Urban Invincible Overlord

Although puppet mastery has a bit of an outsider reputation in the Cultivation World, cultivators proficient in puppet mastery are actually highly sought after.

Powerful puppet masters can create puppets that are more advanced than their own cultivation realm, and these puppets possess the unique attribute of being fearless of death, making them more ferocious and fearless in battle, greatly augmenting a cultivator's combat power.

Yang Fei learned puppet mastery from Gan Qian and realized that puppet mastery can actually be called mechanical techniques.

Under normal circumstances, puppet masters often craft puppets using various materials that are spiritual treasures from nature.

The most common and primary basic material among them is gnome wood.

This wood has a unique spirituality, making puppets crafted from it more flexible.

Besides gnome wood, some puppet masters refine skeletal puppets using the bones of cultivators.

However, the Cultivation World strongly opposes skeletal puppets, considering them extremely disrespectful to cultivators, so puppet masters who create skeletal puppets are rare, and such individuals are often referred to as evil cultivators.

Moreover, there is an even more brutal type of puppet.

That is converting a cultivator into a living puppet after eradicating their divine soul consciousness.

This type of puppet is also known as a sentient puppet, possessing a certain self-awareness and able to execute simple commands without the master's control.

What's more, sentient puppets have the ability to grow and evolve.

Yang Fei wants to turn Chai Xun and the others into sentient puppets.

According to puppet mastery, crafting sentient puppets is the most challenging.

Gan Qian is currently a second-rank puppet master, but he is unable to create sentient puppets. As Gan Qian explains, only by reaching the late stage of the fourth rank or becoming a fifth-rank grand puppet master can one have a reasonable chance of successfully crafting a sentient puppet.

Such puppet masters are extremely rare in the Cultivation World, revered as puppet masters by all factions who strive to associate with them.

The reason Yang Fei, newly learning the puppet way, wants to create sentient puppets is because he has an innate advantage for crafting sentient puppets—the Soul Binding Rope.

As the name implies, sentient puppets require the puppet to possess a certain level of spirit.

If one wants a puppet to possess spirit, it must be endowed with a certain level of self-awareness.

This is very difficult.

For instance, creating a puppet out of gnome wood and then trying to bestow soul consciousness upon this pile of deadwood is virtually a fantasy.

Besides needing strong expertise in puppet mastery, one also needs incredibly precious heavenly materials, of which the most basic is the Soul Crystal.

The Soul Crystal is a higher-grade special treasure compared to the Soul Stone.

The Soul Stone can store soul consciousness for a long time, allowing the puppet master to bestow special instructions on the puppet using the power of Rune Tao, then storing it in the Soul Stone; only this way can the puppet master convey task instructions to the puppet.

Whereas the Soul Crystal can nourish the divine soul consciousness stored within it, allowing it to slowly grow and evolve.

Thus, crafting a sentient puppet must require a Soul Crystal.

Whether Earth possesses Soul Stones is still an unknown, and Soul Crystals are even rarer.

Yang Fei's desire to turn Chai Xun and the others into sentient puppets seems impossible.

Yet the reality is quite the contrary.

According to Gan Qian, using living people to craft sentient puppets requires completely obliterating their primordial spirit consciousness, while retaining a certain Chaos Consciousness Body, and then continuously refining through puppet mastery, imprinting the puppet master's strong will upon this Chaos Consciousness Body.

The most difficult part is not the puppet master injecting their strong will into this Chaos Consciousness Body but retaining the original structure of the primordial spirit consciousness without utterly dispersing the opponent's primordial spirit body.

What other puppet masters find most difficult is actually the simplest for Yang Fei with his Soul Binding Rope.

Using the Soul Binding Rope, he can precisely and effortlessly control the enemy's primordial spirit consciousness.

The conscious minds of Chai Xun and others have already been completely erased inside the Soul Binding Rope, leaving five chaotic primordial spirit bodies like blank hard drives without an installed system.

What Yang Fei needs to do now is to imprint special puppet marks upon these chaotic primordial spirit bodies, equivalent to writing specific instructions so that when these chaotic primordial spirit bodies return to the bodies of Chai Xun and others, they will receive the instructions smoothly upon waking.

Though it sounds easy, this operation is actually a great test of mentality and imposes high demands on the puppet master's divine soul consciousness.

With Yang Fei being a novice in the puppet way, he proceeds with extreme vigilance and care.

Time passes swiftly, and in the blink of an eye, Yang Fei has already stayed in the wooden building housing Chai Xun and others' bodies for seven days.

That evening, the building suddenly resounded with Yang Fei's exuberant and loud laughter: "Hahaha, it's done!"

Qin Yanyang was the first to hear the commotion and rushed over.

She opened the door to find, besides Yang Fei, another person standing in the room.

That person was Chai Xun.

Only compared to Chai Xun aboard the spirit ship on that day, the current Chai Xun appeared expressionless, with vacant and wooden eyes; upon a glance, the word "walking corpse" popped into Qin Yanyang's mind.

Yet the powerful aura emanating from this person made Qin Yanyang secretly wary.

Seeing Qin Yanyang come over, Yang Fei exclaimed with a smile, "Dear, I succeeded, I succeeded, hahaha, my first attempt at refining a puppet has resulted in a sentient puppet, hahaha."

Qin Yanyang swallowed a mouthful of saliva, saying, "Mm, dear, you're amazing. But is this puppet reliable?"

Yang Fei replied with a laugh, "Absolutely reliable. He can only obey one command now, and that is my command."

Qin Yanyang took a deep breath; even witnessing it firsthand, she found it hard to believe a living person could turn into a puppet at one's beck and call.

At this point, Yang Fei instructed Chai Xun, "Go sit in that corner."

"Yes, Master."

Chai Xun said stiffly, without expression, then turned and walked to the corner designated by Yang Fei, sitting down on the ground.

Qin Yanyang felt a pang of compassion.

She just thought it looked too cruel, like the demonic arts used by villains in television dramas.

Yang Fei said, "Darling, once I turn the other four into sentient puppets and embed the combined Killing Array in their minds, the combat power of these five will soar. By then, even without the Soul Binding Rope, any Foundation Establishment cultivator won't be a match for me, and I might even have the strength to fight a Core Formation Master."

Qin Yanyang's heart stirred.

She does not doubt this at all.

Chai Xun is a mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert, and the other four are also mostly mid-stage Foundation Establishment cultivators; a team of five already possesses formidable combat power; if combined with an embedded array, as if a program is placed within allowing seamless coordination, their combat power would naturally increase significantly.

Outside, the continuous sound of breaking through the air was heard, drawing many people in, attracted by Yang Fei's previous loud laughter.

Gan Qian's voice soon arrived: "Friend Yang, what makes you so happy?"

Yang Fei laughed loudly, "Brother Gan, you've come at the right time, come quickly to see the sentient puppet I've crafted."

Outside the house, the expressions of Gan Qian and the other six from the Lingxiao Sect changed dramatically.

The other six all looked at Gan Qian, their eyes evidently questioning, hadn't you said before that Yang Fei gave up on crafting Chai Xun and the others into puppets? How, in just a few days, has he crafted a sentient puppet?