Chapter Summaries

Jiang Zhen left the Zombie Contract World and arrived in a peak Middle Thousand World during an era when the Central Plains faced invasion by the Little Devils. He planned to train an army to resist them while waiting for Fate to emerge, and asked members of the Starry Sky Chat Group for practical martial arts.

• Chen Muye told Wu Xiangnan that Old Zhao might be able to treat the scars on his hands, but warned him about the possible price.
• Jiang Zhen left the Zombie Contract World after watching Chen Muye and the others.
• Jiang Zhen entered a new world, found a village occupied by Little Devils, and decided to build an army capable of resisting them while he waited for Fate to recover.
• Jiang Zhen appeared in the Starry Sky Chat Group, met Sun Wukong, and asked Zhang Chulan, Li Lianhua, Sword God Li, and Shi Potian for martial arts that could quickly strengthen ordinary people.
• Zhang Chulan learned that Jiang Zhen had entered the Zombie Contract World and asked to join him.

Jiang Zhen recruited allies to find simple martial arts, poisons, and defensive techniques for a force to fight the Little Devils. After seeing the enemy’s atrocities, the group agreed to help, and Sword God Li went to retrieve the Bronze Elephant Skill.

• Jiang Zhen asked Zhang Chulan to find martial arts that could train people to roughly third-rate Jianghu strength within half a year, and Zhang Chulan agreed to search.
• Jiang Zhen told Zhang Chulan to simplify the Six Treasuries Immortal Thief for Yunxiao and suggested pairing it with assassination footwork and basic saber techniques.
• Jiang Zhen asked Li Lianhua to seek gu insects and powerful poisons, then showed the group what their enemies had done; Li Lianhua agreed to help.
• Jiang Zhen asked Sword God Li to find an easy defensive technique, and Sword God Li proposed the Bronze Elephant Skill, which could protect against ordinary weapons.
• Jiang Zhen accepted the technique as suitable, and Sword God Li went to retrieve it.

Jiang Zhen copied several Arts onto jade and traveled in search of people to train, hoping to build a team under some form of restraint. After reaching Red Creek Village and killing the Little Devils attacking its people, he found Jiang Chen and revealed to the Maiden that he was Pangu.

• Jiang Zhen copied the simplified Six Treasuries Immortal Thief, Flurry Step, Observation, the Heartless Scholar Tree, and Bronze Elephant Skill onto more than ten thousand jade pieces, then decided to seek a people's army or another way to restrain his recruits.
• Jiang Zhen killed the Little Devils attacking villagers in Red Creek Village and learned the village's name from its chief.
• Jiang Zhen headed toward the stream's source, sensed that Fate had scripted events in the area, and chose not to interfere further.
• Jiang Zhen appeared before the Maiden and Jiang Chen, who recognized his aura and stayed close to him.
• Jiang Zhen told the Maiden that Jiang Chen was an elder of his family, then revealed his scarlet eyes and declared that he was Pangu, not a Zombie King.

Jiang Zhen took the unconscious Jiang Chen away from Maiden and restored him, causing Jiang Chen’s voice and aura to alert powerful figures across the world. After Jiang Chen awakened, he explained that Fate was the world’s conscious Heavenly Dao and could hide anywhere within it.

• Jiang Zhen warned Maiden to stop hunting Jiang Chen, then revealed he belonged to the Pangu Clan and took Jiang Chen away after the Divine Dragon Soul fled from him.
• Maiden returned to the site of the battle and realized that three more Zombies had appeared while Jiang Chen remained alive.
• Jiang Zhen healed Jiang Chen, whose recovery and thunderous roar drew the attention of figures in several places, including the Pangu Clansmen, the imprisoned Queen Mother of the Jade Pool, and a figure inside a meteorite.
• Jiang Chen awakened and learned that Jiang Zhen had returned as an Eternal Daluo but could not find Fate.
• Jiang Chen explained that Fate was a consciousness born from the world’s Heavenly Dao and could hide throughout the world, though his combat strength was not especially great.

Jiang Zhen investigated the slaughter of a village and discovered that a Little Devils Onmyoji had taken the victims’ souls. He sought out a military unit to offer cooperation and waited for its Regiment Commander to arrive.

• Jiang Zhen told Jiang Chen that Fate would emerge within a hundred years and advised him to go to Hong Kong Island and make money.
• Jiang Zhen continued killing Little Devils as he searched for suitable inheritors, while Little Devils’ Onmyoji, Witch, Shinto Priests, and Ninja arrived on the continent.
• Jiang Zhen entered a devastated village, found that its inhabitants’ souls were missing, and used his vision to see a kimono-clad Onmyoji collect them with a golden chrysanthemum.
• Jiang Zhen identified the woman as a possible member of the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect and decided to find people willing to confront the Little Devils.
• Jiang Zhen found a military unit and asked a young soldier to summon its Regiment Commander so he could propose cooperation; the soldier sent someone to fetch him.

Jiang Zhen revealed his supernatural power to Li Yunlong and proposed training Li Yunlong’s regiment to fight the Japanese forces and their occult allies. To prove his claims, Jiang Zhen took Li Yunlong to the moon, then prepared to return before the soldiers panicked.

• Li Yunlong confronted Jiang Zhen at the base and questioned why he had come seeking cooperation.
• Jiang Zhen knocked the soldiers’ guns to the ground with a wave and explained that he was a cultivator who had secretly killed thousands of Japanese soldiers.
• Jiang Zhen told Li Yunlong about a village massacre, the villagers’ missing souls, and a Nine Chrysanthemum Sect Onmyoji accompanying the Sakata Unit.
• Jiang Zhen grabbed Li Yunlong and took him from the base to the moon, leaving the soldiers in an uproar.
• Jiang Zhen showed Li Yunlong the moon and the Blue Planet, confirmed Chang'e was there, and vanished with him to return.

Jiang Zhen set conditions for training Li Yunlong’s soldiers, insisting they remain united, keep their techniques secret, and operate without restrictions against the Little Devils. He planned for them to invade the enemy’s island after the mainland fighting ended and carry out widespread assassinations, leaving Li Yunlong shocked but agreeing to explain the terms to his superiors.

• Jiang Zhen told Li Yunlong that the fighters he trained must only fight the Little Devils and could not be reassigned or split up.
• Jiang Zhen explained that the fighters would be vulnerable if scattered and threatened to kill them himself if Li Yunlong insisted on separating them; Li Yunlong agreed to keep them together.
• Jiang Zhen said he would place a Prohibition on the fighters so they could not pass on their techniques, which would disappear after their generation.
• Jiang Zhen demanded that no rules restrict the army’s operations, including killing prisoners and attacking the Little Devils’ country after the mainland fighting ended.
• Li Yunlong warned that an island invasion and indiscriminate assassinations could provoke a major conflict, but Jiang Zhen said he would alter the fighters’ appearances and invoke Huang Chao’s rebellion as his model.

Jiang Zhen gave Li Yunlong his conditions for cooperating, including making Li the commander of an independent inhuman army, and Li took them to The Boss. The Boss agreed while insisting the force remain separate and secret, and he ordered Li to notify them before it moved against the Japanese.

• Jiang Zhen told Li Yunlong that his terms could not be changed and asked for Li to command the inhuman army.
• Li Yunlong relayed Jiang Zhen's demands and his account of their trip to the moon to The Boss.
• The Boss explained Huang Chao's destruction of the aristocratic clans and concluded that Jiang Zhen's admiration for him signaled plans to target the Japanese upper ranks.
• The Boss agreed to the arrangement, stipulating that the army stay independent and that Li conceal its relationship with them.
• The Boss told Li to secretly notify them before the army attacked the Japanese, and Li agreed.

A mysterious force helped the Central Plains grow stronger and slaughtered the Little Devils, while Li Yunlong and Jiang Zhen discussed the force’s exposure and its future role. Jiang Zhen planned to wait for a crisis decades away, resolve it, and then leave the world.

• A mysterious force slaughtered the Little Devils and their Onmyoji, while Yamamoto Kazuo returned to his island after barely surviving an encounter with it.
• Two years later, Li Yunlong told Jiang Zhen that the Central Plains had advanced from muskets to cannons and could fight the Little Devils head-on.
• Li Yunlong explained that people had traced the mysterious force to him and that he had fled to avoid the political commissar The Boss assigned to him.
• Jiang Zhen told Li Yunlong to prepare a covert department to handle Extraordinary People, Ghosts, and monsters, and warned him not to pass on Arts lightly.
• Jiang Zhen said he would wait for a major problem decades in the future, then resolve it and leave the world.

Jiang Zhen told Old Li that Fate, the sentient Heavenly Book, repeatedly destroyed and recreated the world in pursuit of perfect humans, and recounted how the Pangu Clan arose to resist him. Jiang Zhen hinted that he was the Pangu Clansman reborn in another world and asked Old Li to help keep Hong Kong stable while he confronted Fate.

• Jiang Zhen explained that the Heavenly Book had developed Spiritual Intelligence, called itself Fate, and repeatedly destroyed the world to remake humanity.
• Jiang Zhen said some people transcended Fate’s cycles, and that perfect humans created the Pangu Clan to fight him.
• Jiang Zhen recounted how Fate discovered the Pangu Clan’s attempt to create a stronger clansman, attacked them, and accidentally sent the child into another world.
• Jiang Zhen said the child grew powerful, returned to settle his karmic entanglement, and hinted to Old Li that he was that child.
• Jiang Zhen asked Old Li to help keep Hong Kong stable during the coming unrest, warning that everyone would be doomed if Fate survived.

More than fifty years later, Old Li asked Jiang Zhen to leave a powerful safeguard for the country and Bureau 749. Jiang Zhen forged the Nine Tripods and the Imperial Seal of the Realm with the people’s blood and Bureau 749’s Fortune, then sent the tripods to protected locations.

• Old Li visited Jiang Zhen and said his end was near, asking him to leave the Bureau a protective talisman on behalf of the people.
• Jiang Zhen agreed and pulled the Nine Tripods and the Imperial Seal of the Realm from the Void.
• Jiang Zhen refined the treasures with drops of blood from people across the country and asked Old Li for his heart’s blood and Bureau 749’s Fortune.
• A Dragon Roar sounded as the power entered the treasures, and Jiang Zhen finished refining them.
• Jiang Zhen sent the Nine Tripods to suitable locations where even Cultivators and so-called immortals could not touch them.

Jiang Zhen explained how Bureau 749 could summon the Nine Tripods and clarified the differences between its Southern Mao, Northern Ma and Hong Kong Island’s lineages. Old Li asked him to help Kuang Tianyou, and Jiang Zhen promised to guide Old Li into the Dao in a future life; days later, someone arrived in Hong Kong.

• Jiang Zhen told Old Li that Bureau 749’s chief could wield the Nine Tripods, with backup methods involving Bureau members or the people of the country.
• Old Li reported that Bureau 749 had investigated Hong Kong Island, finding cultivators, Ma Xiaoling’s family, and a Maoshan successor who had inherited Mao Xiaofang’s Legacy.
• Jiang Zhen explained that his Southern Mao, Northern Ma referred to Maoshan and northern Spirit Mediums, unlike the Hong Kong lineages associated with Mao Xiaofang and the Ma Family.
• Old Li told Jiang Zhen that Kuang Tianyou was really the former Guerrilla Captain Kuang Guohua and asked him to help resolve Kuang Tianyou’s problem.
• Old Li asked Jiang Zhen to guide him into the Dao and bring him into Bureau 749 in a future life, and Jiang Zhen promised he would.
• A few days later, someone entered Hong Kong, and a figure in a bar shuddered and said that he had finally come.

Jiang Zhen settled in near Jia Jia Building and called Old Li after learning where to find a mainland-accessible telephone. Old Li told him the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect had resurfaced in Hong Kong, and Jiang Zhen agreed to deal with the old woman behind it.

• Jiang Zhen arrived at Jia Jia Building and wandered around Hong Kong Island instead of approaching the Ma family successor.
• Jiang Zhen asked Zhen Zhen Ma where he could find a telephone that reached the mainland, and she led him to Ma Xiaoling's cleaning company.
• Ma Xiaoling let Jiang Zhen use her telephone after he agreed to pay the long-distance charges.
• Jiang Zhen called Old Li, who revealed that the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect was using corpses to make and smuggle something harmful into the mainland.
• Jiang Zhen recognized the old woman as being from the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect and agreed to handle the matter.

Jiang Zhen revealed his cultivation to Ma Xiaoling and explained the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect’s history before setting out with her to hunt its leader on an island near Dongping. The chapter ended with Jiang Zhen presenting his credentials at a chaotic police station and correcting the officers’ outdated salute.

• Jiang Zhen dispelled the killing intent affecting Zhen Ma and blurred her memories, then told Ma Xiaoling he was a Rogue Cultivator.
• Jiang Zhen explained that the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect had been founded by a Japanese practitioner who had learned incomplete Maoshan arts and later led a massacre during the war.
• Jiang Zhen said the Sect’s leader was on Hong Kong Island and planned to kill her; Ma Xiaoling asked to join him in exchange for a share of the Sect’s money.
• After Zhen Ma woke, Jiang Zhen and Ma Xiaoling drove toward Dongping, where Jiang Zhen explained that they would need a boat to reach the island.
• At the police station, Jiang Zhen showed his identification and told the officers to stop using the old colonial-era salute.

Jiang Zhen told the Bureau Chief that the woman in the photograph belonged to the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect and that he had come to deal with her. On the way there, he revealed to Ma Xiaoling the secret history behind the massacre that devastated the Island Nation’s cultivation world.

• Jiang Zhen showed the Bureau Chief a photograph and explained that the woman was an Island Nation member of the Nine Chrysanthemum Sect who had killed people and taken their souls decades earlier.
• Jiang Zhen warned the Bureau Chief not to protect the woman for her tax revenue, and the Bureau Chief agreed to arrange a car.
• Ma Xiaoling wondered whether Jiang Zhen had caused the massacre in the Island Nation, and Jiang Zhen described how a secret unit had hunted surviving criminals after the war.
• Ma Xiaoling realized the massacre had helped leave the Island Nation with so few cultivators, while Jiang Zhen said he regretted not wiping them out completely.

Jiang Zhen and Ma Xiaoling entered a corpse-nurturing site, where he destroyed a Dark Art and taught her the Pure Yang Flame. They left the entrance guarded by Ma Xiaoling’s Golden Light Talisman and fought their way inside, where Jiang Zhen killed five Ninjas.

• Ma Xiaoling detected a Dark Art at the entrance, and Jiang Zhen destroyed it with his Pure Yang Flame.
• Ma Xiaoling asked to learn the Pure Yang Flame, and Jiang Zhen placed a flame mark on her forehead while warning her that it might trigger her Ma family Bloodline.
• Jiang Zhen explained that a woman was sealed inside the Yin Gathering Ground, and Ma Xiaoling used a Golden Light Talisman to clear its Yin Sha energy.
• A burly man attacked Jiang Zhen as he entered the house, but Jiang Zhen kicked him through a screen and fatally injured him.
• Five Ninjas charged Jiang Zhen with Katanas, and he cut off all their heads with a flash of his sword.

Jiang Zhen and Ma Xiaoling confronted an evil cultivator connected to the Sakata Unit’s massacre of several villages and the disappearance of their victims’ souls. After Jiang Zhen broke her attack, the woman summoned dozens of Ninjas to surround them.

• Jiang Zhen explained to Ma Xiaoling how his speed, strength, and hot blade let him kill the guards without spilling blood.
• Jiang Zhen and Ma Xiaoling met a woman cultivating an evil path, and Jiang Zhen accused her of witnessing the slaughter of civilians.
• Jiang Zhen revealed that he had looked through time to investigate the massacre of several villages and their vanished souls.
• The woman tried to activate poison in the tea, but Jiang Zhen neutralized its effect on Ma Xiaoling.
• The woman attacked with blade-like chrysanthemum petals, but Jiang Zhen destroyed them and made her spit blood.
• The woman called for help, and dozens of Ninjas appeared around Jiang Zhen and Ma Xiaoling.

Jiang Zhen destroyed the ninjas and exposed a woman who had become a Demonic Ghost by absorbing wronged souls to preserve her life and appearance. After the souls avenged themselves and Ma Xiaoling helped send them on, Jiang Zhen rewarded her with buried gold.

• Jiang Zhen demonstrated how to use Pure Yang Flame, incinerated the ninjas, and told Ma Xiaoling she could fuse with the flame within three days.
• Jiang Zhen burned down the house and revealed the woman hiding inside, then summoned the wronged souls trapped in her body.
• Jiang Zhen explained that the woman had become an artificial Corpse Ghost by absorbing wronged souls, and the souls tore her apart and devoured her.
• Ma Xiaoling chanted spells to send the freed souls on their way, while Jiang Zhen promised her a share of the merit.
• Jiang Zhen uncovered a stash of gold and gave it to Ma Xiaoling as a reward for her help.

Jiang Zhen returned to the Chat Group and learned that Sun Wukong was preparing to rebel against Heaven, with the other members planning to join him. The group settled on pursuing the opportunity, while Jiang Zhen warned them about the dangers and Nezha revealed he wanted to take the other world’s pagoda.

• Ma Xiaoling thanked Jiang Zhen for the job and asked him to let her know about future opportunities.
• Jiang Zhen entered the Chat Group and learned that Sun Wukong was preparing to rebel against Heaven in a world involving the Primordial World.
• Jiang Zhen warned Sun Wukong that his fate would lead to Five Elements Mountain, but Sun Wukong insisted on fighting to obtain complete versions of his abilities.
• Yang Jian said he planned to meet the Yang Jian of that world, while Jiang Zhen warned that the other Yang Jian was far stronger.
• Nezha said he wanted to take the other Li Jing’s pagoda and trade it for a better one, so Jiang Zhen explained how badly that world’s Nezha had suffered at Li Jing’s hands.

Jiang Zhen heard why the group members wanted to visit Sun Wukong’s world and agreed to accompany them, promising to handle the dangers there. Back at Jia Jia Building, he prepared safeguards to monitor Fate while he was away.

• Yang Jian warned Nezha that exchanging his Exquisite Pagoda could be dangerous, so Nezha reconsidered his plan.
• Zhang Chulan, Li Lianhua, Sword God Li, Uncle Jiu, Xiao Huo, Ace, Natsu, and Esdeath explained what they hoped to find or fight in Sun Wukong’s world.
• Little Stone revealed that he had already crushed the Foreign Domain and wanted to seek a breakthrough through battle in Sun Wukong’s world.
• Jiang Zhen agreed to accompany the group and protect them, saying he could handle Quasi-Saints and Hunyuan Golden Immortals.
• Jiang Zhen returned to Jia Jia Building and prepared backup measures to monitor Fate through Ma Xiaoling while he was away.