A few months later.

The twilight of the sun, enveloped the mountains, the forests and skies with a beautiful shine.

Unfortunately, none of the disciples of the sect was able to witness such an scene.

The whole forest was covered by a profound red mist, with the vague scent of blood and the further you went into the forest, the more the red mist grew.

This mist was yet another method arranged by the sect leader.

Anything that happened within the mist could be heard, seen and even 'touched' by him, nothing could possibly escape from his sight.

The mist alo granted him the ability to summon weapons, teleport and other kinds of magical abilities.

It was useful as a defensive mechanism in case any righteous Cultivator tried to strike his sect, or to break the will of his disciples even further.

To make the message even clearer, from time to time, he heard many messages to their heads by the use of special wills arranged by him.

The wills constantly made phrases such as 'I am always watching', 'You are all a part of my herd', 'How can you run from something you cannot hide?'

All of that was to temper their personality and achieve the change of mentality required to advance in Blood Path.

Or as a famous Blood Path figure said on the past, 'When a person hits rock bottom, when they drown into their own mind and despair, when they lose a beloved one, and when something inside them finally cracks, a true demon may be born.'

Inside the forest, there was a young figure meditating.

Two thirds of the leeches close to him, meditated with him.

When a puppet's Cultivation grows, naturally the Cultivation of it's puppeteer also improves considerably.

After waking from his meditation, Gu Ten Long opened his eyes slowly.

He put his index finger on his mouth and with his teeth he cut the finger.

Then, before the first drop of blood hit the ground, he moved a nearby leech towards the blood drop.

Upon touching the blood drop, the leech froze in the spot.

For his 'new' ritual to work, he had to use a leech that still possessed a shred of 'self' as a sacrifice.

Therefore, upon noticing the threat to it's existence, the leech began to resist, but the drop of blood began to shine with a copper light.

A few instants later, the leech once more froze.

It's soul had been utterly crushed.

Gu Ten Long smiled for an instant, he muttered.

"It's about time I practice 'deep immersion.'"

In the world, there were hundreds of ways to manipulate one's puppets.

For example, the method created by the Immortal 'Shadow Angel', whom created the method of 'Corruption', by modifying the very essence of his target, he could create servile copies of himself.

Another method was the usage of spiritual contracts that forced one of the parts to surrender their very soul and essence to the dealmaker, some indoctrinated their prey since they're young to 'devote' themselves to them, thus, they'd willingly give up everything and become puppets of their God, patriarch or what not.

As for Gu Ten Long, he had very poor foundations, in his veins there wasn't even a single trace of Puppet Qi as his Cultivation was too low.

Thus, he could only rely on brute force to overpower the soul of the target and then to control them.

Currently, he was trying to improve his technique by trying one of the most dangerous tricks of puppetry.

Deep Immersion, this form of possession was different from most in the sense that the Cultivator had to truly become one with their puppet.

By focusing all his attention onto the leech, Gu Ten Long soon began to forget about his own body, his body became numb and cold, deaf and he could only vaguely see the silhouette of the leech.

Until suddenly, he collapsed.

And woke up in a different body.

Instinctively, he tried to blink in a few times.

His vision was strange, with 7 pair of eyes, that could vaguely distinguish color and shape, everything was blurry.

Everything felt wrong...

Gu Ten Long slowly became more aware of his own body, it was even weirder than his vision.

He had no bones whatsoever, and he could constantly feel the throbbing of his stomach, as for the sound?

He was deaf.

His mind wasn't going well either, after losing control over his original body, he could only rely on his own soul and the leech's immature brains to think, he had a massive headache and drowsiness.

With no bones and only muscle, he began to feel as if his whole body was like a massive tongue, unrestrained by anything.

Yet, so limited.

Gu Ten Long didn't knew this but he was suffering from a theory well studied in Puppet Path.

The 'idealized self' theory.

Every person had an idealized sense of themselves, how they should look, how they should think, how they should sound when they talk, what is their height and weight, what are their sexual organs, etcetera.

Normally, this idealized self corresponds to reality, almost perfectly.

However, in some rare occasions there is a dissonance between the two.

A person may feel pain on their arm, they may feel it trembling, they can feel if it's cold or hot, they know where their arm exactly is.

Stolen novel; please report.

All while they already lost the arm!

Or like a person who believes themselves to be born as a man, trapped in the body of a woman.

The further their idealized self and reality diverge, the greater this discomfort and pain becomes.

Until it becomes unbearable.

A primal part of him began to resonate violently, his instincts of fight or flee were all triggered, he tried to raise his arms, before realizing that he had no arms.

Then, he tried to scream, only to realize he had no vocal chords.

"I have no mouth, but I must scream." He thought, the realization made him even more anxious, his heartbeat increased and his body trembled.

The more his body trembled, the more aware he became of his new self, thus the more nervous he grew, and thus, the more his body trembled.

He was having an anxiety attack, struck in a vicious circle.

Many golden veins began to appear around the body of the leech, that began to expand at a visible speed.

The veins were trembling violently, until finally the leech exploded into countless fragments.

Gu Ten Long fell to his knees, and began to pant heavily.

Even now, he was still dazed and with a heavy headache.

"I guess...I took things a bit too far, maybe."

He frowned, a bit confused, he added in his head. "Why...

Who invented this and why?

How is this supposed to help you to delve further in your path, this is torture!"

Gu Ten Long thought, with pure frustration on his tone.

Surprisingly enough, he actually hit the bullseye.

Yes, it was very painful to turn yourself into a completely different creature, but was also a very valuable experience.

The mere process of becoming another creature widens the horizons of the person, they become more aware of how their puppets work exactly and become more capable of developing their Cultivation.

Most importantly it was very important to fulfill an important step of Puppet Cultivation, 'The death of the ego.'

A person has many core values that they don't even realize, they feel love towards their nation, they feel love, warmness and comfort in their own bodies, they love their own species and desire the propagation of it.

All of those feelings were burdens for a Puppet Cultivator.

A Puppet Cultivator had to give up all of those feelings.

The ideal puppeteer would be someone who is willing to be a man a day, and a woman the next, someone who doesn't care the slightest about their species and who see their own bodies as mere puppets.

In summary, the further removed you're from your own humanity the better puppeteer you become.

"Ugh, it seems my headache won't stop, in my Cultivation session I actually wounded my soul!

Sigh, I was planning to save this for my breakthrough, but...

I'll have to use this Magnet-Soul Powder."

Magnet Soul Powder, was like ordinary magnetic powder, however instead of being attracted by other metals with the opposite electric charge, it was attracted to 'souls.'

Gu Ten Long took a bit of the powder that was kept into a bag, and poured it into a bottle of water.

Then, he took a sip from the water.

Immediately, the unrest of his soul calmed partially, the fluctuations of his soul diminished as the powder began to gather every soul fragment towards the core.

Gu Ten Long then proceeded to meditate and breathe in and out loudly, exhaling Yang Qi whilst inhaling Yin Qi, the more time it passed, the more his brows lowered.

"This is going to take a while...

Maybe, I should ask for some help."

He coughed lightly and then began to recite a phrase he had heard thousands of times.

"Lying in wait, trapped within the mist, the echoes of HE whom was forgotten by all.

The inexorable, he with the three domains of death, coldness and corruption.

To the deity, whose powers kept the whole universe in balance, I kneel.

I, your humble servant, I beg you, please grant me your blessing, please lend me your strength,

bring stability and order to my soul and in return, I'll pay for any Tribute that you may so wish for."

A dark blue aura appeared from the skies, his whole body was surrounded by a cold aura, Gu Ten Long gulped, he closed his eyes, as he allowed the energy to fill his body.

...

Meanwhile.

Standing with his legs crossed, with violent tides of water hitting his body, there was a young kid meditating beneath the waterfalls.

Despite his young age, he still had some well-developed muscles principally his thick biceps.

The kid eyes looked like two emeralds and his blond hair was shining with a copper light.

Even after many months, there was still a trace of Qin Yin Hu's blood drop inside his bloodstream.

With his chest exposed, he was breathing in and out rhythmically, he had been absorbing the surrounding Qi for hours without stopping.

"To reach the 4th Stage of Body Tempering, one must move the lingering Qi from ones muscles towards ones bones and bone marrow.

The essence of Body Tempering is to turn the body into the perfect vessel for Qi, the more QI the body is able to embrace, and the more primary and secondary qualities the body embraces, the more powerful one's foundation will be, and thus, the easier time they'd have to reach the following Realms."

Wu Yong muttered to himself over and over again.

In Cultivation it was very easy to lose oneself, therefore he had to constantly remind himself of who he was, and how Cultivation exactly worked.

Those were the lessons his grandfather gave him.

As for the reason why he was Cultivating so intensively, it actually had to be with the drop of blood inside his bloodstream.

It was too pure and perfect, his whole body was embracing myriad of changes thanks to the highly dense blood drop.

With it, he actually managed to breakthrough the third stage of Body Tempering with ease and was now heading towards the fourth.

Unfortunately, the blood drop was also a powerful poison inside his body.

It was like his body had a drop of mercury inside his bloodstream, the 'mercury' constantly corroded his veins and poisoned his organs, slowly killing him.

Normally, the act of absorbing the energy of a higher-tier Cultivator was even more dangerous, that was due to the innate law of all living creatures.

Every living being was born to embrace the power of QI.

By absorbing the lingering Qi the body instinctively is modified to 'embrace' even more deeply this Qi, to become more compatible with it and to handle it's powers more easily.

An Ice Cultivator that gets exposed to the Qi of a top-tier Fire Cultivator may have the root of their Cultivation tainted, a part of their body would be modified to 'embrace' Fire Qi, rejecting the power of Ice Qi.

Luckily, no event of the sort happened because Qin Yin Hu and Wu Yong practiced the same Cultivation Sutra.

...

After so long, Wu Yong had managed to find a way to absorb completely the lingering Qi in his body, he circulated the Qi towards his chest carefully.

If he hadn't been too focused on the movement of the Qi, he would have heard his intense heartbeat, he was actually quite anxious, the operation was too risky for his tastes.

Suddenly, when he was driving the Qi towards his ribcages, he heard a cracking sound.

He coughed blood, then he observed with fear his own chest.

In just an instant, some of his skin had acquired a vague faint purple tone, that was expanding at every passing second.

In the process of integration of Qi, one of his veins was unable to handle the burden, and thus it broke internally.

The 'purple skin', was no other than his own blood, outside the veins.

Currently, he was bleeding internally.

Most importantly, there was a foreign drop of violent Qi creating havoc inside his body, piercing some of the thin veins of his body, and slashing his skin, which further increased the internal damage.

It even got dangerously close to a few of his internal organs, fortunately Wu Yong was able to move some of his internal veins subtly to block the impacts of the 'foreign Qi trace.'

Until finally, he managed to catch it by moving one of his veins and reabsorbed it into his body.

After reabsorbing it, he exhaled softly, then he gritted his teeth and prepared for the next step.

His whole body began to tremble, as he used all the Qi inside his body, his whole body began to turn hotter and hotter, principally the places of his internal wound.

Somehow, he managed to cauterize his wound without opening the wound.

A part of him wanted to sleep, after this long exhausting process, but he couldn't stop yet, the crisis inside his body hadn't ended.

30 minutes later, he managed to fuse two thirds of the foreign Qi inside his ribcages.

At that point, he only needed to circulate this Qi inside the rest of his body to breakthrough.

After two more hours he successfully broke through.

Upon finishing the process, he moved with his remaining forces towards his backpack, he took a bottle of water and began to drank it.

While he was drinking he thought with cold sweat on his forehead.

"That energy...

It was too much for my body, I won't ever, ever do something that reckless ever again!

What the hell was I thinking when I drank that dirty blood?"

Just after he finished his drink, he saw a tiny lump in the backpack tremble.

Wu Yong blinked a few times, he moved towards the backpack sneakily, afraid that there was a dangerous wild beast inside it.

Upon opening his backpack, he saw a tiny leech inside it.

His expression softened, he even smiled lightly and said.

"He activated the signal, huh?"