V4C84: Sunset Coast

“… All of this is certainly impressive, Ascendant. This appears to be on par with a minor district, at the very least,” the Jiang Patriarch said after having gone through a lot of the fortress with her guidance.

“Considering the fact that this was a fortress constructed during the Master of Yi City’s prime, I wouldn’t expect anything less. Combine that with a lot of time for natural resources to develop, and a lot of people that are more than willing to put in hard work and effort to ensure that the place continues improving, and you get the current state of Paragon,” Wei Yi replied, “The various planting spots are being used, but they can be optimised or replaced according to the suggestion of your experts. The only thing that they need to consider is that I can only improve and accelerate metal-type materials in their growth, so those should be prioritised.”

“I will note that in my instructions. Will you return to the Jiang District with me?”

“That’s what I intend, although I will leave quickly. Before I do, I would like to get some information about the Lan District first, at the very least. Your family is in control of it, right?” she asked, “Telling me where the spatial stabilisation point is would be most useful, but I can live even without that.”

“No, no, I will provide what I can. However, it will take some time for the message to be passed along securely, and I would rather prefer you not to rile anything up before I am able to take care of that matter. If something does occur there, the Great Families should not be as agitated, but it would still increase their suspicions and the degree of attention that they have on us, so it would make things more difficult for both of us.”

“Indeed,” the Ascendant nodded, although his words brought up a question in her mind, “By the way, do you know what they’re up to? They’ve been quite quiet as of late.”

“To us, that is normal, but I’d suspect that they are planning for something.”

That was what Wei Yi was thinking, but that did remind her that she was one of the few in the world to have gotten this involved with the Great Families and have dealt with them this frequently in such a short amount of time. A year had yet to pass since her imprisonment, yet she not only fought with them once after breaking out, but then proceeded to agitate them repeatedly, end the third generation of the Great Luo, confront Ping Wu and kill him, then fight a number of them at the Great Ping family’s manor, then end their siege at Paragon with great losses on their side. In comparison, prior to her involvement in the matter of the Greats, they had been a force that appeared once in a generation, coming and going quietly while stealing away the techniques and knowledge of the outside world to hinder their development.

As such, their current quiet state was far more appropriate for the Greats, but just because they seemed to return to their previous modus operandi didn’t mean that their intentions had to be the same as before.

‘They would have to be planning something, don’t they? If it was possible to get a spy into their ranks, that would be nice, but their numbers are small and all of them are part of distinct families, so it would be very obvious if someone randomly went in and tried to fit in with them,’ she thought, ‘Still, Yi Shi Ming is working on the defences, we’re getting more and more districts on our side, and my realm is also rising. Once I get to the half-way point of the fifth realm, their second generation should no longer pose a threat, meaning that only the first would be of any danger… and they will be extremely dangerous.’

She was under no illusion that her power was sufficient in normal circumstances to rival someone in the seventh realm, especially when they had a full understanding of the situation and their own abilities, unlike the Ping Patriarch. When facing someone who was effectively thirty or forty times superior to the usual seventh realm expert, that ability to resist them would fade away entirely.

The worst thing was that the advantages of both her spatial realm and the Conqueror’s Eye would be limited against the Greats, as they have access to their Testament and an infallible belief in their own righteousness and ability. With the usage of the spatial realm by those in the Oblivion Halo realm, her own Kong Prison Realm could be suppressed without much difficulty, and if she was unable to find herself in close proximity with allies, their belief would overpower her confidence combined with the long-distance mental support of the Arbiters, meaning that many of her Law-based methods would also become unusable. In a way, the first generation was the greatest threat that Wei Yi could possibly find in the world as it was now, without dragons and phoenixes and the like.

Hence, the only question that did really matter was whether she would be faced with the second generation, or the first. The former would be incredibly easy to overcome with a little more time, perhaps even a sudden breakthrough on the scene of battle, but the latter would require a retreat.

Of course, there was another possibility, and that was that the first generation could somehow interact with the outside world without coming out themselves, allowing their subconscious mind to seep out of Testament and through some focus that the Great Family members could carry with them into battle. In that situation, she would have the chance to endure the attack and strike back, but it would depend far more on the exact details of such abilities.

“Pay attention and do inform us if anything out of the ordinary occurs. If you are recruited for some kind of attack, as unlikely as that is, you may proceed with it as long as you tell me and my Arbiters where your forces will be concentrated, as we may otherwise cause a lot of casualties for one another regardless of the attack’s success.”

“That much is only natural. I will not escort you out of the district, as that would attract undue attention to you and my robed self, but I will make sure that the guards will not bother you if you ever return and do something they find untoward. Once our friendly relationship may be shared without fear of repercussion, I will not hold back on any further assistance that I may offer to the cause, nor to you or your people specifically,” the Jiang Patriarch said, “If there is anything else you need from the Jiang District, you may speak with those that I send over.”

She nodded, and they spoke for a little more before they separated.

Some time later, in the dark room of the Jiang District, the Patriarch was leaning on one of the walls and staring out into nothing, seeming to be deep in thought.

However, the moment that a hidden door opened at his side, his mouth was already open, and he was already looking at the person that emerged from the opening as if he had expected them to emerge from the very beginning.

“Will you also go?” the Patriarch asked.

“Patriarch… to be honest, I am still not sure about her. Other than the fact that she is most certainly not interested in men, there is little that I could confirm from her words. Also, that man might have been someone she is familiar with, but she had clearly not spoken with him in some time, and they had a number of issues with one another when they had parted…” the woman said, her appearance being one that Wei Yi would find simultaneously familiar yet distinct from any one person that she had seen before, “Look, my ability is in disguise, not in perception. I’m not some detective that can look at a scene and understand all of it in one go, nor can I understand everything about a person in such a short amount of time.”

“Then what will you do once the connection between our forces is less hidden?”

“At that point, I will visit the Dimensional Domain and see what my fellow ‘demons’ have gotten up to, of course.”

“This… is the Dimensional Domain? I was hoping for dimensional rifts and the like, but this is far enough as well,” Andrew muttered to himself as he walked towards the small village, “That being said, the houses are certainly lacking.”

Aside from one odd pile of dirt at the side, there was one structure seemingly made of incredibly jagged spikes of dirt and stone and a few that looked to be normal yet oddly new and orderly, connected with pristine stone roads that wouldn’t be out of place in a typical medieval fantasy setting, at least in his mind. This was pretty much what he expected from a town with very little time to develop and expand, as he only knew so much about the process of construction in a world that lacked the technology he was familiar with, but it did not yet deserve the name that it had.

Still, the names of places couldn’t be changed every single minute, and most lands must have had the name before they became something of note in the ancient world.

He stopped at a random spot along the road, but he did not expect that he would suddenly be called out to by a woman that came out from behind a house that he had intended to pass by, who had medium length dark hair and green eyes, although one was mostly covered by her hair.

“Who are you supposed to be?” she asked, her left hand quickly rising to the left side of her face.

“Andrew Smith, otherworldly demon and master of the five great arts! Well, future master, hopefully…”

“Andrew… Antanian name, right?” the woman said.

“It is.”

“Yes! I mean, of course it is. You wanted to look around the Dimensional Domain, right? See the kinds of things that Wei Yi had helped found and develop here?” she asked again, her hand remaining near her eye as if she was about to move away the stray locks of hair obscuring the left eye and unleash some kind of Demon Eye upon him.

“I came to her, and she told me to get into a portal and learn-”

“Oh, you met her? She had gotten to the Jiang District already? Was she alright? Had she already managed to break through into the next realm, or is she still saving up her strength for an epic reveal?”

He considered himself to be lacking in the judgement of others, but he was rather sure that this woman was more interested in Wei Yi than she had been in any of the things that he was saying. Whether this was related or not, her hand moved away from her face and joined her right hand as she rubbed them together, eager to receive every little bit of information that he could possibly provide about the Ascendant.

If not for the unlikeliness of this, he would have to assume that there was something between them.

The way that Yi Jiazhi was shoved out onto the streets of Paragon was rather unceremonious, but he didn’t mind. After their previous interactions, he did have little choice but to admit that the way he had acted, not just towards her but also towards a large number of other women he came across, was rather impolite, to put it extremely mildly.

Even back then, he did not consider it to be the right thing to do, but he had let his primal desires overwhelm him without properly considering the impact upon those he considered to be lesser than him, as he had been in the upper echelons of the Yi family whereas those he used his mental manipulation method on were always beneath him. At the time, his mind rationalised that and he convinced himself that this was somehow right, with the limitation of the mental manipulation method partially implying to him that the women were interested in him, just failing to properly communicate or realise it.

That was not the case, of course, and the time he had spent without being fully conscious of his own actions must have forced his mind to realise this.

Now, he would rather do whatever he could to correct his actions, although this was blatantly impossible due to a number of the women he had interacted with being dead or entirely inaccessible to him at the moment. Instead, he could instead work on providing his abilities, whatever they currently were, to the people that were similarly working towards the improvement of the world, and thus assisting them in that same pursuit and allowing him to make up for his actions, or attempt to at least.

When it came to finding a pill refiner, which was a great art that he apparently had some understanding in, he found that it was surprisingly easy to do so within the fortress known as Paragon, although it was not one that he had consciously heard of prior to meeting Wei Yi.

There were no known faces present, nor any particularly famous individuals in the eyes of the residents, but almost everyone he asked was able to refer him to one store or another where a pill refiner would make use of a nearby field’s ingredients to produce various pills that have some use to the people. Mostly, that meant healing and recovery pills for various conditions, as well as various miscellaneous pills that were used for more specific purposes, but there was also a large quantity of cultivation pills that one wouldn’t usually notice in a typical populated settlement.

On any other day, he might not have noticed this, but he did decide to pay attention this time in order to understand what he would need to contribute to the fortress.

‘I suppose that they must be keen to fight as well, especially after the siege that had happened…’

He stopped in front of a small store that looked exactly the same on the outside as the rest of the alchemical stores that had been described to him and stepped inside.

There were multiple routes that she could have taken to the Lan District, but, ultimately, Wei Yi decided that the best way to do it would be by heading to the east of the Jiang District first, towards the border between the current Yi City territory and the Empire of the Dawn’s border. Spending some time near the coast would be bound to benefit her mental state, if nothing else, and would make it extremely easy to find her way to the Lan District, which she had never been in the proximity of, and would thus be unable to use her previous experiences to navigate to it with ease.

By following the coast, she would undoubtedly come across one of the only two coastal major districts in Yi City. Out of the two, with the western one being the Shi District that had some territory spanning a large gap in the terrain between the primary eastern part of the Western Continent and the smaller western part, the Lan District was also the only one that received frequent visits from the Eastern Continents, and so the walls were tall, sturdy and supposedly incredible to look at, with towers acting as lighthouses for the approaching ships of the east. At night-time in particular, the powerful inscriptions that project the light outward cast intense shadows onto the streets and buildings, painting the district in black and bright orange.

That was certain to be a worthwhile sight, so she was rather keen to approach and enter during the night, although she wouldn’t slow herself down if there was even the slightest reason to hurry up and come in prior to the setting of the sun upon the Western District.

She had set off at her usual speed during the evening, and so, when she felt the ocean’s breeze upon her skin and saw the distant blue with perfect clarity, the sun still had an hour or two within the sky. If she was to continue at that exact same pace, she would arrive at the Lan District not much sooner than the sun would disappear beneath the horizon, allowing her to see the sight in all of its glory.

Of course, no journey would be complete without some interruption to slow her down and to allow for some kind people to give away their bloodlines, physique energy and techniques – by being slain and thus having little choice in their items and powers being taken away from them by the Ascendant – and so she was not particularly surprised when she found a small confrontation occurring near the coast. It was one of the larger battles between two groups that she had witnessed in recent times, and so she didn’t rush in right away and figure things out later.

One side stood on the coast, with the majority making use of ranged combat techniques to repeatedly fire out bolts at the opposing force. The other was approaching the coast on a number of large wooden platforms on vague facsimiles of ships, although the hull of the ship lacked the proper shape that one would need to cross the ocean, and there were no sails or sufficient propulsion methods to be found.

Clearly, this ship had come from the Western Continent and thus managed to avoid the tumultuous waves between it and the Eastern Continent, meaning that it was likely to be manned by people either from the Empire of the Dawn, the Heavenly Peak Court that was to the east, or the so-called Reclaimed Lands to the south of the Lan District and the east of the Wu District. All of them had easy access to this region without crossing into the deepest and most dangerous parts of the great ocean, and they would likely be the only ones that have any interest in fighting out on the coast, rather than near the district for something in the district.

With her limited comprehension of the situation so far, going beyond making simple assumptions would be unreasonable, especially when there was a complete lack of any identifiable characteristics common among either group. No robes of traditional colours, no particular techniques, nor any battle cries in support of any particular force, not even a mercenary one, possibly suggesting that the two groups were not even cohesive and singular forces.

To have a better notion of what was happening, and whether she had any reason to help either or if it would be better to get rid of both sides and obtain whatever items they had on them, perhaps even acquiring whatever might have caused the issues in the first place, she approached a little closer.

As soon as her spiritual perception was able to reach out to the two groups and comprehend their activity well enough, she created a barrier around herself with the imbued power of Law to distract attention away from her, and then paid attention to their words, as well as the things that were in their possession, from their weapons and equipment to the small scraps of paper in their pockets.

Those contained various kinds of information from random reminders to themselves to more official messages that had little to do with the current conflict, unless it was caused by some disturbance in the trade of quills between the Jiang District and the Lan District.

Thus, her attention was placed on the few words that the two groups exclaimed to one another.

On the coastal side, the strongest figure was in the Half-Step Linked Channels realm, and he was speaking to a woman by his side while both of them repeatedly fired out projectiles at the hull of the incoming boats, attempting to stop them from getting any closer to their coast than they already were, and not being too successful yet.

“Damn, if we are able to take them down, we will have a whole host of techniques to show to the Greats! They’ll have to take us seriously then, and might even let us form our own Great Family!”

Immediately, it was rather clear that they were not a group that Wei Yi had any need to preserve, nor care for, as their ideas were juvenile at best despite this leader looking like he was in his sixties at the very least, with the age of his energy and lifeforce suggesting a far older true age. To believe that anyone sufficient to intimidate all of the districts and to subdue the world’s development and forcefully throw it back, possibly without any of the assistance from the heavens that they claim to have, would just allow a random gang into their fold because they took down another small group was absolutely silly.

If they were removed from the world, then everyone might be better off overall. From this distance, she wasn’t really familiar with the kinds of things that they had gotten up to prior to this, but his words did appear to be genuine enough, meaning that this was something he honestly believed.

She immediately turned her attention to the other side of the conflict, although she still kept her attention on the coastal side as to prevent her from missing any context that might entirely alter her perception of the group, and noted that they were all equipped with heavy plate armour and equipment of similar weight, with a dawn-like insignia upon the chestplate of each one of the troops. Only the few leaders had that symbol painted, while the rest only had the shape of the rising dawn.

‘Empire of the Dawn, then, most likely. They could also be in disguise, although that wouldn’t change the fact that they are carrying something of worth that has brought the attention of the attackers towards them, so I suppose that I can begin by attacking the first group, question the identity of the latter group, and if they claim that they are somebody that might be of use to me, or that might side with me, I could leave them alive,’ Wei Yi thought while waiting for one of the armoured men or women to say anything that would allow her either to strike at both parties at the same time, or to spare the approaching boats and focus her effort without needing caution.

Unfortunately, the soldiers of the Empire of the Dawn looked to be highly reserved with their words.

After a few more minutes of standing about, with neither side quite gaining the advantage, she mostly dispelled the barrier around herself, leaving only a little bit to not force all attention to her right away, and leapt into the air, taking a few steps on Aerial Platforms in order to rise as high as she could while maintaining her position.

Then, with her energy gathered and her power of Law focused in order to allow for the most impactful entrance, she released numerous points of energy around her that quickly became brighter and brighter, crimson and the flaming orange of her various techniques uniting into the framework created by the Defiler’s Point Beams. They gathered into distinct shapes, and then, as some of the gazes on the ground were turned to the air as incredibly bright crimson lights suddenly appeared amidst an orange and blue sky, they fell down upon the coastal group.

Their initial state was comparable to that of her Ire-based brands, but it quickly grew out into a sphere of Obliteration energy that fell down in the fashion of the Orbital Call method, with each individual point falling onto one of the foes below.

Those in the fourth realm and below had no chance to even comprehend what happened to them before the momentary beam of absolute energy crashed down upon them, but before it could disintegrate their bodies, it instead crushed them. Unbeknownst to them, the property of the Crushing Dagger technique was implemented into the attack, and thus the Ascendant was able to ensure that the possessions of those affected wouldn’t be damaged.

Out of everyone she had met so far, save for the spatial spirit Yi Shi Ming, Wei Yi was perhaps the one that could be the most free with destroying items and books, so long as she had scanned them with her spiritual perception. Even before she had acquired the Gilded Library technique, she had been able to piece together countless pages and figure out the Kong Mental Arts. So as long as there were any pieces left of those that she attacked, she would be likely to successfully obtain every little thing that they had on them regardless of the damage that any texts had sustained, as they would already be stored within her mind and thus safe from any physical damage on the outside. That being said, having a closer physical look was always beneficial.

The force she attacked had several people in the fifth realm, and most of them were brought down with that one attack, with one barely managing to survive but falling to the ground with their entire left arm practically vanishing from the sheer power of the physical collision.

Only their Half-Step Linked Channels leader, whose energy immediately shot up to meet the descending projectile the moment that he sensed it forming in the air, was able to prevent everything but a minor portion of the damage from striking him with the half-formed channels linking his anchor to the searing marks on the core around it. They weren’t able to reach out of his body in the standard illusory connections to reinforce his techniques, but their enhancement of the energy he used was just barely sufficient.

“Who are you to so brazenly interfere in the conflict between two groups?” the man questioned as he leapt away and quickly raised a dozen barriers around himself.

“Oh, no-one in particular. You said you were acting in favour of the Greats, were you not?”

She fell from the sky, but released a burst of energy just as she was about to land, removing all of the momentum and dissipating it in a gust of beach sand, making her resemble an immortal that had perfect control over their movement.

“Indeed, that is our purpose! You dare to-”

He did not get to finish before she raised her hand and casually flicked an immense burst of pure physical energy at him with two fingers, colliding with those barriers and shattering half of them as if they were nothing. With this not being a particularly time or energy consuming technique, she was able to repeat it instantly, another burst of force taking down the barrier that he attempted to manifest around himself and getting through the rest of the ones that had been set up before this.

Although his mouth opened and he seemed intent to suggest or explain something, judging by the thoughts within his mind, she did not hesitate to send out another burst of force and crush his body.

With the embers and anchor energy around her slowly heading into her body, she raised her eyes and looked upon the not so distant fleet of four large ships and two smaller ones, on which the approaching forces were looking to one another in concern and uncertainty. Whether or not they had predicted that they would be attacked, they couldn’t have known about the Ascendant’s sudden appearance, especially not while they had no hint of recognition in their eyes just yet. They also did not know whether the method she had just used to take down the entire coastal force could be repeated easily.

“I’ll give you lot one chance. Are you from Yi City? If you are, do you support or go against the Greats? If not, are you seeking peaceful relations with it?” Wei Yi asked, projecting her voice out calmly while some of her energy lingered in the air above her.

The people on the ships looked to one person for their answer, who stepped up to the front of the ship and said, “We are from the Empire of the Dawn! We would-”

“Ah, just to warn you ahead of time, but I am able to see whether or not you are lying. Also, I am in the third stage of the fifth realm, and happen to have used a bit of energy in order to allow for me to take these people out so easily. If you were to attack me, perhaps you might even have a moment to strike freely before I can properly retaliate.”

On the ship, everyone including the original speaker looked at her as if she had lost her mind, but it was clear that all of their expressions changed slightly. This was made even more obvious when their leader suddenly raised her blade and exclaimed, “The Lan District shall be ours! Go, attack!”

“Yeah, thought so. Thanks for the gifts, everyone.”

Before they could contemplate her words, an incredible beam of black and red fell from the sky, cutting into the ocean itself and directly splitting all of their ships into two, the pure force of the beam torching and melting every piece of wood and metal on their ships respectively. With everyone aboard wearing heavy armour that generously protected all of their bodies, they might as well have been thrown into earth fire.

‘I did need some more additions to my list of techniques, so this lot had a fight at a very suitable time. I’ll need to anonymously thank the Empire of the Dawn at a later time.’