Chapter 229 - The Widening Flaws and the Hidden Needle
The Returnees closed in again.
Su Bai tightened his grip on the spear.
A sudden thought crossed his mind.
If he could enlarge a flaw that already existed, could he eventually go one step further and create one himself?
The idea made his Flaw-Piercing Intent Seed tremble.
He was still far from understanding how to do that, but the possibility alone changed the way he looked at the enemy before him.
If an existing flaw could be pressured until the surrounding structure became unstable, then his target no longer had to remain a single point.
Su Bai’s attacks changed.
The wounded Returnee moved first, sweeping its undamaged arm forward as black-red miasma surged across the chamber.
Su Bai did not meet the attack directly. He shifted aside with Frictionless Phantom Step while the ancient spear thrust toward the Returnee’s shoulder.
The enemy immediately guarded the damaged junction.
Su Bai had expected that.
The spear changed direction before reaching it and struck farther down the regenerated arm instead.
Bang!
The attack did not pierce deeply, but Flaw-Piercing meaning traveled through the point of contact.
The Returnee’s arm trembled.
Su Bai’s eyes sharpened.
He had not attacked the original flaw.
He had attacked somewhere that depended upon it.
The Returnee swung its arm regardless, forcing the spear away, but that violent movement placed even greater strain upon the damaged circulation running through the shoulder.
The saber cut across from the side before it could recover.
Instead of striking the Returnee directly, the ancient blade forced it to twist its upper body to defend. The hammer followed almost immediately, sending a heavy shock through the broken floor beneath its feet.
The Returnee stabilized itself, but the damaged arm jerked unnaturally.
Su Bai saw it.
The flaw had grown again.
The realization made the trembling within his Intent Seed stronger.
He no longer needed every attack to pierce the same point.
As long as the pressure eventually returned to that weakness, even attacks elsewhere could worsen it.
The Returnee seemed to realize what was happening as well.
Its movements became more restrained.
That alone made Su Bai smile.
A Void-Shattering Returnee had begun avoiding certain movements because of something a Golden Core cultivator had done to its body.
Unfortunately, there was little time to enjoy the thought.
Another Returnee tore through the saber’s cutting arc and appeared beside him.
Su Bai raised the spear horizontally.
The collision nearly knocked the weapon from his hands.
His feet slid backward through shattered stone before the war hammer struck from the side, forcing the Returnee to turn and giving Su Bai enough time to escape.
Several streams of his needle-shaped Qi crossed the chamber at the same moment. Some entered the bow and saber, while the others curved toward the approaching Returnees and forced them to defend.
The ancient weapons had long since stopped mistaking them for attacks.
The Returnees had not been granted the same convenience.
One avoided a stream that merely continued past it and entered the saber.
Another chose to ignore one heading toward the bow.
That one abruptly curved back.
The needle-shaped Qi pierced through its side.
The ancient saber gave a pleased vibration.
"Deceitful."
Su Bai did not take his eyes from the enemies.
"Effective."
Apparently, that was enough of an explanation.
The battle compressed around him.
The Returnees had abandoned the looser exchanges from before. They were forcing Su Bai and the ancient weapons into less and less space, preventing the artifact spirits from freely exploiting the chamber.
Their cooperation had improved frighteningly quickly.
So had Su Bai’s.
The bow fired one of his needle-shaped streams from above, forcing the wounded Returnee to shift away. The saber cut across the only comfortable retreat, while an ancient hooked weapon swept behind its knee.
The Returnee destroyed the hooked weapon’s attack and twisted away from the saber, but that movement forced it to support its body with the damaged side.
Its shoulder spasmed, and Su Bai moved in at once.
The spear shot toward the widening flaw, but the Returnee caught the shaft with its healthy hand before the tip could reach it.
Su Bai had expected that.
He let go of the spear and stepped closer instead.
The Returnee struck the moment he entered its reach. Its free hand slammed into Su Bai’s abdomen hard enough to crack several ribs and force the air from his lungs.
Before he could even register the pain, a second burst of force drove through his side and tore flesh open beneath his ribs.
Blood sprayed across the broken floor as Su Bai staggered from the blow.
Pain tore through his ribs and side, and for an instant, even his breathing became ragged. Macro-Taiji Circulation surged through his body at once, but the injuries were too severe to repair immediately.
The artifact spirits reacted the moment they saw him wounded.
The saber cut through the air toward the Returnee, while the hammer shifted its attack to force the enemy away. Even the spear twisted violently inside the Returnee’s grasp as its artifact spirit tried to break free.
The other Returnees moved at the same time.
One intercepted the saber with a wall of condensed miasma, while another crashed into the hammer from the side and knocked its attack off course. The remaining weapons tried to close in, but the chamber had already become too crowded for them to reach Su Bai cleanly without exposing themselves.
For that brief moment, Su Bai was alone inside the injured Returnee’s reach.
But before it could press the advantage, a black streak flashed between them.
It had appeared too close for the Returnee to react. There was no buildup in Su Bai’s Qi and no movement from his hands that could have warned it.
By the time it sensed the danger, the Natal Needle was already there.
For the first time since it had been born from the Soul-Bloom Lotus, Su Bai allowed it to expand without restraint.
The thin dark needle lengthened in an instant.
Its body grew thicker, sharper, until what had once resembled an ordinary needle became a long black spike suspended directly between Su Bai and the Returnee.
The artifact spirits froze for the briefest moment.
They had never seen it before. Neither had the Returnees.
Su Bai’s face had already gone pale from the injury, but his spiritual sense locked onto the weakness he had spent the entire battle worsening.
The original junction in the shoulder was no longer isolated. Instability had spread through the regenerated arm and into the surrounding miasma circulation.
The Returnee immediately tried to pull away, but Su Bai had already forced the distance too close for that to matter.
At this range, there was no need to predict its retreat or rely on the bow and spear to create another opening.
The Natal Needle shot straight toward the widened flaw.
Pu!
The Returnee froze.
For a brief moment, nothing seemed to happen.
Its hand remained pressed against Su Bai’s wounded side, but the strength behind it suddenly faltered.
A faint tremor ran through the regenerated shoulder, then another.
Su Bai’s Flaw-Piercing meaning spread from the point where the Natal Needle had entered, following every weakness he had forced open throughout the battle.
The damaged shoulder gave way first.
A violent distortion spread across the Returnee’s upper body as its miasma circulation rushed to compensate for the damage. Instead of stabilizing the wound, the sudden influx only forced more power through the already weakened structure.
The instability spread with it.
Several nearby junctions began to fail, and black-red cracks surfaced beneath the Returnee’s flesh as its regeneration struggled to keep everything together.
Su Bai saw the opening and immediately activated the Starving Wraith’s Devouring Maw.
For the brief moment that the Returnee remained stiff from the Natal Needle’s strike, an invisible pulling force seized the power circulating through its body. Part of that strength was forcibly drawn away and absorbed by Su Bai, weakening the Returnee just as it was trying to suppress the spreading collapse.
Its reaction was almost immediate.
The Returnee’s eyes snapped toward him, and the miasma throughout its body erupted violently as it forcefully broke the Devouring Maw’s hold before Su Bai could steal much more.
Even so, that brief interruption had been enough.
The regeneration around its shoulder had fallen behind.
The flaw widened farther.
Su Bai could now feel what was happening through his Flaw-Piercing meaning. The weakness was no longer confined to the original regenerated junction. Every attempt by the Returnee to stabilize itself was transferring more strain into the surrounding structure and dragging the flaw deeper into its body.
This was exactly what he had wanted.
Before the Returnee could regain full control, it struck Su Bai away with a violent burst of miasma.
His injured body flew across the chamber, leaving blood behind him.
The other Returnees moved immediately, preventing the ancient weapons from surrounding the wounded one. The saber was forced away by a wall of condensed miasma, while the hammer collided with another Returnee before it could close the distance. Even the bow had to change targets when a second enemy moved into its line of fire.
The spear alone managed to tear itself free from the wounded Returnee’s grasp.
It struck the damaged side again before retreating, adding one more burst of pressure to the already unstable structure.
Inside the Returnee’s body, the Natal Needle had never stopped moving.
It remained buried within the widened flaw, carrying Su Bai’s Flaw-Piercing meaning deeper as the surrounding miasma circulation struggled to compensate.
The Returnee immediately tried to stabilize itself.
More miasma surged toward the damaged region, but that only forced greater pressure through the weakened junctions.
Its upper body twisted violently.
Black-red cracks spread beneath its flesh as the instability traveled farther inward, until something deeper within the reconstructed body finally became exposed.
A distorted Soul-Bloom structure pulsed inside.
The Returnee reacted at once and poured even more power toward it, trying to suppress the collapse before it could spread any farther.
Instead, the Natal Needle drove the instability closer to the Soul-Bloom structure.
The very power meant to stabilize it began feeding the collapse instead.
The distorted Soul-Bloom structure finally gave way.
A violent black-red eruption tore through the chamber and forced the ancient weapons to pull back.
Su Bai had already been thrown several meters away, but his attention remained locked on the collapsing Returnee.
The Natal Needle was still inside.
As the Soul-Bloom structure shattered, the released bloom power rushed outward for only an instant before the dark needle began drawing it in.
The black-red energy twisted back toward the center of the explosion.
Su Bai’s eyes narrowed.
The Natal Needle was absorbing the remnants of the shattered Soul-Bloom structure.
The process lasted only a few breaths. By the time the surrounding miasma began to disperse, most of the remaining spiritual power had already disappeared into the needle.
The black streak shot out from the fading explosion and crossed the chamber.
The Natal Needle returned to Su Bai and disappeared back into his body, settling once more within the Soul-Bloom Lotus.
What remained of the Returnee crashed onto the broken floor.
Its flesh twitched weakly as the last traces of spiritual pressure vanished from it.
Su Bai watched for another moment before finally confirming it.
It was dead.
One of the Void-Shattering Returnees had actually died here.
For half a breath, the chamber became strangely quiet.