Chapter 370 The Puppet Master

Zhong Cai raised her eyebrows slightly and said confidently, "What kind of elixir is it that makes you go to such lengths to order it from me?"

If it were just a regular level-six pill, the level-six alchemists in Wuxiang Palace would definitely prioritize supplying this Sky King Dou, and he wouldn't have to come all the way here to queue up for outside help.

Cui Mao sighed, then smiled and said, "Zhong Danwang is right, it is indeed a rare and uncommon elixir."

Zhong Cai looked up, indicating that he should speak clearly.

Cui Mao then explained in detail.

“Zhong Danwang may know that I am a cultivator with both wind and water attributes. When I use the swirling wind to cultivate secret techniques, the pills I need are specially made Spring Breeze and Drizzle Pills. If my two attributes were balanced, it would be easy to handle. But since wind is greater than water, I need the help of an alchemist to adjust the formula of the pill to determine the amount of spring breeze and drizzle.”

Zhong Cai understood: "You want me to refine a Spring Breeze and Gentle Rain Pill that suits you."

Cui Mao nodded: "That's right." He paused, then added, "If King Zhong Dan has any other suitable pills for me, that would be fine too."

After a moment's thought, Zhong Cai readily replied, "Currently, none of the formulas I have are suitable for you. However, once I finish refining these formulas, you can try them if you have any ideas while I'm researching the Spring Breeze and Gentle Rain Pill for you. If I can't figure it out, I'll just give you a few Spring Breeze and Gentle Rain Pills."

He knew very well that Cui Ang probably wanted him to develop a new elixir. After all, the Spring Breeze and Gentle Rain Elixir could only suit Cui Ang temporarily. With each advancement in Cui Ang's cultivation of the secret technique, the required elixir might need slight differences, and the elixir formula would have to be adjusted, which was really troublesome.

Zhong Cai is somewhat interested in this matter. Whether to practice it or not, and how to practice it, we'll see when the time comes.

Although he already has some ideas now, there are quite a few of those previous lists that he is interested in.

It's not Choi Subaru's turn yet.

Upon hearing Zhong Cai's agreement, Cui Mao was overjoyed and immediately took out a mustard seed bag and presented it to Zhong Cai.

“King Zhong Dan, this is a deposit for now. There will be a generous reward after the matter is settled.”

Zhong Cai took the mustard seed bag and scanned it with her spiritual sense—

Wow, quite generous. No wonder he's a Level 6 Battle King.

Seeing that Zhong Cai accepted the gift without showing any dissatisfaction, Cui Mao felt even more relieved.

After that, all we need to do is wait. With Zhong Danwang's strength, it shouldn't take too long.

·

After this agreement was made, Cui Mao became even more enthusiastic towards Zhong Wu and his wife. Although most of the food and wine had been used up, he sent people to bring more of the finest food and wine, and even brought out his most treasured wine.

Zhong Cai drank a cup and immediately felt a surge of heat rush up to him, so hot that his face turned a little red.

Seeing this, Wu Shaogan patted his chest and took out a bottle of honey spring water that he had prepared beforehand to moisten his chest.

Zhong Cai quickly gulped it down, and the sweet, refreshing spring water washed away the smell of alcohol, which made him feel much better.

Upon seeing this, Choi Subaru repeatedly apologized.

Zhong Cai waved to him, took another sip of wine, and quietly nudged Wu Shaogan.

Wu Shao chuckled dryly, then took out another gourd and carefully brought it to Zhong Cai's lips.

Zhong Cai held onto the gourd and took several more big gulps.

After that, he would alternate between a sip of wine and a few sips of honey-infused spring water. Cui Mao watched in utter disbelief—he had never seen anyone drink like that before!

But since Zhong Cai liked it, Cui Mao did not hesitate to bring out other fine wines for Zhong Cai to enjoy.

Zhong Cai continued drinking the honey spring water to sober up, but winked at Wu Shaogan.

Wu Shao chuckled dryly and tossed a gourd towards Cui Mao as well.

Cui Mao took it casually, opened the stopper, and immediately smelled a very sweet aroma of wine.

He immediately realized that this must be a wine of exceptional quality!

At this moment, Zhong Cai was already a little drunk.

Wu Shaogan spoke on his behalf, saying, "The Hundred Flowers Honey Wine tastes pretty good." He paused slightly and said, "It's best to drink it when you have some free time, otherwise even with Brother Cui's strength, he'll need to sleep for at least a day and a night before waking up."

Cui Mao had never heard of this kind of fermented rice wine before, and he immediately became interested and couldn't help but feel a little itchy. However, considering the mission he had come here for, he reluctantly gave up and decided to find a safe place to drink it when he got back.

·

This Hundred Flowers Honey is made by mixing honey produced by mature bees with spring water infused with tartrate.

Perhaps because the ancient city has many rare and high-quality medicinal herbs, the spirit bees grow very quickly. In the past few decades, the little queen bee has grown to the peak of the seventh rank.

It laid many bee eggs, which grew generation after generation. Currently, the hive has all kinds of spirit bees from the first to the seventh level. Yes, in addition to the little queen bee herself who is about to break through to the eighth level, there are also more than ten spirit bees of the seventh level.

Therefore, the honey produced so far ranges from level one to level seven.

Even their own family couldn't finish drinking it all; a huge amount was sent to the land of sentient beings to be sold.

·

Zhong Cai also tried using this honey as a medicinal ingredient to refine elixirs and research some new elixirs, etc.

Overall, things went smoothly. Through this honey, at least three level-five pills and four level-six pills were developed.

However, there were some setbacks—for example, Zhong Cai's original plan to use royal jelly to make medicine and try to refine a new type of elixir that could stably lead to enlightenment was not accomplished.

Creating a pill that can enhance comprehension is extremely difficult.

When Zhong Cai was at the fifth level, he spent a lot of time and finally discovered that the honey brewed by the queen bee at this level was not enough to be the main ingredient of this type of pill. If it was used as an auxiliary ingredient, the main ingredient would also need other natural treasures with a certain enlightenment effect... Even if this idea succeeded, the cost-effectiveness would be very low and it would cause a great waste of natural treasures.

That approach is something Zhong Cai could research, given his talent, but there's no need to promote it. Once he's researched it, that's good enough.

At level six, Zhong Cai uses level six queen bee honey.

The result is similar to that of Level 5.

However, Zhong Cai is fairly certain that once royal jelly reaches level seven, this approach can be put to the test.

Before this, Zhong Cai had been using this honey to make pills related to enhancing and purifying Xuan power.

As for enlightenment...

Let's try our luck with the royal jelly.

·

At this moment, Wu Shaogan added, "If you like the drink, you can come back to Lingxian Sect to get more in the future."

Cui Mao smiled and cupped his hands in greeting: "Then I won't stand on ceremony with you two."

Today's gathering can be considered a formal acquaintance.

Wu Shaogan smiled slightly, then subtly stroked Zhong Cai's face, wiping away some of the fine sweat.

Choi Subaru: "..."

It wasn't exactly "without a trace".

Cui Mao pretended to be blind and smiled as he spoke a few more words to Wu Shaogan.

The group ate and drank for at least two hours.

At that moment, a breath of air, like a surging tide, suddenly drifted in, filled with endless moisture.

Slightly tipsy, Zhong Cai looked up and saw a long, reddish-yellow dragon winding its way across the sky. Its head was so large that it was almost in front of him, while its tail continued to meander into the distance.

Behind the dragon's head, several men and women of good appearance sat cross-legged.

The one in the lead was petite and delicate, looking like a young girl who hadn't fully grown up yet, probably around thirteen or fourteen years old in appearance alone. But upon closer inspection, one would find that her eyes weren't lively, but rather revealed a strange charm, not the pure and innocent look of a typical teenage girl... She was probably not young anymore.

At this moment, she waved to Cui Mao and the others, greeting them, "King Cui, King Wu, King Zhong! I'm sorry to have kept you waiting!"

Sure enough, he recognized all the people present.

Zhong Wufu, Cui Mao, and others stood up and greeted the girl.

Cui Mao spoke first: "Lord She, how have you been?"

Zhong Cai and Wu Shaogan had both greeted this person.

In an instant, the crimson-yellow dragon flicked its tail, and its enormous body suddenly transformed into a ray of light, disappearing into the brocade pouch at the petite girl's waist.

The young girl slightly opened her arms, gently bent down, and gracefully landed on the deck of the treasure ship.

Zhong Cai glanced at the girl.

He didn't know her at first, but when he heard the title "She Douwang", he remembered her.

It turns out to be She Jiaojiao.

Despite her delicate and beautiful appearance and name, She Jiaojiao is an extremely terrifying puppeteer in Tianlong Mountain—or, more accurately, a puppet manipulator or puppet fighter.

His ranking on the Level 6 Sky Ranking is: sixteenth.

·

Puppet masters are skilled at gang fights, and there are also good and evil types.

Needless to say, those who follow the evil path mostly plunder the puppets they control from cultivators of the righteous path. They use various means to kidnap or kill cultivators who are as powerful as possible, and carefully refine them into puppets with their own thoughts but completely unable to control themselves, leaving them to be manipulated by the evil path.

Of course, the evil sects will not treat other evil sects as their own. They will not let go of anyone they can get their hands on, and will also turn them into puppets.

The righteous path, however, is much more disciplined.

Most of the time, they capture powerful enough savage beasts and turn them into puppets.

Then there are some rare beasts that have done things that harm humanity—such as those that have eaten people.

The rarest of all are cultivator puppets, but those are usually made from the bodies of deceased relatives, friends, teachers, and fellow disciples—this requires their consent before they die before their bodies are used. Unlike the evil path of refining living people, the righteous path's corpse puppets have a contract mark on their foreheads, which represents the consent of the corpse's owner.

But regardless of whether they are on the righteous path or the evil path, in order to control multiple puppets at once, they actually need to use a secret method to separate a wisp of their own primordial soul and enter the puppet's body to combine with the puppet's own spirituality. Only after a long period of adjustment can they control it as if it were an extension of their own arm.

Separating one's primordial soul is extremely dangerous. Not only does it cause terrifying pain, but it can also lead to the primordial soul disintegrating and causing death during the separation process. Therefore, countless puppeteers have died from the act of separating their primordial souls.

To increase their chances of survival, puppeteers usually only begin splitting their souls at the peak of fusion—because at this point, the primordial soul has already fused with the accompanying treasure, making it more stable.

Moreover, each wisp of primordial soul can be used to control a puppet. Therefore, in order to become more powerful, the choice of puppet must be very careful, and it must satisfy the puppeteer in all aspects.

Once the puppet's central core is destroyed, repairing the puppet requires a large amount of refining materials, and after repair, a new soul fragment must be sent back into it—the original soul fragment is hidden in the central core, and after it is destroyed, the puppeteer loses this wisp of primordial soul, which will have a significant impact on the complete primordial soul.

Furthermore, before reaching the peak of fusion, puppeteers must cultivate the method of soul division and attempt to communicate with spiritual beings using secret techniques, which is extremely energy-consuming. Unless they are exceptionally talented, they often find it difficult to balance other cultivations, which results in most puppeteers being much weaker than martial arts cultivators of the same level in the early stages.

·

What makes She Jiaojiao so terrifying is that she also started splitting her soul after reaching the peak of fusion, but in less than a hundred years, she actually split five strands of her primordial soul!

In other words, she has survived five horrific ordeals and can now manipulate five puppets with great skill to fight alongside her.

Of course, these puppets may be of a very high strength level, but they will only release corresponding combat power according to the changes in She Jiaojiao's strength. Even an eighth-level puppet can only show a very strong sixth-level strength when She Jiaojiao is building her palace.

Even so, every time she makes a move, it's as if there's one version of herself, plus five other powerful beings who are stronger than her, have more diverse attack methods, and can coordinate with her to attack her enemy.

Unlike the secret techniques avatars of Wu Shaogan and Chao Hanxiao, these puppets can continue to fight even when their stored energy is depleted, thanks to their powerful bodies. Each puppet also has different abilities, and may even be able to unleash a weakened version of its most powerful attack in life.

When the puppets fight, they use far more tricks than the secret techniques that can be used by the avatars.

Puppet masters have another advantage: because they have experienced the pain of splitting their souls early on, any cultivator who can live to the Spirit Transformation Realm will no longer face the challenge of splitting a wisp of their primordial soul into the Treasure Light Cauldron—they will easily overcome it.

Therefore, as long as a puppeteer grows up, doesn't die halfway, and doesn't have bad aptitude, he will at least become a Spirit Transformation Realm expert. In most cases, because he has suffered so much before, he will have a greater chance of entering the Nirvana Realm than ordinary cultivators.

With She Jiaojiao's level of patience, it's likely that in the later stages, as long as her primordial soul energy is sufficient, she could gradually separate hundreds or even thousands of primordial souls and control them all—the higher her realm, the more terrifyingly powerful she becomes.

·

The moment She Jiaojiao appeared, her demeanor immediately drew attention.

She rushed onto the deck with a warm smile, and Choi Subaru, as the owner of the treasure ship, naturally treated her warmly, quickly pouring her tea—this puppeteer didn't drink alcohol at all.

She Jiaojiao downed her tea in one gulp, quite nimbly, and spoke with a hearty tone. She turned directly to Zhong Cai and asked, "May I ask, King Zhong, do you still have any top-grade level six Soul-Replenishing Pills for sale?"

For puppeteers, pills that work on the Yuan Soul are indispensable, as they are related to their lives and their strength. They hoard as many as they can.

Seeing a pill master like Zhong Cai, She Jiaojiao certainly wouldn't miss the opportunity.

Zhong Cai smiled and shook her head: "They're all sold out long ago."

She Jiaojiao then asked, "I wonder if Zhong Danwang would accept my orders?"

Zhong Cai also told her what she had said to Cui Mao before.

She Jiaojiao behaved similarly to Cui Mao, handing over the deposit directly and also indicating that she didn't mind waiting a little longer.

This business is much easier than Cui Mao's. Zhong Cai can directly refine it and sell it to She Jiaojiao at the market price.

·

Now, the recruitment envoys of the four level-nine forces in the Western River Region have all arrived. Among them, Zhong Cai is undoubtedly just accompanying his Daoist partner. The real competitors are the War God Temple, the Wuxiang Palace, and the Tianlong Mountain.

Both Wuxiang Palace and Tianlong Mountain went all out in preparing their treatment for this trip, determined to outdo the other families. After all, they had been given detailed instructions beforehand, precisely because of the Zhong Wu couple.

Many powerful families initially vied to recruit the couple, but none of them put in the full effort. As a result, they could only watch helplessly as one of them quickly rose to the top of the martial arts rankings and the other to the top of the young alchemist rankings... What's even more terrifying is that once they broke through in strength, they quickly rose to the top of the rankings again at the sixth level.

The achievements of Zhong Wufu made the other forces that failed to recruit him back then regret their actions. As a result, for many years afterward, whenever they competed with other forces for talent, they would keep increasing their offers.

To make the most of every top talent.

This time, Zhong Cai's arrival made Cui Mao and She Jiaojiao somewhat wary—because they both knew that given how much Zhong Cai cared for Wu Shaogan, she always let Wu Shaogan eat pills like snacks. This time, since Wu Shaogan came personally to recruit people, Zhong Cai would certainly not hesitate to allocate some top-grade pill refining quotas to attract young geniuses.

The allure of top-grade elixirs is truly immense.

·

As the recruitment was about to begin, the smiles on the faces of the previously harmonious "friends" became fake.

Cui Mao stood up, cupped his hands in greeting, and said, "Gentlemen, shall we go over now?"

She Jiaojiao smiled and said, "Of course. However, since we are only going into the city together, there is no need to borrow Brother Cui's treasure ship."

Zhong Cai and Wu Shaogan both nodded: "From now on, it's up to each of us to rely on our own abilities."

Cui Mao remained calm: "Then, please, everyone."

Zhong Cai and the others also said, "Please."

The next moment, the figures in front of Cui Mao disappeared.

·

High in the sky, Zhong and Wu had already landed on the back of a majestic and magnificent roc.

The giant roc spread its wings and hovered high in the sky, without immediately taking off.

On one side of the giant roc, a golden dragon reappeared, still winding through the air, its body incredibly majestic.

The treasure ship of the Wuxiang Palace on the plain has disappeared—in its place stands a majestic lion rising from the clouds, its fur gleaming like flowing gold, both powerful and dazzling.

Zhong Cai looked at the golden dragon, then at the golden lion... He nudged Wu Shaogan's waist.

Wu Shaogan ate a meal and immediately burst out laughing.

He quickly relayed a few instructions to Qingyu.

In an instant, the giant roc's feathers, which were a gradient of blue and dark gray, suddenly fluttered slightly. After a short while, all the iron-gray hue disappeared, and it turned into an extremely pure and bright blue.

At first glance, it exudes a vibrant and beautiful springtime charm.

When it flaps its wings, it's like it's fanning a ray of spring sunshine, appearing exceptionally fresh and gentle.

The giant roc itself has a very smooth and beautiful physique. Despite its huge size, it does not appear clumsy. Instead, when its wings are outstretched, it shows a sense of lightness and agility.

This beauty is in no way inferior to that of the dragon or the golden lion.

In comparison, the soft blue color of the feathers makes them feel more approachable and warm.

Originally, She Jiaojiao and Cui Mao thought their mounts were quite adorable, but after seeing how beautiful the Qingpeng ridden by Zhong Wu and his wife was, they were slightly disappointed—if it were slightly less elegant, they could have gained a slight advantage.

That's such a pity.

·

Immediately afterwards, the three mounts each displayed their unique abilities.

Some wagged their tails, some fluttered their wings, and some rose up on the clouds...

They all displayed a rather powerful aura.

The mounts were incredibly fast; in less than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, they had already arrived at the city gates of Tianyong City.

The families within the city had already sent people to guard this place—if it weren't for the fact that this matter was unrelated to their families, the heads of the families would probably be here waiting for the guests from the ninth-level power.

Each family was guarded by those of high status and strength, who accompanied the head and elders of the second-rate Zang family.

When the three colossal beasts arrived at the city gate, their terrifying aura was overwhelming, almost making it difficult for the cultivators to breathe, and rendering them completely unable to react appropriately.

By the time they came to their senses, the three giant beasts had already entered the city.

Not long after, the Zang family arrived almost simultaneously.

"Wu Shaogan of the War God Hall and Zhong Cai of the Spirit Immortal Sect have come to pay their respects."

"Cui Mao of Wuxiang Palace..."

"She Jiaojiao of Tianlong Mountain..."

Several voices, neither hurried nor loud, were clearly heard by every cultivator nearby, and also powerfully transmitted into the Zang family's territory.

The head of the Zang family quickly came out and greeted them with clasped hands: "Esteemed envoys, please come in!"

Wu Shaogan and the others did not look at the Zang family head. After nodding slightly to him, they all looked at the young boy walking behind him.

She looked no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, and was already quite pretty at such a young age.

In his arms was a chubby baby wearing only a red bib—less than 100 days old.

The boy who was about to grow up was Zang Qing.

At this moment, he looked up in amazement at the three giant beasts perched high in the sky, seemingly unable to take it all in.

The chubby baby's eyes darted around, looking back and forth at the male and female cultivators leading the giant beast, seemingly very curious.

Suddenly, the baby's eyes met another pair of curious eyes and stopped looking away.

·

The person making eye contact with the baby was Zhong Cai.

He thought to himself, "This kid... is quite chubby."