Chen Ping took a deep, steadying breath. He tore his gaze away from the barren Spirit Medicine Sector and turned toward the depths of the cave—the corner marked as the Puppet Sector.

He prayed silently.

Please, let there be something real here.

He couldn’t afford another disappointment like the Alchemy or Spirit Medicine areas. Those sectors had been so fragile before the passage of time that they had crumbled into useless powder at a mere touch.

So far, apart from the two mysterious botanical specimens he had barely salvaged using the Black Earth, he was essentially walking away empty-handed.

Those plants had potential, yes, but they were long-term investments.

Right now, he needed immediate power. He needed weapons, tools, or resources he could trade to survive the cutthroat world outside.

His steps were firm as he marched into the Puppet Sector.

Dust swirled around his boots, dancing in the dim light of the dying night pearls.

But the moment he crossed the threshold, Chen Ping froze.

The air here was… different. It felt stagnant, heavy.

He squinted, his eyes catching a faint shimmer. An extremely thin, transparent membrane—almost imperceptible to the naked eye—domed over the entire sector like an invisible bowl.

A preservation formation.

This thin film had hermetically sealed the area, isolating it from the airflow and, more importantly, blocking the ruthless erosion of time.

Inside the barrier, everything was frozen. The racks, the workbenches, the scattered gears and limbs—they were covered in a thick blanket of gray dust, but they were intact. There was no rot. No rust. No weathering.

Time had been paused here.

Chen Ping’s heart raced with anticipation as he approached the center of this perfectly preserved zone. But when he saw what lay at the core, his excitement instantly cooled.

What the hell is this?

There were no towering battle mechs. No armies of spirit-steel soldiers. No intricate clockwork beasts.

Instead, pushed against the cold rock wall, were four stone beds arranged in a row.

And on those beds lay four bodies.

On the first bed lay a man.

His features were painfully ordinary. He lay with his eyes closed, his expression serene, as if he were merely taking a nap. He wore a simple, ancient-style gray robe made of an unrecognizable fabric, devoid of any ornamentation.

On the three beds beside him lay three women.

Unlike the man, they were strikingly beautiful. Even after untold centuries, their skin retained an eerie, fresh luster, though they were pale as paper. They wore identical gray robes, their hands folded peacefully over their chests.

The scene wasn’t martial or grand. It was weird. A mix of eerie silence and morbid tranquility.

Chen Ping looked from the dust-covered mechanical parts on the workbenches back to the four “corpses” that looked like they had died yesterday. The corner of his mouth twitched.

The master of this cave had some serious issues.

Who wastes precious Formation power to preserve four random bodies instead of powerful combat puppets or energy cores?

Is this the ‘Puppet’ collection? A morgue?

His hopes of finding a powerful guardian construct shattered. It seemed this sector would be another bust.

Disappointed, he turned to leave, intending to scavenge the workbenches for scrap metal. But as he turned, his peripheral vision caught something on a low stone table beside the beds.

Two jade slips.

They sat there quietly, gathering dust. But even under the grime, the material looked superior to the ones in the Alchemy Sector—denser, emitting a faint, warm sheen.

Chen Ping stepped forward immediately and brushed the dust away.

The jade felt cool and solid against his skin.

He picked up the first slip, pressed it against his forehead, and sank his Divine Sense into it.

Boom!

A tsunami of information flooded his mind.

The very first line, written in ancient seal script, made Chen Ping’s soul tremble.

“Xuan Huang Puppet Technique”

The introduction was arrogant and clear: This was an Earth-grade (Low) secret art!

Chen Ping’s breath hitched.

Earth-grade!

In a small faction like the Qingyun Sect, such a thing was a legend. Elders would kill for this.

The text promised that if one cultivated this art to the Perfection Realm, they would grasp the “Source Laws” of puppet construction. They would understand the fundamental forces that drove inanimate objects to move.

Once mastered, creating a puppet would be ru bi shi zhi—as easy as moving one’s own fingers. One could craft top-tier constructs that far surpassed standard logic.

This wasn’t just a blueprint. It was a Grand Dao. A theoretical foundation for the entire school of puppetry.

Ecstasy surged through Chen Ping’s chest.

He immediately focused, trying to digest the opening chapter on basic theory.

But moments later, the joy on his face stiffened. It cracked, then crumbled into bewildered helplessness.

He couldn’t read it.

Oh, he recognized the characters. But when strung together into sentences about “Node Construction,” “Spirit Pattern Linkage,” and “Resonance of Soul and Matter,” it read like a celestial tome.

It was pure, high-level abstract theory.

He tried to force his mind around the concepts, but it felt like hitting a wall of fog. His cultivation level and his knowledge base were simply too low. He couldn’t even find the front door, let alone step inside.

Chen Ping sighed, lowering the jade slip with a mix of reverence and frustration.

It was a supreme treasure, no doubt. But mastering it would take years of study, calculation, and enlightenment. It was useless to him right now.

He picked up the second jade slip and pressed it to his forehead.

Please be instructions. Just give me a manual.

This one was different. It was a catalog of practical blueprints, detailing four specific branches of puppet crafting:

[Wood Puppet Art] Uses Spirit Wood as the core. Focuses on using the natural grain of the wood to guide Qi. Runes are carved to grant mobility and basic spirituality. Chen Ping’s take: He had seen low-grade versions of this in the sect marketplace. Common, but the techniques here were exquisitely complex. Still too hard for now.

[Iron Puppet Art] Uses Refined Spirit Iron. Focuses on durability and brute force. The internal gearing and rune-branding required to move such heavy mass were incredibly intricate. Chen Ping’s take: Complex metallurgy. He was completely lost.

[Corpse Puppet Art] Uses the bodies of beasts or cultivators. Treated with anti-rot fluids and strengthened, then implanted with a control core to override the nervous system. It utilized the muscle memory and residual power of the deceased. Chen Ping’s take: Sinister, bordering on the demonic path, but a recognized branch of the art.

[Human Puppet Art] This section made Chen Ping’s skin crawl. It didn’t use corpses as raw material. Instead, it treated the “spirit” and “form” of a living person as a blueprint. It involved “remolding” and “transmutation” to create a “perfect” puppet that mimicked—or even surpassed—the original life form. The text spoke of analyzing biological structures, constructing artificial spirit veins, and cultivating “pseudo-souls.” It was a forbidden science, stepping into the realm of the Creator.

The first three types… Chen Ping felt that with enough time and diagrams, he could brute-force his way into understanding them. They followed the logic of cultivation crafts he knew.

But the fourth? The “Human Puppet”?

It was dizzying. Terms like “Life Essence Simulation” and “Pseudo-Soul Fetal Movement” looked like gibberish incantations.

Chen Ping finally understood.

The first jade slip, the Xuan Huang Puppet Technique, was the key.

Without understanding the fundamental “Dao” of puppetry—the physics and metaphysics of how energy moves matter—these blueprints were just castles in the air. He was looking at the answer key to a math test he didn’t know how to read.

The second jade slip was merely a catalog of treasures he couldn’t build.

He scrolled to the very end of the information stream.

There were no more diagrams. Instead, there was a final block of text.

It wasn’t a technique. It was a message left behind by a lingering Divine Sense imprint.

The final words of the cave master.