The right way to play the game

So this was how you were supposed to play this game?

Lin Feng took off his helmet and set it on the table.

He sank into thought.

Instead of the excitement of clearing the stage, he felt a faint, inexplicable sense of dissatisfaction.

He had cleared it.

Just barely.

The final battle had been far more brutal than Lin Feng could have imagined.

He finally understood. It wasn't that his Swordsmanship Mastery (passive) was inadequate. He was.

Swordsmanship Mastery (passive) was the skill, while his own cultivation was his mana pool.

Without enough mana, the skill couldn't deal enough damage.

He felt that there was something intriguing about this game. It didn't seem to exist simply for him to clear its stages.

Act two: Gestation.

What the entire bandit stronghold had been gestating wasn't the roundworms inside those corpses' bellies.

What had been gestating in act two was the Blood God born of the entire stronghold.

What did the Blood God look like?

A living person stripped of his skin.

He stood about a meter eighty tall, blood-red from head to toe.

Some absolute madman had peeled the largest organ off his own body, exposing all the yellow fat, muscle, and fascia beneath.

An ordinary person who did that would have died of a bacterial infection long ago.

But the Blood God hadn't, because he was a living zombie. He had no skin, nor did he fear bacterial infections.

He looked especially terrifying.

More importantly, the Blood God in his first phase was stronger than an ox. He moved on all fours like a tiger or leopard. The moment Third Lady encountered him, he sprang out and crushed her throat in one hand.

Fortunately, Third Lady had managed to deal damage before she died. She fired her blow dart, and a purple, radiating wound appeared on the Blood God's leg.

His muscles began to dissolve.

Alive, Third Lady had possessed a distinctive allure.

Dead, she was utterly horrifying. After she died, the insect nest inside her body went out of control, and swarms of venomous insects crawled out. Yet they failed to inflict fatal damage on the Blood God. His blood was even more potent than their venom.

The venomous insects bit into him, then fell off in showers, littering the ground. Black patches spread across the Blood God's body, hampering his movements.

Seizing the opportunity, Lin Feng and Hundred-Household Officer Zhu attacked.

Hundred-Household Officer Zhu's abilities were astonishing. A seasoned battlefield veteran, he wielded his saber like a vicious streak of lightning. There were no flourishes, only techniques for killing.

Dragon-Tiger Qi protected him, clashing with the Blood God's aura and growing stronger against a stronger foe!

The Great Ming's national fortune was only just beginning to rise. It was ineffective against the Gu Worms and Worm Thralls.

Against the Blood God, its effects were astonishing.

Blood from the web of his hand empowered his Wild Goose Feather Saber.

One slash, and the Blood God began to burn.

His blood and muscles alike were scorched by golden flames!

Lin Feng borrowed a little blood and smeared it on his sword. His blade moved like a startled dragon, nearly killing the Blood God several times.

Nearly killing him meant that just a little more strength would have done it.

After finishing the game, Lin Feng reviewed his performance with a frown, feeling no joy.

No. This wasn't right. There were still so many things I could have done better!

It wasn't just a matter of strength.

"Just reviewing it afterward, I've already found plenty of openings I missed. The fight should have been much easier, but in the moment, my awareness still wasn't good enough..."

"Decisions on the battlefield shouldn't rely entirely on instinct..."

"My proficiency was a problem, too."

"So many opportunities were right in front of me, and I still missed them."

"I didn't seize them."

"It wasn't just my physical abilities. I was still too bad at this, holding a divine weapon without knowing how to use it."

"Awareness, timing... The Blood God wasn't hard to kill in his first phase. His blood was poisonous, but he couldn't spray it out. That was an opportunity right there."

Recalling the battle, Lin Feng frowned. He earnestly reviewed the game, searching for his shortcomings!

As a gamer,

being bad wasn't frightening.

Being bad without knowing it was the truly frightening part.

No matter how miraculous this game was, Lin Feng's competitive spirit would never change.

If he wasn't playing to clear stages or get stronger, what was he playing for?

If he wanted to relax, couldn't he just play a match-three game?

Barely scraping through a game this hardcore was practically sacrilege!

He picked up a chopstick. As he recalled the battle, he unconsciously thrust it into the air, producing a series of sharp whooshes!

"After that battle, I'm much stronger than I was before."

Lin Feng could feel the difference clearly. He clicked his teeth together.

[Name: Lin Feng]

[Class: None]

[Status: None]

[Skill: Swordsmanship Mastery (permanent passive)]

[Equipment: None]

[Fortune: Seven qian (fortune can empower spells, strengthen the body, and purchase skills)]

[Exchange: Unlocked, expandable (click here to expand)]

[Remarks: Nothing to say]

Clearing the game had earned him Two Coins of Fortune. The exchange opened, and a list unfolded before him.

Lin Feng had originally thought this shop might offer plenty of overwhelmingly powerful skills and spells.

Instead, the exchange options before him were rather lackluster.

[Skills {click to expand}]

[Items (click to expand)]

[Miscellaneous (click to expand)]

Opening the skills category, Lin Feng saw some familiar names.

[Veteran's Sense (passive)]

[Battlefield Resolve (passive)]

[Unyielding (passive)]

[Ectopic Ghost Bones (passive)]

[Ill-Fated Path (passive)]

[Peng Family Saber Technique (lower ninth rank)]

[Buddha's Sutra of the Yaksha King of Medicine (false) (lower Eighth Rank)]

After a little analysis, Lin Feng confirmed that these were all skills belonging to the teammates who had survived until the end: Hundred-Household Officer Zhu and Liao Chi!

Three people had survived to the final battle.

Him, Hundred-Household Officer Zhu, and Liao Chi.

The Blood God's flesh seemed to have undergone some mutation.

Even ordinary sword thrusts struck sparks off it.

It was absurdly hard.

Fortunately, ordinary swordsmanship also included footwork. Once the fighting began in earnest, Lin Feng followed the eight trigrams underfoot, evading several of the Blood God's killing moves.

Liao Chi, thin as a rake, spun his Prayer Wheel. The Blood Buddha behind him acted to restrain the Blood God, pinning him down for six breaths.

The Blood God lay sprawled on the ground like a turtle held flat against it.

Yet the Blood God feared neither pain nor death. The Wild Fox Zen Liao Chi had learned was strange: a mismatched blend of Heavenly Demon Arts passed down by the Mongol-Yuan Yellow Sect, some Great Hand Seal techniques, and a little ancient witchcraft.

Now Lin Feng knew it came from a false sutra.

The Blood Buddha assisting in battle—or perhaps it was the medicine yaksha—couldn't absorb anyone else's blood and qi, so it absorbed Liao Chi's instead.

Liao Chi had bled himself to death.

Before he died, Liao Chi condensed his magical power into a Demon Seed, which settled between Lin Feng's brows. Only then did Lin Feng understand what strength "approaching Eighth Rank" meant.

First came an all-around enhancement of his body. Originally, he had possessed no more than the body of a reasonably healthy young man. Being something of a homebody, his cardiopulmonary fitness hadn't been particularly good. But after the Demon Seed settled between his brows, a force emerged from that spot like a wellspring of power.

With a light jump, he rose three zhang—about ten meters, the height of a small two-story building.

Though it might not have sounded like much, that practically made him a miniature superhuman. In the end, Lin Feng beheaded the Blood God with a single stroke, eliminating him.

He had won, yet he had lost!