Chapter 158: Deja Vu (Second Update)
The owner seemed to be puzzled by Luo Xuanyi's stillness. He tilted his head and said again, "Sir?"
The owner's figure instantly overlapped with the shadow outside in Luo Xuanyi's eyes. Luo Xuanyi responded nonchalantly, walked to the counter, placed the wooden sign on the counter, and pushed it in the direction of the owner.
He casually asked, "This is my first time in your store. What do you sell?"
The shopkeeper shook his fox tail. Luo Xuanyi had never seen a half-transformed demon cultivator before.
"I sell talismans." The shopkeeper put the wooden plaque engraved with the word "puppet" into her sleeve. Strangely, the moment she put the wooden plaque in, Luo Xuanyi seemed to see it suddenly "flattened," and the thickness, originally only a finger's width, suddenly became narrower.
It was like turning from an object into a piece of paper, that light and fluttering feeling. Like a person wearing a white paper mask, it had no thickness and was terrifyingly thin.
Luo Xuanyi had a sense of déjà vu. She'd had that feeling when she saw the shadow, and now, witnessing the wooden sign being transformed into paper, the feeling was impossible to ignore.
Her first thought was Rong Gui, which was a bit like Rong Gui's method of collecting things and turning them into gold paper. However, gold paper was always a thin, round piece of paper, only with different patterns outlined in gold thread. And unless the gold paper was returned to its original shape, the object or person sealed in it would be unable to move.
And the paperization in front of her seemed to be closer to another operation in Luo Xuanyi's memory.
The shop owner had no idea what was going through Luo Xuanyi's mind at that moment. She simply continued to ask Luo Xuanyi dutifully, "Which kind of puppet-making talisman do you want?"
"?" Luo Xuanyi was a little surprised. "Isn't there only one kind..."
Wait, it seems that True Lord Bei Lian is still developing a new puppet?
What was going on? Could the evil cultivators behind the Ghost Market be connected to the Zang Yao Sect? Had True Lord Bei Lian's puppetry, which didn't require blood relatives, truly been successful? Luo Xuanyi remembered that when she was still in the Zang Yao Sect, True Lord Bei Lian's research should have only produced failures.
This information immediately drew Luo Xuanyi's thoughts back to her conversation with the shop owner. This valuable information was a pleasant surprise. She tried to dig deeper: "Are there any new puppet talismans? How do they work? How much do they cost compared to the previous ones?"
The shop owner felt like she had a chance when she heard this, and immediately pricked up her fox ears and moved closer to Luo Xuanyi: "It's a little more expensive than before. But it's much simpler to use! However, this is the latest consultation, this..." She shook her hand from her sleeve and showed two slender fingers.
Luo Xuanyi knew she was asking for money, but she was a bit confused about how much spirit coins to give. However, she had already pretended to be experienced and asked, so if she revealed her true intentions now, she would probably be suspected.
Luo Xuanyi quietly used her spirit power to investigate the shopkeeper, discovering that while her cultivation level was slightly higher than Shadow's, she was still in the Foundation Establishment stage. Killing her would be easy. The coins could always be recovered, so there was no need to be stingy. Luo Xuanyi happily tossed out a storage bag containing over two thousand spirit coins.
"Don't be so stingy. Just say it."
The shopkeeper opened the storage bag and was stunned. Luo Xuanyi clearly heard the sound of slurping saliva, but because of the white paper mask on the shopkeeper's face, she couldn't see his face. She could only see him holding the storage bag in his arms in an extremely exaggerated manner and nodding at her frantically.
It seemed like they had given too much money. This was natural, after all, that was all the "savings" Luo Xuanyi had snatched away.
But later on, money will not be important to Luo Xuanyi at all.
She just urged the owner to speak faster.
"Ahem. This, this new puppet talisman, it looks like this." The owner seemed unable to speak. She even pulled out a drawer boldly, pulled it out with extremely fast speed, and slammed the puppet talisman on the counter.
Originally, he was just going to talk about the puppet talisman, but now he even took out the talisman and showed it to Luo Xuanyi. This is money.
As Luo Xuanyi sighed inwardly, the shopkeeper pointed at the talisman and introduced it to her: "Look, the new talisman is called Puppet Army, and it's the perfect choice for military strength. Compared to the previous two starting bloodline puppets, the Puppet Army only needs one puppet talisman to refine each puppet."
"The puppets forged by the Puppet Army don't require blood relatives to form bells to control them. All you need to do is store a portion of your hair or spiritual energy into them and they can be manipulated at will. The puppets also retain some self-awareness and can implement strategies according to the situation. They can even learn martial arts."
Luo Xuanyi picked up the Puppet Army talisman and took a closer look. The owner didn't seem to be worried at all that she would run away with the talisman, and continued to praise the advantages of the Puppet Army.
"The biggest improvement in the puppet army compared to before is that the skin of these puppets has become extremely hard. There is no need to capture or purchase physical cultivators to refine them. You can use a large number of ordinary people to create an indestructible puppet army!"
"It's said to be indestructible, but in fact it can only defeat mortals, right?" Luo Xuanyi pretended to be disdainful and threw away the puppet army talisman, but she was surprised in her heart.
She had carefully examined it, and although this talisman differed slightly from the puppet talisman she remembered from True Lord Bei Lian, it still shared the same basic principles. Furthermore, the shopkeeper's description of the various advantages of the puppet army only confirmed her suspicions.
However, is this the finished product of the new puppet that True Lord Beilian wants to create? For a cultivator, this kind of military situation can be solved with just a little effort.
"This..." The shop owner looked stricken, clutching the storage bag tightly in his hands. "After all, if you're pursuing military power, you need a large quantity, so it's inevitable that the puppets won't be as good as those made by physical cultivators. But it's also difficult to find physical cultivators and their relatives to make puppets."
Luo Xuanyi glanced at her. Now was not the time to act rashly. She should wait until she had checked a few more shops and found the location of the cultivator behind the scenes. After causing chaos, she could snatch the talisman away in one fell swoop. Luo Xuanyi smiled at the shopkeeper, "I won't buy the puppet talisman, but you can take the money."
"Thank you, sir!" The owner seemed to want to jump out from behind the counter and hug Luo Xuanyi for a moment. Luo Xuanyi then noticed that she was not very tall, and her short legs were exposed when she fluttered.
She probably had to stand on a stool to get her head above the counter. Luo Xuanyi thought about it and took advantage of her happiness to ask, "But do you know where there are any shops selling monks? It's really troublesome to search one by one."
"Oh, that's easy! Go to the end of this street, turn right, and you'll see a house with a birdcage on its sign. Inside that house is a slave market."
When the shop owner waved at her, Luo Xuanyi attached her own deathly aura to her, turned around and walked to the end of the street as she said.
Sister Yi's thinking has already transitioned to muddying the waters + buying for free. The more chaotic it is, the easier it is for her to strengthen her strength. She's stepping on the accelerator all the way towards Chaos Evil.
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