Chapter 210 - The Miasma Refill and the Hungry Intent
Su Bai did not remain near the spatial rupture any longer than necessary.
The Void-Shattering Returnees were occupied for now, but he had already learned how quickly those creatures adapted once they had time to think.
Frictionless Phantom Step carried him over the fractured battlefield at increasing speed.
His chest still hurt whenever his breathing grew too deep. The strike he had deliberately received earlier had cracked several ribs and torn flesh beneath the ruined remains of his robe, although the Macro-Taiji circulation had already repaired much of the damage while he escaped.
Su Bai had no intention of waiting for it to finish naturally.
He opened his system inventory while moving and quickly stored anything on his body that would not survive what came next. The remains of his robe disappeared first, followed by the other external objects that could be damaged by prolonged Ashen-Blood Miasma corrosion.
He had once believed that becoming a cultivator would involve flowing robes, immortal mountains, mysterious treasures, and perhaps the occasional dramatic sword flight.
Nobody had warned him how frequently survival would require taking his clothes off.
His hand entered the system inventory again and emerged holding a small jade bottle.
A familiar coldness seeped through the container.
Su Bai removed the stopper and poured out a pill covered in faint frost.
The Corpse-Chill Yin Pill.
He had refined the pill for exactly this kind of situation. To an ordinary cultivator, swallowing it would extinguish Yang energy and life force almost instantly, leaving behind a perfectly preserved frozen corpse.
For Su Bai, that description had always sounded considerably more useful.
He swallowed the pill without slowing down.
The cold spread through his stomach almost immediately.
A deathly Yin force erupted through his body and rushed toward every trace of warmth and vitality it could find. His heartbeat weakened for the briefest instant as the medicinal force attempted to extinguish the life within him.
The Reversal Body responded before the process could continue.
The deathly force twisted.
What should have extinguished his vitality became an eruption of life force so intense that Su Bai felt his entire body heat beneath the surrounding cold.
The change reached his injuries first.
Fresh vitality poured through his chest and joined the Macro-Taiji circulation already repairing the damage. The steady cycle of Yin and Yang seemed to receive an enormous supply of new material, and the healing that had previously been progressing gradually accelerated.
The ache beneath Su Bai’s ribs softened.
Cracked bone knitted together faster, while the torn flesh beneath his chest closed until only a dull soreness remained.
Su Bai released a satisfied breath.
"This pill really does understand emergencies."
His life force had risen dramatically, his body was healing, and even the lingering weakness from the earlier impact was fading.
Unfortunately, one problem remained completely unimpressed by the improvement.
His stomach tightened. The hunger had not disappeared.
If anything, Su Bai noticed it more clearly now that the pain in his chest was fading.
He frowned and briefly turned his attention inward.
Deep inside his sea of consciousness, the tiny illusory needle remained suspended exactly where it had formed during his comprehension.
The hairline crack across it was still there.
Qi continued flowing toward the damaged Intent Seed from every direction. His infinite Dantian supplied the largest stream, while all nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs fed smaller currents into the same process.
The repair had never stopped.
Su Bai watched his accumulated Qi disappear into the tiny needle and felt his expression become increasingly complicated.
His Needle Intent had barely been born.
It had learned to walk, discovered that space had seams, stabbed one of them, and immediately injured itself.
That felt somewhat excessive for its first few days of existence.
Ordinarily, damaging an Intent Seed could become a serious problem for any cultivator. Intent was tied closely to comprehension, will, and spirit. A crack severe enough to destabilize it could injure the spiritual foundation or send backlash through the soul.
Su Bai had already experienced that backlash.
His Reversal Body had simply refused to cooperate with the expected tragedy.
The spiritual force that should have injured him had been reversed into nourishment, leaving his soul and spirit unharmed by the worst consequence.
Yet the Intent Seed itself was another matter.
The crack remained, and his body seemed perfectly willing to spend as much Qi as necessary to repair it.
Su Bai stared at the streams disappearing into the illusory needle.
Perhaps other cultivators would have considered this fortunate.
Su Bai disagreed.
His stomach growled again.
There were principles a man could compromise on.
Hunger was not among them.
He had eaten moldy bread for six years before learning the truth about his strange constitution simply because throwing away edible food while hungry had offended something deep inside him.
Even in his previous life, his standards for relationships had contained one extremely practical requirement.
A woman did not necessarily need to be beautiful. She did not need to be rich.
But if she could cook well, Su Bai had always believed several personality flaws could be discussed reasonably.
Thinking about food made the hunger worse.
Su Bai immediately stopped thinking about food.
That lasted approximately two breaths.
Fortunately, the familiar red-black boundary finally appeared ahead.
The solid Ashen-Blood Miasma barrier stretched across the deeper region like an enormous wall of condensed liquid.
A vast formation array covered the ground before it.
Su Bai slowed just enough to retrieve the ancient command seal.
The moment he approached the formation, an invisible resistance touched him.
The command seal responded.
The rejection disappeared, and the formation allowed him through exactly as it had before.
Su Bai crossed the vast array without hesitation and reached the solid miasma.
He stepped inside.
The miasma flowed over him, pressed against his flesh, and began entering through his pores.
Su Bai continued deeper until the formation behind him disappeared within the red-black haze.
Only after putting enough distance between himself and the boundary did he stop.
The Petrified Calamity-Magnet appeared in his hand.
The reaction was immediate.
Ashen-Blood Miasma within twenty feet of him shifted violently and began gathering toward him.
Su Bai’s shoulders relaxed slightly.
Several Qi needles quietly left his body. Nether Threads followed.
They spread through the twenty-foot clearing before disappearing into the surrounding miasma, attaching themselves to the ground, buried stones, and anything else stable enough to serve as warning points.
Su Bai did not expect the Void-Shattering Returnees to arrive immediately.
He also had no intention of trusting expectations today.
Only after the warning network had formed did he sit down.
The solid miasma outside the clearing continued pressing inward, and streams of Ashen-Blood Miasma were already entering his body.
Su Bai closed his eyes.
The Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method began circulating.
His Black-Ice Golden Core turned. Golden Yang moved within it, while the infinite Dantian and nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs joined the circulation.
The miasma that entered his body was pulled into the cycle.
Su Bai had refined Ashen-Blood Miasma many times already, and although his strange constitution made the process possible, the foreign energy had never simply surrendered the moment it entered him.
This time, something was different.
The first stream entered the circulation and broke down with surprising ease.
Su Bai’s attention sharpened.
What once required deliberate processing now seemed almost willing to enter the circulation once the Binary Void-Sun Supreme Method caught it.
Su Bai remembered the dead flesh fragments he had consumed.
Their influence had already made the Ashen-Blood Miasma increasingly familiar to him. The improvement had gone further than he realized.
"Useful."
Su Bai increased the circulation.
His depleted reserves began filling again.
At almost the same time, the newly restored Qi was pulled toward his sea of consciousness.
The cracked Intent Seed continued repairing itself without the slightest concern for how much effort Su Bai was putting into acquiring that energy.
His infinite Dantian filled.
The Intent Seed drank.
His nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs recovered.
The Intent Seed drank again.
Su Bai’s eyelid twitched beneath his closed eyes.
He refined faster.
The repaired portions of the illusory needle slowly spread across the crack, although the damage itself remained visible.
The process settled into a strange balance.
Ashen-Blood Miasma entered his body and became Qi, while the damaged Intent Seed consumed a large portion of that Qi almost as quickly as he produced it.
His Dantian and Qi Reservoirs seemed caught between exhaustion and replenishment, constantly emptying and filling as both processes continued without pause.
For Su Bai, however, there was one extremely important improvement.
The emptiness in his stomach gradually weakened.
Su Bai’s concentration deepened.
Apparently, as long as his reserves stopped falling faster than he could replenish them, the hunger could be controlled.
...
Time passed quietly.
The Nether Threads remained still. No Returnee touched the outer network.
Su Bai continued refining until the soreness in his chest had almost completely disappeared and his Qi reserves finally stopped hovering near depletion.
The hairline crack in the Intent Seed had also improved slightly.
Su Bai opened his eyes.
He looked inward again and studied the tiny illusory needle.
The repaired portion was obvious, but the progress was slower than he wanted.
Qi could mend it.
That much was certain.
Yet pouring more Qi into the crack did not seem likely to restore it quickly.
Intent was not merely condensed energy.
If Qi alone could create or repair Intent easily, wealthy cultivators would probably purchase comprehension by the warehouse.
Su Bai considered the problem while standing.
His gaze shifted deeper into the red-black miasma.
A possibility slowly entered his mind.
Ordinary Qi was helping repair the structure, but perhaps repairing something born from Intent required more than raw energy.
A stronger catalyst might accelerate the process.
Something carrying spiritual force, strange will, or the kind of concentrated essence his Intent Seed could actually respond to.
Su Bai knew one place nearby that contained an unreasonable amount of strange things.
His expression changed.
The altar.
Normally, returning there after escaping would have been the sort of decision that made sensible people question whether he had learned anything from recent events.
Su Bai preferred to think that he had learned several things.
Most importantly, the battlefield behind him was currently suffering from a spatial catastrophe.
At least one Void-Shattering Returnee had died. Another had lost an arm, while the remaining ones had been forced to abandon their pursuit and stabilize the rupture before the ancient Space-Reaping Intent tore the surrounding region apart.
That meant fewer high-level Returnees were likely to be guarding the altar right now.
The place remained extremely dangerous.
Yet compared with before, its defenses should be thinner.
Su Bai’s smile slowly appeared.
He glanced toward the direction of the altar.
The safest decision would have been to remain hidden until his Intent Seed finished repairing itself.
Unfortunately, safe decisions and useful opportunities had developed an increasingly hostile relationship since he entered the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
Frictionless Phantom Step activated beneath his feet.
Su Bai began gliding across the ancient ground.
The altar lay ahead.