Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• Chen Cuo’s attempt to probe the Blood Sea triggers a dangerous reaction: his consciousness is shattered, and a ghostly face begins forming in his palm. He senses that both the Blood Sea and the Buddhist School are involved in the schemes around him. Fearing the influence in his mind, he cuts off the memory with his Wisdom Sword.
• His incomplete true body is weakened by the effort, so he resolves to prepare for a journey west before the growing number of otherworldly players overwhelms him.
• At the Eastern Sea, Chen Cuo collects a remnant of the destroyed Blood Infant, preserving a fragment of its memory, then returns to the Sea Eye. There he finds figures imprisoned by chains and surrounded by the aura of the Ancient God Tian Wu. The Old Dragon King and Kui Mu Lang have been guarding the site; Chen approaches the bound Daoist Hai Xuan, whose face reminds him of Daoyinzi.
• Meanwhile, a fleet travels through Qi Land. A scar-faced Buddhist monk and his two companions discuss their plan to suppress Chen Cuo by breaking the common people’s bond with him. Chen’s many identities and widespread worship make him difficult to erase permanently.
• The monks expect the Blood Sea’s successor to join them, but Yao Dan arrives instead. She reports that her senior brother Nan Ke was killed by Chen Cuo at the Eastern Sea and warns that the Chen aboard the fleet may be only an incarnation—or an impostor.
• The scar-faced monk welcomes that possibility: they may be able to use the uncertainty to destroy the “Heart God” Chen represents in the people’s minds.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo shows caution and discipline, cutting off a dangerous line of thought rather than risking further influence. He remains determined to investigate the Sea Eye, while acknowledging the limits of his weakened true body.
• The Old Dragon King and Kui Mu Lang are relieved when Chen returns; Kui Mu Lang remains troubled by Bloodlight embedded in his Divine Body.
• The scar-faced monk emerges as a calculating strategist. He understands that Chen’s power rests not only on force, but also on popular faith and legend.
• Yao Dan delivers crucial intelligence and openly challenges the monks’ assumptions about which Chen they are facing. Her report shifts their strategy rather than ending their cooperation.
• Chen’s brief, silent attention to Daoist Hai Xuan links the Sea Eye mystery to his memories of Daoyinzi.

Significant themes

• Identity and uncertainty: The chapter questions which Chen is real and whether appearances can be trusted.
• Faith as power: Chen’s widespread worship makes him resilient, while his enemies target the people’s belief in him.
• Truth, illusion, and perception: The monks’ closing reflections suggest that falsehood may serve as a weapon against the “true” image held in people’s hearts.
• Dangerous knowledge and restraint: Chen learns that probing hidden powers can leave him exposed, and deliberately severs his own thoughts to protect himself.

Key plot points

• Yuwen Huaji studies the worsening military situation and worries that advancing to Luoyang may already be too late. The Buddhist radiance surrounding a nearby ship restores his confidence: he believes an arhat from the Upper Realm can help him pursue a hidden strategy.
• The scar-faced monk confirms that the person aboard the neighboring ship is an impostor and believes he has identified who arranged the deception. He plans to approach that hidden patron rather than deal with the impostor directly.
• The monk warns Yao Dan that her fear of Chen Cuo could become a Heart Demon and hinder her cultivation. He then recruits her to help undermine Chen Cuo: the plan is to use the impostor’s identity to commit notorious, tyrannical acts and destroy Chen Cuo’s reputation and Incense Root, limiting his ability to return through the Divine Path of Incense.
• Jiao Tongzi, watching nearby, is astonished when the monk is admitted to the Black-Robed Daoist’s room despite Jiao Tongzi himself having been refused.
• On a reef, Hai Xuan Zi meets Chen Cuo, his late Senior Brother Daoyinzi’s disciple. Hai Xuan Zi recounts Daoyinzi’s sacrifice for Taihua and laments that he died without leaving a legend. He believes Daoyinzi’s spirit was destroyed in the Great Calamity at Chang’an and cannot be restored.
• Hai Xuan Zi warns Chen Cuo that the upheaval at the Eastern Sea Sea Eye involves hidden dangers and urges him to beware the person operating behind the scenes.

Character developments and interactions

• Yuwen Huaji remains anxious about the campaign but regains hope through the Buddhist faction’s promised aid.
• Yao Dan recognizes that her fear of Chen Cuo is spiritually dangerous. Though unsettled, she accepts the monk’s advice and offers to take part in the scheme.
• The scar-faced monk reveals the Buddhist School’s goal: not simply to defeat Chen Cuo, but to attack the source of his power by ruining his reputation. His confidence suggests the scheme has backing from a powerful, unnamed figure.
• Jiao Tongzi’s surprise hints that the monk has privileged access or influence unavailable to others.
• Hai Xuan Zi shows deep reverence for Daoyinzi and affection for his disciple, while his failing health contrasts with the warning he gives Chen Cuo. Chen Cuo responds by lending him energy and listens to his counsel.

Significant themes

• Reputation as power: Public infamy may be used to sever Chen Cuo’s connection to worship and Incense.
• Fear and spiritual vulnerability: Fear of an adversary can become a Heart Demon and obstruct cultivation.
• Hidden threats and political maneuvering: The true danger may lie with unseen patrons and schemes rather than openly identifiable enemies.
• Legacy, loss, and remembrance: Hai Xuan Zi’s account raises the possibility that legends can preserve or restore the dead, while also confronting the irreversibility of Daoyinzi’s destruction.

Key plot points and events

• Elders and cultivators from the Great Islands Overseas gather near the battlefield, wary of the lingering aura and the enormous mountain rising from the sea. They speculate about the missing Islands Alliance Leader and whether he has suffered a fate similar to the defeated cultivators.
• Aquatic powers also assemble, while the Dragon Sons keep order. Ke Jun challenges their authority and asks after the Dragon Lord, but Ao Zheng explains that the Dragon Lord is guarding the reef under strict orders.
• Hai Xuan Zi’s disciples arrive, surprised to find prominent Eastern Sea cultivators welcoming them. After decades of suspicion and mistreatment, they learn that their master has been rescued.
• Chen Cuo quietly steps away as Hai Xuan Zi reunites with Wang Chuanyu. Hai Xuan Zi apologizes for the hardships his disciples endured and asks the Old Dragon King to protect them while he recovers from his injuries, which will take about a year.
• Chen Cuo detects and destroys faint wisps of Incense Smoke Aura carrying onlookers’ admiration, envy, and longing. The Yellow-Robed Deity Kui Mu Lang appears and discusses the difficult requirements for returning someone from legend: a True Spirit, a foundation of human-world offerings, and enduring traces or stories.
• Hoping to find a clue about legendary existence, Chen Cuo asks whether Kui Mu Lang was once called Li Xiong. Kui Mu Lang has heard the name but knows only that its bearer founded a dynasty, leaving Chen Cuo’s theory unresolved.
• Chen Cuo says he has little left to do in the Eastern Sea beyond visiting Penglai, then senses something and turns toward it.

Character developments and interactions

• Hai Xuan Zi is reunited with his disciples and shows remorse for their suffering. Though weakened, he remains confident that Chen Cuo’s protection will keep them safe.
• Wang Chuanyu arrives guarded and bewildered, reflecting years of persecution, but is relieved to see his master again.
• The Old Dragon King offers to protect Hai Xuan Zi’s disciples, though he seems to have another matter on his mind.
• Chen Cuo continues seeking a way to restore his master from legend. His questions about Kui Mu Lang reveal a developing theory that worship and historical memory may shape a deity’s identity.
• Kui Mu Lang advises Chen Cuo against pursuing the seemingly near-impossible return, but answers his questions without pressing when Chen Cuo withholds his reasoning.
• Ke Jun resents the Dragon Sons’ authority, highlighting tensions between established aquatic powers and the Dragon Palace’s renewed control.

Significant themes

• Power and political realignment: The battlefield’s outcome changes how the Eastern Sea treats Hai Xuan Zi and his disciples; former enemies now seek favor.
• Faith, memory, and divinity: Chen Cuo considers whether worship transformed a historical ruler into a deity, and the chapter links legend to offerings, stories, and traces left in the world.
• Recovery and responsibility: Hai Xuan Zi’s reunion brings both emotional relief and the practical question of protecting his disciples while he heals.
• Conviction versus outside influence: Chen Cuo and Kui Mu Lang reflect on how even cultivators can be swayed by admiration, envy, and other external forces.

Key plot points

• Chen Cuo returns to the mist-shrouded city he created by combining Gray Mist and the Jade-Belt Peach Paradise. Cultivators mistake it for a newly surfaced Divine Treasury, but Chen Cuo sweeps them away and enters. Kui Mu Lang guards the entrance, while the Old Dragon King arrives later and waits to speak with Chen Cuo.
• In a separate encounter aboard a ship, a Scarred-Face Monk tries to recruit the Black-Robed Daoist, who has been acting under Chen Cuo’s name. The Daoist refuses, rejecting the monk’s attempt to dismiss him as a mere rumor or counterfeit.
• The monk then proposes turning public anger against gods and rulers by exploiting human suffering. He abducts a severely disabled woman and plans to present her as the long-dead “last princess of the Qi Kingdom,” supposedly tortured by a lord of Southern Chen. Yao Dan takes the woman away, but the monk believes the story can serve its purpose even if many people doubt it.

Character developments and interactions

• Black-Robed Daoist: Firmly defines himself through the stories and memories that shaped him. Though he accepts that he is not the legendary person those stories describe, betraying them would mean ceasing to be himself.
• Scarred-Face Monk: Reveals himself as a calculating political manipulator. He speaks of compassion and justice, but treats the woman’s suffering—and the public’s grief—as tools for directing unrest.
• Yao Dan: Challenges the monk’s hypocrisy and questions whether his scheme will work. Despite her disgust, she agrees to help arrange it, apparently constrained by her ancestor’s instructions, then leaves with the woman.
• Chen Cuo and Kui Mu Lang: Their authority keeps outsiders from entering the mist-city, which observers wrongly regard as a treasure site.

Significant themes

• Identity and selfhood: The Daoist insists that a being shaped by stories is not simply a false copy; those stories are part of his present identity.
• Truth, rumor, and propaganda: The monk argues that a politically useful story need not be believed by everyone. It only needs to give people a target for existing anger.
• Compassion versus exploitation: The chapter contrasts genuine concern for suffering with the monk’s performative pity, which turns a victim into an instrument.
• Power and popular grievance: Longstanding hardship can be redirected toward a chosen enemy, making public emotion a force that leaders and schemers can manipulate.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Inside Chen Cuo’s Illusory Realm, Azureblood True Lord urges True Person Wangsheng to compete for the city-lord position. Wangsheng seeks the office not for its authority, but for the chance to investigate the mysteries of Void and Reality.
• Wangsheng briefly begins to recognize that his surroundings are artificial, but a cheering crowd distracts him. The celebration is for Chen Guangrui, who has won first place in an imperial examination after ten years of study. Wangsheng regains his resolve and flies off to challenge the city’s leadership.
• Watching from above, Chen Cuo sees that the city’s conflicting additions—its examination system, city-lord contest, monster mountains, and human-monster customs—are making the Illusory Realm unstable. Cracks spread through its sky. Unlike a true Divine Treasury, it cannot naturally reconcile contradictions or alter the past, so Chen Cuo doubts it can produce the legends he needs.
• The Old Dragon King returns from Penglai with a Jade Slip containing a method for storing Peach Paradise Fragments. Penglai offers it partly as an apology over Luo Sheng.
• The Dragon King asks Chen Cuo to protect his daughter, a reborn Dragon Lady with a congenital Mystic Yin Body and a connection to the Sea Eye, whose fate carries a deadly tribulation. Chen Cuo postpones the discussion when he senses an opportunity.
• Using the Jade Slip’s Pure Qi, Chen Cuo triggers a five-day transformation of the Gray Mist. It gathers into a sphere filled with visions of the cosmos and draws in spiritual energy. When it breaks apart, Chen Cuo declares the process complete and stores the mist and several figures in his sleeve.
• Dark, spiteful energy then rises from Qilu Land, crosses into the Great Hua Secret Realm, and forms chains around Chen Cuo’s true body. He recognizes them as the Demon-Binding Cord.

Character developments and interactions

• Wangsheng remains ambitious and focused on reaching the city-lord seat, though his moment of near-awakening suggests the Illusory Realm’s influence is not absolute.
• Azureblood True Lord, having lost much of his power and his own chance at leadership, supports Wangsheng and offers to gather intelligence on his rivals. Their present friendship contrasts with their former rivalry in the outside world.
• Chen Cuo shifts from observing the realm’s collapse to pursuing a larger undertaking through the Jade Slip. He remains alert to dangers outside the Illusory Realm.
• The Old Dragon King shows gratitude to Chen Cuo, delivers Penglai’s offering, and seeks his help for his daughter. Kui Mu Lang recognizes the Dragon Lady’s unusual nature and explains her potential and peril.

Significant themes

• Illusion versus reality: The Illusory Realm’s logical flaws reveal the difference between a constructed stage and a world capable of making its stories cohere.
• Ambition and distraction: Wangsheng’s pursuit of power survives even his brief doubts, while public celebration pulls him back into the realm’s narrative.
• Fate, merit, and obligation: The Dragon King frames his request through his daughter’s troubled destiny and his debt to Chen Cuo.
• Creation and instability: Adding stories and systems to a world can enrich it, but without a way to reconcile contradictions, the structure may fracture.
• Hidden threats: Just as Chen Cuo completes one major cultivation step, a force from beyond the mist reaches his true body.

Key plot points

• Mysterious Black Chains attack Chen Cuo. Unlike the Demon-Binding Cord, they seem designed specifically to harm him, driven by intense hatred and carrying a trace of the River of Time’s power.
• Chen Cuo uses Myriad Manifestations to disrupt and reverse the chains’ advance, then counters with his own Demon-Binding Cord. The two sets clash, but the hostile chains gradually gain the advantage.
• Chen Cuo remains composed, confident he can defend himself, but concludes the chains’ unusual power and focused malice must have a cause. Since the black qi originated in Qi-Lu, he suspects its source lies there.
• At the Eastern Sea, Chen Cuo’s incarnation leaves the unconscious Chen Guangrui and an old woman in the Old Dragon King’s care. He asks the Dragon King to protect them without giving Chen Guangrui special treatment or interfering with his ordinary life.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo demonstrates his knowledge of the chains, the River of Time, and his own abilities. Rather than panic, he shifts from defense to investigating the threat’s origin.
• The Old Dragon King is eager to serve Chen Cuo and agrees to protect the pair. He privately suspects Chen Guangrui may be related to Chen Cuo because of their resemblance and the young man’s remarkable, untrained physique.
• Chen Cuo and the Dragon King show a clear difference in approach: the Dragon King wants to lavish protection on Chen Guangrui, while Chen Cuo insists that he be allowed to live normally.

Significant themes

• The past’s power in the present: The River of Time can strengthen objects and let them cross boundaries that would normally stop them.
• Hidden causes and unresolved history: The chains’ hatred suggests a specific grievance or connection yet to be uncovered.
• Protection versus ordinary life: Chen Cuo seeks to keep Chen Guangrui safe without letting that protection define or distort his life.
• Power and limitation: Even Chen Cuo’s formidable techniques can be challenged by an artifact sustained by forces he cannot fully refine or control.

Chen Cuo lets the Old Dragon King keep news of him within the Dragon Palace, both to protect his privacy and to leave the king a chance to help him later. He then questions Kui Mu Lang, a Heavenly Court star official sent to assist him. Kui explains that a Blood Sea disciple injured his divine essence and tainted his Divine Thought, leaving him unable to help for now. He describes the Blood Sea Ancestor as an ancient, immensely powerful being sustained by legends and repeatedly restored after defeat—including a period as a Dao Lord’s disciple and Heaven’s Proxy in Upholding the Dao. Thunder breaks out as Kui speaks, signaling the danger of the secret. Chen Cuo recognizes the risk and does not press him.
Kui also explains that True Immortals are rare even across the vast Beyond-Mundane realms. Chen Cuo plans to ask more once Kui recovers, while assuring him he will not force him to reveal forbidden knowledge. Before leaving, Chen Cuo confirms he has accepted the Old Dragon King’s Jade Slip and agrees to take responsibility for the king’s youngest daughter, who will stay with one of his companions. He departs urgently, following an unseen connection.
As Chen Cuo approaches the Grand Canal, he senses growing black qi—an accumulation of resentment, hatred, and anger—and suspects a scheme to ruin the name of “Chen Fangqing,” possibly tied to the Blood Sea or to the man who imitates him. In a city, he hears people blaming Chen Fangqing and the Southern Chen for their hardship, idealizing the former Qi dynasty and its emperors, and believing their suffering stems from Chen Fangqing’s rise to power.
Character developments and interactions: Chen Cuo remains cautious and perceptive, showing compassion by sparing Kui from dangerous questioning, while also acting decisively when he senses a crisis. Kui shifts from anxious deference to guarded explanation, revealing what he can but fearing the consequences. The Old Dragon King is discreet and wary of heavenly secrets, yet trusts Chen Cuo and seeks his help for his daughter.
Themes: The chapter emphasizes the power and danger of legends, hidden cosmic politics, and the way reputation can be manipulated. It also contrasts private truth with public belief: while Chen Cuo investigates the forces behind events, ordinary people’s grievances are being shaped into hatred and blame.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Cuo enters a city where people are spreading elaborate accusations about “Chen Fangqing,” blaming him for abusing a Northern Qi princess and condemning Southern Chen.
• He sees their resentment as black vapor flowing into the River of History and realizes that ordinary people’s words and opinions help shape its waters.
• At a street corner, he encounters the “Start of Summer Six Young Masters,” shabby scholars who are stirring public hatred with dramatic, detailed stories and nostalgia for Northern Qi.
• Chen Cuo challenges them, arguing that their accounts are inventions and that the Gao rulers they praise were hardly virtuous. He also senses Buddha Light, hidden threads, and faint incense power around the men, suggesting outside forces are supporting them.
• The storytellers turn the crowd against Chen Cuo, and social pressure pushes even hesitant bystanders to join the mob. As the crowd closes in, Chen Cuo releases a powerful laugh that shakes the street, then freezes hundreds of people with a gesture.
• He says he will give the self-proclaimed righteous people a chance to rescue the princess. Gray Mist spreads over the city, drawing everyone who carried black vapor into an apparent scene of Northern Qi’s collapse, filled with blood, battle, and a fleeing woman.
• Elsewhere, a scar-faced monk senses Chen Cuo’s arrival and welcomes his apparent loss of composure, believing it will help the monk’s plan.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo moves from observing the crowd’s anger to grasping how collective speech influences history. He remains composed under provocation, but responds forcefully when the mob threatens him and others. His decision to place the crowd inside a historical-looking crisis suggests he intends to test their professed compassion.
• The Start of Summer Six Young Masters present themselves as defenders of the fallen Qi and its princess, but their careful adjustments to what they say, their hostility to scrutiny, and the supernatural traces around them raise doubts about their motives and independence.
• The crowd and bystanders are swept from indignation into intimidation and conformity. The bystanders retreat at first, then turn against Chen Cuo when accused and pressured.
• The scar-faced monk interprets Chen Cuo’s intervention as spiritual weakness and sees it as an opening for his next move.

Significant themes

• History and collective memory: Public stories and resentment are not merely commentary; they feed into and shape the River of History.
• Manipulation and propaganda: Dramatic, specific narratives can make invention seem credible, especially when reinforced by authority and emotion.
• Mob pressure and conformity: People who hesitate can be coerced into acting against their own judgment.
• Righteousness versus performance: The storytellers’ claims of moral courage are tested when they are given a chance to act.
• Appearance, reality, and spiritual perception: Chen Cuo notices hidden supernatural influences, while the monk believes Chen Cuo himself is failing to distinguish reality from illusion.

Plot points

• Yu Shinan records that rumors are damaging Chen Cuo’s reputation and influencing even Yuwen Huaji. He suspects the rumors are deliberate, but does not know who is behind them.
• Chen Cuo senses that the twelve Dao Marks he entrusted to the River of Time have sunk deeper. He wonders whether the rumors might benefit him after all.
• On Yuwen Huaji’s ship, Yuwen Chengdu confronts his father and Daoist Lu Li for plotting against the Marquis of Linru County. Lu Li claims the Daoist aboard the fleet is an impostor—not True Person Soaring—and says they were discussing how to remove him from the ship.
• A nearby ship suddenly catches fire. The Black-Robed Daoist emerges and is attacked by the Scarred-Face Monk, who uses a golden formation and the people’s curses against Chen Fangqing and Southern Chen to bind and capture him.
• The monk plans to use the impostor as a conduit, turning public belief into a weapon against Chen Cuo through a “False-to-True Substitution Method.” Chen Cuo recognizes the scheme but decides to exploit it: by borrowing the Buddhist School’s momentum and reaching the people through the rumors, he will try to draw the River of Time’s power into himself.
• Chen Cuo’s action triggers a supernatural upheaval: thunder rolls, the River of Time appears in the sky, the dynasty’s Dragon Vein trembles, and the long-quiet Underworld Office stirs. King of Biancheng awakens, sensing an attempt to subdue the mortal dynasty’s True Dragon Aura.

Character developments and interactions

• Yu Shinan shows caution and insight, recognizing how persistent rumors can shape public belief. He hides his observations for safekeeping.
• Yuwen Chengdu openly defies his ambitious father, prioritizing the safety of the Yuwen clan and objecting to any plan that could provoke Chen Cuo.
• Yuwen Huaji is angry and increasingly rattled, torn between his ambitions, his trust in Lu Li, and the risks of antagonizing Chen Cuo.
• Daoist Lu Li tries to calm the dispute and conceal his knowledge, but his claim that the Black-Robed Daoist is an impostor does not satisfy Chengdu.
• The Scarred-Face Monk reveals himself as the architect of a deliberate effort to manipulate public opinion and exploit Cause and Effect. Yao Dan questions the danger of using an impostor, but the monk proceeds regardless.
• Chen Cuo remains composed and turns an apparent attack on his reputation into an opportunity to advance his own power.

Significant themes

• Rumor and public belief: Repeated lies can become accepted as truth and reshape a person’s reputation.
• Truth, identity, and substitution: The monk’s method depends on making an impostor seem real—and the real figure seem false.
• Reputation as power: Stories and public opinion can affect supernatural forces, not merely political standing.
• Fortune within misfortune: Chen Cuo treats the plot against him as a possible opening.
• Ambition and loyalty: Chengdu’s confrontation with Huaji exposes the cost of unchecked ambition and the strain it places on family loyalty.

Plot points

• The Black-Robed Daoist awakens bound inside a golden formation threaded with resentment. The Scarred-Face Monk identifies it as the Bone-Destroying Slander Formation, which turns hostile words and thoughts into a force that can damage its target’s body and spirit.
• The monk explains that Buddhist temples across the Central Plains supply the formation with incense prayers, Buddha Light, and the accumulated thoughts of believers. The Black-Robed Daoist realizes the monks intend to broadcast slander from Qi-Lu throughout the world.
• The formation is meant to use the Daoist’s appearance as a model for a terrifying Demon God resembling Chen Cuo. By making people fear and remember this image, the monks hope to permanently ruin Chen Cuo’s reputation and defeat him through the collective will of the populace.
• Prayer beads pierce the Daoist, channeling resentment into him. His suffering fuels the formation, which spreads a golden network linking temples across the Nine Provinces and projects a colossal, three-headed, nine-armed Demon God into the sky.
• The Scarred-Face Monk declares that Chen Cuo will be powerless and celebrates the apparent success of his plan. A voice suddenly challenges him from behind, questioning how Buddhist donations—and even believers’ families and children—are being used. The monk is startled; the speaker’s identity is not yet revealed.

Character developments and interactions

• The Black-Robed Daoist moves from confusion to understanding, then condemns the monk’s scheme as hypocrisy. Though trapped and in agony, he recognizes that he is being made to suffer in Chen Cuo’s place and refuses to accept the plan’s moral justification.
• The Scarred-Face Monk remains calm and self-righteous, framing mass manipulation as a righteous effort to expose the Chen Household and uphold the proper path. His confidence turns to alarm when confronted by the unseen speaker.
• Their exchange reveals a deep conflict between the monk’s claimed moral purpose and the cruelty of his methods: he dismisses the Daoist’s objections while using him as a tool.

Significant themes

• Slander as power: Collective rumor and hostility can become a force capable of reshaping bodies, reputations, and history.
• Manipulation of belief: Religious institutions and sincere devotion are being exploited to influence the population.
• Image versus truth: The monks aim to replace a complex reality with a frightening, memorable image of Chen Cuo.
• Hypocrisy and righteousness: The chapter questions whether noble language can disguise coercion and cruelty.
• Collective will: The formation turns shared thoughts into a weapon, suggesting that public belief can alter the balance of power.

• Attack on the false Marquis: The Buddhist School’s formation traps the Black-Robed Daoist—an impostor resembling Chen Cuo—with chains and prayer beads that fill him with black qi and torment his mind. Jiao Tongzi first mistakes the captive for the legendary True Person Soaring, then concludes he must be a fake when he fails to break free. Daoist Lu Li likewise reassures Yuwen Huaji that the prisoner cannot be the real Marquis of Linru.
• Yuwen Chengdu challenges his father: Huaji is relieved that the captive seems false and wants to avoid taking sides. Chengdu condemns his father’s habitual neutrality: the monks attacked on Huaji’s ships, and the rumors spreading there could implicate the family. He urges Huaji to back Chen Cuo and use the monks’ attack as a reason to declare loyalty. He also links Huaji’s indecision to their family’s past failure to seize power. Huaji resents the criticism but is unsettled by it. A mysterious Old Beggar supports Chengdu’s argument and warns Huaji that his temper and self-interest may lead him to ruin.
• The real Chen Cuo arrives: Chen Cuo appears before the formation, and his presence frightens those on the ships. The Scarred-Face Monk claims Chen is too late to stop the Buddhist School from shaping public memory: once a story takes hold, he argues, it becomes history. He invokes the Demon God above and the faith of temples and believers across the world to create a Golden Bell Shield around himself.
• Chen exposes the scheme: Chen accuses the monks of manufacturing demons to make Buddhism seem indispensable. He recognizes that the captive is a victim, not a willing accomplice, and expresses sympathy for his suffering. He also identifies a more distant Buddhist influence from the western Outer Regions, which is stirring conflict and harvesting the resulting wishes for its own purposes.
• Chen turns the trap against its makers: Using a Five-Zhu Coin, Chen exchanges places with the captive, freeing the Black-Robed Daoist while entering the formation himself. The cruel words unleashed against him cannot hold him: he dismisses them as passing wind and mud. He then confronts the Scarred-Face Monk, declaring that the monk has already drawn his will into the Buddha Land and thereby given him a way inside.
• The Demon God is seized; the monk is defeated: Chen’s Five-Colored Divine Light pins down the monk, while Chen enters the Demon God modeled on himself and takes control of it—claiming it will become his thirteenth Dao Mark. The formation’s backlash leaves the monk vulnerable. Chen crushes the monk’s borrowed mortal body and then uses his divine light to pursue the escaping Buddha Spirit; the chapter ends as it tries to flee.
  Character developments and relationships: Chen is compassionate toward the captive impostor yet forceful toward those exploiting him. Chengdu emerges as a politically perceptive, decisive critic of his father, while Huaji remains torn between caution and ambition. The Scarred-Face Monk’s confidence in collective faith and engineered “popular will” collapses once Chen turns the formation and its demon against him.
  Themes: The chapter examines how power can manufacture “history” by shaping belief; the manipulation of faith and public opinion; the danger of indecision in politics; and the difference between a person’s identity and the role others force upon them. It also contrasts compassion for the deceived with accountability for those who exploit them.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Cuo defeats the Scarred-Face Monk, suppressing the arhat phantom with Heart Fire and capturing his True Spirit. The monk warns that the Demon God of Chaotic Times may turn against Chen Cuo, prompting Chen to question whether the Buddhists were truly controlling it—or cultivating it.
• Two more monks attack, while Yao Dan tries to flee. Chen scatters the monks’ attacks, captures the monks as Shariras, and restrains Yao Dan for later judgment because she helped operate the Grand Formation.
• Jiao Tongzi arrives, newly on the verge of reaching a higher realm. He credits Chen with inspiring his breakthrough and praises him as unmatched.
• The Western Buddha Light supporting the Bone-Destroying Slander Formation begins to withdraw, destabilizing the formation. Conflicting faiths, loyalties, and collective wishes erupt into chaos, threatening a catastrophic collapse across Qi-Lu.
• Chen realizes the western Buddhists may be abandoning the disaster they created, hoping he will bear the blame while they retain their gains. Rather than accept that, he resolves to turn the collapse against them.
• He stabilizes the Demon God of Chaotic Times and prepares to claim the thirteenth Dao Mark, declaring that he will make his reputation as “Buddha’s Foe” deserved. He opens the Vertical Eye between his brows.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo remains composed and strategically ruthless: he captures his enemies, questions their motives, and sees through the western Buddhists’ apparent attempt to shift responsibility. He moves from containing the crisis to planning retaliation.
• The Scarred-Face Monk dies defeated but leaves Chen with a warning about the demon god, raising doubts about Buddhist control of it.
• Yao Dan pleads that she opposed parts of the monks’ plan, but Chen refuses to trust her without investigating.
• Jiao Tongzi has gained a breakthrough and approaches Chen with gratitude and admiration; Chen is briefly embarrassed by the extravagant praise.
• The western Buddhists, though absent, emerge as the likely architects of the crisis and its intended beneficiaries.

Significant themes

• Faith as a dangerous force: Collective belief and desire, once unified, become destructive when their organizing influence disappears.
• Manipulation and responsibility: The chapter questions who truly controls the demon and who should answer for the formation’s catastrophe.
• Power and reputation: Chen embraces the title “Buddha’s Foe,” turning an insult into a deliberate challenge.
• Retaliation through strategy: Chen plans to punish his opponents without needing to confront them directly.

Plot points and events

• At Guishan Temple, an unseen force holds back the Buddha Light trying to leave the Great Hero Hall. A senior monk is straining to seal the temple and prevent its accumulated power from joining the Buddhist School’s response to Chen Fangqing.
• His aged grandmaster warns that the Buddha Light was intended for the Buddha Land and that resisting the Emperor’s command could damage the monk’s foundation and bring punishment. The monk refuses to betray the lord whose kindness enabled his cultivation.
• Across the land, temples send their stored Buddha Light to a great formation above the Grand Canal. Chen Cuo counters by pouring his Myriad Manifestation Thoughts into the formation, where they rapidly become its influential, leading thoughts.
• He sets the formation’s chaotic thoughts alight and uses Pure Qi to give them humanlike forms. The thought-figures split into factions and attack one another.
• Chen Cuo sweeps the formation with Black-and-White Light, collapsing it. The returning force carries the divided thoughts back along their connection to the streams of Buddha Light, spreading discord through the Buddhist School’s network.
• With the formation destroyed and the Three-Headed, Nine-Armed Demon God losing shape, Chen Cuo flies upward to continue pursuing the Dao Mark rather than abandon his goal of becoming Buddha’s foe.

Character developments and interactions

• The monk at Guishan Temple shows loyalty and gratitude by resisting a powerful religious authority despite the personal cost. His grandmaster takes a more cautious view, stressing the danger and scale of the Buddhist School’s campaign.
• Chen Cuo demonstrates quick improvisation, turning the formation’s own mechanism against it. He adapts when his thoughts unexpectedly become its leaders, then uses that opening to fracture the Buddhist School’s collective unity.
• Jiao Tongzi, Daoist Lu Li, Yuwen Huaji, and Yuwen Chengdu observe the formation’s transformation. Yuwen Huaji recognizes the significance of Chen Cuo’s method, while Yuwen Chengdu pointedly reminds Lu Li that he had predicted it.

Significant themes

• Turning an opponent’s methods against them: Chen Cuo answers the Buddhist School’s use of mass belief and shared thought by sowing division through the same network.
• Unity and factionalism: The Buddhist School’s strength comes from a common creed, but that unity is vulnerable to internal disagreements.
• Loyalty versus obedience: The Guishan monk chooses personal gratitude over compliance with the Emperor’s command and the wider religious plan.
• Power and consequences: Chen Cuo’s success disrupts a vast spiritual organization, while the monk risks his cultivation by resisting it.

Key plot points and events

• The Grand Formation collapses, leaving the Demon God—formed from people’s hostile thoughts about Chen Cuo—unstable and on the verge of breaking apart.
• Chen Cuo enters the Demon God to subdue it. The thoughts attack him, but he notices that, as they approach, they begin to acquire the aura of the mysterious Mountain Spirits.
• He tests this connection: a particularly vicious thought transforms into an invisible, infiltrating force. Chen Cuo destroys it, then freezes the remaining thoughts with Pure Qi.
• The thoughts appear as confused people in Green Smoke. Chen Cuo explains that only their thoughts were drawn into the Demon God, but they respond with abuse and accusations.
• He challenges their professed outrage by asking whether they would sacrifice a little Fortune to help the fallen Qi dynasty. When they learn the cost could bring lasting misfortune, they refuse and claim they were merely caught up in the crowd.
• Chen Cuo concludes that the group came prepared at someone’s request. He forcibly draws thoughts from them, causing the collapsing Demon God’s body to reassemble.

Character developments

• Chen Cuo shifts from intending simply to suppress the hostile thoughts to investigating their apparent connection to Mountain Spirits. He sees the Demon God as an opportunity to gain the thirteenth Dao Mark and learn more about the forces beyond the mundane world.
• He also reveals a pragmatic, skeptical view of public righteousness: he believes many people condemn him because it is easy, socially rewarded, and seemingly consequence-free.
• The crowd’s claimed loyalty to the former Qi dynasty proves shallow when supporting it would require personal sacrifice. The Start of Summer Six Young Master, who had seemed especially indignant, is reduced to nervous evasion.

Significant themes

• Crowd morality and hypocrisy: People can loudly champion justice while avoiding any real cost or responsibility.
• Rumor and political resentment: The crowd’s condemnation of Chen Cuo rests on accusations and inherited outrage rather than firsthand knowledge.
• Thought as a supernatural force: Collective feelings can form a being, and hostile thoughts may transform into Mountain Spirits.
• Power and coercion: Chen Cuo exposes the crowd’s motives, but ultimately uses force to control them and preserve the Demon God.

Character interactions

• Chen Cuo confronts the hostile crowd directly, first restraining it and then challenging its members to prove their loyalty through sacrifice.
• The crowd answers his accusations with curses, then retreats into fear and excuses when confronted with the consequences of giving up Fortune.
• Chen Cuo singles out the Start of Summer young master for questioning, but rejects his apology and insists the group’s participation was deliberate and possibly organized.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Cuo reshapes his three-headed, nine-armed Demon God into a form resembling himself and pours his will, Spirit Light, and Magic Power into it.
• In the Buddhist School’s Peach Paradise, a young monk on a Nine Grades Lotus Throne is overseeing an effort to defeat Chen Fangqing, drawing on the accumulated Buddha Light of more than three hundred temples.
• Chen Cuo’s Thoughts of Discord erupt inside the Buddha Land and threaten to spread through its links to the temples, potentially fracturing the Buddhist School.
• The monk expels the visiting monks, gathers Buddha Light from Golden Body Buddha projections, and seals the Discord thoughts beneath the Buddha Land. This contains the immediate threat but also traps Chen Cuo’s guiding thoughts there.
• Chen Cuo recognizes the monk’s countermeasure and merges his Incarnation with the Demon God. Determined to destroy the Buddhist School’s influence, he tears open a passage through the Buddha Light and enters the Peach Paradise.

Character developments

• Chen Cuo proves both strategically inventive and uncompromising: he turns the Buddhist School’s accumulated power against it, then decides to confront its leader directly when the plan is contained.
• The young monk, or Buddha Lord, reveals himself as a formidable and vigilant protector. Though his body cracks under the strain, he prioritizes saving the other monks and containing the danger.
• The visiting monks shift from confidence in the Buddhist School’s victory—and political speculation about Li Tang’s coming rule—to alarm when the Buddha Lord is endangered.

Significant themes

• Thought as power: Thoughts can be shaped into forces, transmitted across spiritual networks, and used to corrupt or defend an entire realm.
• Accumulated power and its risks: The temples’ centuries of gathered Buddha Light provide great strength but also create a network that Chen Cuo can exploit.
• Escalation and retaliation: The Buddhist School’s repeated schemes against Chen Cuo intensify his resolve to strike at its foundations.
• Political ambition: The monks connect their religious campaign to the spread of Buddhist teachings and the anticipated rise of Li Tang.

Character interactions

• The monks debate whether Chen Fangqing can be defeated and discuss how victory might advance Buddhist influence in the Central Lands.
• When the Discord thoughts threaten to spread, the Buddha Lord orders the monks out and protects them before sealing the danger.
• Chen Cuo’s thoughts clash indirectly with the Buddha Lord’s defenses; after his plan is contained, Chen Cuo enters the Buddha Land himself to face the Buddhist power at its source.

Key events

• Chen Cuo enters the Buddha Land in the form of the Nine-Armed Demon God. The young monk, who has been sealing dissenting thoughts, confronts him and uses the land’s power and Buddha manifestations to crush the Demon God.
• Speaking through the Demon God, Chen Cuo challenges the monk’s authority: the Buddhist School draws strength from ordinary people’s Incense and thoughts, yet suppresses their words and claims the right to guide them.
• Chen Cuo reveals himself and argues that the Buddhists are outsiders who have become masters over the people who sustain them. He warns that they cannot accept people’s devotion while refusing the limits and criticism that come with it.
• The Buddha manifestations begin to crack under the Demon God’s strain. Chen Cuo merges the Twelve Stars into it, restoring its arms and empowering it to seize the Buddhas, making the Buddha Land tremble. He recognizes that the Buddha shadows may be the land’s core and hold centuries of accumulated Incense.
• The monk brings out a stronger weapon: his Past Buddha Body, drawn from a mysterious river and formed from Buddhist legends. Incense transforms its decayed, suffering form into one of flourishing Fortune. The monk intends to use it to trap and seal Chen Cuo in a “Legend Cage,” and the chapter ends as it attacks.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo combines physical force with pointed argument. He shows growing insight into the Buddha Land’s workings, while remaining confident that he is more capable in combat than debate.
• The young monk presents himself as a benevolent guide, but Chen Cuo’s accusations provoke visible anger. He shifts from suppressing Chen Cuo with the land’s power to unveiling a supposedly decisive, legend-backed weapon.
• Their confrontation is both a battle and an ideological clash: the monk claims authority to control harmful ideas for people’s good; Chen Cuo insists that those who depend on the people’s thoughts must answer to them.

Significant themes

• Power and accountability: Drawing strength from people’s belief should entail accepting their influence and criticism.
• Censorship versus guidance: The monk calls suppression protection; Chen Cuo frames it as self-serving control.
• Legend and accumulated belief: The Past Buddha Body demonstrates how stories and Incense can turn apparent decline into immense power.
• Rapid rise and fragility: The Buddhist School’s flourishing depends on the same popular support that could challenge its authority.

Plot points and events

• The young monk unleashes a Past Legend Dharma Body, an aged Buddha formed from settled thoughts of the past, to bind and dissolve Chen Cuo’s Nine-Armed Demon God with Buddha Light.
• The River of Time reveals the Buddha’s decline: once an idealistic monk who wanted to save the world, he became consumed by gathering power and controlling the Buddha Land’s monks.
• Chen notices that the young monk is absorbing the Buddha Light for himself. He argues that reliance on worshippers’ thoughts has corrupted the monk and made him unlike his former self.
• Chen cuts away the Demon God’s Incense-born shell, then detonates its body. The resulting flood of Chaotic Thoughts awakens the buried Thoughts of Discord and Myriad Manifestation, tearing the Buddha Land apart.
• The monk tries to suppress the destruction with the Dharma Body’s enormous Kasaya. Chen adds fragments of Buddha Light to the chaos, creating a breach through which the Buddha Land’s connection to temples across the world becomes visible.
• Chen sends the Buddha Land’s surging thoughts through that opening into the temples. The monk is left unable to stop him, and Chen catches a faint glimmer of Starlight.

Character developments

• Chen Cuo remains composed under attack and turns the monk’s own dependence on Incense and the Demon God’s instability against him. He also tests a new insight into how Buddha Light and chaotic thoughts interact.
• The young monk shifts from confidence in his control and vast reserves to fury, shock, and helplessness as Chen dismantles the Buddha Land’s defenses.
• The past Buddha’s history shows how noble ambitions gave way to self-preservation, power-seeking, and authoritarian control.

Significant themes

• Power gained from worship has a cost: dependence on others’ thoughts can reshape and corrupt the one who uses them.
• Substance versus illusion: Chen condemns the Buddha Land as an insubstantial world built on thought, while the monk prizes its Incense-fueled power.
• Idealism eroded by time: the River of Time contrasts the monk’s youthful desire to help the world with his later pursuit of control.
• False security and unintended consequences: the monk’s confidence in the Demon God and his hidden resources blinds him to how those same forces can bring his realm down.

Character interactions

• Chen directly challenges the monk’s claim to spiritual authority, framing him as a tragic figure who has lost his original self.
• The monk dismisses Chen’s criticism and boasts of his control over the Buddha Land, but his certainty collapses when Chen exposes the realm’s connection to temples throughout the world and redirects its thoughts.

• Brahma Tathagata senses a crisis: While traveling through the Qi-Lu Region with Little Pig, Little Dragon Lady, Little Beast, and Little Turtle, he catches several Chaotic Thoughts trying to corrupt him. He realizes that temples across the Central Lands are being stained with blackened Buddha Light, and that contradictory thoughts are spreading toward their Buddha statues. If the statues are corrupted, the Buddhist School’s centuries of work could collapse.
• The group encounters rumors about a princess: Roadside talk describes the Fallen Kingdom Princess of Gao Qi as having suffered at Chen Cuo’s hands. Little Pig condemns Chen Cuo, then admits he has no firsthand knowledge after Little Turtle rebukes him. Little Dragon Lady unexpectedly cries at the rumors, feeling an inexplicable sense of hurt. Brahma Tathagata notices her reaction but cannot investigate it before the temple crisis distracts him.
• The Star Palace Lord explains the larger stakes: Incense worship has become a contested route to power for both the Heavenly Palace and Buddhism. Because no one governs the Way of Incense, it has developed chaotically, drawing its practitioners into the thoughts and emotions generated by worship. The influence has reached the institutions above them as well. Chen Cuo’s actions have now planted a “Seed of division” in Buddhism, threatening its foundation and its claim to the Incense Position.
• Buddhism’s leader responds: Within the Buddha Land, a figure associated with the Great Sun laments that the plan against Chen Cuo has backfired. Chen Cuo has obtained the nascent form of a Thirteenth Dao Mark and condensed a Legend Projection, making him dangerous to suppress. Since Chen Cuo also saw through the Mortal Buddha Land’s flaw, the figure decides to counter him by creating and sending out a strange Primordial Chaos Fruit.
  Character developments and interactions: Brahma Tathagata moves from puzzlement to alarm as he recognizes the scale of the corruption. Little Pig’s indignation is checked by Little Turtle, while Little Dragon Lady’s unexplained grief hints at a deeper connection to the princess’s story. The Star Palace Lord views Chen Cuo’s disruption as both a strategic blow against Buddhism and evidence that the powers above are themselves entangled in incense-born influence.
  Significant themes: Power built on worship can corrupt those who depend on it; institutions are shaped from below as much as directed from above; and legends, deception, and hidden schemes are becoming central to the struggle between Chen Cuo and the supernatural powers.

Plot points and events

• The World-Honored One sends a mysterious Primordial Chaos Fruit toward the Mortal World. He intends it to help create a new history and legend—one that could replace the Buddha Land’s fruition and challenge the Chen clan’s legend.
• The Heavenly Palace Lord recognizes the fruit and suspects it is tied to the Blood Sea. Though wary of the World-Honored One’s plan, the Lord refuses to interfere directly, fearing their own power could contaminate the fruit and aid their rival.
• Heavenly Venerable Taiyi unexpectedly strikes the fruit, leaving it damaged, then vanishes. The World-Honored One can do nothing to stop him.
• As the fruit enters the world, it merges with a mysterious boundary membrane and becomes hazy and unstable. The World-Honored One reaches for it, but it slips away as green smoke.
• The World-Honored One questions the Blood Sea’s eerie young man about the unknown Daoist who defeated him. The young man admits he knows nothing about the stranger, while reminding the World-Honored One that their shared plan has already failed. The World-Honored One decides to put more pressure on Brahma Tathagata.
• Brahma Tathagata discovers that a Golden Body Buddha statue—one of the Nine Pillars of Tianzhu—seems to be developing an independent will. Before he can investigate, the mysterious fruit appears in his hands, accompanied by a strong sense of danger.
• Throughout the eastern Central Lands, monsters feel a sudden pull toward the same place. Little Pig, Little Turtle, and Little Beast sense it too.
• Meanwhile, Chen Cuo sits at the center of a raging vortex of Buddha Light, holding a shining star as a Buddha phantom struggles against black chains beneath him. He senses that Little Pig has encountered an unusual opportunity—and foresees danger and the arrival of promising “actors.”

Character developments and interactions

• The World-Honored One remains determined to advance his plan, but the fruit’s damage, its escape, and his ignorance of the mysterious Daoist unsettle him. His exchange with the Blood Sea figure reveals that their alliance is strained by failure and suspicion.
• The Heavenly Palace Lord shows caution and political insight, recognizing that intervention could unintentionally strengthen the World-Honored One.
• The Blood Sea’s young man is openly resentful of the World-Honored One’s questions and insists he does not know the Daoist’s identity. He withdraws without explaining his fixation on the Chen clan.
• Brahma Tathagata shifts from investigating the statue’s emerging will to confronting the danger of the fruit suddenly placed in his hands.
• Chen Cuo remains composed amid the destruction around him and treats Little Pig’s discovery as both an opportunity and a way to draw new players into events.

Significant themes

• Contested history and legend: The fruit may enable one faction to rewrite the world’s spiritual narrative and displace another’s legacy.
• Uncertainty and hidden forces: The unknown Daoist, the fruit’s strange passage into the world, and the Buddha statue’s new will all suggest powers operating beyond the characters’ understanding.
• Power and unintended consequences: Even the Heavenly Palace Lord fears that acting could alter the fruit in ways that benefit an enemy.
• Opportunity entangled with danger: Little Pig’s apparent breakthrough attracts attention, but Chen Cuo expects it to bring escalating peril.

Summary

• Chen Cuo completes and stabilizes his Thirteenth Dao Mark, “Divergence,” represented by a sleeping, three-headed, nine-armed beast. The mark lets him probe the River of Time, but his own strength is initially insufficient to reach it deeply.
• Determined to destroy the Buddhist School’s powerful Buddha Land—both to settle their long-running conflict and to exploit its reserves—Chen Cuo burns its accumulated power into Spirit Light. The bound young monk can only watch in helpless despair.
• With the Buddha Land’s energy, Chen Cuo’s awareness enters the River of Time and surveys the world’s lands and continents. He realizes the Dao Mark can serve as a fixed reference point within the river.
• He drives the mark into the River of History, where the Nine-Armed Demon God becomes a stone stele carved with “Divergence.” The stele anchors the river, allowing Chen Cuo to connect to that moment across time. He recognizes its potential for temporal travel but judges that using it would require enormous power and carry too many uncertainties.
• With the stele established, Chen Cuo can now reach the River of Time more naturally, though only near the anchor. As he withdraws, he senses a connection to Yu Shinan and realizes that Yu is crucial to his developing legend, the Journey West, and his Dao. He decides he must protect him.
• Chen Cuo destroys the remaining Buddha Land and draws its power into his palm, combining it with Gray Mist through the Dreamland Method. This produces a nearly insubstantial fruit—the essence of the Buddha Land—which he swallows to study its underlying nature.
• At the Netherworld, several Underworld Constables discover that both Chen Cuo’s aura and his Record have suddenly vanished from the book they are monitoring, leaving them alarmed.

Character developments and interactions

Chen Cuo moves from experimenting with his new Dao Mark to recognizing it as a lasting temporal anchor—and as a potential, though costly, means of crossing time. He also gains a clearer sense of Yu Shinan’s importance and shifts toward protecting him. The young monk is reduced to a powerless witness as Chen Cuo consumes the Buddha Land; the Underworld Constables, meanwhile, react with panic when Chen Cuo disappears from their records.

Significant themes

The chapter centers on time, fate, and anchoring: Chen Cuo turns a mark born from the Buddhist School’s schemes into a stele that can hold its place in history. It also explores power gained through destruction and transformation, as the Buddha Land is burned, absorbed, and converted into a new object of insight. Finally, Chen Cuo’s growing influence over history is counterbalanced by the risks and immense costs of wielding that power.