Underground workshop of Mobao Pavilion, Mao hour.
Chen Mo was repairing a bamboo keyboard with spirit butterflies, his fingertips brushing against the "Ren" (Benevolence) key when a gear suddenly popped out from beneath it—a bronze part quenched in spiritual qi. Zhu Qing scratched his head awkwardly: "Actually, we've been secretly researching mechanical spiritual roots for a long time, we were just afraid of being discovered by the Perfection Cult..." He lifted a floorboard to reveal layer upon layer of gear assemblies, each rotation generating a line of bamboo-slip code.
From the corner came the sound of metal colliding. Moli helped a cultivator whose entire body was made of gears walk over: "This is Mo Xie, the leader of our 'Lu Ban Group'. The Cult Master modified his spiritual root into a perpetual motion machine." Mo Xie's gear joints emitted a clicking sound, but as Chen Mo's spirit butterflies drew closer, they automatically assembled into a glowing code pattern that read "Freedom".
Chapter 16