Chapter 202 - The Nether Thread Network and the Lotus Fog
Su Bai was fighting for his life when a sudden chill climbed up his spine.
It came without warning.
One moment, he was gliding across the broken sealing platform with Frictionless Phantom Step. The next moment, his foot caught on a perfectly flat piece of ancient stone.
Su Bai fell.
For a brief instant, Su Bai’s mind went blank from pure disbelief.
This had never happened before.
A grown man with Frictionless Phantom Step, Golden Core Fourth Stage cultivation, fourth major body breakthrough, and enough abnormal methods to make any ordinary elder question reality had just tripped on flat ground.
"Did someone curse me?"
The thought flashed through his mind.
A Void-Shattering Returnee’s palm swept over the place where his head had been a moment earlier. The palm did not touch him, but the space above his back silently collapsed. If Su Bai had continued gliding normally, that attack would have taken his skull and everything inside it.
Su Bai rolled once, pressed one hand against the stone, and shot sideways.
"No. Maybe a blessing."
His expression remained serious behind the Glacier-Lung Bone Mask.
"It must be that Bai Zhi girl."
He did not know whether prayers worked like that to him. He also did not intend to admit that he had tripped for no reason. Between "divine blessing" and "flat stone defeated me," Su Bai chose the more dignified explanation without hesitation.
The Fallen-Star Sanctuary’s groaning had stopped.
The vast sound that had passed through the battlefield, the miasma, and the altar had faded completely. The ancient pressure in the surroundings shifted afterward, as if a door somewhere far away had finished closing.
Su Bai’s eyes changed.
The exit portal might have closed.
For a moment, the chase around him seemed to slow in his perception.
The way out that everyone had been waiting for had already opened and closed. The others should have left by now.
’Good.’
That meant one burden had disappeared.
’Bad.’
That meant he was trapped.
Su Bai’s eyes became calm.
"So be it."
If he was truly locked inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary for another cycle, then he would endure it. A hundred years sounded boring, but boredom was not the same as death.
Given enough time, enough miasma, enough enemies, and enough unwilling resources, Su Bai might walk out later as something that made even elders pretend they had always believed in him.
Of course, he would rather not wait that long.
He would search for another way out first.
If no way existed, then he would study the Boundary Pillars, tear apart the sealing logic, and find whatever hidden path the ancient battlefield still possessed. If all else failed, he would wait until he was strong enough to uproot the problem directly.
But before all of that, there was one small issue.
He needed to stop being surrounded.
The Void-Shattering Returnees moved again.
Black-red rifts opened around the broken sealing platform. Lower-level Returnees rushed between them. False bodies crawled over the altar stones like a tide given human shapes. The miasma overhead descended in layers, trying to press his movement into a smaller and smaller space.
Su Bai tightened his grip around the Parasitic Beast-Master’s Branding Iron.
The matte-black rod hummed faintly.
When several Returnees lunged close, Su Bai activated it again.
Their movement became his stamina. Their pursuit became fuel. A warm surge flooded his legs, and Su Bai kicked off the ground, rising sharply into the air before sliding sideways along an invisible angle.
A spatial rift opened before him.
This time, Su Bai did not panic.
His pupils narrowed.
He had seen this several times now.
The Void-Shattering Returnees did not appear wherever they wanted without pattern. Even their rifts had rules. The space split slightly before opening. The miasma gathered one breath earlier. The altar channels beneath the destination pulsed a shade darker. Their bodies used the miasma as a bridge and the altar as an anchor.
It was still terrifying, but terrifying did not mean unreadable.
Su Bai flicked his fingers.
Nether Thread Needles shot toward the forming rift. He tried to stitch the torn space together before the Returnee could step through. The needles struck the edge of the distortion and bent away with a sharp hum.
They could not pierce space itself. Several snapped under the pressure, dissolving into black threads.
Su Bai clicked his tongue.
"As expected. Sewing the sky is not beginner work."
The rift opened fully.
A Void-Shattering Returnee stepped out.
Su Bai was already gone.
He used Falling Leaf Substitution. The attack passed through empty space and erased another section of the altar behind him.
His attempt had failed, but failure was not useless.
At least now he knew.
Nether Threads could not close the rifts directly, but they could sense the moments before the rifts opened. If he could not seal the door, he could still watch the hinges.
Su Bai’s thoughts sharpened.
He activated the Dao-Shattering Jade.
A faint purple mark appeared on his forehead. The moment it awakened, his Qi was devoured.
The world changed. The battlefield became simple.
Su Bai saw the answer almost immediately.
He could not win.
That result was clear enough that it was almost rude.
But he could try to escape.
He just needed to make the battlefield too troublesome to chase through.
Su Bai moved.
Nether Threads spread from his fingers, sleeves, needles, and steps. They were thin enough to be missed in the miasma, but sensitive enough to tremble whenever something stepped on them.
He did not lay them randomly.
With the Dao-Shattering Jade simplifying the battlefield, Su Bai placed the threads through the paths enemies preferred to use, across the angles where rifts liked to open, around the altar channels that carried miasma faster, and near the broken pillars that could serve as anchors.
Thread by thread, a web formed, or more like, a network.
Su Bai almost smiled.
This was familiar.
One impossible task. Too many moving parts. Not enough strength. Hostile environment. No proper support. Everyone wanted results anyway.
In his previous life, this was called work.
Here, it was called surviving an ancient battlefield full of Void-Shattering monsters.
The name had changed, but the feeling was not very different.
Su Bai threw several array plates from his system inventory. They were among the items Li Xuanzong had given him.
The array plates scattered across the stones.
They did not activate.
To an observer, they looked as if Su Bai had thrown them desperately while running. The chasing Returnees ignored them. False bodies stepped over some of them without reaction. The Void-Shattering Returnees did not bother looking down.
Su Bai continued moving. More threads spread. More plates fell.
A Void-Shattering Returnee appeared above him through a rift, palm descending like a collapsed sky. Su Bai used the Branding Iron to tether two lunging false bodies, stole the force of their movement, and used the sudden surge of stamina to accelerate sideways.
The palm struck the ground and sent cracks through the altar stones. Pressure slammed into Su Bai’s back, but the harmful force pushed into his body and was dragged into the Macro-Taiji circulation.
Su Bai spat out a breath and continued running.
The Nether Thread Network gradually completed its first layer.
Something stepped on a thread.
Su Bai knew before he saw it.
Three Returnees were taking the left channel route. One false body was crawling beneath the broken stone ridge. A stronger Returnee was preparing to bloom behind him. A spatial rift was forming ahead and slightly to the right.
The battlefield reported itself to him through tremors in the threads.
Su Bai changed direction by half a step.
That half step made the difference.
The rift opened where he should have been. The Void-Shattering Returnee’s hand emerged and caught only empty air.
At the same time, Su Bai sent Qi through one of the Nether Threads.
The Qi traveled along the thread beneath the altar stones, reached an attack array plate near the third broken pillar, and activated it.
The plate lit up.
A burst of sword light erupted from the ground.
The three Returnees taking the left channel route walked directly into it.
Their bodies split apart before they could understand what had happened. Bloom petals tried to unfold from the wounds, but Su Bai tugged through the Soul-Bloom Bud just enough to bend the bloom force away from explosion and into collapse.
Su Bai slid past the falling pieces.
More enemies closed in.
Su Bai’s fingers moved again.
A binding plate activated under a charging false body. Chains of light wrapped around its legs and locked it in place. The false body behind it crashed into its back.
Su Bai branded both at the moment of collision, and the reversed tethers pulled the force of their struggle into his body.
A defense plate flared to life a breath before a miasma blade descended.
The barrier shattered almost instantly under the pressure, but "almost instantly" was still time. Su Bai used that breath to slip behind a broken pillar, send Ashen-Frost Blight Flame through a thread, and freeze the miasma channel feeding the nearest group of Returnees.
The frozen channel cracked.
The Returnees slowed.
He escaped the gap.
The Nether Thread Network became more complete as he moved.
At first, it only warned him where enemies stepped, then it began guiding his attacks.
Threads carried Qi to array plates.
Threads carried Ashen-Frost Blight Flame into miasma channels.
Threads pulled broken weapons into enemy paths.
Threads tightened around ankles, wrists, bloom roots, and corpse-armor hooks.
Threads did not defeat the Void-Shattering Returnees, but they made the entire battlefield inconvenient.
That was enough.
Su Bai was not trying to win. He was trying to become too annoying to catch quickly.
A lower Returnee stepped on a thread near an attack plate.
Sword light erupted.
Another tried to avoid the obvious path and triggered a trap plate.
A false body lunged from above, only to be yanked sideways by threads and thrown into a miasma rift opening behind it.
A Void-Shattering Returnee cut through space and appeared near Su Bai’s next route, but the thread beneath the altar trembled one breath early. Su Bai activated a defense plate remotely, not to block the Returnee’s strike directly, but to make the barrier expand between two broken formation pillars.
The Returnee’s hand tore through the barrier like paper.
But the barrier’s collapse pushed the surrounding miasma outward, disturbing the rift behind it.
The Void-Shattering Returnee’s arrival angle shifted by half a step.
Half a step was enough.
Su Bai slid past the edge of the attack, shoulder scraping against the broken pillar hard enough to crack stone. His body repaired the strain almost immediately, but his robe gained another tear.
He glanced at the sleeve.
Su Bai’s eyes became colder.
"These things have no respect for tailoring."
The enemies did not answer. They only chased harder.
The sealed source pulsed again from the center of the altar. The pulse traveled through the channels. The Void-Shattering Returnees adjusted their formation.
Lower Returnees began avoiding the most obvious array plates. False bodies started throwing themselves onto threads deliberately, trying to tear the network apart with weight and miasma corrosion.
They were learning.
Su Bai’s expression did not change, but his thoughts moved faster.
His gaze swept across his inventory again.
The Slumbering-Lotus Fog Talismans appeared in his eyes.
Su Bai altered his route.
He began leading the chase toward a section of the altar where three broken sealing pillars leaned inward. Beneath that area, he had already thrown one defense array plate and two binding plates.
The Void-Shattering Returnees noticed his path change.
They moved to intercept.
Su Bai accelerated.
Branding Iron tethers shot out again, connecting to two nearby Returnees and one false body. Their pursuit fed his legs. Frictionless Phantom Step carried him across the altar like a shadow sliding over water.
Nether Threads tightened behind him, pulling several broken weapons into the path of the lower enemies.
The first Void-Shattering Returnee appeared ahead. The second appeared to his left. The third cut open a rift above. The fourth stepped out behind him.
They were closing the cage.
Su Bai stepped onto the defense array plate beneath the three leaning pillars.
His fingers opened.
Slumbering-Lotus Fog Talismans flew out.
The talismans ignited together, releasing pale, dreamlike fog shaped like blooming lotus petals. The fog was soft and beautiful, completely different from the red-black miasma around it.
For a moment, it looked almost ridiculous inside the ancient sealed altar, like someone had brought incense to a slaughterhouse.
The Void-Shattering Returnees did not stop.
Su Bai expected that.
He activated the defense array plate beneath his feet.
A barrier rose around them.
At the same instant, Su Bai used Falling Leaf Substitution.
His body blurred and folded out of the forming barrier, leaving an afterimage inside. The defense barrier snapped shut around the space beneath the leaning pillars, trapping the afterimage, the Slumbering-Lotus Fog, and the four incoming Void-Shattering Returnees inside the same enclosed area.
The talisman fog collided with the barrier walls and thickened.
Pale lotus mist filled the cage.
The Void-Shattering Returnees froze for a breath, then they struck almost immediately.
The barrier cracked.
Su Bai had never expected a few array plates to imprison Void-Shattering enemies. But the barrier held for one breath, and the Slumbering-Lotus Fog entered through the cracks in their bloom structures.
The Returnees slowed.
And... Su Bai was already running.
He activated the next thread.
A binding plate behind him flared and pulled two fallen pillars together and block the straight route. He sent Ashen-Frost Blight Flame through another thread, freezing the miasma channel at his side so it could not immediately feed the rift forming nearby.
He used the Branding Iron one more time on a cluster of lower Returnees, stole the force of their frantic chase, and launched himself across a broken platform.
Behind him, the defense barrier shattered.
The four Void-Shattering Returnees tore through the pale lotus fog.
For the first time, their movements were not perfectly calm.
Their red eyes locked onto Su Bai with something colder than obedience.
They had realized they had been outplayed.
Su Bai did not look back.
He used Falling Leaf Substitution again and again and again. And just like that, Su Bai vanished from their sight.