Chapter Summaries

Long Xuan attempted an unprecedented Big-Pot Pill Refinement, using millions of spirit herbs to produce one hundred thousand Spirit-Gathering Pills in a single furnace. The pills triggered a strange phenomenon but no Tribulation Lightning, and they burst into the sky as the stunned crowd watched.

• Feng Jiu concealed his formula and began refining a pill with nine different Spirit Flames, while Long Xuan deduced that it could suppress Heavenly Flames and Heavenly Water.
• Long Xuan chose to refine Spirit-Gathering Pills with the Big-Pot Pill Refinement Technique and drew in enormous quantities of first-grade spirit herbs.
• Long Xuan's expanding pill furnace alarmed the arena, prompting spectators and many contestants to flee while the remaining alchemists continued refining.
• Long Xuan used his Soul-Splittings to rapidly extract the herbs and formed one hundred thousand pills in the enormous furnace.
• Dark clouds and violent winds gathered over Long Xuan's furnace, but no Tribulation Lightning fell.
• Long Xuan opened the furnace and sent a rain of one hundred thousand Spirit-Gathering Pills into the sky, leaving the crowd stunned.

Long Xuan received full marks after refining one hundred thousand perfect Spirit-Gathering Pills, while Feng Jiu and Qin Dan scored ninety-nine and Long Yuyao, Feng Shuang, and Wang Wu each scored ninety-six. After Long Xuan returned to seclusion, Long Xiaoyao warned the Dragon Emperor that a Feng Clan contestant might be a Fourth-Grade Alchemist, putting the competition’s championship at risk.

• The judges found that Long Xuan's Spirit-Gathering Pills all had a ten-out-of-ten Fusion Degree and awarded him full marks.
• Qin Dan, Feng Jiu, Long Yuyao, Feng Shuang, and Wang Wu successfully formed their pills, with the last three making Icefire Twin Extremes Pills.
• Long Xuan stored his share of the pills, waited for the five contestants' scores, and then returned to the inn to study the Sea-Calming Needle artifact formula in seclusion.
• Long Yuyao, Feng Shuang, and Wang Wu each scored ninety-six, while Feng Jiu and Qin Dan each scored ninety-nine.
• Long Xiaoyao contacted the Dragon Emperor and said he suspected that a Feng Clan contestant was a Fourth-Grade Alchemist.

The Dragon Emperor ordered Long Xiaoyao to send ten Long Family Gu Kings to assassinate Feng Jiu before the finals, while Long Xuan worked on the Sea-Calming Needle and witnessed the attack from the inn. Feng Jiu killed all ten attackers, and Long Xiaoyao realized Feng Jiu was the Heaven-Burning Ancestor as Feng Tiancheng publicly accused the Long Family of assassination.

• The Dragon Emperor rejected Long Xiaoyao's concerns and ordered him to send ten Gu Kings to kill Feng Jiu that night.
• Long Xuan researched the Sea-Calming Needle and Sacred Gold before an explosion outside the city drew him to the inn's roof.
• Long Xuan watched Feng Jiu use the Evil Phoenix True Eye to overpower ten Long Family Gu Kings and kill them one by one.
• Feng Jiu killed all ten Gu Kings and left the battlefield as Long Xuan recognized his immense power and feared further assassinations.
• Long Xiaoyao identified the Nine Netherworld Flame on the desiccated corpses and realized Feng Jiu was the Heaven-Burning Ancestor.
• Feng Tiancheng confronted Long Xiaoyao and accused the Long Family of trying to assassinate the Feng Clan's alchemy genius.

After the Long Family’s failed assassination exposed Feng Jiu as the Heaven-Burning Ancestor, Long Xiaoyao visited Long Xuan and entrusted him with the Long Family’s hopes for the third round. Long Xuan received Long Xiaoyao’s extensive collection of pill formulas and learned that contestants’ abilities would be sealed inside the Medicine Realm.

• Long Xiaoyao defended the Long Family’s assassination attempt by accusing the Feng Clan of colluding with the Heaven-Burning Ancestor, and Feng Tiancheng proposed an extermination force that no one joined.
• Qin Shang and Wang Hu explained that the Heaven-Burning Ancestor’s three Heavenly Flames made him nearly impossible to approach without Heavenly Water, so the Gu Kings abandoned the proposed mission and dispersed.
• Long Xiaoyao visited Long Xuan at the inn, confirmed that Feng Jiu was the Heaven-Burning Ancestor and a Fourth-Grade Alchemist, and asked whether Long Xuan could defeat him.
• Long Xuan said he could win if the Heaven-Burning Ancestor competed using Third-Grade Pills, and Long Xiaoyao gave him a storage ring filled with pill formulas to study for the third round.
• Long Xiaoyao explained that contestants would gather herbs for three days in the Feng Clan’s Medicine Realm, where farsight and other abilities would be sealed to prevent contestants from killing one another.

Long Xuan learned the Alchemy Competition’s final rounds and planned to use the rabbit and the Heaven-Swallowing World Toad to gain an advantage and seize the Enlightenment Tea Tree. Meanwhile, Long Xiaoyao told the Dragon Emperor that the Long Family’s Gu Kings had died, and the Dragon Emperor proposed wiping out everyone with the Feng surname, leaving Long Xiaoyao to warn that the war could destroy the Long Family.

• Long Xiaoyao explained that contestants would lose their abilities in the Medicine Realm, the Enlightenment Tea Tree’s formation could not be broken, and the fourth round would test the pill formulas they created with Enlightenment Tea.
• Long Xuan inspected the Long Family’s pill formulas, left the valuable ones for his five clones to memorize, and considered using the Heaven-Swallowing World Toad’s Spirit Mountain to break the Enlightenment Tea Tree’s formation.
• Long Xiaoyao reported to the Dragon Emperor that Feng Jiu was the Heaven-Burning Ancestor and had killed all ten Long Family Gu Kings.
• The Dragon Emperor blamed himself for accepting the wager and proposed eliminating everyone with the Feng surname before the Long Family lost half its National Fortune.
• Long Xiaoyao urged the Dragon Emperor not to start a war, warning that bad luck could defeat their forces and leave no one named Long alive in the Western Region.

Long Xiaoyao and the Dragon Emperor discussed the Long Family’s hopes of winning the Alchemy Competition through Long Xuan and ordered protection for him. Meanwhile, the Four Great Villains planned to find and steal the Enlightenment Tea Tree from the Medicine Realm, though their chances remained uncertain.

• Long Xiaoyao told the Dragon Emperor that Long Xuan might win if the Heaven-Burning Ancestor did not refine a fourth-grade pill in the finals.
• The Dragon Emperor ordered Long Xiaoyao to send the Gu King to protect Long Xuan, and Long Xiaoyao left to arrange it.
• At another inn, Jade-Faced Rakshasa, Burial Demon Old Ghost, White-Faced Scholar, and Black Mountain Elder discussed finding the Enlightenment Tea Tree in the Medicine Realm.
• White-Faced Scholar explained that only one of their infiltrators had reached the third round and that the loss of his abilities in the Medicine Realm would make the search difficult.
• Black Mountain Elder proposed using the World-Breaking Pearl and a Giant Demon zombie to open a breach and try to crush the formation protecting the tree.

Long Xuan arrived at the third round of the Alchemy Competition, held in the Medicine Realm, while preparing to search for the Enlightenment Tea Tree amid the Four Great Villains’ plot. Long Yuyao asked him to pool the Long Family contestants’ spirit herbs for a better chance of winning, but he refused and she left angrily.

• The Four Great Villains discussed how they would escape with the Enlightenment Tea Tree after the Giant Demon broke its protective formation, and Black Mountain Elder threatened to unleash his Corpse King if the Feng Clan or other experts interfered.
• Three days later, Long Xuan arrived at the palace garden where the third-round contestants would enter the Medicine Realm, finding that only two hundred alchemists remained.
• Long Xuan recognized a disguised Master Shen among the contestants and suspected he was one of the Four Great Villains’ agents, then resolved to find the Enlightenment Tea Tree before the others.
• Long Yuyao asked Long Xuan to join the Long Family’s plan to pool their collected spirit herbs onto one contestant, but he refused, claiming he disdained cheating and could win on his own.
• Long Yuyao tried to persuade Long Xuan to reconsider, then left angrily when he ignored her.

Long Xuan entered the Medicine Realm with five clones and raced ahead to search for the Enlightenment Tea Tree. He found it behind a barrier, but the Feng Clan had already stripped every leaf from its branches.

• Long Xuan released five clones before entering the Medicine Realm, and the formation mistakenly counted them as contestants.
• Long Xuan and his clones spread out to search the Medicine Realm, while he sent the Flame Clone to follow the demonic cultivator.
• Long Xuan outran the other contestants and released his rabbit, which led him toward the Enlightenment Tea Tree.
• After five hours, the rabbit struck a barrier surrounding the tree, and Long Xuan saw that its branches had already been stripped of leaves.

Long Xuan stole a branch from the Enlightenment Tea Tree and planted Setting Sun Divine Flame in its trunk, intending to frame the Four Great Villains for its destruction. The villains then seized the tree during their assault on Heavenly Phoenix City, where they battled the Feng Clan and faced the Phoenix Emperor.

• Long Xuan tested the Heaven-Swallowing World Toad's ability to use the weight of its treasures to break the Medicine Realm barrier.
• Long Xuan took a branch from the Enlightenment Tea Tree, planted Setting Sun Divine Flame in its trunk, and escaped with the toad, planning to blame the Four Great Villains.
• An ordinary-looking middle-aged man arrived at the barrier and spotted the Enlightenment Tea Tree after losing the person he had pursued.
• Black Mountain Elder and the other villains entered Heavenly Phoenix City with a Giant Demon, shattered the city's formation, and used the World-Breaking Pearl to open the Medicine Realm.
• The Giant Demon dug up the Enlightenment Tea Tree, and the Four Great Villains fought through Feng Clan forces as they tried to escape the city.
• The Phoenix Emperor confronted the villains, and Black Mountain Elder charged at him.

After the Medicine Realm’s barrier broke and contestants regained their abilities, Long Xuan fled toward a teleportation gate while Gu Kings began attacking contestants for their spirit herbs. Outside the realm, the Four Great Villains lost the Enlightenment Tea Tree when Black Mountain Elder’s storage ring exploded, then faced the Heaven-Burning Ancestor, who attacked after they could not hand it over.

• Long Xuan realized his abilities had returned, feared the Gu Kings would target him as the points leader, and hurried toward a teleportation gate.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor found the empty pit where the Enlightenment Tea Tree had been and set out to steal spirit herbs from contestants.
• The Four Great Villains escaped the Feng Clan’s pursuit, but Black Mountain Elder’s storage ring exploded and burned the Enlightenment Tea Tree to ashes.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor confronted the Four Great Villains and demanded the tree, but Black Mountain Elder told him it had burned up.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor refused to believe Black Mountain Elder and charged at the Four Great Villains.

Heaven-Burning Ancestor matched Black Mountain Elder’s Corpse-Transforming Palm and drove the three other evils into battle with his Heavenly Flames. Back in Heavenly Phoenix City, the alchemy competition resumed after the contestants fled the Medicine Realm, and Long Xuan began devising a pill formula to compensate for his smaller haul of spirit herbs.

• Heaven-Burning Ancestor countered Black Mountain Elder’s Corpse-Transforming Palm with the same technique and sent him flying.
• The three other evils attacked Heaven-Burning Ancestor together, and he unleashed three Heavenly Flames that set the forest ablaze.
• The contestants escaped the Medicine Realm, and Feng Tiancheng continued the competition despite the casualties and the theft of the Enlightenment Tea Tree.
• Long Xuan displayed his spirit herbs, realized he had far fewer than several rivals, and told Long Xiaoyao he needed time to find another approach.
• Long Xuan entered the Soul Library to study pill formulas while the other contestants began refining, and Heaven-Burning Ancestor and Qin Dan chose to make third-grade pills.

As the Alchemy Competition continued, Long Xuan devised the Pill-Fusion Technique to overcome his shortage of spirit herbs, while Long Xiaoyao accepted Feng Tiancheng’s wager. Elsewhere, Burial Demon Old Ghost and Jade-Faced Rakshasa fled after the Heaven-Burning Ancestor killed the other two Four Great Villains.

• Long Yuyao and the other alchemists began refining with their meager supplies while Long Xuan sat with his eyes closed, drawing the judges’ attention.
• Feng Tiancheng proposed wagering five supreme-grade Natal Gu Insects against Long Xiaoyao, who accepted despite the Long Family’s poor prospects.
• Long Xuan realized he could refine spirit herbs into pills and then use those pills as ingredients for another pill, a method he named the Pill-Fusion Technique.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor defeated the Four Great Villains, killing Black Mountain Elder and White-Faced Scholar and gravely wounding Burial Demon Old Ghost and Jade-Faced Rakshasa.
• Burial Demon Old Ghost fled with Jade-Faced Rakshasa, fearing the Heaven-Burning Ancestor would pursue them until they found the Enlightenment Tea Tree.

Burial Demon Old Ghost and Jade-Faced Rakshasa confronted each other while both sought to refine the other into a human pill. In Heavenly Phoenix City, Long Xuan awakened from three days of enlightenment and began making his Five Elements Sacred Pill with the help of five clones, hoping to win the competition.

• Burial Demon Old Ghost discovered Jade-Faced Rakshasa had followed him into his cave and accused her of seeking to turn him into a human pill.
• Jade-Faced Rakshasa admitted she intended to kill and refine Burial Demon Old Ghost, and he revealed he had the same plan for her.
• At the competition, Long Yuyao warned Feng Shuang not to disturb Long Xuan, who had remained with his eyes closed for three days.
• Long Xuan opened his eyes with only a few hours left and used five clones to start refining pills.
• Long Xuan prepared to use his Pill-Fusion Technique to combine twenty-five elemental pills into a Five Elements Sacred Pill with power comparable to a Fourth-Grade Pill.

Long Xuan used five clones to refine five different pills, then combined them as ingredients in his main furnace to create a higher-grade pill. The judges and spectators realized his unconventional plan could surpass the leading competitors, while Qin Dan resolved to take Long Xuan seriously in the remaining matches.

• Long Xuan's five clones rapidly refined five different attribute pills by putting all the ingredients into their furnaces at once.
• Feng Tiancheng criticized Long Xuan's choice of pill formula, while Long Xiaoyao and Long Yuyao worried that he had misunderstood the round's scoring rules.
• The five clones sent their twenty-five pills into Long Xuan's central furnace, and he began refining them together as ingredients.
• The judges and returning spectators realized Long Xuan was attempting to create a pill from pills, and they reacted with shock and excitement.
• Long Xiaoyao celebrated the prospect of winning his wager, while Feng Tiancheng stared anxiously at the furnace.
• Qin Dan praised Long Xuan's creativity and told the mysterious soul within him that he would take Long Xuan seriously in the coming matches.

Long Xuan completed the Five Elements Sacred Pill, a breakthrough pill he claimed could raise a Spirit Sea Peak Gu cultivator’s chance of reaching Gu King by ninety percent. The judges fought over the pill and inflated its score before Long Xiaoyao awarded it ninety-two points and declared that it belonged to the ten nations under the competition rules.

• Long Xuan finished refining a radiant five-colored pill, stunning the crowd and leaving the Heaven-Burning Ancestor and Qin Dan convinced it would score above ninety points.
• Long Xuan named the pill the Five Elements Sacred Pill and said it could give a Spirit Sea Peak Gu cultivator who practiced a five-element power a ninety percent chance of breaking through to Gu King.
• Qin Shang identified the pill as a Fourth-Grade Pill, and Wang Hu and the other judges eagerly offered points and possessions to obtain it.
• The judges’ bidding escalated to one hundred points, even though the pill’s medicinal effect did not qualify it as a true Fourth-Grade Pill.
• Long Xiaoyao announced that the judges had awarded the pill ninety-two points and that competition rules gave the single pill to the organizers, jointly represented by the ten nations.

Long Xuan won the third round of the Alchemy Competition with a score of ninety-two, widening his lead over the Heaven-Burning Ancestor and Qin Dan. Long Xiaoyao explained the next round’s rules, leaving Long Xuan worried that his powerful rivals could create frightening pill formulas with Enlightenment Tea.

• Long Xuan’s ninety-two points secured another victory over Feng Tiancheng, who lost five more Natal Gu Insects and was left crippled.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor and Qin Dan realized Long Xuan led them by three points and decided they would no longer hold back.
• Long Xuan returned to the inn, where Long Xiaoyao arrived through the window and congratulated him on winning the round.
• Long Xiaoyao explained that the Four Great Villains had damaged the Medicine Realm’s barrier, causing deaths and reducing the surviving contestants to thirty.
• Long Xiaoyao told Long Xuan that the thirty contestants would drink Enlightenment Tea and create pill formulas over ten days, with the top ten advancing to the finals.
• Long Xuan feared that Qin Dan, whom he suspected was Duan Tianwu, and the Heaven-Burning Ancestor could create formulas far beyond his own after drinking the tea.

Long Xuan prepared to create pill formulas for the next round, while Jade-Faced Rakshasa began refining Burial Demon Old Ghost into a human pill. Long Xiaoyao told the Dragon Emperor that Long Xuan had put the Long Family ahead and arranged heavy protection for him, even diverting the guards assigned to Princess Yuyao.

• Long Xuan reasoned that he could create two pill formulas after drinking Enlightenment Tea and submit the lesser one unless he needed the stronger formula to close the score gap.
• Jade-Faced Rakshasa celebrated killing Burial Demon Old Ghost and began refining his corpse to complete the medicinal power of the Heaven-Defying Pill.
• Long Xiaoyao told the Dragon Emperor that Long Xuan had scored ninety-two points, two more than the Heaven-Burning Ancestor, and was three points ahead overall.
• The Dragon Emperor ordered Long Xiaoyao to protect Long Xuan, warning that the Feng Clan might target him.
• Long Xiaoyao revealed that he had stationed nearly every available Long Family Gu King around Long Xuan and had reassigned even Princess Yuyao's guards.
• The Dragon Emperor wondered whether Princess Yuyao was no longer favored as she sneezed in her sleep.

At the Alchemy Competition semifinals, the contestants drank Enlightenment Tea to develop pill formulas. Long Xuan settled on a Bone-Regenerating Blood-Fusing Pill that could help him obtain Water Elder’s Heavenly Water, while Duan Tianwu also narrowed his ideas to a formula that would benefit himself.

• Long Xuan arrived last at the palace hall and took the top-ranked seat among the thirty semifinalists.
• Feng Tiancheng began the round by having the contestants drink Enlightenment Tea and comprehend the Dao.
• Long Xuan used the Soul Library alongside the tea to accelerate his insights and chose to devise a Bone-Regenerating Blood-Fusing Pill.
• Long Xuan planned to trade the pill to Water Elder in exchange for his Heavenly Water, though the formula’s full power would require a twelfth-grade pill.
• Duan Tianwu also set aside most of his ideas and focused on creating a pill formula useful to himself.

Duan Tianwu, the Heaven-Burning Ancestor, and the other contestants devised ambitious pill formulas under the influence of Enlightenment Tea. In the Soul Library, Long Xuan developed a Bone-Generating Blood-Melding Pill but chose to keep it secret and began preparing a more useful formula for the competition.

• Duan Tianwu decided to research an Inheritance Pill that would grant someone the knowledge of a person refined into it.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor chose to develop a Hundred Lives Pill that could awaken memories and inheritances from past lives.
• Long Yuyao, Feng Shuang, and Wang Wu also appeared confident in the ideas they had conceived as judges and spectators awaited the contestants' formulas.
• Long Xuan completed a Bone-Generating Blood-Melding Pill that could give a body possessor a perfect physical body, but decided not to submit its formula.
• Long Xuan began developing an Estrus Pill to accelerate the breeding of supreme-grade Spirit Insects and increase his Gold-Eating Insect population.

Long Xuan, Duan Tianwu, and the Heaven-Burning Ancestor each developed a powerful pill formula while using Enlightenment Tea, then chose to keep their most valuable creations secret. They began working on additional formulas for the alchemy competition, where they expected their pills to earn the highest score.

• Long Xuan completed the Heat Pill formula, which induced Spirit Insects to lay eggs, and began simplifying it after deciding the original was too powerful to share.
• Duan Tianwu completed the Inheritance Pill formula, which transferred a person's inheritance along with their will, and started developing the Gu King Pill to turn Spirit Gathering Stage cultivators into Early-Stage Gu Kings at the cost of their future advancement.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor completed the Myriad Lifetimes Pill formula, which let consumers recall a random fragment of a previous life, and decided to hide it.
• The Heaven-Burning Ancestor began creating a Soul-Replenishing Pill from the Soul Power of Gu cultivators to increase a consumer's Innate Soul Power.