Surprise

They were sticks of incense, every last one.

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The smoke from those incense sticks seemed to flow with every step Master took. In a fleeting glimpse, Xu Feng even saw the smoke form a bridge.

It passed through the "Baleful Exit" propped open by the bamboo pole.

Xu Feng kept thinking back. This time, he tried to remember every word Master had said to him.

What he could not remember,

Xu Feng passed over.

Xu Feng was certain that during last night's Corpse Stitching in the game,

Master must have let something useful slip without realizing it.

And Xu Feng must have remembered it; otherwise, he would not have such a powerful "mental suggestion" now.

So which sentence was it?

"Virtue is cultivated in the heart."

"Incense can reach the gods."

Or was it, "Corpse Stitching means Stitching Calamity!"

Scenes kept flashing through Xu Feng's mind until he reached the moment when he and Master had stepped forward and wrestled the drowned body from the Yellow River onto the table.

Then Master had stitched the man.

What was wrong with that scene?

Everything was wrong with it.

There was something wrong with Master, and something wrong with the corpse.

For now, Xu Feng was the only one without a problem.

"Was that face and that strange bamboo grove why Master refused the Land God's protection? He had another method, but what was it?

A yin spirit? A ghost? Something he'd once provoked, or a consequence of this so-called Stitching Calamity technique?"

Xu Feng did not understand, so he worked backward from the result.

Others might think "Corpse Stitching, Fengxiong" was a single expression, but Xu Feng knew it was not. Fengxiong was a separate Skill—the one Zhao San wanted to learn.

Seen that way, this might be why Master had not sought the Land God's blessing this time!

He had wanted to bring out the "thing" behind him.

So he could not use the Land God's blessing.

Xu Feng was so deep in this meditation, replaying the past,

that he forcibly "ignored" the last sensation he had felt.

He recalled more of what had happened then.

The corpse dredged from the Yellow River had a huge gash across its neck.

The wound was packed with silt and had already turned white.

That was the wound a Corpse Sewer had to stitch shut.

It was also the first and only time Xu Feng had seen another face on the "male corpse."

Even now, out of the game, Xu Feng shuddered when he remembered that face.

Not merely because it defied reason.

But because it was too much like a person.

The face had grown on the male corpse.

As soon as it appeared, Master had pressed it down with a packet of incense ash, then forced the man's "harmful breath" out through his throat. When it emerged, it gave a strange laugh.

Afterward, Master covered the corpse's face with a piece of yellow silk and laid him down.

"When Master stitched the corpse at the end, he had a needle but no thread. His thread was the incense smoke rising from the ground."

Xu Feng slowly withdrew from his meditation.

He blew out the incense burner in one breath. If he started a fire here and burned the house down, that would really be something!

"Stitching Calamity... Zhao San's master hadn't lied. I really have learned only the barest surface of what he could do."

Xu Feng stood up. Even that brief meditation had left him feeling more exhausted.

Entering the game did not tire his body, but it drained his mind.

"Time to use that sleeping method!"

When Xu Feng had first started pushing himself hard, he had learned a way to sleep without lying on a bed. More precisely, it was an embarrassing posture: feet up, upper body down, with both hands clasped around his legs.

Not dignified in the least.

But that way of sleeping really did restore mental energy quickly.

Fragmented sleep.

He walked out of the storage room into the sunlight and remembered what Master had said after it was over: "Something in the Yellow River attached itself to the corpse. The lad killed himself."

As Xu Feng saw it,

the thing attached to the corpse

had to be that face.

Master had not explained what owned that face, or what it truly was, but it was certainly nothing good. Just seeing it had triggered Xu Feng's uncanny-valley response. Strictly speaking, the face was neither frightening nor evil, merely "eerie"—like some cold-blooded creature trying its hardest to imitate a person with "feelings" and "warmth."

By "cold-blooded creature,"

he did not mean the biological kind.

He meant the kind people imagined in their stereotypes.

And there was more.

If one thing desperately tried to disguise itself as another, despite being stronger than that other thing,

then apart from hunting,

Xu Feng could imagine no reason for it.

"This is a mess, brother. Inside the game and out!"

The game was troublesome enough.

Outside it, Xu Feng found things even harder to handle. His hand went instinctively to his neck, where his fingers touched a cord.

"Hm?"

"A cord?"

Xu Feng had walked out intending to return to his bedroom for a rest.

But after a few steps,

he stopped dead.

"Hm?"

The realization came late. Xu Feng immediately ran his hand over his neck again.

His fingers found the Protective Talisman.

"The Protective Talisman came out with me?"

He examined it in the sunlight and confirmed he was not mistaken!

It was the Peachwood Protective Talisman Uncle Liu the Executioner had given him in the game.

Xu Feng immediately brought up his Character Panel.

[Name: Xu Feng]

[Skills: Corpse Stitching (Familiar), Incense Manual Omen Reading (Ninth), Invoking the Gods' Protection (Familiar), Broad Learning and Rapid Recall (Beginner)]

[Items: Protective Talisman]

[Game Level: Novice]

[Reputation: Unknown]

[Privileges: None]

"Hm?"

This time, the Protective Talisman was not the only thing that had changed.

Xu Feng also noticed a change to the Character Panel.

One entry under [Skills] had vanished—probably because the Hidden Virtue Blessing had disappeared. But the Protective Talisman was listed under [Items], and he had brought it out.

"So items can be brought out. That much is certain. But what about the Dragon-Tiger Plaster? Master gave me that later. Why didn't it come out?"

At that thought,

Xu Feng suddenly remembered that when he had received an item, he had been given an "Equip?" option.

In theory, he could use an item in the game whether he chose it or not.

That made "Equip?" seem rather redundant.

But if equipping an item meant he could bring it out of the game, Xu Feng took that back.

It was not redundant at all.

And his Skills, Corpse Stitching and Invoking the Gods' Protection, had both changed to Familiar.

As for the newly appeared Broad Learning and Rapid Recall (Beginner),

what was that?

Was it a Skill he had gained through studying?

If so—

could a Skill he had learned on his own be made permanent through the Skill Bar?

By that logic,

Xu Feng said, "Does this mean I studied my way into the Celestial Phenomena Realm?"