Chapter 201: Guardian Dolls
A month passed quickly at the Ginkgo Sanctuary, and Anji woke up one morning to the sound of someone chopping wood.
That was strange. The wood chopping was usually done by those residing in the northern district and carried here once a week. Curious, she peeked out of the window, expecting to find someone there or her shifu.
"Wooden dolls?" Anji could not conceal her surprise when the ’person’ cutting wood turned out to be the life-sized wooden puppets used in the training ground. What was it doing here? More importantly, Anji did not recall that they could independently chop wood.
Washing up and making her bed quickly, Anji bundled her hair without brushing it. Clambering down the big redwood tree, Anji eventually reached the ground and cautiously walked up to their new woodcutter.
Seeing how the wooden doll did not sense her as a threat and continued its job mindlessly with a huge pile of unchopped wood at the side, Anji took a closer look at the unique doll.
"It’s a new prototype," Yan Ping’s voice floated from above. "I thought about what you said about the fourth seal. It’s not complete yet, but even if it fails, we could repurpose it to create guardian dolls that help with chores that everyone neglects in this sect."
Landing gracefully after alighting from her flying staff, Yan Ping presented Anji with breakfast for the day. Sometimes, the sect master would fly down to the Northern kitchen alone to get food for them when she was too lazy to cook. Cooking, as Anji learned, was not something Yan Ping enjoyed even if she excelled at it. According to her, food is meant to fill the stomach regardless of taste. It became less meaningful to her after she attained her Enlightened Core. Why waste time cooking, eating and cleaning when there were better things to do?
Regardless, Anji could never dislike Yan Ping cooking for her. She was always thankful for the food, even if it were simple, clumsy-looking dumplings that fell apart in the soup.
Deactivating the wooden woodcutter, Yan Ping opened up the front panel hiding the complex seals inside. After a month of studying, Anji recognised the familiar seals quickly, even if she had not mastered them.
"Are those replicas of the seals inside me?" she blinked, squinting at the tiny inscriptions. As the seal was inside her, Yan Ping had to draw it out on paper for Anji to study in pieces. It was Anji’s first time seeing it as a whole, and the complexity was worse than she thought.
"Not exact replicas," Yan Ping confirmed. "I removed the sections that you said were redundant to test if the concept of a fourth control seal would work. It’s still in the testing phase."
Clapping in awe, Anji asked if the guardian doll could do more than chop wood.
"Until I know how long it can go without needing energy recharging, I won’t assign more tasks. It will chop wood for the entire sect if it has to, but realistically speaking, if it could do this for more than six hours, the concept works."
Six hours was a long time. Even the most efficient spells could not retain more than four hours of operational time. The wooden doll was a complex structure created by her shifu. Even senior researchers cannot create something more energy-savvy. Seeing something surpass its natural performance lifespan would be considered a new breakthrough.
Studying the seals inside, Anji noticed something strange.
"Shifu, are the seals fighting each other? The energy circuits are running in reverse. Isn’t that dangerous?"
When Anji did not hear an immediate reply, she turned around. Yan Ping had a solemn look on her face, and it finally dawned on Anji why her teacher was against the idea of adding a fourth seal at the start. Before, she could only understand the pieces of what her father’s seal was and what it looked like. Seeing a realistic model of what actually happened inside a wooden doll made Anji realise the severity of what she was learning.
"That’s not something you would have to worry about," Yan Ping stated calmly. "How has the studying been?"
Accepting the change of topic, Anji reported that she had memorised up to the sixth out of the eight formations used in her father’s seal.
"Good," Yan Ping acknowledged. "I’ll test you on that and the previous sections you memorised after breakfast. Meet you upstairs."
In a gust of sudden wind, Anji watched how her teacher flew up to the tree house and sighed. The redwood tree had never seemed higher, and Anji’s arms never ached any less each time she had to climb the tree. Normal people would have developed stronger arm muscles by now after climbing this tall tree several times. However, Anji remained stick-like. Yan Ping even went to catch mountain pheasants herself in hopes Anji would fill out a little more in her sleeves. However, nothing of that sort happened even after a month. If anything, Anji had only come to enjoy strong tea like everyone else in the Mystical Qilin Sect.
Rung by rung, Anji pulled herself to the top. She memorised the formation and tested herself several times to remember everything correctly. Her father’s seal had many incorrect calculations, and Yan Ping told Anji not to correct those calculations when she was working on the seal. Memorising a calculation error was harder than memorising and applying a correct formula. It was a different form of hardship on many different levels that Anji dreaded.
When Anji finally made her way to the top, breakfast was already waiting for her on the table. Yan Ping was going through her homework when she snapped her fingers.
"Wash your hands first before you eat," she scolded without even turning in Anji’s direction. "And no tea. I went to the Western District today. Aunt Wine made chicken soup. It should help keep you awake until midnight while warming your body."
Grinning brightly, Anji quickly went to wash her hands. She hated washing her hands or bathing in the tree house because there was no heated water. However, if there was Aunt Wine’s chicken soup, that was a different story. She would wash her hands as many times as required.