Chapter 82: Gotcha!

Exerting his lightness-footwork technique, he moved swiftly, treading on mountain rocks as if walking on flat ground as he headed toward the stone pool on the other side of the mountain.

His fishing rod was slung across his shoulder, and he deftly dodged the brush and tree branches on either side. When thorns jutted out, they were cleaved and shattered by the vital energy shaped like a giant saber.

In just over two quarters of an hour, he reached his destination.

Passing through a narrow corridor formed by two towering piles of large boulders, his vision suddenly opened up.

Ash-green ancient trees leaned against the edge of the pool, their long roots coiling in the crevices of the gray rocks above. A small, curved tree clung to the cliff, stretching its waist against the wind, its leaves rustling. Together with the gurgling of the pool water, they cast an exceptional sense of tranquility over the surrounding wilderness.

Chen Yu raised an eyebrow and looked into the distance; the familiar sandbar was overgrown with lush weeds and fragrant flowers, falling petals scattered everywhere, forming patches of vibrant green.

He stepped into the babbling current, feeling a faint, refreshing coolness beneath his feet. The water splashed against his ankles, palms, and fingers, feeling as soft as a layer of delicate silk.

Splash!

Wading through the water, he carried his bamboo basket onto the sand dune.

The stone pool was neither too big nor too small; the sandbar formed an area about a zhang square. The surroundings were not jagged gravel, but were covered with soft, fine, reddish-brown silt. Stepping onto it, his feet sank down, leaving a clear trail of footprints.

As a breeze swept past, he gathered his robes and put down the bamboo basket.

Well, let's give the stone pool another chance and try a couple of casts first.

With this thought, Chen Yu tied the fishing line, unscrewed the bamboo tube, and poured out a plump, bright red earthworm. It was still fresh, smelling of earth, and wriggling lively in his palm.

There were fish in this place; he remembered it clearly. Back then, he had hooked dozens of times, using earthworms fed entirely on spiritual liquid, yet he had only ever caught a glimpse of a single black tail.

It was about the size of a palm, with a slender body.

The spine near its tail was as dark as ink, leaving a deep impression on him.

Thud!

After baiting the hook, he planted the wooden support rod and cast the long fishing line out into the pool. Following his gaze with his eyes, he saw only a profound and solitary stillness.

Chen Yu fetched a straw cushion, placed it beneath him, and sat cross-legged.

Fishing was fishing, but cultivation could not stop. He circulated his breathing technique to internally harvest vital energy. The qi-bead he had swallowed before departure was tightly wrapped in layers of spiritual power, and now he loosened the gaps, allowing wisps of spiritual energy to overflow like cracking shells.

These wisps were then rapidly absorbed by his vital energy.

Spiritual energy was truly a treasure; it could strengthen vital energy, fortify the physical body and skin, and provide a certain boost to one's spiritual mind.

The only catch was that one had to be constantly mindful when contacting it with spiritual power, lest it trigger an illusion and drag him into that unfathomable realm.

Inverted, chaotic, shattered, and boundless. Even after seeing it many times, every time it entered his vision, it still made his scalp tingle.

Looking at it for too long left him dizzy and disoriented, as if filled with countless things, yet upon careful thought, nothing remained save for blankness and haze.

However, the enhancement to his spiritual mind was quite substantial, far outperforming the Lanting divine fruit and spiritual liquid. At the same time, the consumption was not small either; a single qi-bead would be depleted after three or four uses, and the longer he sank into the illusions, the greater the wear and tear.

Therefore, under normal circumstances, he would not operate this way.

Lately, he only did it about once every two or three days.

Fortunately, without proactive triggering, his spiritual power did not react too violently to the spiritual energy, giving him an opportunity to control it. Otherwise, if both his spiritual mind and vital energy fluctuated wildly with it, he truly wouldn't know how to suppress and rein it in.

After absorbing the spiritual energy for a while and confirming everything was fine, he withdrew his focus, letting the various internal processes run automatically under the remote guidance of his breathing technique, and then looked toward the float.

In quiet silence, he waited for a fish to take the bait.

The pool was calm, with tiny ripples spreading from the direction close to the stone cliff. He looked over, raising his gaze to see bright green ferns covering the area, water droplets hanging from the tips of their leaves. He vaguely remembered that further up was a patch of ancient trees, where a shallow stream encircled the depths of Qingtai Mountain, tracing its winding source back to a yellow earth cliff.

Months ago, he had been there once to harvest reed ginseng.

The Codonopsis pilosula currently planted in an earthenware pot, surrounded by mosquito-repelling wooden talismans, was gathered on his return trip.

As he was thinking this, the float gave two twitches.

Chen Yu concentrated and turned solemn, resting his right hand on the rod, waiting only for the creature to take one more greedy bite so he could haul it up instantly.

Sure enough, it still couldn't resist the temptation of the spiritual-liquid-infused earthworm.

The float bobbed up and down!

Splash!

He sprang up and abruptly raised his arm, but heard only a plash of water falling back down. The familiar black tail flicked in the air for a moment before plunging back into the water.

The fishhook swung idly before his eyes, completely empty.

"..."

A painfully familiar scene. Chen Yu watched quietly, his expression somewhat helpless, though inwardly he actually felt a wave of relief.

Good, very good. As long as the fish was still there.

He threaded a second earthworm and cast it out once more.

Eat! Take a big bite!

At the same time, the five fingers of his left hand formed a virtual pinch, and a mass of vital energy hovered and gathered in his palm.

A faint white mist flickered and appeared in the pool—that was the vital energy released from his body, drifting uncertainly behind the float, poised for action.

Couldn't hook it? No, as long as it took the bait, that was enough.

Even if he had to haul it up by brute force this time, he was going to fish this fellow out! He glanced back at the bamboo basket leaning against the sandbank and the wooden talismans inside.

A smile gradually surfaced on his face. This time, even if the Ancestral Taoist descended in a divine manifestation, it wouldn't be able to save you!

...

He lifted the rod and broke the surface. A flash of familiar black made Chen Yu's lips curl upward slightly. Heh, it's here.

The next moment, the creature resorted to its old trick. This repeat offender was skilled in its methods and, entirely as he expected, unhooked itself once again while swallowing the delicious bait, leaving the angler only a mocking black tail-shadow.

Slap!

The externalized vital energy rapidly condensed, transforming into a massive handprint. The textures were vague and indistinct, but its size was certainly not small. The handprint came down with a flip, stirring up massive sprays of water!

Considering his spiritual mind could not reach the location of the float, Chen Yu decisively released his vital energy, relying on the qi that could reach up to five zhang away to grab the target.

However, the precision was still somewhat lacking, and he could barely compress the energy into the shape of a hand. Not only was the noise of the palm strike massive, but the handprint also became uncontrolled within mere breaths, swaying unsteadily as it enclosed the black fish right in the center of its palm, preparing to bring it over. Unexpectedly, before his untethered spiritual power could successfully receive it, the handprint burst with a loud bang into billowing waves of qi, whipping up bursts of water mist.

As for the black fish, it narrowly escaped, making off with his second earthworm.

"Again!"

Chen Yu was not discouraged. Sitting cross-legged to regulate his breath for a moment, he fished several strings of wooden talismans from the bamboo basket, untied the connecting ropes, and drove them one by one into the sandbar. Not stopping there, he went to the opposite side of the stone pool and planted a full circle of them, even wedging several into the crevices of the stone cliff.

Every wooden talisman had been infused with a certain amount of vital energy, stored within the formation runes, and would not dissipate for an hour or two.

Returning to his casting spot, he threw out the third cast of the day.

At the same time, his spiritual mind reflected outward while he held the largest and most intricately patterned talisman plate in his palm, cupping it.

He waited slowly.

Chen Yu did not believe that the black fish would give up a delicacy delivered right to its doorstep. At most, after hesitating for a moment, it would find such temptation impossible to resist.

Sure enough, after merely a dozen breaths, the float began to undulate once more.

A flash of jade-white light gleamed. As Chen Yu pulled the rod, he directly activated the wooden talismans.

The one in his hand was not the core of the entire array—the formations he created never had the concept of a "core." It merely served to trigger the other wooden talismans that he could not easily manipulate directly.

In an instant, a black fish was hauled out of the surface of the water.

Before it could unhook itself and escape, amid the churning ripples of the water surface, streams of water surged upward in reverse, hanging suspended in the sky!

A drop, two drops... they closed in around the black fish.

Pat-pat, pat-pat. The water droplets pelted its body, and the fish, failing to fall back down as it had already unhooked, was instead pushed upward by the counterforce. It began to struggle, only to be met with an even larger mass of water that enveloped it, making it difficult to break free.

Bubbles churned and bubbled as the black fish swam frantically inside the sphere of water. However, more and more converging currents poured in, making the water body increasingly massive until it finally formed a sphere two zhang in diameter, floating more than six chi above the water surface in mid-air.

Inside, the water currents rolled, sometimes forming whirlpools, sometimes turning into crashing currents. The black fish seemed to have fallen into a vortex in the ocean or a waterfall in a mountain ravine, rushing back and forth yet forever unable to leave the sphere of water to reach the outside world.

"Got you."

Chen Yu rolled up his trousers and waded forward a few steps, looking at the gigantic sphere of water floating overhead amidst the hazy, rising mist.

This was far more spectacular than the trick he used for watering flowers and grass.

He extended his palm and executed the technique of object manipulation. The next moment, the water sphere split apart, and a body of water the size of a human head was squeezed out and isolated, with the black fish floating inside it.

With the blessing of his spiritual mind, lifting and supporting it was indeed much more convenient. As soon as he stepped onto the sandbar, cracking sounds echoed from the circle behind him.

The wooden talismans could no longer hold out, and his vital energy was depleted.

He turned his head back just in time to see the gigantic water sphere collapse and shatter abruptly, like the collapsing of a heavenly river, setting off a thunderous vibration that shook the entire stone pool!