V5C66: That Which Survived

She couldn’t peer far enough into the world with her spiritual perception to identify the nature of this sigh-like shift, but she had enough of an understanding to determine that this had to be significant. For that reason, she did not risk fracturing reality with her constant breaking of Law, and instead commanded her forces to make camp around the barrier and ensure that it would be impossible for the barrier to be lowered and turned into something that would have the potential of attacking instead.

It was hard to be certain of the abilities of the Yi City Web when she didn’t even know whether this was an intended use or not, meaning that it would depend on how far the Great Leeches were willing to push the web for their own gains to determine how much it was able to do. If it was intended, then she had never learned about that function, and would need to spend some time experimenting with it in order to establish reasonable limits for such methods, among other things. Given that she wanted to do things as quickly as possible, she had no time to waste on such things, and would instead benefit from simply preventing as much action as possible from the opposing side.

Even then, it took the rest of the day, and she was only able to proceed towards the mountains and investigate them the day after, on the twenty-eighth.

After one final check that the Great Leeches weren’t trying to get up to something while her attention was distracted, she travelled to the mountains via her movement method and floated in the air before them, examining them with every method that was available to her. However, while her spiritual perception lacked the Absolute attribute of her soul, it was limited in overall usefulness in this regard.

‘I do have some ideas about what could be found here, and what might have caused all the commotion, but… going into things I don’t understand is always risky,’ the Ascendant thought, shifting her location closer to the mountains, ‘Hm… I recall the mountains well enough, but I don’t think that the cave there was present previously… Shouldn’t be possible given the fact that the area is essentially frozen in time due to that odd aura that covers these mountains, but if it is indeed different, then it is very likely that this is where I need to be looking.’

Once she prepared some energy that she could invoke to stop any attacks from landing if she wasn’t able to draw upon any of the energy stored away within her dantian for whatever reason, she took a step inside, and then a few more to be able to have any kind of impression of the area.

The entrance looked like what one might expect to find as the entrance of a cave, and so did the next few minutes of walking through it at a normal pace. All of the stone was grey, with just the slightest tinge of brown, and it was not abnormal aside from the timeless aura. Just as the last time that she had stepped into a cave like this, the aura intensified the further in she went, but there was also a notable warmth that began to be noticeable after twenty minutes of travel.

It wasn’t something that she couldn’t ignore completely thanks to her physique, but it would be very clear to a more normal person.

Ten more minutes passed after that, twenty more after that, and thirty after that, adding up to one hour and twenty minutes of journeying through the cave. Nothing of note occurred in that time, save for the fact that the cave system was entirely devoid of any forks or side passages that would typically be found within caves. It wasn’t impossible for something like that to occur, especially not with the intervention of cultivators and planar energy making things that would seem impossible to some become the very opposite, but whenever cultivators get themselves involved with the natural world, there was usually some kind of reason for it.

Throughout history, there were some instances of people obsessed with certain matters like symmetry, order, or other matters that she didn’t have enough information about to accurately understand. They would go into areas that did not meet their standards, and make use of their power to change it as much as possible to fit the preference, or how they imagined it.

Not all instances of such changes did indeed improve an area in that regard – some attempts to improve symmetry, for instance, made things less symmetrical, but only after the attempt had ended and others had the time to examine the changes from a different angle – but that was not relevant for the moment. All that really mattered was that there were no obvious traces of artificial cave formations here, nor should it be possible for changes to have been made within recent history. If someone had actively done something of the sort despite the restrictions, or could even do so, then there would need to be a greater reason for such an act.

That fact ensured that she wasn’t too surprised to find a change to the cave walls. From a rough surface with no specific intent nor purpose, it changed to a clearer rectangular layout, with two walls on either side, a ceiling and a floor that were distinctly separated from one another with ninety-degree angles. The floor was clearly polished and smooth, albeit not to the extent of making it too slippery to traverse, but the ceiling was carved with some regular geometric patterns.

However, it was the walls that attracted most of her attention, for they were clearly decorated with imagery that had some intent beyond mere decoration. There was imagery of natural scenery, mountains, rolling hills and forests, that of living things carved into and protruding from the stone, and even scenes from the history of the individual or faction that had created these engravings in the passages. Unfortunately, there were no descriptions on these portrayals, and so it was rather troublesome to decode exactly what some of the more esoteric imagery is meant to be conveying to her, or whoever these images were even for.

There were mythical beasts like dragons, qilins and phoenixes, but also men and women of clear human origin, and activities they were engaging in ranged from the obvious – warfare, debates, discussion, and one scene that was very likely to be portraying some very vigorous copulation between a dragon and a human woman – to completely incomprehensible, like them all standing in different realms and lands, gazing in different directions, and seeming to achieve nothing at all from it.

She would have liked to guess the nature of the people living here based on these images, but without proper context or description for them, there was almost nothing to go off of. Perhaps they were describing the heroic acts of the dragons by humans that wished to venerate them, or maybe this place was built by qilins that wished to present the terrible acts of the phoenixes and dragons in ancient days before Yi City. Perhaps the creators of the cave system were archivist and historians alike to those that can be found in the Ru District, and they had no particular bias nor view about the situation at all, which would be a completely different interpretation and meaning altogether.

A hint to the truth was only obtained as she walked further in and found the cave system expanding, changing from a simple square corridor to a vast space and corridor. It was a large hall, with pillars positioned on either side, but empty other than that.

The warmth did intensify, and noticeably so.

She would have guessed at which ancient beast could have inhabited this place from that warmth, but there was a slight problem in that regard. Phoenixes were an all-female species, so one could align them with yin, but they were most commonly associated with flames. Dragons were yin and yang, male and female, but they were also fond of flames. Qilins were a male-only species, most easily aligned with yang, but their most common element was, as one might expect by this point, fire.

In other words, if it was the flames of one of the three that was heating the caves, then she might as well just guess randomly.

‘The craftsmanship here is rather good, though, so it shouldn’t be the work of some random group, and it shouldn’t be possible for an individual to complete all of this unless they are really dedicated to it… In other words, I still know nothing about this place.’

Wei Yi sighed at that fact, and progressed onwards a little more quickly, seeking to find anything of note before the day was over. Given the size of the mountains and the number of halls and corridors that could be built in all directions without ever even risking breaking out onto the surface, she could easily walk through this place for days or even weeks without exploring everything that there was to see. It was only due to the fact that her spiritual perception still worked, albeit lacking the ability to look particularly far and could only linger in places that it had already been, that she had any confidence in exploring the area and not getting lost there.

Her Ascendant’s Library was good at remembering everything that there was to remember, but if two areas were entirely identical, then she could hardly rely on memory alone to determine her location.

Fortunately, there was a guiding hand in her exploration, and it was the heat that was gradually increasing the deeper she went. Whatever was causing it had to have some significance within the underground passages, although whether it would necessarily be that which she was looking for was hard to say.

Almost six hours into her expedition, she finally observed that which she was looking for all along. A clue to the nature and identity of the creators of the underground passages, or at least the faction or group that those creators put most of their focus upon. This came in the form of some ancient objects that almost appeared to be fossilised after the many years that they had spent here, and although she had never seen their shape in person, she had a good feeling that what she was looking at were eggs – dragon eggs.

The last time she had seen anything like it was during the apparent seventh iteration of a talisman-based performance of the Fated Dragon Hatchling, so it was hard to be sure whether this depiction was necessarily accurate, but from what she knew of phoenixes and qilins, this egg was unlikely to belong to either one of them. A qilin was not an avian species, and did not lay eggs in the first place, instead impregnating human women for reproductive purposes. On the other hand, phoenixes were most akin to ordinary birds, especially in their beast form, but their eggs were said to be exceptionally smooth, of a shade relating to their element, and with a large symbol or series of symbols covering the surface of the egg.

What she saw before her was not that, but instead a rough, coarse exterior akin to that of her Subterranean Shell, made even rougher by the accumulation of stone, dust and whatever else on the outside of the shell. Each one resembled the roughest possible stones that one could find.

All of these eggs were covered by the timeless aura, and thus she couldn’t sense anything within, so she could hardly identify whether these eggs were even redeemable from their current state, but since there were quite a few within various alcoves in hall she had come across, then it was likely that there were even more, further in.

These eggs would be best placed near the heat source within the caves, provided that the source of heat had existed back when the eggs had been placed here, as eggs needed to be put near something warm. In regular times, a dragon would remain beside their egg, keeping it warm for however long they needed to before it would hatch. Of course, with her lacking knowledge, the Ascendant did not know how much time that was, but presuming any part of the Fated Dragon Hatchling’s story was accurate, then it wouldn’t be immediate in regular circumstances.

Hence, she rushed on, and saw more of these fossilised eggs, most in a similarly poor state, but the further on she went, the more she was able to find that didn’t look quite as bad. Slowly but surely, as she went on further in, the eggs returned to a more and more decent state.

What came first was not a living egg – if one may call an egg that – but a figure that simply stood there, right in the open, clearly awaiting her entry.

From the figure, one might have imagined this person to be a simple woman, but the ash-grey robes she wore exposed more than enough to show red scales on the hands and arms, on her neck, and a few on her feet. The addition of darker red horns on the forehead, short but obvious against her black hair, and the orange eyes with narrow pupils, made it all too obvious who she was seeing before her – even if they should have all vanished long ago.

“You have heard our awakening. I would greet you by name, but I fear that I do not know it.”

“Wei Yi. You are?”

“Lihe, or Li He, if you prefer. We put less value on family names, so most of our names are a single word,” the dragon introduced herself, “You do recognise my nature, right? If history has forgotten us, then it would truly disappoint all of us.”

“No, you haven’t been forgotten… What… Where… No, let me try that again. What exactly happened to your kind, why and how did you vanish before suddenly reappearing here?”

“The situation…” Li He licked her lips during the pause, and the Ascendant had paid a great deal of attention to it, not just to confirm the shape of her tongue – it was not forked or reptilian in any way, unlike what some claimed about it – but to admire the inhuman beauty of the dragon before her, “I don’t think that I am the one who could best explain this to you. There are few of us that are awake at the moment, and I am one of the young and the weak. Only one is old, powerful, and knowledgeable… She will have a far better explanation for you.”

“I would like to speak with that woman, then… before then, can I ask a few more miscellaneous questions first? Dragons have quite a few tales and myths about them, and it has been impossible to confirm certain elements.”

“Certainly, our leader has waited for a while, and she had not expected you to arrive so quickly in the first place. Before then, I see that you have no obvious trace of a draconic bloodline, and yet…”

The dragon’s glance downwards told her more than enough about the topic of her inquiry.

“It was a bit of an accident with a technique I had chosen to practise,” Wei Yi presented the manual to her using her killing will, which the dragon accepted with an undisguised look of delight and interest in her eyes, “I found no relation to dragons within this, so it is unlikely that you will have any special understanding of it, but since you’re here-”

“Oh, this is fascinating! In fact, it does have a slight connection!”

“It does?”

“While the principle of how this transforms your body greatly differs from the manner in which we may change our shape according to our wills, with some of us preferring to maintain the male reproductive organ at all times, while others would only make use of it if absolutely necessary, the changes to the body do align with how we manifest them ourselves,” Li He explained as she lifted the front of her robes, revealing that the dragons did not seem to care for underwear or common standards of decency, “The way in which it affects the yin and yang within our bodies… well, just look!”

Right before the Ascendant’s eyes, the draconic woman’s flashed and changed, the smooth lower lips being covered up by a penis that greatly exceeded the human average size, and heavy balls to match. The vagina was still there, for dragons were hermaphrodites, and the arrangement matched Wei Yi’s.

“You’re right, there is quite a great similarity… Someone must have been fond of dragons, then.”

The dragon smiled, putting her robes back and undoing the transformation, “From what I recall of our days outside, that was very common. There is a great deal of appeal in our human forms to those that dislike the extreme roughness of the qilin men, or even the human warriors that would often be found in ancient times.”

“Don’t need to explain it to me. I’m very well aware,” Wei Yi nodded, agreeing with the assessment entirely, “Is it possible for me to replicate the transformation method? I wouldn’t even ask, normally, but my spiritual perception is more than a little compromised in this place.”

“I… I would wish to give you good news in this regard, but I do not believe that this would be possible for you. Even if you gained draconic blood and absorbed it without any issue, a thing that is not often seen among humans, your body does still differ too greatly. We dragons exist in a kind of flux state, where both our draconic forms and the two variants of our human ones are present. Imagine this form being covered by an Armour Forming inscription composed of the power of our scales at all times, but in such a way where damage to one would also enact equal damage to the other. Thus, we need little power to transform from one state to another, and can choose to grow a dick right in the middle of sex, at times surprising those who do not know of our true form’s enormous...” the dragon coughed, her gaze clearly trailing away from reality, “You, on the other hand, are what you are. That arm, your skin and flesh, the meridian networks… All of it is constant.”

“In the same way that cleaving away reality permanently removed my left arm, I would need to do something on that level to casually transform?”

“No, it is not that bad. Human transformation methods ought to be able to aid you in this regard, but although some believe us dragons to be highly skilled in transformation, it is merely part of our natural skillset. There are few that ever studied changing either form beyond what its natural state, for it is rather rare for us to be born with undesirable features. I hope I do not sound vain when I say that most of us have impeccable beauty and physical fitness.”

“No, I would certainly agree with the first part from my limited experience.”

“You are gorgeous yourself, Wei Yi… but although I did say that we have time, I would rather not keep our leader waiting just so that we can flirt with one another.”

“It would be rather impolite, to say the least.”

“Indeed. I suspect that you will have more than enough time to spend with us in the future, so I should bring you to her first. Just to make it clear, I would not be at all against resuming this once your conversation ends.”

The Ascendant had nothing to argue with, so she nodded and let the dragon bring her further in. It was as if the draconic woman had been some kind of threshold, for the moment that they went past her location, dragons began appearing around corners and in rooms, their numbers small but far exceeding the zero that had been seen in the last few hundred thousand years. All of the dragon’s eggs that appeared from then on were also clearly intact, if a little older than one would assume an egg should be.

As they got further and further in, the heat grew until she felt like she was standing in a furnace that was able to affect even her extreme Yin-Yang Ascendant physique. If it had continued on for long enough, and intensified at the same rate, she might have begun to feel highly uncomfortable, but they stopped just before that point, with Li He stopping by the side of an open doorway, and a dark room.

“Here. I’ll remain outside. Our leader is… weak. She would not wish to deal with more than one of us at a time, and I would rather not distract her.”

Wei Yi didn’t ask about that either, nor did she stretch out her spiritual perception further than she needed to. She would see the woman on the other side soon enough, with her own eyes, so there was no need to at all to make use of such powers when the person was aged and tired. Furthermore, provided that her guess was right, the person on the other side might well be significantly older than any of these dragons appear to be.

She didn’t know who to expect, but she had an idea of their age, strength – or former strength, provided that there was no chance of an eighth or ninth realm expert existing in the current age – and wished to see them the way she might in a world with different Laws.

Fine, that wasn’t entirely true. She felt like it was rather appropriate to avoid peering in with her mental energy, but far too many of her actions were motivated by personal gain that she had no clue how to justify such a thing to herself. It was not too much of a concern, as one inefficient action wasn’t necessarily going to harm her in any significant way, but it was something that occurred to her all of a sudden and she felt that she needed to find a way to address it to herself. Perhaps if the next minute was different, she would have thought about this more, but…

As she stepped into the chamber, she found a small room with no source of light at the end, with the only light coming from some shining red stones that had been illuminating her path from the moment that she began entering the larger halls. It narrowed towards the end, resulting in an area where a human-sized figure could sit with some hint of comfort, and where one did sit.

Her face was wrinkled and aged, clearly beyond the typical effects of aging on long-lived species like dragons. Whereas most would end up resembling people at the age of fifty or sixty at most, this woman seemed to be in her eighties or nineties, and her vitality reflected that.

Even without the use of spiritual perception, the energy within her body could be felt clearly. It conjured the illusion of the inside of her dantian from merely glancing upon her form, allowing the Ascendant to see something that, on first glance, seemed like the standard anchor, core and halos of a seventh realm draconic cultivation. However, the anchor seemed to be ethereal, and within it one could see a large and open gate that permitted endless energy to pour from within before remaining frozen within the anchor, as if it served more as a prison than the typical fuel for the ignition and opening of the imperfect rift.

It was likely that this was a ninth realm dragon, at least once upon a time, but this was not what caught her interest most of all.

Instead, it was the appearance of this dragon that she took note of the most. Black scales and an appearance that resembled one she had seen once before. Furthermore, she was found in a cave that was much like the images she had seen long before, same with the eggs, the halls, the warmth… There was some potential identities for this person before she saw her, but now there was only one.

“Long Mingyun?”

“… You are not him, and yet you have his trait… I had hoped he would return…”

Given that there was no denial to her question, it was essentially confirmed, and that commentary made it all the more obvious that she knew of Kong Shi Meng, the Truth of the Universe, and the fact that he had intended to depart and potentially never return, just like the Fated Dragon Hatchling implied.

“No, he did not return. I have received the otherworldly gift that he had used, and it had been the basis for my cultivation method for some time.”

“I see…” the dragon’s voice was also old, but there was a hint of similarity to what she had heard in the talisman presentation of the Fated Dragon Hatchling, making it very clear that the one who created that talisman sheet had a far greater understanding of the tale than most, “You are strong. Once you reach the eighth realm, the power that will flow from the open rift within your body can bring the world as a whole to a higher realm.”

“Wait, you mean that the rift will feed the world as well as myself?”

“With an endless source of energy, do you believe that it will just wait for you to use it? No, that is a greater realm… a realm of full control, and one that is not within my reach, nor was it within his. Shi Meng’s best attempts to attain perfection in the higher realms was wasted by imperfection in earlier ones,” Long Mingyun said, looking up at the Ascendant, “You must have realised by now that the perfected stages do not simply accelerate development. They are something else, and the more realms you attain, the further you step away from what is possible with ordinary cultivation…”

“The oblivion essence that I have created is part of that, presumably. Do you know what it could lead to?”

“Oblivion essence… Chaos made coherent, and malleable… yes, that is a good name…” the ancient dragon muttered to herself, her gaze falling back down as she seemed to lack the strength to keep even her gaze up, “Kong Shi Meng never had it.”

“Even in the ninth realm?”

“His first perfected realm was the eighth, and it was also the only one.”

“Then, all of his understanding led to me being able to do what he could not. What did his perfected realm in the eighth realm provide him, then?”

“Nothing. It was too late, and so all of his growth stagnated. He only reached the third stage of the Eternal Gate realm, and although he was similar in strength to me, whose bloodline had led me straight to the ninth stage, but both of us were stuck at that level, unable to take even another step beyond… What is beyond that?”

“So far as I can tell, the heavens offer you no further step.”

“No, but the heavens shouldn’t be here. This place is timeless, and although it is affected by the changes on the outside, it will be a while until the will of the heavens is able to affect this place. It is the same with any other region displaced from the normal passage of time, of which Shi Meng had found many, even if his discovery of them had only led to the distortions resolving themselves that much more quickly…”

“The heavens had their eyes on him?”

“Likely. We knew too little, in the end… Did Yi Shi Ming survive? He had said that he had a method to preserve her life, but never exposed it to me, nor anyone that I knew of.”

“She does still live, albeit as a spatial spirit.”

“Good… Take of that. The less they know, the better, and if they don’t know, then it is good for us all.”

That raised an eyebrow, for her words seemed both incoherent and like they were trying to indicate something. Although that latter part was harder to guess at, the stance of disapproving or otherwise being doubtful of the heavens was truly unexpected, and somewhat refreshing to find, especially since it meant that the most notable ancients had a similar view to her own.

“Did Kong Shi Meng also distrust the heavens? I have a desire to hit them in the face if I ever meet them, personally.”

Long Mingyun showed a smile, a weak but clear expression, “I hope you can. He would like it…”