Chapter 226: Gimmick Puppet
Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
It was absolutely silent in the cave. Even the sound of the wind was absent. The cave seemed like a completely sealed vacuum.
There was a dragonfly on the stone step. Mo Wen looked at the dragonfly thoughtfully, and then he stepped onto the flight of stone steps.
The moment he did so, a terrifying pressure came from above and violently crashed onto Mo Wen’s body. It felt as though the galaxy had fallen onto the highest part of heaven and then banged down onto Mo Wen.
Mo Wen’s body swayed from side to side and nearly fell from the stone steps. However, the next moment, a massive Inner Qi burst forth from his body. Two golden and black streaks of light swept out, causing the stones and sand in the surroundings to whirl and collide with the terrifying pressure.
After he had used all his cultivation to its extreme, his body was stabilized again. He stood upright on the stone step and then walked up one step after another.
The pressure seemed to increase a little with every step he took, but the increase wasn’t much. It was almost negligible. However, while the increase for one step was not big, the increase for a hundred steps… a thousand steps… and what if there were an endless number of steps?
The steps before his eyes seemed endless, and regardless of how long he walked, he couldn’t seem to find the end.
Mo Wen curled his lips, as similar assessments were very common, and he had seen them before in the Immortal Cultivation world. The purpose of the flight of steps was actually very simple. Firstly, it would eliminate those candidates with insufficient cultivation, as the pressure from above could only be withstood by those with at least Qi Nucleation realm cultivation.
If one couldn’t even withstand the pressure, there naturally wouldn’t be a need to proceed with the rest of the assessment.
Secondly, it would assess a person’s patience and perseverance. Though the stone steps looked endless, it was impossible for them to be endless, as they were not in the perilous prohibited area but were in an assessment. There wouldn’t be any unresolvable checkmate situation here.
Mo Wen walked up the stone steps one after another without any emotion on his face. His eyes were calm, and his actions were natural. However, the higher he went, the stronger the pressure was, but he didn’t seem to feel it at all.
Not knowing how long he had walked, the path before him remained endless. However, when Mo Wen once again took a step, the scene in front of him suddenly changed, as if a layer of misty cloud had been pushed aside. The endless stone step path gradually disappeared from his eyes.
An enormous space appeared before Mo Wen. He swept his eyes across the surroundings and realized that the space was as big as two football fields. It was surrounded by ancient, white stone walls, and the whole space was empty without any furnishings.
Mo Wen knew that he should be in the space inside the stone tower, and the scene just now might only be an illusion.
He naturally knew the wondrous tricks of the Immortal Cultivators, so regardless of whatever appeared, there was nothing to be curious about.
A strange sound of clashing metal suddenly broke the silence of the space, and an equally strange sound of rhythmical footsteps immediately followed.
Mo Wen’s eyes narrowed as he abruptly looked into a patch of darkness. In that darkness, something sparkling gradually walked out, accompanied by the clashing sounds of the metal.
Once the thing had completely emerged from the darkness, Mo Wen was able to see it clearly. It was a navy blue Metal Monster that looked like a robot with four limbs, a head, and eyes.
Its eyes were like rubies, and they emitted a cold and weird red light. Once the monster had appeared, its head twisted clumsily, and those red eyes fixed on Mo Wen. It then slowly moved in Mo Wen’s direction.
“Puppet!”
Shock flashed in Mo Wen’s eyes. Without a doubt, that thing was definitely a puppet. He had experienced puppets before when he was in the Divine Pill Sect, but very few people liked this kind of puppet thing because most of time, the puppet was equivalent to one’s doppelganger; the higher the puppet’s level was, the more spirituality it had.
However, Mo Wen was only a normal Registered disciple, so he was not qualified to have such a sophisticated thing. At most, he had an understanding of it.
In the Immortal Cultivation world, there was an inexhaustible supply of wondrous things, so there was a possibility of the emergence of anything. The puppet was considered a most common, ordinary thing. Many Immortal Cultivators had been proficient in puppetry and were able to manufacture puppets for different uses, but most of the time, they were there to assist in their master’s fights.
Therefore, puppets usually had a very strong fighting capacity. The higher the Cultivation of the Immortal Cultivator, the stronger the puppet they owned.
This puppet in front of Mo Wen should be a low grade puppet, as he couldn’t feel any strong fluctuation of spiritual pressure from its body.
Even so, the puppet before him remained difficult to deal with. After all, this thing belonged to the Immortal Cultivation world and not the secular world.
Once the puppet appeared, it obviously had locked onto its target. Its bloody red eyes were constantly focused on Mo Wen.
The next moment, a streak of blue light flashed on the puppet before two cutlasses suddenly shot out of its arms and appeared in its big robotic hands.
Almost simultaneously, two gleams of light flashed on the cutlasses. Two terrifying gusts of wind from the left and the right instantly swept across over a distance of dozens of miles.
Mo Wen’s mouth twitched as those two gleams of the cutlasses were each equivalent to the attack of a top notch ancient martial arts practitioner of the Embryonic Breathing realm using all their might. Merely a Four stars assessment had the emergence of such a powerful puppet. Huatian Palace’s Executor levels were indeed very stringent.
He didn’t collide with the two gleams of the cutlasses. With such terrifying gusts of cutlasses’ Qi sweeping across, he didn’t intend to have that stroke of bad luck.
His feet used the Inch Travel Steps, and his figure flashed and moved horizontally seven to eight miles away. In the next flash, he was thoroughly out of the coverage region of the cutlasses’ Qi.
However, he didn’t stop. He took another step with an inch to 1,000 miles, then he leapt a distance of dozens of miles. With two steps, he was in front of the blue puppet.
At this point, he could only defeat the blue puppet first, or else he might not be able to withstand this indefatigable puppet when it continued to attack.
He blasted a punch, then the cries of the Dragon and roars of the Tiger resonated with a ferocious, overbearing aura sweeping out. Once Mo Wen attacked, he used Dragon Tiger Overlord Fist to convert all his strength to majestically hit the blue puppet.
The clumsy puppet was basically unable to react to such terrifying speed. The punch blasted into the blue puppet’s shoulder armor without any hesitation.
A loud thumping sound on the floor resounded, and the clashing sound of metal reverberated in the entire space. The terrifying force of impact caused the puppet to fly out backwards.
When it was halfway through the air, the puppet flipped its body and landed securely on the ground.
On top of its shoulder armor was a dent that was neither deep nor shallow. In comparison to the puppet’s massive body size, it seemed to be almost unscathed.
Mo Wen’s lips twitched a little. What a terrifying defense!
He had used all his strength in that Dragon Tiger Overlord Fist punch just now, and it had created an attacking force that a normal ancient martial arts practitioner in the Qi Nucleation realm would be unable to endure. However, it basically didn’t seem to affect the puppet at all.
That terrifying defense was almost impenetrable. He wondered how he would be able to defeat this puppet.
Mo Wen furrowed his brows. Facing such a Steel Monster, one would be at his wit’s end under normal circumstances.
Though a low level puppet’s actions were clumsy, and the attack was static, Mo Wen could not forget that the puppet was indefatigable, so if he had to fight with it for a long time, he might not be a match for it.
He cast a calm, contemplative look at the puppet and didn’t get discouraged by his first failed attempt.
Perhaps others couldn’t do anything to that Steel Monster, but Mo Wen could. Because he had been in the Immortal Cultivation world, his understanding of the puppet was naturally incomparable to an ordinary person’s.
Every puppet had an Achilles’ heel which was commonly known as the Eye of the stratagem.
In actual fact, only an erudite Immortal Cultivator would be able to manufacture a puppet, as the manufacturing of a puppet involved the knowledge of the manufacturing techniques, gimmick techniques, and stratagem techniques.
The reason the puppet could be controlled was that there were numerous inscriptions of stratagems on the puppet’s body that were cohered together as a whole. In other words, the inscriptions of the stratagems were like the circuit board in a robot, but the puppet in the Immortal Cultivation world was far more marvelous than Wonder Man.
The so-called Eye of the stratagem was the central part of the inscriptions of the stratagem in the puppet, which was the most crucial part, like the heart in a human body.
In fact, the source of the puppet’s power was where the Eye of the stratagem was.
The Immortal Cultivation world commonly used spiritual stone as the source of the puppet’s power. Mo Wen didn’t know what the puppet on this earth used for its energy.
After all, there were many different kinds of energy sources for the puppet. A spiritual stone could only be considered as the most common kind.
If the location of the Eye of the stratagem could be found, it would be where the supply of energy was and by destroying it, the puppet would immediately become a pile of metal scraps and would never be a threat to him.
However, when the Immortal Cultivators manufactured a puppet, they naturally would have considered this problem, so the Eye of the stratagem was usually very well-concealed.
Mo Wen scrutinized the puppet carefully. It was only a low level puppet, so perhaps he might be able to find the Eye of the stratagem. After all, to the Immortal Cultivators, such a low level puppet was manufactured to take the role of cannon fodder, so very few would spend much effort in concealing the Eye of the stratagem in it.
That puppet didn’t bother about what Mo Wen was doing. The master had given him the order of killing living things on sight. Therefore, the moment it dropped from the air, it started its attack again.
The ground seemed to vibrate with the puppet’s steps. With its focus fixed on Mo Wen, it swung down the two blue cutlasses in its hands.
Mo Wen raised his eyebrows while the Tai Yin Qi in his body circulated frantically. The surrounding air temperature plummeted instantly, and the water vapor that was diffused in the air changed into ice pellets before dropping down.
Both his hands clasped together forming a circle in front of him, so when the ice pellets suddenly rushed forth frantically towards him, all of them gathered in his hands. The next moment, a piece of glittering ice mirror appeared in front of him.
Two dark shadows dived down from the air as two gleams of the cutlasses flashed as fast as a thunderbolt, not at Mo Wen, but crashing directly onto the ice mirror.
Suddenly, the ice mirror shattered into pieces, and the glittering fragments flew in all directions.
In that instant, Mo Wen’s figure flashed and disappeared from the gleams of the cutlasses. In the blink of an eye, he appeared behind the blue puppet and kicked the puppet’s buttocks.
All the Inner Qi in his body instantly burst forth, and the Tai Yin Qi and Tai Yang Qi instantly integrated into one. The terrifying invisible ripples spread and instantaneously covered a circumference of 100 meters.
Almost in an instant, the puppet flew out once again and was thrown far into the air with a relatively big hole appearing in its body.