Night fell over Suian City.
In an antique side room in the He family residence, candlelight flickered dimly, and the floor was strewn with broken limbs.
If a stranger had stumbled into the room, the sight would surely have drawn a scream from them.
But a closer look would reveal that the limbs belonged to wooden puppets.
He Ping sat in a chair, carving a puppet with the knife in his hand. Several finished figures rested on the table beside him.
In the wavering yellow candlelight, their faces were pale and colorless. He Ping had made every lifelike figure himself, and there were so many that they filled the entire room.
Old and young, male and female, they all wore eerie, chilling smiles. In the shifting candlelight, they seemed like living people, all watching He Ping where he sat in his wooden chair.
He Ping said nothing. With nimble fingers, he guided his carving knife through the wood as easily as if it were mud, working with effortless skill,
carving into the puppet on the table. Now and then, wood shavings drifted down from its body.
Who knew how much time passed? The candle on the stand had burned down to a stub, but He Ping did not stop. He remained absorbed in his work, still shaping the figure in his hands.
...There was no denying his skill. He had chosen fine camphorwood, left it to dry in the shade, then spent months preparing it before working his magic with the carving knife. The puppet's rough form was already beginning to take shape.
The carving was clearly a man, with a handsome face and lifelike features. A closer look revealed that the puppet looked exactly like He Ping himself.
Next, He Ping took out a painting brush and filled in the brows and eyes. The figure's face grew more vivid by the moment, almost as if he had carved it directly from his own reflection.
The candle stand by the window stood firm, its tiny flame wavering in the wind. A gust blew over He Ping, and he couldn't help coughing softly twice.
He stopped, then used his knife to cut a small nick into his fingertip. With his blood, he drew strange symbols on the puppet's body, murmuring an unknown incantation.
In an instant, the eerie bloodstains vanished, and the puppet's features and expression took on a trace of life.
He Ping's face had gone somewhat pale. Only then did he stop.
"It's done."
He let out a long breath, then formed a hand seal. A strange sight unfolded: the puppet on the table began to move.
Clack, clack, clack...
It worked its stiff joints, moving slowly at first, then more smoothly, like a living person.
The carved puppet picked up the paper cutouts prepared beside it, put on a hemp robe, and donned a tall hat. Dressed in mourning clothes, it looked as if it were attending a funeral.
"This Nine-Death Substitute Witch Puppet is finally finished. This secret puppet can't extend my life, but it can shield me from blades, weapons, and baleful calamities, and ward off nine kinds of violent death. That's still some use..."
He picked up the Nine-Death Substitute Witch Puppet and examined it closely. Suddenly, his face turned deathly pale. He set the puppet down, clutched his chest, and began to cough.
"Cough, cough, cough..."
He Ping coughed several more times. He covered his mouth with a silk handkerchief, and when the coughing stopped, he unfolded it to find a trace of bright red blood.
"My health keeps getting worse. At this rate, I probably won't last much longer... Could it be that I really have no choice but to use that method?"
As if struck by a thought, he reached into his robe and pulled out a thin booklet. Its pages were yellowed and looked rather dirty. When he opened it, there wasn't a single word inside; it was completely blank.
He Ping gazed at the little booklet for a long while. It was the Immortal Puppet Sect's inherited path to cultivation, called the Formless Secret Treasury. It recorded various secret methods for controlling and making puppets.
Originally, the Formless Secret Treasury had been covered in lines of writing, along with strange symbols and illustrations. But after he had learned the arts it recorded and etched their contents deep into his mind, the writing and images had mysteriously vanished.
"The Immortal Puppet Sect's things really are strange..."
Muttering to himself, He Ping put away the Formless Secret Treasury, now stripped of its words and images.
As the eldest grandson of the He family's main branch, He Ping had displayed intelligence far beyond that of ordinary people from childhood. He had a secret: he possessed the memories of the body's former owner—or, to put it another way, he was a transmigrator.
When this body was seven or eight years old, it had suffered a serious illness and a high fever. After the fever broke, it had lost its memories.
A doctor examined him and said it was a "soul-separation illness." Fortunately, the condition was harmless. He Ping, the He family's only son, had lost his childhood memories, but his mind was otherwise unaffected. The He family had kept the matter quiet.
In truth, after that serious illness, another soul from Earth had crossed over and descended into this body.
After transmigrating, He Ping took some time to adjust to his new life. He discovered that he had arrived in a world much like ancient China.
He learned that this country was called the Great You Dynasty, and that the place where his family lived was Suian City. The He family was the city's largest rice merchant, with a fortune so vast that calling them merely wealthy was an understatement. As their only son, He Ping had grown up in the lap of luxury.
Honestly, life was great, and he was quite content with it.
But for one reason or another, his life changed.
It happened one winter, when He Ping left the city on an errand, accompanied by servants from his household.
On the way back that day, one of his servants found a frozen old man inside a Mountain God Temple nearby.
"He must've been a puppet-show performer. It snowed heavily last night, and he froze to death here."
After examining the old man, the servant found that he had died clutching a wooden puppet tightly to his chest, and gave this explanation.
"He looks so pitiful. I have some loose silver here. Ask the temple caretaker and the nearby villagers to give this old man a proper grave."
He Ping had taken pity on the man on a whim and casually gave the order.
The servant did as he was told. He found the temple caretaker and the villagers, gave them money, and asked them to bury the dead man in a nearby cemetery.
To He Ping, it was no more than a trivial matter.
But when he returned home and fell asleep on his bed, an old man with a white beard appeared in his dream.
The old man first bowed to him, introduced himself as Wu Yousheng, and thanked He Ping for gathering his bones, burying him, and setting up a tombstone.
Wu Yousheng recounted his life. In his youth, he had loved watching string-puppet shows and become obsessed with the art of manipulating puppets. Whenever a street performer came to the market to put on a puppet show, he would pester them to teach him their craft. In time, he mastered a remarkable skill.
When he grew older, he defied his family's objections and wandered the land, making his living as a performer. He took pleasure in making objects resemble people. But he had drifted all his life without a home, and in the end had fallen so low that he froze to death in a Mountain God Temple.
"This old man has no regrets about dying. I only regret that the puppet arts I spent my life learning will be lost. If you don't disdain them, I'm willing to pass them on to you, young master..."
Then Wu Yousheng told He Ping where to find a puppet-making manual he had treasured, a secret art passed down from the Immortal Puppet Sect, called the Formless Secret Treasury.
"The booklet is buried beneath the great scholar tree outside the Mountain God Temple, where three stones are stacked. Dig three feet down, and you'll find it."
After saying this, Wu Yousheng bowed again and dissolved into a cloud of mist.
He Ping woke the next morning with the dream still vivid in his mind. Following Wu Yousheng's instructions, he found a little booklet beneath the great scholar tree outside the Mountain God Temple. It was the Formless Secret Treasury.
He opened it and looked through it. It was indeed a manual recording all kinds of methods for making puppets.
He Ping had never been interested in puppets or anything of the sort. The He family was one of the wealthiest households in Suian City, with a fortune so vast that even calling it a million taels would be an understatement. He could have spent his whole life eating, drinking, and enjoying himself, and even then, it would have taken him a hundred years to spend it all.
With that kind of wealth, there was no way he would take up puppet theater.
But his curiosity got the better of him. He studied the booklet for a while, then couldn't resist trying out the puppet-making secrets it described. To his surprise, he actually learned a thing or two.
After studying for some time, He Ping realized that the Formless Secret Treasury recorded far more than the usual puppet-making techniques using paper, leather, wood, and clay. It also contained methods for controlling water puppets, flesh puppets, firework puppets, rod puppets, glove puppets, string puppets, and crossbar puppets—arts far beyond the skills of street performers.
Beyond ordinary puppet arts, the Formless Secret Treasury also covered methods for warding off curses, restricting qi, using talismans, dispelling calamities, substituting for misfortune, and assuming false forms. Or rather, these weren't mere "arts" at all. They were "methods."
After obtaining the booklet, He Ping foolishly believed he had stumbled upon an enormous stroke of fortune. For years, he devoted himself to studying the Formless Secret Treasury. Whenever he hit a wall or encountered a problem he couldn't solve, he would meet Wu Yousheng again in his dreams.
The white-haired old man answered every question without reservation, imparting all the secrets he knew of the Formless Secret Treasury.
The Daoist schools called this "Yin Master Dharma Transmission." Wu Yousheng had been dead for years, yet he had continued passing down the Daoist arts in dreams, off and on, for years.
As a result, during those years, He Ping became obsessed with the profound and mysterious arts recorded in the Formless Secret Treasury. He studied them day and night, neglecting both food and sleep, never realizing that someone had schemed against him and planted the seed of disaster.