Many countries had already replaced the artifacts on public display with replicas or moved the real ones to safer, more hidden locations.
But Song Miaozhu had prepared for this. She had sent little paper servants to every location on her list ahead of time. Whenever a transfer happened, her paper servants would follow. No matter how the artifacts were moved, she could track their exact locations.
The SEIU was not so lucky.
As artifact thefts swept across the globe—with every nation except China affected—suspicion on foreign forums began to rise. More and more voices accused the thieves of being from China , possibly even agents from the SEIU.
To deflect attention and suspicion, the China SEIU staged a false museum theft of their own. In secret, they transferred artifacts from major museums into secure SEIU storage facilities, using the opportunity to quietly begin their own Unclaimed Spirit Artifact and Spirit Soul Program.
Still, even with the SEIU's attempts to muddy the waters, many nations had already taken notice. The sudden, targeted interest in cultural artifacts made them uneasy.
Countries with sharper instincts began to suspect that these artifacts held some hidden value—something they didn't yet understand.
After all, anyone capable of stealing so many priceless items without leaving a trace had to be a cultivator wielding an extremely rare type of spiritual artifact. No one would go to such lengths for nothing.
Especially since the stronger the artifact, the more spiritual energy it consumed.
But compared to China's SEIU, which had access to Song Miaozhu's research as a guide, other countries would need much longer to catch up.
Meanwhile, back in the underworld warehouse of her ghost shop, Song Miaozhu had expanded the storage area again and again, just to fit the sheer number of artifacts her little paper servants were bringing back.
At this point, her personal artifact reserve rivaled that of a nation.
From that moment on, she no longer had to worry about running out of material to experiment with once she finished replicating everything in the Secret Art of Paper Crafting. Even if she didn't develop a new "spirit infusion" technique, she could still rely on these unclaimed artifacts, each with the potential to evolve into spiritual objects.
There was only one drawback: spirit souls were single-use.
Take the painted paper rattle drums she had crafted. The version that used a spirit souls with exorcising power carried that very ability. But the other version—made without any spirit souls, only nurtured with spiritual energy—ended up with a calming and focus-enhancing effect instead.
When shaken, the drum's soft rhythm helped to clear the mind and soothe the spirit.
Interestingly, the exorcism-version, after being nurtured with spiritual energy over time, also developed that same calming effect, layered on top of its original ability.
However, no matter how much she nurtured the non-exorcism version, it never gained the ability to dispel evil.
In the end, Song Miaozhu came to a conclusion: spirit souls, like infusion techniques, could rapidly transform an object into a spiritual tool and imbue it with a specific ability. But unlike infusion techniques, spirit souls could only be used once.
At first, she hadn't dared to think much beyond that. But later, in her pursuit to deepen her craftsmanship, she began to suspect that spirit souls might not be so different from infusion techniques after all.
It started when she gathered all the shadow puppets from her warehouse into one place and used up a massive amount of spirit stones to cultivate them into unclaimed spiritual artifacts. She then harvested their spirit residues and stored them within her spiritual platform, digesting the memory and experience of each shadow puppet craftsman one by one.
The number of spirit souls she collected was large enough for patterns to emerge. Many of the spirit souls shared the same abilities.
For example, she ended up with over a hundred exorcism-type spirit residues.
Some came from puppet-like furniture, similar to a Grand Tutor chair. Others came from humanoid or animal figures, or even weapon-based puppets.
Looking at the original forms of these puppets, you'd never guess they would all generate spirit souls with such similar powers.