The puppet man seemed not yet to have learned how to tame those two outrageously long legs of his, taking each step slowly—yet the sense of pressure he exuded only grew stronger.
Su Xiaoyuan instinctively stepped backward, and before she knew it, her back was pressed against the wall, and she couldn’t help but tremble.
She’d heard that some powerful cultivators could emanate an oppressive aura that made people shake at the sight of them, even making their legs go weak and forcing them to their knees.
As a mere outer disciple of the Joyous Union Sect, Su Xiaoyuan had never had the chance to experience such a mystical phenomenon firsthand—but right now, her legs were very weak indeed.
She was actually feeling an oppressive aura from a puppet man!
If she said that out loud, Ruan Mianmian would definitely laugh at her for a whole year.
The puppet man slowly walked up to her, stopped, and lowered his head, as if examining her from behind his mask.
He was tall—a full head taller than Su Xiaoyuan at least—and standing there, he cast her entire body in shadow.
He slowly raised his left hand toward her. His hand was very pale, an inorganic sort of whiteness, with faint blue veins rising slightly beneath the fair skin. His fingernails were very light in color, and his fingers were long, slender, and powerful.
Su Xiaoyuan felt as if her throat were being squeezed—for a moment, she genuinely thought he was going to grab her by the neck.
But the puppet man’s fingers merely brushed past the side of her face, then lifted the mask away.
Su Xiaoyuan’s lips parted slightly, her eyes wide.
This puppet man was absurdly handsome!
The Joyous Union Sect lacked many things, but beautiful people were never in short supply. Yet even the sect’s inner-door F4 would be reduced to mere common beauties next to this puppet man.
And those outside with their template-model faces? They were nothing but greasy, fake-looking male mannequins.
This face had superb bone structure and a sexy jawline, paired with a pair of stunning peach-blossom eyes. Peach-blossom eyes normally carried a hint of flirtatiousness, but all of that was dissolved by the puppet man’s cold, indifferent, lusterless gaze, leaving only an air of lofty superiority.
Su Xiaoyuan even had the illusion that she was being looked down upon by a puppet man she’d won for twenty spirit stones.
When Ruan Mianmian saw the puppet man’s true face, she also sucked in a sharp breath of cold air. The scumbag puppet she’d been carrying on her shoulder crashed to the ground with a bang, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Su Xiaoyuan coughed from the dust and finally snapped back to her senses.
She looked down at her trembling right hand, unable to believe her luck.
“This puppet man…” Could he be missing something?
Before she could finish her sentence, the shopkeeper rushed over: “Mistake, mistake! This isn’t old stock—the clerk made an error…”
Ruan Mianmian blocked him, looking fierce: “We agreed that whatever you draw is what you get! If you go back on your word, I’ll smash this shady shop of yours!”
Su Xiaoyuan quickly pulled her back, gently tugging at her sleeve, and whispered: “Forget it, Kāishān. This puppet man is clearly expensive—it might really be a mistake…”
The shopkeeper was so moved he nearly cried: “This young immortal is so beautiful, and her heart is even more beautiful.”
He slapped his thigh and gritted his teeth: “Old Huang here will eat this loss today! Good people deserve good rewards, don’t you think?”
Su Xiaoyuan couldn’t believe it, her big eyes sparkling as if filled with stars: “Really?”
The shopkeeper turned his head away, covering his eyes: “Hurry up and have him acknowledge you as his master, then take him away! If I wait any longer, I’ll definitely regret this!”
Su Xiaoyuan felt like she was dreaming. After all those years of terrible luck, she must have saved up all her good fortune for this one draw.
“Thank you, boss!” Her clear eyes shimmered with gratitude.
“Don’t mention it, cough,” the boss said, looking away. “Now hurry up and form the contract!”
Su Xiaoyuan had never raised a puppet before and had no idea what a blood contract was. Her face was blank.
Ruan Mianmian explained, “Although puppets don’t have three souls and seven spirits, they still have spiritual meridians like humans and can cultivate. Some high-grade puppets are even more powerful than their masters. To prevent the puppet from turning on its master, proper puppets are all equipped with a spiritual blood array.”
As she spoke, she condensed her spiritual energy into a thin needle, pricked her finger, and demonstrated for her. “The master merges their own blood into the puppet, and they can completely suppress it—no fear of backlash, and you can even give it commands.”
Ruan Mianmian squeezed out a drop of blood and pressed it to the scumbag puppet’s brow. “Song Jinshu, from now on, I am your master.”
The blood bead quickly disappeared into the puppet’s brow, and the scumbag puppet let out a voice like a pair of tongs. “As you command, Master.”
Su Xiaoyuan was speechless.
Ruan Mianmian was quite pleased with her new puppet and turned to ask Su Xiaoyuan, “Did you see clearly?”
Su Xiaoyuan nodded.
She had only just learned to guide qi into her body and couldn’t yet condense spiritual energy into a needle to prick herself. Ruan Mianmian pulled her hand over. “Tsk, so tender. I can hardly bear to do it.”
Before the words even faded, she pricked her deftly.
Su Xiaoyuan had been afraid of pain since childhood, and this body had been modified by the system to be even more delicate, extra sensitive to any stimulus. Just a prick from a thin needle made her eyes redden, and physiological tears streamed down.
A tiny coral-like bead of blood welled up from her fingertip.
Su Xiaoyuan looked up at the aloof puppet man but hesitated.
She didn’t know why, but every time she looked into those cold peach-blossom eyes, she felt as if she were frozen solid, her whole body stiff.
“Hurry!” Ruan Mianmian urged, afraid the shopkeeper might change his mind.
Su Xiaoyuan mustered her courage and extended her left index finger. The blood bead at her fingertip was less than a centimeter from the puppet’s brow, but she stopped.
Ruan Mianmian asked, “What’s wrong?”
Su Xiaoyuan couldn’t put it into words. Deep in her heart, there was a faint sense of foreboding, as if doing this would bring some terrible consequence. “Kaishan, maybe we should just—”
Before she could finish, Ruan Mianmian dashed over, grabbed her hand, and pressed it firmly to the puppet’s brow.
The spiritual blood array activated, and blood-red threads spread across the puppet’s entire body like a spiderweb.
“Quick, a name!” Ruan Mianmian said.
Su Xiaoyuan said, “Huh?”
“The puppet’s name,” Ruan Mianmian said. “Think of one fast, or it’ll be too late!”
Su Xiaoyuan panicked. A name suddenly popped into her blank mind, and she blurted it out. “Fu Tingyun…”
The moment she said it, she regretted it. She was about to ask if she could change it when she saw a mark flash rapidly on the puppet’s brow—the blood contract was formed.
“Can the name still be changed?” she asked Ruan Mianmian.
“Once it’s set, it can’t be changed,” Ruan Mianmian said. “Unless you wash away the current blood contract and form a new one. But you’d need a specialized curse-breaker to do that, and it’s very expensive!”
“All right…”
She could only take comfort in the fact that Fu Tingyun was the Sword Sovereign’s original name from when he was born in the mortal realm. After he began cultivating immortality, he no longer used it. The book had specifically mentioned it once—almost no one in the three realms knew his original name, referring to him only by his honorific.
Anyway, the real one absolutely could not find out.
It was like naming a kitten Einstein or Napoleon—what did it matter?
The shopkeeper stood there with his mouth open, staring blankly at the contract seal as it flashed by. It took him a long while to come back to his senses. “See, isn’t this just fine! I told you—this humble shop cheats neither the old nor the young.”
He pulled two paper scrolls out of his Qiankun pouch and stuffed them into their hands: “This is the instruction manual for the puppet. Take it home and read it carefully. I still have things to do.”
Su Xiaoyuan carefully tucked the manual into her storage sachet, then looked up at the puppet’s stern, handsome profile.
Thinking of his purpose, she quickly blushed and lowered her head, tugging at the puppet’s sleeve and whispering, “Let’s go…”
The puppet stiffly lowered its head, glanced at her hand, raised its left hand, extended its long fingers, and mercilessly flicked her hand away.
The moment their fingers touched, Su Xiaoyuan felt as if she’d been shocked by ice. She instinctively withdrew her hand and said to Ruan Mianmian, “He doesn’t seem to like me touching him…”
Ruan Mianmian rubbed her temples: “He’s a puppet, not even a person… no, he doesn’t even count as a living thing. What does he know about liking or not liking?”
Su Xiaoyuan: “But he just…”
The shopkeeper: “That’s because the puppet’s been sitting in the storeroom too long and hasn’t loosened up yet—it’s just a cramp. Take it home, soak it in hot water until it softens, and it’ll be good as new.”
Su Xiaoyuan also felt she was overthinking it. A puppet has no thoughts, so of course it has no emotions—otherwise why would it be called a puppet?
Besides, it was won for twenty bucks. What more could you ask for? It’d be abnormal if it didn’t have some quirks.
She addressed the puppet in a negotiating tone: “Sorry, Fu… Fu Tingyun, shall we go?”
The puppet raised its chin slightly, gazed straight ahead, lifted its long legs, and strode toward the door, treating its owner Su Xiaoyuan like thin air.
Ruan Mianmian was so angry she stamped her feet: “You’re his owner—how come you’re acting like a meek little wife? The world’s turned upside down!”
With that, she led by example, leaping onto the puppet’s neck and kicking her heel into his chest: “Song Jinshu, giddy-up!”
The puppet let out a delicate “mmph,” clamped its legs together, twisted its waist, and ran out the door.
Su Xiaoyuan watched that coy, bashful posture and felt something was off, but seeing her best friend bouncing along and giggling, she suspected she was overthinking again.
The shopkeeper saw them to the door: “Remember to soak it in hot water plenty—I guarantee it’ll be good as new—”
The two happily left the shop. Su Xiaoyuan turned back to wave at the shopkeeper, then faced forward and sighed, “There are still more good people than bad in the Three Realms.”
The shopkeeper watched the two women and two puppets disappear into the crowd on the street, then turned and went back inside, rubbing his hands together with a beaming face: “Tonight we’re adding a dish—I’ll go to the West Market and buy two catties of pork belly and make some stir-fried pork.”
With that, he hummed a tune and went upstairs with light steps.
The two shop assistants were arranging goods in the shop. One asked, puzzled, “What’s going on? Why’s the boss so happy?”
His companion lowered his voice: “He finally got rid of that ancestor—of course he’s happy.”
“You mean ‘that ancestor’?”
“Who else?”
“Thank heavens. Ever since the boss took in that ancestor, there hasn’t been a single peaceful day.”
“No idea where that puppet came from. Don’t tell me some evil cultivator made it…”
“Could be. What decent puppet has such sinister seals all over its body? I heard the last buyer is still addled, and two curse-breakers went mad. Getting rid of it is a blessing from the Puppet Ancestor.”
“The boss dared to sell it without breaking the curse—won’t something go wrong?”
“Since it’s already formed, it should be fine, right… Besides, if something happens, we’ll just deny it to the end. We got them from somewhere else anyway—who’s to say they were sold from our place… Worst comes to worst, we pack up and run! Stop overthinking it. There’s stir-fried pork for dinner tonight!”
Su Xiaoyuan and Ruan Mianmian returned to the sect with their respective puppet figures and went straight to find Elder Qin without delay. But when they arrived at Apricot Blossom Hollow, they learned that Elder Qin had gone out on an urgent matter.
“Looks like we won’t be able to install the formation today.” Su Xiaoyuan was somewhat disappointed, but also secretly let out a breath of relief. This kind of thing—the longer it could be put off, the better.
Ruan Mianmian had a sudden inspiration: “Didn’t the shopkeeper say to soak them in hot water to soften them up? Let’s just take them to the Mandarin Duck Pool and give them a thorough wash.”
Su Xiaoyuan’s cheeks flushed bright red, and her ears practically steamed: “Ah! Isn’t that a bit too fast!”
“Don’t you want to inspect the goods? Besides, even without the formation installed, you can start practicing first,” Ruan Mianmian dragged her along. “Do you still remember the key points of a mandarin duck bath?”
Su Xiaoyuan was just as clueless. She said uncertainly, “How about I go back and grab my notebook first…”
“That’s such a hassle. Just wash them casually.”
Su Xiaoyuan glanced at the handsome jawline of the Fu Tingyun puppet figure: “Alright then…”