Courtyard House: Time Traveler Not Yet a Ghost

Spring arrives later in Fengtian than in the rest of China. The March wind still carries the chill of the Liaodong Plain, whipping up coal dust and dirt from the industrial areas on the outskirts of the city, casting a hazy gray hue over the sky.

In the heart of this area, filled with chimneys and crisscrossed by railway tracks, a cluster of buildings, tightly surrounded by high walls and electric fences, resembled a lurking steel behemoth, belching black smoke day and night and emitting a low, rhythmic roar. This was the "South Manchuria Army Arsenal," also known as the "Fengtian Arsenal of the Kwantung Army Corporation," the largest ordnance industrial heart of the Kwantung Army and even the entire Japanese army in Northeast China.

The towering water towers, the sprawling factory buildings, the dense network of dedicated railway lines, and the heavily armed Japanese soldiers patrolling the perimeter with their dogs all underscored the formidable nature and importance of this place. Inside the factory area, the machines ran day and night, continuously producing rifles, machine guns, artillery, and ammunition, supporting the Japanese war machine in Northeast and North China.

At this moment, in a sparse poplar grove about two miles from the main gate of the arsenal, a middle-aged man wearing a tattered sheepskin coat and a dog-skin hat leaned against a tree, squinting as if dozing, or perhaps gazing at the thick smoke billowing from the distant factory. His face was covered with frostbite and signs of wind and frost, and his hands were tucked into his sleeves, just like countless other people struggling to survive in this harsh land.

Only he knew that beneath his sheepskin coat, the purplish-gold elixir was slowly rotating, silently resonating with the massive arsenal in the distance.

He Damin's (from the perspective of a Yang God) divine sense, like the most sophisticated radar waves, had already silently covered the entire arsenal area. After achieving Yang Godhood, the range, accuracy, and penetration of his divine sense had undergone a qualitative leap. At this moment, even across two miles and high walls, the general layout of the factory area, the distribution of personnel, and the location of the core workshops had already been sketched out in his mind as a clear three-dimensional map.

"The scale... is indeed incomparable to those scattered military workshops in Taiyuan and Baoding," He Damin assessed in his mind.

In his perception, this factory area covered more than 2,000 acres and was divided into multiple functional areas: raw material warehouses, steelmaking and rolling workshops, gun manufacturing workshops, artillery assembly workshops, ammunition loading workshops, power workshops, technical office buildings, Japanese employee dormitories, labor camps... There were as many as two companies of Japanese guards stationed there, as well as a large number of Japanese technicians, engineers, managers, and even more Chinese laborers who were forcibly conscripted or lured there.

More importantly, his divine sense detected several areas where the "energy" fluctuations were unusually concentrated and precise—there were large hydraulic presses, precision boring machines, automatic heat treatment lines, and... ammunition and gunpowder depots that exuded a faint sense of danger.

Move everything out.

This idea was clear and firm. The gains in Taiyuan and Baoding had already given him a taste of success, but those were mostly "finished products" and "semi-finished products." The military production in Fengtian was different; here it was a "mother machine," the source of technology. With it, combined with the existing equipment and the memories of the technicians in the small world, he could potentially build a truly self-sufficient military production line, one that even surpassed the capabilities of this era.

But this operation was far more complex and massive than any before. It wasn't just about killing and collecting souls or emptying warehouses. He needed complete "production capacity," including equipment, technology, and even the people who mastered it.

"Soul Division, Exit."

With a slight thought, one hundred and twenty soul fragments, far more refined and agile than before, silently flew out from his sea of ​​consciousness, like a swarm of invisible ghosts, rushing towards the distant arsenal. These soul fragments at the Yang God Realm were not only more numerous and of higher quality, but also moved without hindrance in daylight; however, to maintain concealment, their flight trajectories were even more elusive and unpredictable.

The divided souls easily penetrated the high walls and electric fences, and scattered and infiltrated according to the instructions pre-assigned by He Damin's soul.

Forty of the soul fragments silently approached the Japanese soldiers patrolling and standing guard inside and outside the factory area. Unlike the previous simple and brutal possession, this time, He Damin demanded "precision" and "quietness." The soul fragments, like the finest needles, pierced the weak points of the soul near the Fengchi acupoint on the back of the target's neck. They did not completely seize control, but rather exerted a deep "sleeping suggestion" and "slowing command." The affected soldiers would feel an irresistible drowsiness and become sluggish, but to their comrades, they might just be yawning or slightly tired, and would never immediately arouse their alertness.

The other forty soul fragments infiltrated the core workshops and technical office buildings. Their targets were the Japanese technicians wearing engineering uniforms or operating precision equipment. The soul fragments clung to their backs like shadows, not immediately invading, but instead began to synchronously "read" their surface work memories and operating habits—the parameters of the parts being processed, the maintenance points of the machine tools, the tricks of a certain process... This fragmented information was collected and organized by the soul fragments in real time, and transmitted back to He Damin's main soul through the soul connection.

The remaining forty divided souls acted as "surveyors" and "scouts," delving into every workshop, warehouse, and underground pipeline. They meticulously scanned and recorded every detail, including the precise placement of internal equipment, connection methods, factory structure, and even the routing of electrical and oil circuits, constructing a complete three-dimensional model of the entire arsenal down to the screw level within the main soul's consciousness.

Time slipped away silently. From noon to dusk, He Damin, like the most patient hunter, wove an invisible net that covered his entire prey.

As the setting sun painted the western sky a rusty red, he opened his eyes (his spirit returned to his body, and his physical form began to act). A fleeting golden light flashed in his eyes beneath the dog-skin hat.

"That's about it. First, take care of the guards, then 'ask' the engineers to leave, and finally... empty this place."

He stood up, dusted himself off, and hunched over like a poor man returning home from work. He slowly walked away from the arsenal and eventually disappeared into a desolate shack area in the twilight.

The real operation began when night fell.

It's 8 PM, time for the shift change at the arsenal.

The guards, who had been given suggestive instructions during the day, felt even more tired at night. The newly assigned soldiers were also affected by a subtle, unsettling, invisible force field permeating the factory area (a very subtle outer layer release of the [Soul Banner Domain - Netherworld Ghost Domain]), and felt more easily distracted than usual.

Just then, He Damin made his move.

This time, he didn't even allow the split soul to fully possess him. With the assistance of the [Soul Banner Domain], he directly activated the "Soul Locking and Spirit Fixing" characteristic of the upgraded [Netherworld Chains - Yin-Yang Twin Chains]!

Target: All Japanese soldiers, junior officers, and ordinary civilian staff in non-technical positions.

Invisible chains of darkness seemed to emerge from the void, precisely binding the "soul core" of each target, not tearing or devouring, but "freezing." In an instant, over five hundred Japanese guards and support personnel were frozen in place, their movements stiff, their eyes fixed, their thoughts stagnant, and even their heartbeats and breathing became so weak as to almost stop! They became living "statues," standing silently at their posts, completely unaware of what was about to happen.

At the same time, the Yang Chain transformed into hundreds of thin, golden streaks of electricity, flashing across the sky above the factory area and precisely cutting off all external communication lines and alarm circuits.

The entire process was completed in less than three minutes, silently. In the massive arsenal, apart from the machines still humming in the core workshops operated by the technicians and engineers who had not yet been "frozen," the guard system was already a mere shell of its former self.

Next, it was time for the technicians to "harvest".

He Damin's physical body had already appeared in the basement of the arsenal's technical office building—a hidden backup power distribution room—through [spatial transfer]. This was his pre-selected "anchor point."

With a thought, he unleashed fifty of his most elite "reading" soul fragments, each carrying more of his soul power, which suddenly intensified their penetration of their respective targets' souls!

In the firearms workshop, chief engineer Koji Suzuki was inspecting the accuracy of barrels on a batch of newly produced Type 38 rifles. Suddenly, he felt a violent dizziness, and countless images and memories uncontrollably surged from the depths of his mind—playing in his father's blacksmith shop as a child, studying mechanical drawing at military academy, being selected to join the Osaka Arsenal, coming to Fengtian with the army, repeatedly improving the production line, those failed experiments and the parameters of the eventual success… His entire life, especially all memories related to ordnance technology, seemed to be brutally flipped open and copied by an invisible hand!

"Ah..." Suzuki only managed a short, muffled groan before his eyes rolled back, he collapsed to the ground, drool dripping from the corner of his mouth. His memories had been violently read, his soul had been severely damaged, and even if he didn't die, he would become an idiot.

The same scene played out simultaneously in various workshops, laboratories, and offices. Those Japanese engineers and senior technicians who possessed key technologies had their life's work extracted in the most efficient and brutal way possible within minutes. Their soul essence, along with their technical memories, was packaged and "copied," while their physical bodies mostly collapsed from the force of this violent soul-searching.

These copied "soul memory packages," containing vast amounts of technical knowledge, flowed into He Damin's main soul through the connection of split souls, like rivers flowing into the sea. He then carefully categorized, compressed, and stored them in a specialized area within the Soul Refining Banner. This was far more efficient and systematic than directly devouring souls to obtain fragmented information; it was equivalent to directly "downloading" the other party's decades of professional experience.

As the last senior technician collapsed to the ground, He Damin slowly exhaled a breath of stale air. The massive, systematic knowledge of mechanics, metallurgy, chemical engineering, and ballistics that suddenly flooded his mind made him feel slightly bloated, but mostly excited.

"Now, it's time for the equipment."

He walked out of the power distribution room and onto the open space in the center of the factory area. Under the cover of night, the massive factory buildings resembled a silent behemoth.

He Damin closed his eyes, his spirit leaving his body and hovering above the factory area. The phantom of the Soul Refining Banner unfolded behind him, purple-gold Dao patterns flowing around it. The [Soul Banner Domain] was fully activated, covering an area of ​​three hundred feet in radius, enveloping the entire core factory area. The power of the domain smoothed out spatial fluctuations and isolated internal and external perception.

Then, he communicated with the small world in his dantian, aligning his divine sense with the perfect three-dimensional model that his divided soul had mapped during the day.

"receive!"

It's not about acquiring them one by one, but rather... relocating them by zone, by category, and as a whole!

Guided by his main divine consciousness and executed by the absorption power of the small world space, an unprecedented yet extremely precise "great relocation" began!

First is the raw material warehouse area. Piles of steel, copper ingots, special alloys, and chemical raw materials, along with the shelves and flooring that support them, are "cut off" as a whole, turning into a flowing torrent of metal and matter, disappearing into the "raw material area" pre-planned by the anode space of the small world.

Next was the core production workshop. Those heavy, large hydraulic presses, gantry milling machines, precision boring machines, heat treatment furnaces, and automatic assembly lines, all firmly fixed to concrete foundations... He Damin's divine sense was like the most exquisite surgical scalpel, precisely "severing" their connection to the foundation, separating the complex pipelines, and then completely "digging up" the entire machine, the entire production line, along with its necessary auxiliary equipment and a small piece of ground, and sending them into the small world.

The scene in the artillery assembly workshop was even more spectacular. Several 75mm mountain guns that were already half-assembled, and even a complete 105mm howitzer, along with the cranes, workbenches, and tool cabinets that carried them, were moved away as a whole.

He was extra careful in the ammunition loading workshop. The sensitive explosives, propellants, and detonators were enveloped and stabilized by a layer of gentle soul power before being transferred along with the explosion-proof isolation cabinets.

The boilers, generators, and transformers in the power workshop; the blueprints, filing cabinets, and experimental instruments in the technical office building; even the relatively well-equipped living facilities and some books in the dormitories of the Japanese employees... are all disappearing at an alarming rate.

Throughout the relocation process, He Damin's spiritual power poured out like a flood. If it weren't for the immense soul power of a Yang God Realm cultivator, and the continuous feedback of pure soul power from the Soul Refining Banner, such large-scale, high-precision continuous absorption would have been enough to drain any Golden Core cultivator dry.

Even so, when the last important piece of equipment—an ultra-precision deep-hole drilling machine from Germany used for machining gun barrel rifling—was safely stored in the small world around four in the morning, He Damin felt a deep fatigue, and his soul power was more than half depleted.

He withdrew his Yang spirit and glanced at the almost completely emptied core factory area. Where once the factory buildings stood, only huge foundation pits with exposed steel bars and pipelines remained, like scars left on the earth after being gnawed by a giant beast. Only a few low-value or too bulky and inconvenient to move secondary equipment and factory shells were left behind, looking particularly desolate in the night wind.

Meanwhile, the Japanese soldiers and low-ranking staff who were "fixed" remained standing in place like statues, completely unaware of the dramatic changes in the world around them.

He Damin did not kill them. Killing these imprisoned souls would have been easy for him, but leaving these "living evidences" might make the situation even more bizarre and cause more panic and confusion among the Japanese high command.

He turned around, his figure disappearing into the darkness, vanishing outside Fengtian City in a few leaps.

Behind him, the largest ordnance heart, upon which the Kwantung Army relied to maintain its military strength, had been completely hollowed out. Meanwhile, within the anode space of the small world, a modern (relative to 1943) ordnance factory, covering nearly a thousand acres and equipped with complete technological reserves, was beginning its initial repositioning and connection under the control of the soul split. The "soul copies" of the engineers and technicians whose memories he had read were using these split souls as carriers to "possess" themselves on pre-prepared, simple "worker soul puppets" shaped by the Soul Refining Banner [Blood Soul Dao Soldier] combined with certain materials. Like the most loyal and professional ghost workers, they were beginning to familiarize themselves with their new environment, preparing to restart the production line under their master's will.

The night in Fengtian was still cold. But some of that cold had seeped into the very bones and could not be dispelled.

As dawn broke, the Japanese troops on duty discovered the anomaly at the arsenal. Terrified screams and chaotic alarms would utterly tear apart the Kwantung Army's supposedly secure rear.

Meanwhile, He Damin had already found a cave a hundred miles away to recuperate. His gaze had turned further north, into the depths of that vast land that the Japanese called "Manchukuo," where there were even more resources, more souls, and... a more complete industrial system.

The relocation has only just begun.