Chapter Summaries

Plot and events

• Lin Feng recognizes names on a weathered stele—Zheng He, Wang Jinghong, and other Ming officials—and concludes it was probably left during one of Zheng He’s voyages to the Western Ocean.
• The stele’s faded inscription commemorates an unknown event; a warning written on its back reads “No entry.” Lin Feng, already past it, ignores the irony and continues.
• In the forest, Lin Feng senses a concealed threat near a dead tree. A hunting dog falls into a sudden pit, followed by a foul wind and a swarm of giant centipedes.
• Lin Feng uses his hair to kill the centipedes, but washbasin-sized scorpions emerge and feed on an armored corpse crawling from the hole.
• When Lin Feng attacks the corpse with his Demon-Binding Rope, a huge centipede escapes from inside it. A second monster then descends from the nearby tree: a giant, human-limbed python covered in agonized human faces.

Character development and interactions

• Lin Feng shows curiosity about the stele but quickly shifts to alertness when danger appears. Though aware he may not leave the forest alive, he responds boldly and prepares to fight.
• His interactions are chiefly with the hunting dogs and the forest’s creatures: he protects himself as the dogs panic, kills the centipedes, and attempts to strike the corpse before its true occupant escapes.
• Zheng He and Wang Jinghong are not present; their names establish a historical link between the site and Ming voyages.

Significant themes

• Survival and competition: The forest is presented as a brutal ecosystem where plants and animals fight for resources, and weakness can mean death.
• The unknown and the ominous: The warning stele, unexplained pit, corpse, and grotesque predators build a sense that the forest hides dangers beyond ordinary understanding.
• Courage in the face of danger: Lin Feng recognizes the risk but meets each new threat with vigilance and action.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng witnesses the Gu-Sorcery Flower-Skinned Python devouring venomous creatures and abducting several natives. Its cries and eggs kill the remaining people, attacking both their bodies and souls.
• Lin Feng uses the victims’ eggs as a link for sacrificial fire, burning the fleeing python and its vengeful spirits. The sacrifice yields life essence, some of which he gives to the Demon-Binding Rope.
• The rope attempts to open the Tongue God Secret Treasury but lacks enough essence to finish repairing the damage, so it stops rather than risk undoing its earlier work.
• [Unyielding] warns Lin Feng of an unseen threat. He escapes with the Earth-Escape Technique and discovers that the Hunting Dogs have vanished and the surroundings seem unnaturally alive—and aware of him.
• From a tree, Lin Feng observes the captured Stink with a group of Indigenous People. Their elder, called Gamalang, uses an intoxicating potion to enter a trance and repeatedly says “Zhubala.” The group beheads Stink, then the elder studies and drinks his blood before the people wait for nightfall.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng acts decisively against the Python and shows grim restraint toward the dead. He also experiments with sacrificial fire and the Demon-Binding Rope, while growing wary of the forest’s apparent watchfulness.
• The Flower-Skinned Python is powerful but terrified of Lin Feng’s Whipping Voice; it flees, only to be destroyed by his sacrificial fire.
• The Demon-Binding Rope shows judgment by abandoning its attempt to open the Tongue God Secret Treasury when it lacks enough essence.
• The Indigenous group and Gamalang appear to combine ritual practice with foreign weapons and poisonous drugs. They treat Stink as a sacrificial victim, while the elder’s blood ritual suggests a disturbing form of divination.
• Lin Feng observes Stink’s capture and death but does not intervene.

Significant themes

• Bodies and souls exploited: The Python consumes both, and Lin Feng turns its eggs into a conduit for retaliation.
• Power has limits and costs: The Rope refuses to risk damage without sufficient essence.
• Nature as an active, watching presence: The forest’s sudden hostility—or apparent awareness—creates a new and ambiguous threat.
• Ritual, poison, and cultural collision: The natives’ ceremonies, foreign sabers, and imported intoxicant suggest traditions altered by outside influence.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng watches the Indigenous People study an inscription. Stink’s blood spreads into a spider-like pattern with a cube beside it, which Lin Feng suspects may map the site and mark a stone stele.
• The tribe’s leader, Gamalang, recovers from a trance after being treated with herbs. He performs a mournful ritual for the dead, using skulls, chanting, drums, and dance.
• At sunset, Gamalang transforms into an Oil Ghost—a form of black wizardry that lets him move through obstacles—and carries Stink’s corpse to the inscription. The body vanishes when thrown at it.
• Gamalang then drives wild boars toward the inscription. Many disappear silently in the darkness, but one reaches the far side before falling into a hidden pit. As the animals vanish, the oppressive presence around the inscription subsides.
• Gamalang leads his people toward Lin Feng’s hiding place. Lin Feng reveals himself, and Gamalang notices his Fire Lance and asks whether he is from Great Ming.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains cautious and observant, using his Qi-Observing Eye to identify Gamalang’s transformed state. Though unnerved by the forest’s danger, he is protected by the light, his faint Human Aura, or his Peace Charm.
• Gamalang is revealed as a shaman and Black Wizard: he communes with the dead, mourns his people, and can transform into an Oil Ghost. He is also startled to discover Lin Feng nearby and alive.
• The Indigenous People show both fear of the forest at night and strong communal bonds, honoring their dead through ritual and cooperating to test the dangerous inscription.

Character interactions

• The tribe supports Gamalang’s recovery and joins his ritual of mourning.
• Gamalang directs his people to use corpses and then boars to test the inscription, while they encourage the animals toward it with calls, torches, and scent.
• Lin Feng and Gamalang briefly meet eyes during the boar drive. After Lin Feng reveals himself, Gamalang questions him about his origins.

Significant themes

• Death and spiritual belief: The tribe’s reverence for skulls and the head as the seat of the soul shapes its rituals and customs.
• The unknown and hidden danger: The inscription and surrounding darkness seem to consume living creatures without warning.
• Communal grief and survival: The tribe’s mourning ritual expresses shared sorrow, while its coordinated actions help members endure a hostile environment.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng claims to be a man of Great Ming. The islanders initially believe him and lower their weapons, but Gamalang learns that Papa’s men escorted Lin Feng back and accuses him of being Papa’s agent.
• Lin Feng turns the accusation to his advantage: he says Papa is supposedly his clan uncle, but he suspects the man is an impostor and has come to avenge his real uncle. Gamalang is persuaded, though he remains cautious.
• When the islanders threaten him, Lin Feng demonstrates his overwhelming strength by deflecting their Foreign Sabers with his hairpin and hair. Gamalang then takes a medicinal paste and enters a painful, apparently hallucinatory state. Afterward, he says God has confirmed Lin Feng is not an enemy and agrees to cooperate.
• Gamalang explains that the islanders want to recover their ancestors’ skulls and lay their souls to rest. He also reveals the history of Dora Mahā Temple: monks built it to imprison a demon, but the demon corrupted them. Ancestors of both Lin Feng’s people and the islanders later sealed the site, leaving Buddhist and Great Ming treasures inside.
• Papa entered the temple and emerged cruel and changed. Gamalang believes the real man died there and that the demon came out in his place. The temple’s guardian creature, a “Dharma Protector,” keeps intruders away.
• Strange events across Ligela—including failing crops, withering orchids, and threatening shadows—suggest the seal is weakening. Gamalang says the stars indicate a rare opportunity to enter the temple that night; otherwise, the demon will grow stronger. Lin Feng agrees to take him to a high point to read the sky.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng stays composed and improvises convincing lies, shifting from suspected accomplice to potential ally. Though skeptical of Gamalang’s visions, he is willing to hear him out and cooperate.
• Gamalang moves from hostility and suspicion to trust after his ritual and apparent divine confirmation. His physical weakness after using the paste suggests the practice is damaging his health and shortening his life.
• The islanders initially prepare to attack Lin Feng, but defer to Gamalang’s judgment and become respectful once he accepts Lin Feng as an ally.
• Their relationship becomes one of cautious cooperation: Lin Feng offers Gamalang practical help, while Gamalang shares the islanders’ history and the urgent threat facing them.

Significant themes

• Deception and identity: Lin Feng’s invented connection to Great Ming and his supposed family grievance help him navigate danger.
• Belief and skepticism: Gamalang interprets drug-induced visions as divine guidance, while Lin Feng questions what he sees but remains open to local knowledge.
• Corruption and failing safeguards: The demon’s influence has tainted people and the land, while the weakening seal makes the threat increasingly urgent.
• Shared history and uneasy alliance: The islanders and Lin Feng’s ancestors once worked together; their descendants may now need to cooperate again.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng confirms that the blood-map Stink left behind matches Gamalang’s directions to Dora Mahā Temple. Gamalang says they have only four hours to enter and return.
• The group follows a passage beneath the Demon-Suppressing Stele. Gamalang warns them not to say names, not to hide in darkness, and to make a sound every thirty heartbeats so they can track one another.
• They reach a sealed-looking bronze gate decorated with Tibetan, Chinese seal-script, and Sanskrit inscriptions. Its mural shows a Western-styled king and a peaceful Bodhisattva, with the Green Tara mantra, “Om Tare Tuttare Ture Svaha,” between them.
• The mantra calms Lin Feng and helps him recall the tangled history of Buddhism in Southeast Asia, which might explain the temple’s unusual mix of influences. But he realizes the mural’s enemy—shown in its lower-left section—is being deliberately overlooked.
• A clicking sound comes from behind the gate. During the group’s roll call, several people disappear, while Gamalang and others become mesmerized by the gap in the gate. Lin Feng’s Dispel sound breaks the enchantment; amplified by the passage, it also drives the clicking creature away.
• As the group tries to ward off the insects, Lin Feng senses that an Indigenous man is not what he appears to be. He cuts off the man’s head, revealing a giant centipede inside. The party has already suffered heavy losses before even entering the gate.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains alert and skeptical, comparing the gate to tomb architecture and questioning Gamalang’s account. His spiritual sensitivity lets him notice the overlooked mural detail and detect that the survivors are compromised.
• Gamalang proves truthful about the map and route, but his fascination with the mural leaves him vulnerable to its influence. The sudden danger also takes a physical toll on his frail body.
• The Indigenous guides follow Gamalang’s precautions and use whistles and powders against insects, but their numbers—and their supplies—shrink as people vanish or are revealed to be infested.
• Lin Feng acts as Gamalang’s escort, then takes decisive action to protect the remaining group.

Significant themes

• Appearance and deception: The map, gate, mural, and even members of the expedition conceal dangers or meanings.
• Knowledge versus vulnerability: Lin Feng’s historical knowledge and spiritual awareness help him interpret clues, but the group is still susceptible to supernatural forces.
• The limits of ritual and preparation: The party’s rules and insect-repelling tools offer some protection, yet they cannot prevent mass disappearances.
• A sacred place turned hostile: The temple’s Buddhist imagery and calming mantra contrast sharply with the passage’s predatory, demonic nature.

Key plot points and events

• After fleeing through the Bronze Gate, Lin Feng and the few surviving Indigenous warriors take shelter in the passage. Lin Feng keeps his sacrificial fire burning, wary of the unknown Dharma Protector and the creatures in the darkness.
• He learns that the apparitions outside the gate took the form of headless ancestors to lure the group inside. The temple’s underground layout suggests it may be a vast burial complex built around a demon-suppressing structure.
• Lin Feng realizes the passage resembles one leg of an eight-legged spider, designed to amplify spells. He suspects the structure once required eight monks to chant together to contain something.
• When venomous bugs begin stirring, Lin Feng urges the group onward. Gamalang performs rites with ancestral skulls and medicinal fumes to restore and prepare his warriors, then sends them ahead while preserving Lin Feng’s spiritual perception.
• The passage’s wall niches contain hundreds of corpses used as breeding vessels for gu sorcery. Their tortured, trapped spirits feed the magic. Some bodies wear Ming armor, while others belong to local people. Lin Feng concludes that Zheng He could not have simply pacified the site and that Gamalang has concealed the truth.
• The group reaches a revolving stone door. Beyond it is a Buddhist pagoda with a luminous image of Mahavairocana—but no sealed demon. Lin Feng senses that the supposed monsters are actually the people inside: outsiders connected to a vanished Plateau civilization.
• Meanwhile, “Grandfather” hears that his nephew and Stink entered the dangerous place. He leaves to punish those responsible for the hunting dogs, then says that one person is dead and eleven remain.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains alert and pragmatic, using his powers to protect the group while questioning what he sees. His suspicion of Gamalang grows as the evidence contradicts the story of a Great Ming treasure and a demon sealed beneath the temple.
• Gamalang draws strength from his ancestors and prepares his warriors for what he believes will be a fatal mission. He shows reverence for the dead and sends his people forward, but his evasiveness makes Lin Feng distrust him.
• The Indigenous warriors are exhausted and frightened, yet follow Gamalang’s rites and advance with grim resolve.
• “Grandfather” is portrayed as fiercely protective of his kin and brutally punitive toward those he holds responsible. The ascetics fear and defer to him.

Significant themes

• Truth beneath legend: Stories about demons, treasure, and temple history obscure the human reality of the site.
• The cost of power: Gu sorcery depends on resentment and torment, turning the dead into instruments of magic.
• Ancestry and duty: Gamalang’s people draw strength, identity, and authority from their ancestors, even as they face near-certain death.
• Fear and uncertainty: The apparent absence of danger beyond the door is more unsettling than an obvious threat, while Lin Feng’s incomplete knowledge leaves him unable to trust appearances.

Plot points and events

• The Gamalang dies after using his secret art to disguise Lin Feng’s human presence. He asks Lin Feng to carry the heads of past Gamalangs—and the truth about Dora Mahā—back to the tribe, so future generations will stop coming here in search of nonexistent treasure.
• Lin Feng surveys the enormous chamber beneath the Spider Tower. He realizes Dora Mahā is not a temple or treasure vault but a vast Pagoda Burial site, built around a High Master’s corpse to suppress demons and Vengeful Ghosts. Its purpose and history have become distorted over time.
• He suspects the clay figures are not prisons for demons but “cocoons” formed around people buried in the earth, from which monstrous corpses later emerge. Higher levels contain increasingly humanlike figures and intact corpses embedded in the walls.
• Lin Feng climbs toward the top, avoiding the demons. He notices them placing bloodied bones inside opened clay shells, apparently trying to create or gestate something.
• On the tier with four clay figures, one attacks him with a powerful spiritual assault. Lin Feng counters with his hair-formed Whip, breaks open its shell, and exposes a Blood Corpse that rapidly burns away in the air.
• The Blood Corpse’s screams bring a second threat: an unseen Dharma Protector or entity that casts a frightening gloom over the chamber. Lin Feng escapes its reach by grabbing an inscribed chain and swinging up beside the High Master’s corpse.
• The gloom stops at the High Master. Lin Feng finds a jeweled Gold-Ground Cloisonné Box beside the corpse and opens it.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng accepts the Gamalang’s final request and becomes the carrier of the tribe’s inherited wisdom. He remains cautious and investigative, choosing to understand the site rather than attack the demons without knowing the consequences. His resourcefulness and combat skills help him survive the assault.
• The Gamalang shifts from despair to a final act of purpose: he sacrifices himself and entrusts Lin Feng with protecting his people from further futile deaths.
• The High Master remains motionless, but the demons’ gloom cannot cross into his presence, suggesting his corpse still anchors the site’s defenses.
• The chapter’s key interaction is an indirect one: the Gamalang entrusts Lin Feng with his people’s history, while the High Master’s burial site offers Lin Feng temporary protection from the entity pursuing him.

Significant themes

• Wisdom as inheritance: The Gamalang calls accumulated knowledge the true treasure that allows a people to endure.
• History distorted into legend: The burial site’s original purpose has been obscured by time, factional conflict, and stories of treasure.
• Death, burial, and transformation: The chapter explores differing funeral customs while suggesting that burial itself may be connected to the creation of the demons.
• Sacrifice and protection: The Gamalang gives his life to save his people, and the High Master’s own burial appears to be an enduring act of supernatural containment.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng reaches the Spirit Pagoda’s chained figure after the dim Dharma Protector eats the Evil Ghosts. The Protector suppresses the blood-red corpse’s smoke, then disappears with the other crawling demons.
• Lin Feng opens a gem-studded treasure box by dropping blood on it. Inside is a copper-plate book written in Phags-pa script with Pali annotations. Unable to read it, he memorizes its contents.
• The chained “Spiritual Master” opens his eyes and reaches toward Lin Feng, offering—or threatening him with—a piece of tanned leather. As Lin Feng takes it and flees, the figure’s skin peels away, revealing an earthen creature.
• Lin Feng realizes the supposed holy man was actually a demon imprisoned by the chains, and that the pagoda’s eight “spider legs” are part of its containment. Its awakening stirs the buried corpses and a dangerous torrent of animated earth.
• Lin Feng escapes through a newly revealed passage, keeping his eyes closed to resist the Gu Sorcery’s illusions and following the real path by sensing its mental attacks. He leaves the demons and fire behind.
• Outside the forest, Fifth Uncle argues with a Western official who fears discovery of their joint exploitation and killing of local people. Fifth Uncle claims their plan will soon free them from the Governor-General’s authority, and hints that the official has already benefited from a supernatural source of renewed vitality.
• The scene reveals the scale of their crimes: a river filled with victims, girls being abducted for brothels, and a python-like presence feeding on corpses. Fifth Uncle then sets out to “rescue” Lin Feng, bringing shackled Black Wizards as captives and threatening them.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng stays alert and pragmatic, but repeatedly revises his assumptions as evidence overturns the local legends. He prioritizes escape over investigating the unknown, relying on cultivation abilities, quick observation, and dark humor.
• The Dharma Protector proves morally ambiguous: it consumes the emerging demons yet suppresses the corpse’s smoke, leaving Lin Feng unsure whose interests it serves.
• The apparent Spiritual Master is revealed as a hostile earthen demon, not a holy guardian. The chains that seemed to honor him actually restrain him.
• Fifth Uncle emerges as ruthless and calculating. He is willing to collaborate with colonial authorities, exploit supernatural benefits, and murder or enslave local people to protect his ambitions.
• The Western official despises and threatens Fifth Uncle while also sharing in the benefits of their arrangement. Their exchange exposes mutual distrust and a partnership built on greed and blackmail.

Significant themes

• Appearance versus reality: Sacred imagery and local legends conceal a demonic prison, while apparent allies may serve unclear purposes.
• The danger of assumption: Lin Feng’s inherited stories repeatedly mislead him; survival depends on revising his understanding.
• Exploitation and complicity: Fifth Uncle and the official share responsibility for violence, even as they resent and threaten one another.
• Knowledge and survival: Lin Feng cannot read the ancient text, but memorizing it may preserve valuable knowledge; in the immediate crisis, however, escape takes precedence.
• Burial, resurrection, and corruption: Corpses, animated earth, and the python’s feeding connect the pagoda’s supernatural horror to the chapter’s broader imagery of death and exploitation.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng, fleeing an eight-armed “Spiritual Master,” realizes the pursuer has become an immortal-like aberration through the Heterodox Path. The creature’s flesh continually grows and its bones form magical weapons.
• Lin Feng opens the hide he has been carrying and discovers an image of a divine yak. Its mighty cry reveals the [mou] tone, which the game identifies as the Heroic Tone, a protective form of the Land God’s Six Tones associated with the Yak God.
• The passage amplifies incantations, so Lin Feng repeatedly uses the [fa] tone as thunderous blasts to suppress the Spiritual Master’s unnatural flesh. Though badly outmatched, he gains a chance to enter the hide’s preserved memory and chooses to do so.
• In the memory, Lin Feng experiences a nighttime procession of Plateau ritual practitioners and their followers. The group travels through the wilderness under the moon, chanting and using bells, banners, and weapons to ward off predators.
• A servant in the procession becomes separated from everyone, apparently ensnared by a supernatural force. He tries to survive through ritual: eating and drinking, shaping tsampa cakes into ox horns, praying toward the mountains, stabbing himself, and swinging an inscribed ox-bone club through dense smoke.
• The smoke clears, and the servant returns to the shaman. The shaman says that seven of his sons were lost after demons from the Demon Kingdom bewitched them. The procession has suffered major losses before any battle begins.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains observant and pragmatic under pressure. He studies the hide even while fighting, recognizes that incantations work especially well in the passage, and uses the memory as a possible refuge from the Spiritual Master.
• The Spiritual Master is revealed as a powerful but grotesquely transformed Heterodox practitioner, capable of growing extra limbs and magical artifacts. Lin Feng’s repeated [fa] tones exploit the passage’s spiritual amplification and weaken him.
• The ritual practitioner in the memory appears disciplined and resourceful: when isolated, he uses familiar ritual actions and endures self-inflicted injury to break free of the supernatural disturbance.
• The shaman greets the returning servant as a son, showing affection and relief, but his account of seven lost sons exposes the procession’s grief and danger.

Significant themes

• Tradition transformed into something alien: The Spiritual Master’s methods retain familiar forms while departing from their original teachings, raising questions about identity and whether the transformed being is still the same person.
• Knowledge and adaptation: Lin Feng survives through observation and improvisation, while the chapter contrasts his flexibility with practitioners who cling to old methods or take dangerous shortcuts.
• Ritual as protection: The yak’s heroic cry and the practitioner’s chants, offerings, blood, and sacred objects suggest that sound and ritual can defend against supernatural threats.
• Isolation and unseen danger: The servant’s companions disappear without warning, emphasizing how perilous the wilderness is and how easily a group can be broken apart.
• Loss and kinship: The shaman’s relief at the servant’s return is shadowed by the loss of seven sons, making familial affection part of the chapter’s tragedy.

Summary

• A mage leads Lin Feng and a band of warriors across the Plateau to stop demons emerging from the frozen earth. He mourns the dead but insists their sacrifice serves the Yak God; he performs a supernatural funeral in which the bodies burn to ash without fuel, then sounds a horn to send their spirits toward the sacred mountain.
• The group presses on through storms, following a White Yak King that appears whenever they risk losing their way. Along the route, frightened herders share their provisions, believing the sacred mountain is in danger.
• At the mountain’s foot, they find a battlefield soaked in blood. Ocher, eyeless, scale-covered demons are pouring from a pit, and the defenders are close to defeat. The mage reveals his emaciated body and transforms his hide robe—reinforced with materials gathered on the journey—into a giant yak-like beast. He leads the charge, and Lin Feng’s warrior companion fights alongside him.
• A tremendous yak-like bellow knocks the warrior unconscious. He later wakes amid the dead, with the battle apparently over and the mage and other survivors nowhere in sight. A white calf licks him awake, then walks toward a waiting herd without looking back.
• At sunrise, Lin Feng sees the snowy mountain illuminated in a stunning golden and five-colored radiance. Among the herd stands a colossal white yak whose presence conveys immense power and majesty.

Character developments and interactions

• The mage is both grieving and unwavering. His prayers, funeral rites, and charge show his devotion to the Yak God and his determination to protect the Plateau, while his starvation-thin body suggests the hardship behind his spiritual authority.
• Lin Feng remains an observer through the warrior’s perspective. He is skeptical and analytical about the supernatural events, but the final vision of the mountain and the great yak leaves him awestruck.
• The white yak calf shows unexpected tenderness by waking the fallen warrior, then quietly rejoins its herd. The White Yak King likewise guides the travelers without attacking them.
• The herders, warriors, and mage are bound together by shared faith and the threat of invasion: the herders give what they can, while the defenders make a desperate stand against the demons.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and faith: The mage gives meaning to the dead through belief in the Yak God and the sacred mountain.
• Human smallness before nature and the divine: The uncanny fire, the immense mountain, and the yaks suggest forces beyond ordinary human understanding.
• Duty amid grief: The mage does not let sorrow stop him from carrying out his mission.
• Beauty alongside violence: The blood-soaked battle gives way to a radiant sunrise and a vision of overwhelming natural majesty.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng escapes the eight-armed “guru” by unleashing the Land God’s [mou] tone, a forceful cry that crushes the creature’s bones. The attack works but nearly overwhelms him, since it draws on a trace of divine essence his body cannot withstand. He flees while the injured guru struggles to recover.
• Elsewhere, Fifth Uncle enters the forbidden forest with his hunting dogs and the creature called Immortal Dregs. He recounts how the Pagan Dynasty’s rulers, fearing death and driven by indulgence, sought immortality through corrupted religious practices. He identifies the supposed “Ten Methods of Immortality” as a crude attempt to make a buried king immortal.
• Fifth Uncle’s dogs locate a toad-like creature concealed underground, and Immortal Dregs swallows it. Fifth Uncle then sets out to find his junior, Lin Feng, intending to kill him himself—but says he would have been willing to sacrifice his own sons if it had been the right moment to strengthen the Li family.
• Lin Feng bursts out of the marked doorway, pursued by grotesque faces from Gu Sorcery. The guru briefly emerges but recoils from the sunlight. The faces infest Fifth Uncle’s hunting dog, turning its body into a mass of talking Human-Faced Boils. Fifth Uncle shoots and kills the dog, then helps Lin Feng to his feet.

Character developments

• Lin Feng demonstrates a dangerous new ability: the [mou] tone can seriously injure the guru, but its power comes at a severe physical cost. He survives by retreating rather than pressing his advantage.
• Fifth Uncle appears calm, ruthless, and deeply pragmatic. He treats slaughter as routine, regards family members as expendable for the Li family’s survival, and maintains that only he should kill his own kin. His care for Lin Feng is genuine—or at least presented as concern—but sits alongside his stated willingness to murder him.
• Immortal Dregs acts as Fifth Uncle’s companion and weapon, consuming both the hidden toad-like creature and threats along the way.
• The hunting dog is loyal to Fifth Uncle, but he kills it immediately once the Human-Faced Boils take hold.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng’s encounter with the guru becomes a brief contest of power: his cry disables it long enough for him to escape.
• Fifth Uncle speaks with Immortal Dregs about the forest’s history, the failed immortality scheme, and his search for Lin Feng.
• When Lin Feng reaches Fifth Uncle, the sorcery faces transfer from him to the dog. Fifth Uncle sacrifices the animal without hesitation, then offers Lin Feng help.

Significant themes

• Power at a cost: Lin Feng’s divine technique is effective but physically punishing.
• Ruthlessness and loyalty: Fifth Uncle’s attachment to family is inseparable from his willingness to sacrifice individuals for the clan.
• Fear of death and false immortality: The rulers’ indulgence leads them to seek shortcuts rather than genuine wisdom or responsibility.
• Faith corrupted by self-interest: Religious traditions are distorted to serve royal power and personal pleasure.
• The grotesque and the expendable: The Human-Faced Boils and the dog’s death reinforce the chapter’s harsh, bodily horror and its bleak view of life as disposable.

Plot points and events

• Fifth Uncle kills his large dog to protect Lin Feng, then shoots at the eight-armed creature lurking inside the Spider-Leg Passage. He explains that it is a prince of the Pagan Dynasty who sought immortality through the Ten Methods of Immortality, using practices such as sacrifice and sorcery.
• Fifth Uncle checks Lin Feng for injuries and takes him back to the Stilt House. He promises to find any doctor necessary to treat him, but neither man discusses the Cemetery or Stink, Fifth Uncle’s dead enforcer.
• At dinner, Lin Feng mentions seeing a Gamalang in the Great Tomb. Fifth Uncle leaves the decision to him while pressuring him to settle down and have children. He says Lin Feng may kill anyone in the foreign land except Fifth Uncle—and even jokes that Lin Feng may stew his children.
• Lin Feng recognizes that Fifth Uncle’s apparent indulgence is backed by overwhelming confidence and control. He estimates that only about twenty-five days remain before the game’s deadline.
• Back at his Stilt House, Lin Feng studies a leather-bound incantation and hand seal called [mou]. Unlike his familiar techniques, it has demanding physical requirements; he suspects followers of the Yak God use special methods to strengthen their bodies.
• The Bronze Urn begins to hum and release a fragrance. Its seal has cracked, and something inside is starting to emerge.

Character developments and interactions

• Fifth Uncle is shown as fiercely protective of Lin Feng but also brutal, domineering, and indifferent to other lives. His sincere concern for his nephew coexists with his confidence that he can control him at any time.
• Lin Feng remains outwardly playful with Fifth Uncle but privately reads the danger in his behavior. He is increasingly analytical, connecting the immortality practices, Yak God traditions, and the techniques he is studying.
• Their exchange about killing Fifth Uncle’s children is framed as a joke, but both understand that Fifth Uncle’s offer is serious. Their relationship mixes affection, intimidation, and unspoken tension.

Significant themes

• Power and protection: Fifth Uncle’s care feels inseparable from his ability to dominate.
• Immortality and its cost: The Pagan prince’s pursuit of eternal life involved horrific, ultimately uncertain methods.
• Strength as a prerequisite: Lin Feng’s study of [mou] highlights how certain powers require physical transformation and preparation.
• Unspoken secrets: Lin Feng and Fifth Uncle avoid the Cemetery, while Stink’s death passes without acknowledgment, suggesting hidden stakes and a harsh moral world.

Key plot points and events

• Granny finishes digesting the Coal Spirit and turns on Lin Feng, mistaking him for prey. Lin lures a floating, alluring South Seas creature into the room and uses it to distract Granny; the Bronze Urn engulfs and absorbs the creature.
• As evil souls swarm across the night sky, Lin hides inside a Stilt House. Once the danger passes, he finds a Painted Skin in the Bronze Urn. Wearing it makes him “invisible to the world,” potentially letting him use the Fire Lance without its usual backlash.
• At dawn, three people—including members of the Enforcer Squad—are found mauled. Fifth Uncle blames Long-haired Warthogs and announces a hunt, though Lin suspects there is more to the deaths.
• Fifth Uncle explains that Zhubala was once a vast wild-boar den. Despite efforts to drive the boars away, they keep returning. With Rigra’s month-long rainy season approaching, he warns that a massive crossing—“ten thousand boars”—is imminent.
• Lin heads off to find where the local Indigenous People live.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains cautious and resourceful: he avoids fighting Granny directly, acquires the Painted Skin, and plans to repair the Fire Lance as protection against future threats. He also notices the corpse-stench in Fifth Uncle’s scratches, suggesting Fifth Uncle was doing something disturbing overnight.
• Granny is revealed to be both dangerous and vulnerable while digesting prey: she does not attack Lin after absorbing the creature.
• Fifth Uncle presents himself as an angry leader responding to deaths, but Lin doubts his account and reads signs that his activities may be connected to the night’s events. He warns Lin personally about the approaching boar migration.
• Lin and Fifth Uncle speak about Zhubala’s history; Lin listens without revealing his suspicions.

Significant themes

• Predation and survival: The Bronze Urn, Granny, the floating creature, and the boars all make the South Seas a world where living things can become prey.
• Deception and concealment: Lin relies on misdirection and the Painted Skin, which literally hides him from the world.
• Mounting danger: The evil souls, unexplained deaths, and approaching rainy season suggest that the threats are escalating.
• Uncertainty and mistrust: The supposed boar attacks may not explain the deaths, and Lin remains wary of Fifth Uncle’s motives.

Plot points and events

• Ominous weather signals the approach of Ten Thousand Pigs Crossing the River, a disaster involving both month-long darkness, torrential rain, and vicious ghosts, followed by stampeding warthogs that kill and devour people.
• Lin Feng and an enforcer enter the Indigenous People’s territory and find the entire settlement massacred. Monitor lizards feed on the bodies, and Lin Feng senses an unknown presence fleeing.
• Back at the Stilt House, Fifth Uncle prepares to patrol the plantations with armed men and hunting dogs. Before leaving, he tells Lin Feng that Lin Feng is more like him than any of his own children.
• That night, Lin Feng uses the Painted Skin to investigate the killings. He discovers that the monk who performed rituals during the day is a corpse whose robe emits the murderous shadows attacking the newcomers.
• Lin Feng examines the Indigenous People’s bodies. Some died from blade wounds, while others appear to have suffered heart attacks. He cannot identify Gamalang’s Heir, but starlight rising from the corpses gathers into a large orchid, revealing the Blue-and-White Gamalang and a skeletal figure.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains composed and curious despite the growing danger. He investigates both the settlement massacre and the nighttime killer, while keeping his suspicions about Fifth Uncle to himself.
• The enforcer is increasingly frightened, warning Lin Feng against entering the Indigenous territory and later urging him to flee the massacre site. He nevertheless follows Lin Feng out of duty and fear of the consequences.
• Fifth Uncle appears cold toward his children but unusually warm toward Lin Feng. Their joking exchange—Fifth Uncle says Lin Feng is the one most like him—suggests a special bond, though its implications remain unclear.
• Fifth Uncle’s children resent Lin Feng, watching him with envy, jealousy, and hatred.
• The ritual-performing monk’s daytime role conceals his nighttime identity as a supernatural killer, highlighting the danger of appearances.

Significant themes

• Foreboding and escalating peril: Strange weather, silent wildlife, and encroaching darkness signal that the island’s threats are intensifying.
• Deception and hidden identities: The seemingly religious monk is revealed as a corpse and murderer; outward appearances cannot be trusted.
• Survival and fear: The enforcer’s terror and the community’s dependence on Fifth Uncle underscore how precarious life is on the island.
• Death and transformation: The massacre, the corpse-feeding lizards, and the starlight gathering from the dead suggest that death may be tied to the island’s supernatural forces.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng witnesses a supernatural vision at the Gamalang place of wisdom: the tribe’s dead elders’ souls gather around a towering Jianmu tree and its orchids. A skeleton embedded in the tree gives him an orchid, carrying generations of Gamalang knowledge.
• The game reveals that Lin Feng has learned the Gamalang secret medicine art, Gamalang’s Mediumship Potion, which uses the Gamalang plant to communicate with the realm of souls and collect ancestral wisdom.
• Examining the ruined settlement, Lin Feng finds drag marks leading to the former home of the tribe’s guardian spirit. He suspects that Immortal Dregs destroyed the Ancestor Spirit, while he believes Fifth Uncle of the Li family was responsible for the slaughter.
• Back at the Stilt House, Lin Feng asks a monk—whom he recognizes as the previous night’s killer—to repair his Fire Lance. While appearing to write Pali characters, Lin Feng sees the monk transform into a corpse surrounded by rats. He strikes at one rat, but the vision vanishes, leaving him unsure whether it was real or an illusion.
• The monk interprets Lin Feng’s writing as traces connected to the former Dharma Mahā. He recounts how a prince seeking immortality was drawn into a scheme involving a Black Wizard and a secret method. A group of monks built Dharma Mahā to carry it out; Master Dongxing discovered the plot too late, and he and the temple fell into Buddha’s Forsaken Badlands.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng gains the Gamalang elders’ accumulated wisdom and a new spirit-channeling technique. He remains cautious and observant, investigating the massacre and testing the monk without revealing that he sees the monk’s horrifying form.
• The Gamalang ancestors are portrayed as guardians of communal memory: their souls pass their knowledge on to whoever comes to the orchids.
• The monk shifts from an apparent repairman and storyteller to a disturbing, possibly supernatural presence. His account introduces the larger mystery surrounding Dharma Mahā and the immortality plot.
• Fifth Uncle is absent, but Lin Feng’s suspicion of him deepens; Immortal Dregs is implicated in the destruction of the tribe’s guardian spirit.

Significant themes

• Inherited knowledge and cultural memory: the Gamalang pass wisdom between generations through their elders’ souls.
• Reality versus illusion: Lin Feng’s encounter with the monk—and the vanished rats—leaves the boundary between supernatural perception and physical events uncertain.
• Power, greed, and exploitation: the prince’s desire for immortality enables a secret conspiracy, while the Gamalang’s destruction suggests the cost of forces acting upon vulnerable communities.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng witnesses the monk being partly consumed by Evil Soil. The monk’s remaining Arhat-like half warns him to leave, trust no one, and remember that what he sees is unreal—then seems to forget the episode.
• Lin Feng tests the monk’s strange chant. It makes his surroundings feel like the intestines of a vast creature, where he glimpses the Immortal Embryo, a gigantic tree, and a buried Altar. He stops before the vision can draw him further in.
• During a nighttime rainstorm, Lin Feng brews Gamalang Secret Medicine, which lets him seek contact with someone connected to him. He chooses his newly acquired master and enters a trance.
• Lin Feng reaches a city hidden among thunderclouds, where someone reads Mencius. A huge hand reaches for him, but the speaker warns him away and strikes him with lightning, jolting him back to his body.
• Outside, the rain has become blood, and a rupture has appeared in the sky. Lin Feng realizes the breach was caused by his master.
• A scene beneath Ligela Island reveals the Immortal Embryo and a corrupted Buddhist temple. The Embryo plans to curse Li Budu to death, but the master’s colossal intervention tears through the island’s hidden realm, leaving the Embryo and temple shaken.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains cautious and pragmatic, but deliberately probes the island’s mysteries to provoke a response. He recognizes his own tendency to create chaos when trying to break a stalemate.
• His new master emerges as a powerful, active force. Lin Feng begins to feel gratitude and melancholy toward him, wondering whether the master’s thunderclouds reflect an endless struggle or sacrifice.
• The monk is revealed as divided between sacred and corrupted states, though he appears unaware of his transformation afterward.
• The Immortal Embryo is confident in its ability to kill Li Budu, but the master’s intervention exposes the limits of its control.

Character interactions

• The monk urgently warns Lin Feng about the Evil Soil and the unreliability of appearances, but Lin Feng later dismisses much of the warning as a clue rather than a direct instruction.
• Lin Feng reaches out to his master through the potion. The master responds with a warning and a lightning strike, yet also appears to have opened a breach in the island’s hidden world.
• The Immortal Embryo and the Gilded Buddha Statue discuss their plan to curse Li Budu; the master’s arrival interrupts them and disrupts the temple’s mantra.

Significant themes

• Unreliable reality: Visions, disguises, and “what you see” may not be real; observation itself seems to affect what appears.
• Memory and erasure: True success for some figures means disappearing from history and being forgotten, not being commemorated.
• Sacrifice and inheritance: Lin Feng reflects on what his master has left behind and what obligations he himself has yet to fulfill.
• Hidden corruption beneath holiness: The temple’s golden Buddhist statues conceal living organs that generate monsters, contrasting sacred appearance with horrific reality.

Key plot points and events

• Fifth Uncle conducts a secret ritual in his rubber plantation, feeding wild boar entrails to venomous creatures and uncanny beings—great snakes and hounds—while striking the figures in the mist and demanding, “Who am I?”
• The beings answer “Grandfather,” but Fifth Uncle repeatedly asserts his identity as Li Budu, invoking his family name and classical verses. A competing voice calls him Tree God, threatening to drown out his human identity.
• He emerges wounded and naked, declaring the local deities “nothing but beasts.” Ascetics assist his ritual by feeding organs and bodies to the mist’s creatures and stabbing Fifth Uncle as part of a process they call “bathing.”
• The Ascetics warn that he still lacks the necessary bloodline and must arrange for someone to die in his place. Fifth Uncle insists he can outwit ghosts and gods as his ancestors did, determined to succeed where previous generations failed.
• A sudden lightning strike destroys the great python and hounds in the mist. Fifth Uncle is shocked and wonders if “he” caused it.
• The story shifts to Lin Feng, who uses Gamalang Potion to explore spiritually. He cannot find Zhang Zhuoen, but another dose brings him face-to-face with the mysterious Great Snow Mountain, which seems connected to the Yak God.

Character developments

• Fifth Uncle / Li Budu appears consumed by a plan to overcome the supernatural forces that shaped his family. His ritual blurs the boundary between man, beast, and deity, while the struggle between the names “Li Budu” and “Tree God” suggests his identity is at risk.
• Lin Feng continues experimenting with the potion and spiritual travel. Though unable to reach Zhang Zhuoen, he persists and encounters a new, potentially significant supernatural presence.

Significant themes

• Identity and naming: Fifth Uncle’s repeated demand for his name reflects a fight to preserve human identity against spiritual transformation.
• Family legacy and ambition: He sees his family’s rise and downfall as bound to ghosts and gods, and believes he can break the pattern.
• Ritual, sacrifice, and the supernatural: The feeding and mutilation suggest that power demands bodily and human costs.
• Uncertainty and unseen forces: The lightning’s source is unknown, and Lin Feng’s spiritual journeys reveal powers he cannot yet understand.

Character interactions

• Fifth Uncle dominates the mist’s beings through questioning and violence, while they alternately call him “Grandfather” and “Tree God.”
• The Ascetics serve as ritual attendants and challenge Fifth Uncle’s confidence by warning him about the missing bloodline and required substitute death.
• Lin Feng attempts to reach Zhang Zhuoen through spiritual travel but fails, then encounters the Great Snow Mountain and senses the Yak God.

Summary

Lin Feng reaches the Karakoram’s sacred glacier while still suffering the hallucinatory aftereffects of Gamalang’s potion. In his delirium, he believes he is facing the Yak God and is overwhelmed by a brutal flood of knowledge: nature’s order is ruled by strength and survival. To protect himself, he instinctively chants mou and visualizes two figures—the Yin God form of his future self and the Yak God’s powerful Dharma Protector. The divine pressure leaves him in agony and unconscious for an unknown period.
When he wakes, Lin Feng finds that his injuries have healed and reads the game notifications. He has gained the recipe for Secret Domain Yak-Bone Divine Oil, a medicine that can strengthen the internal organs when used by sufficiently advanced mages chanting mou. The Yak God recognizes and blesses him, granting a chance to summon the Dharma Protector’s phantom and a chance for his body to gain the protection of yak hide. However, Lin Feng has not proved his courage, so he cannot access the Yak God’s further boons.
Lin Feng is underwhelmed by the oil, since his existing cultivation method already strengthens his body, and uncertain how to demonstrate courage. He suspects the Yak God’s faith values hunting and defeating enemies. Looking out at the sky-hole created by his master, he notices a corpse killing someone near the Funeral Hall. After learning that the corpses are kept in the Cemetery, he spots a Qi Spirit Initiation procession that night, puts on his Painted Skin, and follows it.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng endures a frightening encounter with the Yak God, relying on instinctive visualization and chanting to protect his mind. He gains new blessings but remains practical and skeptical about their usefulness.
• The Yak God is presented as an impersonal force of nature, teaching through overwhelming pressure rather than gentle guidance. Its favor is conditional: Lin Feng must prove his courage to receive greater rewards.
• Lin Feng and the monk have a brief exchange that reveals the location where the corpses are kept.
• Lin Feng’s master is indirectly present through the hole in the sky, a visible result of the master’s power.

Themes

• Nature’s cruelty and survival: The Yak God embodies the rule that the strong consume the weak.
• Faith, power, and worthiness: Divine blessings are earned through tests, not granted freely.
• Self-preservation and identity: Lin Feng uses an image of his own future self alongside the Yak God’s messenger to withstand divine influence.
• Cultivation through stages: Lin Feng reflects that gradual spiritual training may be safer than leaping directly into overwhelming power.

Plot points and events

• During a violent storm, Lin Feng secretly enters the Cemetery and finds Ascetics performing a brutal ritual around a deep pit. Their secret mantra resembles one he heard before, but appears unique to Ligela Island.
• The Cemetery is overrun with uncanny creatures and signs of Gu Sorcery: monstrous centipedes, strange snakes, and a blood-filled vat rooted into the earth. The Ascetics sacrifice Long-haired Warthogs to the pit, where the creatures dissolve and a blood-red Eight-Armed Guru emerges.
• Lin Feng realizes the ritual is connected to Dharma Mahā. Mistaken for an Ascetic, he is handed a knife and ordered to bleed a boar.
• Killing it triggers a game notification: the Yak God rewards his courage by slightly increasing his Wrath and Protection. Lin Feng eagerly helps slaughter more boars, gaining a one-percent boost to both after killing over forty.
• When the boars run out, the Ascetics bring in the corpse of the recently deceased “Sea disaster survivor.” They open its back and hang it up as bait; the Eight-Armed Guru begins burrowing into it, revealing that the ritual uses human remains as well.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng moves from wary observer to opportunistic participant. He disguises himself among the Ascetics, studies their ritual, and exploits the work to strengthen his powers.
• The Ascetics accept Lin Feng as one of their own, unknowingly letting him assist their ceremony—and allowing him to conceal his motives.
• The Ascetics’ treatment of the survivor’s corpse shows their ritual has escalated beyond animal sacrifice.

Significant themes

• Ritual and horror: Devotion is expressed through self-mutilation, animal sacrifice, and disturbing supernatural practices.
• Power through courage and violence: Lin Feng discovers that killing—even animals he did not hunt himself—earns the Yak God’s favor.
• Deception and opportunism: Lin Feng uses the Ascetics’ trust to pursue his own growth while remaining embedded in their ritual.
• Humanity sacrificed to the uncanny: The shift from boars to a human corpse suggests the ritual’s costs and dangers are increasing.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng witnesses the Ascetics perform a gruesome Gu Sorcery ritual: they use blood, ghost script, and a corpse to subdue the “Eight-Armed Guru” and extract a supernatural, infant-like heart, which they preserve in a lacquer vessel.
• He concludes that local deities are being eliminated on a large scale by someone seeking their power. Their campaign has inadvertently helped him claim 27% of the available places and several abilities, including Earth-Escape and Dream-Entrusting.
• Concealing himself with the Painted Skin, Lin Feng searches for materials for the Five-Ghost Transport Art. He suspects Fifth Uncle is behind the abundance of wild boars and wonders whether the island can sustain them—or whether they are being raised for a ritual or other purpose.
• Elsewhere, Fifth Uncle suffers as black burls grow from his body; he cuts them out, and they take root. Despite his ruined, apparently lifeless body, he remains active, accompanied by strange shadows and Gu Sorcery creatures.
• The Ascetics return with the lacquer vessel. The surrounding forest becomes uncanny: bone shoots emerge from the ground, ghostly flames appear, and the South Seas Jianmu bears a living, writhing “Mysterious Female Gate.”
• An Ascetic brings Fifth Uncle one of his daughters. Though the child is frightened by the scene, Fifth Uncle warmly invites her closer.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng proves a cautious opportunist: he avoids direct conflict, hides his abilities, and profits from the struggle between others. His suspicions about Fifth Uncle and the island’s boars deepen.
• Fifth Uncle is revealed as a grotesquely altered but still calculating figure, with a damaged “Inner Landscape,” supernatural companions, and apparent control over a disturbing ritual environment.
• The Ascetics act as ritual practitioners and intermediaries: they extract the heart, return with it, and escort Fifth Uncle’s daughter to him.
• Fifth Uncle’s tenderness toward his daughter contrasts sharply with the horror surrounding him.

Significant themes

• Opportunism and hidden advantage: Lin Feng gains power by letting others fight while he remains unnoticed.
• Ritual, sacrifice, and exploitation: Bodies, blood, animals, and supernatural forces are treated as resources.
• The uncanny beneath ordinary life: The boars and familiar family relationships may conceal larger, disturbing purposes.
• Horror and contradiction: Fifth Uncle’s monstrous condition sits alongside his affectionate treatment of his child.