Chapter 255 - Nether Threads and Natal Needles
The battle did not become easier simply because most of the demonic cultivators were dead.
If anything, the survivors became more troublesome.
They had already seen what happened when their formation spread too widely, so the remaining cultivators abandoned any attempt to surround Su Bai.
Golden Core cultivators closed ranks around the Nascent Soul leaders, layering defensive barriers over one another while the stronger cultivators actively intercepted every group of Qi needles that approached.
The change was effective.
Whenever Su Bai’s needles curved toward a flaw, a Nascent Soul cultivator would disrupt the trajectory with a burst of spiritual pressure or collapse the vulnerable section of the formation before the needles could reach it.
If one defensive artifact cracked, another immediately replaced it.
If a cultivator became injured, the formation shifted before Su Bai could exploit the opening.
Su Bai watched them adjust and felt a little impressed.
These people were nothing like the Returnees.
The Returnees had possessed frightening bodies and strange abilities, but much of their fighting depended on overwhelming opponents through force and abnormal durability.
The cultivators in front of him were different.
They communicated. They baited attacks. They deliberately exposed false weaknesses while hiding the real formation nodes behind overlapping protections.
The Nascent Soul cultivators were especially troublesome. None of them wasted effort trying to overpower every needle individually anymore. They only intervened where Su Bai’s attacks threatened something important.
’Much better.’
Su Bai’s spiritual sense spread through the battlefield.
Humans might have been more intelligent than Returnees, but intelligence did not remove flaws.
It merely made the flaws harder to reach.
Just then, several Qi needles swept toward the left side of the formation at once, forcing the Golden Core cultivators there to divide their attention.
None of them realized that one of those needles was only pretending to be part of the barrage.
Unlike the others, it already carried a nearly invisible Nether-Thread connected to Su Bai’s fingers.
The cultivator it targeted raised his weapon to intercept it, but the needle curved beneath the blade and drove into the base of his skull before he could fully turn away.
The surrounding cultivators were still occupied with the rest of the barrage.
Su Bai felt the thread tighten.
A faint smile appeared on his pale face.
’It has been a while.’
Nether-Thread Puppetry.
His hand moved.
The Golden Core cultivator moved with it.
The man’s sword suddenly changed direction and slashed toward the cultivator standing beside him.
The victim barely raised a shield in time.
"What are you doing?!"
The controlled cultivator’s face had already turned pale.
His arm moved again despite the horror in his eyes.
He fought desperately against his own body, but the thread connected to the needle at his brain stem had already seized control of his movements.
"No! Move away!"
His sword stabbed forward.
"I am not controlling my body!"
The warning came just before the blade pierced another cultivator’s shoulder.
The surrounding formation immediately broke apart around him.
One of the Nascent Soul leaders finally noticed the thread.
"He’s being controlled!"
Another spiritual sense swept over the Golden Core cultivator and found the needle lodged behind his skull.
The Nascent Soul cultivator’s expression darkened.
"Cut the connection!"
Several attacks immediately changed direction.
Su Bai’s fingers moved again.
The puppet ducked beneath a crescent of dark Qi, stepped behind another cultivator, and used the man’s body to block a second attack before slashing toward the nearest formation node.
The demonic cultivators reacted quickly.
Two moved to restrain their companion while another sent a thin blade of Qi directly toward the Nether-Thread.
Su Bai pulled his hand aside.
The puppet followed.
The blade missed the thread by less than an inch.
The Golden Core cultivator could only watch his own body move with a mixture of rage and terror.
One of the nearby demonic cultivators shouted, "Stop attacking! You’ll kill him!"
The Nascent Soul leader did not hesitate.
"That is better than letting him tear open the formation."
His palm struck.
The controlled Golden Core cultivator’s eyes widened.
A dark handprint crashed into his chest and sent him flying backward. Bones shattered beneath the impact, and before Su Bai could redirect the body again, another Nascent Soul cultivator sent a blade of black Qi through his neck.
The Nether-Thread went slack.
Su Bai stared at the corpse for a moment.
He had expected them to continue cutting the thread. Instead, they had simply killed their own companion.
He sighed quietly.
’Not very effective against people willing to kill their own side.’
The demonic cultivators had reached the same conclusion from the opposite direction.
"Anyone controlled by those threads is to be treated as lost."
Nobody argued.
The cruelty of the decision did not surprise Su Bai.
What interested him more was how quickly they had arrived at it.
They had solved Nether-Thread Puppetry almost immediately.
Unfortunately for them, Su Bai had never intended to rely on one method.
The brief disruption had already given him enough time to finish examining the remaining formation.
He had seen how the Nascent Soul cultivators redistributed their defenses.
He had watched which Golden Core cultivators carried the secondary formation flags.
He had identified who supplied Qi to each barrier and which people were responsible for replacing damaged nodes.
The formation itself was already difficult to deal with, but the cultivators controlling it were even more troublesome.
By now, however, Su Bai had seen enough.
His figure vanished from where he stood.
The Nascent Soul cultivators reacted almost immediately.
"Spread out!"
"He’s inside the formation!"
The warning came quickly, but Su Bai was faster.
Frictionless Phantom Step carried Su Bai directly through the gap between two overlapping defensive layers.
He reappeared among the Golden Core cultivators.
For a fraction of a second, everyone around him froze.
They had spent the entire battle keeping Su Bai at range.
Now the pale young man they had been desperately defending against was standing inside their formation.
Su Bai moved first.
Needle-shaped Qi erupted around him.
The distance was too short.
Three Golden Core cultivators fell before their defensive treasures completely activated.
Another managed to raise a blood-colored barrier, but Su Bai stepped through the opening created when two Qi needles struck the same weak point.
A saber flashed toward Su Bai’s neck.
He raised his arm and caught the strike against his forearm.
A metallic clang rang out.
The Golden Core cultivator’s expression changed.
Before he could pull the saber back, Su Bai stepped forward and kicked him squarely in the chest.
The cultivator disappeared from where he had been standing and crashed through several companions before smashing into the ground farther away.
Another Golden Core cultivator approached from the side with a heavy palm technique.
Su Bai turned and met the strike with his bare hand.
The collision drove force through his arm and into the ground beneath him. Stone fractured under his feet, and his arm was pushed back slightly.
For half a breath, the demonic cultivator’s eyes brightened.
He thought he had moved Su Bai.
But then, Su Bai’s fingers closed around his wrist.
The Myriad-Calamity Vajra Body had already distributed the force through his entire frame. Before the cultivator could pull away, Su Bai dragged him off balance and drove a knee into his abdomen.
The man’s body folded from the impact.
Su Bai did not give him time to recover. He turned with the motion and hurled him directly into the approaching formation barrier.
The barrier shook violently when the cultivator crashed into it, and several people maintaining it staggered from the sudden impact.
Su Bai released his grip and glanced at his hand.
’This body is convenient.’
The surviving cultivators had no time to dwell on what they had just seen.
The Nascent Soul leaders were already adjusting the formation.
"Collapse the inner formation!"
"Force him into one direction!"
Three barriers shifted at once, attempting to compress the space around Su Bai while Golden Core cultivators withdrew behind them.
That was a sensible response.
If Su Bai wanted close combat, they would remove the room he needed to move.
Su Bai looked at the closing barriers.
It was then that nine faint lights appeared around him.
The Nascent Soul cultivators felt something change.
"Careful!"
The Natal Needles emerged.
They did not rush forward immediately.
For a brief moment, all nine hovered around Su Bai.
One was noticeably denser than the others. The rest carried the same strange flexibility that had developed after the Soul-Bloom Lotuses matured.
Su Bai’s spiritual sense moved.
The needles disappeared.
A Nascent Soul cultivator raised three defensive barriers in front of himself.
The first Natal Needle struck the outer barrier and flattened against its curved surface instead of trying to force its way through.
The Nascent Soul cultivator’s eyes narrowed as it slid along the defensive layer, searching for an opening.
Before he could reinforce that section, the needle thinned until it was almost threadlike and slipped into the narrow gap between two overlapping barriers.
He immediately shifted the inner defense to block it.
The Natal Needle bent around the change.
Its tip adjusted with the new angle, hardened once more, and struck the weakness created by the hurried movement.
A crack spread across the barrier.
The cultivator retreated at once, but another Natal Needle was already coming from behind.
He twisted aside just in time.
Only then did his expression finally change.
"These are not ordinary flying needles!"
Su Bai agreed silently.
The battlefield became much worse for the demonic cultivators.
The nine Natal Needles did not follow fixed trajectories.
They curved around barriers.
They flattened themselves to pass through narrow openings.
They thinned when a gap was too small and thickened again when they needed greater penetrating force.
Whenever a cultivator changed his defense, the Natal Needles adjusted with him.
One Golden Core cultivator hid behind a massive shield, keeping almost his entire body covered as a needle approached from the front. Instead of striking the shield directly, the Natal Needle thinned along its length and slipped past the edge.
The cultivator reacted quickly and shifted the shield to cut off its path.
The needle curved around the movement.
By the time he tried to lower the shield again, the Natal Needle had already changed its angle and pierced beneath his jaw.
Nearby, another cultivator surrounded himself with rotating layers of demonic Qi.
The incoming needle did not challenge the defense head-on. It moved with the rotation instead, following the current until a brief opening appeared between two cycles.
That was enough.
The needle slipped through, and the cultivator collapsed before the defensive current could close again.
Even the Nascent Soul cultivators were being forced to devote more and more attention to the nine needles.
Ordinary Qi needles could still be destroyed.
The Natal Needles were another matter.
One Nascent Soul cultivator trapped an approaching needle inside a sphere of compressed Yin Qi and immediately tightened the technique around it.
"Got it!"
The needle dissolved before he could crush it.
His expression changed.
What remained scattered back into Qi and returned to Su Bai, where the Natal Needle formed once more beside him.
The Nascent Soul cultivator stared at it for a moment.
Su Bai sent it flying back toward him.
His expression darkened.
"Do not waste power destroying them!"
Another leader understood at once.
"They reform!"
From that moment on, the Nascent Soul cultivators were forced to block and redirect the Natal Needles instead of simply destroying them. Yet every bit of attention spent dealing with those nine weapons gave Su Bai’s ordinary needle-shaped Qi more room to tear through the rest of the formation.
The ancient artifact spirits were still fighting as well.
The saber tore through a demonic technique before laughing loudly.
"This great one approves of these little things!"
The hammer struck a defensive barrier from the opposite side.
"You approve of everything that kills people."
"That is not true."
Su Bai almost smiled again, but he did not have time.
One of the Nascent Soul cultivators had abandoned defense entirely.
The man burned a talisman against his chest.
His speed increased sharply.
Instead of retreating from the Natal Needles, he charged directly toward Su Bai.
’Smart.’
If the needles were difficult to destroy, attacking the person controlling them was the obvious solution.
Two other Nascent Soul cultivators moved with him.
One released a field of corpse-gray Qi to interfere with Su Bai’s spiritual sense.
The other sent dozens of black chains through the air, sealing the surrounding space and limiting Su Bai’s movement.
Their coordination was excellent.
Su Bai’s expression became serious as the first Nascent Soul cultivator closed the distance.
A black blade descended toward him, but Su Bai slipped aside just before it landed. The attacker adjusted instantly, forcing the blade after him while black chains from the second cultivator swept in from behind.
Su Bai twisted through the narrowing gap.
The third cultivator had already anticipated where he would emerge.
A heavy strike met him the moment he cleared the chains.
Su Bai raised his arm to block, but the impact still drove him backward across the ground.
For the first time since he had entered their formation, the demonic cultivators managed to force him back.
Their eyes sharpened.
The three Nascent Soul cultivators pressed forward without giving him room to recover.
Su Bai steadied himself and glanced at his arm.
A deep ache remained where the attack had landed. His skin had not broken, but the force had penetrated far enough for the Myriad-Calamity Vajra Body to respond.
Something subtle changed beneath the surface.
Su Bai noticed it immediately.
The body had remembered the attack.
His eyes brightened slightly.
The three Nascent Soul cultivators saw the change in his expression and felt an inexplicable unease.
"Do not give him time!"
They attacked again.
This time, Su Bai allowed the same heavy force to meet his forearm.
Pain still spread through his arm, but the impact was weaker than before.
Su Bai smiled.
The Nascent Soul cultivator who struck him saw that smile and suddenly regretted using the same technique twice.
Before the three could coordinate another attack, the Natal Needles returned from different directions and forced them apart.
Their formation broke.
Su Bai did not chase them.
His spiritual sense swept across the battlefield instead.
What remained of the army was a far cry from the force that had surrounded him earlier. Most of the Golden Core cultivators were already exhausted, several formations had collapsed completely, and even the Nascent Soul cultivators now had to divide their attention between Su Bai, the Natal Needles, and the ancient artifact spirits.
He had seen enough.
Su Bai’s gaze shifted toward the distant battlefield.
Several miles away, two enormous presences were still colliding.
Yue Cangyu and the Void-Shattering demonic cultivator.
The surviving demonic cultivators noticed where he was looking.
A few of them followed his gaze.
Hope slowly returned to their expressions.
Their senior was still fighting.
As long as he could break free from Yue Cangyu, the situation might still be reversed.
Su Bai understood what they were thinking.
The ancient saber floated closer to him.
"They are waiting for that one."
Su Bai nodded.
"They are."
The hammer gave a low hum.
"Will he come?"
Su Bai watched the distant clash for several breaths.
Every time the Void-Shattering cultivator tried to shift toward the Sanctuary, Yue Cangyu intercepted him.
Su Bai looked back at the remaining enemies.
Their hope suddenly felt much less convincing.
Their Void-Shattering senior had his own problem.
And that problem was Yue Cangyu.