As fellow owners of the Mortal World Gathering Yin method, a pure torrent of evil thoughts naturally couldn't truly harm the Finger Ghost.
But what if the torrent of evil thoughts released by Li Hai wasn't so pure?
In fact, after engaging in a 'verbal battle' with the Finger Ghost, Li Hai had already quietly pushed the advanced Yuan Breath Refining Yang Method, which came from the old man of the Demon Slayer Division, to its limit, thereby elevating his Cultivation Technique Realm to the Spiritual Focus Roaming level.
The so-called Spiritual Focus Roaming means the roaming of the Yin God.
Pure Yin without Yang is a ghost, a mixture of Yin and Yang is a Yin God, and pure Yang without Yin is a Yang God.
When a Mortal dies, their Yin soul leaves its shell and becomes a ghost, while the soul of a cultivator, whose Yin is not completely exhausted and Yang not yet full, is called a Yin God.
To put it plainly, a Yin God is a type of ghost that possesses clarity and Yang Qi and magical power; it is only because the Daoist practitioner's mind is firm and their body still exists that they can remain resolute, not go mad, and reside in the Mortal World without falling into Reincarnation.
Therefore, as it should be, even after the Yin God leaves its shell, it can still consume Yang Qi to release Cultivation Techniques, though the power will be much weaker than when the Yin God resides in the body, but it will still be stronger than a Cultivation Technique practitioner in the Soul-Collecting and Spirit-Gathering Realm.
In short, an un-shelled Yin God is an existence between a shelled Yin God and a Soul-Collecting Cultivation Technique practitioner.
And after Li Hai engaged in a 'verbal battle' with the Finger Ghost, he chose to adopt a two-pronged approach.
His body (ghost body) continued to engage in a back-and-forth bombardment with the Finger Ghost, while his Yin God (soul) left its shell and continuously consumed yellow talismans to cast Fire Spirit Charms, Exorcism Charms, Nightmare Removal Charms, Five Thunder Charms, Demon Subduing Charms... and other ghost-restraining talismans, mixing them into the torrent of evil thoughts to relentlessly bombard it.
Thus, for a time, the entire underground training ground was completely covered by golden-red talisman fire, azure lightning, and soul-stirring thunder, completely dispelling the oppressive, gloomy ghost aura that was originally present.
And after the Finger Ghost was subjected to this, it naturally suffered greatly.
Three or two talismans alone certainly couldn't do anything to it, merely causing the loss of a dozen or twenty fingers, but when a dozen or twenty or even more talismans struck every second, the nature of the matter completely changed.
Because quantitative change leads to qualitative change.
Thus, under Li Hai's dual offensive, the Finger Ghost began to retreat steadily.
Not only did the area of the training ground it originally occupied shrink significantly, but its efficiency in absorbing Yin Qi to generate fingers also gradually fell behind the rate of loss.
In simple gaming terms, the Finger Ghost's health bar recovery speed could no longer keep up with its damage intake speed.
If this continued, the Finger Ghost's defeat would only be a matter of time.
But even so, Li Hai was not satisfied.
“Too slow, too slow.”
Li Hai's Yin God, formless and insubstantial, hovering above Li Hai's ghost body, murmured, “I’ve already consumed over a thousand yellow talismans, but I still haven’t taken down this Finger Ghost… Hmm~ I need to cut off its Yin Qi source.”
As Li Hai thought this, the Formless Evil Spirit, which had been wandering all over the training ground, immediately shot forth according to his will towards the dozens of blurry 'human' figures in the distance, wrapped in mixed evil thoughts and blazing thunderfire.
“I've always been curious, if a monster that can regenerate continuously has its head cut off, then when its head grows a body and its body grows a head again…”
Looking from afar at the transparent soul body surface of the Formless Evil Spirit, which was flying rapidly towards the Finger Ghost's remnants, with the words hell faintly flickering, Li Hai's Yin God muttered, “Which head of this monster will be in charge?”
No sooner said than done.
Like a cunning hyena, after the Formless Evil Spirit stealthily infiltrated the Finger Ghost's vicinity, it immediately opened the Guiyou Cave Heaven portal and fiercely devoured the equivalent of four or five 'human' portions of severed fingers, then fled.
And after that mass of thousands or tens of thousands of fingers, the Finger Ghost's remnants, fell into the Guiyou Cave Heaven, they immediately became agitated and crawled around dizzily like headless flies.
However, due to the intense battle, even if Li Hai discovered this situation, he had no mind to study it, and immediately cast spells 'from a distance', beginning to bombard the crawling fingers.
At the same time, he multitasked, continuing to control the Formless Evil Spirit to launch sneak attacks.
Thus, as time gradually passed.
The Finger Ghost was eventually tormented by Li Hai until it was less than half a 'person' in size.
Whoosh—
The Formless Evil Spirit shot forth again, and in one gulp, 'swallowed' the Finger Ghost into the Guiyou Cave Heaven.
And at the same instant, a phantom identical to Li Hai also appeared within the Cave Heaven's side hall, which was covered in charred ash.
This phantom was the manifestation of Li Hai's perception within the Cave Heaven.
He looked at the Finger Ghost, which was somewhat listless due to the lack of Yin Qi nourishment, and grinned, saying:
“What's wrong, not so impressive now? Weren't you very impressive just now, huh~”
Subsequently, before the Finger Ghost could react, hundreds of densely packed yellow talismans appeared one after another all around Li Hai.
And as soon as these yellow talismans appeared, they all spontaneously ignited without fire, finally transforming into streaks of talisman fire and lightning that crashed down, striking the dying mass of fingers.
Boom!
The entire side hall suddenly trembled.
The Finger Ghost, dead.
At the same time, Li Hai finally obtained the third fragment of a strong individual since coming to this world.
“Strange, strange.”
Regarding this, Li Hai murmured with some doubt, “Earlier, I killed Guo Huaijin and A Su and got two fragments. This time, I killed the Finger Ghost, who was clearly stronger than both of them combined, yet I only got one fragment. Tsk~ How is this calculated?”
Unable to figure it out for a moment, he simply stopped thinking about it and began to ponder about the Guiyou Cave Heaven.
“This… this is what’s called a soul remnant, I suppose.”
Holding a pitch-black spine bone that only he, in his ghost state, could see and touch, Li Hai muttered, “How am I supposed to feed it to the Cave Heaven?”
As he pondered, the red glowing scroll spread out on the black desk dozens of feet away subtly vibrated, suddenly emitting an extremely dazzling radiance.
“Hmm?”
Li Hai followed the light and found that the wisps of radiance emanating from the scroll had actually materialized into a line of brilliant small characters:
“Grind bone into powder, use as a brush, paint into the scroll, mend the gaps.”
“This means…”
Li Hai slowly shifted his gaze to the soul remnant in his palm, “Am I supposed to grind this section of the Finger Ghost’s leftover spine bone into powder, and then use it as pigment to paint on that scroll?”
After a moment of careful consideration, he decided to give it a try.
A little while later~
“Where should I paint?”
Holding a handful of black ash piled on the desk, Li Hai scrutinized the large blank area on the scroll, muttering, “I can't tell which is which at all. Forget it, I'll just paint randomly.”
With that, Li Hai generously pushed all the black ash onto the scroll, preparing to start smearing.
But before his fingers could even make two strokes, the pile of black ash instantly liquefied into ink and began to move on its own across the scroll.
This left Li Hai both puzzled and surprised, so he couldn't help but mutter:
“So, after all that, you're automatic, huh? Heh, I was racking my brain trying to figure out where to draw. Oh well.”
With that, he quietly watched the ink on the scroll move like a Dragon.
A short while later, a slightly larger circular pattern was drawn by the ink on the scroll, positioned to the right of the small rectangular pattern representing the side hall.
And beside this pattern, three small characters were inscribed:
“Eastern Forest Garden”