The Mountain God's Gift

[Sword Heart Clarity]

Lin Feng stared at the skill.

He had finally gotten a drop.

His guess had been right. Passive skills like Hundred-Battle Veteran could be farmed.

Judging by its description, [Sword Heart Clarity] was a perception skill that allowed him to sense danger, both in combat and outside it.

Perhaps it could sense more than just danger.

Without hesitation, he chose to continue the game.

Back from the dead, he climbed off the ground and deftly pushed a Worm Thrall away with a light stroke of his sword, sending it into the Striped Tiger beside him.

Before Peng Tianli could even curse, Lin Feng was already running up the mountain. It was as though he had eyes in the back of his head. He refused to engage the Worm Thralls lunging at him and kept racing uphill.

The stockade's final secrets should all be inside the [Clear Spring Stockade Forbidden Ground].

It was also the only place he had never visited, and the most suspicious of all.

Once they obtained the Thirty-Six Stockades Map, the first-stage Blood God appeared.

If there was any place that could give birth to the Blood God...

It was the [Clear Spring Stockade Forbidden Ground].

If [Western Hunan Blood God] lived up to its name, and the final boss was a Western Hunan Blood God...

Then he really did need to take a look inside the [Clear Spring Stockade Forbidden Ground].

At the very least, he needed to find out what the Blood God actually was.

He charged onto the front plaza alone and reached the edge of the sea of corpses.

He sensed a faint hint of danger.

But it was negligible. As long as he did not court death by cutting open their bellies, no sea of worms would emerge.

Ignoring the corpses on either side, Lin Feng sprinted toward the old Banyan Tree. His entire body tensed when he reached it. As he crossed the ground, a sharp, stabbing sensation rose from the soles of his feet.

Almost dancing, he anticipated and dodged the Banyan Tree's aerial roots as they stabbed up from the ground. He held his breath to avoid the [Five-Organs Incense], ignored the tree, and finally slipped into the [Clear Spring Stockade Forbidden Ground].

The instant he entered, every hair on Lin Feng's body truly stood on end.

His whole body seemed to be screaming a warning. Before he could even thrust his sword, he saw an enormous, horrifying blood-red face.

Crack.

That was the sound of the bones in his neck breaking.

In short, someone had snapped his neck.

It had happened in a single encounter.

The Blood God had awakened!

"..."

Even after all Lin Feng had done to temper his courage, his heart still raced.

This time, he did not choose to continue the game. Instead, he started over. On his last life, Lin Feng opened his eyes and immediately took off running without a word. He sprinted so fast that the people beside him had no time to react.

He climbed the mountain, waded through water, crossed the sea of corpses, held his breath, avoided the [Five-Organs Incense], and slipped into the Forbidden Ground.

Straight to the point.

The Blood God had not awakened.

He was lying inside the Forbidden Ground.

Lin Feng felt no stabbing pain throughout his body.

There was no warning of danger.

The Clear Spring Stockade Forbidden Ground was a chamber formed from a Banyan Tree. Whether it was a marvel of nature or a clever human creation, Lin Feng could not tell. Wherever he looked, the walls of the tree chamber were covered in blood-red incantations.

An opening in the top of the Banyan Tree let daylight spill inside.

Beneath that daylight...

Those incantations were neither Daoist cloud script nor Buddhist Sanskrit. They were written in another script altogether, eerie and unnatural, like living worms burrowing into a person's eyes, ears, and brain.

And that was not all.

Lin Feng also saw old knots in the Banyan Tree overhead. They looked like smiling faces, watching everything with cheerful grins.

It was disgusting.

Sure enough, as long as he moved fast enough, the Blood God would not have time to awaken.

The Blood God's awakening was a process, after all.

Unawakened, awakening, first-stage awakening...

Lin Feng forced his gaze away and looked at the Blood God lying inside, whose skin was peeling away from his body on its own.

As Lin Feng watched, the man's skin slowly melted.

The face of the man on the ground had already melted away. He wore traditional ethnic clothing. Clutched tightly beside him was the Clear Spring Stockade Shrine.

[Clear Spring Village Shrine (Divine Object)]

[Blood God (Unawakened)]

Prompts floated above both objects. Lin Feng approached with his sword and beheaded the Blood God before he could finish awakening.

Empowered by Dragon-Tiger Qi, the still-unawakened Blood God's body began to burn.

It was the [Embroidered Uniform Guard] class.

The Blood God's head rolled away. Lin Feng reached for the Shrine. After all, its label said it was a divine object.

He wanted to see what it was.

The Shrine was carved from a tree root. It looked like a group of old men huddled together, or perhaps seven or eight old men's faces growing from a single body. It was different from the blood-red incantations and the face-shaped knots overhead.

The Clear Spring Stockade Shrine gave off no eerie feeling whatsoever.

Only the weight of passing time.

There was also a faint, strange fragrance of vegetation.

The moment his hand touched the root carving, Lin Feng was caught completely off guard as he felt his entire being sucked into the Shrine!

Damn it, I fell for it!

A dizzying sensation of weightlessness washed over him.

By the time he recovered, everything before him had gone dark.

A soft puff sounded.

Someone was blowing on a fire lighter.

Sparks appeared.

A wrinkled old face emerged in the glow. The fire lighter lit an oil candle, revealing two faces that were completely unfamiliar to Lin Feng.

It felt as though Lin Feng were standing beside the two men.

The flame illuminated the room. It seemed to be the place where the water-drawing Shrine stood.

The two men sat facing each other.

He reached out to touch something, only to find that his hand passed through the darkness without feeling anything.

One man wore traditional ethnic clothing. The other wore ragged clothes and looked like a peddler, yet there was something radiant in his bearing.

The Thirty-Six Stockades Map lay before them.

A trained martial artist.

The wrinkled old man seemed deeply intimidated by him, his expression full of apprehension.

"Imperial envoy, it isn't that this old man sides with Chieftain Peng. I simply had no choice. Chieftain Peng sent his Yangtongzi. If I didn't hand over the map, not a single soul in my stockade would survive!"

As he finished, a thunderclap shook the earth. Lin Feng looked outside, where rain seemed to be pouring down in sheets.

Amid the thunder, the peddler spoke.

“Your difficulties? The court took your difficulties into account. We sent your son, your daughter-in-law, and your grandson to the capital. And now you tell me you were afraid of Tusi's Yangtongzi? That you revealed the map to Tusi?”

"Do you know only of our benevolence, and nothing of our wrath?"

The peddler was furious!

"Imperial envoy, please, you mustn't!"

The old man waved both hands frantically. Another thunderclap struck. He was about to speak again when the envoy beside him suddenly changed expression. Clutching his neck, the envoy retched up a mouthful of Red-Line Worms.

"You... you used gu poison?"

The peddler stared at the old man in disbelief, seemingly unable to understand how he could be so bold. With his family in the capital, he had still dared to attack an imperial envoy.

The old man was even more terrified.

"I... I didn't!"

The old man stood up to check on him, but the moment he rose, his own expression changed too.

He also clutched his throat and spat out a mouthful of Red-Line Worms.

*They were both poisoned. So it really was the water?

But why did neither of them seem to know about it?

Lin Feng watched closely, but before he could see the rest, he turned around.

The darkness outside the room transformed into several old faces that coiled toward him.

The scene cut off.

Those old faces entered Lin Feng's body.

Lin Feng watched blood-red text rapidly refresh before his eyes.

[You have received the Mountain God's gift]

[You have been empowered by the Mountain God’s Power]

[Your status has improved for this game run]

[You have gained the status: Mountain God’s Blessing]

[Mountain God’s Blessing: As you walk through the Western Hunan Mountains, you are a spirit of this land and may wield a tiny portion of the Mountain God Authority]

[You have been blessed with the Mountain God's experience]

[You have obtained a complete Nine-Rank Cultivation Path]

[You may choose to practice the Shaman Priest’s Cultivation Method]

[You have been empowered by Mountain God's Wrath]

[Within the Western Hunan Mountains, you may randomly inflict critical hits on things that do not belong to the Western Hunan Mountains]