When Anji woke up, it was already dark outside. Panicking, she wondered why nobody woke her up for her training session. Not to mention, she had fallen asleep at the table right after the meal. Why didn’t her shifu reprimand her?
"Up so soon?" a familiar voice cut through Anji’s panic. "We’re cancelling training for a few days. If you’re not tired, consider taking a bath first and eating more. Doctor Yun said you are still dehydrated."
Turning to the voice, Anji spotted her shifu’s figure in the dark at the dining table, fiddling with something.
"Shifu? But I’m already this late for training."
Pausing from what she was doing, Yan Ping turned towards the direction of the child and scanned her using her second sight. Thankfully, the foreign energy had been fully adopted into Anji’s body. The modified artificial cores were also no longer sealing Anji’s spiritual network from exchanging energy with the environment. Despite that, Anji’s natural life energy was seeping out of her body rapidly like a leaking tap. The girl would have to start learning how to control that first without the aid of seals in her meridians to understand how to become one with nature. The most update n0vels are published on novelꞁire.net
"Don’t you feel anything different in your body?" the blind woman asked.
Prompted to think about it, Anji paused to self-assess. Nothing much felt different from before. She was still exhausted and thirsty. However, after circulating her energy, she found that there was almost no resistance, and the speed it circulated scared her. It was as if she were sliding down a muddy slope with no way to stop until she hit the bottom of the hill.
Snapping her golden eyes open, Anji quickly realised that she had accidentally entered her second-sight state. Bewildered by the lack of control over her energy, Anji panicked.
Chuckling at Anji’s struggles, Yan Ping beckoned her over.
"It would be difficult to get used to your new spiritual network, so we’ll take a break while you adjust to the new artificial core adjustments I’ve made. I see that you’ve started to understand the concept of becoming one with nature, even if the methods you attempted were very unrefined."
Surprised that her teacher modified the artificial cores, Anji forgot all about her thirst and exhaustion. Curious, she walked over to her teacher to see what she was making on the table.
Yan Ping activated a light talisman to give Anji a better view of her new training materials.
"Paperman?" Anji pointed at the human-shaped paper cutouts.
On closer inspection, these human-shaped talismans had symbols drawn onto them. Anji recognised them. However, that only led to more confusion. Weren’t these spells normally only used on living creatures such as plants and animals? Some of these spells were also carved into her artificial cores.
Now that she studied them more thoroughly, it resembled the spells used in her artificial cores. Was this meant to be a replica of her?
"I decided that you should be training differently from other cultivators," Yan Ping informed her curious student. "These are paperman talismans. As you know, they are inanimate objects. When imbued with a person’s blood, nail clipping or hair strands, the paper will then transform into a temporary living entity, capable of bearing the effects of spells on behalf of their master or target until the biological material decomposes."
That much Anji read about. Many people call these paper dolls curses. However, there were many useful things paper dolls could do that people outside the Mystical Qilin Sect were not doing. Curses such as causing pain and qi deviation with these spell talismans were only used by cruel people with low spell mastery. In reality, the paperman talisman was one of the most adaptable talismans that spell masters loved using.
Researchers often hate not having an extra body. Hence, they would transfer their consciousness into these paper bodies to continue doing what they wanted to do while the body rested. Most times that involved researching journals. Of course, if the paper talisman suffers damage while the researcher occupies it, they also suffer spiritual damage.
Another popular use of paperman talismans was to provide a passive buff to the spellcaster. However, this method was not revealed outside of the Mystical Qilin Sect, as many cultivators and martial artists would abuse this and cause harm to their bodies by underestimating the fatigue and damage built up in the body. Researchers who often needed stamina or strength buffs to move shelves of books they did not want to rearrange would use Paperman spell buffs to temporarily increase their physical limits. Of course, they suffered from severe muscle aches that paralysed them for days after. However, it was all within the risks they were willing to take.
Today, Yan Ping was not using a Paperman talisman with anyone’s blood, hair or nails. It was simply another talisman for now.
"We will attempt to create an artificial life form with intelligence by utilising the spells contained within these talismans. You will play the role of a puppeteer as you learn to control your spiritual energy while infusing it with energy from the environment. Without understanding how true harmonisation works, you cannot become one with nature."
Artificial intelligence? Hearing the term for the first time, Anji studied the Paperman and attempted to imbue her own energy into it.
The Paperman lit up briefly, but the glow fizzled out just as quickly. Normally, the Paperman could store energy in its circuits. Did her teacher forget to include that in the complicated circuit?
"Just supplying it with your internal energy will not awaken the Paperman," Yan Ping explained, wrinkling her nose. Her disciple needed a bath badly. "You need to supply it with your own energy in equal amounts to the energy borrowed from the environment, ."
Demonstrating once, Yan Ping imbued the Paperman with energy from her own core using her right hand. In her left hand, Anji saw how her teacher collected energy from the room they were in. She condensed the nature qi in her left hand and transferred it at a steady rate at the same pace that matched the intensity from her right hand.
Slowly but surely, the Paperman’s circuits lit up and flowed into the rest of the complex circuits spreading from its centre until it reached all four limbs and its head.
Then, the Paperman talisman did the unthinkable and struggled in her teacher’s hands.
Letting the Paperman go, Yan Ping smiled. Her small side project, animating inanimate objects with artificial intelligence, was a success. Although the Paperman talisman did not last long and could only walk and turn a page from the book on command, it was still a new, interesting discovery.
Anji’s jaw fell. She had never seen anything like it before. The Paperman did not seem to do much. However, the fact that it could walk independently without anyone controlling it was amazing. When her teacher gave it a command to turn a page of a book, the Paperman struggled but finally flipped a single page after a minute. Then, as if exhausting all its energy after flipping a single page, the Paperman’s glow faded, and it slumped over, becoming nothing more than a bookmark in the book it had opened.
"That’s your new training," Yan Ping explained. Until you can do this, you will not be allowed to return to the accelerated cultivation chambers. But first, take a shower. You smell of sweat."