Chapter 35#

If You See SnowCh35 - Don’t Have to Worry About Calling Him Mother#

Su Ruhui searched for a long time but couldn’t find him. With curfew approaching, he had no choice but to return home alone. In the empty courtyard, Su Ruhui’s socks and robes still hung on the clothesline. The night wind slipped through like pigeons, diving into the sleeves and collars and causing the garments to billow and flap against each other with a rustle. Su Ruhui stood under the courtyard’s sky and opened his communication compass. Engraved upon it was Sang Chiyu’s seal. Su Ruhui pressed his lips together and tried to contact Sang Chiyu. The compass remained dark, with no sign of lighting up. This meant that the person on the other side did not respond to his attempt.

Bastard. Su Ruhui thought silently.

He put away his compass and was about to step into the dark main hall when goosebumps suddenly broke out all over his body. A sense of vigilance rose in his heart, and his intuition told him that someone was in the room. He stopped in his tracks. Deep within the hall, a dim oil lamp glowed. Its golden light covered the room like oil, illuminating the person sitting upright in a rosewood armchair.

Xia Jing smiled faintly, his fine beard twitching at his lips. He said: “My dear nephew, you must have been enjoying yourself on the road. You’re back quite late.”

This person is hiding something. Does he have ill intent? Su Ruhui quietly placed his right hand on the musket at his waist.

“Alright, stop trying to figure out how to deal with me.” Xia Jing stuffed his hands into his sleeves, “I’m just some poor guy who finished his shift but can’t go home to snuggle with his lovely wife by the fire. Instead, I have to come freeze my nose off here and make sure someone’s message gets delivered to you without a single mistake.”

“Uncle, you jest,” Su Ruhui said as he served him tea. “May I ask whose message you bring, and what it is?”

Xia Jing sighed softly, “The message is from your shijie, Jiang Xueya.”

These words truly surprised Su Ruhui. He hadn’t expected Xia Jing to be a person on Jiang Xueya’s side. The system had said they had an unspeakable relationship, so this was their “unspeakable” relationship.

“Don’t overthink it, I’m just repaying a debt. Back in the Scout Guard days, I received a lot of help from your shijie. You’ve been gone for so long, did something happen?” Xia Jing stroked his beard and smiled, “Found out that you’re a puppet?”

“So this matter is indeed related to shijie,” Su Ruhui said with a smile, clasping his hands. “Please explain, uncle.”

“To be precise, it’s related to yourself.” Xia Jing said, “She didn’t tell me many details, but the gist was that you used to rack your brains trying to create a super first-grade flesh puppet. Your other puppets, though exquisite, were still just puppets. They had no sense of self, let alone intelligence. For over a decade, you hoped your puppets could think freely like humans, even develop emotions. To be frank, you had too much time on your hands. If you wanted to create a human, couldn’t you just get yourself a wife and be done with it?”

Su Ruhui sighed emotionally: “I think so as well, but unfortunately my… um, unfortunately Su Ruhui’s wife is a man.”

“I see, I understand now.” Xia Jing adopted a look of extreme understanding, “The good news is that you have indeed made progress, and that progress is the puppet body you are using now. The bad news is that you still failed. You did not develop a true super first-grade flesh puppet.”

Su Ruhui frowned, “Failed? Aren’t I Su Ruhui’s puppet?”

“She said you can find out the specifics by looking through this estate. She prepared this place for you. When you left Yunzhou, she had already prepared to rent it to you. During your time trapped in the Immortal’s Cave, she smuggled all the blueprints for your super first-grade flesh puppet out of the Secret Sect and stored them here. It was from then on that she began her plan to rescue you from the Secret Sect.” Xia Jing held up an index finger. “The first step of the plan was to prepare a new identity for you. Jiang Huaicang is a lecher, and his illegitimate children are everywhere. I was ordered to buy a woman named Bai Caiping and send her to Yunzhou, and I also fabricated a son for her to pretend to be Jiang Huaicang’s illegitimate son and enter the Jiang family. This non-existent illegitimate son is Jiang Quexie, the new identity she prepared for you.”

“The second step of the plan was to create a flesh puppet. Your shijie spent five whole years crafting a perfect puppet body for you according to your blueprints. The super first-grade flesh puppet is incredibly exquisite. Even with the blueprints in hand, we only managed to create a usable one a month ago. Originally, we should have started preparing to have this puppet replace Jiang Quexie at that point. However, some unexpected things happened. People from the Underworld snuck into the Jiang family, along with some strange individuals of unknown origins. Your shijie spent some time dealing with them. She took care of the people from the Underworld, yet she never fully uncovered the identities of the remaining unknown people, and these individuals have now begun targeting her.”

“Unknown individuals?” Su Ruhui reacted sharply, “Su Gou’s group of demons?”

“Right, that seems to be the case now. Since I’ve been stationed in the border capital, I could only communicate with your shijie through letters, so I’m not very clear about their confrontation. In short, it seems that she was at a disadvantage in the end. I heard that she lost many skilled fighters to ensure her safe retreat. The only thing to be thankful for is that the plan to replace Jiang Quexie went smoothly. I was in charge of this matter. I was outside the Jiang residence and not a member of the Jiang family, so I had no connection with her on the surface and went unnoticed. When you woke up at the Sang family’s old estate on the first day of the twelfth lunar month, our plan was finally a success.”

Su Ruhui clicked his tongue, “So it was you who killed A-Qi.”

“So this Underworld kid is called ‘A-Qi’?” Only seventeen years old, yet he’s out doing such dangerous things. The more chaotic the world becomes, the more people will die. And when all the adults are dead, the children will have to become adults.” Xia Jing sighed.

Xia Jing took a sip of tea and continued, “After her retreat, her situation became extremely dangerous. Not only were the demons hiding in the Jiang family searching for her, but her act of smuggling blueprints for you was also exposed, and Dantai Jing also set his sights on her. My dear nephew, you should know that Lang Yaguang, the Secret Sect’s Zigong star official, has the secret arts ‘Flowery Dream,’ which can probe memories through a person’s dreams. Your memories about the flesh puppets have already been extracted by one of our secret arts cultivators who can extract memories. However, as the executor of the entire plan, your shijie absolutely could not lose her memories. If she was captured and brought back to the Secret Sect, the super first-grade flesh puppet would be exposed, and you would be imprisoned again immediately after your resurrection. Your rescue would be all for naught.”

Indeed, this situation was very tricky. Su Ruhui clicked his tongue.

“But this girl was smart and thought of a way to kill two birds with one stone. Not only did it allow her to escape the pursuit of those monsters in the Jiang family, but it also prevented Dantai Jing from probing her memories.”

“What way?”

“I don’t know either.” Xia Jing shook his head, “I only know that after the plan was made, she was secretly imprisoned by Dantai Jing in the Secret Sect. She was first in the Infernal Prison, and now she’s in the Immortal’s Cave. You don’t need to worry about her. I have a way to help her leave the Secret Sect. Time is almost up, and she should be making her move. She has always been a wise and decisive person, which is one of the reasons I chose to help her, but she has repeatedly put herself in danger for you.” Xia Jing sighed deeply, “It’s hard to have a beauty be a hero…”

Su Ruhui blushed with embarrassment: “Uncle, you’re overthinking it. If you have anything else to say, get it out quickly. If you get home late, auntie will start suspecting you’ve got someone on the side.”

Xia Jing pulled a crystal-clear glass container from his sleeve, containing a storage array placed inside. He handed it to Su Ruhui and said, “This is your memory. The secret arts cultivator lost control while extracting it and took a bit more than intended. The feeling of memory loss must be unpleasant, but even so, I still don’t recommend that you reabsorb the memory. The Secret Sect is watching you. If you want to protect the super first-grade puppet key, forgetting it is the best course.”

Xia Jing left after speaking. Snow as dense as goose feathers began to drift down, fluttering onto the mortal world. Su Ruhui also felt that now was not a good time to reabsorb the memories, so he put the glass container away in a cabinet. He began tapping on furniture and objects around the room, searching for the puppet blueprints Jiang Xueya had mentioned. As he searched, he recalled Xia Jing’s words. That guy hadn’t distinguished him from the real Su Ruhui, which made him feel very uneasy.

After half an incense stick’s time, Su Ruhui located an empty spot on the wall. He struck the surface with his saber handle, chipping away a section. Reaching inside, he retrieved a sealed black box made of meteorite iron. Crafted from Ziji meteorite iron, it was impervious to explosives. Secured atop it was Su Ruhui’s eight trigrams lock, a mechanism with over three thousand possible combinations, unlockable only by Su Ruhui.

Su Ruhui opened the eight trigrams lock, and a series of clicking sounds of gears turning came from inside. The lid popped up slightly, and the lock loosened. Su Ruhui opened the meteorite iron box, inside which were stacked many blueprints. The paper was yellowed, but the handwriting was still clear. He sat down and looked through them one by one. Super first-grade flesh puppets, from the initial concept to the structural blueprints, and then to the insurmountable bottleneck, how to develop the puppet’s consciousness. He remembered the years when Su Ruhui buried himself in bitter work, the puppet warehouse of the Underworld’s Paradise Pavilion piled high with defective super first-grade flesh puppets, and Su Ruhui propping himself up through illness to write at his desk in the Secret Sect Immortal’s Cave.

He recognized the first stack of drawings and could recall where they had been drawn, but he couldn’t remember the last stack. Judging from the size of the paper, it was an eight-chi xuan paper specially used by the Secret Sect, which means Su Ruhui should have completed it in the Immortal’s Cave.

At the core of the puppet lies the insight star array, a construct akin to the human brain. The myriad possibilities of shifting inspiration within it mirror the countless thoughts that course through the human mind. Su Ruhui’s previous research had focused on using the star array to simulate the human brain, but the mysteries of the mind are boundless, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not fathom the secrets of consciousness. After perusing several blueprints from the Immortal’s Cave, he realized that he seemed to have shifted the direction of his efforts.

The function of the star array suddenly shifted from intellection to transferal.

Transferal? Transfer what?

Snow fell in flurries outside the window, while bare branches leaned against the sill. The shadow of his figure hunched over his desk, cast upon the snow-white Goryeo paper, resembling a shadow puppet play framed within the windowpane. Without a moment’s pause, he finished flipping through the final blueprint, and within his heart, he was struck by an overwhelming sense of awe. He realized the truth: he had indeed failed. He had never succeeded in crafting a true “super first-grade” flesh puppet. Yet, he had discovered a way to transfer his spiritual consciousness. He had forged a passage between himself and his puppet’s body, allowing his spiritual consciousness to switch bodies!

This was an unparalleled puppet technique, an unparalleled transferal star array. If anyone harboring malicious intent found out, it would undoubtedly plunge the world into chaos. For with this array to transfer spiritual consciousness, a human would obtain an immortal body. Should one’s original body wither and decay, a new puppet vessel can be crafted to house the spirit, thus living on endlessly, never to die or perish.

No wonder he so adamantly refused to hand over the puppet’s secret key. To avoid Flowery Dream’s influence, he even had Jiang Xueya wipe his memories, removing all traces regarding the spirit transferal star array.

He understood; he understood everything. The way to escape his imprisonment was to shed his physical form and transfer his spiritual consciousness. He found a new life for himself through the super first-grade flesh puppet.

He is the puppet. He is also Su Ruhui.

And that supposed “Su Ruhui” at Secret Sect was likely nothing more than an empty shell.

Human consciousness and the physical body are, in fact, two distinct systems. It was based on this perspective that he created the super first-grade flesh puppet. This puppet was powered by a flow of spiritual energy supplied by the spirit stones embedded within its frame. Through this energy flow, the puppet was able to breathe and blink just like a human. Furthermore, when directed via commands issued through its central insight star array, the puppet could execute far more complex actions, such as fighting, engaging in simple conversation, or even laughing and crying.

The Secret Sect must have established a life-sustaining array around him. This array would ceaselessly channel streams of spiritual energy day and night to prolong his life. This flow of spiritual energy would activate his Eight Extraordinary Meridians and stimulate his muscles, allowing him to remain alive even without consciousness and perform actions that do not require it, like breathing, coughing, opening his eyes, and closing them. However, he was unable to perform actions that require mental awareness, such as speaking or walking.

He was barely clinging to life anyway, so it wouldn’t be strange if he looked like he was on his deathbed. As long as he could open his eyes and cough every now and then to create the illusion that he was still alive, he could fool those idiots from the Secret Sect.

The truth came to light, and he let out a long sigh of relief. Thank goodness. He wouldn’t have to worry about calling Sang Chiyu “mother” anymore.

Su Ruhui drew the crystal lens he’d carried with him from his robes and perched it upon the bridge of his nose. He used a fine needle to pierce into his acupoint, channeling a subtle current of spiritual energy directly into his central insight star array. Through the transparent lens, his eyes faintly shone, reflecting the scene within the array. He saw intricate star lines crisscrossing in every direction, as if the cosmic shifts of eons past were all contained within this tiny array. At the very heart of this complex array, he spotted a winding line as fine as a spider’s silk—the passage leading back to his original body.

He unfolded the puppet’s structural blueprints. The back of the puppet’s neck was outlined in vermilion ink, indicating that the spirit stone was inserted in that location. He touched the back of his own neck. The temperature there was noticeably higher than the rest of his body, likely due to the spirit stone inserted there.

How long can the spirit stone inside me last? Su Ruhui asked the system.

【Scanning… Scanning complete. The spirit stone within your body will last at least one year. To be safe, you should find a reliable person to replace the spirit stone for you before its energy is depleted.】

There’s still a year left, I’ll worry about it later. Su Ruhui relaxed. However, these spirit stones were a bit difficult to obtain. Spirit stones were controlled by the Secret Sect, and like ironware and firearms, ordinary people could not sell them.

System’s Friendly Reminder:【Once you complete “What can save you, my disabled husband?,” I will unlock the daily item access function. This function is equivalent to an “Infinite Coins” or “Infinite Items” cheat, very useful.】

What exactly are you? Su Ruhui was surprised. You can even use cheats?

The system paused for a moment before saying:

【Your access level is not high enough, so you can’t obtain much information. However, you can understand my identity in this way: dvLJFi

This world has an extremely harsh environment, with limited space, crowded populations, and a strict hierarchy. To improve the survival rate of the human race, the Creator opened a backdoor for a select group—what you call secret arts. Mortal secret arts cultivators formed an alliance called the “Kunlun Secret Sect,” maximizing the use of secret arts resources and reaching the most powerful peak of human history. However, individual survival rates are not directly proportional to the survival rate of the race; the survival rate of non-secret arts cultivators is far lower than that of secret arts cultivators. It could even be said that secret arts cultivators improve their own survival rate by plundering the survival resources of non-secret arts cultivators.

You lost your secret arts at the age of ten, turning from a plunderer into the plundered,  drastically reducing your odds of survival. Most people can only resign themselves to fate, but you are different. If this world is a game, then I am your game modifier. While others follow the rules, you rewrite them. I will spare no effort to help you live and increase your chances of survival. But remember: I am your deepest secret. Never reveal me to anyone.】

Why?

【Because cheaters will be hunted down by the entire server.】

The communication compass suddenly vibrated. Su Ruhui opened it, and Xia Jing’s seal glowed brightly.

“Just received word that Sang Chiyu has invaded the Immortal’s Cave. The Secret Sect has issued a Level A alert. Sang Chiyu is currently affiliated with the Underworld, and his purpose in invading the Immortal’s Cave is unknown. Nephew, you should stay home and not go out unless necessary. Hey, nephew, did you hear me? Answer me!”

The author has something to say:

Sang Chiyu went to find his wife while crying.

TL corner: 

Next chapters are some of my favorites ~