First Refinement of the Meditating Doll

"Elder Brother's two legs can both move now?"

"Idiot, not just two—every leg can move now!"

"Elder Brother's all better already?"

"What, aren't you happy?"

"That Puppet Master is damn capable. No wonder Physician Guo thinks so highly of him!"

"If I ever lose a leg, you all have to help me find him to make one!"

Inside the tent, everyone stared in shock at Niu Ya, who had put on the legs and immediately gotten to his feet to walk.

When they learned from Niu Ya that the severed legs could truly take part in the circulation of qi and blood, even Ma Tuan, who had kept a cold face all along, twitched.

One had to know that only Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivators and Tier 2 Body Cultivators could use their sea of consciousness and Qi and Blood Furnace to rebuild their circulation of spiritual power and qi and blood after losing a limb, thereby avoiding ruin to their cultivation.

For Tier 1 Body Cultivators and Qi Refining Magic Cultivators like them, once they lost a limb, unless a Foundation Establishment Grand Cultivator performed the Limb Regeneration Technique, cultivation was almost impossible.

Yet now, they had seen another possibility.

That was the Spirit Lotus Legs Su Qing had refined!

Ma Tuan could practically envision Su Qing monopolizing the entire Forward Camp's severed-leg business in the future.

This craftsmanship was beyond reproach. If he had lost a leg, he would have gone to Su Qing too.

Amid the profuse thanks of the rogue cultivators and Niu Ya's repeated promises to treat him as a brother, Su Qing tucked away a large bag of Spirit Crystals and walked out of the tent, thoroughly satisfied.

He knew that from this day onward, his Spirit Lotus Leg business was officially up and running!

Sure enough.

Just three days later, Niu Ya, whose leg had been severed, was already full of vigor as he ran off to hunt demonic beasts. Then, with gongs and drums blaring all the way, he delivered a demonic beast to the front of Su Qing's Spirit House as payment.

The rogue cultivators in the Forward Market had all learned of Su Qing's skill at refining legs.

After that, Su Qing refined Lizard Warriors and Demoness Puppets at night, while during the day he and Guo Qiao Lian formed a two-person team saving lives and healing the wounded. Busy day and night, he worked himself dizzy.

During this period, he had also asked after Tang Wanqing. He learned that she was hunting demonic beasts farther ahead at the Dwarf Mountain Defense Line, where she had once again made quite a name for herself.

"Even if there are more demonic beasts there and Spirit Crystals are easier to earn, she shouldn't stay away from the Forward Camp without returning to rest and resupply. That woman must have gone mad from earning Spirit Crystals. Why isn't she steady at all?"

Though he was somewhat worried about Tang Wanqing's situation, he had no intention of going out to look for her.

That day, a merchant caravan arrived at the market, bringing all the materials he had asked Hundred Treasures Pavilion to procure.

He had earned a great many Spirit Crystals lately and felt that he finally had the means to refine a Meditating Doll. At last, he was about to begin refining it.

This time, he took out all twenty thousand-plus Spirit Crystals he had earned from the previous Ge Family Village order and exchanged them for more than twenty sets of materials for refining Meditating Dolls.

Even after spending that sum, he still had over thirty thousand Spirit Crystals in his Storage Bag.

For that, he had to thank those rogue cultivators brave enough to lose their legs, fond of Demonesses, and keen on lizards.

Without them, there would be no Su Qing today. Su Qing was immensely grateful for this and hoped they would keep up the good work.

That day, no one in the camp had broken a leg, and the markets for Demoness Puppets and Lizard Warriors were gradually reaching saturation.

With no immediate shortage of Spirit Crystals, Su Qing simply stayed inside his Spirit House and began refining the Meditating Doll.

He had Bear One and Bear Two stand guard outside with sixteen Lizard Warriors.

The reason there were sixteen Lizard Puppets was that he had brought fewer Wood Spirit Servants on this trip, leaving him with extra sea-of-consciousness capacity. So, he had simply refined four more Lizard Warriors for himself.

Over the past few days, he had planted vision throughout a radius of three li. If anything went wrong, he could flee before anyone else.

With this squad of puppets guarding him and Fire Egg, with its keen nose, remaining alert at all times—

Su Qing believed that going into seclusion inside the Spirit House would pose no problem.

He took out all the materials needed to refine a Meditating Doll from his Storage Bag.

Black Profound Gold—five taels and eight qian.

Pine Ren Water—seven jin and eight liang.

Lightning-Struck Wood—one piece.

Myriad Spirit Soil—seventy-six jin and nine liang.

Tier 1 cultivation method—Spring Return Technique.

Tier 2 Immortal Path Talisman Water—a small bottle.

Tier 2 Biomimetic Talisman Water—a small bottle.

Tier 2 Intelligence Rune—a small bottle.

Among these materials, aside from the Spring Return Technique, which was the cultivation method the original owner had always practiced and thus required no additional Spirit Crystals to purchase—

Not a single one of the rest was cheap.

One full set of materials cost more than six hundred Spirit Crystals!

Even with savings far greater than before, his hands trembled and his liver quivered at the thought of using such materials for practice.

But not refining them was even less of an option!

Any cultivator, if given a chance to advance further, would be willing to give everything.

Su Qing was no exception.

A breakthrough in cultivation meant a longer lifespan, greater spiritual power, stronger divine sense, and the rise with the tide of one's status, influence, and everything else brought by those improvements.

Back when his Spiritual Root Aptitude had been poor and cultivation had crawled along like a turtle, he had still kept cultivating even by taking pills, because from beginning to end, he had held onto a sliver of hope for attaining the Dao and living forever.

Although, at his previous cultivation speed, barring some unexpected encounter, Peak Qi Refining would have been the end of the road in this lifetime.

But the emergence of the Meditating Doll might change all that!

These days, he had labored day and night for Spirit Crystals, but when all was said and done, it had been for this Meditating Doll.

"Thinking too much is useless. I'll just get started. I've prepared over forty sets of materials—surely I can grind out one or two dolls!"

After all the preparations he had made these days—

Aside from the Spirit Crystals needed to buy materials—

He had already met all the requirements for refining a Meditating Doll: the necessary runes and the Tier-1 High-Grade Puppet Master Realm.

Even though this was his first attempt, the success rate should not be too low.

If more than forty sets only produced one or two successful dolls, then he could only have been cursed by an Evil Entity!

He took out the Lightning-Struck Wood and carefully carved the charred grain into a hollow little figure over eight inches tall.

Then he poured the Myriad Spirit Soil into a small basin. This soil was extraordinarily heavy; though it weighed more than seventy jin, it was in reality only a handful of fine, brownish-yellow grains.

He mixed in the Pine Ren Water and stirred several times. Only after the water and soil had melded together did he slowly pour it into the little figure's hollow body.

Afterward, he took out the Black Profound Gold and coated the little figure until it was pitch-black. That counted as the doll's skin. He could have used white or yellow, but black was the cheapest of all the materials. There was no helping it—appearance was nowhere near as important as Spirit Crystals, all right?

With that, the little figure's main structure was complete. To make it function, he still needed to imprint runes.

He used Biomimetic Talisman Water mixed with his own blood essence to draw Tier 2 Biomimetic Runes.

He used Immortal Path Runes to inscribe the circulation meridians of the Spring Return Technique, imprinting them onto the sea of consciousness atop the little figure's head.

As for the Intelligence Runes that came next, they were no different from those used to refine ordinary puppets and had no special requirements.

After all three types of Tier 2 Runes had been fully applied—

His spiritual power had unknowingly run dry. Only after swallowing a Qi Recovery Pill did he recover.

He smashed five Spirit Crystals into grains of sand and poured them into the reserved hole atop the little figure's head.

Then, filled with anticipation, he began the activation.

The fragments of Spirit Crystals burst with tiny, dense motes of spiritual light, illuminating the rune meridians on the little figure's body.

Under the effect of the runes, the little figure suddenly became nimble and lifelike. Its appearance was actually identical to Su Qing's own. Apart from being a black boy, it was practically a miniature Su Qing.

Su Qing knew that the Biomimetic Runes infused with his blood essence had taken effect.

Yet at this stage, the puppet could not be considered successfully refined.

The crucial matter was whether it could cultivate and, while cultivating, whether it could synchronize the gains from cultivation back to him.

He immediately sat cross-legged in meditation and circulated the Spring Return Technique.

At the same time, the little figure also sat cross-legged, meditating as it followed him in circulating the Spring Return Technique.

Spiritual power circulated through their bodies, while their divine senses resonated with heaven and earth, drawing the surrounding spiritual energy toward one man and one puppet respectively.

Under the perception of divine sense, one would discover that this absorbed spiritual energy had a fixed frequency.

The speed of that frequency determined a cultivator's cultivation efficiency.

This depended on the spiritual energy of the location, the cultivation method practiced by the cultivator, and the cultivator's Spiritual Root Aptitude.

Beneath the Forward Camp lay a Tier 1 spirit vein extending from the Hundred Beasts Mountain Range, more than sufficient to support the cultivation of Qi Refining Cultivators and Tier 1 demonic beasts.

The Spring Return Technique was a Yellow Grade Lower Rank cultivation method. It had practically no merits to speak of; one could only say that it was a cultivation method one could practice.

As for Spiritual Roots, cultivators in this world did not speak of Five Elements Spiritual Roots. Those lacking one or more of the Five Elements might not even be able to live as ordinary people, much less cultivate. Therefore, all Spiritual Roots contained all Five Elements. The key to judging the strength of a Spiritual Root lay in the size of the sea of consciousness opened after drawing qi into the body.

For example, when a True Disciple of the Cloud Mountain Sect first opened their sea of consciousness, it was already the size of a water bucket. At the same realm, their efficiency in absorbing spiritual energy and the amount of spiritual power they could store were beyond what ordinary rogue cultivators could compare to.

In Su Qing's memories, when the original owner had first opened his sea of consciousness, it had been about the size of a bean?

That could be skipped over for now.

What mattered now was that Su Qing was using one mind for two tasks. While his divine sense controlled his own cultivation, he also had to constantly micro-manipulate the Meditating Doll's cultivation frequency.

Only by bringing the cultivation frequencies of his true body and the puppet into alignment could the Meditating Doll perfectly simulate his current cultivation progress and Spiritual Root Aptitude. Once synchronization was established for the first time, it would no longer be so troublesome afterward.

This process was called Spiritual Synchronization. It was the final step in refining a Meditating Doll, and also the most difficult one.

Not only did it require a cultivator's divine sense to be capable of splitting in two, supporting the cultivation of both the true body and the puppet, it also required precise control to gradually bring their cultivation frequencies closer together.

Fortunately, his Spiritual Root Aptitude was too poor.

As a result, every time he cultivated, most of his exceptionally powerful divine sense remained idle.

Using one mind for two tasks now took no effort at all. In fact, Su Qing felt that he would have no problem synchronizing spiritually with seven or eight puppets at once.

But the micro-manipulation was somewhat difficult. The fluctuations in spiritual energy caused by a cultivator's cultivation were never unchanging.

Sometimes fast, sometimes slow; sometimes long, sometimes short—that was the norm.

Sweat poured down Su Qing's forehead like rain. After struggling for more than an hour, he still had not adjusted the Meditating Doll's frequency to match his own.

Until a plume of black smoke rose from the Meditating Doll's forehead.

Looking at the Meditating Doll, now even blacker than before after it began smoking—

Su Qing's face was nearly as black as it was.

First refinement of the Meditating Doll.

Failure!