Chapter 787 - 418: Tier Six Puppet (Part 1)
Li Mu placed the purple jade scroll into the storage compartment. With thirty years remaining until the next opening of the ’Spirit Void Blessed Island’, there was no use thinking about it now.
Putting away the purple jade scroll, Li Mu’s gaze naturally fell upon the Taiyin Spirit Wood in front of him, a thoughtful glow appearing in his deep eyes.
This Tier Seven Taiyin Spirit Wood, massive in size and having weathered through tens of thousands of years, exudes a mysterious and ancient aura. It is an extremely rare top-grade spiritual material for refining high-tier puppets.
After last ingesting the Medicine King Spirit Ginseng, Li Mu’s spiritual energy increased significantly, allowing him to advance his Puppetry Technique to Level 7 and gain extensive puppet refining experience. Now, refining a Tier Six puppet is a piece of cake for him, with even the potential to create a Tier Seven Celestial Puppet.
Before this, Li Mu had never personally refined a Tier Six puppet, but he had little concern. His expertise in puppetry has vastly improved, especially after unexpectedly acquiring two Celestial Puppet Spirit Tokens, he spent his free time entering the tokens, undergoing countless trials in the heart palace. Each trial engraved countless deep-seated puppet spirit patterns, familiarizing him with them.
Nowadays, Li Mu’s familiarity with the myriad puppet spirit patterns recorded in the Celestial Puppet Spirit Tokens has reached an advanced level. He understands the function and significance of each pattern and knows how to skillfully combine them to endow puppets with powerful capabilities and life force.
At this moment, looking at the Tier Seven top-grade puppet spiritual material—Taiyin Spirit Wood—before him, Li Mu couldn’t help but feel an itch in his hand, ready to refine it into a high-tier puppet.
His divine thought spun rapidly, already mapping out the refining plan for his first Tier Six puppet in his mind.
To refine a powerful Tier Six puppet, in addition to skilled craftsmanship and exquisite spirit pattern engraving, suitable refining materials and formulas are needed, and the cooperation between various spiritual materials must be flawless to maximize efficiency.
Li Mu delved his divine sense into the Nine Treasures Spirit Pearl, where he stored countless rare materials he had meticulously collected over the years. He carefully selected and matched them, aiming to create a formidable puppet.
The Illusory Spirit Pill, a rare Tier Six Earth Element spiritual material, can bestow the puppet with attributes of illusion and phantom, enabling it to generate various illusions during battle, thereby confusing enemies. Meanwhile, the Golden Essence Crystal, a Tier Six spiritual material containing Sharp Gold and Gold Essence attributes, can significantly enhance the puppet’s attack power, making its attacks unbreakable. Besides these two rare spiritual materials, Li Mu also carefully selected several other materials, each possessing unique attributes and functions, with the goal of perfectly integrating these spiritual materials, harmonizing the Five Elements, thus forming a seamless large cycle of Five Elements Mutual Generation.
Through such refining, the puppet will not only possess formidable strength but also unique attributes and skills. Additionally, it will have powerful abilities like the Five Elements Protection Array and the Five Elements Escape Technique, even able to transform the Five Elements to simulate an aura similar to the body.
Li Mu plans to refine a batch of substitute puppets, allowing his true body to safely hide within the Painting Realm Treasure Mansion during future explorations and operations, with these substitute puppets acting in his stead. This will significantly enhance his safety and the concealment of his actions.
However, refining substitute puppets capable of deceiving high-tier cultivators is by no means a simple task. Such puppets need to convincingly mimic appearance and aura, and more importantly, possess life force and divine soul aura to avoid detection by high-tier cultivators. To achieve this, Li Mu needs to meticulously carve and refine the Taiyin Spirit Wood puppet source core, to fully unleash the spiritual energy of the finished puppet.
...
Time flew by, and Li Mu’s eyes were bright and focused, with the puppet refining thoughts in his mind growing ever clearer. Suddenly, he began to act, drawing from the Nine Treasures Spirit Pearl a Tier Six Gold Spiritual Sword, its blade radiating a sharp golden light. He gathered his True Essence and infused power into the spirit sword, then slashed fiercely at the thick Taiyin Spirit Wood.
"Shoo—"
The spirit sword sliced through the air with a sharp whistling sound, then heavily slashed onto the Taiyin Spirit Wood. Though the Tier Seven Taiyin Spirit Wood was incredibly tough, under Li Mu’s full strike, a deep crack was split open.
Li Mu did not pause, swinging the sword continuously, each strike precisely landing on the crack, until it gradually expanded, finally with a "crack," splitting the Taiyin Spirit Wood in two.
The inside of the Taiyin Spirit Wood revealed a profound black color, with the spirit wood heart faintly visible.
Li Mu controlled the Gold Spiritual Sword, gradually removing the surrounding ordinary wood, gradually exposing the corewood imbued with powerful spiritual energy.
The spirit wood heart is the essence of the Taiyin Spirit Wood, containing extremely dense life force and spiritual energy. Li Mu could feel the strong energy fluctuations emanating from the wood heart, a core material for refining the substitute puppet’s source core.
This segment of the wood heart is half a zhang long, containing concentrated yin power, and ideally, it should be able to carve out seven puppet source cores.
Li Mu’s divine thought gathered into a needle, attempting to contact the wood heart. However, as soon as he approached, he was immediately attacked by its powerful yin power, causing his divine soul to tremble.
Li Mu furrowed his brow. Were it not for his cultivation of the Star Nebula Visualization Method, granting him an extremely strong divine thought comparable to a late-stage Void Refining, his divine soul might have been harmed by this yin power.
Gazing at the Taiyin Spirit Wood heart before him, Li Mu couldn’t help but marvel, truly worthy of being Tier Seven Spirit Wood, the yin power and spiritual energy it contained surpassed imagination. As a material for refining puppets, it is indeed priceless.