Chapter 263: Mechanism Puppets and the Great Expansion Art

In the wilderness, a lizard several feet long poked its head out from under a rock that had been weathered for the most part, preparing to start a day of hunting.

But just as it crawled away from its nest and was only a few feet away from the rock, a yellow monster more than ten feet long suddenly lunged out from the sandy ground, fiercely pouncing on the lizard with both its front claws and mouth, easily biting its neck, and then carried the corpse away, running wildly toward a certain direction.

This monster was also a giant lizard, but it was hard all over, and it made a creaking sound when it ran, actually being a mechanism doll-like thing.

When this monster ran out for more than a mile, it came to the side of a yellow-robed man sitting on a flat stone, threw the corpse beside him, and ran away again.

The yellow-robed man's expression did not change, and he was not surprised at all.

He beckoned with his hand, and the lizard's corpse flew flat to his front. It floated a few feet above the ground, motionless.

Subsequently, the yellow-robed man extended an index finger and pointed it at the lizard's head, chanting words in his mouth.

Before long, the finger he extended began to brighten, emitting a faint white light.

In the chanting sound, the white light became brighter and brighter, gradually becoming somewhat dazzling.

"Go!"

Seeing that the timing was about right, the yellow-robed man let out a low roar.

A strand of white light suddenly shot out from his fingertip, piercing into the depths of the lizard's skull, and then the yellow-robed man pulled back with some effort, his expression tense and cautious to the extreme.

Finally, under the yellow-robed man's careful gaze, the white line hooked a green light ball from the dead lizard's corpse; it was only the size of a thumb, floating lightly.

Seeing this, the yellow-robed man was like obtaining a great treasure.

His other hand brightened, and a small pale yellow jade bottle appeared in his palm. Subsequently, with a "pu chi" sound, several rays of light shot out from the jade bottle, rolling up the green light ball and sucking it inside.

Only then did the yellow-robed man let out a long breath of relief and wiped the faint sweat from his forehead. It was evident that this action had consumed quite a bit of his energy.

"This Soul-Pulling Technique is really not something a Foundation Establishment early-stage cultivator can easily cast, and the success rate is too low. It takes three or four attempts to succeed once. It seems I will have to spend the whole day here today." The yellow-robed man looked at the small jade bottle in his hand and muttered to himself, a look of helplessness appearing on his face.

This person was Han Li, who was cultivating the "Great Expansion Art."

The reason he appeared in this desert area nearly a hundred miles away from the spirit stone mine was precisely because, like what he had done before, he was collecting the souls of some animals. That he would do something usually done by demonic cultivators was entirely because he had studied the "Puppet True Scripture."

It turned out that after a preliminary study of the puppet refining technique, Han Li discovered that refining puppets not only required materials usually used for refining magic treasures, but also needed the souls of some living beings to be melted together with the materials to truly succeed. Otherwise, the puppets produced would not have any spirituality and would be no different from ordinary dolls.

The higher the level of the puppet, the more powerful the soul condensed within it, so that the puppet's efficacy could be exerted to the limit. For this reason, at the back of the "Puppet True Scripture," three spells commonly used by demonic cultivators were attached: the "Soul-Pulling Technique," "Soul-Condensing Technique," and "Soul-Refining Technique."

Among them, the "Soul-Pulling Technique" was the spell Han Li had just cast to draw souls from corpses.

This spell not only had low power and a low success rate, but it could also only be used on corpses that had just died. Compared to those demonic secret techniques that specialized in souls, its power could be described as a difference of a hundred thousand miles!

However, the only benefit of this spell was that the required magic power level was extremely low, and a mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator could use it normally. Of course, Han Li, as an early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, could barely use it, but the success rate was not very high.

As for the "Soul-Condensing Technique," it was a spell to condense souls. After all, a powerful soul was not easy to find. Usually, puppets of higher levels used several, a dozen, or even dozens of souls condensed together into an artificial powerful soul. Although this kind of soul was not as easy to use as a naturally powerful soul, it was always much stronger than using low-level souls. Therefore, this spell was also a required course for learning puppet techniques.

The final "Soul-Refining Technique," as the name implied, was a spell to refine and transform souls. After all, to melt them together with puppets, ordinary living souls would definitely not work; they had to be given a certain amount of refining with special methods.

As for that lizard-like mechanism beast, it was the first mechanism puppet Han Li had successfully refined after he cultivated the Great Expansion Art and separated his first independent divine sense. The soul it melted was just a few yellow rats he had caught at random.

But before this, Han Li had already failed seven or eight times in refining, and the success rate could not be said to be very high.

When Han Li attached his split divine sense to this lizard puppet and ordered it to act, the feeling was truly wonderful! It was neither the drifting feeling of controlling a magic treasure nor as real as controlling his own hands and feet.

In reality, his split divine sense and this puppet beast seemed to be in a relationship between a superior and a subordinate. He would send a thought, and the puppet would act according to his command; as for how the other party acted specifically, that still had to be completed by the puppet itself. However, Han Li could clearly sense everything the puppet beast saw and heard, which made him overjoyed.

Han Li, who was controlling a puppet beast for the first time, had a childish urge to play. Apart from this low-tier puppet beast he had refined himself, he played with and controlled all the mechanism puppets he had on him. This allowed him to satisfy the dream he had as a child of playing with dolls.

While controlling these puppets, Han Li gradually experienced some limitations of mechanism puppets.

First, these puppets could only operate within a range of three miles from his own body. Once they exceeded this distance, these mechanism puppets could not move, and the split divine sense would fly back. Han Li guessed that this should be related to the limit distance his split divine sense could escape from the main body. Once his cultivation base and the realm of his primordial spirit were elevated, this could still be improved.

But the next flaw was the insufficiency of the puppet technique itself, which could not be made up for. That was, there was a delay between these puppets receiving commands and acting, making it impossible to act according to his heart, which might be exploited by opponents in actual combat.

Even with these two flaws, this puppet technique was still extraordinary. As long as he could separate a few more divine senses and cultivate the first layer of the Great Expansion Art, it would be enough to contend with powerful characters at the Foundation Establishment stage.

After all, having a dozen or so helpers by his side, even if they were only at the Qi Condensation level, would be enough to ensure his self-preservation.

At the very least, if he were trapped by that Ghost Spirit Sect Young Sect Master again, he wouldn't be afraid of the other party's endless army of blood ghosts. Because the movement of low-tier mechanism puppets only consumed low-tier spirit stones.

Only that giant tiger puppet under the Huanglong seat of the Thousand Bamboo Sect, because its power was too great, consumed mid-tier spirit stones. However, Han Li estimated that it should be a puppet beast of level three or above, which didn't even dare to connect two attacks from the protective barriers released by several Foundation Establishment cultivators, showing the terror of its power.

It was a pity that this puppet was reduced to ashes by his Senior Martial Brother Lei using a magic treasure. Otherwise, if he had gotten his hands on it, it would definitely have been a sharp trump card.

Thinking of the benefits of that kind of giant tiger puppet, Han Li's heart itched, and he became even more attentive to the refining of mechanism puppets.

Finally, after refining dozens of low-tier mechanism puppets, Han Li decided to try refining level-two puppets. These were also the main combat puppets used by the Thousand Bamboo Sect and others he had seen before. As long as he could refine puppets of this level, he wouldn't have to fear the consumption of puppets in the future.

But refining level-two puppets was not something that could be done with the scrap metal he had used before. Almost all the materials were of the same level as top-tier magic treasures, especially the large amount of iron wood that was hundreds of years old, which became the main raw material for production, which would cost a lot.

Actually, if Han Li were in his own cave dwelling, cultivating a few iron woods with age wouldn't count as anything. But now that he was on duty, Han Li had no choice but to let others collect a lot for him from the market at the cost of pain.

Now the materials were available, but suitable souls still needed to be collected. After all, the yellow rat souls most common and numerous in the canyon were too weak; even if they were condensed together, there wouldn't be any significant improvement.

So Han Li set his target on the natural enemy of the yellow rats, the wilderness lizard.

At this time, after three or four months of hard training, Han Li had successively separated several divine senses. So he used these split divine senses to control several low-tier puppet beasts to sweep through the lizard nests all over the wilderness, which was how the scene at the beginning came about.

After Han Li collected the small bottle containing the lizard souls, he closed his eyes again and continued to cultivate the "Great Expansion Art" to slowly strengthen his primordial spirit.

This "Great Expansion Art" was the key to using puppet techniques; Han Li dared not be the slightest bit slack!

But come to think of it, the "Great Expansion Art" was truly worthy of being the foundation technique of the Thousand Bamboo Sect. Compared to ordinary split divine sense secret techniques, the "Great Expansion Art" was simply not worth mentioning!

Ordinary split divine sense secret techniques only split a small part of the original divine sense by force. How much divine sense could be split depended entirely on the strength of each person's primordial spirit and could not be changed afterward.

The Great Expansion Art happened to make up for this regret. After cultivation, it could make the original primordial spirit gradually grow stronger, enough to rival those cultivators with exceptionally gifted primordial spirits. And the method it used to split divine sense was also much safer and more delicate than ordinary methods. It could make the split divine sense finer and more numerous without affecting the normal state of the primordial spirit.

Comparing this, it was no wonder that the Thousand Bamboo Sect regarded the "Great Expansion Art" as the foundation of their sect, and Senior Martial Brother Lin also kept the incantations of the last three layers in mind.

... ===== CHAPTER 264 =====