Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• Fang Shu discovers wormlike gu insects inside the Bronze Stone Gate. They consume spiritual energy but die when touched by it. He finds that Dragon Qi can contain them without harming them, collects several thousand, and stores them for later study.
• The weakened gate is close to breaking, so Fang Shu returns to the Mausoleum, where Wu Zhibai is completing her inheritance. She finishes just before the intruders can reach them.
• Wu Zhibai uses her blood to open the golden inner coffin. Fang Shu and Wu seize several Spirit Stones containing sealed objects, but a surge of treasure light bursts out.
• The Wu Family’s white-bearded Golden Core ancestor charges toward the coffin and is badly burned by the light. The blast tears open the buried Mausoleum and collapses Mount Wu, drawing immortals from across the region.
• Nearly ten clusters of treasure light scatter in different directions. Fang Shu and Wu Zhibai wisely flee rather than pursue them. The wounded ancestor catches one treasure but soon loses it to a newly arrived Golden Core immortal.
• Once safely away, Fang Shu’s Dao Register deciphers the inscription he copied from the coffin: it is the Profound Womb Myriad Gu Nascent Soul Scripture, a Gu Dao inheritance that leads to Refining Spirit.

Character developments and interactions

• Fang Shu shows resourcefulness in containing and collecting the unusual gu, and caution when the coffin’s power erupts. He prioritizes escape and protecting the treasures he already has over chasing more. He departs abruptly before Wu Zhibai can speak.
• Wu Zhibai completes the inheritance with Fang Shu’s protection and expresses gratitude. She hesitates to retaliate against the Wu Family ancestor despite his actions, then leaves separately from Fang Shu. His sudden departure leaves her visibly unsettled.
• The Wu Family ancestor sacrifices his own Golden Core blood essence to break the gate, after already draining his clansmen. His greed drives him toward the coffin, where he is gravely injured; later, he is unable to hold on to even the treasure he catches.
• Fang Shu and Wu Zhibai cooperate in opening the coffin and grabbing its contents, then part ways to avoid being caught in the ensuing scramble.

Significant themes

• Knowledge and cultivation: Fang Shu’s curiosity about the gu leads to a valuable discovery, while the coffin yields an inheritance of extraordinary scope.
• Greed and consequence: The ancestor’s disregard for others and rush toward the treasure leave him vulnerable and ultimately empty-handed.
• Caution amid opportunity: Fang Shu and Wu Zhibai resist the temptation to chase scattered treasures, choosing survival over uncertain gain.
• Bonds and separation: Fang Shu and Wu Zhibai share a tense, cooperative encounter, but their parting reveals an emotional distance—or an attachment neither fully voices.

Key plot points and events

• After escaping the Witch-Ghost Dao, Fang Shu spends several days disguising himself, erasing his aura, and mingling with others to evade pursuit. Reaching an unfamiliar town without detecting danger, he settles in an inn and seals the room with Gu worms.
• He inspects five treasures taken from the Wu Family ancestor, identifying them as Supreme-grade Spirit Stones that had preserved their contents for millennia. Inside are two powerful insect eggs, an unknown and extremely heavy purple-tinged ore, and two medicinal herbs more than three thousand years old.
• One herb is a life-extending ginseng that could benefit even a Golden Core True Immortal. Fang Shu decides to preserve it for future trade or possibly for his second uncle.
• Fang Shu studies the Mysterious Womb Scripture of Ten Thousand Gu Nurturing an Infant. It explains that the Wu ancestor’s seventy-two External Incarnations were Lifespan Gu Worms, and describes refining countless Gu into a unique “Gu Infant,” a path to Refining Spirit. It also introduces the Refining Spirit realm of Nascent Soul.
• The scripture makes Fang Shu reconsider his own Dao Insect and his cultivation path. Though its approach to Refining Spirit seems especially suited to him, he ultimately hesitates to abandon Mount Lu’s Corpse-Liberation Dao, which is linked to a higher Void Refinement Dao Lord.
• Faced with several powerful legacies and no obvious choice, Fang Shu develops a radical idea: combine their useful principles and create a cultivation path of his own. His previous success using the Dao Register to form an unconventional Golden Core strengthens his confidence.

Character development

• Fang Shu proves cautious and disciplined: despite his excitement over the scripture and treasures, he prioritizes escape and carefully conceals his trail.
• His windfall brings delight, but he remains practical, preserving the herbs rather than using them impulsively.
• He moves from humility about his Dao Insect to renewed confidence. Rather than simply follow established paths, he begins to imagine forging a Dao suited to himself.

Character interactions

• Fang Shu credits the absent Wu Zhibai as his “lucky star,” acknowledging the good fortune the Witch-Ghost Dao journey brought him.
• He considers saving the life-extending ginseng for his second uncle, while recognizing that the Old Mountain Lord’s ongoing research into extending life through Lingzhi Fruit may offer another solution.
• Though not directly present, the Goose Divine Immortal’s revelation that Mount Lu’s tradition reaches Void Refinement influences Fang Shu’s decision not to switch to the Gu Dao scripture.

Significant themes

• Inheritance versus originality: Fang Shu values his predecessors’ teachings but questions whether he should follow them blindly or build upon them to create his own path.
• Ambition and restraint: He is tempted by a more immediately suitable route, yet weighs its limits against a higher-reaching tradition.
• Knowledge and possibility: The scripture expands Fang Shu’s understanding of Gu cultivation and Refining Spirit, while his past use of the Dao Register suggests that supposedly fixed rules can be challenged.
• Fortune and preservation: The rare treasures represent both immediate power and resources whose value may grow through patience.

Key plot points and events

• Fang Shu resolves to forge his own cultivation path by combining the Refining Spirit inheritances and other techniques he has gathered. He burns much of the dragon qi in his Dao Register to develop the idea.
• His concept, which he names “Gu Planting in the Dao Heart,” would use gu insects as external incarnations: he would place them in other cultivators, let them mature there, then reclaim them to strengthen himself. He considers helping hosts advance through their cultivation barriers as a compassionate way to establish these symbiotic arrangements, while recognizing the darker possibility of taking their strength.
• Fang Shu searches for a suitable insect. He rejects the Scarlet True Flying Centipede and the idea of developing many gu varieties, judging them too limited, costly, and difficult to control.
• Reading the Myriad Gu Scripture, he discovers the Spirit-Sucking Insect, one of the legendary three great vicious insects. It feeds on spiritual qi, can break formations, and, in swarms, could devastate spiritual veins. Its larvae are tiny, must live within hosts, and die if exposed to ordinary spiritual qi.
• Fang Shu reveals that he already possesses Spirit-Sucking larvae, collected from the Wu Family mausoleum. They die when exposed to spiritual qi but appear to thrive within dragon qi, suggesting he may be able to raise them by isolating them from the outside world.
• He concludes that the insects’ inability to survive under present conditions could prevent them from reproducing uncontrollably. He suspects the Wu Family’s ancestor may have left them at the mausoleum as a test or clue, and bows to Mount Wu in gratitude.

Character development

Fang Shu moves from the daunting ambition of inventing a new cultivation system to a promising, if still untested, plan. He shows ingenuity in adapting old inheritances to his needs, caution in rejecting impractical options, and a pragmatic willingness to combine benevolence with self-interest. Discovering the larvae renews his confidence and gives him a possible route toward both his cultivation goal and greater power.

Significant themes

• Innovation and inheritance: Fang Shu builds on earlier methods while seeking a path uniquely his own.
• The blurred boundary between good and evil: His technique could exploit hosts, yet he imagines making it mutually beneficial by helping them cultivate first.
• Power, risk, and control: The Spirit-Sucking Insect offers immense potential but poses dangers if it mutates or escapes control.
• Guidance across generations: Fang Shu sees the long-dead Wu Family immortal as a teacher whose unfinished work may now be continued.

Character interactions

Fang Shu’s central interaction is with the legacy of the Wu Family ancestor, encountered through the Myriad Gu Scripture and the larvae left in the mausoleum. He interprets the insects as a possible challenge or inheritance from that long-dead cultivator and responds with respect. His imagined dealings with future hosts are also central: he considers helping them grow stronger before eventually reclaiming the insects and their accumulated power.

Summary

Key plot points and events

• Wu Zhibai finishes studying the Myriad Gu Scripture, gaining enough insight to believe golden-core formation is within reach. Though she senses she is still being pursued, she decides to form her core immediately rather than delay for complete understanding.
• The treasures she recovered from the coffin prove exceptionally valuable: a fully potent Millennium Spirit Herb and a promising Gu Insect Egg. She credits Mount Wu’s ancestor and begins her breakthrough.
• The Wu Family Ancestor tracks her down with two other golden-core cultivators. As Wu Zhibai is forming her core, they surround the mountain; the Ancestor pretends he wants to help while preparing to interfere.
• Wu Zhibai emerges with an overwhelming aura and uses a strange gu insect to pierce and consume all three pursuers. Their golden-core powers fail them, and they die helplessly.
• The attack awakens fragments of memories from an ancient Refining Spirit immortal associated with the Wu Family. Wu Zhibai realizes she may be one of the immortal’s seventy-two reincarnations, and that the Outer World may be entering an “age of great contention.”
• Afraid that the ancestor’s identity could eventually overwhelm her own, Wu Zhibai resolves to preserve her present self, even if that means severing the reincarnated memories. She recalls the Primordial Embryo Spirit-Splitting Transformation, a method Fang Shu gave her, and decides to seek him out.
• Meanwhile, Fang Shu continues south and reaches the prosperous territory of the Dao-Virtue Profound Teaching, finding it far richer and more populous than the remote lands he has crossed.

Character developments

• Wu Zhibai advances toward golden-core formation and displays startling power, but her victory is overshadowed by uncertainty about her identity. She moves from delighted confidence to fear of spiritual possession, then to a firm commitment to remain herself.
• The Wu Family Ancestor is revealed as a calculating, badly injured pursuer who leads others to Wu Zhibai, apparently hoping to recover treasures and heal himself. His scheme ends in his death.
• Fang Shu remains focused on travel and gathering resources; his gift of the spirit-splitting method becomes important to Wu Zhibai’s effort to protect her identity.

Significant themes

• Selfhood versus reincarnation: Wu Zhibai must decide whether inherited memories define her, or whether her present life remains her own.
• Power and its cost: The treasures and inheritance that enable advancement also draw danger and raise questions about who benefits from that power.
• An age of upheaval: The possibility that the world has entered an age of great contention suggests that awakened reincarnations and abundant opportunities may be part of a larger cosmic shift.

Character interactions

• Wu Zhibai’s pursuit by the Wu Family Ancestor and his two allies turns her breakthrough into a confrontation; his feigned offer of help contrasts with her decisive retaliation.
• Her growing trust in Fang Shu leads her to seek him not only for the complete spirit-splitting method, but also for reassurance and aid.
• Fang Shu and Wu Zhibai do not meet in this chapter, but the method he previously shared links their separate storylines.

Key plot points

• Fang Shu travels through the Moral Profound Teaching’s territory and sees cultivators using magic to improve ordinary people’s lives: watering mortal fields, creating lakes, and helping transport goods. The prosperous cities and enormous population challenge his belief that the Teaching is merely hypocritical.
• He visits a vast, open city of cultivators, whose life and scale surpass even Vast Sea Immortal City. The Teaching’s headquarters is a huge altar at its center, while its disciples live and work throughout the city.
• Fang Shu learns that the Teaching is open to human cultivators of all backgrounds and uses a merit-based rank system. Yet its authority is also severe: serious offenses, including harms to mortals, can lead to public execution.
• Though tempted to join, Fang Shu comes to the Profound Altar for a divination-predicted encounter. He secretly meets Jiao Lulu, a former neighbor from Guling Town and a past acquaintance from Mount Lu.
• Jiao confirms that she and other Mount Lu disciples were sent to the Western Altar as “immortal seedlings.” She says Xiao Lili is alive, though she has little recent news of her.
• Fang Shu learns that the Deer Cart Earth Immortal and his companions were delivered to the Teaching alive but classified as rare spirit beasts, then taken by three True Disciples. Their current condition is unknown.
• Jiao reports that Zong Qingxue won a Dao contest, gained a True Immortal’s favor, and entered seclusion to attempt Golden Core formation. She has not emerged after three years, leaving her fate uncertain.

Character developments and interactions

• Fang Shu’s suspicion of the Moral Profound Teaching softens as he witnesses its integration of cultivators and mortals, though he remains wary of its power and does not yet decide to join. His days of indulging in the city’s luxuries reveal a susceptibility to pleasure that he recognizes as a potential distraction.
• Jiao Lulu is astonished to discover that the mysterious senior who summoned her is Fang Shu, now a Golden Core cultivator. After verifying he is not an illusion, she greets him warmly as “Brother Shu” and shares what she knows about their former companions.
• Fang Shu’s relief at learning the Deer Cart group survived is tempered by concern over their treatment. Zong Qingxue’s unexpected advancement also surprises him.

Significant themes

• Compassion and power: The Teaching’s practical aid to mortals suggests genuine benevolence, while its harsh punishments reveal an authoritarian side.
• Prejudice and reassessment: Fang Shu’s firsthand observations force him to reconsider assumptions about the Teaching and its treatment of outsiders.
• Merit and hierarchy: The Teaching offers a path upward through service, but local birth and status still affect how much outsiders are valued.
• Temptation and purpose: Fang Shu briefly loses himself in luxury, then renews his resolve to pursue his original purpose.
• Ambiguous belonging: The fates of Mount Lu’s former disciples—some progressing, others treated as spirit beasts—show that the Teaching can offer opportunity and exploitation at once.

Key plot points and events

• Fang Shu questions Jiao Lulu about the Moral Profound Teaching’s true nature. She explains that it takes young cultivators from territories it considers “wilderness,” trains them, and expects them to help civilize and govern those lands.
• The Teaching calls its hands-off approach to semi-civilized territories a “loose-rein policy”: local powers are left to govern themselves so long as they cause no trouble.
• Jiao Lulu invites Fang Shu to accompany her on an urgent mission. He agrees, concealing his identity and posing as her attendant.
• At a river, they investigate a crisis affecting aquatic life. Jiao Lulu determines that a plague—not evil magic or damage to the water veins—is killing fish and other creatures.
• While locals fear the cost of treating the enormous river and propose destroying it, Jiao Lulu experiments with infected and healthy creatures. She develops a remedy using sword qi, cleansing the water section by section. The process also strengthens her qi and fortune.

Character developments

• Fang Shu’s view of the Moral Profound Teaching shifts. He still sees hypocrisy and coercion in its system, but recognizes that decades or centuries of sustained good conduct may become meaningful in practice. He also becomes more cautious about what secrets he reveals to Jiao Lulu.
• Jiao Lulu is shown as diligent, capable, and committed to her work. Though she initially seeks Fang Shu’s protection, she handles the crisis through careful investigation and experimentation rather than relying on brute force.

Significant themes

• Civilization and power: The Teaching regards even powerful outside lineages as uncivilized, revealing its imperial assumptions.
• Order versus hypocrisy: Its rules are domineering, yet they produce real public service; Fang Shu weighs the difference between sincere virtue and goodness maintained through discipline.
• Accountability and governance: Cultivators face long-term—and even inherited—responsibility for the consequences of their work.
• Power used to preserve life: Jiao Lulu turns sword qi, traditionally associated with killing, into a precise tool for healing and restoring the river.

Character interactions

• Fang Shu and Jiao Lulu speak candidly about the Teaching, though Fang Shu withholds his knowledge of He Shoufeng’s deeds to protect himself and her.
• Jiao Lulu invites Fang Shu along partly because she does not want to neglect him and partly because his presence may protect her.
• At the river, Jiao Lulu listens to local cultivators and spirits, investigates their reports, and takes responsibility for finding a practical solution while Fang Shu observes.

Fang Shu watched Jiao Lulu govern the rivers and recognized how the Moral Profound Teaching’s merit system gathered fortune for its disciples. He refined a Scarlet True Flying Centipede into a Golden Core spirit insect, then began collecting materials for an External Incarnation and headed to another auction.

• Jiao Lulu continued treating the water plague, while Fang Shu observed her work and realized that merit gathered fortune that could support a disciple’s Golden Core tribulation.
• Fang Shu left Jiao Lulu without disturbing her and decided to refine an External Incarnation before joining the Moral Profound Teaching, wary of the teaching’s unknown restraints.
• Fang Shu refined the Scarlet True Flying Centipede egg, merged the newly hatched insect with his other centipede, and raised the result to Golden Core.
• The Golden Core centipede developed a dragon-like form and could conceal itself as a scarlet-gold strand of hair, giving Fang Shu a powerful new weapon.
• Fang Shu searched Profound Altar for the spiritual materials required to refine an External Incarnation, obtaining most of them through auctions, trading gatherings, and an immortal middleman.
• Fang Shu went to another auction to look for needed materials or overlooked treasures.

Fang Shu attended a Golden Core auction at the Heavenly Spirit Treasure Pavilion, where a young woman offered a Divine Immortal Artifact fragment in exchange for medicines. After recognizing that several attendees were trying to drive down her price, Fang Shu intervened with a voice transmission to seize the opportunity.

• Fang Shu entered the auction and watched the Golden Core immortals bid on treasures, while he made no offers because he lacked spirit stones and the materials he needed.
• An old man failed to trade his estate deed because he insisted that the buyer help his clan produce another Golden Core true immortal.
• A young-looking woman presented a handkerchief-sized Divine Immortal Artifact fragment that could anchor fortune and protect whatever it covered from divine sense and divination.
• The woman asked for medicines suitable for the Golden Core realm, and the attendees learned that she belonged to the Chu Household, whose ancestor had apparently failed to survive a tribulation.
• Fang Shu suspected that several immortals were working together to lower the fragment’s price, and he sent the woman a voice transmission before another buyer could secure it.

Fang Shu defended Chu Qingxuan from a Yang Household cultivator who tried to force her to trade away her Refining Spirit object and invoked the Inspection Hall to intimidate him. After the man claimed that he was the law, Fang Shu brushed aside the Hall’s suppression and slapped him, leaving the gathering stunned.

• Chu Qingxuan withdrew her Refining Spirit object after Fang Shu offered a spirit herb over three thousand years old in exchange.
• The Yang Household cultivator pressured Chu Qingxuan to accept his poor offer and tried to isolate Fang Shu from the other guests.
• Fang Shu openly backed Chu Qingxuan, who rejected the Yang cultivator’s offer and prepared to leave with him.
• The Yang cultivator blocked the exit, invoked his Inspection Hall post, and demanded that Fang Shu explain himself.
• Fang Shu questioned whether the Inspection Hall served the Yang Household or the Profound Teaching, and the cultivator declared that he was the law.
• Fang Shu ignored the Inspection Hall’s pressure and slapped the Yang cultivator, silencing the gathering.

Fang Shu revealed the Goose Divine Immortal’s Edict Talisman and his status as a True Disciple, then had Yang Baikai captured for abusing the Inspection Hall’s authority. He set out to enter the Profound Teaching with the Treasure Pavilion’s help after completing his exchange with Chu Qingxuan, who received longevity ginseng to treat Old Master Chu.

• Fang Shu showed the gathering the Edict Talisman, which named him a True Disciple, and Yang Baikai acknowledged its authenticity.
• Fang Shu ordered Yang Baikai arrested for misusing the Inspection Hall’s authority, and the Treasure Pavilion’s immortals helped suppress and restrain him.
• Fang Shu placed Yang Baikai in his Storage Bag and asked the shop’s immortal to guide him into the Profound Teaching.
• Chu Qingxuan asked whether their agreement still stood, and Fang Shu exchanged a jade box for her Refining Spirit fragment.
• Chu Qingxuan opened the box and found three-thousand-year longevity ginseng that could save Old Master Chu.