V2C56: Opening the Way

The talks afterwards had gone surprisingly smoothly. After some travelling back and forth by the representatives of the four factions, it was agreed that resources shall be shared and traded, with a certain quantity being devoted to Wei Yi’s cultivation, with the condition that it must be monitored by those same representatives to ensure that she did not misuse or waste the items given to her.

She did not object, of course, for they were smart enough not to demand to learn all of her secrets and would be satisfied so long as she did not go against her words.

After that – and after establishing a small outpost to monitor the position where the storm walls would open just in case the timing of the spiritual will cultivators was slightly off – she went into a form of closed cultivation, focusing on further refining her body and mind and pushing both of them towards the third realms, so that they could catch up with her planar cultivation. Although she was able to advance her physique more quickly through slaughter and killing rather than laborious practise, her recent theft of the Great Bone Lake and the alliance with the Hold of the Mighty reduced her potential targets significantly.

Naturally, she did also take the time to investigate her newly acquired physiques and the desires that had slowly been swelling within her, putting two willing participants out of commission for several months after she had gotten a little too invested in finally stopping their lustful thoughts for good.

Thus, two years passed without much incident. At the beginning of the day before the storm walls would break open, she left her chambers and headed towards the lower parts of Inner Beast’s Rest, where she had asked for an even larger blood pool to be created.

Before it could fill, she had created a number of arrays around it to compress and refine the fluid into the most poisonous and toxic substance it could possibly become, while converting the rest into a weaker variant of miracle fluid to feed the slowly growing population of Beast’s Rest, which was increased further by several groups from the other four factions arriving to watch over the Moon Splitter and her progress.

As she stepped into the pool, she used this opportunity to slightly trim her hair, which had been consistently growing in the last two years and proving to be incredibly resistant against all forms of bladed weaponry, including Sharen e Mo, which needed several strikes to cut a single hair. Meanwhile, the toxins of the Beast’s blood proved to be more effective.

Just as the last time that she had done this, she had gotten into the blood pool with all of her energies at their peak, with all three being within the ninth stage of the second realm, intending to use the constant threat of the poisonous blood to refine them at once to empower herself to new heights.

Having learned from her previous breakthrough using this method, she had considered minimising the effects of her accomplishment on the city, but instead decided that her killing intent occupying and displacing the energy of the Beast provided her with the perfect opportunity to officially replace the energy of Beast’s Rest with her own, hoping that this replacement would allow her to increase the density of killing intent cultivated by everyone with every single breakthrough of her own, leading directly to the overall empowerment of the population.

She stayed within the blood pool for an entire day, by the end of which, all three of her energies were approaching their limit.

‘Some have expressed their belief that I might not be as strong as I had initially presented myself,’ she thought as she condensed her three mental and physiques energy deep within her meridians, concentrating them to the point of putting severe stress on the three active meridian networks, ‘This should prove them wrong.’

All of a sudden, crimson surged out of her and through the underground passages of Beast’s Rest, bursting out on the outside and filling the sky with colour as it entwined and pushed the Beast’s innate hatred away. At the same time, softer white followed, forming a pleasant bubble around the carcass of the ancient creature and prevented the rest of its crimson from entering it while the new killing intent occupied the empty space that was created.

Following after these two with an immense delay, raw sunlight emerged from the ground, overpowering both white and red as it illuminated the land in its true shades and colours.

Slowly, the three energies began to rotate, twist and turn, mingling with one another and yet remaining wholly separate. Individual strands of killing intent and spiritual will came together to form complex structures and arrays within the air, taking whatever energy was already present and condensing and refining it further, complex circulation paths creating themselves within the air and land and rapidly pumping with energy as it flowed into the centre of Beast’s Rest and then returned outwards, picking up more power as it continuously refined the power of the world.

It beat like an enormous heart, with the core being within the depths of the Beast’s body.

There, the blood of the Beast was consumed at a rapid pace, the toxins reacting to the three energies and being devoured by them as they slowly grew in power to suit the user’s fame across the entire prison realm.

The dome around Beast’s Rest stabilised itself with the knowledge Wei Yi had previously gathered within the Kong Holy Grounds just as the last drops of the Beast’s blood were exhausted.

Although the crimson within the dome was replaced with her own, much of her energy still returned to her, filling her meridian networks with newly ascended energy. Her killing intent was now in the first stage of Condensed Shot, with it transforming into dense fluid which seemed to reflect her mental domain at all times, even while she looked upon it with her spiritual perception.

Her spiritual will structure had grown even further in complexity and intensity, and thus her spiritual will had grown to the Greater Stability realm as well, resulting in the total range of her spiritual perception reaching nine and a half metres, or roughly half of that through thick and dense solid surfaces. Even then, everything that she could perceive with her spiritual perception was now even more detailed than before, far surpassing her eyes in the level of complexity that it was able to perceive without any similar dependence on light.

Finally, her physique energy had also broken through to the third realm, Impermanent Permanence. As a direct result, her body had suppressed any of the minor negative effects of age that had appeared during the last few years, causing her to look young her mature.

As she rose out of the former blood pool pit, her long crimson locks stuck to her tanned skin, their colour growing even more regal and intense, as if they had absorbed every single drop of the toxic blood and stole its colour. Her eyes, clear and silver, similarly resembled a combination of metal and gemstone far more so than any ordinary human eye, with this impression being further intensified by the dense spiritual will and killing intent that combined within them.

Her height had remained stable in the last two years, while her musculature was once again condensed upon her breakthrough. Nevertheless, the passive air of power around her only grew.

Wei Yi was able to distinctly sense that, although her physique energy had just achieved a major development, it was still on the edge of something greater, which she suspected to be the development of her physique itself, rather than the entirety of her body. The vast majority of known physiques possess several greater levels, such as the Greater and Absolute Yin physiques, but for the majority of those living in the Planar Continents, reaching such forms of the physiques could be accomplished through the consumption of powerful physique awakening pills and various treasures and miracle fruits. However, that did not take physique energy into account.

‘It is possible that through physique cultivation, I can advance the True Ascendant physique to greater heights… I wonder if this would allow me to absorb yin-type physiques as well, or if it would also advance the physique abilities that I have gathered for myself. Either option would be incredibly beneficial for me and depending on how much the further stages of the physique empower me and my physique energy, it might even save me some time in breaking through the storm walls.’

She looked into her dantian, where the nascent rift had grown further through her continued feeding of it. Now, roughly eight percent of her planar aperture was filled with energy, although it had not been enough to allow for a single advancement in her stage.

Nevertheless, progress was progress, and this increase in energy allowed her to prove to the other factions that she was not lying about her ability to maintain her cultivation realm.

After checking all of her forms of cultivation and energy, she took a brief look at her body to confirm that nothing had gone amiss during her brief dip in a blood pool. Her chest remained exactly as it was two years ago, her abdominal muscles remained as prominent as before even when they shrunk during the breakthrough, and her legs had not grown any shorter or longer, meaning that she would not need to adjust her various leg and kick-based techniques in the future so long as the breakthrough of her physique did not change this.

Out of random curiosity, she took one strand of her hair with one hand while putting two fingers together on her other and condensing Storm Blade Wreathing around it to generate a small blade, which she then empowered with every technique available to her and slashed the single hair with all of the force she had.

This blade of pure energy struck her hair and promptly shattered.

‘Well… It is a good thing that I have found a technique to limit the growth of my hair, or else it would go on forever,’ she thought as she tied her hair into a ponytail and put on her crimson robe, putting on the rest of her equipment before stepping out of the chamber reserved for her toxic baths.

As the mere force emanating from the room was sufficient to ward away anyone under the fifth realm of cultivation, it was deemed unnecessary to have anyone guarding her, thus leaving her on her own for several minutes until she reached the secret entrance to this particular part of the underground network of Beast’s Rest. With several taps on the stone – a process that she had recently improved via some of her own inscriptions and made it so that any opening of such doors would light up a point on a map that she had created within her office, as well as a few others – it descended into the ground, and she stepped through, finding that there was still no-one in sight, as if everyone had vanished from the prison realm on their own.

‘That obviously isn’t the case, so where has everyone gone?’ she asked herself, finding traces of footsteps heading outside, prompting her to follow them.

Once outside, she quickly realized what was happening. Everyone had gathered in a large circle within an open plaza of Beast’s Rest and observed as Ya, a figure that turned out to be a man with features resembling that of the Great Dark and Light twins, Meng Chu, who had recently advanced to the last stage of the Searing Torch realm and was nearing a breakthrough to the Hatred Augur realm, Min Lian, who was similarly at the ninth stage of Condensed Shot, and the squad leaders, all of whom had reached some level of Searing Torch, faced off against a man wearing an obvious and bright crimson robe.

His realm was even more obvious, for he was coated from head to toe in armour condensed from pure killing intent, creating a thick layer of jagged crimson around him, and his power clearly surpassed that of the common cultivator, for he faced such a large group without much issue.

Atop the layer of armour, a secondary layer of thick killing intent created a baleful aura around him, one that seemed intent on actively consuming the energy around, with it being kept at bay only by the arrays within the dome of killing intent created via her earlier breakthrough and the fact that Wei Yi still retained some control over her own energy even if it was no longer within her body or the range of her typical control.

‘If I had to guess, I would say that he has the Consuming Rage technique and is trying to replenish his own power, though I don’t know whether he was winning or losing the battle prior to discovering his inability to do so,’ she thought, looking at both sides and finding nothing more than a few light injuries on all of them, ‘Whatever. I should step in.’

In an instant, she vanished from her current position and appeared between the man and her warriors, creating a stable barrier of spiritual will and killing intent to prevent any attacks on them.

“What are you doing in my city?” she asked plainly, one eye glowing with white and the other with red as both energies trapped the man within them, forcing the second layer of killing intent around him to recede into his body.

“I heard there was a powerful figure here, so I came along to check it out!” he exclaimed, “So-”

“No valid reason, then?”

“Nah, I-”

He did not have the opportunity to continue when he felt his neck split in half, with his head flying away from the rest of his body when two slashes – one from either side – struck the same point on his neck and pierced the armour, the skin, flesh and his bones with only as much resistance as could be expected from particularly dense air.

Before his body could fall to the ground, Wei Yi appeared beside it and grabbed the crimson robe from it so that it would not be covered in his blood, passing it to Min Lian once she dispelled the barrier.

“Here. You’re the most capable in combat, so it is most suitable for you.”

“Thank you,” she replied, silently following with the word ‘Master’.

Wei Yi nodded and turned to Meng Chu, “Now, I need you to tell me everything about what just happened, why you were having such difficulties in dealing with him, and whether we should be expecting more of them in the future.”

“A short time after that enormous dome appeared, he entered and wanted to fight some people before the storm wall would be opened. We couldn’t let him fight random people, so the group that you see now have decided to challenge him and did relatively well, stumping him a short time before you appeared when he wasn’t able to recover his energy as easily as he had expected to,“ he explained the situation quickly, “Although he wasn’t able to devour your energy, he was able to weaken or outright dispel our attacks, and the only thing that stopped him was our joined cooperation… By the way, why have you given the robe-”

“Are there signs of similar intruders?”

“Not yet, but it is very likely that they’ll be drawn towards the enormous dome around us. I’d imagine it’s as obvious as the moon split that you had done back then.”

“Yes, I’d imagine so. In that case, let me provide them with a better distraction,” she said, turning towards the crowd that had gathered to watch, “Everyone, you should have heard us. As I had promised in the past, now is the time to penetrate the storm walls and witness the other side of the prison realm! It is the first step to escaping once and for all, so if you wish to see history in the making, come with us and see!”

The crowd had a variety of reactions, but most cheered with excitement and quickly fled the scene, either to pack up their things for the multiple day journey or to get started early to catch more of the exciting scene.

Those that had no interest in the matter were in the significant minority, and most of them were simply deciding to avoid the matter due to lacking physical ability or the inability to travel for several days without harming themselves in the process, though a few of the latter kind decided to go nonetheless for their own reasons.

Regardless of what they wished to do, Wei Yi did not stand and wait for them, instead returning into the inner passages of Beast’s Rest to find the spiritual will cultivators.

“Come on, it is time for you lot to return to where you came from,” she said the moment that she entered their room, distracting them from their attempts at cultivation and concentration by releasing a faint pulse of spiritual will, “I know you have trouble keeping track of time due to the lack of spiritual will in this area, but it has been two years and the gap in the storm wall should be opening up any second now.”

“Oh, is that so?” Hao Gang exclaimed, the fear that she initially had mostly disappearing into the depths of her mind. Thus, she behaved significantly more happily most of the time, occasionally visiting Wei Yi while she worked and sharing a few minor details about the right of the prison realm.

Once Wei Yi nodded, the woman dressed in white awoke the rest of her companions and they prepared to depart by taking a few food items with them for the journey. Since they did not strictly require it, she suspected that they were simply acting as tourists and collecting a number of mementos from the left side of the prison realm to show off to those on the right. While she didn’t know whether they would be too pleased with their deliver, she wasn’t too concerned with how they would be received, as she only needed them to make it there.

She made sure that they got ready quickly and forced them out of the tunnels, intending to proceed to the ambassadors of the four remaining factions in the prison realm, but spotted them gathering at the outer edge of Beast’s Rest and proceeded to head directly towards them with the men and women in white.

The moment that she entered their line of sight, all four of them turned to her. During their time here, all of them had advanced by a single stage but remained within the fourth realms of their respective cultivation routes.

Apart from Hui Xin remaining rather adamant about claiming any and all bedsheets ever used by Wei Yi, causing the latter to avoid sleep entirely to not indulge the animalistic woman’s fetishistic tendencies, or whatever they were, most of them had avoided doing anything too unnecessary or extreme during their stay, preventing her from needing to interact within them beyond the monthly confirmation that she was making progress – more progress than any of them could.

“Moon Splitter,” Shufen Bai Shu said once she got close enough to them, “You will be intending to impress us today, are you not?”

“No, you will be impressed while the two halves of the prison realm are forced into one whole.”

The woman shrugged, “I suppose I’ll wait and see.”

“How will the storm wall be broken?” asked Kai Feng Zhan, “You are strong, but strength has not yet broken them in our case.”

“Truth be told, the other side of the wall has already ruptured the central wall several times, sending people like the ones behind me in to collect information, scout the area and generally mess around, so I intend to take advantage of their activities to create a permanent passageway into the right side of the prison realm by combining our strengths,” Wei Yi explained, glancing towards Hui Xin, “I’d have suggested that you ask her about the various array and inscription plates I’ve been working on before breaking through, but I suspect that she was more focused on me than my work.”

“Indeed. The mutt is far too wild to act reasonably, and yet the Cranial Domain seems to think that this is their best representative… What a pathetic excuse for a faction,” Shufen Bai Shu muttered, even though everyone who was paying attention was sure that she could have shouted this without consequence.

“I won’t comment on that, but I will say that they have provided me with the most resources out of all of you, especially when it came to acquiring various necessary components for the stabilization arrays. Without them, I might have had to delay this plan until the next rupture of the storm wall.”

With the aid of the amalgam automatons, who were used as mounts or to pull large imitations of chariots or carriages forwards, as well as plenty of movement techniques and inscriptions which mimicked them, Wei Yi and the forces of the left of the prison realm reached the central storm walls within a single day, finding the outpost that was meant to guard for any unexpected lesions in the wall in a ready state.

The outpost was composed of five towers spread out across a significant distance of the storm wall, made up of crimson stone carved precisely and stacked atop itself, with many arrays and inscriptions carved into every single one. Together, they formed an even more complex array, inspired in part by the legacy of the Martial God, with their energies being primarily targeted and the storm wall in front of them, and the land behind them, to ensure that no dissident forces could easily occupy the land without a significant degree of effort. However, the vast majority of effort was put into the wall-facing inscription plates, all of which were currently inactive.

As neither Wei Yi nor the people in white could be certain of the exact location in which the storm wall would be torn asunder, she had been forced to create stabilizing formations on all five towers so that they could be aligned and utilized regardless of the precise point of the opening.

Even then, this was only a small part of the plan, as these plates alone would not be sufficient to deal with an issue that had plagued the people of the prison realm for so many years and on both sides of the central storm wall. No, what would truly accomplish such a feat was a number and volume of inscribed stones and arrays that they would have matched one of the towers if they were to be stacked atop one another.

To ensure that there were no confident idiots taking advantage of her work to attempt a stabilized gap in the wall on their own, she made sure not to explain the function of any individual inscription or array, not to mention the whole thing, and instead allowed every single piece to be placed wherever and however, meaning that only she would be able to complete the puzzle.

Within each tower, roughly four dozen people were stationed in order to ensure that they were appropriately manned and that sufficient attention was paid to the fluctuations of the storm walls.

As the procession from Beast’s Rest arrived, they found that the stationed guards were already focused on the storm wall, with each wall-facing window of the enormous towers being occupied and everyone who couldn’t fit in there stood outside to do the exact same thing.

One of them glanced back, noticed the approaching group with Wei Yi at the front, and shouted, “Master Wei Yi is here!”

Those that could turned around and confirmed this, promptly breaking up and heading into the towers to retrieve the components for the passage stabilization construction while two of the weakest headed towards the procession to greet them.

“Master, visitors,” they had bowed to her first, then to the rest of them without referring to any one individual by name, “We have not yet observed any significant changes within the storm walls, but the device that we have been given has been detecting something near the second tower, with minor fluctuations near the first and third towers.”

“I see. Gather at those three towers, leave two people at the remaining two, and set up the gateway stones near the second one. I will personally inspect all five measurement devices and the gateway stones to make sure that everything is accurate. The moment that you personally witness any occurrences within the storm wall, yell as loudly as you possibly can and launch the brightest technique you’ve been able to learn,” Wei Yi stated, turning to those following her, “If you want to watch, get onto the towers and in the spaces between the towers, but if you want to take part, you can get closer and I will decide what you are able to do and assign you to do it.”

They did not contend with her instructions, as none of them had any understanding of even a single piece of the gateway stones or any of the arrays within or on top of them, not to mention the whole thing, and thus most of them decided to simply watch whereas a few came forward to help.

With their limited assistance, Wei Yi brought the gateway stones to the second towers after checking the instruments that she had designed based on the memories of Bai Hao, confirming that everything they sensed was as accurate as it could possibly be. She did not immediately arrange the stones into any particular formation, continuing to wait for the tear to appear in the storm walls, but she did create a few smaller arrays near the wall in preparation.

‘Old man, you’ll want to see this,’ she said to Bai Hao a little later, forcing him to appear in reality rather than in the library’ lone tower, stabilizing his consciousness with her planar anchor.

“What do you- Storm wall? Are you actually trying to open the storm wall?”

“Not so loud, there are people around you that can hear you now,” Wei Yi limited the reach of his voice, but it still caught the attention of those that stood closest to her, which included the figures in white that were waiting for the storm wall to open, “You’ve been temporarily brought into reality.”

“I… What?”

“Excuse me, are you also from the other side of the prison realm?” Hao Gang approached the old man in white, “May we ask for your name?”

“I am Bai Hao. Have you come from Sanctuary?”

“Yes, that’s right… You’ve achieved a method of granting people immortality?” the woman in white looked towards Wei Yi, for she sensed that the energy surrounding the figure came from her, and was only kept stable due to her.

“No, she-”

“Everyone, be quiet!” Wei Yi interrupted her and everyone else around her, raising her hand, “The breach begins.”

Oculus

Thanks for everyone that has been reading so far, and for those who are giving me money on Patreon. I hope my next work will fix any issues this one has, and be more appealing to those who are interested in the lewd stuff, and who might have been hoping for more of it in this.