All the bookshelves from Song Miaozhu's study had been moved into her papercraft workshop. Along with the existing storage racks, they were now completely filled with spirit-infused bowl-holding paper figures. Once she was done arranging them, she paused.
With this many figures, she could now gather the equivalent spiritual energy of at least two low-grade spirit stones per day. Then a thought occurred to her. "If blue spiritual energy is this effective for nurturing, would it be even better for activation?"
Until now, she had only ever used red spiritual energy for activating her crafts. She had never tried blue. As it happened, the ghost shop had placed a new order for fourth-grade Yin Paper Clothes.
Song Miaozhu began cutting paper again.
When it came time to activate the piece, she used blue spiritual energy.
It only took a little for the activation to succeed.
However, when factoring in how much more difficult it was to replenish blue spiritual energy, it wasn't actually more cost-effective than using red.
She carefully inspected the fourth-grade Yin Paper Clothes. Compared to those activated with red spiritual energy, there was no visible difference.
"So blue spiritual energy doesn't enhance activation?" she muttered, disappointed.
That was, until she began experimenting with activating other crafts using blue spiritual energy.
She tried fourth-grade Yang Paper Clothes, spiritual paper armor, bowl-holding paper figures, spirit kites, little paper servants, and paper soldiers.
The Yang Paper Clothes, spiritual armor, and bowl figures all performed identically regardless of which energy was used.
But the spirit kites, little paper servants, and paper soldiers activated with blue spiritual energy behaved noticeably differently.
The spirit kites previously needed one full unit of red energy to transport goods across 100 kilometers. The blue-enhanced ones could send items over 500 kilometers with the same red energy as a power source.
The red-activated little paper servants had to fold countless inferior paper gold ingots before they could craft a first-grade one. The blue ones? They could produce one immediately upon deployment, and were noticeably more intelligent.
Even though her fifth unit of paper soldiers wasn't fully activated with blue spiritual energy—only partially mixed in—these high-ponytailed soldiers could now go toe-to-toe with her third unit of twin-bun soldiers.
Keep in mind, the third unit had been cultivated four months ago. Paper soldiers got stronger the longer they were nurtured.
By that logic, the fifth unit shouldn't have been able to hold their own even against the fourth. Blue spiritual energy seemed to enhance only those crafts with independent spiritual awareness.
Spirit kites, little paper servants, and paper soldiers all shared this trait.
"Could it be that blue spiritual energy is especially beneficial for developing spiritual awareness?" Song Miaozhu wondered.
She had long suspected that paper crafts activated with red energy seemed more spiritually aware than what was described in the Secret Art of Paper Crafting. She even questioned whether modern spiritual energy, though not divided into the five elements or Yin and Yang, still carried qualities that nurtured sentience.
If blue energy was a higher-tier spiritual force than red, then it made sense that it would be more conducive to developing awareness.
In every way, blue spiritual energy was better. The only drawback was its cost: the same unit required far more ambient energy to restore than red, and the blue crystals were harder to form.
So she cleared out the small storage room in her workshop, installed custom shelving, and filled it with more spirit-infused bowl-holding paper figures.
She had officially scaled up her spiritual energy collection.
Even so, she still needed to supplement her daily needs with spirit stones for cultivation, nurturing, and her paper figures' activities.
Next, she used blue spiritual energy to nurture her remaining crafts that hadn't yet achieved spirit-infused versions.
The first to succeed was the spirit paper horse ridden by her little paper servants. After nurturing, it gained a significant boost in jumping ability and could even tread briefly on wind. Unfortunately, spiritual nurturing only worked on Yang-based paper crafts. The Yin Paper Horse she used in the underworld remained the same.
After several infusions of blue energy, her Displacement and Damage Redirectors paper figures gained new abilities. The Displacement figure could now teleport independently, even without synchronizing positions with her first. It would find an optimal location on its own, then allow her to swap.
No more having to prepare ahead by sending a little paper servant to carry it into place.
The Damage Redirectors figure developed a healing ability in addition to its original function.
Originally, it could only transfer wounds from her to itself. The damage it took was irreversible, and once it exceeded a certain threshold, the figure would be destroyed.
Now, she could use spiritual energy to repair its injuries.
In other words, if someone hurt her, the Injury-Swap figure would take the blow, and she could then heal it using energy.
As long as the damage didn't surpass its threshold, she could keep it in working condition indefinitely.
It had become far more durable.
The only downside was that her current cultivation level still limited how much damage the figure could absorb. It could take minor external wounds, but not internal injuries or broken limbs.
Finally, she turned her attention to her last and most challenging craft: the Life-Saving Paper Figure.
It was still incomplete. Despite using a nurturing method that involved repeated low-level activations, she had yet to succeed. Once she switched to blue spiritual energy, the nurturing process accelerated.
She cultivated, nurtured, and continued working on her other crafts. When her blue energy reserves hit 10,000 units, the Life-Saving Paper Figure finally awakened. From that moment on, she effectively had one extra life. If she ever suffered a fatal wound, the figure would take her place and die in her stead.
But Song Miaozhu wasn't satisfied. She wanted to infuse the figure further, to nurture it into a full spirit-infused version and see what abilities it might develop. So far, none of her spirit-infused crafts had disappointed her, aside from the gold ingot and golden lotus.
However, this wouldn't be a short project.
The Life-Saving Figure was the most complex and difficult to activate among all her creations. Nurturing it to a full spirit artifact would not be easy.
By this point, it had been nearly three months since the SEIU announced the spiritual revival.