NOVGO.NET Chapter 265 - Hidden Needles and the Road Home
Chapter 265: Chapter 265 - Hidden Needles and the Road Home
Their conversation could not continue forever.
Su Bai noticed the approaching cultivators before Ning Shuang did.
Several auras entered the edge of his spiritual sense, moving quickly through the mountains in their direction. They were the Abyssal Lotus disciples Ning Shuang had left behind.
They had been gone long enough for her subordinates to start searching.
Su Bai glanced toward the direction they were approaching from.
"It looks like your people are coming."
Ning Shuang’s expression changed slightly.
She could not sense them yet, but she did not question him.
The relaxed expression she had worn during their conversation gradually disappeared. Her shoulders straightened, the warmth in her eyes faded, and the cold field leader from the battlefield slowly returned.
Su Bai watched the transformation with some amusement.
A moment earlier, she had been arranging tea trips and sword maintenance with him.
Now she looked as though she might kill anyone who mentioned tea in her presence.
"You should leave before they arrive."
"I was planning to."
She looked at him for a moment, clearly wanting to say something else, but whatever words came to mind never left her mouth.
Su Bai smiled faintly.
"We’ll meet again."
The tension around Ning Shuang eased slightly.
"Brother Su Bai should remember what he said."
"I remember."
Only then did she nod.
Su Bai stepped backward before rising into the air. His flying sword appeared beneath his feet, and within moments, he was already moving away from the secluded valley.
Ning Shuang remained where she was.
She watched his figure grow smaller against the distant mountains until even her sharpened eyesight could no longer distinguish him.
Only after he had completely disappeared did she turn around.
By the time the first Abyssal Lotus disciples reached the valley, there was nothing unusual left on her face.
"Leader Ning!"
Several of them descended nearby.
"We couldn’t find you, so we thought—"
Ning Shuang’s cold gaze landed on the speaker.
The disciple immediately swallowed the rest of his sentence.
"The witness has been dealt with," she said.
No one asked how.
Judging from their expressions, they had already imagined something considerably worse than what had actually happened.
Ning Shuang did not correct them.
She walked past the group.
"Did the captives talk?"
The disciples immediately followed.
Behind her expressionless face, however, her thoughts remained somewhere beyond the mountains.
...
Su Bai resumed his journey toward Radiant Sky Sect.
Over the next several days, he became increasingly certain that the cultivation world had changed far more than he had realized while trapped inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
At first, most of what he saw was expected.
More cultivators were traveling toward Azure-Jade City.
Some wore the robes of righteous sects. Others belonged to neutral clans, merchant organizations, wandering cultivator groups, and forces Su Bai did not recognize.
The return of Fallen-Star Sanctuary was no longer something only the nearby powers cared about.
Word had spread.
An ancient forbidden land that had remained separated from the outside world for centuries had suddenly returned, and rumors about what existed inside were already moving faster than the cultivators themselves.
Su Bai avoided those groups whenever possible.
He had no reason to announce that the person who had spent months trapped inside the Sanctuary was casually flying past them.
However, the farther he traveled from Azure-Jade City, the more another pattern began to bother him.
Demonic cultivators were active almost everywhere.
That alone would not have been surprising during the current conflict.
What bothered him was where he kept seeing them.
More than once, his spiritual sense caught small groups moving near mortal settlements.
Other groups appeared near roads that refugees had recently used, farming regions that had been emptied by nearby fighting, or towns whose residents had already fled.
None of the groups were particularly large.
Most would barely attract attention compared with the forces gathering around Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
That was precisely why Su Bai found them suspicious.
He remembered his conversation with Ning Shuang.
Small groups were being sent out more frequently.
Previously quiet areas had become unusually active.
Not everyone was moving toward Azure-Jade City.
At first, those facts had merely been strange.
After several days of travel, they were beginning to look less accidental.
Su Bai slowed his flying sword as another abandoned village passed beneath him.
Several houses had collapsed. Fields that should have been approaching harvest had been left unattended, and weeds were already spreading through the irrigation channels.
There were no mortals nearby.
Yet traces of Demonic Qi remained along the road outside the village.
Su Bai stared at them for several breaths before continuing.
He still did not know what the demonic factions were planning.
Perhaps Fallen-Star Sanctuary was simply drawing so much attention that demonic factions had decided to take advantage of the distraction.
Perhaps the scattered movements were part of several unrelated operations.
Or perhaps the Sanctuary was useful precisely because everyone was looking at it.
Su Bai did not like the third possibility.
Even Ning Shuang appeared to know only fragments of what was happening.
That meant either the plan was being kept from lower-ranking members or there was no single plan at all.
Without more information, he could not distinguish between the two.
What he did know was that the pattern had become too consistent to ignore.
He needed to reach Radiant Sky Sect.
Whatever he had found could be compared against reports from other regions. Li Xuanzong, Lu Canghai, and the other elders might have information he did not.
Su Bai increased his speed.
The detour for Withered Weeds Ash would have to wait.
For now, getting home had become more important.
...
The roads became less quiet as the days passed.
The first battle Su Bai encountered happened near a shattered hillside.
He sensed it long before he reached the area.
Weapons collided beneath him while bursts of spiritual energy tore through the surrounding trees. A group of righteous cultivators had been pushed against the slope by nearly twice as many demonic cultivators.
Su Bai initially intended to go around.
He had already learned that stopping for every conflict on the road was an excellent way to never arrive anywhere.
Then he recognized one of the people below.
His flying sword slowed.
A young cultivator in bloodstained robes was desperately holding back two opponents at once.
Su Bai remembered the face.
They had formed a Sworn Kin Covenant together inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
Su Bai sighed.
Apparently, avoiding trouble had once again failed within several breaths.
He did not descend.
There were too many cultivators below, and he still had no idea which righteous factions the traitors belonged to.
Some of the people fighting already know that Su Bai had been trapped inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary.
Appearing openly would immediately create questions he did not want to answer on the side of a mountain.
Su Bai remained high above the battlefield, his presence suppressed.
Below, the situation worsened.
The covenant cultivator blocked a saber strike but failed to notice another demonic cultivator approaching from behind.
A dark blade stabbed toward his back.
Before it reached him, something almost invisible crossed the battlefield.
A thin needle of condensed Qi struck the attacker’s wrist.
The demonic cultivator’s hand jerked aside.
His blade missed.
The righteous cultivator spun around and struck him across the chest.
He did not know why the attack had suddenly gone wrong.
Neither did his opponent.
Su Bai watched from above.
The other side still had the advantage.
His finger moved slightly.
Another Qi needle descended.
A demonic cultivator preparing a technique suddenly felt his elbow go numb.
The seal in his hands broke apart.
The spiritual technique collapsed before it could form.
Someone from the righteous side immediately took advantage of the opening and drove a sword into his shoulder.
Another needle struck the ground beside a fleeing cultivator, forcing him to change direction directly into the path of an incoming spear.
Su Bai did not attack anyone who was already losing.
He did not need to.
He only interfered where the battle was about to turn badly for the righteous side.
A missed strike here. A disrupted technique there. A leg briefly going numb at the worst possible moment.
Within less than a minute, the numerical advantage of the demonic cultivators stopped mattering.
The righteous side began pushing them back.
One of the demonic cultivators suddenly shouted, "There’s someone else here!"
Several spiritual senses swept across the surroundings.
They found nothing.
Su Bai was already moving away.
By the time the cultivators below realized the battle had changed, the person responsible was several mountains away.
...
It happened again two days later.
This time, Su Bai did not recognize anyone at first.
A righteous group was escorting wounded cultivators when demonic cultivators ambushed them from a forested ravine.
Su Bai paused high above the clouds.
He watched for a short while before interfering.
Three Qi needles descended almost simultaneously.
One struck the shaft of a spear and changed its angle just enough for the intended victim to dodge.
Another pierced a demonic cultivator’s calf.
The third struck a pressure point near someone’s shoulder, causing the man’s arm to lose strength just as he raised his weapon.
The righteous cultivators seized the openings immediately.
Su Bai left before anyone could search for him.
The third time happened near a mountain pass.
The fourth occurred beside a dried riverbed.
By then, Su Bai had stopped being surprised.
The fighting was spreading.
Sometimes the righteous side was stronger and needed no help.
Sometimes both sides were evenly matched, and Su Bai simply watched long enough to make sure nothing unusual happened.
He only acted when one side was clearly about to collapse.
Even then, he never descended.
His Qi was naturally suited for needle techniques, and with his current control, attacking from far beyond the battlefield was almost embarrassingly convenient.
Most cultivators never saw the needles.
Those who did usually noticed only a brief flicker before something went wrong for their opponent.
Rumors probably would have started if the same people kept witnessing it.
Fortunately, Su Bai never remained long enough to hear them.
Several times, however, he encountered faces he knew. More than once, he saw someone connected to the Sworn Kin Covenant.
Whenever that happened, Su Bai paid closer attention.
He never treated them as helpless, but if one of them was about to receive a fatal blow, a needle would quietly arrive before the weapon did.
On the sixth day, Su Bai noticed one of the covenant cultivators fighting three demonic cultivators at once. He managed to block the first two attacks, but the third opponent slipped behind him and raised his weapon for a killing strike.
Before it could fall, a thin needle of Qi pierced the man’s knee.
His leg buckled without warning, throwing off the attack and giving the covenant cultivator enough time to turn and strike him down.
For a moment, he simply stared at the fallen enemy.
Something about the timing clearly bothered him.
His gaze swept across the surrounding terrain before rising toward the sky, but by then Su Bai had already withdrawn behind a distant ridge.
After several breaths, the cultivator muttered something Su Bai’s spiritual sense barely caught.
"Is Brother Su blessing me from the heavens?"
Far beyond his sight, Su Bai nearly lost his footing on the flying sword.
He stared back in disbelief.
Apparently, being trapped inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary for more than eight months had already promoted him to the ranks of the deceased.
Su Bai shook his head and accelerated before the man could start looking for further miracles.
...
A full week passed like that.
Su Bai traveled cautiously, avoided the large groups heading toward Fallen-Star Sanctuary, observed the increasing conflicts, and interfered only when necessary.
The farther he moved, the more familiar the landscape became.
The spiritual energy in the air carried a familiarity that he had not expected to notice so strongly.
Then, sometime near the end of the seventh day, Su Bai saw something in the distance.
His flying sword gradually slowed.
Beyond several layers of mountains stood the outer territory of Radiant Sky Sect.
The familiar peaks rose through the clouds. Their silhouettes stretched across the horizon exactly as he remembered them.
Su Bai stared at them.
He had entered Fallen-Star Sanctuary expecting to spend a month inside.
Instead, more than eight months had passed.
He had entered as a cultivator who had barely begun understanding how strange his own cultivation had become.
Now he was returning at the Ninth Stage of the Golden Core Realm with ten Dantians, an entire collection of ancient artifacts, Immortal inheritances, seven Boundary Pillars, and enough secrets to give several elders headaches.
Su Bai smiled.
After everything that had happened inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary, Azure-Jade City, and the journey back, those distant peaks felt strangely reassuring.
His flying sword accelerated.
Radiant Sky Sect was finally ahead.
Su Bai was home.