After my grandmother called me home in my dream, my spiritual energy revived

Chapter 255 Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage

The papermakers who collaborated with Song Miaozhu couldn't find suitable spirit paper.

At this moment, she thought of the skin used to make shadow puppets, which is also very thin and semi-transparent, but it is still quite a distance from being as thin as a cicada's wing as described in "The Secret Art of Paper Making".

Song Miaozhu simply put all the shadow puppet artifacts she collected together, allowing them to absorb spiritual energy first, transform into ownerless spiritual objects, and collect the corresponding spiritual essence.

Every shadow puppeteer goes through two steps when making shadow puppets: selecting and preparing the leather. So, regardless of the abilities of these spirits, they will all have a memory of the craftsman using leather to make shadow puppets.

Having absorbed and learned from the memories within these spirits, Song Miaozhu became increasingly adept at making shadow puppets.

Once she has learned all the craftsmen's memories from the accumulated shadow puppet spirits, and with a little practice, she will be an experienced leather maker and shadow puppet craftsman.

The prepared paper was imbued with a spiritual light, becoming a veritable "spiritual paper".

What others would spend a lifetime diligently practicing to master, Song Miaozhu learned in just six months thanks to her spiritual power.

Based on this, she further researched how to scrape the skin even thinner, achieving the paper-thin effect required for the Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage.

With extensive experience in leather processing, taking it a step further is not difficult.

She made the paper-thin skin in no time.

After cutting the leather to the appropriate size, she folded it up.

Fold a hollow octagonal lantern using paper as thin as a cicada's wing, then draw cloud vortex patterns on the inside of the lantern with cinnabar, and finally use bamboo strips for support.

Nine of these octagonal lanterns, arranged in a set according to their orientation, form a Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage, which can achieve the effect of "one breath flowing continuously, nine turns without drying up".

These octagonal lanterns aren't particularly exquisite or complex in terms of craftsmanship; what matters is that they must be sturdy and harmonious. Furthermore, nine identical octagonal lanterns are needed to successfully form the Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage.

If the octagonal lantern itself is not sturdy enough, or if the lanterns in the same group are not similar enough, the resulting Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage will not be able to tightly circulate spiritual energy, and spiritual energy may leak out.

This requires very exquisite paper-crafting skills.

Moreover, although the spirit leather made by Song Miaozhu is indeed as thin as a cicada's wing, its texture is still different from paper. Spirit leather is more flexible and less prone to folding.

She had to be more careful and meticulous to keep the spirit skin bending in the direction she wanted.

Sometimes, you have to rely on bamboo strips to get the desired effect.

Although the process was somewhat bumpy, after continuous attempts and practice, she still managed to make nine octagonal lanterns that looked like they were copied and pasted.

Then, dig a small pit in the eight directions of Xiaozhushan: due east, due south, due west, due north, southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest, inside the bamboo horse boundary marker and outside the paper grass bewitching array. Place the octagonal lantern in the pit, cover it with soil, and leave only the top of the lantern slightly exposed.

Then, go to the center of the top of Xiaozhushan Mountain, dig a pit, put the last octagonal lantern into it, and use a specific spirit-invoking method to invoke its spirit, in a total of nine times.

The first eight spirit-summoning sessions involve activating the octagonal lanterns in the eight surrounding directions. The final spirit-summoning session focuses on the octagonal lantern in the center. Each of the nine consecutive spirit-summoning sessions requires complete concentration and must be performed in one continuous flow without interruption. There is no opportunity to replenish spiritual energy with spirit stones in between.

If there is any obstruction, the lantern will fail to be lit and the lantern will have to be made again.

Even though Song Miaozhu is currently the only cultivator at the White Spirit Rank in the world, she is still somewhat exhausted from nine consecutive Spirit Infusions, especially the Spirit Infusion of the Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage that covers the entire Xiaozhu Mountain, which requires her to maintain the Spirit Infusion state for a period of time each time.

When Song Miaozhu activated the octagonal lantern in the due east direction for the first time, she felt an unprecedented rate of spiritual energy consumption and had a premonition that her spiritual energy reserves might not be able to keep up with the completion of the entire spiritual initiation.

When she finished consecrating the spirit of the octagonal lantern, she became even more certain that this couldn't go on, so she immediately stopped.

It's good that we stopped early; at least only the octagonal lantern in the due east position was ruined, which is a timely reduction in losses. If we had continued the spirit-burning process recklessly, all the octagonal lanterns that we worked so hard to make would have been destroyed.

A set of nine octagonal lanterns forming a nine-turn paper spirit cage can theoretically cover any size of land, as long as one's cultivation level is sufficient to complete the spirit infusion.

But now, her cultivation level is somewhat unable to keep up.

Fortunately, the "Paper Crafting Secrets" also mentions that if one's cultivation level is insufficient but one's paper crafting skills are exquisite enough, one can reduce the spiritual energy requirement for each spirit-invoking by increasing the number of octagonal lanterns.

From a set of nine octagonal lanterns, it becomes nine sets of eighty-one octagonal lanterns, and each octagonal lantern must be identical.

Song Miaozhu still needs to make seventy-three octagonal lanterns to have enough.

It took her a long time to collect all eighty-one identical octagonal lanterns.

Then, place a set of octagonal lanterns in each of the eight surrounding directions and at the center of the mountaintop.

However, at this point, you can perform the spirit-pointing ritual one direction at a time.

First, in the due east direction, activate the spirit of the central lantern in the group of octagonal lanterns. This activation must be done nine times without stopping, until all nine lanterns in the group are activated.

The nine octagonal lanterns were not far apart, which greatly reduced the difficulty of the spirit-invoking process, and Song Miaozhu completed the spirit-invoking process with ease.

Then, in the west, south, north... eight directions, eight small-scale nine-turn paper spirit cages are formed. Then, in the center of the mountaintop, the spirit is activated on the last set of eight-sided lanterns using the same method.

Once the spirit initiation is successful and the small-scale Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage in the central position is activated, sufficient spiritual power should be injected into the small-scale Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage in the central position within one day to link it with the small-scale Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cages in the other eight positions. This will create a large-scale Nine-Turn Paper Spirit Cage that can cover the entire Xiaozhushan Mountain.

From then on, no matter which direction the spiritual energy in Xiaozhushan flows, the octagonal lantern in that direction will absorb the spiritual energy and send it to the octagonal lantern in the center to release it, completing the spiritual energy cycle and ensuring that not a single bit of spiritual energy leaks out.

Even some of the spiritual energy at the foot of Xiaozhu Mountain was absorbed by the octagonal lanterns and sent into the mountain.

The spiritual energy of Xiaozhushan Mountain continued to surge as always, but Song Miaozhu no longer had to worry that the spiritual energy she attracted would dissipate down the mountain before she could cultivate and absorb it. She could now plan her time properly and cultivate in peace instead of always thinking about how to quickly use up all the spiritual energy.

The concentration of spiritual energy in the entire Xiaozhushan Mountain visibly increased.