A hymn of despair

In the game, he wasted no words and focused entirely on clearing the stages.

Lin Feng roughly hoisted the guide onto his shoulder and carried him away.

The guide wanted to cry.

Lin Feng said, "Go ahead and cry. That counts toward your time too!"

Nothing troubled them along the way. Before the rain began, Lin Feng had already reached the Jixi Inn. He looked down imperiously at the Three Baleful Corpses, who behaved themselves.

They did not dare look him in the eye.

They might as well have been lifeless objects.

Lin Feng used his Qi-Observing Eye. The Three Baleful Corpses still had no fortune.

He pondered this.

Either the dead had no fortune...

Or his incomplete Qi-Observing Eye could only examine the living.

Remembering that the Qi-Observing Eye had been divided into thirty-six fragments, Lin Feng felt the latter might explain why he could not see the fortune of nonhumans.

His training was lacking.

At the inn, Lin Feng had originally thought they would have to fight again. Who knew that, upon seeing him enter, the Three Baleful Corpses would behave themselves without daring to bristle?

This time, nobody gave them offerings, yet the Three Baleful Corpses showed no intention of attacking.

They pretended not to notice anyone entering their establishment.

Lin Feng gritted his teeth in irritation.

Ghost Uncle at the Ghost Yamen bullied the weak and feared the strong. You lot did too, huh!

Ghost Uncle was a demon.

You were corpses.

None of you were human, yet you were all so worldly and slick. Was that a good thing?

No, it wasn't.

That was what Lin Feng said, but he was not bored enough to provoke them for no reason.

The rain outside grew heavier. After a while, the incense stick outside the door visibly began to burn. Through the mist, the important NPC Li Pusa arrived as expected.

"The joyful spirits come forth. Let the living stand aside!"

Li Pusa delivered his usual call. Lin Feng stepped forward and grabbed him as he held the Shrine, explaining what was at stake and appealing to his emotions—we're the emperor's personal troops; disobey and we'll chop you dead—and his reason—either help us with Yin Roadwalking or get a taste of how the court deals with sorcerers. Faced with those alternatives, Li Pusa immediately developed a spirit of selfless service.

"This humble one knows what to do."

He made his solemn promise.

Obediently, he brought out his supplies to prepare everyone for Yin Roadwalking.

It would have been a lie to say it did not hurt.

A Corpse Driver's materials were rare things too. Who knew how many people had died abruptly while collecting these consumable supplies?

Yin Roadwalking required the same three essentials.

All were treasures.

The chipped bowl was a bowl used to feed the dead.

A bowl was round, and a chipped bowl symbolized incompleteness. It was a bowl the dead ate from.

It carried an unnerving yin aura.

Obtaining one probably involved stealing a bowl the dead ate from, which was fairly dangerous too.

The leftover incense consisted of the remnants of incense and candles offered to ghosts and gods.

Incense was food for departed souls.

The incense in the Corpse Driver's possession had its own peculiarities. It was not the guide's human-fat incense, but something else: incense left over from rituals, food that ghosts and gods had already tasted.

How to put it? To use an imperfect analogy...

The incense and candles in the Corpse Driver's hands were leftovers snatched from the mouths of ghosts and gods.

They had the ghosts' and gods' "saliva" on them.

Lin Feng did not know whether ghosts and gods cared about such improprieties. Those who were not picky about their food would not dare provoke the original owners of the Corpse Driver's incense and candles.

Those powerful enough to provoke them would not enjoy eating other ghosts' and gods' leftovers.

Ghosts and gods had standards!

The incense was a tool used to mask the human scent of those practicing Yin Roadwalking.

Obtaining it required tampering with ghosts' and gods' meals while they were eating.

However he looked at it, that was certainly dangerous enough.

Human-fat ointment was ointment made from corpses.

Corpse Drivers produced that rather disgusting stuff using secret medicines.

Applied to a person's body, it concealed their three flames.

All these things were "treasures" meant to keep people from being seen by things that should not see them during Yin Roadwalking, and thus avert disaster.

That was why people who made a living through shady practices seldom lived to a ripe old age. Calamity often struck without warning; even sudden death counted as "dying peacefully of old age."

Such shady practices were founded on trickery and deception.

They were nothing more than scams and bluffs.

Against beings far stronger than themselves.

If those scams and bluffs failed...

The consequences would probably be worse than death.

Li Pusa wanted to offer incense to the Three Baleful Corpses. Lin Feng pulled him close and declared him his brother. The Three Baleful Corpses smoothly turned away, not daring to accept incense from Lin Feng's brother.

Seeing how the Three Baleful Corpses behaved, Li Pusa became even more obedient.

With the preparations finished, before setting off on the Yin Roadwalking journey, Lin Feng asked him one more question: what was the deal with the old man he had seen in the Underworld last time?

Li Pusa's face instantly went white.

"My lord, please don't frighten me."

He was genuinely afraid.

This was exactly the kind of Underworld anomaly he feared most.

The Underworld and the world of the living were two sides of the same whole. Based on his explanation, Lin Feng understood the Underworld, in his own terms, as a map shrouded in the fog of war.

At present, only the territory controlled by the Underworld Bureau faction was revealed.

Nobody knew what lay anywhere else.

An anomaly like that, which demanded worship and could even steal someone's fate...

Never mind him.

Even the judges of the Underworld would not welcome an encounter with it.

Lin Feng understood. Without wasting any more words, he told Li Pusa to lead the three of them through Yin Roadwalking. This time, nothing went wrong.

Once they entered the Yin Roadwalking route, Lin Feng once again felt that his life was beyond his control.

His Seventh Rank dropped to Ninth Rank.

In the Underworld, Lin Feng had no desire to test what he could summon.

Everyone held their breath and proceeded cautiously.

Even Li Pusa, who had the most experience with Yin Roadwalking among them, was so nervous his hands trembled.

Walking at the front, Li Pusa held a geomantic compass and led them from this Jixi Inn through the Underworld to the Jixi Inn near Bull-Head Mountain.

Nobody spoke along the way.

Only after they emerged from the Yin Roadwalking route and Li Pusa called out loudly, "The joyful spirits come forth. Let the living stand aside!" was that stretch of the journey finally over.

The Jixi Inn at Bull-Head Mountain.

The heavy rain was still falling.

Lin Feng emerged from the Yin Roadwalking route into pitch darkness. A flash of lightning streaked across the sky outside, and instinctively, he felt something was wrong.

There seemed to be some inconceivable being outside Bull-Head Mountain.

Before he could examine it further...

Act Three: The road ended completely.

The scene shattered, and Lin Feng was abruptly snatched into the sky.

Blood-red text continued to appear before his eyes. Amid the suona, human voices, sounds of worship, and rainfall in the background music, some new sounds seemed to have been added.

Listening closely, Lin Feng heard what sounded like clashing weapons, screams of people on the verge of death, spraying blood, and despairing cries.

Together, they created an atmosphere of utter despair.

Within that utterly despairing atmosphere, rain poured down and the blood-red text twisted.

[Western Hunan Blood God]

[Act Three: The road]

[Reach Bull-Head Stockade alive]

[Lives remaining: 3]

[Mission completion reward: One tael of fortune, obtain the Fortune-Enhancement Method]

[Low-level mission. Failure incurs a one-hour cooldown]

The blood-red text gradually distorted, forming Act Four.

[Western Hunan Blood God]

[Act Four: A hymn of despair (Beginner game, final act of the beginner chapter)]

[Wait for rescue to arrive (eight hours). Survival of a single wisp of true spirit counts as clearing the stage]

[Lives remaining: 1]

[Mission completion reward: Remove beginner protection, withdraw beginner missions, unlock the rating system, exploration system, crisis system, and exchange system]

[Friendly reminder: The higher your completion level in the final act, the greater your final reward]

[Normal mission. Failure incurs an eight-hour cooldown]

[Final beginner section hint: Unite every force you can unite and wish to unite. This is both a disaster film and a horror film. You will die alone, and you will die in a group. Only an utterly fearless heart can carve a path to survival through this cruel history. Remember, your predecessors survived without your good fortune. You have no right to complain!!!]

It ended with three blood-red exclamation marks, clearly in violation of punctuation rules.

Lin Feng felt like a thug who had gone hungry for three days and had just laid eyes on a table laden with delicacies.

Crash! Crow flipped the table!

There was nothing left to eat!

That feeling of being left hanging made Lin Feng want to slap the game's creator to death!

Who did things like this? You were deliberately keeping me dangling, huh!

Moreover, seeing the hint for this final act, Lin Feng felt the game's profound malice.

All those little tips earlier...

Were they afraid Lin Feng would quit because the game was too hard?

Looking down on me, were you?

I, the Unyielding Lin, would never admit defeat! That defiant spirit was what I lived for!

Who were you looking down on? I would show you.

What it meant to be fucking tough!

I post two chapters a day! Say they're short and I'll admit it, but I don't post only once a day. Don't slander me!