Mental Health Rep! Something's Not Right Inside Me

Guizhou, Liupanshui, Biyou Village.

Inside a half-traditional, half-modern workshop with a distinctly casual air, an enormous furnace gradually cooled while a barefoot young man with long pinkish-gray hair busied himself over a golden suit of exoskeleton armor at the workbench.

Around him, maidservant puppets with bun hairstyles-Ruhua-moved independently like intelligent robots, helping hand him tools.

His almost miraculous craftsmanship, the faintly visible pale-pink qi, and the lightning flickering across the exoskeleton armor all spoke to the extraordinary nature of his work.

A short while later, Ma Xianhong looked with satisfaction at the golden exoskeleton armor crackling with lightning. With a beckoning gesture, he drew over a golden belt resembling a transformation device from nearby. His ten fingers tapped at the air, activating Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements. Amid a blaze of golden light, the armor became a streak of light and merged into the transformation belt, upon which appeared a golden energy key resembling crystallized lightning.

"The new-generation battle armor upgraded from the Black Battle Armor is pretty much finished. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Why hasn't my dear sister come over yet?"

He leisurely walked over to the opposite wall and placed the belt into its matching recess, setting the key in a smaller recess beside it. Several keys of different colors already rested on the wall, each radiating a different aura: flame, vegetation, lightning, and more.

Nodding in satisfaction, Ma Xianhong returned to the workbench and resumed modifying a half-finished white puppet.

Wood replaced with steel, glue replaced with welding-this White Puppet was the first puppet he had made with Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements during his childhood, before he recovered his memories.

Ma Xianhong had no intention of skimping on resources for an item with such special sentimental value. He had used plenty of rare materials; he certainly wasn't going to let the White Puppet get smashed so easily, as it had in the original story.

Fuck, if just anybody could smash his enchanted artifacts and puppets, what the hell was his Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements even good for?

After all, many of the Eight Wondrous Techniques had a second stage. He didn't believe Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements was limited to such simple artifact refinement, transformation, and control. His last visit to the Gray Fog Space had given him plenty of inspiration.

Bringing his hands slightly together, he slapped the White Puppet's "dantian," and patterns formed from qi appeared across it.

Inside his own body, qi flowed along the same paths, circulating Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements and quietly refining his flesh.

Had Sasuke been there, he would have recognized at a glance that the qi circulation route was eighty percent similar to the Eight Gates Technique.

It was a heavily modified, universal secret art for body refinement and explosive power boosts that they had developed together based on the theories behind the Eight Gates Technique and Ring Detonation.

"People are artifacts too. They can be refined." Ma Xianhong's lips curled slightly, and a sharp gleam blazed in his eyes.

Under his development, Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements had acquired extraordinarily powerful applications not only for ordinary artifact refinement, but also for refining the body, the spirit, and even qi.

Treating people as enchanted artifacts and cultivation methods and secret arts as those artifacts' innate abilities produced unexpectedly powerful results.

He had even reversed the process, producing some utterly unscientific phenomena in certain artifacts and puppets.

If people could be treated as enchanted artifacts, then why couldn't he turn that reasoning around and treat enchanted artifacts as people?

Although he had yet to understand the underlying principles, Ma Xianhong had already succeeded in practice. The enchanted artifacts he created through enormous investments of materials and painstaking effort could grow independently, and their core innate abilities could be understood as the cultivation methods people practiced-they, too, could grow.

"Sect leader! Sect leader!" Just then, a young man with a white buzz cut and a gray Tang suit pushed open the workshop door, shouting. A gilded ruyi was tucked at his waist, and he had an exuberant air.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh-

Almost instantly, with the ringing of blades, four distinct swords hovered above the visitor's head. Only then did the sound of them slicing through the air arrive. Apparently recognizing him, the four swords hummed incessantly and jabbed at his backside as though teasing a child.

"Holy shit! Sect leader, you upgraded your Four Immortal-Slaying Swords again!"

Casually putting the White Puppet into the Heaven and Earth Belt at his waist, a special storage artifact incorporating twenty-four devouring pouches, Ma Xianhong rolled his eyes at Qiu Rang in exasperation.

"Yeah, I added a friend-or-foe identification system. Fuck, Qiu Rang, you're not a kid anymore. Why are you still so careless? Last time you barged in, the Four Immortal-Slaying Swords nearly chopped you into minced meat."

"Heh, the pieces wouldn't have been that big." Scratching his head, Qiu Rang hopped and leaped as the four swords chased him. He reached Ma Xianhong and took several deep breaths, still finding time to wisecrack.

"And that artifact of yours. Didn't I teach you how to make devouring pouches and the advanced Heaven and Earth Belt? Keeping it tucked at your waist like that-aren't you worried someone will steal it?"

Hearing this, Qiu Rang unceremoniously picked up a cup of water from the workbench and drained it, rolling his dead-fish eyes in speechless disbelief.

"Sect leader, listen to yourself. If someone could actually get their enchanted artifact stolen, wouldn't that make them a complete idiot?"

"Heh, suit yourself." Ma Xianhong shrugged, deciding not to stoop to arguing with an idiot. This fellow was one of Biyou Village's current Top Disciples and could also be considered his apprentice. He possessed a crude grasp of Divine Mechanism Hundred Refinements and usually helped manage the sect's affairs.

In theory, this fellow should have been Jiejiao's eldest disciple. Ma Xianhong had even considered giving him the alias Daoist Duobao, but it turned out that, just like him, this fellow believed artifact crafting was his talent and close combat was his passion. He was obsessed with melee fighting.

And yet he sucked at it. An artifact refiner who insisted on fighting up close-he was practically pitting his own weaknesses against other people's strengths.

It seemed necessary to teach this fellow the [Artifact Explosion Technique] he and Tang San had recently developed, along with the exoskeleton battle armor system incorporating the Eight Gates Technique.

As everyone knew, on the Douluo Continent, anything called "Something Explosion Technique" was outrageously heaven-defying. Take, for instance, that certain Level 50 Evil Soul Master who had used Corpse Explosion in front of a Level 98 Super Douluo, killing or crippling a whole bunch of Soul Emperors and Soul Kings.

Ma Xianhong felt that his Artifact Explosion Technique was stronger, if anything. If he couldn't win a fight, he would simply combine Mā's Treasure with Artifact Explosion Technique. He might not have much else, but he had plenty of enchanted artifacts.

Glancing at the gilded ruyi, which he considered decent but with enormous room for improvement, Ma Xianhong casually tossed over a devouring pouch.

"Study the things inside when you get back. All right, enough wisecracks. Let's get down to business. Has my dear sister arrived?"

Judging by the time, Qu Tong should have arrived long ago. Why wasn't she here yet?

Checking the time, Ma Xianhong raised an eyebrow and glanced around the meticulously arranged workshop. The ambush was ready; all that remained was for her to arrive.

But when he looked at Qiu Rang, he found the other man's expression rather strange.

"What? Did my dear sister send a message?"

"Uh... Sect leader..." Qiu Rang hesitated, organizing his words. He motioned with his eyes for Ma Xianhong to check his phone as he spoke haltingly.

"The Yaoxing Society sent a message. They were originally supposed to arrive this morning, but they got stuck in traffic on the expressway..."

Ma Xianhong: "..."

What the hell?

He checked his phone. Once he disabled do-not-disturb mode, he saw a message from Qu Tong saying that she expected to arrive in another hour.

"Then we'll wait. Go make the preparations I told you about. She is my dear sister, after all. Let's give her a grand arrival."

"You got it."

Leaning back on the sofa at the rear of the workshop, directly facing the entrance, Ma Xianhong propped his chin on one hand and quietly began to wait.

One hour later.

Ma Xianhong was still resting with his eyes closed.

Three hours later.

Though he remained calm, his fingers began tapping involuntarily against the armrest.

Five hours later.

"What's going on?" Ma Xianhong was growing irritable.

Twenty-four hours later.

Ma Xianhong: (눈益눈)

"Fuck!"

His expression shifted between dark and darker as he stared at Qu Tong's latest message, promising for the umpteenth time that she would arrive in half an hour. The more Ma Xianhong thought about it, the angrier he became.

"No, this won't do. Where's the mental health rep? Something's not right inside me! Mental health rep! Get over here!"