With that, the problem of the invaders has come to a conclusion. Mostly. Bloodmoon sacrificed his current cultivation to possess someone with lots of future potential. If he plays his cards correctly, he can grow and mature in the seven great sects too. They’ll be none the wiser, raising one of their greatest enemies with their own resources. I should’ve expected him to do something like that; he risked taking a supreme immortal’s legacy right under the seven great sect’s noses after all. Why wouldn’t he temporarily give up his strength for a chance to become stronger than he ever was? The risk is immense though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find him dead when I ascend to the immortal realm with my army of immortals. Also, unluckily for him, he never had a chance to investigate the real legacy before he came under pursuit. He won’t know the one he sacrificed himself for is a fake. Well, that’s not my problem.

My problem is the abundance of captives my trap acquired. I’ll have to look through their memories, see which one of them have soul lanterns or items similar to them. If the elders from their sects know they’re still alive, they’ll be tempted to come down to look for them. However, if they’re dead, the sect elders will gain nothing from avenging a dead disciple; I don’t think they’d descend and risk their wellbeing for something that’s lost. For the captives who don’t have any backers watching their souls, I can afford to let them live. I’ll thoroughly explore their organs, see the differences of a body raised in an abundance of spiritual energy.

I’ve developed a tool that lets me read people memories, the same one I used on Bloodmoon and Fairy Lin. Honestly, it wasn’t very hard to accomplish at all. During the warpath I sent Old Bai on, I had him send me captives and corpses. There were quite a few so-called evil cultivators amongst those captives. I merely trapped their souls inside a device in a similar fashion to the way I put souls in my alchemy stoves. All of them knew how to Soul Scour people, and I basically told them to Soul Scour people for me or die. I have them send their memories into a jade slip afterwards, and once I read it, it’s the same thing as Soul Scouring people myself but better. After all, there’s around thirty people Soul Scouring at once. They’re less likely to miss something vital.

“How come you always say I do things that I don’t do, Auntie Ilya?”

“What are you doing in my lab?” The memory-reading device, which basically looks like a hand, doesn’t require me to do much other than placing it on someone’s head. I can even have my corpse puppet do it. Meanwhile, I’m sorting through everything we obtained. Lucia dropped off a bunch of rings and told me to make a virility pill from the stuff inside. Neither of us know if the required materials are there. Although there might only be around a thousand interspacial rings, the amount of stuff inside is tremendous. The rings hold much more than an average one; I’m not sure if that’s due to the status of the disciples or if it’s a product of the immortal realm’s environment.

“Mommy told me to tell you to make me happy.”

Is this about the false person I created escaping from her? Well, it’s a minor price to pay for accomplishing my goal. How am I so sure my goal has been accomplished? The void dragon boat and other forms of dimensional travel are usually locked by strict coordinates. If my estimation of those immortals up there are correct, none of them would agree to let the traveling tool have a destination other than right in front of the immortal door. Since Bloodmoon used the boat to escape from here, the only place he could’ve ended up was smackdab in the middle of the seven great sects’ forces. …Unless he died because the boat failed. Anyways, Sophia is pretty easy to make happy. “Do you feel happy right now?”

“Um, a little. I like watching you work.”

“You don’t even know what I’m doing most of the time.”

“That’s true, but sometimes the things get really shiny, and I like that.”

She’s definitely Lucia’s child, alright. Oh, finally, Kuang Feng’s corpse, I was wondering when I’d locate the ring containing it. I’ll pull it out, focus one thought into examining it and let the rest continue what they’re doing. Baldie said her attack extinguished Kuang Feng’s soul, but I’ll use the Soul Scouring device on it just in case. Too bad he couldn’t be brought back alive. Another immortal to examine the experiences of would’ve been nice. And … the Soul Scouring came back negative; his soul really is gone. I’ll let this corpse puppet go back to reading the rest of the captives now.

The question is should I turn Kuang Feng into a corpse puppet? It’ll have plenty of combat power thanks to his abnormal physique. Or should I completely disassemble his corpse, learning everything I can about immortality? If I do that and piece him back together, his strength will be weaker than if I converted him right away. Of course, I could turn his body parts into multiple weapons, turn his blood into a precious resource used to promote growth. If I turn him into a puppet, I could always disassemble him later, but I’ll lose what I spent on converting him not to mention the weapons I could make out of him afterwards would be weaker thanks to having less formation space.

I estimate his corpse puppet would be as strong as Lucia if she didn’t use any techniques. I would really like to have something like this that I could easily order around since Lucia is unreliable. However, if I make a hammer out of his body, Lucia might possibly have the strength to slaughter ordinary immortals. Do I make my unreliable trump card even stronger, or do I create a more reliable trump card? Ah, who am I kidding. Lucia expects a hammer. So long, reliable corpse puppet dream.