V3C57: The Mental Maze

Sometimes, having the leader of a large organisation care for you specifically could be a good thing, especially if it meant being rewarded in resources that were needed at the time. This was not always the case, however.

One example of such a situation was the way in which Luo Lia Kun adamantly prevented her from coming anywhere near the test slips after she had gone through four of them in a row, out of the total of twenty-four that were laid out there, and did so for the entirety of the day, forcing her to quietly interact with some of them from afar while pretending not to be able to do so with the usual reach of a third realm’s spiritual perception.

In truth, she did have a certain limit of mental pressure that she could endure at once, and while going through it instantly did certainly help, it didn’t alleviate the fatigue entirely.

The only real issue was that her limit, and the one that the vice-leader thought that she had, differed quite significantly. In the eyes of Luo Lia Kun, she could not handle more than four mental test slips in a day, no matter how prepared she claimed to be nor how quickly she could go through each one. In her own eyes, however, going through eight within a day was fully acceptable and feasible, as it did just enough for her to notice, but not so much as to be impaired in any way for the rest of the day. In fact, all she needed was an hour of intensive rest, typically completed within the Realm of Potential by challenging a variation of her that could be beaten with brute force, and she could get right back into it.

Since she wished to make use of more of the mental tests, it was perhaps obvious that using more of them did benefit her and the development of the Realm of Potential journal, albeit she found that using the same test slip didn’t give her the same benefit as a new one would, although it also affected her less, meaning that she quickly stopped the attempts to benefit infinitely from one mental test.

Every single usage of a new test provided her with a single new passage within the journal, and each one appeared on a new page. Although the book did seem quite enormous the first time she flipped through it, and still did now, it was as if the tome was shrinking with every new passage, the total number of pages drawing closer and closer to around twenty five. With nine pages filled after the effort of the first day, it meant that she only needed two more to fill it completely.

At that point, she would have the ability to confidently attempt to follow the directions towards whatever goal they led towards, hopefully with beneficial results to her.

She couldn’t be certain whether the outcome would give her more options within the Realm of Potential, reveal some technique or secret to her, or if it would just finally provide her with something to look at beside herself and the book while in there, but it shouldn’t be anything outwardly malicious. The Realm of Potential was an otherworldly gift, after all, and while they did clearly have a hidden purpose behind their existence, their basic functions were generally purely beneficial to the cultivator, so long as they were used reasonably and in moderation.

It was the same as with the House of Gold, not just in terms of the unimaginative name, but also the way in which it worked without the support of the azure light. Both were strictly beneficial on their own, and grew based on the cultivator’s ability, although the Realm of Potential seemed to be tied more to the Kong Prison Realm than anything else. Perhaps that was the reason behind it being able to imitate most of her techniques accurately, given that the prison realm was a high-grade spatial realm.

Due to the possibility of discovering something incredibly beneficial through this strange journal, she was not going to take any unusual actions until she could safely receive it, at which point she would be able to ascertain whether or not she was in a sufficiently powerful state to challenge the Remnants of Yin, and whether she will have accumulated a sufficient amount of information about them to be able to fight them without endangering the innocent or otherwise failing to deal with those that were not. For this to be feasible, she would need to investigate a lot more, but she was hopeful that this might be made significantly easier for her judging by Luo Lia Kun’s actions.

Since the vice-leader was providing something like these mental tests to people, it seemed that she could be preparing them for something, and depending on the individuals that she would be selecting from the Brotherhood of Power, it could be determined why this was occurring.

Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the sudden introduction of the mental tests meant that Luo Lia Kun expected them to be fighting with those that used some form of mental influence or techniques, and the only major difference would be whether it is the Brotherhood of Power that will need to fight with them, or the Remnants of Yin. If it was the latter, then the majority of the individuals involved in the training would be members of that group or important individuals from the former.

This is what Wei Yi was hoping for, as it would eventually allow her to get all of the Remnants of Yin in one room as part of another briefing, at which point she could confirm some theories that she had developed on her own and learned from her earlier encounter with the Devil General physique user, some of which were very interesting.

She had noticed several curious matters about Luo Lia Kun, but she couldn’t be certain whether she was noticing some general abnormalities within her body or some larger problem before investigating a sufficient number of people that she could be certain were in the Remnants of Yin. For instance, there was that mark entwined with her heart, which she had previously noticed and presumed to be part of her general talisman mark technique, but that had the potential to be a number of different things that would all require close attention to be dealt with efficiently.

After all, she didn’t want to accidentally kill anyone just because she misunderstood or misinterpreted something, which wasn’t impossible due to her limited awareness of the present situation. She had the view of those against the current Remnants of Yin, but not the opposite.

Who knew what kinds of things they had gone through, and why they did what they did?

‘I know for certain that the Great Families have a certain method of persuasion that involves permanently scarring someone with the marks of their own ideas, but they have likely employed a different method here seeing as the vice-leader is fully capable of stating all kinds of negative things about them,’ Wei Yi recalled the old man from the Silver Side of the Kong Prison Realm, and how he could barely handle any proper conversation about the Greats, especially after the otherworldly demon had encouraged and intensified his trauma, ‘Depending on the truth, it wouldn’t even do to kill any one of them, and I may even need to protect them, so long as they are useful…’

Thus, she was going to head off on another mission for the day, but Chao Ru approached her and invited her to come along with Zhi Qiu Ya for some training, then, more likely on their own, for a bit of personal fun. Apparently, the wolven woman had some interest within the training technique that Wei Yi had devised and wanted to join in and participate in what Chao Ru hoped to be a semi-regular training session.

She suspected that Zhi Qiu Ya had at least one other reason for doing this, no matter how slight it might be within the wolven woman’s head, but she didn’t mind. From the beginning, the training wasn’t meant to devolve into sex every single time, even if it did seem to have that tendency purely from their mutual interest in one another, so having someone else there would simply put it back on track.

Even if the wolven woman developed a similar interest, she would likely not act upon it for quite some time, by which point this entire dynamic would change significantly, at least once.

After all, Zhi Qiu Ya still had some issues with her animal state and many of the emotions and sensations associated with it, and since it had a tendency of getting intimate with people she was somewhat reluctant to do the same. Only once she did get over this would she be confident with any kind of emotional state or compunction shared by her wolven self, and then she could make a reasonable conclusion of her own regarding what and who she was and wasn’t interested in, and Wei Yi had no need to rush such a thing.

When she had some spare time to carefully look at both of them while they were practising her technique, she was tempted to nudge things along a little bit, ‘Actually, the more I look at them, the more I am amazed at the variety of human appearances… As human as all of the animalistic features are, of course. Frankly, I’m sometimes quite happy that I am attracted to women. If I hadn’t been, I’d have missed out on viewing such sights, and I might have even been afraid that they’d steal my man from me, or something of the sort… Alright, maybe that’s just in the less believable stories, but still, being able to appreciate this is truly nice.’

She smiled quietly as she observed their practise of her technique and occasionally corrected them when they made some small mistake, but one had plenty of practise while Zhi Qiu Ya appeared to have a very sharp mind when it came to the practise of techniques.

“Heavens, this is incredibly draining… You made this?”

“You could say that. You’re learning it quite well. Did you have any particular talents when it comes to understanding and cultivating techniques, or was this one special?”

“Special? No… I don’t think so, but it was incredibly clear and straightforward. It was much clearer than most of the basic techniques described at the village I grew up in, and it’s like it was made specifically for my body…”

“It was, partly. I modified it for you.”

“Oh… That’s incredible. You know so much about me through spiritual perception alone? How… how long have you been examining me for that?”

“A few se- minutes?” Wei Yi shrugged, changing her answer mid-way since she realised that either option would sound rather odd. One would suggest that she had been observing her for quite some time, while the other would mean that she had to pay incredibly close attention to her for a brief period of time, either one of which would not be appreciated unless the other person already wanted to receive said attention. Instead, she went for the most realistic answer.

Fortunately, she appeared to be the only one in a condition to be thinking things through like that.

Zhi Qiu Ya was already exhausted from just a few minutes of basic training, and much like everyone else in the Planar Continents, or perhaps the Western Continent specifically, she lacked much training when it comes to using the mind independently of the body.

From what little she knew about the Eastern Continent, the practises of cultivation differed in quite a few ways over there, and beside the practise of transcending tribulations in order to ascend through realms, they were very fond of utilising their spiritual perception for all kinds of things, from spiritual musical instruments to some unique form of art that had never been properly transferred from one continent to another. There, they were somewhat more adept at keeping it around themselves at all times, like Wei Yi was.

“So, have you given any thought to what I said before? Have you had any luck with extending your human time further?”

“That… Let’s not talk about that,” Zhi Qiu Ya said, looking away with as much energy she could possibly spare for embarrassment, “Do you two have any more special techniques that I’ve never heard of, or was this the only one so far?”

“I actually know another technique, which I can teach the both of you if you want.”

“Oh, what is it?” Chao Ru asked, perking up with her slightly greater supply of energy earned only by her greater experience, “Is it another training method?”

“Actually, it is a very simple type of attack that anyone can learn. In fact, I can confidently state that there is no simpler attack in the world that you could use without hurting yourself, and I do know of quite a few techniques,” Wei Yi smiled as she thought to her Absolute Force, which, while being a terrible technique, was pushed to the fifth realm through the Truth of the Universe and granted her quite a lot of understanding on how to improve it for actual use.

“I’d like that!”

“I suppose I have some interest as well,” Zhi Qiu Ya added, relaxing a little, “What technique is it?”

“It is called Absolute Force, and it is literally just that – it is an attack that could be used with any direct set of meridians, meaning that you can attack with your arms or legs, and it relies purely on your energy.”

“Oh, is that so? Is that efficient?”

“Not as much as it could be, but it is an extremely plain and straightforward technique that can be used with no thought whatsoever. It helps in stressful situations, hopefully.”

“Could you show it off?” Chao Ru asked, although her eyes were already glistening.

Wei Yi shrugged, but stood up anyway and rubbed her palms together, warming them up a little bit before turning towards the nearest wall. A moment later, however, she frowned and turned back, saying, “Actually, I don’t think that it would be a good idea to do this in here. You care about your house, don’t you?”

“I do… Yeah, actually, I do think that destroying the house wouldn’t be a good idea,” she nodded, “Not sure we’re fit to go anywhere for now, though… Massage?”

“Massage?” Zhi Qiu Ya raised her eyebrow, “You know how to do that as well?”

“Yeah, so… alright, I can do ones for both of you. Let me carry over…”

“Wei Yi, a mission…”

“I need to do a few mental tests first, if you don’t mind,” Wei Yi said, preparing to ignore her and go through eight of them again while the vice-leader thought that she was heading away, “It’s very important.”

“Oh, if that is what you’re going to do, then I agree. The person that you will need to face has a lot of abilities that influence your mind, so being ready for it is incredibly important,” Luo Lia Kun nodded, “In fact, go there this very moment, and I shall watch over you to confirm whether you’re overexerting yourself or not. The moment that you use too many, I’ll bring you out and instruct you on what your mission will be for today.”

“Strong in mental techniques? Alright, I’ll keep that in mind…”

She headed off towards the mental test slip room, and the vice-leader followed her, not revealing a single thing to her despite walking so close to one another for several minutes. Once within that room, she allowed her to go towards her next set of mental test slips, of which she had already completed four on the way there just to make sure that nobody would be able to interrupt her.

In the morning, the room was mostly empty, as everyone who had been there last time and who would be invited today decided that it would be wisest to challenge the mind nearer to the end of the day, at which point any kind of mental exhaustion would only help with sleep and not hinder any of the day’s activities, no matter what kinds they intended to participate in. One or two did come at that moment, but one came to examine the slips in closer detail while the other was there as he intended to sleep soon in order to be prepared for a task that he needed to do in the night.

Naturally, they ignored one another, since even a single distraction could worsen their ability to process the mental trial and would then lead to a great degree of mental exhaustion and potential damage, as their concentration needed to be absolutely focused on processing the absence of knowledge.

‘Not the case for me, of course, but I’m hardly amongst a crowd of people, whether that would be of those that had experienced a jade slip personally or those that could handle one without any issues.’

Beside it being highly difficult to create a jade slip, this difficulty of use was one reason for them not becoming quite as common as the Master of Yi City certainly hoped them to be, according to what Yi Shi Ming was able to remember of their original creation and shared with Wei Yi. If they were used to store only a small amount of information, they wouldn’t be worth the costs of their creation and if they were filled with everything that they could store, then anyone who wanted to learn them would need to suffer for just as long as they would if they were to learn this information themselves.

The only major advantage that they truly presented was the ability to skip the aspect of comprehension, and allow learning without requiring physical activity, but not everyone saw it as being worth the effort and costs.

‘The temporary, limited use jade slips are doubtlessly cheaper, and these somewhat resemble the ones that I saw being used by Great Earth’s halves, so… it must be something about the method of information storage that causes them to disintegrate with time, while these are able to endure far longer since nothing comes or goes from within,’ she analysed the jade slips while pretending to be incapacitated by one, ‘How interesting. Some time ago I had seen these and marvelled at them… How things have changed, or, rather, how I’ve changed. Back then, things could be marvelled at, while now, I have to be cautious of them all.’

It wasn’t a change in dynamic that she was happy with, of course, but it was the cost that she needed to pay to have even the slightest chance of success in the future.

For the rest of the three training jade slips, she abandoned the philosophical pondering and just got them done as quickly as possible, quickly confirming after each one that the book was being updated just as she was intending it to. One of the jade slips did fail to provide the expected result, but that turned out to be due to someone picking one of them up and switching their place with another training slip, for some reason that she didn’t have the ability to divine no matter how much she pondered it.

Perhaps they were simply bored and wanted to mess around, or perhaps there was a better reason, but the ultimate outcome was the same, and one that she was able to deal with by simply reaching out towards a different training slip while standing by this one.

Nobody around her other than a member of a Great Family would be able to sense her spiritual perception anyway, and even they might have used some other method to detect her presence other than her spiritual perception, which she had intentionally positioned away from them so that she wouldn’t be unnecessarily caught.

Once she pretended to be done with the last mental test, Luo Lia Kun immediately stepped in and dragged her away, holding her by the wrist all the way to her office, where she forced her to be seated.

“Alright, now we may begin. How are you feeling?” the vice-leader asked as she also sat down.

“Just fine, really. All I did was complete a few mental tests, which wasn’t that hard,” Wei Yi shrugged, “I still don’t get why you keep stopping me from doing more. They just cause a slight buzz in the head, and nothing more…”

“That’s exactly why I don’t let you continue,” she answered, “You may be unaware of this, but when your mind start feeling pain, or any kind of unpleasant sensation, that is usually an indication of something. It could be exhaustion, damage to your very mind, or something else, but it is rarely a purely positive thing. Keep that in mind in the future, if you’d prefer to keep your head.”

“Is it important?”

The vice-leader raised an eyebrow, but could say nothing in direct response, “… So, time for me to explain the contents of your next task. Pay attention.”

“Will do. Is it as difficult as the last one?”

“Depends on your strengths, but seeing as you are able to endure four mental tests in a row without much suffering, it might be easier. The opponent that you will face might possess some physical capabilities, their exact amount and power being rather uncertain, but it is her ability to influence your mind that you must be most concerned about. She can influence your body, your mind, or both, in several ways, especially those that you in particular must be most concerned about.”

“Me?”

“Unlike your previous foe, this one is indeed an attractive woman,” Luo Lia Kun said with such seriousness that it took some effort not to laugh.

“Oh dear, that is quite an issue. If she has large boobs, I might even hesitate for a few moments before attacking, which could give her quite a lot of time to do something else to me, like convince me to side with her instead…”

“Indeed, and you must be careful about this. If you have the methods to do so, make sure to block your nose to prevent any gaseous substances from entering it, and possibly block your ears or hearing as well, since she may strive to confound you with sounds either enchanting or revolting,” the vice-leader stated, “Blocking your vision might also be advisable, but then you would be at a severe disadvantage with only your spiritual perception. However, the more that you can do, the less she should be able to do to you.”

“Very well, I shall keep this in mind. What kinds of things should I be expecting?”

She paused for a moment, as if debating whether to answer, or how to do so in the safest manner, before licking her lips and leaning in a little closer.

“Actually, you and she might already know one another. This person is someone that you’ve spent some time with, and you know her by name, even if you may not appreciate every action that she had taken up to this point. If… somehow, you still don’t know who I am talking about, her name is Mo Zhouquan.”

“W-What? How did that happen?”

“You see, she had been studying various matters for quite some time, and, at some uncertain point in time, she came into contact with Them. Whatever they promised her, whatever she wanted, the case now is that she had turned to their side and has attempted to flee the Brotherhood of Power unseen. As you might have noticed, she has an incredible variety of knowledge, so you must capture her before she flees and finds refuge with Them,” Luo Lia Kun stated.

“Right… The Greats are accepting someone that is blatantly insane, unstable and constantly speaking about the voices that she hears from some unknown source?”

“It seems so,” she affirmed, also expressing some confusion in her voice and expression, “Whatever they want with her, if They get their hands on everything that she had researched, not only with They be aware of many of our identities, but they will also be able to use the many corruptive methods that she had put all of her effort into researching. It would be extremely dangerous to all of us.”

Wei Yi frowned, “Right…”

On the third day, with the completion of the last few test talisman slips, she finally obtained the last passage within the journal that had prompted her to go through all of the slips to begin with. With them done, she found a quiet place for herself and entered the Realm of Potential, opening the book and looking onto the first passage with a great deal of care. She wanted to be certain that she understood all of the directions with great clarity, as it was feasible that even a single mistake would force her to somehow return to the start and repeat everything.

The first direction bid her to ascend, and while that seemed to be a somewhat difficult thing to do and then remain at the same height, she did have two potential methods that she could utilise for this purpose.

Besides the floating book, which should be able to support her position, she could make use of the very laws of this reality to prevent gravity from acting upon her, either by forcing it to occur as part of a manufactured conflict between herself and another duplicate or by somehow making it set her new position as the new ‘home’ point of the Realm of Potential… if that was how it worked. She wasn’t too certain how the rules of the realm functioned, given that she hadn’t needed to explore such things yet.

Before that, however, she needed to figure out where the north of this place was, which was naturally made incredibly difficult due to the absence of a sun, land, or anything else within this place.

‘Might a compass work?’ Wei Yi asked herself, creating one for herself and checking where it pointed, finding that rotated slowly and without ceasing even after a full rotation, ‘Doesn’t seem like it does… Then again, no instructions regarding moving from this spot were provided, so perhaps I shouldn’t be doing that just yet.’

She lowered herself to the ground, then leapt into the void above, trying to provide herself only with upwards momentum, and nothing to move her from this spot. The very moment that she reached her required height, she placed an Aerial Platform beneath herself, keeping herself still while trying out her ideas to keep herself from falling back down the very moment that the platform shattered, which it would do shortly no matter how much energy was provided to it.

As it turned out, she didn’t even need to. She attempted to place the journal beneath herself with her killing will, but it struck something as she was bringing it down, with this mysterious barrier expanding all the way out, as if the very ground had risen towards her.

‘Alright… That works too. Now, before I proceed, this says that I need to go around in a circle once or twice, which, unless it is absolutely necessary, isn’t something that I will repeat. In order to verify whether or not it is, I’ll need to leave something here and see whether it remains after I’ve followed the instructions. If it is, then the directions might be unnecessary. Otherwise, everything must be followed precisely,’ Wei Yi thought, conjuring an easily noticeable and recognisable pair of red panties and a bra from Fu Zan’s catalogue, ‘Something like this won’t be lost or overlooked easily, after all.’

The second entry did have precise instructions for the length of travel, the size of the circle, and so on, so she was able to follow it with ease, and this precision even gave her the freedom to notice exactly when the red underwear was suddenly partially obscured by a wall as black as the rest of the void, one that couldn’t be seen unless someone already knew what to look for.

Taking a step back, she was able to regain sight of the entirety of the panties and bra, confirming the wall theory. She tried to reach out to it, but there was no physical trace of a wall, nor did her hand absolutely vanish at any point, suggesting that this wasn’t as simple as just a casual obstacle.

One thing that she could be certain of was that her idea of simply figuring out the final destination wouldn’t work.