"Has the river gone mad?"
"Could something be lurking under the water?"
"Maybe some spiritual beast got loose and is stirring up trouble in the river?"
"If someone really had a spiritual beast powerful enough to do this, the SEIU would've already snatched them up and put them on a pedestal!"
...
At the SEIU's satellite monitoring center, the agent in charge of surveillance near Xiaozhu Mountain—more precisely, around Song Miaozhu—suddenly stood up with excitement.
She had heard her predecessor describe this post as thrilling, but ever since her transfer here, it had been nothing but silence. Today was the first time something actually happened.
"What? Master Song has left the mountain with a spiritual beast? And it can manipulate river water too?"
The news quickly reached Zhao Huoyan at SEIU headquarters.
He hadn't intended to interfere with Song Miaozhu directly, only added a new observation to her file.
But now that the river disturbances were drawing civilians upriver to investigate, and they were likely headed straight for her location, he decided it was time to give her a heads-up.
"What? People are heading this way already?"
Upon receiving his call, Song Miaozhu quickly called the paper-crafted water rhino to a halt. "Alright, alright, I get it! You're amazing. Now take me back."
The rhino calmed down and turned around, trotting steadily back toward Xiaozhu Mountain.
Song Miaozhu was well aware the SEIU kept close watch on her. Zhao Huoyan's warning didn't offend her. Their current relationship—cordial cooperation with a respectful distance—suited her just fine.
And anything she didn't want the SEIU to know about, she would never do out in the open without proper cover.
The spirit soul business, after all, wasn't something she planned to hide. If left unchecked, unbound spiritual objects could eventually disrupt order, cause chaos, or even lead to injuries and deaths.
There was no way she could personally take control of every old artifact in the world with potential for spiritual awakening. The best path forward was cooperation with the SEIU.
Zhao Huoyan wasn't slow to catch on. Noticing that she was still speaking to the water rhino while the call was ongoing, without muting or hiding anything, he seized the opportunity to ask:
"This new spiritual item of yours... is it a mount? A water-controlling mount?"
Song Miaozhu noted his quick thinking and replied, "I wouldn't go that far. I'm not capable of crafting a spiritual item that combines both mount and water-control abilities. It just happens to be big enough to carry me. The water-controlling part, well, I used another method for that."
"What kind of method?" Zhao Huoyan's heart skipped a beat. "Are you saying there's a way to cultivate spiritual items besides infusing them with spiritual energy?"
As she gave mental instructions for a little paper servant to fly overseas on a spirit kite to begin a procurement mission, she responded casually, "Of course. But if you want that information, what are you offering in return?"
Even she couldn't resist the value of spirit souls.
Sure, the SEIU might uncover the secret eventually, but she had no intention of handing it over for free. Especially when there was something she wanted from them too.
Spirit souls came from unbound spiritual items, and unbound spiritual items came from old objects.
"My asking price isn't in money this time," Song Miaozhu said. "I want to choose one thousand old items from your archives. Specifically paper-based ones—ancient paper, paper cuttings, painted paper crafts, paper sculptures, calligraphy and paintings. Anything that can help me deepen my understanding of the Secret Art of Paper Crafting."
Paper objects were notoriously difficult to preserve. Through her private channels, she had managed to find only a handful, and most were already sealed away in official collections around the world.
For her, spirit souls drawn from paper-related artifacts were the most compatible. The artisan memories they carried could then be passed down at full strength.
As for the paper servants she sent abroad, they didn't require such precise compatibility.
Any country that had once looted China's cultural relics, or any museum that still held lost China artifacts, was now on her radar.
She didn't plan to just reclaim a few national treasures. She intended to empty every museum that had hoarded China's lost heritage.
The National Museum in US was the top priority, and the first destination for her little paper servants on their overseas mission. The paper servants, riding their spirit kites, had already arrived in US.
Back when China was weak, other nations had taken what they wanted without mercy. Now that China was strong—both in military might and in the strength of its cultivators—she had no intention of being merciful either.
All of this was happening behind the scenes. Zhao Huoyan assumed she had hit a creative bottleneck with her paper-crafting technique and was seeking inspiration from ancient artifacts.
That was, in fact, a common occurrence among cultivators. The faster one's cultivation advanced, the easier it was to run into gaps in knowledge or technique. It was why the SEIU often organized master-level exchange forums and spiritual item appraisal events to encourage cultivators to learn from one another.
They had even held several cultural artifact appraisal events. Most major museums had already set up specialized sections sorted by craft type for cultivators to study.
However, the artifacts themselves were always well protected. Not a single item had ever been handed over to a cultivator for personal use.
So when Zhao Huoyan realized Song Miaozhu was asking to keep the items, not just study them, he hesitated. "I'll do everything I can to make the request. But I can't guarantee approval. Every artifact is extremely valuable..."
"Go talk to your higher-ups," she replied. "I'll be waiting for good news."
She wanted to reassure him she'd take every precaution to protect the integrity of the old objects.
But she couldn't guarantee how each item would react once it began to awaken into an unbound spiritual item. If it turned out like the Grand Tutor chair shadow puppet, then the spirit soul could be drawn out without damaging the item. But if it acted like the Water-Suppressing Stone Rhino, then there would be no avoiding the damage.
A thousand items sounded like a lot, but her old shadow puppet box alone held more than a hundred pieces.
Still, she wouldn't give the signal for her paper servants in US to act until she heard back from the SEIU. If she missed this window to acquire paper-related antiques from the SEIU, things would become much more difficult after her secret was exposed.
While waiting for a response, she reviewed a list of overseas museums and private collectors, assigning a paper servant to scout each one.
Compared to the thousand domestic items, the ones abroad were her real long-term source of spirit souls. And those, she had no intention of sharing with the SEIU.
If the SEIU were capable of reclaiming those items themselves, they would've done it already.
Besides, those old artifacts couldn't transform into unbound spiritual items without a supply of spiritual energy. And she had more than enough to awaken them. If some turned out to be unusable, she could always trade them away.