me see how your technique allows you to resolve the problems that would inevitably be caused by having dozens of anchors inside of a single core… oh, forgive me, your anchor counts don’t match any longer. Still, dozens,” she said, grabbing Ning Hui’s neck and lifting her up, “Come on, you’ve been so brave and haughty up to this point. Where’s that energy gone, Leech?”

“You… Why would I ever tell you- AH!”

The woman cried out and spat out a mouthful of blood when Wei Yi grabbed onto her arm – the left one, of course – and pulled it off without any hesitation.

“You were saying? Your brother is next, and I don’t intend to hold back. Communicating with mental energy should be easy for you two, and I can keep you alive regardless of the wounds I inflict with my lifeforce, so don’t think that you can get out of this just by getting so injured that there is no real way for your words to emerge from your mouth.”

In truth, she doubted that she would be able to carry on torturing the two of them for long enough to keep to her word. Now that she had broken the previous balance of her energy via the empowerment of her Arm, she felt her killing will becoming more powerful and unrestrained with every moment. Perhaps it wouldn’t reach the next realm today, but the stability of her power would disappear within a few minutes, leaving her without the ability to stop herself from outright slaughtering them right then and there.

“Ugh… You psychopath-”

“Don’t you try that. After everything you’ve done to fuck over the world, bring everyone down, and kill anyone that slightly displeased you, don’t try calling me psychopathic.”

She was a little too relaxed about killing others, sure, but at least she kept those who should have only been able to inconvenience her alive. Had she had an unwanted child with someone and learnt of their survival in some district, she would certainly not rush in to kill them or imprison them in a spatial realm, although she couldn’t deny that knowing how poorly such a thing could turn out was also a major factor that would dissuade anything resembling this approach, regardless of the circumstances.

This was obviously not something she would say to them, or to most others.

“You won’t get anything out of us! The heavens are on our side!” Ning Huang exclaimed, all of a sudden.

“If you’re not saying anything helpful, just shut it,” Wei Yi didn’t even bother looking at him and simply conjured a few phantoms to stab the man a few dozen times in a single second. At that moment, it felt oddly like this was what the Red Phantom Flood was meant to be used for, even if she was only capable of conjuring a phantom for a single action at most.

He managed to restrain his cry of pain, just barely, with the Ascendant ignoring him still.

“Actually, I’m not sure why I’m wasting so much time. I’m now in the seventh realm, so if I use my favourite Dao…”

She hadn’t attempted something like this before, but since now had both a stable arm and the seventh realm, she chose to attempt it. Using the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, she grabbed onto the space where the woman’s dantian was supposed to be and applied all of the strength that she could exert to a single Command of Law.

“Emerge!”

It was as targeted as she could make it, and she could sense that her command did apply to something, for the energy stored within her Arm began to be exhausted at a rapid pace. Despite a core appearing around her, Ning Hui and Ning Huang, and the marks igniting on its surface, she didn’t see even the slightest glimpse of a halo. There should be five of them at least, given the quantity of marks upon the core, and yet their aura remained within the body.

Once her energy started to get exhausted too quickly – more precisely, once the rate of recovery fell far below the rate of consumption – she ceased the command and threw Ning Hui at the wall, hearing a few bones break as a result.

“You cannot bring a halo outside of your body. You cannot bring your anchors into your body. Without the halos to facilitate the collapse of an anchor, even if it was possible to use thirty anchors for an imperfect rift, you won’t be able to break through to the eighth realm. In conclusion,” she released her killing will in vast quantities as a vicious grin appeared on her face, and the restraint she had been exhibiting so far vanished into the void, “All of you are scum that are frozen within the seventh realm forever. To make up for your own weakness, you bring down the world as a whole! For your crimes of a million years, I judge you guilty, and punish you by death!”

In that instant, she did not allow them any action, nor did she permit herself the vaguest semblance of relaxation or hesitation. Every method she could think of to keep them frozen in place was activated, and when she attacked, she did so with her most powerful techniques merged into Obliteration, save for Touch the Heavens as to prevent damaging the world.

A single strike landing on the weak flesh of the Great Leeches reduced their number by two.