Feng Ru and Feng Jinwen didn't press further about how she entered the underworld.
"They seem to believe me."
Song Miaozhu let out a quiet sigh of relief.
When they asked her to report any future underworld intel in exchange for generous rewards, she agreed without hesitation.
"What I share—and what I don't—will be entirely up to me."
For trivial information, she'd happily trade it for contribution points.
Only after the video call ended did she truly relax.
Her "buy in the mortal realm, sell in the underworld" operation had passed scrutiny, and crucially, her spirit stone profits remained undisclosed. A close call.
With no solution yet for repatriating stranded ghosts abroad, Zhao Huoyan left with Zhao Mumu and Old Man Zhao, his expression heavy with worry.
Through the eyes of a lookout paper servant, Song Miaozhu watched their car descend Little Bamboo Mountain. Before she could call them, the other servants emerged on their own. The original thirty were already assigned tasks, so she cut ten more, dedicating them to transcribing texts in the study.
"After all, the SEIU's paying for this."
The events of the day made Song Miaozhu realize just how urgently she needed to improve her self-defense abilities. With the paper servants assigned, she headed straight to the basement to test out an idea she'd been toying with: using spirit energy offensively.
Her first experiments were simple. She used ordinary sheets of paper lying around the house.
She tried infusing them with spiritual power.
If foreign spirit energy could harm the human body, it should be able to damage objects as well.
But the paper didn't even flinch.
There wasn't even the usual quality boost she saw when infusing spirit power into paper crafts. Only when she overloaded the sheets with energy did they begin to show faint signs of cracking. Disappointed, Song Miaozhu set the paper aside. "That much spiritual energy... for such little damage?"
She could tear them more effectively by hand.
"Maybe it's because paper isn't alive?" she muttered.
It was a possibility. With the current cultivation system so deeply tied to craftsmanship, it made sense that spiritual power might respond best to handmade things. Unfortunately, aside from herself and three tiny kittens, there weren't any other living beings in the house.
Wait—a few bugs and ants should be crawling around in the yard.
At her unspoken command, thirteen paper servant—previously folding spirit ingots—dropped their work and began scouring the courtyard for insects.
Soon enough, she had a glass jar filled with test subjects.
This time, she directed spiritual energy into the bugs.
After several minutes and a significant drain on her energy reserves, the insects were still squirming energetically. Only a few that had been overloaded with power looked a little sluggish.
The conclusion was obvious.
Foreign spiritual energy did have a negative effect on both living beings and objects—but nowhere near enough to qualify as an actual spell attack. Using spirit energy like this was a waste of potential.
Next, she tried modeling her efforts after traditional elemental spells, attempting to condense her spiritual power into a spherical projectile or a sharp-edged blade. But every attempt failed. For some unknown reason, her spiritual energy dispersed rapidly the moment it left her body. It refused to hold any shape or form.
Clearly, modern spirit energy worked very differently from what cultivators used in the previous era. It obeyed her only while inside her body. Her research into spiritual energy attacks ended in total failure.
"So that leaves only one path if I want to defend myself," she murmured.
Closing her eyes, Song Miaozhu mentally flipped open the book stored in her mind: The Secret Arts of Paper Crafting.
She skipped over the second half about Yin Paper rituals and focused on the section about Spirit Paper techniques.
Just before the advanced soldier creation spells came the method for crafting Paper Spirit Armor—a defensive technique. It even had a derived version using Yin Paper called Yin Paper Robes.
Based on difficulty alone, this was supposed to be her next step anyway. Paper Spirit Armor was useful for staying alive, but without an offensive skill to go with it, it still felt lacking.
The ideal choice would've been Paper Soldiers, an advanced version of her current Paper Servants, but it required an enormous amount of spiritual energy—far more than she had right now.
With her current abilities, the only offensive spell she could realistically attempt was The Paper Servant Curse.
It was a secret, underhanded technique. One would cut out a paper servant and attach an object deeply connected to the target—like their name and birth date, a personal belonging, or even their blood or tissue.
Then came the eye-dotting, the spiritual awakening.
The curse was activated using special needles and an incantation.
In the last era of cultivation, paper-based dark arts were labeled as sinister and forbidden—and the Paper Servant Curse was a key reason why.
But Song Miaozhu didn't believe the technique itself was inherently evil. Like any tool, it depended on the person using it. Right now, she lacked both offensive and defensive options. While the curse was limited and didn't quite meet her standards for an ideal attack, it was the only viable method available. She wasn't about to pass it up.
Besides, thinking more practically, the Paper Servant Curse could work in tandem with her other techniques: Paper Spirit Armor for defense, and Paper Servants to collect curse materials.
Not a bad setup after all.
She carefully studied the chapters on the curse, the armor, and the associated Yin Paper Robes several times, then went off to gather materials and began her step-by-step practice.
Yin Paper Robes required the least spirit power to make. She just needed some brightly colored paper, cut to the right size, then pieced together into a robe-like shape. But that didn't mean they were easy to make. If she wanted a garment that a ghost could wear without it breaking apart, or even a fourth-rank robe indistinguishable from real cloth, she'd need top-tier craftsmanship.
Each grade of paper robe required different crafting methods.
Song Miaozhu decided to hold off until she could craft third-grade Golden Lotus Flowers before attempting those.
In contrast, Paper Spirit Armor and the Paper Servant Curse weren't as demanding in terms of skill.
The simplest armor required nothing more than a paper cutout shaped vaguely like clothing. No need for color or precision—just a basic outline. Wider coverage simply meant cutting a broader design. As for the curse, it only needed a basic human-shaped paper servant—less refined even than her Paper Servants.
The real difficulty was in the spiritual activation step. Both spells required a seamless infusion of spirit energy.
The moment she paused or hesitated, the activation would fail.
There was no way to recover spiritual energy mid-ritual either.
Thankfully, with her current reserves, she should just barely be able to complete the activation process for the most basic versions of both techniques.