V5C42: Departing the District

Several hours later, the underground chamber was very close to the state that it had originally been in. Naturally, with that much to repair and recover, one could never fix everything within a day, not without a great number of great arts masters specialising in the field of arrays and inscriptions to recreate those, with a few blacksmiths to assist with repairing the materials and some pill refiners to keep the rest of them going with some energy pills and weaker medicines to prevent the mind and body from being exhausted.

Wei Yi could stand in for all of those, but she did not have access to the herbs or the lifeforce needed to manufacture any pills, nor did she have quite as much knowledge in all of the relevant fields as she’d like. In the past, she had been around the third and fourth realm, meaning that the attainment of five, six or even seven stars in the great arts was being used to its fullest.

Now that she had the chance to grow quickly, her knowledge was becoming insufficient. She could utilise seven-star methods and techniques rather easily now, and methods suitable for the eighth realm could be applied with a little effort. However, she barely had any of those things, even with her constant attempts to harvest as many manuals, tomes, scrolls and information from jade slips as she was able. All of the districts that she had visited did their best to maintain as much knowledge as they could, of course, but the decline in even the most dedicated of districts, as well as the absence of eighth realm cultivators in the world as a whole, ensured that there was nobody to maintain anything relating to the matters of the eighth realm.

Theoretically, only the Great Families would have anything of the sort. Some small and secret factions, like the Blood-tinged Church, might also have eighth realm materials, but they were too rare to seek out actively.

All of this left her with only two methods of acquiring something suitable – inventing it herself or defeating the Greats. It should not be necessary to clarify just how difficult it was to do the latter point, as she had not yet done it despite the great benefit that obtaining the archives of the Great Families would grant her. As for the matter of inventing her own methods, this took time and experience, ideally both of those with eighth realm objects, materials and artefacts.

None of those were available, and her ideas were not yet good enough to reach that point, either.

However, it was not all bad for the Xin District, as the resulting repair attempts had returned the structure to roughly ninety-five percent of the state that it had been when she had arrived, and she had even managed to introduce a few rather simple optimisations to the array nodes and channels that meant that they had ten percent more space to work with. In the end, once everything was corrected, they would be able to improve their arrangement without too many difficulties. The otherworldly gifts weren’t affected by the damage, and with some care, they were returned to their pillars with ease.

“Would you be able to improve the materials using the Shaper’s Grasp? Some of the sixth realm materials that we were forced to use are only barely able to endure the pressure,” the Xin Patriarch asked once they were finishing up with the repair effort.

“I have already done a little, but to do a complete replacement in a way that didn’t make things worse for the entire structure would take quite a while longer. Unfortunately for the two of us, I do not have the time for that at the moment,” Wei Yi answered, “I intend to return in a brief while, relatively speaking, so why don’t we get onto that subject? Your spatial stabilisation point – I’d like it, right now.”

The Patriarch glanced at the numerous rings that were being repaired as much as possible by the observers, then back to her, “Very well, I can grant you this. I and my people understand your mission, so we will not force you to stay for long. However, there will be some time when you need to pause and linger somewhere, Ascendant. Whether you rule Yi City, or merely grasp onto a portion of it, there will be a place where you reside during your rule. I would like to know what you intend for that place to be.”

“Is that really such an interesting question to ask?”

“There are some, including me, that consider it to be very important. The Master of Yi City had naturally preferred the Yi District, according to the archives, but you…”

“I don’t have any particular plans in this regard. Even if I did, I don’t think it is something that any of the Patriarchs should have a say in. Wherever I end up is my business only, whereas who ends up under my control is something that you can indeed contribute to. Given our current conversation, as well as the time I’ve spent helping you, I assume that you are likely to, at least, not reject alliance with my Arbiters. Beyond that, we can argue and debate, of course.”

“We shall make of that what we can, Ascendant.”

“You better. I have no problem telling you that I don’t think that Kong Shi Meng had made every wise decision he could, and I doubt that the current systems are perfect. Depending on how things work out, I may dismantle quite a few things in Yi City,” Wei Yi said, lowering her voice as to not clearly broadcast her voice to the others, “Thing is, I have a bit of a vision for things. I don’t want to get rid of you, nor any of your family specifically, but the family structure has flaws. The district structure, isolating certain skills and people away, has flaws. All of the world’s techniques have flaws, actually. Point is, I don’t know what you expect me to do, but be prepared for me to have a very different approach.”

He did not look away this time, keeping his gaze on her for a long while, “Very well. I shall keep that in mind.”

With a few brief instructions to the other people present, he looked away and headed to the doorway, silently requesting her to follow him. As she did so, he sped up and quickly ascended half-way up to the surface, stepping aside to one of the rooms that seemed unassuming when compared to the soul ascension chamber. There, in the centre, was a spatial stabilisation point, standing out in the open.

The Xin Patriarch waved towards it.

“There it is. From my understanding, the phenomenon in the Gang District was not caused by your acquisition of a point like this, so I will trust you to use it without further incident. After that, you may depart via the quick path, if you so choose. I will consider your words before your return.”

“I hope that this will not take too long, but if the War of Ascendancy does not end, then you will see my return, and the people of Yi City shall not forget my name within a thousand years.”

With a simple click of her smoking claws on the Arm, she activated the spatial stabilisation point, feeling an ethereal connection to it form and mostly dissipate. She took a moment longer to permit her spiritual perception reach out further into the Ancestral Hall and grab up everything that she could find, then thanked the Patriarch and began her departure.

She took the quick path at first, but the moment that the Patriarch was no longer observing her actively she used her fourth realm movement method and appeared in Yi Kun’s residence.

“… Ah, Yi- I mean, Wei Yi. You could’ve knocked, you know…” the tailor muttered.

“I couldn’t have, since I just appeared right here, rather than at the door. The reason I’m doing this is that I’m leaving the district, and it will take me some time to return, no matter how I do so. I won’t pressure you to do anything now, since there is little point in asking you to think of anything while I cannot bring you along with ease,” the Ascendant explained, “Trust me, you won’t miss me when I do come back.”

“Are you planning to make that much of an impact?” Yi Kun smiled, uncertain whether she was exaggerating or not.

“An enormous gateway of silver and crimson will form within the district, and it may be called upon to aid in the fight against the Great Families. It will connect to the realm known as the Kong Prison Realm, a spatial realm wherein my Arbiters reside. There, the mother of the Master of Yi City exists as a spatial spirit, and the body of an ancient and incredibly powerful entity is used as the foundation for a city. At the centre, my planar anchor illuminates the world, my core surrounds the borders, numerous searing marks act as stars, and an array from the days of the Master of Yi City is used to defend the entire area. Trust me, you cannot miss such a thing.”

Now, the poor tailor was even more confused as to whether this was accurate or not, but before she could ask too many questions, the Ascendant vanished from the spot and returned to the quick path suggested by the Xin Patriarch.

After this, Wei Yi did not linger within the Xin District, moving out swiftly.

During the repairs, she had already discussed a few matters, and had taken the opportunity to also comprehend the rest of the Xin District’s knowledge as fully as she could without exploring it personally, so she knew how to make use of the soul within spiritual perception, at least theoretically. She also shared her understanding of the Absolute Soul, albeit in as little detail as she could possibly provide, mostly because she was rather keen to keep the details of her exact achievement hidden from the world while she could.

For the moment, she was keeping the fact that she used plenty of otherworldly gifts to herself, mostly because it would be very suspicious if she kept insisting that they were dangerous while grabbing as many as possible for herself. It also gave her a number of cards to hide in her sleeves for later.

By keeping things to herself, she guaranteed that even if the Xin Patriarch turned against her, or perhaps someone managed to obtain information from him without him being able to stop them, they wouldn’t be able to use that information against her. That is why she willingly released plenty of useless knowledge to others, allowing them to learn that which did not matter to her while hiding that which would be more likely to harm her.

Unfortunately, it would take her quite a bit of time to master the exact method to infuse her soul into any other form of energy, as the Patriarch stated without any hint of ambiguity that the more powerful or abnormal her soul was, the more stress it would place on her spiritual perception, and the more difficult it would be to utilise it in any useful way. She also needed to get a far better grip on drawing upon her soul in general, as it was otherwise difficult to actively use it in anything, even if she just wanted to showcase it to the world like when she had attained the Absolute Soul.

In fact, with something like the Absolute Soul, it was all the more important to keep her mouth shut for as long as possible, as it would ensure that she could safely create the impression that her spiritual perception wasn’t too far beyond that of an ordinary cultivator. She could, potentially, have two threads of it at any one time, one with the Absolute Soul imbued and the other ordinary, to make some believe that she did not have the ability to break past their defences, or that she chose not to do so. With the other, utilising the absolute nature of her soul, she could observe everything and everywhere within a vast radius around herself, and guarantee that she saw everything there was to see without anyone else having even the slightest clue of this.

At the moment, with her progressing cultivation and the development in physique energy and bloodline power that came with the breakthrough of planar energy, she had just a little over four thousand metres of spiritual perception reach. It was, in a word, absurd – not absolute just yet, though.

The benefit of the Absolute Soul was unlikely to extend the reach of her spiritual perception, unfortunately, although it was harder and harder to say that she particularly needed it. Soon enough, she would be able to observe the entirety of a district from any point without needing to establish a mental map of the world to stabilise her mental energy.

‘I’m not certain whether the Xin Patriarch will end up being someone that disadvantages me, as his particular stance is hard to read due to his Hidden Soul. If he wanted me to side with his district and settle there, it might led to some problems for me in the future, so let’s just hope that he doesn’t get his hopes up in this regard,’ Wei Yi thought as she finally left the district, taking a quick glance back at the walls of the district of souls before turning towards her destination, a district that could only be called the district of servants.

The Shun District was, as most of Yi City’s people knew, was the place where a great number of servants, low-rank craftsmen, guards and so on were raised and trained, with the Patriarch himself being considered to be beneath all of the other district Patriarchs, and with some of the inner family members of the other districts being able to speak on the same level with him.

That didn’t mean that the Shun Patriarch wasn’t still a capable man, being in the seventh realm as all of his compatriots were. His guardians were also powerful. However, he and his people were expected to work for the benefit of the other districts, doing so under fair circumstances but rarely ever being permitted to hold greater positions due to the combined pressures of traditions, the unwillingness of others to give them this kind of responsibility, and their own lack of preparedness to take on such things over sticking with what they knew best as a result of the incredible length of time being spent on training to serve.

Of course, there were no absolutes in the world, ordinarily, and so there had been a few that had ended up taking over various organisations that they had been let into to perform less significant tasks, with an even smaller number rebelling and creating their own groups and factions from scratch. In the former case, it was usually due to a lazier, richer person recruiting a Shun family member to be their secretary, slowly allowing them to do more and more until they practically controlled the faction.

Sometimes, they would be permitted to take over in full, with the original leaders finding that they would prefer to simply sit back and watch the money roll in – not that they are allowed to reap much of the gathering wealth unless they and their hired servant had formed an excellent relationship – whereas at other times the Shun family servant would have to take matters into their own hands and force the previous leaders out with subterfuge and force, depending on what worked best. It was still unusual for them to take over themselves, though, and they would more often attempt to improve the state of the faction or business as a whole by selecting someone that was able to do a better job of managing the place.

Shun Liu Min was one of the best examples of someone’s potential being squandered as a result of the Shun District’s policies, and the things that have been done to her and the other maids at the home of Ping Gangze were technically not something the Shun District condoned, but that was only in technicality. With the size of Yi City and the sheer number of Shun family members all over the place, it was hard to guarantee that they wouldn’t be forced into anything. With their usual submissive nature and their willingness to do almost anything requested, it was unfortunately easy for those with malicious intentions to force themselves onto their servants.

It was why Wei Yi wanted to get rid of their current practises, aside from personally experiencing the fact that servants could be treated rather poorly even by those that seemed to care about them just enough to worry about seeing them with extreme burns. She was going to make sure that the foundations of this district, in particular, were shaken with only one possible exception, and that is if she was highly disadvantaged by attempting to do this and had to rush off before getting a chance to do this.

Even then, she would return, and she would ensure that change occurred. Her intention was to make the Wei family, clan, or whatever faction she ended up forming, be at the very top, but there was no reason for the people of the Shun District, whatever state they ended up being in, to not end up second.

The Shun District was not too far from the Xin District, especially when crossing the gap between the two from the closest points, located at the east of the Xin District and the west of the Shun District respectively. This walk only needed to be a few hours in length, even if she didn’t run at her greatest speed, but she wanted to get things over with as quickly as possible, prompting her to accelerate her movement to the full by using her fourth realm movement method and some other movement tricks to hurry her progress along. Of course, the time she saved was not going to do much, now or in the longer term, but she had already emphasised speed and saw no reason to stop.

She encountered nothing unusual on the way, unfortunate as that was in some regards, and was soon right before the gates of the district, coming across a sight that was profoundly different from anything else that she had seen so far. Rather than the tall outer walls and singular primary defensive layer of the majority of districts, here she saw several.

After the first, low layer, sufficient only to ward off those with the first realm or below, there were several more walls creating roughly round regions, each one rising higher and higher.

Their first layer was effectively a simple wooden wall, behind which were a number of regions dedicated to work of lower value, such as farming, construction and so on. The people working there were cheap to hire, and would generally only be used for manual labour even if they were recruited for matters other than those that they were specialised for. Those that worked here were not necessarily lower than those above in terms of status, but they were not as adept in some aspects of more complex work.

On the second layer, which was blocked off by a taller wall made of stone, albeit not one that was thick enough for anyone to stand atop it confidently, or without any benefit to those that did attempt to do so anyway, were those that specialised in more particular and complex tasks, albeit nothing as advanced as the great arts or managing large businesses and factions, whether in part or fully, as in some unfortunate cases.

There were three more layers with similar elevations in job complexity, living standards while residing in that space and the price of hiring, and obvious reductions in overall space dedicated to them, as was always going to be the case within any ordinary space that did not use spatial methods.

After all of those, atop a rather large mountain that was, itself, surrounded by some short but sturdy walls, was a large castle that had spread across the mostly flat surface, constructed of a high-grade wood with many angled rooves and numerous levels, resulting in a most wonderful construction within which the most powerful members of the Shun family lived and resided on a daily basis, only rarely being available to hire and only rarely being afforded by the powerful of the other districts. It had only a single path leading to it, and the area was surrounded by the effects of numerous arrays that made it almost impossible for most to ever use flying or hovering movement methods of the fifth and sixth realms respectively, although those with the abnormal power of the Greats, otherworldly demons or someone like Wei Yi could circumvent those, as could those at the level of Patriarchs.

Fortunately, the Shun District was relied upon by all of Yi City, as even those that employed the usual familial system starting with servants and going up to inner family members preferred to have as many outside individuals dedicated to certain tasks so that they could focus on training up their actual family members and bringing them to a level that they could be satisfied with.

It wasn’t strictly speaking necessary for any individual district to hire those from the Shun District, which was why the unfortunate obsession with using them and often giving them a worse life than those from the districts was one she wished to stop, in addition to all of the aforementioned reasons. It was fine for districts to make use of talents from other districts, as was only natural for the focuses of the districts to be spread to more than just the one district, but the things that were happening with the Shun District were simply absurd, in her mind.

This was one place where the expertise of the otherworldly demons could be utilised quite effectively. They had many countries in the world that they had come from, and while certain countries were said to be most capable in certain regards, they would export their goods for reasonable prices and result in most places in the world benefitting without literally devoting themselves to the service of others. It seemed reasonable enough.

‘Can’t just step in and demand change, though, so I will need to step in relatively normally at first. After that, I need to figure out what the current situation is, and then proceed to do as much as possible before departing and leaving things to progress while I work on things elsewhere,’ Wei Yi thought, landing on the ground, patting off the dust from her crimson robes, and then moving forward.

At the gates, there was little point in having ordinary guards as the walls themselves could be pushed down with a bit of effort, and there were no forces with direct access to the Shun District that would be interested in damaging it actively. Around them, the Xin, Gang, Wu and Ze Districts formed a secure barrier that wouldn’t be broken into the vast majority of the time, and the large numbers of guards that were trained in one of the upper regions of the Shun District meant that if there was a threat, it could be responded to before anything beyond construction yards and small patches of farmland were damaged by any invaders.

The fact that this was what any invader or attacker would have to get through first made things even safer for the district, actually. Most that chose to attack the district would either be small bands of bandits and thieves, in which case they would lack both the ability to reach the innermost regions, and the desire to get most of the things that could be found therein, or powerful armies from one of the other districts or outside nations.

Obviously, the former would need food and materials for their own operations, and would thus avoid damaging the farmland excessively, giving the stronger guards enough time to take care of them. The latter would need to have the intention of claiming some part of the district, as there would otherwise be too little reason to attack a place that did not produce much of value aside from workers and servants, all of whom could be purchased and hired with far, far more ease than going in and capturing them, especially if their willingness to work was considered.

Thus, they would not harm the fields that could feed them and allow them to trade, nor would they want to damage any other segments of the district as the surrounding districts would be certain to come and attack them if they found that they not only took over the district all of a sudden, but also ruined it.

In short, the Shun District was safe, and any who chose to attack it was not.

As she approached, she was greeted by a well-dressed servant from one of the inner regions, who bowed to her and spoke with a professional smile, “Welcome to our district. Have you come here for business, entertainment, or do you have some other intention?”

“What does speaking with the Patriarch count as?”

To her credit, the woman didn’t miss a beat as she replied, “Assuming that you wish to purchase or trade for something, then it will still be business. I do not have the authority to schedule any meetings with the Patriarch, but I am able to request that such a thing is done by one of his personal servants. What would you have me tell him?”

“Tell him that the Ascendant has come over, and that she wants to acquire a spatial stabilisation point. That’s it.”

“Understood. While I am delivering that message, would you be interested in making use of some of our services in the inner regions? We have a number of different establishments that should be able to cater to your every need, and, of course, a place to stay if the Patriarch is unable to meet with you immediately,” the woman said, “Although I am unfamiliar with the typical price for a spatial stabilisation point, I am sure that you will be able to find somewhere affordable to stay, and something affordable to eat, even if the purchase will affect your available funds.”

“If you’re going to be bringing me up there personally, then all I need is a bed. I would stress, in your message up the chain, that I am open to plenty of negotiations in regards to this and other matters, but it is urgent that I get the spatial stabilisation point as soon as possible.”

The servant nodded and waved towards the gates, turning around and beginning to walk slowly, allowing Wei Yi to catch up even if she was no faster than her original state at twelve years old, if not younger. Obviously, this was due to her being unable to perceive exactly how powerful the Ascendant was, as she had only caught the woman’s attention once she was already on the ground, and walking slowly.

Since she did not wish to delay any longer than necessary, the Ascendant quickly sped up and prompted the servant to do the same. They soon walked at the highest speed at the third realm servant was able to keep up with without actively harming herself through the effort, and made their way through the outermost region, the largest of the lot and the one with the worst roads. There, the roads were often used by the outermost servants residing there, and maintaining them in a perfect state would be highly difficult, whereas it would be far easier to simply have a planar beast or vehicle that would smooth their journey sufficiently.

Their walk began in the evening, and when they had gotten through the longer segment of the district into long after the sun had set beneath the horizon, leaving them in the light of the lamps lighting the inner segments of the district.

Already, they were beginning to come across places where she could rest, so, after they walked past a few establishments that didn’t seem to be to the liking of the servant, Wei Yi was addressed again.

“What kind of budget do you have for a place of rest, and what are some of your other requirements? Based on them, I can direct you to a place that is most suitable to your needs, and then proceed to report your request to the servants of the Patriarch without needing to drag you along for the whole way there.”

“Just a decent bed and nobody that would bother me in excess. Anything aside from that doesn’t matter, especially if you don’t have any particular rules regarding switching the establishment that I occupy.”

“There is no such thing. In that case, permit me to make a slight detour first, so as to provide you with the most suitable place to rest before I proceed onwards. May I?”

The Ascendant shrugged and allowed her to proceed, mostly because she was sure that, regardless of how much she attempted to rush things along, the Patriarch would either see her first thing the next day, or not without some very deliberate prodding and action by her. She might as well allow him to speak with her on his own terms first, also taking advantage of the pause to figure out the situation in the district and whether there was anybody that had formed a similar faction to the New Community of the Gang District.

If there wasn’t, she would attempt to suggest such a thing to some people, or perhaps even convince the Patriarch himself that the Shun District could do better than being the servants of every other district without ever daring to go above their assigned station. With the way that she was considering removing the presence of families and clans as they currently existed, it would work brilliantly.

For now, however, she would allow herself an hour or two to lie down and process all of the information from the Xin District, as to be able to use it most effectively the next day.