Chapter 109
Chapter 109
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 109
Chapter Title: Blueprint (3)
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A colossal concave-eyed puppet standing 400 meters tall.
Yi Agum, of course, tried to dissuade her.
“Sister, this really doesn’t seem right. What kind of puppet is a whole ri tall? If you pile up that much dirt, it’d be a mountain.”
But the superhuman Ryu Seoran wouldn’t back down.
“That’s exactly the mortal mindset, Agum. How can you ascend to the immortal realm with such frail thinking? Transcendence is immediacy—true cultivation means breaking free from the limits of ordinary folk! Cast off your shell and fully unleash your potential!”
“You’re casting off too much. One wrong move and it’s public indecency. Anyway, what about the spiritual power issue? Didn’t you say last time that self-charging mechanisms have limits, so you could only carry a thousand owl puppets? How exactly do you plan to move something this massive?”
Seoran wore a smug expression.
“Curious?”
Yi Agum nodded readily.
“Yeah.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to kindly teach you. Here’s the question! Why do we have Hundred-Year Five Elements Wood and Millennium Five Elements Wood, but no Ten-Thousand-Year Five Elements Wood?”
“Huh, you’re right. Didn’t you say before that Five Elements Treefolk can live over ten thousand years? So why’s there no Ten-Thousand-Year Five Elements Wood?”
Seoran wagged her index finger.
“It’s because of the unique growth pattern of Five Elements Treefolk. Once they pass a thousand years, their physical structure stops changing. So the pruned byproducts of Five Elements Treefolk—whether a thousand years or ten thousand—show no qualitative difference.”
“That’s weird. Growth stops after just a thousand years? Don’t long-lived species generally get stronger the older they get?”
“Think of it the other way. Reaching the species’ limit in just a thousand years, right? Five Elements Treefolk become unimaginably strong after a mere millennium. Their spiritual power generation and storage are overwhelming. That’s why they crushed the Eastern Continent’s giant sect alliance.”
Yi Agum steered the conversation back from its tangent.
“Anyway, what’s your point?”
“First, Five Elements Treefolk excel at generating and storing spiritual power. Second, Five Elements Treefolk stop growing after a thousand years. Third, those two traits apply equally to Millennium Five Elements Wood.”
“So basically, Millennium Five Elements Wood makes excellent material?”
Seoran’s words sped up.
“It’s not that simple. ‘Not growing’ means a structurally ultra-stable state. And it’s material that’s exceptional at generating and storing spiritual power, too. In other words...”
Yi Agum quickly cut her off.
“Wait, sister. As concise as possible.”
“I meant that using Millennium Five Elements Wood creates the ultimate spiritual power battery.”
“In short, store spiritual power in advance and draw it out as needed? By making some kind of battery from Millennium Five Elements Wood.”
Seoran replied.
“Yeah, exactly. I’m planning to use it as the core for the giant owl-eyed puppet. They’re all finished, by the way—want to see?”
Yi Agum looked skeptical, like she couldn’t quite picture it.
“I’d love to. Curious what it looks like.”
“Then let’s head out right now.”
Seoran suddenly pulled a horn from her sleeve and blew it.
The two owl puppets standing like statues by the main gate rose with a gust of wind.
They soon gripped Seoran and Yi Agum’s shoulders firmly with their talons.
Yi Agum recalled an old memory she’d tried hard to suppress.
“Ah...”
Seoran poked her little sister’s side with her index finger.
“You said last time you wanted to try flying on Zhaan. This time I wrote it in my notebook so I wouldn’t forget.”
Sadly, Yi Agum’s wish that she’d just forget didn’t come true.
The two flew at supersonic speed to the quarry.
It was the same place where she’d once made the bamboo shoot cannon and Vajra Yaksha.
There was no way to craft a giant puppet in the estate’s puppet workshop, so they’d had no choice but this spot.
Finally touching solid ground, Yi Agum asked.
“Sister, is this the Millennium Five Elements Wood?”
“Yeah, it looks a bit different, huh?”
“A bit? That’s an understatement...”
Dozens of pieces of Millennium Five Elements Wood were fused into spheres.
Yi Agum pointed at the vines wrapping the spheres and asked.
“Sister, what are these vines? Holding the stacked Millennium Five Elements Wood together so it doesn’t collapse?”
“Those are part of the Millennium Five Elements Wood too.”
“What? Millennium Five Elements Wood is already cut wood. Why are fresh vines growing on it?”
“I grafted them on recently.”
Grafting: fusing two different plants into one.
Typically done by wounding each plant and joining them.
Done right, it combines the strengths of both.
It would’ve been impossible otherwise.
Millennium Five Elements Wood was dead timber, after all.
But after grafting living spirit wood onto it and diligently infusing spiritual power with the Blossoming Prosperity Art, it somehow worked.
This was Seoran’s innovative use of the Blossoming Prosperity Art.
Yi Agum asked.
“So you revived dead wood like that?”
“Yeah, it was really tough. It wouldn’t respond at all at first.”
“How’d you even think of it?”
“Obviously, living wood performs way better than dead. So I just went for it. It took a ton of effort, but thankfully the results turned out great. Felt so rewarding once it was all done.”
“How many kinds did you combine? There are all sorts of flowers blooming, and even thorny vines.”
“Roughly thirty types?”
“Wow, amazing.”
Yi Agum couldn’t hide her admiration.
Over thirty types of spirit herbs and woods merged into one.
The mystery of life itself.
Then a sudden thought struck her.
“Um, sister...”
“Yeah?”
“Millennium Five Elements Wood is ultimately just pruned byproducts from Five Elements Treefolk, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So reviving what was dead wood through grafting... isn’t that, like, ethically...”
Seoran said.
“Oh, I get what you mean. But don’t worry, Agum. Pruned byproducts are like human hair, even if we call them that. What, scared some self-awareness might sprout in the grafted puppet core?”
Yi Agum broke out in cold sweat as she asked.
“Right? This is all fine, isn’t it? I’m just overthinking? Yeah?”
Seoran grinned widely and patted her sister’s back.
“Of course, Agum. Puppets with self-awareness are barely achievable at the pinnacle of puppetry. It’s half in the realm of imagination. No need to worry.”
Yi Agum stepped back a pace from the puppet core and said.
“Yeah, sister.”
It was early summer.
*****
Preparations for the giant puppet proceeded smoothly.
Provisional name: Giant Owl-Eyed.
Ethically 100% safe puppet core complete.
Blueprint finished—big enough to use as a picnic mat.
Now they just needed materials to start production.
But that was the hardest part.
A giant puppet a whole ri (about 400 meters) tall was less a puppet and more a building.
The stockpiles in Black Bamboo Sect or Gold Forge Faction warehouses weren’t enough to finish even one leg.
And they couldn’t just slap together cheap quarry stone.
Without top-grade materials, the giant puppet wouldn’t bear its own weight and would collapse.
Seoran wrote an order form for the lower world.
Desired goods: top-grade ores.
Quantity: literal mountains.
Payment: crops.
The human-faced chicken took the order form to the logistics hub.
Now all Seoran had left was preparing the crops for payment.
Time for the Blossoming Prosperity Art to shine again.
Seoran pointed at the farmland and declared.
“Grow for me, potatoes!”
Potatoes—the famine crop the labyrinth speakers couldn’t eat—poured out like grains of sand.
The farm-use porcelain puppets under Animal Farm control hoed like mad.
Transport puppets raced without rest.
Next up: sweet potatoes.
“Hyah!”
Sweet potatoes erupted onto the surface like a flood.
The underground was hollowed out with barely a handspan left.
Porcelain puppets swarmed in as usual.
Seoran reveled in the power of a true Earth Mother Goddess.
Didn’t matter what the labyrinth speakers liked.
Grow everything—one of them was bound to hit.
Seoran’s infinitely proliferated crops via Blossoming Prosperity Art were all carted to the processing plant.
Grand name, but really just Qi Building cultivators who came to earn spirit stones trimming crops.
Sweet gig: one small spirit stone per day.
The processed crops were neatly packed into sacks and boxes by the packaging department part-timers.
Seoran-brand crops loaded onto a freighter she’d chartered for the time being, shipped to the logistics hub.
The freighter’s next mission: return loaded with ores swapped for crops.
Seoran-brand crops were hugely popular.
Grown in heaven-and-earth spiritual energy-rich soil, they were top-quality with zero turbid qi.
Labyrinth speakers were bigger gourmets than they looked, discerning even such subtle differences.
In a word, material procurement went smoothly.