Shi Feiyang gathered the immortals on Copper Coconut Island and began with a briefing before the battle. "In this earth calamity, metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—all five elements—will stir together. Their power is often beyond anything human strength can withstand. A mortal tribulation will also strike as circumstances dictate. Although we have many people and have made every preparation we could beforehand, human calculations cannot match Heaven's. The danger remains immense.
"Fellow Daoists, you must watch over your own children. Ideally, none of them should suffer any harm, and we should weather this ordeal with complete success. With this merit, you will have a foundation and greater confidence when facing the three disasters and eight tribulations of heaven, earth, and humanity that lie ahead, making them easier to overcome. Otherwise, those later ordeals will be even fiercer and harder to survive."
Hearing how dangerous failure would be, and how great the rewards of success, the many Earth Immortals and Loose Immortals present all pledged to unite their wills into a fortress and spare no effort to achieve complete success.
Shi Feiyang began assigning tasks. This ordeal consisted chiefly of two parts: the earth calamity and the mortal tribulation.
Earlier, he had instructed Jinxu Nu to have eight mountain peaks brought over from elsewhere. Each stood a thousand zhang high and spanned a hundred li. Leading the demons in a joint effort, he had refined them into eight floating islands.
These floating islands now lay across the Ten-Thousand-Mile Sea Frontier, arranged in the eight trigrams' directions around Copper Coconut Island.
First, he named eight parties. He sent Young Man of Heavenly Stem Mountain northwest to oversee the divine peak of the qian palace, Ancestor Hollow Space due north to oversee the kan palace, Vibration Mountain Divine Lord northeast to the