Chapter 200 - The Sealed Source and the Failed Escape
Su Bai’s instincts rang like a bell struck beside his soul.
The voice that entered his bones was not loud, but the moment the sealed flesh beneath the immortal spear spoke, Su Bai felt the same dreadful familiarity he had felt before.
’What you wound, the whole remembers.’
That warning returned to him with painful clarity.
Su Bai finally understood.
He had messed up badly.
The flesh fragments he had sealed before had not been independent enemies, and now he was standing before the whole.
Or at least, before something much closer to the whole than anything he had ever faced.
Finally, Su Bai walked forward. One step. Two steps. Three.
His face behind the Glacier-Lung Bone Mask remained calm, but every part of him was already prepared to move.
The Soul-Bloom Bud inside his Dantian pulsed with faint unease, no longer relaxed like before.
The closer he came, the clearer the abomination became.
It had no proper face, and no proper body. Veins as thick as ancient tree roots twisted through its surface. Slits opened and closed where there should have been none.
When Su Bai reached the edge of the side altar, the flesh stilled.
For a moment, the entire clearing seemed to hold its breath.
It was then that the abomination spoke again.
The voice overlapped with itself. Countless tones folded together, yet Su Bai understood every word with horrible clarity.
"You..."
The flesh pulsed.
"...are not ours."
That was enough.
Su Bai moved.
Weeping Needles shot from his sleeve in a silent storm, piercing into the nearest pulsing slit on the sealed flesh. Ashen-Frost Blight Flame followed immediately, crawling along the needles and burning inward with a cold ash-gray light.
The flame did not spread like ordinary fire. It sank, froze, rotted, and burned all at once, trying to still the abomination’s movement from within.
At the same moment, Su Bai’s left hand flicked.
Nether Threads tightened around the five Returnees who had led him here.
They had treated him as familiar. That was their mistake.
The five Returnees stiffened almost at the same time.
Before they could fully react, Su Bai’s needles entered their bodies.
Red-black petals tried to open from within their flesh, but the Soul-Bloom Bud inside Su Bai pulled first. Bloom force bent toward him, dragged into his Dantian before it could erupt outward. The five half-formed explosions collapsed into streams of corrupted bloom power and were swallowed by the closed crystalline bud.
The Soul-Bloom Bud trembled. It grew slightly brighter.
Su Bai did not stay to enjoy it.
He ran.
Behind him, the side altar screamed. It was the sealed flesh.
The sound burst through the vast battlefield altar without passing through the air. Formation lines trembled. Red-black miasma surged upward. The channels carved into the ground lit one by one, carrying the alarm from the wounded flesh to every corner of the clearing.
Su Bai knew immediately that he had failed to kill it.
Of course he had failed.
Immortals had not killed it. They had pinned it down with their bodies, weapons, seals, and countless years of suffering. What could Su Bai, a Golden Core cultivator, do with a few needles and a mouthful of flame?
He had only hurt it.
Every False Body in the clearing turned. Every Soul-Bloom Returnee raised its head.
The Void-Shattering Returnee with nine half-open black-red petals slowly looked toward him.
Su Bai’s scalp went numb.
There was no shouted order. The enemies simply moved.
That was worse.
It meant the sealed flesh did not need to speak to command them. Its will passed through the miasma, through the altar channels, through the bloom structures inside their bodies. It was not giving orders like a commander.
It was moving limbs.
Su Bai’s Frictionless Phantom Step activated.
His body slid across the altar as if the world beneath his feet had lost its right to resist him. He did not run in a straight line.
He curved between broken formation pillars, skimmed past a row of unmoving false bodies before they could fully awaken, slipped under a red-black chain of miasma, and passed over a shallow channel.
A blade of miasma swept past his back.
A spear formed from corrupted bloom force stabbed through the place where his chest had been a breath earlier.
Three false bodies lunged from the side.
Su Bai’s fingers moved.
Qi Needles pierced one through the forehead. Nether Threads caught the second by the ankle and yanked it into the third. Ashen-Frost Blight Flame flashed once, freezing their movement for half a breath.
Half a breath was enough.
Su Bai slid past them.
A smile almost appeared behind his mask, then the space in front of him split open.
A black-red rift tore across the altar.
The Void-Shattering Returnee stepped out.
It did not look hurried. It simply appeared in front of him as if distance had become a polite suggestion.
Su Bai’s eyes widened.
It had cut into space, entered the void, and stepped out ahead of him, like an actual Void-Shattering cultivator!
The Returnee raised one hand.
Nine half-open petals turned behind it.
Su Bai’s body reacted before thought finished forming.
Falling Leaf Substitution.
His figure blurred. The Returnee’s hand passed through the empty space, and the altar behind Su Bai collapsed in silence. A wide section of ancient stone disappeared as if swallowed by an invisible mouth.
Su Bai did not look back.
He changed direction immediately.
This was bad, very bad.
Opening spatial rifts should have consumed an enormous amount of power. Even real Void-Shattering cultivators could not use such movement casually forever. But here, inside the sealed source’s altar, Ashen-Blood Miasma was everywhere. The Returnees did rely on Qi. Their bodies drank the miasma directly, and the altar replenished them as quickly as they consumed it.
In this place, their energy was close to endless.
Su Bai cursed silently.
He had walked into the enemy’s home ground. No. He had walked into the enemy’s stomach.
More rifts opened.
The Void-Shattering Returnees were not chasing like ordinary enemies. They were cutting routes through space, placing themselves where he would need to go, forcing him into tighter and tighter paths.
Lower-level Returnees and false bodies flooded the gaps between them, while the miasma itself thickened to slow his movement.
Su Bai threw out Nether Threads.
The threads hooked onto broken pillars, corpse-armor, altar stones, and dead formation spikes. He pulled, twisted, slid, and changed direction in impossible arcs. Frictionless Phantom Step made his movement smooth, while the threads let him carve sharp angles through the pursuit.
A miasma spear struck his shoulder.
It tore through the robe and scraped across his flesh, but it failed to slow him down. The wound closed almost as soon as it opened, dragged back into balance by the Macro-Taiji circulation.
A bloom petal brushed his sleeve.
Su Bai did not waste time worrying about the corrosion. The real danger was not the miasma, but the bloom structure trying to cling to him through the cloth. Nether Threads flashed, severing the stained part of the sleeve before it could become a marker.
A false body opened its mouth and released a soundless shockwave.
Su Bai endured it, let the impact push him sideways, and used that momentum to slip through the edge of the attack.
Still, there were too many.
He needed something else.
Su Bai’s mind swept through the system inventory.
His eyes sharpened.
’There.’
A short, heavy rod of cold matte-black metal appeared in his hand.
Parasitic Beast-Master’s Branding Iron. It’s the sign-in reward from Beast Taming Peak.
Su Bai remembered the description clearly.
It could grant telepathic control over thousands of beasts, but the cost was fatal. Every time a linked beast moved, the user’s stamina would be violently drained. A normal cultivator would die of exhaustion within minutes if connected to an active pack.
In other words, an excellent suicide tool... for others.
Su Bai looked at the Returnees closing in.
"Let us test your job description."
He waited until three fast-moving Returnees lunged from different directions, then he activated the Branding Iron.
Ethereal black tethers shot out from the rod, crossing the miasma like ghostly brands. They sank into the foreheads of the three Returnees just as their attacks descended.
The connection formed.
For an instant, Su Bai felt something hook into his body, then the reversal took effect.
The original function tried to drain his stamina to fuel the movements of the branded targets, but the harmful drain twisted. The direction reversed. Instead of Su Bai feeding their movement, the movement of the Returnees became a massive inbound siphon.
The kinetic force of their lunges was ripped out of them and poured directly into him.
A wave of pure stamina washed through Su Bai’s muscles.
His body lightened. His legs strengthened. His breath steadied.
The three lunging Returnees suddenly staggered as if their bodies had forgotten how to finish moving.
Su Bai laughed.
"Good iron."
He slipped between them, pulled one branded Returnee into the path of a false body, and let the collision feed another surge of stamina into him. The more they struggled, the more power flowed back through the reversed link.
Every movement they made became a gift. Every attempt to chase him made his body feel fresher.
For a short time, the situation changed.
Su Bai became faster.
The branded Returnees became sluggish.
Whenever another enemy came too close, Su Bai activated the Branding Iron again, planting a temporary tether into its body. The effect did not last forever. Stronger Returnees could tear the brand apart after several breaths, and Void-Shattering-level enemies resisted it almost instantly. But several breaths were enough for Su Bai to survive another encirclement.
He dodged.
He slid.
He threw needles into bloom structures.
He used Falling Leaf Substitution when spatial attacks cut too close.
He used Nether Threads to swing around broken sealing pillars.
He used Ashen-Frost Blight Flame to freeze miasma channels for a breath.
He used Devouring Maw to drain their strength.
He branded enemies when they lunged, siphoned their movement, and used their own chase to replenish his stamina.
Layer One became chaos.
False bodies collapsed. Returnees staggered. Bloom petals opened and were dragged aside. Miasma rifts split and closed. The sealed flesh at the center pulsed, and each pulse made the enemies more frantic.
For a while, Su Bai almost looked as if he could escape.
But the deeper region was too large. The enemies were too many. And the Void-Shattering Returnees were too unreasonable.
The Branding Iron helped. It helped greatly. Without it, Su Bai might have been cornered much earlier. But it did not solve the main problem.
The enemies were recovering from the surrounding miasma almost as quickly as he drained them. The weaker ones could be slowed. The stronger ones could be delayed. The Void-Shattering Returnees could only be annoyed.
Annoying a Void-Shattering enemy was not a victory. It was a way to make the next attack more sincere.
One of them tore open another rift. Su Bai dodged.
A second appeared where he landed. He substituted.
A third cut off the path ahead. He threw Nether Threads to pull himself sideways.
A fourth raised its hand, and the miasma below him hardened into grasping black-red arms. Su Bai burned through them with Ashen-Frost Blight Flame, branded two nearby false bodies, stole their motion as they lunged, and used the surge of stamina to break free.
But each method cost time.
Each escape narrowed the battlefield.
Each clever move only delayed the truth.
He could not get out. Not with this many enemies watching him.
And worse, he could not lead them outward.
If these Void-Shattering Returnees chased him back toward the outer layers, the others would die.
Even if the Returnees only sent one Void-Shattering-level monster past the barrier, it would be a disaster.
Su Bai’s expression darkened behind the mask.
He could not bring this trouble to them.
He changed routes again, forcing the chase deeper along the altar edge instead of toward the passage he had entered from. It was the worse route for himself, but the safer route for everyone else.
Su Bai had already confirmed his hypothesis.
He still could not win against Void-Shattering cultivators, not even fake ones.
Not when they had endless miasma, spatial movement, superior pressure, and an entire altar answering their will.
He was difficult to kill. That was not the same as being unbeatable.
More time passed.
Su Bai no longer knew how long he had been running.
The Void-Shattering Returnees kept cutting open space. The false bodies kept reforming lines. Every time he thought he had found a gap, a new wave of enemies filled it.
His stamina remained high because of the Branding Iron. His Qi was still not exhausted because of his abnormal foundation. His body was still enduring because of the Reversal Body.
But none of that mattered if he could not leave.
A man with endless breath could still drown if the sea never ended.
At some point, the entire Fallen-Star Sanctuary groaned.
The sound passed through the solid miasma, through the altar, through the formations, and through Su Bai’s bones. It was vast and distant, like an ancient gate opening somewhere far away.
Su Bai’s eyes changed.
’The exit portal...’
It had opened.
The timing should not have arrived yet by his count, unless the deeper region distorted his sense of time or he had been trapped in the chase far longer than he realized.
Either way, the meaning was the same.
The way out was open, and he was still here.
A black-red rift opened ahead of him.
Su Bai stopped sharply.
Another rift opened behind, then to the left, then to the right.
Four Void-Shattering Returnees stepped out, surrounding him at the edge of a broken sealing platform. More enemies gathered beyond them. False bodies filled the gaps. Soul-Bloom Returnees stood in layers. The miasma overhead descended slowly, pressing the space smaller and smaller.
The sealed source pulsed far behind them. Its voice reached him again, soft and amused.
"Little... wrong bloom..."
Su Bai tightened his grip around the Parasitic Beast-Master’s Branding Iron.
The tethers flickered weakly.
Too many enemies had torn free. The remaining ones were learning.
Of course they were learning.
Why would the nightmare be stupid?
Su Bai looked at the encirclement.
He still had methods, but none of them opened a clean path.
For once, no perfect calculation appeared, no clever trick solved everything, and no absurd reversal turned disaster into victory.
He had gained too much. He had gone too deep. He had believed that because he could endure the mist, he could at least look at the truth and return.
Now the truth was looking back.
Su Bai sighed.
His voice was very soft behind the Glacier-Lung Bone Mask.
"So in the end, it was greed."
A helpless smile appeared beneath the mask.
He had wanted to see the deepest secret. He had wanted to use the miasma to cultivate. He had wanted to take one more step when stopping would have been safer.
This was the result.
The Void-Shattering Returnees moved.
Su Bai raised his needles.
Even if he could not escape, he would not stand still and wait to be eaten.
The sealed altar trembled.
The exit portal had opened somewhere far away.
And Su Bai, for the first time in a very long time, was cornered.