70: Planetary War Puppet

The Spiritual Qi turbulence within the Immortal Cave had subsided.

Han Yuexi's sword returned to its sheath.

A wisp of dark hair, severed by the strong wind, slowly drifted down.

At her feet, the Late Golden Core Stage assassin had become a cold corpse, with a single bloodstain on his brow, his Divine Soul and vitality precisely erased.

The hideous black iron Puppet had its limbs severed, lying sprawled on the ground.

The core Formation in its chest still flickered with an unwilling red light, the last gasp of a dying beast.

Han Yuexi's gaze fell on Lu Yuan, filled with inquiry.

From the beginning to the end of the battle, this man hadn't even risen an inch from his meditation cushion.

He merely watched the broken Puppet silently, his eyes focused, as if that was the most precious treasure in the world.

Lu Yuan extended his hand, his fingertips touching the Puppet's cold metal casing.

The runes engraved on it were intricate and complex, possessing a cold and pure mechanical aesthetic, distinct from the Cultivation system of the Eastern Continent.

His gaze finally settled on the core drive Formation, which had been cracked by Sword Qi.

No further comparison was needed.

This Puppet was exactly as depicted in the diagram from the "Elementary Puppet Crafting" manual in his hand.

It was a living, breathing entity, filled with the aura of slaughter and death.

A huge trap targeting him, its outline horrifyingly clear.

Lu Yuan's fingertips gently caressed the yellowed pages of the book, and a cold voice silently echoed in his mind.

"Do you wish to perform a Sandbox Simulation of the future possibilities of 'Cultivating "Elementary Puppet Crafting"'?"

"Estimated cost: 1000 karma points."

"Yes."

Without the slightest hesitation, Lu Yuan confirmed the command.

Countless fragmented images exploded and flowed incessantly in the depths of his consciousness.

In the images, he sat cross-legged, following the methods described in the book, injecting his own Spiritual Qi and a wisp of Divine Soul into a brand new Puppet core.

The core was successfully lit.

A powerful Puppet was born, its combat power comparable to a Golden Core Cultivator.

He controlled the Puppet, defeating one powerful enemy after another, gaining immense benefits, and his karma points grew rapidly.

The images shifted.

As he invested more and more Divine Soul, his connection with the Puppet deepened, almost becoming one with the machine.

Until one day, he was in seclusion, attempting to break through to a higher Realm.

The Puppet, which had always been loyal, suddenly glowed with a fierce red light in its eyes, and actively pierced a strand of energy, emitting an ominous black Qi, into his brow.

He was unable to resist.

All the Divine Soul he had personally invested became chains guiding a coordinate, pinning him in place.

In the final scene of the simulation, his body remained in a meditative posture, his eyes empty and lifeless, his vitality completely severed.

And the Puppet slowly turned around, bowing in a perfectly standard servant's salute towards the Void Realm.

The Sandbox Simulation ended.

Lu Yuan's expression remained unchanged, but the temperature in the Immortal Cave seemed to drop by a few degrees.

This book, from beginning to end, was a meticulously packaged toxic asset with long-term returns.

It promised powerful strength, but its ultimate goal was to find suitable "Materials"—a Cultivator with a sufficiently strong Divine Soul and expertise in Formation calculations—to refine them into a top-tier humanoid Puppet with autonomous intelligence.

He, Lu Yuan, was the perfect "Material" in their eyes.

The patience and ruthlessness of the force behind this scheme far surpassed any opponent he had encountered before.

Lu Yuan's thoughts raced.

Puppet crafting in the Eastern Continent had long since declined, becoming a minor Dao, making such a mature and malicious system impossible.

The only place capable of orchestrating such a long-term scheme and delivering this "bait" into his hands could only be from one location.

That desolate land where Puppet crafting was developed to its extreme, even rivaling the mainstream Cultivation system.

The Western Desert.

Lu Yuan took out a communication jade slip from his Storage Pouch and injected Spiritual Qi into it.

On the other end of the jade slip was Su Qing, who was far away in the Western Desert, carrying out a mission.

"Su Qing."

His voice transmitted through the jade slip, calm and clear.

"Investigate an assassin organization called 'Shadowless Tower'."

"At the same time, at all costs, collect all information related to Puppet crafting Sects in the Western Desert, especially those reclusive ones."

"Specifically, a force that might be called 'Thousand Mechanisms Sect'."

Su Qing's voice quickly came from the other end of the jade slip, without question, only two brief and powerful words.

"As you command."

Interrupting the communication, Lu Yuan put the damaged Puppet into his Storage Pouch and carefully placed the "Elementary Puppet Crafting" back in its original spot.

He sat down cross-legged again, closing his eyes.

Silence once again filled the Immortal Cave.

He was waiting.

Waiting for the enemy on the other end of the fishing line to notice the movement of the bait.

Three days later.

In the Western Desert, a desert city named "Bloodwind City."

Su Qing, with her face veiled in black gauze, entered "The Omniscient," the city's largest intelligence black market.

She wasted no words, directly placing a small bag of blood crystal sand, emitting strange energy fluctuations, on the counter.

This was one of the spoils Lu Yuan had left behind when he set up the trap in the Beast Valley.

In the Eastern Continent, it wasn't worth much.

But in the Western Desert, with its mixed Spiritual Qi and scarce resources, it was a hard currency that even Golden Core Cultivators would covet.

A sharp gleam burst forth from the black market owner's cloudy eyes.

Half an hour later, Su Qing, carrying a thick stack of intelligence, disappeared into the sandstorm.

"Shadowless Tower," the Western Desert's top assassin organization, rumored to have members who are Puppet Great Masters, coming and going without a trace.

And "Thousand Mechanisms Sect" was a legendary name, said to have been the supreme overlord of the Western Desert a thousand years ago, but later vanished for unknown reasons.

Most intelligence pointed to one conclusion: the current Shadowless Tower was very likely a secret continuation of the Thousand Mechanisms Sect.

Su Qing compiled the intelligence and sent it back to Lu Yuan.

Soon, Lu Yuan's new instructions arrived.

It was a fragmented ancient map, pieced together from the intelligence, and a recalibrated coordinate.

The instruction was only one sentence.

"Find this place."

Following the map's guidance, Su Qing delved deep into the heart of the Western Desert, traversing the deadly "Black Sandstorm"-ridden no-man's-land that even Golden Core Cultivators dared not easily venture into.

Seven days later, a deserted ancient city, completely buried under yellow sand, appeared at the edge of her vision.

Countless massive, rusted mechanical components of the entire city were exposed, making a wailing sound as the wind and sand blew over them.

The City of Puppets.

The name on the map perfectly matched the scene before her eyes.

Following Lu Yuan's instructions, Su Qing found a collapsed temple in the center of the city.

Three thousand meters underground, she discovered a completely sealed, unimaginably grand underground workshop.

When she used Spiritual Qi to light up the workshop's illumination Formation, even her Dao Heart, which had long been as firm as a rock, couldn't help but tremble violently at the sight before her.

Tens of thousands of Puppet remains were neatly arranged in every corner of the workshop, silently narrating its past glory.

And in the very center of the workshop, a colossal humanoid Puppet, ten zhang tall, sat quietly on the immense metal throne.

It was entirely crafted from an unknown dark golden metal, its lines filled with a sense of destructive power.

Although half of its body and one arm were broken, the terrifying pressure, as if it could tear apart heaven and earth, still made one's Divine Soul tremble, daring not to look directly.

Ancient war puppet.

Su Qing approached step by step, and finally, she found her target on the Puppet's massive body.

It was a fist-sized Legacy crystal, seemingly composed of countless golden data streams.

When her hand touched the crystal, a vast, immense, and unimaginable stream of information, transcending endless space, surged directly into Lu Yuan's mind within the Qingyun Sect's Immortal Cave.

At the forefront of the information was the highest Profound Truth of Puppet crafting.

The ultimate creation it described was not merely a humanoid Puppet.

Instead, it was to refine a world's earth pulse as its body, and stars as its energy core, to create a planetary-level war puppet capable of conquering in the boundless star Realms.

Lu Yuan's eyes slowly opened.

For the first time, those eyes, always as deep as an ancient well, reflected a kind of light beyond cold machinery, a light called "ardor."

He looked towards the Qingyun Sect's Forbidden Ground in the back mountains.

That dilapidated ancient grand Formation, and some of the core Formation structures described in this Legacy information, actually shared an astonishing similarity.

An incredibly bold, even insane, plan took shape in his mind.

To use this ancient war puppet to repair that ancient world-protecting grand Formation.

Then, to use this power to hunt down those... Shadowless Tower assassins who considered him prey.