Path of the Ascendant

“My energy is roughly… one hundredth of a hundredth of this barrier’s overall power… Nonetheless, Ascendant, I shall contribute all I can to the cause! Let it not be said that the Bao District was unwilling to help in the conflict against an enemy to mankind itself!”

“I’m sure being quiet would save on energy and give you more to work with.”

The Bao Patriarch did not seem entirely pleased with this, but he had to stick to his words and so he remained quiet enough. That left little more to do at what had once been the lands of the Bao District, and so she moved on as swiftly as possible, returning to the northern part of the Western Continent again.

There were, at least in theory, quite a few things that she could do at the Bao District, especially if she didn’t care about time and the state of the other districts under her protection. She could help with building residences that couldn’t be moved or built in time, she could aid those that were most affected, or offer plenty of other support, but just as the Chu District had to work things out on its own, so would the former land of gems and jewels. It wasn’t even reasonable to assist them over the Chu District, as the Bao District could still be damaged by further attacks from Primordial Earth once she chose to confront it.

Taking care of Primordial Inferno first was a better idea, especially if she was able to defeat it outright. The element of flame supported earth, and so she could use the elemental interaction to achieve greater results than throwing oblivion essence at it alone.

She did already have Primordial Nature’s Branch of Fitness, and all the benefits that it bestowed upon her, which purportedly opposed the element of earth, but this was not enough for her victory. With Primordial Nature, she won due to its particular reliance on minions, as well as the attachment to the earth, so by sabotaging their foundation it was easy enough to ruin much of Primordial Nature’s power. For Primordial Earth, trying the reverse would lead to the same outcome, except in its favour.

The grey dust would devour the vitality of her wood-type energy, and then she would simply throw away her oblivion essence in a very inefficient manner.

‘Somehow, it seems that acting upon the elements that directly support one another is easier than dealing with opposing ones. I don’t think that’s how it is meant to work, but it should be easier once I get rid of this kind of entity. Other things should have less attunement to individual elements and properties of the world, so my various Dao will be more effective.’

The Dao of Law, and other rare Dao, retained their effectiveness, but the trouble was that Law would have less of a direct effect upon her foes unless she came up with something ingenious or paid a great price, some of which were difficult to handle during an intense battle like those she expected.

As always, everything she was considering did nothing at all to prevent her from moving to her original destination, the northern deserts, and she arrived there only minutes after her departure thanks to stopping by in the fortress of Paragon to make sure that everyone there was alright, and didn’t attempt to rush out at a wrong time. The people of the Bao District didn’t get the chance to do so, but she knew thanks to her divine sense that there were many who were considering doing something stupid like that. It wouldn’t help them or her whatsoever, but they clearly didn’t realise that.

“Alright, attempt two… Any more Primordial Deities emerging within the next hour?” she addressed Kong Shi Meng, who appeared by her side as usual.

“You will have twenty-two hours and nine minutes, give or take four minutes.”

“That’s very precise… and I think I understand how you calculated that, so I should only need to confirm it once more with you, though there will only be three or four more emergences in total…” Wei Yi muttered, unsure of how Primordial Yin and Primordial Yang would appear and how they would differ, “I think I may attempt to use your energy here as well, but only if there is a clear opportunity to get something similar to Primordial Nature’s fight. I don’t even know if Primordial Inferno has some kind of shell I can breach, nor whether I will manage it with what you can give me, but you should pay attention to anything I do or say.”

“For the sake of the Planar Continents, I have been doing so already, but I shall raise my focus for this battle.”

She didn’t expect that to be immediately followed by the clear sense of attention upon her, akin to a regular divine sense of a Patriarch except a thousand times more powerful. It felt sufficient to crush her with ease so long as force was properly exerted, and it was extremely fortunate that this was not the case. If nothing else, it proved that he clearly possessed a great deal of power in all ways, even now.

It was a little unusual in nature, however, whether she compared it to the typical spiritual perception of a native or an otherworldly demon, but given that his dantian and the presumed gate within were also unusual, that much was almost expected.

He vanished after that, presumably moving to a place where he wouldn’t interrupt her, and she wouldn’t interrupt him, so she quickly moved into the sands and ignored some of the tribes that were moving about not far from here. A number of them were fleeing from the Primordial Deity, others were trying to capitalise on the situation in some way, and others were doing something she couldn’t quite understand at a glance – though it was unlikely to be noteworthy when most were in the fifth realm and below, making it impossible for them to damage her whatsoever.

Rather than any human beings in the sands, what she paid attention to was the growing heat, and not just the source but also the exact nature of it.

Part of handling her threat was understanding it, and if the Dao of Primordial Inferno was somehow exploitable, then it would bring her that little bit closer to the possibility of complete victory. It was what she would prefer to get today, but the observations she had been able to make regarding the flames so far did not suggest this advantage. The heat was akin to what one might experience if they stepped into a burning building and were suffocated by the smoke, a blaze of immense proportions, and while grey dust may help calm the flame, she would need vast quantities to truly smother the flame forever.

Simply throwing grey dust into the equation wouldn’t help, and letting them consume wood wouldn’t do much more than fan the flames and cause them to grow, far out of any semblance of control that she might imagine having over it for now.

It did not take long for her to see the source of those boundless flames.

As all the others, Primordial Inferno stood tall in comparison to any human being Wei Yi had met. Its form was composed of surging flames, beginning with a bright red on some outside portions and complete with white and blue in the densest, hottest parts of its body. Strictly speaking, the colours of the flame couldn’t correlate with their actual temperature, as the Ascendant could withstand such things easily enough but was already sweating from the Primordial Deity’s heat from quite a long distance away.

She was glad that she had taken a new strand of hair to tie her crimson locks into her usual ponytail, for any strand that touched her body would have stuck to it in moments.

Unlike Primordial Nature and Primordial Earth, who clearly had masculine appearances, Primordial Inferno was the first Primordial Deity she was meeting in person that was more feminine. Long tongues of flame, white and blue, formed long hair that rose up as if in water. On a lithe body of fluctuating flames, two portions of flame rested on the chest and two more at the hips, forming breasts and buttocks that changed size with every movement of the fire.

The feet of this entity were about as wild as the rest of it, but the hands were dense and concentrated, resembling one of the suns the Ascendant had previously conjured, looking solid enough to be able to grab and lift anything that they didn’t instantly scorch.

Had this been an entity with less absurd animosity towards humanity and the world as a whole, Wei Yi might have been tempted to look at her as more than just a clump of flame, though its face ruined any thoughts to doing such a thing. Tongues of flames formed the traditional spiked teeth, the eyes were so hot that they crossed the boundary of light and turned pitch-black – otherworldly demons had once mentioned something about blackbody radiation, but they didn’t understand it and so Wei Yi couldn’t learn much either – and if one was to read some expression from that facsimile of a face, it would not be a pleasant one no matter how much they may try.

The Ascendant was a great distance away from this Primordial Deity, and yet a random movement of her fingers seemed to attract its attention.

“Ah, a mortal thing!”

‘For fuck’s sake, can you… ugh,’ the Ascendant couldn’t stop herself from cursing at that thing for its language, making her curious whether this was a very odd instance of some misunderstanding in their language, since they could easily mean any number of other things if they had some odd accent that didn’t show in other words and phrases.

“Come to me! Let me burn you! Come!”

The tone of the thing, aside from sounding like a fireplace filled to the brim with crackling logs, had the clear cadence of a young child, perhaps a teenager, demanding to play with her favourite toy, and all the innocence that came with it. Of course, she wouldn’t have a change of heart because of it.

One thing that could be confirmed for certain in this world was that the Primordial Deities, whether they were consciously evil or simply made in a way that put them at odds with humanity, were incompatible with the continued development of the world and Yi City. They needed to be stopped, or else their power might well grow alongside that of the world, and in the ninth realm, they might become even more insane than they currently were. At that point, if there was another force breaking into the ninth realm before the Ascendant, she might have no chance of victory at all.

As such, she prepared her energy, imbuing the oblivion essence with the element of water to grant it some additional effectiveness, even if it would only be minimal.

However, before she could do a thing, the Primordial Deity suddenly changed its posture and expression, glaring at her while its whole body fluctuated in shape and colour, the flames shifting with each moment.

“You mortal bitch! I shall destroy you!”

No comments regarding the flame’s volatility or similarity to some women that Wei Yi had come across before had the chance to cross her mind before Primordial Inferno surged forward, her hand raised yet falling rapidly upon her, a mass of flame formed before its hand. This was shocking when compared to some of the slower foes the Ascendant had come across up to this point, but at the very least she was prepared for every aspect of this entity that it had demonstrated so far.

She used her oblivion essence to cover herself and protect herself from the heat, applied her physique energy to her body to accelerate her movement, and then dashed aside to avoid the hit entirely.

The mass of flame landed on the sands and turned them to glass at the same time as scattering it all over the place. Drops of molten glass showered the ground for miles, the heat contained within causing the glass to spread across the sands, turning the desert from a sandy brown to a shining white. It was as if the Glass Wastes came south.

“Ah, what a precious mortal thing! I shall make sure you are preserved in these glass wastes!”

‘I am starting to be very disappointed at the fact that the Primordial Deities have the ability to speak…’ the Ascendant quickly formed a sphere of Obliteration energy and cast it into the air, so as to have a beam fall upon the Primordial Deity in a few moments, and to test its effectiveness.

It was easy to describe her Obliteration energy as being a blaze of blackened crimson, or crimson blackness, and if the presumed Branch of Blaze mastered by Primordial Inferno applied to such vague resemblances as these, it would be significantly weakened against this particular threat. Using water-type energy was more effective when it came to resisting the heat of the Primordial Deity, so it should be more effective at harming it as well. If not, then she would gladly employ her favourite methods in order to defeat it.

The energy fell upon the feminine-shaped flames and briefly wreathed the entity in the crimson blackness, but it faded only moments after, leaving it in yet another shape and charging at her.

A wave of flame sprouted from the half-glass desert, burning with enough heat to lightly char Wei Yi’s skin when it got too close. She was forced to jump back, closer to the territory of Primordial Inferno, and the ancient entity did not stop with just one attack. A dozen waves and surges of heat followed, one only a second after another, very effectively preventing her retreat unless she chose to use her Law-based movement method.

Unfortunately, that required a little bit of time to calculate her destination, and it was just an instant longer than she managed to obtain despite her best attempts. To get any more, she would need to let herself be pushed back into the Primordial Deity’s territory, but that was too dangerous.

Just by getting nearer to the edge of those lands, the Ascendant could tell that she wouldn’t like being there at all. The lands was burnt or turned to glass, flames sprouted from every crevice and crack in the ground, and numerous entities made of flame travelled the horrendous landscape and seemed to do very little. Nonetheless, each one was equivalent to the sixth or seventh realm in power, horrendously dangerous to the outside world if they ever decided to head outside the boundaries of Primordial Inferno’s chosen territory. Fortunately, they were slightly less dangerous than the Primordial Deity that conjured them, so a liberal application of water would be enough.

“Yes, a mortal thing within my lands!” the ancient entity giggled like a child, “Please, put yourself into a glass cage for me, so that I may admire you!”

‘Nope. This one should not have the right to speak at all,’ Wei Yi hesitated on the edge.

On one side, there was Primordial Inferno, and on the other was its land. Neither were an ideal place to be, but she didn’t even get to make a decision when the ground shook in front of her – and behind Primordial Inferno – and the sands were hewn asunder by an enormous thing emerging from the ground.

It was absurdly large, over a hundred metres in width, and it was clearly a worm that the Ascendant had gotten to see in action before. The Great Worm.

‘What had they said back then… What was, will be? What will be, was?’

She couldn’t understand the meaning of such a statement, since it was extremely odd in most interpretations, but it was very clear that in the eyes of those that worshipped it, the Great Worm was equivalent to a god. Perhaps, one could say that it was a primordial deity of a kind, but even if it was not, then Primordial Inferno appeared to have a similar level of power to that thing from the aura both of them released. It was very possible for the two of them to truly combat one another on even ground.

That didn’t answer where the Great Worm had come from, nor why it had that level of power when it existed long before the Primordial Deities had emerged from wherever they typically stayed, but if it was usable, she had to accept it, just as the Dao of the Primordial Deities she currently used.

“I think they said-”

“Praise the Great Worm!”

‘Yeah, that was- wait, the fuck?’

“So that its foe perishes, we must do our part!” the chorus of Great Worm worshippers sounded from afar, to the extent that her divine sense could not perceive them, yet her ears could.

It was nearly impossible for her to verify whether their chanting had any particular effect, unlike the last time that she had witnessed it, for they were located far away, in a place that she couldn’t see from her current position, but the Great Worm most certainly did rush in the direction of Primordial Inferno, racing at an unimaginable speed for an entity that large.

“That twisted prison is ruining the fun! Mortal thing, come back~! Don’t stray too far from me!”

The changes in Primordial Inferno’s mood were too difficult to track, and Wei Yi didn’t even try to do so as she fled into its territory, throwing out her oblivion essence without hesitation to blow away any of the weaker minions used by the Primordial Deity.

Water-type oblivion essence splashed all over the place as she disposed of the weaker enemies, and although Primordial Inferno chased after her, it was more the Great Worm that she was now concerned about. It travelled towards them, and with its open mouth – the result of a hundred different mouth parts opening to permit her to peer into the inside of it for just a moment – she could see that the inside of the Great Worm was not quite as one might imagine from a simple ancient worm. Inside of it, there was a powerful aura of decay, and it eroded itself and the fabric of the world itself.

She couldn’t be sure if this was comparable to whatever power Entropy would have, for she had not yet caught sight of it, but she could say with confidence that it was as dangerous as a Primordial Deity for sure, and that it would be even more dangerous if she got caught within its enormous jaws. Her oblivion essence might not be enough to withstand the erosion.

As such, she needed to get far enough away from that thing before it had the chance to devour her, but not so far so that Primordial Inferno wouldn’t be caught.

‘Incidentally, Inferno doesn’t call it a mortal thing, so that’s knew, at least. Twisted prison, though… another thing that doesn’t quite make sense yet, but will probably click into place when whatever it seals breaks free,’ she thought, using her divine sense to check on the Worm’s approach.

Even when she used her Law-based movement method, her every step was overshadowed by the distance travelled by the Great Worm, and so she could barely make it a tenth of the way into the territory of Primordial Inferno before it was nearly right above her, crashing into the ground only a moment after. The sheer force of its body moving through the air was enough to knock her off her feet, throwing her into a distant charred hill.

Fortunately, it did land upon Primordial Inferno, seeming to swallow it without any issue as it burrowed into the ground, breaking the terrain on its path as it travelled forth, passing under Wei Yi.

“Praise the Great Worm!”

‘I’d be tempted to praise it too, if it succeeded, but there is no explosion of energy, nor the collapse of the entities summoned by the Primordial Deity. Given the way that I had defeated Primordial Nature, it might be that the entities remaining around is completely normal, but there is no way that it wouldn’t be obvious that something actually changed upon its demise,’ the Ascendant rose and looked around with every sense that she had available to her, still unable to locate the Perpetuals of the Worm, but finding the fire-type energy of Primordial Inferno’s territory moving more actively than before.

Although it was absurdly difficult to track down any rhyme or reason to it, the moment that there was a level of energy build-up equivalent to one of the waves of flame used by Primordial Inferno, she shifted her position to a prepared coordinate.

The fact that the sand that had just been beneath her feet turned to naught – literally exploding into nothing from an extreme level of concentrated heat – at the same time made her very confident that the cultivator’s intuition continued to exist and aid her in the best of ways. She also appreciated that the ancient entity she was opposing didn’t have the brains to trick her even a little better, instead just appearing not far from her once the attack failed to land.

“Listen, mortal thing. Listen,” Primordial Inferno said, suddenly, in an aged, wizened tone.

‘…?’

She chose not to obey its instructions this time, either, for it would be better to miss some detail of potential importance than to be destroyed by an entity far more powerful than her in an obvious trap.

That turned out to be an excellent choice, for the same attack as before occurred upon her position, seemingly turning the glassy sand into a pure explosive force that struck Wei Yi even though she had already moved her position to the opposite side of Primordial Inferno. Furthermore, a series of flaming waves and surges came towards her even with her rapid movement, forcing her to meet the attacks with her own energy if she wished to survive them.

Water-type energy collided with raw flames, and all the while the minions of the Primordial Deity were torn asunder as if they were not important to the ancient entity at all. Most likely, this was also due to the capricious nature of the flames, as well as the fact that all of them were completely replaceable and lacking in specific identity. Any of the minions she or the Great Worm had taken out were rapidly shifting in form, and their power could also fluctuate, meaning that when she had taken on those in the sixth realm of power, she could have beaten them more easily simply by waiting for their flame to flicker and their power to drop.

Still, her oblivion essence was still sufficient, and she didn’t need to take on the threat itself when the Great Worm was clearly still in the area, followed by the monotonous chants of the Perpetuals of the Worm.

Only a brief while after the chase began, the ancient worm was already heading back towards them, rushing through the sands beneath and bursting out of the ground in another attempt to swallow Primordial Inferno. Last time, Wei Yi had done her best to flee the entity and avoid being swallowed, but this time she chose to stop and produce the largest mass of ice that she could, combining her Conqueror’s Eye physiques with her general oblivion essence to manifest the coldest mass that she was even capable of creating with her power.

To add to that even more, she naturally included every drop of energy she could borrow from the Yi City Web while at this distance, suffusing everything she produced with the world’s natural energy condensed into an enormous network beneath the ground. It did not match the exact element of her attack, nor was it easily transformed like her oblivion essence was, but it still helped.

She threw it out at the same time that the Great Worm surfaced.

Thus, when the eroding power of the Great Worm bit down upon Primordial Inferno, the ice also struck, bursting from its bite and shattering within the worm’s jaws. Much of it fell upon the flames of Primordial Inferno, at least from what she could see before the Great Worm’s mouth snapped shut.

Her divine sense did attempt to breach its dense flesh, and might have succeeded if not for the eroding power within completely devouring any hint of her divine sense and thus preventing any of her unique attributes from helping her. Fortunately for her, she did not need to see anything when the one she relied upon right now was Kong Shi Meng, a man in the ninth realm with divine sense that had a far more obvious power than her own, though it was impossible to compare the two when she had not had the chance to see its power first-hand. Either way, he had been able to perceive things that she could not, from great distance, so all she needed was for him to know the right time to act.

A white light burst out of the Great Worm’s body, throwing it out and back into the ground, where it burrowed naturally, as if it was intending for this very thing. The light expanded quickly, consuming more and more of the area, nearly swallowing up or throwing away the Ascendant – depending on the way it functioned – if not for her evading via her fourth realm movement method.

It grew to consume the entire territory of Primordial Inferno before ceasing growth, and it was obviously identifiable as one of the barriers manifested by Kong Shi Meng.

As usual, he was able to employ the power of the world in a manner that needed to be seen to be believed in a world where such a thing was nigh impossible, and it may have been a topic for concern in any other circumstance. Right now, however, the sealing of Primordial Inferno was a far greater matter than that, and Wei Yi had to appreciate the fact that it happened right then, for the Great Worm did seem interested in devouring her as well. Most likely, it was keen to eat anything and everything it saw.

Whatever the case, Wei Yi was alive for another day, and Yi City was temporarily free of one threat.