V5C44: The Route to Leadership

Wei Yi did not spend too long within the Shun District after that. She had little to do there, and even if she was to stop and personally instruct everyone there in ways to improve their techniques – as she wouldn’t attempt to do so with their personalities or anything of the sort, as she was not very fond of the effects that she has had on people when she tried these kinds of things in the past – she would only need to scan them, quickly comprehend their methods, and provide them with a manual on the best ways to go about correcting any flaws.

Her range of knowledge was still limited, but with every district and every person she met she gained more and more information. Now, so long as she was working with planar energy, she wouldn’t struggle to provide some advice.

As helping everyone and anyone wasn’t within her plans, she only lingered for a few hours, proceeding to exit towards the east, and towards the Wu District.

It was, to put it as briefly as possible, a district full of those that were obsessed with martial arts themselves, rather than the planar energy that is the foundation of most of them. They still cultivated, of course, but they were far prouder of being able to defeat another with masterful usage of weapons and refined techniques, regardless of the cultivation gap between one another. Most would rather lock their power prior to a fight than make use of planar energy to win.

Standing outside of the district, it was clear that martial arts were their one and only interest. Their walls were low and feeble, clearly a far cry from the metal behemoth surrounding the Ning District. However, the guards that stood at the gates, and the people inside of the district, may well be seen as one and the same. Their fashion and looks differed, of course, but it was clear that all had spent some time developing their combat ability, and that they would be superior to the average cultivator if they fought only using their martial arts.

This did extend to battles reliant more on planar energy, albeit a little less effectively. Many planar techniques and constructs were, in essence, martial arts brought up to a greater level, and learning combat of any kind inevitably leads to greater understanding of tactics, positioning and so on.

The people of the Wu District were not all actively engaging in combat, nor were they all necessarily interested in it, but the focus on the matter meant that everyone would, at one point or another, spend a few years training and brawling. Even those that simply passed by the district – although few had a reason to do so due to its position away from a direct path between any two other districts – would spend a while at a training hall or observing martial arts matches occurring throughout the Wu District, and would inevitably pick up some knowledge along the way. If this district had been near the centre of Yi City, the overall comprehension of combat in the city would have risen by a significant percentage in comparison to now.

None of that was what made her particularly hopeful about this place, however. Instead, it was the notion that an outsider has far more opportunities to gain power within the district than in most others. She wasn’t familiar with the exact structure of the district’s power, nor how one would make their way into it, and so she first needed to make her way inside and hear as much as possible from a reliable source of information. Theoretically, not a difficult thing at all.

“Halt, traveller! If you want to enter our great district, you must prove your capability!”

That was the very first thing said to her by one of the guards as he raised his hand to signal her to stop, before stepping over into her path to make sure she didn’t try and rush past him.

“My capability? I’m guessing that you want to see how I fare in the field of martial arts?” a nod from all of the guards confirmed it, so she continued, “As expected of the district of martial arts. What kind of test do you even intend for me? Should I use my hands or some kind of weapon? Do you want to personally fight me?”

The guard that had blocked her way nodded even more excitedly, “Of course! You are dressed well enough, but this kind of thing doesn’t matter here! Prove that you can beat one of us!”

“With what weapon?”

“You can use whatever you like, although you don’t seem to carry anything on you. The only exception are artefacts, or, more precisely, the power of the artefacts themselves. So long as you use them as any other weapon, there’s no problem at all.”

She shrugged and reached up into the air, grabbing onto the handle of the low-grade weapon she had attained at the southernmost beginning of her journey. With a simple movement, she pulled it out of the House of Gold and swung it down, leaving it at a forty-five-degree angle from the ground and cutting a narrow line within the frozen grass as a result of the sudden stop. It was observed by the guards for a moment, but it did not appear to deter them in the slightest.

One nodded and said, “A sword, eh? I fight with a sword as well. Let me see whether you have that thing just for show! Remember, no cheating with planar energy! We will have a proper fight!”

The others stepped back and allowed them a large circle in which to fight freely, while the guard wielding a sword removed it from the sheath on his belt and adjusted his posture. As he appeared to be sufficiently capable in this regard, Wei Yi decided that she wouldn’t simply win with the virtue of her raw physical ability, so she took this seriously as well by shifting her stance to one used by the Scorching Blade technique. Although it was a planar method, it still contained a number of principles that could be used without a drop of energy, and it was the one that she had the most familiarity with as a result of her experimentation with it and the Phoenix Transformation passive ability.

Her only problem was that she needed to use her right hand this time, as her Arm had yet to reach a sufficient level of fluidity to permit proper usage of most weapons. The only thing she could do, for now, would be holding onto a bow while she drew back the string with the other hand.

Neither of them spoke for a few moments, waiting for the right moment to begin. It was provided, perhaps unsurprisingly, by one of the other guards that had decided to desert their post merely to observe their fight and vaguely surround them to form the arena. The man had been playing with a rock when she had come over, and when he accidentally dropped it, both sides hastened forth.

A sword was a weapon with limited range, as one might imagine with something of material substance, and so the first thing that any combatant needed to do was close the distance in order to engage their foe. Against a ranged weapon or planar construct of any kind, this would obviously be a problem, but the choice to use a sword against her sword removed such difficulties, while the similar lengths of the blades that they used meant that there wasn’t much of an advantage in Wei Yi’s choice to use a greatsword.

Their swords clashed only a few moments after the fight began, and they quickly remade the previous gap after that single blow.

With it, they were able to assess roughly how much strength their opponent had – or was intending to use, in the case of the Ascendant – and thus adjust their strategy to target their weakness while using one’s strength. Against a strong opponent, uses of sheer force would naturally be ineffective, while a significantly weaker one would not require as much finesse to beat, provided that their skills were not a significant leap above one’s own.

As expected, even when Wei Yi held back as much as possible, her strength was only brought down to the level of the man opposite due to her use of a single hand as opposed to his use of two. This meant that their strength would be roughly matched, and that it would be technique and speed that matter the most. From their clash, it seemed that the latter was also similar, so it was down to technique alone.

A moment was all that they needed apart from one another, with the guard taking the initiative to close the gap first yet again and slash at her many times in a row, each time striking at a different angle and at a different place than before in order to figure out the easiest way to bypass the Ascendant’s defence. In combat involving ordinary weaponry and no planar energy – and, often enough, even when artefacts and one’s cultivation was involved – the majority of fights were brief, as they could be settled with a single well-placed blow and a single serious wound. Depending on the intensity of the battle, a single sufficient attack could justify its conclusion, even without injury.

In this case, she didn’t know whether the guards would stop before blood was drawn, although she was sure that they wouldn’t try to kill her. At most, if they had the ability to do so, they would rather beat her up and prevent her from entering the district, whether this was part of the regular procedure or not. The whole process of challenging one of the guards may well be an invention of the guards to deal with boredom, after all.

Each time the sword strike landed, Wei Yi blocked it and assessed her opponent’s capabilities as well, observing every single blow and identifying the strongest and weakest points of her foe’s body and technique. For instance, his left arm appeared to be slightly weaker than the right, and so attacks that came from the left, relying on the left arm’s muscles, were slightly slower and weaker than those that came from the right. On the other hand, his right leg looked to have sustained some kind of injury in the past, as his current stance leaned more onto his left leg, providing him with a relatively balanced and yet exploitable position, so long as the Ascendant made good use of it.

She gave him a little more time to act before jumping into action, striking out at the guard’s head with a quick stab. It was one that seemed to have no force invested into it, clearly resembling a feint of little complexity and minimal difficulty to deal with. Thus, the man did not hesitate to lightly swat away the blade while not overextending himself, as to be able to block her next, stronger attack.

However, that changed the instant that her foot suddenly sunk into the ground and her blade surged forth, almost akin to the terrifying breath of a dragon, surging out from their mouth to consume their foes. It went straight for the neck, and easily cut a thin gash into it.

“There. Happy with that?”

“You… so you can fight like that, can you? In that case, permit me to go all out and show you what our Wu District can do!” the guard shouted with far more energy than one should with a neck injury.

He took a step back and narrowed his eyes slightly, his aura emerging from his body.

It was not immensely powerful, as he was only in the third realm and acting as a guard mostly against weaker forces and trespassers, not proper armies or threats at the level of Patriarchs, but it did possess a certain edge that was not often present within the aura of those from other districts. To compare it to something tangible, one might almost say that it was vaguely shaped into numerous sharp edges, like those of a sword, layered together and cutting outward, forcing those around him to take a short step back reflexively.

As an actual weapon, it lacked any true combat capability apart from intimidating weaker foes, but Wei Yi recognised what was likely to produce this, and where it could end up.

‘The people of this district master particular weapons and martial arts, and so they inevitably become a little… obsessed. This should be able to change their aura, but once aura is brought to a sufficient level, it should have the same kind of power as any other form of energy… More precisely, it is something between planar energy and spiritual will, perhaps with killing intent added to the mix. It lacks the strengths of all of those, and the only advantage is that it is practically infinite so long as one is alive,’ she thought as she quickly concluded what she’d do now, ‘Theoretically, by combining this level of mastery with my Dao, I might be able to use something akin to sword light without needing to mobilise my planar energy…’

Had her mental domain been completely frozen in time, she might have gone on to explain in detail that everything that the Planar Continents witnessed that differed from the Laws of Orbis appeared to be caused by the presence of planar energy, and that all of the five forms of cultivation were technically still uses of the true state of planar energy, but there was really no need to do such a thing.

Rather, she took the pause of her opponent to strike out again, this time going straight for his sword rather than his body. She slashed once, then again and again in rapid succession, each time making sure to take advantage of the man’s stance and grip on the weapon to put as much pressure on him as possible. This was her attempt to convert the Dragon’s Ember move into something not reliant on energy, essentially using her energy to apply ever-growing pressure without allowing her foe to rest.

The guard attempted to get the lead back, but every single time she proceeded to strike in just the right way to force him to defend.

Ultimately, even if she held back her strength, speed, energy, cultivation and Dao – as much as it was even possible to restrain the passive benefits of forced Dao comprehension granted by the heavens rather than her own understanding – her simple calculative ability far surpassed that of anyone that has not focused a great deal of time on spiritual will cultivation. She knew exactly how to attack and what to target in order to prevent him from being able to do a single thing, and she was not going to subdue that as well.

The reason for this was that the Sword Dao, for instance, was about the utilisation of the sword, what it was, what it represented, and the concept of a cutting weapon with at least one edge, a long blade, a hilt and, possibly, a cross guard as well. Abusing strength was not quite in line with it, but to use one’s mind and attack correctly as very much the opposite. Hence, this would benefit her anyway.

After a dozen strikes, she found that his grip faltered, his left hand momentarily left the hilt of the blade, and so she made another attack with the full strength that she intended to use this time, forcing him to drop his weapon.

“Ah, you… fuck, that hurts…”

“Done. Can I go in yet, or should I show you what will happen the moment that I go all out?” she asked, deliberately putting away the sword and showcasing her claws.

With the quality of the processed star metal, even if none of the guards knew of the material and understood how durable and light it truly was, they would still be aware that the gauntlets were of a far higher quality than the blade. It shouldn’t take a genius to go from there and understand that the sword would not be the Ascendant’s primary weapon, and that she might be able to do far, far more if allowed to fight the way that she preferred.

They may or may not have understood the implication, but it was clear that they were far less willing to attack her now, as they returned to their previous posts while the one she fought put the sword back into the scabbard and lazily waved her through the gates, not making direct eye contact. Although it seemed like rather odd behaviour for a group of people from a district that, stereotypically, spent much of their time challenging one another to fights and being happy to receive all kinds of injuries so long as it would result in them learning something new about their martial arts and developing their methods further.

Presumably, they weren’t happy being defeated by some outsider, but they would soon feel differently the moment that they realise who they had stopped.

Leaving them to ponder their own lives and whatever else went through their heads – a list of topics that vastly exceeded the necessity to mention even one of them – she quickly proceeded into the district and looked for the biggest gathering of people she could find. Her goal was to learn anything she could about the district’s structure and the paths available to her, and this was the easiest way.

People speak a lot around their friends and acquaintances, and within a district, most had encountered one another at least once in their lives. They travelled the same streets, traded with the same merchants, and would often share minor facts that, to many, seemed almost insignificant. To her, however, a casual mention of something could pave the way for her approach to the district, and so she would naturally not pass up the opportunity to listen to everything a little more closely than her spiritual perception would allow.

The effects were roughly the same when she used her ears, but it always felt a little more natural to combine spiritual perception and ordinary hearing.

Her destination ended up being a large and open space not far from a raised platform used at the moment of her arrival by two women, both using daggers to fight one another while dressed in the minimal amount of clothing necessary to retain some semblance of modesty. It was a combat arena, one of many present here and in other districts, although the number of people that had gathered was far greater than the crowds she had seen in the Yi District.

At the moment, it was closest to her point of entry and had the most people in the nearest few hundred metres, so it was the most suitable place to go. Quickly, she got to hear the things that she had come here for.

“I’ve been hearing more and more about the Heavenly Sword’s fall… Do you think the Patriarch also-”

“Don’t start saying things like that, not when the next series of selections is beginning not long from now… Imagine if they actually announce that Wu Lang has succumbed to his injuries…” the man responding paused for a moment, resuming with a lowered voice, “If he and Wu Wei Wang, the Heavenly Sword of twenty years, have both perished, then our knowledge of martial arts will have declined greatly. Remember, Wu Lang had become Patriarch after he had proven himself as the Heavenly Fist, and they have not yet passed down all that they knew… Look at what you’ve done! Now I’m speaking as if he has perished…”

He stopped when he glanced over his shoulder and noticed that Wei Yi was standing near him, paying a little too much attention to what they were saying.

“Sorry, did you say that the Patriarch had earned his position through becoming a Heavenly Fist?”

“Yeah, that’s how it has always worked here. You’re an outsider, aren’t you? What do you want from me?”

“Is that something that everyone is able to do? Become a Heavenly something, I mean.”

“You need to be extremely talented and capable in a field of martial arts, but other than that, yes… You don’t think that you’re going to just take that position when there are so many other people competing for it?”

The Ascendant shrugged, “I might not be able to ‘just’ take it, but I see no reason why I shouldn’t try. The people that become one of the Heavenly somethings – is there a proper term for that, by the way, or should I just continue to say something that sounds as silly as that – are they able to vie for the position of Patriarch with no other qualifications, or do they need to be a member of the Wu family first?”

“You… oh, I see, you’re just joking, aren’t you? That’s not as funny as you think, outsider,” the man tried to make himself laugh even a little bit, but failed and continued while Wei Yi just remained quiet, “Sure, anyone can become the Patriarch, but Wu Lang, our previous Patriarch, had originally mastered fist techniques and then expanded his knowledge to the point of becoming a Heavenly Hand, allowing him to make a claim to his position. He may not have been the best at other hand techniques, but his combined knowledge meant that he was the most suited for leading us and developing our methods, improving our skill in martial arts as a whole, which is the duty of every Patriarch.”

“And that position can be claimed at these selections you mentioned?”

“The position of Heavenly Sword, yes. Once you have that, you can address the guardians and other Heavenly Masters to compete with them and display your mastery in other fields relating to the sword, meaning other weapons. If you were to become the Heavenly Fist, you could compete with the Heavenly Finger and the Heavenly Palm, and as the Heavenly Sword, you can challenge the Heavenly Spear, Heavenly Axe, Heavenly Bow and so on,” the man replied, clearly feeling significantly more open now that he had concluded that she was merely joking.

Seeing as he had given out most of the information she might have wanted to know, she didn’t bother correcting him and slowly distanced herself from him and his companion, staying for a while to observe the two fighting women to get a better grasp of the local combat techniques. None were going to be superior in battle against the Greats, for instance, but they could be helpful to study anyway.

On one hand, she would be able to be better prepared for the challenges against the other Heavenly Masters, and on the other, she might step just a little bit closer to a full understanding of a weapon’s Dao, with which it would inevitably be significantly easier to attain the position of a Heavenly Master. Once she had that, she could vie for the position of Matriarch, and once she had that, she would have both the spatial stabilisation point and the ability to invoke the power of the district against her foes.

This was far better to needing to communicate with the Patriarch first and persuade them to act in the way that she wished them to, which she did still need to do with some of those that had aligned with her at the north. There wasn’t that much of a problem most of the time, but the very moment that she decided that she would do something beyond the current expectations of the Patriarchs, beyond something that they would accept her doing, they would put up some resistance and force her to deal with them one way or another if she wanted to guarantee that her plans would be executed exactly as she wanted them to be.

Obviously, the people involved in her plans all mattered, whether they were Patriarchs or random people off the streets, but it was the former that had more of a chance to obstruct her, while the latter would also know less about her overall goals and be far more easily convinced.

That aside, now that she knew what she wished to do, she needed to conclude where to go, and that would be accomplished most easily by simply heading towards the Ancestral Hall of the district, where most of the activity related to the Heavenly Masters and the Patriarch was likely to occur. There, not long after she arrived and stopped by, she noticed a small scroll with her spiritual perception and retrieved it from a shelf on the inside of the structure, getting out quickly after that.

Upon unfurling it, she was able to read the title of the scroll at the top, ‘Selections of the Heavenly Masters.’

Naturally, this was why she had taken the scroll to begin with, so she continued to read on.

‘Occurring on the tenth of the eighth month, any participant willing to attempt to attain the position of the Heavenly Sword after the passing of the previous Heavenly Sword may do so at the Master’s Square, at mid-day. A test to select those who are sufficiently capable of representing their weapon’s martial arts will take place no later than ten minutes prior to the next hour, selecting up to twelve people who shall be permitted to process their comprehensions of the Dao prior to the next trial.

‘At that point, further proceedings shall be announced forthwith, provided that the conflict at the south-eastern border do not disturb our intended actions. On that topic, Guardian Wu Fang will report upon the seventeenth at the latest.’

Aside from the way in which this was written, forcing any casual reader to take twice as long to comprehend it, this provided her with the exact information that she needed, and then allowed her to calculate the exact merit of this method. The delay, potentially taking up as long as nine days from her schedule that might have otherwise been used in the Ze District, as well as in the previous range of the Yi City Web, was a significant one, even if she had anticipated such things in both the Ze and Wu Districts. The benefits were also rather significant, however.

The power of the Wu District, potential advancement of the Weapon Dao, and a list of other benefits that she could obtain from actively participating within the selection process of this district. Even if it took a total of sixteen days instead – assuming that it took two weeks before the proceedings of the selection process rather than one – then she would be a little more reluctant, but it would still be sufficiently quick for her to count this as a worthwhile usage of her time.

In actuality, even if she had to choose between Full Success in something like the Sword Dao and the status of Matriarch in the Wu District, she might still spend nine days on it just because of the sheer potential of the former, and the obvious power of the latter. To master the concept of a weapon to the extent of reaching Full Success in a Dao would offer her not only the vision state of that Dao, greatly enhancing her ability to perceive potential dangers to her, as well as allowing her to use far less of her mental energy to deal with threats that could be deflected with the blow of a conceptual blade, but it could also greatly enhance her offensive capability so long as she bound any of her techniques into the form of a sword. Her Obliteration energy, for instance, could always be wrapped around a blade made of energy, or she could create a new method of using it that fired out swords in place of a powerful beam.

Furthermore, most martial artists loved to pursue the notion that anything could be a sword, and while this was true with planar energy, there was always the potential of making that true without it, fully transferring all of her combat techniques into universal ones. If she lacked a sword and planar energy, she could still use any sword technique simply by willing to do so.

‘Well, this is all speculation, but I see no reason why this wouldn’t be the case. The heavens must have enough comprehension of this kind of thing, unlike with the Dao of Law…’