"Constitution." My eyes widened fully. "You!"
"Haha." The spirit's grip on my neck tightened fractionally. "From the very beginning I knew you carried the Frost Soul constitution. Did you forget the door? Did you think it revealed only useless things to me?"
Its eyes studied my face with particular attention. "Your soul is trapped and your body is lost. Kekeh. Don't worry. Rest as I will take it from here on."
I stared at it with a blank expression as It slowly moved closer and closer and the it entered into me.
"HUEKK!"
The moment its hand around my neck disappeared, the ground came up fast and I could not stop it. I hit the stone hard, my body offering no response at all, and the edges of my vision had already begun to blur.
Through the narrowing frame I could make out shapes moving toward me from multiple directions, faces I recognized, but before any of them could reach me, I completely lost consciousness.
The body on the stone floor did not move for a long time.
Everyone in the clearing had gone silent. The Bai group stood frozen at the edges. Chen Wu and the remaining disciples had pulled together in a tight cluster, their eyes fixed on the motionless figure on the ground, none of them breathing loudly enough to be heard.
"Hou Zi." Chen Wu's voice was controlled but the urgency underneath it was audible. "Can you still complete the seal?"
But before Hou Zi could answer, a finger on the lying body twitched.
The movement was small but every eye caught it.
A breath passed, then the body's hand pressed flat against the stone and pushed. The figure sat up slowly, every movement careful and deliberate, as if relearning a movement it had not done in a long time.
The joints worked through each stage separately. The weight shifted in pieces rather than one continuous motion.
Stillness held throughout the chamber.
The figure lowered its head and looked at its own hands.
The fingers opened. Closed and opened again.
An expression crossed the face that had never appeared on it before. Not Fu Yang's cold amusement but something closer to fascination, as though it was finally feeling the world the way it was meant to.
The figure rose to its feet.
Its gaze swept slowly through the space. For a moment, those familiar dark eyes seemed to belong to a stranger.
Chen Wu and the remaining disciples had already closed the distance between themselves and the Bai group, the two sides pressing together in the instinctive consolidation.
Bai Xia and Bai Feng had taken position at the back of the gathered group.
Master Tang stood at its edge, one hand near his blade, watching the standing young man with careful attention.
"Village Head." Chen Wu turned without taking his eyes fully off the figure. "We need to deal with this together. I am serious."
Neither the village head nor Master Tang responded immediately. The two old men exchanged a glance, sharing an understanding that the past few hours had gone far beyond what they had expected
Chen Wu's expression hardened. "This is not the time to stand there thinking."
Master Tang's frown deepened. "And what exactly are you suggesting? It is still a spirit. And a freed spirit is not bound by this space any longer." He paused. "You do not know what freed spirits are capable of."
"Heh." The figure's voice reached them clearly. "I can hear you from here."
The gathered group went quiet.
The figure tilted its head and the smile it wore did not belong to the face it was wearing.
"There is no need for any of that. Everything is fine. It is all going to be perfectly fine." The confidence in the voice was not reassuring.
Chen Wu took a step forward. "Spirit. There is no reason we cannot speak about this reasonably. Now that you are free, come with us. That man is gone and there is nothing left here that concerns you, so why not—"
"Shut up." The spirit's eyes had moved past Chen Wu entirely and settled on the far side of the clearing. "If you want to talk to me then why are you not stopping him."
It pointed toward Hou Zi, who was STILL on his knees with the materials in front of him, hands moving.
Every disciple straightened at once.
"Cat got your tongue?" The spirit's gaze sharpened and it was already moving, crossing the space toward Hou Zi at a pace that left no room for interpretation. "I am not an idiot."
"STOP HIM!" Chen Wu's voice cracked and the disciples surged forward from both sides.
"Village Head." Chen Wu turned his head without slowing. "I have already informed my sect about all of this. If you do not help us right now, there will be no Bai Village left on this land. I want you to understand that clearly."
The village head's eyes narrowed. "How did you inform them? We are underground. If you cannot answer that, we are leaving." The suspicion in his voice was not hostility. It was the caution of a man who knew that threats without proof were just noise.
Chen Wu did not break eye contact, then reached into his robe and produced a small paper bird. And as he held it the paper shifted slightly.
The village head looked at it and the color left his face. He quickly regained his posture. "Attack that one." And his men moved.
What followed was not a battle in any organized sense. It was bodies and intent from every direction converging on a single point.
The spirit in Fu Yang's body cut through all of it.
Attacks arrived from the left, right and above simultaneously, and the spirit slipped between them with fluid ease.
Disciples who came within reach were redirected or struck and removed from the immediate problem without particular effort, the spirit's attention never fully committing to any single engagement before the next had already been assessed.
"So what if I lost the power of a spirit." The siprit paused at the center of the area , surrounded on all sides, and looked down at its own arms. "I have this one now."
Spiritual essence gathered along both arms at once, dense and red, building from the shoulder to the wrist.
Then extending past the hands, condensing into long curved blades that grew from each forearm like extensions of the bone beneath.
The spirit raised both arms and looked at the blades with the fascination it had shown when it first examined the hands.
"Truly magnificent. Even if this body sits only in the Qi Condensation realm, a constitution changes everything."
It leveled its stare at the assembled groups, the red blades catching the false overhead light.
"Having these, I feel as though I am standing in the Golden Core realm." The laughter faded into something quieter and more dangerous. "Now. Who wants to die first."
Nobody moved.
"Scared already, kekeh."
"No." Master Tang's voice came from the back of the group. He stepped forward, past the retreating village head, Bai Xia, and Bai Feng. His long blade already drawn and glowing white with infused essence.
The spirit noticed it immediately. Its eyes tracked the retreat of the village head, Bai Xia, and Bai Feng toward the entrance passage.
"Eyes forward," Master Tang said, and attacked.
The blade came in clean and direct. The spirit drove forward to meet it rather than retreating, both red blades rising together, angling to catch and redirect.
CLANG!
The impact stopped both parties for a fraction of a second and in that time the spirit's expression changed.
"You have a CORE." It pulled back immediately, separating itself from Master Tang without another exchange, its eyes rapidly reassessing as it recalibrated the situation. The red blades did not retract but the body's weight had shifted to a distance position.
Master Tang lowered his blade slightly, his expression carrying a curiosity that had not been there before. "How did you determine that? Identifying a cultivator's realm from a single exchange... that should be beyond perception. It is almost like a heavenly secret how you knew."
"You know nothing, old man. Call it instinct."
"Instinct." Master Tang considered the word. "I believe it is more than that. And if you will not tell me willingly, then I suppose I will have to make you."
"Keep dreaming."
The spirit slid sideways across the space toward where Hou Zi still knelt. The disciples with Chen Wu stepped directly into the path.
"Get out of my way," the spirit said and drove into them anyway.
"Are you turning your back to me?" Master Tang's voice came from behind, sharp.
"Shit." The spirit cursed without slowing.
Chen Wu came in from the front with a thrust, the blade driving straight for the body's center.
Su Ling arrived from the left, her timing matched to Chen Wu's, the two attacks designed to remove every clean angle of response simultaneously.
But right then, the spirit twisted.
The red blades crossed in front of the body, catching Chen Wu's thrust on the right blade and deflecting it outward, and in the same movement the reverse of the cross drove the left blade backward into the space Su Ling was occupying as she committed to her strike.
The blade caught her across the abdomen.
"—!"
Su Ling's breath left her in a short sound and she staggered, one hand going to the impact point. In that opening, the spirit stepped into the space her retreat had created and drove the blade forward.
The blade went through her and came out from her back.
"SU!" Chen Wu's voice broke, raw and immediate, all control gone from it in the single moment.
" NO—!"