The Paper Puppet Spirit Art had been cultivated to a certain degree of mastery. He Ping had twenty-five paper puppets in all, which he could control with spells and even form into an array, making them all the more wondrous.
At that moment, He Ping stood beside a paper puppet and reached out to pat it on the shoulder.
"Go. Take a few of your companions and bring the sedan over here for me."
The Paper Puppet Spirit Puppet wore a woebegone expression that seemed to speak of some nameless sorrow. It had a tall red hat on its head and carried a paper lantern in one hand.
Inside the lantern burned a cluster of jade-green cold flame. Refined by absorbing yin souls and tempering spirit essence, this was Cursed Spirit Cold Flame. It glimmered like phosphorescent ghost fire, casting an eerie, yin-chilled light over the surroundings.
When He Ping patted its shoulder, the puppet swayed slightly, then began to move as if floating, heading for the main door of the side room.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The sound of wind cutting through the air rang out. Several more paper puppets followed the woebegone one and floated out the door.
He Ping threw on a black hooded robe, then opened a drawer and took out a paper mask. It was painted with a ghostly face that seemed to smile and yet not smile. The crude brushwork looked like a child's scribble.
He reached out with his right hand and put the ghost-face mask on.
Once he had done all this, He Ping stepped outside the side room.
The courtyard outside was vast, and its grounds were spacious, yet no one in the He Household dared come near. He Ping had given orders that nobody was allowed to enter the courtyard at night.
The household servants never came here to clean, either. In the overgrown courtyard, a hundred or so will-o'-the-wisps seemed to flit about, like ghostly flames flickering over a graveyard.
Just then, a snow-white sedan carried by several floating figures came over and landed directly in front of the side room.
—It was a sedan made of paper.
The Paper Sedan had a distinctive shape and was crafted with exquisite care. Even so, anyone seeing it for the first time would likely mistake it for a paper toy.
He Ping, wearing the paper ghost-face mask, lifted the paper curtain and climbed inside. After he drew it shut, the eight Paper Puppet Spirit Puppets standing on either side each carried a paper lantern lit with Cursed Spirit Cold Flame. They moved their feet forward and lifted the sedan.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The other paper puppets in the side room appeared one after another. With their many different expressions, they gathered behind the sedan and formed a strange procession.
Inside the Paper Sedan, He Ping took a deep breath. He had made every preparation. The sedan and the paper puppets were his trump cards, and there was also a hidden ace tucked away inside the sedan. He had decided to track down the young servant and unearth the Immortal Puppet Sect disciples behind him.
"Raise the sedan. Let's go!"
He Ping's eyes were utterly indifferent beneath the mask. At his quiet command, the Paper Sedan shot forward and vanished from the courtyard in an instant. It disappeared so fast that it was gone before one could blink.
In a strange space filled with gray mist, a paper sedan carried by eight porters moved as slowly as an ox cart.
The gray mist stretched endlessly, with no end in sight. Only around the Paper Sedan did it form a passage through which one could travel. The passage seemed to be a one-way route.
A crowd of paper puppets clustered around the Paper Sedan. Each had a different expression, and their movements were all deeply uncanny. The only thing to be said in their favor was that the puppets were utterly devoted to their task. They never tired, carrying lanterns in one hand and the sedan in the other as they pressed on without pause.
Anyone else who saw this scene would likely feel nothing but a nameless chill and terror.
The Paper Sedan was also a spell of the Immortal Puppet Sect, known as the Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique. Simply by sitting in the Paper Sedan, one could travel to and fro in an instant, as if a thousand miles had been compressed into the space before one's eyes.
This spell did not come from the Daoist sects. It was more like the folk religious technique known as the Five Ghosts Sedan-Carrying Technique. Once one had mastered it, one only needed to sit inside the sedan and secretly cast the spell. Four ghosts would carry the sedan, while a fifth carried a banner up front to clear the way, allowing one to travel freely for a thousand miles.
However, the Five Ghosts Sedan-Carrying Technique had its drawbacks. First, it could only be used at night, since most ghosts could only move about after dark;
Second, the technique drove yin creatures and evil ghosts. They could not hear the crowing of roosters or the barking of dogs. If they did, the ghost porters would abandon you.
Legend had it that in the past, someone had practiced this unorthodox spell and used five ghosts to steal valuables. He was so greedy that he took too much, and by the time he hurried back, the sky was already growing pale.
As he made his way home, he heard a loud cockcrow before he reached his destination. The five ghost porters scattered, and the sedan plunged unexpectedly from the sky. The man fell to his death.
Unlike the Five Ghosts Sedan-Carrying Technique, the Immortal Puppet Sect's Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique was far safer. The paper puppets were similar to the yin souls and ghost soldiers driven by the other technique, but they were attached to paper puppets and could be used in daylight. Given physical forms, they also feared neither roosters nor dogs.
Moreover, the Five Ghosts Sedan-Carrying Technique relied on five ghosts flying through the air, so falling from a great height could easily prove fatal. The Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique did not rely on flight. Instead, it traveled through the Nether Realm, making it faster and less dangerous.
The Nether Realm was also known as the Underworld Path, the Yin-Yang Path, or the Nether Luo Path. It was a world shrouded in gray mist. The Paper Puppet Sedan-Carrying Technique could open a passage through this world, allowing one to travel at lightning speed, faster than seemed possible.
Inside the Paper Sedan, He Ping was casting a spell to track the whereabouts of the blue-robed young servant, A-Zhi. A silk map hung suspended in midair inside the sedan. Centered on Suian City, it showed the terrain across several hundred miles.
He took a small bamboo box from his robe and removed a tiny wooden spinning top. With a light flick of his finger, he sent the top onto the silk map. Like a bead rolling across a tray, it spun rapidly with a flurry of whirring sounds, then circled once before settling on a spot on the map.
"Is he moving in this direction?"
He picked up the map and studied it closely. A winding line ran across the silk map, traced by the spinning top's pointed tip as it whirred over the surface.
This was a tracking spell of the Immortal Puppet Sect, similar to the Daoist art of spirit-writing divination. Ordinary spirit-writing with a planchette used a tray filled with sand and a frame shaped like the character for "ding," with a cone suspended from its end. The cone was allowed to write characters in the sand.
He Ping's tracking spell was a simplified version of spirit-writing. With nothing more than a spinning top and a silk map, it could reveal the route and location of someone who had fled.
"It seems he headed northwest after reaching the Black Bamboo Forest... Wait, what's going on? After reaching this place, why has he been circling around the same area?"
He Ping looked at the map and saw that the blue-robed young servant, A-Zhi, seemed to be going around in circles within a certain area.
"Could something have gone wrong?"
He frowned and thought it over. A troubling suspicion came to mind, so he ordered the Paper Sedan to speed up.