Chapter 167: Chapter 167 - The Almost-Real Fakes
Before the tension could turn into bloodshed, Su Bai moved.
His fingers lifted slightly inside his sleeve, and in the next breath, several thin Nether Threads shot forward like black lines disappearing into mist.
The two familiar-faced cultivators reacted almost at the same time.
That was already wrong.
The cultivators around them were still confused. Only those two moved as if they had been waiting for the exact moment Su Bai acted.
Unfortunately for them, Su Bai had moved first.
The Nether Threads wrapped around their wrists, ankles, shoulders, waists, and necks in overlapping layers.
Before either false body could open its mouth, more threads crossed their faces and sealed their lips shut.
The two bodies were then pulled out of the crowd like fish dragged from water.
A few cultivators inside Outpost No. 5 shouted in alarm. Several raised their weapons higher, and one sword cultivator almost attacked out of reflex, but Su Bai’s voice arrived before anyone could truly make a move.
"They are not the people you think they are."
The sentence was calm, but it struck hard.
The cultivators inside the outpost froze. Even those who did not understand the situation instinctively felt the weight behind Su Bai’s warning.
The bandaged young man from Outpost No. 5 gripped his saber tightly and shouted, "Fellow Daoist Su! What is the meaning of this? We know you are from Radiant Sky Sect, but even Radiant Sky Sect cannot seize people without explanation!"
The two bound figures struggled violently.
Their eyes widened. Their throats trembled beneath the threads covering their mouths. They looked frightened, wronged, and desperate.
If they had been allowed to speak, perhaps they would have cried for help. Perhaps they would have said exactly what the outpost cultivators needed to hear in order to hesitate.
Su Bai did not give them that chance.
He looked at the outpost cultivators and said, "These two are wearing faces that do not belong to them. If you let these two speak freely, you may no longer know which memories are yours and which emotions were pushed into you."
The outpost fell silent.
Someone asked hoarsely, "Why should we believe you?"
This time, it was Lin Weiyang who answered.
"Because we have been travelling with the originals."
Her bronze mechanisms turned, and the platforms in the center of Su Bai’s procession moved forward. The crowd parted to let them pass.
Two sleeping cultivators lay there, pale and unmoving.
The moment the outpost cultivators saw them, shock spread like cold water poured over fire.
Gasps rang out.
A female cultivator from Outpost No. 5 took half a step back. "Impossible..."
The bandaged young man’s saber lowered slightly. His face turned pale as he looked from the sleeping bodies to the two bound figures, then back again.
Several other cultivators did the same, and the argument in their eyes began collapsing under what they saw.
Then memories started returning.
A thin cultivator suddenly pointed at one of the bound bodies. "He was the one who told us not to leave the outpost yesterday. He said there were treasures near the southern trench, but when we went there, two people were injured and there was nothing!"
Another person’s expression changed. "The other one was also there when the argument over the formation nail started. He kept saying he saw someone from our side hide something."
"He asked me about my senior brother’s name," someone else whispered. "At the time, I thought he was only being friendly."
"Friendly?" another cultivator said with a trembling voice. "He told me my junior sister had called for me outside the mist. I almost answered."
The more they spoke, the colder the outpost became.
These two had not merely hidden among them. They had guided small suspicions, deepened minor conflicts, pointed people toward useless danger, and asked harmless-sounding questions that were not harmless at all.
Now every small inconsistency sharpened into a blade.
The outpost cultivators finally understood that Su Bai’s group had not come to rob them.
The tension loosened, but only slightly.
Fear replaced anger.
Su Bai’s gaze remained on the two bound figures.
The Nether-Threads around them tightened, and the two bodies began struggling harder. Their skin rippled faintly beneath the robes, as if something under the surface wanted to slide away from the shape it had been forced to hold.
Su Bai’s eyes sharpened.
"They are trying to turn into mist."
Several cultivators did not understand the words at first.
Then one of the false bodies’ wrists blurred.
It was not a normal movement. Its flesh thinned, softened, and began turning into gray-red vapor around the threads. The other false body did the same at the shoulder, trying to slip through the gaps by abandoning solidity itself.
But Su Bai did not leave gaps.
More Qi threads appeared.
One layer became three. Three became ten. Ten became countless thin lines crossing over one another.
They wrapped the two bodies from the outside inward, sealing each joint, pressing down on every ripple of mist, and forcing the half-vaporized flesh back into form.
In only a few breaths, the two false bodies were cocooned.
The cultivators on both sides stared.
Everyone knew that shaping Qi into thin threads was not easy.
Using threads in combat was harder.
Using them to bind two struggling enemies without tearing them apart was something many people could barely understand even after seeing it.
A cultivator from Outpost No. 5 swallowed. "Is he really just in Golden Core realm?"
Someone beside him answered blankly, "I think so."
Chen Feng watched the two cocoons and suddenly felt an old question rise from the depths of his soul.
Why was Myriad Swords Sect competing with Radiant Sky Sect again?
Ji Ruyue was already unreasonable enough. Now there was Su Bai.
He was clearly younger than Chen Feng, clearly pale enough to look like he should be resting in a medicine hall, yet he could walk through miasma, find treasure through dead men, bind borrowed faces with threads, and make over a hundred cultivators obey by changing expression.
Chen Feng lowered his gaze to his sword.
For the first time, his rivalry felt very tiring.
Su Bai’s focus remained on the two bound bodies. He had captured them, but he had not killed them.
If these were ordinary borrowed bodies, destroying them would be simple enough.
But if they were Soul-Bloom Returnees, killing them carelessly might release the very thing the ancient defenders had sealed in star-metal shells.
In a crowded outpost filled with unstable cultivators, that kind of eruption could become disastrous.
Su Bai turned his head slightly and spoke to both groups. "Move back. No one approaches these two. They have remained active for several days, so I cannot be certain what their bodies have become or how much of the stolen soul fragments they have digested. If something leaks out, do not breathe."
The outpost cultivators obeyed faster than they expected themselves to.
Su Bai’s own procession moved back even faster.
They had followed him long enough to understand one thing very clearly. When Brother Su warned people to stay away, staying away was not cowardice. It was wisdom.
A few cultivators from Outpost No. 5 looked touched despite their fear.
"He is going to check them alone?"
"He captured them, warned us, and still bears the danger himself..."
"How magnanimous."
Several cultivators from Su Bai’s procession opened their mouths at the same time, then they closed them again.
The word magnanimous was not wrong, exactly. It was just incomplete.
Explaining that would be difficult.
...
Su Bai pulled the two cocoons away from the main crowd.
He placed the Petrified Calamity-Magnet near him. The True-Sight Bodhi Bead rested in his other hand.
Only after preparing both did he loosen the outermost threads slightly.
The two false bodies immediately struggled again.
Su Bai tightened the threads around their mouths and joints, leaving only enough looseness for the True-Sight Bodhi Bead to catch their reflected state.
He raised the bead.
The reflection inside appeared.
At once, Su Bai’s eyes changed.
Fortunately, they were not Soul-Bloom Returnees.
Unfortunately, they were still false bodies. And worse, they were farther along than he had expected.
Inside the bead’s reflection, Su Bai saw the remaining soul fragments of the original victims. They were still present, but faint. The false bodies had not merely carried those fragments like stolen tokens. They had been digesting them.
The bodies themselves were changing too.
Earlier borrowed faces felt like shells wearing stolen identity from the outside. These two were different. Their inner structure had begun imitating human circulation. Their bones, flesh, breath rhythm, and even the faint trace of spiritual fluctuation had grown closer to genuine cultivators.
The True-Sight Bodhi Bead still exposed them, but only barely.
If more time passed, perhaps even the bead would only see what they wanted it to see.
Su Bai’s face turned ugly.
Now he understood why the ancient defenders had treated such things as troublesome.
A fake that looked fake was only a monster.
A fake that could slowly become real was a disaster.
If these bodies had remained hidden longer, they might have truly copied the stolen origin. At that point, the distinction between real and false would become terrifyingly difficult.
And the real victims sleeping behind Su Bai might never wake properly.
Su Bai exhaled slowly.
Good thing they had not arrived later.
The two false bodies seemed to sense the change in his decision. Their struggling became frantic. One of them tried to force mist through the threads near its throat. The other twisted its fingers until the joints cracked, as if willing to break its own body to create space.
Su Bai did not hesitate anymore.
Thin, black needles appeared around him.
They pierced through the gaps between the Nether-Threads with terrifying accuracy.
Each one entered a point where the false body’s borrowed circulation gathered.
The first false body stiffened. The second followed.
No scream came out.
Their almost-human structures collapsed inward, thread by thread, as if the borrowed shape had lost the lie holding it together.
A thin gray-red vapor tried to rise, but the Petrified Calamity-Magnet pulled it down instantly. The remnant corruption twisted toward Su Bai, and was dragged into his body.
The two faint soul fragments flew back toward their owners.
The entire outpost watched in silence.
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