During Ancient Times, Xiwei Continent was incredibly prosperous. Cultivation in all paths, be it alchemy, formations, puppets, spells or body refinement was flourishing. New discoveries were made every day. This era was characterized by the creation of sects. Among the sects created, ten stood out and eventually became the rulers of their respective regions. They became collectively known as the Ten Great Sects, and they prospered for tens of thousand of years. Their might was far from what someone like Nie Gan or even Nie Xing could grasp. Clockwork Sect, albeit one of the weakest, was still a Great Sect!
In spite of this, due to an unknown cause, nine of the Ten Sects disappeared in the span of mere years. This marked the beginning of the Dark Times, where the world became chaotic and killing and plundering turned into a commonplace occurrence. Presently, many considered that the Dark Times were over thanks to the new feudal system almost every region had adopted, and which had brought some measure of order and peace to the land at last.
Nevertheless, all the knowledge lost to time was not so easy to recover. Hence, anything laeft behind by a Ten Great Sects cultivator was incredibly precious. This puppet was one example. If it had been undamaged, its price would have reached an astronomical sum. After all as time passed, more and more items from this time would be lost, destroyed or simply consumed.
Nie Gan's and Nie Dong's horizons were broadened once again. The latter, who was still doubtful about helping Nie Gan, was now convinced. Even if he lost some due to the opportunity cost of helping Nie Gan, who could only pay him the bare minimum, he would establish a relationship with him. In the future, if he became famous due to his use of puppets, then he could add that he had helped him craft his, and in this way attract wealthier customers who were looking for such a service.
"If this is true then there is no way that the three of us can repair the puppet." Observed Nie Dong, thinking that while his metallurgy and smithing skills were great, they would amount to nothing in thw face of the Great Sects from Ancient Times.
"You're partly right, if you speak about a perfect restoration. However, we needn't do that, do we? All we gotta do is to make it functional. That should be much simpler." Uncle Xing was already beaming with excitement. He could not physically help in the restoration process, but his knowledge was invaluable.
"Uncle is right. It will be heavy work, but once it's done it will be worth it. How about I make the armor and string the qi conducting cables while you cast the platinum alloy and start cutting gears according to the specifications here. Uncle Xing shall supervise in case we do anything wrong." Nie Gan proposed as he took out a small parchment. Within, seventeen gear designs had been drawn, with specific measures on circumference, width, spacing between the teeth, and other aspecrs annotated beside every illustration. There was also a number that indicated how many such gears were needed, as well as the proportions of steel and platinum that the alloy had to had for the manufacturing of each, which varied depending on the function. Some gears even required alloys that made use of additional metals, such as chrome, to prevent rusting.
Having agreed how work would be distributed, the three men started preparations. The blast furnace was ignited and wouldn't be extinguished anytime soon. The crucibles for smelting iron and platinum were readied, as was the crucible where the alloy would be cast into. Nie Dong also did his part. There was a small, six feet wide square where one low grade spirit stone was meant to be placed in each corner. Inside the square, a criscrossing linear pattern array shone with magical light as Nie Dong turned it on.
This array was created by Nie Dong's clan branch, and was kept a secret only passed from one generation to another. It was meant to cut metal in the shape the user desired, which made it quite precious to a metallurgist or blacksmith, but not so much to those with no knowledge of the field. Hence, not many coveted it, much to his luck.
For some time, Nie Gan pondered which material to use for the qi conducting cables. At first, pure steel was the obvious answer. Nevertheless, it was too feeble. The last thing he wanted was for the cables to break mid-fight.
"You could use silver, but you should encase it in silver steel braided wire to preserve its integrity." Adviced Nie Xing, annotating a formula onto a bamboo slip.
"Carbon, chromium, manganese, silicon, vanadium, phosphorus and sulfur..." He read, his eyes full of determination. This was a harder alloy to cast due to the many elements it was composed of, but he felt confident he could accomplish it.
"Right, I think we could add this into the alloy." Uncle Xing took out a fingernail sized piece of an unknown metal. Nie Gan did not recognize it.
"IRON ESSENCE!" Exclaimed Nie Dong, who was only one here who knew what the material was called. Iron essence was actually simply an exceedingly rare isotope of iron that could only be found in nature. Its only effect was to allow items made from it to dissipate spiritual energy contained in spells. Thus, pure iron essence was actually invulnerable to ordinary spells. Naturally, it would also be invaluable, and not something a mere worker like Uncke Xing could get his hands on.
For four days and five nights, the blow furnace was burning, and the sounds of hammering and metal cutting came out every few minutes. The three men were so engrossed in the project they seemed possessed.
By dawn of the fifth day, Nie Dong collapsed, unable to produce more gears. His extremely pale complexion and the trace of blood coming out from the corner of his lips indicated that he had overexerted himself. About a thousand gears were piled not too far off from where he lay; his task had been accomplished.
Uncle Xing was dozing off nearby, the tremendous eyebags under both of his eyes showing how sleep deprived he was. His hands were covered in soot, as was his robe.
As for Nie Gan, he was still standing, albeit with difficulty. He was holding onto two wire winders that contained about a hundred feet worth of qi conducting wire, blood trickling down his palms from burst blisters. The pieces of the armor for the puppet's lower body had also been formed from a dark material; more like rubber than wood. This had been Uncle Xing's idea, to use this elastic sap from a thousand year old medlar tree to cover leather armor, forming this impact absorbing kind of armor that would surely last longer than the ironbirch wood armor he had designed for the training ground's automaton puppet.
As his pupils betrayed him, Nie Gan smiled with satisfaction. Now, all that was left was assembling the parts together and seeing how well he could control the puppet, if at all. His body hit the ground, and he slipped into a comforting sleep, the kind that would only come after pushing one's body to the limit.
Far away from Gray Road City, tens of thousands of miles to the north, there lay a majestic city that sprawled for several hundreds of square miles. No one knew how many people lived there, except for one person. And that person just so happened to be sitting on the throne inside the palace that rose above the clouds at the center. This was Golden Lamp City, capital of the Golden Wreath Dynasty, and the woman sitting on the throne was none other than the Empress.
She wasn't particularly beautiful. In fact, anyone who saw her would immediately feel disappointed, for the paintings and statues clearly embellished her a lot. Even the poems written of her in a way that made it seem to the common man that she must be an otherworldly beauty. Truthfully, she wasn't. She looked like an average countryside girl; thwarty skin, long black hair, deep brown eyes and a straight nose. Her lips were thin, her figure was very lacking when it came to feminine grace, and her ears were a tad bit too big for her head.
In spite of her plain looks, she had an extraordinary air surrounding her. Her eyes radiated both wisdom and cruelty, clearly a result of having experienced many vicissitudes through her life. Her was one that would send chills down the spine of anyone it targeted, and her movements seemed incomparably hypnotizing, almost as if she planned every single one to not use even one ounce of force more than was needed.
A crystal orb filled with a vapor-like substance that seemed to let out shrill screams of agony every once in a while was levitating in front of her. It was her Subject Soul Strand Orb. Within, a minute strand of every Golden Wreath Dynasty citizen's soul was held, taken away from them at birth by the large formation she had set long ago.
"My dear Nie Sang, your sacrifice won't be in vain. Once I break through, even if the Lunar Meadow Dynasty doesn't want to surrender, they will be annexed."
It also served more purposes than simply monitoring who was alive and who was dead based off the disappearance of these soul strands, of course, but those were not something she lightly made use of. With a wave of her hand, she closed her eyes and started performing a divination, attempting to find out which soul strands would be the one to succeed Nie Sang. As she formed hand seals one after another, the orb began to shine with a mystical white light, illuminating not only the throne room but the entire palace.
The vaguely discernible faces formed from the vapor-like substance that the orb held inside screamed even louder as the light intensified, as if they were being tortured.
Some of the pearlish white armored guards outside, all of them giving off fluctuations not any weaker than Nie Sang, trembled as they felt the Empress's aura seeping out of the building. They hurriedly flew away to distance themselves, fully aware that the Empress couldn't care less whether she hurt one of her subordinates or not.
However, moments later, the Empress convulsed, sending a wave of qi so terrifying it leveled the entire edification the throne room was located in, causing massive amounts of dust to fly into the air. Multiple guards were injured, and there was even one lifelesly lying on the ground, his body bisected under the armor. A single crack had appeared on the Subject Soul Strand Orb's surface, and the Empress's eyes were blood red, with some blood trickling down her nostrils.
Listless, she could not prevent fear from showing on her face. There were only a few reasons why divination failed. The first one was simple, it was unsuccessful. In that case, there was no backlash. However, the second one was that the divination was related to an entity with a far superior cultivation. Only then would there be backlash. This entity could be a third party, but it could also very well be the person upon whom the divination had been focused. Since this divination had not been focused upon someone with a name and face, but rather a more ambigous title, she knew nothing about who could have caused such a failure. Considering this, she quickly came to a conclusion; Nie Clan had to be exterminated!
"But I made a Dao Oath..." She remembered, showing deep unwillingness in her gaze. Dao Oaths could not be broken without paying an extremely heavy price. Currently, she knew it was not worth it, for her cultivation was on the verge of reaching new heights. Luckily, her Dao Oath would disappear ten years from now. Hence, she could only wait patiently.