The Dead strike First
The second that Wei Yi stepped out of the residence, deciding to wear some basic footwear as to not instantly sully the work that Min Lian had put into cleaning her feet, she saw a figure in the distance, at one of the cave entrances to Automaton Point.
In the same breath, two more figured emerged, all of them appearing on the other side of the bridge and freezing the second that they saw the entirety of the underground city. They were clearly no ordinary humans, for physique energy actively radiated from their bodies and made them light up like lamps in the dark, and they made no effort to hide their seething fury as they looked upon Automaton Point.
‘There’s one identity for this lot that I can think of, but it is rather unlikely… Still, I know more about the avatars than them, so I ought to side with the former in this situation…’
Using the moment in which they were stunned, Wei Yi used a stealth technique and leapt into the air, obscuring everything about herself and her movement. As the physique cultivators failed to notice her, she opened her mouth and used every voice technique available to her, including the overwhelming volume of the Lion’s Roar, to project her voice.
“INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS SEEK TO HARM YOUR PEACE!”
Her voice reached the outer walls of the cave in a single instant, then bounced off them, vibrating the entire cave with its intensity. The echo of her voice became louder and louder, absolutely deafening all but one person with working eardrums, turning into nothing but a shrill sound that still grew louder.
The aforementioned intruders suffered the most, especially two more of their number that left the tunnels a second after her yell and were entirely unprepared for the situation. Due to the distance between them, she couldn’t see every minor detail, but she could tell that their ears were bleeding profusely even as they attempted to cover their ears to prevent the extreme volume of sound from shattering their very minds.
Yet another physique cultivator entered the area, but after suffering for a moment, he raised his head and met the piercing reverberations with a yell of his own.
The vague image of a lion’s head emerged around the physique cultivator, echoing his cry and amplifying it, causing it to clash with the echoes of Wei Yi’s voice. As the latter had decayed and spread all around the cave of Automaton Point, the former won out, pushing the cry backwards and dispersing it.
‘How fascinating. This is one of the rare physiques that either spawned a technique that fully replicated it, or was born as a result of the technique stimulating that part of humanity,’ Wei Yi noted as she looked at the illusory lion head from the other side of the bridge.
Although the yell was dispersed, she had already taken advantage of the distraction and moved to the base of the bridge, took out White Echo and slashed through the supports.
She made sure to do so just as one of the physique cultivators stepped onto it, causing them to be caught off guard as it collapsed into the abyss between Automaton Point and the caves, with the fall made all the more unfortunate by the fact that they lacked any means of preventing it despite the incredibly variety of physiques in existence.
It was made even more tragic when one of the other physique cultivators, a woman that was almost entirely covered in messy brown hair, approached the edge of the cliff and held out her hand. Translucent and fluid physique energy surged from her pores and flowed to her hands, gathering before them in an enormous sphere. Once it grew to being as wide as a typical human was tall, the sphere was launched forward, expanding horizontally until it barely reached the other side of the abyss and struck the cliff edge on that side.
‘Mystical Bridge Physique… An odd one, to be sure, but incredibly useful in a supporting role. Allows the generation of a bridge via one’s physique energy,’ Wei Yi recognised this physique as well, but chose not to strike again. The hatred avatars had to feel some threat and urgency, after all.
Even without her continued interference, when the mystical bridge passed through the plane of killing intent left behind by White Echo, it was shaken and visibly weakened, as well as being slightly delayed.
By the time it did indeed hit the cliff edge, almost half a hundred hatred avatars emerged from their residences, with some looking alike to hatred automatons while others had significantly more human features, marred only by large spots of crimson flesh on various parts of their body. Most did not wear any kind of clothing, although one was donning an apron made out of ancient cloth that was actively falling apart before Wei Yi’s eyes.
They witnessed the intruders, their exact expressions varying, but when they finally took action, their responses matched. Every single avatar rushed towards the new bridge, stopping several metres away from it before focusing. At the same time, a series of pulses in killing intent burst out of them, spreading out to the edges of Automaton Point and far, far beyond.
To the physique cultivators, this was nothing but a strange vibration in the air, for they were unaware of the great quantities of amalgam automatons that were gathering upon this point.
While they were distracted by the battle, Wei Yi retreated behind them and waited for her moment.
As the bridge solidified, the invaders rushed onto it and towards the other side, fearing the possibility of another collapse due to an unknown opponent. Several more physique cultivators joined them as if they were just flowing from the cave tunnels, and all of them rushed towards Automaton Point with every method that they had at their disposal. One was able to temporarily stand on air, or perhaps the killing intent that filled it, and so they minimised the time they spent on the mystical bridge by constantly stepping on an invisible platform in the air, dispersing it and creating a new one just in time for their other foot to land on it. Another had some kind of support ability, and whenever he weakened the bridge by touching it, he released some of his physique energy to strengthen it.
‘It is rather exciting to see so many physiques at the third realm just marching towards me, all of them radiating yang energy… Since I can’t imagine any of the avatars having an issue with me handling the bodies of the invaders, I will get all of it for little effort…’ Wei Yi thought.
Even though the amalgam automatons were clearly rushing towards this location with great haste, they could only dig through solid rock so quickly with mismatched limbs and confused bodies. Before any one of them could make it to the scene, the first wave of physique cultivators crossed the bridge, with three more waves following behind them.
“Die, you filth!” one physique cultivator yelled for no good reason, with such great timing that one could almost assume that he had been told to do so at this exact time and place.
‘My primary goal is to rile the avatars up against any other foe, and just as I want to do this, he makes it seem like they are just here to kill them due to their identity, even though the most likely reason behind their appearance is the death of that one lustful warlord from the Great Bone Lake,’ thought the most likely culprit behind the sudden invasion, though she naturally did not intend to share this information with anyone else, ‘Since this is also the very first thing that they said, if they follow up with ‘Death to the killers of the warlord‘ or something of the sort, the avatars can just reasonably assume that they had been blamed for something just to give them a good excuse. I’ll make sure that Min Lian suggests this notion…’
The hatred avatars closest to the mystical bridge attempted to run away, but they were entirely inferior to any of the physique cultivators. Two of the avatars sustained heavy damage almost instantly, and the number of injuries would have increased severely if not for the fact that the entire cave suddenly began to rumble. Even the most mentally deficient of the intruders couldn’t ignore it, especially when they suddenly felt the ground beneath them collapsing inwards.
In an instant, two physique cultivators were devoured or torn apart by amalgam automatons, which burst out of the ground and continued to pour out of the same tunnels that were formed by the creatures preceding them.
These insectoid creatures poured towards the invaders like the tide, nimbly avoiding any hatred avatar that retreated while using them as cover, matching the number of intruders in four seconds and exceeding it in only nine seconds. Since these were merely puppets for the avatars to use, they threw themselves at the physique cultivators without any regards for their own safety, using only minimal tactics to entirely overwhelm them – at first. Once those that were clearly unsuited for this battle perished or were forced to retreat, those that possessed powerful area attack capabilities made it to the front lines of this battle, and they did not hold back.
With the empowerment of the Sun’s Regalia physique, one particular fighter threw himself towards the insectoid creatures, with each one of his blows creating a powerful shockwave of sunlight that surged through the amalgam automatons and tore through their long-dead forms and destroyed both their insides and their tough outer shells.
Each punch from this man severely injured or outright shattered three to four automatons, and his stamina appeared to be completely boundless.
However, even that wasn’t the greatest threat to the hatred avatars. As another wave of invaders crossed the mystical bridge, one particular fighter also rushed towards his foes, but he punched far too early for his strike to connect with any one of his foes.
The man was not perturbed by this, and it soon became obvious why. Following his attack, an enormous mirage – a shadowy humanoid figure with arms as thick as logs and a head with no visible features other than a single glowing point in the middle of its face that constantly radiated bright crimson energy – appeared above him, the movements of the figure matching up with his own attack and connecting with the shells and bodies of half a dozen amalgam automatons in a single strike. The dark fist crushed their bodies as if they were mere bugs, vanishing a second later.
‘Titanic Demolisher physique! This one is certainly visually impressive,’ Wei Yi remarked silently.
More and more amalgam automatons emerged from the ground, but in the eyes of the physique cultivators, they were just adding dry logs to their flame.
Eventually, even the less knowledgeable amongst the avatars understood this, and although they were able to maintain their resonance with the amalgam automatons and continued controlling them, some were beginning to be consumed by their connection to the automatons. Their energy distorted and their bodies slowly started to tremble.
What better time was there for a hero to step up and save the day?
Just as the physique cultivators were about to push through to the hatred avatars once more, a bright mass of sunlight-like physique energy appeared out of nowhere and struck the user of the Sun’s Regalia physique directly in the chest, shattering not only the golden regalia on his chest, but also the majority of his front. At the same time, the bright True Ascendant power surged into his body and, the very second that he perished, drained all of the Sun’s Regalia light from his flesh, leaving him dry.
As it returned to Wei Yi’s body, she felt her physique energy grow even more powerful as a part of it concentrated on her chest, forming a strange amalgamation of symbols in between her breasts. More than anything else, this glowing symbol resembled the mysterious characters in disarray.
She suppressed it immediately, forcing it to disappear before it had the opportunity to cause any particular disruptions amongst the side she was attempting to side with, but the improvement that it brought to her physique could not be hidden as easily.
Before the physique cultivators had the opportunity to understand their opponent, she used the warlord’s physique to shift forward by one step and concentrated her physique energy on her fist according to the principles of Draconic Punch. The faint echo of a dragon’s roar reverberated throughout the cave as an illusory image of a dragon’s head formed around her fist, composed entirely of sunlight, and was launched out.
It struck several more intruders and snapped down on them, splitting their forms in two as easily as a knife could cut through air, and fed their energies to Wei Yi.
‘Lion’s Roar, Existence Trace and Cleaving Axe physiques are down and are now mine. With those, the breakthrough should occur in just a few seconds, but as it is only from the first to the second stage, it shouldn’t catch more attention that those two ridiculous attacks… I almost forgot how impressive a single Gentle Breeze Strike can be when amplified by the True Ascendant physique,’ she thought to herself, finding that none of the physique cultivators were powerful enough to awaken another kind of ability within her.
Nevertheless, the entrance still earned her one physique ability and the attention of both sides, who froze as they evaluated this new entrant to the battle. They needed to know which sides she did and did not belong to, and she decided to give the answer to them as plainly as she could.
“Avatars, get back! I’ll keep them away!” she shouted, using Dawn Flowing Light to create a wave of energy to push the physique cultivators as close towards the cliff as possible.
“Wait, can she be trusted? She’s another one of them!”
Simply from the stabilisation of the resonance of the avatars, she could tell that her entrance was greatly welcomed, but due to the oddity and strange convenience of her appearance, it was only natural that some would find an issue with her. In fact, if they did not, Wei Yi would have brought up the exact same concern herself in order to address it before it had the opportunity to gnaw at their trust. Thus, she briefly looked back towards the avatar that raised the question – a woman that looked mostly human from the waist up but had only the barest semblance of legs below that.
“I’ve been working on healing your bodies and mind so that you can recover everything you used to be and be able to leave the prison realm safely, and just when I succeeded with Liu Qi, I saw what was happening outside!” she exclaimed, speaking as quickly as she could, “She should be going to speak with Fen Fang right now to get help!”
That appeared to appease the female hatred avatar, so Wei Yi turned back and threw her hands into the air, subduing her voice via inverting the Lion’s Roar technique as she called out, “Ancestral Call!”
Her silent words caused her killing intent to surge out of her body and into the ground around her, forming into a series of totems that burst out of the ground and were then accompanied by a series of figures shrouded in crimson, with no lower body and a single glowing eye.
‘I suspect the Kong had some inspiration from the Titanic Demolisher technique, seeing as the general visual is incredibly similar,’ Wei Yi noted, lowering her hands before chanting, “Ancestral Eyes!”
A dozen shadows appeared within her vision, all of them showing the battle from a slightly different perspective. All of them followed her lead as she channelled her killing intent according to one of her personal techniques, causing one hundred and eight faint stars to light up within Wei Yi’s body, and for roughly half of that number of ignite within the crimson ancestral figures as their energy was channelled towards a spot before their chests.
It gathered into a large ball of light that then shot out a powerful beam. A total of fourteen instances of Dawn Slicing Beam, warped by killing intent into something far less pleasant to behold, but significantly more powerful, struck the front lines of the physique cultivating invaders, burning right through four of them and significantly injuring the other ten targets.
Before they could react in any way, she dispersed the effect of Ancestral Eyes and leapt towards the bridge, falling down onto the edge of it with a Rising Dawn fist.
With all of the damage that killing intent plane left behind by White Echo had dealt to the structure of the bridge, her punch shattered it, causing the bridge to slowly lean down into the abyss, clearly being unable to maintain its stability with so many people on it.
So that their energy wouldn’t be wasted, she took out the Bone of the Beast and filled it to the brim with several pages of her compressed killing intent, forcefully altering its structure to be as alike to fire-type planar energy as she possibly could. Using the rough structure of the weapon to mimic the required weapon for the usage of Scorching Blade, she burnt all of the killing intent she had forced into it as she activated the first move of the technique: Dragon’s Wrath.
The dagger was coated in an impossibly hot and bright flame, blinding anyone who looked directly at it, as if the sun itself had descended into the blade. It seemed to seep into the very thoughts of those who looked at it, instantly wiping away any consideration of attacking Wei Yi while she was busy preparing to use the technique.
When they recovered, it was too late.
Wei Yi swung the dagger slowly, looking much like someone who had never lifted a weapon in their entire life. However, that single, simple, incredibly basic looking swing contained a force that could never be imagined by the mortals of the current age. The flames contained within the dagger burst out at a dozen- no, a hundred times the intensity of what they should have been, and expanded into the flaming breath of a true dragon, a beast whose might had been long-forgotten, just like the name of the Master of Yi City and the power that he used to wield in his prime against the greatest of foes.
The draconic breath torched everything it touched – the bridge, the people on it, and the stone behind it. All of it was scorched and melted, raw physique energy being the only thing that somehow survived.
‘Have I never used a technique with the Bone of the Beast before? Or, is this some kind of unique interaction between this kind of technique and the weapon? This is- right, I have to absorb the physique energy before it dissipates,’ she interrupted herself and threw out her True Ascendant energy under the distraction of the incredible heat haze generated by the draconic breath, collecting all of the energy for herself.
It flowed into her body, refuelling all of the energy that she had used in this battle so far, and as the last drop of physique energy was absorbed into her, she felt her entire supply of physique energy expand and wash over her body, coating and soaking all of her internal organs for a brief moment before it retreated to her meridians.
‘More of the All-Seeing Eye, another Cleaving Axe, some random ordinary physiques that mostly do nothing… Mystical Bridge physique is still on the other side, and Titanic Demolisher-’
She was forced to end that thought when the aforementioned physique cultivator repeated her plunging attack using his raw strength, his physique phantom following him quickly. Both were rather easy to evade due to the simplistic nature of the attacks, as the man followed the same tactic every single time he struck: initially miss his first strike by an inch before allowing the physique to take care of the rest. It was simple, but still incredibly powerful.
Wei Yi contemplated using more of her killing intent to deal with him, but she found that her energy consumption was significantly more than she had expected, likely due to the immense power of the Dragon’s Wrath.
‘Eh, physique energy will be sufficient- oh, they even have a Vibrant Phoenix physique on their side. It’s a good thing that the Dragon’s Wrath went out almost instantly, or else it could have used the flame to strengthen itself,’ she thought, recalling the description of the physique and the statement about not using any kind of active flame against an enemy using the physique, ‘Yes, physique energy will do.’
Evading the simple punch of the Titanic Demolisher, she looked towards the Vibrant Phoenix who had transformed their upper body into that of an ancient phoenix, using their new wings to fly across the abyss while the Mystical Bridge physique worked to reconstruct the broken bridge, and gathered her physique energy around her arm, splitting it in two while one formed Storm Blade Wreathing and the other circulated the necessary energy for the Frayed Blade technique.
In theory, it was meant to be used with spiritual will only, but as every form of energy had originated from cosmic energy, it meant that they could easily be interchangeable.
As the Vibrant Phoenix was only inches away from her, the bright sunlight in her hands formed an enormous sword, it’s edges frayed and rough yet radiating incredibly intense power, cutting through the air and killing intent around it and leaving a small area around it that was devoid of all matter, containing naught but her power.
‘Elysian Frayed Blade!’
She slashed at the approaching physique cultivator, who thought that they would be able to dodge her attack due to how slow her previous attack with a weapon was. Contrary to their expectations, she moved at almost thrice the speed – the attack with Dragon’s Wrath demanded slow movement to prevent accidental damage to herself, but this weapon did not – and split the cultivator in half in one attack. In that same movement, she continued the slash and spun around to face the Titanic Demolisher once more, transforming the energy gathered for the Frayed Blade into the power of Demonic Ire, which she targeted at the Demolisher.
Before the technique had the opportunity to begin gathering energy from the air, which she suspected to be potentially lethal to the hatred avatars that were still within range, she fired it in the weakest, most basic form, creating only a simple beam of pure sunlight.
The Titanic Demolisher attempted to meet the strike with a punch from the physique phantom, but what he did not expect was that it would be entirely useless against the incredible physique energy. It easily pierced the phantom fist and struck his head, exploding and entirely destroying the top third of his physical form.
His energy was instantly stolen by Wei Yi, who turned back to the Vibrant Phoenix just in time to see their top half transform into that of a woman and for the flames to spread to the cut-off bottom half.
In the one second that they touched the wounded portion of the body, the severed lower half grew out anew, as if the cut had never been made and there wasn’t a pair of legs lying on the ground only a few steps away. While the exact regenerative abilities were impressive and rather daunting, seeing as this meant that the Vibrant Phoenix would have to be finished off in one strike, just as the Titanic Demolisher had been earlier, but Wei Yi saw this as more of an opportunity.
After all, the physique energy in the cut-off legs was still present, and it also filled the new pair that had grown back onto the Vibrant Phoenix’s body. Since it was apparently so easy to regrow limbs with such a technique, did it not mean that she had a plentiful supply of power just waiting for her to take it?
‘But before that, I sense another physique ability awakening!’ she smiled as her True Ascendant energy surged out once more, flying out of her body and forming an enormous phantom behind her that mimicked the terrifying visage present at all times within her mental domain and killing intent.
Just as the poor Phoenix recovered, she grabbed it with the phantom limb – her powerful physique energy allowing her to move the phantom form without needing it to mimic her actual movements, albeit it couldn’t quite rid her of the entire delay – and threw her on the ground next to her before stomping down with the Violet Kick to instantly sever the flaming bird’s arm from her body while also draining it and the legs of the physique energy that they held.
“You- For the Lustful Warlord!” the Vibrant Phoenix suddenly exclaimed, her entire body igniting in a brilliant white flame.
From the movement of energy within her, as well as the words spoken, Wei Yi understood her intentions and was forced to abandon her plan of farming for sufficient physique energy to activate the Vibrant Phoenix physique ability. Instead, she warped one step and kicked the glowing body over the enormous abyss.
Clearly, the physique cultivators on that side also understood what was about to happen, as they did their best to scatter before the imminent explosion.
Only a breath away from landing on the other side, the Vibrant Phoenix shut her eyes one last time and burst into an enormous ball of flame, exploding with enough force to knock the weakest hatred avatars on the other side of the abyss off their feet. The physique cultivators, although more powerful due to their persistent improvement of their own bodies, fared significantly worse, with several being scorched and disfigured in the explosion of flame.
Nevertheless, when they recovered – and they did so quickly, owing to their clear lack of the sensation of pain, amongst other things – they immediately pulled out strange bows, seemingly made of stone and dirt, nocking arrows of a similar appearance with a clear lack of grace and precision.
They fired them quickly, without any order or strategy, and did so directly at Wei Yi, in such a fashion that if she was to dodge, she would allow for everyone standing behind her to be impaled by countless projectiles. Even though such weaponry shouldn’t be able to pose a threat to her, she wasn’t stupid enough to simply allow them to strike her, for there were many odd and astounding physiques in the world that could empower ordinary weaponry or create all sorts of equipment from naught but dust, yet match low-grade artefacts.
Amongst the most powerful of the latter type of physique was the Shaper’s Grasp physique, and although it was graded as only a greater physique, in the hands of a physique cultivator with physique energy, it was bound to be significantly more dangerous.
She met the arrows with another wave of Dawn Flowing Light, but her eyes widened involuntarily when she saw that the arrows didn’t just penetrate the wave, but also continued to fly with the same speed, landing on her body in a hail of projectiles. Furthermore, while some bounced off due to poor aim or broke upon impact, almost a dozen of the arrows actually pierced the Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival and even managed to penetrate her skin, with three getting far enough into her body to not fall off simply due to her breathing.
When she tore them out and inspected one, it proved one thing to her.
‘They do have someone with the Shaper’s Grasp physique, and at a high realm, too. I must have it!’ Wei Yi decided instantly, for the benefits that it would bring her simply couldn’t be ignored.
Thus, before the physique cultivators had the chance to prepare another volley, she looked carefully into the mass of intruders that had gathered on the other side of the abyss and found her target – a man, clothed in robes, that was holding a stone and reshaping it into another arrow, like the rock was fluid in his hands.
‘Since I’ve used a sort of Elysian Demonic Ire once, I might as well do so again, and properly.’
Without making any obvious gestures or movements, she drew a path between herself and the other side of the former bridge using the killing intent that she had recovered since the usage of Dragon’s Wrath, while also preparing for the second series of shots.
The latter came before the former could be completed, and it looked like these particular physique cultivators were fast learners. Their arrows carried more force, flew faster, were aimed more precisely and used some semblance of timing to coordinate an attack that was more difficult to deal with than before.
‘I’ll have to take this one as well, but I hope that the hatred avatars are interpreting this the right way,’ she thought, deciding against using Dawn Flowing Light in a wiser way to minimise her injuries.
Again, the arrows pierced the simple wave of dawn light and struck her body, with the majority piercing the Crimson Robes and the majority of those also penetrating her skin, with one successfully landing on the same spot on her body as one of the previous arrows and getting further into her flesh, as she had not had the time to recover from the wound completely. Wei Yi tore all of these arrows out once more, then, without a warning, suddenly pulled on an invisible thread and jumped.
Naturally, this thread was attached to the pathway made through Direct Movement, and with it, she was able to cross the enormous gap in a single breath, landing with enough force to push several fighters over the edge with the shockwave of the impact alone.
Before the invaders had a chance to strike at her with their various weapons and methods, she brought her hands apart and floated into the air, the aura of sunlight surrounding her. The Sun’s Regalia lit up on her chest, the veil of Grim Mortality covered from further harm, and a burst of physique energy emerged from her, striking the ground in a large circle around her. Every single physique cultivator within that circle felt a sudden sensation of dread, as if some unbeatable predator had cornered them and they had no chance of fighting back.
When the first set of bolts burst out of Wei Yi’s body and struck a dozen of them, tearing enormous holes within their bodies and bringing back the physique energy from them back towards her, they understood this feeling well, and it only got worse as every series of bolts seemed to spawn another, smaller circle, which slowly closed in on her position.
As the last circle formed and the entirety of the physique energy deposited within the circles flew out and into Wei Yi’s hands, they wished that they had run, or not bothered to come here.
Unfortunately for them, not only was it too late for the survivors, but even those that had chosen to flee, like the cultivator of Shaper’s Grasp, had not yet seen the worst that she had to offer. The gathered energy was pulled into one spot between her hands, and as she closed them around it and then released it in the shape of a single, powerful burst of a beam, it shot out at the walls above the many passages that headed towards Automaton Point.
The bright energy struck the stone and exploded, shattering the stone and causing countless shards of rock to burst out of the explosion and impale dozens of physique cultivators through pure collateral damage. A second later, the top of all of the tunnels leading out of Automaton Point cracked and crumbled, collapsing downwards and crushing several of the physique cultivators that had been heading through them. The collapsing rocks also fell down upon many invaders on their side of the passages, several large stone falling into the abyss below.
One of the few that survived was the Shaper’s Grasp physique cultivator, who willed the terrain around him to transform into walls that would then divert the falling stones away from him. When he noticed Wei Yi’s gaze on him, he instantly grabbed a stone from the ground and began to shape it.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ she formed a Living Spear with spiritual will and imbued it with spear light through the Terror Arts, throwing it at the intruder just as he completed creating his own weapon.
Clearly, he had been observing her previous fights with others on his side and thus knew that her attacks needed to be evaded no matter what, or else they would just destroy his skull and leave him at the mercy of whatever it was that she did to their energies, making him leap out of the way of the spear as early as he could. He then prepared to rush forward, intending to pierce Wei Yi’s eyes with his weapon to end her quickly, but he suddenly found that he could not, as if he was being restrained by some kind of rope or thread.
His vision, which had previously been as clear as ever, was suddenly filled with a strange mist that seemed to exist within his eyes rather than outside, and he felt his mind grind to a halt. All ideas of moving, attacking or even evading faded from existence, leaving behind only the mist.
Wei Yi approached him easily and cut off his head in one swing of a Frayed Blade, simultaneously severing the spiritual will thread that she had sent into it.
‘This man should have enough energy to provide me with the full Shaper’s Grasp physique, and if all of his allies that I’ve slain today were to be combined, that would mean that I have acquired parts of, or the entirety of the Lion’s Roar, Mystical Bridge, Existence Trace, Aerial Foothold, Cleaving Axe, Titanic Demolisher, Shaper’s Grasp, Vibrant Phoenix, Humanity Lance, Rapid Existence and even the Pyromaniac’s Coat, which is essentially the inferior version of the Vibrant Phoenix physique, granting some resistance to flame and greater abilities while in it…’ she counted every single physique that she had gained as she finished absorbing the energy from the Shaper’s Grasp cultivator, ‘It is this particular physique that is most important, however, as it will allow me to bypass my weakness with blacksmithing.’
The ground beneath her feet trembled, prompting her to return to the other side of the abyss quickly.
Just as she made it back, the cliff finally crumbled and collapsed into the void, all of the bodies that did not burn from her physique energy falling alongside the rock and disappearing from sight, though no sound was heard from below upon their fall. It seemed like the abyss was either bottomless, or so deep that there was no reason to not label it as such anyway.
She approached the hatred avatars, intentionally allowing blood to flow from two of the wounds on her body while preventing the Crimson Robe of the Third Arrival from repairing itself, and spoke while breathing heavily, “That should be it, for now.”
The avatars stood in silence, stunned both by the prowess of this one human and by the fact that she had just survived several dozen arrows being shot directly into her, when they heard shouting from the depths of Automaton Point. They turned to look towards it, willing their amalgam automatons to change positions as to best guard them from whatever this other threat was, and saw a lone hatred avatar, looking much like a human in almost every way, running in their direction.
“Fen Fang has been killed!”
The Dead strike First
The second that Wei Yi stepped out of the residence, deciding to wear some basic footwear as to not instantly sully the work that Min Lian had put into cleaning her feet, she saw a figure in the distance, at one of the cave entrances to Automaton Point.
In the same breath, two more figured emerged, all of them appearing on the other side of the bridge and freezing the second that they saw the entirety of the underground city. They were clearly no ordinary humans, for physique energy actively radiated from their bodies and made them light up like lamps in the dark, and they made no effort to hide their seething fury as they looked upon Automaton Point.
‘There’s one identity for this lot that I can think of, but it is rather unlikely… Still, I know more about the avatars than them, so I ought to side with the former in this situation…’
Using the moment in which they were stunned, Wei Yi used a stealth technique and leapt into the air, obscuring everything about herself and her movement. As the physique cultivators failed to notice her, she opened her mouth and used every voice technique available to her, including the overwhelming volume of the Lion’s Roar, to project her voice.
“INTRUDERS! INTRUDERS SEEK TO HARM YOUR PEACE!”
Her voice reached the outer walls of the cave in a single instant, then bounced off them, vibrating the entire cave with its intensity. The echo of her voice became louder and louder, absolutely deafening all but one person with working eardrums, turning into nothing but a shrill sound that still grew louder.
The aforementioned intruders suffered the most, especially two more of their number that left the tunnels a second after her yell and were entirely unprepared for the situation. Due to the distance between them, she couldn’t see every minor detail, but she could tell that their ears were bleeding profusely even as they attempted to cover their ears to prevent the extreme volume of sound from shattering their very minds.
Yet another physique cultivator entered the area, but after suffering for a moment, he raised his head and met the piercing reverberations with a yell of his own.
The vague image of a lion’s head emerged around the physique cultivator, echoing his cry and amplifying it, causing it to clash with the echoes of Wei Yi’s voice. As the latter had decayed and spread all around the cave of Automaton Point, the former won out, pushing the cry backwards and dispersing it.
‘How fascinating. This is one of the rare physiques that either spawned a technique that fully replicated it, or was born as a result of the technique stimulating that part of humanity,’ Wei Yi noted as she looked at the illusory lion head from the other side of the bridge.
Although the yell was dispersed, she had already taken advantage of the distraction and moved to the base of the bridge, took out White Echo and slashed through the supports.
She made sure to do so just as one of the physique cultivators stepped onto it, causing them to be caught off guard as it collapsed into the abyss between Automaton Point and the caves, with the fall made all the more unfortunate by the fact that they lacked any means of preventing it despite the incredibly variety of physiques in existence.
It was made even more tragic when one of the other physique cultivators, a woman that was almost entirely covered in messy brown hair, approached the edge of the cliff and held out her hand. Translucent and fluid physique energy surged from her pores and flowed to her hands, gathering before them in an enormous sphere. Once it grew to being as wide as a typical human was tall, the sphere was launched forward, expanding horizontally until it barely reached the other side of the abyss and struck the cliff edge on that side.
‘Mystical Bridge Physique… An odd one, to be sure, but incredibly useful in a supporting role. Allows the generation of a bridge via one’s physique energy,’ Wei Yi recognised this physique as well, but chose not to strike again. The hatred avatars had to feel some threat and urgency, after all.
Even without her continued interference, when the mystical bridge passed through the plane of killing intent left behind by White Echo, it was shaken and visibly weakened, as well as being slightly delayed.
By the time it did indeed hit the cliff edge, almost half a hundred hatred avatars emerged from their residences, with some looking alike to hatred automatons while others had significantly more human features, marred only by large spots of crimson flesh on various parts of their body. Most did not wear any kind of clothing, although one was donning an apron made out of ancient cloth that was actively falling apart before Wei Yi’s eyes.
They witnessed the intruders, their exact expressions varying, but when they finally took action, their responses matched. Every single avatar rushed towards the new bridge, stopping several metres away from it before focusing. At the same time, a series of pulses in killing intent burst out of them, spreading out to the edges of Automaton Point and far, far beyond.
To the physique cultivators, this was nothing but a strange vibration in the air, for they were unaware of the great quantities of amalgam automatons that were gathering upon this point.
While they were distracted by the battle, Wei Yi retreated behind them and waited for her moment.
As the bridge solidified, the invaders rushed onto it and towards the other side, fearing the possibility of another collapse due to an unknown opponent. Several more physique cultivators joined them as if they were just flowing from the cave tunnels, and all of them rushed towards Automaton Point with every method that they had at their disposal. One was able to temporarily stand on air, or perhaps the killing intent that filled it, and so they minimised the time they spent on the mystical bridge by constantly stepping on an invisible platform in the air, dispersing it and creating a new one just in time for their other foot to land on it. Another had some kind of support ability, and whenever he weakened the bridge by touching it, he released some of his physique energy to strengthen it.
‘It is rather exciting to see so many physiques at the third realm just marching towards me, all of them radiating yang energy… Since I can’t imagine any of the avatars having an issue with me handling the bodies of the invaders, I will get all of it for little effort…’ Wei Yi thought.
Even though the amalgam automatons were clearly rushing towards this location with great haste, they could only dig through solid rock so quickly with mismatched limbs and confused bodies. Before any one of them could make it to the scene, the first wave of physique cultivators crossed the bridge, with three more waves following behind them.
“Die, you filth!” one physique cultivator yelled for no good reason, with such great timing that one could almost assume that he had been told to do so at this exact time and place.
‘My primary goal is to rile the avatars up against any other foe, and just as I want to do this, he makes it seem like they are just here to kill them due to their identity, even though the most likely reason behind their appearance is the death of that one lustful warlord from the Great Bone Lake,’ thought the most likely culprit behind the sudden invasion, though she naturally did not intend to share this information with anyone else, ‘Since this is also the very first thing that they said, if they follow up with ‘Death to the killers of the warlord‘ or something of the sort, the avatars can just reasonably assume that they had been blamed for something just to give them a good excuse. I’ll make sure that Min Lian suggests this notion…’
The hatred avatars closest to the mystical bridge attempted to run away, but they were entirely inferior to any of the physique cultivators. Two of the avatars sustained heavy damage almost instantly, and the number of injuries would have increased severely if not for the fact that the entire cave suddenly began to rumble. Even the most mentally deficient of the intruders couldn’t ignore it, especially when they suddenly felt the ground beneath them collapsing inwards.
In an instant, two physique cultivators were devoured or torn apart by amalgam automatons, which burst out of the ground and continued to pour out of the same tunnels that were formed by the creatures preceding them.
These insectoid creatures poured towards the invaders like the tide, nimbly avoiding any hatred avatar that retreated while using them as cover, matching the number of intruders in four seconds and exceeding it in only nine seconds. Since these were merely puppets for the avatars to use, they threw themselves at the physique cultivators without any regards for their own safety, using only minimal tactics to entirely overwhelm them – at first. Once those that were clearly unsuited for this battle perished or were forced to retreat, those that possessed powerful area attack capabilities made it to the front lines of this battle, and they did not hold back.
With the empowerment of the Sun’s Regalia physique, one particular fighter threw himself towards the insectoid creatures, with each one of his blows creating a powerful shockwave of sunlight that surged through the amalgam automatons and tore through their long-dead forms and destroyed both their insides and their tough outer shells.
Each punch from this man severely injured or outright shattered three to four automatons, and his stamina appeared to be completely boundless.
However, even that wasn’t the greatest threat to the hatred avatars. As another wave of invaders crossed the mystical bridge, one particular fighter also rushed towards his foes, but he punched far too early for his strike to connect with any one of his foes.
The man was not perturbed by this, and it soon became obvious why. Following his attack, an enormous mirage – a shadowy humanoid figure with arms as thick as logs and a head with no visible features other than a single glowing point in the middle of its face that constantly radiated bright crimson energy – appeared above him, the movements of the figure matching up with his own attack and connecting with the shells and bodies of half a dozen amalgam automatons in a single strike. The dark fist crushed their bodies as if they were mere bugs, vanishing a second later.
‘Titanic Demolisher physique! This one is certainly visually impressive,’ Wei Yi remarked silently.
More and more amalgam automatons emerged from the ground, but in the eyes of the physique cultivators, they were just adding dry logs to their flame.
Eventually, even the less knowledgeable amongst the avatars understood this, and although they were able to maintain their resonance with the amalgam automatons and continued controlling them, some were beginning to be consumed by their connection to the automatons. Their energy distorted and their bodies slowly started to tremble.
What better time was there for a hero to step up and save the day?
Just as the physique cultivators were about to push through to the hatred avatars once more, a bright mass of sunlight-like physique energy appeared out of nowhere and struck the user of the Sun’s Regalia physique directly in the chest, shattering not only the golden regalia on his chest, but also the majority of his front. At the same time, the bright True Ascendant power surged into his body and, the very second that he perished, drained all of the Sun’s Regalia light from his flesh, leaving him dry.
As it returned to Wei Yi’s body, she felt her physique energy grow even more powerful as a part of it concentrated on her chest, forming a strange amalgamation of symbols in between her breasts. More than anything else, this glowing symbol resembled the mysterious characters in disarray.
She suppressed it immediately, forcing it to disappear before it had the opportunity to cause any particular disruptions amongst the side she was attempting to side with, but the improvement that it brought to her physique could not be hidden as easily.
Before the physique cultivators had the opportunity to understand their opponent, she used the warlord’s physique to shift forward by one step and concentrated her physique energy on her fist according to the principles of Draconic Punch. The faint echo of a dragon’s roar reverberated throughout the cave as an illusory image of a dragon’s head formed around her fist, composed entirely of sunlight, and was launched out.
It struck several more intruders and snapped down on them, splitting their forms in two as easily as a knife could cut through air, and fed their energies to Wei Yi.
‘Lion’s Roar, Existence Trace and Cleaving Axe physiques are down and are now mine. With those, the breakthrough should occur in just a few seconds, but as it is only from the first to the second stage, it shouldn’t catch more attention that those two ridiculous attacks… I almost forgot how impressive a single Gentle Breeze Strike can be when amplified by the True Ascendant physique,’ she thought to herself, finding that none of the physique cultivators were powerful enough to awaken another kind of ability within her.
Nevertheless, the entrance still earned her one physique ability and the attention of both sides, who froze as they evaluated this new entrant to the battle. They needed to know which sides she did and did not belong to, and she decided to give the answer to them as plainly as she could.
“Avatars, get back! I’ll keep them away!” she shouted, using Dawn Flowing Light to create a wave of energy to push the physique cultivators as close towards the cliff as possible.
“Wait, can she be trusted? She’s another one of them!”
Simply from the stabilisation of the resonance of the avatars, she could tell that her entrance was greatly welcomed, but due to the oddity and strange convenience of her appearance, it was only natural that some would find an issue with her. In fact, if they did not, Wei Yi would have brought up the exact same concern herself in order to address it before it had the opportunity to gnaw at their trust. Thus, she briefly looked back towards the avatar that raised the question – a woman that looked mostly human from the waist up but had only the barest semblance of legs below that.
“I’ve been working on healing your bodies and mind so that you can recover everything you used to be and be able to leave the prison realm safely, and just when I succeeded with Liu Qi, I saw what was happening outside!” she exclaimed, speaking as quickly as she could, “She should be going to speak with Fen Fang right now to get help!”
That appeared to appease the female hatred avatar, so Wei Yi turned back and threw her hands into the air, subduing her voice via inverting the Lion’s Roar technique as she called out, “Ancestral Call!”
Her silent words caused her killing intent to surge out of her body and into the ground around her, forming into a series of totems that burst out of the ground and were then accompanied by a series of figures shrouded in crimson, with no lower body and a single glowing eye.
‘I suspect the Kong had some inspiration from the Titanic Demolisher technique, seeing as the general visual is incredibly similar,’ Wei Yi noted, lowering her hands before chanting, “Ancestral Eyes!”
A dozen shadows appeared within her vision, all of them showing the battle from a slightly different perspective. All of them followed her lead as she channelled her killing intent according to one of her personal techniques, causing one hundred and eight faint stars to light up within Wei Yi’s body, and for roughly half of that number of ignite within the crimson ancestral figures as their energy was channelled towards a spot before their chests.
It gathered into a large ball of light that then shot out a powerful beam. A total of fourteen instances of Dawn Slicing Beam, warped by killing intent into something far less pleasant to behold, but significantly more powerful, struck the front lines of the physique cultivating invaders, burning right through four of them and significantly injuring the other ten targets.
Before they could react in any way, she dispersed the effect of Ancestral Eyes and leapt towards the bridge, falling down onto the edge of it with a Rising Dawn fist.
With all of the damage that killing intent plane left behind by White Echo had dealt to the structure of the bridge, her punch shattered it, causing the bridge to slowly lean down into the abyss, clearly being unable to maintain its stability with so many people on it.
So that their energy wouldn’t be wasted, she took out the Bone of the Beast and filled it to the brim with several pages of her compressed killing intent, forcefully altering its structure to be as alike to fire-type planar energy as she possibly could. Using the rough structure of the weapon to mimic the required weapon for the usage of Scorching Blade, she burnt all of the killing intent she had forced into it as she activated the first move of the technique: Dragon’s Wrath.
The dagger was coated in an impossibly hot and bright flame, blinding anyone who looked directly at it, as if the sun itself had descended into the blade. It seemed to seep into the very thoughts of those who looked at it, instantly wiping away any consideration of attacking Wei Yi while she was busy preparing to use the technique.
When they recovered, it was too late.
Wei Yi swung the dagger slowly, looking much like someone who had never lifted a weapon in their entire life. However, that single, simple, incredibly basic looking swing contained a force that could never be imagined by the mortals of the current age. The flames contained within the dagger burst out at a dozen- no, a hundred times the intensity of what they should have been, and expanded into the flaming breath of a true dragon, a beast whose might had been long-forgotten, just like the name of the Master of Yi City and the power that he used to wield in his prime against the greatest of foes.
The draconic breath torched everything it touched – the bridge, the people on it, and the stone behind it. All of it was scorched and melted, raw physique energy being the only thing that somehow survived.
‘Have I never used a technique with the Bone of the Beast before? Or, is this some kind of unique interaction between this kind of technique and the weapon? This is- right, I have to absorb the physique energy before it dissipates,’ she interrupted herself and threw out her True Ascendant energy under the distraction of the incredible heat haze generated by the draconic breath, collecting all of the energy for herself.
It flowed into her body, refuelling all of the energy that she had used in this battle so far, and as the last drop of physique energy was absorbed into her, she felt her entire supply of physique energy expand and wash over her body, coating and soaking all of her internal organs for a brief moment before it retreated to her meridians.
‘More of the All-Seeing Eye, another Cleaving Axe, some random ordinary physiques that mostly do nothing… Mystical Bridge physique is still on the other side, and Titanic Demolisher-’
She was forced to end that thought when the aforementioned physique cultivator repeated her plunging attack using his raw strength, his physique phantom following him quickly. Both were rather easy to evade due to the simplistic nature of the attacks, as the man followed the same tactic every single time he struck: initially miss his first strike by an inch before allowing the physique to take care of the rest. It was simple, but still incredibly powerful.
Wei Yi contemplated using more of her killing intent to deal with him, but she found that her energy consumption was significantly more than she had expected, likely due to the immense power of the Dragon’s Wrath.
‘Eh, physique energy will be sufficient- oh, they even have a Vibrant Phoenix physique on their side. It’s a good thing that the Dragon’s Wrath went out almost instantly, or else it could have used the flame to strengthen itself,’ she thought, recalling the description of the physique and the statement about not using any kind of active flame against an enemy using the physique, ‘Yes, physique energy will do.’
Evading the simple punch of the Titanic Demolisher, she looked towards the Vibrant Phoenix who had transformed their upper body into that of an ancient phoenix, using their new wings to fly across the abyss while the Mystical Bridge physique worked to reconstruct the broken bridge, and gathered her physique energy around her arm, splitting it in two while one formed Storm Blade Wreathing and the other circulated the necessary energy for the Frayed Blade technique.
In theory, it was meant to be used with spiritual will only, but as every form of energy had originated from cosmic energy, it meant that they could easily be interchangeable.
As the Vibrant Phoenix was only inches away from her, the bright sunlight in her hands formed an enormous sword, it’s edges frayed and rough yet radiating incredibly intense power, cutting through the air and killing intent around it and leaving a small area around it that was devoid of all matter, containing naught but her power.
‘Elysian Frayed Blade!’
She slashed at the approaching physique cultivator, who thought that they would be able to dodge her attack due to how slow her previous attack with a weapon was. Contrary to their expectations, she moved at almost thrice the speed – the attack with Dragon’s Wrath demanded slow movement to prevent accidental damage to herself, but this weapon did not – and split the cultivator in half in one attack. In that same movement, she continued the slash and spun around to face the Titanic Demolisher once more, transforming the energy gathered for the Frayed Blade into the power of Demonic Ire, which she targeted at the Demolisher.
Before the technique had the opportunity to begin gathering energy from the air, which she suspected to be potentially lethal to the hatred avatars that were still within range, she fired it in the weakest, most basic form, creating only a simple beam of pure sunlight.
The Titanic Demolisher attempted to meet the strike with a punch from the physique phantom, but what he did not expect was that it would be entirely useless against the incredible physique energy. It easily pierced the phantom fist and struck his head, exploding and entirely destroying the top third of his physical form.
His energy was instantly stolen by Wei Yi, who turned back to the Vibrant Phoenix just in time to see their top half transform into that of a woman and for the flames to spread to the cut-off bottom half.
In the one second that they touched the wounded portion of the body, the severed lower half grew out anew, as if the cut had never been made and there wasn’t a pair of legs lying on the ground only a few steps away. While the exact regenerative abilities were impressive and rather daunting, seeing as this meant that the Vibrant Phoenix would have to be finished off in one strike, just as the Titanic Demolisher had been earlier, but Wei Yi saw this as more of an opportunity.
After all, the physique energy in the cut-off legs was still present, and it also filled the new pair that had grown back onto the Vibrant Phoenix’s body. Since it was apparently so easy to regrow limbs with such a technique, did it not mean that she had a plentiful supply of power just waiting for her to take it?
‘But before that, I sense another physique ability awakening!’ she smiled as her True Ascendant energy surged out once more, flying out of her body and forming an enormous phantom behind her that mimicked the terrifying visage present at all times within her mental domain and killing intent.
Just as the poor Phoenix recovered, she grabbed it with the phantom limb – her powerful physique energy allowing her to move the phantom form without needing it to mimic her actual movements, albeit it couldn’t quite rid her of the entire delay – and threw her on the ground next to her before stomping down with the Violet Kick to instantly sever the flaming bird’s arm from her body while also draining it and the legs of the physique energy that they held.
“You- For the Lustful Warlord!” the Vibrant Phoenix suddenly exclaimed, her entire body igniting in a brilliant white flame.
From the movement of energy within her, as well as the words spoken, Wei Yi understood her intentions and was forced to abandon her plan of farming for sufficient physique energy to activate the Vibrant Phoenix physique ability. Instead, she warped one step and kicked the glowing body over the enormous abyss.
Clearly, the physique cultivators on that side also understood what was about to happen, as they did their best to scatter before the imminent explosion.
Only a breath away from landing on the other side, the Vibrant Phoenix shut her eyes one last time and burst into an enormous ball of flame, exploding with enough force to knock the weakest hatred avatars on the other side of the abyss off their feet. The physique cultivators, although more powerful due to their persistent improvement of their own bodies, fared significantly worse, with several being scorched and disfigured in the explosion of flame.
Nevertheless, when they recovered – and they did so quickly, owing to their clear lack of the sensation of pain, amongst other things – they immediately pulled out strange bows, seemingly made of stone and dirt, nocking arrows of a similar appearance with a clear lack of grace and precision.
They fired them quickly, without any order or strategy, and did so directly at Wei Yi, in such a fashion that if she was to dodge, she would allow for everyone standing behind her to be impaled by countless projectiles. Even though such weaponry shouldn’t be able to pose a threat to her, she wasn’t stupid enough to simply allow them to strike her, for there were many odd and astounding physiques in the world that could empower ordinary weaponry or create all sorts of equipment from naught but dust, yet match low-grade artefacts.
Amongst the most powerful of the latter type of physique was the Shaper’s Grasp physique, and although it was graded as only a greater physique, in the hands of a physique cultivator with physique energy, it was bound to be significantly more dangerous.
She met the arrows with another wave of Dawn Flowing Light, but her eyes widened involuntarily when she saw that the arrows didn’t just penetrate the wave, but also continued to fly with the same speed, landing on her body in a hail of projectiles. Furthermore, while some bounced off due to poor aim or broke upon impact, almost a dozen of the arrows actually pierced the Crimson Robes of the Third Arrival and even managed to penetrate her skin, with three getting far enough into her body to not fall off simply due to her breathing.
When she tore them out and inspected one, it proved one thing to her.
‘They do have someone with the Shaper’s Grasp physique, and at a high realm, too. I must have it!’ Wei Yi decided instantly, for the benefits that it would bring her simply couldn’t be ignored.
Thus, before the physique cultivators had the chance to prepare another volley, she looked carefully into the mass of intruders that had gathered on the other side of the abyss and found her target – a man, clothed in robes, that was holding a stone and reshaping it into another arrow, like the rock was fluid in his hands.
‘Since I’ve used a sort of Elysian Demonic Ire once, I might as well do so again, and properly.’
Without making any obvious gestures or movements, she drew a path between herself and the other side of the former bridge using the killing intent that she had recovered since the usage of Dragon’s Wrath, while also preparing for the second series of shots.
The latter came before the former could be completed, and it looked like these particular physique cultivators were fast learners. Their arrows carried more force, flew faster, were aimed more precisely and used some semblance of timing to coordinate an attack that was more difficult to deal with than before.
‘I’ll have to take this one as well, but I hope that the hatred avatars are interpreting this the right way,’ she thought, deciding against using Dawn Flowing Light in a wiser way to minimise her injuries.
Again, the arrows pierced the simple wave of dawn light and struck her body, with the majority piercing the Crimson Robes and the majority of those also penetrating her skin, with one successfully landing on the same spot on her body as one of the previous arrows and getting further into her flesh, as she had not had the time to recover from the wound completely. Wei Yi tore all of these arrows out once more, then, without a warning, suddenly pulled on an invisible thread and jumped.
Naturally, this thread was attached to the pathway made through Direct Movement, and with it, she was able to cross the enormous gap in a single breath, landing with enough force to push several fighters over the edge with the shockwave of the impact alone.
Before the invaders had a chance to strike at her with their various weapons and methods, she brought her hands apart and floated into the air, the aura of sunlight surrounding her. The Sun’s Regalia lit up on her chest, the veil of Grim Mortality covered from further harm, and a burst of physique energy emerged from her, striking the ground in a large circle around her. Every single physique cultivator within that circle felt a sudden sensation of dread, as if some unbeatable predator had cornered them and they had no chance of fighting back.
When the first set of bolts burst out of Wei Yi’s body and struck a dozen of them, tearing enormous holes within their bodies and bringing back the physique energy from them back towards her, they understood this feeling well, and it only got worse as every series of bolts seemed to spawn another, smaller circle, which slowly closed in on her position.
As the last circle formed and the entirety of the physique energy deposited within the circles flew out and into Wei Yi’s hands, they wished that they had run, or not bothered to come here.
Unfortunately for them, not only was it too late for the survivors, but even those that had chosen to flee, like the cultivator of Shaper’s Grasp, had not yet seen the worst that she had to offer. The gathered energy was pulled into one spot between her hands, and as she closed them around it and then released it in the shape of a single, powerful burst of a beam, it shot out at the walls above the many passages that headed towards Automaton Point.
The bright energy struck the stone and exploded, shattering the stone and causing countless shards of rock to burst out of the explosion and impale dozens of physique cultivators through pure collateral damage. A second later, the top of all of the tunnels leading out of Automaton Point cracked and crumbled, collapsing downwards and crushing several of the physique cultivators that had been heading through them. The collapsing rocks also fell down upon many invaders on their side of the passages, several large stone falling into the abyss below.
One of the few that survived was the Shaper’s Grasp physique cultivator, who willed the terrain around him to transform into walls that would then divert the falling stones away from him. When he noticed Wei Yi’s gaze on him, he instantly grabbed a stone from the ground and began to shape it.
‘Don’t even think about it!’ she formed a Living Spear with spiritual will and imbued it with spear light through the Terror Arts, throwing it at the intruder just as he completed creating his own weapon.
Clearly, he had been observing her previous fights with others on his side and thus knew that her attacks needed to be evaded no matter what, or else they would just destroy his skull and leave him at the mercy of whatever it was that she did to their energies, making him leap out of the way of the spear as early as he could. He then prepared to rush forward, intending to pierce Wei Yi’s eyes with his weapon to end her quickly, but he suddenly found that he could not, as if he was being restrained by some kind of rope or thread.
His vision, which had previously been as clear as ever, was suddenly filled with a strange mist that seemed to exist within his eyes rather than outside, and he felt his mind grind to a halt. All ideas of moving, attacking or even evading faded from existence, leaving behind only the mist.
Wei Yi approached him easily and cut off his head in one swing of a Frayed Blade, simultaneously severing the spiritual will thread that she had sent into it.
‘This man should have enough energy to provide me with the full Shaper’s Grasp physique, and if all of his allies that I’ve slain today were to be combined, that would mean that I have acquired parts of, or the entirety of the Lion’s Roar, Mystical Bridge, Existence Trace, Aerial Foothold, Cleaving Axe, Titanic Demolisher, Shaper’s Grasp, Vibrant Phoenix, Humanity Lance, Rapid Existence and even the Pyromaniac’s Coat, which is essentially the inferior version of the Vibrant Phoenix physique, granting some resistance to flame and greater abilities while in it…’ she counted every single physique that she had gained as she finished absorbing the energy from the Shaper’s Grasp cultivator, ‘It is this particular physique that is most important, however, as it will allow me to bypass my weakness with blacksmithing.’
The ground beneath her feet trembled, prompting her to return to the other side of the abyss quickly.
Just as she made it back, the cliff finally crumbled and collapsed into the void, all of the bodies that did not burn from her physique energy falling alongside the rock and disappearing from sight, though no sound was heard from below upon their fall. It seemed like the abyss was either bottomless, or so deep that there was no reason to not label it as such anyway.
She approached the hatred avatars, intentionally allowing blood to flow from two of the wounds on her body while preventing the Crimson Robe of the Third Arrival from repairing itself, and spoke while breathing heavily, “That should be it, for now.”
The avatars stood in silence, stunned both by the prowess of this one human and by the fact that she had just survived several dozen arrows being shot directly into her, when they heard shouting from the depths of Automaton Point. They turned to look towards it, willing their amalgam automatons to change positions as to best guard them from whatever this other threat was, and saw a lone hatred avatar, looking much like a human in almost every way, running in their direction.
“Fen Fang has been killed!”
