Chapter Summaries

Si Ming fought the skeleton girl inside an isolated Anomaly, using Blazing Sun True Qi to counter her nether arts and rescue Zhu Xuanhuai. After seemingly destroying the girl, he faced her transformed devil’s face and the melting teaching buildings as his Solar Prominence Eruption neared its limit.

• Si Ming realized the teaching buildings had trapped them inside an Anomaly and rushed the skeleton girl despite Si Huaruo’s warning about her soul-corroding spell.
• Si Ming used True Yang Vermilion Blaze Saber to cut through the girl’s black tornado and sever her arm, then taunted her about being an inheritor of the Saints.
• The skeleton girl used Zhu Xuanhuai as a hostage, but Si Ming struck through Zhu Xuanhuai to burn the enemy and then passed the injured student to Si Huaruo.
• Si Ming caught up with the flaming skeleton girl, broke her limbs, and burned her body clean, but recognized that she was still alive.
• The skeleton girl formed a gigantic devil’s face from Yin Qi as the teaching buildings melted into sludge, and Si Ming summoned the image of the Kui Ox.

Si Ming destroyed the ghost at the old campus and carried the exhausted Si Huaruo back to Water Mirror Manor. On the way, Si Huaruo confided in him, and he promised to protect her; after they arrived, she asked whether he had grown up outside the clan.

• Si Ming dispelled the illusion with Kui Drum Thunder Sound, and he and Si Huaruo found themselves back in the classroom with the missing people, most of them dead.
• Si Huaruo used her remaining True Qi to stabilize Zhu Xuanhuai, but she was too weak to walk, so Si Ming carried her out of the school.
• While Si Ming carried her home, Si Huaruo shared how she had learned to rely only on herself after Uncle Gu died.
• Si Ming told Si Huaruo she could rely on him and promised that no one would hurt her while he was her guard.
• At Water Mirror Manor, Si Huaruo asked Si Ming whether he had grown up outside the clan, and he confirmed that he had.

Si Ming attended classes with Si Huaruo at Emperor Peak Luofu Academy and learned about its curriculum, its privileged art education, and its demanding scholarship students. After lunch together, Si Huaruo’s acquaintance arrived and remarked on how close the two had become.

• Si Ming and Si Huaruo awkwardly met the morning after Si Ming had boasted about his invented martial arts title.
• Si Ming attended classes and reflected on the academy’s art-focused curriculum and the unequal opportunities available to noble and commoner students.
• Si Ming told Si Huaruo that the academic lessons were engaging but the technical art lesson had baffled him.
• Si Huaruo ordered an elaborate meal at the dining hall, and Si Ming and Si Huaruo ate heartily together.
• A familiar voice interrupted them, remarking that Si Ming and Si Huaruo had become close in only three days.

Si Jingyu and Si Huaruo clashed over Si Ming and whether he should remain Huaruo’s bodyguard, then Si Huaruo admitted she was worried about replacing an injured drama lead before the performance. She insisted she would still win the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling title and took Si Ming to get tea and pastries.

• Si Jingyu teased Si Ming about his relationship with girls and warned him about the students at school, while Si Huaruo defended him as her bodyguard and younger cousin.
• Si Jingyu and Si Huaruo argued over who had the stronger claim to Si Ming’s care, and Si Shuiyun told Si Ming it was their 1,325th quarrel.
• Si Jingyu revealed that a drama club lead, Zhu Xuanhuai, had been badly injured by an Anomaly, leaving Huaruo only three days to find a replacement before the performance.
• Si Huaruo vowed to win the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling title anyway and asked Si Ming to stay close to her as her personal bodyguard.
• Si Huaruo told Si Ming she could not remember why her rivalry with Si Jingyu began, then invited him to a nearby teahouse for pastries and candied fruit.

Si Huaruo demonstrated tea preparation to Si Ming at the campus teahouse, where she failed to make a bitten cup. After a rival from the Lu Lineage taunted her and raised the possibility of a marriage proposal, Si Ming challenged the Lu Lineage’s tea contestants and declared he could master tea in five days.

• Si Huaruo prepared tea for Si Ming and explained that a bitten cup was an advanced tea-brewing technique.
• Si Huaruo failed to cover the tea’s surface with foam and admitted that her tangled thoughts had affected her brewing.
• A young woman from the Lu Lineage insulted Si Ming and Si Huaruo, then warned that her clan might propose a marriage alliance with the Si Clan.
• Si Huaruo worried that her mother might try to seize power and that she could be married off to prevent future trouble.
• Si Ming asked when tea tasting would take place in the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling assessment, then challenged the Lu Lineage to prepare for defeat.
• Si Ming poured tea precisely into a cup and declared that five days was enough to master the art.

Si Ming proposed adapting “Puppet Show” into a three-person play for Si Huaruo’s performance, and she was moved by the story. He drafted an expanded outline, but Si Huaruo pointed out that they still had no way to portray the puppet.

• Si Ming told Si Huaruo the story behind “Puppet Show,” and she was moved to tears.
• Si Huaruo agreed the story could become their script but worried it was too short to earn a high score.
• Si Ming proposed expanding the old puppeteer’s backstory and building toward the final fire scene.
• Si Ming wrote a rough screenplay outline, using a dramatic structure to develop the characters’ hardships and the ending.
• Si Huaruo asked how they could portray the puppet without a suitable actor or a lifelike prop.

Si Huaruo began rehearsing Si Ming’s play for the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling selection, while her mother urged her to use the contest to challenge Si Jingyu. After returning to his room, Si Ming unexpectedly broke through to level six Internal Cultivation and tried to work out why.

• Si Huaruo agreed to cast the Si Clan’s deity as the doll in Si Ming’s play and quickly began rehearsals with the drama club.
• The drama club improvised dialogue and details while practicing, then agreed to rehearse again early the next morning.
• On the way home, Si Ming told Si Huaruo about his published novels, and she thanked him for helping the club.
• Si Huamu praised Si Huaruo for getting close to Si Ming and ordered her to win the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling crown and challenge Si Jingyu at the ancestral rites.
• Si Ming practiced the Water Moon Precious Mirror and suddenly broke through to level six Internal Cultivation, then wondered what had caused the breakthrough.

Si Ming suspected that killing Anomalies had increased his Internal Cultivation, but he postponed testing the theory until after the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling selection. At the drama finals, he watched Si Huaruo’s club face low expectations after replacing its lead and changing its script, while Si Jingyu supported his rumor-spreading tactic.

• Si Ming wondered whether Blazing Yang Battle Art granted experience for killing Anomalies, but he delayed searching for another one until the selection was over.
• Si Ming, Si Jingyu, and Si Shuiyun attended the finals, where Si Ming learned that Si Jingyu and Si Huaruo had become rivals after repeatedly competing as children.
• Si Ming admitted that he had helped create the club’s revised script and told Si Jingyu that he had written two novels.
• Si Shuiyun reported that audiences expected Si Huaruo’s club to fail because its lead had been replaced and its script changed at short notice.
• Si Ming revealed that he had arranged for people to spread pessimistic rumors, and Si Jingyu explained how lowered expectations could make the performance seem more impressive.

Si Ming worried that Puppet Show lacked the fight scenes audiences expected, but Si Huaruo’s final performance began with real wind and snow conjured onstage. The opening narration revealed a scholar meeting an old puppet seller, and the judges and audience recognized the play as a historical drama.

• After Journey Through the Jianghu ended, audience members debated which performances had the best chance of winning the competition.
• Si Jingyu asked Si Ming whether he remained confident in Puppet Show, and he admitted that its lack of a fight scene made him uncertain.
• The host announced Puppet Show as the final performance, and audience members speculated about its meaning before the curtain rose.
• Si Huaruo conjured real wind and snow onstage as Nan Yang appeared in the role of a scholar struggling through the storm.
• The narrator described the scholar meeting an old man carrying puppets, prompting the judges and audience to recognize the play as historical.

Si Ming’s group performed an ancient drama about a puppeteer whose devotion to his craft shaped his lonely life. After the puppet delivered a mesmerizing song and dance, the old man angrily threw it into the fire, leaving its fate unresolved.

• The judges praised the students’ choice of ancient drama as the play opened with Si Huaruo portraying an old puppeteer sheltering in a ruined temple.
• In a flashback, Si Huaruo portrayed the puppeteer as a child who bought a puppet, learned to perform with it, and refused repeated pleas to abandon puppetry.
• The puppeteer’s betrothed smashed his puppet, but he ignored her and mourned over its broken pieces before making a new, exquisitely crafted puppet.
• As an old man again, the puppeteer performed the puppet’s extraordinary dance and song for the scholar, astonishing the audience.
• The old man blamed the puppet for his poverty and threw it into the fire.

After Puppet Show moved the audience and won the judges’ praise, Si Jingyu explained that the deity’s unique performance had made the play decisive. The Emperor Peak Drama Club secured a commanding victory, while Si Huaruo challenged Si Jingyu to focus on her upcoming dance finals.

• The puppet burned away in the flames, and the old man wept as he delivered the play’s final line.
• Si Ming broke the audience’s silence with applause, and the crowd soon erupted in praise for Puppet Show.
• Si Shuiyun scolded Si Ming for his applause tactic, but Si Jingyu predicted the Emperor Peak Drama Club would win because only Si Huaruo and a deity could perform the play’s fire scene.
• Puppet Show received a score that decisively surpassed the other plays, and Si Jingyu regretted that the script could not be saved for the grand finals.
• Si Huaruo arrived and warned Si Jingyu that she might lose her reigning dance title in the upcoming finals.

Si Ming read sensational newspaper coverage of Emperor Peak Academy's unexpected success at the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling, along with critics' interpretations of the play 'Puppet Show.' The chapter left the play's meaning open to competing readings of how the puppet both sustained and ruined the old man's life.

• Si Ming read headlines exaggerating the drama club's victory and calling its young performers veterans.
• Si Ming reflected that the flourishing arts scene had encouraged an increasingly sensational and unscrupulous news industry.
• Newspapers highlighted the club's last-minute lead change, rewritten script, ancient dramatic form, and unprecedented summoning of a god to perform.
• A critic described 'Puppet Show' as a tale of an old man who sacrificed his life to puppetry and regretted it too late.
• Another critic argued that the puppet had both kept the old man company and trapped him in a life of destitution.

Si Ming learned that Si Jingyu’s enemy was Shi Muyan, the White Night Divine Sword, who was the Si Clan ancestor’s rival in love. Si Jingyu then checked Si Ming’s progress in Water Moon Precious Mirror, leaving him wary of her serious attention.

• Si Ming agreed to help Si Jingyu and learned that her enemy was Shi Muyan, the White Night Divine Sword and the Si Clan ancestor’s rival in love.
• Si Jingyu explained that modern surveillance and allied Spirit Transformation experts made Shi Muyan’s usual assassination tactics difficult, though she still had not acted.
• Si Jingyu told Si Ming that the Si Clan had three supreme arts, but the Eternal Barrier had greatly weakened or nullified two of them.
• Si Jingyu asked Si Ming to circulate the body-tempering force from Water Moon Precious Mirror so she could check his cultivation, while he suspected she had another reason for examining him.

Si Jingyu helped Si Ming practice the Water Moon Precious Mirror, but became flustered while touching his back and realized she might have fallen in love at first sight. Si Shuiyun suspected Si Ming had bewitched her, while Si Ming remained unaware of the commotion and sneezed as Si Huaruo checked on him.

• Si Jingyu guided Si Ming through repeated circulations of the Water Moon Precious Mirror, making him repeat the exercise nine times before she suddenly left.
• Si Jingyu rushed to her room, tried to calm herself, and asked Si Shuiyun what it meant when a woman blushed and her heart raced around a man.
• Si Shuiyun explained that the symptoms could indicate love at first sight, and Si Jingyu wondered if she had finally fallen in love.
• Si Shuiyun panicked and accused an unknown person of planting an Infatuation Gu in Si Jingyu, while Si Jingyu denied that anything had happened.
• Si Ming sneezed, and Si Huaruo asked whether he had caught a chill.

Si Ming abandoned the idea of a romance script and decided to write a Western-style story about a girl knight for the final. A month earlier, Qingyan struggled to find work at the Crimson Eye Society because people blamed him for the deaths and disasters surrounding his previous clients.

• Si Huaruo explained the final’s voting rules and said most of the judges were women, making romance a likely choice for the other contestants.
• Si Ming decided a Mary Sue romance would not impress the judges and chose to avoid competing in a genre he was bad at.
• Si Ming learned that innovative foreign settings appealed to the judges and proposed writing a Western-style story about a girl knight.
• Qingyan asked the Crimson Eye Society for an assignment, but was told clients avoided hiring him because they thought he brought death to his employers.
• Qingyan recalled that his former clients and Huyan Lü had suffered misfortunes, though he insisted the events were coincidences and one assignment had already been canceled.

The Crimson Eye Society’s red-haired leader arranged to exploit the Lu Lineage’s Spirit Transformation expert’s death to infiltrate Tea-Tasting Manor and manipulate the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling Competition. He planned to post a public assassination job against Lu Ling as cover, unaware that Qingyan had already accepted it.

• A yellow-faced woman helped the red-haired man kill the Lu Lineage’s Spirit Transformation expert in the Hide-and-Seek Forest, then demanded help meeting the Si Clan’s young clan head.
• The red-haired man revealed that his subordinate was an Anomaly capable of impersonating the dead elder.
• The red-haired man outlined a plan for the Anomaly to take control of the Lu Lineage and invite the Si Clan’s young clan head to the manor during the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling Competition.
• The yellow-faced woman refused further help and left, insisting she would take revenge herself.
• The red-haired man ordered a public job posted to assassinate Lu Ling and warned his adviser to keep Crimson Eye Society members from accepting it by mistake.

Si Ming attended the Nine Arts Phoenix Fledgling tea art competition with Si Jingyu and Si Shuiyun, offering advice on making dance more popular before spotting the novelist Arteta Dengbulishao among the judges. The chapter ended as the tea competition began, with contestants preparing to brew tea under close scrutiny.

• Si Ming advised Si Jingyu to promote accessible social and health dances, and she decided to advance the idea secretly before presenting it as a reluctant concession.
• Si Ming noticed that Si Jingyu kept her distance from him, but she blamed her mood and refused to explain further.
• Si Ming, Si Jingyu, and Si Shuiyun entered the competition venue as invited Si Clan representatives, and Si Ming prepared to compete in the semifinals.
• Si Ming recognized Arteta Dengbulishao, a former Western Luo Continent magician who had settled on the Sea Continent and become a famous novelist.
• The tea art competition began with contestants brewing in groups of ten, while judges scored both their technique and the tea they produced.

Si Ming used his Blazing Sun True Qi and flawless technique to brew tea that clung to the bowl, impressing the judges at the competition. Before he could serve it, Si Shuiyun told him that the young lady had been lured away by someone impersonating a Lu Lineage steward and had disappeared.

• Si Ming ignored the girl surnamed Lu’s taunts and began brewing tea with the utensils provided.
• Si Ming used his sense of heat to judge the water, then whisked the tea until its white froth rose above the bowl and clung to its walls.
• The judges recognized Si Ming’s bowl as an exceptional result, and he finished before the other contestants.
• Si Shuiyun pulled Si Ming away and reported that the young lady had vanished after following a false Lu Lineage steward into Tea-Tasting Manor.

Si Jingyu was abducted during the tea art competition and faced Shi Muyan, who sought revenge on the Si Clan for the wrongs she blamed on Si Jingxi. As Shi Muyan prepared to kill her, Si Jingyu pointed out that her opponent’s age and lingering injuries had weakened her.

• Si Ming urged Si Shuiyun to seek help from the Lu Lineage, and the Lu woman searched for Si Jingyu’s scent but could not isolate it amid the competition’s crowds.
• Si Ming asked to borrow the Tea-Tasting Manor’s Heaven-Howling Art so he could learn it and track Si Jingyu himself.
• Si Jingyu confronted Shi Muyan in the stone forest and learned that Shi Muyan claimed the Lu Lineage had helped arrange the abduction.
• Shi Muyan revealed her scar and recounted how she believed Si Jingxi had betrayed their sworn sisterhood, ruined her face, and destroyed her family.
• Shi Muyan raised her Sword Qi and declared that Si Jingyu would die because she shared Si Jingxi’s blood.
• Si Jingyu warned Shi Muyan that her leaking Primal Qi, approaching death, and unhealed injury might prevent her from winning.

Si Jingyu fought Shi Muyan through the valley, using modified techniques, agile footwork, and clever tactics to survive their clash despite her opponent’s greater strength. After Shi Muyan recognized her mastery of Countercurrent Divine Gang, Si Jingyu revealed a vicious new palm technique that began to damage Shi Muyan’s meridians.

• Shi Muyan attacked Si Jingyu, but Si Jingyu used the Phoenix-Coming Fuxi Dance and a modified Mirror Reflection Technique to evade and redirect her strikes.
• Shi Muyan unleashed sword-infused sand and cut down statues to corner Si Jingyu, who used the stone figures and her footwork to escape.
• Si Jingyu used a statue to distract Shi Muyan and narrowly dodged her giant Qi sword, but Shi Muyan struck her and sent her flying while Countercurrent Divine Gang stopped the follow-up attack.
• Shi Muyan praised Si Jingyu’s skill but argued that the Si Clan’s defensive arts could not hurt her, so Si Jingyu attacked with Meridian-Shattering Goosefoot Heart Palm.
• Shi Muyan felt the palm technique’s vicious force seep into her meridians and asked Si Jingyu what martial art she had used.