No, that couldn't be right!
If the spiritual motes were drawn to the paper effigy itself, why didn't they appear after it was completed, but during the folding process?
"Could it be my craftsmanship that attracts them? The better my skill, the higher the quality of the offering, and the more eagerly the spiritual light particle come?"
The more Song Miaozhu thought about it, the more convinced she became—and once she started, she couldn't stop.
What began as casual folding during slow hours at the shop turned into an obsession. She carried a bag of golden paper everywhere, folding whenever she had a spare moment. Day or night, even when her soul ventured into the underworld in her dreams, she kept folding. Her physical hands grew swift and precise, while her soul's movements became elegant and seamless.
One afternoon, as usual, she began folding a gold ingot. Just two folds in, a spirit energy light orb drifted down and merged into the paper. At first, she didn't think much of it. The orbs had been arriving more frequently lately, and each seemed more eager than the last.
But then—right as she neared the final fold—another orb appeared. Song Miaozhu paused in surprise. That moment of hesitation caused the second orb to flicker... and vanish.
Though it disappeared quickly, she was certain—it was a second orb.
She drew a deep breath to steady her racing heart, then picked up another sheet of gold paper. The first orb fused in almost instantly. The second hovered at her fingertips, clearly tempted, yet hesitant—moving much more slowly than the others before it.
The ingot was nearly finished. If the orb didn't enter soon, it would fade again.
On impulse, she reached out, brushing it with a finger.
It flinched away.
"Too eager," she sighed, resigning herself to finishing the ingot. If her skill was the key, patience would eventually win it over.
But just as she finished the final fold, the hesitant orb circled back and—whoosh—rushed into her fingertip. The gold ingot slipped from her grasp and dropped onto her knee.
Her hands began to glow, bathed in shimmering, multicolored light. The radiance lasted a few seconds before fading, leaving behind a faint layer of ash. She gave a gentle shake, and it flaked away like dust.
"...Did spirit energy just enter my body?"
She closed her eyes and tried to sense her dantian, as described in ancient texts, but found nothing. No qi sea, no hidden reservoir of energy.
She couldn't feel any spiritual power either—but her hands had changed. Her skin felt smoother, the subtle calluses from constant folding now gone.
And the ingot she'd just folded?
Third-tier.
The highest grade possible.
"It hasn't even been a month since I returned…"
Her great-grandmother had spent a lifetime reaching this level.
The truth was undeniable: Paper Art, born from the age of cultivation, thrived under the touch of spiritual energy.
From then on, every time Song Miaozhu folded, she found her fingers faster, more agile. As long as the second orb appeared—whether it merged with her or not—the resulting ingot was third-grade.
Typically, if the second orb appeared three times, at least one of them would eventually enter her body. And each time, the hesitation grew shorter.
"As if I'm becoming more attractive to them."
By now, she was almost certain: her level of skill directly affected how attracted the spirit orbs were to her.
After absorbing around ten orbs, a tight, swollen sensation began to press between her brows. Any new orbs that appeared now simply hovered around her and refused to enter.
It seemed she had reached her current absorption limit.
Yet there was no frustration. She'd learned the rhythm: Find the right path, persist, and change will come.
Though no dantian formed, her arms now moved with preternatural lightness. Folding efficiency soared. Even without spiritual aid, third-tier ingots flowed steadily from her hands.
But ingots alone wouldn't push her further.
It was time to advance.
Flipping through the Secret Art of Paper Crafting, she surveyed her options.
The manual divided techniques into two categories:
—Spirit Paper Art (complex, demanding)
—Yin Paper Art (simpler, often paired with spirit variants)
Arranged by difficulty, the latter sections held the most challenging crafts.
For now, she chose the second-easiest Yin Art: Golden Lotus.
Like the gold ingot, the Golden Lotus was also made from gold paper.
In the world of the living, Golden Lotuses were often burned alongside ingots during ancestor rites—symbolizing deep longing for departed loved ones.
In the underworld, however, ungraded Golden Lotuses served a different purpose. Like basic paper money, they carried fragments of emotional remembrance—granted as spiritual lifespan to specific spirits. But they couldn't be spent or shared like underworld currency.
Graded Golden Lotuses were something else entirely. They weren't mere "money molds" like gold ingots—they were more like piggy banks or Yin Qi converter.
Every ghost had a fixed capacity for ghost lifespan based on their virtue and power. Excess years could be stored in lotuses—one century per petal. Even the smallest six-petal lotus could hold six hundred years of spiritual lifespan.
Once a Golden Lotus acknowledged its master, it could be carried deep within the soul. The lifespan within could then be converted into pure yin energy, nourishing the spirit and strengthening its power. The better the quality of the lotus, the purer the yin energy it produced—far more efficient than relying on one's own conversion alone.
That said, for actual underworld trade, the lifespan still had to be transferred into a monetary mold like a gold ingot.
Golden Lotuses started at six petals but had no upper limit. Higher-grade lotuses refined the energy more efficiently:
—First-tier: 10% better conversion
—Second-tier: 20%
..and so on, with no hard upper limit.
(For transactions, lifespan still had to be transferred to ingots—lotuses were for personal use.)
Song Miaozhu had folded a few Golden Lotuses in her childhood. Now, with a glance at the technique in the manual, the memory came back instantly.
Perhaps it was thanks to the spirit energy that had nourished her arms—her very first Golden Lotus was surprisingly refined, already close to entering the graded tier.