In the morning, the moment that Gang Xiu Ling awoke and confirmed her intentions, alongside passing along some information regarding the basics of societal norms and communication within the Gang District, Wei Yi departed from the building and let her do as she intended.
Whether or not she found someone to bring to her bed, the Ascendant intended to get as much done today to establish what the best path to proceed on was. Their initial strategy was a fine one, provided that everything was as it seemed, but if the alliance with the Guardians of Purity was not formed merely through a feeble deception that could be overcome with sufficient evidence, something that she could provide to the guardians of the district soon enough, then figuring out a way to bring them onto her side would be preferable to outright killing them.
From what she could tell, the leader of the Guardians was only in the lower stages of Oblivion Halo, so none of his forces should be higher, meaning that it was very much feasible to defeat him. However, if she did so, she would lose a capable force that should still recall a great deal of history, including things that Yi Shi Ming did not learn of or no longer remembers due to her current state.
Of course, it was possible that the Guardians had fallen from grace in recent years, relative to the existence of Yi City, at least, and that they no longer shared quite the same focuses but retained their terminology. At that point, defeating them to some extent would be necessary, although she would still prefer to get someone else from their faction to take over as leader and bring up a greater focus on their old path of pure planar energy, perhaps with a little bit less aggression towards those that choose to solely use elemental energy. After all, outright ending a faction and their history was often the worst outcome, unless they were the old leaders of the Ping District and the thieves that lived within.
‘Even then, I had destroyed a great deal of information and materials that could have otherwise been of use to myself and the people of the district, so that was not the ideal solution either. Had I been able to handle each district and problem in a vacuum, without any pressure from time or other groups, I would have likely done something slightly different than blowing the whole place up,’ she thought, proceeding to the first area of interest.
Naturally, that was the other side of the district, where her spiritual perception could not reach in full, not even with the extension method of stabilising the outside in her mental domain.
On the way, she had a look around the district with her own eyes, finding it to be very much what one may expect after having seen the ancient Kong District, combined with the aesthetic of the southernmost districts that needed to endure the heavy snow at all times. Here, the snowfall was sufficiently calm as to not require a barrier to keep it out of the occupied lands, and it was instead dealt with using rooves that were angled and sloped in such a fashion that only a thin white layer would cover them at any time.
Hence, there were areas where no snow fell, beneath the rooftops, and then the edges would often experience greater quantities of snowfall, dividing the traffic on the streets into several clear lines. Those walking would usually prefer to stick beneath the rooftops, whereas any carriages, vehicles or planar beasts would travel down the middle, with their larger size usually bringing them under the fall of the snow from the edges of the structures in the area.
None of this really mattered, but the more information she could absorb within an instant, the more she liked to take note of certain minor details, and try to learn from them whenever possible. In this case, there wasn’t much for her to study at the moment, as she wasn’t exactly intending to revolutionise roads and road traffic within her districts, but there was no reason at all to not apply this elsewhere. Due to the way in which certain entities that could better endure the weather stood at those places, allowing others to use the routes which were more comfortable and advantageous to them, this was very much applicable to something like her meridians, and combined energy as a whole.
Getting this kind of arrangement with her energy would certainly be of use in stabilising her Arm of Slaughtering Shadow, and thus allowing it to move freely and act as an actual arm instead of a mass of energy that it currently was. To have a perfectly stable arm would make a world’s difference in the long run and in any encounter where her power is not yet overwhelming.
More importantly than anything else, it would restore the perfect stability of her body and return the balance that was so greatly lacking at the moment. It would make it feasible to greatly increase her usage of the Dao of Law, as well as its study, and would grant her the ability to mess around with all kinds of spatial methods far more easily than she currently could. After all, her current explorations of it were limited entirely to the expansion and stabilisation of existing networks and systems, rather than attempting to once more breach the barrier between realms and achieve that which is seen to be impossible at the Linked Channels realm.
‘Trouble is, there’s an obvious difference between concept and execution. I can conceptualise exactly how the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow should work, but actually getting it to function in such a manner is… well, it almost seems fucking impossible, but I know that this isn’t the case.’
As she headed further to the eastern edge of the district, she found conspicuous traces of alleyways hidden behind a layer of buildings on either side, which seemed to connect to one another in the most unusual yet functional ways. There, a person or two could often be found, and their garb and behaviour alike did not match the typical appearance of the district’s populace. It was odd, and it was clearly overlooked by all outside of the alleyways, so after she had walked for long enough, she decided to investigate further.
Once she managed to slide into the alleyway through a sufficiently wide space between two ordinary-seeming homes, she quickly confirmed that there were no underground passages or other abnormal methods for traversal, only a careful design that adjoined a great length of such narrow routes together. People travelled on their rarely enough, and so the lack of space did not appear to be a problem, and even then, based on what she could perceive with her spiritual perception, it seemed that everyone was currently headed in the same direction – to the east, somewhere towards the central area at the eastern edge, where her spiritual perception was blocked by an excess of structures and materials that disrupted the passage of her will.
This alone was enough for her to tell that there was something of interest there, so, since she was already in an alleyway and already heading in the same direction, she saw no particular reason to stop.
She did not keep her speed down, making use of her long legs and capable body to walk as quickly as she could without switching to a jog, and so it did not take her long to catch up to one of the people ahead of her, a man who was removing his fur cloak and stuffing it into a brown burlap sack as she got close to him.
After a glance into his mind, she took a bet and called out simply, “Hello there!”
While she had kept her voice down, as to not alert the people on the proper roads on either side of the buildings surrounding them, a sudden interruption like that still startled the man, who turned to glare at her alertly. A moment passed before he relaxed.
“Ah, you must be going in the same direction as I… You are a foreigner, from the north, aren’t you? I didn’t realise that we had begun accepting people like you, not that I am complaining,” he said, fully hiding his cloak in the sack that he then put onto his back and held onto with one hand, “Are you familiar with the way, or should I guide you?”
“I have some idea, but I don’t mind following along. Actually, this is my first time.”
“So that’s the case. How did you learn of the community in the east, if you do not mind me asking? I doubt the Gang Patriarch’s forces would employ someone like you, so this is just curiosity.”
“No need to worry. I got here recently, noticed something occurring out of the view of the majority of the district, and decided to investigate. The way in which the alleyways are placed seems almost intentional, so if the Gang Patriarch and, presumably, the Gang family as a whole do not condone what it is you’re up to in your community, how did these streets come to be built in the way that they were?” she inquired, easily giving up many details.
For the moment, to get as much information as possible, getting the man to provide it openly and possibly assist her once she did arrive at their community was the easiest route that she could think of. So long as she provided him with sufficient knowledge about herself, there would be little reason for him to be suspicious of her in any regard that she might not have mentioned, as it would seem that she had already given up nearly everything about herself and the reason behind her presence in these hidden alleyways.
“You noticed them? Then, it may be that we need to improve our concealment… nonetheless, I can tell you a little bit, if you wish,” he said, pointing to the buildings on either side, “You see, our district was built long ago with the intention of being able to support and ward off invasions that relied more on warriors than cultivators acting as siege weapons.
“In the past, it was more common for individual martial prowess to be of greater interest and focus, hence the decision to prioritise it as the number one threat. Every single street was designed in such a fashion that a large portion of the population could hide between the homes and buildings, as well as travel between them with nearly none observing them. It would then allow the people of the district to live unseen, attack when possible, and slowly retake control even while the enemy had no clue of what they were losing to. With a number of specific designs, including the entire district being made in the shape of an array to focus and scatter thought in a particular way, this was made in a way that could even resist spiritual perception, to a certain extent.”
“With nobody targeting the Gang District for the moment, I suppose that the Gang family has no need to use such passages, correct?”
“Yes, so, after some of us noticed them ourselves, we realised that we had an opportunity… I’d love to tell you more about it – I am one of the newer members of the community, so I’ve not had the chance to explain it to another in detail yet – but for our security, I will have to let someone higher up than me make sure that you are safe,” the man explained, his tone sounding genuinely apologetic, “If everything’s fine, I wouldn’t mind talking at a later time.”
“We’ll see what happens with that, I suppose. Do you gather very often, then?”
“Generally, most of us attempt to make it only once a week, if not less frequently. Otherwise, we might draw a little too much attention by breaking away from certain traditional rituals, and thus endanger the entirety of the community.”
“There has to be someone sticking around, doesn’t there?” she asked, their slow approach giving her spiritual perception the ability to confirm the presence of a ladder at their destination that led quite deeply into the earth, “Something tells me that they couldn’t possibly maintain any kind of community if they weren’t there the vast majority of the time.”
“Some that have lost the attention of the district go there. Mostly, beggars and various poor souls can reside there permanently, and the few exceptions are powerful figures who intentionally broke away.”
“Including your leadership?”
“… Yes, although I would ask that you stop with such questions. It is not too far now, and I don’t like being so uncertain of what I can and cannot reveal! With the rest of the district, it is easy to just hide everything, but with an inquisitive mind like you, I just feel more and more stressed out at everything.”
“Apologies, then. I suppose that I can opt for another topic if you are more inclined to answer: what is it about the traditions of the south, and of the Gang District in particular, that have led you to be so keen to get away from them and to instead join this community? Why are there so many people that feel the same way, and how is it that the Gang Patriarch, family, and the rest of the district’s leadership can overlook such issues, especially if they have been happening for a long time?”
“Tradition is what drives us all, according to the Gang District’s texts. However, it is extremely restrictive. We must do certain things on certain days, interact in certain ways with certain people, and so little of it seems to be present for any particular reason, remaining mostly because it used to be something that was once done, regardless of how wise it is or was.”
Wei Yi nodded, “That is a rather unfortunate element of a focus on tradition over all else, yes.”
“It binds us, but it binds the Gang Patriarch and everyone under him, as well. They have to act in certain ways, and cannot spend the time searching alleyways for people travelling to a place where the traditions are relaxed or outright thrown away to be able to live like the people of the north, if only for a little while,” the man explained, his voice gaining a certain wistful tone when he mentioned the north, “You are from the northern lands, so you should understand that the districts there are freer in their behaviours, and are more open to change. Perhaps it is not ideal, but it is better.”
“You have a far better, and more detailed, answer to this than I had expected. This is what your whole community believes, right? It must have been around for quite some time to develop its arguments to the level of admitting the ability to be wrong, so could you call it somewhat traditional as well?”
“… I don’t wish to answer that question.”
The Ascendant shrugged, but they continued on nonetheless, not too bothered with this disagreement.
Although they were both cultivators, quick and capable, a district was still an enormous segment of land. To cross from the vaguely central region of the district to the most eastern edge took several hours, most of which were not spend quite as actively nor with as much dialogue between them as in the first few minutes. Their primary topics were exhausted, and neither of them wished to mention too much to the other.
When they got to the area where a number of alleyways converged and led to the ladder that Wei Yi had noticed a long way from there.
“Here we are. With your one arm, will you be fine?”
“Two arms are not necessary to climb a ladder, and they’re certainly not needed if all I do is jump down. It isn’t that far, so even if all planar energy was to be wiped from the world as I fell, I would still come out with slightly hurt legs at most,” she replied, getting onto the ladder with the man lifting up the cover from it.
It was indeed a little trickier than the last time that she had needed to navigate a ladder – it was obviously prior to the sudden rush of events near the Ju District, as ladders as a whole weren’t found all that commonly throughout Yi City for no reason in particular – but she managed just fine, simply relying more on her feet rather than her hand for support. While she could have been faster had she just jumped down, she would not have gained that much more of an advantage with a second hand, which was fortunate while she still had no access to a sufficiently stable one.
Even with the rate at which her energy recovered, to constantly manifest and scatter the Arm of Slaughtering Shadow in such a fashion that it would help her in the climbing process would be rather costly and tiresome, to put it mildly. She would likely be slowed with anything other than perfection.
At the bottom, the obstacles to her spiritual perception were finally insufficient to obscure any major detail about the place she found herself in, allowing her to take in the place at the same time as she looked at the front entrance with her own eyes. From the front, the place she arrived at seemed to be rather cramped and empty, with a tunnel leading further in with only as much space as the alleyways above offered, and little decoration or signage that might clarify the purpose of the tunnel.
This was most likely to be an intentional design decision by those that opted to create their community here, as it would mean that anyone who came across this place without knowledge of it would not have much of a reason to look further. What could they find in a dirty, empty tunnel, even if the various objects preceding it resulted in a significant barrier to spiritual perception? Most would simply overlook and ignore this place, concluding that anything of note would have been developed better than a hole that might as well have been dug by an overgrown planar beast at some point in the world’s existence. It seemed to have worked so far, at least.
However, further on the inside, past a few unintuitive turns and bends that would serve to further confuse and confound an unwanted visitor, was a wide-open space consisting of numerous large chambers that were well decorated and highly clean, almost impressively so. It was split into numerous distinct regions which were clearly allocated for their own purposes.
One area was clearly intended for dining, another for bathing and washing, another for resting and general relaxation, with that part including a large space covered in pillows and soft fabrics on which a great number of people could sit around and enjoy themselves. Whether their enjoyment would be the strictly innocent kind was hard to judge from the currently unoccupied region with often washed covers and pillows, but it would certainly make for a rather comfortable spot to do whatever one wished to do.
Over to the left side of the region was a large storage room, several individual bedrooms and even a market-like area, presumably intended for trade, just to name a few places, and the right was similar. There were even some farming regions, although they weren’t being exploited to their full potential.
If someone wished to, they could easily maintain quite a decent population down here without ever needing to head above the earth that separated them from the Gang District above. Some certainly did so, as there were bedrooms that were clearly more lived in than others, in a way that would not happen if they were rarely claimed, or used by more than a single person for prolonged periods of time. This was why she was curious how those that were down here managed to evade the attention of the Gang District, if it was that overwhelmingly attentive to each and every soul within the walls, and why there weren’t more if it was possible to get out safely.
When they came to the first true chamber of this underground network, they were met almost right away by a short, young-looking woman with vibrant, emerald-like hair that reached down and covered her back, styled into a number of braids far more standard in the Gang District that almost crowned her head, then scattered into loose hair lower down. Her realm was subdued, but it was still possible for a cultivator to tell that she was in the Linked Channels realm, and her body was also strong despite how thin she looked.
“I’ve not seen you down here before, nor in the district, so I am going to need to talk to you,” she said to Wei Yi straight away, glancing to the man beside her afterwards, “Gang Song, unless you told her about where we are, I suggest you leave and get back to your favourite spot.”
He nodded and didn’t linger, heading off in the direction of the small underground farm, where she could identify traces of his aura on some of the shabbily planted crops.
“Now, you. Who are you?”
“What kind of answer do you want? I can give you a name, a title or two, what factions I am aligned with, what districts I’ve been to, what I’m doing here, what I think about the Gang District, your community, as he called it, or my stance on chocolate, but I suspect you don’t want or need to hear about all of that.”
“No, I do not. Besides, I don’t know what chocolate is, so that wouldn’t tell me anything,” the woman said, “Why don’t you go down the list and stop when I tell you to.”
The Ascendant shrugged, “Sure. I am Wei Yi. In some parts, I am known as the Ascendant-”
“Wait a minute, you’re a northern woman, right? If you’re from up there, and you claim to be called that, then does it mean that you are that Ascendant that everyone from the north keeps talking about? The one with planar energy akin a sea of stars, with power matching the level of a Patriarch, and a seemingly endless range of techniques that grows with every single encounter that you are spotted in? That is you?”
“Is that what they say about me? Sure, I guess that’s close enough. Look,” she raised her only hand and brought out a small sphere of cosmic energy, the faint visages of chains now appearing in an additional, closer layer than in her previous realm.
“I can’t sense any distinct element from that, so… I guess it has to be you. What do you want?”
“Your name, first. Then, I wouldn’t mind being introduced to what it is that you are up to here, since I have stumbled across your little community rather accidentally.”
“… Gang Ya Hui, somewhat of a bastard child of the main Gang family. My community is, well… We all simply call it the New Community. We are bothered by the obsession with tradition in this district, so we’ve got a space where we throw those shackles away for a brief while, indulging in all kinds of things that we would never be permitted to do on the surface, whether due to certain obligations or because the district simply doesn’t permit it,” she explained after a brief delay, “We just want to do things that are, well, new. Things that the Gang District has not done, refuses to do, or never considers doing.”
Gang Ya Hui glanced behind herself, “Some of us wish to plant a simple crop or two, and so there’s a small farm for them to do so. Generally, the resulting product isn’t particularly good, nor sufficiently plentiful to ever sustain us down here, but they get their fun while the Gang District’s tradition prevents us from planting any fruits or vegetables for ourselves or for trading purposes. Others may want to share a bath with others, or do anything beyond quickly cleaning themselves and departing. This, too, is actually against tradition, if you can imagine that. I don’t know how it was back at the start, but we now have all the resources we need to sustain a hot fucking bath for more than a minute, and there is no good reason not to have at least one.”
“I don’t disagree, so no need to convince me.”
“That’s not what I was doing. Now, if I was to talk on the topic of the rightmost rooms… Can you imagine that this district has a very strict regulation against sleeping around, unless you are a Patriarch who needs to spread his seed all over the place… ew. Didn’t mean to go there, actually…”
“I’m guessing that this also includes abnormal relationships, too?”
“You mean something like two women sleeping together? Yeah, the Gang District’s traditions go against that as well, much to the displeasure of about half the women over at the rightmost rooms, although the fact that they’ve managed to earn money and find other attractive women with the same interests seems to have offset that displeasure somewhat.”
“Well, that’s not particularly surprising. Anyway, if you’ve played any part in recruiting more people to your New Community, or if you’ve paid attention to those that do this for you, how much of the district supports your ideas?”
“I have brought some people in, as I can go wherever thanks to my identity as both an unwanted member of the family and as a theoretically significant one, but to give you anything resembling a precise figure… I’d guess around a third have some sympathy with our ideas, at least. Another third don’t care either way, or think that it won’t really change the way they do things. The rest would rather have the traditions kept intact, whether for their own gains or because they think that it is the right thing to do.”
As they were talking, they had gotten out of the entrance and moved over to a wall further in, standing around while a few people came and went.
“Would you be interested in making your ideas public?”
“With the current Patriarch? Unless that was an attempt to wish death upon me, then no, I have no such intention. Gang Shu Wen is essentially the representative of traditionalist ideas in the family and district, for the moment,” Gang Ya Hui said, “Even the previous Patriarch was a little safer to deal with, but he had died of old age a while back.”
“Then, what would you say if someone else was interested in taking that position, and might be a little more open to change?”
Gang Ya Hui looked at her with an even more perplexed expression for a few moments, “Do you want to take over the Gang District? Are you mad?”
“No, not what I was saying. What if I had been?”
“I’ll be honest with you, oh mighty Ascendant – that’d be a shit idea. You may be strong up north, you may be mighty and famous, but here, you don’t belong. You don’t know this land, you don’t know the people, what they want, what they hate, what they fight for, and so on. A person like you wouldn’t be a good contender for the position of Matriarch, even if the Gang District would ever allow you to pursue it.”
“Then, what if someone from the Gang family returned to claim the title?”
“You aren’t saying that Gang Xiu Ling has returned? Well, if I recall correctly, her downfall began with a rather convincing testimony of how much she enjoyed spending time with another woman, so she would have to bend tradition a little bit if she was to keep that up… However, most of us aren’t combatants nor particularly strong. If you want us to rise up and overwhelm the current order, then I’m afraid that we simply couldn’t do that,” she stated, “At most, you can get vocal support from us, nothing more, alright?”
“You understood my intentions quickly. I’ll get back to you if you and the potential future Matriarch is interested in going against tradition beyond the minimum,” Wei Yi said.
“Mhm… You don’t seem so bad. Would you like to get a tour of the area, since you’re already here? It shouldn’t take too long unless you intend to personally participate in every activity we have conceived so far, but if you aren’t interested, then you can feel free to depart at any moment. Just make sure not to take the alleyways on your way back, as to not attract attention to yourself.”
“I can stay. The rightmost part of this community seems interesting enough, so long as anyone there is interested in me,” the Ascendant said, “And I don’t need to be shown anything that speaks for itself. My spiritual perception is good enough.”
Gang Ya Hui looked over her for a moment, not commenting out loud, then waved her arm towards the left side of the underground area, “We’d best start out there, then, if you want to see much.”
