"How dare you go deep into the burning sand alone, where are your companions?"
Mei Qiu was stunned. Amidst the chatter among the people in the caravan, they heard the common language in the Kelai continent. Although it was very unfamiliar and mixed with local accents, they did not hear it wrong.
"Where are you from?"
Coal Ball, who tried to communicate in the Kolay language, received feedback, and the old man who gave Lu Yu a water bag replied: "Sercalo, what about you?"
Lulu and Sierra were sure that this place name was not in their knowledge base.
Regarding Lu Yu's answer of "Meira", everyone in the caravan looked at each other, and an older man said with emotion: "Yansha, this dead trade road, can still see adventurers from unknown countries coming and going. It is indeed full of people."
A place filled with countless mysteries.”
After learning that Lu Yu traveled through the Yansha alone, everyone in the caravan widened their eyes, and the originally chaotic discussions gradually ceased. Their eyes were filled with emotions between admiration and fear.
"Dear Sir Lu Yu, are you saying that you traveled across this vast flaming sand for nearly ten days without any excessive preparation?"
Lu Yu wanted to answer "yes" casually, but he understood the shock on the faces of these businessmen, which looked like monsters.
Realizing that his operation was unusually "beautiful in strength" for ordinary people, he did not explain too much, but just nodded while manipulating the forged body.
The old man's attitude became more respectful: "Your Excellency Lu Yu, along the way, you have not encountered the giant spiders roaming the sand, the terrifying yellow sand sky, the burning sand dunes, the sand whirlpool, or those extremely ferocious sands.
Monster?"
"The Burning Sky Dune... I did encounter a strange red sand that would catch fire if I stepped on it. It was caused by the fire element crystal sand enriched under the dune. Because the purity is extremely high, it is indeed enough to make ordinary magicians invincible.
I lost my legs on guard."
"I haven't encountered the yellow sand sky or the sand whirlpool, but I have encountered a lot of giant spiders and sand monsters. They are very well-behaved. Unfortunately, the sand whale digs the sand too fast, so our plan to tame and ride on it failed."
The old caravan man was dumbfounded, and then swallowed hard.
"I also have questions to ask you."
Everyone in the caravan nodded hurriedly.
"Is the language I'm speaking now a common language or dialect in your Selkalo? In my opinion, this is a common language family in the trading continent. Do you have close contact with Kelai?
"
Everyone in the caravan looked at Lu Yu with strange eyes. They looked at each other, and then began to communicate in a language that Lu Yu could not understand at all.
The old man coughed slightly, interrupting everyone's whispers. He stared at Lu Yu and said softly: "You seem to know where the healer's language comes from. Are you from the healer's hometown?"
"The healer..." Coal Ball noticed something, "Is the healer you are talking about an elf?"
The old man's body trembled slightly: "You are indeed from the hometown of the healer and sage!"
The gradually darkening sky makes it impossible to continue communication. After night falls, the temperature of Yansha will drop extremely, which is inversely proportional to the heat during the day. If you do not take measures to keep warm in time, you are very likely to lose your temperature due to the sudden cooling.
The people in the caravan were busy building an area that could maintain the temperature through magic crystals and magic cores. After everything was busy and bonfires were lit, the old man explained to Lu Yu.
About six hundred years ago, a strange elf sage appeared on the streets of Selkalo. She casually rescued a hunter who had lost too much blood due to a wild beast attack, and replaced him with a brand new arm.
This astonishing magic skill shocked Selkalo, whose magicians were generally less than sixth level. Every magician here could not believe that someone could replace the limbs of a living person, and that the prosthetic body perfectly fit the body.
They couldn't help but not believe it, because the hunter recovered quickly after replacing his arm and went hunting again without any accidents.
The female elf sage did not reveal her name and readily accepted the title of "Healer" from the Selkaros.
The healer stayed in Cercalo for about half a year. Here, while treating patients and teaching knowledge, she also learned the local language and taught the locals several languages that she commonly used in other areas.
Among them is the Kolay language family, which is considered simple and easy to learn by the Selkaros.
It was also during their stay here for half a year that the healers were enlightened by the local puppet craftsmanship, making them realize that puppet production could also be developed by replacing body parts, and limbs were the most basic entry-level skills.
After the healer left, Selkalo gradually became a famous nation of puppet masters. They continued to pursue the "miracles" they had seen in the hands of the healer, persevering and even exploring frantically.
The limit of this road.
Lu Yu found that when he said this, everyone in the caravan had unnatural expressions. Some people looked up at the stars in the sky and sighed softly.
"It seems like you don't like healers very much?"
The old man shook his head: "To this day, there is still a rumor among ordinary people that the healer almost responds to all requests and saves people without asking for anything in return. She is powerful, noble, and beautiful and is so approachable that she treats all the seekers equally regardless of whether they are rich or poor, and she is
She ensured the medicines for the poor by charging the rich... How can we not like such a great sage."
After a pause, the old man picked up a bone stick left by an unknown monster in the sand and poked it at the bonfire.
"To be honest, this time we are crossing the sand to settle in another known country. You can also understand that we are on the run."
"what happened?"
The old man looked down at his aging body with a complicated expression, then raised his head and asked: "Your Excellency Lu Yu, if you are getting old, are you willing to 'replace' this old and decaying body in order to obtain a body that is young and strong?"
, welcome a new life.”
Lu Yu hesitated and said: "It depends on your definition of aging. In my opinion, physical aging is not as good as mental decay. But if you are an ordinary person, you can still enjoy the body of your youth through simple means at the end of your life.
, this seems acceptable.”
"I used to think so too..." The old man sighed.
As the old man described it, Lu Yu gradually realized why this caravan was willing to risk its life to cross the burning sand to go to a distant country and seek refuge with an acquaintance.
Back then, Vanessa had good intentions and opened a new door to the puppet masters here - prosthetic body manufacturing.
In that era, puppet masters were generally regarded as the key to the pursuit of immortality, so the production of puppets was aimed at the "living". This also made some puppet masters realize that when it was impossible to change their spiritual bodies, they had
A low-end version of life extension method is body replacement.
By replacing the replaceable parts of the body, he finally pieced together a brand new self, which in a sense achieved a new life.
The idea is beautiful, but the reality is cruel. Body replacement has a major flaw that still has no good solution - the phenomenon of rejection.
When replacing parts for the body to a certain extent, the original body and doll parts will become seriously mutually exclusive.
The reaction that happens to ordinary people is not too drastic, but for magicians, it is fatal. As a pioneer in adventurous attempts at replacement, the first puppeteer to replace body parts took less than a day after replacing limbs.
He watched with his own eyes as the prosthetic body he was proud of broke, the wounds began to bleed, and he finally died in severe pain.
After that, those who risked their lives to challenge for longevity and immortality ended up with internal organs at most. Moreover, this bravery did not allow him to survive for too long. Instead, his body disintegrated and died after a certain use of magic. It was extremely miserable.
So far, no puppeteer has succeeded in replacing every part except the brain with pure puppet parts, existing in a half-puppet body.
The Selkaros have been running wildly on this road since Vanessa inspired them. Although they have repeatedly encountered obstacles, they are still willing to believe that the upgrade of their skills will eventually bring them to the other side of life extension and immortality. In order to wait for this moment to arrive
, magicians will continue to gradually replace their bodies with dolls to enhance their adaptability.
Under this craze, almost every magician in Selkalo, which has become a country of dolls, has modified his body. Some have modified their arms, some have modified their legs, and some have simply extended their spines.
Develop multifunctional prostheses for greater convenience.
They call this change "backdooring."
Borrowing the body of a doll, he escapes the shackles of flesh and blood, and finally approaches immortality through repeated adaptations and attempts, becoming a perfect life that can adapt to all environments and is not afraid of pain.
This kind of fanaticism has affected countless magicians and ordinary people, and is out of control, but not everyone is willing to take this "broad road", and the old man in front of Lu Yu is one of them.
"The skills are very mature. At least you can make your hands and feet stronger. If you replace some aging organs, you will be much more relaxed. But you are very resistant. Why?"
The old man chuckled and said: "It is true that by changing the body of a doll, you can enjoy a new life for a short time, but... everything has a price."
In Selkaro, the replacement of puppet parts is not a one-time thing. Depending on the materials used by the puppeteer, some puppet parts are far from reliable, and most of them have aged before the scheduled deadline.
It's okay if you are replacing limbs, but if it is an organ that will be life-threatening once it stops functioning, the person who replaces the parts has no right to bargain at all and can only accept the price of the puppeteer.
In Selkalo, puppet masters have supreme power. This cannot even be said to be a country, but a huge association composed of many puppet masters. They are well organized and use the art of body replacement to the extreme. In the end,
Achieve a monopoly and extend it to surrounding areas.
With the expansion of influence, people who could not resist the temptation of extending their lifespan and becoming stronger continued to accept the transformation of the puppet master, and the people of one country after another became their money-making tools.
Here, you can offend the princes, nobles, and magicians of all major schools, but you can only offend the puppet masters, because they hold the fate of all the transformed people in their hands, and they are veritable man-eating monsters.
The old man's face was full of bitterness: "I knew clearly that once I accepted that gift, I would never be able to escape their control for the rest of my life, so I resisted transformation from a young age, setting an example and warning everyone around me not to come into contact with the Puppet Master.
"
"But this is just in vain. The temptation to gain advantages through transformation is too great. An ordinary person who has replaced his limbs can do things much more efficiently than a person without transformation. The former will naturally get more opportunities, while the latter will be disliked
, elimination, in this abnormal environment, most people do not have the right to choose and can only be forced to accept it."
"Thanks to my family's meager wealth, I have been able to persevere so far, but that's the end of it... Not long ago, I was reported for discussing privately about puppet masters making money, and I received threats from the Selkaro puppet master.
Threat, if I don’t escape in time...haha."
"There have always been rumors that puppet masters turned the bodies of opponents into body modification parts of others. I believe they can do such a thing."
Lu Yu felt a little dazed as he listened to this otherworldly version of the cyber story.
Lulu and Sera had no idea that in this remote corner, there would be a puppeteer working in a blind alley, developing an inferior version of the body-swapping technology that Meira and other mainland puppeteers did not think highly of, and this technology turned out to be
It also gave birth to an extremely deformed organization.
According to the old man's description, there were no slaves at all in Selkalo, or in other words, except for the puppet masters and some people with status, they were all slaves.
Lu Yu once again exclaimed that it was magical. He was now 100% sure that the puppet masters of Selkalo had created another system besides slavery in this world in an alternative way... This is also too darkly humorous.
.
"I want to know if the healer left anything behind in Selkalo?" Lu Yu asked about the most important purpose of his trip, "For example, magical creations."
The old man thought for a moment and shook his head, but then he suddenly thought of something and said: "There seems to be a treasure."
"Although it's just a rumor, I think it's most likely true. When the healer was teaching puppetry skills in Selkalo, he seemed to have left an object for the puppeteers to observe. We don't know what it is specifically.
But if there is, it must exist in the Puppet Masters Association."
"Are there any related rumors?"
"I have to say...folks have always believed that what the healer left behind was a puppet whose puppetry skills were superb, but which the puppet masters could not drive, because the healer probably did not want the puppet masters to go astray one day.