This war puppet designed by the Pluto King was certainly no ordinary object. Every single material used was chosen with extreme care... Therefore, even the Six Extremes Yang Fire would find it no easy task to melt these components. Take this one piece, for instance; Lei Dong labored at refining it in the flames for a full hour before it even began to soften slightly. Of course, completely melting it was out of the question. He used his divine sense to draw it out, condensing it into a needle-sharp thread of thought, and pierced deep into the component's core to begin repairing the damaged formations within.

Those formations were arcane and marvelous, the very foundation of mechanized puppetry. If Lei Dong had not obtained the Divine Transformation level mechanized puppetry techniques from the Ten Thousand Puppets Sect, coupled with years of intense personal study of puppets and prolonged research into this specific war puppet, he would never have possessed the ability to execute such repairs. Even though Lei Dong had already devised the complete repair blueprint, holding a perfect, clear understanding in his mind, he proceeded with utmost care and caution, meticulously guiding the needle-like divine sense to inscribe and mend every damaged area within the component.

A full half-hour passed before Lei Dong finally declared the task complete, sweat beading and dripping from his brow. Even with the immense strength of his divine sense, this kind of work was pushing his limits, a taxing endeavor. If the component softened too much, the delicate formation circuits inside risked irreparable harm. Yet, if it remained too hard, his divine sense could not penetrate or sculpt. It required a perfect balance of pliability—neither too soft nor too hard. Thus, Lei Dong had to continually cycle the piece back into the Six Extremes Yang Fire for slight re-softening right as it began to cool, only to retrieve it moments later.

The entire process was incredibly draining. Furthermore, engraving formations in this manner served as an extreme test of both the sensitivity and power of one's divine sense. For an average Nascent Soul cultivator, even one at the peak of that realm, achieving this would be nearly impossible.

Upon completing one component, even with Lei Dong’s typically steady temperament, a thrill of excitement and near-tremor shot through him. After all, he was repairing a Divine Transformation level puppet. Once the puppet was restored, he would instantly possess the means to contend with a Divine Transformation expert without being forced, as before, to flee upon encountering one. Worse still, escape was often not guaranteed; Divine Transformation experts were not to be underestimated. If he ran into one particularly adept at speed, Lei Dong would be left with nothing but despair.

Mo Yi also experienced a surge of fierce excitement. If Lei Dong could repair the first component, there was hope for the second, and then the next, until every damaged piece was mended. At that point, he would truly cease to be merely a spirit residing within an object and would become a formidable Divine Transformation entity in his own right.

After a brief rest to recover his divine sense and carefully process the experience gained from the last attempt, Lei Dong swiftly commenced work on the second component.

Amidst this tense labor, a catastrophe of immense proportions was bearing down.

Several days later. The faintly rippling surface of the Molten Lake was suddenly overshadowed by oppressive, dark clouds. A colossal crimson serpent, stretching over a hundred zhang in length, descended like a true flood dragon, stirring the heavens and the mists. Its sheer, overwhelming aura caused the surface of the Molten Lake to begin churning violently. Whoosh! The magma creatures that had been feeding and drifting on the lake’s surface felt an immense pressure and began frantically fleeing toward the inner lake.

One such Gold Core level giant toad-like beast, though not entirely a toad, was the fastest to flee. Its hind legs kicked out, shooting it towards the lake bottom like an arrow. However, the massive crimson serpent was gripped by a profound, terrible rage. The fastest creature to flee only served to ignite an inexplicable fury within her. Her divine sense condensed into a whip, and with a sharp crack, it split the surface of the Molten Lake.

The tail of the whip coiled with unnerving precision around the several-zhang-long crimson toad, yanking it violently toward the edge of the great serpent’s head.

This crimson toad was a relatively renowned beast within the Purgatory Domain. Having managed to cultivate to the Gold Core stage, despite its inability to speak, its intelligence was significant. But faced with such a massive disparity in station, the toad took one look at who its captor was and simply gave up all will to resist, fainting dead away. It was laughable—how could anyone resist a monstrous crimson Fire Serpent of this magnitude? Who else could it be but the renowned Sovereign Chi Gui? Resistance? That would be pure folly! Whether she wished to kill it or... violate it, the crimson toad resigned itself to its fate.

Under normal circumstances, given Sovereign Chi Gui's status, she would naturally disdain bothering with such a meager lesser demon. But having just endured the agony of losing her daughter, her heart was filled with corrosive resentment with nowhere to vent. Seeing the toad had fainted, she instantly transformed into the image of a delicate, beautiful young maiden, her eyes icy cold, sneering repeatedly: "Fainting, does that help? Witness my Soul Scouring Art."

She lacked even the patience for interrogation. A soft, boneless hand reached out from empty air, and a crimson claw-shadow firmly clamped down upon the toad’s head. Streaks of crimson phantom lines connected the two entities. Immediately, the crimson toad convulsed as if enduring the most excruciating torment imaginable, its bulging eyes rolling back to show only white, foam bubbling from its mouth. Sovereign Chi Gui, meanwhile, let out a fiendish, enchanting peal of laughter, finding perverse catharsis in such brutal methods.

Several dozen breaths later, the crimson toad’s skeleton was utterly pulverized, its essence and spirit entirely drained, leaving behind a pool of red mire that slumped back into the lava. Bereft of the true essence protecting its flesh, that lump of gore instantly melted into ash under the extreme heat.

This is the tragedy of the weak: existence and death hang entirely upon the whim of the strong. If they command you to live, you live; if they decree your death, you will certainly not see tomorrow. This is one of the fundamental reasons why the inhabitants of this world strive so desperately in cultivation, pushing themselves to improve even a hair's breadth of power—simply put, they wish to survive. Being weak is, in itself, a mistake.

The more Sovereign Chi Gui laughed, the more displeased her expression became. This Gold Core level crimson toad, naturally, would hold no comprehensive memory of the entire incident. It only recalled that several days prior, precisely on the day her daughter perished, a group of Gold Core human cultivators had arrived at the Molten Lake. And shortly after that group descended beneath the surface, three undeniably powerful auras had pursued them into the depths. Not long thereafter, a violent explosion rocked the underground, causing nearly half of the lake’s magma to surge into the cavern below.

That day, the crimson toad had caught a distant glimpse of the figures belonging to those three powerful presences. One of them was unmistakably her beloved daughter, General Chi Wei.

A torrent of possibilities surged through her mind, yet one by one, they were dismissed. The violent subterranean explosion, based on residual energy signatures and the estimated force, was highly likely to have been the detonation of the Six Extremes Blazing Sun Pearl, which her daughter often refined. Clearly, her daughter had been overwhelmed by her opponents and had sacrificed the Pearl in a desperate bid for mutual destruction.

From this, she could deduce that the culprits were unlikely to be Divine Transformation experts she knew. Divine Transformation experts possessed a certain dignity; if her daughter had declared her identity and pleaded with them, a peer would hesitate to strike fatally unless absolutely necessary. Firstly, preying on the weak was a stain on their reputation. Secondly, a gathering of Divine Transformation cultivators were never isolated individuals; they invariably had heirs, nephews, favored disciples, or loyal generals, leading them to exercise caution and avoid pushing matters to the absolute extreme. Most crucially, if the opponent had been a Divine Transformation expert, her daughter likely wouldn't have even managed to activate the Six Extremes Blazing Sun Pearl, much less cause it to explode.

This suggested that if the people of the Purgatory Domain had not intended a fight to the death, they would not have acted with such ruthlessness. Nor would the Purgatory Demon King; after all, it was merely a mere Flame Spirit Core. Although Sovereign Chi Gui valued it highly, she had already agreed to leave it for the Demon King.

That left only one possibility: outsiders. Only those from outside the Six Domains and Nine Continents could act with such unrestrained abandon. Once they committed a monumental offense, they could simply hide in another region of the Nine Continents, making them nearly impossible to track down, even obscuring their identities. Could it be... could it be those Gold Core human cultivators?

Her daughter had previously transmitted the plan's details to her via secret technique. She certainly knew who the Gold Core cultivators her daughter and her two companions had been trailing were. Could it be that among that group lay some hidden master, skilled in the arts of concealing aura and trace? Were they playing a dangerous game of feigning weakness?

Indeed, she was a formidable monarch, experienced and sharp-witted. In a short span, she had pieced together the events with about eighty percent certainty. With no other leads, she decided to descend into the Molten Lake immediately. Whether these human cultivators from the Great Qian Continent were the masked assassins or not, Sovereign Chi Gui had absolutely no intention of sparing them.

If they were already dead, that would have been preferable, but if they survived, Sovereign Chi Gui felt that revenge was certainly attainable. And the crimson toad seemed to have detected no sign of anyone emerging from the lakebed after the explosion, meaning the perpetrators were likely trapped, for the time being, within the lake’s intricate, submerged caverns.

With this thought firm in mind, Sovereign Chi Gui, using the memories gleaned from the Soul Scouring Art, dove into the collapsed lake bottom in her human form, not even bothering to deploy a shield, merely issuing a cold snort. With a sudden, forceful palm strike, boom boom boom, her palm energy blasted open a gloomy passage over a hundred zhang deep. Her figure shot straight to the end of the hundred-zhang corridor, where she unleashed another palm strike to carve another path. She was clearly intending to blast her way straight down with overwhelming, tyrannical force.

Divine Transformation experts were indeed brutally imposing. When Evil Phoenix had pursued Lei Dong previously, she seemed to have done much the same. With her heart alight with destructive fire, it was rarely easy to convince such a figure to take a detour.

Just as Sovereign Chi Gui bored her way vertically downward, Lei Dong, after several days of intense effort, though showing clear signs of fatigue, was filled with elation. After all, he had now refined nearly all the damaged components of the Divine Transformation level puppet. With just a little more effort, he would finally possess his first such puppet.

At that very moment, the Purgatory Demon King, having concluded his peripheral business, turned back and saw the mysterious young man refining a puppet. With his vast experience, he instantly recognized it as a Divine Transformation level construct. He could not help but utter a soft, "Hmm..."