Chapter Summaries

Heavenly King Li returned toward the Heavenly Court under Gongsun Xuanyuan’s protection while Chen Shi traveled to the Western Heavenly Palace to ask about worlds scarred by an immortal calamity. At the Lesser Jade Pond ferry, Chen Shi reunited with Zhong Wuwang and met his master, Yun Cheng, who revealed that Chen Shi’s repair of the Yin Yang Qi Bottle had helped him advance his cultivation.

• Gongsun Xuanyuan warned Heavenly King Li that others might still pursue him for the Niraya Divine Tree and promised that the Great Heavenly Venerate would protect him from the Great God of the Three Altars.
• Chen Shi visited Star Lord Kui Mulang, who explained that Sanyuan and Tailai had been destroyed by a Daluo Golden Immortal shifting his tribulation fortune and gave Chen Shi directions to other blighted worlds.
• Chen Shi paid for passage to the Wu Fang World from the Lesser Jade Pond ferry and waited as monks boarded and bargained over the fare.
• Chen Shi recognized Zhong Wuwang, who tried to convince his master to take Chen Shi as a disciple instead.
• Yun Cheng introduced himself as the former owner of the Yin Yang Qi Bottle and thanked Chen Shi for repairing its flaws, saying the help had enabled him to pursue a breakthrough to Zenith Heaven.

Chen Shi reunited with Zhong Wuwang and learned how he had become a Buddhist monk after ascending to the Heavenly Court. The three entered the dangerous Wu Fang World to test Zhong Wuwang’s Buddhist dharma, but found a seemingly ordinary town whose residents appeared alive, and met monks who denied that the world was perilous.

• Zhong Wuwang told Chen Shi how he had been forced into Buddhist discipleship, gained a Dao realm on Mount Ling, and advanced his cultivation.
• Chen Shi said Heavenly King Li had sent him to investigate the Wu Fang World, and Zhong Wuwang warned that the assignment might be a scheme to get him killed.
• The group traveled to the Wu Fang World, where Zhong Wuwang blessed Chen Shi and the old monk with Buddhist light before they entered.
• Chen Shi, Zhong Wuwang, and the old monk found a lively town whose residents remained unaffected by Buddhist light, despite the world’s surrounding resentment and calamity.
• Zhong Wuwang met Zheng Nian and Tian Yan Arhat, who said they had spent thirteen years in the world and were preparing to spread Buddhism in the Wo Tuo Kingdom.

Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang watched the Wo Tuo Kingdom’s Buddhist conversion and suspected the apparently miraculous Water-Land Dharma Assembly was hiding something. On its seventh day, the kingdom’s people revealed themselves as ghosts, the monks’ reincarnation paths collapsed, and Monk Zhengnian and Tian Yan Arhat were exposed as dead men who had been trapped in the Wu Fang World for thirteen years.

• Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang followed Monk Zhengnian and Tian Yan Arhat to the Wo Tuo Kingdom, where the ruler fulfilled his promise to establish a Buddhist kingdom.
• The ruler ordered other temples destroyed and believers oppressed while the kingdom prepared a grand Water-Land Dharma Assembly that brought monks spiritual power and rising cultivation.
• The old monk joined the assembly despite Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang’s warnings, and his cultivation began to improve.
• On the seventh day, the people ate the food intended for ghosts, revealed their monstrous forms, and charged into the monks’ Six Paths of Reincarnation.
• The ghosts’ numbers overwhelmed and destroyed the monks’ reincarnation paths, then dragged down and devoured the monks.
• Monk Zhengnian realized that he and Tian Yan Arhat had died shortly after entering the Wu Fang World, before he and his master began eating like ghosts.

Chen Shi, Zhong Wuwang, and Yun Cheng were caught in the revived calamity-transferring divine ability of a Mingwang and reborn as birds in the Wo Tuo Kingdom. After losing their cultivation, Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang rebuilt it from Foundation Establishment while Chen Shi secretly taught Yun Cheng to cultivate, and more than a decade passed with the three becoming known as the Three Fiends of the Black Nest.

• Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang concluded that the Wu Fang World had become dangerous because the released Mingwang’s calamity-transferring divine ability had revived and trapped monks who entered it.
• Yun Cheng transformed into a Golden-Winged Great Peng Condor and tried to escape the divine ability, but he, Chen Shi, and Zhong Wuwang were swept into another world and reborn as birds.
• Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang discovered they had lost their cultivation and began rebuilding it by consuming the meat of a strange beast, eventually forging Golden Cores.
• Chen Shi began teaching Yun Cheng cultivation principles in bird calls, and Yun Cheng raised the two as fledglings while they grew stronger.
• More than a decade passed, and Chen Shi, Zhong Wuwang, and Yun Cheng became notorious as the Three Fiends of the Black Nest, defeating monks who came to subdue them.

Chen Shi tried to detect and escape Mingwang’s divine ability, but discovered that the technique itself was the cultivation method of passing through a myriad calamities to eternally witness freedom. He failed to escape the next reincarnation, though the crude technique he comprehended preserved his memories and cultivation, leaving him determined to find the flaw in another cycle.

• Chen Shi, Zhong Wuwang, and the old monk joined their Dao fields to watch for changes in Mingwang’s divine ability, while the old monk remained trapped in the mistaken belief that he was their mother.
• Chen Shi warned Zhong Wuwang that another reincarnation would erase their awareness, then killed Tian Yan Arhat and Monk Zhening with Zhong Wuwang and the old monk, but their deaths did not prevent the Water-Land Salvation Grand Assembly.
• At the assembly, Chen Shi showed Zhong Wuwang that many people already bore Mingwang’s face, and the two waited for the divine ability to erupt as the kingdom’s people turned into vicious ghosts.
• When the Six Paths of Reincarnation began to collapse, Chen Shi spread the First Dao Rule across the kingdom and used its contact with Mingwang’s formless power to comprehend a crude framework of the cultivation technique.
• The old monk flew Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang toward the outer heavens, but the divine ability swallowed the Wu Fang World; Zhong Wuwang sent Chen Shi onward before he too was trapped in reincarnation.
• Chen Shi awakened in the bird’s nest with his memories and cultivation intact, while Zhong Wuwang had lost his awareness, and Chen Shi began studying Mingwang’s technique again.

Chen Shi spent thirteen years comprehending the Scripture of Eternal Freedom Through a Thousand Tribulations and escaped its power when the Wu Fang World’s reincarnation collapsed. He joined Yun Cheng and Zhong Wuwang in finding a way to free the trapped souls, then arrived at Mount Ling as the Bright King of Eternal Freedom in Tribulation was being installed as the Great Ming King.

• Chen Shi used the First Dao Rule to study the scripture while living beneath an ancient tree with Yun Cheng and Zhong Wuwang.
• When the scripture’s power swept through the Wu Fang World, Chen Shi remained outside it and discovered that its inhabitants shared the Bright King’s face.
• Chen Shi brought Zhong Wuwang and Yun Cheng out of the Wu Fang World, and their memories returned; he then taught them the scripture so they could seek its flaws together.
• Chen Shi, Yun Cheng, and Zhong Wuwang found forty-one flaws, inscribed the First Dao Rule onto Yun Cheng’s feathers, and used them to tear the scripture apart and collapse its ability.
• Zhong Wuwang brought Chen Shi and Yun Cheng to Mount Ling on the day the Bright King became the Great Ming King, and Chen Shi announced that he had come to present the scripture’s ancient scroll.

Chen Shi presented the Bright King of Eternal Freedom with a scroll rigged to trigger the Scripture of Eternal Freedom through a Thousand Tribulations, while using the Heavenly Mechanism Scroll to conceal his plan from the Great World Honored One. The Bright King was badly wounded when the trap activated, and Chen Shi forced the World Honored One to choose between saving Mount Lushan and saving the Bright King.

• Zhong Wuwang realized Chen Shi had hidden a way to break the Bright King's divine power in the scripture and feared Chen Shi meant to kill a Daluo Golden Immortal.
• Chen Shi reached Vulture Peak with the scroll, and the Great World Honored One questioned him while the Heavenly Mechanism Scroll concealed his origins from the Buddha's scrutiny.
• The Great World Honored One gave the scroll to the Bright King, who studied it and hurried to Red Lotus Peak to cultivate its method.
• The scroll's trap erupted during the Bright King's cultivation, tearing his body, Primordial Spirit, and Dao boundary with forty-one wounds as Mount Lushan was drawn into the divine power.
• Chen Shi activated the scripture's second safeguard, and the wounded Bright King recognized him as the culprit while Chen Shi asked the World Honored One to choose between Mount Lushan and the Bright King.

Chen Shi’s scheme caused the Bright King of Eternal Freedom’s divine ability to engulf Mount Lingshan, killing many monks before the Great World Honored One forced the ability back into its caster and the Bright King exploded. Chen Shi was held under house arrest, and after more than ten days Venerable Ananda told him that the World Honored One wanted to see him.

• The Bright King of Eternal Freedom’s injuries from Chen Shi’s scripture triggered his divine ability, bringing tribulation fate and karmic fire down on Mount Lingshan.
• The Peacock Ming King, the Great Peng Golden-Winged Condor, and other Lingshan experts attacked the Bright King, who stirred their karmic fires and fled.
• The Great World Honored One Tathagata drew the divine ability back into the Bright King, who exploded as the forty-one outer Dao fissures tore him apart.
• The Peacock Ming King warned the others away from the fissures, while the Lingshan survivors mourned the many monks killed in the upheaval.
• Venerable Ananda escorted Chen Shi to the East Mountain Courtyard, where he kept him under house arrest for more than ten days.
• Venerable Ananda told Chen Shi that the World Honored One had requested his presence.

Chen Shi learned from the Great World Honored One that the Bright King of Eternal Freedom died because of outer Dao cracks he had forged himself, and that Lingshan feared the approaching Primordial Calamity. The Great World Honored One agreed to release Chen Shi if he wrote down the Bright King's scripture, but destroyed the manual and resolved for Lingshan to face the calamity together.

• The Great World Honored One showed Chen Shi the outer Dao cracks and explained that the Bright King of Eternal Freedom had died when his own divine ability turned against him.
• The Great World Honored One questioned Chen Shi about the Wu Fang World, recognized that he had concealed things, and explained that the Western Heaven depended on its Buddhas to shelter it from calamities.
• The Great World Honored One revealed that the two great Buddhas had left to seek the Dark Sea Green Palace and that Lingshan was preparing for the coming Primordial Calamity.
• The Great World Honored One told Chen Shi to remain in Lingshan, but agreed to release him if he wrote down the Scripture of Enduring a Thousand Kalpas to Eternally Realize Freedom.
• Chen Shi transcribed the scripture and sent it to the Great World Honored One, who let the manual turn to ash and declared that Lingshan would face the Primordial Calamity together.

Ananda, Zhong Wuwang, and Yun Cheng each reconsidered cultivating the Scripture of Perpetual Freedom through a Thousand Calamities after Chen Shi warned them of its dangers. Chen Shi returned to the Heavenly Court, where Heavenly King Li was still trying to summon his primordial spirit, and arrived holding incense while calling for help.

• Ananda urged Tathagata to protect Lingshan, then set out to find Chen Shi when Tathagata refused to act.
• Zhong Wuwang copied the scripture, but Chen Shi confronted him; Zhong burned his copy and erased his memories of it.
• Chen Shi warned that the scripture might have been tampered with and that its creator could harvest its cultivators, causing Ananda and Yun Cheng to abandon their plans to use it.
• Chen Shi and Zhong Wuwang parted at the Heavenly River Ferry after discussing why many immortals could never return home.
• Chen Shi returned to the Heavenly Court, where Heavenly King Li repeatedly asked whether Chen Shi's primordial spirit had been summoned.
• Heavenly King Li saw Chen Shi walking across the Western Heaven Sweep with incense and heard him say that his Crown Prince was being bullied.

Chen Shi returned from the Wu Fang World, exposed Heavenly King Li’s attempt to have him killed, and gathered allies who helped punish Li until he apologized. After reconciling with Li, Chen Shi announced that his ten-year Heavenly Court contract had ended and invited fellow soldiers to leave with him, while Li went to see who would accept.

• Chen Shi told Heavenly King Li that Zijing had caused the destruction of four worlds and that Chen Shi had killed him at Spirit Vulture Mountain, then warned that he had invoked Li’s name before Tathagata.
• Houtu Huangdiqi sent the Great God of the Three Altars to confront Heavenly King Li, while Chen Shi appealed to the East King Duke and other allies for support.
• The Great God of the Three Altars beat Li before the Jade Emperor Great Heavenly Venerate stopped him, and masked attackers continued assaulting Li for several days.
• Heavenly King Li apologized to Chen Shi and reminded him that his ten-year contract had expired.
• Chen Shi invited the Heavenly Court’s soldiers to gather at the Western Heaven Sweep and leave with him, and Li set out to see who would join.

Chen Shi led twenty thousand Heavenly Soldiers and Generals out of the Heavenly Court after their contracts expired, while the injured Heavenly King Li watched his command abandon him. The Jade Emperor Great Heavenly Venerate allowed them to leave, and their star skiffs approached Western Penglai.

• Heavenly King Li saw tens of thousands of Heavenly Soldiers and Generals gathered at the Western Heaven Sweep and learned that they intended to follow Chen Shi.
• Chen Shi rallied the soldiers by promising to lead them to a new hometown where they could pursue their ambitions, and they cheered and followed him.
• Heavenly King Li warned Chen Shi that the Great Heavenly Venerate would stop them, but Chen Shi led the soldiers toward the Western Heaven Gate as the stretcher-bearing Heavenly General joined them.
• The Jade Emperor Great Heavenly Venerate ordered the gate garrison to let the twenty thousand soldiers leave because their contracts had expired, and they departed aboard more than two hundred star skiffs.
• After Heavenly King Li awoke five days later, he learned the star skiffs had not returned and did not know where Chen Shi had gone.
• Chen Shi worried the Heavenly Court might intercept the fleet, but the boatman announced that Western Penglai was near.

Chen Shi negotiated with Gongsun Xuanyuan to bring two hundred thousand Heavenly Soldiers and Generals to Western Penglai while keeping them available to the Great Heavenly Venerate. He arrived at Golden Ao Island with twenty thousand soldiers, leaving Crippled Jiao startled by their presence and their mastery of the Primordial Chaos Sword Scripture.

• Gongsun Xuanyuan told Chen Shi that the Great Heavenly Venerate needed the two hundred thousand Heavenly Soldiers and Generals to remain under his command, even if they moved to Western Penglai.
• Chen Shi agreed to the arrangement and refused Gongsun Xuanyuan’s suggestion that Heavenly King Li become his deputy.
• Chen Shi led the Heavenly Soldiers and Generals into Western Penglai, while Crippled Jiao worried that Golden Ao Island had too few defenders to protect the Jade Purity Dao Spring.
• Chen Shi arrived at Golden Ao Island with twenty thousand Heavenly Soldiers, who demonstrated the Primordial Chaos Sword Scripture.
• Chen Shi told Crippled Jiao that the soldiers had joined Golden Ao Island after their contracts expired and that the Great Heavenly Venerate would continue paying their stipends.

Chen Shi’s new disciples transformed the territory around Golden Ao Island, while Crippled Jiao and Jing Mei raced to keep their dangerous exploits from killing them. Chen Shi arranged for Doumu Yuanjun and Tongtian’s disciples to descend and teach the newcomers, bringing the scattered Jie Sect disciples together to preserve their heritage.

• Chen Shi’s twenty thousand immortals swept the lands around Golden Ao Island, capturing demons and opening mines, caves, and blessed lands, while Crippled Jiao repeatedly rescued them from dangers.
• Jing Mei returned to Golden Ao Island and joined Crippled Jiao and Jiang Guo in preventing disasters among the new disciples.
• Bai Jingming returned with Bian Liu’er, and Crippled Jiao assigned Bian Liu’er to lead the newcomers in mining.
• Chen Shi summoned Doumu Yuanjun, who agreed to descend this once, and told Crippled Jiao to prepare for her and Tongtian’s disciples to teach the outer sect newcomers.

Chen Shi invited the Jie Sect’s fallen deities to Golden Ao Island, where they began teaching its disciples and exploring dangerous ruins. Doumu Yuanjun explained that the so-called external Dao was not inherently separate from the Dao of the ancestral court, while Chen Shi learned that this dispute had helped divide the sects before the War of Slaying Zhou.

• Chen Shi prepared ten palace altars and invited the Jie Sect’s predecessors to Golden Ao Island, where numerous divine avatars descended and Crippled Jiao celebrated the sect’s revival.
• The deities chose disciples and led them into dangerous ruins to train, prompting Crippled Jiao, Jing Mei, Jiang Guo, and Wen Ting to rescue those in peril.
• Crippled Jiao confronted Wen Ting about his work as a groom for the Lingxiao Immortal Lord, then urged him to join the Heavenly Soldier Camp and draw its salary.
• Doumu Yuanjun offered to teach Chen Shi, but he declined and recommended Yang Bi as her successor; she sent an avatar to seek him in the Huayan Realm.
• Doumu Yuanjun told Chen Shi that the ancestral court had once stood within the Dark Sea, and that the Jie Sect’s study of other worlds’ Great Daos had fueled disputes with the Three Pure Ones before the War of Slaying Zhou.

Chen Shi considered Doumu Yuanjun’s explanation of the struggle for orthodoxy and theorized that the Primordial Calamity arose from conflict between immortals and the Dark Sea’s Great Dao. After rescuing Bian Liu'er from the Demon Suppressing Cave, Chen Shi found an external Dao copper bell that led him to an underground lake and an azure palace.

• Doumu Yuanjun explained to Chen Shi that the Three Pure Ones and Sage Tongtian had fought to establish orthodoxy, then departed after revealing that she had found Yang Bi.
• Chen Shi concluded that the Primordial Calamity might be the Great Dao’s purge of immortals whose Dao did not fit it, and feared that his own method of merging the heavens with his Dao would bring especially severe backlash.
• Heavenly Mechanism Scholar Zhong Lin reported that Bian Liu'er was trapped in the Demon Suppressing Cave after an external Dao aura erupted there, so Chen Shi led a rescue party into the mine.
• Chen Shi found Bian Liu'er unconscious and recovered a copper bell etched with external Dao patterns; its ringing disoriented everyone else, and a matching sound answered from deeper in the mine.
• Chen Shi entered the mine alone and discovered an underground lake with an azure palace on the far shore, wondering how a Dark Sea palace had appeared there.

Chen Shi explored a submerged Qing Palace, discovered traces of the Dark Sea’s Heavenly Dao and external Dao, and uncovered the fate of two practitioners who had died trying to escape. He realized the palace’s wall inscriptions recorded Dao Rules gained from observing a deified Heavenly Dao, but ended by wondering why its practitioners had fled.

• Chen Shi examined a petrified man embedded in the rock, found external Dao patterns on his clothing, and buried him beside the subterranean lake.
• The Dark Sea lake attacked Chen Shi’s Dao Field and swallowed the Heavenly Net Blood-Transforming Divine Blade, but he recovered it by using his First Dao Rule to cross the water.
• Chen Shi found countless humanoid skeletons beneath the lake and sensed the Heavenly Mechanism Scroll and other Heavenly Dao auras coming from the Qing Palace.
• Inside the palace, Chen Shi found a woman’s skeleton holding a bronze bell, reunited her with the man by burying them together, and kept the bell to study its external Dao patterns.
• Chen Shi discovered that the Qing Palace had been built to worship a deity embodied by the Dark Sea’s Heavenly Dao and that its walls bore external Dao Rules.
• Chen Shi began examining the inscriptions, then wondered why the Dark Sea practitioners had been fleeing outward.

Chen Shi deciphered the Dark Sea’s outer Dao laws in the Azure Palace, and his cultivation manifestations spread across the Western Ox Continent as he advanced to the sixth layer of the Dao realm. His Yu Heng Gate began guiding newly harmonized immortals to the Western Ox Continent, where Li Tianqing arrived and learned that the continent had become the New Immortal Realm.

• Chen Shi studied the Azure Palace’s outer Dao laws for months, adapting to them as he uncovered their connection to the Heavenly Mechanism Scroll.
• Chen Shi’s Dao manifestations appeared over the Western Ox Continent as he advanced from the second layer to the sixth, alarming True Man Zhang when outer Dao manifestations exceeded half.
• True Man Zhang recognized Yu Heng Gate among Chen Shi’s manifestations and watched it send out immortal light to guide an ascender.
• Li Tianqing harmonized with the Dao in the Huayan Realm and allowed the ascension radiance to carry him through the Dark Sea.
• Li Tianqing emerged from Yu Heng Gate in the Western Ox Continent, and True Man Zhang explained that Chen Shi’s Heavenly Dao treasures were drawing ascenders to the New Immortal Realm.
• Li Tianqing learned that Yang Bi would likely be guided there too once he harmonized with the Dao, and he felt relieved.

Yu Heng Gate began guiding immortals to the Western Ox Continent, where Li Tianqing and others organized them into a Heavenly Soldier Camp. After a cultivator from the Dark Sea ascended, the group recognized him as a Devil Race practitioner and decided to accept him into a new Outer Dao Camp.

• Li Tianqing waited for Yang Bi to ascend but saw Zhong Wuwang swept from Great Peng Mansion to the Western Ox Continent instead.
• Zhong Wuwang struggled to accept his second ascension, failed to summon his Mount Lingshan Dao realm, and eventually joined the Heavenly Soldier Camp with Li Tianqing as its marshal.
• Xiao Qiushui ascended from the Lotus Heart Realm and followed Li Tianqing's instructions to register at New Xiang Imperial Capital.
• Hu Feifei and Chen Tang established the Western Ox Continent's Heavenly Soldier Camp, and immortals continued arriving through Yu Heng Gate while Yang Bi did not appear.
• A young cultivator from the Dark Sea ascended, and True Man Zhang identified him as a practitioner of the Outer Dao, or Devil Race.
• Li Tianqing declared the newcomer could stay under the Heavenly Dao and established an Outer Dao Camp within the Heavenly Soldier Camp.

Luo Yu revealed that the yuan-worms were threatening his homeland, Guiyuan World, and Li Tianqing calculated its location from a star map. After Chen Shi emerged from seclusion with a new understanding of the Dark Sea Dao, he learned of the plan to aid Guiyuan and agreed to pursue the yuan-worms, traveling to the Western Ox Continent.

• Zhong Wuwang communicated with Luo Yu and learned that the devil immortal came from Guiyuan World, where yuan-worms were spreading flesh and blood and turning the dead into evil sui.
• Li Tianqing used Luo Yu’s remembered star pattern to calculate Guiyuan World’s coordinates, and Chen Tang and Fairy Xiaoduan’s officials asked Chen Shi to decide whether to send troops against the yuan-worms.
• Chen Shi emerged from the Demon Suppressing Cave after advancing to the sixth Dao realm layer and told Crippled Jiao and the others that he had comprehended the Dao of the Dark Sea.
• Chen Shi taught the Dark Sea Dao to Crippled Jiao and the others, but their bodies began mutating until he helped them refine the outer dao.
• After hearing Hu Feifei report that Guiyuan World’s location had been found, Chen Shi ordered them to pursue the yuan-worms and traveled to the Western Ox Continent.