Chapter 25: The Rift at the Bottom of the Pool

Souls belong to yin, while physical bodies belong to yang.

Soul and body, both belonging to oneself, naturally achieve Yin-Yang Unity due to their consistent frequencies.

However, one's own soul and another person's body are definitely mutually exclusive.

In legends of ghost possession, certain specific conditions must be met, or the possessing soul must be powerful enough to succeed.

Otherwise, rashly taking over someone's body would inflict great harm on both the physical body and the soul.

In the instant Mother Gejie returned to her original body, Chen Hai felt as if his soul body were on fire.

He also experienced an extremely terrifying force of repulsion, as if it were trying to force him out harshly.

"At this point, I've already made a mortal enemy of this ghostly thing."

"If I just give up now and don't kill this thing, what if she harms my parents while I'm away?"

"No, I must drain her life force. As long as I have a breath left in me, I absolutely cannot let go."

Such thoughts surfaced in Chen Hai's mind.

He turned vicious, enduring the burning sensation like torture, refusing to let go and continuously clinging tightly to Mother Gejie's lower abdomen.

Outside, in the pond.

A giant toad over two meters long seemed to have gone mad, churning the pond water into a murky mess.

The jagged rocks within the pond were smashed into countless pieces by its massive body.

The toad's bumpy skin had long been bruised and torn, but it seemed to care little about these injuries.

This giant toad was undoubtedly the original body of Mother Gejie.

Such a large toad was terrifying to behold, and even a tiger might become its prey, potentially swallowed whole in front of her.

Almost half an hour passed without notice.

Having held on until now, Chen Hai could no longer bear it; his transformed large leech was directly repelled by that terrible force of rejection.

He felt disoriented and, when he regained consciousness, he found himself floating above the pond water.

Not far away, the giant toad, who was Mother Gejie's original body, lay belly-up, floating in the middle of the water.

She was exhaling more than inhaling; her state suggested that even if she wasn't dead yet, she likely wasn't far from it.

After resting briefly and catching his breath, Chen Hai launched himself onto the toad again.

Unfortunately, with the protection of Mother Gejie's true form, his leech soul could no longer harm her Divine Soul.

Frowning and after a brief moment of thought, his transformed giant leech wriggled and burrowed deeper into the depths of the pond.

The last time, he had killed the Snake Demon, but someone else ended up reaping the benefits.

That was a loss of a full one thousand yuan, and the thought alone made Chen Hai's heart ache.

Having learned from such a lesson, he was determined not to make a similar mistake again.

Chen Hai had an idea of where Mother Gejie's true form was hiding.

He now burrowed into the depths of the pond to see whether his luck would hold and whether he could find anything valuable from her lair!

The pond was located at the foot of a large mountain.

Ponds like this one, at the bottom, are typically sandy and rocky, with little accumulated silt.

The pool wasn't very deep, with the shallow parts not even reaching one meter, and the deepest point being only about six or seven meters deep.

During the day, brawny men of about ten or twenty meters in height came and went, searching the entire pool several times over, yet they found nothing unusual.

But Chen Hai was different. In his soul state, the pool water was as if nonexistent to him.

He plunged into the water, and within a six or seven meter radius around him, he could see everything clearly; he could take in every detail into his field of vision.

Following the area toward which Mother Gejie's divine soul had rushed back, Chen Hai submerged himself.

Just over three meters down, a layer of rock that looked like shale appeared before his eyes.

This expanse of rock was not small, its shape irregular; it was wider at the top, and there was an area near the bottom that dipped in significantly.

What it revealed was a massive fissure, about twenty to thirty centimeters high and nearly three meters wide.

The soul state of Mother Gejie was incredibly ugly.

Yet, upon seeing her true form, Chen Hai understood clearly that this thing was a toad demon.

It was just unclear how it had developed spiritual wisdom and achieved such a distinctive external form!

In the city, where human thought and activity are excessively abundant and an array of scattered thoughts extremely dense,

it is usually the case that the more prosperous a city, the greater the constraints it imposes on cultivators.

Originally, in his classroom, the gathering of just over fifty people had made Chen Hai feel very uncomfortable.

In those sprawling metropolises of millions, if one were to stay there,

for weaker cultivators, it would be no different than being in a furnace. Cultivation in such places would likely be nothing more than a joke.

If this is the case for humans, it goes without saying for other demons.

Normally, the more remote and less frequented by humans a place is, the more likely it is for supernatural events to occur, and that's the main reason why.

Compared to creatures like snakes, foxes, and weasels, a toad looking to develop the extraordinary required ample opportunity; usually, it's hardly likely.

After inspecting the large fissure back and forth several times, Chen Hai could tentatively confirm that this place must be the dwelling of the giant toad.

It would be difficult for a normal person to squeeze into such a fissure.

Transformed into the form of a leech, he entered it with ease, without the slightest difficulty.

Inside the fissure were just a few old bones, a fragment of a turtle shell, and a compass.

Unfortunately, in his soul state, Chen Hai could not interact physically with these objects, so while he could see them, he couldn't pick them up.

He had no interest in the bones, but the presence of the compass and the turtle shell caught his eye.

To him, these two items seemed to hold some value and could be worth some money.

Lodging in the school, the living expenses his parents gave him were just enough for him to eat some porridge and steamed buns every day.

The ten yuan for emotional distress that Wang Xiuhua had given him had allowed him to splurge for a few days at a small restaurant outside, but now it was all spent.

He was very aware of the situation at home; he would rather eat plain rice with pickles every day than ask his parents for money.

From the start of his cultivation to the present, he had bought many books related to Tao Cultivation from the old bookstall in town, all saved from cutting back on his own food budget.

As a result, at the ripe age of eighteen, he was a bit underdeveloped.

He was less than one meter seventy tall and weighed barely ninety jin, looking as thin as a rail.

Terrified of poverty, he saw anything that might sell and was of value as a precious treasure, his eyes lighting up at the sight.