Chapter 66: A Mad Plan

"Wait," Lin Feng interrupted, his calculating mind clicking the pieces together. "What about the beasts? The carnivores? The things that kept attacking me?"

"All placed here by her and the Heavenly General’s old seals as a blocking mechanism against intruders," the beast explained and shrugs.

"She resents my existence deeply. She knows she will never be strong enough to win against me in a direct fight, so she has bided her time for centuries, sending powerful mortal cultivators like you in here, hoping I would lose my edge over the ages. Many tried. All failed."

Lin Feng frowned, looking at the majestic, lazy deity. "So you got confined here by a celestial Heavenly General... why? Is there a physical barrier or something actively stopping you from just walking out the front door?"

The beast casually shrugged its massive white shoulders. "There used to be, yes. But over the last two centuries or so, the physical celestial barrier faded out completely."

Yu Mei looked entirely dumbfounded. "Faded out? How can a divine barrier fade?"

"Because she lost her divinity," the beast stated flatly, its voice turning cold and serious.

"Desperate to see me dead, she abandoned her pure celestial path and fell into heretical dark arts, the equivalent of your mortal Demonic Corpse Cultivation. She frequently steals the sect’s high-grade spirit stones from the restricted zones, secretly trading them to external heretical corpse refiners and dark shamans in exchange for necromantic powers. They raise the dead, mutate the beasts, and feed the swamp a twisted, artificial anger."

Yu Mei staggered back half a step, her mind reeling from the realization that the sacred, ancestral training ground of the Orchid Veil Sect was actually a dark breeding ground for heretical experimentation.

"So..." Lin Feng scratched his chin, his troll logic kicking into high gear. "If I cause you to walk out of here right now, is that Heavenly General going to fly down from the clouds and strike me with lightning, or what?"

The beast just gave another unhelpful shrug.

"Not helping, your majesty," Lin Feng muttered. He paced a short circle on the shattered stone tiles, his eyes darting between the beast and the system panel. Then, a massive, shameless grin broke across his face.

"Wait a minute. You said the Heavenly General didn’t care about the physical barrier going down over the last two centuries, right? As long as you stayed put under her watch?"

The beast narrowed its intelligent eyes.

"Correct. Eventhough she have lost her divinity, she’s still needs to fulfill her duty, put on her shoulder’s by the heavenly General. So if I’m to go outside the swamp, she have no choice but to follow me wherever i goes."

"Then it’s not about confining you here at all! It’s just about you being supervised by a designated warden!" Lin Feng pointed his cleaver at the majestic beast, his voice filled with absolute triumph.

"What if I take over her role?"

The white beast’s eyes narrowed into sharp slits.

"Are you suggesting you can imprison me, brat?"

"Whoa, wait, let me finish!" Lin Feng raised his hands quickly. "I’m not saying I’ll cage you or put you in a dungeon. I’m talking about a Bind. Think about it,if you are bound to me, the tracking rules would technically put me as your warden. The criteria of the Heavenly General are legally satisfied because someone is watching you, shen murong gets its ’removal’ of the free threat because you’re leaving under my watch, and you get to get out of this gloomy ditch and be lazy in a nice, quiet cave somewhere else!"

The beast stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then, it let out a booming laugh that shook the ruins to their foundations.

"HAHAHAHAHA! You are a remarkably clever little insect, aren’t you? You are right. The Heavenly General won’t be doing anything directly. But you know nothing of the heavens, brat. There are a lot more ways a celestial deity can hurt a mortal than a direct lightning strike."

Lin Feng smiled, a fierce, cold light entering his eyes as he gripped the Rage-Forged Cleaver.

"You know how many times I’ve come close to death in this miserable swamp just to get powerful? If I actually cared about safety or the wrath of some distant general, I wouldn’t be standing before you right now."

The majestic beast’s laughter died away, replaced by a genuine, deeply respectful smile. It hadn’t seen this kind of reckless, steel-willed conviction in a mortal in an absolute age.

"Your logic is sound, human," the beast rumbled softly. "It would indeed fulfill the deal with the swamp entity, ridding her of my free presence."

Yu Mei, however, looked incredibly uneasy. Her skin was pale as she stepped between them.

"Lin Feng... this is absolute madness. You’re talking about binding a creature of myth, defying a divine Warden who has turned to the dark path, and tricking a Heavenly General. If this goes wrong, the backlash will tear your soul apart."

Lin Feng turned to her, his expression softening but remaining completely resolute.

"Yu Mei, look around us. We are locked in this swamp forever by her decree. We either die rotting in the mud, or we take the ultimate gamble to break out. I need this strength. You want your freedom. This is the only path that gives us both what we want."

They shared a tense, heavy silence, the ambient qi of the courtyard swirling around them until Yu Mei finally closed her eyes, exhaling a long, defeated breath, and slowly lowered her spear.

"You really are a madman."

The majestic white beast stood entirely upright on its pedestal for the first time, its massive white wings unfurling, the blue gem on its forehead pulsing with an intense, contract-ready cosmic light that filled the courtyard.

"Well then," the beast’s voice echoed like a bell inside their minds, its eyes locking onto Lin Feng with terrifying anticipation.

"It is time to test whether your fragile mortal soul can actually back up your grand words. Let us see if you can hold the yoke, human!"