Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng studies photographs of a Western Xia-era mural and realizes it is not Buddhist art but a record of a horrific, undocumented sacrifice. Its distorted monks, submerged nobles, and unnerving blank spaces seem to convey something the painter witnessed but could not understand.
• The image nearly compels Lin Feng to twist his neck around and imitate the figures. His Demon-Binding Rope and Peace Charm break the effect, leaving him shaken.
• Teacher Xun’s handwriting calms Lin Feng and helps him reason that information can pass through carriers and “Mediums”—from the notebook to photographs, a USB drive, and finally the computer and Lin Feng himself.
• Lin Feng tests whether sacrificial fire can trace that chain of connections. He follows it back through the object’s handlers toward its factory, but stops when Teacher Xun’s notes display the warning “Don’t burn.”
• A second photograph shows the monks entering the Yellow River alongside the nobles. Its annotation points to the Yulin Caves, but the coordinates actually lead to an uninhabited desert area. Lin Feng records them and prepares to travel.
• Reflecting on the Hui Family’s Grand Elder and other sinister practitioners, Lin Feng questions his assumption that forbidden methods have become easier over time. He suspects they may have grown more complicated, and that powerful methods carry severe costs.
• He theorizes that Ascension Stockade may be a safer counterpart to “Kiln building,” and considers investigating Western Hunan. He concludes that the supernatural forces he faces may be remnants of a much older, buried era—making him, despite his ancient origins, a rebel against the new age.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng demonstrates growing caution and analytical skill. He resists the mural’s influence, explores how supernatural information travels, and deliberately stops his tracing experiment rather than risk harming someone or unleashing something dangerous.
• Teacher Xun remains absent, but his familiar handwriting steadies Lin Feng and appears to warn him against using sacrificial fire. Lin Feng wonders whether this is an intentional message or an effect of Intent, and briefly tries to contact him without success.
• Professor Han is revealed as the person who photographed Teacher Xun’s notebook and stored it on a USB drive before his death.
• Lin Feng also recalls Teacher Qie, whose matter has been resolved, and remains puzzled by the Hui Family elder’s apparent rise to power without the arduous cultivation other practitioners required.

Significant themes

• Perception and madness: The mural may be a faithful record of an event that its painter could not comprehend, while viewing it exposes Lin Feng to its disturbing influence.
• Information and connection: Objects and people can act as supernatural carriers, linking past and present through images, writing, and electronic data.
• Power and its price: Lin Feng suspects that methods offering power without discipline or sacrifice exact hidden, potentially catastrophic costs.
• History buried beneath history: The chapter suggests that current supernatural threats may be remnants of older forces suppressed by later religious and political orders.
• Moral order and restraint: Social and religious rules may have helped contain dangerous practices, while Lin Feng’s willingness to heed the warning reflects the value of limits.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng continues examining Teacher Xun’s murals, especially the puzzle of two versions of Li Yuanhao at the Yellow River, but finds no explanation.
• On a flight to Suzhou, Lin Feng uses the high-altitude winds to deepen his understanding of wind cultivation.
• He locates Teacher Qie, who has spent fifteen years in a psychiatric sanatorium. The building is saturated with harmful feng-shui energies, and Qie’s room is covered in drawings of hostile beings approaching through doors and windows.
• A man connected to the Kiln arrives. He shares a source of power with Lin Feng—the Land God’s power—and says Qie is “more perfect” than the Kiln’s members. The man admits Qie used Kiln power to help Lin Feng and was caught after asking for help.
• The stranger turns to sand to escape, but Lin Feng traps and destroys him with wind and sword power. He later revives, only to be killed again; the Net of Luo consumes his remains.
• Qie’s drawings predict events with uncanny accuracy. One shows an unseen Evil Ghost joining Lin Feng’s nine Nuo Opera companions, with possible outcomes ranging from Lin Feng being possessed to escaping safely. Lin Feng realizes his next action may determine the result.
• In a parallel storyline, Professor Han flees down a mountain with a head injury and missing skull tissue, carrying tattooed skin. He passes a roadside Soul-Guiding Banner and reaches a silent, apparently abandoned village at dusk.
• He checks into a small guesthouse, seemingly unaware of how unnatural his condition and surroundings are. Two RV travel vloggers, who are stranded nearby, find the village unsettling and plan to sleep in their vehicle.

Character developments

• Lin Feng grows more adept at sensing and controlling wind, and acts decisively against the Kiln’s representative. The drawings force him to recognize that his actions may affect an imminent supernatural threat.
• Teacher Qie is revealed as a skilled artist whose drawings appear to record or predict real events. His request, “Save me,” suggests he remains in danger and may know important things about Heaven-Bearing Temple.
• The Kiln man reveals a shared, ancient land-based power with Lin Feng and shows confidence in his group’s ability to track him, but Lin Feng’s attacks undermine that certainty.
• Professor Han is physically shattered yet continues forward, apparently protected or sustained by something connected to the tattooed skin. His disorientation leaves him unable or unwilling to confront the signs of danger.
• The vloggers move from irritation with the guesthouse owner to unease about the village, but their practical needs keep them there.

Significant themes

• Uncertainty and hidden rules: Supernatural dangers operate according to customs and principles that characters only partly understand.
• Prediction and agency: Qie’s drawings anticipate events, yet present two possible outcomes, raising the question of whether foresight can be changed.
• Old powers and modern life: Air travel and technology unexpectedly aid Lin Feng’s cultivation, while ancient supernatural forces remain active beneath ordinary settings.
• Survival amid distorted reality: Professor Han’s journey blurs the line between physical reality, illusion, and supernatural protection.
• Danger concealed in ordinary places: The sanatorium, village, guesthouse, and even a routine flight all harbor or expose uncanny forces.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng works with the Nuo Opera Masters, who accompany him and carry Talisman Tablets holding his sword qi.
• Lin Feng confronts the Kiln man, questions him about their shared power and Teacher Qie, and refuses to accept his threats.
• Teacher Qie communicates indirectly with Lin Feng through drawings rather than speech.
• Professor Han ignores apparent warnings and the voice of Xie Shiba, focusing only on reaching shelter.
• The guesthouse owner argues with the vloggers over payment; they leave angry and uneasy, then discuss how to spend the night safely.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng realizes that the Kiln worker’s unusual vitality may have created a connection to the Evil Ghost. He cuts off the worker’s transformed finger; when the Evil Ghost appears behind him, Lin Feng closes his eyes and survives. The worker disappears, and Lin Feng’s finger regrows.
• Teacher Qie’s drawings show Lin Feng meeting him amid Evil Ghosts and apparently having his neck snapped. The final note asks, “Why didn’t you die?” Lin Feng concludes that Teacher Qie may have seen a future in which Lin Feng died, though events somehow changed.
• In Shazhou, Lin Feng receives Teacher Qie’s research: anatomical diagrams mapping the Land God’s Six Tones to parts of the body, plus coordinates for an abandoned mining town. He memorizes the material.
• A strange call from the apparently dead Professor Han ends in a mysterious sound of rushing water. The sound nearly overwhelms Lin Feng but leaves him with a natural Water rune and the ability to produce water. His sword absorbs the rune into its Five Sacred Mountains diagram, though later attempts to inscribe the rune have no effect.
• Lin Feng visits the Yulin Caves at night, hoping to find the site of Teacher Xun’s photographs. He finds no relevant traces, but encounters the spectral monks who circle the caves and project a radiant Buddhist Pure Land. Their chanting suppresses most of his abilities.
• Using his Qi-Observing Dharma Eye, Lin Feng sees that Buddhist light is revealing a hidden mass of Karmic Fire in a sealed, severed space. The fire has burned down to an empty husk, and the monks’ long-held attachments have not achieved their aim. A verse about refining an elixir—using a person as the cauldron, Earth as lead, Water as mercury, and intent to guide it—helps Lin Feng recognize the Karmic Fire as a missing piece in his research. He cannot collect it before the monks vanish and the fire becomes imperceptible again.
• Lin Feng enters the game and is flooded with false memories, but retains key outside-game knowledge and his previous reasoning. He seeks the Hui Family’s Grand Elder and insists that the “real” Grand Elder must know the answer to any question he asks. The Grand Elder stops smiling and invites him to ask.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng grows more confident in testing supernatural rules rather than relying on inherited assumptions. He survives a lethal encounter, pursues several mysteries, and makes a significant discovery about Karmic Fire, while remaining aware of gaps in his knowledge.
• Teacher Qie remains an absent but important presence through his drawings and research. His apparent prophetic vision of Lin Feng’s death—and bafflement at Lin Feng’s survival—deepens the mystery surrounding their future meeting.
• Professor Han makes brief, confusing contact through a Ghost Call, apparently searching for his teacher and trapped in a dangerous situation. The call may also be the source of Lin Feng’s Water rune.
• The spectral monks ignore Lin Feng and focus on the caves, their ritual forming a Pure Land image and exposing the hidden Karmic Fire. They represent persistent attachment despite their spiritual aspirations.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder is challenged by Lin Feng’s claim that a true Grand Elder must know everything. His reaction suggests the exchange may test the Grand Elder’s identity or the rules of the game.

Significant themes

• Rules, belief, and exceptions: Lin Feng questions established supernatural customs when experience contradicts them.
• Survival and altered fate: Teacher Qie’s prediction of Lin Feng’s death conflicts with Lin Feng’s survival.
• Knowledge gained through danger: The Ghost Call and the monks’ ritual reveal powerful clues, but at considerable risk and without complete understanding.
• Attachment and failure: The monks’ enduring obsessions have produced a grand ritual, yet the Karmic Fire is an empty husk—suggesting that persistence alone does not guarantee success.
• Memory and identity: The game distorts Lin Feng’s memories, but some knowledge and reasoning survive, raising questions about what defines the self.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng confronts the Hui Family’s Grand Elder, knowing the meeting may end in his death. The Elder cannot predict Lin Feng’s actions because Lin Feng does not fit within the world’s usual rules; moreover, the Elder is bound to Lin Feng as his “Anchor” and needs him to remain in the mortal world.
• Hoping to learn about the Boar-Faced Soaring Serpent Pattern on his body, Lin Feng shows it to the Elder. The Elder reacts with ecstatic excitement and immediately tries to possess Lin Feng, flooding him with information and killing him. Lin Feng revives outside the game, realizing his body may be an unusually valuable vessel.
• Lin Feng repeatedly reenters the game to question the Elder. He learns that his cultivation is not conventional internal alchemy and that the Elder can infer hidden truths about his body and methods—knowledge that prompts another seizure attempt.
• Lin Feng then asks how to collect karmic fire. The Elder explains that ashes can contain it when made into Clay Jars, but the jar-making method is lost. The Yak Balaga Faith may know how to process the ashes, and its ointment is already among the scents on Lin Feng.
• The Elder also explains that the Taotie and soaring-serpent patterns are ancient sacrificial designs used to communicate with particular beings, and that such rites eventually led to the Heaven-Bearing Temple. Lin Feng cannot hear the Elder’s account of what he saw there, apparently because the knowledge is beyond his capacity to receive.
• When the Elder declares that he no longer needs Lin Feng and intends to consume him, Lin Feng tries to fight back, but is possessed and killed again. The Elder savors Lin Feng’s soul and focuses especially on the space between his eyebrows.
• In the real world, Lin Feng notices this repeated focus and wonders whether the area corresponds to a “third eye.” Meanwhile, at the Yulin Caves, he sees a hand emerge from the karmic fire—one making a Buddhist gesture, the other holding a phone—suggesting something strange remains inside it.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains composed and increasingly pragmatic about repeated deaths. He treats the Elder as a dangerous source of information, changes tactics after each failure, and tries to endure possession long enough to understand what happens to his body.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder is terrified of existence beyond the mortal world and depends on Lin Feng as his Anchor. Yet his fear and dependence do not make him merciful: he repeatedly attacks Lin Feng, covets his body, and ultimately treats his soul as a delicacy.
• Their relationship is a tense, temporary bargain: Lin Feng asks questions while the Elder answers selectively, but both know the arrangement will end in violence. The Elder withholds or reveals information according to what Lin Feng can comprehend, while Lin Feng keeps probing despite the danger.

Significant themes

• Knowledge has limits: Some information is deliberately concealed or simply impossible for Lin Feng to perceive.
• The body as vessel: Lin Feng’s unusual body, patterns, and brow region may connect him to powerful beings and make him a target.
• Immortality as horror: The Elder’s endless existence beyond the world has become a source of terror rather than fulfillment.
• Persistence through death: Lin Feng uses repeated lives to gather experience, even as each encounter brings pain and little control.
• Power and ritual: Ancient patterns, sacrificial rites, faiths, and vessels for karmic fire suggest that spiritual power depends on both inherited traditions and material forms.

Chapter summary: “The Loser”

Key plot points and events

• After failing to obtain the Karmic Fire needed for the Great Elixir, Lin Feng resolves to prepare for another encounter with the powerful Grand Elder. He reasons that, unlike the “Version Answer,” the Grand Elder must have weaknesses that people of the past knew how to exploit.
• At Teacher Xun’s second address, in the Gobi Desert, Lin Feng’s Nuo Opera Masters uncover a buried cave, murals, skeletal remains, a coffin, and a small underground vault. The bones belong to cultivators and show evidence of cruel, deliberate wounds—including holes chiseled into victims’ foreheads.
• The murals depict a bloody Western Xia succession and a one-eyed Stone Man emerging from the Yellow River. Lin Feng connects this image to the White Lotus Sect’s famous rebellion prophecy, realizing that the legend may have originated in a real event rather than being purely political invention.
• The coffin and a chest made from mysterious Bone Ash give off ominous signs. Lin Feng wants to leave, but they cannot be moved. Using his Qi-Observing Eye, he discovers that the person in the coffin is alive and drawing energy from the chest.
• Lin Feng enters the cave and finds a prisoner chained before a statue of Yamāntaka. The prisoner, who calls himself Snake and identifies himself as a “Bird,” mistakes Lin Feng for someone connected to Xun Yanyu. He is enraged that Xun supposedly imprisoned him while allowing someone else with similar traits to approach.
• Snake transforms violently as the demonic statue and its Consort Ming react. Lin Feng fights him with his sword and flying blades, exploiting Snake’s many restraints and debuffs to defeat him.
• The chapter then shifts to a flashback, decades earlier, when Xun Yanyu and a group of Xie Family members travel to the Northwest to find the lost seventeenth cave and its Hell Transformation murals. A disguised young man joins them, claiming to share Xun’s archaeological interests. He supplies rare historical sources about the cave and the Yellow River, then reveals that he is wearing a human-skin mask.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains cautious and irreverent, but accepts responsibility for what he has disturbed and proceeds despite his fear. His use of his Nuo Opera Masters lets him investigate dangerous sites while keeping himself at a distance.
• Snake is revealed as a long-imprisoned, altered being—still alive despite severe injuries and years of bloodletting. His fury stems not only from captivity but from what he sees as a double standard in Xun Yanyu’s treatment of people like him.
• Xun Yanyu emerges in the flashback as a heavy-smoking, perceptive archaeologist who recognizes the disguised man’s true nature and sees through the Xie group’s attempted surveillance.
• The disguised young man is knowledgeable and self-assured. He presents himself as an ally of archaeology, but his mask and interest in the cave leave his real motives uncertain.
• Xie Shiba appears as a skilled, dutiful young member of the Xie Family, burdened by his family’s dangerous work and determined to protect his sister from it.

Significant themes

• History, myth, and evidence: The one-eyed Stone Man legend may preserve a distorted memory of an actual supernatural event.
• The dangers of uncovering the past: Archaeological discovery releases threats as well as knowledge, and Lin Feng feels responsible for the consequences of disturbing the site.
• Captivity and injustice: Snake’s anger reflects the pain of being condemned and restrained while others like him may be treated differently.
• Identity and transformation: Snake’s “Bird” nature, the living dead-like victims, and the human-skin mask blur the line between human and monster.
• Duty and inherited burden: Xie Shiba’s loyalty to his family conflicts with his awareness that his talents might have led to a different life.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng relies on his Nuo Opera Masters to excavate the cave and inspect its hazards, then confronts Snake directly when he discovers the prisoner.
• Snake initially believes Lin Feng was sent by Xun Yanyu, but turns hostile when he recognizes Lin Feng is not Xun and suspects hypocrisy in the way people like him are treated.
• In the flashback, Xun challenges the disguised young man’s cover story but listens to his sources; the young man, in turn, flatters Xun’s scholarship and offers information.
• Xun exposes the Xie Family members hiding nearby, including Xie Shiba, bringing their surveillance—and the young man’s disguise—into the open.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng extracts Bird’s memories and realizes Xun Yanyu’s “gift” is meant to help him Anchor the final Historian of Heaven-Bearing Temple, consigning it to history as he previously did Ascension Stockade.
• In Bird’s recollection, Xun Yanyu questions Bird about the mysterious Three Branches and their aims. He argues that freedom requires the power to refuse—and that people must fight for the strength to make choices. He also warns that he is “kindling” who is about to burn out, urges Lin Feng to keep the flame alive, and reveals that the Northwest Jin Family has vanished into Historian.
• Bird attacks Xun Yanyu, but the memory breaks off. In the present, Bird’s blood revives Yamāntaka, which seizes and dismembers him, turning his body into magical artifacts. Consort Ming is among the beings gestated from his remains. Lin Feng escapes with his elder brother’s help.
• Lin Feng returns the tomb’s objects and remains to the cave, then opens the box. Inside is an eye resembling the Stone Man’s. The eye vanishes into Lin Feng, and many eyes emerge from the darkness beneath him. He concludes that the “Qi-Observing Dharma Eye” may originally have been the literal eye of a Qi-Observing Practitioner.
• At the Guesthouse, Teacher Qie senses reality and time becoming unstable. He has been drawing scenes of Lin Feng dying in different ways, hoping to offer him a way to survive. When beings come for Qie, Professor Han unexpectedly crosses from “yesterday” into “today,” disrupting Qie’s prediction; Han’s memories then collapse.
• The eye awakens Lin Feng’s memory of an ancient Zhangzhung ritual: worshippers burn offerings to the Yak God, make and distribute food from the ashes, and use Evil Soil, bone powder, and jars in a disturbing rite involving children who behave abnormally.

Character developments

• Lin Feng recognizes that Xun Yanyu’s work and the eye are connected to a larger historical and supernatural mystery. He gains a potentially dangerous power but remains cautious, choosing not to examine the eye directly.
• Xun Yanyu is revealed as a calculating mentor willing to sacrifice himself and others to preserve a “flame” of resistance. His cryptic guidance frames freedom as something that requires power and choice.
• Bird is shown to be proud, guarded, and driven by a goal tied to the Three Branches. He ultimately becomes a sacrifice, completing both stages of his mission.
• Teacher Qie accepts the risks of abusing the Kiln’s power and tries to help Lin Feng despite lacking control over him. His own wish—to prove his worth to his dead father—makes him sympathetic but not selfless.
• Professor Han becomes an unpredictable factor in Qie’s visions; his arrival overturns the expected future, though the supernatural disturbance erases his memories.

Significant themes

• Freedom and power: Xun Yanyu insists that meaningful choice requires the ability to say no and the strength to defend that choice.
• Sacrifice and inheritance: Xun Yanyu’s “kindling” metaphor and Bird’s death suggest that knowledge and missions pass forward through costly sacrifices.
• History, erasure, and preservation: Western Xia’s lost records, the Jin Family’s disappearance, and the effort to Anchor a final Historian underscore how fragile historical memory is.
• The body as ritual and power: Bird’s remains become artifacts, while the eye, blood, ash, and bone link supernatural power to physical sacrifice.
• Unstable time and fate: Qie’s visions and Professor Han’s arrival show that the future can be disrupted and that memory itself is vulnerable.

Character interactions

• Xun Yanyu probes Bird about his motives, then addresses Lin Feng through Bird’s memory, offering both warning and encouragement.
• Lin Feng uses Painted Skin to evade Consort Ming, but Yamāntaka captures Bird; afterward Lin Feng asks his elder brother to get them out.
• Teacher Qie watches over the Guesthouse’s temporal disturbances and prepares a possible lifeline for Lin Feng, while Professor Han’s unexpected appearance interferes with his plans.
• Lin Feng’s new eye connects him to the Qi-Observing Practitioners and unlocks a memory of the ancient Zhangzhung ritual.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng’s Qi-Observing Eye reveals memories he had sealed after using Gamalang’s Mediumship Potion. He witnesses a Yak Kapala inheritance ceremony in which children undergo a brutal trial: Clay Jars consume their heads, and those who survive are drenched in blood and entrails.
• The trial produces no successful initiates. With the Demon Kingdom’s attacks worsening and a White Calamity approaching, the Yak Kapala leaders fear their tradition may not survive.
• The Ninefold Kapala Dharma Protector performs a desperate self-sacrifice, cutting off parts of his body and pleading with the Sacred Mountain for guidance. It gives no sign in response.
• Lin Feng receives access to the Yak Kapala tradition’s Fourfold Dharma Protector teachings: methods for making Clay Jars, a Niu Kapala sacrifice, a visualization practice, and a diagram.
• The vision shifts to the obscured Sacred Mountain and then to a strange Bronze Mirror. Lin Feng blacks out and awakens in the Shi grotto beside the Nuo Opera Masters.
• He discovers a Vertical Eye has grown between his eyebrows. The eye—an artifact from the Yellow River, once treasured by Western Xia—is bound by layers of seals associated with several religious traditions.
• Lin Feng’s power now works in conjunction with the eye, his body, and his lungs. By merging with the wind, he transforms into a breeze and rises to the surface, though his clothes do not transform with him.
• Back in the Yulin Caves, he plans to collect the Karmic Fire and uses Fortune to obtain Evil Soil, preparing materials for a container.

Character developments

• Lin Feng gains access to Yak Kapala knowledge and a new supernatural ability: transforming into wind. The Vertical Eye becomes a major part of his spiritual and physical system, though its seals limit its power.
• The Ninefold Kapala Dharma Protector is shown as a desperate but devoted leader, willing to mutilate himself to seek help for his people. His appeal goes unanswered.
• The Yak Kapala practitioners are revealed as hardened by hardship. They regard the deaths in the initiation as necessary losses, even while facing the possible extinction of their tradition.

Significant themes

• Survival and sacrifice: The sect’s brutal initiation reflects a world where catastrophe makes survival seem more important than individual lives.
• Faith and silence: The leaders sacrifice and pray, but the Sacred Mountain offers no guidance.
• Tradition versus modern ethics: Lin Feng can learn from the Yak Kapala methods but recognizes that their practices are incompatible with modern society.
• Inheritance and limitation: Lin Feng gains ancient teachings, but his access is restricted by his rank, and the Vertical Eye’s power remains constrained by its seals.
• Transformation and integration: Lin Feng’s new ability depends on uniting different aspects of himself—mind, body, and spiritual energy.

Character interactions

• The Yak Kapala leaders deliberate over whether to continue their sacrifices as the crisis deepens; the Ninefold Protector’s final plea underscores their desperation.
• Lin Feng observes the historical tragedy rather than participating in it, then receives access to the sect’s teachings through the vision.
• After he wakes, the Nuo Opera Masters guard him and help retrieve his clothes when he returns from the surface as wind.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng uses the Yak Kapala Sect’s inherited method to make pottery without flame, shaping hair and Evil Soil into unfired jars. He orders Yellow River water and sacrifices much of his stored Essence to replenish the hair he needs.
• His Second Life meter falls to 97 percent and continues dropping, forcing him to recognize that his resources are not limitless. He must find a way to sustain himself rather than simply relying on stored Essence.
• To fire the jars, Lin Feng stages a lively “exotic” attraction in the Gobi Desert: performers, drums, prayer flags, a bonfire, and group dancing. He channels the participants’ Human Aura into the jars, which are successfully fired. He later erases the attraction and lets it disappear from public memory as a passing performance.
• Lin Feng paints Yak diagrams on seven jars and, at the Yulin Caves, attempts to contain the Karmic Fire. Using Niu hair, offerings, smoke, and a horn, he finds that the Buddhist light guides the fire into a jar. He seals it with python skin and hair.
• The monks who had been chanting around the Karmic Fire thank him and bless him before fading away. The system combines their blessing with Lin Feng’s Dragon-Tiger Qi Fire Lance, creating the eighth-rank Demon-Subduing Fire Lance.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng shifts from treating his inherited arts as a fixed legacy to adapting them creatively. He also becomes more conscious of the need to preserve his own strength and choose how to spend it.
• He uses human participation pragmatically but kindly: the hired performers receive vitality and Mazu’s spiritual aura, and the dancing crowd grows happier rather than exhausted.
• Lin Feng’s encounter with the monks reveals that they are conscious beings, not merely game-like guardians. He asks whether they came from the Great Locust Tree Temple, but receives no direct answer. One monk instead teaches him that beings trapped in the Karmic Fire lack the ability to transcend life and death, making them “Five-Powers Immortals.”

Significant themes

• Inheritance and reinvention: Lin Feng draws on the Yak Kapala Sect’s legacy while developing his own methods.
• Freedom and dependence: His dwindling Essence makes clear that freedom requires having the resources to choose what not to do.
• Collective power: Shared human joy and will become the force that shapes the pottery.
• Containment and release: Lin Feng contains the Karmic Fire, freeing the monks from the long-standing obsession that bound them.
• Experimentation: Lin Feng succeeds by trying an improvised method, accepting uncertainty rather than waiting for complete understanding.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng reflects on the Five-Powers Immortals and realizes that the Heaven-Bearing Temple’s wish-making system is likely a dead end: if it truly offered a reliable shortcut to universal peace, many selfless people throughout history would have tried it.
• A strange shell falls from the sky. Inside is an empty shed-skin resembling Teacher Xun, which had housed some unknown entity. Lin Feng discovers that the monks who guarded it had been trapped by an empty shell, unable to pass on or reach the Pure Land.
• The shell becomes hostile, but Lin Feng overwhelms it with the Demon-Subduing Fire Lance and spends three hours hacking it down. He senses a cold, lingering trace along its spine, but finds that the entity’s occult connection has been severed. He stores the shell and gathers the remaining ritual objects.
• Back in the game’s town, Lin Feng knocks out the Jin Family’s shop staff and enters the Clay Jar, taking control of young Zong Yang. By sealing himself inside, he cuts off the Anchor’s connection to the outside and disrupts the unfinished ritual.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder and his Troupe become intangible and imperceptible, condemned to drift in a realm worse than death. Lin Feng emerges with his memories of them erased, confirming that his plan worked.
• Lin Feng then travels with the county magistrate, Zong Yang, who questions his identity and motives. Lin Feng claims to be a diviner and proposes either recruiting local swordsmen to rob the Jin Family or following his plan to bring them down.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng grows more cautious about supernatural shortcuts and their hidden costs. He also shows strategic ingenuity, recognizing that sealing himself away can achieve what directly imprisoning the Grand Elder cannot.
• Zong Yang remains suspicious of Lin Feng but is impressed—and unsettled—by how accurately he knows his private history. Their exchange mixes mistrust with reluctant reliance.
• The monks are revealed as tragic captives: they guarded an empty shell for years, and their obsession prevented them from attaining release.
• The Hui Family’s Grand Elder and Troupe suffer the consequences of Lin Feng’s countermeasure, losing all contact with the living world.

Significant themes

• Shortcuts and moral danger: A seemingly convenient path to grand ideals may be fundamentally flawed or exploitative.
• Knowledge and limits: Even powerful beings are not omniscient; their influence depends on specific connections and conditions.
• Existence and isolation: Becoming unseen and unreachable is portrayed as a fate worse than death.
• Appearance versus reality: The feared object turns out to be an empty shell, while the true danger is the unknown being that once inhabited it.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng persuades Magistrate Zong Yang to pursue the Jin Family openly under the law rather than enlist soldiers for a village-wide massacre. His plan is to gather evidence, arrest key members, seize the family’s wealth to pay the troops, and wait for the Military Governor to contain any resistance.
• As they travel toward the Jin Family’s residence, Zong Yang regards Lin Feng as a mysterious master and is unnerved when Lin Feng seems to read his thoughts about Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.
• Meanwhile, thin, towering Iron-Crowned Daoists arrive in town. Their healing Talisman Water wins the townspeople’s trust, though the townspeople can no longer remember anything since losing their Anchor.
• The Daoists secretly feed on traces of supernatural energy and on people—including children. Those who drank their water are made to contaminate the well and help hang bells around town.
• The Daoists discover signs that Lin Feng and his companions passed through. They use the remnants of the Hui Family to investigate, identify the group, and perform a sacrificial rite to the North Wind God, apparently marking them for destruction.
• Lin Feng senses the hostile wind but dismisses the threat as bullies who only appeared after the stronger enemy was gone. He and his companions eat lamb soup and prepare to sleep. Another group—armed swordsmen accompanying proper Daoist priests—arrives seeking shelter and is admitted despite the villagers’ reluctance.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains relaxed and sardonic, but his advice to Zong Yang shows practical political insight: he favors lawful prosecution and limiting civilian casualties, while still proposing coercive tactics such as torture and preemptive arrests.
• Zong Yang moves from uncertainty toward accepting Lin Feng’s guidance. He wants to protect the villagers and preserve his reputation, and increasingly treats Lin Feng as a formidable supernatural adept.
• The Iron-Crowned Daoists present themselves as healers to earn trust, then reveal themselves as corpse-like, predatory beings pursuing Lin Feng’s party.
• The townspeople are vulnerable and forgetful; their gratitude toward the Daoists makes them unwitting participants in the danger.

Significant themes

• Law versus expediency: Zong Yang’s desire for justice conflicts with the violence and corruption of military suppression.
• Trust and deception: The Daoists’ apparent healing and benevolence conceal a murderous purpose.
• Power and predation: Soldiers, officials, supernatural beings, and even supposed healers all threaten ordinary people in different ways.
• The uncanny beneath the ordinary: A seemingly restored town hides supernatural manipulation, and danger advances even as Lin Feng’s group pauses to rest.

Plot points

• After eating, Lin Feng realizes that Zong Yang’s appointment as county head likely came through the widespread practice of buying official posts, not merely through his education.
• Lin Feng senses that a group of Taoists staying nearby are surrounded by wraiths and demons. He gives Zong Yang a protective charm, orders him to remain with his guards, and goes to investigate.
• The Taoists’ “Daoist Arts” are grotesquely dangerous: their bodies and shadows are distorted, their life energy is fading, and practitioners accept horrors such as a Tooth Deity emerging from a senior Taoist’s body.
• A young acolyte says the Five Directional Divine Generals guarding his altar are watching him. Lin Feng recognizes that the supposed divine generals are actually five demons, though the Taoists’ ritual registers bind them to share some power.
• Lin Feng concludes that the Taoists’ legitimate lineage was corrupted after the Xianfeng-era upheavals, possibly through a deliberate scheme exploiting the damaged state of the world and their dependence on ritual power.
• When one Taoist tries to protect the acolyte, he is swept away and transformed into a sheet of human skin; a wraith child enters it. The others, resigned to such “inevitable” consequences, push the terrified acolyte outside and urge him to establish an altar and sacrifice a hand.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng is alert, skeptical, and increasingly confident in his own practice. Despite the Taoists’ apparent orthodoxy, he judges his Taiyin Plain Body and lineage to be more authentic. He protects Zong Yang while investigating the threat alone.
• Zong Yang initially protests that he studied, but accepts Lin Feng’s warning and follows his instructions, revealing trust and caution.
• The Taoists are shown as exhausted, frightened, and desensitized to their own corruption. Their seniority offers little protection: one senior brother feeds fingers to his manifested Tooth Deity, while the others sacrifice a vulnerable junior rather than risk themselves.
• The young acolyte is frightened and singled out because he can summon the Five Directional Divine Generals. His fellow Taoists’ reassurance turns into coercion when they force him into danger.

Significant themes

• Corrupted institutions and false orthodoxy: Rituals and registers that began legitimately have become instruments of demonic influence.
• Exploitation disguised as tradition: The Taoists treat bodily harm and death as the unavoidable cost of practice, allowing their system to perpetuate itself.
• Fear and moral surrender: Faced with danger, the Taoists choose self-preservation over protecting one another.
• Unreliable appearances: Beings called divine generals are demons, and supposed religious practice conceals a predatory arrangement.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng encounters Little Daoist Boy being lured toward a ritual sacrifice. The boy’s Golden Light Mantra protects him somewhat, but chanting also releases blood qi that attracts Wraith Children.
• Using the Wraith Mother’s aura and his Earth Staff Technique, Lin Feng drives off demons, swallows the five directional Divine Generals, and takes their divine talisman and regalia without provoking punishment. Incense Offerings pass through the talisman into him, suggesting the corrupt supernatural world has a harsh but recognizable hierarchy.
• The Wraith Mother rewards Lin Feng with the Blood-and-Flesh Sacrificial Bell. When it attacks him, he beats it into submission; his third eye then shrinks the bell and places it under his control. Its power clears the surrounding area, and the Wraith Mother approves of his dominance.
• Lin Feng draws Little Daoist Boy into a dream and appears to him as a towering, incense-scented Daoist deity. Mistaking Lin Feng’s Five Sacred Mountains image for the Lord of Mount Tai, the boy kneels and addresses him accordingly.
• Lin Feng recognizes the danger of letting that mistaken identity stand. He waits for possible divine punishment, then explicitly denies being the Lord of Mount Tai and declares himself the newly appointed five directional Divine General, placing the boy under his command.

Character development

• Lin Feng displays growing power and confidence, but also caution: he exploits the supernatural hierarchy while carefully avoiding a claim that could bring the Lord of Mount Tai and its officials against him.
• Little Daoist Boy is frightened but resourceful and perceptive. Having endured hardship and learned that opportunities may be scarce, he risks trusting Lin Feng in hopes of finding a better protector.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng protects Little Daoist Boy from the demons, then uses a dreamlike vision to present himself as a powerful, apparently benevolent divine figure.
• The boy’s mistaken identification creates a potentially dangerous bond; Lin Feng responds by firmly correcting him and establishing a safer, explicit chain of command.
• The Wraith Mother treats Lin Feng as a favored “son,” rewarding his strength, while weaker demons retreat before him.

Significant themes

• Power and hierarchy: The realm is cruel and amoral, yet governed by an order in which strength determines status and rewards.
• Names and legitimacy: In ritual practice, identity and proper standing have real power; an innocent misidentification could provoke serious consequences.
• Survival and risk: The boy’s life has taught him to seize rare chances, while Lin Feng balances opportunity against the dangers of overreaching.
• Protection amid corruption: Lin Feng uses the rules of a monstrous world to shield the boy, even as he adopts a frightening appearance and methods.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng questions the Little Daoist Boy about his religious lineage. The boy’s community began as a Quanzhen branch but, over generations, acquired a strange “Mount Li Old Mother Register.” Its practice involves merging with magical artifacts and allowing divine generals to enter practitioners’ bodies.
• The register’s connection to the Old Mother of Mount Li troubles Lin Feng. He considers whether the name refers not to a celestial goddess but to successive ancient tribal leaders near Mount Li. He suspects the Wraith Mother may be part of a spreading lineage or “seed,” rather than an original being.
• Elsewhere, Zong Yang and his guards shelter indoors as eerie silence settles outside. A voice impersonating Mr. Lin tries to lure them out by claiming danger is inside. They initially resist, but then flee after seeing a shadow behind them.
• Zong Yang’s Peace Charm activates and shields the group, but an uncanny, jade-encased ancient corpse attacks and appears intent on taking the charm.
• Lin Feng returns to find Zong Yang and the guards alive but suspicious of him. He uses their secret childhood password to prove his identity. Zong Yang recognizes it, yet claims that nothing happened during Lin Feng’s absence.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng is analytical and increasingly disturbed as he connects the unfamiliar Taoist register, the Wraith Mother, and ancient Mount Li traditions. His return reveals that he shares a private history with Zong Yang.
• Little Daoist Boy is deferential and eager to attach himself to Lin Feng, whom he sees as a potentially powerful, benevolent patron.
• Zong Yang and the guards show caution in the face of supernatural deception. Zong Yang is frightened but defiant; after the attack, his denial of events raises questions about what happened to him or what he is hiding.
• Lin Feng and Zong Yang share a secret password from Zong Yang’s childhood, establishing trust and familiarity, though Zong Yang’s final response undermines that reassurance.

Significant themes

• Religious traditions changing over time: The Taoist lineage’s registers and practices have shifted into something unorthodox and unsettling.
• Uncertainty about myth and history: Lin Feng wonders whether legendary figures may have been real, successive human leaders, or part of a supernatural process.
• Deception and trust: The false voice exploits fear, while even the genuine Lin Feng must prove his identity.
• Protection with a cost or hidden purpose: The Peace Charm saves the group but also attracts the ancient corpse, suggesting that safeguards may carry their own danger.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng confronts the figure posing as Zong Yang, using his newly developed Third Eye to inspect him. The eye reveals a grotesque mass of flesh, while the apparent Zong Yang shows no clear hostility.
• Lin Feng realizes the stranger is not an ordinary evil spirit. He discovers that the being is the local Land God of Big Poplar Village, whose body has been corrupted by tumors and decay.
• The Land God admits he has been trapped for 316 years, deprived of sufficient incense offerings and help from a higher power. His failing divinity has left him in agony and unable to control his hunger.
• Lin Feng questions why the Land God appeared. In a final act of resolve, the deity tears out his own heart—the Land God statue embedded in his body—and its remaining spiritual light flows into Lin Feng’s protective talisman.
• Once the divine essence is gone, the Land God becomes a mindless monster and attacks. Lin Feng’s Blood-and-Flesh Sacrificial Bell devours him, while Lin Feng’s hair-net moves to protect the others.
• Afterward, Lin Feng sees a human face inside the bell change to resemble his own, revealing that the artifact can mimic appearances.

Character developments

• Lin Feng is cautious and analytical, relying on his Third Eye, protective talisman, and artifact rather than trusting appearances. He recognizes the Land God’s suffering but does not let pity override caution.
• The Land God is revealed as a once-duty-bound local deity, worn down by centuries of neglect and contamination. Despite his monstrous state and loss of control, he retains enough resolve to surrender his heart and preserve what remains of his divinity.
• Zong Yang survives the encounter, apparently protected from the worst of the Land God’s digestive attack by the guards around him.
• The Blood-and-Flesh Sacrificial Bell acts independently and eagerly consumes the monster, suggesting it is both powerful and potentially unsettling.

Significant themes

• Neglected duty and divine decay: A deity entrusted with protecting a village can become corrupted when abandoned by the systems and worship that sustain it.
• Compassion balanced with vigilance: Lin Feng recognizes the Land God’s tragic plight but remains alert to the danger posed by his uncontrollable hunger.
• Identity and imitation: The bell’s face copying Lin Feng introduces the disturbing possibility that appearances—and perhaps identities—can be replicated.
• The cost of survival: The Land God’s final attempt to preserve his spiritual legacy comes through self-destruction.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng interrogates the Land God directly, testing his intentions while keeping the bell ready.
• The Land God explains his suffering and, unable to communicate fully, offers his heart and remaining spiritual light as evidence of his identity and history.
• The Land God’s loss of control forces Lin Feng’s artifact to intervene, while Lin Feng’s hair-net tries to protect the other people caught in the attack.
• After the creature is consumed, Lin Feng encounters the bell’s unsettling mimicry firsthand.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng examines the Blood-and-Flesh Sacrificial Bell, a crude fusion of living tissue and bronze. He suspects it is an ancient attempt to overcome human mortality through machinery, but one so flawed that even emperors may have rejected it.
• Its patterns remind him of the bronze vessel from the Li Family Ancestral Hall and of Old Mother of Mount Li. He realizes the flesh-and-bronze artifacts may belong to a historical lineage connected to ancient bronze-smelting tribes—and perhaps to his own origins.
• A bronze mask attacks, shouting that Lin Feng is a fake. He destroys it with wind-formed blades, then repairs it and studies its fused flesh and bronze. The mask seems more advanced than the bell, leading him to suspect that he himself may be the most complete result of this process.
• Incense Offerings reach Lin Feng through the eye between his brows. He uses five daggers to force blood from bronze vessels, which are then absorbed into his body. This reveals that the vessels are designed to devour one another, with the weak serving as nourishment. Lin Feng senses a dangerous purpose behind this system.
• He reflects on the Land God’s decline: abandoned when the Heavenly Court vanished, the god was left to face monsters, dwindling spiritual authority, and poisoned offerings. Lin Feng revives County Chief Zong Yang and wounded guards by using the Net of Luo to supply them with blood and vital energy.
• Zong Yang asks what happened. Lin Feng gives him a reassuring cover story rather than reveal that the “ghost” was the Land God Divine Abomination.
• Lin Feng discovers that bronze consumption cannot satisfy his hunger; only sacrificial rites can. He can now transform parts of his body into objects such as a dagger, and the Sacrificial Bell begins merging into him, potentially strengthening his voice-based abilities.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng grows more wary of his connection to Old Mother of Mount Li and the bronze artifacts. His new ability to absorb and reshape bronze expands his power, but also raises questions about what the artifacts are ultimately meant to do.
• Zong Yang awakens frightened but trusts Lin Feng after their childhood-verse password. He worries about his guards and briefly fears Lin Feng may eat the Daoists; Lin Feng dismisses the suspicion, though Zong Yang remains unconvinced.
• The Land God is portrayed as a tragic casualty of the Heavenly Court’s disappearance. Faced with abandonment and corrupt offerings, he has been forced into a monstrous state rather than choosing it freely.

Significant themes

• Mechanical immortality and transformation: The bronze-flesh vessels represent an ancient, imperfect effort to escape human limits.
• Survival without morality: The vessels’ built-in logic makes stronger beings consume weaker ones, turning existence into a brutal contest.
• The cost of institutional collapse: When the Heavenly Court disappears, even minor gods are left to fend for themselves and may be corrupted by the worship meant to sustain them.
• Uncertain identity and historical inheritance: Lin Feng’s investigation suggests that he may not merely be studying an ancient tradition—he may be part of its culmination.

Key events

• During morning prayers, Lin Feng receives a powerful surge of incense offerings from Daoists worshipping the Five Directional Divine Generals. The offerings strengthen his divinity and soul and accelerate his absorption of the Blood-and-Flesh Sacrificial Bell.
• Lin Feng concludes that the Divine Generals may be genuine deities represented by unique bronze artifacts. He recognizes that he is still far weaker than the cult’s leader, Old Mother of Mount Li, and decides to build strength and followers of his own.
• The Daoists perform rites for those killed in the night, then buy children from impoverished families. The villagers accept this as a chance for their children to eat and survive.
• A guard who died during the night remains as a soul beneath Lin Feng’s feet. Lin Feng has gathered it and expects to raise it into part of a force to oppose Old Mother of Mount Li.
• Lin Feng approaches a group of traumatized Daoists, but their new leader, the Third Senior Brother, angrily rebuffs him. Lin Feng and Zong Yang discuss whether the Jin Family might be deliberately luring treasure-seekers into a trap. Zong Yang agrees to investigate.
• Lin Feng inspects the Daoists’ shrine and finds a tablet to the Five Directional Divine Generals among their Dipper Division deities. A Little Daoist Boy, whom Lin Feng helped the previous night, passes by with water. Lin Feng recognizes him and secretly promises a reward for keeping the god tablet clean.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng becomes more confident in his growing divine power, but remains cautious about the stronger Old Mother of Mount Li and her followers. He plans strategically, gathering souls and information rather than rushing into a fight.
• Zong Yang is saddened by the guard’s death and initially dismisses the Daoists, but follows Lin Feng’s suggestion to look into the Jin Family’s possible trap.
• The Third Senior Brother has become the Daoists’ leader after the deaths of the two senior brothers. Grief and fear leave him convinced he will be next, and he reacts harshly to Lin Feng’s greeting.
• The Daoists and guards display contrasting forms of resignation: the Daoists are shaken by the “deities” that prey on them, while the guards accept death as part of a life that has otherwise improved.
• The Little Daoist Boy is healthier and more capable after Lin Feng’s earlier help, and Lin Feng recognizes his devotion to maintaining the deity tablet.

Significant themes

• Faith as power: Worship strengthens Lin Feng, while religious devotion can also expose worshippers to exploitation.
• Survival and moral compromise: Poverty makes the villagers accept children being taken, and the guards tolerate danger because they value their improved lives.
• Random cruelty and helplessness: The deaths are treated as “luck” and “misfortune,” leaving people with little control over their fate.
• Strategy and accumulating strength: Lin Feng counters overwhelming supernatural power by gathering allies, souls, and information.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng recognizes the Taoist Temple’s selection system as another brutal scheme: children are hastily made Daoists, then either learn the rites and serve the spirits behind their registers or die as sacrifices.
• He secretly tells the Little Daoist Boy to give every child the Five Directional Divine General’s register. Lin Feng’s power will grant them supernatural abilities, giving them a chance to survive by supporting one another.
• Lin Feng’s aura suppresses the other deity tablets and weakens their hold over the Daoists. Most uncanny powers resent him, but cannot retaliate under the rules; Old Mother of Mount Li remains unmoved.
• Lin Feng senses that the Blood-and-Flesh Sacrificial Bell can be assimilated, but worries that separate powers and efforts may ultimately be absorbed by someone else.
• Back at the group’s lodging, Zong Yang reports rumors about the Jin Family. Once a respected, charitable tomb-robbing family, they stopped their usual operations a few years ago and withdrew into their mansion. Recent claims say they found an immortality elixir in the First Emperor’s tomb and are preparing to ascend. Monks and Daoists are flocking there, despite doubts about the story.
• Lin Feng decides the group must leave before the gathering crowd turns violent. He collects the dead guard’s soul and sets out with his party.
• The north wind carries a strong smell of blood: the Kiln’s pursuers are close and are summoning the North Wind God through human sacrifice.
• The Taoists also prepare to ordain the purchased boys. The third senior brother senses danger and tells the fifth junior brother to follow his instructions, while he organizes the others. He leaves the youngest Taoist to perform the ceremony alone, insisting it must be completed before dawn.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng acts protectively toward the children, offering them a practical alternative to the Temple’s sacrificial system. He also remains alert to larger supernatural dangers and the possibility that power will be appropriated by others.
• The Little Daoist Boy moves from terror at encountering a normal, benevolent deity to relief and hope. Lin Feng supports him physically and gives him a mission that could save the children.
• Zong Yang is strengthened rather than discouraged by the group’s recent loss. He shares what he learned about the Jin Family and is plainly tempted by the possibility that the immortality rumor might be true.
• The guard bluntly challenges the rumor’s logic, but even he and Zong Yang recognize how powerfully the promise of immortality draws people.
• The third and fifth Taoist brothers share a tense exchange: the third recognizes the danger and takes command, while the fifth understands that their earlier actions may have brought them into peril. The third delegates the risky ordination to the youngest brother.

Significant themes

• Exploitation and survival: Both the Temple and the Kiln treat people as resources—sacrifices, recruits, or fuel for supernatural power.
• Hope against coercion: Lin Feng’s intervention offers the children a chance to survive collectively, in contrast to a system designed to consume them.
• The seduction of immortality: Even implausible rumors can draw people into danger when the promised reward is eternal life.
• Ritual, history, and power: Ancient sacrificial traditions persist despite the collapse of the civilizations that created them, showing how old forces outlast the beliefs and societies that once sustained them.
• Uncertain ownership of power: Lin Feng’s unease about the bell and the bronze-vessel path suggests that supernatural gains may ultimately benefit someone else.

Plot points and events

• As night falls, the village’s residents hide in their cellars while Third Senior Brother prepares to defend the Daoists, using a blood-written talisman on his sword and borrowing power from a deity.
• Inside a house, masked Little Daoist Boy begins a dangerous register-conferral ritual. Bound, blindfolded newcomers serve as “acolytes,” and a reanimated corpse chooses their divine patrons.
• Outside, Third Senior Brother sees Iron-Crowned Daoists and towering Ghost Shadows approaching. He leads the Daoists into battle, but the attackers slaughter them quickly.
• Lin Feng, traveling safely with Zong Yang, realizes the pursuers are fighting the village’s deities. He explains that the two groups are enemies, then connects to his Ancestor Tablet.
• During the ritual, Little Daoist Boy hopes the Five Directional Divine Generals will select the acolytes, but their tablet remains still. A common Guide Official’s tablet moves instead. Before the official can complete the rite, a blade of wind beheads the corpse. The corpse nevertheless continues speaking, revealing that Lin Feng is observing and learning how the ritual works.

Character developments and interactions

• Little Daoist Boy shows nervousness and strict obedience to the temple’s lethal rules. His first time conducting the ritual leaves him trapped between his duty and the violence outside; he is disappointed when the patron he hopes for does not appear.
• Third Senior Brother acts bravely despite fear, confronting the attackers and relying on borrowed divine power. His confidence is quickly overwhelmed by the enemy’s strength.
• Lin Feng remains calm and overwhelmingly dangerous compared with the entities on the road. His exchange with the frightened Zong Yang provides a brief comic contrast to the horrors elsewhere.
• The Daoists’ defense against the Iron-Crowned attackers is brief and disastrous, while the ritual’s corpse becomes an unexpected channel for Lin Feng’s intervention.

Significant themes

• Ritual and obedience: The temple’s rules are treated as essential, life-and-death knowledge, even when their purpose is unclear.
• Fate, hierarchy, and selection: The order of the deity tablets determines the acolytes’ prospects, making divine favor a matter of status and survival.
• Misplaced safety and shifting danger: The village’s defenders face a battle that does not involve Lin Feng’s party; the supposedly safer road is protected by Lin Feng himself.
• Power and observation: Lin Feng’s ability to watch and influence events contrasts with the Daoists’ helplessness, and the final scene suggests he is studying the ritual for his own purposes.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng discovers a booklet recording names, birth dates, and ritual signatures. He recognizes its method as a Luban-style possession rite that can “resurrect” the dead by binding them to a master.
• Taking advantage of the absent deities, Lin Feng performs the rite and claims the people listed in the booklet, effectively placing them under his command—though he notes this is a crude form of authority, not a proper Daoist register.
• Daoist Ji, the sect’s founding master, intervenes from a hidden realm and tries to seize Lin Feng. Lin Feng identifies him as a once-powerful Daoist now trapped between life and death, reduced to a zombie-like state.
• Lin Feng transforms into wind and is pulled into the Yellow Millet Dream Realm, where Daoist Ji has anchored himself to the lights of the temple and its Deity Tablets.
• Using a sacrificial bell and Demon-Binding Rope, Lin Feng overpowers Ji, extinguishes the lights sustaining him, and briefly restores his clarity. Ji recognizes Lin Feng’s spells as dark arts from the Qinling Mountains. Lin Feng finds a box behind him containing a heart carved from peach wood.
• Meanwhile, Zong Yang and the guards remain at the roadside, surrounded by supernatural creatures. A tap on one of Lin Feng’s clay jars drives the wolves and nearby ghosts away, reinforcing their belief in his power.

Character developments

• Lin Feng shows growing confidence and ingenuity: he masters the resurrection-like ritual, adapts his magical tools in combat, and handles his transformation into wind more skillfully than before.
• Daoist Ji is revealed as a formidable but diminished figure: fear of death and prolonged existence between worlds have left him damaged and unstable, though he retains moments of insight and his former Daoist knowledge.
• Zong Yang and the guards remain loyal and cautious, choosing to hold their position and wait for Lin Feng rather than flee.

Significant themes

• Life, death, and the fear of dying: Daoist Ji’s undead state reflects how fear and attachment can corrupt even a respected cultivator.
• Ritual power and authority: Lin Feng’s borrowed “register” gives him control, but lacks the legitimacy and depth of orthodox Daoist transmission.
• Improvisation and the use of tools: Bells, ropes, Deity Tablets, and even clay jars become instruments of power in a world where practical skill matters as much as formal magic.
• The unstable boundary between worlds: The Yellow Millet Dream Realm offers refuge to the dead who refuse the Underworld, but traps them in a precarious state.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng relies on the frightened Little Daoist Boy to help stitch his severed head and examine the ritual booklet, then uses the rite to claim the listed people.
• Daoist Ji confronts Lin Feng and demands what he has taken; their clash becomes both a magical duel and an exchange in which Ji gradually recognizes Lin Feng’s abilities.
• Lin Feng restrains and strikes Ji, testing whether any conscience remains, while Ji alternates between confusion and lucidity.
• Zong Yang and the guards discuss whether to leave, but the jars’ mysterious effect persuades them to stay and await Lin Feng.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng destroys the zombie-like body of Daoist Ji with a point-blank Fire Lance shot, then uses the Peach Wood core to release Ji’s surviving true spirit.
• Ji explains that the evil entity he fought in the Qinling Mountains was one of the Old Mothers of Mount Li. His encounter left him near death, prompting him to attempt a forbidden transformation that made his body something between life and death.
• Ji warns that Ascension Stockade contains accumulated remnants of the past—old qi, folk beliefs, and desires—and that its emergence could disrupt time and return the world to primordial chaos.
• He recounts the tale behind the Southern Dipper Life-Prolonging True Scripture: a Han-dynasty Fangshi, once associated with Prince Liu An, found the ruins of Mount Li and an Old Mother there. Though he recorded what he learned, he chose suicide rather than submit to what he had discovered.
• Ji says Old Mother of Mount Li is not one individual but a group, and that the name can refer to different divine identities or offices across religious traditions. He cautions Lin Feng not to assume that a familiar divine title guarantees a benevolent being.
• With only one strike left, Ji prepares to make a final attack through the Deity Tablet, using power accumulated over centuries of Incense Offerings. The chapter ends as he thrusts out a finger.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng questions Ji respectfully and listens to his account. He also tries, indirectly, to obtain the missing seal-script inscription for his Five Sacred Mountains artifact, but Ji refuses, explaining that his remaining spirit cannot provide it—and that the artifact is not a universal defense.
• Daoist Ji confronts the failure of his life’s work: despite years of virtuous conduct and Daoist study, fear and desperation led him to a corrupted, unnatural path. He speaks openly of his shame, admires the Fangshi’s resolve, and accepts his own impending death with calm purpose.
• Ji and Lin Feng’s exchange combines instruction with caution: Ji shares knowledge but emphasizes the limits of magical techniques and the danger of judging supernatural beings by their names or religious associations.

Significant themes

• Integrity under pressure: Ji regrets abandoning his principles in his final years, while the Fangshi’s suicide represents a refusal to compromise.
• The ambiguity of divinity: Religious titles may describe offices, manifestations, or multiple beings; identity and conduct cannot be inferred from a name alone.
• Limits of power and knowledge: No single artifact, lineage, or technique can defeat every threat, and even learned figures may understand only part of what they encounter.
• Legacy and purpose: Ji’s final strike—and his wish for someone to witness it—offers a last chance to give meaning to a life marked by failure.