V3C36: A Choice of Mercenary Group

It took roughly three hours of lengthy walking for her to finally arrive at something that resembled what she was looking for – an area of the district that was surrounded by a few wooden posts that imitated a fence and contained a large open area around which quite a few buildings and establishments existed, populated by people of all sorts that were clearly most skilled in combat over most other aspects.

Much like the time that she had come across the Deadly Martial Colosseum, there appeared to be quite a breadth of choice for her to look through before she even entered one of the buildings. So that she didn’t appear to be highly indecisive, she headed to a stall that someone had set up near one of the structures, containing a small but decent selection of three-star artefacts, and read through every single one of the introductory documents that those places could have provided to her if she did enter them. Most of the things that were described were the benefits that one would earn from joining, like certain perks, exclusions from particular costs or taxes, and the rest was mainly bragging about how few rules one would need to follow under their umbrella.

Although she had not been very confident with her aggressive persona so far, the things that these documents focused on allowed her to be far more certain regarding the exact interests and desires of actual muscle-headed bloodthirsty combat maniacs, which was a great gain in and of itself.

After looking through a large number of such lists of rules and benefits, she was able to rule out a few that were significantly inconvenient to her, like one that would have forced her to wear a uniform provided by the establishment and do a certain amount of advertising for them, which, while the latter portion wasn’t too difficult for her to accomplish, the former would require her to swap out everything that she currently used and constantly showcase their colours in a way that wouldn’t be suitable for her.

However, she couldn’t be certain where to go after that.

Unlike the time that she had joined the Deadly Martial Colosseum due to her requirements at the time, which was the necessity of technique manuals to compile and cultivate more powerful combat techniques to further empower herself, she didn’t have the need for any particular item or method at the time, which made choosing one significantly more difficult.

‘I should seek one that will allow me to learn the most about the district and any potential secrets it may contain within a short length of time, but it is rather difficult to establish exactly how well-connected any one faction is without taking a long time to study them all in depth…’ she thought while she found a few flaws within the artefacts she was looking over as an excuse not to purchase them after looking at them for a while, ‘In a time like this, I have no choice but to act as any ordinary person without a clue regarding their next course of action…’

“Oi, you cheating bastard, tell me the best place to work around here, and I won’t punch your face in,” she said to the merchant that was trying to quietly pack up and leave after she exposed a vast number of flaws within his items.

“Work? Do you want to join one of the mercenary groups?” he asked with some suspicion.

He didn’t have any doubts that she would be a fine combatant, and her tone and language made it obvious that she would be suitable for such a position, but the way in which the conversation suddenly changed made him ponder whether she was plotting something against him, as much as someone as aggressive as her would be able to come up with.

“I’ll get to beat things and people up, so yeah, obviously.”

“Will you leave me alone if I-”

“Start talking or I’ll hit you once, and you won’t like where the strike lands!” she exclaimed, showcasing her claw gauntlets while glancing at his crotch.

He reflexively took a step back and said, “The most well-known and praised one is the Skyward Blades, who work specifically towards the pursuit of the blade Dao and take up missions of all kinds to be able to train using their weapons. Some are combat- they do a lot of combat missions, but there are a few non-combat ones as well if that’s what interests you-”

“Are they the ones that wear those uniforms?”

“Y-Yes?”

“Nah, fuck them. I don’t wanna walk around dressed like that. Also, why would you ever not be spending your time hitting things?” Wei Yi asked, finding it incredibly difficult not to retort to herself.

“Then… How about the Blood-bound Pursuers? They specialise exclusively in tracking down criminals that the guard couldn’t properly pursue in their own time, and their only requirement is that you participate in a bloodline scanning ceremony of some kind.”

“Bloodline… I’m not gonna cut myself for the sake of some random group! What kind of shit suggestions are you giving me?”

“I don’t have any idea what you want, and I have no time to consider it properly if I ever want to have a family!” he barely managed to keep his voice down, sticking a protective talisman to his leg in preparation for her potential assault, “If you want me to answer you properly, can’t you tell me a little  more about what you actually need? And how about paying-”

“Listen up, since I won’t repeat myself. I want to be able to hit and kill things. I want to be paid for it. I want to be able to use my own things, and my own weapons. I do not want to wear random gaudy shit, and I do not want to cut myself for no reason. What about that isn’t clear?”

“What weapon do you use?”

“These,” she raised her hand again, a glint reflecting from the star metal into their eyes, “Wanna see them in action?”

“No, not at all, I’m sure you are very proficient in this… Give me a moment to think of something…” the merchant took another careful step back as she had advanced slightly to display her gauntlet, “Actually, there might be a better way for you to select something. Two of the best, most suitable groups I can think of are going to be duelling not too long from now, and they will be accepting people from outside of their organisations to participate within the duels. If you prove to be capable enough for them, they may even recruit you with some special privileges?”

‘While that does sound nice, there’s no way someone like the person I’m attempting to portray would ever care about privileges – not to mention how uncertain he sounds,’ Wei Yi took note of that and grinned, “Excellent! I will beat all of them up!”

“You go do that…”

“I will, you scam merchant!” she replied, rushing off before he had the opportunity to retort or notice that quite a few people had gathered nearby to observe their exchange, and would likely check out his wares in far closer detail and potentially spread rumours of his unauthentic items, despite the fact that he didn’t appear to be intentionally selling faulty equipment, failing only due to his inattentiveness.

She could consider fixing this misconception later, preferably with a different identity or if she decided to reveal her intellect at some point within this district, but for now, it was unlikely for most people to be convinced of him being a trickster unless he was a new presence within the district, in which case she would correct his reputation sooner, if he proved to be an honest individual that didn’t have something wrong with him, or some intentional alliance with the likes of the Greats.

‘Either way, I won’t ruin this man’s life just for a bit of acting unless he deserves something like that.’

Within this collection of structures, she did locate two that belonged to the two groups that were going to duel a few hours from now, called the Gang Hong (刚弘) Clan and the Brotherhood of Power.

Ignoring the somewhat overly… masculine name of the former, both of them were indeed suitable for the person she was attempting to portray. Both focused almost entirely on combat missions, both had a significant amount of presence and power within the district, both had plenty of techniques that they had collected and compiled that she could ‘borrow’ the moment that she found their location and came close enough to circumvent whatever protective arrays they must have had, and both would ensure that she would gather a lot of experience, knowledge and understanding, regardless of which field she pursued.

Their rules and policies were rather lax in the areas that mattered to her specifically, and so far as she was able to gather without inspecting any of them in detail, no unusual methods of forcing compliance were used, whereas the Blood-bound Pursuers would obtain her blood in the initial ritual and have the potential ability to do quite a number of things through it.

For most, this would almost certainly be impossible, but their name had a rather significant similarity to the Blood-tinged Church, and they were the largest and oldest organisation devoted to studying blood, bloodlines and whatever else that the world as a whole was aware of, meaning that if there was any possibility of using her blood – or any part of her body, for that matter – against her or anybody else, they would most likely possess it.

Even if she was just being rather paranoid, allowing anyone to view her bloodline was an extremely dangerous thing to do, as it could expose her original identity and potentially alert the Great Families to her freedom, at which point she would be in extreme danger.

Both the Gang Hong Clan and the Brotherhood of Power came without this risk, and had plenty of potential for entertaining activities to participate in when she wasn’t hunting some foe, allowing herself to get a little more caught up with that side of life while she still had the opportunity to do so. If she was able to proceed with her plans without permanent interruption, the Western Continent would eventually break out into war, and at that point, if she stopped to explore some side of herself or of the society she found herself in, she would simply be letting people die for no good reason.

Some of her thoughts and actions could certainly be described as morally dubious, especially when viewed from certain perspectives, but she wouldn’t throw lives away to indulge in momentary distractions, regardless of how pleasing or entertaining they might be. She could either do so after the Planar Continents were freed from the grasp of the Greats, or not at all if she failed.

With no reason to delay, she spoke with someone to get more accurate directions, then proceeded further towards the centre of the Luo District, confirming her initial assumption as she did so.

The buildings around her, once extremely far apart and without a trace of borders within the land, now gained fences and grew closer together, the enormous gulf that she initially saw shrinking until only a few steps needed to be taken to get from one structure to another, although the largest buildings that were typically used by businesses and large trading companies still managed to reserve quite a lot of space for themselves.

Although some of the stores that she came across contained rather curious items for the Planar Continents, she was rather used to the madness that Fu Zan could create and the oddity that she had seen within the House of Gold, so very few things were able to impress her to a sufficient extent for her to bother looking at them with her eyes, rather than just scanning through them with her spiritual perception. Some merchants were foolish enough to leave some technique manuals and recipes in their stalls without sufficient protection to guard from her spiritual perception, giving her plenty of opportunity to reinforce her knowledge of combat techniques and develop some idea regarding the common combat styles of the Luo District.

As was perhaps obvious, with the district being the holy ground of talismans, so to speak, their combat style also focused around talismans and talisman-like tactics.

A number of method involved the generation of single-use planar constructs that could be exploded for a significant degree of damage, and some even gain power the longer they remain active without being used or otherwise destroyed by the enemy. Some would leave these marks on their own bodies, others would attempt to attack with them directly, and others would instead protect their marks for as long as possible in order to finish off an enemy within a single strike.

Whichever one she would encounter in the future, she was very curious to find out how to maximise the power of everything that was already within her possession, and she would be certain to try these out within the Realm of Potential once she had the time to do so.

There were some traces of physiques on certain individuals, and they also had an unusual method of activation through either talismans or the planar construct marks, allowing them to trigger the effects and abilities that might normally be achieved through physique cultivation using these methods at varying levels of power and effectiveness. It was another interesting discovery, not due to the method itself, but because it reminded her of the fact that all other forms of cultivation were ultimately aspects of planar energy itself, meaning that so long as the right method was found, she could theoretically achieve anything typically restricted to physique, spiritual will or killing intent cultivation using planar energy alone.

Of course, that didn’t mean that it was ever a good idea to get lazy and skip out on cultivation just because she could theoretically achieve the same effect through another method, since combining the proper ability and the pure planar imitation could lead to even greater effects, or the discovery of something else that would be more than worth the effort required.

If she capitalised on that potential, she could raise her power even further, and if an enemy was able to figure out how to resolve one of her executions of an attack or technique, she could always initiate a different variation of it to catch them off guard. Furthermore, when the Great Families would inevitably begin to share all of their knowledge about her past, present, and their deductions regarding her future, the more she was able to display while still keeping some cards close to the chest, the more difficult it would be for anyone to accurately decipher whether she still had more to show them.

However, this was something for a later time. Comprehending the Great Dao and figuring out methods to entirely replicate an entire form of energy was something that took time, and even sudden revelations needed some kind of solid foundation to work from.

‘For now, I should see if either of the mercenary groups would accept an insane woman using clawed gauntlets as her primary weapon,’ she thought, glancing down at her hands before she approached the entrance to the arena in which she could sense the combatants of both organisations quietly cultivating and meditating in preparation for the upcoming conflict, ‘It would be great if they had a similar entry process to the Deadly Martial Colosseum, as that would give me a few more jade slips to look through, but that treatment seems unlikely for a temporary fighter.’

Speaking of jade slips, she had returned to browse one more time through the jade slip that belonged to Chen Shujin in the Ning District, and found it as fragmented as before, with a few more sparks missing since the last time she looked through it. She took in a few more bits of information, then left it alone once more, as she was one of the few people disappearing from the district at that time, and so all suspicion would point towards her if the jade slip was to go missing at the same time as she did.

A positive reputation was still important to her, as it would best facilitate the forging of alliances later on, which was also why she didn’t want to do anything too extreme while in the Luo District.

There was a sizeable queue to the arena, but it was for spectators, who would go up into seats above the action, whereas the combatants would enter from below, meaning that they did not need to intersect during their entries into the structure itself.

A long, long time ago, such arenas were used for frequent matches between two factions, often coded by colour or some other defining characteristic of their armour or appearance. These factions would be a bit like the mercenary groups that would fight there now, but their only tasks would be to fight in the arena, either for personal profit and gain, or to risk working off some other punishment without needing to go to prison or withstand some other punishment.

They gained and lost their popularity roughly six hundred thousand years after the age of the Master of Yi City, being one of many spontaneous trends that appeared and disappeared rather unceremoniously.

At the door to the competitor’s entrance, she came across a guard that was lazily leaning against the doorframe, having so much time and energy to spare with so little idea of what to expend them on that she was staring at her own feet, having removed one from her shoes, observing how the light would hit the nails and skin and what it looked like from any one perspective.

“Hey, are either of the groups still accepting fighters?” Wei Yi asked, but the guard did not respond.

She repeated herself, being loud enough for those on the opposite side of the small entryway alcove to hear her clearly, but there was still no response.

‘Alright then, don’t blame me for… this, I guess,’ Wei Yi paused for a moment to consider which approach would be sufficiently aggressive to fit in with her character and to attract the right type of attention while not resembling an attempt to kill the other person, and eventually decided on something that seemed suitable.

The guard, who was somehow still unaware that anything was going on around her, making one wonder how she was ever permitted to occupy such a position (besides the fact that guards tended to be weaker than those they protected and were thus mostly there to act as a force of intimidation for weaker foes to be warded off, minimising annoyance to the person or group they protected), suddenly witnessed a hand clad in black metal and fabric grab the front of her collar and pull on it. She instantly lost her balance and, without any preparation or anything convenient to hold on to, the guard was easily brought right before the face of a woman with sharp and refined features that one could rarely see even on the upper members of a family.

Perhaps due to the sudden shock, she felt her heart skip a beat.

“I asked whether any of the groups that are going to fight here are accepting new fighters.”

As she spoke, this woman used a rather brutish and aggressive tone, but that flew over the guard’s head in its entirety as she focused on the pure pearl-like teeth within the woman’s mouth, as well as the brilliant grey eyes that acted much like an unfathomably deep and enticing void, drawing her attention and enamouring her with ease.

“U-uhm… I…” the guard tried to vocalise anything resembling a coherent thought, but it was suddenly so difficult, as if she forgot how to speak at all.

Something about the woman’s features, the magnificent texture of her skin, the expression on her face, even the faint scent around her that she couldn’t possibly assign a name to, all of these completely enamoured her, to the point that even when the woman’s face blatantly began to display her discontent, she couldn’t bring herself to stop her folly and to respond properly. For a few moments, she wasn’t even sure if she remembered to breathe, although having this be the last thing she saw before death somehow didn’t seem like a particularly bad deal.

“Are you actually listening to me?”

The blatant trace of killing intent within that question broke her away from her reverie, but not before she stole one final look at the woman’s soft, moist, glistening lips that, by themselves, caused the guard’s cheeks to redden.

“Y-Yes, if you go in, they’ll speak to you t-themselves…” she finally responded, feeling strangely hot.

Although the woman’s eyes narrowed slightly, she didn’t ask questions, saying only, “Right. Pay more attention in the future.”

The woman pushed her back against the doorframe, then opened the door. As she headed down into the combatant’s section of the arena, a different guard came upstairs and gave the guard and the woman a brief glance, before leaning towards the former.

“So, what did that woman want?” he asked, taking out a small flagon from which he drunk a gulp of water.

“I… think I’m in love.”

All of the water quickly left his mouth as he spat it out, wetting much of the ground and even causing some to splash onto the feet, boots, robes and trousers of the guests, earning several displeased glares from the most confident amongst them.

“Come again?”

“I… Wait, did I say that out loud?” the female guard suddenly realised, her entire face becoming bright red as she tried to hide it with her hands to little effect.

Since Wei Yi tended to watch over everything that happened near her with spiritual perception, she also witnessed this moment, but unlike the male guard, she was far better at hiding her surprise, which was also significantly lesser than his. She was aware that her appearance was above average, to say the least, having been refined through both her planar and physique energy, with her mental energies enhancing it in a way, although they tended to affect her eyes the most, so it wasn’t too surprising that someone found her form appealing.

Furthermore, the further north one went, the more open and free everyone became with their bodies and sexuality, with far more cases of relationships between the same gender due to the different way in which they saw family, love and whatever else, so for another woman to find her appealing was hardly unusual.

What she had been surprised by was the rather immature way in which the guard acted, considering the fact that her age appeared to be over thirty, by which point Wei Yi herself had extensive familiarity with far more than she probably should have, but one thing that should have been obvious to any adult was that outright love wouldn’t develop from a moment of being a little too close to one another. Then again, the romantic side of a relationship was something that she also had little experience in, so perhaps she wasn’t the best person to provide her opinions on such a thing. There was always a chance that she would experience a similar reaction in the future, regardless of how prepared she thought she was – she remembered how she acted when she first saw Chu Ling, after all.

‘Either way, I won’t be able to reciprocate, regardless of what that guard concludes, since I have neither the time nor interest… She is hardly ugly, most people that cultivate aren’t so long as they invest even a moment to their appearance, but I have no interest in her in any other way.’

In addition, she would feel rather bad if she had developed some kind of relationship with another only to run away or possibly even die because of some conflict that the other had no ability to participate in or no knowledge of, so if she did ever get into a full relationship of the romantic kind, it would have to be with someone that was either already embroiled within the war against the Greats, or someone that would be able to protect themselves.

‘Fuck, I’m thinking about this kind of thing again. Oh well…’ she sighed, finally descending to the place where she was apparently supposed to apply to the upcoming duel.

There were three primary spot around which people gathered in this underground room. On the left and right of the entrance stood the larger groups, with those on the left wearing an orange band around one of their arms and legs, whereas those on the right used blue for the armband and white for the strip of cloth around the leg, the closeness of both groups and the angry stares they directed towards one another making it clear that this was what they had decided to use to ensure that their allegiances during larger battles were clear.

In the middle was a small rectangular platform that was slightly higher than the floor, framed with stone and filled with sand, and contained three tall, rectangular rocks that were placed at different intervals to the left, right, and behind the centre of the platform.

Although she was not personally familiar with these items, she had read about them in the past. They were stones that were not difficult to break or damage in most physical ways, and were thus incredibly convenient to use in measuring one’s aura, which was far weaker than most cultivator’s physical strength. In addition, they would recover if given enough time, meaning that they were perfect to investigate how powerful one’s aura was, which was slightly more accurate to learning one’s overall ability rather than looking purely at planar energy or physical strength.

One person from each group stood near that platform, glaring at one another, beside a man dressed in a fanciful yet practical decorative robe, who appeared to be someone working at the arena and was trying his best not to become frustrated at the way in which they seemed ready to fight it out right there and then.

The moment that he noticed her entry, he broke away from the two and approached her, speaking the moment that he was close enough, “Are you here to participate in this large-scale duel as well?”

His tone was hopeful, and his expression was even more so, but it didn’t last.

“Yeah, I want to beat some people up. How do I do that?”

“Oh, excellent. Just what we needed,” the man said, although his voice was entirely flat, “Stand in the middle of that platform, release your aura, then if you’re able to affect the second stone, the two groups will debate who wants you on their side.”

As he walked off immediately, both she and he questioned why he had chosen to work in such a place when he was clearly unsuited for a position where he would need to constantly manage duels and confrontations between various people, groups, companies, organisations and whatever or whoever else might decide that the best or easiest way to resolve some issue is to beat up some people that might even be unrelated to the group itself.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t her place to judge or question him, since it wasn’t really of any significance to her at the moment, so she just walked onto the sand-filled platform and sat down in the middle with her legs crossed, shutting her eyes for a moment in order to gather her aura and to not appear too laid back or too powerful, as that could pull her into something that she wouldn’t want to be a part of.

Some of the gazes from the two groups turned to her, although none appeared to be holding particularly high expectations of her, which she couldn’t fault in the slightest, as she was someone new within the district, and someone who was able to contain her presence sufficiently to not expose anything beyond a typical third realm cultivation, meaning that they would have no reason to assume her to be someone unusually capable. The two standing near the platform, who appeared to be either the leaders of the two mercenary groups, or temporary leaders of the assembled teams, looked at her with a little more curiosity, both of them looking towards her gauntlets and boots for a moment.

Regardless of their opinions now, she was sure that she would impress.