V4C74: Supernova
“- and this,” Mo Zhouquan exclaimed while she struck down the last of the cloaked and hooded figures that had appeared to attack them, “is the end of that… Phew.”
The moment that she let out her breath, her entire body seemed to lose a significant degree of colour that it still had, with her limbs clearly shaking as she struggled to keep herself standing. Her quivering limbs and gasping breaths were naturally noticed right away by her lover, who hastened over to her with a worried expression.
“Are you alright?” Long Huang questioned, supporting the other woman with the strength of the pulsing twin energies within her, “What happened? Can I help, somehow?”
“… She is going to be fine. The current state of the district is chaotic, disrupting her physical and mental state,” a voice unfamiliar to them replied, seeming to come from a point behind the black dagger that had been helping them all along.
“And who are you?” Long Huang turned to the dagger.
“I have been requested to assist you. If there is anything else you wish to know, then only my master will be able to give that to you,” the dagger said, the darkness around it drawing back slightly to reveal a vaguely feminine figure, one that did make sense with the voice that they had heard, “Are there still foes that you have not defeated?”
The western squad glanced to one another, with Long Huang and Jia Rong both deciding to turn to Great Dark for help in this situation.
He frowned, his spiritual perception being unable to reach out far enough to confirm what Wei Yi and the Patriarchs and the Matriarch of the surrounding districts were currently doing, nor was he able to speak with any of the four in order to understand what they were up to and whether they were aware of the strange woman shrouded in darkness, but from what he could tell, she wasn’t intending to harm them in any way.
In addition, her dark veil could completely fool those that were in adjacent realms, but it was unable to overcome the spiritual perception of the sixth realm. As such, Great Dark was able to see the woman’s blond hair, her light skin that was unbefitting someone of the north, suggesting a central or southern origin, and her expression was extremely still, regardless of her words. She looked to be an assassin under the control of an assassin’s binding, and her master must have been someone interested in benefitting the attack on the Ping District.
That was concerning, as the assassin organisations were known to rarely act in favour of any positive goal, but there was one other thing that he had to notice about the woman. Although it was not obvious due to her rather generic features, the study of bloodlines alongside Long Huang and the others allowing him to detect a trace of Yi ancestry within her blood.
He and Wei Yi had first met in the Yi District, and the last thing she had done while he had remained in the district was leaving for an expedition alongside the Yi family. While he couldn’t be sure whether this assassin had anything to do with the Yi family, the expedition, or anything else, but there was a high chance that this woman had come from the Yi District, and that there might have been some relation between her and the Ascendant.
“No, we have dealt with the majority of foes… Should we head to your master?”
“Yes. Follow me,” the woman instructed right away, turning and rushing off without much care for the ability of the squad to follow her.
At this point, it seemed that all traces of coherent speech and thought, at least on the surface, were beyond the amalgamation of smoke and the Ping Patriarch, as all that was released the moment that the figure stood up again was able to oppose them was a beast-like scream that was completely lacking any meaning so far as Wei Yi was able to tell.
That would have been a positive had the battle been between two humans, two thinking minds that needed intellect and comprehension in order to succeed against the other, but at the moment, even with the two Patriarchs and the Matriarch on her side, Wei Yi was fighting as three capable combatants and a small pile of talismans held up by the Luo family against the entire district, for that was how much land the array spanned. Without the mind of the Ping Patriarch holding it in check, the smoke serpents rose not just from his body, but from every single part of the district, and they began to flood towards the invaders.
“This seems like an incredible array,” the Bai Patriarch said curtly.
“It is one. However, although I was initially suspecting that it might be created by one of the disciples of the Master of Yi City, if not the man himself, I now believe that an otherworldly demon might have played a part in this,” the Ascendant shared, “Their skills are the only ones unfortunate enough to draw a person into such a terrible state.”
“You mean that it would be best not to replicate the array in our own territories? Even while the Great Families may come to knock at our doors at any moment?” the Chao Patriarch asked.
“Yes. Don’t get stupid ideas just because you see power for a single moment. It is not worth it, and that’s that. If you want to commit suicide, please do so after you have found a successor and do so as far away from our lands as possible, as to not injure anyone in the process. Otherwise, I and Yi City as a whole will not be too happy with your actions, to put it mildly,” Wei Yi said, manifesting a blade with which she casually slashed at one of the nearby smoke serpents, making use of the three Great Stride Dao.
The Dao of Law strengthened the energy contained within the blade and improved the sword light that shot out as a result. With the Absolute Dao, the simple movement was made significantly stronger, and was able to manifest into a kind of technique without needing to make use of complex channelling of planar energy throughout one’s body. Finally, the Planar Dao flooded the sword light with the power of the innate energy of the world, which in turn contained the five innate elements of life, which in turn contained the individual forces that truly composed reality, leading to the entire thing being coloured by violet, a five-coloured rainbow and five distinct colours at the same time.
It flew at an immense pace and struck the shadow serpent in an instant, with both seeming to freeze.
Only a single moment later, the sword light kept flying on, while the serpent suddenly exploded into tiny wisps of smoke that barely remained in a single piece. The energy scattered, and it transformed into five distinct shades of light that blended with the air.
For a moment, all, even the screaming mass that was the Ping Patriarch, were stunned as they looked upon this madness.
“Oh. I didn’t expect that to work. That being said, I can’t do this often enough. Look, that energy is already being reabsorbed by that array,” Wei Yi stated, pointing with her clawed left hand at the mass of the five colours rapidly floating down and into the tears in the ground, even with various attempts to grab them by her and the other two Patriarchs, “That’s why we need to destroy it as soon as possible. Keep feeding the black sun!”
Both followed her instructions, although the Bai Patriarch muttered, “Could you not assist us?”
“Would you like to be repeatedly hit by the black serpents, and then need to find a way to stop this black sun from expanding without any energy? I know that I would like to survive this, so no, I cannot assist you.”
Her reasoning was sound, in their minds, but they were quickly terrified by the prospect of this expanding void suddenly erupting out and devouring them all. With how much energy they were providing it, and how quickly it seemed to be able to grow from every single thing that it touched, both an explosion or an uncontrolled expansion would be fatal, even if most of the energy was simply thrown out without much direction. In fact, given the fact that the one that had created the black sun appeared to be able to turn a sword slash into such a powerful attack, it might be even deadlier without direction.
Still, before they could say anything, Wei Yi had already turned to the squad of the Luo District, looking them over once before concluding that they weren’t going to be of much use as individuals.
“Grab your strongest talismans and toss them at the smoke serpents, as well as these locations on the ground! It is not possible to destroy the array with this degree of power alone, but it should be feasible to decrease its efficiency, lower the quantity of emitted smoke serpents, and even increase the amount of energy that it feeds into the black sun,” she explained, pointing out some spots with casual slashes.
Each one flew out of the edge of the blade and pierced the ground with incredible ease, cutting through it with perfect precision. The cuts were stopped by the structure of the array, but that did expose its physical location far more than the lights from below the ground could, giving the Luo District’s forces a far better idea of where to target the array for the greatest efficiency. As the Ascendant turned away the next moment, they looked to one another and, through a few moments of pointing and meaningful looks, decided how they would split up and cover the points indicated by their current leader, with the guardians heading towards the furthest nodes.
On their way, various talismans were thrown at the serpents that attempted to strike them and consume them, or otherwise explode before them and do a great deal of harm. Some were highly effective, with one talisman infused with Wei Yi’s cosmic and Obliteration energy managing to nearly disperse one serpent, and while the rest were less powerful against this particular foe, they still reduced the speed of the serpents.
Seeing that they were doing well enough on their own, the Ascendant naturally raised the blade construct in her right hand and infused it with Ire and Obliteration energy at the same time, leaping up into the air and landing onto an Aerial Platform.
As if lured by her heightened position, a number of smoke serpents that had been heading for the group on the ground changed course and flew straight for her instead, their white eyes glistening with a hunger that shouldn’t be present on purely mindless entities manifested through some strange mutation of planar energy. They approached in great numbers and at a high speed, completely blocking the path of a potential sword slash at the Ping Patriarch, who was currently standing at the back of the battlefield and simply releasing more and more smoke serpents while his voice continued to produce angered screams.
One collision with her sword light could cut two apart with ease, while the third would be scattered only temporarily, whereas the fourth serpent it struck was able to catch the strike and finally nullify it, being distorted into a large cloud of smoke for a little while before the shape of the serpent returned. Still, that meant that each sword strike disabled four serpents for a while, and three of them for longer.
In the time that it took for the last serpent she hit to reform, she was able to slash out once more, doing so twice more before the other serpents got too near for her to be able to continue.
Thus, with the energy that she had built up within her planar construct blade, she unleashed the power of the Eclipse Ire, a massive circle manifesting within the air, arcs and bolts of Obliteration and Ire energy surging out at the nearest serpents.
With every single impact, the circle expanded slightly, remaining within the air as if the blackened crimson carved into the world itself, and once it reached a sufficient size, another circle was carved into the air that matched the size of the initial one. After each strike of crimson lightning, the circles would grow, the arcs of electricity would blast out more and more frequently, and their power would also be greater each time. This was not a feature of the initial Demonic Ire, nor of the three aspects of the Eclipse Ire that she had created with her own insights, but amplified by the combination of the three Dao and the modified position in which she made use of the technique, it was suddenly able to reach new heights.
The moment that she reached the number of ten circles in the air, at the brink of the arcs of lightning being able to hit her own allies, she released the mass of energy, but did not focus it.
A blast of energy simply erupted out of her body, shredding through the Aerial Platform below her and continuing on without a trace of exhaustion or energy loss, striking every smoke serpent. The simple touch of the blackened crimson led to the thick masses of shadow exploding violently that very instant, and their explosions collided with other serpents, each one shattering into more and more loose wisps of colour and smoke.
It continued to expand, tearing through more and more serpents, and by the time the crimson sputtered out, more than a hundred black serpents had been obliterated into naught but planar energy that could sink back down into the array beneath the ground.
While the number may sound impressive in any other battle, at least when an entire district or even nation weren’t involved, at the edge of the affected area she could already see over a thousand serpents that were at least as large as those that she had destroyed, although the vast majority had grown larger in the few moments that she had needed to strike those smoke entities down. In essence, for every one serpent she defeated, ten more took their place, and that would continue to intensify until the array in the ground reached the final limit of its capacity and power, which might be at a few serpents per second, or even a million.
Nevertheless, Wei Yi manifested her Titanic Conqueror and prompted it to summon the empowered Obliteration energy, with the three Dao being infused into it in order to guarantee its success.
The Luo Matriarch had not headed directly to the west, since she was attempting to travel above the ground and thus had to contend with the rapidly increasing numbers of smoke serpents that were attempting to assault her.
Naturally, in her eyes, they were not made of smoke, nor were they particularly serpent-like. Instead, these things were terrible amalgamations of energy distorted from the five base elements, without a single one of them remaining in a stable form. They were constantly twisting and changing as a result of thin threads heading all the way up from the array on the ground, which was like an impossibly deep pit and a blinding light at the same time. It was not something that she could personally comprehend, and that meant that it would be even more difficult to share to anyone in the attacking force.
Luo Na stopped in the air and dropped down to the ground as she found the western squad, intending to greet them. Before she could, she suddenly found a blade right before her, with the wielder enveloped in various energies that were not pleasant to behold with her mutated vision. The figure appeared to be guarding the squad that she was seeking, so she did not attempt to repel her with force at first.
“I am intending to help them make their way to the centre. Are you opposed to that?” she asked.
The assassin – or a woman that looked like an assassin due to her techniques, anyway – promptly lowered her weapon, proceeding onwards as if she had not seen Luo Na at all.
As such, those following behind her were left to speak to Luo Na on their own, with the assassin barely slowing down when they attempted to do so. Quickly, the twin of Great Earth relayed all of his observations to the Matriarch, with Luo Na sharing her own information with Great Dark, resulting in both frowning for a while.
“This is strange… Is Wei Yi aware of this assassin?”
“She hadn’t mentioned anything, unfortunately. It is likely that she had not deemed this something that she needed to state, but if they are related…”
The two of them didn’t say another word, but they did focus on their various thoughts and contemplations, with neither of them needing to invest too much strength in order to ward off the smoke serpents, as destroying them was unnecessary since they would only encounter a few that weren’t flying above them towards the centre. To simply repel a smoke serpent and to prevent it from striking at the immediate best moment, a small blast of concentrated energy was sufficient, which Great Dark could achieve with his planar energy while Luo Na had plenty of weaker talismans.
Together, they proceeded to the centre once more, with the others tagging along.
Out of all of them, the one having the easiest time was Jia Rong, as her timeless body was able to essentially ignore planar energy of all forms, and the more unstable it looked, the less able it seemed to affect her. Had there been a proper sane mind behind the attacks of the smoke serpents, they would have done everything they could to modify the constructs in order to make them more stable and straightforward in the hopes of doing something against her, but that was not the case.
“Why does everyone have nigh infinite energy around here? None of my enemies are in the eighth realm yet, but none of them ever seem to exhaust their power,” Wei Yi muttered to herself, finding that the array and the innate cultivation of the Ping Patriarch combined were able to roughly match the rate at which she damaged the smoke serpents.
That was hardly great, though, considering the fact that the array was still stable and standing. While this was the case, the serpents would forever recover no matter how much energy she spent, and then they would be endlessly firing back at one another with their seemingly infinite pools of planar energy. Wei Yi’s nascent rift was currently one fifth of the way to being fully awakened, with that being the limit simply because to go beyond would mean to essentially invoke the seventh realm two realms early, although she did suspect that she could go beyond this limit if she used up everything at her current disposal.
Nevertheless, that much was sufficient, as five percent of her energy would recover per minute from that alone, but she could also acquire more from the world itself, from various planar shards that were stored somewhere in the Kong Prison Realm, and more if she sought out the aid of the Patriarchs.
‘None of that matters if Jia Rong doesn’t get here soon, which, it seems, will happen quickly enough…’
With the Third Eye and the sixth realm of killing will, seeing through the shadows was becoming easier the more she acclimated to it, and her mind was also able to develop quite a few techniques to possibly bypass the darkness while she was performing the rather mindless task of repeatedly slashing at the mindless constructs that were repeatedly attempting to strike her down. With how many random and simple techniques she was throwing together, she didn’t bother naming any of them and instead kept on with the effort.
Once she had enough, throwing them together as she did with everything else would work well enough.
“How long until this black sun actually erupts?” the Chao Patriarch questioned.
“Do not attempt to suggest such a thing. With my growth in strength, the moment that thing attempts to explode without my control and suppression, this whole district will be… well, completely and utterly fucked! Are you sure that this is the kind of thing you want?” the Ascendant warned, noting that the black sun this time had grown far beyond the state that it had been able to reach at the battle near Paragon, its size becoming rather concerning even to her.
As such, even if she was able to rush back inside and make use of the signet ring once more, she might still endure a great deal of damage just from the energy that bypassed the area before her or bent around it.
“Now you’ve given me a bad feeling. Patriarch of the Chao District, return to your family and order everyone to rush underground, or to the edge of the district!” she instructed.
“What? Now?”
“You don’t have much energy left, so your continued presence here wouldn’t make much of a difference. What we need is to guarantee that the people of the Ping District aren’t needlessly killed by either the array and the Patriarch controlling it, or the method with which the incredible array is going to be weakened and destroyed,” she said, “Bai Patriarch-”
“I’ll hasten off the moment that my energy is close to exhaustion. I’ll also hurry up with this, then,” the Patriarch replied before she could finish, increasing the amount of energy he was funnelling into the black sun before him.
Wei Yi nodded and looked back to the west, where the small group was already close enough for her to be able to perceive them fully. She recreated her planar construct blade one more time, slashing in rapid succession at the nearby smoke serpents as to give herself some room, then rushed off in their direction.
In just a few seconds, while some of the sword lights were still flying, the two groups met with one another. Right away, Yi Bai lowered her head and shifted her position to stand behind the Ascendant.
“So… you two know one another?” Great Dark asked right away.
“None of your business, broken half of a soul. I’m going to need everyone with a lot of energy to feed that black sun and suppress the smoke serpents. Jia Rong, do those eyes of yours see any particular weaknesses in the array beneath us?” Wei Yi got straight to the point, ignoring the other inquisitive gazes as she spoke. In particular, the Luo Patriarch seemed most interested in her and her relationship with the assassin, perhaps because she was able to identify something about the energy Yi Bai used, but no matter how great her curiosity was, there would be a better time and place.
“Um… Nothing in particular. There are some places where the sparks are brighter, but…”
“In that case, I shall mark down a few spots on the ground, so you should go over there, hit the ground until it stops working properly, and rush off to the next spot. The moment that I tell you – and everyone else, for that matter – to rush away from this place, do not hesitate to do exactly that. Got it?”
“G-Got it! Hit things! Which things?” Jia Rong inquired, promptly being shown how Wei Yi raised her hand and created a large number of glistening wisps that she sent out all over the Ping District.
They flew to certain points on the array that had been exposed either by her own knowledge of arrays, the minor knowledge that Yi Shi Ming was able to contribute from her experience with the strongest master of arrays that the Planar Continents had seen in the last two million years, or the nodes that showcased some unusual phenomenon through one of her vision states. In particular, the Vision of the Planar was obviously incredibly useful at revealing all kinds of flaws in the flow of planar energy.
Had it been something that she had from the start, she might have been able to reach the seventh realm or above by relying purely on her own abilities, rather than needing the Truth of the Universe and the other otherworldly gifts to provide her with an advantage.
As to not run off too early, the demoness waited for just enough to see where one of the wisps would settle down, finding that the closest one did finish flying first, and hastened to it with her fists ready and her energy prepared. With her incredible physical might, she practically teleported to the node in the ground, and with the same speed her clawed fist descended onto it, striking the stone on the ground as if it was only air. From the outside, it might have looked light to those who did not use their bodies all that much, as her muscles were far less developed than the usual purely physical combatant, but the next moment revealed it to all.
The instant that her fist touched the ground, a vast ripple erupted from it, with the peaks being several metres tall, each one violently cracking and shattering the terrain into dust that exploded out alongside the ground that was still solid. Her target, the various lines and nodes beneath the ground, shattered as if they were made of glass, the sound being carried by the violent ripples in the ground to the others.
With just one strike, one punch, an area that was over twenty metres in diameter was torn asunder, the array that might have been seven stars in quality or above was damaged, and she could move on.
Her first attack did not appear to do much to the array, which was only logical. Whenever an array was made, there were some redundancies and some safeguards implemented into anything that was meant to withstand attacks, be it a defensive or an offensive method. Things like healing or planar energy recovery arrays would have fewer such elements, as they were not usually used in the middle of combat as the primary method to repel invaders or more common attackers, but even they would occasionally implement a safeguard against damage to certain weaker points resulting in the complete obliteration of the array as a whole. Those who made arrays knew about many weaknesses in their craft, but they were sometimes unavoidable at their level of skill.
As soon as Jia Rong appeared beside the next point, she was once again on the ground, raising her hand one moment and already striking the ground in the next. This time, however, as her fist connected with the ground, two rumbles of energy erupted from her, joining the wave of the ground itself. They were faint in comparison to the destruction, but Wei Yi was able to tell that she had just broken through to the first stage of the third realm with a strike against the ground. A rather enviable feat.
That breakthrough might have come at the very end of her punch, but it did not stop the innate energy within her from becoming even stronger, resulting in this strike piercing even further into the ground, causing the wave to be even larger, for even more structures to be demolished, and for the mere soundwave generated to be sufficient to trigger some of the higher grade defensive talismans on the Luo District’s forces. They rushed to put on more such talismans, and they were wise to do so, for planar energy development was not the only thing that Jia Rong could make use of in order to develop her own strength.
Before that could be examined, however, the Ascendant and those standing near the black sun saw that the array suddenly began to release great quantities of unbound, aimless energy in random positions, presumably where certain nodes that had depended on that one were now failing to keep up. One such point was right below the black sun’s mass.
In just one instant, the growth of the black sun increased by several folds, with it becoming closer to the ground and the array and thus allowing more of that energy to be fed straight into it, propagating that cycle of gluttony.
‘That figure in the Bai District’s Ancestral Hall has made use of techniques that could certainly be called gluttonous. If only I had gotten that Dao instead of the Entropy Dao, or even alongside it, this black sun would easily be the most destructive thing I have,’ Wei Yi thought, turning her attention to the Ping Patriarch and the shadow giant that enveloped him, ‘Well, more than it already is. At the moment, there are still some that can overcome it through sheer force, but the empowerment of Dao would likely put an end to such things, while giving me more control over it.’
As the array still endured, so did the Patriarch, but much of the energy at the outermost portions of the colossus was getting restless and unstable. With a little more work, he could fall.
“Jia Rong, keep going! Destroy this array!”
The demoness did not need that to be repeated, as she was already over a third node in the ground, kneeling beside it as to best drive her fist down into it. In the blink of an eye, her fist fell onto it, and again the street was torn to shreds, while the structures around her burst into little pieces, with some outright bursting into dust the moment that the wave of force collided with them. Most importantly, as the array node below her exploded, the array showed more changes yet again.
Most importantly, several more wounds from which uncontrolled planar energy surged burst open near the black sun, with the energy naturally gravitating towards it as it was easily the strongest source of a draw upon the energy that could be found within the area. Even if the Patriarchs and Wei Yi worked together, their planar energy draw would pale before the black sun, which might soon grow large enough to be acknowledged as a true sun if someone was to launch it into the cosmos for it to take its rightful place.
The Ping Patriarch was also not in an ideal state, with parts of the enormous wrapping of energy around him falling away, with one part exposing withered flesh. It was his arm, and yet it looked as it had been dead and rotting for a number of years, with skin peeling off and revealing bone beneath it.
Theories could be thrown about even in the current situation, but it was certain that the screams were no longer coming from a living person, if they were emerging from the Ping Patriarch to begin with. Whether the array killed him, or if it was some technique of his that had failed him in this moment, it was undeniable that there was little chance of saving him, even if someone wished to do it.
Some might have assumed that it would be a moment of celebration, but the reveal of lifeless flesh caused Wei Yi’s eyes to widen. She was not shocked by this, since this had resembled an ability of an otherworldly demon, which did have the tendency of stealing the lives of their users in more ways than one, but rather by the fact that the moment that the array lost enough of its stability, it would no longer be able to resist the absolute draw of the black sun. At that moment, the energy that had been sufficient to shroud the entire district in darkness and conjure countless smoke serpents would suddenly enter the black sun, and it would expand greatly, leading to it feasting upon the terrain and thus growing with even greater speed.
In other words, there was far less time to escape than she thought.
“Bai Patriarch, Luo Matriarch, Great Dark and the rest of you, stop right now and rush to bring everyone to the edge of the district! I might have a way to prevent this from ending incredibly poorly!”
With her having provided a warning on the topic not too long ago, nobody thought to question the instruction. They rushed off to the parts of the district that had not been evacuated, and quickly shone down all kinds of sources of light to draw the people inside out. They shouted warnings and instructions, suggesting calmness, but little else mattered so long as the people rushed to the edge of the district. It was only once they were gathering there that they had to wonder what the use of it would be.
Since the whole district was enveloped in the strange core, would they not just be at the edge of the eruption rather than the centre? Would her original instruction of heading underground be superior to this?
“Wei Yi, should I-”
“A few more, then run off immediately! You might be able to endure this, depending on your luck, but I do not want any of us to take random chances when there is no reason to do so!” Wei Yi exclaimed, already focusing on the enormous Subterranean Shell and the Endless Monolith, as the smoke serpents were getting slower and less stable with each node destroyed.
Contrary to the thoughts of some, the two phenomena were not her actual anchor and core somehow magnified to that size, but instead projections of them in a similar manner that she could project her Ascendant’s Library. They wouldn’t hurt her if they were to be destroyed or damaged, and they could thus be used as shields if need be. Since the black sun had been made so near to the centre, that was exactly what she wanted to do.
It would be difficult to prevent the black sun from consuming anything, but it was possible to minimise the damage.
One node, then another, then a third were broken, and it was then that the array went wild. Enormous quantities of energy flowed out of it, sinking into the black sun at such a pace that it touched the ground and began to feed upon it only a moment later. Most of the energy contained within the array sank away, revealing light from the outside, making the various lanterns unnecessary, but that did not remove the greatest threat of all – the black sun needed to be detonated, or else even the Ascendant would be unable to prevent its perpetual expansion and consumption.
She did not bother looking to the Ping Patriarch’s body falling to the ground, but instead activated the collapse of the black sun and the shrinking of the Subterranean Shell. With Jia Rong having gotten the hint on her own, she was the only person remaining within the centre of the Ping District.
Everyone on the outside saw as the dome around them suddenly shrank, passing through them with ease, with the outer walls of the district being brought to the outside in moments. Then, more and more was removed, but before half of the district could be freed from the confines of the core, they saw something incredible erupting within the shell, being able to see only the most major of details through the thick core.
A vast light surged into the air, tearing into the core in an instant, marking the epicentre of the explosion. From it, an overwhelming force instantly covered the inside of the core, with cracks and tears appearing on the outside of the Subterranean Shell. Some small portions were penetrated entirely, and the weakest gusts of energy were able to cook the land into glass.
Nevertheless, the core continued to shrink, albeit at a slower pace, forcefully sealing the holes shut via the compression.
On the inside, Wei Yi had thrown out the power of the signet ring right away, and was rushing to make the false core as small as she possibly could before the effect would end. If she couldn’t do so quickly enough, then she would be devoured in an instant, with the core vanishing and the energy contained within erupting with even more force, tearing through the land and scouring the nearest few kilometres of life. With just one failure, she could be the greatest bringer of calamity in the last few hundred thousand years at the very least.
At the last moment of consciousness, she felt the confines of the core pass her.
V4C74: Supernova
“- and this,” Mo Zhouquan exclaimed while she struck down the last of the cloaked and hooded figures that had appeared to attack them, “is the end of that… Phew.”
The moment that she let out her breath, her entire body seemed to lose a significant degree of colour that it still had, with her limbs clearly shaking as she struggled to keep herself standing. Her quivering limbs and gasping breaths were naturally noticed right away by her lover, who hastened over to her with a worried expression.
“Are you alright?” Long Huang questioned, supporting the other woman with the strength of the pulsing twin energies within her, “What happened? Can I help, somehow?”
“… She is going to be fine. The current state of the district is chaotic, disrupting her physical and mental state,” a voice unfamiliar to them replied, seeming to come from a point behind the black dagger that had been helping them all along.
“And who are you?” Long Huang turned to the dagger.
“I have been requested to assist you. If there is anything else you wish to know, then only my master will be able to give that to you,” the dagger said, the darkness around it drawing back slightly to reveal a vaguely feminine figure, one that did make sense with the voice that they had heard, “Are there still foes that you have not defeated?”
The western squad glanced to one another, with Long Huang and Jia Rong both deciding to turn to Great Dark for help in this situation.
He frowned, his spiritual perception being unable to reach out far enough to confirm what Wei Yi and the Patriarchs and the Matriarch of the surrounding districts were currently doing, nor was he able to speak with any of the four in order to understand what they were up to and whether they were aware of the strange woman shrouded in darkness, but from what he could tell, she wasn’t intending to harm them in any way.
In addition, her dark veil could completely fool those that were in adjacent realms, but it was unable to overcome the spiritual perception of the sixth realm. As such, Great Dark was able to see the woman’s blond hair, her light skin that was unbefitting someone of the north, suggesting a central or southern origin, and her expression was extremely still, regardless of her words. She looked to be an assassin under the control of an assassin’s binding, and her master must have been someone interested in benefitting the attack on the Ping District.
That was concerning, as the assassin organisations were known to rarely act in favour of any positive goal, but there was one other thing that he had to notice about the woman. Although it was not obvious due to her rather generic features, the study of bloodlines alongside Long Huang and the others allowing him to detect a trace of Yi ancestry within her blood.
He and Wei Yi had first met in the Yi District, and the last thing she had done while he had remained in the district was leaving for an expedition alongside the Yi family. While he couldn’t be sure whether this assassin had anything to do with the Yi family, the expedition, or anything else, but there was a high chance that this woman had come from the Yi District, and that there might have been some relation between her and the Ascendant.
“No, we have dealt with the majority of foes… Should we head to your master?”
“Yes. Follow me,” the woman instructed right away, turning and rushing off without much care for the ability of the squad to follow her.
At this point, it seemed that all traces of coherent speech and thought, at least on the surface, were beyond the amalgamation of smoke and the Ping Patriarch, as all that was released the moment that the figure stood up again was able to oppose them was a beast-like scream that was completely lacking any meaning so far as Wei Yi was able to tell.
That would have been a positive had the battle been between two humans, two thinking minds that needed intellect and comprehension in order to succeed against the other, but at the moment, even with the two Patriarchs and the Matriarch on her side, Wei Yi was fighting as three capable combatants and a small pile of talismans held up by the Luo family against the entire district, for that was how much land the array spanned. Without the mind of the Ping Patriarch holding it in check, the smoke serpents rose not just from his body, but from every single part of the district, and they began to flood towards the invaders.
“This seems like an incredible array,” the Bai Patriarch said curtly.
“It is one. However, although I was initially suspecting that it might be created by one of the disciples of the Master of Yi City, if not the man himself, I now believe that an otherworldly demon might have played a part in this,” the Ascendant shared, “Their skills are the only ones unfortunate enough to draw a person into such a terrible state.”
“You mean that it would be best not to replicate the array in our own territories? Even while the Great Families may come to knock at our doors at any moment?” the Chao Patriarch asked.
“Yes. Don’t get stupid ideas just because you see power for a single moment. It is not worth it, and that’s that. If you want to commit suicide, please do so after you have found a successor and do so as far away from our lands as possible, as to not injure anyone in the process. Otherwise, I and Yi City as a whole will not be too happy with your actions, to put it mildly,” Wei Yi said, manifesting a blade with which she casually slashed at one of the nearby smoke serpents, making use of the three Great Stride Dao.
The Dao of Law strengthened the energy contained within the blade and improved the sword light that shot out as a result. With the Absolute Dao, the simple movement was made significantly stronger, and was able to manifest into a kind of technique without needing to make use of complex channelling of planar energy throughout one’s body. Finally, the Planar Dao flooded the sword light with the power of the innate energy of the world, which in turn contained the five innate elements of life, which in turn contained the individual forces that truly composed reality, leading to the entire thing being coloured by violet, a five-coloured rainbow and five distinct colours at the same time.
It flew at an immense pace and struck the shadow serpent in an instant, with both seeming to freeze.
Only a single moment later, the sword light kept flying on, while the serpent suddenly exploded into tiny wisps of smoke that barely remained in a single piece. The energy scattered, and it transformed into five distinct shades of light that blended with the air.
For a moment, all, even the screaming mass that was the Ping Patriarch, were stunned as they looked upon this madness.
“Oh. I didn’t expect that to work. That being said, I can’t do this often enough. Look, that energy is already being reabsorbed by that array,” Wei Yi stated, pointing with her clawed left hand at the mass of the five colours rapidly floating down and into the tears in the ground, even with various attempts to grab them by her and the other two Patriarchs, “That’s why we need to destroy it as soon as possible. Keep feeding the black sun!”
Both followed her instructions, although the Bai Patriarch muttered, “Could you not assist us?”
“Would you like to be repeatedly hit by the black serpents, and then need to find a way to stop this black sun from expanding without any energy? I know that I would like to survive this, so no, I cannot assist you.”
Her reasoning was sound, in their minds, but they were quickly terrified by the prospect of this expanding void suddenly erupting out and devouring them all. With how much energy they were providing it, and how quickly it seemed to be able to grow from every single thing that it touched, both an explosion or an uncontrolled expansion would be fatal, even if most of the energy was simply thrown out without much direction. In fact, given the fact that the one that had created the black sun appeared to be able to turn a sword slash into such a powerful attack, it might be even deadlier without direction.
Still, before they could say anything, Wei Yi had already turned to the squad of the Luo District, looking them over once before concluding that they weren’t going to be of much use as individuals.
“Grab your strongest talismans and toss them at the smoke serpents, as well as these locations on the ground! It is not possible to destroy the array with this degree of power alone, but it should be feasible to decrease its efficiency, lower the quantity of emitted smoke serpents, and even increase the amount of energy that it feeds into the black sun,” she explained, pointing out some spots with casual slashes.
Each one flew out of the edge of the blade and pierced the ground with incredible ease, cutting through it with perfect precision. The cuts were stopped by the structure of the array, but that did expose its physical location far more than the lights from below the ground could, giving the Luo District’s forces a far better idea of where to target the array for the greatest efficiency. As the Ascendant turned away the next moment, they looked to one another and, through a few moments of pointing and meaningful looks, decided how they would split up and cover the points indicated by their current leader, with the guardians heading towards the furthest nodes.
On their way, various talismans were thrown at the serpents that attempted to strike them and consume them, or otherwise explode before them and do a great deal of harm. Some were highly effective, with one talisman infused with Wei Yi’s cosmic and Obliteration energy managing to nearly disperse one serpent, and while the rest were less powerful against this particular foe, they still reduced the speed of the serpents.
Seeing that they were doing well enough on their own, the Ascendant naturally raised the blade construct in her right hand and infused it with Ire and Obliteration energy at the same time, leaping up into the air and landing onto an Aerial Platform.
As if lured by her heightened position, a number of smoke serpents that had been heading for the group on the ground changed course and flew straight for her instead, their white eyes glistening with a hunger that shouldn’t be present on purely mindless entities manifested through some strange mutation of planar energy. They approached in great numbers and at a high speed, completely blocking the path of a potential sword slash at the Ping Patriarch, who was currently standing at the back of the battlefield and simply releasing more and more smoke serpents while his voice continued to produce angered screams.
One collision with her sword light could cut two apart with ease, while the third would be scattered only temporarily, whereas the fourth serpent it struck was able to catch the strike and finally nullify it, being distorted into a large cloud of smoke for a little while before the shape of the serpent returned. Still, that meant that each sword strike disabled four serpents for a while, and three of them for longer.
In the time that it took for the last serpent she hit to reform, she was able to slash out once more, doing so twice more before the other serpents got too near for her to be able to continue.
Thus, with the energy that she had built up within her planar construct blade, she unleashed the power of the Eclipse Ire, a massive circle manifesting within the air, arcs and bolts of Obliteration and Ire energy surging out at the nearest serpents.
With every single impact, the circle expanded slightly, remaining within the air as if the blackened crimson carved into the world itself, and once it reached a sufficient size, another circle was carved into the air that matched the size of the initial one. After each strike of crimson lightning, the circles would grow, the arcs of electricity would blast out more and more frequently, and their power would also be greater each time. This was not a feature of the initial Demonic Ire, nor of the three aspects of the Eclipse Ire that she had created with her own insights, but amplified by the combination of the three Dao and the modified position in which she made use of the technique, it was suddenly able to reach new heights.
The moment that she reached the number of ten circles in the air, at the brink of the arcs of lightning being able to hit her own allies, she released the mass of energy, but did not focus it.
A blast of energy simply erupted out of her body, shredding through the Aerial Platform below her and continuing on without a trace of exhaustion or energy loss, striking every smoke serpent. The simple touch of the blackened crimson led to the thick masses of shadow exploding violently that very instant, and their explosions collided with other serpents, each one shattering into more and more loose wisps of colour and smoke.
It continued to expand, tearing through more and more serpents, and by the time the crimson sputtered out, more than a hundred black serpents had been obliterated into naught but planar energy that could sink back down into the array beneath the ground.
While the number may sound impressive in any other battle, at least when an entire district or even nation weren’t involved, at the edge of the affected area she could already see over a thousand serpents that were at least as large as those that she had destroyed, although the vast majority had grown larger in the few moments that she had needed to strike those smoke entities down. In essence, for every one serpent she defeated, ten more took their place, and that would continue to intensify until the array in the ground reached the final limit of its capacity and power, which might be at a few serpents per second, or even a million.
Nevertheless, Wei Yi manifested her Titanic Conqueror and prompted it to summon the empowered Obliteration energy, with the three Dao being infused into it in order to guarantee its success.
The Luo Matriarch had not headed directly to the west, since she was attempting to travel above the ground and thus had to contend with the rapidly increasing numbers of smoke serpents that were attempting to assault her.
Naturally, in her eyes, they were not made of smoke, nor were they particularly serpent-like. Instead, these things were terrible amalgamations of energy distorted from the five base elements, without a single one of them remaining in a stable form. They were constantly twisting and changing as a result of thin threads heading all the way up from the array on the ground, which was like an impossibly deep pit and a blinding light at the same time. It was not something that she could personally comprehend, and that meant that it would be even more difficult to share to anyone in the attacking force.
Luo Na stopped in the air and dropped down to the ground as she found the western squad, intending to greet them. Before she could, she suddenly found a blade right before her, with the wielder enveloped in various energies that were not pleasant to behold with her mutated vision. The figure appeared to be guarding the squad that she was seeking, so she did not attempt to repel her with force at first.
“I am intending to help them make their way to the centre. Are you opposed to that?” she asked.
The assassin – or a woman that looked like an assassin due to her techniques, anyway – promptly lowered her weapon, proceeding onwards as if she had not seen Luo Na at all.
As such, those following behind her were left to speak to Luo Na on their own, with the assassin barely slowing down when they attempted to do so. Quickly, the twin of Great Earth relayed all of his observations to the Matriarch, with Luo Na sharing her own information with Great Dark, resulting in both frowning for a while.
“This is strange… Is Wei Yi aware of this assassin?”
“She hadn’t mentioned anything, unfortunately. It is likely that she had not deemed this something that she needed to state, but if they are related…”
The two of them didn’t say another word, but they did focus on their various thoughts and contemplations, with neither of them needing to invest too much strength in order to ward off the smoke serpents, as destroying them was unnecessary since they would only encounter a few that weren’t flying above them towards the centre. To simply repel a smoke serpent and to prevent it from striking at the immediate best moment, a small blast of concentrated energy was sufficient, which Great Dark could achieve with his planar energy while Luo Na had plenty of weaker talismans.
Together, they proceeded to the centre once more, with the others tagging along.
Out of all of them, the one having the easiest time was Jia Rong, as her timeless body was able to essentially ignore planar energy of all forms, and the more unstable it looked, the less able it seemed to affect her. Had there been a proper sane mind behind the attacks of the smoke serpents, they would have done everything they could to modify the constructs in order to make them more stable and straightforward in the hopes of doing something against her, but that was not the case.
“Why does everyone have nigh infinite energy around here? None of my enemies are in the eighth realm yet, but none of them ever seem to exhaust their power,” Wei Yi muttered to herself, finding that the array and the innate cultivation of the Ping Patriarch combined were able to roughly match the rate at which she damaged the smoke serpents.
That was hardly great, though, considering the fact that the array was still stable and standing. While this was the case, the serpents would forever recover no matter how much energy she spent, and then they would be endlessly firing back at one another with their seemingly infinite pools of planar energy. Wei Yi’s nascent rift was currently one fifth of the way to being fully awakened, with that being the limit simply because to go beyond would mean to essentially invoke the seventh realm two realms early, although she did suspect that she could go beyond this limit if she used up everything at her current disposal.
Nevertheless, that much was sufficient, as five percent of her energy would recover per minute from that alone, but she could also acquire more from the world itself, from various planar shards that were stored somewhere in the Kong Prison Realm, and more if she sought out the aid of the Patriarchs.
‘None of that matters if Jia Rong doesn’t get here soon, which, it seems, will happen quickly enough…’
With the Third Eye and the sixth realm of killing will, seeing through the shadows was becoming easier the more she acclimated to it, and her mind was also able to develop quite a few techniques to possibly bypass the darkness while she was performing the rather mindless task of repeatedly slashing at the mindless constructs that were repeatedly attempting to strike her down. With how many random and simple techniques she was throwing together, she didn’t bother naming any of them and instead kept on with the effort.
Once she had enough, throwing them together as she did with everything else would work well enough.
“How long until this black sun actually erupts?” the Chao Patriarch questioned.
“Do not attempt to suggest such a thing. With my growth in strength, the moment that thing attempts to explode without my control and suppression, this whole district will be… well, completely and utterly fucked! Are you sure that this is the kind of thing you want?” the Ascendant warned, noting that the black sun this time had grown far beyond the state that it had been able to reach at the battle near Paragon, its size becoming rather concerning even to her.
As such, even if she was able to rush back inside and make use of the signet ring once more, she might still endure a great deal of damage just from the energy that bypassed the area before her or bent around it.
“Now you’ve given me a bad feeling. Patriarch of the Chao District, return to your family and order everyone to rush underground, or to the edge of the district!” she instructed.
“What? Now?”
“You don’t have much energy left, so your continued presence here wouldn’t make much of a difference. What we need is to guarantee that the people of the Ping District aren’t needlessly killed by either the array and the Patriarch controlling it, or the method with which the incredible array is going to be weakened and destroyed,” she said, “Bai Patriarch-”
“I’ll hasten off the moment that my energy is close to exhaustion. I’ll also hurry up with this, then,” the Patriarch replied before she could finish, increasing the amount of energy he was funnelling into the black sun before him.
Wei Yi nodded and looked back to the west, where the small group was already close enough for her to be able to perceive them fully. She recreated her planar construct blade one more time, slashing in rapid succession at the nearby smoke serpents as to give herself some room, then rushed off in their direction.
In just a few seconds, while some of the sword lights were still flying, the two groups met with one another. Right away, Yi Bai lowered her head and shifted her position to stand behind the Ascendant.
“So… you two know one another?” Great Dark asked right away.
“None of your business, broken half of a soul. I’m going to need everyone with a lot of energy to feed that black sun and suppress the smoke serpents. Jia Rong, do those eyes of yours see any particular weaknesses in the array beneath us?” Wei Yi got straight to the point, ignoring the other inquisitive gazes as she spoke. In particular, the Luo Patriarch seemed most interested in her and her relationship with the assassin, perhaps because she was able to identify something about the energy Yi Bai used, but no matter how great her curiosity was, there would be a better time and place.
“Um… Nothing in particular. There are some places where the sparks are brighter, but…”
“In that case, I shall mark down a few spots on the ground, so you should go over there, hit the ground until it stops working properly, and rush off to the next spot. The moment that I tell you – and everyone else, for that matter – to rush away from this place, do not hesitate to do exactly that. Got it?”
“G-Got it! Hit things! Which things?” Jia Rong inquired, promptly being shown how Wei Yi raised her hand and created a large number of glistening wisps that she sent out all over the Ping District.
They flew to certain points on the array that had been exposed either by her own knowledge of arrays, the minor knowledge that Yi Shi Ming was able to contribute from her experience with the strongest master of arrays that the Planar Continents had seen in the last two million years, or the nodes that showcased some unusual phenomenon through one of her vision states. In particular, the Vision of the Planar was obviously incredibly useful at revealing all kinds of flaws in the flow of planar energy.
Had it been something that she had from the start, she might have been able to reach the seventh realm or above by relying purely on her own abilities, rather than needing the Truth of the Universe and the other otherworldly gifts to provide her with an advantage.
As to not run off too early, the demoness waited for just enough to see where one of the wisps would settle down, finding that the closest one did finish flying first, and hastened to it with her fists ready and her energy prepared. With her incredible physical might, she practically teleported to the node in the ground, and with the same speed her clawed fist descended onto it, striking the stone on the ground as if it was only air. From the outside, it might have looked light to those who did not use their bodies all that much, as her muscles were far less developed than the usual purely physical combatant, but the next moment revealed it to all.
The instant that her fist touched the ground, a vast ripple erupted from it, with the peaks being several metres tall, each one violently cracking and shattering the terrain into dust that exploded out alongside the ground that was still solid. Her target, the various lines and nodes beneath the ground, shattered as if they were made of glass, the sound being carried by the violent ripples in the ground to the others.
With just one strike, one punch, an area that was over twenty metres in diameter was torn asunder, the array that might have been seven stars in quality or above was damaged, and she could move on.
Her first attack did not appear to do much to the array, which was only logical. Whenever an array was made, there were some redundancies and some safeguards implemented into anything that was meant to withstand attacks, be it a defensive or an offensive method. Things like healing or planar energy recovery arrays would have fewer such elements, as they were not usually used in the middle of combat as the primary method to repel invaders or more common attackers, but even they would occasionally implement a safeguard against damage to certain weaker points resulting in the complete obliteration of the array as a whole. Those who made arrays knew about many weaknesses in their craft, but they were sometimes unavoidable at their level of skill.
As soon as Jia Rong appeared beside the next point, she was once again on the ground, raising her hand one moment and already striking the ground in the next. This time, however, as her fist connected with the ground, two rumbles of energy erupted from her, joining the wave of the ground itself. They were faint in comparison to the destruction, but Wei Yi was able to tell that she had just broken through to the first stage of the third realm with a strike against the ground. A rather enviable feat.
That breakthrough might have come at the very end of her punch, but it did not stop the innate energy within her from becoming even stronger, resulting in this strike piercing even further into the ground, causing the wave to be even larger, for even more structures to be demolished, and for the mere soundwave generated to be sufficient to trigger some of the higher grade defensive talismans on the Luo District’s forces. They rushed to put on more such talismans, and they were wise to do so, for planar energy development was not the only thing that Jia Rong could make use of in order to develop her own strength.
Before that could be examined, however, the Ascendant and those standing near the black sun saw that the array suddenly began to release great quantities of unbound, aimless energy in random positions, presumably where certain nodes that had depended on that one were now failing to keep up. One such point was right below the black sun’s mass.
In just one instant, the growth of the black sun increased by several folds, with it becoming closer to the ground and the array and thus allowing more of that energy to be fed straight into it, propagating that cycle of gluttony.
‘That figure in the Bai District’s Ancestral Hall has made use of techniques that could certainly be called gluttonous. If only I had gotten that Dao instead of the Entropy Dao, or even alongside it, this black sun would easily be the most destructive thing I have,’ Wei Yi thought, turning her attention to the Ping Patriarch and the shadow giant that enveloped him, ‘Well, more than it already is. At the moment, there are still some that can overcome it through sheer force, but the empowerment of Dao would likely put an end to such things, while giving me more control over it.’
As the array still endured, so did the Patriarch, but much of the energy at the outermost portions of the colossus was getting restless and unstable. With a little more work, he could fall.
“Jia Rong, keep going! Destroy this array!”
The demoness did not need that to be repeated, as she was already over a third node in the ground, kneeling beside it as to best drive her fist down into it. In the blink of an eye, her fist fell onto it, and again the street was torn to shreds, while the structures around her burst into little pieces, with some outright bursting into dust the moment that the wave of force collided with them. Most importantly, as the array node below her exploded, the array showed more changes yet again.
Most importantly, several more wounds from which uncontrolled planar energy surged burst open near the black sun, with the energy naturally gravitating towards it as it was easily the strongest source of a draw upon the energy that could be found within the area. Even if the Patriarchs and Wei Yi worked together, their planar energy draw would pale before the black sun, which might soon grow large enough to be acknowledged as a true sun if someone was to launch it into the cosmos for it to take its rightful place.
The Ping Patriarch was also not in an ideal state, with parts of the enormous wrapping of energy around him falling away, with one part exposing withered flesh. It was his arm, and yet it looked as it had been dead and rotting for a number of years, with skin peeling off and revealing bone beneath it.
Theories could be thrown about even in the current situation, but it was certain that the screams were no longer coming from a living person, if they were emerging from the Ping Patriarch to begin with. Whether the array killed him, or if it was some technique of his that had failed him in this moment, it was undeniable that there was little chance of saving him, even if someone wished to do it.
Some might have assumed that it would be a moment of celebration, but the reveal of lifeless flesh caused Wei Yi’s eyes to widen. She was not shocked by this, since this had resembled an ability of an otherworldly demon, which did have the tendency of stealing the lives of their users in more ways than one, but rather by the fact that the moment that the array lost enough of its stability, it would no longer be able to resist the absolute draw of the black sun. At that moment, the energy that had been sufficient to shroud the entire district in darkness and conjure countless smoke serpents would suddenly enter the black sun, and it would expand greatly, leading to it feasting upon the terrain and thus growing with even greater speed.
In other words, there was far less time to escape than she thought.
“Bai Patriarch, Luo Matriarch, Great Dark and the rest of you, stop right now and rush to bring everyone to the edge of the district! I might have a way to prevent this from ending incredibly poorly!”
With her having provided a warning on the topic not too long ago, nobody thought to question the instruction. They rushed off to the parts of the district that had not been evacuated, and quickly shone down all kinds of sources of light to draw the people inside out. They shouted warnings and instructions, suggesting calmness, but little else mattered so long as the people rushed to the edge of the district. It was only once they were gathering there that they had to wonder what the use of it would be.
Since the whole district was enveloped in the strange core, would they not just be at the edge of the eruption rather than the centre? Would her original instruction of heading underground be superior to this?
“Wei Yi, should I-”
“A few more, then run off immediately! You might be able to endure this, depending on your luck, but I do not want any of us to take random chances when there is no reason to do so!” Wei Yi exclaimed, already focusing on the enormous Subterranean Shell and the Endless Monolith, as the smoke serpents were getting slower and less stable with each node destroyed.
Contrary to the thoughts of some, the two phenomena were not her actual anchor and core somehow magnified to that size, but instead projections of them in a similar manner that she could project her Ascendant’s Library. They wouldn’t hurt her if they were to be destroyed or damaged, and they could thus be used as shields if need be. Since the black sun had been made so near to the centre, that was exactly what she wanted to do.
It would be difficult to prevent the black sun from consuming anything, but it was possible to minimise the damage.
One node, then another, then a third were broken, and it was then that the array went wild. Enormous quantities of energy flowed out of it, sinking into the black sun at such a pace that it touched the ground and began to feed upon it only a moment later. Most of the energy contained within the array sank away, revealing light from the outside, making the various lanterns unnecessary, but that did not remove the greatest threat of all – the black sun needed to be detonated, or else even the Ascendant would be unable to prevent its perpetual expansion and consumption.
She did not bother looking to the Ping Patriarch’s body falling to the ground, but instead activated the collapse of the black sun and the shrinking of the Subterranean Shell. With Jia Rong having gotten the hint on her own, she was the only person remaining within the centre of the Ping District.
Everyone on the outside saw as the dome around them suddenly shrank, passing through them with ease, with the outer walls of the district being brought to the outside in moments. Then, more and more was removed, but before half of the district could be freed from the confines of the core, they saw something incredible erupting within the shell, being able to see only the most major of details through the thick core.
A vast light surged into the air, tearing into the core in an instant, marking the epicentre of the explosion. From it, an overwhelming force instantly covered the inside of the core, with cracks and tears appearing on the outside of the Subterranean Shell. Some small portions were penetrated entirely, and the weakest gusts of energy were able to cook the land into glass.
Nevertheless, the core continued to shrink, albeit at a slower pace, forcefully sealing the holes shut via the compression.
On the inside, Wei Yi had thrown out the power of the signet ring right away, and was rushing to make the false core as small as she possibly could before the effect would end. If she couldn’t do so quickly enough, then she would be devoured in an instant, with the core vanishing and the energy contained within erupting with even more force, tearing through the land and scouring the nearest few kilometres of life. With just one failure, she could be the greatest bringer of calamity in the last few hundred thousand years at the very least.
At the last moment of consciousness, she felt the confines of the core pass her.
