Recaps

After becoming the fourteenth Celestial Master, Zhang Xuan learned that he had only twenty-eight days to live and set out with Monk Sanjie to find a way to survive. They escaped a temple haunted by the Headless Corpse Buddha, while Meng Changxi fled with its treasure and the suspicious Xu Ming appeared in their path.

• Jian San declared Zhang Xuan the new Celestial Master, but Zhang Xuan suspected that the Old Celestial Master had been murdered and helped revive him with Jiang Jiu’s Palm Thunder.
• The Old Celestial Master passed the Celestial Master’s Ordination to Zhang Xuan, who learned it could answer questions but noticed that the old man’s Inner Landscape concealed the truth about his poisoning.
• After finding a hidden compartment containing poison and a note, Zhang Xuan entered his Inner Landscape and learned he had twenty-eight days to live unless he found a pill or a Core Formation cultivator to temper his body.
• Zhang Xuan took a Daoist arts book and a damaged jade pendant, then met Monk Sanjie after using Palm Thunder to drive off a ghost, and he agreed to travel west with the monk.
• During a mountain storm, Zhang Xuan and Monk Sanjie found a headless corpse in a coffin and took shelter in a ruined temple, where Zhang Xuan used the Ordination to gain Nether Candle Mystic Eyes.
• Zhang Xuan saw that the temple’s idol was a Headless Corpse Buddha and warned Meng Changxi to return its two-faced Buddha head, while his mystic eyes revealed the temple was a deadly ghost domain.
• Zhang Xuan used Innate Supreme Unity Divine Thunder to break through the temple wall, then escaped with Monk Sanjie as the Headless Corpse Buddha attacked, and Meng Changxi escaped separately with the Buddha treasure.
• Zhang Xuan and Monk Sanjie fled across the Corpse Buddha’s flesh-covered ground and met Xu Ming, a Demon Suppression Bureau centurion whom Zhang Xuan’s mystic eyes marked as a deep red threat.

Zhang Xuan killed the Phoenix-Cry Mountain God, took the Buddha Treasure, and assumed Xu Ming’s identity while investigating supernatural crimes and helping Ji Anning. After enduring repeated deaths in Mountain Suppressor’s trial, he reached Yandang Mountain and confronted the bandits who had killed Ji Anning’s mother.

• Zhang Xuan and Monk Sanjie defeated the Corpse Buddha, killed Xu Ming, and escaped with the Buddha Treasure before burning the Mountain God Temple.
• Zhang Xuan took Xu Ming’s uniform and identity, while Monk Sanjie bound the Azure Phoenix Jade to him and explained how the Demon Suppression Bureau communicated with its agents.
• Zhang Xuan and Monk Sanjie found a village where Zhao Wu had used a Painted Skin and a false Demon Ghost attack to direct danger toward Widow Li’s family, and Zhang Xuan killed the demon.
• Zhang Xuan promised the grieving boy Ji Anning three human heads in exchange for her beast-tooth pendant, then learned she was a girl and treated her injuries with Monk Sanjie’s help.
• Zhang Xuan dreamed of Zhang Jingzhi, who told him violence could be righteous when used to protect himself and help others.
• Zhang Xuan entered Mountain Suppressor and accepted its trial, where the Headless Corpse Buddha repeatedly killed him as he practiced combining his techniques.
• Zhang Xuan traveled with Monk Sanjie and Ji Anning to Yandang Mountain, where bandits revealed that Mad Bull had abused and killed Ji Anning’s mother.
• Zhang Xuan confronted the bandits, asked where Mad Bull was, and knocked a saber from one man’s hand with his golden fingers.