Chapter 264: Mechanical Puppets and Daxuan Technique

On the plains, a several-foot-long lizard tentatively crawled out from beneath a weathered rock, preparing to begin its day's hunt.

But just as it had crawled a few tens of feet away from its nest and the rock, a ten-foot-long yellow monster suddenly shot out from the sandy ground nearby. Using both its front claws and mouth, it fiercely pounced on the lizard and effortlessly snapped its neck. Then, it picked up the carcass and dashed away rapidly in a certain direction.

This monster, too, had four claws, a long tail, and a pointed snout; it appeared to be another giant lizard. However, its entire body was rigid, and it made a creaking sound as it ran. It turned out to be a mechanical puppet-like contraption.

After running for over a mile, the monster arrived beside a yellow-robed man meditating on a flat stone. It then dropped the carcass next to him and ran off again.

The yellow-robed man showed no change in expression; he was not surprised at all.

Calmly, he made a gesture with his hand. The lizard's carcass then floated horizontally in front of him, hovering motionless a few feet above the ground.

Next, the yellow-robed man extended an index finger and lightly pointed it at the lizard's head, chanting under his breath.

Soon after, the extended finger slowly began to glow, emitting a faint white light.

As he chanted, the white light grew increasingly brighter, gradually becoming somewhat dazzling.

"Go!"

When the yellow-robed man saw the moment was right, he let out a low roar. A thin white thread suddenly shot out from the white light on his finger, instantly piercing deep into the lizard's skull from his fingertip. The yellow-robed man then slowly and laboriously pulled it back, his expression extremely tense and cautious.

Finally, under the yellow-robed man's careful gaze, the white thread drew out a green orb of light from the dead lizard's carcass. It floated weightlessly, no larger than a thumb.

Seeing this, the yellow-robed man was ecstatic, as if he had discovered a great treasure.

His other hand flashed, and a small, pale yellow jade bottle appeared in his palm. With a soft whoosh, several rays of shimmering light shot out from the jade bottle. They enveloped the green orb of light and drew it inside.

Only then did the yellow-robed man exhale a long sigh of relief and wipe away the faint beads of sweat on his forehead. It was evident that the action just performed had consumed a significant amount of his energy.

"'This Soul Drawing Art is truly not something an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator can easily perform. The success rate is far too low; it only succeeds once every three or four attempts. It seems I'll be stuck here all day.'" The yellow-robed man gazed at the small jade bottle in his hand and muttered to himself, a hint of helplessness appearing on his face.

This man was Han Li, who was currently practicing the 'Great Development Art'.

The reason he was in this desert region, nearly a hundred miles from the spirit stone mine, was precisely what he had just done: collecting the souls of various animals. Such an act is typically only performed by those in the Demonic Path. Its presence in Han Li's activities, however, was entirely due to his study of the 'True Puppet Scripture'.

It turned out that after initially studying puppet crafting techniques, Han Li discovered that crafting puppets not only required materials typically used for creating magic tools, but also the souls of living creatures, which had to be fused with the materials. Only then could a puppet truly be completed. Otherwise, the resulting puppets would lack spiritual essence and would be no different from ordinary dolls.

The higher the level of the puppet, the more powerful the soul condensed within it needed to be. Only then could the puppet's full potential be unleashed. For this reason, at the end of the 'True Puppet Scripture', three Demonic Path spells commonly used by its practitioners were appended: 'Soul Drawing Art,' 'Soul Condensing Art,' and 'Soul Refining Art'.

Among these, the 'Soul Drawing Art' was the very spell Han Li had just performed to extract a soul from a corpse.

This spell was not only weak and had a low success rate, but could also only be used on recently deceased bodies. Compared to those Demonic Path secret arts specializing in souls, its power was worlds apart!

However, the only advantage of this spell was that it required an extremely low cultivation level. It could be used normally by cultivators at the mid-stage Foundation Establishment. Of course, an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator like Han Li could also barely use it, but the success rate was far from high.

The 'Soul Condensing Art,' on the other hand, was a spell for condensing souls. After all, powerful souls were not easy to find. Typically, higher-level puppets used several, a dozen, or even dozens of artificial powerful souls condensed together. While such souls were not as effective as naturally powerful souls, they were far superior to using low-grade ones. Therefore, this spell was also a mandatory subject for learning puppetry.

Finally, the 'Soul Refining Art', as its name suggested, was a spell for refining and modifying souls. After all, ordinary living souls would certainly not suffice for fusion with puppets; they still required specific refining techniques to be viable.

As for the lizard-like mechanical beast from earlier, it was the first mechanical puppet Han Li had successfully crafted himself after cultivating the Great Development Art and splitting off his first independent divine sense. The soul fused into it was merely from a few yellow-weasels he had casually caught.

However, prior to this, Han Li had failed in his attempts seven or eight times; the success rate could hardly be described as high.

When Han Li projected his divine sense into this puppet and commanded it to move, the feeling was truly marvelous! It was neither like controlling a magic tool, which often had an erratic and unpredictable feel, nor as real as controlling his own limbs.

In reality, his divine sense and the puppet beast seemed to have a superior-subordinate relationship. With a thought from him, the puppet would act according to his command; how it specifically carried out the action was still up to the puppet itself. However, Han Li could clearly perceive everything the puppet beast saw and heard, which filled him with unexpected joy.

Manipulating a puppet beast for the first time, Han Li felt a surge of childlike excitement. Besides this beginner-level puppet beast he had crafted, he playfully manipulated all the slightly higher-level mechanical puppets he possessed. This allowed him to indulge in the puppet play he had dreamed of as a child.

While manipulating these puppets, Han Li gradually experienced some limitations of mechanical puppets.

Firstly, these puppets could only operate within a three-mile radius of him. Beyond this distance, the mechanical puppets would become immobile, and his divine sense would return to his main body. Han Li speculated that this was likely related to the maximum distance his divine sense could depart from his main body. Once his cultivation and primordial spirit realm improved, this could be enhanced.

However, the next flaw was an inherent shortcoming of puppetry itself, which could not be compensated for. This was the delay between the puppets receiving commands and executing actions; they could not move instantly as commanded. This could very likely be exploited by opponents in actual combat.

Even with these two flaws, this puppetry technique was still extraordinary. As long as he could split off a few more divine senses and master the first layer of the Great Development Art, he would be strong enough to contend with powerful Foundation Establishment cultivators. After all, having a dozen or so helpers at his side, even if they were only at the Qi Condensation stage, would be more than enough for him to protect himself.

At the very least, if he were to be trapped by the Young Master of the Ghost Spirit Sect again, he wouldn't fear the opponent's endless army of blood ghosts. This was because the actions of low-level mechanical puppets only consumed low-grade spirit stones.

Only powerful puppets, like the giant tiger puppet under Yellow Dragon of the Thousand Bamboo Sect, consumed mid-grade spirit stones due to their immense power. However, Han Li estimated that it must have been a Level 3 or higher puppet beast, as even the combined protective barriers released by several Foundation Establishment cultivators dared not withstand two of its attacks. This showed just how terrifying its power was.

It was a pity, however, that this puppet had been reduced to ashes by his martial uncle Lei's magic treasure. Otherwise, if he could have acquired it, it would have been an incredibly potent trump card.

The thought of the benefits of such a giant tiger puppet made Han Li's heart itch with desire. He became even more dedicated to crafting mechanical puppets.

Finally, after crafting dozens of beginner-level mechanical puppets, Han Li decided to attempt crafting Level 2 puppets. These were the main combat puppets he had seen used by the Thousand Bamboo Sect and others. If he could even craft puppets of this level, he would no longer have to worry about puppet consumption.

However, crafting Level 2 puppets could not be done with the discarded scrap metal he had used before. All the materials required were almost on par with those for a high-grade magic tool. Specifically, large quantities of centuries-old ironwood became the main raw material, which would entail considerable expense.

In truth, if Han Li were in his own cave dwelling, cultivating a few aged ironwood trees would be no trouble at all. But now, with his duties, Han Li had no choice but to grudgingly have others collect many from the market city, from afar.

Now that he had the materials, suitable souls still needed to be collected. After all, the most common and abundant yellow-weasel souls in the original canyon were simply too weak; even if condensed together, they would not provide a significant improvement.

Therefore, Han Li set his sights on the yellow-weasels' natural enemies: the wilderness lizards.

By this time, after three or four months of diligent cultivation, Han Li had successfully split off several divine senses. He then used these divided divine senses to control several low-level puppet beasts, sweeping across the wilderness, raiding lizard nests everywhere. This led to the scene at the beginning.

After carefully putting away the small bottle containing the lizard soul, Han Li closed his eyes again and continued cultivating the 'Great Development Art' to gradually strengthen his primordial spirit.

This 'Great Development Art' was the key to utilizing puppetry, and Han Li dared not slack off in the slightest!

However, it must be said, the 'Great Development Art' truly lived up to its reputation as the Thousand Bamboo Sect's foundational technique. Ordinary divine sense splitting techniques paled in comparison to the 'Great Development Art'!

Most divine sense splitting arts merely forcefully split off a small portion of one's original divine sense. The number of divine senses one could split depended entirely on the strength of an individual's primordial spirit and could not be altered through subsequent cultivation.

The Great Development Art, however, precisely compensated for this shortcoming. Through its cultivation, one's original primordial spirit could gradually grow stronger, enough to rival cultivators with exceptionally powerful primordial spirit talents. Furthermore, the method it used for splitting divine senses was far safer and more refined than ordinary methods. It allowed for more numerous and smaller divine senses to be split off without harming the primordial spirit's normal function.

Given this comparison, it was no wonder the Thousand Bamboo Sect regarded the 'Great Development Art' as the foundation of their sect, and why Senior Martial Brother Lin kept yearning for the incantations of its latter three layers.

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