Seeking immortality in a deceitful way starts by making oneself into a puppet

Dark night, Sui'an City.

In an antique wing of the He family's mansion, the candlelight was dim and the ground was covered with broken limbs.

If a stranger walked into this wing, he would definitely be frightened by the sight in front of him.

But if you look closely, you will find that these limbs are the torsos of wooden puppets.

He Ping was sitting on a chair. He was making a puppet with the carving knife in his hand. There were also several finished puppets placed on the table next to him.

Under the dim candlelight, there are pale and colorless human faces. These lifelike dolls were all made by He Ping himself. There were so many of them that they filled the entire wing.

They were old and young, male and female, and they all kept weird and scary smiles. In the flickering candlelight, they looked like living people, all looking at He who was sitting on the wooden chair. flat.

He Ping didn't speak. He used his dexterous fingers to control the carving knife, cutting wood like clay with ease.

While carving on the puppet placed on the table, some wood chips would fall from the puppet from time to time.

I don't know how long it took, but only half of the candles on the candlestick were left. He Ping didn't stop. He was concentrating on the puppet in his hand.

...It must be said that his craftsmanship is very exquisite. The material he chose is high-quality camphor wood. After drying in the shade, after several months of preparation, and with his skilled carving, the prototype of this puppet has begun to take shape.

The puppet is obviously a male, with a very handsome face and lifelike facial features. If you look closely, you will find that this puppet is exactly the same as He Ping's own face.

Then, He Ping took out the paintbrush and painted the eyebrows and eyes, and the puppet's face became more and more vivid, almost sculpted according to his own face.

The candlestick in front of the window stood motionless, its flame the size of a pea flame swaying in the wind. He Ping was blown by the wind and couldn't help coughing twice.

He stopped and used a knife to cut a cut on his fingertip. He used blood to draw inexplicable symbols on the puppet's body, and began to chant an unknown spell.

In an instant, the strange blood stains on his body disappeared, and at the same time, the puppet's facial features also became a little bit alive.

He Ping's face turned a little pale, and he stopped.

"It's done."

After letting out a long breath, he made a seal, and a strange scene happened. The puppet on the table moved.

Cluck cluck...

It moved its stiff joints slowly and smoothly, just like a real person.

The wooden puppet picked up the paper cuttings and linen clothes prepared nearby, put on a tall hat, and wore a linen garment, as if wearing linen to express mourning during a funeral.

"This 'Nine Deaths' Substitute Witch Puppet' has been made. Although this secret puppet cannot help me prolong my life, it can be used to stop the catastrophes caused by swords and weapons on my behalf and avoid the nine kinds of unforeseen deaths. It is also beneficial..."

He reached out and picked up the "Nine Deaths Witch Puppet" and looked at it carefully. Suddenly, his face suddenly turned pale, he put down the puppet, held his chest and coughed.

"Cough cough cough..."

He Ping coughed a few more times. He covered the corners of his mouth with a brocade handkerchief. When the coughing stopped, he opened the brocade handkerchief and took a look and found a trace of bright red blood on it.

"My health is getting worse and worse. If I continue like this, I probably won't be able to hold on for long... Is it really the only way to use that method?"

As if he thought of something, he reached out and took out a thin booklet from his arms. The paper in this booklet was yellowed and looked a little dirty. After you open it, you will find that there is not a single big word on this volume, it is completely blank.

He Ping took a deep look at the booklet. It was an entry method handed down from the Immortal Puppet Sect, called "Invisible Secrets". It recorded various secret methods for controlling and refining puppets.

Originally, the "Invisible Secret" contained dense handwriting, as well as some strange runes and pictures. However, after he learned the spells recorded on it and imprinted the contents deeply into his mind, the words and patterns on it became The weirdness disappeared.

"The things in the Immortal Puppet Sect are really weird..."

He Ping muttered as he put away the "Invisible Secret" that had lost its text and pattern.

As the eldest grandson of the He family, he has shown wisdom far beyond the average person since he was a child. He has a secret, that is, he has the memory of his previous life, or in other words, he is a time traveler.

He Ping's body suffered a serious illness when he was seven or eight years old. He had a high fever. After the high fever, he lost his memory.

After seeing a doctor, he was told that it was "soul-leaving syndrome". However, this disease is not a problem. Apart from the fact that He Ping, the only son of the He family, had no memory of his childhood, his mind was not damaged. The He family did not disclose this matter to the outside world.

In fact, after the serious illness at that time, another soul from the earth crossed over and landed on this body.

After traveling through time, He Ping took some time to adapt to his new life. He found that his soul had traveled to a world similar to ancient China.

He roughly knew that this was a country called "Dayou Dynasty", and the area where his family lived was called Sui'an City. The He family was also the largest rice merchant in Sui'an City, and his family was extremely well-off. As the only son of the He family, He Ping had grown up Live a life of fine clothing and fine food.

To be honest, this kind of life is very satisfying, and he is very satisfied with it.

However, his life changed for some reason.

…

It was a winter, and He Ping, accompanied by his servants at home, went out of the city to do business.

On the way back to the city that day, one of his servants found a frozen old man in a nearby mountain temple.

"This must be a puppet show. It snowed heavily last night and ended up freezing to death here."

The servant checked and found that the old man was still holding a puppet in his arms when he died, so he answered this.

"It looks a little pitiful. I have some scraps of money here. Please ask Miao Zhu and the nearby mountain people to help this old man build a grave!"

He Ping was also kind-hearted and gave random instructions.

The servants followed the instructions and called in the temple priests and mountain people, giving them money and asking them to build a grave for the dead old man and bury him in a nearby cemetery.

For He Ping, this is nothing more than a small matter.

Unexpectedly, when he returned home and fell asleep on the bed, an old man with a white beard appeared in his dream.

The old man first bowed to him, told him that his family name was "Wuyousheng", and thanked He Ping for collecting his bones and building a tomb for him.

Wuyousheng recounted his life. When he was young, he loved to watch silk string operas and indulged in the skills of coiled bell puppets. Whenever a busker came to play puppets or puppets in the market, he would pester them to learn their skills, and gradually learned a unique skill. .

When he was older, he ignored the opposition of his family and traveled around the world, making this his career and enjoying himself with objects and people. However, he wandered all his life, homeless and homeless, and finally ended up freezing to death in a mountain temple.

"It's not a pity for me to die, but it's a pity that I lost all the puppetry skills I learned. If I don't give up, I am willing to pass this skill on to the young master..."

Next, Wuyousheng told He Ping the whereabouts of a secret book on puppetry called "Invisible Secrets" that he had collected from the Immortal Puppet Sect.

"That booklet is hidden under the big locust tree outside the mountain temple, where three stones are stacked. You can find it by digging down three feet."

After saying this, Wuyousheng made another bow and turned into a mist.

He Ping woke up the next day, with this dream very clear in his mind. According to what Wuyousheng had left, he found a booklet under the big locust tree outside the mountain temple, which was the book. "Invisible Secrets".

After he opened it and looked at it, he found that it was indeed a book recording various productions of dolls.

He Ping has no interest in puppets or anything like that. The He family is a wealthy family in Sui'an City, and their wealth is said to be small. He could spend his whole life on eating, drinking, and having fun, but it would take hundreds of years to live in vain.

With such a net worth, it is impossible for him to learn puppetry.

But he couldn't bear his curiosity, so he read the booklet for a while, and couldn't help but follow the records in the booklet and start to learn the secret puppet skills above. In the end, he actually learned something.

He Ping studied for a while and realized that in addition to the puppet making techniques recorded in "Invisible Secrets", which were mainly paper, leather, wood, and pottery, there were also water puppets, meat puppets, medicinal hair puppets, staff puppets, bag puppets, Puppet control techniques such as silk puppets and horizontal branch puppets are far beyond the skills of ordinary actors.

In addition to the common puppet techniques, "Invisible Secrets" also involves secret techniques such as weariness of victory, air restraint, suppressing objects, resolving misfortunes, substituting difficulties, and false forms. In other words, this is not a "skill" at all, but "Law".

After He Ping got this book, he thought he had a great opportunity. He spent all his energy in studying "Invisible Secrets" in those years. Whenever he hit a wall or encountered a difficult problem, he would I met Wuyousheng again in my dream.

The old man with white hair told him everything he knew, and he taught him all the secrets of the "Invisible Secret" that he knew.

This is called "Yin Master's teaching" in Taoism. Wuyousheng has been dead for several years, but he still teaches Taoism intermittently in his dreams for several years.

As a result, during those few years, He Ping was obsessed with the profound and mysterious techniques recorded in the volume of "Invisible Secrets". He studied it day and night without eating or sleeping, but he did not know that someone was plotting to sow the seeds of disaster.