Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng discovers a hidden underground chamber beneath the village chief’s livestock pen. Inside, the old woman is being preserved in Evil Soil: her organs and bones have been removed, but she is still alive in some unnatural sense, with her soul sealed underground.
• He finds a ritual arrangement designed to substitute another for the dead, along with a sealed Clay Jar containing a soul. The dead Yin-Yang Practitioner appears to have created the setup, then been killed by the villagers.
• The Great Locust Tree outside begins releasing snakes and fragrant resin, spreading a supernatural influence that darkens the sky and signals an approaching threat.
• While investigating the chamber and the Yin-Yang Practitioner’s belongings, Lin Feng finds a written final message. The practitioner had little cultivation but considerable occult knowledge.
• The village chief and others attack Lin Feng, but the Net of Luo controls them. They speak to unseen figures, revealing that they are afraid of being discovered and have called for help.
• Lin Feng continues reassembling the old woman while resisting the villagers’ mounting resentment and supernatural assault. He uses Great Sound to disrupt the hostile forces, and discovers that Evil Soil reacts violently to it—suggesting the soil is alive.
• Evil Soil begins invading and assimilating Lin Feng, causing intense pain. He also realizes the “pile of miscellaneous objects” contains items that are magically concealed by their very ordinariness. His darkness reveals mud clods marked with unfamiliar patterns.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains methodical under attack, dividing his attention between repairing the old woman, gathering information, and defending himself. He revises his understanding of both the Evil Soil and the supposedly ordinary objects in the chamber.
• The old woman is revealed to be neither conventionally alive nor dead: her body is being preserved while her soul is kept separate.
• The Yin-Yang Practitioner emerges as a resourceful occult expert who anticipated his death and left a final message, despite having almost no cultivation.
• The village chief and villagers are shown to be complicit in the chamber’s horrors and terrified of the authorities. Their apparent conversations with unseen people suggest they are under supernatural influence or control.
• The Great Locust Tree and Evil Soil become active threats in their own right, with the tree spreading an ominous influence and the soil reacting like a living entity.

Significant themes

• The boundary between life and death: The old woman’s preserved body and sealed soul make her status profoundly unnatural.
• The cost of forbidden preservation: The chapter condemns reviving primitive practices when they involve treating people as experimental subjects.
• Hidden forces and unreliable appearances: Ordinary-looking objects, unseen speakers, and apparently inert soil conceal supernatural properties.
• Knowledge versus power: The Yin-Yang Practitioner’s expertise matters despite his weak cultivation, while Lin Feng must rely on observation and improvisation.
• Isolation and mounting danger: Lin Feng is surrounded by hostile villagers, an encroaching supernatural presence, and a force that can physically assimilate him.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng memorizes the strange patterns revealed by the game’s supernatural vision, but trying to copy them makes his paper, pen, and table vanish without a trace. He realizes ordinary materials cannot contain the patterns and reluctantly goes outside to collect a delivery.
• The package is a photograph sent from a Shazhou photo studio, though Lin Feng has no known connection to the sender. It is a group photo from the 2101 Mount-Viewing Kiln Culture Festival. On its reverse are several routes across China and a poem, Li He’s “Lament for the Shortness of Day,” signed by Lin Feng’s teacher, Xun Yanyu.
• Xun’s handwriting carries a faint supernatural “Intent,” like the trace Lin Feng sensed from one of Xun’s fingers in the game. The photograph shows thirteen people: Xun and two apparently normal academics, An Buyan and Qie Yi, surrounded by figures who seem like emotionless, inhuman puppets watching the three as prey.
• Lin Feng wonders whether the people in the photograph have been transformed into clay figures, as others in the game have sought unnatural longevity through Red Mud. He sets the troubling photograph aside and returns to contemplating the game.
• The game finally reveals that Lin Feng has collected all four clues for “The Treacherous Rebel” and unlocked the “Northwest Soul-Calling” chapter. He chooses to anchor this historical thread. Its first mission is to find the missing children’s souls from Yang Family Village within twenty-four hours; he has only one life remaining.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains composed despite terrifying supernatural forces, but his practical, frugal side surfaces when his furniture disappears. He becomes increasingly alert to connections between the game and the real world, especially through Xun’s handwriting and the photograph.
• Xun Yanyu emerges as far more mysterious than Lin Feng realized: his writing carries Intent, and he appears in a photograph of people caught in an ominous, possibly supernatural gathering.
• An Buyan and Qie Yi are identified as academics who, like Xun, appear comparatively human in the photograph. The surrounding figures’ fixed, predatory attention suggests the three may be in danger.
• The courier’s ordinary delivery briefly contrasts with the supernatural events unfolding around Lin Feng.

Significant themes

• The boundary between game and reality: Clues, powers, and entities in the game may have real-world counterparts.
• Humanity and transformation: The photograph raises the possibility that people can be turned into puppets or clay figures and lose their humanity.
• Knowledge’s danger and limits: The patterns cannot be recorded on ordinary materials, and witnessing the priestly figure nearly overwhelms Lin Feng’s mind.
• Time, mortality, and unnatural longevity: Li He’s poem laments life’s brevity and imagines defying death, echoing the game’s attempts to preserve life by supernatural means.

Plot points and events

• After the game, Lin Feng begins a livestream and plans an admissions video with Teacher Qi’s school. The video will introduce cultural heritage, reflect on it indoors, and conclude with a shoot at a university in Suzhou.
• A commemorative group photo unsettles him: only three people look convincingly real, while the others’ generic faces seem artificial. He wonders whether Professor Qie Yi is still alive, but thinks Teacher Xun may be able to protect his students through supernatural means.
• Lin Feng reflects on the Xie Family, whose members seem unusually capable yet die in large numbers. He suspects their history and their troubles involve dangerous knowledge beyond ordinary archaeology.
• A courier delivers a bloodstained notebook sent by “a certain Han.” Its flyleaf bears the number 18 and the name Xie Shiba.
• Before examining it, Lin Feng tests his rapidly improving body. An arrow now penetrates only about a centimeter, and the wound heals almost immediately. He attributes the change partly to ointment and especially to the bronze fragment inside him, though he remains human.
• The notebook describes a journey from west of the Taihang Mountains to the Qin homeland, followed by stops at Qingcheng, Emei, Hua, and Kongtong. It suggests the Xie Family’s troubles began before the disaster at the stockade in western Hunan.
• Its drawings reveal a mountaintop structure labeled [Lightning], apparently part of a series that includes the [Water] structure beside the Yellow River. Lin Feng wonders what these “wonders” were built for and whether they relate to Heaven-Bearing Temple.
• The final drawing is of the Mount-Viewing Kiln Factory—so strange that Lin Feng admits the earlier structure was not as abstract as he first thought.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains intensely focused and energetic, juggling streaming, work, research, filming plans, and physical training with little need for rest.
• His growing strength is evident in the arrow test, but the bronze fragment’s effects—and why it has not transformed him into a Bronze Terracotta Figure—remain mysterious.
• Lin Feng weighs the abilities of teachers, professors, and the Xie Family, distinguishing ordinary scholars from people exposed to supernatural threats. He also speculates about why nonhumans gather and whether scholars possess some special “literary qi.”
• His exchanges with the courier are brief and polite; the arrival of the notebook, apparently sent by someone named Han, becomes the chapter’s central discovery.

Significant themes

• Forbidden knowledge and its cost: The Xie Family’s repeated losses suggest that uncovering ancient secrets brings severe consequences.
• The uncanny and the supernatural: The artificial faces in the photo, mysterious gatherings, and Lin Feng’s changing body blur the boundary between human and nonhuman.
• Power and vulnerability: Physical strength and special abilities do not guarantee survival against forces backed by greater power.
• Investigation and unanswered history: The notebook links scattered sites and elemental structures, opening new questions about who built them and what purpose they served.

Chapter summary

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng examines Xie Shiba’s notebook. Its drawings include an oddly shaped “Mount-Viewing Kiln Factory,” a cryptic phrase—“Open the door and see the mountain. Great fortune”—and a detailed bronze figure patterned like the mark on Lin Feng’s own body.
• The bronze figure has been cast as one seamless piece and cut open from neck to abdomen. Lin Feng wonders whether he might suffer the same fate.
• Elsewhere, Xie Shiba, badly injured after a millipede-like creature burrows into his calf, digs it out, stitches the wound himself, and burns the injury with gunpowder. He insists they must reach the Heaven-Bearing Temple before fever or the Kiln’s threat overtakes them.
• Professor Han helps him despite realizing that Xie Shiba has lied about being unable to read. Xie Shiba explains that the “Kiln workers” are not ordinary people and warns that learning what they are may let them identify you.
• The pair travel through a place where time, weather, and perception seem distorted. Professor Han sees millipedes moving under Xie Shiba’s skin, while Xie Shiba insists the creatures are poisonous Horse Centipedes and that their presence is connected to something going wrong with the Kiln.
• Xie Shiba proposes that the area’s qi has become disordered, disrupting space and time. He turns to divination, hoping the method can guide them out.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng studies the notebook carefully, connecting the bronze figure’s pattern to his own body and confronting the possibility that he could become a similar object.
• Xie Shiba is revealed as educated and knowledgeable despite his evasions: he can read, has practical survival skills, and understands obscure ideas about qi and divination. His bravado gives way to pain and desperation, but he continues protecting Professor Han.
• Professor Han questions Xie Shiba’s apparent illiteracy but chooses to trust him, helping him move even while frightened by the supernatural events. Their exchanges balance the professor’s skepticism with Xie Shiba’s strange explanations.
• Xie Shiba’s final appeal to divination turns his grandfather’s belief in his talent into an immediate test: he hopes his grandfather was right, not blind.

Significant themes

• Knowledge and danger: Secret codes, the Kiln workers, and the nature of the place all suggest that understanding the mystery may itself expose someone to danger.
• Unstable reality: Distorted time, hallucinations, and disorderly qi blur the line between rational explanation and the supernatural.
• Trust amid deception: Xie Shiba lies and withholds information, yet Professor Han senses that he means no harm and continues to rely on him.
• Mortality and bodily transformation: The opened bronze figure and the parasites inside Xie Shiba’s wound make the body a source of horror and foreshadow a possible fate for Lin Feng.

Key plot points and events

• While reading Xie Shiba’s increasingly frantic, bloodstained notes, Lin Feng learns that the Mount-Viewing Kiln Factory’s soil acts as a binding agent. Xie used it to treat injuries, but it caused fever, delirium, and bloodlust. He warned that, if necessary, one should leave the factory and find a chicken or dog.
• Lin Feng wonders who the mysterious “he” in the notes refers to and whether Professor Han is connected to Xie. He hopes the soil can help him fuse with the Painted Skin and hide his presence before entering the game and reaching Duck Ravine.
• Lin Feng reconstructs the early events behind the soul-summoning in Yang Family Village:
  • Before the Rain: After a cliff collapse exposed a cave filled with hacked-up skeletons, villagers concealed the discovery but stole valuables. The village chief took clay jars. That night his elderly mother died, and he dreamed that killing someone beneath the old Pagoda Tree would revive her and spare him from punishment in hell. After he sought help at local temples, a village woman was found hanged from the tree.
  • Wicked Thoughts: The dead woman was Yang Liuwa’s wife. When Liuwa returned home, villagers watched him with predatory interest, apparently focused on his father’s coffin. They made him open it; his father’s body seemed genuinely dead. The village chief then noticed that Liuwa’s dogs were missing.
  • Turning on Their Own: Though Liuwa had lost both his father and wife, the village showed no grief—only a frightening, watchful tension. Liuwa sensed he was being hunted and went into the dark to check his livestock. The village chief secretly climbed into Liuwa’s courtyard to observe him.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng becomes more focused on the soil as a possible practical tool, while remaining wary of its dangerous effects and the unexplained link between Xie Shiba and “he.”
• Xie Shiba, through his notes, appears increasingly ill and unstable; his hurried writing and bloodstains suggest his condition deteriorated rapidly.
• The village chief is driven by fear and grief after his mother’s death. His dream tempts him toward murder, and his later secrecy and surveillance of Liuwa suggest he is implicated in the village’s growing menace.
• Yang Liuwa shifts from a respected, capable sheep drover grieving his family to a frightened man who realizes the villagers may be targeting him. The villagers’ apparent concern for his father’s body masks a disturbing collective appetite or suspicion.

Significant themes

• Fear and desperation: The chief’s terror of hell and Liuwa’s sense of being surrounded push people toward secrecy and violence.
• Greed and complicity: Villagers conceal the cave discovery while taking its valuables, showing how fear coexists with self-interest.
• Predation and mistrust: The village is repeatedly portrayed as a pack of wolves circling a vulnerable sheep.
• The unnatural and bodily corruption: The kiln soil’s healing power comes with mental and physical side effects, while the village’s ritual practices and unexplained deaths suggest a larger supernatural threat.

Key plot points and events

• The chapter opens with the village chief secretly watching Yang Liuwa dismember his father’s corpse. At dawn, the villagers seize Yang Liuwa; after he breaks his leg trying to flee, the chief hangs him from the Great Locust Tree while the villagers watch in silence.
• That night, the chief hears the same noises and wakes covered in Red Mud. Realizing he has apparently sleepwalked to the forbidden Duck Ravine, he fears the place’s sinister reputation and the secrets buried there.
• The chief strikes a deal with an invited Yin-Yang Practitioner, using a dead old woman as a test subject. She revives, but the practitioner proves incompetent and is later hanged from the tree as well. The story ends abruptly when the Priest inside the tree awakens, overwhelming Lin Feng.
• Back in the present, Lin Feng finishes filming the second segment with help from his small team, then cultivates his God-soul rather than risking further mediumship.
• He experiments with [clean] Plateau Evil Soil, testing whether it can carry patterns. When he adds blood to the soil on his Painted Skin, it activates painfully. Using the Mount Tai Diagram and Dharma Sword, he suppresses the effect and endures the transformation.
• The Painted Skin merges with his body, potentially letting him alter his appearance; the Fire Lance and a protective Peace Charm also begin to resonate with him. Lin Feng then buys a pottery wheel and electric kiln to experiment with preserving patterns in Evil Soil—but discovers that even high kiln heat does not affect it.

Character developments and interactions

• The village chief shifts from frightened observer to participant in violence and occult experimentation. His unexplained sleepwalking and return with Red Mud suggest he is entangled with Duck Ravine’s power.
• Yang Liuwa is captured and executed after being discovered mutilating his father’s corpse. The villagers’ silence—and their fixed attention on the chief—makes their complicity and fear palpable.
• Lin Feng remains practical and curious, approaching dangerous materials through controlled experiments. His pain brings back visions of the Yak God and strange divine beasts, while his powers and artifacts become increasingly integrated with his body.
• The villagers act collectively but communicate almost entirely through silence. The chief and the first Yin-Yang Practitioner both become victims of the Great Locust Tree’s apparent justice or supernatural influence.
• Lin Feng’s team helps complete the filming, while a pottery instructor provides him with a brief introduction to the craft.

Significant themes

• Collective guilt and silence: The villagers witness executions without speaking, suggesting fear, shared wrongdoing, or both.
• Hidden corruption and supernatural danger: Duck Ravine and the Great Locust Tree are repositories of secrets, but the forces connected to them cannot be safely controlled.
• Pain as transformation: Lin Feng treats suffering as a catalyst for power, and his endurance produces both visions and physical change.
• Experimentation and uncertainty: He applies practical methods—blood, diagrams, pottery, and heat—to investigate the Evil Soil, but its behavior remains mysterious and resistant to ordinary techniques.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng’s attempt to turn Evil Soil into pottery fails: it loses its shape in the kiln and remains inert. High heat does injure Lin Feng, forcing him to cut off a necrotic fingertip before it burns away.
• He sends Teacher Qi a sample video and arranges to film at the college. He learns that Teacher Qie, whom he hopes to involve, went mad years earlier and is now in a psychiatric hospital in Suzhou.
• Lin Feng books a flight to Suzhou and asks his doctoral researchers whether they know Teacher An Buyan, but receives no leads.
• He enters a new game mission, “The Treacherous Rebel,” with twenty-four hours to find the missing children’s souls in Yang Family Village. He brings in the Fire Lance and Peace Charm, uses Evil Soil to bind a Painted Skin to himself, and adopts the aura of the entity in the village’s pagoda tree.
• Lin Feng enters the village chief’s protected home despite its talismans and barriers. He pulls the hidden old woman’s soul out with the Net of Luo, binds her, interrogates her, and searches her memories. He discovers that the group involved came from the Taihang Mountains and consisted of Daoist priests who proposed worshipping Buddha.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains pragmatic and calculating, using delays and careful planning to avoid unwanted revisions to his filming proposal.
• His curiosity shifts toward Teacher Qie’s madness; he suspects the teacher may have encountered knowledge that others cannot accept.
• Lin Feng is increasingly confident in the game, combining artifacts, disguises, and soul-manipulation to overcome obstacles, while remaining uneasy about wasting time under the countdown.

Significant themes

• Knowledge and madness: What society calls insanity may result from knowing truths that contradict accepted understanding.
• Experimentation and risk: Lin Feng tests the Evil Soil directly, accepting injury to learn its limits.
• Strategy and control: He relies on timing, misdirection, and preparation rather than rushing into situations blindly.
• The supernatural intruding on ordinary life: Kilns, college filming, and travel plans sit alongside souls, curses, and hidden entities.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng negotiates with the pottery teacher and Teacher Qi, securing possible access to a kiln and college filming cooperation.
• He asks the doctoral researchers about Teacher An Buyan but gets no useful information.
• In the game, Lin Feng confronts the village chief’s hidden old woman, intimidates her, and probes her memories for clues.

Key events

• Lin Feng learns from the village’s dead that the children’s souls were taken by a black figure that called to them at night, apparently posing as their deceased grandparents. The trail does not lead to the freshly disturbed ancestral graves: the recently revived elders have clean shoes and were not the visitors.
• The graves reveal that the villagers and a county-seat Yin-Yang practitioner had killed their elders in an attempt to resurrect them. Red Mud from Duck Ravine preserved the bodies and trapped their souls.
• Lin Feng interrogates the village chief. He learns that the cliff collapsed near Duck Ravine, the Daoists who performed Rain-Praying Buddha Worship went there searching for something, and they remarked that “that thing” had awakened.
• Suspecting the Daoists welcomed the awakening, Lin Feng takes the soulless children and Za with him, then investigates the collapse site.
• Beneath the cliff, he finds a three-part burial cave designed like a human body and recognizes it as a sealing site. The villagers had removed objects from its “heart.” Searching the “kidneys,” Lin Feng finds slaughtered people’s bones and scorched oracle bones bearing the same character: Di, the supreme deity of the Shang.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng grows more suspicious of the Daoists, concluding they may have deliberately allowed the sealed power to awaken. He acts decisively, extracting souls from the preserved corpses, forcing the village chief to answer, and removing the children from danger.
• The village chief is revealed to be fearful and unable to control the resurrection power he helped unleash. After Lin Feng’s supernatural interrogation, he is left shaken and disoriented.
• Za accompanies Lin Feng as he leaves the village with the children, in an eerie image likened to the Pied Piper.

Significant themes

• Folk belief and local custom: Religious practices differ by region, and traditions can shift from formal worship into communal celebrations.
• Resurrection and its cost: The villagers’ attempt to restore their dead has produced a dangerous, uncontrollable force.
• Seals and ancient power: The cave’s human-body layout and Shang-era oracle bones suggest a much older supernatural threat beneath the village.
• Knowledge under pressure: With time running short, Lin Feng follows fragments of memory and evidence, repeatedly revising his understanding as the mystery deepens.

Key events

• Lin Feng investigates sacrificial pits at the abandoned Yin-Shang site. One pit was dedicated to the Heavenly Emperor and another to Shang Tang, but both are unexpectedly plain and small.
• He uncovers a magnificent rhinoceros skeleton whose essence has been consumed by the sacrifice; it crumbles to ash when touched.
• A third pit has been emptied. Lin Feng suspects the Buddha-worshipping Taoist priests took the object it contained—the item suppressed by Tang and the Heavenly Emperor.
• A cold, foul presence climbs onto Lin Feng’s back and tries to bewitch him. The damaged children with him join in chanting an ancient Shang ritual, circling and playing around him as the presence begins to take shape.
• Elsewhere in Duck Ravine, a group of thirty-six fake Taoist priests is overwhelmed by illusions. Their ritual bell and improvised techniques fail; they are lured by familiar faces and voices, and one by one they disappear or are seized.
• A pale-faced priest tries to defend himself with a sinister bone-made charm, but loses his arm and is taken. The entire group is wiped out before reaching the objects they sought.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng demonstrates deep knowledge of Shang ritual practices and remains composed under supernatural attack. His concern is not for himself but for the children, whose missing souls may make them vulnerable.
• The children appear harmless and playful, yet their chanting helps the presence become corporeal, making their condition more troubling.
• The fake Taoist priests are experienced in shady supernatural practices, but their confidence and tricks cannot protect them from the ravine’s stronger illusions. Their final moments reveal their fear and regret.
• The priests are manipulated through intimate, familiar ties: apparitions of parents call them home, while companions suddenly become attackers. This turns trust into a weapon.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and sacred authority: Worship of the Heavenly Emperor was supposedly the Shang King’s exclusive right, making the modest site—and its mysterious offerings—especially unsettling.
• Ancient rites and lingering power: Shang-era symbols and rituals remain active across millennia, with the children’s chant echoing a prototype of the Zhouyi Bagua.
• Deception and false familiarity: Supernatural forces exploit memories, family affection, and trust rather than relying on open violence.
• Hubris and consequence: The raiders’ shady expertise and willingness to pursue the Jin Family’s promised objects prove useless in the face of a danger they badly underestimated.

Plot points and events

• At dusk, a corpse steals and defiles the consecrated bell whose righteous qi had kept evil at bay. It replaces it with a sinister, clapperless bell covered in blasphemous writing. Nearby, grave-robbing craftsmen are found mutilated and suspended from the cliff.
• At the collapsed cliff, children sing an ancestral story that intensifies a curse around Lin Feng. Ominous Mourning Birds converge, rapidly decaying as they fly.
• Lin Feng strikes first with the Fire Lance, using a close-range blast infused with powerful Han Dynasty Dragon-Tiger Qi. The curse recoils, and he escapes into a sacrificial pit.
• The Priest arrives, apparently strengthened by the living sacrifices, and his presence provokes an overwhelming urge in Lin Feng to kill himself. Lin Feng suppresses it and hides; the Priest leaves without finding him.
• Finding that the souls he had contacted are gone and learning little relevant to his immediate investigation, Lin Feng heads to Duck Ravine. He smears red mud on himself, but the ravine’s darkness disorients him.
• In sudden, unnatural cold rain, Lin Feng hears cries and sees Taoists rushing toward him. They warn him to flee.

Character developments

• Lin Feng stays disciplined under mounting supernatural pressure. He acts decisively against the curse, then relies on concealment and self-control to survive the Priest’s influence.
• The Priest appears more powerful after receiving living sacrifices, raising the danger of their ongoing conflict.
• The children’s song suggests they are bound to an old curse and ancestral history, though they vanish when the curse takes effect.

Significant themes

• Righteousness versus corruption: The stolen bell embodies communal faith and protective qi; its defilement marks evil’s advance.
• Curses, sacrifice, and inherited danger: The children’s song links present threats to ancient migrations, ancestral warnings, and sacrificed lives.
• Knowledge and uncertainty: Lin Feng can interpret much of what he encounters, but the curses and forces at work remain beyond his understanding.
• Endurance under coercion: Both the Priest’s influence and the freezing rain threaten not only life but human will and identity.

Character interactions

• The corpse takes the sacred bell and leaves a sinister replacement, while the dead craftsmen serve as a grisly warning.
• The children sing around Lin Feng, drawing the curse tighter; Lin Feng breaks its hold long enough to escape.
• Lin Feng and the Priest narrowly avoid direct confrontation: Lin Feng hides, and the Priest departs without discovering him.
• The Taoists encounter Lin Feng in Duck Ravine and urgently urge him to leave.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng rescues three Daoists from a rain-soaked supernatural region, following the leader’s plea to “save three.” The leader warns that most of the group have already succumbed to “Rain Possession.”
• The rain strips people away, while each flash of lightning reveals that a threatening shadow has moved closer. A strange “Intent” from a magical artifact tries to claim people; one of Lin Feng’s captives vanishes despite the artifact’s protection.
• The Daoists’ leader explains that the entity needs three people and may otherwise turn them into puppets. Lin Feng disguises his aura to resemble the artifact’s Intent, preventing it from targeting him, then flees with the survivors.
• Lin Feng notices that the lightning comes from a stationary, familiar source—apparently the object shown in Teacher Xun’s photograph. Looking back seems to provoke it, making the lightning intensify and the shadow approach.
• A figure revealed in the lightning is not a woman but a Pregnant Skin Puppet. When its belly opens, Lin Feng stuffs the Daoist with the split-open head inside. He then collides with a wall and rolls down a dirt slope with the Snake-tongued leader.
• As Lin Feng secretly probes the leader, they hear something crawling nearby. Lin Feng kills the creatures with wind-shaped blades, but the leader urgently warns that spilling blood in a “Kiln yard” is a grave taboo.

Character developments

• Lin Feng stays observant and pragmatic under pressure, using his memory, aura-masking, and unusual abilities to survive. He also remains suspicious of the people he rescues and pursues his own covert agenda.
• The Snake-tongued Daoist shifts from desperate guide to guarded negotiator, hinting that he wants to identify Lin Feng’s faction. His warning about the Kiln yard suggests he knows the local supernatural rules.
• The other Daoist appears grotesquely altered, with his head split and insects emerging, yet remains alive long enough to be used by Lin Feng.

Significant themes

• Survival through rules and bargains: The group’s escape depends on obeying strange conditions, while the artifact’s protection comes at a cost.
• Uncertainty and deception: The storm, shadow, puppet, and Daoists’ motives are difficult to read; Lin Feng and the leader both conceal their intentions.
• Supernatural taboo: The warning against bloodshed implies that survival requires understanding—and respecting—the rules of dangerous places.

Character interactions

• The leader guides Lin Feng through coded warnings, while Lin Feng ignores some of his instructions and acts on his own judgment.
• Lin Feng protects the Daoists from the pursuing Intent but suspects their artifact may be harming them.
• After escaping the storm, Lin Feng and the leader test each other: the leader probes Lin Feng’s identity, while Lin Feng secretly attempts to enter his mind.
• The leader’s final warning turns Lin Feng’s seemingly practical act of killing the crawlers into a possible new danger.

Plot and key events

• In a pitch-black, rain-soaked gully, Lin Feng measures the lightning’s intervals and spots a strange, bristling structure that appeared with him. It seems alive and is drawn toward light.
• Detecting approaching threats, Lin Feng silences Zhou Xianhu, the frightened Daoist beside him. Using his heightened senses, he identifies a rotting presence and blasts an attacker with his Fire Lance.
• A human-looking guide signals them to follow by footsteps. When another voice tries to lure them away, Lin Feng recognizes it as inhuman from its foul, decaying smell and follows the real man instead.
• The guide leads them to a concealed underground shelter occupied by more than a dozen people. Lin Feng learns that over three hundred tomb raiders have gone missing in the area, and those still alive fear they will not escape.
• The survivors reveal they were separately hired by the Jin Family of Guanzhong, which apparently concealed the scale of the expedition. Lin Feng’s Ouroboros mark makes them believe he is an “Immortal” or superior occult figure. When he says he came for another purpose, they conclude the Jin Family sent them to die.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains calm and observant, relying on precise measurement, keen senses, and restraint rather than charging into danger. He protects Zhou Xianhu, distinguishes a genuine human guide from a deceptive creature, and keeps his identity ambiguous.
• Zhou Xianhu is revealed as a branch member of the Five Poisons Sect, not a tomb-raiding family. Though initially terrified and dependent on Lin Feng, he recognizes the dangerous figures gathered in the shelter.
• The survivors are seasoned but desperate criminals and tomb raiders. Their fear and reverence shift quickly when they see Lin Feng’s mark; they treat him as a powerful religious or supernatural authority.
• The survivors resent the Jin Family, whose misleading recruitment appears to have led hundreds into a lethal trap.

Significant themes

• Survival depends on judgment, not experience alone: the text questions whether expertise can overcome fatal circumstances.
• Perception and deception: Lin Feng uses sound, smell, and timing to distinguish real people from predators that imitate them.
• Moral and physical corruption: the tomb raiders’ unlawful lives and the landscape’s pervasive rot suggest that this world is degraded in more than one sense.
• Power, reputation, and misunderstanding: Lin Feng’s mark inspires fear and hope, though the group’s assumptions about him are mistaken.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng’s cold, commanding presence silences the tomb-raiders. Though he knows little more than they do, he deliberately stays quiet and lets them assume he has authority and insight.
• The trapped group introduces itself. It includes members of the ancient Eight Liangs and Three Branches—especially the Hui and Hong families—as well as the Quan Family and other tomb-raiders. These groups have long histories, specialized skills, and dwindling numbers after decades of losses.
• Lin Feng learns that the Jin Family invited the others to search a tomb for a specific object, promising a thousand pieces of gold. The object is a plain bronze mirror, carefully drawn and measured, but its significance remains unclear.
• Lin Feng asks about the incidents in Yang Family Village, where children have been losing their souls. Seventh Son of the Hui Family explains that his group arrived after the incidents began and was searching for a missing elder.
• The Hui group found that the village sits on ominous land, where drought should have prevailed, yet natural rain was falling. They also discovered that the children’s souls had been lured away by beings resembling their grandparents.
• When a Hui member suggests the village may have released an evil creature from its pagoda tree, Lin Feng corrects him: there is no evil creature there, but an ancient Yin-Shang corpse that is not fully dead.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng consciously adopts a silent, intimidating persona to avoid revealing his ignorance. His aura unsettles even experienced criminals, who defer to him and look to him for a way out.
• Hui Yulong, an elder of the Killing Deity Hui Family, introduces his group and answers Lin Feng’s questions. He is respectful and cautious around him.
• Seventh Son, a junior Hui disciple, provides the account of the village’s strange events. He is surprised by Lin Feng’s question but quickly explains what his group discovered.
• The assembled families and outlaws interact warily, united by their desperation and suspicion of the Jin Family, whose absence and deceptive recruitment have placed them in danger.

Significant themes

• Appearance and authority: Lin Feng’s commanding silence gives him influence despite his limited knowledge.
• Decline and survival: The once-powerful tomb-raiding families have suffered severe losses and are now forced to risk their own lives.
• Deception and exploitation: The Jin Family’s invitation appears to have used other groups as expendable labor.
• Mystery and misdirection: The ordinary-looking mirror, unnatural rain, stolen children’s souls, and nearly dead ancient corpse point to a deeper supernatural puzzle.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng reveals that the threat is an ancient Yin-Shang corpse—an enemy so powerful that the assembled tomb raiders could not hope to defeat it. He urges them to prioritize escape.
• Hui Yulong shares a historical booklet connecting the site to Western Xia minister Menzang E’pang. Its stories describe vanished Buddhist treasures, disturbing dreams, “Red Mud” ground, and a warning that events began and ended with a demon.
• Lin Feng reasons that the corpse’s awakening must have been triggered by something abnormal. He connects it to the recent rain, a collapsed cliff, an “Evil Thought” attaching itself to Yang Liuwa, and the first sacrifice.
• Under pressure, the tomb raiders pool information. Their accounts suggest Duck Ravine’s feng shui formation traps spirits—and that children’s souls may be confined in one area. They also reveal that the Jin Family had been behaving suspiciously and had stopped sending anyone out for supplies months earlier.
• Lin Feng verifies that the Time Demon’s account is truthful. Before he can question her further, a pillar falls, forcing him to extinguish the fire. In the darkness, something approaches and imitates voices, while Lin Feng senses a foul presence among the group.
• In a separate scene, Xie Shiba drags Professor Han away from a hallucination or supernatural sight in the Yellow River. He insists that Han deny what he saw and warns him not to touch patterned objects, which could provoke the site’s power. Despite a gaping chest wound, Xie Shiba remains alive and functional.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng stays composed and analytical despite the danger. He uses the others’ fear to make them share information, investigates the historical clues, and demonstrates authority by testing the Time Demon’s honesty. His claim that he fought the corpse is true—but he conceals that he died and returned.
• Hui Yulong abandons his group’s secrecy when survival is at stake, offering Lin Feng a booklet and pressing others to reveal what they know.
• The tomb raiders shift from guarding their private leads to competing to contribute once they recognize their vulnerability. Their respect for Lin Feng grows, partly because his aloofness matches their idea of the mysterious Three Branches.
• The Time Demon supplies a crucial clue about the Jin Family’s disappearance, though her late recollection initially makes others suspicious.
• Xie Shiba is forceful but protective toward Professor Han: he slaps and drags him to break his fixation, then checks that he has recovered and returns his glasses. Han, shaken but responsive, accepts Xie Shiba’s insistence that he stay grounded.

Significant themes

• Survival over treasure: The characters’ ambitions give way to cooperation once the threat becomes undeniable.
• Truth, rumor, and incomplete knowledge: Historical anecdotes and fragmented testimony contain useful clues, but must be sifted from exaggeration and gossip.
• Reasoning against overwhelming force: Lin Feng looks for the cause and patterns behind the supernatural danger rather than relying on strength.
• Perception and belief: The Yellow River vision challenges Professor Han’s grip on reality, while Xie Shiba tries to keep him alive by controlling what he believes and where he looks.
• The limits of ordinary life and death: Xie Shiba’s survival with a fatal-looking wound echoes the chapter’s central question about whether a person can live without a heart.

Key plot points and events

• After the fight, Xie Shiba reveals that his defiant confidence had partly been an act. Despite catastrophic wounds—including the loss of his heart—he remains alive and can even light a cigarette with his hand.
• Professor Han has lost some memories. Xie Shiba jokes about the Xie Family’s brutal history of using lobotomies on tomb-raiders who returned mentally broken, then describes their modern alternative: having people declared mentally ill and heavily sedated.
• Xie Shiba says he cannot leave and sends Professor Han down the mountain alone. He gives him a blood-soaked notebook of survival instructions and asks him to pass along a message and a piece of tattooed skin to a psychiatrist, Xie An’an, if he survives. The message concerns whether she remembers having a younger brother named Xie Shiba.
• Elsewhere, Lin Feng confirms that the lightning strikes at unnaturally precise intervals. He performs a dangerous qi-observing technique, which floods his mind with incomprehensible information, blinds him with tears, and causes a second head to begin growing on his back. He cuts it off.
• The technique draws several hostile entities toward Lin Feng and the Hui Family group: a building covered in hair and faces, shadowy masses, and living earth that swallows people. Lin Feng leads the survivors deeper into the area rather than escaping.
• The group reaches a field of old remains, nonhuman bones, and ruined Daoist artifacts. Hui Yulong recognizes evidence of a Daoist ritual altar and spots grotesque, dead-looking Daoist priests approaching. They pass the group without reacting, and Lin Feng continues inward, convinced the deeper area holds the truth.

Character developments

• Xie Shiba shifts from swaggering survivor to a wounded man confronting his likely death. His farewell and request concerning Xie An’an reveal personal longing beneath his grim humor.
• Professor Han is disoriented and injured, but remains curious and humane. He agrees to carry out Xie Shiba’s request.
• Lin Feng shows resolve and calculated leadership: despite being nearly blind and surrounded by danger, he presses on to complete his investigation.
• Hui Yulong and the other followers are frightened but depend on Lin Feng as their best chance of survival.

Significant themes

• Survival and sacrifice: Xie Shiba stays behind, while Lin Feng knowingly risks his life and leads others through danger.
• The limits of rational explanation: The chapter juxtaposes medical science, superstition, and phenomena that defy both.
• Memory and identity: Professor Han’s lost memories and Xie Shiba’s uncertain family connection make remembrance emotionally significant.
• Knowledge at a cost: Lin Feng’s attempt to perceive hidden truths damages his body and exposes the group to greater danger.
• Layered mysteries: The area is described as “one layer wrapped around another,” suggesting that each discovery conceals a deeper one.

Character interactions

• Xie Shiba jokes with and reassures Professor Han, then entrusts him with a final message and a deeply personal keepsake.
• Professor Han questions Xie Shiba’s methods and family history, but ultimately accepts his request.
• Lin Feng gives the Hui Family members a chance to abandon him, but they refuse, viewing him as their hope.
• Hui Yulong identifies the altar and approaching priests, while Lin Feng directs the group to keep moving inward and trust nothing they encounter.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng leads a dwindling group through a dark, seal-strewn passage. The survivors suffer increasingly powerful hallucinations, nosebleeds, and visions of the dead; Lin knows the visions are false and keeps guiding them toward the sacrificial pit rather than the apparent exit.
• The group finds evidence of Hui Family rites: severed fingers, bleeding clay figures, and insects. Hui Yulong recognizes the work as belonging to his family and is terrified that the Grand Elder may be nearby. Lin senses a powerful being feasting in the darkness and leads the group around it.
• The chapter shifts to the Hui Family Grand Elder’s earlier expedition. He has excavated ancient burials, dismisses the buried nobles’ attempts to revive themselves, and explains that the site is a rare Yin-Yang crossroads tied to an ancient kiln, Dragon Veins, and a mysterious Heaven-Bearing Temple.
• The Grand Elder confirms that a Yin-Shang sacrificial pit and its seals contain the danger he hoped to exploit. He sacrifices lower-ranking followers as bait and uses a White Bone Umbrella, believing the plan is secure. But a monstrous North Wind God appears and attacks, overturning his expectations.
• Lin’s group sees the god depart toward the lightning-lit route. Lin’s vision improves in the darkness, and he finds red mud like that encountered on his earlier visit. He coats himself and the others with it to conceal their auras, then enters the sacrificial pit.
• Following traces of a recent sacrifice, Lin finds the missionary and finally sees the child’s missing soul—held by a Monk. He draws his Dharma Sword.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains composed amid the others’ terror, relies on perception and practical judgment, and continues pursuing the child’s soul despite the danger. He is wary of Zhou Xianhu and secretly probes another man’s mind with his hair.
• Hui Yulong is reduced to helpless fear when he recognizes his family’s forbidden methods, revealing the deep power the Hui elders hold over their disciples.
• Zhou Xianhu tries to interpret the supernatural events and seeks Lin’s protection, but Lin keeps him at a distance. The group increasingly depends on Lin as their only apparent chance of survival.
• The Hui Family Grand Elder is revealed as ruthless, knowledgeable, and barely human in appearance. His contempt for the dead and willingness to sacrifice his own followers contrast with his confidence, which collapses when the North Wind God appears.
• The Grand Elder’s followers obey under fear, while Lin’s companions imitate him by smearing on red mud, showing how thoroughly they rely on his lead.

Significant themes

• Perception versus reality: Hallucinations and misleading appearances make sight unreliable; survival depends on discernment.
• Sacrifice and exploitation: Ancient rites, the Hui Family’s schemes, and the Grand Elder’s use of disciples all treat people as offerings or tools.
• The limits of human control: Even careful plans and extensive knowledge fail before forces like the North Wind God.
• Inheritance, power, and fear: The Hui Family’s secretive master-disciple system preserves authority through withheld knowledge and terror.
• Ancient history and layered mysteries: The site’s successive seals, burials, Dragon Veins, and temple traditions suggest a long, complex supernatural history.

Plot points and events

• In a prologue, several tomb raiders are lured to a cliffside residence by a Jin Family associate. The head proprietor suddenly kills the visitor who enters; the escort then slaughters the others outside. When he discovers the gruesome scene within, he is horrified.
• Lin Feng completes Act One of the game, recovering the missing children’s souls. He chooses to remain in the game and receives a clue connected to a Daoist alchemical verse.
• In the Red Mud “Kiln,” Lin Feng negotiates with a strange Precepts monk whose body is sustained by a flesh-and-blood Buddha’s head. The monk explains that listening to him keeps the group safe, gives Lin Feng a translated Buddhist scripture, and describes two routes out: the dangerous abandoned Heaven-Bearing Temple or burial in Red Mud until the Kiln’s people retrieve them.
• Lin Feng probes the monk about the temple’s power and motives, but the monk’s answers remain mysterious. A sudden flash reveals the Kiln’s vast, artificial, nest-like structure, full of strange remnants. The North Wind God is also seen battling an invisible opponent and suffering severe injuries.
• The monk concludes that the temple route is no longer viable and departs. Lin Feng and the few survivors cover themselves in Red Mud and endure suffocating darkness and disorienting whispers. They awaken in Duck Ravine.
• The game opens Act Two: investigate the Jin Family’s situation within a week of reaching Jin Residence; delay increases the difficulty, and fewer deaths among Jinlong Town villagers improve the result.
• Lin Feng learns that three people survived: Hui Yulong, Hui Qilang, and the Hui Family’s Grand Elder. He plans to use their knowledge and connections to enter Guanzhong and investigate the Jin Family. The Grand Elder agrees to travel with him, while cultivating a reputation for himself.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains cautious and observant, using patience rather than force with the monk. He tests the monk’s rules and intentions, and casually defuses an awkward moment by rating the monk’s unusual eyes “6.” He also adapts quickly to his new role as an opera-troupe leader, turning the Grand Elder’s gratitude into an opportunity to reach Guanzhong.
• The Precepts monk is simultaneously unsettling and composed. He claims to uphold Buddhist precepts while tolerating the Buddha-head’s consumption of blood, explaining that true Buddhahood is not a matter of outward appearances. He assists Lin Feng but remains bound by obscure rules and leaves before the group escapes.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder presents himself as grateful and benevolent, but Lin Feng suspects he is shrewdly managing his public image. He rewards Lin Feng and proposes they travel together, giving Lin Feng a useful connection.
• The survivors follow Lin Feng’s lead in the Kiln, trusting his judgment because they cannot defend themselves. Their cooperation continues after they wake.

Significant themes

• Appearance versus reality: The monk’s grotesque form coexists with thoughtful beliefs; the Kiln’s landscape conceals an immense constructed system; and the Grand Elder’s kindly manner may mask ambition.
• Rules, belief, and survival: Lin Feng survives by identifying the monk’s behavioral rule and choosing the Red Mud route, while the monk’s reflections question whether religious restraint and symbols truly define faith.
• Identity and performance: Lin Feng’s shifting game roles—from Daoist to troupe leader—suggest life as a succession of parts to play. Reputation is also treated as a performance, especially by the Grand Elder.
• Uncertainty and hidden worlds: The invisible enemy, the Kiln’s remnants, and the temple’s unexplained powers leave the setting’s dangers and history unresolved.

Plot points and events

• After Lin Feng leaves the Kiln, the Hui Family’s Grand Elder abruptly collapses and vanishes from the world. Records and possessions identifying him are erased. The Yin-Shang priest tries to attack Lin Feng, but the world rejects and expels him too.
• A vast black sandstorm buries Yang Family Village and nearby settlements; torrential rain then reshapes the mountain, wiping the places and their inhabitants from ordinary history.
• Traveling toward Hanzhong with the Troupe, Lin Feng finds his memories increasingly unreliable. He cannot remember the children he supposedly rescued, and his recollection of events contradicts the mission. His Mystic Sustenance Method is sealed, while the Hui Family members seem lifeless and are labeled as “materials.”
• During a violent, stormy night, Lin Feng discovers the Troupe women—including Little Peach Blossom—hanging as human-skin effigies. An Underworld Uncanny appears, but the Precepts scripture on Lin Feng’s person repels it. The scripture leads him into a spectral temple, where a vengeful, headless monk warns that yin-yang imbalance has unleashed calamity and asks him to find the Buddha Head.
• Lin Feng refuses the monk’s demand and fights his way through the Underworld horrors, using the full power of his Tongue God’s [mou] sound and his swordsmanship. As the village descends into chaos, he encounters more blood-mist and monsters.
• He suddenly returns to the journey, apparently more than ten days later. Much of the intervening time is missing, but the Ghost Script Precepts book remains with him, confirming that the nightmare was real. The Hui Family’s Grand Elder appears to have brought him out.
• The Troupe continues toward the Jin Family’s territory, preparing a play that credits Hui Zhong with the rescue. Lin Feng’s sense of time slips again: he finds himself having arranged a performance in Tianfu Town without remembering doing so. He suspects he has fought nightly, since the Yak God’s satisfaction has risen.
• While exploring the town, Lin Feng detects a foul, corpse-like odor coming from a shop concealed behind a curtain, with a porcelain bottle outside.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng grows more wary and self-reliant. He recognizes that his memories and history may be manipulated, but keeps his suspicions hidden from the Troupe and the Hui Family. He refuses to be drawn into the monk’s demand and fights decisively when threatened.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder remains outwardly genial and helpful, yet his disappearance and apparent ability to extract Lin Feng from the Underworld leave his motives and limits uncertain. He also controls the public narrative by insisting the Troupe perform a play praising Hui Zhong.
• The Troupe, including Little Peach Blossom, behaves normally after the apparent massacre, deepening the mystery of what was real and what has been altered. Little Peach Blossom eagerly discusses the new performance.
• The Yin-Shang priest attempts to punish Lin Feng but is expelled when the world rejects him. The vengeful monk, driven by obsession, tries to enlist Lin Feng, who refuses.

Significant themes

• Unstable memory and history: Memories, records, places, and even people can be erased or rewritten, while the game’s notifications and the Precepts book provide evidence that events occurred.
• Balance and catastrophe: The monk links the Underworld’s eruption to an imbalance between yin and yang, suggesting the world’s dangers are systemic rather than isolated.
• Appearance versus reality: The Hui Family’s friendly conduct, the Troupe’s normal behavior, and the restored journey conceal sinister changes and missing time.
• Agency amid manipulation: Lin Feng cannot control the larger forces shaping events, but he retains the ability to question, resist, and fight.

• The shop and the new magistrate: Lin Feng enters a gloomy antiquities shop tied to the Jin Family and grave robbers. He finds an “Uncanny” scene in its courtyard and kills the shop’s men with the Net of Luo. Outside, he overhears a young county magistrate and his guards planning to investigate the Jin Family. The magistrate wants to expose the family’s crimes and win a place in the County Gazetteer, but he underestimates how dangerous the Jin Family is.
• The town becomes a trap: Lin Feng warns the magistrate to leave, but the roads loop back into town. A supernatural barrier has sealed everyone inside, directing the population toward the Opera Grounds for the Hui Family Grand Elder’s performance. Lin Feng recognizes that the face in the sky is only a manifestation; the opera itself is the true source of danger.
• Lin Feng’s discovery and preparations: Lin Feng tests whether he can die by firing a True Fire Pill at his own head. He survives without defending himself and concludes that the Grand Elder is mechanically keeping him alive—likely because Lin Feng, as a Qi-Observing Historian and witness, still recognizes the Grand Elder’s existence. Lin Feng begins a desperate counterattack, using his life force to force the Net of Luo to grow and preparing a makeshift altar and fire-filled trenches on a mountain outside town.
• The opera’s influence spreads: The Troupe members appear beneath the stage and call Lin Feng back. Some people who reach the mountain also seem affected, including women who transform into Little Peach Blossom’s likeness. Lin Feng remains composed, while the frightened magistrate and guards help gather supplies and bring others to the mountain. Lin Feng warns that the grand opera has already begun.
  Character developments and interactions: The magistrate is ambitious and zealous about justice, but also capable of listening to advice; after seeing the supernatural barrier, he abandons his attempted escape and turns to Lin Feng for guidance. Lin Feng shifts from observing events to actively resisting them, though his survival seems to be controlled by the Grand Elder. Their relationship becomes one of uneasy cooperation: Lin Feng directs the magistrate and his people, while they supply labor and materials for his preparations.
  Themes: The chapter contrasts civic ambition and the desire for recognition with the immediate need to survive; explores how a supernatural performance can manipulate an entire town; and presents witness, memory, and recognition as forces that can sustain existence. It also emphasizes Lin Feng’s grim resolve: even facing overwhelming danger, he chooses to fight back.

Chapter summary

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng shows Zong Yang the town’s transformation into a mass ritual: snow and darkness descend, residents chant and revel in a trance, and an ancient entity begins choosing followers. He warns Zong Yang that the Jin Family’s ambitions are similarly dangerous.
• Lin Feng performs a counter-ritual on the mountain, using controlled townspeople, sacrificial animals, fire, and the Precepts scripture. He sees Anchors dragging a corpse down from beyond the sky, along with a strange “emptiness” full of watching eyes.
• A protective power responds through a Daoist Palace connected to the Young Shrine Attendant. Its intervention silences the town, releases the corpse from its restraints, and reveals a larger struggle among supernatural forces—including the Underworld and Ascension Stockade.
• Lin Feng descends through shadow puppets and other obstacles to the Jin Family’s shop. He identifies the ritual’s missing ingredients: kiln clay, Yellow River water, and fire.
• He confronts the Hui Family’s Grand Elder, now an almost formless being who believes his wish for immortality has made him impossible to kill. Lin Feng challenges the Grand Elder’s assumptions about what immortality means and destroys his scheme, but the disruption brings Underworld Uncanny beings into the world.
• Lin Feng’s attacks prove much less effective against these beings than against ordinary foes. He realizes his power lacks a personal “Intent,” an inner conviction that could strengthen it.
• The chapter shifts to Lin Feng back in Fog City, six hours before boarding. Sorting through real and implanted memories, he concludes that the Grand Elder altered events after the game’s first act. He considers how the ritual’s ingredients might help him refine himself, then studies newly discovered Buddhist murals that tell the story of Li Yuanhao.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains irreverent and daring, but his willingness to risk death is also practical: he believes the world will reset if he dies. His success in disrupting the ritual reveals both his resourcefulness and the limits of his current power. He begins searching for the “Intent” his abilities lack.
• Zong Yang is overwhelmed by the ritual’s horrors but refuses to abandon his resolve to fight the Jin Family. He admires Lin Feng as a heroic warrior, even though Lin Feng’s motives are less noble and more pragmatic.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder is revealed as a nearly formless entity sustained by being remembered and perceived. His wish for immortality has not made him invulnerable in the way he expected.
• The Young Shrine Attendant recognizes Lin Feng’s situation and summons aid from the Daoist Palace, which intervenes briefly before withdrawing.
• Lin Feng protects the townspeople during the ritual and later urges Zong Yang to guard those nearby as a greater threat approaches.

Significant themes

• Knowledge and ignorance: The title’s concern runs through Lin Feng’s challenge to the Grand Elder: people may not understand what they are asking for, or the limits of their own understanding.
• The cost of ambition: The Jin Family and the Grand Elder represent the danger of powerful people seeking influence or immortality without regard for the consequences.
• Faith, compassion, and resistance: The protective power of the Peace Charm suggests that the world has not been wholly corrupted; compassion can still oppose supernatural horror.
• Identity, memory, and existence: The Grand Elder’s survival depends on being seen and remembered, while Lin Feng struggles to separate genuine memories from implanted ones.
• Power and conviction: Lin Feng’s strength is insufficient against the Underworld Uncanny without a deeper, personal “Intent,” pointing toward a new stage of growth.