Chapter Summaries

Vivian appeared on Mars after being teleported from home and helped the group destroy a mysterious red-haired spirit that resembled her. As Hao Ren collected a sample from the remains, Lily spotted what looked like a Mars rover nearby.

• Vivian struck the evil spirit with her frying pan, startling everyone and drawing the creature's attention.
• Vivian realized she could not see the spirit's face, though the others saw a figure resembling her.
• Hao Ren, Lily, Vivian, Izax, and the Nangong team fought the spirit, and Vivian's lightning attacks severely damaged it.
• Vivian and her swarm of bats destroyed the spirit, leaving a pool of blood that Hao Ren collected as a sample.
• Vivian explained that a pentagram array had teleported her from home to Mars, where Hao Ren admitted he and Lily had experimented with the magic book.
• Lily spotted what looked like a Mars rover on a nearby hillside.

After a rover approached the battlefield on Mars, Izax erased the traces with a precisely aimed meteorite. Back home, Vivian identified the summoned creature’s blood as an unknown, shapeshifting substance, and she decided to contact Heiserana to learn where the spellbook came from.

• Hao Ren and his companions spotted a Mars rover approaching the battlefield, and the Data Terminal urged them to clean up without harming it.
• Izax caused a meteorite to destroy the battle’s traces while leaving the rover outside the danger zone.
• The group returned home and found Lily’s summoning ritual reduced to ashes, then checked on Vivian, who was tired but unharmed.
• Vivian explained that she had seen the evil spirit only as a shapeless mass, while the others had seen a figure identical to her.
• Vivian examined the evil spirit’s Blood Drop and found that it was dead but continually mimicked the blood of other creatures.
• Vivian decided to ask Heiserana about the spellbook, suspecting that it had sealed a magical creature rather than contained a summoning ritual.

After the Summoning Ritual, Hao Ren wondered about the evil spirit that resembled Vivian and spoke of someone coming back. Doudou asked whether she would grow up like the others, and the next morning Vivian reported that Heiserana could not identify the magic book’s origins before revealing she had something to show Hao Ren.

• Hao Ren and Vivian wondered whether the destroyed evil spirit had been a summoned creature or connected to Vivian’s blood, and decided to wait for Heiserana’s research.
• Doudou asked Hao Ren whether she would grow as big as the family and whether she would be different from him; he reassured her that he would always be her father.
• The next morning, Hao Ren found Doudou cheerful and exercising after her late-night questions.
• Vivian told Hao Ren that Heiserana had received the magic book from a follower who bought it at a black-market auction, leaving its author and origins unknown.
• Vivian changed the subject and told Hao Ren she had something to show him.

Hao Ren and Vivian discovered that Vivian had gained the evil spirit’s power to wither and destroy things, and they speculated that the spirit might have been a fragment of Vivian’s lost abilities. The chapter left Vivian wondering whether more of her power had been sealed away elsewhere.

• Vivian demonstrated a new ability that turned a stone to sand and withered nearby grass, and she told Hao Ren she had first noticed it after returning from Mars.
• Hao Ren and Vivian tested the ability, and Vivian explained that using it felt instinctive and that she had accidentally broken Roll’s food bowl.
• Vivian described her Red Moon as an innate ability that let her create moonlight and use it to move, become invisible, or amplify her power.
• Hao Ren speculated that the evil spirit had been a sealed fragment of Vivian’s power, and Vivian admitted the theory fit what they had observed.
• Hao Ren noted that red-haired Vivian had been unable to use her Red Moon on Mars, suggesting her power was incomplete, and Vivian asked whether more of her abilities might be sealed elsewhere.

After Vivian absorbed an evil spirit and developed a new ability, she lectured the household for recklessly performing the summoning ritual. Becky then reported that the Return Sect’s headquarters had been found, so Hao Ren and his group traveled to Horleta to help capture the other brain monster.

• Vivian said she felt no different after absorbing the evil spirit, and Izax suggested she had absorbed a Power Fragment.
• Vivian scolded Lily, Hao Ren, and Izax for their actions surrounding the summoning ritual.
• Becky messaged Hao Ren that her group had found the Return Sect’s headquarters and asked for immediate help.
• Hao Ren warned Becky to have Ofra hold the situation steady and avoid approaching the brain monster, then led his group to Horleta.
• Hao Ren met Becky in her cleared wine cellar and introduced Elsa and Nangong Wudi as the Nangong siblings’ parents.

Hao Ren reunited with Becky and learned how she had adapted Earth technology into a magical power system while helping expose the Return Sect across several nations. Becky’s report showed that the cult’s network was extensive, and her feelings for Ofra remained obvious.

• Doudou got drunk on the lingering smell of liquor in Becky’s basement, set fires with holy flame, and was contained by Nangong May in a water ball.
• Becky showed off her television, computer, and a magical electrical system she had developed with the Mage Association’s vice president.
• Hao Ren asked Becky for an update on the Return Sect, and she explained that major incidents had prompted nations across the continent to hunt the cult.
• Becky showed the group a map marking Return Sect branches and suspected bases throughout Horleta and neighboring regions.
• Hao Ren teased Becky about her attachment to Ofra, and Becky blushed while hinting that drugs would not work on the Ancient Species.

Hao Ren and his companions learned that the Return Sect’s headquarters lay in the mountains near Beinz Diocese, where the brain monster remained mysteriously still despite being surrounded. Ofra took them to the Mage Tower to travel to the front line and investigate.

• Becky explained that the Return Sect had built its hidden fortress beneath the Werewolf Tribal Nation’s sacred mountain beside Beinz Blood Lake.
• Ofra arrived with the Big Beard ascetic monk and told Hao Ren that Church and Royal forces had sealed off the western mountains with help from the Werewolves.
• Ofra said soldiers had suffered hallucinations near the mountains, while the Pope’s detection spell found an impenetrable energy field deep inside.
• Vivian and Izax questioned why the brain monster had not moved, and Hao Ren suspected something was wrong.
• The group reached the Mage Tower and teleported to Beinz Diocese.

Hao Ren and his companions arrived in Beinz Diocese as the Radiant Church and the Return Sect prepared for battle around the Holy Mountain. Ofra showed them Hodius, a floating fortress built with crystals from Hao Ren’s quarry, as the story left the brain monster’s plans unknown.

• Hao Ren and his companions teleported from the royal capital to the main knight order camp in Beinz Diocese.
• Ofra led them outside and revealed that the fortress stood above the crystal quarry.
• Ofra explained that processed crystals powered Hodius’s levitation and magical systems.
• Hao Ren asked the Data Terminal whether leaving the crystals behind had violated his organization’s regulations, and it said the action was allowed under exceptional authorization.
• Hodius hovered over the Holy Mountain as the Return Sect’s brain monster remained cornered, with its plans unknown.

Hao Ren joined the commanders aboard Hodius to prepare an expedition against the Return Sect’s hidden lair on the werewolves’ Holy Mountain. Uruk hurried the group toward the mountain, while Elson showed them the routes and explained why the werewolves guarded it so fiercely.

• Ofra explained that Hodius had been built from a mountain peak and that its ascent had exposed the Return Sect’s presence in the western mountains.
• Ofra led Hao Ren and his companions to Hodius’s command center, where they met Uruk, chieftain of the Werewolf Tribal Nation.
• Hao Ren told Uruk that his protective crystals could shield ordinary people from the brain monster’s Mind Control, and Uruk immediately set out for the Holy Mountain.
• Elson explained that Uruk’s wife had given him only two days, then showed Hao Ren’s group a living map of the mountain routes.
• Elson described how the Holy Mountain had protected the werewolves from an ancient plague and why they forbade outsiders from entering it.

Hao Ren’s force met Uruk and his Wolf Riders at the Sacred Mountain before beginning their joint search for heretics. The meeting took an unexpected turn when Uruk’s warwolf turned out to be the Wolf King, an old acquaintance of Hao Ren and Lily.

• Hao Ren, Ofra, and the main force reached the rendezvous point at the Sacred Mountain, where Lily greeted her supposed homeland and Nangong May searched for Uruk.
• Uruk arrived with his Wolf Riders and warned Ofra that her knights would be vulnerable traveling on foot, but Ofra confidently defended their abilities.
• Hao Ren and Ofra had the soldiers inspect their protective crystals, which were meant to suppress the monster’s psychic power.
• Uruk’s warwolf recognized Hao Ren as a Tough Human, and Hao Ren and Lily realized the wolf was the Wolf King they had met before.
• The Wolf King explained that he had led his pack from the grasslands to find a new home, leaving Uruk and the surrounding soldiers bewildered.

Hao Ren and Uruk talked as the Wolf Riders led the group into the mountains, and the Wolf King explained how his pack had migrated from the grasslands. The group reached the marked mind-control danger zone, where Uruk warned everyone to stay alert.

• The Wolf King told Hao Ren that climate changes after the Dragon Ridge Mountains collapsed had driven his pack west to join Uruk's tribe.
• Hao Ren chatted with the Wolf King until Uruk interrupted, and the Wolf Riders set off into the mountains with Hao Ren's group following.
• Uruk complained to Hao Ren that his talkative, book-loving wolf mount often caused trouble, and Hao Ren commiserated by demonstrating his argumentative Data Terminal.
• Hao Ren and Uruk joked as the group advanced along the rugged mountain paths, while their companions watched and speculated about their conversation.
• The group reached the Werewolf Tribal Nation's warning flag at the mind-control danger zone, and Uruk told everyone to stay alert.

Hao Ren and his companions entered the Holy Mountain’s psychic interference zone while the Radiant Church began its search for the heretics. They discovered that the brain monster had concealed the mountain’s core from people’s senses for so long that even Uruk could not remember paths he had traveled.

• The Radiant Pope monitored the Holy Mountain with a divine spell while Hodius prepared its magic cannons and the pope received a warning from the Goddess.
• Hao Ren’s group traveled deeper into the mountain as the knight order searched separately, but they found no heretics despite evidence of human activity.
• Uruk became confused at a fork in a path he knew well and realized he had no memory of the newly revealed valley beside it.
• Hao Ren concluded that the brain monster’s psychic interference made people unconsciously ignore the concealed paths and their surroundings.
• Vivian asked Uruk whether the valley had ever appeared in Werewolf history or on its maps, leaving the group alarmed about how long the interference had lasted.

Hao Ren and the search party entered a hidden valley in the Sacred Mountain, where ancient ruins revealed that the Return Sect had been concealed there for thousands of years. As they investigated the valley’s strange mental interference, stitched monsters surrounded the group and Hao Ren led the attack.

• Uruk reported that other Wolf Rider groups had found an unfamiliar valley, which the protective crystal allowed the party to perceive.
• Hao Ren and the others found an ancient obelisk bearing the Return Sect’s marks, and Hao Ren concluded the sect had hidden in the valley before the Werewolves, Kingdom of Horleta, and Radiant Church arrived.
• Vivian suggested that a change connected to the Goddess may have driven the Return Sect to emerge in recent years, while Ofra ordered the party to watch for signs of mental interference.
• Uruk sensed something unclean, and Roll spotted a monster before numerous stitched creatures rushed out and surrounded the group.
• Hao Ren drew his weapons and charged the monsters, ordering the others to take them down.

Hao Ren and his allies defeated the stitched monsters and discovered underground launch passages beneath the Sacred Mountain. After Hao Ren disabled the passages with an electromagnetic pulse, the group prepared to descend in search of the Return Sect’s lair.

• Ofra ordered the knights to use giant-fighting tactics while Izax and the others fought the stitched monsters.
• Roll warned Hao Ren that more monsters were emerging from holes in the ground, and Hao Ren and Lily found alloy launch passages beneath them.
• Lily killed an electrically charged monster with a boulder, and Hao Ren set off an electromagnetic-pulse bomb that disabled the connected passages.
• Vivian confirmed that the passages led into a tangled underground network but could not guide her bat through it.
• Hao Ren asked the group to look for another entrance, and Lily reluctantly approached a stinking passage to search for a way down.

Hao Ren and his companions entered the advanced underground facility beneath the werewolves’ sacred mountain and discovered that the brain monster had operated there for thousands of years. They found evidence that the missing heretics had been turned into stitched monsters and followed machinery sounds deeper into the base.

• Vivian scouted the tunnels, and Hao Ren threw more electromagnetic pulse bombs inside before leading the group underground.
• Hao Ren ordered the Wolf King to remain outside with the war wolves and help receive the approaching soldiers.
• The group found dead stitched monsters and learned that their electrical vests had controlled them through implanted needles and wiring.
• Hao Ren suspected the monsters were made from missing Return Sect followers, and Izax confirmed that they had been transformed while conscious and willingly.
• Ofra left two soldiers at a fork, and the group headed deeper toward the facility’s lit passages.
• When machinery sounded near another fork, Izax rushed forward and got his head stuck in the ceiling.

Hao Ren and his companions fought their way through the underground fortress as its defenses released stitched monsters. At the cavern’s heart, they discovered that the brain monster had repaired a gigantic spaceship.

• Izax and the others left the cramped pipe and found a vast corridor deep inside the Sacred Mountain.
• Ofra’s scouts encountered stitched monsters, and the fortress sounded an alarm and activated its defenses.
• Hao Ren sent the Data Terminal ahead, and his group blasted through walls and gates while reinforcements fought monsters elsewhere.
• The advancing group felt repeated tremors and passed through malfunctioning gates into an immense cavern.
• Hao Ren, Lily, and Roll saw that the brain monster had repaired a spaceship.

Hao Ren and his companions discovered a giant black warship hidden beneath the sacred mountain as it began launching, while the brain monster unleashed its creatures to protect it. Hao Ren refused to attack inside the atmosphere and rushed everyone toward the corridor as the ship's shrinking antigravity field sent enormous boulders crashing into the cavern.

• Hao Ren's group entered the cavern and found a colossal black warship surrounded by machinery and maintenance structures.
• Izax, Ofra, and Nangong Sanba realized that the brain monster had focused its efforts on preparing the ship for flight.
• The warship activated its antigravity engines, causing weightlessness and shaking the cavern as monsters poured from the underground tunnels to attack the defenders.
• Outside Hodius Fortress, the sacred mountain split open and revealed the ascending ship beneath its summit.
• Lily and the Big Beard ascetic urged Hao Ren to stop the ship, but he refused to fire inside the atmosphere and said he would intercept it in space.
• As the ship rose and reduced its antigravity field, Hao Ren pushed everyone toward the corridor before huge boulders crashed into the cavern.

As the black warship began charging an electromagnetic storm capable of wiping out life on the planet, Hao Ren and the Horleta people scrambled to stop it. Hao Ren went into space to prepare his main cannon, while the Pope stepped forward toward the warship amid Hodius's bombardment.

• Hao Ren warned the others to retreat as the Sacred Mountain shook and collapsed, and the Wolf King reported that his group had survived except for one injured cub.
• Hao Ren recognized the black warship's glow as the charge for an electromagnetic storm like the one that had destroyed Aeolus planet, and ordered an evacuation and preparations for forced bombardment.
• Hodius's forces opened fire on the warship, and Hao Ren teleported away with his tenants to tackle the threat in space.
• Hao Ren deployed drones and radar to provoke the warship while Hodius's soldiers continued firing despite a devastating counterattack that nearly broke the fortress's shield.
• The Pope appeared in a pillar of light, then stepped toward the black warship.

The Pope approached the black warship and sacrificed himself, causing it to abandon its global electromagnetic storm and leave the planet. Hao Ren intercepted it in space, disabled it in battle, and prepared to board while anticipating that its secrets would be revealed.

• The Pope charged through the black warship’s lightning and offered himself in repentance, then vanished in a burst of light as the ship departed the planet.
• Hodius Fortress’s soldiers fired on the retreating warship, but it escaped into space and encountered the waiting Giant Turtle Rock Platform.
• The black warship tried to open a Space Gate, but Hao Ren’s Gravity Well Generator stopped it, and the ship attacked the Giant Turtle Rock Platform.
• Hao Ren ordered the Giant Turtle Rock Platform to evade and counterattack, and its psionic cannons crippled the black warship without destroying it.
• The Data Terminal confirmed that the black warship could no longer move and that survivors remained inside, so Hao Ren ordered his crew to approach it.

Hao Ren and his team boarded the crippled black battleship to capture the brain monster, where they encountered the fading soul of the Pope. The Pope revealed that the brain monster lay beyond a nearby door and urged Hao Ren to speak with him, leaving the monster’s connection to the Goddess unexplained.

• Hao Ren chose Izax, Vivian, Lily, and Nangong Wudi to explore the black battleship with him.
• The team entered through the battle-damaged breach and navigated the ship’s tilted gravity and broken corridors.
• Nangong Wudi spotted a faint soul, and Hao Ren recognized it as the Pope.
• The Pope told Hao Ren that the brain monster was beyond a door and said mortals owed him and the Goddess.
• The Pope’s soul vanished after telling the foreigners they might be able to talk to the brain monster.