V3C26: Fractured Revelation

Even at the end of their chat, Chen Jushu wasn’t awfully fond of the idea of an infiltration being conducted by someone with no clear experience, much like Chu Huazhi, and she presented a similar stance as he did, making it clear that if she did not clearly display her allegiance at the beginning of an assault against the Aberrations, she would be struck down like any other member of the Mirror Plane Aberrations.

This was fine, especially considering the fact that she did not expect to remain weak enough to be easily slain by someone in the fifth realm within a few months, when the Aberrations would be likely to allow her enough understanding of the cult in order to be able to figure out the identity and location of the Great Aberrant himself.

For this reason, she concluded the interrogation with Chen Jushu, neither of them ultimately saying anything out loud, and returned to the Chu Alchemical Store and picked up a few more things for herself, alongside some ingredients that were metallic in nature but could also be used for the pill requested by the Aberrations, as she was certain that they were paying attention to her and she would lose nothing at all just through obtaining more ingredients to grow within the prison realm and acting in a more convincing manner.

Once she had given herself enough time to ‘complete’ a pill, during which she was actually working on prompting more herbs to grow, she left the residence once more and headed to the part of the district that she was meant to deliver her items to.

Before she even had the chance to put those items in the correct location, she could already sense the man with the spot on his neck approaching her, although she pretended to do so only afterwards.

“Ah, it’s… you. I don’t believe you ever introduced yourself.”

“I was far too consumed with spreading word of the Great Aberrant to speak about myself, of course. Even now, we have little time. If you have any faith at all in our great master, then come with me. I shall show you to a place that truly demonstrates his will!”

‘Very quick. Something is definitely happening, and I cannot say that I’m very happy about this sudden change. Nonetheless, perhaps he had some time to consider his recruitment policy, and has now decided to speak with actions rather than words,’ Wei Yi considered for a moment before following him, for she was curious to learn where this was going regardless of the role she was playing at the moment.

Apparently, that man was so eager that he didn’t even bother checking the things that she had prepared, reaching into that hidden spot and removing the pill from it and rushing away immediately, forcing Wei Yi to chase after him the moment that she completed some basic instructions for Min Lian and sent them away through spiritual will.

The man led her to the very edge of the district, to the great walls that protected it since the time of the Master of Yi City, where there was a small shack that was extremely uninteresting in almost every single way. There were traces of it once belonging to someone, but they were so ancient that it seemed to be half the age of the walls themselves, with the door having fallen off so long ago that it had somehow been attached to a building several metres away, with the top half being used to seal a window while the other part had been turned into a table, on which there now lay several broken bottles of a cheap alcoholic beverage.

When she was led into it, however, her Third Eye immediately realised the issue with it.

‘Everything in here is like a thousand mirrors, shifting ever so slightly… And this has to be old, at least twenty years old, so that Great Aberrant must have more presence here than I had initially assumed,’ she understood, as this mirror layer was significantly denser and stronger than the hasty one that had invaded not too long ago. Furthermore, although it was almost opaque, she could see traces of passages beneath it, meaning that this place had seen quite some use already.

“This place has been blessed by the Great Aberrant. Walk into the middle and see it for yourself!” the man with a spot on his neck declared, keeping his voice down as a few people lived in the houses around this area.

She gave him an appropriate glance of suspicion, before grabbing a stone from the ground and throwing it at a specific point of the inside of the building, causing the mirror layer to flicker wildly.

“You seem to have forgotten that I can see through illusions. What’s in there?”

Remaining unperturbed, he answered, “A part of our domain, wherein some of us reside. Go inside and you shall be shown to the true power of the Mirror Plane Aberrations, our goals and our great knowledge! You shall be able to experience everything first-hand, and you will understand the truth of our words!”

The promise of knowledge was enticing to the curious and insightful persona she was presenting to the man, and since she genuinely wanted to learn as much as possible about the Mirror Plane Aberrations, she proceeded into the mirror layer, stepping through it with a little discomfort as the vast quantity of yin passed around her body. Fortunately, it was only large enough to cover the floor of the shack and disappeared the moment that she entered the passage below and got beneath the ground-level wooden floor.

As soon as she could see the passage clearly, she confirmed that this place had been used for quite some time. Everything was built from large bricks of stone, with many pathways leading away from the shack and away into the district, as well as many chambers containing all kinds of curiosities, ranging from simple books to complex artefacts, all of which were obscured from detection through the power of the mirror layer above them, even from the prying senses of Wei Yi’s spiritual perception.

“Follow me and feel free to marvel at the things we have accomplished here!” the man with a spot on his neck continued exclaiming, quickly leading her into the depth of the passages on a somewhat indirect route, judging by the fact that they passed nearly every room there at least once.

There were almost no other people there, with only a few figures taking care of the place by dusting, cleaning and repairing the rooms they were in charge of, and she didn’t have the opportunity to thoroughly look at any one part of the passages with the powers that someone in the third realm would have access to, but even with the rush that the man with a spot on his neck was in, his particular route permitted her just enough time to scan through the many books and technique manuals that she had found within them. Many were rather ordinary in nature, with the only unusual factor about them being that they are all yin-focused, to the point that she already had many of them in her collection.

One did jump out at her quickly, though: Poltergeist’s Tendrils.

It sounded odd, but the principle of it was exactly what she had wanted for a very, very long time. According to it, a poltergeist’s greatest weapon was their hair, and thus it endeavoured to replicate their abilities to freely manipulate all of it, to use it to manipulate the world around the user, to attack their enemies, or even to cover one’s own body.

Based on how little effort was put into taking care of it, she suspected that it had been created by someone with too much spare time and without any intention of it being used seriously, as the hair of most people lacked meridians and would be incredibly weak when it came to dealing with any regular weapons or armour – given that circulating energy through it would be significantly more difficult without them, and it being absolutely necessary to strengthen the hair even a little bit – but it was something that she had wanted to find for some time.

All of the effort she had accidentally spent on enhancing her own hair had resulted in it being entirely immune to most reasonable forms of damage. It was also rather long, with her always having the ability to grow it even further at any time by undoing her forceful cessation of growth, so if there was anything that was perfect for use as an offensive or defensive measure and was horribly underused, it was this particular part of her body.

‘This, alongside some of the other manipulation methods, could become one of my strongest arts, especially if my hair continued to experience such disproportionate growth with every single physique realm,’ she considered while she added it and everything else that she came across into the Ascendant’s Library, merging any variations of techniques she already knew with them as to save space in the library and consolidate their combined knowledge for their eventual use, ‘I did think about forming clothing out of hair before, didn’t I? If I can also use this technique to dye my hair, I will pretty much be able to change my appearance freely.’

If she covered all of her own body in a skin-tight suit made from hair, although it would be likely to be somewhat uncomfortable, she could easily transform its appearance whenever needed and make it seem as if there are either millions of strange figures present at a scene without the use of the Red Phantom Flood, or otherwise avoid pursuit by becoming someone that she couldn’t possibly be.

Of course, only the most distracted or the simplest of men would believe that one skin-tight suit wearing woman and another, identically-built skin-tight suit wearing woman had no connection to one another whatsoever, although this method would still have some use if she wore something underneath and typically concealed it with the hair suit, changing from it to a set of robes would be far more likely to succeed.

The next interesting technique that caught her eye was labelled as Eidolon Lunge, another water-type technique that had some potential. It wasn’t the technique itself that interested her, as it was not particularly uncommon in the field of techniques for the third realm, but rather the exact method through which it achieved its effect. Depending on how she adapted it, it could work alongside the Poltergeist’s Tendrils and a number of her other combat techniques to significantly strengthen her offensive abilities, and potentially anything that requires bursts of strength.

Finally, after sorting through roughly a thousand different, yet similarly uninteresting techniques, was one that she had learned of many, many years ago, but did not have the opportunity to learn until now – the Meridian Explosions Art.

Combining it, the dantian bone talismans, and the searing marks that she would eventually obtain upon entering the fifth realm, she could theoretically achieve an immense degree of power for a while.

It had a far more complicated principle than she had expected from such a well-known and seemingly basic technique, which she was rather pleased with due to the possibilities that it offered. The more complex a technique was, the more options it offered, the more she could extract from it. There was no guarantee at all that a technique as advanced as it didn’t contain a fragment of the Great Dao within it, which would grant her an immense boost in overall power the moment that she comprehended it and was able to apply it to suitable methods and skills, whether that included the great arts, combat, or some other esoteric field.

If it was possible, then comprehending the Great Dao in its entirety would likely put her at the level of the heavens, although she did not imagine that she would ever be successful in such a task. To understand everything about an entire system of energy, life and everything around it required such an immense amount of time, effort and general talent that she doubted that everyone in the world put together could reach such a level, even if legends like the Master of Yi City were included.

‘It is especially unfortunate as so few of the people that are powerful today have acquired all of their skills through genuine comprehension, rather than otherworldly gifts and forbidden skills, making it all the more difficult to accumulate the Great Dao in a single age.’

She had enough time to process everything she had learnt before she and the man with a spot on his neck finally reached their destination, which was a chamber not unlike most of the others, with nobody at all occupying it and few books on any of the shelves, without a single technique manual or anything else that would be of any actual use to her. Instead, they appeared to be simple tales and stories, suitable for teenagers to read to ignite their interest in planar cultivation and adventure if the simple existence of those two things somehow didn’t suffice.

“Stay here for a moment, and one of our number shall greet you!” the man declared, running off as soon as she took a seat on the couch.

Due to him giving her no opportunity to question his actions, nor running away so far that she couldn’t follow him, she decided to simply wait in place while scanning through everything that the room itself had to offer. At first, she looked through the bookshelves and the furniture, curious to learn whether any of them were also made from mirror layers and hid something behind them, but that did not appear to be the case.

Her gaze of spiritual perception then returned onto the story books, mostly due to finding little else to observe, but it then stuck there for far longer than one might expect, as she uncovered something of great interest within them.

In between the pages that described a noble hero’s adventure into the lair of a primordial god to request a favour from them lay a small piece of paper, on which was written a most alarming letter.

‘Second Shard, we have made an unexpected breakthrough in the development of the stabilisation anchors, and must put them into action now that we have caught the attention of one of the Fractured Mirrors, or else the Great Aberrant shall be endangered by their arrival on the 16th. To activate the Mirror Plane in this state, certain measures will need to be taken, but the followers ought to be prepared to give up their lives for our Lord’s reappearance within this world. Nevertheless, do not display this to the followers, lest they have the opportunity to be scared off from their most sacred duty. Aberrant’s praise!’

Two things stood out immediately, and the first was the mention of the Fractured Mirrors.

She had heard the phrase from them before, and she suspected that they could mean nothing other than the Great Families, which was a piece of absolutely terrible news for her, as there was no guarantee that their number would be as low, and that their power would only be as weak as that of the two that she had fought in between the Ning and Yi Districts, who could have easily been the weakest of the Greats, while the presence of the Aberrant could easily warrant one of the more powerful members to appear.

From what little Yi Shi Ming and she were able to put together, the Greats had three primary groups which they could be divided into. The third, second and first generations rose in power and age, and there did not appear to be more than that number of generations. The third was the youngest, and would likely have both the fewest planar anchors and the cultivation of the third realm, while the second generation were more likely to be in the fifth realm and the first was probably in the seventh or eighth realms, depending on their personal cultivation and the exact gaps between the generations. At the moment, she could handle a single member of the third generation without sustaining many injuries, but a single member of the second generation would obliterate her just as easily as the Great Yi Family had killed Yi Yaling so long ago.

Her second issue was the mention of required sacrifice, as well as the implication of the ability for the members of the cult to escape it. If the scared Mirror Plane Aberrations could flee despite the sacrifice being somewhat concealed, then there was naturally a potential for others to be victims of this process that are not involved with the Aberrations in any way.

Several of the chambers that they had passed neared the district above them, and it was not impossible to create arrays that would then siphon the life from those living above, possibly killing them entirely inadvertently in the rush to condense the Mirror Plane.

With these two reasons combined, she could not permit it to happen.

‘I must leave before the Fract- fuck, the Great Families appear, and yet I need to deal with Mirror Plane Aberrations before that… If these chambers are in any way used for the condensation of the Plane, then so long as I endanger them and force them to proceed more quickly, the Great Aberrant is very likely to appear. At that point, I could challenge him with everything that I have learned and bring in those more powerful than me to finish him off, siphon his anchor energy, then flee with great haste to the next district northwards,’ she decided, grabbing the book from the shelf with her killing will while she re-read the Poltergeist’s Tendrils to ensure her understanding of it.

‘I didn’t think I’d have to do this so quickly, but the Greats appear to be incredibly capable at detecting oddities around them, likely due to the strengthening and refining of their spiritual perception through the exuberant number of anchors, so I cannot risk remaining in the Ning District when they appear.’

Due to the nature of the hair manipulation technique, it did not benefit as much from cultivation as it did from understanding and practise, since no meridians were involved with the practise of it, so all she could do was ensure that her knowledge and understanding of the technique was at a sufficient level to accomplish everything that she required.

Fortunately, while this was not helped much by the Truth of the Universe – due to excessive cost for insufficient reward – her Endless Calculation was finally given a chance to fully showcase its abilities, sorting through a million different possibilities in order to rapidly raise her understanding of the skill and to understand exactly how to manipulate it in order to achieve what she required from it. For now, she did not need to use it as a weapon, as her energy sufficed for that purpose, but as clothing.

This was both simpler, as it only required a single series of actions to complete and a second set of actions to undo the hair suit, and more difficult, as offensive hair tendrils only needed to move in simple motions while wrapping herself in a suit of hair required some incredibly intricate actions and movements in order to create it successfully, giving her far less room for error than the majority of other actions she could take with it. If she was to make it too tight and not account for the full extent of movement that she would require, then it would effectively be a trap for her until she found a way to free herself from the prison of hair, while giving herself too much room would be like placing herself inside of a loose bag, with similarly distracting effects.

‘And, given the slow approach of someone, I don’t have much time if I am actually intending to hide my identity… Some energy must be spared for the Endless Calculation to function at maximum efficiency, so…’

She funnelled her killing will into the enormous wall of pages that made up the structure of the Endless Calculation, many of the pages instantly turning to ash while only small passages from them merged with other pages, the deduction skipping along by the equivalent of several hours as a method of manipulating her hair in just the right manner finally came together inside of her mind.

The moment that it did, with only a few moments left before someone from the Mirror Plane Aberrations approached the chamber she was in and saw her, she freed her hair from the ponytail and unsealed its growth, imbuing it with her cosmic energy as to further accelerate it. In an instant, the length of her crimson mane doubled, at which point the cosmic energy surged away from her head and throughout the many individual strands of perfectly smooth hair, merging with their structure and imposing movement upon them.

As she rose from the couch and held out her arms, she was flooded by crimson, everything below the neck being covered completely while the lower half of her face was obscured by a mask-like arrangement of scarlet strands. Her robes were concealed entirely beneath this suit, and any sign of their presence was hidden through a little adjustment of the bodysuit.

It was rather bright and noticeable in the dim chambers of the Aberrations, so in order to conceal herself further, she released a small quantity of Binder of the Dark energy, wrapping it in between the hair strands to darken the entirety of the suit into an absolutely abyss of black, resembling the outfit of the Weavers of the Dark to the extent that she was tempted to use their techniques while in this state as to pin all of the blame on their assassin organisation, but when she recalled what they had to endure and that Fen Zhi might still be seeking a method of freeing all of them from their binding to their leader, she threw away the silly notion and instead decided to focus on raw, physical strength as her weapon.

This decision was made just in time, for the person that was approaching her – a figure that obscured half of their face with a mask, with that half being so filled with malevolent yin that it was visibly rotting – finally got close enough to the doorway to be able to observe her.

His one working eye widened as he undoubtedly rushed to decide on the most appropriate course of action, but before it could occur, Wei Yi had already moved. In a flash, she appeared beside him, cracks appearing on the floor where she previously stood, slashing at the man’s neck with her hand at such a speed that it pierced all the way to his spine before he even had a chance to blink.

Even if that hadn’t been enough to finish him off, the blast of air that caught up with her hand was more than sufficient, throwing him into a wall and embedding him several metres deep within it, the majority of his upper body turning into a red mist that dispersed as she rushed towards the nearest potential conduit anchor for the Mirror Plane. It was only a matter of time before the entire group of Mirror Plane Aberrations that resided in these chambers and tunnels noticed the oddity of her presence and mustered all of their forces to retaliate against her assault, at which point she would be at risk of exposure, injury or general exhaustion depending on their number and power, which she would naturally prefer to avoid whenever possible.

With a combination of the World’s Echo physique and the absolute raw power of her leg muscles, she appeared beside the doorway of that chamber in moments, bursting in to find several items obscured by sets of mirror layers.

There were also several members of the Mirror Plane Aberrations within the room, all of them bearing the malevolent yin marks that the closer members of the cult tended to possess, that responded far more quickly than the man that had come to get her, their entire bodies being surrounded by fractured mirror-like energy that was thick and yet thin, defending every part of their body and yet seeming to exist only on the outline of their figure.

Out of the five there, three took a step back to participate in some kind of group combat technique, seemingly inspired by the common ranged martial arts of the Bai family, while two ran forward to block her path, clearly sensing that she was not meant to be there, and that her allegiance couldn’t possibly be with them due to the lack of any malevolent yin on her body, instead possessing a perfect balance of yin and yang that was not typically seen in men or women without some kind of physique. They also used a group technique, although it was more suitable to call it a pair technique, and likely intended to create a barrier to buy time for their allies to condense some kind of attack.

It did not need to be stated that Wei Yi would not grant them the opportunity to do such a thing, no matter how strong or weak the barrier and their attacks would be.

Wrapping both hands in energy, she raised them and slashed down, releasing that power in the form of a twin Hatred Split, imbued with cosmic light. The two bursts of energy cut straight through the two at the front and continued to strike at two of those at the back, bisecting them alongside an explosion of blood and gore.

As the technique was forcefully interrupted by this, the last man standing felt his muscles lock up as the planar energy within his meridians ran rampant, giving him no opportunity to escape as the dark figure appeared before him and struck his abdomen, passing right through his flesh and striking the weak planar anchor within. With no core to guard it, nor sufficient free energy to form a barrier within his own body, he could do nothing as the anchor shattered within him, his dantian following it soon after.

Without a force to control all of the planar energy within his body, every drop of it that remained violently tore through his meridians and burst out, melting into gaseous and unbound planar energy that merged with the constant layer of energy around them all.

After confirming that her count of anchor energy rose by one, Wei Yi returned to the middle of the chamber and inspected everything that was obscured by mirror layers. Some of the items that were hidden did not appear to have much importance, regardless of how she looked at them, seeming to be only concealed only due to someone’s desire to have their items untouched by others, but the middle of the room did conceal what she was looking for – an array that clearly required a lot of energy.

Since breaking it outright was likely to reduce the chances of the Great Aberrant appearing any time soon, she instead struck a few precise points to put it at risk and to minimize any ability to drain energy from those outside of the array’s immediate reach, hopefully lowering or outright preventing the sacrifice of unknowing civilians above these tunnels and chambers. From the position of this structure, she deduced a few plausible locations for the other arrays, and immediately headed towards the nearest and most likely one.

This one had two guards, both of whom were in the third realm and had already noticed her intrusion, for the moment that she appeared in the doorway, she was met with a large, humanoid planar construct that resembled one of the mirrored monstrosities from the initial mirror layer invasion, with gigantic claws and teeth and perfectly pale skin. It rushed at her, its jaws open and its claws prepared to attack, and some part of it generated a field that limited her movement to either side.

Thus, instead of running away, she drew back her palm, and struck out with a single Elysian Palm.

In comparison to everything that she had created and used up to this point, the Elysian Palm was a significantly simpler and weaker technique, but there was one incredibly valuable ability to it that had significantly benefitted her when she incorporated it into the Ascendant’s Path.

The biggest strength of the palm was that it could shatter planar constructs and arrays of significantly superior level.

As the white elysian energy struck the planar construct, the latter quickly distorted and cracked, the mirrors fracturing into even more pieces before it collapsed entirely, while the elysian energy was practically unaffected, permitting it and Wei Yi to rush past the crumbling construct and eliminate one guard each, adding two more anchor points to the Truth of the Universe.

A moment of searching later, she discovered a similar array that confirmed her initial model of the complete structure, and permitted her to ensure that the Mirror Plane would never be as impressive and powerful as the Mirror Plane Aberrations wanted it to be while still letting them have a chance at generating it and trying to prepare for the arrival of the Great Families. Although damaging two arrays was sufficient to achieve this, it also made it far easier to repair than she wanted it to be, so she persisted in her initial plan and tracked down the other anchors of note and damaged them similarly.

By the time that she returned to the entry point to these chambers, she had accumulated a total of thirty-seven anchor points, granting her far more flexibility in her future cultivation than she had initially hoped for, but when she had the opportunity to explore the entirety of the underground complex, it also showed that she needed to take action even more quickly.

The Great Aberrant and his cult needed to be stopped.