What? I bring dungeon to the cultivation world!

The goal was clear.

1. A farming puppet.

2. A monster suitable for the current state of his dungeon.

3. And the creation of a low-grade Tier 2 puppet, roughly equivalent to an early-stage Foundation Building cultivator.

Not meant for combat, but for errands, maintenance, and manual work.

He preferred to be low-key rather than doing most of the stuff himself. Who knew what ridiculous method were secretly hidden in this world. 

Divination?

Soul lock?

Soul search?

Liam didn't dare to risk it.

Liam decided to tackle the first task.

He closed his eyes, and in the next breath, his consciousness slipped back into the real world. 

His posture hadn't changed, still reclined in that familiar chair by the pond.

He rose slowly, stretching his shoulders as his eyes scanned his modest home.

A soft sigh escaped his lips.

"Maybe it's time to upgrade to something bigger," he murmured, half to himself.

His thoughts flickered, uninvited, to his neighbor. 

Sweet, gentle... and marked by a taboo.

Brother Fu didn't have long left.

Taboo marks weren't easy to remove. 

Only top-tier alchemists, geniuses with access to heaven-defying pills, could cleanse them.

But instead of chasing his own salvation, Fu had thrown everything into helping his daughter. 

A mortal daughter, no less.

His wife possessed some type of a disease. But in all honesty, Liam could treat her if he wanted to. 

But he's not close with her.

'Foolish'

That was the word Liam used. And yet, beneath that label… was awe. And something bordering on respect.

"Love really is blind," he muttered, his tone soft, unreadable.

With a casual wave of his hand, a dozen Tier 1 crafting materials spilled out from his storage ring, forming a small hill in the courtyard. 

The light glinted off spiritual ores and refined beast tendons, pieces of jade, bone, metal, and more.

Then, he got to work.

One puppet after another took shape beneath his hands.

With each new attempt, Liam applied another theory. 

A fresh angle that defied the common puppet making practices. 

The idea was to break everything that was supposedly, "kept as normal"

He preferred his own creations to suit his own imaginations. 

A calculated risk.

What if he embedded a two second grade spiritual core, would the excess energy cause backlash, or double the capacity?

If so, then what countermeasure should he apply to make it work?

What if he restructured the vein circuits? If modeled correctly after a human's meridian pathways, it should, in theory, allow the puppet to circulate Qi more efficiently.

What about external enhancements? Would additional limbs cause internal imbalance or widen functional versatility?

He didn't build these puppets to fight. Not yet. These were for testing, for pushing boundaries and the limit of his imaginations.

And with each failure, each puppet that stuttered, collapsed, or crumbled, Liam's expression didn't fall. 

If anything, it brightened.

Failure meant one thing: room to grow.

What was the point of fearing the impossible in a world where monks soared through clouds and tore mountains in half?

To Liam, impossibility was just an illusion waiting to be disproven.

By the time dawn arrived, the hill of materials had been reduced to dust and scraps.

In their place, ten puppets stood neatly arranged across the courtyard. Each was nearly identical to the others, at first glance.

But a closer look revealed the upgrades from the one before. 

A bit taller. 

Thicker plating. Hidden weapon compartments embedded into their arms and torsos.

Subtle nodes for quick spellcasting. Internal cores equipped with self-destruct safeguards.

They were peak Qi Refining puppets, hand crafted. 

And yet, far beyond the norm.

Using the same spiritual core principles as low-grade Foundation puppets, Liam had created autonomous workers that didn't require constant recharging. 

Just standing there alone allowed a continuous absorption of the spiritual energy from the surrounding. 

Their internal cores pulsed with stable energy, and more impressively, their artificial thoughts pulsed faintly within.

Their spiritual intelligence, crude as it was, had been refined to obey, think, and respond with purpose. 

In a way, their level of intelligence wasn't low, but wasn't high either. But more than enough to execute Liam's complicated orders when needed.

They wouldn't fight unless commanded.

They existed to work.

And for Liam, that made them invaluable.

A puppet wasn't useful just because it could carry heavy loads or cast spells.

No, their true value came from thinking. Adapting. Learning. 

Like rudimentary artificial minds, but good enough in a sense. 

At the heart of each puppet was its core.

Crafted from rare treasures plucked from the earth and sky, these cores functioned like a cultivator's dantian, their personal sea of Qi.

An imitation. 

After all, even a mortal human could take on a fake spiritual core as a spiritual root, why couldn't these puppets do the same?

Liam traced this power through vein-like circuits spread across the puppet's limbs, mimicking the human body's meridians. 

Each puppet moved not by clockwork or gears, but by Qi flow, the movement of the spiritual energy. 

Next, he infused the core with several minor spells, enough to perform tasks, defend themselves if cornered, or maintain functionality.

Basic fireball.

Basic earth wall.

Basic corroding rain.

And finally…

He implanted a sliver of consciousness. A spark of directive thought.

A will.

The core became an egg. The sea of Qi within was the embryonic fluid. 

And the consciousness embedded inside? That was the soul of the machine, the thought that would eventually shape its "personality."

It wasn't life.

Not quite.

But it was close.

"The wonders of how a puppet work is extremely baffling"

Liam touched his chin, discerning the puppet with absolute interest, "A spiritual core that acts similar how spiritual sea or sea of Qi works. Inside lays a divine mind of its own, and also acts as it's own soul"

Spiritual core: Sea of Qi/sea of spiritual energy

Inside of the spiritual core: embryo like divine mind/soul

Soul : alive? 

Potential to be alive?

Liam mulled, interested in this question. 

These creations would never betray him as he had placed his own imprint on their cores. 

Their loyalty wasn't forged by bonds or emotions. It was etched into their cores.

Liam stood among them, arms folded behind his back, surveying his work.

Ten perfect workers.

The first step of his grand automation.

Done.

Liam paced slowly in front of his creations, taking his time as he scrutinized each puppet with a meticulous gaze. 

His eyes swept over their joints, their core plating, their balance. 

One by one.

Eventually, he paused, then smiled.

His lips curved in quiet satisfaction, eyes narrowing slightly. "These should do it," he murmured.

With a flick of his hand, the group of puppets shimmered and disappeared, stored neatly within his divine mind, assigned to their new purpose: farming.

5 of them.

On the outside, five remained behind, left on standby. These would be sold later.

Within the vast, boundless space of his divine mind, Liam appeared mid-air, floating effortlessly dozens of meters above the ground. 

His gaze lowered, watching as he took out the five puppets from his storage bag.

His instructions were simple.

Take the bag of seeds. Pick up the spiritual hoe set to the side. Carve rows into the soil. Plant.

Nothing complicated. Just mechanical repetition, something they were perfect for.

Off to the side, resting alone, was the strange, glowing fungus he'd purchased months ago at an unreasonable price. 

Veined like a mushroom, pulsing strangely as if it was alive, it wasn't a plant in the traditional sense, it was a treasure.

A water source.

Once planted, it would anchor itself to the soil and begin releasing clear, fresh spiritual springwater. 

As long as there was enough spiritual energy in the air, the stream would never run dry.

Liam closed his eyes briefly, scanning the atmosphere within the dungeon bubble.

There was spiritual energy in the air.

Constant. Stable. Not as dense as the outside world, but more than enough to sustain a minor farming project.

It would suffice.

Opening his eyes, he continued to observe from above as the puppets began their work.

Hoes struck soil. 

Dirt scattered. 

Rows formed. 

And soon, seeds were being sown.

No wasted movement. 

The plant chosen for this first batch was a fiery blade grass, a Tier 1 spiritual herb commonly used by alchemists as a base component for basic pill refinement.

It was fast-growing, tough, and highly marketable.

If the process succeeded and the farm stabilized, it would mean a steady stream of spiritual stones flowing into his coffers month after month.

A self-sustaining income.

His own product. 

His own empire!

Why should he be like the others?

Liam had always questioned why puppet masters fell into the same mold, relying solely on crafting puppets and selling them off like luxury tools.

Combat purposes only and not the others. 

Was it tradition? Simplicity?

Laziness?

To him, it was a wasted opportunity. Short-sighted. Puppets shouldn't be sold too easily most of the time, they should serve. 

Work for him.

Let others chase customers.

He'd build something lasting.

He remained there for hours, arms folded, eyes unblinking as he watched the cycle repeat, till, plant, cover.

Again and again.

The rhythm was oddly therapeutic.

He had already programmed a working schedule into their cores.

A strict routine, including maintenance checks, soil quality assessments, and periodic watering from the fungal spring.

As for the light, he didn't need to worry.

Fiery blade grass didn't require sunlight. No photosynthesis logic worked in the cultivation world. It absorbed nutrients straight from the soil, water, and the surrounding spiritual energy in the air.

"Good enough," Liam muttered, a satisfied nod following.

With that, he blinked, and vanished.

Back to the real world, a faint smile still lingering on his lips.

Standing in the quiet courtyard, Liam turned his gaze toward the remaining five puppets.

As for the one who accompanied him before, he was somewhere else currently, running an errand for him.

Liam would upgrade that puppet later. 

Their frames stood motionless under the fading sunlight, casting long shadows across the stone floor.

His thoughts stirred.

The simplest option was obvious, sell them.

Plenty of sects and wandering cultivators would kill for a puppet of this quality. That alone could net him a decent fortune.

But... it was just a passing thought.

A better idea sparked in his mind, slowly gaining traction the longer he stared.

After all, these puppets weren't ordinary constructs, they were built with rare features and already field tested. 

Then, Liam remembered something. 

The imprint on the puppet's core.

What if he layered that imprint with something else?

How imprint worked exactly?

It is the extension of a cultivator's own divine mind that attached itself outside of the body to either a spiritual weapon for ownership marking or something else entirely. 

But what if he used the system golden energy to replace the imprint?

Since inherently, the golden energy operated the same as his divine mind energy does. 

His fingers twitched slightly as the idea took hold.

The golden energy from the system, until now, he had only used it for creation, transformation, modification.

But never once had he tried using it as a form of imprint. 

A method of use outside of the system's purpose. But for his own purpose.

What would happen if he embedded it directly into the spiritual core of a puppet?

Would it function the same way a cultivator's imprint did? Command, observation, self-destruction protocols?

Or... would it do more?

Driven by curiosity, Liam raised his hand.

From the tips of his fingers, a ribbon of soft, golden light unfurled, fluid and warm, shimmering with an inner brilliance. 

It drifted forward, wrapping gently around the nearest puppet like a silken sheet of sunlight.

The energy seeped into the puppet's chest, weaving through its framework, and finally nested itself around the spiritual core.

Liam didn't replace the original imprint. Instead, he layered the golden energy on top of it, blending, and fusing the two into a single coherent imprint.

In that moment, the blue hue of the divine sense imprint faded.

And in its place, a deep, glowing gold radiated out.

Liam's eyes narrowed slightly, a brief flash of insight lighting up his expression. 

He drew back his hand.

"…It works," he murmured, the words slow and almost disbelieving.

Eager to explore further, he issued a silent command.

The puppet raised its hand.

A faint shimmer of golden energy trickled from its palm, barely visible. 

But it worked fluidly without any issues. 

The connection between his divine mind and the puppet had reached a whole new level itself. 

He could feel the puppet. Its structure. Its orientation.

Its state.

Then, he tried something else.

The puppet turned its head slightly, looking toward the pond.

A ripple passed through Liam's mind. 

Not just an image, but understanding of what was being seen. He didn't see what the puppet saw… he knew what it saw.

"A pond," he muttered, blinking.

His heart skipped.

"Incredible."

Excitement bloomed in his chest. It wasn't a grand or explosive power, but the implications, those were monumental. 

This subtle auxiliary function solved long-term problems he hadn't yet figured out how to address.

It wasn't a full sensory link, not a shared sight or hearing, but an awareness of perspective.

The puppet's perception passed through to him as pure understanding.

And that alone was priceless.

Still, Liam quickly sobered.

One puppet with this kind of link was fine.

But two? Three?

If too many shared their perceptions with him at once, the overload might fry his divine mind. 

He wasn't reckless enough to try.

For now... one was enough.

He glanced at the other four puppets still standing quietly in formation and allowed himself a small, satisfied smirk.

And then...

To be continued.