Crafting puppets

At these thoughts, a faint unease stirred in Lu Zhao's heart. He kept feeling that the winds in the Market District had been blowing wrong lately, as though something major was about to happen.

But he soon shook his head and suppressed that feeling.

Although he was only at early-stage Qi Refining, he had already mastered first-tier puppet arts. Even so, in the cultivation world, where the weak were meat for the strong, he still lacked the power to change anything.

What matters most now is crafting puppets, earning spirit stones, and breaking through to the Middle Stage of Qi Refining as soon as possible, he thought.

After they had caught up for about half an hour, Lu Zhao rose to take his leave. "It's getting late. I still need to go to the mine, so I won't keep you any longer, Big Brother."

Wang Yun nodded. "Why not stay for lunch? Try your Sister Fang's cooking."

"No, thanks." Lu Zhao waved a hand. "I still have things to take care of. I won't trouble Sister Fang."

Seeing this, Wang Yun did not insist. He walked him to the door and patted his shoulder. "Be careful out there, then. I'll contact you as soon as I hear anything."

After leaving Wang Yun's home, Lu Zhao headed straight for the Cold Iron Ore Vein.

His luck that day was clearly worse than the day before. After four hours, he had mined only six taels of cold iron.

As for accompanying spiritual materials-how could those be so easy to find? Encountering them two or three times a month was already good.

After finishing his trip to the mine, he went to the Cold Pool to cultivate.

This time, rather than rushing recklessly ahead as he had the day before, he slowly absorbed spiritual energy, gently wearing away at his bottleneck.

By his estimate, if he maintained his current state, he could break through to the Middle Stage of Qi Refining in about two to three months.

"I'm still short on spirit stones!" He sighed softly on the way back.

If he could take a Meridian-Guarding Pill every day, he estimated he could break through in just over a month. But when he thought of the price of a First-Tier Low Grade Meridian-Guarding Pill—twenty grains of spirit sand apiece—he abandoned the idea.

In the past, being able to take one a month had been good enough.

Back in the cellar beneath his little courtyard, Lu Zhao wiped the azure-grain wood shavings off the table, then took out a piece of azure-grain wood to check his remaining stock.

"Three catties left."

His fingertips brushed over the last few pieces of wood. He had acquired them bit by bit over the past three years. Every catty had cost him a great deal of painstaking effort.

And tonight, he would use up all of it.

Remembering the difficulties he had gone through to find azure-grain wood back then, he could not help shaking his head and sighing. None had been for sale in the Market District; he had finally found some at the Black Market.

The seller's asking price had been extremely high, leaving him no choice but to trade the privately mined ore he had saved for over a year.

He still traded privately mined ore for it now, but he had diverted too much in recent months, leaving his mine quota short.

Lu Zhao took out his carving knife and began his daily puppet crafting.

A moment later, a crisp ting rang out.

The blade suddenly caught in the heart of the wood. Lu Zhao gave a slight flick of his wrist, and the muscle memory built through years of carving scrap material instantly awoke.

He cut along the split in the grain. Azure marrow slowly seeped out, forming spiderweb-like Spirit Runes in the moonlight.

The puppet was finally complete, and he let out a long breath.

This was the third puppet core he had crafted. This time, merely making a little use of the techniques in the Hundred Refinements Art had greatly improved his success rate.

Once the puppet core was complete, Lu Zhao swiftly formed a hand seal. A rat's tailbone leaped from an earthenware jar and fitted precisely into the freshly carved groove.

When the final component slotted into an eye socket, a humming like wind passing through a bamboo tube came from the rat puppet's abdominal cavity.

"It worked!"

He carefully fitted a thumb-sized spirit stone into the puppet's abdomen.

A moment later, the second Azure-Patterned Rat Puppet leaped onto the tabletop. Lu Zhao examined his creation closely.

In the dim yellow light of the cellar, sparks leaped now and then, illuminating the mottled knife marks on the wall-traces left by the failed puppet cores of these past years.

Early the next morning, Lu Zhao returned to his usual spot in the West District to set up his stall.

He was just about to enter his stall when he found the passage blocked.

"Fellow Daoist Huang, sorry for the trouble, but could you move aside?"

Old Huang shifted aside at his words. Lu Zhao brushed the dust from the stone step and set a rat puppet on the beast hide.

There were few onlookers at first, but before long, it drew quite a few people to stop.

A demon-beast hunter carrying a bow and arrows crouched down and poked the puppet. "How fast is this thing? How strong? Can it scout ahead?"

"It's no slower than a Rat King, and slightly weaker, but it retains the Rat King's 'spell-breaking' trait," Lu Zhao replied. "It can scout ahead. As long as it stays within the range of divine sense, it can detect things."

With that, he formed a hand seal and awakened the rat puppet. Its azure-grain wood claws scored three white marks across the bluestone paving. Then he cast a Water Curtain Technique and had the puppet gnaw at it-the water curtain shattered instantly.

A little over seven minutes later, the demon-beast hunter tossed down ten spirit stones and left.

Old Huang stared at the now-empty stall and suddenly scoffed. "You Puppet Masters really do have it easy."

"How so?" Lu Zhao asked.

"Look at this West Market." Old Huang's withered finger swept across the entire street. "Five stalls specialize in Fireball Talismans, three sell Heart-Clearing Talismans, and even something as niche as Tortoiseshell Talismans has two stalls."

He rubbed the frayed edge of his talisman paper. "Yesterday, Li the Lame priced his newly made Body-Protection Talismans a full twenty percent below the market rate."

The fat man selling talisman grass beside them chimed in. "Exactly! The Old Zhao Household's daughter only learned to make talismans last month, and now the whole street is full of her Dust-Avoidance Talismans."

Old Huang breathed into his palm. "Nothing like your exclusive business."

He pointed at the azure gleam flowing around the tips of the rat puppet's claws. "In this entire Market District, you're the only one who can make tiered puppets. Whatever you say goes when it comes to the price."

Lu Zhao was about to speak when the woman selling spiritual herbs suddenly leaned over. "I heard Lady Xue from the Zhou Family Medicine Hall ordered one to use as a Herb-Searching Puppet?"

"That's true." Lu Zhao nodded. "I only took the order this morning, but she's short on spirit stones for now, so she placed a reservation first."

"See!" Old Huang slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "His customers come knocking on their own! Nothing like us talisman makers, having to beg rogue cultivators to buy a couple of Body-Protection Talismans to guard against Demonic Beasts!"

"You talisman makers may face plenty of competition, but there's plenty of demand too. I may be the only Puppet Master here, but how much demand is there for my work?"

"They only seem easy to sell because they've just caught people's attention. Later on, things will still go back to how they were."

Hearing him put it that way, Old Huang nodded as well.

If he only had Azure-Patterned Rat Puppets, Lu Zhao's words really would have been true. Once this spell passed, selling even one a month would be good.

But he also had Cloudstream Sparrow Puppets and Frost Rat Puppets. The former were flying reconnaissance puppets, while the latter had combat abilities on par with First-Tier Low Grade Demonic Beasts.

That was where the true potential lay.

Once the crowd had thinned a little, Lu Zhao said, seemingly in passing, "I heard the Zhou Family Cloud-Patterned Cavalry has been deployed?"

"More than that!" The fat man selling talisman grass lowered his voice. "My older cousin supplies spiritual herbs to the Zhou Household. He said quite a few Cloud-Pattern Horses are missing from the Market District."

Old Huang stroked his beard. "People have been talking about this everywhere these past few days. Just yesterday, someone saw seven Cloud-Pattern Horses heading toward Heavencloud Mountain with their own eyes."

"Are they hunting down Demonic Beasts?" Lu Zhao added, seemingly casually.

"If they were ordinary Demonic Beasts, why would they need to deploy the Cloud-Pattern Cavalry?" The woman selling spiritual herbs leaned closer with a secretive air.

She lowered her voice. "I heard it has to do with Young Master Pingyuan's injury. My nephew is a spiritual physician for the Zhou Household. Supposedly, Young Master Pingyuan's injuries are extremely severe. They might even affect his Foundation Establishment."

"Watch your tongue!" Old Huang suddenly interrupted sharply, his cloudy eyes sweeping over the black-robed cultivators passing the street corner. "Some things mustn't be said, or you won't live long."

Lu Zhao followed his gaze. Three cultivators with the Zhou Household's clan emblem embroidered on their cuffs were inspecting the stalls.

What hung at the leader's waist was not the wooden badge of a guest retainer, but a gilded bronze badge-a symbol of identity reserved exclusively for members of the Zhou Household.