Chapter 214 - The Hungry Nightmare and the Ancient Root
Su Bai continued harvesting until he noticed something change in the sealed source beneath the ancient sword.
The flesh still regenerated after each essence-rich piece was removed, but the process had become noticeably slower.
The first wounds had closed almost as soon as the flesh separated. Now, the black-red tissue needed several breaths to spread across the missing sections, and even the veins beneath the surface seemed less vigorous than before.
Su Bai immediately stopped.
He had already gained plenty from this one.
There was no reason to exhaust a resource he had only just discovered could replenish itself.
The sealed source beneath the sword remained silent as Su Bai withdrew his flying sword.
For a moment, it seemed almost relieved.
Just then, Su Bai turned toward the next sealed source.
The relief disappeared.
Several voices immediately entered his bones.
"DO NOT COME HERE."
"YOU HAVE TAKEN ENOUGH."
Su Bai ignored them.
The next sealed source resisted at first, withdrawing its essence whenever his flying sword approached. Su Bai simply cut away several abandoned sections until the creature realized he had no problem repeating what he had done to the first one.
It yielded much sooner.
Dense pieces of essence-rich flesh landed on the altar.
Su Bai stored them.
He continued to the next source.
After that, the process became considerably faster.
The sealed sources had already watched what happened to the first one. Some still resisted out of pride, but very few were willing to sacrifice large portions of their bodies merely to deny him a harvest.
Su Bai did not linger on any single one for too long.
He took several essence-rich pieces, watched the regeneration, and moved on once it began weakening.
One sealed source cursed him continuously. Another refused to speak at all. A third tried to convince him that the flesh would poison his soul.
Su Bai found that one especially unconvincing.
By the time he reached the later sealed sources, the entire altar seemed to radiate resentment.
He continued anyway.
Before long, Su Bai reached into his system inventory for another jade box and found nothing.
Every sealed jade box he had prepared was already occupied.
Su Bai stared at the essence-rich flesh floating beside him.
This was a problem he had not expected.
After a moment of hesitation, Su Bai placed the fresh piece directly into an empty section of his system inventory.
He waited.
Fortunately, nothing happened. The flesh remained still. The nearby treasures remained untouched.
It seems that the system inventory separated things properly. If it did not, he would deal with the consequences later.
He began storing the remaining pieces directly.
By the time he approached the sealed source beneath the ancient spear, Su Bai had already harvested something worthwhile from almost every mass around the altar.
This one was different.
He remembered it clearly.
It had been among the first to notice him when he first entered the altar, and it had reacted strongly to whatever traces of the sealed sources’ origin existed inside his body.
The enormous mass beneath the spear opened several narrow slits as Su Bai approached.
"LEAVE."
Su Bai raised his flying sword and sent it toward the exposed flesh.
The moment the blade approached, the essence inside that section retreated once again, leaving behind another dead piece that fell uselessly onto the stone.
He changed the angle and tried several more times, but the result never changed.
Unlike the others, this sealed source refused to yield.
It kept abandoning every section Su Bai targeted, and the surrounding mass gradually lost its former bulk.
The thinner it became, the more clearly Su Bai could make out the shape of the ancient spear beneath the remaining flesh, even though he had deliberately kept every cut well away from the weapon itself.
That was what finally made Su Bai stop.
His gaze moved from the discarded flesh to the narrowing mass around the spear.
The creature had already sacrificed far more than any of the others, but instead of becoming desperate, it seemed almost willing to let him continue.
Something about that was wrong.
The others hated having their flesh disconnected from the root because those dead sections regenerated poorly.
This one seemed almost eager to let him continue.
Su Bai’s gaze moved toward the ancient spear.
The weapon pierced deep through the center of the mass and entered the altar beneath it.
Much more of the shaft was visible now than before.
Su Bai’s eyes narrowed.
The sealed source spoke.
"YOU WERE SO EAGER TO CARVE. WHY HESITATE NOW?"
Su Bai’s flying sword remained motionless.
The question itself was enough to make his suspicion stronger.
It wanted him to continue.
He looked at the thinned flesh surrounding the spear and slowly understood.
The sealed source was using him.
By allowing its body to shrink around the spear, it might be trying to loosen the weapon, weaken part of the seal, or create enough space for some deeper portion of itself to slip free.
Su Bai did not know the exact method.
He did not need to.
"You were baiting me."
Several slits across the remaining flesh slowly closed, and the creature made no attempt to provoke him again.
That restraint only made Su Bai more certain.
It wanted him to keep cutting, but it was intelligent enough not to say so once he had begun to notice something was wrong.
Su Bai stepped back and withdrew the flying sword.
"You can keep the rest."
The creature remained silent as he turned away.
...
After leaving the sealed source beneath the spear, Su Bai turned his attention to everything he had learned from the altar.
The sealed sources had shown him that their main bodies could not move freely. Whenever they resisted too violently, the ancient weapons and formations reacted and forced them back down.
Their servants and severed flesh could extend their influence beyond the altar, but the main bodies remained pinned.
The mysterious root was also becoming clearer.
Su Bai still did not know what the root truly was, but after everything he had observed, he was increasingly certain that it was the key to the sealed sources’ strange existence.
Their outer flesh could be regenerated, but anything deliberately cut off from the root lost its vitality along with the Ashen-Blood essence sustaining it.
That was why those abandoned wounds remained dead, and why most of the sealed sources were unwilling to use that method unless Su Bai forced them to.
They could recover ordinary injuries. Completely abandoning parts of themselves was much more costly.
The one beneath the spear had accepted that cost because it had hoped Su Bai would unknowingly help weaken its imprisonment.
Su Bai stored the information in his mind.
...
Just then, the distant Nether Threads trembled.
Su Bai’s expression changed immediately.
Something had entered the warning network.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense followed the disturbance.
The pressure was still some distance away, but he did not need to wait for confirmation.
The Deep-Step creations were returning.
Su Bai looked around the altar one final time.
The sealed sources had become much quieter.
Some still muttered curses. Others remained silent while their harvested flesh slowly regenerated.
The source beneath the spear looked particularly miserable after sacrificing so much of its outer body without gaining anything in return.
Su Bai felt no sympathy.
He had already taken more than enough.
There was no reason to remain here until the Void-Shattering Returnees arrived.
Besides, he could always return.
His gaze passed over the regenerating masses.
As long as their claim was even partly true and the root could continue restoring their essence-rich flesh, these sealed sources had become extraordinarily valuable.
For everyone else, they were ancient abominations.
For Su Bai...
They were beginning to resemble a renewable cultivation buffet.
He almost smiled.
The thought alone made leaving slightly painful.
Su Bai turned toward the exit.
A weak voice came from beneath the ancient spear.
"WAIT."
He glanced back.
The diminished mass shifted beneath the weapon.
"AGAIN, WHAT ARE YOU?"
Su Bai’s expression did not change immediately.
The sealed source continued.
"YOU WEAR THE SHAPE OF MAN, YET OUR ORIGIN DOES NOT DEVOUR YOU."
Another voice emerged from elsewhere across the altar.
"YOU BEAR THE BLOOM WITHOUT BELONGING TO THE ROOT."
The one beneath the spear spoke again.
"YOU ARE NOT ONE OF US."
A brief pause followed.
"AND YOU... WERE NOT BORN OF THIS REALM."
Su Bai fell silent.
That sentence struck much closer than the sealed source could possibly understand.
For several breaths, Su Bai stared at the creature beneath the spear.
He could not tell whether it had sensed something or was merely making a guess based on whatever abnormality it detected inside him.
Either way, Su Bai had no intention of explaining himself to them.
He held the sealed source’s gaze for a moment before a faint smirk slowly appeared on his face.
"I’m your little nightmare."
For once, none of the sealed sources answered.
Su Bai turned away, but before he could take more than a few steps, his stomach growled loudly enough to ruin whatever menace he had just created.
He stopped, glanced back over his shoulder, and his smirk widened.
"A hungry nightmare."
Frictionless Phantom Step activated.
Su Bai disappeared from the altar.
The sealed sources remained quiet for several breaths after he left.
For thousands of years, they had endured ancient weapons, fading formations, and the hatred of countless generations.
They had been feared.
They had been sealed.
They had been studied and destroyed repeatedly according to their own claims, only to return through the root.
Yet a naked Golden Core cultivator had entered their altar, killed their servants, stolen their flesh, carved essence directly from their bodies, and left before their strongest creations could stop him.
For the first time in a very long time, they had lost something while being unable to retaliate.
The silence ended when spatial pressure appeared around the edge of the clearing.
The Deep-Step creations returned.
They were battered.
One still lacked an arm. Another carried cracks across much of its reconstructed body, while several others bore fresh damage from stabilizing the spatial disaster around the ancient Space-Reaping Intent.
They had barely emerged when the sealed sources erupted.
"FAILURES."
"NOW YOU RETURN?"
"THE THIEF HAS FED FROM US."
"LOOK AT WHAT YOUR DELAY HAS COST."
The altar shook beneath their rage.
The Deep-Step Returnees remained silent.
Su Bai was already far away.
He had nothing to do with whatever happened to them afterward.
At least, that was what he told himself.
He moved deeper through Layer One, avoiding the route he had used previously.
Eventually, he found another narrow crevice hidden between massive ancient stones.
The surrounding Ashen-Blood Miasma was dense, but there were no immediate signs of Returnees nearby.
Su Bai spread Nether Threads around the entrance and along several approaching paths.
Only after confirming the area was quiet did he settle inside.
The ground was filthy.
Su Bai swept away the dust and dried residue with Qi before sitting down on the cleared stone.
He was still completely naked.
At this point, that had become the least unusual part of his day.
Su Bai opened the system inventory.
His mood improved immediately.
The harvest was enormous.
Several essence-rich pieces remained sealed inside jade boxes, while many more rested directly in the system inventory after he ran out of containers.
Su Bai retrieved one.
Unlike the earlier flesh fragments, it remained completely silent.
There’s no foreign awareness stirring from inside.
Su Bai examined it carefully with spiritual sense.
The essence was still there. So was the dense vitality. But the extension of the sealed source’s will was absent.
That was another useful discovery.
The earlier flesh fragments had been deliberately separated and maintained as extensions of the sealed sources.
These pieces were different. Su Bai had forcibly severed them.
The essence remained, but the conscious connection had not followed.
That meant he could eat them without listening to an ancient abomination curse him from inside his dinner.
Su Bai considered that a considerable improvement.
Several Qi needles appeared beside him.
He divided the flesh into smaller pieces and skewered them.
Ashen-Frost Blight Flame gathered beneath the first skewer. The cold fire wrapped around the meat.
A faint sizzling sound filled the crevice.
Su Bai’s mouth watered almost immediately. The aroma was richer than before.
He could already feel the dense essence inside the meat responding to the flame.
A grin slowly spread across his face.
After this meal, his body might finally transform again.