With her social death scare behind her, Song Miaozhu could finally focus on building the paper stone wall.
Her current cultivation was more than sufficient to support the Spirit-Imbuing Landscape Technique, but she had never actually crafted a paper stone wall before. Still, her hands were more skillful than ever, and her skills in both paper crafting and painting had improved. One mastered technique could unlock many others. She might not yet be able to replicate all forms of nature, but she felt confident about this stone wall.
The Secret Art of Paper Crafting described a simple method: the rub-and-trace technique. It involved pressing a sheet of impressionable paper against a real stone wall to capture its textures, then painting it and activating it with spiritual energy to create a convincingly lifelike spiritual stone wall.
Song Miaozhu decided to use this method. First, she used the cave walls to practice, crafting odd-shaped miniature stone slabs. Once she was satisfied, she cut full sheets and headed to various cliffs in Yunwu Mountain, taking rubbings from multiple sources.
As long as the patterns were gathered from scattered locations, no one would find them familiar. She gathered fragments from east and west, then returned to piece them together and refine the details.
To make the stone wall stand upright and block the cave entrance while remaining operable, she built a bamboo frame at its core. She designed it like a folding door, then attached the crafted paper segments, assembling a snug, seamless facade with one section that could open like a door.
It was perfectly sized to seal the entrance. From a distance, both the interior and exterior appeared like naturally eroded stone. Up close or at odd angles, though, the paper texture was still detectable.
But once she activated it with the Spirit-Imbuing Landscape Technique, it became a proper spiritual stone wall. Visually and by touch, it was indistinguishable from the surrounding cliff. It could withstand pressing and climbing, even resisted water and fire. Only blunt force or powerful impact could damage it, as its hardness still fell short of true stone. Still, for a camouflaging wall, it was more than enough.
Curious, Song Miaozhu wondered aloud, "I wonder if spiritual nurturing will unlock new functions in it?"
This was a new technique and effectively a new spiritual artifact, so she infused it with green spiritual energy. She continued feeding it spiritual energy, restoring her own reserves with spirit stones. After each infusion, she used the Spirit-Mirroring Bronze Mirror to examine it.
Several hours later, the mirror finally displayed a new result:
"A seamless stone wall with a functioning door panel and excellent breathability."
The earlier reading had said:
"A fake stone wall with a functioning door panel, lower hardness than real rock, and good breathability."
With the help of Lingmo's spiritual enhancement, Song Miaozhu punched the wall from inside the cave. An indentation appeared immediately, a few pebbles even crumbling off. Now, by look, feel, or durability, it was no different from real stone.
Staring at the wall, she mused, "If it's exactly like real stone, then… is it still considered paper craft, or is it real rock now?"
If a paper stone wall could be transformed into true rock through spiritual nurturing, that meant a whole new level. This wasn't like turning paper gold ingots into real ones.
The Spirit-Imbuing Landscape Technique could simulate anything in nature—plants, stone, water—with lifelike realism. And once something was made through this method, nurturing it with spiritual energy would produce the same spiritual effect.
"Does that mean I could use this to grow real plants, animals, maybe even entire ecosystems?"
The thought spiraled.
Did the earth and sky count as natural things? What if she used this technique to craft a planet—could it become a real world? A paper-crafted world?
Even if this technique was the most demanding of all paper crafting arts, right now, she was seeing the possibilities unfold. What was a paper house compared to an entire paper-crafted realm?
She could hardly wait.
She pulled out some of the classic blueprints from the Spirit-Imbuing Landscape Technique. She had once thought her paper crafting had come a long way, but seeing these intricate designs reminded her she was still a novice.
The technique had a high threshold, but also a high ceiling. The stone wall was a simple use of the rub-and-trace method. Other things—even a single blade of grass—were far more difficult.
Not only was imbuing the item difficult, but even the crafting itself had to be flawless. The piece had to look alive even before spiritual activation. Right now, just looking at those blueprints made her hesitate, let alone actually make them. After all, not everything could be replicated with surface texture alone. Better to practice with simpler paper crafts first.
She pulled out the stored bamboo slats from her ghost shop space and resumed working on the spirit paper car she had been building before the explosion. Originally, it was just a test to see what abilities would manifest after spiritual nurturing. The real purpose was to make Yin Paper Cars for sale in the underworld.
But now she actually needed a working vehicle.
She didn't want people to know she had the ability to summon a whole car, and it was hard to destroy a real car without leaving any trace. Her old convertible had not been recovered by her little paper servants and had been destroyed in the explosion.
Fortunately, she had already prepared the blueprint and had printed photos and her memory to guide her. Making the car again wouldn't be too hard. Using spiritual energy to feed her body and replenish her energy, she no longer needed ordinary food. The cave had turned into a massive paper crafting studio, with materials strewn all over.
There were just a few chairs and a lounge chair for rest.
At night, she would lie on the chair to attend her underworld classes, while the little paper servants stood guard and the paper soldiers protected her body. This setup worked perfectly for her, but for the three fat cats, the cave was a little too dull.
So she had little paper servants accompany them, ensuring their safety while they played in the bamboo forest by day and returned at night. At first, she had to jump down and carry them back up each time. Eventually, they figured out their own route and learned to climb the cliff on their own.
They still didn't understand why the rock moved, though. So they used the small side opening in the northwest corner to come home.