Invading the Hall of Treasures
Several hours later, the new plan of action was concocted. It wasn’t certain that the man in white could be trusted, but if there was any chance of success with the information he had provided, then Wei Yi would have to go with the fewest number of people possible in order to avoid detection due to incompetent weaklings. In fact, the best approach may be for her to enter on her own, with some people standing by to be able to enter if the man in white turns out to have lied to them.
At the same time, Meng Chu would lead his forces on an undisguised assault on the surface, hopefully diverting Ding Wen’s attention to it instead of Wei Yi. This would also lead Shi Luo Feng to believe that their conflict could conclude there, at which point she might be lured out to engage in battle as well.
Since the so-called siege of the auction house wouldn’t delve into the depths of the structure, planning around it was incredibly easy for her, allowing her to complete the plan within a few minutes, creating a very simple set of directions and movements for every single soldier that would be participating, while also providing their captains with a greater quantity and quality of orders to allow them to adjust to any powers and gifts that Ding Wen could pass along to his forces, although she obviously couldn’t account for every single possibility and instead considered the likely functions of those gifts and came up with methods of defeating and circumventing them instead.
This would, at the very least, lower the number of casualties amongst her forces, with the gaps created as a result likely being filled up quickly by Ding Wen’s troops the second that she is able to triumph.
If Shi Luo Feng or her abominations do appear, she also instructed Dugu Wei and the captains under her to attempt to form a temporary truce with Ding Wen’s warriors, as neither side should want to see the abominations feed on them and their families before growing stronger and taking over the entirety of Beast’s Rest.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t possibly account for everything, and as a result, her current plan was significantly weaker than what she had prepared prior to learning about Ding Wen’s potential true nature, amplifying every risk and danger and significantly reducing the chance of success, but after revising what she had several times, completing one final revision just before the last of the guards returned to the underground passages, there was little more she could do to improve her work beyond its current level, not without more time and knowledge.
‘Frankly, I hate the feeling of lacking information. I don’t know the truth of Kong Shi Meng or the Great Families, whatever that truth may be, but that is mostly irrelevant for the moment. Lacking any clear evidence of Ding Wen’s origins and the extent of his abilities, however, means that there is always a high chance of planning around the opposite of truth,’ she thought, passing along written copies of her instructions to each relevant individual, ‘I hope I’m not failing to see Mt Tai in this situation.’
Whether or not that was the case, she could not determine it before she actually fought against Ding Wen, at which point it would be far too late.
She left the passages beneath Beast’s Rest with a grim look on her face, her spiritual will extended to her absolute limit with much of her attention focused onto it, for it was difficult to observe the entirety of her surroundings with any other one of her senses. There was none of the same dread that she had experienced before the appearance of the Great Family siblings, but she was still concerned.
Due to her last experience with fighting a powerful foe inside of a spatial domain, she also looked out for any potential spatial tears or pockets of warp, for either one could do a significant amount of damage to her and any of her forces without the combination of cosmic energy and True Ascendant physique energy that she had previously used to deal with the avatar of the Kong Holy Realm. Although something as large and complex as the prison realm was bound to have a consciousness already in control of it, it was still bound to be possible to harness some of the spatial energy of the world in order to strike at her, especially if it was being done by an otherworldly demon.
‘Admittedly, I may be going slightly insane about the potential ability of the otherworldly demons, but every single one of the preparations I’ve completed should still apply if he turns out to be the exact opposite of what I believe him to be,’ Wei Yi thought, glancing at the rings on her left hand.
One was the silver ring she had taken from Yi Fenwu, with no modifications made to it, while the rest were simple metal bands that she had created while contemplating the best method of getting around the potential trickery of the man in white, their internal structure mimicking the silver band, except with the energy circuits being adapted for killing intent rather than planar energy. Each one had a slightly different design, as she did not have much of an opportunity to test each one, so that if one failed to function as intended, one of the others would.
In the best case scenario, all of them would have some degree of effectiveness and usefulness, resulting in her owning a total of four defensive items, with three rings adapted specifically for killing intent while the silver band could theoretically be activated by using Antithesis energy to invert the energy it uses into anything other than planar energy.
Since the silver ring was able to block her attacks while she was using the full strength of her planar energy, and also because killing intent as a form of energy is naturally weaker than planar energy, so long as any one of them functioned, she would be able to safely ignore one attack from Ding Wen every few seconds, giving her significantly more options and flexibility in every single one of her actions, hopefully countering some of his treasures.
If they did fail, her raw strength should allow her to handle Ding Wen in a one on one battle, albeit with a great quantity of injuries.
‘It is a shame that I don’t have enough time to increase my physique cultivation, or else I could elevate the chances of success from roughly 24% to 47% or so, depending on how great the increase in the power of my physique energy and the body is. Although I do not think that physique energy is the direct counter to killing intent, it is still incredibly effective, especially when it is combined with a strong mind.’
On the topic of the mind, she did not have much time to create an entirely new mental art to protect herself from further mental effects, but she was able to construct a wall of storm clouds around the mental battlefield, duplicating the walls of the prison realm.
As they were within her mental domain and were thus entirely under her control, she was able to freely open or close them to any mental intrusions, though she suspected that if someone was intent on breaking in or out of her mind, then they could still manage, albeit with a greater delay. On the inside of her mind, in the mental library, she strengthened the support beams with a greater quantity of mental energy, creating a special location for potential influences from the mysterious characters to appear so that she could inspect them in more detail and conclude whether it was something she wanted to permit into her own mind.
Neither of these were perfect, nor did she have the opportunity to check whether they would be effective, but both were still better than having nothing at all. Often, action was the best way to improve.
With the extreme size of the main auction house of Beast’s Rest, finding it was incredibly easy, especially after she had visited it several times for reconnaissance and entertainment purposes. At the moment, the outside of the auction house was devoid of people, with only a few guards protecting the front entrance from unwanted intruders.
From the looks of it, these particular guards were only in the Fine Piercing realm, meaning that they were the spare warriors that would not be useful when sent to attack Shi Luo Feng, suggesting that those warriors had not yet returned to their posts.
‘Perfect. Even if this is a trick by Ding Wen, people at such a low cultivation realm won’t have a chance of spotting me,’ Wei Yi thought, blending into the shadows of the streets with her stealth techniques and approaching the auction house from the side. Even without the amendments that the man in white had made to the map, Meng Chu’s faction was still aware that there was a secret entrance in the side of the auction house, one that did not require any complex methods to access.
After a few taps on specific parts of the wall, a small door opened up within an alleyway that seemed to end at the wall of the auction house, presenting her with a passage into it.
The process of opening was quiet, and it was the same when it shut.
When she got through that passage, she dropped into the basement of the auction house, finding herself in a small room with several chests and crates being placed against one of the walls, with a candle lit atop them.
She wanted to scan the rooms around her with her spiritual will, but she felt the familiar energy of the man in white approach, prompting her to momentarily cease her actions and pay attention to the spiritual will-like energy instead. It gathered near her, then beside a wall that was lit by the candle, causing the man to appear by that wall, standing casually with his hands behind his back, dressed entirely in white and without any part of the clothes showing his skin, hair or any other defining features that could be recognised.
“You’ve arrived alone. A wise choice,” he said, his two-voice chorus still confounding his age.
However, Wei Yi did not pay attention to it or his words, instead, glancing around the figure curiously until a smile slowly bloomed on her face. “Nice trick. No wonder you didn’t appear in the open.”
“Are you prepared for me to guide you, or do you want to loot this area first?” he also didn’t respond, perhaps not caring to answer or intending to avoid questioning for whatever reason, “I am unfamiliar with the contents of this storage area, but I don’t think there’s too much of use here.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said, briefly scanning all of the chests and boxes to learn that they contained various experimental pills, none of which were of particular interest to her. In theory, she could attempt to invert them into something useful via the Antithesis Palm, though she doubted her chances of success as the structure of the pills and the primary functioning aspect of it had formed and would then be inverted via the palm technique.
To confirm her theory about the appearance of the man in white, she opened the chest that held the candle on its lid, looking at some of the pills within to justify her action.
Just as she had expected, the second that the light moved and some of the figure’s legs were obscured by the shadow, those parts vanished, as if they had never been there. When she shut the chest, the missing parts of his legs returned, proving that this was nothing more than a projection of his form, true or otherwise.
‘He doesn’t seem to have noticed my observation, so I will not mention it for now,’ she decided, turning around and stepping up to the door, “Is this the way I should be going?”
“That’s right. These corridors are empty the vast majority of the time, and they are lit well by candles. Proceed to the left, pass three turns then turn right and enter the small room directly in front of you. I will continue to guide you from there.”
“I hope that your directions do not lead me astray,” she replied, using her stealth techniques to exit the small chamber.
The second she turned to the side, however, she found a man lying on the ground, several pieces of gold jewellery on his hands, around his wrists and his neck, with an eerie azure glow emanating from him. It slowly poured away from him, floating softly in the air as it flowed towards some unseen destination deep within the auction house.
“Is this sort of sight normal?” Wei Yi asked the second after she had stretched out her spiritual will and found that there were no guards to overhear her.
The man in white appeared beside a candle and immediately shook his head, his image blurring as the spiritual will-like energy reached out and touched the paralysed man, only to recoil moments later, almost as if it had been in terror, “Not in the slightest. Something is wrong.”
“You don’t say…” she muttered in response, “What is this azure light? Have you encountered it before?”
“Never. However, it is travelling towards Ding Wen’s inner chambers. Adding to that the fact that the light is densest around the treasures on his body, it must be something to do with him!”
He rapidly shared a list of instructions and directions with her, all of which were promptly stored on the map that manifested within the Augur’s Library for a greater ease of use. The path, albeit somewhat confusing and overly long on first glance, guided her through the compound while circumventing the greatest number of traps and obstacles possible, meaning that the journey would be significantly faster than attempting to traverse the area directly.
Wei Yi followed it, quickly stumbling onto more paralysed figures. Men and women alike lay on the ground, wrapped in azure light that emanated from them and their treasures, their eyes and bodies frozen in invisible ice.
Much like the figure in white, she also attempted to investigate the truth of this energy with her spiritual will, but when she came into contact with it, she could see… nothing. It was as if it was not present, with nothing out of the ordinary in the space that she had checked time and time again, despite the incredibly obvious light that filled it. However, she was able to view the internal organs of the frozen people and determined that everything about that had somehow been frozen in time, almost as if they were transformed into statues made of flesh and frozen blood.
‘This is almost like they’ve become treasures…’ she thought, her fists tightening, “Fucking otherworldly demons…”
“I remember where I’ve seen this exact phenomenon before! It’s whenever he turns around on that chair!” the man in white exclaimed, clearly failing to hear her whispers, “It must have been this exact same force that prevented him from losing control when he was being overwhelmed by killing intent, meaning that it must be connected to his cultivation!”
“Well, this isn’t exactly what I expected, but this isn’t too surprising. There won’t be much resistance in my path, will there?” she asked no-one in particular, speeding up significantly as she ran through the corridors of the auction house, her idea being proven right almost immediately.
The deeper they got into the auction house, the denser the azure light grew, and the less pleasant breathing within the area was, as this imperceptible light changed the colour of the prison realm from the sickly red to an oddly unbearable, absolute and pure azure. Something about its scent, its texture and its movements aroused disgust within Wei Yi, in spite of all of the mental defences she had, like it was a natural reaction from the entirety of her being.
Without making it obvious, she looked towards the figure in white, whose image stood in the nearby candlelight; his face was similarly twisted in displeasure, though it was difficult to judge the exact cause.
“You mentioned the traps in this area. Could you clarify?”
“Certainly. The first tra-”
Suddenly, his figure flickered, almost like the candlelight, before it stabilised, albeit with less clarity and certainty that before. He wanted to say something, but his image flickered again, losing even more of its stability.
Before it could happen again, he held out his hand and spoke quickly, “Thirteen spike traps there, there and there, twenty-nine dart traps in those locations, four hundred and seventy-two individual pressure plates to activate them with only these tiles being safe, travel through the air will activate one of four hatred arrays that have the same function, one button there disables those traps-”
His form flickered yet again, vanishing after a moment of uncertainty.
‘That’s quite the number of traps… Very well, then, I might as well… use these to strengthen my body!’ she decided, judging by the slight marks on the walls, ceiling and ground that the traps would not be deadly to her and could prove to be an effective method of further physical cultivation.
Furthermore, it wouldn’t take much longer than stepping on the correct tiles to avoid triggering the traps, meaning that it would be just as efficient.
As the crimson robes covering her body were able to recover from piercing attacks and small cuts, she did not bother removing them, simply running into the passageway with all of the traps while making sure to step onto every single pressure plate in the floor that would trigger each individual trap in just the right order and pattern.
Just a second after the triggered the first spike trap, a faint click could be heard from beneath the ground before a set of spikes, arranged in a grid pattern that was six spikes wide and six spikes long, with a total of thirty-six spikes connected to a single pressure plate, sprung out of the ground, through incredibly thin gaps in the floor, ones that most cultivators in the Planar Continents would have failed to notice on first glance. All of them were shaded slightly by a thin azure light, though the quantity was so insignificant that even if it could have a significant effect upon someone, it would likely not.
They stabbed through her clothing, then struck her skin and pierced it slightly.
Not a single spike was able to penetrate deeper than a single inch into her flesh, with all of them quickly being forced out as her wounds regenerated and her physique energy melted the tips of the spikes simply through flowing within her body.
As one set of spikes retracted, another set sprung out of the wall, prompting Wei Yi to curve and twist her body in such a way as to ensure that they would strike the correct places on her body, those that had vulnerabilities and would benefit from the tempering of even and consistent strikes upon them. Once more, metal pierced her flesh and then receded, with the majority of the spikes being damaged and bent after impact.
Several darts shot out from the direction of her destination, striking very specific points on her body in the intention of disabling her movement and breathing, but with her Golden Form ability being stimulated at just the right time, they bounced off her skin and stimulated the flow of her blood and the many energies within her sets of meridians.
Again and again, the traps activated and struck her, their might clearly having been intended for the typical intruder and not someone who had tempered their body to the extent that they were able to contend with someone in the third realm of physique cultivation while only being in the first. Furthermore, none of the spikes or darts were hatred blades, nor were they supplemented with any great quantity of killing intent in their attacks, meaning that they were only as powerful as the attacks that a typical human would be able to manifest through a great deal of mechanical ingenuity and engineering.
Therefore, by the time she reached the end, the only marks that weren’t on her robes were small and indistinct bruises that vanished even before the robes could reconstruct themselves.
She encountered some more trapped areas on her path, but with the experience of the previous trapped corridor, she was easily able to figure out the best way through every single one of them, both in terms of personal safety and continued physical cultivation.
Her gains were minor, for she did not encounter any traps beyond the level of the first ones, nor did the slowly increasing density of azure light appear to give her much trouble. Whether this was due to something about her particular body or the possibility that the azure light wasn’t intended to harm anyone, she couldn’t determine the exact reason, for there was no consistent reaction within her body whenever she was touched by the azure light.
Every now and then, the mysterious characters would quiver, or her physique energy would suddenly pulse with a greater degree of energy than usual, but nothing happened every single time.
‘Perhaps the light doesn’t affect anyone, or there are multiple ways of negating its effects…’ she concluded, as there was nothing else she could possibly guess without willingly receding her two energies, lowering all forms of defence and somehow blocking away the mysterious characters from reacting to any external stimuli, if that was even possible.
If that was possible, she would still be reluctant to show such weakness in front of something that is not only imperceptible to spiritual will, but also likely comes from the ability of an otherworldly demon, meaning that it would be significantly more dangerous to deal with than any normal ability or technique.
Once she was only several rooms away from Ding Wen’s chambers, the man in white briefly re-appeared beside a candle, the majority of his form flickering constantly.
“He has-” his appearance deteriorated further, the instability and constant fluctuation of his form causing his voice to be lost amidst the chaos, hiding away any of the words he attempted to convey to her until he finally managed to pronounce, “- the book-”
The man in white vanished once again, except it was clearly out of his own failure to maintain that illusory form rather than some outside interference, perhaps from the azure light.
‘The book? Does he have some kind of unique item that is shaped like a book and gives him a great quantity of power? If possible, I must capture it and inspect it closely to see if I am able to decipher what causes it to be so powerful, and if there are any methods of disabling or weakening such effects so that any future otherworldly demons cannot go on the same path that Yi Henghua attempted to go down,’ she thought, furrowing her brows.
She drew White Echo, gripping it tightly in her left hand, and held the Bone of the Beast in her right, though that grip was somehow less certain and comfortable than on White Echo, perhaps due to the latter blade being one that had been made without her while the former was somehow she had created specifically with the knowledge she had available to her.
In addition to the Beast’s Dice, which she placed within her pockets in order to allow them to fly out when necessary, she had three sets of weapons and eight individual weapons.
As for defensive items, although the weapons could most certainly be used for defence, there was little on hand apart from her powerful body. The bronze mirror with the warning scrawled on it could be converted into a protective barrier for a brief while, though, as it did not follow the intent and meaning of the message, it would only last for one or two strikes at full strength, which would be insufficient in the case of the book possessed by Ding Wen permitting for repeated, constant attacks, even if they were the least suited to break the killing intent in the mirror.
‘This is a shame, but there aren’t many defensive items to be found within the prison realm,’ she recalled the auction she had visited, ‘It would be for the best if it so happens that Ding Wen excels in defence more so than offence.’
With all of her stealth technique being put to use, she proceeded through the last few chambers, all of them lit by candles, the light from which was overwhelmed completely by the thick azure that emanated from the many bodies that lay beside one another, food and drink scattered over their clothing and bodies, suggesting that they had been feasting prior to the appearance of the azure light, likely having been the first to return from their missions.
That timing certainly didn’t do them any good.
The doors to Ding Wen’s chamber were tall and wide, incredibly impressive to behold. If she was to arrive here at a better time, she might have even paused to appreciate the sight, but she instead moved straight forward, pushing the doors open quietly just enough to permit her to pass through them and enter the primary chamber.
Jewels, golden bars and all sorts of other treasures littered the ground, all of them releasing the constant azure light that flowed upwards and towards the centre of the back of the room, where, atop a pile of glittering gold, stood a dark gold throne with crimson cloth lining.
Ding Wen sat atop it, his eyes shut, although the eyelids still permitted a certain quantity of azure to pour between them and a book that floated in front of him, a strange light emanating form the surface of the paper. He did not appear to be aware of her entrance, nor was he paying any attention to the world around him, seemingly being confused in his entirety by the mystical, seemingly otherworldly book.
No-one seeking to assassinate him would ever ignore such a perfect opportunity, and Wei Yi was naturally no exception, prompting her to rush forward with both of her knives aimed at vital points.
Despite her haste, her footsteps were silent, each step cushioned by a thin veil of energy from her physique and killing intent, yin and yang combining to prevent any of her actions from resonating with the environment and odd azure around her, completely obscuring her from non-visual detection as she crossed the space between the door and the throne, flooding both daggers with energy as she did so.
That should have been able to strike him with ease, and yet, just before her attack hit, azure light burst out of the book and impacted precisely against the points of her blades, throwing her back with just one simple strike of energy.
Immediately after, Ding Wen also awoke, his eyes snapping open with the azure dispersing harmlessly.
“You… Finally. I was wondering whether you would come to meet me again,” said the treasure-covered man, reaching into the book in front of him.
Somehow, his hand passed through the pages and vanished inside of the book, burrowing into the depths of the pages up to his elbow before he pulled out a large sword from within, gripping it with both hands while the book itself flew behind his back and seemed to vanish completely, though Wei Yi couldn’t tell whether it had truly vanished as it was completely imperceptible to her spiritual will even when it was right in front of her.
Unlike the book, the sword was not just visible to her spiritual will, but it acted like a beacon, filled to the brim with killing intent and made up of an enormous quantity of incredible materials and valuables, creating something that equalled the bones of the Beast despite being composed of treasures that appeared to have originated from the Planar Continents.
“Welcome to my treasury. Since you attacked me first, it may as well be your grave.”
Neither of them waited for the other to respond, for they knew that they both posed a serious threat to one another. As the large sword meant that Ding Wen’s movements would be slower than Wei Yi’s, she acted to take advantage of this by slashing with White Echo, creating a plane of killing intent that rapidly flew towards his throne. Just as quickly as she struck, one of the countless treasures that lined the ground flew up and into the path of her strike, an excessively large shield appearing in the way of the thin place of killing intent just to block it.
That gave Ding Wen the perfect opportunity to stab at her heart, intending to end her in a single blow, infusing an enormous quantity of killing intent into the longsword.
‘His movements are too simple and straightforward!’ she thought, meeting the attack with White Echo.
She positioned the blade of the dagger in a very specific way, then, as crimson lightning gathered around the blade, she deflected the blade with the essence of the Eight Great Changes, manifesting the change of the Repealing Spark to not just negate the blow, but to convert it into her own strength while she deflected it.
Then, while adding the essence of the Bestial Palm skill, which was also intended to retaliate against powerful foes, she struck with the same hand, stabbing at his heart yet again.
And, just as before, the book sprung out from behind his back, thought this time, it did not fire out a projectile of pure azure, instead turning to face her with its pages, finally allowing her to see what they looked like. Every single page appeared to be a portal into a great treasury, with walls made from gold and accentuated by sickly azure, and within lay an endless quantity of items. Blades, sabres, shields, pieces of armour, bows and arrows, pills, bars of precious metals and gemstones of unknown or mysterious origins and far, far more, with no walls or edges to the treasury in sight.
From within the book, separating from the endless trove of riches, flew out a goblet smeared in blood and collided with her weapon, blocking both the blade itself and the plane of killing intent that would emerge, albeit suffering great harm in the process.
The goblet that flew out continued in its path, travelling past her before dropping onto the ground and breaking into two.
‘Just as I thought, it is a spatial item, but one with seemingly no steps needed to activate it, nor any clear limit to its capacity, meaning that it used either an enormous quantity of spatial materials, or it is being empowered – or outright permitted – by some otherworldly power, possibly the same one that is responsible for the excessive quantity of azure in the air,’ Wei Yi concluded in an instant, using the Retreating Torch to create a gap between them, ‘It seems that unless I am able to generate an overwhelming, unstoppable force, I won’t be able to bypass the book, meaning that brute force, at least for now, is out of the question.’
Despite thinking that in her head, she still willed the image from the last minutes of the Kong Holy Grounds to appear within her Augur’s Library so that she would be able to analyse it in great detail, for if there was one thing that could barely be stopped by anything, it was the power of the world itself, the warp, the energy created via the fluctuation of space, one that would likely grow in strength the more complete the reality it was created in was.
Naturally, such a thing would also make generating such an effect more difficult, but if it was only for a second, she believed that she would be able to gather the necessary information from her past experience to force the warp to manifest upon her command.
‘Before I can possibly do such a thing, I must study carefully, both inside and outside of my mind, to see what this world, and my opponent, permit, lest I waste my time and energy.’
For this reason, she merely paused her assault for a single second, before resuming it with twice the force and energy of before, trying her best to test the limitations of the prison realm and to generate a weakness within the particular location of their combat, as to further simplify the process of forcing the warp into existence.
‘Piercing River!’ she threw out White Echo – naturally ensuring that it was protected by her energy for long enough to prevent either the Greed Congregation or the azure light from affecting it – before forcing killing intent to gather in her now empty hand, forming a Living Spear with internal channels that mimicked the golden arrow-spear of Yi Fenwu, albeit with far less stability and power than the high-grade artefact would have had.
Ding Wen did not need to resort to the mystical book to deflect White Echo, blocking it with his longsword instead before shifting his attention just in time to strike back at the rapidly approaching crimson spear.
“Do you think you can act freely here?” he said, forcefully pushing the freely moving White Echo away, “This is my treasury! Every item here is mine!”
‘The otherworldly certainly appear to have a fondness for spilling their secrets upon the slightest provocation,’ thought Wei Yi without a trace of surprise or fear within her expression, ‘I’m not some kind of idiot, Ding Wen. I can see this azure light everywhere, and I saw how it was connected to you. If you could not have some influence over the items connected to it, I would be disappointed.’
Furthermore, it was difficult to surprise someone with access to spiritual will, not without first forcing all of their attention onto a single thing that was in a completely different direction to that of the matter one was intending to hide.
As a large pile of trinkets and baubles floated up from the ground, forced into a large wave of gold and jewels by a thin layer of azure, she didn’t just notice it, but she responded to it pre-emptively, collecting a large quantity of lightning-like killing intent around her empty left hand to permit for the free usage of techniques while also releasing a pair of her dice to assist her. At once, using the physique energy meridians to circumvent the issue of using several overlapping techniques at the same time, she executed the Sweeping Inferno change to pierce and shred the literal wave of wealth, a Drying Sands strike to combat the fluid nature of the attack, and an Antithesis Storm Burst to disperse any semblance of cohesion within the attack.
Several forms of energy, warped and changes by her attacks, flew out of her hand and the dice that had flown closer to the golden wave, weaving together while never coming into direct contact before striking the hundreds of meaningless baubles that had been forced together via some secret technique of Greed Congregation.
The inverted lightning retained its speed, reaching it first, colliding with the azure light.
For less than a second, both Wei Yi and Ding Wen found their eyes drawn to this impact, wondering whose attack would be superior, before the answer showed itself to them. The Antithesis lightning shattered into countless pieces, but it was not broken, instead seemingly being empowered by the large cloud of azure. Almost as if it wished to feed upon it, the inverted lightning spread out across the entire wave of gold, drilling and piercing through the azure light with every minor movement that it made.
Although the wave retained cohesion for that moment, it was clear that it would not remain that way for long, as every single fragment of azure that came into contact with the Antithesis bolts quickly melted into the air, turning into nothingness.
To Ding Wen’s credit, although his expression betrayed his shock, his actions did not. He leapt forward with confidence, intending to take advantage of Wei Yi’s momentary distraction.
Even when he saw her eyes turn towards him, with the hint of a smile appearing on her lips, he was far less perturbed than his otherworldly peer had been, carefully observing every hint of energy and movement within her body before choosing to proceed with his attack. The tip of his blade was half-way to her heart when he noticed that her left hand, which had been initially hidden due to her positioning, was lit up with a deep crimson, surrounded by faint shapes and hints of arrays that united together into an attack.
‘Wrong choice,’ she wanted to say to him, but due to the requirements of the technique, as she struck out with her palm, all she could shout was, “The Touch of God!”
Once again, an object emerged from the book to safeguard its owner, combining with the defence of his blade to negate the powerful beam of killing intent and to allow him to retreat safely, but Wei Yi’s purpose was still met.
‘This attack could function as a part of the technique to forcefully condense an area of warped space, so long as I use to amplify the effect of several powerful overlapping forces and distort the natural structure of the world in my favour,’ she understood, adding this observation to the mental book on the warp while also looking out for any further information within Yi Fenwu’s usage of it.
Ding Wen remained silent this time, simply raising both hands in a specific manner to create two more waves of treasure to compliment the one that was already moving towards her.
At this time, the other two strikes that she had previously unleashed towards the first wave finally met it at the same time, the power of the Sweeping Inferno and the Drying Sands strike uniting into an extreme force that shredded what little remained of the connecting energy between the countless valuables, causing countless golden trinkets and jewels to explode from it like a fountain, every individual piece flying to some corner of the treasury.
Although there were two more waves to contend with, Wei Yi only felt more confident, for she felt her mind accelerate with every single movement she made, and every single piece of information that she was able to glean from the battle.
While it was speeding up with every exchange between them, to her, it felt as if the conflict was slowing down, as every single action from her opponent revealed another fault, another weakness for her to exploit and target to limit the duration of the battle. She did not even turn towards the golden waves, instead releasing the other Beast’s Dice with two techniques manifesting within each pair, with both of them being a strange amalgamation of the three she had previously used to defeat the initial wave.
These two unnamed techniques were by no means perfect, but they were exactly what she needed for the present moment.
As gold and focused killing intent collided with one another, a hint of Antithesis energy emerge from every strand of killing intent, causing every touch of her techniques to disperse the azure energy and to weaken the stability of the waves of treasure.
This time, neither of the waves were outright destroyed, nor exploded into a magnificent fountain. Instead, the rapid loss of energy and the great loss of stability caused them to simply fall apart into nothingness, merging with the treasure-covered floor once again as if they had never moved to begin with. If someone was to enter the treasury at this very moment, the only hint they would have had of some attack being unleashed by either combatant would be due to the uneven quantity and thickness of the azure light in certain places, caused by the reversal and dispersal of the Antithesis energy that was easier and easier to produce with every single use of an Antithesis technique.
“The Light of Divinity!” she immediately followed up, striking down with an ethereal hammer composed of pure crimson to ensure that Ding Wen would have no opportunity to focus or regroup.
In spite of her using the technique almost the same second as the targeting circle appeared on the ground around her foe, she invested almost half of her entire pool of killing intent into it, causing the circle to grow to encompass half of Ding Wen’s side of the treasury. For a second, there was no hint of the enormous beam that should have followed, until the entire structure shook.
The ceiling cracked one moment, and burst open the next, a great quantity of stone and hidden gold caving into the room, followed by and covered in resplendent yet haunting crimson, the energy almost seeming a world of its own, a battlefield of countless combatants and a single figure that overwhelmed them all, her hand raised perhaps to call down this great beam of energy. Even with all of the rubble and debris in the way, its speed was barely affected, meaning that just in a single heartbeat, the stone nearly crushed the man beneath it.
Ding Wen’s eyes widened as his reflexes took over, making him grab the book in front of him and raise it towards the rubble that rapidly neared his position. Just as it was about to strike, an extremely powerful wave of energy burst out of the book, meeting the stone and instantly obliterating it into nothing, not even dust, while the energy that was shaded in the obnoxious azure continued, colliding with the Light of Divinity.
Wild wisps of energy from both attacks scattered into the treasury, some flying at or past Wei Yi in the chaos. She scanned both of the techniques, prompting the eyes of her mental self to widen just as much as Ding Wen’s eyes had only moments prior.
‘Although the energy appears to be formed through killing intent, it is completely different not just to Ding Wen’s energy but killing intent as a whole! In a way, it is an entirely new form of power, harnessing the essence of a concept or an attack to completely circumvent the natural limitations of one’s power and to amplify it beyond belief!’ she realised quickly, following this with her realisation of the source of the attack, ‘This is the energy of some kind of powerful artefact or treasure, most likely a sword, that has been forcefully harnessed not by Ding Wen himself, but by the book that it is contained within, causing it to unleash the full potential of the weapon into a single strike that was specifically aimed to dissipate the Light of Divinity! However… this is at the cost of spatial stability!’
The flow of time within the Augur’s Library seemed to accelerate even further, causing the world outside it to almost freeze as countless books appeared outside of the library, rapidly being processed, discarded and created once again by the natural process of Endless Calculation. Furthermore, the quantity of possibilities, theories and ideas only increased with every mental second, alongside the rate at which they were processed, as her mind slowly neared the very limit of what it was capable of, stimulated by her own adrenaline and the appearance of such a perfect situation for herself.
While this attack was an entirely unexpected piece on the chessboard that was this battle, it was one that benefitted Ding Wen in the short term, but brought him harm in the long term, for with the appearance of such a powerful force, one that was likely beyond the Hatred Augur realm of killing intent, the entire prison realm, which was naturally limited at that realm due to the lacking power of whatever spatial array or item permitted such a prison realm to exist, the structure of the prison realm fluctuated and was distorted. Not only did it mean that the book was momentarily occupied by this, but it also made it significantly easier to force the appearance of the warp.
Several real seconds later, when the Light of Divinity was almost entirely discarded by the powerful force from the book, White Echo returned to her grip, fitting perfectly in her powerful hands.
Without any delay, she used Ember Switch to bring herself forward, stopping several metres away from Ding Wen to then slice at him once, then twice, thrice and far more times, her hand turning into a blur due to the extreme speed at which these actions were performed. Every single slash was imbued with a sufficient quantity of killing intent to form a plane of it upon the strike, and although each one appeared to be entirely random, they were all carefully calculated for one purpose.
They combined together, mimicking the third type of the Beast’s bones and concentrating the killing intent around them in a single direction, that being the brain of Ding Wen. Furthermore, as the many flat planes of killing intent arrived at their destinations, they formed the careful lines of an array and an inscription upon the world itself, with many strokes having been copied directly from the array that was used by the Yi family to condense the identity tokens of their family members. The rest were taken from a variety of sources, with some being calculated from nothing within her mind, but their united purpose remained similar.
In addition to the simple planes of killing intent, the strikes included the essence of different combat techniques within them, with some featuring the Eight Great Changes, others including such simple moves as the Boulder Pushing palm or the Gentle Breeze strike, while others were warped variations of her more powerful attacks, such as the Elysian and Antithesis Palms.
When Ding Wen saw and felt this congregation of energy around him, he instantly responded by unleashing his killing intent into the area around his body, forming the armour of someone in the Hatred Augur realm with an impeccable quality.
However, in Wei Yi’s eyes, this was an insufficient reaction that came too late.
Before the armour could even condense in its entirety, her left hand had already released White Echo to permit for Antithesis energy to safely gather around it, while her right hand had similarly released the Bone of the Beast and instead gathered an immense quantity of sunlight-like True Ascendant physique energy, shaping itself into the form of the most suitable, yet one of the most frustrating attacks within her arsenal.
“TOUCH OF GOD!” she cried out as loudly as she could, investing everything she could to make the attack be as powerful as possible so that she would have even the slightest hope of success.
Blinding light emerged from her palm, shooting out towards her foe at the same time as an inverted bolt of lightning formed around her left hand, flying out at the same time and speed as her other attack. Both of them moved near to the speed of light itself, and both crashed down on their target at the same time as his Hatred Augur armour finally achieved a concrete shape.
On their own, both Ding Wen and Wei Yi knew that these two attacks would do little against him, but what the former had not yet realised was that as they struck him, they formed the eye of the array, the core of the inscription, and the very foundation for the portion of space around his head.
To him, things seemed to become silent for a second, while Wei Yi saw that all of the layers of energy from the planes of killing intent, the techniques imbued into them and the extreme power invested into both the Touch of God and the Antithesis Storm Burst reacted together, causing the very fabric of reality upon that point to quiver. Countless thin cracks formed within space itself, but the most significant effect occurred at the location of Ding Wen’s head, where all light and matter suddenly contorted and twisted, all semblance of stability and order breaking down without any limitations nor restrictions.
In that same heartbeat, an immense quantity of azure light poured towards his head, trying to subdue this force. With every breath, the situation seemed to change, with the first showing the clear victory of the warp, with more and more cracks appearing in the fabric of reality, while the next would suggest that the azure was subduing this effect, but every single time the scene changed, the cracks would grow in size and number, while the azure would decrease.
Every time the spatial cracks appeared, they would cut through the world around them creating thin yet long gaps within space itself, erasing a number of treasures and several parts of the throne from existence, further contributing to their power and the azure’s weakness.
At one point, it became clear that the warp had won, when Ding Wen’s head and a sphere of air around it exploded, the red of blood mingling with the rapidly decaying azure and the twisting, inverted colours and shapes of the warp, rapidly spreading into the spatial cracks and growing, breaking treasures and stone alike, with the only exception in proximity being the book that rapidly sought to escape from said proximity.
However, the warp could not remain for long without a master, or perhaps it was subdued by that invisible master, for the broken space recovered just as suddenly as it burst into existence.
Invading the Hall of Treasures
Several hours later, the new plan of action was concocted. It wasn’t certain that the man in white could be trusted, but if there was any chance of success with the information he had provided, then Wei Yi would have to go with the fewest number of people possible in order to avoid detection due to incompetent weaklings. In fact, the best approach may be for her to enter on her own, with some people standing by to be able to enter if the man in white turns out to have lied to them.
At the same time, Meng Chu would lead his forces on an undisguised assault on the surface, hopefully diverting Ding Wen’s attention to it instead of Wei Yi. This would also lead Shi Luo Feng to believe that their conflict could conclude there, at which point she might be lured out to engage in battle as well.
Since the so-called siege of the auction house wouldn’t delve into the depths of the structure, planning around it was incredibly easy for her, allowing her to complete the plan within a few minutes, creating a very simple set of directions and movements for every single soldier that would be participating, while also providing their captains with a greater quantity and quality of orders to allow them to adjust to any powers and gifts that Ding Wen could pass along to his forces, although she obviously couldn’t account for every single possibility and instead considered the likely functions of those gifts and came up with methods of defeating and circumventing them instead.
This would, at the very least, lower the number of casualties amongst her forces, with the gaps created as a result likely being filled up quickly by Ding Wen’s troops the second that she is able to triumph.
If Shi Luo Feng or her abominations do appear, she also instructed Dugu Wei and the captains under her to attempt to form a temporary truce with Ding Wen’s warriors, as neither side should want to see the abominations feed on them and their families before growing stronger and taking over the entirety of Beast’s Rest.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t possibly account for everything, and as a result, her current plan was significantly weaker than what she had prepared prior to learning about Ding Wen’s potential true nature, amplifying every risk and danger and significantly reducing the chance of success, but after revising what she had several times, completing one final revision just before the last of the guards returned to the underground passages, there was little more she could do to improve her work beyond its current level, not without more time and knowledge.
‘Frankly, I hate the feeling of lacking information. I don’t know the truth of Kong Shi Meng or the Great Families, whatever that truth may be, but that is mostly irrelevant for the moment. Lacking any clear evidence of Ding Wen’s origins and the extent of his abilities, however, means that there is always a high chance of planning around the opposite of truth,’ she thought, passing along written copies of her instructions to each relevant individual, ‘I hope I’m not failing to see Mt Tai in this situation.’
Whether or not that was the case, she could not determine it before she actually fought against Ding Wen, at which point it would be far too late.
She left the passages beneath Beast’s Rest with a grim look on her face, her spiritual will extended to her absolute limit with much of her attention focused onto it, for it was difficult to observe the entirety of her surroundings with any other one of her senses. There was none of the same dread that she had experienced before the appearance of the Great Family siblings, but she was still concerned.
Due to her last experience with fighting a powerful foe inside of a spatial domain, she also looked out for any potential spatial tears or pockets of warp, for either one could do a significant amount of damage to her and any of her forces without the combination of cosmic energy and True Ascendant physique energy that she had previously used to deal with the avatar of the Kong Holy Realm. Although something as large and complex as the prison realm was bound to have a consciousness already in control of it, it was still bound to be possible to harness some of the spatial energy of the world in order to strike at her, especially if it was being done by an otherworldly demon.
‘Admittedly, I may be going slightly insane about the potential ability of the otherworldly demons, but every single one of the preparations I’ve completed should still apply if he turns out to be the exact opposite of what I believe him to be,’ Wei Yi thought, glancing at the rings on her left hand.
One was the silver ring she had taken from Yi Fenwu, with no modifications made to it, while the rest were simple metal bands that she had created while contemplating the best method of getting around the potential trickery of the man in white, their internal structure mimicking the silver band, except with the energy circuits being adapted for killing intent rather than planar energy. Each one had a slightly different design, as she did not have much of an opportunity to test each one, so that if one failed to function as intended, one of the others would.
In the best case scenario, all of them would have some degree of effectiveness and usefulness, resulting in her owning a total of four defensive items, with three rings adapted specifically for killing intent while the silver band could theoretically be activated by using Antithesis energy to invert the energy it uses into anything other than planar energy.
Since the silver ring was able to block her attacks while she was using the full strength of her planar energy, and also because killing intent as a form of energy is naturally weaker than planar energy, so long as any one of them functioned, she would be able to safely ignore one attack from Ding Wen every few seconds, giving her significantly more options and flexibility in every single one of her actions, hopefully countering some of his treasures.
If they did fail, her raw strength should allow her to handle Ding Wen in a one on one battle, albeit with a great quantity of injuries.
‘It is a shame that I don’t have enough time to increase my physique cultivation, or else I could elevate the chances of success from roughly 24% to 47% or so, depending on how great the increase in the power of my physique energy and the body is. Although I do not think that physique energy is the direct counter to killing intent, it is still incredibly effective, especially when it is combined with a strong mind.’
On the topic of the mind, she did not have much time to create an entirely new mental art to protect herself from further mental effects, but she was able to construct a wall of storm clouds around the mental battlefield, duplicating the walls of the prison realm.
As they were within her mental domain and were thus entirely under her control, she was able to freely open or close them to any mental intrusions, though she suspected that if someone was intent on breaking in or out of her mind, then they could still manage, albeit with a greater delay. On the inside of her mind, in the mental library, she strengthened the support beams with a greater quantity of mental energy, creating a special location for potential influences from the mysterious characters to appear so that she could inspect them in more detail and conclude whether it was something she wanted to permit into her own mind.
Neither of these were perfect, nor did she have the opportunity to check whether they would be effective, but both were still better than having nothing at all. Often, action was the best way to improve.
With the extreme size of the main auction house of Beast’s Rest, finding it was incredibly easy, especially after she had visited it several times for reconnaissance and entertainment purposes. At the moment, the outside of the auction house was devoid of people, with only a few guards protecting the front entrance from unwanted intruders.
From the looks of it, these particular guards were only in the Fine Piercing realm, meaning that they were the spare warriors that would not be useful when sent to attack Shi Luo Feng, suggesting that those warriors had not yet returned to their posts.
‘Perfect. Even if this is a trick by Ding Wen, people at such a low cultivation realm won’t have a chance of spotting me,’ Wei Yi thought, blending into the shadows of the streets with her stealth techniques and approaching the auction house from the side. Even without the amendments that the man in white had made to the map, Meng Chu’s faction was still aware that there was a secret entrance in the side of the auction house, one that did not require any complex methods to access.
After a few taps on specific parts of the wall, a small door opened up within an alleyway that seemed to end at the wall of the auction house, presenting her with a passage into it.
The process of opening was quiet, and it was the same when it shut.
When she got through that passage, she dropped into the basement of the auction house, finding herself in a small room with several chests and crates being placed against one of the walls, with a candle lit atop them.
She wanted to scan the rooms around her with her spiritual will, but she felt the familiar energy of the man in white approach, prompting her to momentarily cease her actions and pay attention to the spiritual will-like energy instead. It gathered near her, then beside a wall that was lit by the candle, causing the man to appear by that wall, standing casually with his hands behind his back, dressed entirely in white and without any part of the clothes showing his skin, hair or any other defining features that could be recognised.
“You’ve arrived alone. A wise choice,” he said, his two-voice chorus still confounding his age.
However, Wei Yi did not pay attention to it or his words, instead, glancing around the figure curiously until a smile slowly bloomed on her face. “Nice trick. No wonder you didn’t appear in the open.”
“Are you prepared for me to guide you, or do you want to loot this area first?” he also didn’t respond, perhaps not caring to answer or intending to avoid questioning for whatever reason, “I am unfamiliar with the contents of this storage area, but I don’t think there’s too much of use here.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she said, briefly scanning all of the chests and boxes to learn that they contained various experimental pills, none of which were of particular interest to her. In theory, she could attempt to invert them into something useful via the Antithesis Palm, though she doubted her chances of success as the structure of the pills and the primary functioning aspect of it had formed and would then be inverted via the palm technique.
To confirm her theory about the appearance of the man in white, she opened the chest that held the candle on its lid, looking at some of the pills within to justify her action.
Just as she had expected, the second that the light moved and some of the figure’s legs were obscured by the shadow, those parts vanished, as if they had never been there. When she shut the chest, the missing parts of his legs returned, proving that this was nothing more than a projection of his form, true or otherwise.
‘He doesn’t seem to have noticed my observation, so I will not mention it for now,’ she decided, turning around and stepping up to the door, “Is this the way I should be going?”
“That’s right. These corridors are empty the vast majority of the time, and they are lit well by candles. Proceed to the left, pass three turns then turn right and enter the small room directly in front of you. I will continue to guide you from there.”
“I hope that your directions do not lead me astray,” she replied, using her stealth techniques to exit the small chamber.
The second she turned to the side, however, she found a man lying on the ground, several pieces of gold jewellery on his hands, around his wrists and his neck, with an eerie azure glow emanating from him. It slowly poured away from him, floating softly in the air as it flowed towards some unseen destination deep within the auction house.
“Is this sort of sight normal?” Wei Yi asked the second after she had stretched out her spiritual will and found that there were no guards to overhear her.
The man in white appeared beside a candle and immediately shook his head, his image blurring as the spiritual will-like energy reached out and touched the paralysed man, only to recoil moments later, almost as if it had been in terror, “Not in the slightest. Something is wrong.”
“You don’t say…” she muttered in response, “What is this azure light? Have you encountered it before?”
“Never. However, it is travelling towards Ding Wen’s inner chambers. Adding to that the fact that the light is densest around the treasures on his body, it must be something to do with him!”
He rapidly shared a list of instructions and directions with her, all of which were promptly stored on the map that manifested within the Augur’s Library for a greater ease of use. The path, albeit somewhat confusing and overly long on first glance, guided her through the compound while circumventing the greatest number of traps and obstacles possible, meaning that the journey would be significantly faster than attempting to traverse the area directly.
Wei Yi followed it, quickly stumbling onto more paralysed figures. Men and women alike lay on the ground, wrapped in azure light that emanated from them and their treasures, their eyes and bodies frozen in invisible ice.
Much like the figure in white, she also attempted to investigate the truth of this energy with her spiritual will, but when she came into contact with it, she could see… nothing. It was as if it was not present, with nothing out of the ordinary in the space that she had checked time and time again, despite the incredibly obvious light that filled it. However, she was able to view the internal organs of the frozen people and determined that everything about that had somehow been frozen in time, almost as if they were transformed into statues made of flesh and frozen blood.
‘This is almost like they’ve become treasures…’ she thought, her fists tightening, “Fucking otherworldly demons…”
“I remember where I’ve seen this exact phenomenon before! It’s whenever he turns around on that chair!” the man in white exclaimed, clearly failing to hear her whispers, “It must have been this exact same force that prevented him from losing control when he was being overwhelmed by killing intent, meaning that it must be connected to his cultivation!”
“Well, this isn’t exactly what I expected, but this isn’t too surprising. There won’t be much resistance in my path, will there?” she asked no-one in particular, speeding up significantly as she ran through the corridors of the auction house, her idea being proven right almost immediately.
The deeper they got into the auction house, the denser the azure light grew, and the less pleasant breathing within the area was, as this imperceptible light changed the colour of the prison realm from the sickly red to an oddly unbearable, absolute and pure azure. Something about its scent, its texture and its movements aroused disgust within Wei Yi, in spite of all of the mental defences she had, like it was a natural reaction from the entirety of her being.
Without making it obvious, she looked towards the figure in white, whose image stood in the nearby candlelight; his face was similarly twisted in displeasure, though it was difficult to judge the exact cause.
“You mentioned the traps in this area. Could you clarify?”
“Certainly. The first tra-”
Suddenly, his figure flickered, almost like the candlelight, before it stabilised, albeit with less clarity and certainty that before. He wanted to say something, but his image flickered again, losing even more of its stability.
Before it could happen again, he held out his hand and spoke quickly, “Thirteen spike traps there, there and there, twenty-nine dart traps in those locations, four hundred and seventy-two individual pressure plates to activate them with only these tiles being safe, travel through the air will activate one of four hatred arrays that have the same function, one button there disables those traps-”
His form flickered yet again, vanishing after a moment of uncertainty.
‘That’s quite the number of traps… Very well, then, I might as well… use these to strengthen my body!’ she decided, judging by the slight marks on the walls, ceiling and ground that the traps would not be deadly to her and could prove to be an effective method of further physical cultivation.
Furthermore, it wouldn’t take much longer than stepping on the correct tiles to avoid triggering the traps, meaning that it would be just as efficient.
As the crimson robes covering her body were able to recover from piercing attacks and small cuts, she did not bother removing them, simply running into the passageway with all of the traps while making sure to step onto every single pressure plate in the floor that would trigger each individual trap in just the right order and pattern.
Just a second after the triggered the first spike trap, a faint click could be heard from beneath the ground before a set of spikes, arranged in a grid pattern that was six spikes wide and six spikes long, with a total of thirty-six spikes connected to a single pressure plate, sprung out of the ground, through incredibly thin gaps in the floor, ones that most cultivators in the Planar Continents would have failed to notice on first glance. All of them were shaded slightly by a thin azure light, though the quantity was so insignificant that even if it could have a significant effect upon someone, it would likely not.
They stabbed through her clothing, then struck her skin and pierced it slightly.
Not a single spike was able to penetrate deeper than a single inch into her flesh, with all of them quickly being forced out as her wounds regenerated and her physique energy melted the tips of the spikes simply through flowing within her body.
As one set of spikes retracted, another set sprung out of the wall, prompting Wei Yi to curve and twist her body in such a way as to ensure that they would strike the correct places on her body, those that had vulnerabilities and would benefit from the tempering of even and consistent strikes upon them. Once more, metal pierced her flesh and then receded, with the majority of the spikes being damaged and bent after impact.
Several darts shot out from the direction of her destination, striking very specific points on her body in the intention of disabling her movement and breathing, but with her Golden Form ability being stimulated at just the right time, they bounced off her skin and stimulated the flow of her blood and the many energies within her sets of meridians.
Again and again, the traps activated and struck her, their might clearly having been intended for the typical intruder and not someone who had tempered their body to the extent that they were able to contend with someone in the third realm of physique cultivation while only being in the first. Furthermore, none of the spikes or darts were hatred blades, nor were they supplemented with any great quantity of killing intent in their attacks, meaning that they were only as powerful as the attacks that a typical human would be able to manifest through a great deal of mechanical ingenuity and engineering.
Therefore, by the time she reached the end, the only marks that weren’t on her robes were small and indistinct bruises that vanished even before the robes could reconstruct themselves.
She encountered some more trapped areas on her path, but with the experience of the previous trapped corridor, she was easily able to figure out the best way through every single one of them, both in terms of personal safety and continued physical cultivation.
Her gains were minor, for she did not encounter any traps beyond the level of the first ones, nor did the slowly increasing density of azure light appear to give her much trouble. Whether this was due to something about her particular body or the possibility that the azure light wasn’t intended to harm anyone, she couldn’t determine the exact reason, for there was no consistent reaction within her body whenever she was touched by the azure light.
Every now and then, the mysterious characters would quiver, or her physique energy would suddenly pulse with a greater degree of energy than usual, but nothing happened every single time.
‘Perhaps the light doesn’t affect anyone, or there are multiple ways of negating its effects…’ she concluded, as there was nothing else she could possibly guess without willingly receding her two energies, lowering all forms of defence and somehow blocking away the mysterious characters from reacting to any external stimuli, if that was even possible.
If that was possible, she would still be reluctant to show such weakness in front of something that is not only imperceptible to spiritual will, but also likely comes from the ability of an otherworldly demon, meaning that it would be significantly more dangerous to deal with than any normal ability or technique.
Once she was only several rooms away from Ding Wen’s chambers, the man in white briefly re-appeared beside a candle, the majority of his form flickering constantly.
“He has-” his appearance deteriorated further, the instability and constant fluctuation of his form causing his voice to be lost amidst the chaos, hiding away any of the words he attempted to convey to her until he finally managed to pronounce, “- the book-”
The man in white vanished once again, except it was clearly out of his own failure to maintain that illusory form rather than some outside interference, perhaps from the azure light.
‘The book? Does he have some kind of unique item that is shaped like a book and gives him a great quantity of power? If possible, I must capture it and inspect it closely to see if I am able to decipher what causes it to be so powerful, and if there are any methods of disabling or weakening such effects so that any future otherworldly demons cannot go on the same path that Yi Henghua attempted to go down,’ she thought, furrowing her brows.
She drew White Echo, gripping it tightly in her left hand, and held the Bone of the Beast in her right, though that grip was somehow less certain and comfortable than on White Echo, perhaps due to the latter blade being one that had been made without her while the former was somehow she had created specifically with the knowledge she had available to her.
In addition to the Beast’s Dice, which she placed within her pockets in order to allow them to fly out when necessary, she had three sets of weapons and eight individual weapons.
As for defensive items, although the weapons could most certainly be used for defence, there was little on hand apart from her powerful body. The bronze mirror with the warning scrawled on it could be converted into a protective barrier for a brief while, though, as it did not follow the intent and meaning of the message, it would only last for one or two strikes at full strength, which would be insufficient in the case of the book possessed by Ding Wen permitting for repeated, constant attacks, even if they were the least suited to break the killing intent in the mirror.
‘This is a shame, but there aren’t many defensive items to be found within the prison realm,’ she recalled the auction she had visited, ‘It would be for the best if it so happens that Ding Wen excels in defence more so than offence.’
With all of her stealth technique being put to use, she proceeded through the last few chambers, all of them lit by candles, the light from which was overwhelmed completely by the thick azure that emanated from the many bodies that lay beside one another, food and drink scattered over their clothing and bodies, suggesting that they had been feasting prior to the appearance of the azure light, likely having been the first to return from their missions.
That timing certainly didn’t do them any good.
The doors to Ding Wen’s chamber were tall and wide, incredibly impressive to behold. If she was to arrive here at a better time, she might have even paused to appreciate the sight, but she instead moved straight forward, pushing the doors open quietly just enough to permit her to pass through them and enter the primary chamber.
Jewels, golden bars and all sorts of other treasures littered the ground, all of them releasing the constant azure light that flowed upwards and towards the centre of the back of the room, where, atop a pile of glittering gold, stood a dark gold throne with crimson cloth lining.
Ding Wen sat atop it, his eyes shut, although the eyelids still permitted a certain quantity of azure to pour between them and a book that floated in front of him, a strange light emanating form the surface of the paper. He did not appear to be aware of her entrance, nor was he paying any attention to the world around him, seemingly being confused in his entirety by the mystical, seemingly otherworldly book.
No-one seeking to assassinate him would ever ignore such a perfect opportunity, and Wei Yi was naturally no exception, prompting her to rush forward with both of her knives aimed at vital points.
Despite her haste, her footsteps were silent, each step cushioned by a thin veil of energy from her physique and killing intent, yin and yang combining to prevent any of her actions from resonating with the environment and odd azure around her, completely obscuring her from non-visual detection as she crossed the space between the door and the throne, flooding both daggers with energy as she did so.
That should have been able to strike him with ease, and yet, just before her attack hit, azure light burst out of the book and impacted precisely against the points of her blades, throwing her back with just one simple strike of energy.
Immediately after, Ding Wen also awoke, his eyes snapping open with the azure dispersing harmlessly.
“You… Finally. I was wondering whether you would come to meet me again,” said the treasure-covered man, reaching into the book in front of him.
Somehow, his hand passed through the pages and vanished inside of the book, burrowing into the depths of the pages up to his elbow before he pulled out a large sword from within, gripping it with both hands while the book itself flew behind his back and seemed to vanish completely, though Wei Yi couldn’t tell whether it had truly vanished as it was completely imperceptible to her spiritual will even when it was right in front of her.
Unlike the book, the sword was not just visible to her spiritual will, but it acted like a beacon, filled to the brim with killing intent and made up of an enormous quantity of incredible materials and valuables, creating something that equalled the bones of the Beast despite being composed of treasures that appeared to have originated from the Planar Continents.
“Welcome to my treasury. Since you attacked me first, it may as well be your grave.”
Neither of them waited for the other to respond, for they knew that they both posed a serious threat to one another. As the large sword meant that Ding Wen’s movements would be slower than Wei Yi’s, she acted to take advantage of this by slashing with White Echo, creating a plane of killing intent that rapidly flew towards his throne. Just as quickly as she struck, one of the countless treasures that lined the ground flew up and into the path of her strike, an excessively large shield appearing in the way of the thin place of killing intent just to block it.
That gave Ding Wen the perfect opportunity to stab at her heart, intending to end her in a single blow, infusing an enormous quantity of killing intent into the longsword.
‘His movements are too simple and straightforward!’ she thought, meeting the attack with White Echo.
She positioned the blade of the dagger in a very specific way, then, as crimson lightning gathered around the blade, she deflected the blade with the essence of the Eight Great Changes, manifesting the change of the Repealing Spark to not just negate the blow, but to convert it into her own strength while she deflected it.
Then, while adding the essence of the Bestial Palm skill, which was also intended to retaliate against powerful foes, she struck with the same hand, stabbing at his heart yet again.
And, just as before, the book sprung out from behind his back, thought this time, it did not fire out a projectile of pure azure, instead turning to face her with its pages, finally allowing her to see what they looked like. Every single page appeared to be a portal into a great treasury, with walls made from gold and accentuated by sickly azure, and within lay an endless quantity of items. Blades, sabres, shields, pieces of armour, bows and arrows, pills, bars of precious metals and gemstones of unknown or mysterious origins and far, far more, with no walls or edges to the treasury in sight.
From within the book, separating from the endless trove of riches, flew out a goblet smeared in blood and collided with her weapon, blocking both the blade itself and the plane of killing intent that would emerge, albeit suffering great harm in the process.
The goblet that flew out continued in its path, travelling past her before dropping onto the ground and breaking into two.
‘Just as I thought, it is a spatial item, but one with seemingly no steps needed to activate it, nor any clear limit to its capacity, meaning that it used either an enormous quantity of spatial materials, or it is being empowered – or outright permitted – by some otherworldly power, possibly the same one that is responsible for the excessive quantity of azure in the air,’ Wei Yi concluded in an instant, using the Retreating Torch to create a gap between them, ‘It seems that unless I am able to generate an overwhelming, unstoppable force, I won’t be able to bypass the book, meaning that brute force, at least for now, is out of the question.’
Despite thinking that in her head, she still willed the image from the last minutes of the Kong Holy Grounds to appear within her Augur’s Library so that she would be able to analyse it in great detail, for if there was one thing that could barely be stopped by anything, it was the power of the world itself, the warp, the energy created via the fluctuation of space, one that would likely grow in strength the more complete the reality it was created in was.
Naturally, such a thing would also make generating such an effect more difficult, but if it was only for a second, she believed that she would be able to gather the necessary information from her past experience to force the warp to manifest upon her command.
‘Before I can possibly do such a thing, I must study carefully, both inside and outside of my mind, to see what this world, and my opponent, permit, lest I waste my time and energy.’
For this reason, she merely paused her assault for a single second, before resuming it with twice the force and energy of before, trying her best to test the limitations of the prison realm and to generate a weakness within the particular location of their combat, as to further simplify the process of forcing the warp into existence.
‘Piercing River!’ she threw out White Echo – naturally ensuring that it was protected by her energy for long enough to prevent either the Greed Congregation or the azure light from affecting it – before forcing killing intent to gather in her now empty hand, forming a Living Spear with internal channels that mimicked the golden arrow-spear of Yi Fenwu, albeit with far less stability and power than the high-grade artefact would have had.
Ding Wen did not need to resort to the mystical book to deflect White Echo, blocking it with his longsword instead before shifting his attention just in time to strike back at the rapidly approaching crimson spear.
“Do you think you can act freely here?” he said, forcefully pushing the freely moving White Echo away, “This is my treasury! Every item here is mine!”
‘The otherworldly certainly appear to have a fondness for spilling their secrets upon the slightest provocation,’ thought Wei Yi without a trace of surprise or fear within her expression, ‘I’m not some kind of idiot, Ding Wen. I can see this azure light everywhere, and I saw how it was connected to you. If you could not have some influence over the items connected to it, I would be disappointed.’
Furthermore, it was difficult to surprise someone with access to spiritual will, not without first forcing all of their attention onto a single thing that was in a completely different direction to that of the matter one was intending to hide.
As a large pile of trinkets and baubles floated up from the ground, forced into a large wave of gold and jewels by a thin layer of azure, she didn’t just notice it, but she responded to it pre-emptively, collecting a large quantity of lightning-like killing intent around her empty left hand to permit for the free usage of techniques while also releasing a pair of her dice to assist her. At once, using the physique energy meridians to circumvent the issue of using several overlapping techniques at the same time, she executed the Sweeping Inferno change to pierce and shred the literal wave of wealth, a Drying Sands strike to combat the fluid nature of the attack, and an Antithesis Storm Burst to disperse any semblance of cohesion within the attack.
Several forms of energy, warped and changes by her attacks, flew out of her hand and the dice that had flown closer to the golden wave, weaving together while never coming into direct contact before striking the hundreds of meaningless baubles that had been forced together via some secret technique of Greed Congregation.
The inverted lightning retained its speed, reaching it first, colliding with the azure light.
For less than a second, both Wei Yi and Ding Wen found their eyes drawn to this impact, wondering whose attack would be superior, before the answer showed itself to them. The Antithesis lightning shattered into countless pieces, but it was not broken, instead seemingly being empowered by the large cloud of azure. Almost as if it wished to feed upon it, the inverted lightning spread out across the entire wave of gold, drilling and piercing through the azure light with every minor movement that it made.
Although the wave retained cohesion for that moment, it was clear that it would not remain that way for long, as every single fragment of azure that came into contact with the Antithesis bolts quickly melted into the air, turning into nothingness.
To Ding Wen’s credit, although his expression betrayed his shock, his actions did not. He leapt forward with confidence, intending to take advantage of Wei Yi’s momentary distraction.
Even when he saw her eyes turn towards him, with the hint of a smile appearing on her lips, he was far less perturbed than his otherworldly peer had been, carefully observing every hint of energy and movement within her body before choosing to proceed with his attack. The tip of his blade was half-way to her heart when he noticed that her left hand, which had been initially hidden due to her positioning, was lit up with a deep crimson, surrounded by faint shapes and hints of arrays that united together into an attack.
‘Wrong choice,’ she wanted to say to him, but due to the requirements of the technique, as she struck out with her palm, all she could shout was, “The Touch of God!”
Once again, an object emerged from the book to safeguard its owner, combining with the defence of his blade to negate the powerful beam of killing intent and to allow him to retreat safely, but Wei Yi’s purpose was still met.
‘This attack could function as a part of the technique to forcefully condense an area of warped space, so long as I use to amplify the effect of several powerful overlapping forces and distort the natural structure of the world in my favour,’ she understood, adding this observation to the mental book on the warp while also looking out for any further information within Yi Fenwu’s usage of it.
Ding Wen remained silent this time, simply raising both hands in a specific manner to create two more waves of treasure to compliment the one that was already moving towards her.
At this time, the other two strikes that she had previously unleashed towards the first wave finally met it at the same time, the power of the Sweeping Inferno and the Drying Sands strike uniting into an extreme force that shredded what little remained of the connecting energy between the countless valuables, causing countless golden trinkets and jewels to explode from it like a fountain, every individual piece flying to some corner of the treasury.
Although there were two more waves to contend with, Wei Yi only felt more confident, for she felt her mind accelerate with every single movement she made, and every single piece of information that she was able to glean from the battle.
While it was speeding up with every exchange between them, to her, it felt as if the conflict was slowing down, as every single action from her opponent revealed another fault, another weakness for her to exploit and target to limit the duration of the battle. She did not even turn towards the golden waves, instead releasing the other Beast’s Dice with two techniques manifesting within each pair, with both of them being a strange amalgamation of the three she had previously used to defeat the initial wave.
These two unnamed techniques were by no means perfect, but they were exactly what she needed for the present moment.
As gold and focused killing intent collided with one another, a hint of Antithesis energy emerge from every strand of killing intent, causing every touch of her techniques to disperse the azure energy and to weaken the stability of the waves of treasure.
This time, neither of the waves were outright destroyed, nor exploded into a magnificent fountain. Instead, the rapid loss of energy and the great loss of stability caused them to simply fall apart into nothingness, merging with the treasure-covered floor once again as if they had never moved to begin with. If someone was to enter the treasury at this very moment, the only hint they would have had of some attack being unleashed by either combatant would be due to the uneven quantity and thickness of the azure light in certain places, caused by the reversal and dispersal of the Antithesis energy that was easier and easier to produce with every single use of an Antithesis technique.
“The Light of Divinity!” she immediately followed up, striking down with an ethereal hammer composed of pure crimson to ensure that Ding Wen would have no opportunity to focus or regroup.
In spite of her using the technique almost the same second as the targeting circle appeared on the ground around her foe, she invested almost half of her entire pool of killing intent into it, causing the circle to grow to encompass half of Ding Wen’s side of the treasury. For a second, there was no hint of the enormous beam that should have followed, until the entire structure shook.
The ceiling cracked one moment, and burst open the next, a great quantity of stone and hidden gold caving into the room, followed by and covered in resplendent yet haunting crimson, the energy almost seeming a world of its own, a battlefield of countless combatants and a single figure that overwhelmed them all, her hand raised perhaps to call down this great beam of energy. Even with all of the rubble and debris in the way, its speed was barely affected, meaning that just in a single heartbeat, the stone nearly crushed the man beneath it.
Ding Wen’s eyes widened as his reflexes took over, making him grab the book in front of him and raise it towards the rubble that rapidly neared his position. Just as it was about to strike, an extremely powerful wave of energy burst out of the book, meeting the stone and instantly obliterating it into nothing, not even dust, while the energy that was shaded in the obnoxious azure continued, colliding with the Light of Divinity.
Wild wisps of energy from both attacks scattered into the treasury, some flying at or past Wei Yi in the chaos. She scanned both of the techniques, prompting the eyes of her mental self to widen just as much as Ding Wen’s eyes had only moments prior.
‘Although the energy appears to be formed through killing intent, it is completely different not just to Ding Wen’s energy but killing intent as a whole! In a way, it is an entirely new form of power, harnessing the essence of a concept or an attack to completely circumvent the natural limitations of one’s power and to amplify it beyond belief!’ she realised quickly, following this with her realisation of the source of the attack, ‘This is the energy of some kind of powerful artefact or treasure, most likely a sword, that has been forcefully harnessed not by Ding Wen himself, but by the book that it is contained within, causing it to unleash the full potential of the weapon into a single strike that was specifically aimed to dissipate the Light of Divinity! However… this is at the cost of spatial stability!’
The flow of time within the Augur’s Library seemed to accelerate even further, causing the world outside it to almost freeze as countless books appeared outside of the library, rapidly being processed, discarded and created once again by the natural process of Endless Calculation. Furthermore, the quantity of possibilities, theories and ideas only increased with every mental second, alongside the rate at which they were processed, as her mind slowly neared the very limit of what it was capable of, stimulated by her own adrenaline and the appearance of such a perfect situation for herself.
While this attack was an entirely unexpected piece on the chessboard that was this battle, it was one that benefitted Ding Wen in the short term, but brought him harm in the long term, for with the appearance of such a powerful force, one that was likely beyond the Hatred Augur realm of killing intent, the entire prison realm, which was naturally limited at that realm due to the lacking power of whatever spatial array or item permitted such a prison realm to exist, the structure of the prison realm fluctuated and was distorted. Not only did it mean that the book was momentarily occupied by this, but it also made it significantly easier to force the appearance of the warp.
Several real seconds later, when the Light of Divinity was almost entirely discarded by the powerful force from the book, White Echo returned to her grip, fitting perfectly in her powerful hands.
Without any delay, she used Ember Switch to bring herself forward, stopping several metres away from Ding Wen to then slice at him once, then twice, thrice and far more times, her hand turning into a blur due to the extreme speed at which these actions were performed. Every single slash was imbued with a sufficient quantity of killing intent to form a plane of it upon the strike, and although each one appeared to be entirely random, they were all carefully calculated for one purpose.
They combined together, mimicking the third type of the Beast’s bones and concentrating the killing intent around them in a single direction, that being the brain of Ding Wen. Furthermore, as the many flat planes of killing intent arrived at their destinations, they formed the careful lines of an array and an inscription upon the world itself, with many strokes having been copied directly from the array that was used by the Yi family to condense the identity tokens of their family members. The rest were taken from a variety of sources, with some being calculated from nothing within her mind, but their united purpose remained similar.
In addition to the simple planes of killing intent, the strikes included the essence of different combat techniques within them, with some featuring the Eight Great Changes, others including such simple moves as the Boulder Pushing palm or the Gentle Breeze strike, while others were warped variations of her more powerful attacks, such as the Elysian and Antithesis Palms.
When Ding Wen saw and felt this congregation of energy around him, he instantly responded by unleashing his killing intent into the area around his body, forming the armour of someone in the Hatred Augur realm with an impeccable quality.
However, in Wei Yi’s eyes, this was an insufficient reaction that came too late.
Before the armour could even condense in its entirety, her left hand had already released White Echo to permit for Antithesis energy to safely gather around it, while her right hand had similarly released the Bone of the Beast and instead gathered an immense quantity of sunlight-like True Ascendant physique energy, shaping itself into the form of the most suitable, yet one of the most frustrating attacks within her arsenal.
“TOUCH OF GOD!” she cried out as loudly as she could, investing everything she could to make the attack be as powerful as possible so that she would have even the slightest hope of success.
Blinding light emerged from her palm, shooting out towards her foe at the same time as an inverted bolt of lightning formed around her left hand, flying out at the same time and speed as her other attack. Both of them moved near to the speed of light itself, and both crashed down on their target at the same time as his Hatred Augur armour finally achieved a concrete shape.
On their own, both Ding Wen and Wei Yi knew that these two attacks would do little against him, but what the former had not yet realised was that as they struck him, they formed the eye of the array, the core of the inscription, and the very foundation for the portion of space around his head.
To him, things seemed to become silent for a second, while Wei Yi saw that all of the layers of energy from the planes of killing intent, the techniques imbued into them and the extreme power invested into both the Touch of God and the Antithesis Storm Burst reacted together, causing the very fabric of reality upon that point to quiver. Countless thin cracks formed within space itself, but the most significant effect occurred at the location of Ding Wen’s head, where all light and matter suddenly contorted and twisted, all semblance of stability and order breaking down without any limitations nor restrictions.
In that same heartbeat, an immense quantity of azure light poured towards his head, trying to subdue this force. With every breath, the situation seemed to change, with the first showing the clear victory of the warp, with more and more cracks appearing in the fabric of reality, while the next would suggest that the azure was subduing this effect, but every single time the scene changed, the cracks would grow in size and number, while the azure would decrease.
Every time the spatial cracks appeared, they would cut through the world around them creating thin yet long gaps within space itself, erasing a number of treasures and several parts of the throne from existence, further contributing to their power and the azure’s weakness.
At one point, it became clear that the warp had won, when Ding Wen’s head and a sphere of air around it exploded, the red of blood mingling with the rapidly decaying azure and the twisting, inverted colours and shapes of the warp, rapidly spreading into the spatial cracks and growing, breaking treasures and stone alike, with the only exception in proximity being the book that rapidly sought to escape from said proximity.
However, the warp could not remain for long without a master, or perhaps it was subdued by that invisible master, for the broken space recovered just as suddenly as it burst into existence.
