Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng realizes the Xia Jie before him is the same ruler who was supposedly defeated and exiled. He concludes that Xia Jie had hidden himself behind the “sun,” and that their exchange of information as Source Seeds explains why Lin Feng’s earlier perceptions were incomplete.
• Xia Jie confirms that he learned much from Lin Feng, calling him his “true teacher.”
• Lin Feng reconstructs the past: Di Fa, Xia Jie’s father, violated a taboo by entering time or divining the dynasty’s fate. After discovering that Xia would fall to Shang, he tried to change the future, ordered the study of the Mirror, and built a mysterious door. He died believing his life—and history itself—had been controlled by observers.
• Xia Jie inherited the throne, released the Grand Artificers, and sealed the place containing the door. He later discovered that the door did not need to open: its mere existence served as a medium linking past and future.
• Xia Jie explains that history forms a closed loop in which Historians are both cause and effect—and the one variable capable of influencing it. Lin Feng realizes Xia Jie wants his identity as a Historian, not merely the Historian’s Eye.
• Xia Jie pulls Lin Feng’s thoughts into himself. Lin Feng understands the meaning of Xia Jie’s inscription: “All things are not me, yet all things are me.” Xia Jie has made his Intent capable of spreading through others, achieving a form of immortality even if his body and soul are destroyed.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng moves from confusion to insight, piecing together the hidden history and recognizing Xia Jie’s true goal. He also begins questioning what makes someone a Historian—eyes, abilities, or identity.
• Xia Jie is revealed as a deliberate, far-reaching thinker who uncovered the mechanics of history and sought to become its decisive variable. His apparent madness may actually be the result of understanding—and exploiting—the nature of Intent.
• Di Fa is portrayed as a desperate predecessor who tried to resist a predetermined fate but died believing his efforts were futile.
• Lin Feng and Xia Jie’s teacher–student dynamic is complicated: Xia Jie credits Lin Feng as his teacher, while Lin Feng realizes Xia Jie intends to take what makes him a Historian.

Significant themes

• Fate versus free will: attempts to alter history may fail when events are observed, recorded, or corrected.
• The nature of identity: Xia Jie’s existence persists through shared thoughts and Intent, suggesting that selfhood can extend beyond body and soul.
• History and causality: Historians occupy a unique position in a closed causal loop, serving as both witnesses and potential agents of change.
• Knowledge as inheritance and danger: information passes between Source Seeds, and understanding the system may enable both liberation and control.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng realizes Xia Jie’s ambition is not merely to rule: Xia wants to transcend bloodline and individuality, becoming a “sun” whose identity encompasses everyone.
• Xia begins attacking Lin Feng through a direct clash of intent. He tries to overwrite Lin Feng’s memories and identity, turning him into Xia Jie. If successful, Xia could gain the Historian’s ability to travel through and anchor history, then spread his identity until everyone becomes an extension of himself.
• Lin Feng spots the distant heavenly fire but remains trapped in the mental confrontation. He recognizes the danger, yet his ability to joke about Xia’s plan suggests he still has room to resist.
• Elsewhere in the Underworld, Zhang Daoling cannot locate Libationer Green Mountain. He finds a familiar signal—an emergency message Green Mountain would send only in dire circumstances—and grows increasingly concerned.
• A mountain repeatedly obstructs Zhang’s path. He finally uses the Male and Female Swords to carve through it and the surrounding terrain. Their wounds are permanent, and the attack drives away the lurking Underworld beings. Zhang then races onward through the ravine.

Character developments

• Xia Jie is portrayed as a radical, increasingly grandiose thinker. Having benefited from hereditary rule, he now rejects bloodline and seeks to make his own identity universal.
• Lin Feng is shaken by Xia’s plan but stays mentally engaged, looking for a way out rather than surrendering.
• Zhang Daoling shifts from searching cautiously to acting decisively when the emergency signal and repeated obstruction exhaust his patience.

Significant themes

• Bloodline, legitimacy, and power: The chapter traces how inherited status once seemed natural, and how challenges to it threatened established order.
• Identity and conquest: Xia’s “contamination” turns domination into an effort to erase another person and replace them with himself.
• Ambition and dehumanization: Xia’s desire to become “everyone” reflects a vision so expansive that individual lives and identities become insignificant.
• History and permanence: The Historian’s ability to shape historical reality is central to Xia’s plan, while the swords’ irreversible wounds emphasize that some actions cannot be undone.

Character interactions

• Xia and Lin Feng engage in a high-stakes contest of intent, with each seeking to overwrite or preserve Lin Feng’s identity.
• Zhang Daoling responds to Green Mountain’s silent emergency signal, whose meaning rests on their mutual trust and unspoken understanding.
• Zhang’s attack also confronts the hidden Underworld beings drawn by his aura, forcing them to retreat.

Summary

• Lin Feng realizes he has been drawn into Nightmare, a natural force Xia Jie is attempting to exploit. Xia Jie’s plan combines Nightmare with the Mirror, using knowledge preserved in fragments of the Three Mounds texts. The Yellow Emperor Book supposedly describes the door that enables people to imitate nature and access its power; Xia Jie suggests this may explain the origin of Source Seeds.
• Xia Jie’s attack floods Lin Feng’s mind with another person’s memories, aiming to make him become Xia Jie. Lin Feng resists by treating his past identity-changing experiences as roles or games, keeping those borrowed lives separate from his own sense of self. He welcomes the contest on ground he believes he understands best.
• Nightmare eventually overwhelms that defense: Lin Feng can no longer shift perspectives or think independently. He is immersed in the memories of Gui, experiencing Gui’s life as his own. Nightmare’s power works partly by dulling the mind until it accepts the memories as real.
• In Gui’s memory, he stands with his father, Di Fa, at a vast, dark fissure believed to be the burial place of a deity who served the Yellow Emperor. Di Fa has secretly organized an expedition to investigate it. Soldiers descend into the abyss carrying a sacred blue-green flame that illuminates darkness and repels evil. Earlier, slaves entered the fissure and never returned; now the armed soldiers also disappear from sight without a sound.
• As Gui and Di Fa watch, Lin Feng notices something disturbing: he cannot clearly see what is happening below.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng draws on his experience inhabiting other identities to resist Xia Jie, but Nightmare’s immersive power eventually strips him of control and sense of self.
• Xia Jie is revealed as an ambitious strategist willing to harness powerful natural forces—and Lin Feng’s mind—to achieve his aims.
• Di Fa appears as a forceful, secretive father who personally leads the dangerous expedition and brings Gui with him. His tight grip and insistence that Gui watch suggest both control and a determination to expose him to the truth.

Significant themes

• Identity and selfhood: Lin Feng tries to preserve himself by treating other lives as experiences rather than true identities.
• The danger of knowledge and power: Attempting to imitate or exploit nature is portrayed as profoundly risky.
• Memory and reality: Memories are subjective and can be manipulated; Nightmare can make borrowed experience feel unquestionable.
• The limits of perception: The chapter ends with Lin Feng unable to see into the fissure, foreshadowing a deeper mystery.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng becomes troubled by unexplained thoughts and knowledge that feel foreign to him, including the concepts of “temporal turbulence,” “Seventh Rank,” and even “meters.” Di Fa’s painful grip snaps him out of one such episode.
• When the ropes used by the first descent team are hauled back up, they are empty and untied. A Fangxiangshi examines them and discovers glowing, multicolored spores that induce hallucinations; he concludes the scouts were eaten.
• Di Fa orders the exploration to continue. Fangxiangshi and masked climbers, apparently powerful Seventh Rank fighters, descend wearing protective robes and masks.
• A scout reports finding a palace below. Di Fa orders the route cleared, then decides to descend himself, taking Lin Feng with him.
• As they climb into the abyss, Lin Feng sees dead snakes and insects, strange plant-animal creatures, and mutilated bodies. Blue-green torches keep smaller predators at bay. Di Fa explains that some creatures are dead people deprived of sacrificial offerings, driven to seek flesh and blood.
• Fangxiangshi warns that they are nearing the region inhabited by the hallucinogenic spores.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng is frightened by the descent and feels unable to refuse Di Fa. His recurring, unfamiliar thoughts suggest a gap between his present self and his sense of identity or memory.
• Di Fa is decisive and controlling: he treats the expedition as a private operation, keeps other Xia Dynasty factions out, and insists on going down personally. He also physically jolts Lin Feng back to attention.
• Fangxiangshi acts as the expedition’s specialist, identifying the spores and advising the group on protection. He works alongside masked climbers to clear the way.
• The growing danger draws the group together in a tense, practical effort, while Di Fa’s distrust of rival factions shapes how the expedition is organized.

Significant themes

• Unreliable memory and identity: Lin Feng senses that his thoughts and knowledge do not fit his current understanding of himself.
• Exploration and the unknown: The descent reveals a hostile, unfamiliar world where ordinary assumptions offer little protection.
• Power and control: Di Fa commands the mission and controls who participates, while Lin Feng has little agency.
• Death and ritual: The explanation that unoffered dead become predators links spiritual neglect with physical danger.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng and Di Fa descend into an enormous abyss, where Azure Fire torches mark a narrow path across a perilous platform. The surrounding darkness conceals unknown threats.
• The group passes many corpses: earlier victims who fell to their deaths, old skeletons of nonhuman beings, and recently killed soldiers. Scouts advance while others remain behind to guard the flames.
• Lin Feng instinctively gestures as if to protect wounded soldiers. Di Fa and the Fangxiangshi notice; the Fangxiangshi performs a ritual, leaving Lin Feng dazed and strangely forgetful. Di Fa tells him to ignore the deaths and concentrate on their mission.
• Di Fa explains that the site is believed to be a burial ground for divine allies of the Yellow Emperor, built after his decisive battle with Chi You at Zhuolu. He suspects something unusual happened there and warns Lin Feng to show no surprise at whatever they encounter.
• Di Fa stresses that Chi You’s power is associated with darkness—not simply night or fog, but the inability to see.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains compassionate despite Di Fa’s insistence that deaths are unimportant. His protective impulse triggers an unexplained reaction, and he realizes that his memories and identity may be unstable: the name “Gui” feels familiar, yet wrong.
• Di Fa is stern, pragmatic, and focused on keeping Lin Feng controlled and alive. He reveals his knowledge of the site and treats emotional concern as a dangerous distraction.
• The Fangxiangshi responds to Lin Feng’s unusual gesture with a ritual, apparently checking whether something is wrong, though the reason and result remain unclear.

Significant themes

• Darkness and perception: The greatest threat is not darkness itself but being unable to see, which gives Chi You’s forces an advantage.
• Memory and identity: Lin Feng senses that he has forgotten important information and questions who he is.
• Compassion versus survival: Lin Feng’s concern for the dying conflicts with Di Fa’s insistence on focusing only on the mission.
• The cost of the past: The trail of bodies and the hidden story of the Zhuolu battlefield suggest that ancient history still carries deadly consequences.

Character interactions

• Di Fa keeps Lin Feng close, physically gripping his hand and repeatedly directing his attention forward.
• Lin Feng’s attempt to help the wounded draws attention from both Di Fa and the Fangxiangshi; the Fangxiangshi performs a ritual while Di Fa reprimands him.
• Di Fa shares his account of the burial ground and warns Lin Feng to stay composed as they proceed into territory associated with Chi You.

Key plot points and events

• Di Fa leads Lin Feng’s party through a passage swallowed by unnatural darkness. Scouts and soldiers repeatedly vanish despite standing in the light, and the route behind them disappears.
• Lin Feng realizes that his memories and identity may be under alteration. Painful rebukes from Di Fa seem to disrupt his thoughts and erase memories, but the interruptions also make him more suspicious.
• Lin Feng recalls his own powers—red flames, the Calamity Hound, and the Soaring Serpent—and recognizes that the wind around him has vanished. He also senses an unfamiliar voice supplying insights that feel like his own knowledge.
• The voice clarifies that Chi You’s power was not simply darkness: whatever could not be seen belonged to him, allowing him to appear wherever people lacked sight. Lin Feng recalls that the Land of Forgetting consists of places that have sunk into the Underworld, beyond sunlight and memory.
• With the way back cut off, Di Fa keeps the group together, orders a defensive formation, and has them advance with fires lit and weapons positioned. Their survival depends on maintaining awareness: if anyone can see something, it cannot be claimed by the darkness.
• Lin Feng reasons that the site is not a conventional tomb. Its intact, unfinished condition suggests a deliberately designed cage, perhaps connected to ancient geomancy. The party reaches stairs leading upward, surrounded by human bones and many more remains of exotic beasts.

Character developments

• Lin Feng grows increasingly alert and analytical despite memory loss, pain, and uncertainty about who he is. His recovered memories reveal that he has powers and knowledge beyond what his present circumstances suggest.
• Di Fa appears as a commanding, pragmatic leader who suppresses panic and prioritizes discipline. He treats Lin Feng as his son and heir, though Lin Feng knows this does not match his true identity.
• Fangxiangshi loses confidence when his theories fail, while continuing to protect Di Fa and Lin Feng because his own survival depends on them.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: Lin Feng’s sense of self is being manipulated, and remembering becomes an act of resistance.
• Sight, darkness, and knowledge: The danger exploits what people cannot see; attention and shared awareness offer protection.
• Power and control: Di Fa maintains authority through discipline, while the unseen force controls territory by claiming whatever lies beyond perception.
• History and forgetting: Places and people can disappear from the world when they are forgotten, linking physical darkness to the loss of memory.

Character interactions

• Di Fa repeatedly disciplines Lin Feng, warning him to conceal grief and maintain a king’s composure; Lin Feng hides his confusion so he can keep thinking.
• The soldiers follow Di Fa’s orders, forming rings and advancing together rather than scattering.
• Fangxiangshi’s failed deductions contrast with Lin Feng’s emerging insight, while the mysterious voice inside Lin Feng’s mind guides him toward the truth about Chi You’s power.

Key plot points and events

• The group climbs a ruined, unprotected black-stone stairway littered with bones. Although it looks vast and threatening, it has only twenty-three steps.
• At the top, they find a platform strewn with human remains and deep, patterned grooves filled with an ancient, flammable substance. Fangxiangshi identifies it as a fuel made largely from solidified fat, with unfamiliar possible blood-like ingredients.
• Di Fa orders the fuel ignited. The flames reveal that the platform opens onto an immense expanse of yellow sand, oddly fixed in place despite the wind.
• The remains show a progression of horrifying deaths: people near the platform were drained dry, while those farther into the sand seem to have been transformed into grains themselves.
• Di Fa recognizes the dead as a particular group. Lin Feng infers from their clothing, bronze ornaments, and sea-life motifs that they likely came from a coastal or seafaring people, far from the Central Plains.
• As the heat and light awaken the sand, it begins creeping toward the group. Di Fa asks for a prepared object, and Fangxiangshi throws a blood-red stone onto the sand. The sand surges up and swallows it.

Character developments

• Lin Feng grows increasingly unsettled by his own thoughts: his instinctive references to movies and modern horror reveal knowledge that does not fit his apparent era or lost memories. He also shows a keen eye for drawing conclusions from small archaeological clues.
• Di Fa remains decisive and controlled, ordering the group’s movements and the deliberate ignition of the grooves. He treats the deaths as evidence rather than a cause for sympathy.
• Fangxiangshi demonstrates unusual abilities, including extending an inscribed bronze arm from his sleeve. He examines the fuel and carries the red stone intended to test or affect the sand.

Significant themes

• The danger of knowledge and curiosity: Di Fa suggests that those who uncover a secret are compelled to test it—and may die as a result.
• The uncanny and the unknown: Darkness, ancient remains, and seemingly impossible sand create mounting dread.
• Clues hidden in material culture: Clothing, ornaments, and bodily remains allow Lin Feng to reconstruct the dead people’s origins and way of life.
• Displacement and fractured identity: Lin Feng’s anachronistic thoughts deepen his sense that his memories and instincts do not belong in this world.

Character interactions

• Di Fa directs the group and questions Lin Feng, prompting him to interpret the evidence; Lin Feng’s body answers even as his thoughts wander elsewhere.
• Fangxiangshi investigates the substance and follows Di Fa’s order to ignite it, then acts on Di Fa’s request by throwing the prepared red stone onto the sand.
• The group maintains close formation and careful sightlines as they explore, but the sand’s sudden movement turns their investigation into an immediate threat.

Plot and key revelations

• Lin Feng sees sand and stones consume crimson material, then become dormant, loosen, and float upward. The sight leads him to suspect the Drought Demon—a once-divine maiden associated with clearing the skies, whose image was later transformed into a monstrous bringer of disaster.
• Di Fa explains that the people who died here were distant kin: descendants of Gun’s loyal followers, who accompanied him into exile on Mount Yu after his failure to control the Great Flood.
• Gun had considered turning floodwater into sand and gravel with the help of a divine being, but never found the Drought Demon. His son Yu instead succeeded by channeling the water rather than blocking it.
• After Gun’s death, his followers migrated to a great lake and founded their own tribe using Breath Soil and distinctive bronze techniques. They eventually learned the divine being’s location, recorded their history on a bronze vessel, and broke their agreement by returning to the Central Plains—where they met the fate visible around Lin Feng.
• Di Fa’s crimson “stones” are actually paste refined from metal-eating fish. The lake tribe had turned these supernatural fish into a special metal, and the waste paste can temporarily anesthetize the sand and stones, allowing the group to pass.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng connects the strange behavior of the sand to the Drought Demon and gradually pieces together the hidden history before Di Fa explains it. He also recognizes that his body’s original owner does not share his understanding.
• Di Fa is unusually forthcoming, calmly explaining his people’s ancestry, Gun’s failure, and the survivors’ punishment. His gesture of a descending hand emphasizes the severity of the curse against them.
• The passage centers on a father-and-son exchange: Di Fa answers Lin Feng’s confused questions while Lin Feng listens and interprets the account through his own knowledge.

Significant themes

• Myth and history: Familiar legends conceal real events, while later retellings distort figures such as the Drought Demon.
• Knowledge and authority: Powerful groups control dangerous information, and access to secrets is treated as a privilege that cannot safely be shared.
• Different approaches to nature: Gun seeks to overcome the flood through extraordinary power; Yu succeeds by adapting to it and redirecting its course.
• Inheritance and consequence: Loyalty to Gun becomes an obsession for his followers, and their broken agreement ends in collective punishment.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng accompanies Di Fa deeper into the sand-filled ruins. The group passes buried corpses, including Shamans of the Nine Li Tribe, and the remains of a sacrificial plaza whose carved flames and ritual objects have turned to sand.
• Di Fa forbids anyone from looking back and insists the sand is harmless as long as they do not disturb it. His calm, forceful leadership suggests he knows far more than he has revealed.
• Elsewhere in the Underworld, Zhang Daoling and Libationer Green Mountain face a burning mountain and an approaching deluge of sand. Zhang destroys the monstrous beings before them with his Male-Female Twin Swords, while Green Mountain realizes their real danger lies behind a sealed Bronze Gate.
• Green Mountain suspects that Lin Feng has drawn “nature” out of history, causing the Qingshan Game Console to crash. He also recognizes that Di Fa’s remaining malevolence and obsession—not Di Fa himself—are obstructing them.
• Zhang and Green Mountain prepare to draw the mountain’s hidden beings out. Zhang uses his blood, which carries a Pseudonatural aura, and warns Green Mountain to keep his distance.
• Meanwhile, Lin Feng receives the Root Teacher’s memories and knowledge. Di Fa repeatedly prompts him to distinguish between himself and the Root Teacher, while visions of a Soaring Serpent and a tree appear in his mind.
• Lin Feng’s perception changes: he recognizes the surrounding sand as “nature” and suspects the ruins may be a place associated with the Drought Demon, which the Root Teacher’s experience suggests may be an imagined figure rather than a literal goddess.

Character developments

• Lin Feng begins to move beyond fear and confusion as the Root Teacher’s knowledge reshapes how he sees the ruins. He remains uncertain about his identity and the strange Flame visible only to him.
• Di Fa appears increasingly capable and prepared, though his motives and the nature of the force left behind after his death remain unclear.
• Zhang Daoling shows fierce loyalty to Green Mountain, treating threats to him as threats to his own path to enlightenment. He is cautious, decisive, and unwilling to take unnecessary risks.
• Libationer Green Mountain recognizes the scale of the danger and becomes anxious about what Lin Feng’s connection to nature may mean. He also understands that a Historian’s death can be complicated by another Historian witnessing or causing it.

Significant themes

• Identity and selfhood: Lin Feng must separate his own identity from the Root Teacher’s memories and experience.
• Nature and human limits: The chapter presents nature as a terrifying force that can overwhelm even experienced Historians and disrupt powerful tools.
• History, fate, and inevitability: Some events seem bound to occur, yet the intervention of Historians may alter even deaths thought to be settled.
• Knowledge and danger: Understanding the deeper structure of history and nature can bring power, but also risks destroying the person who seeks it.
• Loyalty and the Dao: Zhang’s devotion to Green Mountain is tied to his own spiritual path, making their bond both personal and purposeful.

Character interactions

• Di Fa leads Lin Feng and the others through the ruins, enforcing obedience while guiding Lin Feng through the process of receiving the Root Teacher’s knowledge.
• Zhang Daoling protects Green Mountain and acts on his behalf, but sharply orders him back when Green Mountain approaches the mountain’s hidden threat.
• Green Mountain assesses the danger for Zhang, identifying the sealed gate and the nature-related force behind it, while Zhang supplies the means to provoke the hidden beings.

Key plot points and events

• As Lin Feng travels with Di Fa and Fangxiangshi through the yellow-sand-covered ruins, he realizes he has been drawn into Xia Jie’s memories. Xia Jie’s oddly passive behavior makes Lin Feng suspect danger.
• The group reaches a sunken sacrificial plaza. Beneath the sand is a cellar hatch, surrounded by clay jars and eerie remains arranged as defeated creatures paying homage to something below.
• Di Fa identifies the cellar as a sacrificial site associated with the Yellow Emperor. He explains that his research suggests the site conceals what happened to the divine beings who aided Chi You at the Battle of Zhuolu—particularly the Wind Earl and Rain Master—after their defeat.
• While Di Fa speaks, Xia Jie finally looks up. A gigantic woman-shaped mass of sand clings to the ceiling, following the group. The sand suddenly pours down and surges toward them.
• Di Fa throws Lin Feng into the cellar and follows; Fangxiangshi joins them and shuts the hatch. Di Fa lights a candle, revealing an immense array of Incantation Script that shocks Lin Feng—and apparently exposes the reason he was lured there.

Character developments

• Lin Feng becomes increasingly alert to the danger and to the strange overlap between his own awareness and Xia Jie’s memories. His curiosity gives way to shock as the hidden threat and the cellar’s contents emerge.
• Di Fa proves more capable and prepared than he first appeared. He recognizes the site, shares his historical research, and reacts decisively when the sand attacks.
• Fangxiangshi remains watchful and practical, helping the others escape by closing the hatch.
• Xia Jie breaks his apparent restraint by looking up at the sand woman, triggering the attack.

Significant themes

• History and buried truth: Di Fa’s investigation challenges accepted accounts and seeks to explain the unexplained fate of Chi You’s defeated allies.
• Nature as a force beyond control: The shifting sand behaves like a living, hostile power.
• The danger of forbidden knowledge: The truth beneath the cellar is revealed through overwhelming Incantation Script that threatens Lin Feng’s sanity.
• Memory and identity: Lin Feng’s awareness of being inside Xia Jie’s memories blurs the boundary between observer and participant.

Character interactions

• Di Fa orders the group to stop and warns Lin Feng not to look up, physically holding his head down.
• Di Fa explains his conclusions to Lin Feng and the others, framing the cellar as the key to a forgotten historical mystery.
• When the sand attacks, Di Fa forcefully saves Lin Feng by throwing him into the cellar; Fangxiangshi follows and seals the entrance behind them.
• The chapter ends on the revelation of the Incantation Script, leaving the nature of Di Fa’s trap—and what awaits Lin Feng—unresolved.

Key events

• The narrator and their family test positive and develop fevers. At first, the narrator alone remains well and believes they have escaped the illness.
• The narrator eventually develops a fever too and skips an update.
• Their remaining stockpiled chapters are gone, so there is no backlog to keep the updates coming.

Character development and interactions

• The narrator shifts from feeling like the lucky exception to joining the rest of the sick family.
• The family’s illness is mentioned collectively; no individual interactions are described.

Themes and tone

• Illness and disrupted plans: Getting sick forces the narrator to miss an update.
• Unlucky timing and creative pressure: The lack of spare chapters makes the setback especially frustrating.
• Irony and dry humor: The narrator’s claim that things are “really looking up” is undercut by “through gritted teeth.”

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng, Di Fa, and their companions explore a strange realm of layered mirrors. Lin Feng realizes that the reflection is not truly him—and notices that only two figures return in the mirror, though three had entered. Fangxiangshi is missing.
• Di Fa identifies the place as the Yellow Emperor’s study, a repository of ancient observations about the world. Its mirrored boundaries and inscriptions appear to contain powerful beings or forces, including a mass of rain that may be Rain Earl and records associated with the Drought Demon.
• Di Fa finds Zhuanxu’s Book, which describes attempts to alter the world by creating a heaven-reaching Jianmu and separating humans from nature’s powerful manifestations. Zhuanxu’s method was incomplete, and later rulers left little relevant information; Yu the Great’s sole surviving book concerns flood control.
• The scene shifts to the darkness beyond the Bronze Gate, where Lin Feng and Xia Jie’s consciousnesses have merged while their bodies remain intact. Xia Jie realizes that Lin Feng’s Historian power comes from the Qingshan Game Console, and locates it within their shared memories.
• Xia Jie wonders whether the console lies at the beginning of Lin Feng’s timeline. His thoughts reach the Underworld, where Libationer Green Mountain recognizes that the console is trying to escape.

Character developments

• Lin Feng remains clearheaded despite the surreal reflections and begins connecting ancient records to beings and powers described in myth.
• Di Fa reveals both his knowledge of the Yellow Emperor’s study and his hope that Zhuanxu’s work proves nature’s forces can be changed or contained.
• Xia Jie shifts from dismissing Lin Feng’s experiences to recognizing the game console as the source of Lin Feng’s Historian abilities. His understanding raises a new danger: the console may be escaping.
• Libationer Green Mountain quickly senses the threat and reacts with alarm.

Significant themes

• Humanity versus nature: Ancient rulers sought ways to separate people from entities embodying nature, but their methods had limits.
• Knowledge and inheritance: Each era left different records, and later generations inherited only fragments of earlier discoveries.
• Identity, memory, and power: Lin Feng and Xia Jie share consciousness and memories, while the source of Lin Feng’s abilities lies outside either man—in the game console.
• The limits of control: Boundaries can contain some beings, but nature may transcend ordinary space and time.

Character interactions

• Di Fa guides Lin Feng and the others through the mirror realm, explaining its history and the purpose of Zhuanxu’s work.
• Lin Feng and Xia Jie’s memories intertwine, allowing Xia Jie to uncover the console’s importance.
• Xia Jie’s thoughts pass through the Bronze Gate to Libationer Green Mountain, who warns that the console is attempting to escape.

Key plot points and events

• Xia Jie seeks to possess Lin Feng and take the Qingshan Game Console, believing it to be the external “succession ritual” that grants someone the complete powers of a Historian.
• Unable to enter the relevant period through the Bronze Gate, Xia Jie slips into the anchored stretch of history by using Lin Feng’s identity. The moment Lin Feng received the console appears to be the stretch’s likely secret.
• Libationer Green Mountain realizes that he did not protect this period: it was originally left unguarded because its ordinariness made it difficult to find. He concludes that Lin Feng himself must have anchored it, likely because Lin Feng’s condition is still unstable.
• Green Mountain wonders whether Lin Feng is nearing victory, but cannot tell how long that might take. Meanwhile, Zhang Daoling continues fighting the ghosts while Green Mountain hangs back.
• A figure called “Fangxiangshi” emerges from a dark mountain, covered in ancient incantations. Zhang Daoling recognizes them as Primordial Talismans, which he cannot decipher. The markings are linked to Gun’s Book and its observations of nature, especially water.

Character developments and interactions

• Xia Jie is revealed as a determined, calculating seeker of the Historians’ source of power. He regards the console as a means to become a Historian himself and exploits Lin Feng’s identity to enter the protected period.
• Lin Feng is absent, but his act of anchoring the period suggests he may be exerting control over history despite his unstable state.
• Libationer Green Mountain explains that each generation of Green Mountain follows its own path; protection is not governed by fixed rules. He admits uncertainty about Lin Feng’s progress and uses humor to avoid helping Zhang Daoling.
• Zhang Daoling confronts the ghosts largely alone, rebuking Green Mountain for failing to assist. Their banter shows Zhang’s frustration and Green Mountain’s shamelessly evasive manner.
• Fangxiangshi’s appearance shifts attention toward the mysterious Primordial Talismans and the flood-era knowledge preserved by Gun.

Significant themes

• Legacy and succession: Xia Jie treats the console as a vessel through which power and knowledge can be inherited.
• History and agency: A seemingly insignificant moment can become fixed by someone’s deliberate intervention; Lin Feng may be shaping the past himself.
• Divergent paths: The Green Mountain lineage is portrayed as a shared source that allows each generation to develop independently.
• Hidden knowledge: The ancient talismans resist ordinary interpretation, connecting present dangers to buried history and Gun’s observations of nature.

Key plot points and events

• The Bronze Gate tries to penetrate a sealed stretch of time by stripping away its many layers. The process is slow: the defenses appear designed to resist the severing techniques described in Zhuanxu’s Book.
• Xia Jie recognizes that the layered time-space resembles the Yin-Shang Divine Kingdom’s model, with something outside it acting as an anchor. He can only wait while the gate searches for the correct point in time.
• Lin Feng’s memories become unstable after sudden flames erupt. Voices and images overlap, revealing what seems to be a hidden presence within the memories.
• A voice explains that the study was built by the Yellow Emperor after the Battle of Zhuolu, and discusses nature, the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and Cangjie—the Yellow Emperor’s Historian, credited with inventing writing.
• The speaker abruptly claims, “I was the first to discover it. I left behind written characters!” A strange four-eyed figure appears, whom Lin Feng identifies as Cangjie.
• Lin Feng’s flames expose the figure without burning the original history, which is protected by an unseen face that has witnessed everything.

Character developments and interactions

• Xia Jie recognizes the limits of the Bronze Gate and the Xia people’s incomplete understanding of the device they built: they can use its runes and incantations but cannot explain their underlying principles.
• Lin Feng experiences a feverish confusion as memories, voices, and flames intermingle. He senses both the “Root Teacher” and the “Historian,” and begins to question the order of ancient events.
• Cangjie emerges as a powerful and unsettling presence connected to writing, memory, and the events in the study. Lin Feng is surprised to encounter him and realizes that the Soaring Serpent’s fear contains memories of Cangjie.
• The shifting speaker initially sounds like Di Fa, then appears to be someone else, complicating Lin Feng’s understanding of who is communicating with him.

Significant themes

• Fixed history and the limits of control: The Bronze Gate cannot alter predetermined events, despite its ability to travel through time and space.
• Knowledge without understanding: The Xia built and operated a powerful artifact without grasping how it worked, underscoring the danger and frustration of relying on inherited techniques.
• Nature, writing, and hidden knowledge: The chapter links Cangjie’s creation of writing to an ability to perceive time and nature, while suggesting that crucial knowledge was buried or lost.
• Uncertain memory and chronology: Overlapping voices and memories make it unclear who is speaking and when events occurred, raising doubts about the accepted sequence of history.

Key plot points

• Lin Feng questions what the ancient Historian feared. He concludes the Historian was not killed by the Lei Ancestor Tribe itself; they likely lured him toward the mysterious black light, which Lin Feng identifies only as a force of “nature.”
• Lin Feng realizes he has encountered Cangjie through Xia Jie’s Memory Fragment, not through ordinary historical time. The fragment forms a strange loop: Lin Feng’s presence influenced Xia Jie, and Xia Jie’s memories helped bring Lin Feng there.
• Heavenly Fire burns away the fragile memory-based history. Lin Feng understands that the events in the fragment never existed in actual history; they were only held in Xia Jie’s memory.
• As the flames strip away history’s surface, Lin Feng glimpses what lies behind it: an ancient, four-eyed, rune-covered face—the “thing that bears history.” He identifies it as Cangjie.
• Lin Feng’s intent begins to shake and risks shattering. Xia Jie panics, fearing he will lose the chance to obtain Lin Feng’s body and class.
• Lin Feng recognizes that history is supported by unknown manifestations of nature and is dangerously fragile. Heavenly Fire has pierced its surface and entered time’s inner layers, threatening everything with collapse.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng gains several major revelations about memory, history, and nature. His fear comes from confronting something wholly beyond his understanding, and his curse briefly reveals his human emotional side. His apparent defiance is not a conscious choice to die rather than submit; it follows from what he has discovered.
• Xia Jie shifts from controlling the situation to alarm as Lin Feng’s intent nears destruction. Their connection through the Memory Fragment allows Xia Jie to sense Lin Feng and gives his memories a role in shaping the encounter.
• The ancient Historian is portrayed as powerful yet fearful: he possessed Heavenly Fire and transformed his fear into the Soaring Dragon, but ultimately died through contact with nature.

Significant themes

• History’s fragility: What seems like established history may be only a weak construct, especially when sustained by memory.
• The unknown and fear: Lin Feng’s terror comes from seeing a reality that exceeds his assumptions.
• Memory and causality: Memory Fragments can resemble complete history and even create loops between past and present.
• Nature’s power: Heavenly Fire and other manifestations of nature can expose or destabilize the foundations beneath time and history.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng realizes that history may be far more fragile than he thought. If the past depends on a recorder to remain real, then the ancient age—and perhaps even the present—could be vulnerable if that record or its foundation disappears.
• This revelation sends Lin Feng’s Intent into violent turmoil. Xia Jie, who is trying to force memories into him and trace the moment he acquired the “game console,” finds that Lin Feng has suddenly vanished from the space behind the Bronze Gate.
• The Bronze Gate contains two currents of thought: Xia Jie and Lin Feng’s disembodied Intent. Its workings are poorly understood, even by its maker, Di Fa. As Xia Jie searches, cracks begin to appear in the surrounding space.
• Lin Feng discovers that he cannot put away the Heavenly Fire because he is now connected to it: his Intent is attached to it. The Fire also carries the recorded fear of a prehistoric Historian, preserved within its “Soaring Serpent” category.
• That Historian’s fear passes into Lin Feng. It comes from the possibility that history, memory, and the natural forces recorded within them might not be real or stable—that past events could be fragments trapped in repeating loops.
• Lin Feng’s mind buckles under the terror. He struggles to calm his Intent, aware that if it breaks, his cultivation may collapse too.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng shifts from adapting to the mysteries of history to confronting a fundamental threat to reality. He recognizes the danger, but is overwhelmed by inherited fear and tries to hold himself together.
• Xia Jie becomes unsettled when Lin Feng disappears. He assumes it may be a Historian’s ability, but his lack of understanding of the Bronze Gate leaves him unable to locate or control Lin Feng.
• The prehistoric Historian remains dead, but his experiences and fear persist through the Heavenly Fire and reach Lin Feng, showing how a Historian’s perception can outlast their life.
• The central interaction is indirect: Xia Jie tries to impose memories on Lin Feng, while Lin Feng’s destabilized Intent—and the Historian’s fear within the Fire—disrupts Xia Jie’s plan.

Significant themes

• The fragility of history: The past may rely on records or “anchors,” raising the possibility that reality itself can be lost or distorted.
• Memory and continuity: A dead Historian’s experiences survive and influence someone living, blurring the boundaries between past and present.
• Fear of false reality: The chapter asks whether history and nature are genuine, or merely fragments of time repeating within limits.
• Limits of knowledge and control: Xia Jie and even the Bronze Gate’s maker do not fully understand the Gate, while Lin Feng confronts questions too vast to answer.

Plot points and events

• Lin Feng’s consciousness is trapped in an unstable stretch of history. Using Heavenly Fire keeps him lucid, but also burns away the history around him, so he must escape before the era collapses.
• He focuses on finding his Life-Bound Artifact, his staff, which is anchored to Mount Tai. Their bond lets him use the staff as a route back toward his own time.
• As he travels, the “game console” associated with the Green Mountain legacy transforms into Green Mountain itself. Lin Feng recognizes it as something beyond time and space: an enduring concentration of intent.
• Lin Feng realizes that his connection to Green Mountain is part of a closed loop. The previous Green Mountain, Libationer Green Mountain, gave him the legacy and helped anchor him; Lin Feng’s own intent was already part of Green Mountain.
• He senses the intent associated with Cangjie on the mountain. Text identifying itself as Cangjie tells him to touch Green Mountain’s essence. Lin Feng does so, triggering an overwhelming burst of information.

Character developments

• Lin Feng stays focused despite disorientation and danger, relying on discipline and his bond with the staff to avoid being lost in history.
• He begins to understand his place in Green Mountain’s legacy: he has not merely been selected to become a Historian—his existing connection to Green Mountain is part of a self-reinforcing loop.
• His growing insight also unsettles him. He questions whether history itself is a form of nature and recognizes the risk of doubting everything when a worldview is shaken.

Character interactions

• Lin Feng and Libationer Green Mountain: Though Libationer Green Mountain is absent, Lin Feng recalls how he adapted the legacy into a game-console form and gave him anchors, ultimately recognizing him as a successor.
• Lin Feng and Cangjie: Lin Feng discovers Cangjie’s intent on Green Mountain and communicates with it through text. Cangjie confirms Lin Feng is qualified and urges him to touch the mountain’s essence.

Significant themes

• Stability and identity: Lin Feng’s survival depends on finding an anchor and preserving his sense of self amid unstable history.
• History’s vastness and indifference: History may overwhelm individuals, treating even Historians as expendable in the pursuit of continuity.
• Closed loops and destiny: Lin Feng’s relationship with Green Mountain suggests that past and future are intertwined, though change remains possible.
• Knowledge and doubt: New truths can destabilize established beliefs; the chapter cautions against allowing that shock to become indiscriminate skepticism.

Key plot points and events

• Lin Feng is swept into a disorienting vision in which Green Mountain reveals its ancient past.
• He witnesses early people discover fire after lightning strikes dead wood. They record the discovery with an Incantation Script character meaning “fire,” which produces a flame despite the storm.
• Lin Feng realizes both the flame and the surrounding darkness are deadly. The darkness seems to take people according to an inescapable law; the newly created fire then spreads uncontrollably, burning the people who observed or inscribed it—including Lin Feng.
• The blaze grows immense, but time begins to reset as it recedes. The people who died do not return; they are erased.
• Lin Feng is rescued. A mysterious figure holding a Pottery Shard explains that attempts to observe and record nature can unleash its power, while ignoring nature leaves people vulnerable to it. The figure calls this an insoluble paradox and says they will reveal a secret passed down through Green Mountain’s history.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng struggles to remain conscious amid shifting scenes, then uses his observations and basic knowledge of combustion to question how the supernatural flame works. His curiosity gives way to fear as he recognizes that both darkness and light can kill. He is ultimately rescued and respectfully asks his rescuer’s identity.
• The ancient people are shown as ingenious observers who record natural phenomena to protect their community. Their breakthrough becomes catastrophic: the Incantation Script turns them into fuel, and they perish.
• The mysterious figure remains unidentified, speaks to Lin Feng about humanity’s perilous relationship with nature, and prepares to share a long-guarded secret.

Significant themes

• Nature’s indifference and danger: Natural forces can destroy humanity without intent or awareness.
• Knowledge as both protection and threat: Recording nature helps people understand and survive, but engaging with its power can be fatal.
• The limits of human control: Humanity cannot master nature, yet cannot safely ignore it.
• Survival amid existential uncertainty: In this ancient world, the boundaries between life and death—and between natural phenomena and supernatural forces—are unstable.

Key plot points and events

• The Historian explains that the ancient Three Mounds and Five Canons were not lost simply through time: they were unsafe, powerful records of “nature.” The Three Mounds helped people survive; the Five Canons enabled them to live better.
• Lin Feng looks at the Historian holding the Book of Suiren and suffers intense eye pain, tears, and blurred vision. The Historian says Lin Feng was not merely reading a book—he was entering the reality of “nature” recorded within it, and might have burned to death without being brought back.
• Asked about the “Cangjie” head Lin Feng saw, the Historian says it represented everyone’s thoughts, not Cangjie himself.
• The Historian traces Lin Feng’s experience to Zhuanxu’s Book, whose original purpose was to separate and send away some aspect of nature. The process should have erased the book’s information, but Di Fa somehow obtained it and built a door into nature.
• When nature was separated, the history and spacetime supporting it began to collapse. People forgot that era, and even the present risked disappearing. Someone therefore cut history into fragments, allowing Historians to anchor the surviving pieces.
• The Historian concludes that the present arrangement was created through the combined efforts of many people, not one or two Historians.

Character developments and interactions

• Lin Feng becomes physically overwhelmed by what he witnesses, recognizes the danger, and turns away. He remains inquisitive, asking about the strange head and seeking an explanation.
• The Historian acts as a patient but candid teacher, laying out the limits of human understanding and the origins of the fractured historical world. He makes clear that even Historians do not fully understand nature or how the ancient separation was achieved.

Significant themes

• Nature’s overwhelming power: Human knowledge and ingenuity cannot master nature; even studying or ignoring it can be dangerous.
• Knowledge as risk: Ancient wisdom could preserve or improve life, but its power made it unsafe to pass down freely.
• History and continuity: The past is not guaranteed to endure; preserving the present required breaking its connection to a collapsing past.
• Collective effort and uncertainty: The world’s current structure resulted from many people’s actions, while crucial parts of its history remain unexplained.

Key plot points and events

• A Historian explains why Green Mountain avoids investigating the Tribal Era: history in that period is fragile, and meddling could cause it—or all of Green Mountain—to collapse. Green Mountain itself is a dangerous, forcibly created “natural phenomenon.”
• Lin Feng is given pottery inscribed with Incantation Script, containing the Three Mounds and Five Canons. The Historian recommends the Five Canons, whose methods for harnessing natural phenomena are more useful in the present; the Three Mounds’ brutal practices belong to a harsher age.
• Lin Feng is told he can learn to master Nightmare and the Anomalous Beasts’ flesh and blood he carries. This knowledge will help him confront the central danger: the Bronze Gate.
• The gate, made with the Source Seed, acts as a Medium. Lin Feng’s arrival through it was fortunate; next time, it might admit a dangerous exiled natural phenomenon. The gate must be destroyed before it brings catastrophe upon the Xia Dynasty.
• Lin Feng’s involvement was planned by both Xia Jie and the Historians. Libationer Green Mountain cannot handle the crisis because he is bound to Zhang Daoling, so Lin Feng must resolve it.
• Lin Feng learns that his body is somewhere in the Underworld, while he is currently only a wisp of Intent, separated from his consciousness and body. The Historian advises him to begin by studying Zhuanxu’s Book.

Character developments

• Lin Feng is assigned a decisive role in stopping the threat, but first must understand his unusual condition and develop his ability to master natural phenomena. His immediate priority shifts to learning.
• The Historian reveals the Historians’ limits and responsibilities: they are not all-powerful, but their work is essential to managing the risks of history.
• Libationer Green Mountain is shown to have survived through a symbiotic bond with Zhang Daoling, though this connection prevents him from taking on the present crisis.

Significant themes

• The fragility of history: Even seemingly small interventions may unravel entire eras.
• Risk and uncertainty: No one can guarantee that dealing with natural phenomena—or allowing Green Mountain to appear—will end safely.
• Power and responsibility: Lin Feng’s abilities make him responsible for confronting a danger others cannot address.
• Impermanence: Dynasties, tribes, and family lines eventually fade, while natural phenomena pose threats on a far greater scale.
• Knowledge as preparation: Lin Feng must study before he can act effectively.

Character interactions

• The Historian gives Lin Feng a candid explanation of Green Mountain, the Historians’ role, and the dangers surrounding the Bronze Gate.
• The Historian directs Lin Feng toward the Five Canons and Zhuanxu’s Book, framing study as the first step toward recovering his agency.
• Lin Feng asks about his body, prompting the revelation that he is currently only a wisp of Intent and must find his body in the Underworld himself.