V3C68: Devastation

There was not just one, or two, or even five distinct ‘packs’ of people, as it were, but instead it seemed like the entire district had decided to converge upon her position. It seemed rather absurd, enough to be certain that Ju Yazhu wouldn’t believe a single word, so she instead tossed her into the nearest alleyway alcove – of which there were far too many – and proceeded to an open square.

As the sun was already close to setting, the number of people on the streets had decreased further, leaving only the thugs that were heading in her direction and those that worked in the night.

Unfortunately, those converging crowds were rather slow in their overall movement, their large numbers clearly not benefitting their ability to perform whatever task had been bestowed upon them. This gave her quite a lot of time to be doing other things, and since it was rather difficult to find such things to do due to her current status within the district, she decided that she would bend the rules a little before either a fight or recruitment occurs.

A bar was within the vicinity of her, so she entered it and got to watch all of the customers part immediately, as if they were too afraid to touch her. The owner of the store also wanted to get away, but there was too little space behind the counter for him to do more than shuffle.

“I’m not going to serve you!” he declared instead.

“You might as well. A lot of people are coming here, and regardless of which side wins, nobody should be able to blame you for accepting a silver or two,” Wei Yi said, “Come, just one drink. Any drink.”

While they spoke, the majority of the customers vacated the bar, although they did do the owner the favour of leaving behind their cups, glasses and whatever else, although most were not precious nor ornate enough to be worth stealing in the first place. This rapid exodus did include the watchers that kept track of the bar, so the moment that it was empty save for them, the owner was able to relax slightly.

His body stopped shivering, and he stepped back up to the front of the counter, staring into her eyes for a little while before he was forced to look away from her deep, unblinking gaze by the sheer pressure of her mental energy, even while it was still contained within her body.

“Sure, I could offer you something. However, not a word to whoever’s coming.”

“I wouldn’t say a thing anyway. I don’t care about the politics of this district, and, frankly, I might not stay here long. Not that any of you would mind.”

“No, we would not,” the owner poured her a cup of a red alcoholic drink straight from the already opened bottle that had stood behind the counter, clearly not being willing to open up a new one just for her, “We also don’t appreciate you messing around. Our district has stood as it does for many decades, and no outsider has needed to interfere before.”

“Really? The Master of Yi City must not count, since he was most definitely both an outsider and not a fan of rampant crime.”

“Don’t be so brash, outsider. You’re strong enough to stand your ground so far, but you are only in the third realm. That lot starts out with leaders in the fourth, and goes all the way up to the sixth, although there are certain rumours of some reaching the Half-Step seventh realm.”

“Rumours, though, are not always to be trusted. I can start a rumour with just a random word.”

She glanced behind herself, mostly for effect rather than to confirm how long it would take for the gangs to finally arrive, then leaned forward as she took the cup with her clean, clawed hand.

“For instance, I could declare that I am a genius that is able to craft five-star inscriptions at just the third realm, and will soon be able to reach the level of spatial inscriptions the moment that I comprehend the correct technique. I could claim that I have a planar anchor unlike any other. I could hint that I even know the name of the Master of Yi City, in full,” she said, quietly giggling after a short pause, “Of course, none of those are mere words, but you know what I mean. You may not be sure whether any words that I have said are true, but the moment that one is said to another, it will spread, won’t it?”

As the owner had no immediate reply, she raised the cup up to her mouth, pondering for a moment how to best drink the contents without needing to expose her face, but the necessity to figure it out was notably lessened when the first group of thugs arrived.

Since she hadn’t expected to be able to get much drinking done anyway, she put the cup back down.

“Sorry to say, but I have to get going. Keep the coin and drink for yourself, if you want, although you can conceal one or the other so long as you keep quiet about it,” she suggested, stepping away.

“I was thinking that myself,” the bar owner muttered, hiding both at once before running right out of the bar. He had noticed the approaching group, and whatever would happen, he did not want to get involved in the matter as it would doubtlessly cause the damage of some of his property that could easily be intensified if either side would some fault with his behaviour. To avoid such things, not being there entirely would be safer, even if both decided to pillage his bar.

Fortunately for him, Wei Yi similarly left the bar, albeit heading the opposite direction, to meet the approaching group with her arms open – figuratively, of course, since neither an amicable nor an aggressive group would possibly go in for a hug.

Something about their appearance, perhaps the obvious aggression, the weapons in their hands, the energies that they were already readily circulating throughout their bodies, made it seem like they just might not be the kind to go for the amicable approach, however. In addition, they did not bring a single gift or offer to settle their differences, as such people might, but instead were dressed in armour with all kinds of equipment at the ready, including talismans, artefacts, inscribed weapons and plates, amongst other things.

After being stuck near the Luo District for some time, seeing such a variety of equipment was truly rather refreshing.

“So, fight or talk?” Wei Yi asked, just to be absolutely certain.

“You’ve upset the boss, you’ve upset the order, and so we will eliminate you, flat-chested bitch!” the man leading the group declared, slamming down his shielded planar anchor on the ground behind the ground right away, “If you want to die quickly, we can make it happen quickly, but if you try to defend yourself, we will take our time…”

“Good luck with that. I hope you certainly won’t mind if I begin first, will you?” Wei Yi asked back, removing a dagger from a sheath at her waist.

The next instant, she seemed to vanish from the spot, several quiet rumbles of thunder sounding somewhere in the distance. It struck the attention of certain combatants, with some outright trying to find the source of the noise rather than attempting to figure out where their foe had gone.

Thus, they missed the dagger that split their necks in two, separating their heads from their bodies, a thick blade made of golden lightning extending from the handle of the dagger and increasing its reach by a great deal. It disappeared a breath after it severed the heads of numerous second-realm combatants that must have come along expecting an easier time than they got. Within a single strike, a dozen lives were culled.

Just as the group had the chance to notice her location, she disappeared once more, a further set of echoing rumbling sounding in the sky,

“Her movement technique causes thunder! Watch out for it! It might relate to her resulting position!”

That insight seemed obvious, but it had been enough to shock quite a few out of their confusion. Since it was a rather obvious tell to her movement, a loud sound that appeared to originate from a specific distant direction, all that weren’t absolutely deaf were able to make use of it to their advantage, accurately locating the direction from which Wei Yi next appeared.

It was not enough to stop the second and last batch of those in the second realm from perishing to the lightning blade that extended from the weapon.

Even if their reaction speed, movement speed, and circulation speed of their energy was accelerated by a thousand times, they would have simply been incapable of stopping the immense power of the lightning, which did not seem to be something that could possibly be created from the energy of the third realm, especially without the anchor placed upon the ground. As such, their thoughts were naturally directed towards one piece of information they had heard from their superiors regarding certain skills that their foe might possess.

“An inscription? Watch out for that knife of hers!”

Such an assumption was only natural, given that they had no clue about the nature of White Echo, nor the existence of killing intent as a form of cultivatable energy that can be used in combat, and that can have an immense range which can then be masked with Storm Blade Wreathing.

That did work for Wei Yi, so she did nothing to change their minds. She also didn’t disappear once more, instead plunging right into the group of combatants, for the second group slowly arrived, meaning that she not only needed to deal with this one as quickly as possible, but would also benefit from obscuring her abilities from them so that she would be able to abuse her power as much as needed in front of them as well.

Furthermore, if more groups decided to converge and join in, then the more tactics she would be able to present, the more difficult it would be for any one individual to remember every single one of them and respond to them properly, while she had no difficulty in switching between techniques or even weapons at any time since her dagger was still mostly hidden by the movement and lightning.

Her lunge allowed her to pierce the heart of two in a single go, the killing intent-based blade of the dagger reaching far beyond its actual size, prompting the large crowd to split with a single stab.

“You are all so easily scared. A bunch of fools that will never reach the apex!” she exclaimed with an evil grin that – unfortunately for everyone involved – could not be seen beneath her mask, although the aura of killing intent that rapidly began to pool around her was most certainly obvious to anyone with even the poorest ability to detect energy around themselves. That, combined with the words that essentially meant nothing, drew out the image of some unfathomable and deadly expert, causing a number of thieves to outright drop their weapons and run off.

At that moment, it did not occur to a single one of them that they were just proving her right regarding her words. However, it was only the weakest of the lot that fell to this ploy, with those that required genuine effort, as in cultivators in the upper third realm and above, remaining steadfast.

‘To finish as many off in one go…’

One of her feet suddenly crashed onto the ground, digging into the stone, as she drew her dagger back and filled her arm with cosmic energy while supplying the dagger with killing intent.

Then, she drove the dagger forward, parting the air and shaking the world with a single move, causing a sonic boom from the sheer speed and might of her thrust. Killing intent and sheer force erupted from the tip of the blade, splitting into a thousand cutting streams of energy that stabbed into all of the foes before her.

‘Eight Great Changes, Tidal Flame!’ she thought in her mind, willing the countless supposed flames to transform into something formless through the all-unifying Ascendant’s Dao.

In an instant, countless lives of the third realm were lost, their hearts and brains being penetrated and torn apart by the invisible flames of the technique, although the moment that they passed through a single person, the many blades transformed to lightning and accelerated, slicing past a number of foes at the back and ultimately scattering on the front wall of the first building they struck, mostly due to her lack of desire to damage the district itself for no good reason.

The only person to remain in fighting condition after that was the leader of the small band, who had managed to dodge to the side while she had been executing the attack and only suffered minor cuts to the side of his right arm.

He snarled at her, a primal snarl that had some clear influence from the Lion’s Roar technique, but that also incorporated a very different intent, focusing on sheer ferocity rather than intimidation. It took form and surrounded his body, armouring him in solid planar energy that was much akin to the killing intent armour of the Hatred Augur realm.

Unlike the spike-filled, literally sharp appearance of the protection formed from killing intent, this more resembled the equipment of a savage barbarian, with heavy but dull illusory metal appearing upon shoulders and body, fur-lined gauntlets bracing his hands and a thick set of boots appearing upon his feet. Together, it was as if they formed a great array, for they visibly resonated with one another and caused the air around him to quiver.

This effect intensified even further when he pulled out an enormous axe, with a shaft suited for usage in two hands but a head that wouldn’t be amiss on the axe of a giant, or some titan.

“You have upset our organisation! We have been in control of a street for over a dozen hundred decades! For this, you have no choice but to die, flat-chested bitch! If you have anything else to say, then I will not hear it!” he announced, raising the axe into the air.

“Second time, already. I’m done with you,” Wei Yi replied, calling upon a small amount of physique energy to manifest into the Titanic Demolisher, which she wreathed in the same lightning the moment that any semblance of it appeared. It also gripped a dagger, but within the hands that were ten times as large as her own, the weapon also grew by the same extent, easily matching and surpassing the enormous axe head used by her foe. With it, she struck down at him while his axe was still in the air, while simultaneously stabbing at him in reality.

Even if the man knew about the Titanic Demolisher physique, he couldn’t possibly associate it with what he saw occurring before him, for the enormous phantom was not only made from lightning, but it also moved as fast as it and didn’t follow Wei Yi’s actions, all unlike the traditional physique ability. Thus, when two attacks came at him at once, he could protect against no more than one.

Instead of playing by her rules, he decided to charge forward and cry out, “Live or die, you bitch!”

Wei Yi merely rolled her eyes, for his behaviour made it even easier for her. The Titanic Demolisher had already been behind her, so its strike would land on all space between her and him, while there was no point in attacking it. That meant that, no matter what he did in an attack, it would fall upon him, while all that she needed to do was evade to the side, without even requiring a technique so long as she was able to move swiftly enough.

The only reason that he even thought that he could get away with this was due to the way in which the Titanic Demolisher, or whatever technique he believed it to be, was bound in some way to herself and her position, meaning that if she did evade to the side, as she would need to in order to dodge the long shaft of the axe, it would cause both of them to miss, whereas her remaining still would lead to some damage being inflicted to both. In essence, he was betting that a trade of sorts would need to take place, with both sides potentially weakening their attacks in order to be able to get out of them alive. From there, the armoured man would have the ability to switch up his approach, and potentially place himself in a more favourable situation.

In the end, she did dodge to the side, as he had hoped she would, pretending to have supplemented her speed with the use of the Storm’s Edge Dash by falsifying the rumbling of thunder.

However, the Demolisher did not dodge alongside her, and all that the man ended up achieving was delivering himself straight into the best place to be struck by the great dagger that was being used by it.

The dagger’s edge came down right on his head, splitting him in two with little difficulty. His armour, his body, his clothing beneath it, and the bones, snapping the dantian into naught while his anchor and core had been outside of it, causing the latter two to shatter a second after, the one point of energy within the anchor joining countless others from fallen foes within her Truth of the Universe.

Just as his body parts fell to the ground, the second group finally got there, and numerous other thief factions also appeared to within the vicinity.

“Brutal murderer! Our mistress shall have your head!” the leader of the second group, a scantily dressed attractive woman leading a band of similarly dressed women, called out and rushed towards her with all kinds of weapons drawn.

Those other factions that were able to see this also accelerated, wanting to join in hurriedly.

‘For fuck’s sake… If you want to call me a killer, then I shall show you exactly what true killers can be like!’ Wei Yi exclaimed within her mind, manifesting her ample killing intent.

She did not attempt to condense it into weaponry or some attacking force, nor did she try to summon the killing will form, since that would be rather inefficient for her current purposes, but instead spread it out as much as she possibly could, diluting it as much as necessary for it to reach as far as her spiritual perception was able to.

Nonetheless, her killing intent was in the fifth realm, empowered by the stabilisation of the anchor, and born of her own boundless hatred and immense mental domain with a half that had been dominated for endless years by the power of killing intent. Even at its most diluted, at its weakest, her killing intent crashed into stone and the walls around her, eroding them as quickly as countless years would, sand and dirt flying away from her, carried by the dense currents of the faint red energy which rapidly saturated the air.

It struck the approaching woman, stopping many of them in the tracks as their eyes widened.

To every single one of them, the world seemed to turn dark and grim, and a fog rapidly filled the world before them, obscuring most of the district from sight. The skies, previously dark with hints of crimson and orange from the setting sun, became absolutely crimson, with maddening storms rumbling throughout them. Bolts of ruby lightning lit up the skies as if it was the morning, and their light gave them just enough light to see the thing behind Wei Yi.

A great titan, towering above them all, with glowing eyes of crimson and silver, looked down upon them. One half, the one with the crimson eye, was outright demonic in appearance, its arm not covered by a single thing and fully exposing the jagged and murderous tips of her claws, the black bone plates covering the inflexible parts of her arm, and the inhuman skin that covered much of it.

The other half was bright and white, soft and somehow even less human than the other half, for while the first presented a potential corrupted form of a human, the other was unnaturally pure and white, odd in the simplest yet most unsettling way. Simply by looking upon it, one might easily assume that the skin did not belong to any individual member of the human species but was instead the flesh of some entirely different entity that had some minute relation to it. That arm, also covered by naught, lacked all traces of the sharpness that filled the other one, but nothing about it seemed to be any less dangerous than the other hand.

However, neither of the individual hands mattered, for the sheer size of that colossal horror, akin in part to the vague image of the Titanic Demolisher that had been presented through the lightning arcs and bolts, would allow it to crush every single one of them with a single step.

Furthermore, a faint rhythm could be heard all around them – or so it seemed within their fear and terror addled minds – akin to that of a heart, bringing forth the image of an impossibly powerful beat that could dominate the world with naught but its boundless and unsurpassable body. In their eyes, this thing was omnipotent.

In the eyes of most, Wei Yi was forgotten, for how much could a single woman do in comparison to such a great terror?

Although this effect was incredibly efficacious, it was hardly an omnipotent ability, nor could it suppress all. Those in the second and third realms would need quite a few minutes to be able to extract themselves from the terrifying illusion, and some might even die from the horror induced by the beat of the heart, and the colossal figure, but there were several in the fourth realm and were far closer in terms of power to her killing intent, at least in terms of pure cultivation, and thus it would only hold them for only a few moments before they would begin to recover and notice traces of reality once more.

At that point, all they would need to do was shake the others from their stunned states, and the battle could resume anew, with the aura of killing intent being little more than a distraction unless it was modified or otherwise focused on particular targets in greater densities.

Really, the only thing that could not be stopped with such ease was the erosion of all that the killing intent met, quite a few intricate details that had been on homes or scratched onto the road at some point literally floating away, having been ground into dust and rendered null, as if they had never been present. After the battle, regardless of the victor, most would find their surroundings to be entirely new, or at least oddly clean, so far as they would be able to tell.

Since the effect could be thrown off quickly, Wei Yi naturally didn’t intend to waste her time, or otherwise play around. She could control the Titanic Demolisher separately from herself, so she bid it to partially mirror her movements and then headed towards the nearest foe in the fourth realm, for they would be the most dangerous.

Her tactic was rather simple – eliminate the biggest threats and take out as many of the weaker ones in the process as was reasonable without obliterating the district itself.

Strictly speaking, no death or killing was necessary to remove a foe from a conflict in the world of cultivation; the breaking of a dantian would be more than sufficient to purge one’s cultivation and remove their ability to participate as anything more than slightly stronger meat shields that wouldn’t be useful to either side. Destroying a planar aperture was more difficult from the fourth realm onwards due to the presence of the core, from which the name of Active Core is derived, but that did not mean that the barrier was impossible to break.

In a way, the core resembled the strongest defensive technique that the fourth realm cultivator could manifest with all the preparation in the world, in terms of power more so than effect. Most did not believe that it would actually mimic any of the cultivator’s known defensive methods, but this description was still apt for clarifying the protective power of a core.

Essentially, any technique that a fourth realm cultivator could deploy has the potential to be powerful, especially in ideal circumstances, but that did not mean that it would be invincible, especially if the cultivator does not possess some kind of secret power or knowledge that allows them to act as gods that have descended into the world. Similarly, a core, no matter how sturdy, is not invincible, and has a lot of room to grow, just as the cultivator’s realm.

So long as an attack is sufficient to break the defences of a fourth realm cultivator, it can damage the core. So long as the core can be damaged, it can also be destroyed. So long as it can be destroyed, both the anchor and dantian can be broken alongside it, and one’s cultivation can be scattered.

Thus, while all of her foes in sight and spiritual perception range were consumed by the illusion brought on by her killing will, Wei Yi would naturally use her strongest techniques to break the dantians of as many as she possibly could. The nearest target happened to be that attractive woman that was part of the second group to arrive at the scene, so she rushed to her while preparing the likes of the Elysian Storm Burst, combined with the power of the Yang Elysian Storm and unified together with the essence of the Touch of God for maximum effect.

Independently, those effects were powerful enough to threaten both otherworldly demons and the Great Families, but when unified together, their abilities combined into an excellent weapon against all kinds of techniques and planar energy-based methods, for the Elysian property had the ability of targeting the weakness of any and all planar techniques, whereas the Yang Elysian Storm itself took that further to allowing her to shatter arrays just by lightly touching them.

That lone punch carried as much power as the previous set of attacks against the first bandit group, and that was before her comprehension of the Hand and Punch Dao kicked in at the last moment, suddenly causing the many bolts of gathering lightning to multiply on the spot.

Each replica was slightly weaker, but as her target had been the fourth realm woman and her alone, every single one instantly struck her alongside the main force of her attack, landing upon her abdomen.

Whatever that woman was capable of, and whatever she had prepared for, she had not only failed to cover the place where her planar aperture resided, but she had not cultivated a single method to prevent it from being damaged. Perhaps she had been overconfident, assuming that so long as her anchor and core were within her body, they could not be damaged, or perhaps she had not even had the time to consider exactly what she would be doing before she had been plunged into the nightmare of Wei Yi’s killing intent.

Either way, the deafening lightning storm that was focused within the essence of a single fist crashed upon the core, landing on its surface and causing it to tremble in the very first moment of contact and interaction. The moment after that, it was cracking, and the moment after that, it shattered completely.

With one strike, the cultivation of someone in the fourth realm was torn apart, leaving naught behind.

However, there were multiple flaws with her attack, perhaps the least of which was that the planar energy consumption had been unexpectedly large, perhaps due to the unification of some incredibly powerful and hard-hitting techniques. It was less of a problem for her due to her possession of the nascent rift, but even that wasn’t instant.

The more dangerous property was that the strike was so mighty that it tore a hole within both the air and killing intent, one that couldn’t be filled for several long breaths as if the very fabric of reality had been endangered for a short time. Just as regular lightning was accompanied by loud thunder, so was this mixture of energy and intent accompanied by a roaring rumble, instantly bursting the eardrums of several warriors near to the female leader and caused minor bleeding in others.

What that accomplished was alerting them that there was a greater, or, at the very least, different and more important threat to take care of first.

As a result, several were thrown out of their bewitched state with just one attack, bringing several opponents in the upper third realm back into the fight, and their cries and yells brought further attention to the scene, throwing more and more out of their confusion.

It was a miscalculation regarding the exact outcome of the technique, and it was one that she couldn’t afford to make again, nor one that she could easily ignore. Luckily, the equivalent usage of the technique by her Titanic Demolisher failed to be as impactful, nor as powerful, but it did succeed in bursting the core of a fourth realm leader and snapping their anchor in two, which was less effective than outright disabling them but did suffice to reduce their power to the second realm.

Thus, she activated Endless Calculation on a number of matters relevant to the moment, then got back into the fight, moving onto the next fourth realm cultivator. Since raw power was not entirely appropriate in this instance, she coated White Echo in her bloodline power, channelled a part of her killing intent that was no longer necessary into it to fill it up with as much energy as possible, then empowered it and herself with Storm Blade Wreathing, doing all of this in a single moment before the dagger stabbed into the abdomen of her next foe.

The weapon faced no resistance in penetrating to the core, and when it did come into contact with it, it merely changed from slicing through thin air to cutting through old and dried meat.

Her White Echo pierced the dense shell of the active core and only needed to tap the anchor – although her tap was as powerful as a giant’s, if they had been a cultivator of the same realm and had the freedom to stab at the anchor without interruption – to crack it into countless pieces.

On the opposite side of the battlefield, her Titanic Demolisher stabbed at the abdomen of a different foe, the enormous dagger point barely making up for the deficiency of the phantom’s body and the lack of all of her forms of energy around it, and crashed into the core of their dantian. The surface of the solidified energy fluctuated and cracked, but it was not sufficient to break the core completely, which was why the Demolisher had moved more quickly than she had.

Since it was able to replicate her own movements, she willed it to act twice, stabbing again to pierce the core and break apart the anchor.

Five combatants in the fourth realm had been incapacitated only several seconds apart, a feat that the vast majority – no, likely everyone within the third realm other than Wei Yi – would have rejoiced at, but that much wasn’t enough, for over eleven groups were caught up in her killing intent field, and more still seemed to be pouring in. It was as if the entirety of the Ping District had decided to converge upon her position and was now intent to take her life alongside every other participant in the battle. The fact that someone in the fifth realm or higher still hadn’t appeared was actually rather surprising, given the fact that any organisation powerful enough to maintain even the slightest grip on a district would require a force like that.

Still, she hardly wanted to deal with anyone capable of using a searing mark, so she obviously wasn’t going to challenge them to battle, or otherwise encourage them to enter the one that was already occurring. Instead, she would do whatever possible to end her current situation quickly.

In order to accomplish that, she called upon a certain power that she had mostly avoided using in the past, not just due to her own lack of understanding on the subject and the way in which her warped cultivation might affect it, but also due to the uncanny way in which the hallmark of the fifth realm of both mental paths of cultivation had ended up manifesting within her. For most, the Hatred Scar or Mark of Balance would manifest upon their own bodies upon entry into the fifth realm and would be a clear indicator of it.

Wei Yi had not received such a thing, and for quite some time, she had sought to figure out the answer, going through countless possibilities until one suddenly jumped out at her.

For her, the Mark of Balance and the Hatred Scar were not on her heart or in any of her other vital organs, the brain included, but a review of what she understood about the path of mental cultivation confirmed that this was not a necessity by any means. All that was vital was for either one, or both in her case, to be within the body, somewhere relevant to the technique being practised.

What some also forgot was that the Hatred Scar, for instance, wasn’t just a meaningless term, but instead more of a descriptor. It was indeed a scar upon the cultivator, just as the Mark of Balance indicated a semblance of balance and peace within the cultivator’s mind. Thus, beside the place where one’s cultivation gathered killing intent or spiritual will, those two symbols of the fifth realm could also appear on the part of the body that best aligned with the meaning of either of those terms.

In her case, she happened to have a place were both could reside, and one that she had not paid enough attention to until somewhat recently, having overlooked the initial moment of the formation of both symbols during her absorption of the walls of the prison realm.

Within the Kong Prison Realm, the inhabitants of the former Crimson Side suddenly observed the ground turning bright crimson, somewhat alike to the initial state of the realm, except that the light was not only impossibly immense, but that it far surpassed even the concentration of energy that had been present within the outside and separating storm walls.

Fortunately for them, it appeared to do them no harm, and simply passed through them as if the energy was merely illusory, or outright existed in a different reality to them.

It was a much bigger shock to the newer arrivals to the prison realm, the Remnants of Yin and those that had belonged to the Brotherhood of Power, for they had never seen the original state of the spatial realm, and thus when their every surrounding suddenly became dyed in an overpowering crimson, an extreme shade that would never appear in reality, no matter what kind of power had appeared, even if the ancients that had been in the ninth realm resurrected and all pursued a single goal within the Planar Continents as a whole.

For this reason, Yi Shi Ming had been forced to appear, although it also took her a moment to comprehend the matter. When she did realise the nature of the crimson light, her eyes widened as she looked out of the realm.

There, the cloud of crimson light suddenly doubled in brightness, each minute particle of energy seemingly changing into blades that cut into those already affected by the crimson light, digging even further into the things that it touched and wearing away the surface layers. Those that were in the fourth and third realms had some natural resistance due to their stabilising anchors and cores, but the common soldiers in the second realm that had been brought along were not so lucky.

Their skin was actively torn away from their flesh, and much of the muscle and fat beneath it was also rapidly eroded all the way to the bones, in just a few seconds.

Countless people fell to the ground after mere moments of exposure to the empowered energy, and this was even more intense for those that dared to enter the field of killing intent after this change, those from the groups that had yet to make it to the battlefield in the centre of the Ping District. Those people got to experience walking through a barrier of knives and swords, each one slicing their skin and clothing, countless small gashes appearing within them, blood rapidly pouring from the open wounds, turning the ground wet with the lifeforce of humanity.

A number of people ran out, terrified, as blood poured down the streets, for anyone that could cause such a massacre was blatantly not within their ability to cross, no matter what kind of backing and support they had. Others were horrified by the faces and bodies of their comrades being torn apart right before their eyes, and a few were prompted to flee by what they saw within the crimson.

There, in the centre of the overwhelming fog, a great silver blade formed within the right hand of their target, containing a boundless celestial sky within its narrow blade. For the woman’s allies, such a thing would likely act as the perfect lighthouse, for it shone with perfect clarity through a hundred metres of ever deeper crimson fog, but now, for all that saw it, it heralded naught but their deaths. Each and every one of them could see the great ire of their foe gathered within the sword, and they could state without a shadow of a doubt that they had never witnessed anything as horrifying as it in the past, and that they would never witness such a thing again, not from any other soul.

Wei Yi raised the blade high, so that the last traces of sunlight might fall upon it, while invoking the power of Moonlight Ire to force an illusory moon to appear within the skies.

Together, the two sets of light merged within the blade of killing will, forming into the power of Eclipse Ire that was enhanced by both bloodline power and her cosmic energy, but she did not intent to merely cut through a line of warriors. That much would certainly be effective in ridding her of at least one fourth realm foe, but it would bring even more out of their stupor, making if far from being a worthwhile action to take.

Instead, she decided that she would put the flexibility of her techniques to use, as per her right as the Ascendant for whom restrictions are little more than suggestions that are imposed upon others, and once her weapon was charged with her ire, she lowered it.

It glimmered with boundless power, seeking to free itself in one mighty strike, and she would deliver exactly that, except she turned the blade the side, suitable more for a cutting or rending motion than a downward slash, then, ignoring those that had already begun to approach. Wei Yi positioned herself in a stance that would make it easiest to perform the move that she had in mind, then took a breath.

Her heart and the heart of the titan beat in perfect synchronicity, thumping incomparably slowly, as if her very existence had stopped in time. One beat passed for every hundred of that of her foes.

‘Three…’

The blade within her hand grew heavier as more and more energy flooded to it, weighing it down within the space itself around it, causing the world to distort around it as it was unable to withstand the absolute force of the Eclipse Split being concentrated on the weapon.

Her foes were now only a dozen steps away, the steps of a cultivator with a complete and powerful movement technique, and each one of them was in the third realm at the very least, suffering significant but hardly deadly lacerations upon their clothing and faces, droplets of blood spilling from their injuries with every movement.

‘Two…’

All energy around the weapon distorted and blurred. Her killing intent quivered and fluctuated, and the space seemed to both expand and contract, everything that could be seen in the vicinity of the blade seeming to stretch out in a strange and unbelievable manner, as if someone took a length of flexible material, painted something upon it, and then stretched it out, distorting the image that could once be seen upon it.

Several steps were cleared by her enemies, as they saw these unnatural phenomena occurring around the solidified weapon of someone that could only be in the third realm, without her planar anchor even being placed upon the ground, and knew that they could not delay even a little bit.

‘One…’

Her weapon, the one that had caused so many of these phenomena already, also began to suffer under the immense pressure of the power within it.

Thin cracks formed within the surface, although its physical form as much of a suggestion to the energy within as the laws of reality were to Wei Yi, the Yin-Yang Ascendant, the cultivator of five paths, the pursuer of the restoration of a city that had once reigned over the Western Continent. However, while the laws that would bind her could be weakened with her Dao of Law, the things that she created, technique or weapon, were all empowered by it just as much. Thus, her weapon remained in a suitable state, albeit barely.

On the other hand, many of the weaker third realm cultivators that had been able to approach felt an overwhelming feeling of terror occupying their mind. It was not one born of killing intent, not even of their cultivation and spiritual perception, which was heavily hampered by the killing intent in the air, but instead a natural sense belonging to all humans, from the start of history to now.

It was their innate sense of fear, one that would only be sparked when facing someone or something that was not just impossibly deadly, but outright surpassing the very world they lived in.

Most of them doubtlessly lacked the knowledge of her physique, of its name and power, and of the things that she had been able to accomplish in her time. That much was only natural when half of her life had been spent in a spatial realm, and when she had did put some effort into disguising herself in every district that she visited, to the point that not a single person from the Yi District even had a clue that she had returned from the Kong Prison Realm.

However, they could sense the innate might that was contained within her. It bid them to flee.

‘And… now!’

Her eyes snapped open, her muscles filled with power, and the energy that had been filling the weapon forged from killing will finally had the chance to pour out. She slashed the air, spinning in a full circle, easily piercing the armour, flesh, dantians and even the anchors of her nearby foes.

Those that were further away could see little more than the eruption of blinding light, completely overwhelming every single sense that they had, and yet it was still insufficient to warn them of the full extent of what was coming for them. A circular blade of endlessly sharp force tore through the air, splitting it and killing intent alike, obliterating the cultivation of all that were in the way of it.

The weakest were torn in two, their planar aperture snapping in half, while the strongest managed to remain in one piece even while their cultivation did not.

In just one second, with one technique, several hundred lost their lives.