Chapter Summaries

Key plot points

• Chen Xuan questions the Lotus Cloud Sect’s mysterious figure about the remains in its Artifact Refining Room and the erosion inside Nine Sons Peak. She confirms the erosion is caused by Mount Sumeru Distortion, which opened a passage into the cave heaven roughly a century ago.
• Members of the Gospel Society entered through that rift about two hundred years ago. They made the temple a holy site and crafted Jade Tokens, believing them to be divine gifts capable of absorbing miraculous power. The figure explains that the tokens gained their energy from the spiritual treasures used to make them.
• The sect’s Treasure Vault was real and held only a fraction of its wealth. The Gospel Society’s people were allowed to explore and experiment because the figure viewed their arrival as a potential opportunity, not a threat.
• Many of the remains in the Artifact Refining Room belonged to Gospel Society members who died using a dangerous method copied from undersea demons. The technique was unsuitable for humans, but the sect’s guardian did not interfere.
• The figure reveals that a new invader has entered the cave heaven. It is as powerful as a heart demon, lies deep inside, and cannot be reached by Chen Xuan. As the cave heaven is collapsing, she tells him to evacuate the people he cares about.
• Before Chen Xuan can learn more, she sends him out of the white branches.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Xuan connects the Gospel Society to earlier mysteries: the conflict aboard the Mechanism Airship, the breach between worlds, and the Shadow Demon’s possession of Su Xingwan. He also suspects that the Society’s Jade Tokens helped nanobugs evolve into Nano-Lifeforms.
• His view of the Gospel Society grows more complicated. Though their actions caused danger and many deaths, their persistence and self-taught skill make them seem more than the organization’s “vermin” label suggests.
• The guardian remains committed to noninterference, treating both Chen Xuan’s arrival and the Gospel Society’s as opportunities that might shape future events. She explains that this principle helped create a chain of events leading to the Lotus Cloud Sect and Liu Shuyue.
• The guardian is visibly weakening: new wounds appear and heal slowly. She reveals she has continued fighting so Ji Lian’s specially inscribed Jade Token would fulfill its purpose before the sect vanished. Chen Xuan worries about her and tries to explain the danger in his world, but she cuts him off and urges him to leave.

Significant themes

• Opportunity and consequence: Arrivals, discoveries, and even disastrous choices can become opportunities for someone else.
• Noninterference and fate: The guardian accepts events—including deaths and the sect’s impending collapse—as part of a larger causal chain rather than intervening to prevent them.
• Unintended costs of progress: The Gospel Society’s experiments produced valuable Jade Tokens, but their use of an unsuitable refining technique cost many lives.
• The widening threat between worlds: The cave heaven’s collapse and the heart-demon-level invader suggest that the conflict is escalating beyond Chen Xuan’s ability to control.

Chen Xuan returned from the Erosion zone and revealed that the Lotus Cloud Sect was an entire Cave Heaven whose failing protective formation left the world exposed to the heart demon. Liu Shuyue questioned the meaning of her existence as a Mountain-Dispatch Disciple, and Chen Xuan assured her that she was an independent living person.

• Chen Xuan rejoined Lin Qing, Honglian, and Xu Xuanling on Nine Sons Peak and explained that the white lines were cracks in the Cave Heaven, not layers of Erosion.
• The group left the Lotus Cloud Sect and met Liu Shuyue, then boarded the Wind Song as the blizzard stopped and the temperature rapidly rose.
• Chen Xuan told everyone that the Lotus Cloud Sect was the entire world and described how it had been created to resist Ji Yun's heart demon.
• Xu Xuanling protested that Ji Yun could not have become a monster, while Chen Xuan pointed to the ruined world beyond the sect as evidence of the danger.
• Liu Shuyue asked whether she was a real person and what purpose her existence served, and Chen Xuan told her that every Mountain-Dispatch Disciple was an independent individual.

Chen Xuan urged Liu Shuyue to choose her own path and decided to risk activating a backup plan to save the Lotus Cloud Sect. In the sect’s failing core cellar, a figure spoke with Ji Lian’s soulless body before Chen Xuan and his companions broke in, setting up a reunion after a thousand years.

• Chen Xuan reassured Liu Shuyue that her past efforts to protect Mala Village mattered and that the Lotus Cloud Sect had not dictated her choices.
• Liu Shuyue decided to look ahead, while Chen Xuan and the others resolved to confront the intruder threatening the cave heaven.
• Chen Xuan chose to activate the backup plan rather than abandon the Lotus Cloud Sect and its people.
• A figure visited Ji Lian’s soulless body in a decaying cellar and told her she had met the person Ji Lian had wanted to see again.
• As the heart demon shook the cellar, the figure prepared to fight, but Chen Xuan and his companions crashed through the ceiling.

Chen Xuan and Ji Lian reached the core of the Lotus Cloud Sect’s protection formation and met the guardian Ji Lian had created. Ji Lian named her A Wei, and the group prepared to learn where the enemy was.

• Chen Xuan and Ji Lian entered the formation core through a passage beside the well and encountered its guardian.
• Ji Lian recognized the guardian as the soulless body she had created, and Chen Xuan explained that he had summoned Ji Lian as a backup plan.
• Ji Lian thanked the guardian for protecting the sect and gave her the name A Wei.
• Ji Lian reflected on the future burden of supporting the Lotus Cloud Sect and her guilt over making A Wei shoulder that responsibility.
• Xu Xuanling asked A Wei where the enemy was, and A Wei sensed that the sect might yet avoid its destruction.

Chen Xuan and the others brought a gigantic demon from the Lotus Cloud Sect’s core area to the Kunlun Mountain Summit so they could fight without risking the formation. The monster emerged into the open, and Ji Lian, Liu Shuyue, and Xu Xuanling launched their Demon-Slaying True Swords against it.

• A Wei revealed a gigantic human-faced, centipede-like monster outside the core area and explained how the sect’s formation concealed its location.
• Lin Qing realized the monster could threaten the formation’s nexus, and A Wei offered to move it and the group to the surface.
• Ji Lian warned Liu Shuyue to survive even if the Lotus Cloud Sect fell, then asked Chen Xuan to take care of her master.
• A Wei moved the group and the monster to the Kunlun Mountain Summit, where the creature emerged beside the Wind Song spacecraft.
• Chen Xuan identified the creature as a demon, and Ji Lian, Liu Shuyue, and Xu Xuanling attacked it with the Demon-Slaying True Sword.