V3C55: A Mission Briefing

When she made her way back into the Luo District, she avoided the guards at the edges of the district entirely, not wanting to be added to a list of potential suspects in relation to that earlier burst of energy, since that would only cause unnecessary stress for her even if she was dismissed as a suspect early on.

This wasn’t made difficult at all by the lack of guards, who were likely being called upon to prepare for an investigation, and it did allow her to ponder some simpler things.

Her appearance, which she had been able to confirm after checking that all of her energy had not changed in any unpredictable ways, and that the bloodline power was indeed incapable of doing much rather than augmenting her physical abilities by an extremely small margin when active, was not changed in any significant way by the bloodline. In fact, she wasn’t at all certain whether this was the effect of her physique training or the recent breakthrough, since the changes were all rather similar to what she would expect from the former.

As usual, all of her features were slightly more refined than the last time she looked upon them, although her eyes did gain a certain gem-like quality that they had first developed a semblance of a long time ago, all the way back when she had achieved her crystalline energy. Now, it was amplified by being a result of two forms of cultivation at the very least, and so it would likely be even easier to get lost within her eyes. It would take some getting used to.

There was little room for the likes of her vision or hearing to develop, but there was some slight improvement in both, as well as her sense of smell and taste when it came to things other than food. Since these were even slighter than the effects upon her eyes, she didn’t expect it to matter too much.

One thing that she did expect to change quite a lot with future breakthroughs was everything that had come about since her first physique cultivation session involving the Realm of Potential, as there was no chance that these weren’t implemented within her bloodline in some fashion. As one developed, the other would be bound to encourage it, eventually amplifying the positive effects to the point that her body would probably be able to consume and process anything without ever needing to worry about waste or poison, even without getting physique energy involved.

So long as she came up with some new concept of the ideal eye, or something of the sort, they would likely be included in both physique and bloodline as well, at which point she could look forward to major changes with every single lengthy period of cultivation, but she didn’t think that to be very likely. After all, the eye worked quite well as it was. Changing it significantly would certainly require some very unexpected insights.

‘There’ve been plenty of those as of late, so maybe it isn’t that unlikely after all,’ Wei Yi said to herself, proceeding down the road towards the Brotherhood of Power headquarters calmly and casually, ‘Maybe the likes of phoenixes and dragons have some good ideas on the matter…’

“Oi, clawed woman! Stop right there!”

‘Hm, it’s been a while since one of these. Alright, I’ll play along,’ she turned to face the speaker.

The moment that she observed him to be a muscular, tall man with a large body but small head, and saw his friends surrounding her, it became rather obvious which group they were a part of.

“Hey, how did you like walking around peacefully for so long?”

“Not gonna lie, it’s a bit boring. Why do you lot care?” Wei Yi asked back, although their stances and the circulation of energy within their bodies made her question even less necessary than it already was, ‘No guards in the proximity of this, either, so they’ve either paid them off or all of the guard has been called in to prepare to search for me. Either way, not too afraid, but I will need to be careful.’

“Well then, we have a perfect distraction for you!” announced the man that called out to her, “How about getting beaten up?”

She was barely able to resist rolling her eyes externally, so she did so internally instead. There was so much wrong with their plan, whatever that was, that she wasn’t sure whether it would be better for her to just leave and let them realise their own mistakes or to sit them down and explain it to them in detail, since she couldn’t handle it on her own. Even with the alcohol on their breaths making it quite straightforward that she wasn’t dealing with the most reasonable or sober men, to try and attack a monster like her with only third-realm combatants was equivalent to suicide.

For a moment, she did wonder whether that was what they were intending to achieve, but one look at their defensive artefacts made it obvious that they did have some semblance of self-preservation, even if it was blatantly obscured by whichever drink they had before this.

‘Also, that line was absolutely abysmal. I suppose that is what alcohol does to someone who already has limited mental capacity due to all of his work going towards his body rather than his head,’ she commented to herself, looking around once with her eyes before shrugging, “I highly doubt you’ll manage, but sure, go ahead. I’ll give you a moment.”

“Get her!” the man ordered right away, prompting all of them to run forward.

“Stop right there!” a different voice suddenly reached them, prompting most of the charging men to either stop and attempt to find its source, or, in the case of two of them, fall over and drop into sleep.

This individual was also male, but his appearance and aura differed significantly from the people within the Gang Hong Clan. He was properly dressed in robes not indicative of any family, his hair was long but swept back and his demeanour was clearly presentable, especially if it was to be compared with the extreme opposite of those standing around him. Around his waist was a thick belt with several large pouches attached to it, one of which he was grasping firmly.

Once they stopped, he made his way into the circle and towards Wei Yi.

“I need to confirm something with you, and we may do so here, or in another place of your choosing. What do you say?”

“Uh… Here’s fine. Those guys-”

“Begone,” the man interrupted her, glancing towards the Gang Hong Clan’s members. In tandem with his voice, a pulse of energy expanded from him, pushing the encirclement away with extreme ease, making it obvious to even those that couldn’t sense his cultivation that he was far above them.

‘A man in the fifth realm mysteriously approaches me for some kind of confirmation… He doesn’t have anything too strange about him or on his body, save for the thing in the pouch that he’s holding onto, but I cannot immediately conclude what it is or what it’s for…’ Wei Yi watched as the man waited for the muscular men to disperse before looking back at her.

“You must provide a droplet of your blood,” the long-haired man said, opening the pouch and removing an item the size of his palm from within.

It was shaped a little like an elongated pentagon, with a small panel of glass on the front that he opened and presented to her with an outstretched arm, holding it at just the right height and distance for her to be able to hold a finger over the portion of the item previously concealed by glass.

This was rather concerning, seeing as she had just torn an enormous tear into the Planar Continents, but nothing about the item seemed capable of drawing out the same kind of resonance that Long Huang’s device could, since she was now able to recognise a small degree of the reason behind the appearance of the images from the blood. They necessitated the rotation of arrays around the blood, and thus something with no moving parts shouldn’t be able to draw out that kind of image from her, especially if it doesn’t have the assistance of the special needle.

Furthermore, she now had some control over her own blood and bloodline, meaning that it should be more difficult for anyone to draw out some phenomenon from her body without her permission.

‘Still, this is strange. Either this is someone related to Long Huang, or someone caught wind of one of the bloodline resonance phenomena and decided to investigate, meaning that one of them is of some importance to an individual or group. I wonder which one, and why,’ she thought, biting through the skin on her finger and allowing a drop of blood to land on the strange item.

The glass panel was quickly closed, and the item withdrawn, the man staring closely at it for quite some time in absolute silence. His expression was still for quite some time, prompting Wei Yi to frown as she pondered what he was looking for and whether he was or wasn’t noticing such a thing, until it slowly changed. One eyebrow rose and fell quickly, from surprise to great focus and attention, he brought the item ever so slightly closer to himself.

He withdrew it slightly after a few minutes of close attention, then looked up at her with a conflicted expression.

“We appear to have been mistaken. You are free to go.”

Before she had a chance to ask a single question, he turned around and walked away quickly, although his spiritual perception did linger in the area for as long as it was able to before he got too far away. He did not give back her drop of blood, not that she expected him to no matter what his intentions had been from the beginning, nor did he bother to explain what it was that he was investigating to begin with, although he likely didn’t expect her to have paid incredibly close attention to the entire process and the tool that he put back into his pouch.

It appeared to be following a similar idea to the one that she intended to use to develop her bloodline power, as it didn’t attempt to draw out some previously unseen resonance but instead amplified a particular form of energy within the blood, one that would need to be known about before it could be drawn out.

In other words, if the man was looking for a particular bloodline within her blood, this item could be made or somehow configured to detect it specifically. Based on his reaction, and the absence of any kind of feedback from the item, he didn’t manage to detect such a thing, which was fortunate and simultaneously allowed her to add this design to her memory, and if she ever encountered it working and detecting something within another’s body, she would be able to identify what this was meant to detect and use it in the future.

The only issue right now was that of the nature of this sudden inquiry. Since it was about her blood, and since most couldn’t possibly know that the cause of the sudden burst of energy to the west was related to bloodlines in any way, it meant that it had to be about the resonance experiment.

Just as with the burst of energy, the cosmic cloud that formed the resonance of the Ascendant’s bloodline shouldn’t be known to the world, so the matter had to relate to one of the other two bloodlines that had existed within her blood. If she had to guess, the Golden Qilin would be the result of the Yi bloodline within her, and while that could bring some attention to her, it would be rather unlikely due to the immense number of people that did possess a bloodline from one of the major families within the Western Continent. Thus, she could only presume that it was indeed the silver sprites that caught their attention, but that raised questions of its own.

At the moment, she couldn’t answer the most significant one of all of them, which was, simply, what the bloodline was supposed to originate from, or what it represented. The primary reason why she didn’t believe that this could be some other family’s bloodline was due to the nature of the resonance. It was composed of several sprites, rather than one, and corresponded to no mythical beast or ancient technique that she was aware of.

From her expansive but admittedly limited and occasionally shallow knowledge of all of the ruling families within Yi City, not a single one of them corresponded with any small creature, nor did they live within the proximity of any former nest that belonged to any creature that was small, lived in large groups, and had no obvious living features so far as she was able to tell.

That ruled out the possibility of it being the heritage of some ancient creature or planar beast, and it didn’t resemble any kind of flora either – not that most vegetation, planar or otherwise, had any ability to reproduce with or using humans, as far as she was aware – so it had to be the result of an artefact or technique that had changed the blood of some ancestor to such an enormous degree that it manifested within the bloodline even after all this time, even despite all of her features clearly favouring the Yi side of her blood.

The issue was that she knew of no such familial tale, which was odd considering the fact that certain families, like the Ning family, would absolutely love to advertise such an origin for their familial beginnings, since their obsession with blacksmithing was plain to see for all.

As such, there was a possibility that this was not related to the ruling families of each district, but then she had even less of an idea who or what such a bloodline could have originated from. Her parents, from what she knew, weren’t particularly strange, with her mother possessing the Yi name while her father might have had some other common name. Even if she assumed that her father was from some ancient group that had an incredible bloodline, not only would the bloodline be significantly weaker than that of the Yi family, which it was not, but would make it far less likely for anyone to be able to recognise this bloodline and come after it, or for it.

‘Then who in the world could that man have been, and why exactly are they curious about my blood?’

No answer to this came about by the time that she entered the Brotherhood of Power headquarters and came across Luo Lia Kun, who had clearly noticed her approach and went out to meet her.

“Wei Yi, come to-” her words got lost within her throat when she beheld Wei Yi’s appearance once again, and just like last time, she needed a few moments to contemplate exactly what could have caused such a transformation, “Uh… Office. Right, go there. Now.”

“Sure, boss,” she nodded, following the confused woman while she continued thinking.

“Were you cultivating near the west, by any chance?”

“Nope, north-east of the district. There’s a nice field of grass there that I like to rest in, and an apple tree grows a few minutes to the north of that spot, which I may or may not plunder every now and then,” Wei Yi claimed, having taken care not to expose herself anywhere near the border and only presenting herself once her origin and direction of movement would be far more ambiguous, “That’s not an issue, is it?”

“No, shouldn’t be. Did you see anyone coming into the city while glowing bright violet?”

“None that I remember. By the way, did you know anything about a guy that wanted to check my blood for something?”

“Hm… I don’t remember anything like that being said by Long Huang or Mo Zhouquan, so no, I do not,” Luo Lia Kun stated, although she wasn’t able to keep her gaze to her front and looked to the side, as far away from Wei Yi as she was able to, “I appreciate that the last time we spoke, we were interrupted by… matters, but this time we must finish our conversation. The task that you must complete is incredibly important, and although you may think differently, it is significantly more important than snogging someone.”

Wei Yi shrugged, “That’s unlikely.”

“As I said, you may think differently. Unless you’ve got something to do immediately, I’m not letting you run off this time,” the vice-leader said as she let her into the office, locking the door behind her, “Do sit down, as we may need to talk for a while.”

She nodded and sat down in her seat, although she displayed a bit of reluctance in doing so, as would be expected of someone that had other things to do, that they were more interested in. They had walked past a number of people that she would have wanted to be near no matter which persona she was trying to present, including Chao Ru, who was only around the nearest corner on their path, where she could easily have been noticed via the spiritual perception of the average third realm cultivator.

Luo Lia Kun noticed this, and sighed, but she did not intend to let her go this time. The matter she was going to entrust her with was very important, and no matter of lust nor entertainment could interrupt.

“Alright, do you recall what I had been about to say back when you ran off with your friend?”

“Nope.”

“… I have a mission for you, which is of extreme importance to the Remnants of Yin. We have learnt of a servant of Them that will be travelling alone, not far from the district. This is an incredibly rare opportunity to get rid of them without much difficulty, and it is one that we must absolutely take no matter the cost,” Luo Lia Kun declared.

“Quick question, is this actually one of Them or-”

“No, a servant. They do not practise the same techniques, so they are less dangerous, and they handle matters that They do not are too proud and arrogant to do themselves. The person you must defeat is someone who is relatively high ranked amongst them, and will handle matters that are almost at the same level as those resolved by Them. So long as this person is removed, Their work here might be held back significantly.”

“So, who is this person, and what are they doing here? Who am I even going to be killing? Are they cute?”

“No, they are not. It is a man with a mutated Devil General physique that caused his features to warp into that of some demonic creature, with pure black eyes and discoloured skin and flesh. He has several sets of horns, and a series of black bone growths on his chin as well,” the vice-leader described an entity that could barely be called human, although it hardly interested Wei Yi as much as the potential of getting the physique that she had once witnessed within the prison realm, “As for his exact activities, he has partaken in a number of operations that have prevented our own efforts and have removed several significant collections of knowledge from the grasp of the district.”

“Wow, sounds bad. What kind of knowledge was it?”

“You are being far more inquisitive than usual today. Did you hit your head on the way in?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s rude…”

“Yes, you’re right. So, did you?”

“I would need to hit my head on the side of an ancient dragon for it to actually affect me, and I don’t recall encountering any such things in the area,” Wei Yi said, glancing to the west, “That bit of light over there was very nice and all, but it looked nothing like a dragon’s fire… I don’t actually know what that looks like, but I doubt that it would look like a bunch of stars.”

Luo Lia Kun shrugged, “Shouldn’t be dragon fire, and you wouldn’t have come across a random dragon sitting out in the district, so I doubt anything of the sort occurred. Fine, the knowledge included things like cultivation techniques, methods of empowering oneself in a manner that They dislike.”

“Oh, I see. Can I get any of those?”

“No. They have taken everything, and unless we find whatever library or archive They use to store such things, if they even keep the things that they take, we won’t be able to get it all back. It might be that we will need to seek out a different source of information if we want to prevent such knowledge from disappearing entirely,” she said, her expression darkening for a moment while she looked into the distance with a complicated look in her eyes, “Now, tell me, Wei Yi – how much of your power have you made use of so far?”

“Some amount, but not everything. I can do a bit more planar techniques and release more strength, but I can hardly put that into a number,” Wei Yi claimed, entirely contrary to the truth as usual.

If she was to attempt to actually quantify the amount of her strength that Wei Yi the Warrior had revealed so far, she could estimate it quite easily. Judging purely by her five paths of cultivation and their realms, she had made use of no more than one sixth of her total ability, and less if the full potential extent of her cosmic energy was considered. After all, she had not yet made use of physique energy, nor killing will, and she had only obtained her bloodline power a short time ago and has thus obvious not displayed it to anyone either, meaning that all anyone had ever seen was a fake state of planar cultivation and a powerful body.

At that point, it could be said to be less than one tenth of her total power, since she hasn’t yet used the upper limit of either, although such a calculation would naturally fail to take into account the actual usefulness of any one form of cultivation, the benefits that they provide, and more.

“A shame. Could you ever double your physical strength, even if it is only for a short time?”

“Maybe. However, this Devil General, what is the number of troops that he commands, and shouldn’t I be worried about them more than him?”

“That’s where his mutation truly comes in. You see, he has no subordinates at the moment, none that we’ve been able to identify, anyway, but he is able to display the might of a Ten Thousand Man Devil General all on his own. It is an incredibly powerful state, and one that bestows a great deal of physical strength that must be met with similar force. His planar energy is weaker, formidable, but less significant.”

“So, what you’re saying is that I should rush in, grab his heart, and rush out?”

“That’s one tactic that won’t work, so you don’t have to try to bring it back like you seem to like doing. There are quite a few dense bone growths on his body, and most are protecting vital points on his body. The heart is included amongst those,” Luo Lia Kun revealed.

“I never knew that the heart was important. Thank you for that.”

“…” her vice-leader noticeably deflated at that gratitude, “You’re welcome. Try and put that knowledge to good use in the future, or else I’m sure someone else will do the same. Now, unless you happen to have some experience in fighting against those with this kind of physique and believe that you need no further knowledge, I will go through every combat move, technique and skill that this person had displayed in the past, and make sure that you understand how to deal with them, even if it is just in theory. Even that much will greatly reduce your chances of dying.”

“Have you been monitoring him long? Do you know everything, or just a few simple techniques? Can you be certain that he had been at his best during those times?”

“How do you switch from that to reasonable questions? How do you do this? Why?” Luo Lia Kun sighed when Wei Yi tilted her head to the side as if she didn’t understand a single one of the questions, “Yes, we have been observing him for quite a while. We know most of his techniques at their peak, though he will likely have at least one major hidden trick up his non-existent sleeves, so you will need to be alert.”

“Alright, I am capable of that. You can begin.”

“First off, his basic combat style. It involves his large and heavy body, leading to slower but more powerful attacks further boosted by his wood-type cultivation. Your priority shouldn’t be to block or parry any kind of attack, but instead to dodge, as a single hit can injure even someone with preparation in the fourth realm. He has a great recovery speed and takes care not to overdo any particular attack, so you won’t find him throwing a punch too far and then being incapacitated for a short while.”

“Am I meant to attack him during one of his attacks, or does he have something like the Gentle Breeze fist?”

“Gentle Breeze… Ah, yes, I remember that technique. No, he has never displayed it before, so it should be safe to attack him during attacks, although he can still affect the trajectory of a strike in the same way as any normal person, and will likely put far more thought into his every move when he sees that you aren’t a pushover,” she detailed, “At that point, expect to see a lot of feints and attacks meant to draw your strikes without investing any strength into his own. Also, he will likely take advantage of the many bone growths on him, so watch out for his right hand, left knee and foot, right foot, left shoulder, and, obviously, his head. If he uses any of those and hits you, he will do far more to you than he otherwise would, and you will have more difficulties damaging those spots as well.”

“Noted. What should I do once he stars being smart?”

“At that point, longer distance attacks will be absolutely necessary, since he is also able to move quite quickly once he puts his mind to it, but not for too long. If you have the stamina to wait him out, he might become exhausted and make it far easier for you to finish him off, but he might be well prepared with a number of pills and methods for faster recovery. If he has those, then…”