The Puppet Gate's "Gu Refining"

Deep in the dense forest, after He Ping made his escape with the help of the "Nine-Death Substitute Witch Puppet," he gathered his paper puppets and hurried back.

In the skirmish at the Ghost Stockade ancestral hall, several paper puppets had been lost, but many remained. With the ones He Ping had hastily repaired, this group of puppets could still handle the current situation.

"Form up!"

He Ping sat within his sedan, his fingertips dancing, and the paper puppets snapped into formation, several grinning, joyous faces appearing at the front.

"Hee hee hee hee..."

The smiling paper puppets had only three curved slits on their faces, forming a comical yet minimalist grin.

The pale, ghostly green flames flickering inside the lanterns held by the smiling puppets cast long shadows, and their eerie laughter wove through the woods. Chixinzi heard this laughter, and his heart grew restless and agitated, his base desires surging. He knew this was the true terror of the Paper Puppet Spirit Technique.

Damn it, this fellow has even refined a curse spirit. This thing is designed to scramble a man's wits and pierce his spirit... Damn it, how is this brat so formidable? Did that old ghost Wu Yousheng keep secrets from me, or is this Fifth actually more gifted in puppetry than I am?

Chixinzi felt a sense of frustration he had never experienced before. He had prided himself on being a senior to this "junior brother" and having studied the arts with greater diligence, yet he was now falling behind in their duel.

The arts of the Immortal Puppet Sect relied heavily on innate talent; they were not things one could master simply by wanting to. Chixinzi had always considered his own aptitude exceptional, never imagining someone could possess a talent far surpassing his own.

Chixinzi felt both furious and stifled, compounded by the minor setbacks he had suffered during the fight. This humiliating sensation, like a hundred ants gnawing at his heart, made his spirit waver and his emotions spiral out of control.

This was bad!

A lump formed in his throat. He hurriedly used his reattached prosthetic right hand to clench into a fist, pressing the back of his hand against his lips to forcefully suppress the blood rising in his gullet.

(No, how could my emotions be so out of control? Could it be that after suffering the loss of essence, I've been affected by the curse spirit? I cannot be careless...)

Fortunately, Chixinzi was an old hand in the world. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and secretly used the "Body Cultivation Furnace"—a technique for internally refining the four limbs and five senses of the Immortal Puppet Sect—to soothe his chaotic thoughts. As his mind shifted, the strange sight of the sun and moon alternating and stars rotating flashed through his eyes, and his spirit stabilized.

The series of changes within his heart lasted only a fleeting moment. Almost simultaneously, Chixinzi flicked his wrist, and several spirit talismans flew through the air. They did not fly toward the enemy, but instead landed on several towering trees nearby.

Boom!

The curse power ignited the talismans like fire. The talismans, inscribed with ghost-like patterns in blood-red cinnabar, burst into flames in the blink of an eye, billowing with black smoke.

Immediately following, the trees shuddered, and thumb-sized, venomous, monstrous bees bored out of their trunks.

Thousands of these monstrous bees treated the ancient trees as a giant hive, drilling countless holes into them. The trees' vitality was plundered, their roots withered, and their lush green leaves seemed to have their life force drained away, turning from green to yellow and brittle as dead leaves in an instant, scattering in the wind.

This was another sinister talisman art, derived from the secret teachings of the long-destroyed Tri-Origin Devil Palace. Like the "Demon Maggot Curse Evil Skeleton Eating Talisman," it was a method that relied on plundering life to unleash strange arts.

These monstrous bees formed a black cloud, swarming toward the paper sedan where He Ping sat. Before they had flown even halfway, the lead paper puppets shook their paper lanterns, and green flames erupted, transforming into several fiery snakes that charged into the black cloud.

These cursed flames held no heat; instead, they were unnaturally cold. Yet, the bees could not resist them and were refined to death by the light one after another. Thousands of strange black bees fell to the ground with a "rustling" sound, and the black cloud could no longer sustain itself, dissipating on the spot.

What a pity. I only obtained a fragmented scroll of that "Seed Demon Technique," and the various arts within it are incomplete. Otherwise, I wouldn't be so constrained!

Chixinzi remained outwardly indifferent, but he sighed inwardly and stomped his right foot hard against the ground. Suddenly, the earth thundered as if a dragon were turning over; dust and mud exploded, and a large pit cracked open.

In the next second, a crimson shadow burrowed out from underground. It had a series of segmented armor plates and dozens of blade-like legs swaying on its sides. It was, in fact, a giant centipede.

"Red-Scaled Earth-Armored Centipede Dragon?"

He Ping, staying in the sedan, realized at a glance that this giant centipede was not a living creature, but a puppet construct known as the "Red-Scaled Earth-Armored Centipede Dragon."

The Red-Scaled Earth-Armored Centipede Dragon was recorded in the "Formless Secret Treasury." Covered in a layer of red-scaled steel armor, it could expand and contract, and it could tunnel and travel through the earth—a truly formidable puppet.

Each of the centipede's hundred legs was as sharp as a steel blade, and its total length was nearly twenty feet. As it burst from the ground, its body shuddered violently, and the strange, eerie patterns embedded in its red armor emitted shifting electric arcs.

Then, the sound of vibrating gears echoed, and countless patterns glowed brilliantly. With a strange "hum," the segments of the giant centipede lifted into the air, actually hovering above the ground.

This thing can utilize the earth's magnetic force to move rapidly even on the surface...

The wariness in He Ping's eyes grew. Just as he prepared to command his paper puppets to form a new formation to defend against the red-armored centipede's attack, Chixinzi suddenly stood up, his figure flickering as he appeared on the head of the giant centipede.

"Let's stop, let's stop..."

Chixinzi waved his sleeves, looking as if he had lost interest. "I say, Junior Brother, if we continue to fight, it will be hard to determine a victor in the short term. I think it would be better to call it a day!"

"Call it a day?"

He Ping snorted coldly at these words.

"You are Chixinzi. You made me your enemy for no reason, and now you speak of 'calling it a day'? Do you take me for a three-year-old child to be trifled with?"

"Junior Brother, we are both practitioners of the Immortal Puppet Sect, not commoners of the mundane world. Is it really worth fighting to the death over a bit of face or a petty dispute of pride?"

Chixinzi simply sat down. He was a rational man by nature, and after realizing there was little chance of victory in a protracted duel with He Ping, he changed his tune.

"Enough, enough. I am in the wrong here, so let me offer you an apology, Junior Brother He. Indeed, your senior brother acted improperly, but do not take it too much to heart... Regarding this matter, I will provide you with suitable compensation that will leave you satisfied."

He Ping had initially dismissed this fellow's words as nonsense, but upon hearing Chixinzi use the name "Junior Brother He," his expression shifted.

(This Chixinzi, does he really know my identity? Still, it isn't difficult to hide my status as a descendant of the Immortal Puppet Sect from outsiders, but if Chixinzi is determined to investigate, it won't be easy to fool him. Not to mention there is also Cheng Zhi; it was only a matter of time before my identity was leaked...)

With a shift in thought, He Ping did not waver due to his identity being exposed, and he regained his composure in an instant.

He continued, asking, "Chixinzi, you speak such nonsense—are you not afraid that I will kill you to silence you?"

"Junior Brother He Ping."

Chixinzi chuckled and said, "You yourself should know that no matter how well you hide your identity, you can only fool outsiders. How could you possibly hide it from a fellow disciple of the Immortal Puppet Sect? Let me ask you: does that 'sign of blood-leakage' grow worse day by day?

Heh heh, is that old ghost Wu Yousheng's method hard to bear? How many famous doctors have you sought over these years? They likely couldn't cure this strange ailment of essence and blood depletion. No matter what method you use to delay it, you cannot stop the essence and vitality in your body from leaking away like a reservoir with a hole in it. Isn't that so?"

At these words, He Ping's face beneath the ghost mask turned pale, his expression looking exceptionally grim.

"Chixinzi, did you go out of your way to say these things just to mock me?"

"Of course not."

Chixinzi said solemnly, "I only wish to warn you, Junior Brother: our lives are, in truth, held in the hands of another. You and I are by no means true enemies; we could entirely turn our swords into silk and jade. As for the present world, who is our greatest threat? Does that even need to be asked?"

He Ping remained silent, only asking indifferently after a moment, "What exactly do you mean by saying all this?"

"The Immortal Puppet Sect is one of the Nine Evils of Longevity."

Chixinzi spoke unhurriedly, "It is the tradition of our sect passed down through the generations: each master only takes five disciples. Without exception, these five disciples all possess the aptitude for the Dao. However, the master secretly divides the various techniques recorded in our sect's true legacy, the Formless Secret Treasury, into five scrolls, teaching one to each of the five, and then leaves them to cultivate on their own."

"Once these five have studied the techniques on their respective scrolls to a certain degree, they will perceive the inherent flaws. To alleviate these flaws, there are only two directions to choose from: the first is to refine oneself into a living puppet, and the second is to seize the scroll of the Formless Secret Treasury from the hands of another disciple."

"If one does not refine oneself into a puppet, one will be deeply harmed by the flaws of the technique. If one cannot seize the Formless Secret Treasury from others, one will be unable to mend the defects in the cultivation method. I fear one's cultivation will never make an inch of progress for the rest of one's life—let alone having no hope of entering the Dao, one might instead become prey for the other disciples."

Speaking to this point, Chixinzi sneered.

"That old ghost Wuyouzi took in five disciples, and I am naturally one of them, while you are the fifth. Do you think that old ghost took on disciples because he was bored out of his mind?"

"You are wrong. It is because the Immortal Puppet Sect has always been this way. The five disciples taken into the sect chase and slaughter one another, just like poisonous insects. Wuyouzi is refining a gu; he is refining the likes of you and me. Do you still wish to continue fighting me and let that man reap the benefits?"