Mountain God

Biodata

Feature	Value
Name	Mountain God (山神爷)
Alias(es)	Clear Spring Stockade’s Mountain God 19 33
Species/Race	Wood spirit; understood by Lin Feng as a collective of tree spirits 33
Affiliation	Clear Spring Stockade; the Mountain God system of the Western Hunan Mountains 19 33
Occupation/Role	Worshipped mountain deity and master of Clear Spring Stockade’s banyan guardian 19 37
Status	Devoured by the Blood God after passing fundamental divine power to Lin Feng; elderly faces associated with the deity are later released when the banyan Blood God dies 19 34
First Appearance	First confirmed encounter through the divine shrine and its gift to Lin Feng 18

History

Protector of Clear Spring Stockade

The Mountain God subdued an old banyan tree demon and made it Clear Spring Stockade’s guardian. According to Ghost Uncle, the banyan protected the settlement for several sixty-year cycles. The Mountain God rarely ventured out, but its guardian was powerful enough that Ghost Uncle ordinarily could not defeat it 37 38.

Ghost Uncle later reported that the deity’s authority had steadily weakened and withdrawn half a month before her conversation with Lin Feng. She investigated the stockade but retreated after sensing tremendous danger within it 38.

Gift to Lin Feng

Inside Clear Spring Stockade’s forbidden ground, Lin Feng found the unawakened Blood God clutching a root-carved shrine. After beheading the creature, he touched the shrine and was drawn into a vision of the stockade’s past 18.

The vision showed the stockade’s elder meeting an Embroidered Uniform Guard disguised as a peddler over the Thirty-Six Stockades Map. Both men coughed up red threadworms. Lin Feng later used these memories to reconstruct the deaths of the elder and the first group of imperial agents, though the source of their affliction remained uncertain 18 20.

Old faces entered Lin Feng, and the game announced the Mountain God’s gift: divine authority, experience, a complete nine-rank cultivation path, and the statuses Mountain God’s Blessing and Mountain God’s Wrath 18 19.

Defeat and Release

After Lin Feng’s departure, red threadworms poured from the corpses into the old banyan. Wails rose from the shrine as the Mountain God failed to defeat the Blood God, and the tree transformed into Blood God, Phase Two 19.

The transformed banyan carried the deity’s agonized faces within its trunk. However, it had not obtained the Mountain God’s fundamental divine power, which had already been given to Lin Feng; consequently, the Blood God could not control the surrounding forests 32 34.

When Lin Feng destroyed the banyan’s heart, elderly faces emerged from the absorbed statue, looked at him with relief, and vanished 34.

Appearance

• Divine shrine: A tree-root carving resembling old men huddled together, or seven or eight elderly faces growing from a single body 18.
• Atmosphere: Unlike the forbidden ground’s inscriptions and face-shaped knots, the carving felt neither eerie nor threatening. It conveyed age and emitted a faint fragrance of vegetation 18.
• After being devoured: The faces seen during the gift were seared into the Blood God’s trunk in agony, uttering delirious murmurs 32.

Abilities & Skills

Mountain God Authority

The gift allows Lin Feng to wield a small portion of the deity’s authority and be recognized as a spirit belonging to the Western Hunan Mountains 18.

• Establishes affinity with woodland spirits, plants, and animals, which respond to Lin Feng’s requests for assistance 32 33.
• Allows the forest to supply vitality, strengthen his body, and support his cultivation 27 32.
• Enables cooperation with tree spirits for scouting, concealment, and battlefield control 35 36 37.
• Is territorially limited: Lin Feng’s mountain-god abilities become inactive in the Underworld 31.

Mountain God’s Blessing

A protective status that makes its recipient one of the mountain’s own spirits 18.

• Protects Lin Feng from the region’s venomous creatures 22 25.
• Improves the effectiveness of Qi Gathering within the Western Hunan Mountains 27.
• Helps him navigate a storm-darkened forest when combined with Sword Heart Clarity 23.

Mountain God’s Wrath

Within the Western Hunan Mountains, this status can randomly inflict critical hits on things that do not belong to the mountains 18.

• Against the banyan Blood God, enhanced strikes leave deep wounds that resist healing, bleed continuously, and burn with faint blood-red flames 34.
• Does not affect the towering shadow Lin Feng encounters near the tomb passage 39.

Experience and Cultivation Inheritance

The Mountain God grants its experience and the Shaman Priest’s Cultivation Method, a complete nine-rank path 18 19.

• Lin Feng begins its Ninth-Rank Qi Gathering practice by entering meditative stillness and attracting a wind spirit 20 22.
• The inherited authority later supplies enough vitality to accelerate his cultivation through Qi Nurturing and into Seventh-Rank Qi Condensation 32 33.
• This enhancement is identified on his character panel as active during the game session; outside the game, he remains Ninth Rank 40 47.

Relationships

• Lin Feng — Recipient of the deity’s gift and fundamental divine power. He considers himself its likely chosen successor, though this identification initially remains his conjecture 18 33 34.
• Old Banyan Tree Demon — Subdued guardian that protected Clear Spring Stockade for several sixty-year cycles; later becomes the Blood God’s second-phase body and devours its former master 19 37.
• Blood God — Enemy that defeats and consumes the deity, but fails to acquire the fundamental authority already transferred to Lin Feng 19 34.
• Clear Spring Stockade — Community that worshipped the Mountain God and was protected by its banyan guardian 19 37 38.

Nature of the Authority

• Lin Feng concludes that Mountain Gods are spirits bound to their mountains, rather than officials requiring formal investiture or a divine seal 33.
• He theorizes that their authority can be inherited or forcibly stolen, with statues serving as vessels for that power 33.
• The deity’s gift therefore makes Lin Feng both an accepted member of the mountain’s spiritual community and a target for demons seeking to extract his authority 30 33.