Hospitality

Beaten to death by a mob.

Lin Feng stood in the darkness, his expression utterly calm.

He had been surrounded inside the inn and beaten to death.

He felt no particular emotional turmoil.

He was quite composed.

Since he was dead, he might as well check the new skill first.

[Precise Vision (Passive)]

[Precise Vision: Your senses are your ruler! Follow your instincts to find an enemy's weakness and kill them in one blow.]

An exceptionally good passive skill.

It was essentially an offshoot of swordsmanship mastery.

He should have been happy.

But remembering how he had died, Lin Feng still felt aggrieved.

Two fists were no match for four hands.

Even a great fighter could be overwhelmed by numbers.

He had originally thought those figures were tiger thralls.

They weren't.

He had gone on a killing rampage.

Those figures were Stone-Skinned Puppets, with green blood inside them that was extremely corrosive. This time, Lin Feng had fought until his strength ran dry. Without a sword, he had become the sword himself. He had exhausted every last bit of the qi he had gathered into his body, and in the end, he spat out blood.

His blood struck like a sword, killing one stone puppet.

That counted as an unusual move he had figured out himself.

Unfortunately, he couldn't use it casually. It was the same sort of sword technique as "Longevity as Great as the Southern Mountains": while stabbing the enemy, he also stabbed himself.

A move for taking the enemy down with him.

Using it under normal circumstances would damage his body too badly.

By the end of the battle, he had collapsed helplessly on the ground.

A toothless old woman slowly emerged from the darkness.

The mantis stalked the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it. She must have been that oriole.

"My lord from afar, why won't you behave?"

She was different from those figures.

[Mountain God’s Wrath] didn't work on her.

A despicable local!

She was taunting him!

Lin Feng had immediately felt the urge to kill.

She's taunting me!

How could I let that slide?

Lin Feng remembered her.

Just you wait. Sooner or later, I'll get you back!

I'll teach you just how petty the abbot is!

Offend the abbot, and you get locked in the scripture library!

But Lin Feng hadn't made any threats, saying something like "Why didn't lightning kill you?" that would only make him look ridiculous.

After the old woman finished speaking, her toothless mouth opened wide, and she swallowed Lin Feng and Li Pusa in one gulp.

Game over.

Lin Feng didn't continue.

He began taking a break, thinking over what Li Pusa had said along the way.

Act Three, the Road, really was no simple affair. This game still had the same familiar flavor, the same familiar recipe.

Want to clear it?

Die a few times first.

Unless you had died eight or ten times, you couldn't even claim to have seen this stage's true face.

Even after dying eight or ten times and clearing it, you still wouldn't feel good about it.

Lin Feng had gotten stuck just ten li from Bull-Head Stockade as the crow flew.

Not only was he stuck, but someone had their eye on him.

An uncle?

Lin Feng wondered whether he should get his hair cut during the New Year festivities this year, to send that uncle straight into mourning and bring himself some good luck!

After a couple of sarcastic remarks, Lin Feng began thinking seriously.

Clear Spring Stockade still held quite a few mysteries.

The mystery of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the poisoning, the Blood God—so much remained unclear. It made Lin Feng feel that, in this operation, their little group were all expendable, whether they belonged to the Great Ming or the Tusi side.

Once used up, they were gone.

Even a Thousand-Household Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, someone fairly high up the ranks, could die just like that. As for a Hundred-Household Commander, a young Daoist who didn't know a damn thing, and a guide whom a county magistrate could threaten...

If they died, they died.

Just make these people suffer a little more. As for the blame, the facts proved that Old Zhu didn't much care about a bad reputation.

A few rough soldiers and one Daoist without any skills.

The Great Ming wouldn't mourn them.

So they faced not only an unclear mission and dangers along the road, but unknown crises ahead as well.

The letter the Grand Elder had written to Mao Xiang must have contained an enormous secret.

This operation was probably inextricably linked to that letter.

If they reached Bull-Head Stockade alive...

They would very likely meet the Yangtongzi serving the Tusi whom the Grand Elder had mentioned.

The Yangtongzi had entered the mountains and found the map before they did.

That meant the Yangtongzi might be waiting for him up ahead.

Lin Feng certainly didn't think the Tusi's Yangtongzi would treat them courteously out in these remote mountain forests.

That was an enemy.

More importantly...

What was a Yangtongzi?

This was Lin Feng's first time hearing those three syllables together.

It sounded like a phonetic transliteration. Was "Yangtong" a noun, and "zi" perhaps a son?

The son of some sort of thing?

It was also possible that all three syllables of Yangtongzi were phonetic.

Fortunately, he had gained quite a lot in [Clear Spring Stockade]. At the very least, [Mountain God’s Blessing] had saved him from being bitten to death by venomous insects a hundred times or so along the road.

And this flash flood really was a bloody killer.

Once Lin Feng finished thinking, he selected [Continue Game].

He had already come this far. He couldn't leave without finding out what that uncle was.

When he chose to enter the game again, Lin Feng felt as though he had collided with something and was being jostled about. If he had to describe it, he was like a billiard ball knocked into a pocket, being squeezed this way and that by a pair of large hands outside.

He bumped into another person.

A very strange description.

A very strange sensation.

After a while, just as all that haphazard shaking was beginning to make Lin Feng nauseous, there was a retching sound, and he and the unlucky bastard beside him were spat out together, landing on the ground.

Before he could make out the scene, someone tore off Li Pusa's head beside him. This move was called "Kui Star Kicks the Dipper": kick through the neck, then wrench off the head.

Only someone with immense strength could use it.

They also had to be tall.

Supposedly, it was used to deal with hopping corpses.

The spine came out along with the head. Li Pusa couldn't have been any deader.

Blood splashed all over Lin Feng.

Warm and slick.

Disgusting.

Cold rain pelted down from the sky, washing over Lin Feng.

Lin Feng wiped his face with a hand, but still couldn't make out what was happening in front of him.

The night was too dark, the rain too heavy.

First blood, then rain.

He couldn't open his eyes.

"Refine him."

An enormous dark figure looked Lin Feng over and gave the order.

The voice sounded like a night owl.

It gave anyone who heard it goosebumps.

He couldn't tell whether the speaker was male or female.

Then the Toothless Old Lady stepped forward and seized Lin Feng.

"My lord."

She apparently had more to say, but what could she possibly say?

He had already said it: the abbot was petty!

Before she could finish, Lin Feng's spine bent like a great bow. At close range, his hand formed a crane's beak and jabbed once!

The old woman wasn't particularly skilled either. He struck a vital point!

[Precise Vision].

That single blow brought the old woman to her knees.

Lin Feng felt the bones in his hand break, but that hardly mattered.

He had only intended to vent his anger anyway.

Getting to his feet, Lin Feng finished her off, tearing out her windpipe.

No one stopped him.

Lin Feng had thought someone would rip off his head too. Strangely, the wind threading through the downpour brought bad news that made his whole body tense, yet [Sword Heart Clarity] indicated that the bone-chilling cold from earlier had diminished a little.

For some inexplicable reason, the hostility and danger directed at him here had lessened considerably.

"My hospitality was lacking, letting a slave woman kill you."

The owl-like voice spoke.

Lin Feng opened his eyes to look at the speaker. It was too dark; he still couldn't see.

He didn't know whether someone here had cast a spell.

Outside, lightning clearly lashed like a whip.

Yet here, everything remained pitch-black.

Still, there was no need to see anymore.

Lin Feng tried to use the wind to make out the speaker's appearance. Footsteps approached, and within mere seconds, Lin Feng felt alarms going off throughout his entire body!

[Sword Heart Clarity] reached its highest level of warning.

He opened his mouth and spat a blood sword at the other person.

Unfortunately, it was useless.

The gap in strength was too great.

It took only one move.

For the first time, Lin Feng learned what it felt like to have his head twisted off!

Your hospitality was lacking?

Motherfucker, this is your idea of hospitality?