Chapter 227 - Ancient Weapons and False Commanders
The Void-Shattering Returnees stopped.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense had brushed across them only briefly before he severed the connection, but that instant had been enough for them to notice.
Their gazes swept across the surrounding ruins.
Spiritual senses spread outward, searching through collapsed buildings, broken corridors, and the drifting Ashen-Blood Miasma.
They found nothing.
Su Bai’s Void Ring remained in its Null State, suppressing his aura completely. Within the Crystalline Tree Spirit Root, the Soul-Bloom Lotus had already closed, concealing the peculiar presence that might otherwise expose him to the Returnees.
The spiritual sense that touched them had disappeared without leaving anything obvious to follow.
However, before the Returnees could continue searching, another spiritual fluctuation spread through the ruins.
It touched them briefly.
Several Returnees immediately turned.
Confusion appeared on their otherwise expressionless faces.
The fluctuation resembled spiritual sense, but something about it was different. There was an ancient quality within it that did not belong to an ordinary cultivator.
Their caution visibly increased.
The first spiritual sense had already revealed that someone was nearby.
The second told them there might be more than one presence hiding within the ruins.
Their gazes gradually settled upon the remains of the underground military hall.
After several breaths, the first Returnee began walking toward it.
The others followed.
...
Inside the ruined chamber, the artifact spirits had fallen completely silent.
The ancient spear floated near the entrance.
Its usual arrogance and irritation were gone.
"Those bastards..."
Its voice became unusually solemn.
"They turned them into Returnees."
The longbow’s spiritual pressure fluctuated.
"To reduce commanders who fought until the end into these things..."
Anger appeared in its normally calm voice.
The saber and hammer reacted similarly.
Su Bai understood.
The vivid memories inherited from the ancient remnant souls had shown him many powerful cultivators from that era.
Some of the faces approaching the chamber were familiar.
They had once belonged to commanders and powerful elders who fought against the sealed enemies during the ancient war.
Of course, the beings outside were not those cultivators.
Soul-Bloom Returnees were constructed from what remained of the dead. Their forms were determined by the dominant fragments within them, allowing them to inherit appearances, memories, and portions of abilities that had once belonged to someone else.
The true cultivators were already gone.
And after receiving the memories of several Void-Shattering experts, Su Bai could see just how large the difference really was.
The Returnees possessed Void-Shattering auras.
Yet compared with the original cultivators whose forms they had stolen, their strength was incomplete.
Their power was reconstructed from remnants instead of being developed through an entire lifetime of cultivation.
They might not even possess a tenth of what the original commanders could once wield.
Su Bai sighed quietly.
Unfortunately, even a tenth was troublesome for someone at the Golden Core Seventh Stage.
His expression became more serious.
There was another problem.
These Returnees were stronger than the last time he encountered them.
The previous wounds had disappeared completely. The one that had lost an arm possessed a new one. Their auras had also become noticeably denser.
Whatever the sealed sources had done while repairing them, they had apparently strengthened them as well.
Perhaps losing one Void-Shattering Returnee and allowing the others to suffer such severe injuries had convinced the sealed sources to invest more power into them.
Yet their restoration was not perfect.
During that brief contact with his spiritual sense, Su Bai’s improved Flaw-Piercing understanding had noticed something strange.
The newly regenerated portions looked completely normal from the outside.
Internally, however, there were subtle inconsistencies.
The restored flesh and the older structure had not completely integrated.
Their miasma circulation showed tiny deviations around the places where regeneration had occurred.
Perhaps the new portions simply needed more time to stabilize.
Or perhaps the sealed sources had restored them too quickly because they wanted the Returnees moving again immediately.
Whatever the reason, flaws remained.
Su Bai memorized every one he had noticed.
The Returnees were already approaching the chamber.
The ancient spear suddenly floated toward him.
"Brat."
Su Bai looked over.
The spear stopped directly before him.
"Wield this one."
Su Bai’s eyes narrowed slightly in surprise.
Ever since they met, the spear had resisted being controlled, thrown, and especially treated like one of his needles.
Now it was willingly presenting its shaft to him.
The spear sensed his hesitation.
"Do not misunderstand. Those things are wearing the faces of cultivators who once fought alongside our masters."
Its voice grew heavier.
"I will not watch those enemies defile them without doing anything."
The spear lowered into Su Bai’s reach.
"Wield this one however you find comfortable. I only ask that you use me properly."
Su Bai stared at the ancient weapon for several breaths before reaching out.
His hand closed around its shaft.
For the first time, the spear offered no resistance.
The artifact spirit willingly opened itself enough for Su Bai’s Qi to enter.
His Qi flowed through the ancient weapon.
The transfer was rough.
Without refinement or an established bond, a portion of the energy scattered through the spear’s structure before the artifact spirit gathered it.
Even so, faded patterns across the ancient shaft slowly brightened.
A pressure Su Bai had never felt from the weapon began awakening.
The saber floated closer.
"This great one will lend its edge as well. Your Qi will be inefficient, but it is still better than wasting what little power remains within us."
The bow and hammer gave similar responses.
They could still move and attack using their remaining artifact power, but after thousands of years inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary, those reserves were far from endless.
Su Bai’s Qi could support them.
The connection would not be as efficient as it would be with refined artifacts, but it was enough.
Su Bai looked around at the weapons.
None of them belonged to him.
Yet faced with the ancient enemy they had once fought, all of them had willingly chosen to help.
Su Bai nodded.
"Don’t consume your remaining power unnecessarily. I’ll provide Qi when you need it."
The weapons accepted without argument.
The situation was too serious for their usual bickering.
The Nether Threads trembled again.
The Returnees had reached the outer ruins.
Su Bai followed the movement through the network.
He had already exposed his spiritual sense once, and the artifact spirits had released their own fluctuations afterward. Whether the Returnees knew his exact identity was uncertain, but they had clearly narrowed down the location.
Running now would only surrender the advantage of the prepared Nether Thread Network.
More importantly, Su Bai wanted to confirm something.
Those imperfections in the regenerated bodies.
His Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent Seed reacted merely from remembering them.
If those flaws were as significant as they appeared, perhaps the difference in cultivation realm was not as impossible to overcome as it seemed.
He had no intention of blindly fighting several Void-Shattering Returnees head-on.
But neither did he intend to flee before understanding what his current strength could accomplish.
The artifact spirits were familiar with these enemies.
He possessed memories from three ancient Void-Shattering cultivators.
And his entire path revolved around striking precisely where an opponent could least afford to be struck.
Su Bai tightened his grip around the spear.
The ancient weapon responded immediately.
Its own piercing meaning stirred within the shaft.
Su Bai’s Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent flowed toward the spearhead.
Two different understandings of piercing briefly overlapped.
The spear’s method relied upon the entire weapon driving everything toward its tip.
Su Bai’s Intent sought the exact flaw that point should enter.
His eyes brightened.
The Returnees were almost there.
The spear seemed to sense what he had noticed.
"Do not judge them by the realm they imitate."
Su Bai glanced down at the ancient weapon.
"They were assembled from stolen remnants. Their foundations are nothing like cultivators who reached Void-Shattering through their own path."
Su Bai’s gaze returned to the entrance.
That was exactly what he needed to hear.
Footsteps echoed from the passage outside.
The artifact spirits spread around Su Bai without another word.
The bow rose toward the broken ceiling.
The saber moved toward his left.
The hammer settled near the front, while the remaining weapons occupied the surrounding passages.
Su Bai stood at the center with the ancient spear in hand.
The first Returnee appeared beyond the ruined entrance. Its gaze immediately swept across the chamber.
Su Bai’s eyes settled upon its regenerated shoulder.
Beneath the apparently flawless flesh was the subtle junction he had noticed earlier.
The tiny illusory needle within Su Bai’s Intent Seed trembled.
His grip tightened.
For the first time since encountering the Void-Shattering Returnees, Su Bai was not thinking about how far above him their cultivation stood.
He was looking only at the flaw.
And he had several ancient weapons beside him that had spent thousands of years waiting for another chance to strike the same enemy.