Chapter Summaries

At Soul Cleansing Mountain, Chu Mu slaughtered Sand Tail Scorpions while realizing their reputation as desert-dwelling creatures might conceal a far more adaptable and destructive race. As nearly a hundred Golden Core trial-takers gathered to mature their Scorpion Eggs and enter the mountain, Chu Mu found no familiar faces and considered Great Heng’s connection to the ancient Heavenly Palace.

• Chu Mu reasoned that Sand Tail Scorpions might adapt to different environments and transform into other forms, and that their true nature had been suppressed in the Desert Sea Heaven and Earth.
• Chu Mu unleashed his blade at the foot of Soul Cleansing Mountain, killing swarms of Sand Tail Scorpions as the Scorpion Egg on his wrist grew and its crimson pattern solidified.
• Trial-takers arrived at Soul Cleansing Mountain, inscribed their names on the Stone Tablet, matured their Scorpion Eggs, and entered the mountain with jade talismans.
• Nearly a hundred human and beast trial-takers gathered and slaughtered scorpions without interfering with one another, while Chu Mu found none of them familiar.
• Chu Mu considered Qin Zhaoxue’s claim that Great Heng had inherited the ancient Heavenly Palace’s legacy as he wondered why Great Heng cultivators formed the main force exploring the newly appeared ruin.

Chu Mu encountered Mo Bai, Sword Feather, and the mysterious black Dark Serpent among the trial-takers gathering at Soul Cleansing Mountain. After sensing an unsettling threat from the black serpent, he chose not to provoke it and resumed nurturing the Scorpion Egg as more cultivators arrived.

• Chu Mu recognized Mo Bai and Sword Feather as the three Monster Beasts approached, while the black Dark Serpent led them.
• Chu Mu considered attacking Mo Bai but held back when the three Monster Beasts registered their names on the Stone Tablet and began hunting Sand Tail Scorpions.
• Qin Zhaoxue warned Chu Mu that the black Dark Serpent concealed its Divine Soul Aura with an unusual ability.
• Chu Mu met the black serpent's gaze, felt an inexplicable Great Terror, and decided to avoid fighting it unless necessary.
• Chu Mu and Qin Zhaoxue resumed nurturing the Scorpion Egg as more trial-takers gathered beneath Soul Cleansing Mountain.

After his Scorpion Egg matured, Chu Mu entered Soul Cleansing Mountain and met Yun Qianshan, a Golden Core cultivator who had guarded the mountain for nearly eight hundred years. Yun Qianshan guided him through the sect and began describing the deaths of those who had entered, leaving Chu Mu surrounded by a growing sense of despair.

• Chu Mu saw that his Scorpion Egg had matured and received a jade talisman guiding him to Soul Cleansing Mountain.
• Chu Mu entered his personal doorway and found a vast immortal mountain sect filled with cultivators.
• Yun Qianshan introduced himself as a disciple of the Hidden Mountain Grand Elder who had guarded Soul Cleansing Mountain for nearly eight hundred years.
• Yun Qianshan escorted Chu Mu up the mountain and explained that a flaw in his state of mind prevented him from cleansing his own Scorpion Egg.
• Yun Qianshan recounted how fellow disciples had entered Soul Cleansing Mountain and perished, and Chu Mu felt despair closing in around him.

Yun Qianshan revealed the history of Soul Cleansing Mountain, the true nature of the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen, and the perilous process of cleansing a Scorpion Egg. He gave Chu Mu access to the mountain’s records and left him to choose where to live as he began his own path.

• Yun Qianshan led Chu Mu into the hall of memorial tablets and explained that thousands of Sky Palace disciples had entered Soul Cleansing Mountain, many of whom never returned.
• Yun Qianshan revealed that the Sand Tail Scorpion Queen was the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast, an upper-realm taboo creature that had evolved by devouring a Yellow Sand Nine Hook Scorpion.
• Yun Qianshan explained that the Desert Sea was woven from the beast’s spiritual world and that scorpions killed there contaminated cultivators’ souls and hearts, forming Scorpion Eggs.
• Yun Qianshan told Chu Mu that cleansing a Scorpion Egg meant resisting the darkness within a thousand-year dream, while many disciples remained trapped or had merged with the beast’s divided spirit.
• Yun Qianshan gave Chu Mu a jade token to enter the Soul Cleansing Pavilion and invited him to live wherever he wished.

Chu Mu learned that cleansing the corruption in his mind required confronting his desires while holding fast to his true heart, and he decided he would not abandon Wangcai despite the added danger. Suspecting Soul Cleansing Mountain was a spiritual world tied to the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast, he disguised himself as a Sky Palace cultivator and entered Soul Cleansing Pavilion.

• Yun Qianshan explained that Chu Mu had to draw out the corruption by facing his desires without losing his true heart, and said 3,892 disciples remained on Soul Cleansing Mountain.
• Yun Qianshan warned that saving Wangcai would force Chu Mu to confront the corruption in both their minds, but Chu Mu vowed not to abandon it.
• Chu Mu examined the memorial tablets and candle flames, finding signs that disciples’ souls were fading or disappearing, and suspected Soul Cleansing Mountain was a spiritual world formed by the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast.
• Chu Mu went to Soul Cleansing Pavilion, changed his robe and face, concealed his aura, and blended in with the Sky Palace cultivators.

Chu Mu studied Crimson Ridge Real Person’s recorded soul-cleansing descents and learned how the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast’s taint could erode a cultivator’s inner world. After reading every jade slip in the Soul Cleansing Pavilion, he left and observed the unequal treatment of human Sky Palace Disciples and demon Court Soldiers.

• Chu Mu read the Heavenly Traces Jade Slip recording Crimson Ridge Real Person’s repeated descents into illusory reincarnations.
• Chu Mu considered how the taint exploited the complexity of the human heart and could dim a cultivator’s true spirit until it usurped the inner world.
• Chu Mu returned the jade slip to its shelf and spent several months reading all several thousand records on the pavilion’s ninth floor.
• Chu Mu learned that human trial-takers served as Sky Palace Disciples without restrictions, while demon Court Soldiers were confined to southwestern mountain ranges and faced strict limits on reading jade slips.
• Chu Mu left the Soul Cleansing Pavilion after finishing the final jade slip.

After months of fruitless attempts to identify the heart’s corruption, Chu Mu examined his own transformation and the difference between his and Wangcai’s corruption. He sensed a clue, linked his Divine Sense to Wangcai’s incomplete intelligence, and both fell into a strange slumber.

• Chu Mu spent more than half a year in a luxurious valley on Soul Cleansing Mountain, where gatherings of trial-takers yielded no useful information about the corruption of the heart.
• He wandered through the valley and meditated under Spirit Radiance Blessing, reflecting on how cultivating the immortal path had changed him and left him with few obvious flaws.
• Chu Mu considered that he and Wangcai shared the same essence despite their primitive forms, with the difference lying in how much corruption each held within the heart.
• Chu Mu sensed something, activated Spirit Radiance Reappeared, and connected his Divine Sense to Wangcai’s incomplete intelligence.
• Chu Mu and Wangcai both fell into a strange slumber as their Heart Connection took hold.

Chu Mu awoke in a cramped rental room in the modern world, realizing that he had returned to the ordinary life he lived before entering the Cultivation World. Though his cultivation and powers were gone, his true spirit remained clear and his centuries of knowledge endured, and he left Xia Jie standing entranced after replacing her light.

• Chu Mu recognized the modern city outside his window and realized that his original self had not come from the Cultivation World.
• He sensed that he was now an ordinary mortal, with none of his former cultivation or strength.
• Chu Mu recalled his years living in a rental room in an urban village and stepped into the corridor.
• Xia Jie asked Chu Mu to replace her broken ceiling light, and he followed her into her room.
• After finishing the repair, Chu Mu used simple hand gestures to cloud Xia Jie's mind, leaving her standing eerily still.

Chu Mu questioned Xia Jie in the mind-evolved world and confirmed that it recreated the day before his former self transmigrated. After leaving her behind, he considered how the scorpion soul’s filth would erode a world without cultivation or spiritual energy, and wondered where Heaven’s Evolution would begin.

• Chu Mu questioned Xia Jie, examined her phone, and learned that she had seen him only three times recently, with him working late each day.
• Chu Mu realized the mind world recreated his former life on the day before he transmigrated and that his true spirit remained clear because of a wisp of Spiritual Radiance.
• Chu Mu told Xia Jie she would forget what had happened, then left the residential building and observed the ordinary bustle of the urban village.
• Chu Mu recognized that the scorpion soul’s erosion had already begun and considered how it might destroy a world without transcendent power.
• Chu Mu reflected that Heaven’s Evolution might adapt to the magicless world and wondered where its erosion would begin.

Chu Mu tested how cultivation worked in the demonless mental world and realized that techniques could draw on bodies and souls when no spiritual energy was available. He refined mortal jade with blood-red crystals into crimson command talismans, bringing powers foreign to this world into existence.

• Chu Mu sensed a faint strand of Essence, Qi, and Spirit in his body and opened his nearly dried-up Sea of Consciousness.
• Chu Mu found that techniques could function without spiritual energy by consuming his own Essence, Qi, and Spirit, and he considered how Heretical Cultivator methods could bring calamity to the world.
• Chu Mu devised a plan to build an intelligence network and gather loyal people to detect and respond to anomalies from the mental corruption.
• Chu Mu returned from a nighttime trip with mundane jade and blood-red crystals made by refining the bodies and souls of people he had killed.
• Chu Mu strained for days to refine the materials, producing crimson crystalline jade talismans that made powers foreign to this world real.

Chu Mu completed a talisman that let him use Blood Qi Beads to power nine arts, including mind control and concealment, then used it to seize the city’s wealth and power. With ninety-nine Thought Imprints in place, he waited for someone to reveal themselves.

• Chu Mu fused the nine Truth Talismans into an artifact and explained how its blood-refinement art let Blood Qi Beads power it.
• Chu Mu used a mind-bewitching art on Xia Jie, making her forget his unusual absence, then concealed his traces and left at night.
• Chu Mu targeted the city’s luxury villas and provincial government, planting Thought Imprints among the people who wielded wealth and power.
• Seven days later, officials and dignitaries gathered at a lakeside manor, where Chu Mu gave Wang Yue a Truth Talisman and ordered him to report anything unusual.
• Chu Mu revealed that ninety-nine Thought Imprints had brought the metropolis’s upper ranks under his control, then waited for someone to show themselves.

After months of extending his global information net, Chu Mu concluded that the spiritless world restricted the Heavenly Evolution Turbidity to the Demonic and Heretical Paths. He awaited its arrival, and the chapter ended when Wang Yue reported a suspected supernatural anomaly in C City.

• Chu Mu’s net brought the world’s leaders and resources under his control, spreading surveillance and order worldwide.
• Chu Mu studied ancient texts and concluded that without spiritual energy, the human body could not support a transforming soul.
• Chu Mu reflected on the deaths of past practitioners and recognized the danger of developing Essence, Qi, or Spirit without the others.
• Chu Mu reasoned that the spiritless world would limit the Heavenly Evolution Turbidity’s possible forms and prepared for it to emerge.
• Wang Yue and several men entered and reported to Chu Mu that an anomaly in C City was suspected to involve evil spirits and ghosts.

Wuji Village’s villagers sacrificed a lost hiker to the Mountain Lord, and the village was slaughtered overnight. After drones discovered the massacre, Chu Mu concluded that a Ghoul or Monster had likely caused it and prepared to respond.

• Wuji Village’s villagers blamed their failing harvests on angering the Mountain Lord and sacrificed a lost girl during the Double Ninth Festival ceremony.
• The girl was killed and left inside the sealed temple for three days as an offering to the Mountain Lord.
• That night, the temple doors opened, the girl’s corpse vanished, and the Mountain Lord statue appeared to look at the two guards with bloodlust.
• Drones found Wuji Village silent at dawn, with heaps of dismembered bodies in the village threshing ground.
• Wang Yue reported the discovery and the rapid response deployment to Chu Mu, who suspected a Ghoul or Monster had fed on the villagers’ despair, hatred, or pain.

Chu Mu arrived at Wuji Village and confirmed that the flesh mountains were formed from energies resembling those of heretical ghouls. He reviewed the measures organized to contain the threat, while considering how to recover his own fighting strength without relying on demonic methods.

• Chu Mu prepared special bullets infused with blood qi and the power of the true words to help human society fight heretical ghouls.
• Chu Mu saw that the Light Screen Panel showed only his meager cultivation progress, and considered rebuilding his blade intent despite his weakened body and spirit.
• Chu Mu examined the flesh mountains at Wuji Village and concluded that their blood qi and Resentment Qi had produced heretical ghouls.
• Chu Mu asked Wang Yue about the worldwide response, and Wang Yue reported that the handbook, patrols, crematorium renovations, detection equipment, and emergency divisions were being put in place.
• Wang Yue reported that emergency divisions had reached 3.82 million personnel, but supplies for expelling heretical ghouls remained scarce as death-row inmates and criminals dwindled.

Chu Mu discovered that Three Ridges Mountain’s isolated villages could nurture evil entities and ghosts, so he ordered the mountain sealed and prepared Plan Number One to destroy the threat with overwhelming force. He believed the newly emerged Heavenly Evolution Turbidity could still be stopped while his emergency response system commanded the strength of the technological world.

• Chu Mu told Wang Yue that social order and Plan Number One were priorities, and warned that another source of disaster existed beyond evil entities and ghosts.
• Chu Mu learned that more than four hundred settlements and nearly a hundred thousand people remained in Three Ridges Mountain, including Wuji Village.
• Chu Mu concluded that Three Ridges Mountain’s sacrifices, blood vitality, and negative emotions made it a natural breeding ground for evil entities and ghosts.
• Chu Mu ordered Roof Ridge Mountain sealed within half a day and forbade contact between the blockade forces and anyone or anything in the mountains.
• Wang Yue reported that aviation units, artillery battalions, and a missile battalion were preparing to carry out Plan Number One.
• Chu Mu reasoned that the Heavenly Evolution Turbidity had only just begun to grow and could be crushed through carpet-bombing with evil-dispelling methods.

Chu Mu deployed a massive technological blockade around the Three Ridges Mountain Range and began Plan One, using treated mist to reveal ghosts and evil entities for aerial and ground strikes. The mist began exposing targets, and the command center received its first anomaly reports.

• Over a hundred thousand armed forces sealed off the Three Ridges Mountain Range while drones surveilled the area.
• Wang Yue reported that the blockade was established and all units were ready, and Chu Mu ordered the forces to proceed according to plan.
• Fighter jets and bombers launched with blood-treated missiles and specially prepared Pseudo Spiritual Water.
• Bombers spread the mist across the mountain range to make ghosts and evil entities visible to surveillance.
• The command center received reports of anomalous white detections at multiple coordinates.

Chu Mu and Wang Yue’s forces used dyed surveillance and relentless bombardment to destroy dozens of ghosts and evil entities across Three Ridges Mountain Range, but the hidden source remained undiscovered. Realizing settlements could be hiding the ghost mother body, Chu Mu ordered one entity captured alive and went to face a weakened tentacled monster.

• Wang Yue ordered a massive barrage against a dye-revealed ghost above a ruined temple, and the ghost was destroyed before troops collected its remains.
• The forces expanded the blockade and spread dye across Three Ridges Mountain Range, killing dozens of newly revealed entities while the command center searched for their unseen source.
• Chu Mu studied the entities’ remains and concluded that Heavenly Evolution Turbidity’s hidden source, rather than the individual ghosts and monsters, was the true threat.
• Chu Mu identified villages and towns as possible hiding places for the source, but rejected a mass attack because the deaths and resulting negative emotions could strengthen it.
• Chu Mu ordered the forces to leave one entity alive for him to capture and learned that the search for Wangcai had found no matching dog.
• Chu Mu flew to a forest where a dye-revealed tentacled monster was being weakened by bombardment, preparing for a live capture.

Chu Mu and the Exorcism Armed Forces captured a tentacled evil entity and bound it in a blood cocoon, but it self-destructed during transport. Chu Mu survived the blast and identified the hidden presence’s location as Xishan County, three hundred li to the southwest.

• Chu Mu ordered the Exorcism Armed Forces to suppress the tentacled evil entity with crimson blood threads, missiles, and exorcism tools.
• The forces bound the weakened entity in a blood cocoon, and Chu Mu ordered it taken to the Soul Suppression Cave.
• As the helicopter carried the cocoon toward camp, Chu Mu’s Divine Soul Blade surged, warning him that the cocoon was about to rupture.
• The evil entity self-destructed, destroying the helicopters and killing the armed personnel while its blast swept death through the jungle.
• Chu Mu survived behind a pure radiance, became completely white-haired, and located the hidden presence in Xishan County, three hundred li to the southwest.

As Xishan County was sealed off to contain the Source Ghoul, Chu Mu confronted the worsening toll of his returning Blade Intent and realized he had only a month to find a source of energy. He ordered the forces to maintain surveillance and expand the blockade rather than risk entering the town.

• Hundreds of helicopters, drones, bombers, and fighter jets helped establish a cordon around Xishan County, while the command center waited for Chu Mu's decision.
• Chu Mu woke from meditation frail and aged, recognizing that his Blade Intent and Divine Soul Blade were draining him in a world without enough energy to replenish him.
• Chu Mu concluded that he would die within a month unless he found a solution to his energy problem.
• Wang Yue brought Chu Mu medicinal materials more than a hundred years old and asked whether the next stage of operations should begin.
• Chu Mu ordered the forces to strengthen the blockade and search while monitoring Xishan County, reasoning that the intelligent Source Ghoul would remain hidden and that entering the town could give it an advantage.

Chu Mu examined a cache of aged medicinal herbs and realized that, without spiritual qi, they could only provide limited help and would be difficult to replace. With no better option, he refined them into pills and began using them to restore his depleted body.

• Wang Yue bowed to Chu Mu and left the room.
• Chu Mu opened the chest and found 163 medicinal herbs, each more than a hundred years old.
• Chu Mu concluded that the herbs lacked the spirituality needed to match medicinal herbs from the Cultivation World, making them an inefficient and scarce source of energy.
• Chu Mu assessed the herbs’ properties and devised a plan to use them despite their limitations.
• Over several days, Chu Mu refined the herbs into pills and swallowed them to replenish his dried-up blood and qi.