Chapter 42: Puppet Making

I looked at the second pouch, after all, opening the first one was gonna kill me, so I'm better off not to try and pry into ay traps.

For the second pouch, there were no warnings, I actually waited and even 'Asked' the book if there was any danger entailed in opening this pouch, but seeing that there was no such thing, I went ahead.

The pouch only needed for me to infuse it with a little bit of Qi, it didn't matter if it was poison Qi or spiritual Qi, Qi is qi, and the pouch is neutral to the type. So it opened, and the moment I touched upon the rims of the pouch, it gave me a picture of everything within it.

There were thousands of pill bottles and herbs locked in spiritual boxes o preserve them. There was also a small hill of small stones, that gave off powerful spiritual energy. Weapons of all sorts and robes, dress for the cultivator. These robes all had the same color and shape, and the same logo, it was a sect's uniform.

There were also some tokens and the most interesting were cultivation books.

I also found a piece of a map, I pulled it and understood that this was the map to the Poison God's cave.

It seems that all of these cultivators had a piece of the map, they gathered up and made the map as a whole and then went to the cave once they discovered the location of the treasure.

I ignored the rest of the content of the pouch as it didn't have anything else worth mentioning.

I continued looking at the other pouches and found a lot of good stuff, mainly weapons and herbs of the eight to the seventh ranks.

There was only the first pouch that I couldn't open, and it seems that it belonged to the strongest cultivator of the bunch, so I was better off keeping it for when I could open it while keeping my life.

I began by gathering all the items that I thought are worth my time in the Poison God's book, as for some of the weaker weapons and some healing pills, those I placed in a pouch and placed it on my side.

I needed to have a fake pouch for whenever I found myself in trouble it would come in handy to not have all my eggs in one basket.

Now that's done, I went back to the main thing I was after, Puppet Making.

I started by pulling the puppet that was going to kill me back at the spider cave and placed it down.

I had a few tools that I found from one of the cultivators who seemed to have a side interest in puppet making, and pulled them out.

I needed to understand how this thing works, and thanks to my knowledge in the engineering domain. This puppet was going to be a great project.

Once the puppet was out, I began by dismantling it. I needed to understand how it worked and how I can mimic it.

The whole thing was truly difficult to untangle, every screw and bolt had a mechanism to protect it and keep it in place that I had to pop off first before reaching the screws. I managed to unbolt them and removed the head of the torso, and once the head was out, I started by removing the right hand which was the only limb left on its upper body, and then the legs.

Once every piece was out, I noticed that they didn't seem to have any wires connecting them, so how did the limbs receive the command to move?

I figured I needed to dig in deeper. The head didn't look like it had anything special, supposedly it wasn't where the 'brain' was located.

I looked at the chest area, where the tip of the sword was embedded, there looked to be something that was dug in by the sword. I had to open the chest to see clearly.

There was a small hidden plate that covered the screws of the torso, once I removed the screws I was able to open the chest from the side of it, it opened like a box revealing its inside.

There was a golden circle drawn in the chest area, and right at the middle was a broken spiritual stone, though broken and clearly old, it seemed to still have some spiritual energy within it. It would still work as a power supply.

Once I made sure that the jeweled piece was removed from its place, I began by studying the circle. There seemed to have several strange letters and symbols to it. They were organized in different and various shapes around the circle and the pinkish stone was powering them. Yet, with the sword dug in deep, the circle was broken and it seemed that it no longer worked. The sword had cut through a great part of it, leaving it barely readable. If I were to reverse engineer this, I'll need a reference point.

I started by pulling the other puppets and dismantling them, which took the better period of the night, I could even know it was day by the rising temperature in the room. Still, I worked diligently, heck this was bringing me back to my roots, and it was fun. I enjoyed using my hands especially in anything that dabs in precision and details.

Once I dismantled the majority of the puppets I began by writing the symbols on a piece of paper, going from puppet to puppet, and figured out a few things.

Not every circle was an exact match to the other, there were a few differences, especially in the drawings. And the one that had the most complete and detailed and perfect circle was the first puppet I dismantled, it seemed to have the best quality. As for the stones, most of the other puppets had their stones destroyed and were inoperable and unusable.

Once I compared the circles I managed a rough drawing of a complete one in a piece of paper. I studied it and understood some other things.

It seems for whatever reasons these writings were like programming codes and once they are put together they will make a 'brain' of sorts that can execute simple commands. Though I didn't fully understand the exact meaning of every symbol, I could get the gist of them. And with a few repetitions, I could manage to write them.

I began by reproducing the circle on other pieces of paper, and after a long time, I managed to perfectly draw the circle and could duplicate it from memory alone.

Now I needed to see how this drawing could revive a dead puppet. First things first, I'll need a puppet that is in operable condition, and the only one that almost matches this condition is the first puppet, though it has a deep gash in its chest and was missing a limb, I was able to replace them from other puppets.

Now that the chest was perfect and the left limb was taken from another puppet, I put the whole thing together making the puppet. I opened its chest area and carefully wiped away the golden drawing that didn't need more than a wet cloth. As it seems the ink that was used to write this inscription wasn't permanent.

That was a flaw, imagine if the puppet was in contact with water, that'll make it faulty immediately.

And though I don't know which ink I should use to write the circle, I know of a good quality ink that can be used to write talismans. The Drowsy Inkberry. Which was a spiritual herb I got when I was in the purple Cloud Sect.

I took the drowsy Inkberry and followed the instruction of the Poison God's book on how to process it and make it into ink. It didn't need more than a bit of dew water, and a pot which was in abundance in the cultivators' pouches.

After batting the herb and mixing it with water then extracting the liquid that turned black after a short while, I pulled out a brush and began drawing on the puppet's chest.

I completed the circle but left only one small line of it which will serve to close the circuit. That line I wrote in regular ink that can be removed with a splash of water, for reasons that I will explain later.

Once the puppet was done and the circle was completed and closed, I placed one of the spirit stones I had in my book in the center. Though this spirit stone wasn't as powerful as the pink one which was there before, it should be enough to operate the puppet at low power.

Almost immediately the puppet turned to life and it took a slow swing at my face. I dodged it and splashed its opened chest with a cup of water I had readied before.

The puppet immediately stopped working as the line that was written in regular ink had faded.

"Well, I guess there is a kill on sight command in that circle, the problem is I don't know which one…"

"Time for some trial-and-error tests," I said and began by removing one of the symbols, the only way for me to figure out the attack command was by the process of elimination, and only when I eliminate the appropriate symbol would the puppet actually not attack me.

And then I began by replacing symbols, removing them, changing them, rewriting them, and even writing strange gibberish instead of symbols that were already written. This process was going to take a while, and I had a lot of time…