V4C61: True Power of Law

The moment that she finished speaking, the Ascendant slashed down with the blade, allowing it to collapse and send out a vast wave of force that forced Luo Yunzhen and Luo Ping Dong to step away from one another. At the same time, she reached out to the advancing guardians and forced a thread of spiritual will past their barriers, physical and mental alike.

“I have a method to defeat them despite their realms, but whether we focus first on Luo Yunzhen or the Patriarch, please follow my instructions. I can focus on one, but when I leap back, don’t retreat with me. Is that clear?” she sent her message via the threads, gathering two more Obliteration blades so that she could circumvent the obvious charging process of both the Ire techniques and the typical Obliteration beam, as well as confuse her two foes. It wasn’t the most effective method of dealing as much damage to her energy as possible, but it was nonetheless capable of damaging someone in the seventh realm, even if it would just lead to a small mark upon their skin at worst.

All of the guardians were surprised to a varying extent, as one would be if a voice suddenly spoke in their heads, but they adapted quickly, with some nodding whereas others agreed through the thread.

Since Luo Na was supposed to be their leader if they succeeded, she was the one to say, “Although you may be powerful, it would be best for us to target Luo Ping Dong while you take on Luo Yunzhen. Otherwise, our power would essentially be wasted.”

“In that case, go for it!” the Ascendant exclaimed through the link, weakening it immediately so that it would not be discovered by the divine sense of the current Luo Patriarch. She did not think that he would be able to do much more than break the thread and force it to be remade, which would only take a little bit of time, but in the unlikely case that his energy could achieve something greater, caution was best.

The guardians, as well as Luo Na, rushed towards the Patriarch, running around the wave of Obliteration energy and engaging him head on, with Luo Ling Zan and Luo Huang leaping to the front whereas the others stood back, making use of talismans or combat techniques to prevent him from entering the fight between Wei Yi and Luo Yunzhen, on whom the focus truly lay.

While the five guardians and Luo Na may all be in the sixth realm, their power boosted innately by their linked channels, that was nothing compared to the seventh realm, Oblivion Halo, wherein a cultivator was able to further multiply their own power at all times without losing it if they ever decided to make use of a searing mark to empower a single attack, which could be done all the way up in the ninth realm if one so desired. It would lead to the linked channel temporarily ceasing to boost the cultivator by the typical amount while the mark recharged, but there was no major downside to using one or two marks in battle.

As such, their battle would be likely to end up with neither side being able to obtain the edge that they needed, and so it would be up to Wei Yi to step in and swing the outcome one way or the other.

For that reason, she didn’t hesitate to leap towards Luo Yunzhen, swinging both of her Obliteration blades in turn to project a vast quantity of energy at him, empowering each slash with a searing mark to make the best use of them before she advanced to the next realm and lost the ability to use them quite as freely as she could now. Every single searing mark boosted the already immense might of her technique by doubling it, so Luo Yunzhen was met with two attacks that he had to block.

He raised a hand and wreathed it in an incredibly bright blaze that was so hot that the flames turned white. One finger in particular seemed to be burning from the inside, and it was the one that he used as he reached out and pointed at the incoming waves of energy with it.

At once, an enormous burst of white flame exploded out it, seeming to consume some of the wave’s power, and engulfed it within moments. The first slash of blackened crimson was caught by the flames and slowed to a crawl, although it wasn’t completely extinguished nor defeated, and the second blasted through it, striking his outstretched hand without mercy. It cut into his flaming flesh and drilled into bone, consuming it with a terrifying speed.

While his face didn’t change in response, the fact that the area around him suddenly became far easier to conquer with the Conqueror’s Eye said everything that she needed to know about his mental state. Despite his appearance, he was blatantly afraid of her, or at the very least aware that she was capable of matching him.

For that reason, both of them leapt towards the other, with one allowing the white Flames of Perfection, born of his cultivation method that happened to share the same name, to surround his entire arm and shoulder as he leapt forward, whereas Wei Yi did not yet call upon the Titanic Conqueror, only conquering the territory around him as she focused a vast sphere of Obliteration energy within one of her hands. She waited for them to near one another, then, with a smooth and simple movement, thrust out her hand and the energy contained within.

A million sets of blackened crimson beams surged out of the sphere, spreading all over the man’s body and cutting into his energy, then the cloth that covered much of his body, then his skin.

That last layer seemed to be the only one in which the Obliteration energy encountered much trouble, as all of the rest were as effective before it as the air was at stopping a blade. As the white flame was blown away and forced to reveal that which lay beneath, Wei Yi was able to make some sense of the odd endurance of his skin.

Aside from his face and hands, as well as the few parts that weren’t covered by his baggy robes, the rest of his body was almost inhuman in appearance, with his skin being a sickly kind of red lined with bulging and pulsing veins of a strange ichor. Although she couldn’t properly perceive what it was, nor where it came from, it was easy enough to guess that it had been the work of the Blood-tinged Church, for there were indeed few factions out there that were able to perform something this extreme with blood, regardless of what ‘it’ actually was in this case.

‘All that matters is that his skin is a little tougher, so I should either put some effort into cutting it – which would be moronic, but that’s beside the point – or avoid it entirely, heading for the organs that haven’t been changed by whatever the fuck that lot had done to him,’ she quickly concluded.

With yet another Obliteration blade, she begun to swing at him, only to intentionally break apart the blade mid-way through her swing and allow the energy to explode wildly, completely flooding the man’s sight and even harming one of his eyes. Before she could determine the exact nature of the damage, she attempted to punch his neck directly, with it being one of the blatant weaknesses that was exposed upon his current body.

However, that too was somehow blocked, as an immensely powerful gust of raw planar energy suddenly erupted from him, blasting her away further than even Luo Na, who was standing quite some distance away to be able to throw out her talismans without needing to risk becoming involved first-hand. She was forced all the way to the back lines, and the cause appeared to be a talisman that was turning to dust as the rest of the surrounding energy cleared, and the flames on Luo Yunzhen’s arm slowly returned, flooding past his shoulder and covering the entirety of his torso and other arm very quickly.

‘There’s the assistance from the Greats, I guess. They managed to spare him some talisman, and I can’t say that I am very fond of the fact that they were made from a material that can’t be perceived through spiritual perception,’ she thought, stabilising her footing in a moment and narrowing her eyes, ‘Since he kindly nudged me away, I guess I’ll have a go at the less straightforward tactic.’

She turned and nodded to Luo Na, who acknowledged the gesture and took a step forward as she brought out another handful of talisman papers.

Meanwhile, the Ascendant reached out with her bloodied left hand and tightly grasped onto one of the chains that she had noticed previously, one that had supported the ephemeral talisman before the battle and her loss of focus upon it caused it to disperse.

Just like all of the chains of Law in existence, it was simultaneously an infinite distance from other chains, meaning that the hand of a normal person could search through the world for eternity without finding a single one, and yet they were close together, sometimes wrapped around one another in enormous balls of various Laws and ideas, with the one rule about them all being that they were always taut and stretching out to the beyond, into a realm that Wei Yi did not yet understand.

As such, when one grasped a single chain, they could shift a thousand, and when one could mobilise a million chains, moving a single one wouldn’t be a particular struggle no matter how it was considered or perceived.

Before this, she had already seen how a large number of people had wished for the defeat of the Greats, even if they did so with knowledge that wasn’t exactly complete. With the Conqueror’s Eye, that could become an enormous benefit to her and a detriment to her foes, but what was far more vital than simply making use of them was to cause them to overwhelm the opposition despite their even match at the current moment.

With everything that she had, as well as the chains within her grasp, it was possible, but she had not fully determined how to accomplish it. Instead, she could only do what came to mind.

“By my authority…”

All of the chains in Luo District trembled, for a moment. It was as if they had all felt a shiver, with her words inciting it despite the vast distance from her and the outermost portion of the district. Some physical chains were affected alongside the chains of Law, but it was the latter that seemed to bring something to the forefront of the many people’s minds.

Images of victory, of success, of power, of accomplishment that those opposing the Greats possessed. They flooded in, unbidden, yet oddly welcome, and the more they thought about them, the more accurate these seemed to be. They had heard so much about the Great Families as a result of the Arbiters, but, in the end, was it not the Ascendant’s Arbiters that had endured their direct assault, that beat them back, that unveiled their long hidden secrets and that brought them to the forefront? Was it not the Ascendant that had entered the district not long ago, ready to lead them to a better future? How could they possibly lose with such a force?

Even the people that didn’t believe that the Great Families were a bad force, or that outright thought them to be superior to the Ascendants, whether morally or in terms of their power, were overwhelmed with countless thoughts of doubt. They had made their stand rather randomly, so what if it was wrong?

There was a chance that this was the case, and with how much they had heard from their neighbours and friends, there may have even been a rather large chance of this. While the Greats hid away and drained the world, the Ascendant and her Arbiters went out and fought back, revealing the truth, sharing their power, encouraging the world to rebuild that which it once had, to rise back to the level that they had unfortunately lost since the ancient days.

As this was happening, the guardians and the candidate for the position of Patriarch didn’t know what had happened, but they were able to see the room around them turn a deep shade of blackened crimson, with their energy seeming to rapidly climb in power while their opponents seemed to struggle with every next breath.

“As Ascendant and Conqueror…”

Again, the chains of the district quaked, this time as if they had been struck by an unseen hand. This time, the disturbance did catch the eye of a few curious bystanders, although all of them found their thoughts occupied with a far more pressing and important matter – the Great Families, and the terrors that they had inflicted upon the world up to this point. More and more memories of such things came about, even though they were so strangely realistic and clear when they hadn’t remembered such things before this point. Still, with such clear and vibrant memories, they couldn’t belong to anyone other than them, so since their minds were roused, they might as well recall the things they thought they knew.

What they did not realise was that the world around them seemed to turn slightly darker, with a shade of crimson surrounding and highlighting everything around them. It was subtle at the outskirts of the Luo District, and even close to the fortress of the guardians it was little more than a mirage in the eyes of most, but inside of the structure in which the guardians and the current Patriarch fought, it was like the difference between night and day.

Everything and everyone other than the Patriarch and his chosen successor, Luo Yunzhen, was wrapped in blackened crimson, and it was all empowered to a ludicrous extent. The talismans of Luo Na had been powerful before, but now they seemed to be able to pose a serious threat to the Patriarch himself, as a number of offensive talismans that he had failed to block had pierced his robes and dug into his flesh, leaving behind burns and unveiling much of what had remained beneath his skin for most of his life.

Despite that, it wasn’t quite enough to bring them victory… nor did they think it to be the end.

“I judge the outcome of this battle… to be VICTORY!”

The first time, it was a light tap, a subtle breeze, and the second had been a notable strike, although a weak one. This time, it was as if the entire room had been grasped by a tight fist, forcing everything within it to change as to conform to its desires.

All of the mighty planar energy held within Luo Yunzhen and Luo Ping Dong seemed to just flow out with every action that they took, even if it should have remained for far longer than that. Their every attack was weakened, their defences were made feebler, and even their vision blurred with all of the blackened crimson that surrounded them. Everything within their bodies was simply trying to go wrong, and although they thought they knew who was to blame, they simply didn’t understand how.

As they looked past their current opponents for a brief moment, acting in a way that was clearly unsuitable for a difficult battle, they saw Wei Yi, the Ascendant, standing there with her eyes shut, fist locked tightly around something that they could not see. There were no traces of tiredness, exhaustion, or even particular strength in her grip, as if this was effortless.

This also applied to every action that their current opponents took, for every talisman thrown out might as well have multiplied ten-fold and attacked them all at once, as the sheer strength and endurance of the guardians and Luo Na somehow leapt up with every breath. Now, blocking the talismans thrown out by the candidate for the position of Patriarch was no longer a viable tactic for Luo Ping Dong, as each offensive talisman was enough to breach the barrier that he would put up in an attempt to block a dozen attacks.

Perhaps, had only a single side been affected either positively or negatively, he might have stood a better chance, but when he felt ten times weaker at the same time that his foe seemed ten times stronger, he was clearly losing his chance to achieve victory.

Luo Yunzhen felt the same way, so he forcefully lit up the white flames to a great extent, allowing them to wrap all around his body. If he did nothing, then his loss would be nearly inevitable and he would then either perish or have his cultivation scattered, his dantian shattered, and his body be placed within a prison from which such a weakling would be unable to escape from. It was not an outcome that he desired, and it was one that he absolutely had to avoid. If he was going to end this in a way that was even remotely favourable to him, he would need to eliminate the cause of this sudden turn of the tides, and then he might survive.

With a burst of speed that the others had not expected, he rushed past the guardians and focused his flames around one of his hands, with it clearly heading towards Wei Yi’s neck in a similar manner to the one that she had attempted to utilise against him. He had been preparing for the response, intending to evade and simply endure whatever would occur, but there was nothing.

It was as if he was approaching a dead person, or someone that had fallen asleep where they were standing.

Only a moment from striking her, a talisman suddenly landed upon his shoulder and exploded upon him, sending him flying into the seats that still remained on that floor. As he crashed through them and broke a large quantity of them with his flaming body, setting them alight as well, a few more talismans latched onto him while two of the guardians broke off to finish him off, leaving Luo Ping Dong to combat Luo Na, who had thrown the talismans, and the other three.

Although his realm had once put him far above the rest, with his energy quickly spilling away from his dantian while his foes made use of an absurd number of talismans that they had saved up throughout their lives, he was also brought to his knees after a while, with a number of his halos being shattered.

There was no deliberation on whether to keep him alive. The moment that Luo Na confirmed that Luo Yunzhen was taken out, she ordered his execution, which was carried out promptly and successfully.

“That… Just like that… This is not how I had expected this to go,” Luo Na admitted as she turned to Wei Yi, “I have to apologize for the doubts that I did have in your methods, although I would still ask whether it would have troubled you too much to just evade that attack-”

Her words stopped when the Ascendant doubled over and threw up an immense quantity of acidic blood that quickly burned a sizeable hole in the floor. More continued to drip out of her open mouth as she similarly fell to her knees, nearly falling onto her face but just barely managing to use her arms to prevent that. Every part of exposed skin on her body was pale and weak, with her blood turning black beneath it.

Naturally, even the partially blind woman could easily see that this wasn’t the time for her earlier remark, if it made any sense at all.

“Luo Ru- No, Luo Long Meng, support her!” Luo Na instructed, running up to the Ascendant but being able to do little with a body that wasn’t particularly physically capable, “Was that the result of you turning the tide?”

Although her mouth was occupied, Wei Yi was able to reconnect with their spiritual will thread and say, “Unfortunately. You should have seen my hand after I had been maintaining the ephemeral talisman, so I think you can imagine what the inside of my body looks like right now. I’m quite good at recovering from this, so I’ll only be like this for a little while, but that little while will not be particularly pleasant.”

Indeed, the increasing quantity of blood so acidic that it seemed to be sufficient to burn even through a dragon’s scales was hardly an enjoyable sight to behold, but her recovery was also very quick.

Just a few minutes passed before she was able to stand, although many of her internal organs were functioning at a far lower capacity than usual, causing her skin to remain pale enough to allow her to resemble her appearance back at the Yi District, before she had acquired the True Ascendant physique and everything that it had led to.

The guardians and Luo Na waited for her to stabilise her footing before trying to do anything else.

“Alright… I will not be able to make use of that again any time soon, so I hope that there are no secret Patriarchs in your district.”

“No, there is no such thing. We have won, except that we are still weaker than we should be. For us to hold the position of the district’s leader reliably, one of us has to be in the seventh realm – me, ideally, but it might be that pushing Luo Long Meng to the next realm would be easier in any reasonable amount of time…” Luo Na said, “Her body is in a less strange state than my own, at least from what I know.”

“So there was something wrong with you… Fuck, we could have had it…” the guardian muttered in the background, kicking one of the walls that still stood around the central area, finding that it turned to dust the moment that her foot touched it.

Wei Yi glanced at that, then slowly shook her head.

“No need. I can bring you to the seventh realm. In fact, that would probably be easier. You are meant to be the next leader, so it would only make sense for you to be in the seventh realm…”

“What do you mean?”

“Did you not hear what I had said? The battle had been won because the people had deemed it so. If you are to be the next leader of the Luo District, then you ought to be in the seventh realm. That means that you can enter it, and that’s that… Don’t force me to explain the nature of Law when I can barely speak…”

“How bad is your state at the moment?”

“My lungs have a million holes in them, and they’re probably doing the best out of every other vital organ… Just sit down and cultivate. I shall assist you.”

Luo Na had her doubts about her current abilities, but she still sat down on the ground with her legs crossed, ready to cultivate according to whatever instructions the Ascendant would provide her with. It took Wei Yi some time to seemingly register that fact, after which she attempted to sit down in a similar manner.

She managed to end up in the same place, although she did so by unceremoniously dropping to the floor and arranging her limbs later to put herself into the same position. After throwing up another mouthful of blood that joined the rest of the pool that was slowly dripping down to the floor below, Wei Yi barely managed to raise her head and look into Luo Na’s eyes, although her energy was far more fluid and was thus able to reach out and link with the candidate for leadership and communicate with her with greater clarity.

“You’re going to need to make use of some methods boost your energy absorption, as usual. I shall assist you once you make those preparations, although you ought to not take too long.”

“What would happen if I did?”

“The people wish to see their new Matriarch. If one doesn’t emerge, then they may have some doubts about their perception of reality, and they may even deem that the Great Families may be the better side – or, at the least, stronger side – to follow, rather than one that cannot be bothered to appear before their people.”

Luo Na nodded, turning to the guardians and making some quick requests before turning back.

“Begin absorbing energy already. Just do everything you can, then capitalise on every opportunity I give you… Would you object if I kept an eye on the process, though? Not just for the sake of preventing mishaps, but to gather insight for my own breakthrough in the future?”

“You might as well. I will require strong support in the future, especially if the Great Families or the Blood-tinged Church ever wins over the Arbiters, so the quicker you advance, the better.”

“Noted. Fortunately, you needn’t worry about that. We will either win completely, or lose completely. There will not be a middle ground,” Wei Yi assured her, with her cosmic energy surging within her body to continue to seal up the countless wounds that insisted on opening with each breath, “As for the rate of my advancement, I would benefit greatly from resources, since I have the technique already. Once I reach the sixth stage, you might even be pleasantly surprised by the leap in strength.”

Luo Na shrugged, choosing not to voice her various doubts and curiosities, and instead absorbed the energy around her just as any other cultivator might, except that her energy absorption radius was absolutely enormous.

The corner of Wei Yi’s lips twitched, as her own ability to absorb energy was similar if not greater than that of someone in the seventh realm, whereas her energy requirement was also unfortunately similar due to the perfected realms that she had stacked on top of her cultivation. If not for that, it would have been quite a lot more impressive, although she fortunately wasn’t seeking to spend her time admiring the cultivation process of Luo Na. The only thing that she was going to pay much attention to was the breakthrough itself, which wouldn’t happen for a while, and to make that happen, she would need to make a few talismans to help it along.

‘With the things I’ve done today, I have some understanding of talismans that I did not have before, but before I can make one with my blood, I will need it to calm down a little…’

She still took out a number of talisman papers that she had acquired during her stay in the district, then focused upon all of the techniques that she had managed to collect when she had been in the proximity of cultivation technique libraries.

There was a lot of work ahead of her, since compiling a million techniques into something cohesive was something that she tended to achieve more through dumb luck and random enlightenments rather than a proper understanding of everything she threw together, since that was the unfortunate result of so many differing principles being thrown into one. With the ever rising understanding of Law under her belt, one that she did not wear and never had, she did hope to improve on that process as well, especially if she wanted to make some advances on her Obliteration while she did so.

It was extremely effective, but there was always room for improvement, like adding in principles of ephemeral talisman assembly prior to energy release for the purpose of improvement.