Another Fragment

As fellow holders of the Red Dust Yin Gathering Method, the pure flood of Evil Intent naturally couldn't truly harm the Finger Ghost.

But what if the flood of Evil Intent released by Li Hai wasn't so pure?

In fact, after getting into a "war of insults" with the Finger Ghost, Li Hai had quietly pushed the High-Order Primordial Breath Yang Refining Method he'd received from the old man of the Demon-Slaying Division to its limit, advancing his spellcraft to the Focusing Spirit and Wandering stage.

What was meant by Focusing Spirit and Wandering was that the Yin Spirit left the body.

A spirit with pure yin and no yang was a ghost. One with yin and yang mixed together was a Yin Spirit, while one with pure yang and no yin was a Yang Spirit.

When an ordinary person died, their yin soul left their body and became a ghost. A cultivator's soul, whose yin was not yet exhausted and whose yang was not yet complete, was called a Yin Spirit.

Put simply, a Yin Spirit was a ghostly being endowed with clear spiritual awareness and yang energy. Since Daoists and Warlocks had steadfast minds and their bodies were still intact, they could remain focused and avoid madness, staying in the mortal world without falling into reincarnation.

So naturally, even after a Yin Spirit left its body, it could still expend yang energy to cast spells. Its power was considerably weaker than when it remained in its body, but it was still a cut above a Warlock in the Soul Gathering and Spirit Condensing stage.

In short, a Yin Spirit outside its body was an existence between a Yin Spirit residing in its body and a Warlock at the Soul Gathering stage.

After his "war of insults" with the Finger Ghost began, Li Hai chose to use a two-pronged approach.

His body—the ghostly form—kept exchanging blows with the Finger Ghost, maintaining a back-and-forth tug-of-war. Meanwhile, his Yin Spirit—his soul—left his body and continuously expended Yellow Talismans to cast Fire Essence Incantation, Evil-Expelling Incantation, Nightmare-Removing Incantation, Five Thunder Incantation, Demon-Subduing Incantation...and other talismanic spells that countered ghosts, mixing them into the flood of Evil Intent and unleashing an unending barrage.

For a time, the entire underground training ground was blanketed by golden-red talisman flames, deep-blue lightning, and the Spirit-Capturing Thunder Sound, driving away the oppressive gloom and ghostly atmosphere that had filled it.

The Finger Ghost naturally suffered terribly under this onslaught.

Two or three talismanic spells alone couldn't do much to it; at most, it would lose a dozen or twenty fingers. But when ten or twenty spells—or even more—came crashing down every second, the situation changed completely.

For a quantitative change could trigger a qualitative one.

Under Li Hai's twofold assault, the Finger Ghost began retreating step by step.

Not only had the area of the training ground it occupied shrunk considerably, but its rate of absorbing yin energy and producing fingers was gradually falling behind the rate at which it lost them.

In simple gaming terms, the Finger Ghost's health regeneration could no longer keep up with the damage it was taking.

At this rate, its defeat was only a matter of time.

But even so, Li Hai wasn't satisfied.

"Too slow, too slow."

Li Hai's Yin Spirit, formless and intangible, floated above his ghostly body and muttered, "I've already used up over a thousand Yellow Talismans, but I still haven't knocked this Finger Ghost flat... Hmm, I need to cut off its source of yin energy."

As soon as Li Hai thought this, the Invisible Evil Spirit that had been drifting around the training ground immediately shot toward the dozens of indistinct "human" shapes in the distance, wrapped in mixed Evil Intent and roaring thunder and flames.

"I've always been curious. If a monster that can constantly regenerate has its head chopped off, then its head grows a body and its body grows a head..."

Watching the transparent soul of the Invisible Evil Spirit speed toward the Finger Ghost's remains, the words Naihe faintly glimmering across its surface, Li Hai's Yin Spirit muttered, "Which head gets to call the shots?"

In the blink of an eye, the Invisible Evil Spirit slipped up beside the Finger Ghost like a cunning hyena. It opened the Cave Heaven Portal, swallowed the equivalent of four or five "people's" worth of severed fingers, then fled at once.

The mass of Finger Ghost remains—an unknown number of thousands or tens of thousands of fingers—fell into the Guiyou Grotto-Heaven. At once, the fingers began twitching and crawling in every direction like headless flies, dazed and confused.

But with the battle still raging, Li Hai had little inclination to investigate, even after noticing what had happened. He immediately cast spells "from afar," bombarding the crawling fingers.

At the same time, he split his attention and continued directing the Invisible Evil Spirit to launch more sneak attacks.

And so, as time slowly passed...

Li Hai eventually wore the Finger Ghost down until it was less than half a "person" in size.

Whoosh—

The Invisible Evil Spirit shot over once more and "swallowed" the Finger Ghost into the Guiyou Grotto-Heaven.

At that very instant, a phantom identical to Li Hai appeared inside the Grotto-Heaven's Side Hall, its floor strewn with charred ash.

This phantom was the manifestation of Li Hai's perception within the Grotto-Heaven.

Looking at the Finger Ghost, now listless after losing its supply of yin energy, he grinned and said:

"What happened? Not so tough now, are you? You were pretty tough just a moment ago, weren't you? Heh."

Then, before the Finger Ghost could react, several hundred Yellow Talismans appeared all around Li Hai.

The moment they appeared, every one of them spontaneously burst into flame. Talismanic fire and lightning roared down, crashing onto the dying mass of fingers.

Boom!

The entire Side Hall shook violently.

The Finger Ghost died.

At the same time, Li Hai finally obtained his third Stronger Fragment since arriving in this world.

"Strange, strange."

Li Hai muttered, puzzled. "Earlier, I killed Guo Huaijin and Asu and got two fragments. This time, I killed the Finger Ghost, which was clearly stronger than the two of them put together, yet I only got one fragment. Tsk... How is this even calculated?"

Unable to figure it out, he simply stopped thinking about it and began pondering the Guiyou Grotto-Heaven.

"This...must be the so-called Soul Remains, right?"

Holding a pitch-black spinal bone that he could see and touch only in his ghostly state, Li Hai muttered, "How am I supposed to feed it to the Grotto-Heaven?"

As he pondered, the Red Light Scroll spread across the black desk several dozen zhang away trembled slightly and suddenly blazed with dazzling light.

"Hm?"

Li Hai looked toward the light and saw that the strands of radiance spilling from the scroll solidified from nothingness into a line of brilliant text:

"Grind bone to powder for a brush; draw it into the scroll to mend its flaw."

"So this means..."

Li Hai slowly shifted his gaze to the Soul Remains in his palm. "I'm supposed to grind this piece of the Finger Ghost's spine into powder, then use it as pigment on the scroll?"

After thinking it over for a moment, he decided to give it a try.

A little while later—

"Where should I paint?"

Holding a heap of black ash over the desk, Li Hai studied the vast blank space on the scroll and muttered, "I can't tell what's what at all. Forget it, I'll just paint anywhere."

With that, Li Hai boldly swept the entire heap of black ash onto the scroll and prepared to spread it around.

But before he could even swipe his fingers across it twice, the ash instantly liquefied into ink and began flowing across the scroll by itself.

Li Hai stared, both baffled and amazed, then couldn't help muttering:

"So you're automatic after all. Heh, and I went and racked my brain trying to figure out where to paint. Ah, forget it."

With that, he quietly watched the ink dance across the scroll.

A short while later, a slightly larger circular shape had been drawn in ink to the right of the small rectangular symbol representing the Side Hall.

Beside the shape, three small characters appeared:

"East Forest Garden"