Chapter 321 - The Restrained Dragon and the Golden Root

Chapter 321: Chapter 321 - The Restrained Dragon and the Golden Root

Su Bai raised one hand.

Nine silver lights emerged around him.

The Natal Needles hovered for a moment before their forms began to change. Each needle lengthened and narrowed until their tips became almost impossibly fine.

Across from him, the restrained lightning dragon immediately reacted.

Its white-gold eyes locked onto the needles.

A furious roar shook the training ground.

The translucent chains binding its neck, limbs, body, and tail tightened at once as the Ancestors maintained their seals.

Su Bai looked at the dragon.

The dragon looked back at him.

After everything it had done to his body, Su Bai felt remarkably little sympathy.

"My turn."

His spiritual sense spread across the dragon.

His True Needle Intent followed.

The Heavenly Blessing Descent was not a creature of flesh and blood. Its entire body consisted of condensed heavenly blessing carried by white-gold lightning, and the different properties it had released earlier still circulated through that form.

Su Bai could sense where those currents converged.

Some sections carried denser vitality. Others contained restoration, nourishment, healing, and the remaining heavenly lightning that bound all of them together.

He did not attack randomly.

The first Natal Needle flashed forward.

It struck a point beneath the dragon’s neck.

White-gold sparks exploded outward.

The dragon convulsed against the chains.

Su Bai’s eyes brightened.

A small fragment of blessing had separated from its body.

The second and third needles followed immediately.

Each one pierced a different circulation point.

The Heavenly Blessing Descent roared as pieces of condensed white-gold radiance broke away from its body.

Su Bai guided them toward himself.

At the same time, another thread of Immortal Qi left the stone.

The two powers entered his body almost together.

Reversal twisted the heavenly blessing into harm, but the overwhelming density of Immortal Qi immediately interfered with its ability to settle within his meridians.

The familiar corrosion appeared far more slowly.

Su Bai guided what remained deeper into his foundation.

Inside one of his Gateway Dantians, the golden sprout trembled.

The tiny leaf pulled at the incoming heavenly power.

Su Bai allowed it.

White-gold blessing disappeared into the leaf. The lightning surrounding it brightened.

The Heavenly Blessing Descent struggled violently.

Its claws tore at empty space while its tail strained against the chains holding it in place.

The Ancestors’ expressions tightened.

None of them loosened their seals.

Su Bai sent another Natal Needle into the dragon, then another.

Before long, a steady rhythm formed.

The needles opened precise channels within the restrained heavenly manifestation. Su Bai drew away the blessing that escaped, used Immortal Qi to keep the reversed effects from overwhelming him, and guided the surviving heavenly property toward the golden sprout.

The dragon became noticeably dimmer, but its furious roars did not weaken nearly as quickly.

One of the Ancestors stared at Su Bai for several breaths before a bead of sweat slowly rolled down his temple.

"The heavens are definitely going to remember this."

Another Ancestor’s mouth twitched.

"We chained down a Heavenly Blessing Descent so that a junior could dismantle it piece by piece."

A third old man looked at the increasingly miserable dragon.

"When you say it like that, even I feel slightly guilty."

A dry laugh escaped someone nearby.

"We may have created a story no righteous sect should ever admit to."

The Ancestor maintaining the central seal glanced at him.

"Would a demonic sect admit to it?"

"They would probably deny involvement."

That earned several quiet laughs.

The tension in their faces did not disappear.

The heavens were still above them.

Every one of them understood that helping Su Bai restrain a heavenly descent could bring consequences later.

One Ancestor eventually sighed.

"If this earns us a place in the Naraka Realm after death, I expect someone to remember whose idea this was."

Another old man smiled.

"Survive long enough for the boy to open the Immortal path, and perhaps you will not need to worry about reincarnation."

"That is an ambitious solution."

"It is better than Naraka."

Their laughter became more genuine.

None of them released their seals.

The possibility of heavenly wrath remained real, but the decision had already been made.

Su Bai’s life mattered more.

Their attention soon returned completely to maintaining the suppression.

Su Bai heard none of it.

His focus had settled on the golden sprout.

Its change was becoming impossible to ignore.

The single golden leaf that had once emerged from the remnants of Lian Qingyue’s blessing was no longer merely glowing.

White-gold veins had begun spreading through it.

They resembled tiny branching bolts of lightning, yet every pulse carried the gentle aura of blessing alongside the sharp heavenly nature of lightning.

The leaf expanded.

A second point of light appeared beside it.

Su Bai’s breathing slowed.

’The sprout was growing.’

He sent two Natal Needles through another dense section of the dragon’s body.

More white-gold radiance broke away.

The dragon’s roar became hoarser.

Su Bai absorbed the released power.

The golden sprout drew it in without hesitation.

Its tiny stem thickened. Another leaf slowly unfolded, then another.

Su Bai’s attention sharpened.

This was no longer the gradual growth he had seen before. The sprout had reached something it had been missing all along.

Its incomplete structure was finally beginning to settle.

Across from Su Bai, his Nascent Soul reflected the transformation perfectly.

The spiritual counterpart of the golden sprout expanded inside it at the same time.

Su Bai watched both.

The realization came naturally.

The first of his nine sprouts was finally crossing the boundary.

It was becoming a complete Spirit Root.

He still did not understand exactly what it would become when the transformation finished.

The combination of blessing, light, and heavenly lightning had already moved beyond the simple Light Spirit Root he had originally expected.

That could wait.

For now, the breakthrough came first.

Su Bai closed his eyes again.

The Natal Needles continued moving under his spiritual sense.

The rhythm became almost effortless.

At the same time, he returned most of his attention to the connection between his Nascent Soul and the transformed Black-Ice foundation.

The spiritual thread linking them had already become far stronger than before.

The Macro-Taiji circulated through both physical and spiritual structures without interruption.

Su Bai slowly deepened that connection while continuing to drain the restrained dragon.

Something else began happening inside his Infinite Dantian.

The nine Tribulation Marks etched into the transformed Black-Ice foundation had been glowing faintly since the tribulation began.

Now, every time Su Bai absorbed a trace of white-gold heavenly lightning, part of that lightning was drawn toward the marks.

The marks did not consume the blessing itself.

They responded to the heavenly lightning carried within it.

Thin strands of white-gold electricity passed over their surfaces before sinking into the transformed foundation beneath them.

Su Bai sensed the change immediately.

The central seat became steadier.

Its connection to the Nascent Soul deepened.

The transformed Black-Ice structure had already survived one complete realm change. Under the pressure of another heavenly tribulation, the old marks left by the heavens were helping it settle more firmly into its new role.

The Void Ring remained outside them. Null State was still suppressed.

Su Bai smiled faintly.

The tribulation that had come to destroy his breakthrough was helping stabilize it.

He decided not to mention that to the heavens.

Another Natal Needle struck.

The dragon roared.

Its body had already shrunk noticeably.

The white-gold brilliance around its scales had become thinner, and portions of its once-solid form were now translucent.

Su Bai continued meditating as though the furious heavenly dragon in front of him were merely an unusually noisy cultivation resource.

Beyond Radiant Sky Sect, others had begun noticing the phenomenon as well.

Several groups from righteous factions were already approaching the sect when the waves of Heavenly Blessing Descent reached them.

Even from several miles away, the blessing remained powerful enough to make experienced cultivators stop in disbelief.

They accelerated toward Radiant Sky Sect almost instinctively.

None of them intended harm.

The opportunity was simply too rare to ignore.

That haste lasted until they entered the outer range of Radiant Sky Sect’s Sect-Scale Suppression Formation.

Their Qi circulation suddenly grew heavy.

Movement techniques weakened.

Several figures in the leading group slowed almost simultaneously.

Only then did they remember what kind of situation they were approaching.

A sect undergoing an active heavenly tribulation was not a place one rushed toward without warning.

Their gazes shifted ahead.

A solitary figure stood near the boundary.

Shen Youran watched them calmly.

Her cold presence was enough to make the leading cultivators immediately reduce their speed.

One of the senior visitors cupped his hands from a respectful distance.

"Elder Shen. Forgive our haste. We came to visit and sensed the heavenly phenomenon from afar and came to see what had happened."

Shen Youran’s gaze passed over the arriving groups.

"You may remain outside the inner boundary."

Nobody argued.

The pressure of the suppression formation had already made the situation clear enough.

The visitors slowed completely and approached with proper restraint.

From there, they could still feel the waves of heavenly blessing spreading outward.

Rumors that Radiant Sky Sect had previously benefited from a tribulation had sounded exaggerated when first heard.

Standing beneath the edge of another heavenly blessing made those stories considerably easier to believe.

Shen Youran returned her attention to the sect surroundings.

As long as they remained peaceful, she had no reason to stop them from receiving whatever blessing reached this far.

Back on the Main Peak, the dragon gave another furious roar.

Su Bai opened his eyes.

Very little remained of its former majesty.

The Heavenly Blessing Descent had once stretched through the tribulation clouds.

Now the chained dragon had shrunk to only a fraction of that size.

Within Su Bai’s Gateway Dantian, the golden Spirit Root continued settling into its completed form.

A gentle heavenly aura surrounded the whole structure.

Su Bai’s lips curved upward.

The dragon roared at him again.

He raised another Natal Needle.

"You started this."

The silver light flashed. The needle struck.

White-gold radiance erupted from the dragon’s chest.

Su Bai drew it into himself.

The golden Spirit Root absorbed the final large wave.

Its entire structure shone.

But Su Bai barely had time to appreciate it.

A roar far greater than anything the restrained dragon could produce suddenly descended from the heavens.

The entire Main Peak shook.

Su Bai’s smile disappeared.

The remaining dragon froze.

Even the Ancestors looked upward.

The tribulation clouds had begun moving again.

The first phase had not fully disappeared, yet the heavens no longer seemed willing to wait for Su Bai to finish harvesting it.

The atmosphere changed.

The white-gold radiance within the clouds faded.

A solemn stillness spread across Radiant Sky Sect.

Su Bai’s expression slowly became serious.

The heavens were moving on.