On the plain, a lizard several feet long poked its head out from a weathered rock crevice, preparing to start its day's hunt.
But just as it crawled away from its lair, only a few yards from the rock, suddenly from the sandy soil on one side, a yellow monster about a zhang long shot out. Its two front claws and mouth worked together, fiercely pouncing on the lizard and easily snapping its neck. Then it grabbed the corpse and ran wildly in a certain direction.
This monster had four claws, a long tail, and a sharp snout, also resembling a giant lizard. But its entire body was hard, and as it ran, it made a creaking, creaking sound—it was actually a mechanism puppet.
After running for over a li, this monster arrived at the side of a person in yellow robes sitting on a flat stone in meditation. It then dropped the corpse beside the person and ran off again.
The person in yellow robes showed no surprise on his face.
He calmly waved his hand, and the lizard's corpse flew flat to the front of the person, hovering motionless several feet above the ground.
Then the person in yellow robes extended his index finger and pointed it at the lizard's head, muttering incantations.
Soon, the finger he extended began to glow slowly, emitting a faint white light.
As the incantations continued, the white light grew brighter and brighter, gradually becoming somewhat blinding.
"Go!"
When the person in yellow robes saw the timing was right, he gave a low shout.
A thin white line suddenly shot out from the white light on his finger, piercing deep into the lizard's skull from the fingertip. Then the person in yellow robes struggled to slowly pull back, his expression extremely tense and cautious.
Finally, under the careful gaze of the person in yellow robes, the white line pulled out a green light orb from the dead lizard's corpse. It floated lightly, only about the size of a thumb.
Seeing this, the person in yellow robes looked as if he had obtained a great treasure.
His other hand lit up, and a small pale yellow jade bottle appeared in his palm. Then with a soft "puff," several streaks of colorful light shot out from the jade bottle, wrapped around the green light orb, and sucked it inside.
Only then did the person in yellow robes let out a long sigh of relief, like a heavy burden had been lifted, and he wiped the faint sweat that had appeared on his forehead. It was clear that this action had truly consumed a lot of his energy.
"This Soul-Drawing Technique really isn't something a Foundation Establishment early-stage cultivator can easily perform. The success rate is too low—only one success every three or four attempts. Looks like I'll have to spend the whole day here today." The person in yellow robes looked at the small jade bottle in his hand and muttered to himself, a helpless expression appearing on his face.
This person was Han Li, who was practicing the "Grand Derivation Art."
The reason he appeared in this desert wasteland nearly a hundred li from the spirit stone mine was exactly what he had been doing before—collecting the souls of animals. This was something usually only demonic cultivators would do.
The reason it appeared on Han Li was entirely because he had studied the "Puppet True Scripture."
It turned out that after initially studying the puppet refining technique, Han Li discovered that refining puppets not only required materials commonly used for refining magical tools, but also required the souls of living beings to be melted together with the materials to truly complete them. Otherwise, the puppets made would have no spiritual nature and would be no different from ordinary dolls.
The higher the grade of puppet, the stronger the soul refined into it should be. This way, the puppet's effects could be maximized. For this reason, at the end of the "Puppet True Scripture," three spells commonly used by demonic cultivators were attached: the "Soul-Drawing Technique," "Soul-Condensing Technique," and "Soul-Refining Technique."
Among them, the "Soul-Drawing Technique" was the spell Han Li had just performed to draw souls from corpses.
This spell not only had low power and a low success rate, but could also only be used on corpses that had died recently. Compared to those secret demonic techniques that specialized in souls, its power was vastly inferior!
However, the only advantage of this spell was that the required cultivation level was extremely low—it could be used normally at the Foundation Establishment mid-stage. Of course, a cultivator at the Foundation Establishment early stage like Han Li could barely use it, but the success rate wouldn't be very high.
The "Soul-Condensing Technique" was a spell for condensing souls. After all, finding a strong soul wasn't easy. Usually, higher-grade puppets used several, a dozen, or even dozens of artificially created strong souls combined together. Although these souls weren't as effective as naturally powerful souls, they were still much better than using low-grade souls. Therefore, this spell was also essential for learning puppet arts.
The last one, the "Soul-Refining Technique," as the name suggested, was a spell for refining and transforming souls. After all, to be melted together with a puppet, ordinary living souls definitely wouldn't work—they needed to be refined with special techniques.
As for the lizard-like mechanism beast just now, it was the first mechanism puppet Han Li had successfully refined by hand after cultivating the Grand Derivation Art and separating his first independent divine sense. The soul melted into it was just a few yellow weasels he had casually caught.
But before this, Han Li had failed seven or eight times in refining puppets. The success rate couldn't really be considered high.
When Han Li attached his divided consciousness to this puppet and ordered it to move, that feeling was truly wonderful! It wasn't like the erratic feeling of controlling magical tools, nor was it as real as controlling his own hands and feet.
Actually, his divided consciousness and this puppet beast seemed to have a superior-subordinate relationship. He would send a thought, and the puppet would act according to his command, but how exactly the puppet acted still depended on the puppet itself to complete. However, everything the puppet beast saw and heard, Han Li could clearly sense. This made him overjoyed.
Han Li, controlling a puppet beast for the first time, became childishly playful. Besides this elementary puppet beast he had refined himself, he playfully controlled all the slightly higher-grade mechanism puppets he had on him. This satisfied a childhood dream of playing with puppets.
While controlling these puppets' movements, Han Li gradually experienced some limitations of mechanism puppets.
First, these puppets could only operate within a three-li radius of himself. Beyond this distance, the mechanism puppets couldn't move, and his divided consciousness would also fly back. Han Li guessed this was likely related to the maximum distance his divided consciousness could travel from his main body. This could be solved once his cultivation and spiritual consciousness level increased.
Second, these puppets' movements still relied on their own puppet cores to complete. His divided consciousness's instructions only played a leading role. For example, when he told this lizard puppet to catch a rabbit, the puppet had to judge for itself how to pounce and how to chase—his divided consciousness couldn't directly control every movement of the puppet.
Finally, the sensory information these puppets could transmit back was still somewhat blurry. Although he could see and hear everything the puppet could access, the feeling was like looking through a layer of gauze—not real, not clear. Moreover, it couldn't transmit other sensory information like smell and touch.
But for Han Li, these limitations weren't major problems. After all, his puppet arts were just getting started, and having the current effect already satisfied him very much.
As he continued to study and cultivate puppet arts, these limitations would naturally be gradually overcome.
Just like cultivating the Green Yuan Sword Technique—as long as one works hard enough, an iron pestle can be ground into a needle.
Han Li gathered his thoughts and continued to wander in this desert wasteland, searching for suitable prey.
He knew that to refine more powerful puppets, he needed to collect more powerful souls.
And in this desert wasteland, although it looked incredibly desolate, there were actually quite a few hidden spirit beasts and demon beasts.
As long as he searched patiently, he would eventually find suitable prey.