Chapter 102: The Puppet Army
Even with all conditions met, the casting took nearly half a day—and the entire process allowed not one slip, or all the effort was wasted.
Andy sat upright on a cushion sewn from beast hide, hands locked in seals, his face twisted with pain. Bean-sized drops of sweat rolled off the ends of his hair, and his face had gone deathly pale.
At the very cusp of completing the technique, Andy extended his right forefinger to the center of his brow and slowly worked the final seals. Gradually, at his fingertip, a white point of light the size of a soybean condensed—his first strand of divided spirit.
Enduring the splitting pain in his skull, he guided the hard-won strand into a humanoid puppet, laboriously murmuring the incantation and striking seal after seal into it. Half an incense stick later, the casting finally complete, Andy let out a long breath and settled into quiet meditation.
Two days and two nights later, his lost spiritual sense had at last recovered.
Rather than begin a second casting, he first took control of "Puppet One"—the puppet now housing his divided spirit.
The sensation was strange and marvelous. It was nothing like the free, fluid control of an artifact; it worked instead by instruction and command. Andy would transmit an order through his spiritual sense, and the puppet would carry it out—never resisting, though always with a slight delay.
To borrow an imperfect comparison: wielding an artifact was like moving one's own limbs—nimble, effortless, exactly as one willed. Commanding a puppet was like directing a subordinate—give the order, and how it was done became the subordinate's business. Except a puppet executed its master's instructions to the letter: an absolutely loyal subordinate.
Precisely because the mode of control differed, puppets consumed far less spiritual sense than artifacts. For an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, five or six artifacts at once was the limit—yet the same cultivator could often run twenty or thirty puppets, or more.
Andy ordered the puppet to take up the Frost Dragon Bow and loose a shot at the stone wall.
No sooner had the thought passed through his spiritual sense than Puppet One drew the bow from the hide bag on its back, pulled the string once at the wall, released seven or eight ice spikes—and then stood motionless where it was.
It works! Andy thought, elated. So Qi Condensation puppets could indeed wield mid-grade spirit tools—just as he himself, back in Qi Condensation, had wielded the flawed mid-grade ice shield.
Which meant: if he controlled twenty or thirty puppets at once, each armed with a mid-grade spirit tool, it would be tantamount to commanding the offensive power of twenty-odd Foundation Establishment cultivators simultaneously. With strength that terrifying, no one at Foundation Establishment could stand against him at all.
He rested briefly, then began the second casting of the Spirit-Splitting Technique.
Again the splitting headache; again the bean-sized sweat beading on his brow. After half a day's ordeal, another strand of divided spirit was carved free and lodged in Puppet Two...
Busy days pass quickly, and in the blink of an eye Andy had been in his dwelling more than two years. During that time, Zhang Mo, the mortal mayor of Luojia Island, had come to the dwelling to request the next five years' spirit stones. Andy simply handed him four mid-grade stones in one go, buying himself twenty years free of the bother.
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Apart from that, Andy labored without pause on his puppet army.
And on this day, he at last finished lodging a strand of divided spirit in every puppet, and fitted each with a hide bag slung across its back containing one mid-grade spirit tool and several mid-grade spirit stones. With that, the puppet army of his plans had taken its first true shape.
Testing his limits, Andy found he could control thirty to forty puppets at once—ample for his hunting purposes.
After careful deliberation, he assigned eight puppets to carry defensive mid-grade spirit tools and twenty-two to carry mid-grade bows, forming a small force of thirty Qi Condensation puppets bearing thirty mid-grade spirit tools.
He arranged the eight defenders on the outside, sheltering the twenty-two archers within, and ran the formation through its drills. The results satisfied him completely. Two years of painstaking labor had not been spent in vain!
Beyond the puppets, there was other good news.
The young Ice-Wind Snake, aided by generous helpings of peak-grade Spirit-Nurturing Powder, had grown swiftly from a chi in length to over half a zhang, its body now a cun thick. Its cultivation had advanced greatly as well, reaching the level of a rank-one mid-stage beast—roughly equivalent to a human cultivator at the sixth or seventh layer of Qi Condensation.
It still knew no spells, capable only of puffing out wisps of cold mist that froze small patches of water to ice.
Not yet of practical use—but advancing a stage in barely two years delighted Andy all the same.
As for Andy himself: consumed by forging, puppet-crafting, and casting the Spirit-Splitting Technique, he had refined no pills at all, and his cultivation remained exactly where it had been—early-stage Foundation Establishment, without the slightest advance.
Stay in the dwelling to study alchemy, refine the dozen-plus rank-three cores into pills, and meditate on them for a stretch? Or set out at once for the Outer Star Sea to hunt beasts alone? Andy weighed it briefly and chose the latter.
At his current level of alchemy, a dozen cores would likely yield precious few pills. And his spiritual root aptitude was thoroughly ordinary—those pills could never lift him quickly to mid-stage Foundation Establishment. The room for gain was small.
Besides, there was the beast tide—no one knew when it might suddenly erupt. Better to hunt the Outer Star Sea early than let delay breed complications.
He believed, too, that at his present strength—early-stage cultivation notwithstanding—nothing short of a Core Formation senior posed him any threat.
So Andy packed everything away, even retrieving the formation sets protecting the dwelling—leaving only the Six-Wheel Spirit-Severing Formation in place.
Then he stepped onto the Wind-Treader Dragon and flew for West Star Island.
Seven or eight days later, Andy reached West Star Island and, as was his habit, did a modest round of purchases in the market—though this time everything he bought was alchemy material, all of it ingredients for Qi Condensation grade pills. High-level beast cores were hard-won; better to begin with low-level pills and let his alchemy season properly before refining Foundation Establishment pills from beast cores.
Andy also visited the third-floor tearoom of the Dao Discourse Pavilion—but for all his asking around, there was still not a whisper of Xi Feng, Di Er, or the others.
A mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator in the tearoom told Andy that in five years, none of them had once appeared on West Star Island—and pressed Andy in turn about what exactly had happened. Five years ago Andy had left for the Outer Star Sea in their company; now he alone returned, asking everywhere after his companions. It did look odd.
Andy improvised a story three parts true and seven parts false: his strength being too low, he had hunted only a few rank-three and rank-four beasts with the team before departing, while Xi Feng and the others went on to hunt a rank-five—after which he had lost all contact. He was seeking them now merely to hunt together again.
The explanation was, if anything, more believable than the truth, and the cultivator asked no more.
At the Dao Discourse Pavilion, however, Andy picked up another piece of news. Two years ago, the Mystic Change Pavilion—the island's largest formation shop, celebrated on West Star Island for a thousand years—had closed temporarily and never reopened. No one had seen any core member of the Yun family since, and the whereabouts of the Yun surnamed Core Formation cultivator hailed as the island's foremost formation master were utterly unknown. It was as though the Yun family had vanished from the Star Sea overnight.
So Yun Mengli being hunted by Demon Gate cultivators was no coincidence. Even her father—a Core Formation senior—is missing. Her chances now look grim indeed. And Xi Feng, Di Er, and the rest—most likely the same. At the thought, Andy let out a long sigh.
He lingered no more, taking West Star Island's teleportation formation to the Immortal Island of Penglai.