Path of the Ascendant

Three days was what it took, in the end. The Leeches tried, they tried to exert so much power that they might have even managed to breach the space of the Planar Continents if they were trying it somewhere else, but in the face of her assault via a hastily created technique to drill away at their defences, they could do naught.

Surprisingly, the delay did little to dampen the surge of support that the Ascendant had managed to attain to make this possible. To some extent, she was maintaining it by borrowing the notion of television from the otherworldly demons and sending out the image of the drill technique burrowing deeper and deeper into the barrier to all that would see it, but all that did was provide confidence that she was actually doing what she claimed to want and intend. Even without that, she estimated that she would receive enough power through the altered Proof of People’s Will to handle things just fine. It made her just a little proud of the people of Yi City.

Prior interactions with them had left her mostly neutral on the average person in Yi City, but this was certainly a decent point in their favour.

Back to the events at hand, however, she stood at the front door of Testament, or what one might term as such. Her technique was moments away from finishing its work, and from what she was able to observe of the spatial realm, she was able to say without a shadow of a doubt that the next moment, she would be able to enter. Indeed, although there was a significant reluctance from the spatial realm at the last moment, it was not enough to stop her.

A final push with her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow took the small hole formed by her technique and forced it to widen into a spatial gateway, borders formed of pure heavenly light around a dark and windy interior.

The floor was level with the grassy field on which Testament was placed, but it lacked any hint of natural growth or life. All she saw was the same grey stone that she had stood upon when she had been pulled into some kind of illusion by the Leeches when she first fought with the Great Ning’s male first generation member. However, there was clearly more than the circle that she had seen last time, and no hint of the figures in the distance, who she expected to belong to either the current first generation, or the past members of the Great Families.

For now, all that stood before her was an empty landscape, so she took a step towards it and held her left hand out once more. She may be able to enter now, but she recalled how troublesome it had been to find the exit of the Kong Holy Grounds when everything was collapsing around her. If the Leeches decided to destroy their Testament with her in it, before she finds some way to prevent it, she might well get swallowed alive and shattered by the voids outside the spatial realm upon its collapse.

Her seventh realm was good enough for her to hold back against the void between worlds for a while, as the power of the second and third realm was enough to endure for a while if enough people worked together, but her power wasn’t endless. The nascent rift in her dantian could only provide her with a limited rate of regeneration for her oblivion essence, but the void would consume and feed until she was gone, getting through all she had faster with each breath. This acceleration would be unnoticeable at first, but so long as it was present, it was enough. After all, she had no method of escaping the void between worlds, so even if she had a million years, she would have nowhere to go.

To guarantee her own safety, she used the Kong Prison Realm to stabilise the gateway into Testament, causing crimson and silver to form in a smaller circle within the existing gateway, propping it open even if the Leeches wished it shut.

Then, she took her first step inside.

“Cold… one might say it’s like the grave…” she muttered to herself, though the Great Leeches were welcome to listen.

All around her, the darkness extended without obvious limit. A storm raged above her, obscuring whatever sky this place might have had, although it did so quietly and rather dimly despite the intense sparks of lightning that she could see occurring above her. Presumably, this was part of whatever Laws the Great Leeches had put into their Testament, and those that they had left out.

It didn’t matter much to her, for the sky could be made of anything and look like anything so long as it did not obstruct her in her path. The terrain was of far greater significance, as despite its flat and empty nature, there was no hint of a direction for her to travel down. She expected that the Leeches would place her at the further point available to them, but she could see the stone extending to all sides, even behind the gateway she used to enter. Had this been the realm she entered instead of the Kong Holy Grounds, she might have been extremely lost and incapable of doing anything but leaving without any gains or losses, other than time wasted.

Now, she had divine sense, and plenty of it. It could spread for endless miles without any emotional support, but she didn’t even need to consider the worst conditions, for she was in the place that she had wished to be in for so many years.

Even before she had the slightest clue to her origins and the identity of her mother, she understood that there were those that wished to make things difficult for her. Some were not acting for any reason beyond pettiness and entertainment for themselves, like the many that chose to beat her up when she was weak and powerless to do anything to stop them. Back then, she had wished to see the source of such things, and put it to an end, but she had presumed that it would only extend this far, and cease somewhere in the Yi District.

After everything she had gone through since the awakening of the Truth of the Universe, a coincidence that had acted with numerous other coincidences to put her where she stands today, she understood that at least one thread could be traced here, and could be put to an end here. The thread of the mortal world, the one that ended with the seventh realm and could never see the glory of an imperfect rift.

For her, the Leeches stood at the end of this thread, and the eighth realm was beyond, on a different thread of different circumstances that she wished to overcome.

“Found you, you fuckers.”

She vanished from the spot, the ground fracturing and turning to dust beneath her as she distorted space itself to shift herself to the entrance to their true lair amidst this stone eternity. Unlike the things that they had showed her up to this point, the area she found was bright and regal, although it was still as muted in light and sound – and in the very motion of space within it – as the skies above, which were covered by a ceiling of magnificent wood unlikely to exist in modern times. She would not be surprised in the slightest if they were both the direct and indirect reason for such a thing, cutting down the trees before ensuring that the world wasn’t powerful enough to sustain the creation of any more.

There was a lengthy corridor leading up to an enormous open chamber, wherein a map of the Western Continent was placed. Numerous leylines appeared to be drawn upon the surface, and countless spots would flare up for a reason that the Ascendant could guess easily.

“None but us should have seen the Death of Words. It itself should have perished, once its task was done.”

The voice was strange, but it belonged to two figures in white standing atop it, on an elevated platform leading to another passage elsewhere in this roofed domain. Both were identical in appearance, except that she knew that one was male and the other female. Their voices, however, did not belong to two human figures, that much she could say with absolute certainty even if she wasn’t using her divine sense to peer into their bodies.

If she had to guess at the reason, it would be the same thing that caused them to seem as if they had been duplicated atop themselves a thousand times. Their forms were akin to identical images cut out and stacked, and this gave them the feeling of oddity that could not be seen if one was to look at appearance alone.

Still, their words made it all too clear that they were the very ones that she had been looking for.

“Leeches, aren’t you?”

One began, “Your presence here is incorrect.”

“Remove yourself at once,” they replied, almost as if they hadn’t even heard her.

Most likely, that was because they truly hadn’t.

With the phantoms she had fought on the outside, she had gotten the impression of the Leeches being slightly mechanical in their behaviour, but they were always responding to the outside world. They couldn’t ever follow a script, so to speak, if they wished to be even a little successful, which they could be described as being due to living for more than a few moments before being wiped out by someone other than the Ascendant. Acting in a freer manner appeared to be harmful to their seal, so therefore none of the entities directly within Testament would do so.

“I don’t think I will. If you are akin to the phantoms on the outside, and you have even a fragment of sentience in you, then I just want you to know that you are the very reason I am here. You only have yourselves to blame for your downfall.”

“Remove yourself at once.”

“No. I had given you the chance to do whatever, so now I will break this place apart.”

She released all of her power at once, her every cultivation path blasting out with so much force that space itself was shaken with her power. It was able to rampage for a single moment before the pair before her appeared to activate, their eyes igniting with heavenly white light as they placed their hands together and reached out with their other hands to release a vast beam of energy towards her, two strands colliding upon her position.

They were powerful, supported by the spatial realm in the most obvious of manners, with their power being amplified via invisible energy being applied to it, and her power being supressed, but Testament was only able to do so much to her. The latter suppression could be handled easily by her own power from the Kong Prison Realm, and the former…

“Invert!”

The powers of the spatial realms were suddenly flipped, nearly nullifying the attack heading towards her to the point that the dissipating energy from her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow was sufficient to scatter it into naught. Since that energy was already being scattered as a result of expending it for the sake of her Command of Law, executed via the method of her Slaughtering Replacement, this was essentially free for her, and permitted her to use her right hand to manifest a hundred railgun bolts all around her, targeting nothing in particular even when the threat was right before her.

She had no need to target those two, as their power was based on the spatial realm. Therefore, if she damaged the parts of the spatial realm that provided them with support, and wrecked the foundation of the Leeches, she might be able to damage Testament and yet keep it intact for her own use later.

At least, that was what she was currently thinking. The Ascendant couldn’t be certain that she would remember such a thing in a few minutes, provided that the fighting had to continue, and she knew that the last time she fought recklessly in a spatial realm with her full power, there was a high chance of completely ruining the place even if a spatial spirit invested their every drop of energy into limiting the damage.

These railgun bolts hovered in the air for just a moment before the infusion of Obliteration energy allowed them to blast out and collide with the needlessly regal walls of the structure, with just a few flying straight towards the pair while a good dozen others managed to land near them. Each one exploded in a wave of crimson blackness, utterly shredding the terrain and opening it up for her to see.

Beneath was the same grey stone as everywhere else in the spatial realm, but it could not be broken through with a force of that level. Unlike the constructions made by the Leeches to make this place their home, as well as whatever it was they were creating here, the foundational stone was the spatial realm’s borders made manifest, meaning that she would need to pierce through the realm itself to damage them. They and the central map of the chamber she was in were the only things that remained in perfect condition, and only the latter required her attention.

She was unfamiliar with the array that made up the underlying components of the map, but the fact that it was incredibly important was immediately clear from the fact that the spatial realm’s power instantly focused upon the map to protect it. This made her very tempted to ruin it specifically.

Unfortunately, her sane mind recognized that it was not reasonable to do so, since there was still something that could be done with the map if it was indeed the source of their ability to reach out to the world despite lacking a proper connection to the Yi City Web. As she had promised, she would need to share the things she learned inside Testament, and using Testament itself for that purpose was both easiest and most indicative of her victory.

Moving herself on top of the map, where she would be least likely to damage it with deliberate attacks against her two foes, she brought out the Titanic Conqueror and followed with two pairs of Obliteration beams. Focusing two spheres of what might well be her most used form of energy at her own two hands and the hands of the Titanic Conqueror, she launched them both at the point between the pair that remained in place, their clothes torn but their bodies and skin unaffected entirely by her previous attack. This was not something she could immediately amend, but the first attack gave her a trace of energy to follow with her divine sense.

The force protecting them would need to continue doing so, and each attack would give her more to work with.

Indeed, as the blast hit the two, they had only begun to move back in an attempt to evade, and thus the power defending them had to take most of the impact instead, bringing her attention to that which lay behind them. Her divine sense hadn’t noticed anything there at first, but now that she knew she was looking for something, she could direct the Absolute power of her soul to reveal the truth.

‘I could rush straight there, but whatever is defending these two has to have some limited source of power. As such, if I rush in and try and take it on, I may well run into trouble with whatever else resides there. Instead, if I force them back and push them into the path of the thing defending them, I’ll waste their energy, might be able to learn more on the way, and might make it difficult for the spatial realm’s power to retaliate if they don’t wish to harm them at the same time,’ Wei Yi quickly concluded, making her Titanic Conqueror take a step back from her, or the equivalent of a step while floating, ‘That means that as I go, I can also fuck everything up! Perfect!’

To further boost her own destructive potential, she manifested numerous Red Phantoms while she went along and got them to attack the nearest wall or structure of interest, when she occasionally came across such things in openings to either side of the corridor.

“Intruders are to be punished,” the left figure in white proclaimed.

“Testament must remain pure,” the figure on the right asserted.

Together, they separated and used both hands to conjure masses of anchor-like phantoms, before which a series of planar constructs formed in the shapes of spikes, each aimed directly at the Ascendant regardless of her own movement. For every dozen phantoms, there was a single spike, but the concentration of phantoms was so enormous that the spikes themselves acted as a sufficient shield for the pair and were able to conduct and break any attack aimed at an area rather than a fine and precise point.

Some of her attacks were sufficient to damage the spikes while others outright shattered them, but just as Wei Yi had nigh infinite oblivion essence thanks to her nascent rift, they had a boundless supply of energy from that one point in the distance, luckily placed on the main path of corridors and chambers that she could easily lead the pair down. Every other attack pushed them back by a step, and since she could strike many times in a second, their movement was very hurried.

From the chamber with the map, which she kept her divine sense on just in case, she continued to advance into the corridor behind it, then another chamber, some twists and turns, and so on. While she proceeded onwards, she did occasionally stall and limit the force of her abilities to destroy larger spaces or otherwise examine the areas she came across. She expected at least some place to contain other Leeches, provided that the spatial realm was incredibly large, but even if she presumed that some were invisible to her combination of divine sense and soul’s power, she was unable to see anything or anyone of note.

Her issue with this was that the space was vast and detailed, filled with numerous rooms and even bits of furniture, but there were no people here at all. From her understanding of the Greats, she knew that the third and second generations would stay within their chosen mansions and residences, but since there was so much room occupied here, then there should have been someone using it.

If so, where were those people?

She had no answer to that now, especially since she suspected that the first generation wouldn’t be engaging in common activities or forms of entertainment, which were present in Testament in small quantities. It was a mystery that couldn’t remain for long, so she didn’t worry too much about this.

Other than the minor point of confusion in regards to the wasted space, she was more interested in understanding the structure of the area and breaking it all down. Her intention was to weaken the stability and power of Testament, so figuring out the layout of the place was important for the potential detection of any kind of channels running through the place. Perhaps everything was laid out so as to produce a pseudo array over the entire spatial realm, and perhaps it could play a major role in throwing her out even if she did her best to remain.

There was also the possibility of the spatial realm rebuilding itself after she departed and using a certain lapse in her attention to make her believe that nothing behind her had changed. If she ended up travelling in a circle without noticing, finding identical chambers would make it far easier to realise the truth and alter her plans quickly.

However, she did not end up needing to use such knowledge, for once she pushed the pair back enough, she came across a chamber of interest without its arrangement relative to the outside.

It was filled with pedestals and numerous objects of indeterminate value. From a pure visual standpoint, she might have guessed that this was the collection of some old man or woman with odd interests, for there was little cohesion between any of the objects – and some of the pedestals contained broken items, with some being outright ground to dust – but her divine sense informed her of the vaguest and subtlest points somewhere within those objects. Each one was an otherworldly gift.

Given that the first time she had come across the Leeches after escaping the Kong Prison Realm, they were hunting someone making use of the Arrow of Artemis, she wasn’t surprised by that alone. The number of otherworldly gifts was also above her expectations, but not particularly amazing to behold.

Rather, her interest was in the manner in which a number of these otherworldly gifts had managed to retain their azure lights and yet damage the otherworldly gifts. She had not had much success in damaging otherworldly gifts without using one to separate it from the azure light, thus making it more vulnerable to her influence, but the opposition these Leeches had to the otherworldly gifts would indicate that they shouldn’t use any gifts that still contain an azure light, which was not a thing that they could actually verify without the use of either Absolute divine sense, or an otherworldly gift of their own, which she couldn’t locate with a glance.

That it wouldn’t be possible to do so with most otherworldly gifts wasn’t something that needed to be mentioned, for few had a direct correlation between appearance and function.

Her Purifier’s Seal didn’t look like it should be able to melt apart objects into their components, the Truth of the Universe certainly didn’t look like it was capable of storing numerous pieces of information and calculating even more of them in moments, the House of Gold was shaped like a book and shouldn’t have been able to contain as vast a spatial storage as it does, and so on. Therefore, one of the otherworldly gifts here might well be usable for locating azure lights, provided that the Leeches wished to risk using a gift in this manner.

Whatever the case was, she had some interest in these items. Simply picking them up would be equivalent to suicide, for it would let the azure light invade her body and thus ruin all of her attempts to prevent such a thing.

That made it rather complicated, since she was sure that something would keep these items out of her grip if she failed to pick them up now, but she couldn’t pick them up now since it would take time that she didn’t really have. Her current plan was essentially just to barge through the place and obliterate everything in sight, and this was not conducive to careful operation and extraction of azure lights.

Hence, she needed to use a slightly different approach, and so she dedicated her mental presence to the production of red phantoms that would strike with Obliteration, which was the most effective attack by far due to a perfect combination of forces to push her foes back, and leapt to one of the furthest pedestals from the pair. Before opening the transparent cover atop it, she examined it.

The material used for the covers atop the pedestals was akin to glass, but made of some kind of stronger material that was then inscribed with numerous defences to prevent the objects within from influencing the outside. Whether the Leeches realised it or not, most of the defensive methods were actually closer to illusory inscriptions, acting upon the otherworldly gifts in a manner resembling the array of the Truth of the Universe, which was able to effectively recall the azure lights to wherever it was that they came from.

In this instance, all of the protective inscriptions ended up merely preventing the otherworldly gift from reacting to the outside world, with the power of Testament adding on to boost that further.

‘I can copy parts of this and put my stance of taking the things that work from the Leeches and discarding all the bullshit that comes with it into practise,’ Wei Yi thought while she attempted to bring out some of her own attention from the pair of Leeches before her to the glass-like covers atop the pedestals without drawing too much of it. This was a problem to her due to her ever-present inability to literally split her mind into several pieces.

Luckily, after some brief analysis, she managed to discover a good place for breaching the obstructing inscriptions, and was in and ready to use her power of the Purifier’s Seal to separate the azure light from the otherworldly gift.

“Contact with the weapons of the invaders is not permitted!”

“You shall distance yourself at once!”

The two suddenly stopped simply gathering their planar constructs and fired them out, and in doing so perfectly demonstrated the difference between ordinary constructs and her own railgun bolts. All of the spikes they launched at her flew quickly, sufficient to prevent most cultivators from reacting in time, but they had no true kinetic force, and were simply being made to shift position rather than truly moving. This was very much a positive for her, as aside from showing that the Leeches inside Testament hadn’t learnt, it meant that she was easily able to handle it with the phantoms she was already making.

Obliteration was good at breaking down energy, but there was a certain deficiency at ceasing the advance of physical objects, hence her need to take out the automatons of the Ju District before they could attack her. Facing the exact opposite of their methods, she was now free to separate the azure lights from the otherworldly gifts.

She began with a large white feather, then a simple stone, then a pile of ash, then some bones stuck together for no obvious reason, and more. To make sure that she didn’t fuck up any part of the process, she followed very strict timing and never tried to use an otherworldly gift and learn of its power, nor did any of them force themselves into her body like the Mirror of Potential and House of Gold had. As such, she wasn’t sure whether the items would be of any use to her, now or in the future, but that wasn’t the most significant point. Rather, she needed to grab everything with her mental energy, bring it with her, and then advance towards her original destination, which was now so much nearer than before.

Otherworldly gifts had power, that much could be guessed from a simple glance at one of them in action, but they didn’t necessarily need to be used in the same manner as they were meant to be used. The current Xin Patriarch had figured this out, for instance, and managed to awaken the power of her soul in a process that the Ascendant still hadn’t been able to fully replicate within her own body, without the use of any outside otherworldly gifts.

It might well turn out that she would not have the chance to apply them properly before using their influence over the Planar Continents in a more raw form to defeat the Leeches.

That’s not to say that they would all be expended in such a manner, as the otherworldly gifts sealed off by the Xin District were all usable many times, but her oddly reliable intuition did lead her to believe that she would not be facing the same level of opposition as the Xin family.