V3C34: The Array Master and the Warrior

“Huh? What happened? Where is my beard? Where am I?” an old man rose quickly, looking around wildly as he tried to correlate his memories with what he saw – or, rather, didn’t see – before himself.

“Of all the things to bring up, the one you chose is one that I hadn’t even touched. You sure that you haven’t spent too much time here?” Wei Yi’s voice entered his ears, and he turned to find that she was right behind him, looking through his copy of the Prime Star Arts and comparing it to her own knowledge, “I did get rid of someone of the unnecessary clutter on your body, whether that was the webs, leaves, vines and whatever else. It literally hurt to look at you, and considering my level of cultivation, that is saying something.”

She wasn’t joking, either. When she had a little more time to examine his state, she found that he might as well have been an inanimate object in the very middle of a thousand different nests of creatures and insects, as every little pocket, fold and whatever else was filled with some form of natural creation or growth.

After reinforcing her eyes with some cosmic energy refinement, mostly for future use, she cleared away all of it, leaving him looking a little more like a human being, then healed a few of his internal injuries so that he didn’t collapse only a moment after waking up, which, clearly, confused him.

“You… Are you truly not one of Their number?”

“No, I am not, and I will never be. They killed a number of my teachers, including your descendant of the same name,” she said, “I did end up meeting with a descendant of Meng Qi, the Thunder Lord. Since you mentioned the War of Yin, might you be familiar with that name?”

“Meng Qi… Ah, the Thunder Lord!”

‘That’s what I just said… He shouldn’t be old enough to be suffering from any kind of mental condition, but his body has certainly not aged gracefully. There’s a chance that his mind had also suffered.’

“Yes, I remember him. He sure was an active young man, known to most women of the City!” Senior Yi Yi exclaimed, laughing for a little while before he continued, “Most people respected him so much that when he explained his discoveries about Their actions, they immediately leapt to aid him, and I was no exception… Don’t recall him fathering any children back then, but with how much time he had spent with the wives of others…”

“I am well aware of the actions of Meng Qi. If you’re going to speak about the past, I’d prefer to hear about Great Dark and Great Light, who had the echo of the Thunder Lord within their Deadly Martial Colosseum.”

“You said my son had died, didn’t you? Had he succeeded?”

‘Of course, you won’t listen to me directly, will you? Hah…’ she quietly sighed and replied, “He created the Excellence Art to match your Prime Star Arts, but I believe that he was a step from succeeding. Also, I believe that this was your grandson at the very least, if I got the timeline correct, and so long as I didn’t misunderstand anything.”

“My grandson? Why wouldn’t my son have visited me if he couldn’t succeed?”

“From his actions, I got the impression that they were told not to do so until they were able to complete their task.”

“No, no, that’s not what I had ever told any of them! They should have gone to me if they weren’t successful, and we could have pooled our knowledge together, and created something fantastic together! We could have breached the barrier of the fourth realm and put up a genuine effort against the- Them once more!” he exclaimed, going silent for a moment before his voice became more sombre, “So my son and my grandson have both passed. How long have I been here?”

“Quite a while. Have you not noticed how terrible you looked before I showed up?”

“Oh… Who are you again?”

“My name is Wei Yi. I was your grandson’s student for a while-”

“No, no, what I want to ask is about your full identity. Why did you come over here to meet with a tired old man?”

“Besides wishing to complete the technique you two had been working on, I would not be opposed to recruiting you to our cause of obliterating Them until the world is free from their tyranny and their constant harmful behaviour. I have something that they’re not aware anyone other than them can possibly have, and I have learnt that destroying their anchors grants the entire world a boost in planar energy concentration. If you can support others in the faction with studying, creating and developing arrays, we might have a far better chance.”

“What faction would this be?”

“I don’t have a name, but I can tell you that I have something that They would never expect me to have, as well as a certain insight regarding matters that you might never imagine. Furthermore, as you should have been able to see from my earlier array arrangement techniques, I have a certain talent when it comes to creating and refining techniques of all kinds. Give me enough time and I match those used by Them, if not surpass them.”

“It’s led by you, a third-realm woman, without a single person standing by your side? You may hold my grandson’s creation, but that does not mean I trust you.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate. Don’t really need your permission for this,” she shrugged, clicking her fingers as a large circle of silver and crimson appeared beneath him, “Even if you do not decide to join our side, you will be far safer away from here.”

However, the old man didn’t listen to her words, instead paying attention only to the great transportation array that appeared beneath him. His eyes widened as he comprehended part of its function, and it enveloped him in light as he turned towards her and loudly exclaimed, “You have a spatial realm of your own?”

“Yup. Well… you’ll see.”

A second, smaller circle appeared beneath her, completing at a far faster rate due to how familiar she was with herself, allowing her to complete the transportation process significantly quicker even without Yi Shi Ming’s assistance, although the spatial spirit still needed to contribute some of her ability.

Thus, they both disappeared from the Planar Continents.

Somewhere far away, and yet unbelievably close, two figures in identical clothing and with identical hairstyles stood beside one another, looking upon an array of impossible complexity.

One of them was male, and the other female, but one would be hard-pressed to guess this from their appearances, for their figures were incredibly alike, making them seem more like identical twins rather than brother and sister. One wouldn’t be faulted for assuming that a mirror stood between them, one that was invisible and yet all encompassing.

“They have learnt, I suspect.”

“They would learn.”

“We cannot add to the array with ease.”

“Changing it entirely would be a poor solution.”

“Yes.”

“Indeed.”

With simultaneous motions, they stepped away, placing their hands behind their backs as they walked slowly and elegantly, their long white robes not permitting them much room for rapid movement.

“The Yi girl. Have there been any sightings?”

“Too few with any credibility.”

“Red hair should stand out.”

“The name might differ. The Yi are unaware of her.”

“They appear submissive. They did not take action and subdued all rumours the moment that the child was found to be growing too powerful.”

“Could have been a trick to earn favour with Testament.”

“Further investigation might be useful.”

“Indeed.”

Like this, talking to one another in short sentences, exchanging thoughts that the two likely didn’t even need to share vocally, they slowly walked away from the great array, which would occasionally brighten and ignite a point on the great map that floated above it, prompting a man or woman in simple robes to rush out towards that location.

It was called the Death of Words, and it maintained a tight net over the entire world.

“What is this place?”

“The former Kong Prison Realm, and also the former prison realm of the Great Families. Now, it is under my control, and I have brought planar energy into the world to allow everyone to cultivate in such a manner that would be most beneficial within the Planar Continents. Once, the Master of Yi City used this place to contain something that he named the Hunger of the Beyond, which you should be able to see over there… It’s only half, but it had filled the entire left side of the prison realm with killing intent that they used for cultivation,” she explained, before looking towards the Silver Side, “That side believed themselves to be the elites of the world, chosen by the Greats, but that perception was shattered very soon after I arrived.”

“You… snatched such a large spatial realm from Them just like that?”

“You can say their name in here, as far as I am aware. Even if you can’t, it’s too late, since everyone in here has been saying all of their lives.”

“How?”

“They imprisoned me when I scratched the cheek of one of the Great Yi, so I took a while and took it from them. That great library that you see over there, in the very middle, is the core of my mental domain.”

“That is…” he gasped, “amazing. To cultivate to such an extent… A mixture of spiritual will and… killing intent? Such a force truly exists?”

“Indeed, it does. In fact, spiritual will is an energy that can even occupy the meridians, if given the opportunity, and it can be cultivated in much the same way. The same goes for killing intent, killing will, and physique energy from obtaining and refining one’s own physique. I suspect there is also a fifth force out there, but I have not yet stumbled onto it.”

His mouth remained agape for a moment, but then Senior Yi Yi frowned, “Why are you telling me this? Even if you want to bring me into your faction, this is a little much, isn’t it? I know now that if I want to injure you, that this library is the key, and can study it with arrays whenever I want. If I’m not mistaken, that also looks like a great facsimile of an anchor up there, which would mean that there might also be a way of damaging it if I try hard enough.”

“Both of those things are rather unlikely, but you can try. The library itself is intangible, whereas the anchor should be as well – it’s real, by the way. Want to see?” she asked, smirking slightly.

“Anchors have three sides. Don’t be ridiculous.”

‘At the very least he seems to be feeling a little better now that he has been removed from that place, which is fortunate. I wouldn’t be very confident in dealing with someone with rather severe mental issues, especially since my only experience in dealing with similar things myself was when I had changed my name and my entire approach to life during my arrival here,’ Wei Yi thought, summoning her cracking anchor from the peak of the prison realm onto the ground.

It crashed into the ground before them, knocking up a wave of dust that was lit up by the violet light that glowed from within the dark crystalline structure of the planar anchor. Above it, forty-seven glistening anchor shards rotated around it.

“Personally, I like the look of it. What do you think?”

“This is impossible! How can an anchor have that many sides? How can it be glowing with the power of five elements- no, seven, eight elements? What is this? How did this ever happen? How?”

“Are you alright?”

“No!”

“Fair enough. Still, I would advise you not to go this insane from just one anchor, otherwise you will lose your mind entirely and you won’t be able to survive the fact that Meng Qi’s descendant currently practises two forms of cultivation at once, or the fact that I am using four.”

“Ah, of course,” his response was far different from what she expected, but she suspected that this was only his method of dealing with the matter of such great confusion, which was to shut it all away and pretend that he understood everything and that nothing could phase him, which, to his credit, was very sensible considering the fact that he would never learn everything that there was to learn within a short period of time, no matter how open she was about everything that she did.

“So?”

“Are you asking whether I would like to join you?”

“Naturally. You can feel free to walk around and see what’s going on around here, but considering your relation to the Greats, I don’t think that letting you outside would be wise in the slightest,” she said, “If you want, I can lead you to the descendant of Meng Qi first, if you’d like to know what your friends ended up causing.”

“What wording… But I shall do that first. I need to know what it is that you have created here with your absurd anchor and whatever else.”

“Rude, considering the fact that your arrays are able to reach similarly absurd levels so long as they are three stars or below. If not for the fact that I am significantly more powerful than most at my realm, you could have won quite easily.”

He muttered something beneath his breath, then said, “I don’t care. Show me to this person.”

Wei Yi shrugged and clicked her fingers once more, the gesture being little more than emphasis on the command being given to the world and to the spatial spirit, both of whom coordinated to move her in an instant into the dome of Beast’s Rest.

After the entirety of the Kong Prison Realm was granted access to planar energy, she didn’t wish to undo all of her work from her previous breakthroughs in terms of killing intent and spiritual will, namely the dome that they created to convert the killing intent of the entirety of Beast’s Rest into her own energy, she instead decided to change the purpose of the great sphere of energy. Instead, it would focus the planar energy of the world around it, further amplifying the overall quantity of energy that the prison realm would naturally contain.

There were several method of raising the quantity of planar energy within a spatial realm, or the continents themselves, but all of those methods consisted of giving it more space to exist, tricking it into flooding into a world and increasing its density without reducing concentration or spreading it out unnecessarily.

She knew of several methods to achieve this, and the array of the great dome was suitable due to its ability to store planar energy, thus allowing it to perform a similar trick to the planar stones that she had used near the centre of the prison realm. Another effective approach would be to contain a vast number of precious materials that required planar energy to survive or thrive, as they would feast on the energy that flowed in, prompting a great quantity of it to arrive, before stabilising the space around it on a greater concentration of planar energy.

Obtaining such materials was somewhat difficult, considering the fact that they needed to be of the sixth realm or above, containing what was essentially their own cultivation and meridian network that could use as much energy as a typical entity in the fifth realm, although she did believe that she would be able to force their growth upon entering the fourth or fifth realm, depending on the limitations of her silver-leaf energy. Generally, it wouldn’t be easy to obtain such a material, as it included the likes of spatial metal that was absolutely essential to the creation of spatial realms, but if she was able to claim one and give it plenty of room to grow, then she could greatly raise the energy concentration of the entire Kong Prison Realm with relatively little effort – other than whatever effort needed to be invested to claim the material, of course.

For now, however, she was going to focus on the two men before her, who were currently looking at one another in some confusion.

“Wei Yi, there haven’t been any major developments in the usage of the material, but I suspect that this is not what you wanted to talk to me about,” Meng Chu said as he looked towards the old man beside her, “Who is he, by the way?”

“You do have some resemblance…”

“What?”

Seeing that the two of them weren’t going to be straight-forward with one another, Wei Yi stepped in and said, “Meng Chu, this man is Senior Yi Yi, someone who fought in the War of Yin and is an expert on arrays, although his technique will need a little work to reach the fourth realm at a decent quality. Senior Yi Yi, this is Meng Chu, the descendant of the Thunder Lord Meng Qi.”

They looked at one another once more, their gazes different and yet similar at the same time.

“There certainly is some resemblance…”

“You are familiar with my ancestor? Most of his legacy here has been lost, save for what he had done at Beast’s Rest and a few of the techniques that he had worked on,” Meng Chu said, raising his hand and letting a few sparks of crimson lightning arc between his palm and fingers, “I’d be very curious to hear about the kinds of things that he had gotten up to outside of here, mostly to know how this prison realm changed the man.”

“Hmph… I can tell you, but…” he turned to Wei Yi, “Fine, I’ll stay here, but I still doubt your identity and motives. The name Wei is so rare that I’ve never heard of it before, so you might be part of a secret Great Family, for all I know!”

“Fine by me, old man. If you want to speak to me, just sit down in a quiet room and speak. I’ll hear you, although I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to reply immediately. I might be fighting some great foe, or perhaps resting in preparation for said battle, or I might be visiting the public baths and stealing some glances at- ahem. You get the point,” she said, joking a little at the end in an attempt to make herself seem even less like the irritating Greats. Naturally, she wouldn’t outright declare her interest in looking at any attractive women there – she would do so without revealing her desire, unless she was mostly certain that she could take it further with someone of similar interests. “If I’m not available, my friend Yi Shi Ming might speak to you in my stead, although it isn’t very likely.”

Not wishing to disturb them any further, she initiated the transportation array beneath herself and faded out of the prison realm, returning to the area from which they had disappeared so unceremoniously. She did keep an ear on what they were discussing, just out of idle curiosity, but her focus was on the small clash they had previously.

The thing she was most surprised by was how natural wearing these high heeled boots turned out to be with a little assistance from the Heeled Balance Art, while it was still at the Initial Accomplishment stage, denoting the fact that she did not yet have full comprehension of the best usage of her altered footwear. This was an incredibly good thing to her, as this meant that the technique possessed a great deal of potential for further development, the opportunity to merge it with other techniques to create a semblance of an independent path, and perhaps a hidden truth deep within it.

Any technique with that potential was effectively another great increase in power for her, just with a slight delay before she was able to maximise the usefulness of the skill and best comprehend exactly how to apply every single one of them.

She would naturally experiment with it later within the Realm of Potential, in order to comprehend it as quickly as possible, but she decided that in order to not overwork herself, she would only use that place at night, when she would otherwise only have time to rest or sleep if she didn’t want to expose herself before attentive observers. For now, she instead turned her attention to the array arrangement techniques used by Senior Yi Yi, and how they compared to her own creation.

Her Spiritual Flow Arts were very good, there was no doubt about it, resulting in roughly fifty percent quality of any arrays that she created, whereas the average was ten for the typical master of any of the great arts, but the Prime Star Arts were able to create arrays at sixty percent quality – somewhere around sixty-three percent, to be more exact – and would thus be more powerful than her own, given the same level of cultivation, energy used and supporting techniques. Due to this, she had carefully scanned every single array that was used and how it was set up, hoping not to replicate the technique but to comprehend the exact reason for the immense boost to the low-grade arrays.

There had to be some reason why such a thing could occur, even if it was restricted the moment that the array gained a total of four stars, and if she understood them, she could elevate every single array she created even further, and, perhaps, one day reach the very peak of this great art, achieving the full power of an array.

Such a thing was entirely unheard of, no matter whether one looked in legends, true historical documents, or even into the gifts of the otherworldly demons. For this reason, such a thing as a ten-star array, inscription, pill, artefact or talisman did not exist, and nine stars were the peak of any great art, following the limitations of cultivation stopping at the ninth realm. It was much like leaving the prison realm had been for those within it or seeing the sun and moon – they had thought that it was impossible and concluded that it was not worth pursuing.

Wei Yi was not going to do the same. The Hunger of the Beyond was powerful, from what she knew, possibly at the ninth realm or above, but it meant that there were indeed existences that weren’t easy to obliterate at the peak of cultivation. She was already surpassing many perceived limitations of the world, whether it was in the number of paths she travelled at once, the number of sides her anchor had, the power of her individual techniques, her body, her cosmic energy, and the creation of the Ascendant’s Dao as a whole went beyond much of what she had thought was possible, and at the core was the combination of countless previous paths, experiences and experiments that allowed her to compose something that was purely her own.

One day, she would succeed. She would surpass the Master of Yi City, as she had originally intended, and she would confirm once and for all whether there were truly worlds beyond this one, whether the ninth realm was the peak, whether it was possible to transcend the Planar Dao and whatever else.

Before then, however, she would need to take every opportunity possible to maximise her ability.

‘It doesn’t seem to have a fragment of the Great Dao, which is unfortunate considering the fact that I want to acquire as many of those as possible, but it also means that this should be easier to decipher… I guess that’s another thing I could focus on while staying in the Luo District for a while,’ she decided, seeing as she wasn’t experiencing an immediate revelation or breakthrough and would thus need to spend quite some time before cracking the secret of the Prime Star Arts.

Instead, she reached into the air and removed a pair of gauntlets, a pair of crimson gloves covered in incredibly thin plates of black metal that made them seem like claws.

Placing them on her hands, she experimented with them a little to see exactly how freely she was able to move and was ultimately impressed with what Fu Zan had been able to make in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, as they were made partly from one of the strongest parts of her body, she not only had a useful kind of connection to them, but they were also able to link together with the star metal and achieve far superior results to using almost any other material known to her, as the strands of hair could still be reinforced using her cosmic energy and physique energy and would thus never break before the star metal.

‘Now, it is time for me to become a warrior. Good thing I have practise with claws, or else I’d have no idea how to scratch my head or gently caress someone… Not that I get to do such a thing frequently,’ she sighed, raising her head and looking in the direction of the rest of the district, “Now, onwards.”