V3C74: Rushing through the Stages

It took some time to remove as much of their influence and traces from the small cave as was possible, and then they set off, with Shun Liu Min carrying the dry branches for the sake of training her body. Beside it not being beneficial whatsoever for Wei Yi, who could carry several trees without much issue, it would also help them due to the district that they would likely approach next – the Chao District.

Located north of the Ping, Ning, and Yi Districts, as well as to the east of the Ju District and the west of the Bai District, a place that Wei Yi wished to check out at some point simply due to the strangeness of a family of mostly pale individuals coming from a place like the desert of the Western Continent, the Chao District was obviously home to the Chao family, and was on the border of the modern Yi City, as well as being the northernmost major district.

When Yi City had stood tall and strong, it was comprised of two types of districts, unsurprisingly named major and minor districts. There were twenty-four major districts, and each was named after the family that had been allocated to rule over it. These were clustered near the centre of Yi City, where they could be in close proximity to one another and trade their precious resources and talents between one another when necessary. Their positioning was decided by the Master of Yi City in order to ensure that the central region of Yi City was not weak and wouldn’t crumble to internal dissidents or potential threats such as the primordial deities or large bandit or assassin organisations.

After the twenty-four districts were established, the districts that were formed around them became the minor districts, without a unique family name to the district itself.

That didn’t necessarily mean that they were entirely inferior to the major districts, or that they were considered to be less important, but they were simply not part of the great bulwark of the central major districts. The families that lived there did often come up with their own family names, but there was far less focus on familiar inheritance than in the other districts.

As such, it was not too strange that over the years of stability, the rulers of the minor districts had changed several times. It was also not too strange that once the great Yi City began to fall apart without the aid of the Master of Yi City, a few of the minor districts decided to become independent, although quite a few of those were swallowed or forcefully united by nearby kingdoms and empires. Those that did not go willingly still fell, in the end, for far less focus had been placed upon them from the very start, causing them to lack particularly unique techniques that they could employ in battle, or teachings directly from Kong Shi Meng, which could have boosted their combat ability enough to allow them to remain in Yi City as many had wanted back then.

In the end, no matter what they did, the districts were no longer districts, and even if some retained their vague shape, system of governance or primary export, none would be recognisable to anyone who could travel from the past, skipping over the million years, in order to appear in the present.

For this reason, and the fact that most of the former minor districts were now against Yi City, even if it was just through passivity and the ignoring of danger that would head directly for one of the modern major districts, the modern border of Yi City was defined by the major districts and the land that they were able to hold on to. Some defined their own walls as the border, while others would protect or otherwise occupy large areas and thus allowed the influence of Yi City to not shrink as much.

The Chao family was one of body cultivators and purely physical fighters, placing a great deal of focus on one’s physical ability. Unlike the Wu family that dedicated itself purely to physical martial arts, meaning that they avoided the use of planar energy in most situations and sought to perfect them and only then strengthen them with planar energy, the Chao family cared less for finesse and technique, believing that so long as their bodies were powerful enough, and they were able to endure the stress that many of their planar techniques brought, they would be able to handle anyone.

Considering the fact that they had remained at the border at the north of Yi City for so many years without a single significant defeat to the groups beyond, it appeared that this idea, or what it resulted in, did have some validity.

In the north, it was supposedly common not only to have a varied and rather open sexuality, perhaps due to the significant heat of the desert making it rather inconvenient for people to be in tight, enclosed spaces during their hottest moments – in both meanings of the word – or due to the varied culture of the people there. This did mean that they should, in theory, be quite alright with Wei Yi’s unique body and the frequency in which she and the former maid would need to physically interact with one another to fully resolve their internal issues and raise their cultivation together, but any kind of open community had its limits.

For this reason, as they slowly travelled through the sand towards the north, they sought out something that would be able to obfuscate the rather distinct scents that resulted from their activities, amplified significantly by the rather over the top properties of her newly acquired parts. Just as the heat within them seemed rather excessive, the volume of liquid that it resulted in, as well as everything about it, was also rather extreme.

It made her ponder whether or not that Dao of Lust may have played some part some part in what the Yin Soul Yang Root created upon her body, and a quick inspection of the Truth of the Universe confirmed that it had, at some point, risen to the Minor Achievement stage. This also reminded her of a few techniques that she had once learned to incorporate into her own body cultivation method.

She could remember with quite some clarity that at least one of them, the Yang Concentrated Body, was able to focus and magnify the yang within the yang root. In theory, if such a thing was to occur without the existence of a yang root, then collect within her body and apply itself to the results of the Yin Should Yang Root… well, it seemed rather clear that even if this wasn’t the sole reason behind any of her current troubles, it certainly hadn’t helped things. With how many things did appear to have affected her and led to the situation at hand, it seemed that even if she had not practised the technique, had the Dao of Lust, and hadn’t had the True Ascendant physique for so long, there would have still been plenty of reasons for it to appear mostly the same way.

‘My body certainly doesn’t appreciate the current topic of philosophical pondering, does it? Hopefully, sealing off unnecessary movement of blood, amongst other things, won’t cause impotence or something.’

Some time ago, she had considered the option of having children, and had been forced to conclude that unless she was able to obtain the ability to impregnate another, she wouldn’t be able to ever have children prior to the conclusion of conflict within Yi City at the very least. Now that she did obtain a method of doing exactly that, seeing as everything about her new appendage seemed rather virile, she now had that exact option, and did want to try it out at least once.

Quite a few parents had described the process of having and raising children to be quite life changing, and Wei Yi would rather experience as much of life as she could before a potential untimely demise.

It did mean that she had to be careful on any future visits to a brothel, just in case.

“I’d forgotten how hot it is out here,” Shun Liu Min said, noticing Wei Yi’s gaze upon her but being unable to understand exactly what her intentions were, “I can keep going, although I’d appreciate something to drink soon… Or, otherwise, somewhere where we can spend some time together, since you don’t seem to have any troubles with water…”

“The sooner we can get you to the third realm, the better. At that point, you will be able to mostly fuel yourself with your planar energy, which is significantly more plentiful around here. Otherwise, I suggest that we learn as much as we can from any travellers that we come across, since they are bound to have some methods of keeping themselves hydrated… save for drinking their own fluids, of course.”

“Ew.”

“You do not have the right to act like that, not after the things you’ve been through,” Wei Yi said, looking away and into the distance, “You know, I had once been in a desert-like environment like this one, except it was far less hot. I don’t have the right to act like that either, and I don’t.”

“Do you… did you… drink… that?”

“How are you managing to act so embarrassed about this? I really don’t understand you. Still, no, I did not do that. I got lucky, and then I killed a person or two. It was nice.”

That seemed to confuse the former maid even further, so she also looked away into the distance, clearly pondering something judging by the loss of focus and attention in her gaze. Her face occasionally twitched, at times in disgust, at others in a strange curiosity, and she occasionally glanced towards Wei Yi with that confusing mixture of thoughts.

After almost half an hour of trudging through the sands, she finally gathered the courage to speak.

“Ehm… by the way… Since you now have a dick, does that mean that you would also… you know… use it for that?”

“Have we actually decided to move our topic of conversation to piss? Really? Fine, I was trying to avoid it, but yes, so far as I can tell by observing the internal structure of my body, the urinary tract has indeed moved to my penis. Is that good enough for you?”

“…” she did not reply, but the slight nod confirmed it, “Does drinking it actually-”

“Oh, look, there’s a nice place to rest up ahead! Let us rest there right now and get a different source of water than what we are currently discussing. Also were you actually thinking of drinking it?“

“… Shut up…”

Dual cultivation had two particular uses and practises. One was for the cultivator to use another as a so-called human furnace, using their energy to refine their combined planar energy and then fuel the primary cultivator, typically leaving the furnace full of yin and thus highly attractive, but weak and feeble in all other matters. It was only an acceptable trade to the most committed of nymphomaniacs, and so the rest of the population would only enter such a situation under some kind of threat.

The other method was for the two cultivators to benefit semi-equally. Energy would be spread out throughout the primary and secondary cultivator, and each would receive a portion of the energy according to their ability to handle it. It was a method used by powerful cultivators who fell in love with normal humans or those in a significantly lower realm, since it allowed them to gather energy, accelerate the cultivation of their partners, get them used to a suitable cultivation method, and gave them a good excuse to have fun together.

Since Wei Yi had no reason to employ the first method, and did want to assist in Shun Liu Min’s cultivation, now that their primary concern of the aphrodisiac drug was subdued and the first of the many cultivation pills was taken, she would naturally make use of the Yin Soul Yang Root technique to spread out that energy.

Over another half an hour, the first portion of energy was split between them, some of the drug that had indeed been hidden within the pills had been neutralised, and they split to process it equally.

As she wouldn’t spy on every single thought in the heads of every single soul, the Ascendant didn’t know what she was thinking about as they attempted to consolidate the planar energy that they had absorbed – Wei Yi received the vast majority of it, and yet Shun Liu Min still found herself with a little too much to be comfortable – but she had considered that the drug they consumed might not have been a drug at all. It was present in every bit of food and every pill that Ping Gangze had, and was fixable with ease, so a different possibility had come to mind.

Often, in order to nullify all flaws in something, many advantages would also need to be removed, which lowered the efficacy and benefit of all products of the five great arts, and so some would occasionally request certain flaws that they can handle to be left in on purpose.

These flaws would often be those that were insignificant to the cultivator the item is intended for, like something that weakens the fertility of a woman when the item is intended for a man, but that could often result in incredibly improvements, depending on the nature of the pill they intended to consume. At times, such things would even be used to the advantage of that cultivator, like if they were being robbed and some bandit decided to consume their pills without the proper preparation.

Due to this, it was not impossible for the so-called drug to be one such side effect. Ping Gangze appeared to frequently have sex with his many maids, so he would be able to nullify it before it could even affect him, especially since it had less of an effect on men, and the boost that it could result in would certainly not be one that anyone that cares about wealth could ignore. It would make it very convenient for him to lure in anyone he wanted and feed them, before either allowing them to recover without noticing anything or forcing them into his bed and would explain why it was located absolutely everywhere.

Then again, for something at the sixth-star level to be present even in more common foods, it meant that some of it was intentionally thrown about.

‘Such a thing wouldn’t be impossible to do by extracting the impurity causing this within other substances, and the alchemist that creates these pills might have figured out how to separate that individual property a long time ago,’ she guessed as she completed her preparations, ‘Once I ascend to the next realm, I should be able to make these things out with greater clarity, so, before the characters have a chance to try and devour this stuff, on to the breakthrough.’

She took one breath, completed something she had started in the prison realm, and focused.

The Truth of the Universe characters displayed their technique as usual, but since she had created her Ascendant’s Path, they no longer fit her path perfectly, forcing her to modify the instructions before she was able to make use of it fully.

As soon as she did, however, she witnessed her planar aperture fill with seemingly boundless energy, the entire planar pool rapidly becoming full with cosmic light. It overlapped with the bright white glow of the sphere within the Endless Monolith, the lights seeming to touch without ever merging with one another. For a short while, her aperture simply bulged outwards, trying to expand even further than it already had, then, with an audible pop, the next stage was reached.

Her Monolith’s shadow emerged from her dantian, surrounding her in reality and lighting up the entire area with the various lights that shone from the many fragments that orbited the centre.

The white glow, which appeared around her head, sunk into her body as it had before, waiting for her to make use of it, and so she did exactly that, directing the refining and enhancing energy towards her muscles, exactly as she had intended. Unlike her bones, which she had previously enhanced without too many ideas on exactly how to best optimise the mixed white energy, she had already strengthened her muscles immensely and yet possessed countless ideas for how to go further and elevate her compressed musculature to a further level.

After all, she was the one to create a technique that was capable of simultaneously expanding and compressing muscles back when she was in the first realm, and also the person to accidentally add four more meridian networks to her own body, so she knew of countless ways to improve even her own muscles.

Due to this, the energy did not take half an hour, like last time, but only five minutes, a short enough time for Shun Liu Min to not have noticed the blinding anchor in her own concentration, and she was thus able to move onto the perfected stage breakthrough process.

It was more of the same, and so she naturally directed her efforts towards the next thing on her list – her blood vessels. Seeing as she needed to mess around with them far more frequently than before, and due to the appearance of something that was able to interfere with her body even with all of the methods she had of cleansing herself, it was even more important than before to ensure that her blood vessels, her veins, arteries and capillaries, were as strong as necessary, and capable of delivering her lifeforce all over her body at any moment, under any pressure.

Given that it might also be capable of enhancing her Bright Glimmering Heart physique ability further, she would naturally focus on this.

With her experience with meridians and blood vessels, some of which was gained during the restoration of Min Lian’s body from her hatred avatar state back in the prison realm, finding some ways of enhancing these things further was much less difficult than when it came to her bones, with which she had spent the least amount of time and effort, but it was slower than empowering the muscles.

Taking a total of ten minutes, she completed the second breakthrough and completely absorbed all of the energy of the first pill, bringing her to a stable position within the seventh stage, at the sixth perfected stage.

That degree of growth, in combination with the empowerment of her muscles, meant that her strength had risen significantly, but not enough to truly make a difference if she found herself within the same set of circumstances as when she had been nearly killed by Ping Waqing. At that time, she had only been able to endure and damage him to any extent due to the endless energy provided by the temporary Soul of Cinder state, and even then, neither her attacks nor defences proved sufficient to do much. If she was able to enter that state again, she would likely be able to inflict one or two more incredibly minor injuries, but to truly make a difference she would need the fourth realm and the perfected realm breakthrough that would come with it.

At that point, she would effectively experience her power multiplying by several folds, allowing her to be as much of a threat to weaker members of the sixth realm as she currently was to those in the fifth realm, more or less. The gaps between realms, stages, and personal ability did grow with every single realm, so while she was able to easily compete with the second realm while in the first, if she was to reach the eighth realm, any foe in the ninth might be significantly more difficult to defeat.

However, that much didn’t matter, since she would just advance as far as possible regardless.

‘The only issue now is that I do not have enough energy from this first pill in order to progress further. A shame, but it does confirm that the requirements will just rise each time.’

Since the next quantity of energy shouldn’t be absorbed too quickly afterwards, as she would otherwise encounter the familiar situation of being unable to properly control her strength for quite some time, she instead rose and observed Shun Liu Min’s efforts towards breaching the second stage of the day.

At the beginning of their journey, even at the beginning of the day, the former maid’s cultivation realm was the seventh stage of Planar Pool, which was now rapidly rising to the ninth stage with just the little bit amount of energy that she had been able to obtain from their dual cultivation.

‘Such a wide disparity in the requirement of energy for cultivation. Hm… Since she is about to reach a new realm, changing cultivation techniques will be somewhat easier than usual. I could share the same technique that I had attempted to create for that Ju Yazhu with her, convert it to the wood element that she currently uses, and therefore make it more difficult for her to break- I mean, make her stronger, and not make her ponder the efficacy of consuming anything that can emerge from genitalia as sustenance,’ Wei Yi considered, opening up the tome within her Ascendant’s Library and looking through it to begin making the changes necessary, ‘She won’t reach the next realm from this quantity of energy, so I have some time…’

Shun Liu Min opened her eyes after a fruitful session of planar energy consolidation to a large water container made of dark leather that appeared to be filled with liquid being held in front of her.

Due to everything that had been going through her mind as of late, she instinctively sniffed at the opening of the container, but found that it contained none of the scents that she had become familiar with, nor one that she had begun to imagine despite her best efforts not to. So far as she could tell, it was water.

“Don’t do that, you’ll look like Zhi Qiu Ya,” Wei Yi commented, bringing the container opening a little closer, “Just drink it. I remembered that I can just condense some water for you, which, while slightly worse than the stuff you’ll find in a fresh spring due to the absence of minerals and all that, does still serve to relieve your thirst for a little while. The added planar energy certainly won’t do you any bad, either, so you might as well.”

“Aren’t you a lightning or a fire cultivator? How did you-”

“You said that you weren’t going to ask unnecessary questions. Really, you should be wondering where these came from,” she shook the container slightly, “Take it and drink.”

Having been reminded of her own words, the former maid took the container and cautiously drunk a mouthful of the water inside, confirming that it did indeed appear to be what Wei Yi claimed it to be. It was almost strange to have something so tasteless in her mouth after everything else, but it was a great relief to finally sate her thirst properly.

She drank up the rest quickly, throwing her previous caution to the wind.

Since she appeared to have controlled herself well enough not to endanger herself, Wei Yi did not stop her, although the more devious (and incredibly small) part of her did regret not doing literally anything to the water at the bottom of the leather container.

“I can make more. You could have paced that out. Now you’ll probably need to go and that very thing you-”

“Don’t continue with that. I had just barely begun to shift it off my mind. Can I get some more?”

“Yes, but remember that consuming too much isn’t good for you. It’s obvious that you were really thirsty now, so I won’t blame you, but you need to give this kind of water some time to get through your system before you drink more,” Wei Yi instructed, creating enough water to fill up the leather container once again.

“I know, and I will not go too far. However, the desert and the breakthrough have exhausted me quite a lot.”

“I understand the former, seeing as it bothers me too. The latter, however, confuses me. Don’t breakthroughs generally imbue you with energy and strength, often leading the overly eager to their death against some foe that they were ill-equipped to face?”

Shun Liu Min nodded, “That’s normally the case. In my case, the technique had been given to me by Ping Gangze, and he obviously modified quite a few things. I did my best to undo as many of them as possible, but without the original, and without permission to view as many techniques as I want, I could only substitute certain flaws for others. In its initial state, my lust would have risen with each stage, I would develop an interest in men against my will and my memories would be more easily toyed with, so I think that being a little weak every now and then was a better choice.”

“While I won’t disagree, I do suppose that my timing for adjusting a technique for your usage was quite suitable. Have a look,” Wei Yi conjured a tome with her killing will, giving it to the former maid, “It should be compatible with you, incredibly so, but if something is wrong, I would advise you not to modify it without consulting me first. There are some rather complex principles in that technique.”

Although she clearly thought that she had been exaggerating at first, the moment that Shun Liu Min read through the first page of the tome, her eyes widened.

She silently mouthed a curse or two, her hands shaking as she continued to read through the following pages, stopping at the end with arms that trembled so much that one might assume that the very earth was quaking beneath her.

“What is this? How did… what… hah?”

“First time I got that exact reaction. Mind telling me whether this is a positive or a negative first impression?”

“I don’t… It’s just that…” she shut her mouth for a little while, trying to gather her thoughts, “It doesn’t seem bad, but it is very different from anything that I am familiar with. What realm can this go up to?”

“The fourth realm should be safe, from then on, I would need to enter them myself in order to gain a better grasp of them, then update the technique accordingly. It is rather difficult to base my understanding of the higher realms just from a few battles and flawed techniques that I encounter, after all,” Wei Yi explained.

“You made this? Yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Oh… you must be some kind of genius, then. I have seen one of Ping Gangze’s techniques, which he gave to one of his trusted subordinates, and while it was made for cultivation up to the sixth realm, the insights that it contained to every realm from the first to the sixth were vastly inferior… or so I think. I’ve never been above the second realm, not yet,” Shun Liu Min said, taking another look at the manual, “I would’ve asked whether you’re accepting students, but I am clearly not qualified… Will you take a maid, instead?”

“You want to become my maid after everything that you had endured as a maid? Are you sure that’s a wise idea?”

“In the Shun family, most of our education relates in some way to servitude. As such, although I am somewhat capable, I have very little experience and skill in taking things into my own hands, which is why I had needed your help, amongst other reasons,” she explained, “When it comes to important matters, I am much more comfortable with following someone’s lead rather than taking it myself. Also, I have plenty of experience in the field.”

“I have been able to tell. Your cleaning is certainly very enthusiastic.”

“…”

“Alright, since you’re the one suggesting this, I shall temporarily accept you as my maid until we get to my faction’s base. At that point, your status may change according to your abilities and contributions. Does that sound fair?”

“Perfectly fair, Wei Yi. I’ll do my best.”