Deep in the forest, after escaping with the help of the Nine-Death Substitute Witch Puppet, He Ping hurried back with his Paper Spirit Puppets.
Several paper puppets had been lost in the battle at the Ghost Stockade shrine, but plenty remained. He Ping had also hastily repaired a few, so they could still handle the situation at hand.
"Form up!"
He Ping sat inside the sedan. With a flick of his finger, the paper puppets arranged themselves into formation, several beaming faces at the front.
"Hee hee hee hee hee..."
The smiling paper puppets had only three curved slits for faces, forming grins that were both comical and simple.
The eerie green flame in the lantern held by the smiling paper puppet flickered. Its strange laughter threaded through the forest. Hearing it, Chixinzi grew restless, his filthy desires surging. He knew this was the power of the Paper Puppet Spirit Technique.
"Damn it, this bastard even refined a curse spirit. That thing can scramble a person's mind and stab at their spirit... Hell, how is this kid so powerful? Did that old devil Wuyouzi keep his tricks to himself, or is this Fifth more talented in puppetcraft than I am?"
For the first time, Chixinzi felt utterly stymied. He had always assumed he had joined before this fifth "junior brother" and had put far more care into studying their arts. Yet now he was at a disadvantage in their contest.
The Immortal Puppet Sect's arts demanded exceptional talent. They weren't something anyone could master just by wanting to. Chixinzi had always believed himself exceptionally gifted; he had never imagined someone could possess far greater aptitude than he did.
Chixinzi was furious and resentful, and he had already suffered several hidden losses in their magical duel. The humiliation gnawed at him like a swarm of ants, making his thoughts waver and his emotions hard to control.
This was bad!
His throat tightened. He hurriedly clenched his reattached prosthetic right hand and pressed the back of it against his lips, forcing down the blood that had risen into his throat.
Something's wrong. Why are my emotions so out of control? Could the curse spirit be affecting me because my essence was depleted by my injuries? I can't be careless...
Fortunately, Chixinzi was an old hand. He took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, secretly using the Body Cultivation Furnace—an inner-refinement method of the Immortal Puppet Sect that honed the Four Limbs and Five Senses—to calm his jumbled thoughts. With a shift of his mind, the sun and moon seemed to flash through his eyes, followed by the strange sight of stars wheeling through the heavens. His mind settled.
All these inner upheavals had lasted only an instant. At almost the same moment, Chixinzi flicked his hand and sent several spirit talismans flying through the air. They did not fly toward his enemy, however, but landed on several towering trees nearby.
Boom!
The curse power ignited the talismans like flames. Their blood-red cinnabar markings resembled the scrawls of ghosts. In the blink of an eye, the talismans caught fire, billowing black smoke.
The trees shuddered. Thumb-sized venomous insects and monstrous wasps crawled out of their trunks.
Thousands of monstrous wasps turned the ancient trees into giant hives, boring countless holes into their trunks. They drained the trees of their vital essence. The roots withered, and the green leaves seemed to have their life sucked away. In an instant, they turned yellow and brittle as dead leaves, then scattered across the ground in the wind.
This was another sinister art of talismanry, a secret method passed down from the long-vanished Sanyuan Devil Palace. Like the Demon Maggot Curse Evil Skeleton Eating Talisman, it worked wonders by stealing life and stripping away vitality.
The monstrous wasps formed a black cloud and swarmed toward the Paper Sedan where He Ping was. Before they had covered half the distance, the paper puppets at the front rocked their lanterns. Green flames burst forth, turning into several fiery serpents that charged into the black cloud.
The cursed flames gave off no heat; they were bone-chillingly cold. Yet the monstrous wasps could not withstand them. One after another, they were refined to death by the firelight. Thousands of strange black wasps pattered to the ground, and the black cloud collapsed on the spot.
"Too bad. I only got a fragment of the Seed Demon Technique. I couldn't fully refine all the arts recorded in it, or I wouldn't be so constrained!"
Chixinzi showed no reaction, but sighed inwardly as he stamped his right foot hard against the ground. The earth boomed several times, as if an earth dragon were turning over. Sand and dirt exploded outward, opening a massive pit.
The next second, a crimson shadow burst out of the ground. Its body was made up of a long chain of armored segments, with dozens of blade-like legs writhing along its sides. It was a gigantic centipede.
"The Red-Scaled Earth-Armored Centipede Dragon?"
From inside the sedan, He Ping recognized it at a glance. The gigantic centipede was not a living creature, but a puppet construct called the Red-Scaled Earth-Armored Centipede Dragon.
The Red-Scaled Earth-Armored Centipede Dragon was also recorded in the Formless Secret Treasury. Its body was covered in red-scaled steel armor that could extend and contract, and it could burrow through the earth. It was a remarkably powerful puppet.
Every one of the centipede's hundred legs was as sharp as a steel blade. Its body was nearly two zhang long. As soon as it emerged from the ground, it gave a violent shudder, and the strange patterns set into its red armor glimmered with shifting arcs of electricity.
Then came the sound of mechanisms rattling. Countless patterns blazed to life, and with a strange hum, the giant centipede's segmented body rose into the air, floating above the ground.
"This thing can use the earth's magnetic force to move swiftly over the ground..."
He Ping's wariness deepened. He was just about to direct the paper puppets into a new formation to defend against the Red-Armored Giant Centipede's attack when Chixinzi rose abruptly on the other side and appeared at the centipede's head in a flash.
"Let's not fight anymore. Let's call it off..."
Chixinzi waved his sleeves and shook his head, as if he had lost interest. "Junior brother, if we keep fighting, neither of us will win anytime soon. I say we'd be better off calling it quits!"
"Call it quits?"
He Ping gave a cold snort.
"So you're Chixinzi. You picked a fight with me for no reason, and now you're talking about calling it quits? Do you take me for a three-year-old you can fool?"
"Junior brother, we're both cultivators of the Immortal Puppet Sect, not people of the mundane world. Must we fight to the death over a little pride, just to prove who's stronger over some petty grudge...?"
Chixinzi simply sat down. He had always been a rational man, and once he realized he had little chance of winning in a drawn-out magical duel with He Ping, he had changed his mind.
"Enough, enough. I was in the wrong here. Let me apologize, Junior Brother He. What I did was indeed wrong. But don't dwell on it too much... As for the matter at hand, your senior brother will make suitable compensation. I guarantee you'll be satisfied."
He Ping had initially taken the man's words for hot air. But when he heard Chixinzi call him "Junior Brother He," his expression changed despite himself.
Does Chixinzi really know who I am? It wouldn't be difficult to hide my identity as a successor of the Immortal Puppet Sect from outsiders, but if Chixinzi made an effort to investigate, it would be hard to keep it from him. And then there's Cheng Zhi. It was only a matter of time before my identity got out...
The thought passed, but He Ping did not waver at the exposure of his identity. He quickly recovered his composure.
He continued, "Chixinzi, you're talking nonsense. Aren't you afraid I'll kill you to silence you?"
"Junior Brother He Ping."
Chixinzi gave a dry laugh. "You know perfectly well that no matter how well you hide your identity, you can only fool outsiders. How could you hide it from your fellow disciples of the Immortal Puppet Sect? Let me ask you: that 'blood-leaking omen'—has it been getting worse day by day?
"Heh, that old devil Wuyousheng's methods must be hard to endure. How many famous physicians have you sought out over the years? None of them could cure this strange affliction that drains your vital blood. No matter what you do to slow it down, you can't stop the blood and vital energy inside you from leaking away, as if a reservoir had sprung a hole. You can't stem the flow, can you?"
At those words, He Ping's face beneath the ghost mask turned ashen, then pale. He looked terrible.
"Chixinzi, are you saying all this just to mock me?"
"Of course not."
Chixinzi's expression turned solemn. "I'm only warning you, Junior Brother: both our lives are actually in other people's hands. You and I aren't true enemies. We can turn our weapons into plowshares... As for who poses the greatest threat to us in this world, do I really need to ask?"
He Ping fell silent. After a moment, he asked coolly, "What exactly are you getting at?"
"The Immortal Puppet Sect is one of the Nine Evils of Longevity."
Chixinzi spoke without haste. "The sect's tradition has always been that each generation's master takes only five disciples. Every one of those five has the potential to enter the Dao. But the master secretly divides the methods recorded in the sect's True Inheritance, the Formless Secret Treasury, into five scrolls and passes one to each disciple. Then the five are left to cultivate on their own.
"Once the five disciples have studied the techniques in their scrolls to a certain level, they discover the flaws in them. There are only two ways to deal with those flaws: either refine yourself into a living puppet, or seize another disciple's copy of the Formless Secret Treasury.
"If you don't refine yourself into a puppet, the flaws in your techniques will bring you endless suffering. If you can't seize the Formless Secret Treasury from someone else, you'll never be able to complete your cultivation method. Your cultivation will likely never advance again. You won't just have no hope of entering the Dao—you may even become prey to the other disciples."
At this, Chixinzi sneered.
"That old devil Wuyouzi passed down five disciples, and I'm one of them. You're the fifth. Did you think that old devil took us in because he had nothing better to do?
"Wrong. The Immortal Puppet Sect has always done things this way. The five disciples accepted into the sect pursue one another and slaughter one another, like poisonous insects in a gu pot. Wuyousheng is refining gu, and you and I are the ingredients. Do you still want to keep fighting me and let that man reap the benefits?"