Chapter 119: V2C62: One’s Twisted Innocence

“What?” Chang Fang He froze, his attention switching entirely.

“You saw me tremble with every mention of the Greats and pushed me until you realised what they had done!” Chao Zhi continued, his voice secretly being amplified with Wei Yi’s support, “Due to your delusions, you drove me to tears until I could not even consider disagreeing with your words! You act just like the Greats!”

He turned to the crowd outside, “We can be unified! The two factions, the two sides of the prison realm – they can work under the guidance of someone that has successfully harmed two members of the Great Families! We can see the light of the sun and the glow of the moon once more!”

With every word, he spoke more quickly, and it soon became obvious why. After his last sentence, he fell to the ground with a cry of pain, his shaking hands grabbing onto his head in some feeble attempt to suppress the immense horror within. Even without a spiritual thread connecting them, Wei Yi was able to tell that her killing intent had been annihilated by the memories, and that they had now returned with twice of their previous power, as if to punish him for ever attempting to deal with the lesson provided by the Greats.

Still, his words had reached a quarter of Sanctuary, and they quickly spread to the Nobility and Continental factions alike, regardless of what either one thought about them.

“You… no matter. You, girl, are going against the obvious victors of the world, and that alone makes you worthless!” Chang Fang He declared, “How foolish do you have to be to fail to see the futility of your actions?”

“Futility? This is futile?” Wei Yi asked back, switching the projected image to that of the wounded face and damaged clothes of the two members of a Great Family. If it had been the image of any normal person, such a thing would have been entirely insignificant to anyone, but what she showed was stunning for two reasons.

The first, and most obvious, was the natural sky and terrain present within the scene. It was too natural to have been concocted from simple tales and stories that were widespread within the prison realm, and thus it gave credibility to the image.

The second was the simple fact that the Greats were to cultivators as cultivators were to mortals, to common people. At their weakest, a cultivator could be slain by a mortal, of course, but as their cultivation rose and their state recovered, a literal city of people would need to rise up in an extremely organised fashion in order to have the slightest chance of injuring a cultivator. Meanwhile, the Great Families were said to be immortal, indifferent to damage, capable of surviving the very sky crashing down upon them without a single scratch on them or their clothes. It was said so commonly within any material mentioning them in the Virtuous Side that it had become common knowledge.

And yet, there it was. A mark, on two members of the Great Families at once.

It was akin to a miracle.

“A pathetic fabrication! Do you expect to-”

“Shut your mouth! I have yet to finish!” Wei Yi infused another quantity of spiritual will into the large floating image, filling it with so much power that it literally bloated and burst.

However, it did not scatter, but instead expanded into the full scene, with her barely remaining on her feet after exhausting all of her power, while the Greats showed a look of absolute, uncontrolled fury that clashed with their typical attempts at presenting themselves with pride. They could smell smoke and flame around them, see the dirt and grass on the road, and even feel a feeble wind barging out of the memory.

“Everyone, do you believe that this is false?” she shouted with the empowerment of the Lion’s Roar, forcing the scene to split, expand and shift, spreading it as far as she could while doing almost nothing to the image before her primary audience, “They were not attacked by someone two realms above them, nor was some heavenly item used to damage them. It was planar energy, and nothing more!”

Of course, it was possible to fabricate such a scene, but it would be bound to take time, preparation and a lot of effort, even for someone with a mind as efficient and quick as hers. Those of the prison realm did not know about her mind, and even if they did, there was only a single conclusion that any of the common populace, and many of those in power, would even wish to make – it was real, and the Greats were mortal! They could be beaten! They could be killed!

“The Great Families are mortal?” one voice expressed their conclusion with uncertainty.

Another followed, “They are human, just like us!”

“They can be injured!”

““THE GREAT FAMILIES CAN BE KILLED!””

“Be silent!” Chang Fang He tried to launch a blast of spiritual will at the shouting observers to shut them up, but it was intercepted by Wei Yi, who appeared in its path in an instant and dispersed it with a single powerful punch.

“Now, why don’t you tell us why you’ve lied to the people that trusted your words?”

“I did not lie! It is only obvious to support those who live in a greater world to our own, those who can decide our fates with a single breath! Even the greatest among us would be like ants to them, and just-”

The killing intent around Wei Yi had been beginning to fade then, the success slowly lightening her fury from the words about the Greats, but when she heard his description, her mind unwittingly recalled the words spoken by the first powerful enemy she had been forced to face in her life. She, too, spoke of higher worlds, of ants, of being nothing to those above them…

“Otherworldly demon!” she shouted, the second explosion of her hatred instantly turning the floor beneath her to dust and shattering the spiritual will arrays that protected the shelves around her, sending the books and shelves flying away from her, “Once again, you fuck with a world that you do not even understand, and yet you dare preach to us that you are the one acting with wisdom? You dare speak of obvious victors, of futility, when you do not even belong to the Planar Continents? Answer me, you bastard!”

Perhaps he would have answered her, but her crimson energy expanded rapidly, further shredding anything in its path, forcing him to retreat. She controlled it to stop just before it reached Chao Zhi, who was still on the ground and writhing in pain, but it had made her stance against him clear.

“I understand how this world works! It follows the same clichés as always, which makes you a worthless foe that will be slain within a chapter! Just-”

“WE ARE NOT LIVING IN A FUCKING BOOK!” dense crimson concentrated on her left arm, almost forming into solid claws despite the deficiency in realm, “I don’t care what you’ve learned on your other world, but this is reality! You are not some protagonist, fated to succeed! You do not have the blessing of the heavens! You are just a spoiled child with a blessing that you do not deserve!”

Within her mental domain, her Augur’s Library lit up like a lantern in the night, illuminating both sides of the mental prison realm in crimson. She converted most of it into the condensed books and pages that she could use in extreme situations, but even then, the power was so overwhelming that it shook the foundations of the entire structure, driving her to make a set of declarations based entirely on her assumption from previous experiences.

Despite that, she believed herself to be accurate in this regard, as the behaviour of both Yi Henghua and Chang Fang He were close to one another. Both, despite whatever suffering they had faced, had gained something too powerful without any work, so far as she could tell, and had clearly gotten used to that power. Perhaps it was only natural to assume that you were the centre of the world if the very best things within it seemed to flow towards you, but it was a childish and sickening perspective when it gave rise to the idea that one’s every act was righteous, and every one of their foes was destined to fall due to their wickedness.

“I am no child! I have lived two lifetimes, in full, whereas you’ve barely gotten through half of one!” he rejected her claim, suddenly throwing his blades, “Behold the power of the protagonist!”

A second set of shortswords appeared in his hands while the first flew towards Wei Yi with peculiar accuracy. They spun at great speed, almost blending into a set of white and grey blurs, but she was not in the right mind to worry about such pathetic weapons.

She dashed towards one, grabbing it with her crimson-encased hand and crushing the blade into nothingness while a Frayed Blade spawned within her right hand, although it mixed with so much killing intent that, in combination with the natural appearance of the technique, it almost seemed to be made of a killing intent that was denser and more powerful than her hatred itself, as difficult and unlikely as such a concept seemed to be.

“Despite your age, you still play with toys!” she exclaimed in reply, unleashing a Hatred Split within a downward slash.

Even while she was in the second realm, such an attack at full force was able to sever the space of the prison realm. After two years, a breakthrough in her cultivation, and ample time to improve on the technique, she had chosen to focus more on speed and fluidity rather than anything else, as power would naturally follow with a greater cultivation.

Her weapon expanded just far enough to be able to cut Chang Fang He in half, then exploded into scorching flame and searing crimson half-way down the swing, and further empowered by overlaying the Cleaving Axe ability onto the weapon.

The raw force of the technique fell upon the brown-haired man, exploding outwards as it landed on a hastily created barrier, crushing the walls around him into nothing. A thick plume of smoke and dust flew into the air with such speed that it caused the spires of Sanctuary to tremble, with stray specks of dust scratching their surface and even piercing into the interiors, disrupting the lives of those within. A thin spatial tear formed within the last seconds of her swing, swallowing a certain quantity of the dust and devouring it without a trace.

And yet…

“Do all of you have bullshit methods of escape?” Wei Yi shouted in frustration, swatting the enormous cloud of dust away to reveal that, apart from a few hairs and a drop of blood, Chang Fang He had somehow vanished from his location and appeared elsewhere.

She instantly turned towards his new position – as he was still within the range of her spiritual will – and found him standing atop a roof, his teeth clenched while one hand lay on the top of his head in an attempt to suppress the bleeding. A trace of the cut was visible on his head, but it was thin and shallow, insufficient to do anything but shake a seasoned warrior or lightly terrify a commoner that was unused to blood. It could not end his life.

“As I said, I am the one in charge! Since I cannot best your brute strength,” he winced as the wound on his head slowly attempted to heal, “I shall show you the truth of my ‘toys’!”

With his free hand, he pressed down on his chest, shutting his eyes for a moment. Although it was the perfect moment to make a move on him, before Wei Yi could do so, she found the characters within her dantian trembling slightly as a great quantity of stable energy pooled within his body, prompting her to stay put as to be able to respond in the best manner.

The next second, his eyes snapped open and he slowly pulled away his hand from his chest, a strange light following them out of his body. It was a mixture of white and azure, and as it lit up the space around him, the vibrations of the mysterious characters intensified.

‘Another one of those twisted abilities belonging to the otherworldly demons!’ she recognised it easily, as the azure light, trembling of the characters and the inability to perceive it directly with spiritual perception were all obvious signs of interference from those that did not belong to the Planar Continents or the spatial realms within, ‘It is stabilising the area around it, contains a lot of power, clearly has a degree of control to its actions, either through itself or through Chang Fang He’s influence… An anchor?’

It provided the answer for her when, after crossing some arbitrary boundary away from his chest, the glowing light pulsed, with only the azure expanding at a great speed. Within a single breath, it covered the entirety of Sanctuary, covering it with a dome-like energy that released countless threads of will that forced themselves into the stagnant spiritual will of the city and shaped it into humanoid figures.

Those figures, bare and simple as they were, crashed onto the ground, with idle strands of energy forming into weapons or random pieces of armour that they then put to use, heading towards the nearest person with these weapons at the ready.

Although this action was clearly one made with haste and folly that appeared to be prevalent in otherworldly demons, there appeared to be a purpose to their and Chang Fang He’s madness, as one of the figures within her perception targeted a simple clump of spiritual will instead, grabbing onto it and adding it to itself and channelling a certain quantity of it to the glowing white light in his hands, as well as to his cultivation.

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This was a terrible act, of course… but also the most perfect opportunity she could have asked for.

“People of Beast’s Rest, attack the spectres! Protect Sanctuary!” she shouted first.

No direct reply came to her, but their actions spoke far louder than any words could. As soon as her voice reached them, several dozen crimson pillars rose from the ground, crashing into the spiritual will figures forming above them, then exploded horizontally, cutting through the apparitions around them with ease, the killing intent easily shattering the feeble spiritual will.

Once she confirmed that the techniques she had previously taught to them were effective, she turned her attention to those that were most in danger, “People of Sanctuary! Chang Fang He, the founder of the Nobility faction, is not only an otherworldly demon, but someone that does not care for your survival, only his own interests! These spectres originate from him, and it is due to him that you will be harvested for your energy, so that he can shut me up! If you want to survive, approach the nearest pillar of crimson!”

As the most powerful amongst every guest from the Crimson Side of the prison realm, she naturally needed to contribute, so as a series of phantoms formed near her and chose to target her, regardless of the driving force behind such a decision, she reined in her killing intent only to unleash it once more.

Before the opening of the tear in the storm walls, Wei Yi and the people at Beast’s Rest naturally had ample time to prepare, during which they created the gateway stones. However, those stones were not the only thing that she had prepared – techniques for herself and everyone else was another. With the benefit of the memories of Bai Hao and the expeditionary group that she had captured, she had a somewhat decent understanding of the right of the prison realm even before she came to it, and thus she knew what the threats she might have to face were. Cultivators were one, but the equivalents of hatred automatons were another, so she had prepared a method for handling each one without harming the other, as well as methods to target all spiritual will.

Now, she used one of those exact methods, capitalising on the fact that her energy could easily split far further and with far more stability than anyone else’s, and created an enormous sphere around herself and the library. It was formed from killing intent, and thus it cut straight through the spectres incredibly easily, creating a bound space of her own spiritual will within it.

“Everyone, use the spiritual will and prepare for battle!” she spoke to those within the sphere without the Lion’s Roar technique and physique, “Min Lian, you’re here, aren’t you?”

“I am, Master,” the assassin emerged from the edge of the spiritual will and killing intent sphere, bowing to her quickly before she drew a weapon that had been specifically created to replicate the Scorching Blade of her assassin organisation, “Do you wish me to protect these people?”

“That’s right. I need you to prevent their deaths while I expand my influence and limit the unbound spiritual will that Chang Fang He has access to,” Wei Yi explained herself quickly, linking the automaton’s resonance with her own energy as to allow her to wield as much power as possible, “If you have to, sacrifice your bodily integrity, though not to the point of sacrificing your combat ability and mobility.”

“Understood, Master,” she nodded and immediately went to work, slashing through a dozen wraiths.

As she had things under control, Wei Yi rushed out of the sphere and brought a small sphere of energy with her, dragging out the field that was controlled by her planar anchor and bringing it towards the rooftop on which Chang Fang He was creating these spectres.

“You’ve given up on convincing your people, haven’t you?” Wei Yi called out to him, concentrating an immense quantity of spiritual will within her right fist.

He shook his head, retreating while the white light accompanied him with a slight delay, “I have not.”

“Killing them all is hardly a genius plan, otherworldly bastard. At this point, even if you had been in the right, not a single soul would believe you,” she explained, having gotten far enough from the others to allow her to speak a little more freely, “I’ll give you a single opportunity to stand down and not be a murderous bastard, but if you reject this, I don’t care whether you were a kind man in your world, in Enia or-”

“WHAT? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT WORD?” the soft white light that emanated from a point between his hand and chest suddenly brightened by several folds, the colour transforming into a duller yet more intimidating grey, “Who are you? Where did you get that word from?”

“A fellow otherworldly demon of yours. Did you think that you would be the only one here?”

However, even if her words reached him, they did not affect him, for he immediately created a legion of spiritual will apparitions around himself and sent out half of them to fight her, “Die!”

‘That’s your opportunity gone, Chang Fang He. Don’t expect me to ever consider giving you a second chance,’ Wei Yi thought as a storm of spiritual will threads burst out of her body, forming into the shape of an array, ‘Furthermore, you think that you’re the only one who can create countless disposable warriors? Let me show you how to do it properly.’

She recalled an array that she had once encountered and broke, and although she had only a second to witness it then, she had memorised it just as fully as everything else within her mental domain. Her threads formed the Restraining Phantoms array in seconds, but then the many loose threads that remained arranged themselves behind it and around it, expanding it in both size and power as her plentiful spiritual will surged towards it, activating the newly refined and assembled array just as the opposing wave of spectres reached her.

They tried to swing and claw at her, but a force suddenly kept them in place, with countless hands emerging from the air and grabbing onto their limbs.

With the standard Restraining Phantoms array, that would have been the full extent of the two star array’s power, but then the fractal  patterns came to life. Each one of the hands expanded slightly, then tightened their grip on the will spectres and pulled themselves out of the void, full skeletal and ghostly figures emerging from nothing. Despite the lack of weaponry and equipment, they still fought the spectres, biting at them with such ferocity that their armour proved to be worthless.

As soon as they dealt with the initial wave, they and the array itself turned its attention towards the group that currently surrounded and protected Chang Fang He, with countless more hands and limbs emerging from some unknown void to grasp onto that defensive force.

“What the hell is this? You’re just some girl – you should be failing pathetically until some prince comes to save you!” the man shouted in Enian, his ranting directed more at himself than anyone else.

“That’s a strange assumption, demon,” Wei Yi replied in the same tongue, causing his head to snap towards her and his eyes to widen in further surprise, “There are no princes in Yi City, nor in the prison realm. Finding a prince around here is bound to be far more difficult than one of your kind, not to mention one more powerful than me.”

“But that is how it works! That’s how it always works!”

“Really? Is that more wisdom from some story that you’ve read?”

“Exactly! And now, as I am nearly defeated by you, the Great Families will finally take notice and descend upon this damned world, cleansing it of bitches like you!” he excitedly informed her, looking up as if to observe their literal descent.

That was a poor move on many levels. Even putting aside the fact that there had never been a single sighting of the Greats within the prison realm, meaning that them appearing now, out of nowhere, would be highly unlikely, he distracted himself with this move as even his spiritual perception was directed to the storm clouds above, perhaps hoping to be the first to notice some traces of a spatial tear.

If he had been right, he would not have suffered greatly. And yet, even as Wei Yi flew right through the spiritual will spectres and thrust Sharen e Mo into his chest, no one appeared to save him.

It pierced right through his body, cutting through the heart and several ribs in the process, and was pulled out of him just as easily, as if he had not been there to begin with. Rather than bothering about finishing off Chang Fang He’s body – as she felt that at this rate, he would manage it himself – she raised the sword above her head, gripping it with both hands, and channelled physique energy, spiritual will and killing intent into the weapon, instantly causing another crack to appear within its surface. A Titanic Demolisher appeared beside her, its weapon merging with Demon Killer, while the Martial Aspirant physique energy empowered three instances of Moonlight Ire, Demonic Ire and a nameless, killing intent variant of the same technique.

The initially spotless storm cloud-covered sky was suddenly torn asunder as a moon and sun appeared within that gap, shining brightly upon the glowing white light that had not yet followed Chang Fang He to the ground.

With the full imbuement of all of her available energies, the three instances of her technique completed charging up in an instant, at the minor cost of yet another crack of Sharen e Mo’s surface, with neither of the false objects in the sky being able to dominate the other to appear in the centre of the opening within the storm clouds.

‘If this cursed power can be destroyed, then…’ she did not finish her thoughts, for she saw that the light was slowly beginning to move, instead slashing down with the full force of her powerful muscles and physique, the additional weights on her wrists, the power of the True Ascendant physique, the further assistance of the Martial God’s Extremes and even the mostly dormant Condensed Arts Body and planar energy.

“DIE!”

Her weapon struck the light in the blink of an eye, the overlapping techniques and the overuse of every muscle in her arms causing everything within them to crack and tear.

It tore the space in its path asunder, revealing a dark and empty void, and even managed to decapitate Chang Fang He through the sheer sound of the slash, catching him just as he tried to rise for one last gasp.

And yet, when it met the light, it was as if it had encountered an immovable object, for it was unable to nudge the wisp of light even slightly, not to mention cutting or damaging it in any way. If anything, the weapon appeared to be suffering more, as a chip of obsidian broke away from the blade near the spot of direct impact. Even the fact that the sphere of light around Sanctuary appeared to recede seemed to be linked with the will of the light, rather than her actions.

Nevertheless, she ignored the pain in her arms, the damage to the weapon, the collateral damage to one of the main spires of the city, and applied even more force, activating every single technique that could be transmitted to the weapon via Storm Blade Wreathing.

For the sake of the Planar Continents, of the prison realm, of life as a whole, she had to succeed!

Crimson, silver and sunlight merged together, moonlight surrounding them, and every single one of them exploded at once, the sun and moon above her suddenly shattering completely as both of their light pooled together and fell from the sky, crashing down onto her weapons as it illuminated the entirety of Sanctuary and beyond.

The light was fantastic, brilliant, astounding and more, instantly illuminating the Virtuous Side with an even greater display than the split moon of the Great Bone Lake, and yet, to the one performing it, to the splitter of both sun and moon, to the only planar cultivator within the prison realm, to the one with an anchor that rivalled the prison realm itself, to the one with the unique cosmic energy and possibly even an unrivalled mental domain, nothing mattered as much as the fact that the light beneath the weapon completely ignored her attack, replying only when she was exhausted with a single pulse.

That pulse threw off her blade and flooded the dome of energy, which had shrunk to roughly half of its previously size, with even more wild controlling threads, which quickly coalesced into more spectres that sought out targets to feast upon.

Or, so they would have done, if the trembling characters within Wei Yi’s dantian hadn’t finally gone beyond that point, breaking up into many individual fragments that arranged themselves into an enormous, complex and impossibly powerful array that did not belong to the Planar Continents, impossible quantities of energy surging into it from some unknown, unseen source, condensing together to release a singular blast of power.

It struck the glowing light just as the last spark of life faded from Chang Fang He’s body, causing it to suddenly fade and dim, the large dome of energy around it receding as nothing but an azure gem remained. For several seconds, it hovered in the air, doing nothing at all, before it disappeared from the world.

The second otherworldly demon felled by Wei Yi’s hand died with a look of absolute confusion on his face.

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