Dong Rui cut him off, “I’ll use this to notify you.”

So this is the miniature version of that bat monster puppet from earlier? Once it shrank, it no longer looked quite so unnatural. Its eyes seemed larger and brighter too.

“You made this recently?” Dong Rui had denied over and over that he had a new monster puppet, so He Lingchuan had known he should take those words in reverse.

“Obviously.” Dong Rui stroked the little bat and warned him, “The original ones were all ruined by you. This is the only successful one I’ve made in the past few months, a one-of-a-kind piece. Don’t mess with it again!”

Mess with it? Question marks filled He Lingchuan’s eyes. “Only one? In other words—”

“Yes. Your Mount Xu Plan is also going to depend on it.” Dong Rui said, “This is a completely new breed, capable of two-stage transformation! What you saw at the carriage station was only the first stage, and that was only it at medium size. It can grow even bigger.” With that, he snapped his fingers.

The bat hopped onto the ground, and its body swelled rapidly.

An aberrant creature several times larger than before appeared, thick-bodied and ferocious in figure. He Lingchuan made a rough estimate: if its wings were fully spread, the span would exceed ten meters, about the same as the...