V5C55: The War Forged Seal

Kong Shi Meng had continued to break apart incoming attacks, moving at a constant pace, as if time itself was not an issue, but that much was obviously not the case. From the memories of the distant past alone, it was impossible to tell what part of the conflict against the Primordial Deities was depicted here, and thus whether there were still many left, but whenever a battle dragged on for a long time, people suffered. The Master of Yi City was never entirely without enemies in the Planar Continents at the time of his life, and if there were other Primordial Deities out there, they would not hesitate to lay claim to more lands and harm more human lives and retreat once the battle was done.

Hence, when he suddenly changed his strategy, simply avoided the large number of projectiles, leapt over another few, and went straight for the fragment of the Primordial Deity, swinging his blade in a manner similar to the initial strike that had prompted it to change tactics. It began to evade this time, aware of the danger, but the energy within his blade extended by a whole metre.

Thus, it cut into Primordial Invader, leaving another mark upon the surface of the rip in the world. A diagonal cut joined the one that had remained on the part of the Primordial Deity, but unlike that one it was larger and bled significantly more vile ichor than the initial wound, but that much was to be expected. When split into a dozen figures, each one was clearly weaker and less capable of action than the united whole. The wounds didn’t move onto the other figures, either, meaning that it was currently contained to the one part.

In what might well be the most natural part of its behaviour so far, the cut entity made a significantly louder noise, almost screeching at the Master of Yi City as it retreated, a number of the other portions following it in what had to be an attempt to re-join.

Assuming that they could share their injuries by doing so, the wound would once again be split across a number of segments rather than a single one, and thus the overall impact of Kong Shi Meng’s blow would have lessened significantly, which is not something that he wished for. Despite that, Wei Yi saw him suddenly vanish from the spot and appear beside another one of the Primordial Invader’s parts, slashing several times in rapid succession.

These attacks landed with ease, and this time the thing most definitely released a screech as it suddenly collapsed into the ground and moved a hundred metres in an instant, appearing beside one of the other parts and merging into it, the intensity of the new wounds being lessened while the open initial wound opened a little more.

“Did you think you could trick me? You were staying back and attacking the least, so unless a part of you got lazy, then that particular part of you had to be significant!” the Master of Yi City exclaimed, glancing briefly at his sword and at the small cracks that appeared on the surface, “You will not get away that easily from someone that had defeated every raid boss with the smallest team possible, while playing the worst class possible! I’ve seen things a million times smarter than you, and they were all… ahem, too much… too much…”

Those who could still hear Kong Shi Meng might have assumed him to be saying something esoteric and beyond their understanding, and, in a way, they were indeed correct, albeit not for the reasons that they thought. His otherworldly knowledge was simply too difficult to grasp without an explanation.

Wei Yi was able to guess at bits and pieces, but if she had heard all of the strange exclamations that he had made over the years, then even her attempts to study such things would prove insufficient. In part, this was due to the lack of personal experience in the other worlds from which the otherworldly demons hailed. She could view the memories of others, hear about the fashions and standards of worlds other than her own, and even see attempts to recreate them, but unless she saw things with her own eyes and spiritual perception, it would not be sufficient. That was an unfortunate limitation of different types of perception and thought which were imbued into ideas and memory.

The only thing that could circumvent such a thing would be a perfect replica that was connected to her at all times so that her ideas successfully passed between one and the other as if they were a single whole. Then, different experiences would change her mental state, and those memories would still be fully usable.

However, this was a little off topic for the moment, so she brought her focus back.

Before the thing could get far enough away, the Master of Yi City threw out another one of the binary webs, which bound the thing and allowed him a moment to charge in and slash it once more.

This time, the injury was indeed lessened, but it was still severe, and better yet, both he and she saw that the injury was also leaking out a greater quantity of ichor than the previous injuries of a similar size. However, as much ichor had poured out already, it didn’t have any obvious effect on the radiant energy that poured in from the outside, on the unknowable shape on the inside, nor any other elements of the Primordial Deity that might be recognised by her or Kong Shi Meng.

It wasn’t surprising to see the Master of Yi City bite his lip to the point of a drop of blood emerging, a tough feat considering his cultivation realm and the techniques he must have cultivated on this path. That pause lasted for a moment before he brought one hand away from the sword.

A mass of pure white suddenly poured out his hand and into the shape of a weapon identical to the one in his other hand, albeit softly flowing in place as if it was a river captured as a moving image, and portrayed in the shape of a blade. He brought both hands out, holding out the sword parallel to one another, and raised his head.

Wei Yi noted that this appeared to be the tool of the Weapon Condensation realm of spiritual will.

“Warriors whose lives I failed to protect! Warriors that yet live, and would see Primordial Invader fall! Warriors that did not come, out of reason or emotion, who still wish to keep their district safe!” he called out, his energy emerging in the meanwhile to safeguard himself from the incoming rifts and spheres, although he could only ward them off and not destroy them, “In this moment, grant me your anger! Grant me your fury! The killing intent that you feel towards this thing that would end your lives and take your homes!”

His words, were, on the surface, just words. Although the soldiers that still lived and were present may be able to take action, how much could they really do when no precise command was given?

Despite that, a mass of crimson suddenly arose, gathering from all the places were the dead fell, and where their bodies lay still. It poured from the soldiers that stood far away, watching the battle, pouring from their heads and bodies. An enormous wave surged from the outside, from far beyond the scope of these memories, and it doubtlessly belonged to the very people that Kong Shi Meng had addressed with his words.

Looking at it with the knowledge of the Kong Prison Realm, and the ability to convert planar energy to killing intent and spiritual will exhibited by it, both the Weapon Condensation realm and the control of killing intent only made sense. It would be stranger if he had no methods associated with this despite his control of both those energies by the end of his life.

The crimson amassed beside him, but it was unable to condense into anything before he slammed the true sword and spiritual will sword together, forcing them to directly combine into one.

An explosion of energy of unbelievable power and unknown nature shook the earth and the memory, momentarily bringing her out of it for the millionth time over the forging process. If not for the Ascendant’s Library allowing her to perfectly piece the memories together and not get lost, it would have been rather difficult to watch such a lengthy and complex scene without being driven to some level of insanity.

In reality, she looked upon the weapon lying on the anvil, moments before her hand would fall upon it once again. At this point in time, as the memories were clearly drawing to some climax, so was the forging process. She could see the full shape of her final weapon right before her.

From a single glance, it looked shoddy, broken, fractured into more pieces than it had originally been, although that wasn’t actually the case. Despite all of that, she could see something far greater within the weapon than there could have ever been within the sword that was called Demon Killer. It would, most certainly, lack all of the attributes of that weapon, for it couldn’t possibly maintain the otherworldly nature of the artefact once it was shredded into tiny pieces, flooded with artefact channels, then forced back together by a woman who might not be considered sane by those around her if she was too vocal about every single thought that passed through her head at certain times.

Every piece was connected, and not. The channels were aligned perfectly with one another, and yet there was a gulf as wide as the ocean between the Western and Eastern Continents between them.

The weapon was as close to a living, breathing contradiction as an inanimate object could ever be. Yin and yang mixed together, yet remaining far apart, prompted by the work of someone who should have not been trusted to pick up a hammer and create equipment, driven in part by her Dao and in part by the core of this new sword.

All of the memories were informative, but they also hid within them secrets of great value. Techniques and events that she could learn from, even if she couldn’t analyse them at the same level as she would had she been present physically. The basic sword swings, the strange net of zeroes and ones, the disruption of rifts, and the possibility of combining the weapon of spiritual will cultivation with a physical sword. Some would only be of use against a single potential foe, but others had the chance of becoming incredibly vital – such as what she would see next.

Her hammer fell once more, and a wave of crimson burst out.

Two things, physical and energy, attempted to take up the same place, and they were surrounded by an absolutely overwhelming storm of killing intent gathered from thousands, if not millions of people.

It sat around the swords, gathering power with every single moment, to the extent that it alone was enough to disrupt the incoming attacks from Primordial Invader. It did not directly enter, instead occupying the many cracks that formed into the physical blade, and that continued to form as the condensed weapon of Kong Shi Meng’s spiritual will cultivation was made to merge with it when there should be no possibility of such a thing.

“Primordial Invader, your time is no more!” the Master of Yi City exclaimed as he vanished from his position once again, except that this time it was not simply a movement method that could be countered by the Primordial Deity now that it had seen him do it previously.

No, this was a shift of heaven and earth, a sudden transfer of a pool of energy of thousands. The earth broke, a great dent was made in the world, and a shockwave tore out the nearby frozen trees and cleansed the earth of remaining snow. His figure moved forward, a single sword held in both hands above his head, as he brought down an enormous quantity of energy upon the merged Primordial Invader, whose injuries were mostly nullified by this point. The simple descent of the weapon was enough to tear the clouds above, and the moment it fell was something else.

The Ascendant could see the Shard of Warfare burst into a far stronger crimson light than before, standing out blatantly within her weapon as she went to strike it yet again.

She could see it becoming eager to provide her with the last piece of memory, so she hurried to bring the hammer down. As she did, her vision went white even as she was plunged into memory, and she could tell that a great phenomena akin to her first bloodline power awakening began at that instant, but she could not see it in full.

Kong Shi Meng’s blade cut into the head of Primordial Invader, digging in all the way to the neck, but when it stopped, the energy did not. It surrounded the entity and crushed it with the weight of a dozen mountains, compressing a rather large figure into one the size of a human, albeit with a dozen arms and, oddly enough, three leg-like shapes at the bottom. There were clear sounds emerging from within, akin to some form of displeasure, but it was not the only thing suffering.

The sword that was forced to contain the power of spiritual will and was enveloped by killing intent visibly cracked and shattered at great speeds, its state worsening with every single moment even while Primordial Invader was clearly not going to be restrained fast enough.

Indeed, after it shrunk down to the size of a child, the sword exploded, fragments flying out but stopping in the air after a moment of flight. The Primordial Deity dashed away in that instant, only for all of the shards to fly up and fall down in a rain of blade shards, most failing to strike the thing directly but all of them bursting out with impossible quantities of power that would have reached it even if it was on the other side of the battlefield. It was phenomenal to behold, that much could be said without any doubt, but it was still not enough to damage the Primordial Deity, never mind destroying it.

To make matters even worse for Kong Shi Meng, all of the shards that were restraining the entity were clearly beginning to lose their grip upon it, as their united whole could hardly be described as such any longer. It was clear that something had to be done, and when he held out his hand, he clearly thought the same.

All of the phantoms that had gathered above the Ze District, including the duplicate heavens, suddenly fell down upon the Forge of Perfection, coming together into an absolute source of light.

The next moment, after an endless instant of silence and stillness that could bring dread into the minds of all that saw it, a beam of impossible brightness burst forth, shining into the heavens as if to burn into them a permanent mark.

With naught but light, the barriers around the Forge of Perfection were worn away at a thousand times the speed of the rest of the forging process, forcing the Ze Patriarch and his guardians to commit nearly all of their planar energy to keeping them in some semblance of stability so that the rest of the district would not be overwhelmed and consumed in an instant of infinite radiance. No matter what methods were used, peering through it was impossible, and as such none of them had even the faintest clue of whether this explosion of luminance was in the favour of the Ascendant or not.

In fact, they struggled to imagine her surviving such a thing if even they struggled this much, but they suspected that she could do so readily. The tales of the Ascendant led them to expect that.

‘Ascendant, whatever you produce with such a ruckus, it better be worth it! That better be able to bring down the Greats and grant us all a golden age!’ the Ze Patriarch found himself thinking, and without any awareness of a clear silver mist that flowed from his form and towards the centre of the district.

Similarly, all of the people in the Ze District that looked upon the light found themselves thinking of better days, of better lives and a greater world. They dreamed of peace, of power, of glory and greatness, for themselves and for all. Their dreams surged out and took on a shape unseen by all, and was brought to the Forge of Perfection, flowing into the sword on the anvil, into the cracks and broken segments, and filling the crimson Shard of Warfare with boundless spiritual will at the level of the seventh realm, just as a second source of it joined this endless flow. This lone source doubled the quantity of energy, but came from the body of a single soul that smashed a hammer down onto the sword one final time.

A boundless energy, violet and raging, tore out of Kong Shi Meng’s hand and grabbed onto Primordial Invader, instantly collapsing it to the size of a man’s head, even when it tried to bring out all of its limbs to the furthest points that it could reach.

“You shall not disturb Yi City! You shall not let these people’s wills be unfulfilled!” he proclaimed as he suddenly pulled his hand back, the action causing Primordial Invader to fly towards him.

Just a moment before they might have touched, both of his hands flew out again, clapping down on the Primordial Deity while his cultivation poured out from his whole form, shrouding him in vibrant violet. It pressed down on the entity, forcing it to be smaller and smaller, making it weaker and weaker, until it was no larger than a peanut. Then, all of the shards of the sword flew to surround it, forming a miniature array of sorts that combined with the power of Kong Shi Meng, and forced the entity into submission.

It was reduced to the size of a single, infinitely small point in space, at which point it vanished, the pieces of the sword falling around it, still brimming with the killing intent that had been used to apply the seal to the Primordial Deity, but they were not the only thing around which crimson lingered.

Kong Shi Meng himself glanced at his skin and found the traces of the seal, most obviously residing in his dantian, visible from the outside as a circle of crimson framing something that was best left undisturbed. He clenched his fist as he looked at those around him, at all of the dead, the wounded, and the living that he had failed to protect, as he had claimed he would.

The threat was still dealt with, and might not return within the lifetime of the ninth realm, meaning that he might well be celebrated for that long, if not longer, but it was not enough. It was not in keeping with his attempts to improve everything he could, for he had ended the lives of many just to command their remaining wills to give up even themselves to seal this terrible foe. Some may see it as an achievement, but to him it was a disappointment, a terrible failure that he had to improve upon.

“So, with that azure thing sealed, this is what I amount to? I can’t even deal with this… and there has to be something beyond. Once it comes up, what could I do?” he muttered in remorse, “So much for being the leader of a nation. So much for the Master of Yi City…”

He waved his hand, and the killing intent that focused on his dispersed, at least visually. The seal that it formed was still there, but he could obscure that with his own power. What couldn’t be hidden was the endless and extreme killing intent that lingered on the pieces of the blade, which he picked up with his energy and, at first, brought into a pile.

However, something prompted him to change his mind, for he separated them and took out a single shard before waving the rest towards a ring on his finger, which he then tapped in order to make the shards disappear into them. With the single shard, he looked towards those who survived and found them unconscious, allowing him to come up to one almost at random and awaken him with a wave of spiritual will. The man saw him and tried to stand, only to find that his body wouldn’t let him do so in the presence of an overwhelming aura.

“Master Shi Meng, this-”

“This will be in your care, Wu Song. This shard… it holds within a price of our warfare, whether against one another or the Primordial Deities that seek to reclaim their place. Never forget that, no matter what happens to me.”

In a way, Kong Shi Meng was right. Whatever he had thought of his own achievements, a million years later he was still known all over the Western Continent, and was often mentioned at the Eastern Continent as well, from what Wei Yi had heard. He was a great existence, a person that could never be surpassed, a figure to whom all the great figures that came after would inevitably be compared, only to find these new figures falling short.

He did fail terribly, though. It was not obvious on the surface, at least not before the War of Ascendancy had begun by Wei Yi’s hand, but every great thing he had made began to rot long ago.

The Great Leeches, the districts and their purposes, the outside nations and the great deterrent against them – a two-fold system of suppressing them in strength and making them undesirable places in comparison to the jewel that was Yi City – had all begun wondrously, and still seemed to be exactly the same from an outside glance. There were few traces of the Leeches, which were the ancient powers that Kong Shi Meng had sought to quell with the creation of districts. The districts themselves worked, and produced great men and women from time to time, as he would have wanted. Even with how brazen some empires and kingdoms on the outside were, they did not dare to invade the inner districts, and had to respect their power and authority. Many would rather leave them and live in Yi City, for there was far more opportunity to be found there in almost all cases, the only real exception being if one wished to easily lord over a group of weaker people, which was easier in nations where the structures of power were less rigid.

And yet, the Greats did exist. The districts were slowly decaying. With enough time, the outside nations would reach the current level of Yi City, and surpass it. At that point, the people of Yi City would flee to the outside, not the other way around.

That is why things needed to be changed once more, why a great figure needed to rise from the common people, just as Kong Shi Meng had done. Someone to burn away the rot, to forge things anew, to understand the greatness of what had come before and bestow upon it a glory that could never have been seen prior.

Most importantly, that figure needed to resolve the greatest problems that the Master of Yi City couldn’t defeat: the otherworldly, and the hungry.

Naturally, that figure had a name, a name known best to the people of Yi City, but the one to make the most impact was still not that name. Rather, it was a title begotten by a single act done in battle, almost at a whim, when a technique was advanced and a people with no day or night got to witness both, if only for a moment. That title was no longer relevant to the one that had earned it, but there was another that deserved it most of all, for, although it was shattered, it was now made whole.

A blade, with a handle of dark planar stone and a blade made of stars, was raised up, the tip reaching the sky and almost seeming to tap at it, in a clear display of power and ability that few would even dare imagine.

“I name you Moon Splitter,” Wei Yi spoke for the first time in four days.

In that instant, the blade shattered, splitting into numerous pieces, with a single shard of boundless smoke mixed with a pure silver standing out within the middle, the energies spinning in a vortex that rotated regardless of the state of the shard itself. All of the shards shone brightly towards the sky, where an illusory moon returned to the sky but for a moment, and broke alongside the blade.

The moon, as untrue as it was, could be seen from all over the Planar Continents, even on the distant Eastern Continent. All the world could behold the splitting of a moon, the breaking of a perpetual whole into two large chunks and numerous tiny pieces that could barely be seen from the ground.

And while they marvelled at it, or perhaps laughed or cried or even shouted angrily at the phenomenon, all kinds of thoughts passing through their heads as would happen regardless of the appearance of the moon, the central shards of the blade were touched by soft yet strong fingers, released from the gauntlet in which they had been sealed for far too long. The Ascendant lightly stroked the shard, and felt the power within, attempting to feel the thing to which it should have connected if it still served its purpose.

All that the search revealed, however, was naught. There was nothing, meaning that the killing intent still lingered, but did not do one of the things that it should have.

In other words, there was no support for the seal of Primordial Invader from the power of the Shard of Warfare, or the Shard of Moon Splitter as it was now going to be called. That left only a single source of power for the seal.

A source that had not lived for a million years.

‘Even with the lower quantity of energy, the Primordial Deities should not have vanished entirely. It means that there is still something keeping them sealed, something other than Kong Shi Meng, and other than these shards, wherever the others ended up… but what is it?’ Wei Yi thought to herself, unable to arrive at an answer.