Chapter 231 - Another Month and a Sharper Needle
The ancient weapons led Su Bai through several ruined passages until the oppressive fluctuations from the battlefield had finally faded behind them.
Su Bai remained silent throughout the journey.
He had not known the ancient spear for long. In fact, most of their time together had been spent arguing, experimenting, or listening to the weapon complain whenever he treated it in a way that offended its dignity.
Even so, there had been nothing false about what it had done.
Humans could hesitate when death approached. Loyalty could change with enough fear, ambition, or passing time, but artifact spirits were different.
The weapons surrounding Su Bai had already proven that much. Thousands of years had passed, yet they still remembered the cultivators who had once wielded them.
The spear had been no different.
Su Bai released a quiet breath as they continued forward.
He would be lying if he said he felt nothing.
Someone had remained behind so that he could leave, and no amount of cynicism could make that easy to ignore.
His expression darkened slightly.
In the end, there was only one conclusion he could accept.
He was still too weak.
Macro-Taiji Circulation continued repairing the damage inside his body while they traveled. The torn flesh along his side had already closed, but the deeper injuries recovered much more slowly. Several ribs had been cracked, and part of the Returnee’s force had reached his internal organs directly.
By the time they finally stopped in a safer region, most of the damage had already healed, leaving only a dull ache beneath his ribs.
Su Bai pressed one hand against his abdomen.
His recovery was far beyond what an ordinary Golden Core cultivator could manage, but the battle had exposed the weakness of his current body cultivation clearly enough.
Even after six major transformations, taking a direct attack from a Void-Shattering Returnee had nearly broken him.
He had survived because his body can repair itself. That did not mean his body had actually been strong enough to withstand the attack.
Su Bai looked back in the direction they had come from.
He had no intention of leaving that weakness untouched.
The other ancient weapons had also remained unusually quiet. The saber floated nearby without its usual arrogance, while the bow remained above the group and the hammer rested against a section of broken stone.
After some time, the bow finally asked, "What do you intend to do next?"
Su Bai turned his gaze toward the distant Outer Area.
"I’m going back there."
Several of the weapons shifted slightly.
Su Bai continued before they could ask.
"I’m going to absorb the Ashen-Blood Miasma in the Outer Area first. If this place keeps supplying the Returnees, I might as well take what I can before they do."
The saber’s spiritual fluctuation brightened faintly.
That answer seemed to suit it.
Su Bai looked toward the surrounding artifact spirits.
"I’ll need your help with something else too. I want to keep studying your weapon principles and push my Needle Intent further."
Several weapons became noticeably still. They clearly understood what those words meant.
This time, however, none of them complained.
They had seen Su Bai kill one of the Returnees.
If they intended to survive long enough to leave the Fallen-Star Sanctuary, helping Su Bai grow stronger had become beneficial to all of them.
The saber finally gave a faint vibration.
"Just remember that this great one is a saber."
Su Bai glanced at it.
"I remember."
For some reason, that answer did not reassure the saber at all.
...
Another month passed.
Su Bai moved constantly throughout the Outer Area during that time, rarely remaining in one place longer than necessary.
No Returnee found him.
He did not know whether the spear had somehow delayed them far longer than expected or whether keeping the Void Ring in Null State while the Soul-Bloom Lotus remained closed had finally made him too difficult to trace.
Either way, Su Bai accepted the opportunity without wasting it.
Most of his time was divided between cultivation and studying the ancient weapons.
The Outer Area contained much thinner Ashen-Blood Miasma than Layer Two, but the Petrified Calamity-Magnet compensated for part of that weakness by continuously drawing the surrounding miasma toward him.
Once the energy entered his body, the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method refined it before Su Bai compressed the resulting Qi into his Black-Ice Golden Core.
The repeated sign-in reward from the Outer Area proved especially useful during this process.
The Vial of Ashen-Dew Runoff would have been disastrous for an ordinary cultivator, but its harmful effect reversed after entering Su Bai. Instead of disrupting his circulation, it made the movement and compression of the gathered miasma noticeably smoother.
Day after day, the Black-Ice Golden Core became denser.
By the end of the month, the compressed structure within his Golden Core finally shifted again.
The change spread through his entire body.
Macro-Taiji Circulation accelerated as his whole-body Golden Core structure reorganized around the new level of density.
Su Bai slowly opened his eyes inside the remains of Outpost No. 1.
He had reached Golden Core Eighth Stage.
The breakthrough itself was only part of the change.
The Ashen-Blood Miasma surrounding the outpost had become so thin.
Su Bai looked toward the ruined landscape beyond the broken walls.
A large portion of the Outer Area had already been drained to the point where its natural replenishment could no longer keep pace with what he consumed.
He was studying the surrounding miasma when another change suddenly began inside him.
His muscles tightened beneath his skin, followed by a series of muffled cracks from his bones. Blood surged more forcefully through his body as flesh, tendons, and internal structures underwent another round of tempering.
Su Bai remained seated until the transformation settled.
When he raised one arm again, the difference in strength was obvious.
His seventh major body transformation had completed.
He clenched his hand slowly.
The improvement was considerable, although he doubted it was enough to let him calmly receive another direct strike from a Void-Shattering Returnee.
That was fine.
He had no intention of stopping at seven.
...
Cultivation had not occupied the entire month.
Whenever his Qi or body needed time to stabilize, Su Bai turned his attention toward the ancient weapons.
The bow proved especially useful.
At first, Su Bai had focused too much on the arrow itself, but the artifact spirit gradually made him understand that an arrow’s killing force began long before the projectile was released.
The bowstring accumulated force before transferring it forward, while the shape of the bow controlled how that force was directed. By the time the arrow left the string, everything had already been prepared to send its power toward one precise destination.
That principle suited Flaw-Piercing surprisingly well.
A successful strike did not begin only when the needle touched the target.
The movements before the attack mattered just as much.
An enemy could be pressured into shifting position. Its defense could be redirected. The surrounding structure could be stressed repeatedly until the final path toward the flaw became almost inevitable.
The saber gave Su Bai a different kind of insight.
Its cuts did more than damage what was already weak. A well-placed slash could divide an otherwise stable structure and expose new edges that had not existed moments earlier.
The hammer taught him something even more direct.
It rarely cared about finding a delicate weakness. Instead, its overwhelming impact forced stable structures to deform until hidden weaknesses exposed themselves under pressure.
Su Bai did not try to imitate any of them. That would have missed the point.
He studied why their attacks produced openings and slowly translated those principles back into his own needle path.
The more he experimented, the more complete the illusory needle within his Intent Seed became.
Its shape was clearer now, while the meaning surrounding it had grown far more stable than before.
It was still an Intent Seed, but only barely.
Su Bai could feel that he was approaching the point where it would finally mature into true Needle Intent.
More importantly, the question that had appeared during the battle with the Returnees had begun producing actual results.
He still could not create a flaw from nothing.
However, after weeks of experimenting with the artifact spirits, he had discovered that a weakness did not always need to exist beforehand in an obvious form.
If enough pressure was applied in the right sequence, an intact structure could be forced into an unfavorable state.
A saber could divide the support between two parts. A hammer could distort their alignment. The bow could force movement along a path that increased the strain.
Once the structure began working against itself, a new weakness could appear.
Su Bai stood inside the ruined Outpost No. 1 and stared toward the deeper regions of the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
He was beginning to understand the difference.
Finding a flaw meant discovering something already there.
Creating one meant forcing the target into a condition where a weakness had no choice but to appear.
He was not capable of doing that freely yet, but the path was becoming clearer.
The Outer Area had also reached its limit.
After an entire month of Su Bai repeatedly drawing in Ashen-Blood Miasma, there was little left nearby that could be absorbed efficiently.
His gaze shifted toward the Inner Area.
The spear had bought him this month.
He had not forgotten that.
Su Bai’s expression remained calm, but his eyes hardened slightly as he looked deeper into the Sanctuary.
He had already taken most of what the Outer Area could provide.
Next, he would move inward again.
If the Ashen-Blood Miasma was part of the advantage enjoyed by the creatures sealed within this place, then Su Bai intended to reduce that advantage one region at a time.
He returned to his cultivation position and grabbed the Petrified Calamity-Magnet again.
The remaining miasma around Outpost No. 1 slowly gathered toward him.
There was still some left.
Su Bai saw no reason to leave any behind.