She was unable to detect any trace of anything related to the Magnanimous Leech on their bodies, whether in killing intent, spiritual will, planar energy or even physique energy forms, so she temporarily shelved that theory again. If she was given a reason to suspect that there had some been some strange actions on the part of the Shi family, now or long in the past, she would naturally attempt to get to the bottom of things if it had any relevance or danger to her, but for now, more paranoia would only bring her closer to the state of Huang Yu Di, which she really didn’t need. She had enough to worry about without making up threats and mysteries at the same time.

For a while, she stared out into the sands once more, keeping an eye on the interaction between Great Dark and the Hammers, which had little substance to it beside them trying to actually speak.

The group that she suspected to be the Flood Kings of Shi, a group that specialised in water techniques that acted as a flood would, overcoming obstacles and tearing down anything in their way, found their way to Great Dark soon enough as well. They stepped into the conversation by accident, as they had walked in while both were silent for a while.

It didn’t take long for the Flood Kings to recognise the nature of the Hammers, if not their identity as well, so they shared a quick glance with one another and managed to decide on a tactic just like that. The women approached the Hammers, distracting them before they had a chance to do a thing to interact with them, and then brought them out of the tent simply by walking out of it and simultaneously showing off their butts to the empty-headed men from the Chao District.

They led them out to the edge of the camp, spreading some kind of powder as they got far enough from the tents, and once the Hammers caught up with them, their movements were already slow and unsteady, and as was quickly becoming a trend, the women did not need to do another thing before the Hammers fell. Presumably, they had spread some kind of sleeping powder, but judging by the confused expressions they had shared with one another, they hadn’t expected it to be anywhere as effective as it had proven to be.

‘You lot thought you’d need to distract them for a while until they had inhaled enough of the powder and had no chance to get it out of their system, didn’t you?’ Wei Yi thought, not actually speaking with them as it would be rather sudden to get commentary from the heavens.

While most of the women were out handling that, the rest of the group, two men and one woman, spoke with Great Dark.

 

“I think you’ll agree with us that any negotiations we might have do not require their presence, nor would they appreciate their contribution,” one of the Shi family men said, “I’m sure we’ll have some place for them to sit around and ogle people while the rest of us actually hunt that worshiper of Primordial Cosmos, right?”

“No objections on that front. Mind introducing yourselves?”

“We are the Flood Kings of Shi, warriors that have come to seek combat experience against someone related to the Primordial Deities,” Shi Bao Ya introduced them, “What about you?”

“I-”

All of a sudden, Long Wuchu stormed inside, shouting, “We… are the Hunters of the Cosmos, damn it! We were fantastic, do you hear that! Then that fucking pale bitch tried to fucking kill us, and she will fucking pay! She will… bleh…”

Before he could randomly blurt out too much, Wei Yi appeared at the entrance of the tent and lightly tapped the back of his neck, spreading out some of her energy quietly to knock him out quickly and painlessly. She grabbed him in one arm, lifted him up, and turned around to bring him out of the tent right away.

“The guy’s drunk! Sorry about that,” she said, leaving before anyone had a chance to ask.

The three from the Flood Kings of Shi did have a number of questions, but before they could even ask Great Dark about a single thing, the women that had gone out to deal with the Hammers returned with similarly curious expressions on their faces.

That caused them to pause again, before the other man asked, “Uh… You’re from the Hunters of the Cosmos, right?”

“We are. I, and many others, were attacked by a strange foe, and I managed to recruit some people for the mission… Brother Wuchu also suffered an attack in a different squad, and he is the only survivor,” Great Dark said, not saying anything that would go against the story that had been presented by the only true Hunter of the Cosmos, “Just to get things straight, are you intending to camp besides us in search of Primordial Cosmos or any worshipers of it?”

“Yes, that is our intention,” Shi Bao Ya nodded, “This place seems to be well positioned in the sandstorm, and from what information we have, the worshiper would be somewhere nearby, camping out similarly. Have you encountered anyone yet?”

“Before we get to that, would you not want to spare me the effort of explaining this again to the people that will soon arrive? You are not the only people looking for information.”

“Of course we aren’t… We don’t know exactly what the rest will want, nor whether they even expect anything out this – most do, but that’s beside the point – but if there is any combat, call us. We want to participate within it to train and acquire more practise, so you better not forget to tell us a single thing,” the first man said, “Alright?”

“I’ll consider it, naturally.”

 

The next group was coming from a slightly different direction, so Wei Yi adjusted her position to meet them properly under the guise of a casual walk. Long Wuchu had already been placed back in his bed with a restraint or two to keep him there, as she didn’t want him to charge into Huang Yu Di’s place next and scare that paranoid man any more than he already was, and the Hammers did not appear to have any intentions to awake within the near future.

As such, she was able to calmly look onwards as the next group appeared amidst the endless sandstorm.

Unlike the previous two, whose identities took some time to decipher, she was almost certain that she had gotten it right away this time. Every single figure moved in perfect synchronicity, and they managed to make far more progress with each step than they should have, and so there was only one district that she expected them to have originated from – the Bai District.

Not only were the Bai family traditionally focused on earth-type techniques, which would naturally benefit them in the traversal of any kind of sandy environment due to the ample quantity of earth-like materials to interact with, but their collaborative group techniques and formations also allowed them to intensify each one of their steps to cover more distance while using less energy. In addition, there was the faint trace of umbrellas above them, as one might expect from a family of those who are commonly affected by albinism, although she struggled to make out whether they were physical or made from stabilised energy hovering above them.

Once they got a little closer, however, the slight glow of grey energy above them became clear, and the planar constructs that guarded them from the sun became visible as well.

‘Fourth realm, all of them. This can’t be some random group from the Bai family, not unless they have a far larger quantity and density of energy within their district than any other district I had ever heard of, which is very unlikely given the fact that there have no wars to capture it at all despite the fact that they are not as keen to keep their gates shut as the Ju District, meaning that they would be discovered almost right away,’ she thought, keeping a close eye on them, ‘Thus, it might be one of their legions…’

As with her other guess, verifying it straight away was impossible without endangering the Ascendant’s Arbiters’ ruse, as a dumbass with a very limited scope of knowledge on things south or east of their origin suddenly figuring out the nature of the incoming forces would be odd, to say the least.

Instead, she had to hope that they would reveal themselves when she called out, “Who goes there?”

They did not slow down or speed up at her question, making their way over to her at an impressively consistent pace despite the frequent changes in the sand’s direction and the occasional hill and dune in the way. Perhaps their ultimate speed was slower than if they had decided to speed up once hearing her, but the reason that they and most of the forces that attempted to intensely focus on group martial arts of any kind needed to stay together in perfect unison at all times was that they would ruin the flow created by their method if one moved out of line while another did not.

On a curious note, that did mean that it was entirely reasonable for certain soldiers to abandon battle together, as it might be less damaging to the smooth flow of their technique than to be beaten or otherwise matched by some other powerful enemy, especially if they had mental techniques that would only affect one of the group.

In the north, their strive for this flow did result in frequent orgies, whereas the south had to be satisfied with simply sleeping together to share their warmth and not die in the cold.

“7^th Legion of the Bai District. We are here to cull the threat of fanatic cultists and maniacs before the district can be threatened!” they announced themselves in perfect unison, even performing the same salute at the same time with impeccable harmony.

The energy between them flowed almost as one, although, as with any human creation in the world, there were flaws to be observed within their actions. One of the men took a breath at the wrong time and was unable to lift his hand at the same time, and one of them stuttered as a grain of sand went into their mouth, and although these things were miniscule enough to likely not be noticed even by the ones that instructed this legion, they did affect that flow of energy.

Every minor mistake staggered and destabilised it just a little bit, which in itself made it easier to break the flow and cause further instability that could effectively balloon out of control after a single careless mistake from one of the participants. For this reason, even though some were quite enticed by the prospect of frequent sex in large groups, there were not only the realities of such a situation to deal with, as well as a lot of the less pleasant stuff that such legions would do together as well, very few were ever willing or able to get into a group such as this one unless they had begun training with one another from birth and only decided to form a group like this at a later point in time.

“Why does the number… Eh, forget it. If you want to see the boss ‘round here, he’s in the biggest tent. He’s the smallest and weakest lookin’ one, though.”

She let them through as well, momentarily pondering whether she was even resembling a decent guard since she had yet to stop, search or even question a single one of the incoming groups beyond simply asking for their identity, as she had now. In theory, if she demanded a small tithe for disturbing her, or something of the sort, she could accumulate a decent amount of money by doing nothing at all.

While she didn’t need it, commerce was a powerful thing in the Planar Continents, hence the Chen family’s prominence throughout it, and she could hardly be everywhere at once to complete every single transaction with her false coins, the concentrations of the Dao of Law. Even if she could be some omnipresent entity, there were still bound to be those that would be able to see through her illusions, whether due to their cultivation realm or some other unique property, so this would hardly be a solution to all financial problems until the end of it.

It was within the Ascendant’s Arbiters’ abilities to produce false coins through the many materials available at the Kong Prison Realm, and soon within Paragon as well, but while they might be able to fool common people, there were bound to be others that were less susceptible to such things.

Furthermore, there was the matter of the value of the coins to be considered. If they were to constantly mint more of their own coins then use them for trade, then every district that they interacted with would gain more and more coins to work with. Such things would spread out throughout the district’s people and eventually everyone would have more coins than when they started, but then the individual value of each coin was bound to decrease in the eyes of those with most significance.

The Arbiters did not need to cause the value of the current system of currency to drop, especially not while it was as balanced as it was, and so it was naturally far safer to simply earn some money of their own. Plenty of the people in the prison realm were able to produce items of some value to the outside world, and there were plenty there that would be willing to purchase them, so all that they required was a channel to the interested parties. It would almost certainly need to be disguised as some kind of trading group that would have little to do with Paragon as often as possible so that any potential raids on them couldn’t yield a great deal of dangerous information to the attackers, but this in itself was not that uncommon.

In particular, it seemed that most of the participants in the War of Yin did wish to pursue the same method as this, since the Deadly Martial Colosseum and the Brotherhood of Power both earned a decent amount for their owners without needing to be explicitly related to the leader of the offensive and the Remnants of Yin respectively.

This method could also be used to attain an incredibly degree of influence within the districts prior even to announcing the existence of the Ascendant’s Arbiters to the world at large. If they provide a large amount of valuable resources and equipment to Yi City, then it would be incredibly difficult for the Greats to convince certain groups to work against them, and if they had spent some time doing this, they might earn a reputation of being trustworthy and reliable enough for the words about the Greats to be believed right away, allowing them to turn Yi City against them.

Of course, there would still be others, most likely the Chen family, that wouldn’t be fond of such an approach and would attempt to prevent it, possibly even siding with the Great Chen Family just to prevent their market dominance from coming to an end, but to think that they could easily spread out to all districts in the first place was essentially nothing more than a fantasy. Even if the roads between districts were to be fully rebuilt and guarded, that wouldn’t be enough to guarantee that their trading forces could spread out however they want and trade wherever they like. There were already plenty of organisations and groups that wished to benefit from trade that would then have the desire to stop them, and they hardly possessed the best craftsmen in the world to surpass all of them with quality.

Wei Yi and Fu Zan were indeed more capable than most, and both had some interesting ideas when it came to designs and equipment, but they were two people that would then need to compete against hundreds of skilled masters of the great arts in all of the other districts.

Simply put, this was not the most viable solution to all problems, but as a single method out of thousands to eventually topple the Greats, this would work well enough. It could permit them to have a covert and an overt force in districts of interest, acquiring two layers of information about them at the same time, and could help with discovering talent or deals that might not appear at the house of a spy in the district.

‘That’s one more thing to pass down to the Arbiters, I guess… Next group, then.’

The next group was arriving from a similar direction to the Flood Kings of Shi, leading her to conclude that they were either from a district in a similar direction, such as the Ju District or the Chu District, both of which were to the west of the Chao District and would thus arrive at the sandstorm at a similar angle.

She was prepared to guess at their identity and origins, but even through the sand, the vague figured seemed to threaten to blind her with bright gleams, as if they were covered in an excessive amount of overly polished that would somehow reflect more than all of the light that fell upon it, threatening to devalue the very concept of light itself. This shiny annoyance was also golden in shade, as were the approaching forces, leaving only one reasonable conclusion that could be made even with the great distance from the group itself.

They were almost certain to be from the Chen District, and they were certainly not shy about it. It didn’t make it obvious which group they were part of, but only the Chen could spare that much gold for such useless things.

Indeed, as they got closer and spotted her as well, she could see that all of them were wearing items made from golden threads, with some areas of the body being protected with golden chainmail or even golden plates that were almost certainly reinforced either with immortal gold or some other method in order to give them a minimal amount of viability, otherwise even the Chen family would likely not wear such an excessive amount of things on their body this far north.

It was important to mention that Paragon, and thus the sandstorm surrounding it, was a good way into the Northern Desert, perhaps half of the way to the Glass Wastes of the absolute north, which were hot enough to turn anything into glass the moment that someone stepped into them. As such, the temperature outside of the fortress, in which the residents enjoyed the superstructure array that kept it down to a more reasonable level, was many times higher than it was in the Central Plains and thus the Chen District, easily being unsuitable for most ordinary people to be unable to live there for prolonged periods of time without a lot of water and some intensive preparation to resolve matters other than hydration.

To make it worse for oneself by coating oneself in metal that was easily heated by the sun was a rather foolish thing to do just for appearances and was thus fortunately rare.

Once they were near enough, she acted as usual and called out, “Who goes there?”

The Chen District group hesitated when they heard her, then strode forward until they could see her properly through the sandstorm, and then proudly straightened their backs and posed for her, leading her to question her assessment of their intelligence.

“We are the Golden Lords! We come from the Chen District to assist you with the troubles of the Primordial Deities!”

“Oh? Who paid you to come here?”

“The Chen family, of course!” they proudly confirmed.

“What for?”

At once, with even greater synchronicity to the 7^th Legion, they reached out with their palm up, gesturing for her to give them a suitable bribe.

‘This lot has their priorities straight, I guess. It also confirms that they are probably here for more than one reason, although whether it is something really minor or significant is more difficult to determine,’ Wei Yi thought, pointing towards the camp, “Boss is in there. If you want, talk. Otherwise, get the fuck out.”

They took no offense to her words, although any experienced moneygrubber should have known that if they had, they would have had a chance to getting a small settlement amount out of the time spent, but perhaps they already had enough to spare or had something else lined up for themselves. Returning to their prouder outward look, they walked past her and entered the barrier of the camp, leaving her to watch the outside for any further incoming groups and to ponder their actions. She could also watch over what the diplomatic talks between the four participating groups so far would look like, but for the moment, the 7^th Legion and soon the Golden Lords went to sit or stand by the tent while awaiting further arrivals, as well as quietly checking out the potential disturbances to their plans.

Before then, she only had their actions so far to consider, and some did catch her attention.

The newest arrivals were looking at the others far more closely, and while it could be assumed that they were simply curious who they could take the most money from, their wandering spiritual perception was most focused on the weapons and armour of the others groups, save for when their spiritual perception was able to wander undiscovered. There was clearly interest in the equipment of the other groups, leading her to conclude that their intentions might not be as pure as they had announced to her.

Given that they were sent by the Chen family, their goals were almost certainly related to the forceful repossession of as much wealth as possible, but whether they intended to do that by stealing the equipment and then selling it back or by some more nefarious means was more difficult to conclude.

Then there was the 7^th Legion, that also paid a strange amount of attention to the people around the camp. Unlike the Golden Lords, however, they only focused on the supposed Hunters of the Cosmos, and their gazes were even more intense and careful. For the moment, there was little outward tension, especially as they appeared somewhat confused by the clothing and weaponry of the false Hunters, but if they had some enmity with them then Wei Yi suspected that they would get look at them even less favourably when they learned that there was indeed a true member of the Hunters amongst them, for one of two reason that she could think of.

The first would be if the Bai District had some allegiances with the Hunters of the Cosmos, in which case they might be rather suspicious of the odd outfits of the Ascendant’s Arbiters poorly masquerading as the Hunters, made worse by the fact that if Wei Yi knew about them in advance, she could have easily manufactured some equipment that would seem to have been made from abyss metal to the untrained eye. At that point, only Long Wuchu might have known that there was something wrong.

Alternatively, it could be that they were indeed opposed to the Hunters for whatever reason, in which case their gazes would be to confirm whether or not this squad of the Hunters of the Cosmos was something that the 7^th Legion could take without much assistance in some remote area where they would not be observed by the other forces, as attacking them here and now would be foolish.

Most of the attention of the Flood Kings of Shi was focused on the sandstorm around the camp, which they observed frequently and with a significant amount of attention, likely meaning that there was something out there that they wished to see. Perhaps they knew about the Great Worm, or maybe they were waiting for more allied forces to arrive from another district or another group, but whatever the case was they weren’t talking about it, so Wei Yi couldn’t just listen in on their words. Some of them were likely thinking about it, but the precision of her spiritual will thread declined significantly through the sandstorm, so she didn’t want to risk anything just yet.

Finally, the Hammers remained unconscious for the moment, with the reason behind their odd weakness becoming rather obvious the moment that she looked into their bodies.

While their muscles and whatever else was trained more than sufficiently to bring them onto the same level as second realm cultivators with their bodies alone, as was the limit of ordinary body cultivation, their internal organs had not been refined anywhere near as much. As a result, a powder that would only be able to knock out an ordinary person in second did the same to them, as on the inside their bodies were effectively identical.

One person that wasn’t part of any of these groups but that Wei Yi was still rather concerned about was Huang Yu Di, who had been resting within his tent most of the time and thus hadn’t seen any of the newly arrived forced just yet. There was a high chance that if he did see the Golden Lords, he might fly into a panic, and that the Golden Lords might know or pretend to know something about his situation to attempt to profit from it in some way, as the Chen were never put off by shoddy garbs so long as there was the potential for making money somewhere in a person’s head or body.

That would naturally not be ideal, so she remotely requested one of the Ascendant’s Arbiters to monitor the man’s tent and keep him busy if necessary, just so that this had no chance of happening without some exceptional circumstances.

For some time after she looked through the camp a few times, she saw nothing out in the sands, making her ponder whether it was time to go back inside and also let Great Dark convene the meeting of the forces present so far, but just as she was about to turn around she felt the earth beneath her feet tremble ever so slightly, with a strange feeling spreading throughout her body. For a moment, she wondered whether it might be the Great Worm again, but the trembling didn’t quite match in her mind.

Most of the groups so far had come from the south, as they originated from Yi City, but this trembling had come somewhere from the west, where the outer districts of the city had once been, so she went there at once to keep an eye out on whatever was approaching them.

It repeated once more after a short delay, then occurred again and again. Quite clearly, it was drawing closer, but the volume of the sound and intensity of the trembling did not appear to be increasing all that much, meaning that not only could it not be the Great Worm, which was highly fortunate, but it did also mean that the nearing group was able to produce a consistent and wide-spread tremble every few seconds without any obvious difficulty – so far, at the very least – to however many people were present within the group.

Only after several minutes of repeated, almost rhythmic shaking was she able to witness the new arrivals, as well as hear them, curiously enough.

“Praise the Great Worm!” a large number of people chanted.

“It guards our world from the invaders beyond!” a singular voice exclaimed.

“Praise the Great Worm!”

“A being perpetual and immortal!” a second but very similar voice proclaimed.

“Praise the Great Worm!”

“We are but ants that benefit from its vigour!” a third, also similar, voice bellowed.

“Praise the Great Worm!”

“So that its foe perishes, we must do our part!” the first returned with the same vigour as before.

“Praise the Great Worm!”

“Men must fight men, while gods oppose gods!”

“Praise the Great Worm!”

“What was, will be, what will be was!”

“Praise!”

With each repetition of their praise, the dull thud spread out throughout the ground once again, with the four chanting lines of people tapping the staves in their left hands on the sand in unison to cause it. On the right of the gap in between each line, numbering three in total, were figures garbed much the same as those in the lines, but rather than holding a staff each one carried a bead necklace that hung from their connected hands, the palms pressed together in prayer.

Whenever the tips of the staves touched the sand, the necklace would light up momentarily with a sand-colour glow, shining through otherwise unseen patterns on the wooden beads and likely participating in whatever process permitted the ground to shake in the way that it did.

Aside from the way in which she had come across three groups with a strange kind of unity in just a single hour being rather curious, her attention was mostly on the way in which their group technique was achieved, as it was clearly incredibly profound and effective but did not draw a drop of energy from the users, save for the physical exertion of each step and staff strike. Instead, whatever was used came from around them, and reverberated through the ground leading to a far more intense effect than that amount of energy should have been able to produce.

‘I don’t think that it would be possible to make use of that principle in everything, but they are certainly strangely knowledgeable on this method for a group of worm worshipers,’ she thought, recording it all very carefully as to have some chance of deciphering the exact nature of the method at a later time with some practise and experimentation.

So long as something of the sort could be mastered, any kind of environment with plentiful planar energy in the atmosphere would immediately become more favourable to her forces as they would be able to muster far more offensive, defensive or possibly just utility potential than if they lacked such an ability. All that she could understand about it so far was that the people participating in the chant and prayer somehow acted together, not as a typical group formation but as a complex array instead, tapping into some kind of strange energy while also releasing some of their own. From such a distance, it was difficult to tell whether their bodies suffered as a result, but they certainly weren’t showing it.

Their uncertain capabilities combined with their devotion to the chant made her reluctant to interrupt them as they got nearer, especially as that strange feeling in her chest still remained, so she let them come to her at their own pace.

As it turned out, that pace was the same one that they had been following all of their journey there, for they continued to have something to proclaim about the Great Worm or something about life itself, with their statements ranging from somewhat sensible, like the statement that men should fight men while gods fight gods, but not all were anywhere near as reasonable. It did make sense that a man couldn’t step into the battlefield of deities without suffering, and should thus restrict himself to battles where his presence would actually do some good, but being merely food for the worm was less profound and hardly as pleasant of a matter to consider, which, considering the fact that being weak was already something that many struggled with, was a small achievement.

When they did get near enough to see her right before them, the group approaching in such a manner that the three on the side of the four lines were closer to her, they did cease their endless proclamations as the closest of the three stepped forward to speak with her face to face, still holding onto his prayer beads.

“This one would speak with you. Do you accept?”

“… I guess so. Are you here to fight the worshipers of Primordial Cosmos, or… am I misunderstanding something?” she asked in reply.

“These ones have come here for that purpose. The sky perpetually consumes the earth, which in turn devours it. The Great Worm must not be hindered from its endless path, nor may the cosmos be permitted to plan for its failure. As the supplicants of the Great Worm, those who are made by it and ended by it, we must ensure that it can persist eternally.”

“Good, you do that… maybe. I am not going to be talking with you further, so go.”

“The Perpetuals of the Worm thank you.”

The man nodded, stepped back, then the group proceeded onwards, walking past her and into the camp, ceasing their repeated striking of the ground much to the relief of those in the camp, as some of her Ascendant’s Arbiters had seen the Great Worm and were still somewhat afraid of it.

As they came into the area of the camp where the other forces gathered, the Flood Kings immediately began to pay attention to them far more than any other group in the area, prompting the natural question of whether they and the Perpetuals of the Worm, as these people apparently called themselves, had previously met or if the trembling of the group had simply been too shocking.

They did not act right away however, and soon returned an eye to the sandstorm while the other remained upon the Perpetuals.

Before anything else could happen, Wei Yi was already able to sense the next group arriving, and so headed back to the same point where the people from the Shi District and the Chen District had appeared, awaiting to see what kind of strange force would arrive upon their figurative doorstep this time. She hoped ever so slightly that they would be from the Ju District, since that would give her a chance to observe the various tools and methods they use to fight in place of planar energy, but the strong aura of energy surrounding them, and its wood element, soon confirmed a different identity.

Out of the sands, with a thin green fog around them and the traces of small saplings growing out of the ground around them as they walked, only for most to dry and die soon after they went past it, came out a group dressed in green robes that were light and thin, yet covered most of their bodies.

Unlike some of the skewed groups that had come before them, this one contained an equal number of men and women, each one walking as a pair with the other, creating a small resonance of yin and yang between them. It did not appear to be entirely coincidental, but she could tell quickly that they weren’t taking full advantage of the potential of that resonance thanks to her rapidly growing experience in that as a result of her dual cultivation method.

In comparison with the Perpetuals, their arrival almost seemed uneventful despite everything that they had put into their travels, so the moment they got near, Wei Yi pointed towards the camp.

One among them saw this, shared it with the others, and they soon entered the camp as well. They did not attempt to speak with Great Dark as the two forces before them had, but instead neared the Flood Kings of Shi and attempted to remain in their vague vicinity, although they did not overtly communicate with one another.

They did not change that within the next hour, nor did she witness the arrival of another force, so it was decided by the groups, and by Great Dark with Wei Yi’s agreement, that it was time to begin, and that anyone that came later could be excluded from their temporary alliance.