Stillness

A Blood God wasn't made only from corpses.

A tree could become a Blood God too.

But were the trees outside the Clear Spring Stockade Forbidden Ground really trees in the normal sense?

Lin Feng wasn't sure anymore.

Before receiving the game console, he had lived for nearly twenty years. In all that time, he had never heard of Banyan Tree aerial roots looking for a chance to burrow into people's heads and suck out their brains.

Based on that, he believed there might be something wrong with the Banyan Trees in Clear Spring Stockade.

They might even have become spirits.

Then Lin Feng thought of the scene the Mountain God had shown him.

If the Mountain God hadn't lied, the person dressed in traditional local clothing, talking to the Embroidered Uniform Guard in the darkness, was Clear Spring Stockade's Grand Elder.

The words spoken by the Embroidered Uniform Guard disguised as a peddler opposite him—"bring your son, daughter-in-law, and grandson to the capital"—matched the information Hundred-Household Officer Zhu had revealed earlier.

The other party was the Embroidered Uniform Guard who had come to demand the map.

But he wasn't the Thousand-Household Commander who had gone up the mountain with the second group.

The Thousand-Household Commander had gone up to investigate because the first group of Embroidered Uniform Guards—the ones who had fallen victim to gu sorcery and been wiped out—had sent no word back down.

The information he sent back was that everyone in Clear Spring Stockade had died or gone missing.

That meant the stockade was already empty when he went up.

Judging by the Mountain God's memories, the Embroidered Uniform Guards and the Grand Elder had most likely fallen victim to the gu by accident. The next possibility was that someone had poisoned them.

In their panic, none of them had spared a thought for the map lying on the ground.

The Thousand-Household Commander had gone up and reaped the rewards without lifting a finger.

But if that was how it had happened...

The elder, the stockade's residents, and the Embroidered Uniform Guards had all died.

There had been no one left in the stockade.

So how had the Thousand-Household Commander and the second group of Embroidered Uniform Guards died?

Who had killed them? Who had processed them into Five-Organs Incense?

The stockade was full of secrets!

This game was getting interesting.

Lin Feng looked at the gray [Enter Game] and the red [Exit Game] before him and quit for now. The Underworld background music and blood-red text made him uncomfortable.

He exited.

There were still thirty minutes before he could enter the third act, Road.

He set an alarm and sat cross-legged on the hotel bed.

The Shaman Priest's cultivation method was indeed still in his head. After studying it for a while, he found that it wasn't difficult.

Once he got started, he would be at the ninth rank.

The ninth-rank stage of this path was called Qi Gathering.

The method for beginning cultivation was called awakening.

This awakening meant sending one's spirit beyond the heavens to ask all things in nature who wanted to be friends. Whichever spirit responded, you shamelessly latched onto it and milked it for benefits.

Everything between heaven and earth had its owner. If something was not mine, I would not take even a hair of it. Only the clear breeze over the river and the bright moon among the mountains became sound to the ear and color to the eye. They could be taken without restriction and used without exhaustion, the Creator's inexhaustible treasury.

All things had spirits. Even a single hair on the Creator was thicker than an ordinary person's waist.

Abroad, this method would be called elemental affinity. At home, he would have to trouble the great spirit immortals of the northeast to serve as an example: an immortal found you had a connection with it and made you its spirit-medium disciple.

He had no incense or guardian at hand, but fortunately, this cultivation path didn't care about that.

Wealth, companions, methods, and a suitable location—yet affinity mattered most. In Lin Feng's view, that was a much taller order than the other four.

Following the breathing method described, Lin Feng slowly breathed out, in, out, in...

Swordsmanship Mastery helped somewhat. Practicing the sword had calmed his mind and given him a solid foundation. Lin Feng entered a meditative state quickly. Three minutes later, he pictured a deep lake before him.

As vast as the sea, as still as a mirror, as deep as an abyss.

There, he sensed the elements of nature.

He entered "stillness."

His former self could never have done this.

Ten minutes later.

The temperature around Lin Feng dropped slightly. The room, which had been fairly bright, grew a little dim.

A breeze brushed over his body, but it was a ghostly chill.

His permanently fixed skills had taken effect.

[Wild Fox Zen]

[Affinity with All Things] and [Favor of the Gods] were showing some effects.

As Water Margin put it, merchants traveling the roads and stopping for the night could never avoid two things: eating from filthy bowls and sleeping in dead men's beds.

Lin Feng's attractive presence and the call he sent out while cultivating stirred some lingering remnants of power.

Fortunately, for some unknown reason, the ghostly forces in this world were so weak that a puff of air could scatter them.

And Lin Feng also had Dragon-Tiger Qi protecting him.

An intangible sensation spread out from Lin Feng. He felt as though he stood in the center of the lake, with many people around him speaking to him.

There was fire, water, lightning, trees, clouds, wind, and some presences he couldn't quite describe. Lin Feng extended an invitation to them, and the wind got there first!

The wind entered his body. In an instant, Lin Feng felt as though he had followed it out of his physical shell. He saw himself sitting cross-legged on the bed, watched the wind open the window, watched the curtains sway in the breeze, and saw a face watching him from beneath the computer desk a short distance directly ahead.

A vehement expletive jolted his emotions, and he abruptly snapped out of that peculiar sensation.

He opened his eyes.

There was nothing beneath the desk opposite him.

Lin Feng didn't believe it. He stood up and took out his phone, but the camera picked up nothing.

"A hallucination? Were my eyes playing tricks on me?"

He glanced at the window. He had closed it before meditating. The days were getting hotter; closing the window and turning on the air-conditioning was common sense.

The window was open.

Hot air blew in from outside.

It didn't seem like a hallucination.

Did that mean there really was something beneath the desk?

Lin Feng went over to the window. For some reason, he kept feeling that the breeze brushing past him was especially gentle.

Standing there, Lin Feng closed his eyes and once again breathed out, in, out, in.

His emotions gradually settled. He returned to the lakeside, and the wind around him slowly entered his lungs.

Qi Gathering.

Once again, Lin Feng followed the wind out of his body. This time, he didn't go outside with it. He looked beneath the desk, where a pair of bloody eyes stared at him.

Prepared this time, he didn't break out of his state of "stillness." He gazed at those bloody eyes, and they gazed back. He moved a couple of steps, but the eyes stayed fixed, staring at Lin Feng's physical shell.

"..."

He returned to his body, checked out, packed his things, and went home.

He had run into a fellow who didn't quite belong to this world.

Didn't mean to disturb you. I'll be going now.

By the time he got home, the thirty minutes were up. Lin Feng hesitated briefly between "stillness" and entering the game, then entered the game.

He silently reproached himself.

He regretted having hesitated between the game and "stillness." "Stillness" was fun, sure, but the game was even more fun. That cutscene in particular had thoroughly whetted his appetite.

Once in the game, with that damp-sounding background music playing, Lin Feng selected [Start Game]. He had only just opened his eyes when he heard the guide beside him say in some despair, "Master Daoist, the mountain's collapsed. We can't get through. We'll have to take a detour."

I only said the update would be delayed, not that I was dropping it...

My writing's been going perfectly fine...