V5C12: The Church’s Influence

‘There are several things to note with the energy. First of all, it is blatantly not the Yin-Yang Ascendant energy that I currently possess, so it is likely that this has come from a similar source to the otherworldly demon that happened to inhabit a body somehow made with my blood. That means that this guardian has some relations to the Blood-tinged Church,’ she was able to conclude now that part of the interferences were gone, freeing up some of her mental capacity for matters that were more significant to her in the long-term, ‘Blood-tinged Church, and the Great Families. I think I’ll rush and get rid of the next faction that tries to join their ranks, even if it is a little inconvenient, just to prevent their numbers from constantly growing in my mind.’

Her killing intent and spiritual will, as well as their combined state, may both be rather powerful, but they were unable to cover for the perpetually rising fury at the world, so it would be best for her to quell the causes of it if they ever rose in number. So far, the two factions were the only significantly powerful ones, fortunately for the world and her alike.

‘How my blood can be used to produce physique energy, or something akin to it, is another matter entirely, but it seems like I am able to absorb my old blood into my current bloodline easily enough, so that’s good at the very least,’ Wei Yi found something to prevent her emotional state from fluctuating and focused back on the foe itself, and the potential capabilities that this transformed guardian of the Qiang District might possess.

She didn’t expect him to be capable of operating at the same mental level as before, although she wasn’t sure what his mind was even capable of considering that he decided to randomly attack her in the middle of the mines with plenty of witnesses.

Hence, the primary concern was regarding his actual ability. The guardian had been in the sixth stage of Linked Channels, a realm that was capable of enduring her abilities in a favourable environment but not when their abilities were not fully utilised. In that way, the man must have lost some of his overall potential, but it might be that his transformation had more than made up for any losses in reasonable tactics. Out of everything that she was able to guess regarding the abilities granted by the change, she was most concerned about the excessive number of pustules that appeared on his body.

Each one was filled with something that she almost certainly didn’t wish to touch directly, so the ideal way to fight him would be from the distance, so long as he was not able to use his planar energy well.

There was no way to be sure without experiencing an attack from this monster, so she went right ahead and attacked first, so that anything she provoked would at the very least be acted out with less strength and energy than the entity might otherwise gather in an ideal situation for itself. If the attack successfully prevented it from attacking at all, that would obviously be even better.

In an instant, her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow reappeared and lingered before her just long enough to focus her energy through it and unleash it upon the monster’s head. The smoke collapsed into a mass of absolute power that then shot out and pierced right through the right arm that the monster raised in an attempt to block the blast. It didn’t do a very good job at defending from the entirety of the Elysian Blast, but the amount that did hit him was not enough to end his life and prevent him from continuing to be a nuisance.

The parts of his arm that were evaporated by her Elysian Blast healed with immense speed and without the same physical distortion, while the toxins that had been contained within the pustules on his body burst out and covered him and the ground, forcing her to leap back.

Even then, she had a difficult time understanding their purpose, as most of the vile fluids touched the stone and had little reaction to it. Furthermore, her spiritual perception did not have the ability to perceive the atoms that the otherworldly demons were so fond of, so she couldn’t just analyse the very structure of some unknown substance and thus figure out what it would be able to do against her or others that might involve themselves in the conflict, so she had to act with appropriate caution until comprehending the purpose of the liquids was possible.

All that she was able to determine with certainty was that the pustules filled with her former True Ascendant energy were more than capable of burning a sizeable hole in stone with a single drop, resulting in numerous such holes appearing in the ground near the monster. That meant that it was still as effective in this regard as her own energy had been, and so the rest had to have a similar value according to logic, which may not have been taken into account by those that created the mixture that resulted in this transformation. It was what made it so much more difficult to estimate the exact effectiveness of each individual portion of the former guardian, and far more challenging to comprehend the exact intentions of the ones that had allowed it.

Presumably, the Blood-tinged Church had some interest in the district, hence the vial finding its way to the guardian, but it was hard to be sure whether the vial of blood was a finished product or not.

‘Well, if I manage to find their members in the district, I will be sure to have a word. Before then…’ she finally saw the monstrosity move for a purpose other than defending itself, and so she conjured a number of the shields she had duplicated from the automatons that she had fought at the Ju District, combining both the spherical and the hexagonal barriers just to be safe.

The entity roared again and charged at her, a number of the pustules on its body bursting during the sprint and greatly increasing the speed with each drop of unpleasant fluid that landed upon his skin and flesh. During the sprint, his planar energy was also activated, but all that it looked to be able to do was fluctuate violently and tear through the terrain, effectively expanding the size of its own body in terms of the area that it would strike with the charge. Its body was also made stronger, but this was negligible in comparison to the other effects.

Most importantly for her, this movement was simplistic and lacking in any further tactics. It was a straightforward rush towards her current position and leaping away was incredibly easy.

For that reason, she conjured an Obliteration-infused Destruction Brand upon the ground before leaping away, and watched as it latched onto the poor fool and slammed down upon him a moment after. It charred the flesh and ruptured some more of the pustules, although that only led to them recovering a few moments later and the substances within imparting whatever benefits they were able to bestow upon the monster that he had transformed into.

The regenerative properties of this entity were actually rather astounding, with the overall capabilities rising to the fifth realm of bloodline power cultivation in certain ways. It even fit some of the criteria for the Genetic Comprehension realm, with the changes to his body and, presumably, to his own bloodline, being most notable.

However, one of the benefits of the brands empowered with her ever-improving energy – with Obliteration in particular being something made of the combination of every method in her possession, meaning that the addition of the Elysian Blast and Touch the Heavens made it even more powerful – was that they would stick around no matter how one attempted to ward them off. There were certainly methods to dispel the brands before they were exhausted of the energy imbued into them, but to a figure that did not have the ability to consciously draw upon its energy and seek to ward off attacks rather than simply engaging in more of its own. Hence, the attacks would persist for a long while.

Given that this proved to be an effective method of attack, as the brand fell down once more and burst in a storm of blackened crimson, she waved her right hand and summoned a dozen more brands all over the place. Wei Yi then stood behind them and launched another Elysian Blast at the monster in order to catch his attention. It worked as well as anything would, as there was nothing else to grab its interest. Had one of the miners stayed behind, it would have been more difficult.

Who could assume what intentions the entity had, after all? The current mind of the guardian could have been focused on eating mice over combat, regardless of what it perceived as mice or what it thought to constitute eating. Any kind of interference would have been unfortunate, to say the least.

She repeated the process several times, luring the monster to attack her, caused it to pick up a brand that charged up the others at the same time, then moved to the next brand. Each time, the entity looked to be trying something new, with different running postures, uses of planar energy, and so on, but the changes were far too minor and failed to take into account previous modifications to the entity’s tactics. In other words, it would try something new each time, but never learn and repeat previous attempts, whether or not they were successful.

Thus, although the combination of everything that it did could have allowed the former guardian of the Qiang District to gain enough speed and suddenness to catch her off guard and grab onto her, it did not implement them successfully. Each time, all that it got was more Obliteration energy blasting down upon it, and each time it ended with just a little bit more damage that it couldn’t quite fix fast enough.

In total, it took twenty-four Obliteration-infused brands for the entity to withstand the first attack that it simply couldn’t recover from, which was bound to occur no matter how sturdy it was. Without a nascent rift within its body, and without the ability to rapidly absorb and process planar energy like Wei Yi was able to, the total supply of it within the guardian’s body decreased each time that it had to recover flesh and blood. Even at the greatest efficiency and speed, even if the blood had provided it with a thousand lifetimes of regenerative potential, it would be unable to keep regenerating at some point.

Of course, the addition of the principles contained within Touch the Heavens helped. Above anything else, Touch the Heavens was focused on subverting the natural order and tearing it apart, challenging the structure that the heavens had established and displaying her own range of Laws to the world. All of the random imposition was likely to damage the world, of course, hence the destructive potential of the technique and why it could endure Reality Severance to an extent.

Against a monstrosity that should be able to regenerate in near perpetuity so long as it was provided with an appropriate amount of energy, her Lawful imposition would have a number of distinct effects. Most of them, however, would prevent that regeneration one way or another.

As soon as that energy was exhausted to a sufficient degree, she raised her phantom arm and conjured the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow high up in the air, the palm facing downwards as she resonated her own energy with the individual systems of the twenty-four brands hovering right above the monster. They were not far apart from her, nor from one another – they couldn’t be, even if the guardian had swollen to twice his original size – and thus controlling them herself was incredibly simple and providing them with more energy was even more so.

Once she had that link, she directed a trace of the true potential of Touch the Heavens to the brands, not daring to get even closer to the full power of the technique simply due to the damage that it would inflict upon her in return. She was still holding back with the Dao of Law, so unleashing the next step after it would be akin to seeking death loudly and proactively.

Even that was enough to cause the space around the brands to be distorted. She didn’t want to let the brands distort the world too much, as it would cause too much of a commotion if they went out of control, so the moment that this was complete she made them fall upon the monstrosity and explode.

When the energy of the Touch the Heavens appeared within the brands, the monstrous thing was drawn to look up and behold the brands, although she couldn’t determine whether it had a greater reason for doing so than simply being alerted by the powerful energy. Perhaps the guardian that the body had once been recognised that he was witnessing something unusually powerful, especially when the limit of her fifth realm was considered, or maybe it was the entity that was instinctively observing something within the brands. Either way, it did nothing to move out of the way, sealing its fate.

The descent of the space-tearing brands was followed by an explosion that almost seemed to begin before they had the chance to touch the guardian. All of the bursts of energy tore through the space and the entity, shredding it to many pieces, scattering the tainted blood within all over the place. However, before it could touch the ground and burn through the stone, her killing will surrounded every single drop and brought it before her so that she could absorb the bloodline power within.

Ever since the first instance of the Blood-tinged Church abusing her blood to produce a clone, she had become far more cautious about leaving any blood to be used by that faction. They likely had more vials of blood akin to the one used by the guardian, but it was possible that they would benefit from the resulting combination of blood. Perhaps they were attempting to experiment with the effects of her blood and the others in the mixture upon other people, and the Qiang District’s guardian had only gotten involved in the matter coincidentally.

If that was true, it would be particularly unfortunate. For a faction to get involved somewhere just for an experiment, they must be very relaxed and not concerned that they could be defeated by the ones they are targeting. There was always the possibility that they were hoping to remain unnoticed, but the world had plenty of reason to associate anything related to blood with the Church.

Hence, the mere presence of the blood-filled vial would make it very obvious who was likely to be involved, whether the guardian was successfully defeated or not. Their location was also not difficult to guess, and an investigation from a force on the level of a district would be capable of discovering an outpost at the very least. Even her random considerations on this matter had already brought her to concluding that the Blood-tinged Church must have some presence in the Huang District, whether they were there with the knowledge of the district’s Patriarch or if they were merely lurking beneath the surface while being a nuisance and danger to everyone.

It was not necessarily the place that they were using as their primary base, but they certainly left their traces there.

To prevent them from having a chance of recovering their research, she made sure to absorb all of the blood and contain anything that wouldn’t be taken in by her bloodline power. There were a few particles within the mixed blood of the guardian that didn’t seem too significant, but it was always better to go the extra mile when dealing with a faction that had existed since before the Master of Yi City had begun his life within the Planar Continents.

A brief time after that, she turned as she finally felt a presence in the seventh realm approaching, and thus had to the Patriarch of the Qiang District unless it had been invaded since she had last looked. New seventh-realm experts would appear with time, but not so soon after the battle with the Ju District.

He got here not long after, using a fourth realm movement method that must have allowed him to move through the stone, as he made it over along a nearly straight line. Although he entered via the regular entrance to the cave, most of the journey couldn’t have been made as it had been without him actively destroying the majority of the Qiang District’s mines and causing several cave-ins.

“Ascendant! What… what has happened to Qiang Mu? Did he attack you?”

“I assume you know this man, then. He was a guardian of the Qiang District, right?” she confirmed with a nod from him, “I’ll also assume that you were not the reason that he suddenly decided to punch me, failing terribly, then drink a vial of blood that almost certainly came from the Blood-tinged Church.”

“The Church? They’ve made an appearance here? That would certainly explain a great deal regarding Qiang Mu’s actions over the past week.”

“Oh?”

“He was always against the presence of intruders and northerners. This is not abnormal for us in the south, but the longer you remained here, the more agitated he grew. There was a chance that he had been interacting with a group that had been assisting this agitation, but I had been unable to detect any figures that he had been speaking with using my own perception,” the Qiang Patriarch said, sighing, “The Blood-tinged Church must have sent someone with incredible capabilities in disguise or stealth, or perhaps communicating from a distance.”

“Given that a vial of blood had been passed along, the former two must be more likely. Also considering the few things that I have managed to see of the Blood-tinged Church, I do not think that their specialty is in disguise. They are too prone to theatrics. Just look at the shards of the vial.”

A single look exposed that the vial was capped on the top and bottom with highly detailed metal caps. The metal had a golden tint, although it did not appear to be gold, rather some metal that was more durable without reaching the level of immortal gold. Both were ornate and mirrored the other, resulting in the vial seeming to have no clear top or bottom, nor any reasonable place to interact with in order to open it up.

This was not something that would be made at random, nor by a group that was willing to keep themselves quiet and out of the way. Frankly, being a Church, staying subtle wouldn’t really fit them.

‘Of course, there is another reason for this assumption, but I will need to keep quiet for a little longer before I am able to act upon it confidently. If I rush things and the person gets away, I won’t have a chance to interrogate them regardless of who they actually are,’ Wei Yi noted, glancing around in a natural way while paying attention to a slight shift of light to her right, in the distance.

She had noticed the presence of something when the Patriarch had entered the area.

It wasn’t immediately obvious that it belonged to a person, but the longer that it stuck around and failed to move, presumably in an attempt to draw less attention to itself, the more obvious it became to her spiritual perception. She was already very familiar with detecting such things as a result of her experience with otherworldly objects and their absence in the view of spiritual perception, so any disturbances and abnormalities in her view of the world were naturally detected far more quickly and easily than if someone else with similar abilities to her own was present without the same kind of experience that she had.

Hence, she remained quiet about the discovery and kept gathering as much information about the figure striding about and the technique that it had to be using in order to allow it to remain hidden. No matter which faction was responsible for it, if any, she was not going to throw away the opportunity to learn more about the techniques of the world. There was guaranteed to be something to gain from simply knowing it, even if she didn’t spend her time practising the technique itself.

Presuming that she somehow had the fortune of discovering that this figure was an ally, the gains from simply studying the various ways in which the technique functioned would be more than enough.

“Have you had many encounters with the Blood-tinged Church?”

“A few. I know of a faction that had splintered from them, and their knowledge has greatly assisted me in understanding some of their tendencies and specialties. Unfortunately, that had occurred some time ago, and so the exact nature of the Church’s structure at the current moment is difficult to guess,” Wei Yi said, deliberately bringing up things that the figure might have some interest in, “I can say that they have several divisions with different focuses, so it is likely that we are dealing with one that experiments with mixtures of bloodlines, or else creates volatile substances that can corrupt blood.”

She had gathered the blood of the guardian and had found that the effects of the vial had led to it containing a strange mixture of energy that didn’t activate any specific bloodline for her. From this, it was obvious that it had somehow scrambled the structure of the guardian on a very fundamental level, but the origin of this was a little uncertain.

That didn’t stop her from being almost sure that the vial was specifically a mixture of blood that interacted with the bloodline of the one that consumed it, rather than one that led to a distortion of what was already present. Revealing it would likely make the Patriarch trust her more in the matters of the Blood-tinged Church, as knowledge regarding that faction would always benefit the district, but the other figure may be scared off and convinced to run off to report to the Church.

Given the purpose of her attempts to stall the figure, it would be entirely detrimental to allow such a thing to occur.

“For them to be experimenting with the blood of guardians… They think they can get away with so much just because we are far away from their main base?” the Qiang Patriarch frowned, anger appearing within his expression, “The south may stand far apart and pride ourselves on our independence, but when there is a threat that endangers us all, we will be sure to unite and attack as one. If they do not comprehend this, then they will suffer greatly the moment that they go too far with their actions.”

“I would bring up the fact that the Blood-tinged Church had gone ‘too far’ every single time stories of their actions got out to the rest of the world, but I understand what you are trying to say. Do you actually know where they are, or are you merely assuming?”

“We have some ideas. All of the world does, I should assume. We know where they appear the most, and where they prefer to operate. They aren’t a clear southern faction, yet they can appear here as well as in the Chao District, so they should be somewhere near the Central Plains. As with all factions, unless they possess spatial realms and stable gateways, they can only have one location in which they can confidently reside and perform their various activities, so this greatly narrows things down. Out of all districts in the Central Plains, the only one that has any clear connection to blood is the Huang District, so I expect that they can be found in the vicinity,” the Patriarch explained his ideas.

“Funnily enough, I’ve come to a similar conclusion. Unlike the Ju District, which is highly secretive due to preventing any outsiders from entering, the Huang District instead has a system of limiting much of their lands to outsiders, only allowing them to see very specific parts of the district. Even there, the people are rather odd and unsociable, with many having features of odd physiques or bloodlines.”

“Indeed, that is rather suspicious. However, if the Blood-tinged Church has the power of a district behind it-”

His eyes widened as Wei Yi suddenly manifested the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow and even a number of faint chains around herself. The black palm was almost aiming at the centre of his face, so that combined with the vast quantity of energy that was suddenly pouring out her had the ability to threaten even him with his seventh realm. In particular, a strange feeling akin to the empowerment of a searing mark was present, except that there was no obvious hint of a mark’s usage in her movements and technique, which was odd considering how flashy such things tended to be.

Before he could ask a single thing of her, nor act to get out of the way of the attack or even fight back, the figure of the Ascendant suddenly vanished from his sight, although he could sense her presence right behind him, prompting him to turn.

As was the case with many of the cultivators of the world, in a moment like this, he failed to employ his divine sense immediately upon realising that something strange had occurred, and so he was only able to see the Elysian Blast strike a point in the cave that was several metres from the nearest wall. There should have been nothing there, and yet the blast of space-tearing energy was stopped in the air and lit up the vague silhouette of a figure in a hooded robe.

It stood there for a moment before it was thrown into the wall, as the white energy dispersed.

“First try. Want to tell us who you are, or should I just kill you here and now?” Wei Yi asked, her eyes gleaming as she saw countless chains around herself and the figure, using them to establish the exact location and shape of the entity even while the light dispersed and prevented her from being able to witness it via her sight and spiritual perception.

She had been able to lock onto it a brief moment ago, and so decided to catch it off-guard by pretending to attack the Patriarch out of nowhere. The plan was rather silly on first glance, and that must have contributed to why the figure stopped being quite as careful with their stealth method, exposing themselves just enough for her to lock onto the exact chains of Law that were being affected by its presence. From there, she just needed to use her fourth realm movement method to displace her position and put herself into the right place to target the entity.

This didn’t count as movement of the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, as her movement method skipped motion completely, and so she was able to charge up the Elysian Blast safely and easily.

“You are observant, Ascendant. However, I will not speak with you,” the entity stated.

It sounded almost inhuman, lacking any distinctive property that might identify anything about the person, nor did the clothing of the figure expose a single blatant characteristic that might allow her and the Patriarch to identify them if they saw the figure without the crimson hooded robe. Before they could look even just at that all that much, the figure suddenly rose into the air without any obvious usage of planar energy.

Naturally, Wei Yi pursued it, leaping into the air and stepping onto one of the many chains of Law to stabilise her stance, needing to jump up a dozen chains that all caused parts of the cave to tremble, crack and twist, as these were still manifestations of Law and not just random projections of energy.

When she did end up in the perfect place to strike, she did so without hesitation, drawing upon the full strength of her right arm to deliver the strongest punch she could.

The figure either couldn’t get out of the way fast enough, or decided not to, instead meeting her attack with a dense layer of blood that completely covered it and absorbed the impact of her strike for just a moment. Once it shattered – or, more precisely, lost its structure and splashed all over the cave wall, the figure that had manifested the blood was nowhere to be seen.

“Tch. Had I mentioned that I don’t really like the Blood-tinged Church?”