V5C20: False Eternity

The fourth realm movement method Wei Yi used allowed her to traverse the area in moments, vanishing from the room she was in and shifting over to the back of the room the Ru Patriarch, with some other figures, was in.

Aside from Ru Shi and a few other captains, who she was not too surprised to see due to all of them being in the Linked Channels realm and thus highly capable in contributing to the upcoming battle, the last figure was both expected and surprising. On one hand, to find the leader of the Preservers – Ru Preservers, perhaps, as to avoid confusion with the Preservers of Eternity – in such a gathering was not strange, but to detect that he was in the Half-Step Oblivion Halo realm was far more unusual for one simple reason.

Reaching the seventh realm, even only partially, was really challenging up until recently, when her fight against the Greats and the automatons of the Ju District forced far more energy into the world due to it being freed from anchor energy. Thus, anyone who managed to overcome this recently must still have put in more work and had more ability than quite a few others in the world.

“Thus, the barrier shall- who’s there?” the man turned, the hammer from his back flying into his hand, which he held with the same ease that another person might hold a normal weapon.

“Stand down, Ru Jian. This is the Ascendant, who looks to have reached the eighth stage. She is going to be assisting us, as I had explained,” the Patriarch stopped him, looking over to Wei Yi after he made sure that the man was calmed, “Ascendant, this is the Preserver Commander, my fellow leader of the Preservers. You must have read this by now, but in order to ensure that I can focus on my duties while allowing the Preservers to be led competently, the Preservers have had two leaders since the beginning of the faction. I am the Preserver Patriarch, whereas he is the Commander, and will generally be in charge most of the time.”

“I have, yes, so I am not sure why you went out of your way to explain this… Nonetheless, hello there.”

“Hello, Ascendant. I’ll be keeping an eye on you, to make sure that you do not step out of line while inside.”

“Right. Would saving your ass be a step out of that line, or is that kind of thing fine?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, trying to regain some of the energy that had been expended on the development and integration of Knowledge Amplification into her own path, and choosing a casual jab in order to accomplish this.

By the looks of it, he had a few issues with her, perhaps not personally but with some outsider standing around, so she figured that it would also be best to get over their differences as quickly as possible. If the situation wasn’t confronted right away, only handled with a quick remark from the Patriarch asking him to be less aggressive, then it could always put them in a bad place when their disagreement got too significant. While not a perfect example, the situation in the Qiang District perfectly exemplified why certain stances shouldn’t be allowed to sit and fester, so to speak.

Had that man not wished to deal with outsiders as much as he did, she wouldn’t have needed to fight him and kill one of the guardians of the Qiang District.

However, as she had not communicated this to the Patriarch, he quickly said, “There is no need to-”

“Ru Wen Xiang, if I may, I would like to handle this right away. Preserver Commander, if you wouldn’t mind, could you explain why your words seemed to be treating me as some subordinate that will get in your way, and why your thoughts were a lot less pleasant than that?”

“You were even staring at my thoughts?” the Commander asked, frowning, “It looks like you are the one attempting to stir things up, not I.”

“Uh-huh. Why do I need an eye kept on me?”

“Is this something that I truly have to explain? You are an unknown element with uncertain intentions that-”

“Oh, please, of everything you could have said, whether you believe it or not, why did you go for that? Please recall who I am – the Ascendant, the one that is responsible for the beginning of the War of Ascendancy that stirred up a certain hornet’s nest that had been ignored for far, far too long in Yi City,” she stated, “Is something unclear about that?”

“The ancient families are truly dangerous, but that does not mean that your actions will benefit our Ru District, does it? You have already been given far too much of our materials in return for too little, in my eyes.”

“Well, when I provide the whole world with everything that I am able to gather, I will be sure to omit the Ru District’s people from receiving that information. Clearly, you do not need a single bit of help from me. So, should I just depart? I trust that you will handle the matter of the Preservers of Eternity without a single action from me, and so me being around will indeed be equivalent to simply getting in the way.”

The Preserver Commander frowned, but he couldn’t refute the fact that she was indeed necessary.

From what both she and all of the Ru Preservers present here knew, the forces of the Preservers of Eternity contained several individuals in the seventh realm, and quite a few in the sixth, with some number of those in lower realms that would essentially be insignificant as far as the battle went. With their own numbers, having only one seventh realm cultivator, they needed all the help they could get.

“Enough! There is no need to be arguing at this point in time! Ru Jian, I have already explained to you that the Ascendant has not received anything dedicated only to the Preservers, and that she will be departing soon. Calm yourself!”

“… Yes, Patriarch.”

“And you, Ascendant, shouldn’t have aggravated the situation.”

“I disagree. Now, we both understand exactly what your Commander’s problems with me are, and you’ve been able to address a few of them. Imagine had this not happened and we ended up in battle against someone able to create various illusions and affect the mind,” she said with a calm shrug, “I will admit, I may have gone at this a little harshly, but it is better than a repeat of what I had experienced in the Qiang District.”

“What did you… No, later. Preservers, Ascendant, eyes to the front,” the Patriarch instructed, pointing forward towards the door to the inside of the seal.

The door itself was plain stone that had been raised into the ceiling via a planar energy-based mechanism, designed in such a fashion as to ensure that it wouldn’t be easier to open if the planar energy was taken from the structure. There were several such doors, but only the one before them was open at the moment, as to guide the entities inside towards them and only them.

Almost within the doorway was a thick film-like obstruction that had an oily texture, resulting in the light being reflected in the colours of the rainbow, making it difficult to see much on the other side. This effect applied to her spiritual perception as well, meaning that it must have affected the perception of all others present as well at least as much, and showed scenes frozen in time, with everything from lone particles of dust to the figures within standing perfectly still. Of course, if that was it, then there would be no need to be concerned about the barrier.

Every now and then, at shallow and deep points alike, occasional specks of dust would suddenly shift and move forward by a moment or two, and then everything that they came into contact with would also move.

One point would spread to a dozen, which would also shift their movement to a thousand more.

The still figures within would occasionally move forward as a result of the repeated collisions, and each time the period between their bouts of movements got just a little smaller, and the duration of their movement also grew. She could observe their clothing shifting and the silver metallic cloth losing the support of a wind that had likely vanished many decades ago.

She did not have much time to spend on observation, so she made sure to focus upon them in full. Their mix of fine satin-like robes and thin black metal sheets was clearly similar to the current style of the Ru Preservers, albeit with thinner armour overall, but their faces were obscured in their entirely by a strange layer of shifting light and shadow, with strange patterns scrolling past even as the time around them was frozen completely. Whatever this was, it managed to block her spiritual perception completely, making it hard to comprehend whether these figures were even entirely human, and only their energy could pierce through the veil and barrier combined, confirming their strength.

At this moment, there were six figures that were in the seventh realm, with one being in the higher stages, three in the middle stages, and the last two residing clearly in the lower stages. This was somewhat worrying, as the techniques of the Preservers of Eternity were bound to display the power that had been lost since the golden age of Yi City. Thus, the higher stages of the seventh realm would be even more dangerous.

Then, clad in silver cloth and metal sheets, as thin as those of their superiors but made from a different material, there were twenty-two sixth realm experts standing around in the frozen zone.

In comparison to the stronger six, their disparities in strength didn’t matter all that much, as a gap of a single stage in the seventh realm was three times greater than a stage in the sixth. They would be manageable so long as they could beat the seventh realm leaders, and they would not change the outcome much if they failed.

Naturally, the fifth realm Preservers of Eternity mattered just as little, mostly because the forces gathered by the Ru Preservers would be more than sufficient to handle them if their leadership was left to take care of the stronger opponents. Even with their superior techniques, it would be hard to compete with all of the combatants that could be called upon whenever needed. Wei Yi noted down all of their locations and the types of energy that they seemed to be employing, something that was difficult to do due to the stagnation of time itself, and then transmitted it to the others around her.

“I haven’t been told what your strategy is, but I’ve scouted out all I can for now.”

“Once the barrier is broken, will you be able to gather more information than that?” the Ru Patriarch asked, his eyes shutting for a moment as he had to process everything that had only taken her a moment to gather, a far shorter moment that he needed.

“At that point, the only thing that should be difficult for me to obtain is their exact name, age, and sexual orientation, but I trust that we won’t be needing any of those for the strategies that you must have come up with while I had been cultivating,” the Ascendant replied, “Actually, I might be able to get the latter two based on certain physical aspects, but I would rather not waste my time on that of all things.”

The Patriarch raised an eyebrow but lowered it quickly and chose to disregard the follow-up. The Commander, on the other hand, did not.

“You may be unaware, but they all make use of a veil that completely prevents intrusion from-”

“Spiritual perception, so, when combined with the natural effect of stopping time in an area, it is nearly impossible to learn anything about them. That being said, I have learned quite a bit, as you should be perfectly aware due to what I sent to your mind, and I will not struggle to obtain more knowledge once half of the issue is gone. If you would like to have some explanation, think of my spiritual perception as being half a step to the divine sense of the seventh realm, as this is not too far from the actual truth.”

He frowned at her, but also chose to look away and focus on the oily barrier before them, observing the occasional tears within it and the clear signs of intensifying decay that left it with only a few minutes to linger.

Given that their time to bicker was running out, she didn’t try to go on, especially as her surface-level view of his mental state confirmed that he was understanding her position, but wouldn’t outright agree with her after the clear resistance that he had put up earlier. Something to do with pride and sticking to one’s position regardless of the legitimacy of it, as far as she could understand it.

There were many problems with such a stance, but she could resolve it at a later time, when it would actually be reasonable to discuss such things in length and the detail that they would benefit from.

With each passing moment, the stability of the barrier further lessened, so they were soon left with something akin to a patchy, worn cloth, with many dozens of layers slowly revealing more and more gaps through which everything behind them was as visible as if the barrier wasn’t even there. Fortunately, this did not give the Preservers of Eternity complete freedom, but as parts of them were no longer restricted, they were clearly realising that they were no longer in quite the same situation that they had been frozen in.

Naturally, they had been in some kind of conflict with the forces of the Ru District, whether it was known as that back then, when they were sealed, and thus it did not take them long to understand that regardless of the current nature of the individuals outside of the seal, they were not likely to come across friendly faces.

“- fifteen-” a burst of sound got through the barrier, with it coming from one of the seventh realm figures, addressing another one, “- Shi Gong-”

He was addressing the strongest of the figures present, so the name was quickly understood to be his. From the records of the Preservers of Eternity that Wei Yi was permitted to view – and some that she had secretly read even though there were quite a few obstacles in this pursuit – this fit with the name of their leader. That meant that his current cultivation might very well have risen by several stages, as he had been recorded to be somewhere near the fifth stage at the time that he was sealed.

In a state of frozen time, one might think that planar energy wouldn’t be able to flow to the cultivators and empower them continually, but this was not quite the case. As she had concluded long ago, planar energy was not a usual form of matter, instead acting as an absolute that would exist in the world at all times according to the fraction of energy that was freed from other elements such as anchor energy and the anchors that would store it, whether or not they actually had anchor energy or would transform into it when broken. That was also rather interesting to investigate, at a later point, but not possible for the moment.

Thus, even though time would only barely move within the barrier, the energy would still be refilled according to the Laws of the world, and their cultivation would be able to advance alongside that timeless process regardless of the barrier.

The planar energy would endlessly ‘regenerate’ and enter the bodies of the Preservers of Eternity, so even though they would have experienced only a few moments within, their realms were not stagnant. If not for the difficulty of creating such a static region, a feat that was mostly permitted by the structure known as the Bottomless Archive and everything that had been put into its foundation, then everyone would prefer to cultivate within such an environment. So long as they had no immediate concerns and no foes that would wish to see them gone right away, they could rest within frozen time and come out a few stages ahead with no effort needed on their part. It wasn’t the best method, but it was a highly effective one for the effort needed once within it.

“- History’s-” another fragmented word emerged through the breaking barrier, one that couldn’t be meddled with from the outside unless they wanted to risk a significant rise in uncertainty and a destabilisation of events. The outcome could be anything from the instant collapse of the barrier to the energy that composed it suddenly being thrust into the entities within, greatly empowering them.

“- Truth-”

It was hard to know what they wanted to accomplish within that stagnant region, wherein the long-forgotten Preservers of Eternity had lived out a million years within only a few minutes, at most, but it was impossible to overlook the sudden burst of energy that filled the area.

The power flooded into all of the people present, but the moment that they felt it take effect, they understood that it was different for all of them, and that it was only a taste of what they would be forced to endure once the barrier shattered – for the energy broke through the gaps in the oily layers of frozen time, and it was not a benevolent type of energy, that much was certain the moment that it took effect.

Although the Ascendant wasn’t sure how it affected everyone around her, she didn’t need to guess what the function of the energy was. From the few words that reached them from within the barrier, the mention of history combined with a sudden influx of immense cold, a weakening of her energy and the searing pain at the stump of her left arm meant it was obvious.

‘They’ve brought back a time period wherein I was weak, and it was either a recent one or the only one that applied to me as Wei Yi, the Ascendant, whereas other situations would be applying to someone else, like Yi Wei, or an indecisive woman over in the Kong Prison Realm,’ she thought, her mind remaining calm as she analysed her own situation, as well as that of the others, ‘I can’t send out my spiritual perception, and what I had sent out is currently unavailable to perceive, but my own energy is still there, clearly. I can feel it circulating throughout my body, but it seems like it is being used a million times less effectively, hence the weak feeling.’

One thing that she was always to keep to was a powerful mind and great degrees of focus regardless of the situation, with her only obstacle so far that she couldn’t overcome fully being her killing intent.

Back then, her killing intent was not much greater than now – in fact, it was even lesser, as she had not unleashed the black smoke that manifested behind the overwhelming crimson light to create the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow – so she had no difficulties with resolving the current state of her mind, and only needed to pay attention to the limitations that were imposed upon her body.

The best that she could expect now would be for the barrier to either hold for far longer than it really should, or for those within to feel the need to spend a long time talking and explaining just what it is that they intend to achieve upon breaking out.

At first, she did not find her hopes coming true, for the oily layers suddenly trembled all together and exploded outwards, dissipating before a single particle from them touched the Ascendant and the Ru Preservers. Within, the figures took a moment to catch their breath and then looked towards them, energy that was shaped into countless small characters flowing out of their bodies and surrounding their bodies, only leaving the front of the hood uncovered.

When a voice that sounded like it was covered in echo, she was tempted to thank the heavens.

“Ah, so the decades have passed, but there are still those that clearly draw inspiration from us. They see us with hostility, but the connection cannot be denied,” the leader spoke slowly.

His voice flowed from his hood and washed over them in a manner similar to the technique he must have used. It was strangely overwhelming and unpleasant, in a way that would have been difficult to explain had she been asked to do so. The exact unpleasant aspect of the voice originated from something that couldn’t be put across with anything but the original sound.

Even then, or perhaps specifically due to the slowness of the man’s words, this was a far more comfortable sound to her and to the Patriarch, who, as she noticed, was able to retain a similar level of mental stability to her own. Similar, in this case, meaning that he managed to look ahead and think clearly, whereas the rest were having trouble even looking in the direction of their opponents, with the Preserver Commander having the most luck out of his Ru Preservers but still failing to spend the time productively.

“In this time, our careful preservation of history has been disturbed by the Ru District’s forces… So much history disturbed and misplaced, so much kept in despite the wasted space in the history books…” the Preserver of Eternity, the man in black that looked calmly upon the weakened and confused imitators, continued as if he was providing a simple lecture to few young students, “I have seen the potential future for Yi City, and I will ensure that this future comes to pass, no matter what.”

He looked towards them, his gaze noticeably passing over certain people and pausing on them.

“A Patriarch, a manifestation of Yi City’s faults. What do you call yourself, imitator of our strengths? Preserver? You fail to understand the right path of our organisation, and thus you show that you can merely hold the name, not our purpose.”

The way in which he looked at the people before him almost made it natural that he would know as much as he does, but even if they wanted to ask questions, the only two that were able to ask questions wouldn’t stop him from continuing on with his chatter. Hence, they saw his gaze to the Preserver Commander, who could only occasionally peek at the scene before him while his mind was too confused the rest of the time.

“A Commander of the same organisation? Two leaders, with such differing stances and yet similar power? Yes, these are the mistakes that we would purge from the world, ensuring that our libraries are cleared of such nonsensical tales. The people of the world shall know only that which they need, only that which works, and the fools shall be no more.”

“… That’s how you excuse your behaviour?” Wei Yi decided to speak up, quickly grabbing his attention.

She could have left him to monologue to himself, which would have left her with a while longer, but she had a number of ideas that could improve her own state while prolonging the delay caused by his talking. It would be foolish not to take the risk.

“You… huh. What a conflux of madness you are. Ascendant, Aberrant, Greed… are you attempting to amass histories to manifest yourself into something more?”

“No, I have no need to do anything of the sort!” she exclaimed proudly, in part due to knowing what might have given him the idea and also to ensure as long a confrontation as possible, “I have a single path, and that is Justice! In the pursuit of it, I have studied Law, Ascendancy, Entropy, Ire, and more, but I have never thought to become another person. I have also never thought to purge history that I dislike, or disagree with. Want to know why, you ancient fossil?”

For this moment, it was fine to drop some accuracy with her words.

The Preserver of Eternity looked upon her for a moment, with the time feeling stretched as a result of the lack of expression beneath the hood, then reached out with his hand in a motion that invited her to talk.

“To remove failure is only natural. You think that you have more wisdom than us?”

“If that is what you think, then yes, I do. How are you intending to learn from the supposed failures of those around you if you remove it all?”

“The successes are carried over, while all failure is removed so that none should learn from it. Right now, the world learns from countless failures, like the legacy of the youth that became the Master of Yi City, when the examples of countless successful people have been buried before us, and will have been buried by your Preservers.”

“You idiot, pay attention – and I will even avoid asking who you think we should be looking up to, and following. Once failures, mistakes, blunders, accidents, fortunate and otherwise, are purged, how can a single person know not to commit them again? No, not even that – how can a single person understand what had gone wrong and improve? If they have only a single path before them, forcefully set out by you and your history, then people will inevitably attempt other things, and then, even if your path was absolutely correct – which it isn’t – they might come across reasons to pursue these different paths all the more.

“When that occurs, not only will more follow, but it may very well be that everyone will consider that alternative path to be the most effective, leading to a far larger number of people going far further away from the supposed best path because of their ignorance. Is that really what you want, supposed Preservers of Eternity? Do you truly wish to repeat mistakes again and again?”

The hooded figure stared at her for a while, his stance not changing much in any way from the moment that she first noticed him up until now. It was hard to know whether he even cared about her words, but it was clear that he was not acting to stop her, making that all the more important to figure out as quickly as she possibly could. So long as her hunch was correct, then she would be able to act with nearly complete certainty of survival.

“There is no need for others to learn on their own. We can store the right path, and-”

“Who do you think would listen to you? Rebellion is Law, as contradictory as that may sound to you. One generation may follow, maybe even countless millions, but if you think that there won’t be one person to stand out, to try a different path, to become Ascendant among their fellows… You’re wrong.”

“You think you can interrupt us? You are the very example of the wrong path, Ascendant, so you must-”

“Why aren’t you killing me, then? You should be able to do so easily, right? I can only show the power that I had at a bad time of my life, but that shouldn’t be affecting you as well, right?” she asked, reaching into the air and pulling out a simple greatsword from her memories, “It isn’t a perfect technique, is it? That’s why you were talking, right? In that case, come and kill me, you fucking idiots!”