Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

The rumors were true after all—liches were truly evil creatures! Utterly, thoroughly evil! Isabel fled Anbaixiu's study with a crimson face. Had this been a human lord, scandalous gossip would surely have spread like wildfire. Yet inside this gloomy castle, no one cared about such trivialities. A crowd of restless people had gathered in the center of the great hall on the first floor. Each harbored their own anxieties as they stared up at Isabel on the stairs. The land reclamation plan was finally about to be announced. For them, this marked the turning point of their lives. Isabel had never spoken before a crowd of over a hundred people. Even though she mustered all her courage, her words still came out halting and clumsy. "Um... the Lord Lich says we can begin clearing the land today... As for the specific arrangements, we'll divide the work according to the number of able-bodied laborers..." Before she was even halfway through, an impatient voice cut her off. "What about the land we used to own? Back in our old territory, I had two mu of land and a house!" "Yeah! I had a mu of land too!" "And I had a cow!" "Didn't they say everything would get better if we came here? If we have to start from scratch, we'll lose everything!" ... A chorus of voices erupted at once, utterly drowning out Isabel's words. Having never seen such a chaotic scene, the young girl turned pale with fright and collapsed onto the stairs. Seeing the crowd descending into turmoil only heightened her panic. As they grew increasingly agitated, the refugees began closing in, pressing forward as though to surround her. Hadn't everything been fine just moments ago? Now that they were on the verge of starting a new life, why had these desperate refugees suddenly turned so terrifying? Just as Isabel was about to flee in terror, a shrill, grating scrape tore through the room—like a sharpened blade dragged across stone. The crowd followed the sound and saw Raul standing in the hall, his expression cold as ice. In his right hand, he gripped a massive iron hammer. Beside his left stood an oddly shaped skeleton, and that ear-piercing noise had come from the creature dragging its scythe-like arms across the stone floor. This was the aberrant skeleton Anbaixiu had created: Kha'Zix No. 1. Many present had already witnessed its prowess firsthand. When they fled their homeland, their former lord had sent soldiers after them, and it was solely thanks to this grotesque skeleton that the pursuers had been slaughtered and repelled. Bizarre as the skeleton looked, its combat strength was enough to obliterate a fully armed militia squad. Shouldering the great iron hammer, Raul walked toward the crowd step by step. The people who had been worked up enough to riot moments ago now went as quiet as cicadas in winter. They instinctively parted to both sides, clearing a path. Raul walked on in silence, with the aberrant skeleton following mute behind him. The thud of his footsteps and the clatter of bone claws echoed through the castle, feeling even more deafening than the earlier shouting. Raul walked straight up to Isabel and said sternly, "Stand up, Isabel. Don't humiliate the Lord Lich." Isabel scrambled to her feet and stammered an apology. "I'm sorry, I—" Raul cut in, "Now isn't the time for apologies. Have you finished what the Lord Lich entrusted to you?" Isabel had never expected Raul to speak like this. He sounded just like a devoted servant of Anbaixiu. Helping Isabel steady herself, Raul turned to the timid, uneasy refugees. "Do any of you have an objection to the Lord Lich's arrangements?" All eyes fell on the menacing, clawed skeleton. The refugees had completely sobered up, reminded once more that the master of this land was a lich. Deep within the castle, Anbaixiu watched everything unfolding in the hall through a magical scrying projection. He had sent Raul to steady the situation for Isabel, and from the look of things, he wouldn't need to intervene himself. Raul's transformation pleased him greatly; once a creature had personally tasted the act of slaughtering its own kind, even the meekest sheep would begin turning into a predator. With a wave of his hand, he dispelled the divination spell and refocused his attention on his research. He had skimmed through *Research on Wraith Reproduction*. He might not have fully mastered all the experimental nuances yet, but he had thoroughly grasped the fundamental principles. Master Morgan had drawn inspiration from human reproduction. In human procreation, a child was carried to term for ten months, and the newborn entered the world naturally possessing a soul. Setting aside the physical flesh and looking purely at the soul level, it meant two independent souls, through a specific process, gave birth to a new soul. By the same logic, every race that possessed a soul had some means of increasing the number of souls in existence. Furthermore, these newborn souls had never undergone the physical death of a body, meaning they were fundamentally not undead. As long as one could replicate this soul-growth process—where one plus one became greater than two—through magical means, the resulting newborn soul could be fashioned into a soul puppet: a special breed of undead entirely immune to the restrictions of radiant magic. It sounded simple enough, but breaking free from the physical body's assistance to achieve reproduction purely through the soul was harder than a mortal reaching legendary rank. Master Morgan had spent a thousand years finally developing a specialized ritual spell capable of procreation on the soul level, which he had named "Soul Embryo." The entirety of *Research on Wraith Reproduction* revolved around explaining the ritual spell of Soul Embryo, laying out every single principle with exhaustive clarity. Creation was difficult, but replication was far easier. Anbaixiu was confident he could recreate this ritual magic. The only problem was—the cost was exorbitant. To successfully perform the ritual spell just once required nearly fifty thousand gold coins. And that was merely the cost of generating the newborn soul. Next, one had to craft a suitable soul puppet body for the fragile soul, or the newborn spirit would quickly "die" from lacking physical nourishment. This "death" did not mean the soul would disperse; rather, it meant it could not remain in a "living" state and would swiftly devolve toward becoming true undead. Only a specially crafted soul puppet could keep the soul active while retaining the convenient modularity of undead units, allowing it to be disassembled and reassembled at will. Yet constructing a soul puppet's body required an immense sum of gold, and granting it respectable combat strength required an astronomical figure. To create a soul puppet comparable to a high-tier undead, conservative estimates placed the cost at two hundred thousand gold coins. Anbaixiu muttered to himself, "Spending two hundred thousand gold coins to produce a soul puppet that only matches a high-tier undead in combat... I'd be better off spending two hundred thousand to hire a few high-tier human combatants to risk their necks for me. No wonder this never caught on. The cost is absurdly high—there's no cost-efficiency whatsoever." Yet Anbaixiu felt no disappointment. Instead, he was so thrilled that his soul fire seemed ready to burst from his eye sockets. He had realized that he could drastically cut the production cost of a soul puppet. Simulated Soul—this was the unique spell Anbaixiu had obtained upon advancing to legendary rank, allowing him to create different souls tailored to his needs. The reason his aberrant skeletons functioned with flawless coordination was entirely because he had forged bespoke souls for them. Otherwise, forcing a human soul to control eight bone scythes would have yielded half the results with twice the effort. After reading Master Morgan's work, Anbaixiu estimated he could substitute the ritual spell of Soul Embryo with his Simulated Soul spell, slashing the cost dramatically. As for the body of the soul puppet, Anbaixiu glanced toward the large glass jar on his desk—the cheap bottle of living mercury. A vessel with high magic resistance and no soul of its own... with just a few minor modifications, it would serve as the perfect match for the custom Simulated Soul Anbaixiu could produce. Magical research was truly fascinating. Even Master Morgan could never have imagined that centuries after his demise, a lich would be blessed with the legendary boon of Simulated Soul, nor could he have foreseen that the madmen of the City of Alchemy would invent living mercury—the ultimate material for a soul puppet. And now, standing on the shoulders of giants, Anbaixiu was about to step onto a gleaming golden road to wealth. "Master Morgan, if you hadn't fallen, I would have loved to exchange thoughts with you." Anbaixiu sighed with feeling. If that master were still alive today, perhaps the City of Alchemy truly could have pulled off their mysterious apotheosis project. Such was the power of knowledge. His reflection done, Anbaixiu set about preparing the materials. The first experiment in crafting a soul puppet was officially underway!