Chapter 325 - The Silent Heart and the Living Soul

Chapter 325: Chapter 325 - The Silent Heart and the Living Soul

The last traces of pale-gold light disappeared from the sky.

Above the Main Peak, the tribulation clouds finally began to loosen. The enormous hand that had repeatedly crushed Su Bai was gone, and the strange radiance carrying fragments of Heavenly Law faded with it.

One after another, the cultivators throughout Radiant Sky Sect awakened from their involuntary comprehension.

For a brief moment, several of the Ancestors remained motionless. The insights they had just received were extraordinary.

Even with their realms and accumulated experience, glimpsing the structure of Heavenly Law so clearly was something they might never encounter again in their lives.

But none of that mattered when they remembered why the heavens had given it to them.

Their gazes snapped toward the center of the training ground.

The shattered stone was stained red.

Su Bai lay in the middle of it.

His battered body was strangely peaceful compared to the devastation around him. His robes were soaked in blood, his limbs rested at unnatural angles, and there was no visible movement from his chest.

Nobody spoke.

For one breath, the entire Main Peak seemed to forget how.

An Ancestor disappeared from where he stood and appeared beside Su Bai.

"No. This cannot be..."

The composure that had remained even before the Heavenly Palm finally cracked.

More figures followed immediately.

Lu Canghai reached the ruined ground at nearly the same moment as Li Xuanzong. Huo Yan abandoned the formation controls entirely, while the remaining Ancestors surrounded Su Bai and sent their spiritual senses into his body.

The result made their expressions sink.

His heart was silent.

His organs had ceased functioning.

There was no breath.

Most importantly, the life aura that should have remained even in someone on the verge of death was gone.

Behind them, movement erupted throughout the Main Peak.

Disciples who had awakened from the heavenly comprehension rushed toward the training ground before the Peak Masters stopped them.

"Remain where you are!" Li Xuanzong’s voice spread across the peak. "Do not crowd the formation."

His tone remained firm, but it did little to hide the tension in his face.

Some of the younger disciples had already understood.

Among the Outer Sect disciples, Yan’er stared at Su Bai’s unmoving figure.

Her face slowly crumpled.

"No..."

The word barely left her before she began crying.

She had only recently begun to understand what death truly meant. The absence of her mother had finally become something she could comprehend rather than something adults spoke around, and Su Bai had been one of the people who made the world feel less empty afterward.

Now the person she followed around with such easy trust was lying there without breathing.

Several senior sisters immediately gathered around her. One pulled Yan’er against her chest while another wiped at her own eyes, though neither could find anything useful to say.

Not far away, Liu Meng stood completely still.

Her eyes had become red.

Su Bai had only just returned.

He had brought back things no one in the sect could have imagined, repaired foundations, opened opportunities for others, and somehow turned his own ridiculous tribulation into a blessing for everyone around him.

When he had needed them most, they had all been sitting there comprehending Heavenly Law.

The thought hurt far more than Liu Meng expected.

For one irrational moment, she wished lifespan could simply be handed over like Spirit Stones. She would have given him some without hesitation.

At the outer boundary, Shen Youran was already moving.

The visitors were left behind without a word.

For the first time since she had taken responsibility for watching the sect boundary, she abandoned the position before anyone came to replace her.

Nobody tried to stop her.

By the time she reached the Main Peak, the Ancestors were still examining Su Bai.

Her expression remained cold, but something unfamiliar appeared within her eyes when she saw the blood covering the shattered training ground.

It lasted only an instant.

For someone who practiced the Heartless Sutra, that instant was enough.

One of the Ancestors slowly withdrew his spiritual sense.

His face had become grave.

"The body is dead."

The words spread through the nearby cultivators.

Yan’er’s crying became louder.

Lu Canghai’s hands tightened at his sides.

Another Ancestor closed his eyes, recalling the Heavenly Law they had just comprehended.

"That palm was worse than we understood."

Several gazes turned toward him.

"While it descended, the law locked onto the child completely. It did more than prevent movement. Anything he tried to extend beyond himself would have been suppressed."

Huo Yan’s expression darkened.

The boy had been alone beneath the palm while every person capable of helping him had been dragged into comprehension.

A bitter silence followed.

The Ancestor examining Su Bai’s foundation suddenly frowned.

"Wait."

Everyone looked toward him.

His spiritual sense swept through the corpse again.

His expression changed.

"Remember, he broke through."

Lu Canghai stared at him.

"He reached the Nascent Soul Realm."

Another Ancestor sent his spiritual sense inward and confirmed it.

"Right! The spiritual transformation is complete. His foundation crossed the threshold."

Nobody needed to say anything more.

The tension surrounding the ruined training ground changed almost immediately.

For the first time since they had seen Su Bai lying motionless in his own blood, hope appeared on their faces.

Reaching the Nascent Soul Realm meant the death of the physical body did not necessarily mean the end.

As long as Su Bai’s Nascent Soul had survived, there was still a chance.

And almost as if answering that realization, a faint spiritual fluctuation came from within his body.

Every senior around Su Bai felt it at the same time.

Lu Canghai’s eyes widened.

The fluctuation strengthened.

A translucent figure slowly emerged from Su Bai’s body.

It rose beside the corpse and gradually became clear.

The face was familiar.

The height was familiar.

Even the expression that appeared after the figure opened its eyes was unmistakably Su Bai.

His full-sized Nascent Soul hovered beside his own dead body.

Nobody moved.

Su Bai looked around.

He noticed the Ancestors first, then his master, then the Peak Masters, the disciples farther away, and eventually the corpse lying beside him.

He stared at it for several breaths.

"Did I die?"

The silence somehow became heavier.

Lu Canghai’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Yan’er stopped crying long enough to stare through her tears.

Even the Ancestors seemed to have forgotten the proper reaction.

Su Bai lowered his gaze toward his translucent hands.

He flexed his fingers.

They responded normally.

He could think. He could see. He could hear everyone around him.

His consciousness did not feel scattered or incomplete.

"So this is what it feels like after the physical body dies at Nascent Soul Realm."

One of the Ancestors finally recovered enough to speak.

"Your consciousness is completely intact?"

Su Bai looked toward him.

"It seems so."

The old man stared at him.

Nascent Souls surviving after the destruction of the physical body was not unheard of. At sufficient cultivation, escaping through the Nascent Soul could preserve one’s existence.

This was different.

Su Bai had only just reached the realm.

His Nascent Soul was not weakened, fading, or struggling to preserve its consciousness after the sudden death of the body.

It stood there as though the corpse beside it were merely inconvenient.

Lu Canghai finally moved.

He rushed forward until he nearly passed straight through Su Bai’s spiritual body.

"My disciple!"

There were tears in his eyes and absolutely no dignity left in his expression.

"You are alive!"

Su Bai looked at the snot threatening to join the tears.

"Master, please don’t wipe anything on me. I’m not sure whether this body can be washed."

Lu Canghai froze.

Several people nearby made strange sounds that were dangerously close to laughter.

The pressure suffocating the Main Peak eased for the first time.

Yan’er began crying harder, though now she was smiling through it.

Lu Canghai ignored Su Bai’s complaint entirely.

"You nearly frightened your master to death."

"I did die."

"You know what I mean!"

That finally drew a weak laugh from several disciples.

The Ancestors recovered more quickly.

One of them studied Su Bai’s Nascent Soul carefully.

"The survival itself can be explained. What is difficult to explain is your stability."

Another nodded.

"For someone who only entered the Nascent Soul Realm moments before losing his body, your spiritual form should have suffered greatly. Yet your consciousness is complete, and your Nascent Soul is showing no immediate signs of dissipation."

Su Bai listened quietly.

He did not know the answer either.

He was not going to guess.

One of the older Ancestors glanced toward the corpse.

"Unfortunately, surviving as a Nascent Soul does not mean returning to your original body will be simple."

The atmosphere sobered again.

"The connection has been severed. Normally, once the original body dies completely, the Nascent Soul must preserve itself separately and eventually seek a method to reconstruct a physical vessel. Returning to a corpse whose life foundation has already collapsed is almost impossible."

Another Ancestor looked at Su Bai.

"Reforming a body will also require rare materials and time."

Su Bai turned back toward his corpse.

He understood that much.

Yet something about their conclusion felt wrong.

He closed his eyes.

His awareness sank inward.

The physical connection was faint, almost impossibly faint.

But it existed.

Su Bai’s eyes opened.

The Nascent Origin was still there.

He could sense it inside the dead Infinite Dantian like a coal buried beneath cold ash.

The Heavenly Palm had crushed his body and broken the active connection between physical and spiritual foundations.

It had not destroyed the Nascent Origin.

That difference mattered.

Su Bai stared at his corpse for several breaths before smiling.

Lu Canghai knew that expression.

His master immediately leaned closer.

"You thought of something?"

"Maybe."

Su Bai turned toward Huo Yan.

"Martial Uncle Huo, do you still have the Heavenly Blessing that was stored earlier?"

Huo Yan blinked, then his eyes sharpened.

"Yes."

"How much?"

"A considerable amount. Why?"

Su Bai’s gaze returned to his body.

Because somewhere within that corpse, the golden Spirit Root still existed.

More importantly, the spiritual reflection of that root remained within his Nascent Soul.

He could feel something through it now that he had never understood while alive.

A compatibility.

A path.

"I want to try something."

Every person nearby became attentive.

Su Bai pointed toward the storage artifacts Huo Yan had prepared during the first phase of the tribulation.

"Please bring some of the stored blessing here."

Huo Yan did not ask for an explanation.

He moved immediately.

Su Bai looked once more at his dead body.

The connection was barely there, but barely was not nothing.

’I hope I’m not too late.’

This time, tardiness probably would not be as helpful.