Chapter Summaries

Shen Leyan’s Restaurant filled with Cloud Radiance Sect disciples eager for hot pot, and the Jiangxue Sword arrived seeking him. The sword transformed into Sect Master Lu, who confronted Shen Leyan about his invitation to split the Restaurant’s earnings with the sect.

• Cloud Radiance Sect disciples crowded the Restaurant after classes ended, leaving only its largest private room empty.
• Shen Leyan helped serve customers and wondered whether Sect Master Lu would come after hearing he was busy with the elders.
• The Jiangxue Sword flew to Shen Leyan, withdrew its frost when it learned he was sensitive to cold, and signaled that it wanted to enter the Restaurant.
• Shen Leyan took the Jiangxue Sword to a private room as diners speculated about his connection to Sect Master Lu.
• The Jiangxue Sword transformed into Sect Master Lu, who said he had come because Shen Leyan had insisted he attend and discuss sharing the Restaurant’s earnings with the sect.

Shen Leyan shared a meal with Lu Yuanyi, who asked for his birth details and tried to read his fate, but the chart shattered. After learning Zheng Ziheng was heading to the Southwestern Territory to gather herbs, Shen Leyan asked to go along so he could find new ingredients for his restaurant.

• Shen Leyan refused payment from Lu Yuanyi and invited him to bring the sect's elders to the restaurant.
• Lu Yuanyi asked Shen Leyan about his progress with the Azure Shadow Profound Art and requested his birth details after explaining Elder Xuanji's prediction about his divination affinity.
• Lu Yuanyi formed a fate chart with Spiritual Power, but it shattered and left a cut on his fingertip.
• Lu Yuanyi told Shen Leyan that Zheng Ziheng was staying behind to finish arrangements before going to the Southwestern Territory to gather rare herbs.
• Shen Leyan decided the region's specialties could attract customers to his restaurant and asked Lu Yuanyi when Zheng Ziheng would leave so he could go along.

Shen Leyan traveled with Lu Yuanyi and Zheng Ziheng to the Southwestern Territory to find ingredients, enduring a month-long, misdirected journey and severe flight sickness. After landing in a border marketplace, they bought spicy and sour pounded chicken feet, and Shen Leyan teased Lu Yuanyi about his age before preparing to continue toward the Southwestern Jungle.

• Shen Leyan entrusted Qingli with caring for the Restaurant and told Chen Jing to stay confident before his first Inner Sect mission.
• A month later, Shen Leyan, Lu Yuanyi, and Zheng Ziheng finally reached a border town after detours and meal stops prolonged their journey.
• Shen Leyan became nauseated during Sword Flight, and Lu Yuanyi landed with him and Zheng Ziheng in the marketplace.
• Zheng Ziheng checked that the Southwestern Jungle was nearby and suggested they eat before gathering herbs.
• Shen Leyan teased Lu Yuanyi by telling a chicken-feet seller that the white-haired man was over a thousand years old.
• Shen Leyan laughed at Lu Yuanyi's reaction and asked Zheng Ziheng to take him on Sword Flight later.

As Shen Leyan and his companions traveled toward the Southwestern Jungle, Lu Yuanyi shoved Shen Leyan into a fight between rival cultivators. Shen Leyan used the Azure Shadow Profound Art to evade their attacks, but the brawlers closed in and one charged him in stone armor.

• Zheng Ziheng explained their mission to find jadeblood snakegrass, then discovered Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi had disappeared.
• Shen Leyan joined the crowd watching two groups of cultivators fight, and Lu Yuanyi suddenly placed him between them.
• A cultivator hurled a flaming blade at Shen Leyan, who awakened his Wind Spiritual Root's power and dodged it with the Azure Shadow Profound Art.
• Shen Leyan tried to explain that he had stumbled into the fight by accident, but the cultivators attacked him anyway.
• Following Lu Yuanyi's advice, Shen Leyan used wind to deflect and evade the incoming Magic Artifacts.
• The attackers stopped controlling their Magic Artifacts from a distance, and an earth-attribute cultivator charged Shen Leyan in stone armor.

Shen Leyan was forced into a fight as training, but Lu Yuanyi intervened before he was seriously hurt. The group then entered the Southwestern Jungle, where Lu Yuanyi offered to knock down a flying Demonic Beast for Shen Leyan to roast.

• A cultivator trapped Shen Leyan with stone hands and sent stone armor charging at him, but Lu Yuanyi froze and shattered it with an ice needle.
• Lu Yuanyi asked the cultivators to let the matter go, and their leader apologized with a box of Pills that warded off venomous insects and dispelled miasma.
• Shen Leyan realized the fight had helped him use his Wind Spiritual Root and the Azure Shadow Profound Art more smoothly, then bought Lu Yuanyi a sugar figure.
• Zheng Ziheng rejoined Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi, then the group took Sword Flight into the Southwestern Jungle after taking the Pills.
• Nearby cultivators warned that flying Demonic Beasts attacked those who used Sword Flight above the jungle, and Lu Yuanyi offered to knock one down for Shen Leyan to roast.

Shen Leyan, Lu Yuanyi, and Zheng Ziheng traveled deeper into the Southwestern Jungle to find jadeblood snakegrass for Zheng Ziheng’s younger brother. After Shen Leyan tested several wild mushrooms, their strange effects left him in increasingly bizarre states.

• A Giant Eagle attacked the sword-flying group, but Shen Leyan disrupted its balance with a spell, and they later cooked and ate it.
• Zheng Ziheng located the jadeblood snakegrass search area on the map, and the group continued on foot as rain made Sword Flight difficult.
• Shen Leyan asked whether the colorful wild mushrooms were edible, then picked a gray one and ate a bite.
• The gray mushroom made Shen Leyan recite a poem and multiplication tables until Lu Yuanyi sent Spiritual Power into his back.
• Shen Leyan sampled a red mushroom and collapsed foaming at the mouth, then ate a white mushroom and began spinning and dancing.
• After eating a green mushroom, Shen Leyan’s hair glowed green and he declared himself Shen 'Heaven-Defying Dragon' Leyan.

Shen Leyan stayed behind while Lu Yuanyi and Zheng Ziheng went deeper into the Southwestern Jungle to search for Jadeblood Snakegrass. When a battle erupted, he persuaded the Jiangxue Sword to take him toward Lu Yuanyi, but it dragged him through the jungle at high speed.

• Shen Leyan gathered wild mushrooms and put them in Zheng Ziheng's Storage Ring Space.
• As they neared the Jadeblood Snakegrass location, Shen Leyan hid from large insects behind Zheng Ziheng.
• Lu Yuanyi left Shen Leyan in a clearing with a Heavenheart Crystal and the Jiangxue Sword for protection, then went deeper into the jungle with Zheng Ziheng.
• A crash shook the jungle and drove venomous insects and snakes toward Shen Leyan's clearing.
• Shen Leyan asked the Jiangxue Sword to take him toward Lu Yuanyi, and the sword suddenly pulled him forward through the jungle.

Shen Leyan tried to stop a wounded snake demon from eating the immature jadeblood snakegrass the Cloud Radiance Sect needed to save a mortal. The snake explained why it refused to give up the herb, and Shen Leyan promised the sect would protect the next stalk so it could eat it.

• The Jiangxue Sword carried Shen Leyan to a safe distance while Senior Brother Zheng and the other cultivators pursued the giant snake demon.
• Shen Leyan spotted the jadeblood snakegrass growing on the snake's head and realized the snake was about to swallow it.
• Shen Leyan ran back and tried to persuade the snake to give up the herb, but Zheng Ziheng explained that it had repeatedly been beaten by cultivators who took each previous stalk.
• Shen Leyan told the snake the herb was needed to save a mortal and promised Cloud Radiance Sect would guard the next stalk so the snake could eat it.

Shen Leyan and Zheng Ziheng made a Heavenly Oath with a wounded snake in exchange for Jadeblood Snakegrass, then Shen Leyan learned that Chen Jing had not returned from his mission. Qingli revealed Chen Jing had gone to Glory Ancestors Village, giving Shen Leyan a possible destination as he traveled through the southwestern region.

• Zheng Ziheng swore a Heavenly Oath, and the snake gave him the Jadeblood Snakegrass while asking them to wait another day for it to mature.
• Shen Leyan and Zheng Ziheng treated the snake's wounds, and Shen Leyan rested with it by the fire after the rain stopped.
• Shen Leyan asked Zheng Ziheng to send Qingli an Image Transmission, and Qingli replied that Chen Jing and his mission companions had not returned.
• Zheng Ziheng explained that Chen Jing's mission involved treating villagers affected by demons that ate fetuses.
• Shen Leyan asked Qingli to find Chen Jing's destination, and she reported that he had gone to Glory Ancestors Village in the southwestern region.

Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi traveled east through the Southwestern Jungle to find Glory Ancestors Village, where they learned that a curse was blamed for the villagers’ repeated miscarriages and infant deaths. The chapter left them with directions and a silver-funded account of the village’s troubles.

• Lu Yuanyi agreed to accompany Shen Leyan to Glory Ancestors Village after Senior Brother Zheng departed with the matured Jadeblood Snakegrass.
• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi lost their way through the Southwestern Jungle, but the demonic beasts fled before Lu Yuanyi could fight them.
• At the eastern edge of the jungle, Shen Leyan asked locals for Glory Ancestors Village, but they either did not recognize the name or spoke a dialect he could not understand.
• Shen Leyan offered one tael of silver for directions, and a previously hard-of-hearing old man stepped forward to draw him a map.
• The old man said a flood had destroyed the village’s ancestral graves three years earlier, after which its children began dying before age eight and the curse seemed to follow villagers who moved away.

Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi arrived in Glory Ancestors Village to investigate its history of having no surviving girls and found signs that something was wrong. After nightfall, they set out to inspect the village’s ancestral graves.

• Shen Leyan learned that Glory Ancestors Village’s families had once had only sons and wondered whether the girls had been deliberately killed.
• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi followed the old man’s map to the desolate village, where Lu Yuanyi sensed no demons nearby.
• Shen Leyan persuaded a wary woman to let them stay by pretending Lu Yuanyi had injured his ankle.
• Shen Leyan noticed the woman had children’s clothes to wash and that their supposedly empty room was clean, suggesting the village’s account of having no children was suspicious.
• After the village lights went out, Lu Yuanyi proposed that he and Shen Leyan investigate the ancestral graves.

Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi investigated Glory Ancestors Village at night, learning that cultivators had treated the villagers without success before checking the ancestral graves. They found no spirits among the graves and followed a forbidden path uphill, where they discovered several small towers.

• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi used an invisibility spell and searched the village for its ancestral graves.
• Shen Leyan spotted a man climbing into a courtyard, but he and Lu Yuanyi overheard the man meeting a widow named Cuihua instead.
• Lu Yuanyi told Shen Leyan that the couple had mentioned Cloud Radiance Sect disciples who had failed to treat the villagers and been driven away.
• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi climbed to the ancestral graves, where they found no souls or other signs of anything unusual.
• Shen Leyan noticed a forbidden path beyond the graves, and he and Lu Yuanyi climbed over the fence and found several small towers.

The chapter recounts generations of women in Glory Ancestors Village whose daughters were drowned or abandoned, ending with a mother-in-law’s daughter-in-law vowing to avenge her baby. In the present, Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi found the Abandoned Infant Towers, gathered the remains to bury them, and heard a child’s voice insist that the killers could not escape punishment.

• Thirty years earlier, a young mother watched the midwife carry off her newborn daughter, and the men in her family drowned the baby after having already drowned her first daughter.
• The woman later gave birth to a son, but when her daughter-in-law’s baby was also a girl, her husband ordered the newborn drowned and her son abandoned the body at the Abandoned Infant Tower.
• The woman secretly fed her imprisoned daughter-in-law, who vowed to get justice for her daughter.
• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi discovered the Abandoned Infant Towers, and Shen Leyan raged at the villagers who had killed the infants.
• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi collected the infants’ remains and flew to a scenic place by a stream to bury them.
• When Shen Leyan questioned why the local authorities had done nothing, a child’s voice called from above that the killers could not escape punishment.

Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi entered Glory Ancestors Village and confronted a Spider Demon who was draining the life of a woman tied to the village’s crimes. After learning that Chen Jing and the other cultivators had vanished while helping the villagers evacuate, Shen Leyan was left facing a new mystery.

• Shen Leyan met a Little Spider Demon in the woods, who explained that her mother had raised her and her siblings with demonic energy and was hunting in Glory Ancestors Village.
• Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi cut through the Spider Demon’s web surrounding the village and found the Spider Demon attacking the woman who had once sheltered them.
• The Spider Demon accused the woman of bearing responsibility for the deaths of children, and Shen Leyan intervened as she began draining the woman’s vital essence.
• Lu Yuanyi restrained the Spider Demon, and she told Shen Leyan that she had fought Chen Jing and other cultivators half a month earlier but let them go with minor injuries.
• The woman told Shen Leyan that Chen Jing’s group had later arranged to escort the villagers away, but the cultivators disappeared before the evacuation began.

Shen Leyan investigated the disappearance of Chen Jing and the other Cloud Radiance Sect disciples, uncovering that Glory Ancestors Village villagers were drugging and imprisoning cultivators. He reached their underground cellar and began reviving the captives, but their condition remained uncertain.

• The spider demon explained why she had adopted the village’s abandoned infants, and Shen Leyan and Lu Yuanyi let her go; Lu Yuanyi left with her while Shen Leyan stayed behind.
• A dying villager told Shen Leyan that Chen Jing and the other cultivators had stayed in a house near the mountain, and then she died.
• Shen Leyan disguised himself as a frightened traveler and tricked the villagers into revealing their greed by offering them silver and pretending to drink drugged chicken soup.
• The villagers carried Shen Leyan through a dry well into a cellar, but he expelled the knockout drugs, subdued one captor with Softening Powder, and forced him to help Shen Leyan escape and obtain the antidote.
• Shen Leyan entered the cellar, found Chen Jing and several other Cloud Radiance Sect disciples bound and unconscious, and gave Chen Jing the antidote before channeling spiritual energy into him.

Shen Leyan and Chen Jing survived the villagers’ attempt to burn them alive, but Chen Jing destroyed his spiritual root to protect the others and fell unconscious. After Lu Yuanyi stabilized him, Shen Leyan decided he wanted to cultivate to protect the people around him, and the group set out for the Cloud Radiance Sect with Chen Jing preserved in an ice coffin.

• Shen Leyan and Chen Jing were trapped in a liquor-fueled fire, and Chen Jing used a forbidden method that destroyed his spiritual root to raise a wall of Spiritual Power and shield the others.
• Lu Yuanyi arrived after getting lost, froze Chen Jing’s body to stop the black markings from spreading, and said the Cloud Radiance Sect already had Fire-Yang Divine Wood.
• Shen Leyan told Lu Yuanyi he wanted to cultivate so he could protect the people around him, while Lu Yuanyi explained that Chen Jing’s damaged spiritual root might not recover.
• Lu Yuanyi sealed Chen Jing in an ice coffin, and he and Shen Leyan left Glory Ancestors Village for the Northern Territory as the guilty villagers were taken into custody.
• Shen Leyan asked when the Cloud Radiance Sect would accept disciples and whether anyone could teach wind techniques; Lu Yuanyi said the sect would recruit in October and suggested elders might learn wind techniques for a disciple with a wind spiritual root.

Shen Leyan returned to the Cloud Radiance Sect with Chen Jing, whom Lu Yuanyi began treating in Cicada Song Pavilion, and reunited with Qingli over dinner. He learned that the sect’s disciple recruitment assembly was approaching and that visitors from across Great Xia, including the crown prince, had already arrived.

• Several Cloud Radiance Sect elders schemed to become the master of an Outer Sect disciple rumored to have a wind spiritual root.
• Lu Yuanyi brought Shen Leyan to Cicada Song Pavilion, gave him an entry token, and began repairing Chen Jing’s meridians with the fire-yang divine wood.
• Lu Yuanyi sent Shen Leyan to the Cloud Radiance Restaurant on the Jiangxue Sword while he stayed to treat Chen Jing.
• Shen Leyan reunited with Qingli on the way to the restaurant and told her about their journey and Chen Jing’s condition.
• At the restaurant, Qingli explained that visitors had come for the disciple recruitment assembly and that the crown prince and children of major families were expected.

Shen Leyan learned how Cloud Radiance Sect’s recruitment assembly worked and discovered that its elders were competing to mentor a wind-spiritual-root disciple. When he returned to his quarters, he found that the Crown Prince of Great Xia had taken them over, and he left with compensation after witnessing the prince’s cruelty.

• Shen Leyan sent Mala Xiangguo to Sect Master Lu and asked Qingli about the Cloud Radiance Sect’s recruitment assembly.
• Qingli explained the recruitment process and revealed that the elders were competing to teach the expected wind-spiritual-root disciple, Shen Leyan.
• Shen Leyan found his quarters filled with the Crown Prince’s belongings and used his Cicada Song Pavilion token to gain permission to enter.
• The Crown Prince offered Shen Leyan a hundred-tael banknote for his belongings and threatened an attendant whose fan brushed his ankle.
• Shen Leyan persuaded the Crown Prince to spare the attendant’s eyes because the Apprenticeship Ceremony was near, then accepted the banknote and left.

Shen Leyan escorted Apprenticeship Ceremony visitors to the Cicada Song Pavilion, sold them on free sect newspapers, and used his token to let them briefly approach the pavilion. After entering to visit Lu Yuanyi, he was asked to compensate him for a fish.

• Ji Lianyi ordered his attendants to investigate Shen Leyan, the disciple carrying the Cicada Song Pavilion Token.
• Shen Leyan furnished his new room, bought food for his visit, and told aspiring disciples they could learn sect gossip from newspapers sold at the Law Enforcement Hall.
• On the mountain, a chubby visitor tested the pavilion’s formation and was grabbed by a snowy hand and beaten with a club.
• Shen Leyan used his token to let several stubborn foundation-establishment visitors take a brief look inside the formation, then left them outside and entered the pavilion alone.
• Shen Leyan found Lu Yuanyi fishing beside the pond, and Lu Yuanyi told him to compensate him for his fish.

Shen Leyan visited the Cicada Song Pavilion, where Chen Jing recovered enough to wake after Lu Yuanyi rebuilt his meridians. After escaping the crowd of admirers outside, Shen Leyan went to buy stealth clothing so he could reach the Law Enforcement Hall and block the path to the pavilion.

• Shen Leyan learned that Lu Yuanyi had never caught the fish he had charged him for, then visited Chen Jing in the Hundred Herbs Pavilion as Lu Yuanyi continued treating him.
• After cultivating for several hours, Shen Leyan neared a breakthrough, and Chen Jing woke, complained that Shen had hidden his spiritual root, then fainted again from the pain.
• Shen Leyan noticed Lu Yuanyi secretly reading a scroll about mastering Wind Arts, but Lu Yuanyi sent him down the mountain on the Jiangxue Sword before he could investigate.
• A crowd of admirers surrounded the pavilion and cheered when Shen Leyan flew out, so the Jiangxue Sword rushed him past them and down the mountain.
• Shen Leyan ate Luosifen, then went to Luoxiang Hall disguised beneath a bamboo hat and bought stealth clothing to avoid the crowd while heading to the Law Enforcement Hall.