Paper Puppet Spirit Puppet

The Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique had been refined to a fair degree of success. He Ping possessed twenty-five paper puppets in total, all of which could be manipulated through his arts and arranged into formations, adding a touch of the supernatural to their utility.

At this moment, He Ping stood beside one of the paper puppets and reached out to pat its shoulder.

"Go on. Take your companions and bring the sedan over to me."

The paper puppet spirit-doll wore a bitter expression, its face etched with an inexplicable sense of sorrow. It wore a tall red hat and carried a paper lantern in its hand.

Inside the lantern burned a cluster of emerald-green cold flames. This was the Cursed Spirit Cold Flame, refined by absorbing wandering souls and tempering spiritual emotions. It glowed a sickly, phosphorescent green within the lantern, casting a gloomy, chilling aura over the surroundings.

After He Ping patted its shoulder, the puppet's frame swayed slightly before it began to move as if drifting, heading toward the main entrance of the side chamber.

Swish, swish, swish!

With the sound of wind being rent, several other paper puppets followed behind the sorrowful-faced one, drifting out of the door.

He Ping donned a black hooded robe and opened a drawer to retrieve a paper mask. A ghost face was painted upon it with crude, childish strokes, wearing a smile that didn't quite reach its eyes.

He extended his right hand and pressed the ghost-faced mask onto his own face.

Once this was done, He Ping stepped out of the side chamber.

The courtyard outside was vast and spacious, yet no one in the He household dared to approach it, for He Ping had issued an order that no one was to enter this courtyard at night.

The servants of the manor did not come here to clean, and in the overgrown, weed-choked courtyard, hundreds of will-o'-the-wisps seemed to dance, looking much like the eerie ghost fires of a graveyard.

It was at this moment that a snow-white sedan, carried by several drifting figures, arrived and came to a direct halt before the door of the side chamber.

—It was a sedan made of paper.

The paper sedan was uniquely styled and crafted with exquisite precision. Even so, anyone seeing it for the first time would likely mistake it for a mere paper-crafted toy.

He Ping, wearing the paper ghost mask, lifted the paper curtain and sat inside. Once he pulled the curtain shut, the eight paper puppet spirit-dolls stationed on either side—each holding a paper lantern lit with Cursed Spirit Flame—moved their feet forward and lifted the sedan.

Swish, swish, swish!

The other paper puppets from the side chamber appeared one after another. These puppets, each with their own distinct expression, gathered behind the sedan to form a bizarre procession.

Sitting within the paper sedan, He Ping took a deep breath. He was fully prepared; this paper sedan and these puppets were his trump cards. Furthermore, he had hidden his ultimate ace within the sedan itself. He was determined to track down the servant and unearth the member of the Immortal Puppet Sect behind the scenes.

"Lift the sedan. Let's go!"

The eyes beneath He Ping's mask were utterly indifferent. He gave a low command, and the paper sedan began to move at high speed. In an instant, it vanished from the courtyard, disappearing as quickly as the blink of an eye.

In a strange space filled with gray mist, a paper sedan carried by eight bearers moved as slowly as an ox-cart.

The gray mist was boundless, stretching on without end. Only the space immediately surrounding the paper sedan formed a passable corridor through the fog, a path that seemed to be a one-way street.

The paper sedan was surrounded by a cluster of paper puppets, each with a different expression and movements that were utterly uncanny. The only thing to be said for them was that they were dutiful and tireless; they moved without pause, one hand holding a lantern while the other helped carry the sedan.

If anyone else were to witness this scene, they would likely feel an indescribable sense of cold, creeping terror.

This paper sedan was also a technique of the Immortal Puppet Sect, known as the "Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique." Once one sat inside, they could travel to and fro in an instant, as if the distance of a thousand miles had been compressed to the space before their eyes.

This technique did not originate from the Daoist sects; rather, it was somewhat similar to the folk-magic "Five Ghosts Sedan-Carrying Technique." Once that art was mastered, a practitioner only needed to sit in the sedan and cast spells in secret, and four ghosts would carry them while a fifth held a banner to clear the path ahead, allowing them to travel freely within a thousand miles.

However, the Five Ghosts Sedan-Carrying Technique had its drawbacks. Firstly, it could only be used at night, as most ghosts were only active after dark.

Secondly, it relied on driving yin-entities and demons. These ghosts could not hear the crowing of roosters or the barking of dogs; if they did, the ghost-servants would simply drop the practitioner and abandon them.

Legend had it that in the past, someone who practiced this heterodox art used the five ghosts to steal wealth. Because they were greedy and loaded the sedan with too much, the sky had already begun to turn white by the time they were rushing back.

As a result, before they could reach home, a loud rooster crowed. The five ghosts carrying the sedan fled in all directions, and the sedan plummeted from high in the air, killing the man instantly.

In contrast, the Immortal Puppet Sect's "Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique" was far safer. The paper puppets were similar to driven yin-souls, but because they were bound to physical forms, they could be used during the day and did not fear the sounds of roosters or dogs.

Moreover, the Five Ghosts technique relied on the ghosts flying through the air, making a fatal fall easy to come by. The "Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique" did not rely on flight, but rather traveled through the Nether Realm, making it faster and significantly less dangerous.

The Nether Realm, also known as the Underworld Path, the Yin-Yang Path, or the Nether Luo Path, was a world shrouded in gray mist. The "Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique" could open a passage to travel through this realm, moving with the speed of wind and lightning—inconceivably fast.

Inside the paper sedan, He Ping was casting a spell to track the whereabouts of the servant in green, A-Zhi. Suspended in the air within the sedan was a silk map covering the terrain and geography of the area for hundreds of miles, with Suian City at its center.

He reached into his robe and pulled out a small bamboo box, from which he took a tiny wooden spinning top. With a light flick of his finger, the top landed on the silk map. Like a pearl rolling on a plate, it spun with a swish, swish, swish before finally settling on a specific location on the map.

"Is he moving in this direction?"

He picked up the map and stared at it intently. A winding, crooked trail had been traced onto the silk by the tip of the spinning top as it moved.

This was the Immortal Puppet Sect's tracking art, similar to the "Spirit-Writing" divination of the Daoist sects. However, standard Spirit-Writing usually involved a vermilion plate covered in sand, upon which a T-shaped frame was placed with a stylus suspended from its end, allowing the stylus to write characters in the sand.

He Ping's tracking art was a simplified version of this, requiring only a spinning top and a silk map to determine the target's escape route and direction.

"It seems that after fleeing to the Black Bamboo Forest, he headed northwest... Wait, what is this? Why has he been circling in this area after reaching this point?"

He Ping's eyes scanned the map, noting that the servant in green, A-Zhi, seemed to be moving in endless circles within a certain region.

"Could something have gone wrong?"

He frowned in thought, a vague sense of unease creeping in, and ordered the paper sedan to increase its speed.