V3C21: Searching for the Mirrored Realm

On the next day, exactly a minute after midnight, Min Lian reminded Wei Yi that it was her birthday, and that she had turned 41 just like that.

It was not something that deserved any kind of celebration, so after the assassin repeated that she would always remain loyal to the Scorching Blades, they snuck out of the district yet again, finding few new security measures appearing since the sudden invasion and quick defeat of the Mirror Plane Aberration illusory mirror layer.

After that brief appearance of the Great Aberrant, Wei Yi had been able to deduce a few things about the Great Aberrant, although the piece of information that had greatest significance to her was the direction from which that mirror layer originated. So far, everything seemed to suggest that this action, at the very least, was rather poorly thought out, so she hoped that the Great Aberrant had not taken the time to disguise the direction from which he invaded, meaning that he would be somewhere to the north of the Ning District, or, at the very least, one of his hideout was bound to be in that direction.

She did not think that she would be able to defeat him today, nor did she think that she had a high chance of discovering him on her first attempt, but she was feeling confident in escaping him as the energy that he had used to congeal that mirror layer appeared to be in the fourth realm, and the physique energy that she managed to borrow from it, apparently belonging to a Mirrored Being physique, did not give her the same impression as some of the most powerful physiques she had encountered so far. Whether he was actually in the Active Core realm, or whether there was more to the physique that she could not yet discover before awakening it, she concluded that it was reasonable to assume that he could not, or would not, use energy more powerful than that without a serious threat being presented against him, at which point he could potentially unleash a more devastating ability at the cost of a recovery process, or his general health.

‘I can easily hide my prowess in most fields, so it should be easy enough to convince him that I am not a significant threat to whatever plans he has – unless he recognises me as the person that shattered the mirror layer, at which point I will naturally need to react according to his actual power.’

Since such things tended to be rather varied from person to person, with everything from core techniques to random trinkets coming into play during a battle, and that meant that raw realm was not necessarily the defining factor. Wei Yi was the prime example of this, since her planar cultivation was only in the third realm, but it alone provided strength equivalent to the fourth realm, with a killing will in the fifth realm and a physique in the fourth realm that, altogether, allowed her to survive encounters like those with the Greats that would otherwise obliterate any normal cultivator.

Then again, such immense differences in power could not usually be produced by normal means, so unless the Great Aberrant was another otherworldly demon or a secret member of the Great Families, he should not be able to exceed the power of the fifth realm, as the gaps in realms grew with every single realm. Someone in the fourth realm acquired ten times the power of a normal person – not in terms of physical strength, of course – whereas the fifth realm granted the cultivator forty times their initial ability per stage. The stages of the sixth realm, on the other hand, granted someone one hundred and twenty times their initial strength, a gap that was significantly more difficult to cross.

‘I think I’m starting to overthink things again…’ she muttered to herself, advancing on.

Having some kind of clear and obvious trail to follow to the Great Aberrant’s location would have been best, but either he or his abilities were too clever to allow for such glaring flaws, and as such the most she had was the rough direction of movement from the time that the layer of mirrors entered her spiritual perception until it shattered.

This wasn’t ideal, especially considering the fact that if the leader of the Mirror Plane Aberrations was truly as foolish as he could be, then he could have easily gone to all sorts of places before finally invading the Ning District, meaning that heading directly north would be a flawed plan.

It was for this reason that after she had reached the edge of what her spiritual perception had been able to detect back at the Refiner’s Duel, she told Min Lian to take a different path, instructing her to go to any nearby points of interest and investigate whether any sightings of the floating mirror plane had occurred, then follow them to confirm their validity. Meanwhile, she would travel in a straight line, where they will hopefully be able to unite and discover the location from which the layer had originated, although it would also be fine if one of them found the origin point and was able to inform the other afterwards, although Wei Yi would certainly prefer it to be her that discovers it, rather than the assassin, due to her actually possessing the ability to do something about it while Min Lian was still essentially powerless while in the second realm.

She was advancing swiftly and steadily, but it was far from enough, no matter how competent of an assassin she was. If she cannot pierce the core of someone in the fourth realm or above, she is nothing more than a momentary distraction to most opponents at that realm, which, given that the Great Aberrant was unlikely to be lower than that, meant that all she could do upon discovering a potential origin point is stay far enough away not to catch attention.

Wei Yi sighed to herself when she and the assassin had come far enough apart from one another, ‘Perhaps I will find a planar stone somewhere out there, as that would speed things up greatly.’

Such things were significantly more rare than planar shards, naturally, and would typically be enough for someone in the second and third realms to achieve at least one full stage, although it was far more likely to be two or three, depending on one’s cultivation and technique. When she had absorbed the entirety of the third Lock Obelisk’s energy and only progressed by a small amount, that was due to the absolutely excessive quantity of energy required to attain a perfected realm and stage every single time. That, and the characters deciding to devour most of the energy.

To the north of the district was a small road that advanced into the forests around the district, with the trees growing progressively closer and closer to the road itself before it slowly shrunk into nothingness. Only a small and thin path remained after that, barely sufficient for someone as tall as her to travel through without clearing some of the excess branches as she went, but it did not remain that way for long, as it expanded very gradually until, suddenly, the forest cleared entirely.

An enormous plain lay before her, small rolling hills dotting its surface and a number of visible planar beasts frolicking on its surface. Most of the grass grew to be a metre tall, shading the entire area with a vibrant, verdant green.

As a soft wind passed through the plains, their entire surface shifted slightly, following the wind as they rocked back and forth.

It could be said to be a pleasant sight, if not for the fact that quite a few patches of grass were oddly grey and decayed, moving in ways that could not be caused naturally by the wind that Wei Yi was currently experiencing, and at times appeared to break the very laws of matter itself as the grass stalks reflected and refracted within unseen mirrors, multiplying at times and almost vanishing at others, fading into some kind of different realm.

“Well, that’s certainly a confirmation of his presence,” she said to herself, her voice fading away into the grass before her, ‘Whether this is in any way connected to the layer of mirrors that overwhelmed the district is another question entirely, one that required some further investigation.’

To get a better view of the plains, she leapt onto the tallest tree in sight with a few chained aerial platforms, keeping the top of the tree stable with killing will while she looked around, looking for any kind of pattern to the grey spots, any hints of where they could be coming from, what might have caused them to remain in place, or anything else that could give her any idea of where the Mirror Plane Aberrations were based. Wei Yi was also curious about the full extent of the mirrored spots, like whether they extended into the ground and the air or if they were focused specifically on the solid matter in the area or the blades of grass themselves.

From above, it appeared that it was not that precise, instead being more alike to small clouds of mirror-like energy floating beside certain patches of grass, just above the ground but low enough to hide that fact from the casual observers. There were even times when individual blades of grass went outside of the mirrored cloud, but that tended to be brief and uneventful.

It did show that, at least to the grass itself, these strange clouds of visual deformation did not appear to be harmful, and that it did not appear to prohibit one from entering or leaving them, although it was almost certain that this version of the mirrored effect differed from the mirrored layer – which she established mostly from the absence of the terrible abominations rather than anything else – and the Mirror Plane Aberration’s goal of creating their mirror plane, whatever that kind of effort would even involve.

All of these mirrored spaces, from afar, appeared to share the yin nature of the mirror layer, so they were likely to be consumable by her physique energy, but their difference made Wei Yi rather reluctant to attempt it, especially due to how low the benefit from it would be.

‘Then again, it is possible that the Great Aberrant is using these for observation and detection, so if I was to absorb these spaces, I could alert him to my presence,’ she thought, ‘I don’t sense any traces of spiritual will or any other kind of mental energy connecting these to anything, but it could be either as imperceptible as my spiritual will, or something that I have not yet understood, such as the mirage anchors had been during my first encounter with the Greats.’

Once more, there was no necessity to keep dwelling on this, as she couldn’t possibly act in a way that would deal with all possible instances at the same time in a satisfactory manner, so she kept up her stealth techniques and surrounded herself with the energy of the Binder of the Dark, making sure to be as ready to attack, defend, escape or negotiate – depending on the circumstances – as she could possibly be without already knowing what kind of situation she would need to be dealing with afterwards.

She leapt off the tree, landing softly onto the grass, then continued through the plains, attempting to follow the general direction indicated by the mirrored spaces, although it was quite likely that they were simply random and that the shape of these plains, with part of the forest continuing on either side with far fewer trees than there were behind her, caused it to look like they originated from the north.

That wasn’t much of a concern, though. ‘If that is the case, then once the plains widen, I shall be able to see the random pattern clearly, and then I can change my approach and investigate the spaces themselves with greater attention to the more minor details that I might have otherwise overlooked. In addition, perhaps there will be something of interest at the end of these plains, or at the beginning of something more than an enormous flat field. I won’t come across a district through such a brief walk, but I might be able to locate a small settlement of some kind, perhaps something like that village where cultivation was accomplished through the consumption of the blood of planar beasts.’

The majority of Yi City’s population lived in the districts for many different reasons, whether it was safety, comfort or convenience, and if she had lived in the time of the Master of Yi City, or only shortly afterwards, she would have likely not encountered many people living outside of the districts, as there would be no reason to do so unless they were ardent enemies of Kong Shi Meng. After he left this world, however, and the walls of each district slowly began to recede, some were left on the outside, whereas others thought to head out of them to attempt to reclaim that which they had lost, occasionally returning with great power and wealth. Most of the time, they did not, and instead remained somewhere out there with their companions.

In time, that proximity and isolation fostered relationships, and eventually, with the occasional arrival of new residents from other attempts to acquire lost items, small communities that were incapable of returning grew within the wilderness.

After the many, many years that had passed, more than a million years, everything about their surroundings districts was entirely forgotten, leading to the primitive cultures that they had to resort to in order to be able to survive. Some of the more specific behaviours, like cultivation through blood, likely originated from various superstitions or fragmented techniques that had been passed down to the descendant’s of the original group, which they then turned to in order to endure the harsh environment around them.

There was also a small possibility that someone had been passing through the area and had decided to encourage certain practises while subduing others, but that required too much effort to be likely.

Then again…

‘People in the Planar Continents, especially those that are far too powerful to have many opponents or those that are from another world and wield some kind of ridiculous ability, have a little too much time on their hands, so perhaps it isn’t that outlandish at all. The particular village that I had come across could have been influenced by the Blood-tinged Church at some point, or someone trying to experiment with various techniques on people that had few of them.’

She caught herself getting unnecessarily distracted, so she activated her movement techniques and accelerated her journey through the plains, rushing past the many mirrored spaces at a speed that was just low enough to maintain her stealth techniques, just in case, while her spiritual perception followed behind her as closely as it could to scout for anything of note within her surroundings.

For quite some time, there was nothing at all, just more grass, more mirrored spaces, more small hills that wouldn’t be enough for most to hide behind, no matter how short and insignificant they would otherwise be, with the grass itself being far better as cover than any of the geographical formations on the plains. Every now and then, she would near an animal or a planar beast that would either notice something amiss and step away or remain in place and continue munching on the long grass that grew all around them.

After a kilometre or so, she had still not encountered any people, but the road that had initially brought her here reappeared, separating the grass plains and slowly growing to be wide enough to fit a regular carriage.

What this did give her the opportunity to confirm was that the mirrored spaces were concentrated towards the direction in which she was travelling, as the further away from this road she observed with her spiritual perception, the fewer of these spaces she witnessed, until they essentially disappeared entirely at the edge of her perception. Assuming that this wasn’t another coincidence, she decided to follow the road until it either led her to something of note, or until the mirrored spaces before her also began to thin out and disappear, at which point there would be little reason to continue blindly unless she located some other form of hint to the Great Aberrant’s activities.

So, she continued, on and on, until, about as suddenly as the plains and the mirrored spaces appeared, she came across a small stick stuck into the ground, with a black and grey ribbon tied to the top of it, fluttering in the wind alongside the grass. It was placed atop a small mound in the road, one that was otherwise entirely inconspicuous.

On the other hand, Wei Yi could clearly sense what the stick and ribbon were likely meant to mark, as, right below it, under several inches of strangely dense and solid dirt, lay several planar stones without any supervision or protection, other than the material that covered them.

‘Uh… What exactly am I seeing here? Did someone leave behind several full planar stones just like that? W-Why?’ she wondered, bewildered by how poorly something of this value was hidden, ‘I’m certain I’m not missing anything in terms of defensive arrays, traps, or anything else of the sort, so what the fuck have I just come across? And… why is this surprising me to such an extent? As I had thought before, the Planar Continents are full of strange people, and I could have easily bypassed some simpler defensive measure without realising due to the numerous intrinsic defences that I possess, whether it is the Third Eye or my powerful body.’

At the moment, it didn’t matter, as her cultivation had been mostly stagnant for a very long time, and something with a great quantity of energy was absolutely essential.

‘Yi Shi Ming, would you be able to place something into the prison realm while it is underground?’

“Underground? Oh, I see what you have discovered. I am afraid that I cannot currently do so, as I need most of the surface of the planar stones to be uncovered before I can take any action. Ah Shi Meng had not intended the transportation array to be used to transport items, so it must be placed upon or below the surface of that which is it to be transported,” she replied from within the Kong Prison Realm, beginning to create the exit array within it, “You were hoping to remove it secretly, I presume?”

‘Whoever left these here is bound to return, at which point I would prefer them to take as long as possible to discover their absence,’ Wei Yi replied, transforming her left hand and digging the claws into the ground to lift the entire dirt cover from the planar stones, ‘Give me a moment to shield these, and then you can begin.’

After releasing a cloud of Binder of the Dark energy to obscure everything, congealing some of her killing will into an illusory array, she watched as the total of nine planar stones fell into the prison realm, disappearing from the face of the Planar Continents.

Immediately, she dispersed both forms of energy and placed the hard dirt back onto its original location, shaping the area around it to hide any evidence of her claws or general tampering, then left.

She was already uncertain whether she could deal with the Great Aberrant, and now that she had gained several potential stages, it made no sense to rush into potential conflict before acquiring and accumulating them. Having already found quite a few interesting things, she could always return and consolidate her knowledge with Min Lian before setting out once more at the third or fourth stage, which would effectively put her at the fifth or seventh stage due to her perfected stages.

If, by some stroke of fortune, she reached the sixth stage, then she would experience an effective breakthrough in realm, acquiring some powerful ability that would effectively allow her to match or surpass the fourth realm without much difficulty. At that point, she would be more than ready to confront the likes of the Great Aberrant, with her confidence becoming far greater than ever before.

“I apologise for my-”

“Stop that and just say what you have managed to discover.”

“Yes. I had found a small, abandoned camp that appeared to have been in use not too long ago, which had several sets of footprints leading from it. I followed them, seeking their origin, but once I reached the edge of the forest, I had lost my way entirely and had been unable to proceed. I suspect the presence of some confounding array, but I have been unable to confirm the existence of such,” Min Lian said, bowing just low enough to make it obvious but high enough to avoid earning Wei Yi’s ire.

“Oh. So that’s why it had been hidden so poorly… You’ve not missed much, Min Lian, as I was there as well, except the confounding array did nothing to stop me. If I am not mistaken…” she pulled a map to herself with her killing will and unfurled it on the wall, creating numerous killing will points that she then scattered across the map based on the location of the mirror spaces in reality, “Hm, not quite what a confounding array would need to look like, unless the height is also of relevance, in which case, raising these and these…”

“That must be it, Master. I felt my vision distort just from that, but, in the future, I should be able to resolve it on my own. I will not make the same mistake again.”

“No need for that. You and I are going to have a little break – for cultivation purposes.”