Chapter Summaries

After reaching the underworld, Zhang Xiao waited for someone who might remember reincarnation and help him change the past. When Reincarnation Daily arrived, its news and fantasy serial captivated him and stirred his suspicions about the story’s hidden truths.

• Zhang Xiao learned that the underworld was overwhelmed by war dead, and he asked Meng Po to delay his reincarnation as a Celestial.
• Zhang Xiao returned to the start of the Road to the Underworld to search for someone who arrived looking familiar rather than frightened.
• Zhang Xiao heard that Black and White Impermanence had recruited a strange treefolk, which began planning a city and creating a daily newspaper.
• Zhang Xiao picked up Reincarnation Daily and read about Fengdu Ghost City, then became absorbed in the novel The Alchemy Emperor's True Records.
• Zhang Xiao sensed that the novel’s account of wizardry and spiritual power contained profound principles that might be real.

Mao Tiao recruited livestream viewers to help plan Fengdu by publishing Reincarnation Daily as a reward for the dead on the Road to the Underworld. The newspaper’s cliffhanger drove Zhang Xiao and the waiting souls toward the construction work, leaving Zhang Xiao furious when the latest chapter was withheld until he reported to the Brick Moving Office.

• Mao Tiao livestreamed his Fengdu-building quest, and viewers proposed using serialized fiction in Reincarnation Daily to recruit workers.
• Mao Tiao and the netizens translated stories and distributed the newspaper, whose tale of the Alchemy Emperor captivated Zhang Xiao and other souls.
• Zhang Xiao refused to join the construction effort, but he grew absorbed in the story and joined the crowd waiting for its climactic battle.
• Meng Po’s line at the Helpless Bridge emptied as the souls rushed to the newspaper stand, while Shangguan Man stayed behind and read her own book.
• Zhang Xiao found the latest chapter’s title but no story, learned that he had to report to the Brick Moving Office for the content, and tore the newspaper in anger.

Zhang Xiao read about Grantham’s victory over Gilgamesh and was drawn back in by the preview revealing that the Seven Little Witches were nearing death from old age. He decided to keep moving bricks for more chapters, while Mao Tiao’s construction project continued.

• Zhang Xiao went to the Brick Moving Affairs Office, where Mao Tiao made readers smelt and move bricks in exchange for newspapers.
• After working, Zhang Xiao read that Grantham had defeated Gilgamesh, begun the Alchemy Era, and returned to the Seven Little Witches.
• The next chapter preview revealed that the Seven Little Witches were nearing death and that Grantham would ascend to meet the gods.
• Zhang Xiao decided to work another afternoon and stay for the next chapter, while other workers admired his brick-moving skill.

Li Sansheng reached the underworld and chose to wait three years on the Helpless Bridge so he could reincarnate with the woman he had sought across several lives. Zhang Xiao recruited him to help save the Human Path and took him to try the underworld’s Fighting Pavilion, which revealed itself as King of Fighters 98.

• Li Sansheng reviewed his past lives and learned that he had found the woman he sought only when they were both old, after which he died at ninety-seven.
• Li Sansheng asked Meng Po to let him wait three years on the Helpless Bridge for the woman to die and reincarnate.
• Zhang Xiao heard that Li Sansheng had returned, realized he had nearly missed him, and recruited him to help protect the Human Path.
• Zhang Xiao explained that Li Sansheng’s faint memories of reincarnation made him the Human Path’s best hope and offered to train him using insights from The Alchemy Emperor's True Records.
• Zhang Xiao and Li Sansheng inserted coins into the Fighting Pavilion, whose screen lit up with the words King of Fighters 98.

Zhang Xiao and the others mistook Mao Tiao’s King of Fighters arcade machine for a supernatural Gate of Hell and spent days studying its fighters. Zhang Xiao eventually discovered how to operate it, selected the highest available difficulty, and impressed the crowd by mastering the controls; he left Li Sansheng to learn from his play.

• Zhang Xiao and Li Sansheng tested the arcade machine, and Zhang Xiao wondered whether the tiny fighters behind the screen could hear him.
• The gathered dead interpreted the machine as a Gate of Hell that imprisoned souls, while Mao Tiao watched in disbelief as they treated the game’s opening screen like a lesson.
• Mao Tiao’s livestream viewers proposed turning the mistaken interpretation into a plan for the Eighteen Levels of Hell, and Mao Tiao chose to keep observing.
• After three days of watching the fighters, Zhang Xiao experimented with the buttons, selected Single Player Mode and Third-Order difficulty, and began controlling Kyo Kusanagi.
• Zhang Xiao quickly mastered the controls, astonished the crowd with his fighting skill, and told Li Sansheng to watch and learn.

Zhang Xiao demonstrated his fighting skill in the Battle Pavilion and taught Li Sansheng how combat aptitude, calmness, and original techniques shaped a strong fighter. After Zhang Xiao discovered that the game’s fighters revived after each death, Li Sansheng tried playing but was quickly defeated by his nerves.

• Zhang Xiao defeated a fast, difficult opponent while spectators watched and praised his reactions.
• Zhang Xiao explained combat aptitude to Li Sansheng and urged him to develop his own techniques and battle instincts.
• Li Sansheng accepted Zhang Xiao as his teacher, while the crowd and livestream viewers speculated about Zhang Xiao’s identity and the game’s purpose.
• Zhang Xiao killed his opponent, inserted another coin, and discovered that the defeated fighter could be selected again.
• The spectators debated whether playing the game repeatedly inflicted death on the prisoners while helping them reduce their karmic burdens.
• Li Sansheng took control of the game, panicked, made repeated mistakes, and was quickly beaten.

King of Fighters 98 drew the dead souls into the Battle Pavilion, while Mao Tiao’s reforms helped Fengdu grow and sparked a public debate about players changing the ancient world. Zhang Xiao tried the upgraded Heavenly Emperor-level game and was stunned by its roster of apparently ancient, godlike figures, leaving him to suspect the underworld concealed a forgotten history.

• Li Sansheng lost repeatedly at King of Fighters 98, and a Celestial Being took his place as the crowd gathered to watch.
• Shangguan Man praised Mao Tiao as his arcade cabinets and recruitment slogans drew more souls into the game and helped the underworld’s construction advance.
• The game and its players became a subject of online controversy, while Xu Zhi turned off the television and remained unconcerned with public opinion.
• Online viewers discussed ways to raise the game’s difficulty, and an improved cabinet capable of reaching Heavenly Emperor-level challenges appeared several days later.
• Zhang Xiao secretly visited the Battle Pavilion and selected the seventh difficulty, where he encountered figures such as Su Huanzhen, Qi Tiandi, Nanfeng Bijing, and Fu Ying Zhaizhu.
• Zhang Xiao concluded that the cabinet’s roster suggested a forgotten ancient era and wondered what had happened to the Six Paths of Reincarnation.

Zhang Xiao cautiously tested the updated arcade game, choosing Qi Tiandi and discovering his moves before battling the fearsome All-slayer. Watching the players’ reactions, Xu Zhi considered turning the arcade machines into the Eighteen Levels of Hell and making their characters real figures in ancient mythological history.

• Zhang Xiao hesitated over controlling the imprisoned ancient beings, then selected Qi Tiandi in Two Player Mode to practice his moves.
• After extensive button inputs, Zhang Xiao discovered Qi Tiandi’s divine and demonic forms, along with several powerful combos.
• Zhang Xiao faced All-slayer, whose devastating attacks defeated him repeatedly, but he kept inserting coins and fighting again.
• Xu Zhi watched the test and considered making the arcade machines part of the Eighteen Levels of Hell, with their characters manifested as real mythological beings.
• Xu Zhi decided he might summon the players and left Reincarnation Hall in his black dragon robe.

Xu Zhi prepared to expand the Six Paths of Reincarnation, while Mao Tiao and the players opened a new Battle Pavilion filled with arcade machines depicting ancient powers. The underworld’s residents interpreted the characters’ poetic introductions as evidence of a shattered ancient history, and Meng Po realized the Asura Path had deceived them.

• Xu Zhi decided to create fifty thousand new Cubes and planned to summon the player who had arrived in the underworld after making preparations.
• Mao Tiao and the players refined Zhang Xiao’s arcade machine, then mass-produced it with challenges ranging from Third-Order to Heavenly Emperor difficulty.
• Mao Tiao announced the Battle Pavilion’s opening as crowds gathered to try the new machines and their more difficult stages.
• The arcade machines introduced figures including Apothecary Mu Shaoai and Lord of the Broken Forest, whose poems led the underworld’s residents to speculate about a lost ancient era.
• The residents debated why the ancient powers had been suppressed, while players’ rule that each character could only be used on one machine reinforced their suspicions.
• Meng Po recognized that the Asura Path’s supposed uprightness was a deception, though she wondered whether the vivid ancient figures had truly existed.

At the Battle Pavilion, ancient souls interpreted arcade characters as clues to a terrifying mythological past, while the Celestials mistook Qi Tiandi for a trapped ancestral hero. After Meng Po summoned Mao Tiao to meet the ruler of reincarnation, he feared he was being called to answer for his livestream spectacle.

• An old man selected All-slayer and read his poem aloud, prompting spectators to suspect ancient powers had once fought the underworld.
• Celestials secretly discussed Qi Tiandi as a possible ancient Celestial ruler and ancestor, then tried unsuccessfully to communicate with him through the arcade machine's Glass Window.
• The Celestials decided to earn coins by playing Qi Tiandi's game, believing they could help him atone and escape Avici Hell.
• Meng Po and Mao Tiao watched the crowd's growing awe of the underworld, while Mao Tiao celebrated the successful arcade event on his livestream.
• Meng Po told Mao Tiao that His Majesty wanted to see him, and she led him toward Reincarnation Hall.

The Yun Emperor investigated the decline in births across the Three Paths and suspected that something in the underworld had disrupted reincarnation. In Reincarnation Hall, Xu Zhi summoned Mao Tiao and offered to make the characters in his arcade machines into real beings, while the players suspected Xu Zhi was hiding the underworld’s true history.

• The Yun Emperor heard from Cloud Sovereign that births had fallen across the Celestial, Human, and Animal Paths and ordered the Celestials to remain on alert.
• Xu Zhi watched the players build Fengdu and considered using Meng Po Soup to reincarnate those absorbed in games and novels.
• Meng Po brought Mao Tiao before Xu Zhi, who praised the mechanical constructs Mao Tiao had used to help build Fengdu.
• Xu Zhi offered to awaken the characters in Mao Tiao’s machines as living beings imprisoned in hell, prompting the livestream audience to suspect a hidden conspiracy.
• Mao Tiao offered to invent more history for the machines, but Xu Zhi told him to leave gaps for the players to fill with their own theories.

Xu Zhi turned the arcade machines into genuine Gates of Hell and explained Fengdu’s purpose as a place for souls to wait in the underworld. He left Meng Po with a terrifying revelation about the world’s past, and she chose to serve him with renewed loyalty.

• Xu Zhi told Mao Tiao to proceed with the arcade machines while he handled putting souls inside them, then dismissed him.
• Xu Zhi explained to Meng Po that Fengdu would house souls waiting for the crowded Road to the Underworld to clear.
• Shangguan Man left to recruit more people in the mortal world while Fengdu’s construction gathered pace.
• Xu Zhi revealed that his world could contain Heavenly Emperors but no gods, whom he intended to suppress in hell.
• Meng Po overheard Xu Zhi’s words, realized the previous underworld era had ended in catastrophe, and vowed to become his sharpest blade.

Xu Zhi turned the arcade machines into a system for the dead to play games, hone their combat skills, and generate faith, then created a mysterious hidden character called Peerless God. The character’s rare appearances would hint at a world where no one could become a god.

• Xu Zhi sent blank thoughts into two hundred arcade machines, creating spirits within them through the worship and offerings of their players.
• Xu Zhi planned for the dead to play games while waiting in Fengdu, and considered how the world’s history of forbidding godhood might come true as more Heavenly Emperors approached the eighth rank.
• Xu Zhi created a hidden character named Peerless God and set his appearance to occur at an extremely rare rate across the arcade machines.
• Peerless God’s opening scene showed a prehistoric Dao Attainer challenging the Six Paths of Reincarnation and ended with the voice, “When I had not yet become a god, there were no gods in the world.”

Mao Tiao left the Reincarnation Hall troubled by his role in hiding history as players discussed the game’s first-day events and planned to build a city in the Animal Path. In the Human Path, Li Sansheng reincarnated and began spreading stories of the Underworld, leaving its idea to take root in the world.

• Mao Tiao returned to the Battle Pavilion and suspected he had joined a quest to conceal the world’s true history.
• Players discussed the deaths caused by the game’s logout rules and proposed building a safe city in the Animal Path.
• Fengdu neared completion as time passed at different rates across the paths, while the Celestial Path’s population and strength declined.
• Li Sansheng and Xu Yingluo entered reincarnation together, and Zhang Xiao wished Li Sansheng’s combat training would endure in his next life.
• Li Sansheng was born to Li Yuanwai, recalled fragments of his former life, and began writing novels about the Underworld.
• Li Sansheng’s stories about the Helpless Bridge, Yellow Springs Road, and Six Paths of Reincarnation began spreading across the world.

Wu Country and the Celestial Path investigated the spreading claims about reincarnation, while the Animal Path began seeking and nurturing gifted reincarnated beings. Xu Zhi reflected on the Six Paths’ progress and, walking home from the supermarket, decided it was time to use reincarnation to explore the universe.

• Wu Country’s emperor reported the reincarnation rumors to his hidden ancestor, who ordered a nationwide search of historical records for repeated innate talents.
• The Yun Emperor ordered the Celestial Path to investigate the source of the detailed reincarnation information and find someone who remembered the afterlife.
• Animal Path inhabitants began searching for newly reincarnated gifted beings and nurturing them to compete with the faster-growing paths.
• Xu Zhi observed that Fengdu and the Six Paths were advancing, then went to a supermarket and drew attention because his Heavenly Emperor appearance had returned.
• Xu Zhi decided to adjust his appearance and use reincarnation to take a stroll through the stars and seas of the universe.

Xu Zhi set out to explore space in his newly completed Mechanical Armor, which was built from the cycle of reincarnation. His departure shook the underworld, but Meng Po reassured its inhabitants that reincarnation would continue normally, while Celestial People saw a chance to investigate hell.

• Xu Zhi prepared for a short trip, reflecting on Di Qi’s spatial traversal technique and the Ancient Wood World’s growing space exploration.
• Xu Zhi transformed the cycle of reincarnation into Mechanical Armor, climbed inside, and flew away from the orchard.
• The cycle’s disappearance alarmed people across the underworld and the Three Paths, but Meng Po assured them that reincarnation would proceed as usual.
• Zhang Xiao and others wondered at the power of the mysterious ruler of the underworld as reincarnation fragments continued to arrive.
• A group of Celestial People decided to earn more coins and explore the underworld while the ruler was away, hoping to contact ancient gods and uncover hidden truths.

Xu Zhi traveled toward the moon in his Mechanical Armor while reincarnation vanished from Fengdu City, prompting its residents to investigate the ancient beings through arcade machines. Their unexpected encounter with Peerless God revealed that multiple eras had fought over reincarnation, ending with a mysterious claim that no gods existed before its speaker became one.

• Xu Zhi flew toward the moon in his Mechanical Armor and reflected on his cultivation and the matured Sand Table.
• The loss of reincarnation threw Fengdu City into turmoil, and Zhang Xiao watched its residents work urgently to reach the ancient beings imprisoned in hell.
• Mao Tiao assumed the arcade figures were fictional and believed the people would uncover no real history, but he rushed over when a strange scene appeared.
• The arcade machine showed Peerless God vowing to reverse the Six Paths, revealing that he had survived a prehistoric defeat and returned to fight for reincarnation's true names.
• The witnesses inferred that several generations of Heavenly Emperors had resisted the one who controlled reincarnation, and the scene ended with the voice, “Before I became a god, there were no gods in the world.”

The underworld experts learned that the ancient figures who had seemed like gods were Heavenly Emperors in a world without gods, then watched Zhang Xiao fight Peerless God in the arcade machine. Zhang Xiao defeated him, and a new poetic title appeared as the crowd mourned and honored Peerless God.

• The underworld crowd reeled at Peerless God's revelation that there had been no gods before he became one, and they debated how the ancient Heavenly Emperors could wield such power.
• The experts began a fight against Peerless God in the arcade machine, but their attempts failed as his moves proved increasingly difficult and lifelike.
• Zhang Xiao stepped forward despite knowing that learning the truth could force him to reincarnate and complicate his pursuit of Li Sansheng.
• Zhang Xiao fought Peerless God and defeated him, reflecting on the cycles of life, eras, and cultivation as his skill reached a new level.
• A new poetic title appeared on the screen, calling Peerless God the first supreme one upon the throne of no gods, and the crowd broke down in grief.

After Zhang Xiao and the Celestials accepted that reincarnation would erase their memories, Mao Tiao let the arcade’s hidden history play out for his livestream audience. Mount Akina Speed analyzed the world’s backstory and revealed that Mao Tiao might decide whether the truth reached the future Li Sansheng, leaving players eager to choose the world’s fate.

• After the arcade reset, the Celestials failed to encounter Peerless God again and accepted that reincarnation would erase their memories of the past.
• Zhang Xiao acknowledged that he would soon reincarnate as the next Yun Emperor, while Li Sansheng would be left to confront the Celestial Path alone.
• Mao Tiao let the urgent plot event continue despite his underworld faction’s interests, and his livestream surged to six million viewers.
• Mount Akina Speed posted a rapid review, theorizing that His Majesty had Harmonized with the Dao of Six Paths of Reincarnation and that the game’s two storylines represented opposing factions.
• Mount Akina Speed suggested that Mao Tiao could either conceal the history from the future Li Sansheng or reveal it, prompting viewers to debate the world’s fate.

Mao Tiao and the players debated whether to reveal the truth about the underworld, while Xu Zhi traveled to Mercury to begin cultivating energy-producing trees. He left the story preparing to turn Burning Heaven into an experimental greenhouse for adapting Star Ancient Trees to vacuum.

• Mao Tiao and the players argued over whether to tell Li Sansheng the truth, and Mount Akina Speed urged them to investigate and prepare before deciding.
• Xu Zhi considered using the underworld to gather emotions and explored the idea of evolving vacuum-adapted plant life.
• Xu Zhi rejected the Moon as a suitable place for life and headed to Mercury to plant Star Ancient Trees for energy.
• Xu Zhi found that the seeds could not survive Mercury's conditions, so he chose Burning Heaven as a temporary experimental sandbox.
• The Yun Emperor sensed that Burning Heaven had vanished, while Xu Zhi flattened its landscape and ordered the Sub-brain to plant and cultivate Star Ancient Tree seeds.