V5C2: The Extreme South

It took her a while to get through the meal, although she did get better at handling herself with only one arm by the end of the process. She still had a lot that she needed to clean up with her physique energy, so she knew that she would still need to improve or acquire some method of touching things even without a physical second arm.

By the time that she was done, the fire had weakened and the cold atmosphere was a little clearer, although it did not pose much danger to her as she converted all of the meat that she had consumed to planar and physique energy. Together, even in the incredibly low quantities that she had obtained them in, they were sufficient to overcome the cold that she was currently facing and thus gave her all of the confidence and energy she need to take a step outside and take a look at where exactly she had ended up.

She needed to make her way through a few rooms and corridors of the dark wooden residence, and by the time that she had reached the exit door, she found that the doorway was completely frosted over, with a thick layer of snow lying near the small opening between the bottom of the doorway and the door itself. To pull it open, she had to break through all of the ice that had formed around it, and when she did, she was greeted with a scene of pure white.

A powerful snowstorm was passing through the area, obscuring her vision so that she could see little more than ten metres ahead of her even with her excellent eyesight. It completely filled up the sky, blocking any traces of sunlight or moonlight, and the ground was similarly encased in snow, with it reaching the bottom of the door with ease.

Somewhere beneath the snow, she was able to perceive the existence of a staircase, so it was likely that it had gone several metres above what the builders had constructed over.

While all of this was something that she had never before seen, she did have just enough understanding of the world’s regions to identify the only part of the Western Continent that she was likely to be at.

“The south. More precisely, the Southern Wastes… My clothing is not at all suited for this place,” she noted to herself, finding that her current physical state wasn’t quite sufficient to endure the sheer cold that she was met with, “If I recall correctly, the temperature decreases to an absolute zero at the very south- wait, what am I saying? Of course I remember correctly, so if there is any issue with this, it would be due to incorrect information in various books. Anyway, the Absolute Frost is at the very south, and is at an absolute zero. The closer someone is, the colder it is, and what I’m currently experiencing…”

She shut her eyes and focused her spiritual perception on the air before her to analyse the exact temperature that she was faced with.

‘Nearly equivalent to the yin in my body, so I must be near the Absolute Frost. Then… near the Qiang District, perhaps?’ she pondered, shutting the door and heading back to the room where the three bodies still lay. The fire had gone out completely as a result of the cold wind blowing through, but the bodies were in a sufficient state for her to obtain a pair of furred boots from one of them.

While she expected to be able to endure the cold if given a little more time to recover her own energy, then she would be just fine passing through the cold wastes of the south, but it didn’t quite feel right to walk without any footwear after wearing her heeled boots for such a long time. It would also earn strange gazes from the people that she might come across, although that would happen anyway simply due the rest of her clothing not even attempting to cover up the majority of her body tightly. She could rob more from the bodies, given that they were hardly using anything they had on them, but she was aware that there were some traditions over at the south that she might accidentally go against if she wore something wrong, so she didn’t wish to risk it when she didn’t need to.

From what she recalled, the furs that one wore on their bodies had some significance, and needed to be hunted by the person that wore them, so if she randomly grabbed things from the bodies of others, she might either earn the ire of the locals or otherwise make the wrong impression.

Once she came back to the door, she opened it and stepped out into the snow, finding that it completely lacked the soft texture that she had once heard of. Instead, it was incredibly hard and dense, possibly having laid there for hundreds if not thousands of years without much disturbance. Whatever soft properties it might have had were entirely gone as it had nearly frozen into a dense sheet of ice that might be able to endure an incredibly powerful flame being placed right into it and kept going for several decades.

There was no doubt that she had to be near the very south, so there was only one district to search for, and it was said to be at a relatively low position relative to the ocean around the continent.

That meant that she had to go down from her current position, or otherwise use some method to determine her exact position with a little more precision than simply being aware that she was somewhere near the south. In fact, she might not even be in the current Yi City, at which point all that her attempt to find a district would result in is earning the ire of some other faction present around the modern territory of the city. It wouldn’t be worth it, not when her body was not operating nearly as well as it could, and so she was beginning to conclude that it would indeed be better to find some identifying factor first.

Her issue was that she was not particularly aware of anything that existed or occurred near the Qiang District, be it some physical landmark or tradition that might make it easier to track down her position. With everything that she had studied, there was far more information about the Central Plains than either the Northern Desert or the Southern Wastes. Even then, most of the focus was over to the north, as that was the direction that one might go from the Yi District to find the Ning District, the Chen District, the Luo District or the Ju District, all of which were noteworthy in their own ways.

On the other hand, the south had the rivalry between the Xin and Ling Districts, the so-called district of servants, the Shun District, and the mine of the south, the Qiang District. To put it one way, it was not particularly well known or cared about, especially when the people at the north even had the story of the Master of Yi City’s progression to the north and the establishment of a fortress where he had protected the people of his Yi City from the invaders of the northern territories. The south was often remembered as little more than a trip to gain a little more territory for his city and to find a place to dig for planar materials, so the only ones that took much time to study it were the people of the Chen District, as it involved their obsession with money and trading.

Wei Yi had not been born in the Chen District, nor had she ever visited it, so she did not get the chance to review any of the information that they had access to, if they would have even permitted her to look through.

She took a short walk around the house that she had exited from, and came across something.

It was not what she had expected, but it did give her far more information than she had expected to obtain from something as simple as random wandering about the local area.

Not far from the residence, there were traces of a high speed and high force collision in a nearby large hill, or perhaps a small mountain. Traces of the collision could be seen far from the actual impact site, and once she attempted to track it down, she found that it was even further than she had anticipated at first, as it took nearly half an hour just to make it over. Admittedly, that was made slower due to her present weakness and the difficulty of the terrain, but it had still looked to be far closer to her at first glance.

What she did eventually locate was an enormous crater in the side of yet another large hill or small mountain, and it came from something that she had not expected. Well, to begin a little more appropriately, she found a thin line along the snowy ground that was not yet filled up despite the intense snow, and it proceeded towards the centre of the crater.

There, she located a thin layer of blood that contained a hint of cosmic light within it, which, when combined with the vague shape of a humanoid figure with a single arm partly impressed into the stone, she would need to have turned into an idiot to not realise the origin of this crater.

“How fucking hard did I hit the ground… No, it actually makes perfect sense. If I had somehow flown from the Central Plains to the extreme south, then I would have left a crater that is at least this large,” she muttered, stepping into the crater and quickly taking action to incinerate the blood contained within it so that the situation with the Blood-tinged Church didn’t repeat again, “This also tells me exactly where I am… relatively speaking, of course. I know that I ended up somewhere between the Yi and Ning District while fighting with the Greats, meaning that if I use that line in the snow to calculate exactly how I flew… I might be to the west of the Qiang District? Maybe?”

She wasn’t too certain about that, as even a small deviation in the line in the ground would lead to a very different destination due to the magnification effect of any action across a large distance. Nevertheless, she was able to roughly place her current position as being within the borders of the current Yi City, which was the best that she could have reasonably hoped for. So long as it wasn’t entirely outside of it, she would definitely be fine.

From some basic guesses and calculations, she was able to determine that she was more likely to find a district by going to the north-east than she was by heading over to the south-west, so she decided that it would be best to go in the safer direction first and see where she would end up. If she ended up going for far too long in one direction without results, she would shift her direction and instead attempt to find one of the coasts, as their more distinctive shape would allow her to get a better grasp of her position than any random mountain or hill in the southern territories.

There would be some challenge in feeding herself until she was strong enough and absorbing enough energy from the world to sustain herself purely through planar energy, but given the apparent prevalence of pigs, bears and wolves at the south, she wasn’t too concerned in that regard.

Before travelling anywhere, however, she decided that it would be best to first return to the house within which she had awakened, as that would be the best place to start from due to it being over to the east from the crater. It was more likely to be closer to the Qiang District, and it would give her a chance to use her slowly expanding spiritual perception to find anything else that might be of use to her in the wooden structure.

With some greater familiarity in traversing the snow, she was able to return a little more quickly than she had left, although that gave the residence itself more than enough time to completely freeze over. Without a flame, even if she did properly shut the door, there was nothing to prevent the outside cold from taking over the inside, and so it was soon transformed by a thick layer of ice forming over the walls and ceiling. That combined with the lack of heat looked to dye the entire place in a dismal colour, making it look as if it had died since the last time that she had taken a proper look at the place. It was quite something to behold for someone that had never once been to the south.

Still, it was not yet as cold as the outside, nor was there as much snow on the ground, so it took her little effort to look through the place by first scanning a room with spiritual perception, then going through on foot if she caught anything of interest.

Most of the rooms were devoid of interesting items, but a few did contain various pills that had been frozen in the snow. All were beneath three stars in quality, so she didn’t hesitate to consume them to extract what little energy could be found within to slightly boost her own state, even if it did take a lot of effort to melt them. She wasn’t sure whether there was a proper method for consuming them that didn’t involve using an incredibly potent yang energy, but it did help them to remain in a good state for a long time despite their low quality.

She found a few damaged and rusted blades in the corner of another room, and recognised that one of the weapons was missing, and that it looked much like the one she currently held.

‘The people that had found me might not have been the original residents of this place, since even the sword is older than they were. Whatever this place was, originally, it must have been picked clean over the years, and yet nobody has done a single thing about it, meaning that the owner is no longer around,’ Wei Yi was able to conclude, given that the pills she had consumed were at least two hundred years old, ‘Well, even if they show up again and want their things back, they should blame themselves.’

There were a few pieces of armour as well that she decided to borrow and put over her crimson robes. As they were made made of the leather of some weaker planar beast, it shouldn’t have the same kind of implication to the people of the south as the fur of the same beast, and it would make her stand out less if she had something to cover herself with other than some cloth and a thin layer of metal over her skin. Out of all of the troubles with the clothing that she had expected, one thing that had failed to occur to her was the trouble that came with only having one proper limb to place clothing onto herself with.

She was able to partly substitute that fault with some guidance from spiritual will, but having spent so long with her own body, she was most familiar with using it and bypassing all of the limitations of the muscles and the physical structure of every limb to achieve the exact effects that she wished for.

“On a less serious, yet still annoying note, without an arm, having that additional sleeve just looks… wrong. Taking it off wouldn’t be good, but keeping it on doesn’t seem right, either,” the Ascendant sighed, instinctively trying to raise her left arm to take a better look at the clothing she had put on only to recall that this wasn’t possible. Even though the sleeve that hung loosely from her body made it obvious that there was nothing there for her to move, her mind repeatedly missed this.

Her current issue was that no matter what she did, unless she was able to maintain a stable facsimile of an arm underneath her clothing, she would make it very clear that she did not have her full body. What that would incite would be the same kinds of reactions as the one that the three she had recently killed had, resulting in people seeing her as being weak and incapable. It was fine when it came to simply walking through a district, but if she wanted to get her hands on a spatial stabilisation point and earn some respect from the people, she wouldn’t benefit from such an impression.

Had her power remained in the exact state that it had been prior to the invasion of the Greats, that would have been fine, since she would have just been able to defeat anyone that had the wrong impression of her, but the lack of so many meridians and her dominant arm was not doing her any favours in that regard.

Hence, she concluded that she would need to find a way to stabilise an arm even if it lacked normal flesh, and established the two conditions that it had to meet. First of all, her new arm had to be able to contain, transfer and utilise planar energy in the same manner that her meridians could without any more than a ninety percent loss in efficiency and efficacy, as any more than that would be too great of a loss compared to just using some planar constructs instead. Second of all, it had to be solid, present at all times, and not require any concentration on her part to maintain. Whether that was to be due to its usage purely instinctive, or due to it being something that only needs to be conjured once in order for it to remain for a minimum of a day without any further action on her part, this was very important.

‘The cold is not the best place for me to practise it, however. I can’t really spend my time doing whatever I want when the air itself can prevent my energy from emerging at the same vibrance that it might usually possess,’ she noted, placing a few last touches onto her body.

Once she was fully dressed up, she left the residence yet again and took the time to shut the door properly, just so that whoever else might reside here wouldn’t try to track her down to complain. The bodies were taken care of by removing their embers and then draining their physique energy, with that process consuming their corpses and turning them into ash, which she dropped into the fireplace just to be nice.

With everything readied, she left the wooden residence behind, and began her journey to the north-east, making sure to mark the terrain with heavy footsteps just to ensure that she wouldn’t end up getting lost if her mental capabilities decided to act up again. With the intensity of the constant snow storm, it was difficult for her to clearly identify every part of the world that she had seen, and even the marks she left behind would fade away, but at the very least it would take a little longer for that to occur than if she didn’t bother doing anything at all.

After a while, she decided that it would be best to keep the sleeve in place rather than removing it, just in case her various assumptions about her arm were wrong.

She hadn’t been sure how much time she had wasted while being unconscious, so she was unable to accurately assess the exact time or date, but her internal clock functioned as accurately as before the moment that she awoke. As such, she was sure that she had walked for roughly an hour before she finally caught sight of something in the distance.

During the walk, the extreme cold had prevented most of her body from recovering, meaning that her strength and practical cultivation was still low, but she had been able to prevent any degree of further decay without much difficulty, guaranteeing that she would be able to make it over to wherever she was heading without any further losses. Given that she was able to beat three people in the second realm easily enough, she suspected that she would be able to take down someone in the third realm even at this state, and the fourth realm would still struggle to break her star metal armour if she protected herself well, so she wouldn’t be in danger from regular predators and thieves.

After she had noticed something in the distance, she naturally accelerated, and soon came up to a lantern hanging from a wooden pole that was stuck in the ground and was almost certainly buried just as deeply as the residence from before, as it was almost at the level of her head despite looking like it was designed for someone to be able to remove or refuel the lantern without physically coming into direct contact with it, perhaps with a large stick or some kind of similar implement.

Then there was also the fact that it reached down to the surface beneath the snow and then some, meaning that it had certainly been put in while knowing where the ground was.

It worked well enough, and while standing in the light of this lantern, she was able to see the light of another further along in the distance, prompting her to follow the lights. They were powered by planar methods, meaning that they didn’t really require human intervention unless natural planar energy was somehow prevented from reaching them, so they were not useful at informing her where she might find any kind of living being, but it was still something. Just like the presence of a residence, there had to be a reason for lanterns to be built. If it had a use once upon a time, then there was no reason that they wouldn’t still be used, even if not by the original creator of the lanterns, or perhaps not even for the original purpose.

In a way, one could see this kind of thing occur all over the Planar Continents if one was to think about the topic in vague enough terms. The very land of the Western Continent must have been home to countless different groups and cultures, and even in the years since the founding of Yi City, certain places had changed hands and uses countless times.

There were no hints of footprints beside the lanterns, but this was to be expected given the intensity of the snow. Even the heaviest of people wouldn’t dig too deep into the snow without doing it intentionally, like Wei Yi had done, so all that would be needed were a few minutes for any traces of a person’s presence to be completely hidden from the world, with even the compression of the snow being rather unreliable since it had long compressed under its own mass.

After the second lantern, there was a third, and after that one, a fourth and fifth. They got closer together after a while, and when walked past quite a few of them to the extent that her immediate thoughts no longer bothered to recognise their exact quantity, she finally reached something.

It was not a district, so far as she was able to tell, given that there were only a few structures that were all close together and without any wall to protect from outside intruders. The place was far more accurately described as a village, and it was all concentrated around a central region where the number of lanterns was largest. One hung from every home, and then there were two or three in between every single structure just to make sure everything was bright enough. The unbound planar energy that seemed to travel with the freezing winds would flow into the glass of the lanterns and keep the orange light inside going, even if that did seem a little contradictory to the typical operation of a lantern.

Nobody was outside at the moment, but that much was to be expected when considering the weather. She wasn’t sure whether this snowstorm was common, but it was certainly unpleasant.

Approaching the middle of this small village, she looked around and determined the structure that most looked like a place that a visitor might enter and least resembled a common residence, which was one that had the most worn door, a few windows that were completely frozen over that exceeded those in other buildings, and also a few hints of snow having been compressed a little more at the doorstep of that structure than at any of the others. All of these suggested that it had been more visited, with the windows being something that wouldn’t be necessary for anyone simply using the place as a residence given the lack of anything to look upon.

In general, windows in the Planar Continents were used more commonly in social spaces, and this had remained consistent enough in the Central Plains and only changed over at the north due to the heat forcing certain buildings to limit the places through which cold air could escape from their various cooling systems. The south was likely to follow the central region’s traditions.

She headed over to the structure and knocked on the door a few times, then pushed the door open.

Seeing a light on the inside as well as the quiet muttering in one of the corners, while receiving no hint that she wasn’t wanted here, she stepped inside and shut the door behind her before too much of the cold had the chance to seep into the building and ruin the mood of those that occupied it.

Even before she took a look at it herself, her spiritual perception was sufficient to confirm her previous guess. The space she entered was primarily dominated by a bar and several barstools on one side, while the other had a whole collection of alcohol bottles on the wall and a large man standing near them, quietly wiping the surface of the bar with a grey towel. From its appearance alone, it was hard to tell whether it was that colour due to dirt and age, or if it had been that way from the very beginning.

Away from the bar and to the left of the building were two tables with chairs around them, and one of the tables was occupied by a small group of four men, all of whom were still wearing all of their furs despite being inside of a building with sufficiently good thermal insulation. They were also sitting right next to one of the four fires in the room that were desperately attempting to heat the room to a suitable temperature, so it was likely that they were not as capable of dealing with the cold as Wei Yi’s physique permitted her to be.

When she entered, they had been talking to one another in a low voice, and after a single glance, they continued doing so, not bothering with her.

The bartender also didn’t react until she got close and sat down on a barstool.

“Anything that you want?”

“The staircase to the right, does it lead to some rooms? Can I rent one, and do you have a hot bath or something of the sort?”

“We have a room, and the room does have a bath. It is also hot. You want it?”

“I do. How much should I pay you?”

“One silver if you will only stay the night. If you go to the Qiang District, you might be able to reach it by the end of the next day depending on how long it took you to get here, not that I care,” the man said, not bothering to do much more than reach out with one hand to collect the fee for the room, “Third room on the second floor. Don’t make a mess, or else it’ll cost you more.”

“Noted,” she said, having passed along one of her many spare coins to the man, “Anything else?”

“Nothing you need to worry about. Do you want a drink first?”

“… Yeah, why not? Something cheap but decent, if you have such a thing.”

“Hmph, asking for the cheap stuff. Do you not have a sense of taste, woman?”

“No, actually. I can barely sense the alcohol, but I’m not in a good state to drink more than I need to for the moment, so nothing excessive.”

“Ah. In that case, here you go.”

He passed her a glass of a dark fluid and let her drink from it, finally paying attention to her actions as she was able to down it without a hint of an unpleasant expression appearing on her face, meaning that she was either speaking the truth or very good at hiding her disgust.

Given that the people of the south did not look to be interested in random discussions, the Ascendant didn’t waste her time hanging around and quickly departed to the second floor, finding the room she had been given and the bath that had been mentioned. It was the only thing that had even a trace of true warmth around it, and it came from the stones that were placed beneath it, which had a series of cracks upon them. Through them, a magma-like texture could be seen, as if they contained the earth fires of the world within them.

To her, it didn’t really matter how it worked, so long as it did, so she got rid of her clothing with her House of Gold, then got into the bath and laid back.

Today, she had taken the first step to recovery, and the first step to expanding her domain. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t able to connect to the Yi City Web right away, or if her arm would not regenerate no matter what she did. All that she cared about was the fact that she would be able to proceed, and also that she would have a chance to wound the Greats yet again.

‘They will die. Then, the Primordial Deities, and if the Hunger of the Beyond dares to invade, I will kill all of them too. I wish I had them near here, just so that I could say this to their face,’ she thought, the left side of her face transforming into the killing intent state.

It might be difficult, but she had never been so energised.