V5C27: The Path of the World

By the next day, if the world even had the proper concept of days, quite a few more of the Planar Continentals were discovered, alongside many locals that guided them to the homes of the grave digger, and the nature of the world became… well, it would be inaccurate to call it clear in any fashion. It was, clearer than before, due to a few rules being revealed to them, but other than that, Wei Yi was still in the dark regarding the true nature of the world, the location of it, the distance from the Planar Continents, and essentially everything else that she had any interest in.

What was told to them was a kind of myth shared by the locals, speaking of a power hidden within the earthen horrors that made them partly desirable to them, except for the fact that few could ever defeat them even with everything that they possessed.

Supposedly, this was a power that all of the earthen entities contained, and it was incredibly beneficial. With every particle of the grey dust, one’s abilities would be enhanced in a fashion that did no harm to one’s own body, which, to those that had no knowledge of planar energy, seemed even more fantastic. It was partly more beneficial to a stronger individual, although the variance was minor and did not meant that weaker men would be wasting the grey dust if they received it.

The Ascendant herself couldn’t say too much on the topic, her physical strength not being affected too significantly by the small particle that she had gained, but from the effects on the others, it was beyond obvious. Those that had done the most damage to the earthen horror as it began to break apart were able to lift heavy objects with much greater ease.

In other words, while they weren’t receiving the benefit of a second realm equivalent back on the Planar Continents, they were certainly stronger by a stage or two of the first realm, seemingly without any effect on their cultivation. Even her blood was only touched by the grey strand on its surface, without any direct mixing. Their planar energy remained, and their cultivation did not appear to suffer in the slightest, but their own strength rose nonetheless, and there was likely plenty of room for improvement.

She was a little confused about the fact that she could sense the energy despite its seeming otherworldly origin, but it soon became clear that she couldn’t draw any conclusions from it alone. For one, she had seen the energy of the House of Gold when it had attempted to devour the lives of its former owner’s forces back in the Kong Prison Realm, and this appeared to be similar. When the grey dust was within the earthen horror, she couldn’t perceive it, but she was able to see it now that it was out. In the same way, the Mask of Yama could be seen by others when it was taken out, but cannot be perceived with spiritual perception and can be easily overlooked by anyone reliant on spiritual perception for their observation of the world around them.

The only problem was that she was observing her insides with spiritual perception, which was exactly when the energy should be unseen. Even there, however, if the grey dust was showing itself to the world, in a visual manner, then even spiritual perception might be able to observe it.

‘I wish that was my current major concern. With enough time, I would be able to figure out exactly what is happening around here, even with my limited abilities, and the world would be unable to hold any secrets from me. That is not the case, however,’ she thought, bringing her glowing lantern forward as to illuminate the darkened street before her, ‘For the moment, the earthen horrors are the priority.’

After the battle, and after a few more of the Planar Continentals had made their way over to the grave diggers home, which seemed to be some kind of gathering spot for the people of the nameless town when they came across curiosities, it was concluded that it would be best to hunt the earthen horrors. Many remained on their own as they prowled the darkness, and so it would be possible to work together and fell them without too great an effort, especially for those who had already benefitted from the grey dust and knew what to do in order to damage the earthen horrors.

Not all of the new arrivals, nor all of those that had fought the first monstrosity, wished to participate, however. A few had noticed the strange grey mist and did not trust it, whereas others did not believe it to be a good use of their time. After all, the horrors had been endured by the locals, so staying here and simply shutting themselves in when the monsters come should have been more than sufficient for their survival.

There were arguments about this between almost everyone, of course. Those who would go felt that staying back and doing nothing would be a betrayal and a show of laziness, as those people would simply proceed on with the rest of them once a way to return was found. The others were of the opinion that they would only throw their lives away fighting the earthen horrors, to no real benefit. Instead, it would be far better for all of them to settle down and make the most of this place, allowing for families to develop here and for the Planar Continentals to adapt to the new world that they were forced into by circumstance none could quite understand.

The Ascendant sided with the former opinion, unsurprisingly, although she did not think that forcing those that had no interest in fighting out into the front lines, so to speak, would be wise.

None of them would be particularly helpful in battle, as they would never invest their full strength and be as ready to leave as the mason, who was not found even after a whole day seemed to pass in the dark. Presumably, he was devoured by some other earthen horror, which was not particularly concerning to any of the other locals.

Instead, letting those people work on something that they were more interested in would grant better results overall. Having the basic infrastructure of the world be reinforced by them would mean that they would have greatest access to food, equipment and whatever else they needed, although it was difficult to understand exactly how such things were even obtained within the realm of earthen darkness. All that the Ascendant could obtain from the others was that there were things made of stone-like material that could be consumed for sustenance, and from another a clear liquid would regularly drop that could be drunk without negative effects to oneself.

Armour and weapons could also be produced from the stone and dirt around them, and they would be significantly more suitable in this world than the feeble metallic weaponry that they had managed to enter with.

Perhaps this didn’t even need to be said, but the various gemstones that were brought in from those that resided in the Bao District were not of much use to either group. The gemstone-focused arts of the Bao District were reliant upon planar energy, which was absent from the earthen realm, as well as other gems, which were also in short supply. Even in the Planar Continents, with just the gems that were brought over by those that had them, they would not be able to display one percent of their potential.

Being the one to have guided many of the Planar Continentals in attacking the first earthen horror, she had a degree of authority and trust, even with her obvious injury. She was allowed to comment and remark more than the average person, and she made use of that authority to get the two groups to leave one another alone. Eventually, when the threats to them were gone, they could engage in lengthy debate, but for now, the earthen horrors wandered round them still, and so it would be a waste of time, effort and potentially their lives to do so now. The people on both sides weren’t entirely pleased with such a neutral outcome, but they weren’t too upset, either.

One thing that they did decide to do, however, was to provide a large number of suggestions for her to go off and contribute as much as possible to the effort of exterminating the earthen horrors in the region. This was a task that all of those that wished to leave as soon as possible would participate in, unless they were literally incapable of fighting their enemies at all, and she was asked to take charge.

Hence, she was in a dark place, holding up a lantern, attempting to locate an earthen horror that was believed to have passed through the area. She had not yet found any definitive traces, as the entire world was filled to the brim with earth and stone and did not change a bit even if someone chipped away at it for a few decades, so it was hard to be certain of anything other than the relative stability of the world itself. As for the homes around her, or what she had to presume to be residences as she could only see their walls and the tips of their rooves, they seemed fine, not that she even knew what they had looked like prior to the supposed arrival of this wave of earthen horrors, who may well have done nothing at all to the area, or have changed it completely.

A guide would, in theory, have been useful in this regard, but none of the locals were especially strong or agile. In a large mob, perhaps they would have some kind of threat towards either the Planar Continentals or the earthen horrors, but on their own, they would only serve as meals for the latter.

In addition, it didn’t really matter whether the area was or was not different, so there was really no reason for her to bring anyone at all along. Some did wish to accompany her, mostly to take some part of the grey mist from the slain earthen horrors and benefit themselves, but they were all Planar Continentals and she refused. She could take one of the horrors on without any help, and the only issue was that she needed to take far longer to avoid enemy attacks while inflicting significantly effective attacks of her own.

She could manage it well enough on her own, and would do so, if there was a chance.

‘So far, it doesn’t look like it, however. Having only fifteen metres ahead of me is rather bad for searching for things that aren’t usually much larger than a human.’

Even a larger entity would be difficult to see, but at the very least they would leave behind larger marks and have a larger chance of being obvious to her if she did come across them. With the way that everything was made from dirt and stone, to the extent that it was nigh impossible to tell it apart from some of the supposed wood or glass, she could easily have walked past a number of earthen horrors that simply didn’t stand out as much, and didn’t move for one reason or another.

In fact, what were the restrictions for those things? Could the entire world be made from them?

The thought was so random, so arbitrary, that she just had to pause and look down at the ground, putting down the lantern a moment later. Certainly, this was extremely absurd, but she did appear to be in another world, so would this not make perfect sense? The earthen horrors were native to the world, or, at the very least, were extremely suited to it, so if they were able to reside her comfortably, then why would they not be able to hide within the ground and leap out to ambush those that were not prepared for such an attack?

‘Normally, I wouldn’t be worried about looking foolish, but here I am not particularly well known, so the darkness is rather beneficial to ensuring that I wouldn’t get a worse reputation and thus less authority in most regards,’ Wei Yi thought as she took out her sword and aimed it at a point that seemed most likely to be the hiding place of an earthen horror.

Although the sword was weaker against the earthen horrors than it would have been in the Planar Continents, it would still endure a stab into the ground, so she wasn’t concerned about damaging it.

Her weapon plunged into the ground, and for just a moment, it did seem exactly as it should. It simply penetrated the dirt and the stone beneath, meeting some resistance but not as much as she might had she needed to attack from a less convenient position than this one, where her plunge could use all of her strength in combination with the gravity of the world, the downward pressure of which generally matched that of the Planar Continents so far.

A moment after, however, a series of large cracks formed in the ground, and a grey mist floated out.

She had quite a bit to say on the matter, but she simply couldn’t get a word out while the grey mist floated into her, and her exclusively, greatly overwhelming the amount that any of the contributors to the first earthen horror kill had received.

Again, it seemed to only cover her blood, not directly modifying it in any way, and this time, the effect was far more obvious, with everything from her breathing to her strength getting noticeably better. It was essentially all that she had been able to observe about the others, intensified by a noticeable bit, although she couldn’t say that it was an entirely linear progression, rather seeming to provide just a little less benefit than one might have expected from the amount she had received the first time an earthen horror was slain.

“Not that I have any right to complain… Rather, how did I figure out where to strike, and to do so in the first place?” she frowned, for this was far more significant than a power that did not appear to actively result in any detrimental effect, “The stone here was indeed different, just a little bit, but that… ah. Dao. I understand three of five possible combination of earth and the elements in general, and when combined with the Dao of Law, Sword Dao, and so on… it is not impossible that I would detect something subtle. That is the whole power of the Initial Accomplishment of Dao, after all, although I had presumed that this originated in no small part from the will of the heavens, not the Dao itself. Clearly, I must have been mistaken, or else some part of the heaven’s insights have been brought along with me…”

There was something about this that she clearly could learn more about, but she could not wait now that she discovered that the entities she and the rest of the Planar Continentals hunted may reside within the walls and floor. Their impression was that they were purely aggressive, so that it was clear that this was not the case, it needed to be reported.

While the others may not have quite the same luck and ability to perceive and deal with the earthen horrors as her due to the difference in their Dao, so long as they were aware of the possibility, they could be on the lookout for it. After all, there were certain signs that could be perceived so long as one put in the effort, and so long as a sufficient number of weapons were held by the outgoing forces, they could just stab at and smash everything they could. With enough effort and time, they would destroy everything that might lurk near the surface, and then they wouldn’t need to be afraid of attack while repairing everything they damaged.

Who would even know what the world would end up being like after the earthen horrors, even if it was only the local ones, were dealt with? Perhaps they were, in some part, the cause for the black fog that obscured the entirety of the world, and removing them would allow them to see further into the distance, somehow. It was a little absurd, of course, but so was attacking the street in order to damage an entity that had no right to hide there after the behaviour shown by its fellow horror.

Rather than going straight to the grave diggers house, however, she took her time and progressed through the streets, seeking other hidden entities. There was no reason to assume that there would only be one hiding in the ground.

There turned out to have been a total of five within the ground, at least so far as she had been able to observe. She did not only stab in places where she was almost certain that something was amiss, but also in those that just seemed a little odd in one way or another, resulting in her sword being in a less than ideal state by the end of it all.

She did clean it, but without the right equipment for it, she wouldn’t be able to properly sharpen the blade, and it would fall into decay and lose any value that it still retained.

This was not something that she would allow to happen, simply because there was no good reason at all to do such a thing, and because it was rather difficult to find a replacement to her weapon. There were quite a few swords around the nameless town in which they had been forced to reside in, but all of them were made from a stone-like substance – presumably, actual stone that would be more suitably called a metal-like stone instead – and were not ones that she wished to even attempt to utilise. In her mind, this was not a safe thing to do, and neither was it particularly reasonable to use a strange stone against more strange stone.

A normal, functional weapon was best, regardless of the origin, and it would have to be one that she had created, although it was difficult to guess whether there was even such an option in this world. She had relied too greatly on her own physiques and energy, and hence she would be unable to do much without them. This was rather unfortunate, but she couldn’t do much about it unless the grey dust that gathered in her blood vessels would be able to replace either one.

That wasn’t even guaranteed or likely, so she had already spent a little while on her way to the alleyway in which she had discovered the first hidden earthen horror to calculate a way to apply as much of her existing smithing knowledge to forge a weapon that would be suitable for her. She wasn’t that much of a fan of swords, as strange as that might seem with the number of swords that she happened to use over her life, preferring her fists and hands, as well as claws, but none of those were particularly easy to use, not to mention the fact that they worked far better when one had two hands to fight with. Her current star metal gauntlets were already sufficiently tough, enduring a few tests against other weapons, but with their limited reach she could not confront most earthen horrors nor do much damage against their earthen forms.

She was slowly beginning to hate the word earthen, which was a far less significant issue.

The five horrors that she had dispatched with more ease than she had expected at first had all contributed to her power, and that meant that her strength had now notably risen, to the extent that there was essentially no chance of anyone from the Planar Continental group defeating her.

And yet, she knew from the very moment that she had seen the first earthen horror that this would not allow her to act as she wished within the darkened realm. Those things were terrifying for one without planar energy, but given the nature of earth, there had to be far, far more entities out there that she couldn’t handle with her current strength and equipment. For instance, horrors made of stone rather than tough brown dirt, and entities that were far larger, faster, and stronger than the one that she had actually fought.

Perhaps there would be entities made of gemstone as well, given that this realm had been accessed through the Bao District, but it was also the case that most gems were rather hard and durable, at least against certain attacks. It would be entirely reasonable to see the strongest entities being composed of the strongest types of diamond that existed in this world.

It was with this though that she had returned to a street where lights were prevalent and where people could be seen, most armed and ready for attack just in case an earthen horror made its way towards them yet again. These people had all benefitted from the first slain entity, and so they would have some chance against the dirt and stone-made things, and they were keen to fight while the rest of the people remained behind them for the moment, pursuing various attempts and crafts.

There were all kinds of people that had been pulled into the darkened world, with some presumably simply not being in the area when they appeared and thus not yet known to them, and they had a variety of specialties that had a chance to be useful. The only issue was that the extremely limited materials and tools combined with the lack of planar energy made it rather difficult to actually utilise the vast majority of their skills. Without the same kind of experience that Wei Yi had, it was more difficult for them to adapt, and the lack of familiar items to work with made it far more complicated to know what knowledge they could even apply here.

Essentially, they were experiencing the same issue as she was, just with far less preparation for something like it.

Once on a street within the domain that they had claimed in the nameless city, she did not need to go much further. Sure, her perception was currently unable to stretch beyond fifteen metres horizontally, and twenty metres vertically, but that was not applied to her in a manner that meant nothing could reach out further. Everyone on their streets was placed so that they would always see at least one other person at the edge of their vision, two if they were not at the end of a chain of people.

That meant that so long as one of them was informed of something and called out to his or her fellows, the message could spread throughout the entirety of their zone and be delivered to those that needed to hear it. In this case, it was the majority of the combatants, so things would need to be a little more complex, but not that difficult.

“Everyone, I have something significant to report regarding the earthen horrors!”

Her voice easily reached the warriors stationed on either side of her perception, and they then shared the message with those that they could see, condensing the wording to simply mention earthen horrors.

It took a little while for everything to be passed along, but once it was, there was a sudden appearance of numerous figures from the darkened fog, with each one curious what it was that the one-armed woman had to say. Most were not familiar with her, or the word of the Ascendant that had slowly been spreading to the south, so the only significantly abnormal thing that they could latch onto was the fact that she had a single arm and yet more fighting prowess in this kind of environment than most of them.

All of them had tried only going as far as they would need to in order to be within view of Wei Yi, but that proved rather difficult with the number that accumulated. They had occupied a rather large area, and so they needed to use nearly two thirds of their total willing forces simply to secure the area. Hence, it was all the more important that they figure out a way to expand their range of perception, as they could technically secure larger areas but were simply unable to do so due to the fifteen metres that were keeping them in check.

Once they were gathered, however, it was her time to speak.

“I have discovered that the earthen horrors can also hide within the ground. Rather, something that also releases grey mist was doing this, as I have not verified the exact appearance of the entity hidden beneath the ground, but I suspect that they are also dangerous to us,” she explained, noting the fact that none of the entities had actively attacked her, not even when she was on her fifth kill of the day.

“Hide within the ground? Why would any of those things just sit in the ground and do nothing to any of us?”

“Why the fuck would I know? Are you saying that you understand the full nature of the entities that we are facing? I certainly do not, unfortunate as that is, and so we just need to know what is happening for the moment. Once we figure out how to work with the rules of the world, we will likely have understood a little regarding the purpose of them, and will then have the time and energy to further comprehend said purpose,” Wei Yi replied, “Just think about it for a moment, and you should understand that wasting your time understanding why something occurs before dealing with it can be rather dangerous for the moment.”

“How many have you found that were like this? Is it just a coinci-”

“No, it is not a coincidence. I found…” she turned so that her voice would be clearer for those on the other side of her perceptive radius, “… a total of five such entities within the ground. I don’t know why they did this, when they had decided to bury themselves, or who may have done it for them, and I don’t know what their full body looked like. Anything else?”

“How did they-”

“No idea. Somebody could have come along with a shovel, or maybe they can move through earthen objects with far more ease than we anticipated after the difficulty with which the first one had attacked the door. Perhaps there are different earthen horrors with different abilities that we need to consider.”

She couldn’t answer any of the questions, and neither could the others here, nor the local people. None of them were aware of what the Laws of the world were, whether it was another world, or even if anything they were seeing was absolutely real. Perhaps they were all befuddled by an illusion of the world in which they were in, and the truth of nearly everything they beheld was not what it appeared. Without knowing any of this, attempting to understand the why of anything was essentially pointless, as they might simply figure out the fictitious logic of a world that will not remain as is for long.

As such, she was going to make sure that they had their priorities straight, even if they ended up going their separate ways for one reason or another. While she did not have any arbitrary attachment to anyone here simply because they were from the same world, she was interested in keeping the civilised and semi-intelligent – well, if one wished to be particularly critical of certain negative elements of society – people of any worlds in the best state possible.

“In that case, should we just attack everything, everyone and everywhere?” one particularly inquisitive person asked after a brief pause.

“No, that is not ideal. I would, however, suggest to the apparent owners of the town that it might be a good idea to temporarily destroy some buildings to confirm that there are indeed no hidden earthen horrors within them. There don’t appear to be enough people in the town to actually require so many residences, anyway, so it might be wise to do this even if we find nothing, if only to make guarding the place easier,” the Ascendant explained, glancing around and finding that there were unfortunately no townsfolk paying attention to her announcement, “For now, just attack any place on the ground that looks abnormal, provided that your weapon has the durability to spare. I don’t know how much force a blunt weapon will require, but if you can just grab a random rock, it should be enough.”

With that, she had little more to say, so she nodded and let them return to their original places, while she sought out someone from the town, preferably the grave digger, to ask them for permission to demolish their homes and property in the hope of finding some earthen horrors. If that proved successful, then they might also have the hope of warding off some of the darkness in order to make their lives slightly more pleasant. However, the chances were ultimately low.

Of course, not everything would ever be that simple.