Chapter 211 - The Returning Intruder and the Deep-Step Creations
By the time Su Bai saw the altar clearing again, the presence he had released earlier had already disappeared beneath the Void Ring.
His aura sank back into complete suppression until almost nothing leaked from his body.
He remained unclothed and unequipped after passing through the solid Ashen-Blood Miasma.
Su Bai lowered himself behind a fractured section of ancient stone and studied the clearing.
The enormous altar remained exactly as oppressive as he remembered.
The sealed masses beneath the ancient weapons were no longer quiet.
Slits opened and closed across malformed flesh. Veins shifted beneath surfaces that did not possess any recognizable anatomy. Some portions expanded with slow breaths despite having no lungs, while others contracted around the weapons pinning them as though the ancient metal were merely an inconvenience they had been enduring for thousands of years.
Su Bai did not stare at them for long.
His attention moved to the living defenses around the altar.
There were still many.
Rows of False Bodies stood throughout the clearing, although their numbers had clearly decreased since his last visit. Soul-Bloom Returnees moved between them while several stronger figures supervised the movement of supplies and flesh.
Su Bai searched carefully for the pressure he feared most.
Nothing resembling a Void-Shattering Returnee entered his spiritual sense.
He searched again to make sure.
Still nothing.
A faint satisfaction appeared on his face.
Apparently, when the sealed sources had decided to hunt him, they had been quite serious about it.
Most of their strongest creations had been sent after one Golden Core cultivator.
Su Bai was almost flattered.
His spiritual sense continued moving across the altar.
Several Returnees were gathered near one side of the clearing, where chunks of black-red flesh had been arranged in rows.
Su Bai’s expression slowly changed.
Flesh fragments. The Returnees were sorting them.
Su Bai watched for several breaths.
His earlier suspicion finally became much clearer.
Those fragments were pieces separated from the beings beneath the seals while still maintaining some connection to the original source.
They helped form new bodies, produced Returnees, and carried the influence of the sealed source farther from the altar.
Su Bai’s humor faded for a moment.
These things had been trapped beneath immortal weapons for thousands of years, yet they had never truly stopped trying to escape.
Time had not weakened their purpose. It had merely taught them patience.
Su Bai looked toward one of the massive sealed bodies.
A slit opened on its surface.
For the briefest instant, he had the uncomfortable feeling that it was looking directly at him despite having no visible eye.
He withdrew his spiritual sense slightly.
’Definitely not ordinary.’
Whatever these things were, killing them had either been impossible or had carried consequences bad enough that sealing them had been the better choice.
That thought should have encouraged Su Bai to leave.
Instead, his gaze returned to the neatly sorted flesh fragments.
His stomach tightened faintly.
Su Bai ignored it.
He spent several more breaths counting enemies, watching patrol routes, and estimating the strength of every Returnee he could sense.
There were several at Nascent Soul level.
There were many weaker ones.
The False Bodies varied greatly, but none gave him the same pressure as the Void-Shattering creations that had nearly killed him earlier.
More importantly, the strongest defenders were absent.
Su Bai waited until two patrols crossed each other and separated.
Only after confirming the opening did he move.
Frictionless Phantom Step activated beneath his feet.
Su Bai crossed the first stretch of ruined stone so quickly that the nearest False Body did not react until he had already passed it.
Several black Qi needles emerged directly from his body.
He did not touch the damaged Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed. The tiny illusory needle in his sea of consciousness was still mending, and Su Bai had no intention of cracking it further simply because using Intent would make the cleanup easier.
Ordinary qi needles had killed people perfectly well before his Intent existed.
The first Qi needle entered the False Body through the temple.
A second pierced the base of its skull, while a third struck the unstable point where reconstructed flesh had been joined to the structure controlling it.
The False Body collapsed before it understood that the naked cultivator beside it was an enemy.
The figure next to it reacted faster.
Its arm transformed as black-red flesh expanded around the bones, but Su Bai was already sliding beneath the swing. A Qi needle entered through its jaw and tore upward while Nether Threads tightened around both legs.
The Returnee fell backward.
Su Bai pulled once.
Its neck struck a broken stone edge with enough force to bend unnaturally, and two more needles finished what gravity had started.
That was when the altar noticed him.
Several heads turned at once.
A Soul-Bloom Returnee near the center of the clearing froze before releasing a sharp warning.
"Intruder!"
Another recognized him almost immediately.
"The false bloom!"
Su Bai’s eyebrow twitched.
He had hoped that nickname would have been forgotten.
Apparently, ancient abominations maintained records.
The nearest line of False Bodies surged toward him.
Su Bai continued forward.
Qi needles spread around him in a widening arc, dozens becoming hundreds as the enormous reserves inside his Dantian and Gateway Qi Reservoirs responded.
The first wave reached him.
Su Bai slipped between two attacks while several needles crossed behind his shoulders. One False Body received three through the chest before a fourth entered its eye. Another raised a miasma shield, only for Nether Threads to wrap around its wrist and pull the defense aside long enough for six needles to pass through the opening.
A third lunged from Su Bai’s blind side.
Frictionless Phantom Step changed his direction without warning.
The attacker missed him and struck another Returnee instead.
Su Bai continued gliding.
"Please watch where you’re going."
The False Body turned toward him just in time for a black needle to enter its forehead.
The clearing erupted into movement.
Returnees abandoned the flesh they had been sorting. False Bodies broke formation and converged from several sides while black-red techniques rose through the Ashen-Blood Miasma.
Su Bai’s expression remained calm.
Compared with fighting coordinated Void-Shattering Returnees around an ancient spatial wound, this felt almost reasonable.
Elsewhere, several Nascent Soul-level Returnees finally joined the fight.
Their presence changed the pressure around the clearing, and Su Bai stopped treating the battle like a walk.
One descended from above with both palms covered in dense black-red miasma.
Su Bai avoided the direct strike, but the ground beneath him collapsed as the force spread through the altar stones.
He used the falling debris rather than fighting it.
Frictionless Phantom Step carried him across a tilting slab while Nether Threads spread through the dust. When the Nascent Soul Returnee followed, six threads tightened around broken stones behind it.
Su Bai pulled.
The stones flew past the Returnee from several directions.
It shattered them easily.
That was precisely why it failed to notice the Qi needles hidden among the fragments.
Three needles pierced its shoulder and side. A fourth entered beneath the ribs.
The Returnee roared and released a burst of miasma that destroyed the remaining needles.
Su Bai was already behind it.
The Ashen-Frost Blight Flame appeared over his palm.
Cold ash-gray fire struck the wounds opened by the needles.
The flame sank into them.
The Returnee’s roar changed.
Frozen corruption spread beneath its reconstructed flesh as the Ashen-Frost Blight Flame burned and stilled the miasma supporting its body at the same time.
Su Bai released another volley.
This time, the needles passed through tissue that could no longer recover fast enough.
The Returnee collapsed.
Its Soul-Bloom began to emerge.
The closed black-red crystalline bud inside Su Bai reacted immediately.
Su Bai felt the pull.
The erupting bloom force twisted away from the corpse and flowed toward him before the incomplete Soul-Bloom could stabilize.
Several nearby Returnees stopped. They had seen him do this before.
Fear and hatred entered their expressions almost simultaneously.
Su Bai noticed.
That was considerably more concerning than enemies who merely wanted him dead.
The battle continued.
Su Bai moved through the clearing without touching his damaged Intent Seed.
Qi needles pierced eyes, throats, joints, bloom structures, and unstable connections that his ordinary spiritual sense could identify. Nether Threads turned fallen enemies into obstacles, redirected attacks, and occasionally pulled two approaching False Bodies directly into each other.
The Ashen-Frost Blight Flame dealt with anything that regenerated too quickly.
Against the strongest remaining Returnees, Su Bai never allowed himself to become stationary long enough for their realm advantage to matter.
They were stronger.
He was faster across the ground, harder to predict, and considerably more experienced at making a battlefield inconvenient than the last time he had entered this place.
More importantly, none of them could tear open space.
Su Bai appreciated that difference deeply.
The absence of Void-Shattering Returnees transformed what had once been a desperate escape into something much closer to extermination.
The altar’s organized defense steadily collapsed.
Returnees shouted commands. False Bodies changed formations.
Some tried to surround him, while others abandoned offense entirely and moved toward the sorted flesh fragments as though protecting those pieces mattered more than their own survival.
Su Bai noticed immediately. His gaze sharpened.
He killed the defenders around them first.
A Nascent Soul Returnee threw itself between Su Bai and the flesh storage area. Its body expanded as black-red veins spread across its skin, producing a shell of hardened corrupted tissue.
Su Bai did not waste time trying to pierce it directly.
Nether Threads caught the broken altar stones beneath the creature’s feet.
He pulled the stones apart.
The Returnee lost its footing for less than a breath.
Su Bai entered that opening with Frictionless Phantom Step, placed one hand against the hardened shell, and released Ashen-Frost Blight Flame at point-blank range.
Cold fire flooded through the gaps in the armor.
The creature convulsed.
Su Bai stepped away before its counterattack could land and sent a dense storm of Qi needles through the damaged shell.
When the Returnee finally collapsed, the remaining False Bodies around the flesh fragments hesitated.
That hesitation killed most of them.
Soon, the clearing became noticeably quieter.
The last nearby False Body staggered toward Su Bai with half its torso frozen and one arm missing.
Su Bai sent a needle through its brow.
The body fell.
For several breaths, only the shifting Ashen-Blood Miasma and the distant movements of surviving Returnees disturbed the altar.
Su Bai exhaled slowly.
He had not used his Needle Intent once.
Just then, a strange sound entered his awareness.
It did not come from any Returnee.
Su Bai turned toward the sealed sources.
Every slit across several of the enormous masses had opened.
The altar grew colder.
The voices arrived together.
They did not travel through the air. They climbed through his bones, and unfolded inside his body as though the speakers had always been waiting somewhere beneath his skin.
"This false thing has broken one of the Deep-Step creations."
Another voice overlapped it.
"Broken? It is gone. The bloom did not return."
A third voice carried something resembling disbelief.
"We refined that shell through three thousand years of waking and sleep."
Something beneath a distant immortal sword shifted.
The weapon sealing it trembled by a fraction.
"Three thousand years, and the little wrong bloom killed it."
The words entered Su Bai’s bones with a sensation like fingers dragging slowly across the inside of them.
He remained still.
Another voice emerged from beneath a spear.
"This thing should not exist."
A different sealed mass answered from farther across the altar.
"Our origin enters it and does not rot it."
"It consumes what should consume."
"It wears the bloom without belonging to the root."
A pause spread through the voices, although the altar itself seemed to continue whispering beneath them.
One of the sealed sources opened a long vertical slit across its flesh. Inside was no mouth. Only darkness crowded with rows of tiny moving shapes.
"Cut it open."
The command entered Su Bai’s spine.
"Find what is wrong inside."
Another source disagreed.
"Do not waste it. Return it alive. Let the root drink slowly and remember its shape."
Several voices began speaking at once, their meanings overlapping without becoming unclear.
"Peel the false flesh."
"Open the bone."
"Remove the wrong bloom."
"Leave the eyes until the end."
Su Bai felt a genuine chill run across his skin.
These things were unpleasant conversationalists.
More importantly, one part of their argument had given him useful information.
The Void-Shattering Returnee killed by the spatial rupture had not been something they could replace casually.
Three thousand years.
Perhaps the exact time differed between creations, but the implication was obvious.
Creating something capable of reaching the Void-Shattering level required an enormous amount of time and refinement even for these sealed abominations.
Su Bai suddenly felt slightly better about destroying one.
The feeling lasted until a high-pitched screech came from beneath the nearest ancient weapon.
There was no booming sound. The air did not shake.
Space around the altar distorted instead.
Straight formation lines bent visibly. The distant edge of a ruined platform seemed to move closer despite remaining in place, while the Ashen-Blood Miasma briefly stretched into long black-red strands.
Su Bai’s expression changed.
He knew enough about spatial disturbance now to recognize what the sealed source was attempting.
The overlapping voices confirmed it.
"Call every Deep-Step creation that still answers."
Another voice carried open contempt.
"The Void-Shattering of this realm are poor vessels."
A harsher voice joined them.
"Ridiculous. Ancient blood wasted upon failures that cannot even seize one naked weakling beneath our own sky."
Su Bai’s face became complicated.
There were several things wrong with that statement.
Unfortunately, this was not the time to argue about which part offended him most.
The Void-Shattering Returnees were being called back.
His window had just acquired an expiration time.
Su Bai immediately turned toward the sorted flesh fragments. Dozens remained.
His stomach growled.
Su Bai stared at the nearest fragment.
His stomach apparently considered the matter settled.
"Fine."
He moved.