Concerning the puppet town, Klein had been thinking about how to create it for a long time and had initially come up with three plans:
If external factors were excluded, his best choice was to directly make the puppet town rise overnight in some place in a country on the Northern Continent, and connect it to surrounding cities via railways, rivers, and roads.
This way, the puppet town would see a large number of outsiders arriving every day and would have very strong interactions with the surrounding areas: on one hand, a town without satellite villages would certainly need to purchase necessities like grain, salt, cloth, ore, sugar, etc. from elsewhere; on the other hand, it would also have its own output to sell to nearby cities, towns, and villages. Under these circumstances, the coming and going of merchants, laborers, travelers, and other groups would be very frequent, and at the same time, their interactions with the residents of the puppet town would be considerable.
Under the influence of various strong interactions, it wouldn't be long before the puppet town gave birth to a corresponding region in the Spirit World. Once the fate trajectories of the residents became detailed and true, Klein could consume the potion and advance to Sequence 1, "Mysterious Servant."
This whole process might take less than three months.
But the problem is that this plan cannot be kept secret.
In the current era, the sudden appearance of a new town in a certain place cannot be hidden from anyone. Soon, government employees, police, and reporters would come to investigate, and the subsequent strong interactions would likewise let more and more people know about this city and understand it. This is a problem that cannot be solved by illusion abilities, unless the puppet town simply doesn't interact with surrounding cities, towns, and villages, or interacts only minimally—but that would contradict the ritual's requirements.
Once news of the puppet town spreads, Klein would undoubtedly be targeted by enemies like
Therefore, Klein only listed this plan and basically wouldn't choose it, unless some "Visionary" was willing to help, making all living beings on the Northern and Southern Continents take it for granted that there was indeed a town there, not one that had suddenly appeared.
Considering the influence of various external factors and his own Beyonder powers, Klein's safest choice was to build the puppet town on an uninhabited island deviating from safe sea routes and sufficiently hidden, and use the "Source Castle" to set up anti-divination and anti-prophecy measures.
At the same time, Klein would rely on that "Curtain" to "graft" certain nodes of roads, rivers, and railways to the outside of the puppet town, making it a stop on some people's journeys.
This wouldn't be completely secret, but once the "grotesque phenomenon" spread and might attract the attention of Zaratul and Amon, Klein could easily undo the original "grafting" and change the "entrance" irregularly.
Under such a strategy, only the "entrance" would be transferred, not the puppet city itself. The effects of various interactions on the Spirit World could be preserved and not interrupted, allowing the ritual to proceed steadily.
Of course, this plan also has major problems: the domain of interactions is limited, unable to produce influences that penetrate daily life in every aspect; moreover, the frequency and intensity of interactions would not be very high.
If this plan were chosen, it would mean Klein would have to spend most of a year or even more than a year on the ritual.
—If, for safety, he insisted that each puppet's fate have a beginning and an end, the ritual would take at least fifty years. However, there is also a clever way: after all other requirements are met, directly give the town a meteor, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption, so that all the puppets' fates reach their end simultaneously. This kind of situation also occurs in reality and is quite reasonable.
Between the aggressive and conservative plans, Klein had a compromise plan.
That was to replicate a certain city, mapping puppets to that city's residents one by one. Then, if being evil, directly erase that city and replace it with his puppet town; if being merciful, hide that city and ensure material supply—the reason for not converting the target city is that it already has a corresponding region in the Spirit World, not a newly born one, which doesn't meet the ritual's requirements.
Relying on the "Curtain" formed by the Beyonder characteristic of "Mysterious Servant," Klein could have a better choice: "graft" a certain phase of that city onto his puppet town.
In this way, it would be as if his puppet town became the dark side of that city. Outsiders entering during the corresponding time period would encounter puppets instead of real people. After that time period passed, they would leave the puppet town and return to reality, dealing with real people.
During the process, Klein would also send out puppets to play the role of outsiders, maintaining interactions with the corresponding real people, so that real outsiders could seamlessly integrate after returning to reality.
In other words, two kinds of lives were playing out simultaneously in the same city, but no one could detect it. Occasionally, someone might feel that a certain detail wasn't quite right, but they would have no way to explain it and could only ignore it.
This quite fit the characteristic of "mysteriousness" and had a certain degree of concealment.
Of course, this plan also had its own problem: the fates of the puppets were highly simulated to the fates of real people, lacking their own independence, which would cause some aspect of the ritual's effect to fall short of expectations.
Tap, tap, tap. Klein tapped the edge of the mottled long table with his fingers, hesitating between the second and third plans.
After a few minutes, he followed his heart and chose the second plan, preferring to spend more time rather than affect the fates of innocents.