The Bai Clan like most other clans has there own Alchemists, Blacksmith/Weapon-smiths, and various other professions that could supply their clan with the necessary resources to support a cultivation clan of their size.
Somewhere within their clan was the Blacksmith section.
In this area, there were various buildings that were built to accommodate the blacksmiths who were creating and supplying the Bai Clan with weapons and Spirit Weapon Artifacts.
Walking past these builds one would feel an intense heat wafting from them to slam into their face.
In one of the larger buildings, which could be considered the main building, the four servants that had taken up the coffin were haggling prices with the Head Weapon-smith.
“Bullshit!! How could this coffin cost so much?!! Do you take me for a fool?! There’s no way this coffin is worth ten thousand mid-grade spirit stones, that’s just absurd!!”
The four servants looked at each other before they turned back to the Head Weapon-smith with a bitter expression.
One of them then said, “But the appraiser said it was worth at least fifteen thousand mid-grade Spirit Stones. That’s our final price, we won’t go any lower than that!”
The burly Head Weapon-smith released a bit of his mid-stage Foundation Realm cultivation which caused the four to tremble. He then said in a threatening tone, “At most I’ll pay five thousand mid-grade Spirit Stones. That appraiser must have been blind to think this thing was worth that much.”
The Head Blacksmith then let out a loud snort, which cause the roof tiles to tremble from the vibrations.
These four were only at the 1st stage of the Foundation Realm, or else this Head Blacksmith wouldn’t have dared to lower their price that much.
However, they could only suck it up since this was the only place within their clan that would want a coffin. They could go outside the clan but were unwilling to be scammed even worse than this.
“Fine, five thousand mid-grade spirit stones.”
After hearing that, the Head Blacksmith took out a pouch from his robes and toss it on the counter in front of the four. After that the blacksmith quickly had some of his underlings take the coffin to the back room.
Seeing that the Head Blacksmith had taken out a poach without even checking if it was actually five thousand mid-grade spirit stones, the four wore furious expressions on their face.
Seeing they haven’t left yet, the Head Blacksmith barked at them, “What are you looking at!!”
The four having been scared quickly left the building, but were feeling furious in their hearts.
Watching as these four left the Head Blacksmith busted out laughing.
“I have to give my thanks to that appraiser Wang. I didn’t believe it when he told me but to think someone would use Celestial Ore for something so wasteful. Those metal spikes could be melted down and make at least one or two mid-grade Spirit Artifacts!”
Unable to keep his excitement in anymore, the Head Blacksmith headed for the room the coffin was placed in. Opening the door he quickly entered, but the sight that greeted him caused him to pause momentarily.
Standing in the middle of the room was a black figure around five or five and a half feet tall.
It seemed as if it was made from wood, but the way the setting sun from the window refracted on its body would make one realize the material was a type of metal.
The Head Blacksmith stood there stunned at this sight.
The figure made of the strange material slowly turned its head to look at the Head Blacksmith.
A sudden chill went down his back as the figure’s eyes which were glowing red with some complex runic symbols landed on him.
The Blacksmith's eyes then shifted to the space next to the figure to see the coffin he was so eager to inspect. But to his horror, a big chunk of it was now missing.
The Head Blacksmith suddenly realized where this figure came from. Without much thought, he immediately decided to retreat.
However, that split second he looked away, Xi Shen already lifted his finger and drew in the air. His hand moved at blinding speeds that created hand shadows as he created a complex rune in the air. After which he tapped its center and the red rune flew out, piercing the void towards the Blacksmith’s forehead.
As it moved through the air, one could see its lackluster color became brighter as it instantly adsorbed the surrounding Spiritual Qi and activated.
The Head Blacksmith couldn’t even react in time, and the rune easily landed between his brows. The red rune glowed once and then sunken into his consciousness, causing his eyes to roll to the back of his head as he fainted by the door.
Looking at the man’s unconscious body, Xi Shen stood there for a brief moment in thought.
‘This is the first time I tried incorporating the runes in my past life with the ones in this life. That rune will have him think what he saw up to a few minutes ago was a dream, but I had to create a Qi Gathering rune as its base so it would activate, or else I won't be able to use these rules. I don’t have any of my cultivation so each time I create a rune I’ll need to add a Qi Gathering rune as its foundation to have it absorb the Spiritual Qi in its surroundings for it to activate.’
After coming to that conclusion, Xi Shen looked down at his puppet body.
He was really satisfied with the material of the coffin.
The rune technique he used to make this puppet was from his past life, and it was called Puppet Creation Art. Back then, because the mortals' bodies were too weak to carry out certain tasks, the Gods’ Apostles would order the Gods’ Royals to take the consciousness from a few mortals and insert it into puppets like these.
With that, they had created undying slaves that couldn’t feel hunger, pain, or tiredness. But he had to tweak the rune a bit and added some features of this Era’s runes so it would work with this Spiritual Qi environment.
Xi Shen was starting to realize that everything he learned in his past life could seamlessly be combined with the techniques of this Era. He wondered if that was just a coincidence, or if there was more to it.
“Tai, Little Snow.”
Xi Shen came out of his thoughts and called for his two God Beasts.
Suddenly Xi Shen’s figure disappeared from its position in the room, but he didn’t actually leave. He was only within a pocket space in the void.
Xi Shen looked around to see that his entire surroundings had turned gray in color. Even the sun over the horizon had turned into a gray ball in the sky.
This wasn’t the first time Xi Shen was brought into a pocket space by Tai and Little Snow, but he still couldn’t help but marvel at their natural ability to create such stable pocket spaces.
To know how their ability works, you would have to think of this world as if they were in layers upon layers of space. Tai and Little Snow were able to penetrate the void and enter one of these layers of space to create a pocket between them.
The deeper the layer they could create their pocket spaces in, the harder it was for anyone to sense their presence. And even though they couldn’t create these pocket spaces perfectly, they could still use their Illusions to cover any traces of them.
With Tai and Little Snow on his shoulders, Xi Shen followed their lead and left the Blacksmith section, and headed for a rather remote area in the Bai Clan where not too many people were at.
In this area was a lone mountain with a three hundred meter clearing around it, but asides from that weird feature it wouldn’t attract too much attention.
After only a few minutes, Xi Shen moved through the slight dark forest and reached the edge of the clearing.
One other thing that should be mentioned was that time move a lot faster in the void than it does in the outside world. It was about 1×3 faster.
Standing in the void at the edge of the clearing Xi Shen gazed at the mountain, his puppet eyes glowing with complicated runes, allowing him to see the numerous runes that were placed down around and on the mountain.
“Hmm, I can see what you guys mean. This entire place is filled with void disruption runes and anti teleportation runes. There are even some motion detection runes, sound detection runes, and almost every possible rune there is to detect if someone was trespassing.” After thinking for a moment, Xi Shen asked, “How many layers of space can you guys enter?”
Hearing Xi Shen’s question, Tai puffed out his chest and meowed, which translated to, ‘Over three hundred!’
However, before he could get smug, little Snow chimed in and said, ‘That was before we had to escape from that Void Devourer. It chased us across the galaxy destroying each layer of space to get to our pocket dimensions. I and brother had to forcefully expend more power than we can handle, and now the farthest we can create pocket space individually is around the twentieth layer, and if we work together about the sixtieth.’
Little Snow’s mental message was filled with a bit of sadness, and Tai trying to sound confident and reclaim his face snorted and said, ‘That beast didn’t know who he was messing with! If I were stronger, I could have swiped my paw and banished him so deep into the fabric of space it would take him an eternity to devour his way out! Humph!”
Even though Xi Shen couldn’t change his expression, he was smiling on the inside.
Patting Little Snow on her head, he traced his finger over the long scar on her back. Even though he couldn’t feel it, he knew well where it was and it was something he did to comfort Little Snow.
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Word Count: 1708
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