Chapter 109: V2C52: Challenging the Warlords, Part 3

“So, you, with the Spirit Mirage physique, are next?” she asked, pointing her sword at the woman’s true body.

“We will… be next… Your blade… is strange…” the various spirit mirages took turns to speak, with no clear preference for any one of the bodies, “Drop it… it is… not a… part of… your strength.”

‘What a clever… whatever she would call herself. Hm…’ Wei Yi recalled the fact that none of the hatred avatars appeared to have any desire to take her weapon, and got a bad idea that was far too tempting to not attempt, “If you want, try to lift my weapon. You can use it for our battle if you succeed.”

Before the Spirit Mirage warlord had the opportunity to ponder why she would let go of the obsidian blade so easily, she tossed the sword to her and prepared to conjure a Frayed Blade and use one of the Eight Great Changes in order to parry the incoming strike and redirect the immense power of Sharen e Mo at the attacker. However, she suspected that she would not need to do so, due to the line that mentioned, ‘Scales with player level’, as it would suggest a certain connection between her and the weapon, as shown by the fact that it only began to grow slowly after she got her hands on it.

For this reason, she had the suspicion that if she was to give it to someone else, they would either not be able to use the weapon – explaining why the avatars didn’t touch it – or the level of the weapon would reset and then she could easily beat the Spirit Mirage warlord.

Then again, she had no clue what a player was supposed to be in this context, so maybe she was wrong.

As someone with five perspectives and a great deal of combat experience, the warlord was able to catch the weapon easily, but they suddenly dropped it when some kind of shock struck their hand.

Rather than clattering onto the ground harmlessly, it pierced directly into the ground, sliding several inches into it before stopping mostly due to the lack of momentum rather than insufficient sharpness to the obsidian edge.

“Oh dear, it seems that you cannot use my weapon,” Wei Yi said, calming down and speaking with far more confidence, “Would you like me to wait, or should I attack now?”

Although she said that, she understood enough about the culture of the Great Bone Lake that the duel had begun the moment that she threw her sword over, and so she condensed Frayed Blade and used Ember Switch to cross the gap between them, following up with a Piercing River to stab directly at the woman’s heart.

However, just as the weapon began to pierce her flesh, the solid feeling of her body changed into a spectral one, and the entire warlord’s body changed into pure physique energy, collapsing the second that the obsidian shattered her heart.

‘She can swap between her bodies? Physique energy can truly lead to some unique abilities, it seems!’ Wei Yi exclaimed to herself, getting away from the other four Spirit Mirages instantly with Retreating Torch as none of them appeared to have any traces of living flesh within them, whether through the Third Eye or her spiritual will, indicating that her body had truly vanished into the pool of energy that formed their collective.

Those four figures attacked the space where she had just stood, hitting the stone and achieving little, before all four of them grew slightly denser. Veins grew within one, skin grew on another, bones sprouted and rapidly enlarged within the third and a set of muscles spread throughout the fourth, their power somehow growing with every minor change that occurred within them.

Wei Yi was not one for allowing her enemies to do whatever they liked while watching on, unless she could be absolutely certain that they would pose no threat no matter what they did, so she slashed with full force in the aim of separating these mirages into several pieces.

Just as quickly as she was able to swing her sword, the muscular mirage appeared in front of the incoming slash and swung her arm in the inverse direction. A strike with one’s fist did not match a strike with the blade, but it still generates a burst of air and energy that met the aerial slash half-way, somehow matching the immense power of the Demon Killer. Their collision erupted in a shockwave of force, shaking the entire Great Bone Lake for a third time in just a few minutes, but they were just barely able to negate one another.

‘What… the fuck is this? Is this physique cultivator secretly one of the Greats?’ she questioned for a moment, dropping the idea immediately due to its lack of relevance and instead considering how to resolve the issue in front of her, ‘Presumably, this is caused by the combination of a higher-grade physique, likely the Superior Spirit Mirage in this case, and a physique cultivation in the fourth realm, which would likely strengthen the body to an extreme amount… If it was to be classified as a particular type of physique, like how the Immortal Mortal is a human-type physique and the True Ascendant is a yang-type physique, it would be considered an ancient-type physique due to its connection to the primordial powers of the world that existed long before the Yi City and had bled into the human bloodline after many, many years…

‘It is likely that a part of the physique that has been forgotten in the current day, much like how there are many supposedly useless physiques that are simply unusable due to the lack of empty meridians for physique energy to flow through, perhaps following similar principles to the Bestial Palm and the Repealing Spark, allowing her to sacrifice one of her mirages to infuse all of them with a strength somehow mirrored from me… That, or this is the latent potential of the Spirit Mirage warlord, and it is being unleashed temporarily via this strange method, in which case I will benefit the most if I delay any attacks and wait for her power to fall down to its previous level.’

As if in reply to that idea, the physique energy of the Spirit Mirage cultivator grew even further as another set of features appeared within the mirages: the vein-filled one gained a heart, the skin-covered one gained a set of lungs, the skeletal one gained a brain and the one full of muscle developed a small glowing spot near its abdomen, exactly where one might expect to find a dantian.

‘Waiting isn’t an option then. I have always wanted to see what will happen if I use Demonic Ire with physique energy…’ Wei Yi thought.

She took her weapon and held it out in a semblance of a guard position, while actually using it as the focus of the Demonic Ire energies in place of her body in order to receive the benefits of the weapon’s enhancements.

In place of the typical dark crimson that would surround her or her weapon, the bright sunlight of her physique energy ignited around the obsidian for an instant before it, just like spiritual will, was twisted, the brightness of the sun getting duller as the entire structure of her physique energy morphed. For a few instants, she could not tell what the end result would be, but when the light slowly dimmed to a soft white, she saw that the sunlight was instead turned into moonlight.

A bright, circular pulse of moonlight surged out of the sword, expanding to a large area before suddenly falling into the ground, cutting into the ground before surging upwards, creating a calming circle of energy around her.

Naturally, just as she didn’t permit her opponent to stand in place, the mirages also attempted to intrude into her circle of light once they understood that she was building up some kind of force or technique of equivalent power to their four-way split. The muscular mirage rushed forward first, its power clearly exceeding that of the other three, and attempted to break the circle of moonlight with a stomp of its foot, but the second that it crossed into the circle, a thick beam of blue and white light latched onto it, forming between it and Demon Killer, and rapidly drained away its power.

Although the mirage had instantly pulled away and broke the connection, Wei Yi was more than a little pleased with the energy that flowed into Sharen e Mo and was about to surge out to form the first inner pattern of Demonic Ire, ‘Although this doesn’t allow me to absorb yin-type physique energy for myself, perhaps if I infuse Antithesis energy into this, I could achieve something even more powerful…’

She did exactly that, condensing Antithesis energy within the palms of her hands and then projecting it towards the rest of the weapon, waiting to see what would happen upon their collision.

As it turned out, bringing one of the most powerful yang-type physiques warped by an otherworldly technique into a yin-type force into contact with an absolute inverting force derived from a sufficiently powerful and complex principle to allow for the externalisation of energy in the first realm of cultivation was something that yielded rather extreme results. The second that the outer layer of physique energy within and around the blade was touched by the Antithesis energy, a second pulse of force erupted from her position, instantly flattening the stone she stood upon, transforming the low circle of light at the edge of Demonic Ire’s range into a tall beam that surged into the storm cloud-covered sky.

The crimson clouds seemed to tremble for a moment, then, before the eyes of everyone that observed the fight between Wei Yi and the Spirit Mirage warlord, they actually appeared to move and shift out of the way, creating a small gap within the eternal storm.

Through that gap, soft moonlight fell upon the world, covering their arena in white and blue.

It was then that the first inner circle of the technique began to form, but instead of acting as it usually would, the energy within the blade fired out a horizontal beam that carved a curved line within the stone, reminiscent of the shape of the moon’s phases. As the light from the moon above fell upon this line, both it and the line suddenly grew brighter, with the area between the line and the outer edge becoming filled with white energy.

Once more, the muscular mirage attempted to enter, perhaps hoping that the initial phase of the technique had ended and that the moonlight beams would no longer drain her energy, but not only was she wrong, the beams had gotten even more powerful. Just a single instant of the beam coming into contact with the mirage instantly consumed its hand, leaving the muscle within to break down into crimson sludge and fall onto the ground while the mirage itself retreated, slowly recovering from its injuries.

That energy also proved to be sufficient for another line to be carved into the ground, with the new segment also being filled to the brim with power.

‘Since I’m already building up power and none of the four mirages appear to have the right ability to deal with me, I might as well see the full power of the… Antithesis Demonic Ire? Yin Demonic Ire? I’m not the right person for naming this shit…’ she decided to delay the naming until there was something more notable about this version of the technique, remaining in place while it continued to charge.

The Spirit Mirage that was covered in skin decided to approach next, walking significantly more carefully and daring only to reach out towards the bright beam of moonlight with the tip of her finger, only succeeding in actually touching the beam once the third line was carved into the ground.

However, it was not immediately torn asunder, nor did the beam that connected to it glow as brightly as before, being able to take only a small portion of the physique energy that existed near the surface of the mirage at a rate that was lower than the natural regeneration of it. As she saw that the technique wasn’t instantly obliterating her, the mirage instantly accelerated to a run, getting through the outer layer of light as quickly as it could.

With every step, the pressure and drain grew more powerful, but it could have reached Wei Yi and done something – anything to interrupt the channelling process of the technique, or, depending on the abilities of this skin-covered mirage, possibly even inflict serious harm to her – if not for the next phase of the Moonlight Ire suddenly bursting out of her blade and cutting a line directly through the middle of the pale white circle, splitting the mirage in two while also resulting in half of the entire circle being filled to the brim with Wei Yi’s physique energy.

The mirage broke into raw energy, the remaining skin crumpling to the ground and rotting away quickly, while the energy returned into the collective pool of the three remaining spirit mirages.

After all three of them shivered, a layer of thin, translucent skin and a set of lungs grew within the remaining mirages, their overall power experiencing yet another massive leap as the full power of the warlord was consolidated within them.

This moment allowed for another line to be cut into the stone, this time on Wei Yi’s right, prompting the warlord to rush back towards the beam of moonlight with the muscular mirage and pull her fist back, building up as much force as she could within her muscles before punching the air with force that rivalled the strongest of the casual attacks with Sharen e Mo, sending out no physique energy at all for the moonlight to absorb.

It reached the pale light in an instant, clashing with it and easily destroying the nigh non-existent defences that it provided from intrusion.

Before it could get too far, however, Wei Yi removed one hand from the hilt of the outstretched blade – it was sufficiently light for her to hold it with only two fingers, but she didn’t want to affect the channelling process by being careless – and replied to the punch with her palm, infusing only the raw principle of the Antithesis Palm into her strike, without any of its destructive potential.

Their collision occurred only a breath before the punch would have reached her, but the second that it entered the inverted air, it suddenly changed into nothingness. Yang, raw explosive force and potential and activity itself reverted to yin, calmness and stillness.

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Another line was carved into the ground, and the moon below was almost complete, while the moon above grew ever brighter, illuminating the entirety of the Great Bone Lake in its pale light. This light, much like the skyward slash and the moon itself before it, caught the attention of all who looked up into the sky. Physique cultivators, killing intent cultivators, hatred avatars and automatons, even people with no semblance of unique skills or abilities couldn’t help but watch this impossible colour appearing within the land of eternal crimson.

Even to those that knew nothing about the potential cause of the moon, this light sparked hope.

It was the light that their ancestors had spoken of, the glow that came from the skies above the Planar Continents, the radiance that had enveloped so many of those that had gone against the Great Families and were caught regardless. They had never expected to see even a glimpse of it within their lifetime, and yet, within just a single year, Beast’s Rest experienced a brief time without the endless crimson, while the Great Bone Lake now saw the moon.

No matter how pessimistic those that learnt of this were, it was impossible to deny that something was changing. The only question that remained was whether it would be enough.

Perhaps the Spirit Mirage warlord felt similarly, but she could not afford to get distracted, instead being forced to act in an extreme manner. With the muscular mirage, she grabbed the one that had developed a bone structure and threw her into the direct beam of moonlight before the thin barrier around it could recover.

The mirage flew straight through and directly onto Wei Yi’s blade, breaking into little pieces.

‘Does she want to forcefully complete herself to get the best chance at victory? Do you think I’ll just let that happen?’ Wei Yi asked inside of her head, using her free left hand to create another field of Antithesis to attempt to restrain the fleeing energies.

However, it was just a little too quick to be caught by her technique, and it slipped out of the moonlight and returned to the remaining two mirages, causing bones to sprout within every single one of them in seconds, seconds that still permitted for the creation of yet another carving in the ground through the Moonlight Ire. With it, the Spirit Mirage warlord knew that she had only a few seconds left to grasp victory from the jaws of defeat before those jaws consumed her whole.

This time, it was the vein-filled mirage that took a step forward, the physique energy within it suddenly retreating deeply into the body until the moonlight could not reach it even as she stepped into the beam and progressed towards Wei Yi with physique energy slowly building within the spirit mirage body, being bottled up within the veins.

‘I can’t be sure of what she’s doing, but if she thinks that I can’t do anything with my own techniques, especially after I’ve had so long to work on them, then she is wrong,’ Wei Yi thought as she released another part of her killing intent into the air behind her, shaping it into a heart with the combined assistance of her spiritual will and the Shaper’s Grasp physique ability. This heart looked nothing like her own organ, instead being based on the form of power currently being cultivated by Min Lian, for it was that same technique that she currently intended to use.

To further its power, she had also created a reflection of the draconic heart within her mental domain.

As it beat for the first time, the moon in the sky above pulsed with it, glowing brighter for a moment before nearing its previous brightness. However, that brief pulse of energy caused the skin on the mirage to burn, several particular points of it failing completely and disintegrating to naught but ash, permitting the moonlight to surge into the gaps and siphon the physique energy that was so carefully stored beneath it.

While most of the skin remained, this small breach allowed her to drain a significant portion of energy, causing the last two lines to be carved into the ground one directly after the other, completing the moon.

The circle in the ground filled to the brim with power while the one above appeared to pierce through even more of the clouds, shining even more brightly onto the Great Bone Lake and the land around it. Just the light of the moon repelled the killing intent of the Beast, pushing away the eternal crimson and leaving a soothing pale light in its wake.

However, the scene suddenly changed as the fluid energy within the ground seemingly dried up in an instant, while the moon above was overpowered by a different, golden light – sunlight. Everyone who was observing the moonlight looked up and saw how the gap in the storm clouds revealed that the sun had appeared within it, existing far away from the moon and thus passing behind it as it came into view. It quickly settled directly behind the moon, leaving nothing but a corona of bright flame around the now darkened moon, and yet this light alone was enough to illuminate the entire area with twice the brightness of the moon’s previous radiance.

Neither of the spirit mirages knew what to do, nor what this meant, nor did Wei Yi, but the latter understood the simple fact that her technique had finished charging.

Once more, she raised her weapon above her head, gripping it with both hands as it surged with immense force, as if she was directly connected to that luminous entity in the sky, and, using every muscle in her sturdy limbs, she swung the blade downwards.

The phenomena that followed would not be out of place in one of the fantastical stories told to the children of the Yi District, of the great heroes and adventurers that completed all sorts of tall deeds that only the Master of Yi City could hope to achieve in reality. As her blade descended, instead of cutting through air and space as it did before, it seemed to be entirely unaffected by them, as if it had lost all trace of weight and form.

Nevertheless, it still cut – it cut the moon.

Following her swing, a large gash was carved in the darkened circle above her, radiant sunlight surging directly through it. For a second, there was no obvious continuation, but then, alongside an explosion of force that shook the storm cloud-filled sky of the prison realm and reached the very edges of the world, it split violently in two, both sides being forced apart by the radiance of dawn light.

At the same time as the moon fell apart, the extreme quantity of energy within Sharen e Mo exploded out in a single, seemingly insignificant beam that was only as thick as the blade – a significantly weaker showing that her previous uses of Demonic Ire with her own body. Nevertheless, synchronising perfectly with another beat of the draconic heart, this energy pierced the first mirage’s heart directly, then followed the energy from it towards the last remaining instance of the warlord. Upon reconnecting with the essence of the defeated mirage, the Spirit Mirage warlord reformed in place, her body bursting with so much vitality and power that it seemed to double the previous might of the muscular mirage.

Despite that, when the Moonlight Ire beam touched her flesh, it passed straight through, nullifying all of the power found within the warlord’s physique.

It cut through the heart, the lungs, the head and neck, then latched onto the warlord’s body and threw it into a distant hill, where it reached the end of its life and exploded into a smooth ball of moonlight. For a second, it and the sun in the sky, with both growing brighter with every moment of their existence, shared the prison realm, illuminating the left side of it with radiant yang and chilling yin, before the spectacle had to come to a close.

The moonlight collapsed into itself, leaving no traces of itself or the warlord that it consumed.

The sun, and the gap within the storm clouds that revealed it, vanished just as suddenly.

Crimson filled the Great Bone Lake once again, no longer being held back by anything, and the colours of the world were lost to the inhabitants once more. However, unlike the previous times, when the only mention of the colours was in stories that came from so long ago that it was difficult to believe that any of them were real, they had truly seen the majesty of the outside world for themselves.

Now, they understood. Even the least intelligent and attentive of the physique cultivators understood why the outside world was considered to be such a grandiose place, as even the two most ubiquitous presences within the Planar Continents – the moon and the sun – contained such immense power that they able to devour their hearts and minds in the brief duration of their existence in the prison realm. If just those two things were so impressive, then what of the green grass, blue seas, brown and grey mountains, golden dragons… what of the stars?

Wei Yi did not yet know that she had inspired this much thought, instead looking down at her blade to find two more cracks within it.

‘For an otherworldly weapon, one that was likely meant to handle at least this much power, if not more, it is surprisingly easy to break. I wonder whether the otherworldly demon might have been scammed on this particular purchase,’ she idly considered as she recovered her breath and turned towards her last foe.

The fifth warlord’s expression remained mostly still, but the slight glimmer in his eyes could not be hidden. He was clearly interested in what he had just seen, and thus, when he bid the four servants on his sides to step away, his intentions caused some confusion.

“Let us begin,” he said, indicating his desire to partake in the duel as originally planned.

She did not have so much as the chance to slash with her blade to test his strength when she felt something within her mental domain and dived into it to take a look.

Somehow, a vague shadow of the warlord formed on the outer edges of the left side of her mental battlefield, bypassing the outer storm walls entirely. As the owner of the place, Wei Yi had no difficulty in observing him without revealing herself and doing so revealed something interesting. When he first entered, he had a confident expression – unlike his physical self – but when he saw a landscape reminiscent of the prison realm in some ways, that changed into confusion, his brows furrowing and his eyes darting around for any clue to his current predicament.

‘If he is in my mental domain, then… this could be the Dreadful Possession physique! The only ability that it has is to occupy people’s bodies and control them for prolonged periods of time, meaning that if I just stab him… he will die.’

Wei Yi did exactly that, walking over to his still body in reality and splitting his neck in two with her sword.

The figure in her mental domain flickered, but it otherwise did not appear to register any changes to the outside world, indicating that it was able to live on for some time purely through the physique energy that the warlord must have expended to get inside of her head. To prevent him from doing anything to her, she concentrated her spiritual will and killing intent around him, dispersing his mental form in seconds.

‘Did I win just like that?’ she questioned, continuing when she saw no evidence to the contrary, ‘Well, I should have fought him first, shouldn’t I? I suppose that this shows exactly how important it is to use the correct weapons against the correct enemies, or else I will be in the same situation as the warlord was.’

She stabbed her sword into the ground once again and raised her head.

“THE WARLORDS HAVE FALLEN! WILL YOU OBEY ME AS YOUR NEW WARLORD, OR MUST I PROVE MY POWER FURTHER?”

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