V5C10: The Slaughtering Shadow, Part 2

The moment that the man removed himself from stone, Wei Yi had already readied her own techniques, bringing them out as soon as she could be reasonably sure that she wouldn’t just end up hitting the cave walls and collapsing the ceiling onto them. Even if this cave was some distance from the Qiang District’s over-ground territory, it wouldn’t be good to cause a major cave-in anywhere.

She still recalled the degree of damage that she had managed to inflict upon the world back when she had decided to awaken her bloodline power, and even if this was going to be less unusual of a situation, it would still greatly alter the landscape of the world. From her understanding, she was somewhere to the east of the outer walls of the Qiang District, meaning that she would damage either the Ru District – a place that she did not want to needlessly get involved with before it was time to do so, as it had a focus on something of great interest to her – or an unaffiliated territory, which would be less disastrous in the short term.

In the long term, however, it could provide anything from an invasion opportunity to a reason for a major war to begin, which would be unfortunate due to the state of Yi City. If it was unified, a good opportunity for war without angering other regions would be beneficial, but until then, it would only allow the other nations to claim regions that were currently being held onto by the city’s districts. This was also a topic that really didn’t need to be considered at the time of combat.

After all, when she projected a dozen railgun bolts above her and shot them all at the otherworldly demon, she found that he moved with greater speed than before and met the bolts with a slash of his blade.

A normal weapon should have broken, and even a high-grade artefact would have struggled to endure the bolts, not to mention the fact that the man’s body should have failed to endure the immense physical force contained within every single railgun bolt. That’s how it should have been, but since the impact of her Elysian Blast, the energy around the axe and sword only looked to have intensified, and part of it wrapped around the man himself, allowing her to conclude at least one of the characteristics that was added to his two weapons.

‘Some type of berserker artefact, perhaps, that becomes stronger the more the user is injured. The structure is rather difficult to replicate, so it is very rare, but I guess that one of the southerners that went into this particular battlefield decided to bring such a weapon along. Well… Great for him,’ she quickly fired out another Elysian Blast as she infused her greatsword with all of the killing will she had to ensure it didn’t break too easily, ‘There’s a limit to it, and it shouldn’t be too ridiculous.’

If there wasn’t, then allowing the fight to get drawn out wouldn’t be good, but the chances of that were very low. While she was unable to detect the internal structure of the artefacts in his hands, she could identify distinct properties of certain types of weapons that she was familiar with due to her blacksmithing knowledge. That meant that even if they were all jammed into two weapons despite the seeming impossibility of such a thing, the distinct artefact channels and structures were still in there somewhere. Even if the properties were combined without any damage or deterioration, it was still highly different from amplifying a property into infinity.

Such a thing was nearly impossible, in fact, due to the intrinsic laws of reality. It was possible to subvert them to an extent, but as with her Dao of Law, each step further from the laws vastly amplified energy usage – and personal injury, in her case. The azure lights might have been able to provide nearly infinite energy to the otherworldly demons, but true infinity was unlikely to be within their reach. Thus, the gift that had permitted these weapons to exist in their current state would have to have a limit of some kind, especially if the modification was limited.

The railgun bolts were fast, but they did not exceed the speed that the Elysian Blast reached, which was very likely to be near to the speed of light that was so renowned in the minds of otherworldly demons, meaning that even the empowered state of the otherworldly man was insufficient to block it.

It launched him back into the wall, but this time his feet struck the stone and dug into it, countless cracks appearing within the even grey before the force was fully transferred to the stone. As soon as he was able to move, he pulled one foot out of the stone and kicked off the wall, instantly forcing his other foot out and sending him flying with even more force than the last leap he performed.

With this degree of strength, obtained from her continued attacks, he was slowly becoming shrouded with energy that mixed together into an incomprehensible mist, and his movement was accelerating accordingly. He stopped speaking the moment that he went on the offensive, so it was hard to tell whether he was even conscious while in battle, but what was certain was that his current state wasn’t terrible at fighting. On the contrary, while he had yet to perform any kind of complex attack, mostly needing to block the bolts and Elysian Blasts to keep himself alive, he had shown a great proficiency at it.

Either he had worked it out during the first few attempts to kill him, as he would have had to in order to survive, or he was being influenced by the otherworldly gift. It wouldn’t help him too much no matter what, as simply moving well in combat was rather inferior to extremely refined combat techniques.

This time, he flew straight at her, slashing down at a slower speed that meant that he would end up bringing the blade down onto her head just as he reached her. Even against weaker foes, she didn’t want to risk being hit by her enemies, so she was not going to simply stand there and allow herself to be hit. Given that the exact strength of her opponent was difficult to judge, she drew upon her killing intent while also raising her arm, flooding it with physique energy to ensure that it could withstand any damage effortlessly.

As the blade neared her, she released a thin strand of concentrated killing will directly at the edge of the sword, the two colliding nearly instantly.

In that moment, killing will was able to hold the blade of the sword back for just long enough before it was dissipated, the energies gathering around the sword far surpassing the thin strand that she had used against it. Still, it was enough to slow down the weapon significantly, so that when it continued on, she was easily able to meet it with her right hand instead.

Since she didn’t want to risk being hit in a more vulnerable position, she used the back of her hand to catch the strike, thrust the blade aside, and punched at him. At the same time, she repeated the Elysian Blast technique, as it was one of the few things that she was able to do with her left arm that approximated the offensive potential of the right arm. If she had the ability to do anything else with the same accuracy and reliability, she would have gone for it instead, as the man would have to slowly realise how the technique worked and what the best ways to work around it were. Mixing Obliteration with it would already be greatly effective, but it was not something she could pull off for now.

This blast was intended specifically to respond to the weapon contained within the other arm of the enemy, the axe that was being swung the moment that the man must have realised that his sword was not going to hit her as intended.

Her punch landed on the otherworldly demon’s chest and was somehow absorbed entirely, without applying any force onto him at all. It was strange, given the fact that all of the stone behind him collapsed inwards by a metre from the remaining force of the strike. Thus, his axe and her Elysian Blast collided, pushing his right hand back just long enough to give her time to grab onto the handle of the axe, shoving it over to the right to turn away his entire body and give her time to re-summon her left arm’s meridians and direct all of that energy at his armpit.

That point was typically a weaker point on any body, and was vital for proper movement, so if she was able to damage it even a little, she would give herself a great advantage.

It hit right away, but it seemed to only be able to push him away by a step, leading only to further acceleration and empowerment of the two weapons, as well as the man wielding them. The moment that he was no longer within her grip, he moved even more quickly and attacked yet again, the shadows gathering around him slowly overwhelming the figure. Hints of azure slowly seeped in with each moment.

As he attacked, so did she, needing to meet the sword with her right hand’s abilities while the axe needed to be repelled only with what she could produce using the left side of her body. Even though this man didn’t explicitly have any issue with her in particular, nor was there any real reason for her to develop her killing intent as a result of the battle, but she was frankly furious for some time now. He was not the cause, of course, but his presence only highlighted the very problems that she had wanted to deal with since learning of them. The Greats, the heavens, and, possibly beyond them, whatever led to the otherworldly demons coming into the world – it was all infuriating.

There were countless things that she had wanted to ask and say since she had ended up in the Kong Prison Realm, and each moment only seemed to add to that list. Some were minor and insignificant, others were far less so, and together, they had begun to gather into a red storm all that time ago.

When the expedition to the Kong District suffered major losses, those thoughts and questions had merely burst out and overpowered her mind, and the fight with the Greats that lost her an arm and the mad man right now were merely giving the opportunity for the darkness that had not been taken in by the red storm to rise up. With her every strike, Elysian Blast, and parry of the attacks she was facing, a similar darkness that appeared around the man also rose around her.

In her case, the only real exception was that the shadow was free of azure light, looking far more like smoke than the strange shroud around the otherworldly demon.

She had removed a lot of limitations that she had placed onto herself after the forceful imprisonment in the Kong Prison Realm, and more still as she realised just what she was facing, but that hardly meant that she had abandoned every possible moral that she and the world had ever held. She hated using anything that manipulated the mind, she did not want to utilise slaves, she did not wish to needlessly torment and kill anyone when there was no real reason to do so at all. Now, her body had recovered as much as it would and her arm could be manifested soon enough, provided that the world didn’t literally appear in humanoid form and slap the idea out of her mind, or something like that.

Using darker actions in order to lead to greater results was one of the key principles that she had to stick to in order to have any chance of success. This was the case with the crimson manifestation of her killing intent, and it had to be the case with the blackened smoke as well.

If she abandoned that notion, then all that she would be doing is killing randomly, and committing the worst crimes and deeds that she could possibly image for entertainment. Depending on the outcome of those actions, perhaps there would still be those that regard her as an overall positive force in the world, but it would also be a complete failure to follow the ideal of justice that she had developed. After all, if she was permitted to remain alive in that state, then what person possibly deserved any death or suffering?

Hence, she needed to make use of that darker side somehow, and where better to use it than to let the endless flood be directed towards something useful? To allow the darkness to become a tool that could bring the light to the world, although it was still difficult to say whether anything that she intends to do could truly be said to be even near to being good, not to mention absolute good. She didn’t even know what kind of form her absolute justice would need to take in order to work as intended.

That would do nothing to stop her from pursuing her goals, not when the simple act of moving towards them actively revealed more about the world and herself.

As the axe of her enemy approached her side yet again, its movements accelerating with every single blow that she landed upon him – albeit less quickly than before, which was confirming her earlier guess that the weapons had a limit to empowerment through the berserker effect – she unleashed the darkness. This time, she didn’t bother sealing it within the binding of a meridian, instead allowing the smoke to shape the path of the other four energy meridians as she formed an arm to block the strike coming at her.

It was something that she had already theorised about, but now that she had actually gotten around to doing it, she realised far more than she had imagined she could possibly learn from something this simple. In a single instant, the crimson light of her killing intent that had long coloured her techniques and nature completely blackened, the quality of the energy multiplied, and the quantity went to an absolutely insane level.

All of that manifested into a clawed hand connected to her left shoulder by an arm made entirely of the dark smoke. The basic features were akin to the left arm’s previous killing will state, except that the claws were sharper and obviously stronger, with all of the black smoke concentrating at them to form something that was almost solid in appearance.

In practise, when the axe hit the palm of this hand, it couldn’t penetrate even the surface of the smoke, resulting only in a little bit of smoke momentarily flying off, the killing intent dissipating into the air.

The entire arm scattered similarly a moment after, plenty of smoke and energy thus vanishing from her body, but all of the killing intent was refilled almost instantly. Still, even that wasn’t the best outcome of the momentary experiment, as she discovered that as the rest of the energy was able to return to her body, it did so without a hint of damage to her body that might usually be present after such an experiment. Even in the killing intent-filled state that she had found herself in, she was able to have a moment of clarity in which she comprehended the fault of Reality Severance.

‘As it cleaved me apart, removing the arm from my body forever, it severed only the state that I was in at the time. It removed the human arm which was influenced by my flesh, blood and energy, and thus any attempts to replicate it would automatically fail. However, the killing will state was a significantly different state of the arm, and was thus distinct from that which was severed. When manifested through killing intent and used to contain the other four energies within meridians that are arranged according to the most optimal setup in such a state, this bypasses my split concept of existence and still permits the arm to exist, even if the current technique only gives me one second to use it, without any movement,’ she understood, her left eye filling with shadow while crimson still shone through at the iris and pupil.

She allowed her killing intent to seep out even without focusing it into the left arm, flooding the cave with shadow that obscured her maddened grin as she attacked with renewed vigour and greatly intensified strength.

Without someone to restrain the quakes, they were far more obvious on the surface than before, causing the guardian to look even more grumpy than he had been a few minutes before the battle below the ground began. He had listened to his Patriarch for some time, but the longer that he needed to experience the trembling of the ground, the less he wanted to do so.

“You look grim, Guardian Mu. The Patriarch has refused to listen to your words again?”

A cloaked figure whose face was obscured by the shadow of a red hood appeared by his side, the voice being obscured in its entirety via an unknown method into a blur that barely conveyed meaning.

“The Patriarch and I disagree more often with each day… How can he not understand that the outsiders are only going to bring down our district? The south does not need the interference of the north, and especially not of some faction that merely seeks to rile up everything when there is no need to break tradition!” Qiang Mu exclaimed, his expression twisting with fury for a moment before he forced himself to relax, “I hate that you are the one that agrees.”

“Me? I and the ones I represent are as fond of traditions as you, and surely upholding tradition does not necessarily require sticking to them when your foe does not?”

“Do not think that such simple words will ever convince me that you are acting in my interests. I know what you want – no, of one thing that you want – and I will not succumb. Do you understand that?” Guardian Mu said barely restraining himself from poking a finger at the figure in red.

“And yet, you would benefit from this greatly, would you not?” the strange voice seemed to have no significant emotional response, only offering the guardian a small vial with no more words.

As soon as it was gone from the figure’s hands, it vanished in the same quiet manner as it had appeared in, leaving the guardian on his own, in a dark room shrouded from the cold with thick walls and a dense, inscription-filled door. He sighed, not bothering to look at the vial. The contents were already known to him, and while he did not wish to consume them, a feeling in his heart made itself more and more obvious the longer he thought on. It was not something he wished to do, but it might be something that he has to do.

With each strike and collision, Wei Yi was able to get used to the newly manifested Arm of Slaughtering Shadow just a little bit more. It was still limited to an instant of stillness, but now that it did not collapse, she was able to keep conjuring it again and again whenever her arm stood still.

As her proficiency grew, her opponent’s strength no longer did so. Instead, she was able to make use of the left arm to block his weapons, grab onto him whenever it would be to her advantage, and even stop her own movement whenever optimal by thrusting out her left hand at an incoming wall. She ended up doing the last of that list quite a bit, as she and the otherworldly demon leapt around quite a bit in their fight.

Since she was getting better and he was not, there was hardly any feasibility for the demon to win over her. His previous injuries that had been absorbed by the berserk effect of both weapons were clearly still present, and so, once she had the right opportunity to do so, she once more approached the man from an opportune angle.

Given that she had attacked his left armpit several times with Elysian Blasts, that was what she chose to target again with the same method, except that there was no longer any need to hold back her energy. So long as she did not move her arm, the energy that composed it wouldn’t collapse, and thus the quantity of energy that she could unleash through the arm would be similarly amplified and multiplied, and the layer of killing intent that wrapped around the four meridians would affect that energy in some uncertain manner. After all, it was no longer the same intent that produced her Antithesis methods, although that was still in there, beneath the smoke.

He attempted to get out of the way, but the smoky claws that suddenly grabbed onto his flesh couldn’t be broken out of, not in time. The moment that he was out, it was also when the claws collapsed.

From the confines of the smoke, a boundless force surged out, tearing into his flesh and manifesting the first obvious wound upon his body. Muscles were ripped apart, skin was cracked and injured, and the bones beneath endured for a single moment before they shattered with a deafening noise, the many shards tearing through his own body without any resistance. In an instant, the sturdy body of the otherworldly demon collapsed, the weapons fell to the ground, and an azure light burst out alongside an ephemeral shape of a sheath covered in vein-like geometric patterns.

Before the azure light had a moment to move, a clawed hand made of smoke suddenly appeared around it, gripping it tightly without a spot of light having a chance to escape from her grasp. With that, she had all the freedom in the world to activate the Truth of the Universe and send off the light.

“Antithesis, and now something that can restrain the azure lights for a little bit… The Arm of Slaughtering Shadow might turn out to have been a blessing in disguise.”