Chapter 238 - The Sealed Sources and the Hidden Nursery
Su Bai did not immediately move after the battle ended.
He remained among the ruined structures while Macro-Taiji Circulation worked through the injuries scattered across his body.
While waiting, Su Bai looked toward the ancient weapons gathered nearby.
Several of them had gained new cracks during the battle.
Their spiritual fluctuations were still stable, but their weapon bodies were clearly approaching a dangerous point. Another prolonged clash against enemies on the level of the Void-Shattering Returnees might truly cause one of them to break.
Su Bai sighed quietly.
Without them, the previous battle would have been far more difficult.
They had followed him despite their deteriorated bodies, repeatedly placed themselves between him and enemies they had once failed to defeat, and even entrusted their remaining strength to someone they had known for only a short time.
He would remember that debt.
Once Macro-Taiji finished repairing the worst of his injuries, Su Bai stood and adjusted his body.
The ancient weapons stirred almost immediately. Their exhaustion did little to hide their excitement.
They knew where Su Bai intended to go next.
The Void-Shattering Returnees were dead. What remained were the things that had created them.
The artifact spirits had endured inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary for thousands of years without being able to completely destroy those sealed existences. Now they were following a human who seemed almost perfectly suited to dealing with everything the Sanctuary had thrown at him.
Even the saber’s spiritual fluctuation carried an unusual anticipation.
Su Bai noticed it.
"You all seem happier than I expected."
The hammer vibrated heavily.
"We have waited a very long time."
That was enough of an answer.
Su Bai started moving.
The ancient weapons followed him back through Layer Three. Along the way, he kept the Petrified Calamity-Magnet active, drawing away as much Ashen-Blood Miasma as possible.
The artifact spirits were already damaged enough.
He had no intention of letting prolonged exposure to the miasma accelerate their deterioration when he could reduce it.
By the time they approached the familiar altar region, the surrounding haze had already thinned noticeably.
Soon, the clearing came into view.
Su Bai stopped at its edge.
The surviving False Bodies and lesser Returnees were already there. They were the same ones that had escaped from the previous battlefield.
They turned almost simultaneously when Su Bai appeared.
The reaction was immediate. Fear spread across their faces.
Behind them, the sealed masses of flesh bound near the ancient altar stirred violently.
Layered voices rolled across the clearing, overlapping without becoming completely unintelligible.
"YOU DARE RETURN."
"AFTER SLAUGHTERING WHAT WAS OURS."
"YOU SHOULD HAVE FLED WHILE YOU STILL COULD."
Ashen-Blood Miasma churned around the altar as more voices joined in, some furious, others cold enough to be worse than the shouting.
"KILL HIM."
"TEAR APART THE BODY."
"PRESERVE THE SOUL."
Beneath those commands came deeper sounds that no longer resembled speech at all, low shrills and distorted cries that made the surrounding air tremble.
The surviving enemies responded to the voices from the altar. Their bodies tensed as weapons rose and corrupted Qi began to gather.
The commands from the sealed sources became sharper, but Su Bai kept walking toward them.
That was when the front row faltered.
One False Body managed half a step before stopping. Another began trembling, while several lesser Returnees glanced back toward the altar and then at Su Bai again.
None of them advanced.
Su Bai slowed slightly as he watched.
The commands were reaching them. They understood what the sealed sources wanted.
They simply could not bring themselves to obey.
Looking at their expressions, Su Bai gradually understood why.
The sealed sources had made their imitations too well.
False Bodies and Soul-Bloom Returnees were not mindless puppets formed from empty flesh. Their construction incorporated soul fragments, memories, identities, instincts, and emotions taken from real cultivators.
That made them more useful. It also meant they could become afraid.
Su Bai looked toward the raging flesh masses behind them.
"So even perfection can become a flaw."
The sealed sources answered with another wave of furious shrieks.
"SILENCE."
"YOU UNDERSTAND NOTHING."
"THEY EXIST BECAUSE WE ALLOWED THEM TO EXIST."
Su Bai ignored them.
Perhaps sufficiently powerful creations could resist this weakness. Perhaps the Void-Shattering Returnees had possessed enough strength or enough direct control from their creators to suppress those instincts.
The remnants standing here clearly did not.
Whatever the exact reason, it no longer mattered.
Su Bai glanced toward the ancient weapons.
"Don’t interfere anymore."
The saber shifted.
"Then we’ll watch."
Su Bai looked toward the frightened group ahead.
"They’ve already decided they don’t want to fight."
His fingers moved.
"Unfortunately for them, I do."
Qi Needles appeared around him. The surviving Returnees finally reacted.
Some retreated back. Others forced themselves forward under the screaming commands of the sealed sources.
Neither choice changed the result.
Su Bai disappeared into their ranks.
The battle lasted only a short while.
Without the Void-Shattering Returnees controlling the battlefield, the difference was overwhelming.
Nether Threads caught those attempting to scatter through the ruins, while Qi Needles pierced through weaknesses before the stronger Returnees could organize themselves. Whenever something managed to enter close range, Su Bai’s transformed body ended the exchange almost immediately.
The Innate Unified Body made even simple strikes terrifying.
A palm crushed through reinforced flesh. A shoulder sent a False Body tumbling across the clearing. A short step placed Su Bai beside another Returnee before it could finish using a technique.
The remaining enemies broke completely.
The sealed sources screamed commands until those commands became meaningless noise.
Soon, the clearing became quiet.
Su Bai stood among the fallen bodies.
The Natal Needle floated nearby, drawing in the Bloom essence released from the destroyed Returnees before eventually returning to him.
With the last of the Returnees fallen, the clearing finally grew quiet.
Su Bai let the silence settle for a moment before turning his attention toward the sealed sources, whose layered voices had gone still.
For the second time since he had discovered them, the flesh masses became completely silent beneath his gaze.
The ancient weapons gathered behind him.
Their spiritual fluctuations changed as they finally saw the sealed sources directly.
These were the existences connected to everything that had happened inside the Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
For the artifact spirits, this was no ordinary enemy.
Su Bai did not need to ask what they were feeling.
Their silence was enough.
Su Bai walked toward the altar, and the sealed flesh masses shuddered as he approached.
A faint smile appeared on his face, carrying a meaning none of them could mistake.
You’re next.
The sealed sources erupted violently.
Ashen-Blood Miasma surged around their restraints, then abruptly slowed.
For several breaths, even the continuous flow of miasma seeping from their flesh seemed to weaken.
The ancient weapons noticed.
Su Bai did too.
The sealed sources apparently realized what his arrival meant.
Their Void-Shattering protectors were dead. The lesser creations had been slaughtered. The human standing before them had already proven that their corruption could not stop him.
A moment later, the overlapping curses resumed with even greater fury.
"YOU WILL REGRET THIS."
"THIS PLACE WILL BURY YOU."
"YOU THINK KILLING THOSE SHELLS MEANS YOU HAVE WON?"
Su Bai scratched his ear.
"That’s better. I was starting to think you had finally learned manners."
The flesh masses convulsed harder.
"ARROGANT HUMAN."
"COME CLOSER."
"WE WILL TEAR YOUR SOUL APART."
Su Bai ignored them.
There was something else he wanted first.
Su Bai had seen enough Soul-Bloom Returnees to know that those bodies could not simply appear from nowhere. The sealed sources had been producing them for countless years, and the process had to take place somewhere.
He turned toward the ancient weapons.
"Help me look around. This place is hiding something."
The artifact spirits moved at once.
They swept around the altar and surrounding ruins, examining walls, broken formations, buried structures, and anything that might conceal an entrance.
The hammer eventually slowed over a fractured section of ground and tapped it lightly. A hollow vibration answered from below, making Su Bai glance over.
The hammer struck the same spot again, this time with more care. The sound returned.
Su Bai raised an eyebrow.
"Not bad."
A pleased spiritual fluctuation came from the hammer.
The saber immediately cut in.
"It hit the ground."
Su Bai walked over and looked at the spot.
"It hit the correct ground."
The saber went quiet.
The location was surprisingly close to the altar.
Once he knew what to look for, he found traces of an old concealment formation buried beneath layers of corrosion and broken stone.
The entrance had been hidden extremely well.
Without the hammer noticing the hollow space beneath them, Su Bai might have walked over it several times without realizing anything was there.
The moment they began clearing the rubble, the sealed sources reacted violently.
Their flesh convulsed against the restraints as the layered voices rose at once.
"STOP."
"LEAVE THAT PLACE."
"YOU HAVE TAKEN ENOUGH."
Su Bai paused and glanced back.
That reaction was different from the anger they had shown before. Beneath the fury, something far more revealing had slipped through.
Panic.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"So this matters."
The sealed sources thrashed harder.
"YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT LIES BELOW."
Su Bai ignored them and continued clearing the rubble until a narrow passage finally appeared beneath the collapsed stone.
Cold air drifted upward, carrying the familiar presence of Ashen-Blood Miasma. Beneath it, however, was another aura Su Bai recognized immediately.
A dense concentration of soul power.
His expression grew more serious as he looked into the darkness below, then descended with the ancient weapons following behind him.
The passage continued much farther underground than he expected. Ancient formation patterns still covered portions of the walls, while traces of dried black-red material clung to channels carved into the stone.
Eventually, the tunnel opened into a massive underground chamber.
Su Bai stopped.
Rows of dark growths filled the space ahead. Some were no larger than fists. Others had already developed into fleshy lotus-like structures wrapped around translucent cores.
Soul-Bloom Seeds.
There were far more than he expected.
Su Bai’s eyes moved across the chamber.
Many were still immature. Others had clearly entered a later stage of development, their internal soul fluctuations becoming increasingly distinct.
The ancient weapons followed him inside and immediately became still.
Su Bai stepped closer to the nearest mature growth.
His spiritual sense spread through the nearest Soul-Bloom Seed.
Several faint soul fluctuations answered from within.
Su Bai’s expression changed.
The seed contained multiple soul slivers, their auras overlapping inside the growing structure. He could not identify every fragment, but some of them carried traces that were unmistakably young.
He moved to another seed and found the same thing.
The deeper he checked, the uglier his expression became.
Among those mixed soul slivers were traces that matched the younger generation who had entered the Fallen-Star Sanctuary during the recent opening. Some belonged to cultivators who had been reported dead, while others came from those who had simply vanished after entering the deeper regions.
Su Bai’s face slowly darkened.