Chapter Summaries

Chapter Summary: “Forging a New Body”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Baron’s corpse witch purchases nearly all of Gao Da’s high-grade slaves, including valuable private stock. In exchange, Baron offers Gao Da access to the Dwarf race’s rare Soul Plasma, but Gao Da refuses to give up his opportunity connected to Li Ziran.
• Gao Da and Baron speculate about Li Ziran’s mysterious need for rare creatures and body parts.
• At Six Flavors House, Li Ziran secretly begins constructing a new body while the building is empty.
• He uses:
  • A giant’s shinbone and marrow to support blood production.
  • The skeleton of a deceased young human Magister as the body’s framework.
  • Moon Elf magical meridians and giant-derived nerves.
  • Organs harvested from three aged Elven fire-element Magisters.
  • A Salt Porpoise brain, whose enormous capacity makes it vastly superior to a human brain.
  • Hellhound Tongue tissue as an important component of the project.
• Li Ziran spends several days painstakingly connecting thousands of nerves, blood vessels, and meridians. He completes all 37,200 cranial nerves after three days of work.
• The body initially lacks cohesion because its organs come from different creatures. Li Ziran therefore applies Puppet Art, engraving magical runes that create “Puppet Threads” linking the organs together.
• His experiment succeeds: the Puppet Curse’s runes can unify separate organs and flesh, creating a new kind of artificial living body.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran is shown as an extraordinarily skilled surgeon, magical researcher, and inventor. His patience, precision, and willingness to experiment reveal his determination to create a suitable vessel, possibly for his spirit or soul.
• He demonstrates both pragmatism and personal preference by choosing a human skeleton, despite using materials from giants, Elves, Moon Elves, Hellhounds, and Salt Porpoises.
• Gao Da appears possessive and commercially shrewd, valuing rare creatures and resources even while complaining about losing them. His loyalty to his deal with Li Ziran outweighs Baron’s tempting offer.
• Baron is relaxed, teasing, and opportunistic. He treats the transaction as a profitable opportunity and tries to exploit Gao Da’s access to Li Ziran’s goods.
• The aged Elves serve unwillingly as sources of organs, emphasizing the ruthless sacrifices involved in Li Ziran’s project.

Significant Themes

• Creation and transformation: Li Ziran is effectively forging an entirely new body from parts of multiple species.
• Scientific and magical experimentation: The chapter combines surgery, anatomy, elemental magic, and Puppet Art into an unprecedented process.
• The pursuit of perfection: Li Ziran continually seeks superior materials, ultimately replacing his original plan for a human brain with the vastly more capable Salt Porpoise brain.
• Moral ambiguity and exploitation: The body is built from corpses, harvested organs, enslaved beings, and rare creatures, raising questions about the cost of progress.
• Unity from disparate parts: The Puppet Threads symbolize the attempt to make incompatible elements function as one complete organism.
• Knowledge as personal power: Li Ziran’s successful use of Puppet Curse runes establishes a unique secret that belongs solely to him.

Character Interactions

• Gao Da and Baron exchange sarcastic banter over the value of the slaves and the Soul Plasma deal. Baron pressures Gao Da to surrender his connection to Li Ziran, but Gao Da refuses.
• Their conversation indirectly reveals that Li Ziran’s activities are attracting attention because of his unusual demand for rare biological materials.
• Li Ziran has no direct interaction with them, remaining isolated and focused on his secret operation.
• His brief address to the Elves—praising their courage for their race—contrasts with his immediate use of them as experimental resources, highlighting the chapter’s tension between admiration, necessity, and cruelty.

Chapter Summary: “Transplanting a Hellhound Tongue”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran continues constructing a powerful artificial body in the courtyard of Six Flavors House.
• He grafts God-Descended Dwarf flesh onto the calf, carefully splitting and reconnecting meridians and nerves with blood vessels. Life Potion helps the transplanted flesh merge and retain vitality.
• He installs several extraordinary organs, including the Blessed Livers, Purification Heart, Resurrection Gallbladder, and an organ embodying the Redemption Spell. These organs accelerate the body’s recovery and bring the project past its halfway point.
• Li Ziran implants various sensory organs:
  • A Cavefolk Sevenfold Mutation Eye with blinding powers.
  • A low-level Horned Demon Eye.
  • The mucous membrane from Doug’s six-times-mutated nose, granting the ability to distinguish thousands of scents.
  • A Goblin ear, used as a practical substitute.
• The most difficult procedure is transplanting a Hellhound tongue. Its unusually complex neural structure requires dozens of nerve branches to be connected inside the throat.
• A mysterious metallic noise from upstairs startles Li Ziran, causing him to sever one nerve and ruin part of the connection. He controls his anger and fatigue, performs simpler procedures to regain focus, and successfully repairs the damaged nerve network.
• After three hours, the Hellhound tongue is fully connected. Blood flow restores it to a healthy pink color and makes it resemble Wood’s tongue.
• Li Ziran completes the lips, teeth, facial skin, eyelashes, Adam’s apple, and other finishing details, even modifying the skin and giving himself double eyelids.
• He carves a Soul Transfer Formation and moves his consciousness into the completed body.
• Upon awakening, he discovers that a group of transparent souls has been secretly watching his work from the second floor. They criticize his Soul Transfer technique but praise his surgical skill and speculate that the Hellhound tongue could make him a monstrous genius.
• The chapter ends with Li Ziran confronting the souls and asking who they are.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran is shown as exceptionally skilled, patient, and meticulous, especially in biological surgery and organ transplantation. Despite exhaustion and an unexpected interruption, he maintains discipline and refuses to let anger compromise the operation.
• His confidence grows as the artificial body nears completion. He is proud of his surgical abilities, particularly his talent for eye and tongue transplants.
• However, the souls’ comments reveal a weakness: although Li Ziran is a master surgeon, his Soul Transfer technique is comparatively crude and inexperienced.
• The transparent souls emerge as a new group of curious, knowledgeable observers. They appear impressed by Li Ziran but also enjoy teasing and evaluating him.

Significant Themes

• Creation and reconstruction: Li Ziran is effectively building a new body from assorted organs, flesh, and magical components, blurring the boundary between surgery, alchemy, and creation.
• Precision and patience: The chapter emphasizes that even extraordinary powers cannot replace concentration and technical care. A tiny distraction nearly ruins the tongue transplant.
• Adaptation and imperfection: Many organs are substitutes rather than ideal choices, showing Li Ziran’s willingness to work with limited resources while planning future improvements.
• Art versus science: The observers describe his work as “pure art,” highlighting the beauty and sophistication of his surgical craft.
• Identity and transformation: By transferring his consciousness into the constructed body, Li Ziran moves closer to becoming something physically assembled and fundamentally different from an ordinary human.
• Observation and secrecy: Li Ziran believes he is working alone, but the souls have been watching him throughout, introducing a tension between his private experiment and the hidden community around him.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran has no direct interaction with the souls until the end, but their ongoing commentary provides an outside judgment of his work.
• The souls praise his surgical skill, debate whether he qualifies as an Archmage or Title Magister, and speculate that his Hellhound tongue will make him exceptionally gifted.
• They mock his Soul Transfer technique, creating a contrast between his mastery of body construction and his inexperience with transferring consciousness.
• After hearing their voices and seeing their transparent forms, Li Ziran directly addresses them, setting up a likely confrontation or explanation in the next chapter.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran notices figures spying on him, but they suddenly vanish after realizing he has installed a Demon Eye. The old man at Six Flavors House dismisses the incident and claims they are alone.
• Li Ziran tests his newly installed organs and discovers that his Fire Elemental Organs are exceptionally powerful. He can gather and release fire almost instantly, producing a flame attack comparable to an Intermediate Mage’s spell despite lacking an Elemental Gland or Forbidden Spell.
• His transformed body begins generating a new Spirit World. Several spiritual vortices form around different powers:
  • A green vortex connected to crystals and gravity.
  • A bronze-yellow vortex centered on a broken mirror.
  • A moon-colored Puppet Network linking the mirror to his body.
  • A black vortex containing the Memory Ghost.
  • A transparent vortex associated with a monk-based spell formation.
• The Spirit World’s rapid formation suggests that Li Ziran’s soul is successfully merging with his new body. Its strange, partially degenerative appearance is balanced by a stable structure and efficient spiritual-energy circulation.
• Li Ziran examines the old man with his enhanced vision and detects a hidden world or derivative realm within the man’s soul. He also realizes that the old man’s body is actually a corpse.
• Testing his Transcendent Eye, Li Ziran uses the “Blinding” ability on the old man. The attack temporarily blackens the man’s eye, forcing him to reveal some genuine surprise and defend himself with soul power.
• His enhanced nose detects that there are additional living beings upstairs, contradicting the old man’s claim that only the two of them are present.
• Li Ziran tests his Infernal World tongue by drinking Hellhound blood. Although the tongue destroys his normal sense of taste, it allows him to identify and precisely remember complex elemental “flavors,” including earth, bitterness, numbness, heat, and electrical sensations.
• He theorizes that the tongue can appraise the elemental composition of organs and perhaps help him reproduce or create similar organs in the future.
• The chapter ends with Li Ziran preparing to dissect and sample a remaining Elf Gallbladder.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran becomes increasingly confident in his altered body. He recognizes that the new organs are not merely replacements but a powerful system of tools and abilities.
• His Fire Elemental Organs greatly improve his offensive potential, while his enhanced eyes and nose provide sensory and investigative advantages.
• He begins to understand the broader value of his Witch Doctor configuration: by analyzing elemental compositions, he may eventually be able to replicate organs and abilities.
• His loss of ordinary taste is treated as an unfortunate but acceptable sacrifice for the tongue’s superior appraisal function.
• The old man remains outwardly calm but is visibly shaken by Li Ziran’s Blinding Eye. His corpse-like body and hidden soul-world suggest that he is not an ordinary human and is concealing important secrets.
• The unseen observers appear frightened by Li Ziran’s Demon Eye, implying that his transformation has already made him dangerous or abnormal in the eyes of others.

Significant Themes

• Transformation and adaptation: Li Ziran’s body is becoming a collection of specialized organs, each offering new abilities while also altering his humanity.
• The relationship between flesh, soul, and magic: The formation of the Spirit World demonstrates how bodily organs, spiritual power, and consciousness are merging into one system.
• Knowledge through sensation: The new tongue replaces taste with elemental analysis, turning a lost human sense into a method of scientific and magical investigation.
• Power through understanding: Li Ziran’s greatest advantage may not be raw strength but his ability to dissect, identify, and reproduce the elemental structures of living beings.
• Hidden identities and deception: The old man’s corpse-body, concealed soul-world, and upstairs companions establish an atmosphere of secrecy and danger.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran briefly confronts the old man about the vanished observers, but the old man denies that anyone else was present.
• Li Ziran tests the Blinding Eye directly on the old man, forcing him to defend himself and exposing his otherwise carefully maintained composure.
• Through his enhanced senses, Li Ziran discovers that the old man is a corpse and that other beings are hidden upstairs, though he chooses not to confront them yet.
• The old man watches Li Ziran’s transformation closely, particularly the formation of his four spiritual powers, and seems both curious and astonished by what he witnesses.

Chapter Summary: The Taste of Elements

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran experiments with eating the Elf Gallbladder using a scalpel, discovering that he can identify its elemental composition through taste.
• He detects numerous varieties of grass, water, fire, and unidentified rare elements within the organ. This reveals the gallbladder to be an exceptionally valuable, high-quality organ.
• Li realizes that memorizing the flavors of different elements could make him a supreme organ-identification expert. He particularly wants to taste a Time Ghost’s eye so he can determine whether the Ghostling haunting him is Bowente.
• At Six Flavors House, Li asks the elder whether he has a Time Ghost’s eye. The elder offers one in exchange for magma from the deepest layer of the Abyss, but Li recognizes the danger and refuses the task.
• The elder proposes establishing soul-based contact. Although wary of having his soul altered, Li accepts because he needs allies, information, and access to rare ingredients.
• The elder places a salmon-shaped communication point in Li’s Spirit World. Li compares the elder’s refined soul technique favorably to Shadow Elder’s harsher methods, though he remains suspicious of Bowente, whose soul techniques are undetectable.
• The elder reminds Li that Wood once tracked prey by consuming pieces of their flesh. This makes Li realize that the worm Bowente left inside the giant may allow him to identify Bowente by scent, regardless of disguises or possession.
• Li rushes back to his Snow World, where Anfuni, Anthony, the Goblin Baron, and Dwarf Gao Da are negotiating the division of Soul Plasma.
• Before anyone can question him, Li tears the worm from the giant’s arm and eats it. He savors it enthusiastically, while Anfuni is disgusted and vomits.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran demonstrates growing skill and confidence in analyzing organs and elemental structures. His unusual sense of taste may become a major professional advantage.
• He becomes more pragmatic about forming alliances and accepts that controlled risks involving his soul are necessary for survival.
• Li’s suspicion of Bowente deepens. He recognizes that Bowente’s undetectable soul abilities make him especially dangerous.
• Li also becomes more observant, quickly connecting the elder’s comment about tracking prey to the worm hidden in the giant.
• The Six Flavors House elder is established as powerful, knowledgeable, and comparatively trustworthy, though he openly admits that his soul contact constitutes a form of tampering.
• Anfuni remains sensitive to Li’s grotesque behavior, reacting with immediate revulsion.
• The Goblin Baron continues to treat Li casually and cheerfully, even though Li is focused on an urgent and disturbing discovery.

Significant Themes

• Knowledge through sensory experience: Li’s tasting of organs turns eating into scientific analysis, emphasizing his unconventional methods of gaining power and knowledge.
• Trade and mutual dependence: Six Flavors House operates through exchanges rather than charity, showing how rare resources and information circulate through negotiated relationships.
• Trust and vulnerability: Li must decide whether to permit the elder access to his soul, highlighting the danger of relying on others in a world where spiritual manipulation is common.
• Identity and detection: The worm’s scent-tracking ability offers a way to identify Bowente despite disguises, possessions, or altered appearances.
• The grotesque as utility: Flesh, organs, and parasites are treated as tools, ingredients, or sources of information, contrasting Li’s practical outlook with Anfuni’s disgust.

Character Interactions

• Li and the elder negotiate over a Time Ghost’s eye and establish a potential supply-and-contact relationship.
• The elder advises Li about soul control and gives him a spiritual communication channel.
• Li compares the elder’s gentle soul technique with Shadow Elder’s crude methods and silently evaluates the elder’s strength.
• The elder’s mention of Wood indirectly helps Li uncover the purpose of Bowente’s worm.
• Back in the Snow World, Li reunites with Anfuni, Anthony, the Goblin Baron, and Dwarf Gao Da, who are discussing Soul Plasma distribution.
• Li’s sudden consumption of the worm shocks the group, especially Anfuni, ending the chapter on a deliberately comic and nauseating note.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran eats a disgusting elemental worm in order to memorize its more than seventy scents, which he hopes will help him track or understand Bowente. Although Anfuni and Baron are sickened, Li Ziran treats the worm as useful research.
• After Anfuni recovers, Li Ziran returns the three Elves she had given him. He removed their Elven Organs and replaced them with ordinary ones, sparing their lives but permanently stripping them of their Magister abilities.
• Anfuni introduces her master, Anthony, as the new person overseeing the Elves’ Elemental Embryo trade. Anthony recognizes Li Ziran from their earlier encounter on a coral reef, when Li Ziran had attacked his ship.
• Baron and Gao Da arrive to purchase Soul Plasma. Li Ziran appoints Anfuni to set the prices and dismisses Gao Da’s protest that an Elf should not control such an important trade.
• Li Ziran enters the ice chamber to fulfill the accumulated embryo orders. Using his enhanced body, especially his Hellhound-like tongue, nose, and improved brain, he can identify embryo quality far more efficiently.
• Over three days, he cultivates 726 embryos—roughly one per minute—marking a dramatic improvement over his former production speed.
• Anfuni negotiates a trade arrangement at half the market price, but Li Ziran lowers ordinary Soul Plasma to one-third of the market price so his buyers can still make substantial profits.
• He asks Baron and Gao Da to provide girls from their tribes, since different racial traits can produce embryos with unique abilities and higher value.
• Li Ziran revises his agreement with the Elves, claiming all Soul Plasma above the fortieth layer for himself. Anthony objects because their original deal was to split it equally, but Li Ziran threatens to restrict the Elves to lower-grade plasma if they refuse.
• Li Ziran also orders Anfuni to raise the prices of all his goods by half, with several specially selected embryos priced at three times their former cost. His confidence suggests that his improved products will sell despite the higher prices.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran becomes increasingly confident and commercially aggressive. His new body greatly enhances his reflexes, intelligence, senses, and embryo-cultivation abilities, making him more efficient and more willing to dictate trade terms.
• He also demonstrates greater strategic independence. Rather than personally negotiating with every buyer, he delegates authority to Anfuni and focuses on production and his larger conflict with Bowente and the Ghostling problem.
• Anfuni develops from a subordinate and supplier into Li Ziran’s business partner and representative. Although uncomfortable under the pressure of negotiating with powerful buyers, she handles the trade discussions responsibly.
• Anthony is revealed to be cautious but politically constrained. He recognizes that Li Ziran is breaking the original balance of power, yet he cannot accept the new arrangement without consulting the Elven Queen.
• Baron and Gao Da become enthusiastic allies and potential distribution partners after Li Ziran offers them Soul Plasma at extremely favorable prices. Gao Da, in particular, realizes that his previous connection to Li Ziran has become highly profitable.
• The three old Elves survive but lose their magical abilities, showing the severe consequences of Li Ziran’s experiments.

Significant Themes

• Power through knowledge and adaptation: Li Ziran turns grotesque biological features and sensory abilities into practical advantages, demonstrating that unfamiliar or repulsive traits can become valuable tools.
• Commerce as a form of power: Trade agreements are not merely exchanges of goods but mechanisms for controlling supply, profit, and political influence. Li Ziran uses Soul Plasma and Elemental Embryos to strengthen his position over multiple races.
• Exploitation and moral ambiguity: The production of embryos depends on the bodies of pregnant girls, and Li Ziran casually treats them as part of a supply chain. Anthony’s discomfort highlights the ethical conflict between economic benefit and the dignity of the Elves.
• Renegotiation and unequal bargains: Li Ziran recognizes that the Elves have benefited disproportionately from the original agreement and moves to reclaim control over the most valuable Soul Plasma.
• Transformation and bodily utility: Li Ziran’s new body changes not only his physical capabilities but also his understanding of biology, suggesting that identity and power are closely tied to the body one possesses.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Anfuni: Their relationship shifts toward partnership. He entrusts her with pricing and negotiations, while she worries about protecting the Elves and questions his increasingly aggressive business decisions.
• Li Ziran and Anthony: Their reunion is polite but tense. Anthony acknowledges their prior encounter, while Li Ziran insists that his past actions were forced by circumstance. Their discussion quickly becomes a confrontation over trade rights and the value of high-grade Soul Plasma.
• Li Ziran and Gao Da: Li Ziran reminds Gao Da that their previous deal has already been fulfilled and rejects any claim that Gao Da deserves special treatment. Nevertheless, he gives him access to highly profitable trade.
• Li Ziran, Baron, and Gao Da: He offers them favorable prices and invites them to contribute girls from their tribes, turning them into commercial partners and distributors.
• Anthony and Anfuni: Anthony’s authority over the Elven trade is established, but Anfuni must bear the immediate pressure of negotiating with Li Ziran’s buyers. Anthony also reacts protectively to the possibility of Elven girls being used as reproductive resources.

Chapter Summary: “The Bustling Sulfur Island Trade”

Key Plot Points and Events

• An Ebony Ship carrying a valuable cargo of Elemental Embryos travels toward Sulfur Island. The Elven crew remains alert after a previous attack in the supposedly safe coastal waters.
• Anthony, a Title Magister escorting the shipment, learns that the Elven Queen is furious with Li Ziran for breaking their agreement and intends to strip him of his princely title.
• Despite the political dispute, Li Ziran’s reputation has made his embryos extraordinarily valuable. Demons recognize his brand and eagerly purchase even embryos that would otherwise be considered ordinary.
• Sulfur Island is revealed as a rapidly growing center of trade. Its waters are crowded with ships, and embryo buyers hold signed orders while waiting for shipments.
• Because of the cargo’s special status, Anthony’s ship is allowed to enter through a VIP waterway and avoid the ordinary inspection process.
• Anthony announces a ten-percent price increase. Buyers protest, but they ultimately accept the new price because Li Ziran’s embryos are scarce and can be sold for far more in the Abyss.
• The formal exchange begins, with buyers trading Soul Plasma for embryos. Sulfur Island deploys guards because large-scale violence often follows these transactions.
• In a separate secret chamber, several Fire Demons examine a high-quality embryo personally produced by Li Ziran. They recognize its exceptional fire-based organs and debate whether to use it themselves or exchange it for resources.
• The Fire Demons discuss the possibility that powerful demons from the lower Abyss may soon act against Li Ziran, seeking not merely to possess his body but to obtain control of his embryo-making techniques.

Character Developments

• Anthony is shown as practical and politically constrained. Though sympathetic to the Elves’ dissatisfaction, he follows Li Ziran’s pricing order because Li Ziran controls the market.
• He also demonstrates authority and negotiation skill by offering compensation to anyone who rejects the new price, effectively preventing the buyers from abandoning their orders.
• Anfuni takes responsibility for handling the Soul Plasma trade and apologizes for being unable to provide more assistance due to her Elven background. Anthony reassures her that he can manage the situation.
• Li Ziran, though absent, becomes the chapter’s central force. His reputation, production techniques, and control over supply dominate both legitimate trade and demonic political calculations.
• The Fire Demons shift from viewing the embryos merely as commercial goods to recognizing them as strategic assets capable of transforming the future of their race.
• The Elven Queen’s anger reveals growing tension between Elven political authority and the economic power surrounding Li Ziran’s business.

Significant Themes

• Supply, scarcity, and monopoly: Li Ziran’s brand has created overwhelming demand, allowing prices to rise despite contractual objections.
• Economic power versus political authority: The Elven Queen can threaten Li Ziran’s title, but she cannot easily challenge the market influence of his embryos.
• Body, possession, and transformation: Demons value the embryos as ideal bodies that can be possessed and developed into powerful forms.
• Trade and violence: Commerce on Sulfur Island is highly organized, yet every transaction carries the threat of slaughter and conflict.
• Strategic importance of technology: Li Ziran’s embryo-making methods may be more valuable than the embryos themselves, making him a target for powerful Abyssal forces.
• Racial advancement and survival: The embryos may allow demons to overcome the environmental limitations that previously weakened them during invasions of the Red Soil Continent.

Important Character Interactions

• Anthony reflects on Li Ziran’s mysterious troubles and struggles to understand what could unsettle someone so capable.
• Anthony and Anfuni discuss announcing the price increase, with Anfuni offering to bear the burden of explaining it to the buyers.
• Anthony’s assistant announces the new price, provoking an angry response from the assembled traders.
• Anthony counters the protests by allowing buyers to cancel their agreements, but only if they accept compensation and surrender their opportunity to obtain the embryos.
• The Fire Demons examine and praise Li Ziran’s embryo, debating whether their tribe should use it personally or trade it for broader resources.
• Their discussion reveals rumors that lower-level Abyssal demons are preparing to target Li Ziran and seize control of his techniques.

Chapter Summary: “How He Somehow Became Deputy Warden”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran’s specially created Embryos become highly valuable across the North Sea. Their improved organs and elemental sensitivity trigger fierce competition, especially among demons from the Abyss’s fiftieth layer.
• Despite the commercial uproar, Li Ziran focuses on entering Thorn Prison so he can locate the real Bowente and reconnect with Wood. Although he now possesses Bowente’s tongue and can identify the genuine Bowente, he cannot trace Wood’s whereabouts.
• Cavis’s strict control of Thorn Prison prevents Li Ziran from entering. His sheepskin identification certificate no longer grants him access, and Cavis is too suspicious to allow him to meet Wood privately.
• Jenny reminds Li Ziran of his supposed promise to help investigate mutated creatures. She and Winnie reveal that they have captured Iron Hammer, a heavily modified Gray Dwarf responsible for harvesting organs and possessing extraordinary abilities.
• Li Ziran recognizes Iron Hammer as one of his own modified subordinates. Rather than expose the truth, he pretends the prisoner is a major discovery and manipulates the girls into helping him gain access to Thorn Prison.
• When Li Ziran claims Cavis stripped him of his prison authority, Jenny angrily intervenes. She uses her unknown influence to alter Li Ziran’s certificate, granting him the title of Deputy Warden, with authority over the Inquisition’s prisons second only to its head.
• Li Ziran enters Thorn Prison with Jenny and Winnie, discovering that his new status gives him a clearer view through the prison’s fog and allows him to perceive all seventeen prisoners.
• He places Iron Hammer against an empty Cross. The Cross extracts and compresses Iron Hammer’s soul into a tiny point of soul essence, revealing itself to be a powerful soul-binding treasure.
• Li Ziran then opens Iron Hammer’s body and exposes an artificial Elemental Gland, astonishing Jenny. He encourages the girls to document the organ as evidence of the mutated creature’s extraordinary modifications.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran: Becomes increasingly adept at manipulating others to achieve his objectives. He turns Jenny and Winnie’s investigation into an opportunity to bypass Cavis and enter Thorn Prison. His new Deputy Warden status gives him far greater authority and access.
• Jenny: Demonstrates that she possesses considerable influence within the Inquisition, far beyond that of an ordinary junior member. She strongly opposes Cavis’s rigid methods and supports reform and the recruitment of younger members.
• Winnie: Shows initiative, enthusiasm, and practical cleverness. Her suggestion to imprison Iron Hammer in Thorn Prison provides Li Ziran with the opening he needs.
• Cavis: Remains an obstructive, authoritarian figure whose strict control over Thorn Prison frustrates both Li Ziran and the younger Inquisition members.
• Iron Hammer: Is revealed to be one of Li Ziran’s heavily modified creations, containing multiple artificial organs, including an Elemental Gland. His capture unintentionally helps Li Ziran gain access to Thorn Prison.

Significant Themes

• Manipulation and opportunism: Li Ziran repeatedly turns inconvenient situations into advantages, using the girls’ enthusiasm and resentment toward Cavis to accomplish his own goals.
• Conflict between old authority and new reform: Cavis represents rigid tradition and centralized control, while Jenny and Winnie advocate for fresh blood, broader participation, and institutional change.
• Appearance versus reality: The girls believe Iron Hammer is evidence of an unknown criminal network, while Li Ziran knows he is connected to the creature’s modifications. Likewise, Jenny and Winnie initially appear to be ordinary rookies but possess remarkable authority.
• The nature of the soul and the body: The chapter highlights the contrast between powerful physical modifications and fragile souls. Iron Hammer’s body is extraordinarily advanced, yet his soul is reduced to a tiny, helpless point of essence.
• Power through official status: Li Ziran’s new title transforms his relationship with Thorn Prison. A simple alteration to his certificate grants him access and authority that he could not obtain through force or persuasion.

Important Character Interactions

• Li Ziran dismisses Jenny’s request for evidence until he realizes she and Winnie may help him enter Thorn Prison.
• He deliberately praises Iron Hammer as a “big fish” to excite the girls and persuade them to pursue the case.
• Li Ziran lies about being stripped of his authority by Cavis, prompting Jenny to challenge Cavis and secure Li Ziran’s promotion.
• Jenny and Winnie reveal their hostility toward Cavis and their desire to modernize the Inquisition.
• Inside Thorn Prison, Li Ziran directs the girls’ investigation, using Iron Hammer’s body and organs to reinforce their belief that they have uncovered an important criminal conspiracy.

Chapter Summary: “A Fifty-Year-Old Relic”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran returns to the place where Wood is imprisoned and discovers that Wood cannot freely communicate with him. To awaken him, Li Ziran cuts his finger and feeds his blood into the black, petroleum-like solution surrounding Wood.
• The solution contains countless mutated worms and predatory organs—revealed to be Wood’s own decaying internal organs. They consume the blood and devour one another, demonstrating the horrifying biological system keeping Wood alive.
• Wood eventually awakens after tasting Li Ziran’s blood, recognizing it as the blood of a seven-times-mutated Fire Element user. Li Ziran explains that he installed a Hellhound’s tongue, allowing him to sense elemental qualities, though it destroyed his normal sense of taste.
• Li Ziran asks to resume his previous “game” with Wood. He wants information about the Time Ghost, hoping to understand souls and eliminate the threat posed by Bowente.
• Wood demands that Li Ziran recount the emotional and physical pleasure involved in killing slave owners. Li Ziran reveals a traumatic memory from his past: after being abused and falsely accused by a slave owner’s mistress, he later killed her by tearing open her abdomen. The act brought him a disturbing sense of calm and ended his fear and confusion in the unfamiliar world.
• Wood then tells Li Ziran about events fifty years earlier. As a powerful Archmage, Wood came to Hippo Ancient City seeking the Time Ghost. He instead fell in love with a woman whose encouragement pushed him toward the Title Domain. Because of his achievements and Human Race identity, North Sea Port began calling him the “Savior.”
• Li Ziran realizes that Wood was the central figure in the earlier conflict involving the Time Ghost and the Savior. However, Wood warns him not to save him, suggesting that his imprisonment serves a purpose.
• A second entity suddenly emerges from the back of Wood’s head. Red dots move through the black solution and form a woman’s face. The Cross and chain are revealed to be binding not Wood, but this creature.
• The entity identifies herself as Viya, a Void Spirit Follower and the true Time Ghost. She offers to explain how Li Ziran can escape the Void Spirit’s influence in exchange for Fire-attribute blood.
• Viya then asks for the skin of a woman she smells nearby. Li Ziran sees Jenny approaching through the mist, implying that Viya intends to use or consume her.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran: Becomes increasingly willing to confront his own dark past. His memories reveal that violence gave him emotional stability after trauma, complicating his self-image as a former healer and “law-abiding person.” He also shows greater caution and strategic thinking, immediately recognizing that feeding Wood awakened a much more dangerous being.
• Wood: Is shown to be physically and spiritually degraded, yet still possesses immense knowledge and influence. His body’s organs function as ravenous predators, suggesting that his survival is unnatural. His warnings imply that he may fear being freed—or may know that freeing him would unleash something worse.
• Viya: Makes her first direct appearance as the true Time Ghost. She is intelligent, manipulative, and predatory, presenting her offer as a bargain while immediately demanding human flesh or skin.
• Jenny: Appears at the end of the chapter as an unsuspecting potential victim, raising the immediate danger.

Significant Themes

• Corruption and moral transformation: Li Ziran’s identity as a healer conflicts with the violence he has committed and the calm he feels while recalling it.
• Soul imprisonment and identity: The Cross is not simply restraining Wood’s body; it is binding a soul or supernatural entity, emphasizing the difference between physical life and spiritual existence.
• Hunger and survival: Wood’s organs and the worms form a grotesque ecosystem based entirely on consumption. Viya likewise treats blood and human flesh as resources.
• Manipulation and dangerous bargains: Both Wood and Viya exchange knowledge for personal experiences or blood, showing that understanding supernatural forces always carries a cost.
• Time and forgotten history: The fifty-year-old events surrounding the Savior and the Time Ghost are revealed to be directly connected to Li Ziran’s present circumstances.
• The uncertainty of good and evil: Li Ziran questions whether he is evil, while Wood and Viya blur the boundaries between victim, monster, prisoner, and manipulator.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Wood: Their relationship remains a tense exchange of curiosity, knowledge, and exploitation. Li Ziran wants information about the Time Ghost, while Wood probes his violent memories and emotional responses.
• Li Ziran and Viya: Their interaction begins as a proposed bargain, but Li Ziran quickly recognizes Viya as a major threat. Their shared connection to the Time Ghost phenomenon makes the encounter especially significant.
• Viya and Wood: Viya appears to control or inhabit Wood’s body, forcibly twisting his head and interrupting his warning to Li Ziran. This confirms that Wood is not the true power behind the prison.
• Viya and Jenny: Although they have not yet spoken directly, Viya identifies Jenny as a source of desirable flesh, placing Jenny in immediate danger.

Chapter Summary: “Give Me Something Useful, Big Sis”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran confronts Viya, a rotting Time Ghost covered in black oil, while Jenny and another girl search for him through the fog.
• Viya claims that Time Ghosts—also called Void Spirits—are souls transformed through the Void Spirit Church’s methods. They abandon their original bodies and seize more suitable ones, like skuas laying eggs in other birds’ nests and later devouring the host’s offspring.
• She offers to teach Li Ziran the Void Spirit Doctrine, which supposedly allows believers to perceive and enter the structure of souls.
• Through Viya’s chanting, Li Ziran briefly opens a crack in his Spirit World and views his soul as a vast, double-helix nebula filled with countless points of light. He recognizes one point as being connected to his Redemption Organ.
• The experience ends quickly, leaving only a scar-like silver-gray line in his Spirit World. Li Ziran realizes Viya gave him only a limited glimpse rather than genuine access.
• Li Ziran accuses Viya of using outdated tricks and demands something genuinely useful: information about Bowente’s tampering with his soul.
• Viya admits that she cannot identify or remove Bowente’s modifications, since Bowente’s techniques are more advanced than her own. She instead suggests that Li Ziran join the Void Spirit Church and learn enough to investigate the tampering himself.
• Li Ziran agrees, treating the arrangement as a commercial transaction. In exchange for Jenny’s facial skin, his help in freeing Viya, and fresh magical organs as “tuition,” Viya promises to teach him the Void Spirit Doctrine.
• Before the deal is finalized, Jenny and the other girl find Li Ziran. Frightened by the prison and something moving through the fog, Jenny clings to him. He reassures her protectively.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran becomes increasingly calculating and pragmatic. Although Winnie’s purity briefly affects him, he prioritizes survival and information about Bowente’s interference in his soul.
• He demonstrates strong bargaining instincts, recognizing that Viya’s desire for Jenny’s facial skin gives him leverage.
• Li Ziran also shows growing insight into the relationship between the soul, spiritual organs, and bodily functions. He theorizes that soul-based “light points” operate like code controlling physical organs.
• Viya is revealed to be both fanatically devoted to the Void Spirit Church and technologically outdated. She can expose Li Ziran to the structure of his soul but lacks the ability to detect or undo Bowente’s more sophisticated tampering.
• Viya shifts from attempting to impress or spiritually influence Li Ziran to negotiating directly with him. She also reveals her disturbing appetite for magical organs.
• Jenny remains frightened and dependent on Li Ziran for protection. Her trust in him is emphasized when she immediately clings to him upon finding him.

Significant Themes

• Faith versus manipulation: Viya presents the Void Spirit Doctrine as divine truth, but Li Ziran suspects it may be fabricated spiritual “code” designed to influence or control believers.
• Survival and transactional morality: Li Ziran treats purity, body parts, knowledge, and freedom as negotiable commodities, placing survival above sentiment.
• The soul as a machine or information system: The chapter compares spiritual organs to hardware and the points of light in the soul to code controlling that hardware.
• Obsolescence and technological advancement: Viya’s methods were effective fifty years earlier but are now outdated compared with Bowente’s techniques, highlighting the rapid evolution of soul manipulation.
• Identity and bodily possession: The description of Time Ghosts as creatures that abandon one body and steal another reinforces the chapter’s concern with souls, bodies, and the instability of identity.
• Protection and dependence: Despite his ruthless bargaining, Li Ziran comforts Jenny, showing that he still maintains a protective role toward those who trust him.

Important Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Viya: Their conversation is a battle of negotiation and psychological pressure. Viya tries to lure him with forbidden knowledge, while Li Ziran exposes the limits of her abilities and forces her into a practical bargain.
• Li Ziran and Jenny: Their reunion reveals a gentler side of Li Ziran. Jenny’s fear contrasts with his calm reassurance, strengthening their relationship.
• Li Ziran and Bowente: Though Bowente does not appear, his influence dominates the chapter. The mystery of the tampering in Li Ziran’s soul motivates the negotiation and drives Li Ziran’s interest in Void Spirit techniques.

Chapter Summary: “Face Skin”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• In a dense fog, Li Ziran prepares to harvest face skin from two unconscious girls for Viya. Viya chooses the slimmer girl, Jenny, and requests an intact face.
• Li transforms Jenny into a frog, anesthetizes her, and surgically removes her facial skin using corpse oil, a corrosive alchemical substance that separates the skin from the flesh.
• Through careful cutting, controlled breathing through a straw, and the use of tweezers, Li removes Jenny’s face skin with almost no damage or waste.
• Viya is deeply impressed by Li’s precision, calling the result a work of art and revealing that Bowente had recognized Li’s value.
• Li places the skin in Viya’s black-oil-filled barrel. Strange insects begin devouring it, forcing Viya to destroy them with spiritual energy before applying the skin to her own face.
• Viya’s extraordinary Face-Adhering Technique causes the skin to bond perfectly to her decayed body, restoring the appearance of a beautiful young woman despite her rotten flesh and exposed organs.
• Viya asks Li whether she is beautiful. Although her body remains horrifying, Li praises her appearance, and Viya expresses genuine gratitude.
• In return, Viya begins explaining the central secret of the Void Spirit Doctrine: the soul lies at the core of the Spirit World.
• She tells Li that the Spirit World rotates around the soul and that he must collapse his inner world toward its center to perceive his own soul. Li enters meditation and senses four spiritual whirlwinds but cannot yet detect the rotation of the entire world.

2. Character Developments

• Li Ziran demonstrates exceptional medical and alchemical skill. His controlled, meticulous technique reveals both professional experience and a disturbing willingness to treat human bodies as materials.
• He also shows emotional restraint and practicality, remaining focused on the procedure while managing Viya’s expectations. His flattering response to Viya’s question about her beauty reveals social awareness and a survival instinct.
• Viya becomes emotionally vulnerable after regaining a beautiful face. Her prolonged self-examination suggests that she has been alienated from her former identity and appearance for decades.
• Her gratitude toward Li marks a temporary strengthening of their transactional relationship. She also proves herself highly knowledgeable and powerful, particularly through her advanced face-adhering magic and understanding of the soul.
• Viya remains manipulative and demanding, however, challenging Li to collapse his Spirit World before offering further assistance.

3. Significant Themes

• Beauty versus physical decay: Viya’s beautiful new face contrasts grotesquely with her rotting body, questioning whether beauty is merely an appearance or something connected to the whole person.
• Identity and transformation: The face functions as both a physical object and a symbol of identity. Viya temporarily recovers the image of her former self by wearing another woman’s skin.
• Art within horror: Li’s surgical procedure is described with the precision and appreciation of artistic craftsmanship, blending medical skill with grotesque body horror.
• Transactions and trust: The relationship between Li and Viya is based on exchange, but the procedure and Viya’s emotional response create a more personal connection.
• The nature of the soul: The chapter shifts from bodily transformation to spiritual discovery, introducing the idea that the Spirit World is an outer structure revolving around the soul.
• Limits of perception: Li’s inability to sense the Spirit World’s rotation suggests that beings cannot easily perceive the larger systems in which they exist.

4. Character Interactions

• Li and Viya cooperate through a disturbing bargain: Li provides a complete face skin, while Viya promises knowledge and assistance.
• Viya evaluates the two girls and directs Li’s choice, while Li performs the operation according to her demands.
• Viya admires Li’s surgical precision and hints at a past desire to possess his body, mixing praise with an unsettling reminder of her predatory nature.
• After applying the face skin, Viya becomes absorbed in her reflection and seeks Li’s approval. Li reassures her despite the grotesque reality of her body.
• Their exchange then becomes more intellectual and strategic as Viya reveals the secret of the soul’s location and tests whether Li is capable of mastering the required spiritual technique.

Chapter Summary: “Fake Is Fake”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran attempts to understand the rotation of the Spirit World through four powerful forces: Elven leaves, Puppet Mirror fragments, the Memory Eye, and the Redemption Spell. Although his spiritual power has increased and he can sense spiritual particles within the whirlwinds, he cannot perceive the rotation of the Spirit World itself.
• Viya explains that Li Ziran has failed to connect with the world at the soul level, confirming that his incompatibility with the Spirit World remains a major obstacle. She is about to offer further guidance when Cavis discovers them in the Thorn Prison.
• Viya hides inside the black oil, while Li Ziran conceals Jenny and the fat girl’s remains in his spatial ring. Cavis angrily confronts him for interfering with the prisoners and giving organs to the being trapped in the wine barrel.
• Rather than obeying Cavis, Li Ziran reveals that he has been appointed Deputy Warden of the Inquisition. He uses this authority—and a series of pointed accusations about Cavis’s failures and the Inquisition’s decline—to force Cavis to back down.
• Cavis then reveals that his teacher has supposedly captured Bowente, the Time Ghost Li Ziran has been pursuing. Li Ziran agrees to inspect the prisoner, though he is reluctant to leave because of his growing interest in Viya and the study of souls.
• In the Judgment Room, Li Ziran finds a badly burned prisoner bound to a Cross. The Truth Mirror identifies the soul inside as Lain, who had previously been possessed by the Time Demon. Cavis claims that this prisoner is the real Bowente.
• Li Ziran removes both of the prisoner’s eyes and eats them, discovering the black fluid associated with the Time Ghost’s inhabitation. Despite the apparent evidence and the Truth Mirror’s confirmation, he immediately declares the prisoner a fake.
• After Li Ziran leaves, Cavis’s teacher emerges from hiding and confirms that the prisoner was indeed a counterfeit. He praises Li Ziran’s ability to detect the deception and criticizes Cavis for relying too heavily on alchemical tools.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran becomes more assertive and politically confident. Instead of submitting to Cavis’s authority, he exploits his new position as Deputy Warden and verbally exposes Cavis’s incompetence.
• His fascination with souls deepens. He recognizes that his ignorance of soul mechanics is a serious weakness, especially in contrast to Bowente, and begins treating soul research as essential to improving his surgical abilities.
• Li Ziran also demonstrates exceptional investigative and anatomical skill by identifying the false Bowente through direct examination rather than trusting the Truth Mirror.
• Cavis is shown to be hot-tempered, insecure, and overly dependent on institutional authority and magical verification. His confidence collapses when Li Ziran challenges him, and he is humiliated again when his teacher confirms that the prisoner was fake.
• Cavis’s teacher appears as a more perceptive and experienced inquisitor. He deliberately allowed the counterfeit to be tested and recognizes Li Ziran’s superior judgment in this situation.
• Viya remains mysterious but becomes increasingly important to Li Ziran. His disappointment at having to leave her shows that he now values their spiritual investigation and sees her as a possible key to understanding souls.
• Bowente remains uncaptured. The false prisoner and the deception surrounding him emphasize how difficult it is to identify the real Time Ghost.

Significant Themes

• Appearance versus reality: The chapter’s central idea is that convincing evidence can still be false. The prisoner passes the Truth Mirror, yet Li Ziran exposes the deception through specialized knowledge.
• Limits of authority and technology: Cavis trusts official judgment and magical instruments, while Li Ziran relies on observation, experience, and skepticism. The chapter suggests that tools are unreliable when confronting soul-based abilities.
• Knowledge as power: Li Ziran’s lack of understanding about souls is presented as his greatest weakness, motivating him to pursue deeper knowledge. His ability to identify the fake Bowente shows the practical value of specialized expertise.
• Institutional decline and generational change: Li Ziran criticizes the aging and ineffective Inquisition, hinting that a new generation may soon replace its old leadership.
• Deception and identity: Possession, soul replacement, counterfeit bodies, and false test results make identity unstable. The chapter repeatedly questions whether outward form or official verification can reveal the truth.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Viya: Their conversation centers on Li Ziran’s failed attempt to connect with the Spirit World. Viya’s presence encourages his exploration of souls, and his reluctance to leave reflects his growing investment in her guidance.
• Li Ziran and Cavis: Their hostile confrontation shifts the power dynamic. Cavis initially orders Li Ziran around, but Li Ziran counters with legal authority, insults, and evidence of Cavis’s failures. Later, Li Ziran again dominates the interaction by exposing the fake prisoner.
• Li Ziran and Cavis’s teacher: Though they do not speak directly for long, the teacher recognizes Li Ziran’s abilities and uses his success to criticize Cavis.
• Cavis and his teacher: Cavis seeks confirmation that the prisoner was genuine, but his teacher reveals that the deception was deliberate and rebukes him for failing to think independently.

Chapter Summary: “Harvest Time”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran leaves the Inquisition feeling renewed and more confident in his position. He has obtained unrestricted access to Thorn Prison, allowing him to communicate freely with Wood.
• His immediate concern is Viya’s guidance along the soul path. His progress depends on whether he can sense the rotation of the Spirit World; failure would prove him useless to her.
• He reflects on Jenny, whose actions helped him become deputy warden despite her current condition. He plans to repay her by providing facial skin, though he may ultimately abandon her if he lacks the time.
• At Snow Woman Lake, Anfuni and the Elven Archmage Anthony wait for him. Anfuni delivers twenty-three bottles of Soul Plasma from the Abyss’s fortieth layer and above.
• Anthony informs Li that the Elven leadership has rejected their agreement and intends to withdraw its protection from him. The Elves fear that Li’s Elemental Embryo business is becoming too profitable and too powerful to remain outside their control.
• Li refuses to compromise. He recognizes that his Embryos have become strategically important to Demons, Elves, and other powers because they allow Abyssal creatures to survive and use magic on the Red Soil Continent.
• Li compares his situation to the animal world: becoming wealthy has made him prey for powerful factions, but stopping his growth would leave him permanently vulnerable. He resolves to continue expanding his strength through business and the acquisition of powerful organs.
• The Goblin Baron and Dwarf Gaoda enthusiastically report that the Sulfur Island trade was enormously successful. Merchants competed fiercely for the Embryos, new orders have flooded in, and violence and piracy have increased around the island.
• Li reveals the twenty-three bottles of fortieth-layer Soul Plasma. He then trades with the Elves, requesting two hundred bottles of twentieth-layer Soul Plasma and offering five higher-grade bottles in exchange.
• To the Goblin Baron and Gaoda’s dismay, Li proposes exchanging one bottle of twentieth-layer Soul Plasma for each Forbidden Spell-level fire incantation, giving them a way to obtain the valuable resources they need.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran becomes more self-assured and openly defiant. Rather than fearing the Elves’ withdrawal of protection, he accepts that power attracts danger and chooses to grow stronger instead of retreating.
• He demonstrates increasing strategic awareness, understanding that his Embryos are not merely commercial goods but revolutionary resources capable of changing the balance between races and factions.
• Anthony remains sympathetic to Li and warns him about the dangers surrounding his business, but he is disappointed when Li refuses to moderate his position. Nevertheless, Anthony quickly takes advantage of the trade opportunity.
• Anfuni continues to act as a reliable intermediary, delivering the Soul Plasma and helping maintain the commercial connection between Li and the Elves.
• The Goblin Baron and Gaoda are thrilled by the success of their trade mission and increasingly view Li’s business as a miraculous source of wealth. Their excitement also reveals their dependence on Li’s continued production.
• Jenny remains absent and incapacitated, but Li’s thoughts about her show a conflicted sense of gratitude and responsibility.

Significant Themes

• Power attracts danger: Li’s wealth and technology have made him a target for every major faction, proving that success brings political and physical threats.
• Independence versus control: The Elves initially supported Li but now want influence over his revolutionary technology. Li refuses to let their former assistance become a claim to ownership.
• Survival and the food chain: Li embraces a ruthless philosophy that the strong must continue growing or risk becoming prey.
• Commerce as a source of power: Business provides Li not only with wealth but also with organs, materials, allies, and the means to strengthen himself.
• Technological and biological revolution: The Elemental Embryos could allow Demons and other beings to adapt to the Red Soil Continent, making them valuable military resources rather than ordinary commodities.
• Greed and competition: The escalating demand for Embryos causes merchants to compete, battles to erupt, and piracy to increase.

Important Character Interactions

• Li and Anthony: Anthony warns Li that the Elves will no longer protect him and hints that powerful groups may use manipulation, soul replacement, or assassination. Li responds calmly and makes clear that he will not submit.
• Li and Anfuni: Anfuni delivers the valuable Soul Plasma harvest, while Li uses it to negotiate further supplies.
• Li, Baron, and Gaoda: The two merchants excitedly describe the success at Sulfur Island, but Li redirects their enthusiasm into a practical exchange involving Soul Plasma and Forbidden Spells.
• Li and the Elves: Their relationship shifts from cooperation to uneasy rivalry. The Elves admire the value of Li’s work but fear losing control of it, especially because it could empower Demons and humans.

Chapter Summary: “Soul Plasma, Raising the Price on the Spot”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Baron initially hesitates when Li Ziran requests a fire-based Forbidden Spell in exchange for Soul Plasma, explaining that such spells are extremely rare and difficult to obtain.
• Anthony offers two powerful mixed-element Forbidden Spells:
  • Flaming Meteor Shower, combining fire, earth, space, and star elements.
  • Volcanic Eruption, combining fire, earth, dark, magnetic, and Milk Elements.
• Anthony then reveals a large collection of additional “Forbidden Spells.” Gao Da suspects they are fake because some have ordinary names, such as Flame Burst.
• Anthony proves that the spells are highly advanced mixed-element versions, capable of effects such as opening derivative spaces and incorporating rare elements.
• Li Ziran realizes the spells are genuine but are likely theoretical manuscripts created by Elven researchers rather than practically usable spells. The declining Elven race lacks the resources and talent to bring most of them into reality.
• Li Ziran purchases the remaining useful manuscripts, leaving only eight bottles of Soul Plasma.
• Baron proposes converting the giant shell behind Li Ziran into a mobile spatial fortress equipped with machinery, weapons, defensive systems, and embryo-production facilities. Li Ziran accepts the plan and gives him four bottles as an initial payment, with future payment dependent on the quality of the work.
• Gao Da, desperate to obtain Soul Plasma, offers information and connections related to slaves and rare organs instead of magical technology.
• Li Ziran asks Gao Da about the holders of the Twelve Light Spells. Gao Da lists them accurately.
• Li Ziran offers four bottles for useful information and promises twenty bottles of forty-layer Soul Plasma for each holder brought to him, with an additional fifty-layer bottle for the holder of Sheep Transformation.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran demonstrates increasing confidence and business sophistication. He evaluates the practical value of magical manuscripts rather than their reputation and adjusts prices according to usefulness.
• Anthony is revealed to possess access to a vast archive of Elven magical research. Although initially willing to exchange many manuscripts, he discreetly withholds some when Li Ziran identifies their likely origin as abandoned laboratory research.
• Baron shifts from an awkward seller to a proactive contractor. He recognizes Li Ziran’s need for a secure base and offers a practical Goblin engineering solution.
• Gao Da becomes increasingly anxious as he watches others receive Soul Plasma. He recognizes that Li Ziran will trade for almost anything valuable and turns to his strongest field: slave-trading intelligence and networks.

Significant Themes

• Value is determined by usefulness, not rarity alone. Li Ziran accepts theoretical Forbidden Spells because some may become valuable through future body modifications or access to rare elements.
• Decline and lost potential. The Elves possess thousands of brilliant magical derivations, but their weakened civilization can no longer support or realize them.
• Bargaining and opportunism. The chapter revolves around escalating negotiations, with Li Ziran raising or tailoring the price whenever a more valuable opportunity appears.
• Knowledge versus practical capability. Theoretical spells may be extraordinarily powerful, yet few people can actually cast them.
• Security and preparation. The proposed mobile fortress reflects Li Ziran’s growing concern about protecting embryo cultivation technology and preparing for the collapse of Snow World.

Important Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Anthony exchange Soul Plasma for rare magical manuscripts, while Li quietly exposes the manuscripts’ origins and limits Anthony’s gains.
• Gao Da challenges Anthony’s credibility, but Anthony counters by explaining the hidden complexity of the supposedly ordinary spells.
• Li Ziran and Baron negotiate the conversion of the giant shell into a fortified mobile base, establishing a results-based payment arrangement.
• Gao Da seeks a way to match Baron’s offering and presents his slave-trading intelligence as an alternative form of value.
• Li Ziran raises the stakes by offering exceptionally high rewards for information leading to the holders of the Twelve Light Spells, especially Sheep Transformation.

Chapter Summary: My Soul Was a Double Helix Nebula

Key Plot Points and Events

• Anthony reflects on Li Ziran’s discovery of the ancient Light Spell, the primordial source from which the twelve modern Light Spells supposedly originated. He recognizes the potential danger of Li Ziran obtaining this power, especially because Li Ziran might use it to create and sell powerful “Origin Essence Embryos.”
• Anthony is particularly uneasy about Li Ziran’s organ-transplantation experiments and his interest in the Sheep Transformation Spell, associated with the sacred Lamb Tower and the origin of Light magic.
• Li Ziran receives information from Gao Da that the Human Race possesses seven complete Light Spell inheritances, including the Sheep Transformation Spell. However, Li Ziran’s immediate priority is not Light magic but discovering the true nature and location of the soul.
• Li Ziran conceptualizes the soul as “code”—a system that operates the body and governs its organs—rather than treating it as merely another elemental force.
• To force open the Spirit World and locate the soul, Li Ziran consumes enormous quantities of Soul Plasma. The Soul Plasma dramatically strengthens the three major spiritual whirlwinds associated with the Puppet Mirror, the Elven leaf, and the Redemption Spell.
• The growing spiritual power destabilizes the Spirit World. Its structure expands and cracks, Spirit Crystals repeatedly shatter and reform, and the Memory Eye’s whirlwind is nearly forced out of the realm.
• A sudden collision reveals that the Memory Eye’s whirlwind has become lodged in the original opening Viya used to enter the Spirit World. Li Ziran realizes this obstruction is a gateway or weak point leading toward the soul.
• He consumes the remaining Soul Plasma, enlarging the opening until his consciousness passes through it.
• Li Ziran enters a vast nebula-like realm and sees two transparent, balanced rings of light revolving around a central cluster of lights. He realizes this is the soul, with the Spirit World rotating around it.
• Having finally located the soul, Li Ziran leaves the Soul World and heads toward the Inquisition to confront Viya and discuss what he has discovered.

Character Development

• Anthony becomes increasingly suspicious and concerned about Li Ziran. He understands that Li Ziran’s unusual abilities and potential access to the Light Spell could disrupt the political and magical balance of the Red Soil Continent.
• Li Ziran demonstrates his characteristic scientific and experimental thinking. Rather than relying on traditional elemental perception, he reframes the soul as biological “code” and uses an extreme, physically dangerous method to investigate it.
• Li Ziran also shows remarkable persistence. Even after repeated failures and the threat of spiritual collapse, he continues consuming Soul Plasma until he discovers the necessary breakthrough.
• His success marks a major advancement in his understanding of the body, spirit, and the relationship between the Spirit World and the soul.

Significant Themes

• Science versus traditional magic: Li Ziran approaches the soul through analysis, systems, and biological structure rather than conventional magical comprehension.
• Knowledge through dangerous experimentation: His breakthrough requires deliberately destabilizing his own Spirit World, reflecting both his courage and recklessness.
• The origins and fragmentation of magic: The discussion of the Light Spell presents magic as having evolved from primordial sources into divided, specialized systems.
• Balance and disruption: The Soul Plasma threatens the equilibrium of the Spirit World, while Li Ziran intentionally destroys that balance to uncover a deeper truth.
• The nature of identity and the soul: The soul is presented as both a spiritual entity and an organizing principle comparable to code, linking consciousness, memory, and the body.

Character Interactions

• Anthony and Li Ziran: Although they do not directly confront each other in the chapter, Anthony observes Li Ziran with growing distrust and fear, while Li Ziran remains unaware of Anthony’s concerns.
• Li Ziran and Gao Da: Gao Da provides information about the Light Spell towers and promises access to someone transformed by the Sheep Transformation Spell, feeding Li Ziran’s curiosity.
• Li Ziran and Viya: Viya’s earlier guidance into the Spirit World proves crucial. The entrance she created becomes the weak point that allows Li Ziran to reach the soul, motivating his decision to seek her out at the chapter’s end.

Chapter Summary: “Two Fire Rabbit Kidney Treats”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran enters Hippo Ancient City and buys two fire-attributed rabbits from a slave shop—not as slaves, but to harvest their kidneys as gifts for Wood and Viya.
• He visits Thorn Prison, confirms that Iron Hammer’s soul is not inside his bound body, and then goes to the wine barrel containing Wood and Viya.
• Li Ziran feeds Wood Pigman blood, causing Wood to emerge. He presents him with a fire-rabbit kidney as thanks for previously helping him obtain a Hellhound tongue.
• Wood reveals the existence of the Devouring Serpent’s stomach, an organ capable of digesting anything and converting it into pure elemental energy, including extremely rare elements. Li Ziran becomes interested in finding it because it would complement the Hellhound tongue.
• Wood begins discussing the serpent’s connection to a Demon from the Second Continental War, but Viya awakens within his body before he can finish.
• Viya accepts Li Ziran’s kidney gift despite calling it “trash,” magically transplanting it into herself.
• Li Ziran tells Viya that he has detected his own soul after using roughly two hundred bottles of Soul Plasma to force his Spirit World into a collision with his soul.
• Viya is shocked by his extravagant and unconventional method but acknowledges that it worked.
• She begins teaching him about Void Spirits and the Spirit World, immediately assigning him a dangerous test: he must approach Iron Hammer, a nearly exhausted Time Ghost, and sign a Soul Exchange contract with him.
• Li Ziran recognizes the danger and protests, but Viya insists that confronting this threat is necessary if he wants to become a true Void Spirit Follower and eventually oppose Bowente.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran demonstrates increasing confidence, resourcefulness, and willingness to take risks. His preparations show that he understands the value of maintaining relationships with Wood and Viya, while his use of Soul Plasma reveals his extraordinary wealth and determination.
• He is also shown to be cautious and self-aware: unlike a reckless fighter, he openly admits that Viya’s soul-training exercise frightens him.
• Wood remains greedy, perceptive, and knowledgeable. He is impressed by Li Ziran’s ambition and shares valuable information about rare elements and the Devouring Serpent.
• Viya is revealed to be both physically adaptable and extremely demanding. She effortlessly replaces her kidney and adopts an aggressive teaching style, testing Li Ziran through mortal danger rather than gentle instruction.
• Iron Hammer remains physically functional but spiritually almost destroyed. His weakened soul may be attempting to escape or replace itself through a Soul Exchange contract.

Significant Themes

• Soul cultivation and identity: Detecting one’s soul is only the beginning; understanding, protecting, and shaping it are far more difficult.
• Risk as a path to power: Both Li Ziran’s use of Soul Plasma and Viya’s dangerous lesson emphasize that extraordinary abilities require extreme investment or peril.
• Knowledge and rare resources: Wood’s discussion of the Devouring Serpent highlights the importance of hidden elements and specialized organs in advancing magical power.
• Trust and manipulation: Li Ziran’s gifts create a temporary bond with Wood and Viya, but both characters continue to pursue their own interests.
• Unconventional mentorship: Viya teaches through intimidation and life-threatening trials, forcing Li Ziran to confront danger before he fully understands the rules.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Wood share a transactional but increasingly familiar relationship. Li Ziran offers food and gratitude, while Wood responds with information and tests his greed and ambition.
• Wood and Viya’s shared body creates uncertainty over who will emerge, reinforcing the unstable nature of their existence.
• Li Ziran and Viya clash over the meaning of teaching: Li Ziran expects guidance, while Viya demands immediate practical action and mocks his hesitation.
• Viya’s challenge forces Li Ziran to choose between risking his soul or abandoning his goal of becoming a true Void Spirit Follower.

Chapter Summary: “The Time Ghost’s Possession Trick”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Viya urges Li Ziran to sign a soul transaction agreement with a severely weakened Time Ghost trapped within a Cross. Although Li Ziran suspects a trap, he is tempted by the chance to investigate the soul—an area of knowledge he has long considered forbidden and dangerous.
• Li Ziran struggles between preserving his current success and taking a potentially fatal risk. He reflects on his past as a slave and realizes that survival has always required him to take the initiative.
• He approaches the Time Ghost, whose degenerated form is little more than a balloon-like sphere containing a Void Spirit World. By touching it, he sees his own image reproduced inside.
• Li Ziran enters the Ghost’s inner world and finds a desolate, collapsing realm filled with weak Void Spirits. These spirits assemble themselves into a crude “Soul Trade” tablet.
• He signs the agreement by writing his name. Through the experience, he realizes that an Oath Tablet is not a conventional spell but a structure formed from countless Void Spirits, which serve as the foundation of a soul transaction.
• After the agreement is completed, the Time Ghost’s world collapses into Annihilation. However, the Void Spirits follow Li Ziran’s soul back through the barrier and enter his Double Helix-shaped soul.
• The Void Spirits begin attaching themselves to his soul, multiplying, and attempting to seize control of his body. Li Ziran recognizes this as the Time Ghost’s true method of possession.
• Rather than panic, he notices that his liver reacts to the invading spirits. He removes the organ with his scalpel, causing the corresponding soul-light and its invading spirits to vanish. This confirms his theory that organs and the soul are directly connected.
• The chapter ends with Li Ziran realizing that the soul may function as the “code” of his organs—and that he might be able to absorb the weakened Time Ghost instead of being possessed by it.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran moves from fear and hesitation toward deliberate action. His traumatic memories of the slave gang reinforce his belief that taking the initiative is often the only path to survival.
• He displays increasing courage, analytical ability, and scientific curiosity, treating the possession attempt as an experiment rather than merely a threat.
• His understanding of his own body deepens. He confirms that his Elemental Organs are linked to his soul and discovers a possible method for resisting or exploiting soul-based attacks.
• Viya acts as a guide and catalyst, pushing Li Ziran toward the soul transaction while being unable to directly assist him inside the Cross.
• The Time Ghost is revealed to be far weaker and more desperate than expected, but its apparent helplessness conceals a dangerous possession mechanism.

Significant Themes

• Risk versus security: Li Ziran must choose between protecting his prosperous present and pursuing knowledge that could elevate him beyond his current limits.
• Taking initiative: His past suffering teaches him that passive obedience offers no real safety; decisive action can create a chance to survive.
• The nature of the soul: The chapter explores the soul as a tangible, structured system connected to the body and its organs.
• Knowledge through direct experience: Li Ziran gains insight into soul transactions and Oath Tablets only by personally entering the Time Ghost’s core.
• Predation and possession: The Void Spirits appear weak and harmless but behave like parasites, multiplying and attempting to replace the host’s original soul structure.
• Transformation of fear into control: What begins as a potentially terrifying supernatural encounter becomes an opportunity for Li Ziran to test his theories and possibly turn the threat to his advantage.

Important Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Viya: Viya pressures and instructs him to sign the agreement, while Li Ziran remains suspicious of both her motives and the Time Ghost’s reliability. Their interaction reflects a tense but useful alliance.
• Li Ziran and the Time Ghost: Their apparent transaction is actually an attempted possession. Li Ziran initially believes he is helping a dying creature, only to discover that the Ghost’s Void Spirits are trying to invade and copy his soul.
• Li Ziran and his own organs/soul: His liver becomes the key to countering the possession, proving that damage or manipulation of an organ affects its corresponding soul structure.

Summary of “Bowente’s Hidden Hand”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran studies the soul of an invading Time Ghost after removing a fire-aspected liver. The invading soul-specks vanish with the organ, confirming a direct connection between each physical organ and its corresponding structure in the soul.
• He theorizes that the soul functions as an operational code system for the body. Each organ has a unique soul manifestation, while the soul itself likely possesses a central “core,” analogous to the heart or brain.
• The Time Ghost’s invading light-specks move through Li Ziran’s soul, targeting different organs. They first attack the kidneys, reproducing their internal structures and gradually expanding through the soul.
• Li Ziran allows the invasion to continue so he can observe how possession works. The Time Ghost proceeds strategically, beginning with peripheral organs while avoiding the most vital ones.
• When the invaders reach the soul structure corresponding to Li Ziran’s brain, they encounter intense crimson resistance. Li Ziran realizes that this force does not belong to him but comes from Bowente, whose Void Spirit has secretly occupied part of his brain and is using it as a stronghold.
• The invading Time Ghost launches repeated attacks against the brain’s soul-cluster, but Bowente’s red energy destroys the invaders each time. This reveals that Bowente’s possession methods are more refined and deeply concealed than those of the weaker Time Ghost.
• During the conflict, Li Ziran discovers a tiny region of absolute darkness at the center of his soul. His thoughts disappear when they touch it, and the entire soul appears to revolve around it.
• He identifies this darkness as the Soul Origin Essence, the fundamental core of his existence. Bowente’s red energy is gradually surrounding and consuming it, suggesting that Bowente is attempting to erase Li Ziran’s identity by conquering his soul’s center.
• Terrified, Li Ziran breaks out of the soul vision. The invading Time Ghost has dissipated, but he immediately seeks Viya and asks whether his experience was real.
• Viya is shocked because ordinary beings should not be able to perceive their Soul Origin Essence. She reveals that, among the Void Spirit Church, only the First-Generation Time Ghost is known to have discovered it unaided.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran becomes more knowledgeable and confident in analyzing souls. Rather than immediately stopping the possession, he treats the invasion as an experiment, using it to map the connection between organs and their soul counterparts.
• He develops a clearer understanding of possession as a gradual, strategic process that advances from peripheral organs toward the brain and soul core.
• His curiosity and willingness to risk himself lead to a major breakthrough: he independently discovers the Soul Origin Essence, something even advanced Void Spirit practitioners struggle to perceive.
• His attitude shifts from fascination to alarm when he realizes Bowente is not merely hiding within him but actively consuming the center of his soul.
• Bowente is revealed as a much more dangerous and sophisticated enemy than the dying Time Ghost. His Void Spirit has infiltrated Li Ziran’s brain and is covertly advancing toward the Soul Origin Essence.
• Viya is shown to possess incomplete knowledge of Li Ziran’s capabilities. Her attempt to teach him about Void Spirits produces an unprecedented result that astonishes her.

Significant Themes

• The soul as a biological and informational system: The chapter portrays organs as having coded counterparts within the soul, suggesting that spiritual and physical anatomy mirror one another.
• Knowledge gained through danger: Li Ziran’s greatest discovery comes from allowing an enemy to invade him, turning a life-threatening event into an opportunity for investigation.
• Possession and identity: Control of the body is ultimately linked to control of the brain and, more fundamentally, the Soul Origin Essence. The destruction or occupation of this core threatens the existence of the individual.
• Hidden enemies and concealed power: Bowente’s presence is difficult to detect because he operates indirectly, allowing another Time Ghost to expose the structure of Li Ziran’s soul.
• Limits of established knowledge: Li Ziran’s discovery challenges what Viya and the Void Spirit Church believe is possible, implying that he may possess an unusual or unprecedented relationship with his own soul.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran observes and indirectly exploits the invading Time Ghost, allowing it to attack his organs so he can study the mechanics of possession.
• The Time Ghost’s invasion accidentally exposes Bowente’s hidden presence when it clashes with Bowente’s defenses around the brain.
• Li Ziran recognizes Bowente’s red energy as the force protecting—and simultaneously consuming—the deepest region of his soul.
• After escaping, Li Ziran urgently confronts Viya. His report leaves her stunned, as his perception of the Soul Origin Essence should be impossible under normal circumstances.

Chapter Summary: “Take Me Out of This Godforsaken Place”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Viya, desperate to escape Thorn Prison, reveals that Li Ziran’s soul talent is extraordinary: he has already touched his Soul Origin despite being young.
• Li Ziran attempts to remove Viya from the prison by using two Frogs transformed into bull-headed Corpse Witches to drag away the wine barrel containing her bound soul.
• The attempt fails because Viya’s soul is sealed to a Cross through Wood’s body. The force injures her Origin Essence, and she angrily warns Li Ziran not to interfere recklessly again.
• Viya explains that Void Spirits inhabit personal Void Spirit Worlds, which are created through spiritual power and connected to the First-Generation Time Ghost. Her initial “safe” method requires sacrificing part of one’s soul, effectively making the cultivator a potential replacement for the Time Ghost.
• Li Ziran rejects this dangerous method. Viya then offers a safer alternative: he must obtain a genuine Sealing Spell, the only power capable of undoing the Crosses binding her.
• She reveals that the Sealing Spell is controlled by the Inquisition’s leaders and suggests Li Ziran can reach its head through Jenny, whose father is the head of the Inquisition.
• Viya warns that Bowente’s Void Spirit will devour Li Ziran’s soul in roughly one month, giving him limited time to act.
• After Viya disappears into the black oil, Li Ziran begins treating Jenny, who is severely disfigured and injured by Corpse Oil. He plans to restore her appearance so she can serve as his connection to the Inquisition’s head.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran demonstrates both formidable soul abilities and growing strategic caution. He refuses Viya’s soul-sacrifice method and recognizes that cooperation requires trust, but also understands that both sides are manipulating one another.
• His attempt to free Viya reveals his willingness to take risks, though it also shows that he does not fully understand the prison’s seals.
• Li Ziran becomes increasingly pragmatic. He views Jenny as his most convenient route to the head of the Inquisition and resolves to preserve and restore her rather than seek a more difficult alternative.
• Viya shifts from fear and desperation to hostility and manipulation. She tests Li Ziran’s resolve, threatens to turn him into a sacrifice, and withholds information until he proves useful.
• Despite her cruelty, Viya’s disclosure of the First-Generation Time Ghost and the Sealing Spell indicates a tentative willingness to cooperate.
• Jenny is revealed to be the protected daughter of the Inquisition’s head. Her memories show her as innocent, sheltered, and fascinated by Judgment, making her a valuable political connection as well as a sympathetic figure.

Significant Themes

• Power and manipulation: Both Li Ziran and Viya treat information as leverage, offering knowledge only in exchange for something valuable.
• The sanctity and vulnerability of the soul: The soul is portrayed as the deepest expression of individuality, but it can also be sealed, invaded, sacrificed, or replaced.
• Trust within cooperation: Li Ziran realizes that an alliance built on concealed motives is unstable, and that genuine cooperation requires each side to reveal some sincerity.
• Pragmatism versus morality: Li Ziran’s plans are driven by necessity rather than affection. He intends to restore Jenny partly because she is his route to power, even as he carefully reads and experiences her memories.
• Identity and physical appearance: The effort to recreate Jenny’s face emphasizes how appearance, memory, emotion, and identity are interconnected. A merely accurate face would be useless if it failed to reflect her personality and expressions.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Viya: Their relationship remains tense and transactional. Li Ziran tries to control the situation physically, while Viya counters through threats and secret knowledge. Their confrontation establishes the terms of a reluctant partnership.
• Li Ziran and Jenny: Although Jenny remains unconscious, Li Ziran interacts with her through her memories and body. He studies her personality and emotions to reconstruct her face convincingly, treating her simultaneously as a person in need of rescue and as a means to reach her father.
• Viya and Jenny: Viya recalls meeting Jenny ten years earlier and receiving a Little Mouse from her, suggesting that Jenny’s innocence and privileged status made her memorable even within Thorn Prison.
• Jenny and her father: Though he does not appear directly, her father’s authority as head of the Inquisition has protected her throughout her life and now makes her central to Li Ziran’s plans.

Chapter Summary: “Crafting a Face”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Ziran leaves Thorn Prison after using Jenny to create a path toward the Inquisition’s leader. He briefly encounters Cavis, but their former relationship has deteriorated into awkward silence and mutual avoidance.
• He struggles with guilt over manipulating Jenny, recognizing that she is innocent and previously helped him. Nevertheless, he convinces himself that suppressing guilt and conserving effort are necessary traits for survival and strength.
• In Hippo Ancient City, Li Ziran observes the expanding slave trade and the growing popularity of body-part transplants. His own transplant business is spreading rapidly, increasing his influence and making him more difficult for others to overpower.
• He visits the city to obtain old snake skin and high-quality anesthetics from Snake People traders. After hiring a translator, he acquires the materials he needs and secures a bulk supply of Red-Eye Anesthetic.
• Returning to Snow World, he sees Baron’s Goblins rapidly dismantling the Giant corpse and gathering steel, suggesting that the construction project is progressing quickly.
• Li Ziran retreats to his private ice chamber and processes the snake skin. Using Carnivorous Flower sap, refined salt, and Purification Light, he removes impurities and transforms the rough skins into thin, transparent, high-quality material.
• With the finished snake skin prepared, he is ready to begin crafting a new face or mask.

Character Development

• Li Ziran becomes increasingly pragmatic and emotionally hardened. He acknowledges his guilt toward Jenny but deliberately suppresses it, believing that true strength requires the ability to act ruthlessly without hesitation.
• He also shows growing confidence in his influence and value. The spread of his transplant business makes him feel safer, since greater economic importance gives him protection from being easily exploited.
• Despite his ruthless choices, Li Ziran retains traces of sentimentality. He remembers the Snake People teacher who taught him about anesthetics and leather processing with genuine nostalgia.
• Cavis and Li Ziran’s relationship has shifted from familiarity to estrangement. Their silent encounter shows that their conflict has created emotional distance even though neither appears to harbor a simple personal hatred.
• Baron is established as an efficient and productive ally, rapidly organizing the Goblins’ work on the Giant corpse.

Significant Themes

• Pragmatism versus morality: Li Ziran’s manipulation of Jenny raises the question of whether survival justifies exploiting innocent people.
• The cost of becoming powerful: Li Ziran believes the strong must be capable of suppressing guilt, suggesting that power requires emotional sacrifice.
• Influence and protection: His expanding transplant business demonstrates how wealth, usefulness, and economic importance can serve as defenses in a dangerous world.
• Adaptation and craftsmanship: The chapter emphasizes the value of combining traditional knowledge, surgery, potions, and elemental magic to improve practical techniques.
• Transformation and identity: The careful creation of snake-skin material foreshadows the crafting of a new face, reinforcing themes of disguise, bodily alteration, and reconstructed identity.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran and Cavis encounter one another outside the Judgment Room but avoid speaking, revealing the tension and estrangement between them.
• Li Ziran indirectly uses Jenny’s position to advance his own goals, creating a morally complicated relationship despite her innocence.
• He negotiates with a Snake People shopkeeper, overcoming the language barrier by hiring a translator and securing both snake skin and anesthetics.
• His memories of the Snake People teacher highlight a formative relationship that contributed to his surgical expertise.
• He observes Baron and the Goblins at work but chooses not to interrupt them, reflecting both trust in Baron and his preference to work privately.

Chapter Summary: “The Prince Charming?”

Key Plot Points and Events

• After resting, Li Ziran resumes reconstructing Jenny’s destroyed face. He branches and connects her facial nerves and blood vessels using a newly developed “nerve docking” technique.
• He painstakingly applies roughly three hundred layers of specially prepared skin sheets, inserting capillaries and terminal nerves between each layer. The process is extremely repetitive and mentally exhausting, and a momentary distraction causes him to ruin ten skin sheets.
• While resting, Li Ziran studies Jenny’s memories to recreate her appearance, mannerisms, preferences, and knowledge of her father—the Director of the Inquisition.
• He learns that Jenny is innocent and idealistic, once dreaming of fighting mutants alongside her friends. He also discovers her childish fantasy of being rescued by a “Prince Charming.”
• Li Ziran completes the facial reconstruction, sculpting the skin until it perfectly matches Jenny’s final appearance. The restored face is placed onto the other girl’s body, effectively creating a convincing disguise.
• To gain access to the Director of the Inquisition and obtain the Sealing Curse Organ, Li Ziran devises a plan to present himself as Jenny’s “Prince Charming.” He surgically implants an embryo in her womb and alters the circumstances to make it appear that she has been affected by the Scarecrow’s desire-based powers.
• Realizing that Jenny’s friend Winnie would also need to be accounted for, he prepares to include her in the same fabricated story.
• Li Ziran chooses a location near the Scarecrow in Thorn Prison, arranges the two girls and himself, removes his wizard robe, and applies anesthetic to himself so the scene will appear authentic.

Character Developments

• Li Ziran demonstrates extraordinary surgical precision, patience, and technical creativity. Despite exhaustion and frustration, he forces himself to continue because of the dangers surrounding his larger plan.
• His study of Jenny’s memories gives him a more personal understanding of her innocence and personality, though he remains calculating and treats her primarily as a means to reach the Inquisition Director.
• Li Ziran recognizes that the Director is a formidable, highly disciplined opponent who will be difficult to deceive. This makes him refine his disguise and cover story rather than relying on a simple explanation.
• Jenny is portrayed through her memories as naïve, idealistic, and romantic, with a strong belief in heroic fantasies and the possibility of a Prince Charming.
• The Director of the Inquisition is characterized as stern, intelligent, meticulous, and burdened by constant worries. Li Ziran suspects he is at least Title-Class and may possess multiple soul mutations.

Significant Themes

• Appearance versus identity: Li Ziran reconstructs Jenny’s face so perfectly that physical appearance becomes a tool for deception and infiltration.
• Surgical mastery and obsession: The painstaking restoration emphasizes Li Ziran’s perfectionism and the enormous mental strain required by repeated, delicate work.
• Innocence versus manipulation: Jenny’s harmless dreams and idealism are repurposed by Li Ziran into elements of a calculated deception.
• Survival over morality: Li Ziran repeatedly justifies disturbing actions as necessary for survival and strategic success.
• Fantasy becoming reality: Jenny’s Prince Charming dream is twisted into a grotesque imitation when Li Ziran literally creates the circumstances for himself to appear as her rescuer.
• The importance of preparation: Li Ziran’s careful study of Jenny and the Director shows that successful deception depends on understanding both a target’s appearance and their relationships.

Character Interactions

• Li Ziran interacts primarily with the unconscious Jenny and her friend, treating them as subjects of surgery and components of his plan.
• Through Jenny’s memories, he indirectly encounters her friends, her father, and her romantic ideals.
• His imagined future interaction with the Director drives the entire operation: he must make his disguise and explanation convincing enough to fool a cautious, powerful investigator.
• He also accounts for Jenny’s friendship with Winnie, realizing that leaving her out would expose inconsistencies in the Scarecrow-based cover story.