V3C29: True Face of the Aberrant, Part 3

All of the Mirror Plane fog that remained before her suddenly stopped flowing outwards and instead collapsed onto its origin point, becoming far denser than it had been during the entirety of the night.

It expanded rapidly, but not just horizontally, as before, but instead shaped itself into a large sphere that grew with every breath, quickly becoming the size of her head, then her torso, and then almost as large as she was tall, before it slowly shrunk again, this time shaping itself into the figure of a masculine figure dressed in extravagant clothing, which was obvious even from the vague shape formed by the gathering mirror-like fog.

Furthermore, it was immediately obvious that it would not be as easy to disperse this figure, as it had an aspect of reality that even the strongest and most convincing amongst the Mirror Plane monsters could never hope to possess.

‘Most likely, this is either the big guy himself, or some phantom of him,’ Wei Yi concluded quickly, ‘I have not expended too much energy, and he only seems to be in the upper fourth realm, so I have a chance at this so long as he is not like the otherworldly demons, and does not possess an overwhelming power that defies simple realms and stages…’

She checked the characters within her dantian just in case, but found them to be still, or as still as they could be considering their constant movement and shifting.

As his shape solidified and stabilised, it became obvious that his outfit was more complex than that. Every single one of the items he wore would easily sell for a ludicrous amount in the land of common people, such as some of the countries on the outer edges of the continent, but they were damaged, torn, ripped and cut in numerous locations, with his top that was decorated with jewels and wondrous designs having so many signs of wear that it looked to be hundreds of years old, with tight dark trousers that somehow retained their shape despite both trouser legs having been torn into a thousand different strips and ribbons of fabric, with even the shoes that he wore being more suited for the ruins of the Kong District.

The only thing that was odd about his clothing was the style of it. It seemed as if it was from another world, for it was not anything that Wei Yi had ever seen before, no matter what memory she recalled.

His face and body were also strange, although it was his face that was most obvious within his outfit. Everything about its structure differed from that of the typical person from the Planar Continents, with larger eyes and mouth, a different shade of skin and a whole host of other minor factors of note.

Regardless, what distracted her was the wild look in his eyes that became prominent the instant that colour filled his flesh. It, far more than anything else, did not belong on the body of a man, or a human in general. They were bloodshot and wild, a feral madness and rage emanating from every aspect of his being the moment that his eyes came to be solid enough to be perceived within reality, without possessing the ability to comprehend the Mirror Plane in full.

“You are the one that has done this? Can they not handle a single person trying to burn this fucking world to the ground?” the powerful voice of the Great Aberrant emerged from this figure, confirming her earlier speculation, “Since you do this, I know what you will do next. Go on, introduce yourself.”

“I doubt you know me as well as you think, but… Whatever. My name is Wei Yi, and I highly doubt I need to provide you with a reason why I might want to avoid the destruction of a district by the mad energies of some insane individual, especially when you very well aware of what you and your followers are up to.”

“You are like the rest, then. Wishing to live in a stagnant world without a single change for many decades, where all innovations are silenced by the Fractured Mirrors while so many continue to live in their own filth, kept alive only by their ever-present planar energy, is foolishness!” the Great Aberrant exclaimed with certainty and anger, his ordinary hands momentarily manifesting the same mirror-like claws that so many of the creatures that his Mirror Plane possess, “I have no doubt that you think of your life as being excellent, of course you will!”

“You prove your ignorance, then, Great Aberrant. This world is terribly flawed, and, so long as I am correct, I suspect that I know who you refer to as the Fractured Mirrors,“ Wei Yi replied, “The solution to their threat is not going to be the complete annihilation of the world. That much is obvious.”

“Oh, really? Then, tell me, primitive woman – what is wrong with this world?”

“Do you want the full list? Just from my experience, there is an extreme and blatant divide between families and ordinary people, and even different members of the same family can suffer significantly if they were born to the wrong people. Cultivation has consistently stagnated since the time of the Master of Yi City, and even the quantity of planar energy has dropped since then. The – as you call them – Fractured Mirrors control much of the world from the shadows, likely having some influence over every single one of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in each of the districts, and they have free reign to do whatever they like, whenever they like, without a single person attempting to stop them. The strong can get away with a whole lot of things, just because there won’t be anybody who tries to offend them unless it is really worthwhile, and even if you are weak, so long as there is reason for you to remain alive, you can still get away with far too many crimes,” she paused to take a breath, “Need I go on?”

“Why don’t you?”

“As you mentioned, progress in other fields also appears to have stood still, whether that field is arrays, inscriptions, talismans, blacksmithing, pill refining or even technology, without a single item that allows the common man to live a better life having been made in all of this time despite the free time that quite a number of cultivators have,” Wei Yi continued, her eyebrows lowering slightly as she attempted to guess exactly what he was after and whether her speech would allow something negative to occur, “In fact, things like farming methods have not grown in countless years, despite the benefit that it would bring to everyone and everywhere. Even cultivators in the highest realms use them, after all.”

The Great Aberrant, for a moment, lost that mad look and nodded, “Then I have mistaken your exact nature, child, but I still doubt that you comprehend the full nature of the wrongness with this world! You have had a million years, if not far more, but how can you not have invented proper roads? Vehicles that do not rely on beasts? Power that all can use? Proper – FUCKING – TOILETS!”

Somehow, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the madness returned in full and an enormous anchor fell from the sky, landing below him and amplifying his presence by an immense degree.

The anchor was unlike anything that she had ever seen whether it was compared to her own or to that of most cultivators. It only had three sides, as any more would have been rather concerning, but everything else was completely unfamiliar to her. Instead of being made from the usual violet stone, it – almost predictably – was made from countless shards of mirrors stuck to one another in the vague imitation of an anchor, with the general shape remaining accurate while being extremely jagged and unseemly due to just a few minor inaccuracies.

What she could also sense was a presence that far surpassed the common anchor within that mess of mirrors and shards, that she recognised after a moment of consideration. It was the same kind of energy as her anchor energy, except it was concentrated in such quantities that her amplified senses led to it being outright overwhelming.

She had little time to ponder the exact nature of it, however, as he reached into the air, where a mass of fog quickly gathered, and removed a weapon that looked like a cane, with a handle at the top and a flat surface at the bottom, from that cloud of fog. He held it in a horizontal position in front of himself, and, in an incredibly dramatic fashion, pulled on the top of the cane and removed it from the other half, revealing a sharp blade just in time to accept Wei Yi’s first attack.

Based on his behaviour, and his power, she knew that if she was to have a chance at dealing with him, attacking first, dominating the battlefield and not giving him any room to use his superior cultivation to his advantage was key. Attacking the anchor was not an option, since it was guarded by his core regardless of its position on the battlefield, and thus she was unable to forcefully weaken or distract any attacks from him. Furthermore, if she ran away or tried anything else more strategic, perhaps allowing him to recover from his madness and continue their conversation, she would just be endangering herself if he did not do so and instead directly attacked.

Judging by his reaction speed, his insanity did nothing to his combat ability, for he took an uncharged Hatred Split directly, blocking it with what appeared to be great ease.

As an impossibly strong wave of force passed through the battlefield, Chu Huazhi witnessed a vast number of mirror-like monstrosities drop to the ground and lose a significant quantity of their mass or outright vanish, with most of those that remained being finished off in moments by the glowing arrays above them.

He turned towards the origin of that wave, looked back to check the current number of fog-spawned abominations, then sighed and tossed the bag on his back to Fu Xiu.

“I think that we may have been distracted, so I will go and confirm whether the Great Aberrant has appeared elsewhere. Stay here and distribute these pills based on your own judgement!” he ordered, looking to the other people in the area, “If any of you treat her poorly, you will not be permitted to make any purchases within the Chu Alchemical Store, even after my passing – do you understand that, you muscle-heads?”

“Be purged, fool!” he cried out, the cane blade momentarily warping into a huge jagged piece of a mirror that reflected Wei Yi’s image perfectly, and yet what looked back on her was entirely different from what she should have seen.

Her crimson hair was white, her body gaunt and her eyes sunken, as if she had not had any sustenance for many weeks, and since her hair in the reflection was too thin and feeble to maintain her current outfit, she could see her overly spacious robes revealing little more than skin and bones beneath them. Furthermore, while her true self current held two daggers filled with energy, the reflection wielded little more than sharpened metal sticks.

It was a peculiar sight, but as it lasted only for a moment and had no effect on reality, she treated it as little more than a curiosity while she threw her blades into the House of Gold and instead condensed a weapon of pure cosmic energy, filling it to the brim with killing will while she surrounded it with Yin-Yang Ascendant physique energy and threaded every technique principle that was within the Ascendant’s Dao into its structure, the final result transforming into a great two-handed greatsword that unintentionally bore a great resemblance to the Demon Killer that now lay broken within the House of Gold.

Before the Great Aberrant had the opportunity to move his weapon to attack, she brought it down upon the cane blade once more, her muscles bulging visibly beneath the layer of hair and robe.

He did not move, expecting a repeat of the previous situation, most likely thinking that his strength combined with the power of his cultivation would be as sufficient to take this blow as it had been when she used two daggers, but just as the blades were about to clash, Wei Yi’s entire figure flickered for a single moment.

His eyes widened and he attempted to move, but he could only consider it before her figure appeared once more, with her blade having passed his and now heading directly into his chest. The sharp point struck his chest, encountering glass-like resistance, but that was when she executed some techniques.

‘Meridian Explosion Art. Piercing River. Scorching Blade: Dragon’s Wrath. Finally, just in case; Elysian Storm Burst!’ the point of the cosmic blade erupted and shattered into his body, digging a deep hole within his clothing and flesh before the actual techniques were executed, with every single one of them occurring at once.

The Meridian Explosion art, executed at a safe level in order to prevent any accidental injury to herself, strengthened the Piercing River move as it dug further into his flesh, revealing more of the mirror-like organs and bone that made up his true body. Dragon’s Wrath erupted into that gaping hole, scorching and melting the mirror shards into a vague mess that could not reflect a thing, followed by the crackle of lightning and a thunderous bolt bursting out of the shattered tip of the cosmic blade.

She was still not certain whether this Mirror Plane originated from him, the arrays, his physique or something else entirely, so for this reason she attempted the technique that had proved to be of immense use at damaging planar constructs in the past. If there was any resemblance in the structure of the mirrors to the typical construct, then this would damage the body of the Great Aberrant far more than any of the other attacks combined, and judging by the way in which a series of thin cracks suddenly spread from his chest and covered half of his entire body, there must have been some truth in that assumption.

To the credit of the Great Aberrant, he was not stunned by this, so far as she was able to tell. On the contrary, he moved with great precision and speed, not retreating or dodging any other incoming attacks but instead advancing towards the side of the shortened blade, slashing down on her wrist with his cane sword.

For a moment, it transformed into the long and jagged fragment of a mirror once more, reflecting her weak and gaunt self holding a paper sword within her hands, the message of the reflection being obvious even if the origin of the image and the logic behind its appearance was less so.

His intentions were blatant, but they were ones that were incredibly convenient to Wei Yi’s own arsenal, so she did not block his strike, instead letting go of the cosmic weapon after thrusting it forward, so that it would fly towards the hole within his chest the moment that she let go and leapt back, keeping the planar construct of the blade intact as if she couldn’t disperse it whenever she wanted with just her mind.

When it left her hand, he sheathed the lower half of the cane that had acted as a scabbard into the fog that once more formed conveniently, although it seemed to act more as a place for the solidified entity to disperse into rather than an actual form of storage like the House of Gold, and reached for the hilt of the cosmic weapon. It would have been too far away for a normal arm to reach it, but his limb momentarily warped into that of one of the mirror abominations, and when it was back to normal a moment later, the weapon was already firmly in his hand.

With it and the cane sword crossed in front of it, he blocked a simple punch, only to notice the cosmic sword developing a series of cracks along its surface.

‘The oldest trick that I discovered with cosmic energy, potentially amplified to a ridiculous extent…’

Since the formation of the cracks correlated with her strike, he couldn’t be sure whether it was caused by some flaw of the weapon or the impact itself, and the moment of hesitation cost him the opportunity to throw it away and minimize the impact of the explosion upon himself as the cracks spread and began to glow more and more brightly, changing from being overpowered by the rest of the cosmic light to being utterly blinding in just an instant.

After a single moment of silence, during which the entire world seemed to cease its function, the cosmic blade exploded.

The night’s sky seemed to materialise around him, the darkness, nebulae and stars all emerging within the violet flames of the explosion, instantly devouring the ground and air around him and turning it to nothingness. A wave of pure force burst out from within, shaking the district before it seemed to collapse back inwards, crushing the cosmic light and finally putting it out in one final shockwave.

Although the street was once pristine, it now featured a crater with the depth that was half the height of an average man, the surface melted and glowing brightly as if it had just been taken out of a blacksmith’s forge. The air itself was steaming and smoking, a slight orange hue glowing in that sphere. Despite that, the Great Aberrant stood within the middle of the crater, albeit not unharmed. His skin and clothing were gone, showing only a layer of fractured glass that brought his appearance far closer to the monstrosities that his Mirror Plane spawned.

His eyes themselves were absent, only two flames glowing within his sockets, and the cane sword had transformed into the jagged shard form once more, not appearing to be changing back any time soon, while his other hand was not just empty but outright gone.

“You… backwards, primitive apes! Your filthy world must be destroyed!” the Great Aberrant yelled, his body pulsing with energy as it suddenly grew by several inches in every single proportion, the jagged shard blade growing the most as it changed from what was essentially a shortsword into an unusually wide and thick longsword.

What Wei Yi thought to be most significant, however, was the combination of the appearance of a faint azure light within his chest, where his heart should be, and the slight rumbling of the characters within her dantian.

‘So much for the faint, admittedly foolish hope that someone this abnormally powerful, who made so many comments regarding the primitive nature about this world, wasn’t an otherworldly demon. Perhaps the only unusual thing about him was that his madness appears to be, at least partially, caused by the difference between his world and ours, whereas everyone else simply begins to lust for power and ascension beyond this supposedly small reality into something greater…‘ she thought, stretching out both hands as she began to channel the power of Eclipse Ire.

This time, it was the Great Aberrant that acted first.

He raised his empty arm and pointed it towards her, the apparition of an open hand appearing at its end, the palm pointed towards Wei Yi as something formed within it.

“You shall see… Potential.”

Despite lacking eyes, eyelids or a true physical form, the Great Aberrant felt himself blink, his vision turning dark for a moment before he awoke within the Realm of Potential.

The ground, air and walls, if there even were any, were all pitch black, with the exception of the grey fog that covered his feet, lacking any of the mirror shard-like properties that were present within the fog of the Mirror Plane. As a result of this bare sight, his body and the distinct changes to it stood out significantly more.

Gone was the layer of mirror shards and the tattered clothes that he had worn before them. The maddened eyes now look sane and intelligent, his face was well groomed and respectable, and he wore a striped blue suit and tie atop a white shirt and similarly blue trousers, beneath which was a pair of white socks and black shoes. The jewels and riches were entirely missing from his appearance, and yet he looked far more sensible and royal as a result, although most royal and imperial groups outside of Yi City would have still preferred him to clothe himself in something more suitable.

More important than all of the superficial, purely visual factors was the power that now radiated from him.

The shard-like anchor that had accompanied him into this darkness was now surrounded by a dense sphere, the completed core of the fourth realm, on which sixty-seven searing marks were linked to the anchor itself. The next feature, six halos that surrounded the core, were more ethereal, and the rift that overlapped the shape of the anchor was even fainter, to the point that whatever the ninth realm generated was entirely imperceptible beyond the power that it bestowed upon him.

Furthermore, there was a faint aura of even greater force around him, making him appear as if he was an impossibly powerful being that had stepped down onto the world and challenged all of it in order to accomplish his own goals.

“This is the Realm of Potential. Here, everything that we can become is unleashed, and we can fight not as we are, but as we can be. The winner will leave with greater knowledge of themselves, while the other will perish,” he explained to the void, as he knew that he would not be able to see his foe immediately and had a moment to talk, “You may be powerful in your world, but I am from Orbis! I have knowledge that you could never have! I can see this world in a manner that you could never understand! Do you even know about atoms, electrons, neutrons, protons, photons? Can you even imagine a concept such as quantum superposition? Of vehicles that move through nothing but their own mechanical and electronic movements? Your potential is limited in a world like this, while I can go beyond!”

His head snapped to the side, for he finally felt the presence of his foe, the strange woman that was impossibly powerful despite her realm.

“Come, show me what you truly are, what you will become-”

Countless chains suddenly poured from her direction, enveloping his arms and legs and stretching them outwards, before he felt his form being cut in four. He did not see, nor feel, nor hear a cut, an attack, any movement at all, but he knew that it had somehow occurred.

Bright light from the direction of the chains filled his vision, almost blinding him.

A sound that he was familiar with entered his ear next – that of a gavel striking a hardwood block. As if it shepherded his memories, he found his head being filled with recollections of his past. He remembered how he was once known as Rong Sheng, and before that, as Jonathan Michaels, and how he lived a normal life in the Great Empire of Antania, how he grew up and became a pilot to pursue his interests, how he flew all over the world innumerable times, occasionally living in all kinds of places, staying in Antanord, in Roksgard, in Neria and the United States of Kopesh, in Scheshezad, and in so many more nations that he could barely recall them all. Then, his life had been good, and joyous, and his marriage had punctuated all of that with another pleasant note.

Something had happened after all that – something that he could not remember, or, more precisely, that he refused to remember, just in case he had truly been guilty of some terrible crime – that placed him in the court, before the judge.

He spent some time in prison, being permitted to keep and wear his suit and tie mostly due to how little life he was expected to have. There, he met with an old man whose life was also nearing its end, who had so many stories to tell, almost more than Jonathan himself. A day before he vanished from the cell, presumably having passed away in his sleep, he left a simple playing card behind. A King, with no peculiarity other than the fact that the top and bottom were mirrored rather than being duplicated and reversed, resulting in the figure and the letter K being strangely unsettling.

How he came to be in these Planar Continents was a mystery to him, but he could remember what it did to him.

After so long, as he looked once more upon his actions, upon the horrible downwards spiral that his life had taken, he suddenly realised everything. Everything that he had done, was doing at that moment, and what he had intended to do once he succeeded in taking over the Ning District. It was all horrible, so counter to what any of his actions should have been, that he recalled the judge that passed the sentence on him once more, and how he had looked upon his with obvious dislike.

“Unworthy!” a voice that did not belong to him or the judge shook him out of the past, as he felt his entire being crumble beneath the sound of the voice and the gavel combined. His body, his power, his potential within this realm all fell apart in an instant, and he could do nothing to stop it.

Wei Yi nearly lost her footing and completely abandoned the channelling of the Eclipse Ire the moment that her vision faded, burst with light, and then threw her back into the world as she remembered it – which was perhaps the most confusing part, for her more prominent memory of the Ning District was the state that it had been in prior to the appearance of the Great Aberrant.

She looked up from the fogless, dark ground, towards the location of the Aberrant himself, and found the crater that she had previously caused, but within lay only a large pile of shards of glass, not a great foe in the fourth realm.

‘What… what just happened? Why? How? Wh-’ she could not answer a single of those questions, so she instead focused on a matter that she could resolve, which was that of the azure light within the Great Aberrant. Provided that the pile of mirror shards was truly what remained of him, and not some distraction, then the azure lights were bound to still remain within him, especially if the momentary darkness and light only lasted for a few instants, as they seemed to.

Rushing towards the crater, she saw them quickly, and almost as if they recognised her gaze, the azure broke free of his form and rose into the air. One began to move towards her, while another flew elsewhere.

Whether the latter azure light intended to claim another host, or disappear entirely, she could not allow the first possibility to occur. Before the first light had the opportunity to accelerate and approach her, she ran past it and towards the other light, prompting the characters within her dantian to come to life, to realise the threat that she was facing, and to act in order to stop it before there was any chance of her or anybody else being consumed by the madness that was inherent to all otherworldly beings and their gifts.

She used everything that she could in order to alert them, and one of those things must have worked, for the characters broke out of their typical arrangement, displaying the technique to advance to the sixth stage, and formed an impossibly complex array that was notably different from the one that she had witnessed before, seemingly brought about just to facilitate the additional shard that was added to it alongside the Truth of the Universe calculator.

It built up a vast quantity of power, almost matching everything that she had witnessed Chen Jushu containing within her dantian, and erupted, a pulse of energy enveloping both and forcing them to stop in mid-air, before suddenly flying away into the sky and vanishing in moments.

This time, she was a little more aware of what was going on, and made sure to observe the exact structure of the array and the nature of the signal that it released, and her discovery was off-putting to say the least. She had expected the characters to arrange some kind of repealing, destroying or outright killing array to damage the azure lights and scare them away that way, but so far as she was able to tell with the insights obtained from the Spiritual Flow arts, she could not perceive the seemingly fantastic array as anything other than a messaging array, doing nothing at all other than delivering a message to the azure lights.

‘Based on what I know, Kong Shi Meng wished to deal with these azure things, so I would have thought that he wished to eliminate them, which, assuming that this is all true, is it possible that even at his full power, he could not create a single thing that could damage the azure lights?’ she pondered, glancing one last time at the spot where the lights disappeared before returning her attention to the present.