NOVEL NEXT Chapter 232: 232- Hollow Spirit.
The needles struck Xiao Bai.
A sound like hail pelting marble echoed through the battlefield ping, ping, ping each note sharp and crystalline.
Yet none managed to pierce her skin, not even leave a scratch.
At every point of impact, a faint spark of white light flared and snuffed itself out.
The qi constructs did not shatter but simply dissolved, transmuted into a cold mist as if reality itself refused their existence upon her skin.
Not a single mark marred her pale flesh.
The attack, meant to probe her meridians, had failed to reach so much as her outer layer.
Fang Yuan's mask did not break but the silence in his mind was thunderous.
One word circled, slow and relentless, pressing against every corner of his thoughts.
Inviolable.
Her body was not merely strong. It was like a sealed law, a perfect vessel that rejected intrusion entirely.
Xiao Bai finally lifted her gaze from her sleeve, brushing away a speck of dust that had never truly been there.
Her eyes found his, cool, lucid and unfathomable.
There was no arrogance there, no fury, no satisfaction. Only curiosity remained, detached and clinical.
As though she too were dissecting an experiment in motion.
"A decent try," she said, her voice soft, resonant, cutting cleanly through the brittle air.
"Your control is commendable. But you are trying to pour poison into a jade vial with no opening."
She took a step forward and with each step the ground beneath her frosted, her steps were unhurried and weightless.
The crushing spiritual pressure that Fang Yuan continued to pour down like a collapsing mountain did not so much as ripple her stride.
To her, his Hollow Spirit Realm suppression was weather, an inconvenience no more obstructive than the breeze.
Fang Yuan did not relent.
He stood, back straight, eyes unwavering.
A statue of composure. But inside, instinct gnawed at him. This was not combat between cultivators of different tiers.
This was paradigm against paradigm.
His techniques, his realm, his truths. She moved through them as though they were laws of a lesser world.
"Your realm," Xiao Bai continued, her voice steady as she closed the distance, "is a castle you build upon sand. You reached for the sky and forgot the very foundation that should have kept you strong. Your spirit is weak, because your vessel is neglected."
She raised her hand wiith her palm open in a demonstration.
"Allow me to show you," she said, that serene smile never wavering, "the difference between building power… and being power."
Xiao Bai's hand had barely begun to rise when Fang Yuan's eyes hardened.
His fingers moved in a blur, not weaving the signs of an attack, but of a formation.
The broken shards of his grade-three sword, pitiful scraps scattered across the ground, suddenly pulsed with a violent violet.
From the instant his blade had shattered, Fang Yuan had been laying the groundwork, feeding threads of Qi into the earth beneath their feet.
He had hidden the current within a sleight of hand, the qi needles that shot toward her were never meant to pierce.
Each fragment that shattered against her body instead bled into the array he had long prepared.
What seemed like a failed strike was, in truth, the fuel that fed the formation, bringing about this very moment.
"You think I'd let you finish?" His words were quiet, flat, but each syllable cracked like frost underfoot before the air suddenly warped.
From the shards erupted a lattice of light, intricate and merciless.
Purple veins stitched the air together, weaving a prison not around Xiao Bai's body, but the very space she occupied.
The remnants of the sword, quivering with his will, rose from the ground in a storm of jagged fragments.
They shot forward like a storm of lightning shards, bending mid-flight, curving impossibly until they wove into the pattern already searing through the air.
The runes locked in place with a thunderous clang, the whole structure snapping down like a celestial cage hammered into existence by heaven itself.
The world itself seemed to tighten, folding her into a sealed domain.
But Fang Yuan didn't so much as glance to see whether it held. He already knew she would break it—it was never meant to last.
His gaze swept back toward the city.
The streets had become rivers of fire and ice. Armored Qin soldiers surged through alleys in disciplined waves, their banners gleaming crimson against the smoke.
Above, Lin Zhaoyue was a vision of lethal grace, her vines and blades weaving together as she faced Ian and two other Nascent Soul elder of the Divine Ice Sect.
She was smiling, smiling as though the clash of life and death were nothing more than a game of cat and mouse.
Not far from her, Fang Tian's blade carved sparks of fire as he met a third Nascent Soul master head-on.
The sheer ferocity of the Divine Ice Sect was staggering; four Nascent Souls, all dispatched just to grind the Fang Clan beneath their heel.
And on the southern flank, the Crown Prince Qin Hai pressed forward, his strikes sharp and refined.
Yet Fang Lian, barely a freshly ascended Golden Core, met him without flinching.
Each exchange rang like thunder, her raw, surging core clashing against years of his polished cultivation.
She did not yield, not even half a step.
The battlefield was fire, storm, and steel incarnate.
Without a word, Fang Yuan's presence unfurled.
The Hollow Spirit Realm surged outward, like an ocean dropping its full weight upon the world.
Pressure bled from him like a storm breaking its banks, rushing down in invisible torrents.
The three Nascent Soul experts locked against Fang Tian and Lin Zhaoyue stiffened at once.
Their movements, once fluid and sharp, suddenly turned sluggish as though their bodies were dragging chains of molten iron.
Even their Qi sputtered, straining against the unnatural gravity.
Fang Tian's eyes flashed in surprise before seizing the fleeting opening, he struck with all his force.