Chapter Summaries

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying arrived at Lingze County and discovered that its magistrate had arranged a large ambush for Jiang Qiao. Mo Qingying recognized the soldiers as the magistrate’s private troops, while the chapter detailed the corruption and weakness of Great Qi’s local military forces.

• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying reached the closed gates of Lingze County, where Jiang Qiao joked that the locals were inhospitable.
• Mo Qingying sensed five hundred armed soldiers hidden around them and realized the ambush was likely aimed at Jiang Qiao.
• Mo Qingying concluded the soldiers were private troops deployed by the County Magistrate, not legitimate government forces.
• The chapter explained how officials and aristocratic families inflated troop numbers and siphoned military funds while local county soldiers grew undisciplined and ineffective.
• The account contrasted the weak county soldiers with the elite Armored Warriors maintained by the old aristocratic families in the Capital City.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying were ambushed outside the city by County Magistrate Meng Sheng’s forces, who attacked with poisoned crossbow bolts. As the attack unfolded, Meng Sheng and his men watched from the city tower, confident their preparations would capture the pair.

• Long Fei reported that Jiang Qiao was approaching with Mo Qingying, whose ability to float suggested she had reached Spirit Condensation.
• Meng Sheng ordered Long Fei and Tie Niu to deal with Mo Qingying while he and Old Wu captured Jiang Qiao.
• Hundreds of soldiers emerged along the road and fired poisoned crossbow bolts at Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying.
• Jiang Qiao recognized that the poison could damage a Sixth-Tier Awakened person's Ghost Domain and wondered about Great Qi's supernatural research.
• Meng Sheng and his companions watched the soldiers fire in rotating volleys, believing the crossbows would leave Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying no chance to escape.

Meng Sheng dismissed Old Wu’s concerns about Mo Qingying and planned to capture her while Jiang Qiao endured the crossbow barrage. A sudden feminine voice unleashed a devastating storm over the county town and condemned them all to die.

• Old Wu warned Meng Sheng that Mo Qingying’s clothing suggested a powerful background, while Tie Niu hurriedly explained away his laughter.
• Meng Sheng reasoned that Mo Qingying might be from the Capital but insisted that he would only capture her and frighten her.
• Meng Sheng mocked Jiang Qiao for enduring the crossbow bolts with Xiantian Aura, and Tie Niu flattered him while disparaging Mo Qingying.
• Long Fei reacted to Tie Niu’s flattery, but a thunderous feminine shout cut him off and shook everyone nearby.
• A violent storm engulfed the county town, and the unseen speaker declared that everyone there could go to hell.

A sudden supernatural storm devastated Lingze County after Mo Qingying unleashed her power against the soldiers and Meng Sheng’s group. Jiang Qiao explained his rebuke of Mo Qingying, while Meng Sheng and the survivors faced the destruction of their forces.

• A violent storm and earthquake struck Lingze County, scattering soldiers and trapping Tie Niu and Meng Sheng in the chaos.
• The city tower collapsed, and Long Fei was struck through the eye by a crossbow bolt before being killed by a barrage of bolts.
• Old Wu dragged Meng Sheng into a building and realized that the disaster came from Mo Qingying, whom he believed to be an Imperial Family expert; Meng Sheng despaired over the Meng Family’s fate.
• Jiang Qiao told Mo Qingying that he had scolded her because young men pursued revenge swiftly, while elderly people should cultivate their temperament.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying crushed Meng Sheng’s ambush in Lingze County, then heard Old Wu try to save himself by betraying the Meng, Bo, and Luo families. Mo Qingying already knew the secret of the Living Dead Legion and killed both men, leaving the county in silence.

• Mo Qingying asked Meng Sheng who ordered the ambush, and he claimed he had acted to avenge his son, whom Jiang Qiao remembered killing.
• Mo Qingying prepared to kill Meng Sheng and Old Wu, but Old Wu begged to report treason and accused Meng Sheng of crimes against the Imperial Court.
• Old Wu revealed that the Bo Family served the Luo Family and said the Luo Family was secretly building the Living Dead Legion.
• Mo Qingying named the Living Dead Legion before Old Wu could finish, then told him to think over the rest of his report after he died.
• Old Wu begged for his life, but Mo Qingying killed him and Meng Sheng.

Mo Qingying explained Luo Baishan’s secret plan to control Vicious Ghosts from the Void Realm and revealed that the Heavenly Humans had been watching his research. She proposed that she and Jiang Qiao explore the Outer Heaven together, then offered to help him advance to the Half-God realm if he agreed.

• Jiang Qiao asked Mo Qingying about Luo Baishan’s Living Dead Legion, and she explained that it consisted of Vicious Ghosts from the Void Realm.
• Mo Qingying revealed that Luo Baishan hoped to find and control a Heavenly Human Realm Vicious Ghost, while the Heavenly Humans allowed his research to continue.
• Mo Qingying described the layers of secrecy around Luo Baishan’s scheme and explained that other peak Innate experts were also searching the Void Realm for a way to advance.
• Mo Qingying proposed that she and Jiang Qiao travel to the Northern Pole Land to explore the Outer Heaven and investigate the Ancestor Emperor’s disappearance.
• Jiang Qiao questioned why he should cooperate with her, and Mo Qingying offered to pave the way for his advancement to the Half-God realm.

Jiang Qiao rejected Mo Qingying’s offer to help him become a Half-God through the Path of Incense and Fire, preferring to pursue his own path. Mo Qingying then urged him to investigate the Northern Pole Land, where unexplained graveyards and living inhabitants hinted at a mystery beyond their understanding.

• Jiang Qiao dismissed Mo Qingying’s claim that she could help him reach Half-God, noting that she was only at the peak of Eighth Tier.
• Mo Qingying explained that she could establish faith in Jiang Qiao among Great Qi’s ghosts and said her ancestors had perfected the Path of Incense and Fire’s flaws on Tongling Island.
• Jiang Qiao declined the offer because he disliked relying on believers and could not freely travel to places where his faith had not spread.
• Mo Qingying invited Jiang Qiao to the Northern Pole Land and described graveyards where people vanished and a peak-Xiantian powerhouse died after exploring an empty tomb.
• Mo Qingying added that witnesses had seen ordinary living people inside one of the graveyards.

Bo Yuan interpreted the deaths in Lingze County as an attack by the Capital City and hurried toward the Provincial Governor’s Office, while Mo Qingying explained the strange dangers of the far north to Jiang Qiao. She began recounting an unexplained incident in the Gobi from ten years earlier, leaving its details unfinished.

• Bo Yuan read reports that Meng Sheng, Old Wu, and hundreds of household soldiers had been killed, and concluded that an Innate Realm peak expert from outside Youzhou had attacked the Bo Family.
• Bo Yuan blamed the Capital City and ordered his horses saddled so he could go to the Provincial Governor’s Office.
• Mo Qingying told Jiang Qiao about strange apparitions and impostors that had lured Expedition Team members away in the far north.
• Mo Qingying described an Innate Realm expert whose corpse appeared near his old campsite a year after he vanished in the Gobi, then began to reveal that another strange event followed about ten years later.

Mo Qingying described the dangers of the lands beyond Great Qi, focusing on a Gobi desert where hallucinations and unexplained disappearances were common. She recounted a tale of four explorers who vanished from a cave, leaving the cause uncertain.

• Explorers faced severe dangers in the Gobi, where strange mental forces caused hallucinations and even Xiantian experts could disappear.
• A team found the corpse of an Innate Realm explorer near its original campsite, and travelers later reported seeing a figure wave there at night.
• A royal expedition camped near the site, where a Condensing Spirit Realm expert heard a story about phantom voices warning of a cave and seven travelers.
• The explorer who heard the voices warned his team, and their leader split the seven people between the cave and the camp outside.
• The next morning, the three people outside found the four who had slept in the cave gone, though rumors also claimed the three had killed them and invented the story.

Mo Qingying told Jiang Qiao about a shadow that appeared to be a long-dead Xiantian Expert, raising the possibility of a power that could affect the future Timeline. Jiang Qiao agreed to travel to the Far North to investigate, while at the Youzhou Governor’s Office, a mind-controlled Bo Ao demanded the Soul Gathering Mask from Luo Baishan.

• Mo Qingying recounted how a shadow attacked a group of explorers, lost half a blade when it was killed, and left clues matching a Xiantian Expert who had vanished six years earlier.
• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying discussed how the incident seemed to involve travel into the future rather than ordinary time reversal, and Jiang Qiao said he would visit the Far North to investigate.
• At the Youzhou Governor’s Office, Luo Baishan’s associate confronted Bo Ao for failing to report the events, but Luo Baishan recognized that Bo Ao’s mind was being controlled.
• Bo Ao insulted Luo Baishan and demanded that he hand over the Soul Gathering Mask, threatening to kill him if he refused.

Luo Baishan interrogated Bo Ao and searched his consciousness to learn who had altered it. He found a mysterious figure carrying a green horse lantern blocking the deeper memories, and the figure turned toward him as the lantern was about to go out.

• Luo Baishan seized Bo Ao and threatened to search his consciousness when Bo Ao refused to identify who was behind his actions.
• Luo Baishan invaded Bo Ao's memories and saw his journey from Yanjun to Qingzhou, his encounter with a Vicious Ghost, and his plan to steal a Martial Artist's Mental Power.
• Luo Baishan found that Bo Ao's memories became distorted when an unknown person arrived, indicating that someone had altered them.
• Luo Baishan recognized a motionless figure with a green horse lantern as a barrier separating Bo Ao's self-awareness from his behavioral consciousness.
• Luo Baishan forced his way against the barrier, but the figure abruptly turned around and a shrill scream rang through the Governor's Residence of Youzhou.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying went to the Yuzhou Governor's Manor, where Jiang Qiao took the Soul Gathering Mirror and left Luo Baishan and the manor’s staff in danger. The chapter ended with the steward becoming unnaturally stiff and silent after Jiang Qiao departed.

• Luo Baishan suffered intense pain after seeing the lantern-bearing figure, while his guards kept their distance.
• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying used the Ghost Domain to reach the Yuzhou Governor's Manor and demanded the Soul Gathering Mirror.
• Jiang Qiao found the bronze Soul Gathering Mirror with his Ghost Domain and took it from the manor.
• Jiang Qiao left with Mo Qingying as the steward recognized her from portraits in Luo Baishan's study and feared disaster.
• The steward found the servants and guards wearing mechanical smiles, then became numb and unable to call for help.
• A dozen seconds later, the steward stood at the doorway with a wooden, lifeless smile.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying traveled north from Youzhou into the grasslands, where he learned about the tribes’ strength and their history with Daqi. As they crossed the increasingly desolate borderlands, Jiang Qiao sensed that the world itself was abnormal.

• Jiang Qiao explained that Mental Plague spread through consciousness by hiding within ordinary negative emotions, and judged his test of it to be limited in power.
• Jiang Qiao told Mo Qingying that he considered people with human identities and personalities to be human, and explained that he had killed the Governor of Youzhou’s men after discovering the corpses used to summon the Living Dead Legion.
• Mo Qingying described the grassland tribes, their powerful leaders, and how the Ancestor Emperor had once exterminated experts of Sixth Tier and above there.
• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying traveled north through worsening terrain and violent weather, while Jiang Qiao occasionally glimpsed mysterious runes in the rain.
• Jiang Qiao looked through the clouds and concluded that the world had a problem, recalling the Abyss and the legends of Outer Heaven.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying crossed a cursed cemetery that Great Qi could safely explore, then reached a desert with vast unnatural tunnels beneath it. Jiang Qiao sensed interference deep underground and concluded that something of Ninth-Rank strength was hidden below, but he continued toward the Arctic for now.

• Mo Qingying explained that the cemetery held eighteen hundred graveyards and varied curses, while Jiang Qiao found its strongest dangers posed no threat to them.
• Jiang Qiao identified several graves whose Eighth-Tier curses could transport victims across great distances, and Mo Qingying thanked him for resolving Great Qi’s concerns about the cemetery.
• Jiang Qiao saw countless tunnels beneath the desert and asked Mo Qingying about them; she described Great Qi’s failed explorations and the maze-like caves.
• Jiang Qiao decided not to investigate the tunnels yet, but sensed resistance deep below and inferred that something at Ninth-Rank strength lay underground.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying reached the Icefield and waited at its border to let the wasteland’s aura dissipate. After entering its dead, ominous forest, Jiang Qiao sensed a mental influence throughout the area but could not locate its source.

• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying approached the Icefield, where Mo Qingying warned that entering directly from the wasteland could provoke attacks from local evil entities.
• Mo Qingying described the Icefield’s strange mountain apparitions, and Jiang Qiao watched figures on a distant peak that appeared to him as curse-like lines.
• Jiang Qiao relaxed at the border while Mo Qingying floated red cloth downriver to lure any nearby Vicious Ghosts; none appeared during their day of waiting.
• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying entered the Icefield and found a silent forest of dead, carbonized trees.
• Mo Qingying warned that evil entities haunted the forest, while Jiang Qiao detected a pervasive mental influence that could cause Negative Emotions but found no source.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying crossed the forest into an endless Icefield, where they found ominous yellow-paper warnings and signs that a group had been changed by something. Jiang Qiao told Mo Qingying a story about tomb robbers who saw their own faces in a tunnel, then asked her to guess what the faces were.

• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying found recently extinguished campfires in a clearing, though the flames had left no Supernatural Aura.
• They crossed the forest and reached a flat, treeless Icefield, where Jiang Qiao found a yellow paper warning them not to go because the others were no longer themselves.
• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying continued onward, finding more papers claiming the writer was still themself and that the others were not human.
• Jiang Qiao told Mo Qingying a story about two tomb robbers who saw two faces like their own at a tunnel exit.
• Jiang Qiao asked Mo Qingying what the two faces in the story had been.

Jiang Qiao rescued Mo Qingying after a Ninth Rank evil entity replaced her, then continued north with her across the Icefield toward the Abyss. They crossed dangerous mountains, where Jiang Qiao effortlessly killed the evil entities they encountered, leaving Mo Qingying convinced his strength exceeded that of an ordinary Ninth Rank.

• Jiang Qiao struck Mo Qingying, exposed the Ninth Rank evil entity that had replaced her, and destroyed it with a talisman formed from eighteen Runes.
• Jiang Qiao found the unconscious Mo Qingying and explained the replacement; she thanked him and described Great Qi’s limited knowledge of the Icefield.
• Jiang Qiao discussed Great Qi’s weak combat methods and its Vicious Ghost transformation, telling Mo Qingying that her people’s path still had potential.
• Mo Qingying guided Jiang Qiao north toward the single bridge over the Abyss, and they crossed the mountain range together.
• Jiang Qiao killed several evil entities with ease, including a Weird Corpse hidden inside a mountain peak, and Mo Qingying realized he was stronger than an ordinary Ninth Rank.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying crossed a frozen lake in the far north, where Mo Qingying recounted the Ancestor Emperor’s strange and dangerous explorations beneath its surface. The lake’s unknown watcher left Jiang Qiao wary as he began to suspect what the Ancestor Emperor had encountered.

• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying reached an enormous black lake whose frozen surface was surrounded by an ancient, oppressive aura.
• Mo Qingying explained that the Ancestor Emperor had explored beneath the lake but never reached its unfathomable bottom, where he saw submerged civilization remains.
• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying stepped onto the ice and began crossing it, while Jiang Qiao tested its unusual strength.
• Mo Qingying described the ancient corpses and mutated creatures beneath the lake, along with something that seemed to watch the Ancestor Emperor.
• Jiang Qiao asked what the watcher was, and Mo Qingying recalled the Ancestor Emperor’s note that it was not advisable to investigate.
• Mo Qingying revealed that the Ancestor Emperor had been just short of becoming a Half-God during his first northern expedition, and Jiang Qiao began forming a conjecture.

Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying crossed the ice lake, where Jiang Qiao discovered that apparent withered leaves concealed the footprints of thousands of powerful Ghost Slaves. When the illusion vanished and the figures turned on them, Mo Qingying found herself helpless and saw Jiang Qiao disappear just before his furious shout rang out beside her.

• Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying avoided a strange fish beneath the ice and continued across the lake, limiting their use of the Ghost Domain to avoid stirring whatever lay below.
• Jiang Qiao saw that the withered leaves covering the ice were actually blood-colored footprints beneath tall, painted figures, which he identified as Ghost Slaves.
• Jiang Qiao told Mo Qingying to follow his steps and entered the footprint-covered area, causing the illusion across the lake to break.
• Thousands of figures turned toward Jiang Qiao and Mo Qingying as a terrifying supernatural aura and black mist spread across the ice.
• Mo Qingying became unable to move and saw Jiang Qiao disappear, then heard him shout, “Die, damn you!”

Jiang Qiao fought through the evil spirits and strange corpses on the frozen lake, using his Evil Spirit Body and Ninth Rank Thunder Art to overcome their curses and attacks. After he cleared the lake, Mo Qingying sensed that he was close to becoming a Half-God.

• Jiang Qiao charged into the evil spirits and destroyed hundreds of them with his fists and Black Lightning, resisting their overlapping curses.
• A human leg bone, a hand bone, and three Wax Corpses emerged from beneath the ice and attacked Jiang Qiao from multiple directions.
• Jiang Qiao used Stalker to evade the initial attacks, then kicked one Wax Corpse away, knocked the hand bone into the water, and trapped the other two corpses with blood-red talismans.
• Jiang Qiao unleashed a lightning shield and fought across the frozen lake, rapidly reducing the number of evil spirits.
• The lightning shield vanished after the final peal of thunder, leaving the frozen lake empty except for Jiang Qiao and the distant Mo Qingying.
• Mo Qingying felt the power of Jiang Qiao's presence and judged that he was probably close to becoming a Half-God.