V3C78: Approaching the Chao District

Once she got into a comfortable pace with one hand, she switched to creating inscriptions with her other hand, putting one in front of herself and then sinking into thought for a few moments while pondering the nature of what she wanted to create. Fortunately, she had a lot of ideas, so all that she needed to figure out was which one she’d go for first, and where to pull inspiration from.

It didn’t take long for her to decide that creating some version of the Armour Forming inscriptions as to get some practise with them, understand exactly how they worked, and provide some fortunate soul with a piece of metal that could make their entire body as tough as it just so long as it is kept on their body. Something like that was a second realm technique at least, and even the Copper Skin Toughening pill wasn’t as effective as an Armour Forming inscription, so it would be an excellent deal for whoever ended up getting it.

Judging by the enormous price the merchant would likely sell it at, it probably won’t fall into the hands of someone who couldn’t get a better piece of better metal and get an inscription on that instead, but that didn’t seem like much of a problem to her.

What some people did with their money and free time didn’t concern her, even if the case resembled that of Ju Yazhu and the other man that she had been fighting with. Such things happen, frequently, and even if she could observe each one at all times, to stop all of them would be an exercise in futility until she was able to reach out with her Dao of Law and change the very structure of the land. Until then, the moment that she vanished for even a moment, such behaviour would just re-emerge.

In her eyes, it was better to let a few such injustices and unfortunate events occur out of her reach while seeking to stop them than to attempt to end as many as possible without coming any closer to dealing with the underlying reason behind them. Earning money and learning about the location of the desert fortress would be advancing that goal, so it was fine even if it allowed some things to happen.

To make an Armour Forming inscription, with which she had very little experience, she naturally took a close look at those worn by the people in the caravan from afar with her spiritual perception, finding that they were indeed not all the same. There were some differences based on material, quality of the inscription, tier of the inscription, and quite a few other minor variations that seemed to have been made by various inscription masters out of some personal touch or as an attempt to improve the schematic that they were following.

Despite all of these differences and intricacies, all it took was a glance for her to be able to tell some of the intrinsic functions and variations within the inscriptions.

The Vision of Law appeared to function better when she saw things with her own eyes, rather than just using her spiritual perception, but what little she was able to see through the two openings in the strider gave her enough understanding to raise her clawed finger above the inscription plate and begin with something very basic.

Well, she began with that, and it quickly got out of hand.

Just a minute later, the inscription plate was covered in all kinds of thin lines, channels and complex shapes made of straight and curved lines that twisted and travelled in all sorts of strange ways. It was confusing to observe for Shun Liu Min, at least, although that was also due to something else diverting far too much of her attention, but from the inscriptions that she had seen, this was certainly way more complex than the common five-star inscriptions out there.

Wei Yi herself would have struggled to understand it if she hadn’t been the one to make it, and even then, it was not the most intuitive structure to create. However, her intuition and some quick Endless Calculation told her that this was the best way to go about creating an efficient and effective Armour Forming inscription, and the moment that she allowed planar energy to pour in, she confirmed it.

As soon as enough energy filled the inscription channels to create the basic defensive field around her body, she felt it gain the endurance of the metal used, which wasn’t particularly high but still notable. It didn’t override her natural endurance and resilience, as that was far higher than that of the metal in the inscription plates and would open up a completely different use for these inscriptions, but it added it on top of that instead. In theory, so long as she had multiple Armour Forming inscriptions that didn’t overlap in terms of their energy and structure, she could add several layers of star metal defence to herself if she made some rings out of it.

‘Alternatively, if I was to make a sort of scale armour with each scale being made of star metal and having an Armour Forming inscription upon it… that would be insane, yet incredibly useful…’

Such a thing was not yet possible, whether due to the requirement of star metal or because of the amount of work that would go into developing, creating, inscribing and then connecting all of the separate inscriptions into a cohesive and effective whole, but it was something to experiment with at a later date, that much was certain. Even if she just made a chain that was worn around one’s wrist or neck, so long as it had plenty of pieces, it could boost someone’s defensive capability by a ridiculous degree.

Regardless of future possibilities, the current fact was that she had created an Armour Forming inscription for the metal used in the one-star inscription plate, and that she now had a grasp on how inscriptions of this kind functioned. If she wanted to create one in the future, she would need to put in far less effort to comprehend it after this, regardless of the material she wanted to work with.

She obviously wanted to learn how to make the most of star metal, and perhaps how to extend the defensive aura of the inscription into other things, like adding an edge to a blunt weapon by extending it from the same defensive piece of metal.

The Armour Forming inscription offered a lot of possibilities, and most of them weren’t ones that Wei Yi had imagined on her own. Quite a few people before her, the Master of Yi City included, had wondered how to take further advantage of the inscription, as well as how to optimise it to the point that an incredibly small piece of metal could be used to enhance something enormous, like the wall that surrounded the Ning District, and they hadn’t all failed in their pursuits. It was just that certain attempts had far less success and effectiveness than they would have liked, and thus their exact details got lost to time.

Perhaps it was only natural that she intended to uncover them, develop things on her own, and eventually complete something that would be able to rival those past creations, allowing each warrior under her to wield weapons as sharp and sturdy as star metal could be, with perfect armour covering their bodies at the same time from a small ring on their finger, or a necklace around their neck, or even just a random chunk of the metal in their pockets.

‘So long as everyone isn’t likely to die the moment they emerge onto a battlefield, our numbers would actually mean something,’ she thought as she put that inscription aside, ‘War wouldn’t be impossible.’

She shifted her focus to Shun Liu Min for a moment, confirming that she was still able to hold her voice in regardless of the persistent and incredibly skilled stimulation that she was receiving, then took out another inscription plate and pondered it for a moment. While she had been able to make a variant of the Armour Forming inscription, she did have quite a lot to work from, so it wasn’t particularly difficult for her to elaborate on what she already had with the Vision of Law. Even if she could somehow produce an Edge Forming inscription, it would merely project the dull edge of the plate.

Instead, Wei Yi decided to allow herself a similar state to when she created the Bolt Deflecting inscription, and see what such a thing could lead to, merely modifying her thought process slightly to focus on an offensive principle of some sort.

An hour later, both of her hands were free to work on the inscriptions, even if she didn’t need them, while Shun Liu Min chose to rest on the bed-like area inside of the strider for a while.

Several inscriptions were completed, with all of the one-star plates being used up for various experiments and interesting ideas that popped into her head. Not all of them were as good as the Armour Forming or the Bolt Deflecting inscriptions, which were certainly very impressive in almost every regard, but they would still make a decent amount of coin if sold to the right people.

Perhaps the most popular would be the Temperature Regulation inscription, which could allow someone to cool down a room and then use the inscription to keep it in that state for as long as it had enough planar energy. Most people had gotten used to the heat after living in the Northern Desert for so long, but there were guaranteed to be those that still wanted a lower temperature, or just wanted to have some relief from the constant blazing sun above them.

Her work on all of those things did make her ponder on the nature of her Vision of Law, which had unfortunately become common enough of a term to stick with her. It would make sense to be some particular result of the Dao of Law, but the state of vision itself wasn’t what was bound to the Dao. The things that she saw were.

In order to help her figure it out a little more quickly and easily, she called for Xin Fu when she was passing by the second strider, and asked her a simple question.

“The circles in my eyes?” the wife of the merchant repeated, innocently blinking several times, “Ah, the heritage of the Xin family, right? All who are born to it receive them when they are very young, but I cannot say that I remember it all that clearly. I was no older than four at the time, and the whole process is confusing to me to this day. I think it may have had some effect on my vision, but I honestly cannot be sure. Why do you ask?”

“I just thought it was interesting. I have a circle like that too, you see.”

“Where… oh, you do. It is much fainter than mine, but I have no clue whether that is a good or bad thing.”

Since she knew so little, as was confirmed by a quick look with spiritual perception, it was rather unfortunate but little could be done about it unless Wei Yi was to grab her and force her to return to the Xin family in order to learn more. She said, “Fine then. You can bring these to your husband.”

“I will… and you put labels on them too. How kind of you! Thank you!”

Xin Fu took the one-star inscription plates and carried them out of the strider, heading back to the one at the front before passing by not long after in order to get to whatever it was that she had initially left the strider to do. All the while, the insectoid creatures that they were travelling in, as well as the escorts around them, continued to travel forwards, moving relatively slowly but very consistently.

In fact, their movement was barely noticeable inside of them, as if they were just hovering over the ground.

Wei Yi’s view on the Vision of Law was that it could be a certain result of the Great Stride stage of Dao development, and that it would mark a significant departure from the standard technique stages that she and the Truth of the Universe appeared to be following before this. According to her theory, so long as she developed any other Dao to the Great Stride stage, she would also be able to use their state of vision to view the world from another perspective, but she couldn’t be certain whether she would need to switch between states or not.

It would be ideal if they could overlap, granting her far more insights from any particular view at once than any individual state would allow, since she would then retain the freedom of world without needing to bind herself to one perspective.

Since her theories appeared to be accurate so far, it presented two matters for her to consider, the first being the three circles in Xin Fu’s eyes. If they were some marks of the Dao, with one per Dao, then that would mean that she possesses the vision state of three separate Dao, with their quality being dependant on the brightness of the circles. Whether brightness was a positive or negative in this case was yet to be established, but from Xin Fu’s actions, it didn’t seem like she had a very unique view of the world, at least not one that would be immediately noticed by someone who focuses on Dao as much as Wei Yi has.

That would mean that the dimmer the circles are, the greater one’s comprehension of a vision state is and the more in tune with it they are, causing it to be less prominent and foreign within their irises, or that a vision state could be induced in another without them comprehending it, perhaps leading it to laying dormant in the eyes of whoever received it until sufficient comprehension was accrued.

If the latter possibility was true, the former could also be, and it would mean that the Xin family possessed something relating to three individual Dao, perhaps without even realising it exactly.

Judging by the focus of the Xin District being spirits, souls and the like, it was very likely that their three Dao were something like the Soul Dao, Wraith Dao and Ghost Dao, which would be based on the three classifications of spiritual entities that the Xin family had established for themselves. Unfortunately, Wei Yi knew too little about them and about the general understanding that the Xin family had, so she couldn’t do much more than theorise, but she soon wouldn’t need to, as the moment that she acquired another vision state, most questions would be answered.

She thought this to be within her reach, not just because she had quite a few Dao at her disposal already, but due to the first vision state being that of Law. The Dao, too, were a part of the natural laws, and that meant that she would instinctively be able to observe them in other entities.

With enough careful observation and close attention, she would slowly pick up on natural aspects and manifestations of other Dao, and then that could be incorporated into her existing understanding of them in order to advance them to a greater stage. Eventually, no matter how few casual breakthroughs she had, she would reach the Great Stride stage with at least one of the many Dao that she would observe.

For the moment, she had two Dao that were closest to that stage, as they were in the Minor Achievement stage, but she wasn’t sure whether she actually wanted either one of them to advance.

Having a constant vision state of lust would either cause her to constantly observe the arousal of every single person she saw, or it would bring attention to the innate yang and yin of those individuals in some way that was different to the way that the Yin Dao and Yang Dao would permit her to see things. There was also a chance of it allowing her to see exactly how and why certain things attract the kinds of sexual interest that they do, essentially explaining fetishes and certain toys to her the moment that she witnessed them.

She could already be called a rather lustful and knowledgeable individual, so expanding her knowledge of lust would not be particularly helpful to her mind or state. Sure, it would have some use in certain scenarios, especially if she came across some kind of test that requires such knowledge in order to pass it and obtain something that she needs.

The other option, a Vision of the Absolute, or perhaps Absolute Vision, or just Vision of Absolute, depending on what kind of naming scheme she would go for, was not significantly better. Frankly, she didn’t even have a clue what kind of thing a vision state like that would grant her, since the vast majority of entities didn’t possess any kind of Absolute laws or energy, unless simple things like gravity or the movement of light was considered.

However, she already saw and perceived such things, so it wasn’t all that useful to her, not so far as she could tell. Perhaps it would unveil something that she hadn’t anticipated, like with the Vision of Law, but it didn’t seem like the most optimal route to pursue.

It did cause her to ponder the nature of her Ascendant’s Dao while she worked on the two-star plates, since she lacked both a vision state and a circle within her irises that would indicate her achievement of the Great Stride stage, and yet she did have the Dao at the Full Success stage. That would’ve broken her theory of the Great Stride stage granting the vision state, if not for the fact that the Ascendant’s Dao was her very own creation. So far as she knew, there wasn’t any other person out there with any attainment in the Dao, and there was nothing other than her that used any energy born of it.

That meant that she wouldn’t be able to see anything unique with a vision state, whether she had one or not, and the absence of the circle in her eyes could be born of the same cause as the Ascendant’s bloodline not causing any physical changes to her body. The Dao was already fully her own, and any vision state would essentially be her existing vision. Naturally, the circle in her eyes wouldn’t be present if she had a perfect comprehension of it, or if it already covered the entirety of her eyes.

As such, it was plausible that she had attained a vision state all that time ago, when she had developed the Ascendant’s Dao, and was viewing everything through it all along.

After some more time, she made full use of the two-star inscription plates as well, completing a series of curious things that were mostly distinct from the ones that she had implemented into the one-star inscription plates, although she did remake the Bolt Deflecting inscription just to refine the initial ideas that had gone into creating it, and to see how much she could change with her greater understanding.

With a better inscription plate and some developments of her Solar Inscription Arts, she was able to get a lot of improvements into the finer structure of the inscription, but the general framework of her work remained the same, as quite a lot of changes that could be made would significantly alter the inscription and make it a little too powerful. She didn’t want to sell items that could be used against her later, and while she knew how to deal with the vast majority of her techniques and inscriptions, the more she had to work around them, the less efficient any battle would be.

During her work on these, she had pondered some of her Dao and did uncover a few minor things, but none were significant enough to nudge their stage even a little bit, and she did need to stop the moment that she got onto the three-star inscription plates.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t just make the same inscriptions on them as she had on everything else, but the costs of the metal used for the plates rose with each star, meaning that if Chen Xiu was to sell the one-star plates with four-star inscriptions, he would make a lot of money. On the other hand, if a three-star plate was sold with a four-star but relatively simple inscription, there would still naturally be profit, but it would be notably lesser than from the one-star plate, since it wouldn’t take full advantage of it.

Since she was aiming to get him to do much of the searching for her, the more that she was able to make for him in one go, the more he would feel that he needed to do for her, and the more effort he would put in. Even if he didn’t bother amplifying his efforts himself, she could always speak to him or his wife and point out how much money she had made, and that if he chases her away by performing poorly, she could easily improve in her craft and go to some competitors with the inscriptions that she would be able to produce at that point. It might take a certain amount of finesse to create just enough incentive for him to act, while not encouraging him to make her stay for as long as possible, but she could do it.

As such, the only Dao that she could ponder was one that related to one of the inscriptions that she was putting onto one of the four three-star plates, which she decided would make use of the Absolute Dao after a lot of thought.

She still wanted to get another one of her Dao to the Great Stride stage, and as she had considered before, the Dao of Lust wouldn’t make for a suitable vision state, so she could only pursue the Absolute Dao instead. It would have a lot of uses in inscriptions, and even if the vision state proved utterly useless, it would be able to confirm or deny many of her theories.

‘I swear, at some point I’ll just find a Dao of Dao sitting in the Truth of the Universe interface, since I seem to be working on them the same way someone else may practise their techniques,’ she thought, mostly jokingly, although she did need to check the grey interface just to be absolutely certain that no such thing had popped up already, ‘Still, that would be bound to allow me to do a whole host of things. Perhaps all of my faction could make use of various Dao if I had something of the sort.’

It was an amusing possibility, but an unlikely one, so she shut her eyes and focused on the inscriptions.

When it came to the four-star inscriptions, she decided that she would go all out and create the most insane things she could. They would probably be quite niche in terms of their usefulness or appeal, but that in itself could raise prices due to their exclusivity, so she didn’t see any issues with her idea.

What came out of it was certainly quite interesting. She had three inscription plates to work with, so, naturally, she made three different inscriptions, all of which had a different purpose and contained her own method of negating or at the very least detecting them if she ever came across them being used against her, which, as always, was an unfortunate possibility.

The first was called the Fifty-Five Channels Defence, and it was a rather ludicrous thing. Once activated and guided to guard a certain area, which would not be alterable unless it was first entirely powered down, it would generate fifty-five separate channels of energy within the air that would move, alternate, and change their direction of flow at random intervals to make it very difficult to deal with it. Those that weren’t specifically permitted to enter would be repelled at first contact, but if they attempted to enter again or encountered it while it was within its offensive mode, they would be struck by one of the fifty-five different methods within.

Despite the rather excessive number of defensive methods, she actually found this one to be the easiest to create. She had more than enough techniques to come up with all of them.

It had its flaws and strengths, as any method and inscription would have, likely even at the ninth realm, but it would certainly be useful at preventing any short-term intrusion into an area. With how many defensive techniques – and offensive techniques that were masquerading as defensive technique by being made to fire the moment that they were needed – were present, and how difficult it would be to track exactly where any one of their relevant channels was, it would require sheer force or a lot of testing in order to successfully break into it.

Then, since she had recently obtained the Destruction Brand, she decided that it wouldn’t be nice not to incorporate it into an inscription, especially seeing as the inscriptions she was putting into the four-star plates were five-star in complexity and quality, which happened to match the approximate intended level of practise for the Destruction Brand.

With it, she made the Brand Alternator inscription, which was a similarly stationary protective measure, but one that was far more aggressive and offensive in nature than the Fifty-Five Channels Defence. The basic function of the inscription was to conjure, recall, and intermittently empower multiple Destruction Brands at regular intervals, with each one having some variations in order to make them particularly dangerous despite the regularity of the changes to it. As she had not yet had the opportunity to mess around with the brand-type techniques all that much, she didn’t have much of a chance to create anything particularly extreme, but some of the brands would have a higher spread of damage, others would focus on weaknesses, and some would be dedicated to fire and burning foes.

Perhaps it wasn’t the strongest kind of skill that she could have put into her inscriptions, but it was an effective one, and from what she knew, brands weren’t a common technique in any part of the world, to the point that she had only seen two after having been through five districts on her way to her sixth.

After that, she decided to make something that would also have a use, but not for combat, instead seeking to tap into a market that wasn’t very well saturated. Thus, the Projecting Visage inscription came to be, with a single but powerful function of being able to project a cube of the world above itself at a size of the user’s choosing, from a location also dictated by the cultivator that would make use of it. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t superior to spiritual perception itself, but most lacked sufficient talent to make use of it in a proper way, and thus it would give a far clearer image for them.

It was also able to bypass certain types of spiritual perception blocking material due to a difference in the way in which it functioned, but it did make it easier to notice, meaning that if someone was in the fourth realm or had spiritual will at an equivalent level, they would be likely to notice the inscription’s effect of spying upon them if it lingered for longer than an instant.

To make up for it, the range at which it could operate was as high as five hundred metres, save for the fact that it would require far more energy than it could provide for itself to keep functioning at that distance. With the assistance of a fourth realm cultivator pouring their energy into the inscription, or the addition of a few additional energy condensing inscriptions or arrays on the side, it would be more than sufficient.

She suspected that those who purchase it would want one of two things – to spy onto their opponents, or some targets of importance, or to peep on people changing, but there wasn’t much she could or wanted to do about it.

If someone wasted an inscription like that just doing what their spiritual perception should already be able to do, it would be entirely their fault, and she wouldn’t allow herself to get involved unless they were stupid enough to spy on someone that she cared about personally, or herself for that matter. Fortunately, while most with sufficiently powerful spiritual perception or natural senses would be able to make out the presence of the inscription’s effect, she also knew how to track it down, so it would quickly be taken back if they were too brazen in their actions.

Just to be sure that nobody would be foolish enough to blame her for the actions of another, she didn’t leave any traces of her name, and the channels within the inscriptions themselves weren’t particularly identifiable, although they did all share common characteristics that could be recognised if someone familiar with her work was to witness it.

She had just placed the inscription plates aside and pondered whether she’d able to get away with some light interaction with her maid when she was distinctly able to feel the striders slowing down.

With her spiritual perception always scanning about, she quickly saw Xin Fu heading towards the second strider, and some of the merchants and guards going ahead to speak with someone beyond her range of usual spiritual perception. Before the merchant’s wife could get close, Wei Yi had already reached out with the amplification of her killing will, allowing the range of her senses to expand just enough to catch a glimpse of something at the edge of it.

The moment that Xin Fu came up to the entrance of the strider, she decided to ask her about it.

“Have we reached the Chao District?”

“We have! Once we are permitted to enter, then me and my husband shall be bringing you inside and to a residence that we own. He said that you can stay there for as long as you like, although he will probably try to force you to make some inscriptions while you’re there. Nobody will bother you if you don’t want them to, which is great!” she replied with some unnecessary but useful information.

“Alright. To not make things more difficult for you, I will remain inside of here. I have put a label on each of my inscriptions, so if they don’t make sense, I’ll explain their function for you.”

The merchant’s wife nodded and went back to the first strider, while Wei Yi leant back and relaxed.