V5C98: Chasing the Stars

The Ascendant claimed the spatial stabilisation node, quickly threw a few remaining drops of her energy remaining in the roots to the future Matriarch of the Shi District, and then departed. It wasn’t that she really didn’t wish to stick around the Shi District, as it was perfectly fine as far as districts went… mostly. The feeling of the Gluttonous Leech was still present, and it was incredibly unpleasant, but she had handled worse things.

On that note, she had confirmed the origin of the Gluttonous Leech, and the Magnanimous Leech as a result. Many years ago, the Primordial Deity had been present in what would become the Shi District, and just as wild beasts influenced some to create techniques, the calmer Primordial Ocean must have influenced someone to create a technique that would give them a leeching ability similar to the entity that they resided beside. Due to lacking information, she couldn’t confirm whether this had influence from Primordial Ocean itself, but what was clear was that the Shi family had become immensely capable due to their usage of the Gluttonous Leech.

Enemies would be deprived of all of their positive traits, leaving little more than husks, while they thrived, becoming the leaders of the Shi District when Kong Shi Meng defeated the Primordial Deity that previously ruled there.

It was also then that the Shi family had to ease up on their usage of the Leech, due to the loss of a Primordial Deity that directly supported a skill combined with Kong Shi Meng’s presumed distaste for such a method, and it was slowly lost to time. The central Shi family knew about it still, but only by name, hardly remembering the function of the ability that had given them so much power.

The one place that did not lose the technique was the Kong Prison Realm, where it changed into the Magnanimous Leech and was eventually put to use by a descendant of the Shi family, Shi Luo Feng.

Tracing that woman’s lineage was impossible, so it was uncertain whether she had a direct relation or if she just acquired the surname by chance, and it wasn’t particularly worthwhile. At best, she’d just confirm the source of yet another vile technique that needed to be removed from the public’s eye in the state that it was in, so that none had the chance of abusing it to the extent that Shi Luo Feng or the old Shi family did.

Returning to the reason that she left, it was due to an external factor in the form of Primordial Cosmos.

It had yet to make a proper appearance that she was able to see herself, but for the first time since its emergence, she had been able to perceive its presence tangibly. The Primordial Deity was out there somewhere, and if it began to pose a threat to Yi City, it would need to be taken down. More importantly, if she had a similar strength against it as against Primordial Energy, which suffered quite a bit after she took a bit of its energy, then it would essentially be a free boost to the sixth stage that she wanted so much at the moment.

The chance couldn’t be overlooked, and the other Primordial Deities were temporarily sealed with no chance of releasing them only to seal them back up – save for Primordial Metal, which was out of the way for now – so it was easily the best and most suitable target.

Since Primordial Cosmos appeared once, she headed right over to where she glimpsed it and watched for any further appearance. In order to not spend all of her time staring at grass and whatnot, as the area between the Ning District and Wei District lacked much else, she split up her focus somewhat. By remaining in the region where the Primordial Deity was sighted, she would ensure that her divine sense was strongest there, but by shifting her mind into the Kong Prison Realm, and thus the Yi City Web, she could appear there and focus on taking care of what few problems she could handle in her lands. She was still unsure exactly how she had managed to do this while unconscious those few times, but she was replicating it effectively enough.

Jia Rong did not express much interest in conversing, being occupied by some matters that she did not care to share, but Lan Mei Xing, her inspiration for the kick that took out the former Shi Patriarch, did find the Ascendant almost the moment that she showed up in Paragon. The old friend of Kong Shi Meng didn’t make what she wanted clear, at first, but it soon became obvious regardless.

She had a wary expression, a frown on her face, and couldn’t stand entirely still, all of which was rather uncharacteristic of the woman.

“Do you mind isolating us from any observation? I am rather concerned about something.”

“Sure,” the Ascendant said, that alone giving her a bit of a clue, but she had to shift her position into the Kong Prison Realm in order to then seal it away from the outside world, where certain people might be listening in.

It took a moment to move around, but sealing the spatial realm was something she was getting more and more experience with, so it did not take long.

“You’ve done it, right? I have a suspicion about Kong Shi Meng-”

“Most likely, he isn’t who he claims to be, though I have not yet identified who he actually is. For all I know, that man isn’t human,” Wei Yi finished for her, “I know, but I haven’t shared it to prevent him from learning, and to minimize the general worry about such things. Everyone who knows about him is significant enough to matter in the conflict against the Primordial Deities, and anything that will come next, so if they were to suddenly be distraught after learning that Kong Shi Meng is not Kong Shi Meng, it wouldn’t be very good for any one of us.”

“Have you been keeping an eye on him, then?”

“That’s right. From the moment that I had my suspicions. So far as I can tell, I’ve kept him away from anything too important, and I haven’t even been using his strength to defeat the Primordial Deities. Nonetheless, there isn’t much that can be done against him for the moment, especially when his identity isn’t clear.”

“You would just let someone like that parade about and impersonate my boss? My best friend? Does Shi Meng mean nothing to you?” Lan Mei Xing exclaimed with extreme passion.

“Although I haven’t met him in person, his achievements do mean a great deal. However, I cannot simply do whatever I like and expect it to go smoothly. This Xu Shi Meng is a powerful figure even if he is somehow lacking in comparison to the true Kong Shi Meng, and if he was to be a foe, he could wipe us out. You of all people should not only know, but clearly remember the gap between the seventh, eighth and ninth realms.”

“… I know. It just… sucks, you know?”

“I am well aware. I would love to change the situation, but there is only so much I can do at a time. For now, Xu Shi Meng is on our side, and we need to take advantage of it.”

“Tch. I-”

The Ascendant cut off her words by raising her hand and turning to the side, unsealing the Kong Prison Realm and gazing into the outside world. She had very little knowledge about anything taking place outside of it while it was separated from the world, but she did have just enough to perceive a presence felt only the day before.

“Primordial Cosmos, again. I have to go.”

Lan Mei Xing didn’t need further explanation, not that she could have received it even if she wanted one. As soon as she caught wind of Primordial Cosmos’ presence, Wei Yi headed right over, leaving the Kong Prison Realm without hesitation.

She appeared a moment later in the area between the Wei District and Ning District, standing at the spot where her remaining divine sense had spotted the presence of a Primordial Deity, and for the first time, saw a physical trace. It was rather surreal, actually, as the blades of grass at that spot were partially broken up into gleaming stars, with larger bunches manifesting into monochrome nebulae and galaxies.

Somehow, the shape of the grass remained mostly intact, and it still moved in the wind as if she was just seeing an illusion of some kind.

‘Looks fascinating, but there doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason why the Primordial Deity had appeared just now and touched the grass before fucking off as quickly as it had shown up,’ Wei Yi thought as she carefully reached out to pluck a blade of said grass in the hopes of being able to discover something even vaguely useful from the energy left upon it.

Instead, however, the energy seemed so happy to come into contact with her, that it seeped right into her body and towards her dantian the moment she came near it. It was absurdly insistent on this, to the point that she had to suspect it to be a trap of some kind, but by that point it had already gotten to the area where all the other Primordial Deities found their energy turning against them… and the cosmos that had entered now was no different. It merged with her cultivation incredibly smoothly, a star appearing within the endless sea of the oblivion essence.

The quantity was insufficient to advance her realm, but with the star gleaming in her oblivion essence, she could partially guess where to go in order to track down more of Primordial Cosmos’ stars. Right now, it seemed to be somewhere to her south.

She hastened in that direction right away, and soon a flash of the Primordial Deity’s presence appeared for a second time. It was slightly off from her predicted direction, as she was essentially guessing something based on no information whatsoever, but it was only a slight discrepancy that she corrected right away with Omit Movement.

For whatever reason, the second trace was another bunch of star-changed grass.

‘Alright, this one has a fetish for grass, or something like that. Alternatively, it doesn’t want to touch the world too much, but has decided to do so now… Why? Is it expecting me?’

Even if that was the case, she had no clue what the Primordial Deity was looking for. Did it want to kill her, influence her, eat her, or maybe even meet with her and have a pleasant chat? She had no idea whatsoever, for the behaviour of this Primordial Deity so far had been greatly outside of her expectations. She would have liked to learn more before getting into a potential confrontation, but this was not a privilege she had with an entity that was not sealed, and that might well remain that way.

After picking up the next trace, she tried to track down the direction that the entity continued in. judging by her last guess, she presumed that she had some ability to predict the direction that it would travel in, but the next appearance was in a completely different direction, and of a completely different nature. Thinking about it, this did seem to make quite a great deal of sense, for the entity appeared and disappeared at will, so perhaps it wasn’t travelling somewhere at all, instead popping in and out of existence as easily as the Ascendant could if she perfected the Omit Movement technique and memorized the right coordinate points.

Thus, tracking it in an ordinary manner was impossible.

What she could do was pursue the spatial movements that it made, for Primordial Deities were still a part of the world, even if they crossed whatever line the heavens had. They would leave marks that would be obvious to all that knew what to look for, and it was something that Wei Yi did have to learn soon.

She was in the seventh realm, and climbing steadily towards the eighth, but she barely understood spatial principles sufficiently to create a spatial realm of her own.

Once upon a time, this would have been rather embarrassing for a seventh realm cultivator, and yet she was the leader of the Arbiters, a force that had – mostly thanks to her own power – purged the world of one great threat, and was on its way to permanently removing another. To make up for her current faults, she needed to improve, and if this Primordial Deity was so keen on giving her the opportunity to learn, she would gladly take it and learn from it while she had the chance to do so.

After all, once it was gone completely, the Dao it would give her would be greatly lacking in comparison to her own knowledge and skill. With a Full Success of her own in something like the Dao of Law, she would have already dominated the world, but she had not had the chance to reach it yet.

‘Either way, off I go, following this thing until it shows itself properly, or until I comprehend the nature of space. One seems more likely to come before the other, though.’

She picked up the next trace and let it join her cultivation before shifting her position elsewhere with her movement method. It proved to be quite a way off soon, when the next hint of the Primordial Deity manifested, but it was close enough for her to make another movement and arrive at that spot, picking up that trace as well and continuing on. Each time, she analysed everything in the environment that she was able to perceive, and compared it to everything she had spotted previously. There wasn’t much that stuck out at first, but such things would become obvious with enough examples.

Once she could eliminate anything caused by the grass, the air, the ambient planar energy and everything else that existed there, she would have to be observing only the influence of Primordial Cosmos, and the method it used to traverse space. At that point, she could also detect where it travelled, how it did so, where it would go next, and more. She didn’t expect the Primordial Deity to be so kind, though.

Another appearance, another use of Omit Movement, and more observation. This cycle repeated itself a great number of times, to the point that she was getting rather bored of it.

Just before the one hundredth trace to examine and analyse, she finally spotted it herself.

Not just some influenced grass, not some air that had changed into a growing nebula, but instead the entity itself, floating above the ground while seeming like it was facing in her direction, though it was incredibly difficult to confirm this.

Much like Primordial Invader seemed to be a rift in space rather than a solid entity, Primordial Cosmos was a mass of monochrome stars that didn’t effectively convey depth when looked at from the front or back. The Primordial Deity was either facing her or away from her, and it was standing mostly still, in a humanoid pose that was very much unlike Primordial Invader’s otherworldly stances.

It was shaped like a human, with slightly longer legs than average – obviously, when viewed proportionally, as it was still around twenty metres tall – and hints of a feminine physique, though it could easily be caused by stars that drifted further than others. Beyond that, it had no eyes that were visible at the moment, no defined facial features, no obvious marks of musculature or the like. It was just a floating cloud that had forced the Ascendant to run around for no obvious reason before settling down in the middle of nowhere, with no territory, no influenced flora or fauna, nothing like the normal activities of the Primordial Deities.

“What are you doing? What are you, exactly?” Wei Yi asked, not expecting an answer, but certainly not opposed to one.

If there was an answer, and it was a good one, then she might – potentially – gain some kind of ally, or at least a source of information she would otherwise miss out on. Even if it kept quiet, as she expected this strange entity to, then she wouldn’t lose out on much by attempting a conversation. Nobody was even around her, so nobody could make an argument that she was consorting with the Primordial Deities when she wasn’t supposed to, not that anyone would dare to make such an argument even if they believed this.

After all, she didn’t confront Xu Shi Meng for very similar reasons.

The Primordial Deity did not answer, but it did drift forward slowly and without threat, the left hand rising to reach out to her. As strange as the gesture was, Wei Yi only had one reasonable response.

Obviously, she took the hand of this entity, for there was no better option. Whatever it was attempting to do, she could still benefit from this close contact and steal some of its power in the same way that she had taken it from the marks it left behind. If there was some kind of abnormality with it, then maybe it could lead her into contact with some deeper areas of reality that she had not yet gotten to explore to her heart’s content.

Although there was no touch per se, there was contact, and there was the same rush of energy she had experienced with the marks left by Primordial Cosmos. The problem was that she wasn’t interacting with a small influenced mark, but the Primordial Deity itself.

‘Is it just giving away its power? What… the fuck? No, really, this is more concerning than any kind of attack that it could carry out!’ the Ascendant gasped, but even then, she had to let it happen, as it was the best chance to get a great deal of power without any need for combat. To miss out on such a thing would be equivalent to throwing away the path to immortality for any other person, or the opportunity to impose whatever form of justice she would eventually settle upon onto the world. Either way, she had no other choice.

The stars poured in, headed to her dantian, and, with a wondrous feeling, rushed in to supplement her cultivation, breaching the barrier to the sixth stage.

At once, the figure distorted and broke, the power of this entity was swallowed up, and the last oblivion halo took form within her body, only to be changed into a completely different arrangement. Each of the spinning halos paused and formed a single circle around her, their power resonating together to multiply her overall strength by one hundred, double of what the ten halos on their own would produce.

This new form of the oblivion halos required a name, but luckily she had already imagined one.

“True Apertures… perhaps a True Aperture might even be more fitting, since they’ve merged into one… but what for? Why did you do this?”

Unfortunately, Primordial Cosmos had almost vanished by that point, and the rest of its power joined her cultivation with no ability to reply to her. It was, in a way, a great shame, but even then the Ascendant was not about to shed a tear for a Primordial Deity. That simply wouldn’t be right, even if it had simply surrendered to her.

Rather, that was the duty of a Primordial Deity, for the sake of the world.

Her advance in planar cultivation signalled the advance of her other paths as well, save for her killing will. It remained stagnant, and it was very fortunate that it did so, though she could sense it pushing against the threshold of the realm. There would not be too much time before it broke, inevitably.

She obtained its Dao of Space, along the Branch of Stars, but more importantly, she finally obtained a revelation that she had been working upon for some time. It wasn’t quite the one that she had wanted – her comprehension of space did improve, but not to the point that she could confidently set up a spatial realm if she obtained some spatial metal – but she had figured out a seventh realm movement method, alternatively called a seventh realm flight method.

The name of her technique was Chain Resonance, and it was one that continued on her path of using the chains of Law. Rather than omitting movement, she would instead temporarily bind herself to them.

With that, she could achieve free movement anywhere that chains were present, a longer way of saying just ‘anywhere’. Alternatively, if she was to be more precise, it would be most accurate to say that she could employ this method anywhere that she could interact with chains, and anywhere that she lived. Currently, the requirement for both was the presence of the structure of planar energy, as she might not be able to endure in a world where it was simply absent as a concept altogether, even with a nascent rift and the like, but a world without Law would be one where life couldn’t exist, and so she wouldn’t have the chance to use Chain Resonance before her existence would end.

Obviously, with her power overflowing and her general mood being quite high despite the oddity of the Primordial Deity, she leapt into the air and let herself soar dozens of metres up with just her physical strength. Once she was high enough, she stepped onto the nearest chain of Law and then stood on it for a moment, letting herself become attuned to them.

This was not going to be a necessary step in the future, once she became accustomed to doing things like this, but it didn’t hurt to get a feeling for the chains she was going to rely upon before ending up face-first in the ground just because she was too lazy. It wouldn’t hurt her too much, as it would concern the grass and dirt beneath her far more so than it would affect her, but there was no good reason to plant herself into the ground just for experimentation’s sake.

After a short while, she believed she had it, so she stepped off the chain and let herself fall.

She allowed herself a few metres before engaging her newly created Chain Resonance, and sent out a number of infinitely thin chains with which she formed a connection to the world’s Laws. At her current level of both calculative prowess and energy, she limited herself to two dozen connections, as she was concerned with the potential damage caused by throwing together a hundred chains and forcing them to interact with one another when she had still not attained full control over the Dao of Law.

These thin strands latched on and, after a moment in which she continued to fall, she was suddenly sprung forth, the strands being partly elastic by some mistake in the calculations. The upper strands had stretched a little, and caused her to be bounced back up, allowing her to fly for just a moment.

It might have been fun to play around with, if she was seeking to do such a thing, but it was very much not her intention to do so. She wished for a proper movement method, and so she dispersed those strands and reformed them, but she did keep the possibility of making them elastic, as she could employ it in order to control her movement a little more precisely than if she had to use only rigid strands and needed to find well-placed chains in order to finely control her motion.

When she produced her next set of strands, she was reassured that it had been wise to reduce their total number, as she would now need to manipulate the threads more precisely in order to achieve the best results. To a certain extent, there was more precision involved than in ordinary cultivation or technique usage, as she would typically have the same body, meridian networks and so on. However, the chains of Law were many and ever-changing, despite being constant at the same time. No place had the exact same arrangement of chains, so she needed to maintain an eye on them constantly. Only if she knew exactly how and where she would move could she create a stable path that would require no further elaboration.

Of course, even a pre-planned path couldn’t be as simple as that. The chains would shift with significant occurrences, such as powerful techniques or anything that could tear the fabric of the world, like Touch the Heavens or Reality Severance. As the foes she fights become stronger, changing from men to Primordial Deities and then to the Hunger of the Beyond, their ability to shake the chains of Law would also rise. In combat against them, both sides would constantly shift the chains in their favour, even if they were unaware that they were doing so.

‘The Dao of Law is complex, but if I can get down to a deeper level of it, I can change my understanding of the chains to something more… controllable. I could manipulate each chain according to my will, and let them carry me forth instead of necessitating the creation of my own strands. Unfortunately… Hm?’ as she was getting used to the method of flight, her thoughts had drifted, and she was forced to stop when she saw something in the distance, among the many chains of Law.

It seemed to vanish in the next moment, as if she had merely been seeing things, but when the chains trembled and shifted, with her other vision states also proved that something was changing. Every chain moved and rotated in space, the spatial waves that were visible through her newly acquired vision state grew deeper, not that it made much sense to her either, and all of the other factors she was able to observe changed similarly. Everything became denser, deeper, greater, and even the ground around her transformed after the world had the chance to perform a breath. That was mostly everything she needed to comprehend what happened.

Had she been at all confused, the appearance of Xu Shi Meng would have cleared it all up.

The man showed up in front of her in his usual fashion, and spoke as soon as he saw that she had registered his presence.

“It has come. With your rise into the sixth stage, the energy density of the world has finally passed the threshold of the seventh realm, and now sits in the eighth. This comes with both good and bad news, of course,” Xu Shi Meng stated, “Which ones do you already know of?”

Before she responded, she noted that he had grown stronger since she had last seen him, although she was unable to quantify it in any way thanks to the obfuscation of his internal light.

“The positives are obvious. Patriarchs and Matriarchs will be able to rise to the eighth realm with less difficulty, and the overall power level of humanity will also rise. On the other hand, the Primordial Deities will grow too, and they may well begin escaping from their barriers, or lettings parts of their energy or influence escape. Alternatively, they would open spaces for their minions instead, and let them spread those two things in their stead.”

Just by the end of her sentence, she took another quick look, and it seemed as if he had grown even stronger than a moment earlier, along with the world. It was curious, but she didn’t mention it.

“It is the latter. It might be wise to send your forces to the barriers, and accelerate your work.”

The Ascendant did not nod, and instead went straight to do exactly that. She couldn’t be sure how each Primordial Deity would attempt to use their monstrosities, but there was no reason to ever allow them to go unchecked.