After the Kong Prison Realm, Wei Yi had no problems with killing, and that had not gotten any less true after she gained the ability to freely look into the thoughts of those she was dealing with.
So far as she was able to tell, some of those people did have families, or businesses that they were keeping afloat with their contributions, and some even took care of the weak and poor when they could. She could hardly deny that these were significant things to many, but she also knew from the day’s experience that they would commit to an attack and theft of a person that had done little to most of them. There had been many people in the group, but only thirty-one had spent more money that they had wanted, while only ten of those people were present.
That meant that most were simply present to steal something from her, like the recently deceased thief that had made the mistake of trying to sell out those he had come along with in an attempt to earn her favour.
So far as she could tell, there was no reason to finish them off for her own benefit.
From their demise, she earned a few more planar anchor points, bringing her to seven hundred and twenty-three, meaning that they could soon contribute to the increase of planar energy within the air of the Planar Continents, and from their hands she could reclaim some of the inscriptions that she had sold, as well as quite a few valuable items that could be used so long as she found a use for them.
Something like this could potentially lead to a great change in the world, while their lives would be unlikely to.
Just as she had thought back when she had slain the Black Terror of Beast’s Rest, she did not believe that she was necessarily doing the right thing. In fact, if she was to be her own judge from some independent, unbiased perspective, the act itself was not a positive one at all, since their occasional inclinations to theft did not necessarily outweigh the positive contributions that they had been able to make throughout their lives, if supposedly good and evil deeds could even be balanced in such a fashion.
However, this was her path, her risks, and her pursuit. If she failed, then, as she had imagined quite a few times, the world could judge her for her misdeeds, and find some terrible fate for her to suffer. On the other hand, if she managed to succeed and convinced the Planar Continents that she had done so, she wouldn’t need praise or wealth. So long as she could ensure that the stable state she wished for the continents could persist and endure any trials and tribulations, or, in other words, so long as she had the power to continue such a thing, whether on her own or through somebody or something that she could trust absolutely, then it would be fine.
Even then, if the world found her methods to be inexcusable, it would be something that she could accept, although it would be a shame if she had managed to achieve most of her goals only to be disposed of by a world that did not agree with her vision.
‘Again, my mind seems to drift. Something like that is useful at times, but most of the time, focus is far more important,’ she thought to herself, returning her attention to the remains of the God Burial Sea technique within the sand and dirt, ‘Now this is something far more recent, and more interesting. It seems that the ire energy embedded in the brands dispelled the law of restriction.’
Most of the sand within the thick circle around her was still dark and mud-like, but in the spots where the dead bodies of those who got captured still remained, it was far lighter and less restrictive, likely being far less of a challenge for most people to cross than the God Burial Sea itself.
In a word, this was interesting. Not just due to the conflict between energy that shouldn’t have occurred, but due to the seeming cause of it. When she set down a few more brands, with varying levels of energy infusion and alterations to test out their effects, she found that only the brands with ire energy inside of them were able to inflict any damage to the God Burial Sea, whereas the rest collided uneventfully and returned into the sky as they were meant to.
So far as she was able to understand this, it seemed that the ire energy didn’t simply destroy the restriction technique, but instead caused a conflict of Dao that dispelled its effects.
‘The God Burial Sea is heavily bound to the Dao of Law, so the ire energy is in opposition to law? No, perhaps it is even a direct opposite? Yes, ire is another word for fury, indignation, and in extreme, rebellion. My Dao of Law is absolute, so what I witness here is absolute rebellion against it… In other words, ire energy of all kinds, despite its mechanical origin, is in fact a branch of the Dao of Law itself?’ she contemplated, bringing her focus into the Kong Prison Realm for a moment, ‘The Ire Dao, a rebellion against the law, against restrictions, against fate… Judging from the descriptions of the man that had used it, he was most certainly intent on rebelling against the order of things on the Silver Side…’
Her mental gaze returned to the Endless Monolith, the core of which glowed brightly, barely showing a glimpse of the cosmos in the very core of it. With her thoughts, however, the light became brighter, and the amount of energy threatened to increase again.
‘I can restrict everything with the Dao of Law, binding rebellion into a lawful matter, but in order to do so, the condensation of ideas must change somewhat,’ she understood instantly, but the exact shape that this changed form should take was a little more difficult to guess, especially considering her earlier encounter with some vague figure that had seemed to see her, then vanish entirely.
To prevent a repeat of that time, even if it did seem to end well, she decided to focus and pay close attention to her actions and deductions, making sure that every thought that she invested into this was considered in proper detail and wouldn’t cause problems in any kind of timeframe.
After a short while of her mental time, and essentially no time at all inside of the prison realm and especially outside of it, she came up with a few ideas that should work, and was now contemplating the most optimal one to choose from. Among her ideas, something like edicts stuck onto the sphere of light seemed to have some potential, as it would replicate the way in which law could bind with mere words, but that only led her to decide on a better idea.
‘In a way, the law binds. It restricts and ties one down, for to act within the law is to abide by restrictions, whether in nature or in modern human civilization. The law, regardless of the way in which it appears, is a mass of chains, each one binding more and more, until one’s freedom is restricted to an immense degree.’
Around the sphere of light in the centre of the monolith, a series of illusory chains, thick and powerful, formed, wrapping around it and being held taut on either end with some invisible attachment to the air.
‘However, the law also protects, for to act within it means that it is possible to benefit from that which may hinder another. To understand it and to use it to one’s own advantage means that any who seek to break it in order to attack you will be met with the full force of the law, whether it is a natural response like the retaliation from a hunter carnivore or the heat of flames being able to burn those who set it, or supposedly unnatural, like guards attacking a criminal that sought to end the life of a respected and protected man,’ she added, ‘With perfect mastery of it, no additional action must be taken in order for its full benefits to be bestowed upon you.’
The chains around the sphere became denser and tougher, no longer seeming like an illusion that could be broken with a mere touch. Each link transformed from mere iron to steel, becoming thicker and more secure, tightly enveloping the sphere of light without blocking a single glimpse of the light itself, as if they remained as illusory as before.
‘The law is also a weapon against those that obey it or are still bound to it. So long as the chains are wielded properly, they are as much of a boon to the chained as they are a threat to any other…’
All of the restrictive chains suddenly loosened, but their number grew denser and they seemed to hold the light even more securely than before, protecting those outside from within and the within from outside.
‘Finally, the act of rebellion, in itself, is law. It occurs whenever the law strays too heavily into weakness or strength, being able to hold a man without benefit or keeping him lose with all of the power that one could use. It is an attempt to restore balance, to reclaim that which must be had, and it occurs always and freely, unrestricted by the views of human society. Beasts may engage in rebellion, insects may, matter can, even energy can do so. It is not about a conscious desire for chaos, but the will to see a change that one believes to be right…’ her eyes, mental and physical, shut.
Meanwhile, the chains in the centre of the anchor, unseen by most, gained a crimson vibrance in their core. Much like how the Cosmic Dao had bestowed the core of the anchor’s pure planar energy light and the star that resided within it with a gateway to the cosmos, the ire that spread throughout the chains granted them a slight hint of a similar portal to a domain of absolute crimson rebellion.
However, even something like that was bound by the chains themselves, the ire supporting the very things that kept it in place.
‘The world is bound by law. And yet, through it, it attains freedom. What a contradictory thing, and yet…’ her eyes reopened, witnessing this sight as it settled down, the Dao concepts finally settling again, ‘Actually, I still don’t know whether these Dao concepts actually reflect reality, or if they are merely stable here because I see no flaws with them. If I encounter a contradiction that I cannot solve, will my entire understanding of a Dao simple shatter? Would such a thing occur even if I hadn’t solidified them like this?’
As was often the case in life, one’s questions could be many, but the answers would be limited and not immediate, even at the best of times. In order to test those questions, she’d need to risk her current strength and find something that heavily contradicts her current view of the world, which was tough.
The issue with such a thing was that she naturally believed herself to be correct in the interpretation of everything so far. Her idea of the Dao of Law, the Ascendant’s Dao, and everything about the world itself was only stable because she had been able to confirm it numerous times. That meant that if she wanted to test it, she would need to locate someone who heavily disagreed with her stances and also had the evidence and interpretation to prove it, and would then not capitalise on momentary weakness if it id did occur, meaning that the likes of the Greats were immediately out of the question.
If that possibility was true, it would be rather disappointing for her, not due to the threat that it caused, but due to the fragility that the Dao would force upon her. In order to survive, she had needed to change certain perspectives quickly, and an immovable Dao would prevent such a thing from happening without causing even more trouble than the circumstance.
At that point, it would be more worthwhile to discard it and return to pure technique cultivation, supplementing her strength with raw cultivation and power rather than something that forces her to avoid risking anything that could shatter a Dao. Even if it was easy to put it back together and incorporate the new insight, it would still take mental energy, effort, and likely some time, meaning that it wouldn’t be something she could do freely.
In other words, to rely heavily on something like that was effectively equivalent to putting an inscription that was being controlled from afar by a hostile, powerful cultivator into your home without even checking its nature. It could end well, but it would be more likely to result in pain or even death.
She presumed, based on her current understanding of the Dao, that this wouldn’t be the case, as she had already figured out that there are separate branches that embody different aspects of a Dao. With her Absolute Branch of the Dao of Law, and the image that is based on her views of it, it should be that the image will allow her to make use of that interpretation of reality, no matter what the actual truth of the matter is. Under that assumption, so long as she did not personally seek to scatter the Dao and dismiss everything about it, there should be no danger, although she really didn’t like taking such a risk.
‘To avoid the risk, switching my focus back to the techniques that I do have would be the sensible choice. I have plenty of anchor points to spend, and need to do so in order to increase the concentration of planar energy, so once I deduce a path for some of them, I should immediately improve them just in case,’ she decided, glancing at the Truth of the Universe interface once before moving her attention.
With this pondering of Dao being the second one of the day, even though she hadn’t been spending hours of real time on it, she still felt that a lot of time had passed, and that moving on would be wise.
There were still the matters of desert exploration to consider, after all, and if she kept shutting her eyes and then emerging with new Dao insights and circles in her eyes after opening them a moment later, Shun Liu Min would at the very least figure out that something was going on, and might even start taking advantage of the brief pauses to resume her staring while Wei Yi was unable to handle her immediately.
This time, when she brought her focus back onto the Planar Continents, the maid had fortunately not yet noticed anything about her actions as she had her focus purely on the bodies around them, some of which were slowly being brought out of the ground as the God Burial Sea ended.
“Have you not seen a dead body before?” she asked.
Her question, although not intended to scare the woman, managed to cause her to tremble momentarily, a noticeable jitter spreading throughout her body.
“I… Well, not really, unless you count those who would be dead soon… Neither the Shun family nor that man had any interest in me being able to resist them or be able to fight for them, so I didn’t really get to experience anything of the sort…”
“I see. In that case, here you go. Death. You can get used to it, because the further we go, the more of it you are likely to see,” Wei Yi said, “You don’t need to like it either, since I don’t, but if you get scared like that in the future, it wouldn’t be good for either one of us. Mostly you, since I can get out of most situations easily, but I wouldn’t want to let you get hurt just to save myself, not unless I had no other choice.”
“Right… I’ll try to get used to it… Somehow, great pain and death seem to differ significantly, don’t you think?”
“I suppose they do. People often talk about a fate worse than death, amounts other things, so there is clearly some difference between perishing and endless torment in our eyes, amongst other things. Witnessing it, or even experiencing them, also differs in that long-term pains lacks a sense of finality to it, meaning that you will be able to persist regardless, whereas death is not all like that.”
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“Yeah… You can also talk about some very heavy things…”
“Comes with experience and the necessity to be thinking about them. Not to put you down, but I have done and intend to do quite a bit more than training for and then becoming a maid, although I might not have necessarily gone against such a thing back when things were simpler.”
Shun Liu Min did not reject such a statement, but she did ask, “Could I hear something about your past? Later, I mean.”
“Sure, I don’t mind. However, for now, let us go in that direction, since that is where we are supposed to be going today. Let’s continue on until the evening, patrol around, then get back to the district and see whether anything interesting has been found. Look out for these,” Wei Yi gave the maid a copy of the killing will pages just to help her remember, “If you spot anything that looks vaguely like those landmarks, remember to tell me right away, and if some kind of desert creature attacks you, quickly view it with spiritual perception. Second realm and lower should be safe, third realm you could defeat, and the fourth realm onwards should be directed straight to me.”
The maid nodded and readied her spear, glancing at it and momentarily wondering just why she had been thinking about drawing it in the first place if she had no experience with attacking or killing, which then also made her question when she could have ever used it in the earlier so-called battle when Wei Yi was able to wipe out all foes in a few seconds.
As Wei Yi was about to take a step forward, she stopped, put her foot back down, and raised a hand into the air, causing numerous tendrils of killing will to reach towards the bodies around them and reached into their hands and pockets, removing numerous items from each one of them. She did attempt to loot the embers from the bodies of the fallen, but unfortunately, she was unable to touch them with anything other than her own hands. Everything else proved far easier to take, and so she brought it to her, taking one of the inscription plates that had been brought along directly.
“Oh, and since we have looted ten inscription plates, I will let you have a few of them. Tie the Bolt Deflecting inscription to your back, and it will ward off sudden attacks that you might otherwise miss,” she instructed, passing it to Shun Liu Min, “I could also give you either the Lightning Spear or the Tormented Spines inscription, seeing as they happened to be on these people. Truly, what a waste of decent craftsmanship.”
“The method of using a lightning spear seems more straightforward, so I will take it… By the way, what is that manual? It doesn’t have a label…”
Wei Yi looked in the direction she had pointed, finding that amongst the many items she removed from the bodies of those she had defeated was a small tome with no particular detail on any part of it, with even the pages seeming ordinary and only slightly aged. If she had seen such a thing in a library, she wouldn’t have presumed it to be anything more than a foundational cultivation method.
She scanned through it with spiritual perception, then quickly picked it up and confirmed that the inside of the book was exactly what it seemed to be, at which point she placed it inside one of the pockets of her robes, where it was sent to the House of Gold.
“What was it?”
“Just look at the man’s body and you should be able to guess exactly what it does. I’ll make use of it to gain some more understanding of what I’ve now got and whether I can manipulate it further, but using it without any modification will be equivalent to simply asking to be found out,” Wei Yi said, pointing in the vague direction of three bodies in the bloodied sand, their heads mostly gone from their bodies.
However, one of them did have a highly prominent feature in his trousers.
“That… is not how I would have liked to learn the function of the technique, and it most certainly didn’t help with dealing with all of the death…”
“On the contrary, getting used to all kinds of things involving the dead, be it their blood, organs, or certain physical characteristics should bring you right along to not being bothered by it… It helped me, that’s for sure. If I recall correctly, after I had killed for the first time, I had to borrow the deceased’s clothing… Not telling you where that ended up, however,” she muttered at the end, patting her robe.
It seemed that the maid was already struggling with what she was saying, so she didn’t need to know that she was in the presence of that very clothing, taken from the body of the Black Terror and worn to this day.
Even without such contributions, Shun Liu Min appeared to have been realised something on her own, and looked back onto the body for a little while longer than before.
“I suppose when you compare it to that, this is… not as bad… How old were you?”
“Eighteen, and a bit, if that matters. Back then, I had quite a few difficulties I had needed to deal with, but I managed to figure them out and continued on. It took a while to get back from there, but I ended up succeeding in the end, and here I am.”
“Eighteen… When I had left to meet that man… I had thought that I was in a weird place, but I guess I’m not the only one…”
“Rather than considering who is and isn’t in a strange place in their lives, you should consider the differences. I had not needed to deal with your exact experiences, and you have managed to avoid killing all the way up to today. We won’t be able to go through life without some odd experiences that will change us greatly, and we should strive to learn rather than being stuck with them. They won’t ruin us, not so long as we understand who we are and who we wish to be. Who do you wish to be?”
“I wish to…” Shun Liu Min pondered it for a while, but she was unable to answer even after a minute of thinking, “Actually, I haven’t considered it… ever. I never thought that I would ever have a chance to change myself in any way, so-”
“So, consider it now. We’re walking through a huge desert, looking for some ancient fucking rocks, so you have the rest of the evening to ponder it. For example, do you wish to be honest, or do you believe that lying is something permissible? Regardless of the answer, why is it that you believe this? Would you leave an ally and friend behind for the sake of pursuing a particular goal, or would you never dare to do such a thing? Once again, why?” Wei Yi suggested, “The key is not necessarily the questions themselves, but why you wish to act in a particular way. What is it that you wish to achieve, why do you seek it, and how far would you go?”
“And, once I reach some conclusion, what would it do?”
“If you comprehend and settle on your goals, morals and so on, you might be able to significantly decrease the effects of all kinds of mental and physical stimuli, such as death and killing. That’s what helped me the most, although I don’t know whether it will do the same for you. I can occasionally be rather anomalous in the way I do things.”
“I see… I will ponder it as much as I am able to, and I will share any progress I may have as soon as I can!”
“Don’t rush it. I had a bit of an epiphany due to the raving maniac that I looted, but I doubt that you will be so fortunate, or that the questions they had asked will make as much sense for you as they did for me, so I won’t try to recreate the experience. Just take your time, consider things, process why you conclude anything, and you should eventually be able to handle anything that strives to affect your judgements or question your intentions. So long as you remember why and how you act, you will not be stopped by anything.”
“So that is how it is… I wondered how you were able to remain so calm all of the time,” Shun Liu Min mentioned, “As I already said, I promise that I will do my absolute best in order to stabilise my mind and be of greatest use to you… and to myself, I suppose.”
“Good girl… wait, you’re twenty-eight, right?”
“Yes?”
“In that case, I do suppose that you’re young enough. So, once again, good girl. I don’t expect you to be able to do much in a short span of time, but you should do your best nonetheless, alright?”
“Yes, Wei Yi! I shall not let you down!”
‘Now she reminds me of Miyu, but… eh… That’s better than becoming someone with an absolute binding to me like in the case of Min Lian, in my eyes, nonetheless,’ she stored the rest of the things that she had looted while talking to the maid, and was thus able to move on the very moment that their conversation ended with quite a bit more wealth than she had started with.
For whatever reason, these people had come along with quite a lot of currency on them, and also had a number of the shrinking bags that Shun Liu Min employed, although the latter were more sensible overall.
They had clearly intended to take things from her after surrounding and defeating her, and so they would need a place to store anything larger than what could fit within their pockets. Some of them wore too little to fit many pockets, although it was customary for such outfits to have one or two very large pockets instead, and so such a bag was almost necessary if they intended to have any serious gains from her today.
A shrinking bag was an old invention that had occurred somewhere to the north, although it was never recorded exactly where it occurred, nor how. It was a derivative of the concept of spatial storage, but much like how the blacksmithing hammer Wei Yi had obtained from Ning Guanting was able to shrink without needing to outright rupture space, so were the bags able to affect other things in a similar manner by a certain set of principles and methods. All of them were difficult to replicate for anyone that wasn’t either a blacksmith, inscription master, or array arranger, for the principles would be entirely foreign to a pill refiner or talisman creator due to the differences in the great arts.
The principles of most of the great arts were interchangeable to a certain extent, but the three arts that related to the creation and enhancement of channels for planar energy to flow through in order to achieve certain results relied on greatly different principles to pill refining, which handled herbs and medicinal energy, while the way in which talismans handled planar energy also different greatly.
Essentially, all that the shrinking bag did was compress the fundamental nature of an item to an immense degree, a little like an excessive version of the way in which things shrunk in the cold.
It did tend to make things inside of it a little cold, but it also had the property of slowing certain kinds of decay while not interfering or outright accelerating others, sometimes within a single item, causing them to not be the best for storing food or other products that tend to rot, rust or generally decay in some fashion. Combined with the cold property, they had the most use in the north, less use in the centre, and essentially no use in the south at all.
They did catch more of her interest the more she saw them, which prompted her to begin the drawing of a new schematic within the Ascendant’s Library. She wanted to develop something with this shrinking or compression ability and then put it to use, although the details would be covered later.
‘For now, I suppose I should… no, adding more things like that for her to think about would almost certainly be too much. Maybe later…’
With a few items in hand, most in the House of Gold or the Kong Prison Realm – although the maid, Shun Liu Min, was not yet aware of that fact that believed that it was some variation on the method of spatial storage that was flashier and needed more time in order to be completed – and some thoughts in both of their heads, they proceeded into the depths of the sandy wastes.