"Pretty alert."
Through the Truth-Destroying Type One, Lu Qingfeng saw that the Ghost Spirit Sect disciples in the shell field ahead had already drawn their talisman artifacts and were lying in wait.
The Ghost Spirit Sect was one of the Six Demon Sects. It specialized in driving ghosts and enslaving demons, and was proficient in poison arts and dark arts.
Those abilities would certainly give ordinary cultivators a splitting headache. But as luck would have it, the Hundred Crafts Sect excelled at refining puppets, which could counter ghosts and poison arts.
At that moment, Lu Qingfeng was controlling a hundred Truth-Destroying Type Ones, which were closing in to surround the Spirit Turtle Shell Field in a fan-shaped formation.
The dense forest and marshes were filled with rustling sounds.
Qian Sen focused intently and let out a cold laugh. "Playing tricks with ghosts!"
But he never loosened his grip on the black pearl.
All of a sudden.
Whoosh!
A sharp arrow tore through the air, heading straight for a disciple standing before Qian Sen.
"Ambushing us with cold arrows!"
"The Hundred Crafts Sect's brats are only capable of this much!"
Qian Sen sneered. A ghastly white skull suddenly appeared in his hand.
His five fingers pierced through the skull's facial openings. As True Qi circulated, he waved it lightly, and two humanoid phantoms drifted out of the skull. They hovered in the air and gave a gentle push, immediately knocking the arrow aside.
Swish!
Clang!
The arrow plunged into the dense forest, pierced through several ancient trees, and finally lodged in a trunk with a series of metallic clangs.
"The art of driving ghosts!"
Lu Qingfeng's gaze focused on the two humanoid phantoms that had blocked the arrow, and his heart stirred.
This should be the Ghost Spirit Sect's signature technique—the ghosts this man had enslaved!
The moment the two ghosts appeared and deflected the arrow, they darted toward the direction from which it had been fired. Ghosts had no physical bodies and were incredibly fast. In the blink of an eye, they reached the puppet where Lu Qingfeng had descended.
"Fire!"
With a thought, Lu Qingfeng transferred his consciousness to another puppet.
Swish!
Swish!
Swish!
A hundred Truth-Destroying Type Ones leaped out of the forest at the same time. Fifty of them—archer models—drew their Sun-Breaking Bows, some using Armor-Piercing Arrows and others using Shock Arrows.
The arrows flew as one!
"Puppets?!"
"Oh no!"
Qian Sen controlled the ghosts to pounce onto the "person" who had fired the ambush arrow. They passed straight through him, only then discovering that the target was actually a puppet.
And in the very next moment, a hundred puppets appeared simultaneously.
Qian Sen's heart turned cold!
Not to mention how powerful a hundred puppets were, just this display alone showed that the people who had come to attack them were no ordinary figures.
"Kill!"
Qian Sen clutched the skull talisman artifact in one hand and crushed the black pearl with the other. At the same time, he shouted an order for the disciples behind him to attack the puppets.
As for himself, he dodged the arrows and quickly retreated.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The arrows fell like rain.
The puppets knew no fatigue. In an instant, they unleashed five volleys. Two hundred and fifty arrows enveloped Qian Sen and the thirty-seven disciples around him.
The disciples each brought out their talisman artifacts. Ghostly aura coiled around them, and waves of Yin Wind surged.
But!
The nine True Qi Realm cultivators could barely withstand it. The twenty-eight disciples still only at the Embryonic Breath Realm, however, could not even endure three volleys before their talisman artifacts shattered and they collapsed into pools of blood.
Lu Qingfeng saw that among these Ghost Spirit Sect disciples, the leader was the first to flee. Afterward, the nine surviving True Qi Realm disciples also scattered in all directions beneath the arrow rain.
"Trying to escape?"
The Archer Puppets continued firing arrows to interfere with them, while fifty Shield Warrior Puppets had already caught up.
"Golden Fu Mother-and-Son Blades!"
The Shield Warrior Puppets held crescent-shaped long blades. With a powerful swing, eight smaller blades appeared from thin air and blanketed the nine fleeing men like a barrage of cannonballs.
"Golden Light Technique!"
"Black Iron Shield!"
"Mother-and-Son Soulbound Ghosts!"
The nine men grew wary and each displayed their own means, hoping to block this attack.
But one puppet's attack might be blocked. How could they withstand the assault of fifty Shield Warrior Puppets and fifty Archer Puppets?
Boom, boom, boom!
Amid a burst of explosions—
The Golden Light Technique shattered!
The Black Iron Shields fell!
The Mother-and-Son Soulbound Ghosts dispersed into a cloud of smoke!
The arrows pierced their hearts. The nine Ghost Spirit Sect True Qi Realm disciples instantly died, their souls extinguished!
"Withdraw!"
Lu Qingfeng glanced in the direction where the sole escapee had fled and immediately ordered the puppets to retreat.
This battle had been clean and decisive.
A hundred Second-Level Puppets had swarmed forward, leaving ordinary cultivators no chance to fight back.
The strongest True Qi Realm Peak cultivator had been frightened away on the spot, while the rest had lost the will to fight. Pursuing them relentlessly had yielded a bountiful harvest!
Before the Ghost Spirit Sect's Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivators could arrive, they had vanished without a trace.
And even Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivators would not dare pursue more than a hundred Second-Level Puppets rashly, lest they fall into an ambush.
Thus.
Lu Qingfeng directed 1,020 puppets deep into the Blackwater Marsh, constantly searching for the shell fields, medicine gardens, mines, and other sites occupied by the Ghost Spirit Sect and harassing them.
He decapitated no fewer than several hundred Ghost Spirit Sect disciples.
The puppets also suffered losses during this process. On one occasion, they even encountered a Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivator. One squad of puppets failed to withdraw in time and was completely wiped out!
The Foundation Establishment Realm!
Upon reaching this realm, one could initially communicate with the power of Heaven and Earth. It was the beginning of the Immortal Dao. Its methods were transcendent, and its destructive power was even more astonishing.
The one Lu Qingfeng encountered held a banner. With a casual wave, it laid down a grand formation of ghosts. Yin Fire sprang up everywhere. Even though the puppets were caught within it, they could not tell direction from left to right. After attacking blindly, they were ultimately refined by the Yin Fire into a puddle of molten iron!
But the Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivator had not had an easy time either.
After the hundred puppets were refined one by one by the Yin Fire, and only eight puppets remained, the Yin Fire formation was torn open.
Through the puppet, Lu Qingfeng saw the thin, bamboo-pole-like Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivator. As the formation was broken, the triangular black banner in his hand shattered into dozens of fragments that fluttered to the ground.
His face was gloomy to the extreme, and a trace of heartache could faintly be seen!
Finally, he suddenly struck out with a palm. It transformed into a towering handprint that directly smashed the eight puppets emerging from the broken formation to pieces.
His vision vanished!
"That black banner should be a Second-Rank Dharma Artifact. This person's cultivation is definitely no lower than the Foundation Establishment Second Realm."
Lu Qingfeng sat cross-legged in the Black Sand Artifact Workshop, feeling no heartache over the destruction of all one hundred puppets. In fact, even if all of the more than one thousand puppets in the game were destroyed, as long as he could find suitable tactics and combat methods and gain a more direct understanding of the puppets' fighting strength,
it would all be worth it.
Lu Qingfeng refined and stockpiled puppets solely to prepare for counterattacking the Return to Truth Sect in reality.
"The Truth-Destroying Type One's equipped artifacts are enough to slaughter ordinary True Qi Realm cultivators. But against Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivators, they fall far short."
"I wonder whether the Return to Truth Sect has any Foundation Establishment cultivators!"
Lu Qingfeng pondered in silence.
In the game, refining a hundred or a thousand puppets was easy for him. But in reality, in Miaoyin City, gathering such vast quantities of materials was extremely difficult.
"If the Return to Truth Sect has no Foundation Establishment cultivators, a dozen or so Truth-Destroying Type Ones could sweep through it. But if it has a Foundation Establishment cultivator guarding it, then even against the weakest Qi Guiding Realm cultivator, more than a hundred puppets would be needed to contend with them."
After witnessing the power of that Ghost Spirit Sect Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivator and experiencing firsthand the difficulty of mass-producing Truth-Destroying Type Ones in reality, Lu Qingfeng began to harbor doubts about his mass-production tactics.
"It seems I still have to proceed step by step."
"Once the Return to Truth Sect matter is settled, I should also study the refinement of advanced puppets."
The might displayed by a Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivator with every gesture had caused Lu Qingfeng's thoughts to shift somewhat. But all of this would have to wait until after he dealt with the Return to Truth Sect and left Shangyang Country.
Thinking of the Return to Truth Sect, Lu Qingfeng suddenly sensed someone calling him in reality. He immediately ordered the remaining puppets in the Blackwater Marsh to scatter and hide in suitable places.
Then he hurriedly logged off.
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