Chapter 7: Puppet

Boom!

A massive Blaze Condor appeared behind Jiang Liu’s back and unfurled its wings, the flames on its body towering into the sky. The condor practically radiated a majestic, imposing presence.

“Go!”

As Jiang Liu yelled, the Blaze Condor behind him flapped its flaming wings and shot forwards. A massive rhinoceros lowered its head as it charged directly at the condor. Its powerful feet pushed through the air like they were pushing off of solid ground, generating an ominous hum. The entire mountain seemed to wobble slightly.

The Blaze Condor was far weaker than the Iron-Armored Rhinoceros. It immediately disintegrated upon contact. As the rhinoceros continued to charge in his direction, Jiang Liu calmly stretched his hands out. Another flaming condor appeared, grabbed onto his hands, and pulled him into the air.

As a Yang Opening Realm cultivator, he did not possess the ability to fly by himself. However, with the Blaze Condor carrying him around, he was able to fly as he pleased.

As he flew through the air, Jiang Liu unleashed waves of flames at his opponent, causing his opponent to cry out, “This is cheating!”

Jiang Liu laughed loudly. “My Blaze Condor is far weaker than your Iron-Armored Rhinoceros in terms of pure strength. Of course I would use my ability to fly to my advantage.”

“Psh. If we were allowed to use Soul Armaments, I would have been the first one to knock you out of the sky,” his opponent yelled, unwilling to show weakness.

Jiang Liu’s opponent was called Wang Yuankun. He was also one of the seventy-three soldiers from before who had become Su Chen’s Sword Servants.

“We’re comparing Aspects right now, not Soul Armaments,” Jiang Liu cackled with delight.

“Once I reach the Light Shaking Realm and learn to fly on my own, this Blaze Condor of yours will be useless.”

“Perhaps I will have learned a second Aspect by then, or even more,” Jiang Liu laughed.

The two of them bickered without end, full of appreciation and happiness towards their newfound abilities.

Because Aspects had a certain degree of compatibility, each person possessed a different Aspect. Jiang Liu’s body was more suited towards the use of fire-type Aspects, so he had chosen the Blaze Condor to complement his Wildfire Sword Technique. Actually, it was quite powerful, and it’s close-quarters strength was not actually that weak. It was just that the Iron-Armored Rhinoceros’s defenses were simply too high and suppressed its power. Even so, if Jiang Liu were to continue advancing in this direction, it was possible that he would be able to rely solely on the Wildfire Sword Technique’s flames to suppress the Iron-Armored Rhinoceros.

The compatibility of the Aspects depended on many variable factors. This was a completely new problem for Su Chen; if it wasn’t for the aide of the Origin Bone Scepter, he might have had to perform research for a long time and explore many different paths. This time, however, he had basically stepped onto the right path immediately.

Even so, however, improving the Aspects was going to be a long and laborious path. It was impossible for him to ever perfect it in a short period of time. The combination of the various Aspects alone could produce countless possibilities to explore; if he was to use the Origin Bone Scepter to search for answers repeatedly, perhaps even Su Chen would go broke.

Thankfully, Su Chen didn’t feel the need to do so.

He chose an even simpler method: constructing the Aspect Hall.

To the left of the Heaven-Upholding Peak was the Flying Wings Peak due to the fact that there were two large rocky outcrops protruding from the peak, one on each side, which looked kind of like wings.

The Aspect Hall was placed at the top of the peak.

This hall was specifically used to store records of the Demonic Beast Bloodlines that had been stripped from the beasts.

Upon walking into the large hall, anyone would feel like they were being pounced on by thousands of beasts at once, as the walls of the hall were covered in the images of all kinds of different Demonic Beasts, some howling at the sky, some flying through the sky, some swallowing clouds and blowing out fog, some causing rain to descend, some locked in a fierce battle, and some fleeing from battle. Their expression ranged from anger to panic to fear to shock to many others. There was no lack of variety amongst these beasts.

These drawings were not just drawings, but real Demonic Beast Aspects.

These Aspects were formed from mixing the Beast’s soul with the bloodline that had been stripped from them, before finally imprinting them on a wall primarily constructed out of Origin Crystal to create such a mural or a portrait. Any disciple that came to the Aspect Hall could choose one Aspect to study and obtain power from.

The Aspect that was chosen would be absorbed and disappear, but others could be caught to take its place.

The Aspect Hall became yet another possible reward after the Immaculate Cultivation Technique, the Origin Conducting Tools, and the Flaming Phoenix Theurgy Art. Its value was similar to that of an Origin Conducting Tool, but was slightly less valuable than the Flaming Phoenix Theurgy Art.

From this day onwards, any disciple could obtain an Aspect by making an appropriate contribution, selecting a compatible Aspect for themselves.

The disciples, through their personal experiments, would gradually refine and perfect these Aspects, saving Su Chen from a lot of work.

This was a key point to the development of this cultivation technique, and also one of the reasons for developing an organized system.

For this reason, Su Chen didn’t didn’t choose any Aspect yet. He felt that his understanding of Aspects was not deep enough yet, and he wanted to wait until he felt more comfortable with them to make a choice. At that point in time, the vial of Desolate Beast blood he still possessed would become useful.

In the meanwhile, Su Chen continued his research as per usual.

This time, he was researching the Origin Substances contained in the small black stones.

Those black stones contained a huge mix of Origin Substances. Su Chen had already managed to isolate Shadow, Dragonfish, and Bewitching Origin Substances from them. Each had their own unique kind of effect, but they also had their own drawbacks. The Dragonfish and Bewitching didn’t need to be mentioned; one could only be used in water, while the other was used for stirring up affection. Even though the Darkness Origin Substance was powerful, it was quite rare in this world, making it impossible to incorporate into a conventional Origin Skill. This problem hadn’t been resolved until Su Chen had managed to open up a connection with the Darkness Door.

Su Chen hoped to obtain a more conventional source of power to further improve his own strength.

Su Chen once again relied on the Origin Bone Scepter to obtain his answer.

“So it’s actually something like that.” A strange expression appeared on Su Chen’s face.

However strange the answer was, Su Chen still began to follow the method provided in the prediction.

First, he created a certain unique kind of solvent and poured it on the black stone. The black stone’s Origin Substances began to peel off due to the effects of the solvent, falling into the water.

Su Chen pulled out the black stone and placed it to the side, then began to combine the new solution with the old one.

Under the perceptive gaze of his microscopic eye, the new Origin Substance’s transformation was completely seen by Su Chen. Once he could confirm that the opportune moment had arrived, Su Chen suddenly cut open his wrist and squeezed a few drops of fresh blood in.

Immediately, the solution began to bubble and expand within the vial, shattering it and continuing to expand until it was roughly the same size of Su Chen. It wiggled incessantly like a chunk of meat as four limbs began to slowly take shape, along with a head. Finally, a human-like figure emerged.

Next, eyes, ears, a nose, and a mouth began to form as well until a clone of Su Chen appeared.

However, this Su Chen’s expression was dazed and motionless. It looked just like a wooden puppet.

Su Chen knew that this was because the puppet Su Chen had no soul or consciousness.

This thing was basically an empty puppet that looked just like him. It had no consciousness nor intelligence, and even moving was incredibly difficult for it.

Even so, this was already quite the impressive invention.

There were all kinds of strange Origin Skills scattered across the Primordial Continent, but camouflage and cloning Origin Skills were quite rare. Those techniques usually involved the principles that governed the rotation of the earth, making it impossible to use them so casually.

Most Origin Skills on this planet were primarily focused on strength and power, while utility Origin Skills were rare. Otherwise, Su Chen couldn’t possibly have relied on just his camouflage Origin Skill to traverse Ravager territory as he pleased.

The clone in front of Su Chen was something he had developed by mixing his blood with that unique Origin Substance. The principle behind it was that this Origin Substance, with the support of an adequate amount of Origin Energy, could extract the biological information hidden in the cells in the user’s blood, then turn into a replica of that target based on that extracted information.

In other words, by relying on such a technique, Su Chen could not only clone himself; as long as he had fresh blood on hand, he could clone other people as well.

In actuality, this was not a cloning skill but a puppet skill.

These kinds of humanoid puppets could be imprinted with a consciousness, giving them the ability to think and move, as well as access to all the user’s abilities.

Yes, all of their abilities; however, these abilities were generally weaker.

For instance, this human puppet had been created by duplicating the cells in a few drops of Su Chen’s blood many times over, using the information in those cells to differentiate in a well-established pattern. However, it could not duplicate the energy contained in that blood, so this puppet’s actual strength was roughly one ten-thousandth that of Su Chen’s.

Su Chen gently tapped his finger on the human puppet, immediately tearing a hole in the puppet. Fresh blood actually began to flow out of that hole, but the color of the blood was incredibly faint because it was highly diluted.

Su Chen carefully separated a strand of his own consciousness and infused it into the body of the puppet. Even though it was just a strand, this action brought Su Chen quite a bit of pain.

The puppet’s eyes flashed a few times, and its entire demeanor suddenly changed as it became incredibly mobile.

Intelligence didn’t decrease even if the consciousness was smaller, which was why this puppet was not dumb. However, its consciousness power was much lower. Su Chen’s baseline consciousness power was around a thousand units, while this human puppet’s consciousness power was only around five units. It could be said that any consciousness-type attack would be extremely effective against it.

If someone were to use a bewitching technique on it, it was even possible for this puppet to turn on Su Chen.

In addition, thinking for so long had exhausted quite a bit of Su Chen’s mental energy, which was also a reason why the clone possessed such low consciousness power.

Su Chen said, “Let me see you unleash a fireball.”

Actually, even if he didn’t speak, the other Su Chen could understand his thoughts. After all, their souls were connected. However, Su Chen still preferred to speak; a puppet was still a puppet, not even a clone of himself, let alone his duplication. Because of this, the puppet Su Chen chose not to talk because there was no point in doing so.

The puppet raised its hand and began to gather energy. A wisp of flame sparked into being above his hand before fading without a trace.

This was the strength that this puppet could unleash.

If Su Chen were to tell the puppet to unleash the Flaming Phoenix, it would have been impressive if it was even able to produce a Flaming Sparrow.

Su Chen wasn’t disappointed. He continued, “Take a few steps.”

The puppet walked back and forth a few times. Its stride was identical to Su Chen’s.

Su Chen smiled slightly. Regardless of how strong it was, at the very least it looked exactly like Su Chen from an outward standpoint.

In other words, he could at least use this to trick someone else, even if it was practically useless in battle.

In addition, there was no saying that it was completely useless in battle, since all he needed was to use a bit more of his blood.

If that was the case, would a puppet created from some of the blood that he had stockpiled possess even more power?

As soon as this thought flashed into his mind, Su Chen immediately thought of a bunch of different possibilities, all of which he needed to do some more research on.

Bang!

Just as he was lost in thought, the puppet suddenly shattered, turning into a cloud of smoke before disappearing.

When the smoke had completely disappeared, all that remained were a few drops of blood on the ground and the leftover solvent.