Lin Chen had never seen a tiger like this before.
The colossal creature, two stories tall, walked slowly through the bamboo grove with its head raised. Its sharply defined musculature, like hewn rock, formed the shape of a tiger as people understood it, yet the fur covering its body grew wildly like needlepoints, gleaming with sacred golden light.
The patterns in its fur had faded under the wear of time, and many parts of its body were damaged, exposing stark white bones beneath flesh and hide. Yet this did nothing to diminish its majesty; instead, it made the creature all the more terrifying.
It advanced toward the Players step by step. The dense bamboo grove around it parted to either side, opening a path wide enough for it to pass through.
Even the mist shrank back into the corners, afraid of touching even the slightest part of its body.
The grotesque tiger demon stopped before the Players and slowly lowered its head, as wide as three people standing side by side, looking down arrogantly at the four below.
Two pools of green flame burned above its high cheekbones, forming enormous tiger eyes. The breath from its nostrils stirred the mountain winds, scraping over the Players' skin and bringing a faint prickling pain.
It was no longer merely a fierce animal. It was more like an instrument of divine punishment, or a natural disaster born from nature's wrath.
The might of the mountain forest had condensed within the most dreadful creature of the mountain. Before it, an individual was like an ant trying to shake a tree—unable to resist, unable to affect it.
At that moment, everyone truly understood the meaning of the words "Mountain God."
Calling the tiger demon a Mountain God was not a term of respect, but an