Path of the Ascendant

It is said that the heavens have their favourites. They favour some, gifting riches, knowledge and talent, and curse others, tearing those very things away from them, again, again and again.

Often, it is said that the heavens do this to maintain equilibrium – to maintain balance between the strong and the weak, the righteous and demonic, the virtuous and the sinful, the brilliant and the dull. As one side falls, the other falls with it.

Such a belief could not be proven any more easily than with the story of the Master of Yi City. Little is remembered of him. His face is unknown. The clothes he wore are a mystery. Even his identity, his name and his gender are all beyond the reach of the modern man. However, it can be said without a shadow of a doubt that he fit the former categories far more than the latter. He was strong, righteous, virtuous, and brilliant in every move, or so say those who benefited the most from his past actions.

Although his influence supposedly remains all over the two Planar Continents, it can be seen most clearly in his city. When Yi City was first founded, many, many years ago, every child of the Yi family held a status equivalent to an emperor. The city stretched from one end of the Western Continent to another, and the powers around it would all bend to its ruler’s will.

There were other families, in charge of certain districts, but none of them could hold as high a status.

And yet, the Master of Yi City did not remain within the Planar Continents forever. Whether willingly or not, he eventually departed from the world, though whether he found another, greater place is not known.

With him, his enemies vanished also. Ancient beasts, monstrous demons and Primordial Deities that wished to see the world burn, or cower beneath their feet; all were gone, as if they were mere myths.

Thus, began the decline.

By the time that the fifth generation of the Yi family came to be, it was no longer unbelievable to see one of their members being unable to acquire a life in glamour as a noble of one of the other nations. The scale of the city itself decreased, though many had said that the lands were hardly being used, and that their loss was irrelevant.

The tenth generation only had four figures worthy of being called nobles, and more territory was lost yet again. It was harder for anyone to rationally proclaim that they had lost nothing of importance, but few wished to argue otherwise, for none could reclaim that land.

With every generation after that, the losses grew, but it wasn’t only the city that suffered. The planar cultivation of the people fell as well. The Master of Yi City was said to hold a realm unobtainable by normal men, possibly surpassing the ninth realm, with power so great that he could raze the entire world in a single careless breath, and that even his disciples and direct descendants could draw from a nigh-endless supply of planar energy within their body, wielding it with the same ease as they would use their body. They did not require techniques or skills, for everything they had learned would be integrated into their very being, and every action, twitch and step would represent their concentrated knowledge, or so the stories went.

By the fiftieth generation, there wasn’t a single person that could achieve the same level of skill, and since then, all about the city plummeted.

Lands that had long belonged to the twenty-four major districts of Yi City shrank until each district was separated, leaving each one in nearly complete darkness about the activities of the others. The minor districts that existed in the outer regions of Yi City were annexed by other nations, or splintered from the city, and soon the territory of what had once been the most majestic treasure of the world shrank into relatively small dots on a map.

 

Yi Wei was born in a generation where the highest of the family were only fully respected within their district of the city, while the lowest were mere servants. One’s status could be decided by a number of factors, but none were as significant as their parents and cultivation ability. Intelligence was favourable, but optional. Brains could never defeat a fist, or so they believed.

Although she had plenty of intelligence to throw around, she was unfortunately born to servants, and her cultivation ability was all but absent.

When she had reached the age of twelve, she and all of the other children of the same age were brought to the family’s training hall and given planar cultivation techniques to allow them to become cultivators. Her brothers and sisters, cousins and distant relatives all succeeded in reaching the first stage of Energy Condensation within the year, but Yi Wei has only barely managed to reach the same stage three years later, and now, after her sixteenth birthday, she was still stuck in the exact same place.

Most struggled with sensing planar energy at first, as they needed to rely purely on the innate sense of their dantian for the detection of the particles that existed all around them, but for her, it had gone beyond a mere struggle. Every single particle that she was able to snap up took hours to obtain.

As a result, she spent the last few years working simple, menial jobs, and lived in a small shack on the edge of the city district.

She was thin, mostly because of how little food she could afford on a daily basis, with shoulder-length red hair and grey eyes, both of which were obvious symbols of her heritage. Her features were fair, though they were obviously nowhere near what one may call a country-toppling beauty, and the parts that many considered to matter on her body were still underdeveloped, and barely noticeable as a result.

On this particular day, the first of the month, she sat on her bed, desperately trying to sense and absorb even a small quantity of planar energy. The pathetic mist that she had managed to accumulate so far hovered within her dantian, with impurities taking up a third of the total volume of the cloud. In comparison to the geniuses who could practise higher-tiered techniques and only had impurities occupy around ten percent of their planar energy cloud, she might as well have never gotten into cultivation in the first place.

‘Still, I can’t give up!’ she thought, clenching her fists, almost to the point of breaking through skin with her nails, ‘If I can’t get to the second stage before I turn eighteen, then I’m going to be kicked out onto the streets, and what little access I currently have to the family’s pills and elixirs will be rescinded.’

Just as she finally felt another particle of planar energy that was suitable for her, the sound of a fist striking the wall of her home distracted her from absorbing it.

“Yi Wei, get out here immediately!” a frustrated voice said, speaking far louder than necessary.

She recognised this voice immediately – it belonged to one of her many aunts, Yi Zehao, an aging woman of over sixty years, and one who tried to hide her age with an excessive amount of makeup, though she did so poorly. When Yi Wei had carelessly mentioned that while gossiping with another servant several years ago, she had managed to overhear this and had never forgiven her since.

For a moment, she hoped that she would be able to recapture that wisp of planar energy, but when it became obvious that wouldn’t work, she opened her eyes, got up and stepped out the front door, bowing before the woman.

“Aunt Zehao, what can I do for you?”

“I require the ingredients for a Blood Regeneration Pill, right now. Ten sets of ingredients, no more, no less. Understand?” she stated, clearly limiting her words to avoid having to speak to her any longer than necessary.

“Yes,” Yi Wei said, and immediately ran in the direction of the Three Stars Pharmacy.

At times, she attempted to speak back, but Aunt Zehao never cared for her words and simply urged her to hurry up, so she didn’t bother. Also, she wanted to get back as soon as possible to resume her cultivation before anyone else could barge in and interrupt her. It was difficult enough as it was, so she appreciated the free moments when she earned them.

She hadn’t been able to say anything against her aunt even when her cultivation talent was unknown, so she had gotten used to receiving sudden orders to retrieve ingredients at random times of the day. It was frustrating, as her aunt had reached the Planar Pool Realm, and could get to the pharmacy and back a dozen times in the time that it took her to make the journey once, but there was no point in complaining. If she really wanted to, Aunt Zehao could have her exiled from the city in a heartbeat, and then she would have no chances of surviving whatsoever.

The road to the Three Stars Pharmacy was familiar to her after all these years, so she didn’t need to focus on her journey, ‘At the very least her constant orders have allowed me to learn the ingredients for a number of different pills, elixirs and medications. If I ever reach the second stage of Energy Condensation, I could try refining some of them. However…’

Yi Wei sighed, and used her spiritual will to look inside her body, at her dantian. There, in the middle of the cloud, hidden amidst the silver, metal planar energy, hovered a dozen lines of impeccable characters, written out in utmost precision. They had no clear meaning, and their order and place would change with her every breath, and every line was thin and narrow, as if drawn with a quill upon the space of her dantian.

Normally, such an abnormal situation would be seen as some sort of inheritance or gift from the heavens, but not once did the letters arrange themselves into any order that would benefit her.

On the contrary, whenever she attempted to cultivate in a manner that was somehow unsatisfactory to the characters, they would suck up the energy and not give her a single thing in return. It took Yi Wei a little more than a year to perfect her cultivation technique to prevent as much of her energy as possible from being drained, but all that got her was a form of planar energy that was one fold greater in quality than any of her peers, with a notable number of impurities still present amidst that, due to the low quality of her cultivation method in comparison to superior members of her family.

That did her no good, however. Even against those of the same stage of cultivation, she was at a severe disadvantage due to her low quantity of planar energy, and the greater quality of each particle only meant that she wasn’t typically beaten as badly as she would have been otherwise.

‘If only those things arranged themselves into some sort of legendary technique, or a long-lost method of crafting or refining weapons, artefacts or pills, I could quickly rise to the top,’ she thought, breathing in to sigh once more, ‘Well, at least I’d not be in as poor a state as I currently am…’

Before she could do that, however, she heard an explosion to her left, and saw the home of a talisman maker explode in a burst of planar energy.

“Damn it! How difficult can it be to make a four-star talisman!” a voice from inside the explosion yelled and tossed out a rectangular piece of yellow paper.

As if it was being guided by some outside force, the talisman, with three profound characters written horizontally across it, flew straight at Yi Wei, landing right on her face.

‘Wait, is this a failed talisman? Oh no-’

Just as she raised her hand to remove the paper from her body, bright orange light flooded her vision, and the thick, solid planar energy of the Active Core Realm burst into her. It tore through her flesh, her blood vessels, her bones and even her meridians, and all of it coursed right to her planar aperture – her dantian. If it was to reach it, the energy would undoubtedly destroy it in an instant, and even if she survived, her cultivation would be gone for the rest of her life.

However, there was nothing she could do. Her spiritual will was purely a method of sensing the inside of her body, and planar energy was meaningless against someone three whole realms above her. As such, all she was able to do was watch as the fire planar energy burst into her dantian, burning away almost all of the cloud that she had cultivated.

‘No! Not like this! Not from a failed talisman that was accidentally thrown at me!’

All of a sudden, the characters that had previously been idle and dull in colour lit up with a blinding violet glow. The flaming planar energy froze in place.

The characters rearranged themselves into gaping maw, and, without any resistance whatsoever, all of the foreign planar energy was sucked into the space between them, vanishing from view just as suddenly as it had appeared.

With what looked to be a glint of satisfaction, the characters broke back down into a dozen lines of text. However, as opposed to their usual nonsense, they now spelled out legible words and sentences. In fact, as Yi Wei had a closer look, she realised that each line was incredibly profound, containing knowledge that someone like her would never have been able to see with just her own effort. Faced with these words, she couldn’t and wouldn’t stop herself from following their instructions, and began to absorb planar energy according to the glowing characters.

Unlike before, when she had to struggle to find even a single piece of compatible energy, it now rushed to her willingly, flooding into her body and passing through her meridians before entering her abdomen, where it peacefully collected within the centre of her dantian. She wasn’t even sure if there was any energy out there that wasn’t compatible with this method.

In just a single moment, all of the progress that she had lost was recovered by the technique within the mysterious characters, but not with the same metal planar energy as before. Instead, it was purple in colour, and looked almost as if someone had collected a cosmic nebula and deposited it within her body.

‘Amazing! The fire planar energy burned away my impurities, and the mysterious characters managed to collect so much energy without accumulating a single speck of dirt inside it. Just… what sort of energy is that? It doesn’t look to match any specific element-’

“Kid! How long are you going to stand there?” a man’s voice forced her out of her stupor, and as she returned her focus to the outside world, she realised that she had been standing in the middle of the road, with the ash that remained of the talisman having been blown away by the wind a long time ago.

The road wasn’t especially wide, so she alone managed to block a group of nine men from progressing onwards.

“M-My apologies!” she said quickly and got out of the way to allow a large group to pass by her.

Yi Wei glanced at the ruins of the talisman maker’s home before proceeding to the pharmacy.

‘That’s right, I need to get those pill ingredients,’ she recalled, though her mind was still on the purple cloud within her dantian, ‘To think I had something like that in my body the whole time…’

 

She was still a little dazed by the time she picked up the pill ingredients and returned to her hut, where her aunt was standing impatiently and instantly leapt onto Yi Wei, ripping the ingredients out of her hands.

“What were you doing out there for so long? Explain yourself, you wretch!” she said, grabbing her by the ear.

“I got injured by a failed talisman on the way there! I’m so sorry!” Yi Wei replied as hastily as she could.

This caused Yi Zehao to let her go, instead grabbing her arm, “Don’t say such nonsense. There’s no way-”

As she was speaking, her aunt sent her spiritual will into Yi Wei’s body. Her face quickly changed, showing a look of shock. Secretly, Yi Wei also looked into her body, and saw that everything inside of her was lightly burned, and that more than half of her body shouldn’t have been able to function with such a degree of damage. She hadn’t even realised that her state had been this bad.

“How in the heavens are you still standing?” Aunt Zehao questioned, handing her a fragrant pill, “Take it. The Flesh Recovery Pill should fix your injuries so that you are properly able to continue serving me in the future.”

As soon as Yi Wei accepted the pill, her aunt looked deeper into her, focusing on her dantian.

‘Wait, will she be able to-’

“It looks like you haven’t advanced much in your cultivation. Useless,” she shook her head, and removed her spiritual will from her body, “If you don’t reach the second stage soon, you won’t even be fit for manual labour.”

With that, her aunt turned around and left, leaving Yi Wei alone in her shack.

‘It… it can hide!’ she mentally exclaimed to herself once her aunt was out of sight.

When her aunt had been probing her planar aperture with her spiritual will, any planar energy she came across changed into the same metal energy she had cultivated for four years and returned to normal the instant her attention shifted.

It seemed that it wasn’t just the appearance of her energy that changed, but also its very structure, for it resembled metal while it was silver and had an entirely different feel while in the violet, almost celestial state. Such sudden changes weren’t just unusual, but practically unheard of, as energy was usually stuck in a single element and gathered through a single technique, meaning that this was absolutely phenomenal.

Additionally, the characters in her dantian still remained unseen, no matter how many times someone had attempted to scan her with their spiritual will.

Her eyes widened, and her lips parted into a wide grin that she simply wasn’t able to contain, ‘This is it! This is what I’ve been waiting for – a chance for me to break through again! I won’t have to lose my home!’