The Barbarians Attack, Flame Martial Unleashes Its Might!

"Hu Lao'er, you idiot, say something!"

After Hu Lao'er entered the room, he made no further sound.

Through the window, the silhouette beneath the oil lamp remained seated upright, never moving.

The two men beneath the window sensed something was wrong and called out to him in low voices, but received no answer.

They exchanged a glance, and the urge to retreat rose sharply.

But just as they prepared to leave, a noise suddenly came from the doorway.

A tall metal puppet, black and red from head to foot, slowly emerged.

In the moonlight, its metallic body gleamed with a chilling light that made anyone who saw it shudder.

The puppet held a man in one hand, his body dangling like a deflated ball. It was Hu Lao'er.

Rain pattered against the metal shell, mingling with blood as it ran onto the ground in a crimson pool.

"A Late Qi Refining puppet! Retreat!"

The two men were scared out of their wits. They turned and fled, unable to fathom why a Late Qi Refining puppet had appeared here.

But after only two steps, they had no choice but to stop.

At some point, three more puppets had surrounded them, sealing off every escape route.

The three puppets looked identical, dark red from head to foot and radiating a dangerous air.

They were actually three Qi Refining Third Layer puppets.

Seeing their situation clearly, both men fell into despair.

They had only planned to deal with Qin Fei, who was at the Qi Refining Third Layer. Three against one, they should have had practically no chance of losing.

Who would have thought they had stumbled into the emperor's own house, where the other side had more "people" than they did?

They were about to die here without even seeing the person they had come for.

"Second Brother, how did you scout this place? Didn't you say there was no problem?"

"Big Brother, Second Brother is already dead."

Qin Fei had no intention of wasting too much time, lest delay breed complications.

With a thought, he killed the two men.

The Flame Martial Guards then took the men's Storage Bags and fired several fireballs, reducing the corpses on the ground to ashes before vanishing into the darkness.

Qin Fei placed the Flame Martial Envoy in the Heavenly Craft Creation Pavilion to protect him wherever he went.

Qin Fei climbed onto the roof and carefully surveyed his surroundings.

The three Flame Martial Guards patrolled outside, ready to deal with any attack that might come.

Fortunately, he had only just finished refining these puppets two days before the barbarians arrived.

The Flame Martial Guards had been manageable. They were not difficult to refine, and after simulating the process in his sea of consciousness for over a month, he had produced three in one go.

But the Flame Martial Envoy had not been so easy.

He had failed repeatedly during the simulations in his sea of consciousness, with a success rate of less than one in ten.

But Qin Fei had no more time to spend, so he gritted his teeth and steeled himself to leave the simulation.

Having burned his boats, Qin Fei instead became unusually calm.

He drew lessons from his failures and brought his body and mind to their peak. He worked with his own hands throughout the process, losing all sense of himself and everything around him.

To his surprise, he actually succeeded in refining the Qi Refining Seventh Layer Flame Martial Envoy.

He breathed a great sigh of relief and hurriedly dripped Essence Blood onto it, initiating the master acknowledgment process with the Heavenly Craft Creation Pavilion's assistance.

Once it had acknowledged him as its master, the Flame Martial Envoy appeared in the Heavenly Craft Creation Pavilion, ready to be summoned with a thought.

And just as its description had said, the puppet consumed no Divine Sense whatsoever. Controlling it was just like controlling his own body.

As for its power, he had just caught a glimpse of it.

When Hu Lao'er slipped into the room, the Flame Martial Envoy had killed him in a single encounter, without even letting him make a sound.

Moreover, the Flame Martial Envoy was best at Fire Element Technique Methods. If it unleashed its full power, it would be even stronger than it had just shown.

Qin Fei finally had a trump card of his own, giving him another means of surviving on the border.

However, the number of Spirit Stones consumed by the Flame Martial Envoy was also terrifying. It had burned through one Spirit Stone in that brief clash.

The loss pained Qin Fei, and he resolved to use it as little as possible in the future unless absolutely necessary.

Time ticked by, and it was now past midnight.

A few more miscreants visited in the meantime, only to be easily dealt with by the puppets outside.

Just as Qin Fei thought he had made it through the border raid, a battle quietly drew near.

He could clearly see two groups fighting fiercely not far away.

One group consisted of barbarian soldiers raiding the border. They were all burly men, each mounted on an exotic beast and wielding a savage weapon, shouting in their barbarian tongue with cries of slaughter that shook the heavens.

The other group was made up entirely of puppets.

"Aren't those my Puppet Soldiers..."

Those puppets looked extremely similar to Qin Fei's Puppet Soldiers. They were the same Bumblebee model he had first sold.

But these puppets had clearly been modified, and every one of them possessed the strength of the Second Layer of Qi Refinement.

Behind the puppets, a woman dressed in black was fleeing for her life.

If the puppets had not been desperately holding the soldiers back, she would probably have been captured by them in short order.

"It seems the person making high-quality imitations of my Puppet Soldiers on the market is this woman."

Qin Fei's heart stirred when he saw her face clearly.

"So it's her."

He did not know the woman, but he had seen her on a wanted poster.

That day, when he and Old Zhang had been running a stall at the market, they had encountered people from the Lin Household looking for someone with a wanted poster. The person depicted on it was this very woman.

A hundred Spirit Stones. Qin Fei was somewhat tempted.

What concerned him most, however, was that the woman could control around ten Puppet Soldiers at the Second Layer of Qi Refinement at once.

Normally, the number of puppets a cultivator could control depended on their strength.

For puppets at the Second Layer of Qi Refinement like these, Qin Fei would do well to control six or seven at once.

The fact that the woman could control so many showed that the strength of her Divine Sense was far beyond his.

After considering it for a while, Qin Fei decided not to intervene.

The woman clearly had some secrets, but he did not want to put himself in danger.

Now that he had the Heavenly Craft Creation Pavilion, he only needed to develop in peace to keep growing stronger. Why should he bother with outside affairs?

And what did her life or death have to do with him?

Qin Fei prepared to slip away, but he was still a step too late.

"Fellow Daoist, help me!"

The woman had clearly spotted him and charged over without hesitation.

As her Puppet Soldiers dwindled, the situation for the woman in black had taken a sharp turn for the worse.

Some of the barbarian soldiers had caught up. The iron chains they usually used to snare beasts flew through the air; they were treating the woman like livestock.

Fortunately, the woman had some skills of her own and narrowly dodged the chains, but the blood gushing from the corners of her mouth showed that she was at the end of her strength.

Qin Fei stopped and narrowed his eyes slightly.

He understood that the woman was trying to divert disaster onto him, using him to escape the barbarians' pursuit.

"Fellow Daoist, you would do better to flee in another direction. Don't bring trouble upon yourself."

But since the woman had seized on him as a lifeline, how could she let go so easily?

Not only did she maintain her speed, she went even faster.

The barbarian soldiers pursued her relentlessly, and in the blink of an eye, they reached the courtyard wall.

Qin Fei's gaze turned completely cold. He understood that this battle could no longer be avoided.

In that case, he could only finish it quickly.

If other barbarian soldiers were drawn over to help, things would take a bad turn.

The barbarian soldiers blocked the woman outside the courtyard gate, jabbering in their barbarian tongue, seemingly taunting her.

But the next moment, a puppet wreathed in blazing flames descended from the sky. Eight fire dragons burst forth, like a god of fire descending to burn the world to nothing.

The expressions on the barbarian soldiers' faces froze. In an instant, they were reduced to ashes, which washed into the soil with the rain as though they had never been there.

Only the wafting aroma of cooked meat in the air proved they had ever existed.

Everything before her had happened so quickly that the woman stood rooted to the spot.

"Many thanks for saving my life, Senior. This humble woman-"

Before she could finish, a heavy chop struck her neck, and she immediately fell unconscious.

The barbarians' border raid was not yet over, and anything could happen at any moment.

Under these circumstances, Qin Fei had no desire to exchange idle words with the woman, so he simply knocked her out.

A puppet then picked the woman up as though she were a chick and disappeared into the small courtyard.