V3C6: The Secret of the Arrow
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The shattering sound came from both directions, and both correlated with the addition of two points of anchor energy to the Truth of the Universe.

For a moment, there was nothing, but then two explosions of pure planar energy erupted from the positions of the mirage anchors, scattering the energy of the Hatred Split swiftly and throwing Wei Yi and the two Greats backwards with such force that even the Eldritch Hold physique ability proved to be insufficient to keep her in place, as the tendrils were either torn out of the ground or outright torn to naught.

She attempted to stabilise her stance as quickly as possible and return to combat, but to her surprise, the Greats used the energy from the explosion to retreat with incredible swiftness, flying to the outer edge of her spiritual perception before she could even begin to move.

“Get back here, you fuckers! Get… shit…” she began to yell at them but stopped quickly as her saner side reminded her that it would not cause them to return if they truly wanted to flee. Furthermore, with the great expense of energy on the Hatred Split, she would not have the opportunity to recover her physique energy with sufficient speed to chase after them with the World’s Echo physique. Instead, she frowned and attempted to memorise and process every single thing about the encounter that had just unexpectedly concluded.

‘So, their anchors can be damaged without striking at the dantian even while they are still inside of their bodies, but it requires an immense degree of force… They shouldn’t be able to learn of my identity without the conclusion that the prison realm is no longer under their control – which would imply that they have failed on an immense level, and should truly put them into a panic – and the fact that I displayed my killing will form should make them believe that I can freely shift my appearance if things don’t go my way, so I don’t necessarily need to consider their response or an attack on the Yi District any time soon,’ Wei Yi concluded after a moment, calming herself and changing her appearance back to her regular form, ‘On the topic of combat again, I might be able to extrapolate their attack methods and possibly make myself appear as one of them for a moment, but that will take a while…’

The next few seconds were spent in deep thought, but there was unfortunately little she could do with how little information she had to work with. She didn’t know why the anchor had broken, nor did she understand exactly why they needed the arrow from that otherworldly demon – who she found on the ground without a trace of life to him, nor a hint of the nature of the arrow or his particular ability.

One thing that she was able to roughly determine from the quiver in which the arrow must have been held was the shape and length of it, as well as the vague idea of the kind of arrowhead that it had.

‘If I luckily stumble upon it in the future, I will be able to store it away and ensure that it doesn’t fall into the hands of the Greats no matter what happens,’ she thought, burning the body of the otherworldly demon to further confuse the Greats as to her identity, purpose and reasoning, since someone with a simple hatred of the Greats wouldn’t stop to burn the body of some random person in the forest.

Before doing anything else, she collected the hammer she had thrown at one of them, shrinking it and putting it back onto the back of her head.

The two Greats had fled to the north and north-west, which just happened to be exactly where she was intending to go, meaning that if she rushed out now, she would simply meet them again and be instantly attacked.

Instead, she chose to wait for a while, then travel directly westwards to continue making progress while not intruding upon any other potential Great Family locations, hoping that most of them were limited to only a few in number and didn’t have the same enormous quantity as the combined forces of Yi City. With the power that each one of them had, matching an army with ease as a lone warrior, if the numbers of the Greats matched those of the normal families, not even the most insane leadership could ever prevent them from holding the power over Yi City in the open, rather than in the shadows, like in their current state.

 

A day later, she had decided that she had enough of travelling in the wrong direction, and returned to travelling towards the north, where the Ning District would now be located, but once more found herself encountering various planar beasts and obstacles. Most were not particularly difficult to defeat, given that most of them were only in the peak of the second realm, but what truly stumped her was the fact that several of them had been slain with a single attack by the time that she had found them.

In itself, that would suggest a combatant in the fourth realm or above going through the forest and slaughtering beasts that get in their way, but the presence of burnt-out campfires that been carelessly extinguished and still sent wisps of smoke into the air suggested that this person either chose to rest much like her, or had no choice but to do so.

‘That would be nonsensical, however. There are few things that can permit someone of a low realm-’

She was about to punch another weak planar beast to death when she felt something shoot into the range of her spiritual perception and head directly towards the foe before her.

Before the projectile struck, she appeared several steps behind her present position and watched as an ordinary-seeming arrow shot through the air and impaled the large planar beast, piercing directly through it before shooting out the other side and crashing into a tree, lodging itself half-way into the thick bark.

‘The arrow? That quickly?’ her eyes widened for a moment, but that did not stop her from shifting over to that location with the World’s Echo ability and collecting it, storing it in the House of Gold before the one that fired it could realise that she had done anything.

However, when the person entered her spiritual perception, she realised there was little she needed to do, as this person was none other than the strange hunter she had encountered earlier, but entirely overlooked due to the inability to sense the powers and artefacts of the otherworldly demons. The only reason she was even able to notice the arrow coming towards her was due to the shifting of air as it travelled, and if it had the ability to affect the air around it and keep it in place with an array or inscription, she could have easily been hit without any idea that there was something to dodge.

Slowly, the hunter trudged towards the carcass of the planar beast, gasping when he realised just what he had slain before excitement overcame him.

He found the wound on the beast, then rushed towards the location where he would be able to find his prized possession, but that was when he saw Wei Yi, standing far away from the place that should have housed his arrow. For a moment, neither one was quite sure of what to do, but then Wei Yi had an idea and walked over to him.

“Oh, it’s you again!” the hunter exclaimed, missing the expression that she had put on as she walked, “How do you do? Could you help me find the arrow that had pierced that fearsome beast-”

“Arrow? What arrow are you talking about? You don’t have any arrows on you,” she suddenly stated, putting her hand on his shoulder while releasing the darkened energy of the Binder of the Dark technique to completely obscure their surroundings, “Look, you’ve been out here for far too long, it’s even gotten dark. You should head home before you get yourself hurt.”

“Night? What are you… Huh? When did it get so dark?”

As he looked up, her dark energy obscured the sunlight in a large area, then wrapped in a dome around them making it seem as if the entire forest was enveloped by absolute darkness, without even the moon to light their way.

“See, you’ve even lost track of time. Do you recall which direction your home is in?”

“I… What is…”

“You’ve been getting distracted a lot as of late, so you really should get some sleep. Come on, rest here. You won’t be hurt. There are no beasts around here.”

“But, didn’t I-”

She shook her head, “You’ve been moving around without any clear reason or purpose, muttering about all kinds of strange things. You’re just in the first realm, whereas everything here is in the second and third realm and above. Do you believe that you would be able to kill any kind of beast with just one arrow when they’re so much more powerful than you?”

“… Yeah… That is strange…”

“See? Now, just relax and allow yourself to rest. Then, go home when you awake. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I do…”

“Good. Sleep now…”

Despite how strange everything must have been for the hunter, her reasoning seemed to have convinced him, for no sane man could believe that a single arrow would ever have such a powerful ability to pierce whatever it wanted despite no traces of arrays or inscriptions upon it. His eyes slowly shut, and his breathing calmed, and in just a few minutes, he fell asleep entirely, ignoring the fact that he lay just a few metres away from the bloody carcass of a terrible beast.

When she could be sure that he would not awaken, she breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the ground near him, as she was quite amazed that something like that succeeded without any preparations or appropriate techniques.

‘Well… That worked out, so now I need to allow him to leave safely, without the beasts consuming him as they would have done if he didn’t have the arrow… Actually, I suspect that he will be in more danger now that the blood of many foes is upon him, and I don’t really have any methods of dealing with it…’ Wei Yi thought, grabbing a random rock from the ground and condensing a thin needle of yang-type physique energy atop one of her fingers and began to carve out a simple array upon it, ‘I need to prevent him from dying randomly, and perhaps the best way to do so would be to give him something that can scare away the beasts for now, but will deteriorate quickly and will not catch the attentions of the greedy and envious, like the Greats.’

Normally, an array made by someone in the third realm of planar cultivation would be insufficient to ward off the most powerful planar beasts in the forest, but since spiritual will was utilised in the completion of arrays, she could also empower them with her superior killing will cultivation and thus achieve a far greater effect than she otherwise would.

The process took her a few minutes, but when she completed the array, it lit up with a soothing cosmic light that slowly faded into the stone until it was entirely invisible so long as anything covered it.

Since it would likely become entirely invisible after a few more hours, she placed it into the hunter’s pocket and took out the planar core of the beast that he had slaughtered. After burning the rest of the corpse – and simultaneously cleansing her blood-covered hands from the extraction process – she moved on swiftly, rushing northwards. She did not intend to reach the border of the Ning District, as that would necessitate another few days of travel, but she did with to make up for the lost time.

 

Besides a few more encounters with planar beasts, none of which truly challenged her, Wei Yi was able to make a significant degree of progress before nightfall, stopping on the branch of a large tree with a chunk of so-called ‘Enigmatic Metal’ from the House of Gold. Although the otherworldly artefact did not explain how to procure it, nor what made it so enigmatic, it did state that it was easily to mould and manipulate, especially when combined with a seemingly arbitrary list of other items, and could be used to create anything from a simple shield to an entire set of armour, although the exact method of achieving something of the sort from a simple chunk of metal was also not explicitly described while within the House of Gold.

While she could not rush to produce that set of armour, she did tear off a chunk of the Enigmatic Metal and begin to fashion it into a mask, which was exactly what she was currently missing. Having an entire dark outfit might be a little too much, but a mask alone could easily be explained away with any number of reasons, so she would prefer to hide her identity a little more from other Greats.

‘I could even maim my face on purpose, preventing the wounds from healing- ah, that would be a little more difficult with all of my attainments in physique cultivation, wouldn’t it? It would affect any attempts to change my appearance as well, since the entire point of physique cultivation appears to be to stabilise the body before bringing it to greater heights than it could otherwise reach. In that light, it is even more curious that my killing will can change my shape to such an extent,’ she thought, transforming her left hand into its clawed form for a moment, ‘Fuck, can I even dye my hair at this point?’

She grabbed her ponytail with one hand and inspected it for a moment, sighing when she confirmed that it wouldn’t be affected by any typical methods of dyeing one’s hair. That messed with her plans ever so slightly, but she decided to carry on with her mask for now.

Once most of the particularly complex parts were done, taking her roughly an hour and a half due to trying to get it to fit her perfectly, she shifted most of her attention to her Ascendant’s Library, where she looked upon the extremely rough copies of her incomplete Ascendant’s Transformation and Defiler’s Point Beams, the latter of which she could not bear to associate with herself due to its origin. Perhaps, one day, if she found herself with an entirely different variation of the technique, or if the Greats were defeated, she could proclaim it to be the Ascendant’s Point Beams.

Her focus was instead on the Ascendant’s Transformation, which currently contained the few basic principles that she was able to extract from the killing will form. She unfortunately had a very limited comprehension of it, and unless she wished to risk using whatever the Truth of the Universe could create for her, Wei Yi had to work on it slowly and cautiously, comprehending every part of the process before replicating it with the powers of her four types of her cultivation.

In theory, it was possible to replicate every aspect of a cultivation realm with techniques and the clever manipulation of energy via one of the five great arts, but in practise, that was significantly more difficult. To her knowledge, the only people to successfully use more than one planar anchor were the Great Families, the only one to gain the boon of the Imperfect Rift realm was she with the nascent rift from the Nine Petals Cosmic Lotus, but other than that, most were incredibly limited in when they could achieve the power of any cultivation realm. It was this that allowed everyone to be certain of another’s realm whenever they witnessed a particular ability, like externalised force, a planar anchor, solidified planar energy, the burst of a searing mark, purified planar energy from the Linked Channels realm, echoes of chaotic halos, a nigh-bottomless supply of energy and the Eternal Gate of the ninth realm.

‘Frankly, the most I expect is the ability to subtly change the colour of my skin or hair, which would allow me to blend in to most communities so long as I can change by hair to be brown or black, since the crimson hair I currently have is rather distinct even for the Yi family, while skin colour can be significantly more flexible even in the Yi District,’ she thought while experimenting with slight improvements and additions to the technique as the sun slowly returned to the horizon, at which point she dropped down from her tree and returned to reality, putting the Ascendant’s Transformation aside with two more lines of text.

That seemed like a minor improvement, but as anyone who didn’t rely on random enlightenment for the creation of techniques would know, even one accurate word was immensely valuable.

With a full pool of cosmic energy and meridians brimming with power, she employed all of her available movement skills to navigate the forests with immense speed, throwing quite a number of leaves off the branches of nearby trees as she travelled due to the raw force of her movement. No further interruptions stopped her until the sun had begun to set again, at which point she stumbled across a small village in the middle of a dense wall of trees.

It was a simple set of structures placed within a clearing, protected only by the trees and a few feeble fences that would be unlikely to hold up well against any planar beast within the area. Clearly, this village did not have much contact with the outside world, as none of the fashion, design or even techniques at their disposal appeared to match anything Wei Yi had ever heard of in Yi City.

Out of those three, their techniques and form of cultivation appeared most curious. As she sat in another tree and carefully observed some kind of ritual, she saw two men tearing apart a beast and extracting its planar core, before throwing it into a large cauldron that boiled with blood and flesh. Within, she was able to sense quite a number of cores, all of which were slowly melting into raw energy thanks to the concentrated heat from several crimson coals, a type of fuel that burned with a particularly high temperature.

When they concluded that their brew was complete, without any obvious usage of spiritual perception or anything else of the sort, they removed the cauldron from the flame and poured the contents into several rough bowls of varying sizes, with the smallest being for the children and the largest for the muscular combatants of the village. After kowtowing to the flame, they sat down on the ground and readily consumed the mixture of blood and flesh.

‘Interesting. They don’t have any clear cultivation technique, but this process allows them to consume planar energy and digest it more naturally, adding it to their bodies slowly albeit consistently,’ she observed traces of thickened planar energy within the blood broth that then entered the bodies of those that consumed it, suffusing their meridians and awkwardly flowing through them without any direct input from the people, ‘If they had proper guidance, they would achieve far more from this, but for now, I ought to memorise this and see if I could expand on it to create something that less resembles the prison realm’s cuisine.’

Neither their appearances nor clothing seemed to match what she knew of the Ning District, so after staying a little longer to see them practise some rudimentary punching routines, she navigated around them and returned to her route.

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