Shaye's two years at the academy and nearly frenzied self-study had given him a frightening depth of theoretical knowledge, but his body remained his greatest shackle. Extracting chakra was like drawing water from a nearly dried-up well; each day, he gained only a negligible trace.
Yet in his hands, that trace of chakra shone in a different light.
He had long since memorized Elder Chiyo's foundational Puppet Technique scroll from cover to cover. Its most difficult core lay in the condensation and control of Chakra Threads. This required releasing chakra precisely from the fingertips, condensing it into invisible threads, and maintaining their stability and resilience in order to control puppets remotely.
For the vast majority of beginners, this was an insurmountable hurdle. Releasing chakra externally was difficult enough; maintaining its form required exceptional control. Many apprentices needed months, or even years, just to barely condense a single unstable thread.
But for Shaye, this was precisely his absolute domain!
The monstrous chakra control forged by his extreme circumstances displayed terrifying results at that moment. He barely needed any effort. On his first attempt, he precisely guided that faint trace of chakra within him to his fingertips. With a slight shift of thought, an invisible Chakra Thread—yet one incomparably clear to his senses—shot forth like silk and steadily connected to a small wooden block several meters away.
He tried curling his fingers, and the block moved lightly in response, as naturally as moving a limb! The Chakra Thread was tough and stable, consumed barely any chakra, and perfectly carried out every command he gave it.
"Just as I thought..." Shaye watched the moving wooden block, understanding gleaming in his dark eyes. "For puppet control, the 'quality' of chakra—its precision of control—is far more important than its 'quantity.'" This discovery greatly boosted his confidence.
Having mastered the core technique, the next step was true creation!
He had long ceased to be satisfied with merely crafting individual components. A complete creation that could move was what he truly desired. Combining everything he had learned—puppet construction, basic runes, the restrictive principles of Sealing Technique, and the mechanical transmission and bionics knowledge from his previous life—a concept gradually took clear shape in his mind.
He wanted to make a scouting puppet. Given his pitiful total chakra reserves, it had to be small, light, consume very little energy, and possess high mobility and stealth.
He recalled the various small robots he had seen in his previous life, as well as the efficient movement patterns found in nature. In the end, he settled on a perfect bionic model—a spider.
Eight legs offered exceptional stability and obstacle-crossing ability. Its low profile made it easy to conceal, while the movement patterns of arthropods were relatively energy-efficient.
The blueprint rapidly took shape in his mind. He did not use precious chakra-conductive metal, instead relying entirely on the most ordinary wooden scraps from the Maintenance Unit and a small number of metal parts. For the energy core, he designed an extremely tiny core inscribed with basic energy-gathering runes using discarded chakra-metal fragments. It was inefficient, but its advantage was that it could be activated with an incredibly minute amount of chakra and slowly absorb the faint ambient energy in the environment to maintain minimal standby operation. This inspiration partly came from what Bunpuku had said about natural energy, as well as Shukaku's complaints.
For the control system, he abandoned complex multi-thread control, which his current chakra reserves could not support anyway. Instead, he adopted a more ingenious method: one Chakra Thread connected to the main core, sending simple pulse commands, while the puppet's internal basic mechanical structures—levers, catches, and tiny springs—converted those pulses into specific actions, such as "move forward," "turn," and "stop." This was equivalent to preloading part of its "intelligence" into the mechanical structure, greatly reducing the consumption and difficulty of real-time control.
In the days that followed, Shaye spent all his free time in a corner of the Maintenance Unit and at his little desk. Using a small saw, file, and engraving needle, he polished and assembled it bit by bit. His fingers were often cut by his tools, but he did not care. He would barely treat them with the Healing Technique he had only just learned and was still terribly unskilled at, then continue working.
His father, Shaliu, watched silently. Sometimes, at critical moments, he would hand him a more suitable tool or point out a structural issue involving load-bearing, but he never interfered with the actual construction. As he watched the small eight-legged mechanical prototype of wood and metal gradually come to life in his son's hands, his eyes filled with incredulous amazement.
Finally, one evening as the sun set, Shaye completed the final assembly.
A palm-sized "Spider" rested quietly in his hand. Its eight legs were made of slender wooden rods and miniature joints, while its body was a crude round wooden box. It looked incredibly simple, even somewhat ugly.
Shaye took a deep breath and focused. From his fingertips, an invisible but resilient Chakra Thread precisely connected to the receiving point on Spider's back. He carefully injected a faint trace of chakra, activating the crude energy core.
Buzz...
A glimmer so faint it was almost imperceptible flashed across the core's runes. From inside Spider's body came an extremely soft click-clack of mechanisms turning.
Shaye held his breath and sent a simple "move forward" command through the Chakra Thread.
The next second, the eight legs of the wooden Spider began moving in a slightly stiff yet remarkably steady rhythm! It crawled from his palm onto the table, nimbly climbed over a pen, then slipped through the gap beneath a book! Its movements perfectly imitated those of a real spider. It was slow, but astonishingly stable!
Success!
Shaye's heart pounded with excitement. He tried making it turn, stop, and even lift one of its front legs to touch a small paper ball... Every one of these simple commands was flawlessly executed by the tiny creation!
Though it had no offensive power, its scouting ability was limited to "seeing wherever it could reach," and its range was strictly restricted by the length of the Chakra Thread, for a seven-year-old child with only a trace of chakra, this was undoubtedly a milestone miracle!
He had succeeded in using the most insignificant energy and the crudest materials, combining the knowledge of two worlds to grant "life" to an inanimate object!
Shaye watched the little Spider tirelessly crawling across the tabletop, an incomparably bright light shining in his eyes. This was not merely a puppet. It was the beginning of his dream, proof to this cruel world that even with a frail body, intelligence and creativity could still carve out a path to power!
He named it—"Spider."
(End of Chapter)
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