Sergeant William’s heartfelt approval dissolved the last bit of tension in Lin Jie’s chest.
“I think the commotion we just made must have already put that Artisan Chieftain on high alert,” Lin Jie lowered his breath, which had become a little rapid from excitement, and calmly analyzed the situation before them. “It certainly now sees us as the number-one threat and won’t send out small patrols so easily in the near term.”
“That means we have a window of uninterrupted time,” William immediately added, two tactical minds showing remarkable synchronicity in that moment. “We can use this time to inspect our spoils.”
Their gazes both turned to the Gremlin corpses.
These little things weren’t strong fighters individually, but they were still UMAs, and any single part of their bodies could become precious material for making Grotesque Armaments.
The two of them carefully returned to the side path that had served as the hunting ground.
Lin Jie put on his leather gloves and, together with William, began to meticulously “dissect” and “scavenge” the bodies of these mechanical monkeys.
Lin Jie quickly discovered that the Gremlins’ anatomy was far stranger than he had imagined.
They were neither purely flesh-and-blood creatures nor wholly mechanical constructs; they were a bizarre hybrid between the two, filled with elements of bioengineering and alchemy.
Their muscles resembled countless interwoven rubber fibers.
And the fluid coursing through their bodies wasn’t blood but a dark liquid that smelled like machine oil.
“Their claws are the most valuable parts,” William said as he skillfully removed an entire arm of a Gremlin with his short knife while explaining to Lin Jie.
“These tiny arthropod-like limbs made of unknown metal have extremely high hardness and flexibility. That madman Arthur loved using them to make miniature surgical tools that could reach into an enemy’s body, or… certain nasty trap components.”
Lin Jie imitated William and started collecting these materials himself.
He also found that the crystal lenses in the Gremlins’ skulls, though they had lost their luster after death, still contained faint energy fluctuations capable of resonating with each other.
He guessed those could be used to make a simple short-range communication device.
However, after scavenging several Gremlin bodies, Lin Jie keenly sensed that something was off.
These materials were indeed unusual, but they seemed to be missing some core element.
From the Cartographer Karl’s journal, he had learned that the highest-quality raw materials for Grotesque Armaments were often the parts of a UMA that contained the most spirit and best represented its core characteristics.
These claws and crystals were useful, but they felt more like ordinary “components” rather than “cores” that harbored powerful forces.
“What about the things they stole?” Lin Jie’s gaze suddenly shifted to the music box that had been dismantled into fragments by the Gremlin pack.
He walked over and, among the pile of parts that no longer resembled their original form, noticed something peculiar.
The music box had originally been made of silver and brass, but now the scattered brass gears and springs were covered with an oily, faintly glowing film.
Their color was deeper than ordinary brass, and the texture felt like it “vibrated” slightly when held.
“Sergeant William, look at this,” Lin Jie called.
William came over, picked up an altered gear, and held it in his hand to feel it carefully.
Surprise flickered across his normally stolid face again. “This is… spiritual saturation?”
“What do you mean?” Lin Jie asked immediately.
“Certain UMAs—especially trickster spirits like Gremlins that develop obsessive attachments to particular objects—will, over time, slowly change the nature of places they occupy or objects they frequently touch because of their strong collective will or mental field,” William explained. “We call that process spiritual saturation. Mundane items exposed to it gradually transform from ordinary matter into spirit-infused materials that contain supernatural power.”
“This kind of material is often more stable than biological tissue taken directly from a UMA, and it’s easier to shape,” he said, lifting the gear with light in his eyes. “That music box, because its orderly sound became the Gremlins’ number-one enemy, had all their hatred and destructive will poured into its parts while they dismantled it.”
“So these gears and springs are no longer ordinary metal. They’ve become cursed objects carrying the Gremlins’ will for chaos and destruction.”
Lin Jie’s heart hammered at the magnitude of the discovery.
He finally understood: for a special UMA like the Gremlin, the materials on its own body were merely secondary; the industrial objects they stole, nested in, modified, and hated were the real treasure!
A whole new line of thought lit up in his head.
“Quick!” Lin Jie’s voice turned urgent. “We have to check the clocks they were dismantling earlier, and all the things they stole from the surface to build their nests!”
The two of them immediately returned to the Gremlin squad’s former work area.
Sure enough, among the clock wreckage they had been torn apart into, they found large amounts of materials altered by spiritual saturation like the music box parts.
Some had become exceptionally tough, others emitted faint interference fields.
Then they turned their eyes to the pile—like a mountain of trash—that formed the mechanical shrine.
What they had found before was merely an appetizer; this shrine, built from countless spirit-infused materials, was an invaluable treasure trove immeasurable by money!
“My God…” Even the usually composed William couldn’t help but exclaim when he saw the sight. “These little things… they’re building a doghouse out of a gold mountain.”
Lin Jie suppressed his inner jubilation and forced himself to stay calm.
They couldn’t carry away the entire shrine.
They had to “steal” the few highest-value, best-quality pieces without alerting the Artisan Chieftain.
He cautiously approached the outer rim of the shrine and activated his Reverberation Touch.
Lin Jie dared not perform deep readings; he feared that would instantly attract the Artisan Chieftain’s attention.
He merely, like an experienced sommelier, took a light taste—just skimming—the gargantuan and chaotic spiritual aura emanating from the tens of thousands of parts on the shrine.
In his perception, most materials’ auras were mixed and faint.
But a handful of items emitted spiritual auras like lighthouses in the night—bright and pure.
“There!” Lin Jie pointed precisely to an inconspicuous spot in the shrine’s lower-middle layer. “I can feel it. There are several things there… their spirituality is far stronger than the other materials!”
William did not hesitate to trust his guidance.
The two of them once again moved silently toward that target.
In the heap of scrap iron and pipes, they pushed aside layer after layer until they finally found what Lin Jie had sensed.
It was a coil of rubber hose, once used by the Gremlins as a rope, now transformed into a deep black, highly pure rubber tube.
Not only did it retain rubber’s toughness, but its surface was coated with a peculiar matte material that absorbed light.
There were also several brass ingots the Gremlins had used as cornerstones at the base.
The surfaces of those brass ingots were no longer smooth; they were covered in tiny runes inadvertently etched by Gremlin claws.
When Lin Jie held them in his hand, he could clearly feel a strange force that could interfere with surrounding magnetic fields.
This was exactly what they wanted.
Spirit-infused materials that had undergone perfect metamorphosis after long-term saturation by the Gremlins’ collective will!