Chapter 216 - The Returning Needle and the Changing Form
The dark natal needle began moving.
At first, Su Bai thought it was simply reacting to the trembling Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed.
Instead of approaching it directly, however, the natal needle slowly circled around the tiny illusory needle suspended within his sea of consciousness.
With every revolution, the faint pressure surrounding the Intent Seed brushed across the surface of the natal weapon.
Su Bai watched carefully.
The dark-red crystalline lines within the natal needle gradually brightened. A familiar meaning began sinking into it.
Su Bai’s expression changed.
The natal needle was bathing itself in his Intent.
A faint resonance gradually formed between them. The natal needle trembled. The Intent Seed answered.
For a moment, Su Bai thought the exchange flowed only one way, until another sensation entered his awareness.
Something was returning from the natal weapon.
Fine strands of black-red spiritual essence emerged from its crystalline surface and flowed toward the damaged Intent Seed.
Su Bai’s eyes widened.
The essence carried by the natal needle was dense with the strange nature of the Soul-Bloom, but it no longer felt foreign to Su Bai. After growing inside his body and taking root upon the Crystalline Tree Spirit Root, the Soul-Bloom had already become part of his own spiritual foundation.
That strange essence flowed from the natal needle toward the damaged Intent Seed and gathered around the hairline crack.
The damaged portion of the Intent Seed brightened.
Su Bai immediately sensed the difference.
The crack was healing faster.
Qi was still being drawn from his Dantian and nine Gateway Qi Reservoirs, but the burden had noticeably decreased. The spiritual essence provided by the natal needle seemed to be supplying something raw Qi could not completely replace.
Su Bai remained still.
He did not interfere.
Whatever relationship had formed between the Soul-Bloom Natal Needle and his Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed appeared perfectly natural, and touching it without understanding anything would only create unnecessary risk.
So he watched.
The natal needle continued circling while Flaw-Piercing meaning accumulated within it. At the same time, Soul-Bloom essence continuously returned toward the Intent Seed and nourished the damaged structure.
Su Bai gradually understood why the natal needle had entered his sea of consciousness without being summoned.
It was drawn to the Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed naturally, as though the two had always been meant to nurture each other.
...
Time passed quietly inside the crevice.
Ashen-Blood Miasma continued gathering toward the Petrified Calamity-Magnet on Su Bai’s head. His transformed body accepted the incoming energy naturally, replenishing what the Intent Seed consumed while the two needles continued their strange exchange.
Su Bai barely noticed the passage of time.
The crack slowly diminished.
As it became thinner, the amount of Qi being drawn toward the Intent Seed also decreased.
Eventually, only the faintest line remained.
The spiritual tether connecting the two needles weakened with it.
The natal needle completed one final circle, then a pulse passed through its dark-red crystalline lines.
The resonance faded.
Su Bai thought the weapon would remain beside the Intent Seed.
Instead, it suddenly moved.
The natal needle left his sea of consciousness and traveled back through the invisible spiritual pathways it had followed earlier. It passed through his internal structures without disturbing them before returning to the Crystalline Tree Spirit Root.
The black-red Soul-Bloom Lotus remained open upon one of its branches.
The natal needle descended toward its center.
It settled between the petals as naturally as if it had merely returned home.
Su Bai stared.
The weapon remained motionless, but it no longer felt the same as when it had first been born.
Flaw-Piercing meaning now lingered throughout it.
The Intent was not merely coating the surface.
It had seeped into the natal weapon deeply enough that Su Bai could sense the familiar principle even while the needle rested inside the Lotus.
His eyes slowly brightened.
This was far better than manually infusing an ordinary Qi needle every time he wanted to use his Intent.
The natal weapon could remain beside the Soul-Bloom Lotus, return to the Intent Seed when necessary, and continuously grow alongside both.
More importantly, it was his.
A genuine natal weapon would strengthen as its owner strengthened. Its bond with the soul meant that compatibility was not something that needed to be forged afterward.
The weapon had been born already belonging to him.
Su Bai could no longer resist testing it.
His eyes opened.
The crevice remained quiet.
His Nether Threads showed no disturbances nearby, and the Ashen-Blood Miasma continued drifting toward him.
Su Bai extended one hand.
A thought passed through his mind, then something cold touched his palm.
The dark natal needle appeared.
Su Bai stared at it with obvious satisfaction.
Up close, it seemed even finer than it had inside his spiritual sense. Dark crystalline material formed the body of the weapon while thin red lines occasionally glimmered beneath the surface.
He could feel a deep connection from it, almost like sensing another part of himself.
Su Bai turned toward the stone wall beside him.
With a flick of his fingers, the natal needle shot forward.
There was no violent explosion. A tiny dark streak crossed the crevice and vanished into the stone.
Su Bai stepped closer and examined the stone. Only a narrow hole remained where the Natal Needle had entered, but his connection to the weapon told him it had pierced much farther than the surface suggested.
Curious, he left it where it was and simply called to it through that connection.
A faint vibration answered from deep inside the stone.
The natal needle pulled itself free and flew directly back toward him, settling gently above his palm.
Su Bai’s smile widened.
"So you can come back yourself."
He examined it for another moment before throwing it toward a loose boulder farther inside the crevice.
The needle pierced deeply again.
This time, Su Bai did not recall it physically.
He tried something else.
He focused on the spiritual connection between himself and the weapon.
Just then, the natal needle dissolved.
Dark-red crystalline light broke apart inside the stone before flowing through the connection that bound the weapon to him.
Su Bai immediately sent his senses inward.
The Soul-Bloom Lotus trembled.
Spiritual light gathered between its petals.
A moment later, the natal needle reformed exactly where it had originally rested.
Su Bai blinked.
He summoned it again.
The needle appeared in his hand without damage.
That was considerably more convenient than retrieving a normal weapon every time it became stuck somewhere inconvenient.
As long as the natal connection remained intact, he could either call the physical needle back to him or disperse its manifested form and allow it to reform within the Soul-Bloom Lotus.
Su Bai became increasingly interested.
The weapon still felt as though there were functions he had not explored.
He sent Qi into it. The natal needle accepted the energy immediately.
Its dark crystalline body began growing.
Su Bai watched as a needle no longer than his hand stretched into something several feet long.
The Flaw-Piercing meaning inside it did not weaken.
If anything, the larger form made the spiritual pressure easier to sense.
Su Bai changed his intent.
The weapon grew thicker.
He changed it again, and the needle contracted until it became shorter and much thinner than before.
Su Bai held the hair-thin weapon between two fingers.
The same amount of natal essence remained at its core, but Qi allowed him to reshape the manifested form around it.
He experimented for a while.
The weapon could become long and slender for reach, thicker for greater physical force, or frighteningly thin when precision mattered more than size.
It always remained a needle, but that limitation did not bother Su Bai at all.
He had never wanted a sword.
A needle capable of changing itself according to the flaw he intended to pierce was far more useful.
Su Bai tried channeling different energies into it next.
Ashen-Frost Blight Flame gathered around his fingertips.
When the cold flame touched the natal needle, the dark crystalline surface accepted it without resistance. Ash-gray fire wrapped around the weapon, yet neither the Soul-Bloom essence nor the Flaw-Piercing meaning inside it became unstable.
Su Bai’s eyebrows rose again.
He withdrew the flame and circulated his Wood Qi.
The Natal Needle responded differently this time. A thin crystalline layer spread across its surface, carrying the strange withering nature that had remained within his transformed Wood Root.
Su Bai stopped and stared at the weapon.
The possibilities were becoming troublesome... in a good way.
Because the natal needle had been born from his own spiritual foundation, energies that already belonged to him did not clash with it the way they might with an ordinary artifact.
Ashen-Frost Blight Flame could ride along the needle.
His Wood Qi could enter it.
His Flaw-Piercing Intent already lived within it.
What would happen once his Intent matured?
What if he combined the Sloth Needle principle with it?
What if the weapon eventually became strong enough to touch the spatial seams he had only barely managed to pierce before?
Su Bai forced himself to stop.
Thinking too far ahead had a tendency to turn reasonable experiments into extremely unreasonable ideas.
He looked at the natal needle hovering above his palm.
Even with what he had already confirmed, the weapon was extraordinary.
There was only one problem.
He had only one.
Su Bai’s smile slowly faded.
His gaze moved inward toward the Soul-Bloom Lotus.
The flower had been born from a Soul-Bloom Seed.
Soul-Bloom Seeds were products of the same strange system created by the sealed sources beneath the altar.
Su Bai’s eyes narrowed.
The sealed sources could create more Returnees. That meant there should be more Soul-Bloom Seeds inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
His heartbeat quickened slightly.
If another Soul-Bloom Seed entered his body, what would the Lotus do with it now that it had fully bloomed?
Would it simply absorb the seed as nourishment?
Would the Lotus grow stronger?
Or...
Su Bai looked at the single natal needle resting above his palm.
Could it grow another one?
The thought struck him hard enough that he stopped moving.
One Natal Needle was already valuable.
Ten would completely change how he fought.
A hundred would turn his usual Qi-needle storms into something else entirely.
Su Bai immediately restrained that line of thought before his imagination reached an unreasonable number.
He still did not know whether the Soul-Bloom Lotus could produce another natal weapon at all.
But there was only one way to find out.
His gaze shifted toward the depths of Layer One.
The altar was way behind him.
He had deliberately retreated farther into the region than before, into an area he had barely explored.
Su Bai slowly swallowed.
What else had been buried deeper inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary?
The natal needle dissolved from his palm and returned to the Soul-Bloom Lotus.
Su Bai looked toward the darkness beyond the crevice.
His eyes began shining again.