Chapter 283 – Puppet Battle Body

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The bone fragments danced in the air, the mummy was blown away by the true essence explosion aftermath!

Lin Ming erupted with true essence. His spear trembled, and he immediately launched Golden Roc Shattering the Void, his figure blurring, his extreme speed like gods and ghosts. He ignored the mummy puppet, and instead rushed straight towards Mugu Buyu!

200 feet passed in a fleeting moment under Lin Ming’s feet, he directed his spear towards Mugu Buyu’s chest!

Bypass the puppet and oppress the controller; this was the best and most efficient way to deal with a Puppet Master. However, Mugu Buyu was no normal Puppet Master. His close-range combat capabilities were simply abnormal.

In melee combat, would Lin Ming repeat the same mistakes and end up just like Jiang Lanjian? Everyone was thinking this question in their hearts. Jiang Lanjian was a disciple of the Sword Faction, and no one doubted just how strong his close range power was. Yet he had been crushed by Mugu Buyu. Mugu Buyu’s defensive power was too amazing, he was nearly invulnerable!

Then, would Lin Ming’s spear have any hope of threatening the existence known as Mugu Buyu? The audience’s eyes were round, all of them were watching with unblinking eyes, their gazes focused on the scene atop the martial stage.

Seeing Lin Ming rush towards him, the corners of Mugu Buyu’s lips tilted up in a nefarious grin. Starting when he was 12 years old, his body had undergone countless transformations with rare and precious materials.

His bones had been mixed with Aged Gold, and heavy darksteel essence had been injected into his flesh. Afterwards, he had soaked in Heavy Gold Water for all seven days of seven weeks, totaling 49 days. This process was repeated six times, and occurred twice a year for three years. This sort of inhuman torture and excruciatingly harrowing pain was not something a normal human could endure without going mad. Because of this transformation, all of his hair had completely fallen off and his skin was dried and withered as if he were at the last breaths of his life. Even though he was young, his appearance was the same as a corpse that was laid out in the sun too long!

One could say that to a certain extent, Mugu Buyu had turned his own body into a living puppet!

The reason that Mugu Buyu was willing to pay such a great price was to rid himself of the Puppet Master’s close combat curse. He wanted to become a legendary Puppet Master, and the place where his ambitions began would be at the Seven Profound Valleys Total Faction Martial Meeting!

“Aged Gold Armor!”

Mugu Buyu shouted out, and his bones began to crackle, his entire skeleton making loud popping noises. A layer of metal drilled out of his flesh and poured forth, covering both of his arms. At this moment, both of Mugu Buyu’s hands had turned the color of black gold.

Facing Lin Ming’s ferocious attack, Mugu Buyu didn’t dodge or evade. Instead, he grabbed Lin Ming’s Heavy Profound Soft Spear!

This sudden change caused the entire audience to be shocked, was this still a human body?

Mugu Buyu directly gripped the spearpoint. As long as he could hold onto the spearpoint, he could use his puppet to attack again. Then, Lin Ming would be the same as Jiang Lanjian! He would only have two paths to take. Abandon his spear and retreat, or suffer a grievous wound and be defeated!

However, the moment he took hold of that spear point, his cunningly smiling face froze where it was. In that moment, 10,000 vibrating true essence filaments blasted out like an explosion!

Lin Ming sneered, “Do you really think you are invincible?”

Lin Ming gave a cold humph, and his azure true essence that had fused with the power of the True Dragon rampaged into Mugu Buyu’s body. The power of vibration was able to disregard any surface defense, directly destroying the core!

Mugu Buyu gave a miserable cough as he was sent flying back by Lin Ming’s vibrating spear!

“What!?”

Seeing this, the audience had extremely stunned expressions. Earlier, Mugu Buyu had been able to easily block Jiang Lanjian’s sword blade, and at that time he hadn’t even used Aged Gold Armor to cover his hands.

Now, the Aged Gold Armor had appeared, and he was still swept away by Lin Ming’s spear. How could this happen?

Mugu Buyu’s face was incomparably grim and fierce as he crawled back up to his feet. His arm was still trembling, and a stream of dark red blood bubbled out from a broken gap in the Golden Aged Armor.

“Mugu Buyu is injured. A single spear was able to wound Mugu Buyu! How did Lin Ming do this?”

“How the hell is Lin Ming’s attack power so abnormally freakish? Could it be that he hasn’t used his true strength until now?”

To most of the audience, although Lin Ming was stronger than Jiang Lanjian, he wasn’t several times stronger. In terms of attack power, Jiang Lanjian was still a disciple from the Sword Faction, and he himself was widely regarded as having extremely powerful attacks. At least, he shouldn’t be too much worse than Lin Ming. But that single spear of Lin Ming’s a moment ago had just completely upended the perception of the audience.

Lin Ming glanced at Mugu Buyu’s trembling hand and said, “So it seems even you can bleed.”

Mugu Buyu’s defensive power had truly surpassed Lin Ming’s expectations. Lin Ming had just broken through to the Pulse Condensation period, and he had reached 10,000 filaments of Flow like Silk. Not only that, but his strike had also contained azure true essence and the power of thunder. That vibrating true essence of his had an incomparably formidable destructive power. Once it hit the enemy, it could completely ignore all surface defenses and directly damage the organs and bones!

That is to say, Mugu Buyu’s Aged Gold Armor was simply useless against someone like Lin Ming. In this case, after Mugu Buyu had actually taken his attack, his meridians and bones hadn’t been ruined.

‘This fellow has actually transformed his own meridians and skeleton. His body had almost metamorphosed into a puppet. There truly are unlimited martial paths, everything wonderful and strange is possible!’

“Good! Very good!” Mugu Buyu’s expression sank. His brilliant glowing eyes that glared at Lin Ming were just like a vicious beast that was staring at a human it wished to chomp down on. He said, “You really have provoked my ire this time; I will have you pay the price of doing so!”

“Puppet Battle Body!”

Mugu Buyu’s skeleton suddenly emitted explosive popping sounds as if all his bones were contorting and snapping within him. The clothes on his body were like rags as they were torn to shreds, and two arms coated in blood stretched forth from his back. In the blink of an eye, Mugu Buyu had turned into a four armed monster!

Lin Ming had seen and experienced many strange and disgusting things in the Southern Wilderness. Yet seeing this scene caused his heart to palpitate, the hairs of his arm to rise, and his scalp to tingle with numbness. This pair of arms didn’t look as if they were created by rare materials. Rather, they were real arms that were hacked off and then sewed on!

This Mugu Buyu was a raving madman!

Cha cha cha cha!

Four different weapons were taken out from Mugu Buyu’s spatial ring.

His two back arms held a sickle that was over five feet long and a one-inch thin longsword. One front arm held a hammer and the other held a three foot long iron needle that was as thick as a thumb. This iron needle was especially used by the Puppet Faction to nail into a human’s chest, so they could fix the human onto a wooden board and facilitate the process of turning them into human puppets. Most of the time this would be done to corpses, but sometimes it was used on the living.

As Mugu Buyu pulled out these four weapons, Lin Ming was already moving. Lin Ming didn’t intend to wait for Mugu Buyu to complete this body transfiguring process.

A spear thrust out, and the spearpoint sparked with sizzling electric flashes. The Purple Flood Dragon was especially good at disintegrating Yin energy, and Mugu Buyu’s body that was partially composed of corpses was especially heavy in this energy. If this spear struck, Mugu Buyu would absolutely take additional bonus damage.

At this time, Lin Ming suddenly felt a massive traction force take hold of his body. It was as if he were a piece of iron that was attracted to a magnet.

Lin Ming turned around in surprise to see that the giant alligator puppet had opened its giant jaws, and in its mouth a single pure black swirling vortex. This vortex emitted an extremely strong tugging force that pulled down his entire body.

Engulfing power?

What skill was this?

Before Lin Ming could react, he heard a strange sound. A giant silver spiderweb dropped down from the sky towards him. This was the spiderweb that the spider puppet released. After a Puppet Master reached the Essence Integration boundary, the puppets they created could retain the abilities they had in life to a partial degree. For instance, this spider had retained its spiderwebs.

Meanwhile, the mummy puppet also moved. It raised its hand, holding a broken bone blade and thrust straight towards Lin Ming’s chest.

At this time, Lin Ming was gripped by the engulfing traction force and was completely unable to dodge or evade. There was a spiderweb in the air and a bone blade on the ground. Lin Ming had been driven into a sure-kill situation!

The audience collectively gasped in shock. Several of the young Zither Faction girls couldn’t bear watching this and began to loudly scream.

At this moment, a scintillating bright purple light radiated from Lin Ming, and thick arcs of purple lightning leapt from Lin Ming’s body like giant pythons, crashing towards the spiderweb.

Chi Chi Chi!

That spiderweb that far surpassed Sky Worm Silk in tenacity was instantly fired to ashes by the Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder.

In that split-second, the mummy flushed at Lin Ming, its bone blade raised high. Lin Ming gave a loud shoot; the long spear in his hand pierced forth like a venomous snake!

Puff!

The spear was filled with an unbelievable momentum as it thrust through the mummy’s chest. The power of thunder that was especially able to dispel Yin energy burst forth, countless arcs of electricity covering the mummy in a grid of lightning, its body wildly convulsing.

Chi chi chi!

The mummy’s entire body was charred black by the power of thunder, fired into a block of charcoal. Suddenly, the mummy opened its wide mouth and spat out a cloud of purple smog.

“Corpse poison?”

The purple smog had just emerged when it was cleanly burned away by the purifying nature of thunder. However, this scene caused Lin Ming’s heart to jitter in surprise. The diversionary strength of the engulfing power of the alligator to contain him, combined with the killing potential of the mummy and spider puppet as they circled him. Even on death, the mummy puppet would still release a deadly toxic poison; there were simply layers upon layers of killing moves. If Lin Ming didn’t have the Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder and azure vibrating true essence that could both defend and attack, then it would be exceedingly difficult for him to ward off so many attacks.

“Die!”

Lin Ming coldly snorted and 10,000 vibrating true essence filaments merged into the mummy’s body where it exploded. The mummy was simply directly blown to smithereens from the spearpoint!

“He destroyed a puppet?”

“So fierce!”

Although it was only destroying a puppet, this achievement was still enough to deeply shock the hearts of everyone present. Up until now, it was as if Mugu Buyu’s puppets were immortal. No matter how he let his opponent attack, none of them were able to break apart the puppets’ defenses. Even if the puppets were occasionally inadvertently injured, they seemed completely unaware of any damage they took.

The fact that Lin Ming was able to completely destroy a puppet in one strike was enough to cause the audience’s eyes to light up in delight. A Puppet Master had a limited number of puppets. Every time a puppet died, the Puppet Master’s strength would correspondingly weaken.

On the martial stage, Lin Ming casually shook off his spear, coldly looking towards Mugu Buyu. “Have you finally finished your Puppet Battle Body transformation?”

At this time, Mugu Buyu’s entire body was enveloped in a thick carapace, with only four arms sticking out that were covered in Aged Gold Armor. Mugu Buyu was in a very strange position as he supported himself on these four limbs; he looked just like a giant beetle.

“Hehe, this puppet I created has the strongest defense of all. It is called the Crimson Gold Tortoise. The Crimson Gold Tortoise’s armor can resist penetration from any form of true essence. I confess, your true essence is very strange, it can actually pierce through my Aged Golden Armor and injure me. But now, it is useless against the Crimson Gold Tortoise! As long as I am protected inside, I am invincible! Jejeje!”

Mugu Buyu laughed devilishly. Lin Ming probed the Crimson Gold Tortoise’s armor with his soul force and it appeared just like Mugu Buyu had said. That Crimson Gold Tortoise armor was sealed in some sort of strange force field distortion, cutting off all flows of true essence.

‘The Puppet Faction really has too many secrets!’ Although Lin Ming didn’t understand the principles behind the force field, he was able to guess that it was a mystery that approached the power of Laws. A mere Puppet Faction also had such a powerful legacy; one really couldn’t underestimate any faction, no matter the size.

‘I didn’t think that against Mugu Buyu I would be forced to use my final abilities. If I’m already driven to this stage, how will I deal with Jiang Baoyun?’