Chapter Summaries

Lu PingAn transformed the battlefield in his Divine Realm into a war of attrition, summoning frost creatures and activating the War Domain under The Scale’s God Name. The domain rewarded defenders with Life Points for their victories, and Lu PingAn’s forces eagerly pressed the battle.

• Lu PingAn explained that gods could be defeated by destroying their followers, industries, and organizations, and noted that the attackers faced mounting costs if they failed to stop him.
• Lu PingAn summoned Frost Claw and a frost giant as barracks, spawning Snow Dragons, Ice Dragon Dragonkin, and frost giants to fight in the freezing environment.
• The battlefield’s fighters affirmed that they fought to preserve life and civilization and to defend justice, fulfilling the three prerequisites for the War Domain.
• The Scale declared himself God of War and Death and made the domain reward those fighting for order and protection.
• Lu PingAn revealed that Chris held the authority to seize Life Points, and the domain distributed points to victorious defenders as spoils of war.
• Defenders celebrated the Life Points gained from killing enemies, while Lu PingAn challenged the attackers to outlast his forces in a war of attrition.

Lu PingAn and Lady Lin’s forces continued their grinding war while hidden gods watched for a chance to profit. Lady Lin finally sent her direct forces into battle, revealing a vast sea of flowers that Lu PingAn recognized as the God of Spring’s power.

• Lu PingAn’s side used its abundant life reserves and Chris’s War Domain to sustain the fight and grow stronger as the battle wore on.
• Lu PingAn and Lady Lin waited for the other to reveal a trump card while three other Lords of Life stayed hidden nearby.
• Lu PingAn’s followers detected Lady Lin’s power and reported that her forces had entered the battlefield.
• Lu PingAn realized Lady Lin was deploying her direct forces to prove her strength to the watching gods.
• Lady Lin’s God of Seasons spread across the battlefield as a sea of flowers, which Lu PingAn identified as the God of Spring’s power.

Lady Lin unleashed a costly Holy Domain of Spring that absorbed fallen fighters and disrupted Lu PingAn’s Life Insurance. Lu PingAn ordered his forces to retreat into his Divine Realm, leaving Lady Lin’s desperate gamble and the stability of her alliance in question.

• Lady Lin’s woodland domain collided with the defenders, and beast hordes on both sides began a deadly battle.
• The battlefield warned Lu PingAn’s forces that Life Insurance had been overridden and fallen fighters could no longer revive through their contracts.
• Lu PingAn realized the woodland absorbed the dead under its territorial rules, but judged its immense cost a sign that Lady Lin was desperate.
• Chris explained that Lady Lin could use Lu PingAn’s divine corpse to fill a vacancy and seize the Subordinate Gods of Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
• Lu PingAn ordered his forces to withdraw into his Divine Realm and questioned whether Lady Lin could still remain above the mortal struggle after joining it.

Lu PingAn identified the rules behind Lady Lin’s giant white elephant divine beast and used a recreated Taboo Item to make it forget its allies’ deaths. The elephant shrank and entered the Beast Cage on its own.

• Lu PingAn watched the God of Spring burn away her power to expand the Woodland domain and clashed it against his Divine Realm.
• Lady Lin sent a colossal elephant-shaped divine beast stomping through the battlefield, devastating the defenders.
• Lu PingAn appraised White Elephant Ayusha’s rules and learned that it grew stronger when allies died nearby.
• Lu PingAn gave his allies a recreated Bane’s Wishbone and ordered them to capture the elephant rather than fight it directly.
• The Wishbone made the elephant forget its fallen allies, causing it to shrink and follow a fruit-lined path into the Beast Cage.

Lu PingAn analyzed Lady Lin’s Spring Earth and discovered that its Woodland turned death into a cycle of plants and beasts, treating life as expendable material. He concluded that her world would keep intelligent beings primitive, strengthening his resolve to defeat her and defend Earth’s civilization.

• Lu PingAn watched more beast packs surge across the battlefield and asked whether the dead were reviving or the foreign land was changing.
• Intelligence officers reported widespread treantification, and Lu PingAn gathered samples to decipher Spring Earth’s power.
• Lu PingAn identified the Woodland as a life cycle in which the dead nourished trees, treants became fodder, and creatures consumed plants and grew stronger.
• Lu PingAn and Chris recognized Lady Lin’s plan to make subordinate gods parts of nature while she ruled above the world’s living beings.
• Lu PingAn rejected Lady Lin’s rules for keeping life primitive and declared that humans, civilization, and life should continue advancing.

Lu PingAn’s forces battled Lady Lin’s Flame Sun Celestial Qilin as the Gods of Spring and Summer fused their powers, turning the Woodland into a life-draining wildfire. The God of Autumn then descended, and Lu PingAn realized Lady Lin was rebuilding the world by overlapping the gods’ domains.

• The Flame Sun Celestial Qilin arrived and turned Spring’s Woodland into a summer landscape that empowered its creatures and spread burning fissures.
• Little Flame fought the Qilin, but Lu PingAn recognized the danger of a summer wildfire and ordered her to retreat.
• The Qilin became a wildfire that consumed the forest and drained life from the battlefield, injuring Little Flame despite her escape.
• The Qilin reappeared as a vast phantom, and Lu PingAn and Chris recognized that the Gods of Spring and Summer had fused their powers.
• The God of Autumn descended, and Lu PingAn warned that Lady Lin’s overlapping of the gods had to be stopped.

Lu PingAn judged Lady Lin’s desperate, destructive attempt to wield nature as a weapon and summoned the Black King to meet her flames. He then used the God of Wisdom’s power to grant wisdom to the lives rising for his Burning Legion.

• Lu PingAn criticized Lady Lin for relying on outdated natural disasters and burning life as fuel to fight him.
• Lu PingAn summoned the Black King, who drew on the Courtyard’s source power and called the dead to fight.
• Black figures rose from the ground as the Burning Legion awakened from the lives Lu PingAn had kept outside the city.
• Lady Lin dismissed Lu PingAn’s claim that he could offer another path for the remnants of life.
• Lu PingAn activated the God of Wisdom and called on Fang Wen to grant the rising lives selves and wisdom.

Lu PingAn awakened new life from the remnants of the dead and offered them the choice to become revenge-driven Heroic Spirits sworn to protect the Courtyard. Most accepted, gaining immortal statue bodies, and he sent them into battle against Lady Lin’s flames.

• Lu PingAn used the Spirit Awakening Art to give the remnants new life, memories, and the choice to follow him.
• He awakened their hatred and offered them the Heroic Spirit Contract, warning that becoming guardians would bind them to the Courtyard forever.
• About 67% of the newborn spirits accepted the contract and gained pale metallic armor and weapons.
• The first batch charged into Lady Lin’s flames, and those destroyed reappeared beneath the city walls in their immortal statue bodies.
• The resurrected spirits attacked again, using the power of revenge to strike back at their enemies.
• Big Cat questioned whether their situation differed from the spirits’, and Lu PingAn pointed to the future he had given them.

Lu PingAn taunted Lady Lin about their opposing ways of using Life Circulation and argued that he was destined to replace her. When his words enraged her, he traced her God’s Wrath to her true body beneath them and realized she had assimilated the land.

• Lu PingAn told Lady Lin that even if she defeated him, she would eventually be eliminated, and he challenged her to face that truth.
• Lu PingAn contrasted his shared-growth approach to life with Lady Lin’s treatment of living beings as property and cultivation vessels.
• Lu PingAn suggested he had been brought into the world to replace Lady Lin, provoking her anger.
• Lu PingAn followed the source of Lady Lin’s God’s Wrath and found her true body beneath them, where she had assimilated the land.

Lu PingAn’s forces continued to outlast Lady Lin’s besieging army, forcing her to accept previously prepared terms and summon powerful allies. As Lu PingAn prepared to fight the arriving gods, two more participants entered the field.

• Lu PingAn’s side gained strength through revival and growing Life Points while Lady Lin’s side steadily lost lives, leaving both sides convinced that a prolonged battle would favor Lu PingAn.
• Lady Lin accepted the terms, activating several contracts and bringing the malicious God of Life known as Black False Dover onto the battlefield.
• Big Cat identified Black False Dover as a powerful quasi-god and an old enemy of Lady Lin and Chris.
• Life Pastoral joined the encirclement, explaining that she owed Lady Lin a favor, while Lu PingAn refused to yield.
• As Lu PingAn prepared to fight the gods, a fourth and fifth participant entered the field.

Lu PingAn confronted the other Lords of Life, offering them a share in his growing supernatural industry while arguing that humanity needed his power. As the gods attacked, several held back and watched for which side would prevail, leaving Lady Lin increasingly isolated.

• Lu PingAn mocked the old Gods of Life and argued that he could provide humanity with Professionals, supernatural goods, and life-based military industry.
• Lady Lin declared that she would inherit Lu PingAn’s authority, but he dismissed her ability to accommodate it.
• Lu PingAn offered the other gods a joint venture or alliance, but the gods roared and their quasi-gods began attacking his side.
• Big Cat revealed that Black Buddha was holding back, signaling that the gods’ attacks would become real only if Lu PingAn’s side showed weakness.
• Singing God advanced, and Eve and Phil confronted her avatar while the Lords of Life and their subordinate gods encircled Lu PingAn.
• Lady Lin angrily called out the others for holding back, but they reminded her that they would choose whichever side seemed likely to win.

Lu PingAn recognized that Lady Lin had turned the battlefield into a trap to transform the land into her Woodland and consume the dead as offerings. He forced her hidden main body into the open, but found it stronger than he had expected.

• Lady Lin's allies and kin fought Lu PingAn's forces while Chris drove Black Buddha back.
• Lu PingAn said the Courtyard's connected customers, Traders, and allies fought together, unlike Lady Lin, who stood alone.
• Lu PingAn realized Lady Lin had merged her main body into the earth to turn the region into her Woodland and use the dead as offerings.
• Lu PingAn explained that the Courtyard had intercepted most sacrifices and that his Small World had hindered Lady Lin's evolution.
• Lady Lin's main body began emerging from the land, and Lu PingAn remarked that its strength exceeded his expectations.

Lu PingAn confronted the Maiden of the Forest after she rebuilt herself through human sacrifice and became a grotesque, unstable evil god. As the gods of life withdrew, the Black King fought her, and her overwhelming power was checked by the purifying Sacred Flame.

• Lu PingAn recognized that the Maiden of the Forest had transformed from an Order God into a Primal God by sacrificing lives, much as Chris had tried to do.
• The Maiden of the Forest appeared as a monstrous, uncontrolled being whose body had absorbed the battlefield and its sacrifices.
• The other Gods of Life saw that the Maiden’s sacrificial design could consume them and their kin, so they withdrew from the fight.
• The Black King confronted the Maiden, who fused the God of Seasons’ sea of fire into her body and attacked with mixed flames and negative energy.
• The Black King’s purifying Sacred Flame dissolved the Maiden’s impure power and forced her giant form back, leaving her shocked.

Lu PingAn and Phil used purification and Phil’s Life Separation to counter Lady Lin’s unstable Giant God form. Phil’s ability tore apart the life and death within Lady Lin, leaving her divine body to collapse as the chapter revealed Phil as the destined heir who might once have been fated to stop Chris.

• Lu PingAn lent his power to the battle and used Purification while Little Flame’s flames burned away Lady Lin’s contamination.
• Phil reached Lady Lin’s Giant God form and used Separation to split apart the life and death within her.
• Lady Lin’s body collapsed as revived flesh and lingering death tore her apart from within.
• Lu PingAn and Phil explained that Phil’s Life Separation was the natural nemesis of Chris’s Life Fusion and had been prepared as a counter to Lady Lin.
• Xue En revealed that the Doom Curse had remained locked on Lady Lin, worsening her luck after she betrayed her original world.
• Lu PingAn recognized that Phil might once have been fated to become the Filial Daughter who stopped Chris, but now her power had turned against Lady Lin.

Phil used Life Separation and her emerging authority over childbirth to trigger the rebirth of the lives and divinities Lady Lin had devoured. As Lady Lin’s body collapsed and the new gods escaped, the Mother Goddess fell, leaving the cycle of seasons in the hands of its successors.

• Little Flame, Panda Man, Chris, and Phil combined their abilities to overwhelm Lady Lin, with Phil unleashing more than three hundred percent of her power.
• Phil inherited Chris’s abandoned authority and used Life Separation to begin breaking Lady Lin apart.
• Phil’s authority became the power of childbirth, causing the divinities and lives inside Lady Lin to emerge as Children of God.
• Lady Lin tried to force her children back inside her instead of fleeing, and the Giant God collapsed.
• The new gods of summer, spring, autumn, and winter emerged from Lady Lin, who fell while insisting she was eternal.

Lu PingAn confirmed that Lady Lin had died in childbirth after refusing to surrender control of the era, while Chris confronted the end of her long hatred. After tending to Chris and settling the battlefield, Lu PingAn prepared to claim Lady Lin's inheritance and children.

• Lu PingAn learned that Lady Lin had died in childbirth after choosing to make one final gamble rather than give up control of the era.
• Chris saw Lady Lin's remains surrounded by flowers and realized her hatred had left her exhausted and empty.
• Lu PingAn kissed Chris to stop her from speaking, promised they would stay together, and sent her to rest.
• Lu PingAn planned to keep Chris busy after she recovered and began arranging the return ritual and battlefield cleanup.
• Lu PingAn billed the Lords of Life for their losses and emotional damages, while planning to settle accounts with them later.
• Lu PingAn decided to fight for Lady Lin's inheritance and her children.

After returning Ancient City to Earth, Lu PingAn stabilized the damaged dimension and prepared to enter a long divine slumber as his Courtyard evolved toward becoming a true world. He awoke a year and a half later, with the expanded Courtyard transformed into a layered continent and new matters awaiting him.

• Lu Mouren explained that Ancient City had returned to Earth but now surrounded a massive Otherworld Rift, and Lu PingAn decided to postpone plans for a garrison.
• Lu PingAn absorbed Lady Lin's remains, gained Life Points and magical plant modules, and united the four seasonal gods into the nature of his Land of Life.
• Lu PingAn assigned Chris to cover his duties and tasked Eve with gathering new forces before returning to the Bank Building.
• Big Cat welcomed Lu PingAn, and after spending time with her, he fell asleep as the Courtyard began expanding.
• The Courtyard transformed into a vast, layered floating continent with distinct seasons, proliferating wildlife, and merging artificial and natural rules.
• Lu PingAn awoke a year and a half later as a true Lord of Life, with many matters still awaiting his attention.

Lu PingAn woke in the transformed Sea of Life and caught up with the Panda Man over a barbecue about the Courtyard’s rapid growth and new Life Pathways. The Panda Man revealed that he had been dismissed because the Courtyard had become too powerful.

• Lu PingAn woke in the Sea of Life and found the Panda Man and his family holding a barbecue on the beach.
• Lu PingAn learned that his new form could shift between different stages of life and considered how the God of Breeding could improve beast taming.
• The Panda Man described the Courtyard’s expanding pastures, industries, tourism, and military production across its floating continents.
• Lu PingAn learned that his Pathways had gained three branches and at least twenty exclusive professions, thanks in part to Lady Lin’s gift and the Forbidden Library.
• Lu PingAn asked why the Panda Man had been dismissed, and the Panda Man said the Courtyard had become too powerful.

After waking, Lu PingAn learned that Xue En was stepping down now that the reforms had succeeded and outside officials were arriving to claim a share. He found his faction had grown too large during the war and began planning cuts to projects and departments, leaving him facing a backlog of work.

• Xue En told Lu PingAn that he was stepping down under charges of unstable public security, and Lu PingAn recognized the move as a sign the reforms had succeeded.
• Xue En explained that outside administrators were arriving to learn from the reforms and seek a share of the resulting opportunities, while Lu PingAn agreed to show himself and thank Wanjing for watching over things.
• Xue En told Lu PingAn that more than a hundred thousand people had been lost in the war and that at least half of Ancient City's supernatural beings were connected to Lu PingAn's faction.
• Lu PingAn learned that his faction had expanded across many departments and industries during his absence, making layoffs necessary.
• Lu PingAn ordered every department to report why it was important and proposed breaking up departments and shifting some projects to the private sector.
• Xue En raised another matter, and Lu PingAn faced a flood of work that would keep him working overtime.

Lu PingAn learned that Chris had led the Reborn Group to expand its influence across the city to secure his Divine Realm and support his ongoing evolution. As he toured the transformed city, he discovered that his Life-oriented World's Logic had made fossil fuels inefficient, while the region prospered through cleaner energy and electric vehicles.

• Lu PingAn learned that the Reborn Group's industries dominated the city's employment and economy, and realized the Queen had directed its expansion without Xue En's knowledge.
• Chris explained that the group had expanded to keep outsiders from gaining influence and to secure legal control over land within Lu PingAn's growing Divine Realm.
• Lu PingAn accepted the existing arrangement, while Chris proposed cutting some projects and letting members retire to ease the group's excessive reach.
• Lu PingAn walked through the city and saw that airships and supernatural machinery had largely replaced cars because gasoline had become inefficient.
• Chris told Lu PingAn that his Life-oriented Logic might be affecting petroleum, and explained that the city had shifted toward electric vehicles, solar power, and cleaner industries.