Chapter Summaries

Key plot points

• Lin Feng learns how the Seven Warlords of the Sea perceive their surroundings: in a five-meter radius, animals appear as flames, plants as white shapes, and most other things as gray. Lin Feng and his console are black, marking them as outsiders.
• The spirits can scout but cannot touch or affect most physical objects. They are too weak for Lin Feng’s hoped-for “nanny” role, though their scouting may still improve his survival chances.
• After dismissing and replenishing the spirits, Lin Feng reviews a disappointing batch of items and the Corpse Driver class. Its traits involve bringing misfortune to weakly protected people nearby, suppressing the user’s yang energy around corpses, and making corpses less likely to rise.
• Remembering that fortune can stitch methods together, Lin Feng combines Wild Fox Zen and Five-Ghost Transport Art. With 98% compatibility and three qian of fortune, the game fuses them into a powerful new Thief’s Gate Secret Art: Five-Ghost Transport Art.
• The art can grow through thirty-three stages and potentially steal or transport anything—from valuables and vital energy to fortune. Lin Feng is thrilled, but notices its drawbacks: it develops slowly and is ruthless.

Character developments

• Lin Feng is increasingly strategic: he accepts the spirits’ current limits and values them as scouts rather than expecting them to become powerful immediately.
• He shows distaste for the Corpse Driver’s cruel implications, especially the possibility that Li Pusa’s master sacrificed the young man’s parents as part of a plan to use him.
• Lin Feng grows more confident in experimenting with the game’s fusion system, though the new art’s scale and power leave him wary.

Significant themes

• Power comes with limits and costs: the spirits are useful but weak, while the new secret art promises enormous potential at the price of time and ruthlessness.
• Cruelty disguised as fate: the Corpse Driver’s misfortune and Li Pusa’s story show how people can be exploited through supposedly supernatural circumstances.
• Theft and legitimacy: the secret art’s maxim contrasts petty theft with the “great theft” of kingdoms, questioning whether power determines how theft is judged.
• Growth through experimentation: Lin Feng turns disappointing finds into an opportunity by combining seemingly unrelated techniques.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng briefly tends to the Seven Warlords of the Sea, returning them to their figurines, replenishing their incense and candles, and stroking their heads.
• He reflects sympathetically on Li Pusa, whose obedience to his master may have left him without a family.
• Lin Feng’s relationship with the game remains playful but increasingly trusting: he jokes about its “conscience,” then takes a chance on the fusion system.

Key events

• Lin Feng realizes the Five-Ghost Transport Art’s power rises dramatically at higher levels—from carrying gold to stealing financial luck, Fortune, or even a nation’s destiny. But stolen things must eventually be repaid, and the backlash can ruin an entire clan, as the Sima family’s history suggests.
• He tests whether the new art can combine with his other abilities, but every attempt fails. He spends the remaining hours restoring his mental energy and looks for a secluded courtyard where he can safely practice “Feasting on Wind and Drinking Dew.”
• Xu Nian still has not replied. Lin Feng leaves her another message, then returns to the game, where his cycle of dangerous lives continues.
• While Lin Feng is away, the Seven Warlords sneak out and gather around the rabbit cage. They seem to be “feeding” on it much as they feed on incense, suggesting their nurturing process may involve choosing something to consume.
• In the game, Lin Feng plans to use his current life to survey the surrounding mountains, since the available maps are inadequate and the terrain is perilous. He stops to conceal the group from Yin Gods, then decides to try the Five-Ghost Transport Art despite Li Pusa’s warning that the distorted supernatural environment could summon something horrific.
• Lin Feng uses a chipped bowl, chopsticks, damp clothes, and bone objects as makeshift ritual implements. As he chants, the ground grows cold and an ominous presence rises around them.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng is skeptical of the art’s grand promises and wary of its costs, but remains pragmatic: in the game, he is willing to take a dangerous gamble when he sees no safer option.
• Li Pusa strongly opposes the ritual, fearing it will summon a deadly entity. Lin Feng dismisses his warning, while Zhu threatens him with a saber to prevent him from interfering.
• Hundred-Household Officer Zhu continues to trust Lin Feng and stands ready to protect him during the ritual.
• The guide supplies the map and ritual objects, though he and Li Pusa are both uneasy about Lin Feng’s improvised method.
• Xu Nian remains absent from the conversation, leaving Lin Feng concerned about her safety.

Significant themes

• Power and its price: The secret art offers vast potential, but every theft carries repayment and potentially catastrophic consequences.
• Risk under pressure: Lin Feng’s choice to perform the ritual reflects the group’s desperate circumstances and the need to gamble when ordinary options fail.
• Uncertainty and incomplete knowledge: The maps, supernatural rules, and identities of summoned spirits are all unclear, making survival dependent on cautious experimentation.
• Control and appetite: The Seven Warlords’ behavior around the rabbit cage hints that their “nurturing” may involve selecting and consuming a source of sustenance.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng uses the Five-Ghost Transport Art, but senses that the ritual’s setting is profoundly wrong. The unnatural quiet, dampness, and rotten smell give way to disembodied murmurs that tempt listeners to pay attention.
• The guide nearly succumbs to the whispers, but Li Pusa slaps him and warns that listening to ghost talk is fatal.
• Lin Feng’s summons appears to bring an immense tide of Uncanny beings. Only Lin Feng can see the horde: countless spirits in black fog, led by a sky-high, baboon-like giant labeled [Stage Five, Blood God]. It drags several enormous Mountain Land Gods in chains.
• Before the group can be overwhelmed, a crimson Flash Grenade descends from the thunderclouds and wounds the Blood God, shearing away part of its fog. The horde vanishes, and the forest becomes calm.
• A group of spirits from the Feng Shui lineage thanks Lin Feng, then merges into him. He receives a fragment of a geomancy legacy, gains knowledge, and his Qi-Observing Dharma Eye begins to change.

Character developments

• Lin Feng recognizes that ordinary danger senses cannot explain his unease. His shock at the Blood God’s scale is tempered by sarcastic humor, and the encounter leaves him with a new legacy and a changing ability.
• Li Pusa proves alert and protective, detecting danger and stopping the guide from listening to the whispers.
• The guide is vulnerable to the supernatural murmurs but is pulled back from danger.
• Hundred-Household Officer Zhu remains composed, though he cannot see the terrifying vision Lin Feng witnesses.

Character interactions

• Li Pusa forcefully rebukes the guide and warns him against listening to the ghosts.
• Lin Feng’s companions see only darkness and forest, while Lin Feng alone perceives the Blood God and the chained deities.
• The Feng Shui spirits address Lin Feng as a fellow practitioner and repay his aid by passing on their legacy.

Significant themes

• The limits of perception: The same place appears ordinary to Lin Feng’s companions but teems with horrors to him.
• The unknowable supernatural: The chapter deliberately leaves the nature and definition of a “Blood God” unclear.
• Danger concealed in the familiar: A ritual that seems normal becomes a gateway to an overwhelming threat.
• Unexpected reward amid peril: The near-disaster ends with Lin Feng receiving knowledge and a supernatural inheritance.

• Lin Feng receives a new inheritance: The feng shui diviners pour their teachings into him. Though their knowledge is incomplete and divided among specialized traditions, their experience and techniques for reading expressions and speech improve one portion of his Qi-Observing Dharma Eye. It evolves into Qi-Observing Eye: Fleeting Glimpse. He also gains a memory fragment and chooses to enter it.
• The memory reveals a courtly setting: Lin Feng awakens in a beautiful, human-made garden, a stark contrast to the ominous mountains where he is trapped. He recognizes the scene as the Song imperial palace and identifies the seated figure as Emperor Zhenzong, Zhao Heng. Nearby is Chancellor Ding Wei, whose deferential manner strikes Lin Feng as undignified.
• The emperor’s occult interests are implied: Ding Wei brings Zhao Heng a medicinal pill, which the emperor takes. He then summons the feng shui diviners through the chancellor. Ding Wei tells them to settle their affairs within three days, after which they will be taken to an undisclosed destination. Eunuchs present them with gold as a reward.
• Character development and interactions: Lin Feng is confused by the claim that he saved the diviners, since he had only used his spirit-summoning art to find ghosts to explore the Map. Still, he accepts their teachings rather than refuse a free benefit. In the memory, the diviners stand and bow to Ding Wei, who relays the emperor’s orders; Lin Feng watches from the sidelines and privately mocks the overtly flashy reward.
• Significant themes: The chapter emphasizes how knowledge fragments and specializes over time, leaving practitioners with incomplete inheritances. It also contrasts the beauty and control of human civilization with the threatening natural world, while hinting at the Song court’s entanglement with occult pursuits and political performance.

Key plot points and events

• After a memory fragment abruptly ends, Lin Feng learns that Song-dynasty feng shui masters once surveyed Western Hunan’s mountains and earth veins, and most apparently died there—evidence that the region has long been deadly.
• He uses the Five-Ghost Transport Art to bind several ghosts into bone objects. The spell takes only moments, though the others experience a chilling wind, strange sounds, and a flash of red lightning.
• Lin Feng sends the spirits ahead to scout and confirms they can travel a limited distance. He senses the False Mountain God approaching, but postpones confronting it.
• The guide cannot explain Lin Feng’s vision of the strange mountain force. Li Pusa appears to recognize something but stays silent.
• Human-faced crows return, followed by the pointed-hat ritualists. Lin Feng prevents Zhu from attacking, and the group stays hidden as they pass.
• Lin Feng’s Qi-Observing Eye identifies the central Skeleton Mage as an extremely dangerous Upper Seventh Rank Corpse Demon, while the crows are Lower Ninth Rank demons with a self-sacrifice ability.
• The Corpse Demons and the broad-headscarfed men begin fighting nearby. With enemies drawn toward the battle, Lin Feng decides it is time for the group to flee.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng turns his brief vision into useful historical and tactical information. He remains alert and pragmatic, coordinating the ghosts, assessing threats, and choosing concealment over a reckless fight.
• The guide grows increasingly terrified; his limited knowledge of the Ghost Yamen offers no answers about the deeper mountains.
• Li Pusa seems to know more than he admits, but keeps his thoughts to himself.
• Zhu is ready to fight the pointed hats, but yields when Lin Feng silently warns him to hold back.
• Lin Feng stuffs mud into the guide’s ears to protect him from the ritualists’ passing sounds, though the guide’s survival remains uncertain.

Significant themes

• The limits of knowledge: Even experienced practitioners understand little about the mountains’ oldest horrors.
• Survival through restraint and teamwork: Lin Feng avoids unnecessary combat and exploits distractions to protect the group.
• A hostile, uncaring supernatural world: Danger arrives without warning, and those who lack the strength to perceive it may not even understand how they die.
• Time pressure and dread: The countdown advances slowly, but each minute feels punishingly long.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng correctly predicts that the great Skeleton Mages will fight the square-kerchiefed figure, who can summon the powerful blood god A Lu Hun. He hopes the ensuing battle will kill nearby overlord monsters, letting him shelter in their lairs.
• The clash draws predators from across the area. Lin Feng loses contact with six of his eight scouts and leads his group northwest to avoid the uproar.
• The survivors encounter a massive Mountain Spider, far larger than the creature described in old records. Its brood sacs are releasing human-head-sized offspring, some of which are eaten or crushed as they scramble across their mother.
• Lin Feng decides the Spider’s territory may offer safety and hurries toward it with the guide and two other companions.
• A ghostly woman from the Underworld appears in a tree and strangulates Li Pusa with her wet hair. He rises as a Corpse in the form of “Guanyin,” but the woman easily kills and devours him.
• The woman then floats away like a kite, pulled by an invisible cord. Lin Feng sees that countless similar ghosts drift over Bull-Head Mountain, even near A Lu Hun’s battle.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains calculating and adaptable, using his knowledge of the monsters to plan a route through the chaos. When Li Pusa is attacked, he abandons any attempt to intervene and flees with the remaining living companions.
• Li Pusa is killed suddenly, then briefly returns as the Wild God “Guanyin” he worshipped before being consumed by the woman. His fate shows how little protection that transformation offers against stronger entities.
• The ghost woman is introduced as a dangerous Underworld creature whose hair acts as a strangling cord. She ignores Lin Feng because he is not her target, but kills and eats Li Pusa with ease.
• Lin Feng’s group is reduced to three living people after Li Pusa’s death, while the Mountain Spider and its brood add another immediate threat to their escape.

Significant themes

• Survival through opportunism: Lin Feng looks for shelter amid conflicts he cannot control, but every possible refuge carries its own danger.
• The scale of supernatural power: Even powerful beings can be overwhelmed; Li Pusa’s transformation offers no defense against the ghost woman.
• Chaos and unintended danger: The battle attracts predators, destroys scouts, and creates hazards far beyond its intended participants.
• The expanding supernatural world: The Underworld’s arrival has introduced unfamiliar entities, including the kite-like ghosts now filling the skies over Bull-Head Mountain.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng and Hundred-Household Officer Zhu continue through Bull-Head Mountain after their guide dies of hypothermia. Lin Feng cannot save him or safely bury his body, and the guide’s soul is soon pulled into the mountains.
• A Butterfly Woman, previously responsible for killing Li Pusa, finds the guide’s corpse and waits for another living victim. The chapter explains that Butterfly Women are sacrificial servants: they gather blood offerings before eventually becoming offerings themselves.
• A woman carrying large scissors arrives, skins the guide, then devours the Butterfly Woman. When more Butterfly Women converge, a ghostly mourning ritual and a bloodied Corpse impersonator appear. The scissors-wielding woman turns into a huge white python and flees, but the Uncanny force pursues her.
• Lin Feng and Zhu reach the Mountain Spider’s lair. Its webs entangle a mysterious Divine Temple beside a cave, both potential dangers in the wilderness. With no safe way onward, Lin prepares to fight roughly thirty smaller spiders and asks Zhu to gather branches for torches.
• Meanwhile, the Ironhead Viper survives multiple deadly areas by using mountain-god authority and continues tracking Lin, driven by its desire for that power.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng remains practical and determined: he tries to save the guide, accepts that burial is impossible, and presses on despite exhaustion and the risks at the shrine and spider lair. He relies on Zhu for help while preparing to fight.
• Hundred-Household Officer Zhu is badly weakened but continues with Lin and is assigned to collect branches.
• The guide dies despite Lin’s efforts, illustrating the limits of Lin’s blood energy and the brutality of the journey.
• The scissors-wielding woman displays predatory strength by consuming the Butterfly Woman, but recognizes the Corpse impersonator’s danger and retreats in python form.
• The Ironhead Viper is established as an inexorable pursuer, willing to brave lethal territory to reach Lin.

Themes

• Survival and sacrifice: People and supernatural beings alike are treated as expendable; Butterfly Women exist ultimately to be sacrificed, while the guide’s death underscores the journey’s human cost.
• The limits of power: Lin’s potent blood energy cannot safely save someone weaker, and even formidable monsters must flee greater threats.
• Uncertainty and taboo: The unknown temple and cave represent the danger of acting without knowledge in a landscape governed by unpredictable spirits.
• Relentless pursuit: Lin faces threats from both the terrain and the pursuing viper, leaving little room for rest or escape.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng fights through a nest of giant Mountain Spiders, using his sword to kill them and cut away their silk. He sees the spider-infested area as a forbidden ground and recognizes that the Divine Temple and nearby cave may be even more dangerous than the spiders.
• Keeping his distance, he probes both places with wind. The temple seems mostly intact, with an altar and a stone tablet, but the altar behaves like a bottomless void. His wind also senses something alive in the complex cave—possibly a person—and Lin Feng refuses to investigate.
• With his scouting wind suppressed and the local wandering souls seeming unreliable, Lin Feng avoids using his ghost-transport technique. He and Hundred-Household Officer Zhu make a small fire and prepare rations while waiting in their temporary refuge.
• Smoke from the fire risks revealing their position. Strange gnawing sounds come from the silk-covered temple, but Lin Feng tells Zhu to ignore them and uses wind to prevent odors from drifting toward the cave and temple.
• A flash of lightning reveals a pale, bloodless face watching them from the cave. Lin Feng hurls a prepared projectile toward it; afterward, the face is gone, though a gray-white hair remains floating in the air.
• At the same moment, the Ironhead Viper attacks from above. Lin Feng counters by using his sword to flick burning wood into the air, shaping the fire into a wind-driven tornado that strikes the snake.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng shows confidence and lethal skill against the spiders, but remains cautious around threats he cannot understand. He prioritizes survival over curiosity and keeps himself ready for the approaching viper.
• Hundred-Household Officer Zhu helps maintain the camp, lights the fire, and prepares the wet wood. He remains composed despite the strange noises and the danger surrounding them.
• Lin Feng and Zhu cooperate quietly and pragmatically, staying within sight of one another and sharing their exposed, makeshift shelter without embarrassment.

Significant themes

• Survival in an altered wilderness: Even powerful fighters are vulnerable in a landscape where the natural order has collapsed.
• Caution before the unknown: Lin Feng avoids the cave, temple, and unreliable supernatural forces rather than risk provoking them.
• Temporary safety and constant danger: Their refuge offers only a brief pause; smoke, strange sounds, the pale figure, and the viper’s attack quickly threaten it.
• Resourcefulness under pressure: Lin Feng turns ordinary materials—wind, firewood, and flame—into weapons.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng dies again after surviving more than six hours on Uncanny Bull-Head Mountain. His eight-hour Joy cooldown begins.
• Before his death, he kills the weakened Ironhead Viper, absorbs its Mountain God power, and reaches Lower Sixth Rank. He gains control over the tree spirits of Front and Bull-Head Mountains, can turn wind into flying swords, and can better predict enemy movements.
• He initially survives by keeping the mountain’s fragile balance and relying on the Divine Temple’s apparent protection. But in the final hour, the Divine Temple clashes with a strange residence that sends out half-burned joss paper and mourners’ sobs. The wet-haired women who killed Li Pusa attack Lin Feng; Hundred-Household Officer Zhu dies, and Lin Feng is swallowed by a huge white snake that seems to be a puppet.
• During the battle, Lin Feng sees and memorizes a marking inside the damaged Divine Temple. Back in his apartment, he draws it and asks his creator friend Brother Chen for an expert contact. Chen connects him with Teacher Ma, a folklorist and popular-science writer. Lin Feng sends Ma the image; Ma recognizes it as familiar and calls a colleague to inspect it.

Character developments

• Lin Feng becomes much stronger and more confident after reaching Lower Sixth Rank, briefly imagining how powerful he would be back in the city. His death teaches him that strength cannot protect him from the mountain’s larger, unpredictable conflicts.
• Even after dying, Lin Feng remains curious and methodical: he records the temple marking and seeks outside expertise rather than dismissing it.
• Teacher Ma is introduced as approachable and knowledgeable; his immediate recognition suggests the marking has real-world cultural or historical significance.

Significant themes

• Power has limits: Lin Feng’s new abilities help him survive ordinary threats but cannot shield him from collateral damage between greater forces.
• Uncanny places have their own rules: Monsters and spirits avoid the temple’s territory, implying a tense balance of power.
• Intent and sacrifice: The exhausted Ironhead Viper attacks despite its poor condition, underscoring the importance of resolve.
• Knowledge beyond the game: Lin Feng turns to real-world folklore research to understand what he witnessed.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng fights Ironhead Viper strategically, exploiting its exhaustion and weakness to venom-based power.
• During the final conflict, Lin Feng fights while retreating alongside Zhu, but Zhu dies and Lin Feng is overwhelmed.
• Lin Feng and Brother Chen exchange familiar, teasing banter before Chen provides Teacher Ma’s contact.
• Lin Feng respectfully consults Teacher Ma, who brings in colleague Old Xu to examine the marking.

Teacher Ma and his friend Old Xu examine a mark Lin Feng has shared and identify it as the Land God Seal, matching examples found on Han-dynasty tomb bricks. They praise Lin Feng’s drawing and explain that the symbol is far older than the familiar village or household land god.
Old Xu gives Lin Feng a history lesson: land deities once held broader authority and, during the Han era, were associated with burial rites, guiding the dead, and receiving offerings. Over time—especially from the Song dynasty onward—their status and jurisdiction shrank. By the Ming dynasty, they had largely become minor household or village protectors, alongside city gods who governed larger areas. The scholars suggest the seal served both to communicate with land gods and to make offerings to them. These early gods could be frightening, even appearing as beasts, rather than kindly old men.
Character developments and interactions: Lin Feng is cheerful enough to enjoy the elderly scholars’ lively bickering, and he eagerly asks for a detailed explanation. Teacher Ma is conscientious and uses voice messages because typing is difficult; Old Xu supplies the expertise, while the two friends trade teasing interruptions. As Old Xu describes ancient land gods, Lin Feng recognizes a resemblance to the land god he encountered at Bull-Head Mountain.
Themes: The chapter contrasts the changing forms and roles of religious belief across history, and hints that ancient folklore may connect directly to Lin Feng’s supernatural experiences.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng learns that the Land God was once a formidable deity, not the mild, minor figure of popular stories. He suspects a Land God temple may explain why Yin Gods avoid the area around a cave.
• By charming Professor Xu with his questions and comments, Lin Feng gains access to rare Han Dynasty records and archaeological photographs concerning the Land God.
• The materials describe a mandrill-like Land God statue, a tomb occupant’s contract with the deity, and the belief that the Land God guided souls toward the Yellow Emperor. Travelers were to utter “fa” to avoid being led astray.
• Puzzling over how an animal with three fingers could form a seal, Lin Feng enters a trance. He unifies the hand gesture, Curse Seal, and sound “fa,” then completes the Land God Seal.
• Its first activation releases a tremendous invisible shockwave. Several of Lin Feng’s supernatural companions are forced to their knees; a rabbit, a corgi, and people in the corridor faint. Lin Feng also loses all three strands of energy he had accumulated.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng’s curiosity shifts into focused investigation: he studies the historical evidence and experiments with the seal rather than treating it as merely an interesting symbol.
• Professor Xu becomes an enthusiastic collaborator, sharing valuable sources and speaking informally with Lin Feng. Their lively exchange helps Lin Feng connect the historical records to his own discovery.
• Lin Feng’s companions and nearby bystanders experience the seal’s overwhelming power firsthand, though Lin Feng has little control over its effects.

Significant themes

• The power behind humble appearances: the Land God’s familiar, modest image contrasts with its ancient authority and terrifying force.
• Ritual, language, and belief: the gesture, written symbol, and spoken “fa” combine into a potent supernatural act.
• Contracts between humans and gods: the Han records portray the afterlife as governed by bargains and obligations.
• Discovery through inquiry: historical research and unconventional reasoning lead Lin Feng to awaken a powerful ability—with dangerous consequences.

Key plot points

• Lin Feng uses the Land God Seal to incapacitate the ghosts and many people in his rental building, but his improvised, overly forceful use drains his strength, God-mind, and vital breath. He collapses unconscious.
• The “Seven Warlords of the Sea” recover after about fifteen minutes. Though still early in their Five-Ghost Transport Art training, they have advanced unusually quickly by inhaling the rabbit’s strange fragrance. Now able to move light objects, they bring the rabbit cage beside Lin Feng, and its scent eases his headache and calms his nightmare.
• In a remote clinic in Western Hunan, Xu Nian wakes after a prolonged fever. Weak, swollen, dehydrated, and barely able to speak, she realizes she is in a small village clinic and wonders what happened to her teachers and the men who brought her down from the mountain.
• A medical worker leaves after seeing she is awake. Members of the Security Section then question Xu Nian, beginning by asking whether she remembers how she came down from the mountain.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng’s first successful use of the seal reveals both its power and its cost: without divine authority or mastery, he can affect many souls, but the effort leaves him unconscious.
• The Seven Warlords show unexpected loyalty and resourcefulness, caring for Lin Feng by bringing him the rabbit’s restorative scent.
• Xu Nian is confused and physically debilitated, but alert enough to assess her surroundings and worry about others. The Security Section’s formal questioning signals that her recovery will be followed by an investigation.

Significant themes

• Power and its price: Lin Feng’s improvised strength comes at severe personal cost.
• Unexpected growth and loyalty: The ghosts advance far faster than expected and respond to Lin Feng with care.
• Uncertainty and aftermath: Xu Nian’s awakening leaves open what happened on the mountain and what became of her companions.

Plot points and events

• Xu Nian wakes in a township clinic after being unconscious for more than two days. Officials question how she came down from the mountain during flash floods and landslides.
• Xu Nian insists that six people carried her, but the investigators say she was found alone outside the clinic, protected by a raincoat and beside a stretcher. There were no footprints or other signs of how she arrived.
• Her archaeological team remains trapped at the mountain camp. Rescue attempts are hampered by the weather, and officials can no longer contact the team by satellite phone.
• At the camp, Professor Han worries about the missing Ran Zhihui and Xu Nian. He studies his teacher’s old field journals, which contain theories he once dismissed as pseudoscience, and copies them onto a USB drive so the knowledge may survive if the camp is lost.

Character developments

• Xu Nian is confused and feverish, but certain about being carried down the mountain. The impossible circumstances leave her—and the investigators—without an explanation.
• Professor Han shifts from skepticism toward taking his teacher’s disputed writings seriously. His decision to preserve them shows growing concern that they may matter, as well as a determination to protect the archaeological legacy.

Character interactions

• The two investigators question Xu Nian carefully, comparing her account with the evidence and explaining the danger facing her team. They reassure her while seeking information about the camp.
• Professor Han reflects on his teacher’s legacy and his intended successor, Ran Zhihui, whom he fears is dead or worse.

Significant themes

• The inexplicable: Xu Nian’s arrival defies ordinary explanations, unsettling even experienced investigators.
• Isolation and danger: The storm cuts off the mountain camp, creating a sense of helplessness and looming threat.
• Legacy and preservation: Field journals carry knowledge across generations; Professor Han’s actions suggest that preserving a record can matter even in the face of possible disaster.

Plot points

• Trapped by the storm and strange events, Professor Han accepts that the group may die. He worries most about his young students and apprentices.
• He studies a USB drive containing important data and plans to hide one copy and swallow the other if danger becomes imminent.
• Han examines the journals left by his missing mentor. They contain accounts of earlier excavations, strange rituals, and incidents associated with the smell of incense ash and burning paper—often followed by deaths.
• The journals recount how Han’s mentor became obsessed with theories about ancient, vanished cultures after an inconclusive tomb excavation in the Central Plains. His controversial research damaged his career and personal life.
• Outside Han’s tent, chanting rises from the forest. People believed to be members of the team sent to check the route appear in the rain, beckoning. When a flashlight reveals what stands behind them, the security personnel draw their weapons and order everyone back into the tents.

Character developments and interactions

• Professor Han shifts from skepticism toward fatalism, recognizing echoes of his mentor’s experiences and taking the journals’ warnings seriously. Though frightened, he tries to prepare for the worst.
• Han’s relationship with his missing teacher is marked by respect and regret: he apologizes to him while handling the journals and reflects on the legacy he left behind.
• The security personnel respond to the apparent threat with suspicion, then alarm, and take charge by ordering everyone inside.
• The mentor emerges as a once-respected scholar whose pursuit of forbidden or unsupported ideas led to isolation and a transformation others viewed as madness.

Significant themes

• Fate and human helplessness: Humanity’s power is limited in the face of nature and forces it cannot explain.
• Knowledge and its cost: The mentor’s investigations bring professional and personal consequences, while Han inherits both his records and his danger.
• Cycles and inheritance: The ouroboros symbolizes endless recurrence, reflected in the apparent repetition of events across generations of scholars.
• The boundary between scholarship and the occult: Scientific excavation gives way to unauthorized tomb-raiding, ritual practices, and supernatural threat.

Plot points and events

• Xu Nian wakes from a forgotten nightmare in the township Clinic, still feverish and unsteady.
• The Lingguan charm Professor Han gave her grows hot against her chest. She recalls that it was passed down through generations and was meant for Ran Zhihui before something happened to him.
• During a storm, Xu sees Ran Zhihui clinging to the window. His face is partly split open and crawling with red threadworms. He appears to mouth “Run.”
• The charm suddenly emits a blinding flash. Xu collapses, while Ran recoils in pain, sprouts wings, and flies away into the rain.
• Xu continues convulsing and making muffled, strange sounds. The Clinic’s doctor can do little beyond giving her medicine, so he insists that Security Section staff take her to a major city hospital.
• After Xu is taken away, the doctor notices marks on the window suggesting someone had been peering inside. Later, he hears the same unsettling chanting sound near the nurse’s room and approaches the window to investigate.

Character developments and interactions

• Xu Nian is frightened and physically vulnerable, but the charm appears to protect or restrain her: its flash drives Ran away, and it suppresses the sounds coming from her throat.
• Ran Zhihui appears increasingly monstrous, yet his apparent warning to Xu suggests he may still be trying to help her.
• The doctor shifts from professional alarm over Xu’s worsening condition to suspicion and unease about the strange sounds and window marks.
• The nurse denies muttering when the doctor confronts her, leaving open whether she knows more than she admits or whether the doctor has misidentified the source.

Significant themes

• Protection and danger: The inherited charm is both a mysterious safeguard and a force that restrains Xu.
• Transformation and uncertain identity: Ran is grotesquely altered, while the nurse’s odd behavior raises doubts about what is happening around the Clinic.
• Fear of the unexplained: Ordinary explanations—fever, a peeping local, nighttime noises—fail to account for the increasingly uncanny events.
• Warning and communication: Ran’s possible “Run” and Xu’s muffled sounds suggest attempts to communicate that remain unclear or suppressed.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng realizes the Land God Seal likely requires unity of body, speech, and Intent: he must combine visualization, hand movements, and chanting. He stops practicing when his exertion leaves him badly injured.
• His supernatural creations, the Seven Warlords of the Sea, have become capable enough to clean his room. Property staff and residents break in after finding people unconscious in the building; Lin Feng is taken to hospital, where a doctor diagnoses overexertion and warns him about rhabdomyolysis.
• After leaving the hospital, Lin Feng discovers his new skill is called Wind God Mark, not Land God Seal. He reasons that the seal’s form depends on the power used to activate it, but finds the title “Wind God” embarrassing.
• Lin Feng rents a secluded rural courtyard so he can practice safely. He then streams without a camera, chats with viewers, and maps the game’s known locations.
• His approach to the game shifts from simply trying to survive to actively seeking rewards. He marks the Land God Temple as the best place to investigate, planning to exploit its contents before risking the cave.
• A viewer begins telling a potentially frightening story about sensing something around his neck after going to bed.

Character development

• Lin Feng grows more strategic and opportunistic. Instead of entering the game unprepared, he studies the map and identifies where he might gain useful items. He also shows growing awareness of his own formidable—and potentially dangerous—physical and supernatural abilities.
• The Seven Warlords’ improved coordination demonstrates that Lin Feng’s creations are developing into practical helpers, not merely weak figures.
• The young estate agent is efficient and accommodating, helping Lin Feng quickly secure a suitable place to live and train.

Significant themes

• Discipline and technique: The seal requires mind, body, and speech to work together, while Lin Feng’s injury shows the physical cost of pushing beyond his limits.
• Adaptation and resourcefulness: Lin Feng responds to setbacks by changing his environment, planning carefully, and finding new ways to benefit from the game.
• Power and identity: The unexpected “Wind God Mark” raises questions about how a power source shapes a supernatural ability, while Lin Feng’s embarrassment contrasts with the grand title.
• Comedy alongside danger: Supernatural strength, hospital scares, and Lin Feng’s self-mocking commentary keep the chapter’s tone playful even as the stakes remain real.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng’s household helpers work together while he rests, then rescuers and residents rush into his home and take him to hospital.
• The doctor warns Lin Feng about overexertion; Lin Feng stays quiet about his unusual abilities and lets the doctor assume he has been exercising.
• Lin Feng and the estate agent quickly arrange a viewing and rental for a secluded courtyard.
• During his stream, Lin Feng banters with viewers and invites them to share stories; one viewer’s unsettling account captures his attention.

Plot and events

• Streamer Lin Feng invites viewers to share uncanny stories, expecting mostly invented tales but hoping for good entertainment.
• One viewer tells a vivid story about a childhood episode in an old apartment building. After dinner, he feels as if something is tightening around his neck, cannot speak, and smells what he later recognizes as burning paper offerings.
• He looks up and sees a huge old woman’s face spread across the ceiling, with wet hair and hands hanging down. The vision ends when the talisman his maternal grandmother gave him burns against his chest. He wakes on the floor, and the ceiling is empty.
• His parents dismiss his account, but his grandmother is relieved, saying, “It’s over,” and later burns the talisman, drinks its ashes mixed with water, and kowtows to him. She refuses to explain further.
• Viewers criticize the story’s ending. Lin Feng privately asks the storyteller to continue; the viewer admits he made it up. Lin Feng replies that he still wants to hear it.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng’s usual, pragmatic attitude toward viewers’ stories gives way to genuine interest. The tale unsettles him, echoing his own memories of the Ancestral Hall, paper hands, and incense-ash smells. Rather than dismiss the story after the confession, he warmly invites the viewer to elaborate.
• The storyteller delivers the account with convincing detail and emotion, pausing at the most frightening moment. His admission that it is fabricated leaves open whether he is simply improvising or concealing something personal.
• The grandmother’s unexplained relief and ritual behavior suggest she knows more than she reveals. The parents, by contrast, reject the child’s account and punish him.

Significant themes

• Stories and belief: A tale can matter emotionally even when it is invented; Lin Feng values the experience of listening over factual truth.
• Fear and vulnerability: The child’s inability to speak and remembered helplessness intensify the supernatural encounter.
• Unresolved mysteries: The grandmother’s actions hint at a hidden history, while the story’s abrupt ending leaves its meaning uncertain.
• Performance and audience: The stream chat treats the story as entertainment, but Lin Feng responds to its atmosphere and the teller’s feelings.

Key plot points

• Lin Feng persuades the viewer to continue telling his account, though the viewer insists it is not a story.
• The viewer reveals that, after growing up, he discovered he had never had maternal grandparents: they died when he was an infant, with no bodies recovered. The “grandmother” he remembers was someone—or something—else.
• He shares a photo showing a person whose ID says he is only twenty-seven or twenty-eight, but whose body appears extremely old. He believes unseen thieves stole his youth and time, and cries out for them to be killed.
• Alarmed by the viewer’s condition and the disturbing revelation, Lin Feng removes him from the livestream and shuts it down. He saves the ID photo so he can investigate.
• Lin Feng suspects the case is connected to the entity that strangled Li Pusa in the Western Hunan Mountains. He contacts Old Xu, who identifies the phenomenon as “Borrowing Yin Lifespan”—a disputed supernatural practice involving the transfer of life or lifespan.
• Old Xu notes that accounts of it appear in folklore and local gazetteers, and that it violates traditional ideals of family duty and moral order.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng shifts from calmly guiding a viewer through a story to confronting a terrifying, potentially real supernatural case. Though shaken, he acts decisively to end the broadcast and plans to investigate. He also admits the livestream has become dangerous and considers taking a break.
• The viewer moves from guarded, repetitive messages to a desperate confession. His apparent memory of a grandmother is revealed as false, and his conviction that his youth was stolen fuels his rage and despair.
• Old Xu serves as Lin Feng’s knowledgeable contact, offering a folkloric framework while cautioning that the phenomenon is poorly documented and disputed.
• Lin Feng’s interaction with the viewer is strained but patient: he apologizes when he mistakenly calls the account a story, then listens until the viewer’s distress overwhelms the stream.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: The viewer’s childhood memories collapse when he learns that the person he remembered could not have been his grandmother.
• Stolen time and aging: The stark contrast between the viewer’s ID age and his aged appearance makes the loss of youth horrifyingly tangible.
• The danger of treating reality as entertainment: Lin Feng’s livestream performance becomes a real crisis, forcing him to stop broadcasting.
• Folklore and moral order: “Borrowing Yin Lifespan” connects supernatural harm to the violation of familial and social ethics.

Summary

Plot and key events

• Professor Xu explains why “Borrowing Yin Lifespan”—a ritual said to transfer a younger relative’s life to an older person—could not plausibly have been tolerated in ancient China.
• Confucian values of loyalty and filial piety, together with the blended influence of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, made such practices deeply taboo. Laws and social customs treated them as grave violations; authorities and neighbors would move quickly to expose and punish those involved.
• Professor Xu cites a county-gazetteer account of a father and son whose strange behavior attracts a neighbor’s attention. The neighbor sees the father tied to a chair while the son repeatedly kowtows, then reports them. Officials find the father dead and emaciated; the son has disappeared, and the room smells of burned incense, candles, and joss paper. Days later, the neighbor dies by strangulation.
• Local shamans claim the father had stolen his son’s lifespan and transformed into a “Longevity Worm,” a rare ingredient favored by spirits. Lin Feng remarks that the tale has veered from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio into the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
• After Professor Xu ends the late-night conversation, Lin Feng reflects on the strangled neck, stolen lifespan, and ash smell he encountered in the game, wondering whether they are connected.

Character developments

• Professor Xu presents himself as a learned, cautious authority, grounding his explanation in history, religious change, law, and social practice before turning to the supernatural tale.
• Lin Feng begins by listening and agreeing, then becomes increasingly alert to the possible link between the old story and his own experience in the game.

Significant themes

• Cultural inheritance and social order: Shared traditions shape what people consider acceptable, while filial piety and family duty underpin both society and law.
• Fear of transgression: Borrowing lifespan is portrayed as an assault on human relationships and the natural order, provoking severe social and legal consequences.
• History and folklore blending: The gazetteer story shifts from a supposedly historical account into fantastical lore about spirits and strange creatures.
• Unresolved connections: The repeated motifs of ash, strangulation, and stolen life suggest that the tale may illuminate Lin Feng’s game-related mystery.

Character interactions

• Professor Xu lectures Lin Feng, who responds with agreement and questions before listening to the full explanation.
• In the gazetteer tale, a suspicious neighbor secretly watches the father and son, reports them to the authorities, and later becomes another victim.
• Lin Feng’s final reflection connects Professor Xu’s story to clues from the game, but leaves their relationship unresolved.

Plot and events

• Lin Feng returns to the county house before dawn, aching from his earlier training. He locks himself inside and performs Mystic Sustenance Method: Feasting on Wind and Drinking Dew to recover.
• Wind gathers around him as he dances through the ritual. The method heals his injuries, but it also causes unsettling bodily changes: his teeth and nails loosen and fall out, then begin to regrow. His new teeth are ordinary rather than predatory, and his appearance is temporarily ruined.
• Once recovered, Lin Feng practices the Divine Seal. He discovers it works when he visualizes the Land God Seal, makes the sound, and forms the seal with one hand. Even his imperfect “hua” pronunciation is effective.
• He learns that the seal’s strength depends on his will, not on exhausting himself. He has accumulated five wisps of wind in his lungs and realizes the seal may function like a flashbang against spirits.
• Reading the translated silk manuscripts, he finds that the seal was used in tombs to repel uncanny beings and keep the dead from being led astray.
• Just as he considers what this might mean, his phone’s facial-recognition camera alerts him that a familiar face has repeatedly appeared at the entrance to his home.

Character development

• Lin Feng grows more methodical: he uses the healing ritual to prepare for training and learns to regulate the Divine Seal rather than pushing himself to collapse.
• He remains curious and irreverent, but the changes to his body unsettle him. He speculates about how the method may transform his bones and other tissues.
• His practical caution is vindicated when the security camera detects a repeated visitor.

Themes

• Transformation and bodily cost: The ritual restores Lin Feng while altering his body in strange, potentially progressive ways.
• Practice and control: Skill improves through experimentation; willpower lets Lin Feng control the Divine Seal’s force.
• Old knowledge in modern life: Ancient ritual texts and supernatural techniques intersect with computers, cameras, and AI alerts.
• Protection against the uncanny: The manuscript reveals the Divine Seal’s original role as a defense against wandering or malicious spirits.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng is alone throughout the chapter, interacting mainly with his own changing body and the techniques he is learning.
• The orchard workers briefly experience the wind he draws in, describing it as a refreshing breeze without sensing its supernatural nature.
• The chapter ends with an unseen visitor’s repeated appearances triggering Lin Feng’s security system, setting up a likely confrontation.