The helicopter landed in the heart of the Lawrence Mountains. With a blizzard raging today, they had no choice but to land and trek into the mountains on foot.
Black Panther leaped from the helicopter. His black trench coat flapped wildly in the icy wind laced with snowflakes. With his hands tucked into his coat pockets, he lifted his eyelids—his golden cat-like eyes narrowing to slits—and coldly assessed his surroundings for a moment before slowly setting off toward the west.
He left a trail of footprints in the rugged snow, staggering as he went, his steps uneven—one deep, one shallow—because he had sustained serious injuries.
Trying to snatch something from Lan Bo’s hands was bound to leave you battered and bruised, and that was only because Lan Bo had stopped halfway and couldn’t be bothered to chase him.
Black Panther had heard Lan Bo say into his headset microphone: “ “Randy, there’s no need to bother with that little stone. There are plenty of bigger ones in the treasure chest I brought you from the ocean floor. Just pick a red one for them. Right now, I just want to go home and make love to you.”
He had stowed away on a ship to leave the country, stopping at an island along the way to be met by a contact. After flying to Canada, he boarded a pre-arranged helicopter and, after several twists and turns, finally approached his destination with the gem.
After walking for nearly an hour, the snow-capped spires of buildings gradually came into view amidst the rugged mountains, with warm light glowing from the windows.
It took another ten minutes before he could see the full extent of the structure. Nestled in the snow-covered mountains stood an entire castle, its spires stretching endlessly. The pale blue tiles blended with the snow, and warmth radiated from every window.
Though situated in a remote and secluded location, acquiring this entire complex required substantial wealth, and the costs of daily maintenance were staggering.
The black panther dragged his stiff, cold body toward the main gate, where a life-sized automaton butler standing guard politely bowed to him. The automaton butler was dressed in a well-tailored tailcoat and white gloves; aside from the spherical joints in his limbs, he looked indistinguishable from an ordinary white man, his expression lifelike. The automaton maker’s depiction of his features and posture was nothing short of genius, rivaling that of any sculptor in the modern world.
Black Panther said nothing; he stepped lightly on the ground, hooked his hands onto a protrusion on the outer wall, and swiftly scaled it.
Though the wall was not high, it blocked out the blizzard outside. Inside, there was no snow on the ground, and the temperature was quite warm. An elderly puppet was sweeping the floor, and a puppet gardener was tending to the roses in the courtyard.
Black Panther glanced back at the sky beyond the wall—it was a clear, cloudless blue. This place seemed like a world cut off from the rest of the world.
The puppet butler waiting outside walked in elegantly, closed the door, brushed the snowflakes from his shoulders, and nodded to Black Panther, inviting him inside.
Once inside the castle’s hallway, a female automaton maid hurried over, handed Black Panther a cup of hot cocoa, and led him to a seat in the reception room.
The surroundings were completely silent; these automaton servants seemed unable to speak, capable only of acting according to their pre-programmed routines.
Every so often along the corridor, there was a door left ajar. While the doll maid wasn’t looking, the Black Panther gently pushed one open and peeked inside.
The interior resembled a kindergarten classroom. A few children sat sparsely scattered around several low tables and chairs. Sensing the presence of a stranger, they all turned their heads in unison to stare at the Black Panther.
Some had toad-like mouths, some had spider-like lower bodies, some were nearly transparent, and some had wings growing from their backs. They were all test subjects.
At the front of the classroom, standing before the blackboard, was a doll-teacher dressed in a Lolita dress, carefully writing a few simple English words on the board.
Black Panther scanned the rooms. Besides the kindergarten classroom, there was a toy room and rooms for ordinary adults. He also spotted a dragonfly test subject in its mature stage standing by the window, playing the violin. She wore a simple white dress, and two pairs of translucent dragonfly wings hung from her slender back.
She glanced back at Black Panther, paused her playing, and offered him a completely unguarded smile, releasing a wisp of pheromones as a polite greeting upon their first meeting.
From her pheromones, Black Panther determined that her rank was very low and her aggressiveness extremely weak. Typically, such test subjects would be turned into feed for more powerful ones and wouldn’t live to reach this age.
The corridor was long and lined with numerous rooms. The Black Panther made a rough estimate: the rooms along this single corridor alone housed over a hundred test subjects and juveniles. The scale of the entire castle rivaled that of a small city, capable of accommodating at least ten thousand test subjects.
The doll maid led the Black Panther to the reception room, bowed, and silently departed.
Leaning back on the sofa in the reception room was a female Alpha, dressed in an emerald-green satin cheongsam. Long, gold-and-blue peacock tail feathers cascaded onto the carpet as she gently fanned herself with a snow-white feather fan. The flames burning in the fireplace beside her cast a warm, reddish glow upon her cheeks.
Qishenggu looked up and saw Black Panther. She covered her mouth and nose with the fan and coughed a few times.
“Your illness has worsened.” Black Panther sat down across from her, his back straight and upright, his index finger—adorned with a gemstone ring—tapping lightly on his knee.
Qishenggu shook her head. “I left the growth chamber early, so I’m inherently weak—it’s incurable. New injuries piling on old ones… it’s quite a nuisance. Where have you been these past few years, Zhu?”
Black Panther remained silent.
“Have you found a Master yet?” Qishenggu caught sight of the sapphire ring on Black Panther’s index finger and raised an eyebrow curiously as she studied him. “I’d always thought your Master would be Satan.”
Black Panther turned his head away, clearly unwilling to discuss the matter further, and coldly changed the subject: “Do you plan to stay here forever?”
“Staying here isn’t so bad. Even with all the kids, the house is big enough that it doesn’t feel noisy.” Qishenggu chuckled, then coughed again.
The Black Panther wasn’t good at small talk and soon fell silent once more.
“He asked me to deliver a gem to the Puppet Master. Where’s Nyx?”
“He hasn’t left his workshop in three days. I’ll send a little wraith to fetch him.”
——
In the secluded yet spacious workshop, the tools for making dolls were arranged in orderly rows. Wooden display shelves lined the walls, holding numerous unfinished dolls in various poses and expressions—though they were unpainted and their spherical joints remained exposed, lacking any clothing to conceal them.
A velvet non-slip mat covered the tabletop; it had been in use for many years, and the paint and varnish stains were long since impossible to wipe away. Under the light of an old wrought-iron desk lamp, the dollmaker was hard at work.
Wearing a leather apron and a pair of thin black fingerless gloves, with small, engraved silver lenses set into his deep-set eye sockets, he is completely absorbed in assembling the intricate components in his hands with fine tweezers—the mechanical core of a doll.
The mechanical core closely resembles a human heart—a delicate, intricate framework made of copper. Inside, a red core should have provided power to the entire unit. The chip within that core replicated the combat memories uniformly implanted in the test subjects, including knowledge of weapon construction, close-quarters combat skills, and a propensity for slaughter. Eris’s factory settings designated him as a riot test subject, named after the goddess Eris, and his mission was to provoke war.
Wherever there is war, the arms trade becomes increasingly lucrative—and this was precisely the motive behind the Red Throat terrorist organization’s custom order for such a test subject.
The primary container for the chip is a heart-sized ruby, carved by CNC machines in the research institute’s deep-sea pressure chamber; the space between the chip and the gem is filled with argon gas.
It is extremely difficult for buyers to find a gem of the same quality and carat weight to create a replica. The research institute, with its deep pockets, chose this material as the container for the core specifically to prevent buyers from counterfeiting or repairing their products; once damaged, the unit must be discarded, forcing the buyer to purchase a new one from them.
However, the mechanical core inside has been completely destroyed. The ruby housing the chip has been blown to pieces, and more than half of the chip itself has been burned away. Even with the puppet master’s consummate skill, he can only repair the outer framework of the mechanical core. Tens of thousands of precision copper wires and chips form a network resembling the blood vessels surrounding a heart, and the puppet master has been working day and night for three days straight.
He had moved a mattress from his bedroom and placed it in the corner of his workshop, though he hadn’t needed to use it yet. After all, he was only human, and working without sleep or rest had quickly left his body looking haggard.
Three hours passed before the puppeteer finally looked up. He slowly removed the magnifying glass from his eyes; the moment he closed them, he felt a sharp ache. He straightened his back, and his neck and lower back cracked with a series of sharp pops.
The puppeteer habitually glanced down at his feet, intending to tell the sleeping Eris to move out of the way so he wouldn’t trip over her, but there was nothing there. He froze for a moment, then stiffly set the magnifying glass on the table and stood up, his bloodshot, cloudy eyes turning toward the corner.
On the mattress in the corner lay a broken ceramic doll. Half its face had shattered and vanished; the remaining half was covered in cracks. It had no lower body, only a single right hand resting on its shattered chest, which was itself mostly broken, revealing its hollow, empty cavity.
The makeup on the doll’s face had been wiped away. Its silver hair had been plucked strand by strand from the roots and stored in sealed bags. The damaged eyeballs had been removed, leaving only empty sockets. It was now nothing more than a discarded doll, no different from the moldy limbs in the burlap sack—so much so that if placed together, one could not tell which was which.
“Eris.” The puppeteer called out to him.
The tattered puppet twitched slightly, still responding to his voice—though it was merely a faint movement, no different from the reflex of a skinned frog.
Yet the puppeteer wore an expression of relief; his furrowed brow smoothed out, leaving a faint crease between his eyebrows.
Knock, knock.
A knock sounded at the door. The puppeteer glanced outward; peeking through the crack was the tip of a small imp’s toe.
“Nyx, he… is here.”
The puppeteer acknowledged the message, removed his leather apron and gloves, placed them on the table, locked the workshop, and walked out.
Stepping into the reception room, the puppeteer immediately spotted the ruby Black Panther had placed on the table. Based on his precise judgment of materials, this ruby’s carat weight was sufficient to serve as a brand-new core for Eris.
“He asked me to simply hand this over to you,” Black Panther said. “Pay the money to the IOA.”
“IOA?”
“This gem was taken from them.”
“……”
The Black Panther had nothing more to say and turned to leave.
“Wait a moment.” The puppeteer called him back, pulled a medical kit from under the table, and selected a scalpel and a set of suture needles and thread. “Take off your shirt.”
Black Panther frowned, but the man before him looked kind. His command was impossible to resist; it was as if his limbs were being manipulated by a puppeteer’s strings. Black Panther did as he was told and took off his shirt.
Lan Bo had left three deep, long claw marks on his shoulder. The wounds were too severe to heal on their own; blood was still seeping out, soaking through his shirt.
The Puppeteer skillfully used the scalpel to remove the necrotic tissue around the edges of the wound, then sutured it with medical thread. This was his profession; his adept techniques were deeply ingrained in his mind and would never be easily forgotten.
Black Panther had instinctively clenched his teeth, only to find, to his surprise, that he felt no pain at all.
“My innate ability, ‘Hand of Creation,’ ensures you won’t be harmed even if I remove your organs—so suturing is even simpler.” The Puppet Master cut the sutures, packed away his medical kit, and looked utterly haggard, his face betraying his exhaustion.
“You may go.”
Black Panther paused for a moment, glanced at the perfect stitches on his shoulder, picked up his trench coat, and followed the puppet maid out.
After seeing Black Panther off, the puppeteer picked up the ruby from the table and returned to his workshop without a word.
As he pushed open the workshop door, his foot kicked something. He looked down to see a worn-out ceramic doll lying by the door, struggling to prop itself up on its elbows. Its lone remaining right hand clutched the puppeteer’s pant leg, tugging at it, then lifted its head to stare at the puppeteer through hollow eye sockets. Though its face was expressionless, its inner panic was plain for all to see.
The puppeteer sighed softly, bent down to pick up Eris, secured him to a half-torso frame with clay, and placed him on his workbench so he’d have a support to prop up his upper body.
He then re-tied his apron, put on his gloves, and sat down to work.
Just as the puppeteer was about to put on his goggles to continue repairing the core, a spherical, jointed ceramic hand reached out and covered his eyes. The ceramic was cool, providing a soothing compress for his bloodshot, swollen eyes, strained from overuse.
In that brief moment of darkness, the Puppet Master couldn’t help but recall the night a few days earlier, when the operation to seize the test subjects had begun. He had stood gazing at the empty shelves of his puppet shop, feeling a twinge of wavering and hesitation.
He was human, and like any human, he occasionally doubted his unwavering goals and lifelong aspirations—a common human frailty from which even the Puppet Master was no exception.
But at that moment, Eris had leaned close to him and said out of the blue, “I don’t care if you’re right or wrong. I’ll always fight for you.”
In the shop, Qishengguchang often argued with Eris. That sharp-tongued woman always loved to say hurtful things, never caring if she was speaking to his face: “Nix is just using you to carry out his revenge against humanity. What is there that a man like him wouldn’t sacrifice? Who do you think you are? He’s just using you—what’s there to be happy about?”
The Puppet Master felt she was right.
But Eris would always retort, “He isn’t using me; he just needs me.” This left Qishenggu speechless, and he could only roll his eyes in mockery.
The light from the desk lamp illuminated only this small workbench.
The puppeteer removed Eris’s damaged head, propped it on his lap, and secured it in place. He pressed a fine grinding needle against the inner corner of the doll’s eye and ground it deeper, bit by bit.
Such delicate work as creating tear ducts required immense patience; it took the puppeteer seven hours to complete.
When finished, the dollmaker straightened his back, stretched his aching neck, and reattached the head to its original position.
Outside, night had fallen completely. The blizzard raged with increasing ferocity, its wolf-like howling swirling outside the window. The decorative fireplace in the room was still burning brightly; the crackling of the flames sounded serene and warm, making one want to stay in this peaceful haven forever, never to leave.
The dollmaker closed his eyes to rest for a moment, held up the ruby, and roughly calculated the cutting plan in his mind. He then put it back in its place, used tweezers to retrieve a tiny chip from a drawer, and held it up to the light to examine it.
This was a combat chip from Athena’s Shield, identical to the version Eris had previously used, and it could be swapped into Eris. He had risked his life to retrieve this chip from the ruins while escaping the pharmaceutical factory. The fact that it was intact meant that the combat memories, weapon skills, and murderous tendencies it contained remained fully intact.
The Puppet Master stared at the tiny chip on the tweezers, lost in thought for a long time.
After pondering for a while, he silently placed the chip back in the drawer, picked up the ruby from the table, and put it in the drawer as well, locking it.
He reached into his pocket, gripping the scalpel tightly, and hesitantly, slowly ran his fingers over it, as if weighing a momentous decision.