V2C54: Diplomacy

Over the rest of the day, as vague as the idea of a day was within the prison realm, the majority of Beast’s Rest was mobilised. The killing intent cultivators were assigned to be in less physically intensive positions, as they would be useless at them no matter how much they tried, while the rest were put to work carrying the Beast’s bones that Wei Yi picked out on her own and then calculated where the best position for them would be.

By the end of the day, the killing intent within the city grew to be almost twice as dense and twice as imposing, putting significant pressure on those that were not prepared for such a change and had incredibly weak bodies. Fortunately, life in the prison realm was dangerous, and so everyone important adapted quickly and on their own, while the rest found others to assist them in building up a resistance to the crushing pressure of the eternal crimson. Only a few had so many problems that they saw it fit to go to their leader, Wei Yi, for help, and depending on the nature of their troubles, she decided what kind of aid to offer them. For some, a simple strengthening pill was sufficient to deal with their weaker constitutions, while others had to be given a small stone with an inscription on it to temporarily weaken the killing intent around them to a level between the current and previous density to give them more time to adapt to it.

Ultimately, she needed everyone to get used to the harsher conditions, and so those that could not do it no matter what, or were too lazy or unwilling, were sent to the outer part of Beast’s Rest.

Some complained, but all she had to do to get them to stop was to create a fake glow of moonlight around herself by inverting the energy of the Sun’s Regalia physique into the Moon’s Regalia without actually gaining its power. It was a purely visual change, but the killing intent cultivating community within Beast’s Rest wasn’t too knowledgeable on the subject.

The unintentional side effect of this method was that her title, Moon Splitter, had gotten around this city even more quickly than if the physique cultivators had gone around and spread rumours about it to the population.

‘It’s just a name, in the end. It doesn’t matter too much, and once I get to more grandiose activities in the real world, something as simple as splitting a fake moon won’t be on their minds as much as it currently is,’ she thought after she had dealt with another person that couldn’t understand the fact that he was not permitted to sit around lazily any longer, ‘Now that there is a name attributable to me, word of the Moon Splitter is bound to spread. If any of the other factions willingly come to me and ask to engage in diplomatic talks, it ought to be much easier to convince them of my strength and ability.’

As she had dealt with the Great Bone Lake and Automaton Point – and would heal Ya the next day, unless something went awry – she now held three out of the seven major powers within the palm of her hand, and managed to achieve this without seeing the deadly techniques that the warlords of the Great Bone Lake were said to have. This meant that she and the people under her now formed the single most powerful faction within the prison realm, and that was bound to attract attention.

The three remaining killing intent factions were likely to be pleased with the elimination of their competition, as they were bound to assume that the old Beast’s Rest, the city of killing intent cultivators, somehow subjugated them with their own means, while the Hold of the Mighty, the only known remaining stronghold of physique cultivation, was bound to investigate the Moon Splitter and quickly come to know that it was someone that fought all five remaining warlords without any particular difficulty, using primarily their raw strength.

To the people there, nothing interested them more than powerful bodies and physiques, meaning that they were guaranteed to contact her at some point.

During the few days after that, after drawing a blueprint for the physique cultivation portion of the city, she headed out of Beast’s Rest once more, heading back to pick up the killing intent cultivator from the remains of Automaton Point, who turned out to be in the exact same place as before, seemingly unbothered by the recent collapse of the fourth quarter’s top.

She healed him with ease and found out that he was only a common killing intent cultivator in his past, so she directed him towards Beast’s Rest and ventured out once more. This time, she wanted to find the treasure mentioned by the deceased owner of the Concentrated Humanity physique.

It had never coincided with her route, due to its position being between the Hold of the Mighty and Beast’s Rest, so she decided to take advantage of her current lack of responsibilities to investigate. Unfortunately, when she had fought with the physique cultivator that gave her that information, she had no access to her current ability to look into the minds of others, so she could not get the full details about the location of the supposed great treasure. As a result, Wei Yi only had a vague set of directions to follow, forcing her to make the full use of the expansion of her meridians through her Immortal Mortal ability and her physique cultivation stabilising in the fifth stage to rush there as quickly as possible.

With her full power being showcased, she reached the area south-west of Beast’s Rest and east of the Hold of the Mighty within a single day despite the enormous distance between them.

Just like most of the prison realm, all she saw when she arrived was a set of small red hills, occasional crimson plains, ruby mountains, several small rivers of the Beast’s baleful blood, and one small pit in the ground that appeared to be entirely ordinary after one of her close inspections. Other than that, nothing really stood out.

‘Well, fuck. I had expected some hint of an unusual object within my spiritual perception, but everything here is just as dull and barren as when I searched for the Ancestral Hall of the Kong,’ she thought, wondering whether there was any chance at all to stumble across it just by shutting her eyes and walking in a random direction, ‘This is unfortunate, especially when I expected this treasure to be something obvious yet unobtainable to normal cultivators of the prison realm… Perhaps I’m just not there yet.’

She understood that most people would not be as accurate in their geography as she could be thanks to her ability to perfectly map things within her mental domain, and thus Wei Yi got out of the small pit and began her explorative search.

Her first point of interest was the tall mountain peak near her current position, as it was rather narrow and would thus act as a sort of large tower, exposing a large quantity of the land to her without obscuring too many of its own secrets. Due to its steepness, it was difficult to climb it with her hands and feet alone, so she employed the Aerial Foothold physique ability whenever there wasn’t a suitable indentation in the stone.

From atop the oddly flat peak – unfortunately without any hints of oddity beyond that, so far as she could tell – she was able to see the bland terrain of the prison realm from a slightly different perspective, but little more than that. No clear beams of energy shooting up from the ground, as in the Kong District, nor any unnatural terrain other than this peak.

‘Will I need to break down the peak and see if someone had built the mountain on top of the treasure? It wouldn’t have been a complete lie, right?’ she considered, conjuring some of her physique energy around her hand to play around with it while she looked around herself several more times, ‘No, that would be extremely stupid of her. I had proven my strength then, and she had made me swear to not kill her afterwards, so if she then lied, she would just be putting herself in further danger once I found out that she had tricked me. In that case, what kind of obstacle would stump a woman like her?’

She spotted another mountain in the distance and decided to try looking around from there, hoping that it would give her a slightly better idea of the area.

By leaping across widely spaced Aerial Footholds, she crossed the gap between the mountains in minutes, avoiding the process of climbing down and then back up the mountain that was her destination, then looked back down on the world to not see anything of particular interest.

Or, so she thought. When she looked to the left, she saw another mountain, very similar to the two she had stood on so far, and when she looked to the right, she realised that these mountains were not only incredibly similar to one another in appearance, but that their positioning was entirely unnatural and on a curve, as if someone had drawn a circle using the geographic phenomena.

Just to be sure, she crossed onto the next mountain and saw yet another one along the invisible curve.

‘Indeed. There are just enough differences and oddities within these to hide them from sight on first glance, but their shape and placement allows for some sort of array to be hidden within them, even from my perception…’ she noticed, extending her spiritual perception outwards and focusing more on the passive flow of energy throughout the area. At first, there still appeared to be nothing, but when she took the shape of the presumed array into account and applied some pressure onto it with her spiritual will, the long-awaited fluctuations in energy presented themselves to her, ‘So there is something here, and the Concentrated Humanity physique cultivator stumbled across it by chance.’

She leapt off the mountain peak and descended gracefully with the Aerial Foothold ability, running towards the presumed centre of the array the moment that she landed onto the ground.

‘Based on the scale and ability of this array, there would have been no way for her to break into it, no matter what she tried, but it is possible that the only obstacle in her way was some kind of unpassable wall or field that allowed her to understand enough about the treasures on offer for her to be able to share a description of them with me,’ Wei Yi deduced as she slowly got close to the centre of the mountain range – a similar, yet smaller mountain.

Just like the others, there was nothing particularly interesting about it on first glance, as even the fact that it wasn’t part of the mountain range was explained by the artificial terrain of the prison realm. However, if one was to look more closely, they would spot a small cave near its base, and a dim glow coming from within.

Naturally, she hastened into the cave, protecting herself with a few basic defensive and stealth techniques as she did so, for she had the aid of spiritual perception to foresee danger.

The cave was shallow, and the source of the light could be seen within several steps of the entrance. It belonged to a thick and flat wall that obstructed the entirety of the cave, preventing any passage through, and it appear to grow if the walls around it were destroyed, for there were traces of such attempted activity within and through the glowing wall. While most of the energy within the prison realm, the power flowing through the array included, was killing intent, this was a field of pure yang physique energy, being contained and maintained by the air around it.

‘This is clearly the work of a physique cultivator, then,’ she understood, approaching the wall while easily ignoring the slight warmth emanating from it. Although it would have been able to cook someone without a yin or yang physique, it barely mattered to her.

What caught her attention before the things behind this translucent wall was the energy it was made from – whereas her physique energy resembled sunlight and, inversely, moonlight, this energy was closer to the raw yang that one may find within the meridians of someone who cultivates the Yang Physique, or one of the more powerful variants of it, such as the Greater or Absolute Yang physiques.

However, it still differed from the physiques listed above, as this barrier contained a force that could, in the right circumstances, be described as being ‘otherworldly’ in nature.

What certainly didn’t help dispel this impression was the fact that it could not be sensed with spiritual perception nor Wei Yi’s natural senses, and that even her physique energy was barely capable of reacting to it when in close proximity.

When she finally looked beyond it, into the place that it protected, her impression was further deepened by the things she saw within. Other than the vitality-storing blood stone and several large bones that compressed the killing intent around them to such an extent that it solidified into a thin film around the bones, there was only one thing of note: a large, thick scroll made of some kind of skin, with characters written on it that Wei Yi partially recognised, and yet was unable to understand.

These characters confirmed her theory, for they resembled the writings of Kong Shi Meng within the books of the Yi family, and the description of the Kong Mental Arts.

“Another fucking otherworldly power… How many of these people are there? Are they like ants in an anthill?” she said, resisting the urge to strike the physique wall in front of her mostly to avoid sudden disintegration of her fist, “How are they everywhere? Do they just fall through random holes in their world and acquire random powers for no reason?”

She sighed, calming herself, and drew out an enormous quantity of her physique energy to be able to absorb all of the wall without too much risk for herself. Her sunlight enveloped the orange energy and slowly pressed down upon it, effectively digesting the outer layer of energy before being strengthened by it and continuing to devour the otherworldly power. It took a long time, but when her cultivation suddenly broke through with the immense power and reached the sixth stage, she got through the rest of the energy in minutes.

‘Not enough for the awakening of another physique ability, but it was so powerful that it brought me straight onto the next stage… Good enough. Now, what is the rest of these things?’

Stepping through the now-empty passageway, she entered the small chamber of the cave that held the three items of value. As she already understood all too well how the Beast’s bones functioned and how they were to be used, she skipped over them and looked first at the stone that seemed to be made entirely of blood.

She could distinctly sense the intense vitality within the stone via her physique abilities, and so she quickly drained it before anyone else found this place and decided to try stealing it from her. The moment that it entered her body, the only way to take it back would be to gather more physique cultivators with greater physiques than her own and focus their energy on her without any interruptions, which would be difficult to accomplish when she had so many methods of attacking and repelling her enemies no matter what position she was in.

Then, it was finally time to move onto the most significant find within this chamber – the scroll.

As she unfurled it, she found that the entirety of the front was covered in the same symbols and that no matter how she applied her understanding of the language of the Planar Continents, she could not decipher anything about these symbols.

Fortunately, when she turned it around, she found a full description of a technique in the perfect Planar Continent language, although certain symbols were written in such a way that they resembled the writing of the other world. According to the scroll, the technique was called Martial God’s Extremes, and although the Concentrated Humanity cultivator must have been guessing at the contents of the scroll, it was indeed a physique energy-based technique.

Rather than being a typical combat technique, or a cultivation method – although it featured elements of both, and could thus assist her in her cultivation nonetheless – this appeared to be a modifier that could be applied to one’s physique energy at any time, enhancing its power immensely and increasing the effectiveness of every technique used at the same time.

It used all of the meridians at the same time, but this also allowed for other techniques to be utilised as it merely required the presence of energy in the correct places and did not care for its flow.

‘This one isn’t as artificial, however,’ Wei Yi noted, comparing it to her last few otherworldly methods, ‘Perhaps the other otherworldly demons used different methods to create their own techniques, while this one was created by someone that had genuinely considered and contemplated their own creation… I can’t see any traces of negative influences from this particular technique, and so it should be safe to practise. Since it does not occupy any of my meridians, I could fully cultivate it without reducing my ability to practise any other technique…’

She did exactly that, gathering her physique energy at the walls of her meridians and condensing it within them, simultaneously using this force to expand them a little further. Once she completed that, in place of experimenting with it immediately, she looked at the last paragraph written on the scroll.

“If this scroll is in the hands of one that cannot read the other side, I implore you to find someone that can and share that side with them, even if this one is kept to yourself,” she read it out to herself, mentally comparing it with the message left by Kong Shi Meng in the books of the Yi District, ‘These otherworldly demons sure are polite, aren’t they? I am impressed, frankly.’

The technique scroll was small enough for her to hide it within one of the larger pockets of the Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival, so she chose not to destroy it yet. If she was able to find another otherworldly demon out there that happened to use the same language as the presumed Martial God, she saw no reason not to allow them to read whatever was written on the other side of the scroll, even if it was only to view their memories and gather their understanding of the language for future personal use. There was always the possibility that the superior version of the Martial God’s Extremes was written on the other side, of course, but anyone would require several minutes of cultivation to use it properly, whereas she would be able to notice it quickly and prevent them from doing anything stupid.

After confirming that there was nothing else within the cave, both with her natural senses, her eyesight and her spiritual perception, all of which could be affected by different factors and were thus less trustworthy on their own than in their combination, she struck the wall with the Collapsing Cavern fist and left before it collapsed, getting out of the way and turning around just in time to witness the passage seal itself behind her.

The ground and the mountain trembled before her, but neither collapsed entirely, meaning that the landscape remained almost identical to how she had found it.

‘I can try out my newly acquired technique at a later point in time. For now, I should get back to Beast’s Rest and make sure that the physique cultivators haven’t been bothering people with their… mating habits? I guess that’s a suitable description…’ she shrugged, walking away from the lone mountain.

Wei Yi had been gone for only a short time, and yet the city had developed far more in those few days than it had in the twenty days that she had spent searching for, and helping, Automaton Point. Likely due to the assistance of the physique cultivators, the number of houses and structures in various stages of construction in the outer portion of the city had nearly tripled since the last time she had counted them, and most of the buildings that had not been finished when she left were now complete, for the most part.

As she navigated the outer portion of the city on her way in, she only spotted a single minor dispute occurring between a killing intent cultivator and a physique cultivator, and it was over their relationship with some third figure, causing her to ignore it entirely due to it being outside of her area of expertise and far from her realm of interest.

On the inside of the city, the average cultivation level remained mostly as it was before, with only a few minor figures breaking through to the next realm, but it was still progress. If given enough time, she believed that she could raise the average cultivation level of everyone within the prison realm to the third or fourth realm, which, once combined with the support of her killing intent in the Planar Continents, would allow them to easily defeat those in the second and third realms of planar cultivation.

She had considered the fact that there might not be enough killing intent for everyone to reach such a level – as, unlike planar energy, it was not infinite and was generated from the Beast’s energy – but since she would be allowing others to share in her killing intent, that was not an issue.

After all, her immense pool of killing intent originated from the constant conversion of her planar energy, which might as well be infinite due to the nascent rift, which, with enough time and effort, could be enlarged and made to be more efficient, meaning that she would eventually be able to have a full pool of energy even with the regular consumption of the prison realm and constantly generate even more killing intent for her subordinates to share in. It would also serve as excellent motivation for them to never go against her, as their power could be nullified immediately if she revoked her energy from them.

When she stepped into the underground passages and found Meng Chu, however, she found him to be in a surprisingly panicked state.

“Has something gone wrong after all?” she asked him.

He shook his head, “Not exactly… You mentioned that the other factions might want to get in touch with us, right?”

“Indeed. Has one of them sent us a declaration of war?”

“No… All four factions have sent a representative to speak with us, apparently.”

“Oh? I’ll admit, I didn’t expect that at all. Since you’re so worried, I assume that they aren’t just simple warriors or diplomats?” Wei Yi raised an eyebrow, “Do you think that they could pose a significant risk to Beast’s Rest?”

“Well, all four of them are in the fourth realms of their cultivation, so far as I can tell, all of them are practising unique techniques and all of them appeared rather displeased with the other three.”

“Ah, so that’s how things are. If you have placed them in one room, then I’ll hurry there before a conflict does break out. Just so that I don’t inadvertently make things worse, tell me everything you know about them, what they look like and whether you’ve noticed any strange behaviours from any of them that I should keep an eye on.”

“Yes. The first one to get here was a woman from the Council of Crimson, calling herself Shufen Bai Shu. She is tall, dark-haired and would probably suit the tastes of most of Beast’s Rest, but she has an obvious problem of looking down on everyone, viewing them as nothing more than dirt. If I hadn’t told her that I am the second in command in this city, she would have likely ignored me for the rest of the day,” Meng Chu explained, “You’re unlikely to mix her up with any of the others.

“Then, Jing Ling, a man from the Seekers of Blood, found his way into the city. He seems like someone that spends all of his time performing experiments in some dark cave, as his skin is even paler than normal, seeming to be almost green at times, although you could miss this at first due to an incredibly full head of greying brown hair that reached the lower half of his legs and seems to be a complete mess.

“Almost immediately after, I was informed of the presence of the third ambassador due to several brief quakes that happened one after the other, They were caused by Kai Feng Zhan, a physique cultivator from the Hold of the Mighty that spoke reasonably well for someone on his path of cultivation, but immediately rushed off to speak with the most muscular figure he could find under the assumption that they were in charge. As you’d probably expect, he was incredibly muscular himself, to the point that he could probably block blades just using his muscles.

“Finally, nearly an hour later, a woman by the name of Hui Xin came along, hailing from the Cranial Domain. I can’t say much about her other than the fact that she resembles an animal.”

“An animal? In what way?”

He shrugged, “My description won’t do it justice. Since I’ve said enough, you ought to be able to distinguish one from the other. I asked them to gather in a room near your office and told them that you would return within three days. All of them have taken a few things for themselves, food and some things for entertainment, and agreed to sit there and wait.”

“Very well, then. I’ll let you relax and see these so-called ambassadors. If a fight does break out, don’t be surprised if you see me fleeing first,” she said, “I wouldn’t want to damage the city too much.”

She turned around and headed towards the location of her office, rushing there with the assistance of Endless Dark Movement and the Storm’s Edge Dash to nullify the collateral damage that she otherwise would have caused.

Thus, she got there quickly, and with only one small bit of damage to a chair that happened to be in the wrong place. Before going into the room where the four guests were waiting, she stopped by the door, using her stealth techniques, and extended her spiritual perception into the room to observe them without their knowledge. She quickly confirmed the descriptions of the four figures by Meng Chu, finding one muscular man, one skinny and weak-looking man, one woman that wouldn’t be out of place in a noble court in one of the empires outside of Yi City, and a figure that was covered in thick hair on most parts of her body, truly resembling a wild animal.

All of this created a curious atmosphere, for none of them wanted to be close to the other and thus positioned themselves in the four corners of the room, their collected energies causing the air in the room to be incredibly heavy and dense, acting almost like one of the Beast’s bones that she recovered from the Great Bone Lake.

‘Well then, let’s see what these lot want from me,’ she thought, pushing the door open.