Chapter Summaries

Ji Jue sailed the Prosperity from Seven Cities toward Central Earth after securing lucrative Riot Cat and exoskeleton deals with Minkler, while avoiding political scrutiny and threats. Near Taiwo, a sudden storm engulfed the ship as the Central Earth Security Bureau detected a gathering of Sea Locusts and lost track of the Prosperity.

• Ji Jue bid farewell to Minkler, who secured future Riot Cat deliveries and offered to pay five times the price for industrial exoskeletons.
• Ji Jue left Seven Cities with the Prosperity loaded with goods, while Coast faced surging demand, intense competition, and repeated Central City inspections.
• Ji Jue avoided leaving the ship and took an unpredictable route toward Taiwo, wary of Central Earth's dangers and his rising Wild Bazaar bounty.
• Ji Jue noticed an unexpected storm forming despite a clear forecast, and the Prosperity's alarms warned that unidentified objects were approaching.
• Tong Shan learned that a sudden air mass and a suspected Sea Locust swarm were gathering around the Prosperity, which then vanished from the bureau's tracking screen.

Ji Jue transformed the Prosperity into a mechanical whale and fought off an ambush by the Vortex Lineage and the Horde. Just as Hibert and White Deer struck together, Ji Jue regretted that the hidden attacker was not the wolf he had been waiting for.

• Ji Jue identified the sea locust swarm as an attack involving the Vortex Lineage and transformed the Prosperity into a steel Giant Whale that devoured the creatures.
• The attacker made the sea locusts devour one another and turn the surrounding water corrosive, while Ji Jue used mercury branches and the Little Cow and Horse to drain them.
• Hibert, a Rebirth Rank Chosen One of the Horde, charged the Prosperity with overwhelming strength and punched through its hull toward Ji Jue.
• Ji Jue disrupted Hibert's Inheritance Sacrifice with the Pan Ying Sword and defeated Prusa by infecting him with fish-scale essence that mutated his body.
• Ji Jue guessed Hibert was buying time for another teammate, then fought him as White Deer emerged behind him and used Pierce to stab through his armor, chest, and soul.
• Hibert prepared a final blow, but Ji Jue sighed that it was a pity the hidden attacker was not the wolf.

Ji Jue defeated the attackers aboard the Prosperity, discovered the half-formed Blood Wrist inheritance, and considered how to use it. After a night of repairs, the corpse-laden ship emerged from a storm and reached Tower City’s harbor.

• Ji Jue survived a White Deer’s piercing strike, trapped the attacker inside the Dragon Mountain Armor, and used Mercy to paralyze Hibert after severing his Sacrificial Master connection.
• Ji Jue processed the three captured attackers, repaired the Prosperity, and found the half-formed Blood Wrist emblem on Pan Ying.
• Ji Jue learned that Blood Wrist multiplied strength by consuming blood and Spiritual Substance while also reducing the user’s life and soul, then considered having Little Cow and Horse use it.
• Tong Shan told Liang Mo that Ji Jue was reliable in a crisis and predicted the storm would soon disperse.
• The Prosperity emerged from the storm and arrived at Tower City’s harbor, covered in monster corpses and carrying three bodies on its bow.

Ji Jue arrived in Tower City, reunited with Tong Shan, and established Tide Sound Military Industry’s local presence while sizing up the city’s powerful interests. The chapter ended with Ji Jue accepting an invitation to a charity banquet that would bring together the region’s military and business leaders.

• The Prosperity docked at the military port, where Ji Jue greeted Tong Shan and met Major Liang Mo; Tong Shan identified the three corpses aboard as members of a Wild Bazaar team associated with Black Gold Stone.
• Liang Mo escorted Ji Jue through the base, helped him complete the necessary procedures, and warned him to be careful outside the garrison.
• Ji Jue reunited with Yan Fei and Yan Chang, then rode into Tower City with them and Old Gou, who had established Coast Industry’s local office.
• Ji Jue surveyed prosperous downtown Tower City and accepted an invitation from Zhengrong Group to attend a charity banquet attended by military and industry leaders.

Ji Jue attended a reception where Federation and Empire commanders pledged to prioritize resource production and public order, then met Lieutenant General Fan Yun. Fan refused to intervene in Ji Jue’s conflict with Central Earth’s local powers, leaving Ji Jue to handle it himself.

• Ji Jue attended Shaban’s reception, where Fan Yun and Duke Pasarela announced plans to maintain stability and increase phlogiston and mineral production.
• Shaban warmly welcomed Ji Jue and introduced him to guests, seeing his business as a boon to Tower City’s economy.
• Major Li summoned Ji Jue to meet Fan Yun in a private room.
• Fan Yun said he had been told about Ji Jue by Xiao Lü and warned him that she had acted rashly by getting involved with the Li Family and Di Family.
• Fan Yun declined to get involved and told Ji Jue to settle his own business, and Ji Jue left after drinking his whiskey.

Ji Jue secured an unofficial foothold in Central Earth after meeting Fan Yun, then learned that a local arms broker had reason to hate him. As fires spread through a southern nomad settlement, Ji Jue encountered a familiar figure from Chongguang Church.

• Fan Yun judged Ji Jue an ambitious threat who had already made enemies throughout Central Earth, but the meeting still gave Ji Jue an unofficial ticket into its business scene.
• Ji Jue exaggerated Fan Yun’s invitation to visit the base, using the general’s apparent favor to impress Shaban and other banquet guests.
• Shaban identified the scarred broker Mudakaka and explained that Lü Garrison Chief had blinded him and that he sold Empire weapons to the Red Federation.
• Ji Jue tried to get Shaban to provide dozens of bodyguards on a free trial, but Shaban refused and left to find other clients.
• Ji Jue watched a fire spread through a southern nomad settlement, and an elderly man in a wheelchair identified it as a settlement in the Slums before Ji Jue recognized the Chongguang Church badge on his chest.

Ji Jue received Elder Longge’s thanks and a promise that the church would buy its equipment from Coast Industry, while Longge urged him to keep his principles amid Central Earth’s schemes. After the banquet, Shaban and Dugu Ming discussed how Ji Jue’s arrival had drawn powerful rivals and left him facing a fight to claim a place in Tower City.

• Elder Longge thanked Ji Jue for helping save the church’s medical team and promised that the Tower City church would purchase its equipment from Coast Industry.
• Longge explained that the church had to guard its neutrality, but said he believed Ji Jue could benefit Central Earth if he held to his boundaries.
• Longge invited Ji Jue to visit the church again, and Ji Jue watched him depart before reflecting on how difficult it was to be good in Central Earth.
• After the banquet, Shaban noted that many Wild Bazaar orders targeted Ji Jue, while Dugu Ming said Tide Sound had no place at the table unless Ji Jue fought for it.
• Shaban and Dugu Ming discussed Ji Jue’s connections and the forces gathering against him, and Shaban anticipated the conflict ahead.

After Ji Jue’s new company was destroyed by a timed bomb, he refused to retaliate and called the police, leaving his enemies and Central Earth’s officials baffled. During questioning, he named the Evil Transformation Cult as the mastermind, triggering panic across Tower City.

• Ji Jue’s company exploded, but Yan Chang survived behind a Mercury barrier and reported that the bomb had been timed and designed to counter Ji Jue’s abilities.
• Ji Jue called the police instead of fighting back, and the explosion’s watchers were stunned when officers took him in for questioning.
• At the police station, Ji Jue calmly described the attack to a nervous officer and claimed he trusted Central Earth’s public security.
• When asked whom he suspected, Ji Jue accused the Evil Transformation Cult of masterminding the bombing.
• The superintendent rushed to stop the questioning, but the officer repeated Ji Jue’s accusation, sending the officials into panic.

Ji Jue’s threat to expose the Evil Transformation Cult triggered panic across Tower City and forced the Federation and Empire to investigate an attack on him. The investigation found a curse tied to the cult’s Turning Wheel Saint King, confirming that the threat was real and setting the stage for a sweeping purge.

• Ji Jue’s answer spread through Tower City, alarming its powerful residents, while Shaban warned Dugu Ming that Ji Jue could make the Evil Transformation Cult a pretext for a new witch hunt.
• Duke Pasarela pressed Fan Yun about another purge, and Fan Yun ordered the Security Bureau and Confidentiality Bureau to investigate the attack together.
• Tong Shan and Olivia examined the blast site, where Tong Shan defended Ji Jue and explained his history of fighting the Evil Transformation Cult.
• Investigators reconstructed the scene and discovered a hidden curse linked to the Turning Wheel Saint King, a Holy Lord worshipped by the Evil Transformation Cult.
• Tong Shan and Olivia’s findings reached both military commanders and spread through Tower City, making residents fear that a major investigation was about to begin.

After Ji Jue invoked the Evil Transformation Cult, Tower City fell under martial law as panic spread and people with suspected cult ties scrambled to cover themselves. Ji Jue watched the chaos from the police station, while pressure mounted on Dugu Ming to stop the situation from escalating.

• The Federation and Empire imposed citywide martial law, deployed troops and checkpoints, and demanded that Tower City show support for a campaign against the Evil Transformation Cult.
• Wild Bazaar was flooded with jobs to silence people and flee, as residents feared that investigations would expose their connections to the cult.
• Ji Jue drank coffee at the police station, posted a smiling selfie, and let his many influential identities make others fear he could expose the crisis further.
• Mudakaka began to suspect that people around him had set him up, while officials avoided searches and investigations that might uncover the truth.
• Calls from Tower City's power brokers blamed Cosmos Heavy Industries, and Fan Yun's secretary conveyed the general's order to Dugu Ming: stop this.

After Ji Jue’s attack, Dugu Ming tried to keep him from escalating the crisis by offering Cosmos Heavy Industries’ support and substantial compensation. Ji Jue agreed to wait for an investigation, but pressed Dugu Ming about finding the Evil Transformation Cult, which turned itself in half an hour later.

• Dugu Ming visited Ji Jue during Tower City’s lockdown and promised that Cosmos Heavy Industries stood with him.
• Ji Jue used the attack and his losses to secure a downtown building, a plot of land, and emergency funding from Dugu Ming.
• Dugu Ming asked Ji Jue to cooperate with a procedural investigation, and Ji Jue agreed to show tolerance for the greater good.
• Ji Jue asked whether Dugu Ming had found the Evil Transformation Cult, and Dugu Ming promised it would happen soon.
• Half an hour later, the Evil Transformation Cult turned itself in.

Ji Jue forced his allies to provide a real culprit for the supposed Evil Transformation Cult plot, and the coerced confession named Mudakaka as its mastermind. As Mudakaka tried to flee Tower City, Ji Jue revealed that his own forces had already begun attacking Mudakaka’s businesses and bringing down his airship.

• Ji Jue tested the planted confessor’s knowledge of the Evil Transformation Cult and exposed him as a likely pawn, demanding that he name a significant accomplice.
• Under pressure from Ji Jue’s demand and the news that Mudakaka was preparing to escape, Dugu Ming made a decision, and the confessor abruptly began giving a coerced confession.
• The confessor named Mudakaka as the man who ordered the attack and accused him of collaborating with the Evil Transformation Cult and the White Banner Restoration Front.
• The confessor listed Mudakaka’s alleged accomplices, bases, and plots before collapsing and dying in the interrogation room.
• Mudakaka fled toward a waiting airship, but an explosion struck it as it took off, while attacks and fires spread through businesses connected to him.
• Ji Jue told Dugu Ming that his people were already carrying out the operation to exterminate Mudakaka’s network.

Liang Mo’s forces attacked Mudakaka’s factory hideout as The Horde broke through the siege, but Qiongqi armor killed him and an unidentified blood-red machine raced toward the city. At Acacia Manor, Yan Fei directed a devastating silver-rain assault, then detonated the airship carrying Mudakaka so it crashed onto the blood-marked target.

• Yan Chang sensed panic and infighting inside Mudakaka’s factory, where mutinous mercenaries began shooting as Liang Mo’s forces surrounded them.
• Liang Mo ordered his squads to kill everyone, but The Horde broke through the factory and hurled a blood-flame spear at him.
• The Riot Cat blocked the spear, and Qiongqi armor crushed The Horde and destroyed a war vehicle before spotting a blood-red machine racing from the harbor.
• Artificial Rain Bombs unleashed silver rain on Acacia Manor, where the liquid metal and mechanical monsters slaughtered the defenders and destroyed the estate.
• Yan Fei arranged the wreckage and corpses into a giant X, then detonated a device at noon, bringing Mudakaka’s burning airship crashing onto the marked target.

After destroying Mudakaka’s stronghold, Ji Jue secured Fan Yun’s approval to operate in Tower City, though the general warned him not to cause further trouble. Ji Jue then took possession of Coast Industry’s new headquarters and put Yan Fei to work renovating it.

• Tower City’s factions celebrated Mudakaka’s death but feared Ji Jue’s ruthless methods after his forces destroyed Acacia Manor.
• At lunch, Ji Jue told General Fan Yun that he cared only about supporting the Federation’s order and stability.
• Fan Yun approved Ji Jue’s Coast Industry venture and offered the Federation’s backing, while warning that another disruption would bring the Garrison Base’s response.
• Ji Jue left the general and went to take over Coast Industry’s unfinished thirty-one-story headquarters.
• Ji Jue assigned Yan Fei to learn construction work and renovate the building alongside his studies.

Ji Jue used Coast Industry to dominate Tower City’s low-end lighter market while secretly planting traces of the Plague of the King of Flies to locate wolves. After half a month of exhausting research in the Doomsday Train’s Workshop, he finally extracted the Essence of the Five Metals.

• Old Gou got Coast Industry’s Central Earth factory district running, and the company launched its cheap plastic lighter in Tower City.
• Dugu Ming kept Ji Jue under close watch, but Coast Industry’s lighter business soon drove local manufacturers to become its distributors and monopolized the low-end market.
• Ji Jue used recycled scrap in lighter production to spread the Plague of the King of Flies through the Slums, where its signals revealed traces of multiple wolves.
• Ji Jue waited patiently for the Plague to identify the wolves while continuing his research in the Doomsday Train’s Workshop.
• Ji Jue extracted five purified metal essences and sealed them in Spirit Essence Crystals, completing the Essence of the Five Metals.

Ji Jue forged Zhanlu by fusing the Five Metals’ Essences and the Essence of the Sun with his own Metal Heart, then survived its first activation and tested its destructive power. He ended the chapter with Zhanlu completed as a semi-finished, unorthodox creation whose true path required Bind and Restrain Calamity and Inner Thunder Pool.

• Ji Jue gathered the Essences of the Five Metals and the Sun, then used his Metal Heart as the vessel for forging Zhanlu.
• Ji Jue fused Zhanlu’s Spirit Essence with his heart, drawing on Spirit Essence and metal to make the heart withstand the transformation.
• Ji Jue connected the new heart to his body, survived its initial surge by releasing the power, and repaired and reinforced his mechanical form.
• Ji Jue tested Zhanlu by firing Electric Light through his finger and unleashing Rocket Fist against targets in the Workshop.
• Ji Jue blamed the Little Cow and Horse for the wrecked Workshop and made it clean up while he inspected Zhanlu.
• Ji Jue recognized Zhanlu as his third Nine Types Creation, but concluded it remained an unorthodox semi-finished product because it lacked Bind and Restrain Calamity and Inner Thunder Pool.

Ji Jue used the Natural Disaster-like power of his Sin Corruption form to transform Zhanlu’s spirit essence into a Thunder Pool, then searched for smaller disasters to feed it. Instead, he discovered a mass of approaching calamities as the fused typhoon White Deer began bearing down on Tower City.

• Ji Jue revealed his Sin Corruption form and found that its chaotic power corroded materials and erased the consciousness of ensouled creations.
• Ji Jue pulled a wisp of calamity from the hole in his chest and fed it into Zhanlu’s heart, which absorbed electricity and transformed its spirit essence into a destructive violet lightning.
• Ji Jue tested Zhanlu’s new power, accidentally dissolving a wide area of the workshop and alarming Little Cow and Horse.
• Ji Jue used the Containing Form Mirror to search for manageable Natural Disasters and discovered overwhelming tribulation aura and numerous approaching storms around Central Earth.
• The Federation warned that Typhoon Coral and Typhoon Jianpeng had fused into the powerful Typhoon White Deer, which was projected to make landfall in Tower City that night.
• Torrential rain began pouring over Tower City as the catastrophe approached.

As a typhoon stirred strange forces across Central Earth, the dam north of Tower City burst and sent floodwaters toward the Slums while authorities sealed off the prosperous district. Ji Jue agreed to help Elder Longge evacuate the church’s children and disabled residents, and dispatched trucks from the factory; they reached the overcrowded church.

• Ji Jue noticed the Horde and Embers growing unusually active during the storm and suspected White Deer’s Aura had appeared.
• The dam north of Tower City collapsed, sending a Turbid Flow toward the Slums while officials and armed forces excluded most residents from the protected urban district.
• Elder Longge asked Ji Jue to open the factory grounds and help evacuate the homeless children and people with impaired limbs from the church.
• Ji Jue sent Yan Fei to work and activated a convoy of trucks to transport the church’s residents and supplies.
• The trucks crossed the flooded streets and arrived at the overcrowded church in just over ten minutes.

As Tower City flooded, Yan Fei and Ji Jue organized the evacuation of the church, hospital patients, and other survivors to Coast Industry’s factory. After sheltering the refugees, Ji Jue set out to search for a woman’s son, who had been trapped in a drug factory.

• Yan Fei used a Riot Cat and gunfire to control the panicked crowd while church members loaded children onto the first trucks.
• Ji Jue’s borrowed trucks evacuated hospital patients, doctors, medicines, and finally Elder Longge and the church members to Coast Industry’s factory.
• Ji Jue offered shelter and supplies to the Church, and Longge agreed to let it sell Coast Industry’s prosthetic exoskeletons for income.
• A man arriving with the final evacuees learned that his loved one had died, while a woman begged Longge for help finding her son, who had been imprisoned in a drug factory.
• Ji Jue learned the woman’s son might still be trapped in the factory and went to search for him.

As floods and a typhoon devastated the Slums, Ji Jue struggled to rescue survivors and found that Jiachujia had died. Tong Shan unleashed his Disaster Prevention Book to shield the district from the storm, and a mysterious purple lightning joined him after calamity beasts attacked.

• Ji Jue reached the burning factory, learned from the bloodied bearded man that Jiachujia was dead, and let him leave with the rescued victims.
• Ji Jue used Little Cow and Horse to carry survivors to higher ground, but many distrusted him, and he could not save everyone.
• Jiagongzhu threatened Ji Jue, who supported the collapsing ruins, gave him medicine, and urged him to flee with his family.
• Ji Jue found a girl clutching her dead mother's severed hand and continued through the flood as the Slums descended into violence and destruction.
• After the White Deer Typhoon accelerated and the dam breach worsened, Tong Shan unfolded his Disaster Prevention Book and redirected the flood and wind away from the Slums.
• Calamity beasts engulfed Tong Shan, but purple lightning incinerated them; Tong Shan welcomed it and charged into the calamity with his sword.