Chapter Summaries

Li Shiwei encountered the Death Demon and Bojun within her demonic thoughts, but her memories of them were erased. Afterward, she unexpectedly unleashed a vast destructive power and seemed to have touched a Dao resonance.

• The Death Demon calmed Li Shiwei’s demonic thoughts while Bojun teased her and summoned waves of illusory people that the Death Demon destroyed.
• Bojun revealed that the immaculate girl was the Death Demon, who had awakened amid the war’s deaths and intended to wait for events involving Li Qi.
• The Death Demon told Bojun that Li Shiwei was important to a future involving Li Qi, then ordered him to erase her memories and avoid interfering.
• Bojun erased Li Shiwei’s demonic thoughts and memories, and the Death Demon and Bojun vanished.
• Li Shiwei resumed reading her battle report, then casually struck the landscape and carved a canyon three thousand li long and one thousand li deep.
• Li Shiwei and the stone at her waist were astonished by her sudden power, and she wondered whether she had touched a Dao resonance.

Li Qi and a Fifth Rank world lord destroyed a Tang Kingdom army by exploiting the deaths of the world lord’s own people, then Li Qi continued his Executioner Squad missions across the Human-Shaman War. As the battlefields revealed him to strange civilizations, Shen Shuibi reflected on the growing distance between their strengths while both continued their duties.

• The world lord sent three more waves of his people to die, and Li Qi joined him in attacking the Tang Kingdom’s commanding general once their deaths suppressed the army’s Soldier’s Qi.
• Li Qi cursed the general through karma, causing his cultivation to spiral out of control and explode; Li Qi contained the resulting lightning tree with his Star Official.
• Li Qi left for Liesu to continue his decapitation missions, and he and Shen Shuibi compared their progress across their planned battlefields.
• Shen Shuibi felt lost as she considered how far Li Qi had surpassed her, but both spouses returned to their work in the Human-Shaman War.
• Li Qi encountered civilizations that treated individuals as fuel, used parasitic brains to guide societies, or formed composite beings from species that replaced one another.

Li Qi led a four-person team toward the Middle-Micro Bird Realm, a High Civilization that existed beyond the laws of physics and could interact with the material universe only through gravity. As the team approached the Micro-Birds’ nest near the World Fountain’s supermassive abyss, they prepared to contact them through a sacrifice.

• Li Qi received classified records explaining how the Middle-Micro Bird Realm arose from cracks in the Great Dao and existed throughout the universe in gravitational isolation.
• Li Qi, Yan Cong, Youxiong Gong, and Shao Chi traveled through the World Fountain, where Yan Cong adjusted their route through warped space-time and the team avoided local civilizations and their wrecked vessels.
• Li Qi warned the team that the supermassive abyss’s event horizon was the Micro-Birds’ nest and that its gravity made the area dangerous for them.
• The team narrowly passed through a natural celestial sword formation and stopped to rest after Youxiong Gong helped them evade the destructive Sword Qi.
• Yan Cong explained that they would need to perform a grand sacrifice at the abyss’s event horizon to perceive the Micro-Birds, and he described the origin of their name.

Yan Cong described the radically different Micro-Birds and other unusual high-rank civilizations to Li Qi’s team during their journey. After two months of travel, they reached the supermassive Return to Ruin, the Micro-Birds’ home, and Li Qi ordered the team to prepare a Sacrificial Ritual.

• Yan Cong explained that the Micro-Birds were difficult to communicate with because their thought differed fundamentally from human thought, though mathematics allowed limited exchange.
• Yan Cong described Myriad Worlds, a third-rank civilization whose instinct-driven, nonsapient beings had developed powerful technology and cultivation.
• Yan Cong told the team about Extreme Speed World, whose inhabitants lived and developed at extraordinary rates because their bodies decayed rapidly.
• Li Qi ended the team’s break and ordered them to set out again.
• After two months of travel, Li Qi and the team reached the Return to Ruin and prepared to perform a Sacrificial Ritual.

Li Qi's squad set up a Sacrificial Ritual beside a supermassive abyssal ruin to communicate with the Micro-Birds, while Li Qi negotiated with nearby Reason Way guards. The ritual succeeded, but after Li Qi sensed a strange delicacy and warned the others, he fell silent and appeared to merge with the ritual.

• Li Qi, Youxiong Gong, Shao Chi, and Yan Cong established a safe area around the abyssal ruin so Yan Cong could prepare the Sacrificial Ritual.
• Li Qi met Reason Way cultivators guarding an energy station and assured them that the Shaman Path mission would not interfere with their work.
• After a month of preparation and seven days of ritual work, a gravitational fluctuation signaled that the Micro-Birds had arrived.
• Li Qi sensed a familiar delicacy, warned the squad that something was wrong, and the others activated their defenses while Yan Cong continued the ritual.
• When Li Qi stopped responding, Youxiong Gong and Shao Chi rushed to check on him and Yan Cong.
• Youxiong Gong and Shao Chi found Li Qi unharmed but merged with the Sacrificial Ritual alongside Yan Cong.

Li Qi entered the Sacrificial Ritual through his True Knowledge Dao Charm and encountered the incomprehensible Micro-Birds, whose abandoned Dao Charm greatly strengthened his own. After returning to Bo Yue’s command world, he discovered his True Knowledge could perceive the World Cluster Formation’s connection to spacetime, then learned his daughter Li Shiwei had been using the dying world as a training ground.

• Li Qi used his True Knowledge Dao Charm to contact a Micro-Bird through the Sacrificial Ritual, but their incompatible ways of thought prevented communication.
• The Micro-Bird abandoned its True Knowledge Dao Charm, merging it with Li Qi’s and evolving his True Knowledge until his body briefly became informationized.
• Li Qi withdrew from the ritual and found Shao Chi, Youxiong Gong, and Yan Cong waiting; after learning five chen had passed, he left with them and later requested leave from Bo Yue.
• Li Qi returned to Bo Yue’s command world and used his strengthened True Knowledge to perceive the World Cluster Formation’s trans-temporal foundations.
• Bo Yue explained that Li Shiwei had damaged the world while training, and said the Micro-Birds and Demon Stars had helped collapse the Human Path’s War Fortresses.
• Li Qi began his two-month leave and went to see Li Shiwei.

Li Qi discovered that Li Shiwei's powerful Dao Charm carried the aura of the Death Demon and removed it to have it examined. He began training her himself while planning to ask Yun Fang to investigate the charm.

• Li Shiwei showed Li Qi the immense severing power she had practiced with for fifteen years.
• Li Qi used True Knowledge Dao Charm to read Li Shiwei's thoughts and recognized the deathly aura of the demonic path in her Dao Charm.
• Li Qi examined Li Shiwei, confirmed she had not fallen into demonic cultivation, and extracted the suspicious Dao Charm despite her reluctance.
• Li Qi comforted Li Shiwei and began teaching her cultivation, devising a tailored training plan for her.
• Bo Yue returned to his duties while Li Qi studied the extracted Dao Charm and planned to take it to Yun Fang for appraisal.

Li Qi finished teaching Li Shiwei and accepted Bo Yue’s order to handle the war zone’s execution work while traveling to find Great Shaman Yun Fang. He reached Yun Fang at the Illusionary Reality Domain and asked him to examine Li Shiwei’s Dao Charm, leaving Yun Fang studying it.

• Li Qi gave Li Shiwei his final cultivation revisions and a book containing two months of evaluations and advice.
• Bo Yue assigned Li Qi the war zone’s execution work and authorized him to use Liesu to travel to Yun Fang, with a one-year deadline.
• Li Qi traveled to the Illusionary Reality Domain, where he observed the crowded worlds held in carefully maintained orbits around the wonder.
• Yun Fang revealed that he had rescued suffering visitors from the Illusionary Reality Domain and asked whether Li Qi had come about demonic thoughts.
• Li Qi presented Li Shiwei’s Dao Charm and asked Yun Fang to examine it, and Yun Fang took it with a solemn expression.

Li Qi entered the Illusionary Reality Domain to investigate the Dao Charm, where imagination could alter reality and stray thoughts could be fatal. After the charm unleashed a destructive black mist, Li Qi tried to contain and study it, but activating True Knowledge Dao Charm caused his head to explode.

• Great Shaman Yun Fang explained the Illusionary Reality Domain’s wish-fulfilling power and warned Li Qi that uncontrolled imagination could harm its users.
• Li Qi entered the domain, saw a seventh-rank cultivator flee after his inner world collapsed, and discovered that even an ordinary person imagined into existence could not survive its dangers.
• Li Qi released the Dao Charm, which produced a spreading black mist that corroded nearly a third of his inner world.
• Li Qi healed himself through imagination and created countless fifth-rank magic treasures to hold back the black mist while observing it.
• Li Qi activated True Knowledge Dao Charm to examine the black mist, and the information overwhelmed him and caused his head to explode.

Li Qi used the Illusionary Reality Domain to expand the True Knowledge Dao Charm and process the domain’s information, awakening the Spiritual Way Dao Charm. A second-rank Spiritual Way practitioner explained that the domain was a search for a path to first-rank, and Li Qi asked whether anyone else had completed its challenge.

• Li Qi restored his head through imagination and realized the True Knowledge Dao Charm could manifest and expand within the Illusionary Reality Domain.
• Li Qi imagined his information-processing ability increasing, allowing him to absorb the information gathered as True Knowledge decomposed everything in the domain.
• Li Qi’s thoughts encompassed the Illusionary Reality Domain, bringing the Spiritual Way Dao Charm to life and prompting its voice to invite him to the true world.
• Li Qi accepted the invitation, and his pure spirit separated from his body and entered a world composed of information streams.
• A second-rank Spiritual Way practitioner told Li Qi that the domain sought an unimagined opportunity for the Spiritual Way to reach first-rank, but Li Qi’s Dao Charm could not be replicated.
• Li Qi asked whether anyone besides him had completed the challenge, and the practitioner answered yes.

Li Qi entered the Illusionary Reality Domain and learned that the Spiritual Way used people who imagined nonexistent things as sealed innovators in the Desire Realm. After bargaining with a second-rank Spiritual Way expert for knowledge in exchange for a sample of True Knowledge Dao Charm, he left with new insight into the Spiritual Way’s devotion to absolute rationality.

• Li Qi learned that the Illusionary Reality Domain could make imagined things real, then saw five innovators sealed within the Desire Realm and experimenting with their wishes.
• A second-rank Spiritual Way expert asked to record Li Qi’s True Knowledge Dao Charm and offered to stabilize his unusual information-processing state; Li Qi declined the stabilization but agreed to provide a sample in exchange for knowledge.
• Li Qi requested information about the Dao of Demons and the Spiritual Way, along with any future findings on True Knowledge, and chose to receive it as literary qi.
• After sampling the Dao Charm, the expert told Li Qi that his affinity might have suited the Spiritual Way, invited him to visit the Arctic, and warned him not to reveal the Illusionary Reality Domain.
• Li Qi read that the Spiritual Way revered pure spirit and absolute rationality over bodily desires, but concluded that emotions and material desire were also necessary for life.
• Li Qi left the domain with his True Knowledge Dao Charm restored and the Death Demon Dao Charm in hand, then staggered as he adjusted to his ordinary information-processing ability.

Li Qi entrusted Li Shiwei to Great Shaman Yun Fang, learned the Death Demon Dao Charm’s origins and powers, and returned to the Human-Shaman War. Over the next seventy years, Li Qi became a famed battlefield fighter, defeating Liu Junyi after thousands of reversions, though he grew exhausted and wondered where the other Executioners were.

• Li Qi reported the anomalies and Death Demon Dao Charm to Yun Fang, gave him copied Demonic Path knowledge, and accepted his offer to protect and guide Li Shiwei.
• Yun Fang spent ten months sorting the information and determined that Li Shiwei’s Death Demon Dao Charm could annihilate anything it touched; Li Qi returned it to her and helped teach her for two months.
• Li Qi returned to the war zone and took on the Executioner Squad’s missions alone, using his accumulated combat knowledge and ability to retain memories through reversions.
• Over seventy years, Li Qi killed more than fourteen thousand fifth-rank Human Path cultivators, earning comparisons to the Demon Prince.
• During a battle over the Human Path’s Great Wall and a massive Return to Ruin, Liu Junyi defeated Li Qi seven times, but Li Qi won every time across more than three thousand reversions and ultimately defeated him without injury.
• Li Qi’s fame spread across the heavens, while he grew weary from seventy years of fighting and wondered what had happened to the other Executioners.

After enduring seventy years of relentless warfare and repeated time loops, Li Qi reunited with the Little Heavenly Master, Zhang Zong, aboard a flying vessel. Zhang Zong comforted him and revealed that he had come to discuss an abnormality involving the Demon Prince.

• Li Qi reflected on how seven thousand years of repeated battles had left him exhausted, then traveled toward another battlefield with Qin Lan piloting the vessel.
• Qin Lan spotted someone ahead, and Li Qi recognized the waiting figure as Zhang Zong, the Little Heavenly Master.
• Zhang Zong boarded the vessel, brewed fine tea for Li Qi and Qin Lan, and advised Li Qi not to burden himself so heavily.
• Li Qi said he could not abandon his responsibilities, and Zhang Zong accepted that their paths differed.
• Zhang Zong explained that he had come to tell Li Qi about an abnormality involving the Demon Prince.

Li Qi learned that the Demon Prince had gathered the Four Demons’ Dao Charms and may have been acting under constraints, while the Little Heavenly Master revealed that great powers were shaping them both. As Li Qi continued reliving the same journey aboard the flying vessel, he questioned whether his choices remained truly his own and considered asking Teacher Zhu about the cycle.

• The Little Heavenly Master told Li Qi that the Demon Prince had spared him despite defeating him, and explained that the Demon Prince possessed Dao Charms from the Four Demons.
• Li Qi realized that Death Demon Dao Charm had appeared elsewhere as well, and the Little Heavenly Master said he had brought the warning to alert the Shaman Gods.
• The Little Heavenly Master explained that great powers were shaping Li Qi and himself, and Li Qi introduced his idea of actuality and learned that the Little Heavenly Master knew nothing of regression.
• After the Little Heavenly Master left, Li Qi took over piloting the vessel, but the scenery reset him to before the journey began, and he repeated the same events.
• Li Qi wondered what Zhu Fengdan, Teacher Zhu, would say about the cycle and reconsidered how his choices could still belong to him even if others had designed the paths before him.

Zhu Fengdan recruited the Little Heavenly Master to impersonate Li Qi and bear his karma while Li Qi was away, promising help with his troubled Dao heart. Li Qi received orders to depart for a new mission, but Zhu Fengdan stopped time and appeared before him with stolen immortal tea.

• The Little Heavenly Master struggled to prove his own reality until Zhu Fengdan appeared and advised him to focus on existing in the present.
• Zhu Fengdan asked the Little Heavenly Master to take over Li Qi's Palm Slaughter duties for up to a hundred years and bear Li Qi's karma while Li Qi went elsewhere.
• The Little Heavenly Master accepted in exchange for two favors from Li Qi and help resolving his Dao heart problem, then brewed tea for Zhu Fengdan.
• Li Qi received a direct order from the Ranked Shaman to leave for the nearest Liesu, with someone else taking over his current duties.
• Time stopped aboard Li Qi's flying vessel, and Zhu Fengdan appeared with a pot of immortal tea he had taken from the Little Heavenly Master.

Li Qi learned that his Shaman mission would send him to the First Rank Immortal Heavenly Realm, where time might stretch to a million years and his memories could be erased. He chose to keep his memories, then questioned Zhu Fengdan about his past and studied the brutal world he would enter.

• Zhu Fengdan warned Li Qi that the mission could take a hundred years outside and up to a million years inside, and suggested erasing his memories afterward.
• Li Qi refused to have his memories erased, and Zhu Fengdan agreed while insisting that he complete the mission.
• Li Qi asked Zhu Fengdan about his highest cultivation, and Zhu Fengdan revealed that he had briefly reached the second rank before dismantling his Dao foundation because he disliked the path arranged for him.
• Li Qi inferred that Heaven's Will or the Martial Grandmaster had arranged Zhu Fengdan's path, and Zhu Fengdan confirmed it was more or less true.
• Zhu Fengdan revealed that Li Qi's mission was to communicate with the inhabitants of the closed-off First Rank World called Immortal Heaven.
• Li Qi examined information describing Immortal Heaven's brutal mortal realm, where cultivators below the seventh rank formed unstable sects mainly to survive.

Li Qi traveled with Zhu Fengdan through strange mathematical spaces and met Yao Ji, the Wushen Mountain Goddess, only for Zhu Fengdan to beat her and then be pulled away by an unknown force. Left alone with the restrained Yao Ji and still unsure how to reach the Immortal Heavens, Li Qi resolved to help her.

• Zhu Fengdan left a Little Heavenly Master in Li Qi's place while he took the real Li Qi through a strange space and back into Liesu.
• Li Qi realized that Liesu traveled through the Fast Universe, where matter had imaginary-number mass, and Zhu Fengdan told him to stop overthinking.
• Li Qi met Yao Ji and identified her as a being descended from a world's Primal God who had followed the Shaman Path.
• Yao Ji said she had watched Zhu Fengdan grow up, and Zhu Fengdan seized her and beat her before Li Qi pulled him away.
• An unknown force dragged Zhu Fengdan away, leaving Li Qi beside the restrained and battered Yao Ji.
• Li Qi threw a stone in frustration, then decided to help Yao Ji and continue trying to reach the Immortal Heavens.

Li Qi freed Yao Ji from Zhu Fengdan’s spell, then used his causality-based ability to locate a route through the void. He left Yao Ji sleeping and set out toward an unusual gravitational region that might contain the Immortal Heavens.

• Li Qi analyzed and dispelled Zhu Fengdan’s restraint spell, freeing Yao Ji.
• Yao Ji explained that she had been reincarnated and insisted Li Qi was only qualified to help her, then fell asleep and left him to find their way.
• Li Qi used repeated causal calculations to make two rare strands of Celestial Sword Energy appear, allowing him to determine his position.
• Li Qi traced the Celestial Sword Energy to an unusual gravitational region where matter converged and suspected the Immortal Heavens might be there.
• Li Qi glanced at Yao Ji as she played games in her dream, then prepared to investigate the region himself.

Li Qi and Yao Ji reached Immortal Heaven, a vast continent surrounded by an artificially cleared hollow, and entered its mortal region. As they began looking for a way into the True World, Yao Ji ordered Li Qi to wash her clothes and shoes.

• Li Qi traveled through the void in the Ghost Chariot while Yao Ji slept, using pulsar signals to navigate toward Immortal Heaven.
• Yao Ji woke and confirmed Li Qi’s direction before falling asleep again, and Li Qi concluded that Immortal Heaven had cleared a six-billion-light-year-wide hollow around itself.
• Li Qi reached Immortal Heaven’s enormous outer continent, where Yao Ji pierced its world barrier with a casual wave.
• Yao Ji explained that an artificial force fixed the continent’s downward direction, then told Li Qi they should descend and demonstrate their abilities rather than seek an audience.
• Li Qi and Yao Ji landed in the mortal region and discussed finding a Seventh Rank to enter the True World.
• Yao Ji began removing her shoes and told Li Qi to wash her clothes and shoes, leaving him certain she did not regard him as a person.

Li Qi traveled with Yao Ji through a First Rank World, where her disregard for others and her destruction of a mountain deepened his distrust of her. When Yao Ji ignored his warning to conceal herself near a heavily guarded city, Li Qi parted ways with her and entered the city alone.

• Li Qi refused to help Yao Ji, then discovered she could command a spiritless natural water deity to wash her clothes, revealing her authority as a Primal God.
• After Yao Ji bathed, Li Qi found that she had drained the surrounding mountain of spiritual energy and performed a Sacrificial Ritual to help restore the damaged land.
• Li Qi and Yao Ji flew toward a city while powerful observers watched them, and Li Qi inferred that the locals were delaying advancement to avoid labor after ascending to the True World.
• Near the city, Li Qi told Yao Ji to conceal herself, but she ignored him and continued flying openly, so he headed toward the city alone.
• Li Qi discovered Yao Ji was no longer with him, studied the vast fortress city, and joined the crowd approaching its gate.