Qing Ling, with a human body and a snake's tail, used ten thousand years of green vines and spiritual soil and water to mold humans, creating "little figures" full of spirituality!
These "little figures," as soon as they landed, could walk, had arms and legs, could hop and skip, just like a person!
But they were thirty-three layers of heaven away from humans.
Because the "people" molded by Qing Ling from soil and water had human bodies but no intelligence, their physical bodies were fixed and could not grow, no new species were produced, and no qualitative change occurred.
The "people" he created were essentially just "humanoid" objects made of a pile of spiritual elements of wood, earth, and water. Whereas later, the goddess Nuwa created humans by founding a race of beings based on her own dao. The people she molded were living beings, a sublimation and breakthrough of the Great Dao of Creation, fusing the Nine Heavens Loamy Soil with the Three Lights Divine Water.
He once didn't understand the marvel of Nuwa's creation of humans. Now, Qing Ling deeply understood what a terrifying existence could achieve by molding humans from soil.
It required a peerless mighty being with the power of creation. Even ordinary Daluo supreme beings, or even beings like the Dragon Ancestor and Phoenix Ancestor, could not do it.
Only the Great Dao of Creation, which was close to essence, could directly derive intelligence, create a race, disregard the rules and order of heaven and earth, comprehend the mysteries of the universe, and thus possess the ability to create humans!
However, Qing Ling never intended to have any connection with Nuwa's creation of humans. He was only creating his puppets, a multitude of puppets with instinctive spirituality surrounding him.
Puppets, large and small, with consistent appearances but different sizes.
Some puppet figures were only palm-sized, while others were giant puppets reaching ten feet tall. For now, there were only these two types of puppets. Over a hundred puppets already surrounded him. They couldn't speak, couldn't think, had no life aura, and their features were only eyes and ears, yet they could move, run, and fight.
Qing Ling looked at over sixty palm-sized miniature puppets and smiled knowingly. He exhaled a breath of green wood spiritual energy and covered the miniature puppets.
Then he said to them, "Go!"
Immediately, over thirty small puppets set off on their short legs. Some jumped into the water, some burrowed into the soil, and some walked among the flowers and grass, leaving the Hundred Spring Valley and moving stealthily to various hidden places in Xi Mountain.
A puppet with a green leaf carved on its back hid among the vegetation in Xi Mountain. A tall shrub obscured its small body. At this moment, it was staring with its simple eyes at a Heavenly rank tribesman of Xi Mountain ahead. It remained motionless in the grass, watching the Heavenly rank tribesman meditating on a rock, absorbing spiritual energy from heaven and earth. It didn't move, and neither did it.
The Golden Immortal Venerable Yu was scolding Qi in the cave without any real consequences. Qi hung his head, not daring to retort.
"How many times have I told you, stop running outside the tribal lands! If it weren't for me this time, you probably would have disturbed the peace at the border again and let the Toad Clan notice our movements in Xi Mountain. From now on, you're staying in Xi Mountain, and you're not going anywhere. Look at Qing Ling, he can go into seclusion in his cave dwelling and cultivate for thousands or tens of thousands of years. If you had even a tenth of his patience, you should be making even greater progress."
Qi, feeling indignant, retorted, "But Brother is also at the middle stage of Heavenly rank. He meditates in seclusion every day, and I roam around everywhere every day, yet our cultivation realms are the same?"
"Hmph, you foolish brat. A Heavenly rank like you, your brother can take on five with one hand. What makes you think you can compare to him?"
"I don't believe you, you're just talking nonsense!"
When Venerable Yu was contradicted, his temper immediately flared. Just as he was about to get angry, there was a "bang" on the ground between them. A puppet with a mountain pattern carved on its back poked its head out of the ground, its neck stiffly turning to observe its surroundings.
Venerable Yu and Qi were both stunned. They looked down at the small figure beneath them.
As soon as the small figure saw two "giants" above its head, it quickly retracted its head back into the soil.
"Father, what is this thing you've kept?"
"How should I know? What is this thing?"
In a mountain stream in Xi Mountain, a puppet with a water drop carved on its back had its body buried in the turbid water. It was watching two thick pythons entwined in a life-and-death embrace. They would transform into a naked man and woman, then into half-snake, half-human forms. The sounds of their panting echoed through the mountain stream.
The woman's temples were slightly damp, and she lay panting on a large rock. She turned her head and looked around. "Why do I always feel like someone is watching us."
The muscular man behind her, lying on the woman, tilted his ear and said, "This place is so secluded, how could there be other living beings? It seems you're not focused enough~"
The water churned, snake tails swished, stirring up the turbid sand at the bottom of the water. The sounds of man and beast, and the lapping of water, rose again, echoing through the cliffs. The "little figure" silently submerged into the water and left the area.
In the Hundred Spring Valley, Qing Ling's expression remained unchanged. He merely coughed lightly, but his ears and the area behind his ears had turned red. He shouldn't have peeked!
These puppet figures had no combat power whatsoever. Ordinary beasts could destroy their bodies. However, these puppets had extremely astonishing stealth capabilities. They could hide in the earth and mountains, in lakes and waters, and in dense vegetation. Even ordinary Golden Immortal Venerables would have difficulty discovering these little figures that lacked any life aura if they weren't paying attention.
And Qing Ling could see the scenes observed by these puppet figures through their only two organs, their eyes and ears.
They were the best scouts and the best tools for stealing others' secrets. Just like the tribesman and woman in the cliffs earlier, they already had snake companions, yet they dared to have an affair in broad daylight.
Qing Ling did not recall those puppets. As long as they were in areas with water, earth, or wood spiritual energy, they would spontaneously absorb spiritual energy as a source of energy for their actions, requiring no spirit stones, spiritual items, or magic power to sustain them.
Qing Ling pointed to over twenty ten-foot-tall green giants beside him. Yellow and blue mixed to become green. Wood element was also green, hence these puppets, with balanced attributes of the three elements, became green giants. They had no other skills, no divine abilities or spells. They could only step on the earth to draw upon earth element, resist damage, fight, and possess great strength. They could draw upon wood energy when in forests to simply repair their bodies, and they could move large waves of water when in water bodies.
They couldn't emit light from their eyes, shoot lasers from their mouths, or change size. They could only fight, possessed great strength, and had tough hides.
Even a single strike from a Heavenly rank fierce beast might not completely destroy them.
These two types of puppets, large and small, were what Qing Ling would refine in the future. Under the premise of cultivation, he couldn't dedicate too much attention to refining profound puppets, so these simple puppets became the preferred choice to save trouble.
Qing Ling was still in seclusion, never leaving the valley. The gates of Hundred Spring Valley seemed to be perpetually closed, and no one in the tribe dared to disturb the Saint Son's cultivation.
However, although Qing Ling did not leave his residence, he knew everything happening in the world. He had refined tens of thousands of reconnaissance puppets, scattered across Xi Mountain, in lakes and waters, in forests and grasslands. They were in the million-mile tribal land of Xi Mountain, and across the vast expanse of land for tens of millions of miles in all directions, these small, unremarkable puppets could be found.
Qing Ling could see many, many things. Many unknown things and events across these millions of miles of land were seen by a peeping observer.
However, he remained silent.