Konoha, reported by the Fourth Hokage at the start.

Chapter 199 The Wonderful Uses of the Earth Grudge Technique

P.S.: Only one update today, I'm too dizzy.

"No!"

The shadow clone spirit merges into the ninja's soul, but like water and oil, although they seem to be integrated, they are actually unrelated. The shadow clone cannot control the ninja's soul.

"Is it because there are still mental fluctuations present?"

Li Yao pondered again.

The soul extracted by the Rinnegan's eye power chakra is not dead; it is still alive and therefore continues to emit the unique spiritual energy fluctuations of its owner.

However, without the nourishment of the body, the spiritual energy emitted by the soul is an irreversible depletion of the soul.

It's like the soul is constantly dissipating, only it's dissipating faster than when someone is killed.

The fluctuations of spiritual energy are equivalent to the genetic code of the body's cells. The reason why the shadow clone spirit cannot possess a soul is because the spiritual energy fluctuations simulated by the spirit are inconsistent, so the ninja's soul rejects the fusion of the shadow clone spirit.

Thinking of this, Li Yao immediately instructed his shadow clone spirit to alter the fluctuations of his spiritual energy.

"It's done!"

This time it really worked.

Li Yao sensed that the moment the shadow clone spirit changed the fluctuations of spiritual energy, the ninja's soul absorbed the shadow clone spirit as if absorbing the dissipated spiritual energy fluctuations.

He can control... um... what is this?

"It's this person's will!"

Li Yao's expression suddenly froze, his joyful look turning to ashes. This time, he had indeed merged into the body, but a will within his soul was rejecting the shadow clone spirit. Whenever the shadow clone spirit attempted to control the spiritual energy emanating from the soul, this will would subconsciously resist, preventing the shadow clone spirit from controlling the soul.

Even... with the integration of the shadow clone spirit, this ninja's soul is evolving, evolving from a demented soul into a spirit with thought and logic.

"It still doesn't work!"

Li Yao was somewhat frustrated. With a thought, he immediately dispelled the shadow clone and purified the extracted ninja soul, preventing it from evolving.

Although the soul is senile, it still possesses basic will.

Li Yao's shadow clone spirit body is infused with Li Yao's consciousness, and is essentially a manifestation of Li Yao's will.

His desire to control other people's souls will inevitably be thwarted by the will and instinct within those souls.

Without addressing the will within another's soul, possession cannot succeed.

Just like how, to possess someone's body, you must first kill that person's soul.

Otherwise, how can one body and two souls coexist?

The same applies to soul possession. The will within the soul must be destroyed before Li Yao's will can take over another's soul, complete the soul possession, and become a perfect clone that he can independently control.

Although this experiment still failed.

But the path is clear; now there's only one problem.

How to resolve the will within the soul?

Or rather, how to kill the will within the soul?

When the soul dissipates, the will naturally dissipates as well.

The key question is how to make the will dissipate while the soul remains intact.

How do you do that?

Li Yao closed his eyes and pondered.

The world of ninjas is made up of chakra.

Chakra is a magical energy that can even turn reality into an illusion, so it must have the ability to destroy the will within a soul without harming the soul itself.

Is there any ninjutsu that could be used in this regard?

Li Yao carefully searched his memory bank, filtering through all the ninjutsu he knew, had seen, or had heard of.

“Eh…”

Li Yao's eyes suddenly lit up. He hadn't expected that... he would actually find a ninjutsu that might work.

"The Earthly Grudge Technique!!!"

Li Yao never expected that this secret art of immortality, which he had looked down upon, would bring him hope.

Unlike the principle of possession and rebirth, the key to immortality in the Earth Grudge Secret Technique is also to seize the heart of another person, which seems to be the same as possession of another person's body.

But they are fundamentally different.

Possession is essentially about discarding one's own body and replacing it with a younger body that can live longer.

While the Earth Grudge Secret Technique also seems to involve replacing one's heart with a younger one to live on, one is passive and the other is active.

Possession and rebirth is a passive process of changing bodies, where only the soul adapts to the body. However, each body adapts to a unique soul, which leads to rejection reactions from the body and soul during possession.

The Earthly Grudge Secret Technique is not available.

Because it's not a simple and crude heart replacement, but rather the assimilation of the stolen heart, using the Earth Grudge Secret Technique's chakra to assimilate the heart into one that one can absolutely control.

Although this would mean that the assimilated heart could only use one chakra attribute.

However, it can also inherit all the ninjutsu that the previous owner of the heart possessed using that attribute of chakra.

Originally, Li Yao didn't think much of this shortcoming.

However, this weakness may now play a crucial role in possession of a soul.

As mentioned earlier, chakra is formed by the fusion of spiritual energy and physical energy.

Since the Earth Grudge Fear Secret Technique Chakra can assimilate the heart and control the heart and related attribute chakra of others, it means that it can assimilate the spiritual energy of others, allowing the heart of others to continue to release spiritual energy fluctuations after being assimilated.

Of course, it's also possible that the Earth Grudge Fear technique's chakra only assimilates the hearts of others, while the spiritual energy is still provided by the technique's master.

However, regardless of the circumstances, the assimilation of spiritual energy by the Earthly Grudge Secret Technique is useful for soul possession.

"Bang!"

Li Yao immediately created a shadow clone that transformed into a spirit and once again possessed... no, assimilated, the soul of a ninja.

This time, Li Yaoying's clone spirit first used the Earth Grudge Fear Secret Technique chakra to assimilate the ninja's soul.

"It works!!!"

Li Yao's lips curled up slightly as he suppressed his joy, fearing another failure and nothing to show for it, and continued to observe.

The Earth Grudge Secret Technique is like ink that devours everything, turning everything it touches black.

The ninja's soul is being assimilated little by little by the Earth Grudge Fear secret technique's chakra.

"No!"

"No!"

In a daze, Li Yao seemed to hear the will within the assimilated soul emitting an instinctive wail.

After a while, the wailing clearly echoed in the ears of the shadow clone spirit.

This is not an illusion; the will within the ninja's soul is being assimilated and dissipated, but his soul body shows no signs of rapidly dissipating.

"Is it going to work out?"

Li Yao's body trembled uncontrollably, his eyes filled with both anticipation and trepidation.

Li Yao had developed a psychological trauma from repeatedly thinking he had succeeded only to fail.

"Snapped!"

Just as the will within his soul was assimilated and dissipated by the Earth Grudge Fear Secret Technique chakra, the ninja's soul suddenly exploded like fireworks, like water in a balloon that loses its comfort the moment the balloon is punctured and then bursts.

Why?

Li Yao felt a tremor in his heart, but quickly recovered. Having experienced several failures before, he knew that soul possession was not so easy to succeed. He just wanted to know why.

"Could it be because the soul was extracted?"

Li Yao pondered.

Once the soul is extracted and no longer protected by the body, and the will is assimilated and dissipated, is the soul like water without a container, which will disperse all at once?

Thinking this, Li Yao created another shadow clone spirit to possess a ninja, and used the Earth Grudge Fear Secret Technique to assimilate the ninja's soul within the ninja's body.

"So hard!"

Li Yao frowned and withdrew his shadow clone spirit body.

If the soul is not extracted and remains inside the ninja's body, it's like the soul is wearing a thick layer of armor. The Earth Grudge Fear Secret Technique's chakra can't be said to have no effect on the soul's assimilation ability, but it's impossible to achieve successful assimilation without taking several hundred years.

"But at least it proves that this is feasible."

Li Yao smiled slightly again.

For the soul, will is like an invisible force that binds and aggregates the most basic soul particles together to form the soul, while the body is like a human-shaped container that holds the soul inside.

Once the soul is extracted, without the protection of the physical body, the will that binds and maintains the basic form of the soul dissipates. The soul will then dissipate quickly, like air in a balloon, as the balloon bursts, and will no longer maintain the shape of a balloon.

However, if there is a physical container, it will be like the air in two layers of balloons. Even if one layer of balloon bursts, the other layer will maintain the basic shape of the air.

Similarly, the soul within the body, even if its will dissipates, will maintain its physical form and will not collapse; it will simply remain in a state of confusion and bewilderment.

The Earthly Grudge Secret Technique is used to seize the heart in this way.

By using the heart, one can preserve the scattered spiritual energy and retain the chakra attribute within the heart.

Now Li Yao only needs to make Di Yuanyu accelerate the assimilation process.

Without the power and chakra of the Rinnegan, Li Yao would have been helpless in this regard.

Now, he just needs to develop a good way to combine the use of Rinnegan eye power chakra and Earth Grudge Fear secret technique chakra.

So, for the next month, in addition to capturing every ninja who attacked the village, Li Yao would also travel to more distant places to capture wandering ninjas in order to experiment with and develop the Perfect Clone Technique.

(End of this chapter)