As Li Chen laughed, several more streaks of escaping light flew over from the nearby mountain forest, one after another.
Within those streaks of light appeared the figures of the "Chief Steward," "Qi Dongyun," "Gan Xiong," and several other Creation Sect disciples in Mirage who also served under the Qi Family Army.
Even "Grand Artisan Qi" appeared among the crowd, a cryptic smile on his face.
With Li Chen's current attainments in Shape-Stealing Skin-Painting, creating these false appearances was effortless. Given enough time, he could even counterfeit every member of the Qi Family Army he had ever seen in Mirage and put on a grand performance for Master Artisan Yang.
Unfortunately, Master Artisan Yang had fallen as soon as he brought out "Mu Qing."
Once he fell into Li Chen's hands, Master Artisan Yang had no further chance. His skull was opened, his brain extracted, and then placed inside a specially made machine.
To prevent him from generating magic power and breaking out of his shell, Li Chen deliberately activated the Spirit-Gathering Formation's suction function, constantly draining his primordial energy to keep him weak.
What awaited him was for Li Chen to finish debugging the brain-reading equipment and perform Physical Soul Searching, reading his memories in their entirety with greater efficiency.
After reading the memories, Li Chen also tried using the "Brain Deconstruction Technique," which he had only barely begun to learn and had yet to fully master, to carve his brain as though sculpting flowers out of tofu.
After this treatment, the brain became like Luo Changshan's hollowed-out brain before it: stripped of self-awareness, emotion, and will, it was reduced entirely to a walking corpse capable only of mechanical responses.
This already fell within the scope of refining human puppets, except that it targeted the brain rather than modifying