The sage was determined to die.

Wang Zhixuan pretended to be dead at this moment.

He kept searching through his fragmented memories for information about the puppet, when a gentle voice of an old man whose face he couldn't see rang in his ears.

"Using living people to create puppets is a divine art," the old man said gently, stroking his head. "It's very difficult to do."

He was still young then, and had a naive view of everything. He asked the old man in bewilderment, "But wouldn't it be very painful for a living person to make a puppet?"

"pain?"

The old man seemed surprised by his words, gently stroking the back of his head with his hand, his voice soft: "My child, how could you think such a thing?"

"What were you thinking about when you ate fish for dinner?"

Children's responses are always straightforward: "Fish is delicious."

The old man then patted his head and said, "That's the right way to think. You don't need to worry about where the fish came from. Just treat it as something to eat."

"The same principle applies," the old man's kind features gradually became clearer, "you don't need to care where the puppet came from, just know that it works very well."

"But," the child asked, still puzzled despite his young age, "fish are fish, and they are people. Aren't they the same as us?"

The old man's kind face instantly softened, and he put on a stern expression, clearly very dissatisfied with the child's incorrigible attitude.

The old man said to him, "We are a member of the Wang family. How can they be treated the same as us?"

How can they be the same?

Wang Zhixuan felt a piercing pain in his brain, as if it were being penetrated by steel nails. His limbs, burned by flames, became increasingly stiff and completely unresponsive to his brain's commands.

My mind was in complete chaos, fragmented memories pieced together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, only this time, the man speaking in my head was another young man.

The person who pushed him down!

He still couldn't see the features clearly, nor could he hear the voice. The man was gripping his neck, his tone contemptuous and mocking: "They say the people of the five great families are different from us ordinary mortals. If you had fallen, you would have been lucky to survive."

The man's voice had a sinister, ghostly quality to it.

"I will find you," he said. "Then I will see how your flesh and bones are different from those of ordinary people."

He chuckled: "Perfect timing, I also promised someone I'd make a puppet for them."

Recalling this, Wang Zhixuan couldn't help but shudder.

A fraction of a second later, he involuntarily opened his eyes and met the gaze of a man.

……

"Actually," Gongsun Yang hesitated for a moment before speaking, "I do know a little about puppetry using living people."

Upon hearing this, Yan Ming sized him up, then raised his voice: "You?"

Gongsun Yang nodded. He first glanced at Ji Bai beside him, and seeing that the other party also seemed willing to listen, he continued, "...This evil art has harmed many people in our country."

As Gongsun Yang spoke, he couldn't help but feel a little bitter: "I don't know the specifics either. I only know that this evil art is related to a literary heart. Some people have come to us to buy it in order to better refine puppets, and we've also captured quite a few people."

"Buy? Catch?" Ji Bai asked.

"Yes," Gongsun Yang nodded, "Anything they set their sights on, they'll try to win over with politeness first, then force."

Ji Bai paused, already having a premonition, but still turned to look at Gongsun Yang, "What will become of these people?"

Gongsun Yang forced out an ambiguous expression: "Later, that person discovered that these lowly, impoverished people couldn't be used to create any usable puppets at all. Naturally, some of them died, and others were destroyed."

Ji Bai was silent for a while, then shifted his gaze to the distance and suddenly said, "To put it cruelly, it wasn't a death in vain."

"If these people were useful, I'm afraid far more than just these people would have died."

"Yes," Gongsun Yang said with a wry smile, "Great powers may still have the ability to protect themselves, but small countries like ours would probably have perished long ago."

"All I can say is that this writer's mind," Ji Bai carefully chose his words, "isn't it about ripping off the poor?"