Path of the Ascendant

“Every weapon of the invaders has been compromised!”

“Retreat to the Crowded Sky is necessary.”

No sooner than the pair said that, they were already in rapid retreat, prompting the Ascendant to take the items she had collected and chase after them immediately. Even if they had no plan prepared to take her on once they reached that Crowded Sky of theirs, it would be foolish to give them time to come up with one while she still had the advantage.

Fortunately for her, imparting physical force upon the otherworldly gifts via her killing will neither counted as touching them physically, nor as her attempting to directly use her energy to manipulate them, so dragging them alongside her was easy. Without the obstacle of the Leeches, she was also able to focus her attacks purely on her surroundings and the rest of her attention on movement, so she made rapid progress. A room filled with something of use would have slowed her down, but perhaps due to the general trend of making rooms purely to occupy space, she didn’t come across anything of the sort until the chamber that stood before the place the pair had fled to.

The chamber was very singular in its purpose, and that purpose was most obvious no matter where one looked – unless one looked at some random floor tile and ignored all else, of course.

A library of great proportions was laid out before her, numerous shelves lined up in a very simple grid, each one three floors high and absolutely filled to the brim with tomes. There did not appear to be any sorting based on the cultivation realm the techniques were intended to be for, but they were nonetheless ordered vaguely appropriately due to the order instead being chronological. The closest tomes to the place where she entered were clearly obtained relatively recently, their material far from fresh, but hardly weathered by time.

Nothing of the sort could be said about the furthest books here, which were closer to compressed dust than pages bound together to be read by someone. This was even with the spatial realm’s influence slowing down the aging of all within, meaning that the true age of the books was significantly higher than it appeared.

Still, even in this condition, the words on the pages still existed, and thus everything that she wanted to know was present. Everything from the secrets of the seventh realm to some slightly more minor yet vital aspects of the ninth realm, paving a clear road for anyone with any cultivation path at all to advance to the ninth realm if they so wished. Of course, there was a bit of a problem in that regard, and it was that the Ascendant somehow managed to avoid every standard cultivation path of planar energy and step onto the path of oblivion essence mixed in with just about everything under the sun of the Planar Continents. It was fortunate that she had no intention of taking an ordinary path.

Her Ascendant’s Dao, and investigations into the Dao of Law, were sufficient, but integrating all of the techniques here ought to be sufficient to bring her into the ninth realm safely.

The techniques here had also came at the wrong time. Had she managed to chance her way before she even held the House of Gold, she might have been able to acquire a nice series of techniques to actively utilise against her opposition, but the issue originated from her current arsenal of methods giving her no room to fit such things into her combat system. The most that she could do was integrate some elements into her Obliteration energy, and her overall Dao comprehension.

In a way, her attention was thusly more focused upon the thing that lay behind the oldest shelves and tomes, wherein the power of the ninth realm was clear even though no energy was imbued into the ancient dust resembling books. There, at the back, was an obstruction of light within a small doorway, at least in comparison to those that she had traversed up to this point.

It would only be sufficient for two men to enter at once, rather than the open arch on the other side of the room through which a small army could likely run through unimpeded, and it was currently blocked by a pure veil of light, akin to the heavenly glow marking the gateway to this spatial realm. Through there, although she could not see a thing clearly with either her divine sense or her sight – something unusual, but expected from a spatial realm as ancient and well-maintained as Testament had to be – she could almost feel a vast field of sparkling lights, almost akin to the night’s sky illuminated by numerous stars.

Such a thing was very different from her typical cosmos, whether it was the original view through her cosmic energy or the current crimson sight visible through oblivion energy, although an outside observer may not be able to tell the difference. Frankly, without seeing it in person, she couldn’t be sure whether her impression of whatever lay on the other side was even accurate, so it may be far closer than she imagined.

Nonetheless, what mattered more was that there was a barrier, and she could recognise the structure of the defensive layer.

Last time, it took her a very long to take her out, and it was on the outside, with the full support of the people of Yi City being needed to get her the result in anything resembling a sensible timeframe. This time… she might have had less power from her version of the Proof of People’s Will array right now, but with everything around her, she could smile confidently.

“Alright then… People of the world, I have found the archive of the Great Leeches!” she exclaimed, forcing her voice outside of Testament, “The rest of the Leeches seem to be hiding away in a part of their Testament, but since they’ve left everything else unattended, let me give you a gift!”

She spread her energy out and connected her will to the map in the earlier chamber, taking the time to trace exactly how it connected to her current location along all of the corridors she had travelled. When she did so, taking in everything at once, she realised that the leylines depicted on the map were nearly identical to the layout of the corridors of Testament’s chambers, and also that the overall layout of the interior area matched the shape of Yi City as a whole. In other words, she understood how the Leeches managed to achieve their method to contact Yi City without the Yi City Web.

Rather than having a network of nodes all across Yi City, as the Web did, they created a smaller version of everything in their spatial realm and then projected it outwards as a substitute, effectively gaining the ability to benefit from both a wide net such as the Yi City Web and a compact array with precise points like something a reasonable person might create for their own use. For once, their actions showed the slightest hint of genius.

It was fortunate for her that this was the full extent of it, for their decision to place the library right next to the barrier she wished to break meant that she could maximise its power in the Proof of People’s Will portion of her array, and the size of the indoor region of Testament was just large enough for her to be able to reach out to it and control all of their map array and substitute leylines with ease. The method used by the Leeches was certainly different to her own, and through it she knew that she could repeat what she had done not long ago and provide the world with a technique that they would find most useful, but this difference prompted her to change her approach to her gift just a little bit… no, quite a bit.

Then, instead of a single technique, tailored to an individual based on their thoughts and talents, she provided every single person with a mixture of information. Some was incredibly specific, relating either to the techniques she had previously passed down, or properties that they would greatly benefit from, and there was also plenty of more general things, like insights on how to manipulate energy.

Altogether, everything she had provided was essentially equivalent to the learning that could be done in a hundred years by another.

In the ages prior to Kong Shi Meng and his Yi City, the disorganised tribes might have only been able to collect the same quantity of insight within a thousand years. Perhaps the eastern sects might have the ability to acquire a similar quantity of knowledge within a smaller length of time, but from what she understood of their power structure, it would be granted only to the most capable and talented, as well as their sect master. Thus, by providing such a large amount of understanding to everyone at once, she effectively provided more than a hundred years of pure experience to everyone who was in range.

She used her existing mental capability to accelerate the comprehension process for the others, since it was essentially necessary for anyone other than her to go through the equivalent of the library she stood in within a few minutes at most.

The moment that all of this really set in for the people that she supported with this method, she almost found the array she had constructed collapsing as the positive feedback from the technique was so immense that it overwhelmed it completely. Of course, with brute force and some quick modifications she was able to amend such things, and thus make full use of the power surging through her method and flood her with enough force to distort the barrier before her even prior to using any techniques.

Once she did manifest her breaching technique, the obstruction of light trembled and shook with increasing frequency as the power provided to her also grew.

For the first time in quite a while, her power was able to prompt the refinement of her body and meridians, although there wasn’t much room for progression in this sense. Her every path was already in the seventh realm, approaching the peak of what could be done without drawing upon nigh endless energy from the eighth and ninth realms, but that didn’t stop the path of the Ascendant.

In that regard, she had to appreciate that she did possess the Ascendant’s Dao, even if the origin was somewhat dubious. It did not align with her preferred path, and the extent to which this was true appeared to grow with every moment that she made any advancement to her own Dao of Law, but the benefits of aligning with everything and growing past existing standards was incredibly helpful to her progression of power. Without it, she would have certainly had a rather bad time whenever she needed to deal with things that Law could not overcome in as simple a manner.

Her body had been purged of all impurity long ago, and yet her energy was able to keep burning through in perpetuity, refining every cell and particle composing the entirety of her form to some unseen, unreachable point that was nevertheless drawing ever closer to her.

In a moment, some threshold unknown to her and the world as a whole was passed, and the barrier was pierced. Her body flashed for just a moment as her oblivion essence was raised to an absurd level and repeated a phenomena of the early cultivation realms, the power surging out and constructing a thin shell of force around her. Unlike the armour that she would see in those realms, this was a layer over her skin, hair, and every part of her body that was exposed to the outside.

For the briefest of moments, she was akin to an entity of pure energy in appearance, and everything beneath that layer was so suffused with oblivion essence that there was more of it than her own body.

Even that could only last for a brief moment before it was exhausted and her body and energy returned to normal, and the effects seemed almost non-existent when compared to the benefits provided by everything else that strengthened her. Still, in her current state, a small addition was multiplied significantly, and it would only take her a little while to see the effects in full, as the obstacle of light before her broke apart and revealed a sea of stars above a pillar of stone, surrounded on the sides by a storm that was even more familiar to her than the exact stone that was laid out before her, for she stepped forward right away to look around.

When she peeked out through the boundary of the door, she witnessed that the storm appeared to expand into the library, but that much was obviously not true, for she was very familiar with the state of the library.

Thus, it was obviously a spatial gateway of some kind, and she crossed through a moment after.

“Your intrusion shall not be forgiven. You tread where you should never be, and now you will pay the price,” a voice came from the depths, and the gateway behind her attempted to close while the vague shadows of figures drew forward from the storm, the stars in the distance also moving forward alongside it.

The stars were completely monochromatic, white on the black backdrop of the storm and dark sky, and in this it was distinguishable easily from her oblivion essence.

Meanwhile, the voice was as one would expect from the Leeches at this point – mechanical, synthetic, and as blank and void of emotion as anything in the world could be while still resembling humanity. It was rather fantastic, in fact, for the entities should have been entirely human regardless of their particular savage proclivities when it came to their method of acquiring multiple anchors, and yet it spatial spirits proved to be far more human in their behaviour from her experience.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” she managed to remain calm, but her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow flared as if the power within had tripled in a single moment, signifying her true emotions, “I won’t leave a single one of you alive.”

The mouths of her opponents couldn’t be seen from her position, and the Crowded Sky made it very difficult to ascertain any detail of their appearances, but she didn’t care whether or not they were prepared for her. After everything they’ve done in the Planar Continents, and in Yi City most importantly, they should be more than ready for all of the retribution that would come their way. After all, in this moment, Wei Yi did not come as just herself, but as the representative of all those in Yi City that wished the Leeches gone, or wanted her to take their place. As the one who could revive Yi City’s glorious past, or usher in an even greater future, after it had been ravaged in small part by time and in far greater part by the endless greedy biting swarm that were the Great Leeches.

She had to put them to an end, now and forever.

Her body vanished from the spot, and she reappeared a dozen metres in the air, the Titanic Conqueror behind her and numerous red phantoms accompanying her as they all blasted out Obliteration energy in – frankly – excessive quantities.

It pierced the storm and hit the bodies of the figures in the dark, instantly revealing their forms with the vibrant crimson. Each one was as one might expect an elderly member of each of the Great Leech families to look, with the ones she was facing being a man and a woman of the same family. Their features were near identical, and their auras were as well, but it was in this respect that they differed most significantly from the second and third generation members she had fought up to this point, as well as the three pairs from the first generation.

Those Leeches had no more than fifty anchors each, and so their power was relatively subdued in comparison to the absurd emanation of force from the two she could see with clarity.

The effect was so ludicrous that it nearly nullified her oblivion essence in the form of Obliteration before it could hit them, and the rest was scattered upon the collision, resulting in little more than insignificant singes upon their skin. It recovered a moment after that, so it was truly and entirely worthless in terms of damage.

Obviously, she continued attacking with her full power while examining the cause for such an event.

‘Not even a hundred anchors would be able to provide them with so much power, not when I am at my most powerful state in quite a while. Their realm is still limited to the seventh realm, and there is a certain limit to the power of anchors, so…’

All was as usual, save for the battlefield, and the most unusual factor about the battlefield was not the storm, which could have a dozen origins that would have no relevance to her, but the distant stars. While she couldn’t immediately guess their nature from afar, when her divine sense was muddled by the power of Testament, she could guess that they were not stars in a manner that the otherworldly demons would be able to recognise. There was little reason for the Leeches to put up such things, especially not as densely as they were positioned here. As such, it was only natural to conclude that they were something else.

Judging by their behaviour up to this point, it shouldn’t be anything like an azure light, which would be the worst possible scenario. The Truth of the Universe could resolve the existence of a few azure lights by forcefully recalling them, but a hundred or thousand would be far too much with her current rate of oblivion essence recovery. It would also mean that she wouldn’t have a chance to affect even one azure light, since the Leeches would be able to kill her in an instant.

The most reasonable answer was that the distant gleaming was that of anchors, but logically speaking, there should be no more than those surrounding the few before her.

‘The previous Leeches disappeared to somewhere, but there is no reason for them to have actually vanished… Unless they were placing themselves in an area where those other than the Leeches couldn’t possibly explore. Testament fits that description best, and this room is the most difficult to access within it…’ the Ascendant thought as the attacks of her foes began to come for her.

Although there were only two first generation Leeches that were currently on the offensive, with other indistinct figures remaining in the storm, they conjured planar constructs rapidly, and their power and quantity alike was a force to be reckoned with.

For instance, the traditional point beams were expanded to vast rays the width of four metres each, capable of piercing an ordinary barrier of oblivion essence within seconds, even though they did not leave a single mark upon the stone. The safest thing for the Ascendant to do was dodge each one, but that took up quite a bit of her body’s potential movement and limited what she was able to do against them, or any of the other projectiles and attacks that she had to face. Larger spikes, akin to those used by the previous pair belonging to an uncertain Great Family, constructs of various powerful beasts, and more that she didn’t pay much attention to.

It had been quite a long while since she had been forced to engage with the battle to such an extent, and before she could get used to the rhythm of battle and do anything without disrupting it, the other figures drew forward just a little. Their eyes gleamed akin to the stars that followed them, and when their attacks began, she was forced to defend instead of evading.

However, with four sources of power instead of two, she had a greater degree of clarity in regards to its origin. She knew for a fact that it was not coming from them, and that it was still the power of the seventh realm, simply multiplied in a manner that wasn’t possible with more anchors. As such, it would not only require the use of an unusual method, but also the degree of control that couldn’t be exhibited by a force as small as the one before her, like the original pair or the second one that emerged only shortly after.

The easiest way to achieve that, the actual difficulty of it aside, was the combination of several minds onto a single task.

To confirm her theory, she needed a clear look through the storm, a thing that could somehow obstruct both her mental energy and her body, both of which were imbued with the power of her soul. Thus, she needed to invoke a great quantity of energy in a manner that couldn’t be supressed by Testament’s energy and Laws.

With all of the otherworldly gifts that she had been dragging behind her, she formed a certain arrangement of nodes and directed the planar energy of Testament towards them, manifesting an array out of them. She didn’t have the time to analyse any of the gifts yet, and so she didn’t know their exact function, but the simple fact that the world itself lacked knowledge of them, and couldn’t interact with them as it would with anything originating from it, meant that these objects contained vast potential.

By targeting that potential towards the forces of the world, Laws could be superseded with one’s own will, and the advancement that one wished to occur would do so promptly. This method permitted the awakening of a soul’s latent power, eroding the barriers to such a development and letting it happen right away, and since the Ascendant was the most knowledgeable individual when it came to the Dao of Law that might have ever lived in the Planar Continents, she had the confidence to break away a layer or two of stormy clouds and look upon that which might be witnessed with one’s own eyes. It merely required her command to happen.

There were a number of words that would do, but words had meaning, and their meaning correlated with the exact function of her instruction. Picking wisely was greatly advantageous in comparison to saying whatever she wished.

Hence, she raised her Arm and proclaimed, “Show!”

Out of all the options, it was difficult to pick just one word that would do exactly what she wished. For instance, ‘reveal’ might not necessarily show her that which she wanted to see, and could intensify the obstructing effect of the storm by revealing parts of its true nature that she had no ability to perceive right now. The Ascendant could control the power of Law to a certain extent, but before she reached the stage of Full Success – or the first true realm, if she lucked into acquiring such a thing – there was a limit to the power and control she could exhibit at a time, with the power of her Arm.

Showing was much more straightforward. Implicitly, it targeted only that which was unseen, and only that which was not currently seen about things that were visible in some portion. Hence, whatever there was that she did not yet see, she would see and would not miss anything that fit that description, which she believed to be the answer she sought.

Indeed, as the power of the otherworldly artefacts burst out and her Arm returned to little more than a frame of feeble smoke, the storm parted and unveiled a series of figures, much akin to the giant shapes before her, each one hanging with their head tilted to the side as if an invisible rope sat around their neck. It was a curious visual, to be sure, but what interested her far more was the fact that both had a series of anchors each, ranging from three to four dozen in number, as well as a clear link to a distant surface that encompassed this entire stone arena, previously hidden behind the clouds of the storm.

All of the figures, both the giant ones she was fighting now and the smaller ones in the distance, were linked to that distant surface, and it was clearly acting as a barrier for something.

From that, she had an understanding of what to do. The barrier was linked to the stability of the Leeches, and the past first generations were hanging from the air to boost the power of the current first generation, who were supplying their will to stabilise the barrier.

Breaking a single part of this loop would destroy all others, which meant that there was little chance of her maintaining the barrier while ending the lives of the current and old first generation Leeches, but she wasn’t too concerned about that. She had already understood that this would be highly difficult, if not impossible, so she was more interested in the best method to fracture this cycle in a manner that would minimize the excess damage to the barrier, which was simply not necessary, as far as she knew.

Their connection to the barrier was not to the extent that they would only live and die together, and so the only efforts that needed to be invested were those that would prevent the immediate collapse of the barrier, rather than those that would only damage it. One might not be able to find much of a difference between the two, but then the Ascendant would tell them to search for their brain first.

She needed a moment to calculate the best manner to target the weaknesses of her opponents, so she rushed straight into battle once more and left her otherworldly artefact collection behind her, flinging numerous phantoms and masses of Obliteration energy everywhere. Wei Yi could take a few hits now that she knew what she was doing, since there was no chance of the battle dragging out forever. There were a few points that contributed to this, but aside from those already stated, the fact that none of the Leeches – current or past, moving or frozen in a hanged position – were in the eighth realm or above mattered a great deal.

When comparing her own recovery of energy through the nascent rift, and the replenishment of the world to meet a certain quota of planar energy in a region, her method won out, and had the advantage of providing her with energy that she instantly had control over. In fact, this was also very significant.

Whether one was in the first realm, or the ninth, they could only control their own energy, not the energy of the world around them. Even the Ascendant could only grasp everything around her quickly, not command energy that was unbound. Thus, even if the rate of replenishment for natural planar energy doubled, then the Leeches would still require some time to take control of it, and they did not have Testament’s aid in this regard, as there was no spatial spirit to contribute to complex tasks. Instead, their spatial realm was devoted entirely to maintaining their barrier and the map of Yi City’s array.

Her oblivion essence was stronger, and it would recover more quickly than their planar energy. Their power was not infinite, and thus she could fight on for as long as she wished.