Filling in the Flesh

"Would a dead person's flesh and blood work?"

Ye Qianfan asked.

But the Taoist replied without hesitation, "No! The dead soon turn into water and earth. Water will erode the Paper Puppet's skin, and earth will leave you unable to move, so a dead person is absolutely out of the question!"

"I've been wondering this whole time—why not just use a corpse to make a puppet? Wouldn't that work better?"

Ye Qianfan voiced the question on his mind.

But the Taoist said, "Bringing the dead back to life isn't a spell of our Puppet Sect lineage. That's a spell of the Maoshan Sect!"

"Besides, bringing the dead back to life goes against the Heavenly Dao!"

"Unless you want to cultivate the Corpse Path, don't get any ideas about corpses. Once you get mixed up in that, you'll never escape the body of a living dead man for the rest of your life, and you'll never be able to follow the orthodox path to immortality!"

"So there are actually that many rules."

Ye Qianfan sighed.

He hadn't expected someone from the Puppet Sect to have such firm principles.

"Stop bothering me for a moment. Let me think about what lies outside the five elements." The Taoist told Ye Qianfan not to disrupt his thoughts, then continued muttering to himself, "No corpses, nothing from the five elements. What else is there here that I can use?"

"Woo, woo~"

"Rustle, rustle, rustle~"

Just then, seeing that his master had stayed on the altar without coming down, Little Fu grew afraid that this terrifying thing had stolen his master's soul too.

Yet he didn't dare climb onto the altar. He merely circled anxiously around its edge, occasionally letting out a "woo, woo, woo." The sound immediately made the Taoist's eyes light up. "I've got it!"

"Master Fu! Master Fu lies outside the five elements, and he happens to have a body of flesh and blood that can bend and stretch!"

"See if you can swallow Lord Fu and let him serve as your flesh and blood!"

"I..."

Looking at that slimy mass covered in tentacles, Ye Qianfan had only one thing to say: "Fuck that. You eat him!"

"You can't leave unless you eat him!" The Taoist could sense Ye Qianfan's revulsion, and he said helplessly, "If you really don't want to eat him, you can let him crawl in through your other hole! It makes no difference anyway!"

"Fuck you!"

Ye Qianfan wanted to curse, curse, and curse some more!

"I'm still a virgin, and you already want me to offer up my rear chrysanthemum?!"

"Well, what else can you do?"

The Taoist groused, "You won't eat him, and you won't get penetrated. What exactly do you want?"

"Swallowing him... isn't entirely out of the question. I can accept that a little more easily, but isn't he way too big?"

Looking at Little Fu, who was as large as a German shepherd, Ye Qianfan recalled people in Korea choking to death from swallowing live octopuses!

If he weren't already dead, Ye Qianfan would have suspected that swallowing this thing now would definitely choke him to death!

Even if he didn't choke to death, the disgust would probably kill him!

"If only Little Fu could shrink!"

"Woo, woo!"

Ye Fu suddenly let out a whimper, as though he had understood Ye Qianfan.

The next moment.

Ye Qianfan saw a great deal of water seep out of Little Fu's body.

He could even use his own tentacles to wring himself dry. The more water came out of Little Fu, the faster he actually shrank.

It was as though...

Ye Fu was like a water baby made entirely of water, shrinking as soon as he dried out!

How incredible!

In the end...

Ye Fu really did shrink to the size of an ordinary octopus.

His once black, plump, slimy body had now become something resembling a shriveled dried wood ear mushroom. Even his tentacles had turned into strips of dried kelp, making crisp "crack, crack" sounds whenever they moved.

Ye Qianfan even began to worry that Little Fu's dried-kelp arms might snap because they were too brittle!

"He really did shrink!"

The Taoist exclaimed in surprise, "This Lord Fu knows when to bend and when to stretch. A true man indeed!"

"All right, now that he's this small, swallowing him shouldn't be hard, should it?"

"Hurry up and eat him!"

"Got it." Ye Qianfan picked up the dry, brittle Little Fu with one hand. He had just opened his paper-thin mouth when another worry struck him. "This paper man can open his mouth, right? If something's too big, could it tear his mouth apart?"

"No. Relax. Eat!"

The Taoist spat out three simple words.

Seeing that, Ye Qianfan could only fight down his disgust and stuff Little Fu into his mouth, even giving him a couple of bites along the way!

There wasn't much of a problem.

He was just a little like dried vegetables—tough, with a dry, shriveled texture. Not tasty.

Little Fu seemed to understand his master's wishes too, so he cooperatively crawled into Ye Qianfan's mouth. Fortunately, Ye Qianfan was a paper man; otherwise, he probably would have thrown up the moment Little Fu crawled past his throat!

Thank goodness, thank goodness!

A paper man's body didn't feel much. At most, he could make out the texture of the food.

He even suspected that Little Fu actually had a distinctive flavor, but he simply couldn't taste it because he was a paper man now!

"How does it feel now? Your body's a lot heavier, right?"

The Taoist asked.

Ye Qianfan took a few steps. Although his body finally had some weight to it, it also felt as though something hard was stuck in his stomach, which was extremely uncomfortable. Especially when he walked, he kept hearing a "scrape, scrape, scrape," like stiff cardboard rubbing together!

"You heard that, right?" Ye Qianfan asked in return.

"Drink some water!"

The Taoist merely smiled and said, "All of Lord Fu's water was squeezed out just now. You have to let him swell back up before he can fill all your limbs and bones."

"Once he softens, you naturally won't feel like something's stuck in your stomach anymore!"

"Come to think of it..."

"You really are lucky, having such a wonderful treasure to fill in your flesh and blood."

"Normally, paper puppets can neither eat nor drink. But with Lord Fu serving as your flesh and blood, he can digest whatever you eat or drink for you. That way, you won't give yourself away!"

"Glug, glug, glug!"

Hearing that, Ye Qianfan lay down beside a puddle on the ground, formed by water dripping from a stalactite, and began to drink.

After he drank a large amount of water, his whole body softened just as the Taoist had said. It even had the feel of flesh. He jabbed his skin hard, and it actually sprang back!

He hadn't expected Ye Fu to have this ability too. Not bad at all!

"All right, all right, hurry up and dig out the altar's formation core!"

The Taoist's voice suddenly grew anxious. "I think I heard something outside. The Mountain God Hag might have woken up!"

"We have to leave quickly. If the Mountain God Hag discovers this body of yours, there probably won't even be any scraps left!"