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Published at 22nd of September 2022 12:19:56 PM


Chapter 324

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She descended into the mines not long after, using the path that she had used last time to get as deep as she needed to before finding the rest of the path via her spiritual perception.

When she was in places that weren’t explicitly sealed away by order of the Qiang Patriarch, she came across plenty of miners that were actively working and digging up the various ores that were contained within the stone, and most of them were fortunately reluctant to waste their time observing her actions. Some were almost certain to be confused as to her identity, and possibly frustrated at the intrusion, but she didn’t care about their opinions.

Whether they recognised her or not, whether they ever learned what she did before coming to the district, what she did within it, and whatever she managed to do after, it wasn’t particularly important. Any opinions and judgements made about her would only affect things once she had completed her attempt to change the world.

The underground battlefields effectively existed at the edges of the Qiang District’s control over the mines, where their security forces were unable to maintain perfect order and ward off all enemies that threatened their land. Planar beasts and occasional forces from other territories and factions were able to reside there, and the district would send in their own warriors to combat the intruders and attempt to claim the area for themselves, changing it from a battlefield to an extension of the existing mines. This was not always successful, and so not all places would even be called underground battlefields in modern times.

Instead, areas that were out of the control of the district for longer than a certain period of time, or that were recaptured before a similar period of time, and thus led to frequent conflict, would be labelled as battlefields, while the safer and simpler to secure areas would only be called dangerous portions of the mines.

From what she had been able to learn, this kind of naming scheme had originated from a time shortly after Kong Shi Meng’s disappearance. It was then changed as necessary once the threats outside of Yi City drew closer to the Qiang District and forced the district to take greater measures to defend itself.

Thus, to get to the battlefields, she needed to go beyond the commonly used mines, beyond the emptier areas where only a few miners would descend to for the sake of digging up a small quantity of rare ore that she would boost with her energy as she went past, to allow the ore to grow and not run out while it was still available. Given that her body was as whole as it could be and her energy was back to its fullest strength, with the slight rise in cultivation giving her about as much effective energy as she had before, this was no longer as difficult as before.

With the nascent rift, she also didn’t need to worry about her planar energy running out by the time that she arrived at the underground battlefield, and so she wasn’t going to save any of it during the journey. From the information that she had obtained about the otherworldly gift and the potential demon that wielded it, they tended to remain in place most of the time, and so she wouldn’t come across them until she got close enough to their hunting grounds, so to speak.

As she did have the ability to perceive most otherworldly gifts, and thus items that were shrouded by the otherworldly nature, she also believed that she would be able to identify their position before they had a chance to ambush her, and take the time to recover her planar energy while using the other four types of energy to repel any attempt to harm her. After all, the Silver-Leaf energy was a manifestation of planar energy only, and the other four were separate from the particular energy that she used. If she had a single pool of true planar energy – that is, one from which all of the five cultivation types were derived – then there would be more reason to hold back with her usage of energy, as exhausting that one pool would exhaust everything she had.

‘Theoretically speaking, that would be the most perfect setup, simply because it would be closest to the ultimate truth of the world, but it would mean that I would need to find one place for a boundless quantity of energy to reside that isn’t the dantian. It can only fit bound energy, whereas the true nature of planar energy is closer to the unbound state… Possibly. This is one of those things that I may be unable to understand until I witness it personally, since the true answer may be so far out there that my view of the world is insufficient,’ she considered as she walked.

Given that this wasn’t going to go anywhere, she instead glanced at the place where her mind thought her left hand to be, and contemplated what she could do with it while she attempted to find a better way to form the meridians into a permanent, stable state.

It was best to use something fast, something that would draw upon the energy manifested into the meridians in order to consume them and prevent their inevitable collapse the moment after from harming her. When it came to the techniques she already had, and the principles that she could call upon, the one that was most volatile and instantaneous was actually her second newest method – Touch the Heavens.

The technique itself was not suitable, as it would put too much stress upon her body and mind to invoke the full technique before stabilising the left part of her body, but nothing was stopping her from adapting the absolute overpowering nature of the Touch the Heavens to produce something similar. She did not need to break down space and time itself – with time being only slightly distorted, as there was only so much that she could do without violating the laws of the world. If not for that, the properties of the technique would have been useful in time travel and similar impossibilities.

‘So, if I just raise my phantom arm, I might be able to…’

As was slowly becoming more frequent with her attempts to generate techniques, she was going to rely more on her innate comprehension of the world and the energy that she was utilising for the technique. It was technically the same, but her current method relied more on inspiration and subconscious realisations whereas a more standard method would be better if she was trying to create something that did not interact with any of her existing systems and methods.

Her five meridian networks quickly manifested, and before the world had the chance to declare that she did not have the right to keep it, all of the meridians shattered and converged together into a thin, white line, which then burst into blinding light.

Unexpectedly, she ended up creating something similar – if not outright identical – to her Elysian techniques, which she had mostly stayed away from for various reasons. This was very much not intentional, but as that light shot out from the location of her phantom limb, it blasted out with an immense speed, crossing a vast distance in an instant and striking the walls of the mine with an overwhelming noise that quickly shattered her eardrums again, forcing her to take a moment to let them recover.

For some time, she had considered her hair to be the toughest and most resilient part of her body or self, but with the number of times that she managed to create incredibly loud noises which tested her ears time and time again, she was almost certain that the ear drums would eventually become the most resilient part of her body. This would be useful, but not especially so.

She also didn’t have the chance to contemplate that matter in any detail as she had to rush over to the wall that she had targeted and extend her energy all over it to reinforce the damaged structure. The blast had outright evaporated a great deal of stone, and that had sent a shockwave throughout the stone that she had to suppress as quickly as she could before the entirety of the Qiang District was shaken and many mines were destroyed.

None of her techniques were explicitly meant for this, but she was able to cease the wave and stabilise the stone quickly enough.

“Well… The Absolute Dao will be effective here as well, at the very least,” Wei Yi noted to herself, patting the stone wall once before getting away from it and returning to the original route that she had intended to take, “Also, the Dao of the Elements, the Planar Dao, the Dao of Law, the Ascendant’s Dao, and so on…”

Despite the new creation, which she decided to call the Elysian Blast for lack of better ideas, being in the Initial Accomplishment Stage, the effectiveness of this technique was elevated to an impossible level. Worst of all – for the mines, at least – the first use of her technique was not affected by these, as it had not yet become a proper technique and was thus used directly through the other Dao, rather than being amplified by them. It did mean that she needed to control her strength in this regard, which was a little difficult considering the fact that her strength looked to be taking every opportunity to grow whereas her body had only recently suffered a significant setback.

That didn’t stop her from doing it, of course, it just meant that she needed to put in a significantly greater degree of effort and focus into the process over the rest of combat and tactics, or even other matters that she might otherwise have been thinking about during any fighting.

Then again, there was also nothing stopping her from using other techniques, but it was a bit of a personal tradition to make use of new techniques once they were usable by her. Touch the Heavens was used almost immediately after the idea was conceived, her Elysian methods were similarly employed soon after their creation, both physique energy and her mental energies proved to be highly useful not long after she figured them out, and even her planar cultivation’s ever-changing states became useful as she acquired or, or soon after.

It just wouldn’t be right not to use it at least once in the upcoming fight.

Even then, it was still some time until she would even have a chance to do anything of the sort. The mines were expansive and incredibly lengthy, and so she had several more opportunities to use the Elysian Blast before she was anywhere near the underground battlefield that she was looking for.

 

“Quake after quake… I had heard some things about the northern regions, in particular the enormous rift that had formed near the Luo District after someone decided to cultivate near there,” a guardian of the Qiang District said, their senses permitting them to detect the vague remnants of the force that had been mostly suppressed before reaching them.

“She’s still holding back with those, so just consider what would occur if the Ascendant was actively intending to attack the district. There is no reason not to provide her with the spatial stabilisation point that she asked for,” the Patriarch replied, much to the obvious displeasure yet agreement from the guardian, “The south had long stayed away from the matters of the north, but in the current situation, we have no choice but to participate in the continent’s disputes.”

“Are those factions present here as well?”

“Of course. You have seen the figures dressed in simple clothes, have you not? They stride around and make great demands of the district, but they have been quieter as of late.”

The guardian sighed, but he was unable to provide a single response that would be backed up with any objective facts or notions. It was indeed true and very irritating to the guardians of the Qiang District whenever they were forced to submit to certain demands that did not seem to have a proper origin. Even then, he didn’t really wish to acquiesce to the point, as he did not want to leave this to an outsider.

Still, there was little that he could say regarding this, so he was forced to keep quiet.

“I can feel your discontent, but you should not endanger the Qiang District over your personal issues. That is your role as guardian, and that is something that you must adhere to if you wish to keep your position.”

“Patriarch-”

“Whatever you wish to say, I don’t need to hear it. Just make sure that you do as you must, and there shall be no need to speak.”

 

It did take a while, but she finally found her way to the portion of the mines where random artefacts could be found lying about without any owner or purpose. Some were recent, with little dust and the like settling on them, but others were clearly left in place for far longer, resulting in them blending in with the stones around them as if they would eventually become buried within the stone and turn into lost fossils that someone may excavate one day in search of ancient relics of some place that was called Yi City.

On a less distant and insignificant topic, however, she was already aware of the presence of a void-like figure at the end of the mined-out portion of the cave. There, this figure looked to be sitting with a hand gripping a blade, while another held onto an axe of some kind.

Both of the weapons were visible to her spiritual perception, but everything beneath an incredibly thin outer shell behaved partially like an otherworldly gift. From this, it was easy enough to conclude that the sword and axe had to have been affected significantly by the otherworldly gift that had to lie somewhere within the body of the figure, whose figure was entirely invisible to spiritual perception. In regards to the figure himself, who looked to lack any female characteristics, she actually suspected that he was not merely an otherworldly demon in the mental sense, as some were due to appearing in the bodies of others, but rather a fully foreign entity.

His facial features, or what she could make out of them, looked incredibly different from any common Western Continental features, and the body shape also differed from the standard figures that she had come across in the north and south alike. She had no clue how someone’s entire body could be brought over like that, if that was indeed what happened, but it seemed very likely that it had happened.

If she remembered correctly – something that was usually certain, with very few exceptions – then Miyu and those like her found themselves in the Planar Continents with their bodies altered, meaning that there was a significant chance that they had simply come to inhabit those that were very similar in appearance to them. Also, it was theoretically possible to create a new mindless body and then fill it with a mind and soul from the other worlds, but that would bring up the question of why only certain otherworldly demons were changed, while this one was kept the same.

The answer, if the aforementioned possibility was accurate, would likely depend on the method by which the otherworldly demon ends up being sent over to the continents. Their stories always differed, and there were only a few similar elements across all of their recollections of their last days on their Orbises.

So, it was feasible that certain factors would alter how their selves were transported to the Planar Continents. Death on their Orbis could lead to the mind being put in a similarly weakened or injured body, like what might have happened with Yi Henghua and her Fairy of Dust manual. A more uneventful day could lead to their bodies being partly replicated upon arrival, with the alteration occurring during the transportation process due to some difference in worldly laws and the like, or by the influence of their otherworldly gifts and the powers that chose to throw them into the Planar Continents. With this, they were able to ensure that the demons always possessed a dantian and were able to cultivate with whatever method was given to them.

As the man at the back of the cave was completely shrouded by his otherworldly nature, she couldn’t be sure whether he had also acquired a dantian, but he did not look to be weak despite the length of time spent away from the sun and without any food. Either the gift fed him, or planar energy did.

Given that he did not seem to have had much time to adjust to things in the Planar Continents, she didn’t expect him to have many techniques to draw upon, and so it wouldn’t really matter even if he was in the ninth realm, as he would not know how to make use of the powers of his realm. The weapons in his hands were the only things that were likely to play a part, and in their case, they might have some abilities that are drawn from the weapons that were used to empower them.

The man had proved to be a challenge for the forces of the district to take on, so the weapons were likely activated by the otherworldly gift. That meant that it was essentially pointless to consider cultivation in terms of combat strength, and so the key to safely defeating the opponent would be by understanding the abilities of the weapons in his hand and comprehending the best ways to work around them. Even if they were primarily functioning via the otherworldly gift, their abilities would still be affected by planar energy’s five manifestations, and thus it should be possible to block them or dodge them, depending on their strength and the situation.

For that, she would have liked to find some remnants of previous weapons that had been brought into the mine so that she could comprehend their previous abilities and understand the kinds of things that the sword and axe could now do, but it proved rather difficult. While there were remnants of armour, trinkets, and even more miscellaneous and obscure artefacts, there wasn’t a single weapon anywhere.

‘They are indeed merged with the weapons in his hands, then. Unfortunate, especially considering all of the metal that will be lost in this process. With the Silver-Leaf energy, all of the metal in the mines can grow back, and provide far more resources than were lost, but it is still a meaningful degree of loss in the short term,’ she thought briefly while her primary focus was on the problem of the foe himself, who seemed to have no idea that she was anywhere near him.

To be fair, she was quite far away, and he was unlikely to possess spiritual perception. Still, it seemed that he was not attempting to be wary of his surroundings, which was hardly a reasonable thing to do when he was apparently considered to be a threatening force in the Qiang District.

There had to be some reason that he, a man that had survived for a minimum of a year in such a dangerous environment, was not paying attention to his surroundings, and so it was safe enough to confirm that a sneak attack would not be as effective as to finish him in one go. She would have liked not to do so, instead bringing in another powerful force to the Ascendant’s Arbiters and eventually freeing him from the azure light, possibly avoiding any significant loss in strength as the changes would have already been made, but this was nearly impossible due to the man’s current state.

She had not yet spoken with him, so it was a little presumptuous to decide what the man was thinking, but even if he was entirely unaffected by the usual otherworldly sickness, so to speak, there was no chance of him being friendly in any way to the people of the Planar Continents. She knew she wouldn’t be if the situation was flipped around.

In fact, she might even be keen to obliterate the whole world if all that she knew was people rushing in to kill her for no good reason. It would require something more extreme than that, but it was feasible.

‘For that reason, I will attempt to speak with him first, but if he does not know a single language that I do know, or if he gives me no chance to speak at all, it would be best to put him out of his misery and take the otherworldly gift as quickly as possible. Of course, developing my arm technique would also be highly beneficial, but as always, I do have to stay alive in order to benefit from any improvements to my techniques,’ she thought as she briefly manifested the five meridian strands from her left shoulder and confirmed their strength and stability.

So that they did not damage her body again, she absorbed the energy before it had the chance to collapse, then stepped forward through the slightly smaller opening to the cave in which the otherworldly demon sat, facing the wall with eyes that were likely to be dim and hopeless.

To verify a little more about the man’s abilities, she decided to bring along her low-grade greatsword, as it was neither strong nor very necessary to her combat abilities. If it was lost, whether through its destruction or its absorption into one of the man’s weapons, she wouldn’t lose anything, and he would not gain anything of note. Depending on how the absorption process worked, he might even lose out due to the dilution of the weapon’s abilities with less useful elements.

Although she did not do much to prevent her bare feet – she did not bother to put on the furred boots, nor the metal high-heeled ones, as neither were particularly beneficial to her in the current situation and state – from making much noise, other than having the common sense not to actively cause more than necessary, the man did not bother looking back at her.

He just kept staring at the back wall of the cave, confirming her earlier guess about his gaze.

There was nothing stopping her from continuing on, other than the increasingly large number of artefacts lying about on the ground that she had to step around so that she didn’t accidentally alert the man more than necessary, or something like that. It would also be rather uncomfortable to walk on the artefacts, but that was not really important. She had walked around on very uncomfortable surfaces, and she was going to continue doing so if she had to. Her feet would not be damaged by something so insignificant.

“Another one… another one… another one…” a voice came from the distance, barely reaching even her incredible ears.

‘I guess he has noticed me. Not doing anything yet, though. Good start… possibly. I can’t read his mind from here, and it seems like I won’t be able to do so even if I manage to stand immediately next to him. His entire head is invisible to spiritual perception, so nothing I have will work.’

Given that she was intending to speak with the man if possible, it seemed like a good start. She had to get a little closer before her voice could reasonably reach him, though, so she did exactly that while attempting to restrain any of the killing intent within her body, just in case he was able to instinctively perceive it one way or another. While there was a slight chance of success in a peaceful negotiation, it wouldn’t be good to waste it.

“Another one… with a sword, too…”

“Are you just guessing, or are you able to perceive that all the way from here?” she asked, amplifying her voice as much as she could without risking a cave in.

“… Why do I understand those words? They are wrong! They should be wrong! Why can I understand what you are saying?” he suddenly leapt up from his rocky seat and turned around, his dim eyes meeting her own all the way from across the few hundred metres covered by the cave, “Why can my mouth and lips speak these words as if it is normal? Explain this!”

“You were brought over from another world. Some part of the process gives you that knowledge.”

“PUT ME BACK!”

“… Not exactly easy to cross the boundary of worlds, if it is even within the reach of cultivation as a concept.”

“AAH!” the man screamed, slamming his axe into the stone to his side. It looked like the tool of an ordinary lumberjack, and yet, when it struck the stone, it did more than just dig into the stone, which would be impressive enough.

Instead, it went in all the way to the shaft of the axe, then sent a great tremor through the stone, causing the entire cave to shake and tremble. Pieces of stone fell from the ceiling, although it did not go as far as outright collapsing the cave, which would have been disastrous. It took the man a moment to pull the axe out of the stone, but the moment that he did, he quickly leapt forward with strength that shouldn’t have been contained within a body like his.

Of course, he wasn’t in terrible shape, even if that may have happened purely due to the regular fighting that he needed to do in order to survive, but without an obvious hint of planar energy usage, there should have been no way for him to clear over fifty metres in a single leap, nor should his weapons have been able to ignite with all kinds of elemental energies that were barely stable enough to remain on the axe head and blade. The fact that they hadn’t yet exploded completely – as small explosions did occur every instant on the spots where opposing energy met – made it very clear that the weapons were reinforced accordingly to the power that filled them.

Since he was the first to act, she didn’t restrain herself either, quickly conjuring the meridians of the left arm and condensing their energy into an Elysian Blast, firing it the very moment that it was ready as the man leapt forward again, reducing the distance between them to half of what it was in seconds.

The blast of white light emerged and was nearly at its target before the man could even respond. He didn’t look to have the ability to dodge while in the air, which was to be expected from her current understanding of his nature, but he was able to bring the blazing, freezing, crackling and so on axe to meet the ray of light.

While the collision was audible and the force from the impact clearly reached the ceiling and floor alike, cracks appearing in the stone from the shockwave, she knew that the man did not perish, instead being thrown back. His body was buried in the stone at the back of the cave within a blink of an eye, but the axe and sword alike were still in his hands, and his body was not instantly turned into a red mist, so it meant that he was very much alive. At best, that impact would cause him to be unconscious, but given the instant sounds of movement that she heard from the end of the cave, she knew that this was also not the case.

‘Well, I did want a fight. Let’s go, random man from another world. I don’t dislike you specifically, but I will not hesitate to end your life and let you rest in peace,’ she thought, momentarily putting away the weapon in her hand, as it did not seem to be suitable for this fight.





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