Chapter 484 - 444: A Hidden Door Within a Hidden Door

Chapter 484: Chapter 444: A Hidden Door Within a Hidden Door

’I’ll have to make some changes...’

Chu Mu murmured to himself. As he looked again at the Soldier Puppet’s structure before him, it was as if he were gazing upon a treasure trove.

Some material loss was inevitable.

But perhaps... he could swap those "losses" for the materials he needed.

After all, he could guarantee that these supposedly lost materials wouldn’t actually be lost.

Any complacency he felt from having figured out the Soldier Puppet’s structure vanished in an instant.

Chu Mu frowned in thought. His pen, which had been still, once again moved across the Spirit Paper.

One by one, the names of Spiritual Materials appeared on the Spirit Paper. Each one was a material he required.

The Nine Dragon Prison Suppression Tower and the Sword Intent Treasure were his top priorities.

In about a quarter of an hour, he had listed dozens of rare Spiritual Materials, seldom seen in the outside world, next to the Soldier Puppet’s diagram.

After a moment’s thought, he moved his pen to the side and began to sketch again, slowly outlining another Soldier Puppet.

The refining method for the Soldier Puppet was incomplete, and he had been given full authority to repair it. This clearly gave him a lot of room to maneuver.

The question was how to swap out the originally required Spiritual Materials for the ones he needed without adversely affecting the Soldier Puppet’s restoration.

This was the problem he now needed to solve.

As he continued to sketch, he crossed out dozens of the listed Spiritual Materials one after another. This indicated that they couldn’t be substituted without negatively impacting the Soldier Puppet’s restoration.

After making some rough comparisons and alterations, Chu Mu looked back at his modified Soldier Puppet diagram and suddenly froze.

He felt a flicker of doubt. Looking over at the original Soldier Puppet diagram on the other sheet of Spirit Paper, he compared the two. The changes he’d made weren’t obvious, but something seemed... off. Inharmonious?

Chu Mu was baffled. As far as he knew, substituting the Spiritual Materials shouldn’t have caused any kind of disharmony in the Soldier Puppet’s design at all.

If anything, it should have been even more beneficial to the Soldier Puppet!

He studied the two Soldier Puppet diagrams back and forth. Under his Spiritual Radiance Blessing, his mind raced, his enhanced intellect spinning wildly as he tried to find the root cause of the discord.

A quarter of an hour passed, then half an hour, then three-quarters of an hour.

One hour, two hours...

A day, then a night...

The baffled look in Chu Mu’s eyes only intensified.

He had altered a total of eight Spiritual Materials. Six were for the Nine Dragon Prison Suppression Tower. The other two, Shoushan Red Copper and Nine Heavens Profound Gold, were both exceedingly rare metallic Spirit Ores with a sharp Attribute, perfect for refining a Sword Intent Supreme Treasure.

Although he had never worked with most of these eight Spiritual Materials directly, their characteristics and effects were described in detail within the Immortal Dao Sect’s Artifact Refining General Outline.

He ran another round of simulations and comparisons, one by one, cross-referencing and deducing with painstaking detail. He could be absolutely certain that the possibility of his changes having a negative impact on the Soldier Puppet was virtually nonexistent.

But the problem was, no matter how clear and certain his deductions were, the fact remained: after changing the materials, he could clearly feel that something was off with the Soldier Puppet. He just couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

’If the material change isn’t what’s causing this, then... could it be that there was something wrong with the Soldier Puppet all along, and my changes just brought it to light?’

Chu Mu continued to speculate. Following a faint premonition, he let his thoughts expand, once again dissecting the Soldier Puppet’s design, peeling it back layer by layer.

’Is it because of the Shoushan Red Copper?’

After several hours, a faint answer began to form in Chu Mu’s mind.

According to the Soldier Puppet Artifact Formula he had reverse-engineered from the incomplete text, the original design used a material no weaker than Shoushan Red Copper—a Spiritual Material called Celestial Yin Cold Iron—as the primary component for the outer barrier of the Puppet’s control core.

Celestial Yin Cold Iron is extremely hard and is a Yin Attribute Spiritual Material. A barrier refined from it could not only effectively protect the Soldier Puppet’s control core but could also use its Yin Attribute to nourish the soul condensed within it. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

This time, however, he had taken a different approach, swapping the Celestial Yin Cold Iron for Shoushan Red Copper. Shoushan Red Copper is born where lightning and fire meet, transformed from common red copper after eons of being tempered by the two elements.

It embodies the elements of thunder and fire, is nigh-indestructible, and has the property of All Evil Repelled!

In his design, the properties of Shoushan Red Copper could fulfill the same protective role as Celestial Yin Cold Iron. Furthermore, he could use an Array Prohibition to channel its thunder and fire effects, allowing those elements to create life and thus making the Soldier Puppet’s Flesh and Blood Demon Puppet Attribute even more powerful.

The benefits of a stronger flesh and blood attribute for a Soldier Puppet were self-evident.

The two materials served different purposes, making it difficult to judge which was superior, but the possibility of such a beneficial change causing negative effects was undoubtedly minuscule.

Having narrowed down the scope, Chu Mu focused on Shoushan Red Copper as the breakthrough point, continuing his analysis piece by piece.

This time, it only took a moment for a clue to emerge.

"This is..."

Chu Mu’s pupils contracted. He abruptly took out the Jade Scroll that recorded the incomplete refining method for the Soldier Puppet.

He sent his Divine Sense into it for a moment, then abruptly put the Jade Scroll down and looked again at the two Soldier Puppet schematics before him.

’A backdoor? A flaw?’

Chu Mu couldn’t hide his astonishment.

The truth was clear: his alterations hadn’t caused a negative effect on the Soldier Puppet.

Instead, by replacing the Celestial Yin Cold Iron with Shoushan Red Copper, he had exposed a fatal flaw that had been hidden deep within the Puppet’s control core.

Chu Mu observed it closely. Having locked onto the target after peeling back the layers of the design, the flaw was now glaringly obvious to him.

The flaw was hidden deep within the Puppet Core, rooted in its flesh and blood attribute, and intricately woven from Demon Patterns of the Demon Realm. If he hadn’t stumbled upon it by swapping out the Celestial Yin Cold Iron, if he hadn’t performed such a meticulous, layer-by-layer analysis, and most importantly, if he hadn’t possessed a sufficient understanding of Demon Pattern Array Prohibitions...