V5C68: To Rise Beyond

Collecting the large supply of planar stones and various energy storage artefacts that the dragons had – those that still worked, for a number had been turned to stone – took little time, and so they were left to move onto the next part of her visit, and it was one that appeared to be on the minds of a number of dragons.

Based upon their appearance and strength, the Ascendant felt confident enough in labelling them all as young adults, at the exact age range where one would be met with regular feelings of lust and desire, at least in the case of humans. It appeared that there was a strong similarity in draconic physical development, for the majority were clearly wiser than humans at an equivalent age, but that didn’t stop them from thinking with their lower halves. With those that didn’t hide their twin genitalia, that was even more blatant than with the others.

Their involvement would allow her to process all of the energy that she intended to take for herself significantly more quickly, so she didn’t have any reason to deny her own wants and desires either. Her only objection was that a lot of the dragons seemed to be trying to be on top, which was her place.

To her surprise, they didn’t object, and quite a few were very happy with the arrangement.

If there was a need to provide a lengthy description of what followed, one may be better off seeking something specifically meant to go into detail on such events above all others, such as an additional chapter. A large number dragons, most having dicks as large or larger than the Ascendant’s, made quite the mess, and all that really needed to be known was that it took quite a while to clean up after the fact, even when physique energy was put to use.

She had gained a better idea of whether she liked being penetrated, though she couldn’t make use of the typical hole as she was too tight and small for such a thing. Nevertheless, two out of three holes did get used, and it wasn’t a terrible experience. She enjoyed their taste, and their warmth.

After it was all done, the dragons mostly headed back to rest, while Wei Yi travelled back out of the cave system and sat down on the outside, right beside the entrance. She waited there for a while, processing the energy that she had already absorbed via her own power and the yin and yang energy of the dragons, as well as throwing a large number of planar stones into the Kong Prison Realm, filling it with as much planar energy as she possibly could. It was almost getting full, as odd as that may be for such an immense realm, but with her own cultivation beginning to head towards the seventh realm, she had an impression of what she might be feeling.

There was a boundary between the seventh and eighth realm because one’s power went from finite to infinite, from being bound by the outside world to, at least partially, coming from the self.

Once she reached the seventh realm, she would be at that same boundary. Her spatial realm was currently capable of producing someone in the seventh realm, provided that they used a less excessive cultivation method than her own, but once it passed this boundary in energy quantity, the eighth realm would be feasible. Unfortunately, she didn’t think she would manage it on her own.

The boundary might be near, but to truly condense all of the power in the spatial realm to a significant enough extent that it could be breathed in instead of simply lingering as loose particles within the air, she would need an incredible quantity of energy, far more than she currently had. There was even a possibility that she would need to provide some spatial metal to strengthen the stability of the spatial realm to prevent it from falling apart in the same manner that the Kong Holy Grounds had when their stability was ruined by her.

Her previous guess regarding a location of spatial metal couldn’t be proven due to the current barrier around the Yi District, so she had to postpone that in particular and wait for the world around her to develop first.

Not too long after she got done with all of that, she heard the footsteps of dragons from within the caves, and could sense everything else about them with her spiritual perception. Just like her after her first time, they were positively glowing, although that was odd given their immense age in comparison to her own. Perhaps their bodies had effectively reformed during their long sleep within eggshells that they should not have had, and now they were unused to the things that their minds easily remembered.

“… I forgot this path was so long… Ancients forbid we have some sensibly short route to the surface,” one of the dragons that proved to have quite a lot of stamina earlier, Long Hua, muttered before she came out onto the surface, covering her eyes from the bright rising sun that shone into their eyes, “I hope we haven’t kept you waiting too long.”

“No, not at all. Unlike a longer lived species, I apparently have patience… and far more to do.”

“Like what?” Li He asked.

“Like throwing all of the planar stones I picked up with you into the Kong Prison Realm. Speaking of which, do you want to travel to the barrier around the three central districts of Yi City, or would you rather go straight to my spatial realm and get acquainted with the people there?”

“If you’ve got the Yi City Web, then it should not be a problem to go the spatial realm, then exit beside the barrier,” said a third, a shy but knowledgeable and clever short dragon who was significantly quieter than when Wei Yi and another dragon were inside her, “I’d like to find a place to study all of the techniques that your people have come up with, since we’ve not had much of a chance to study that kind of thing over here.”

“Please, we’ve made plenty of improvements in the time underground,” Long Hua said.

“If you mean improvements to how everyone shagged one another, then sure…” the shy dragon, Long Tao, muttered, “I’m glad the smell didn’t stick around in the million years…”

“On one hand, I agree with you, but on the other, all of your scents are vastly nicer than those of humans, so if you ever get a spatial stabilisation point in here, many would still be keen to visit,” Wei Yi said, coughing as she moved the conversation back onto the tracks, “Anyway, if you would stand still for a little while, I’ll move you over.”

They didn’t add any other comments, nor did the remaining four add anything, simply getting a little closer and preparing for the spatial transportation. One did try to place a hand on her ass, which was understandable given that it was one of her more noteworthy assets from a certain point of view, but she quietly nudged it via her spiritual will onto the backside of one of the other dragons and shut her eyes, activating the transportation array as soon as it manifested beneath their feet. Crimson and silver poured out from within, and after a moment, they vanished from the mountains.

A moment after that, Beast’s Rest was illuminated by the silver and crimson that had once been so completely intrinsic to it, but were now shoved to the side by the overwhelming light of her oblivion essence glowing through the Subterranean Shell above.

Although the crimson of oblivion essence and killing will could indeed be likened to one another, none of the local population could ever mistake one for the other. Even the most intense killing intent displayed prior to the opening of the Kong Prison Realm out to the world, that of the Ascendant, was simple in shade and texture, being a relatively monotone and flat red that could work as a wall paint colour, provided that someone was willing to even attempt to paint with something so intense.

Oblivion essence had incredible depth and detail, even in comparison to her cosmic energy. Stars, galaxies and nebulae completely filled it, crisscrossed by the chains of Law, and thus the light that it shone down upon the Kong Prison Realm was far more complex than the absolute red glow that had initially consumed the left side of the spatial realm.

“Well… This is quite the place.”

“I hope that was a compliment,” Wei Yi said, stepping away and turning around to face the dragons, “This place is Beast’s Rest, for it lies upon the body of an ancient beast from beyond the world. If you know what they are, then you’ll guess it soon enough. Other than that, you are free to get a place here, in Sanctuary, Paragon – that’s the fortress to the north of Yi City – but any of the districts other than the former Kong District are not places you should go, just to prevent any kind of unnecessary conflict. After all, the districts are under the control of Patriarchs and Matriarchs, who may not be keen to see you intruding upon their lands.”

“Don’t forget about the Wu District, where you are the current Matriarch,” the Matriarch of the Luo District happened to be nearby around the time of their entry, and so joined in when she found it appropriate, “By the way, are these… dragons?”

“All seven are, yes. Feel free to have a chat with them while they don’t have much to do, since that will soon change.”

“You have found a way to break the barrier the Greats have formed around the three districts, then,” Luo Na switched topics right away, for that was far more significant in the short term, “How long do you estimate this will take? I have observed a number of changes around the barrier, making me think that the Leeches are finding ways to better utilise the energy at their disposal than simply forming a large obstruction. Offensive measures are likely to appear within two weeks.”

“I should be done by then. I got a lot of energy from that trip, and I should be able to push myself to the seventh realm within that time. Do your best, save up your talismans wherever necessary, and do use a few to lower the stability of the barrier whenever you get a failed talisman or something of the sort.”

“Noted. I’ll not interrupt you any longer.”

She quickly stepped away, leaving Wei Yi alone with the seven dragons, at least if one didn’t include the numerous people that resided in the city and would walk quite close to the spatial gateway in the centre, and thus the many other gateways on the other side, within Paragon.

“So, you’ve got four stages to go through. Where and how do you intend to make that many steps within two weeks?” Long Hua inquired.

“Not near the barrier, but everywhere else should be entirely fine. In fact, it may be best for me to hop around and drain all of the energy that I am able to get my hands on, so I won’t be lingering in a single place. Combine that with my constant connection to the spatial realm, and… Actually, before that, I would like to introduce the lot of you to some of my acquaintances, who I think you may be able to get along with quite well. First of all, Long Tao, there’s someone else who is very familiar with techniques that you will be able to exchange a lot of knowledge with…”

A day passed, and she had hopped through two of the districts already, and she was reaching the seventh stage by that point.

This was while she was making the most of her nascent rift and available planar stones, of which she had thirty to herself, and she had expended three so far. On one hand, this wasn’t that significant, for most cultivators would need more stones than that, but her use of them meant that the Kong Prison Realm wouldn’t receive a notable quantity of planar energy. For the moment, it was less significant due to it reaching its limit, but once she brought it to the point that it was able to foster the development of eighth realm cultivators, the amount built up will effectively cascade onwards at an immense rate, multiplying the present quantity at regular intervals.

For a normal cultivator, such a thing would be especially noticeable from the ninth realm, for the eighth would only form an imperfect rift that would consume some of the energy it releases to maintain itself. The ninth realm would be the one that provided constant gain without as much of a cost, a completed gate having attained complete stability and thus being able to simply provide planar energy.

A spatial realm wasn’t quite the same as a cultivator, and it didn’t have an imperfect rift nor gate through which it obtained energy. Instead, it functioned according to the same Laws at the Planar Continents themselves, and had a total allocated quantity of energy that could be expanded by the possible energy being converted into practical planar energy quantity. It might seem rather odd how that works, but that was exactly what allowed the Ascendant to be confident about her conclusion of the nature of the world being rather artificial.

There was something in the worlds of the otherworldly demons that was called conservation of mass, which states that any system that is closed off, in a vacuum, will not experience any changes in mass regardless of what goes on inside, for no mass can be produced or destroyed, only changed in form. This did not align with the nature of planar energy, which existed in an infinite quantity within the world, nor with the ability of energy to create stable and permanent structures at higher realms.

In theory, there still needed to be some level of conservation of mass and energy, so long as all worlds followed the same set of rules, and would lean towards such a thing even if they did not. A world which followed this principle would have a limited set of matter and energy, thus having limited complexity, thus being able to exist in near perpetuity without outside interference. However, in worlds where energy seemed to come from nowhere, it had to originate from somewhere nonetheless. Perhaps it wouldn’t be originating from the world itself, but from outside it, from some unseen source that might go a million layers beyond anything that Wei Yi could even conceive, but there had to be a source to everything.

Even if such a source was infinite, the world would continually increase in complexity as more and more energy was pulled in, allowing those within to grow stronger and then demand more energy, forming the same loop as the ninth realm would provide for her – she would obtain more oblivion essence, break through into the next stage, be able to attain more energy, and then obtain more without even needing to look to the outside world.

It would have a higher demand, higher instability, and higher potential of individuals outright breaking the system and going beyond, potentially even attaining something akin to the azure lights without needing to travel outside of a world. At that point, she had no idea how anything would function, so she didn’t bother contemplating it for now and instead focused on taking advantage of her Law-based method of inducing the potential energy density of the world to be refilled within an instant. This permitted her to vastly increase the rate of cultivation to the point that earning a single stage within a day, despite being at the sixth realm and with all perfected realms, was possible for her.

Once she stepped over the edge to the seventh stage, she felt the entirety of her oblivion essence as if it was a heart, a single contraction pumping lifeforce throughout her body. There was no great change to the essence itself, nor to the links, but she felt an aura emerge around the dantian as a whole.

That aura did not provide her any significant bonus, but the power of her cultivation did rise as one might normally expect. From her previous testing of the Yi City Web’s barrier, she knew that Long Mingyun’s assessment of her power was correct, so she would indeed require the seventh realm in order to breach it, and so she did not hesitate to proceed onwards to the next stage and the next district, for there was a certain limit to what her Law-based power was able to do.

Each time that she subverted the natural regeneration of planar energy within the Planar Continents, she had to expend a greater quantity of energy to do so. The limit she decided upon was however much energy was needed to completely scatter her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, and she had just used that much to push herself to the seventh stage. Thus, it would not be very practical to stay.

The approach to the eighth stage took an agonizing two days, during which she hopped around and further drained all of the energy of the region.

All of the attention that could possibly be placed upon this process was on it, but she still had plenty to spare a great deal of it onto observing the various phenomena occurring around the Yi City Web’s central barrier. Just as almost everyone who had taken a look at that ghostly green barrier had assumed, the Great Leeches weren’t going to be content with simply sitting behind their barrier and letting the rest of the world proceed according to its own will.

Just yet, there were no offensive measures being used against the forces of the Ascendant, but there were frequent changes in the barrier, albeit not ones that could be used to breach it. None of the experiments that were occurring sufficed, clearly, for they were undone soon enough, replaced soon enough by further attempts to modify their methods. Most of it needed to be permitted, for doing otherwise would require the breaching of the barrier, but a few of the attempts to expand it were met with fierce resistance that fell upon a less stable segment of the ghostly light, promptly causing a retreat of the energy to its previous state.

The Ascendant was considering whether to come over and help out, but it turned out to not be necessary, so she instead showed up after everyone had moved their attention away and snapped up all of the energy that was thrown about during that quick collision.

None of the others would be able to make use of it, so she took everything for herself instead.

That did greatly assist her by skipping forward by an hour of cultivation, allowing her to step into the next stage just before the sun began to rise once again. She sat down in a planar energy-rich region and brought in all of that energy as well, pushing her over the edge and prompting that same unknown aura to appear in greater quantities around her dantian. Her oblivion essence pulsed in the same manner, and the rest remained unchanged, except for the slightest hint of something around the core, positioned on what an otherworldly demon might term as the equator of it.

From her previous glances at the dantians of those in the Oblivion Halo realm, she recalled that their halos would form in a sequence that began in the middle of the core, and would then occur below and above that halo, with the optimal arrangement of halos essentially surrounding the core entirely from the sides, leaving only the top and bottom open.

So long as her halos were not going to deviate from the standard arrangement – which they would, since she would have ten and not just nine, and thus either have an additional halo at the top or bottom, or an entirely different arrangement entirely – then this greater gathering of aura would indeed indicate the beginning of the first halo. Seeing as she was only at the eighth stage now, it was a little early for something like that, but perhaps she would see the manifestation of some spectral halos before the real ones come up, and then get two pairs of them, just like with her current cores. This would be a little absurd, especially if they provided their full power and literally doubled the number of halos, but she wasn’t going to complain.

As she moved from her spot once more to seek out more planar energy, she found it necessary to contemplate the two realms that would come after the seventh, for both were going to be essential to her future development, and also give her the power that she had been seeking for very long.

In theory, she was going to attain the ten halos that would come as standard from having one hundred marks, and then the step to the sixth stage would advance those halos to something greater. She had no clue what that would be, at least just yet, but all of the changes so far were fundamental, yet did not change the base function or behaviour of the planar structures, so the seventh realm shouldn’t be any exception.

This could very well change in the eighth realm, where the imperfect rift might well advance to the perfect, somewhat complete, competent or maybe even a slightly better than usual rift, depending on her mood when she was naming it. Perhaps there would be a repeat of the second realm’s spectral cores, where there was a notable difference in what the perfected stages ended up affecting, or maybe something entirely unique would occur and catch her off-guard. That was very much a possibility, and she needed to consider all of these.

Her technique for cultivating was her own, after all. At this point, she barely took what the Master of Yi City had created into consideration, and when she did check her own findings against what he had made, she had to conclude that there would be very few advantages to sticking with his technique as opposed to her own.

It wasn’t that his Mysterious Character technique – or perhaps the Truth of the Universe technique, which would be more appropriate to the true name of the otherworldly gift within which it was contained – was particularly bad, but it was simply no longer suitable for her or her Dao. Kong Shi Meng had never anticipated having five meridian networks, with killing will, physique energy and bloodline power, nor the exact effects of all perfected stages and thus perfected realms, the Dao of the Ascendant, Dao of Law, Dao of the Heavens, and all of the other Dao that she had accumulated up to this point, which was likely a far greater quantity than the Master of Yi City had acquired due to his reliance on the Truth of the Universe for such a long period of time.

Within that technique, there was likely guidance towards the eighth realm, and the ninth realm after that, although it could only provide theoretical recommendations after the third stage based on Kong Shi Meng’s attainment.

That information would be fed to her stage by stage as she progressed through the stages, but she didn’t wish to wait for that to decide how she was going to move forward. Instead, she thought to the most powerful thing she knew, the one source of energy that surpassed the world she existed within and could provide seemingly infinite power. Obviously, she was contemplating some method of advancing her path to the level of an azure light.

She knew that it was an advanced step on the path of a seed of power, a concentration of some principle and source of energy. In theory, the structures of the seven initial realms would be beneficial in forming something like that, but the natural cultivation path would only lead her to forming an imperfect rift and then an eternal gate, which didn’t quite align with that progression path.

‘Both act as sources of energy, but something that effectively goes inward, piercing some unknown space for the energy within, is very different from a quantity of matter – presumably, since all I’ve ever seen is the light itself – that… hm. Are they all that different? No, even if they were identical in nature, I’d need something extremely abnormal to turn the power of the world to something that goes far beyond,’ the Ascendant concluded, placing her fingers on the bridge of her nose as she tried to hold back the sudden headache, ‘Clearly, I need some hands-on experience with this stuff.’

Four days were needed to bring herself to the ninth stage, and when she broke through, she finally felt a noteworthy change.

The aura that had been gathering with the last few stages had condensed to an even greater extent, finally gaining form upon the second to last beat of oblivion essence that she would see, provided that it did not continue within the seventh realm and beyond. It was indeed much akin to the shape of a halo, but the aura around it did not gather into the other halos, instead forming a large sphere around the entirety of the dantian.

If this sphere had a similar width to the spectral mass representing the first halo, she would simply assume that the next breakthrough would lead to that aura condensing into the other halos, but it instead maintained a significantly larger area all around the dantian. The aura thinned out the further it went, but it continued on with sufficient density to form further spectral halos for almost ten times the diameter of the first halo, which was not at all how the halos should be arranged. Either this would change with future stages, and the aura had yet to condense fully, or she could just throw away any expectation of being able to follow existing techniques and standards in regards to her cultivation.

Either way, just because she got to the ninth stage didn’t mean that she could drop her cultivation and rush towards the central barrier of the Great Leeches, as she would need quite a bit more energy to push into the seventh realm. Thus, she moved to another region where energy was plentiful, and used a moment to take note of the current state of the barrier.

Since last time, there had been more experiments and more changes, but none were able to affect the outside just yet. The issue was that her forces also weren’t able to do a single thing against the blatant second layer that was forming behind the first, with patterns very reminiscent of array channels used for offensive purposes. In other words, they were constructing various combat arrays behind the barrier, which could be used to attack simply by shifting around the arrangement of the barrier, and there was nothing that either Wei Yi or any of her Arbiters could do about it.

Luckily, it appeared that the estimations regarding the completion date of such modifications were accurate. A week had passed, but it seemed like this arrangement would take around a week more to be completed. The actual offensive arrays would likely need only five or six days, but it would take some time for the proper method to utilise them to be devised. Something as stable as the barrier couldn’t just be moved around without exposing weakness or outright compromising the stability of it.

That was exactly why her first body cultivation method, the Condensed Formation body, was a unique creation. It incorporated something very complex into a living, breathing being that would never remain still, and yet it retained a degree of stability to this day. Such a thing was extremely abnormal.

‘That, my mind’s capacity to process information, and my acquisition of the Truth of the Universe, and… In essence, there is a lot that could be investigated, just as Long Mingyun had said, but I can only spare my attention to a limited quantity of things for the moment, and the best thing to focus upon would be resolving the barrier, reaching the seventh realm, and ending the Great Leeches as quickly as possible,’ Wei Yi concluded, shutting her eyes and shifting her thoughts onto activating the powers of Law as to acquire more planar energy to fill her dantian.

She had a long way to go.