The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer - Chapter 35

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 35
Time rushed past like an arrow.
Han Eol had no sense of how long his mind had been drawn into the Crimson Pearl.
He’d been so absorbed in mastering and refining the Spirit Barrier that he’d lost all track of time’s passage.
He’d even forgotten the fact that he needed to return to Midland.
He’d even forgotten that his physical body was housed in a Highland Demonic being’s—a Spirit Race’s—ruins, where another Demonic being could appear at any moment.
Han Eol had devoted himself entirely to perfecting the Spirit Barrier.
Unaware as he was, his ability to handle spiritual entities like spirits was frankly broken.
Even Spirit Race members specialized in this field would have been astounded by how quickly he grasped the concepts.
The Spirit Race being who had passed down—or rather, had had stolen away—the foundation to Han Eol had himself been an exceptionally talented member of his peers, and in his youth, it had taken him approximately thirty years to fully master the Spirit Barrier.
Thirty years, to put it in human terms.
Thanks to acquiring the Spirit Barrier in such a short period, he had earned recognition as a prodigy among his kind.
Yet the time Han Eol’s mind had spent inside the Crimson Pearl was less than one-sixth of that. He had fully grasped one of the Spirit Race’s arcane abilities in barely a fraction of that span.
Of course, Han Eol had no awareness of how much time had elapsed. He had no idea how extraordinary his learning speed truly was.
‘Whew, that should do it.’
After finishing his study of the Spirit Barrier, Han Eol finally regained a sense of reality.
‘I think I’ve grasped the fundamentals now. Wait, though—how much time has passed? It feels like quite a while.’
As awareness returned, so did a creeping sense of unease.
‘I got so wrapped up in commanding spirits that I lost track of time. I still need to return to Midland… This is bad.’
Han Eol felt a twinge of urgency.
Fortunately, escaping the Crimson Pearl proved simple enough.
‘I want to leave this place.’
The moment he formed that intention, his consciousness detached from the pearl and returned to his body.
Chapter 4
Han Eol’s eyes opened at the 1st Control Room, located at the Center of Five Continents.
Bubble-like spheres drifted throughout the control room, monitoring the production activities of various enslaved races—a sight identical to what Han Eol remembered.
Some spheres displayed cultivation progress and harvest yields for each herb type in numerical form.
Another showed the production quantity of blood crystals being refined in boiling magma.
A Cape slave with the characteristic oversized head of the giant race, wearing a small safety helmet, was in the process of compiling today’s blood crystal production data and entering it into the control panel.
‘Huh?’
Han Eol’s eyes widened.
He had a good memory.
‘Why is the blood crystal production count exactly the same as before? The numbers are identical to when I entered the Blood Drop Library.’
The giant Cape in the small safety helmet hunching over the control panel looked identical to how he’d appeared before Han Eol entered the Blood Drop Library.
‘What?’
Han Eol rubbed his eyes and checked another sphere.
The herb harvest yields were also unchanged.
When Han Eol double-checked to be sure, it wasn’t just one herb type—all the harvest data for numerous herbs matched exactly what it had been before.
‘Could time have actually stopped?’
Han Eol tilted his head, then suddenly his eyes snapped open wide.
‘Wait, wait, wait? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait?’
In that instant, the concept of “Time Stop” struck him like a thunderbolt.
‘Is this real? Has time actually frozen?’
What if, during the time Han Eol had been in the Blood Drop Library—the Crimson Pearl—time in the outside world had come to a standstill?
Or inversely, what if the concept was that infinite time was permitted within the Crimson Pearl?
This was no ordinary matter.
It meant Han Eol could acquire all the vast knowledge and abilities the Spirit Race had accumulated without any time investment whatsoever.
And accessibility was excellent too.
If Han Eol had to visit the 1st Control Room of the Five Continents each time he wanted to enter the Blood Drop Library, that would be incredibly inconvenient.
Even attempting Guided Teleportation wouldn’t guarantee he’d arrive at the Five Continents, and finding the 1st Control Room in such an vast expanse would be no trivial task.
But Han Eol didn’t need to go through any such trouble.
The Blood Drop Library—the Crimson Pearl—had already embedded itself within his Upper Dantian.
Whether Han Eol was in Highland, Midland, or Old Earth, he could visit the Blood Drop Library whenever and wherever he wished.
‘This is insane! Absolutely insane! Really, truly insane!’
Han Eol’s mouth fell open silently as he clenched both fists and yanked them downward with a sharp motion.
‘Yes. Yes. Yesssss.’
So overwhelmed with joy was he that Han Eol spun in circles throughout the 1st Control Room, repeating this bizarre gesture over and over.
After a while, Han Eol left the 1st Control Room at the center of the continent and returned to the 7th Control Room—the control chamber hidden within the Cliff Ruins.
This time too, Han Eol used the Ultra-Long-Distance Teleportation Magic Circle that had been installed between the two control rooms.
Thanks to it, crossing that immense distance took barely less than a second.
‘Perfect—there’s an artifact here that should suit my needs.’
Han Eol had rushed back to the 7th Control Room for one reason alone.
‘Now that I’ve mastered it, I should put the Spirit Barrier to use.’
Han Eol made his way to the warehouse connected to the 7th Control Room, then entered the one among the four major storage chambers where artifacts were kept.
Though he couldn’t quite grasp the principle behind it, the interior of the warehouse was astonishingly vast.
The cliff itself was barely thirty meters across, yet somehow the width of Storage Chamber Four extended several times beyond that.
‘How is this even possible? Did they warp the space somehow?’
Han Eol tilted his head in puzzlement but didn’t press the matter further.
Such mysteries would resolve themselves in time, once he’d absorbed all the knowledge contained in the Blood Drop Library. There was no need to wonder about it now.
After entering the artifact warehouse, Han Eol rubbed both forearms with his palms.
‘Ugh, it’s so cold—like walking into a freezer. Are there artifacts stored at low temperatures here?’
Han Eol’s Cold Resistance stat was merely fifty.
While this meant his resistance far exceeded that of any ordinary human—the highest among average people was around ten—it couldn’t be called particularly high when ranked among ability users.
The fact that Han Eol’s Cold Resistance had reached fifty in the first place was thanks to the Bark Skin he’d obtained (or rather, been gifted) from the Three-Tailed Eight-Tailed creature.
‘Brr. Even with the Bark Skin, it’s freezing. Let me find what I need and get out.’
Han Eol hurried deeper into the warehouse.
There was not a shred of hesitation in his stride.
This was because Han Eol knew the exact location where the artifact he sought was stored.
When he’d mastered the Spirit Barrier in the Blood Drop Library, he’d simultaneously absorbed information about artifacts that might prove useful.
‘Lucky that this exists.’
What Han Eol eventually found was a thin bracelet made by threading hundreds of flea-sized skull beads onto transparent string.
This artifact, which radiated an ominous and sinister presence, had been created by an ancient Spirit Race being.
This Spirit Race being had tormented enslaved demons with unspeakable cruelty, shattering their minds completely.
In pursuit of this goal, he had committed acts too vile to speak aloud.
The shattered souls of those enslaved demons eventually fell into malevolent spirits, consumed by hatred and resentment.
Afterward, the ancient evil Spirit Race being killed the offspring of the enslaved demons, shrank their skulls down to flea size, and locked the parents’ malevolent spirits inside them in pairs.
It was an unforgivable crime against kinship and a terrible karmic sin.
Yet in the Highland, where only the strong survived, no one dared condemn the ancient Spirit Race being.
Through repetition of such work, the ancient Spirit Race being eventually succeeded in creating the Skull Bracelet artifact.
After a long span of time, the ancient Spirit Race being left behind a final testament and vanished.
‘I have imprisoned three hundred pairs of serviceable malevolent spirits within this artifact. Should any descendant wish to master the Spirit Barrier, let them use this.’
Thereafter, the Skull Bracelet containing the malevolent spirits passed through the hands of several Spirit Race beings before ultimately becoming the property of the ruin’s master, where it was then locked away in the artifact warehouse of the 7th Control Room.
Han Eol had verified this information in the Blood Drop Library and rushed here at once.
Chapter 5
Whoom, whoooom-whoom.
Tiny skulls cradled in Han Eol’s palm emit an eerie wail.
The cry of the malevolent spirits—inaudible to human ears—sends shivers down the spine at the slightest exposure. To hear it is to feel one’s sanity crumbling.
But it had no effect on Han Eol.
The Rainbow Hand, one of Han Eol’s four mental images, could extract not only the souls of living creatures.
Spiritual entities like Earth-Bound Spirits and malevolent spirits, unbound to flesh, could be absorbed far more easily than souls.
At least with souls tethered to living bodies, one must mime the act of extraction.
But malevolent spirits adrift in the void, severed from their flesh, were automatically sucked into the Rainbow Hand whenever it drew near, forever becoming bound to it.
Had he understood this instinctively?
‘Tsk.’
Thud.
The instant Han Eol frowned, the three hundred pairs of malevolent spirits bound to the Skull Bracelet artifact fell deathly silent.
Until now, the Spirit Race being was what these malevolent spirits feared most in all the world.
But the moment they sensed Han Eol, their priorities shifted.
Compared to Han Eol, the Spirit Race beings were nothing. The malevolent spirits felt a primal terror in his presence.
‘Let’s see then……’
Han Eol grasped the Skull Bracelet artifact in his hand.
‘Is this how it’s done?’
When Han Eol fully activated the Spirit Barrier, the Demonic Energy drained from his soul-sea like an ebbing tide, forming a Spirit Barrier—a rampart of spiritual essence.
The process of forming the barrier unfolded as follows.
First, the Demonic Energy pouring out from Han Eol’s body wove itself into a gossamer net outside his form, like a fisherman’s lattice.
At the same moment, the three hundred pairs of malevolent spirits imprisoned within the Skull Bracelet artifact burst forth and densely filled the interstices of the Demonic Energy’s weave.
It was as though Han Eol stood within a transparent cylinder teeming with malevolent spirits.
Once the preparations were complete, Han Eol snapped his fingers.
Snap!
The Spirit Barrier activated at once.
Rumble, rumble, rumble—
The Spirit Barrier, filled with three hundred pairs—six hundred evil spirits in all—completed its formation and began circling Han Eol’s body in smooth, ceaseless motion.
The Spirit Barrier’s rotation was stately yet turbulent.
Of course, human eyes could not perceive this flow of malevolent spirits.
Instead, the laughter of countless evil spirits surrounded Han Eol, resonating like an operatic chorus.
Tee-hee-hee, hee-hee-hee-hee, kree-kaw-kaw.
The grotesque noise stimulated the brain directly, bypassing the ears.
‘This is working well.’
Han Eol nodded quietly from within the turbulent Spirit Barrier.
How much this Spirit Barrier would improve his defensive capacity remained to be seen.
To make an accurate assessment, Han Eol would need to test it in real combat. Only then could he truly gauge the Spirit Barrier’s worth.
But for now, the barrier’s manifestation was flawless.
The evil spirits obeyed his command well.
More than that—all six hundred malevolent spirits appeared to be in sharp, disciplined formation.
‘Why are they like this? Do they only look rough on the surface but are actually obedient, well-behaved creatures?’
Han Eol tilted his head in confusion.
At that, the evil spirits suddenly let out a mournful wail.
In any case, the malevolent spirits’ obedience was remarkable, and the flow of the Spirit Barrier met no resistance. The supply of magical energy was also steady.
‘This will do.’
Han Eol was satisfied.
As proof of his satisfaction, he placed the Skull Bracelet he’d been holding onto his left wrist.
Now he had the mind to begin using this bracelet in earnest.
‘The fact that it’s inconspicuous is even better.’
Just as Han Eol thought, the Skull Bracelet relic was woven from tiny skulls no larger than flea heads, appearing to be nothing more than a thin cord.
Besides, most of the Spirit Race relics, including this bracelet, operated without Mana Stones, so there was no fear of them being caught by the Sacred Group’s detection apparatus.
‘Honestly, the Sacred Group’s technological level isn’t equal to the task of assessing the value of Spirit Race relics from the Center of Five Continents. They probably won’t even detect it.’
This thought made Han Eol even more pleased.
The Puppeteer of Soul Harvest
Author |
Junon
Publisher |
Samyang C&C Corp.
Editor in Chief |
Editorial Team
Published by |
Samyang C&C Corp. – Dream Books
Address |
7F Gwangseong Building, 28 Bongeunsaro 114-gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul
UCI |
G720:N+A063-20260703071
Blog |
blog.naver.com/dreambookss
Twitter (X) |
@dreambookss
Submissions |
[email protected]
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Samyang C&C Corp. – Dream Books.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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