Year 1
"Bought this 'thing' from Lady Su—only 30 jin!" the middle-aged woman said, sounding pleased.
"That cheap? The mother didn’t want it?" the man beside her asked.
"No. Died during childbirth," she replied.
"And the father?"
"Doesn’t have one. Prostitute child. No one claid it," the woman said, her tone sharp with disdain.
"Lucky us. Ever since the war ended, good slaves have been scarce," the man remarked.
"Sell it or use it?" she asked.
"Better to raise it ourselves. A newborn is easier to train—loyal, obedient. Doesn’t know anything else."
The woman sighed, weighing the pros and cons. "A pity. In the next city, this thing might fetch a good price… but I’ll follow your decision. So? What do we call it?"
The man scratched his chin in thought. Then he said slowly—
"Let’s na it…"
Year 5
He had already learned how to smile.
The woman praised him for his silence and obedience. "Such a quiet one," she told her husband.
"Doesn’t cry. Doesn’t complain. Listens to every word."
He would nod and bow his head, just as they liked.
Always watching.
Always observing.
Always rembering.
The man chuckled again. “Bi Gou. That’s what I nad you, didn’t I? Cheap dog.”
The boy smiled—small, practiced. But sothing in his eyes didn’t match.
Year 7
Bi Gou liked the ants.
He would spend hours watching and playing with them, trapping one, pulling off a leg, then another.
Always in order.
Always slowly.
When the ant stopped moving after its long, twitching dance, he tilted his head, curious.
Why did it stop?
Later, he watched a slave child fall and cry in the dust.
And wondered the sa thing.
Year 10
Another child had run away—or so the household believed.
A ten-year-old girl, barely older than Bi Gou, had vanished during the night. No signs of struggle. No open doors. The slave rchant couple was furious, lashing out at the other slaves and blaming their “laziness” for not noticing.
Bi Gou listened quietly.
He even helped search the nearby hills, carrying a lantern and calling her na like the others. His voice was calm.
His eyes are alert.
Year 15
He was careful—always careful.
But not careful enough. A mistake finally happened.
The body wasn’t cold yet when the servant stumbled into the shed.
A mont of panic.
A flash of the knife.
Blood again.
Then another servant noticed.
More blood.
Then another ca.
Voices shouting. Footsteps. The back door slamd open.
No more blood.
He ran.
Down the backyard. Over fences. Through the broken outer wall.
The slave household faded behind him, torches and screams swallowed by distance.
He didn’t look back.
There is a forest before him, and he goes there and disappears.
By the ti the slave rchant gave chase, Bi Gou was already long gone.
Year 16
They found him half-starved in the deep forest—an old man and woman, kind-hearted healers who lived in quiet seclusion.
They fed him, clothed him, and gently cleaned the whip scars he no longer noticed.
The man taught him basic dicine.
The woman showed him herbs and roots.
They gave him warmth. Safety.
And they never once asked where he ca from.
But kindness, once given, is not always understood.
In the mind of the other side, it stirred only confusion and discomfort.
How dare they, the 'thing,' look at him with such softness?
Look down on ? Do you think I am weak?
Their reward for kindness... was to be lulled into eternal sleep.
Year 18
He hunted.
Villages, caravans, lone travelers—anyone would do. Quiet places where screams vanished in trees.
Over a hundred bodies, maybe more. He stopped counting after the first dozen.
Each one opened. Peeled. Studied.
How bones are locked. How lungs filled. How long did the heart beat after the throat was cut?
He was seeking answers.
Why does 'Thing' stop moving?
Can I make them move again?
Will I stop moving soday too?
He won't accept that.
Because he believed he was different.
They were things, just like the ants, the slaves, the rchant couple.
All of them.
But he was not a thing.
Only he was real.
Only he should keep moving.
So he kept looking. Cutting. Listening. Hoping the body would whisper its secret.
So he skinned. So he boiled. So he left whole, just to watch the end.
The forest whispered of a demon.
The brave went looking.
They never ca back.
Year 20
He was hunting again.
A quiet village tucked between forested hills, the kind that welcod strangers. This ti, he played the doctor. Clean hands, calm eyes. A small hut with jars of herbs and bone tools neatly lined.
They believed him.
One day, they brought in a man, injured, unconscious, chest bruised, and bleeding. They found him deep in the mountain.
Bi Gou examined him with practiced care.
Beneath the torn flesh, he felt it—density, tension, strength that shouldn't belong to a 'Thing'.
Muscles coiled like iron. Bones heavier than stone.
This was no villager.
Bi Gou smiled.
A cultivator. One that only appears in the myth.
And now, helpless before him.
He hit the jackpot.
He moved fast. Mixed the rarest poisons he'd harvested from the deep forest—sleep-root, moonspore, ghost wasp dust.
Enough to paralyze 10 bulls for days.
This is to ensure this 'special thing' will not awake...
Forever.
Year 25
Bi Gou had beco a cultivator, but not in the way most would imagine.
No longer hiding in the shadows, he openly hunted, no longer pretending to be sothing he was not.
He loved to wear the mask of a savior, solving problems, offering aid. To the mortal world, he was a healer, a protector, a solution to every issue.
But that was just the beginning.
Once trust was established, once they believed in him, he revealed his true self.
The mask fell away. The kindness was gone.
He demanded from them what no mortal could ever willingly give: the ones they loved. Their most precious, their dearest.
When they refused—when they resisted, which they always did.
He showed them what they truly were.
Things.
The puppet.
The toy.
Empty vessels, no more than tools for his own desires.
He had already figured out how to never stop moving, how to escape death’s grip.
The cultivation.
Now, his obsession had turned elsewhere.
The mind.
It was what made him different.
It was what made him real.
His ntality was flawless—no weakness, no empathy.
He was perfect.
Others were weak. That’s why they were things. And he would prove it.
He sought to break their mind—to show that no matter how much a person loved, cared, or fought, it was all the sa.
Just a weakness.
Everyone could be broken.
Everyone could be reduced to a thing.
He wanted to prove to himself that he was truly different.
That in the end, they were all just things.
And one day, they too would stop moving.
But he would not.
Year 30
Bi Gou returned to the slave household.
The sa place where it all began. Where the slave-trader couple—the ones who once “raised” him—still lived.
He didn’t do it out of hatred.
He no longer felt such things.
It was simply repaynt.
They treated him like a thing. Now, he turned them into things.
He converted them—and everyone in the household—into flash puppets. Hollow shells of flesh and nerves, stitched together by Qi and will, moving only because he allowed them to.
Their limbs twitched. Their mouths opened and closed, mimicking life.
After he had entertained himself enough, he swallowed their souls.
Then he turns his back and leaves.
It was neat. Efficient. Fitting.
He felt no triumph.
Only completion.
Then he looked around the ruined place one last ti.
“Bi Gou.” The na tasted foul in his mouth.
A na given by lesser things.
A joke.
He discarded it.
There was no one left who treated him as a thing.
And from this mont on, there never would be.
He already proved enough that he was truly different.
He had beco sothing greater—sothing that would never stop moving.
From this day forward, he nad himself—
The Puppet Master
Year 977
He was no longer known by any na, only as—
The Puppet Master.
For centuries, he road the mortal world like a ghost story made real. Entire cities beca his playhouses. Their people, his puppets.
He toyed with mortals and deceived fellow cultivators with his puppet, luring them in with various thods, won, wealth, or precious cultivation resources.
When they let their guard down, stepping into his domain, he harvested them. Their Qi, blood, and bones—fuel for his cultivation. Their bodies joined his ever-growing collection of puppets.
He did this for generations.
When the cultivator faction notices his great deed, he deals with them accordingly.
They chased him.
He ran.
If he couldn’t win, he escaped.
If he won, he turned the survivors into tools—flesh puppets wired with threads of soul, augnting his power and guarding his domain.
For a hundred years, the great sects and clans tolerated the rumors.
But then the rumors beca truths.
They hunted him in force. Dozens of elite cultivators, righteous swords blazing with fury.
He killed many. Fled from others. Laughed at most.
Decades passed, then centuries.
And still he endured.
He was a plague they couldn’t cleanse. A nightmare that didn’t fade.
Until finally, the true giants of the cultivation world descended—the Sect Ancestors, the Ancient Clan Patriarchs. n and won whose very presence shook the heavens.
They ca to end him.
But even they were surprised.
The Puppet Master was stronger than they expected. His technique is wicked, twisted, and deep. Empowered by centuries of slaughter and thousands of puppets bound to his will.
The battle was terrible.
Mountains fell. Rivers boiled. The sky itself trembled under the weight of their clash.
But in the end.
The ancient cultivator is suprerior.
Even he… eventually stopped moving.
…
And so, after nearly nine hundred years.
The Puppet Master fell.
— Simulation Ended —
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