The three lifeless forms opened their eyes in unison.
In the next moment, the dry yellowish hay on which the three corpses lay started rustling as if tickled by a strong wind.
The three corpses were covered in three eggshell-like layers as the dry yellowish hay started merging with their bodies.
If Aksai paid close attention, he could hear some ghostly cries in the distance. However, to keep his head steady, he chose to ignore those ghostly cries without any remorse.
Woo. Woo. Woo.
The winds started howling, and the temperature of the surroundings seemed to have dipped. Uncaring about the world around him, Aksai carried on with the process.
He kept on providing the three eggshell-like Spirit layers more of his Spirit Essence as instructed by the puppet creation manual.
To strengthen the bond between the three puppets and make refining more accurate, he also kept on creating more Essence Equations in the air before sending them to merge with the three corpses.
Originally, Aksai had planned to do only one corpse refinement at a time to lessen the burden on himself. However, at least one of the corpses would have been wasted because of going past the “expiry date,” so to speak.
However, the Everwood farm’s enchanted capabilities gave Aksai the confidence he needed to refine three corpses together even though it was the first time for him doing it. After all, inside the farm, his Spirit Essence expenditure had been practically halved whereas the effect of the Spirit spell had been enhanced.
Furthermore, Aksai was sure that some kind of enhancement had already been cast on the three corpses ever since he took them inside the Everwood farm. This was because it took him almost two days to create embalming liquid out of the Spirit herbs and oil. However, during those two days, the corpses showed no signs of decay and rot.
These three corpses had been practically frozen in the state of their recent deaths after they were brought inside the isolated domain.
As such, Aksai had a little suspicion that the seven-day deadline mentioned in the manual might not apply to him. However, Aksai didn’t like to take risks if he could avoid them.
Plus, he was sure that the quality of the puppets would improve a lot from its initial estimation if he was done with the corpse refinement as soon as he could.
***
After a few hours passed, Aksai had a haggard look on his face, and his entire body was drenched in sweat. However, a mighty smile tugged at his lips as he saw three Scarecrow Puppets standing in front of him with emotionless expressions.
“Three Scarecrow puppets. Success,” Aksai mumbled as he looked at them. There was practically no difference in the way the puppets looked from their former selves. However, if one looked at them carefully, they would see that dry hay was jutting out from their nails, toes, ears, nostrils, and mouths. If one were to scan these Puppets with their Spirit Sense, they wouldn’t find any pulse or beating heart within them.
Thanks to the Essence Equations embedded in the three corpses, Aksai could feel a vague connection to these three puppets. He decided to check the strength of the connection as soon as he determined that there was no visible fault in the corpse refinement for all three of the puppets.
“You walk three steps forward,” Aksai said to the puppet standing right next to Nesha. “You walk three steps backward,” Aksai ordered the puppet standing left to Nesha. “And you stay where you are and slap yourself,” Aksai said to Nesha.
He then activated the Essence Equations with the three corpses and watched them as they followed his commands simultaneously. One puppet moved three steps backward, and one moved three steps forward, while a hard slap sound reverberated in the surroundings.
“Ouch! My bad,” Aksai scrunched his nose when he saw that Nesha had almost mangled her facial skin and exposed her cheekbone with her strong slap. He bit his tongue when he realized his mistake.
“These puppets will follow my orders. But they don’t have the intelligence to adapt to them like a normal living person.”
Aksai mumbled to himself as he looked at Nesha’s once beautiful face, now carrying a heavy injury. Thankfully, no blood came from the wound; otherwise, she would have looked even more hideous.
Aksai had already inserted a bunch of spirit stones into the corpses through their mouths. As such, he was sure that the wound would eventually get repaired on a superficial level.
In fact, the process had already started with the way the dry hay popped out from the wound to cover it up. This dry hay would act like a stitching thread to fix the superficial injuries suffered by the puppets. However, the installed spirit stones would be spent that much faster in case of such injuries.
Aksai had spent about 10 spirit stones on each puppet. He didn’t want to spend them right away, so he decided to refrain from giving the puppets useless and self-harm commands.
“It seems that the cultivation levels of these puppets have regressed after turning into puppets,” Aksai mumbled to himself as he walked around the puppets and observed them keenly.
“These two jokers had the cultivation level of 5th stage Spirit Refining when they were alive. Now they exude the aura of the 3rd stage Spirit Refiner.
This drop in strength is truly too wasteful. Is it because the injuries I gave them by piercing their hearts were more severe?”
Aksai asked as he looked at the places where the two puppets’ hearts were supposed to be. He could only see the exposed wounds showing the embedded dry hay inside their bodies.
“Thankfully, this woman’s cultivation level was more or less preserved,” Aksai looked at Nesha’s form with a smile on his face.
“She was at the peak of the 6th stage of Spirit Refining when she was alive. However, she exudes the aura as if she has just entered the 6th stage. I think her talent as a cultivator also has a lot to do with this retention,” Aksai said to himself as he caressed his chin in contemplation.
“What was it that you said to me that day?” Aksai stood right in front of Nesha as he smiled. “A dead genius is no genius, right? Look at you now. I retained you as a genius even after your death,” he chuckled to himself before shaking his head.
“With these three puppets acting as my meat shields, my defense needs have been mostly taken care of,” Aksai chuckled as he looked at his three Scarecrow puppets adoringly.
“Now, I can start looking into body cultivation and martial arts to improve my offense.”
