V3C5: The Great Encounter

Dark shadow coiled around her, crimson hair turning black with the shadows that focused in her body. Her cosmic energy changed into similar darkness, overwhelming everything in sight and turning even the pristine dantian bones black. Slowly, it expanded outwards, covering more and more of her form in the abyss.

She turned to the wall and willed a tendril of the Eldritch Hold physique to reach out, imbuing it with the power of the Weavers of the Dark before sending it at a nearby mountainside.

The tendril struck the stone silently and with great speed, easily piercing into it as if it had been an impossibly sharp blade and not a thick inhuman appendage that had found a surprising amount of use in a place that the first user of the physique would have likely not appreciated. It was able to lodge itself far into the stone and could then be easily pulled out without a single difficulty, and with only a slight crack forming in the stone as a result.

In other words, it was as one would expect from a tool of an assassin.

Wei Yi made that tentacle disperse and instead created a tendril from yang-type physique energy, which, when it fused with the shadowy energy belonging to the Weavers of the Dark, rippled with both dawn light and darkness at once, and when she struck a different part of the stone with it, it instantly exploded into dust that boiled the air around it.

‘Excellent. The physique energy is able to react with the technique and alter the way in which it functions,’ she summarised to herself, dispelling the second tendril and converting her energy back into the cosmic crystal that typically occupied her dantian. Such attacks were sufficiently powerful to belong to her third realm, and yet their cost was rather low, whether in terms of energy consumption or physical exertion, making the techniques of the Weavers of the Dark significantly more effective than the vast majority of common combat techniques taught in the Yi District.

They were weaker than those of the Scorching Blades or the likes of the Elysian Palm, but had the planar energy cost been higher, their offensive potential would have been similar.

‘I suppose that the Weavers of the Dark must be a little more stealthy in their approach, whereas the Scorching Blades and those of the Endless Dark are somewhat more violent. Both have their place, so I need to include them in the Ascendant’s Dao, but I must consider both when approaching a situation.’

Since there were no good reasons for her to bother with repairing the rocks that she had struck, she simply made sure to get rid of any remaining evidence of the Ancestral Library and looked through the remaining rooms of the structure, which were unfortunately in a far worse state than the entrance and the library and thus yielded nothing of use, before departing the Ancestral Hall and sealing the entrance with her yang-type physique energy.

She would have loved to investigate the array or material that made the doorway impenetrable to her spiritual perception, but it was more difficult to break it apart than it was to ruin it forever.

Fortunately, although she would not be able to benefit from this particular door, it was certain that there were similar ruins out there, also containing long-lost methods and storing various techniques that still surpassed common understanding, with one such ruin being certain to use a similar door to this one. All she needed to do was find it.

Once she reached the other side of the Kong District, she quickly climbed up the side of the cliff using the Aerial Foothold ability, using each one to leap up almost five floors at a time whilst simultaneously shattering the foothold and letting the energy return to her. With this process, she spent only one fifth of her physique energy to ascend something that had taken the young generation of the Yi family several days to navigate in less than an hour, ending up at the edge of a different forest than the one she had entered through.

Almost as quickly as she extended her spiritual perception to cover this area, she found a planar signature of the third realm, with a powerful anchor quietly humming in the middle of it. By the nature of the energy, and the general appearance of the origin, it was clear that it was a planar beast.

‘Well, I haven’t yet fought someone or something at this level since my return, especially not without utilising my other three energies, so this could be a decent distraction,’ she shrugged, rushing to it.

Several minutes after, the foe came into view – a wolf’s head atop a lion’s body made entirely of bark and leaves, with a single thin root trailing behind it. It did not notice her immediately, both due to the distance between them meaning that it’s spiritual perception could not reach her, and due to the powerful stealth methods in her possession, but not only did she see everything about it, she also recognised it almost immediately.

It was a variant of a hungry nest, this one appearing to be a bark or tree hungry nest.

‘That’s the second one, despite the fact that these creatures are meant to be about as rare as a common creature can get, with there being one hundred vine and bark wolves for each vine or bark hungry nest… Fortunately, the resource output from these things is slightly higher than most other planar beasts, so it’s not like their additional inconvenience is all that bad.’

She jumped out of the tree and landed onto the grass with her bare feet, instantly catching the attention of the bark hungry nest and the bestial extension that it was using to explore its surroundings. Dull crimson light glowed within its eye, and a brief glance into the Ascendant’s Library confirmed that this was actually a trait of hungry nests and not typical wood-type planar beasts as she had assumed the first time that she had seen the vine hungry nest’s dire wolf, whereas its teeth were clearly sharp and incredibly lethal.

The beast growled at her while the roots that led up to it pulsed, the attention that the hungry nest was paying to it increasing as it spotted a cultivator in the same realm as it.

Once it saw her move, even if it was just to achieve a more comfortable posture while she waited for its actions, it pounced while its planar anchor descended to her left, at the very edge of its limit of placement. In a typical situation, this would mean that Wei Yi would need to choose either to fight it while it was at its full power, or attempt to evade its attacks and strike the planar anchor instead, which could be retracted and replaced at any time.

As a set of jaw-shaped planar constructs formed around its open jaws and flew out at her, the planar creature likely thought that she would be heading for it, but she simply raised one hand and clicked her fingers.

Soft white light suddenly enveloped her hands and expanded smoothly, completely unlike an explosion. It met with the planar construct and as the latter bit down onto it, every bit of stable energy within the planar jaws suddenly broke down into fluid, spilling onto the sphere of energy and sliding down it before dripping off and dispersing into unbound planar energy. When the false wolf attempted to bite down on it, it passed through the light smoothly, and shut its jaws on Wei Yi’s outstretched arm triumphantly. However, while it did make a mark on her skin, it could not pierce it.

“Is this all you’ve got? I suppose that this is the weakness of mostly unintelligent beasts – they cannot form proper techniques nor truly cultivate their bodies, so the stability of their planar constructs is lacking against Elysian energy, whereas the fangs prove to be weak in comparison to such things as knives,” she kindly explained to the beast, taking out the Bone of the Beast before using her derivative of the Crushing Dagger arts to destroy the bark wolf’s head.

Since it would just recover the moment that she allowed it to, she kicked the body with as much strength as she could, sending it through a dozen trees in the process, and hastened in the direction that the root originated from.

Just as the vine hungry nest had a nest full of vines and teeth-like spikes, the bark hungry nest lived near a tree and had connected to it with a thick layer of bark, with the opening to the cave being surrounded in jagged pieces of brown. Warm air streamed away from it, making it incredibly obvious that this was no common location. She rushed in, ignoring the numerous branches that appeared out of the walls and ground, and followed the trail of warm air all the way into the large opening of the primary chamber of this particular nest.

It was filled to the brim with thick white gas and housed within the centre a large round creature that was attached to the walls, floor and ceiling with thick wooden branches. Dull crimson poured from within, lighting up the gas around it, emphasising it through the obscuring properties of the white, almost certainly poisonous gas.

Three mounds on the floor were slowly rising, and they were changing into the shape of wild beasts.

‘It’s doing better than the vine hungry nest, but not good enough…’ she thought, infusing the Bone of the Beast with planar energy and transforming it into the power of the Scorching Blade technique.

Although she was entirely immune to the effects of the gas, as she had flooded her lungs and veins with Yin-Yang Ascendant energy and thus eliminated anything that it contained almost instantly, she still had to endure its terrible stench. It was clearly not something edible or consumable, hence allowing her to endure the full horror of the noxious gases, the full nature of which could never possibly be described through words alone.

For this reason, she decided it was best to hurry, completing the charging process of the technique early as it lit up with draconic flame. It torched the horrendous gas and rapidly expanded as she waited for the gas to shift ever so slightly, then slashed at the creature diagonally.

Scorching flame shot out of her dagger and cleaved the air, causing the very air to combust alongside the noxious white cloud, reaching the outer bark of the nest just as the shape of a dragon’s head formed out of the fire. It bit down onto the bark, chewing right through it, removing an enormous chunk before exploding into raw heat and utterly annihilating the entire nest, followed shortly by the violent incineration of the white cloud and the explosive reaction that happened as a result. Wei Yi was thrown against one of the walls, but before the flame could damage her robes, she used the Pyromaniac’s Coat physique ability to lighten the blow and the World’s Echo to phase through the worst wave of damage.

Just as a precaution, she had closed her eyes, so when she opened them, she saw how the sides of the cavern had lost all traces of wood or bark, instead being replaced by slightly scorched or molten stone.

In a small mound on the ground, roughly where the hungry nest had hung, was its root. Unsurprisingly, it was in a better state than the first one she had the pleasure of acquiring, and it also appeared to be larger, likely due to the higher cultivation of this specimen in comparison to the Half-Step Emergent Anchor of the vine hungry nest.

The previous root had been sold for a few gold coins, and would likely be somewhere in the depths of the Yi District, so she had no chance of obtaining it and thus decided to keep this one for further research, just in case it proved to have a useful function.

What she could be certain about was that the Truth of the Universe worked in the Planar Continents exactly as intended, as a thin mist had been hanging around the root and was absorbed into her body and then into the characters within her dantian. When Wei Yi brought up the grey rectangle – apparently called an interface or a screen by Kong Shi Meng when he had been talking about it – the number had increased back to forty-seven, meaning that if she really desired it, she could improve one of the primary elements of the Ascendant’s Dao once, so long as the cost did not increase.

For now, she did not intend to do such a thing, as this fight against the nest had not shown her any weaknesses, but only that she was still far superior to common planar creatures.

She would require true combat to learn more about her current ability in the Planar Continents.

As she knew nothing about the current locations of any Great Families in the world as of this moment, nor was she confident in being able to do more than scratch any one of them again, she did not want to seek any of them out at this particular moment. Instead, she rested in the nest’s cave for a little while, recovering the energy expended on destroying it, and then proceeded to head to the north-west, so that she could get back from the diversion that was the Kong District.

If observed on a map, or viewed from a bird’s eye view, the Yi District was roughly in the centre of Yi City, and directly to the north of it were the Ning and Ping Districts, among others. The Kong District, although it was not present on modern maps, was to the north-east, so in order to return to her original route towards the Northern Desert and the districts there, she needed to go into the direction of the Ning District, where Ning Guanting hailed from. According to what the blacksmith had told her, the district housed incredible blacksmiths, so it would allow her to study that art before proceeding in the direction of the desert hideout.

Without any immediate threats in sight, Wei Yi continued through the trees and forest, but she was stopped far more quickly than she had expected.

Only a few minutes after she had begun to sprint, she sensed an incredible force at the edge of her perception, forcing her to instantly stop herself with an Aerial Foothold generated directly in front of her just as she nearly entered the range of spiritual perception of the other person. Fortunately enough, her spiritual perception appeared to be unnoticed, but just in case, she retracted the majority of it.

After surrounding herself with every stealth method that she was able to call upon without moving, she looked out to observe the identity of this powerful individual, finding that it was a figure in a plain robe that stood over a yet-breathing body, with their sandals stomping onto the body’s arm.

Despite being in the third realm, just like the nest, there was one feature that distinguished this one person from almost everyone else, that caused her heart to pump with absolute, undiluted fury, that sent the entirety of the mental realm – thankfully avoiding the physical prison realm – aflame with such powerful killing intent that it would easily make one think that her change to the cultivation of killing will was nothing but a lie. It was a large set of mirages around the figure, causing the air to tremble while that number of unclear shapes floated in the air.

The last time that she beheld them, she was unable to understand their shape, but after condensing a full anchor and learning of the secret, Wei Yi saw that every single floating shape was an individual planar anchor, with each one possessing some uniqueness despite being attached to the very same figure.

Thick crimson rage erupted from her body against her will, only barely being kept in check by her remaining consciousness using some of her spiritual will to prevent it from alerting the member of the Great family.

“Where is it, foul creature?” the Great said, sounding like he was addressing some kind of wild animal instead of a normal human being, “Your resistance is not doing you any good, and simply prolongs your suffering. Tell us where the arrow is, and I will end your life here and now, and you will not need to suffer Testament. Speak up.”

“I said… that I… already… gave it… away…”

The male member of a Great Family shook his head and raised his foot, just to bring it down again with greater force, “Who was it, then?”

“I… forgot…”

“Sure, that’s believable. You gave the arrow away, and yet you don’t remember who now has it, what they look like, where they went or what they’ll do with it…” the plain-robed man sighed, looking away in thought for a few moments before his gaze returned to the man beneath him, “Worthless.”

At the same time, he raised his hand and gathered his metallic planar energy at a small point in front of it, with a circle of metallic light forming around it as the many mirages around him seemed to actively press down on the energy to compress it further into a more powerful pulse of power than he could have otherwise achieved. In one second, that enormous volume of power was pressed into a single point, which shot through the man’s head in a single pulse of power.

‘THAT FUCKING BAST-’ Wei Yi’s anger almost overpowered her spiritual will before her saner side spotted a faint azure shimmer emerge from the man on the ground and soar into the sky, disappearing into naught and instantly causing all of her fury to recede, ‘Otherworldly demon? That was one of them? Then, the arrow that he was talking about must either be something to do with his power, or his actual ability that he was somehow able to rid himself of… Perhaps, a bit like the Fairy of Dust, it was in an external item while the azure light was separate, permitting it to be passed on without the interference of the azure… Furthermore, since this otherworldly demon was clearly in a lower realm, it must not have controlled him too greatly, thus permitting such an action to take place- Fuck, the first time seeing a member of the Great Families shook me this much, didn’t it…’

The man in plain robes did not follow the azure with his eyes, instead searching the otherworldly demon with spiritual perception until he appeared to have found nothing and instead suddenly turned in Wei Yi’s direction, his eyes glaring with an iron-like sheen. “Come out. I can see you.”

A small clump of crimson rage once more thrust itself out of her body, but she was able to force it back into her mental domain this time and keep herself in place, as she reasoned to herself that the Great couldn’t possibly be referring to her. She had encountered them before, and while they were certainly impressive in almost every possible regard, not only did he fail to detect the azure light – although that could ever be for any number of reasons, considering the fact that she had not seen the first azure light from Yi Henghua’s demise – but her stealth methods were composed from those of several assassin organisations and supported by energy of the fifth realm of killing will, whereas he was only in the third realm.

Those kinds of gaps in realm could only be crossed to a certain extent, as she had already learnt.

“You seem to be having some difficulties with your target, Ning Wu,” a male voice emerged from a similar direction to Wei Yi, but it was far enough from her to be able to walk past the crimson-haired woman without any trace of detection.

“Chen Wu, neither of us will be acting in the interest of Testament if we speak to one another in such a fashion,” Ning Wu replied to the figure that emerged – a man dressed in a plain robe that displayed a golden Chen (辰) character on its breast, with brown hair and eyes. Ning Wu, meanwhile, had oddly grey hair and dark eyes, and, although she had not noticed this previously, also had a character on the breast of his silver robes, with his one being an iron Ning (宁).

Their fashion seemed to be almost exactly like that of the families that ruled the districts of Yi City, except for the colours and materials of their clothing being slightly skewed. For instance, the Chen family typically had robes of plain cloth that then changed into purple at higher ranks of the family, with the upper members and the patriarch proudly wearing a golden Chen character on their chest, while the Ning family always clothed themselves in metallic greys, unlike the silver shade of Ning Wu’s outfit, although the material of the character was consistent.

‘There’s a mention of Testament for a second time. Is it a location, a group, a person or some cause?’

“True. He did not divulge a thing?”

“Nothing of use. A total waste of time for us, except for the slaying of yet another foul invader,” Ning Wu affirmed, glancing around, before turning back to Chen Wu, “Would you mind assisting me with something?”

“Certainly. We have to work together, after all.”

As they said that, both of them suddenly turned back towards Wei Yi, one’s eyes glowing with metallic lustre while the other’s shone like gold. Both of their mirage-like planar anchors suddenly compressed onto their bodies, and an immense burst of raw force – not planar energy, not spiritual will or killing intent, not even the power of space – shot out towards her, disrupting all energy in its path.

It crashed into her obscuring techniques and instantly dispersed them with raw might, striking her body and forcing her back by a step before her bare feet dug into the dirt.

“We’ve had a spy all along, it seems,” Chen Wu said, a smile on his face as he tossed several golden coins into the air after he filled them with his planar energy. Each one froze in the air, turning to face her as more power pooled in the centre of each one.

“Indeed. Red, positively crimson hair, silver eyes… one of the Yi?”

“Did one of them get uppity after one of their servants was consigned to the prison realm?”

“Could be. Red robes, no Yi symbol, so not garbed as one of their servants… They’re trying to make her seem independent?”

Their idle chat had been suddenly interrupted when they felt the energy around Wei Yi intensify by a dozen times, like a cultivator might if they somehow ascended from the first realm all the way to the third in one go.

‘I did not want to do this, but I must raise my power as quickly as possible. Fortunately enough, there is something that can be enhanced with simple efficiency and power, without adding any new elements to it that might require lengthy calculation,’ Wei Yi thought to herself as she brought up the Truth of the Universe interface and looked at the subdivision for the Ascendant’s Combat Dao, where the Yang Elysian Storm, her last weapon against the Greats, was outlined, ‘To focus on a single technique should allow me to save on anchor energy, and could still lead to me discovering improvements for the rest of my combat abilities…’

When she mentally pressed the button to the side of the technique, three units of energy were consumed, so before it had the opportunity to begin the process, she repeated it two more times, with the second and third instance costing her four and seven units respectively. In just one instant, she had spent fourteen out of the forty-seven units currently available to her, but both her rage and reason agreed that this was the best use of that resource.

Nothing would matter if she perished, so she must ensure that it would not happen. The only chance she had of defeating or scaring away the Greats would be with one powerful attack while they are not prepared for it, with the death of even a single one of them instantly leading to an increase in her supply by another thirty or forty points of anchor energy.

Thus, as the entire structure of the Yang Elysian Storm changed within her, she already began to utilise the technique purely through the insights that the Truth of the Universe delivered to her at the same time as she drew one hand beneath her and clicked her fingers at the same time as muttering the phrase ‘Totems’.  Several dozen stone shapeless pillars rose out of the ground around her, each one gathering an immense quantity of cosmic light, pure yang sunlight, condensed killing will and the iridescent whiteness of Elysian energy, uniting together into a single attack that was led by Wei Yi herself, mimicking her exact movements and thus avoiding the need for the recreation of her meridians within the totems. In three short bursts, their and her energy grew distinctly, with the combined total of these attacks consuming more than half of her entire pool of energies.

Within a single heartbeat, the derivation process began, the totems emerged, and her energies gathered into the form of the Yang Elysian Storm, giving the two Greats only a single opportunity to decide what to do against their foe.

Ning Wu prioritised attack, perhaps believing that he would be able to handle her before the might of the storm of energy reached him. Concentrated points of metallic energy formed above him, all clearly aiming at her head with the intention to annihilate any of her thinking ability and thus ensure that she would pose them no threat.

Meanwhile, Chen Wu made the coins that flew above him drop back down, caught all of them and threw them out again, arranging them into a small barrier around him.

‘Yang Elysian Storm!’

It was as if she was relieving the past – her palm thrust out as a wave of immensely dense power flew out from it and the totems that had emerged from the ground. Covering her vision entirely, her power instantly enveloped Ning Wu and Chen Wu’s positions and swallowed them in pure dawn light, in radiant Elysian energy, in the incredible light of the stars, tearing through the terrain with as much ease as a knife through paper. At the same time, mobilising half of her remaining power, she condensed all of it within the Bone of the Beast, leaping into the enormous storm of power while aiming for the one that had focused on offence, as she believed that he would be more easily dispatched.

Just as Ning Wu’s vision cleared for a moment, permitting him to reassess the situation after his robes had burnt, his hair turned to ash and he suffered several severe burns and wounds, he witnessed the impending arrival of a terrifying flame drake, the jaws of which hung open to devour his skull in one ferocious bite.

Slamming down onto his skin and flesh, it reverted into pure flame and heat that continued to feat upon him, slowly consuming his facial features.

Nevertheless, as Wei Yi drew closer to attempt a finishing blow, she felt the offensive energy generated by the Great continue to condense and, just as the Bone of the Beast approached his eye, fire out towards her. As the pure blast of metallic energy approached her, she was forced to choose whether she would give him an excellent opportunity to get away, or if she would risk destruction just to finish him off.

For her, neither option was suitable. Out of all of her forms of power, out of the obscure nature of her spiritual will and the destructive nature of her killing intent, her most fearsome ability was the only one that truly bore the label of Ascendant.

Her flesh turned golden, her form changed to one half dark and half light, a shroud of sunlight and moonlight surrounded her and her very form flashed out of existence just as the first beam would have struck. It passed through her and she immediately returned to existence, empowering the dagger further with the Martial Aspirant and Titanic Demolisher physique abilities in order to enlarge the weapon while also doubling the overall offensive potential of her strike. Together, these forces continued on their path to Ning Wu’s right eye.

By the look in his eye, it was obvious that the member of the Great family would readily barrage her with all kinds of insults and disparaging words had he been in a better position, as the two presumed members of the Great Yi had done, likely calling her some kind of disgusting insect that didn’t deserve to do even that much damage to him, but he appeared to understand the right time and place for such things. While the other concentrated points of energy continued to charge above him, he shifted all of his mirage-like anchors onto the path of her blade, making all of them unite together into a single glowing point that bent the very space around it, despite the stability of the Planar Continents themselves.

The doubled dagger points struck the anchors… or, rather, it hit the solidified air that the anchors stabilised through their mirages. They seemed to remain within the dantian of the Great that cultivated them, and these mirages were simply their influence upon the world around them, just as Wei Yi could stabilise large areas of energy through her own anchor.

On their own, every single one of these planar anchors were clearly inferior to her own, cultivated with techniques that still retained fragments of impurities in their core, but together, they contained even more power than the warp of the Kong Holy Grounds, stopping her blade in its tracks after it had pierced only a single centimetre into the mirage. With a cry emboldened by her fury, Wei Yi applied the full extent of the strength contained within her thin arms, which exploded and almost doubled in volume as the mirage was finally pierced.

However, that one moment was more than sufficient for Ning Wu to evade and remove a talisman from his robes, sticking it to his chest as it began to turn to ash and intensify his healing speed ten-fold.

Just as the knife was about to reach his new position, a second beam of energy struck its point and knocked it aside, rendering the attack completely ineffective, before a third pulse shot out at her head in the same way as her dagger had been aimed at his.

The very shifting of air before the planar energy would have been enough to shatter the skull of a first realm cultivator, regardless of the system of cultivation used, and the beam itself was even more powerful, but Wei Yi did not intend to back down, instead releasing all of her physique energy around herself and obliterating what remained of the training set that somehow still restrained some of her might, at which point the already mighty aura around her transformed entirely.

It should be known that in order to break through the realms of physique cultivation, one’s body must reach incredible heights. The first realm requires one to be eight times as strong as a normal individual, equating to the seventh stage of the Planar Pool realm, while the second and third require a strength that is sixteen and thirty-two times superior to the origin of the cultivation. Naturally, following this trend, Wei Yi’s own form, empowered by the Yin-Yang Ascendant physique and reinforced countless times through the five elements of cosmic energy, almost equating to the raw power of the first stage of Active Core, greatened even further by the kind of energy that she had been able to cultivate.

Her movements also accelerated immensely, allowing her to suddenly appear a step to the left without the use of the World’s Echo physique ability with a blacksmith’s hammer in hand. With a cry of exertion, she threw it at Ning Wu’s skull with so much force that it caused an enormous shockwave to burst out, dispersing the remaining smoke and dust around them from her earlier attack.

Barely before the hammer left her grip, her form already vanished and appeared in her original spot, where the beam had already passed her, and charged at Chen Wu, who had dispelled his defensive coin-based barrier and returned to attacking, tossing a few more coins into the air to arrange them into an offensive array of some kind that she was already focusing on Wei Yi, with his aim and concentration being disrupted only slightly when the shockwave struck the floating coins that nudged them back, although they barely moved due to the support of the mirage anchors.

The hammer, although it had been filled with power and speed, was still easy for Ning Wu to knock aside with the remaining beams of energy that had built up above him.

‘Their techniques, although they use somewhat different principles and systems, clearly share origins and have a similar structure. Both are hands-free, without the need for their personal movements, for what kind of heaven-blessed rulers of the world could possibly get their hands dirty? Even those two, the ones that imprisoned me, did not use their bodies until they had to seal me within the prison realm,’ she quickly analysed their actions and readily scanned their techniques for a better understanding of their structure. Although she found them abhorrent due to the ones that had created them and had used them to suppress all others that could have taken their place, she did not believe that they could not be turned against them, or, at the very least, be accounted for and dealt with in the future.

Fortunately, although she had been readily expending her power so far, her nascent rift was not too far behind in recovering it. Having reached a certain size of the rift prior to her exit from the Kong Prison Realm, it was now able to recover one tenth of her energy per four minutes.

That was slow on its own, but it had a slightly different effect while in the Planar Continents – whenever newly absorbed energy from the air, which was typically an immense amount due to the raw pull from the quantity of power that her anchor and technique, was enveloped by the cosmic mist from the nascent rift, it would quickly melt into her existing cultivation, allowing her to use it before even fully processing it and expanding her total pool of power.

As a result, her actual speed of regeneration was closer to a tenth per half a minute, meaning that in those few breaths of time that she had spent utilising purely physique energy, she had already recovered sufficiently to unleash another powerful strike – and that was exactly what she did. A weapon of pure cosmic light formed in her right hand, using the Frayed Blade technique as the base structure, and was then empowered further not only by the principles of Demonic Ire and the Hatred Split, but also by the Yang Elysian Storm, causing the light around it to distort in a manner that almost matched the many anchors she was up against.

In the face of the incoming barrage, she put up no defences other than the physique energy that surrounded her, fusing yin and yang to prevent it from searing all of her limited clothing into oblivion, and instead directed the majority of her power into the united technique. With how expensive the Yang Elysian Storm itself was to improve using the Truth of the Universe, she didn’t wish to waste the rest of her anchor points on another overly powerful technique that required the time and the opportunity to prepare for the best effect, and so she instead made up for the relative weakness of the Frayed Blade and the other techniques utilised by funnelling all of her power into this attack yet again, causing the warping effect to grow even more powerful and significant as she ignored their collective preparation to slaughter her.

The points of energy gathering in the air above Ning Wu and in the coins above Chen Wu completed charging and shot out at the same time as the Frayed Blade was ready to strike.

Both sides attacked at the exact same time, and while the united beams travelled far more quickly, the Hatred Split united with the power of the Yang Elysian Storm finally appeared to contain more might than their assault. Colliding roughly a third of the distance from Wei Yi to the Greats, two metallic forces found themselves unable to proceed as absolute sunlight overwhelmed them, and slim and nimble moonlight slid past them and surged further, disrupting the entire length of every single beam before crushing them entirely.

Although that initial moment seemed to drag on forever, the rest of the energy’s journey was strangely brief. In just one instant, her storm-like power was only a single brief moment from carving into their flesh, piercing their vulnerable areas and, hopefully, splitting them into naught.

Somehow, both of her foes decided on the same defence… and placed their anchors before her once more. The last time, her strike was momentarily stopped by the anchors before passing through them without a single scratch being made to any one of them. This time appeared to be similar, but just as the Hatred Split was about to pass the mirage anchors, she suddenly heard something shatter.