V3C45: Execution and Cultivation

Her nightly training session went along smoothly and effectively.

As could be expected from a physique by the name of the Vibrant Phoenix, the ability that it bestowed went along perfectly with the Phoenix Transformation modifier, empowering it significantly without the need to do much beyond having the ability active.

This allowed her to learn the method and integrate it into her combat style without needing to spend all that much time within the Realm of Potential, giving her a lot of time to spend of training with a lot of her other techniques, polishing them and remembering how to use them in the best manner after some had gone unused for some time. Had she been able to practise any of the great arts properly, she would have likely spent the rest of the night improving various recipes and her limited list of techniques for utilising them, but, unfortunately, while the various ingredients and surfaces could be created, they wouldn’t work quite as they do in reality, meaning that it would be entirely useless to practise.

Instead, she decided to make some more progress with both the Heeled Balance art and some of the other movement techniques within her arsenal, not managing to raise the stage of any but successfully managing to combine them in a smoother, more efficient method than before, meaning that there would no longer be any more difficulty to using, for example, Storm’s Edge Dash with heeled boots than without.

To begin with, the problem was rather insignificant due to the properties of the Ascendant’s Dao unifying the techniques she used into one, meaning that the Heeled Balance art and any of the other skills she had already had a close link together. All she needed to do to improve was connect them fully.

She was tempted, for a moment, to use the Truth of the Universe to raise the stage of the entirety of her Ascendant’s Movement Dao, as it could be called, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for the same reason that she avoided using it the majority of the time to begin with, since she didn’t currently have a clear image of how to progress the technique that would allow her mark to truly be made upon the skill and limit the mechanical nature of the Truth of the Universe.

Eventually, if all of these techniques were to be united perfectly, their every single move could contain a fragment of the Great Dao, and their power would be elevated into a forbidden skill, hopefully without the same side effects as most of the skills that she was aware of. It could also potentially lead to no longer requiring any excess energy to be consumed for the execution of a technique, meaning that she could use the Storm’s Edge Dash just as she might actually dash from place to place, necessitating only as much physical exertion as that movement despite the vast disparity in effectiveness.

That would take time, so she wasn’t yet intending to push towards such a goal. Instead, she observed that the day was coming, so she pretended to wake up.

As she did that, she saw that the last person that lived within the room had finally returned, and that she was currently sitting on top of her stomach, a tail wagging with curiosity and wolven ears twitching alongside it.

This figure had nothing but a strip of cloth covering her chest and another around her hips, fully exposing a body with large patches of white fur, nails on both her feet and hands that resembled something that might be seen on a wolf, and long grey hair that flowed wildly and without anything but the most basic of grooming. Her slightly open mouth displayed a set of elongated canines, as well as sharper teeth more general, as well as a trace of a moist, inhuman tongue behind them. In a similar way, her eyes were amber, and they seemed to have a slight glow within them, while they looked into Wei Yi’s eyes with an unreadable intent and expression.

“Hello, Zhi Qiu Ya. How’re you doing?”

The animal-like woman didn’t respond with words, instead leaning down and getting close enough for Wei Yi to be able to feel the warmth of her breath and skin, and made it very clear just how sweaty the woman was, her skin glistening after whatever strenuous activity she had engaged in before this.

In the corner of her vision, she was able to wolven ears twitch in response to her as Zhi Qiu Ya lightly sniffed her, perhaps trying to make use of the typical powerful sense of smell of wolves and other canines to figure out something about her, although that wouldn’t be particularly useful against the constant purification of the Yin-Yang Ascendant physique energy that she had continued throughout the night, which eliminated everything but the natural scent of her body.

“Um… Are we going to be here for a while, or are you going to get off of me?”

The wolven woman did not reply, but a hand did suddenly grab onto her neck and pulled her off the bed.

“There you are, mutt. Get away from her,” Long Huang singlehandedly managed to throw her onto the other bed, the one with a dense covering of fur upon it, “Wei Yi, were you? Tell me, does that look like a bloodline, or that corruption bullshit that the Mo Zhouquan keeps prattling on about?”

“I wouldn’t say I understand exactly what corruption is, so it’s difficult to say.”

“So long as you’re not siding with her right away, I will not slip the blood of a cobalt spawn into your food,” she said, checking that Zhi Qiu Ya wasn’t hurt by her actions before heading out of the room.

Mo Zhouquan appeared to still be asleep, breathing steadily and slowly beneath the thick layer of flesh-like bedsheets. The corruption, or whatever it was, hadn’t spread at all from yesterday, so that alongside Zhi Qiu Ya lacking any semblance of the same corruption appeared to confirm that it wasn’t something that would be quickly spread through the air or simple touch.

She still had no intention of actively remaining anywhere near that bed or the person responsible for it, but it was good to know that she shouldn’t turn into some strange approximation of humanity if she stopped paying attention for a little while and genuinely went to sleep at some point. The fact that she, hopefully, wouldn’t need to regularly cleanse and incinerate anything that comes near the corrupted woman was also quite convenient, as she already had too many things to be paranoid about without needing to worry about her gauntlets developing a fleshy interior that would attempt to permanently bond with her hands, or something of the sort.

Meanwhile, Zhi Qiu Ya had sat up in her bed, rubbing her forehead as she looked to her right, a strange degree of surprise appearing within her expression when she saw Wei Yi.

“What are you doing here? Who are you?” she asked, speaking with an oddly refined accent for someone who had been wagging her tail – that was still happening, although to a far lesser extent – and sitting on top of someone just a moment prior.

“My name is Wei Yi, and… weren’t you just sitting on top of me?”

“Oh, did that occur? I apologize for the actions of my other, primitive mind, but I am not in control of myself when she takes over, nor do I recall a single thing from that time,” Zhi Qiu Ya stated, glancing at her sweaty hand and lowering it in disgust, “Note that this doesn’t give you the excuse to do whatever you want when I am not conscious. I have ways of learning what occurred around me and to me, with or without my enhanced senses, and as inconvenient as this wolven form is, it does grant me great strength.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Do you have all of the senses of a wolf, or are those ears just for show?”

“I do. Taste, smell, hearing, even my sight has changed. Unfortunately, it makes the actions of my other mind even more unpleasant, since I can all too easily detect the stench of myself and others.”

“That… must not be pleasant, I guess.”

“No, it is not,” Zhi Qiu Ya confirmed firmly, “I will be heading to the baths. Since you seem to be new, I can lead you to them at the same time, and I should hopefully remain conscious for long enough to provide some semblance of conversation for you.”

“Alright, let’s do that. Would you mind telling me a little more about yourself while we walk? I’ve never seen someone like you.”

The wolven woman shrugged, “It’d be a relief to speak to someone other than the pair of maniacs that sleep beneath us, so I could, even if the topic itself is one that bores me immensely and tempts me to engage in my baser instincts even without requiring the other consciousness to overwhelm me. You couldn’t have known that, so I apologise for throwing that onto you.”

“No, no, I understand entirely. I should have known, given the questions asked about these,” Wei Yi raised her claws and clicked them together several times, “Not the same, of course, but still.”

“Indeed. Come on, every moment wasted increases the chance of me reverting to my previous state, although it doesn’t usually occur before thirty minutes have passed,” Zhi Qiu Ya stated and got down from her bed, waiting only for a little while for Wei Yi before she headed out of the door.

“Wait, don’t you want to put something on?”

Wei Yi managed to get dressed within an instant due to wearing nothing but the leather boots, gauntlets and black robe, with her clawed gauntlets being kept on at all times due to them not being inconvenient to her, but the wolven woman hadn’t bothered to put on anything other than what her animal self had chosen to wear.

Besides understanding the remark that Luo Lia Kun had made regarding Zhi Qiu Ya often losing her clothing, presumably while in her animalistic state, but the aura given off by her right now did not seem to imply a fondness for the same kind of behaviour.

“I don’t own too much clothing at the moment, since anything complex will be torn apart by my other mind the moment that it decides that I am covering too much of my own body. Furthermore, we are going to bathe. I will not stain anything with my sweat just because I wish to retain some semblance of modesty, assuming that I still have any of it left,” she explained, giving Wei Yi just enough time to catch up with her before she hastened off towards the baths.

Based on the direction in which she headed, Zhi Qiu Ya preferred the separate baths, which were located on the first floor at the back of the building, while the shared baths were near the middle of the building and on the left, making them somewhat less popular due to the decreases quantity of sunlight shining into them.

“You were going to ask me questions. Ask them before we get there if you want answers.”

“Alright. I was-”

“The flower and wolf of corruption meet at last~…” Mo Zhouquan appeared behind them, coming dangerously close to both of them and prompting them to flinch away, earning a sad pout from the corrupted woman, “Aw, don’t distance yourselves from the succulent heart of corruption… You both have such fantastic potential~… In particular, you, Wei Yi. You stayed above me for the night, and yet you lack the blatant flavour that belongs to me…”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t really want to know.”

“Black-blooded maniac,” Zhi Qiu Ya spat, “Are you going to be ruining the baths with your stench as well?”

“Why, of course~! It has been some time since I have cleansed my form, and I would never pass up on the opportunity to share in conversation with those I oft reside with~…” she replied, “I do find your comments on me rather rude~… I have no stench, only the delectable scent of corruption pouring through my veins at every moment.”

“I don’t care what you call it. Stay away from me unless you have something useful to do.”

Giving her no opportunity to reply, Zhi Qiu Ya grabbed Wei Yi’s arm and dragged her away, as if concerned that she would stay behind for too long and be corrupted, although whether she didn’t want to lose a reasonable person or if she didn’t want to give Mo Zhouquan the opportunity to spread her corruption further wasn’t made obvious by any part of her behaviour. What could be seen was her strength, which, although it paled in comparison to the monstrous might of Wei Yi, was truly far superior to the physical abilities of most within the Planar Continents, at least in the same realm as she was.

With them travelling at an even greater speed, they reached the baths in no time, put away their things into a protected drawer that could be reopened with the talisman that lay within, and entered the baths only to find Long Huang already within them.

The baths were located in a large chamber, with one entrance at the front and a set of large windows at the back, made from blurred, unclear glass that would obstruct vision and spiritual perception similarly, allowing only the faintest glimpses to be seen of the people bathing within. The walls and ceiling were lined with a light wood that kept in the warmth of the hot waters in the centre of the room, while the floor was made from tiles of dark, porous stone that managed to resemble black, polished marble without the same risk of slipping and falling when getting out of the baths.

One could walk with two friends around the rectangular perimeter of the bathing pool itself, which was carved from several large stones in such a manner that the baths had three levels of elevation, with the first two resembling steps as they were just wide enough for one person to stand on them, and just tall enough to be able to ascend them without much discomfort.

It was possible to sit with only one’s feet within the water, or get in deeper up to one’s chest, which was the position that Long Huang had chosen to occupy, or go even further in, arriving at the depth of most of the bathing pool, where only the tallest could stand while others would easily be able to dive beneath the water, which wasn’t usually recommended but was occasionally done to see things that would otherwise be obscured by the subtle waves and refraction of the water.

From a quick look through spiritual perception onto the other side of the wall, the male baths were identical, except the colours of the floor and walls were reversed for some aesthetic reason.

“Ah, Zhi Qiu Ya. Have you regained your human mind for now?”

“I have. Otherwise, I’d never be here, judging purely based on experience,” Zhi Qiu Ya confirmed as she headed to the showers at the side, “Don’t try to take a sample of my blood again while we’re here.”

“For the moment, I have enough of them. Furthermore, I typically ask for permission.”

“’Typically’ doesn’t mean always.”

Seeing their exchange, with both acting slightly differently than she would have expected, especially given yesterday’s comments, Wei Yi didn’t have much of an opportunity nor desire to step in, so she calmly washed herself and then stepped into the warm water of the bath, sitting down a short distance away from Long Huang as to not bother her too much.

“And you. Have you made friends with the mutt?”

‘Oh, so she still calls her that. I was wondering whether she only used that for the wolven state of Zhi Qiu Ya, and I guess that isn’t the case,’ Wei Yi pondered how to reply for a moment, then said, “I’ve only spoken with Zhi Qiu Ya a little, but I’m hoping that it hasn’t been going too poorly so far.”

“I don’t dislike you, so that is more than what can be said for most,” Zhi Qiu Ya said as she got into the water as well, sitting a similar distance away from Wei Yi as she was from Long Huang, “Furthermore, you haven’t yet attempted to experiment on me in some way, and you are not an unpleasant creature like Mo Zhouquan, so-”

“Do you miss me already, delectable~ seed?” the person she brought up finally arrived at that point, not bothering to enter the showers before she went straight into the water, thankfully having enough sense and empathy to avoid them and sit on the other end of the baths. The very moment that her skin touched the water, a thick, dark violet fog began to spread throughout the water, turning it opaque and entirely obscuring all of the woman’s activities within that darkened mist while also releasing a thin vapour that hung around it and released an unpleasant smell that both Zhi Qiu Ya and Wei Yi quickly attempted to retreat from.

Just as with most of the corrupted woman’s actions and creations, it was difficult to accurately explain or label them in words alone, but the vapour seemed to be the combination of the best and worst scents of passion, humanity, and life itself, appearing highly disgusting to the extreme senses of the wolven woman and the above-average sensory abilities of Wei Yi.

Long Huang appeared to be able to ignore it, although her eyes did narrow as she stared at the woman opposite her.

“Nobody in this world could ever possibly miss you, Mo Zhouquan,” Long Huang stated, getting a little out of the water to the point that her nipples rose above it, “Just so that you know, Wei Yi, every time that she enters the water, the entire bath has to be cleaned and refilled. For this reason, everyone constantly asks her not to bathe, and thus she manages to get away with remaining in the building very frequently and not cleaning herself for weeks or even months, at times.”

“Fortunately, whatever is going through her veins doesn’t result in sweat or dirt accumulating on her, or else she’d have had her neck bitten off some time ago,” Zhi Qiu Ya added, almost growling at the woman before catching herself.

Seeing as Mo Zhouquan had nothing to add, as she was simply leaning back and enjoying whatever had become of the water, Wei Yi decided to ask, “Is there any reason why she is allowed to be doing whatever she wanted with her, er, corruption, as she calls it? How does a bed transform into a living thing, anyway?”

“Well, the creepy bitch is rather knowledgeable about way too many things and is able to cure the majority of diseases and poisons within an hour of learning about them. Additionally, she has some connection to a faction that also specialises in corruption, which the Brotherhood of Power, that is, we, occasionally benefit from,” Long Huang explained, reluctantly getting a little deeper into the water so that she could enjoy the warm water above the waist as well, “Our vice-leader also believes that they have some credibility, though I dispute this whenever I can.”

“I see. Does she… ever transform people’s things like she has her own clothing and bedsheets?”

“She’s been… convinced by us to stop that kind of behaviour,” Zhi Qiu Ya said, sharing a glance with Long Huang that likely meant that she was included in that group.

“Right…” Wei Yi bit her lip as she pondered about some other question to ask the three of them, but she couldn’t think of much that wouldn’t raise some suspicion the moment that they learnt a little more about her, so she instead took advantage of the location she was in and took a proper look at the people around her, as the previous time necessitated spiritual perception rather than her eyes.

The first person to catch her eye was naturally Mo Zhouquan, mostly because she was sitting directly in front of her, but she was also the worst to look upon within the baths due to the damage that she had inflicted upon the waters.

All that she was able to see was that her chest was large, her skin soft, and her eyes were incredibly curious and inquisitive, making Wei Yi somewhat reluctant to look upon her for a prolonged period of time despite everything that she had endured before, and that she expected to experience later, especially if the corrupted woman assumed that she was also interested in being affected by that corruption and put in great effort to inflict it upon her.

Instead, she turned to Zhi Qiu Ya, who was currently meticulously trying to clean the fur that grew on her arms, armpits, back, parts of her belly and on the sides of it, on her legs and on her head, although that was more of a mix of human hair and animal fur, getting closer to the latter near her animalistic ears, which somehow coexisted alongside her human ears.

Unlike the somewhat top-heavy figure of Mo Zhouquan and the comparatively bottom-heavy figure of Wei Yi, Zhi Qiu Ya had a balanced body, having both muscle and fat in just the right places, above-average breasts seemingly emphasises by the fur that grew around her chest, fitting onto her body significantly better than Mo Zhouquan’s assets did on her inhuman, unnatural form that was, admittedly, still highly appealing if the corrupted features of her body were to be ignored entirely, as they significantly lowered her appeal in her eyes.

To her left, Long Huang finally managed to relax enough to sit back down, fully immersing her chest within the warm water, which was perhaps the second smallest out of everyone in the baths, perhaps caused in part due to the overall thin appearance of the pale figure.

Out of everyone here, she seemed to be consuming the least food and had the most bones showing through her skin, beside spending the least amount of time in the sun, so this thinner figure was likely caused in part due to the excessive amount of time spent in some dark room experimenting upon bloodlines and whatever creatures she would be permitted to interact with, which was either her loss or gain depending on whether she was like Wei Yi, valuing efficiency and convenience over having slightly larger boobs.

‘Anyway, it has been a while, so I might as well relax, circulate my physique energy to prevent that corrupted sludge from coming into contact with me, and occupy my mind with something slightly more relevant than the bodies of those beside me,’ she thought after a while, leaning back and focusing.

Some time later, without being accosted by anyone that she knew within the Brotherhood of Power, she found a board that had a large number of contracts pinned to it, picked out a simple one requiring her to chase down some criminal and kill her, and left the district quickly, as the target had only left recently and because she was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to integrate the energy that she had obtained from Shi Taihao’s failed plan to win his duel with Luo Lia Kun.

It wouldn’t be sufficient to breach the fifth stage, even though it was a significant amount of energy for someone in the fifth realm, not only because reaching any stage of the fifth realm would actually require a hundred times the energy someone in it would actually possess due to the way in which energy refinement and absorption functioned, but also due to the overly inflated amount of power that Wei Yi required for every single one of her realms and stages. With a fraction of the total pool of someone in the fifth realm, she would obtain energy that was only roughly five times more powerful than her own, meaning that she would need twenty times more of it to cross the entirety of a stage.

Still, miracles had occurred in the past, and if she did achieve a breakthrough, whatever occurred during it would certainly drawn unwanted attention. She would rather avoid that at all costs, while she could.

Furthermore, she wanted to get some opportunity to practise without potential observation, and while she couldn’t be certain that she would avoid the attention of someone with the seventh realm within the district, given that their energy could be significantly more powerful than her own and potentially avoid her gaze, but she could easily stretch out her perception within the wilds and be safe.

Once she arrived at such a place, she did exactly that, finding no people of a high realm within reach, even if one of them was within the seventh realm, at which point they could reach out to one hundred and twenty three metres with their spiritual perception without requiring any kind of spiritual will cultivation, which they wouldn’t be able to commit to unless they were somehow born with a physique that included additional sets of meridians, or if they somehow uncovered the same method that she did via the insane and rather dangerous combination of countless body cultivation techniques.

‘Every time I recall that, I realise how close I had been to killing myself back then. Had I not been successful, there would have been more than just excruciating pain… On the topic of which, time to cultivate and attempt to come up with some more new things. Perhaps I’ll find some fortunate combination of techniques and principles again, at some point, and figure out bloodline cultivation or something of the sort,’ she thought as she sat down and reached out to Yi Shi Ming.

Within the prison realm, a cloud of purified energy floated in the air, kept in place by the might of the Oblivion Halo realm spatial spirit, above a series of planar stones that were slowly releasing their energy into the space around them and saturating the entire spatial realm to a greater level.

“Are you ready, Wei Yi?” the mother of the Master of Yi City asked, raising her hand in preparation.

“Yes. I am prepared to activate an obscuring array and to defend myself even if the Greats all congregate upon my current position without warning… I’m prepared to fail almost instantly, that is. I don’t expect to survive for long enough to get away if their first generation appears, especially if they are able to accumulate more anchors than those in the second and third generation,” Wei Yi thought idly, “I wonder what technique allows them to breach the laws of planar energy cultivation to such a large extent.”

“Actually, you might be being worried over nothing, as the Great Families tend to maintain a similar number of anchors across their generations, and from first public appearance to their deaths, the number does not usually change.”

“Oh, really? Then, does that mean that I have dealt a great deal of damage to Ning Wu and Chen Wu?”

“Potentially, so long as their technique does not set a fixed number of anchors, akin to the way in which searing marks may be obtained at first but will only ever regenerate afterwards.”

“I’d prefer it if they couldn’t recover easily, but it is far more likely that they can,” she agreed, “I was just being uncharacteristically optimistic for once. Being so paranoid and worried about every minor possibility can get quite draining, far more than I must have expected when I first began to engage in this kind of behaviour. Anyway, you can begin.”

Without saying another word, Yi Shi Ming opened a gateway between the Kong Prison Realm and the Planar Continents, containing it within Wei Yi’s dantian and thus avoiding any obvious traces of the prison realm’s opening. Since all that would be transported was energy, it was also entirely safe even though the physical location of the dantian and its contents were somewhat vague, as it was only ever in existence when it was being interacted with by a weapon or some physical technique.

The refined energy of the fifth realm seeped into her body, quickly being cultivated by the Ascendant’s Path technique and absorbed into her cultivation, the crystalline planar pool within her body rapidly growing during the few moments of absorption.

Just as predicted, however, it was fully consumed before her planar aperture was anywhere close to being full.

‘Still, this is good progress. One or two more planar stones, and the first nine stages of a realm will be under my wings, so to speak. After that, I should experience a great boost in strength, planar energy quality, and whatever else, and hopefully correct the rather unstable situation of the planar anchor,’ she reminded herself, glancing inwards at the trembling anchor, with the many bulging pieces of dark stone and the bright sphere within still prompting a certain degree of wariness from her, ‘What exactly could this result in, anyway? I don’t see any reason to break a perfectly good anchor, but who knows…’

She rose, thanked Yi Shi Ming, and proceeded onwards. She had a criminal to catch.