V4C14: A Drop before the Rain

Neither of them could have said exactly what they had expected when the man had said that he wanted to forget some things, but they certainly didn’t think that he would be taking his own words that seriously. Normal authamite wine was not particularly strong due to the way in which it was brewed, but this one contained more alcohol than any other taste or substance, meaning that besides being extremely effective at getting one drunk, it would also be the most likely to damage the liver after excessive drinking.

And yet, Long Wuchu was perhaps the best example of excessive drinking, as he consumed most of the bottle on his own, quickly abandoning the pretences of drinking slowly from the cap to instead drink straight from the bottle.

Even had Great Dark wanted to get drunk alongside him, it would have been rather difficult to do so, prompting him to instead ask more and more questions the more intoxicated the other man got, veiling them less each time, in order to gather as much information about the Hunters of the Cosmos, him, and anything else in the area, such as the rumours that had attracted the Hunters.

The simplest thing to learn about was the man himself. His name did appear to be legitimate, as did everything he told about himself when he was sober, and from a little prodding from words and Wei Yi’s spiritual will they were able to confirm that he had indeed been attacked by an albino woman without a clue of who she was or why she was seeking to hurt them. His memories revealed that she had likely been within the fifth realm, as there was an absence of the channels between any of the attacks she had used, but the barrier around her almost seemed to be made up of the core that most would contain within themselves, along with several illusory searing marks.

This also suggested that the attacker had been one of the Greats, for the barrier seemed suspiciously like the field of anchor mirages that typically protected and surrounded them, and it appeared to confirm that the core of the fourth realm and the marks that form upon it wouldn’t be multiplied across every anchor, but would instead surround the cultivator if they had a vast number of anchors as the Great Families did.

Overall, that was actually a beneficial thing for her and anyone else seeking to oppose them, as having a field of anchors protected and empowered by cores and each with fifty searing marks would be absolutely devastating, whereas a single core and a single set of marks could be overcome with similar ease to the core of any other person. It would obviously be much tougher, that much she didn’t doubt, but when something was singular and monolithic, a single flaw or crack would endanger the whole thing, whereas a series of thirty cores would each need to be broken independently.

Now that she was in the fourth realm, she also didn’t need to exert herself quite as much to damage or break the cores of regular cultivators, and likely would be able to survive a hit from one of the second generation, who this woman appeared to be.

Judging by her features, she was very likely to be from the Great Bai Family, invoking the rather natural question of the purpose behind her actions, but Wei Yi had an idea that she believed to be rather plausible. After all, the people attacked were from the Hunters of the Cosmos, professionals that knew and understood the Primordial Deity they sought at least to some degree. If they showed up in full force, other forces would be discouraged from getting involved, and if they concluded that she had nothing to do with Primordial Cosmos, then all of the preparation invested into getting people riled up would have been wasted entirely.

The easiest way to prevent that was to either eliminate the Hunters of the Cosmos entirely, at least those that were intending to investigate the rumour, or to break up that expedition and cause enough damage and chaos that they would be weakened and sufficiently agitated to pronounce Wei Yi a heretical worshiper of the Primordial Deities despite all of the evidence to the contrary.

She had no doubt at all that if she had failed to prepare for the rumours accordingly, and if she had set up a decoy camp where she might have attempted to gather information about Primordial Cosmos by sharing tales of its potential neutral nature, even a calmer Hunter of the Cosmos might have found her suspicious at the very least. Someone as shocked and agitated as Long Wuchu would have certainly attempted to attack them had they taken that approach.

As such, she concluded that it was in her best interests to ensure that this man wasn’t randomly thrown out, but instead kept reasonably happy with the situation. If others arrived and tried to accuse them of being worshipers of Primordial Cosmos, whether they would do so as a result of their own misconception or due to the instructions of the Greats, then he could easily step in as someone with the proper knowledge and items of the Hunters of the Cosmos and decrease the doubts about the Ascendant’s Arbiters, even if just a little bit.

Since he wasn’t a high ranking individual in the Hunters, she didn’t expect his word to carry much weight, but if a few of the Hunters survived and made their way over and none disagreed with his judgement, they might even side with him and further dissuade suspicion – or accept it as well.

In that case, they could potentially be introduced to the Arbiters themselves at some later point, as they could become the enemy of the Greats if they refuse to play along and possibly the enemy of many factions in Yi City if they became convinced that the entirety of the Hunters of the Cosmos had turned away from their original purpose, and might be more keen to act against those who had placed suspicion on them and had forced them to seek out a false lead in the first place.

Even if that didn’t end up happening, there was no reason to antagonise the only real member of the Hunters of the Cosmos around the, especially due to some of the things that they had learned about them as a result of his words and loose mouth.

For one, someone among his superiors seemed to have a trace of the Hunter’s Toxin absolute physique, the last one that Wei Yi needed to complete the potential set of the Conqueror’s Eye. Theoretically, it would be better to kill them at that point, as it would make getting the physique a significantly easier task, but seeing as there were apparently several such people, it was feasible that the Hunters possessed some method of obtaining an appropriate physique and developing it for themselves over all of the other options.

If they were able to do it, then she could naturally replicate the process, or otherwise loot the bodies of the fallen Hunters of the Cosmos until she had what she wanted.

Then, she could have both allies and her Conqueror’s Eye, combining the two to accomplish some great deeds at some point in the future. She did not yet know of the exact effects of the Eye, if it was even a possibility, nor did she have a clue whether the Hunters of the Cosmos were anywhere close to being sufficiently powerful to make any semblance of a difference in the brewing conflict, but bringing them into the cause could be akin to creating a new branch in a very distant district.

Essentially, there was no reason not to do it so far, so she would naturally not abstain.

Most of the Hunters of the Cosmos used the same black weapons and armour that the man had, which were labelled by them as abyss equipment. Each Hunter was meant to have an abyss blade and an abyss set of armour, although the amount that it needed to guard from naturally varied depending on where they went and what tolerance they had to high temperatures. Despite the similar names, the material used was wholly distinct from abyssal basalt.

While the black stone did have the same heat-containing properties as the abyss metal, they had no relation to one another, and neither one could be used to make the other unless someone knew of a method to generate a sufficient amount of heat to transform regular basalt into abyssal basalt with nothing more than an inscription or array made solely with abyss metal. It might also be the same the other way around, but the sole true Hunter amongst them did not know of the way in which the weapons or armour were created save for the fact that his measurements had been taken, his combat style and ability was analysed, and then a weapon and armour were provided to him some time later.

Finally, the information that had brought them here wasn’t known fully to Long Wuchu, not because he had been drunk while it had been provided, nor because he had not bothered to listen, but due to the information supposedly being significant and reliable enough for only the higher ups to listen to it before sharing only what was necessary with the rest.

According to the implications of his words, the Hunters of the Cosmos tended to limit their own knowledge of certain matters relating to the Primordial Deities, especially the one they sought, as they thought that the more they knew about them, the more the Deities would know about them, and that they would become more susceptible to any kind of Primordial Deity influences and methods with each piece of relevant information that they obtained. She had no idea if this was in any way accurate, or even related to the truth, but if it was, there was little she or Yi Shi Ming could do about it.

Even if the Primordial Deities would wake soon, and even if it would put them at great risk, they could only expand what they already knew so that they wouldn’t be in a place where they knew enough to be affected, but not enough to do anything about it.

The Hunters of the Cosmos themselves got around this issue by learning the tactics and techniques necessary to combat Primordial Cosmos – although they primarily fought against small cults that had been started in someone’s basement when they and their friends were drunk, according to Long Wuchu, due to the shortage of the Primordial Deity in question – without fully understanding how they helped, or why.

As he had shared, most of these methods were of some use, but as Wei Yi could easily guess, most of the common troops of the Hunters of the Cosmos would not be capable of modifying their techniques on the go to suit the situation, or even properly responding to a complex threat on their own if they did not have a guide with them that had been written by someone more knowledgeable.

If this was a necessary weakness in return for far less dangerous encounters most of the time, she could understand it, but if this had no use and yet crippled the majority of the Hunters then they would need to reconsider their policy if they were going to work with the Ascendant’s Arbiters and actually contribute. There was also the possibility of the leadership of their organisation knowing something about Primordial Cosmos that they were afraid to share, either because it would weaken their position or due to it being able to shatter their group if it was widely known, but that would require some better evidence than the drunk words of a random man.

They would, at the very least, need to get someone higher up in the ranks of the Hunters of the Cosmos to speak with them, even if it was just for Wei Yi to be able to browse through his memories.

Once Long Wuchu had consumed the entire bottle of authamite wine, he did not end up lasting too long, and so before much more could be extracted from him he had to be put in a bed and permitted to sleep off the excessive alcohol. As a third realm cultivator, he would fare far better with it than a normal person, and might be able to overcome the hangover rather quickly, but for now even his mind was in too poor a state for Wei Yi to dare to tread within it without getting a bizarre and maddening mixture of images.

She wasn’t sure if she should be glad that she’d never get drunk due to her physique energy quickly burning through everything that tried to affect her body while her killing will and mental plane could easily result the mental influences, or if she was missing out on quite a few things, but the question seemed happy to make itself irrelevant rather quickly.

That random thought occurred to her some hours after the sole true Hunter of the Cosmos amongst them fell asleep on Great Dark’s bed while the twin had occupied himself outside of his tent, when the morning had turned to evening yet again, and only a short time after that some of the Arbiters that they had kept out of the camp to permit them to report on matters of interest returned with interesting information.

There were news of new arrivals, and it wasn’t just one or two lone individuals this time, but instead large groups, most of them seemed similar enough in the distance when looked at through the obstruction of the sandstorm. It was either some coincidence, or a number of other groups had come.

Since it would be impolite to let them arrive un-greeted, and since Wei Yi wanted to gather as much information as possible on them before they had any chance to learn anything about them, she came to the edge of the barrier around their camp and was soon able to sense them as well, although they needed to get closer before she could perceive them in any detail.

‘I have to say, while the sandstorm is hardly a perfect defence method no matter how you look at it, it is certainly very effective against observation through spiritual perception. If I cannot look through it with ease, the vast majority of the Western Continent will likely also struggle, and it might even be that the Greats – if they had detected me themselves back then, and didn’t do something that I had been unable to perceive – will struggle to some extent when it comes to looking through here,’ she thought while she waited, ‘Amplifying it for our enemies while minimizing the effects for me and my allies would be an ideal path of progression, but not one I can pursue any time soon, unfortunately.’

The number of things that she wouldn’t be able to resolve or otherwise act upon within the near future seemed to only grow alongside her cultivation realm, grasp over the world, and even her comprehension of the Dao, which was rather annoying to say the least, but at the very least the Planar Continents had a limit of the ninth realm, after which any further progression wouldn’t be a matter of the world any more, even if it was possible. Eventually, anything that could be done would be available to her to deal with.

Fortunately, that too didn’t remain on her mind for long as the first bunch of people spotted her and the camp in the distance, tried to mutter to one another before needing to shout to get through the noise of the constant sandstorm.

Once they arrived at some decision, they rushed towards her with immense speed.

As a result, while they did not outrun her spiritual perception, since that would be rather challenging, she got to look over them with it and her own eyes at very similar times, letting her get a good look at the exact kinds of people that were going to be intruding upon their territory. Their tall, muscular, dark bodies, covered in little and yet managing to withstand the sand, made it obvious that they were from the Chao District, or somewhere near it, and the insignia of a hammer on their belts confirmed that they had some relation to one another rather than having come together at the same time and in a group for the sake of better withstanding the sand.

“Who’re you lot?” Wei Yi asked to get their version of things, keeping her words short since their earlier failure to consider the volume of the sand implied a thing or two about them.

“We are the Hammers! We smash!” a man at their front declared right away.

“Yeah, we smash!”

“Don’t forget that we smash, also!”

‘The Hammers… Some body cultivating bunch from Chao District, most likely, and with the brains to go along with it. I don’t even know whether they meant three different things by their proclamations, or if they just didn’t listen to one another while they had been talking…’ Wei Yi sighed internally and asked, “What do you want?”

“We’d like to smash! Any of ‘em Cosmos things around?”

Another man first nodded, then shook his head, as if he was onboard with the smashing but not the target. He said, “Nah, you got some tough walls?”

“Got any bitches? Smash the bitches, haha!” the third exclaimed, answering her earlier question.

She had to hold back another sigh as she said, “Don’t know nothing about that. Boss is a skinny, weak guy with a bow, chat with him.”

They immediately ran off to pursue Great Dark, who she did not intend to apologise to after the façade was ended. He was the leader of the War of Yin itself, so he should be more than capable of handling some people whose heads had been too damaged by repeated cranial attacks on their path of having a body so strong that the aforementioned cranial strikes would be unable to damage them. Rather than achieving that, regular body cultivation, from which physique cultivation was wholly distinct, tended to only make them a small degree tougher, and never sufficiently so.

Within the Chao District, this practise was popular, and so there were quite a few groups that had simple names and were dedicated to the sole pursuit of making their bodies tougher and then having fun with them, as per the third man’s comment.

These kinds of body cultivators were more of a stereotype than what most usually were, but she just happened to have the fortune of meeting them today – and she did mean that, as much as she didn’t like the all that much already, since she would likely need to beat them all up several times before they would stop trying to assault the women of the camp. Most would be able to handle it just fine, but it would still be an unnecessary source of stress that should be avoided.

The reason that she thought their presence to be a positive one was due precisely to their simple way of thinking. At the moment, they were in a somewhat risky situation due to their nonconformity with the typical practises of the Hunters of the Cosmos. With sufficient evidence, if it wasn’t considered that they were the worshipers of Primordial Cosmos that were being sought, they would still be attacked either to kill or to detain, depending on the ultimate conclusion and mood of those that would be watching their behaviour for any further oddities. What they needed were groups that wouldn’t be likely to contribute to such a situation in any way that might be positive for their foes, or that might even be easily persuaded to be on their side.

She could think of two types of people or groups that might easily be drawn to their side, or that would at the very least refrain from unnecessary investigation: those who acted for the sake of money, as they could easily be paid off through illusory coins and the Dao of Law or might not even be bothered to do anything that they hadn’t been explicitly paid to do, and the dim-witted, who wouldn’t notice the oddity of the situation and would thus leave it alone when they really shouldn’t.

The Hammers seemed to fall into the category, and so she believed that it would be fine to put up with them for however long they would stay in or near their camp, and since she could maintain her view of the entire camp at all times, she could always be there the moment one of them decides to seek the third type of target for smashing.

‘Come to think of it, I tend to be far less welcoming to men that to women when they have some interest in sex, either with me or with other ladies of the Ascendant’s Arbiters… My Dao of Lust is obviously on the Lesbian branch, if that is even possible…’ Wei Yi thought as she kept an eye on the members of the Hammers while they walked through the camp towards Great Dark’s tent, ‘I should ponder on my biases at some later point. Even if I am interested in women only, I have a way to get more than just sex out of it, while the others cannot do so as easily, if at all. For the Arbiters to withstand a prolonged conflict, and to be able to occupy lands that might have lost a large number of people, we would need… well, people, which come from the union of men or those with draconic blood with women.’

If she somehow managed to plunge everyone into the depths of lust for women and women alone, then any potential partnerships would never result in children that they could raise and ensure the best upbringing for, and would instead need to recruit others frequently if the war continued for a long time or if their numbers were no longer sufficient for any one of a countless list of reasons. Those recruits wouldn’t have been able to practise the best techniques, to learn all of the principles and beliefs of the Arbiters, nor would they have as much of a reason to keep developing and growing.

For a moment, she considered whether giving out the Yin Soul Yang Root technique to every lesbian couple in the prison realm and Paragon might be a good idea, if only to avoid a complete cessation of natural births.

‘I could also find some dragons… Yeah, like they’d just wander into Paragon like Long Wuchu wandered into the camp. Also, I could hardly force anyone to sleep with the dragons if they didn’t wish to, although most dragons and those with draconic blood tend to be attractive to both genders, so it might not be a problem in the first place… Not common enough, that lot, unfortunately,’ she sighed properly.

As if specifically to take her mind off things, the second group that she had been warned of came into view.

Judging purely from their highly vague silhouettes, they did not appear to be another bunch of body cultivators, and they might even be somewhat reasonably dressed in some manner of dresses or robes, depending on exactly what the fabric shifting in the storm was.

In time, they too came closer, and she was able to see that while they had managed to get dressed in the morning, or whenever they had ventured outside, they had not done so in a manner that one might expect from the Yi District, or the districts to the south of it, and certainly not like the people of the Qiang District needed to clothe themselves as to avoid being turned into an ice statue for the people around them to marvel at.

Most of the group was made up of women, but none of them had any defining characteristics that might connect them to a family save for their absolutely incredible and charming features. Each woman – for she knew naught of the reasons to enjoy a man’s body and thus did not pay attention to them – had a gorgeous face, with perfect lips and eyes, flowing and shiny hair, flawless skin that was slightly darker than Wei Yi’s own at the moment, and their breasts and bottoms, varied in size as they were, did not fail to match the standards that the rest of their bodies set. They wore pink outfits made of translucent silk that pretended to cover their chests and nether regions, with some also wearing a length of similar fabric to pretend to cover the lower half of their faces.

There was only one family that could so consistently and successfully have children with such varying yet perfect features, and it was the Shi family.

‘If these are all members of the Shi family, then they are very likely to be some sort of organisation within the district and the family, which may mean that I already know of their existence… Unfortunately, I do not know of many of the Shi family’s activities and the factions within it, so it is rather difficult to guess their identity simply from their appearance.’

Just as with any family and in any district, there were plenty of things that people could get up to in their free time. Some wanted to sit around in their own homes and do nothing, other wanted to constantly be in the midst of combat, and some never wished to see their home districts again for whatever reason, and so people would often form groups based on their shared interests to do whatever it was that they were interested in. Some would consist solely of family members or some close friends, others would end up becoming large organisations, and all had their own tendencies. Some would dress in particular ways while others wouldn’t, for instance.

These things did not always remain individual, especially when they were based in part on some common trend of the family, such as the colour of their robes, or some insignia, or something else of the sort. The particular pink garb that she saw on the women of this group was not special to any one organisation, nor the Shi family itself, so it was hard to assume anything based on that, and they lacked any immediately defining insignia or physical feature that might have brought them together, leaving her to look at their cultivation.

Each one of the people before her, who had now slowed to a walk as they got nearer to her, had a water-type cultivation, and while that in itself wasn’t particularly odd for the coastal Shi family, they also appeared to be sharing a few techniques amongst themselves, with only three different water-type cultivation techniques spread amongst the two dozen people present. Once again, for a family to share techniques wasn’t unusual, but for them to follow the same principle was.

Even if a family focused on one element for their cultivation, they would still have some variance in their interpretation and usage of it. Fire could be instant, long-lasting, devouring or blinding, and water could be still, flowing, falling in many droplets, subduing, freeing, obscuring and revealing, but everyone in the Shi family group shared the concept of a powerful tide overwhelming land in their cultivation.

That did narrow things down to a certain extent, allowing her to guess at their identity.

However, she couldn’t reveal it, since a westerner that didn’t spend much time near the Shi District or Yi City in general wouldn’t be aware of them, so she instead called out, “Want something?”

They didn’t hesitate to call back in reply, asking, “Is there a camp behind you?”

“Yeah. Want in?”

“If you wouldn’t mind letting us in,” one of the ladies said, smiling as they kept their eyes on her face and didn’t wander any further, “Could we… I just ask whether you have any relation to the Shi family? You have a wonderful face.”

‘Um… That is an interesting way to word that kind of praise, but alright. Maybe they’re fond of doing it that way in the Shi District, although… Well, I am not, so it shouldn’t lead to much,‘ she shook her head straight away, “Never been there, never fucked anyone from there, nor have I even been that far south.”

Contrary to her expectation, that did nothing to dull the interest of the woman, who quickly said, “Oh, that’s great! Would you mind if we talked soon? I’d love to get to know you better. I’m Shi Bao Ya!”

The others in the group had already gone forward without her, although Wei Yi was able to notice them listening in on their words, and so she ran off to catch up with them with an excited smile on her face. While she couldn’t know the exact reason for it, she did know the cause.

‘The Shi District… It is said that the people there can be rather unusually secretive despite their northern location, and it is most often theorised that there is some ancient reason behind that which is kept from all but the Shi family itself… Another thing that requires further investigation, and another unexpected encounter…’ she thought to herself, remaining in place at the outer edge of the camp’s barrier to keep observing incoming groups, ‘Their overly perfect appearances remind me of Shi Luo Feng again. I swear, if they are related, I won’t be able to trust beauty… Not that I really should…’