Chapter 28
Chapter 28
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 28
Chapter Title: Clay Dolls Have No Wings (2)
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Who on earth makes pills and magical tools?
Things don't just stick together on their own and pop out babies, so there must be creators behind them.
Naturally, they're cultivators who wield spiritual power.
Pill refining is the art of concocting pills.
Artifact forging is the craft of making magical tools.
Puppetry, strictly speaking, falls under artifact forging.
But because it pursues different goals from standard magical tool forging, it's called puppetry separately.
To an artifact forger, a magical tool is just a device.
A sharp sword just needs to slay enemies well, and a shield just needs to block arrows properly.
The best tools strip away all the frills and focus on a single purpose.
So don't get greedy and commission a tool that blocks arrows, slays foes, and occasionally cleans the room.
The forger will slap you across the face and ask if you're mocking them.
It was those greedy fools who got slapped that banded together and invented puppetry.
To a puppeteer, a puppet is an extension of themselves.
They think anything they can do, the puppet should be able to do too.
It's the same greedy mindset that wants one tool to beat drums, play flutes, and do everything else.
That's why heaven punished these rotten-hearted puppeteers with divine retribution.
Infinite errors and eternal headaches—that's the curse.
And today, puppeteers everywhere pay the price in agony.
Seoran pleaded with her clay doll.
“Please, why are you acting up again this time? It worked fine earlier. Was it because I tweaked the knee joint range a bit? That was my bad, okay? But you're not being fair either. I already reset the range to the original values. Shouldn't that fix your error? Why is it still glitching?”
But Seoran's puppetry was still at the stage of building basics.
Thus, the clay doll before her had no means of communication.
She was just ranting at a wall.
With no reply coming, Seoran dropped to her knees.
“Am I not a genius after all? Just a mediocre nobody who never hit a wall before?”
Despair washed over her.
Puppetry has several stages.
The beginner stage involves directly controlling the puppet.
Seoran breezed through it.
From the basic stage onward, you infuse the puppet with incantations to execute set commands.
As the puppeteer's skill improves, the commands grow more complex.
The proficient stage grants the puppet various functions.
Even outsiders could read it, but they'd have no clue what it meant.
Seoran was currently stuck at the early basic stage.
She'd shaped a human-like clay doll and tried bipedal walking, only for errors to crop up.
She fixed errors, then fixed the new ones they spawned, repeating the cycle.
Like pouring water into a leaky jar—until, by some miracle, a flawless clay doll emerged.
Watching it walk steadily without toppling filled Seoran with joy.
But the knee movements looked stiff, so she adjusted the joint range slightly—and disaster struck.
Back to the infinite error-fixing hell.
Seoran sprang up like a rubber band.
She kicked the clay doll straight into the river.
Bipedal walking could wait.
Seoran molded clay into a cylinder.
She attached four smaller cylinders.
Time for a quadruped clay doll.
First, she inscribed the incantation on a flat clay slab.
She calmly checked for typos or logical flaws.
Once infused, it was basically set in stone.
There were ways to revise, but they were messy and unstable.
She'd just learned that tweaking an infused incantation could cause errors itself.
Best not to mess up the infusion from the start.
The finished quadruped clay doll did walk.
But not straight—it veered left, circling counterclockwise in endless loops.
Seoran felt like she was losing her mind.
*****
After days fiddling with clay by the riverbank in torment.
As the sun set and Seoran returned to her dwelling, she spotted a note stuck in the door crack.
It commended her for slaying the yokai threatening the lower world and normalizing spirit stone mining, awarding her an E-grade reward token.
The next day, Seoran headed to the Reward Hall.
She met the same guide from before.
The guide greeted her warmly.
“Did the Stone Lotus Powder you took last time work out well?”
“Yes, I used it great.”
“Glad to hear it helped.”
They chatted amiably as they reached the E-grade treasure vault.
Seoran asked,
“Any books or items helpful for puppetry training?”
The guide pondered, then shook his head.
“Well, it's such a fringe art...”
“I see...”
After much thought, the guide hesitantly suggested,
“How about this?”
The booklet he showed featured a drawing of a sailing ship.
Titled 'Dwelling and Flight Transformable Magical Tool.'
The 'transformable' part felt a bit unfamiliar.
Seeing Seoran's interest, the guide explained.
“This can serve as a flight tool or a dwelling. Land it and give the command—it shifts from ship to two-story pavilion. And vice versa.”
“The ship turns into a house?”
“Yes, in the blink of an eye, they say.”
“I'll take it.”
Seoran swapped her reward token for the transformable tool right away.
Boarding the ship—now dubbed Transform Puppet Vessel—she gripped the helm.
Her childhood dream of piloting a transforming robot had come true. She felt great.
And she began rationalizing her choice.
One token for both a house and a flight tool—double the value.
Plus, studying the transformation could apply to puppetry.
Totally rational purchase.
The Transform Puppet Vessel was painfully slow.
The convoluted internals for transformation sacrificed power and durability.
Proof of why tool forging wisdom demands stripping to essentials.
The sluggish vessel took ages to reach the riverbank.
Seoran's clay-gathering spot had long lost its pristine beauty.
Crater after crater from rock bomb tests brimmed with failed clay dolls, stacked like terracotta warriors beside the Qin Emperor's tomb.
The merciless eco-destroyer Seoran landed the ship.
Then transformed it into a pavilion.
Gears clicked and gaps yawned as parts slotted in and out chaotically—soon becoming a two-story structure.
Not the flashiest look, but Seoran was pleased.
No more trekking home; she could eat, sleep, and work here.
She'd already stocked dried rations.
Seoran wrestled with clay dolls anew.
*****
Days later, Yi Agum came looking for Seoran.
Summer heat was on, and she wanted to go splashing in the water.
A powerless pedestrian climbing thousands of steep steps to the riverbank? That was true dedication.
Yi Agum dodged pits and clay dolls littering the area to reach the two-story pavilion.
She opened the door like it was home. The living room overflowed with clay dolls, a wooden tub smack in the center.
Peering in, she saw Seoran curled up, sucking her thumb.
Looked like a mental breakdown regressing her to infancy.
“Sister, let's go play in the water.”
Yi Agum cooed sweetly.
She'd been shocked at first, but now it was routine.
Seoran always snapped back soon enough.
“I'm trash. Trash that gnaws at the sect's foundations. Trash who can't even handle basic puppetry. No one will love me.”
Seoran muttered on.
Yi Agum tickled her side.
“What nonsense. Your lover's right here. Accept my love quick. Now get up—we're going splashing.”
But Seoran stayed glum.
Repeated brutal setbacks had snapped her spirit.
She clamped down her twitching lips against the tickles.
Seoran intoned solemnly,
“I don't deserve playtime. You go alone, Agum. I'll stay here atoning.”
Yi Agum squirted water at her with the toy in hand.
“Bamboo water gun too. I made one for you—body only, no effort needed.”
Simple setup: bamboo tube drilled, stuffed with rag on a stick.
Push the stick, water blasts out.
Yi Agum's handmade bamboo squirt gun.
Seoran licked the water from her face, then bolted upright.
Hollow bamboo, high-pressure spray, explosives—piecing clues led to a modern weapon.
No need to obsess over animal shapes.
Just launch it like a missile.
Water rocket—she'd made one in elementary school.
*****