Chapter Summaries

Key plot points

• At a hot-pot restaurant in Fukou, Lin Feng reunites with his old friend Brother Chen. Chen finds him startlingly different: fitter, strikingly handsome, dressed in flowing hanfu with long hair and a wooden sword, and surrounded by an imposing presence.
• Lin Feng hides the reason for his change. He has just completed the game’s Nanyang’s Rise into Evil volume and is still processing its events, studying his rewards, and planning another scheme.
• The game confirms that Lin Feng fulfilled all four objectives: survive thirty days, reach Ligela Island, obtain a Ninth Rank folk Magical Artifact, and leave a male descendant of the Li family alive.
• During his ascent from the game world, Lin Feng recognizes that combining three fragments of the Qi-Observing Dharma Eye has greatly expanded its power: it can now reveal the flow of origin energy through the world. He suspects all thirty-six fragments could expose the secrets of ghosts and gods, but also knows the artifact is dangerous and has worsened his injuries.
• Before leaving, Lin Feng strikes the replicated Ascension Stockade again. He chooses not to keep observing Fifth Uncle and Wangxiang Zai, sensing that the latter has an unsettling connection to the Longevity Tree.
• The system declares Lin Feng an official player and grants him the identity Qi-Observing Historian. He has anchored seven historical nodes, including the Li family’s rise and fall, the suppression of Ascension Stockade, Zheng He’s voyages, and the destruction of Rigra. This yields a 260% total reward increase and a high-distinction rating.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng has changed dramatically in bearing and appearance. Though he remains casual with Brother Chen, he now carries a quiet authority that makes strangers lower their voices. He is more powerful, but his injuries and the Qi-Observing Dharma Eye’s dangers remain significant.
• Brother Chen is unsettled by the contrast between his familiar friend and the imposing figure before him. His teasing suspicion and physical distance provide light comedy, while also emphasizing how much Lin Feng has changed.
• Fifth Uncle and Wangxiang Zai are left behind in the game’s history. Fifth Uncle’s schemes have failed, while Wangxiang Zai appears connected to something larger and more troubling.

Significant themes

• History and observation: Lin Feng’s new identity makes him both witness to and anchor of historical events; the system claims those events cannot change while he lives.
• Power and danger: The Dharma Eye offers increasingly profound insight, but each fusion comes with physical or supernatural consequences.
• Transformation and estrangement: Lin Feng’s growth makes even a close friend feel that he has become someone unfamiliar.
• Schemes and unintended consequences: Fifth Uncle’s ambition ultimately turns against him, while Lin Feng continues plotting beyond the completed game.

Chapter summary

• After completing his first solo run, Lin Feng reviews his rewards and realizes the game heavily favors taking risks: defeating dangerous enemies brings vastly more fortune than the small guaranteed reward. The haul includes a large bonus for killing a mysterious, name-censored target, plus Han Dynasty Dragon-Tiger Qi comparable to a high official’s rank. Lin Feng suspects the target may be the shaman responsible for the deaths of two Marquis Champions, but cannot identify them.
• His total fortune reaches roughly 82,940 taels after bonuses. He is briefly delighted, thinking he can afford many skills, until he opens the redemption menu and sees the prices of rare items. Ordinary knowledge and skills are cheap, while valuable objects—especially “clean” versions free of supernatural entanglements—can cost enormous sums. He concludes that he has escaped poverty but is still far from wealthy.
• Lin Feng buys the Gamalang Mediumship Potion and Secret Domain Yak-Bone Divine Oil, along with ingredients and equipment. Over three days, the potion lets him observe the Yak God, while the oil strengthens his body and gives him an abnormal ability to process and store power. Though he cannot consciously remember what he sees, he realizes those memories are likely sealed rather than lost.
• At a meal with his friend Brother Chen, Lin Feng’s new strength and appetite become obvious: he eats an extraordinary amount without feeling full. Brother Chen worries about his health and his neglected streaming career, urging him to keep up his exposure. Lin Feng instead wears him out by walking him all over Fukou, then leaves him asleep so he can go out alone.
• Lin Feng explores the city’s spiritual environment. Through the Painted Skin, he can see the Human Aura—the vitality of humanity—suppressing even powerful supernatural entities during the Age of Humanity. Those beings are desperately seeking anchors but cannot cause much disruption while humanity’s influence remains strong.
• He practices Earth Staff Technique, a method he acquired through Fifth Uncle’s witchcraft. It lets him use himself as a kind of staff and create a small area beneath his feet where companions can hide, though objects carrying magical power are difficult to conceal there. His thoughts about Fifth Uncle’s cruel methods for raising supernatural hunting dogs deepen his disgust for tomb-robbing families and their lack of humanity.
• Lin Feng makes his usual circuits around the mountain near Fukou. This time, the Ancestral Hall fails to detect him.

Character development and interactions

• Lin Feng grows stronger and more confident, but also learns the limits of his new wealth and abilities. He remains cautious about the game’s hidden rules and the powerful forces behind its rewards, while steadily adapting his body and spiritual techniques.
• Brother Chen acts as a grounded, comic counterpoint: he worries about Lin Feng’s health and career, but is overwhelmed by Lin Feng’s stamina and unusual behavior.
• Lin Feng’s reflections on Fifth Uncle show increasing moral distance from the brutal practices of tomb-robbing families.

Significant themes

• Risk, reward, and hidden incentives: The game rewards dangerous action far more than safety.
• Knowledge versus consequence: Forbidden skills are easy to obtain, but using them may bring serious entanglements.
• Wealth and limits: A fortune that seems enormous can still be inadequate for truly rare, powerful items.
• Humanity’s spiritual power: Human vitality suppresses supernatural forces, even as those forces search for ways to regain influence.
• Memory and identity: Lin Feng’s lost visions may remain sealed within him, awaiting a future trigger.
• Moral compromise: Supernatural power often rests on cruel practices, which Lin Feng increasingly rejects.

Key plot points

• Using his Qi-Observing Dharma Eye, Lin Feng sees that the Li Family Ancestral Hall is a vast but fragile ill omen, held in the world by a few tenuous connections. He plans to sever those connections rather than confront it directly.
• Lin Feng infiltrates the hall’s ominous energy and hides within Fukou’s Human Aura, reasoning that the collective presence of millions of people could overwhelm the hall’s priest if discovered.
• He puts Li Gao, Li Gao’s parents, and the people hired by Li Gao’s father to sleep, then enters a dream as an impostor associated with the Li Family Ancestral Hall.
• Inside the dream, Lin Feng finds and burns away the sleepers’ connections to the hall, erasing their memories of it. While severing Li Gao’s father’s connection, he sees an inscribed ox shoulder blade—an oracle bone—and memorizes its writing.
• The moment Lin Feng burns the oracle bone, the Li Family Ancestral Hall explodes.
• Meanwhile, the priest inside the hall reflects on the outsider’s hostility and suspects that surviving shamans from Zhong Ding’s line may be involved. He recalls the ancient conflict surrounding Zhong Ding, the Rebellion of the Nine Generations, and the terrifying Xia bronze vessels hidden by Shang rulers.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng moves from observation to a deliberate, indirect attack. He uses disguises, dreams, and the human population’s collective aura as strategic tools, and his encounter with the oracle bone hints at a larger historical mystery.
• The Yin-Shang priest becomes increasingly anxious and suspicious. Although he has been occupied by the outside priest, he begins to consider a possibility he had dismissed: that shamans from a suppressed lineage survived.
• Lin Feng and the priest remain opposed but do not meet directly in this installment. The priest is distracted by Lin Feng’s earlier interference, while Lin Feng exploits that distraction to attack the hall through its human connections.
• Li Gao, his family, and the hired workers are passive participants: they fall asleep and become the links Lin Feng uses to weaken the ancestral hall.

Significant themes

• Fragility beneath apparent power: The hall’s immense size is also a vulnerability because it depends on a few connections to remain present.
• Collective human power: Lin Feng treats Fukou’s population as a force capable of challenging supernatural authority.
• Memory and historical erasure: The hall’s connections and associated memories can be burned away; meanwhile, the priest’s account shows successive regimes trying to bury the history of their predecessors.
• Inheritance and suppressed history: The possible survival of Zhong Ding’s shamans—and the secret of Xia’s bronze vessels—suggests that buried histories may return with dangerous consequences.

Plot and key events

• Lin Feng exploits the Human Aura pressing against the Li Family Ancestral Hall, using his Mazu Amulet for protection and turning the force against the hall. Its contracts are broken, and the hall collapses and sinks back into the Underworld.
• The Shaman loses a Bronze vessel fragment and realizes his side’s protections have failed. Trapped in the Yellow Millet Dream Realm, he rages and lashes out with dark chains before the hall disappears.
• Lin Feng leaves the mountain and heads to morning tea with Brother Chen, reflecting on the skills and resources he has acquired and planning his next steps.
• Back at the hotel, Lin Feng takes Gamalang Potion to commune with the Yak God. Afterward, he finds the Bronze fragments missing and notices an unfamiliar pattern beneath his skin. The game identifies it as a Boar-Faced Soaring Serpent Pattern.

Character development

• Lin Feng shows growing confidence and resourcefulness: he defeats a formidable enemy by understanding and redirecting the forces around him, rather than relying on brute strength.
• He is increasingly strategic about building his abilities, preserving Fortune for materials, and experimenting with ways to bring allies into future games.
• His encounter with the Bronze vessel and the new pattern suggests that his connection to the game—and its effects on his body—is changing.

Character interactions

• The Shaman is powerless against Lin Feng and can only rage as his contracts and relic are lost.
• Lin Feng’s thoughts return repeatedly to Brother Chen, who later teases him for seeming tired. Lin Feng hides what happened and uses the Net of Luo to make Chen believe he is speaking to him while actually addressing a wall.

Significant themes

• History and change: Lin Feng frames the old regime’s fall as an inevitable tide: those who resist the new era perish.
• Power through knowledge: His understanding of contracts, Human Aura, and his acquired skills lets him turn a seemingly overwhelming force to his advantage.
• Preparation and experimentation: Lin Feng treats each victory as a chance to plan, gather resources, and test new strategies.
• The uncanny entering ordinary life: The missing Bronze fragments and unexplained bodily pattern blur the boundary between game, supernatural forces, and reality.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng investigates the bronze markings that appeared on his body after his encounter with the Li Family Ancestral Hall. He suspects the Bronze Vessel fragment may have merged with him, though he finds no obvious physical change. The markings surface when he strongly circulates blood and qi, and he realizes his human aura has disappeared: to Underworld Uncanniness, he now appears to be a Ritual Vessel carrying powerful dynasty-era dragon-tiger qi.
• He helps Brother Chen recover by channeling blood and qi through the Net of Luo, then takes him out for morning tea—on Brother Chen’s tab, as usual.
• Lin Feng and Chen notice that Li Gao has sent a large amount of money to Lin Feng’s livestream account, setting off a frenzy in his VIP group. They joke about the reasons behind the donation and tease each other.
• They review plans for a filming trip to Fukou, centered on a newly opening museum exhibition of a Qing Dynasty cargo ship salvaged five years earlier. Lin Feng is wary of possible Uncanny activity and dislikes the episode’s theme, “Retracing our ancestors’ journey to the South Seas.”
• Chen urges Lin Feng to focus on streaming and offers him an interest-free loan of 500,000. Lin Feng reveals that he has already leased half a mountain for a livestock farm, then turns the offer back on Chen by asking when he’ll repay the loan.
• The production crew arrives in Fukou. Xiao Ning, a content creator being promoted by the platform, buys numerous children’s drinks and milk. She says she enjoys them and confirms filming begins the next day.

Character developments

• Lin Feng grows more aware of how dramatically his nature may have changed: he is no longer perceived as human by Uncanny beings, but as a powerful ritual object. Despite the danger, he remains practical and curious.
• Brother Chen continues to be Lin Feng’s loyal, blunt friend. He worries about Lin Feng’s career and business plans, but his concern is mixed with their habitual teasing and financial banter.
• Xiao Ning is introduced as charming and alluring, with an unusual fondness for children’s drinks that draws quiet attention from the crew.

Significant themes

• Uncertain transformation and identity: Lin Feng’s bronze markings and vanished human aura raise questions about what he has become.
• The uncanny and the unpredictable: Lin Feng doubts that five years without incident guarantees the shipwreck is safe, since Uncanny phenomena can evade ordinary logic and surveillance.
• Friendship through teasing: Lin Feng and Chen express familiarity and care through insults, jokes, and money-related schemes.
• Ambition versus caution: Lin Feng’s plans to start a livestock farm clash with Chen’s advice to stick to streaming, while Lin Feng prioritizes both cultivation and personal safety over publicity.

Key plot points and events

• Before filming, Xiao Ning tells the production crew she does not want to be paired romantically with Lin Feng, fearing damage to her public image. The crew accepts her preference.
• At the hotel entrance, Xiao Ning is overcome by pain and fear, insisting the place is haunted. Lin Feng sees a blue-black child spirit trying to drive her away. He destroys it with a strand of his hair, not out of compassion but to remove an unpredictable influence.
• Lin Feng enters Xiao Ning’s dream that night and discovers she encountered a Southeast Asian shaman who sold her a charm meant to improve her financial fortune. The shaman’s home contains the name Spring Guest Flood Dragon, leading Lin Feng to suspect that figure has fled to Southeast Asia and is behind the charm’s supernatural effects.
• Xiao Ning rests for a day, then returns to filming. Lin Feng impresses the directors with his unusual screen presence.
• At the Shipwreck Museum, staff explain that the wreck was an illegal smuggling vessel carrying copper coins and porcelain, yet no human remains have been found and no historical records describe the disaster. Lin Feng listens closely, but senses nothing supernatural during the visit; the museum remains quiet and safe.
• After filming, Lin Feng receives news that Professor Han has disappeared after traveling to Susu Prefecture. Xu Nian and others have posted missing-person notices. Lin Feng doubts Han would take his own life and suspects the disappearance may relate to the coming “game.”

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains controlled and highly capable, using his power decisively against the spirit and investigating the charm through Xiao Ning’s dream. He also shows interest in archaeology and is careful about people connected to Teacher Xun.
• Xiao Ning is frightened and physically distressed by the hotel’s supernatural presence, but later forces herself to resume filming. Her fear appears tied to the spirit rather than simple nerves.
• The production crew treats the romance pairing as optional and prioritizes filming and the season’s cultural focus. The directors appreciate Lin Feng’s distinctive presence on camera.
• The museum guide enthusiastically shares the wreck’s history and connects Lin Feng with familiar scholars. He is shocked by the news of Professor Han’s disappearance.
• Lin Feng’s conversation with the guide shifts from friendly discussion of the museum to shared concern when the missing-person news arrives.

Significant themes

• Power and responsibility: Lin Feng intervenes to eliminate the spirit, but frames it as practical risk management rather than altruism.
• The limits of historical knowledge: The museum’s evidence offers clues about the shipwreck, but the absent crew and missing records leave its story unresolved.
• Hidden supernatural forces in ordinary life: A purchased good-luck charm conceals a connection to a dangerous occult figure.
• Uncertainty and looming danger: The chapter ends by linking Professor Han’s disappearance to a broader, potentially supernatural “game,” setting up a new threat.

Plot points and events

• In a pitch-dark, stormy landscape on the Loess Plateau, Professor Han runs from an unseen pursuer with Xie Shiba and a group of armed, muscular men. Several people are killed, and Han collapses before being dragged to safety.
• Han wakes in a refuge where the group burns desiccated corpses for light. He notices their old-fashioned clothes and cigarettes that went out of production decades ago, suggesting something is deeply wrong with his surroundings.
• Xie Shiba explains that they are near the Mount-Viewing Kiln Factory, which has been pursuing them. Han says he came from Shazhou after receiving a cup his teacher, Xun, had left with a farmer—along with a recent photograph of Han that appears to have been taken the day before.
• The group discovers a cave containing dead Taoist priests and a large collection of bamboo slips. Han examines the writing and recognizes small seal script, but the text is encrypted and unreadable without a key.

Character developments and interactions

• Professor Han is exhausted, injured, and disoriented, but his scholarly instincts remain strong: he notices historical clues, worries about preserving artifacts, and quickly identifies the script. His usual critical judgment is challenged by the danger and strangeness around him.
• Xie Shiba is practical and composed. He pulls Han to safety, shares food, explains the group’s rules, and treats him with respect because of Han’s connection to Teacher Xun.
• The men in Xie’s group are rough and seemingly indifferent to archaeological conventions, burning corpses and handling the cave’s contents carelessly. Their behavior makes Han suspect they are tomb raiders rather than legitimate researchers.
• Xun remains absent but shapes events: he separated from most of the group and arranged for Han to receive the cup and photograph.

Significant themes

• Displacement and temporal mystery: Outdated cigarettes and clothing, the unending darkness, and the impossible recent photograph suggest Han has entered a place—or time—outside ordinary reality.
• Scholarship amid peril: Han’s academic curiosity persists even when survival should take priority.
• Trust and identity: The group avoids real names, and Han’s connection to Xun is one of the few links he has to an explanation.
• Knowledge withheld: The encrypted bamboo slips promise important discoveries but cannot yet be deciphered.

Plot points and events

• Professor Han discovers that the bamboo slips contain a genuine cipher, which cannot be deciphered without a key. Xie Shiba says the key should be easy to find.
• Xie identifies the dead “Taoists” as infiltrators from rival underworld groups, including the Hui Family. One impostor apparently killed a Taoist and used a disguise and a feigned-death technique to infiltrate the group, but the Taoists’ safeguards killed him.
• Searching the impostor’s body, Xie finds a brocade pouch hidden inside the man’s stomach. It contains a small book that he gives to Professor Han as the likely cipher key.
• Before Han can examine it, the group hears unnaturally clear marching footsteps approaching over the soft Yellow Earth. Xie orders everyone to extinguish the lights and remain silent. Han is shoved against a wall, overwhelmed by the stench of Xie’s corpse-soiled hand, and faints. Strange thunder, hidden sounds, and viscous liquid accompany the approaching presence.
• The story shifts to Shazhou, where exhausted investigators review Professor Han’s disappearance. They trace his arrival, hotel stay, desert excursions, and visit to Singing Mountain, but have yet to establish where he went immediately before vanishing.
• A farmer recognizes Han from a photograph: Han bought a dog bowl from him, paying unusually well.

Character developments and interactions

• Professor Han is a capable scholar but is out of his depth amid the Xie Family’s brutal methods and the supernatural danger. His embarrassment at being wrong gives way to alarm and physical helplessness.
• Xie Shiba shows sharp knowledge of rival groups, confidence in the Taoists’ defenses, and a practiced, unsettling skill at searching corpses. He treats Han as the scholar who can make use of the recovered key, but shifts instantly to caution when danger approaches.
• The Xie Family acts in concert, searching the bodies and obeying Xie Shiba’s orders, though their members are visibly frightened by the approaching sounds.
• The investigators work under intense pressure and fatigue, coordinating interviews, records, and surveillance. The farmer’s recollection offers a concrete new lead.

Significant themes

• Knowledge guarded by secrecy: Ciphered writings and hidden keys suggest that the Taoists’ knowledge is deliberately protected.
• Deception and infiltration: Rival groups disguise themselves as religious figures and use tricks to steal information, but their schemes can backfire.
• The uncanny intruding on the ordinary: Familiar footsteps and thunder become terrifying when heard in the wrong place, while the strange liquid and sounds deepen the supernatural menace.
• Human cost and uncertainty: The investigators’ exhaustion and the mystery of Han’s disappearance contrast with the immediate, unexplained danger surrounding him in the past.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng prepares for an upcoming game by burning the Wood Guest into powerful Ritual Incense. He considers saving it for a supernatural offering, since a future game may bring another uncanny encounter.
• He reviews the four groups of followers under his command: the Seven Warlords of the Sea, the upgraded Nuo Opera Masters, the Galaxy Guard, and the newly recruited Shipwrecked Lost Ones. His carved masks and the Nuo Masters’ weapons give some of them formidable abilities.
• Xu Nian calls, distressed over Professor Han’s disappearance. Lin Feng gently argues that Han likely did not take his own life, pointing out that the missing scholar’s research interests make such an explanation unlikely.
• While absorbing the Wood Guest’s essence with Ritual Incense and yak-bone ointment, Lin Feng experiences a feverish vision. Unseen voices urge secrecy, warn that merchants from Shangqiu are probing hidden knowledge, and mention the ailing king, a suspicious successor, missing western soil, and trouble at “Mount-Viewing Kiln.”
• He wakes to find the Wood Guest turning into a wooden carving and discovers that his Tongue God has opened. Linking the vision to the Bronze Vessel and Professor Han’s research, he decides to investigate the vessel and its connection to Northwest Soul-Calling.
• The chapter ends with Lin Feng attempting to fuse the Fire Lance with his Han Dynasty Dragon-Tiger Qi; the stated compatibility is 95%.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng’s supernatural power continues to grow, but he remains cautious: he insists that his abilities must be activated consciously and recognizes the danger of uncontrolled cultivation.
• His followers’ varied strengths and roles are clarified, showing that he has built a capable, organized group.
• Lin Feng acts as a calming confidant to Xu Nian, offering a reasoned alternative to panic about Professor Han.
• Lin Feng’s strange vision gives him a new investigative lead, though he does not yet know whether it is a side effect of the Bronze Vessel or something more.

Significant themes

• Power and its costs: The Wood Guest provides potent spiritual nourishment but is consumed in the process, while its incense may be dangerous to others.
• Secrecy and forbidden knowledge: The vision’s warnings about merchants, bronze craftsmen, and concealed secrets suggest an ancient conspiracy.
• Rationality amid the uncanny: Lin Feng tries to interpret supernatural experiences through evidence and historical context, without dismissing their danger.
• History layered across time: The apparent link between an ancient kiln, the Yin-Shang era, and modern places blurs the boundary between past and present.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng considers the Bronze Markings on his body. They have greatly increased his durability: even a powerful war bow barely penetrated his thigh. He hopes to learn whether the markings are dangerous and how to control them, possibly by strengthening his soul through offerings.
• He enters Northwest Soul-Calling, while his real body remains in his courtyard to oversee the making of ritual incense from the unsettling Specter Mother’s Amniotic Fluid.
• The game begins with a long cutscene. Lin Feng’s character is stranded in a remote mountain shrine at night, surrounded by wolves and exposed to bitter cold.
• The character reads a letter asking him to perform soul-summoning rites for several children in Yang Family Village. He questions why the villagers sought a provincial-capital practitioner rather than someone nearby, suggesting their problem may be unusual.
• A flatbread offering disappears from the shrine’s deity statue, and crumbs appear on its mouth. The character realizes the statue has eaten the offering and fears it, while an unnatural wind and bloody stench signal an approaching threat.
• When the cutscene ends, Lin Feng takes control. He instantly pulls the charging demon into a dark abyss and drives it away from the shrine. The deity statue’s attempted ambush also fails.
• Lin Feng notices travelers approaching over the mountain ridge and recognizes how harsh the setting is: winter is near, food is scarce, and survival is difficult.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains compassionate and opportunistic: he is willing to help Professor Han if the chance arises while pursuing his own goals.
• His growing physical toughness is confirmed, increasing his confidence but not resolving his concerns about the Bronze Markings.
• The game’s original character appears to be a frightened, poor Yin-Yang Practitioner, cautious of the shrine’s deity and uncertain about the villagers’ request.
• Lin Feng’s supernatural power contrasts sharply with that character’s fear: once in control, he dispatches the demon without hesitation.

Significant themes

• Power and uncertainty: Lin Feng has become extraordinarily resilient, but still does not know whether the Bronze Markings are beneficial or dangerous.
• Folk belief and the supernatural: Soul-calling customs, offerings, shrine deities, demons, and spirit-related ailments shape everyday life.
• Survival in a hostile environment: The cold, wolves, hunger, and approaching winter make the Northwest a place where both people and animals struggle to live.
• Compassion and duty: Lin Feng’s willingness to lend help guides his choices, even when he does not yet understand the danger.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng’s imagined exchange with himself—calling himself “the God of lending a hand”—underscores his self-aware, humorous generosity.
• The frightened practitioner’s relationship with the shrine deity is wary and transactional: he avoids acknowledging it, but has left it food and water.
• The Yang Family villagers’ letter establishes an indirect appeal for Lin Feng’s help, while their choice to seek a distant expert raises suspicions about the case.
• Lin Feng confronts the demon and the deity statue as hostile forces; their attempted attack fails once he takes control.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng awakens in a new game-like world with no memories, prompts, or quests—only the phrase “Northwest Soul-Calling.” He decides to seek Yang Family Village and establish a territory where he can grow stronger.
• He discovers that his bonded Eighth Rank Dharma Sword came with him, but his Fire Lance and Painted Skin did not.
• A suspicious caravan reaches the ruined temple where Lin Feng is staying. Its travelers carry grave-like soil on them, corpse-scented fat, and bells apparently taken from a tomb.
• The travelers’ leader recognizes the temple as dangerous and tries to leave, but Lin Feng asks them to stay. Meanwhile, two people and three pack animals outside mysteriously disappear. The remaining travelers are frightened, and the old man tells Lin Feng they are in Duck Ravine.
• Lin Feng suspects the group are grave robbers. He withdraws into the temple and hides his presence as a strange force draws the travelers away one by one. None return.
• At dawn, Lin Feng finds the ravine littered with the torn bodies of adults and children, with wolves feeding nearby. He wonders whether famine or war has devastated the region.
• When he uses his Qi-Observing Eye to inspect the area’s feng shui, a blinding force attacks him. Before losing his sight, he glimpses a human-shaped silhouette and suspects the feng shui itself may have taken form. He sets off along the road using his other senses.

Character development and interactions

• Lin Feng remains curious and methodical, but shows caution in an unfamiliar and dangerous world. He tests his abilities, avoids overestimating his strength, and adapts quickly to temporary blindness.
• The elderly caravan leader initially appears warm and trustworthy, but his fearful reaction reveals that he recognizes the temple’s supernatural danger. He answers Lin Feng’s questions while concealing the group’s likely grave-robbing activities.
• The caravan members defer to their leader and share his terror as the people and animals outside vanish, but their fate remains unclear beyond being drawn away by the unseen presence.
• Lin Feng’s exchanges with the caravan are tense: he calmly questions them, while they perceive him and the temple as threats they cannot understand.

Significant themes

• The limits of knowledge and power: Lin Feng enters without guidance and encounters dangers that even his dependable skills cannot fully explain.
• Supernatural rules and uncertainty: The bells, fat, vanished travelers, and dangerous feng shui suggest that familiar protections may not work in this world.
• Survival through caution and adaptation: Lin Feng restrains his power, hides when needed, and relies on senses other than sight.
• Human suffering and desolation: The ravine’s corpses and scavenging wolves point to widespread catastrophe, though its cause is unknown.

Summary

After dying in Duck Ravine, Lin Feng offers apologies and incense to the Qingshan Game Console, then reflects on the brutal experience: an unknown force lured him into a Yaodong Cave and killed him by plugging his Seven Apertures with red mud. He realizes that suppressing his Human Aura is not enough to survive there; he urgently needs the Painted Skin. He also spotted an Abandoned Cave Dwelling just before dying, but avoided saving there because it would trap him in a hopeless cycle of repeated deaths.
To investigate the place and understand his surroundings, Lin Feng writes Oracle Bone Script in a scrambled, divided form and contacts Teacher Xu. He searches Northwest maps while reopening Teacher Xun’s archive of photographs, hoping they contain a clue. The first images show an immense mining pit and a green-lit karst cave with a corpse-like figure crawling from the darkness. The rest initially appear blank, but Lin Feng discovers that 910 black photos capture brief lightning flashes. Playing them rapidly reveals a photographer moving at impossible speed and apparently pursuing a distant silhouette.
The images grow increasingly disturbing: a river—possibly the Yellow River—contains numerous strange objects, while the lightning and the photographer’s movements defy ordinary expectations. In the final sequence, the photographer abruptly changes direction, and a flash reveals a stone stele carved with the words “Heaven-Bearing.”

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng is shaken by the realistic agony of his death, but responds methodically: he reassesses what he needs to survive, researches the Northwest, and patiently analyzes the photos. His curiosity and determination lead him to uncover a clue in what first seemed to be meaningless images.
• The Qingshan Game Console remains an impassive system: Lin Feng tests whether his ritual bows can affect it, but it shows no reaction and offers no relief from the pain of dying.
• Teacher Xu receives Lin Feng’s carefully encoded Oracle Bone Script, though no response is shown.
• Teacher Xun is absent, but his archive becomes the focus of Lin Feng’s investigation. Lin Feng assumes the many photos were deliberately preserved to communicate something.

Significant themes

• Survival through knowledge and preparation: Lin Feng recognizes that brute strength and caution alone will not protect him from Duck Ravine’s unknown supernatural power.
• The limits of ordinary understanding: The photos, lightning, river, and photographer’s movements violate familiar rules, reinforcing the strangeness of the world Lin Feng is exploring.
• Death, pain, and persistence: Repeated deaths do not make Lin Feng fearless; instead, they teach him what dangers to anticipate and push him to keep searching for answers.
• Hidden messages and interpretation: Lin Feng treats the photos as evidence, piecing together meaning from patterns until the stele’s inscription offers a concrete lead.

Key plot points

• Lin Feng studies the first useful photograph from a mysterious sequence. It shows a Pixiu Shi stele marked with the words “Heaven-Bearing,” stained with what he identifies as sheep’s blood, with sheep bones beneath it.
• The photographs trace the photographer up a mountain and into a ruined complex resembling a temple. The storm grows more intense as the photographer approaches what may be its center. Inside are a collapsed hall, human bones, scattered religious objects, and an unusual assortment of artifacts, including bronze water pipes, astronomical instruments, sand tables, and sheepskin rafts.
• When Lin Feng finishes viewing, the photographs vanish, leaving him only with his memories. He concludes that information connected to the northwest has appeared and then receded.
• Reflecting on his recent death, Lin Feng realizes that sealed breathing passages should not have killed him: he can breathe through his skin and use Fetal Breathing. He suspects an unknown force imposed an unavoidable law of suffocation—one he currently cannot counter.
• Lin Feng receives an Oracle Bone Script transcription. It reveals that the Li Family’s supposed bargain for wealth was actually a covenant dedicating them as human livestock to someone called Jiao, witnessed by Wang Hai.
• He contacts an expert on bronze-artifact patterns, Teacher Qi, and agrees to make a university admissions video in exchange for help investigating the patterns on his own body.
• In Shazhou, investigators fail to explain why a well-educated man paid a large sum for a dog bowl, and the case stalls.
• A refined, old-fashioned stranger brings old film to a photo studio and asks for it to be developed urgently. He gives the owner Lin Feng’s exact address and requests express delivery.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains composed despite supernatural dangers, methodically analyzing the photos and his own death. He accepts that the threat at Duck Ravine is beyond his current abilities and treats the mystery as a reason to investigate further.
• Teacher Xu helps Lin Feng connect with Teacher Qi, who is eager to use Lin Feng’s online popularity to promote his university. Lin Feng recognizes the mutual benefit and agrees, hoping to learn about the markings on his body.
• The mysterious visitor at the photo studio appears scholarly and deliberate; his request to send the developed photographs to Lin Feng suggests a direct connection between the old film and Lin Feng’s investigation.

Significant themes

• Supernatural forces and limits of knowledge: Lin Feng can reason through strange events, but some threats operate according to laws he cannot yet resist.
• False bargains and exploitation: The Li Family’s covenant exposes how Uncanny beings exploit humans rather than treating them as equals.
• Vanishing evidence and unstable information: The photographs—and other northwest-related information—disappear, making memory the only record.
• Mystery converging across places: The mountain photographs, the stalled dog-bowl investigation, and the old film being sent to Lin Feng hint that separate events may be linked.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng meets with Mr. Qi and students from several disciplines to research ancient bronze casting. He learns about Yin-Shang designs, mold-making, and the unusual assembly of Sanxingdui bronze sacred trees. The students have never heard of his “boar-faced soaring serpent” pattern and say it has not been found in excavated artifacts.
• Before returning to the game, Lin Feng considers stitching the Painted Skin to his body so the game might recognize it as part of him. He realizes the idea reflects a troubling change in his thinking: increased strength has made brute force seem like the answer to everything.
• Lin Feng streams a long gaming session and earns enthusiastic praise from viewers. Their simple approval makes him happy and reassures him that he is still grounded, while his cultivation lets him play and entertain the audience with ease.
• He asks the Nuo Opera Master to stitch the Painted Skin onto his back. Ordinary tools fail against his defenses, and a needle made from South Seas Jianmu is ruined by his blood.
• In the game, Lin Feng easily subdues an evil creature, drives off wolves, and kills a group of tomb robbers with a thrown strand of hair. He questions the creature about Yang Family Village and the children losing their souls, but it knows nothing.
• The Painted Skin does not enter the game with him, showing that attaching it to his body did not make the game recognize it as part of him.
• At dawn, Lin Feng investigates the tomb robbers’ remains. He finds that the copper bells around nearby livestock animals’ necks are sealed with Red Mud. A wary, ragged farmwoman appears; when Lin Feng introduces himself as a spirit medium summoned by Yang Family Village, she notices Red Mud on his shoes, despite the surrounding soil being yellow, and cries that Heaven has come to take them.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng’s growing power is both useful and unsettling: he can handle threats effortlessly, but recognizes that it is pushing him toward crude, forceful solutions. He also remains responsive to ordinary praise and values it as a sign that he has not lost himself.
• The students cooperate with Lin Feng but privately find his design unfamiliar; Mr. Qi handles administration rather than teaching.
• Lin Feng treats the game’s evil creature as a source of information, though it is too frightened and unintelligent to help. His attempt to question the farmwoman instead alarms her, and her reaction introduces a new mystery.

Significant themes

• Power and distorted judgment: Lin Feng sees how strength can make violence and force feel like universal solutions.
• Limits of control: His attempt to carry the Painted Skin into the game fails, despite his physical efforts.
• Ordinary human connection: Viewers’ praise gives Lin Feng reassurance and pleasure amid his increasingly extraordinary life.
• Ominous signs and the uncanny: Red Mud appears where it should not, linking Lin Feng to the village’s apparent danger and prompting the farmwoman’s fear.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng discovers that inexplicable, scentless red mud has appeared on his feet after his night in the Wild Temple. It vanishes when he removes his shoes and walks again.
• A peasant woman tells him that “Heaven” has been taking people and directs him toward Yang Family Village. Her apparent knowledge of the bodies—and her willingness to loot them—makes Lin Feng suspect she is hiding something. He gives her his leftover buns before leaving.
• At the village’s Great Locust Tree, Lin Feng sees a recently hanged woman and many red cloth strips tied to its branches. Looking at the tree triggers a terrifying sequence: he wakes inside a broken coffin, where fear-inducing soil seems to manipulate his thoughts.
• The game begins. Lin Feng is warned to choose a historical difficulty carefully because an overly difficult choice could create a dead-end save and block a later hidden storyline. With only one life, he starts anyway.
• Back at the village entrance, he saves at the Locust Tree. Yang Family Village appears deserted and eerily lifeless.
• Lin Feng investigates the village head’s unusually bright, protected house. Before he enters, he hears someone cry that Three Dog Wa Zi’s mother has hanged herself—the same woman visible at the village entrance.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng shows caution and sharp investigative instincts, noticing the anomalous mud and questioning the peasant woman. He also recognizes the danger posed by the Locust Tree, yet proceeds into the village to see how its many ominous signs fit together. Despite the game’s warning, he chooses to begin rather than delay.
• The peasant woman appears driven more by hunger than fear of death, accepting Lin Feng’s buns only after he warns her away from the bodies. Her unexplained presence and knowledge leave her motives uncertain.
• Lin Feng and the woman exchange information about the deaths and the route to the village, but she avoids explaining what “Heaven taking people” means.

Significant themes

• Fear and mental vulnerability: The coffin sequence shows that supernatural forces can distort thought, not merely threaten the body.
• Poverty and survival: The peasant woman’s hunger outweighs her fear of corpses.
• Folklore and layered protection: The Locust Tree’s association with yin and ghosts contrasts with the protective scriptures, talisman, and threshold at the village head’s house.
• Risk and consequence: The game’s one-life limit and irreversible difficulty choice make Lin Feng’s willingness to proceed consequential.
• A village under unnatural silence: The empty streets, absent animals, hanged woman, and strange red cloths build the sense that Yang Family Village is caught in a wider calamity.

Key plot points and events

• After hearing a woman’s wail, Lin Feng finds an old woman hiding beneath the village chief’s table. She appears dead yet remains physically present, and seems to be eating raw flesh from an ancient bronze vessel. Lin Feng conceals what he saw and leaves.
• At the village entrance, he finds Three Dog Wa Zi’s mother hanged from the old Pagoda Tree. The villagers say her son is one of nineteen children who have lost their souls; overwhelmed by his condition, she took her own life.
• Lin Feng takes her body down, but the villagers refuse to touch it. He senses the tree provoking an urge to hang himself, and notices the corpse stiffening and growing heavier. The village chief has it tied to a millstone in case it rises.
• The village chief explains that the children’s afflictions began about half a month earlier and have continued since. Lin Feng accepts a small payment and says he will attempt to call their souls back that night.
• While surveying the village with the dead woman’s brother, Lin Feng learns that the settlement is sparse and precariously built. Asked what unusual event preceded the children’s afflictions, the uncle answers: “It rained.”

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains composed and observant, hiding his discovery of the strange old woman while investigating clues such as the unusually high threshold, the bronze vessel, and the sinister tree.
• The villagers are frightened and wary of both the corpse and their surroundings. Their fear gives way to cautious hope when Lin Feng handles the body.
• The village chief acts as the community’s practical authority: he arranges the corpse’s removal, shares what is known, and hires Lin Feng, though he keeps a measured distance.
• Three Dog Wa Zi’s uncle serves as Lin Feng’s guide but knows little about the events himself.

Significant themes

• Fear and superstition: The villagers’ terror shapes their behavior, while Lin Feng tests what may be supernatural rather than accepting explanations at face value.
• Hidden corruption and ominous clues: The old woman, the deteriorating bronze vessel, the corpse, and the tree suggest deeper forces at work.
• Vulnerability and misfortune: The children’s condition and their mother’s death show the human cost of the village’s crisis.
• The ordinary becoming uncanny: Rain—a commonplace event—may be connected to the sudden onset of the supernatural afflictions.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng learns that a severe drought began three months earlier. Villagers from several settlements paid a county ritual master to pray at the Dragon King Temple and hired an opera troupe, but no rain came. They then whipped the Dragon King’s statue and, on the master’s instructions, searched Duck Ravine at midnight for a supposed Drought Demon. A drizzle followed.
• Later, Taoists claiming to come from the Taihang Mountains hung rain-praying bells on the mountain. Their ceremony brought three days of torrential rain, which damaged the uncle’s house. The original ritual master later died after supposedly falling off a cliff.
• At the threshing ground, villagers prepare to burn Sangou’s mother. Lin Feng secretly uses the Net of Luo to make them believe the body is burned, while actually absorbing it into the darkness beneath his feet.
• Lin Feng questions Sangou’s uncle about the village’s past. The man becomes visibly terrified when Lin Feng mentions the flourishing pagoda tree, and Lin Feng’s [Unyielding] reacts to circling crows and distant bells mixed with Buddhist chanting.
• That night, Lin Feng attempts a soul-summoning ritual for a village boy. As he walks toward the threshing ground, the familiar yellow earth gives way to blood-soaked Red Mud. He encounters animal remains and the corpse of a recently dead Western adventurer, whose sheepskin bag resembles an object in a photograph left by Teacher Xun.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng is observant and methodical, using questions and supernatural abilities to investigate the villagers’ history. He tests whether they truly want the boy’s soul returned, though his ritual is partly improvised. The Red Mud and strange corpse unsettle him, but he remains cautious and composed.
• Sangou’s uncle recounts the drought rituals but refuses to look at his sister’s corpse. His fear intensifies when Lin Feng probes the pagoda tree, suggesting he knows or suspects something he will not reveal.
• The village chief readily provides a boy for the ritual and watches Lin Feng depart with palpable anxiety.
• The villagers resort to increasingly desperate religious measures as drought threatens their survival.

Significant themes

• Faith and desperation: Dependence on rain drives the villagers from prayer and offerings to violence and dangerous rituals.
• Fear, secrecy, and hidden danger: The uncle’s reaction, the crows and bells, and the shifting Red Mud imply that the village’s past conceals a supernatural threat.
• Appearance versus reality: The villagers think they have burned a corpse; Lin Feng’s improvised ritual may have led him somewhere other than the physical road; and the apparent “fall” that killed the ritual master invites suspicion.
• Uncertainty and investigation: Lin Feng encounters clues—the Red Mud, remains, and the matching bag—without yet knowing how they connect.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng enters the Red Mud despite knowing he may die, relying on his ability to save progress and return.
• He searches a dead Western explorer. The explorer carries only an Old Testament and a snuff bottle containing sand, but Lin Feng discovers that the man had sewn a layer of sheepskin onto his own back—apparently causing infection and death.
• Hidden in the sheepskin is an architectural plan labeled “Heaven-Bearing Temple, built by imperial decree.” Its date places it in the Ming Dynasty’s Jiajing reign. The plan shows an unusual structure connected to water, including a channel from a river, a rain-collecting courtyard, and a large urn.
• Lin Feng questions why such a major imperial project would have been built in a vulnerable border region, and whether the plan was intended for this location or is a copy. He connects the temple’s name to an inscription on a pixiu stele and to a place in Teacher Xun’s photograph.
• When Lin Feng drops the plan, Red Mud briefly appears again. He finds it in Three Dog Wa Zi’s eyes and ears. Three Dog Wa Zi resists having the mud removed from his ears and offers some to Lin Feng, suggesting it protects him.
• Lin Feng shields the boy and shuts off his hearing, but eerie voices still force their way through. He hears fragments about thunder, rain, and the spirits within all things.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains cautious and analytical, investigating the explorer’s body and reasoning through the plan’s historical and geographical contradictions. He also shows compassion by trying to clear the Red Mud from Three Dog Wa Zi’s eyes and protect him.
• Three Dog Wa Zi appears to understand that the Red Mud in his ears serves as protection. His resistance to Lin Feng’s help reveals that he may know more about the danger than Lin Feng does.
• The Western explorer, though dead, becomes an important clue: his hidden sheepskin contains the plan, and his likely attempt to conceal it may have cost him his life.
• Lin Feng and Three Dog Wa Zi share a protective, uneasy exchange: Lin Feng tries to remove the mud, while the boy insists on keeping it and offers it to Lin Feng.

Significant themes

• Dangerous knowledge and relics: The plan may reveal a remarkable imperial structure, but discovering it brings renewed supernatural danger.
• History and uncertainty: The Ming date, imperial wording, and border location do not fit neatly together, leaving the temple’s origin and purpose mysterious.
• Protection versus contamination: Red Mud appears threatening but may also shield people from something worse.
• Curiosity and control: The disembodied voices exploit the urge to listen, while Lin Feng struggles to resist being drawn in.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng hears what seems to be an Uncanny army approaching. Sangou abruptly acts with clear purpose, covering himself in Red Mud to hide from it. Lin Feng follows.
• They endure a night of marching, chanting, and human and animal cries. The newcomers conduct a Shang-style human sacrifice, treating the victims’ suffering as part of the ritual. Lin Feng recognizes the peasant woman from that morning among the captives and realizes this may be what she meant by “Heaven was taking people.”
• The ritual includes blood, cinnabar, medicinal herbs, and repeated invocation of an unknown name. At dawn, bells and Buddhist chanting sound; Lin Feng wakes in Duck Ravine rather than Yang Family Village, with Sangou beside him.
• Lin Feng confirms Sangou has lost parts of his soul. He also finds the bodies of Sangou’s mother—who died by hanging—and a Western Ocean explorer. The explorer’s arms bear patterns Lin Feng recognizes as clues connected to bronze vessels.
• Suspecting the recent rain-praying effort may have triggered the children’s soul loss, Lin Feng searches nearby villages. Li Family Fork and Liu Family Ravine are nearly or entirely deserted, with evidence of deaths, suicides, and killings. Yang Family Village is the only place he has found with survivors.
• In Liu Family Ravine, Lin Feng discovers a hidden space and a concealed child.

Character developments and interactions

• Sangou shifts from seeming vacant to acting decisively when danger approaches, showing he knows how to survive the Uncanny army. He clings to Lin Feng during the sacrifice and later appears to have suffered soul loss.
• Lin Feng responds cautiously to a lethal threat, trusts Sangou’s warning, and protects him afterward. He investigates the surrounding villages, connects the disappearances to the rain-praying events, and follows the clues on the explorer’s body.
• The peasant woman’s earlier phrase, “Heaven was taking people,” gains a frightening possible explanation: she may have mistaken the raiding Uncanny force for Heaven’s agents.

Significant themes

• Dehumanization and ritual violence: The Shang sacrificers regard people and animals alike as offerings, and treat victims’ cries as entertainment.
• Survival through knowledge and cooperation: Sangou’s practical warning saves both himself and Lin Feng.
• The cost of supernatural events: The rain and the children’s missing souls suggest that efforts to avert disaster may have brought another danger.
• Mystery and investigation: The cause of the village deaths, the sacrifice, the bronze-vessel clues, and the hidden child remain unresolved.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng retrieves a child’s mummified body from a village secret passage. The child appears to have died of thirst after the rain, prompting Lin Feng to question whether the villagers’ rainfall came at the cost of human lives.
• He gathers and burns the village’s corpses with ordinary fire, then searches the village with his seventh-rank wind. He finds no records, lingering souls, or local deities, and suspects something has taken the dead away.
• Lin Feng tries to claim the village with his Dharma Sword, but the weapon becomes an ordinary, inert object when planted in the ground. The village’s power can suppress magical artifacts.
• Returning to the village, he finds another woman hanged from a pagoda tree. He cuts her down with wind and notices the scene resembles a sacrifice. The villagers hide from him, and an old black dog that may be a Yin Object flees.
• Searching with his wind, Lin Feng uncovers a hidden cellar containing ritual objects, buried soil, corpses, and the body of a Yin-Yang Practitioner. A dent in the practitioner’s skull suggests he was killed rather than dying accidentally.
• Among the objects, Lin Feng discovers Evil Soil brought from the Plateau. The soil can revive the dead, and he concludes that the villagers have learned to use it to prolong life, though less effectively—and with fewer side effects—than in Rigra.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains compassionate and investigative: he honors the dead, searches for answers, and carefully distinguishes what he knows from what he can only suspect. Even amid horror, he remembers his promise to make a video and insists that keeping his word matters.
• The villagers’ fear is evident in their hiding and refusal to retrieve the hanged woman. They do not confront Lin Feng.
• Lin Feng’s interaction with the old black dog reinforces his suspicion that the village is affected by Yin forces.
• The absent old woman becomes a central mystery: Lin Feng’s discovery of the Evil Soil suggests she is alive through its power.

Significant themes

• The cost of survival: The rain, possible sacrifices, and the villagers’ use of resurrection soil suggest that life and prosperity may have been bought at a terrible price.
• Death and the afterlife: The missing souls and absent deities imply that death here does not follow the ordinary spiritual order.
• Hidden violence and ritual: The concealed bodies, burial objects, and murdered practitioner reveal brutality beneath the village’s quiet surface.
• Power and uncertainty: Lin Feng’s magic is formidable, yet the village can disable his Dharma Sword, showing that he has entered a place governed by unfamiliar forces.