Chương 181: Chapter 180: The Dome

Yang's feet struck solid ground hard enough to jar his knees. He had barely begun to register the impact when Senior Brother Fan Xiao's arm slammed across his chest and hurled him backward. Yang flew several metres and hit the rock wall behind them. He was dazed for a moment. When his senses returned properly, he realised he had travelled further than he initially thought, and the only reason he was uninjured was a domed barrier that had apparently formed around him mid-flight.

He was also not alone in it; Senior Brothers Zhen Hao and Yuan Shen were also inside along with him for the joy ride.

"Chen Yang, are you alright?" Senior Brother Yuan Shen asked, his expression more serious than Yang had seen so far.

"I am fine, Senior Brother," Yang assured him. Senior Brother Yuan Shen nodded, giving him a once-over.

"Good. Make sure you stay behind Zhen Hao and me." Yang looked at Senior Brother Zhen Hao, who had positioned himself at the edge of the barrier with his sword already drawn. Yang moved to stand a step behind them both, and from there watched in horrified fascination as a group of ugly beasts threw themselves repeatedly against the barrier's surface, causing it to let out tiny sparks at every contact. They were unlike anything Yang had encountered before.

Skeletal builds, with dark greyish-blue skin stretched tight over their frames with barely any mass between skin and bone. Their lower bodies were built like a kangaroo's, while their upper bodies were longer with equine facial features. They kept lunging at the barrier again and again, and when one of them snarled close to him, Yang got a look at large fangs in their mouths. Senior Brother Yuan Shen had his sword out as well. But for now the barrier held, and neither of them needed to do more than simply watch.

Beyond it, farther along the valley, the other Senior Brothers were somewhere in the middle of a battle. Yang could see flashes of light and hear the screeching sounds of the beasts, but the details were obscured by distance and by the sheer number of creatures moving between here and there. He took stock of the surroundings while he had a moment to do so. A rocky valley. Dry stone outcroppings on every side, harsh and uneven. No vegetation that he could see.

And the light was wrong; they had entered the inner world during what passed for day in the secret realm, but here the sky was a shifting blue-orange, somewhere between twilight and something that had no equivalent in a normal world. He remembered from yesterday's discussions that the connected world had no sun or moon. The sky remained effectively unchanging. The qi felt the same as outside. That was the only familiar thing.

"Will they be alright?" Yang asked, watching the distant lights. Senior Brother Zhen Hao gave him a reassuring smile over his shoulder.

"They will be fine." Senior Brother Yuan Shen was the one to actually rest his worries, giving him the more complete answer.

"We were not expecting to be immediately surrounded the moment we came through. That is likely why we were thrown into this dome." He glanced up at the surrounding barrier.

"Senior Brothers Fan Xiao and Qing An could resolve this in minutes if they chose to. I think they are taking their time."

"Testing them?" Yang asked.

"Yes. Seeing which approaches work most effectively. What the beasts respond to, what they resist. Going in at full force against an unknown enemy is not always the most informative approach." He paused as Senior Brother Zhen Hao added, "They are also probably trying to preserve the beast cores." Yang looked at the beasts still lunging at the barrier and wondered what their cores would be like.

Whatever kind of energy these things carried, it was clearly not identical to the beasts he had consumed in the forest as a child. Several more minutes passed and Yang got bored. He looked around the interior of the barrier, found a large flat rock at a convenient height, and sat down on it. He reached into his storage ring and took out the flat wooden case Senior Brother He Su Ye had given him. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

Senior Brother Yuan Shen cocked an eyebrow, and Senior Brother Zhen Hao glanced back to see what Yang was doing, and smiled before returning his attention to the barrier's perimeter.

"Senior Brother Xiao Zhan would be proud," Senior Brother Yuan Shen said, with a short laugh. Yang had read through the manual the previous evening but had not yet had time to practice. Being stuck inside this fish bowl seemed as reasonable a time as any. He opened the case. The interior was lined with dark velvet and held over a hundred needles in rows, each one identical to the next. Despite the name, they were nothing like any needle Yang had encountered before.

Each was approximately the length of his palm and as thin as spider silk, completely uniform and identical to every other. The accompanying technique was called the Myriad Silk-Splitting Needle Art. Each level of mastery required the cultivator to control twice the number of needles as the previous level. At the beginning, a single needle. Then two, four, eight, and so on. The greater the number controlled simultaneously, the higher the level of mastery, and the more elaborate and powerful the art became.

Yang, just starting, would begin with a single needle. He took a needle from the case, storing the case back in his ring, and set the needle flat on his palm. He focused his attention on it and tried pushing his spiritual sense toward it. Nothing happened. He tried again. The needle still did not move. He did not get a chance to try a third time before he became aware of Senior Brother Yuan Shen settling onto another rock across from him.

"Have you managed to use your spiritual sense before?" Senior Brother Yuan Shen asked.

"I can sense the qi in the environment around me," Yang said, looking at the needle.

"And I have previously pushed my spiritual sense into seeds to awaken them. But the same approach is not working here."

"It won't," Senior Brother Yuan Shen explained.

"Seeds are living things. They respond more readily than metal does. Metal is one of the more difficult elements to work with when it comes to spiritual sense. It has never been alive and carries no inherent responsiveness. You will need to push harder, and with more precision, than you would with something organic." Yang nodded and looked back at the needle. He pushed harder, trying to imagine a long passage through the metal that his spiritual sense could enter and travel along.

The needle jolted slightly in his palm. Then settled and refused to move further. Senior Brother Yuan Shen watched without interrupting.

"What are you imagining as you push in?" he asked after a moment. Yang described it. The tunnel. His spiritual sense entering one end and traveling through.

"Ah. That's part of the issue. When your spiritual sense enters the needle and exits the other end, you lose the connection, requiring you to form it again. You are not controlling it; you are passing through it." Senior Brother Yuan Shen leaned forward slightly.

"Instead of a tunnel, imagine a loop. Your spiritual sense enters, moves through the full length of the needle, and comes back around to where it started without ever leaving. A closed rewinding path. That continuous loop is what gives you control over the needle's movement." Yang looked at the needle and tried again, this time imagining the loop. His spiritual sense entered, ran the length of the needle, and curved back to where it had begun. First attempt, nothing. Second attempt, the needle twitched.

It took several more attempts. On the sixth or seventh try, something caught, and the needle rose from his palm. It was not graceful. The needle wobbled in the air, dipping and rising, making uneven circles around him with all the elegance of a toddler who has just learned to walk. Yang kept his full attention on maintaining the loop and did not let himself feel pleased about it yet because the moment he let his focus slip even slightly, the needle dipped sharply toward the ground.

Then a blast lit up the entire valley, and Yang's concentration broke; the needle dropped to the ground. He stood up automatically, as did Senior Brother Yuan Shen, though Senior Brother Yuan Shen did not look concerned about the large blast. Yang's eyes first swept the ground for the needle, tried to reach for it with his spiritual sense, and found the connection gone. It seemed that without physical contact he could not re-establish it.

He walked a few steps and crouched to pick it up from where it had landed between two stones, then placed it back in his storage ring. He stood up, looking outside the dome. The beasts outside the barrier were gone. Senior Brothers Fan Xiao, Qing An, and Song Weilong were walking toward them across the valley floor. Senior Brother Fan Xiao waved a hand as he reached them, and the barrier dissolved. Senior Brother Zhen Hao started immediately.

"Why did you throw us all in the shield dome? I thought I was here to actually test my strength."

"Don't be a brat, you will have plenty of opportunities to play around," Senior Brother Qing An said in an unsympathetic tone.

"We did not expect to be immediately surrounded the moment we arrived. Senior Brother Fan Xiao reacted on instinct to protect the three of you." Senior Brother Zhen Hao continued grumbling until Senior Brother Song Weilong looked at him with an expression of disappointment.

"Junior Brother Zhen Hao. Even Junior Brother Yuan Shen is not making an issue of it." Senior Brother Zhen Hao looked across at Senior Brother Yuan Shen, who returned a look of complete innocence.

"Enough," Senior Brother Fan Xiao said, with a tone that ended the conversation.

"We have more important concerns than Zhen Hao's little tantrum."

"Like what?" Senior Brother Yuan Shen asked.

"Like that," Senior Brother Qing An said pleasantly, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb and a cheerful smile.