Chapter Summaries

Chu Mu fought for days through an endless Sand Tail Scorpion swarm in a desert with no night, while the creatures adapted to his attacks and blocked his escape. After his fire and mana ran out, he relied on his physical strength and Basic Blade Technique, and was nearly buried beneath the swarm.

• Chu Mu realized the Sand Tail Scorpions were adapting to his Blade Intent and Great Sun True Fire while Spatial Sand Tail Scorpions blocked his escape routes.
• Chu Mu carved a blood road more than a thousand li through the desert, fighting alongside Wangcai and the Nine Dragons Divine Fire Tower.
• As his mana dwindled, Chu Mu extinguished his Great Sun True Fire and recalled the Nine Dragons Suppressing Prison Tower.
• Chu Mu continued fighting with his body and Three Feet Blade, using Basic Blade Technique as Sand Tail Scorpions nearly submerged him and Wangcai.

Chu Mu continued fighting through the Desert Sea’s endless Sand Tail Scorpions as his supplies dwindled and his Blade Intent sharpened under the pressure of survival. When a brief lapse let the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen’s assassins strike, he unleashed a domain of dazzling blade lights against them.

• As night fell on the ninth day, Chu Mu kept cutting a bloody path through the Sand Tail Scorpions while Wangcai recovered in the Qiankun Pouch.
• Chu Mu questioned why the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen had not appeared and continued tempering his Blade Intent amid the slaughter.
• After hours of fighting, Chu Mu discovered that only a few Alchemical Pills remained and feared he was trapped in a dead end.
• When Chu Mu’s attention briefly shifted, several Spatial Sand Tail Scorpions attacked his Sea of Consciousness and divine soul.
• Chu Mu unleashed his Essence, Qi, and Spirit, freezing the surrounding scorpions before filling the darkness with countless blade lights.

After exhausting himself fighting the Sand Tail Scorpions, Chu Mu discovered that the Pill Patterns on a Two Pill Pattern Azure Cloud Pill had lost their heavenly mystery, leading him to suspect that this world belonged to a different heaven and earth. With the scorpion tide still closing in, he swallowed the pill and pressed onward, leaving his theory untested.

• Chu Mu unleashed a powerful blade attack that shattered a vast swath of Sand Tail Scorpions, then exhausted his remaining strength.
• Chu Mu swallowed a Two Pill Pattern Azure Cloud Pill but found that it restored him no differently from an ordinary Azure Cloud Pill.
• Chu Mu examined another pill and sensed that its visible Pill Patterns lacked the mystery created by Heaven and Earth.
• Chu Mu wondered whether the place was a self-contained heaven and earth or belonged to another world, and resolved to test the idea by refining pills.
• Chu Mu swallowed the pill and continued through the Sand Tail Scorpion tide along the blood-soaked path.

Chu Mu suspected that the endless Sand Tail Scorpion Swarm was following a rigid program rather than being directed by an intelligent Sand Tail Scorpion Queen. He stopped fleeing and began testing his theory, leaving his next move uncertain as the swarm pressed in.

• After the darkness ended, Chu Mu noticed that the Sand Tail Scorpions reacted identically whenever he exposed and then covered a flaw in his defense.
• Chu Mu compared their rigid behavior to artifact puppets and considered whether the desert sea was a programmed trial within the Relic Cave Estate.
• Chu Mu chose to gamble that the swarm followed a program and swallowed several Azure Cloud Pills to replenish his Essence, Qi, and Spirit.
• Chu Mu dismissed the Three Feet Blade, exposed his defenses, and summoned an ancient tower and the Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array.
• The array confined the nearby Sand Tail Scorpions and refined those that charged into its flames, while Chu Mu spent his replenished strength to sustain it.

Chu Mu studied the Sand Tail Scorpions and their mysterious mental connections while the Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array held back the Beast Tide. He concluded that disguising himself as a Sand Tail Scorpion could let him escape, but only if he could reproduce the connection that served as its proof of identity.

• Chu Mu used the Spirit Radiance Blessing to inspect and record the Sand Tail Scorpions’ bodies, magical power, and Seas of Consciousness while sustaining the grand array with Alchemical Pills.
• After more than ten hours, Chu Mu had studied dozens of Sand Tail Scorpions, leaving one first-order, one second-order, and one third-order specimen imprisoned in the array.
• Chu Mu reasoned that the Sand Tail Scorpions’ relentless pursuit might be governed by rigid programming that would stop if he ceased to register as an outsider.
• Chu Mu realized that a Heaven Deceiving Pill could disguise him as a Sand Tail Scorpion, but he would still need to imitate the mysterious connection that proved its identity.
• Chu Mu inferred that the connection did not belong to Divine Sense and that it might only need to be vaguely reproduced, then observed that the connections appeared to lead toward the strange sky.

Chu Mu created a silver-white sphere to simulate the Sand Tail Scorpions’ identity signal and help him cross the desert unnoticed. After discovering that the scorpions became lifeless when their connection to the Unknown Existence was severed, he suspected they were not truly living beings but were controlled or simulated by an ancient divine ability.

• Chu Mu refined a sphere designed to imitate a Sand Tail Scorpion’s identity marker and connect with the Unknown Existence.
• Chu Mu noticed that the Sand Tail Scorpions imprisoned in the array had become vacant and motionless after their connection was severed.
• Chu Mu released one scorpion beyond the array, where it immediately returned to life and charged with the Beast Tide.
• Chu Mu concluded that the connection itself seemed to grant the scorpions life and suspected they were under Programmed control or simulated by an ancient divine ability wielder.

Chu Mu questioned whether the Sand Tail Scorpions were living beings or puppets, then refined a Heaven Deceiving Pill and used it to disguise himself inside a constructed scorpion. He withdrew the Nine Dragons Suppressing Prison Tower, causing the weakened array to explode, and vanished in the inferno.

• Chu Mu severed dozens of Sand Tail Scorpions from the unseen force by trapping them inside the Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array and wondered whether they could serve as ingredients for the Heaven Deceiving Pill.
• Chu Mu refined a Heaven Deceiving Pill from a silver-white Sand Tail Scorpion and fashioned a lifelike scorpion body with a simulated connection to the force behind the tide.
• Chu Mu swallowed the pill and entered the constructed Sand Tail Scorpion as the Nine Dragons Suppressing Prison Tower shrank and disappeared into the array.
• The Sand Tail Scorpion tide overwhelmed the weakened Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array, which erupted in a massive blast that annihilated the surrounding scorpions.
• After the explosion left a vast crater in the Desert Sea, Chu Mu had vanished without a trace.

Chu Mu used the Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array’s explosion to disguise his escape and discovered that the Sand Tail Scorpions were controlled by a lifeless program-like force. The force identified an Emerald Green Silk Dress woman as an invader and pulled Chu Mu back into the attack, leaving him among the reinforcements surrounding her.

• Chu Mu’s disguise helped him evade the Behind-the-Scenes Existence’s first probe, and the Sand Tail Scorpions briefly regained their own instincts when its influence receded.
• Chu Mu concluded that the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen might be a lifeless program and that the scorpions could be pseudo-lifeforms created for a trial.
• The unseen will showed Chu Mu an image of an Emerald Green Silk Dress woman and declared, “Invader, die!”
• The will strengthened its control over Chu Mu’s simulated Sand Tail Scorpion body, forcing him to charge toward the woman while he concealed his resistance.
• Chu Mu arrived with the reserve group as countless Sand Tail Scorpions surrounded the woman and attacked her.

While hiding in an artificial Sand Tail Scorpion body, Chu Mu watched a woman from Great Heng unleash a powerful Spirit Planter art that turned the Sand Tail Scorpion tide into nourishment for her plants and her cultivation. Her technique inspired him to explore whether his Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array could form a similar cycle, and he left the scene recording his insights while wishing he could obtain her complete cultivation art.

• Chu Mu recognized the woman as someone he had briefly met in the East Lake Secret Realm and wondered whether her origins in Great Heng were connected to the Dragon Robe Man.
• Deciding not to risk his life to save her, Chu Mu concealed his emotions with the Heaven Deceiving Pill and watched the battle from within an artificial Sand Tail Scorpion body.
• The woman summoned a vast forest of spirit plants that devoured the Sand Tail Scorpions and grew more powerful as their blood essence nourished the plants.
• Under the Spirit Radiance Blessing, Chu Mu understood that her art filtered the blood essence through the plants and fed the purified energy back into her cultivation.
• Inspired by her technique, Chu Mu considered adapting the same cycle to his Nine Dragons Divine Fire Grand Array and inscribed his observations and ideas onto a Jade Slip.
• Chu Mu became obsessed with the possibility of reading the woman's complete cultivation art.

Chu Mu realized the woman’s flourishing vitality was failing under the endless Sand Tail Scorpions and learned that the Desert Sea might be a trial with no escape unless its source of slaughter was destroyed. As the woman unleashed a final surge of spiritual energy, Chu Mu sent a Jade Slip into her domain and waited amid the resulting chaos.

• Chu Mu recognized that the woman’s Golden Core Early Stage cultivation could not sustain her seemingly perfect vitality against the endless Sand Tail Scorpions.
• The woman’s green domain shrank to only a few miles, and she warned Chu Mu that they had to destroy the source of slaughter to survive the Desert Sea Trial.
• Chu Mu considered that the controlling will and its vessel might be the source, but remained uncertain whether escape from the trial was possible.
• Chu Mu recorded a large amount of information on a Jade Slip and prepared to exploit spiritual energy interference against the controlling will.
• The woman unleashed a vast surge of wood-attribute spiritual energy, and Chu Mu sent the Jade Slip into her flourishing domain as the resulting energy tide filled the night sky.

Chu Mu concealed himself as a Silver White Sand Tail Scorpion until Qin Zhaoxue used her domain to shield them from the surrounding Sand Tail Scorpions. Qin Zhaoxue explained that the relic’s trials varied in difficulty and warned that Chu Mu’s unusually long passage meant his trial had odds of survival worse than one in a hundred.

• Chu Mu watched as Qin Zhaoxue used emerald rain to expand a living domain that annihilated Sand Tail Scorpions and blocked outside observation.
• Qin Zhaoxue saw through Chu Mu’s disguise, and he revealed himself as Xu Yuan before she identified him as Chu Mu.
• Chu Mu asked about the Relic Cave Estate, and Qin Zhaoxue explained that it was an ancient Trial Land where the Sand Tail Scorpions’ source likely had to be destroyed to clear the stage.
• Qin Zhaoxue said a detection array had assessed entrants and set their trial difficulty according to how far they traveled through a passage.
• Qin Zhaoxue warned Chu Mu that anyone who entered a trial after traveling more than ninety-nine zhang faced odds of survival worse than one in a hundred.

Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue discussed the Relic Cave Estate’s trials, rewards, and unusual restrictions while facing the Sand Tail Scorpion tide. They agreed to cooperate and use Chu Mu’s method to survive the calamity, though the mystery behind the scorpions remained unresolved.

• Chu Mu questioned why Qin Zhaoxue’s family had let her risk her life, and Qin Zhaoxue explained that cultivators could not rely on family protection in every matter.
• Qin Zhaoxue described the Relic Cave Estate’s changing trials, clearance rewards, and increased difficulty for returning participants and stronger cultivators.
• Qin Zhaoxue recognized Chu Mu’s Crossing the Sea Under False Pretenses method as being based on the Heaven Deceiving Pill, and Chu Mu explained how he had deceived the Sand Tail Scorpions.
• Chu Mu argued that the scorpions’ behavior did not fit the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen, but Qin Zhaoxue noted that the scorpions could not exist without a queen.
• Qin Zhaoxue said pill-pattern alchemical pills could not be produced within the relic, and Chu Mu asked her to cooperate with him to survive the Sand Tail Scorpion tide.

Chu Mu crossed the Desert Sea disguised as a Sand Tail Scorpion and used his Spirit Stabilizing Compass to track other cultivators caught in the trial. After detecting the sixteenth outsider, he began to suspect the desert sea was a prison and found the blazing sun seemed illusory.

• The two Silver White Sand Tail Scorpions crossed more than ten thousand li of desert and found only endless sand and Sand Tail Scorpions.
• Chu Mu studied his Spirit Stabilizing Compass and saw that it had detected abnormal spiritual energy fluctuations along their route, including those of other cultivators.
• The compass detected a sixteenth fluctuation ahead, where nearby Sand Tail Scorpions were converging to form another Beast Tide.
• Chu Mu wondered whether the Desert Sea Trial was a prison and sensed that the great sun overhead lacked the aura of a true great sun.

Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue searched for the Trial Land’s hidden conditions, but Chu Mu sensed an unexplained despair affecting his state of mind. A spiritual energy eruption then triggered the Sand Tail Scorpions to converge on its location, while the Spirit Stabilizing Compass revealed more than a dozen cultivators heading there too.

• Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue wondered whether the trial required them to fulfill an unknown condition or kill a certain number of Sand Tail Scorpions.
• Chu Mu detected a sudden feeling of helpless despair, but his Blade Intent and Spirit Radiance Blessing revealed no cause, and Qin Zhaoxue reported that her state of mind seemed normal.
• The Spirit Stabilizing Compass detected a spiritual energy eruption nearly a thousand li away, and Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue set out toward it.
• The will controlling the Sand Tail Scorpions awakened and ordered them to converge on the eruption and attack any non-Sand Tail Scorpion creatures approaching it.
• More than a dozen new anomalies appeared on Chu Mu’s compass as cultivators and Sand Tail Scorpions moved toward the eruption.

Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue followed a mysterious guidance to the Ancient Mountains, where a grand formation and countless Sand Tail Scorpions blocked access. At the mountain foot, they found a blank stone stele matching one from the cave abode ruins, and Chu Mu looked to Qin Zhaoxue for insight into its significance.

• Chu Mu sensed that the guidance drawing trial-takers toward the Ancient Mountains had locked onto his true body, unlike the will controlling the Sand Tail Scorpions, and realized the two forces opposed each other.
• Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue flew toward the Ancient Mountains as other Golden Core cultivators fought through the scorpion tide to reach them.
• Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue found the mountains enclosed by a grand formation and surrounded by Sand Tail Scorpions, preventing them from entering.
• Qin Zhaoxue pointed out a giant white stone stele, and Chu Mu recognized its material as matching the blank stele in the cave abode ruins.

Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue discovered that the white Stone Tablet was an ancient Evil Shadow Stone, and it revealed matching Sand Tail Scorpion marks on their wrists. The tablet identified both of them as undergoing Scorpion Egg Incubation and announced that entry into Soul Cleansing Mountain would be permitted when the scorpion eggs matured.

• Qin Zhaoxue explained that the Stone Tablet was an ancient Evil Shadow Stone, a recording medium said to rival Heavenly Mark Crystal Stones.
• Chu Mu sensed a living crimson thread on his wrist transform into a Sand Tail Scorpion pattern and realized it might have caused his earlier despair.
• Qin Zhaoxue showed Chu Mu that an identical Sand Tail Scorpion mark had appeared on her wrist.
• The Stone Tablet displayed ancient characters naming Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue and identifying both as undergoing Scorpion Egg Incubation.
• The Stone Tablet revealed that entry into Soul Cleansing Mountain would be permitted once the scorpion eggs matured.

Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue connected the Scorpion Egg forming through slaughter to the trial’s Soul Cleansing Mountain, while Qin Zhaoxue explained how the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen’s ancient catastrophe had shattered the Cultivation World. The chapter ended with the pair still facing the mystery of whether the mountain was a reward or a trap.

• Chu Mu realized that killing Sand Tail Scorpions caused a Scorpion Egg to gestate on his wrist and suspected it was backlash tied to the trial.
• Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue considered whether killing more Sand Tail Scorpions would mature the egg and allow them to enter Soul Cleansing Mountain, but could not tell whether the mountain was a trap.
• Chu Mu asked Qin Zhaoxue about ancient Sand Tail Scorpion catastrophes, and she said the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen likely fell from the Upper Realm during a war there.
• Qin Zhaoxue recounted how the Queen used the Devil Race invasion and later Human-Demon war to strengthen her clan, leading to a catastrophe that destroyed the Heavenly Palace and Demon Court.
• Qin Zhaoxue explained that the Upper Realm eventually suppressed the Queen after the thousand-year Age of Extinction, leaving the Cultivation World fragmented and many ancient inheritances lost.

Qin Zhaoxue explained that the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen may have been imprisoned rather than killed, and Chu Mu suspected the Relic Cave Estate was the ancient Heavenly Palace’s Trial Land built to wear her down. As Chu Mu pieced together how the Scorpion Eggs and Soul Cleansing Mountain might sustain the prison, he realized the blood-red mark had bypassed his defenses because he was exposed as a divine soul without his physical body.

• Qin Zhaoxue told Chu Mu that secret records suggested an upper-realm cultivator had suppressed the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen in the Heavenly Palace, which later declined and disappeared.
• Qin Zhaoxue said the Relic Cave Estate might be an ancient Heavenly Palace Trial Land, and Chu Mu wondered whether it was the place where the Queen had been imprisoned.
• Qin Zhaoxue revealed that Great Heng’s founding ancestor inherited from the Heavenly Palace, explaining the dynasty’s knowledge of and control over ancient relics.
• Qin Zhaoxue proposed that the Trial Land had been created to breed Sand Tail Scorpions and wear down or kill the Queen; Chu Mu connected the Scorpion Eggs and Soul Cleansing Mountain to that purpose.
• Chu Mu reasoned that the blood-red Scorpion Egg had attached itself unnoticed because his defenses protected his physical body while he was present as a divine soul.

Chu Mu realized the Desert Sea was an illusory cage tied to the real Sand Tail Scorpion Queen, and that the Scorpion Eggs were part of a ritual to weaken her through cultivators’ souls. The suppression had gone without human intervention for far too long, leaving the cage overrun with scorpions and possibly slipping out of control.

• Chu Mu examined a Three Pill Pattern pill and concluded its patterns lacked the spirit of true creation because the Desert Sea was not wholly real.
• Chu Mu connected the illusory Desert Sea and its Sand Tail Scorpions to the sealed Sand Tail Scorpion Queen and her soul.
• Chu Mu reasoned that the realm’s nine days of sunlight and nine hours of darkness reflected yang suppressing the Queen’s yin.
• Chu Mu realized cultivators were meant to nurture Scorpion Eggs, then purify them or risk becoming incarnations of the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen.
• Chu Mu concluded that cultivators’ intervention had been interrupted for far too long, allowing scorpions to multiply and the place of suppression to become unstable.

Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue saw Xie Cang enter the formation after the Stone Tablet announced that the Scorpion Egg had matured. Chu Mu discovered that his Scorpion Egg fed on Sand Tail Scorpions, but when he briefly entered its interior, he witnessed countless beings sacrificed to the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen.

• A ghostly giant destroyed the Sand Tail Scorpions around the Stone Tablet, received a jade talisman, and entered the Mountain Protecting Grand Formation.
• Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue dropped their disguises, drawing the Sand Tail Scorpion Swarm's attention again.
• Chu Mu used crimson true fire and Blade Intent to form a blade and slash through hundreds of Sand Tail Scorpions, confirming that their world was illusory.
• Chu Mu sensed the Scorpion Egg on his wrist absorb the Sand Tail Scorpions' remnant souls and grow.
• Chu Mu entered the Scorpion Egg with his Divine Sense and saw countless beings and races turned into nourishment for the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen.