Yun Jhin woke up from his dream with a feeling of cold sweat on his caterpillar body but it was just a hollow feeling as he couldn't truly sweat, he stood there unmoving as he started to analyze his soul and he said slowly in his mind:
"A soul leakage... this reincarnation is more and more problematic, how can I fix the hole in my soul?"
Yun Jhin knew of many ways to fix it but he needed the proper materials, unfortunately for him, most of the materials were either extremely rare or expensive or just out of his proverbial hands right now.
Yun Jhin knew that if he lost memories he would continue to lose them to the point his soul would become empty like one of a newborn he would transform into an idiot for the rest of his life!
Because the hole would remain there no matter what he would learn in the future it would leak from there slowly and transform him back into what he was before.
Yun Jhin slowly pondered what to do as his body was now full of energy, there was a more primitive way to fix the problem, and since he was in the right place to fix his soul he guessed he could only take this one.
He started to look around and he ignored the sleeping undead, he needed to find souls!
Souls were of the energy plane and they could be used to heal someone's else wounded soul through a certain technique he knew, however, this technique put a huge burden on the user and if he wasn't in his right mind there was a chance to develop a multiple personality disorder or even explode!
Luckily for Yun Jhin, he had mastered this technique back in one of his older reincarnations, as he looked around he finally spotted a darkened patch of energy, it was a tortured soul of the undead, it became an evil spirit after being unable to achieve reincarnation up till now, Yun Jhin quickly approached him and opened his 'mouth' and immediately the soul went directly into his body where his soul started to refine the soul who was screeching and shouting.
Dark Soul flames came out of Yun Jhin's soul as he refined the weaker soul however the soul was too weak and he couldn't patch the hole at all, it helped him but it was only a temporary seal, he needed a stronger soul, but where could he find such a soul?
This was a cemetery meant for the failed experiments of the nearby sect, there was no way Yun Jhin would find a good enough soul to fix his soul leakage problem when suddenly a notification from the Caterpillar system appeared:
[Soul devoured, devour 100 more souls to transform into a soul-devouring caterpillar.]
[Soul devouring caterpillar gets the ability to self heal through eating other souls, however, if you evolve to the soul-devouring caterpillar you can't revert to your family eating caterpillar.] (...)
I could care less what this damned system told me if I needed to become a soul-devouring caterpillar to fix my soul it didn't matter, my memories were more important than this body, the soul-devouring caterpillar was still a cultivating insect so I could still make do with that evolution, it had fewer evolutions than the family eating caterpillar but I didn't mean to evolve from this weak caterpillars anyway.
I continuously searched the catacombs for souls and fortunately, the souls hid from the apprentices of above, unlike the dumb ghouls the souls had a little bit of clarity in them that scared them away from the apprentices who would harvest them for soul pills.
Instead of becoming soul pills, they would become my food! (...)
Yun Jhin searched and devoured, searched, and devoured, always walking forward, there was no taste nor crunches, it felt hollow as he continuously refined the souls, it was just like a chore for him, it was harder to find the souls rather than refining them. After a few days of searching the catacombs, he finally refined 100 souls!
He created a cocoon over himself as the system said in his ears:
[Evolving from family eating caterpillar to soul-devouring caterpillar, power changed, the body adapted to better capture souls, strength reduced, vitality reduced, agility increased, rank reset to 1.]
Yun Jhin shook his head as he left the cocoon, now he changed to a blue spectral caterpillar with strange purple dots as its eyes, his length remained the same but he grew wings and he felt faster than before, the power of the family eating caterpillar and soul-devouring caterpillar was equal it's just that the family eating caterpillar was a mutant among its kin and it could evolve more times, so it had better potential. Unlike the family eating caterpillar, the soul-devouring one could only reach rank 6 instead of 9.
The higher the rank the caterpillar could reach before evolving the better it was, at maximum, it could reach the rank of 10,000. However those were the devilish and godly caterpillars of legends that Yun Jhin haven't met even when he reached the peak of his power, they were elusive creatures that liked to hibernate for the time when they would evolve in their butterfly form. The hibernation period of such creatures was in the millions of years or even tens of millions, technically speaking these types of beings were the best for Yun Jhin as he wanted a longer and longer life expectancy.
Yun Jhin shook his head as he cleared his mind using a mantra he knew from his previous life, he looked down at his body as he felt that now with the help of his constitution he could fix a patch in his soul as long as he ate enough souls, even notified him with the number:
[To fix the host's soul 1000 weak souls are needed, 100 medium souls or 1 strong soul.]
Weak souls came from people without any cultivation, medium souls came from people withing the first cultivation realms while strong souls came from those within the middle, there was no way to get any of those, even if he could drag some cultivators into the tombs there wasn't a good way for him to kill them and absorb their souls. Only if he could control the ghouls...
Suddenly a flash appeared in his purple eyes, maybe as a soul-devouring caterpillar he could control the zombies!
He found a sleeping zombie and used his mind to imprint a contract into the zombie's empty mind, suddenly the zombie's eyes opened as it stood there without moving, his wide eyes were looking at Yun Jhin without saying anything, Yun Jhin gave him some mental commands and he moved as he intended. Yun Jhin started laughing as he looked at the zombie but all that came out of his body was a high-pitched chirp sound.
Yun Jhin ignored the chirping sound and then he continued to enslave more and more zombies, unfortunately, his soul was injured and he needed to enslave only a limited number, he thought that 20 zombies were enough to deal with the weaklings outside as long as he controlled them, he was a master in battle formations and the apprentices shouldn't know any techniques besides conjuring fire.
Yun Jhin grinned as he looked at his zombie squadron and then made them drag some apprentices under the ground along with his help and soul cries they dragged two unsuspecting apprentices under the ground they were unknown to Yun Jhin but he could care less, he immediately sent a soul cry inside the duo's mind and shook the membrane of their souls making them both nauseous, as a soul-devouring caterpillar he gained the ability to control his soul better however his body still wasn't strong enough to fully handle it, at the same time it was also injured so he could only use what he dubbed as 'parlor tricks'.
However, these 'parlor tricks' of his were most deadly to newbies who only entered the first level of the earthly domain, they could barely conjure some flames with their inner qi as they tried to defeat the zombies while their soul shook, unfortunately for the duo the zombies bit them hard scratched at them and even ripped one of their arms off before they both died.
They died a painful death and their souls were full of vengeance towards these beings that dragged them under the catacombs where they found their resting place, a thing for them as the vengeful soul was the favorite snack of Yun Jhin, he opened his 'mouth' and absorbed both souls he now just needed 98 more!
Yun Jhin knew how evil sects acted, at most, they would send more people to investigate, if they still didn't find anything after they lost enough people they would just 'recruit' more people and send them here, in the end, if they didn't find anything they would finally put a middle level to investigate, by then he would have already fixed his soul and left the cemetery!
Yun Jhin chuckled as he waited for more apprentices to enter the cemetery, to him they were the sweetest nectar and the best nourishment to his injured soul, his soul wasn't even at 1% of his original power or else these souls wouldn't do a damn thing to heal it. But for him, it was a stroke of luck and a curse at the same time that he was reborn as a caterpillar if he got reincarnated anywhere else with this soul leakage he would have most likely become an idiot.
Yun Jhin sighed as he enslaved the duo's bodies, due to the dark energy in the cemetery most bodies thrown here would become undead after a while, to not waste his time Yun Jhin already put two contract seals in their memory sea, when their body fully turned into undead he would have already controlled them!
Yun Jhin waited for hours and hours that turned into days before some other apprentices were sent out to investigate, now there were 3 more making their number 5 in total.
Yun Jhin just took it as extra food as his two new cronies were already up and ready, he killed two of his normal zombies and changed them with the cultivator ones who had a sturdier body.
Yun Jhin knew when to attack, suddenly when the team of 5 people got under Jhin's location one of the now undead cultivators immediately dragged an unsuspecting apprentice to his death, Jhin immediately killed him and absorbed his soul refining it into his own.
The other apprentices weren't so easy to trick as they already knew where to look, their leader looked at the ground and shouted:
"They are in the catacombs be wary of the hands!"
Yun Jhin shook his head, the man's warning wouldn't do anything, they were doomed to join his soul as nutrients so he could repair the leakage, just like everyone else that appeared in front, be it either friend or foe, Yun Jhin was a man who would get what he wanted no matter the price or the actions he needed to take.
Suddenly one of the apprentices from above shot a fireball that immediately incinerated one of the zombies.
Yun Jhin narrowed his purple dots that acted as his eyes as he looked up, it was time to show these people what a reincarnated cultivator could do.