I Shall Steal the Heavens 141 Chapter 140: Battle-automata

"Oi, why the hell are you ripping off Wu Dong Qian Kun again? There's no such thing as Qian Kun bags in reality."

That said, we did have pouches and bags that opened up into a vast alternative space where we could store limitless amounts of items. Thanks to the existence of the Void Whale, whose stomach was bottomless, the bags crafted out of those were indeed without any depth. Using my makeshift spatial bag (which was actually my half-crafted Spirit Armament), I began to approach the first Thallax-pattern battle puppet.

Even if I was supposed to be over thirty mentally, even a grown man would be tempted by the idea of controlling and leading hundreds of battle puppets into battle. Okay, I didn't know how I was going to program them and control them, but I figured I could find out how later. Furthermore, if I couldn't control them, I could just sell them for a high price.

"But there's no point taking these battle puppets. Even though they are powerful, they are broken. They're useless now."

"Broken? Useless?" I repeated incredulously. Shaking my head, I turned to study the Thallax battle puppets in greater detail. True enough, there was no sign of qi being emitted from their bodies, no trace of life, energy or movement. They were completely still, just like literal puppets, standing rigidly like metallic pillars.

"The Spirit Engravings inside these battle puppets have already faded away, so they are basically useless. Even though they have such a fearsome appearance, they are actually totally harmless. It's best to move on."

"Hah!" I snorted. "Good thing I'm a Spirit Engraver, eh?"

Reaching out, I inspected the first battle puppet. Like Qi Lin said, the Spirit Engravings powering these battle puppets had faded away with age, or wear and tear. Since Spirit Engravings were made to last, I bet it was the latter. Closing my eyes briefly, I tried to remember the most optimal Spirit Engravings for battle puppets.

"Ugh…I haven't learned any Spirit Engravings for battle puppets…"

To my regret, I realized that I didn't possess such knowledge. Of course I wouldn't. This was reality. I wouldn't conveniently happened to have studied something I needed as a minor plot point just to run into this development. If I were a Mary Sue protagonist, no doubt I would happily engraving the appropriate Spiritual patterns into the battle puppet and bringing it back to life right now, but being a normal person (equivalent to a side character or mob character in these stupid xianxia stories), I was completely out of luck.

"Well, I'll just go home and research on them. And I'll ask Elder Tie if he knows anything – if he does, I'll ask him to teach me."

"Oh, right…you're a Spirit Engraver? If only Zhu Jiao was a Spirit Engraver too." Qi Lin sighed bitterly.

"Zhu Jiao has his own strengths. He's stronger than me, more skilled than me, and I'm sure he specializes in something else…like elixir-refining or making medicine. And I'm a below average Spirit Engraver who just barely made the cut. So it's nothing to brag about."

I wouldn't be surprised if Zhu Jiao turned out to be a receptarier or alchemist. As was the case of multi-talented xianxia protagonists, they at least excelled in something else other than martial arts. Well, most of them, anyway. Li Fu Chen didn't, I doubted Lin Feng did. Even Yang Kai of Martial Peak fame wasn't. But Xiao Yan was a receptarier/alchemist (and also had a ghost for a master), Yun Che was a former doctor in his past life, Li Yao was also a refiner in addition to being a martial artist/cultivator in the far future…Yue Yang was a summoner in addition to be a martial artist (for a story titled Long Live Summons, it focused way more on his martial arts and fighting abilities and transcendant sword thing than summoning…).Ya Se from The Great Conqueror was also known as the awesome martial artist Asura, yet at the same time he was a genius Spirit Engraver who innovated many new revolutionary designs. Qin Lie was also another strong martial artist who doubled as an artificer or blacksmith, having joined the Armament Sect.

In other words, you wouldn't be able to be a proper xianxia protagonist if you weren't a genius at something other than fighting. Funnily enough, that secondary occupation always inevitably turned out to be something that was related to fighting or used to support combat. Granted, I did learn Spirit Engraving and smithing (which were essentially the same discipline), but unlike all the other xianxia protagonists, I completely sucked at smithing. You wouldn't be seeing me coming up with innovative Spirit Engravings or inventing new armaments. Hell, even after a year I still had yet to finish my first big project, and I honestly didn't want to go through all that trouble again.

Ugh…

Such was the fate of untalented side characters like me, doomed to a life of mediocrity. Meanwhile xianxia protagonists like Zhu Jiao and all the other examples I mentioned would go on to be invincible martial artists who were simultaneously heralded as geniuses in their secondary field, whether it was being a medical god, or a genius alchemist/receptarier, or an innovative artificer, or shameless god summoner with extremely rare, high-ranked summoned beasts. Meanwhile I would continue to slave away at smithing for decades while not receiving any recognition because my products were subpar and average.

At least it was enough for me to make a living.

And so I began to shove all the Thallax battle puppets into my half-crafted spatial device. Even though I wouldn't be able to revive them for a long time, I was thinking more long-term. The problem with people these days was that they were too impatient and short-sighted. They always demanded instant success. If the protagonist wasn't overpowered or godlike from the first ten chapters, or even the first chapter, the readers would go, "protagonist too weak! I'll drop the story!" But in what real world does someone go from zero to hero in just the first chapter, and begin curbstomping every arrogant young master he meets thereafter?

"STOP YOUR RANTING!" Qi Lin shouted.

Whoops. I didn't realize I was saying all that out loud. I hastily shoved the remaining Thallax pattern battle puppets into my spatial device in silence, hoping to clear out the hall before anyone stumbled into it.

Fortunately, the lack of any human sound meant that I could put those worries to rest. As I shoved the last Thallax battle puppet into my spatial device, I finally came upon the end of the vast field. None of the battle puppets even budged or reacted to my manhandling of them, and by the heavens, they were extremely heavy.

"Huff…huff…"

By now, I was panting as I heaved the final Thallax battle puppet into the spatial device, and immediately dropped to my knees once it disappeared from real space. Wiping the perspiration from my face, I fought to catch my breath.

"How weak," Qi Lin remarked. "Xiao Jiao wouldn't have broken a sweat."

"Give me a break," I protested, annoyed. "There were hundreds of those things, and each one weighs a ton! And I'm aware that Zhu Jiao is stronger than me, all right?!"

"Well, you've only just scratched the surface. The real expedition starts now…the real treasures are inside that chamber."

"…eh?"

True enough, there was a vault at the end of the vast field, closed off from the wide, open space by a pair of double metallic doors.

"It's locked, but…there's a Spirit Engraving Array inscribed onto the surface." Qi Lin looked at me meaningfully. "You should be able to unlock those doors with your current skills."

"…right."

My "current" skills. In other words, Qi Lin was aware that my Spirit Engraving skills weren't that impressive. Without any way of rebutting him, I merely nodded and staggered to my feeet. Taking a deep breath, I approached the locked doors.

"Good thing I ran into you…this has to be Fate. If I was still with Xiao Jiao, he would never have gotten this far. Even though he's a great alchemist, he lacks knowledge in the Spirit Engraving department. He would never have been able to decode and decipher all these Spirit Engraving patterns!"

Qi Lin was musing to himself, nodding to show that he was impressed. I didn't like the idea of Fate pulling me around by the nose, but given how I benefited so far, I decided not to push my luck and curse it.

I could always rage and curse it later, when something bad happens.

"Hmm….this is quite the complex Spirit Engraving pattern," I observed as I pressed my right palm against the metallic doors. The surface felt cold to the touch, and I could sense great amounts of qi swirling inside it. Swallowing, I closed my eyes and focused, probing the Spirit Engraving Array with my qi senses, and realized just how convoluted they were.

As expected of a Spirit Engraving meant to protect the treasures within and lock intruders out. Even though there were signs of someone being here – particularly with a smashed portal to the right, and several broken servitors and other forms of damage – this door had been left in one piece.

It wasn't from the lack of trying, though. The double doors were clearly not untouched. I could detect traces of aggressive qi still floating around the area, indicating that someone had tried to attack the double doors to blow them open. Judging from how they were still tightly sealed, it was clear that they had failed.

Good for me.

"Oh, not bad. I can sense something really impressive behind these doors. Whoever kept them locked inside really didn't want them to be taken – hence the powerful defensive Spirit Engraving Array. Hah! Even those elite martial artists failed to break it! That means something extremely valuable is definitely stored inside!"

Qi Lin must have sensed the violent remains of qi techniques too, for he came to the same conclusion as me.

I ignored him and focused all my attention into breaking the Spirit Engraving code. Perspiration poured down my face as I struggled to comprehend the signs and patterns. It was a good thing I was a literature student in my previous life, for I was able to make metaphorical connections that I otherwise wouldn't be able to, and draw meaning from otherwise obscure images. Slowly decoding those signs meant teasing out meanings from stylized images and patterns, and my education as a literature and history student provided me some sort of background.

"Phew…"

Exhaling, I began to slowly break the signs and symbols apart, decoding the images and rearranging the patterns to allow me entry. My modifications caused a reaction, and the metallic doors glowed brightly, blasting me off my feet with a violent qi wind.

"Ugh…!"

I did a cartwheel in midair and landed on my feet, skidding a few centimeters backward. Sucking a deep breath into my battered lungs, I glanced up at the doors. My body tensed as I got ready to move, in case I had triggered some security system and it was going to attack me.

To my surprise, the doors merely swung open.

"Ha ha! You did, it, you brat!"

Qi Lin burst out laughing when he saw that I had succeeded. I rose to my feet, continuing to stare at the open doors blankly for a few moments until Qi Lin snapped at me.

"Well, what are you waiting for? A red carpet to roll out and welcome you? Get your ass in there, pronto!"

Shaking my head to clear myself of my stupor, I then stepped into the vault. A cold blast of air struck me, but both being an ice-type martial artist and having already experienced the hellish depths of the Nine Thousand Yin Ice Hell from earlier, the sudden drop of temperature was nothing to me. It felt chilly at worst, soothing at best.

"This is…"

The moment I stepped into the vault, I froze when two rows of colossal battle-automata came into view, their hulking forms standing straight and stationary. My first reaction was to use Tui to retreat out of there before they could attack me, but as soon as I calmed down, I realized that they were emitting no sign of qi, life or energy.

Just like the Thallax pattern battle puppets before them, they were dead. Or at least unpowered.

"These are different from the Thallax pattern battle puppets or the Servitors from earlier," I mused, stating the obvious. Mustering my courage, I stepped into the vault again and scanned through the two rows with my hastily repaired glasses. The sensors in my lenses counted their number for me and I saw that there were about a hundred and twenty of them.

"I want these too…" I murmured greedily.

"Good choice!" Qi Lin concurred excitedly. "Brat, your luck is really good! These are all mid-level battle-automata! Castellax-class battle-automata! They formed the mainstay of the cybernetica cohorts and mechanical armies during the Dark Age of Technology, serving as the line troops during the Great Crusade!"

"I don't suppose the Machine Cult and the Great Emperor sent them out into space?"

I was being sarcastic, but Qi Lin shook his head as if he thought I was asking a serious question. He glanced up and sighed.

"Space travel and faster-than-light technology has always eluded us. It'll be a few thousand years before we finally gain the technology to cross the stars and colonize other planets. For now, we're stuck in this world."

"…right…"

"For now, though, these are probably one of the most powerful weapons you can have at your disposal! If, like the Thallax battle puppets, you are able to find the correct Spirit Engraving patterns and bring them back online and fully functional, you'll be able to command a terrifying army that can obliterate entire regiments!"

"Heh…"

Even without Qi Lin having to tell me, I was already venturing over to study the vast ranks of the Castellax battle-automata.

They were large, over three meters high, which allowed them to tower over even the superhuman Astartes…I mean gigantic martial artists. Their dome-shaped heads were smooth, with no features, not even the slightest trace of a face. They carried – or used to carry an assortment of weapons, which ranged from…well, ranged mauler-pattern bolt cannons to plasma guns or thermal weapons. Their arms ended in power claws, which would have rippled with shimmering power fields had they not been destroyed. Also attached to their hands were smaller patterns of bolt weapons, which upon my analysis, fired mass-reactive projectiles that detonated within their targets to deal maximum amount of lethal damage.

If I could command entire cohorts of these fallen battle-automata, perhaps I could launch a Great Crusde of my own and conquer the stars, setting up dozens of forge worlds that adhered to the tenets of the machine cult.

"Hmm, but the Spirit Engravings will only bind them to their command and program them, but they still need a power source." I examined the closest battle automata intensely, but couldn't find any reactor or qi generator that was present in most modern vehicles and electronic devices today. "How are they supposed to move?"

"Yeah, you'll need to provide the energy for them to move." The ghostly master snickered. "Who asked you to be so greedy? Normally, a single practitioner has barely enough power to supply a mid-level battle automata and still be able to fight alongside it, but you want to gather hundreds of them! I think you'll only be able to control twelve of the Thallax battle puppets, or one of the Castellax battle automata at most, assuming you want to conserve enough qi for yourself to fight beside them."

"Well, I can always sell them off…just ensure that they don't fall into the hands of the wrong people."

Even if I was desperate for money, I couldn't very sell them off to unscrupulous owners who would use these terrifying automatons to conquer the world. Aha! I knew just who to sell them to. The Imperial Guard. Even if I couldn't trust private corporations or my fellow men, I could always trust the government.

Okay, that sounded incredibly naïve. Of course the government couldn't be fully trusted, but at least they were far less likely to do something stupid like conquering the world than a corrupted, greedy megcorporation.

I hope.

Thinking about it, the president of the United States during the time I got hit by a truck was quite the…madman.

Shuddering at the memory of a loud-mouthed president who was willing to shut down the government just to have his stupid wall built between Mexico and States, I tried to focus on this timeline. Surely the royal government of the Great Zhou Empire wouldn't do anything as stupid…right? Right?

It was alarming that I couldn't convince myself that it was all right to trust the royal government. Politics tended to bring the worst out of people.

"So I provide energy to the battle-automata by infusing it with my qi?" I asked Qi Lin. "Are there other methods?"

"Certainly. If you want to conserve your own qi, then you can provide it qi through other means. For example, you can directly feed a battle automata pure yuan pills. If you want it to execute an attack that is equivalent to that of a Qi Fusion Stage practitioner…hmm, approximately two thousand pure yuan pills will be required. However, that's only enough to release one attack. After unleashing that attack, if you want the battle automata to continue fighting, you'll have to continue supplying it with more pure yuan pills or your own qi."

"That's pretty expensive…but…" I grinned. "I can see the possibilities."

Certainly, I didn't have any pure yuan pills. But I might be able to request for access to the next best thing.

Artificial qi.

Wu Ling Academy had tons of artificial qi…all right, they were pretty expensive, so I obviously couldn't afford to continually buy artificial qi from them, nor would I ever be able to afford to buy so much artificial qi to supply every single one of my battle-automata. But even for just a single battle-automata at my disposal, if I could supply him with three sexagenaries of qi, he should be able to fight on par with a top Wu Ling Academy student.

That was more than enough.

Good thing artificial qi exists, eh?

I suddenly knew who to sell the battle-automata to (or the majority of them, anyway – I planned on keeping at least a few for myself). With unlimited access to virtually infinite amounts of artificial qi, Wu Ling Academy would certainly welcome the chance to add these battle-automata to their armory!

Chapter end