His expression was not too good.

“What did you do?” Zuo Mo probed.

“None of your business!” Pu Yao’s expression was dark, his tone unfriendly.

Seeing the sign, Zuo Mo knew that he couldn’t get anything out of Pu Yao and went on his own business. Ge was busy.

He started to make puppets for the Stone Door Beach that would soon enter his hands. He had deep confidence in Gongsun Shidi who was a battle crazy maniac. He didn’t know exactly where the confidence came from. When he thought about it, Gongsun Shidi was just a beginner, but Zuo Mo’s confidence in his did not lessen because of this.

“Was this the a psychological shadow from having lost in War Chess several times,” Zuo Mo muttered in his heart.

There were many ways to make puppets. The most commonly seen and crude method was to use paper and bamboo to make puppets. High level used things like corpses. After death, corpses would be buried in the ground. Yin and corrosive energies would permeate for long times, and birth some qualities. But in the eyes of large sects, they still avoided using corpses. However, that was not difficult or hard to find. They only needed a suitable corpse, forge it for a bit, and the power would be significant.

Most of the corpses used would rarely be human since no one wanted their own corpses to be ruined after death. They were mostly animal corpses.

However, Zuo Mo didn’t have the territory needed to find so many animal corpses. The corpse method was not suited to him. He decided to make the simplest paper puppet, with bamboo as the skeleton, the paper as the body. Paper puppets could not be greatly relied upon, but they should manage in mining.

Zuo Mo decided to make one to try first.

He took out a second-grade Rain Consort Bamboo and second-grade yellow paper. After a while, he finally folded out a paper person. This was the first time he had done this, so his skill was crude, and the paper figure looked very awkward. Zuo Mo did not care. He took up the cinnabar brush, and patiently painted characters on the paper person.

After a while, the body of the paper person was covered in squiggly characters. Zuo Mo put down his pen in satisfaction.

Bending down and pushing it in front of his face, he opened his mouth and blew a breath full of ling energy onto the paper person. The cinnabar seals suddenly lit up. The paper person creaked as it moved, and swayed as it struggled to stand up.

The paper person was about one chi high. As it walked, the creak of the paper and bamboo was endless. Zuo Mo’s mind moved. The paper person awkwardly raised both of its hands, making him worry that it would scatter into pieces at any moment.

Woosh!

A belt of palm-sized yellow paper suddenly flew out of the arm of the paper person. Different than the awkwardness of the paper person, the yellow paper that flew out was very nimble, accurately grasping a fist-sized rock. The paper belt shrunk back with the rock and flew in front of the paper person.

Interesting!

Zuo Mo looked at the paper puppet and found it more interesting. He controlled the paper puppet to do all kinds of movements. After a while, the paper person plopped to the floor, and would not get up no matter how Zuo Mo urged it. Zuo Mo hurriedly inspected the paper person and found the ling energy of the paper person had been used up.

This couldn’t work. If they stopped after just this little bit, the paper puppets didn’t have any value at all. He needed a way to increase the ling power of the paper puppets. Zuo Mo stared at the paper puppet in front of him, thinking inside.

What he used were all low level materials. They could not store much ling power. This was a problem with all low level puppets.

Zuo Mo suddenly thought of the jingshi talismans. His eyes lit up. Jingshi talismans used jingshi as the source of ling power and could be used in the long term! After thinking it through, he felt that this characteristic of jingshi talismans fit his needs.

He wasn’t going to depend on these paper puppets to fight or kill. They were only doing some hard labor. A steady source of ling power would completely fulfill their needs.

After thinking it through, he instantly made modifications. Inside the body of the paper puppet, he used thin bamboo to weave a cage that jingshi could be held and then added new characters along the bamboo skeleton.

The newly modified paper puppet was full of energy. After playing around for several hours, it showed no signs of exhaustion.

However, Zuo Mo quickly found a new problem. The paper puppet did not know exhaustion, but after so many hours, Zuo Mo was tired from commanding it. The new problem was very important. These paper puppets were going to be used in mining. He couldn’t always stay in the mine and direct them. That wouldn’t be as efficient as him mining by himself.

To get the paper puppets to mine by themselves and not need his control. If he could do this, even if the efficiency was low, he would be able to offload the heavy duty of mining. In any case, he could fold some more paper people!

But quickly, Zuo Mo realized that this problem was beyond his abilities. To make the puppet able to perceive, that mean that the puppet needed to have intelligence. There were many ways to create intelligence, but no matter which one, it wasn’t something a ningmai could do.

Did this idea have to be discarded?

Zuo Mo furrowed his brows and though. There were more and more for him to do. It would be best if he could split himself in two. Split in two ... ...

Like a bolt of lightning, he suddenly thought

– Lil’ Pagoda

Something to replace him and connected to his mind, that was Lil’ Pagoda! Lil’ Pagoda was even able to control a formation as complex and large as the [Skyring Moon Chime Formation], a dozen or so puppets would be a piece of cake.

Right right! Lil’ Pagoda would be perfect as the supervisor. Zuo Mo instantly felt confidence.

Hm, where was Lil’ Pagoda?

Scanning the surroundings, he didn’t find the shadow of Lil’ Pagoda. His mind moved, wanting to communicate with Lil’ Pagoda, but found that the connection between him and Lil’ Pagoda seemed to be blocked by an invisible force.

Zuo Mo jumped in fright and started to search.

He quickly found Lil’ Pagoda in the corner of the room. Lil’ Pagoda was silently floating in the air, surrounded by an invisible pressure.

Silly Bird proudly walked its bird walk around Lil’ Pagoda in circles, occasionally revealing its concern. Lil’ Black had climbed onto the ceiling, the two antennae on its head continuously waving.

Seeing Silly Bird and Lil’ Black guarding Lil’ Pagoda, Zuo Mo’s heart felt very warmed.

However, the warmth was quickly smashed to pieces by the roll of eyes that Silly Bird had thrown over. Silly Bird took back its gaze, raised up her bird head, and continued to calmly strut its walk. Compared to the rebelliousness of Silly Bird, Lil’ Black was much warmer and obedient, climbing down from the ceiling, climbing up Zuo Mo’s pants until it reached Zuo Mo’s palm. The two antennae on its head waving and fawning.

“So good!” Zuo Mo purposefully took out a lingdan and put it in front of Lil’ Black. Lil’ Black started to happily chomp.

Silly Bird responded with a roll of the eyes filled with scorn and disdain, completely unmoved.

Zuo Mo was very irritated. At this time, a five colored light suddenly appeared on Lil’ Pagoda’s body.

Lil’ Pagoda was leveling up!

The displeasure in Zuo Mo’s heart instantly was thrown away, his eyes unblinking. Silly Bird also stopped walking and stared at Lil’ Pagoda, the concern in her eyes completely undisguised.

Lil’ Pagoda was Zuo Mo’s soul-tethered talisman. In the recent past, Zuo Mo had fed it large amounts of talismans and flying swords. Zuo Mo was not surprised it was leveling up. Zuo Mo knew pitifully little about soul-tethered talismans, and the grades of normal talismans were useless for Lil’ Pagoda.

In any case, he only needed to know that Lil’ Pagoda was becoming stronger, Zuo Mo comforted himself.

Lil’ Pagoda had five levels, and the light released by each level was different. The five colored lights merged and cycled. Inside the five colored lights, Lil’ Pagoda spun, the lights becoming even brighter. In a while, Lil’ Pagoda was covered in the blinding five colored light, and was unable to be seen.

The five balls of colored light dimmed and brightened like it was breathing. Reflecting off Zuo Mo’s face, it was possible to see the nervousness in his eyes.

This leveling up, what change would happen to Lil’ Pagoda?

After several cycles, the five colored ball steadied. Zuo Mo closed his eyes. He could barely make out that Lil’ Pagoda was changing.

The steady ball of light slowly dimmed until all the light was gone.

Lil’ Pagoda’s body had become even rounder, the tip of the power almost a ball now. The eaves were even wider and smooth, giving people the feeling of chubbiness. The little gourds under the eaves were bigger, and rounder.

Zuo Mo gaped.

These days, did pagodas also get fat?

Lil’ Pagoda shook its body, the chubby five levels of eaves opening and closing like five little hands that were also waving. It didn’t seem to have woken up, somewhat dizzy. However, it quickly found Silly Bird guarding it at the side.

The eaves of the five levels opened, and Lil’ Pagoda shook the five colored chubby gourds on its body as it skipped over to Silly Bird. Then it spat out a grey bead.

Silly Bird skillfully picked up the grey bead and swallowed it.

A tragic and pain filled voice suddenly shook the skies!

“You people! I say, this is why has it been so long since this stuff had come out, you guys secretly ate it!”

Zuo Mo furiously pointed and swore. He felt his heart was being carved with a knife! Heavens! The grey bead that Lil’ Pagoda had spat out a material that was not in the five elements!

With Silly Bird’s swallow, Zuo Mo felt the sky and earth turn, he seemed to see a flood made out of countless jingshi enter Silly Bird’s mouth like a whale swallowing water!

Pain! Pain of the flesh!

Lil’ Black, who had been chewing happily, froze, the antennae that had been waving freezing in the air. It slowly retreated, step by step, as slow as a turtle. When it found that Zuo Mo did not seem to notice it, it shot away from Zuo Mo’s body like a black light and disappeared.

Zuo Mo instantly understood, and gritted out, “Lil’ Black, so you were involved too!”

Lil’ Pagoda timidly hid behind Silly Bird, the chubby body shivering.

Only Silly Bird was not scared, glancing at Zuo Mo, her eyes filled with disdain and scorn. She picked up Lil’ Pagoda and proudly stalked her bird walk away. On the feathers above her butt was Lil’ Black that bounced with the strides.

Zuo Mo was so angry he almost spat blood.

———

Gongsun Cha took back his dissatisfied gaze. The new additions to the troops, training until they could barely fight, it was not easy. In War Chess, the setup for this was training took at least one year. Other than that, it would take more than two real battles.

That could only be considered just having formed, and was far from a mature troop. As to a troop of a hundred battle elite, that was hundreds of li away.

However, the troop in front of him, while far from the troop in Gongsun Cha’s heart, but it had started to take the shape of a troop.

Like in the areas of organization, like the still immature cooperation.

There wasn’t much technique in training but it wasn’t as though there were no tricks, such as real combat. Real battles were always able to quickly increase the strength of the group.

Gongsun Cha stared into the distance, his eyes dark, a cold and cruel smile floating at the corner of his mouth.

In this hundred battle hell of Little Mountain Jie, did he have to worry there was no chance for actual combat?

Translator Ramblings: A comedic chapter today. I don’t know what Zuo Mo expected from his menagerie. He is a terrible role model by certain standards so it is almost his fault Silly Bird and Lil’ Pagoda turned out this way. The apples does not fall far from the tree. Pu failed at what he was trying to do and Gongsun Cha starts building a troop.

I got a few comments back about the drop-down menu. Any more?

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