With matters settled, Tang Jie and Shentu Yuan started to design a brand-new puppet. As they had to consider the merger of the ghost guard with the puppet, Ye Xiao joined them. As for Ximen Changfeng and Ice Phoenix, they were responsible for purchasing materials. It had to be said that if this puppet were completed, their chances of success in the Inkcloud Abyss would be much greater.
From the moment this team of three was established, Ye Xiao and Shentu Yuan began to argue about which would have the main role in the puppet, the ghost guard or the puppet.
One design after another was drafted and thrown away. After countless arguments, brimming with venom and criticism, Tang Jie finally slammed the gavel and decided on the final design.
This was the most expensive puppet he had ever designed, and even though he already had the principal materials of the Mother Cloud Essence Metal and the High Antiquity beast puppet cores, it still took at least four million in materials. Tang Jie already had around five hundred thousand in materials, but he had to buy the remaining 3.5 million. Fortunately, Tang Jie hadn't finished spending all his spirit coins yet, and he had some treasures that he could sell. Even so, Tang Jie had to venture into fiend territory and hunt large numbers of fiends for their fiend pellets three times in order to get enough money. Alas, he couldn't get anything from Gu Pinzhang for these adventures.
This vast amount of resources served as the foundation of immense strength. According to the designs of Ye Xiao and Shentu Yuan, when this puppet was complete, it would be just as strong as Tang Jie, and with the potential to grow.
Original-body Tang Jie was scary enough. A puppet who was just about as strong as him together with the avatar Tang Jie would even be enough to contend against a Violet Palace cultivator.
Next, everyone threw themselves into the puppet creation process.
The green Astral Winds above Dongjin Pass served as the forging location for the trio, the world as the furnace and the Astral Winds as the flame. Tang Jie was responsible for the melting, every day taking the Mother Cloud Essence Metal and heading into the Astral Winds.
Shentu Yuan was responsible for taking the melted material and modeling it.
Puppet modeling wasn't to be underestimated. It was more than just getting the form right.
The Dao of Puppetry treated the body as a world, one that needed to contain the formations and seals. It required a broad perspective so that while modeling, one left enough space to carve the formations. The balance was hard to achieve—too much space would cause waste, but too little space would cause a deficiency. One also had to ensure that the body remained balanced and well-proportioned so that its movement wasn't impeded. As for aesthetics, that was a minor matter. More important was the usage of the materials, structuring them such that the materials for the body and the materials for the formations complemented each other rather than worked against each other. There were myriad materials in the world, so one had to carefully plan everything out before actually starting the work. This required a master with abundant experience, and Tang Jie's previous experience with Wei Tianchong was amateur in comparison.
Ye Xiao was responsible for modifying the ghost guard so that it could perfectly merge with the puppet. The techniques of the Ghost Dao represented their own profound field. Ye Xiao was already an outstanding talent, and in order to guarantee success, Tang Jie even let him look at the Ghost Classic. Ye Xiao's attainment in the Ghost Dao grew thanks to it, and he quickly managed to deduce the solution to many problems that had previously vexed him. Because of this, the modifications to the ghost guard went even more smoothly.
While the two were experts in their respective fields, Tang Jie had a cursory understanding of them, so other than melting the metal, he also assisted the two, offering his opinions and helping out with a few tasks.
In this way, the three of them formed an excellent team, the two each being responsible for their respective sides and Tang Jie mediating between them. After half a year of hard work, they finally completed this unprecedented puppet.
This was a humanoid puppet around four meters tall. This massive body had taken up quite a lot of resources, and in order to complete it, Tang Jie had even thrown his deformed suit of Mother Cloud Essence Metal armor into the Astral Winds. In this way, he had essentially used up all of his Mother Cloud Essence Metal other than the metal used in the axe for the creation of this puppet.
This puppet had an inner part and outer part. The inner part had the ghost guard serving as the skeleton for the puppet, and all that was exposed of it were its eyes, two ghostly blue flames. It looked as if the ghost guard was wearing a giant suit of armor.
The other part of the puppet was a dark red, thanks to the addition of large quantities of Bloodvein Steel. There were also many green runes. These were formation lines that connected the entire body, transferring energy to every part of the body.
Worth noting was that none of the formations were exposed on the surface. Through an exquisite and complex method, the formations had been embedded into the puppet and could be controlled by the ghost guard within. The greatest advantage to this was that the damage suffered by the puppet in an intense battle wouldn't break the formations and affect the puppet's operation. This was one of the important functions of the ghost guard.
The outer form of four meters was large enough to hold many formations. The Grade 3 combat puppet Tang Jie had once worked on had only been able to fit seven spell formations despite his best efforts. But this time, the three of them together, with the ghost guard's cooperation, had managed to carve 108 formations into the puppet. These 108 formations formed their own cycle, complementing each other and creating far more than 108 variations. It had basically any ability one might think of.
Besides that, they used the Yin Yang Cycle Formation as the base for the dual core system. The two High Antiquity crystal cores allowed the puppet to fight for longer, and they could also be used in unison to unleash a sudden burst of power.
Finally, there was the real core, the ghost guard.
As the controller of the puppet, the ghost guard could be considered to have a relationship to the suit akin to Iron Man's to his power suit, though with its own twist. This was because the ghost guard could also infuse the outer shell of the puppet with its power, even granting it its abilities. And in the core of the ghost guard was a pearl.
The Soul Refining Pearl!
This pearl that Tang Jie had obtained long ago was enormously powerful. It was just that its insidious attributes made Tang Jie unwilling to use it. But in Ye Xiao's hands, it proved to be very useful. This person cultivated the arts of the Ghost Dao, one of which could absorb refined souls to make the user stronger. Ye Xiao carved this formation into the puppet, linking it to the ghost guard and then installing the Soul Refining Pearl.
In this way, whenever the puppet killed someone, the Soul Refining Pearl would absorb part of the soul and refine it, after which it would be transferred through the formation to the ghost guard so that it could grow stronger.
The puppet itself couldn't grow, but the ghost guard could, and in a way, the stronger the ghost guard became, the stronger the puppet became.
This was why this puppet had so much potential to grow.
In the past, while the ghost guard could grow stronger, as it couldn't cultivate on its own, its rate of improvement was very slow. But with the soul refining formation, it only needed to kill now to get stronger.
Once the puppet was complete, Tang Jie had a battle with it. As he had predicted, the puppet was extremely strong. Its body made from Mother Cloud Essence Metal was difficult to damage through normal means, and this wasn't even considering the numerous defensive formations Shentu Yuan had carved into it. Even a barrage of more than one hundred punches from Tang Jie's original body was only able to make a small crack. But once Tang Jie stopped attacking, the puppet's recovery formation quickly repaired the damage.
Meanwhile, the attacks from the puppet were particularly brutal. Other than incredible defense and power, the puppet was also extremely fast, its large body not clumsy in the slightest. Enhanced by the ghost guard's Ghostshadow Traceless Step, it was like a gust of wind or a bolt of lightning, so fast that it was difficult to catch or react to.
Besides powerful close combat capability, the ghost guard now commanded an impressive array of spells, no longer an existence similar to a body cultivator. It now seemed more like the merged Tang Jie.
Regrettably, the ghost guard couldn't use its strongest move, the Thousand Ghost Shadows, through the puppet. But it made sense. After all, the thought of several dozen puppet illusions being created through the Thousand Ghost Shadows frightened even Tang Jie.
But Ye Xiao swore that this was simply because the ghost guard's body was still somewhat weak. So long as the ghost guard absorbed enough souls, it would eventually be able to create puppet afterimages.
Regardless, the results from practical combat showed that Tang Jie couldn't beat the puppet unless he merged or used Dao power. They had truly created a terrifying killing machine.
This was the strongest puppet Tang Jie and Shentu Yuan had ever seen!
Shentu Yuan and Ye Xiao were also excited to have taken part in the birth of this formidable puppet. Although the puppet belonged to Tang Jie, the two of them had put in so much effort that they already regarded the puppet as they would their own child.
As a form of thanks, Tang Jie taught the rest of the Ghost Classic to Ye Xiao and gave his remaining low-quality High Antiquity crystal cores to Shentu Yuan. Despite their low quality, as the art of making them had been lost, they could still be considered to be priceless treasures, and Shentu Yuan was very satisfied.
The team of five now had another powerful card up their sleeve, and they were brimming with confidence toward their adventure.
Several dozen days went by in the blink of an eye.
On this day, Ice Phoenix came to Tang Jie and told him the news: the Inkcloud Abyss was about to open, and it was time for them to move out.
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