Straight into the enemy's lair

After he waited a while longer, thunder rolled across the sky and rain began pelting down, but there was still no sound of opera singing.

Even Lin Feng's wind could not keep all the rain off him.

The water soaked his clothes.

It felt uncomfortable.

He stood with his sword in hand, but the Toothless Old Lady never came. Aside from the thunder, the mountain forest was quiet.

It should have been afternoon in the mountains.

Yet it already looked like dusk. Before much longer, it would be too dark to see his hand in front of his face.

Judging by the time, Hundred-Household Officer Zhu and the guide should have been almost at Jixi Inn.

The Toothless Old Lady should have found him by now, too.

But she still had not arrived, which left only one possibility.

Ghost Uncle of the Ghost Yamen was a bully who preyed on the weak and feared the strong. Back when he was weak, she had encountered someone of Ninth Rank carrying [Mountain God's Power], and immediately sent people to capture him and refine him into pills.

Now that he had reached Seventh Rank, she would not come. She was pretending she had not seen him.

Playing deaf and dumb.

In game terms, the optimal choice now was for Lin Feng to meet Hundred-Household Officer Zhu and the guide at Jixi Inn, then use Yin Roadwalking—the normal roads between Clear Spring Stockade and Bull-Head Stockade had all been washed out by flash floods, leaving Yin Roadwalking as the only route.

But he refused.

He would not feel right until he had vented his anger.

Since the Ghost Yamen's people would not come looking for him, he would go looking for the Ghost Yamen!

Lin Feng did not rashly enter a meditative trance. There was something far too sinister about this thunderstorm, and he feared that if his soul left his body with the wind, lightning would strike it dead.

Instead, he tried communicating with the surrounding trees, asking them where the Ghost Yamen was.

Since they would not come looking for him...

Lin Feng was ready to walk right into their trap!

The rain grew heavier.

Lin Feng sheltered beneath a tree. Trees were everywhere here, so if lightning struck him, he would just have to accept his bad luck.

The tree spirits told Lin Feng they were willing to help find the Ghost Yamen.

All Lin Feng had to do was wait for news.

For now, then, he had little to do.

Thunder and lightning filled the sky, and Lin Feng felt a little nervous down below, so he could only distract himself by recalling the past.

He thought back to his first meeting with Li Pusa.

After refusing to pay the Three Baleful Corpses at Jixi Inn and fighting them until both sides were badly hurt, he had met Li Pusa.

He had come back to life, hale and hearty, right before this Corpse Driver's eyes, and even asked Li Pusa what Yin Roadwalking was.

Before the Ghost Yamen's stone figures had swarmed him and beaten him to death, Lin Feng had spoken with Li Pusa for a while.

Li Pusa said Yin Roadwalking was an unorthodox means used by people of the living world.

It was a way of taking a shortcut through the Underworld.

No matter how distant the destination in the living world, or whether mountains and rivers barred the way, Yin Roadwalking could get someone there in just half an hour.

But this method was far too dangerous.

Li Pusa said that, ever since childhood, his birth chart had been exceptionally resilient and his innate constitution unusual. While he was playing in the street, a passing Corpse Driver had taken him away to train as an apprentice.

Corpse Drivers plied an unorthodox trade. After a lifetime of traveling through the Underworld, they would become tainted with an ominous aura and were certain to encounter strange things in old age. That was why, when they grew old, they would always take a final disciple to conceal their souls and hide their bodies, preventing certain beings in the Underworld from carrying them off.

After all, as Li Pusa put it, the Underworld contained more than just ghosts and evil spirits.

Thus, Corpse Drivers had a saying: avoid Yin Roadwalking whenever you could.

Unfortunately, this time, Li Pusa had no choice either.

A heavy rainstorm a month earlier had washed out the mountain roads around Western Hunan.

He could not take the normal roads.

He was a Corpse Driver, not a flying yaksha.

He could stop, but the walking corpses behind him could not. In weather like this, even with medicinal herbs applied, his clients might rot and become infested with maggots, ruining their appearance after death.

To earn his living, he had no choice but to take these clients along the Yin roads and deliver them to a Tusi lord's household in gz within the time his customers had specified.

Li Pusa said he was called Li Pusa because a skilled artisan had tattooed an image of a bodhisattva on his back.

His master had told him, "Do one good deed each day, keep a bodhisattva's compassionate heart, and do not clash with baleful energy." Then the bodhisattva on his back would bless him with safety and let him live to seventy.

That way, he could live out his life in peace.

He had encountered Lin Feng here because he had to pass through Jixi Inn. This inn on the route from Clear Spring Stockade to Bull-Head Stockade was one of the Yin Roadwalking transport hubs serving Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan.

People traveling the Yin roads had to come out for air every so often.

If they stayed on the Yin roads too long, those who plied this unorthodox trade might never return to the living world.

At that point in their conversation, the stone figures outside had charged in, leaving Lin Feng no time to keep talking. Even then, though, Lin Feng had understood that the game had given him no real choice.

He could only reach Bull-Head Stockade through Yin Roadwalking!

Once he arrived at Bull-Head Stockade, Lin Feng could choose to clear the stage and proceed to the next act.

So the intended progression of the game's second act should have been as follows.

Lin Feng opened his eyes.

He saw that the nearest road was cut off and chose to take the route used by the Corpse Driver.

He arrived at Jixi Inn, saw the Three Baleful Corpses, and stalled for time without clashing with them.

Once Li Pusa arrived, he asked Li Pusa to take everyone to Bull-Head Stockade.

The game ended.

Everyone was happy. As long as he was cautious enough, died a few times, and accumulated experience, this stage was not difficult to clear.

The obstacle blocking his progress now had arisen because he had chosen to keep exploring the second act, acquiring Mountain God's Power and the Shaman Priest's Cultivation Method. The game's difficulty had risen as a result.

The Ghost Yamen had come for Mountain God's Power.

After he began cultivating and encountered the Three Baleful Corpses, he had not considered peaceful coexistence. His first thought had been to stab them to death with his sword.

Without Mountain God's Power or the strength gained through cultivation, the dangers he encountered might have been venomous insects, torrential rain, treacherous mountain roads, and unexpected hazards along the Yin roads.

Different choices, different difficulties.

All he could say was that every gain and loss was fated.

But if Lin Feng were asked to choose again, he would still make the same choice. So what if the game got harder?

He liked mowing down enemies in unstoppable rampages. What was wrong with that?

As he reached that thought, Lin Feng suddenly heard leaves rustling beside him. He quickly focused and listened closely, soon understanding what the trees meant.

These tree spirits had found the Ghost Yamen.

Picking up his sword, Lin Feng headed in the direction they indicated.

The Ghost Yamen lay in a deep mountain ravine far from here. Drawing on the wind's power, Lin Feng darted through the heavy rain like a swift, racing toward the place the trees had pointed out.

After nearly half an hour, by which time Lin Feng was soaked through, he finally arrived.

Not far away stood a "cave abode" wrecked by the flash flood. A cave abode, supposedly—but by the light of a sudden flash of lightning, Lin Feng saw an Imperial Way, Tomb Guardian Beasts, and a pitch-black cavern.

He narrowed his eyes.

Was the Ghost Yamen inside a tomb?