Puppet (3)
'That should give me about seven more uses.'
Cheon Woo-jin tucked the talisman back into his robe.
A talisman-treasure was a sealed extraction of a magical treasure's power, and so its uses were strictly limited.
Once the stored power was spent, it degraded into a worthless scrap of paper.
An ordinary talisman-treasure could be used about ten times before it ran dry.
He had used it once when he first robbed it, and once more inside the Dark Soul Secret Realm... which meant he had roughly seven uses left.
'I've always been the type who could never bring himself to use limited-use items...'
He had been hoarding this particular talisman-treasure all along.
Part of it was the usage limit — but part of it was the need to hide the fact that he'd taken it at all.
The talisman-treasure had been prepared by Dongnyu Merchant Group for its dealings with the Hwangju Neungnyeong Sect, and behind that transaction stood the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect.
But when Song Pyo had hired him to sabotage the deal, Cheon Woo-jin had stolen the talisman-treasure for himself.
Which meant that if he were ever seen using it, he risked becoming a target of the Taiyi Inverse Principle Sect.
He had kept the theft hidden even from Song Pyo, so using it in front of witnesses was never an option.
'But if I use it while keeping my identity hidden, there's no problem at all.'
Right now, he was nothing more than an unknown cultivator wielding the power of Samadhi True Flame.
He had to conceal his other magical implements and spells anyway.
So actively exploiting the talisman-treasure was the correct play.
"H-how is he producing flames like that...!"
"A Core Formation cultivator?"
Down in the valley, the cultivators struggling against the puppets and the mechanical contraptions stared at Cheon Woo-jin in sheer astonishment.
A mysterious figure who had appeared out of nowhere and unleashed firepower at the Core Formation level.
From where they stood, it could only inspire awe.
"..."
Cheon Woo-jin glanced at them once, then immediately moved on.
A moment ago, he had adjusted the direction of the Samadhi True Flame precisely so that they wouldn't be caught in it.
Thanks to that, the puppets that had been locked in close combat with them were still standing, untouched by the flames.
With their puppeteer dead, the puppets could only act on their own now — but it would still take the cultivators considerable time to shake them off.
Attacking the headquarters of the Blood Puppet Sect Branch while they were occupied — that was Cheon Woo-jin's plan.
'All I need is the Yin-Yang Wondrous Pearl. The Cheongun Trading Company's cargo is their problem to sort out.'
He spent the talismans he had prepared in advance without hesitation, driving his movement speed to its limit.
He ran into sentry puppets along the way, but shredded them with blades launched from Sword-Controlling Talismans.
They were nothing but low-grade puppets, so he didn't need to burn any powerful spells to punch through.
Advancing at that pace, a building soon came into view.
Without hesitation, Cheon Woo-jin charged straight in.
'Mechanical contraption!'
The instant he smashed through the window, he heard the grinding of gears turning.
Cheon Woo-jin twisted his body on pure reflex and flung two talismans from either hand.
Protective barriers bloomed on both sides, deflecting arrows that came shrieking in from left and right.
"Who the hell is this...!"
A human voice rang out from across the corridor.
A scar-faced man had spotted Cheon Woo-jin and was charging at him.
Judging by the way he held his sword, he was a sword cultivator.
Foundation Establishment, Peak Stage. A genuinely formidable cultivator.
For all Cheon Woo-jin knew, this man might be the master of the entire branch.
A Foundation Establishment cultivator couldn't be killed with the talismans he had prepared.
But wasting the talisman-treasure of the Crimson Sea True Flame Cannon on a single man like this would be a squander.
So instead, Cheon Woo-jin snatched out the hidden dagger from his robe and hurled it.
"Hah...!"
Lee Neuk-gyeol, the Foundation Establishment sword cultivator, scoffed and batted the dagger aside with his blade.
His face wore the mockery of a man who couldn't believe such a feeble attack had even been attempted.
Then that face twisted in an instant.
"K-ghk...!"
The moment the dagger took the impact, venom burst from within it.
An ordinary poison, he could have neutralized by circulating his spirit qi.
But he could do nothing at all before blood came spewing from his lips.
A Peak Foundation Establishment cultivator should have been able to endure almost any poison without an antidote.
"What kind of poison is th—... urgh!"
What Cheon Woo-jin had used was none other than the venom of the Dark Furnace Great Centipede.
He had harvested it back in the Dark Soul Secret Realm while dismantling the beast's corpse.
He had refined half of it into an antidote through the principle of using poison against poison — but the other half he had kept precisely for deploying poison arts like this.
The venom of a Core Formation demonic beast like the Dark Furnace Great Centipede was far beyond what a Foundation Establishment cultivator could withstand.
Lee Neuk-gyeol died in agonized convulsions.
"Branch Master! What on earth is going—... hggk!"
Other cultivators came running to help Lee Neuk-gyeol, only to inhale the poisonous miasma still lingering in the air and double over, vomiting blood.
Cheon Woo-jin, meanwhile, was perfectly fine.
He had swallowed an antidote the instant he threw the dagger.
When using poison, one had to prepare meticulously to avoid poisoning oneself.
Cheon Woo-jin had never once forgotten that.
'Now then...'
His spirit qi spread out in every direction like a spider's web.
He mapped the building's interior as he went, searching for where the cargo might be stored.
'That direction, most likely.'
Cheon Woo-jin moved along the path from which Lee Neuk-gyeol had come running.
There he found an enormous warehouse.
Peering inside, the first thing that caught his eye was wooden blocks of every conceivable size.
They looked like materials for constructing or maintaining puppets.
'Nothing but wooden blocks... so this place really does hold nothing but low-grade puppets.'
The Blood Puppet Sect only used wood for its low-grade puppets.
Anything from mid-grade and above was built from other materials.
'And over there...'
Beyond the wooden blocks, he could see timber of a different kind.
Wooden crates used for transporting cargo.
'Storing puppet materials and looted merchant goods in the same place... this branch clearly isn't run in any systematic fashion.'
It could hardly be an important branch within the Blood Puppet Sect.
After all, in the game, he had never once encountered the Blood Puppet Sect in this region.
The Blood Puppet Sect that Cheon Woo-jin remembered was far more powerful, far more intricate, and... drenched in madness.
No — calling it an organization wasn't even accurate.
The Blood Puppet Sect was, in practice, a sect composed of nothing but the Blood Puppet Ancestor Gu Do-ryun and his puppets.
The cultivators he had just fought were nothing more than tools for managing the puppets.
In any case, very little of Gu Do-ryun's madness seeped into this place.
It had to be a branch that Gu Do-ryun barely spared a thought for.
That thought put him slightly at ease.
'But where on earth is the Yin-Yang Wondrous Pearl?'
Before his eyes, Cheongun Trading Company crates were stacked to the ceiling.
Opening them one by one to search for the pearl would take far too long.
It would have been convenient if he could locate it by spreading his spiritual power like a web and sweeping the area — but regrettably, there was no reaction at all.
Perhaps... the Yin-Yang Wondrous Pearl wasn't here at all.
'It could have been dropped somewhere during the plundering...'
Neither Seo Seol-ryeong nor the Cheongun Trading Company had directly confirmed that the pearl was here.
So it was entirely possible the pearl simply wasn't.
'Still, I have to look.'
Cheon Woo-jin closed his eyes for a moment.
The Yin-Yang Wondrous Pearl was unquestionably a valuable item.
Which meant it wouldn't have been stored in some ordinary crate.
Don't search for the pearl — search for a special container.
With that thought, he focused his mind.
'Most of these crates are standard-issue from the Cheongun Trading Company. But...'
He felt it.
One box stood out from the rest.
Cheon Woo-jin approached the spot where it sat.
It was buried beneath other crates, but even a sideways glance told him enough.
It was a box made of some unidentified jet-black wood.
With its faint sheen, it resembled ebony.
'When my thread of spirit qi touched it, I felt the qi being drawn in.'
Qi being reflected back — that he knew. But this sensation of qi being swallowed was entirely new.
It seemed to be a wood with extraordinary properties.
'Then...'
Cheon Woo-jin cleared away the crates stacked on top.
Then he lifted the lid of the black wooden box.
"...!"
The moment it opened, a dense, concentrated aura surged up into his face.
That alone told Cheon Woo-jin his guess had been right on the mark.
'This box was made to conceal the presence of something important.'
Inside the box lay something wrapped in white cloth.
He peeled the cloth away, and a single 'bead' revealed itself — white and black interwoven like the pattern of the Taiji.
'The Yin-Yang Wondrous Pearl!'
A pearl in which the principles of yin and yang were cunningly entwined.
A rare spiritual treasure that, even in the game, could only be obtained by combing every auction house in the land — and it was right before his eyes.
'With this, I have all six Foundation Establishment treasures!'
Green Willow Spring Leaf Herb.
Crimson Root Fire Dragon Ginseng.
Yellow Earth Mountain Spirit Ganoderma.
White Leaf Autumn Spirit Herb.
The Golden Core of the Dark Furnace Great Centipede.
The five elemental treasures of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water were already secured.
And now... the foundational treasure, the Yin-Yang Wondrous Pearl, was in his hands.
With all six Foundation Establishment treasures gathered, he could finally create a Foundation Establishment Pill.
'Everything else is prepared. All that's left is to return to the eastern territory, and I can attempt Foundation Establishment.'
Barely a year and a half had passed since he first set foot on the path of cultivation.
A place where dozens of years of frantic effort should have been required before one could even reach out a hand toward it — and he was entering it in just a year and a half.
Strength clenched into Cheon Woo-jin's fist of its own accord.
He simply had to keep climbing the stairs from here. That conviction hardened, iron upon iron.
'So...'
He had to survive this place.
With that thought, Cheon Woo-jin turned his head.
"Quite the peculiar fellow, aren't you?"
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The sound of wood striking the ground had been echoing without pause for some time now.
The warehouse entrance was completely blocked by a mass of puppets that had swarmed in from the surrounding area.
The one standing at the very front had a face on its head.
It hadn't been painted with a brush or carved with a knife — spirit power welled up from inside the puppet, shaping the eyes, nose, and mouth.
"No matter how I look at you, you're Qi Condensation... at most Qi Condensation Peak Stage, I'd say. Concealing your strength meticulously, are you?"
A voice was flowing out of the puppet's mouth.
A hoarse, rasping voice — the sound of aged vocal cords.
"Tsk tsk. Low-grade puppets truly can't manage proper sensory organs. I can't see a single thing worth seeing. If only I had a mid-grade puppet here, I could have gathered a little more information."
"..."
Cheon Woo-jin bit his lip.
What he was looking at was merely a face surfacing on a block of wood — and yet he felt as though he were staring at the face of a real person.
The mad visage of the Blood Puppet Ancestor Gu Do-ryun, a face he had grown sick of seeing within the game.
Right now, Cheon Woo-jin was conversing with Gu Do-ryun, who sat far away at the Blood Puppet Sect's main headquarters.
"Young whelp."
The puppet-borne Gu Do-ryun called Cheon Woo-jin a brat without preamble.
"Your name. What is it?"
"My name?"
Cheon Woo-jin faltered for a heartbeat.
He had planned to disguise himself as someone else, but he hadn't thought to prepare a name.
Still, since things had come this far, it seemed best to declare a false identity.
"My name is..."
Suddenly, his own clothes caught his eye.
He had dyed them with an agent earlier, and they now carried a reddish hue.
"Hyeok."
"Hyeok? As in hyeokhyeok — resplendent?"
A hyeok that blazes bright.
A character formed of two 'red' radicals joined together — a word expressing crimson radiance.
"That's your name? Don't tell me your surname is Hyeok as well?"
"Who knows. Perhaps both my family name and my given name are Hyeok."
"EhahahahaHAHAHAHA!"
Gu Do-ryun abruptly burst into laughter.
The puppet's shoulders shook with it.
He laughed long and loud — and then, without warning, cut the laughter dead.
"Little whelp. Let me have a look inside your skull, shall I?"
Did he mean he wanted to see what the structure of Cheon Woo-jin's brain was like, that he dared behave so insolently?
Or did he mean to examine his dantian and confirm his cultivation realm?
Either way, Gu Do-ryun fully intended to split open Cheon Woo-jin's skull and inspect the contents.
Thud, thud, THUD-THUD!
The hundreds of puppets clogging the entrance hurled themselves at Cheon Woo-jin all at once.
It was a tidal wave of maddened puppets.