V5C28: Madness, True and Terrible

Eight days later, things were different, and few of the changes were truly positive to the Planar Continentals.

First, the positives shall be mentioned, if only because there were so few that one could count them on a single hand, making it especially convenient for the Ascendant. Their first and most notable attainment was that of decent weaponry forged from the metal-like stone found in the basements of certain residences after they were broken down. This equipment was neither perfect nor entirely identical to what was often used back at the Planar Continents, but it was still highly effective and seemed to be more useful against the earthen horrors than the usual metal swords were, perhaps due to the blunter nature of these weapons.

Against dirt and stone, a sharp tool such as a sword needed to be far sharper, and thus far more fragile than usual in order to have much success, and even the shovel that had proved to have some use against the first earthen horror had lost the ability to damage those that came after. Now, it was delegated to simply digging through the ground and clearing away destroyed buildings.

The second change was one relating to their overall visibility, and it was not the kind that would actually be desirable in the darkness. Instead, the structures that they had destroyed had indeed provided them with some more grey dust-like energy from a number of hidden earthen horrors, and then opened up a great deal of space for them to stand around in. This was something that they had wanted, so that was fortunate, and it was indeed confirmed that they barely needed the living room offered by all of these residences, even if the structures did offer a far greater degree of vision than the outside. To replace them, a plan to construct walls and a ceiling over a large portion of the explored town using the gathered materials was created, but it did not go too far for the moment.

Finally, they had learned a bit more about the world, and could now say with confidence that there were indeed more types of earthen horrors that performed various activities for purposes that were so far unknown, and that there was something at the core of all of their actions.

In theory, taking out this entity would be sufficient to advance their goals by a great degree, although it was hard to have any certainty whether this would simply affect the darkness, their energy, or the world itself, as a whole. Ideally, it would be all of those at the same time, and it would grant them a great deal of freedom and opportunity to do more in the dark without fear of being torn apart by the earthen horrors the moment that they allow a lapse in concentration.

This was where all of their problems began. The simplest aspect was that the entity that they needed to fell, a kind of earthen horror that resided deep within the ground, through a long series of tunnels that they had only begun to explore three days ago, was incredibly powerful. It was known to be gigantic from the mere tremors that its breathing caused, and from the growth of power of horrors that increased as they got closer to the lair of this thing, it was clear that it wouldn’t be easy to defeat whatsoever.

Had they had all of the warriors that they had begun with, this might have been somewhat imaginable for most of them. As one might imagine, however, this was not the case – nowhere near, in fact.

The problem that did come about was to be expected, given the origin of the grey mist that had begun to empower all of them once they had found at least one earthen horror to hunt down, either within a wall or floor or out in the wild, so to speak. It was one that Wei Yi had been wary of, but had been forced to put aside when it did not appear to apply to her, with her being the only person that she was able to inspect in the same detail as she would have liked.

Those that had defeated more earthen horrors than most suddenly found that they began to see things in the corner of their vision every now and then. This began only a few days after they appeared in the darkened realm, and it looked to occur only to those with the grey mist in their veins – interestingly enough, the Ascendant was safe from this, and could not detect what it was that was causing their problems with her limited senses. Furthermore, she could not advocate that they stop fighting the earthen horrors, for it would both raise suspicion about her motives and also weakened the forces of the nameless town relative to the enemies that they were fighting, which were slowly getting stronger as more powerful earthen horrors emerged from the depths.

With this alone, there wouldn’t be that much to worry about, as the darkness would naturally inspire certain visions in the minds of those that were not used to it, and yearned for brighter sights and greater clarity of vision.

On the seventh day of their exile from the Planar Continents, one of the stronger combatants suddenly went berserk. His weapon in hand and his eyes almost glowing red, he rushed at the nearest living thing and tried to cut it apart into a thousand pieces, raving and laughing in a tongue that none of them could understand, although this was likely due to the words being so terribly mangled and not due to his discovery of some new language that none of them knew.

Luckily, the person that he attempted to slay was none other than Wei Yi herself, who was still at a slight advantage to most of the people present due to her luck – or ability, depending on what one wished to call it – in discovering hidden earthen horrors, as well as her general combat strength and skill. She was able to contend with him fairly evenly, then, after almost five minutes of fighting without either side being able to inflict any injuries, the man provided her with an opening after attempting to spout more incomprehensible words at her, and she was able to slice off his head in a single cut, the weapon forged for her only a day ago proving to be highly successful and effective.

This was all observed by several others, who verified that she had not attacked first and that there was something wrong with the man from as far back as four days before, where his behaviours were clearly changing, albeit to such a slight extent that it was hard to be certain of anything. One also said that he had complained of strange visions that none of the others could see only a day ago.

Questioning the others with high quantities of grey dust within their blood led to a single conclusion, and it was not an optimistic one by any measure. The grey mist, either by design or due to some issue between it and the human body, planar energy or something else entirely, would drive anyone who was exposed to enough of its influence to madness. Everyone who had the most mist reported at least a few symptoms that had driven their first loss to insanity, and those with even the smallest drop of it confirmed that they were the ones to see things at the edges of their vision, while those who had never been near an earthen horror were free of this. As such, they knew that they could not sit here and wait to build up their territory and power before trying to free themselves.

The Ascendant did not experience any of this, and yet this was more concerning than if she had the same symptoms as everyone else.

With her current focus on Law, what she desired, perhaps needed, the most was some degree of consistency and logic to the world. This was something she could track down in excess, back in the Planar Continents, for despite the confusing mess that it all appeared to be, there were relatively simple answers hidden away everywhere, just waiting to be discovered by someone like her. She was fond of that, to put it mildly.

Here, where she could not be sure of anything, what she needed was a series of constants from which she could expand her understanding of reality, and this was not easy when she was finding the very notion of this being reality a little stranger by the hour. Nothing overt was occurring to lead her to believe that this was not real, but the way in which the world behaved did not seem to be allowing for long-term existence, only short-term progression from a group like her own, which could be the case for any number of reasons.

Back onto the odd lack of symptoms that she experienced, she wished that she could know why this was the case, as the worst-case scenario, that of a blatant irregularity in the world’s rules, would be incredibly dangerous. It would mean that things could occur without any rhyme or reason.

At that point, not only would her notion of Law collapse entirely, even if she did eventually return to the Planar Continents, but it would also mean that anything could happen at any time, and she would be completely incapable of predicting it. Her Endless Calculation, which she couldn’t use anyway, would also have its foundation rocked, for it could only ever compile as much evidence as possible to then arrive at conclusions that were as close as possible to the truth, and at the truth that could be if her limited knowledge was all that existed. This was used by everyone to work with the future, whether they knew it or not, and something that meant that even absolute knowledge would be useless would completely ruin their chances of survival.

Fortunately, with the range of abnormalities that came together to form her current nature, it was not impossible for something to affect this particular matter without doing anything to the other restrictions of the world. Some of the dantian bones settled within her body, for example, could be negating the madness for the moment, or perhaps her bloodline and physique came together to cancel out the toxicity of the grey mist that flowed atop her blood.

There were plenty of problems aside from this, however, like the fact that they would need to attack the strongest entity within roughly two weeks if they wanted to have a chance of making it out alive, and possibly leaving the darkened realm as well. This also meant that their construction effort would have to be for naught, for the large structure they wished to create to cover the town in light would not have enough time to be built. It would simply remain as a half-finished pile of stones for the rest of their stay, no matter how much of their time and effort they invested into it, no matter how many went to work on it.

This did mean that their overall forces were increased by a certain extent. Given the rather low amount of information about the grey dust, it was hard to assess whether it was merely amplifying the madness, or directly causing it, and so the people currently residing in the nameless town did not think themselves safe from it just because they have fought few earthen horrors.

They would need to put in some effort to become as strong as the outgoing forces, but it was not impossible for them to catch up in the given timeframe.

Hence, they began their preparations as quickly as they could, and essentially told the locals that were either unable or unwilling to attempt to fight alongside them to hide in the buildings that they had not destroyed, near the centre of their taken territory. There, the people could reside with reasonable safety behind reinforced doors, and await the end, whatever that end may be. It could be that of the Planar Continentals, of the darkness, or of the very world itself, revealing whatever lies behind it to them.

“The skies are climbing, the skies are-”

“Listen to yourself, you madman,” Wei Yi muttered, bashing the fourth figure of the day to begin hallucinating and crying out all kinds of nonsense. They weren’t yet completely gone, and did not begin attacking, so their words were still legible, even if they were absurd by any meaning of the word.

Another six days had passed, and it was clear that they could not delay any longer. Almost half of their overall forces were now residing within sealed chambers where they would be unable to affect anyone negatively while the rest of them worked, trained and slowly travelled further and further away. This would secure them from attacking others, and prevent the earthen horrors from being able to get to them while they were lacking the right equipment to combat them. That being said, they would still be able to defeat them due to the high quantity of grey dust within their blood, and might be better at this due to their maddened state affording them far more focus on battle than the typical concerns and thoughts of sane people would allow them.

If their state could be secured for even an hour or two, perhaps letting them come on the expedition to the depths of the darkened world would be beneficial to them, but there appeared to be nothing that could suppress the words that they had to spout, the glazed look of their eyes, and the strange gathering of dirt and earth on their skin that no degree of effort could clean.

“What will happen if we fail?” one of the fighters that had a high quantity of grey dust and yet retained a mostly sane mind asked the Ascendant, “At that point, will we have just wasted everything?”

“I constantly wonder whether you are intentionally doing this, or if you fail to consider of the fact that everything will be wasted if we all go mad and do nothing? We have to do this if we wish to live and have any chance at all, which is, I assume, something that all of us wish for, and so there is no point to question this,” she replied, drawing her weapon, “I thought that we had already all understood this, didn’t we?”

“… Apologies, the madness distracted me.”

“Frankly, I don’t entirely trust you here, but that’s irrelevant. Let us go, right now,” Wei Yi instructed, keeping her stone blade out just in case. The earthen horrors were prone to attacking without sufficient warning, as one might expect from mostly mindless entities. “Keep within sight of me.”

Theoretically, all of them could just remain within sight of at least one other person in the group, but this would not be ideal in ensuring that all of them were safe and sound throughout the journey. For instance, if they kept at the longest possible distance from one another, then they could easily be picked off one by one with some careful timing by either the earthen horrors or another force that might see them as foes. Whether this would occur in a moment of sanity or otherwise was insignificant, for they would be dangerous regardless.

“Just because you have obtained less dust than I does not mean that you can simply dismiss my plight, you know. To constantly experience this is… terrible.”

“I’m sure it is. However, if you lose your ability to reason completely, then I would suggest that you do not attempt to speak such things out loud, at least. Once we’re done, one way or another, especially if we break out of here, then you are free to make whatever remarks you wish. If I fuck something up, then you may criticise me however much you like, although it better be fair, or else I can and will hit you if you go too far.”

“You have a very strange way of inviting criticism, Wei Yi,” another person said.

“I have not been in the best mood for some time. As such, I think that providing a warning is very fair, especially if we are on the road out of here. After all, there, I am significantly more powerful than here, and yet most of you struggle to land a hit even with the limitations imposed upon me.”

Two days, and now they stood before it, an enormous thing made of golden opal, with the faintest hint of that familiar figure sitting within the centre, its open mouth and jagged teeth grinning at them.

They-

“No!” Wei Yi suddenly cried out, as everyone around her, the earthen horror included, froze for a moment due to the sheer abruptness of her exclamation. It was as if a silent entity had released a sound after decades of silence. Although the horror quickly resumed its movement towards them, she was not interested in it at all.

After so long, seeing this golden opal thing, she finally realised and understood that thing that had been gnawing at her mind since the beginning, and its form allowed her to be as certain of her conclusions as she could ever be.

“This world, all of this, is wrong! You are that thing from the banquet, aren’t you? All of this… it’s you.”

The entity did not provide her with an answer, and there was no movement within the golden opal, but she did not care.

“Frankly, I don’t know exactly what you are, but I have finally understood that this, whatever this is, simply does not exist. Not yet, anyway. I should not be able to see otherworldly energy within myself via spiritual perception. There should be no reason for all of my energy to remain and yet be arbitrarily limited, for the very nature of another world means that foreign energy is uncontrolled, if it still functions at all. Here, however, there are straightforward, constant limitations that simply shouldn’t exist!”

“Wei Yi, is this the best time? That thing-”

“That thing is false! Come, strike at me. Do it. Right now. I’m sure that wouldn’t take any effort at all for you, given the immense web that you have spun around us.”

It had already begun to swing its enormous golden opal limb at them, and so it continued, seemingly uncaring for all of their words. This would make perfect sense, given the lack of interest displayed by the earthen horrors for their previous pleas, and with the way in which the maddened souls from the Planar Continents also lost their ability to respond in any sensible manner to outside stimuli, it would seem that such uncaring attitudes were normal here.

The limb descended, and in moments it was almost in contact with the Ascendant.

“Feel the effort of us so-called mortal pests!” she exclaimed, her eyes suddenly igniting like the cosmos.

A burst of celestial energy, wrapped and bound in countless thin and distant chains, surged out of her, and supporting it was a dense layer of more crimson power that greatly supported the larger volume of energy. Silver and dawn light merged together, splitting off from her centre and covering her left in silver and her right in orange, burning through the world with absolute heat and cold.

An immense darkness and shadow spread out from her left, especially from the covered-up wound that would never heal, with crimson bursting out from it. A fine and feeble silver almost slipped beneath the dawn light, but in terms of power it was far superior to it, tearing the darkness of reality apart.

“This wound should not have remained open yet closed, and it should have either bled or healed itself with no restriction from the world to consider. However, I guess that not even you can overcome the heavens, oh Fashionable Gentleman!” the Ascendant stated, forming the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow with her palm directly aimed at the golden opal earthen horror, “You want to see the kind of effort we put into our own lives? Then I shall give it to you, now, without any restraint. Feel the power of an Elysian Blast!”

The shadow collapsed and surged out with blinding light, piercing the crystalline surface of the enormous earthen horror and touching the thing that hid beneath.

“What an amusing notion I have beheld. To slay eternity with the feeble act of a mortal-”

“You have no power of Law, and you might hold a single Dao at a high level, at best. You are weak, and even if you have lived for all eternity, that does not mean that you will always be superior! Eternity and mortality themselves are of no significance, only that which one achieves with them!” the Ascendant cut off that disgusting voice, spreading her arms – simulating this act with her left, as always, “Even here, you could not cut off my Dao. You could not cleanse my energy. You could not kill us all with the darkness, so what did you choose to do? To flood us with your own power, so that we may fall into madness and become your pawns, or perhaps merely die within your hell.

“I did not wish to become Ascendant, but I have never been one to refuse that which I am given. This applies to my power, and this applies to that which you have given me in such ample quantities via your earthen horrors. Do you know what I am best at?”

The entity did not speak.

“Everything around me is akin to an open book that I can learn from. Every artefact can be of use, every drop of energy can bring me that one step forward to the next stage, the next realm! You, meanwhile, have granted me an ocean of your own power, and with it, understanding that would have required decades to acquire! So, with it, let me show you what I had reserved for those damned Great Families.”

All of the energy that had gathered around her surged out, sinking into the bodies of all those that accompanied her, all those that fell behind, those that died and those that still remained within the nameless town. It sank into the ground, the darkness, the theoretical sky and into the countless earthen horrors that lay in wait, and from all of these things tendrils of her energy drew out a grey dust which flowed with utmost speed into her body, accelerated by her own effort… and that of the entity that looked upon her.

She knew that it did not believe in her ability to succeed, and so gave her so much power that she could not possibly endure.

However, even had she not been witnessing her odd immunity to the grey dust since the first drop that she gained, she would have still taken this gamble, for merely witnessing the dust allowed her to comprehend a great deal of the Earth Dao. Most of it was merely boosted by the heavens, undoubtedly, but in one go she felt a vision state forming, perhaps to the point of reaching the Full Success once she was done with all of this. It would take time to digest, but it would be worth it.

All of her energy surrounded that grey dust, and burned through it with all five of her separate types of energy. There should have been nothing that she could do something against something this powerful, as shown by the first moments, but then it just… melted.

In a moment, it broke apart into raw power that flooded her meridians, all of them at once and in quantities that she could barely contain, forcing her stages to advance with such a speed that the bursts of power that surged outward merged together into a single unceasing wave of absolute energy, overwhelming the sights around her.

The darkness was scorched away, the earth disappeared, and the entity made of golden opal vanished into naught. All that remained was the entity that had trapped them here in the first place, and even that could only stare upon her in disbelief as the faint traces of reality appeared around them, the hints of buildings, roads and even people slowly fading in through the immense obstruction that the earthen thing had been able to manifest. Perhaps it had been immortal, eternal, perpetual, but it had a limit, just like all other things.

“So this is the effort that I shall face… Soon, mortal thing. Soon, you shall be felled, and the world shall return to those that it had belonged to, before your attempts at insurrection.”

“This form, then, is not a display of your full ability? In that case, I shall get rid of you as well, just to send the rest of you a message. I don’t care who you used to be, what position you used to hold, for there comes a time when you must give up what you have worked for, and leave it in the hands of others. You, clearly, were not content to do that. Let me do it for you.”

She shut her eyes, and the next moment, the mirage of the Endless Monolith dominated the district, towering above it and occupying the entire central region with its five-sided radiance and power. Around it, a pair of shells, one crystalline and another resembling the carapace of a thing long forgotten, domed the entire area, covering it from all outside observers. Upon the surface of the Subterranean Shell, one hundred perfect searing marks joined together and burned with a radiance that grew progressively more violet in shade, as if the stars were burning through them and illuminating the world. At the centre, a quiet, small rift released energy in perpetuity, forever flooding her dantian with power regardless of circumstance.

An enormous burst of energy flooded out of her body, consuming the area and completely overwhelming anything within the nearest hundred metres. A ray of crimson, silver, shadow, dawn and moon light, the chained cosmic energy and the radiant bloodline power all surged up, through the Endless Monolith, and reached up and up, soaring through the air towards the peak of the Subterranean Shell.

Just as they came into contact with one another, a great wave shook the Subterranean Shell, spreading from the top to the bottom, gliding through the middle layer of the shell and washing over every single mark upon the core.

It was as if, upon that contact, each mark suddenly sunk in space by a mile, drilling into a void and unveiling the light of a violet cosmos that lay beneath the fabric of reality. From every single searing mark, an astral light burst out with enough radiance to overwhelm the sun and moon together, and formed a single blazing mark that covered the entirety of the inner layer of the Subterranean Shell.

From the inside, this same effect was visible, except that the light of the marks also formed into thin strands that reached towards the Endless Monolith, just as all of the power from the stars washed over her and disintegrated her form, assembling it anew in the next moment. The remaining influence of the darkened realm was scorched away, and at the last moment, when her body had almost regained its stability, her dantian burst as the outer layer cracked away once again. Behind the perfect lustre that it previously possessed she now saw crystal, a fine, black and smooth surface that matched with the appearance of her anchor.

Within her mind, her Third Eye lit up with a new energy that closely resembled that of her empowered spiritual will, which also advanced to the peak of its current realm. Both it and her spiritual perception remained relatively simple in appearance, but there was an absolute, immutable quality to them.

As her eyes opened, she beheld the Bao District, and the central open plaza which most districts possessed. There were no traces of an earthen entity, and her vision state could not assist her in the slightest in detecting even a single trace of it. Her left arm was still gone, with her lacking the opportunity to develop her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow much within the realm that she had been in for some time, and although she wished to linger and comprehend the situation in full, she knew that she had to move on to make up for lost time.

The blast of energy from her breakthrough did not seem to alert anyone, but it did connect her to the spatial stabilisation point, which meant that she had no reason to remain.

Thus, she did not.