Before long, Wu Ding, who had been fiddling with a jade slip off to one side, somehow heard from someone that Li Chen intended to take on apprentices. He asked him about it again. "Brother Li, are you really going to recruit a few apprentices and teach them the knowledge of Puppet Masters?"
"That's right," Li Chen said. "It's also something I ought to do as a Master Artisan."
"Well, that's good," Wu Ding said. "Now that you've become a Master Artisan, you're certainly qualified to teach others. Even Craftsmen can study under you, let alone mere apprentices."
"Still, I don't take you for someone entirely selfless. You're doing this for the development of this place too, aren't you?"
Li Chen smiled faintly. "Although I decided long ago to leave this place, ten or twenty years will still be enough to train a few apprentices and pass on my Dao lineage."
"This place itself can also be regarded as one large experiment. I really would like to see what changes a century or so of development according to my ideas would bring to this region."
"Besides, leaving these people behind will be a real help to you and Old He."
Wu Ding fell silent at that, and there was no telling what he was thinking.
After a good while, he asked about something else. "It's almost time for this place's opening ceremony, isn't it? What day are you planning to hold it, and who will you invite?"
Li Chen pondered for a moment. "There's no hurry. Once the apprentices we're recruiting are all here, we can hold an initiation ceremony at the same time. It'll strengthen their sense of belonging."
"Besides, there are still plenty of things here that haven't been put in order. We should at least spruce the