Chapter 1710 - 310: 5

But what if you looked at it from another angle?

If you stripped the woman's soul and consciousness out of this body, then whatever was left would all be Blood Sea porcelain.

It was a bit bulky, with plenty of skin, flesh, and bone still wrapped around it, but that didn't matter; just like how people nowadays buy a genuine leather sofa and still like to throw a fabric cover over it for protection.

In fact, a similar operation could be done with his own little Compass—the Copper Coin in the Compass had that bizarre Power to catalyze a person's flesh into "Tai Sui."

But first, the little Compass didn't have the subjective initiative of the evil book, so using it to slowly grind away would be exhausting; second, the little Compass was still in Tan Wenbin's hands right now.

If he asked Tan Wenbin to toss it over for him to catch, that might trigger the woman's teammates to enter the field immediately, ruining Li Zhiyuan's rhythm.

The wordless book split open a gap and cracked to the first page.

On the first page, inside the evil book's prison cell, a big cauldron appeared, and a woman was standing there with a long ladle, stirring it nonstop.

The wordless book trembled violently, and the stirring in the evil book's image grew even more frenzied.

"Aaaahhhhhhh!"

A desperate howl ripped out of the woman's throat—this time, without a trace of performance in it, because her soul and consciousness were being rapidly stripped away and sucked into the book.

In that instant, she finally realized that whether it was the earlier Array duel or the psychological warfare just now, this boy in front of her had always been letting her make the first move, then countering.

Talent can come from the womb, and sometimes fortune can fall from Heaven, but this kind of mindset… can you really just shut yourself away and cultivate it?

Thinking back again to how the boy had主动 stepped out earlier and let her attack first:

"You… on…the…Jiang…"

"Yeah."

"Rumble!"

The wind wall on the perimeter suddenly shifted; the woman finally gave the order to her teammates to act.

If they didn't move now, she was going to die here—and not just die, but have her soul stripped and spirit drawn out, with everything left taken as material by the other side. That was the most brutal way to go!

She knew the boy had definitely guessed she had teammates, and his steady attitude from beginning to end also showed he had his own backup plans, but right now, she could only pin her hopes on her teammates turning the situation around.

The kite in the sky plunged straight down at the boy's position.

It came so fast that the shrieking wind it kicked up far surpassed the whistle-kite Lin Shuyou had flown in Nantong some time ago.

Li Zhiyuan heard it, but he ignored it.

King versus king, the woman had no chance; soldier versus soldier, she had even less.

"Yiya-ya-ya-ya-ya~~~~"

Having waited outside for so long earlier, Lin Shuyou had had plenty of time to think through and prepare how he was going to make his entrance.

What to shout, what lines to chant—he'd drafted several versions of his script in his head already.

However, that shrieking wind from the other side shredded Lin Shuyou's script to pieces.

Aside from this most primitive operatic ghost-god wail, any halfway normal speech would be completely drowned out.

The White Crane Child charged in with Double Mace in hand, the native patterns showing through from under his skin now seeming to gleam.

Ever since Ah You and the child had reaffirmed their master–servant relationship, Ah You hadn't had a proper fight.

Run Sheng had been given a beauty filter by the Three-eyed and didn't dare do any heavy lifting for fear of messing up his face and scaring Mr. Li, leaving Ah You itching for a fight this whole time.

Now he finally had his chance, and all that pent-up hot blood and restlessness could finally be unleashed!

"Boom!"

The kite dropping straight at the boy was rammed aside mid-air; the two sides skidded across the ground, forcibly clearing a clean path through the ruins.

Lin Shuyou didn't move; the kite disengaged and backed off on its own, landing farther away.

Inside the kite was a man; he'd actually been flying in the sky with the kite the whole time.

By rights, an adult's weight was definitely not suited for this kind of operation; a child might work, or someone with a dwarf's build.

But he really didn't weigh much, because all he had left on his body was a head and a chest—his four limbs had been shaved off clean.

One black iron wire after another threaded the kite and his body together.

As it rapidly folded, the kite began to disassemble and close up.

The man turned into a White Impermanence lookalike, standing on stilts and dressed all in white, with a tall hat on his head.

He had nothing to do with White Impermanence; it was purely that the folding style leaned toward that image, so they'd added some extra decorative touches.

Li Zhiyuan was refining the woman in front of him while also paying attention to the commotion over there.

Mechanical Techniques.

A very ancient Secret Skill.

Back in the Village of Highway Robbers, Li Zhiyuan had gained insight into a copy of Qi's Spring and Autumn Annals, which recorded key Mechanical techniques from generations of ancient tombs—a major branch. And within those Mechanical Techniques was a sub-branch aimed specifically at individual bodies.

Judging from how ruthlessly she had folded and mutilated him, it was obvious that this woman, like him, would actively apply her insights to her teammates and help them develop and grow.

Her team-building philosophy was even more solid and long-term than Zhao Yi's back in the day.

Of course, everyone's strengths were different. One big reason Zhao Yi hadn't focused on deep team cultivation early on was that he excelled at sweet-talking women and living off them.

"Living, keep away; souls hooked, lives taken~"

Long enough in artistic processing and it becomes a habit; this human wretch wrapped in mechanisms had really thrown himself into the role of White Impermanence.

If you'd never been to Fengdu, this scene might have been a bit impactful, but after going to Fengdu and seeing the real thing, whenever Lin Shuyou saw this kind of image again, he just found it laughable.