V4C89: Inhuman Invasion, Part 1
There was no room for discussion, and after seeing how easily their barrier was destroyed, few of them wished to risk enduring those kinds of attacks on their own. Furthermore, none of the Patriarchs had the ability to regenerate their bodies in a few seconds like Wei Yi could, so they could hardly shrug off an attack without fully blocking it.
Even if anyone present had the ability to establish the same kind of barrier that they had just used, then use their own strength to regenerate themselves that quickly, Wei Yi had lost much of her body in just one attack from one of the railgun robots. There were at least a hundred of them in the wave, and there could easily be thousands more in the Ju District, waiting to be unleashed once the initial wave was shown to either succeed or fail to fully complete its mission.
They had no time to establish individual defences in the two districts in greatest danger of attack, so they decided that it would be best to force these approaching forces to converge a single point that could then be defended with the full forces of all districts and forces on the side of the Arbiters. After a brief consideration of terrain, taking into account the mountains between much of the Ping District and the Ju District, it was concluded that occupying a spot from which Wei Yi’s spiritual perception still covered the edge of walkable terrain before the mountains would be best. Then, they could catch the focus of the invading forces, and thus endure for long enough to comprehend the weaknesses of the invaders, as well as any effective tactics.
The only positive so far was that the last two entities that the Ascendant had perceived, one being a six-legged colossus with one enormous weapon at the bottom and sixteen mounted around its round head, and the other being a robot with eight legs that were placed in a more regular arrangement than the legs of a spider which was covered entirely in weaponry, were currently staying back and not approaching, or else they would need to deal with monsters that were thirty metres tall or long, respectively.
In what might have been the greatest speed and degree of effort exerted since the original establishment and rise of Yi City under the rule of Kong Shi Meng, a defensive post was established on the aforementioned location in a single hour.
All of the districts contributed their own specialties in order to do this as quickly as possible. There were talismans placed on the walls, which contained many overlapping inscriptions and were supported with arrays, while the materials themselves were enhanced by secret alchemical methods from the Jiang District covered by various metals recently purchased from the Ning District, and made into artefacts via the Red Shaper’s Grasp. That would have normally exhausted Wei Yi’s energy, but there was one thing that they quickly noticed from the wave, which might have also contributed to her own rapid recognition of the invasion – it turned out that the machines were repelling planar energy away from themselves, and thus brought in a vast wave of it towards their defensive positions.
“How likely is it that the automatons are run with a power source that ignores planar energy, and that this will be the right approach to dealing with them?” Wei Yi asked after the walls were established.
“Knowing the Ju District, very likely,” Luo Na offered, frowning as she gazed upon the scene with her unique vision, “There is only so much that I can perceive from this distance, and none of it confirms or denies any theory we have had so far.”
“If this could be solved with sight alone, then I would almost certainly be able to detect it myself. However, the enormous wave of energy surging towards us is making it rather difficult to perceive what the army at the back looks like, and it may be that if they do use planar energy, they take only the necessary kind of particles into their bodies while spitting out the rest, resulting in this tide. A close examination of one of them will be needed in order to figure out the truth,” she said, sighing, “If they somehow ignore or repel planar energy, then only that which is not born of it will be effective. Their attacks are at the seventh realm and above, so if their defences are at the seventh realm…”
She paused, but not because she was afraid to finish the sentence. Rather, she had another idea that only she could put into practise, and thus she noted it down for future use, just in case it proved to be necessary. To waste a certain resource that was already limited would be highly unfortunate, but if it was necessary, then so be it.
“What if they do use planar energy?”
“At that point, everything falls under the concept of planar energy, which is subservient to the laws of reality. Even the heavens are bound to them, I suspect. If that is the case, I will be able to beat them, and we will win.”
Nobody present truly understood her words, especially not how she had meant them, but they were able to comprehend their essence. They would be able to oppose the automatons of the Ju District if they use the powers of the Planar Continents, but if they were facing genuine otherworldly creations that don’t feature a trace of local planar energy, then the effort required to oppose them would be significantly greater. Overall, that would be the worst-case scenario, but it should also be the least likely for one simple reason.
Even the otherworldly demons used planar energy to some degree, and since the world was so full of them, there were very few chances of them not utilising planar energy in one way or another. The materials that compose the structure of the robots may be planar in origin, or perhaps the source of their power is, but so long as there was a trace of planar energy, the Ascendant could affect it with her abilities.
In order to account for other possibilities, however, she did decide to bring in a few other combatants that might thrive in the worst case scenario.
“Ah! W-Wei Yi, this… what are all of those things?”
“Welcome, Jia Rong. This is the army of the Ju District, likely created by otherworldly demons or in collaboration with them, at least. I’m not sure what powers them, but you might be the strongest against them,” Wei Yi said, pointing at the smallest of the approaching forces, “If we are forced into direct confrontation, then you can ignore those, as they should be easy enough to contain even if they ignore planar energy itself, since we will still be able to restrain them with constructs. The true danger comes from those things, which we should figure out labels for at some point.”
“Uh, Wei Yi, could I offer a suggestion?” Miyu called out from beyond the spatial barrier again, “The small ones are infantry, the larger ones are elite infantry, then the four-legged things are centaurs, the ones with one cannon and treads are tanks, then the artillery, the railgun walker, the colossus and finally the weapon platform.”
“Did you get that from the otherworldly gift?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I guess that the people who made these gave them names while they were working on them, hence the ease with which I can access that kind of information.”
“Right. That also confirms that even if they are the products of some otherworldly gift, they are not themselves an otherworldly entity. They are made from materials that can be produced in this world, and that confirms that they will have a weakness,” Wei Yi turned to the rest of the powerful forces at the rushed fortress, “We will have a way to destroy them, and all that we need is time and effort.”
Since she was brought in and informed briefly about the situation, it was time to prevent the enormous wave from surging out onto the lands of the Arbiters, and to ensure that they wouldn’t be risking fighting a war on three fronts at the very least.
The easiest way that they could see would be to attract the attention of the enormous tide – the railgun walker that had previously attacked her looked to have lost interest after the first shot for some reason – would be to provoke them, and then direct them towards the centre of the walls they had constructed. From there, they would not have the full might of the other districts to call upon directly, but more forces could still be moved in the moment that a tactic presents itself.
Wei Yi did not think that she would be able to clear out the army on her own, not unless their defensive power does not compare in the slightest to the offensive capability of the railgun walker, in which case they could be swept away with a single wave of her hand. No, what was far more likely was that their physical resistance would be in the fourth realm at the very least, and possibly as high as the seventh realm, although that was less likely considering the sheer difficulty of resisting the kinds of powers that manifest upon the entry to the higher realms.
For that reason, it was absolutely vital to ensure that the combatants currently present had the ability to truly resist and dismantle the walking and rolling machines, so that the immense numbers did not need to be coped with by something dangerous like the Red Phantom Flood, which would simply tear her mind apart if she consistently made more than a few figures of herself. If it was possible for anyone to take out the robots, then they would need to do so, no matter what that took.
Ideally, their structures would have a fatal flaw, or some specific point that could be struck to disable them.
Perhaps they operate with an energy animation core, a concept that had existed in the Planar Continents for some time and could have been used to drive enormous golems if not for the numerous flaws with the initial design, which could be struck and thus disabled, or they might have some integral element that can be struck to block the flow of energy within the metallic body of the automatons, thus stopping them. It was highly unlikely for the latter to be present, as it was simply too obvious to pass by the otherworldly demons that had to have contributed to such unusual designs.
‘Obviously, I’d never complain if they did decide to provide me with such a kind offering. The attack was already unexpected, so the least they could do is make it some kind of sick joke,’ she thought to herself while waiting for the approaching tide to get just a little closer.
The moment that it was at the perfect distance, she made use of her fourth realm movement method to rapidly appear nearly five hundred metres closer, crossing half of the gap between them, and immediately conjured her many physique abilities and techniques at once, making use of her five meridian networks to allow for nearly twenty different techniques to be actualised at once. The Titanic Conqueror rose up behind her, the Obliteration sphere blazing within its four hands, each one preparing the Delayed Pulses variant of the technique.
After a moment of build-up that was highly accelerated by the Planar Dao, before any of the encroaching forces had the chance to fire anything at her, everything was released at them.
Due to the overwhelming nature of the Obliteration energy, everything else was consumed by it as the first pulse shot landed upon the front of the wave, where the infantry was concentrated. Each one landed far apart so that as much of the force could be struck at once, ensuring the largest number of the automatons will be pulled if not all of them choose to attack them at once.
The instant that the first infantry automaton was struck, she noted that there was indeed an effect upon the collision. All the bipedal entities that were caught in the radius of the blazing blackened crimson beams staggered, a hexagonal energy layer manifesting over their bodies and absorbing much of her attack, leaving only a small fragment of that energy to land upon the black metal that composed their bodies. Some of the bright orange that shone through the armoured plates flickered for a single moment, but after the first beam of Obliteration energy began to dissipate, there was no visible damage upon any of the infantry automatons.
Naturally, the second pulse followed soon after, impacting the barrier composed of numerous hexagonal fragments and causing a deep sound to emanate from it, although that looked to be the only notable effect.
The third proceeded after that, and beside the pulse of sound, there was a slight fluctuation on the surface of the protective barrier, allowing just a little more energy to pass through it and land upon the automaton itself. It did not prompt any movement, delay, nor a trace of even insignificant damage to it, which caused the Ascendant to frown.
There was still one more beam to come, and it would be the most powerful of the set, but the weakest of the automatons had already effortlessly endured half of the power of the attack empowered by all of the Dao under her control, which was also easily one of the most powerful in her control. She had not used the full capacity of her abilities just yet, but this was already terrible news for the potential of any cultivators other than her, as it meant that planar energy itself was not an effective counter.
‘I need to confirm the effectiveness of my full power first, then look for a weakness in the structure of the automatons. If they share one, then we do still have a chance,’ she thought, her attention moving out to the other automatons that were in the area near her, ‘That being said, they are not going to let me do this without any interruptions, are they?’
With her Obliteration beams, with four being cast by the Titanic Conqueror and two more being fired out by her, she had managed to hit roughly thirty-six automaton infantry in total, which meant that for every one that she hit, there were ten that were nearer to her and more than ready to fire upon her. The moment that they got into range, their three fingers retracted to open up the path for the cannon occupying half of their arm, which they promptly aimed at her. Like the Obliteration beams, these weapons needed a moment to charge up, but unlike her primary technique, these only needed one.
Just as the fourth and last blast of the Obliteration beams emerged from her hands, she leapt into the air, soaring past her Titanic Conqueror as it also fired out its last instance of the beams. Those landed upon the infantry that was still keeping their shields up, with their hands also opening up. In place of firing bright spheres of orange matter, however, they were releasing raw heat from within their bodies, coinciding with the stress placed upon the hexagonal barrier.
‘Heat? They do have a flaw, then. Fire-type techniques may be effective.’
Then, the hundred or so bipedal automatons that had gathered around her fired their first shot, resulting in that sphere of something that looked akin to both energy and extremely hot matter, which seemed to be a state that the otherworldly demons called plasma, hence the names of their weapons in their minds. This plasma shot towards her direction with impressive speed, lower than that of the railgun mounted atop the railgun walker but far more quickly than any arrow, bolt or even bullet could fly. Some planar techniques would overwhelm it, but their number was limited, and they were most certainly the exceptions, not the rule.
“Stop!” the Ascendant exclaimed, calling upon the Law around her to act upon the bolts and the automatons alike. She didn’t know whether she could affect them, but now was the safest time to try, as the larger threats had yet to make their way over.
Her voice pulsed out like a shockwave, travelling through the plasma and the enemies in an instant, and she saw a most surprising thing – the plasma projectiles were unaffected, being delayed only for a moment, but the automatons outright stopped their activities, all of the orange lights on their bodies fading out to nothing, turning them entirely black. It was akin to a miracle to her, for a moment.
The very next, the lights ignited once again, and their eyes regained their orange radiance that was focused upon her. Their arm cannons were aimed at her, and their temporary cessation of activity looked to have permitted them to accelerate their charging process, allowing them to figure out a second set of projectiles in just a moment. This time, she was already falling to the ground, but their attacks did take that into account and aimed their shots at the place where she would be if she continued to fall at the natural pace of gravity.
‘Aside from potentially interrupting movement with water or earth-type techniques, perhaps they are not very intelligent. It could be that it is possible to rush into melee range and strike them down without fearing their attacks, as they are unable to take into account a cultivator’s movement capabilities,’ she thought, quickly amending, ‘At least at first. There is a possibility that the minds driving these things are able to learn, in which case the less I do the better, technically. If their knowledge can also be shared by all of the other automatons… This army shouldn’t have that capability, as this alone is already far beyond anything that the Planar Continents should have been able to produce. To develop a fully intelligent and connected hive mind for these things would imply that the Ju District could have defeated the Great Families a long time ago.’
That did raise the question of why it was the Ascendant’s Arbiters and not the Great Family-controlled districts that needed to face the assault, but there was nothing about these automatons that suggested that they would be able to talk, or that they would be keen to do so.
Due to that, she decided to test her theory by charging straight into the army, reserving some of her energy specifically to be able to unleash it all at once the very moment that it is the right time to do so.
Luckily for her, the projectiles fired out by the plasma cannons were fast and, when some of them shot past her and struck the ground with an enormous explosion of orange, looked to be clearly powerful, but they did lack any ability to adjust to her after being fired out of the arm cannons. Evading them was easy, especially when the Law-based movement method that she employed permitted literal instantaneous movement in most terrain and environments.
In mere moments, she was at the incredible wave of automatons, and they were ready to fire upon her. Before they could, she shifted herself another fifty metres forward, ending up amidst a number of those that she had previously assaulted with her Obliteration beam. They were nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the attacking forces due to their uniform design and the lack of clear damage upon their bodies, and so it was only her recollection of their positioning and speed in the wave that allowed her to recognise this. They did not look to care about that, as they quickly joined the rest of the silent forces in firing at her.
Countless orange spheres of pure power shot in her direction, and when she once again leapt out of the way, they instead flew at the other automatons, quickly colliding with the hexagonal shields that emerged the moment anything threatened their bodies. It did show that they had some kind of physical weakness, or else the creators wouldn’t have bothered with the shield, but not the flaw itself.
The barrier looked to wrap around the entire automaton, even if it was only glowing and thus highlighting itself at the point of collision, making it look like there were a few hexagonal barriers simply appearing out of thin air whenever the automatons were attacked. Just as they withstood the Obliteration beam, these infantry forces endured the attacks from each other, and appeared to be entirely unperturbed as they were preparing to attack again at the same time as their shields were blocking the attacks from the opposite side of the encirclement that happened to form.
‘Alright, before the rest of those things get here, the ultimate test! Oh, this is going to hurt my head, isn’t it?’ she readied herself for the inevitable outcome, then stretched out her hands.
Out of the sandy ground, countless small totems emerged, each one topped by a figure akin to the Titanic Conqueror, a single eye made up of blackened crimson glaring upon the encroaching forces of the enemy. Before their figures could fully stabilise, they also reached out with their hands and caused a further set of totems to surge out of the ground, all of which then looked at their nearest automaton and placed their hands close together.
While the totems were rising, she opened the Truth of the Universe interface and prepared to invest her hard-earned anchor energy points, for she knew that if she was going to test one thing, she should also test a few more.
Blackened crimson gathered between them, rapidly ballooning into a sphere that scorched their illusory hands with the Ever-Growing Blaze imprisoned within the principles of the Obliteration energy. It was readied in the same amount of time as it took the automatons to be able to attack once more, so before they had the chance to recognise the totems as enemies and destroy them prematurely, Wei Yi split her focus across all of these totems and, with all of them pushing the sphere out at once, joined in with firing the Obliteration beam.
Then, she also threw in seventy anchor points into the technique, allowing it to be enhanced at the same time.
At once, more than a hundred incredible beams shot out, each nearby automaton being faced with several beams at once. Their shields looked ready to activate, and that was when the act of potentially wasting seventy anchor energy points came into play. Beside empowering Obliteration to the Seventy-First Stage, a most impressive improvement that makes it the technique at the second highest stage in her arsenal, those seventy points contained a notable quantity of planar energy trapped somewhere within them, preventing it from occupying the world once more. At the instant that they were spent, a small planar energy wave surged out from her body.
It touched them the instant before the numerous Obliteration beams could. All of the barriers that had been specifically repelling planar energy were suddenly met with a wave of it, and one that wasn’t insignificant in quantity. All of the hexagonal parts of the shield flickered at different times, a clear dissonance occurring within the previously smooth activation of the barriers. Thus, when the blackened crimson struck them, small embers managed to pass through the weaker portions of the shields.
They touched the metal body of the automatons and lightly scorched it, leaving a trace of ash upon the surface without piercing it at all.
It did, however, expose the fact that the shields were not only imperfect, but that it was possible to affect the automatons themselves, so the moment that her mind was able to return to full control over her own body rather than the totems, she vanished from the spot again and appeared beside the automaton that had endured the most damage from the first beam attack. The totems continued to fire upon it, making full use of the energy that they had already gathered while the automatons were splitting their attention between the totems and Wei Yi herself.
Although the infantry automaton attempted to attack her, it was unable to hit her in with the plasma cannon, and its finger-like segments couldn’t move into place fast enough to stop her own fingers from grabbing onto the chest of the automaton. That was both the largest segment of each automaton, meaning that there was either a very thick layer of armour in place to protect something, or that there was a particularly large object contained inside, as there would otherwise be no reason to put such a significant weight onto such a high part of the automaton.
There were few parts of the body to grab onto, but it was made out of several large plates that weren’t perfectly joined with one another to prevent any trace of seams. Near the chest, in an arrangement similar to the ribcage, two plates on either side reached out from the shoulder area to the middle of the torso, with a small gap between them and the metal beneath that could be grabbed onto.
She didn’t try to test out her own strength against this entity, as it was simply too dangerous to waste her time if the rest of the automatons were able to inflict damage that was in any way similar to that of the railgun walker. From the very start, she forced the two plates apart with her full strength, and although they proved far more resistant to her attempt than she would have hoped – as a weaker body would mean that the Chao District’s forces would have more of a chance to contribute – but they still failed to hold after her physique energy enhanced her already immense physical strength even further, exposing the inner portion of the automaton.
Something bright and, as with everything else in the robot army, orange was visible through the two openings, blocked only by the central plate, so she grabbed onto that and tore it off as well. There, beneath the black metal that she threw right into the House of Gold for later inspection, was a glowing spherical object, the luminous orange obscured only by a few thin strands of metal seeming to creep across the top like vines, with no clear purpose so far as she was able to tell.
‘I don’t know what this is, but I’m taking it!’ she exclaimed mentally, grabbing onto the glowing surface and pulling it out of the chest cavity of the robot.
It partly bent under the pressure from her fingers, but it came out quickly enough. As it parted from something within the automaton, the latter lost all of its light and suddenly collapsed, all of its motion ceasing entirely while the barrier also vanished into naught, allowing some of the remaining planar energy to surge towards the other encroaching infantry automatons.
That confirmed that the item was somehow vital to the entity, so she promptly grabbed it with both hands, ignoring the surrounding forces preparing to fire upon her, and pressed down with all of her fingers to crack the glowing shell.
Knowing some of the otherworldly power sources, she did suspect that there was a chance of an enormous explosion upon opening the core, but that was something that she was willing to risk both due to her own resilience and the chance of the explosion injuring the automatons around her due to their power systems being identical. Whether it would be interference from the energy, or the outright power contained within the core being capable of damaging the barriers and bodies of the automatons made via the same method and with the same ingredients, it would be advantageous for her, and she would certainly draw the attention of the other larger automatons to pull them over to the fortress.
That was not what happened, however. Instead, the orange sphere cracked open, the glowing orange material breaking apart into small shards like it was made of a particularly durable glass, and liquid of the same colour poured out onto the sand, quickly dissipating into steam. All that was left behind was a small particle that fell onto the ground, quickly alerting her perception as she realised the nature of the object that fell.
‘Ah… Ha… So that is how they are getting so much power. Of course…’ she turned around and, as a series of plasma spheres shot towards her, she leapt up and activated the ability of the Lion’s Roar, both the physique and technique, “They are powered, albeit indirectly, by planar energy! They can be felled; they can be beaten!”
V4C89: Inhuman Invasion, Part 1
There was no room for discussion, and after seeing how easily their barrier was destroyed, few of them wished to risk enduring those kinds of attacks on their own. Furthermore, none of the Patriarchs had the ability to regenerate their bodies in a few seconds like Wei Yi could, so they could hardly shrug off an attack without fully blocking it.
Even if anyone present had the ability to establish the same kind of barrier that they had just used, then use their own strength to regenerate themselves that quickly, Wei Yi had lost much of her body in just one attack from one of the railgun robots. There were at least a hundred of them in the wave, and there could easily be thousands more in the Ju District, waiting to be unleashed once the initial wave was shown to either succeed or fail to fully complete its mission.
They had no time to establish individual defences in the two districts in greatest danger of attack, so they decided that it would be best to force these approaching forces to converge a single point that could then be defended with the full forces of all districts and forces on the side of the Arbiters. After a brief consideration of terrain, taking into account the mountains between much of the Ping District and the Ju District, it was concluded that occupying a spot from which Wei Yi’s spiritual perception still covered the edge of walkable terrain before the mountains would be best. Then, they could catch the focus of the invading forces, and thus endure for long enough to comprehend the weaknesses of the invaders, as well as any effective tactics.
The only positive so far was that the last two entities that the Ascendant had perceived, one being a six-legged colossus with one enormous weapon at the bottom and sixteen mounted around its round head, and the other being a robot with eight legs that were placed in a more regular arrangement than the legs of a spider which was covered entirely in weaponry, were currently staying back and not approaching, or else they would need to deal with monsters that were thirty metres tall or long, respectively.
In what might have been the greatest speed and degree of effort exerted since the original establishment and rise of Yi City under the rule of Kong Shi Meng, a defensive post was established on the aforementioned location in a single hour.
All of the districts contributed their own specialties in order to do this as quickly as possible. There were talismans placed on the walls, which contained many overlapping inscriptions and were supported with arrays, while the materials themselves were enhanced by secret alchemical methods from the Jiang District covered by various metals recently purchased from the Ning District, and made into artefacts via the Red Shaper’s Grasp. That would have normally exhausted Wei Yi’s energy, but there was one thing that they quickly noticed from the wave, which might have also contributed to her own rapid recognition of the invasion – it turned out that the machines were repelling planar energy away from themselves, and thus brought in a vast wave of it towards their defensive positions.
“How likely is it that the automatons are run with a power source that ignores planar energy, and that this will be the right approach to dealing with them?” Wei Yi asked after the walls were established.
“Knowing the Ju District, very likely,” Luo Na offered, frowning as she gazed upon the scene with her unique vision, “There is only so much that I can perceive from this distance, and none of it confirms or denies any theory we have had so far.”
“If this could be solved with sight alone, then I would almost certainly be able to detect it myself. However, the enormous wave of energy surging towards us is making it rather difficult to perceive what the army at the back looks like, and it may be that if they do use planar energy, they take only the necessary kind of particles into their bodies while spitting out the rest, resulting in this tide. A close examination of one of them will be needed in order to figure out the truth,” she said, sighing, “If they somehow ignore or repel planar energy, then only that which is not born of it will be effective. Their attacks are at the seventh realm and above, so if their defences are at the seventh realm…”
She paused, but not because she was afraid to finish the sentence. Rather, she had another idea that only she could put into practise, and thus she noted it down for future use, just in case it proved to be necessary. To waste a certain resource that was already limited would be highly unfortunate, but if it was necessary, then so be it.
“What if they do use planar energy?”
“At that point, everything falls under the concept of planar energy, which is subservient to the laws of reality. Even the heavens are bound to them, I suspect. If that is the case, I will be able to beat them, and we will win.”
Nobody present truly understood her words, especially not how she had meant them, but they were able to comprehend their essence. They would be able to oppose the automatons of the Ju District if they use the powers of the Planar Continents, but if they were facing genuine otherworldly creations that don’t feature a trace of local planar energy, then the effort required to oppose them would be significantly greater. Overall, that would be the worst-case scenario, but it should also be the least likely for one simple reason.
Even the otherworldly demons used planar energy to some degree, and since the world was so full of them, there were very few chances of them not utilising planar energy in one way or another. The materials that compose the structure of the robots may be planar in origin, or perhaps the source of their power is, but so long as there was a trace of planar energy, the Ascendant could affect it with her abilities.
In order to account for other possibilities, however, she did decide to bring in a few other combatants that might thrive in the worst case scenario.
“Ah! W-Wei Yi, this… what are all of those things?”
“Welcome, Jia Rong. This is the army of the Ju District, likely created by otherworldly demons or in collaboration with them, at least. I’m not sure what powers them, but you might be the strongest against them,” Wei Yi said, pointing at the smallest of the approaching forces, “If we are forced into direct confrontation, then you can ignore those, as they should be easy enough to contain even if they ignore planar energy itself, since we will still be able to restrain them with constructs. The true danger comes from those things, which we should figure out labels for at some point.”
“Uh, Wei Yi, could I offer a suggestion?” Miyu called out from beyond the spatial barrier again, “The small ones are infantry, the larger ones are elite infantry, then the four-legged things are centaurs, the ones with one cannon and treads are tanks, then the artillery, the railgun walker, the colossus and finally the weapon platform.”
“Did you get that from the otherworldly gift?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I guess that the people who made these gave them names while they were working on them, hence the ease with which I can access that kind of information.”
“Right. That also confirms that even if they are the products of some otherworldly gift, they are not themselves an otherworldly entity. They are made from materials that can be produced in this world, and that confirms that they will have a weakness,” Wei Yi turned to the rest of the powerful forces at the rushed fortress, “We will have a way to destroy them, and all that we need is time and effort.”
Since she was brought in and informed briefly about the situation, it was time to prevent the enormous wave from surging out onto the lands of the Arbiters, and to ensure that they wouldn’t be risking fighting a war on three fronts at the very least.
The easiest way that they could see would be to attract the attention of the enormous tide – the railgun walker that had previously attacked her looked to have lost interest after the first shot for some reason – would be to provoke them, and then direct them towards the centre of the walls they had constructed. From there, they would not have the full might of the other districts to call upon directly, but more forces could still be moved in the moment that a tactic presents itself.
Wei Yi did not think that she would be able to clear out the army on her own, not unless their defensive power does not compare in the slightest to the offensive capability of the railgun walker, in which case they could be swept away with a single wave of her hand. No, what was far more likely was that their physical resistance would be in the fourth realm at the very least, and possibly as high as the seventh realm, although that was less likely considering the sheer difficulty of resisting the kinds of powers that manifest upon the entry to the higher realms.
For that reason, it was absolutely vital to ensure that the combatants currently present had the ability to truly resist and dismantle the walking and rolling machines, so that the immense numbers did not need to be coped with by something dangerous like the Red Phantom Flood, which would simply tear her mind apart if she consistently made more than a few figures of herself. If it was possible for anyone to take out the robots, then they would need to do so, no matter what that took.
Ideally, their structures would have a fatal flaw, or some specific point that could be struck to disable them.
Perhaps they operate with an energy animation core, a concept that had existed in the Planar Continents for some time and could have been used to drive enormous golems if not for the numerous flaws with the initial design, which could be struck and thus disabled, or they might have some integral element that can be struck to block the flow of energy within the metallic body of the automatons, thus stopping them. It was highly unlikely for the latter to be present, as it was simply too obvious to pass by the otherworldly demons that had to have contributed to such unusual designs.
‘Obviously, I’d never complain if they did decide to provide me with such a kind offering. The attack was already unexpected, so the least they could do is make it some kind of sick joke,’ she thought to herself while waiting for the approaching tide to get just a little closer.
The moment that it was at the perfect distance, she made use of her fourth realm movement method to rapidly appear nearly five hundred metres closer, crossing half of the gap between them, and immediately conjured her many physique abilities and techniques at once, making use of her five meridian networks to allow for nearly twenty different techniques to be actualised at once. The Titanic Conqueror rose up behind her, the Obliteration sphere blazing within its four hands, each one preparing the Delayed Pulses variant of the technique.
After a moment of build-up that was highly accelerated by the Planar Dao, before any of the encroaching forces had the chance to fire anything at her, everything was released at them.
Due to the overwhelming nature of the Obliteration energy, everything else was consumed by it as the first pulse shot landed upon the front of the wave, where the infantry was concentrated. Each one landed far apart so that as much of the force could be struck at once, ensuring the largest number of the automatons will be pulled if not all of them choose to attack them at once.
The instant that the first infantry automaton was struck, she noted that there was indeed an effect upon the collision. All the bipedal entities that were caught in the radius of the blazing blackened crimson beams staggered, a hexagonal energy layer manifesting over their bodies and absorbing much of her attack, leaving only a small fragment of that energy to land upon the black metal that composed their bodies. Some of the bright orange that shone through the armoured plates flickered for a single moment, but after the first beam of Obliteration energy began to dissipate, there was no visible damage upon any of the infantry automatons.
Naturally, the second pulse followed soon after, impacting the barrier composed of numerous hexagonal fragments and causing a deep sound to emanate from it, although that looked to be the only notable effect.
The third proceeded after that, and beside the pulse of sound, there was a slight fluctuation on the surface of the protective barrier, allowing just a little more energy to pass through it and land upon the automaton itself. It did not prompt any movement, delay, nor a trace of even insignificant damage to it, which caused the Ascendant to frown.
There was still one more beam to come, and it would be the most powerful of the set, but the weakest of the automatons had already effortlessly endured half of the power of the attack empowered by all of the Dao under her control, which was also easily one of the most powerful in her control. She had not used the full capacity of her abilities just yet, but this was already terrible news for the potential of any cultivators other than her, as it meant that planar energy itself was not an effective counter.
‘I need to confirm the effectiveness of my full power first, then look for a weakness in the structure of the automatons. If they share one, then we do still have a chance,’ she thought, her attention moving out to the other automatons that were in the area near her, ‘That being said, they are not going to let me do this without any interruptions, are they?’
With her Obliteration beams, with four being cast by the Titanic Conqueror and two more being fired out by her, she had managed to hit roughly thirty-six automaton infantry in total, which meant that for every one that she hit, there were ten that were nearer to her and more than ready to fire upon her. The moment that they got into range, their three fingers retracted to open up the path for the cannon occupying half of their arm, which they promptly aimed at her. Like the Obliteration beams, these weapons needed a moment to charge up, but unlike her primary technique, these only needed one.
Just as the fourth and last blast of the Obliteration beams emerged from her hands, she leapt into the air, soaring past her Titanic Conqueror as it also fired out its last instance of the beams. Those landed upon the infantry that was still keeping their shields up, with their hands also opening up. In place of firing bright spheres of orange matter, however, they were releasing raw heat from within their bodies, coinciding with the stress placed upon the hexagonal barrier.
‘Heat? They do have a flaw, then. Fire-type techniques may be effective.’
Then, the hundred or so bipedal automatons that had gathered around her fired their first shot, resulting in that sphere of something that looked akin to both energy and extremely hot matter, which seemed to be a state that the otherworldly demons called plasma, hence the names of their weapons in their minds. This plasma shot towards her direction with impressive speed, lower than that of the railgun mounted atop the railgun walker but far more quickly than any arrow, bolt or even bullet could fly. Some planar techniques would overwhelm it, but their number was limited, and they were most certainly the exceptions, not the rule.
“Stop!” the Ascendant exclaimed, calling upon the Law around her to act upon the bolts and the automatons alike. She didn’t know whether she could affect them, but now was the safest time to try, as the larger threats had yet to make their way over.
Her voice pulsed out like a shockwave, travelling through the plasma and the enemies in an instant, and she saw a most surprising thing – the plasma projectiles were unaffected, being delayed only for a moment, but the automatons outright stopped their activities, all of the orange lights on their bodies fading out to nothing, turning them entirely black. It was akin to a miracle to her, for a moment.
The very next, the lights ignited once again, and their eyes regained their orange radiance that was focused upon her. Their arm cannons were aimed at her, and their temporary cessation of activity looked to have permitted them to accelerate their charging process, allowing them to figure out a second set of projectiles in just a moment. This time, she was already falling to the ground, but their attacks did take that into account and aimed their shots at the place where she would be if she continued to fall at the natural pace of gravity.
‘Aside from potentially interrupting movement with water or earth-type techniques, perhaps they are not very intelligent. It could be that it is possible to rush into melee range and strike them down without fearing their attacks, as they are unable to take into account a cultivator’s movement capabilities,’ she thought, quickly amending, ‘At least at first. There is a possibility that the minds driving these things are able to learn, in which case the less I do the better, technically. If their knowledge can also be shared by all of the other automatons… This army shouldn’t have that capability, as this alone is already far beyond anything that the Planar Continents should have been able to produce. To develop a fully intelligent and connected hive mind for these things would imply that the Ju District could have defeated the Great Families a long time ago.’
That did raise the question of why it was the Ascendant’s Arbiters and not the Great Family-controlled districts that needed to face the assault, but there was nothing about these automatons that suggested that they would be able to talk, or that they would be keen to do so.
Due to that, she decided to test her theory by charging straight into the army, reserving some of her energy specifically to be able to unleash it all at once the very moment that it is the right time to do so.
Luckily for her, the projectiles fired out by the plasma cannons were fast and, when some of them shot past her and struck the ground with an enormous explosion of orange, looked to be clearly powerful, but they did lack any ability to adjust to her after being fired out of the arm cannons. Evading them was easy, especially when the Law-based movement method that she employed permitted literal instantaneous movement in most terrain and environments.
In mere moments, she was at the incredible wave of automatons, and they were ready to fire upon her. Before they could, she shifted herself another fifty metres forward, ending up amidst a number of those that she had previously assaulted with her Obliteration beam. They were nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the attacking forces due to their uniform design and the lack of clear damage upon their bodies, and so it was only her recollection of their positioning and speed in the wave that allowed her to recognise this. They did not look to care about that, as they quickly joined the rest of the silent forces in firing at her.
Countless orange spheres of pure power shot in her direction, and when she once again leapt out of the way, they instead flew at the other automatons, quickly colliding with the hexagonal shields that emerged the moment anything threatened their bodies. It did show that they had some kind of physical weakness, or else the creators wouldn’t have bothered with the shield, but not the flaw itself.
The barrier looked to wrap around the entire automaton, even if it was only glowing and thus highlighting itself at the point of collision, making it look like there were a few hexagonal barriers simply appearing out of thin air whenever the automatons were attacked. Just as they withstood the Obliteration beam, these infantry forces endured the attacks from each other, and appeared to be entirely unperturbed as they were preparing to attack again at the same time as their shields were blocking the attacks from the opposite side of the encirclement that happened to form.
‘Alright, before the rest of those things get here, the ultimate test! Oh, this is going to hurt my head, isn’t it?’ she readied herself for the inevitable outcome, then stretched out her hands.
Out of the sandy ground, countless small totems emerged, each one topped by a figure akin to the Titanic Conqueror, a single eye made up of blackened crimson glaring upon the encroaching forces of the enemy. Before their figures could fully stabilise, they also reached out with their hands and caused a further set of totems to surge out of the ground, all of which then looked at their nearest automaton and placed their hands close together.
While the totems were rising, she opened the Truth of the Universe interface and prepared to invest her hard-earned anchor energy points, for she knew that if she was going to test one thing, she should also test a few more.
Blackened crimson gathered between them, rapidly ballooning into a sphere that scorched their illusory hands with the Ever-Growing Blaze imprisoned within the principles of the Obliteration energy. It was readied in the same amount of time as it took the automatons to be able to attack once more, so before they had the chance to recognise the totems as enemies and destroy them prematurely, Wei Yi split her focus across all of these totems and, with all of them pushing the sphere out at once, joined in with firing the Obliteration beam.
Then, she also threw in seventy anchor points into the technique, allowing it to be enhanced at the same time.
At once, more than a hundred incredible beams shot out, each nearby automaton being faced with several beams at once. Their shields looked ready to activate, and that was when the act of potentially wasting seventy anchor energy points came into play. Beside empowering Obliteration to the Seventy-First Stage, a most impressive improvement that makes it the technique at the second highest stage in her arsenal, those seventy points contained a notable quantity of planar energy trapped somewhere within them, preventing it from occupying the world once more. At the instant that they were spent, a small planar energy wave surged out from her body.
It touched them the instant before the numerous Obliteration beams could. All of the barriers that had been specifically repelling planar energy were suddenly met with a wave of it, and one that wasn’t insignificant in quantity. All of the hexagonal parts of the shield flickered at different times, a clear dissonance occurring within the previously smooth activation of the barriers. Thus, when the blackened crimson struck them, small embers managed to pass through the weaker portions of the shields.
They touched the metal body of the automatons and lightly scorched it, leaving a trace of ash upon the surface without piercing it at all.
It did, however, expose the fact that the shields were not only imperfect, but that it was possible to affect the automatons themselves, so the moment that her mind was able to return to full control over her own body rather than the totems, she vanished from the spot again and appeared beside the automaton that had endured the most damage from the first beam attack. The totems continued to fire upon it, making full use of the energy that they had already gathered while the automatons were splitting their attention between the totems and Wei Yi herself.
Although the infantry automaton attempted to attack her, it was unable to hit her in with the plasma cannon, and its finger-like segments couldn’t move into place fast enough to stop her own fingers from grabbing onto the chest of the automaton. That was both the largest segment of each automaton, meaning that there was either a very thick layer of armour in place to protect something, or that there was a particularly large object contained inside, as there would otherwise be no reason to put such a significant weight onto such a high part of the automaton.
There were few parts of the body to grab onto, but it was made out of several large plates that weren’t perfectly joined with one another to prevent any trace of seams. Near the chest, in an arrangement similar to the ribcage, two plates on either side reached out from the shoulder area to the middle of the torso, with a small gap between them and the metal beneath that could be grabbed onto.
She didn’t try to test out her own strength against this entity, as it was simply too dangerous to waste her time if the rest of the automatons were able to inflict damage that was in any way similar to that of the railgun walker. From the very start, she forced the two plates apart with her full strength, and although they proved far more resistant to her attempt than she would have hoped – as a weaker body would mean that the Chao District’s forces would have more of a chance to contribute – but they still failed to hold after her physique energy enhanced her already immense physical strength even further, exposing the inner portion of the automaton.
Something bright and, as with everything else in the robot army, orange was visible through the two openings, blocked only by the central plate, so she grabbed onto that and tore it off as well. There, beneath the black metal that she threw right into the House of Gold for later inspection, was a glowing spherical object, the luminous orange obscured only by a few thin strands of metal seeming to creep across the top like vines, with no clear purpose so far as she was able to tell.
‘I don’t know what this is, but I’m taking it!’ she exclaimed mentally, grabbing onto the glowing surface and pulling it out of the chest cavity of the robot.
It partly bent under the pressure from her fingers, but it came out quickly enough. As it parted from something within the automaton, the latter lost all of its light and suddenly collapsed, all of its motion ceasing entirely while the barrier also vanished into naught, allowing some of the remaining planar energy to surge towards the other encroaching infantry automatons.
That confirmed that the item was somehow vital to the entity, so she promptly grabbed it with both hands, ignoring the surrounding forces preparing to fire upon her, and pressed down with all of her fingers to crack the glowing shell.
Knowing some of the otherworldly power sources, she did suspect that there was a chance of an enormous explosion upon opening the core, but that was something that she was willing to risk both due to her own resilience and the chance of the explosion injuring the automatons around her due to their power systems being identical. Whether it would be interference from the energy, or the outright power contained within the core being capable of damaging the barriers and bodies of the automatons made via the same method and with the same ingredients, it would be advantageous for her, and she would certainly draw the attention of the other larger automatons to pull them over to the fortress.
That was not what happened, however. Instead, the orange sphere cracked open, the glowing orange material breaking apart into small shards like it was made of a particularly durable glass, and liquid of the same colour poured out onto the sand, quickly dissipating into steam. All that was left behind was a small particle that fell onto the ground, quickly alerting her perception as she realised the nature of the object that fell.
‘Ah… Ha… So that is how they are getting so much power. Of course…’ she turned around and, as a series of plasma spheres shot towards her, she leapt up and activated the ability of the Lion’s Roar, both the physique and technique, “They are powered, albeit indirectly, by planar energy! They can be felled; they can be beaten!”
