V4C56: The Purifier’s Seal

Due to being right next to the chaotic walls of what appeared to be the lowest floor, she was able to vaguely perceive that which occurred inside, and thus she sought out the location with the least traces of life and heat, then phased through the ceiling using her Mortal World’s Echo ability.

Landing in the middle of a small closet, wherein she only found a few old robes and some used and unwashed clothing, she quickly but carefully spread out her spiritual perception, making sure to keep it away from the more powerful entities in the rooms outside. Whether or not they were able to sense her snooping around, it would be better not to let herself be noticed before she had a chance to even know where she had ended up.

The first thing that she was able to notice was that the rest of the area, save for that door, was no different from the rest of the basement floors. Everything was dirty and dusty, with this dust being extremely authentic and thus displaced according to where the people inside had taken steps and, judging by a certain mark in the dust, someone had been spending their time sitting around on the floor without robes or any kind of baggy clothing on. She wasn’t going to make any kind of assumptions about that, since she had no interest in it unless it was related either to the Greats or to the red-haired woman.

A number of people got in the way, most of them being those that were notable to some extent but weren’t of prime importance and were only at the fourth and fifth realms, making them unable to sense anything about her spiritual perception, forcing her to look through far more than she might otherwise have done as to ensure that she didn’t miss anything.

In the room nearest to her, directly on the other side of the storage closet door she was now standing next to, two figures stood side by side, leaning against the wall and muttering things to one another. Their conversation changed focus very frequently, to the point that Wei Yi had to wonder whether they were in their right mind, but it did seem to be coherent enough, so she moved on from them and allowed them to keep speculating on the prices of jewels, if that’s what they were actually doing.

Then, in the direction of the person that she was interested in, a large room with a circle of couches and chairs that were currently occupied by some armoured figures, with men and women alike sitting with weapons in hand that they were maintaining and working upon.

“I didn’t think that those kinds of people would be interested in working alongside us…”

In response to one of these figures speaking, another offered, “They probably just want the resources for their own benefit. You know how those kinds of groups can be.”

“Yeah, but for them to choose us instead of the upstarts…”

“Less surprising than you make it sound. The ones following Luo Na have been doing very little, and I suspect that the woman herself has a problem of some kind. She’s still not participated in a single challenge, whether it was offered directly or not. I heard something about her physique, so perhaps she can’t even use her own energy…”

‘That one knows too much, so it may be wise to get rid of him the moment that it is possible,’ Wei Yi frowned, noting the figure’s voice and appearance in her own mind, ‘What are they up to right now, I wonder…’

Most of them appeared to be Luo family members, and they were currently in their seats without any obvious intent to stand up any time soon. They looked to be doing nothing relevant to the situation at all.

As if to help her, one said, “What were those papers supposed to be again?”

“It’s the files on the artefacts that the woman’s group wants, I think. I don’t understand how they’ll be useful to a group like them, but… eh…”

“So, what do you think about that new brothel that opened up?” one of the men asked, “Their best offering is that blonde, and, trust me, she is the absolute best! You have to go and visit if you have the time-”

“Hey, you do realise who you’re talking to, right?” a woman replied.

“I do! You were the one that first recommended her.”

Their conversation rapidly turned away from anything of use to her – even if the topic itself wasn’t necessarily one that she opposed – and so Wei Yi moved on to yet another room with her spiritual perception, then looked on and on. She wasn’t in a major hurry at the moment, so viewing every single person and item of interest was essential to finding something of note.

In one of the corners of the largest room on that floor, occupied mostly by scrap metal that had been thrown all over the place, sat a woman with red hair and grey eyes. At her side, a number of weapons, pieces of armour, random artefacts and even a length of tapestry lay in a large pile, with all of them looking to be slightly heated and melted, as if they had been held near the mouth of a volcano for a while during a time that they behaved as metal, for the tapestry shouldn’t have been able to drip like it did. There may have been some metallic energy at play there, for all she knew.

Rather than those kinds of details, which were interesting but hardly relevant, what interested her far more was the current activity being performed by this woman.

She was sitting on the ground, with only a thin pillow beneath her, held an artefact that looked like a bloodied flag in one hand, and a small round seal in the other. The former was currently inactive, but the latter was glowing with a strange light of an unmistakeable shade, while the object itself mysteriously visible only by the fact that the world had an absent point in the exact shape of a solid object.

‘Are you- f- How does this keep happening?’ Wei Yi nearly shouted as she realised that this object was an unmistakable otherworldly gift, one that she was currently perceiving through a series of factors that allowed it to be visible despite the innate un-detectability of those types of items, ‘She is an otherworldly demon? Well… Actually… That does offer up a few interesting possibilities…’

The Ascendant forced herself to calm down and look onto the situation from another perspective. Although it was an unexpected one, the fact that she was dealing with someone from another world did give her the chance of either negotiating with her, persuading her, or even tricking her with information that she didn’t quite understand. Even without any of that, if the otherworldly demon was acting for the sake of some group without understanding it fully, there would be a lot of things that could be done which wouldn’t work on someone who had a full awareness of the world and had acted for the sake of their own desires.

Since that woman looked to be one of the stronger individuals in this underground chamber, the rest were unlikely to be able to perceive her, and thus Wei Yi decided to capitalise on the opportunity.

With a few barriers to keep attention away from her, as well as a technique to rock the ground and cause some ruckus upstairs, she was able to force the attention of the other people present into that direction. They ran off, doing very little to communicate with Jian Hongchao as they did so, leaving Wei Yi with perfect freedom to approach the figure and speak with her.

She placed her hand on the door handle, but didn’t open it immediately. First, she activated every technique she had to strengthen her own body and mind in preparation for some surprise attack. There was no way to be certain about the person that she was facing, especially when there was the matter of the dispersed artefacts of the House of Gold, so she believed that it was only reasonable to do everything in her power to keep herself safe. Any energy expended would regenerate in time, so it was hardly costly to do so.

Then, she shared her intention with Yi Shi Ming, who could then pass the matter on to the Ascendant’s Arbiters in the case of something going wrong. It would, at the very least, ensure that they weren’t at the same loss that they had been when she had allowed herself to be taken by the Greats.

After then following all of this up with a few more methods of lesser significance, she added on a bit more reason for the others to remain upstairs and to keep anyone from going down to the interaction between the two of them. Whether there would be a battle, a pleasant chat, or something else, privacy would be key to ensuring that it worked out in the best way possible, and that Jian Hongchao wasn’t spooked by something that might cause her to act in a poor manner.

‘Now, thinking of the otherworldly demons as animals might not be the wisest idea, if only because they would then be able to easily trick me, but the point still stands,’ she thought to herself as she opened the door to the closet.

That brought her out into the room of scrap metal, and directly into the view of one of the people that had not rushed to the top to figure out the nature of the commotion. That figure was a man at the fifth realm, and while he was able to react the moment that she appeared, he was unable to perceive the strands of spiritual will that restrained his limbs and gave him no room to evade her strike at his neck.

She made sure not to kill him, since his ramblings to his friend made him look to be part of the less knowledgeable group amongst those that went against the opposition to the Greats. Due to her plentiful techniques, simply knocking someone out for a long while wasn’t difficult, and she was hardly seeking to remain unknown within the Luo District, so even if the conflict continued for a long while and word of her appearance in the basement was spread all around the enemy side, she would not lose out on anything.

Then, she moved onto the next room, and the next room after that, finding similarly useless and insignificant people that had remained within them. Making sure to incapacitate them and hide them away somewhere that they would be unable to interfere with her if they did somehow awake earlier than expected, she made her way to the room in which Jian Hongchao still sat, not bothering to check on why it was that so many of the people down here had ran off.

Finally, at the relevant door, she slowed down and opened the door without any hurry in order to make herself look as unthreatening as possible.

“Jian Hongchao, right?” she said as she opened it fully.

The red-haired woman had glanced up momentarily, but her attention wasn’t fully on the Ascendant until her head flew back up and her eyes widened in realisation. For a moment, she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to throw away the items in her hand and rush into action – be that fleeing or fighting – or stay in place and pretend to be invisible or something of the sort.

“No need to panic. We had met one another as enemies a little while ago, but it would not be impossible to be friendlier this time.”

“You… are the woman that had defeated me, right?”

“Indeed. As I said, that doesn’t mean that we need to fight again – especially not when you appear to have recovered excellently after just a little while. Does the Silver Form physique create a secondary layer of skin instead of transforming your own?”

“I, uh, I don’t really know that… What do you want from me?” Jian Hongchao asked, her hands shaking while she put the flag in her hand aside and hid the other item behind her back.

“Actually, that’s not a good idea. That item that you have in your hand is very likely to be dangerous.”

There was an immediate glint of suspicion and aggression in her eye, but the otherworldly demon quickly restrained it. She looked around, confirming that there wasn’t anything dangerous around her, then brought out the item and looked at it. Just as Wei Yi had been able to perceive with her spiritual perception, it was a round seal that looked to be made of a vibrant green jade, with specks of a flame-like colour within it.

On the top was the sculpt of a qilin with an impressive degree of detail, but it did not look quite like the qilins of the Planar Continents. It differed in no obvious way, but there was a certain oddity to it that immediately stood out even to someone that had never personally witnessed such an entity.

“Judging by your behaviour, you are not aware of how spiritual perception is mobilised. Is that why you don’t notice how odd that seal is?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Focus your mind and bring it out of the body. Imagine seeing something not with sight, but with the mind, and perceive that seal in your hand. Feel what it looks like, the material it is made of, all of that kind of thing, and then tell me about it without looking directly at the object. It’s fun when you first get to do it…”

Wei Yi didn’t keep speaking as she could tell that she had intrigued Jian Hongchao, who shut her eyes and attempted to follow the admittedly vague instructions.

Had she been in the first or second realm, she might have struggled to achieve anything in a short amount of time, but with the fourth realm of planar cultivation, first realm of physique cultivation and some kind of bloodline power at the second realm, her spiritual perception was naturally stronger than that of a beginner. With that much mental energy, she was bound to succeed after a little while, and succeed she did, only several seconds after she began.

It was clear that she had never made use of spiritual perception prior to this, as her mental energy was not only unfocused, but emerged in an unstable blob that was clearly taxing her far more mentally than it should have. The overall mass of mental energy reached out, surrounded her hand and seal, then surge back into her body the moment that she was unable to maintain it.

“Eh… That feels extremely weird. I know it’s there, I can sense that it’s there, but…” Jian Hongchao opened her eyes and raised her head, “You know that something is wrong with me, right?”

“I can tell that you are either extremely unaware of the world… or from another world. Your body might not be, but your mind is almost certainly from somewhere else, right? Would it be a world called Orbis, perchance?” Wei Yi inquired, and the immediate widening of the woman’s eyes confirmed to her that she was most likely right. Even if she wasn’t from that world itself, she was bound to have heard of it at some point.

Meeting someone that had been to two worlds would have been great, but that was unlikely to be the case as anyone with the experience of two worlds wouldn’t have been caught this easily, nor be this unaware of how things could differ. She might have come from an Orbis-like world, and then have appeared at Orbis and failed to realise the feasibility of such systems as planar energy, but, at this point, she was reaching far enough that even her mental energy wouldn’t be able to reach the end, meaning that there would be little point to it.

“Yes, it was. Have you heard of it? Is it possible to come back? P-Please?”

“You aren’t liking it here so far? Most of the others that I’ve met weren’t so keen to return, from what I understood.”

“It has been hell! I show up in some kind of evil scientist’s lab, I’m someone else, I am meant to understand and do a lot of things, then I have this strange seal that can separate blood and blood-type things from other items, and then I apparently need to fight and kill people…”

The surprised expression quickly turned to panic, as Jian Hongchao grabbed onto her hands while the imperial seal seemed to just disappear from her hand. It had done so without leaving a trace in the world, neither to spiritual perception or Wei Yi’s eyes, so it had clearly disappeared off to some space from which the otherworldly demon could then retrieve it without any effort on her part, but the way in which could occur while so easily evading her attention was still surprising, even now.

“I get that you haven’t gotten the best introduction to our Planar Continents. I would love to introduce it to you properly, if you have the time, but before then, I would like to understand just what it is that you had in your hand. That seal, you said that it can separate something from items? Did you cause this?” Wei Yi asked, taking out the round object.

Jian Hongchao nodded right away.

“Yeah, I took out a thing from inside of it, but I don’t really know what for. The seal’s called the Purifier’s Seal, by the way… Not sure how I know that, but-”

A sudden crash through the door forced both of them to look back in surprise, for neither Wei Yi or the less experienced Jian Hongchao had been able to perceive the approach of someone to the doorway. They also looked to be disinterested in entering the normal way, but rather than merely passing through a wall, the figure slammed right into the door, resulting in it and the very frame around it falling inward.

As it turned out, having a strong door didn’t matter if the walls weren’t on par with it.

The moment that he was visible to them, the Ascendant was able to perceive the energy of the sixth realm radiating from him, as well as the faint yet thick scent of blood emanating from him. A single glance with her spiritual perception confirmed that he also had a second set of meridians within him.

‘Is this now an art that everyone has at their disposal, or did I miss something?’ she questioned for a moment, although she shelved such random inquiries until later, for she was currently met with the blatant killing intent of the sixth realm cultivator before her. Although it was not a force that he had cultivated, so far as she was able to tell, the amplification of his realm caused it to coalesce into a red mist around him. It paled in comparison to what a proper killing intent cultivator could manage, but it still caused a few cracks to appear in the floor and nearby wall.

He did not set down an anchor nor attempt to figure out more about the situation; whatever he knew about her, Jian Hongchao, or the interaction between them, he had clearly deemed Wei Yi a foe. Instead, he instantly directed a blast of blood-like energy at her, with the crimson energy surging at an immense speed even to her perception.

Due to the way that she and the otherworldly demon had been standing, if she simply moved out of the way of the wave, if that even worked and if it didn’t just result in her being followed by the projectile regardless, the wave would end up striking Jian Hongchao with the full force of the sixth realm. Given that she was interested in learning more about her, the Purifier’s Seal, and potentially even recruiting her if she was not against assisting the Ascendant’s Arbiters, letting her be hit by such a strike was not a reasonable solution. Thus, with the eruption of one of her searing marks, Wei Yi merged the Elysian Palm with some Obliteration energy and struck the flood of crimson.

Pale white and blackened crimson entwined into a simple yet fascinating spiral as they collided with the blood that was as solid as energy got and yet remained fluid, like liquid would be.

At once, both of the attacks scattered, with their energy exploding at the point of their collision and cracking both the flood and ceiling in an instant. The sound reverberated throughout the room and the ceiling, with the sound of creaking continuing as if the entire building was on the edge of falling onto their heads and crushing them whole. Whether or not this was an actual possibility, the sixth realm cultivator certainly wasn’t intending to stop there.

With a hand flooded with more blood-like energy, he threw it at her, a dozen spears manifesting from the fluid and all flying at her from different angles. Inside of each one, a glowing symbol akin to one that may be found on the front of a talisman glowed with a distinct white, shining through the red.

‘He’s blatantly taking advantage of this, so the first thing to do is obviously to get rid of the handicap,’ Wei Yi glanced back with her spiritual perception and confirmed that the otherworldly demon was currently frozen from some feeling or another, meaning that she was essentially a perfect target for the intruder whether or not he was actually intending to hurt her.

During the flight of the spears, brief as that flight may have been, she manifested the Titanic Conqueror, forcing it to somehow exist beneath the low ceiling of the room, then advanced with both herself and it as to prevent any of the spears from being able to go past her and hit the otherworldly demon. At the same time, the four hands of the conqueror flooded with their respective energies, frost, toxin, righteous energy, and an aura of order arising from each one. None of the abilities may be perfect for the scenario, given that they thrived in open spaces, but they would still aid her greatly.

“Obliteration!” she exclaimed to further bring attention to herself.

All at once, the dozen spears of blood were met with the four abilities of the Conqueror’s Eye, as well as an immense beam fired from one of Wei Yi’s hands, while her left manifested a greatsword from her killing will.

Just like the clash before, this caused a further explosion of raw energy to shake the structure, but this one was also followed almost immediately by an instant slash of Ire energy accompanied by the cracking, throwing and then the subsequent explosion of the killing will blade, which was unable to contain the planar energy that she had suddenly forced into it and thus began to explode the moment that she had let go of it.

It seemed that only all of that was finally able to stir Jian Hongchao into action, as she finally moved from her position and hastened towards a wall with the most obstacles between her and the fight.

The situation obviously wasn’t ideal, and, against someone of the sixth realm, Wei Yi wouldn’t have minded aid in the form of someone with abilities that she understood well – which was easy with the otherworldly demon due to the partial mirroring of her physique abilities – but she understood that the red-haired woman wasn’t exactly a trained and practised fighter, nor did she have the right realm for this battle in particular. With all of that combined, if she did intrude in the battle, she would likely only be more of a handicap, one that wasn’t needed against someone in the Linked Channels realm.

Her killing will blade had flown past the midpoint between them, although that was shrinking as she still advanced further to place herself in a more advantageous position, and thus it exploded far more closely than the Hatred Split had been able to reach. The man was clearly forced to make use of a searing mark, although he still didn’t place down his anchor.

As he gathered his own energy, Wei Yi did the same, knowing that any attack made after a lengthy period of energy collection and focusing would not be one that she could just casually block with another one of her own attacks.

However, what seemed to be an attack that would require far more energy to be collected was suddenly interrupted as he dashed forward and called out, “Blood servant, attack!”

There was no time to figure out who that was, nor was any time needed, for her to realise who the command was meant to be for, as the only other person in the room suddenly leapt out with a strained expression and threw an attack at her back. Jian Hongchao appeared to be moving entirely differently to before, and the speed at which she controlled and then made use of her planar energy confirmed that.

‘Blood servant… judging by the coursing of her blood and bloodline power, she might be being controlled by some kind of technique. Given that it is related to blood, and she said that she appeared in some kind of laboratory…’ Wei Yi had a few ideas, but she knew that it was best to leave the guesswork for later. For now, she couldn’t randomly attack the otherworldly demon no matter what.

Whether the woman was attacking her due to the control of an overpowering art, like was the case with Yi Bai and other people cultivating an assassin cultivation method, or if she had been partially deceitful for whatever reason, it did not change the fact that she needed to have a better chat with her at a later point. If she managed to kill her here and now, it would simply bring more danger into the situation, as the Purifier’s Seal would then attempt to latch onto another cultivator and thus require her to deal with it at the same time as her current foe.

She kept her focus on the sixth realm cultivator and made her Titanic Conqueror turn and conjure a banner into the path of the incoming blood wave from behind.

The two collided, the banner withstanding the energy of the fourth realm with ease, prompting the otherworldly demon – or, as might be more accurate, her body, seeing as her eyes seemed rather reluctant to be participating in this – to pull out the imperial seal and point it at the banner.

Before she had any opportunity to figure out what that was about, Wei Yi had to first deal with the attack from her front, igniting a spark of lightning and striking at the incoming remnants of some greater attack with an Elysian Storm Burst. It was an old technique, but it had a lot of room for growth, and thus it was able to manifest the power of the fifth realm in full, a bolt of white and the gold of her electric energy shooting out of her hand and meeting with the wave, shattering it in one go.

At the same time, she made her Titanic Conqueror to place down a series of runes, all gathered beneath the feet of the sixth realm cultivator, as it coated a number of enormous chunks of ice with noxious toxins that began to melt through the ceiling merely through the vapours that they released. The towering figure drew its hand back as it was about to throw the chunks of ice at whichever foe necessitated the strike first, although there were enough projectiles to hit both of them together simply by making use of two of the hands that the Titanic Conqueror had in excess. Mid-throw of the ice, however, the banner between it and Jian Hongchao suddenly shook.

From the imperial seal in her hand, a vibrant azure surged out and latched onto the banner, as if it was a hand made of blue flames grabbing onto the cloth of the banner, the fingers tightening their grip.

Then, as she pulled the seal back, something emerged from the banner, akin to a duplicate of the arrangement of physique energy which resembled cloth and a pole on which it was placed. It was pulled away, and as parts of it no longer touched the rest of the banner, the banner itself seemed to turn grey and weak. The stability of the object decreased, and something vital vanished from it.

‘The Purifier’s Seal is certainly affecting the bloodline power within the banner, but it is able to simply separate an object or energy construct into two! That is… that might be one of the most powerful otherworldly gifts that I’ve encountered so far!’ Wei Yi exclaimed mentally.

As more than half of the spectral banner was pulled away, made up of bloodline power, mental energy and some kind of innate structural force, the empowering banner itself suddenly broke apart, turning into a mist of energy while the separated portion also scattered, with the flaming azure hand disappearing only a moment after that. The imperial seal dimmed, but, judging by the fact that she did not lower it and kept pointing it at Wei Yi, it was clear that it would soon be able to affect her once more.

‘So, I should do this quickly, before she has a chance to try out that seal on me…’