Chapter 97: The Luminous Thousand-Needle Art (Support with Subscriptions and Monthly Votes)

The black fog, blackening the sky like a curtain dropped from the heavens, stretched on with no end in sight. The last spirit feather that fell from Shuyu’s back, wavering like a fragile skiff on open sea, vanished almost at once.
Gu Yi moved in front of the two girls, taking the full force of Blacktooth’s attack. His clothes snapped in the wind, and a dense film of white spirit-light stood before him. He spread his arms, as if suspended in midair, like the final shaft of light before nightfall.

“Gu Yi!”
Shule had to shout against the roar.
Yet Gu Yi could not hear her. He was giving everything he had, spirit qi surging in him to the brink, barely holding the front.

Blacktooth was running out of patience, yet for one moment his use of so much qi gave Gu Yi a chance.

Where the light touched the water, it turned to scattered silver glints, harsh and pricking the eyes like falling needles.

“Can you see the gap between the Way of Union and Return to the Root?” Blacktooth flicked his hand, and a long whip of black mist rolled out.

Gu Yi dodged again and again. When that wave passed, he was hurt, but there was a first flicker of confidence in him.

“I knew from the start that Return to the Root cannot beat the Way of Union.” Gu Yi drew in his energy.

“Have you given up?”

“How could I? I only prepared for what I knew I could not win cleanly.” He gave a brief laugh.

Blacktooth could not help but knit his brow. He was no mere brute who trusted muscle alone; he used his mind like a lion uses its claws. So he had watched Gu Yi’s strange movements from the beginning.
When Gu Yi finally gathered the qi of heaven and earth one last time, Blacktooth broke it apart.
Blacktooth believed he had been careful enough.

His eyes shifted to the girls below. Bookrain had spent all her spirit qi and gave almost no response. Shule, with old wounds and new layered atop them, could barely threaten anything.

Then the question rose in his mind: was it Gu Yi alone?

“Your qi is running low now. I have seen every trick you used. You cannot even tear through the Black Serpent Spirit Mist. It is already a deadlock.”

Gu Yi silently pressed his hands together, arms held level. With a short, low sound, faint white light flickered upon his palms.

Shule stepped beside him. “Gu Yi, you are the divine envoy-prodigy of Xuguo. Xuguo can live without Shule, but it cannot live without Gu Yi. Do not throw your life away.”

“Right,” Blacktooth said more carefully, “you are still a disciple of the mighty Saint Yun…”

Gu Yi glanced at Shule, where blood and sweat streamed down her fair cheek, her hair tangled, her garments no longer carrying the composure she once wore as an honored candidate.

“We won’t die,” Gu Yi said, showing a row of brilliant white teeth in a sudden, upward laugh. “At least I will not let you die.”

“Gu Yi…” Shule’s voice softened, moved by that broad fearless smile, and for a moment she could not answer.

At the same time his hands kept moving. Slowly the two palms separated, and at once revealed fine, sharp needles of light.

“Needles?” Blacktooth’s eyes narrowed. No one had ever used such a technique. “What is he doing?”

“To think to make this preparation,” Gu Yi said with a wry chuckle, looking slightly toward the air, “you should thank Little Maid.”

Bian Xiaochuang’s Azure-Light Glimmering Thousand Needles Art was no ordinary cultivation method.

Heh-heh, Gu Yi lifted his face. “If the Black Serpent Spirit Mist can always keep you from being hurt, then we can break through it from within. This is the total needle, the first.”

With a sharp crack he brought both hands together, and the needle-light faded—but as if a wave of his body’s radiance unfolded outward.

For the first time Blacktooth felt a hidden pain, a prickling stab spreading in his flesh. At last he understood.

“W-when?”

“Exactly when you siphoned away so much qi that I had summoned. I learned Glimmering Needle Technique for this reason: it is hidden, and it is devastating. Pain is what finally arrives.”

The moment she spoke, Blacktooth cried up to the sky. The black mist scattered from every direction, dissolving quickly, and his power plummeted.
“Xiaoyuan Mountain is no fool to bully,” Gu Yi called. “Though the qi I borrowed will eventually be used for you, at this level of method, Xiaoyuan Mountain is still far ahead.”

A cry tore from him. Blacktooth rolled in the air, his hands clawing without knowing where to reach. From his body, a dense web of white pinpoints shot through and out—each of them was a needle.
Like Biyang Qi hiding in Little Maid’s body that Bian Xiaochuang’s method could not fully drive away, the Qi of the Glimmering-Light technique ravaged Blacktooth from within.

“Ah! Ah!”

With a splash, Blacktooth crashed headfirst into the lake, then rose again shortly after and struck the cliffs violently. Fine needles stabbed his meridians all over his body; it was agony itself.

“Stop! Stop this at once!”

“Have we won?” Shule cried—a joy born after a terror.

From every sign, yes: Blacktooth’s momentum had dropped sharply. Until now, their attacks barely harmed him. Now he had at least real pain.

Gu Yi still did not dare relax. He narrowed his eyes, then stamped the ground with force. At once his qi burst outward.

Then dense, unending strange symbols crawled over the ground, all centered on Gu Yi, reaching toward Blacktooth.
They were spirit seals.

Blacktooth recognized them.

With a heavy splash, the figure in the water shot upward through the air. Since his injuries now covered every part of him, blood ran from him all over.

“He is on the Way of Union,” Gu Yi said.
“What?”

Gu Yi had realized: Blacktooth was a union-level adversary and could not be subdued so easily. He drew qi from between his fingers and swiftly brushed symbols in the air, forming a great sigil-shield.

A metallic crack rang out.
Blacktooth was still on the Way of Union; he still had the strength for this attack.

“Gasp…” Gu Yi could not help but spit blood, but he had to hold. If he did not, Shuyu and Shule would die beneath Blacktooth’s hands.

“Gu Yi,” Shule watched him with pain in her eyes.

“I’m fine. Don’t move.” Gu Yi wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, straightened himself, and with only a slight twist of his foot, the spirit seals that had slowed at first surged again with terrifying speed toward Blacktooth.

Meanwhile, Blacktooth kept rolling, colliding, clawing, ignoring everything, trying to smother the chaos of spirit qi in his body beneath other pain.

The roar of spirit energy grew louder and more jagged. Gu Yi’s hair, already whipped about, had come loose across his shoulders, lending him a sudden, ragged look.

“Shule…” he called quietly.
“Shule—”

“Hm? Speak!”

“Move! Move now.”

In that instant of desperation, Shule did not hesitate. She placed her palm on Gu Yi’s shoulder; her hand glowed in steady pulses. “The little energy I regained—I gave it to you. You must follow me and hurry.”

Though she did not wish to lose Gu Yi, in Blacktooth’s previous frenzied strike she had seen clearly: at this moment, she and Bookrain were nothing but encumbrances.

The Way of Union was indeed as troublesome as people said.

Yet Gu Yi, too near frenzy, shouted on, blood in his mouth, bloodshot eyes, the spirit seals at his feet racing across the whole field like madness itself.
Blacktooth’s speed slowed as well. His wounds worsened with each breath, and the meridians inside him were slowly being ruined by the Glimmering-Light Thousand Needles.

So Gu Yi had to endure—
endure until the enemy could no longer endure.