Chapter Summaries

Zhang Qing returned as Dragon Venerable and learned how much Great Xia had sacrificed during his absence. He vowed to settle accounts with Hao and announced that he would open an Imperial City Sequence to gain the authority needed to fight the Lords.

• Zhang Qing synchronized his memories and grieved over the people of Great Xia who had died or vanished during the past three years.
• Zhang Qing appeared in the starry sky in a secondary body, while Hao congratulated him and tried to leave.
• Zhang Qing confronted Hao over Great Xia's losses, but Tiger Venerable warned that Dragon Venerable's true body could not kill the Lords without Sequence Authority.
• Zhang Qing declared that he would settle accounts with his enemies, and Hao challenged him to try.
• Zhang Qing announced that he would open an Imperial City Sequence, shocking the Sovereigns while the Highnesses accepted it as something he would do.

Zhang Qing created the Imperial City Sequence Dragon Court by anchoring its path to the Dragon Venerable and establishing its first seven Waypoints. The sequence promised to protect Great Xia’s present and future, and Zhang Qing intended to use its Starfire Authority to bring back those who had died.

• Zhang Qing announced the birth of Dragon Court, while Jie nervously considered whether he could use the Time Sequence to force a strategic alliance.
• Zhang Qing anchored Dragon Court’s endpoint to the Dragon Venerable and forged a golden path backward toward its starting point.
• Zhang Qing established Evolution, Predation, Clan, and Struggle as Dragon Court’s first four Waypoints.
• Zhang Qing created the Starfire Waypoint, restoring the Spark Authority and resolving to find a way to bring back Great Xia’s dead.
• Zhang Qing added Pioneer as the sixth Waypoint and Civilization as the seventh, tying his survival and Great Xia’s future to the new Sequence.

Zhang Qing claimed the Years Waypoint by using Jie's Time path, then set his sights on Hao and the Survival Authority. He activated the Dragon Court Sequence’s ninth Waypoint and charged at Hao, beginning a fight over Survival.

• Zhang Qing used the Time Sequence aura to activate Years as the eighth Dragon Court Waypoint, while Jie protested that it would drain the path He had opened.
• The Dragon Venerable True Body approved Zhang Qing’s choice, forcing Jie to concede the conflict.
• Zhang Qing told Hao that Survival should not belong to him alone and rallied his allies to fight for the Authority.
• Zhang Qing activated Survival as the ninth Waypoint, merged with the Dragon Venerable True Body, and charged at Hao.

Zhang Qing fully fused with the Dragon Venerable and fought Hao, while the other Venerables joined forces to help him seize the Survival Authority. The battle left Hao wounded and the Authority’s fragments scattered, prompting the Sovereigns to gather them and Phoenix Venerable to prepare another gamble.

• Zhang Qing completed his flawless fusion with the Dragon Venerable, whose power let him fight atop the River of Destiny.
• Hao formed the Mechanical Survival True Body, and he and Zhang Qing clashed before separating to avoid breaking the River of Destiny.
• Zhang Qing attacked Hao with Predation while the Venerables and Progenitors surrounded and restrained him.
• Serpent Venerable tripped Hao, allowing Zhang Qing to bite a piece of the Survival Authority from within Hao’s Mecha.
• Little Lion, the Progenitors, and the Sovereigns gathered the scattered Survival Authority fragments, while Phoenix Venerable planned to use them as collateral for another gamble.

Zhang Qing crippled Hao’s Survival Authority and returned to Blue Star, where he confronted the losses Great Xia had suffered. At the memorial, he vowed to find a way to bring the dead back.

• Hao fled after Zhang Qing took a bite from his Survival Authority, leaving Hao incomplete and unable to make the Ultimate Leap for the foreseeable future.
• The Lords gathered the remaining Survival Authority, while Zhang Qing thanked the Progenitors and said he needed to return to Great Xia.
• Zhang Qing reunited with Yun Xiaoxi and entered the Imperial Capital, where he saw the corpses of fallen allies, including Pusan, Niu Qi, Lin Tian, Zhu Yi, Guan Huangsheng, Li Liming, and Li Wannian.
• Zhang Zhengguo and the people of Great Xia welcomed Zhang Qing home at the memorial square.
• Zhang Qing looked at the monument and declared that he would find a way to bring everyone back.

A month after Great Xia’s victory, Zhang Qing reviewed his plans to destroy Sky City, revive the dead, and pursue the Ultimate Leap. Jie offered a way to retrieve the sacrificed Great Xia people’s True Spirits in exchange for the Sixth Floor’s survival, and Zhang Qing agreed to let the Sixth Floor settle in Great Xia.

• Zhang Qing identified destroying Sky City, bringing back the dead, and reaching the Ultimate Leap as his next goals.
• Jie and Fan Adkin visited Zhang Qing, and Jie offered his last bargaining chip to secure the Sixth Floor’s survival.
• Jie proposed creating an Orthodox Sequence to lock onto the dead and using Hao’s Survival Sequence to endure the cost of retrieving their True Spirits.
• Zhang Qing accepted Jie’s proposal and invited the Sixth Floor to settle in Great Xia.

Zhang Qing arrived at the Dark Side after Sky City’s retreat and Great Xia’s new political and succession systems were established. He fought Mad Blood, then met with the Progenitors and said he had come for another purpose, not to make the Ultimate Leap.

• Hao’s loss of part of his Survival Authority forced Sky City to retreat, allowing the Imperial Cities to take control of the lower Sky City Battlefield while Great Xia established a garrison there.
• Zhang Qing spent time with Yun Xiaoxi, discussed her Sequence, and helped shape Great Xia’s new political structure and a selection system for choosing future Dragon Venerables.
• Zhang Qing traveled to the Dark Side, where his Venerable Lord Authority brightened the sky as Mad Blood charged him and demanded a fight.
• Zhang Qing exchanged several hundred moves with Mad Blood and then suppressed him with a Predation strike, earning Mad Blood’s admiration.
• The Progenitors gathered in a Sky Dome conference room, where Ghoul Mother asked whether Zhang Qing had come to make the Ultimate Leap; Zhang Qing said it was still far off and that he had other matters to attend to.

Zhang Qing questioned whether the Progenitors’ power and the breach in the River of Destiny had been created through a vast sacrifice, raising the possibility that power could be bought without limit. He proposed investigating the breach again, and the Progenitors agreed to bring in the Imperial City Lords.

• Zhang Qing told the Progenitors that their strength seemed insufficient to have breached the River of Destiny, making the breach suspicious.
• Zhang Qing suggested that the Sequence advancement system resembled a sacrifice, and Little Loli calculated that such a process might be used to create another Fantasy Venerable Lord.
• Zhang Qing said they should investigate the breach again and hoped that genuine coincidences existed, since otherwise the first Dragon Venerable might be reproducible.
• Sea Emperor suggested informing the Imperial City Lords, and the Progenitors agreed.
• Zhang Qing notified the Imperial City Lords, who soon arrived on the Dark Side with Zhang Qing acting as the bridge between the two groups.

Zhang Qing led the twenty-four Venerable Lords to investigate the Fissure in the River of Destiny, while learning that the Venerable Lords intended to make the Ultimate Leap before him. He unleashed the Dragon Venerable’s true body at the cavern, and the fragments from its impact felt like Authority Crystals.

• Zhang Qing explained his interest in the Fissure in the River of Destiny, and Tiger Venerable told him the Venerable Lords planned to make the Ultimate Leap before he did.
• Zhang Qing and the twenty-four Venerable Lords reached the cavern and examined the River of Destiny beyond it.
• Zhang Qing tested the river water, cut away the karma clinging to it, and summoned his true body as the Dragon Venerable.
• Zhang Qing fully armored the Dragon Venerable with Sequence Authority, stirring waves and karma in the River of Destiny.
• The Dragon Venerable smashed into the cavern path, shaking the Dark Side, and Zhang Qing recognized the fallen entrance fragments as resembling Authority Crystals.

After the Venerable Lords left, Zhang Qing stayed in the Dark Side to study Progenitors’ Star Arrays and pondered the hidden karmic ties he had sensed in the River of Destiny. He proposed that Yun Xiaoxi might become a Progenitor, though he admitted he was unsure whether he could make it happen.

• Zhang Qing crushed the object he had examined and told the Venerable Lords that the gateway had appeared by coincidence, easing their fears that Dragon Venerable could be replicated.
• Tiger Venerable and the other Venerable Lords departed, while Zhang Qing returned to the Dark Side and glimpsed tangled threads of fate, time, and causality.
• Ghoul Mother asked Zhang Qing how to make the Ultimate Leap, but he pointed out that he knew little about it and said he wanted to study Star Arrays instead.
• Little Lion explained how fire-attribute runes had transformed his true body from a mountain giant into a Lava river through evolution and Wheelshift.
• Zhang Qing told Yun Xiaoxi that he had sensed a vast karmic connection in the River of Destiny, then suggested he might be able to help her become a Progenitor.

Zhang Qing considered securing Yun Xiaoxi’s future, while Hao searched for a way to survive the coming conflict and consulted Kid Brother, the Destiny Incarnation. Kid Brother began to sense something blurry in the River of Destiny.

• Zhang Qing decided that Yun Xiaoxi needed protection for her True Spirit and linked the idea to Jie’s Heroic Spirit Sequence.
• Hao sat in White Jade City and recalled that among tens of millions of futures, his only victory ended in the universe’s devastation.
• Kid Brother told Hao that the Venerable Lords had reached a peak and that even the Destiny Incarnation could not promise an easy victory against Zhang Qing.
• Kid Brother explained that Jie’s disruption of time had caused the Destiny Incarnation to awaken and had allowed Jie to transcend the River of Destiny.
• Hao asked whether other divine laws could produce incarnations, and Kid Brother suddenly sensed blurry traces in the River of Destiny.

Kid Brother discovered that the Star Array Clan’s Progenitors were connected to constellations projected from another Unknowable Land, making the future unpredictable. Zhang Qing linked Little Lion’s true body to Leo and concluded that the Star Array Civilization had left a contingency in the Unknowable Land of the Universe.

• Kid Brother searched the River of Destiny and found that the Star Array Clan’s Progenitors were connected to twelve constellations unseen in Hao’s records.
• Kid Brother pointed out Leo in the Sky Dome, and Hao realized it was a projection from another Unknowable Land and found a future he could not predict.
• Fan Adkin sensed the River of Destiny becoming unknowable and wondered what had disrupted the apparent advantage of the Dark Realm.
• Little Lion showed Zhang Qing its true body in the Lava Zone and explained that maintaining it eventually made it sleepy enough to sleep or undergo Wheelshift.
• Zhang Qing suppressed Little Lion’s true-body authority and saw Leo return to normal, then concluded that the Progenitors’ power carried a hidden price tied to the Unknowable Land of the Universe.

Zhang Qing and Little Lion entered the Leo gateway and discovered that Star Array Civilization had secretly used Little Lion’s power to sustain an entire world. After Zhang Qing pulled Little Lion out of the world’s control, he soothed its rage and began considering a bold plan involving Yun Xiaoxi.

• Zhang Qing traveled to Leo with Yun Xiaoxi and Little Lion, then had Little Lion reveal its full true body to expose the gateway.
• Zhang Qing and Little Lion entered a world sustained by Little Lion’s power, and Little Lion realized it had unknowingly served as the world’s foundation for countless years.
• Little Lion asked Zhang Qing to destroy the world, but its power transformed into a magma river and came under the control of the Fire Kingdom’s Ritual Spirit.
• Zhang Qing caught the magma river and withdrew with Little Lion, leaving the High Priest to believe the threat had been killed.
• Zhang Qing calmed Little Lion and saw a path suited to Yun Xiaoxi.

Zhang Qing explained how the Star Array Civilization had used worship to steer the Progenitors toward becoming Material Path Venerables, intending to take over their immortal bodies. He proposed creating a world of their own with the Wisteria Flower as its foundation, and the Progenitors began plotting with him.

• Zhang Qing explained that the Star Array Worlds had used worship and sacrifice to exchange power with the Progenitors and accelerate their Wheelshifts.
• Zhang Qing revealed that the Star Array Civilization aimed to wear down the Progenitors' True Spirits, destroy the celestial phenomena, and seize their materialized bodies.
• Little Loli called for the Star Array Civilization to be killed, but Little Lion said they could control the Progenitors' bodies because the long exchange had cost them the initiative.
• Zhang Qing proposed developing a world of their own and asked whether the Wisteria Flower could serve as the foundation for a Material Path Venerable's true body.
• Zhang Qing gathered the Progenitors to plot, while Yun Xiaoxi listened and realized she would benefit greatly from the plan.

Zhang Qing began the Evil God Plan to reclaim the Progenitors’ original shares and create an immortal Material Path Lord body for Yun Xiaoxi. He led Yun Xiaoxi and the twelve Progenitors through the Leo portal into the Pisces World, where they prepared to establish a hidden foothold.

• Zhang Qing devised a plan to use worship and sacrifice to reclaim the Progenitors’ original shares, then use them to create an immortal Material Path Lord body for Yun Xiaoxi.
• Zhang Qing pulled stars into the Spark Giant Gate, and the group entered the Leo portal after Little Lion manifested his Lava true form.
• Inside the Star Array worlds, Sea Emperor sensed the Pisces World, and Zhang Qing led the group across the boundary from the Leo World.
• Zhang Qing warned the others to avoid detection by the High Priests and explained that Yun Xiaoxi’s mental power could overwhelm the Pisces World’s Star Mark martial artists.
• Zhang Qing planned for Yun Xiaoxi to pose as a failed Star Array Master seeking refuge, with the Evil God [Flower Master] as the being she worshipped.

Zhang Qing tested a new sacrificial path, and a purple-flower ritual spirit appeared before a struggling tribe in the Sea World’s frozen north. As the tribe feared being abandoned, the Flower Lord offered warmth to a crying infant, leaving hope that the tribe might be saved.

• Zhang Qing considered sacrifice a way for certain Sequences to communicate with Heroic Spirits through time and sought a safer path than helping others hunt Hao.
• In the far north, Batu urged the chief to fight their way back, but the chief insisted the tribe had to survive by growing food in exile.
• A purple flower bloomed and transformed the frozen landscape into a warm sea of flowers as the Flower Lord approached with a High Priest.
• The chief summoned the tribe, and its people worshiped and chanted sacrificial prayers in hopes the Flower Lord would choose them.
• As the flower sea withered and the tribe despaired, the Flower Lord gave a purple flower to a mother holding her crying infant and declared, “May the Flower Lord bring warmth!”

Yun Xiaoxi established the Flower Lord’s temple among the freezing tribe and accepted the chief and Batu as its first loyal followers. The tribe gained protection from the cold, while Yun Xiaoxi began planning to expand the Flower Lord’s faith and power.

• Yun Xiaoxi branded the infant with a mark that protected it from the cold, and the tribe welcomed her as the Flower Lord.
• Yun Xiaoxi borrowed Zhang Qing and the others’ power to create a temple and placed the Wisteria Flower inside as an offering.
• Zhang Qing explained that the Wisteria Flower was absorbing faith and becoming a Spirit Medicine, and warned Yun Xiaoxi to keep watch over it.
• The chief and Batu entered the temple, worshipped the Wisteria Flower, and pledged their loyalty to the Flower Lord.
• Yun Xiaoxi branded the chief and Batu with Wisteria Flower marks, then asked what their tribe could actually do.

Yun Xiaoxi revealed the Flower Lord’s power to the Qi Feng Tribe by making golden rice grow in the snowy Polar Domain, giving the tribe a path to feed itself and expand. Meanwhile, Hao and Kid Brother entered the hidden Sea World, where Hao discovered a plan that could turn the Progenitor against its current allies.

• Yun Xiaoxi told the Qi Feng Tribe’s leader and Batu that the Flower Lord would protect them, and urged the tribe to grow food before waging war for more people.
• Yun Xiaoxi summoned a field of rice in the snow, while Cheng Qiping used his Sequence power to make rice grow through the Spark Giant Gate in Great Xia.
• The Qi Feng Tribe’s leader and Batu knelt in thanks, then led their people to harvest and eat the golden rice.
• Hao and Kid Brother entered the Sea World through the Leo gateway and found that the Progenitor’s power had concealed it from fate.
• Hao identified the Sea World as a contingency left by the Star Array Civilization and resolved to use it to win the Progenitor to his side.

Batu led fewer than three hundred Qi Feng Tribe warriors through the blizzard to bring the Tianshui Tribe under the Flower Lord’s protection. Ge Da surrendered, and Batu’s prayer brought calm weather, warmth, and a growing rice field.

• Batu rallied the Qi Feng Tribe warriors to seize people and strengthen their bond with the Flower Lord, while Zhang Qing sent Lava and Sea Emperor to protect them from the cold.
• Ge Da prepared the Tianshui Tribe to fight the approaching raiders, fearing his people would be taken for food.
• Batu arrived and demanded the Tianshui Tribe’s surrender in the Flower Lord’s name.
• Ge Da recognized Batu’s sacrificial spirit mark and surrendered, believing the Flower Lord could save his people.
• Batu prayed for the Flower Lord’s grace, and the blizzard stopped as sunlight, warmth, and a growing rice field appeared.

The Tianshui Tribe migrated to the Qi Feng Tribe after Cheng Qiping’s grain harvest eased their hunger, and Ge Da was given a task to prove his devotion. Zhang Qing established a recruitment system that rapidly expanded Qi Feng, while Ge Da set out to bring back another tribe.

• Cheng Qiping’s grain ripened, allowing the Tianshui Tribe to harvest food and migrate toward the Ritual Spirit’s temple with Batu.
• Ge Da greeted High Priest Yun Xiaoxi, who gave him a Wisteria Flower and ordered him to bring back a devout tribe before dawn.
• Zhang Qing explained to the Progenitors that he was using staged rewards and recruitment tasks to expand Qi Feng quickly and strengthen its foundations.
• Before dawn, Ge Da returned with the Fan Bone Tribe and received half a mark, with instructions to bring back another tribe to prove his faith.
• Ge Da accepted the task, while the Fan Bone leader Blood Bone was told to bring back three tribes to earn a mark.
• The Qi Feng chief established regular worship and temple inspectors, and the growing population largely complied to protect their access to food.