With a heavy heart, Chang Sheng returned to his courtyard.
He continued crafting puppets while simultaneously sending out every single puppet in his possession.
Throughout the following day, apart from occasionally tagging along with the two NPCs with thick-skinned persistence, he spent the rest of his time in the guest room crafting puppets.
Naturally, he still secretly ordered his puppets to search the entire mountain from top to bottom.
Whenever he felt exhausted, he would take a brief rest.
He repeated this cycle, but in the end, his efforts yielded no results.
Chang Sheng let out a soft sigh. “Could it be that the path of survival isn't on this mountain?”
Just then, as his numerous puppets searched all the way down to the foot of the mountain, he happened to spot an inconspicuous path hidden among withered trees and weeds through one of them.
He had heard Liu Da mention it before, so he still had some recollection of it.
Back then, Liu Da had intended to follow this path to see what lay ahead, but he was forced to retreat after encountering a specter attack midway.
Chang Sheng slowly looked up at the darkening sky, an indescribable sense of anxiety welling up in his chest.
It was already the evening of the second day.
He still had no clues whatsoever regarding the path of survival.
He had thoroughly searched the mountain where the old residence was located and found nothing, meaning the path of survival was highly unlikely to be here.
That meant it had to be somewhere else. But with so many mountains within the dungeon's boundaries, did he really have to search them one by one?
How long would that take?
Forget three days; even if he had thirteen days, he probably wouldn't be able to search them all.
The puppet at the foot of the mountain tilted its head slightly, gazing at the path stretching into the distance.
The path of survival certainly wouldn't be hidden in some random spot, as that would make it far too difficult for players to find.
Therefore, there had to be some sort of guide.
And outside of this mountain, the only possible guide was this very path before him.
Could it really be related to this path?
“Right.”
Chang Sheng recalled what Zuo Lin'an had said earlier.
“The NPC said that we can leave this place if we just keep walking along that path.”
“Could the path of survival be at the end of the path?”
Chang Sheng took a deep breath.
Although he felt it was a bit far-fetched, time was running out. He didn't know why the specter hadn't attacked him yet, but that didn't mean it never would.
Perhaps it would appear on the very next hour!
“I might as well check it out along this path. Who knows, the path of survival might really be over there.”
Even if his judgment was wrong, it didn't matter; it was his puppets doing the scouting, not himself.
Chang Sheng quickly made his decision. He immediately controlled all the puppets at the foot of the mountain to gather by the path. There were quite a lot of them, thirty-three in total.
After some thought, he decided not to send them all. Instead, he selected thirteen of them and divided them into three groups, setting off one after another in a four-five-four formation, with a distance of a hundred meters between each group.
The remaining twenty puppets were left behind to hide on the spot. If anything happened to the thirteen puppets ahead, they could step in as replacements.
Zuo Lin'an, of course, was well aware of this.
As expected, the puppets were indeed quite useful.
He remembered that the small paper puppets cut by the old Daoist back then could only be controlled over a very short distance.
He recalled that when the old Daoist ran down the mountain with Lin Xiaolei, the paper puppets on the mountain peak could no longer be controlled.
Yet Chang Sheng could control puppets at the foot of the mountain from the peak with ease, even as they continued to move further away.
“Excellent.”
He was truly satisfied.
If another member of this... what was it called again?
Right.
Huasheng Sect.
If any more players from the Huasheng Sect entered his dungeon in the future, he would keep them all as well.
With a few more of them making puppets together, the efficiency would surely be much higher.
In any case, as the supernatural world continued to assimilate other worlds, his dungeon's environment would only get better.
And as he grew stronger, the dungeon would also continue to upgrade.
When that time came, a village, then a town, and eventually even a city would be built here.
But where would the population come from?
No matter how small a city was, its population would have to be at least a hundred thousand. Relying solely on the players left behind each time the dungeon opened would definitely not be enough.
Even in the worst-case scenario where he could acquire that many player puppets, maintaining them would absolutely drain his life away.
Therefore, in his eyes, puppets were the true way!
Of course, while he wanted players from the Huasheng Sect, they would definitely have to know the Puppet Vitalization Art.
He wouldn't want those who didn't.
At this moment, Zuo Lin'an was sitting in his “brother's” room. While guarding the specter item, he used his God's-eye view to watch those mini puppets sprinting along the path.
Though they were small, the speed of those short legs was not slow at all.
He thought for a moment and decided to send his specter body over.
Blocking the path with his specter body would create an illusion for Chang Sheng, making him mistakenly believe that the specter was deliberately blocking him from passing.
By then, he might become convinced that the path of survival lay at the end of the path.
Even though it actually was there.
However, reaching the end of the path would take a significant amount of time, so Chang Sheng was highly likely to leave the mountain peak early and head toward the end of the white mist...
Once he went there and reached the edge of the white mist, even if he suddenly came to his senses and realized something was wrong, it would definitely be too late for him to return and investigate the plot.
After all, a round trip would take at least a whole day.
“Almost there.”
He had gone to such lengths with this act just to keep Chang Sheng here.
“There's about a day or so left. It will be over soon.”
Speaking of which, he wondered how Xu Youyou was doing and what kind of Death Rule he had formulated.
To be honest, he was quite looking forward to it.
Snapping back to reality, he shifted his attention to his specter body.
The specter body's speed was incredibly fast.
He easily reached the path ahead and chose a spot slightly past the midpoint of the path to stand in wait.
Although Chang Sheng's puppets were fast, it would take them at least three hours to reach this position.
Choosing this location was also meant to stall for as much time as possible.
By the time he spotted those puppets from afar, it was already past eight in the evening.
Under Chang Sheng's control, several mini puppets ran forward. But at that moment, he suddenly caught sight of a somewhat familiar dark figure standing on the path ahead.
In the next instant, the puppets froze in place mid-stride, as if they had suddenly crashed.
Chang Sheng did not dare to move.
He had witnessed the specter's speed more than once.
It could be said that once noticed by the specter, it was useless no matter how or where one ran.
By remaining completely still, perhaps he could trick the specter into thinking they were just inanimate objects, thereby saving these few puppets.
However, Chang Sheng had clearly underestimated Zuo Lin'an.
In the very next moment, the specter, which had been slowly wandering along the path ahead, suddenly came to a halt.
Seeing this, Chang Sheng gasped in fright, his heart skipping a beat. He almost forgot that he himself was still inside the old residence on the mountain peak.
Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he watched through the puppets as the specter ahead slowly turned around. Its crimson slit-pupils rolled slowly before its gaze finally locked onto the puppets.
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