Four hours in reality translated to one hundred and twenty hours within the prison realm. This was a positive the vast majority of the time, since it gave her far more time to spend on whatever it was that she was busy with that time, and it was also beneficial here, although she did not enjoy it whatsoever this time.

For the first real hour, she lost roughly every two minutes, which equalled a total of nine hundred losses before everything that she was slowly absorbing from the replicas finally started to pay off within her own combat ability and style. At first, it just led to her surviving slightly longer, but it eventually allowed her to actually retaliate against some of the replicas, and by the end of the second real hour, she had even managed to land a small scratch on one of their faces using nothing but the Scorching Blade techniques.

Especially when the incredibly tough skin that she possessed was taken into account, that was an impressive feat, but it was not one that she could ever be satisfied with, so she continued.

With time, exploration and observation, she slowly figured out which skills suited her best, and which ones were most effective at which roles. In particular, she came to like the Draconic Claw technique, as it meshed well with her killing will transformation and seemed to gain power when used with the claw-like hand, although that might or might not have simply been her imagination.

This increase in power appeared to be somewhat unreliable, and as such she did not want to focus on it over more consistent forms of strength and power that would not force her to flip a coin to see whether they would succeed that particular time or not.

Of course, elements of randomness like this tended to be those that she did not yet comprehend in full, and likely had something to do with the strengthening of yin-type energy on the left of her body during the killing will transformation, which perhaps extended to attacks that matched with the nature of killing intent being executed through her left arm. The issue was that this strengthening wouldn’t always apply in the case of the Draconic Claw, so until she understood the nature of the technique to the level that this made sense to her, she would stay away from experimenting towards uncovering the reason for this at random.

In addition, the Draconic Kick proved a strong fit for her long and powerful legs, which were likely tempered significantly by her use of the Violet Kick that, more than likely, was a technique as ancient as the Master of Yi City, and thus contained more power and potential than the vast majority of modern, commonly available techniques, preparing her well for another skill of a similar level of power, which did bring another factor to her attention for future consideration.

In general, it seemed that the assassin organisations of the world had not suffered as much due to the decline of everything after the disappearance of Kong Shi Meng, which implied that they were either allied with the Greats, beyond their detection or interest, or sufficiently powerful to be able to oppose them and do enough damage to dissuade the Great Families from attempting to claim their knowledge.

‘So far, the assassins that I have met were not particularly powerful, but Yi Bai seemed to get her technique by accident whereas Min Lian had been sent to attack someone a realm below her – failing mostly due to a superior member of the Greats appearing – so it may be that the strongest assassins aren’t usually caught that easily,’ she thought at some point during the third hour, although she was barely able to keep track of the timeline even with the Ascendant’s Library recording every single thing that she had done, ‘That would make sense, considering the fact that most assassin organisations, regardless of their preferred techniques and killing methods, tend to attack quietly and while attracting as little attention to themselves as possible, so the best would be those that have not yet been caught or revealed to the world.’

Fortunately, the Scorching Blades were one of the less known groups, as they and the tale of Chao Jianhong were far less significant to the history of the world than the Weavers of the Dark or the Endless Dark – whose names are believed to be purely coincidental – and appeared in far fewer books and tales than the latter two.

As a result, her use of their techniques wouldn’t immediately cause suspicion, and if she was able to control them with great accuracy, she would be able to showcase them in a different fashion that would cause most to doubt whether they could even be the same techniques. If she then used the power of the Ascendant’s Dao to shift the form of the technique into a different shade or colour, like making the draconic flames golden, blue or green, which, while it would be a total waste of planar energy, would allow her to instantly separate herself from the assassin organisation even for those few that knew them.

After all, techniques were typically rather static, changing only due to particular physiques and abnormal circumstances, so for there to be such a significant difference from the standard Scorching Blade physiques for seemingly no reason would imply that they have to be sufficiently different from one another to produce such differing effects, and that would mean that they were either only coincidentally similar, or that these were a different variant of the Scorching Blade techniques, perhaps created long ago and now used by an entirely different family, group or individual.

Even then, some might fail to make such an assumption, whether they could be blinded by emotion or simply skip that detail to arrive at some conclusion that was more favourable for them, but at that point, she could probably use an entirely unrelated set of techniques and get a similar result due to some random person mixing up a dragon and a phoenix, for instance. And yet, despite that being such a random thought, it gave her an idea.

‘Dragons and phoenixes are highly distinct in their actual nature, but at the same time, they are some of the closest mythical creatures I am aware of. Wouldn’t it be rather simple to change a few things around?’ Wei Yi pondered near the end of the third real hour, and immediately came up with another test for the Realm of Potential, which was whether it would be able to produce a technique that she had not yet obtained, as that would give her such an immense number of possibilities that she would essentially be able to replace the Truth of the Universe altogether.

As it turned it, it did permit this, but only to a very limited extent, and only if it was a derivative of techniques that she already owned and understood, as the replica would either fail to generate or would just attack her with raw energy or its fists.

It was obviously not going to allow her to do whatever she wanted, however she wanted, but that was enough for her to create something she called the Phoenix Transformation by the end of the last hour of work. The skill wasn’t so much of an independent technique as it was a modifier of every single Scorched Blade technique, practically switching the prefix of most moves from ‘Dragon’ to ‘Phoenix’ and swapping their priorities from absolute damage to a greater focus on speed.

She hoped that would prevent any of the confusion she had considered earlier.

With only thirty hours of work, she was unable to reach beyond the Initial Accomplishment stage of the Phoenix Transformation technique, but as it was a part of the Scorching Blade series, her understanding of the other skills allowed her to use it at the equivalent of the Full Success stage while receiving the full benefits of the modifier.

It did, however, get her thinking about applying this kind of principle to everything – creating a universal modifier that could raise the strength of everything she had, and will, ever encounter or create without needing to develop it in either the Truth of the Universe or the Realm of Potential. If she was somehow able to stack these, so to speak, then that would be able to boost her ability just as much as the multiple anchors of the Great Families, effectively making her a force on par with them without even needing to learn of their secrets.

Although it was an extremely enticing possibility, she couldn’t spend much more time within the Realm of Potential without trying to tear her hair out, and neither did she have the time to do so, for she was informed that someone had appeared within close proximity of her on the outside of the prison realm, meaning that it would be best for her to delay this matter until another time, at which point she might be able to accumulate more insight on the matter of modifier techniques as a whole.

There was even a chance of finding something like them within the Luo District, so long as they had similar thoughts to her in the past.

She ‘awoke’ from the Kong Prison Realm and opened her eyes in the Planar Continents, finding that the sun was rising beyond the horizon, and that someone had decided to set up a camp not far away from the place that she had chosen to rest beneath. It was a young man, with only the trace of hairs above his lip, a thin frame and soft hands that had clearly not had to weather many years, and he did not appear to have realised that there was anyone else in the vicinity of his camp, which consisted of a small campfire and a branch covered in cloth that served the role of shelter and a bed to rest in without needing to worry about common annoyances such as rain or wind.

This man – although it would be suitable to call him a boy, considering his age – possessed no clear cultivation, with his dantian being empty and impure, but his body was strengthened beyond the level of any ordinary person, with the traces of various medicinal essences and miracle fruits within his system.

‘So, I don’t think this is an otherworldly demon, but it also isn’t someone akin to that hunter who was kept alive by an arrow. Let’s see, does he have anything of interest on him…’

Of course, any items of otherworldly origin remained completely invisible to her spiritual perception, but if they were in one of his bags or some other tight space, she would be able to make out the trace of some item through the way in which it affected everything around it, but so far as she was able to tell, there was nothing of any interest anywhere near him beside the few low-grade miracle fruits that would be able to slightly strengthen one’s body upon consumption, without the need for any preparation.

Considering the fact that several of them had the same kind of medicinal effect as the ones present within his body, it was likely that he either lived somewhere where these items grew in large quantities, or that he had some tremendous fortune in stumbling across so many of these during his journey.

This made him rather interesting and made her want to investigate.

‘Kidnapping him would be a bit cruel, so I should figure out exactly what he’s up to first, at which point I will have a better idea of what I can do with him… Wait, that makes me sound like I’m planning something suspicious… and I suppose that I am… Eh, I guess I’ll just give myself away and see how he responds, and if a conversation follows, I’ll try to learn whether or not he is fortunate, or whether there are some other circumstances I need to investigate first,’ she decided, intentionally snapping a branch beneath her as she pretended to rise from a deep slumber, allowing herself a slight yawn, as being as loud as possible would be far too silly for her.

There were a lot of different things she would do in order to succeed, and to get the most favourable outcome out of every situation possible, but she respected herself too much to make herself look like a complete buffoon. Ignorant and distracted at times was something that she would allow herself, but not outright folly.

‘Perhaps that’s another flaw of mine, but I think that some self-respect should be maintained…’

Fortunately, the young man had lived in the dangerous lands between the districts for long enough to notice something as obvious as her actions, so he stood up and raised his fists in preparation.

“Who’s there?”

‘Alright, so if I am already acting like a fool…’ she considered for a moment, then responded, “What’re you shouting for? Couldn’t you see that I was sleeping here?”

She got out from beneath the tree roots, her long hair trailing along the dirt and leaves that were on the ground, covering much of her crimson locks with brown, green and crimson leaves that made her seem as if she had been beneath that tree far longer than one might assume.

“I bothered you?” the young man was confused for a moment, before he was able to somehow convince himself that she was right, “I’m so sorry, I hadn’t noticed that you were there. How long have you been resting there?”

“Well… Is it still the sixth day of the seventh month?”

“I don’t think so?”

“Then, is it still 1,051,961?”

“Eh…”

“Listen, I am Da Gang, the greatest warrior of the Ning District. Tell me what you are doing here, and why do you have so many things in that bag of yours?” she questioned him, deciding that her approach would ultimately be, ‘Act as unreasonable and unbelievable as possible so that he will doubt that I had even existed the moment that I decide to leave. Hopefully.’

“Well, my village grows all of them. Do you-”

He was unable to finish his sentence before Wei Yi’s figure was suddenly enveloped in darkness, then vanished alongside it, with any traces of her presence disappearing as if she had never been there.

Naturally, the young man looked around and tried to find her, but without spiritual perception, he stood even less of a chance than the ordinary cultivator, who would, at the very least, be able to scan the area around them and potentially track down some minute traces that might or might not point to her existence. After several minutes of explorative attempts, he settled back down at his camp and absentmindedly reached into his bag to grab a random miracle fruit.

His hand went deeper into the bag than he had expected, but alongside the earlier encounter with what was either an insane woman or some hallucination, the young man didn’t think to question this and just ate what he had.

Meanwhile, Wei Yi reappeared far above him, standing on one of the branches of a tree and infusing a large quantity of metal-type planar energy into the miracle fruit that she ‘borrowed’ from him.

‘Fortunately, it appears that miracle fruits are also affected by the silver-leaf energy, which means that I can strengthen everyone within the prison realm and my entire faction by allowing them to eat this kind of item on a regular basis,’ she thought to herself, tossing the finished product into the House of Gold before glancing down at the confused man on the ground, ‘If it is as he says, then I will need to search for the place he comes from and attempt to understand why someone like him is wandering around without any obvious supervision or cultivation. For now, I will need to move on, so I hope that this man will not go in the wrong direction any time soon.’

She waited for him to be sufficiently distracted to get one of the newly grown miracle fruits and place them into his bag, then quickly rushed away towards her earlier destination, releasing waves of spiritual perception every now and then to scan through the forest and look for wild animals, planar or otherwise, to practise with.

Despite the majority of cultivators abandoning the practise and refinement of ordinary physical strength after the second realm, as planar constructs and energy would far surpass anything that ordinary body cultivation could ever reach, it was also commonly held that there were two primary elements to most techniques that did not purely rely on planar constructs, like her Elysian Storm. Those were the physical, and the energy sides of skills.

In the opinion of combat cultivators city-wide, save a few notable exceptions, in order to truly comprehend a technique and be able to extract all of its power with any single attack, it was vital to understand and have practised both sides independently of one another, to maximise one’s understanding of the physical aspects of each strike or movement as well as familiarising oneself with the exact planar energy flow and circulation required in order to turn those movements into something far superior to merely hitting one another with fists or legs.

The exact truth of such a statement was somewhat varying, as some had little talent for regular fighting and would only slow themselves down with excessive practise of physical technique, although some others were better at that side of cultivation, hence the existence of body cultivators.

Fortunately for Wei Yi, she was equally good at both sides of cultivation and combat, so balancing those aspects was easy for her and would greatly benefit her so long as those things were true, and some extension of the enormous Great Family conspiracy to obscure the truth about everything that could affect their hidden grasp over the world. If that was the case, she expected to be able to uncover this both in reality and within the Realm of Potential, at which point she would be sure to instruct everyone that she was allied within in order to prevent them from making the same mistake that she was currently engaging in.

‘Such a thing is fortunately rather unlikely and is more likely to be me being rather paranoid at times. Fortunately, I can control myself, and such insane thinking can occasionally lead me to uncovering certain facts that I might have otherwise missed, and my assumptions regarding who is and isn’t an otherworldly demon have proved accurate an unfortunate number of times…’

Despite the forests near the Ning District being rather bare the last few times that she had ventured into them, she managed to come across a suitable target for the practise of one half of the Scorching Blade techniques – a wolf that was significantly larger than usual due to a similar diet to the young man from a few minutes ago, with the primary power of the miracle fruits having concentrated on its legs, causing them to be abnormally large and powerful even for a dire wolf.

This made it a sensible target to experiment with the faster skills of Phoenix Transformation.

She appeared some distance in front of it using a movement skill, then subdued all of her cosmic energy and approached it using only her body and physical strength. Even then, she was likely far superior to it through the consistent refinement of her physical form through cosmic energy and physique alike, but if she and the wolf could previously be compared to a deity and an insect, now it was closer to a battle between a titan and a small dog, which, while still highly unfair, would give her a chance to practise some control alongside evasion and efficient striking.

The moment that she emerged from the green of the woods, the wolf noticed her presence and turned towards her, showing its teeth and readying itself to leap at her if she does not retreat.

When she did not do that, it saw no reason why it shouldn’t pounce on a large meal like her, especially with her wearing far less armour than the typical mortal might employ if they wanted to fight a large beast without the use of a bow, meaning that it would be far easier to devour her than most of the humans it had previously encountered.

And yet, when it attacked, leaping towards her at great speed, not only was this strangely red human not taken by surprise, but she instead managed to evade, moving a little like a graceful or even intelligent beast, before slashing at the wolf’s side with nothing but her hand and fingers.

Worse yet, those fingers were somehow sharp enough to pierce its fur, skin and flesh, digging in deeply and leaving behind a series of five severe marks on its side, blood slowly pouring from them.

As it landed some distance away from her and looked in her direction, it saw that one of her hands had turned dark and that a portion of her fingers turned to bone, with the tips being sharp enough to pierce through metal with far too little effort. If not for her ability to dull them, and to control exactly what she would and wouldn’t pierce with them, they would be extremely bothersome and inconvenient for use in anything other than combat, although it would not have ever made her consider less conventional uses of claws.

The wolf was not a particularly intelligent beast, especially in comparison to any planar beast, and thus it did not fully comprehend the nature of its opponent, thinking only that the human had some kind of trick which it needed to guard against, win as quickly as possible, and eat it before hiding away to recover.

Meanwhile, Wei Yi was adjusting her own power so that she did not kill it before getting to use more than a single Phoenix Claw. She wasn’t sure whether she would be able to locate more convenient animals to practise with, nor did she know where the nests of most planar beasts in the area was, so it would be best to make use of the wolf for as long as possible. In theory, she could heal it with one of her physique abilities or techniques, but that seemed highly unnecessary and inefficient, not to mention the fact that the infusion of lifeforce would implicitly raise the overall strength of an ordinary creature or person by a slight margin, effectively empowering the beast with both knowledge and physical ability every time she restored its form.

This would provide greater challenge, but the requirement of lifeforce would increase with every single time that she healed it, so it would ultimately waste far more of her energy that simply returning into the Realm of Potential and practising within it, especially if non-human replicas were possible.

Instead, she consciously limited her physical ability in every regard to that of herself at the peak of the first stage, as she was still quite powerful back then but would not be able to easily obliterate a common animal like this, meaning that some degree of thought will need to be invested during combat in order to avoid injury.

‘Furthermore, it is commonly held that the likes of dragons, phoenixes and qilins are closely linked to the heavens themselves, with parts of their bloodline and cultivation techniques being connected to the Great Dao and thus making perfect material for forbidden skills to be borrowed from and based on. Doesn’t usually work out too well, but since the Scorching Blades must have been studying these kinds of things for a very long time, I suspect that they might have a better grasp of dragons than most, and if my modifier skill correctly converts every principle, then I might be able to finally obtain a shard of my very own forbidden skill and uncover some part of the Great Dao,’ she thought as she stared down the wolf’s eyes, ‘Come to think of it, creating this phoenix modifier might have actually been a very sensible idea, as I am a woman and will find it easier to uncover the secrets of a phoenix than of a hermaphroditic species like a dragon, even if my perfect balance of yin and yang is taken into account.’

Both dragons and phoenixes had only a single gender, and dragons were not technically female or male, despite their commonly masculine appearances while in their true forms and their incredibly feminine figures in their human forms, while phoenixes were only female. Naturally, it was significantly easier for her to understand and emulate the female form, even with her experiences of the male body as a result of memories from the Thunder Lord, and thus practising the Scorching Blade techniques through the Phoenix Transformation would grant her the highest chance of success.

Qilins were similarly only male, but perhaps due to her own preferences, she had little interest in thinking about them. Given that she couldn’t fully emulate any of their aspects either, there was little point in doing so anyway.

Once the beast rushed towards her once more, its jaws open and fangs on display, she felt the full extent of the difference between herself now and then. With just the power that she wielded at the first stage, dodging this beast suddenly became significantly more difficult, and she found that evading this particular attack might be outright impossible for her.

Instead, as the wolf was about to get close enough to tear off a chunk of her flesh, she plunged her claws into the wolf’s neck and grabbed him with her other hand, using the beast’s speed and momentum to throw it into the tree behind her while gouging out a large chunk of its neck.

It crashed into a thick, large tree with the audible crack of bone and squelch of flesh, followed by a vast quantity of blood pouring from the several wounds on its body. Despite her intent to finish the battle after as much fighting as possible, the fact that she underestimated her strength yet again forced the conflict to end far more quickly than she could have ever expected. As it turned out, the spine and neck were incredibly valuable elements of the body, and damage to them was very effective.

‘That much is obvious, of course, but perhaps I can incorporate attacking specific weak points into my strategy to maximise the efficiency of every single strike,’ she considered as she restored her strength and glanced back at the excessively long hair pouring from her head and trailing along the ground, ‘I do need to get rid of this, though. Since the old and new parts of my hair differ in strength, with the newer half being far stronger due to the hair roots being constantly strengthened during most of my cultivation, I can separate them as easily as the root and branches of the star metal, so I should probably make use of them…’

She scratched her head for a moment, making sure to dull the claws as it was actually more comfortable to use them than her nails, before glancing at that hand and getting an idea.