Chapter 208 - The Spatial Flaw and the Hidden Aura
Su Bai reached toward the spatial seam. But then, he stopped himself from doing anything stupid too quickly.
His body had already undergone four major body transformations. With the Macro-Taiji circulation constantly moving through him, injuries that would cripple others could heal at an absurd speed.
That did not mean he could stand still and receive a full attack from a Void-Shattering Returnee.
And space was even less reasonable.
A cultivator might hold back. Nature did not.
Su Bai had already watched the ancient Space-Reaping Intent divide a Nascent Soul-level Returnee into several pieces with less difficulty than he used to cut vegetables.
He had no desire to test whether his body cultivation would turn being divided into five pieces into being divided into only four.
His spiritual sense surged outward.
The battlefield changed within his perception. Everything entered his awareness at once.
He saw the seams again.
Before, when he had tried to touch one, the tiny illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness had trembled so violently that he had withdrawn without hesitation.
At the time, that had seemed like good judgment.
Right now, good judgment was becoming increasingly expensive.
A Void-Shattering Returnee appeared at his left.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense caught the movement barely in time.
He twisted.
A palm passed beside his ribs, and the pressure alone ripped apart the stone behind him. Before Su Bai could stabilize himself, another figure appeared ahead.
A spatial blade flashed.
Frictionless Phantom Step carried Su Bai sideways, but the blade still grazed his sleeve.
The dark cloth split. A thin line appeared across his upper arm. Blood followed.
Su Bai glanced at it while moving.
His expression became slightly unpleasant.
His robe had suffered enough. Apparently, the Returnees disagreed.
Three more attacks came from different directions.
Su Bai moved between them, but the space available to him had become painfully narrow. The Void-Shattering Returnees were no longer chasing him recklessly. They moved one after another, taking positions rather than kills.
One closed the left. Another blocked the rear. The third forced him forward. The fourth watched the Space-Reaping Intent and adjusted.
They had learned. Worse, they were patient.
Su Bai would have preferred stupid enemies.
A stupid enemy could be tricked once and remain stupid afterward.
These people were developing professionally.
Several lower Returnees surged in from the remaining gaps.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense swept across them.
Inside his infinite Dantian and nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs, dozens of Qi needles received the faint meaning of Flaw-Piercing.
They emerged from his body.
Black lines crossed the ruined battlefield.
The lower Returnees reacted immediately, but the needles curved after their moving flaws. Several were forced backward while others raised miasma defenses.
Before the needles could reach deeper targets, a Void-Shattering Returnee lifted one hand.
Space tightened.
Su Bai felt it clearly this time.
The needles did not stop because something struck them. The distance around them changed.
Their paths became distorted, compressed, and twisted until the needles lost the momentum and direction needed to continue.
Several fell apart.
The remaining needles were slapped aside by the lower Returnees.
Su Bai’s eyelid twitched. He tried gain.
Every time he sent something through open space, the Void-Shattering Returnees interfered with the space around it.
He also realized that they were not manipulating space recklessly.
The Void-Shattering Returnees had already analyzed the battlefield and identified the relatively stable areas where they could still use their spatial abilities without disturbing the Space-Reaping Intent.
"Annoying," Su Bai muttered.
One of the Void-Shattering Returnees heard him.
"You are finished."
Su Bai glided backward as a black-red palm crashed down where he had stood.
"That is what people usually say before I become more troublesome."
The Returnee’s expression darkened.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense continued searching.
The battlefield narrowed.
The Returnees pressed him toward the ancient Space-Reaping Intent exactly as they had intended from the beginning.
This time, Su Bai allowed them.
He retreated along a broken path near the spatial wound while Nether Threads continued spreading behind him.
Some threads had already been laid during the previous battle.
Others slipped from hidden needles as he moved. They attached themselves to broken pillars, fallen stones, cracked walls, and several lower Returnees that came too close.
The Void-Shattering Returnees noticed the threads.
They destroyed the obvious ones.
One spatial ripple severed seven at once.
Another Returnee stepped through a web and shattered the attached stones instead of allowing Su Bai to use them as anchors.
Su Bai said nothing. His spiritual sense surged farther.
’There!’
For an instant, he saw it.
A junction close to the ancient wound.
Compared to the other spatial seams, that point was different.
The lingering Space-Reaping Intent had been pulling against the surrounding space for countless years. Most of the ancient wound remained stable only because the old sword Intent continued enforcing the original separation.
But near one edge, several spatial layers met unevenly.
A flaw had formed.
Su Bai’s Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent immediately reacted. The illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness trembled.
Su Bai smiled.
He had found the place. Now there was only one small problem.
He had to reach it.
The Void-Shattering Returnees were between him and the exact angle he needed. And every Qi needle he released into the open was being interfered with.
Su Bai continued retreating.
A miasma spear flew toward him. He avoided it.
A spatial blade followed. He twisted away.
Another Returnee approached from the right, forcing him closer to the ancient scar.
Su Bai allowed himself to be pushed another twenty steps.
His spiritual sense remained fixed on the flaw.
The distance was almost correct.
The Void-Shattering Returnees noticed his positioning, but nothing about it seemed immediately dangerous. From their perspective, Su Bai was being forced exactly where they wanted him.
One of them raised its hand. Black-red light gathered.
The miasma compressed until the surrounding stones began to crack.
Su Bai looked at it, then he looked at the spatial flaw.
An unpleasant calculation completed inside his head.
He needed momentum.
Frictionless Phantom Step could give him speed, but the Returnees were already reading his movement.
Nether Threads could change his direction, but they were watching the network.
That left a simpler option.
Su Bai stopped avoiding the incoming attack.
The Void-Shattering Returnee’s eyes narrowed.
The condensed black-red light shot forward.
Su Bai adjusted his body by half a step, then he let it hit him.
BOOM!
Pain exploded through his chest.
The remains of his robe tore apart across the front as the force struck him like a mountain.
His body cultivation prevented his ribs from collapsing completely, but several still cracked beneath the impact. Blood burst from Su Bai’s mouth.
He had underestimated the force.
Apparently, deliberately allowing someone several realms above him to hit him remained a terrible idea.
The Macro-Taiji circulation surged immediately.
Yin and Yang moved.
The hostile power that entered his body was caught and processed by his strange constitution, but the physical damage remained. Cracked bones began pulling together while torn flesh started repairing itself.
Su Bai had no time to appreciate the service.
The impact had already thrown him from the ground... exactly where he wanted to go.
His body flew toward the spatial flaw.
The Void-Shattering Returnees immediately understood that something was wrong.
"He’s planning something!"
Their reactions were instant. One Void-Shattering Returnee shot forward with raw speed while another attacked from the side.
But Su Bai was already acting.
Several Qi needles inside his Dantian moved together.
Normally, he released them separately. This time, he let Qi needles converged.
Their edges merged under his control until a single thick black needle formed.
The Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed trembled inside his sea of consciousness. It descended.
The enlarged Qi needle gained meaning.
Finally, Su Bai released it.
A large black needle appeared beside his hand.
The Void-Shattering Returnees reacted immediately.
Their attention locked onto the weapon.
One shifted its body. Another prepared to interfere with the needle’s trajectory.
They expected Su Bai to attack. But at that moment, the needle turned.
It did not point toward any Returnee. It pointed toward empty air.
For the first time since the battle began, the expressions of the Void-Shattering Returnees changed completely.
They saw what ordinary cultivators could not.
They understood space. And because they understood it, they understood exactly where Su Bai was aiming.
"No!"
The nearest Returnee surged forward. Another abandoned the encirclement entirely.
"Move away from the scar!"
Su Bai heard them. His smile widened.
That was the reaction he had been hoping for.
The enlarged Qi needle touched the flaw.
At first, nothing happened.
For one terrifying instant, Su Bai wondered whether his brilliant plan had amounted to stabbing empty air while several Void-Shattering Returnees watched.
It was then that a violent tremor suddenly ran through the tiny illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness.
Su Bai’s expression changed.
The enlarged needle shook violently. The spatial seam resisted.
Su Bai’s Intent pushed forward. The seam refused.
The tiny illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness trembled harder.
Su Bai gritted his teeth.
"A flaw is a flaw."
The enlarged Qi needle pushed another fraction deeper.
The nearest Void-Shattering Returnee was almost upon him.
Su Bai could feel its pressure.
Even with the momentum from the earlier attack, he would not finish in time.
Su Bai could not afford to stop pushing the needle, nor could he spare enough attention to deal with them properly.
He needed only a moment.
His gaze hardened.
Inside him, the tenth tribulation mark moved.
Until now, the Void Ring had held his aura beneath complete suppression.
Su Bai had released only a fraction of what it concealed before, but this time he let far more of his presence escape.
The change swept across the ruined battlefield at once.
His aura entered the world.