Chapter Summaries

Chu Mu heard how the Demon Calamity had devastated the Yan Yun Mountain Range while the Longevity Sect failed to send reinforcements. After Gong Shan Hong revealed his findings about captured demons, Chu Mu entered the forest prison in Yan Shan City to investigate them.

• Gong Shan Hong reported that demons had attacked the Yan Yun Eighteen Cities and sixty-eight camps ten days earlier, leaving only three cities and six camps under Longevity Sect control.
• Gong Shan Hong explained that the sect’s remaining forces had held out with help from two itinerant Golden Core cultivators, while several elders had transformed or died.
• Gong Shan Hong told Chu Mu that he had captured demons and discovered that their bloodlust could erode the minds of those who fought them.
• Chu Mu flew with Gong Shan Hong to Yan Shan City and followed him to the formation-protected forest where the demons were imprisoned.
• Gong Shan Hong opened a passage into the forest, and Chu Mu entered as the captured demons roared and released a powerful bloody stench.

Chu Mu examined demons that had been transformed from captured cultivators and concluded they were a new species created through Heavenly Evolution, combining Monster Beast, True Demon, and human bloodlines. He learned that three Golden Core demons were directing attacks near Chongxiao City and Xifeng Stronghold, while the threat of demons hiding among other beings remained unresolved.

• Chu Mu inspected a cage of savage, unintelligent demons and learned from Gong Shan Hong that captured cultivators transformed into such creatures after a day or two.
• Chu Mu reasoned that intelligent first-generation demons created and controlled unintelligent second-generation demons, which could grow by devouring living beings.
• Chu Mu examined and killed a demon, recording his findings in a Jade Slip and concluding that demons were a new hybrid species formed through Heavenly Evolution.
• Chu Mu considered whether humans, Monster Beasts, and True Demons could all become demons, and worried that demons might conceal themselves by returning to their original forms.
• Chu Mu asked Gong Shan Hong about three Golden Core demons, and Gong Shan Hong reported that they watched over Chongxiao City and Xifeng Stronghold while their forces hunted cultivators.

Chu Mu organized the defense of the Yan Yun Mountain Range and learned from the Longevity Sect Master that the sect was safe and the crisis there was under control. The sect elevated Chu Mu to Grand Elder and entrusted him with command of Yan Yun.

• Chu Mu ordered Gong Shan Hong to coordinate the effort to draw out three Third Order Demons, which Chu Mu would suppress himself.
• Chu Mu surveyed the demon-infested Yan Yun Mountain Range and saw that most cities and camps had lost contact while a few defenders held the central region.
• Chu Mu's True Inheritance Token activated and restored his authorities after he entered the sect's network coverage.
• The Longevity Sect Master told Chu Mu the sect was safe and the situation had been brought under control.
• The Longevity Sect Master elevated Chu Mu's authority to Grand Elder and placed all Yan Yun authorities and disciples under his command.

Chu Mu gained control of the Longevity Sect’s authority network across the Yan Mountain Range and used it to assess the Demon Calamity. He discovered that demons had avoided the sect’s protected cities and camps while encircling the surviving Longevity Sect forces, and he began examining the scale of the threat.

• Chu Mu took control of the Longevity Sect’s authority network and brought the Yan Mountain Range within his perception.
• Chu Mu viewed projections showing Spirit Cities left empty while demons moved outside them, avoiding the sect’s cities, camps, and formations.
• Chu Mu realized that controlling the authority network could give its holder influence over the Great Chu Cultivation Realm and its cultivators.
• Chu Mu identified places where demons had destroyed the sect’s arrangements and established strongholds, including Chongxiao City and Xifeng Stronghold.
• Chu Mu saw that the demons had nearly encircled the Longevity Sect disciples in Yan Yun and cut off potential aid, leaving them at risk of being wiped out.

Chu Mu learned how the Longevity Sect had discovered a way to identify demons and how its attempt to purge them triggered a Demon Calamity across the Southern Sky Cultivation World. Watching the demons gather against the Longevity Sect’s forces near Chongxiao City, he sent a voice transmission to the Golden Core Direct Disciples, preparing to test the enemy.

• Chu Mu read the True Inheritance Token’s records and learned that the Longevity Sect Master had identified demons by studying a captured Fourth Order Demon Outside the World.
• Chu Mu learned that the Longevity Sect’s purge had been detected by Heaven’s Evolution and triggered a Demon Calamity throughout the Southern Sky Cultivation World.
• Chu Mu considered how the demon-identifying method could not be widely reproduced and how demons could remain hidden among humans.
• Chu Mu reached the ruined Chongxiao City and watched demons slaughter fleeing cultivators across the Yan Yun Mountain Range.
• The Longevity Sect assembled its disciples and rogue cultivators for battle, and three Golden Core demons in Longevity Robes led the opposing forces.
• Chu Mu found no sign of a Fourth Order Demon and sent a voice transmission to the Golden Core Direct Disciples in Yan Shan City.

The Longevity Sect forces turned the battle against the Demons into a one-sided slaughter after reinforcements arrived. Chu Mu then freed the Thread-drawing Saint Spirit Gu and grew suspicious of its ties to the Demons, leaving the Gu’s true purpose unresolved.

• The Longevity Sect cultivators fought the Demons in the mountains, but their Golden Core fighters were quickly pressured by three Third Order Demons.
• At Chu Mu’s command, Golden Core personal disciples arrived from Yan Shan City and helped the Longevity Sect overwhelm the Demons.
• Chu Mu noticed his sealed Thread-drawing Saint Spirit Gu buzzing inside his Qiankun Pouch and released it from its restriction box.
• The Gu responded to Chu Mu’s thoughts and showed an urgent attraction to an unknown presence beyond him.
• Chu Mu reconsidered the Gu’s origins, noting that Yan Ming, the Heaven’s Secrets Lineage, and the Wang Family Old Ancestor were all connected to Demons.

Chu Mu destroyed the Thread-drawing Saint Spirit Gu, then realized he had missed the chance to absorb the origin of the collapsing Longevity Secret Realm into his Qiankun Small Heaven and Earth. As the battle turned decisively against the demons, he awakened the Longevity Sect’s vast authority system to exterminate them, but recognized that the ancient installations could not endure without enough power and people to maintain them.

• Chu Mu burned the Thread-drawing Saint Spirit Gu to ashes and resealed them in the restriction box.
• Chu Mu sensed Wangcai’s rapidly growing bloodline and realized it could soon reach the Fourth Order, then regretted missing the chance to collect the Longevity Secret Realm’s scattered Small Heaven and Earth origin.
• Chu Mu surveyed the battlefield, where intelligent demons had retreated and the remaining low-level demons were being slaughtered.
• Chu Mu released a tide of spiritual energy and activated the Longevity Sect’s arrays, restrictions, puppets, and spirit energy weapons with the command to kill all demons.
• Chu Mu recognized that the Longevity Sect’s authority system could control much of the Great Chu Cultivation Realm, but worried that its installations would fail without disciples to maintain them.

Chu Mu used the True Inheritance Token to suppress the fleeing Third Order Demons and coordinate the slaughter across the Yan Yun Mountain Range, then tested Soul Searching on captured Demons and found their minds were destroyed by a mysterious countermeasure. He sent Chen Hong to investigate the Star Luo Grassland with an Armored Soldier Puppet, while remaining unsure whether the sect’s agents there were truly human.

• Chu Mu suppressed three fleeing Third Order Demons and used the Yan Yun Mountain Range’s authority to direct the sect’s arrangements against the Demons.
• Chu Mu gathered twelve Demons from ten bloodlines and found that Soul Searching triggered a countermeasure that erased the minds of two Second Order Demons.
• Chu Mu reflected on the reach of the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast before taking the captured Demons into Yan Shan City.
• Chu Mu gave Chen Hong Demon intelligence and the sect’s grassland network information, then assigned him to investigate the Star Luo Grassland and its bordering tribes.
• Chu Mu lent Chen Hong a Third Order High Grade Armored Soldier Puppet for protection, then wondered whether the sect’s covert agents on the grasslands were human or Demons in disguise.

Chu Mu reviewed the damage and remaining demons in the Yan Yun Mountain Range, restored the authorities of eleven Golden Core direct disciples, and traveled to Ji Province City. He found the city reclaimed and its immense defenses and detection network operating at full power.

• Chu Mu studied records and live data on the Yan Yun Mountain Range, estimating that about a million demons remained and that most local cultivators had been overwhelmed.
• Chu Mu restored the authorities of eleven Golden Core direct disciples but withheld authority from lower-tier disciples until he could determine whether demons remained among them.
• Chu Mu left for Ji Province City after considering the risk of higher-order demons and the limitations of the disciples available to fight.
• Chu Mu approached Ji Province City and saw its fully activated fourth-order City Protection Array and automated defenses attacking demons.
• Chu Mu observed the city’s coiling-dragon pillar, Reconnaissance Puppets, and surveillance formations operating as a vast detection and targeting network.

Chu Mu entered Ji Province City and used the True Inheritance Token to open the Bearing Transport Treasury, which had served as the private vault of Yan Yun’s former ruling Grand Elder. The treasury held the accumulated wealth of eight hundred years, and Chu Mu now held uncontested authority over the mountain range.

• Chu Mu arrived at Ji Province City, where the puppets recognized his True Inheritance Token and welcomed him as Supreme Elder.
• He surveyed the deserted city and used the City Protection Array to teleport from the North City Gate to the Garrison Manor.
• Chu Mu entered the government hall and used his True Inheritance Token to open a Spatial Portal to the Ji Province Treasury.
• He recalled how Yan Yun’s transport system had functioned as a private interest network dominated by its two Nascent Soul Supreme Elders.
• Chu Mu reviewed records showing that a Grand Elder had ruled Yan Yun for over eight hundred years and turned it into half a family territory.
• With the old power structure gone after the Demon Calamity, Chu Mu looked toward the treasury with anticipation.

Chu Mu explored the Inheritance Treasure Repository after the True Inheritance Token granted him control of it. He reached the Fourth Order region, where a few guarded shelves and old wooden boxes awaited him.

• Chu Mu used the True Inheritance Token’s Supreme Elder authority to take control of the repository, which formed the core of the Eight Trigrams Grand Formation.
• Chu Mu surveyed the vast First Order region, filled with shelves and spatial crates of spiritual materials.
• Chu Mu inspected the Third Order region and found crates holding hundreds of thousands of jin of Flame Cloud Stones apiece.
• Chu Mu reflected that powerful factions controlled the Cultivation World’s resources, then restored the crate’s restrictions.
• Chu Mu crossed into the Fourth Order region and saw emerald-shrouded shelves and more than a dozen old wooden boxes.

Chu Mu examined the treasure repository’s spirit-herb boxes and spirit-material chests, then used a recording projection to investigate an empty wooden casket that Hong Yu had taken away before leaving for the Longevity Sect. The recording revealed the casket’s arrival decades earlier and showed Hong Yu opening it, but the chapter ended before Chu Mu saw what it had contained.

• Chu Mu inspected fifty-six Spirit Accumulating Jade boxes and identified numerous rare, millennium-old Spirit Herbs, including Ice Soul Cold Sword Grass and Crimson Root.
• Chu Mu examined hundreds of Forbidden Spiritwood chests, discovering stores of spiritual materials and several dozen chests filled with High-Grade Spirit Stones.
• Chu Mu found an empty wooden casket with a long-dimmed seal and projected recordings of events in the treasure repository.
• Chu Mu saw that Hong Yu had taken the casket three months earlier, shortly before departing for the Longevity Sect.
• Chu Mu rewound the recordings further and watched Hong Tianfeng deliver the casket decades earlier, then saw Hong Yu open it days later as the recording revealed its contents.

Chu Mu discovered that Hong Yu’s recording showed a Top-Grade Spirit Stone, a legendary treasure capable of sustaining a cultivator even in the Chaotic Void. He recognized the danger of possessing such a stone and continued examining the vault, where he found abundant High-Grade Spirit Stones and fourth-rank materials.

• Chu Mu enlarged the recording image and identified the glow in Hong Yu’s wooden box as a Top-Grade Spirit Stone.
• Chu Mu recalled that Top-Grade Spirit Stones came from the Upper Realm and could sustain themselves by drawing on the energy of the Chaotic Void.
• Chu Mu remembered how the eighth-generation Longevity Sect Master’s departure with a Top-Grade Spirit Stone triggered a succession struggle that contributed to the sect’s later catastrophe.
• Chu Mu fixed Hong Yu’s face and Divine Soul Aura in his memory, then dismissed the recording.
• Chu Mu surveyed the vault’s High-Grade Spirit Stones and fourth-rank materials and reflected on how mining depleted resources faster than nature could replenish them.

A year into the Doomsday Skyfall calamity, the Longevity Sect had retreated to the Northern Border while Chu Mu rebuilt order in Yan Yun with extensive surveillance and battle puppets. As Lie Yan delivered newly made components, Chu Mu ordered the Immortal Skills Division to stop refining puppets, having completed a large force of Demon Suppression Guardians and Generals under his control.

• The Demon Calamity devastated the Southern Sky Cultivation World, while the Longevity Sect retreated into the Northern Border and Yan Yun became a refuge where order was gradually restored.
• Chu Mu established a strict surveillance system across Yan Yun, using battle puppets and linked facilities to monitor cultivators and suppress suspected demons.
• Lie Yan entered the forest behind the Garrison Manor and delivered storage tokens containing puppet components to Chu Mu.
• Chu Mu ordered the Immortal Skills Division to temporarily cease puppet refinement, and Lie Yan obeyed before leaving.
• Chu Mu examined the components of the Demon Suppression Guardians and Generals, which he had assembled to strengthen Yan Yun and create a puppet force entirely under his control.

Chu Mu inspected the two-thousand-puppet Suppressing Demon Army and watched a recording of Xu Yuan escaping the Demon Calamity through an ancient teleportation array. The exhausted Longevity Sect Master arrived in Yan Yun and led Chu Mu through a rift in space, saying he needed Chu Mu’s help.

• Chu Mu reviewed his two thousand Second and Third Order puppets and reflected on the incomplete army’s potential and limits.
• Chu Mu watched Xu Yuan’s recorded message, then saw that Xu Yuan had escaped the demons by entering the ancient Teleportation Array in the Endless Desert Sea.
• Chu Mu considered Great Heng’s possible role in helping the Longevity Sect identify demons.
• Chu Mu sensed an arrival beyond Yan Yun’s monitoring system and flew through the storm to meet the Longevity Sect Master.
• The Longevity Sect Master said he needed Chu Mu’s help, opened a rift in space, and guided Chu Mu through it.

Chu Mu examined the demon-identifying sculpture the Longevity Sect Master had brought to Yan Yun and learned that it held a strand of the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast's Divine Soul Aura. The chapter revealed how Xu Lingtian's failed attack on Xuan Cheng led to that aura being extracted and used to establish a vast demon-monitoring network.

• Chu Mu returned to his Cave Abode, passed its defenses, and settled inside to regulate his thoughts.
• Chu Mu tried to pierce the mist surrounding the wooden sculpture with his Divine Sense and Blade Intent, but the effort wounded him and ended in failure.
• Chu Mu recalled that the Longevity Sect Master had said the sculpture's shell came from a Fourth Order Demon and its demon-detecting power came from the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast's Divine Soul Aura.
• The Longevity Sect Master's plan to destroy Xu Lingtian's Other Self and kill Xuan Cheng went awry when Xu Lingtian's Other Self mutated and Xuan Cheng escaped.
• The Longevity Sect Master studied a severed portion of Xuan Cheng's Demon Body and extracted a strand of the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast's Divine Soul Aura.
• The Longevity Sect Master divided the aura among the Longevity Mountain Gate, the Frontline Battlefield, and the Yan Yun Mountain Range to create a monitoring network spanning several million miles.

Chu Mu transformed Ji Province City’s Coiling Dragon Stone Pillar into a Heaven’s Evolution demon detector and linked it to Yan Yun’s order system. Once it exposed demons hiding among humans, he commanded the mountain range’s defenses to begin slaughtering them.

• Chu Mu realized the Wang Family Old Ancestor’s Demon Body might conceal another mystery of Heaven’s Evolution, then used the Grand Elder Token to study the locations of its traces across the Northern Border.
• Chu Mu chose Ji Province City and spent three days altering its Coiling Dragon Stone Pillar so it could merge with the wooden carving and detect demons.
• Chu Mu merged the carving with the pillar, suppressed the unleashed demon phantoms, and activated its detection ripple across Yan Yun.
• Chu Mu saw black markers identify demons and white markers identify registered cultivators and Longevity Sect disciples, with overlapping markers revealing demons in disguise.
• Chu Mu issued the command to slay demons, and Yan Yun’s arrays and battle puppets began killing marked demons as they shed their human forms and fought back.

Chu Mu oversaw the purge of demons across Yan Yun and restored the Longevity Sect’s order system after the threat of hidden demons had been brought under control. In his cave, he discovered a wisp of World Origin among his spoils and weighed using it to advance his Qiankun World or his Nine Dragons Suppressing Prison Tower, leaving it stored away while he examined the rest of his acquisitions.

• Chu Mu monitored the demons being exterminated throughout Yan Yun and noted that none of the high-level demons had appeared.
• Chu Mu restored the permissions of the Longevity Sect disciples’ tokens, returning the Yan Yun Mountain Range’s order framework to full operation.
• Chu Mu stood down the Suppressing Demon Battle Puppets after the demon suppression proceeded more smoothly than expected.
• Chu Mu examined the spiritual items from the Ji Province Treasury and the storage artifacts taken from the Longevity Sect Master and two demons.
• Chu Mu discovered a wisp of World Origin in the Longevity Sect Master’s Storage Talisman and concluded that his Qiankun World had the greater need for it.
• Chu Mu stored the Jade Bottle and inspected the demons’ collections, finding fewer than twenty types of fourth-rank spiritual items.

Chu Mu used the superior-grade Shou Shan Purple Copper Furnace and fourth-grade spiritual materials to devise and refine a new Azure Cloud Pill formula. He secured ninety-eight pills, including eighteen patterned pills, giving him a substantial supply for cultivation.

• Chu Mu claimed the Shou Shan Purple Copper Furnace, a superior-grade spiritual treasure taken from a mid-stage Nascent Soul demon.
• Chu Mu examined pill formulas and spiritual materials from the Dao Cauldron Vein and the Immortal Path Sect.
• Chu Mu spent nearly a month adapting the Azure Cloud Pill formula to his fire-attribute Immortal Dao and available materials.
• Chu Mu refined nine batches of Azure Cloud Pills over several months without a single failure.
• Chu Mu obtained ninety-eight Azure Cloud Pills, including eighteen patterned pills and two flawless pills with Three Pill Pattern.

Chu Mu speculated that the Heavenly Evolution Sacred Beast could influence the world but was constrained by its limits. In the Qiankun World, he learned Wangcai had reached the Third Order Limit and needed high-order Blood Food to advance, then tested whether it could devour demons.

• Chu Mu examined the sealed World Origin and reasoned that Heavenly Evolution could influence the Cultivation World without fully controlling it.
• Chu Mu entered the Qiankun World and noticed Wangcai’s cultivation had reached the Third Order Limit.
• Wangcai told Chu Mu it needed high-order Blood Food to break through to the fourth order.
• Wangcai explained that demons could also serve as food, and Chu Mu released the demonic body that had evolved from the Wang Family Old Ancestor.
• Wangcai used its Devouring Divine Ability to swallow the demonic body whole.