Chapter Summaries

After the Shugu Tribe’s attempted reform collapsed, Mo Hua encouraged Danzhu to persist through failure, and the group decided to return to the Danque Main Tribe amid the spreading Famine Disaster. Mo Hua’s divination then led him to discover that the Bifang Main Tribe had surrounded the route and prepared to ambush Danzhu’s force.

• Mo Hua reassured Danzhu after the Shugu Tribe rejected equality and unity, urging him to treat repeated failures as steps toward success.
• Mo Hua, Danzhu, and their companions chose to abandon the Shugu territory and return to the Danque Main Tribe for safety and time to prepare.
• Tie Shugu protested the withdrawal, while Danzhu’s enlarged force—including rescued Danque people, former Shugu soldiers, and Barbarian Slaves—set out east.
• Mo Hua used daily divinations to guide the group through dangers, but for three consecutive days he received a great ill omen.
• Mo Hua and Chi Feng investigated the route and found the Bifang Main Tribe’s elite soldiers, including at least ten Golden Core Barbarian Generals, waiting to ambush Danzhu.

Mo Hua decided that Danzhu could not safely return to the Danque Main Tribe and led him toward a Second-Grade mountain realm instead. After arriving in Wucha, Mo Hua found that the realm remained impoverished and oppressive despite his plans for its development.

• Mo Hua concluded that the Bifang Tribe’s blockade might lead to a wider catastrophe and considered how to protect Danzhu without exposing his Concealment Technique.
• While planning, Mo Hua remembered the Wutu Mountain Realm and worried that Little Zhatu, Elder Zhamu, and the children there might be suffering from the Famine Disaster.
• Mo Hua devised a plan to take Danzhu to a Second-Grade mountain realm, where Danzhu could be safer and build strength for a later return.
• Mo Hua claimed that the God Lord had warned them that forcing their way through the Bifang Tribe’s blockade would doom them, and directed Danzhu’s group southeast.
• After half a month of travel, Mo Hua brought Danzhu and his followers into the Wucha Mountain Realm, where he found hunger, neglected children, and oppressive rule under Wucha’s stone statues.

Mo Hua secretly entered the Wucha and Wutu Mountain Realms to see how his teachings had fared, then returned to the Wutu Tribe as its people faced threats from Wucha and Jiaoli’s followers. After revealing himself and summoning the two chieftains, he went to see the children he had taught and found them safe and still studying.

• Mo Hua left Danzhu’s group outside the Wucha Mountain Realm, passed through Wucha’s territory, and went to the Wutu Tribe to check on his students.
• At the Wutu Tribe, Elder Zhamu refused a Black Horn Tribe Barbarian General’s demand for newly forged Barbarian Armor, while a Wulu Tribe Barbarian General demanded that the Shaman’s students be taken to Wucha.
• The Wulu Tribe Barbarian General defeated the people who tried to stop him and reached for Little Zhatu, but Mo Hua appeared on the high seat and made the general kneel in terror.
• Mo Hua ordered the Black Horn and Wulu Barbarian Generals to bring Jiaoli and Wucha to him, then asked Little Zhatu to take him to the other children.
• Little Zhatu led Mo Hua to a hidden mountain cave where Elder Zhamu had sheltered the children, who were safe and continued studying and practicing Array Techniques.

Mo Hua confronted Wucha for defying his authority and claiming the Wucha Mountain Realm as his own. After defeating him, Mo Hua replaced him with the Red-Armored Barbarian General and sent the new Wucha to invite his guests, where he discovered a formidable force led by five Golden Core Cultivators.

• Mo Hua questioned Jiaoli and Wucha about their conduct, but Wucha initially refused to come and later claimed he deserved to rule the Wucha Mountain Realm.
• Mo Hua stripped Wucha of his titles, and Wucha challenged him, demanding that Mo Hua officially recognize him as the mountain master.
• Mo Hua struck Wucha with a Fireball and shattered his will with his terrifying gaze, forcing him to kneel and admit defeat.
• Mo Hua named the Red-Armored Barbarian General Wucha, and the new Wucha strangled the former Chieftain before presenting his head to Mo Hua.
• Mo Hua sent the new Wucha with a letter to invite his guests, and Wucha found five Golden Core Cultivators and a powerful force of barbarian soldiers in the valley.

Mo Hua welcomed Danzhu’s powerful force into the Wutu Tribe, then entered Wutu’s Deep Mountain to find out why its monster aura had grown fierce and where the Big Tiger had gone. He found the Big Tiger ruling a den of tigresses, including a Third-Grade Golden Core Suspended-Eye Fierce Tiger, and realized it had become their pampered companion.

• Wucha led Danzhu, five Golden Core Cultivators, and their soldiers to the Wutu Tribe, where they respectfully greeted Mo Hua and settled under his authority.
• After Wutu’s Deep Mountain was reported dangerous, Mo Hua went there alone and encountered a pack of fierce tigers that pursued him until the Big Tiger appeared and stopped them.
• The Big Tiger led Mo Hua into its expanded den, where a Third-Grade Golden Core Suspended-Eye Fierce Tiger restrained its hostility after the Big Tiger intervened.
• Mo Hua realized that the Big Tiger was the only male among the tigers in the den and watched it choose a fine piece of meat while the Third-Grade tigress indulgently backed down.

Mo Hua settled the Wutu Mountain Realm’s defenses and devoted himself to comprehending the Twenty-Three-Pattern Taotie Absolute Array. After repeatedly drawing its patterns, he entered a vision of famine, mass death, and a terrible figure born from the world’s hunger and resentment.

• Mo Hua roasted meat for Big Tiger, forgave its grudge with another meal, and decided to rename it Big Flower.
• Mo Hua left the Wutu Deep Mountain and warned Elder Zhamu that deadly monsters lived inside it, then ordered guards to watch for famine and gather intelligence on nearby tribes.
• Mo Hua advised Danzhu to focus on surviving and growing stronger, and arranged for Little Zhatu to serve as Danzhu’s attendant.
• Mo Hua resumed studying the Twenty-Three-Pattern Taotie Absolute Array and chose to master it through repeated drawing rather than speculation.
• After drawing the patterns relentlessly, Mo Hua entered a vision of famine victims becoming black array patterns and merging with heaven and earth.
• Mo Hua saw a terrifying figure emerge amid the black qi, driven by hunger and resentment to devour the world and return all life to chaos.

Mo Hua traced the Taotie’s law to the Great Famine and realized the Famine Aura spreading through the Great Wilderness might be Taotie power. He went to study the disaster at its front line and suspected someone was using an Array Technique to create it.

• Mo Hua resisted Taotie’s hunger after glimpsing its birth, then deduced that famine and the dead may have given rise to the law-bound beast.
• Mo Hua sensed unseen eyes watching him after studying the Gluttony Array, and the Dao Stele warned him of the danger.
• Unable to learn more from the Taotie Patterns alone, Mo Hua investigated legends of the Great Famine and connected the present Famine Aura to Taotie power.
• Mo Hua traveled to a Withered Mountain near the Wucha Mountain Realm with Bachuan and five Danque barbarian soldiers to study the spreading disaster.
• After observing the Famine Aura, Mo Hua suspected an Array Technique was generating Taotie power and spreading famine across the Great Wilderness.

Mo Hua studied the famine spreading across the Great Wilderness and realized that natural laws, rather than formalized patterns, lay at the core of array techniques. After two months of experiments, he constructed an initial Thick Earth Compound Absolute Array that used the Law of Vitality to resist the famine.

• Mo Hua failed to calculate the Famine Aura with Heavenly Calculation and concluded that it might embody a natural law beyond ordinary array patterns.
• Mo Hua recorded his insight that arrays were vessels for laws and considered how Taotie arrays might relate to famine and eating.
• Mo Hua tested a First-Grade Thick Earth Formation against the famine and saw it dissolve the aura briefly before being overwhelmed.
• Mo Hua devised a compound-array approach that used an Absolute Array as its core and vitality as its hub, linking it with other earth-type arrays.
• After two months of calculations and failed attempts, Mo Hua built his first crude Thick Earth Compound Absolute Array.

Mo Hua used the Thick Earth Compound Absolute Array to draw on the laws of life and suppress the Famine Aura, then studied how those laws conflicted with the power of Taotie. After his intense comprehension nearly made him lose his humanity, he resumed his research cautiously, testing how much the Heavenly Dao would tolerate.

• Mo Hua created the Thick Earth Compound Absolute Array, which generated a Law of Vitality that matched and locally suppressed the Famine Aura.
• Mo Hua studied the mutual generation and restraint of laws to expose and analyze the essence of Taotie's power, while Bachuan watched in awe.
• Mo Hua became so immersed in his research that he collapsed from hunger and divine-consciousness depletion, then slept for a day and night.
• Mo Hua awoke with his memories temporarily lost and realized he had nearly been assimilated by the Dao, but recovered his identity through his Heart Image and heart-tempering.
• Mo Hua blamed the Heavenly Dao for repeatedly suppressing and sealing his Divine Consciousness, then decided to continue his research in measured sessions.
• Mo Hua returned to the front lines, used a Sundial to limit each period of study, and began testing how close he could get to the Heavenly Dao's punishment.

Mo Hua deepened his understanding of how array techniques and laws could generate one another, then turned from researching Taotie’s famine laws to confront the Shugu Tribe’s invasion of the Wucha Mountain Realm. After Danzhu’s forces lost a battle against the Shugu Tribe’s superior numbers and Fang Heavy Armor, Mo Hua began considering how to counter their heavy armor.

• Mo Hua connected his study of laws and arrays to his Martial Uncle’s Ghostly Path Heaven-Sealing Array, then continued investigating the distinct laws behind different Taotie arrays.
• Mo Hua considered entering the famine’s core to search for the array patterns behind famine, but Bachuan arrived and reported that the Shugu Main Tribe had breached the Wucha Mountain Realm.
• Mo Hua reached the front lines and learned that Danzhu’s roughly two thousand troops faced about four thousand Shugu soldiers, while Danzhu’s strength was restricted by the mountain realm.
• Mo Hua made preliminary battle arrangements, but the Shugu Tribe’s superior numbers and Fang Heavy Armor overwhelmed Danzhu’s forces and the Wutu Alliance, forcing them to retreat fifty li.
• Mo Hua studied the Shugu Tribe’s Fang Heavy Armor after the defeat, and an unusual light appeared in his eyes as he began to consider the problem.

Mo Hua learned that Tie Shugu had secretly urged Lugu to invade the Wucha Mountain Realm and kill him, then changed the battle plan after discovering the leaked intelligence. The Danque forces used arrays to capture three Shugu heavy-armored soldiers, giving Mo Hua a chance to study the Abyssal Bone Thousand Barbarian Armor.

• Mo Hua questioned Tie Shugu about the Shugu Tribe's heavy armor and learned it was an ancient heirloom known as the Abyssal Bone Thousand Barbarian Armor.
• Mo Hua secretly watched Tie Shugu send Lugu a report urging the Shugu Tribe to conquer the Wucha Mountain Realm and destroy the demon Shaman.
• Mo Hua told Danzhu to alter the battle tactics and target the Shugu Tribe's heavy armor while preserving Tie Shugu's credibility as a spy.
• The Shugu Tribe pursued the retreating Danque forces, and its Yuangu Heavy Armored Soldiers became separated from the main force in difficult terrain.
• Danzhu, Chi Feng, Bashan, and Bachuan used earth and water arrays to trap the separated heavy troops and hauled three armored soldiers away on carts.

After the Shugu Tribe overran nearly half the Wucha Mountain Realm, Mo Hua captured three soldiers wearing ancestral Yuangu Heavy Armor to study its arrays. Two soldiers destroyed themselves and their armor, but Mo Hua stopped the last from doing so and secretly derived the armor’s core array after five days of observation.

• Lugu rejected pursuit and ordered the Shugu Tribe to advance, forcing Danzhu and the Wutu Alliance to retreat across the Wucha Mountain Realm.
• A captured Shugu soldier bit through his tongue and triggered his Yuangu Heavy Armor to explode, and a second soldier did the same before Chi Feng could stop him.
• Mo Hua used his Thought Power to prevent the last soldier from killing himself, then ordered Bashan to clamp the soldier’s mouth shut with an iron hoop.
• Mo Hua challenged the soldier’s claim that the ancestral armor could not be broken and had Tie Shugu fight him with an ordinary spear while he observed the armor’s defenses.
• After five days of observation and derivation, Mo Hua recorded the core array as a Second-Grade Twenty-Pattern Four Symbols Heavy Armor Array.

Mo Hua studied the Shugu Tribe’s Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor Absolute Array and realized its patchwork structure might share a law with Ten Thousand Demons Transforming into Dragon. He then connected Taotie’s ability to devour array techniques with the creation of residual patterns, uncovering a possible sequence behind the Great Wilderness’s laws.

• Mo Hua stopped Tie Shugu and Adagu from fighting and taunted Adagu to keep him from committing suicide.
• Mo Hua secluded himself to study the Twenty-Pattern Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor Absolute Array, but discovered its laws differed from the Taotie arrays he had encountered.
• Mo Hua noticed the Abyssal Bone Array was pieced together from scattered demon patterns and saw a possible connection to Ten Thousand Demons Transforming into Dragon.
• Mo Hua compared the Abyssal Bone Array with his old research notes and realized his understanding of dragon transformation and Return Derivation had been incomplete.
• Mo Hua recalled the incomplete patterns on the Barbarian Armor surrounding the Shugu Barbarian God Statue and deduced that Taotie could devour array techniques, leaving residual patterns that could be assembled into new arrays.

Mo Hua comprehended Taotie's law of swallowing and transforming by observing the Shugu Barbarian God's Gluttony Array devour demon-pattern arrays, but the law left him with an unsettling hunger for the Dao. He then drew the Taotie Swallowing and Transforming Array beside the Yuangu Transforming into Dragon Array and watched Taotie swallow it whole.

• Mo Hua reasoned that Taotie's devouring and digestion gave different demon patterns a shared identity, allowing them to fuse and transform into dragons.
• Mo Hua arranged the Great Wilderness arrays into a system and realized he had to learn the Twenty-Three-Pattern Taotie Swallowing and Transforming Array before he could comprehend the Twenty-Pattern Yuangu Transforming into Dragon Array.
• Mo Hua drew demon-pattern Compound Arrays onto the Shugu Barbarian God's head statue, and its Gluttony Array passively devoured them as he used Heavenly Calculation and Daoized Divine Thought to study the laws.
• Mo Hua comprehended Taotie's law of swallowing and transforming, but it awakened a powerful hunger for laws and array techniques that he struggled to suppress.
• Mo Hua drew the Taotie Swallowing and Transforming Array beside the Yuangu Transforming into Dragon Array, and the Taotie array came alive and swallowed the entire dragon-transformation array.

Mo Hua mastered the Shugu Tribe’s Yuangu Transforming into Dragon Array by using the Gluttony Array to break it down and reconstruct it, then secretly forged fifty sets of Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor. As Danzhu’s forces faced Lugu’s renewed assault, Mo Hua revealed the armor, leaving Lugu stunned to see the Shugu ancestors’ armor worn by the Danque Tribe.

• Mo Hua used the Gluttony Swallowing and Transforming Array to break down and repeatedly reconstruct the Yuangu Transforming into Dragon Array, deepening his understanding of its laws.
• Mo Hua speculated that the Great Wilderness’s Four Symbol divine beasts might have been assembled from demon-beast remains, then set the thought aside and continued studying the array.
• Mo Hua emerged from nearly two months of seclusion and learned that Danzhu and Chi Feng had lost most of the Wucha Mountain Realm and retreated to the Wutu Mountain Realm.
• Mo Hua ordered the alliance to withdraw, had Jiaoli execute defectors, and secretly arranged for fifty sets of Barbarian Armor to be forged using the Shugu Tribe’s materials.
• When Lugu attacked again, Mo Hua brought the fifty completed sets of Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor to Danzhu’s camp and told him to equip fifty elites.
• Lugu saw the Danque Tribe’s soldiers wearing the Shugu ancestors’ heavy armor and angrily demanded to know how they had obtained it.

Danzhu’s Danque Tribe defeated the Shugu Tribe with Yuangu Heavy Armor forged by Mo Hua, then held a tense standoff with Lugu’s forces at Wufeng Ridge. Mo Hua explained the armor’s secrets as blessings from the God Lord, eased suspicion among his allies, and used the lull to strengthen his forces against the Famine Disaster.

• Danzhu led the Danque Tribe’s armored soldiers to defeat Lugu and drive the Shugu Tribe back, while Lugu struggled to understand how his enemies had obtained ancestral armor.
• Lugu tried to capture a suit of armor and later rallied the Shugu Tribe for a prolonged fight, but Danzhu’s forces gained fifty more suits and pushed the Shugu Tribe west of Wufeng Ridge.
• Mo Hua let the two armies settle into a standoff, leaving the Shugu Tribe as a buffer against outside invaders while he continued forging Yuangu Heavy Armor.
• When Chi Feng asked how he knew the Shugu Tribe’s lost forging method, Mo Hua claimed the God Lord had revealed it, easing his allies’ suspicions and deepening their reverence.
• Mo Hua reorganized the tribes, retrained their soldiers, and searched for talented Barbarian Cultivators to teach Array Techniques as he prepared to resist the Famine Disaster and expand his power.

Mo Hua used a new insight into opposing forces to turn the Shugu and Bifang alliance against itself, leaving the two main tribes fighting before they could breach Wutu Mountain Realm. The chapter ended with Mo Hua watching the battle and resolving to make greater use of contradictions.

• Mo Hua consolidated several mountain realms into Wutu, centralized authority under Danzhu, and introduced laws while postponing his plan to abolish the Barbarian Slave system.
• Bi Jie led the Bifang Main Tribe into Wucha Mountain Realm and joined forces with Lugu and the Shugu Tribe to threaten Wutu.
• Mo Hua recognized that he could exploit the rival tribes’ contradictions, learned the Shugu Tribe’s face-painting patterns, and planned a battle using disguises and calculated troop movements.
• Danzhu lured Bi Jie into a trap, where disguised Danque soldiers wearing Shugu armor attacked Bi Jie and his forces.
• Mo Hua’s soldiers scattered Bifang supplies and provoked fighting, causing the Shugu and Bifang troops to accuse and attack one another before reaching Wutu.

Mo Hua brokered an alliance with Lugu by trading Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor, then drove Bi Jie’s Bifang forces from the Wucha Mountain Realm. As Mo Hua prepared to return to the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm with Lugu, he overheard Tie Shugu and Lugu plotting to kill him by awakening an ancestor in the White Bone Mausoleum and cursing him.

• Mo Hua negotiated an alliance between Lugu’s Shugu Tribe, Danzhu’s Danque Tribe, and the Wutu Tribe in exchange for six sets of Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor and the materials to forge them.
• The Shugu and Danque Tribes joined forces against Bi Jie, forcing the Bifang commander and his remaining troops to flee the Wucha Mountain Realm.
• Mo Hua planned to take Lugu back to the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm and sent him two completed armor sets as an advance gift; Lugu agreed to go.
• Mo Hua secretly watched Tie Shugu exchange messages with Lugu and learned that they believed he was a demon and wanted to kill him.
• Tie Shugu told Lugu that their only possible plan was to awaken a Shugu ancestor at the White Bone Mausoleum and use the Great Shamanic Art of Communicating with the Underworld to curse Mo Hua to death.

Mo Hua learned that Tie Shugu wanted to use a forbidden Great Shaman Technique to curse him to death, then prepared an army to enter the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm and secure a safe place for Big Flower to form its Golden Core. The allied forces reached the realm, where Mo Hua saw that famine and warfare had left it devastated and cloaked in the Death Omen of an entire mountain realm.

• Tie Shugu urged Xi Gu to awaken dead Shugu Old Ancestors and use the Great Shaman Technique against Mo Hua, but Xi Gu warned that violating the taboos of life and death could bring calamity.
• Mo Hua wondered about the Shugu Tribe's Death Awakening technique and thought of his master before visiting Big Flower, whose approaching Golden Core breakthrough made him plan to find it a safer home.
• Mo Hua said goodbye to Big Flower, warned it to trust no one if it had to break through alone, and promised to return with a mountain peak if he could claim one.
• Mo Hua assigned leaders to govern the Wutu Mountain Realm, appointed Danzhu commander of the expedition, and sent Little Zhatu with him to learn and build connections.
• Mo Hua and Lugu led six thousand allied barbarian soldiers out of the Wucha Mountain Realm and into the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm.
• Mo Hua saw that war and famine had devastated the Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm and recognized a Death Omen formed from the accumulated Karma of the entire realm.

Mo Hua led the Danque and Shugu forces through a devastated Vermilion Bird Mountain Realm, where famine had killed nearly everyone. He realized the disaster was spreading as a vast Gluttony array and suspected Senior Uncle had created it.

• Mo Hua persuaded Lugu to escort Danzhu to the Danque main tribe in exchange for two sets of Abyssal Bone Heavy Armor.
• Mo Hua guided the group through famine-stricken lands, where they saw monstrous survivors and piles of dried corpses that made him suspect the dead formed Array Patterns.
• The group found the Wutian Tribe surviving in a remote valley, and Mo Hua ordered everyone not to harm its people.
• Mo Hua calculated that the valley's Earth Aura and the famine's patterned spread had spared the Wutian Tribe, revealing that the disaster was generating a massive array across the land.
• Mo Hua set out toward the Danque main force and concluded that Senior Uncle was behind the Famine Disaster Grand Array.