Who are you?

Ghost Uncle's unwitting actions might have completed a sacrifice.

The Blood-Food Sacrifice had nothing to do with morality.

A god that accepted Blood-Food Sacrifice was neither good nor evil. He was simply a deity, powerful and indifferent, an entirely different kind of being from humans.

According to Ghost Uncle, who lay prostrate on the ground, she had driven mountain villagers into the tomb passage. They had never returned, nor had any screams or smell of blood emerged.

The villagers had vanished.

They had simply vanished inside the tomb passage.

Ghost Uncle had been a little frightened. Believing the passage to be dangerous, she had stayed outside for safety, but the [Five-Organs Incense] held an overwhelming allure for her.

So she had settled on a compromise.

She had breathed in the faint fragrance at the entrance and cultivated, ready to flee at any moment.

But to her surprise, several Terracotta Figures had walked out of the tomb passage that very night.

Under the moonlight, these Terracotta Figures had looked especially terrifying.

Several had been badly damaged, with green insects dropping out of them onto the ground. It was revolting.

Ghost Uncle had intended to attack them, but the faint fragrance on their bodies had changed her mind.

After observing them for several days, she had concluded that the Terracotta Figures meant no harm.

Once outside, they had merely stood blankly to one side.

Their fragrance had been far stronger than the scent inside the tomb passage. With its help, Ghost Uncle had even been able to bridge yin and yang.

In her hazy state, she had even heard a mighty voice. Her Nuo Opera technique, the means she used to beguile people, had been an "opportunity" she obtained in that same haze.

Lin Feng remained hidden in the shadows as lightning flashed, missing not a single word.

[Five-Organs Incense] was a hallucinogen used during the Yin-Shang period by the High Priest—the king himself—to communicate with Ancestral Spirits and Di.

From what Lin Feng was hearing, Ghost Uncle seemed to have used [Five-Organs Incense] to communicate with some unknowable existence.

She had tasted the benefits.

She had thrown more mountain villagers into the tomb passage.

More Terracotta Figures had emerged and stood at the entrance, allowing her to enter a profoundly mysterious state.

One day, one of the Terracotta Figures had emerged carrying a sheet of human-skin parchment.

Using a needle as a pen and pigment as ink, someone had inscribed numerous Words of Immortality upon it.

At this point, Ghost Uncle rolled on the spot and transformed into a three-meter-tall humanoid, offering up a sheet of human-skin parchment from her robes with both hands.

Though it pained her, she was willing to offer it to the lord Mountain God in exchange for her life.

According to her, this sheet of human-skin parchment bore the Curse Seal that controlled the Terracotta Figures.

The Terracotta Figures had brought her not only the parchment, but also Elixirs, a Mask, and a Staff.

She had not dared consume the Elixirs and had put them away.

She had wrapped them in the human-skin parchment.

She placed the bundle before her, begging the lord Mountain God for forgiveness.

She had learned only the Curse Seal.

If she recited the Curse Seal written in the Words of Immortality and threw villagers down into the passage, more Terracotta Figures would appear.

There would even be more "opportunities" inside.

After reciting those incantations and throwing villagers into the tomb passage, she had inhaled the fragrance of the Terracotta Figures and heard more "secrets."

Lin Feng's brain went into overdrive as he listened.

Beneath the torrential rain, Lin Feng felt as though he had seized upon an extraordinary clue.

He did not know what the person before him had heard.

But no matter how he looked at it,

Lin Feng could not see this as a good thing.

The whole affair reeked of something sinister.

Worship a deity, hear the deity, receive gifts, then trust the deity even more and offer Blood-Food Sacrifice, whereupon the deity increased its rewards.

It was a cycle, and it matched the Blood-Food Sacrifice process Lin Feng had heard about before.

But Charismatic-Type deities that accepted Blood-Food Sacrifice were not so easy to deal with.

Blood-Food Sacrifice that answered every request.

Even Lin Feng had rarely encountered those!

Damn it. That theory I was so sure about earlier seems to have been wrong.

Vaguely, Lin Feng felt that the events in the Western Hunan Mountains were closely connected to this wave of natural disasters—the torrential rain and landslides.

It felt like a sudden flash of insight.

Lin Feng forcibly restrained his mind before his thoughts could spiral and asked Ghost Uncle his second question.

When had things gone wrong at Clear Spring Stockade?

Ghost Uncle said she did not know, but she could sense that the authority of the Mountain God worshipped at Clear Spring Stockade had been steadily weakening. Half a month ago, the stockade's mountain god's power had withdrawn, so she had gone over to take a look. But she had sensed tremendous danger within the stockade and had not dared approach, returning instead.

She was timid and had hardly dared try to seize the mountain god's power. After all, as she put it, though Clear Spring Stockade's Mountain God rarely ventured out, his guardian deity was very powerful—an old banyan tree she ordinarily could not defeat.

Ghost Uncle was approaching the pinnacle of Eighth Rank, nearly Seventh Rank, yet the banyan tree tainted by the Blood God had not been that powerful.

Why?

Had it weakened because something happened to the Mountain God?

Did the guardian deity and the Mountain God rise and fall together?

Half a month ago...

The banyan tree...

Lin Feng pondered briefly, then asked his final question.

"Then do you know what happened at Bull-Head Stockade?"

At Lin Feng's additional question, Ghost Uncle declared in fearful reverence that she did not know that either.

The legends of the Ghost Yamen were concentrated around the front of the mountain and its foot. Bull-Head Mountain, in the rear, was outside her territory.

If monsters had their own hierarchy, she was someone of consequence at the front of the mountain, but deeper into the mountains, she was nothing.

She never went to Bull-Head Stockade. Besides, the heavy rain a month ago had washed out the road connecting the front and rear mountains.

There was no way through.

During their conversation,

she brought up a term once again.

Clearly, she too feared what that term represented.

The Yin God Forbidden Ground.

What was a Yin God?

Ghost Uncle said a Yin God was a Yin God.

There was no way to explain it.

A forbidden ground was a place where monsters like her would come to harm if they entered. The nearby tomb passage, for example, was a forbidden ground.

The deeper one ventured into the mountain forests, the more likely one was to encounter a Yin God.

She obediently told him everything she knew. Seeing that he could get nothing more out of her, Lin Feng motioned for her to unwrap the human-skin parchment and show him what was inside.

Ghost Uncle obediently unfolded the human-skin parchment, revealing its contents.

Lin Feng stood in a tree. Though that put him at risk of being struck by lightning, he no longer cared.

If his luck was truly so rotten that lightning struck him dead, he would accept it.

A bolt of lightning flashed, casting Lin Feng's shadow onto the ground.

In that instant, he saw what was inside the human-skin parchment.

Lin Feng tightened his grip on his sword.

The forest carried his voice.

"Tell me, how many Elixirs did that Terracotta Figure bring you?"

Ghost Uncle said, "Sixteen."

Lin Feng said, "How many did you say?"

"Sixteen. Your servant obediently kept them all in the human-skin parchment..."

As she spoke, Ghost Uncle grew anxious. She raised her head and looked inside the parchment, intending to explain herself to the lord Mountain God.

She looked up and froze.

Inside the human-skin parchment, there was nothing but a bloody human skin and a heart.

Rolling thunder, lightning, a black shadow, a forest illuminated by blinding white light before plunging back into darkness.

"How many?"

Lin Feng's voice rang out again.

"Sixteen."

Ghost Uncle spoke mechanically, staring at her own chest in disbelief. That voice had not come from her throat, nor was it the cry of a night owl.

It was another strange kind of voice.

A desolate voice like the throat singing Lin Feng had heard in the background music, and the sound he had heard from the mouths of the banyan tree's Sacrificial Corpses, issued from Ghost Uncle's body. It made his hair stand on end and chilled him to the bone.

With no doubt left, Lin Feng dropped from above and thrust his sword!

His target: Ghost Uncle's Bregma!