Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• The strange fruit Chen Cuo swallowed merges with the Jade-Belt Peach Paradise, strengthening it with Buddha Light and making it more vivid and vital.
• The Paradise’s residents are transformed: ordinary people gain an aptitude for immortal cultivation, while its Land God, the old man of the Black Banner, and the three Incomplete Dao Masters feel their own power and vitality rise. The change stirs the River of History, revealing how changes in individual fate affect the wider world.
• Chen Cuo detects three Underworld Constables spying on him and pulls them into the Paradise. Tingyi arrives, explains that they were acting under orders from someone more powerful than her, and takes them away. Chen warns the unknown authority not to interfere again.
• Tingyi cautions Chen to remain in the Mortal World. After returning to the Netherworld, she appears to be fighting an influence within herself: an emotionless voice speaks of the Netherworld’s weakened foundations and another coming “cleansing” of the Mortal World. Tingyi regains control and rushes toward the Netherworld’s depths.
• The Lord of Self discovers that Chen Cuo’s aura has vanished. Convinced Chen has somehow advanced—and still believing Chen stole his Shadow-Cutting Divine Ability—he accepts the Blood Sea and World-Honored One’s terms and departs through the River of Time.
• At the Grand Canal, the Old Beggar sees stormy signs and reflects that a foretold day is drawing near.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo gains a clearer understanding of how the Paradise’s changes affect destiny and history. He remains wary of the Netherworld’s surveillance and asserts a boundary with the unknown figure behind it.
• The Paradise’s inhabitants experience a surge in vitality and cultivation potential; the old man of the Black Banner realizes his earlier attempts to understand Chen were limited by his narrow perspective.
• Tingyi acts protectively toward Chen, but her warning and sudden shift in demeanor reveal that she is under pressure—or possibly divided against herself. Her exchange with Chen is cordial but guarded.
• The Lord of Self grows more agitated and consumed by resentment toward Chen, escalating his conflict by accepting an alliance with powerful forces.
• The Old Beggar remains an observant, uneasy witness to events gathering momentum.

Significant themes

• Creation and destiny: Changing people’s abilities can alter their Fortune and Fate, producing ripples in history.
• Incomplete knowledge and perspective: The old man of the Black Banner recognizes that his assumptions about Chen were constrained by his limited viewpoint.
• Power, surveillance, and hidden authority: Chen’s breakthrough exposes covert observers, while the identity of their superior remains unknown.
• Life, death, and cosmic instability: Tingyi’s words suggest that the Netherworld’s weakened balance may lead to another attempt to “cleanse” the Mortal World.
• Rivalry and looming upheaval: The Lord of Self’s renewed pursuit and the approaching foretold day signal conflicts to come.

Plot and key events

• Chen Cuo’s assault shatters the Buddha Land, and a flood of Thoughts of Discord spreads through Buddhist temples, invading monks’ hearts and consuming Buddha Light. Many monks mistake their sudden feelings of ease and freedom for an Outer Fiend’s temptation.
• As the Buddha Land’s influence disappears, Guishan Temple’s accumulated Buddha Light is freed from its remote control. Temple Master Huizhi can now command it directly, though he realizes the change signals a catastrophe for the Buddhist School. An old monk reports that other temples in the city have changed as well.
• In the ruined Buddha Land, Chen Cuo captures the final strand of Buddha Light and confronts a furious young monk. He argues that the Buddhist School had already been plotting against him, so he will no longer hold back.
• Rather than kill the monk, Chen Cuo sends him through a rift to the Eight-Headed Tianwu, which has also captured Buddhist cultivators. Chen Cuo wonders why the Buddhist School has been so intent on targeting him despite its other feud.
• Sensing that the River of Time is flowing faster, Chen Cuo concludes that “Little Pig” has encountered trouble involving a possible Primordial Chaos Fruit and Yu Shinan. He leaves to intervene. The Buddha Land then dissolves completely.
• A mysterious dark-robed figure observes that the Buddha Land might someday return through memory and mind, but warns that the Great Thousand World is far more fragile.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo shifts from reacting to Buddhist hostility to openly embracing the role of Buddha’s Foe. He remains controlled and calculating, choosing a punishment that will deepen the young monk’s fear rather than kill him. His concern for Little Pig also reveals a personal loyalty that draws him into a new crisis.
• Temple Master Huizhi recognizes that the Buddha Land’s collapse has unexpectedly given him control over Guishan Temple’s Buddha Light. Rather than celebrate this power, he mourns the loss of the Buddhist School’s foundation and acknowledges that the school’s decision to oppose Chen Cuo helped bring about the disaster.
• The young monk abandons restraint and openly rages at Chen Cuo for destroying generations of Buddhist accumulation, but ends the confrontation terrified as he is handed over to the Eight-Headed Tianwu.
• The mysterious figure offers a wider, more philosophical perspective on the destruction, suggesting that the Buddha Land may be recoverable while the material world is vulnerable.

Significant themes

• Foundations and impermanence: The Buddha Land’s collapse exposes how much Buddhist authority depended on accumulated belief and shared spiritual structures.
• Cause and consequence: The Buddhist School’s repeated schemes against Chen Cuo help turn him into the enemy they feared.
• Power and responsibility: Huizhi gains control of temple power but experiences it as a burden amid institutional ruin.
• Memory, reality, and fragility: The chapter contrasts a spiritual realm that may return through minds and memories with the vulnerable Great Thousand World.
• Freedom versus temptation: The monks’ newfound sense of release may be a genuine consequence of the Buddha Land’s disruption, but they interpret it as spiritual danger.

Key plot points and events

• Little Pig, Little Dragon Lady, Little Turtle, Little Beast, and Brahma Tathagata fight their way through a sudden assault by many powerful monsters. They are driven into the Grand Canal, where Dragon Lady uses its waters to help hold their formation and Brahma Tathagata shields them.
• The monsters demand that the group hand over a treasure. Little Pig first insists they must be after him, but Dragon Lady points out that the attackers are clearly pursuing something the group possesses. Brahma Tathagata appears to know more than he has revealed.
• A clash ahead draws the party’s attention: the monsters have encountered Yuwen Huaji’s fleet. Brahma Tathagata suggests using Yuwen’s forces as a distraction, but Dragon Lady warns that Yuwen’s ambition makes him just as likely to betray them.
• Dragon Lady decides they should slip away while the two sides are occupied, then find the Lord—a protector strong enough to secure the treasure and face the monsters it attracts.
• Nearby, the Azure Lion Monster and White Elephant Spirit discuss exploiting the conflict. They believe the treasure’s Divine Breath could help them break through their cultivation bottleneck and defy both the Underworld Office and Beyond the Mundane.
• Chen Cuo appears and questions their confidence. When they identify themselves as descendants of Ancient God bloodlines, he releases the Divine Breath he has absorbed. Its purity frightens them, and they wonder whether he is a True God Heir.
• A giant ox then blocks the Grand Canal, causing flooding that sweeps away people on the banks and capsizes ships in Yuwen Huaji’s fleet. Amid the chaos, scholar Yu Shinan rushes back aboard to retrieve a family manuscript rather than flee.

Character developments and interactions

• Little Pig remains boastful and comic, initially convinced the monsters are targeting his “peerless” self. He eventually admits the treasure may be hidden with Dragon Lady or Brahma Tathagata.
• Little Dragon Lady shows clear-headed leadership: she challenges Pig’s vanity, rejects the risky idea of relying on Yuwen Huaji, and chooses escape and a search for stronger protection.
• Brahma Tathagata protects the group and briefly considers recruiting Yuwen’s help, but accepts Dragon Lady’s criticism. His hesitation suggests he is concealing information about the treasure.
• Azure Lion and White Elephant reveal their greed and confidence that the treasure will grant them power. Their reaction to Chen Cuo’s aura exposes their reverence—or fear—of a superior Ancient God lineage.
• Chen Cuo uses his Divine Breath to test the monsters and question their understanding of the treasure, showing both curiosity and concealed power.
• Yu Shinan’s refusal to abandon his manuscript highlights his devotion to scholarship and family legacy, even in mortal danger.

Significant themes

• Greed and the lure of power: The treasure draws monsters from across the region and fuels their plans to rise above existing authorities.
• Leadership and judgment: Dragon Lady’s caution contrasts with Pig’s self-importance and Brahma Tathagata’s initial willingness to gamble on Yuwen Huaji.
• Hidden identity and ancient lineage: Chen Cuo’s Divine Breath raises questions about Ancient God bloodlines and the true nature of the forces involved.
• Competing loyalties: Yuwen’s political ambition, the monsters’ self-interest, and Yu Shinan’s devotion to his manuscript all shape choices amid the crisis.

Plot points and events

• Lu Li withstands the Giant Bull’s devastating roar, powers up, and punches the enormous monster into the air. Jiao Tongzi catches the falling bull with ribbons of cold air and pursues it, while Lu Li stays behind.
• Lu Li and the three sentient Monsterkind sharing his body discuss Yuwen Huaji’s collapse in fortune. They consider exploiting him, but Chen Cuo—True Person Soaring—appears and rebukes them for plotting against someone who trusted them.
• Chen Cuo has already captured two powerful Monsterkind overlords, whose bodies are changing and whose powers are slipping beyond their control. He recognizes that Lu Li is also three Monsterkind souls in one body. When Lu Li tries to flee, Chen Cuo captures him and offers the three a chance to regain physical bodies if they later carry out a task. He places them in Jade-Belt Peach Paradise.
• Chen Cuo plans to deal with the Giant Bull and remove lesser monsters from the canal area, while protecting Yu Shinan as he retrieves books and manuscripts.
• Yu Shinan’s Book Box, combined with a stone stele in Transoxiana, reveals that the Divine Treasury of the Great Wilderness is about to open again. Cultivators across the Central Lands recognize the opportunity: Longevity-level figures may be unable to enter, potentially limiting Soaring’s influence.
• At Great Hua Mountain, Nanmingzi learns from Chuiyunzi that the Crown Prince’s fortunes have surged: he has defeated the King of Qin’s forces, nearly destroyed the invading Turks, and may now gain the Tang Emperor’s trust and inherit the dynasty.

Character developments and interactions

• Lu Li displays great physical strength but is outmatched by Chen Cuo. His attempt to escape only makes him easier to capture, and he is forced to confront how thoroughly Chen Cuo sees through him.
• Chen Cuo shows immense power, confidence, and strategic foresight. Rather than kill his captives, he offers them a possible path to restoration in exchange for service. He also recognizes Yu Shinan’s importance and seeks to protect him discreetly.
• Jiao Tongzi acts to protect the civilians below the falling Giant Bull, then pursues the monster.
• Yu Shinan remains focused on recovering books, though his Book Box proves central to detecting the approaching Divine Treasury.
• Nanmingzi and Chuiyunzi share relief that events now favor the Crown Prince and Great Hua Mountain’s standing in the Tang Kingdom.

Significant themes

• Power and restraint: Chen Cuo can easily overpower extraordinary beings, yet uses captivity and conditional cooperation rather than immediate execution.
• Fortune and political change: Yuwen Huaji’s decline and the Crown Prince’s sudden rise show how shifting fortune reshapes both mortal politics and the supernatural world.
• Hidden identities and perception: Chen Cuo sees through Lu Li’s concealed nature, while Yu Shinan’s apparently ordinary books reveal a major cosmic event.
• Opportunity and limits: The coming Divine Treasury offers younger cultivators a chance to advance, while restrictions on powerful elders may temporarily reduce their dominance.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• In the Netherworld, Tingyi briefly loses control as a powerful will within her manifests as a vast, misty face. The entity recognizes Zhuanxu’s hidden refuge reopening and fears that history may repeat itself, threatening to turn the ancient gods of that realm into Netherworld deities. Its thoughts devastate much of the Netherworld, but Tingyi forcibly pulls the mist back into her body. The entity also discovers that the Hundred Schools of Inheritance have spread through Zhuanxu’s hidden world before vanishing.
• Chen Cuo reflects on the Divine Treasury and the Great Wilderness, concluding that beings created there can become real—and even part of history. He decides to investigate the Treasury more deeply as a possible model for the Journey to the West.
• He creates a talisman using Penglai Island’s method, combining his Three Flowers, Myriad Manifestation Thought, and a fragment of Peach Paradise. The talisman cannot contain an entire Peach Paradise, but it can hold a fragment. Chen Cuo sends it into Yu Shinan to protect him and test its capabilities.
• Chen Cuo intervenes in Jiao Tongzi’s battle with the Giant Bull, instantly defeating and capturing the bull. Jiao Tongzi’s cultivation surges toward a breakthrough; he sets up a formation and begins advancing on the spot.
• Chen Cuo clears the remaining monsters from the area with a controlled gale, restores the floodwaters to the Grand Canal, and reopens the blocked river. When the people begin worshipping him, he reveals his true likeness to them, leaving them embarrassed and speechless.
• As Chen Cuo heads toward Little Pig and the others, he senses trouble at the Hanging Peak of Soaring. A river appears from nowhere, and a voice calls out to Chen Fangqing, claiming to have found his true body through the River of Time and threatening to capture him.

Character developments

• Tingyi shows that, despite her weakening body, she can resist and contain the powerful being within her. She also recognizes that she may soon need outside help.
• Chen Cuo becomes increasingly interested in how the Divine Treasury turns imagined creations into reality. He experiments with Peach Paradise talismans and uses his power decisively to rescue the region.
• Jiao Tongzi reaches the verge of a major breakthrough after the fight and displays an unusually intense, almost reckless commitment to cultivation.
• The hidden entity within Tingyi reveals its fear of Zhuanxu’s refuge and the historical consequences it may bring, while also discovering that the Hundred Schools’ traditions have entered that world.

Significant themes

• The boundary between imagination and reality: The Divine Treasury’s dreamlike creations may become genuine beings and history.
• History repeating itself: The entity fears that Zhuanxu’s refuge will recreate the upheavals surrounding Primordial Antiquity.
• Power, responsibility, and protection: Chen Cuo uses overwhelming strength to protect civilians, restore the river, and equip Yu Shinan with a means of defense.
• Cultivation through intensity: Jiao Tongzi’s breakthrough suggests that boldness—and even a degree of madness—can drive advancement.
• Identity and misdirection: Chen Cuo’s apparent actions through an incarnation have concealed his true body, but the River of Time has now exposed him.

Character interactions

• Tingyi struggles against the will inhabiting her, ultimately forcing it back inside.
• Chen Cuo gives Yu Shinan the talisman without a direct conversation, intending it as protection and an experiment.
• Chen Cuo rescues Jiao Tongzi by defeating the Giant Bull; Jiao Tongzi responds with respect and promises to seek his guidance after consolidating his breakthrough.
• The people praise Chen Cuo as an immortal, but his revealed face turns their reverence into awkward embarrassment.
• At the chapter’s end, an unknown pursuer confronts Chen Fangqing’s true body at the Hanging Peak, setting up a new threat.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• An unknown intruder breaches the Great Hua Secret Realm and alters its celestial phenomena. Nanmingzi realizes the newcomer is far beyond his ability to confront.
• Chen Cuo identifies the intruder as the Lord of Self, who has brought a tributary of the true River of Time into the Secret Realm and merged with it.
• The river’s waters carry the immense weight of history, injuring Taihua disciples and binding Chen Cuo. Chen Cuo teleports the disciples to Nanmingzi, who protects and tends to them.
• The Lord of Self attacks Hanging Peak with Historical Shadows—imprints of past eras and dynasties—then summons the armies of Tyrannical Qin to overwhelm Chen Cuo.
• As the attack intensifies, Chen Cuo senses moisture in the air and begins to understand what is happening, while old memories surface.

Character developments and interactions

• Nanmingzi recognizes the danger, then anxiously watches over the disciples after Chen Cuo sends them to him.
• Chen Cuo reveals both his protective instincts and his ability to manipulate the Grotto-Heaven. He is initially surprised by the Lord of Self’s command of the River of Time, but starts piecing together the secret behind it.
• The Lord of Self is confident and contemptuous, claiming that historical forces surpass Chen Cuo’s authority within the Mortal World. He taunts Chen Cuo for saving the disciples, calling it a weakness.
• Chen Cuo’s protection of the disciples contrasts with the Lord of Self’s view of them as insignificant figures in a story.

Significant themes

• History as power: The River of Time represents the accumulated weight of civilizations, dynasties, and eras.
• Compassion versus ruthless strategy: Chen Cuo risks his position to protect his disciples, while the Lord of Self sees such care as foolishness.
• Control and limits: Chen Cuo governs the Secret Realm, but the Lord of Self challenges that authority with forces drawn from beyond its ordinary boundaries.
• Uncovered secrets and memory: Chen Cuo begins to recognize the nature of the attack as buried memories return.
  The final lines switch abruptly to the author’s note about supply shortages and running the shop.

Key plot points and events

• The Lord of Self unleashes the power of a dynasty: ranks of Black Warriors merge into a torrent of historical force that suppresses Chen Cuo’s Divine Abilities and threatens to dissolve his Immortal Body.
• He argues that individual power is insignificant beside history’s tide, which is shaped by those who command their age. The torrent overwhelms Chen Cuo, engulfing him in the experiences and pressures of a bygone era.
• Chen Cuo counters by recounting the Qin Dynasty’s achievements—and its weaknesses. His understanding of Qin’s unstable foundations and failure to secure succession breaks apart the historical torrent.
• The Lord of Self escalates, summoning the territories and historical forces of successive dynasties, from the Han and Three Kingdoms through later eras. Their combined weight surges toward Chen Cuo.
• Chen Cuo draws on the Thirteen Stars and his own illusory River of Time, joining it with his Myriad Manifestation Thought. He recognizes that the Lord’s technique has shown him how to reflect history and asserts that his own knowledge of history can match the Lord’s.

Character developments

• Chen Cuo demonstrates that he can withstand more than raw force: his command of his body, historical knowledge, and ability to adapt let him turn the Lord’s technique against him.
• The Lord of Self shifts from confident certainty to surprise and strain. Although his historical power is formidable, his pale appearance and failed attacks suggest that sustaining it is costly.

Significant themes

• History versus individual agency: The Lord presents history as an overwhelming tide that renders individuals powerless; Chen Cuo challenges that view by interpreting history rather than simply enduring it.
• Knowledge as power: Understanding a dynasty’s achievements and flaws becomes a weapon capable of breaking the force it represents.
• Legacy and political stability: Qin’s greatness is shown alongside its unresolved divisions, weakened support, and failure to prepare for succession.
• Learning through conflict: Chen Cuo turns the Lord’s display of the River of Time into a lesson that strengthens his own technique.

Character interactions

• The Lord of Self taunts Chen Cuo, insisting that he is merely a “fish” trapped in the River of Time and cannot oppose the weight of history.
• Chen Cuo answers first with an account of Qin’s rise and collapse, then directly challenges the Lord’s claim to superior historical understanding.
• Their battle becomes an argument as much as a contest of power: the Lord tries to overwhelm Chen Cuo with history, while Chen Cuo uses interpretation and insight to resist it.

Plot points and events

• Chen Cuo withstands the Lord of Self’s golden torrent, which embodies the Jin Dynasty. He identifies its contrast between elite indulgence and common suffering, then breaks it apart by exposing those divisions.
• He redirects the Five Barbarians’ Sixteen Kingdoms and Three Kingdoms torrents into the Jin torrent, using the resulting historical turmoil to weaken it. Four Seal Script characters—Song, Qi, Liang, and Chen—consume what remains, and Chen Cuo absorbs the Jin Dynasty’s power.
• Empowered by the Jin torrent, Chen Cuo defeats the Three Kingdoms torrent, then uses it to shatter the Flame Han torrent. He also halts and begins dismantling the two-colored North–South torrent.
• The Lord of Self, badly weakened, flees as a stream through the void. Chen Cuo pursues him with a tributary of the River of Time, apparently drawing on the Era Tide power he has acquired.
• The Lord of Self realizes Chen Cuo baited him into using his River of Time Reflection Divine Ability so Chen could copy it. As Chen’s multicolored river becomes the actual River of Time, the Lord of Self turns and dives into one of the passing historical visions.

Character developments

• Chen Cuo demonstrates that he can read the character and vulnerabilities of historical eras, then turn their conflicts against one another. He grows stronger by absorbing their power and shows considerable tactical cunning—though the Lord of Self recognizes that he has been deceived.
• The Lord of Self shifts from commanding an apparently overwhelming attack to panic and desperate flight. His final realization makes clear how completely Chen has outmaneuvered him, but he still seeks escape through the historical visions.

Themes

• Dynasties reflect their people: An era’s character emerges from its inhabitants, but its apparent grandeur can conceal deep inequality.
• Excess and internal collapse: Jin’s elite freedom and indulgence are portrayed as destructive, while the common people bear the dynasty’s hardship. The chapter also suggests that powerful states may fall from internal weakness rather than foreign attack.
• History as conflict and power: Dynasties are not merely successive forces; their rivalries and contradictions can be used to undermine one another.
• Strategy over brute force: Chen Cuo wins by interpreting his opponent’s techniques, manipulating the battlefield, and turning the Lord of Self’s own ability against him.

Character interactions

• The fight is a contest of will and tactics: the Lord of Self unleashes successive historical torrents, while Chen Cuo analyzes, redirects, and consumes them.
• Chen Cuo taunts the fleeing Lord of Self by challenging him to summon earlier dynasties, prolonging the deception. The Lord of Self answers with bitter recognition and fury before escaping into a historical vision.

Key events

• Chen Cuo wounds the Lord of Self with the Red Light Art, though he suspects the blow is not fatal. He recognizes that his opponent’s attacks have nevertheless strengthened his own foundations and taught him how to reflect a dynasty through the River of Time.
• Using Myriad Manifestation Thought and the tributary he controls, Chen Cuo enters a phantom connected to the River of History. The phantom assaults his mind with countless memories, but his Gray Mist and thought-power let him break free and form an Incarnation of the River of Time.
• Chen Cuo strikes the Lord of Self again. The enemy escapes into the tunnel’s wall, where Chen Cuo’s Black-and-White World cannot reach him.
• The Lord of Self claims the tunnel holds Chen Cuo’s past and that he can attack Chen Cuo at a moment when his power and Fortune were diminished. Chen Cuo pursues him by driving his will into the tunnel.
• Chen Cuo’s perception lands on the fall of Southern Chen, in the Linru County Marquis Residence. He sees a past version of himself complete a cultivation involving Cause and Effect, at “Zhenming Year Three.”

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo grows more adept at using the River of Time, applying what he learned from the Lord of Self and creating a River incarnation. Despite recognizing the danger of following his foe into the past, he commits himself to the pursuit.
• The Lord of Self shifts from confident aggressor to wounded fugitive, then regains his composure by exploiting the tunnel and Chen Cuo’s vulnerable past. Their exchange is adversarial: the Lord complains that Chen Cuo attacks without letting him finish speaking, while Chen Cuo insists that a life-or-death fight leaves no room for speeches.

Significant themes

• History as power and peril: The River of History holds vivid fragments of the past that can be studied, weaponized, or used to attack someone.
• The cost and limits of time travel: Reversing time could affect all creation and demands immense resources; the Lord of Self’s apparent attempt raises doubts about how he can manage it while badly injured.
• Memory and identity: Chen Cuo’s encounter with an earlier version of himself brings buried memories—and the circumstances of Southern Chen’s fall—back into focus.
• Adaptation through conflict: Even dangerous attacks provide Chen Cuo with knowledge and power he can turn against his opponent.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• In the Passageway Wall, Chen Cuo discovers a vast realm containing layered visions of the Linru County Marquis Residence, Jiankang, and distant landscapes. His Divine Sense meets crushing pressure he identifies as the “weight of history,” suggesting the space may connect to the River of History as well as the River of Time Gap.
• Inside the Quiet Chamber, Cause and Effect takes shape. Its immense power shakes and fractures the surrounding realm, forcing Chen Cuo to leave before it collapses.
• The man in the chamber absorbs the formed light and explains his strategy: he can attain Longevity while being regarded as dead, provided those connected to him believe he has died. He expects to be sent to confront the invading Sui army, where Chen Fangqing’s historical defeat and death may come to pass.
• As Chen Cuo travels through the strange realm, he reflects on how Between Cause and Effect works. It does not manufacture outcomes; it connects existing resources and circumstances into the most direct path toward a result. He suspects an unknown decisive factor enabled this latest outcome.
• Chen Cuo encounters the Lord of Self amid strange ripples that appear connected to Chen Cuo’s fate. He attacks with six Ghost-Faced Masks, combining the Torrent of the Era and Heroic Spirit Silhouette—abilities especially suited to the realm—and pins the Lord of Self, who cannot escape or counterattack.
• The Lord of Self calls on his allies, warning that he will destroy the stretch of the River of Time rather than serve merely as bait. A solemn voice—apparently the World-Honored One—answers that he will honor their agreement but must act cautiously around the River of History and the River of Time Gap.
• Golden light descends, destroys Chen Cuo’s masks, and forms a protective barrier around the Lord of Self. Chen Cuo launches a powerful punch, but the chapter ends as it strikes amid spreading ripples and cracks in the void.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo grows more perceptive about the limits and mechanics of his Cause-and-Effect ability. He remains wary even while attacking and begins to suspect the Lord of Self may be constrained by hidden circumstances—or may have helped him despite acting like an enemy.
• The man in the Quiet Chamber accepts a paradoxical plan: to live on while becoming “dead” in others’ memories. He also recognizes that the Cause-and-Effect ability binds its user to its own rules; his defeat and death must follow once the corresponding cause is established.
• The Lord of Self is caught in a vulnerable position, but his appeal reveals that he has allies and a prior agreement with them. His desperation suggests he may be serving as bait or pursuing a larger plan.
• The World-Honored One intervenes indirectly, claiming he cannot risk acting freely in this region and must use the Lord of Self’s situation to resolve the Cause and Effect.
• Chen Cuo and the Lord of Self’s encounter shifts from a one-sided ambush to a larger confrontation when the World-Honored One’s golden power protects the Lord of Self.

Significant themes

• Cause and effect, fate, and choice: The ability links existing circumstances rather than inventing outcomes, and its user must also submit to the rules it creates.
• Life and death as matters of perspective: Someone may be physically alive while considered dead by those who remember them.
• History as a force: The realm’s oppressive weight and its visions suggest that the past is not merely remembered but exerts power over the present.
• Hidden motives and constrained alliances: Apparent enemies may be acting under unseen obligations, while allies’ agreements can shape events as strongly as direct action.

Key plot points

• Chen Cuo attacks the World-Honored One’s barrier. His first strike barely affects it, but with Gray Mist and Myriad Manifestation Thought, he gradually makes his power resonate with the barrier and fuses with it.
• The Lord of Self fears the barrier will fail. He reveals that past setbacks caused him to ally with the Buddhist School and Blood Sea and enter the River of Time Gap, where he hopes to reach stories from Chen’s past and regain control of his fabricated legend.
• The Lord of Self pressures the World-Honored One to intervene. The latter briefly attacks Chen, disrupting his focus, but the golden light ultimately passes through the curtains and into the Mist beyond.
• Resonating with the Buddha Light of past eras, the Lord of Self merges with outlines of historical monks and is pulled deeper into the past by a colossal Buddha hand.
• Chen tears the barrier free and absorbs its golden light into his Gray Mist. He concludes that Buddha Light accumulated through history can connect past and present, though the World-Honored One blocks Chen from using that connection.
• As the Lord of Self escapes, Chen invokes his Cause-and-Effect power, declaring that being the Lord’s enemy is the cause and defeating him is the effect. The resulting light cracks and shatters the curtains, then flies into the past. A matching light rises from the Linru County Marquis Residence in the third year of Zhenming.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo remains composed and resourceful, adapting when his attempt to follow the Lord through Buddha Light is blocked. He begins to understand how the River of Time Gap links past and present, then turns to Cause and Effect as another way to pursue his enemy.
• The Lord of Self shifts from taunting confidence to alarm, then regains hope when the World-Honored One’s intervention and the Buddha’s pull give him a route into the past. His bitterness toward Chen is rooted in Chen’s repeated disruption of his plans and the failure of the “Counterfeit” to cooperate.
• The World-Honored One is powerful but constrained by the dangers of acting within the River of Time Gap. He intervenes only after the Lord threatens to reveal secrets, then prevents Chen from borrowing the same Buddha-Light connection.
• Chen and the Lord remain adversaries in a contest shaped by past events, while the Lord’s coercive appeal to the World-Honored One exposes the uneasy alliance between them.

Significant themes

• Cause and effect: Chen’s final declaration turns their enmity into a force capable of reaching across time.
• The past’s influence on the present: Historical belief and accumulated Buddha Light can bridge eras, but reaching the past demands immense power or a collective contribution.
• Power and its limits: Even formidable abilities are restricted by the River of Time Gap, and alliances or ingenuity become essential.
• Control of identity and narrative: The Lord’s attempt to reclaim his fabricated legend shows how personal history and constructed stories can become sources of power.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• The Lord of Self enters the Time Cage, a corridor of sundials that display moments from history. To search for a way to undermine Chen Fangqing, he pulls a mass of black fire from his chest—sacrificing the Fabrication Heart—and gathers legends about Chen into black threads.
• He chooses a moment before Chen begins cultivation, hoping to avoid the powerful factions and historical forces surrounding Chen’s later deeds. He settles on the day Chen inherits his title, when the boy is leaving the Prince of Nankang’s protection but has not yet received the full protection of the imperial edict.
• The Lord of Self sends a black arrow, shaped from the gathered legends, into the young Chen’s mind, intending to plant a weakness rather than kill him.
• The attack unexpectedly pierces Chen’s spirit and nearly kills him. The Lord of Self realizes that Chen has an ordinary, short-lived Fate Pattern—not the exceptional one he expected—and fears the historical backlash he may have caused.
• A mysterious ball of light enters Chen’s body and barely preserves his shattered True Spirit. Chen survives, though he becomes ill soon after receiving his title.

Character developments

• The Lord of Self is shown as calculating and determined, but his confidence gives way to panic when his plan produces an unforeseen result. He is willing to sacrifice a powerful asset and manipulate history, yet remains wary of its consequences.
• Young Chen Fangqing appears, for the first time in this excerpt, as a mortal boy celebrating his investiture. His survival depends on an unexplained intervention; the illness that follows is publicly attributed to excessive joy.

Character interactions

• The Lord of Self reflects on the World-Honored One’s retreat and the Ancestor of Blood Sea’s silence, suspecting both may be avoiding the dangerous gap in the River of Time.
• He treats the many legends about Chen as weapons, using stories gathered from history to penetrate Chen’s defenses.
• An unidentified light intervenes after the attack, briefly restoring Chen’s shattered spirit and preventing his immediate death.

Significant themes

• Cause and effect: Altering a pivotal moment in the past risks immense consequences in the present.
• History and storytelling: Legends are not merely records; they can become forces that shape or attack a person.
• Fate versus reality: The Lord of Self’s assumptions about Chen’s destiny conflict with the apparent ordinariness of Chen’s fate at this point in his life.
• Unintended consequences: A carefully planned act becomes a near-fatal mistake, with its lasting effects still uncertain.

Plot and key events

• Chen Cuo explores a mysterious band of light filled with sundials, realizing their projections are fragments of the past. Rewinding history consumes the six-colored “tides of the Dynasty” sustaining his Incarnation.
• A sundial in Dream Marsh—an ordinary one he brought there shortly after arriving in the past—begins resonating with the sundials in the band. Following the connection, Chen Cuo reaches a sundial showing the moment he crossed over, including scenes of both himself and the original owner of his body.
• Before he can enter, a blood-red force spreads through nearby sundials. Recognizing a presence stronger than the Blood Infant, Chen Cuo suspects the Ancestor of Blood Sea and senses grave danger.
• Inside the sundial’s void, a blood flood breaks restraints and surges through the space. A mysterious dark-robed figure, surrounded by yellow mist, cleaves the flood in two and casts it away. The disturbance badly injures the Lord of Self, who is forced out of the era with blood-colored ghost faces entangled in his stream-like form.
• Chen Cuo intercepts the Lord of Self with his six-colored sword, cutting his stream in half. The Lord flees, while Chen Cuo claims the abandoned portion and pursues him.
• Two powerful forces—one azure, one purple—rush through the band, destroying much of Chen Cuo’s Incarnation as he dodges. They later strike the Lord of Self. He uses a ghost face and the World-Honored One’s remaining golden protection as shields, but all are drawn into a nearby paper sundial. A blurred scene and snippets of dialogue emerge from it.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo shifts from observing the strange time-path to investigating its connection with his own arrival in the past. He remains determined to pursue the Lord of Self despite his Incarnation’s damage and the many dangers around him.
• The Lord of Self is weakened first by the blood-flood disturbance and then by Chen Cuo’s attack. His attempt to flee while carrying the ghost faces leads them to feed on his negative thoughts; he destroys most of them, but must sacrifice his remaining protection when the azure and purple forces attack.
• The dark-robed figure intervenes decisively against the blood flood, but his identity and motives remain unknown.
• The blood-colored ghost faces, initially driven into the Lord of Self by the chaos, become a threat to him and briefly serve as a shield.

Significant themes

• Cause and effect, and the cost of altering history: turning back the wheels of history consumes the tides, shadows, and collective will that sustain Chen Cuo.
• Time’s interconnectedness: an ordinary sundial brought into Dream Marsh resonates with a specific moment in the past, linking Chen Cuo’s present investigation to his crossing-over.
• Uncertainty and escalating danger: the band of light contains forces and beings beyond Chen Cuo’s understanding, while major identities and events remain unresolved.
  The chapter ends with an abrupt author’s note about several people testing positive for COVID and the author waiting for a test.

Key plot points and events

• After narrowly escaping destruction, the Lord of Self decides to abandon his failed attempt against Chen Fangqing and damage his destiny instead. Using ripples through the Sundials, he draws on an ancient Heavenly Dao power to strip away decades of the era’s fortune attached to Chen Fangqing.
• A mysterious will warns that this effort violates the natural order and seals the Lord of Self’s doom. The intervention also weakens a will embedded in Dianyunzi of Kunlun, altering the prodigy’s destiny.
• Chen Cuo follows the Lord of Self’s disturbance into a weapon-shaped Sundial associated with the fall of Southern Chen. There, he absorbs the Sundial’s vast historical visions through his Vertical Eye, replenishing the fading torrent of the age that sustains him.
• Chen Cuo witnesses the Sui invasion and recalls that Emperor Chen Shubao demanded he use immortal arts against the invaders. Shubao resented Chen Cuo’s refusal, suspected him of colluding with Sui, and considered reducing his fiefs after the invasion.
• From Shubao’s outburst, Chen Cuo learns that the emperor’s hostility may also have involved Zhang Lihua and Shen Wuhua, though he cannot understand why: he scarcely knew either woman and had never met Zhang Lihua.
• This puzzlement clears the haze around him, revealing two conflicting visions: a temple called Heaven-Cleansing Temple to his eyes, and a flower-surrounded courtyard to his Divine Sense. Each contains a mysterious figure—a white-robed person with a vase and branch in the temple, and a nine-tailed fox in the courtyard.

Character developments and interactions

• Lord of Self shifts from direct confrontation to a desperate attempt to undermine Chen Fangqing’s fortune. His resentment and fear drive him to use a dangerous, unnatural power.
• Chen Cuo remains cautious while pursuing the Lord of Self, but also gains strength by absorbing historical scenes. His recollections reveal that his relationship with Chen Shubao was more politically fraught—and perhaps personally complicated—than he had understood.
• Chen Shubao appears volatile, entitled, and suspicious. He expects Chen Cuo to use his extraordinary abilities for the dynasty, while Chen Cuo refuses and insists on fighting as a general. His anger surfaces in exchanges with a court official and a eunuch, especially when they mention the women.
• The mysterious will regards the Lord of Self’s actions as self-destructive and ultimately helpful to his enemy.

Significant themes

• Fate and self-sabotage: The Lord of Self’s attempt to break Chen Fangqing’s destiny may instead ensure his own ruin and strengthen his foe.
• Power and political obligation: Chen Shubao treats Chen Cuo’s supernatural abilities as resources owed to the state; Chen Cuo’s refusal exposes the tension between personal limits and imperial demands.
• History and perception: The Sundial presents the past as an overwhelming flood, while Chen Cuo’s shifting position and contradictory visions suggest that truth in these temporal spaces is unstable.
• Unintended consequences: The Lord of Self’s intervention changes not only his own prospects but also Dianyunzi’s destiny, while Chen Cuo’s unexpected discoveries complicate his understanding of the past.

Key plot points and events

• Inside the Sundial, Chen Cuo glimpses two women—one accompanied by Buddhist radiance, the other by demonic aura—and suspects they are Shen Wuhua and Zhang Lihua, Chen Shubao’s future empresses. He resolves to investigate their mysterious ties to the Buddhist School and Monsterkind.
• Chen Cuo realizes the Sundial’s scenes are not in chronological order: time shifts according to his will, though an unusually clear ripple seems to come from the Lord of Self.
• He detects black fire near another version of himself and recognizes a Causal Light formed by his own action at this point in history. It is meant to let life and death coexist, helping him shed his flesh and attain Longevity. Following it, he travels across distorted times and places.
• The light brings him to the battlefield where his fleshly body, Chen Fangqing, was defeated and shed its mortal form. He recalls the political tensions that led there: Chen Shubao’s increasingly oppressive rule, and Chen Cuo’s refusal to obey him or protect him after he turned against his own clan.
• Chen Cuo senses five powerful observers watching the battle: a monk resembling Brahma Tathagata, Consort De, a winged star-cloaked man, an Azure Dragon, and a red-faced elder. He recognizes the last three from earlier encounters and concludes that many factions watched his final battle but chose not to intervene.
• He understands that a karmic divine ability made him disappear from divination for forty years, and credits the dying Lord of Self with causing the strange outcome. When Chen Cuo tries to look toward the battlefield, a Black Veil hides it. He concludes that two versions of himself from different times cannot meet.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo grows more perceptive about the Sundial, tracing its shifting time and space, identifying the Causal Light’s purpose, and connecting past events to his later disappearance. He remains detached from Chen Shubao, judging that the emperor forfeited his protection through cruelty toward his relatives.
• Chen Shubao is presented through Chen Cuo’s recollections as arrogant, narrow-minded, and increasingly tyrannical, ultimately alienating Chen Cuo by trying to command him and persecuting his clan.
• The Lord of Self appears to have played a crucial role in the karmic chain behind Chen Cuo’s disappearance, though Chen Cuo believes he is about to die.
• The five distant observers watch Chen Fangqing’s final battle but do not interfere, each apparently wary of the consequences.

Significant themes

• Causality and fate: The Causal Light links events across time and serves a deliberate purpose in Chen Cuo’s transformation.
• Unstable time and identity: The Sundial’s disordered chronology lets Chen Cuo observe different eras, but the Black Veil suggests limits on contact between versions of himself.
• Political power and family duty: Chen Cuo’s choice not to protect Chen Shubao’s line follows the emperor’s betrayal of family and abuse of power.
• Hidden powers and observation: Major religious, political, and supernatural forces monitor pivotal events, yet choose when—and whether—to act.

Plot points and events

• The Sui army clashes with Chen forces commanded by Chen Cuo, the Marquis of Linru. Sui marshal Wei Guang initially hopes to retreat honorably, since he knows Chen Cuo is far more powerful than an ordinary general.
• A mysterious black flame influences Wei Guang, making him order his army to press on and fight to the death. It also infects the soldiers, driving both armies into senseless slaughter.
• As the battlefield’s bloodshed intensifies, Chen Cuo realizes an immortal is manipulating events. He orders his officers to withdraw, then uses Five-Colored Divine Light to dispel the frenzy and Black-and-White Light to restore the wounded and revive the recently dead.
• Chen Cuo’s attempt to reverse death draws down an overwhelming force. The thin officer among his staff reveals himself as the attacker, piercing Chen Cuo with a black thread and setting him alight. The narration names him Chen Fangqing and declares that heaven and earth could not tolerate his violation of life-and-death law.
• In the Void-Reality Interstice, the Lord of Self—who had been shaping reality through a story—realizes Chen Cuo’s death has triggered a backlash from history. He is swept away by a torrent of time.
• Elsewhere, a small tree covered in black lines withers and breaks. Its starlight passes into a great golden tree, where it helps form a strange fruit. A small brass-colored tree responds.
• The chapter ends with an abrupt modern-day aside: the narrator complains that their health code has turned yellow and that required testing sites are dangerously crowded.

Character developments and interactions

• Wei Guang begins as a cautious commander seeking a controlled retreat, but black-flame influence turns him into a reckless advocate of fighting to annihilation. He strikes Deputy Wang Yong when Wang questions the order.
• Chen Cuo is shown as powerful and compassionate: he frees the soldiers from the frenzy and tries to restore the dead. Yet he knowingly takes a risk, hoping the crisis will help him shed his mortal body and complete his transformation.
• The thin officer, previously quiet and inconspicuous, is revealed as the agent behind Chen Cuo’s death. He attacks while Chen Cuo is occupied resisting the force enforcing death’s laws.
• The Lord of Self is exposed as the story-shaper behind the battle’s manipulation. Chen Cuo’s death overturns his plan and provokes history’s retaliation.
• Chen Cuo’s officers urge him to retreat, but he calms them, sends them away, and faces the supernatural threat alone.

Significant themes

• The limits of power: Even extraordinary ability cannot freely override the laws governing life and death.
• Manipulation and agency: The soldiers’ apparent choices are distorted by black fire and hidden influence, while Chen Cuo’s deliberate acceptance of events complicates the question of control.
• History resisting interference: The Lord of Self’s attempt to reshape reality is answered by a destructive backlash.
• Compassion and consequence: Chen Cuo’s effort to save lives is morally generous but brings catastrophic consequences.
• Abrupt tonal contrast: The final health-code complaint sharply breaks the mythic fantasy narrative with a contemporary, comic-sounding aside.

Plot points and events

• Chen Cuo’s Five-Colored Divine Light halts the battlefield’s frenzy and restores the soldiers’ clarity. His Black-and-White Light then briefly reverses death, restoring severed bodies and souls—but the force of the ancient Heavenly Dao injures the cultivators and deities present.
• Watching from outside the period, the future Chen Cuo realizes the battlefield’s disturbance was caused by someone from the future. He had deliberately exposed a weakness to draw out an attacker while gathering the souls of the newly dead, but had not understood the full situation at the time.
• Black flames disrupt time and space, then break apart. The resulting streaks of light scatter across the land, prompting observers to suspect that the Marquis of Linru County has undergone “Liberation by Violence” and dissolved his Dao.
• Reactions vary: Long Xu investigates while putting the shaken Lingya to sleep; Creation Dao members celebrate what they believe is their enemy’s death; Guan Yu tries to reach the battlefield but is restrained by her senior brother and the elders. Dianyunzi worries that the Kunlun Sect may now act against Great Hua Mountain and returns to protect his younger sister.
• Chen Cuo notices two lights from Chen Fangqing’s body being swallowed by a vast millstone hidden in the clouds. Its ancient aura suggests that the Life-and-Death Millstone is awakening. Soon afterward, a force pulls Chen Cuo out of the period.
• In the void, Chen Cuo gathers fragments of Starlight containing scenes from the past and finds that no one else is nearby. He wonders whether the Lord of Self escaped rejection from the timeline. Before Chen Cuo can leave through the Sundial, a Dao Mark Star appears, apparently connected to an Incomplete Dao Master—possibly the Lord of Self.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Cuo shifts from acting within events to interpreting them from a future vantage point. He remains focused on confronting the Lord of Self, but the millstone, the timeline’s rejection, and the Dao Mark Star reveal that major mysteries remain.
• Long Xu acts protectively toward Lingya when she shows signs of cultivation deviation, then sets out to investigate. Lingya, despite insisting that the suspected death is impossible, is visibly shaken.
• Guan Yu reacts emotionally to the apparent death and attempts to rush to the battlefield; Hu Qiu and the Creation Dao elders stop her, prioritizing her safety.
• Dianyunzi consults Master Soaring, then chooses to return to his sect out of concern for his younger sister and the danger of a possible political backlash.

Significant themes

• Life, death, and cultivation: Even the pursuit of immortality cannot fully escape death; Chen Cuo’s power briefly bridges the divide but cannot undo the larger consequences.
• Time and causality: Future intervention, temporal distortions, timeline rejection, and memory-like Starlight make events difficult to understand even for experienced cultivators.
• The consequences of apparent death: Different factions interpret the scattered lights as proof of a rival’s demise, and their reactions expose rivalries, grief, and political anxiety.
• Unseen forces and unresolved mysteries: The Life-and-Death Millstone and the Dao Mark Star hint that deeper powers—and possibly the Lord of Self—are shaping events beyond what the characters can yet grasp.

Key plot points and events

• A will, reduced to a star of Origin, escapes through a strange painting of the past. It vows to rebuild itself and break free of its former fate, while plotting to mislead Chen Cuo and widen the gap between them.
• As the star nears the painting’s exit, Chen Cuo’s Long Sleeve catches it. The star releases its Dao Mark and summons ancient, overwhelming Aura Pressure, tearing the sleeve and blasting Chen Cuo back out of the Sundial.
• The star bursts onto the River of Time Gap’s band of light, manifesting as a towering, shadowy figure surrounded by pale-yellow energy and phantoms of the River of History.
• The figure recognizes Chen Cuo as Chen Fangqing and attacks with waves of hatred and resentment. It freezes the surrounding space, shatters Chen Cuo’s Incarnation into six torrents, and threatens to stain his Dao Heart.
• Chen Cuo steadies his mind with the aid of the Slanting Moon, Little Gourd, Mind Monkey, and Mind Horse, then reforms his Incarnation.
• The figure declares it will replace Chen Cuo’s cultivation path with the discredited Merit Path. Chen Cuo realizes the attacker is a Dao Mark of the Merit Way that has developed a will. The chapter ends as it transforms into a pale-yellow torrent of accumulated deeds and rushes at him.

Character developments

• The star’s will / former Lord of Self: Driven by resentment toward Chen Cuo, it sees its loss of body and power as a chance to start anew. Its desperate bid to escape its past instead brings forth the ancient power of its Dao Mark, and it turns its hatred into an attempt to derail Chen Cuo’s cultivation.
• Chen Cuo: Faces an opponent whose power surpasses what he has demonstrated with his own Dao Marks. Though his Incarnation is nearly destroyed and his mind is attacked, he keeps control of his Dao Heart, identifies the enemy’s nature, and remains alert to the danger of the Merit Path.

Significant themes

• Fate versus self-determination: The star longs to escape its old destiny, yet wonders whether it is still bound to it.
• Resentment as both power and peril: The star’s hatred fuels its attack, while those same emotions threaten to corrupt Chen Cuo’s mind.
• The danger of a corrupted path: The Merit Path is presented as a road that has lost its foundation, making the attempt to impose it on Chen Cuo especially threatening.
• Identity and continuity: The attacker claims it is no longer the Lord of Self, but its memories and hatred persist in its surviving Origin and Dao Mark.

Character interactions

• The conflict is driven by the star’s personal vendetta against Chen Cuo, whom it blames for its downfall and lost body.
• Chen Cuo first tries to capture the star, then must evade its unleashed power. After surviving its emotional assault, he questions its identity and recognizes its connection to the Merit Way.
• The attacker refuses to explain itself directly; instead, it answers through accusations and the attempt to force Chen Cuo onto a different cultivation path.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Chen Cuo’s incarnation discovers that the powerful presence in the torrent intends to follow his connection back to his true body. He splits the incarnation into six, but the enemy destroys five and traps the last one, preventing Chen Cuo from withdrawing his will.
• The entity reveals that the torrent contains the original form of the Merit Heavenly Dao, which has accumulated power for eleven hundred years. It abandoned that form because it is “no longer a Dao Mark.”
• The torrent’s impact makes Chen Cuo’s past deeds—rescuing, attacking, teaching, and more—manifest as luminous characters. From them, he comprehends the Heaven and Earth Exquisite Merit-Teaching True Scripture, a complete and exceptionally powerful cultivation path.
• Chen Cuo realizes that the Scripture, the Merit Dao Mark’s conception, and the accumulated Merit are entering him together. This combination could qualify him to challenge the Merit Heavenly Dao’s highest realm—but would also overwrite his existing cultivation paths, including his deeply rooted Dao of Rise and Fall.
• Before he can resolve the danger or investigate why ancient Heavenly Daos have declined, his incarnation dissolves and his thoughts scatter.
• At Soaring Peak, Nanmingzi and Qiongfa Zi worry that Chen Cuo may be in danger. Their magic power and physical strength suddenly weaken, and bright-yellow mist begins pouring through the mountain.

Character development

• Chen Cuo remains quick-thinking under extreme pressure, discerning the entity’s motives and evaluating the benefits and risks of the Merit Way. His response to the apparent opportunity is alarm rather than excitement: preserving his own path matters more to him than gaining immense power.
• The entity within the torrent presents itself as the original form of the Merit Heavenly Dao. It is powerful, hostile, and seemingly trying to impose its path on Chen Cuo.

Character interactions

• Chen Cuo questions the entity about why it abandoned its original form, prompting the explanation that it is no longer a Dao Mark.
• The entity condemns Chen Cuo’s resistance and insists that all beings are subject to the Heavenly Dao.
• Nanmingzi and Qiongfa Zi discuss Chen Cuo’s silence and fear that he may be in danger, before the same bright-yellow force affects them.

Significant themes

• Power versus identity: A perfect, powerful cultivation path may still be destructive if it erases the practitioner’s own path.
• Merit and action: The Merit Way turns past words and deeds into spiritual power, making all conduct part of cultivation.
• The limits of control: Chen Cuo’s experience on another entity’s “turf” shows how helpless even a formidable cultivator can become.
• Aging and decline: The chapter raises the question of why ancient Heavenly Daos have weakened or disappeared, leaving the cause unresolved.
  Note: The final sentence about a health code appears unrelated to the chapter’s narrative.

Key plot points and events

• As the Bright Yellow Mist erupts across Great Hua Secret Realm, Nanmingzi and Qiongfa Zi use their last strength to activate the realm’s protective formation and warn the sect not to interfere.
• The formation fails to contain the mist. It reaches the two elders, but instead of harming them, it restores their strength and awakens powerful memories.
• The mist spreads through nearly half the realm, affecting disciples, ordinary people, and even animals. It draws in more heavily those with cultivation, distinguished lineage, or unusual potential.
• Nanmingzi’s senses transform: he can see Public Esteem, and a weighty power begins forming within him. He recognizes the mist as Primordial Yellow Aura, which is forcing him onto the Path of Merit and may propel him toward the Longevity Realm.
• At Soaring Peak, the aura attempts to remake Chen Cuo’s Immortal Body, turning its parts into Transcendence organs. Chen resists by invoking the essence of rise and fall, the River of Time, and the Thirteen Stars.
• A star speaking from the River of Time urges Chen to yield, claiming that Merit cultivation could make him powerful but would eventually entangle him in a cosmic struggle between truth and falsehood, Void and Reality—and possibly lead him to destroy Great Hua Mountain.
• The star explains that ordinary Divine Abilities cannot withstand Primordial Yellow Aura and tempts Chen with the promise of reaching the Eighth Realm, the Constellation Realm. Chen responds by summoning the Treasure Pagoda through rolling Gray Mist.
• The chapter ends with one Hanging Peak absorbing the surrounding aura like a black hole. Its summit bears the characters “Righteousness.”

Character developments and interactions

• Nanmingzi puts the sect’s survival ahead of his own safety, trusting Chen Cuo to be its true foundation. The aura then begins transforming him into a Merit cultivator, deepening his concern about what Chen has unleashed.
• Qiongfa Zi worries that the elders’ absence will leave the sect vulnerable, but he and Nanmingzi are both overwhelmed by the mist and swept into its influence.
• Chen Cuo remains defiant despite the aura’s invasive transformation of his body. He questions the star about its warning but refuses its offer to stop resisting.
• The star acts as both a source of unsettling knowledge and a tempter, using the promise of immense power to persuade Chen to surrender.
• Disciples such as Yang Ling’er and Li Dingji, along with people across the realm, lose control of their strength and drift into a trance as the aura enters them.

Significant themes

• Power and its cost: The Merit Method offers rapid, extraordinary advancement, but may bind its practitioners to forces and conflicts beyond their control.
• Resistance versus transformation: Chen fights to preserve his own path and body against an aura that treats transformation as inevitable.
• Duty and trust: Nanmingzi accepts personal risk because he believes Chen—not the Sect Leader—is the key to Great Hua’s future.
• The reach of cosmic change: The aura affects an entire realm, showing that the events at Soaring Peak have consequences for ordinary lives as well as cultivators.