Chapter 206 - The Sloth Needle and the Flaw in Space
Inside the narrow trench, Su Bai remained seated with his eyes closed.
Just then, his Needle Intent Seed trembled. The tiny illusory needle floating in his sea of consciousness released a faint ripple.
Su Bai smiled.
He had succeeded.
The Sloth Sword Intent had become an application belonging to his own Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent.
He decided to call it Sloth Needle.
Unfortunately, after admiring his achievement for several breaths, he discovered a very serious problem.
His smile slowly disappeared.
The problem was not the Sloth Needle.
The problem was him. More precisely, it was his Intent.
His Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent was still only a seed.
Su Bai studied the tiny illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness and sighed.
"So small."
The Sloth principle itself was already clear to him. Intent reached the destination first, marking the result before the weapon completed the action. A true expert who had comprehended such an Intent deeply enough could make the distinction between intent and attack increasingly thin.
His current Intent Seed could not do that.
Su Bai raised one hand.
A black Qi needle condensed above his palm.
His spiritual sense spread toward a cracked stone several dozen steps away. The stone had been struck by something long ago, leaving several intersecting fractures beneath its surface. Su Bai’s spiritual sense moved across those fractures before settling upon the weakest intersection.
His Intent followed.
For an instant, Su Bai felt something strange.
The needle had not moved. Yet his will had already touched the flaw.
The cracked stone remained completely intact.
Su Bai stared at it.
The stone stared back in the manner expected of a stone.
After several breaths, Su Bai sighed again.
His Intent could reach the flaw first. But reaching it and actually piercing it were two different things.
The Sloth Sword Intent he had studied had belonged to someone whose understanding was already mature. When that person’s sword intent reached its destination, the result carried genuine power. The intent itself could already produce part of the sword’s effect.
Su Bai’s Intent Seed could not.
It could mark, but it could not yet turn that marked result into reality without the needle itself.
Su Bai flicked his finger.
The black needle vanished from above his palm and struck the intersection of the cracks.
Crack!
The entire stone split apart.
Su Bai looked at the pieces thoughtfully.
"So I still have to work."
That was disappointing.
He had briefly hoped enlightenment might allow him to become lazy immediately.
Apparently, even the path of Sloth required effort at the beginning.
There was something deeply unreasonable about that.
Su Bai formed another Qi needle.
A small miasma creature had miraculously wandered near the distant edge of the trench. It resembled a thin red lizard.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense swept across the creature.
He found several unstable places where its miasma failed to circulate smoothly.
Su Bai’s Intent locked onto the place beneath its neck.
The Sloth Needle activated.
The red creature suddenly jerked.
Its entire body twisted violently as though something had pierced straight through its neck. It stumbled sideways. Its claws scraped against the stone while its head snapped toward the empty air behind it.
There was no wound, no blood, and no needle.
Su Bai’s eyes brightened.
The creature had felt it.
His weak Intent Seed had reached the flaw first and made the creature experience the result of being pierced before the real attack happened.
For one brief moment, the creature had experienced a wound that did not yet exist.
Su Bai flicked his finger.
The Qi needle shot forward.
The creature was still reacting to the phantom piercing when the real needle entered the exact point beneath its neck.
Its body collapsed immediately.
Su Bai stared at it for several breaths, then his smile slowly returned.
This was useful.
His Sloth Needle could not yet make the future result real, but it could make the enemy experience that result before it arrived.
If he intended to pierce the shoulder, the opponent would feel the shoulder being pierced before his needle struck.
If he aimed for a meridian, the enemy might feel that meridian rupture while it was still intact.
Su Bai paused.
The weakness was equally obvious. Because the damage had not truly happened yet, a sufficiently calm opponent could still respond. They could move the targeted flaw, block the actual needle, disrupt his lock, or simply escape before the true strike arrived.
Against an experienced expert, the premature sensation might even become a warning.
But Su Bai did not mind.
If someone suddenly felt a needle entering their eye before anything had actually touched them, maintaining perfect composure would probably require a fairly unreasonable personality.
Besides, this was only the beginning.
Su Bai lowered his hand and looked inward again.
The illusory needle in his sea of consciousness remained faint.
Once his Intent Seed matured, the false result might no longer remain false.
His Intent could reach the flaw first and begin causing genuine damage before the Qi needle arrived.
If his comprehension went even further, perhaps one day the distinction itself would disappear.
The moment his Intent pierced a flaw would become the moment the flaw was truly pierced.
At that point, whether a physical needle followed will no longer matter.
Su Bai’s expression became strange.
That sounded extremely convenient.
...
Su Bai closed eyes again.
Sloth Needle was only the first application.
The battlefield had shown him more intents. Each one contained a different answer.
Su Bai did not need their answers. He only needed to understand the questions they had solved. Then, his needle could find its own solution.
A smile slowly appeared on his face.
One application had already been born.
There could be another.
Perhaps someday, people would stop asking whether Needle Intent existed.
They would instead start asking why this particular needle had so many unreasonable ways to stab them.
Su Bai considered that a much better problem.
He sank into meditation again.
•••
Time passed quietly inside the trench.
Su Bai’s attention had completely sunk into the battlefield traces preserved in his mind.
This time, his focus was the Space-Reaping Intent just outside the trench.
It came from an ancient sword strike.
Even after countless years, the wound it had carved into space had never completely healed. A spatial rift still hung there, trembling faintly as the lingering sword intent continued to hold the torn boundary apart.
Before, he had only treated it as another dangerous remnant of the ancient battlefield.
Now he saw something different.
Space was not empty. At least, not to his Intent.
The Dao-Shattering Jade simplified the old impressions again.
Su Bai noticed something.
Where two spatial layers met, they were not perfectly seamless.
There were junctions, connections, and weak points.
The tiny illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness trembled.
Su Bai’s mind became frighteningly clear.
A sword could reap space by cutting through its weakness.
But a needle did not need to cut space apart.
A needle only needed to find the seam, then it could pierce through it.
Su Bai followed the thought further.
’If something could be pierced through a seam...’
His expression slowly changed.
’Could it also be stitched?’
The thought was so natural that Su Bai almost opened his eyes immediately.
A torn robe could be stitched because two separated edges could be joined.
A wound could be sutured because separated flesh could be pulled together.
A formation line could sometimes be repaired by reconnecting broken nodes.
What about space?
Those Void-Shattering Returnees tore open rifts because they understood how to force apart the spatial boundary.
If Su Bai could eventually see the flaw that allowed the rift to open...
Could he stitch the two sides back together?
Su Bai’s smile became considerably brighter.
The Void-Shattering Returnees would probably dislike this line of research.
That made it more attractive.
Unfortunately, when Su Bai attempted to actually touch a spatial seam with his current Intent, the illusory needle inside his sea of consciousness trembled so violently that he immediately stopped.
He was not ready.
His understanding had advanced, but understanding something existed did not mean he could casually poke it. Especially when the thing being poked was space.
Su Bai had survived many unreasonable things. He did not want to discover what happened when space itself became angry.
Still, something had changed.
His Intent Seed had become clearer than before.
The illusory needle was no longer as faint as when it first formed. It remained incomplete, but the understanding supporting it had deepened.
His path had become a little wider.
That was enough.
For now.
•••
On the thirty-fifth day inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary, Su Bai opened his eyes.
A faint vibration traveled through the stone beneath him.
Su Bai’s expression changed immediately.
The Nether Threads he had hidden around the trench entrance were warning him.
One thread trembled, followed by another. A faint sound came from beyond the trench.
Su Bai remained seated.
His spiritual sense spread outward carefully.
Shapes appeared at the edge of his perception.
Returnees.
Su Bai slowly stood.
"So you finally found the address."
He dusted the front of his robe.
Outside, another Nether Thread trembled.
A Returnee had entered the outer warning range.
Su Bai’s expression settled.
He had not perfected the other Intent applications. But compared to the person who had entered this trench five days ago, he was no longer exactly the same.
Su Bai raised his right hand.
Qi moved from his Dantian.
A thin black needle condensed above his palm.
Su Bai’s Intent entered it.
His spiritual sense passed beyond the trench.
The nearest Returnee moved carefully between two ancient weapon scars.
Su Bai studied it.
His spiritual sense moved across its body.
The Returnee’s corrupted circulation. The unstable connection beneath the false flesh.
’There.’
The Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed stirred.
The Returnee froze.
Its hand suddenly flew toward the side of its neck.
Pain exploded through a point beneath its jaw.
Its expression twisted.
For one instant, it clearly felt something pierce straight through that flaw. But there was nothing there.
The Returnee’s eyes widened.
Su Bai flicked the needle.
The Returnee reacted.
Its body twisted sideways with frightening speed, trying to escape the place where the phantom wound had appeared.
Su Bai’s eyes narrowed.
The needle adjusted.
The moment Su Bai’s spiritual sense found the flaw, his Intent had already locked onto it.
The Returnee moved, the flaw moved with it, and the needle followed the flaw.
Puchi!
The black needle entered beneath its jaw.
The Returnee’s body stiffened. The phantom pain became real!
Its corrupted circulation collapsed at the exact point where two incompatible flows met. Black-red veins spread across its neck before the structure supporting its stolen body suddenly broke apart.
The moment the Returnee died, its Soul-Bloom erupted.
The Soul-Bloom Bud immediately reacted and pulled the bloom force toward Su Bai.
The nearby Returnees stopped for an instant.
Su Bai’s eyes brightened slightly.
The attack had worked better than expected.
Unfortunately, there were still many enemies outside.
The Returnees began moving again. Several surged forward at once.
Su Bai rolled his shoulder.
He had spent five days hiding.
The first three had given him his Intent Seed.
The next two had given that seed teeth.
It would be wasteful not to test them properly.
He stepped toward the trench entrance.