Volume 1: Rebirth Chapter 2: Snatching a New Body and Reborn

  The night scenery of Shanghai Bund is so brilliant, coinciding with the National Day, students in groups of three or five, waving inflatable sticks on the streets of the Bund, chasing and playing, laughing constantly, adding a few more joyful atmosphere to the festive atmosphere.

  Suddenly a sharp cry for help came from the banks of the Huangpu River, "Save someone! Someone jumped into the water..."

  The one who screamed was a girl with short hair that reached her ears, looking very delicate and no more than fifteen or sixteen years old. At this moment, her bright black eyes were filled with anxiety and panic, her hands tightly grasping the railing, half of her body leaning out as she desperately shouted: "Xiao Yi... Xiao Yi, don't scare me..." The girl's eyes had already welled up with tears.

  The girl's cries attracted a crowd of onlookers, but none of them jumped into the water to rescue her. Instead, they stood by and started discussing among themselves. Seeing that no one was going to jump in to save her, the girl became so anxious that she burst into tears. However, she herself couldn't swim, and as she gazed out at the dark river surface, her ten fingers gripping the railing turned white from exerting too much force.

  "Uncle, please, save Xiao Yi...!" The girl was so anxious that she grabbed the hem of a middle-aged man's clothes who was nearby and begged.

  "Little girl, don't hold onto me! There are so many people here, go ask them for help, I won't go into the water." The middle-aged man hastily shook his head, broke free from the girl's grasp and retreated into the crowd. In his heart, he thought to himself: "The river is so deep that you can't even see a ripple on the surface, how could someone who fell in possibly survive? I don't want to catch a cold or fever from going into the water to rescue someone."

  The girl's helpless expression was pitiful, her pleading gaze cast towards the onlookers, but all she got in return were more whispers and murmurs. Just when the girl had lost all hope, someone with sharp eyes suddenly let out a shout of surprise, "Look quickly! There's something moving in the river... it's a person!"

  This cry for help became the girl's lifesaver, and she hastily looked out at the river. The girl couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, "Xiao Yi, is that you? Don't scare me like that, hurry up and swim to shore!"

  The figure in the icy river water gradually approached the shore, climbed up with a thick rope next to the railing, and the onlookers' discussion voices became even louder, accompanied by no small amount of blame.

  "Whose child is this, so disobedient? It's easy for adults at home to raise you, what's wrong with learning, learn to kill yourself, play with your heartbeat!" A middle-aged woman scolded.

  "I like it, don't bother about me." The boy who climbed up the shore was about ten years old, with a naturally good-looking face, a high nose and thin lips that inadvertently showed a hint of arrogance.

  The young man's icy response obviously infuriated the middle-aged woman, who was about to give him a good scolding. But before she could do so, he simply ignored her and quickly walked forward, grabbed the girl's hand and bluntly said, "Let's go."

  The girl felt that the boy's behavior after landing was very unusual, but on one hand she was also afraid of being surrounded by so many people pointing and staring, and on the other hand Xiao Yi's strength was great, so she immediately half-pulled and half-dragged her to follow the boy out of the crowd.

  They ran wildly until they were out of everyone's sight, and the boy pulled the girl into a small alley before stopping. "Xiao Jing, I hope you can keep tonight's events a secret."

  Feeling the boy's uncharacteristic indifference, the girl gazed at him in confusion. "Xiao Yi, don't worry about the exam anymore, okay? Do you know that just now you almost scared me to death? You know how anxious I was on the shore?" As she spoke, the tears welling up in her eyes finally fell.

  The young man slightly furrowed his brow and repeated: "Xiao Jing, keep tonight's matter a secret for me."

  The girl's name is Su Jingyi, and the boy was also a third-year junior high school student. In this confused youth, the immature interactions between the girl and the boy had been going on for two months. This National Day outing to the Bund was something they both thought was extremely romantic, but unexpectedly, the boy suddenly jumped into the river.

  Su Jingyi nodded with tears in her eyes "I won't tell anyone about what happened tonight, but you have to promise me that this will never happen again. What you did just now made me want to jump down with you."

  It seemed that due to the sincerity in Jingyi's words, the youth's cold expression slightly softened, revealing a somewhat stiff smile as he said: "Alright, I'll agree to it. You go back first, I live closer by, just walking back will do."

  After finishing speaking, the young man involuntarily pulled out a wet fifty-yuan bill from his pocket and stuffed it into the girl's hand. He hailed a taxi, put the girl in the back seat, and quickly closed the door, giving the driver an address.

  "Xiao Yi, remember to call me tomorrow, or I'll come looking for you..." The taxi had already started moving, and the girl stuck out half her head from the window and shouted back: "Remember... give me a call." Apparently she still wasn't very reassured about the "first love boyfriend" who had just tried to kill himself a few minutes before.

  Watching the taxi disappear into the distance, Xiao Yi finally turned around and walked towards the other end of the alley, a hint of a smile that was not quite suitable for his age hanging at the corner of his mouth. "After wandering in the world with a strand of soul that had merged with the divine consciousness of his past life for a hundred days, he finally found a body that could pass as decent before his form dispersed and his spirit scattered. It's indeed a narrow escape from death."

  The Cang Mang Mountain was not destroyed, and Chu Yu did not disappear as he had expected. Although his physical body was completely destroyed, his primordial spirit was refined by the divine thunderbolt to 99%, but in the end, it allowed him to escape with that one strand of primordial spirit that had merged with his past life's divine consciousness.

  To be honest, Chu Yu's current state of existence as a stray soul is not much different from being completely annihilated. At this point, he is even weaker than the weakest wandering spirits or wild ghosts. If it weren't for the fact that he chose the precious land of Cang Mang Mountain as his place of reincarnation, it's likely that if he had chosen a location with slightly weaker spiritual energy, even if he managed to escape with a strand of his soul, he would have been devoured by stronger spirits in an instant.

  "Reincarnating himself was out of the question, and he wasn't even a complete Yuan Shen body. He had to avoid even a lone ghost or wild spirit... The only way for him to reincarnate was to find someone who had just died, whose soul had dissipated but whose body was still intact, with their yang energy not yet exhausted, and merge with them."

  After making up his mind, Chu Yu specially chose some popular places to try his luck. In nearly a hundred days of wandering, Chu Yu almost traveled all over the country, but he still couldn't find a body that met his requirements. After all, this condition was too harsh. Even though Chu Yu had encountered several people who had committed suicide, when he found them, they were all dead. With Chu Yu's current abilities, it was naturally impossible for him to perform soul fusion on a body without yang energy.

  It was also Chu Yu's luck that during the hundred-day period when he could hardly preserve his last bit of yuan Shen, he found an excellent body-snatching target in Huangpu River - Xiao Yi, who had just died and his spirit had dissipated while his yang energy was exhausted.

  From the moment he floated ashore, Xiao Yi was dead, dying in the vast river waters, while Chu Yu, the 16th generation master of Lianbao Pavilion, finally seized the opportunity to reincarnate after experiencing a great calamity.