“Ow ow ow ow ow ow! Why do I feel like my atoms are splitting?”
“Your what now?”
Fu Zan broke out of his daydream upon the mention of the otherworldly word and readily provided, “They’re small particles that make up all of the cells in the body.”
“First of all, I do have your memories on the term, but the mention of it caught me off guard. The Purifier’s Seal shouldn’t be able to split up your fundamental particles into anything else… Unless there’s something I’m missing, in which case I will need to check up on all of the nonsense I had filled the Ascendant’s Library…”
“Eh… I don’t remember the specifics…”
“That’s a shame. I would have loved to learn something new,” Wei Yi muttered, turning back to the otherworldly demon that was squirming beneath the light of the Purifier’s Seal, which had turned a blackened crimson rather than the original azure, “Now, I think the problem is with your otherworldly gift. It usually appears like a rectangular screen, right? If so, summon it and then display exactly where it is supposed to be.”
Miyu nodded and examined something with the otherworldly gift in her possession, following that by holding out her hand and framing the invisible display that was only visible in her own eyes.
To anyone unfamiliar with her abilities, or with the notion of unseen otherworldly gifts in general, this might have looked like she was attempting to frame a portion of scenery within her mind and perhaps paint it, or engage in some other creative endeavour. While it couldn’t be guaranteed that she wouldn’t obtain some kind of inspiration from this, painting a simple rectangle would hardly be worth anyone’s attention. There might have been plenty behind it, but it was not something that was easily seen through.
Although the Purifier’s Seal clearly wished to act upon a clear object rather than the air, when pointed at the supposed location of the screen and willed into action, it still had a reaction, no matter how slight. It was clearly able to latch onto something, causing the very air to tremble for a little while before she could tell that it wasn’t going to be sufficient to complete the process.
‘That much is only natural, though. I lack the azure light that tends to power these, and thus my usage of the Purifier’s Seal can only function at the fifth realm, whereas the azure lights are essentially equivalent to the ninth realm, if not higher,’ she considered as she attempted to use the slight quivering in the air to comprehend the nature of the otherworldly gift she was attempting to affect, ‘I thought that it might be easy to view with my eyes, given that otherworldly gifts are usually entirely visible, but this does not appear to be the case with those that are… hidden somewhere in the body. Indeed. Even if I cannot affect the gift with another at its current level, I should still target the right thing.’
She stopped using the blackened crimson light of the changed Purifier’s Seal and took a step back, staring intensely at Miyu.
“Um… Did we do it?”
“If we did, you would almost certainly feel it. It might be bright, loud, impactful, or anything else of the sort, but I can guarantee that this will not be something that you are capable of overlooking,” Wei Yi said, drawing upon her previous experiences of the azure lights escaping, “Now, remind me – that body, is it your original one?”
“It looks mostly the same, but I can’t be sure whether it is the same…” the otherworldly demon said, squirming under the powerful gaze of the Ascendant.
“In that case, what features changed? Have you viewed your internal organs and seen if they were modified in any unpredictable ways? Are there perhaps oddities that shouldn’t be present in someone from your world – the dantian and the like aside – which somehow evaded your attention until now, or whenever you decided to actually focus upon yourself? When you make use of the otherworldly gift, do you feel any particular part of yourself being affected even when there should be no reaction from it?”
“I don’t really… um… I think my breasts got bigger…”
“That was kind of whatever or whoever had thrown you here. So, that’s one response to one of my questions. Care to move onto the rest, or should I try this on someone with an easier otherworldly gift to locate?”
“No, no, I can do it! In general, I seem to have gone one step up the scale in terms of my appearance. Nothing significant, but it adds up… The last time I had an x-ray on Orbis, I didn’t really pay much attention to it. The doctors had just said that it was fine, so I ignored it… My biology wasn’t too good either, so I have no idea if anything is wrong inside of me- wait, no, that sounds wrong…” Miyu blushed, making her words lean far more in that direction than they should have been.
Even without her taking the time to trim her hair and get rid of the unnecessarily long bangs covering much of her face, the amount that was revealed still made her look far cuter than Wei Yi anticipated. Usually, her blush was one that was prompted only by the seeming shame of being attracted to her own gender – or Wei Yi specifically, since she appeared far calmer around most of the other women in the Ascendant’s Arbiters – but when it was instead roused by lewd thoughts, it seemed significantly more appealing.
The Ascendant wasn’t going to comment on this, but she was becoming more and more certain that she had a thing for attractive women blushing. It had been quite clear even prior to this, but each time she came across a different set of vividly crimson cheeks, she was forced to control her blood flow.
“Anyway, if don’t know any of the specifics, can you not move onto the other parts of my question?”
“… Is she…” Luo Lia Kun muttered in the distance, also beginning to blush as she realised what she might have seen.
“I don’t really feel anything in particular… Oh, right, I should try it out and see, right?” with a confirmatory nod from the Ascendant and the few standing by close enough to hear them, she continued, “Alright, I’ll focus on Luo Lia Kun, then.”
“W-Why me? What did I do?”
“Nothing, you were just nearby. Should I not be using the otherworldly gift on you, for some reason?” Aimi Miyu asked, tilting her head slightly in surprise at the reaction.
“Oh… Well… Alright, go ahead. I am still not sure exactly what that otherworldly gift is able to show you, but please don’t look at anything you shouldn’t, alright?” Luo Lia Kun said, “Wait, you’ve looked at all of us before? What kinds of things can you see? Is it just basic physical things, or can it go all the way down to one’s mental state? Are you able to-”
‘Luo Lia Kun, I’m not going to question exactly why you are acting that way, but just like Miyu’s behaviour makes her interests very clear, your current actions are showing how you are less and less capable at concealing your own emotions,’ Wei Yi was forced to interrupt via a spiritual will thread, ‘Calm down and just let her do what she needs to. This is vitally important, far more so than having some minor secret seen by a girl who, frankly, does appear to be rather airheaded most of the time.’
“- see… Actually, never mind that. I got a little too nervous. Just do what you need to do and don’t peek at anything you don’t need to.”
Miyu was naturally quite surprised by the sudden turn, and glanced over to Wei Yi, perhaps assuming that she had been the one to convince the perpetual vice-leader to change her mind. However, their spiritual will thread was already severed, and she was doing nothing that might give them away, so the otherworldly demon was unable to spot anything and looked back with a nod.
She opened her eyes a little wider than usual and activated her otherworldly gift, with it showing quite clearly in the reflection in her eyes. From that alone, it was difficult to read much of what was on the interface panel, but it was quite clear that the quantity of information available had increased since the first time that Aimi Miyu had made use of the otherworldly gift in front of Wei Yi. Given that the azure lights were able to influence the mind, and seeing as most otherworldly gifts could be commanded by it alone, the amount of information shown grew not only with every new fact learned, but also with the desire to know more about someone or something.
If she wished to only know someone’s name and cultivation at first, but later wished that she could learn about someone’s age, or perhaps their weight, or even the state of their bones for whatever reason, the otherworldly gift was likely able to add those in once sufficient knowledge was available to accurately assess such a condition. Had Wei Yi not shared that the Monolithic Towers were something she had invented to test her, then gave out a series of criteria to identify which tower someone was supposedly from, the otherworldly gift would likely be able to provide that information as well.
“So?”
“I don’t really know… My eyes are straining a bit, but that’s because I am opening them all wide for some reason…”
“… Hm. C’mere for a moment,” the Ascendant instructed, although she was the one to come over since that was much quicker. She stared closely into the otherworldly demon’s eyes, and soon found something that she had not recognised all this time, “The interface appears in only the left eye! Fuck, and I missed that…”
From her previous experience with Kong Shi Meng and the way in which his Truth of the Universe display manifested within his eyes, and later her own vision, she had assumed that this would apply to all others as well, but she had failed to consider the fact that the Truth of the Universe made use of the characters in her dantian to manifest any of its effects. If someone did not possess something like them, it would be necessary either for the effect to come from somewhere else in the body, or for the interface to not be projected out into the world at all. The latter option would thus require the interface to appear directly in one of the eyes, which would, by extension, mean that the eye in question had to contain the otherworldly gift in some capacity.
“In only the left? I-It looks perfectly normal to me, as it is right here…”
“Indeed, the fact that I was able to affect something without targeting the eyes means that this is a two-fold issue. First of all, the left eye must activate the gift, which is then placed before you as a projection. However, we can easily figure out if this isn’t some strange trick of the light with a simple test,” Wei Yi stated as she reached out with her right hand, “I’ll block this eye, you shut it, and tell me what you see.”
This was to prevent an instance where the otherworldly gift was able to see through one of the types of obstacles, like if it was able to ignore Miyu’s eyelids or if it could look past Wei Yi’s hand. If it was able to see through both, then any such experiment would be entirely pointless.
Although the otherworldly demon’s cheeks flushed again, she was able to focus and look at Luo Lia Kun once more, attempting to perceive her via the otherworldly gift in her possession. Usually, this looked to be something that required little to no effort from her at all, and this did not look to be too different from the last time, but this time, there wasn’t even the illusion of an interface within the unveiled right eye, nor did she respond in a way that might suggest that it did appear. Even without voicing that fact, it became clear that Wei Yi’s guess was accurate.
“So, we’ve figured out where the gift itself should be. It is either in the eye, or is the eye itself. Either way… I am guessing that if I do manage to purge the azure light, you will not emerge entirely unscathed. Tell me, are you willing to potentially sacrifice part of your eyesight in exchange for the ability to cultivate freely, and to be safe from the azure light?” she asked as she removed her hand from her face.
“I… I don’t think that… no…”
“No? That’s fine, I suppose. We can just-”
“No, I will do it! I want to be able to cultivate, to live freely, to not be afraid that my mind will be stolen from me at any moment!”
‘Not quite how that works, but… eh, I won’t break that to her. I’ll need to do this sooner or later, if I want to keep her around and allow her to grow alongside the world, so it would be best if I got through it right now,’ the Ascendant decided after a moment of though, prompting her to turn to the others that stood by nearby, “Everyone, if you could watch over us and make sure that nothing goes wrong, as well as have some faith in our success, then the chances of it working out will rise significantly.”
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She hardly needed to explain why this was a necessity, as the power of the Conqueror’s Eye had been explained to the Ascendant’s Arbiters before, but it did make it very clear that this was not something that she expected to be able to accomplish with ease.
To absolutely require the belief in her success – not something that could be manufactured on purpose, but could be amplified if this was needed – meant that it was an arduous task.
“We’ll do what we can, but I am not sure if we will be able to do anything when you are unable to manage it,” Luo Lia Kun spoke for the others, with Great Dark nodding along as he took out a few inscription plates that he had brought along with himself, “If there is anything specific that you need us to do, I think that it would be best for us to be informed of it ahead of time. Otherwise, we may simply fail to react in time.”
“The issue is that I do not have a practised process yet, so the more I say, the more unnecessarily confused you may become if something does not go right. That would not be ideal, so I will let you respond however you feel is necessary once a reaction is required. Do try to stay back if Miyu is just screaming in pain a little, since that is going to happen no matter how I go about this.”
Before either the target of this experiment or any of those that was going to observe them had the opportunity to voice their questions regarding this, Wei Yi placed her right hand back onto the otherworldly demon’s face and covered the left eye, promptly activating the blackened crimson of the Purifier’s Seal and focusing all of it upon the whole eye. Her experiment hadn’t proved anything more than the fact that the physical aspect of the otherworldly gift had to be somewhere near it, so she couldn’t pinpoint it just yet, and would need to risk damaging Miyu’s body if she would have any chance to succeed.
Now that the effect of the seal was entirely localized upon a single part of her body, the intensity of it was clearly increased, leading to the otherworldly demon quickly beginning to squirm and suppress a more vocal response.
However, this time, Wei Yi was able to sense that there was something responding entirely differently within the eye than the rest of the body. There was some kind of presence there, some kind of entity that had used the rest of the otherworldly demon’s body to mask itself and thus avoid the typical fault of being completely invisible to spiritual perception, resulting in a gap forming where it did not belong. It was still difficult to perceive in any way, but she was sure that it was there.
“I’ve got something, but it will take more to remove it. Miyu-”
“I’ll hold on! I promise I will hold on, so do whatever you need to do! Even if you pull out my eye, then… wait, no, please don’t do that!”
“Not going to, since that may be the cue for the otherworldly gift to fuck off to someone else, making things a million times worse for us all. We’d not only lose the gift itself, but would give it away to someone else with a potential for a far worse response to the azure light, and all of that would come with the additional loss of a whole eye, while this might just lead to a drop in vision clarity or acuity,” Wei Yi stated.
Luo Lia Kun muttered, “I was worried that you’d forgotten all about that…”
“Of all of the things to suspect I may be lacking in, memory was perhaps the worst choice. You do know that the library in Paragon is my mental domain being projected out, right?” she asked, promptly turning her attention back to Miyu, “Now, shut it.”
The vice-leader nodded and stepped back, sharing a glance with Great Dark, who was looking at the scene with all of his focus and attention.
As the otherworldly gift was discovered, now what was needed was to pull it out, somehow. Once it was far enough out to be detected by the Truth of the Universe, whether that requires the method of obstruction currently in use to be broken or for the azure light to be literally pulled out of the gift, the characters could activate and force the azure light to retreat, hopefully leaving the otherworldly gift itself behind. This had been the case with most of the ones that she had encountered so far, save for the ones used by Chang Fang He and Yi Henghua.
In the case of the former, the azure light had coalesced into some kind of gem that then vanished, whereas in the case of the latter the technique had vanished after only a simple trembling of the Truth of the Universe. Presumably, the azure light within the Fairy of Dust manual had disappeared at that point, being completely overlooked by the rest of them.
So long as these two instances didn’t repeat, then Wei Yi had high hopes for this experiment.
‘First of all, for the Purifier’s Seal to be able to do this properly, I need to focus on the very item I wish to affect. The previous owner might not have needed to do this, given that she had the support of the azure light, but unless I can replicate it myself without the seeming sentience, then I must figure out exactly which parts of the eye… contain the azure light? Is that even how this works? What are these fucking azure pieces of shit? Ahem…’
The Ascendant was forced to quickly subdue her killing will transformation on her left arm, where it was most prone to appearing. If she couldn’t determine the exact location of the azure light, then what she needed to do was to figure out some other way to distinguish it from the rest of the eye and the otherworldly gift. What the Purifier’s Seal did was separate one distinct concept from another, and while an azure light was hardly a concept in and of itself, while it also might lack the characteristics that she commonly ascribed to it. The typical azure appearance might not occur within an otherworldly gift or may even be something unique to the azure lights she had come across so far.
Thus, she considered the aspects that were unique to it. All of them were not from this world, so far as she understood it, but that could target both the otherworldly gift and Miyu’s current body.
It could be physical or spiritual, so that wouldn’t be sufficient either. She could attempt to focus on the degree of power that the azure light possessed, but that had the chance of somehow targeting the rest of the eye as well by invoking the human potential to reach the ninth realm of above even without needing to modify their own bodies to a significant degree.
‘Sentience? The azure cu- no, I am not ruining that word. The azure lights possess a clear degree of thinking ability, which should be greater than the eye of an otherworldly demon, even with their notions of cells, fundamental particles and whatever else, so that should be a sufficient separator. Fortunately, most of the gifts themselves that I have seen so far lack any intelligence of their own, so, hopefully, I’ll be able to bring in the proper distinction between the two and separate only that which needs to be removed,’ Wei Yi thought to herself, prompting the Purifier’s Seal to change its focus.
That caused Miyu to let out a subdued cry of pain, although it came after a length of time during which her features were contorted by that sensation. As such, Great Dark stepped forward with one of his inscription plates.
“Would it be safe… for me to contribute with healing? It might soothe the pain… if nothing else.”
“You may, but keep it on the outside of the eye itself. Everything other than the eye can be affected safely, but since I don’t know exactly how the azure lights work or where this one is, any energy provided to it might be used against us, which would obviously not be ideal,” Wei Yi stated, grabbing onto Miyu’s arm and helping her stand while her knees tried to buckle, “Actually, only the main orb part – have you noticed that most technique manuals avoid talking about the proper names for these things? – is relevant, so it would be best if you can ensure that they do not get damaged if you want her to keep her sight.”
“I want to keep my sight!” Miyu exclaimed, “Also, I know that there’s an optic nerve at the back-”
Her words were promptly interrupted by another cry of pain as the she felt the contrast between the extreme unpleasant sensation within the eye itself and the sudden flush of soothing light that spread out throughout her body, nearly touching the left eye before Great Dark hurriedly prevented it from continuing further. He operated the inscription in his hand while keeping an eye on her.
“Stop speaking if you don’t want to bite off your tongue. It could be healed, but it will be even less pleasant.”
“Alright… Wait, can you not fix my eye th-”
Since Wei Yi was quite certain that the danger of her doing something dangerous to herself increased with every second that she kept asking random things or saying something that did not need to be voiced, she manifested a large rag of spiritual will cloth and shoved it into the otherworldly demon’s mouth. As to make it more pleasant, she did make it tasteless and soft, drawing upon the few experiences that she did have of holding a large amount of cloth within her mouth.
“While there is a possibility of restoring your eye if some kind of damage does occur to it, I would like to remind you that the eye is one of the more complex parts of the human body. I can easily remake the tongue, with the possible flaw of failing to accurately replicate a portion of your perception of taste, but to correct the eye is significantly more difficult for me,” she explained, “Also, otherworldly matters can be rather difficult. For all I know, once your eye is damaged, the very world itself will consider that it is gone, and will thus prevent me from healing it. I hope that this will not happen, but I do not know enough about the phenomenon of your transmigration to possibly understand everything that might occur.”
The otherworldly demon couldn’t vocalise her response, nor could it be acquired from her mind as Wei Yi was focusing on the usage of the Purifier’s Seal and didn’t accidentally want to shift the focus of the seal to the wrong place.
Furthermore, with the regenerative energies coursing through her, interfering with them wouldn’t be safe in the slightest while things were on the brink of either success or failure. With the shifted priority of the seal, she had clearly latched onto something inside of Miyu’s left eye, which did also result in a significantly greater intensity of the discomfort being experienced by her, thus causing her limbs to flail as she attempted to subdue her reaction. As she was being held in the air, that flailing made her resemble a fish out of water.
Nobody nearby was in the mood to care about such things, as they suddenly saw Wei Yi shifting her grip to beneath the woman’s shoulder as she slightly pulled back her right hand, an incredibly vibrant azure shining through the small gaps in her fingers and in the space between them and Miyu’s skin. It was almost flowing with some degree of reason behind it, spilling out and slowly spreading out in an unnatural manner.
“Is that…”
“Azure light! This is the fucking thing that causes most of the problems associated with otherworldly demons, save for your tendency to poke your nose into literally everything you can,” she stated, “Get back, just in case!”
With how often she had mentioned the dangers of the azure lights, nobody needed to ask why she was demanding such a thing. Everyone in sight took a few steps back, with some putting up barriers for the others, although there was very little reason for them to waste their energy when dealing with the power of the ninth realm of above. Even the strongest amongst them was only in the sixth realm, so even if they pooled all of their strength together in an attempt to repel the azure light, they would fail miserably.
As Wei Yi brought her hand further and further away from Miyu’s face, a strange symbol could be seen in her left eye, seemingly being emblazoned upon it as azure light poured from inside each individual line. It was vibrant and would have been incredible to behold if it did not belong to such a vile force, although a great deal of attention was still necessary as the very tip of something made of a pure azure radiance finally emerged from the eye.
Just looking upon it hurt the eyes, even Wei Yi’s own, but the moment that it peeked out of the otherworldly demon’s flesh, viewing it was no longer necessary.
The Truth of the Universe had caught the presence of the azure light, and shifted within her dantian, almost seeming to become excited at the prospect of being able to participate in something again. As always, the stone-like characters rearranged themselves into an impossibly complex array that the Ascendant was still only able to roughly guess at the full purpose of, with energy flowing throughout them with a radiance both similar and yet entirely different from that of the azure lights that typically powered the otherworldly gifts. Unlike the Purifier’s Seal, it was not as marked by her new blackened crimson, but hints of red bolts were entering its radiance.
It blasted out a great deal of energy at the tip of the azure light that emerged from Miyu’s eye, using nearly all of the power stored within the characters. They collided in a strangely anticlimactic manner, with the two lights seemingly cancelling one another out, before the azure light suddenly became a thousand times brighter.
The entity left the eye in which it resided, floating out slowly, then lingered in the air for just a moment.
With a blast of even brighter light, the azure vanished, leaving only the dim Truth of the Universe, and a dim, milky eye with an incomprehensible mark upon it, carved into the eye itself.
One azure light was banished. Perhaps not even the heavens knew how many remained.