V4C51: Marked Core

The fifth realm was a powerful one, and to ensure that she would get as much out of it as she possibly could, Wei Yi had naturally made some preparations for her other forms of cultivation as well. It was about time for her to raise her minimum level of cultivation, and it would stabilise her form far more if she could bring her physique to a similar realm as her planar cultivation.

Fortunately, her awakening of the physique vein had paved the way to the realm of Blood Resuscitation, and she wasn’t going to let it go.

As such, with all of her pills having been consumed and their energy circulating throughout her body, she had allowed them to be absorbed while she was in the Realm of Potential. Now that she returned, she could feel herself being ready to go, on the brink of a breakthrough, and she was going to get on with it as soon as possible. Obviously, doing so in the Kong Prison Realm was risky, as it could always endanger its hidden state by causing too many spatial fluctuations on the outside, or even be destroyed if her breakthrough goes a little insane, so she didn’t attempt such a thing in there.

Instead, she made her way to the Bai District with the usage of a stealth method, then rushed down towards the Luo District, only going as far as she needed to in order to be out of sight for anyone at the Bai District.

For someone with her speed, that was not difficult at all, although the energy overflowing within her did make it rather difficult. If it had done the same as it had for the last few major breakthroughs, and began to pool up towards some particularly unusual achievement, it might have made for an easier trip, but considering the necessity of reaching a greater realm so that she would have a greater chance against her foes, she was glad that this wouldn’t happen.

There was always the perfected stage breakthrough, and then the next realm to await.

She sat down in a greener part of the savanna, surrounded herself with a great deal of protection to ensure that nobody would be foolish enough to approach, then shut her eyes and prepared.

Her planar energy filled her dantian to the brim, her physique energy actively trembled within her meridians, particularly inside the physique vein, and her bloodline, which she had elevated to the peak of the second realm since the last time she had cultivated it through the pressure of her other forms of energy combined with some particularly helpful pills from the stores of the Chao District, bubbled with unique power; she was close, and she knew that she would soon need to focus just to be sure that nothing went wrong.

In order to allow herself to do that, she first brought out a few tomes from her mental domain, checking on what the regular breakthrough to those realms would look as to ensure that she knew what did and did not go as usual for her.

First off, planar cultivation was rather straightforward when it came to the fifth realm. With it being the Marked Core realm, what any cultivator would acquire upon reaching it was a number of searing marks upon their core, the shield that guards the dantian and anchor. People with particularly poor attainment would still get ten or so by the peak of the realm, but those with a high degree of competency usually didn’t reach beyond sixty.

The marks would form upon the core, and there were a number of recommendations regarding the best way to obtain as many as possible. Some were wrong, others had a trace of truth, but, ultimately, Wei Yi decided to make use of the insights that she already possessed into her own techniques and allow them to take care of things. So far, she made excellent use of her perfected realms, so she expected that she wouldn’t be let down by whatever happened today so long as she did everything correctly. She wasn’t sure whether it was reasonable to expect more than sixty marks for herself, nor whether the fact that she had two cores would make a difference, but she certainly knew that ninety-nine was the peak of what she could obtain, Ascendant or not.

Then, her physique would reach the Blood Resuscitation realm, also the fifth of the cultivation branch, and the greatest benefit that it would offer her would be the further development of some of her physique abilities combined with the possibility of regenerating from extreme wounds. She was already able to endure some rather insane attacks and injuries, but with the Blood Resuscitation realm, she would near the mythical ability of regenerating from a droplet of blood.

Of course, such a thing was actually nonsensical in reality. A drop of blood couldn’t possibly hold all of the knowledge of the mind, or sustain the soul fully, or allow for any kind of proper restoration.

Still, if she suffered something that would be lethal to her at her current state, she might be able to recover, and do so with far more speed than she would otherwise possess. It would be ideal in ensuring that no long-term injuries are forced upon her, since it would make it nearly impossible for her to lose a limb or some vital organ.

The development of the physique would also prompt the creation of further physique veins, all the way until she acquired a full physique vein circulation throughout her body, with each altered meridian empowering her physique and body as a whole. Only then could she have a chance of attaining the realm after Blood Resuscitation, with that being the Physical Amplification realm, in which all of the power of the physique vein circulation would be infused into the body in order to raise it to far greater heights.

As that was still some way away, she turned her attention to the last realm that she expected to attain today, which was the third realm of bloodline cultivation, called Trait Acquisition. Had she possessed a normal bloodline, this might allow her to gain one particularly notable or significant aspect of her bloodline origin, like the heart of a dragon or something similarly impressive, but her circumstances made that a near impossibility for her.

She was the source of her own bloodline, the origin of it, and even if the absorbed bloodlines could play a part upon it, she would still be the primary source of her own power. All that she expected was for the boost from her bloodline to become more significant, and for her hair to get even silkier and more crimson, or for her eyes to gain a further silver depth.

Anything beyond that would be simple fantasy, all the way up until she actually acquired something of the sort. It was unlikely, but there had been quite a few unlikely events in the past, so she didn’t outright rule out such a chance. She would prepare for it, but not expect it.

‘If that is everything, I might be able to begin… Searing marks shouldn’t be anywhere near as painful as actually being branded, right?’ Wei Yi asked herself, suddenly considering the fact that she was able to sense a very small amount from her core. If the sensation of numerous marks was suddenly transmitted, she would once again get to experience some kind of significant pain, and that would only add to her unnecessarily plentiful experience in the matter.

Even if that was possible, she wouldn’t throw it away just because there was a chance of pain. She would just make sure that the pain gave her something truly beneficial, so long as she had a chance.

With her doing nothing to hold her energy back, and with it already being so near the breaking point, her breakthrough began only a few moments after she released her restraint on it. Cosmic energy bound in chains surged out of her body, dyeing the entire area around her in the light of the cosmos, with nebulae and stars transforming the area bathed in the rising sun to a seeming night.

Much of that energy formed into the Endless Monolith, aligning the glowing and chained sphere with her head, while two layers of cores appeared around it, with one being translucent and crystalline while the other was dense and dark, like the carapace of a subterranean beast. Both layers radiated sheer power, pressing down upon the uneven ground around her and forcefully flattening anything that stood in their way as they attempted to perfectly surround Wei Yi, just like the real cores surrounded her planar aperture.

Her energy pooled up within the spheres, just as it might within her body, and slowly grew denser and denser as it also pressed down upon her due to her own designs.

With the state of her planar energy easily surpassing the fifth or possibly even the sixth realm at this point, she would be wasting it if she didn’t make use of it to reinforce her own body with it while she could. Sure, it would be possible to bring out her energy at a later point, and the natural refinement of the cosmic energy would also still be present, but while she was in the middle of her breakthrough, it would be far more vibrant and impactful upon her own physique, making this the best time to use it.

So, as the cosmos seemed to surround her, with traces of shining moons within and a force of entropy encroaching upon all of it, her physique energy was also forced into action, surging throughout her body and reinforcing her every particle.

The bloodline within her final set of meridians was hardly unaffected by this combination of powerful energies, and thus the power within was also forced to surge out, bathing her body in various colours as everything within strived to burst out with more power than before. Everything was on the brink of being unleashed, and as some of her cosmic light travelled outwards, it began.

To summarise everything in a single series of events would simply be impossible, so, instead, it would be best to go through everything one by one.

Beginning with the simplest matter, from the perspective of the number of occurrences and changes to Wei Yi’s body, her breakthrough of bloodline power began at the same time as the rest of her developments. All of the blood within her body suddenly rose to a boiling temperature, with her veins being forced to their limits as they were also supported by all of her planar energy to make them regenerate and strengthen themselves during the constant damage that was enacted upon the feeble blood vessels.

As soon as the next realm approached, Wei Yi felt all of her body surge with unknown power, every part of her becoming strangely better, filling with energy, life, and everything else that could ever go inside of her body. Her skin became softer and yet far more stable and tough, her nails changed to glisten without their endurance being affected, her eyes became more intense and would have likely gained more depth had this been possible with what she already had.

Whether the changes were subtle and small or the exact opposite, she felt everything about her being enhanced, although she was slightly distracted by the other matters that was occurring at that moment.

Nevertheless, the energy that had begun to become denser within her since her last breakthrough in her bloodline power now grew denser once more, the cosmic mist thickening into liquid until it flowed through her fifth set of meridians. This finally made use of the incredible room now offered by her current meridian networks, and thus they were able to align with the quantity of bloodline power and enhance it even further, causing her more particular features to be amplified even further, like the killing will form which was in part supported by her blood.

However, the bigger changes were also associated with her physique and planar energy, so it was the next matter that needed to be described. As her breakthrough began, all of her physique energy had exploded out of her meridians and the physique vein, flooding throughout her body, forcing all of the physique abilities to be ignited.

The Titanic Conqueror appeared behind her, a number of the physique features also appearing upon it, including but hardly being limited to the Sun’s Regalia, Superior Bright Star and Golden Form, as well as the more obscure abilities like the Eldritch Hold, which appeared in an illusory form around the Conqueror as well as wrapping itself around Wei Yi’s own form. For whatever reason, it seemed to prefer her left arm, surrounding it tightly, whereas the right arm and both of the legs were essentially left alone.

Her own body experienced all of the physique abilities at once as well, but as she felt the next realm approach, she suddenly realised that they weren’t the ones being affected by her development. Rather than the usual development of a few physique abilities being awakened and developed, she felt her very foundations surging. She had previously contemplated the possibility of her physique becoming strengthened, and while she wasn’t sure what it would do, she had thought of the stage names.

‘Going off the traditional names for the stages of a few other physiques in my collection, I suppose that I could call it the Superior Yin-Yang Ascendant,’ she had thought, albeit with far less calm as her body was barraged with all kinds of energy.

All of her veins and physique meridians lit up with the mixture of absolute yin and yang as her very figure split into two, with one made of pure moonlight while the other was nothing but dawn light. Despite the bright light of both, her features weren’t simply visible, but, in combination with her bloodline, they were further amplified, with nothing obvious changing and yet the impact being blatant straight away. Everything was made clearer, more distinct, sharper, and far more prominent, as if she was not mortal but a descendant of the heavens – a phrase that she did not intend to use due to her own dislike of the heavens.

Just as quickly as it began, her boosted features suddenly merged with her own, and the split halves of moon and dawn united into one, their distinct energies mixing with one another as they returned her appearance to normal, all of her flesh and skin returning to their rightful place with the boost of a strengthened physique far beyond normal bounds.

Regardless of the other potential improvements, the Yin-Yang Ascendant alone had increased all of her power by an incredibly over the top degree, making her stronger than most physique cultivators of the third realm through the use of its boost alone, and went even further beyond when reinforced by everything else at her disposal. Now that it had ascended in its own right, it would likely elevate her to the fourth realm of strength with naught but it, certainly making her stronger than anyone else with a physique if compared on that alone. Only the absolute otherworldly physiques likely posed a serious threat to her in their own right, both due to the strange powers they had and her inability to absorb them fully.

Naturally, she would go on to explore exactly what it offered her, but before that, her planar cultivation still needed to be mentioned. It had begun with the surging of energy into the core around her, and the real version of it within her dantian and the Kong Prison Realm, and it continued that way.

An immense quantity of power flooded her entire inner core, the Subterranean Shell, and made a series of distinct channels within its surface. There was no carving, penetration, separation nor anything to damage the core, as it instead appeared to develop and grow in tandem with her energy, which grew even denser as the crystalline state lost most of its transparency and became a pure portal out in the planes beyond, to the distant chains of all reality.

The channels slowly expanded, as if they were rivers that continually spread their tributary, until they covered most of the core in its entirety, filling it with strange patterns that seemed to be present not on the top, or inside of the core, but in the middle of the shell itself. They could be seen from either side, and some were even visible through one side of the core despite being on the other, but it was strange to observe, as if this wasn’t actually the case. The channels were most prominent on their appropriate side, from the outside, and anything contrary to this simply didn’t feel right for whatever reason.

Wei Yi didn’t understand this perfectly, but this was likely to be some twist of the Subterranean Shell making itself known. For that reason, and the other distractions, she wasn’t too bothered about it.

Instead, she directed her planar energy to flood towards these channels and to make themselves into searing marks, trying to make use of what little knowledge she did have to make the process as smooth and successful as she possibly could. The creation of marks couldn’t be forced, according to her understanding, but she would certainly ensure that as many occurred as possible.

Whether or not that helped her, she did see the marks appearing upon – or, rather, within – her core as more of her current built up energy flooded the core, somehow continuing to pour even after all of the channels would have been filled a thousand times over in a normal space, and did temporarily make her ponder the nature of the Eldritch Dao once again. Planar energy had been capable of quite a few strange things, and it could sometimes fit into spaces that it had no reason to be able to fit into, but whatever the truth was, it was usually not capable of simply disappearing into larger spaces.

Instead, she suspected that the planar energy was capable of being compressed far more than it seemed, and thus her energy would simply expand once it left the meridians, or contract when it entered a small inscription or something of the sort.

It was widely known that something like this could occur, especially when the dantian and the core was considered, and, frankly, she wasn’t entirely certain whether it was due to those entities going into a partly separate space and simply being projected, or due to it everything being capable of shrinking and compressing to the point that the very nature of energy changed and became more difficult to affect and perceive. Something like that was beyond her for the moment, at least until she obtained the capability of sensing spatial fluctuations of the seventh realm, but, until then, she would simply be content with her understanding that something was indeed happening behind the scenes.

‘All that matters at this moment is the number of marks. Each stage typically brings one ninth of the total number of searing marks, so the number that I find now will decide the total quantity for me…’

She was slightly nervous, that much could be said, as she couldn’t be certain whether the methods of the Master of Yi City, further refined with her own new understandings, would be able to transcend the common limitations of the world and bring her anywhere near the limit of marks that humanity faced. If she didn’t approach a minimum of sixty marks, she would start to fall behind quite significantly against the Greats, for their powers were simply too great to be overcome by an insufficient cultivation.

The reason for her current prowess, everything other than planar energy aside, was due to her always reaching the peak of what she was capable of, and therefore attaining the highest number of perfected stages and reaching perfected realms. With crystalline energy, an Endless Monolith, and a Subterranean Shell, she posed a significant threat to the second generation.

However, these realms were potentially separate from one another, although she couldn’t quite be certain of that yet. What certainly wasn’t independent from one another were the realms after that, since they were all specifically connected to the number of marks and halos achieved on the previous realms. She needed as many of them as possible to keep up with the Greats, and any threats that came after, and if she failed to have enough marks, she would have fewer channels, then a lesser number of halos, then the resulting rift at the eighth realm would be weaker, and the final result of the ninth realm would also be far worse.

Obviously, she wished to have as many marks as possible, so she looked upon her core nervously.

As she stared at the side of the core, she saw a number of strange symbols of scorching crimson appearing upon her Subterranean Shell, all of them occupying their own individual point on the carapace of the core. They differed in exact shape, but all seemed similar to one another.

Wei Yi attempted to understand their nature at first, but the more she looked, the less certain she was of their meaning. The symbols didn’t move around, nor shift as the Truth of the Universe did during the first four years of her cultivation, but they seemed even more esoteric and confusing to her than anything that did shift around like that. There had to be some kind of logic to them, for they aligned with one another and intersected at their edges in some representation of a web, but that was all the connections that she could confidently extract.

‘Is this some kind of language, or are they forming some kind of pattern?’ she asked herself, but was unable to get much more out of that, forcing her to instead look at the number itself for a moment, ‘At the very least, it appears that I have ten… no, that should be eleven marks… Fuck, am I seeing this correctly? Has my spiritual perception or eyes been affected by cultivation?’

The reason for her disbelief was simply that the total number of marks that one could have was ninety-nine at the peak of a stage. Assuming that she would reach the total number by either the half-way point thanks to her perfected stages, or at the end while the half-way point brought about something else, she would attain a total of ninety-nine marks by the end of her fifth realm cultivation, and bring her to an absolute peak.

From her knowledge, there was simply nothing superior to ninety-nine marks. The lowest number was nine, and the highest was ninety-nine.

‘That means that I have the chance of getting all of the marks possible… They seem to be vaguely aligned to the individual scales of the Subterranean Shell’s carapace, but… there is room for one more, so long as the marks are the same size and in the same pattern,’ Wei Yi concluded, narrowing her eyes, ‘Now, I wouldn’t say no to more, but… that’s too much to hope for, obviously.’

As the Ascendant that wished to bring the world to a new golden age, she naturally had some high ambitions and some high hopes for the outcomes of her efforts, but there needed to be a limit to them. If she began to hope for obtaining items equivalent to otherworldly gifts every other day, she would be placing herself in a silly and unreliable position, since she would then be planning around something even remotely close to that notion. Instead, she tempered her expectations, and was more than satisfied with the regular maximum number of marks.

‘After all, just because I got eleven now doesn’t mean that I might not get ten next time. I doubt that half-marks are possible, simply due to the way that cultivation works,’ she thought.

Half-Step realms did exist, and she had been within one at one point in time, but that was very different from achieving half of a stage, or half of a searing mark. They were distinct steps towards a realm, with half of the overall benefits and more time to polish one’s energy, whereas a half-mark would be random nonsense.

The cores and the Endless Monolith receded into her dantian, the energy around her calmed, and she was able to rise and put her clothing back on. Before even thinking about removing the protective barrier, she needed to figure out what it was that she had just gained.

Since it was the most prominent matter, she decided to start out with one of her searing marks, and check her other forms of cultivation later. A searing mark would recover within an hour or two at most, from her understanding of them, and her cultivation may even accelerate this, so she wasn’t concerned about the potential loss of a mark by the time that she arrives at the Luo District to participate in a potential conflict. Even without enough marks, the raw improvement from the fourth realm to the fifth would make her significantly more powerful, and she could always abuse the sheer power of an exploding artefact combined with stronger energy to overwhelm foes who are unaware of her ability.

Even without that, the simple rise to the fifth realm would be guaranteed to allow her to confidently face foes of the sixth realm without worrying about an imminent demise, especially when combined with the strengthening of her physique. The seventh realm was a little less safe for her to engage, but she suspected that she would still have the certainty of escape against most seventh realm methods, and might be able to injure them the same way as she had damaged Ping Waqing.

With her clothing on, her hair tied into a ponytail securely with her usual strand of hair, and her energy drawn into a small sphere, she decided to try out a simplistic attack for easy comparison.

First, without the usage of a searing mark, she threw out a sphere of planar energy at a nearby hill.

It struck the hill after a little while, moving rather slowly, and burst into an explosion of cosmic light, tearing apart the side of the hill, throwing hardened dirt and dry grass all over the place. The sphere had been small, only ten centimetres or so in diameter, and yet the impact was easily more than a metre in size and depth.

‘That’s even without crystallization, a technique, or a Dao… Neat, I guess,’ Wei Yi smiled for a moment before she recreated a sphere exactly like it, rebuilding the hill with some earth-type manipulation at the same time.

That degree of impact from unguided energy was decent, but hardly anything to brag about, since even her Absolute Rupture – a method meant for nothing but shredding the inside of her body, failing to do anything other than this – could do more when the entire point was to throw efficiency and effectiveness to the wind and achieve simplicity itself. Still, it was a nice way for her to play at being at a lower realm without needing to do a single thing to disguise her energy aside from not making full use of it. Had she tried something like this at an earlier time, when she was intent on using that tactic, it might have been useful to her, but not anymore.

Having replaced both the sphere of energy and the hill she had targeted, she recalled all the previous uses of a mark that she had witnessed as to get a proper understanding not only of how to best make use of a searing mark, and how to do so in the first place. She didn’t want to waste a mark, even if she didn’t expect to use them on an enemy, as it would still give her a far better idea of how her own marks affected her own energy.

From her understanding, searing marks were able to double the power of any one attack, which she did naturally contemplate using in something like the Black Sun to forcefully amplify her power for the long term without needing to make use of several marks for the same length of time.

She understood it quickly since the process didn’t seem to be all that complex, and infused the sphere of energy with her searing mark before throwing it at the hill.

After the barrier was lowered and Wei Yi moved on, there was no more trace of a hill. Instead, a small plot of land was filled entirely with a fine sand of dirt and stone, and although it had been shaped into something that rose above the ground, it couldn’t match the initial terrain that had been in place before this.

‘Well, it may be twice as powerful on its own, but the Absolute Dao gets in the way…’