As the severe pain vanished, Lin Xing found himself back more than ten minutes prior, scaling the hills alongside Scarface.
He stood rooted to the spot, his expression still somewhat dazed.
He instinctively touched his body, the bone-deep pain from just before his death still faintly resurfacing.
"Truly excruciating."
This was the most heart-wrenchingly painful experience Lin Xing had felt among his numerous deaths.
The feeling of having every bone and muscle violently shattered and crushed by the Mountain God—though his body had fully recovered, his spirit was still shaken.
This was the first time Lin Xing hesitated about facing death.
He had thought his mind was very strong, capable of enduring various types of deathly pain.
But this time, it genuinely startled him.
It was a deep-seated genetic memory from his body, an innate human fear of extreme pain.
Just then, Bai Yiyi's voice arose in his mind, "What's wrong, Lin Xing? Why have you stopped walking?"
Lin Xing waved his hand, took a deep breath, and slowly said, "I was killed by the Mountain God, just came back."
Seeing Scarface looking at him in surprise, Lin Xing swung the wrench he was holding, and with a bang, Scarface was already on the ground, holding his leg and screaming in agony.
Then, Lin Xing suppressed the pain aversion that had just surged in his mind and sprinted towards the stone platform.
With the memory of last time, Lin Xing sped through the woods, sprinting and jumping, arriving at the stone platform a few minutes earlier than before.
From a distance, he saw the village chief tying three children to the stone platform one by one.
Seeing Lin Xing rushing over, the village chief just began to shout, "You…"
But Lin Xing threw his backpack directly and then pulled out his double-section wrench and smashed it towards him.
Facing Lin Xing, fierce as a tiger, the village chief, with only old man-level strength, was utterly powerless to fight back.
Amid screams of agony, the village chief's knee was first crushed, then his head was smashed open after a few blows.
After preemptively killing the village chief, Lin Xing carefully observed his surroundings.
He was in such a rush to kill the village chief to see if he could destroy him before the Mountain God was summoned and what the consequences would be if successful.
But the next moment, something disappointing happened.
As the village chief died, a terrifying roar came from within the woods.
Lin Xing grabbed the three children intending to flee, but had only run a few hundred meters when he felt the earth shattering behind him.
A gigantic figure, like a cannonball, followed him, roaring furiously.
In this encounter, Lin Xing's defeat was even more inevitable.
After the village chief's death, the Mountain God, as if mad, ripped off Lin Xing's limbs one by one…
With a burst of agonized screams, Lin Xing found himself back on the hill more than ten minutes before, once again.
The pain from this death was even more intense than the last, causing Lin Xing to take several deep breaths before he calmed down.
He glanced at the stunned Scarface beside him and with another wrench broke the other's knee.
"Killing the village chief early seems useless; the Mountain God did not disappear but became even more uncontrollable."
Thinking this, he turned to Scarface on the ground, clutching his leg and moaning, and asked, "Why can the village chief control the Mountain God?"
Scarface replied, "I…I don't know, that's the village chief's family secret. How would I know?"
After some forceful questioning, Lin Xing realized that Scarface likely truly didn't know.
"Indeed, considering the village chief's character, how could he possibly share such a secret with anyone else?"
Thus, Lin Xing asked the cat doll, thinking that the latter, being widely knowledgeable, might know how to deal with this so-called Mountain God.
However, after hearing Lin Xing's description, Bai Yiyi was completely puzzled.
"Over three meters tall? Made entirely of animal corpses? Possessing immense strength?"
Bai Yiyi hesitated as she spoke, "This must be some malevolent spirit... I have never dealt with such things before."
Bai Yiyi recalled her past memories. The Taiqing Sect, which she belonged to, was a major Martial Arts sect. Its disciples primarily joined the army or engaged in business, some becoming personal guards for generals or marshals, while others mixed in with the escort agencies and merchant convoys. Many also opened martial arts schools and managed gangs.
The main opponents faced by the Taiqing Sect had always been humans.
Bai Yiyi herself had only heard stories of these malevolent spirits from rural tales, mysterious rumors, or small pieces of gossip that some disciple had heard from somewhere.
Malevolent spirits always seemed like shadows lurking in the dark.
Most people living in this world seemed to always hear rumors about them but never actually witnessed their existence.
"Even Master Bai, you don't know how to deal with the Mountain God? Then we're really in trouble."
As Lin Xing pondered, he continued walking toward the altar. This time, he didn't rush forward immediately but deliberately observed from a distance, wanting to see what the village chief would do there.
He saw the village chief tie three children to the altar one by one, then start loudly calling out to the Mountain God while circling the altar.
After a long while, as the village chief chanted in a strange tone, the Mountain God slowly emerged from the forest.
Observing until the Mountain God began to devour the children, Lin Xing then charged out and began to fight with the Mountain God.
Leveraging the experience from the previous two battles, Lin Xing managed to hold on for a longer time this time, but he ultimately was torn in half by the Mountain God.
Accompanied by a scream of agony, Lin Xing once again returned to over ten minutes earlier.
Touching the area previously torn apart, the excruciating pain still echoed in his mind, causing him to involuntarily draw a cold breath.
"It hurts, it really hurts."
After dealing another blow to Scarface, a fierce glint flashed in Lin Xing's eyes as he gritted his teeth and charged toward the altar again.
To find a way to defeat the Mountain God, Lin Xing began to constantly change his strategies.
He tried to cripple the village chief and carry him on his back, using the village chief as a human shield, hoping this would make the Mountain God hold back. In the end, both he and the village chief were crushed to death by the frenzied Mountain God.
He tried to grab three children and run, but he was still caught and crushed to death by the Mountain God.
He even tried to pretend to ally with the village chief, hoping to coax more information about the Mountain God out of him, but still ended up being killed by the suspicious village chief who commanded the Mountain God to crush him…
With each time reversal, the duration of each reversal varied, sometimes as long as twenty minutes, other times only a few minutes.
Because each death Lin Xing faced was different – sometimes he was shredded by the Mountain God, sometimes crushed into a pulp, sometimes twisted into a pretzel, and sometimes he even watched as the Mountain God devoured him bite by bite…
Although Lin Xing gradually gained experience in fighting the Mountain God and was able to withstand longer in front of the Mountain God,
he lacked effective means of attack on one hand and on the other hand, battling such a gigantic monster quickly exhausted his physical strength, so he inevitably ended up being killed.
The giant creature, made up of numerous corpses and emitting a foul stench, was like an inescapable nightmare that continuously led Lin Xing to death.
The extreme agony, those heart-wrenching experiences, put tremendous pressure on Lin Xing's psyche.
However, such painful sacrifices were not without gains.
Through the continuous cycle of running, chasing, and deadly combat, Lin Xing gradually discovered that each time he fled toward the northeastern woods, the Mountain God seemed particularly irritable. Several times when he was torn and eaten, it was because he ran in that direction,
Even the village chief showed a hint of caution at that time.
To an ordinary person, these peculiarities might be overlooked, but Lin Xing, having died hundreds of times at the hands of the Mountain God and having battled it across the surrounding woods, was no ordinary person.
Although subtle, he gradually noted the unusual behaviors of the Mountain God and the village chief.
Thus, Lin Xing became curious, "What exactly is there, making them so guarded?"