Another half month passed when the stone door of the earth fire room suddenly exploded with a bang, and Zhang Ling's laughter came from inside.
The originally scorching environment inside had changed drastically, turning into a world of ice and snow, with wisps of yin and cold spiritual power filling the room, causing the entire earth fire temperature to plummet.
In a cloud of cold mist, a giant tortoise shook its head a few times, emitting the sound of metal clashing against each other.
Zhang Ling was standing on the giant tortoise at this moment, lightly tapping his brow, separating a wisp of divine thought from his primordial spirit and submerging it into the giant tortoise's body.
Instantly, the entire giant tortoise seemed to come alive, becoming even more agile. With a slight thought, the giant tortoise's entire body turned ice-blue, instantly spitting out a large number of ice thorns, which shot all over a nearby wall with a swishing sound.
That wall was instantly frozen, turning into a sheet of ice.
"Judging by attack power alone, this puppet beast's attack power has indeed reached the level of a high-level puppet. It is already not weaker than a real fifth-order demon beast. But is it really a success to use Soul Nourishing Wood to refine the control core of a puppet?" Zhang Ling circled around the giant tortoise puppet, constantly scrutinizing it while muttering to himself.
After trying many materials without success in refining a control core for a high-level puppet, he thought of trying Soul Nourishing Wood, and unexpectedly, it actually worked.
The control core of a puppet originally needs to fuse a demon soul to give the puppet a certain spirituality, making it easier for cultivators to control. Only then can it be considered a complete puppet that has been successfully refined.
Of course, it is also possible to control a puppet with divine sense by placing only a spiritual power core on its body, just like controlling magical treasures.
However, since there are many components on a puppet, controlling it consumes a lot of divine sense. Controlling such a high-level puppet consumes as much divine sense as three or four magical treasures.
In order to unilaterally pursue strength, consuming a large amount of divine sense in battle is somewhat not worth the cost, especially for Nascent Soul cultivators, it seems even more impractical.
Even if they possess several high-level puppets, the role they can play in Nascent Soul battles is limited. It is even questionable whether they can play any role at all.
Zhang Ling's research on high-level puppets is naturally also to increase his strength. After all, upon reaching the Nascent Soul stage, powerful divine abilities are not easy to cultivate, and the increase in cultivation is even slower.
Although high-level puppets are external objects, they can accumulate strength more effectively. If a dozen high-level puppets are released at once, that would be different. The accumulated combat power should not be underestimated.
Soul Nourishing Wood is originally a divine wood for nourishing the soul. It is natural to fuse some remnant souls and demon souls to refine the control core of a puppet.
He had thought of using this material when he first started researching high-level puppets, but Soul Nourishing Wood was too precious, and he didn't want to waste it like that.
Therefore, he experimented with other materials, but in the end, only this material could meet the requirements and be used to replace Soul Fusion Stones in refining the control core of high-level puppets.
Zhang Ling revealed a somewhat complicated expression, put away the giant tortoise puppet, walked out of the earth fire room, and flew directly to an open area not far away to test the power of this puppet.
After all, he did not use the so-called Soul Fusion Stone to refine the puppet core, and he did not know whether it could exert the full power of a high-level puppet. It was also difficult to say whether there would be some kind of defect, so he naturally had to examine it carefully.
The refined giant tortoise puppet was three zhang(丈: zhang, a unit of length) tall, like a real giant tortoise demon beast, quietly lying prostrate at his feet.
Zhang Ling held a gray-black wooden plate two fingers wide and one inch long in his hand, and a spiritual power hit it. The wooden plate floated up, and a gray-black mist emerged from it.
As this cloud of mist flowed rapidly, it transformed into a vague phantom of a demon soul. Upon closer inspection, this demon soul was not the soul of a tortoise demon beast, but a lizard demon soul.
In fact, there was nothing strange about this. The control core of a puppet must be injected with the remnant soul of a living being to give the puppet a certain spirituality, so that the cultivator can better control it.
To drive a high-level puppet, the injected remnant soul cannot be too bad, and ordinary remnant souls cannot meet the requirements. It is best to use the remnant soul of a high-level cultivator or the soul of a high-level demon beast.
These types of soul are not easy to collect, and even if he wanted to integrate the high-level soul of a turtle demon beast into this giant tortoise puppet, it would be difficult to collect it in a short time.
Fortunately, he had previously hunted many high-level demon beasts and desolate beasts, and had also collected many high-level demon souls.
However, there was no demon soul of a turtle demon beast, so he could only use the soul of other high-level demon beasts as a substitute for now.
Of course, as long as the remnant soul meets certain requirements, it can be used to refine the control core of a high-level puppet, without any other requirements.
In fact, there is no need to specifically look for the corresponding demon beast soul.
After all, the control core of a puppet is mainly to give the puppet a certain spirituality, so that the cultivator can issue orders and control it more easily.
It is not to give the puppet a complete consciousness, so the requirements in this regard will naturally not be too harsh.
However, in his research on puppetry, the Heavenly Ultimate Puppetry also introduced a type of spiritual puppet that once existed.
It is said that a true spiritual puppet does not need to be controlled by humans, but instead, like an external avatar, it gives birth to an independent consciousness, and even has emotions such as human's seven emotions and six desires.
Of course, the method of refining this kind of spiritual puppet is not recorded in the puppetry. Zhang Ling smiled when he saw this and did not pay too much attention to it.
Puppets are, after all, a special kind of magic weapon. If they could really give birth to a complete consciousness like a living being, even if it really existed, it would not be something that cultivators in the human realm could refine.
After all, if a magic weapon gives birth to some autonomous spirituality, it can become a spiritual treasure. This kind of spirituality is not a complete consciousness, but a spirit like a weapon spirit or a sword spirit.
He took a deep breath, put away his thoughts, and stopped thinking wildly. With a wave of his hand, this puppet control core made of Soul Nourishing Wood turned into a black light, and in a flash, it disappeared into a piece of turtle shell behind the giant tortoise puppet's head.
Instantly, the entire giant tortoise seemed to come alive, and the two pitch-black eyeballs on its head lit up with dark blue light.
"It's your turn, little guy. Let's use you to test the extent of this puppet."
Zhang Ling then smiled, patted a spirit beast pouch on his waist, and a flash of spiritual light appeared at the mouth of the pouch, and a round thing fell at his feet.
meow~
The double-tailed cat meow meowed twice extremely dissatisfied, sat down on the ground with a thud, shook its head, and the two tails behind its back swayed left and right, not caring about his orders at all.
"Hmph, still lying on the ground. I will activate the blood curse, and your spirit stones will be halved." Zhang Ling helplessly kicked the double-tailed cat and said with a cold snort.
The double-tailed cat immediately pricked up its two ears, meowed again, shook its chubby body, and fire rose from its body.
In an instant, it burst out with a burst of aura, kicked with its four feet, and rushed directly towards the giant tortoise puppet next to it.
"Hehe, threatening words still have some effect." Zhang Ling smiled wryly in his heart, and at the same time quickly released a wisp of divine sense, instantly controlling the giant tortoise puppet to act.
kabakaba The sound of gold and iron colliding came from the giant tortoise's mouth. The puppet opened its mouth wide and spat out a ball of dark blue ice mist.
Under the rapid expansion and contraction of this ball of ice mist, it instantly condensed into huge ice thorns and shot out towards the rushing double-tailed cat.
The double-tailed cat, despite its chubby body, was extremely agile in its movements. It jumped a few times in the air and dodged the attacks of a large number of ice thorns.
At the same time, the double-tailed cat's body also turned into a flame cat in the fire, like a huge tiger.
As the two fiery red tails waved, they turned into a large sheet of red afterimages, and directly whipped towards the giant tortoise puppet.
Every strike hit the puppet's body, and there were rumbling loud noises. It looked like it was not weak.
After the double-tailed cat advanced to the sixth-order demon beast, its strength greatly increased. Even without demon fire attacks, the strength of the demon beast's body alone would be enough to deal with ordinary sixth-order demon beasts.
After a burst of attacks, the double-tailed cat found that its attacks on the Xuan tortoise puppet, in addition to making loud noises, could not cause any damage.
This little guy seemed to be angry, and also changed the attack mode, emitting a whimper low whine in his mouth, and his body swelled a few circles, and purple-red flames appeared all over his body, and instantly spat out a purple-red fire light.
Zhang Ling narrowed his eyes slightly as he watched this scene, thinking secretly that the demon fire in this little guy's body had condensed a lot.
As his thoughts turned, he controlled the giant tortoise puppet to spat out a large sheet of ice mist, covering his whole body, and the giant tortoise puppet turned into an ice sculpture.
He did not control the puppet to avoid the attack, but wanted to test the puppet's defensive power.
The huge flame beam hit the giant tortoise, and immediately melted the ice covering the puppet, and even the giant tortoise's iron-black body was imprinted red.
If it was an ordinary fifth- or sixth-order demon beast, if it received this blow, it would be seriously injured even if it didn't die.
But the puppet did not have this kind of worry, but under Zhang Ling's induction, the giant tortoise puppet still suffered some damage.
Fortunately, the turtle shell on the back was refined with several tough materials, and the giant tortoise was an ice-water attribute puppet with outstanding defensive power. It was not worse than an ordinary defensive magic weapon, and could withstand more than ten such attacks.
"Not bad, little guy, pay attention, then we will try the puppet's attack power." Zhang Ling chuckled and immediately controlled the giant tortoise puppet to display its attack power.
Suddenly, under his control, the black turtle shell on the back of the giant tortoise puppet lit up with a sheet of blue-green spiritual light, and a burst of ice-cold power burst out. In the blink of an eye, huge ice thorns several zhang(丈: zhang, a unit of length) long grew out of the turtle's back.
These ice thorns did not stay at all, and swooshing broke through the air. In an instant, more than twenty ice thorns attacked the double-tailed cat.
At the same time, under the turtle shell, the tail behind it also lengthened, turning into an iron-black steel whip, emitting a whirring breaking wind sound.
The double-tailed cat naturally did not want to show weakness, and the flame spiritual power on his body was even more violent. He directly pounced over.
As the full power of the giant tortoise puppet was tested, a burst of bang bang chaotic sound came from Fire Cloud Island.
Half an hour later, Zhang Ling returned to the earth fire room with satisfaction.
The giant tortoise puppet did not disappoint him, and could exert its full strength. Not only could it emit various ice attribute attacks, but also the puppet's body was hard and would not be easily destroyed.
But there were still weaknesses. The giant tortoise puppet consumed a lot of spiritual power every time it attacked, and the spiritual power core could not continuously emit attacks.
And the emitted attacks were all of the attack power of a high-level cultivator, but the puppet was not as exquisite as a cultivator in the use of spiritual power. The power exerted by the puppet was to control the special array patterns engraved in it.
While emitting power, a large amount of spiritual power would dissipate. Of course, spiritual power consumption could also be supplemented with spirit stones.
But compared to real high-level demon beasts and Golden Core cultivators, the flexibility was still much worse. Such a high-level puppet could only drag down a Golden Core 초기(초기: early) cultivator for a while at most.
Even so, Zhang Ling was quite satisfied. This proved that he could already refine high-level puppets.
Then he closed the earth fire room and took out a lot of materials, intending to refine a few more high-level puppets.
……
This day, in a dark cave somewhere on Fire Cloud Island. Zhang Ling was checking a large sheet of newly cultivated spirit grass.
This cave was not big or small. Two mu, a unit of area of spiritual field had been opened up on the ground, planting a lot of flowers and plants.
Most of these flowers and plants were quite strange. They did not emit a strong medicinal effect like ordinary flowers and plants. Some of the flowers and plants emitted pungent, unpleasant smells.
This was because most of these flowers and plants were poisonous, and ordinary cultivators would not cultivate them.
This dark cave was specially opened up to cultivate these yin and cold poisonous grasses.
Zhang Ling was squatting next to a half-person-high shrub, collecting the bright white small flowers condensed on it.
These small flowers were not as soft as ordinary flowers, but like ice sculptures, emitting a glittering light.
Each petal was translucent, and if you looked closely, there was a thin layer of ice mist emitting on it.
Zhang Ling did not pick them directly with his hands, but used two small yellow light hands transformed by spiritual power to pick the ice flowers quickly.
These bright white ice flowers were snow fog flowers, which were also the spirit medicine needed for Xuan Turtle to cultivate ice soul poison.
After collecting the snow fog flowers, Zhang Ling walked to a crooked black sapling not far away. With a light wave of his finger, he shot out a cyan sword light, directly cutting the whole sapling into seven or eight sections.
Several sections of tree trunks were flying in the air, wrapped in spiritual power and rotating rapidly. starlight black powder was scattered.
The released spiritual power was like a blade, constantly shaving these tree trunks. The scattered powder was all collected into a square jade box.
This was also another material needed to condense ice soul poison.
Finally, Zhang Ling picked a few ice snake grasses that had grown for eight or nine hundred years before leaving this medicine field.
After returning to the cave, he processed all the spirit medicines needed for ice soul poison. Some were refined into spirit liquid with pill fire, and some were air-dried into powder.
After processing these spirit medicines, they were all packed into small jade bottles in a certain proportion. He shot out a beam spiritual light, dragging more than a dozen jade bottles into a cultivation quiet room.
The transformed Xuan Turtle was cross-legged on an ice pillar, shrouded in a layer of blue ice mist. Between breathing, his mouth was breathing in a strong extreme cold force.
After more than a dozen jade bottles flew inside, they fell directly to the Xuan Turtle's feet, surrounding a small circle.
