The Red Hair Jiangshi had been effective and unsettling.

Han Yu had kept several of those for further study.

Then there was the Caustic Boil Jiangshi.

That one had been unpleasant even by his standards.

Large, swollen boils covered its surface, each one filled with corrosive fluid. When ruptured, they released a substance capable of melting through armor and flesh alike. The difficulty lay in controlling the release. Too much pressure, and the entire body destabilized. Too little, and the effect was negligible.

He had refined the design to a usable state.

Barely.

And then…

His thoughts returned to the most intriguing case.

The Cursed Phantasm Jiangshi.

He frowned slightly.

That creation had not been intentional.

The conditions that led to its formation remained unclear. A slight variation in curse energy, a fluctuation in the blood composition, perhaps even an unnoticed interference from external Qi. Whatever the cause, the result had been extraordinary.

And dangerous.

The body had been fragile.

Weak.

Yet it possessed an ability that defied conventional structure.

Intangibility.

It could shift between physical and phantom states, allowing it to avoid attacks entirely. It moved through obstacles, bypassed defenses, and struck from unexpected angles. Its offensive capability had been far beyond what its classification suggested.

Han Yu had underestimated it.

That mistake had cost him.

The wounds had not been fatal, but they had been real. The Jiangshi's attacks had cut through his defenses, leaving marks that required immediate treatment. For a brief moment, he had experienced something rare.

Uncertainty.

But he had destroyed it in the end.

A precise application of his Soul Skills had shattered its core, ending the threat.

Yet the memory remained.

And the question persisted.

Just what had caused that mutation?

He had spent months attempting to recreate it.

Failure followed failure.

The results never matched the original.

Han Yu's gaze sharpened slightly as he looked at the corpse before him.

"If I can understand that… everything changes."

A Jiangshi with that level of adaptability, combined with stability and control, would elevate his entire plan.

An army of such constructs…

Even thinking about it stirred a faint sense of anticipation within him.

The workshop door opened quietly.

Han Yu turned his head slightly.

A woman entered, her steps measured and composed.

It was of course none other than Meng Jueyan.

She carried a tray with a teapot and a cup, the steam rising gently as she approached. Her presence was familiar within this space, one of the very few allowed to enter without restriction.

"Master," she said softly, setting the tray down on a nearby table. "Please have some tea. You have been here for two weeks without rest."

Han Yu blinked once.

"Two weeks…"

He glanced toward the formation clock embedded in the wall.

The time confirmed it.

"…I see."

He stepped away from the pool, his movements slow as he stretched slightly. The tension in his body eased, though his mind remained active.

Meng Jueyan poured the tea with practiced care and handed him the cup.

"You have not eaten properly either," she added.

Han Yu accepted the cup, taking a small sip.

The warmth spread through him, grounding his thoughts slightly.

"I was close to something," he said.

"You always say that," she replied calmly.

Han Yu gave a faint smile.

"This time, I mean it."

Meng Jueyan did not argue.

She had heard similar statements before.

Many times.

Yet she also knew that each of those attempts had brought him further along this path.

Her gaze shifted briefly to the corpse in the pool.

"This one…" she said, "is different?"

Han Yu looked at it again.

"Yes."

His tone carried a quiet certainty.

"I adjusted the curse layering. Reduced external interference. Increased internal coherence. Theres now three differenet curse cores working in tandem."

He paused.

"But whether it works…"

He did not finish the sentence.

Meng Jueyan nodded.

She understood.

There were always variables.

Always risks.

Han Yu took another sip of tea, his thoughts already returning to the problem at hand.

The path forward was still unclear.

But he was closer than before.

And that was enough for now.

Meng Jueyan stood quietly beside the blood pool, her gaze fixed upon the corpse suspended within its dark, pulsing depths. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

The surface of the liquid shifted gently with the steady rhythm of the formation beneath it, faint ripples spreading outward in response to the subtle movements of energy flowing through the array. To an untrained eye, it might have looked like a grotesque ritual frozen in time. To her, it was something far more complex.

Behind her, Han Yu watched.

Not the Jiangshi.

Her.

There was a quiet moment between them, one that carried the weight of years. Ten years was enough time to reshape a person, and Meng Jueyan had changed in ways that even Han Yu sometimes paused to appreciate.

When he had first taken control of her fate, she had been broken. Her cultivation had been crippled, her body damaged beyond the reach of conventional healing, and her spirit worn thin by the circumstances she had endured.

At that time, she had been little more than a tool in his plans, someone he needed to stabilize and preserve.

That had changed.

Slowly at first, then more decisively as time passed.

After resolving the Mind Modifying Doll Seal, Han Yu had turned his attention toward her condition with a level of focus that surprised even himself. Repairing her cultivation was not a straightforward task. Standard pills and techniques yielded limited results, and even the best alchemical solutions failed to restore what had been lost.

So he chose a different path.

The same path he walked with puppets and Jiangshi.

Reconstruction then enhancement before full integration.

He began by stabilizing her internal injuries using refined blood infused with carefully selected herbs. These were not ordinary medicinal ingredients. Each one was chosen for its ability to interact with both flesh and energy pathways, allowing him to rebuild damaged structures piece by piece.