Recaps

At dawn, Shen Hui and his companions left an abandoned post station after Shen Hui gave two wild boars to the impoverished villagers who had come to salvage its timber. The group parted ways with Nie Yun and her companion, each setting off toward a different destination.

• Nie Yun accepted Shen Hui’s safety talisman and asked him to buy her a drink the next time they met.
• Daoist Feng said he planned to return to his Temple, while Shen Hui and his companions prepared to leave the post station.
• Hu Cheng reported that a group of villagers claimed to be woodcutters, and Shen Hui realized they had come to take timber from the abandoned building.
• Shen Hui saw a child scavenging chicken bones, returned to the post station, and left two wild boars for the villagers to share.
• Nie Yun agreed to deliver Lu Huan’s candied hawthorn skewer to Chengying, and she and her companion set off toward Lingzhou as Shen Hui’s group went the other way.

Shen Hui and his companions reached a mountain town where they prepared to part ways with Daoist Feng. After Shen Hui cleared the blizzard and gave Feng two protective talismans, he continued southwest with Lu Huan and Hu Cheng while Feng planned to return to Grand Void Temple.

• The group reached a mountain town, where Shen Hui planned to travel southwest with Lu Huan and Hu Cheng while Daoist Feng returned north to Grand Void Temple.
• A sudden blizzard forced them to shelter in a mountain pavilion, and Daoist Feng worried about crossing the snowy mountain paths.
• Daoist Feng asked Shen Hui for permission to loot the cave abodes of the military Attendants Shen Hui had killed, and Shen Hui agreed with a warning to be cautious.
• When Feng delayed leaving until the storm eased, Shen Hui swept the wind and snow into his sleeve and cleared the sky.
• Shen Hui gave Feng a Warm Sun Talisman and a Thunder Peace Talisman, and Feng thanked him before Shen Hui departed southwest with Lu Huan and Hu Cheng.

Shen Hui learned that the child-bestowing Seed-Jade Nunnery in Great Peace County had gained fame for causing women to conceive and grow more beautiful, and suspected its miracles concealed a demon. He warned a childless middle-aged couple, but they rejected his warning and headed for the nunnery.

• Shen Hui discovered that the “Killing Tribulation Approaching” status had vanished from his panel, though he could not determine why.
• At a tea stall in Great Peace County, Shen Hui overheard a couple discussing Seed-Jade Nunnery and the rumors of miraculous pregnancies there.
• The couple explained that a wealthy gentleman’s seven concubines had all become pregnant after visiting the nunnery, inspiring many local women to seek its blessings.
• Shen Hui told the couple their childlessness was caused by the man’s kidney yin deficiency and warned that pregnancy could endanger his wife’s life.
• Shen Hui cautioned that Seed-Jade Nunnery’s miracles likely hid a demon, but the woman dismissed him and led her husband toward the nunnery.

Shen Hui entered Squire Wang’s estate and learned that its seven pregnant concubines and a dead male servant had suffered unnatural pregnancies and frightening changes. When the concubines confronted them in the main hall, Shen Hui summoned White Skeleton to investigate what they carried.

• Shen Hui told the gatekeeper that sinister evil and disaster surrounded the estate, and Squire Wang invited him and his companions inside.
• Squire Wang fell to his knees and begged Shen Hui to save him, then described his nightmares and the seven concubines’ strange behavior at night.
• Squire Wang revealed that four concubines had become pregnant despite years without relations with him, and that a male servant had also become pregnant and died in agony.
• Squire Wang said he had stayed silent because the concubines seemed to read his thoughts and silently confronted him whenever he tried to seek help.
• Seven pregnant women entered the hall and addressed Squire Wang, while Shen Hui shielded him and summoned White Skeleton to inspect their bellies.

Shen Hui used Jia Wood Azure Thunder to knock out the seven pregnant women and the others in the residence, then cut open the women’s bellies to investigate. The crimson flesh balls inside revealed a giant eye staring at him.

• The seven women claimed their pregnancies were blessings from Child-Bestowing Guanyin, and Shen Hui answered by unleashing Jia Wood Azure Thunder.
• The thunder knocked the seven women, Squire Wang, Lu Huan, and Hu Cheng unconscious, while Shen Hui preserved their lives with the nonlethal attack.
• As Shen Hui prepared to cut open the leading woman’s belly, the seven women rose in a twisted posture and surrounded him.
• Shen Hui severed the women’s swollen bellies with White Skeleton and found that their bodies were rotten and their abdominal cavities empty.
• Shen Hui opened one belly and discovered a crimson, lotus-seed-shaped flesh ball that split apart to reveal a giant eyeball.

Shen Hui discovered that the pregnant women in Great Peace County were dead creatures hiding fleshly parasites, and he killed the ones that attacked him. After learning there were more than three hundred pregnant women in the county seat, he realized the infestation would take considerable effort to clear.

• Shen Hui left Squire Wang’s residence after telling the servant that he had removed the source of trouble there, then headed toward Seed-Jade Nunnery.
• Shen Hui noticed pregnant women secretly watching him, lured one into an alley, and killed her after she revealed herself as a monster with a flesh ball inside her belly.
• When a crowd accused Shen Hui of murder, more pregnant women transformed and fled, so he killed them with his sword and burned the corpses.
• Shen Hui asked the tall, thin runner how many pregnant women lived in Great Peace County and learned that more than three hundred were in the county seat.
• Shen Hui burned the remains and recalled his sword while the terrified runner wet himself.

Shen Hui investigated Seed-Jade Nunnery and discovered it sat at the heart of a rare Lock-Dragon Formation that drained people’s vital energy. He drove the worshippers away and captured the guest-receiving nun as he continued into the nunnery.

• Shen Hui learned that Great Peace County kept a register of people who visited Seed-Jade Nunnery, then sent a constable to report his findings to the magistrate.
• Shen Hui flew to Seed-Jade Nunnery and recognized that its location formed a Lock-Dragon Formation that gathered vital energy into the nunnery.
• Shen Hui passed two constables guarding the mountain entrance and entered the nunnery without announcing himself.
• When the guest-receiving nun challenged his presence, Shen Hui kicked her aside and drew White Skeleton to frighten the worshippers into fleeing.
• Shen Hui took the injured nun into his sleeve and proceeded deeper into the nunnery.

Shen Hui confronted the abbess of Seed-Jade Nunnery, who admitted to making women who prayed there become pregnant. She revealed that the nunnery’s lotus had become a Sinful Lotus after absorbing the blood of a True Dragon, whose execution had stolen the Great Li Dynasty’s fortune.

• Shen Hui searched the nunnery and gathered the nuns into his sleeve before reaching Perfect Penetration Hall.
• The abbess of Seed-Jade Nunnery emerged and admitted that she had caused the women who came to pray to become pregnant.
• Shen Hui beheaded the abbess when she asked him to hear her story, but she reattached her head and continued speaking.
• The abbess recounted how Buddhists captured and refined the True Dragon after the Buddhist suppression of the Great Li Dynasty.
• The abbess explained that the lotus in Guanyin’s Jade Purification Vase had absorbed the dragon’s blood and become a Sinful Lotus.

Shen Hui confronted the woman haunting the Temple, but her shifting forms and strange magic overwhelmed his attacks. She released a blood-red mist that impregnated him with a demonic force, leaving him with a swelling, heavy lower abdomen.

• Shen Hui accused the woman of preying on the weak, and she claimed she had never harmed anyone while explaining that the nuns in the Temple were her children.
• The woman released the nuns from Shen Hui’s sleeve, and Shen Hui’s divine light dispersed her apparent body.
• A nun transformed into the woman, who multiplied among the other nuns and resisted Shen Hui’s Sword Qi, Frost Chi, and lightning.
• Shen Hui traced the woman’s laughter to the lotus in Child-Bestowing Guanyin’s vase, where the flower opened into a mouth and released a blood-red mist.
• The mist entered Shen Hui’s lungs and gathered in his lower abdomen, and the woman declared that she had made him pregnant.

Shen Hui fought the Sinful Lotus, destroyed its blood sea, and pulled up the lotus left behind, but found no Dao Xing points. Rotborn consumed the lotus remnants and revealed an eye that showed Shen Hui a vision of a pregnant woman possessed by the demon, demanding that her child be saved.

• Shen Hui burned away the Sinful Lotus's demonic fetal aura with thunder and attacked it with Rotborn and the Great Five-Elements Extinction Divine Light.
• The Sinful Lotus unleashed a vast blood sea that destroyed Perfect Penetration Hall, but Shen Hui summoned a crimson sword light that devoured the blood.
• Shen Hui found and uprooted the white lotus left in the ruins, then suspected the Sinful Lotus had used a golden cicada sheds its shell trick when he received no Dao Xing points.
• Rotborn consumed the lotus's remains, and a vertical eye opened in its crossguard.
• Shen Hui shared his divine sense with Rotborn and saw a delivery room where a pregnant woman suddenly demanded that her child be saved.

Shen Hui used Rotborn to destroy the flesh-balls planted by Sinful Lotus throughout Great Peace County, earning over fifty thousand Dao Xing points. After settling the crisis, he discovered new ways to use Rotborn and left the county amid rumors of supernatural attacks.

• Rotborn devoured a flesh ball emerging from a woman who died in childbirth, then raced through Great Peace County to destroy other lotus seeds and kill their hosts.
• Shen Hui sent Red Calamity back toward its origin after it absorbed a sea of blood and grew more powerful.
• Shen Hui and Lu Huan, Hu Cheng, and two constables used the county magistrate’s list to hunt down and kill more than nine hundred lotus seeds, including dormant ones and those that had fled.
• Shen Hui discovered that Rotborn could let him see through eyes growing in its victims’ wounds and track people whose body parts it had devoured.
• Stories of strange deaths and mysterious red and gray lights spread throughout Great Peace County after Shen Hui settled the matter.

After the county officially declared the demonic evil eliminated, Shen Hui accepted a reward from the county magistrate and took Hu Cheng and Lu Huan into the mountains. There, he explained why Daoists accepted payment for their rites and taught them that cultivation’s heart lay in the Dao.

• The Great Peace County Hall posted a notice declaring the demonic evil defeated and warning people against false divine miracles.
• The county magistrate hosted Shen Hui and his disciples, gave them fifty taels of silver and two thousand copper coins, and offered additional local gifts.
• Shen Hui led Hu Cheng and Lu Huan out of the county and stopped at a mountain pool, where Lu Huan found several colorful stones, including valuable Dog-Head Gold.
• Lu Huan asked why Shen Hui had accepted payment despite not needing money, and he explained the costs, livelihood, sincerity, and karma behind Daoists’ fees.
• Shen Hui told Lu Huan and Hu Cheng that cultivation was rooted not in technique but in the Dao, describing it through nature, non-action, non-contention, and carefree wandering.

Embracing Snow formed her Golden Core after drawing in spiritual energy for three days, and Shen Hui congratulated her. She decided to travel with Shen Hui as he searched for a mountain-gate site, while she consolidated her cultivation by the river.

• Embracing Snow absorbed spiritual energy from the surrounding region for three days as Shen Hui guarded her and sent White Skeleton and Rotborn to drive away any demons or evils.
• Embracing Snow rose from the rock, completed her breakthrough, and formed her Golden Core.
• Embracing Snow told Shen Hui she would accompany him to seek a Gui-water sword material, and he explained that he planned to search the Cangyue Mountains for a suitable mountain-gate site.
• Embracing Snow stayed by the river to consolidate her cultivation, while Shen Hui, Lu Huan, and Hu Cheng settled nearby.
• Shen Hui built a small willow house, and Lu Huan and Hu Cheng caught crabs, crawfish, and fish in the stream.

Shen Hui and his companions discovered that a village upstream had been poisoned, and he treated the villagers with antidote medicine. Most survivors recovered, but one boy died before he could be saved.

• Baoxue awakened after stabilizing her cultivation, and Shen Hui, Lu Huan, and Hu Cheng found dead fish and crabs in the river.
• The group followed the poisoned water upstream and found villagers suffering from severe poisoning.
• Shen Hui identified the illness as poisoning and prepared antidote water from pills taken from the Plague Emperor Sect.
• Lu Huan and Hu Cheng helped distribute the medicine while Baoxue investigated the village.
• Many villagers recovered, but Shen Hui confirmed that a boy had died and told the boy's father.

Shen Hui told Tie Zhu that his child could not be brought back, and Tie Zhu led Willow Creek Village residents toward Stone Bridge Village to seek revenge. Shen Hui questioned the villagers’ account of poisoned water and followed them upstream to investigate.

• Shen Hui confirmed that Tie Zhu’s child was dead and said even a true immortal could not revive him.
• Tie Zhu stopped pleading and vowed to kill the people of Stone Bridge Village, gathering more than twenty angry villagers armed with tools and weapons.
• Shen Hui learned that Willow Creek Village and Stone Bridge Village had a long-running dispute over water, including a recent fight over spring irrigation.
• Shen Hui warned Hu Cheng not to accept one side’s claims and reasoned that the river would dilute poison unless an enormous amount had been used.
• Shen Hui, Hu Cheng, Patriarch Baoxue, and Lu Huan followed Tie Zhu’s group upstream and reached Stone Bridge Village.

Shen Hui discovered that Stone Bridge Village had been poisoned, with only one newborn still breathing. He revealed that the village had not poisoned the child from Willow Creek Village and left the surviving baby in the grieving father’s arms.

• Shen Hui stopped the villagers from entering Stone Bridge Village and told Patriarch Baoxue to check downstream and warn other villages.
• Shen Hui examined the houses and found the residents dead from a colorless, odorless poison.
• Shen Hui found a barely breathing baby beside its dead mother and used yiwood essence to help it.
• Shen Hui confirmed that the baby was the village’s only survivor and told the Willow Creek villagers that Stone Bridge Village had not poisoned the child.
• The grieving father took the surviving baby, who stirred and began to wail in his arms.

Shen Hui and his companions traced a river’s deadly poison to a two-hundred-year-old Poisonbird feather at the stream’s source. They followed a flying paper crane into the mountains, where Shen Hui found energy-restoring fruit, while the bird’s whereabouts remained unknown.

• Patriarch Baoxue reported that downstream villages had been treated or were unharmed, and Shen Hui led the group upstream.
• Shen Hui found dead animals along the stream and burned their bodies to prevent disease from spreading.
• At the stream’s source, Shen Hui retrieved a feather from the pool and, with Patriarch Baoxue, identified it as a Yunri Poisonbird tail feather.
• Shen Hui explained that the feather came from a bird with at least two hundred years of Dao Xing and could poison a vast area, then used it to guide a paper crane into the mountains.
• Shen Hui led Lu Huan, Hu Cheng, and Patriarch Baoxue through the forest, where he picked energy-restoring fruit and offered it to them.

Shen Hui and his companions discovered a Poisonbird nesting in a colossal tree, and Shen Hui killed it with thunder and fire. After finding a green egg and several stones in the nest, he burned the tree and its human and animal remains, then waited for another Yin Xie to appear.

• Lu Huan, Hu Cheng, Patriarch Baoxue, and Shen Hui sampled strange fruit and gathered flowers and medicinal mushrooms as they traveled through the forest.
• Shen Hui and the others found a giant tree with a nest surrounded by human and animal bones, and the Poisonbird emerged and swallowed their paper crane.
• Shen Hui repelled the Poisonbird's poisonous cry and struck it with crimson thunder, then burned its body to ash.
• Shen Hui searched the nest and took a green egg and several smooth green stones.
• Shen Hui burned the colossal tree and its nest, then told the others to wait for another Yin Xie.

Shen Hui and his companions followed a paper crane to the place where Yin Xie had died, then discovered a remote Taoist temple. A startled young Taoist fled inside to alert her master as Shen Hui knocked at the gate.

• Shen Hui discovered that the Poisonbird egg had spoiled, and he and the others opened it before freezing the rotten remains.
• Shen Hui used eggshell fragments to guide a paper crane toward Yin Xie while Lu Huan and Hu Cheng practiced folding cranes and reading characters.
• After more than two months of travel, the paper crane led Shen Hui and his companions to a poisoned clearing where Yin Xie's corpse lay.
• The group found a narrow path leading to Purple Bamboo Temple, where a young Taoist girl saw them, dropped her bamboo shoots, and ran inside to call her master.
• Shen Hui reassured Lu Huan that she had read the temple couplets correctly, then stepped forward and knocked on the gate.

Shen Hui and his companions visited the secluded Purple Bamboo Temple, where Daoist Yun Su told them how she and Green Bamboo came to live there. After hearing Shen Hui explain how Clear Wind Temple would let its disciples choose between worldly service and secluded cultivation, Yun Su offered to reveal a suitable spirit mountain in exchange for one small request.

• Daoist Yun Su welcomed Shen Hui and his companions into the Purple Bamboo Temple and served them tea.
• Shen Hui explained that Clear Wind Temple sought a spirit mountain on which to establish a home for the sect.
• Daoist Yun Su described how she had settled in the abandoned temple and rescued Green Bamboo as a child.
• Shen Hui explained that Clear Wind Temple would allow disciples to enter the world or remain secluded according to their own wishes.
• Daoist Yun Su offered to guide them to an exceptional spirit mountain, but said she first needed Shen Hui to agree to a request.

Daoist Yun Su asked Shen Hui to take Green Bamboo out of the mountains, but Green Bamboo refused to leave her. After Daoist Yun Su revealed the location of Spirit Mountain, a huge tiger confronted Green Bamboo, and Shen Hui challenged it.

• Daoist Yun Su explained that she wanted Shen Hui to take Green Bamboo away so the girl would not spend her life alone in the valley.
• Shen Hui offered to find a safe home for both Daoist Yun Su and Green Bamboo, but Daoist Yun Su insisted that only Green Bamboo should leave.
• Green Bamboo overheard them, broke the pot she was carrying, and declared that she would stay with Daoist Yun Su.
• Daoist Yun Su told Shen Hui and his companions how to reach Spirit Mountain, describing a tract of land suspended within a natural chasm.
• Daoist Yun Su called for Green Bamboo and then spotted her sitting helplessly beside a boulder as an enormous tiger stared at her.
• Daoist Yun Su pleaded with the tiger to spare Green Bamboo, and Shen Hui stepped forward and challenged it to understand human speech.

Shen Hui drove off the intelligent Tiger Demon and helped Green Bamboo recover, then accepted Daoist Yun Su’s invitation to stay at the temple. Over dinner and conversation, Daoist Yun Su described a mysterious mountain suspended in midair, which Shen Hui resolved to investigate himself.

• Shen Hui used his Sword Qi to frighten the Tiger Demon into fleeing, then helped Green Bamboo stand.
• Daoist Yun Su examined Green Bamboo for injuries, thanked Shen Hui, and warned that the Tiger Demon might return.
• Daoist Yun Su invited Shen Hui and his companions to stay at the temple, and he accepted.
• Green Bamboo prepared a simple vegetarian dinner, and she and Daoist Yun Su explained that they rarely ate such dishes because life in the mountains was meager.
• Daoist Yun Su described a floating mountain with sheer cliffs and vines hanging from its southern face, and Shen Hui decided to see it for himself.

Daoist Yun Su decided to stay at Purple Bamboo Temple with Green Bamboo, while Shen Hui and his companions set out west with a Thunder Talisman to protect them. On the road, Patriarch Baoxue killed a giant snake, and Shen Hui began training Hu Cheng in the Sword Wielding Art.

• Daoist Yun Su chose to let Green Bamboo remain at the temple and accepted Shen Hui’s Thunder Talisman for protection from the tiger demon.
• Lu Huan asked Daoist Yun Su and Green Bamboo to come with them, but both declined.
• Shen Hui, Lu Huan, Hu Cheng, and Patriarch Baoxue left the mountain the next morning after Green Bamboo gave them food for the road.
• Patriarch Baoxue killed a giant snake that blocked their path through a mountain hollow.
• Shen Hui gave Hu Cheng a wooden sword and instructed him to practice five hundred? no: three hundred of each of five sword movements every day.

As Shen Hui’s group cultivated while traveling west, they discovered Floating Immortal Mountain, a spectacular suspended peak he chose as their new sect grounds and cultivation sanctuary. They began surveying its terrain and found natural pools, terraces, and meditation sites.

• Hu Cheng practiced sword strokes diligently, while he and Lu Huan struggled comically with the Snake Form and Crane Form techniques under Shen Hui’s instruction.
• The group crossed a ridge and saw a vast chasm with a mountain suspended above it, which Patriarch Baoxue called crafted by spirits and gods.
• Shen Hui decided the mountain was ideal for their sect and flew there with Lu Huan and Hu Cheng as Patriarch Baoxue followed.
• The group landed on Waterfall Terrace and explored the mountain, surveying its terrain and earth veins over the following days.
• Shen Hui’s group discovered clear pools, ancient pines, and natural stone platforms suited to meditation and Qi Refining.

Shen Hui investigated the bottom of the floating mountain’s valley and discovered a living Bixi beneath an ancient stele. Bixi explained that the mountain had risen into the air when a Rogue Cultivator ascended, leaving Shen Hui with the mystery of the mountain resolved.

• Shen Hui descended alone to the valley floor to investigate why the mountain floated above the earth’s veins.
• He searched the barren valley and noticed strange insects and fish before finding a half-buried statue of Bixi carrying a stone stele.
• The statue awakened and spoke to Shen Hui, who introduced himself and explained why he had come.
• Bixi told Shen Hui that the mountain had once been rooted in the earth’s veins until a Rogue Cultivator ascended after a thousand years of contemplating the Dao, drawing the mountain aloft with his energy.