Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Rumors spread in Hidden Immortal Valley that Mo Chen is a monster because he has not aged and claims he can go without food or water. A town advisor and local bandits plan to capture and butcher him, while the villagers agree to help.
• Mo Chen’s parents secretly help him escape. He flees the valley, later learning that wealthy men seeking immortality abducted and tortured his family to death.
• After years of hardship, Mo Chen reaches the capital and becomes a copyist at Wenyuan Pavilion. He conceals his unchanging appearance with a disguise technique and remains there for decades.
• An immortal cultivator visits the library to research an ancient ruin. Mo Chen helps her find relevant records and asks her to test his spiritual root. She finds his aptitude poor and his meridians withered, but gives him a water-and-wood cultivation method that may improve his health.
• The emperor brings his children to be tested. One prince is accepted as a nominal disciple; the others are rejected. Resentful, three of the rejected princes kick and spit on Mo Chen for daring to seek the immortal’s attention.
• Once they leave, Mo Chen quietly returns to his work and begins studying the cultivation method, resolved to use his endless lifespan to overcome his limitations.

Character developments and interactions

• Mo Chen has grown from a bewildered fugitive into a cautious, patient survivor. His family’s murder deepens his desire for revenge, but he relies on concealment and long-term planning rather than impulsive action. He now sees immortality as an advantage he can apply to cultivation.
• Mo Chen’s parents risk themselves to save him, giving him supplies and a route out of the village.
• The immortal cultivator is practical and initially dismissive of Mo Chen’s prospects, yet rewards his assistance with a suitable manual. Her attention unsettles him, suggesting she may sense something unusual about him.
• The emperor and princes reveal how strongly worldly power depends on the hope of immortality. The rejected princes take their disappointment out on Mo Chen, while he endures their abuse without revealing his true resolve.

Significant themes

• Immortality as both curse and opportunity: Mo Chen’s unaging body makes him a target, but his long life may let him compensate for poor aptitude through persistence.
• Patience and diligence: The chapter closes on Mo Chen’s belief that sustained effort can overcome even severe natural limitations.
• Fear, superstition, and exploitation: The villagers’ rumors turn Mo Chen into prey, while powerful people seek to profit from the possibility of eternal life.
• Humility and hidden strength: Mo Chen survives by appearing unremarkable, enduring humiliation, and keeping his plans to himself.

Key plot points

• Over many decades, Mo Chen stays at the Wenyuan Pavilion, repeatedly faking his death and adopting new identities so he can remain unnoticed in the capital. He studies the Black Turtle Breathing Method at night and, after fifty years of effort, finally senses spiritual energy and begins cultivating.
• Sixty years after Mo Chen secretly gave a poor boy part of a saber manual, the boy—now the renowned saber master Lu Canghai—returns. Near death from old injuries, Lu gives Mo Chen his life’s work, Vast Sea Blade Intent, in gratitude. Mo Chen conceals his identity, accepts the gift, and sees Lu off with a simple cup of tea.
• After Lu’s death, Mo Chen studies and memorizes the saber art. Its martial insights help his cultivation advance to the third layer of qi refining, the threshold beyond ordinary mortality.
• Recognizing that the capital offers little opportunity for further progress, Mo Chen leaves for the mountains in search of the cultivation world.
• Before departing, he returns to his hometown and takes brutal revenge on the people who once harmed his family, wiping out their surviving enemies and descendants. A month later, the slaughter of local bandits and gangs becomes an unsolved case.

Character developments

• Mo Chen remains patient, cautious, and skilled at hiding his identity, but he gradually gains both immortal cultivation and mastery of the mortal world’s greatest saber art. His long-held desire for revenge also surfaces in a merciless campaign against his family’s persecutors.
• Lu Canghai is revealed as the once-destitute boy Mo Chen helped. He became a legendary warrior, but age and old injuries leave him facing death. His final act is to repay Mo Chen’s kindness and preserve his martial legacy.

Significant themes

• Time and mortality: Lu’s worldly fame cannot protect him from age, while Mo Chen’s slow cultivation lets him begin a path beyond ordinary human limits.
• Patience and persistence: Mo Chen advances through decades of effort without shortcuts, succeeding where others might have given up.
• Kindness and legacy: A small, anonymous gift shapes Lu’s life, and he later passes his knowledge back to the man who helped him.
• Concealment and survival: Mo Chen repeatedly changes identities and avoids attention, treating obscurity as a means of preserving himself.
• Revenge and its cost: Mo Chen’s delayed vengeance is absolute, marking a darker turn as he resolves never again to let an enemy escape justice.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen and Lu Canghai meet as old men, though Lu does not realize that the copyist before him is the benefactor he has sought. Lu offers his saber manual in gratitude; Mo Chen responds with quiet respect rather than revealing the truth.
• Their exchange contrasts Lu’s celebrated life and approaching death with Mo Chen’s anonymous existence and newly opened future.
• Mo Chen’s final actions also revisit his family’s past: he confronts the people responsible for their suffering, turning long-suppressed resentment into violent retribution.

Plot points and events

• Mo Chen enters Flowing Cloud Immortal City, a prosperous but dangerous cultivation hub ruled by the Twin Crane Sect. He keeps his disguise, presenting himself as an aging, low-level rogue cultivator.
• He applies for one of the sect’s menial-worker positions. The recruiter initially rejects him for being old, weak, and of mixed spiritual roots.
• Mo Chen persuades the steward to reconsider by showing him a carefully handwritten copy of a Great Qian gazetteer and explaining his decades of experience managing a library.
• The steward hires him cheaply to oversee the first floor of the Outer Sect Scripture Pavilion, where he will register loans, organize texts, and repair damaged books.
• After arriving, Mo Chen recognizes the pavilion’s crowds and low profile as advantages: he can observe the cultivation world while gaining access to its many manuals and writings.
• When a disciple carelessly hits him with a jade slip, Mo Chen keeps up his harmless appearance but privately resolves to surpass the arrogant geniuses. Once the pavilion closes, he begins cultivating, intending to master its many techniques over time.

Character developments

• Mo Chen demonstrates patience, resourcefulness, and long-term planning. Rather than seek status or risky opportunities, he uses his ordinary appearance and practical skills to secure a position that offers both cover and access to knowledge.
• He outwardly remains humble and compliant, but inwardly harbors strong ambition: he plans to build his abilities steadily while others compete for fame and fortune.
• The steward is pragmatic and self-interested. He hires Mo Chen not out of sympathy but because the older man seems well suited to an unpleasant, underpaid job and unlikely to cause trouble.
• The young guide and the disciples reveal how hazardous and chaotic the pavilion is for its workers, while the careless disciple’s conduct highlights the arrogance of some cultivators.

Significant themes

• Lying low as a strategy: Mo Chen treats obscurity as protection and an opportunity, not a sign of weakness.
• Steady preparation over reckless competition: While others chase fortune and recognition, he focuses on patient study and cultivation.
• Knowledge as power: The Scripture Pavilion’s vast collection offers Mo Chen a foundation for future growth.
• The harshness of the cultivation world: Even a prestigious sect relies on poorly paid workers, and low-status people can be mistreated without recourse.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen respectfully negotiates with the steward, using his handwritten work and library experience to turn rejection into employment.
• The guide warns him to avoid conflict with the sect’s disciples, underscoring the vulnerable position of menial workers.
• A disciple treats Mo Chen dismissively by throwing a jade slip that strikes him; Mo Chen absorbs the slight outwardly while converting it into private resolve.

Plot points and events

• Mo Chen works as an unassuming servant in the Twin Crane Sect’s outer-sect scripture repository. He endures disciples’ impatience and contempt without complaint, using the day’s anonymity to keep his true nature hidden.
• At night, he studies and cultivates. Over three months, he organizes the repository’s books and jade slips so thoroughly that he memorizes the contents of all nine floors.
• He realizes his ordinary disguise might fail against the Bone-Viewing Art, which can reveal a person’s bone age. To protect his secret of immortality, he searches the repository’s unorthodox manuals and chooses three defensive arts: Breath-Concealing, Form-Concealing, and Disguise and Form-Change.
• He masters the disguise spell after a year and tests it among the disciples. Even those who briefly inspect him with spiritual sense perceive only a frail old servant.
• Forty years pass. Mo Chen continues his routine, studies many low-level techniques, and perfects his concealment skills. His cultivation advances only to the fourth level of Qi Refining.
• Now appearing about forty years older than before, Mo Chen decides it is time to retire from the role. He plans to recommend a “nephew” to take his place.

Character development and interactions

• Mo Chen remains patient, disciplined, and cautious. Rather than pursue power quickly, he prioritizes survival and steadily builds an effective cover.
• He treats the repository’s chores as a way to learn and secure his position, while the disciples regard him as little more than an elderly servant. Their casual disregard helps his disguise succeed.
• His experience in mortal bureaucracy shapes his practical outlook: rules can be evaded, and every danger may have a countermeasure.

Significant themes

• Anonymity as protection: Mo Chen’s low status and quiet routine make him difficult to notice.
• Patience and long-term planning: His endless lifespan lets him study slowly and prepare for risks others might ignore.
• Knowledge as security: Organizing the repository gives him access to the techniques that protect his secret.
• Appearance versus reality: Mo Chen’s outward identity changes while his true age and nature remain concealed.

Plot points and events

• Mo Chen visits Deacon Zhou Ping to request retirement from his Scripture Pavilion duties, claiming that his age has weakened his eyesight and hands.
• Zhou initially resists the idea of losing a reliable worker, but readily agrees when Mo Chen says his young nephew, Mo Xiaoyi, can take over.
• Zhou tells Mo Chen to bring the nephew the next day so he can complete the hiring formalities.
• After leaving Zhou’s divine-sense range, Mo Chen drops his frail disguise and reflects that Zhou’s cultivation and status mean little beside his own long-term potential.
• Mo Chen realizes he has created a problem: the nephew does not exist, and finding a trustworthy stand-in by tomorrow could expose him to danger. He rejects hiring a stranger and recognizes that he must adapt his usual strategies to the sect’s circumstances.
• The chapter ends as Mo Chen thinks of a solution, though it is not yet revealed.

Character developments

• Mo Chen remains patient and calculating, using a convincing performance of weakness and humility to secure Zhou’s approval. He also shows self-awareness, acknowledging that he relied too casually on methods from his previous experience and needs to stay alert.
• Zhou Ping is revealed as a failed, disillusioned cultivator who has abandoned advancement for drink and leisure. He is lazy about his duties and uses Mo Chen’s low status to feel superior.

Significant themes

• Appearance versus reality: Mo Chen’s feebleness is an act, while Zhou’s apparent superiority masks stagnation and defeat.
• Patience and long-term perspective: Mo Chen’s confidence comes from enduring time and steadily pursuing his goals, unlike Zhou, who has given up.
• Adaptation and vigilance: A strategy that worked in one setting may be dangerous in another; Mo Chen must revise his approach.
• Status and misplaced pride: Zhou looks down on Mo Chen based on rank and cultivation, unaware of the larger difference between them.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen carefully flatters and appeases Zhou, presenting the imagined nephew as dependable and low-risk.
• Zhou responds with condescending mockery, then approves the replacement because it would spare him effort.
• Their exchange is a contest of hidden motives: Zhou seeks reassurance and a sense of importance, while Mo Chen uses deference to protect his plans.

Key plot points and events

• Mo Chen prepares to retire his elderly “Old Mo” identity and return to the Scripture Repository under a new name, taking care to avoid Zhou Ping’s suspicion or any magical scrutiny.
• He retrieves Shallow Afterimage Illusion, a rudimentary art he once dismissed as useless. Its phantom cannot act independently or touch anything, but it can convincingly fool observers for fifteen minutes.
• To strengthen his deception, Mo Chen stops suppressing his cultivation and advances from the peak of qi refinement fourth layer to fifth layer using the Black Turtle Breathing Method.
• He practices the illusion through the night until it can reproduce Old Mo’s appearance, movements, expression, and limp. He then uses his disguise art to appear as an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old youth.
• Carrying forged household-registration papers, he goes to Zhou Ping’s cave and presents himself as Mo Xiaoyi, Old Mo’s nephew, while projecting the Old Mo phantom beside him.

Character developments

• Mo Chen shifts from cautious planning to decisive action, accepting that the risk of remaining at his old cultivation level is now greater than the risk of advancing.
• Seeing his youthful face brings back the pain of having been feared and shunned for never aging. His immortality, once a source of anxiety and danger, is now central to the identity change he is attempting.
• He remains resourceful and disciplined, turning a technique he had once considered worthless into a practical tool.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen’s plan centers on deceiving Steward Zhou Ping, whose scrutiny could expose the identity switch.
• At the cave, Mo Chen presents the phantom as the departing Old Mo and introduces his youthful persona as Old Mo’s nephew, asking Zhou to assess him for work.

Significant themes

• Identity and reinvention: Mo Chen constructs a new self from appearance, paperwork, and performance.
• Aging and immortality: His unchanged face has isolated him across generations, even as it enables this transformation.
• Caution versus ambition: He has long hidden his abilities to avoid attention, but circumstances force him to grow stronger.
• Adaptability: A seemingly useless skill becomes valuable when circumstances change.

Key plot points and events

• Mo Chen uses an illusion of Old Mo to convince Deacon Zhou that Old Mo is retiring and that Mo Chen, posing as his nephew Mo Xiaoyi, will take over the Scripture Pavilion job. Zhou, drunk and indifferent, approves the appointment and gives Mo Chen a new menial token.
• With Zhou’s permission to handle routine Pavilion matters independently, Mo Chen settles into the role. He works efficiently, earns the outer disciples’ trust, and spends half a month without trouble.
• During a scheduled day off, Mo Chen decides to seek a cultivation art that reaches Foundation Establishment and buy two spiritual artifacts. He has saved 1,440 low-grade spirit stones over forty years, and spends three on a small storage pouch.
• In Flowing Cloud Immortal City, he visits the Gathering Fate Trading House. The artifacts cost 800 spirit stones, while a complete Foundation Establishment art costs 1,200—more than he can afford.
• When Mo Chen asks about cheaper options or bargaining, the manager insults him for being poor and orders enforcers to throw him out.

Character developments

• Mo Chen proves adept at deception and role-playing, carefully maintaining his false identity. His long-term ambitions become clearer: with his seemingly inexhaustible lifespan, he wants to advance beyond Qi Refining and prepare for danger. The trading-house encounter exposes both his limited resources and his lack of experience with the harsh economics of cultivation society.
• Deacon Zhou is portrayed as lazy, self-indulgent, and easily manipulated. He is pleased to have a subordinate who will keep routine problems away from him.
• The trading-house manager shifts from polite to openly contemptuous once he realizes Mo Chen cannot afford the merchandise, revealing his class prejudice and greed.

Significant themes

• Deception and survival: Mo Chen’s carefully coordinated illusion and performance let him secure a safe position.
• Wealth and social status: Years of disciplined saving still leave Mo Chen unable to afford basic advancement, while his worn menial’s clothes invite contempt.
• Long-term ambition: Mo Chen’s extraordinary lifespan gives him time to plan, but he still needs resources and knowledge to progress.
• Indifference and power: Zhou’s neglect gives Mo Chen freedom, while the trading-house manager uses his authority to humiliate a poorer customer.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen and the illusory Old Mo work seamlessly together before Zhou, with Mo Chen acting as a nervous, obedient nephew.
• Zhou casually grants Mo Chen the post and instructs him not to bother him over minor matters.
• The outer disciples treat Mo Chen as a convenient replacement for Old Mo, relying on him for books and loan registration.
• The trading-house manager first welcomes Mo Chen as a potential buyer, then scorns him when he cannot pay; two enforcers arrive to remove him.

Key plot points and events

• After a shop manager humiliates Mo Chen and has him removed from the upper floor for being poor, Mo Chen leaves, frustrated that his savings may not cover cultivation expenses.
• He joins a long line at Zhiwei Hall, a respected fortune-telling shop, and receives a reading from a low-level cultivator.
• The fortune-teller says Mo Chen’s fate chart makes water and wood unfavorable to him, while fire, earth, and metal suit him. This means the Black Turtle Breathing Method—his water-wood cultivation method—is a poor match and may have hindered his progress for decades.
• The fortune-teller demonstrates the principle by drawing spiritual qi into Mo Chen and showing that his body retains fire, earth, and metal qi while rejecting water and wood.
• He explains that the idea that only a select few can cultivate is partly a deception: cultivators restrict access to methods and resources because they fear competition from mortals.
• The reading also predicts a bloodshed calamity within three months. Despite Mo Chen’s unusually long lifespan and the possibility of great future achievements, his life is expected to remain full of hardship.
• Mo Chen leaves determined to find a fire-attribute cultivation method and buy spirit artifacts to prepare for danger.

Character developments

• Mo Chen moves from embarrassment and frustration to shock, then cautious resolve. He begins to question the explanation he has accepted for his slow progress and suspects he may have been deliberately misled.
• The fortune-teller presents himself as calm and knowledgeable, challenging accepted beliefs about spiritual roots and cultivation access. He gives Mo Chen practical advice but limits how much more he will reveal.

Significant themes

• Exploitation and gatekeeping: Those with power restrict knowledge and cultivation methods to protect their status.
• The cost of misplaced trust: A supposedly helpful senior may have set Mo Chen on an unsuitable path, wasting decades of effort.
• Fate versus choice: Mo Chen’s reading predicts hardship, but he responds by preparing rather than surrendering to it.
• Hidden potential: His long lifespan and possible future achievements contrast sharply with his modest standing and troubled past.

Character interactions

• The trading-house manager treats Mo Chen contemptuously and has guards remove him, reinforcing the social hierarchy.
• At Zhiwei Hall, the fortune-teller patiently explains Mo Chen’s elemental affinities, tests them directly, and warns him about his future.
• Mo Chen questions the reading, reveals the origin of his cultivation method, and ultimately thanks the fortune-teller—though he leaves with serious doubts about the senior who gave him the method.

Plot points and events

• After consulting a fortune-teller who advised him to choose a fire-attribute cultivation method, Mo Chen visits the Spirit Mechanism Pavilion.
• He rejects common methods, along with the powerful but restrictive Nine Li Sun-Illumining Method, which forbids cultivating anything else.
• He chooses the incomplete Flame-Drinking Art, a painful method that uses swallowed flames to strengthen the body and repeatedly scorch and heal the meridians. Though it reaches only early Foundation Establishment, Mo Chen sees it as a way to address his naturally sluggish, aged meridians.
• He also considers the True Sun Prairie-Fire Art, but decides its focus on offensive spells won’t help his physical cultivation.
• Mo Chen buys the Flame-Drinking Art, a practical fire-attribute flying sword, and a protective talisman, spending nearly all his spirit stones. The shop assistant warns him to prepare Iceheart Pills before attempting the flame-based method.
• Leaving at dusk, Mo Chen accepts the coming pain with characteristic resolve.

Character development

• Mo Chen shows patience and discernment, weighing each method against his long-term cultivation path rather than choosing the most impressive-sounding option.
• He acknowledges the disadvantage of beginning cultivation at eighty, with atrophied meridians, but believes perseverance and time can help him catch up.
• His years of enduring humiliation have made him unusually willing to suffer physical pain.

Significant themes

• Perseverance and endurance: Mo Chen views suffering as manageable after a lifetime of hardship.
• Time as an advantage: Though late to cultivation, he believes his longevity gives him time to overcome weaknesses.
• Practicality over prestige: He chooses methods and equipment suited to his needs, not their reputation or raw power.
• Cultivation’s harsh pragmatism: The shop and its dealings reflect a world shaped by resources, aptitude, and survival.

Character interactions

• The Spirit Mechanism Pavilion assistant treats Mo Chen courteously, recommends products, negotiates a small discount, and warns him about the risks of the Flame-Drinking Art.
• Mo Chen is appreciative and straightforward in the exchange, buying both an offensive weapon and a defensive artifact for practical reasons.

Key plot points and events

• Mo Chen returns to the Scripture Pavilion after buying a Red-Tailed Sword, an Azure Mystic Protective Talisman, and the incomplete Flame-Drinking Art.
• He practices the art by swallowing fire and circulating it through his body forty-five times. The painful process consolidates his unstable Qi Refinement Fifth Layer cultivation and strengthens his spiritual power.
• His practice reveals two hidden techniques: Fire-Sitting, which protects him from ordinary flames, and Firebird, which lets him create five firebirds at his current cultivation level. He tests both, then experiments with his new sword and protective talisman.
• The next morning, an elderly woman visits the pavilion seeking records about extending her lifespan. She recognizes Mo Chen as the mortal he met ninety years earlier at Wenyuan Pavilion—and identifies him as the recipient of the Black Turtle Breathing Method.
• Mo Chen denies knowing her or practicing that method, while quietly preparing his artifacts in case she attacks. She insists she recognizes his unchanged spiritual aura and leaves by introducing herself as Jiang Jiuyao, promising to visit him again.

Character developments

• Mo Chen becomes stronger and gains new combat abilities, but remains cautious and guarded. His growing awareness of deception in the cultivation world leads him to conceal his past and deny Jiang’s claims.
• Jiang Jiuyao is revealed to be the female cultivator who gave Mo Chen his first cultivation method. Now old and facing the end of her lifespan, she is determined to learn how he survived ninety years without his appearance or aura changing.

Significant themes

• Cultivation’s costs and limits: Fire refinement brings power through intense pain, while Qi Refinement cultivators remain vulnerable to aging and death.
• Secrecy and deception: Hidden techniques and misleading teachings reinforce Mo Chen’s belief that knowledge is carefully guarded and trust can be dangerous.
• Longevity and identity: Mo Chen’s inexplicable survival contrasts with Jiang’s approaching death, raising questions about what has happened to him.
• Patience and survival: Mo Chen’s steady routine reflects his belief that enduring and staying cautious matter more than rushing ahead.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen’s practical handling of the new artifacts and techniques shows his growing confidence, though he avoids dangerous experiments near the pavilion’s books.
• His exchange with Jiang begins as an ordinary request for help but turns into a tense confrontation: she presses him with details from their shared past, while he maintains a convincing denial and keeps his defenses ready.

Plot points and events

• Jiang Jiuyao leaves after recognizing that Mo Chen is the same man she met ninety years ago. Because she is near death and desperate to extend her life, Mo Chen expects her to come after him.
• Mo Chen decides to flee the Twin Crane Sect. Bitter about decades of low wages and poor treatment, he packs his few possessions and secretly takes valuable books and jade slips from the Scripture Pavilion.
• As he leaves, he senses someone scanning him with divine sense. Jiang soon reveals herself, having watched him prepare to escape, and dismisses his claim that he is merely going out to relieve himself.
• Jiang attacks with thorny vines. Mo Chen’s sword techniques prove ineffective against her spell, but his protective talisman and practiced escape techniques help him break away into the rear mountain.
• Jiang pursues him, while Mo Chen uses Wood and Water Escape to evade her attacks and gain distance. He believes he has prepared the mountain with numerous restrictions and hidden talismans.
• Jiang reveals that she lured him into a trap: an old man blocks Mo Chen’s path. The man claims to be the prince Jiang took from the Great Qian Kingdom, and says he recognized Mo Chen by his face, expressions, and gait.
• The two pursuers—at the seventh and eighth levels of Qi Refining—surround Mo Chen, who is only at the fifth level. They demand that he surrender the elixir or secret behind his prolonged life, then attack from both sides.

Character developments and interactions

• Mo Chen shifts from anxious resignation to decisive flight. His history of poverty and exploitation fuels his resentment, while his long preparation for discovery shows he has always expected pursuit. Rather than mastering combat, he has prioritized escape skills.
• Jiang Jiuyao is patient and calculating: she watches Mo Chen, anticipates his escape, and arranges help rather than confronting him unprepared. Her desperation to prolong her life drives her pursuit.
• The old man/prince joins Jiang’s hunt and claims a past connection to Mo Chen, turning the pursuit into a confrontation with someone from Mo Chen’s earlier life.
• Mo Chen and Jiang trade deception and taunts, but Jiang ultimately gains the advantage through planning and numbers.

Significant themes

• Immortality and desperation: Mo Chen’s inexplicable longevity becomes a coveted prize for Jiang, who is nearing death.
• Knowledge and exploitation: Mo Chen’s meager wages and lack of access to basic cultivation knowledge expose how sects control resources and disadvantage ordinary workers.
• Survival over strength: Mo Chen’s emphasis on escape reflects a world where avoiding danger may matter more than winning a fight.
• Preparation versus overconfidence: Mo Chen’s hidden defenses give him confidence, but Jiang’s own preparations reveal that both sides have been planning for the encounter.

Chapter Summary

• An unexpected invasion: Flowing Cloud Immortal City, governed by the Twin Crane Sect, is caught unprepared when scouts report hundreds of fast-moving demonic beasts approaching from the south. The beasts—described as eagle-headed and leopard-bodied—have already killed more than thirty scouts, and several are as powerful as Foundation Establishment cultivators.
• City Guard officers react differently: Three senior guards, Huang Yi, Zhang, and Guan, are initially drinking and boasting about their comfortable posts. When the attack is reported, Zhang immediately orders the city’s protective formation reinforced and heads to the walls. Guan supports him. Huang Yi dismisses the threat, trusting the formation and preferring to stay behind. Zhang angrily condemns his cowardice and warns him to show up for the defense.
• The city descends into panic: The warning spreads through Flowing Cloud City. Mortals and weaker cultivators rush inside for safety, while stronger cultivators try to flee. Crowds swarm shops to buy weapons, talismans, and defensive artifacts; merchants exploit the emergency by sharply raising prices, provoking angry protests.
• The beasts come into view: The city’s barrier lights up, revealing flocks of winged beasts closing in. The attack is expected within half an incense stick’s time, and the sight intensifies the panic.

Character Developments and Interactions

• Zhang shifts quickly from drinking to responsible leadership, prioritizing the city’s defense and rebuking Huang Yi for neglecting his duty.
• Guan acts as Zhang’s ally, backing his response and trying to ease the confrontation with Huang.
• Huang Yi is exposed as complacent and self-serving: he trusts the city formation to handle everything and resists risking himself.
• The messenger is frightened but delivers the urgent report, despite the officers’ initial intimidation.

Significant Themes

The chapter contrasts public duty with self-interest, showing Zhang’s sense of responsibility against Huang Yi’s cowardice. It also depicts how fear and crisis disrupt social order, while revealing opportunism during disaster through merchants’ price hikes.

Key plot points and events

• Panic erupts among Flowing Cloud City’s residents over rising prices during the demon attack. The City Guard arrives, suppresses the unrest, and orders civilians to stay calm while the troops divide between controlling the city and confronting the beasts.
• Guard officers Zhang Tang and Guan Chiwen lead the defense against a vanguard of Gu Diao. Zhang’s earth spells create stone pythons and barriers, while Guan’s gold talismans become deadly blades. Their coordinated attacks kill the six Foundation Establishment leaders and many lesser beasts.
• Huang Yi, who had been monitoring the battle from the formation’s control hub, arrives only after the main threat appears defeated. The officers resent his delay, but their argument is cut short when an enormous flock of Gu Diao surrounds the city.
• Zhang and Guan cover the retreat of their Qi Refining troops. Zhang raises a massive, spiked earth wall while Guan protects him, allowing the soldiers to escape through a narrow opening in the defensive formation.
• Huang refuses to reopen the gate for Zhang and Guan, claiming that any gap would let demons flood the city. Despite their pleas, he leaves the two officers outside to be overwhelmed. He kills the guard carrying the control token when the man questions his decision, then watches the officers fall and takes their weapons.
• Huang orders the formation reinforced, but the barrier’s core begins to fail, and cracks appear at the city gate.

Character developments and interactions

• Zhang Tang and Guan Chiwen prove skilled and courageous battlefield partners. Though they trade competitive compliments about each other’s spiritual abilities, they coordinate effectively and ultimately risk themselves to protect their troops.
• Huang Yi is revealed as selfish and ruthless. He delays joining the fight, abandons the officers, kills a subordinate who challenges him, and takes advantage of their deaths to claim their weapons.
• The City Guard troops follow orders and fight alongside their commanders, while the crowd’s initial panic shows how fragile public order is under pressure.
• Zhang and Guan’s teamwork contrasts sharply with Huang’s betrayal; the officers’ trust in the city’s leadership is answered with abandonment.

Significant themes

• Leadership and responsibility: Zhang and Guan put their subordinates’ safety first, while Huang sacrifices individuals to preserve his own position.
• Self-interest and betrayal: Huang’s actions expose the danger of protecting oneself under the guise of protecting the majority.
• Order versus panic: The chapter moves from civil unrest to organized defense, but the city’s survival remains uncertain.
• The limits of power: Even capable cultivators and a formidable formation may be overwhelmed by a far larger enemy force.

Key plot points and events

• A horde of Gu Diao demon beasts overwhelms Flowing Cloud City’s defenses. The city’s mountain-protecting formation collapses, and the beasts flood in, killing cultivators and mortals as they scatter.
• On the mountain, Mo Chen tries to escape Jiang Jiuyao and the elderly prince. The prince’s metal-aspect attack briefly makes Mo Chen feel as if he is drowning, while Jiang Jiuyao explains this is the prince’s [gold in the sea] Nayin effect.
• Mo Chen uses Wind-Binding Restrictions to slow his pursuers, but Jiang Jiuyao’s [pine and cypress wood] effect weakens binding and other support spells, allowing her to break free quickly.
• Mo Chen turns to a large supply of crude, rice-paper talismans and restrictions to keep the pair occupied. Their struggle sparks fires across the rear mountain.
• When some Gu Diao are drawn toward the mountain, Mo Chen activates the many restrictions he has secretly prepared over decades, then hides inside a boulder using concealment and earth-escape techniques. Jiang Jiuyao and the prince remain trapped as the beasts approach.

Character developments and interactions

• Mo Chen shifts from evasion to calculated survival. He learns how powerful Nayin effects can be, recognizes his own ignorance about them, and exploits the chaos to escape. His final thoughts reveal a ruthless resolve: because Jiang Jiuyao and the prince know about his seemingly limitless lifespan, he intends to let them die.
• Jiang Jiuyao demonstrates both expertise and dominance. She scolds the prince for wasting the surprise of his ability, explains how their Nayin effects work, and repeatedly breaks Mo Chen’s restrictions. Her confidence falters only when she sees how many restrictions he has prepared.
• The elderly prince is initially overconfident and is reprimanded by Jiang Jiuyao. He obeys her, but becomes enraged and humiliated when Mo Chen bombards him with talismans.
• The pursuit becomes a contest of knowledge and tactics: Jiang Jiuyao and the prince rely on their cultivation and Spiritual Root effects, while Mo Chen uses preparation, terrain, and the attackers’ distraction.

Significant themes

• Preparation versus raw power: Mo Chen’s years of secret work let him delay stronger opponents despite inferior status and cultivation.
• Knowledge as a weapon: Understanding Spiritual Roots and Nayin effects can reveal both powerful advantages and exploitable limits.
• Survival and moral hardening: Faced with death, Mo Chen prioritizes himself and accepts mass casualties as an opportunity, showing how danger intensifies his ruthlessness.
• Chaos as opportunity: The city’s catastrophe transforms a desperate chase into a chance for Mo Chen to escape—and potentially eliminate those who threaten his secret.

Key plot points and events

• Mo Chen watches from hiding as a flock of gu eagles attacks Jiang Jiuyao and the old prince. The two are weakened by the restrictions and by their earlier struggle with Mo Chen, leaving them vulnerable despite their cultivation.
• They fight back fiercely, killing most of the beasts, but both suffer catastrophic injuries: the prince loses both legs, while Jiang Jiuyao loses her right arm and badly damages her left.
• Once the final eagle is dead, Mo Chen emerges. He taunts the prince, who recognizes him as the former book-copying clerk, then kills him by crushing his face.
• Mo Chen claims he will spare Jiang because she once gave him a cultivation method. After she begins to offer help, he kills her with his flying sword and reveals that her method was deliberately mismatched to his spiritual affinities, intended to keep him from progressing.
• He takes both cultivators’ storage pouches, burns away evidence, and hides underground when an even larger wave of beasts approaches.

Character developments

• Mo Chen is revealed as calculating, ruthless, and unwilling to leave witnesses alive—especially anyone who knows his secret longevity. His recollection of Jiang’s earlier betrayal turns his apparent gratitude into a deliberate deception.
• Jiang Jiuyao shows skill and courage in battle, repeatedly rescuing the prince, but becomes helpless after her severe injuries. Her past condescension and deliberate sabotage are revealed as a lasting source of Mo Chen’s resentment.
• The old prince fights desperately but is overwhelmed by injury and numbers. His pleas for mercy do not change Mo Chen’s decision.

Significant themes

• Betrayal and revenge: Mo Chen’s violence is tied to the earlier humiliation and sabotage he suffered.
• Survival and ruthless pragmatism: He treats potential enemies and witnesses as threats, even after promising mercy.
• The cruelty of cultivation society: The chapter contrasts the beasts’ physical brutality with cultivators’ calculated exploitation of the weak.
• Deception and distrust: Mo Chen’s false promise shows how little kindness or trust remains between the characters.

Character interactions

• Jiang and the prince cooperate under pressure, with Jiang repeatedly using vines and swordplay to save him.
• Mo Chen watches their struggle without intervening, then confronts them only after the beasts have left them incapacitated.
• He taunts and kills the prince, then invokes a past kindness to win Jiang’s trust before killing her and explaining his true grievance.

Key plot points and events

• A massive Gu Diao beast tide overwhelms Flowing Cloud Immortal City. Cultivators and mortals are slaughtered as they flee, and the city’s teleportation formation becomes hopelessly overcrowded.
• Huang Yi, a City Guard officer, forces his way to the formation and kills people to make room. Before it can be activated, a powerful Gu Diao kills the defender and destroys the teleportation token.
• Huang Yi’s protections cannot save him from the beast tide: a Foundation Establishment peak Gu Diao and several others tear him apart.
• The Twin Crane Sect is also under siege. Its mountain-guarding formation has fallen, and its remaining defenses are being worn down by the attackers.
• Mo Chen hides in the rock with Earth Escape while Gu Diao devour the bodies nearby—even eating their own dead. Once the beasts leave, he concludes that neither the sect’s strength nor its leaders can protect everyone and begins considering how to escape.
• A powerful cultivator arrives and unleashes a vast lightning technique. The bolts link into a “Thunderweb,” killing the Gu Diao across the city while sparing the surviving cultivators. The witnesses recognize the newcomer as a Golden Core Realm cultivator.

Character developments and interactions

• Mo Chen remains cautious and observant. The attack deepens his disillusionment with the sect’s supposed security and turns his thoughts toward survival and escape.
• Huang Yi is exposed as cruel and self-serving: he murders civilians and fellow cultivators to secure his own passage, then dies in the chaos he helped worsen.
• The fleeing crowd and city defenders are shown as powerless against both the beasts and the violence of stronger cultivators.
• The Twin Crane Sect’s cultivators cooperate in small groups to defend themselves, but their formations and spells cannot hold indefinitely.
• The Golden Core cultivator’s arrival abruptly changes the balance of power, demonstrating overwhelming strength and precise control over the lightning.

Significant themes

• Survival and selfishness: Fear drives people to abandon others, while Mo Chen focuses on finding a way to live.
• The limits of power and protection: Even powerful sect leaders and advanced formations cannot guarantee safety in a disaster of this scale.
• The brutality of unchecked hierarchy: Huang Yi uses his status and cultivation to prey on the vulnerable.
• The sudden reversal of fortune: The Golden Core cultivator’s intervention transforms an apparently hopeless defeat into a decisive victory.

Key plot points and events

• A Golden Core cultivator from Haiyanhui announces that the monster uprising in Flowing Cloud City has been quelled. Haiyanhui reinforcements treat the survivors, distribute water, medicine, and two hundred Low-Grade Spirit Stones each, and begin salvaging valuables from the ruins.
• Mo Chen, unfamiliar with Haiyanhui and the wider Immortal Alliance, is mocked by another cultivator for his ignorance. He stays unbothered, reflecting that taking every insult to heart would make immortal life feel like imprisonment.
• When repaired teleportation arrays are opened, Mo Chen decides to leave Flowing Cloud City to avoid attention after the disaster. Since he can afford only the cheapest fare, he chooses Maozhou, despite needing to spend fifty of his relief spirit stones.
• Zhou Ping—whom Mo Chen had assumed might have died—recognizes him and jokes about Maozhou’s reputation for fine coffins. Mo Chen answers politely and self-deprecatingly, hiding both his irritation and his real reason for going: poverty.
• During teleportation, a talisman supplied by Haiyanhui eases Mo Chen’s nausea. He arrives safely in Maozhou, a prosperous city built across several spirit-rich mountains, and resolves to find a quiet place to lie low and strengthen himself.

Character developments

• Mo Chen remains cautious, observant, and emotionally detached from insults. His unfamiliarity with major sects and limited funds underline how isolated and precarious his position is. He continues concealing his identity and circumstances.
• Zhou Ping survives the crisis and reappears with his usual teasing manner, though Mo Chen privately believes he has only a few years left to live.
• Haiyanhui’s Golden Core cultivator displays formidable power and authority, while the sect’s relief efforts are shadowed by suspicions that it is keeping the city’s recovered valuables.

Significant themes

• Power and authority: The Golden Core cultivator’s lightning arts and command over the city reveal the gulf between powerful cultivators and ordinary survivors.
• Self-interest and distrust: Haiyanhui provides real aid but also salvages valuables, prompting rumors that its relief is meant to quiet criticism.
• Survival and concealment: Mo Chen’s choices are driven by limited resources and the need to stay out of sight while quietly growing stronger.
• Perspective on immortality: Mo Chen’s refusal to dwell on mockery reflects his long-term outlook and his determination not to let petty conflicts dominate his life.

Character interactions

• Haiyanhui’s forces reassure, aid, and direct the survivors, while their recovery of artifacts fuels suspicion among the crowd.
• Mo Chen’s fellow refugee mocks his ignorance, then joins in criticizing Haiyanhui’s conduct.
• Zhou Ping needles Mo Chen about his destination; Mo Chen responds with exaggerated courtesy rather than escalating the exchange.

Chapter Summary: “A Bountiful Harvest”

Key plot points and events

• After leaving Flowing Cloud Immortal City, Mo Chen rejects an inn referral and settles in a secluded mountain fifty li away. He carves out a cave, plants a medicinal garden, and sets up warning restrictions, prioritizing secrecy and safety.
• He searches the storage bags taken from the old prince and Jiang Jiuyao. The prince’s bag contains more than four hundred spirit stones, a fine mid-grade flying sword, the Dark Gold Sword Art, and notes on life-prolonging herbs and pills. Jiang Jiuyao’s contains over a hundred spirit stones, ordinary pills, a powerful second-tier Wind Blade Talisman, and her cultivation manual and personal notes.
• Mo Chen works out how to activate the talisman by consulting his reference texts and practicing its required incantation. His haul leaves him with over seven hundred spirit stones, several flying swords, and a large collection of manuals and spell records.
• Months later, Flowing Cloud Immortal City has recovered from the beast tide, while the deaths and disappearances—including Mo Chen’s—are largely forgotten.
• Mo Chen spends more than seventy years in remote seclusion, cultivating the Flame-Drinking Art, tending medicinal plants, and practicing sword techniques and basic spells. He finally reaches the eighth level of Qi Refining and decides to leave seclusion for the first time in decades.

Character development

• Mo Chen remains cautious and secretive, refusing to risk exposing his stolen goods or true identity. But he is no longer content to simply hide: the demon uprising has convinced him that survival requires greater strength.
• His broad reading proves valuable: it helps him identify and understand Jiang Jiuyao’s talisman, showing how knowledge can create options in dangerous situations.
• Decades of repetitive, disciplined cultivation demonstrate his patience and unusual longevity. Though he advances slowly by sect standards, he takes comfort in being able to outlive ordinary cultivators.
• Foundation Establishment becomes more than a cultivation goal: Mo Chen sees it as a chance to erase his old identity by gaining an unchanged appearance and a plausible explanation for his age.

Character interactions

• Mo Chen brusquely dismisses the inn agent, avoiding contact with strangers who might compromise his safety.
• He has no direct interactions with the deceased owners of the storage bags, but studies their possessions closely, inferring that the old prince may have been near the end of his lifespan and that Jiang Jiuyao could not use her talisman because she lacked the knowledge to activate it.
• Over the decades, Mo Chen deliberately avoids other cultivators passing through the mountains, preferring to observe them from a distance.

Significant themes

• Survival and self-reliance: The beast uprising reinforces Mo Chen’s belief that retreat alone cannot keep him safe; he must become stronger.
• Knowledge as protection: Reading and practical research give him capabilities he might otherwise lack.
• Longevity and patience: Mo Chen’s slow progress contrasts with ordinary cultivators’ shorter lives, making endurance his advantage.
• Identity and anonymity: His eventual pursuit of Foundation Establishment is tied to escaping the limitations and suspicions attached to his apparent age.
• The cultivation world’s indifference: The city forgets the dead and missing, especially those without status, underscoring how little attention is paid to the powerless.

Plot points

• After seventy years of secluded cultivation, Mo Chen reaches the threshold of the eighth Qi Refining layer. His techniques have improved, his Five Elements spells are well practiced, and his divine sense reaches twenty-four zhang.
• He harvests and stores his spirit plants, then travels to bustling Maozhou City to find buyers. To avoid being underpaid, he plans to learn the local market prices before selling anything.
• A fortune-telling shop catches his eye. Mo Chen tests its “Ask Anything” promise by accepting a free reading.
• The diviner correctly infers that Mo Chen has come to sell wood-element goods—either seven artifacts or herbs around seventy years old or seventy jin in weight.
• Impressed, Mo Chen pays for a reading about his cultivation bottleneck. The diviner explains how his four elemental “five-note resonances” affect his strengths and weaknesses.
• Mo Chen pays for another question, asking what he should watch for in the near future.

Character developments and interactions

• Mo Chen is cautious and practical about selling his harvest, but curious enough to test the diviner. His skepticism turns into respect when the reading accurately describes his plans and confirms experiences he could not explain.
• The middle-aged scholar is confident and shrewd, offering a free demonstration while taking precautions against magical interference. His detailed reading reveals him as both knowledgeable and attentive.
• Their exchange shifts from playful challenge to genuine consultation: Mo Chen begins by trying to catch the shop out, then sincerely thanks the scholar and willingly pays for more advice.

Key revelations

• Fire in the furnace is beneficial: it boosts cultivation in enclosed, fiery places, supports soul-related cultivation, and strengthens charged-up burst spells—but cultivation is slower in open spaces.
• Spring water is adverse: magical power replenishes as long as some remains, but exhaustion stops natural recovery; it may also make Mo Chen more vulnerable to heart demons.
• Ocean water is adverse: it gives him unusually large magical-power reserves, but sticking to one cultivation method can stall his progress, and water-rich conditions weaken him in combat.
• Earth on the city wall is beneficial: it strengthens his soul, modestly improves his body tempering and earth defenses, and grants advantages when something connected to him is planted in the soil.

Themes

• Self-knowledge and destiny: A new framework helps Mo Chen understand patterns in his cultivation and past setbacks.
• Practical wisdom and value: Mo Chen’s caution in business and willingness to pay for useful expertise show the importance of informed choices.
• Strengths paired with drawbacks: Each beneficial or adverse resonance offers advantages alongside meaningful limitations.

Plot points and events

• A fortune-teller advises Mo Chen to look for a six-character-titled jade slip and study the ninth spell in its third volume. He also warns that selling his wood-attribute treasures will bring danger but end favorably. Mo Chen buys a costly reference book on the Five Elements’ sixty na yin, judging it useful for future cultivation questions.
• Mo Chen finds a modest herb shop and sells most of his spirit herbs for 650 spirit stones after negotiating up from the shopkeeper’s offer of 600. Two types remain unsold. The shopkeeper contacts a pill-maker who agrees to meet Mo Chen that night at an inn in Shuinan Village.
• On the way there, Mo Chen studies a map of the region and discovers that the six-character book is the Compendium of Unorthodox Spells. Its ninth spell in volume three can rewrite and deepen a spirit beast’s mastery mark, potentially allowing someone to take over another person’s beast under specific conditions. Mo Chen memorizes the spell’s incantations and hand seals.
• At Shuinan Village, Mo Chen finds the route up nearby East Terrace Mountain unexpectedly packed with cultivators and tourists. He stops a passerby to ask what is happening.

Character development

• Mo Chen shows growing confidence in evaluating advice and making practical decisions: he buys a useful reference book, negotiates for a better price, and carefully studies a potentially valuable spell.
• He remains cautious and observant, weighing costs, reading the local power structure, and preparing before meeting the pill-maker.

Significant themes

• Practical knowledge and self-reliance: Mo Chen invests in books and learns to answer future questions for himself.
• Fortune, risk, and opportunity: The warning about danger in a favorable transaction foreshadows complications, while Mo Chen’s preparations suggest he expects to navigate them.
• Unorthodox power: The spell offers a morally questionable shortcut to claiming spirit beasts, reflecting the chapter’s interest in the boundary between legitimate cultivation and exploitation.
• A layered world of authority: The map reveals how power is delegated from the Immortal Alliance to regional sects such as the Jade Pot Sect.

Character interactions

• The fortune-teller gives Mo Chen cryptic guidance, sells him the compendium, and offers a final warning.
• Mo Chen negotiates respectfully but firmly with Shopkeeper Zhang, who connects him to a pill-maker willing to buy the remaining herbs.
• The pill-maker communicates by Voice Transmission Talisman and arranges a late-night meeting.
• The chapter ends as Mo Chen questions a blue-robed cultivator about the crowd heading up the mountain.