Chapter 325 – Puppet Palace, Three Hidden Treasures
What kind of treasure would there be inside the Puppet Palace? Everyone was extremely curious.
However, it was Yue Clan’s secret. Xue Wu Xia, Princess Qian Qian and Luo Hua City Mistress and the others tampered down their curiosity and waited for Yue Yang inside the grimoire world quietly.
Yue Yu and Yue Bing had also stayed behind willingly.
Especially Yue Bing, although she obviously wanted to go, she knew that she would just be a burden for her brother if she stayed by his side. Without her, it would be easier for her brother to move. The day that they had promised the old Dragon Turtle to come and attack the Prison Emperor’s Divine Palace was coming soon, but neither Princess Qian Qian nor Luo Hua City Mistress had become an Innate. Yue Bing didn’t dare to slow her brother down. With regards to the girls’ thoughts of staying behind, Yue Yang didn’t comment much. It was indeed easier for him to explore on his own without Yue Bing and the others, it would just be a little boring by himself.
Xue Wu Xia and the others could now exit and enter the current grimoire world on their own. It was so much more convenient than fighting alone on his own. With the teleportation scroll that Elder Yue Hai gave him, Yue Yang teleported to the mysterious Puppet Palace.
When the teleportation was completed and Yue Yang landed on the ground, he realized that he had arrived at an extremely dark place, where he couldn’t even see her five fingers.
If it were another person, he would definitely be a blind person.
However, to Yue Yang, who possess the power of Night Vision, it wasn’t a problem at all.
Yue Yang summoned the Five Quintet Puppet Mice and ordered them to find a path. Although Yue Yang had understood about 80-90% of the traps en-route to the Puppet Palace, and that he only didn’t know about the location of the secret Inner Hall, Yue Yang still passed the job of exploring in front to the Five Quintet Puppet Mice. He wanted to search if there were any treasures along the way.
The Puppet Palace was built underground. It was a little like Ancient Passage, the road was extremely wide.
It’s just that this road wasn’t constructed by people, it was actually a cave. The Ghost Genius Yue Gong had ingeniously hidden the Puppet Palace inside.
Because he already had the route map to move forward, Yue Yang purposely walked through various small passages that was like a maze, avoiding all kinds of traps and mechanisms. After walking for an hour, he finally arrived in front of a great door, the entrance to the Puppet Palace.
The great door was built with metal. It was ten metres tall and 5 metres wide.
There was a monster like head decoration in front of the door. This was also one of the door protection mechanisms for the Puppet Palace.
Without the key, if someone touched this door carelessly, the monster head would spout flames. The door would also release poisonous arrows, causing the intruder to die on the spot.
If the intruder had a puppet beast, the monster’s eyes and the Heaven Runes ‘Lose Control’, ‘Devour’, ‘Persish’ and the others would join together to form a Rune Circle, making it very difficult for the mr.know-it-all intuder to escape. When Yue Yang saw all these, he couldn’t help but sigh in admiration to Ghost Genius Yue Gong’s design. This fellow, it was no wonder that he was the one and only Ghost Genius. He was simply too awesome. Yue Yang never thought that he would design a trap for puppet beasts with Heaven Runes. Ghost Genius Yue Gong was definitely more than someone who was an expert with Dwarf Runes and Puppet Beasts. From the arrangement of these Heaven Runes Rune Circle, the Ghost Genius Yue Gong was at least a master in the knowledge of Heaven Runes.
Yue Yang know quite a lot about Heaven Runes, but looking at the arrangement that Yue Gong had used, Yue Yang really never thought that it can be used that way. It can be said that this kind of arrangement gave Yue Yang a new enlightenment, immediately broadening Yue Yang’s knowledge.
Yue Yang didn’t have any speciality, but he was passionate in learning new skills from others to improve himself.
Yue Yang etched the anti-puppet Rune Circle arrangement deeply in his heart.
He believed that this arrangement would be useful in the future.
Yue Yang had already gained the Anti-Puppet Rune Circle just by coming to the entrance of the puppet palace, to his happy surprise. What awaits him inside? He wondered excitedly.
Yue Yang couldn’t wait, he really wanted to go inside and see.
He took out the Rune Crystal key and carefully placed it inside the hole on the monster’s head.
The Rune Crystal and the hole in the monster’s head combined together and released a ‘click’ sound. Afterwards, everything proceeded naturally.
As Yue Yang channelled a little Innate Qi into it, the whole Rune Crystal suddenly shone radiantly. The soft glow enveloped everything around it. The Rune Crystal’s energy flowed out, triggering the gear inside the monster head statue. That gear moved the monster’s eyes, and it instantly shone radiantly in green. The door produced a sound as if the gear mechanism inside was moving.
It was extremely soft, but if one listens carefully, he would be able to sense a subtle yet intense sound.
Yue Yang reached out and felt the changes in the door with his Innate Qi. He realized that if the monster head checked that the key was fake, the green light would not have lighted up. Instead, the colour red, which was the colour of death, would light up.
It would spout out an attack that was similar to a Dragon’s Breath and annihilate everything!
The moment it was spouted out, the intruders that were targeted would definitely met their miserable end!
However, with the real key, the great door would slowly open soundlessly, pulling back into the cave.
This great metal door was a full metre thick. Between the door, there were empty spaces at every short distance, which was connected to the various different mechanisms underground. Yue Yang took note that the traps underground were joined seamlessly. It was even more high-tech than those movies that he had watched before in his previous world. Yue Yang couldn’t help but to praise Yue Gong in admiration. He felt that making a big metal door wasn’t a difficult thing to do, the difficult thing was to install the sensors on the door. Machines aren’t living beings, no matter how accurate a machine was, it would never be able to compare to a human’s brain. It was also not flexible. Yue Yang was really marvelled at how the Ghost Genius was able to design a huge metal door that was still so sensitive and effective after hundreds of years.
He reckoned that even if hundreds of years passed, this door would still be working fine. From this, one could see how great the Ghost Genius’ abilities were.
Yue Yang entered the Puppet Palace.
Walking through a long passage way, he suddenly found steep cliff.
Yue Yang couldn’t see the bottom of the cliff. The passageway was not below, instead, every one hundred metres, there would be a special floating platform made from magical magnets that moved around. This kind of floating platform was called the “Floating Bridge”. Innate Rankers who entered would have to step onto the footprints on the magical magnets in succession.
Yue Yang must pass the magical magnets detection, only then would the door to the Inner Palace slowly open… If one forces his way and flew over using a flying beast, the invader would be bombarded with endless traps and mechanisms the moment he landed. Yue Yang relaxedly stepped onto the stone surface of the magical magnets. Everytime he stepped on one, the magical magnet stone surface would shine, showing that he passed the verification as the new owner of the Puppet Palace, and would be allowed to continue advancing.
After Yue Yang finished jumping across the magical magnets floating stone, there was another big door made of metal that opened automatically.
Inside, there was a long hallway.
Crystal Stones that gives out light had been illuminating the hallway for hundreds of years.
Under the soft glow of light, two rows of mechanical beasts arranged from low-ranked to high-ranked, from low-levelled to high-levelled extended backwards, in order.
The ones in front were Normal-ranked Level 1, Normal-ranked Level 2 Iron-skinned monsters. Following that, there were Stone Goblins and Stone Giant. Behind them were Bronze-ranked War Wolf and Silver-ranked War Leopards, War Tigers and War Eagles. There were rows and rows of dazzling line-up, so much that there were no war beasts that Yue Yang had ever seen before but not within the collection.
Walking 2 kilometres forward, the number of monsters in ocean, land and air decreased gradually, while the number of humanoid monsters or puppet beasts increased.
Similarly, they were also arranged by their ranks and levels, from low to high.
Humanoid Stone Doll, Iron-skinned Man, Chopping Slaughterer, Sawtooth Killer, Iron-clawed Follower, every kind of beast was there. There was even a humanoid mechanical war doll that Yue Yang had never seen before. Looking at this magnificent collection, Yue Yang who had seen many types of beast before felt dizzy looking at them… Gold-ranked Level 5 Earth War Soldier, Gold-ranked Level 6 Earth War General, Gold-ranked Level 7 Earth War Marshal, Gold-ranked Level 8 Earth War Emperor… Yue Yang almost drooled looking at them.
If it weren’t for the fact that these puppets didn’t have their core, hence unable to move at all, Yue Yang would have moved them all out.
Were this Ghost Genius Yue Gong’s masterpieces?
No!
Yue Yang felt that all these were merely the superficial knowledge that the Ghost Genius Yue Gong had displayed.
It could be seen that these puppets were more or less faulty. Of course, only Yue Yang who had the Heaven Eyes Divine Vision could see it clearly.
In the eyes of a normal warrior, these puppet beasts were perfections. Yue Yang suddenly thought something in his heart, why are they arranged in that way? Those puppet beasts, could they possibly be the Ghost Genius Yue Gong’s puppet making skill growth?
At the beginning, the beasts that he created were rather low-levelled. The handwork, design, composition and others were rather crude.
However, along with the process of making puppets, the Ghost Genius Yue Gong’s improvement could be clearly seen. The problems and weak points in the first few puppets disappeared. No matter if it was in terms of handwork, design or composition, there were evidence of great improvements. Furhtermore, these kind of improvements were separated to different layers. From the animal-type puppet beast to human-shaped puppet beasts, there was a huge leap of improvement. From human-shaped puppet beasts to humanoid puppet beasts, there was another huge leap of improvement… With regards to Bronze, Silver, and Gold-rank, Yue Gong’s improvement could also be seen. Last but not least, the ghost Genius Yue Gong could actually make a Gold-ranked Level 8 Earth War Emperor.
Yue Gong’s improvement, was it only up to this point?
No!
Yue Yang walked towards the Gold-ranked Level 8 Earth War Emperor and realized that on the manual of the puppet beast, Yue Gong had written a lot of assessment, and most of them were the weaknesses of the puppet beast.
For example, there was a problem with allocating the power from the core to the rest of the body. Its combat skills were also unable to perform up to standard. Furthermore, the Earth War Emperor was unable to adapt to various land terrain battles, it was difficult for it to fully show its power on certain topographies, and etc… Yue Yang was dumbstruck when he read all these.
It was already incredible for the Ghost Genius Yue Gong to be able to create Gold-ranked Level 8 Puppets, but he was still gravely dissatisfied.
From this, it could be seen that he was definitely a perfectionist.
“I thought of a way to solve the problem of adapting to various topographies. The puppet must be able to transform. Being able to execute all of its combat skills would never be enough. The humanoid puppet must be able to transform and recombine itself, turning into some kind of beast that could fight in water, land, air, sand, ice, fire and other kinds of special area. It has to have more accurate weapons and strong propelling force! Maybe I am going in the wrong way, but I think it is possible to use the Heaven Runes to create the propelling force. To humans, this is something new, but to the dwellers of the Outer Realms, this might have been something that has already been invented, something that is commonplace or household items. If I have fifty more years, no, ten more years, I believe I can perfect this puppet. It’s a pity that I have not much time left!” Ghost Genius Yue Gong recorded his analyses on his record book.
Yue Yang became more shocked as he read on. He was completely shaken by Yue Gong’s ‘crazy’ idea.
The Ghost Genius Yue Gong wrote in the end: “Puppet research has captivated me, and the more I research, the more I realized that I have gotten closer to uncovering the secrets of the puppet’s core… In the last one year of my life, I have decided to research on things that requires to be solved immediately. If it is successful, I will be able to leave my descendant Three Hidden Treasures. Before locking the Puppet Palace, I hope that an excellent Yue Clan descendant would be able to come to the Inner Palace and receive the fruits of my studies… If, if I did not manage to finish an died first, please continue the research that I have laid foundation on on my behalf…”
Three Hidden Treasures?
There were still Three Hidden Treasures inside the Inner Palace?
Yue Yang couldn’t help but to be shocked. What kind of treasure would the Three Hidden Treasures be?