V5C57: Awaiting the Storm

The explosions were simulated with masses of the Ascendant’s energy, for it would be silly to blow up either the Kong District or the spatial gateway, and the shards soon returned to her sword. Once she put that into the House of Gold, she sighed and glanced at the sky for a moment, uncertain what it was that she even hoped to find there.

Finding nothing of note, regardless of original intent, she lowered her gaze and looked to the spatial spirit.

“Now, I can speak. Hi, Yi Shi Ming,” she said, a faint smile appearing on her face, “Hello, the lot of you. I can see you standing back there, so don’t think that I have gone blind in addition to losing an arm. Speaking of, did any of you come across my arm?”

She waved her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow as if she needed to make things more blatant to herself.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that led to a longer period of silence had she not made that joke in the first place. Seeing that this was the case, and that the others still refused to produce even a single word in response to her, she glanced back into the Kong Prison Realm and noted the absence of one that would most certainly be present had she wished to do so.

“Did Miyu decide not to visit?”

“I think it was concluded that it would be best not to bother her while she adapts to the concept of being pregnant.”

“Oh, she is… right, I can check myself. It’s been a while,” the Ascendant sighed, glancing into her dantian and finding the Kong Prison Realm around the anchor, standing there as it had often done before, and as it really should have been in the past few months.

Around the edge of the spatial realm, the Four Cardinal Beasts array lay and glowed vibrantly, having progressed a bit further than the last time Wei Yi had seen it, although it was not as developed as she might have liked to see it. However, it did not take long to see clearly why this was the case, and why the spatial realm as a whole had not advanced all that significantly. All around the realm were spots of planar energy conversion to killing intent and spiritual will, and the vivid fauna and flora that she had attempted to cultivate barely remained in a stable state.

In other words, things had gone downhill since her disappearance, at least in this regard, and that wasn’t that much of a surprise. Her physique abilities were a vital aspect of growing various plants.

Now that she was back, she made sure to get to it right away, lest she let the spatial realm decay any further than that. All of her physique energy poured out through the massive nexus that was the Endless Monolith, and everything quickly began to bloom and grow, before the other part of the cultivation and harvesting plan could be put into effect. With her other physique ability, she began to sap away some of the energy that she had just provided to the plants, allowing her lifeforce supply to be maintained.

“Since we seem to be struggling with simple chatter, can we go to some pleasant spot so that you can tell me what happened while I was gone? I’d love to know, and, honestly, I don’t see how some of you in particular can look so stunned, still. Great Dark, you’ve seen me return from near-fatal injury before.”

“… I do suppose that is true… even if I wasn’t present to see you be sent to this realm.”

She stepped into the Kong Prison Realm and looked at the others, finding another lacking vital member of the Arbiters that also offered her the chance to start a conversation.

“Long Huang, I see that you’ve managed to improve your technique, but before then, could you tell me what state Mo Zhouquan has been in? Last time I checked, the influence of Primordial Corruption was beginning to become clearer than before, and if the increase in general planar energy quantity has a direct effect on that, then it may be that she is in a worse state too.”

“That is… quite accurate, unfortunately. I had suggested that we drop a certain oddity of our relationship, but apparently its presence around my neck made her feel quite a bit better, so…” she didn’t need to finish that sentence, as the soft touch of the collar offered plenty of information.

“I see you upgraded that thing since last time,” Wei Yi mentioned, instantly causing the woman to blush and turn away, “Nonetheless, if possible, I wouldn’t want to just stand here and mention familiar people and events, so can we proceed to Beast’s Rest and have a chat? Oh, first, though, I’d like to address those that have decided to stand around here and look into the Kong Prison Realm through the gateways that I opened.”

She looked into the gateways leading out of the central plaza of Paragon and into the districts under her control, where a number of Patriarchs and Matriarchs looked in.

“You can come in, if you wish, but I’m not going to be welcoming you in for the moment. I have more important things to handle, and there might not be much time after this in order to bring the lot of you around the Kong Prison Realm, Paragon, and the other districts that you may not have yet visited. Given the current state of the world, I presume that this is indeed a rather large portion of the lands within the alliance of the Ascendant’s Arbiters, so while I will encourage you to look around, I will also warn you that I have no intention to force the other leaders to let you in if they do not wish to do so. Any questions?”

“Is it really more important to catch up with some friends than greet so many Patriarchs?” Gang Xiu Ling asked, stepping forward through the gateway, with Lan Mu in her embrace. They hadn’t ended up having the time or opportunity for any private interaction, as overwhelming as the Ascendant’s presence was in her message, so they instead ended up together near the gateway.

“Yes, it is more important. My mental state happens to be rather significant to my abilities overall.”

“How so?” the Gang Matriarch asked, “When I try to say that, those people always complain that I’m not being focused enough.”

“Those people being your guardians, I assume… Just tell them to fuck off until they adjust to the new way of things for the Gang District, provided that you don’t go too far. Not just because you will have wasted your time, but because there can also be too much of a good thing, the possibility of which rises with every single additional year that you live,” the Ascendant replied, giving a threatening glance to the guardians that stood in the background, “As for my own state, this Arm of Slaughtering Shadow is literally made from my excess killing intent, hence the constant billowing of smoke. In a way, it is helpful for me to maintain a reasonable quantity of hatred within my mind, but not so much as to overcome the balance of energy within my body.”

“I’m not the strongest in that regard, so I’ll presume that you’re correct.”

She went away from the gateway and came a little closer to the Ascendant, as if intending to get past.

“By the way, I heard that there are some… interesting places in the fortress under your control,” Gang Xiu Ling whispered as she walked past, slowing down as to be able to get all of the words out, “Could you point me to them?”

“What level of interesting?”

“Very.”

“Over there,” Wei Yi pointed towards a part of Beast’s Rest, through the appropriate gateway, “Four hundred and fifty metres.”

The Gang Matriarch nodded in gratitude and moved along, with Lan Mu also sending a grateful glance towards the Ascendant as she passed by, with most of her attention being on the woman that was holding her in her arms. Some of the other Patriarchs were a little displeased by their behaviour, thinking that she did not fit the usual attitude of a leader of a district, but they did not say anything and instead stepped into the Paragon square after her, walking around the Ascendant and her people and heading off to other parts of the fortress, or moving on to some part of the Kong Prison Realm.

In that brief time, she readjusted herself to viewing the spatial realm and Paragon with the reach of the spatial stabilisation points, as well as her own influence as the owner of the former, although the extreme range acquired through the newly added points in the southern districts was still taking a bit of time to get used to.

Eventually, her ability to monitor the Western Continent would improve to the necessary degree, so by the time she did acquire further spatial stabilisation points it should be sufficient. It almost made her want to rush out soon and simply snap up the points in the Great Leech-controlled districts the moment that she did stabilise her perception, allowing her forces to invade, but her current inability to view everything at once was hardly the only reason why she didn’t wish to do so.

Her original reason for avoiding such a thing was due to her not being powerful enough to handle the first generation of the Greats, and that was still partially true today. With the increases in her cultivation, matching up against one of the first generation was feasible, but she would need to invoke some of her strongest methods in order to have any guarantee of success, and even that could lead to further injury. In particular, Reality Severance was something that she had no hope of dealing with for the moment, as her power was not sufficient to overwhelm a spatial method of that sort, even with Touch the Heavens imbued with the peak Yang Elysian Storm.

Currently, the larger concern was that she would open up a direct passage into the Kong Prison Realm – more precisely, Paragon and, a few steps after that, the Kong Prison Realm – by linking her part of the Yi City Web with the Ning District, for instance. Once given a direct opportunity like that, if the Great Leeches didn’t act to take advantage of it, she would be very concerned.

After all, they weren’t stupid in that way. For them to miss an opportunity like that would indicate that they had something even greater planned, or that there was something preoccupying them to the extent that they wouldn’t even be able to handle one of the biggest threats to their existence at the moment. If that was indeed the case, then she would first slaughter all of them, then improve her defences and attempt to face this threat herself. If that didn’t work, for one reason or another, she would obviously reach out to the allies that she apparently had over to the east, in the Eastern Continent, and hope that they would be able to assist her. If that didn’t work out either then… well, she’d say that she and the continent were in great danger.

The Ascendant and her Arbiters, at least the ones that came out to greet her, ended up sitting down within her office beneath the ground floor of Beast’s Rest. Since the last time she had seen it, the place had turned into more of a conference room than an office, but since she didn’t like sitting in here anyway, this was not something she objected to. Her old seat was still in place, so she took it and let the others find their own places.

“So, are the rest of you still going to be quiet?”

“It’s difficult not to be, Wei Yi,” Luo Lia Kun replied, her hand brushing past a lock of hair near her forehead, which was no longer obscured as it once was, “You nearly die, and then you return like this… we’ve not even been able to find your arm, by the way.”

“Ah. A shame, given that I would have liked to see if it was indeed possible to put it back on…”

“Why hasn’t it grown back yet? I recall that you can drink poison and be just fine, and you have been cut up quite a bit before, but you would always recover.”

“Since you weren’t there, you must not have heard what the Great Leech had said. Rather than just cutting my arm off, he used a method called Reality Severance, which permanently severed the concept of a left arm from my body. Now, there is a left arm somewhere that can recover nearly infinitely, but cannot ever go beyond that, and here is me, a full being with the exception of an arm of flesh and blood… well, save for my bloodline power that composes its veins, which is technically blood, so it’s only the flesh that’s missing.”

“So, that arm…”

“I call it the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, since it is, quite literally, a mass of my killing intent, reinforces with nerves of spiritual will, meridians of planar energy, flesh composed of physique energy, and veins of bloodline power.”

“And the shape of it seems to be like your killing will form.”

“Yes, that’s due to the concept of a normal arm being severed from my body. Fortunately, at the time of the Reality Severance activating, I had not been in my killing will state, and thus it was possible to form something that vaguely resembles the clawed hand that I had in that state. Nevertheless, it is not a simple replica by any definition of the word, for it does not have a single structure or element that is identical to my original killing will arm… but I suspect that this is not too interesting for the lot of you.”

“I could appreciate the technique you have developed…” Great Dark nodded, “… but this may not be the best time for us to discuss it… seeing as the lot of us have not gathered for this reason.”

“Just as well, since none of you will be able to use it… Alright, as the conversation appears to be stalling once again, can one of my older questions be answered? What is it that happened after I departed, who was that figure that appeared and stopped the spatial realm from breaking open, and how have you proceeded in the three months since I was kicked over to the north?”

Yi Shi Ming was the one that answered, “I am not sure which figure you mean, Wei Yi.”

“I am talking about the man that had activated the Four Cardinal Beasts array and also assisted with the repairs of the spatial realm, so far as I can tell, at least. Given how bright that man was, it would be very odd if you missed him.”

“… On one hand, the activation of the Four Cardinal Beast’s array was indeed rather convenient, but I hadn’t… Huh. Now that I think of it, there should have been something to cause the array’s activation, and there must have been something to provide it with sufficient energy to activate at the level that it did, and yet I remember coming across nothing, nor was I particularly surprised to see the array refusing to function afterwards, forcing my continued repairs,” the spatial spirit said, “That I hadn’t given this further thought is my fault. I apologise for my negligence.”

The Ascendant give it a moment of thought, then shook her head.

“No point in apologising, nor could you have done all that much. So far as I can tell, whatever had affected you should be acting at a level above your own. In other words, unless you had known that something would happen, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it,” Wei Yi suggested, looking back to the appearance of the figure.

It was still difficult to remember any details about it, but she was sure that it was incredibly powerful due to what it had been able to do. Activating the Four Cardinal Beasts array at the peak of its ability without even needing to fully complete the array itself was very impressive, as it needed the man to sustain the array entirely using his own power, only supplementing that with the existing array structure rather than the other way around.

So far as both the Ascendant and Yi Shi Ming had been able to tell, the Four Cardinal Beast’s array at its peak should be a nine-star array, which meant that a cultivator capable of driving it themselves should also be at, or around, the ninth realm in terms of overall capability.

‘This leaves us with no possible candidates for that mysterious figure, however, and since Yi Shi Ming has no clue, there’s not much I can gather from back then,’ she had already glanced in the direction of where the figure had appeared, and there were no traces that her spiritual perception could detect, at least without the added aid of her Absolute Soul. With it, maybe that would be possible, and perhaps she would learn that there had been some kind of spatial invasion from another world where the ninth realm remained a feasible cultivation realm for some, but that was very unlikely, and wouldn’t explain why one person from that realm moved in, assisted one group in an invasion by another group that they wouldn’t know anything about, then left without saying anything else.

There could always be action taken on a whim, but this was unlikely, so it shouldn’t be assumed.

“Well, whatever happened, let’s just be glad for the assistance, and focus on improving our current Four Cardinal Beasts array to guarantee that it will be able to protect us in the future. What happened next?”

“Once the rip in the spatial realm was sealed, and you could no longer be felt by Yi Shi Ming, the Kong Prison Realm went to shit,” Long Huang said, “It wasn’t as bad as time Mo Zhouquan decided to go into our bath and deliberately mess with it, but that was a rather special case… Ahem. Your anchor nearly vanished, all of the things that you set up with your energy nearly broke down, and all of the plants and animals you put here also didn’t fare well.”

“Almost?”

“Yi Shi Ming stepped in right away and activated the old properties of the spatial realm, causing most significant elements to be supported by the planar energy of those that came in to use them. The anchor was faked with a simple illusion, as were all of the other aspects of your cultivation, and most people were fortunately preoccupied with other things and didn’t really notice. Idiots…”

“Now that’s hardly fair,” Luo Lia Kun said, “This isn’t the first time that Wei Yi had gone off, so most people probably assumed that something similar was happening. In a way, they weren’t completely off, since she did come back with something overwhelming last time as well…”

“Do you want to see the combat technique that I can use with this Arm, by the way?” the Ascendant inquired, given that her Obliteration did indeed make quite an impact on those who had seen it, and so her new Elysian Blast might be even nicer to witness, especially if she involved Obliteration energy and some of her other methods in order to spice up the blast. Given that she controlled the spatial realm, putting them somewhere else within the Kong Prison Realm, or even outside of it, wouldn’t be particularly difficult.

The Arbiters looked to one another, looked back, and provided a variety of responses ranging from an uncertain shrug to a rather enthusiastic nod from Zhi Qiu Ya, who had not spoken up to this point and was seemingly afraid to even meet her gaze up to this point. Even once she did provide her nod, she looked away right away, a blush on her face.

After Wei Yi was reminded of Chao Ru, and decided to check on her via her view of the Kong Prison Realm to confirm that she, like Miyu and Shun Liu Min, were doing well, she proceeded to wave her right hand and transport all of them into an empty region at the former Silver Side of the spatial realm.

Now, it was significantly less silver, so there wasn’t much of a point to calling it that, but no new name had appeared for it in conversation so far, so she would just continue until that changed. If the people living in the Silver Side, and within Sanctuary and the three Sanctums, decided that they liked that name, then she was obviously not going to force them to change anything, but she would be rather curious to know why they had a worse naming sense than she did.

Most people tended to reside over at Beast’s Rest, assisted in no small part by the fact that it was both nicer and significantly more developed for new residents than the occupied Sanctuary, where the majority of towers were already filled and where the outside was used for the sake of rearing all kinds of beasts that the Ascendant had found and thrown in while she was bored.

She would throw more in, though, since the place was currently rather empty. It was good for the day, though, given that it would allow for a perfect demonstration without needing to slaughter some random beasts. She wasn’t opposed to doing so when necessary, but now that she had taken even a moment to throw them into the Kong Prison Realm, it would be a little wasteful. In theory, setting up a full ecosystem with planar beasts, plants, herbs and all of the other things that she is able to shove into a spatial realm would enhance her comprehension of the Dao of the Heavens, since the Planar Continents might very well be equivalent to a spatial realm in terms of its overall state.

However, that was her getting distracted again.

“Should I just hit the ground, or would you prefer to see a wall explode?” she inquired, somewhat interested in experimenting with her current power over the spatial realm but not sufficiently so to waste people’s time.

When she had first acquired the Kong Prison Realm, she was still below the fifth realm, and that was the case even when she gained the spatial stabilisation node at Paragon, which partly aided with the degree of control that she could exert. As such, she needed to let Yi Shi Ming take care of most changes to the landscape and world, and she was limited to slowly transforming the spatial realm into her mental image of it. As a process, it required less effort and energy than active transformation – although terraforming might be a more suitable term in this instance – and was possible from the moment that a spatial realm was anchored on one’s anchor. Now that she was nearing the same realm as the spatial spirit, she should have a greater degree of control over the spatial realm, so she would be able to near Yi Shi Ming’s level of power within this realm.

Once their realms matched, it would be her that would assist the spatial spirit, and once she went further, to the higher stages and maybe even the eighth and ninth realm, then she would advance the power of Yi Shi Ming with each major breakthrough – with one condition. To advance a spatial realm, one needed spatial metal, and spatial metal was not an easy material to locate. After all of her time looking around the world during her adventures, unwilling and unintentional as some were, she had only a single clue for where some spatial metal could be found.

Her old mask fit some of the necessary criteria for being raw but processed spatial metal, so she was certainly going to grab it the moment that she got near the Yi District, but before then, she had no other clues at all.

“You might as well have an exploding wall, if you want to,” Long Huang said, “If you can explode a decently sized wall, then I won’t complain.”

“In that case, one explosive wall coming up right away,” the Ascendant nodded.

She looked out into the plains and focused on a good spot that was far enough away to prevent the explosion from harming anyone present, but close enough to be visible to everyone even if they didn’t use any eye techniques, then held out her right hand and drew upon the energy of the spatial realm. To a certain extent, she could affect it using her Earth Dao alone, but the amplification of her control over the Kong Prison Realm became obvious a moment after she began.

What began as a slow ascent of earth and stone from the ground turned into a surge of stone that rose to a height twice that of the tallest person present – that being Wei Yi herself – before pausing due to her own control.

It stood somewhat unsteadily, being composed of a variety of materials that weren’t especially adhesive to one another after being torn out of the ground like that. Before it fell apart, she turned her hand and aimed her palm at the wall, using it to focus her Red Shaper’s Grasp power onto the wall and stabilise the overall structure without enhancing the overall quality and stability of the material.

While it was possible for her to do so, and still breach and obliterate the wall even without the application of Obliteration energy, she did not wish to make things harder for herself. None of the others would have much of an idea regardless of what she did, but it would make her expend more energy twice. First, she’d need to enhance the material of the wall, costing herself a bit of physique energy, then make use of all of her pools of energy in order to produce the most powerful Elysian Blast possible, which she would most certainly need in order to get through the reinforced wall.

On any other day, something like that would be fine, especially with the expanded nascent rift, but since the Greats could attack at any moment, and should, given their usual temperament, it would be risky not to be as near to her strongest state as possible at any one time.

“Alright, here it is. Don’t blame me if your eyes get hurt.”

She raised her Arm and opened her clawed hand, replacing her right hand in aiming her palm at the wall.

Since the wall that she had created was rather large, she deemed it best to target the left side of the wall first and leave the right for the display of the strongest possible Elysian Blast, rather than a general one. This would make it much clearer what her general strength was, and what she could pull off when she needed to against the stronger foes and threats.

All of the energy within her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow condensed into a thin strand, the smoke mostly covering up the process as it continued to billow from her shoulder. It gathered further, into a smaller, gleaming mass, and then burst out in a vast ray of white that struck the wall and exploded, scattering stone and dirt everywhere within the nearest hundred metres, with some dust from the explosion continuing to travel even further out.

It did stop just a few metres from the gathered group of Arbiters, proving her estimations right.

“There. Now, if I-”

“Wei Yi, there is a force at the borders of your perception in the Luo District,” Yi Shi Ming interrupted, appearing in front of the Ascendant, “Judging by their auras, it is very likely that they are the forces of the Great Families.”

“They’ll be called the Great Leeches now, whether they like it or not. Fortunately, I was expecting those horrible creatures, so I didn’t waste my energy. Everyone, if you wish to come along, you may, but I would advise everyone to stay behind at the walls and observe. Provided that one of their first generation members emerge, which is most likely, I do not expect to be able to spare any of my attention on protecting you, so you will instead need to protect yourselves and deal with the second and third generation, if they decide to send in those false copies or the real ones.”

As sudden as this was, the Arbiters had already prepared for attacks prior to the Ascendant’s return, so all it took was a moment for them to adjust to the fact that this was still a threat before they were ready to go.

“If you need help-”

“If I need help, then I will obviously call for it. That being said, do you really believe that you can offer it? One of the problems with the Great Leeches of Yi City is that they are significantly stronger than any regular cultivator, and while some of you are exceptional in your power – Long Huang has her mixed bloodline power and planar energy, for instance – it is nowhere near the level of exceptional that you should be at in order to contend with them.”

Luo Lia Kun nodded after a brief delay, “Indeed, that is true. We’ll stand back, don’t worry.”