After feeding the cats, Song Miaozhu sent Zhao Huoyan the photo she had just taken when appraising the spiritual-item version of the bowl-hugging paper servant using the Bronze Mirror.
It had been nearly a year since the SEIU publicly announced the revival of spiritual energy. For the past year, citizens across Chinese had been learning handicrafts to absorb spiritual energy and cultivate.
Beginners who had truly put in the effort were now well into the Qi Introduction stage. Those who already had experience with crafting progressed even faster, with some nearing the end of their body tempering phase.
The number of cultivators capable of absorbing spiritual energy had surged dramatically. Meanwhile, the growth of ambient energy remained relatively steady, leading to a noticeable imbalance. Spiritual energy was becoming thinner and scarcer by the day.
Especially in Chinese.
Here, the population was large, meaning high spiritual energy generation, but also high consumption. From elderly folks in their eighties and nineties to toddlers who had just learned to walk, everyone was learning some kind of craft, consuming enormous amounts of spiritual power.
This led to increasingly intense competition over spiritual energy. On the SEIU app, it was now a daily occurrence for local branches to report conflicts, brawls, and territorial disputes among cultivators.
In other countries, because their governments had not widely disclosed the spiritual revival—or in some cases had even suppressed it—awareness was limited. As a result, spiritual energy consumption was still slower than in Chinese, and the situation there was a bit more manageable.
Even Song Miaozhu noticed that the absorption speed of her bowl-hugging paper servants had slowed slightly. She assumed it was due to the global surge in demand, leaving less free-floating energy in the atmosphere.
Now, she felt her own power had reached a point where it was time to officially launch her spiritual-item-grade bowl-hugging paper servants and make a real profit.
In terms of cultivation level, the third layer of the azure spiritual crystal in her spiritual platform was nearly complete. A week ago, the SEIU had announced a milestone: the most advanced artisan-cultivator in the country had just surpassed 180,000 units of spiritual power.
A single layer of spiritual crystal required 90,000 units. Nine red layers marked complete crystallization. That meant the SEIU's strongest known cultivator had only just reached the second layer of red crystal—still a full major stage behind Song Miaozhu.
As for combat, she now commanded over 200 stealth-capable little paper servants, which could assist her with chores and gather intelligence.
She had also accumulated nine squads of paper soldiers, totaling 245. Among them, five had been nurtured to the point they could be used for possession. In other words, she had five muscular, battle-ready alter-egos that not even the Heavenly Eye technique could detect. Many SEIU branches didn't even have this many active cultivators with spiritual platforms.
If they actually fought, paper soldiers would defeat most human cultivators, barring the use of other spiritual items. Escaping was always an option for cultivators, but not from one of her possessed paper soldiers.
And when it came to spiritual items, who could compare? She alone possessed every dangerous item in the SEIU's key spiritual item vault. She never had to worry about running out of spiritual power either—she could supplement at any time using spirit stones or the energy stored in her bowl-hugging paper servants.
Her defense was equally formidable. Her long-nurtured Paper Armor and one-time-use Paper Armor from the point-spirit method both automatically shielded her from ambushes. With the spiritual shield generated by her Grade-4 Yang Paper Clothes, even her strongest paper soldier couldn't break through.
As for escaping, she was confident no cultivator could outrun her.
Not only did she train her body daily, but she never once slacked on nourishing it with spiritual energy. She spent more energy each day maintaining her body than most cultivators had in total reserves.
Many cultivators needed days to fully recover their energy.
On top of that, she had both a substitution paper servant and a lifesaving one. One could teleport her away at any moment. The other would absorb lethal damage, cleanse her status, then teleport her to safety.
A drawn-out battle? Not a problem. She had stockpiled over 500 million hell coins—equivalent to five top-grade spirit stones. Her recovery speed was nearly unbelievable.
For assassination and underhanded tactics, she had her paper curse technique. After cursing countless Japanese ghosts, her mastery of the technique had reached the point that, with just a name, birthdate, or a photo, she could curse anyone with lower cultivation than hers to death.
Whether it was cultivation, combat, defense, speed, survival, recovery, or assassination, Song Miaozhu had reached the top tier of modern cultivators.
Her warehouse in the underworld's ghost shop still had enough spiritual paper, bamboo, and other crafting materials to last her at least ten years.
Now, she truly had no weak spots. It was time to start making bold profits.
The 500 million hell coins in the ghost shop weren't just earnings from the shop itself. A good portion came from the spiritual items she had sold.
Every time she received contribution points, she immediately exchanged them for hell coins. After all, contribution points could now be freely converted to RMB and back.
Whenever she needed to buy spiritual items, she could just swap her hell coins for RMB and then into contribution points. The underworld's currency had never collapsed. The same couldn't be said for earthly money, which was still vulnerable to inflation.
This time, she was ready to go big—release a large batch of items and rake in serious money.
*
In the SEIU's wood carving workshop in Lingcheng Zhao Huoyan was practicing his carving fundamentals.
He had spent much of his time and energy setting up the local SEIU branch, and then managing Lingcheng's growing population of cultivators and eager craft learners. As a result, he had fallen far behind in his own cultivation.
His peers who had trained in wood carving under the old master had long since opened their spiritual platforms and started condensing red spiritual crystals. Zhao Huoyan was still stuck at the Heavenly Eye stage.
But now that the local SEIU and public cultivation programs were running smoothly, he could finally refocus on his own craft.
Unfortunately, spiritual energy was getting scarcer by the day. If he weren't the SEIU team leader, with enough internal contributions to be assigned three bowl-hugging paper servants—and if he hadn't bought two more privately from Master Song—he wouldn't have gotten this far.
He took those five servants everywhere he went to absorb spiritual energy. Slowly but surely, he had begun catching up. He was now nearing the crucial breakthrough into the spiritual platform stage. When his phone chimed, Zhao Huoyan shivered with anticipation.
That alert tone was set for only one person: the sole elite master in all of Lingcheng.
In these times, where spiritual energy was growing more precious by the day, someone like Master Song—who could nurture bowl-hugging paper servants—was absolutely vital.
Why did people still regard the SEIU as the ultimate destination for cultivators?
Because aside from being the largest cultivation organization in the country, the SEIU was the one place where cultivators could be assigned bowl-hugging paper servants.