Path of the Ascendant

As soon as she was fit to communicate with the world, having adjusted the strength of her energy and slotted her authorities into the system of Law to gain better control, she spoke to all in the Western Continent that would hear her.

She explained that she had reached the ninth realm and defeated the Primordial Deities that had once been the terror of the world. She also spoke of the Hunger of the Beyond, of their threat, and the way in which they could be repelled and defeated. The promise of immediate victory would be unbelievable to most, and she couldn’t offer it, so she instead proposed her protective array and suggested its expansion.

Her current structure had been meant to protect Yi City and that alone, but with more land and more energy being devoted to the matter, she believed that she would have the ability to cover the whole Western Continent in a dome that would – provided the power of the Hunger of the Beyond did not greatly exceed her expectations – protect them for as long as a week, if maintained properly.

Obviously, there were some that attempted to challenge her, for they believed that there was no way for someone to reach the ninth realm so quickly. They thought that she was attempting to trick them, and that she was simply hiding away and projecting her words from a far lesser distance than she claimed. It was only natural for them to do so, but that didn’t mean that she had time for their nonsense. Each second was precious, and so she took care of two problems at the same time by heading to the Blood Clan, north-west of the lands once known as the Huang District.

As they were most opposed to having anything to do with Wei Yi, and had the most marks of the Blood-tinged Church’s experiments, she performed a single strike against that land. Her only targets were those with antagonistic intent against her, though she would not make any guarantees to the safety of the rest.

This time, her priority wasn’t precision, but flashiness, and so she incorporated everything she knew about beams and orbital strikes to cause the skies to seemingly rain their fury onto the small nation.

Without limits on the amount of energy she could expend, it was trivial to execute an attack such as this, and it sent the message to all the leaders of the outside nations. They might have varying views about Yi City and its place and deeds, current and past, but when they saw what Yi City was able to muster against its foes, they naturally decided that it would be a good enough reason not to push their luck and fall into line.

Wei Yi didn’t even demand that they join Yi City, only construct the array nodes for the barrier, so the decision was made significantly more straightforward for all those that had initially departed from Yi City so as to avoid their overbearing control.

Once that was decided, she sent out the people of Yi City to those lands, simply placing them there with her power of Law. It made the point of her strength even more obvious to the outside nations, so she was happy to familiarise herself further with both the endless planar essence and the greater perception of the very concept of Law that she had gained after conversing with Heaven’s Will.

However, she quickly understood that this was not sufficient. A sensation originating from beyond the boundary of the Planar Continental landmass led her gaze to the skies, where hungry eyes glared back.

They were gathering closer than before, that much she knew for certain, but even the absurd range of her current senses couldn’t reach that far. Asking the heavens to tell her would defeat her whole notion of going at it alone while they were too busy cowering in fear, and would further increase her reliance on the powers of the world rather than her own strength. Her intention with the Reality Forge was specifically to overcome that reliance, and by placing the authorities of the world beneath her power over Law, she partly compromised their strength in return to making them obey her whims, rather than the other way around.

Whatever they were doing up there, in the space beyond, they weren’t yet coming to her and the world, so it was time that she could spend in any number of ways. Lesser individuals – most of the dragons and phoenixes, mainly – might spend it tasting the pleasures of the world, but she could allow herself that after her victory. For now, there were still so many things to do that it seemed impossible to get everything done.

First of all, she got the Blood Alchemists and Huang Yu together in one place. The latter had somehow recovered certain memories that had been sealed after coming into contact with Jia Rong’s timeless aura, but the disappearance of Primordial Blood and the change in the Blood authority led to her body decaying slowly, yet visibly, inevitably and fatally.

As such, she and the Blood Alchemists were to research the remnants of the Blood Clan and the Huang District, and told them to study everything they could about bloodline power and collate it. With their contribution, she would have some extra minds on the matter in general, but she would also put their efforts into improving her current array structure, implementing bloodline power in a more effective manner than simply forcing it into a structure meant to support only planar energy. Changing the structure to generate certain veins would allow for the efficiency to rise.

This was significant, as she couldn’t rely on her own planar essence to support the protective dome as the sole source of energy. It needed to permit her to step away, or even step out.

It might turn out that the best method to handle the Hunger of the Beyond would be to ensure that they couldn’t harm the Planar Continents, then fight them while knowing that she only needs to focus on them. Alternatively, there could be other dangers in the world beyond the Hunger of the Beyond, and if she devoted her full focus to the dome, then the Western Continent could get obliterated while she can do nothing without inviting further harm.

Such a thing would, obviously, be awful, so she took steps to ensure that it could never occur.

While those that had studied blood went to do their thing, she also reached out to the other factions and put them to work, while also raiding some storage spaces she hadn’t yet been to for planar stones and whatever else she could find that would support the barrier dome and the Kong Prison Realm.

Both would work together, though it would be the spatial realm supporting the dome more so than the other way around. If she could, she would prefer to focus purely on the Kong Prison Realm and emphasise long-term benefits, as it would remain after the Hunger of the Beyond were defeated for so long as the Planar Continents themselves continued to exist, but it was a little difficult when she lacked the ability to accurately estimate the strength of her current foes. Going out to fight them wasn’t necessarily impossible, but would only invite the risk of them descending earlier.

There was one other thing she needed to do before the Hunger of the Beyond arrived, and that was raise her own cultivation.

Unsurprisingly, with a constant flow of energy from the Eternal Gate, she could feel her cultivation improving with each moment, but she was still going to invest the time to develop it more quickly so as to reach the highest stage possible before the entrance of her foes. The sixth would be ideal as a starting point, but it wouldn’t be feasible unless she got more than five, maybe six days.

 

A day later, and her second breakthrough was beginning. As with her attainment of the second stage, it was not as grandiose a process as some of her other breakthroughs, but it vastly amplified her strength and focused even more energy onto the centre of the Eternal Gate, though it was still far from enough to call the planar structure a Reality Forge. Still, it was progress, and it was good progress, surpassing her initial and apparently pessimistic estimations.

Array node construction had begun in all the lands, and some were even being completed around the same time, letting her spare some excess energy on connecting them to the Yi City Web in a partial manner.

To form a true connection on the same level as a true component of the Yi City Web, she would need to build two channels on the level of the eighth realm and establish full-blown spatial stabilisation nodes on the intersecting ends, but spatial metal wasn’t so plentiful that it could be thrown away. Her miners did find a deposit within the depths of Paragon, but she expended all of it on strengthening the Kong Prison Realm and ensuring that it not only matched the strength of her mental domain – it had fallen behind greatly when the total of five cultivation paths merged into one and simultaneously advanced into the highest realm – but also that it would be able to sustain the pressure put upon it by the defensive dome around the Western Continent.

Temporary connections of lesser quality would do, and if that became a problem then she would have plenty of time to resolve it, either on her own or with the assistance of Yi Shi Ming and other powerful figures. Since her senses reached most places on the Western Continent at all times, the spatial spirit of the Kong Prison Realm could exist in just as many locations.

A number of Patriarchs and Matriarchs reached the eighth realm as well, partly thanks to Wei Yi’s excess planar essence but also due to the immense enrichment of the world’s energy. It was so plentiful that one could almost drink it, and numerous individuals that were once deemed to have no talent were breaking into the world of cultivation without even realising that they had done so. If not for how widespread the notion of cultivation, planar energy and the like was, then there would be a great deal of chaos thanks to people running wild in euphoria, confusion or distress. Perhaps all three.

It wasn’t enough to save Long Mingyun, however. The ancient dragon had a similar issue to a number of other ancient things and figures, and it was that her entire existence was formed in a world different to the one she had ended up in. It was difficult to overcome significant decay and such a change at once.

She was still trying, and in the event of an incursion by the Hunger of the Beyond, she could hold her own for a decent while – provided that the power of the threat was close to Wei Yi’s estimations – but in as little as a hundred years, the spark of the dragon’s life would likely fade completely and deprive the world of yet another ancient being. Unlike certain other ancient beings, this would not be a positive to the Planar Continents in any way Wei Yi could think of.

‘If Heaven’s Will was replaced by Long Mingyun, I’d imagine we’d be in a far better place than we are now. A shame that I can’t just swap them over, or else I would do so right now,’ Wei Yi sighed to herself as she stood on a chain of Law above the ocean between the Western and Eastern Continents, the left Arm stretched out as she was experimenting with techniques in her spare time.

Given that her pool of energy was effectively as endless as it was while fighting Primordial Blood, she could reasonably utilise any technique involving Law so long as it didn’t end her in a single instant, so she was testing her limits and also seeing just what she could produce, combining just about everything to produce the strongest attacks she could imagine. At the moment she had her mood soured by thinking of Heaven’s Will continued uselessness, she had been attempting to refine her concept of Omit Attack and stacking her Elysian Blasts as much as possible.

By stacking, of course, she meant that she produced a million instances of them and let them strike the world.

“By my decree… uh, fuck it, go!” she still struggled to conclude on a proper incantation.

The sky dimmed for a moment as thousands of faint shadows resembling her left Arm manifested around her, all pointed in a single direction but not the same point, and blinding light converged within them. It formed a thin strand and, after a moment, released a vast beam that overwhelmed the light of the setting sun.

All of it plunged into the water and seemingly simply vanished, though she knew that it was simply the world’s Law ensuring that the separating waters would remain unaltered by her deeds. This was desirable for the moment, as she did not want to cause a great wave to engulf the two continents at such a precarious time, so she didn’t interact with this property. That being said, she did examine it in detail so that she understood its principle, and if it came to be beneficial to her, she would be ready to attack this Law and force it to bend to her will.

For a moment, she glanced back into the sky, and confirmed that the numerous eyes had shifted closer, though they were not yet within reach of her perception. Whatever they were planning, it apparently didn’t involve answering the beacon of Primordial Blood’s death within a day or two.

 

On the second day of construction, it was finished. Numerous nodes and channels built in just the way she wished them, placed all over the Western Continent in a manner that would be seen with ease from the point that she usually had her conversations with Heaven’s Will – the two of them that she had so far, that is.

It wasn’t the smoothest thing she’d ever created, directly or by proxy of numerous artisans and builders, but she was satisfied with the outcome, for the effectiveness was at the higher end of what she had calculated to be possible. She had not activated it to perform any kind of test, as it would simply deteriorate what was made and require repairs that could prove lethal, but every individual component was in excellent shape, and she could slightly alter the operation of the whole array with her Law if such a thing proved necessary.

Also, she had nearly attained the fifth stage by the evening of that day, which made for some excellent news, though she was feeling the advancements slowing down. The reason for this was as plain as day given her past experiences, and it was that the sixth stage would require a far greater alteration to the current planar structure than any of the five stages – and four perfected stages – before it. Her Reality Forge was meant to overcome the restrictions of the world itself, after all.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t likely to have the time to reach the sixth stage in time. The Hunger of the Beyond had clearly gotten closer since the last day, and so it was becoming clearer that their arrival was impending. A day, maybe two at most, was all that the world would have before destruction.

For that reason, she gathered her energy and formed as many planar stones as she could, embedding them into the structure of the dome array so that it would have the ability to activate itself without requiring the infusion of energy. In theory, provided that one was able to affect energy without having attained any realms in cultivation, then even a perfectly ordinary person would be able to activate the defensive array without her assistance. In the event of her suddenly passing out and being unable to do anything for a day or two, the world would still be safe – safer, at least.

The inclusion of those planar stones would not have a significant effect on the strength of the array, but it would increase the duration that it could endure without a cultivator contributing their energy for a second or two per planar stone. As one might imagine from a defensive dome meant to defend a whole continent against a potential world-ending threat, it needed a vast quantity of energy.

As the sun set, she got everyone that knew even a little bit about arrays to contemplate and theorise improvements for her defensive dome, as even the slightest of improvements would greatly improve the Western Continent’s chances of surviving for long enough. Furthermore, if someone figured out a method to boost the dome’s power and transform the additional portion into an offensive form, then it could also take down some of the Hunger of the Beyond before there would be a need for anyone to personally get involved.

Then, she did her best to divide her thought process to focus on manifesting planar stones, attempting to discover improvements to her arrays, and developing more methods to use her techniques in the ninth realm as effectively as possible, but her mind disliked functioning in such a manner.

Nevertheless, since her thoughts could operate at a significantly greater speed than the world around her, she could get all three done to a certain extent before the sun set and while it was dark, rejecting the very notion of resting just as she had done for numerous years. Somewhere deep within her heart, she had this idea that a time when she could truly lay down everything and be at peace, if only for a short while, was right around the corner, but given the impending doom, she saw this as some concealed belief that she would not succeed. As such, she disregarded it, for there was no room for doubt now.

Even if she was heading on her way to death, she couldn’t escape. She could only ensure that she did the most she could before it finally claimed her.

 

Day three. As expected, the sixth stage was proving to be troublesome to reach, and it seemed like she might need to do something out of the ordinary in order to push it forward. The root of the problem was that she lacked the knowledge of what could work in this situation, so she was essentially forced into accumulating as much energy per second as she could until it was enough.

In other news, she noted some action on the Eastern Continent, though she couldn’t tell what they were up to from such a distance. Whatever it was, they would not be able to come to fight the Primordial Deities, and she wasn’t sure that they would be able to compete with the Hunger of the Beyond on their own, either. That wasn’t any of her business, though, so her interest was primarily in why the Primordial Deities existed only in the Western Continent, as well as why certain aspects of cultivation differed from continent to continent.

Previously, it was one of those things she could simply pass of as being part of the world’s natural quirks, but she knew better than that now.

Presumably, the Primordial Deities were deliberately placed into the world, or were at least utilised by the Old Ones through Heaven’s Will in order to produce the kind of environment that they wished to have. This seemed to indicate that the Eastern Continent was of lesser interest to the Old Ones, or perhaps to the source of the Primordial Deities, but she could find no obvious reason why, nor what would cause the Eastern Continent to deviate from the Western Continent’s cultivation methods, nor why both of those cultivation methods would work. In theory, only one should function, and she found no direct interaction between the heavens and cultivation, so the deviation appeared to come from nowhere.

In this case, it was probably something she hadn’t understood yet, as was the case with most facts of the world. There was a greater structure than what one could initially see, and she still had a lot to learn when it came to the Planar Continents.

One day, she might be able to look upon it and understand everything in full, but it would be a long time until then. The ninth realm may be the peak of the cultivation path offered by the heavens, but it was not the step before the heavens themselves, nor anywhere near for that matter. A space greater than the span of the Planar Continents existed between the two, for one wielded an allocated power within an allocated space, whereas the other was the source, and distributed it as they saw fit.

Someone in the ninth realm couldn’t defeat Heaven’s Will with only that power, for the latter could simply take it all away. That was why the Reality Forge, or some other method of manifesting the equivalent of an azure light, was so vital, as it would permit the forging of something from effectively nothing, overcoming the limits of the world and making…

‘What should I call the azure lights now that I have a vague notion of their true nature? They’re akin to seeds of power, for there is undoubtedly far more than you could do with it, but even then they are…’

The word evaded her for a while before she remembered it. Omnipotence. Complete and total power over all, absolute freedom in all aspects of existence. Thus, the item that would lead to it could be named a Seed of Omnipotence.

For some reason, she felt as if a few sets of eyes were suddenly laid upon her, the gazes vanishing only a moment later. Nothing seemed to follow, and nothing appeared to directly change, so she had to disregard it, but it was a moment that stuck with her due to the sheer oddity of the feeling, and the fact that it just so happened to occur as she began to delve into the greater aspects of the world and its framework.

 

In the early morning of the fourth day, a boat showed up on a route from the Eastern Continent, and to ensure that it got through in time, Wei Yi helped it onwards a little bit.

Luckily for her and her somewhat unorthodox methods of speeding up the boat, which involved some raging waves as the least dangerous element, the people on board were headed to see her specifically. In particular, the main passenger of the vessel was the eastern equivalent of a diplomat from the major powers of the continent, and he was sent to relay to her the situation over there and the reasons for their so-called delay in appearing to fight the threat of both the Great Leeches and the Primordial Deities. He thought he had only missed one of those, so learning that it was both clearly made his even more uncomfortable to be there.

The man explained, in more convoluted terms, that not long after the initial promise to support her was made, a large-scale conflict broke out across the entirety of the Eastern Continent, swallowing most sects and large factions to the extent that all of the fighting forces were occupied with it.

Most of them weren’t destroyed nor at risk of vanishing into the archives of history, at least when the diplomat departed from the east, but as far as they could tell, it would take at least a few more months for the conflict to be resolved. By that point, at least half of the major factions would fall, and so any promises that they had made would not be fulfilled. The diplomat refused to speak on the details, nor speculate which sects would endure and which would not, but something gave Wei Yi the impression that he might be part of the latter set of factions.

“So, you’re here for what reason?”

“The squad that I am with could have provided some measure of assistance to you during the conflict against the Primordial Deities, but…” the situation spoke for itself, so he left that thought there and continued, “There is also something that I have been asked to report. Something strange has been seen on the horizon, akin to a sea of storm clouds gathering in place just off the eastern coast.”

“That would probably be the Hunger of the Beyond. They haven’t attacked yet, I presume?” Wei Yi asked, only realising a moment later how casually she said it.

From the perspective of someone that knew nothing of the Hunger of the Beyond, which would be most people, it would be akin to her speaking utter gibberish. If one did know, then it would be akin to casually remarking that the world would end in a week or so.

“What? Hunger of the Beyond… wait, they are… oh no! I must return and warn my sect!”

“Uhm… About that…”

She had been gazing towards the east during their conversation on the beach, which was the furthest she could be bothered to go before speaking with the diplomat, and she just happened to see a black tide suddenly swallowing all of the lands on the east that she was able to see. It took only a few moments, and the only resistance that she had witnessed culminated in a few flashes of light and a bolt of lightning resembling what she had heard of about tribulations.

Presumably, someone had the bright idea of defeating the Hunger of the Beyond by calling down a lightning tribulation by attempting to break through to the eighth or ninth realm.

It didn’t help, for the tide completely overwhelmed the land and caused a notable wave of planar energy to pour into the Western Continent now that it had nowhere else to go, amplifying the allocated energy capacity in the only place that could still bear it.

Apart from providing the Western Continent with yet another boost, it proved that the Hunger of the Beyond hadn’t just surrounded the Eastern Continent while leaving it with a chance to succeed. It also demonstrated the sheer disparity between the true power of the Hunger of the Beyond and what she had at one point presumed about them.

They seemed to have infinite power for that one moment.

“Fuck. Everyone, activate the dome! Expend the planar stones! DO NOT LET US BE DEVOURED!” Wei Yi quickly sent her voice to all the people in the Western Continent, omitting the movement of herself and the diplomat to put them in a safe spot near one of the nodes in the Heavenly Peak Court.

She thrust out her left hand, coming into contact with the dense layer of planar stones, and sent all of the energy contained within her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow into them, and the array by extension. A rainbow of lights surged from it, and then appeared at other points throughout the continent, illuminating the dull early morning with a series of miniature suns that completely overwhelmed anything around them. The whole world seemed to be dyed as the light surged out, rapidly covering a larger and larger area.

Then, a shell appeared around it all, solidifying and thickening in seconds until it was as thick as all the walls of the Western Continent combined, several dozen metres of crystalline pseudo planar essence standing between the people and the darkness outside.

It was surrounded instantly, and soon its light was the only light the Western Continent received.