V4C38: The Attack

“That is certainly very interesting… It appears that your meridians and dantian act just fine, as I had predicted, but you are unable to drive anything through them in the usual manner. Instead, your energy is always manifested in the manner that would be expected from active physical cultivation, thus refining and empowering your body as you utilise it,” Wei Yi summarised as she looked through Jia Rong’s body with spiritual perception again, “With prolonged and repeated energy circulation, the stress on your body increases, but it takes a while to become an issue, and does increase the degree of refinement of your body…”

“And I don’t appear to be able to sense that planar energy the regular way… I cannot sense a single thing.”

“That’s not as much of an issue for you, since you have enough energy in your body to, potentially, reach the ninth realm due to your particular method of progressing through realms. Also, do consider your eyes for a moment, since you should recall that you have been steeped in planar energy for a million years or so. Do look around.”

“What do you… hm?”

Jia Rong’s eyes widened as she looked into the air, finding something that neither Wei Yi nor Shun Liu Min were able to see, as unfortunate as that was for the two of them. Unlike otherworldly gifts, which could occasionally be reflected in the eyes of those that used it, this phenomenon did not seem to share the same attribute. No matter whether her eyes were examined simply with one’s own vision or spiritual perception that was then amplified with spiritual will or killing intent, nothing out of the ordinary could be seen nor perceived upon them.

If Wei Yi was right in her presumption, then this was due to her effectively being able to see a different part of existence from her and the other cultivators of the modern day, meaning that they may very well be unable to see it for themselves without completely changing the way in which their eyes worked.

Fortunately for them, they might not need to do something of the sort at all.

“There are faint violet particles around here, far more than usual… I don’t see anything unusual at all around here. Don’t all people see this?”

“No, not normally. Was this around during your years in the past?”

“I think so, yes. I remember that my mother had made use of the violet particles for planar weaving, but I had not been able to learn anything about it. Why, is this significant for cultivation?” Jia Rong questioned, reaching out for one of those particles but grabbing nothing.

“Shun Liu Min, you did explain all of it, right?” nodding from both Jia Rong and Shun Liu Min confirmed that, prompting Wei Yi to raise an eyebrow, “In that case, I will just be straightforward and as direct as possible, so forgive me if I sound condescending. In cultivation, you need to absorb planar energy, a universal form of energy that exists everywhere, typically in a gaseous state. Within your body, it can be condensed into a liquid or solid state, although it cannot be projected outside of your body without the assistance of an anchor and a core, just as I am able to do right here and now.”

For the sake of showcasing this, she released a sphere of pure planar energy out of her hand, creating a small globe of it as to make it as obvious as possible.

“This is an example of that energy when it is in a liquid state, here it is in a solid one, and here’s a crystalline version, although most people can’t accomplish something like this. Anyway, this energy must be absorbed and refined by you, and then outside energy can be absorbed without the process to refill your planar pool and dantian, which looks something like this,” she presented that phenomenon to Jia Rong as well, “Are the violet – I’d assume they were purple, but whatever – particles moving?”

“Yeah, they are… That is planar energy? Planar energy is the same thing that’s used for weaving?”

“I would’ve made that connection before this, but I suppose that planar weaving, planar cultivation and planar energy may be somewhat different from one another. It is likely that planar weaving can still be accomplished, if the world hadn’t changed much since you were imprisoned,” she said.

“Oh, that makes so much more sense! So, all of this purple matter is planar energy, and I can see it despite not having that spiritual perception thing?”

“Yes, exactly. It is likely that the reason you see individual particles and not a dense mist, which would likely be quite infuriating and irritating to experience constantly, is either due to them being ones that are most suitable for you, or ones that fit whatever visual spectrum you are able to peer into, or perhaps both,” Wei Yi theorised, her own eyes glimmering with blackened crimson, “Fortunately enough, even if you manage to absorb energy the regular way, this will be incredibly useful for you as you will be able to take in exactly what you require.”

“Planar energy is complicated like that?”

“Yes, it is. Although all of it is in an unbound state in most places, and thus without an elemental status, every particle of energy has a certain elemental preference… I suppose, although the actual law that dictates this is far more complex than that, if I understand it correctly. To benefit from a drop of energy and to be able to utilise it for yourself, you will need to absorb the right type of energy.”

“For example, I am practising a wood-type technique, so I need to absorb energy that is suitable for the wood-type technique, as well as matching the exact details of the technique I use,” Shun Liu Min chipped in, demonstrating the absorption of a few drops of energy as she did so.

Once it could be easily confirmed by her reaction that Jia Rong was not able to see wood-type energy being interacted with, both she and Shun Liu Min turned to Wei Yi, for one could guess that Wei Yi was special while the other was fully aware of exactly how extreme her ability to interact with nearly every kind of energy was. Based simply on the technique that she had been able to provide to Shun Liu Min, it was obvious that Wei Yi herself would have something more impressive.

“This will be the day of looking at me, won’t it? I suppose that I should thank you for helping me get used to it,” Wei Yi commented, taking a step back and shutting her eyes.

However, the moment after, she opened them again and took a few more steps back, heading all the way back until she was but one step away from the back wall. The reason behind this was not one that the other two questioned, since they were both certain that she knew what she was doing, but they were also quite curious to learn exactly what it was that she wanted to either cause or avoid.

The explanation for that came moments later, as the very space around Wei Yi suddenly twisted and seemed to partially collapse upon her, light twisting and bending into her. It was extremely unnatural and insane, and with it came an absolutely vast quantity of energy surging into her body, enough to fill a regular third realm cultivator within an instant and satiate someone in the fourth realm like she was within moments. Despite the occurrence ending within those moments, and her opening her eyes again, it was still highly impactful.

To see light and space twist because of something that appeared to be the simple absorption of energy was obviously not a common phenomenon, not even for the maid that had seen someone in the sixth realm cultivate regularly. For the less experienced Jia Rong, it was absolutely shocking.

“W-what was that? Is that kind of thing normal?”

“Nope. My cultivation realm is just getting out of hand, and since this place now has far more energy while being entirely controlled by me, I am able to interact with far more than I usually would be able to. For most, it is just a process of sitting down and grabbing at as many particles suitable for them as they can while ignoring every particle that isn’t,” Wei Yi clarified, “So, did you see any of your purple particles being absorbed, or did even the Ascendant’s Path fail to absorb whatever you’re able to see with those eyes of yours?”

“No, I did see a particle be absorbed, I think… That was amazing!” Jia Rong suddenly exclaimed, having finally moved on from the initial shock, “I wanna be able to do something like that! Imagine if I could twist space around me like my mother would weave planar energy…”

“For that, you’d need the usual cultivation foundation, which includes a proper planar pool, anchor, core, then searing marks upon it, then channels to link it and the anchor, before finally concluding with a series of oblivion halos in order to be able to make an impact on space outside of a spatial realm, with a spatial realm being a place like this that is separate from the outside world and can be modified by the spatial spirit and the one that controls the realm,” the Ascendant said, replacing the blatant enthusiasm on her face with confusion, “Unfortunately, you do not currently have a regular planar pool.”

“Wait, a planar pool… That’s the thing that comes after initial energy condensation, and is a specific pool within my dantian, right? The dantian is here, so… uh, how exactly am I meant to… oh.”

“Spiritual perception, which, presumably, you recalled you cannot access in the regular manner. This is an issue for cultivation, as spiritual perception is highly necessary. However, I would tell you not to despair, since the path that you are currently taking is highly unconventional and yet has vast and immense potential. A powerful physical body can take you far, with me being the prime example,” Wei Yi barely needed to point out how she had been able to carry Jia Rong for the second half of their journey together at such vast speeds that even the crimson-skinned woman and her unnaturally powerful body couldn’t keep up, “Don’t get obsessed with appearances, and you might be able to attain far more than most cultivators could ever dream of getting.”

“Even if I cannot use that same kind of technique and do the same kinds of feats?”

“Precisely. For one, you currently appear to be immortal, which is not something that anyone else has achieved. If I had to guess, I would say that you shouldn’t be able to have a lifespan higher than someone in the ninth realm, who would have about a million, six hundred and thirty-eight thousand and four hundred years of life provided that they reached it without flaws or complications to their health, so you might have a guaranteed two or three thousand years at the very least.”

“I… might have lived that much of my own life already? Even if I may be able to go on for that long… it still feels like much less after the time I’d spent chained up,” Jia Rong sighed, glancing at her own clawed hands, “Anything else?”

“Just as I had already told you on the way here, your strength is also far out of the realm of ordinary people despite you only being in the second realm at the moment. Since your increases in cultivation realm appear to affect your body, and also due to the way in which you can use your planar energy to enhance your own strength, you might be able to reach the sixth or even seventh realm in physical strength alone provided you manage to make full use of both the cultivation technique you somehow possess and the energy that you obtain from it.”

“Right, there is that! Alright, how do I do it? Do I just… stand here?”

“It is currently related to your emotional state, so yes, that does work, since you have gotten to the third stage now,” Wei Yi said, looking at her with the full understanding of what it must have been like for the people that had known her in the Yi District to suddenly find her cultivation realm leaping up without explanation, “You know what? I have an idea…”

The sun set, the night passed, and then morning came once more. A cool wind passed through Paragon, entering from the southern tear within the sandstorm, although it escaped the notice of most.

What could hardly be missed by those that remained inside it and the Kong Prison Realm was the departure of the Arbiters, of a large force led by Great Dark while a lone figure belonging to their leader left at a similar time but headed in a different direction than the rest of them the moment that the sandstorm no longer impeded her.

Naturally, the primary force had set out towards the Chao District, which was directly to the south of Paragon, but Wei Yi intended to go around the side and to the larger Bai District, likely passing near the eastern coast at the same time. Whether or not she was actually going to see the ocean that separated the Western and Eastern Continents was uncertain at the moment, since it would depend on any possible obstacles on her path that might force her down a certain path, but she would be nearer to it than she had ever been in her entire life, allowing her to feel the breeze and hear the waves in the distance.

Her forces would travel more slowly and end up at the Chao District around the same time, then challenge the leadership of the district using Jia Rong’s power in order to get the upper hand in any kind of physical challenge that they might demand of them. They would not proclaim that they want to directly take over the district, of course, but rather state that they wish it to be included in the territory of the Ascendant’s Arbiters, and that this would not come with any kind of difficult conditions.

Since trying to say that they want nothing at all from the Chao District would be strange, and only demanding that they do not cooperate with the Great Families might not even make sense to more than one or two of those in power, so they would demand some light tithes or taxes, mostly making use of information or the few resources that the Kong Prison Realm or Paragon did not already possess.

While they were busying themselves with that, Wei Yi would invade the Bai District and similarly seek their cooperation, although she believed that she might have an easier time of it than the primary force at the Chao District. The reason for that was simple, and it was to do with the number of the Great Family members that would be present at the district. While the Great Chao had not yet suffered any significant losses, save for those that had been mixed in at the siege of Paragon, the Great Bai Family only had a single member of the second generation, meaning that unless the first generation was to emerge, the Bai District would have no Great Family members to call upon without risking their lives immensely.

That meant that those who are already aware of the Great Families might be that much more keen to act against them, if only to give themselves more freedom in their actions.

The one person that would be able to do anything to her, named Bai Chao just as all of the other male members of the current generation were known by the same name, would not be able to defeat her on his own. If the district’s leadership concluded that the Arbiters would be better for them in either the long or short term than the Greats, it would likely be possible to receive aid from several sixth or possibly even seventh realm combatants. After that, Wei Yi could potentially lure them into being assisted by her various physique abilities, spreading her conquering presence and utilising the essence of law to partly claim the hearts and minds of those she would free.

Wei Yi was not particularly fond of such a notion, since it was yet another instance of manipulating the minds of others without them having a single clue that it would even occur, but a number of things had changed since she had departed to the Great Ping mansion.

She was now certain that she would be able to win, simply because she had no other choice when the world was as it was, and she would do quite a few things differently if she had to. The fact that certain extremes would need to be taken was already clear in her mind, and the fact that she had let so many die just because she had not taken full and immediate action was prominent and clear.

‘Really, I should thank the Greats – as disgusting as the very combination of words is – for proving once again that the philosophy of doing what I must, to be judged after I succeed or fail, is right in the current situation. If I had acted fully in line with that philosophy, I might have been at the peak of the fourth realm, or even at the sixth realm now, and I might have been able to do far more to stop the Greats, prevent the siege of Paragon, and do so much more…’ Wei Yi thought to herself while she reached into the air and took a look at the Mask of Yama, ‘I will not let these kinds of opportunities slip by me again. The Bai District will lose some items today.’

The theft of some items from the district she was heading towards, as well as the Chao District if she found a treasury to loot, might cause some issues, and might cause a few more people to suffer when they did not need to, but it was necessary to guarantee her survival and success, so she’d do it.

Placing the Mask of Yama on her shoulder for now, where it appeared to be able to stick easily without needing any further support due to whatever mystical properties that it possessed, she widened her eyes. The energy of the Conqueror’s Eye surged out of them, the blackened crimson overwhelming the sand and momentarily turning it and the air above it a similar colour.

Within that air, she could move at a thousand times her regular speed using the Mortal World’s Echo physique, which she did right away.

There were a lot of things that needed to be done, and she wasn’t going to delay any longer.

With that speed, the only thing that limited her was her pool of physique energy, which could be recovered incredibly quickly with her planar energy supply and the nascent rift, as well as the rate at which her conquering of the world was able to expand. The further away she got from Paragon and the Kong Prison Realm, which were the primary reasons for her ability to instantly take over the fortress and the region around it. In terms of her ability to conquer things so quickly in Great Ping mansion, that was due to the way in which she was able to exert her dominance both over the Greats at the moment of her sudden reveal of her power, and the way in which she was seen as a sufficient threat with the ability to control the world.

In that way, it was clear to her that the Conqueror’s Eye was partly bound by the people’s view of it. Whatever laws controlled it meant that if she was in a territory where she was seen as a powerful figure, she would receive the most benefits from it, which meant that it would be in her favour to act as domineering and absolute in her actions as possible.

So long as she was considered to be a force that couldn’t be rivalled, the Conqueror’s Eye could make that happen, and could allow her to dominate districts the moment that she entered them simply by causing the people within them to consider her as being victorious before she has any chance to act. Then, when her conquered territory allows her to win a battle that would otherwise be far more challenging, if not impossible, that perception would be reinforced.

Out in the sands, few people believed that they actually controlled each grain and particle of it, so it was still easy enough to control it, but it did mean that she had no benefit from the people’s belief that she had an extreme degree of power. The less that people cared about the parts of the land that she was traversing, the more individual opinions of the few that did live there would affect her, and they would likely consider themselves as the only rulers of their limited territory. Such an effect would further intensify the further out from common civilization she was, and the more certain some were of their control.

Fortunately enough, the land to the east of the Chao District was not controlled by anyone in particular, not as far as she was able to tell, at the very least, and thus only affected her to a limited extent.

Her overall speed did drop slightly, but it was to an acceptable level, and she was able to begin moving past the Chao District within an hour. If she had a full grip of the terrain before she began, and without needing to conquer it all and did not need to contend with the limited threats that did exist around the district, she might have been able to manage it within forty minutes, less if her physique energy was infinite, and she would then be at the coastal region of the east continent at an earlier time to appreciate the sight.

In all of her life, there had only been one time that she had gotten to stay by a large source of water and take in everything about it, and that could be argued as not being a true visit of it due to being some kind of strange illusion or visual gateway.

Now, she was seeing reality, as far as she could tell, and it was certainly something.

Before her, only a few dozen metres away from her, was an endless plane of wonderful azure – fortunately distinct from the azure light of the otherworldly lights that inhabited the items that the demons carried – that slowly gained more and more fluctuation the further on she looked. Great waves rose and fell within the distance, and some of them managed to survive for long enough to reach the shore of the district, right where Wei Yi was able to see them.

The usual blue fog that obscured the world and required spiritual will or killing will to be seen through was much clearer and fainter above the sea, and even without her mental energy she was able to see the faint trace of another landmass far to the east. It was a mostly flat territory, without many hills or mountains near the region that she was actually able to observe, although she did know that the south of the Daoist Continent was a mountainous and wild region with an innumerable number of the sects that their continent was so fond of.

Much closer to her, over to the north-east, she saw a few islands that were, to her knowledge, entirely uninhabited in the modern day, as they had once been home to the ancient qilins. Just as everything beside the Glass Wastes, it was horrendously hot there, and thus it was most suitable for a species of ancient creatures whose veins were filled to the brim with fire.

The Yi family must have had some interaction with the qilins of the past, so her ancestry was in some way shared with the entities that had lived there a long time ago, prompting her to stare there.

‘It certainly looks unimpressive from here, although it is rather difficult to see anything from such a vast distance. Not particularly hilly from here, so perhaps they had lived beneath the ground and occupied some lava-filled caves, which are bound to be in a northern region like that,’ Wei Yi thought to herself, trying to perceive as much of that land as she could across the distance, ‘I might visit that place when I get to the sixth or seventh realm, since I would then be able to reach it without too much effort, and will be able to endure the horrific heat.’

The Yin-Yang Ascendant physique was bound to benefit her in the department of heat endurance, but the extreme north and south were so dangerous precisely because the vast majority of heat resistance methods were utterly useless against what seemed to be the absolute peak and bottom of the temperature range respectively. To survive without being one of the entities that existed there naturally required an immense degree of preparation and sacrifice for just a few moments.

Had the set of islands been beyond the edge of the Glass Wastes, rather than simply nearing it, she wouldn’t have even bothered considering the possibility, since it would have been an unnecessary attempt at suicide.

She intended to look away when she felt her gaze being forced back onto the islands by something.

It was slight, faint, and almost certainly false, but she was almost sure that she had seen something moving on that land.

‘What the… Was that some tall wave, or has someone decided to move in while everyone else was more focused on the two continents? No, if it was just some person, I would have likely not noticed it, so…’ she frowned, continuing to stare at it for a while longer only to find no more curious movements or changes of interest in the distance, ‘Well, none of my business, at least for now.’

However, now that she did see something, whatever it was, her desire to visit increased further.

The easternmost district in the Northern Desert, the Bai District, was famous for the particular way in which it was designed and built. The district was large, matching the Ju and Yi Districts in terms of general area, but every single inch and millimetre was covered by a dense layer of cloth created many decades ago when the Bai Family’s prominent features became as common as they were now, and when their placement in the world became a rather significant issue due to the way in which their pale skin reacted to the sun.

As a result, it was often called the roofed district, although those that came from the east and west, from districts close to water, would also call it the district of sails, for that was what the constant rippling covers of cloth supposedly look like from above.

Due to being from the central district of the Central Plains, Wei Yi was not particularly familiar with sails or the like, and couldn’t state with any degree of certainty whether or not there were any similarities between sails and the cloth top of the Bai District. She could, however, say that it was a very different sight to the one that may be gained from the other districts. Almost every other district, save for those that had a significant portion of their structures underground, was prominent, tall, with rooves visible for all to see whether they were friends or foes, as a way to proclaim the marvel of the district itself, and Yi City while they were at it.

Meanwhile, the Bai District only showed a sheet of dark brown cloth for every few dozen buildings, resulting in countless individual sheets covering the district entirely, resulting in patterns not unlike the ones that may be found on the ocean and particularly large lakes. If anything was to attempt to sail atop them, it might not even look entirely foolish for a second.

‘I’d hate to ruin that in particular, but it may lead to that. First, however, I should do some looting…’