Chapter Summaries

Jia Xiu investigated Daniel’s divine spell and found a way to use it to exchange writing between believers. The experiment revealed a possible new application, and Jia Xiu asked whether Daniel could play moving images as well as text.

• Jia Xiu concluded that future divine authorities should build on gods’ existing spells, and planned to develop a faith-collection method for Daniel.
• Jia Xiu and the others visited Daniel’s cluttered divine temple and learned that his spell prevented mistakes when copying or writing text.
• Margaret recalled that she had prayed to Daniel as a child to avoid copying mistakes, but magical quill pens later eroded his former believers’ livelihoods.
• Jia Xiu learned that Daniel’s spell duplicated prayed-for content and strengthened its impression in a worshipper’s mind, then asked whether it could transmit one believer’s content to another.
• Daniel exchanged the passages Jia Xiu and Margaret had prayed over, and Jia Xiu realized the spell let them see text to trace as they wrote.
• Jia Xiu asked Daniel whether he had ever tried playing moving images through the spell.

Jia Xiu tested whether Daniel’s divine art could play continuous images and planned to turn it into a platform for recorded courses. Daniel agreed to the idea and began preparing lessons while Jia Xiu left to solve the technical problems.

• Jia Xiu explained persistence of vision to Daniel, and Margaret created stick-figure illusions to demonstrate it.
• Daniel successfully played a sequence of images, though the picture was blurry and the frame rate unstable, and he said he could store material in a memory palace.
• Jia Xiu identified the need for spells to handle storage, video selection, uploads, and eventually audio, and proposed using Phantom Screening to help create course videos.
• Jia Xiu suggested that Daniel attract frequent prayers by offering free online lessons, with magic-power rewards for creators; Daniel agreed and offered to forgo his share.
• Daniel said he would prepare a course on ancient-to-medieval orc totem culture, and Jia Xiu estimated the platform might take weeks or months to build.
• On the way out, Jia Xiu joked that an evil God of Lust with a similar platform could become the strongest evil god in history.

Jia Xiu built a rough video platform spell but struggled to upload Phantom recordings because Daniel’s divine art could only display images remembered by worshippers. After Ram discovered that forgetting earlier footage while memorizing later parts allowed him to preserve a twenty-minute clip, Jia Xiu looked for a way to reproduce the trick with spells and asked Justina to help test it.

• Jia Xiu assembled a basic video platform spell with content display, keyword searches, categories, and view-count sorting.
• Jia Xiu found that worshippers could remember only a few minutes of video before images vanished or changed, and memory-enhancement spells extended the limit to around ten minutes.
• Ram suggested forgetting earlier footage after it had been uploaded, then successfully memorized and uploaded a twenty-minute Radiant Knight clip.
• Jia Xiu found materials on sequential memory enhancement and asked Justina to test a spell that enhanced memory while delaying sequential forgetting.

Jia Xiu tested a memory-upload system that used Justina’s spell to forget while retaining videos, then developed faster recording and a way to encode audio into Phantom images. He discovered the divine spell might have much broader powers than its limited use on Daniel’s platform suggested, leaving him preparing a team to build the new system while Justina warned of its danger.

• Jia Xiu persuaded Justina to test a modified forgetting spell, and her hour-long video trial showed no obvious problems.
• Jia Xiu investigated faster uploads, identified blinking as the cause of missing footage, and commissioned a device that held viewers’ eyelids open; its prototype uploaded an hour of video in three minutes.
• Jia Xiu found that storing audio separately caused uncontrollable desynchronization, so he tested sound-producing runes encoded in magic power and confirmed that they could reproduce speech.
• Jia Xiu found an unused third dimension in the divine spell’s image data and proposed overlaying invisible magic fluctuations to encode sound-producing runes without changing the picture.
• Justina warned Jia Xiu that the spell might affect worshippers in dangerous ways, and Jia Xiu speculated that Daniel’s version had locked permissions while the God of Knowledge possessed its complete form.

Jia Xiu launched the Clockwork Orange No. 1 and tried to build an online-course platform, but its content and audience remained limited. After a sudden surge in prayers and views, he discovered a hugely popular course on elementary magical mathematics.

• Jia Xiu prepared standard, Pro, and MA versions of Clockwork Orange No. 1, along with equipment rentals, while Daniel volunteered to provide course content.
• Jia Xiu and Daniel recruited instructors and contributors, but most courses were too specialized, and Elizabeth's illusion lessons proved difficult to understand.
• Jia Xiu delayed major promotion after the platform attracted few viewers, while a sexual-health course and Elizabeth's course gained four-digit views through unusual promotion.
• Jia Xiu received Daniel's panicked oracle about a sudden wave of prayers and found that platform views had surged across multiple courses.
• Jia Xiu traced the spike to a mathematical course titled "Complete Collection of Elementary Mathematical Foundations of Magic and Problem-Solving Methods," which had surpassed ten thousand views.

Fiona, a struggling student and private tutor in Larven, agreed to record lessons for her twelve-year-old student, who hoped to sell them remotely. Days later, she learned that more than ten thousand people had listened, and Jia Xiu arrived at her attic with a job offer on behalf of the Juan-Jia Xiu Trading Company and the God of Transcription and Depiction.

• Fiona reflected on her debt, weak spellcasting, and transfer to a cheaper major while working as a tutor to fund her studies.
• Fiona's student proposed recording her lessons and sharing the recordings with other apprentices for a fee.
• Fiona reluctantly recorded a lesson and then forgot about the plan after returning to her attic.
• A child recognized Fiona as a teacher and asked when her next lesson would be updated.
• Fiona's student told her that more than ten thousand people had listened to the recordings and that classmates wanted refunds.
• Jia Xiu knocked on Fiona's door and offered her a job on behalf of the Juan-Jia Xiu Trading Company and the God of Transcription and Depiction.

Jia Xiu recruited Fiona to produce more lessons for her popular magic mathematics course, offering her a strong contract and support. After Fiona signed, she explained that she still needed components for her graduation project, and Master Dain offered to replace her requested parts with better-quality ones.

• Jia Xiu found Fiona in her attic and took her to Aurelius's Mage Tower to discuss her course.
• Jia Xiu offered Fiona a contract to continue making lessons, with a high salary, view-based bonuses, mana rewards, and other support.
• Fiona signed the contract, then explained that she had not graduated and needed time to finish her magical-device project.
• When Jia Xiu asked what components Fiona needed, Master Dain said he did not carry such low-quality parts and offered better replacements.

Jia Xiu recruited Fiona to develop magical rune programs after discovering her strong theoretical knowledge and limited casting talent. Fiona passed his beginner programming test, and Jia Xiu offered her a second contract and asked her to recommend similar candidates.

• Fiona decided to record more lessons after completing her graduation project, while Jia Xiu asked how she found tutoring jobs.
• Jia Xiu realized Fiona’s theoretical skills and poor casting talent made her a good candidate for magical programming and asked her to study his courses.
• Fiona accessed the course platform by praying to the God of Transcription and Depiction, then watched Jia Xiu’s first two programming lessons.
• Jia Xiu gave Fiona problems involving duplicate removal and Pascal’s triangle, and she produced mostly correct solutions despite struggling with the rune restrictions.
• Jia Xiu offered Fiona a second contract and asked her to recommend other theoretically strong people with limited casting talent, promising referral pay.

Jia Xiu recruited magic programmers at Gallahad while studying research left by another plane’s soul magic users. He discovered a promising theory about interplanar storms and wondered how to verify it.

• Jia Xiu held written tests for magic programmers at Gallahad, but no student passed the exam.
• Jia Xiu studied other-plane knowledge and found that soul magic researchers had developed many untested theories that he could investigate using rune magic.
• Jia Xiu considered establishing a research laboratory to test the theories and recruit spellcasters for the work.
• Jia Xiu found a conjecture that interplanar storms were projections of vibrations from another dimension and noted that its predicted increase in storms matched records from the Mainland Plane.
• Jia Xiu read that flickering points of starlight in the void signaled an approaching storm and wondered whether he would need to watch the void for them.

Jia Xiu recruited rune programmers and discussed a new teaching approach with Margaret before turning to the Space Maintenance Department for advice on predicting interplanar storms. He began investigating the storms as a hobby, despite Odysseus warning that years of research had revealed no pattern.

• Jia Xiu reviewed the written test and selected two candidates for rune programming, then realized the team would need a centralized version-control system because local storage could not safely hold the immense project data.
• Margaret told Jia Xiu that three people had shown promise as teachers and announced she wanted recording equipment so she could teach spells more effectively.
• Margaret decided to pursue a career in magical education and promised Jia Xiu he could become her chief eldest disciple once she was famous.
• Jia Xiu visited Odysseus at the Space Maintenance Department and learned that its annual target was to discover three reachable planes, though it had met that target only five times.
• Jia Xiu told Odysseus he wanted to study whether interplanar storms followed predictable patterns, and Odysseus cautioned that previous efforts had found no clues.
• Jia Xiu said he would treat the research as a hobby and began investigating how to observe the storms' precursor flashes.

Jia Xiu investigated whether he could observe the precursors of planar storms, then arranged for Elizabeth’s clones to watch a passage while he attended the launch of a computing center. When the clones reported an anomaly, Jia Xiu teleported away from the ceremony to investigate.

• Jia Xiu asked Director Odysseus how to observe planar storm precursors, and Odysseus explained that storms were too difficult to locate consistently along dangerous routes.
• Odysseus supplied Jia Xiu with probing spells and route information but warned that opening and maintaining additional passages would consume too much magic power.
• Jia Xiu studied records of storm events, found no consistent precursors, and spent more than half a day watching a passage without seeing anything useful.
• Jia Xiu brought Elizabeth to the passage, and she left four conscious clones to monitor it in shifts and alert him through the prayer channel.
• Jia Xiu attended the launch of a computing center planned to support the war against the Devil Race and the campaign to reclaim the Northern Wasteland.
• When Elizabeth’s clones reported an anomaly, Jia Xiu teleported away during the eldest prince’s speech, leaving Margaret to explain his sudden departure.

Jia Xiu studied a catastrophic storm in the void, whose chaotic magic fluctuations destroyed his detection spells and passage gate. Unable to find useful data, he decided to remain in the laboratory and wait for another storm while Margaret took charge of his other responsibilities.

• Jia Xiu returned to the laboratory, used Sage Time to examine the storm, and deduced that immense magic power might be flowing from a dimension where faith converged.
• The storm's intensifying magic fluctuations nullified Jia Xiu's detection spells and destroyed the passage gate before he could gather usable data.
• Jia Xiu questioned Elizabeth, then reviewed the detection records and found no warning signs before the storm's sudden onset.
• Margaret returned after Jia Xiu had left her to handle the prince, and Jia Xiu announced that he would go into seclusion in the laboratory for a month or two.
• Jia Xiu put Margaret in charge of the Magic-Energy Computer team and asked Ram to deliver documents and meals while he watched the void.

Jia Xiu watched the passage for forty days but saw no warning before another void storm began and destroyed it. Afterward, he realized the storm’s precursor might occur in the dimension of faith, leading him to suspect that spellcasters on the Soul Magic Plane could perceive it because they served as vessels of faith.

• Jia Xiu spent nearly forty days watching the passage while the Magic-Energy Computer teams made steady progress on their projects.
• Jia Xiu reviewed records about Soul Magic Plane spellcasters and questioned how they could identify storm precursors despite their small numbers and limited magical research.
• A void storm began without any warning Jia Xiu could detect, and the passage collapsed under its interference.
• Jia Xiu left the laboratory exhausted, told Bubu that he was a maggot, and lay down to rest.
• Jia Xiu studied soul magic and realized that the Soul Magic Plane’s spellcasters might receive worship and faith as vessels of faith.
• Jia Xiu connected faith to the storms’ source and wondered how he could become a vessel of faith.

Jia Xiu persuaded Justina to temporarily lend him her divine authority so he could investigate the interplanar storms. After becoming the God of Papers, he reopened the planar passage and spotted warning signs in the void, leaving him rushing to record his discovery.

• Jia Xiu explained his theory about faith and interplanar storms, then asked Justina to lend him her divine authority temporarily.
• Justina feared Jia Xiu intended to take her godhood, but agreed after he clarified his plan and explained the risks.
• Justina transferred her divine authority to Jia Xiu in her divine kingdom, overwhelming him with prayers until he learned to filter them.
• Jia Xiu struggled to take himself and Justina out of the divine kingdom and restart the planar passage.
• Jia Xiu spotted warning signs in the void as the passage opened and hurried to record them while Justina asked what he had seen.

Jia Xiu used Justina’s divine authority and perception to observe the turbulent points of light in the void, then tested whether the Soul Magic Plane’s algorithms could predict planar storms. Mia calculated the predictions, and after a storm appeared near the predicted location and time, Jia Xiu recorded its exact details and prepared to refine the algorithms.

• Jia Xiu saw countless shifting points of light in the void and realized their patterns could signal planar storms.
• Jia Xiu gathered data on one movement tendency and called Mia to calculate predictions using two algorithms from the Soul Magic Plane.
• Mia calculated the first algorithm’s prediction and then completed the second, producing nearby coordinates and times.
• Jia Xiu opened a passage encompassing both predicted locations, and a storm appeared close to the predicted time and direction.
• Jia Xiu recorded the storm’s actual time and coordinates, asked Mia to find the algorithms’ errors, and began collecting another set of data.

Jia Xiu and Mia refined a model for predicting storms during plane traversal, but discovered that safe travel required navigators who could perceive storm precursors and carry faith. As they struggled to find a way to recruit or empower such people, the God of Knowledge suddenly spoke from within Jia Xiu's consciousness.

• Jia Xiu and Mia improved their storm-prediction model through more than a hundred verifications and estimated that precursors appeared within 120 kilometers of a storm.
• Jia Xiu concluded that plane traversal required navigators with exceptional perception who could also act as vessels of faith, but he and Mia could not find suitable candidates.
• Jia Xiu returned the divine authority to Justina, and Mia asked whether their calculations made plane traversal possible.
• Jia Xiu explained that they still needed a void ship, observation equipment, and navigators to monitor precursors during travel through the void.
• Mia proposed hiding the missing navigator requirement when selling the plan, but Jia Xiu warned that the Association or a country would discover the deception.
• Jia Xiu considered giving faith to perceptive members of the Space Maintenance Department, then heard an unfamiliar voice identify itself as the God of Knowledge inside his consciousness.

Jia Xiu learned from the God of Knowledge that the god faced inevitable annihilation and that planar travel could be enabled by distributing divine authority taken from a god trapped in an endless illusion. The God of Knowledge bound Jia Xiu to complete planar travel and suggested targeting an evil god in the Exile Plane, while the Sect Master confirmed Jia Xiu could avoid the contract but advised him not to.

• The God of Knowledge contacted Jia Xiu, described how splitting their divine authority had failed to stop their eventual annihilation, and explained that gods faced a crisis caused by faith.
• The God of Knowledge made Jia Xiu contractually responsible for completing planar travel in exchange for the knowledge they had shared.
• The God of Knowledge explained that Jia Xiu could distribute divine authority by trapping a god in an endless illusion, and recommended targeting an evil god in the Exile Plane.
• The God of Knowledge said Larven could help Jia Xiu with the method, then ended the contact after wishing him success in godslaying.
• Jia Xiu asked the Sect Master whether he could escape the contract, and the Sect Master said he could but advised him to try godslaying instead.

Jia Xiu returned to the Magic-Energy Computer team and proposed a time-sharing operating system that could let one computer handle multiple users, including during a trip to the exile plane. He then met Master Larven about killing a god, and Larven eagerly offered his godslaying plans after Jia Xiu revealed he had a feasible way to cross planes.

• Jia Xiu returned to the development team, where its members greeted him with surprise and teased him about his month away.
• The team discussed fitting new storage material into Unit Two, while Jia Xiu considered upgrading its memory and moving from assembly language to a high-level language.
• Jia Xiu proposed a time-sharing operating system that could let one computer handle several users and support their future trip to the exile plane.
• Jia Xiu left the meeting and asked Master Larven whether he knew how to kill a god.
• Master Larven revealed that he had prepared and refined plans to kill every god, and Jia Xiu said he had a promising way to cross planes.
• Master Larven became excited at the prospect of targeting an exiled evil god and said he had long wanted to kill one to warm up his hands.

Jia Xiu visited Master Larven’s secret laboratory and discovered that Larven had spent centuries preparing to kill gods rather than become one. They chose the God of Pain as their target, and Larven assigned the Space Maintenance Department to Jia Xiu to support the still-unfinished planar-travel operation.

• Jia Xiu found statues and research notes on the gods, including plans detailing their weaknesses, in Larven’s laboratory.
• Larven explained that he wanted to defeat the God of Magic by escaping its control over magic and using magic power itself as a weapon.
• Larven recommended the God of Pain as the most suitable evil god to target, and Jia Xiu said they needed to preserve its faith and divine authority for future planar travel.
• Larven described a plan to deprive the God of Pain of physical sensation and searched his treasure vault for a divine artifact to restrain its true body.
• Jia Xiu told Larven that planar travel remained only a projected plan, while Larven warned that the Association could provide little support.
• Larven put the Space Maintenance Department under Jia Xiu’s command.

Jia Xiu demonstrated that he could predict a spatial storm with Mia and Justina, convincing the Space Maintenance Department to join his plan for planar traversal. As the team prepared to confront the God of Pain, Jia Xiu proposed a more direct way to sever divine authority, bringing the group to Oberon for help.

• Odysseus agreed to put the Space Maintenance Department under Jia Xiu’s leadership after learning that Jia Xiu had a feasible plan for planar traversal in a storm.
• Jia Xiu used Mia and Justina to predict a storm to the second, proving the plan’s prediction method to the department’s researchers.
• Odysseus recruited volunteers for the dangerous mission to the Exile Plane, where they would confront the God of Pain.
• Larven explained that splitting divine authority within the suppression window remained the plan’s greatest uncertainty.
• Jia Xiu suggested using a more direct and violent method to sever divine authority, and the group went to ask Oberon for help.