“I searched the Myriad Beast Department and managed to scrounge up quite a few scrolls. I picked out several related to raising chickens specifically for you.”

Yu Changchun’s face was wreathed in smiles as he withdrew a stack of books and scrolls from his Storage Bag.

Wang Ba accepted the bundle with a look of visible delight. Internally, however, he remained skeptical. He knew that valuable knowledge was rarely recorded in common scrolls. Still, any scrap of information regarding poultry farming might help solve the breeding issues plaguing his Rare Fowl.

A quick glance confirmed his suspicions. The titles were all too familiar: Detailed Guide to Rare Fowl and Spirit Poultry, Summary of Difficulties in Breeding Spirit Birds…

He had already read these back in Ding Ninth Village, borrowed from that cultivator surnamed Stone. It seemed Stone had merely copied these texts from the Myriad Beast Department in the first place.

However, when he flipped to the bottom of the stack, his brows lifted slightly. Record of the Wind Bird’s Southern Journey. This one was new. He hadn’t seen it in Stone’s collection.

“Well? Useful?” Yu Changchun watched him with expectant eyes.

“Useful! Extremely useful!”

Wang Ba kept his expression carefully managed, projecting gratitude while masking his true thoughts. He immediately hurriedly added a look of shame. “Senior Yu has come all this way, yet this junior doesn’t even have a cup of tea to offer. It is truly…”

“Eh! We are all seekers of the Dao; why bother with such mortal trivialities!”

Yu Changchun waved a hand dismissively, feigning annoyance before his smile returned. Buying Wang Ba’s goodwill with a few worthless scrolls was a transaction he was more than happy to make—maximum benefit for zero cost.

He reached into his sleeve again and pulled out two spirit beast bags.

“Those books were just incidental. This is the main purpose of my visit. Take a look. Are they acceptable?”

He handed the bags over.

Wang Ba took them and peered inside. Each bag was an expanded space, roughly three zhang wide, and packed to the brim. Nearly three hundred Rare Fowl occupied each bag.

Despite the crowding, their feathers were glossy and their movements spirited.

Wang Ba nodded repeatedly. “Not bad! Not bad at all.”

He wasted no time releasing the birds. In moments, the fenced-off run he had prepared was teeming with activity, a quarter of the enclosure now occupied by clucking Rare Fowl.

“Fellow Daoist, regarding the Spirit Poultry…” Yu Changchun began, his smile beaming but his eyes sharp.

Wang Ba immediately struck a pose of sudden realization. “Senior, rest assured! What you requested is already prepared.”

He jogged to the back of his wooden hut. There, from the small batch of Spirit Poultry he had painstakingly cultivated using his own Lifespan, he counted out ten birds and tied their legs.

He paused. After a moment of hesitation, he untied four of them and carefully hid them away.

He returned to Yu Changchun carrying six Spirit Poultry and a basket of eggs, his face wearing a pained, apologetic expression.

“Senior Yu, it is truly difficult to speak of… breeding these Spirit Poultry takes time. Furthermore, one needs a large population base to ensure that strong bloodlines emerge. This junior has truly exhausted himself this past month. But please rest assured! Within six months, at most, I will definitely make up the difference…”

“It’s fine! It’s fine!”

Yu Changchun wasn’t listening to the excuses. He was staring at the six Spirit Poultry in Wang Ba’s hands, his eyes wide with genuine surprise and delight.

He had expected one or two birds at most. He had mentally prepared himself for a meager return given the short timeframe. He never imagined Wang Ba would deliver such a massive surprise.

Six Spirit Poultry!

Even if they were all roosters, and even if his status as a Heavenly Gate Sect cultivator allowed him to purchase them cheaply at the market, these would still cost at least four Spirit Stones apiece.

Unlike the Eastern Sage Sect, which had proprietary breeding methods, the market supply was finite. You ate one, there was one less in the world. Prices were naturally high. If most Heavenly Gate Sect cultivators actually knew the miraculous benefits of eating Spirit Poultry, the price would be astronomical.

Recovering twenty-four Spirit Stones in one go was a soothing balm to his wallet, which had been bleeding funds recently.

His anticipation for the future soared. If Wang Ba could consistently supply twenty Spirit Poultry a month, Yu Changchun would recoup his entire investment within a year.

The following nine years would be pure profit.

Of course, he wouldn’t sell them. These birds were fuel for his cultivation. By the end of the ten-year contract, he fully expected to use the accumulation of spiritual energy to charge straight into the Foundation Establishment realm.

That was a distant dream, but his valuation of Wang Ba rose sharply in the present.

“Rest assured, I will resolve the chicken feed issue as soon as possible! You just focus on raising the chickens!”

Seeing Yu Changchun in such high spirits, Wang Ba seized the opportunity.

“Senior Yu, this junior went to the market earlier and happened to pass by a human puppet shop. I’ve been feeling short-handed on the farm, so I went in to take a look… but the prices were terrifying. Even a mere mortal puppet costs twenty Spirit Stones…”

“You want to buy a human puppet?” Yu Changchun raised an eyebrow. “Actually, twenty Spirit Stones for a mortal puppet isn’t a rip-off.”

As a cultivator of the Profound Puppet Path, Yu Changchun knew the trade inside and out. Eager to deepen his ties with Wang Ba, he held nothing back.

“Human puppets are divided into two categories: Dead Puppets and Live Puppets. Dead Puppets are simple. Once crafted, they possess no intelligence—no different from a corpse. They can only perform the most basic, repetitive tasks.”

“Live Puppets, however… they require the subject to remain willing during the process for the best results. Generally, we use the Bone Burial Technique to lure mortals with the promise of power… Heh, I deceived you back at Ding Eighty-Seven Village regarding that technique. I hope you can forgive me.”

“Not at all, not at all!” Wang Ba waved his hands hurriedly. “We were serving different masters then. It’s water under the bridge. So, does that mean the Bone Burial Technique is useless?”

“Not exactly,” Yu Changchun corrected. “The Bone Burial Technique is a foundational art shared by both the Profound Puppet Path and the Blood Bone Path. It can help mortals obtain a spiritual root. But rather than ‘growing’ one, it is more akin to a transplant. It is plunder, not creation.”

He continued, his tone casual. “To give a mortal a spiritual root, another root-bearer must be destroyed. Furthermore, cultivators created this way face immense difficulty in cultivation and have almost zero hope of breaking through. Using spirit beast bones as a substitute is theoretically possible, but practically speaking, it’s a dead end.”

“It is, as the saying goes, a chicken rib—tasteless to eat, but a pity to throw away.”

“However, our Profound Puppet Path used this technique to develop the Human Puppet Method. We bury a refined ‘Bone Source’ into a living person. Over time, we gradually seize control of their body.”

“The Blood Bone Path takes a different route. They refine their own souls into their blood and bones, abandoning their flesh and blood entirely. They walk a path where ‘as long as the blood-bone remains, the body is immortal.’ But that is a story for another time…”

Yu Changchun revealed the dark secrets of the sect as if discussing the weather. Among Heavenly Gate Sect disciples, this was hardly classified information, so he felt no burden sharing it.

Wang Ba listened, his heart cold. Demonic cultivators, indeed. The cruelty was built into the system. Yet, he couldn’t deny the macabre fascination of it.

“Since mortal Live Puppets can be created through simple deception, they are common. But cultivators aren’t so easily fooled. To make a cultivator puppet, we must ask Fellow Daoists from the Profound Soul Path to shatter and confuse their consciousness. Add in the cost of the Bone Source materials, the time, and the effort… naturally, the price is high.”

Yu Changchun concluded, “Even if I were to make one myself—a mortal Live Puppet—the cost would be at least seventeen or eighteen Spirit Stones.”

“But I don’t have that kind of leisure. My own cultivation time is scarce enough; why would I waste energy making puppets to sell?”

Wang Ba nodded thoughtfully. “So, that puppet shop was actually quite honest?”

“No, no, no!” Yu Changchun laughed, shaking his head. “In this day and age, who works for free?”

He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping. “Don’t spread this… but practically every puppet master leaves a backdoor.”

“Whether it’s an ordinary puppet, a beast puppet, or a human puppet… dead or alive… there is always a trap. I don’t eat from that bowl, so I don’t mind smashing it.”

“The soft-hearted ones just leave a fail-safe to prevent you from using the puppet against them.”

“The ruthless ones leave an ‘eye.’ As long as you use their puppet, they see everything you do. Every secret, every conversation.”

“And the truly vicious ones? If you, the master, are killed, the puppet is programmed to loot your Storage Bag and run straight back to its creator.”

Yu Changchun smirked. “Tell me, isn’t that far more profitable than earning a meager few Spirit Stones from the sale?”

Cold sweat drenched Wang Ba’s back.

Damn. These puppet masters are treacherous.

If not for Yu Changchun’s warning, he might have walked right into a trap. With his secrets—the sheer number of Spirit Poultry, the high-quality Rare Fowl, the turtles—an ‘eye’ in his home would have been a death sentence.

Poverty had saved him.

He etched this lesson into his heart: Never let your guard down. The cultivation world is filled with invisible knives.

“Does that mean… I shouldn’t buy a puppet at all?” Wang Ba asked.

“You can buy one. Just find a maker with a solid reputation. Usually, they only leave a self-defense countermeasure. As long as you don’t hunt them down, it won’t trigger.”

“Or,” Yu Changchun added, sharing a pro-tip, “buy puppets made by a master who is already dead.”

Wang Ba blinked. That made perfect sense. If the creator was dead, their backdoors were useless.

Seeing Wang Ba’s genuine interest, Yu Changchun decided to throw him a bone.

“Here. This is the Lightless Mantra. It can detect small mechanisms left by puppet masters. It’s useless if the puppet exceeds the third layer of Qi Refining, but for low-level goods, it works.”

He taught Wang Ba the chant. Wang Ba thanked him profusely, his gratitude appearing to border on tears.

Satisfied that he had completely won over this humble laborer, Yu Changchun offered a few words of encouragement and departed, flying off into the sky.

Wang Ba watched until Yu Changchun was a speck in the distance. Slowly, the obsequious smile vanished from his face, leaving only a calm, placid lake.

A year as a Laborer Disciple had made him a master of face-changing.

He turned back to the farm. The arrival of six hundred Rare Fowl meant his workload had just tripled. It took him the better part of the day to feed them and shovel the mounting piles of waste.

Since the sect didn’t collect chicken manure, Wang Ba piled it outside the enclosure. The smell was pungent, drifting through the air. He was used to it, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant.

I should find time to visit the market for spirit plant seeds. I can’t let this manure go to waste, he thought.

Dusk fell.

Bone-tired, Wang Ba washed a portion of Spirit Rice and set a pot to boil. He slaughtered one of the ordinary Spirit Poultry chickens and fired up his stove. He made a rich clay pot chicken, slapping a ring of coarse flour pancakes around the inner edge of the pot to bake in the savory steam.

When he lifted the wooden lid, a thick, fresh aroma exploded into the air.

Even the gamey smell of the Spirit Poultry seemed appetizing now. Back when he was a starving laborer, he never had the luxury to enjoy food. Now, though he was still walking a tightrope, the noose wasn’t quite as tight.

Perhaps smelling the food, the Yellow-throated Spirit Turtles in the pond went into a frenzy. They clawed at the stone edges, splashing water and stacking on top of each other in a desperate attempt to climb out.

The Rare Fowl nearby stared with their silly, beaded eyes, circling the stove, beaks twitching as if planning a raid.

“Shoo! Shoo! Don’t even think about it!”

Wang Ba chased the gluttons away, savoring the rare moment of domestic peace.

After eating his fill and cleaning up, he leaned back on his wooden bed. Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating the stack of books Yu Changchun had left.

With a full belly and a relaxed mind, he casually picked up the Record of the Wind Bird’s Southern Journey and began to skim.

His eyes tracked over the words, his mind drifting… until he was halfway through the book.

He froze.

He sat up straight, his eyes locked on a specific passage hidden within the mundane travelogue.

“Prime Yang Inversion Technique?”