Li Chen and Hua Wucuo agreed to lay the natural-science foundations of the mortal path between them, guiding several major avenues of exploration.
What they needed to do now was strip away magic to preserve the truth, eliminate the influence of divine abilities and spells, and select the natural laws and axioms that still held true.
Those would be genuine, indisputable powers of mortals-powers that ordinary people could master.
But in this world, spiritual energy, magic power, and the like were indeed objective realities. They also needed to introduce the concepts of spiritual roots and divine sense to bridge the gulf between these and the Puppet Dao.
In pioneering this path, Li Chen did not intend to separate it from the puppeteer Dao path or turn his back on that path. Quite the opposite: he wanted to expand both, integrating them so that each could enrich the other.
Hua Wucuo wholeheartedly agreed. It was like an island nation entering the Age of Discovery, finding a new continent and acquiring countless spices, silks, gold, and treasures, which could then be brought home to foster development there.
The conversion involved the deepest secrets of magic power in this world, perhaps the very foundation of all divine abilities and mighty powers.
It would be the embodiment of the Dao, the ultimate method, and the single source to which the Great Dao's divergent paths all returned.
Li Chen handed Hua Wucuo some materials he had compiled on classical mechanics and the electrical industry, asking him to analyze their Dao fruits against the Puppet Dao. He himself focused on the electronic engineering of the Information Age, likewise attempting to convert it.
During this period, a group of Puppet Masters, including Mo Chen and Li Baiyan, joined in, along with the Salt City artisans Li Chen