V3C23: Mysterious Silver-Leaf

The arrays were cleaned up and Min Lian successfully reached the peak of the second realm, being only a few drops of planar energy away from the third, so they collectively took a break in order to adjust to their new strengths, although the only one that truly needed to do so was Wei Yi, as her planar energy had grown in power immensely after what was effectively eight consecutive breakthroughs. With each stage, her planar energy’s ability had increased by the equivalent of five stages in the second realm, meaning that, effectively, she had gone through the entirety of the second realm four times.

If she was to go out and attempt to do something basic, like refining a pill or holding back an attack, she could easily complete the mathematical calculation for how much less strength she would need to use, but actually doing it was a little more difficult.

Furthermore, she also obtained a new form of planar energy, a new combined element, so understanding it was essential to being able to use it effectively, whether it was useful in refinement, combat, defence, construction or any other field. Even if all it could do was encourage crops to grow – which was unlikely given the fact that the wood element already offered the ability to support the smooth growth of most planar herbs – there were uses for it that had to be discovered and applied.

Before she could deal with such delicate potential applications, she naturally needed to work out her full strength, so she rose and looked towards the one indestructible thing within this prison realm, the Ascendant’s Library. It was a manifestation of her mental structure and could not be affected by the physical prison realm no matter what she or anyone else did, meaning that it was perfect for this.

She manifested a blade from killing will, not wishing to damage any actual weapons, and sent her cosmic energy into it according to the shape of a common artefact, ignoring the cracks that immediately appeared on the solid energy’s surface. By the looks of it, with the empowerment of the planar energy, it was now able to damage even her own energy constructs, meaning that creating an item that could withstand her cosmic energy became even more pressing than before. With a moment of thought, she decided to make use of the Scorching Blade technique, as it would be simultaneously the most destructive pure application of planar energy without the necessity for the combination of multiple techniques but would also yield quite the fantastic sight.

Cosmic light focused around the killing will blade, not quite transforming into heat or flame, instead brightening and filling with more nebulae than most of her energy, the stars within them glowing so brightly that they almost blended together into an enormous cloud of light.

As more and more cracks appeared on the weapon’s surface, she did not spend any more time building up the power of the attack, instead transitioning into the first movement of the technique – Dragon’s Wrath. The cosmic light surged from her weapon, the form of a dragon’s head emerging from it as it normally would, but then it changed suddenly and entirely, the dragon warping into an impossible amalgam of shape and colour that flew at immense speed at the illusory wall of the library, striking it and exploding into a sphere of absolute energy.

The surface of the ground was torn away, all of the air melted beyond a gaseous substance, and the three of them were thrown back, with Yi Shi Ming stopping herself first and assisting the other two with a barrier made from a small quantity of her and the prison realm’s energy, which was easily able to resist the remaining shockwave.

However, this shockwave did not appear to be the least of their problems, as what was left behind was akin to a literal star, a huge sphere burning with such brightness that it even illuminated the mental library and domain without existing within it. It spun on the spot slowly, bright flares of pure white light occasionally bursting from it, and it did appear to be shrinking slowly, but the pace was incredibly slow and almost made it seem like it was going to remain in place for the rest of all eternity.

“This… Now this is certainly what I’d expect from something that is called cosmic energy,” Wei Yi muttered, realising that she might have made an even more incredible change to her technique than she had anticipated.

To truly understand and regulate her strength, something this insane was unsuitable, so she instead used the Gentle Breeze Strike to gain a better grasp over her energy, using the enormous sphere of burning energy as a target in an attempt to get it to decay a little more quickly. She could, in theory, have just absorbed the energy that it was made from, but she found that it did not work due to the entire star being made from the natural materials of the world, that being the air and ground, just at an insane level of heat and stabilised significantly by the wonders of the Scorching Blade’s interactions with the Ascendant’s Path technique, nearly giving it a permanent place in the world through a piece of the Great Dao.

Due to her ability rising to this level, it was a little more difficult to provide an exact mathematical comparison between her current and previous states, made even more difficult by the fact that she did not know how much of this came from the cultivation stages and what was caused by the transformation of her cultivation technique, but one thing that she could determine with some certainty was that if she encountered another one of the Greats any time soon, they would not be an impossible foe to defeat, even if she fought them fairly, without surprises or tricks.

‘Not that those bastards deserve a fair fight, or anything of the sort,’ she added mentally, punching at the decaying star once more as it finally lost stability and began to diminish in size more and more quickly, eventually shrinking down into a head-sized sphere and falling onto the stone-hard burnt dirt with a dull thud.

When it did not immediately vanish, Wei Yi slowly approached it and lifted the ball of metal, picking it up without much difficulty due to her physique, and finding it to be a hand-sized orb of magnesium.

“So… Does anyone have any clue what just happened here?”

Neither the assassin nor the spatial spirit was able to offer an answer, forcing her to turn to the orb of metal for an answer. It wasn’t expected to speak, of course, but she believed that if she was able to understand exactly what she was now holding in her hands, she might be able to deduce more about the strange transformation of the Dragon’s Wrath move, or perhaps even learn more about her new cosmic energy as a whole.

She held it tightly in her right hand, then, transforming her left into the killing will form, she carefully struck the top of the sphere, applying the principles of several techniques in order to break the object in half smoothly.

The inside of the item appeared to be made from several layers, separated by hotter segments of metal. The first was magnesium mixed with some other substances, then some kind of blue and grey metallic substance mixed with sulphur, then nickel mixed with pure iron. After that, the final layer, the very centre of the sphere, was only as large as her thumb, but it appeared to not only weigh almost nothing at all, but was also something that she couldn’t recognise from the top of her head, forcing her to plunge into the library in search of any document that might be relevant to it.

Seeing as it was the product of a miniature star, she naturally searched through the few documents in her memory that spoke about stars, whether those that fell from the sky or those that were still up there, flipping through books regarding theories on celestial arrays, the nature of the heavens, the true forms of stars, whether or not the celestial bodies could be used as a means of prophesizing or predicting the future, and much, much more.

Just like how the moon and sun captured the imagination of all that saw them, and forever trapped the minds of those that could read or hear of them without ever laying eyes upon them, the stars and the cosmos had long enraptured the world with its potential.

At the fifth realm, temporarily standing in the air was possible, and in the sixth realm, and displayed by Chen Jushu, it was possible to levitate by using planar energy to resonate with the ground and keep oneself in the air. Once one reached the seventh realm, it should be possible to achieve freer flight due to the acquisition of chaotic halos, and the eighth and ninth should further boost those abilities to the point that one could fly with few to no restrictions. And yet, despite the plentiful number of those cultivators in the time of the Master of Yi City, not a single one had ever written down their experience of surpassing the world and reaching space, meaning that there was either some kind of immense secret there that all of them hid, or that it was not something within their reach.

This made things far more intriguing for everyone, as the peak realms were those that possessed power close to outright omnipotence, so for something to be able to restrict them meant that they were either in the domain of the heavens, which were naturally above the powers that they bestowed, or something that presented a potential further realm for the mortal cultivators of the world, which was naturally extremely appealing to all who had built up enough power to eventually reach the peak of the known nine realms.

Everyone had a different theory on what the secret the stars held. Some thought that their shapes, constellations and colours were connected to the very river of time, which would allow one to predict the future using them.

That theory had been a little more popular in the Daoist Continent, where they used many divination methods to decide their paths and future, but it did not take hold in the Western Continent, where it was more commonly accepted that the paths of the stars conveyed complex secrets of the heavens that could be learnt, imitated, adapted and then used as techniques, cultivation methods and even forbidden skills, one of which might have led to the Broken Sky Brand.

Others thought that the stars contained no such things, and that those technique were created through the insight of the cultivators themselves, and that the stars were instead part of the solar system alongside the moon and sun, and that more could be learnt through their actual structure and substance, as that would be bound to yield greater results.

One of the people that the document regarding this claimed was in favour of this theory was actually the Master of Yi City himself, and after a little inquiry with Yi Shi Ming, it became obvious why.

In his former world, the stars were supposedly the same as the sun itself, and they lived on a planet that was spherical, orbiting the sun regularly alongside a number of other planets and moons. There were various stars, which were powered by some kind of magical and yet entirely ordinary force that was able to transform materials into different ones, almost like alchemical transformation, despite the absence of planar energy and all of its manifestations within the world that was centred on the planet known as Orbis.

To her, such a thing seemed fantastical, but plausible, especially considering the fact that the otherworldly powers from that place were just as fantastic, whereas the small star that she had just created appeared to achieve that very effect, condensing metal from the air and ground.

Finally, after a great deal of mental time and effort, she found something that appeared to match the description of the dark and incredibly light metal inside of the star sphere, which was labelled simply as star metal within the dusty tome. According to the information within it, the metal was nearly perfect for use as a weapon or as armour, as they would not encumber one in the slightest, would not break or shatter or shift with heat, would not stain nor grow dirty, and would simply be a miracle in every way imaginable. The reason that this substance has not yet overtaken the world is that it was immensely rare, and nigh impossible to shape, as it arrived onto the world from the heavens in the incredibly resistant state that made it so desirable.

In fact, it was said that the best skillset to manipulate the star metal was not that of a blacksmith, but that of a tailor.

‘That’s where I differ from most of the previous blacksmiths, however. I not only know of an otherworldly demon that can shape metal and cloth freely, but I have the Red Shaper’s Touch, a physique that is bound to be able to manage something similar while enhancing the metal even further, if such a thing is even possible,’ she thought, looking at the two halves of the metal, ‘It likely broke due to still being hot, rather than my own strength… The only problem is that it is rather limited, and I highly doubt that replicating it time and time again will be easy – such things do not tend to be easy, after all.’

The consumption of planar energy to create that star was not too insane, using only a third of her planar pool, so she naturally tried it again, throwing a sun of the similar size into the air to investigate whether the ground was essential to the creation of the star metal.

It struck them with a similar shockwave of force, but as they were more prepared, they only experienced their hair being thrown about and little more.

Perhaps due to the lack of whatever was in the prison realm’s ground, the star lasted far less, and what dropped out of it at the end was only magnesium and nothing else. For this reason, she naturally attempted this again after recovering a little bit of her energy through the nascent rift, but, as if the prison realm itself was rejecting the technique, she only obtained the same result.

“Shit. Do either of you know of a way to create more metal from nothing?”

Min Lian shook her head immediately, whereas Yi Shi Ming thought for a few moments before shaking her head. The Scorching Blades, from what Wei Yi knew about them, did teach their assassins a whole host of different techniques, but the generation of metal was not one of them. It also appeared that the Master of Yi City had never spoken about any experiments to achieve such a thing to his mother, or that those memories were too insignificant and were eventually lost to time, effectively resulting in the same thing.

Thus, there was only one more thing to try.

‘As I’ve decided to temporarily call it following the example of the other elements, Mysterious Silver-Leaf,’ she released a small quantity of her planar energy while it was still in the form of that silver-like metal and wood energy, infusing all of it directly into half of the sphere that was in her hands.

No immediate reaction followed, prompting her to glance up at the site of the last attempted star, but when she felt the planar energy within the metal disappear extremely suddenly, her gaze shot down at the product of her work. From the open side of the sphere, small branches and leaves began to emerge from each of the metals, growing the fastest from magnesium and the slowest from the star metal, but that did not change the fact that the metal was indeed growing – and that did mean that it was growing still, taking in the planar energy from the air and slowly gaining additional mass. The magnesium, iron, sulphur and silicon were all progressing more quickly, with the magnesium having branches that were half a metre long whereas the star metal gained only a centimetre or two.

That was still an additional centimetre, however, and it only cost her a small fraction of her planar energy before it would continue to grow, possibly without any limit and time restriction.

It was like a dream come true.

“Min Lian, please locate a few hatred avatars that had some understanding of planar arrays and ask them to set up planar gathering arrays around these two halves of the star sphere. Harvest all of the materials regularly, and produce them into whatever is useful for the prison realm, and leave the star metal for Fu Zan and me, splitting them in half so that neither one of us can waste the materials that the other might find a better use for,” she said, infusing both halves of the sphere with more than half of her planar energy pool to stimulate the metallic growth as much as possible, “Do you understand?”

“Absolutely, Master. I shall complete your task immediately. Should I personally inform Fu Zan as well?”

“No, don’t. I’ll talk to him myself and see whether he knows anything about the star metal. Perhaps the people of his world had come across it before, and know of some methods of handling it in a more effective manner than blindly throwing physiques and otherworldly gifts at it,” she answered, shaving off the grown star metal from one of the halves to show to the otherworldly demon, “Come back the moment that you’re done.”

The assassin did not provide another acknowledgement, instead rushing off to do what she had been told while Wei Yi departed straight to the centre of Beast’s Rest, where Fu Zan now resided and, from what she could see through her dominion over this realm, was actively working on another nonsensical item alongside some new line of underwear for men.

Although the latter product did look useful, it was completely irrelevant in comparison to the potential applications of star metal, so she did not hesitate to appear there with Yi Shi Ming’s assistance and throw that design out of his hands, placing the star metal into them instead.

“Have you ever seen this before?”

“Eh… What just-”

“I partially control the entire prison realm, so is it really that surprising that I can appear wherever I like? Now, answer.”

“I don’t think so. This looks very much like a sci-fi material, so if it did exist, I wouldn’t have ever come near it,” he replied, taking a closer look at the branch and leaf-like structure of the metal as well as it’s immense resistance to force, “Looks really strong, though. I’d imagine you’d need a very good blacksmith to work with this particular substance.”

“It apparently requires the expertise of a tailor.”

“Then, go and… Wait, what? Tailor? Are you telling me to weave it into a shirt or something?”

“No. I lack any concrete techniques on exploiting this material, so all I can tell you is what others have written down in the past. The most I can say with certainty is that your ability should be able to make use of the metal to some extent, and that I will not allow you to do anything stupid with it, as it is very precious at the moment. For this reason, I have taken some of your past designs and made them a little more reasonable. Have a look,” she said, placing a diagram for the gauntlet design she had come up while improvising with entirely unsuitable materials.

“This looks… This actually looks cool! It’s got the pointy claws, but you can also use them because the bottom is made from cloth or something similar instead!”

“Yes, that’s the entire point. I will admit that I do not dislike most of the designs you convert from your previous world, but their impracticality has constantly tempted me to get rid of them – which I might have done once or twice… Can you attempt to shape these gauntlets using your ability and that metal?”

“I will try!” he explained with great enthusiasm, grabbing the metal and focusing on it intensely.

As no progress would be made while she looked at him, Wei Yi shut her eyes for a few moments before opening them to find a series of incredibly thin plates of metal laid out in the vague shape of a hand, with a few plates on the side that didn’t appear to fit in anywhere.

When she glanced at Fu Zan, he explained, “I didn’t have any material for the gloves beneath the metal, so it worked out a little bit like this.”

“That’s fine, possibly even preferable. I have a few tests I wish to perform on these, so it is possible that you will need to make them like this even when you do have all of your materials on hand,” she said, taking one of the spare pieces of metal and attempting to snap or bend them. A light application of force did nothing, and even when she infused her planar and physique energy into her arms in an attempt to damage the star metal even slightly, all she managed to do was deform it so insignificantly that it would likely never be noticed. “That book wasn’t lying about this star metal, then. Now, what if I…”

She followed her words with the activation of the Red Shaper’s Touch, infusing its energy into the material while not wishing it to actively transform in terms of shape or appearance, instead focusing everything about the physique onto enhancing the star metal even further, intending to turn it into something that surpassed the vast majority of materials to begin with.

Her physique energy ebbed away rapidly, more than half of the incredibly powerful Yin-Yang Ascendant energy sinking into the star metal as it gained just a little bit of mass from the energy, or perhaps through some unknown process that transformed the very structure of the material.

Either way, when she repeated her experiment, the plate was even tougher than before, remaining unbent and unbroken despite everything she tried to do to it, excluding throwing another star at it as she did not want to damage Beast’s Rest any more than necessary, especially after having caused a significant amount of noise from the many attempts to break the star metal even slightly.

“Well then, I suppose I have half of what I need to complete my first gauntlet,” she muttered to herself, turning to Fu Zan, “I’ll take these and enhance them, while you should work on getting more practise with this metal. You’ll be getting more of it in a while, but try not to waste it on non-functional designs, as the star metal grows incredibly slowly and there is too little of it to perform experiments that may not yield positive results even if they succeed. Is that clear?”

“You don’t need to worry – I think I’ve figured it out!”

She frowned and took a step away from him, as his eyes gleamed and planar energy actively surrounded him, granting him a slight violet glow, “What exactly have you figured out?”

“The beauty of practical equipment! For so long, I had been influenced by the games and blatant fan service, but now I see what I must do! To truly use my ability in a good way, I must create things that are practical but sexy!”

“… You go do that. I won’t be sticking around,” Wei Yi said, using the World’s Echo physique ability to depart before he had the opportunity to do anything strange, ‘Has the otherworldly madness finally manifested within him, or has he just gone insane from constantly attempting and failing to create something that could actually be made and worn by his customers? I certainly don’t mind either of the things he is striving for, but with his track record so far, I highly doubt his ability to succeed… I need to check that he isn’t going to do something stupid – more stupid, that is – won’t I?’

Wei Yi rolled her eyes and looked into the room through her mental version of the prison realm, but found something contrary to her initial impression. Instead, she saw the man sitting at his desk and working on an outfit that was entirely different from everything he had ever created before. It wasn’t that the design itself was particularly different, with this one being just as suited for a prostitute as most of his other creations, but the design was no longer a flat drawing on a piece of paper. Now, it radiated his creativity, his passion and his inspiration in order to appear more three dimensional and believable. With the addition of the sensible design, drawn around a figure that resembled one of the first people he had slept with in the prison realm, it seemed like the design could just jump out of the sheet and walk around, or perhaps be worn by another without issue.

‘Not only was that quick, but also far better than most of his past work. Has his ability improved in some manner or is he actually someone with a reasonable head on his shoulders, just one that is typically misused?’ she could continue to ask herself questions, but as she didn’t know the answers to any of them, she saw no reason to do so, instead stepping away and finding a place to wait for Min Lian to complete her task.

Of course, she would need to take a closer look at everything eventually, but that would require greater insight into otherworldly abilities in order to be of any use, which she did not currently possess and wasn’t sure where to obtain it from.

Ideally, she would eventually come across an otherworldly ability that she could absorb that would also be able to inform her about others, as she might then be able to scan their bodies for the azure light and forcefully activate the Truth of the Universe in order to repel it, leaving them with a weaker, but seemingly safe version of the gift, although even that wouldn’t be a flawless solution due to how draining it appeared to be on the characters themselves. At most, she would be able to deal with an otherworldly demon a week, so long as more powerful cultivators and azure lights did not require more energy to handle.

That, and there was a possibility that the characters were only able to send away an unbound azure light, which would mean that this tactic is entirely ineffective.

‘On that note, I should check the House of Gold. My initial theory had been that it would grow according to my own development, so perhaps I will not be able to fit more than just my… where was I going with that… Anyway…’ she briefly checked that her mental domain was still in a good state, then sank her spiritual will into the spatial storage.

Everything within was still in a good state, but when she found a few things to toss into it, she found that she was indeed able to fill it beyond the previous limit, with the new storage capacity appearing to be roughly one and a half metres squared. This was not a great increase, of course, but it meant that the rise in her power would indeed increase the size of the House of Gold, which, assuming that this growth was as exponential as cultivation itself, would mean that the fourth or fifth realm would allow her enough space to throw whatever she wants into the storage space without worry.

Once she emptied the House of Gold of everything that she had just thrown into it, she sat down and began to work upon the first of the many plates. It would take a lot of time for her to complete the enhancement of all of them, but it was bound to only get easier with experience.