Back into the game

They bored through his eardrums, pierced his eyes, and burrowed through his nose into his brain!

The worms writhed madly, infesting him.

At the moment of death, Lin Feng felt a flash of excruciating pain!

He felt those red threadworms bore through his mouth, ears, and eyes, wriggling in dense masses beneath his skin before finally tunneling into his brain.

Lin Feng died.

The utterly realistic sensation of death made him retch.

It even sent a chill through him.

The scene began to freeze. Lin Feng lay sprawled on the ground, dry-heaving with nausea.

He barely managed to raise his head. Beside him, Hundred-Household Officer Zhu had abandoned his short saber and grabbed a leg of the altar table beneath the shrine. The table weighed over sixty pounds, yet it seemed weightless in his hands.

Hundred-Household Officer Zhu wielded the heavy table with ease, smashing a monster to death.

He looked like a god of war.

But with Lin Feng's death, everything froze.

A line of large, blood-red text appeared before him.

[The player has died. Game over.]

[You have two lives remaining. You may choose:]

[Revive on the spot and continue playing.]

[Start over and continue playing.]

Lin Feng now understood what the extra lives in the game meant.

In this game, an extra life was essentially a save point.

It allowed him to choose between reviving immediately and starting over.

Very convenient.

But...

Was there any point in reviving on the spot now?

Lin Feng recalled how dying had felt.

It was terrifying.

Instinctively, he looked down at his hands and touched his face, afraid those worms might have followed him out of the game and infested his body.

Yet that brief distraction had an unexpected effect. As he recalled the sensation of dying, the memory felt like rice paper dropped into water, the ink beginning to bleed.

His memories began to blur as well. Both his fear of death and his recollection of it gradually faded away.

Within a few seconds.

He could no longer remember the pain of dying.

Only a sense of danger remained.

An instinctive wariness of those red threadworms!

He returned to normal.

Lin Feng was puzzled.

What was this?

Experience gained from dying?

And this damned game even had its own unusual way of protecting the player's mental health?

Still, it made sense. The sensation of death had been far too real. If he experienced it a few more times, he might not be able to endure it.

There was profound terror in the space between life and death.

If someone kept bouncing between life and death as they did in this game.

Something might well go wrong with them.

They might even go mad.

Now that the lingering sensation of death had faded, Lin Feng rubbed his hands together, his competitive spirit rising again.

He did not rush back into the game. Rubbing his hands together, Lin Feng began to think, his mind racing.

He used this "pause" to reason through everything that had happened and decide what to do with his next life.

Judging by the information he had gained during his first life.

The situation at Clear Spring Stockade was not simple.

There seemed to be a secret involved.

A secret involving the Thirty-Six Stockades and the upper ranks of the Great Ming.

If Lin Feng's guess was correct, the Lord Mao whom Hundred-Household Officer Zhu had mentioned should be Mao Xiang.

According to the stories, this Lord Mao Xiang had been the first Regional Military Commissioner of the Embroidered Uniform Guard. Unfortunately, he had later met a bad end.

Hundred-Household Officer Zhu was a capable fighter.

The Hundred-Household Commanders and Thousand-Household Commanders of the current Embroidered Uniform Guard were different from those of the late Ming dynasty. A Hundred-Household Commander now carried considerable weight.

These hundred-household and thousand-household officers were all battle-hardened veterans fresh from the battlefield.

Every one of them was an exceptional fighter.

Yet these Hundred-Battle Veterans had all disappeared in Clear Spring Stockade.

In Lin Feng's view, they were most likely dead.

Clear Spring Stockade really was terrifying!

Judging by the angle of the sun, roughly twenty minutes had passed between his arrival at the stockade and his falling out with the Tusi's people.

Definitely no more than half an hour.

They had come under attack after twenty minutes.

Time would not wait for him!

Lin Feng now had a rough grasp of this round's difficulty.

As for teammates, his companions belonged to two opposing sides. He only had Hundred-Household Officer Zhu on his side, and for now, Zhu seemed stronger than him—at least when dealing with those little monsters, brute strength worked wonders.

On the chieftain's side, Liao Chi remained an unknown. Third Lady belonged to the Five Poisons Sect and was probably from Yunnan. She was not a subordinate of the Western Hunan Five Stockades Chiefdom, so those three people on the chieftain's side might not be united either.

As for outside enemies, the monsters that had suddenly appeared were clues in themselves.

As for timing, no matter what, those first twenty minutes should be safe.

He had to use those twenty safe minutes to find out where the Thirty-Six Stockades Map was.

With that in mind, Lin Feng decisively chose to start over!

He would use his second life to try to find the source of the danger here and get to the bottom of Clear Spring Stockade's troubles.

[Start over and continue playing.]

After he selected the option, a cool breeze brushed past him. Lin Feng opened his eyes and saw that he had returned to the [Clear Spring Village Shrine].

It was around morning. The sun had just risen, and the air was fresh.

Thin mist still lingered among the mountains.

He walked into the [Clear Spring Village Shrine].

All five people before him looked at him.

The grossly obese man who had spoken first tugged open his clothes as the weather grew warmer, exposing his hairy belly.

He opened his mouth, about to speak.

Lin Feng ignored him.

He stepped forward and tested the weight of the Shrine's altar table.

He could lift it, but he could not swing it.

Too heavy.

So he asked, "Hundred-Household Officer Zhu, can you lift this altar table?"

Peng Tianli: "???"

Was this young Daoist sick in the head?

He had walked in and immediately ignored everyone to speak to that Han man. Hundred-Household Officer Zhu's face remained impassive. He showed no surprise that this late-arriving Daoist from Dragon-Tiger Mountain knew his name.

He stood up, hoisted the altar table, and gave it a swing.

Lin Feng was very satisfied.

He drew the Wrought-Iron Sword and said to Hundred-Household Officer Zhu, "Come with me."

Without another word, he motioned for Hundred-Household Officer Zhu to follow. The two left the shrine without so much as glancing at the other three.

The three people on the Tusi's side exchanged bewildered looks, unsure what was happening.

Lin Feng walked out of the Shrine. He knew where the monsters that had attacked them had come from.

Skinned bodies, faces bloated and pale from soaking in water.

Only one place here met those conditions.

The Divine Spring of Clear Spring Stockade.

Only there was enough water to soak corpses into that state.

"Hundred-Household Officer Zhu, you arrived early. Tell me, where is the Divine Spring that Clear Spring Stockade draws its water from?"

When Lin Feng asked, Hundred-Household Officer Zhu pointed to the left and said, "Up there."

It was another path up the mountain. Above the Shrine lay the lush greenery that crowned the entire stockade like a head of hair.

Hundred-Household Officer Zhu had pointed toward a narrow path. When Lin Feng asked how he knew, Zhu explained that people frequently passed that way, leaving the vegetation trampled. It was the most likely route to the water source.

Dense mountain woods flanked the path. Lin Feng instinctively said, "Hundred-Household Officer Zhu, be careful."

"I know."

Hundred-Household Officer Zhu answered.

Then he moved closer to Lin Feng and whispered, "Something in there is watching us!"