Path of the Ascendant

The white light was parted and the Ascendant stepped within, the white light attempting to seal itself and failing to do so. Gaps were formed within the dome, through which some flaming entities manifested by Primordial Inferno’s influence attempted to escape with varying results. Fortunately, the forces of Yi City had been called to keep this place protected, just like all the others, and the seventh realm foes were difficult but not impossible to slay.

The dragons also came to assist the outside battles soon, lending their slowly growing power to the world, but nothing they did mattered anywhere near as much as what occurred within the dome.

Endless flames of a blazing entity scorched the outer portions of the dome’s interior, forcing the Ascendant to get closer, but it was only another reason for her to rush straight in and attempt that which she had conceptualised moments prior. She tended to alter and subvert Law the majority of the time, so she needed to modify her usual methods a little, but by the time the clash was inevitable, she had come up with not just the principle, but also a suitable name for this new invention, which might well fill out her arsenal of Law-based techniques.

One technique had been named Omission of Law, so this one naturally became Enforcement of Law, being marked by the sudden tightening of chains around the entirety of the dome. It cost her half of the energy within the Arm, but she considered it to be worth every drop.

Primordial Inferno had no chance to make some random proclamation, whether mad or reasoned, before its entire body was surrounded by invisible yet obvious chains of Law, encasing it and dimming the flames. They burnt without care for Law or order, yet they were not completely immune to such principles, for they were products of the world, just like any other living thing. Primordial Deities as a whole were not otherworldly entities that could ignore the restrictions of the Planar Continents.

Thus, when one brazenly attempted to bypass such Laws, the world seemed happy to press the chains down upon them and put them in their place.

Although the figure made of flames began at the eighth realm, at quite a high stage, its aura now dropped visibly alongside its size. Primordial Inferno’s flames could no longer reach as far, the fluctuating tongues of flame being forced to adhere to whatever conceptual frame existed within their depths. A titan that was as large as ten men was forced to be no taller than seven.

“Mortal thing, what are you- what have you done! The mortal thing is touching me! So… so disgusting!” as always, the words of Primordial Inferno could be an excellent mood killer at the best of times, and extremely effective distractions in others, but the Ascendant did not allow herself to listen.

Instead, she sought to deprive as much of the entity’s energy as quickly as possible, by wasting it on everything that regular flame would generally spread to. Wooden branches, twigs, leaves and so on, all would force the flames to grow and devour, but in doing so, they would expend a certain quantity of oxygen in doing so. Furthermore, even if she constrained this blaze to the typical Law of flame, it was still a planar entity first and foremost, so anything that prompted it to spread out and waste its energy would be effective.

With a whim, she could produce a thousand branches and roots, and it would expend a whim’s worth of Primordial Inferno’s power, but it might well tip things in her favour.

“Do you think you can swallow the flames?”

“No, I want to put them out!” Wei Yi replied to that one, though that did make her reconsider whether it would be a good idea to attempt something like that. In theory, if she could pull it off with Primordial Energy and Primordial Nature, she would have a chance with Primordial Inferno, but it was difficult to rely on such a thing when she still had a few other things to attempt with far more surety.

“Would you not swallow the rich nectar of a lover?”

‘Not a relevant question, you glorified candle flame,’ the Ascendant returned her focus to the battle, where it would be far better utilised, and swapped the branches to hollow, dry ones.

Flames gained energy from the material they consumed, and thus the branches she provided had to feed the less than they expended in order for the flames to be efficient. By combining the Wood Dao with the incomplete grey dust of Primordial Earth, she produced a dry substance that the flames would eat up readily, but would not have much to offer it. Ideally, it would starve the flame in much the way that the dust starved Primordial Nature’ power.

At the same time, she stepped back and let the Primordial Deity distract itself while working upon the Dao of Law, trying to figure out a deeper way to strike at the weakened Primordial Inferno. She either needed an attack that was powerful enough to bring it down – when combined with Xu Shi Meng’s aid – or something to weaken it further to the seventh realm, where she could fight with it easily.

‘Of course, randomly inventing things to throw in the direction of the Primordial Deity is not generally easy, for me or for others. Even Kong Shi Meng could only bring out so much thanks to his Truth of the Universe, which I mostly refuse to use for the development of techniques themselves,’ Wei Yi thought, quickly executing Omit Attack to strike at Primordial Inferno when it tried to get away from her chains, ‘I have Imposition of Law, but that is not sufficient to overwhelm the power of Primordial Inferno just yet. The heavens do not understand Law either, so I cannot hope for miraculous assistance, certainly not the type I would like…’

She considered another approach, while a direct binding of Law was not effective. As she was already able to omit herself from an attack that was meant to be performed by her, she was curious whether it would be possible to overwrite certain other aspects of her attacks and eventually produce something that would provide her with enough power to slash through Primordial Inferno’s flames into something more core to it, like the innards of Primordial Nature that she had absorbed.

‘I have the energy, I can recover it, so if I skip the movement…’

After a moment, she saw an opportunity and shifted her position forward, enduring the absurd heat of the flames as she placed both hands upon Moon Splitter’s grip, holding it before her as if she was about to perform an ordinary downward slash.

It took a moment for a vast swath of her energy to vanish, and for a strange shimmer in the air to appear. Whether or not Primordial Inferno wished to comment this time, it didn’t get the chance as a dozen cuts were made in an instant, without a single one being the Ascendant’s own. She kept her weapon steady, lowering it as soon afterward as she could, though it didn’t help much.

Every slash dug into the flames, forcing some apart and pulling others together, mostly heating up the shards of her blade more so than damaging the enemy. If this had been at no additional cost beside that, it might well have been a fine experiment, but the sudden movements that she had not made were still transferred upon her arms, material and energy-based alike. Her arms were able to handle one attack, or as many attacks as she wished within a reasonable timespan, but when twelve powerful attacks were performed in the time that she would generally not be able to complete one, that did hurt quite a bit.

Both arms were damaged to a certain extent, the Arm wasting a whole bunch of its energy while the right one suffered a number of broken bones and torn musculature.

‘I haven’t omitted enough, have I? Fuck… I would say it’s been a while, but Primordial Physique had injured me better than this,’ she thought, forcing her body to recover from the injuries in seconds. She switched her strategy after that, backing up and refocusing on the previous usage of Law and the Wood Dao. With an even more extreme application of grey dust, she made it so that each root and branch ended up as only lengths of dry dust and nothing more.

That let it burn regardless, but it was cheapest on her oblivion essence supply.

“The flames shall touch you… gently, and kindly. That is how flame must be, and if you do not understand, then you shall be burned. Do you understand, Wei Yi?”

“?” the Ascendant’s thoughts and sound of surprise couldn’t be expressed as anything beyond a question mark – the Planar Continental equivalent, of course. From any other person, the words may have been entirely ordinary, perhaps a little odd at most, but the thing before her was not a person, but a Primordial Deity. It was something that should have lacked all knowledge of her name.

Furthermore, the previous voices, produced through maddened roaring flame, were completely different from this oddly human tone.

“What are you?”

 “It will all burn, so jump into the inferno!” the old flames returned immediately, the oddly intelligent voice vanishing in an instant, forcing the Ascendant to retreat and try and put things together within her head.

To say that it might be difficult was an understatement of an era, for the advice of the Primordial Deity was rather inconsistent with its own nature, and also proved that there was something more to consider about them if this voice was indeed something that they produced – a fact that the Ascendant had wished to never encounter in the process of fighting the Primordial Deities, since it would generate far too much complexity for her to handle right now.

As such, she chose to switch to the words themselves, and tried to comprehend some actual meaning to them. The part about flames being gentle was, at first, incomprehensible.

However, a second thought led to her having a sudden unexpected revelation of a most welcome kind.

‘Flames are often called violent and destructive – and they are – but the physical force of flame is minor. One could pass through it with no effort at all if they are not burned, but physical force is also unable to have much effect upon them. Rather, it will be the air distorting the heated flames for a moment, and perhaps breaking them sufficiently to put them out…’

In the corner of her vision, she could see the Truth of the Universe displaying her Fire Dao rising by a stage. The increase was not earned, as she had understood a single principle and the heavens filled in the rest without her knowledge, but since it would be of use, she didn’t reject the appearance of the vision state. Calm, soothing flames became visible in all things, living and not, shrinking until each one was so small that she needed her divine sense to peer into the nature of a single one. Nevertheless, when looking at the world from this perspective, she understood a great deal more than she had before, allowing her to take one step further.

This step was both mental and physical, for she advanced towards the Primordial Deity and disregarded the growing heat washing over her tanned skin.

‘A blaze is mighty, yet it is nothing without the source, without the fuel that it consumes. Rain can put out the heat and render the fuel unusable, sand can deprive it of air, an axe can separate it from the rest of the area and keep a large house safe, and even the driest wood will stop burning when one of the other elements prevents the flame’s growth,’ she looked upon Primordial Inferno and saw it looking back at her, far less intelligence within its eyes.

“A mortal thing as young as yourself should-”

“A flame does not burn without fuel.”

Instantly, the figure of Primordial Inferno shrunk further, drooping to the ground and distorting the previous humanoid form. It tried to retain parts of its shape, but that merely led to it resembling a monster far more so than if it had accepted the change.

The entity glared at her, or perhaps didn’t care for her at all. Often, it was rather hard to tell.

What it did do was jump at her, as if to embrace and devour her with flames, whether to get rid of her or to empower itself. As always, the Primordial Deity moved quickly and without hesitation, meaning that evasion even with Omit Movement would prove to be rather challenging. Instead, Wei Yi put her left hand forward, her palm facing the incoming blaze.

“Heat is spread through the air. Then, the air around me shall be still.”

A horrible blaze enveloped her, and yet she stood still, untouched and unburnt. Around her, a field no larger than a single particle of air was forcefully kept still with the combination of the Dao of Law and Flame Dao, but it was enough.

Oddly enough, some heat did still reach her, though it appeared to be far less than what she would have been enduring otherwise. From talks with otherworldly demons, she surmised this to be heat spread via radiation, something found most commonly outside their planet, and the manner by which heat reached them from their sun. This was something she hadn’t accounted for, but it was only a little dangerous right now.

She could endure for quite a while, if necessary.

“This dome is a sealed space. Flames had been burning for days, and all the oxygen ought to have been expended. You have no right to burn here.”

The flames of Primordial Inferno dulled and sputtered, though not enough to make a major difference to its stage. It was forced to cover even less of the Ascendant’s figure, leaving her hair free of flame, not that the vibrant crimson made it obvious. From afar, one might even imagine that her hair was the only thing to truly burn.

“How do you do this, mortal thing? Why do you put out my warmth? Am I so terrible to you?”

“Yes, you are. You are a killer with no care for your actions. You destroy everything and turn it to flame, regardless of its purpose and nature. Just like Primordial Corruption, you twist the world itself.”

“The flame is part of it. Everything burns, and I make it burn. You cannot say that such an existence is wrong, no matter how it affects you-”

“I can say plenty of things, Primordial Inferno. Most importantly, the fact that you do not follow the Law of the Planar Continents means one thing above all else – you, just like Primordial Invader, are not native elements of this world,” the Ascendant said, her words being almost as surprising to herself as they would be to anyone else that heard them, “Thus, whether I am to act in favour of humanity, or the world itself, I have the right.”

“You-”

“Whether as Ascendant or Arbiter, I can freely pronounce you an enemy to us and the world.”

At that moment, she released the vast killing will that had built up within her body and let it run rampant in the dome that still covered this area. The white light was still present in sufficient quantities and density to prevent the escape of smoke and silver, but it was obviously stressed the very instant that her power struck the walls. That allowed it to bounce off and strike its main target.

The smoke swallowed the flames of Primordial Inferno, forcing it down to the point that it barely reached above her waist. Beneath, silver rose and cut off the blaze from the ground that it had used as fuel, leading to the overall size of the entity compressing until it was half of its original size.

When it shrunk just a millimetre below that, there was a change. One of the many tongues of flame that remained, composing the overall form of the Primordial Deity, suddenly grew slower and denser, changing from whatever plasma a fire was to a strange fluid mass that hovered in the air. It was very prominent among the raging inferno due to its odd calm, and the Ascendant didn’t hesitate to reach out to this thing with her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, grasping the strange energy with two plans in mind and no clue which would work out.

With the power of the Primordial Deities, one might attempt to destroy it entirely, wiping them out of existence, or they could attempt something that only the Ascendant has performed so far.

Upon touching the soft matter, she felt the power in her Arm burning away rapidly as it was forced to confront power that surpassed her own, but she endured and willed the energy of Primordial Inferno to travel into her body, ignoring the manner in which it continued to burn along the way, scorching everything and anything that it touched, destroying veins, meridians and muscle with no effort at all, for she had more difficulty maintaining her body temperature than the heat of the air.

Ultimately, it would be decided by the moment that it came into contact with her dantian, and she saw the result a second later. It was a terrifying pause, even when she believed that she might be able to purge the energy in the event of failure.

A moment of contact settled its fate. Her primordial dantian snapped up the energy of Primordial Inferno readily, and the energy surged in just as happily, flooding in and changing to her oblivion essence as if that was always what it was meant to be. In one absolutely wondrous step, she felt her cultivation leap into the fifth stage of the seventh realm, two more halos appearing around her dantian, and completing the nine that most would ever be able to dream of obtaining even in the most perfect of circumstances.

Arcs of crimson joined the constantly spinning halos, leading to constant arcs between the centre and the outside.

Her physique energy, bloodline power and killing will both advanced by a stage, with the killing will was brought to the peak of the Yin-Yang Conduit realm, which would have been concerning had it not followed with the last step she would theoretically require in order to breach the sixth stage of the Oblivion Halo realm and thus achieve a far greater level of power than she currently had.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite at the level of surpassing that which she needed, as she was currently managing to defeat the Primordial Deities mostly by a combination of luck, coincidence and good fortune – terms that she knew were typically synonymous.

With her advancement, the power that Primordial Inferno still had was swallowed by her, and a second Primordial Deity became no more.

What little was wasted – by her standard, which, by the standard of the world, was an extremely large amount – burst out of the remnants of the ancient entity, torching the sands and turning what little remained of the desert into smooth, completely transparent glass. It spread to the edges of the dome, and when that vanished due to the death of Primordial Inferno, the heat spread further outwards, coating the wide desert in an ever-thinning layer of glass, stopping many miles away.

The minions of Primordial Inferno had remained alive up until now, unlike the monstrosities created by Primordial Nature, so Wei Yi naturally took a good look at what happened to them upon the death of their creator.

From the moment that it had begun to suffer, so did its minions, and when it had been absorbed in one figurative gulp, the flames of the minions had sputtered and they began to stumble and fall, allowing anyone with the ability to damage them to do so freely and easily. Obviously, the dragons had a very easy time, their natural affinity to flame allowing them to endure the heat and take out a great number of monstrosities with ease. Others struggled a little more and needed to invest a good length of time into it, but they didn’t need to struggle for long.

As soon as the last spark of Primordial Inferno ended, so did the things it created, turning to ash or hot air that soon left the battlefield silent.

There was no downpour of rain this time, and a few threads of the Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival had endured upon her body, allowing them to reform the moment that the heat cooled. This didn’t stop a few of the distant dragons from ogling her, as usual, nor Xu Shi Meng from stepping in when her clothing had fully recovered.

“It took a day, but you have defeated another Primordial Deity… Is it also dead?”

“Of course it is. Now, I have the full power of two Primordial Deities,” the Ascendant said, raising her right hand and making the air turn into a heated flame, compressing into a sphere that burned for a moment before vanishing, according to her will, “Did you not catch it this time, either?”

“I had distanced myself to prevent distraction or any other problems. I would have still been able to assist you with an empowered attack, but you appeared not to require it.”

“Luckily enough.”

“Indeed,” Xu Shi Meng said, his expression remaining about as still as usual, turning towards the approaching draconic and human forces, “I will speak with you at a later time, but I would personally recommend handling Primordial Ocean and Primordial Cosmos before most of the other Primordial Deities.”

“Why those two?”

“Your people can tell you, and I would rather let you work on your own. Impeding your growth by imposing myself upon you would not be helpful to you, or to myself.”

He disappeared before she had the chance to reply, leaving her to face the incoming dragons and Patriarchs on her own, though it wasn’t much of a problem. She had dealt with more confusing situations and far more difficult ones – apparently, she had just spent a day managing a far more challenging one – but it was rather annoying to be unable to converse with a man that clearly knew more than he was letting on, while also being rather ignorant in regards to other elements.

Understanding which one was which would be of great aid to her, but this was not so easy to achieve.

“Wei Yi, I can feel myself getting stronger!” Long Hua exclaimed, the other dragons nodding alongside her, “There might be a chance that more of us emerge, hopefully more quickly than those… qilins. I certainly hope so.”

“Aren’t you generally more popular than the qilins?”

“It depends on what the people like. If they’re fond of massive dicks, then both of us have those,” the boisterous dragon replied.

“Both sides would like to believe that the other is inferior, but that is rarely the case,” Li He added, ignoring the displeased glance from Long Hua as she continued, “If that isn’t the only thing being looked at, then the question is whether a person prefers male or female bodies. That is usually more of a draw, as unfortunate as that is for us.”

“Most of the dragons and qilins prefer women, perhaps out of some reproductive instincts,” Long Tao added, more quietly than both of her peers, “The same explanation doesn’t apply to human women, though, who have varying preferences…”

“Right. Enough about that,” Wei Yi was aware that she had allowed the conversation to steer in the wrong direction, but her curiosity needed to be sated and something needed to done to calm her killing will after she had unleashed it, “I need to ask you and the others about Primordial Ocean and Primordial Cosmos, since I might have missed something about those two entities while I had been fighting Primordial Inferno.”

“You did miss something,” Luo Na said, having gotten close enough a while ago, but unwilling to contribute to the discussion of reproductive instincts, “The Shi District has reached out to the people of the Ju District, and the rest of us by extension, as they were under attack by Primordial Ocean and were not able to handle it. Meanwhile, Primordial Cosmos… Ning Bao Su, would you?”

“Although you should have been able to handle that on your own, considering how much you seem to know, I shall proceed,” the Ning Patriarch stepped up, nodding to greet Wei Yi, “I had kept in touch with my people at the Ning District, and word of a strange entity began to appear not long after you entered the barrier surrounding Primordial Inferno. At first, they had presumed that it had been something you created, for it was shrouded in stars and nebulae that were similar to your own… oblivion essence, I believe you call it. However, those with more understanding recalled that your energy has a crimson tone, whereas that celestial entity was more monochrome.”

“Yes, it is oblivion essence, named after the oblivion halos,” the Ascendant said, turning away.

Physically, even her sight couldn’t peer far enough to see the lands of the Ning District or the Shi District from her current position in the sands – she did not have the power to see through the many hills of dunes and the like, either – but it did not stop her divine sense from focusing on those places.

The Shi District was outside of her territory, so she could only see the eastern portion of the district, but the lands near the Ning District were nearly fully covered by her divine sense. Thus, she had little difficulty in perceiving every possible location where Primordial Cosmos was supposed to be. The trouble was that she failed to see even the slightest glimpse of it, no remnants of starry trails or whatever else Primordial Cosmos might leave behind.

“I can’t find a single thing. Dragons, qilins, you head over to support the Shi District and the area by the Ning District,” she instructed upon turning back, “I’ll rest and train in the meanwhile, and if Primordial Cosmos is found first, I’ll take it on. Otherwise, I shall go to the Shi District and ensure that it does not fall.”

With that, it was settled, and everyone got to work.