Chapter Summaries

Luo Xuan followed the patrol captain through a mist-shrouded street filled with monstrous Secret Medicine Cultivators and realized how dangerous their path was. He arrived at a black house with the other youths who had consumed Secret Elixirs, where the town mayor began explaining the continent’s dangers and their future cultivation.

• Luo Xuan reflected on the need to gain enough power to survive before he could leave the Black Mist Continent.
• The patrol captain summoned Luo Xuan and led him away after saying his three-day leave had ended early.
• Lin Chen revealed that the captain had scrutinized Luo Xuan because he was too normal, then refused to answer questions unrelated to cultivation or mortal danger.
• Luo Xuan followed the captain through gray mist and a black street crowded with pale figures and monstrous beings.
• Luo Xuan entered a black house and found the other youths who had consumed Secret Elixirs, all frightened by their transformations.
• The town mayor gathered the youths and began explaining the continent’s dangers and their future cultivation.

The Old Town Chief explained the monsters and ghosts threatening humanity on the Black Mist Continent, while Lin Chen considered the continent’s potential value and the forces surrounding it. As Luo Xuan wondered how to help the town, Lin Chen told him to open his panel, revealing an incomplete method of consumption.

• The Old Town Chief described how demons, fiends, ghosts, and aberrations endangered humanity and forced people to the continent’s edges.
• Lin Chen reflected that the continent might be valuable as a base and considered taking control of it through Spirit Yuan Island.
• The Old Town Chief urged the youths to protect their families, and his voice calmed the frightened crowd.
• Luo Xuan asked Lin Chen what they should do, and Lin Chen advised him to learn the locals’ methods for his future Path of Corpse Release.
• Luo Xuan opened his panel and found a new entry labeled [Method of Consumption · Incomplete Chapter].

The Old Town Chief explained that the Consumption Method granted power from monsters but risked turning cultivators into demonic beasts. Lin Chen told Luo Xuan that contamination came from incompatible worlds and suspected a Dao Integration-level evil god might descend in the future, while his analysis of the Consumption Method reached 3/100.

• The Old Town Chief introduced the Consumption Method and warned that demonic wills, human desires, and contamination could drive cultivators mad.
• The Old Town Chief said State of Mind cultivation methods could suppress or refine inner demons.
• Lin Chen told Luo Xuan that State of Mind methods could not remove demonic beast nature or the effects of contamination.
• Lin Chen explained contamination as distortion caused when matter from incompatible worlds entered one another.
• Lin Chen inferred that a future change to the world's environment might be caused by a Dao Integration-level evil god.
• Lin Chen's Spiritual Light Screen recorded his Demonic Beast Consumption Method analysis progress as 3/100.

Lin Chen explained that Luo Xuan’s Analysis Panel could help him master sorcery, while secretly using a Soul Spirit Insect to gather his knowledge and bind him to the Spirit Net. The Old Town Chief announced that the students would enter the wilderness for combat training in three days, leaving Luo Xuan to prepare for the dangers ahead.

• Luo Xuan noticed the Analysis Panel’s rate rising as he listened to the Old Town Chief and asked Lin Chen how to use it.
• Lin Chen explained that analyzing things, studying Classics, and repeated use could develop sorcery models and teach him sorcery.
• Luo Xuan asked whether the panel could let him learn methods without a teacher, and Lin Chen confirmed it.
• Luo Xuan asked about the pain between his brows, while Lin Chen concealed that a Soul Spirit Insect was burrowing into his soul and connecting him to the Spirit Net.
• The Old Town Chief announced that the students would enter the wilderness for combat training in three days, and Luo Xuan realized he would face Demonic Beasts and battles directly.

Luo Xuan’s group entered the dangerous Eternal Night Forest for a trial meant to prepare new Secret Medicine Cultivators for the Human Race Competition. As darkness swallowed them, Lin Chen recognized that the forest might function like a Nascent Soul Dao Domain and continued seeking a power capable of awakening his true body.

• Zhou Bao and Yang Qingping led Luo Xuan and the other youths away from town, warning them about the dangers and explaining that the settlement needed fighters for the Human Race Competition.
• The group encountered poisonous plants and bizarre entities on the journey, then reached the Eternal Night Forest, where Zhou Bao warned that even its edges could prove deadly.
• Zhou Bao taught the youths three forest rules: stay within firelight, watch for incomplete shadows, and destroy the bodies and souls of anyone who died there.
• Lin Chen told Luo Xuan that the forest was expanding and that nearby human settlements existed both to gather secret-medicine materials and to contain it.
• Lin Chen compared the forest’s unnatural domain to a Nascent Soul cultivator’s Dao Domain and reflected that he needed Nascent Soul-level power to awaken his true body.
• Luo Xuan’s group entered the forest, and a tide of dim night surged over them.

Luo Xuan and the others entered the Eternal Night Forest, where Zhou Bao’s bone-and-flesh Burning Lamp kept the darkness at bay. Lin Chen recognized the forest as a dangerous domain akin to a Nascent Soul Dao Domain and began analyzing it, while Zhou Bao and Yang Qingping noticed an unsettling silence.

• Zhou Bao carried a Burning Lamp that consumed his vitality as the group entered the darkened Eternal Night Forest.
• Luo Xuan learned from Lin Chen that the lamp was a Bizarre Object made from a dead Ghost rather than a cultivator’s artifact.
• Lin Chen warned Luo Xuan that the forest was dangerous and identified its darkness and altered spiritual energy as signs of a domain-like region.
• Lin Chen decided he could abandon Luo Xuan if necessary and sent his consciousness into the forest to analyze its essence.
• Zhou Bao and Yang Qingping stopped after a few steps and remarked that the forest was unusually quiet.

Luo Xuan and the others fled through an unnaturally silent forest, where a corpse marsh and its Earthbound Spirits attacked them. As a greater threat descended and the light vanished, Luo Xuan called on Lin Chen, who dismissed it as only a little fellow.

• Zhou Bao recognized that the forest was dangerously quiet and led the group toward the outskirts.
• A youth fell into a Grotesque Corpse Marsh, and Zhou Bao used a flesh-and-blood rope to try to pull him free.
• Lin Chen warned Luo Xuan to retreat, just before corpses and Earthbound Spirits dragged several youths into the mire.
• Zhou Bao led the survivors away as the trapped youths screamed behind them.
• Zhou Bao and Yang Qingping suspected the Eternal Night Forest was expanding, but a deathly presence approached and Lin Chen called it a little fellow.
• The surrounding light vanished, the Burning Lamp went out, and night enveloped the group.

Luo Xuan discovered that shadow creatures could be killed by striking their shadows and warned the others, but a far deadlier flesh monster attacked after the lamp went out. As the monster devoured Luo Xuan, Lin Chen finally intervened, and a blade of frost-lit light appeared in the darkness.

• A shadow double grabbed Luo Xuan, but Lin Chen told him to attack its shadow, allowing Luo Xuan to destroy it and warn the others of the creatures' weakness.
• Zhou Bao and Yang Qingping helped the group defeat the shadow doubles, then Yang Qingping urged Zhou Bao to relight the lamp.
• Lin Chen warned that the monster that had extinguished the lamp had not appeared, but a mass of flesh dropped onto Zhou Bao and digested him alive.
• Yang Qingping fled as the flesh monster devoured several people, and the survivors scattered in a desperate attempt to escape.
• The monster enveloped Luo Xuan, but his gaze changed as Lin Chen said he had to act, and a frigid blade light flashed through the darkness.

Lin Chen took control of Luo Xuan’s body and fought a monstrous, tentacled creature in the Eternal Night Forest. Unable to overcome it with the mortal body’s strength, he called on his dream-bound main body, which answered by sending the Spirit Net’s power toward the human world.

• Luo Xuan surrendered control of his body to Lin Chen as the monster attacked, and Lin Chen cut through its flesh.
• Lin Chen examined the creature, dodged its tentacles, and determined that his borrowed body could not defeat it unaided.
• Lin Chen called upon his main body in the Boundless Dreamscape by speaking his own name.
• The Spirit Net gathered the dreamscape’s knowledge into a vast network above the immortal palace, and Lin Chen’s main body answered, “I am—here—”.
• The Spirit Net sent a ray of light toward the human world.

Lin Chen tried to use the Spirit Net to cast a Fireball Technique through Luo Xuan's mortal body, but spiritual energy aberration caused the spell to fail. After defeating the Flesh and Blood Monster with enhanced physical abilities, he realized he would need to redesign the Spirit Net's runes and methods for the Black Mist Continent.

• Lin Chen connected to the Spirit Net and formed a Fireball Technique, but it dissipated when it clashed with the continent's altered spiritual energy.
• The Flesh and Blood Monster seized Lin Chen's opening, wrapped him in its body, and attacked again by splitting into threads.
• Lin Chen used a white-bone saber and enhanced strength to slash apart the monster, forcing it to abandon part of its body and flee.
• Lin Chen pursued the monster and realized that Law Deviation made most spells from outside the Black Mist Continent ineffective.
• Lin Chen concluded he would need to modify the Spirit Net's fundamental runes and methods, then continued hunting the monster with his physical strength.

Lin Chen defeated the Flesh and Blood Monster, but Luo Xuan chose to risk consuming it as a secret medicine and cultivate both his body and soul to gain power. Lin Chen agreed to help and revealed that Luo Xuan could reduce the backlash by borrowing power from the Immortal of Dreams.

• Lin Chen cut down the Flesh and Blood Monster with a storm of blade strikes until only a powerless, human-head-sized mass remained.
• Luo Xuan asked Lin Chen to return control of the body so he could consume the monster and cultivate Life-Nourishing Consumption.
• Lin Chen warned Luo Xuan that the monster’s backlash could kill him and that attempting soul cultivation alongside bodily cultivation risked destroying his soul.
• Luo Xuan declared that he would gamble his life to gain strength rather than depend on Lin Chen to save him.
• Lin Chen praised Luo Xuan’s courage and agreed to teach him the cultivation methods.
• When Luo Xuan asked how to reduce the backlash, Lin Chen named the Immortal of Dreams as the source of external force.

Luo Xuan prepared to cultivate the Life-Nourishing Feathered Transformation True Scripture by consuming a monster and sought the sleeping immortal’s power to protect him from backlash. Lin Chen taught him a simple prayer ritual and named the being he would call upon: The Traveler.

• Luo Xuan stood before a monster with a damaged Burning Lamp, preparing to cultivate with its life force despite the risks of the deduced technique.
• Lin Chen told Luo Xuan that borrowing the immortal’s power could help offset cultivation backlash and explained that such power could reach anywhere in the world.
• Lin Chen outlined the prayer ritual: establish a connection, prepare protections, and provide an offering.
• Lin Chen instructed Luo Xuan to keep the Burning Lamp lit, inscribe a formation in spiritual blood, and offer half the monster’s body.
• When Luo Xuan asked for the immortal’s name, Lin Chen told him to call the being The Traveler.

Lin Chen explained why he chose the name Traveler for the Immortal of Dreams and gave Luo Xuan the invocation to use. Luo Xuan performed the ritual and received a response from the figure in the vision.

• Lin Chen told Luo Xuan that the Immortal of Dreams bore the name Traveler, a title reflecting an endless journey along the Dao.
• Lin Chen explained that he chose the name as a warning to later Dao Seekers and because it expressed his own search for meaning and the Great Dao.
• Luo Xuan accepted Lin Chen's assurance that the Traveler would respond and stepped onto the altar, determined to risk everything.
• Luo Xuan invoked the Dao-Chasing Traveler on the Path of Truth and asked for power to complete his transformation.
• The altar revealed a vast starry realm and a figure seated among the stars, whose voice told Luo Xuan, "I—am listening."

Lin Chen used Luo Xuan’s successful prayer ritual to establish an anchor between the Dream Realm and reality, bringing his true body closer to returning. But the ritual also drew a mysterious power from Eternal Night Forest, leaving a dark trace on the altar’s new heart.

• Luo Xuan’s ritual connected him to the Sea of Consciousness, where Lin Chen observed the dreams of countless living beings and the Dream Realm’s place between the shallow and deep layers.
• Lin Chen used the ritual’s connection to reality to anchor his Dream Realm and began planning how to regain power, status, and resources before returning his true body.
• Lin Chen sent starlight into reality, and it enveloped the Flesh and Blood Monster on Luo Xuan’s altar.
• A sudden darkness swept into the altar and mixed with the starlight, leaving a heart covered in rolling eyeballs with an indelible trace of darkness.
• Luo Xuan recoiled from the change, while Lin Chen wondered why Eternal Night Forest could respond to prayers like a deity.

Lin Chen performed the dangerous Life-Nourishing Consumption ritual to let Luo Xuan absorb the heart formed by the Burning Lamp’s radiance and the Eternal Night’s darkness. The heart took root in Luo Xuan’s chest, and the ritual began as his body started to transform.

• Luo Xuan asked Lin Chen what the eerie heart was and whether consuming it would bring consequences, and Lin Chen admitted he did not know.
• Luo Xuan chose to continue, so Lin Chen took control of his body and prepared the ritual with blood, writing, and talismans.
• Lin Chen explained that Luo Xuan needed a symbolic object to restrain the beastliness of the Demonic Beast, then flayed him and used his human skin as that symbol.
• Lin Chen opened Luo Xuan’s chest, removed his heart, and placed the eerie heart inside, where its blood vessels began joining Luo Xuan’s arteries.
• Luo Xuan saw his bloodied, half-human, half-ghost appearance in an ice mirror as granulation tissue grew across his body and the ritual officially began.

Luo Xuan underwent a dangerous transformation while consuming demonic beast flesh, and Lin Chen let him struggle with only a human skin to restrain the change. As Lin Chen discovered the expanding Shadow Strange Domain and considered his plans, a reflection resembling Luo Xuan appeared in the ice mirror and silently threatened to eat him.

• Luo Xuan began transforming into a flesh-covered monster as the demonic beast’s desires overwhelmed his human awareness.
• A sheet of human skin covered Luo Xuan and briefly restored his clarity, allowing him to fight back while Lin Chen watched without intervening further.
• Lin Chen sensed that the Eternal Night was turning living beings into shadows and expanding, and concluded he needed to reach the Nascent Soul Realm and return to reality within a hundred years.
• Lin Chen decided to reopen the dream and guide talented people in the Dao of Dreams to gather resources and help bring his true body back.
• After Luo Xuan collapsed in blood, a figure identical to him emerged in the ice mirror and silently mouthed, “Eat. You.”

Luo Xuan endured a perilous cultivation process in which his human nature and the demonic thoughts within him fought while Blood Flame burned his body and soul. He emerged with a Yin Spirit, becoming the first Yin Spirit True Person in this side world despite having no spiritual roots.

• Luo Xuan resisted the urge to seal away his beastly nature and chose to use his human nature to suppress and devour it.
• Luo Xuan and the consciousness of the evil thoughts fought over his soul as Blood Flame burned them both.
• Lin Chen watched Luo Xuan's agonizing transformation and wondered why he found it fascinating.
• Luo Xuan's Yin Spirit emerged after the ice mirror shattered, marked by a vertical eye on its forehead.
• Lin Chen congratulated Luo Xuan on becoming the first Yin Spirit True Person in this side world.

Luo Xuan successfully became a Yin Spirit, but his transformation left him symbiotic with Demonic Thought and at risk of losing his reason. After Lin Chen suppressed his sudden madness, he warned Luo Xuan to flee the Eternal Night Forest and directed him toward a Golden Core-level presence to the east.

• Luo Xuan completed his transformation into a Yin Spirit by burning his body's essence to nourish his soul, gaining the prospect of changing bodies and living for five hundred years.
• Luo Xuan's Demonic Thought drove him to plot against Lin Chen, but Lin Chen suppressed the madness and warned that Luo Xuan's transformation was incomplete and could eventually turn him into a Demonic Beast.
• Luo Xuan asked how to resolve the contamination, and Lin Chen admitted he had not researched a cure and urged him to leave the dangerous forest.
• Luo Xuan destroyed the ritual runes, picked up the Burning Lamp, and headed east toward a Golden Core-level aura rather than returning to town.
• After Luo Xuan left, a shadow swept through the forest and briefly revealed another version of the region containing the dead, Luo Xuan, and Lin Chen before the forest returned to normal.

Luo Xuan traveled across the Black Mist Continent using Shadow Transformation, a power gained from the Eternal Night Forest that threatened to corrupt his mind. He reached a bustling city inhabited by living people, while Lin Chen warned that its apparent safety might conceal a mass sacrifice; Luo Xuan secretly settled inside to await a chance to find the Spirit Yuan Island cultivators.

• Luo Xuan used Shadow Transformation to cross the dangerous wilderness, but its corruption forced him to emerge and recite the Mind-Clearing Mantra.
• Luo Xuan recalled how Lin Chen had rescued him from a forest that altered his perception, and Lin Chen reflected on the strange power and its connection to the Eternal Night Forest.
• Lin Chen warned Luo Xuan that prolonged Shadow Transformation invited madness and revealed that he sensed another familiar figure within the shadow.
• Luo Xuan reached a large, lively city, and Lin Chen cautioned that its residents might be kept as livestock for an unseen entity.
• Luo Xuan secretly entered the city, enslaved the occupants of a residence, and decided to wait before searching for the Spirit Yuan Island cultivators.

Lin Chen began opening the Dream Realm to others, intending to establish a communication network that could lead to research into spiritual energy nuclear fusion and the East Sea Ring Particle Accelerator. His actions drew the attention of powerful beings, and Grandmaster Taixuan ordered the Immortal Alliance’s young cultivators to investigate the East Sea.

• Lin Chen advised Luo Xuan to rely on overwhelming strength, then cut off contact before Luo Xuan could act; Luo Xuan abandoned his plan and resumed cultivating.
• Lin Chen entered the Dream Realm’s Sea of Consciousness and prayed to project its power into reality and bring people into the virtual world.
• People with Dream Realm Talent were drawn toward Lin Chen, while figures across the East Sea and beyond suddenly lost consciousness and streams of light flowed toward the Dream Realm.
• A black shadow in the Lost Layer sensed an unexplained disturbance, but continued searching for the Doomsday World’s lost coordinates.
• Grandmaster Taixuan and Tianjizi both sensed that something was amiss and traced the feeling to the East Sea.
• Grandmaster Taixuan ordered the current generation of walkers from the Nine Great Immortal Sects and the Spirit Transmutation Seeds to investigate the East Sea, commanding them to kill anything that threatened the Immortal Alliance.