Soul Venerable (Re-written)

 

‘The most dangerous method that Shion possessed is not [Triple Extreme Sound] nor her secretive lightning-path methods, but… her songs…’ The assassin smirked.

In the last timeline, she fought with a rank 1 Shion who’s capable of singing. It gave her endless trouble as her method of going back in time had almost failed due to Shion’s song. 

In this timeline, despite knowing that she Shion could not sing, she knew that Shion must’ve at least had an elementary form of that method.

Such as humming.

‘From the tone of her whispered humming, it seems like she had already conceptualized [Song of Subjugation]...’    

The countermeasure in the assassin’ sea of consciousness flared to life as it reflected Shion’s invasive telepathic fake will with her own. The effect is instant, she could see silver blood bleeding from Shion’s eyes as the wisdom-path backlash damaged Shion’s sea of consciousness.

‘The countermeasure is far more effective than in the previous timelines, but it made sense. Her whispered humming is still a rank 0 ninjutsu, while my method is rank 1...’ 

Since Shion’s thought process has been impaired, it should be easier to fight against her, but it isn’t that simple. Shion’s humming did not only affect the assassin, but also the Giant Kararan Serpent. 

Shortly after, the beast acted differently. It began to actively attack the assassin without a care of the counterattack from her effulgence weapon. As a result, not only does it give Shion a brief respite to heal her wounded sea of consciousness, the beast’s large head is laced with dozens of wounds laced with golden lines due to the assassin’s retaliation.

‘As expected, the serpent is affected by her Song of Subjugation. I need to kill the beast first before Shion hummed other songs.’ 

The assassin was quick on her judgment. Since Shion used the elementary form of Song of Subjugation, then it’ll be best to kill the beast as soon as possible.

‘The serpent is now muddle-headed, it would be hard for it to properly activate [Minor Petrification], but you wouldn’t just let me behead this beast, aren’t you Shion?’

Just as she expected, Shion aimed her weapon at her. There was a flower of flames as fire-path gunpowder exploded from the gunlance, propelling a high explosive shell.

The projectile was blocked by the assassin’s Mage Armor, but the explosion shockwave ignored some of the ‘armor’ provided by the spell as Shion’s rounds contain the profundity of sound-path.

And the special property of sound-path is its permeability and its penetration power.  

The explosion destroyed some part of the cave as the pressure released shook the ground. If this was a real underground cave, some part of it would collapse. Fortunately, this fake environment has a limited vertical space, thus there’s not a lot of earth that would fall.

Clank! An empty HE (High Explosive) shell is being ejected from Shion’s gunlance. It’s large revolver ammunition chamber rotated, reloading a new shell but Shion did not launch another ranged attack as the amount of HE shells is limited.

‘The gunlance can only hold 9 cannon shells at one time. The question is, does she only prepare HE shells or there are other types?’ 

The assassin paid great attention to the movement of the gunlance. In essence, Shion’s weapon is a cannon strapped on a high-frequency vibration spear head. Shion could fire that oversized gun depending on her needs. As long as she got her chance, the assassin believed that Shion wouldn’t hesitate to launch another shell even if that meant killing the muddle-headed beast.

The two did not exchange words as they are meaningless. Seeing the HE shell did not inflict effective damage, Shion did not get discouraged. She rotated the gunlance’s revolver ammunition chamber once more as she selected a different shell. The sound of mechanical clicks consumed the assassin’s attention as Shion’s every action should not be ignored.

While the giant serpent acted as Shion’s vanguard, she disrupted the assassin’s train of thought by using her gunlance. Shion did not stop rotating the gunlance’s ammunition chamber.

‘Annoying!’  The assassin lodged her effulgence weapon at the beast’s neck in hope to decapitate it, but Shion shot another shell at her.

Boom! A blast of ice and frost wind exploded on the assassin’s chest. Frost enveloped her golden Mage Armor, but it quickly melted as the Cryo Shell could not completely freeze her. 

‘That’s two…’ The assassin raised her head as she looked at Shion who’s rotating the gunlance’s ammunition chamber. ‘I won’t let you take another shot!’ The assassin realized that Shion is poking around the Mage Armor’s weaknesses. 

Just as most physical armor, magical armor have structural integrity and elemental weakness. A fire-path Mage Armor is extremely strong against wood-path or water-path attack, so on and so forth.

Since the assassin’s Mage Armor is made from time-path methods, its elemental relationship becomes complicated as time-path is strong and weak against space-path. In other words, all nine elemental paths have weaker offensive power against time-path defense but the other way around is also true. Time-path has no fundamental advantage against most elemental paths just as elemental paths have no fundamental advantage against time-path.

However, it all depends on the user. 

There’s no strongest path, there’s only the strongest cultivator.

Shion dabbled in refinement-path, she could produce artifacts of various elemental paths. The ammunition that her gunlance used have the same function as ‘spell catalysts’, and the attack using cannon shells could be considered as quasi-killer moves. Although it does not have the undulation of magic or true elemental paths, it produced the same effect.  

By changing multiple elements, Shion is figuring out which elemental attack is best to wear down the assassin’s Mage Armor because although time-path has no fundamental disadvantage against elemental paths, Shion’s observation ability could determine structural instability. 

Shion ‘fell’ behind once more the moment the assassin approached her. Shion’s dynamic defensive measure is better than the assassin’s method of tanking damage. Each shell is a limited resource, it would be best Shion could hit all of them, but the assassin isn’t a block of wood, she knew the importance of those shells.

The beast once more tried to entangle its large body to bind the assassin, but she isn’t going to waste anymore time with this. She activates a new blessing to empower her effulgence weapon. The blessing activation sequence took a brief time that Shion could use to attack.

Enduring another HE Shell, the assassin decapitates the serpent with her effulgence weapon augmented into taking the form of a greatsword. The amplification only works for one attack, it reverted back to its previous golden sword-shape after beheading the serpent.

The assassin wiped the blood that she coughed up due to the last HE shell. Shion’s [Bell Palm]-imbued HE Shell are getting stronger as Shion gets familiar with the assassin’s Mage Armor, but it was worth enduring it as Shion could no longer use the serpent to distract her anymore.

‘Although my body will be okay, my internal organs wouldn’t last a few more of those ninjutsu-amplified HE Shells. Fuck, I can’t outlast her 2nd form. Then, I’ll have to go all out!’

The assassin activated another blessing as she healed herself. Unfortunately, those time-path healing methods use up a chunk of her dwindling timeforce. Otherwise, she would be able to tank Shion’s shells endlessly.

“I see. You’ve used [Personal Backtrack] to heal yourself, it isn’t wise for me to prolong this battle any further, then.” Shion muttered as she had the same thought as the assassin. 

‘I won’t fall to your obvious scheme.’ The assassin knew Shion was desperate, but not to the point of being incapable of enduring the 1-hour mark. She was fooled in the previous timeline and got her lower half destroyed because of that blunder.

However, it is true that both wouldn’t want to extend the battle any longer.

Shion stabbed her gunlance and ceramite shield onto the ground. Her hand made complicated hand seals. This was the perfect time for the assassin to attack because Shion lowered her weapon and shield, but this was a trap which was also not a trap. Shion could use a self-mutilating method that increases her reaction speed further to react properly; it isn’t wise to attack a Shion who openly reveals openings.

The assassin took this chance to activate her own method. She prayed to her god to ask for more blessing as her golden timeforce circulated through her body. 

“Rank 0 Pyo Kuji-in (channel seal) ninjutsu, [Antiblessing Resonance]!” Shion’s activated her method.

Of the nine ninjutsu seals, Pyo Kuji-in or channel seal is the seal responsible for the direction of energy. If used as a support, it can augment energy absorbing rate and raise cultivation speed but if used offensively, it can disrupt or cancel the energy cycle of others. Since the assassin is not a mage but a battlepriestess, common antimagic technique wouldn’t be effective.

Mages use mana while battlepriestess or other faith-path related occupations uses divine force which is the grace from their gods. Faith-path cultivators must offer their faith in exchange of divine force. Since their energy source is provided by the divines, it would be extremely difficult to fight them even as an antimage. 

However, Shion isn’t a greenhorn antimage. 

In the Seas of Eternal Winters, there was actually a group of atheist antimages who developed antiblessing methods which counters faith-path cultivators the most. 

Since the Great Archmage ‘Mordred’ is the greatest archmage of his time, naturally, there are a group of antimages who wanted to kill him to obtain glory and fame. The result was: their true inheritances were plundered and their organization completely uprooted.

The assassin is still praying without making a move, so Shion instantly decided to attack her during this time. She made a set of hand seals as quickly as possible. After she finished, she grasped her shield and gunlance.

“Rank 0 Rin Kuji-in (power seal) ninjutsu, [Destruction Pulse]!”

Rin Kuji-in of the nine ninjutsu seals specializes in pure destruction. Shion produced noises as a concentrated sonic wave spread around the cave room. Since Shion has no vocal cord or mechanical organ which has similar function, she uses her gunlance to oscillate in high frequency to produce this noise.   

Boom! An antiblessing-augmented mono-directional sonic wave exploded from her gunlance, shattering small rocks into pebbles and pebbles into dust. 

Since the move itself is referred to as pulse, the sonic wave exploded multiple times, each was stronger than the last. If this was a true underground cave, the area would collapse as the vibration would cause a small earthquake. Boom! Boom! Boom! After fifteen times, the [Destruction Pulse] was strong enough to wound the assassin as blood flowed from her seven orifices. 

The assassin’s Mage Armor is also crumbling as the antiblessing resonance destabilizes its energy structure. She would be killed if this continued, but she did not rush herself. Her Mage Armor shouldered on as its energy was depleting at a rapid pace, but she kept on praying towards her goddess. 

This has become a contest of durability. Shion’s Gunlance is not designed to make this type of attack for a prolonged amount of time, thus cracks and microfractures worsened it’s already heavily damaged weapon as more [Destruction Pulse] was sent.

The assassin opened her eyes after she endured the 21st [Destruction Pulse] while grasping her effulgence weapon. “Rank 1 time-path blessing, [Instant Pause]!”

 

Time stopped.

 

When Shion realized that her time was frozen, the assassin’s sword had already touched her neck. No matter how quick her self-mutilating method to accelerate her thinking process, it is useless in the face of one that stops time itself.

“You-!” Shion’s neck was severed as her expression of shock is immortalized. With Shion’s death, her [Destruction Pulse] could not send any more sonic waves of pure destruction which have already pulverized a part of the pseudo-plane.

Shion’s headless body squirted liquid silver as it fell. Shion’s severed head was hot, the assassin could feel its warmth even though she merely held its hair. 

The assassin beckons the borrowed rank 3 artifact, [Eye of Prolonged Present] as it deconstructs the pseudo-plane. With a flash of light, the assassin, Shion, and the beast corpse which was not not native to the pseudo-plane got ejected. 

Her Mage Armor flickered as it deactivated. After enduring Shion’s attack whose damage potential was on the boundary of rank 1 attacks, it could not sustain any more attack as the runes on her robe crumbled.

“Finally, Yukikaze Shion is dead.”

A sense of accomplishment filled the assassin’s mind. After leaping multiple timelines, she finally assassinated the one who disrupted the arrangement of fate. The future will have less disruptions and things will be according to the Eternal Time Dragon’s prophecy. 

She gazed at the large serpent’s decapitated corpse. Its value dropped slightly due to the corrosion of time, but it is still a precious dark-path resource that she could trade with other resources. Just as she was thinking how to haul the giant corpse, she could feel a singing sensation on her chest. At first, it was faint like a mosquito bite, but she could feel a wet sensation spreading around it.

As the annoying wetness increased, she dispelled her Effulgence Weapon and rubbed her chest. She felt a bit lightheaded, so when she gazed at her hand stained with golden-crimson liquid, she could not register what happened.

“Wha-” she coughed crimson blood laced with golden hue, not knowing what happened. The assassin turned her head towards her back slowly.

What she saw put her into the brink of despair.

Shion’s headless body pierced her chest with the gunlance. There was no complicated method used. The spear head isn’t even vibrating but the lance stab was augmented with ninjutsu that targets the soul. What made her confused is why isn’t her passive time-path investigative method did not warn her about this. 

“You’re… cough… still alive?” 

The frozen expression on Shion’s head slowly loosened to a smirk. Shion’s headless body pulled the gunlance from the assassin’s body. Before the assassin’s body fell to the ground, Shion’s body dropped the weapon and shield on her hands to catch her own head.

“Impossib-”

The assassin dropped dead, not knowing what happened. 

 

…

 

“What a boring farce. I thought she was a super-elite assassin of the Sacred Alliance, but she’s from its subordinate organization, the Fate Guardian...” Shion’s body put her head onto the neck. The leaking liquid silver slowly returned to the source of the wound as they quickly underwent emergency repair, reconnecting mechanical nerve and metallic muscle tissues. 

The severed bone will take some time to repair and some resources from her mobile furnace, but full repair wouldn’t be a problem in the future. 

‘I’ve fought with that bitch who can physically time-travel, she was the avatar of the Eternal Time Dragon herself. Did you think I am unfamiliar with your time-path method of slowing, accelerating, and stopping time?’ Shion mentally cursed the assassin while stripping her body naked. 

When Shion touched the assassin’s rank 3 artifact, [Eye of Prolonged Time], the orb flickered as if it fades from existence. It disappears almost instantly, Shion has no chance of canceling it’s teleportation method because of the lack of cultivation base and resources to block it. 

‘I can’t plunder the good stuff since the orb has a recall function, but at least it’s not recalling itself to the past.’ 

After stripping the assassin’s body naked to ensure she has no more contingencies left, Shion sighed in relief. She sat cross legged as she stored the truesoul of the dead Giant Kararan Serpent while consuming the leftover soul nutrient produced by the dissipation of the assassin's truesoul.

Shion was forced to destroy the assassin's truesoul, even though she really wanted to obtain a human soul. 

It couldn’t be helped, the assassin is a battlepriestess and all faith-path cultivator’s souls are the property of their god or goddesses. The only chance for Shion to hide the fact that she killed the battlepriestess-assassin is by completely destroying her truesoul so that it is lost forever and the divines could not get a read on it. 

“I’ve alway been careful not to attract the attention of faith-path cultivators and haven’t created a contingency for handling time-path users. My encounter with this assassin should not happen, but… this is a method of my future self to send a message to the past...” Shion smiled as she recalled the battle.   

When she hummed in a low voice to spread telepathic fake will, she was surprised that her own will made contact with a lump of telepathic fake will within the Assassin’s sea of consciousness. She immediately recognizes those telepathic fake will is her own!

In this ‘timeline’, it was the first time Shion faced the assassin, therefore, the only logical explanation was Shion’s future self manipulated the assassin so that when she went back in time, the current Shion would receive the message.

“He schemed to send a message back into the past by using a member of Fate Guardians. How extravagant.” Shion muttered.

Time traveling is possible, but it has severe limitations. Firstly, the energy and resource expenditure to send a material object into the past is obscenely high. 

Time travel is like using a ‘slingshot’ to send ‘rocks’ through the River of Time. The time-path user is the ‘slingshot’, and their body, mind and soul is the ‘rock’. The time traveler would need to have a great cultivation base and understanding of time-path in order to send himself into the past, but as one’s cultivation base progressed and their body was baptized and refined by their own cultivation method, the ‘rock’ would become heavier.

This caused an endless cycle of limitations upon limitations, thus physically traveling through time became unfeasible in terms of resource and energy expenditure. Even if one can pay the expensive price of physically going back in time, they would not be able to handle karmic retaliation from the world and would end up in a situation that is sometimes worse than death.

Since cultivators, especially time-path users, aren't idiots then they will eventually find ways to circumvent this limitation.

If sending physical objects to the past, especially a person with their physical body is unrealistic, then why not sending a message to the past with a letter or something equivalent?

A well-placed, cheap paper containing a message from the future is possible for someone with great power to change the past. However, research indicates that papers or sending messages to the past have limited effect because during the process of sending it upstream in the River of Time, the paper will be shredded by karmic retaliation from the world.

The World’s Will hates time-path users, so it uses karmic luck to counter them. Even if one manages to go back into the past, the karmic retaliation from the world will set things back on the right track.

This was the so-called ‘fate’.

Even so, that does not discourage potential time travelers. 

Since cheap paper could not survive, they used multiple time-path materials to bypass the corrosion of the River of Time. Some succeeded, while others failed, but research never stopped because recently, there was a new path that could help time-path the most.  

Wisdom-path.

If physical letters, despite their obscene energy and resource expenditure, are still ineffective, then what about telepathic thoughts or telepathic will?

The usage of telepathic wills transcends written expression, it can be a potential tool to send instruction, memory, personality, or experience through time. 

Furthermore, sending telepathic wills is far easier than sending back a physical body. The ‘rock’ which was supposed to be thrown upstream in the River of Time has become a mote of ‘dust’. As long as  the ‘slingshot’ can throw this dust upstream, one can send back telepathic wills years, or even decades into the past. 

And thus, the phrase ‘time travel’ is usually tied with sending back telepathic wills through the River of Time. The details are complicated as it contains the profundity of time-path and the River of Time, but Shion is quite familiar with it because she never stopped preparing for the eventual fight against the most powerful Dragon God, the first Hero, the Eternal Time Dragon herself.

When the assassin used her method of going back into the past, her telepathic will had already been infected with Rank 2 Shion’s telepathic fake will. It hides itself within the assassin’s sea of consciousness across multiple timelines, each jump containing a small but meaningful amplification from Shion in each timeline which resulted in the assassin’s failure of sending her will upstream in the River of Time in this timeline.

Because, if it succeeded, the assassin’s body, soul, and mind would become the ‘fuel’ needed to send those telepathic wills back in time. In other words, she would explode like a balloon. The fact that she did not explode meant she did not even activate her method.

Even if she successfully activates that method, the difficulty of traveling upstream in the River of Time is extremely high. A Legendary time-path expert might be able to do it once in their lifetime due to sheer luck, but she was able to do so multiple times because of the assistance of future Shion’s telepathic fake will whose time-path attainment is at [Exemplary].

“The battlepriestess’ name is Xi Ling, she was actually a rank 3 Legendary Paladin before she went back in time. She is currently serving as a battlepriestess in Qin Empire’s military. In a few years, she advanced to rank 2 but she converted her occupation into a Paladin. After her conversion, her career experienced a meteoric rise as she was promoted into Paladin-Commander of the Qin Empire’s Dawnbreaker Legion a few decades after becoming a Legend… Unfortunately, she got in a conflict with my future self during my time in the Qin Empire and thus, used as a courier to deliver a message.”

“She fought with me four times in different timelines, each ‘earlier’ than the last. In this timeline, she has late-stage rank 1 cultivation base, but her Sea of Consciousness has been infiltrated by future me’s telepathic fake will so deep that she’s mentally blocking herself from exerting more than 15th superlative height of rank 0 combat prowess…. Well, no wonder she’s so weak for a rank 1, she did not even use up 25% of her total timeforce.” Shion smiled in delight as she could sense the timeforce in Xi Ling’s dead body. 

“My future self’s method… is frightening as expected. He made an elite legendary expert into a retard.”

Fighting a real rank 1 cultivator is still impossible for Shion. Unless the rank 1 cultivator is a newbie mage of lightning-path where their methods wouldn’t be effective towards Shion, she absolutely cannot fight against one at the moment. Her cultivation base is too low that any battle tactic or strategy won’t have any meaningful impact.

After all, Shion is still at the mid-stage of rank 0.  

She crouched down and touched the deceased Xi Ling’s face with her palm. When she retracted her hand, there was a prismatic lump of light as small as a dust particle covered by a telepathic fake will woven into a small ball.

This telepathic fake will is the source of Shion’s knowledge regarding Xi Ling. However, the time spent was too short for her to know everything, she merely knew brief information regarding Xi Ling. 

She deftly unweaves the telepathic fake will to fetch the ball of prismatic light contained within.

“So, what is it that my rank 2 future self wanted me to do to the point of him using a Legend from the Qin Empire to send a message...” Shion extended her telepathic will as it collided with the lump light. Messages from different timelines started gushing out.