Chapter 165: Scheduled Replacement

Chapter 165: Scheduled Replacement

Live long enough and you’ll see it all… If you encounter something you don’t know or understand, it just means you haven’t lived long enough. Anyway, Dan Marina tried to recall the various methods of handling Souls she had seen before. Those methods were all strange and varied, but she had never seen anything as simple and brutal as Zheng Yichen’s.

He was actually using physical force to compress Souls. His actions were definitely aimed at improving the quality of the Soul, but how many people could actually achieve what he did? Even for experts in handling Souls, what he was doing was like a challenge to all the knowledge they possessed!

Three Souls with complete appearances were forcibly kneaded into a pellet under Zheng Yichen’s compression. This pellet showed a clear, deep blue color.

“Crystal…” Dan Marina’s mouth twitched slightly. A Soul Crystal. Even experts in related fields would consider the risks when making one. After all, a Soul Crystal was completely different from a single Soul. Crystals were far superior to Souls in terms of preservation and had higher efficiency in use.

A single Soul needed special methods to be preserved. If left in the air without preservation, it would quickly dissipate. A Soul Crystal didn’t have such risks. Even if it fell into the hands of an ordinary person, it wouldn’t cause any issues and might even be mistaken for a glass marble.

“Hmm, enough to make two Puppet Cores.” Zheng Yichen looked at the amount of the Soul Crystal in his hand and nodded. Quality was one thing, quantity was another. That’s why the superior Souls of powerful beings were especially precious. The stronger a person was, the more difficult it was to harvest their Soul through a Contract. One even had to be careful not to be killed on the spot when proposing such a thing.

However, the amount of Soul provided by a sufficiently powerful being could far surpass this Soul in his hand. Some high-level Alchemical Puppets required a Soul of high enough quality and large enough quantity as the main material, and it had to be a complete one. The Soul Crystal Zheng Yichen kneaded together might seem like one piece, but it couldn’t have the completeness of a single powerful Soul. In short, an artificially made Soul Crystal with large quantity and high quality could not serve as the core main material for a high-level Alchemical Puppet.

Zheng Yichen didn’t plan to make high-level Alchemical Puppets anyway, mainly because his strength wasn’t sufficient and materials were lacking.

Taking out some materials for making Puppet Cores from his pocket, Zheng Yichen quickly processed this Soul Crystal. Soon, two Alchemical Puppets without skin were made. Probably because the quality of the Soul Material used was high enough, even though the body materials of these two Alchemical Puppets couldn’t keep up, their behavior far exceeded any Alchemical Puppet Zheng Yichen had made before. They even had excellent learning abilities!

Only half an hour after being made, they could fully understand some of the commands Zheng Yichen gave. “What a pity, without Enchanted Material, bodies made from these ordinary materials would quickly be eroded and destroyed by the Mana Source.”

“So?”

“So?” Zheng Yichen glanced at Dan Marina and waved his hand, revealing a row of about twenty Alchemical Puppet bodies prepared behind him. “Let them replace them on a schedule! These should last about ten days.”

Afterward, Zheng Yichen sent these two Alchemical Puppets out to collect nearby resources. They carried tools provided by Zheng Yichen and could identify any collectible materials they encountered. As for danger? They were just two Alchemical Puppets. Zheng Yichen directly placed a Projection on each of them. If something happened, the Projection would step in and handle it.

With the Alchemical Puppets as collection tools, the steps in this secluded Valley could slowly get on track. Witches? Tsk! Witches were indeed powerful, but the two Witches by his side were currently in a half-state. One was suffering from the Fate Backlash. Even though she could still handle him easily, among Witches, she could temporarily be considered idle. Loris’s situation was similar…

In the Lockdown Zone, a young woman sat on a supply crate, looking at the black threads that completely confined her to this area. Three days had passed, and the number of these black threads had decreased by about one-tenth. It would take about a month for them to completely disappear. During this time, they could only stay here, staring helplessly at the outside world. Communication was limited to internal and nearby exchanges. Any communication Magic passing through the barrier would be interfered with.

After being affected by the Power of Fate, who knew where the information carried by communication Magic might end up? In short, external communication basically relied on shouting. Even if the Sanctuary Church sensed something was wrong and sent many people, those people could only stare at these black threads helplessly. Besides, they brought the worst news: Dan Marina had truly escaped the control of the Sanctuary Church. The reason they didn’t discover it immediately was because the Fate Backlash power on her restrained and concealed the traces of the Contract punishment.

However, later, as the Fate Backlash power on her weakened, the Contract completely revealed the problem. By then, it was already too late. And now they were trapped here for about a month. By then, it would be far too late. The Sanctuary Church also couldn’t truly mobilize too much combat power from the headquarters, as every region required sufficient high-level combat power to guard it.

This world didn’t have many rules like restrictions on high-level combatants not being allowed to deal harshly with low-level combatants. It was purely because a region had a sufficiently powerful Guardian, which made other high-level combatants hesitate to do so. Once the Guardian left, even if that region didn’t fall into chaos, some powerful individuals, lacking the suppression from above, would eventually become restless…

Although the guarding system worked level by level, and losing the strongest one might not immediately cause problems, one had to fear the worst. Once a problem occurred, it could become very serious.

Therefore, existences like an Archbishop basically never left the regions they guarded unless faced with particularly serious issues. Even if they couldn’t control all factions within their guarded regions… well, they didn’t really have the right to control them either, but they could ensure the safety of factions belonging to their own camp within the guarded region. Otherwise? Otherwise, if a problem really arose one day, a high-level expert from the Dark Church might come to a Sanctuary Church branch lacking high-level combat power guarding it, slaughter everyone there, and then hide in the Dark Church headquarters.

Could the Sanctuary Church then directly launch a full-scale war against the Dark Church? Of course, for the sake of face, they would definitely wage a war. But once something happened, the loss was already set. Even winning the war couldn’t make up for or recover the loss. However, besides those high-level combatants responsible for guarding, the Sanctuary Church also had many high-level combatants who could be deployed flexibly. Of course, these high-level combatants more or less had their own duties. If one had to say who was the most free, it would be her, the Saintess.