114: Chapter 114 The Assembly Line Emerges

Hearing this, Wang Yaowu clicked his tongue and chimed in with a painful expression, "Those Puppet Rats and Puppet birds are all of decent quality. We could make a lot more by selling them slowly. Since we're in a rush to offload them now, the price will definitely take a hit."

Wang Yaozu shook his head, "It's fine. Let's plug the financial hole first. From now on, the income from the two hundred mu of spiritual fields and the few prime shops in Xiaoshan County will be a steady stream of revenue; we shouldn't sweat the price difference for a moment like this."

Wang Yaowen closed the ledger, stood up, and walked outward. Reaching the doorway, he turned his head back and said, "I'll handle it right now. Within three days, the hole will be filled."

His actions were even faster than his words.

That afternoon, over a hundred Cloud Carps hoarded in the warehouse of Lotus Pier were sorted and loaded onto a caravan, sent to various markets across the Three Counties.

The Wang family's Cloud Carps had always been hot commodities. Once the price was lowered, they were snapped up in less than two days.

Wang Qingcheng's Puppet Rats and Puppet birds, which she had accumulated for over half a year, were also packaged and sold to Wanbao Pavilion all at once. Zhiyao took the order personally. Although the price was discounted by twenty percent, the transaction was settled in spot Spirit Stones, making it crisp and neat.

Three days later, Wang Yaowen recorded the last batch of Spirit Stones into the accounts, and the hole in the ledger was indeed filled cleanly.

He put down his brush, picked up the tea that had long since gone cold, took a gulp, and leaned against the back of his chair, letting out a long breath.

Outside the window, Wang Yaowu was shouting at the top of his lungs, directing the clansmen to move the first batch of Ore Materials just transported back from Xiaoshan County into the newly vacated warehouse. A few younger disciples of the Shou generation carried Ore boxes past the corridor, their footsteps making a thumping sound.

Wang Yaowen watching this scene suddenly smiled and muttered to himself, "After being poor for so many years, this is the first time I've had to sell our family foundation to spend money. However, selling this foundation was worth it."

...

In a secluded small courtyard in Lotus Pier.

Wang Shouren rubbed his forehead and put down the Jade Slip in his hand, feeling that he needed to make his words clearer.

"It's not about wiping them out completely." His tone was gentle yet non-negotiable.

"It's about achieving strict confidentiality, ensuring that under no circumstances will outsiders detect it.

Killing is merely one of the means for confidentiality, not the only means, and certainly not the preferred choice.

If you act casually without regard for the occasion, it would instead be a dead giveaway, proactively exposing your background to everyone."

Wang Qingxin obediently nodded, understanding half of it.

After being quiet for a moment, she suddenly raised her head again and asked seriously, "Then if we kill everyone who saw it after using it, does that count as keeping it confidential?"

Wang Shouren was silent for two breaths, once again supporting his forehead.

He thought to himself that it was over; this girl's obedience just now was indeed completely fake.

No matter how the scale in her heart was tipped, it would ultimately lean toward the side that "dead men keep secrets best."

He began to seriously consider whether he should open a separate course for Wang Qingxin called 《On How Cultivators Handle Problems Without Making a Sound》. He had already thought of the title for the first lecture— "Besides killing, you have many other choices."

Wang Qingcheng was lying prone on Wang Shouren's bed, her two lower legs raised and swaying back and forth, holding her half-assembled iron-winged Puppet bird in her arms.

This iron-winged bird was fully three times larger than the previous Puppet Rat, pitch-black all over. Its wings were layered piece by piece with thin iron sheets, and the joints were densely embedded with copper clasps smaller than grains of rice.

She had been wrestling with this iron-winged bird for several days. At this moment, she was finally too tired to move, placed the Puppet into the corner of the bed, tilted her head, and rolled onto Wang Shouren's pillow, muttering incoherently.

"Brother, I quit. Making Puppet beasts is too difficult. From material preparation and joint grinding to skeleton assembly and carving control formation patterns, every step is both meticulous and annoying."

"Just the wing joints of this iron-winged bird ruined the iron-mother copper sheets several times over, and they still kept jamming after being installed."

"I haven't slept well these past few days, and my dark circles are almost dropping to my chin."

While massaging the back of her neck, Wang Shouren smiled and teased her, "Didn't you love tinkering with these things the most? Father hasn't stopped praising you in front of the uncles, saying that our Qingcheng is now a proper Puppet Master. What, do you want to give up halfway?"

Wang Qingcheng buried her face in the pillow, her voice muffled, "I don't care what they think of me at all. It's just too tiring! You try squatting in front of the workbench from morning till night, carving those formation patterns finer than a hair's breadth; your eyes go blurry after staring for too long. Several times I carved the formation patterns wrong, rendering an entire copper plate useless, and I had to start all over again."

She lifted half her face from the pillow, revealing one eye as she looked pitifully at Wang Shouren, "Brother, do you think all Puppet Masters are going to be worked to death?"

"Then have you ever thought that the making of a Puppet from start to finish doesn't need to be completed entirely by you alone?"

Wang Qingcheng flipped over, tilting her head to look at him, though her mouth remained unconvinced.

"How is that possible? Brother, you don't know the trade, do you? Puppet making isn't something anyone can just pick up; every single process from material selection to array carving has its own intricacies."

"Outsiders don't even understand what spiritual conductivity is. If you have them grind the joints and they deviate by even a fraction of a hair, the entire transmission structure will be ruined."

Wang Shouren patiently listened to her finish before saying, "Among the processes you just mentioned, the ones that truly require the Puppet Master to do personally are actually only two steps—carving the formations, and the final assembly and debugging."

"Especially array carving, which is the Soul of the Puppet. It must be completed personally by an experienced graded Puppet Master. But what about the other steps? The pre-treatment of Materials, the weighing of ingredients, the grinding of joints, the polishing of the shell, and the baseline marking before carving the array."

"Although these processes are trivial, they don't require high talent. With just a little training, an ordinary person can do them very well."

Wang Qingcheng blinked her big eyes and didn't speak.

Although she didn't admit defeat verbally, in her heart she had already started calculating along Wang Shouren's words.

What her brother said was actually right; what truly consumed her effort wasn't the array carving, but all that trivial preparatory work before carving.

Sometimes just grinding a set of joint copper clasps would take half a day, leaving her hands sore by the time she finished, so that her wrists would tremble when she went to carve the array patterns afterward.

Wang Qingxin also stopped her Cultivate, sitting cross-legged on a cattail mat, tilting her head and listening quietly.

She didn't understand much about Puppet making, but she felt that every word her master said made a lot of sense, and she wanted to listen carefully to the end.

"The so-called assembly line is to break down a complex matter into many simple minor tasks.

Each person is only responsible for one of them, doing it repeatedly until they are extremely proficient and efficient, and then passing it on to the next person. The next person finishes their share and passes it on to the next.

Materials go in from one end, and finished products come out from the other. The whole process flows like running water, continuous and endless."