None of the papermaking artisans Song Miaozhu had partnered with had the right kind of spirit paper.
Then it struck her—shadow puppets were made from thin, semi-translucent hide. Not quite as delicate as the "cicada-wing-thin" paper described in the Secret Art of Paper Crafting, but it might serve as a base.
So she gathered her collection of shadow puppet relics and prioritized them for spiritual infusion, letting them absorb spiritual energy to become unbound artifacts, so she could extract their spirit residues.
Every shadow puppet artisan would have gone through the steps of selecting and preparing the hides. That meant, regardless of the spirit residue's abilities, each one held memories related to the craft of working with hide.
After studying and absorbing those memories, Miaozhu found herself becoming more adept at preparing hides for shadow puppetry.
Once she had absorbed all the artisan memories within the puppet spirits, and practiced a little on her own, she had effectively become a master leatherworker and shadow puppeteer in her own right.
The hides she prepared gleamed with spiritual light. They were no longer ordinary material, but true spirit paper.
What would normally take others a lifetime of diligent practice, she had mastered in half a year with the help of spirit residues. With that solid foundation, she began experimenting with thinning the hide even further, aiming to achieve the cicada-wing thinness required for the Ninefold Spirit Trap.
Thanks to her newly gained expertise, the task wasn't as difficult as it might have been.
She managed to create ultra-thin hides before long.
Once cut to size, she began folding.
She folded each sheet into a hollow octagonal lantern. Inside, she painted swirling cloud patterns using deepwater cinnabar, then reinforced the structure with bamboo slats.
Each of these lanterns, when placed in a group of nine and arranged according to the cardinal and intercardinal directions, would form a Ninefold Spirit Trap. This setup allowed for seamless energy circulation, forming a complete loop without interruption or decay.
Though the lanterns weren't overly ornate or complicated, they had to be crafted with stability and precision. More importantly, all nine had to be absolutely identical, or the formation would fail to properly contain the spiritual energy, leading to leakage.
This required a very high level of paper-crafting skill.
Even though the spiritual hides were now as thin as cicada wings, their texture was still different from paper. They were more flexible, and therefore more difficult to shape.
She had to work carefully and meticulously to fold the hides exactly where she needed. In some cases, she had to rely on the strength of the bamboo framework to achieve the desired form.
After much trial and repetition, Miaozhu finally created nine lanterns that looked as if they had been copied and pasted.
Next, she dug shallow pits in the eight directional positions around Xiaozhu Mountain—true east, south, west, north, southeast, southwest, northeast, and northwest—just inside the boundaries of the bamboo-horse boundary markers and outside the grass-and-paper maze formation.
She buried one lantern in each pit, covering them with soil so only the tops were visible.
Then, she dug another pit at the peak of Xiaozhu Mountain, right at the center, and placed the final lantern there.
Using a specific spiritual ignition technique, she began the activation process—nine rounds in total.
The first eight ignitions were to activate the surrounding lanterns. The ninth and final one was for the central lantern.
Each ignition had to be performed in immediate succession, with no pauses, no chances to recover spiritual power using spirit stones. If even one round faltered, the whole ignition process would fail and she would have to remake all the lanterns from scratch.
Even though Miaozhu was now the world's only known cultivator at the White Spirit Tier, maintaining the spiritual ignition state nine times in a row was nearly overwhelming—especially for a formation that would encompass all of Xiaozhu Mountain.
As she ignited the lantern in the eastern position, she could already feel the alarming drain on her spiritual reserves. It became clear she wouldn't be able to complete all nine.
So she stopped.
Better to halt early and lose just the eastern lantern than to push ahead and ruin them all.
Technically, a single Ninefold Spirit Trap could cover any land size, as long as the user's cultivation was high enough to sustain the ignition.
But right now, hers was not.
Fortunately, the Secret Art of Paper Crafting included a solution.If one's cultivation was lacking but paper-crafting skill was sufficient, it was possible to reduce the burden by multiplying the number of lanterns.
From one set of nine lanterns, she would need to expand to nine sets—a total of eighty-one identical lanterns.
She still needed seventy-three more.
Only after a long time did she manage to complete all eighty-one lanterns to identical standards. She arranged the lanterns in groups at the eight directional points and the mountaintop center.
Now, she could activate each direction one at a time.
Starting with the eastern group, she focused on the central lantern of that set, performing the nine-step ignition in one continuous flow.
Because the lanterns were positioned close together, the spiritual strain was greatly reduced. She completed the ignition with ease.
Then came the west. Then the south. Then the north.
One by one, she ignited the eight directional groups, forming eight smaller Ninefold Spirit Traps.
Finally, at the mountaintop center, she performed the same ignition sequence on the central group.
With the center trap activated, she had a limited window—one day—to pour enough spiritual energy into the mountaintop lantern group to connect it with the surrounding eight formations.
Once linked, they would function as a unified whole, a vast Ninefold Spirit Trap covering all of Xiaozhu Mountain.
From then on, no matter where the energy surged, the nearest lantern would capture it and redirect it toward the central lantern, keeping it circulating in a perfect loop with no leakage.
Even the spiritual energy beneath the mountain was being drawn in and recycled.
Xiaozhu Mountain's spiritual tide continued unabated, but Miaozhu no longer had to worry about energy being wasted. She could finally take her time, train at her own pace, and no longer feel forced to race against the overflow.
The spiritual density across the entire mountain was visibly rising.