Chapter 237 - The Rematch and the Final Reckoning
The four Void-Shattering Returnees soon noticed that Su Bai was not slowing down at all.
Their attention shifted toward the ancient weapons fighting around him. Several of the artifact spirits were forced back under repeated spatial attacks. Their already damaged weapon bodies trembled beneath the pressure.
The Returnees had clearly reached the same conclusion.
The ancient weapons were Su Bai’s support, so destroying them first would weaken him.
They still remembered the spear and how close it had come to killing another of them while burning away its own foundation. That memory only made them more determined to eliminate the remaining artifact spirits before dealing with Su Bai himself.
Su Bai noticed the change immediately and understood their mistake. They still believed his confidence came from the ancient weapons.
A violent impact sent one of the artifact spirits crashing through the ruins, and a Void-Shattering Returnee immediately followed after it. Before the finishing strike could land, Su Bai crossed the distance and caught the descending wrist in one hand.
The Returnee stiffened.
Su Bai was already standing beside it, his fingers locked firmly around its arm.
The creature pulled back with tremendous force, but Su Bai’s feet only sank slightly into the ground as his entire body adjusted at once. His shoulders, spine, waist, hips, legs, muscles, and tendons aligned naturally, allowing the Innate Unified Body to support the grip as a single structure.
The Returnee’s arm stopped.
Su Bai looked at it.
"You hit me hard last time."
His other fist drove into the Returnee’s abdomen with a dull impact, folding its body around the blow before sending it crashing through several ruined structures.
The other three reacted immediately. Spatial pressure collapsed around Su Bai from different directions, and one of them struck him squarely in the chest before he could fully reposition.
He was hurled backward as the Innate Unified Body responded on instinct. It pulled his entire frame into resistance and dispersed part of the force through his structure. Even so, the attacker was still a Void-Shattering existence, and two of Su Bai’s ribs cracked under the impact.
He hit the ground hard, rolled with the momentum, and rose again while Macro-Taiji had already begun repairing the damage.
Su Bai’s eyes brightened.
A similar strike in the past would have left his internal condition in far worse shape.
Now, it had only broken two ribs.
"Much better."
The Returnees did not share his enthusiasm.
Two attacked simultaneously.
Su Bai moved.
Frictionless Phantom Step carried him between them as the Dao-Shattering Jade simplified their trajectories.
A claw passed beside his throat.
Su Bai’s body bent with an efficiency he had never possessed before.
His movement no longer felt like individual muscles following commands. Thought and physical response seemed almost continuous.
His hand touched one Returnee’s arm.
A Nether Thread wrapped around the elbow.
He pulled.
The creature’s strike changed direction by a fraction and collided with its companion.
Su Bai’s Natal Needle appeared and lengthened into a black spike in his palm.
The Flaw-Piercing power already contained within it sharpened naturally as he aimed at the junction he had identified.
The Intent Seed stirred faintly within him as Su Bai drove the needle forward.
The Returnee twisted away.
The point still entered its shoulder.
A crack spread through the restored structure.
The creature roared and tore itself free before the weakness could propagate deeply.
Su Bai did not pursue.
He had three more opponents moving toward him.
The ancient weapons returned.
Needle-shaped Qi flowed from Su Bai and entered their damaged bodies again.
The ancient weapons attacked together and forced the Void-Shattering Returnee to divide its attention.
A cutting arc tore across one side of its defense while another weapon disrupted the spatial distortion forming around it, giving Su Bai the opening he needed to close the distance.
He did not aim for a killing blow immediately. Instead, he struck three times in rapid succession, targeting separate points along the creature’s rib, shoulder, and waist. None of the attacks looked decisive on their own, which was exactly what he wanted.
The Returnee retaliated with a palm that slammed into Su Bai’s side and hurled him several dozen steps away. His Innate Unified Body dispersed part of the force, but something still tore inside his abdomen before Macro-Taiji immediately began repairing it.
By the time Su Bai landed, the Returnee was already advancing.
He smiled.
The Dao-Shattering Jade had shown him what those three attacks had created. The weaknesses were already connected, and the Flaw-Piercing power within them was drawing the damaged structure toward a single point.
The Returnee suddenly faltered as its torso twisted unnaturally.
Su Bai’s Natal Needle shot forward at once, but the creature reacted just as quickly and tore open a spatial rift. Half of its body disappeared through the opening before the needle could reach its chest.
Su Bai’s eyes narrowed.
The Natal Needle changed shape immediately, becoming thinner and straighter as it slipped into the same spatial passage before the rift could close.
He was not trying to pierce through space itself. The path was already there.
The difficulty was keeping the Natal Needle locked onto the flaw after both it and the target entered the distorted passage.
Su Bai’s Flaw-Piercing Intent Seed trembled as he forced that connection to remain intact across the warped distance. The flaw he had already marked was still there, but its position kept shifting through the spatial passage, forcing his Intent to follow something it could no longer sense through ordinary distance.
Just then, a muffled scream came from beyond the closed rift.
Several breaths later, space twisted again as another rift tore open. The Void-Shattering Returnee stumbled out with the Natal Needle already embedded through its chest, exactly where the connected weakness had converged.
Su Bai stared at it for a moment.
"It worked!"
The Returnee tried to move, but the three weaknesses Su Bai had planted earlier were already collapsing toward one another.
The Natal Needle drove through their convergence point, and the distorted structure inside its body gave way almost immediately.
Its Bloom structure ruptured soon after.
The Natal Needle absorbed the released Bloom essence before returning to Su Bai.
Three Void-Shattering Returnees remained.
For a brief moment, none of them moved.
They had understood what had just happened.
Opening a spatial rift was no longer enough to guarantee escape. As long as Su Bai had already marked a flaw and his Natal Needle entered the passage before it closed, he could continue pursuing that weakness through the distorted distance.
The nearest Returnee reacted first.
Spatial force compressed around its arm as it struck toward Su Bai’s head with far more power than before. Su Bai raised both arms and received the blow directly.
The impact shook the surrounding ruins and drove him backward hard enough for his feet to carve long trenches through the ground.
His muscles strained and bones trembled as the Innate Unified Body responded, drawing support from his shoulders, spine, waist, and legs before directing part of the remaining force into the earth beneath him.
Stone split apart under his feet.
Su Bai coughed out a mouthful of blood, but he remained standing.
One forearm had fractured beneath the impact, yet Macro-Taiji was already repairing it.
"You almost had me."
The Returnee hesitated.
Su Bai moved forward instead.
The ancient weapons attacked with him, forcing the creature to divide its attention and opening a narrow gap in its defense. Su Bai entered immediately and drove his fist into the exposed weakness.
The first blow disrupted the structure around it.
The second landed before the Returnee could fully recover, this time carrying the coordinated strength of his entire Innate Unified Body.
By the third strike, the flaw had already widened beyond what the creature could stabilize.
Su Bai’s Flaw-Piercing power followed naturally through the opening, and the Natal Needle shot into the compromised structure soon afterward.
The second Void-Shattering Returnee collapsed.
Two remained.
They immediately tried to separate, but the ancient weapons pressed them from different directions and prevented a clean retreat.
One of the Returnees opened several spatial rifts in rapid succession, clearly trying to create enough confusion to escape through one of them.
Su Bai watched carefully.
The creature finally committed to the third opening and disappeared into the passage.
His Natal Needle moved at the same moment.
It slipped into the still-open rift before the passage closed, while the Flaw-Piercing Intent Seed inside Su Bai trembled harder than before.
This time, the difficulty was greater.
The Returnee had opened multiple passages in succession, distorting the surrounding spatial traces and making the marked flaw much harder to follow.
Su Bai had to force his Intent to maintain its connection through the warped distance while ignoring the false spatial trails left behind.
A thin line of blood ran from his nose as the effort placed real physical stress on his body, while the harmful spiritual strain from maintaining the connection was immediately reversed.
The sealed passage suddenly convulsed.
Moments later, space twisted again and the fleeing Returnee was forced back into the battlefield with a deep wound torn through its side.
Su Bai did not give it time to recover.
He appeared beside it and struck directly into the wound created by the Natal Needle, using Flaw-Piercing to widen the weakness while Nether Threads snapped around its limbs.
Ashen-Frost Blight Flame erupted along several of the filaments, slowing the creature just long enough for the ancient weapons to close in from the other sides.
The Returnee broke through part of the restraint, but the opening had already been created.
Su Bai drove the Natal Needle into the existing flaw.
The compromised structure collapsed around it.
The third Void-Shattering Returnee fell.
Only one remained.
It stood among the ruined battlefield and looked around.
Most of the lesser Returnees had already been slaughtered. False Bodies lay broken throughout the ruins, while the ancient weapons, although visibly damaged, were still capable of fighting.
Su Bai stood among them with blood at the corner of his mouth and several injuries still being repaired beneath his skin.
The final Returnee slowly opened a spatial rift.
Su Bai raised the Natal Needle.
The creature stopped.
For the first time since Su Bai had encountered these beings, he sensed something unmistakable from one of them.
Fear.
The final Returnee turned away from the spatial rift as its spiritual fluctuations grew violent. Ashen-Blood Miasma surged toward it from the surrounding ruins, and Su Bai immediately understood what it had chosen.
It was no longer trying to escape.
"Better."
The Returnee vanished.
The Dao-Shattering Jade caught the spatial distortion before Su Bai’s eyes could follow it, but the creature still appeared behind him fast enough to drive a palm into his back.
His Innate Unified Body reacted at once. The impact was taken first by the struck area, while his spine, waist, hips, and legs joined together to resist and redirect part of the force. Even so, several structures cracked before Su Bai was hurled forward.
The Returnee pursued immediately.
Nether Threads snapped around one of its ankles and were torn apart almost at once, but that brief interruption gave Su Bai enough time to twist in midair and release hundreds of Qi needles.
Most were destroyed by the Returnee’s defense.
The few that survived curved around the stronger currents of power and converged on an old seam Su Bai had already identified. One needle struck it, followed immediately by another, and the repeated pressure began forcing the weakness deeper into the restored structure.
Su Bai landed as the Returnee charged again.
This time, he met it directly.
Their fists collided almost simultaneously, and both were thrown backward by the exchange. Su Bai’s sternum cracked beneath the impact, but Macro-Taiji immediately began repairing it, while the old seam across the Returnee’s chest widened another fraction.
They closed the distance again before either side had fully settled.
The second exchange broke two of Su Bai’s ribs, while his counterstrike drove the existing flaw farther toward the Returnee’s shoulder. By the third, muscle along Su Bai’s side tore under the accumulated physical force, but the creature’s restored structure was already beginning to fail around the weakness he had repeatedly attacked.
Neither retreated.
When they collided for the fourth time, Su Bai changed his attack.
His hand opened as the Natal Needle emerged through his palm.
The Returnee noticed it too late.
Su Bai’s Innate Unified Body aligned behind the thrust, allowing the force of his legs, waist, spine, shoulder, and arm to converge naturally behind the Natal Needle as it drove toward the flaw he had spent the previous exchanges widening.
Flaw-Piercing Needle Intent concentrated at the point.
Every lesson from the spear, saber, bow, hammer, and every battle inside the Sanctuary seemed to gather into that one movement.
The entire attack existed only to pierce the flaw.
The Natal Needle drove into the weakened point, and the Returnee’s body stiffened as the damaged structure finally gave way. Cracks spread outward across its chest while the collapse propagated deeper along the weakness Su Bai had built throughout the exchange.
He pushed the needle farther in.
The distorted Soul-Bloom structure inside could no longer withstand the pressure and ruptured from within, causing the Returnee’s body to lose cohesion and collapse around it.
The Natal Needle remained suspended for several breaths, absorbing the released Bloom essence before returning to Su Bai.
Silence descended over the ruins.
No Void-Shattering Returnee remained standing.
Su Bai remained standing among the ruins as Macro-Taiji continued repairing the injuries scattered across his body. His breathing was heavier than before, blood stained his pale skin, and one arm still felt numb from the repeated exchanges, but none of the damage was severe enough to stop him.
The ancient weapons gradually gathered around him. Several had suffered new cracks and damage during the battle, yet none had shattered.
Su Bai looked across the battlefield.
All four Void-Shattering Returnees were dead.
Most of the lesser Returnees and False Bodies that had followed them had already been destroyed, while the survivors were retreating into the distant ruins.
He did not chase them.
Instead, his gaze shifted toward the place where the ancient spear had once stood alone against those same enemies.
His expression softened slightly.
"That should cover part of the interest."
The saber floated beside him.
"Part?"
Su Bai looked deeper into the Fallen-Star Sanctuary, where the sealed sources still remained.
His smile returned.
"They’re the principal."