Chapter 376 - A Hungry Ghost and a Golden Hand

Chapter 376: Chapter 376 - A Hungry Ghost and a Golden Hand

Su Bai crossed the broken barrier before its fragments reached the ground.

His Natal Needles passed him on either side, aimed at the Golden Core cultivator’s acupoints.

The man looked up as the first point reached his collar.

Suddenly, his body thinned into shadow, and all nine needles crossed the place where he had stood.

He reappeared well behind them, at the foot of a tree whose shadow stretched halfway across the clearing.

His hand was already raised to strike.

There had been no burst of speed between the two places that Su Bai could follow, and the man had chosen his new position in time to face the entire clearing.

At the unfinished formation, a Foundation Establishment cultivator swept his brush through the wet mixture and flung it toward Ji Ruyue.

She stepped inside the arc before it widened and drove her sword through his shoulder. Frost gathered around the wound and spread down his arm.

His fingers slipped from the brush as she turned the blade and brought him down.

The second cultivator threw himself sideways, keeping his eyes on Han Yuelin’s sword.

Han Yuelin had drawn it only far enough to clear the sheath. He held it still, and his Sloth Sword Intent severed the hand that was reaching into the man’s sleeve.

The cultivator stared at the talisman falling beside it. By the time he remembered to move, Han Yuelin had closed the distance.

The last man saw Liu Meng’s cauldron rise and rushed her before it could reach its full size.

Qin Baoshan stepped across his path.

The blow landed on the outer edge of his shield, and he turned it aside with the same movement Su Bai had seen him practice on the terrace.

The man stumbled into the open ground beyond Qin Baoshan. Liu Meng waited until the latter had drawn his shield back, then dropped the cauldron.

Its base struck squarely enough to leave the formation lines a handspan away undisturbed.

Su Bai turned back to the man beneath the tree. "Which elder are you?"

The man’s gaze went from him to the unfinished formation.

He took one step into the shadow behind him and came out at Su Bai’s side, close enough to press a dark palm against his ribs.

Su Bai planted his feet and took the strike. He wanted to know how much force the borrowed body could produce at that distance.

The answer was more than he had expected. The impact drove his boots into the soil and sent a deep ache through his side.

His Myriad-Calamity Vajra Body held, and the ache was already fading when the man withdrew his hand. For the first time since the barrier broke, the cultivator looked directly at him.

"You know what you’re doing with those meridians," Su Bai said. "I wonder how long you’ve been wearing them."

The man’s eyes sharpened. "Who are you?"

He drove both hands forward before Su Bai could answer.

His Qi broke outward in a mass of overlapping palms, the nearest rushing for Su Bai’s chest while the others swept wide enough to catch him if he stepped aside.

Su Bai saw the separate strikes drawing strength from the same stream of Qi. He let the foremost palm come within reach.

"A Hungry Ghost, maybe?"

He raised his hand.

The Starving Wraith’s Devouring Maw swallowed the entire attack in one pull.

Even the shadow palms sweeping wide to cut off his escape were ripped from their paths, and all their Qi surged into Su Bai before a single strike could land.

The cultivator stared at the space where his technique should have been.

"Impossible."

Su Bai’s Natal Needles were already coming back from behind him. The man turned at the last instant.

One needle grazed his neck before he escaped into the shadow at his feet, leaving a thin line of blood in the air.

Su Bai turned the Devouring Maw on him as soon as he reappeared. The man broke off his next attack and slipped into another shadow an instant before the pull could catch him.

He knew better than to feed it another strike.

Su Bai followed with Frictionless Phantom Step.

By then he had seen enough of the movement to know where the man was likely to surface.

The shadows cast by the trees reached across the clearing in long, broken stretches. The cultivator could pass through them faster than Su Bai could follow his body, but each time he came out he needed a place wide enough to take shape.

Su Bai reached the next one just as a shoulder emerged and drove his right fist into the man’s chest.

His fist sank all the way to the wrist.

The man gave beneath the blow like water, then closed around Su Bai’s arm. His feet slid back without lifting, pulling Su Bai with him toward the foot of the tree.

A moment earlier he had used the shadow to escape. Now he meant to take Su Bai into it with him.

A smile crossed the man’s face as Su Bai tested his grip and found he could not pull free.

The flesh around his wrist was cold and almost weightless. Deeper inside, however, he could feel the meridians tighten each time the cultivator drew on them to hold his shape.

The man still needed those channels, and he had just let Su Bai reach past every defense that usually protected them.

Su Bai opened his hand inside the man’s chest.

Needle Qi surged from the Gateway Dantian in his palm.

The cultivator tried to let it pass through him the way the punch had, but Su Bai sent the points into the channels carrying his Qi.

His True Needle Intent picked out the places where those channels strained to keep the body half formed. Each time the man tried to divert the current, more needles followed it into the very meridians he needed to withdraw.

His smile vanished. The shadow at his feet stopped moving, and he tried to open his chest around Su Bai’s arm.

By then the Weeping Needles hidden among the others had already lodged inside him.

Su Bai drew his hand free as they opened.

Ashen-Frost Blight Flame burst along the compromised channels. The man lurched backward, trying to scatter his body again, and managed only to tear loose a ragged length of shadow that burned away before it touched the ground.

The rest of him struck the tree hard enough to shake its branches.

"Who sent you?" he gasped. His eyes went to Su Bai’s mask. "Why would you turn against us?"

Su Bai called his Natal Needles back into position. The man had recognized the Devouring Maw, and his choice of words was worth remembering. Su Bai had no intention of letting him buy another breath with it.

But then, before the needles could descend, something contracted behind the cultivator’s forehead.

Su Bai recognized the movement from the forest and sent two points toward it at once.

The soul burst free between the needles and shot past the treetops.

Su Bai was about to give chase when he caught sight of a figure between two pines on the ridge.

The man raised one hand, and golden light gathered around his fingers. Above the trees, the same gesture took shape on a vast scale, an open palm reaching across the soul’s path.

The soul veered. The man closed his fingers, and the golden hand closed with them.

Gray light flashed twice between its fingers as the soul threw itself against them. The hand held steady as it drew back toward the ridge.

Ji Ruyue raised her sword as Qin Baoshan stepped in front of Liu Meng with his shield. Han Yuelin moved to cover their flank, his blade still drawn.

Su Bai kept his needles in the air and studied the figure between the pines.

In the light of the great hand, he could now make out the man’s shaved head and plain monastic robes.

The monk looked past them to the bodies lying in the grass.

"Amitabha," he murmured.