V5C56: Declaration of War
The Ze Patriarch wished to address the Ascendant the moment that the process was complete, but he found that the light faded and revealed no figure standing within it. The sword that should have been created was also absent, but he could tell that there had been no death nor great disaster.
As he felt his legs tire and his whole body demand rest, for his energy was nearly expended and his mind had not had a single opportunity to pause and relax, he fell without much grace onto the stone wall nearest to him, managing to remain in a vaguely vertical position as he did so. Once he was sure that he wouldn’t fall, he reached out with a ray of spiritual will to the nearest guardian to him, succeeding in reaching him after a moment of uncertainty.
“Check the spatial stabilisation point and see what has emerged!” he passed on the message, not caring that much whether the guardian himself would be the one to investigate.
All of them were exhausted and clearly in no state to run about to confirm anything, but if they passed the message on and then brought back the answer, it would only take a short while for the Patriarch to learn what he wanted to know.
That was exactly what they seemed to do, for the Ze Patriarch could just see the nearest of the guardians in a position much akin to his own, sitting on the stone with his back on the wall, his head being the only thing that he could move at all. His lips moved a little as the message was passed on, and then he was still, only his eyes occasionally blinking. He was still alive, that much was clear, but it would be a while before he would be able to recover his energy and do anything more than that. Had there been a threat to his life there and then, he wouldn’t have been able to survive without outside assistance.
After a while, the message from the other side finally returned to the Patriarch, and it was rather surprising to him, ‘The spatial stabilisation node is currently inactive, but there is a large thing above it, like some kind of rune or brand. It is in active motion and is twisting constantly, and it seems to be getting brighter as I look upon it.’
Certainly, all of that could have caught his attention, but the most significant factor was that the node was not yet active, completely shocking the Ze Patriarch.
With the way in which the Ascendant vanished, she could have easily snapped up the node and departed, perhaps even grabbing the Ze District once she had connected the node to Paragon, from which her forces could have emerged and conquered the lands easily enough. That she didn’t do this shocked him far more than it probably should have, especially considering the straightforward fashion in which she had behaved prior to this.
Since he and his district were not in danger for the moment, he allowed himself to relax just a little.
Inevitably, that moment of quiet slowly led to him falling asleep, his eyes shutting and his mind going off to matters other than his own, to worlds far beyond that seemed to wondrous in comparison. Upon his awakening, all of that would be forgotten, and the few fragments that remain would seem to be incredibly absurd, to the extent that it would not make sense for him to ever dream of such a thing.
Whether or not that was the truth would be anyone’s guess, for what adult would speak of their dreams in length? They were insignificant matters, best forgotten in the waking world.
At the edge of a great cliff, leading into the Kong District’s land, crimson hair fluttered in the wind, the lengthy ponytail being blown back as the Ascendant looked down into those lands and recalled the last time that she had visited them.
Last time, she had been in a far, far lower realm than now, and the gap had widened even further with the breakthrough that occurred upon the forging of her sword. All of the energy unleashed from within the Shard of Warfare combined with the power of the planar stones she had pulled out of the Wu District’s treasury, not to mention the various materials that she had taken out and then merged into the refining process, unleashing much of their energy in the meanwhile.
First and foremost, the most significant breakthrough that she had succeeded in was either the development of her nascent rift, or the next step of her killing will.
If she had to pick one, she would probably be most proud of the sudden expansion of the nascent rift from twenty-five percent to a terrifying fifty. In far more precise terms, it meant that instead of it taking her a total of sixteen minutes to regenerate all of her planar energy in an environment with no planar energy whatsoever, it would only take her eight. Within four minutes, she would regain half of her planar energy, and within one minute, she would regain twelve and a half percent. This was an enormous increase, and one that couldn’t be compared to the growth of her killing will cultivation.
With the quantity of killing will that could endlessly pour of her body, to go up a single realm wouldn’t be too difficult with some dedicated effort, but now she had just thrown herself out of balance yet again only to give herself… well, it wasn’t in any way fair to claim that she was not gaining a great deal from it.
Upon ascension to the seventh realm, called the Yin-Yang Conduit realm, a structure had formed within her body and within the mental domain. In shape, it was much akin to the vortex that manifested around the Shard of Warfare, smoke and silver light spinning around, one seeming to chase the other while also being pursued, never truly merging nor separating. The form of the conduit itself was difficult to establish, but the function did not need a single moment of contemplation to be witnessed.
So long as she made use of the conduit, all of her killing will would be able to reach far further, and contain far more power. Combining that with the simple growth in the density of her energy, if she could previously overwhelm most Patriarchs with an Ire-based technique utilising either killing intent or spiritual will as the primary core of the technique, now she could kill them with a little effort. Of course, this was a bit of a simplification, for no battle was as simple as one man standing in place while she attempted to kill them, but it was still a significant difference that could allow her to resolve threats posed by Patriarchs with far less difficulty.
The other reason that she was not particularly impressed by this breakthrough was that she did gain two more stages in each of her other cultivation paths. Her bloodline power, physique energy and cosmic energy all reached the fifth stage, with four perfected stages, roughly equating to the ninth stage for normal cultivators.
With a single further step, a stage and perfected stage would be gained, and with those, her cultivation would undergo a great transformation that would give her the chance to step into the seventh realm at an early stage, whether by attaining something that was normally relegated to that realm, or by gaining a power equivalent to it. So far, she was still unable to guess what she would gain, but as the linked channels gained additional chains and her energy gained further crimson nebulae, it was clear that the changes would be related to her energy, a rather surprising phenomenon at this point in time.
One of the core factors of planar cultivation was that there was a certain limit to planar energy itself. Even if one could advance it past a gaseous state and into a liquid one, then a solid one, and maybe even a crystalline one without cultivating any kind of core, planar pool, anchor or anything else of the sort, it would not make them on par with those that did the same the normal way. Energy alone had a limit, and it seemed to be the crystalline state that she had attained some time ago. Past that, one needed to manifest an anchor to stabilise it and allow it to be projected out to greater distances, a core to do the same and to protect the anchor, marks to empower the energy and planar constructs as they emerged from the body, channels to connect that energy back to the anchor, halos to expand one’s power and further concentrate force upon the anchor, and then, finally, a rift forged from the broken anchor that would surpass all of the previous structures.
Despite that, there seemed to be a further step for planar energy itself, of which she had never heard of prior to this. It was very much to her liking, as she would very much appreciate the added advantage against the Primordial Deities and Great Leeches – to her knowledge, both used ordinary planar energy.
Her physique energy and bloodline power could be said to be more ordinary in terms of advancement, as she had not been able to attain any kind of perfected stage and instead just progressed by two ordinary stages, with her overall power rising due to the increases of both. The growth was still appreciated, and it helped stabilise the state of her body and the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, but it was far outmatched by her planar cultivation.
This gap was certain to become even larger once she got to the seventh realm, and the eighth realm after that, at which point only the ninth realms of bloodline power, physique energy and killing will would be able to match the near-unlimited power offered by the Imperfect Rift realm. The only method of changing that would be to fuse all five into their original, true state – that of the true planar energy that all five cultivation paths came from. Once that was done, the power of all five would go into one path, and the single path would empower all five, allowing her development of bloodline power, for instance, to directly benefit her planar energy rather than doing so through the incidental bonus of bloodline cultivation multiplicatively enhancing the other forms of energy in her body.
‘Unfortunately, I have no time for that right now. The Kong District awaits, and I have a thing to say to the bastards in Testament…’ Wei Yi thought as she vanished from the spot, pulling herself to the position of a chain in the valley of the Kong District. There, she spread out her spiritual perception to its absolute limit, a total of nearly six thousand metres, and quickly found the spatial stabilisation node.
With another usage of the fourth realm movement method, she appeared beside that, finding herself in the centre of what must, at some ancient point in time, have been a great plaza, with the node being placed inside of the centre of a fountain-like structure that was itself centred in the central square. It was also quite close to the middle of the Kong District itself, so it was clearly put there either by impossible coincidence or deliberate planning, with the latter indicating that Kong Shi Meng himself might have come by to place it down.
Otherwise, there would have been none in the Kong District who could do such a thing. Even at their peak, their leaders were generally in the fifth and sixth realms at most, which wouldn’t be sufficient to work with any kind of spatial node like the ones bound to the Yi City Web.
She stood over it, but did not active it immediately.
As she recalled, she battled a member of the first generation of the Great Ning family on the sixth of the third month, and it was now the twenty-fourth of the eighth. A total of eighteen days and five months had passed since then, nearly half a year, and she was finally intending to make her return to the conflict that she had started.
It wouldn’t be right to do so without proper preparation, and without the right kind of presentation. Furthermore, she had to be ready for the Great Leeches to attack in full force the moment that she made herself known beyond killing one of their own in the Wu District, through the activation of the Yi City Web in a manner that put a powerful wall to the right of their districts. Thus, she had two objectives in mind.
The first was to guarantee that her reappearance would show her at her best, in the best light possible, and in a manner that would make it nearly impossible for anyone to conclude either that her injury from nearly six months ago was a detriment for her in any way. In that regard, she was somewhat ready.
Her newly reforged blade, Moon Splitter, was a very impactful weapon, and it could do far more than simply act as a sword and break apart and then repeat the technique used by Kong Shi Meng in the memories of the Shard of Warfare. It could shift into any weapon that she had mastery over, and she suspected that she could find far more uses to manipulating the metal shards freely than were obvious right away. As such, there was no need to worry that anyone would see her weapon as one that was unfit for the Ascendant, or one that wished to combat the Great Leeches and tear them down once and for all.
Although she had not taken much care of it since her awakening on the southern border, her hair was not significantly different from before, not that it would earn much attention anyway.
Obviously, the development of her cultivation couldn’t be ignored, so a simple display of her Endless Monolith, Subterranean Shell, Astral Scars and the chain-like channels should be enough to prove that the delay did not prevent her from cultivating to a point where she would soon be able to fight one-on-one with the first generation and win. Only she knew that she could have done far more had she been provided with a few more resources, but that didn’t need to be said.
Her Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival were essentially the only thing that she wore, aside from the broken scale armour, the star metal heeled boots and star metal gauntlet. There wasn’t much to swap them to, nor did she see much of a reason to do so when her attire was good enough for the job.
In a way, she hoped that the permanence of that would grant some people hope that her path and her objective could not be thwarted even by the best efforts of the Greats, and that she would not fall no matter what she was forced to endure. So long as people knew that, they would have a higher chance of risking their own lives as well.
For that, the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow might even be a benefit, for it could display in full how she had been permanently maimed and yet came out as the winner in the long run. For the moment, it lacked the same freedom as her previous arm had, but that would change the instant she either became powerful enough, or found the right method to controlling it more efficiently. However, just as with a number of her other afflictions, she was able to hide them from the world and simply not reveal those kinds of details, and many wouldn’t believe them even if the Greats found out and spread the word deliberately, deciding to take advantage of the common people that they despised. Her fighting ability would only go up with every single day, so how could she not be at her best?
‘In this regard, I suppose that I don’t have much to change or address, do I? That’s good,’ she nodded, moving onto the second significant point she needed to consider.
The second factor was that she wished to bring her voice to as many people as possible, be they Great or not. She wanted the world to learn of her return, and to bring the challenge to the Great Leeches in the most overt possible, so that nobody could possibly claim that they didn’t know of her actions. There had been a time for subterfuge, and it was far gone.
From now on, there would only be over conflict and war until her enemies fell, or until she failed to do what she wished. Either way, one side would win and the other fail, and the world could be plunged into light or darkness, with some viewing either as a positive and either as a negative. That was the natural Law of things, for some thrived beneath the morning sun and others could only emerge in the night, when nearly no light remained except for the few feeble sparks that mankind had lit for themselves.
She wasn’t arrogant enough to claim that she knew best, but if she didn’t strive towards something, all of her actions would be meaningless, for they would simply meander and go nowhere regardless of how long she fought.
Part of the problem in delivering her message, however, was the fact that she still lacked the appropriate methods to make her voice heard anywhere and everywhere. In the ninth realm of all cultivation paths, perhaps the range of her energy would be sufficient to reach all in the Western Continent, if not the Eastern Continent, but she didn’t have the power to simply sit around and wait for that to come. Sitting around wouldn’t even permit her to go up by a stage within a thousand years, thin as the energy of the world was for someone like her, and if her Arbiters endured for that long, then she would very much be impressed.
After all, they weren’t a proper, well developed faction with proper procedures and clearly defined plans to adhere to. They were a name slapped onto a large group, and that group would only last for as long as they were bound together by a shared hope and will – hope of success, and the will to remove the Greats, and all threats to the people of Yi City.
For them to persist past a few years without the supervision of the one that had thrown them together and given them the name that they now used, they would need to greatly change their operating procedures and figure out ways in which to achieve that which they wished for without relying on the power of a few with abnormal strength. If they did that, it wouldn’t be right for her to claim any responsibility for such a success, as she could have been replaced by any other so long as the same people met one another.
‘Besides, I had wanted to rename the Kong District at one point, so that my children could live there and learn and grow. Considering that I might already need to stay away from them once they are actually born, it would be even worse of me to completely break any promise I had made to them,’ the Ascendant thought, aware that her thoughts were once again slipping away from her, and that it wasn’t helping the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow to keep itself to a more sensible state.
When she did let it loose, the mass of smoke and the vibrance of her power would expand greatly, causing the claws to grow and the limb to gain an aura of overwhelming threat and destruction. It was powerful in the right place and time, that much she wouldn’t argue with, but it was not the kind of image that she wished to present to the world if she did manage to find a way to reach every single one of them in a single message. As the Ascendant, she was attempting to bring a better world to all those that would have it, and if she radiated her killing intent towards all without any reservation, then few would wish to take her up on that offer. The few that would, might only do so as they would hope to get a world of blood and fire.
That was not the world she wished for, and so she had no use for their company and their intent.
Hence, she brought herself back to the right topic yet again, ‘With my current range of spiritual perception, it will allow me to cover the majority of every single district that I control through the Yi City Web. That means that if I am able to produce some kind of array using the area of every single district, one that would send a single message to all, the combined area of nearly half of Yi City might very well be enough to reach out to the people of the Shi, Chu, Ning, Fu, Chen, Yi, Huang and Ling Districts, even if they do not wish to hear my message.’
The most difficult to reach might be the Fu or Chen District, for they would be more than a district away from the border of any of her controlled districts, but she did have one method for expanding her reach further – other than the mental replication of the world to impose the spatial stabilisation node state in places where she did not have such a thing, which she would use anyway.
That method had a name, personality, and lengthy memory, meaning that she would need to call out to her first. To do that, the connection to the Yi City Web needed to be formed first.
She glanced to the south, where the spatial stabilisation node of the Ze District was going to be claimed by a brand that she had set down with the intention of delaying the wave of her energy from reaching it right away. There, it would be able to connect with the Jiang and Lan Districts, thus forming a connection between three districts, thus having a large chance of activating the phenomenon of the Yi City Web even if it didn’t allow a connection to the Luo District and all those to its north, which she wanted to avoid for the same reason that she was making sure she was as prepared as possible for the activation of the node here in the Kong District.
Although she was too far from the brand to judge its condition accurately, she could guess that it was nearing the end of its duration. In a moment, it would activate the spatial stabilisation note, and then she would have to act anyway.
So, she might as well be the first to activate a node.
Reaching out with her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, she brought forth her vast power and focused it upon the spatial stabilisation node hidden within the remnants of a fountain. It took her only a moment to activate it, even quicker than the last time she had interacted with a node like it properly, and then felt a wave of force hit her with the force of a mountain.
“The rebellion of the vile thing I had fought is only gaining traction. The people’s minds seem to have declined as planar energy density has risen,” Ning Huang, “We will need to take action soon, if-”
He, and all of the Great Leeches present, looked to the large map of the Western Continent, where the number of mentions of their names had clearly increased from before they knew of the threat of the Ascendant.
That should have been it, but they all felt a disturbance from the Death of Words, one that manifested moments later with the sudden ignition of vibrant points – no, vast spheres – of light above the Chao, Ju, Bai, Ping, Luo, Jiang, Kong, Ze, Lan, Shun, Wu, Gang, Xin, Bao, Ru and Qiang Districts, as well as a point to the north of the Chao District, where a marker was added to the map with the simple label of ‘Fortress’. More than half of the districts in the current Yi City were affected, naturally interrupting their discussion as they looked upon the ensuing chaos.
The former fountain, long unused for such a purpose, exploded into a grey mist that quickly spread out before crimson and silver erupted from the spatial stabilisation point. Aside from the great quantity of smoke that poured out from the crimson, the gateway itself was unchanged, the energy rising up and then being pulled apart to reveal a familiar landscape within.
On the other side, a woman with silver eyes and red hair stood ready, even if she had likely manifested her avatar there only a moment prior. She stepped out – projecting her state out of the spatial realm -and looked at the Ascendant with a stunned face, as many emotions brimmed within her eyes.
“Wei Yi…”
“Yi Shi Ming, with the current range of the Yi City Web, would it be possible to broadcast my voice to all of the other districts?”
The mother of the Master of Yi City froze with her mouth half-open, stopping herself and instead considering the question for a brief while. Her figure blurred for a little while, with her perception clearly travelling through all parts of the world where the Kong Prison Realm’s influence was able to reach. Once she returned to full stability, she bit her lip as she thought for a little longer, the energy around the spatial stabilisation nodes being affected as she likely tested a number of her theories.
“I believe that this would be possible, with a little disturbance in the districts where the node is located beneath earth or rock. If you wish, it might even be feasible to send across your image in some limited capacity.”
“Please do so right away. I have a thing I wish to say to the Great Leeches.”
The spatial spirit nodded and waited for the Ascendant to take a step back before waving her hand and driving all of the energy within the range of the spatial stabilisation nodes.
Before the Ascendant began, the people within the districts that were already under her control, and that were within the Kong Prison Realm at the moment, had managed to begin gathering near the gateways at the circle of gateways, and they looked out of the gateway at the Ascendant with varying expressions. Most were still easily recognisable, with their cultivation having grown by no more than a realm, and their bodies looking much like they did when they and Wei Yi had last spoken, but she could tell even from the single glance that she sent their way that they were not unchanged after all of the time they had spent apart.
Still, this was not something she could spend her time on right now, as she had something to say.
At the Qiang District, the Patriarch looked on as the smoke-covered crimson and silver gateway that formed but moments prior began to release numerous threads and lines of controlled planar energy, spreading out far and wide throughout the chamber where the stabilisation node was located. This energy shook the land and brought quite a bit of alarm to the guardians that remained, as well as the new one that he had procured since the loss of one at the hands of the Blood-tinged Church.
“Remain calm. Whatever it is that she does, she has no reason to damage us. I suspect that this is a message.”
“Message to us?”
“To those figures in simple robes. Rather, I should say that they are the Great Families, if the Ascendant does not come up with some alternate name for those things. Judging by our interactions in her brief stay in our district, she very well might.”
Within the Ru District, the Bottomless Archive was lit up by the activation of a crimson and silver gateway, from which strands of blue and violet snaked out like the tendrils of a hungry nest.
Their completely envelopment of the great structure and a number of buildings outside was naturally a shock to many, but when these tendrils sank into some of the tomes scattered around the district, the mood was strangely lifted. Although this was still a rather suspicious matter, with the length of time spent on studying knowledge and the tomes of the past, for something else to access the same means meant that it had to be aligned with them, at least in part.
In the Bao District, the activation of the spatial stabilisation point was very much a surprise to those who could immediately identify it. None of them could remember the false realm that they had been plunged into, and they certainly wouldn’t expect that the thing and people that they saw might have also been witnessed by another that had come and gone without their notice.
The Patriarch attempted to comprehend the matter, but only managed to glance inside of the gateway and see a sky filled with Astral Scars, chains, and a scale-covered shell covering it all before the strands of energy emerged from within, weaving around every single one of the gems within the six thousand metre reach of the spatial stabilisation node and activating their powers in a manner that the people of the district couldn’t imagine in the past. It was not their usual method of usage, but the overall power that was produced was significantly greater in quantity and efficacy than anything that they had been able to produce so far.
Hence, the Bao Patriarch wasn’t going to interrupt the process, not yet.
When Gang Xiu Ling saw the emergence of the gateway, she was perhaps the calmest of the Patriarchs at the south, for she had been informed of what might happen upon the opening of the gateway. The guardians that stood by the side were, as always, muttering, and she was highly tempted to tell them to shut up.
Before she could, though, the gateway opened fully, the other side briefly showing two figures with crimson hair that caught the new Matriarch’s eye, and then the strange threads of energy poured out from within, surging out and seemingly trying to consume the district.
“W-What is this? We need to-”
“You will do nothing, guardian!” she snapped at them, pointing towards the distant figure of the Ascendant, “She’s right there, and she now has the support of all the other districts right here, a few steps away from us. If you try to pull anything at all, not only will you need to fight one Matriarch, but you will also have to deal with the Ascendant, with a dozen Patriarchs, and with whatever forces her Arbiters include. Do you think you can take that on?”
Their silence was sufficient for her to turn away from them and look back into the gateway, her expression taking on a degree of pensiveness.
“Since you’re so worried, keep an eye out for this. I’ll have a chat with Lan Mu…”
In the Xin District, the great construct in the Ancestral Hall was nearing the state of full recovery with the great deal of effort that had been invested into making it function at an even greater level than before. Their efforts were, however, distracted as they saw numerous strands of power reaching towards the air, seeming to wrap around invisible entities of an uncertain nature and appearance, save for the fact that they were vaguely humanoid. With the nature of the district’s focus, there were a few conclusions that were more naturally drawn than others.
“Are these… souls? Spirits? Are they…” the Xin Patriarch questioned nobody in particular, but he couldn’t go far with that line of questioning, for he was as at odds with the Ling District’s fondness of natural ghosts and the like as any other Patriarch of the Xin District.
Hence, he went quiet and instead ordered the temporary pause of the repairs of the soul awakening structure, as to guarantee that it couldn’t be damaged no matter what these tendrils were intended to accomplish. At the same time, he took some time to attempt to comprehend their nature, for that might very well make a great impact on further actions, even if they came from a reliable source or one that could be trusted.
A moment of further thought brought him to the gateway itself, and the things on the other side, leading to all of his focus going to determining the purpose of the tendrils instead.
For all of the oddities of the Ascendant, she was not against them, only the Great Families.
Within the Shun District, the Shun Patriarch had noticed the development of the spatial stabilisation node’s state earlier than most, and thus he gathered a number of his trusted aides and servants to observe the opening of the gateway.
They weren’t sure whether to expect a direct greeting from the other side, but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared and see what it was that the Ascendant truly had behind her.
Provided that they were not disappointed or did not consider themselves to have been misled, then there would be no problem at all with continuing their current plans, and if they were seeing more than they had initially expected, then the Shun Patriarch would most certainly increase his investment into this plan in particular. He had planned for a few other matters and routes to increase the chances of success, but if the Ascendant succeeded, then he might as well drop all of that.
When the spatial realm on the other side of the gateway became visible, he was nearly convinced.
Then, when he saw a mass of other spatial gateways and a gathering of people that grew with every second, he felt even more encouraged. His aides might well have thought the same, but before he could ask, the numerous tendrils emerged.
Instantly, they snapped up a great portion of the territory and began to faintly vibrate, in a manner that made it very difficult to ascertain their true purpose at first glance.
Despite that, the Shun Patriarch knew that these were not only in their district, but in all districts connected by the gateway before him, and he could also guess that the effort required to manifest something of this size and complexity couldn’t be minor in the slightest. This indicated a great level of strength and ability, as well as an enormous range of energy control that few of the Patriarchs he had come close to in the past could show. With the Ascendant’s current realm, this was an even more impressive feat.
His support of the Ascendant grew even more that day.
The Wu District’s guardians and Heavenly Masters beheld the opening spatial gateway and were looking to one another constantly in silent questioning of what they should do if things did not go well.
Their adherence to tradition was never as great as that of the Gang District, but as the Gang District gained a new Matriarch a brief time ago, their fondness of tradition would eventually rise above that of the former District of Tradition. As such, after they had been apart from the Ascendant for a few days, they had begun to worry a great deal about what it was that they had unleashed upon the world.
For that reason, they sat by the spatial stabilisation point for significantly longer than may have been healthy, or beneficial for the process of studying their chosen martial arts or weapons. They had been the top in their field at the moment of Wei Yi’s entry into their territory, so a little less practise wouldn’t harm them all that much, but the extreme degree of thought that went into attempting to understand the best route for their district made it incredibly difficult for them to even keep their level of ability constant, meaning that every single day was essentially leading to them losing a month of progress, development and practise.
When they saw opening, they felt like they lost another decade of experience, only for the other side to suddenly reveal the presence of numerous other Patriarchs looking upon the spatial realm and others at the outside of other spatial gateways.
Then, numerous strands of uncertain purpose stretched out and snapped onto anything they were able to find, and then activated in a fashion that sent a single blatant message into their heads. Although they didn’t have the time to hear and process it all within an instant, that simple fact led to them changing their opinions ever so slightly.
The Ze Patriarch was finally able to stand up once the brand was activated, courtesy of a number of planar stones and a recovery pill brought to him by a helpful citizen of the district from their stores. He suspected that they would expect an endorsement from him in the future, but he didn’t mind doing such a thing given that the recovery pill was sufficient to alleviate his physical exhaustion a great deal, and even assisted with the low quantity of planar energy within his body. If this was not an exception to the norm of those pills, he would like to purchase quite a few more.
Before then, of course, he looked to the open gateway and the reaching tendrils, and rushed over to the opening in space in order to catch even a single glance of what lay beyond with his own eyes, and not a vague form of spiritual perception that could never reach as far as the spiritual perception of his cultivation.
Unlike many, he was not too concerned with the tendrils themselves, as they paled in comparison to all of the madness that manifested above the Ascendant when she worked upon her blade, but he had not yet seen a single spatial gateway or spatial realm with his own eyes despite the incredible amount of time that he had lived and studied various pursuits of perfected stages and other forms of perfection, whatever shape they may take. If he missed out on an opportunity – for he could hardly be certain of how long such a gateway would be open, nor whether the other side would remain the same for long – then he might never get one again, and it would be one of the biggest losses for any Patriarch or Matriarch of Yi City.
In fact, that was true even without mention of the possibility of comprehending the nature of spatial realms to a sufficient degree not only to discover spatial metal, but also to create a spatial realm or some form of spatial storage of one’s own. That was a dream of most living men.
“The report… it was not another one of their deceptions,” Ning Huang muttered, looking onto the Death of Words as numerous lights from the districts controlled by the Ascendant began to expand, further and further, spreading onto the districts that had never once been visited by the people of the Ascendant’s Arbiters.
It was not long before that sudden wave of energy reached not just the people that they sought to oversee, but also the very Greats themselves. Their Testament shook and quivered as a wave of power, manifested not as an attack but as some other force, invaded their lands, and forced them to witness its arrival. A strange trembling reached them, forming numerous vein-like strands within the air, until a singular form breached into their minds, standing tall and stalwart with a blade held before it, both hands resting on the pommel while the tip stood buried just a little in the ground.
Long crimson hair was tied into a ponytail that fluttered in a light wind, a few looser strands hovering beside deep and glistening silver eyes that seemed to stare straight into their souls.
“I greet all people of Yi City, whether northern or southern, eastern or western, and even the Great Leeches that sit in our lands and drain us all of resources and knowledge while they fatten themselves and wait for our fall. In particular, I address this message to them,” Wei Yi said, narrowing her eyes as if she had locked eyes with one of the Greats, “I want to tell you that the War of Ascendancy, the war that I had begun for the sake of freeing the continent, will reach its apex soon. After the Great Leeches had attempted to slay me, I had survived and now I come to strike back with half of Yi City at my back, and you may all join me.”
She deliberately raised her left hand from the sword’s hilt, turning it around and tightening it into a fist, showing something that seemed to resemble completely smooth movement of a limb that most certainly did not belong on an ordinary woman – not that she could be said to be one.
“I have no conflict with the people of Yi City, only the Great Leeches. If you are forced to serve them, flee, and we will protect you. If you are in their lands and do not wish to be, leave, and we will provide a place for you to stay. If you wish to fight, but see no method to do so, then we can grant you the way to do so, just so long as you ask!” the Ascendant slammed her clawed hand of smoke back onto the pommel, “Do not be afraid, and do not regret your decision!
“And for the Great Leeches, I wish to tell you one thing – the storm is coming! Your winds of drought and decay will be obliterated by the incoming storm of value and potential. There will be challenges for us all, there will be struggle, there will be suffering, but we can come out into a new age, into a far greater world than ever before!
“The eighth realm is out there, and the ninth realm is out there. If there is a tenth realm, then I will guarantee that we could all reach it! The Greats would never grant you such a thing, for the only thing they would promise you is that you could live while being under their boot, forced to clean it and delight in the fact that they did not force you to do something more disgusting!” Wei Yi pulled the sword out of the ground, pointing it towards the gathered members of the Great Families, “I bring war to those leeches! I will destroy them, and I will ensure that their path cannot continue! This I promise all of you!”
All of a sudden, her sword broke apart into many pieces, and followed the hilt as she raised it further up.
“See you soon, leeches of a million years!”
The many shards crashed down and exploded in vast cosmic light, the image vanishing from the eyes of the Great Leeches. For a few minutes, they sat in perfect silence, unable to move or even breathe as they tried to come to some conclusion regarding the madness that they had seen.
V5C56: Declaration of War
The Ze Patriarch wished to address the Ascendant the moment that the process was complete, but he found that the light faded and revealed no figure standing within it. The sword that should have been created was also absent, but he could tell that there had been no death nor great disaster.
As he felt his legs tire and his whole body demand rest, for his energy was nearly expended and his mind had not had a single opportunity to pause and relax, he fell without much grace onto the stone wall nearest to him, managing to remain in a vaguely vertical position as he did so. Once he was sure that he wouldn’t fall, he reached out with a ray of spiritual will to the nearest guardian to him, succeeding in reaching him after a moment of uncertainty.
“Check the spatial stabilisation point and see what has emerged!” he passed on the message, not caring that much whether the guardian himself would be the one to investigate.
All of them were exhausted and clearly in no state to run about to confirm anything, but if they passed the message on and then brought back the answer, it would only take a short while for the Patriarch to learn what he wanted to know.
That was exactly what they seemed to do, for the Ze Patriarch could just see the nearest of the guardians in a position much akin to his own, sitting on the stone with his back on the wall, his head being the only thing that he could move at all. His lips moved a little as the message was passed on, and then he was still, only his eyes occasionally blinking. He was still alive, that much was clear, but it would be a while before he would be able to recover his energy and do anything more than that. Had there been a threat to his life there and then, he wouldn’t have been able to survive without outside assistance.
After a while, the message from the other side finally returned to the Patriarch, and it was rather surprising to him, ‘The spatial stabilisation node is currently inactive, but there is a large thing above it, like some kind of rune or brand. It is in active motion and is twisting constantly, and it seems to be getting brighter as I look upon it.’
Certainly, all of that could have caught his attention, but the most significant factor was that the node was not yet active, completely shocking the Ze Patriarch.
With the way in which the Ascendant vanished, she could have easily snapped up the node and departed, perhaps even grabbing the Ze District once she had connected the node to Paragon, from which her forces could have emerged and conquered the lands easily enough. That she didn’t do this shocked him far more than it probably should have, especially considering the straightforward fashion in which she had behaved prior to this.
Since he and his district were not in danger for the moment, he allowed himself to relax just a little.
Inevitably, that moment of quiet slowly led to him falling asleep, his eyes shutting and his mind going off to matters other than his own, to worlds far beyond that seemed to wondrous in comparison. Upon his awakening, all of that would be forgotten, and the few fragments that remain would seem to be incredibly absurd, to the extent that it would not make sense for him to ever dream of such a thing.
Whether or not that was the truth would be anyone’s guess, for what adult would speak of their dreams in length? They were insignificant matters, best forgotten in the waking world.
At the edge of a great cliff, leading into the Kong District’s land, crimson hair fluttered in the wind, the lengthy ponytail being blown back as the Ascendant looked down into those lands and recalled the last time that she had visited them.
Last time, she had been in a far, far lower realm than now, and the gap had widened even further with the breakthrough that occurred upon the forging of her sword. All of the energy unleashed from within the Shard of Warfare combined with the power of the planar stones she had pulled out of the Wu District’s treasury, not to mention the various materials that she had taken out and then merged into the refining process, unleashing much of their energy in the meanwhile.
First and foremost, the most significant breakthrough that she had succeeded in was either the development of her nascent rift, or the next step of her killing will.
If she had to pick one, she would probably be most proud of the sudden expansion of the nascent rift from twenty-five percent to a terrifying fifty. In far more precise terms, it meant that instead of it taking her a total of sixteen minutes to regenerate all of her planar energy in an environment with no planar energy whatsoever, it would only take her eight. Within four minutes, she would regain half of her planar energy, and within one minute, she would regain twelve and a half percent. This was an enormous increase, and one that couldn’t be compared to the growth of her killing will cultivation.
With the quantity of killing will that could endlessly pour of her body, to go up a single realm wouldn’t be too difficult with some dedicated effort, but now she had just thrown herself out of balance yet again only to give herself… well, it wasn’t in any way fair to claim that she was not gaining a great deal from it.
Upon ascension to the seventh realm, called the Yin-Yang Conduit realm, a structure had formed within her body and within the mental domain. In shape, it was much akin to the vortex that manifested around the Shard of Warfare, smoke and silver light spinning around, one seeming to chase the other while also being pursued, never truly merging nor separating. The form of the conduit itself was difficult to establish, but the function did not need a single moment of contemplation to be witnessed.
So long as she made use of the conduit, all of her killing will would be able to reach far further, and contain far more power. Combining that with the simple growth in the density of her energy, if she could previously overwhelm most Patriarchs with an Ire-based technique utilising either killing intent or spiritual will as the primary core of the technique, now she could kill them with a little effort. Of course, this was a bit of a simplification, for no battle was as simple as one man standing in place while she attempted to kill them, but it was still a significant difference that could allow her to resolve threats posed by Patriarchs with far less difficulty.
The other reason that she was not particularly impressed by this breakthrough was that she did gain two more stages in each of her other cultivation paths. Her bloodline power, physique energy and cosmic energy all reached the fifth stage, with four perfected stages, roughly equating to the ninth stage for normal cultivators.
With a single further step, a stage and perfected stage would be gained, and with those, her cultivation would undergo a great transformation that would give her the chance to step into the seventh realm at an early stage, whether by attaining something that was normally relegated to that realm, or by gaining a power equivalent to it. So far, she was still unable to guess what she would gain, but as the linked channels gained additional chains and her energy gained further crimson nebulae, it was clear that the changes would be related to her energy, a rather surprising phenomenon at this point in time.
One of the core factors of planar cultivation was that there was a certain limit to planar energy itself. Even if one could advance it past a gaseous state and into a liquid one, then a solid one, and maybe even a crystalline one without cultivating any kind of core, planar pool, anchor or anything else of the sort, it would not make them on par with those that did the same the normal way. Energy alone had a limit, and it seemed to be the crystalline state that she had attained some time ago. Past that, one needed to manifest an anchor to stabilise it and allow it to be projected out to greater distances, a core to do the same and to protect the anchor, marks to empower the energy and planar constructs as they emerged from the body, channels to connect that energy back to the anchor, halos to expand one’s power and further concentrate force upon the anchor, and then, finally, a rift forged from the broken anchor that would surpass all of the previous structures.
Despite that, there seemed to be a further step for planar energy itself, of which she had never heard of prior to this. It was very much to her liking, as she would very much appreciate the added advantage against the Primordial Deities and Great Leeches – to her knowledge, both used ordinary planar energy.
Her physique energy and bloodline power could be said to be more ordinary in terms of advancement, as she had not been able to attain any kind of perfected stage and instead just progressed by two ordinary stages, with her overall power rising due to the increases of both. The growth was still appreciated, and it helped stabilise the state of her body and the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, but it was far outmatched by her planar cultivation.
This gap was certain to become even larger once she got to the seventh realm, and the eighth realm after that, at which point only the ninth realms of bloodline power, physique energy and killing will would be able to match the near-unlimited power offered by the Imperfect Rift realm. The only method of changing that would be to fuse all five into their original, true state – that of the true planar energy that all five cultivation paths came from. Once that was done, the power of all five would go into one path, and the single path would empower all five, allowing her development of bloodline power, for instance, to directly benefit her planar energy rather than doing so through the incidental bonus of bloodline cultivation multiplicatively enhancing the other forms of energy in her body.
‘Unfortunately, I have no time for that right now. The Kong District awaits, and I have a thing to say to the bastards in Testament…’ Wei Yi thought as she vanished from the spot, pulling herself to the position of a chain in the valley of the Kong District. There, she spread out her spiritual perception to its absolute limit, a total of nearly six thousand metres, and quickly found the spatial stabilisation node.
With another usage of the fourth realm movement method, she appeared beside that, finding herself in the centre of what must, at some ancient point in time, have been a great plaza, with the node being placed inside of the centre of a fountain-like structure that was itself centred in the central square. It was also quite close to the middle of the Kong District itself, so it was clearly put there either by impossible coincidence or deliberate planning, with the latter indicating that Kong Shi Meng himself might have come by to place it down.
Otherwise, there would have been none in the Kong District who could do such a thing. Even at their peak, their leaders were generally in the fifth and sixth realms at most, which wouldn’t be sufficient to work with any kind of spatial node like the ones bound to the Yi City Web.
She stood over it, but did not active it immediately.
As she recalled, she battled a member of the first generation of the Great Ning family on the sixth of the third month, and it was now the twenty-fourth of the eighth. A total of eighteen days and five months had passed since then, nearly half a year, and she was finally intending to make her return to the conflict that she had started.
It wouldn’t be right to do so without proper preparation, and without the right kind of presentation. Furthermore, she had to be ready for the Great Leeches to attack in full force the moment that she made herself known beyond killing one of their own in the Wu District, through the activation of the Yi City Web in a manner that put a powerful wall to the right of their districts. Thus, she had two objectives in mind.
The first was to guarantee that her reappearance would show her at her best, in the best light possible, and in a manner that would make it nearly impossible for anyone to conclude either that her injury from nearly six months ago was a detriment for her in any way. In that regard, she was somewhat ready.
Her newly reforged blade, Moon Splitter, was a very impactful weapon, and it could do far more than simply act as a sword and break apart and then repeat the technique used by Kong Shi Meng in the memories of the Shard of Warfare. It could shift into any weapon that she had mastery over, and she suspected that she could find far more uses to manipulating the metal shards freely than were obvious right away. As such, there was no need to worry that anyone would see her weapon as one that was unfit for the Ascendant, or one that wished to combat the Great Leeches and tear them down once and for all.
Although she had not taken much care of it since her awakening on the southern border, her hair was not significantly different from before, not that it would earn much attention anyway.
Obviously, the development of her cultivation couldn’t be ignored, so a simple display of her Endless Monolith, Subterranean Shell, Astral Scars and the chain-like channels should be enough to prove that the delay did not prevent her from cultivating to a point where she would soon be able to fight one-on-one with the first generation and win. Only she knew that she could have done far more had she been provided with a few more resources, but that didn’t need to be said.
Her Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival were essentially the only thing that she wore, aside from the broken scale armour, the star metal heeled boots and star metal gauntlet. There wasn’t much to swap them to, nor did she see much of a reason to do so when her attire was good enough for the job.
In a way, she hoped that the permanence of that would grant some people hope that her path and her objective could not be thwarted even by the best efforts of the Greats, and that she would not fall no matter what she was forced to endure. So long as people knew that, they would have a higher chance of risking their own lives as well.
For that, the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow might even be a benefit, for it could display in full how she had been permanently maimed and yet came out as the winner in the long run. For the moment, it lacked the same freedom as her previous arm had, but that would change the instant she either became powerful enough, or found the right method to controlling it more efficiently. However, just as with a number of her other afflictions, she was able to hide them from the world and simply not reveal those kinds of details, and many wouldn’t believe them even if the Greats found out and spread the word deliberately, deciding to take advantage of the common people that they despised. Her fighting ability would only go up with every single day, so how could she not be at her best?
‘In this regard, I suppose that I don’t have much to change or address, do I? That’s good,’ she nodded, moving onto the second significant point she needed to consider.
The second factor was that she wished to bring her voice to as many people as possible, be they Great or not. She wanted the world to learn of her return, and to bring the challenge to the Great Leeches in the most overt possible, so that nobody could possibly claim that they didn’t know of her actions. There had been a time for subterfuge, and it was far gone.
From now on, there would only be over conflict and war until her enemies fell, or until she failed to do what she wished. Either way, one side would win and the other fail, and the world could be plunged into light or darkness, with some viewing either as a positive and either as a negative. That was the natural Law of things, for some thrived beneath the morning sun and others could only emerge in the night, when nearly no light remained except for the few feeble sparks that mankind had lit for themselves.
She wasn’t arrogant enough to claim that she knew best, but if she didn’t strive towards something, all of her actions would be meaningless, for they would simply meander and go nowhere regardless of how long she fought.
Part of the problem in delivering her message, however, was the fact that she still lacked the appropriate methods to make her voice heard anywhere and everywhere. In the ninth realm of all cultivation paths, perhaps the range of her energy would be sufficient to reach all in the Western Continent, if not the Eastern Continent, but she didn’t have the power to simply sit around and wait for that to come. Sitting around wouldn’t even permit her to go up by a stage within a thousand years, thin as the energy of the world was for someone like her, and if her Arbiters endured for that long, then she would very much be impressed.
After all, they weren’t a proper, well developed faction with proper procedures and clearly defined plans to adhere to. They were a name slapped onto a large group, and that group would only last for as long as they were bound together by a shared hope and will – hope of success, and the will to remove the Greats, and all threats to the people of Yi City.
For them to persist past a few years without the supervision of the one that had thrown them together and given them the name that they now used, they would need to greatly change their operating procedures and figure out ways in which to achieve that which they wished for without relying on the power of a few with abnormal strength. If they did that, it wouldn’t be right for her to claim any responsibility for such a success, as she could have been replaced by any other so long as the same people met one another.
‘Besides, I had wanted to rename the Kong District at one point, so that my children could live there and learn and grow. Considering that I might already need to stay away from them once they are actually born, it would be even worse of me to completely break any promise I had made to them,’ the Ascendant thought, aware that her thoughts were once again slipping away from her, and that it wasn’t helping the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow to keep itself to a more sensible state.
When she did let it loose, the mass of smoke and the vibrance of her power would expand greatly, causing the claws to grow and the limb to gain an aura of overwhelming threat and destruction. It was powerful in the right place and time, that much she wouldn’t argue with, but it was not the kind of image that she wished to present to the world if she did manage to find a way to reach every single one of them in a single message. As the Ascendant, she was attempting to bring a better world to all those that would have it, and if she radiated her killing intent towards all without any reservation, then few would wish to take her up on that offer. The few that would, might only do so as they would hope to get a world of blood and fire.
That was not the world she wished for, and so she had no use for their company and their intent.
Hence, she brought herself back to the right topic yet again, ‘With my current range of spiritual perception, it will allow me to cover the majority of every single district that I control through the Yi City Web. That means that if I am able to produce some kind of array using the area of every single district, one that would send a single message to all, the combined area of nearly half of Yi City might very well be enough to reach out to the people of the Shi, Chu, Ning, Fu, Chen, Yi, Huang and Ling Districts, even if they do not wish to hear my message.’
The most difficult to reach might be the Fu or Chen District, for they would be more than a district away from the border of any of her controlled districts, but she did have one method for expanding her reach further – other than the mental replication of the world to impose the spatial stabilisation node state in places where she did not have such a thing, which she would use anyway.
That method had a name, personality, and lengthy memory, meaning that she would need to call out to her first. To do that, the connection to the Yi City Web needed to be formed first.
She glanced to the south, where the spatial stabilisation node of the Ze District was going to be claimed by a brand that she had set down with the intention of delaying the wave of her energy from reaching it right away. There, it would be able to connect with the Jiang and Lan Districts, thus forming a connection between three districts, thus having a large chance of activating the phenomenon of the Yi City Web even if it didn’t allow a connection to the Luo District and all those to its north, which she wanted to avoid for the same reason that she was making sure she was as prepared as possible for the activation of the node here in the Kong District.
Although she was too far from the brand to judge its condition accurately, she could guess that it was nearing the end of its duration. In a moment, it would activate the spatial stabilisation note, and then she would have to act anyway.
So, she might as well be the first to activate a node.
Reaching out with her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, she brought forth her vast power and focused it upon the spatial stabilisation node hidden within the remnants of a fountain. It took her only a moment to activate it, even quicker than the last time she had interacted with a node like it properly, and then felt a wave of force hit her with the force of a mountain.
“The rebellion of the vile thing I had fought is only gaining traction. The people’s minds seem to have declined as planar energy density has risen,” Ning Huang, “We will need to take action soon, if-”
He, and all of the Great Leeches present, looked to the large map of the Western Continent, where the number of mentions of their names had clearly increased from before they knew of the threat of the Ascendant.
That should have been it, but they all felt a disturbance from the Death of Words, one that manifested moments later with the sudden ignition of vibrant points – no, vast spheres – of light above the Chao, Ju, Bai, Ping, Luo, Jiang, Kong, Ze, Lan, Shun, Wu, Gang, Xin, Bao, Ru and Qiang Districts, as well as a point to the north of the Chao District, where a marker was added to the map with the simple label of ‘Fortress’. More than half of the districts in the current Yi City were affected, naturally interrupting their discussion as they looked upon the ensuing chaos.
The former fountain, long unused for such a purpose, exploded into a grey mist that quickly spread out before crimson and silver erupted from the spatial stabilisation point. Aside from the great quantity of smoke that poured out from the crimson, the gateway itself was unchanged, the energy rising up and then being pulled apart to reveal a familiar landscape within.
On the other side, a woman with silver eyes and red hair stood ready, even if she had likely manifested her avatar there only a moment prior. She stepped out – projecting her state out of the spatial realm -and looked at the Ascendant with a stunned face, as many emotions brimmed within her eyes.
“Wei Yi…”
“Yi Shi Ming, with the current range of the Yi City Web, would it be possible to broadcast my voice to all of the other districts?”
The mother of the Master of Yi City froze with her mouth half-open, stopping herself and instead considering the question for a brief while. Her figure blurred for a little while, with her perception clearly travelling through all parts of the world where the Kong Prison Realm’s influence was able to reach. Once she returned to full stability, she bit her lip as she thought for a little longer, the energy around the spatial stabilisation nodes being affected as she likely tested a number of her theories.
“I believe that this would be possible, with a little disturbance in the districts where the node is located beneath earth or rock. If you wish, it might even be feasible to send across your image in some limited capacity.”
“Please do so right away. I have a thing I wish to say to the Great Leeches.”
The spatial spirit nodded and waited for the Ascendant to take a step back before waving her hand and driving all of the energy within the range of the spatial stabilisation nodes.
Before the Ascendant began, the people within the districts that were already under her control, and that were within the Kong Prison Realm at the moment, had managed to begin gathering near the gateways at the circle of gateways, and they looked out of the gateway at the Ascendant with varying expressions. Most were still easily recognisable, with their cultivation having grown by no more than a realm, and their bodies looking much like they did when they and Wei Yi had last spoken, but she could tell even from the single glance that she sent their way that they were not unchanged after all of the time they had spent apart.
Still, this was not something she could spend her time on right now, as she had something to say.
At the Qiang District, the Patriarch looked on as the smoke-covered crimson and silver gateway that formed but moments prior began to release numerous threads and lines of controlled planar energy, spreading out far and wide throughout the chamber where the stabilisation node was located. This energy shook the land and brought quite a bit of alarm to the guardians that remained, as well as the new one that he had procured since the loss of one at the hands of the Blood-tinged Church.
“Remain calm. Whatever it is that she does, she has no reason to damage us. I suspect that this is a message.”
“Message to us?”
“To those figures in simple robes. Rather, I should say that they are the Great Families, if the Ascendant does not come up with some alternate name for those things. Judging by our interactions in her brief stay in our district, she very well might.”
Within the Ru District, the Bottomless Archive was lit up by the activation of a crimson and silver gateway, from which strands of blue and violet snaked out like the tendrils of a hungry nest.
Their completely envelopment of the great structure and a number of buildings outside was naturally a shock to many, but when these tendrils sank into some of the tomes scattered around the district, the mood was strangely lifted. Although this was still a rather suspicious matter, with the length of time spent on studying knowledge and the tomes of the past, for something else to access the same means meant that it had to be aligned with them, at least in part.
In the Bao District, the activation of the spatial stabilisation point was very much a surprise to those who could immediately identify it. None of them could remember the false realm that they had been plunged into, and they certainly wouldn’t expect that the thing and people that they saw might have also been witnessed by another that had come and gone without their notice.
The Patriarch attempted to comprehend the matter, but only managed to glance inside of the gateway and see a sky filled with Astral Scars, chains, and a scale-covered shell covering it all before the strands of energy emerged from within, weaving around every single one of the gems within the six thousand metre reach of the spatial stabilisation node and activating their powers in a manner that the people of the district couldn’t imagine in the past. It was not their usual method of usage, but the overall power that was produced was significantly greater in quantity and efficacy than anything that they had been able to produce so far.
Hence, the Bao Patriarch wasn’t going to interrupt the process, not yet.
When Gang Xiu Ling saw the emergence of the gateway, she was perhaps the calmest of the Patriarchs at the south, for she had been informed of what might happen upon the opening of the gateway. The guardians that stood by the side were, as always, muttering, and she was highly tempted to tell them to shut up.
Before she could, though, the gateway opened fully, the other side briefly showing two figures with crimson hair that caught the new Matriarch’s eye, and then the strange threads of energy poured out from within, surging out and seemingly trying to consume the district.
“W-What is this? We need to-”
“You will do nothing, guardian!” she snapped at them, pointing towards the distant figure of the Ascendant, “She’s right there, and she now has the support of all the other districts right here, a few steps away from us. If you try to pull anything at all, not only will you need to fight one Matriarch, but you will also have to deal with the Ascendant, with a dozen Patriarchs, and with whatever forces her Arbiters include. Do you think you can take that on?”
Their silence was sufficient for her to turn away from them and look back into the gateway, her expression taking on a degree of pensiveness.
“Since you’re so worried, keep an eye out for this. I’ll have a chat with Lan Mu…”
In the Xin District, the great construct in the Ancestral Hall was nearing the state of full recovery with the great deal of effort that had been invested into making it function at an even greater level than before. Their efforts were, however, distracted as they saw numerous strands of power reaching towards the air, seeming to wrap around invisible entities of an uncertain nature and appearance, save for the fact that they were vaguely humanoid. With the nature of the district’s focus, there were a few conclusions that were more naturally drawn than others.
“Are these… souls? Spirits? Are they…” the Xin Patriarch questioned nobody in particular, but he couldn’t go far with that line of questioning, for he was as at odds with the Ling District’s fondness of natural ghosts and the like as any other Patriarch of the Xin District.
Hence, he went quiet and instead ordered the temporary pause of the repairs of the soul awakening structure, as to guarantee that it couldn’t be damaged no matter what these tendrils were intended to accomplish. At the same time, he took some time to attempt to comprehend their nature, for that might very well make a great impact on further actions, even if they came from a reliable source or one that could be trusted.
A moment of further thought brought him to the gateway itself, and the things on the other side, leading to all of his focus going to determining the purpose of the tendrils instead.
For all of the oddities of the Ascendant, she was not against them, only the Great Families.
Within the Shun District, the Shun Patriarch had noticed the development of the spatial stabilisation node’s state earlier than most, and thus he gathered a number of his trusted aides and servants to observe the opening of the gateway.
They weren’t sure whether to expect a direct greeting from the other side, but it wouldn’t hurt to be prepared and see what it was that the Ascendant truly had behind her.
Provided that they were not disappointed or did not consider themselves to have been misled, then there would be no problem at all with continuing their current plans, and if they were seeing more than they had initially expected, then the Shun Patriarch would most certainly increase his investment into this plan in particular. He had planned for a few other matters and routes to increase the chances of success, but if the Ascendant succeeded, then he might as well drop all of that.
When the spatial realm on the other side of the gateway became visible, he was nearly convinced.
Then, when he saw a mass of other spatial gateways and a gathering of people that grew with every second, he felt even more encouraged. His aides might well have thought the same, but before he could ask, the numerous tendrils emerged.
Instantly, they snapped up a great portion of the territory and began to faintly vibrate, in a manner that made it very difficult to ascertain their true purpose at first glance.
Despite that, the Shun Patriarch knew that these were not only in their district, but in all districts connected by the gateway before him, and he could also guess that the effort required to manifest something of this size and complexity couldn’t be minor in the slightest. This indicated a great level of strength and ability, as well as an enormous range of energy control that few of the Patriarchs he had come close to in the past could show. With the Ascendant’s current realm, this was an even more impressive feat.
His support of the Ascendant grew even more that day.
The Wu District’s guardians and Heavenly Masters beheld the opening spatial gateway and were looking to one another constantly in silent questioning of what they should do if things did not go well.
Their adherence to tradition was never as great as that of the Gang District, but as the Gang District gained a new Matriarch a brief time ago, their fondness of tradition would eventually rise above that of the former District of Tradition. As such, after they had been apart from the Ascendant for a few days, they had begun to worry a great deal about what it was that they had unleashed upon the world.
For that reason, they sat by the spatial stabilisation point for significantly longer than may have been healthy, or beneficial for the process of studying their chosen martial arts or weapons. They had been the top in their field at the moment of Wei Yi’s entry into their territory, so a little less practise wouldn’t harm them all that much, but the extreme degree of thought that went into attempting to understand the best route for their district made it incredibly difficult for them to even keep their level of ability constant, meaning that every single day was essentially leading to them losing a month of progress, development and practise.
When they saw opening, they felt like they lost another decade of experience, only for the other side to suddenly reveal the presence of numerous other Patriarchs looking upon the spatial realm and others at the outside of other spatial gateways.
Then, numerous strands of uncertain purpose stretched out and snapped onto anything they were able to find, and then activated in a fashion that sent a single blatant message into their heads. Although they didn’t have the time to hear and process it all within an instant, that simple fact led to them changing their opinions ever so slightly.
The Ze Patriarch was finally able to stand up once the brand was activated, courtesy of a number of planar stones and a recovery pill brought to him by a helpful citizen of the district from their stores. He suspected that they would expect an endorsement from him in the future, but he didn’t mind doing such a thing given that the recovery pill was sufficient to alleviate his physical exhaustion a great deal, and even assisted with the low quantity of planar energy within his body. If this was not an exception to the norm of those pills, he would like to purchase quite a few more.
Before then, of course, he looked to the open gateway and the reaching tendrils, and rushed over to the opening in space in order to catch even a single glance of what lay beyond with his own eyes, and not a vague form of spiritual perception that could never reach as far as the spiritual perception of his cultivation.
Unlike many, he was not too concerned with the tendrils themselves, as they paled in comparison to all of the madness that manifested above the Ascendant when she worked upon her blade, but he had not yet seen a single spatial gateway or spatial realm with his own eyes despite the incredible amount of time that he had lived and studied various pursuits of perfected stages and other forms of perfection, whatever shape they may take. If he missed out on an opportunity – for he could hardly be certain of how long such a gateway would be open, nor whether the other side would remain the same for long – then he might never get one again, and it would be one of the biggest losses for any Patriarch or Matriarch of Yi City.
In fact, that was true even without mention of the possibility of comprehending the nature of spatial realms to a sufficient degree not only to discover spatial metal, but also to create a spatial realm or some form of spatial storage of one’s own. That was a dream of most living men.
“The report… it was not another one of their deceptions,” Ning Huang muttered, looking onto the Death of Words as numerous lights from the districts controlled by the Ascendant began to expand, further and further, spreading onto the districts that had never once been visited by the people of the Ascendant’s Arbiters.
It was not long before that sudden wave of energy reached not just the people that they sought to oversee, but also the very Greats themselves. Their Testament shook and quivered as a wave of power, manifested not as an attack but as some other force, invaded their lands, and forced them to witness its arrival. A strange trembling reached them, forming numerous vein-like strands within the air, until a singular form breached into their minds, standing tall and stalwart with a blade held before it, both hands resting on the pommel while the tip stood buried just a little in the ground.
Long crimson hair was tied into a ponytail that fluttered in a light wind, a few looser strands hovering beside deep and glistening silver eyes that seemed to stare straight into their souls.
“I greet all people of Yi City, whether northern or southern, eastern or western, and even the Great Leeches that sit in our lands and drain us all of resources and knowledge while they fatten themselves and wait for our fall. In particular, I address this message to them,” Wei Yi said, narrowing her eyes as if she had locked eyes with one of the Greats, “I want to tell you that the War of Ascendancy, the war that I had begun for the sake of freeing the continent, will reach its apex soon. After the Great Leeches had attempted to slay me, I had survived and now I come to strike back with half of Yi City at my back, and you may all join me.”
She deliberately raised her left hand from the sword’s hilt, turning it around and tightening it into a fist, showing something that seemed to resemble completely smooth movement of a limb that most certainly did not belong on an ordinary woman – not that she could be said to be one.
“I have no conflict with the people of Yi City, only the Great Leeches. If you are forced to serve them, flee, and we will protect you. If you are in their lands and do not wish to be, leave, and we will provide a place for you to stay. If you wish to fight, but see no method to do so, then we can grant you the way to do so, just so long as you ask!” the Ascendant slammed her clawed hand of smoke back onto the pommel, “Do not be afraid, and do not regret your decision!
“And for the Great Leeches, I wish to tell you one thing – the storm is coming! Your winds of drought and decay will be obliterated by the incoming storm of value and potential. There will be challenges for us all, there will be struggle, there will be suffering, but we can come out into a new age, into a far greater world than ever before!
“The eighth realm is out there, and the ninth realm is out there. If there is a tenth realm, then I will guarantee that we could all reach it! The Greats would never grant you such a thing, for the only thing they would promise you is that you could live while being under their boot, forced to clean it and delight in the fact that they did not force you to do something more disgusting!” Wei Yi pulled the sword out of the ground, pointing it towards the gathered members of the Great Families, “I bring war to those leeches! I will destroy them, and I will ensure that their path cannot continue! This I promise all of you!”
All of a sudden, her sword broke apart into many pieces, and followed the hilt as she raised it further up.
“See you soon, leeches of a million years!”
The many shards crashed down and exploded in vast cosmic light, the image vanishing from the eyes of the Great Leeches. For a few minutes, they sat in perfect silence, unable to move or even breathe as they tried to come to some conclusion regarding the madness that they had seen.
