At the end of August, in the rented warehouse, Li Chen personally set warning restrictions on the doorway and surrounding walls, then released his ten newly assembled Puppets to stand guard. Only then did he summon the Water Spider and begin modifying it.
He had already removed its damaged steel legs, temporarily replacing them with a pair of mechanical arms from a humanoid Puppet, and drawn a cable from the chest of a nearby Armored Warrior Puppet to connect it to the Water Spider in parallel.
As Li Chen circulated his magic power, the two mechanical arms began moving, as nimble as those of a real human.
He was using the Armored Warrior Puppet's core to control the arms.
The two mechanical arms were also Combat Puppet arms, but they had been taken from the earlier "Wooden Soldier" and fitted with more precise joint components and mercury slurry conduits, allowing them to perform finer operations.
After making sure the mechanical arms worked properly, Li Chen directed another Puppet to bring over a wooden table. He removed his Puppet Master's Robe and lay flat on it in only his inner shirt.
The next moment, the mechanical arms rose and flashed out a steel blade roughly a foot long, its entire length gleaming silver, as spotless as a mirror.
This was a surgical-grade instrument. Once enhanced with gang edge, it surpassed a magical artifact despite not being one itself.
Li Chen's flesh was hardly an indestructible diamond body. With his gang qi deliberately withdrawn and no defenses raised, he could not withstand such an edge.
And so...
Swish!
The mechanical arm raised the blade and brought it down, severing Li Chen's head!
A little short of breath? I'm still not used to relying on magic power to stay alive...
*This blade still