Heaven Armor Puppet
Heaven Armor Puppet — an Earthly Treasure bestowed by the heavens.
Wrapped in pure white spiritual energy inside the body of the knight who called himself Yu Gisa, Gamran was half out of her mind, intoxicated by the overwhelming spiritual power. She was crushed beneath an oath while lost in illusion.
Of course, the oath a mere Qi Condensation cultivator like Gamran had to bear was only the tiniest fraction of what Yu Gisa carried — and even that was crushing.
Despise injustice.
Fight for honor and glory.
The knight's oath that had been suddenly thrust upon her clung to her soul like shackles, and Gamran's cultivation soared. She had been early Qi Condensation at best. In three days she blasted past mid-stage, hit late-stage, and was already knocking on the door of Foundation Establishment.
That she could inherit even a portion of the oath was purely thanks to Gamran's talent, Yu Gisa's Status Window, and the system protections for friendly NPCs.
What honor was, Gamran still didn't know. She was too young to weigh injustice. But glory — that glory was just another word for victory — that was the one thing Gamran grasped fastest and easiest.
"Gloooooory shall be!!!!"
Crack! Crunch!! Every binding spell trying to restrain her body shattered from sheer movement alone. Cultivators forming the encirclement tried to block the fully armored figure of Gamran-as-Yu-Gisa charging at them, only to be blasted away shield and all like they'd been hit by a traffic accident.
"Stop her! No — catch her! An Earthly Treasure is right in front of us! Are you going to let a mere Qi Condensation cultivator snatch it away?!"
Gamran's eyes slid sideways. If she took down that greedy bastard barking orders without fighting himself, maybe this whole fight would end. The thought was short; the action was lightning-fast.
All of Gamran's power was spent simply accepting and supporting the oath, so all she had to do was mindlessly shout the oath and let her body take over.
"Sir Knight! Please watch over me!!!"
"Do I sound dead to you or something?"
Buoyed by the knight's warm, affectionate encouragement, Gamran charged straight at the Golden Core cultivator screaming his head off from one side of the encirclement. The Golden Core cultivator tried to flee. Gamran launched herself into a full-body tackle, locked him in a bear hug, and crushed his physical body to pieces — leaving only his Golden Core to escape.
"Why aren't you killing them?"
"A knight! Does not! Kill the weak! Right, Sir Knight?!"
Watching the friendly NPC Gamran go completely feral on the oath and start spouting idealistic nonsense, Yu Gisa felt his head — no, his soul — start throbbing. So this was what a headache felt like.
He'd tried a little clever trick to freeload a Heavenly Tribulation, and now his friendly NPC had gone completely off the rails. Meanwhile she was fighting by only smashing bodies or tearing them apart without killing anyone — possible only because of the massive equipment gap — and amazingly, Gamran hadn't killed a single cultivator.
And yet her cultivation kept climbing, and Yu Gisa had no idea why, so out of pure curiosity he gritted his teeth and kept watching to see how far she'd go.
If Yu Hee had seen this, she'd have said: Whoa! Look at this newbie auto-leveling off training exp with a bug — she's got potential!
If Yu I-seong had seen this, she'd have said Gamran was deepening her soul by shouldering and adapting to the oath, achieving spiritual growth.
But Yu Gisa — called Heaven Armor Puppet by the other cultivators — had achieved Transcendence through Lotus Transformation, yet not purely by his own power, so he had neither the eye for it nor any intuition or inspiration.
The one trait unique to Yu Gisa, different from Yu I-seong or the main body Yu Hee, was this:
"Our Ran can do whatever she wants!"
He was excessively, almost absurdly positive. Far from hitting the brakes, he'd slammed the gear into max and floored the accelerator. Watching his friendly NPC go completely berserk on the knight's command, Yu Gisa was thoroughly enjoying the auto-leveling show when —
He smiled at the sensation of spiritual energy gathering.
Heavenly Tribulation, baby!
The sky opened and a Heavenly Tribulation came crashing down. A tribulation of the feeblest possible presence. Naturally — it was falling on Gamran as she made her first Foundation Establishment breakthrough from Qi Condensation, so of course it was a level-100 Foundation Establishment-grade tribulation.
The whole point had been to snatch it and experiment with a second Transcendence, so while Gamran was frozen in concentration for her first foundation, Yu Gisa moved the armor himself, reaching out with the pure white gauntlet to catch the falling tribulation —
"Oops."
Out of pure habit, he tapped it — and parried it.
The rebounding tribulation seemed to startle the open sky. It wavered, spiritual energy scattered, and it began to close. Yu Gisa felt a cold sweat he couldn't even produce pouring down his nonexistent brow.
If this happens, she's completely screwed?!
For Gamran, who needed to draw in the rich heavenly spiritual energy of the upper realm for her first foundation, he pulled a top-grade spirit stone from his inventory as a substitute, opened the visor, shoved it in, and let her absorb the spiritual power. She shot straight up into Foundation Establishment. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Thought we were done for for real!
Huh? But why does it feel like the sky's opening again?
Yu Gisa looked up. A far stronger Heavenly Tribulation was falling than before.
What, did it swap in a stronger tribulation because it got parried?
Just in case, he checked on his friendly NPC — and saw Gamran converting the entire top-grade spirit stone he'd shoved in into a Golden Core.
Unlike Yu Gisa, who treated top-grade spirit stones like junk items after hauling too many back from Abyss runs, Yu Hee and Yu I-seong hoarded them carefully. One top-grade spirit stone held more spiritual power than early Nascent Soul Yu Hee. And she'd slammed two of them in — so she skipped right past Foundation Establishment and was turning the whole top-grade spirit stone into a Golden Core, vaulting entire realms in an instant.
Normally her body should have gone boom and exploded. She shouldn't have been able to handle it. Call it a level restriction, basically.
But Gamran was currently equipped with Yu Gisa. And since he'd been Lotus-Transformed by Heavenly Tribulation and listed as an Earthly Treasure, simply equipping Yu Gisa had forcibly awakened spiritual senses on par with a Golden Core cultivator.
The top-grade spirit stone began refining into a Golden Core at high speed. She didn't even need a Heavenly Tribulation in the first place. One top-grade spirit stone had already filled the armor with spiritual power; stuffing in another made it so excessive that if a tribulation hit her now, even with Yu Gisa equipped, Gamran — bearing only a fraction of the oath — would be crushed flat.
"Don't mind if I do."
Yu Gisa snagged the Heavenly Tribulation without hesitation. Of course he did — the whole reason he'd been raising the friendly NPC Gamran from the start was to steal Heavenly Tribulations. Completely natural.
The tribulation thrashed wildly, trying to escape the pure white gauntlet as if to say you're not the target, but it didn't stand a chance. Transcending from a mortal meant he'd already been officially recognized by the heavens. Heavenly Tribulations dealt massive type-advantage damage against cultivators who defied the heavens — but by the same logic, they posed no threat at all to an already-recognized Transcendent mortal.
Yu Gisa began devouring the Heavenly Tribulation whole.
"Ah, still not enough, I guess."
What I-seong swallowed was a Nascent Soul-grade tribulation. This is just Golden Core-grade. Makes sense!
Even after fully absorbing the tribulation, his equipment body only strengthened a little — no dramatic power spike. Disappointed, Yu Gisa suddenly checked on the friendly NPC inside him — and finally realized something was off.
Was it always supposed to take this long?
Knowing nothing about the ecology of ordinary cultivators without Double Speed Mod, Yu Gisa was stuck sitting still, unable to move because of the friendly NPC still forming her Golden Core.
"What the hell are you doing getting captured?! Now I can't kill you!"
"...I see. So surrendering was the answer."
"My experience! My Slaughter Tribulation!"
I burned through 4,987 lines of Tetris stacking, draining my Ocean of Slaughter Tribulation — how am I supposed to recover that?! Natural regen alone is gonna take at least a week!
Even when I forced an attack, Prisoner Mode half-forcibly blocked it, bounced it off, and sent me tumbling across the floor on my face.
Oh for fuck's sake.
"Yu I-seong!!! What the hell are you doing!!!"
I had them right at death's door!
But they're a good kid, aren't they? The kind who burned through their True Name Dharma Treasure and even their lifespan, then recovered in a single hit.
"I don't care how good they are!"
Meaning they're packed with main-body-level fame and Good Karma, right?
When you put it that way, it really hits different.
Whoa, at that level, aren't they basically a national hero?
Listening to the Humanity Clones chatter away, Yu Hee's rage drained in an instant, replaced by a reluctant well, maybe?
"Still don't want to drag a kid back to base, though. Release Prisoner!"
"I refuse. It seems we need to have a talk."
An Elite Boss-rank prisoner has refused Prisoner Release!
I! Don't! Want! To talk!
Watching the Demon Immortal glare and huff before turning away like a sulking child who didn't want to talk, Yeonpa understood — she'd fought cultivators from the Demon Path sects who took the forms of young children, the so-called Demon Child Orthodoxy. That was genuinely the kind of behavior only a child that age would pull.
...Are they actually a child?
The Demon Immortal had only been active for about a hundred years, so even by cultivator standards they counted as a child. Not wrong, really.
As Yeonpa thought this, she sensed a familiar presence and frantically tried to draw a True Name Dharma Treasure or Dharma tool — but everything had already been smashed to pieces, so nothing came.
Behind the Demon Immortal, Mudu's clones appeared. Before Yeonpa could stop or intercept them, they bound the Demon Immortal's limbs with various Dharma tools, and a flood of golden seals slammed down, pinning the Demon Immortal in place.