V4C87: Distant Memories

“Phew… That was unpleasant. So, Lan Mei Xing, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me, again. Did I get your name?” the blue-haired woman asked back, nudging some of her blue hair behind her ear.

“Even if not, I’ve already asked for your name, so I might as well inform you of my own name once again. I am…” the Ascendant was about to speak, but as her spiritual perception reached the woman, she found that there was a certain resemblance in her that was buried far deeper in her memories, forcing her to pause for a moment.

At the same time, Lan Mei Xing naturally reached out with her own spiritual perception, not reaching too far into her body out of respect but still went far enough to also demonstrate a shocked reaction.

Together, the two of them looked at one another with strange expressions, and for several moments, they did not speak a single word. The blue-haired woman seemed keen to let the Ascendant speak first, but Wei Yi wasn’t sure whether her conclusion could possibly make any sense without completely changing their perception of the other person. As she quickly determined via the surface-level thoughts of the blue-haired woman, it was likely that she was having the exact same dilemma in her head as well, further assisting in the uncertainty amongst them.

“You are… Lan Jia Hao?”

“And you… with the way you put that, it seems less likely, but… you have the characters, right? Would you be…”

“I am sorry, but I am not Kong Shi Meng.”

“He…” Lan Mei Xing unconsciously clenched her teeth while restraining her voice and expression, “He didn’t make it in the end, did he? After we’d promised to one another that we’d reincarnate and fix the problems we came across… Fuck. I knew that was likely, but…”

“Just to confirm, you are also able to sense the Truth of the Universe inside of my body, right?”

“Yeah…”

The blue-haired woman’s previous aloof cheeriness actively bled away from her entire being, the very air around her and the bright light of her planar energy both getting darker and colder. While the air itself froze and flakes of ice fell to the ground, the stars composing her energy dulled and looked to die, their bright and uncertain exteriors fading into something cold and still.

“If you came back, who’s to say that he might not?”

“Do you know what he had gone to do? You’ve learned my name, through the characters or from somewhere else, so you should know that I had just faded away back then. He… did not.”

“…” the Ascendant would’ve tried to encourage and reassure the woman, but she knew as well as Yi Shi Ming and Lan Mei Xing that there was almost no chance of the Master of Yi City still being alive and well. In fact, rather than little chance, it would be more accurate to say that the heavens themselves would sooner descend onto the earth and walk amongst humanity than he would return alive from his attempts to sever his otherworldly gift from the azure light, and to oppose the Hunger of the Beyond.

If she was to try and claim otherwise, it would be plainly disingenuous, and easily seen through by his ancient friend. With her mental state being relatively decent, especially when compared to the worst days, she would also feel like shit if she did actively lie and give her false hope, since that reincarnation method of theirs might have forced her to sit through a million years simply waiting for a chance to reunite. There was little benefit from doing this, and so not even that line of thinking could justify it in her mind, nor did the fact that she still seemed to retain some of that childish innocence from the first time that she had seen her in Yi Shi Ming’s memories.

Breaking it was necessary in the long run, as it was only a matter of time, but it didn’t feel right.

“Yi Shi Ming, or, if I understand correctly, a copy of her imprinted onto a blank spatial spirit, is still around. Would you like to meet her?”

“… Honestly, no. It feels like I’d be doing something wrong, even if that makes little sense. I’m hardly responsible for Shi Meng’s actions… But, even putting that aside, I don’t want to speak to her just yet. I’d prefer a lie down, or something… I don’t even know what people do nowadays, since I’ve been too busy looking around for any hints of his return…”

“Right… How about getting a place to sleep and retiring for the night? That might help.”

“Probably. It feels like I should be doing something else, but it does seem like the best idea. Do you know of a place?”

“Not right now, but once I deal with the remaining bodies here, I am sure that I will find it within a few minutes,” Wei Yi replied, her spiritual perception already reaching back out to its usual range of a kilometre, grasping as much of the district at possible to find a suitable location for them to rest. Given that she wasn’t sure whether Lan Mei Xing would prefer a smaller or larger bed, nor whether she might have the notion of sleeping beside her for some kind of emotional reason, she just looked out for any place where there looked to be few visitors that might prove troublesome.

Lan Mei Xing approved of that course of action, so she quickly disposed of the bodies and took everything of use that she could find on them, including their bloodlines. She would have preferred to be able to obtain more information about the Blood-tinged Church so that she could dispose of them more easily when they came up again, but neither the monstrosity nor the robed figures were of much help now that they were dead.

They departed soon after, heading towards the eastern portion of the district where the waves were louder and more places to stay were built for visitors and travellers, many of whom would likely come in via the ocean and would thus look for lodging near the ocean. There were occasional traders from the four nearby coastal nations that had separated themselves from Yi City, those from villages near the coast beside the Jiang District, and most importantly, visitors from the east, where a long voyage would usually encourage finding a place to sleep off the constant waves of the ocean barraging the ship they travelled in and seemed to strike at their very souls – or so the various tales of oceanic travel claimed. Wei Yi had yet to experience such a thing.

By the time they arrived at a suitable place, many rooms were already occupied, and so the best room that they had available to them had a single large bed. The blue-haired woman did not reject the offer of sleeping beside one another, although her mood was clearly not suitable for anything beyond that, and so they headed up the stairs of the lodging and entered their room.

After a quick creation of an array to block out sound and intruders, just to ensure that they had the freedom to do what they like, they were able to get around to lying down on the bed. Wei Yi’s clothing was all clean as a result of the robes cleaning themselves while the rest of her items were made of cosmic metal and seemed to lack any spots for dust and dirt to reside, but this was not the case for Lan Mei Xing. To prevent them from unnecessarily dirtying the sheets, the blue-haired woman removed her simple shirt, pants, and shoes, lying down on the surface of the bed in her underwear.

Performing a few more checks around the room, the Ascendant soon joined her on the other side, placing her hands beneath her head while she looked up at the ceiling in a similar manner to Lan Mei Xing.

For a while, it was quiet.

“I want to talk about some things, and while it doesn’t matter whether you listen, I figure I should still ask,” Lan Mei Xing said, turning her head to the left, “Do you want to hear a few things about him?”

“About Kong Shi Meng, the Master of Yi City? I have had some interest regarding him for some time, and even with everything that Yi Shi Ming could remember, I can’t say that my curiosity had been entirely sated so far. In comparison to some of the figures remembered by the world, he had not lived all that long, but his deeds are certainly remembered even now.”

“Yes, that seems to be the case… How much do you know about me?”

“I know that you were friends in the Kong District, and that you had called him boss when he taught you some simple games. You had wanted to cultivate elemental-type methods, while he was more interested in acquiring pure planar techniques due to his belief that they were going to be more powerful. After that, however, I am pretty much lost,” she replied, turning her head to the right in order to meet Lan Mei Xing’s gaze, “I don’t know whether you remained at the Kong District for long, but I imagine that you had reunited even if you hadn’t left with him.”

“That is the case. I had not left with him right away, instead remaining with my father at the time. He had wanted to head to this place, the current Lan District, but after the disaster of the Kong Clan, he ended up changing his mind,” the blue-haired woman said, “We met back up when Shi Meng and I were around fifteen years old, if I remember correctly. Back then, I had no idea that he was not… normal, I suppose. It was clear that he was more mature than I was, but as you might have noticed, I have always been a little carefree in the way I act… He was very powerful after just a short amount of time, though which did catch my attention.”

“Did you want to learn from him and let him continue being your boss? Was he already pulling off all kinds of impressive acts?”

“Yes, and yes. He managed to do a great deal after only a few days of cultivation, and by the time that I had met him in the Yi Clan, he had already leapt to the second realm. His pure planar energy was also something to behold, so I was a little tempted to switch, I’ll admit. He recognised me, so we began to work together again, and he eventually began to teach me his techniques.”

“The violet kick is one of them?”

“The… ah, the Stellar Kick? It’s part of the Stellar Paragon cultivation technique, which is what I switched to practising after some time. In this life, I used it from the start… Let me tell you, my new mother was very shocked to see her child practising cultivation from such a young age.”

“In the modern world, cultivation begins at twelve, not ten. Obviously, she was sure that you’d kill yourself by attempting to copy something from a book without properly understanding it. Had I been unaware of the fact that this was not due to some significant difference in the body, but, rather, the difference in energy density, one that you had bypassed mostly via a highly refined technique, then I would have also been afraid for your life,” Wei Yi stated, “Did you stick around your parents, or rush off right away?”

“I rushed off, after giving them some thanks for raising my new body. Perhaps if I had reincarnated with fewer interests and attachments, I might have been able to stay back there and let the past go, but I had hoped that we would have reincarnated together, into the same time, possibly both into women, as well, and we could have returned to fighting, exploring and living life to the fullest.”

Lan Mei Xing sighed, returning her gaze to the ceiling with a trace of regret in her expression, although it was one that faded quickly.

“I had hoped that you would be him. That’d be great. We could rediscover what had happened since our passing, what our descendants ended up doing… or I could have stayed back there and seen what my new parents were doing. My new mother was a farmer, from what I could tell, and my father often went out and hunted. Both were in the second realm, so it came as quite the shock for them to find their daughter reaching the third realm after only three years of cultivation,” she said, her voice quieter than before, “I don’t really know what they think about me. Maybe they thought that their daughter had been possessed, or perhaps they just think me to be some kind of genius…”

“As someone who grew up without parents, I would recommend that you go back to visit them at some point. Even if they don’t recognise you, at least you could confirm that they’re doing well after the time you’ve spent apart.”

“… Probably should, shouldn’t I? I’d imagine they’re worried… hm…”

Her voice trailed off, and when Wei Yi looked over, she saw that the woman had shut her eyes and fell asleep.

It was surprising, but only for a moment, as the next allowed her to recall the fact that she is one of the few in the world that does not sleep or rest unless it is absolutely necessary. In theory, her body shouldn’t be able to withstand such a thing, given that she does not have anything resembling a Sleepless physique, but she had yet to collapse from exhaustion after a normal day.

Since she had started this line of thought, Wei Yi decided to finish it in her own head, and recalled her earliest memories, made legible only by the existence of the Ascendant’s Library. Without it, all of them would likely be lost to time, present only in vague recollections and flashes. Those would still convey the essence of the memories, but not their substance, which was what she needed the most from them right now. She was curious to recall just what her parents had done in their last few days.

According to her memories, she had reached the age of four before the disaster of the Greats struck, but she obviously did not know about it back then. Most likely, her parents were just as unaware.

Given that her father was definitely a servant of the Yi family, and her mother was also pretending to be one via some unknown method that had allowed her to blend in without anyone asking questions, there were no particular celebrations for any festival or holiday, including her own birthday. Celebrations upon reaching certain ages did occur within the Planar Continents, although it was usually a series of festivities upon certain milestones of one’s life, and even then that was considered unnecessarily extravagant for most. The Chen family was, as a result, extremely fond of the tradition, so the few people with their surname that she had gotten to know would often brag about their coming of age party and the like.

Returning to the original topic, on the eighteenth of the second month, in the year 1,201,508, her father had taken longer to return home than usual, and her mother had clearly recognised that something wasn’t right. Back then, both were able to remain quite composed in most situations – likely due to the awareness that most things were not as dangerous as the Great Families that they had hoped they had evaded – and when her father did return, in the middle of the night, they sent her to Aunt Zehao’s home to sleep there while they had a discussion of some kind.

In a normal family, that might be an excuse for a row or some graphic activity blatantly not meant for minors, but with the benefit of hindsight, there was no chance of that being the case. Her father must have found something that allowed him to determine that the Greats had learnt about them.

Being a good and obedient girl, she was hardly going to object to their instruction – especially not when she was promptly carried over to Yi Zehao’s care. Her aunt was physically younger then, less obsessed with preserving her own young appearance, and most importantly, she seemed to be far more explicitly caring for her and her family than she was twelve years later. Even after all that time, that care did remain, buried beneath layers of unnecessary displays of arrogance and makeup, but back then, unless she had taken more care to act in an appropriate manner, Yi Zehao looked like a regular human being taking care of a child.

Unfortunately, the next day, she woke up to terrible news. Her parents had died for unspecified reasons. Their home would not belong to her, but she did have a place to stay.

At the time, she was not fully capable of understanding the situation, even if the children of the Planar Continents tended to develop more quickly than those of Orbis and its many variants. There was a small ceremony to send them off, which was attended by only a few, and then she had to assist Yi Zehao in return for food and minimal amounts of money.

None of the attendees looked to be members of the Great Yi Family, but she suspected that they were watching. They had to, considering the blatant sadistic behaviour that they demonstrated to her again and again, as well as their fondness for proving themselves to be above the rest. How could they possibly stay away from her being placed in a terrible home with arrays that they must have put there specifically for her?

She had been allowed to see her original home before it was taken away, as well as the bodies of her parents. Neither looked to have been damaged or blatantly affected by outside forces, hence why the general conclusion was sudden but unfortunate death due to some unknown and irrelevant condition.

Aside from confirming that the Greats were able to restrain themselves when it would further their own sadistic goals, it was able to confirm little about what happened at that time. No matter how much clarity she could obtain of her own memories, she couldn’t obtain information that was simply not present in her senses at the time, and since she had yet to cultivate a single wisp of planar energy, she obviously had no access to spiritual perception to obtain every piece of information possible to be processed at a later time, like now. With no blatant signs of combat, struggle or even poison, it was hard to say what they had done to her parents.

Perhaps those weren’t even their true bodies, and they had been taken away prior to being killed.

The only thing that could be guaranteed was that her mother was definitely dead, and the Great Families would be unlikely to leave her father alive at that point. In their eyes, he would just be clutter in any prison cell he could be placed into, and letting him go would be too much of a risk for their attempts at secrecy. In order to ensure that their current third generation could exist, they needed her mother to be dead, which was why she could be so sure about her conclusion now, just as she had been back on the nineteenth.

‘Frankly, it is better if she isn’t in their hands right now. If she was, that would be the exact kind of emotional connection that could be used against me, which I had wanted to avoid by forming no romantic relationships. If, by some miracle, she is elsewhere and still safe, then I will obviously not complain.’

Wei Yi turned onto her side and shut her eyes, although she did not fall into sleep. Instead, using the increase in her bloodline power as a result of the day’s fighting, she directed that excess and the rest of her forms of energy into the nascent rift within her Endless Monolith.

It had been some time since she had last developed the nascent rift, and while she may not have acquired any immense enlightenment in the nature of the rift itself, the acquisition of the Planar Dao, combined with the Dao of the Elements and everything beneath it, meant that she could push the current state of the rift a little further. At the moment, it was at twenty percent of its full potential, meaning that one fifth of her planar energy would recover every four minutes, or that five percent would recover per minute. Such a thing was naturally extremely powerful, especially in environments with thin or outright non-existent planar energy, but it could be better.

Having done this many times before, she was able to limit the effect on the outside world and contain all of the energies within her own body, so she wasn’t concerned about damaging the room or even waking Lan Mei Xing up, although she would have a limit to how far she could go. If she was to try and go beyond an increase of five percent, there would be a certain danger of those things occurring, so she would just hold back if that was the case.

Like the first time that she had channelled everything she had into the nascent rift to open it up further, once her collective energies forced themselves into the rift, they were able to being widening the opening to the planar realm beyond it. Despite all of the changes to her own energy, the violet void behind the rift remained the same, although she could tell that it was becoming denser with the increase of the planar energy density in the world itself. Whatever the planar realm was, whether it was in the Planar Continents themselves or somewhere far beyond them, it was affected by the exact same events, meaning that it might not be impossible to find.

Of course, it could also be that the planar realm was nothing more than the manifestation of a great deal of planar energy emerging from nowhere, and that the rift of the eighth realm and the gate of the ninth realm were merely symbolic representations of that energy being produced.

‘In that case, does planar energy ever become exhausted? Is it not merely locked up by the anchor energy and the dantians of cultivators, only to then be released and reabsorbed… the planar realm is likely just an illusion, possibly one cultivated within our own minds to explain that which we cannot comprehend. Things must come from somewhere, and return to somewhere, and yet planar energy is technically eternal and infinite while still acting like a limited and finite thing…’

All of a sudden, the faint circle in her eye flashed with intense violet, and the rift within her planar aperture leapt all the way to twenty-five percent awakening before the five forms of energy receded.

Her Vision of the Planar became overwhelming, flooding her vision with all kinds of information that she had barely had the chance to comprehend. The entire world was painted in violet, and certain particles stood out amongst the rest. On its own, the image meant little to her, but with the understanding of Jia Rong’s view of the world, she was able to understand that this was a similar gaze to the one she possessed. The highlighted particles were most suitable for her, but the rest still appeared as her technique could absorb all energy, and since she understood planar energy to an extent that went far beyond what the million-year-old woman could imagine.

‘My Planar Dao has reached Full Success? That’s… this confirms one thing. There must be some kind of flaw with the heaven’s understanding of the Dao of Law, since I have realised far more about it than I have about planar energy,’ Wei Yi concluded in an instant, dulling her Vision of the Planar as to get acquainted with the new information pouring into her mind, ‘Still, to reach Full Success in a Dao is still impressive. I can already feel certain effects, although I will need some time to myself to confirm them.’

While she wouldn’t be opposed to running off and doing that without any delay, she understood that the woman beside her was not a heavy sleeper, not after everything she and Kong Shi Meng had done in her past life. She would still have caution, and so she would act accordingly. There was no real rush to test the Dao out, like she might wish to experiment with a technique, since her comprehension would come around even if she only looked around and observed the natural world around her in the Planar Dao vision state, so she might as well let the blue-haired woman rest and relax on the admittedly comfortable bed in their current lodging. Once the morning came, then both of them would have far more room to do whatever they like, and that would only take a few hours.

‘In the time that I have before then, I suppose that I could work on the theoretical aspects of my techniques and cultivation. It has been some time since I spent a significant amount of time on that…’

Since she needed to get used to the sudden empowerment of the Vision of the Planar, she did not shut her eyes nor fully end the vision state, first checking what her eyes looked like now before simply lying back and focusing most of her efforts within her mind, while the rest was observing the world and the violet that occupied it.

Everything contained planar energy to some extent, and when it was consumed, it was momentarily faded from that place. However, in time, even if there was a planar stone that could store an infinite amount of energy, that energy would return and fill up the space once more. The only thing that clearly altered this rule were constantly active arrays, or anchor energy, which could seal away energy density until it was broken by the Truth of the Universe. Even then, it was not the anchor energy itself that restrained the most energy, but rather the connection of several instances of it being bound together via the methods of the Great Families.

In fact, she suspected that anchor energy was another permanent thing prior to the Greats, since she did not see as much of it lying about as one might expect from an energy that can only be used by her and, potentially, a few other people with otherworldly gifts on hand.

It was likely that prior to the appearance of the Great Families, planar energy in the world would be sealed away to an extent within anchors and would then be taken up by cultivators. It might even be that people were unable to achieve breakthroughs and form planar anchors unless they could source a wisp of anchor energy, and it could also be that achieving the eighth realm, Imperfect Rift, was able to either free the anchor energy, or generate more as a result of the expansion in energy quantity near the cultivator.

All of this was just her assumption for the moment, as she was unable to verify it just yet, nor did she understand what the effect of the Truth of the Universe upon anchor energy was. There were many potential failings in her theory, but all of it was, in part, informed by her current Planar Dao stage. If this was something that she could push ahead to the First Stage or beyond, if that was even possible for Dao, then her understanding might rise simply from what she is able to see.

What it does guarantee is that her combat ability would rise significantly against anything that is unable to resist planar energy itself, as well as its derivatives, as anything involving planar energy is now boosted once she interacts with it, while all opposing uses will be naturally weaker.

‘Now, the Greats and the otherworldly demons are the only true challenges in the same realm, and even then, most of the second generation Great Family members are barely able to do anything to me. The otherworldly demons are far more troublesome due to the major gaps in their abilities. Some are near omnipotent, at least in theory, whereas others mostly build houses or make nice clothes from memory,’ she thought, taking a brief amount of time to rest her eyes after eyeing the constantly shifting violet all around her for a little too long, ‘Whoever is tossing them into the Planar Continents better have a good reason for it, or else I will be sure to track them down and obliterate them for constantly sending in innocent, foolish people that destabilise the world as a result.’

After a brief break, she reopened her eyes and returned to the effort of fully comprehending the empowered vision state in silence.