Chapter Summaries

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu travels from Qi Tian Continent toward the Third-Grade Continent passage, accompanied by the Bai Family Head. He learns that reaching the Mahayana Stage is enough to ascend to a Fourth-Grade Continent, though the Bai Family delays ascending because it lacks sufficient influence and foundation there.
• Chen Qiu effortlessly defeats an Integrated Body Peak Stage puppet with a single lightning attack, officially entering Qi Tian Continent. He reflects that his offensive abilities are overly reliant on one powerful technique and resolves to acquire more combat methods.
• He discusses Trait selection with the Mocking Heaven Sect, explaining that the Bai Family can remove most unwanted Traits and mitigate their associated bodily mutations.
• Rather than remain on polluted Qi Tian Continent to cultivate, Chen Qiu uses his Heavenly King title to secretly enter the Fourth-Grade Jiang Taiping Continent, where spiritual energy is far denser and even condenses visibly in the air.
• He accidentally appears in a hot spring while several women are bathing, leading them to mistake him for a peeping voyeur. Before he can leave, the valley begins shaking and reveals itself to be the body of a sleeping stone giant.
• The giant, an Early Mahayana cultivator, attacks Chen Qiu after blaming him for ruining his long-awaited romantic encounter. Chen Qiu defeats him in a brief sparring match, stripping away his moss without damaging his Root Bone.
• Chen Qiu discovers that the giant is Zhao Yishi’s grandfather. Zhao Yishi, formerly a human cultivator with the Pink Trait “Sky-Piercing Giant,” has transformed into a massive rock-like Barbarian and now lives on Jiang Taiping Continent.
• Zhao Yishi reunites with Chen Qiu and Zhao Dezhu. He explains that his grandfather has little lifespan remaining because of “Immortal Cancer,” a fatal Heavenly Disease curable only with a pill refined using Yin Emperor Fortune.
• Chen Qiu agrees to help the giant, despite already promising a strand of Yin Emperor Fortune to the Bai Family Head for his daughter. He decides to seek more Fortune of the Yin Soul in the Yin Realm.
• The chapter ends with the giant revealing that he was once an Immortal King, feared even by powerful immortals, but declined after contracting Immortal Cancer.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu remains overwhelmingly confident in battle but becomes more aware of his limitations, particularly his lack of varied offensive techniques and his inability to dominate higher-level cultivators on a Fourth-Grade Continent.
• He shows increasing responsibility and compassion by agreeing to help Zhao Yishi’s grandfather, even though the cure will be difficult to obtain and may conflict with his existing obligations.
• Chen Qiu also becomes more cautious about the danger of higher-rank continents, recognizing that Jiang Taiping Continent contains powerful beings far beyond ordinary expectations.
• The Bai Family Head is portrayed as practical and cautious. Although he is strong enough to ascend, he refuses to do so until the Bai Family has built a sufficient foundation to avoid being oppressed by stronger forces.
• Zhao Yishi has changed dramatically from a weak, timid human cultivator into a powerful stone-bodied Barbarian. Despite his transformation, he retains his innocent, straightforward personality and remains deeply loyal to Chen Qiu and Zhao Dezhu.
• Zhao Yishi’s grandfather, formerly an Immortal King, is revealed to have fallen into decline because of Immortal Cancer. His exaggerated pursuit of romance masks his fear of death and desire to enjoy the little time he has left.
• Zhao Dezhu is shown to have genuinely cared for Zhao Yishi, supporting him despite pressure from his sect. Their reunion emphasizes the bonds formed in the Great Xia Kingdom.

Significant Themes

• Strength and hierarchy: Cultivation realms and continent grades create strict limits on power. Chen Qiu dominates lower realms but understands that higher continents contain dangers he cannot casually overcome.
• Preparation versus opportunity: The Bai Family values preparation before ascending, while Chen Qiu favors speed and access to richer spiritual energy. Their differing approaches highlight the risks of pursuing rapid advancement.
• Mortality and the fear of death: The giant’s Immortal Cancer forces even a former Immortal King to confront decline and death. His humor and obsession with romance are ways of coping with his limited lifespan.
• Friendship and loyalty: Zhao Yishi’s faith in Chen Qiu and Zhao Dezhu’s care for him lead Chen Qiu to take responsibility for the giant’s treatment.
• Transformation and identity: Zhao Yishi’s body has become entirely stone, yet his personality remains recognizable. His grandfather’s moss-covered body is also treated as part of his identity and pride, making Chen Qiu’s accidental removal of it especially offensive.
• The value of enjoying life: Through Zhao Yishi’s simple happiness and his grandfather’s reflection, the chapter contrasts rigid seriousness with a more relaxed, joyful approach to life.

Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu and the Bai Family Head discuss ascension requirements, cultivation foundations, and the dangers of higher-grade continents.
• Chen Qiu clashes with Zhao Yishi’s grandfather, first misunderstanding one another and then resolving the conflict through combat.
• Zhao Yishi mediates between Chen Qiu and his grandfather, identifying Chen Qiu as a friend and preventing the confrontation from becoming fatal.
• Chen Qiu reunites Zhao Dezhu with Zhao Yishi, allowing master and disciple to share an emotional reunion.
• Chen Qiu teasingly offers to help the giant find a suitable partner, while Zhao Yishi explains the hostility between the Barbarian and Dragon Races.
• Zhao Yishi asks Chen Qiu to save his grandfather, prompting Chen Qiu to reconsider his plans for obtaining Yin Emperor Fortune.
• The chapter closes with Chen Qiu listening to the giant’s boastful account of his former glory as an Immortal King, creating a humorous but poignant contrast between past power and present decline.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu learns more about Immortal Cancer, a Heavenly Disease that afflicts immortals and causes both physical decline and the loss of status and reputation.
• Zhao Yishi’s grandfather, Badan, explains how he used a Heavenly Dao treasure called a Bloodline Lure to locate and bring Zhao Yishi out of the Great Xia Kingdom’s Land of Heavenly Imprisonment.
• Badan reveals that the Land of Heavenly Imprisonment is normally reserved for extremely dangerous criminals, including those who destroy a continent’s Heavenly Dao. However, Great Xia’s version is unusual: it contains many prisoners, limits cultivation to the Golden Core Peak, and allows escape by defeating a Nascent Soul Sword Cultivator Puppet.
• Zhao Yishi reports recent changes in Great Xia: the Boundless Ice Wastes have grown colder, Fierce Baleful Wood has spread through Fat Prefecture, the Seventh Prince has escaped, and the kingdom’s cultivation limit has been removed, allowing people to reach the Nascent Soul Realm.
• Before Chen Qiu leaves, Badan warns him to hide his origins in the Land of Heavenly Imprisonment. Those who escape may possess a special “baptism” that frees them from Heavenly Dao control, making their bodies and blood highly coveted.
• After Chen Qiu departs, Badan reveals his determination to return to the Immortal Realm and confront his former enemy, the Demon Race patriarch. He unleashes his sealed cultivation, summons numerous powerful treasures from former allies, and prepares for a final battle.
• Badan breaks through the sky and opens a passage into the Immortal Realm, taking Zhao Yishi with him. Chen Qiu returns in time to witness the event.
• Chen Qiu realizes Badan intends to die and pass on his entire cultivation, memories, traits, and experiences to Zhao Yishi through his “Self-Sacrifice for Others” trait.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu becomes increasingly aware of the vast dangers surrounding his origins and the unusual nature of his strength and fortune. He understands that Badan’s path is not cowardice or madness, but a deliberate choice to end his life meaningfully.
• Badan is revealed as a former Immortal King who rose from slavery through sheer strength. His moss-covered body hides his slave brand, while Immortal Cancer has reduced his cultivation and left him facing death. His greatest remaining goals are to defeat the Demon Race patriarch, erase the shame of his past defeat, and establish Zhao Yishi as his successor.
• Zhao Yishi remains gentle, passive, and deeply resistant to conflict. He values ordinary life—eating, sleeping, and living peacefully—rather than fame or power. He becomes frightened and emotional when he realizes Badan may be sacrificing himself.
• Fat Dragon provides comic relief but also reacts with genuine shock to Badan’s overwhelming power.
• Badan’s unseen former allies demonstrate that, despite his isolation and decline, he still inspires loyalty and friendship.

Significant Themes

• Legacy versus personal glory: Badan once sought fame, but after being forgotten and afflicted with Immortal Cancer, he comes to believe that inheritance is the only way to preserve his name.
• The cost of cultivation: Immortality does not bring peace. Even powerful cultivators face enemies, pursuit, political danger, Heavenly Dao trials, and the fear of being surpassed.
• Death as a chosen destination: Badan views death not as defeat but as the final act through which he can regain his dignity and pass everything to Zhao Yishi.
• Freedom and Heavenly Dao control: The Land of Heavenly Imprisonment and its escapees suggest hidden truths about the Heavenly Dao, including the possibility of becoming less subject to its influence.
• Friendship and support: Badan’s friends lend him priceless treasures even though they will not accompany him into certain death. The chapter emphasizes that friendship can mean offering help or farewell without expecting survival.
• Peace versus ambition: Zhao Yishi’s desire for a quiet life contrasts sharply with Badan’s need to reclaim honor and Chen Qiu’s ongoing journey toward greater power.

Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu and Badan share a respectful conversation about Immortal Cancer, inheritance, the Land of Heavenly Imprisonment, and the dangers awaiting those who escape it.
• Zhao Yishi and Badan’s relationship is central: Badan sees Zhao Yishi as his heir and future successor, while Zhao Yishi wants only to remain peacefully with his grandfather.
• Chen Qiu and Zhao Yishi reconnect as old friends, though Zhao Yishi’s poor memory and indifference to outside affairs frustrate the discussion about Great Xia.
• Badan conceals his past humiliation from Chen Qiu, refusing to ask for Chen Qiu’s Yin Emperor Fortune despite sensing that Chen Qiu possesses it.
• After Chen Qiu leaves, Badan reveals his true intentions to Zhao Yishi and takes him toward the Immortal Realm, while Chen Qiu recognizes the tragic meaning behind Badan’s final act.

Chapter Summary

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Badan breaks through the shattered boundary between Jiang Taiping Continent and the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm while carrying Zhao Yishi. His overwhelming power draws the attention of countless experts, who rush to the Demon Race Forest to watch.
• The spectators recall Badan’s past humiliation: he once knelt before the Demon Race chieftain, Zhao Yishi, seeking Yin Emperor Fortune to cure his Immortal Cancer. Zhao Yishi broke his oath and refused to help him.
• Badan reveals that he has come prepared to die. He intends to use his death to help Zhao Yishi break through his bloodline shackles, just as Badan’s own master once sacrificed himself for him.
• Badan attacks Zhao Yishi with his strongest halberd strike, but Zhao Yishi effortlessly blocks it using the Demon Race’s power and supreme treasure, defeating Badan in a single move.
• Badan’s old friend, disguised among the spectators, struggles with guilt because he cannot intervene without endangering his own clan.
• Badan’s hope of receiving aid from the Barbarian Race collapses when the Barbarian Race chieftain refuses to lend him the race’s supreme treasure. The two races have made peace for a thousand years.
• The Barbarian Race chieftain reveals that Badan’s position as Immortal King depended primarily on the racial treasure, then introduces Sankui as the new Barbarian Immortal King.
• Humiliated and furious, Badan initially decides he no longer wants a dignified death. He kneels toward the east and asks “Master Chen”—Chen Qiu—for a strand of Yin Emperor Fortune.
• Although everyone expects Chen Qiu to ignore him, Chen Qiu sends the fortune across the spatial rift. Badan’s wounds heal, and his unstable condition is restored.
• With renewed strength, Badan reclaims the Barbarian Race’s Scarlet Giant Hammer, which responds to him and abandons Sankui. Badan prepares to fight Zhao Yishi and the newly established order of both races.

2. Character Developments

• Badan: Shifts from accepting a sacrificial death to embracing survival and revenge. His humiliation, betrayal by the Barbarian leadership, and Zhao Yishi’s cruelty reignite his fighting spirit. His bond with his weapons and friends shows that his power is tied not only to treasures but also to loyalty and sincerity.
• Zhao Yishi: Is portrayed as cruel, arrogant, and deeply insecure. He mocks Badan’s past humiliation and relies on the Demon Race’s supreme treasure rather than accepting a fair duel. Badan’s goal is to force him to mature by making him confront a lifelong enemy.
• Chen Qiu: Though he has only met Badan once, he demonstrates extraordinary trust and generosity by lending him Yin Emperor Fortune at a critical moment.
• The Barbarian Race Chieftain: Reveals himself as politically calculating and willing to discard Badan for the race’s strategic interests. His claim that Badan’s strength came only from the racial treasure deeply wounds Badan.
• Sankui: Gains the title of Immortal King through the Barbarian Race Supreme Treasure but immediately shows arrogance and disrespect toward Badan.
• Badan’s friends: Their inability to help reflects the painful conflict between personal loyalty and responsibility toward their families and clans. Despite their fear, their emotional reactions affirm how deeply Badan’s sincerity has affected them.

3. Significant Themes

• Betrayal and political expediency: Both the Demon and Barbarian leaderships prioritize power and collective interests over personal loyalty or justice.
• Sincerity as strength: Badan’s straightforward and dependable nature earns him genuine friendship, even from people who cannot openly fight beside him.
• Humiliation versus dignity: Badan refuses to let Zhao Yishi or the Barbarian leadership define the meaning of his life or death.
• Inheritance and sacrifice: Badan recognizes that powerful figures often sacrifice themselves to help the next generation break through their limitations, though he questions whether forcing such a destiny onto Zhao Yishi is fair.
• True strength versus borrowed power: The chapter questions whether power belongs to the individual or to the treasure, race, and systems supporting them. Badan’s return of the Scarlet Giant Hammer suggests that genuine bond and legitimacy cannot be reduced to political possession.
• Fear and responsibility: The spectators and Badan’s friends want to help but are restrained by fear of death and the need to protect those dependent on them.

4. Character Interactions

• Badan and Zhao Yishi: Their confrontation combines old hatred, mockery, and a distorted form of inheritance. Badan wants Zhao Yishi to remember the “enemy” who will shape his life, while Zhao Yishi treats him as a defeated and humiliating relic.
• Badan and the Barbarian Chieftain: Their exchange exposes a broken relationship. Badan believed his loyalty and contributions mattered, but the chieftain reduces him to someone replaceable by a new bearer of the racial treasure.
• Badan and Sankui: Sankui taunts Badan and claims his former status, but the Scarlet Giant Hammer rejects him and returns to Badan, undermining Sankui’s legitimacy.
• Badan and Chen Qiu: Their brief prior acquaintance becomes an unexpected bond of trust. Chen Qiu’s assistance gives Badan both renewed life and the emotional validation he desperately needs.
• Badan and his old friends: Their silent presence, guilt, and emotional distress demonstrate their love for him, even though they cannot risk openly joining his doomed battle.
• Badan and Zhao Yishi: Badan’s relationship with Zhao Yishi also mirrors his relationship with his own master: he intends to use his death—or potential survival—to force Zhao Yishi toward transformation.

Chapter Summary: “Ba Dan’s Ninth Form, Power of Nine Fists!”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Badan awakens the full power of the Barbarian Race’s supreme treasure, the Scarlet Giant Hammer, and reveals a previously unknown nine-form technique.
• His First Form instantly overwhelms and blasts away the current Barbarian Race Immortal King, shocking both the Barbarian Race patriarch and the spectators.
• Badan denounces the Barbarian Race leadership for abandoning its simple, honest traditions and declares that he will kill both the Demon Race patriarch and the current Barbarian Race patriarch. He also openly admits that he does covet the position of Barbarian Race patriarch and rejects the idea of peace talks between the sworn enemies.
• Badan successively uses the Second through Fifth Forms, combining the hammer with increasingly powerful phenomena such as frost, flames, and overwhelming physical force.
• During the Fifth Form, Badan deliberately adopts a mutual-destruction strategy. The Demon Race patriarch retreats defensively, allowing Badan to shatter his shield and smash him deep into the earth.
• The Demon Race patriarch reveals his true form: a gigantic, flame-covered lion. He and Badan then engage in an extended, brutal battle, using their strongest abilities and repeatedly devastating the surrounding area.
• After roughly an hour, both combatants are critically injured. Badan loses an eye and is nearly unable to move, while the Demon Race patriarch suffers massive injuries, including the loss of a claw.
• The Demon Race patriarch’s forces surround Badan, revealing that Badan is fighting not only the patriarch but the entire Demon Race stronghold.
• The Barbarian Race patriarch and the current Barbarian Race Immortal King also turn against Badan, attempting to reclaim the Scarlet Giant Hammer and eliminate him while he is weakened.
• When Zhao Yishi tries to protect the hammer, the current Barbarian Race Immortal King gravely injures him with a roar.
• Enraged by the attack on his grandson, Badan rises and unleashes his ultimate technique, “Badan’s Ninth Form, Power of Nine Fists!”
• The attack kills the current Barbarian Race Immortal King instantly, destroying both his body and divine soul. Badan wins the battle but is completely exhausted and apparently near death.
• As the Barbarian Race patriarch prepares to kill Badan and Zhao Yishi, Badan considers sacrificing himself to save his grandson and pass on his inheritance.
• Before he can do so, reinforcements arrive: the Northwestern Kang Clan, tens of thousands of Barbarian clansmen who wish to make Badan their chief, and the Wei Prince’s Residence. The chapter ends with these allies declaring their support for Badan.

Character Developments

• Badan demonstrates that he has surpassed everyone’s expectations, having fully synchronized with the Scarlet Giant Hammer and unlocked its ultimate forms. He evolves from a disgraced former Immortal King into a terrifying champion capable of killing the current Immortal King in one blow.
• His battle style emphasizes overwhelming strength, fearlessness, and willingness to risk his life. Despite his injuries, he continues fighting to protect his dignity, race, and grandson.
• Badan’s concern for Zhao Yishi reveals his deep affection and responsibility as a grandfather. His rage over Zhao Yishi’s injury enables him to unleash the Ninth Form.
• Zhao Yishi grows from a weak observer into someone willing to stand before an Immortal King to defend his grandfather. Though badly injured, his courage proves that Badan’s influence has changed him.
• The Demon Race patriarch is shown to be a dangerous and experienced rival who understands Badan’s psychology. However, his hesitation during the mutual-destruction exchange gives Badan a decisive opening.
• The current Barbarian Race Immortal King is exposed as arrogant and cruel. His contempt for Zhao Yishi and belief in his own superiority lead directly to his death.
• The Barbarian Race patriarch remains calculating and opportunistic, abandoning Badan once he becomes vulnerable and prioritizing control of the supreme treasure.
• Badan’s old allies, especially Xiao Kang, the Barbarian clansmen, and the Wei Prince’s Residence, reveal that he was never truly abandoned by everyone. His past sincerity has earned him loyalty.

Significant Themes

• Sincerity versus scheming: Badan condemns the Barbarian leadership for replacing the race’s traditional honesty with political manipulation, while the support he receives proves that genuine loyalty can outlast political exile.
• Family and protection: Badan’s strongest attack is triggered not by personal injury but by Zhao Yishi being harmed. His final priority is ensuring his grandson survives.
• Legacy and leadership: The clansmen’s willingness to rebel and follow Badan suggests that true authority comes from treating others well, not merely from holding an official title.
• Sacrifice and defiance: Badan accepts that his life may end, yet he refuses to surrender passively. His Ninth Form represents the final eruption of his will to protect those important to him.
• The cost of hesitation: The Demon Race patriarch’s instinctive retreat and the current Immortal King’s arrogance both create openings that lead to devastating consequences.
• True victory: Although Badan is physically near death, he wins morally and politically: he defeats his greatest rival, kills the corrupt Immortal King, inspires the Barbarian clansmen, and regains the support of old friends.

Character Interactions

• Badan confronts the Barbarian Race patriarch over his hypocrisy and accuses him of betraying the race’s traditional nature.
• He taunts the Demon Race patriarch throughout the battle, drawing on their long history of conflict and even recalling that he once destroyed one of the lion’s claws.
• The Demon Race patriarch attempts to exploit Badan’s declining condition, arguing that no one can survive in the world by relying on sincerity alone.
• Zhao Yishi physically shields the Scarlet Giant Hammer and defies the current Barbarian Race Immortal King, prompting the attack that awakens Badan’s final strength.
• Badan protects Zhao Yishi throughout the battle and ultimately rises for his sake, declaring that no one has the right to touch his grandson.
• Xiao Kang arrives with the Northwestern Kang Clan, the Barbarian clansmen demand that Badan become their chief, and the Wei Prince’s Residence pledges its life to defend him, transforming Badan’s apparent final stand into the beginning of a rebellion and counterattack.

Chapter Summary: “Today Is the Day We Slaughter the Demon Race!”

Key Plot Points and Events

• After Badan reaches a desperate stalemate with the Demon Race patriarch, his old friends and allies begin arriving to support him. The weakened Wei Prince’s Residence, rogue cultivators, White Crane Valley, the Kang Family, and many other factions risk the Demon Race’s retaliation to stand beside him.
• The Kang Family head urges Badan to launch a counterattack, explaining that he could not watch his former protector die without acting.
• Tens of thousands of Barbarian Race members, many of them slaves, join the battle. Their leader, Ba Xi, openly rejects the patriarch’s threats and denounces the Barbarian Race’s continued slavery.
• The Barbarian Race’s second elder and several hundred elite giants also declare that the patriarch’s policy of peace with the Demon Race is wrong. The patriarch argues that cooperation is necessary to survive the coming tribulation, but the rebels insist that the two races can never truly coexist.
• Badan rises, commands the gathered forces to attack, and transforms the conflict from a personal duel into a massive war between his accumulated friendships and the Demon Race.
• Various groups join the battle for different reasons: loyalty to Badan, hatred of Demon Race oppression, opportunism, or the desire to seize treasures from the Demon Race Forest.
• Badan confronts the dying Demon Race patriarch. The patriarch reveals that he once intended to give Badan the Yin Emperor Fortune but was persuaded by the Barbarian Race patriarch not to do so. He also admits that Badan’s earlier humiliation destroyed his fear of him.
• When the Demon Race patriarch attempts to kill himself rather than be defeated, Badan stops him and personally kills him with the Scarlet Giant Hammer.
• The Heavenly Dao announces the patriarch’s complete death through a grand funeral edict, and heaven and earth mourn with snow and sorrowful music. The Demon forces lose their will to fight and retreat.
• After the victory, a Barbarian slave places the traditional patriarch’s cloak on Badan. The gesture effectively signals that the people have chosen him as their new leader.
• Badan declares that all Barbarian slaves will be freed and that the Barbarian and Demon Races will never make peace. He also orders the attack to continue and urges the Barbarian Race to destroy the Demon Race.
• Badan explains his vision for reform: equal distribution of cultivation resources, freedom for slaves, open interaction with the outside world, and growth through battle and friendship rather than isolation.
• He then rushes toward the Demon Race treasury to recover its Yin Emperor Fortune and repay Master Chen, whose help made his victory possible.

Character Developments

• Badan: Moves from a man seeking death to erase his humiliation into a victorious leader accepted by his friends and followers. He realizes that his past humiliation did not destroy his reputation; instead, his loyalty and sincerity inspired others. He embraces leadership and reveals a strong commitment to fairness, freedom, and racial unity.
• Demon Race Patriarch: His long rivalry with Badan ends in defeat. He reveals that he once respected and feared Badan, but Badan’s past submission caused him to underestimate him. Even in death, he attempts to preserve his dignity by choosing suicide, though Badan denies him that final act.
• Barbarian Race Patriarch: Becomes increasingly desperate and hysterical as his own people abandon him. His policy of peace with the Demon Race and his defense of slavery isolate him from the majority of the Barbarian Race.
• Kang Family Head: Demonstrates deep gratitude and loyalty toward Badan, overcoming political caution and personal fear to support him.
• Ba Xi and the Barbarian slaves: Transform from an oppressed underclass into a decisive political and military force. Ba Xi openly challenges the patriarch and asserts the slaves’ right to freedom and dignity.
• Barbarian Second Elder: Initially questions Badan’s idealistic reforms but is gradually moved by his sincerity. He recognizes that Badan could unite the Barbarian Race and possibly connect it with Master Chen.
• Badan’s friends and allies: Their willingness to act despite danger proves that their affection for him survived his earlier disgrace.

Significant Themes

• Friendship and loyalty: True friendship is measured by the risks people are willing to take, not by whether they help only when victory is certain.
• Humiliation and redemption: Badan seeks redemption through death but instead achieves it through survival, leadership, and the unwavering support of his companions.
• Freedom versus oppression: The chapter strongly condemns slavery and challenges systems that justify inequality through tradition or limited resources.
• Sincerity and solidarity: Badan argues that sincerity, rather than cleverness or political manipulation, is the Barbarian Race’s greatest strength.
• Idealism and reform: Badan believes that reforms must first be imagined and demanded before they can become reality. His vision values fairness even if implementing it carries heavy costs.
• The people’s will and legitimate leadership: A patriarch should be chosen by the clan rather than claim power through authority. Badan’s leadership emerges organically from the people’s loyalty.
• Unity against tyranny: Formerly divided factions unite against the Demon Race and against leaders who prioritize political strategy over justice.

Important Character Interactions

• Badan’s old friends arrive one by one, demonstrating that their bonds with him remain intact despite his former disgrace.
• The Kang Family head publicly encourages Badan to counterattack, reaffirming their familial and personal loyalty.
• Ba Xi confronts the Barbarian patriarch, exposing the hypocrisy of defending reform while preserving slavery.
• The second elder opposes the patriarch’s peace policy and later debates Badan about the practical difficulties of abolishing slavery.
• The Demon Race patriarch and Badan share a final exchange about their long rivalry, past humiliation, mercy, and fear before Badan kills him.
• The Barbarian followers symbolically choose Badan by placing the patriarch’s cloak on him.
• Badan and the second elder discuss the future of the Barbarian Race, with Badan insisting that fairness and dignity matter more than resource-based excuses.
• Badan’s concern for repaying Master Chen reveals his continued humility and gratitude despite becoming the central figure of the victory.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• After the Demon Race clan chief is killed, the Demon Race collapses into disunity. Its various branches prioritize preserving their own forces rather than continuing the fight, allowing Badan’s coalition to overwhelm them.
• Badan orders the Immortal Water Well to be removed and takes control of the battlefield. He deliberately avoids exterminating the Demon Race, since surviving demons and demon beasts are valuable for strengthening the Barbarian Race’s “Sky-Piercing Giant” trait.
• Badan reunites with old companions, including the newly appointed Wei Prince. They celebrate their victory with a large banquet and discuss strengthening their respective factions through cooperation.
• At the banquet, Badan publicly announces Zhao Yishi as his successor and intends to train him to become the next Barbarian Race clan chief. Zhao objects, but Badan argues that someone who does not desire power may be best suited to wield it.
• When questioned about Master Chen, Badan refuses to reveal private information, only emphasizing that Chen is extraordinarily powerful.
• Three days later, Chen Qiu is enjoying a peaceful meal on Jiang Taiping Continent when Fat Dragon and Scholar speculate that Badan may have lost after ascending to the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm. Their discussion destroys Chen’s sense of calm, especially because Badan had previously asked him to lend Yin Emperor Fortune.
• Chen explains that he did lend Badan his Yin Emperor Fortune, but this prevents him from fulfilling his promise to the Bai Family head. He therefore needs to find another source.
• The Bai Family head locates Peihong Continent, a First-Grade Continent undergoing a Netherworld Collapse. Chen, Fat Dragon, Scholar, and the Bai Family head travel there so Chen can obtain another strand of Yin Emperor Fortune.
• Peihong Continent is a Polluted Continent where every inhabitant possesses three unusual traits that make low-level cultivators exceptionally powerful against stronger opponents.
• Chen tests these traits by having a Qi Refinement farmer attack him. The farmer’s hoe produces an attack powerful enough to numb Chen’s arm, demonstrating how dangerous the continent’s inhabitants can be.
• The Bai Family head then describes the even more extreme Seven Madam Continent, also called the “Tricolor Continent,” where everyone is born with three rainbow traits. Because offensive power vastly exceeds defensive power, the continent has become a perpetual battle royale with no stable cities or ordinary mortals.

Character Developments

• Badan emerges as a pragmatic leader. He wins the war but chooses not to pursue total extermination, instead considering the long-term development of the Barbarian Race.
• Badan and Zhao Yishi’s relationship becomes clearer: Badan treats Zhao as both a grandson and political heir, while Zhao remains reluctant to assume leadership.
• The Wei Prince demonstrates loyalty and maturity by joining the battle despite difficulties within her own residence. Badan accepts her explanation without resentment, showing their longstanding trust.
• Chen Qiu is shown to value quiet, ordinary pleasures. His peaceful enjoyment of food and snowfall is disrupted by concern for Badan and his obligation to repay the Bai Family head.
• Fat Dragon remains talkative, humorous, and prone to speculation, while Scholar acts as the more restrained and analytical presence.
• The Bai Family head continues serving as an information broker and guide, but his envy and frustration with the bizarre conditions of Qi Tian Continent are also revealed.

Significant Themes

• The consequences of power vacuums: Once the Demon Race chief dies, the supposedly unified race fractures into competing branches, showing that authority—not inherent unity—held the clan together.
• Leadership and ambition: Badan believes those who do not crave authority may be the safest leaders, contrasting responsibility with personal desire for power.
• Promises and moral responsibility: Chen values keeping his word and feels obligated to replace the Yin Emperor Fortune he lent to Badan.
• The meaning of “fairness”: The chapter questions whether powerful traits are truly advantageous when everyone possesses them. On the Seven Madam Continent, universal strength produces violence rather than safety.
• Peace versus survival: Chen’s simple breakfast represents tranquility and human comfort, while the surrounding worlds are defined by war, cultivation, and constant danger.
• Pollution and distorted systems: Polluted Continents do not merely become weaker; they develop abnormal rules that overturn conventional cultivation logic and create social chaos.

Character Interactions

• Badan and the Wei Prince reconcile their past separation, with Badan reassuring her that he understands why she could not intervene earlier.
• Badan introduces Zhao Yishi to his old friends and asks them to support Zhao in the future.
• The banquet reunites Badan with former companions, who now lead their own factions but regain their old camaraderie through him.
• Fat Dragon and Scholar debate Badan’s fate, inadvertently upsetting Chen by suggesting that Badan and Zhao may have died.
• Chen, Fat Dragon, Scholar, and the Bai Family head travel together to Peihong Continent, where the Bai Family head explains its dangerous trait system.
• Fat Dragon and the Bai Family head exchange insults over the Bai patriarch’s appearance and the strange bodily mutations associated with Qi Tian Continent, providing comic relief amid the chapter’s darker themes.

Chapter Summary: “Several Immortals, Please Save Us!”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu and the Bai Family head investigate rumors of a Netherworld Collapse in Hong City, believing the Li Family may know the location of an entrance because several dead family members have recently returned to life.
• Chen Qiu uses his overwhelming cultivation to immobilize the entire city and forcibly summons the Li Family. The Li Family head admits that the revived relatives were brought back through a mysterious artifact called the Weird Buddha, not a Netherworld entrance.
• The Weird Buddha resurrects people in exchange for the bound user’s flesh and blood. The Li Family head has sacrificed large portions of his own body to revive his loved ones.
• The group discusses the artifact’s sinister reputation. Those who gain the Weird Buddha’s power eventually disappear without a trace, suggesting that its “blessings” come at a terrible cost.
• Chen Qiu asks the Weird Buddha which low-grade continent recently experienced a Netherworld Collapse. After five flesh sacrifices, it reveals that Seven Madam Continent suffered one the previous day.
• The Bai Family head discovers that Seven Madam Continent is a Fourth-Grade Continent in another Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm—normally inaccessible to Chen Qiu. He offers to use the Bai Family’s resources to send Chen Qiu there.
• Chen Qiu agrees, hoping to investigate the collapse and find a way to save his daughter, who suffers from Immortal Cancer.
• Before leaving, Fat Dragon gives the Li Family head a storage ring as compensation.
• After the immortals depart, the Li Family head begins suspecting that the people revived by the Weird Buddha may not truly be themselves. He questions his resurrected wife, Fei’er, and discovers that although she remembers factual details perfectly, her personality is subtly wrong.
• Realizing that the woman is likely an imitation or altered being, the Li Family head runs after Chen Qiu’s group and desperately cries for the immortals to save him.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu: Remains calm and decisive, relying on his overwhelming strength but avoiding unnecessary involvement with the Weird Buddha. His determination to find a Netherworld entrance is driven by his desire to save his daughter.
• Fat Dragon: Provides comic relief through his observations about overwhelming weaker opponents, but also displays sharp insight by recognizing that the Weird Buddha’s resurrections are unnatural.
• Bai Family head: Acts as an informed guide and cautious strategist. His concern about the Weird Buddha reveals his extensive knowledge and prudence, while his willingness to pay the cost of sending Chen Qiu to Seven Madam Continent demonstrates loyalty and support.
• Li Family head: Shifts from fearfully obeying Chen Qiu to opportunistically offering the Weird Buddha’s services, then becomes suspicious and terrified when he realizes his resurrected wife may be fake.
• Fei’er/the resurrected wife: Appears physically and behaviorally identical to the original Fei’er, but her flawless memory and incorrect emotional temperament expose something deeply unnatural about her resurrection.

Significant Themes

• The price of resurrection: Bringing the dead back may violate the natural laws of life and death, and apparent miracles may conceal horrifying consequences.
• Appearance versus identity: Perfect memories and physical resemblance do not guarantee that someone is truly the same person; personality and emotional instinct are equally essential.
• The fragility of existence: Entire continents can collapse into the Void, rendering the struggles and achievements of their inhabitants meaningless. This creates a bleak sense of cosmic instability.
• Power and scale: Chen Qiu’s group is practically invincible on a First-Grade Continent, emphasizing the enormous hierarchy between continents and cultivation realms.
• Unnatural world order: The repeated collapse of lower continents suggests that the world’s laws are corrupted, operating through elimination rather than normal growth and balance.

Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu questions and commands the Li Family head, while Fat Dragon prepares to force information from him.
• The Li Family head tries to gain Chen Qiu’s favor by offering to resurrect someone for the group, unaware that they are seeking information rather than resurrection.
• Fat Dragon and the Bai Family head analyze the Weird Buddha together, agreeing that its power is suspicious and dangerous.
• Chen Qiu stops the group from dwelling on the terrifying implications of continental collapse, urging them to continue moving forward.
• The Li Family head’s final interaction with his resurrected wife becomes a psychological confrontation: her answers are factually accurate, but her unnatural temperament convinces him she is not truly Fei’er.
• His desperate plea—“Immortals, save me!”—ends the chapter on a cliffhanger and signals that the Weird Buddha’s true danger may now directly threaten him.

Chapter Summary: “Perhaps You Should Address Me as an Evil God”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• The Li Family patriarch flees in terror as Chen Qiu and the other immortals arrive. They reveal that the entire Li Family estate has been mysteriously severed from Hong City and lifted ten thousand feet into the sky.
• Chen Qiu senses a filthy, sinister aura beneath the estate, similar to the aura of a massive Wraith-filled cavern. He suspects the Li Family’s supposed “resurrections” are unnatural.
• When the patriarch refuses to explain, Chen Qiu prepares to force the hidden entity out. The patriarch’s resurrected wife and servants appear, holding the remaining Li Family members hostage and threatening to kill them.
• The patriarch surprisingly refuses to cooperate. He argues that his family can be replaced, while his own life cannot, and suspects that the resurrected relatives are also abnormal.
• The hostile woman orders the slaughter of the hostages. Nearly half the Li Family is killed, but Chen Qiu eventually destroys the entire estate with heavenly lightning.
• A scarlet, living Weird Buddha survives the attack and confronts Chen Qiu. It insists that Chen Qiu has ruined its “opportunity” and denies plotting against him.
• Chen Qiu accuses the Weird Buddha of deliberately directing him toward the Seven Madam Continent by concealing that other continents were also undergoing Netherworld Collapses. The Weird Buddha claims it only knew about the Seven Madam Continent and had no reason to deceive him.
• The two sides agree to talk rather than fight. During the discussion, the Weird Buddha explains that it operates through “Equivalent Exchange” and claims never to have directly killed anyone.
• The truth about the Li Family emerges: the family had been plagued by ghosts for years. The Weird Buddha suppressed the ghosts and created replacement bodies for the patriarch’s dead relatives, but those bodies were subsequently possessed by the ghosts.
• The patriarch knowingly sealed away his own memories so he could believe that his family had been restored and continue living happily with them.
• The Weird Buddha reveals that it is an Evil Demon by race and profession, but argues that “evil” is a misleading term. Its personal rule is Equivalent Exchange, which it claims must never be broken.
• It hints that, in the future, it may become powerful enough to be called an “Evil God,” explaining that absolute adherence to a self-imposed rule is necessary for reaching the highest realm.

2. Character Developments

• Chen Qiu becomes increasingly suspicious and proactive. His concern over the Weird Buddha’s possible manipulation turns the incident from a minor investigation into a personal confrontation. Though initially ready to destroy the Buddha, he eventually agrees to negotiate after hearing its explanation.
• The Li Family patriarch is revealed to be selfish, fearful, and deeply self-deceptive. He values his own survival above his family, recognizes that the resurrected relatives are wrong, and deliberately erased his memories to preserve an illusion of domestic happiness. Despite his flaws, he is unusually candid once his memories are restored.
• The Weird Buddha shifts from a mysterious supernatural threat to a morally ambiguous merchant-like entity. It is defensive, temperamental, and crude, but presents itself as a strict practitioner of Equivalent Exchange rather than a malicious killer. Its ambitions and explanation of cultivation suggest it may once have possessed immense power.
• Fat Dragon provides comic relief while also helping analyze the situation. He repeatedly points out the absurdity of the patriarch’s behavior and questions the Weird Buddha’s moral logic.
• Scholar offers a concise moral criticism, arguing that calling a false reconstruction “resurrection” is inherently deceptive.

3. Significant Themes

• Self-deception and denial: The patriarch knowingly constructs a false family life by suppressing his memories, showing how grief and longing can cause people to accept obvious distortions of reality.
• The price of resurrection: The chapter questions whether recreating bodies and memories truly counts as bringing the dead back to life, especially when the results can be possessed or corrupted.
• Equivalent Exchange and moral responsibility: The Weird Buddha claims that it is not responsible for how others use what it provides. The chapter challenges whether a transaction can be morally neutral when the seller understands the likely consequences.
• Greed and temptation: The patriarch recognizes that people ignore warning signs when presented with an opportunity capable of changing their lives. Desire, rather than ignorance alone, blinds him.
• Good and evil as constructed labels: The Weird Buddha rejects the assumption that the term “Evil Demon” automatically means morally evil, distinguishing race, identity, and profession from ethical behavior.
• Rules, cultivation, and transcendence: The Weird Buddha explains that supreme ascension requires dedicating oneself to a single absolute principle. Its commitment to Equivalent Exchange may be both a moral code and the foundation of its path to ultimate power.
• Manipulation and uncertainty: Chen Qiu’s suspicion of the Weird Buddha reflects the difficulty of determining whether an apparently hostile event is deliberate plotting or merely an unintended consequence.

4. Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu and the Li Family patriarch: Chen Qiu treats him as a suspicious witness, while the patriarch immediately submits to the immortals and later admits that he knowingly lived with the ghosts’ deception.
• The patriarch and his wife: Their confrontation exposes the collapse of their relationship. His wife attempts to control him through their children and family, but he coldly rejects her threats and insults her logic.
• Chen Qiu and the Weird Buddha: Their exchange moves from hostility and accusations to a wary negotiation. Chen Qiu remains skeptical, especially after being cursed, while the Weird Buddha tries to defend both its motives and its professional ethics.
• Fat Dragon and the patriarch: Fat Dragon is baffled by the patriarch’s lack of grief and mocks his detached, calculating attitude.
• Fat Dragon, Scholar, and the Weird Buddha: The group questions the Buddha’s definition of resurrection and Equivalent Exchange, forcing it to justify its actions. The Buddha responds defensively but maintains that it technically fulfilled every bargain.
• The Weird Buddha and the patriarch: Their relationship is revealed as transactional rather than familial or benevolent. The Buddha provided replacement bodies and suppressed the ghosts, while the patriarch accepted the arrangement because it allowed him to preserve his desired illusion.

Chapter Summary: “This Isn’t a Rotten Fruit, I’m Just Peeling It”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Weird Buddha explains the Ascension Path to the Supreme Position, revealing that cultivators in the High-Grade Immortal Realms must follow a self-created rule continuously in order to qualify for further advancement.
• Although any rule can theoretically lead to the summit, the rule’s difficulty determines the resulting combat power. Weird Buddha’s rule, Equivalent Exchange, ranks seventy-eighth.
• The strongest known rule is Devotion to One Love, which requires someone to love one person faithfully for tens of thousands of years regardless of betrayal, death, or catastrophe. The second is Fairness, which requires one to uphold justice even at the cost of one’s life.
• Following a rule for increasing periods grants related Traits, eventually including a Rainbow Trait after ten thousand years. However, surviving for extremely long periods is difficult because past catastrophes have apparently removed or killed ancient powerhouses.
• Weird Buddha compares a past catastrophe to peeling away the rotten portion of a fruit. Xiong Gao humorously protests that his apple is not rotten and that he is merely peeling it.
• The group learns that even reaching the Supreme Position is not the end of cultivation. It is only the threshold to enter a higher plane, where another competition awaits.
• Weird Buddha reveals an alternative route: consuming the flesh and blood of someone who escaped a Land of Heavenly Imprisonment can grant entry into the higher-level competition without following a rule. However, such escapees are nearly impossible to find and are hunted by the great powers.
• Chen Qiu realizes that he and the others who escaped the Great Xia Kingdom may possess this special status. If their origins become known, powerful factions will likely hunt them as valuable targets.
• Chen Qiu exposes Weird Buddha’s lie about only recently learning his name. Weird Buddha admits he knew Chen Qiu’s identity from the beginning through the Evil Demons’ communication network.
• Weird Buddha identifies himself by his personal name: Mopan.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu becomes increasingly aware of the vastness and danger of the Immortal Realms. His satisfaction with his current Integrated Body cultivation disappears, replaced by an urgent desire to advance to the Immortal Realm and uncover the secrets surrounding the Mocking Heaven Sect, the Great Xia Kingdom, and the recurring thirty-thousand-year time period.
• Chen Qiu shows strong self-awareness. He rejects Devotion to One Love, Fairness, and Do as One Pleases as unsuitable to his nature, especially because he dislikes being constrained by an externally imposed rule.
• He also becomes more cautious, recognizing that his group may be treated like escaped “Tang Monks” whose flesh and blood are coveted by powerful cultivators. He begins planning how to conceal his secrets and limit the Mocking Heaven Sect’s exposure.
• Fat Dragon remains humorous and irreverent, using absurd examples to question the logic of self-created rules, but he becomes visibly disturbed by the brutal reality of the Ascension Path.
• The Bai Family patriarch acts as a practical interrogator, asking about the nature of rules, Weird Buddhas, their rosaries, and the Evil Demon race.
• Scholar shows curiosity about the Traits received after extremely long periods of following a rule.
• Weird Buddha/Mopan presents himself as cautious and relatively reasonable compared with other Evil Demons. He wants to avoid conflict with Chen Qiu, gain his friendship, and protect the relationship between Chen Qiu and the Evil Demon race. At the same time, he remains unwilling to reveal secrets that could threaten his race.
• Xiong Gao serves as a source of comic relief through the fruit-peeling misunderstanding.

Significant Themes

• The cost of advancement: Higher cultivation requires increasingly extreme commitments, sacrifices, and restrictions. Power is tied not merely to talent but to the difficulty of the principle one can uphold.
• Freedom versus obligation: Chen Qiu’s resistance to choosing a rule reflects his fear that advancement will require surrendering personal freedom and acting under constant threat of failure.
• Self-knowledge and honesty: Chen Qiu understands that pretending to embody love, fairness, or spontaneity would violate his true nature. The chapter emphasizes the importance—and danger—of accurately recognizing one’s own heart.
• Hidden identities and survival: Knowledge is power in the High-Grade Immortal Realms. Chen Qiu must conceal his origins because escaped prisoners of the Land of Heavenly Imprisonment are valuable targets.
• Race and independence: The Evil Demons’ refusal to become another faction’s servants highlights the importance of racial autonomy, even in decline. Mopan protects his people’s secrets because their survival and future resurgence depend on independence.
• The uncertain structure of the world: References to the thirty-thousand-year catastrophe, transmigrators, the Mocking Heaven Sect, and higher Immortal Realms suggest that the known world is only a small part of a much larger hidden system.

Important Character Interactions

• Fat Dragon and the Bai Family patriarch repeatedly challenge Weird Buddha’s explanation of self-created rules, forcing him to clarify their requirements and limitations.
• Weird Buddha shocks the group by ranking Devotion to One Love above all other rules, leading Fat Dragon to mock the idea that romance determines the strongest path to power.
• Chen Qiu silently observes most of the discussion, but his reactions reveal growing concern and ambition.
• The group jokes about Weird Buddha’s fruit analogy, with Xiong Gao defending his apple from being labeled rotten.
• Chen Qiu confronts Weird Buddha over his knowledge of Chen Qiu’s name, testing whether he is being deceptive. Mopan admits he lied but argues that his deception was meant to appear sincere rather than malicious.
• The Bai Family patriarch probes Mopan about the dangers and secrets of Weird Buddhas. Mopan reveals that hosts may still be saved before the twentieth bead of the rosary is lit, but after that point even an Immortal Emperor cannot help them.
• Chen Qiu recognizes the strategic value of the Weird Buddhas’ ability to transmit information and objects across continents and considers whether the Evil Demon race could become useful allies, though Mopan firmly rejects the idea of subordination.
• Fat Dragon’s final questions about Evil Demon reproduction are refused, reinforcing the limits of Mopan’s willingness to disclose racial secrets.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Weird Buddha explains the naming customs of the Evil Demon Race: Evil Demons are born independently, without parents, and are named after the objects on which they are born. His own name, Mopan, comes from a grinding millstone.
• He seeks to maintain a friendly relationship with Chen Qiu, emphasizing that human factions are often divided and may prioritize internal conflicts over resisting external enemies.
• Weird Buddha reveals that he once surpassed the Body Integration realm but fell to a First-Grade Continent after contracting Immortal Cancer, a random Heavenly Disease that causes cultivation and lifespan to continuously regress.
• He has only about three years left to live and needs Yin Emperor Fortune to cure the disease. Nine strands of Fortune of the Yin Soul are required to synthesize one strand of Yin Emperor Fortune. He has gathered six strands but still lacks three.
• The chapter explains the severe restrictions surrounding Fortune of the Yin Soul:
  • It can only be obtained through trades with Yin Realm prodigies or by entering a collapsing Yin Realm with sufficient merit.
  • A person can generally obtain only one strand from each Yin Realm.
  • Each continent has a limited supply, and excessive extraction can destroy its Yin Realm.
  • Obtaining it requires enormous merit, intercontinental travel, intelligence, and access to collapsing Yin Realms.
• Weird Buddha realizes that Chen Qiu has repeatedly entered Yin Realms and may be able to bypass Heavenly Dao restrictions. Chen Qiu becomes concerned that exposing this ability would make him a target of powerful beings.
• Chen Qiu decides to use Weird Buddha’s ability to transport living people between continents. In exchange for the remaining three strands of Fortune of the Yin Soul, Weird Buddha agrees to transport Chen Qiu’s followers across many First-Grade Continents for up to three hundred years.
• The purpose of the expedition is to spread Chen Qiu’s name and accelerate the cultivation of his Far-Reaching Fame.
• Liu Zide proposes dividing the expedition into multiple teams. Six teams are organized under leaders including Liu Zide, the Dao Sect Master, Qu Gui, Ao Tian, the Sky Axe Sect Master, and Scholar.
• The teams enthusiastically depart through Weird Buddha’s transmission ability, leaving the Mocking Heaven Sect unusually empty.
• Before leaving, Weird Buddha promises to protect Chen Qiu’s people when possible. Chen Qiu promises him the remaining Fortune of the Yin Soul and wishes him an early ascent to the throne of an Evil God.
• The Bai Family patriarch privately asks Chen Qiu to prioritize helping his daughter. Chen Qiu reveals that her condition may indicate she is the reincarnation of an immortal—or that Immortal Cancer was somehow implanted in her.
• The patriarch reveals that the girl’s mother was genuinely an immortal maiden, and that he gained a powerful Red Trait after marrying her.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu becomes more cautious and strategic. He realizes his ability to repeatedly obtain Yin Realm fortune may mean he can occasionally escape Heavenly Dao control, making his identity potentially dangerous if discovered.
• He also demonstrates strong leadership by turning Weird Buddha’s personal crisis into a mutually beneficial long-term arrangement.
• Weird Buddha shifts from a humorous, eccentric figure into a tragic and desperate survivor. Despite having once been extraordinarily powerful, he is now facing death and reincarnation because of Immortal Cancer. His excitement upon receiving a seventh strand of Fortune of the Yin Soul shows how desperately he needs Chen Qiu’s help.
• Liu Zide proves himself to be an effective organizer and strategist. He understands the importance of spreading Chen Qiu’s reputation efficiently and identifies suitable leaders for the expedition.
• Ao Tian, previously gloomy because he felt useless, becomes energized by the chance to lead the Dragon Race’s team and prove its value.
• The Mocking Heaven Sect’s members show that they desire adventure, independence, and opportunities for personal growth rather than merely safety and resources within the sect.
• The Bai Family patriarch becomes more open about his family’s secrets, including his daughter’s possible immortal origins and his relationship with an immortal maiden.

Significant Themes

• Mortality and the decline of power: Even former supreme cultivators can be reduced to helplessness by Immortal Cancer. Power and longevity are shown to be fragile.
• Fate versus effort: Weird Buddha calls his illness fate, while Chen Qiu searches for practical ways to overcome restrictions imposed by the Heavenly Dao.
• The cost of heavenly resources: Fortune of the Yin Soul is not merely a treasure; it is tied to the survival of entire Yin Realms and the natural order of life and death.
• Trust and mutual benefit: Chen Qiu and Weird Buddha form an alliance based on exchanged value. Their relationship evolves from cautious conversation to genuine cooperation.
• Reputation as power: Chen Qiu’s followers are dispatched to spread his name, showing that fame itself can become a cultivation resource.
• Freedom and restriction: Chen Qiu’s possible exemption from Heavenly Dao regulation contrasts with his inability to freely pass through Heavenly Dao Shackles, suggesting that his freedom is partial and mysterious.
• Adventure and personal growth: The expedition gives the sect’s members a chance to leave Chen Qiu’s protection, gain experience, and establish themselves independently.

Important Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu, Fat Dragon, and Weird Buddha joke about names and cultural differences before moving into serious discussion about human and Evil Demon relations.
• Chen Qiu privately questions Weird Buddha about Immortal Cancer and the difficulty of obtaining Yin Emperor Fortune, allowing the chapter’s rules regarding the Yin Realm to be explained.
• Chen Qiu and Weird Buddha negotiate a major exchange: transportation and logistical support in return for Fortune of the Yin Soul.
• Liu Zide persuades Chen Qiu to form multiple expedition teams, identifying capable leaders and turning the plan into a large-scale operation.
• The team leaders compete humorously over whose group will achieve the greatest fame, revealing their enthusiasm for the mission.
• Weird Buddha and Chen Qiu part on friendly terms, each promising the other future success.
• The Bai Family patriarch privately appeals to Chen Qiu for his daughter’s sake, leading to the revelation of her possible connection to immortals.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• The Bai Family head finishes recounting the story of the fairy who once loved him. She has been dead for many years, and he still does not understand why she chose him. Chen Qiu learns that fairies originate from the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm and that possessing a fairy’s first night grants the powerful Red Trait, “Fairy’s First Night,” which permanently boosts luck.
• Chen Qiu and the Bai Family head prepare to travel to another continent undergoing a Netherworld Collapse to obtain Yin Soul Fortune. Chen Qiu acknowledges that cultivation and survival always involve risk.
• Qu Gui leads a Mocking Heaven Sect group to an unfamiliar First-Grade Continent. They arrive at an abandoned temple containing a Weird Buddha. Qu Gui jokingly offers it living sacrifices, but the Weird Buddha clarifies that Weird Buddhas do not slaughter living beings. The group enters the nearby city to gather information.
• Scholar leads another group, the “I Have a Sword” Team, to a separate First-Grade Continent. He encourages the disciples to establish themselves and intends to demonstrate his swordsmanship, which has been overshadowed by the stronger members of the Mocking Heaven Sect.
• Chen Qiu, the Bai Family head, and their companions arrive at the Wang Family on Endless Continent, where a Netherworld Collapse entrance is located inside a dried-up well. The Wang Family rose because of a former prodigy who became the King of Endless Province before fleeing to the Yin Realm.
• The Bai Family head reveals that his family has planted agents in promising lower-rank families to monitor and control future Sky Prodigies. Their agent in the Wang Family, Wang Yi, has risen to become its family head.
• Chen Qiu infiltrates the Wang Family during what appears to be a strange family wedding. While heading toward the well, he discovers that multiple hidden cultivators are secretly observing the bride bathing. The bride exposes all thirteen infiltrators.
• The group reveals that they deliberately destroyed Pingxi Continent and plans to destroy all twelve Lower-Rank Continents of the Vast Continent within five years, including Mystic Heaven Continent.
• Because Great Xia Kingdom is connected to Mystic Heaven Continent, Chen Qiu decides he cannot remain uninvolved. He captures the thirteen intruders and the entire Wang Family, ordering Xiong Gao to interrogate the captives.
• Chen Qiu finds Wang Yi, the Bai Family’s agent, already dead in the Wang Family ancestral hall, apparently murdered by someone he trusted. He takes the Wang Family members into his Minor World to investigate the continent’s destruction and identify the faction behind it.
• Xiong Gao begins interrogating the captured group using torture devices he designed himself. He seals the old man’s cultivation and prepares a medicine that heightens physical sensitivity.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu remains cautious and pragmatic but becomes increasingly protective of Mystic Heaven Continent and Great Xia Kingdom. His personal attachment overrides his reluctance to provoke a powerful Immortal Realm faction.
• The Bai Family head reveals both his romantic past and the extent of the Bai Family’s intelligence network. His methods involve planting agents in lower-rank continents and helping them rise within influential families.
• Qu Gui displays his irreverent, sociable personality while taking his new assignment seriously. He and the Mocking Heaven Sect disciples are eager to prove their usefulness after repeatedly being denied chances to fight.
• Scholar shows leadership and renewed confidence in his swordsmanship. He wants his team to create achievements and remind others that he is an exceptionally talented sword cultivator.
• Scholar’s younger brother remains nearly silent, though Scholar is attentive to his withdrawn state.
• Xiong Gao reveals a disturbing but enthusiastic talent for interrogation and torture. He is also conscientious, worrying that inadequate background checks on the sect’s maidservants might have allowed spies to infiltrate them.
• The captured old man and his companions are shown to be agents of a larger destructive faction. Their justification for destroying lower-rank continents exposes their arrogance and disregard for ordinary lives.
• The mysterious bride is unusually perceptive and capable of detecting hidden cultivators, despite her low apparent cultivation. Her true identity and motives remain unclear.

Significant Themes

• Risk and survival: Chen Qiu reflects that every path in cultivation carries danger, and avoiding all risks is itself a form of surrender.
• Power and responsibility: Chen Qiu’s strength allows him to dominate the Wang Family and the infiltrators, but his decision to defend Mystic Heaven Continent shows that power also creates obligations.
• Class prejudice and dehumanization: The attackers dismiss First-Grade Continent inhabitants as poor, ignorant people whose lives are not worth preserving. Chen Qiu rejects this belief, arguing that poverty does not make life meaningless.
• Hidden schemes and manipulation: The Bai Family’s planted agents and the faction’s continent-destruction plan reveal a world shaped by covert influence, surveillance, and long-term strategic control.
• Identity and usefulness: Qu Gui’s and Scholar’s groups struggle with feeling unnecessary within the powerful Mocking Heaven Sect. Their missions give them a chance to establish their own value.
• Public glory versus discretion: Chen Qiu’s “Buried with Full Honors After Death” trait would expose his entry into the Yin Realm through a continent-wide heavenly phenomenon, conflicting with his desire to act secretly.

Character Interactions

• The Bai Family head tells Chen Qiu about the fairy and his past, while Fat Dragon’s skeptical reaction cuts short his boastful claim that he possessed an emperor’s bearing.
• Qu Gui banters with the Weird Buddha, who warns him not to interfere with its cultivation.
• Scholar motivates his team and encourages his silent younger brother, emphasizing their shared responsibility as senior Mocking Heaven Sect members.
• Chen Qiu questions the Bai Family head about the source of his intelligence and becomes suspicious of possible spies, prompting Xiong Gao to reconsider the screening of the sect’s maidservants.
• The bride confronts the thirteen hidden observers and challenges their justification for destroying Pingxi Continent.
• Chen Qiu intervenes after overhearing the group’s plan, captures them, and assigns Xiong Gao to interrogate them while he investigates the dead Wang Yi and the Wang Family’s connection to the Netherworld Collapse.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Xiong Gao tortures a captured Body Integration Realm cultivator to uncover who ordered the destruction of Pingxi Continent. He uses a pain-enhancing pill and increasingly brutal torture devices, including the “Hundred Flavors Bull,” “Flesh-Bone Separation,” and “Complete Hundred.”
• Despite initially mocking Xiong Gao, the prisoner eventually breaks down and confesses. He reveals that his group destroyed Pingxi Continent by accelerating the collapse of its Yin Realm and using a Soul-Sealing Pearl to trigger the continent’s destruction.
• The attackers were working for Drunken Flower Manor, a force from the Sixth-Grade Immortal Realm. Their mission was to destroy all twelve Lower-Rank Continents of Vast Continent within five years and obtain their Fortune of the Yin Soul.
• The prisoner suggests that Drunken Flower Manor’s leader may be suffering from Immortal Cancer and is gathering Fortune of the Yin Soul to treat it. Drunken Flower Manor may have more than one person afflicted with the disease.
• Chen Qiu realizes that destroying a continent yields significant Fortune of the Yin Soul but also creates immense Sin Points, so the attackers manipulate resentful natives into becoming “sword bearers” who carry out the destruction.
• Chen Qiu recognizes that he is bound to clash with Drunken Flower Manor, but his current strength is insufficient to challenge a Sixth-Grade force.
• The Bai Family Patriarch proposes an alliance: the Bai Family will use its enormous Spirit Stone reserves to fund Chen Qiu’s cultivation for five years. In exchange, Chen Qiu will protect the Bai Family for a thousand years, help them rise to the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm, and grant them three requests for assistance.
• Chen Qiu accepts the deal after discovering the Bai Family’s immense wealth. However, he rejects the plan of directly supplying Fortune of the Yin Soul to Drunken Flower Manor, since they cannot produce enough.
• Instead, Chen Qiu proposes deceiving Drunken Flower Manor by fabricating the existence of a terrifying expert or hidden power connected to Mystic Heaven Continent. He asks Fat Dragon to devise a convincing plan to buy them five years.

Character Developments

• Xiong Gao demonstrates his ruthless and inventive methods as an interrogator. His confidence grows as he tests increasingly elaborate torture devices, though the prisoner’s resistance briefly embarrasses him.
• The captured cultivator shifts from arrogance and defiance to terror and desperation. He ultimately reveals the truth and begs for a quick death, exposing both Drunken Flower Manor’s plans and his own limited knowledge.
• Chen Qiu becomes more aware of the complicated forces behind the destruction of lower continents. He feels fatigued and frustrated by his lack of strength but remains determined to cultivate faster and protect Mystic Heaven Continent.
• The Bai Family Patriarch reveals that his family is far wealthier and more capable than Chen Qiu realized. He abandons caution and commits the family’s entire fortune to a risky alliance, showing both strategic insight and desperation.
• Fat Dragon recognizes the commercial potential of the Bai Family’s intercontinental trade network and begins considering how the Bai Family might cooperate with the Evil Demon Race.

Significant Themes

• Power and vulnerability: Even powerful cultivators can be helpless when restrained, while great forces may still have hidden weaknesses such as Immortal Cancer.
• Moral corruption and exploitation: Entire continents and billions of lives are destroyed to obtain Fortune of the Yin Soul, with perpetrators rationalizing the deaths as inevitable because the continents were destined to collapse.
• The limits of strength: Chen Qiu understands that courage and ability are not enough against a Sixth-Grade force; survival requires cultivation, wealth, deception, and alliances.
• Wealth as power: The Bai Family’s economic network and massive Spirit Stone reserves become an alternative source of strength, allowing them to support Chen Qiu’s rapid cultivation.
• Strategy over direct confrontation: Rather than fight Drunken Flower Manor immediately, Chen Qiu and his allies seek to mislead them and buy time.
• Trust and mutual dependence: The Bai Family risks everything on Chen Qiu, while Chen Qiu agrees to protect them for a thousand years, establishing a long-term alliance.

Character Interactions

• Xiong Gao and the prisoner engage in a battle of wills, with the prisoner’s pride eventually collapsing under Xiong Gao’s torture.
• Chen Qiu questions the prisoner’s testimony and analyzes the broader motives of Drunken Flower Manor.
• The Bai Family Patriarch approaches Chen Qiu with a serious proposal, offering the family’s wealth in exchange for protection and future advancement.
• Fat Dragon joins the discussion, highlighting the potential partnership between the Bai Family and the Evil Demon Race.
• Chen Qiu accepts the Bai Family’s alliance and promises to protect them for a thousand years, but the group must now develop a believable deception to keep Drunken Flower Manor away for five years.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Fat Dragon suggests eliminating Mystic Heaven Continent as a permanent strategic weakness, but Chen Qiu recognizes that relocating the entire continent—including Great Xia Kingdom—is currently impossible.
• Xiong Gao brings unexpected news: Drunken Flower Manor, a major Sixth-Grade Immortal Realm faction, has been completely destroyed. Every member, from the manor lord to servants, suddenly died after contracting Immortal Cancer, leaving the manor as a toxic forbidden zone.
• Chen Qiu orders the captured group connected to Drunken Flower Manor killed and sends the Wang Family members back to Endless Continent, seeing no reason to investigate their personal grievances.
• Chen Qiu enters the Wang Family’s dried well and uses Heavenly Dao Edicts to stage his “death” on Endless Continent. He then appears in its Yin Realm, where he is publicly recognized as possessing the Heavenly Dao’s Maximum Merit Body and receives Fortune of the Yin Soul.
• Using special techniques, Chen Qiu extracts Fortune of the Yin Soul from several First-Grade Continents, gathering thirty-nine strands—enough to refine four strands of Yin Emperor Fortune.
• He plans to help the Bai Family head’s daughter remove her Immortal Cancer after entering a Heavenly Dao Secret Realm, then intends to break through Qi Tian Continent and ascend to the Immortal Realm.
• Chen Qiu briefly returns to Mystic Heaven Continent but still cannot break the Minor World’s powerful shackles or return to Great Xia Kingdom.
• Back on Jiang Taiping Continent, he rests while discussing the Immortal Realm with Fat Dragon and Xiong Gao. They speculate that Human Immortal Abodes, Earth Immortal Mounts, and Heavenly Immortal Realms may function like status symbols or possessions rather than direct combat abilities.
• Badan arrives with Zhao Yishi. He reveals that he has become chief of the Barbarian Race in the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm and plans to groom Zhao Yishi as his successor. He also returns one strand of Yin Emperor Fortune to Chen Qiu.
• During a drinking gathering, Badan discusses Drunken Flower Manor’s mass death. The event has caused widespread panic because it suggests Immortal Cancer may no longer be random, but a targeted punishment or attack.
• Chen Qiu learns the origin of the continent’s name: Jiang Taiping was an ancient, extraordinarily gifted prodigy, born with nine Rainbow Traits as the illegitimate son of an Immortal Emperor. He rose rapidly from a Fourth-Grade Continent into higher Immortal Realms, aided by Dao Protectors.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu becomes increasingly powerful and strategically secure, accumulating large amounts of Yin Emperor Fortune while preparing for ascension. He remains pragmatic, casually accepting unexpected advantages such as Drunken Flower Manor’s destruction.
• Fat Dragon continues to provide unconventional ideas and comic commentary, but becomes speechless and envious upon learning that Jiang Taiping was born with nine Rainbow Traits because his father was an Immortal Emperor.
• Bai Family Head gains renewed hope that his daughter can be cured of Immortal Cancer. His relationship with Chen Qiu becomes even more firmly tied by mutual reliance.
• Badan has risen from a struggling warrior to Barbarian Race chief. He remains deeply grateful to Chen Qiu and seeks to repay his debt while offering future protection.
• Zhao Yishi has found his place among the Barbarian Race and is being prepared as Badan’s successor, suggesting significant growth in status and future importance.
• Xiong Gao continues serving as Chen Qiu’s reliable intelligence gatherer and executor.
• Jiang Taiping is introduced through historical accounts as an almost impossibly privileged and talented figure whose achievements may rival or exceed Chen Qiu’s.

Significant Themes

• Fate versus deliberate punishment: Drunken Flower Manor’s destruction challenges the belief that Immortal Cancer is random and raises the possibility of Heavenly Dao judgment or targeted attacks.
• Power and privilege: Jiang Taiping’s birth highlights how lineage—especially being the child of an Immortal Emperor—can determine one’s opportunities and survival.
• Strategic survival: Chen Qiu consistently eliminates future threats, gathers resources, and prepares for ascension rather than relying on temporary defensive measures.
• The Heavenly Dao as a force of recognition and destruction: It grants Chen Qiu titles and fortune while possibly punishing those who violate its unseen rules.
• Friendship and repayment of debts: Badan’s return of Yin Emperor Fortune shows that loyalty and gratitude remain important even within a ruthless cultivation world.
• The unfairness of cultivation: Characters reflect on the gap between those born in the Immortal Realm or backed by powerful parents and those forced to struggle upward from lower worlds.

Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu and Fat Dragon debate how to deal with Mystic Heaven Continent, showing their practical partnership and Fat Dragon’s absurd but inventive thinking.
• Chen Qiu gives Xiong Gao direct orders regarding Drunken Flower Manor and the Wang Family, reinforcing his authority.
• Chen Qiu and the Bai Family head discuss the cure for the latter’s daughter, with the Bai Family head expressing relief and renewed confidence.
• Chen Qiu, Fat Dragon, and Xiong Gao share a relaxed conversation about the Immortal Realm, revealing the warmth and camaraderie within Mocking Heaven Sect.
• Chen Qiu and Badan reunite warmly after Badan’s victory. Badan offers future protection and returns Yin Emperor Fortune as repayment.
• During the drinking session, Badan’s account of his hardships strengthens the bond between him and Chen Qiu, while Fat Dragon adds humorous reactions.
• Badan’s story about Jiang Taiping shifts the group from casual discussion to astonishment, especially when they learn that his extraordinary talent came alongside Immortal Emperor heritage.

Chapter Summary: Mocking Heaven Sect’s Repaying-Kindness Blessing

Key Plot Points and Events

• Badan, Chen Qiu, and their companions discuss the strange behavior of Immortal Emperors and the reliability of historical records, then turn to the greater crisis surrounding the Heavenly Dao.
• Badan explains that the destruction of Drunken Flower Manor has shaken the Immortal Realm’s faith in the Heavenly Dao. Powerful figures are investigating whether:
  • the Heavenly Dao has developed consciousness and can act independently, or
  • “Immortal Cancer” is a deliberate, man-made attack.
• If the Heavenly Dao can freely alter its rules, remove Traits, or inflict Immortal Cancer, all cultivators could become its puppets. Chen Qiu realizes this may explain why the ancient Mocking Heaven Sect imprisoned itself within the Land of Heavenly Imprisonment: it may have sought freedom from Heavenly Dao control.
• Chen Qiu suspects that the sect’s ancient preparations—including the Rainbow Trait jade slip and vast Spirit Stone reserves—were part of this plan.
• Before leaving, Badan reveals that a Fairy reacted with extreme terror after learning that Chen Qiu was the sect master of Mocking Heaven Sect. He gives Chen Qiu a Voice-Transmission Ring and offers to repay his debt.
• The Fairy, living in the Wei Prince’s Residence, remembers Mocking Heaven Sect because her kind preserved knowledge of its ancient “Repaying-Kindness Blessing.” She realizes Chen Qiu may be connected to the original sect, either as its resurrected successor or as someone who revived its name.
• She descends to the Vast Continent to find the ancestor of Peaceful Prefecture, fulfilling an inherited debt through a Fairy’s First Night. After discovering that his family plaque bears the words “Under the jurisdiction of Mocking Heaven Sect,” she demands to hear everything about Chen Qiu.
• The Peaceful Prefecture patriarch takes her to hear a storyteller recount Chen Qiu’s rise. The story includes Chen Qiu’s two unique Heavenly Dao Trait Sets, his rapid victory in the Sole King Contest, and the fear he inspired in the other kings.
• The Fairy explains that the original Mocking Heaven Sect was an immensely powerful faction erased from history and memory thirty thousand years earlier. Only Fairies connected to its Repaying-Kindness Blessing still remember its name.
• The patriarch becomes uneasy, realizing the current Mocking Heaven Sect may be the ancient sect reborn and could attract old enemies. When the Fairy asks how many Fairies have repaid his family’s debt, he truthfully answers that she is the only one.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu grows increasingly convinced that Mocking Heaven Sect’s self-imprisonment was a deliberate strategy to escape Heavenly Dao domination. He remains composed but begins connecting ancient mysteries to his own powers and the sect’s history.
• Badan shows loyalty and consideration toward Chen Qiu. He carefully shares sensitive information, offers practical assistance, and wishes to repay Chen Qiu’s help.
• Zhao Yishi remains quiet and dutiful, mostly roasting meat while listening. His brief question about the Heavenly Dao highlights the seriousness of the discussion.
• The Fairy from the Wei Prince’s Residence shifts from confusion and fear to active investigation. Her knowledge of the ancient Mocking Heaven Sect makes her one of the few people capable of recognizing Chen Qiu’s deeper significance.
• The ancestor of Peaceful Prefecture moves from complacent comfort toward thoughts of cultivation, adventure, and possible romance. However, learning the truth about Mocking Heaven Sect makes him reconsider joining it, fearing that its enemies may still exist.
• The Fairy and the patriarch develop a more personal connection through their inherited karmic relationship, though much of their interaction remains shaped by obligation rather than conventional romance.

Significant Themes

• Fear of Heavenly Dao autonomy: The chapter explores the terror of a cosmic order that can develop will, punish disobedience, or strip cultivators of their powers.
• Freedom versus security: Mocking Heaven Sect’s imprisonment may have been a sacrifice designed to achieve freedom from the Heavenly Dao, suggesting that survival sometimes requires deliberate isolation.
• Memory and historical erasure: The ancient sect was removed not only from records but from collective memory, leaving Fairies as the sole keepers of its name.
• Karma and repayment: The Repaying-Kindness Blessing creates bonds that persist across generations, linking Fairies, the Peaceful Prefecture family, and Mocking Heaven Sect.
• Truth versus legend: Storytellers embellish events, but the Mocking Heaven Sect deliberately preserves accurate accounts of Chen Qiu’s achievements, blurring the line between propaganda, history, and myth.
• The danger of inherited conflict: The return of an ancient power may also revive old enemies, making association with Mocking Heaven Sect both valuable and perilous.

Important Character Interactions

• Badan reassures himself that Chen Qiu is not threatened by praise of another Sky Prodigy, then openly discusses the Heavenly Dao crisis with him.
• Chen Qiu silently acknowledges Badan’s concerns and exchanges a farewell toast, showing mutual respect.
• Badan mistakenly assumes Chen Qiu may have shared a bed with the Fairy, creating a humorous misunderstanding before revealing her identity.
• The Fairy sternly urges the Peaceful Prefecture patriarch to cultivate and leave his comfortable life, while he privately interprets her repeated visits as possible affection.
• After seeing the Mocking Heaven Sect inscription, the Fairy questions the patriarch about Chen Qiu and his family’s connection to the sect.
• The patriarch initially hopes to use the connection to return to Mocking Heaven Sect, but fear replaces enthusiasm once he understands the sect may be the resurrected remnant of the ancient, erased faction.
• The chapter ends humorously with the Fairy asking how many Fairies have repaid the family debt and the patriarch admitting that she is the only one.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• The unnamed woman questions the Peaceful Prefecture ancestor about other fairies who might come to repay his ancestors’ kindness. She knows fairies seek the Repaying-Kindness Blessing, not merely out of gratitude, and hopes to expose another one.
• The Buddhist Sect ancestor and Azure Mountain Palace ancestor interrupt them, offering exclusive information about Chen Qiu and claiming they specialize in turning enemies into allies.
• They reveal that Chen Qiu’s first appearance on the Mystic Heaven Continent was in Deathbind Town, where he was rescued from the snow by a hunter. He was already at Golden Core Peak and soon rose to fame in Yuan City after destroying the Fate Sect during the “Long Night Approaches” event.
• The ancestors explain the history of the Mocking Heaven Sect, an ancient sword-cultivator organization supposedly destroyed thirty thousand years ago. A prophecy claimed its reappearance would bring about Mystic Heaven’s destruction, causing numerous forces to attack Chen Qiu’s new Mocking Heaven Sect.
• The woman becomes suspicious because the old Mocking Heaven Sect’s history seems inconsistent with Chen Qiu’s sect. She decides to investigate the Mystic Heaven Continent personally, suspecting that important memories or records may have been erased.
• The woman learns that Pingxi Continent’s destruction was accelerated by Drunken Flower Manor, but the entire manor later perished from Immortal Cancer. She warns the Peaceful Prefecture ancestor that powerful forces may question him about the incident.
• She advises him to invoke Chen Qiu’s name if threatened and promises to come to his aid if he is injured, though she rejects his repeated insistence on calling her his wife.
• Meanwhile, Chen Qiu returns to the Celestial Palace and prepares for the upcoming Heavenly Dao Secret Realm, hoping to find a stronger cultivation method.
• He visits the Bai Family on Qi Tian Continent and gives the Bai Family head a strand of Yin Emperor Fortune, returned by Badan, so it can be used to cure the Bai Family daughter’s Immortal Cancer.
• A divine physician confirms the Fortune’s authenticity but demands an exorbitant fee of twenty million Spirit Stones to refine the pill. He justifies the price by claiming to be the only qualified physician across the Fourth-Grade Continent and below.
• The physician also argues that the payment would protect the Bai Family from the Soaring Pavilion, which blames them for exposing its internal scandals and intends to retaliate.
• Chen Qiu challenges the physician’s claim and asks whether anyone in the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm could perform the refinement, suggesting that a stronger solution may exist.

Character Developments

• The woman grows increasingly suspicious of the connection between Chen Qiu’s Mocking Heaven Sect and the ancient sect from her own memories. Her curiosity turns into a firm decision to investigate the Mystic Heaven Continent.
• The Peaceful Prefecture ancestor remains shameless and flirtatious, repeatedly calling the woman his wife, but also shows genuine gratitude and emotion when she offers to protect him.
• The Buddhist Sect and Azure Mountain Palace ancestors reveal themselves as opportunistic informants and self-appointed mediators, using their past conflicts with Chen Qiu to sell information and reconciliation services.
• Chen Qiu demonstrates continued generosity toward allies, returning valuable Yin Emperor Fortune to help cure the Bai Family daughter. He also becomes more assertive when confronting exploitation.
• The Bai Family head shows deep desperation and devotion toward his daughter. Although twenty million Spirit Stones could potentially be gathered, he fears that displaying such wealth would attract predators and endanger the entire family.
• The Bai Family daughter abandons her romantic admiration for Chen Qiu after recognizing the enormous gap in their age, cultivation, and future prospects.
• The divine physician is exposed as calculating and opportunistic. He initially names an outrageous fee because he realizes the Bai Family has no alternative, then uses their political danger to strengthen his bargaining position.

Significant Themes

• Hidden history and manipulated memory: The conflicting accounts of the two Mocking Heaven Sects suggest that major historical events may have been concealed or erased.
• Gratitude versus self-interest: The fairies’ supposed repayment of kindness is revealed to be motivated by the Repaying-Kindness Blessing, while the ancestors similarly disguise profit-seeking as benevolent service.
• Power, scarcity, and exploitation: The divine physician invokes “market economy” to justify charging an enormous price for a life-saving treatment only he can provide.
• Protection through connections: The woman relies on Chen Qiu’s reputation to shield the Peaceful Prefecture ancestor, while the physician claims his ability to travel between continents can protect the Bai Family.
• The burdens of wealth and reputation: The Bai Family’s wealth is both a resource and a danger, since openly spending it could attract stronger forces.
• Emotional distance caused by cultivation: The Bai Family daughter recognizes that the gulf between her and Chen Qiu would eventually make a relationship impossible.

Important Character Interactions

• The woman and the Peaceful Prefecture ancestor continue their antagonistic yet intimate banter, with him calling her his wife and her repeatedly denying the relationship.
• The woman interrogates the Buddhist Sect ancestor about Chen Qiu’s origins and the ancient Mocking Heaven Sect, revealing her personal connection to the mystery.
• She offers the Peaceful Prefecture ancestor practical protection, showing that despite her irritation, she genuinely cares about his safety.
• Chen Qiu comforts the Bai Family head and prevents him from kneeling, emphasizing that the Yin Emperor Fortune is a gesture of gratitude rather than a transaction.
• The divine physician confronts Chen Qiu over his price, defending his greed through supply-and-demand arguments and the Bai Family’s political vulnerability.
• The chapter ends with Chen Qiu probing whether the physician’s monopoly is absolute, hinting that he may seek aid from the Fifth-Grade Immortal Realm or find another way to defeat the physician’s bargaining power.

Chapter Summary: “Disorder Continent, Evergreen Continent”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu contacts Badan to find someone capable of refining the Bai Family head’s daughter’s medicine. Badan sends Lin Xiaobei, an immortal physician and legendary pill refiner.
• Lin Xiaobei uses the rare “Thousand Threads, Ten Thousand Flames” technique to refine the Yin Emperor Fortune, producing two pills and saving the patient’s life.
• The miracle physician recognizes Lin Xiaobei as a legendary pill-refining genius who ascended to the Immortal Realm. He begs to become Lin’s disciple and offers his entire fortune, but Lin refuses, advising him that opportunities must be seized rather than begged for.
• Lin reveals that he was once a powerful combatant as well as a pill refiner, having fought and killed many opponents in a secret realm. The miracle physician realizes that relying solely on reputation, attendants, and external treasures has left him dangerously weak and resolves to develop his own combat strength.
• The Bai Family head’s daughter is completely cured. He intends to thank Chen Qiu, but Chen and his companions leave before he can do so.
• Badan later warns Chen that Immortal Cancer appearing in a mortal on a Third-Grade Continent is abnormal, likely caused by increasingly chaotic Heavenly Dao laws rather than a conspiracy.
• Lin Xiaobei tells Chen and Fat Dragon about the Evergreen Continent, a First-Grade Continent where the Heavenly Dao gave every living being a button: pressing it granted one Spirit Stone but randomly killed someone on the continent.
• Billions pressed the buttons, causing the deaths of tens of billions and producing hundreds of millions of Spirit Stones. The continent’s spiritual energy was exhausted, its balance shattered, and its collapse accelerated. It is now a dangerous wasteland filled with Sky Caverns and approaching destruction.
• Immortal Realm factions plan to send Body Integration Realm prodigies into the continent during a brief period of calm to collect the Spirit Stones. Since Chen Qiu is exceptionally strong at that cultivation level, Badan asks him to participate.
• Chen agrees, motivated by the need to build his own wealth instead of relying excessively on the Bai Family. Badan offers a seventy-thirty split in Chen’s favor and gives him a Spirit-Absorbing Stone and a Guidance Talisman to gather treasure and escape quickly.
• Chen learns that the continent will stabilize for only about half a day before collapsing completely. The expedition will become a brutal struggle in which participants can kill others and seize their accumulated Spirit Stones.
• Fat Dragon argues that he would still press the button even if everyone possessed one, reasoning that refusing would not prevent others from pressing it and that spreading the risk is preferable.
• Chen contacts Mopan, a Weird Buddha, to ask about Evergreen Continent. Mopan reveals that the entire Evil Demon Race is already there, freely teleporting in and collecting Spirit Stones.

Character Developments

• Chen Qiu remains calm and detached but demonstrates loyalty to the Bai Family and a willingness to help friends. He also becomes more self-reliant, deciding to seek his own resources rather than depend on the Bai Family’s generosity.
• Lin Xiaobei is established as both an immortal and a legendary pill-refining master. Despite his extraordinary reputation, he is humble and uninterested in boasting. He also shows that true pill refiners must cultivate combat ability to survive and compete for opportunities.
• The miracle physician experiences a major awakening. He recognizes the limitations of his former methods—reputation, followers, talismans, and formations—and realizes that personal strength is essential.
• Badan grows more comfortable relying on Chen Qiu but feels guilty about asking him for another favor before repaying his debt. He nevertheless acts as Chen’s ally and expedition guide.
• Fat Dragon displays his cynical but pragmatic worldview. His willingness to press the deadly button reflects his belief that chaos is unavoidable and that individual restraint cannot change the larger situation.
• The Bai Family head is relieved and grateful after his daughter’s recovery, though he misses the chance to immediately thank Chen.

Significant Themes

• Chaos in the Heavenly Dao: The appearance of Immortal Cancer in a mortal and the destruction of Evergreen Continent suggest that the laws governing the world are becoming unstable and unpredictable.
• Greed and moral compromise: The button experiment illustrates how easily individuals sacrifice strangers for minor personal gains. The resulting Spirit Stones are literally wealth purchased with mass death.
• The necessity of personal strength: Lin Xiaobei’s advice emphasizes that specialized skills or social status are insufficient without the ability to defend oneself and seize opportunities.
• Friendship and mutual aid: Chen helps the Bai Family and agrees to assist Badan because of their relationships, while Badan attempts to repay Chen through a favorable share of the Spirit Stones.
• Survival in a collapsing world: The expedition to Evergreen Continent presents opportunity and danger together. Treasure, factional conflict, and impending annihilation force characters to act quickly.
• Moral ambiguity: Even sympathetic characters debate whether pressing the button is acceptable. The chapter presents a world where survival and profit increasingly depend on choices made within a broken system.

Character Interactions

• Chen and Lin Xiaobei interact respectfully, with Lin treating Chen as a powerful and important figure despite Chen’s modest demeanor.
• The miracle physician’s attempted apprenticeship under Lin highlights Lin’s legendary status and the physician’s humility and desperation to improve.
• The Bai Family head and Chen maintain a friendly relationship, with Chen helping him without demanding further compensation.
• Badan approaches Chen as a friend and potential partner, offering him the majority of the expedition’s profits while explaining the risks.
• Chen and Fat Dragon debate the morality of the deadly button, revealing their differing but pragmatic responses to a chaotic world.
• Mopan’s final message establishes that the Evil Demon Race is already exploiting the crisis, raising the stakes for Chen’s upcoming expedition.

Chapter Summary

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu learns that the Evil Demon Race has found a way to enter the unstable Evergreen Continent ahead of the Immortal Realm’s forces. Since the continent is filled with Spirit Stones and will completely collapse soon, he asks to join them.
• Weird Buddha agrees, allowing Chen Qiu to bring companions. Chen Qiu contacts Badan, who arrives with tens of thousands of Sky-Piercing Giants from the Barbarian Race.
• Badan insists on honoring their original agreement: the Barbarian Race will give Chen Qiu 70% of what they collect and retain 30%. He explains that Chen Qiu can make better use of the Spirit Stones because of his unusually fast cultivation speed.
• The group enters Evergreen Continent through Weird Buddha’s method, but the unstable continent makes the transfer extremely unpleasant. Nearly all of the Barbarian giants vomit upon arrival.
• Evergreen Continent is revealed to be a horrifying Polluted Continent. Its sky is blood-red, Sky Caverns cover the heavens, and entire cities are filled with corpses and blood. The inhabitants had been forced into a Heavenly Dao-related killing game in which pressing a button randomly killed someone in exchange for a Spirit Stone.
• Weird Buddha criticizes the Heavenly Dao for killing billions of people without distinction. Chen Qiu realizes that a collapsed continent is outside the Heavenly Dao’s control and may provide a place to kill enemies with extremely high Merit Value without triggering heavenly punishment.
• To avoid competition, Weird Buddha divides the continent between the two groups: the Evil Demon Race will search west, while Chen Qiu and his allies search east. They have only until the following day to leave before Evergreen Continent completely collapses into “Eternal Silence.”
• Chen Qiu divides his forces into teams, sending the Barbarian Race southwest and the Mocking Heaven Sect teams northwest and elsewhere. The Evil Demon Race has already emptied the first city they reach.
• Chen Qiu uses Badan’s Guiding Stone to collect Spirit Stones from entire cities at once. He also sends Fat Dragon, Star Dipper, the shopkeeper, and others to loot faction vaults and shops.
• When conventional looting proves too slow, Chen Qiu uproots whole cities, shakes out the blood and corpses, and attempts to store them in his Minor World.
• His Minor World reveals that it can be expanded for one million Mid-Grade Spirit Stones. Chen Qiu pays the cost, creates a new barren area larger than a city, and begins storing entire looted cities inside it.
• The chapter ends with Fat Dragon joking that “greater ability means greater responsibility,” while the shopkeeper realizes that the huge number of restrictions he must break will occupy him for centuries.

2. Character Developments

• Chen Qiu shows fairness and responsibility by informing Badan and bringing the Barbarian Race rather than exploiting their information. At the same time, he becomes increasingly pragmatic and opportunistic, exploiting the continent’s catastrophe to gather enormous resources.
• Chen Qiu also displays strategic creativity: he divides the search parties, uses the Guiding Stone, and expands his Minor World once he discovers that storage capacity is the main obstacle.
• Badan demonstrates loyalty and gratitude. Despite leading an enormous race with heavy daily expenses, he voluntarily maintains the 70/30 agreement because he believes Chen Qiu will benefit more from the Spirit Stones and may eventually help the Barbarian Race.
• Weird Buddha acts as Chen Qiu’s guide and temporary ally. He reveals the Evil Demon Race’s secrecy, its rivalry with the Barbarian Race, and the strict time limit before the continent’s destruction.
• Ao Tian, the Dragon Race patriarch, struggles with inherited hatred toward the Barbarian Race. He nearly reacts violently to them but regains control, recognizing that their current alliance takes priority.
• Fat Dragon provides comic relief while also expressing genuine horror at the mass deaths. His comments make clear that even he is disturbed by the continent’s gruesome fate.
• The shopkeeper shifts from enthusiastic restriction-breaker to resigned laborer, realizing that Chen Qiu’s expanded storage plan will give him an overwhelming workload.

3. Significant Themes

• Power and responsibility: The chapter’s title is treated humorously, but it also reflects Chen Qiu’s expanding capabilities. The more powerful and resourceful he becomes, the more responsibilities—and burdens—he places on his subordinates.
• The cruelty and arbitrariness of fate: The mass deaths demonstrate that cultivation strength cannot always protect people from sudden catastrophe. Chen Qiu concludes that the only reliable defense is to increase his cultivation and move toward safer, higher-grade continents.
• Moral ambiguity and survival: Chen Qiu and his allies loot a dead continent filled with blood and corpses. They are horrified by the tragedy but still profit from it, showing the uncomfortable coexistence of compassion, necessity, and greed.
• The limits of the Heavenly Dao: The collapsed continent exposes flaws in the Heavenly Dao’s justice system. Since the Heavenly Dao caused or permitted the mass killing, Weird Buddha questions whether it should itself receive the highest sin ranking.
• Racial conflict and inherited hatred: Old grudges among the Evil Demon, Barbarian, and Dragon Races continue to influence present relationships, even when the races temporarily cooperate.
• Resource accumulation and cultivation advancement: Spirit Stones remain the universal currency and the foundation of Chen Qiu’s growth. The chapter emphasizes how wealth can transform both individual cultivation and the physical capabilities of his sect.

4. Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu and Weird Buddha negotiate access to Evergreen Continent, divide their search territories, and agree to meet again before the continent collapses.
• Chen Qiu and Badan reaffirm their partnership, with Badan emphasizing his trust in Chen Qiu’s future strength.
• Weird Buddha privately warns Chen Qiu about the Evil Demon–Barbarian feud and Ao Tian’s hostility toward the Barbarian Race.
• Ao Tian and Fat Dragon argue over the Dragon Race’s historical relationship with the Barbarian Race, with Ao Tian defensively insisting on the Dragon Race’s superiority.
• Chen Qiu manages tensions between his allies and organizes them into separate teams to maximize their gains.
• Fat Dragon teases the shopkeeper about his growing workload, leading to the chapter’s closing joke about ability creating responsibility.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu and the Mocking Heaven Sect finish looting their assigned region of Evergreen/Mystic Heaven Continent before the main forces arrive.
• The steward, now at the Spirit Transformation Realm, helps break restrictions on countless storage rings, though the sheer number exhausts him. Chen Qiu promises that he will no longer have to perform such work afterward and can instead train disciples.
• Chen Qiu uses the Guiding Stone to collect Spirit Stones and uproot entire cities into his Minor World. Together with the sect disciples, he removes the wealth of 108 cities.
• More than one hundred million Mid-Grade Spirit Stones are used to expand the Minor World, which now contains a huge Spirit Stone mountain and over a hundred cities.
• Chen Qiu meets the Barbarian Race and the Weird Buddhas at the rendezvous point. Mopan confirms that all of Chen Qiu’s people will be transported to different First-Grade Continents, in exchange for the remaining Fortune of the Yin Soul.
• Chen Qiu, the Barbarian Race, and the Weird Buddhas return to Jiang Taiping Continent just as the Heavenly Dao Shackles stabilize and the main forces are about to enter Evergreen Continent.
• The guidance process causes severe vertigo. The Barbarian Race members vomit upon arrival, though Badan confirms that they are not poisoned or seriously injured.
• Badan prepares to return the Barbarian Race to the Immortal Realm and promises to deliver Chen Qiu seventy percent of their harvest.
• Chen Qiu returns to his secluded cultivation site and plans to enter prolonged seclusion after visiting the Heavenly Dao Secret Realm. With his enormous Spirit Stone reserves, he expects to reach the peak of the Tribulation Transcendence Stage and eventually enter the Immortal Realm.
• At a nighttime bonfire, Chen Qiu, Fat Dragon, and Xiong Gao discuss whether life in the Immortal Realm is truly better than life on a First-Grade Continent. The conversation ends when Chen Qiu falls asleep.
• Fat Dragon and Xiong Gao soon fall asleep as well, transforming the planned celebration into a quiet “slumber banquet.” The maidservants hold their own silent bonfire gathering rather than wake them.
• The next morning, Chen Qiu wakes refreshed after a night of snowfall. Fat Dragon discovers that Xiong Gao, a Brown Bear, has buried himself in a pit and apparently entered hibernation.

Character Developments and Interactions

• Chen Qiu demonstrates increasing efficiency, ambition, and confidence. His successful plundering gives him the resources to accelerate cultivation dramatically, but he also recognizes the danger of relying on Badan and other powerful allies.
• The steward shifts from an enthusiastic restriction-breaker to someone eager for retirement and teaching. Ironically, Chen Qiu’s promise to free him from restriction-breaking inspires him to work even harder.
• Fat Dragon remains humorous and practical, helping motivate the steward and later expressing both curiosity and skepticism about the Immortal Realm. He also shows a fondness for ordinary comforts such as warmth, blankets, sleep, and fear.
• Xiong Gao offers a thoughtful analysis of the Immortal Realm. He argues that although it contains more opportunities, the overwhelming disparity in power and the influence of powerful backgrounds may make advancement harder for unaffiliated cultivators.
• Mopan acts as a reliable transport coordinator and ally. He accepts the second strand of the Fortune of the Yin Soul and promises to protect and relocate Chen Qiu’s people.
• Badan shows concern for the younger Barbarian members and remains eager to assist Chen Qiu, offering to deliver most of the Barbarian Race’s harvest.
• The maidservants display loyalty and consideration by refusing to disturb their sleeping masters and quietly holding their own celebration.

Significant Themes

• Wealth through plunder and cultivation acceleration: Chen Qiu’s massive haul transforms his future prospects, demonstrating how resources can radically shorten the path to power.
• The cost of ambition: The group’s success is accompanied by exhaustion, vertigo, and the moral ambiguity of stripping entire cities and worlds of their wealth.
• Independence versus reliance: Chen Qiu acknowledges that borrowed strength can solve immediate dangers, but insists that true security must come from his own cultivation.
• The Immortal Realm as both paradise and danger: The characters question whether entering a higher world guarantees opportunity, or instead exposes weak cultivators to even greater oppression.
• Rest, comfort, and humanity: Despite their extraordinary cultivation, the characters still value sleep, warmth, food, snow, and physical comfort. The chapter humorously emphasizes that powerful cultivators retain ordinary needs and habits.
• Changing motivations: The steward’s loss of passion and Chen Qiu’s growing desire for secluded cultivation reflect how success changes people’s goals over time.

Overall Significance

The chapter marks a major turning point for Chen Qiu: he returns from Evergreen Continent with unprecedented wealth and a clear path toward rapid cultivation. However, instead of immediately beginning his ascent, the exhausted group enjoys an unexpectedly peaceful night of sleep beneath the snow, ending the chapter on a humorous and domestic note with Xiong Gao apparently entering hibernation.

Chapter Summary

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Chen Qiu returns to the Minor World with Fat Dragon and inspects the rear mountain, which is now overshadowed by a massive pile of Spirit Stones—more than one hundred million, gathered from the collapsing continent they recently explored.
• Little Wolf has taken on the task of repeatedly pushing fallen Spirit Stones back up the pile, treating the work like a game. Chen Qiu is pleased that it has finally found something to occupy itself.
• Chen Qiu reflects on the collapsing continent and regrets not having had enough time to loot more cities, herbs, and resources. He also acknowledges that he owes Weird Buddha a significant favor for bringing him into the opportunity.
• Chen Qiu criticizes Fat Dragon’s management of the Mocking Heaven Sect, joking that the disciples should have proper sect missions instead of inventing their own work. Fat Dragon reminds him that Chen Qiu is the sect master.
• Badan arrives and reports that the Barbarian Race obtained roughly fifty million Spirit Stones. He honors their agreed-upon seventy-thirty split and gives Chen Qiu thirty-five million Spirit Stones.
• Chen Qiu returns half of the received Spirit Stones to Badan, instructing him to give them to Zhao Yishi, since they came from the same village and should support one another.
• Chen Qiu and Fat Dragon spend several days relaxing by a bonfire, barbecuing, chatting, and doing nothing productive. Chen Qiu views this leisure as meaningful, contrasting it with a life spent entirely on cultivation.
• The Bai Family head informs Chen Qiu that the Heavenly Dao Secret Realm on Qi Tian Continent has opened. The realm allows participants up to the Body Integration Realm and includes Sky Prodigies from ten Third-Grade Continents.
• Chen Qiu enters the secret realm with Fat Dragon and three Bai Family Sky Prodigies. They appear in a classroom-like “Waiting Area,” with no explanation of the realm’s rules or purpose.
• One Bai Family disciple speculates that leaving the room might be the first trial. Chen Qiu explains that, with limited chances for trial and error, they should choose the action with the highest survival probability.
• Despite advising them to stay, Chen Qiu personally leaves the room. He later returns safely, demonstrating that the rules apply differently to him because of his overwhelming strength.
• The Huang Family’s young master mocks the Bai Family and then attempts to leave the room. A heavenly lightning strike instantly kills him, proving that the entrance is dangerous and that the secret realm punishes reckless experimentation.

2. Character Developments

• Chen Qiu: Displays greater wealth, influence, and confidence after the continental opportunity. He balances strategic caution with bold action, relying on his overwhelming strength to test dangers personally. He also shows generosity by giving part of his reward to Zhao Yishi and values leisure as an essential part of life.
• Fat Dragon: Continues acting as Chen Qiu’s companion and practical commentator. Although he is nominally the sect’s grand elder, he admits his shortcomings in administration. He understands Chen Qiu’s unusual methods and explains them to the Bai Family disciples.
• Badan: Gains enormous prestige among the Barbarian Race by helping secure their Spirit Stone recovery. His refusal to become greedy reinforces his loyalty and integrity.
• Little Wolf: Finds a purpose in managing the Spirit Stone mountain, becoming an amusing but surprisingly diligent “warehouse keeper.”
• Bai Family Sky Prodigies: Begin as respectful but inexperienced cultivators. They look to Chen Qiu for guidance, yet struggle to understand the difference between his advice and the actions made possible by his superior strength.
• Bai Family Head: Demonstrates strategic planning by arranging for Chen Qiu to guide his juniors, hoping they can safely gain experience and rewards in the secret realm.
• Huang Family young master: His arrogance and impulsiveness lead directly to his death, establishing the severe consequences of acting without sufficient information.

3. Significant Themes

• The value of leisure: Chen Qiu argues that a life devoted only to cultivation would be empty. Moments of relaxation and companionship give life meaning even if they do not increase strength.
• Strength and perspective: The same action can be safe for Chen Qiu but fatal for weaker cultivators. His ability to leave the Waiting Area does not make the Bai Family disciples’ caution wrong.
• Risk management: In an unknown Heavenly Dao Secret Realm, survival depends on choosing the option with the greatest chance of success rather than blindly seeking the “correct” answer.
• Generosity and obligations: Chen Qiu treats favors as moral debts, not calculations of surplus resources. He recognizes his obligation to Weird Buddha and voluntarily shares his gains with Zhao Yishi.
• Arrogance versus prudence: The Huang Family young master’s mockery and rashness contrast with Chen Qiu’s calculated experimentation, showing how pride can become fatal in unfamiliar environments.
• Wealth and opportunity: The Spirit Stones represent the enormous rewards that can come from rare opportunities, while also emphasizing the scale of Chen Qiu’s growing resources and influence.

4. Character Interactions

• Chen Qiu and Fat Dragon banter about sect leadership, administration, and the absurdity of Little Wolf’s new occupation.
• Chen Qiu and Badan maintain a respectful but friendly relationship. Badan fulfills his agreement, while Chen Qiu rewards his honesty and asks him to help Zhao Yishi.
• The Bai Family head entrusts his three juniors to Chen Qiu, asking him to protect and guide them. Chen Qiu agrees, but warns that he cannot save them if they act recklessly.
• The Bai Family sword cultivator seeks Chen Qiu’s approval and advice, but becomes confused when Chen Qiu’s actions appear to contradict his teachings.
• Fat Dragon clarifies Chen Qiu’s philosophy through the lock analogy: finding a key is the proper method for ordinary people, while Chen Qiu can simply destroy the lock.
• The Huang Family young master provokes the Bai Family, creating tension among the participants, but his attempted challenge to the secret realm ends in immediate death and silences the room.

Chapter Summary: “So Sorry, I Came a Little Late.”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• After the Huang Family’s young master is killed by heavenly lightning for leaving the private school, the assembled cultivators become terrified and suspicious of the secret realm’s unusual rules.
• Chen Qiu explains that the lightning did not strike him because the secret realm’s artifact spirit feared his power. The Bai Family’s sword cultivator realizes his Household Head’s advice—“lie down easy”—meant relying on Chen Qiu rather than acting independently.
• The secret realm’s host, an azure-robed middle-aged man, appears and announces that the realm is called Drunken Dreams, Deadly Delirium.
• When the Huang Family protector interrupts to question why Chen Qiu was spared, the host instantly kills him with heavenly lightning. He then establishes three rules:
  1. Do not interrupt him.
  2. Do not lie to him.
  3. Follow the first two rules.
• The host admits that the realm’s treatment is unfair: he fears the strong and controls the weak. He also reveals that killing him would cause the entire secret realm—and everyone inside it—to collapse and disappear.
• Chen Qiu questions the host about the realm’s nature and discovers that the host is not bound by the “no lying” rule; he simply personally dislikes lies.
• The host leads everyone through a dark, seemingly endless corridor. A panel identifies the realm as a “Drunken” secret realm whose purpose is to make participants seek “the true meaning of your life.”
• The group reaches the first of nine trials. Passing all nine offers great treasures; passing at least four allows safe departure with lesser rewards. Those who pass fewer than four cannot escape.
• The first trial requires participants to enter a room alone and maintain rationality and focus when faced with beauty’s temptation. The reward is a random Purple Trait Jade Slip.
• An elderly cultivator clears the trial easily, encouraging the others to enter. Chen Qiu also succeeds without difficulty by remaining detached in a bridal chamber illusion.
• Chen Qiu theorizes that the host is the self-aware artifact spirit of one of the secret realm’s treasures, and that it has gradually altered the realm’s original rules. He suspects the realm’s instability reflects serious disorder in the Heavenly Dao.
• Fat Dragon enters the trial next. Unlike Chen Qiu, he recognizes the “bride” as Ma Yinxue, his former lover who abandoned him after attaining cultivation. Though he knows the scene is fake, he chooses to approach her, valuing the chance to relive his past feelings.

2. Character Developments

• Chen Qiu remains calm, powerful, and analytical. His immunity to the realm’s lightning establishes his overwhelming strength, while his questions show that he is investigating the realm’s deeper structure rather than merely seeking rewards.
• The Bai Family sword cultivator shifts from uncertainty to dependence on Chen Qiu, realizing that survival may require following the powerful senior’s lead.
• The Huang Family survivors become silent and fearful after witnessing both their young master and his protector die instantly.
• The host/artifact spirit is revealed as capricious, powerful, and self-aware. It is willing to kill anyone who violates its preferences, yet it behaves cautiously and respectfully toward Chen Qiu.
• Fat Dragon appears outwardly irreverent and confident, mocking the trial’s apparent simplicity. However, his encounter with Ma Yinxue exposes unresolved affection and emotional vulnerability beneath his bravado.

3. Significant Themes

• Power determines fairness: The host openly admits that rules apply differently according to strength. The powerful are feared, while the weak are controlled.
• Fear and survival: The cultivators abandon their usual confidence and become cautious after seeing how casually the host kills people.
• Reality versus illusion: The first trial appears to test resistance to beauty, but it actually draws on personal memories and emotional attachments.
• Unresolved love and emotional temptation: Fat Dragon’s reaction shows that temptation is not simply physical; it can exploit grief, regret, and lingering affection.
• The instability of the Heavenly Dao: Chen Qiu’s observations suggest that the realm’s abnormal rules are symptoms of a larger collapse or disorder within the world’s governing cosmic system.
• Strength and restraint: Chen Qiu’s greatest advantage is not only his power but also his refusal to act recklessly, contrasting him with those who panic or challenge the realm without understanding it.

4. Character Interactions

• The Bai Family sword cultivator asks Chen Qiu how the Huang Family young master died, prompting Chen Qiu’s explanation about the lightning’s fear.
• The host kills the Huang Family protector for interrupting, demonstrating the danger of challenging or questioning him improperly.
• Chen Qiu and the host engage in a tense but respectful exchange about the realm’s collapse, its unfair rules, and the host’s dislike of lies. The host treats Chen Qiu almost like someone he must carefully appease.
• The other cultivators instinctively look to Chen Qiu for leadership, though they recognize that his immunity to lightning makes his experience impossible to use as a safety test.
• Fat Dragon follows Chen Qiu into the trials but reacts very differently to the illusion, allowing his past relationship with Ma Yinxue to influence his choices.