Chapter Summaries

Key plot points

• The real Li Ping and Past Li Ping discuss whether a transformed version of the past self—unable to use his Golden Finger entries—could defeat the real Li Ping, currently the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens. Past Li Ping insists he could, because the real Li Ping is not at full strength.
• The apparent negotiation seems to reach an agreement: the real Li Ping would preserve [Sage of Today] while leaving his other trump cards unused, allowing Past Li Ping a chance to affect the future from the past. The real Li Ping then abruptly rejects the proposal.
• He addresses the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority, revealing that the formidable figure may already be present inside the space created by the Spacetime Token.
• The real Li Ping recalls the 914,500,000th use of [Sea of Time], when the protagonist discovered what he believed was a contingency left by Longevity Great Talent. The protagonist now suspects that the “contingency” was actually the Venerable Lord in disguise—a trap hidden in plain sight.
• The protagonist realizes Past Li Ping likely knew about the deception and may have used his abilities to keep the protagonist from noticing. This overturns the assumption that the real Li Ping had been controlling events and that Past Li Ping was caught off guard. The chapter ends with the chilling possibility that Past Li Ping anticipated—or even orchestrated—the entire situation, as an obscure Dao resonance appears.

Character developments and interactions

• Past Li Ping displays confidence in his ability to defeat the weakened real Li Ping, but his knowledge of the hidden Venerable Lord casts him as a much more calculating figure than the protagonist had believed.
• The real Li Ping initially appears willing to compromise, then refuses and exposes the Venerable Lord’s concealed presence, suggesting he has uncovered a deeper layer of the scheme.
• The protagonist shifts from cautiously weighing a negotiation to recognizing that his understanding of the past and present may have been manipulated.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority emerges as a possible long-term infiltrator, connected to the apparent contingency from Longevity Great Talent.

Significant themes

• Reversal and control: apparent agreements and assumptions collapse as hidden actors and plans come to light.
• Deception and unreliable interpretation: evidence that seemed trustworthy may have been deliberately misrepresented.
• Foreknowledge and manipulation: Past Li Ping may have anticipated events far beyond what anyone realized.
• Power and vulnerability: even mighty figures’ strength depends on their current condition and access to their abilities.

Plot points and events

• Chen Fan detects a tiny disturbance in the Great Dao and sees a silver lake of spacetime form, followed by a branch fragment carrying the power of the Ages Dao.
• The voice from the fragment belongs to the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority. Chen Fan realizes They have replaced Longevity Great Talent’s original contingency with a copy, likely through Their Life-Bound Divine Ability, Twin Blossoms. Past Li Ping must have revealed the original contingency and when it was made.
• The fragment uses the Ages Dao to raise Chen Fan from Qi Refining back to Spirit Transformation rank. This is Borrowed Attunement Rank: a temporary boost that leaves him under the lender’s control.
• The Venerable Lord suppresses Chen Fan’s Major Divine Ability, Sage of Today, preventing him from activating or expending it freely.
• Chen Fan reconsiders his earlier belief that Past Li Ping had foreseen and orchestrated the entire crisis. He concludes instead that Li Ping likely arranged this safeguard only after recognizing how unfavorable the situation had become.
• Chen Fan suspects Li Ping used Colorful Entry: Omnipotence to make an effect precede its causes, placing the Venerable Lord within the Spacetime Token’s realm without substantially altering the established past. The chapter ends with the real Chen Fan addressing the Venerable Lord, asserting that this is likely the limit of Omnipotence’s ability to interfere with the future at their current higher-dimensional level.

Character developments

• Chen Fan moves from alarm and apparent helplessness to careful reassessment. He identifies the mechanics behind the trap and finds reason to believe the situation is not as hopeless as he first feared.
• Past Li Ping emerges as a calculating negotiator who uses formidable abilities and contingencies, though perhaps reactively rather than having planned every event in advance.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority demonstrates both extensive preparation and control over Chen Fan, but Their intervention appears limited to restraining Sage of Today.

Themes

• Knowledge and prediction: Omniscience and the ability to place effect before cause blur the line between foreseeing events and shaping them.
• Agency versus control: Borrowed power restores Chen Fan’s rank while making him dependent on—and vulnerable to—the one who grants it.
• Strategic uncertainty: Chen Fan’s changing deductions show how difficult it is to distinguish a master plan from a contingency made in response to events.
• Limits of power: Even near-omnipotent abilities may face constraints, backlash, and scrutiny from forces such as Karmic Law.

Character interactions

• The Venerable Lord communicates through the branch fragment, restraining Chen Fan and explaining that Sage of Today will remain unusable at Their discretion.
• Chen Fan interprets this as part of a bargain between Past Li Ping and the Venerable Lord: Li Ping disclosed Longevity Great Talent’s contingency, while the Venerable Lord agreed to limit Chen Fan’s Divine Ability.
• The real Chen Fan’s closing remarks challenge the Venerable Lord’s reach, suggesting that despite the trap, Their power to alter the future has a ceiling.

Summary

The real Li Ping realizes that Past Li Ping used [Colorful Entry: Omnipotence] to alter history through cause-reversal. The real Li Ping’s repeated use of [Sea of Time]—914,500,000 times—was no ordinary event: Past Li Ping had erased the outcomes in which the real Li Ping detected the deception, making the trap appear unavoidable. The trap’s purpose was to secure a contingency, the [Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority], that would prevent the real Li Ping from freely using [Sage of Today] during their negotiations.
Past Li Ping admits that this alteration was necessary to protect himself in the proposed trade: if he helped the real Li Ping escape his crisis, he needed insurance against the real Li Ping turning on him. The real Li Ping concludes that Past Li Ping has been manipulating the past more extensively than he previously let on.

Character developments and interactions

• The real Li Ping moves from uncertainty toward a clearer understanding of the trap and gains confidence that he still has a slight advantage. He presses Past Li Ping about the limits on his ability to affect the future.
• Past Li Ping openly acknowledges using Omnipotence to change the past and create the contingency. His actions reveal both his formidable power and his caution about trusting the real Li Ping.
• Their exchange shifts from deduction to direct confrontation: the real Li Ping challenges Past Li Ping to explain what truly prevents him from traveling from the past into the future.

Significant themes

• Cause and effect can be manipulated: Omnipotence can apparently rewrite what was once an established outcome.
• Knowledge and uncertainty: Repeated uses of Sea of Time show how even a seemingly obvious anomaly can be concealed by altered history.
• Trust and self-protection: Both versions of Li Ping approach the trade as a potential threat and prepare safeguards.
• Hidden constraints: The chapter ends by questioning whether Past Li Ping is limited by circumstance, powerful beings, or karmic law—or by some deeper fear.

Plot points

• The protagonist and his alternate self realize Past Li Ping’s goal is not simply to obtain the Major Divine Ability [Sage of Today]. He needs Chen Fan himself to activate it, apparently to bypass a powerful restriction on interfering with the Future from the Past.
• Past Li Ping confirms he is being watched and cannot act freely. He wants to influence the Chat Group’s Fourth Group Mission through Chen Fan—and ultimately to “possess” or replace him, making Chen Fan become Past Li Ping.
• The protagonist suspects a higher power or higher-priority Golden Finger ability is blocking Past Li Ping. Senior Lin Feng, who sealed off the Past, is one possible culprit, but Past Li Ping refuses to explain.
• As the Spacetime Token’s remaining time runs out, Past Li Ping again proposes their earlier bargain: Chen Fan should keep [Sage of Today] and use [Transform All Beings] to become Past Li Ping and resolve the crisis.
• That deal now seems perilous. The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority—Past Li Ping’s concealed contingency—has already constrained the protagonist, making it risky to trust the bargain or use the transformation.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan and his alternate self reason through the mismatch between Past Li Ping’s apparent powers and his need for Chen Fan personally, uncovering the likely importance of the restriction.
• Past Li Ping admits his real objective and the need to act through Chen Fan, but remains evasive about what restrains him. He presses Chen Fan to accept the bargain before time runs out.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority stays silent and offers no clarification, reinforcing the protagonist’s suspicion that he is part of Past Li Ping’s scheme.
• Chen Fan shifts from analyzing the plan to confronting its immediate danger: with the hidden contingency in play, he can no longer safely assume he can counter Past Li Ping’s tricks.

Significant themes

• Control and possession: Past Li Ping’s plan threatens Chen Fan’s identity and autonomy.
• Power and hidden limits: Even abilities with seemingly superior priority may be constrained by unknown forces.
• Trust under uncertainty: The bargain might resolve the crisis, but the contingency makes cooperation dangerous.
• Knowledge and time pressure: Past Li Ping withholds crucial answers while the shrinking window forces Chen Fan toward a choice.

Key plot points and events

• Past Li Ping corners the True You, insisting that cooperation with him is the only remaining option. He claims the True You has lost not through poor strategy but because Past Li Ping has greater accumulated resources and has anticipated his countermeasures.
• The True You appears trapped: the borrowed rank imposed by the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority blocks access to Sage of Today, leaving Wish Echo unusable.
• Instead of accepting defeat, the True You reflects on the idea that the journey matters more than a perfect ending. He forcibly spends the final use of I Am the Chess Player.
• That talent could either free him from the imposed rank or protect him from a hidden, potentially fatal force Past Li Ping had planted in his body. The True You chooses protection.
• As I Am the Chess Player shatters, the True You invokes Existence from Nonexistence, declaring that he will use everything he has to overturn the ending.

Character developments

• The True You shifts from trying to win by calculation to accepting the value of the journey itself. Even while facing apparent defeat, he refuses to accept an ending he considers unworthy of his struggles.
• Past Li Ping reveals his confidence in his extensive preparations and intimate knowledge of the True You’s abilities. His coercive offer of cooperation is framed as the only practical choice.
• The narrator/you recognizes Past Li Ping’s contingencies and the danger of the final talent use, but remains caught between distrust and the lack of alternatives.

Significant themes

• Preparation versus adaptability: Past Li Ping’s reserves and foresight overwhelm the True You’s immediate resources.
• Agency and acceptance: The True You’s choice is meaningful even when conventional victory seems impossible.
• The journey versus the ending: The True You embraces the value of hardship and experience rather than judging everything by the final result.
• Defiance in despair: The closing invocation turns apparent defeat into one last attempt to reshape reality.

Character interactions

• Past Li Ping pressures the True You to cooperate, arguing that resistance is futile.
• The True You rejects Past Li Ping’s framing of the situation and answers with a personal conviction about the journey.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority’s imposed control remains a silent but decisive force, while Past Li Ping’s hidden trap forces the True You to choose between escape and survival.

Key plot points and events

• At the brink of defeat, Chen Fan activates [Existence from Nonexistence], freezing the surrounding world and quieting the overwhelming power inside him.
• He sees that [I Am the Chess Player] is nearly shattered. Its hidden spirit—another version of Chen Fan—speaks to him, asking him to take its place and continue toward the ending.
• Chen Fan accepts, recognizing that he and the vanished spirit, along with his simulated selves, are all Chen Fan. The spirit dissipates, leaving him free of Past Li Ping’s influence.
• Chen Fan resolves to stake everything on survival. He sacrifices [Myriad Selves], gaining the fortune and blessing of all living beings, then sacrifices [Fusion] and inherits Ten Thousand Arts’ power to unite the ten thousand Dao and break through his former limits.
• Finally, he prepares to sacrifice [I Am the Chess Player], gaining three deliberate uses of its ability, [Effect Before Cause].

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan moves from seeing himself as mere bait to embracing his identity and choosing to fight, even when survival is uncertain. His declaration, “I will win,” marks his renewed resolve.
• The spirit within I Am the Chess Player, another Chen Fan, reveals that it has been guiding events and protecting him—particularly by stopping him from using Wish Echo. It willingly disappears so Chen Fan can continue.
• Chen Fan’s earlier exchanges with Past Li Ping and the remembered words of Chen Hei help shape his understanding: even a hopeless situation may contain a chance, and courage matters more than avoiding regret.

Significant themes

• Identity and self-sacrifice: The many versions of Chen Fan are ultimately one person, and one version’s sacrifice enables the others to proceed.
• Hope amid despair: The “sliver of vitality” is not guaranteed survival but the possibility worth risking everything to pursue.
• Courage and commitment: Chen Fan chooses to live and fight without certainty, accepting the consequences.
• Power through unity: By taking on the fortune of all beings and fusing the ten thousand Dao, he draws strength from both collective existence and accumulated paths.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan reverses the crisis created by the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority’s forced attunement. His borrowed rank shatters and drops to Qi Refining, but the power of the ten thousand Daos continually rebuilds and elevates him through Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, and Spirit Transformation.
• As a “Myriad Dao Furnace,” Chen Fan begins smelting the ten thousand Great Daos, suggesting he may eventually challenge even the Lord of the Heavenly Court.
• The Venerable Lord recognizes Chen Fan’s power as that of the legendary Myriad Arts Dao Lord.
• Chen Fan realizes he cannot simply erase the Venerable Lord’s hidden contingency: it is sustained not by the Ages Dao alone, but by Past Li Ping’s higher-priority ability, effect before cause.
• Chen Fan uses one of his own three opportunities to invoke that same ability. He revisits the past moment when he searched for Longevity Great Talent’s contingency and restores the history to its original course, undoing Past Li Ping’s alteration that let the Venerable Lord replace it.
• The two versions of effect before cause—Chen Fan’s and Past Li Ping’s—clash. Neither has gained the advantage by the chapter’s end.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan shifts from being controlled by the Venerable Lord’s borrowed power to asserting control over his own fate. His extraordinary growth gives him the potential to contend with the strongest beings, while his use of effect before cause shows newfound command over causality.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority is briefly astonished by Chen Fan’s apparent connection to the Myriad Arts Dao Lord, but remains a dangerous opponent through the contingency hidden in time.
• Past Li Ping is revealed as the one who altered the relevant past and whose intervention continues to oppose Chen Fan, even indirectly.
• Chen Fan and Past Li Ping are now locked in a contest between two powers of the same kind, setting up a struggle over which version of history will prevail.

Significant themes

• Self-determination versus manipulation: Chen Fan fights to reclaim control from powers that have engineered events around him.
• Causality and history: The past is portrayed as something that can be changed, but altering it invites resistance and potentially dangerous consequences.
• Power and limits: Chen Fan’s immense strength does not automatically overcome higher-priority abilities; the decisive struggle is as much about authority over reality as raw force.

Key plot points and events

• Past Li Ping withdraws his effect-before-cause power and admits that he can no longer restrain Chen Fan. He proposes that Chen Fan transform into him, then use the major divine ability Sage of Today to keep him in check while he helps fight the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens.
• Chen Fan refuses to accept Past Li Ping’s apparent surrender. He suspects Li Ping withdrew because Chen Fan’s talent-based effect-before-cause has greater priority than Li Ping’s entry-based version—and believes Li Ping is still concealing his real intentions.
• Chen Fan points out that his advantage is temporary: the power gained through Existence from Nonexistence will last only as long as an incense stick burns. Distrusting Li Ping’s proposed guarantees, Chen Fan ends their conversation.
• The Spacetime Token’s constructed space collapses, returning Chen Fan to the battlefield, where Nine Heavens and numerous future experts are poised to overwhelm him.
• Nine Heavens unleashes a vastly enhanced attack combining fruit-position powers over karma, destiny, time, rules, and destruction. Chen Fan’s newly manifested Myriad Beings Aspect, accompanied by his borrowed Colored Heaven’s Mandate, blocks the strike.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan demonstrates both strategic insight and deep suspicion: despite needing help, he sees through what he believes is Li Ping’s performance and refuses to trust him. On the battlefield, he begins to experience the immense but unfamiliar power of the Colored Heaven’s Mandate.
• Past Li Ping acknowledges that Chen Fan has outmaneuvered him and offers cooperation, but his motives remain ambiguous. Their exchange ends in mutual distrust rather than an alliance.
• Nine Heavens escalates from an ordinary attack to a combined assault drawing on multiple fundamental powers, establishing the scale of the threat Chen Fan faces.

Significant themes

• Trust and manipulation: Chen Fan questions whether Li Ping’s concession is genuine, emphasizing how difficult it is to distinguish sincerity from strategy.
• The priority of powers: The clash raises the possibility that talents outrank entries, explaining how Chen Fan’s power overcame Li Ping’s.
• The bond among all beings: Chen Fan senses that the weak and powerful share some hidden connection within the Colored Heaven’s Mandate, but cannot yet identify it.
• Borrowed power and incomplete understanding: Chen Fan’s mandate is temporary and borrowed through Myriad Selves, unlike the seemingly deeper version possessed by “Old Self.” Even so, it provides enough power to stop Nine Heavens’s attack and signal Chen Fan’s return.

Plot and key events

• The narrator blocks the Heavenly Court Lord, Nine Heavens’s devastating attack with the colored Heaven’s Mandate, whose “Visages of All Living Beings” shield them.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority unleashes a super Great World. The narrator catches it, holds it together with the power of ten thousand Daos, then refines it to fuel their Myriad Dao Furnace.
• Seeing the furnace and the narrator’s power, Nine Heavens wonders whether they are connected to the legendary Myriad Arts Dao Lord—perhaps a reincarnation or contingency. His reaction suggests the Dao Lord truly existed and that Nine Heavens may have met him.
• Nine Heavens counters by manifesting the Nine Heavens Celestial Court and layering at least ten thousand Great Daos into an attack. The blow devastates worlds in the True Myriad Worlds and breaks through the narrator’s Mandate protection.
• The narrator withstands it by concentrating ten thousand Daos into the unified force of the Myriad Dao Furnace, which proves stronger than Nine Heavens’s scattered, layered power.
• Karmic Law Punishment then strikes Nine Heavens. By pursuing the narrator into the future, he has disturbed causality too greatly to conceal his actions.

Character developments and interactions

• The narrator reveals a dramatic increase in power: they can hold and refine a super Great World and use the Myriad Dao Furnace to meet Nine Heavens head-on. They remain wary, however, because Nine Heavens has not yet used his ultimate “Investiture of the Gods” method.
• Nine Heavens is shown to be formidable and calculating. He recognizes the Myriad Arts Dao Lord’s legacy, but delays using his trump card—likely because it could bring even more severe karmic repercussions.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority contributes the Great World attack, but the narrator neutralizes and repurposes it.

Significant themes

• Unity versus accumulation: The narrator’s unified Daos overcome Nine Heavens’s enormous but dispersed power.
• Legacy and hidden history: The encounter suggests the supposedly legendary Myriad Arts Dao Lord was real.
• Power and consequence: Even overwhelming strength has limits when wielding it disrupts causality and draws punishment from Karmic Law.

Key plot points and events

• After karmic punishment strikes the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens, Li Ping uses the opening to act—but not to escape. He reasons that the Lord can track him and may even destroy the Hollow Willow, while Past Li Ping remains a threat.
• Li Ping returns to the River of Time and withstands attacks from powerful Immortal Venerables, including the Buddha Ancestor of the Western Region and the Fake Lord of Penglai. His empowered Myriad Beings Aspect and myriad Dao furnace let him cross back into the Supreme True Realm and enter the damaged Painting World.
• There, he confronts the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority about the purpose behind the Life-and-Death Chess Game and the surrounding attacks.
• Li Ping concludes that the Venerable Lord’s real aim was not to help Past Li Ping possess him or descend into the future. Instead, the Venerable Lord wanted Li Ping to use Wish Echo alongside Sage of Today to summon—and meet—a particular existence.
• Li Ping suspects the Venerable Lord deliberately pushed him into a desperate but survivable situation. His attacks seemed designed to pressure rather than kill: he detonated the Heavenly Painting Scrolls one at a time, despite apparently having the power to use several at once.

Character developments

• Li Ping shows strategic restraint and greater confidence. He tests the limits of his enhanced power, recognizes that he cannot simply defeat the Heavenly Court’s Lord, and turns to deduction rather than flight.
• The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority is revealed as a likely hidden architect of events. His motives remain uncertain, but Li Ping believes he has been manipulating circumstances to bring about a meeting.
• Past Li Ping remains a danger in the background, reinforcing Li Ping’s need to preserve his remaining options.
• The Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens remains overwhelmingly powerful, though temporarily constrained by karmic law punishment.

Significant themes

• Fate, manipulation, and agency: Li Ping questions whether his apparent choices and crises have been engineered by others.
• Power and its limits: Even immense amplification cannot guarantee victory, so survival depends on judgment and preparation.
• Truth through inference: Li Ping reconstructs the Venerable Lord’s intentions from what he chose not to do, especially his restraint in using lethal attacks.

Character interactions

• Li Ping and the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority engage in a tense, probing exchange. The Venerable Lord speaks indirectly, while Li Ping challenges his account and lays out his own theory.
• Li Ping’s encounter with the Heavenly Court’s Lord is indirect in this passage: he uses the Lord’s distraction to pursue his own investigation rather than attempt a doomed escape or fight.
• The powerful combatants in the River of Time act as obstacles, but Li Ping’s newly amplified abilities allow him to push past them quickly.

Plot points and events

• The protagonist confronts the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority in the World Within the Painting, asking whether the Lord’s earlier schemes were meant to make the protagonist summon an unknown being using Sage of Today and Wish Echo.
• The Lord refuses to explain. The protagonist concludes that the Lord’s earlier claims—to be seeking an answer rather than trying to kill them, and acting for Master Lin Feng—may have been truthful, though the exact plan remains unclear.
• When the Lord tries to end the discussion by pressing the shattered painted world toward the protagonist, the protagonist uses Colored Heaven’s Mandate and the Myriad Beings Aspect to halt it.
• The protagonist threatens not to use the anticipated abilities unless the Lord answers. They reveal a backup plan: sacrifice their powers with Existence from Nonexistence to gain enough strength to survive, even if doing so costs them nearly everything.
• The threat works: after a long silence, the Lord asks what the protagonist wants to know.

Character development

• The protagonist moves from anxious suspicion to a forceful, calculated stance. Though they fear being manipulated yet again, they decide they would rather risk losing everything than remain at the mercy of others’ schemes.
• The Venerable Lord remains guarded, but the protagonist’s willingness to use a desperate alternative finally makes them engage.

Character interactions

• The protagonist presses the Lord to explain their purpose and invokes the Lord’s past statements as evidence.
• The Lord initially avoids the questions and attempts to shut down the exchange.
• The protagonist counters with a direct ultimatum and a demonstration that they still have options, prompting the Lord to respond.

Significant themes

• Agency versus manipulation: The protagonist struggles to reclaim control amid schemes by the Lord, Past Li Ping, and the Heavenly Court’s ruler.
• Risk and sacrifice: Survival may require giving up every ability and resource.
• Uncertainty and trust: Even plausible deductions cannot provide certainty, forcing the protagonist to act without knowing whether they are still being played.

The Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority refuses to reveal what being Chen Fan will summon with Sage of Today, insisting that his scheme will bring Chen Fan “a hundred benefits and not a single harm.” Asked how he avoided Past Li Ping’s higher-dimensional mind-reading and pseudo-omniscience, he explains that Li Ping was not the only Otherworldly Demon. Chen Fan deduces he means Senior Lin Feng, though the Venerable Lord does not confirm how Lin Feng helped.
Chen Fan then revisits a mystery: in an earlier simulation, the being summoned by Sage of Today greeted him as someone they had met a hundred thousand years before, and another ancient remnant also seemed to recognize him. This leads Chen Fan to wonder whether a Past Chen Fan existed. The Venerable Lord says there are no traces of Chen Fan in the past, but reveals that he knows of four Otherworldly Demons from history, excluding Chen Fan. Some have been deliberately erased from the world’s records, so he cannot identify them all.
He names two: Lin Feng, his master and the Third Era’s Otherworldly Demon, renowned as the Supreme Dao Immortal Venerable; and the Reincarnation Immortal, an Otherworldly Demon who attained the Dao in the First Era. The Venerable Lord clarifies that this figure was the First Era’s Half-Immortal—not a Supreme Immortal. The Reincarnation Immortal established the Six Paths of Reincarnation, remade the Supreme True Realm, founded the Netherworld, and earned the Earthly Dao’s response, creating the supreme fruit position of Reincarnation.
Character developments and interactions: Chen Fan moves from probing the Venerable Lord’s hidden plan to investigating his own possible connection to the past. The Venerable Lord remains guarded about his scheme but shares significant historical knowledge. His respectful pause before naming the Reincarnation Immortal hints at the figure’s lingering importance or danger.
Themes: The chapter explores erased history, identity across time, the limits of knowledge, and the lasting legacy of extraordinary outsiders.

Key events

• The protagonist questions the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority about the Reincarnation Immortal and the other Otherworldly Demons. The venerable lord says the Reincarnation Immortal’s fruit position was vacant by the Third Era, suggesting—but not proving—that the immortal had fallen. It cannot recall the immortal’s abilities or details about the other demons, blaming the vast knowledge and memories it severed when returning from the Present to the Future.
• The World Within the Painting cracks open, and the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens, reaches the protagonist despite karmic-law punishment. The painting world collapses, forcing them into battle again.
• Nine Heavens unveils the Investiture of the Gods List, a treasure that can bestow ranks based on possible futures—and, through its owner, create those possibilities artificially. The deity uses it to invest Chen Fan with the title Eternal Radiance Immortal Venerable, a title he already possesses.
• The protagonist realizes the investiture is an attempt to impose the List’s power on him and control him. His usual defenses fail, leaving him apparently unable to stop the process without destroying the treasure or defeating Nine Heavens.

Character developments and interactions

• The protagonist presses the venerable lord for information but gets little in return. Though uncertain whether the answers reflect genuine ignorance or concealment, he accepts the limits of what it can tell him.
• Nine Heavens shifts from pursuit to direct, serious confrontation, revealing a powerful method that exploits the protagonist’s existing title against him.
• With no other option, the protagonist activates Sage of Today and his final trump card, Wish Echo. He chooses to trust the venerable lord’s plan, hoping its aim will ultimately benefit him, and calls on some being capable of reversing the situation.

Significant themes

• Uncertainty and incomplete knowledge: The Reincarnation Immortal’s fate is inferred rather than confirmed, while the venerable lord’s severed memories leave crucial history unknown.
• Possibility as power: The Investiture of the Gods List turns potential outcomes into authority, even manufacturing the possibility it needs.
• Control through identity and rank: Nine Heavens weaponizes the protagonist’s own title, showing that recognition can become a means of coercion.
• Trust under desperation: The protagonist has to rely on the venerable lord despite not knowing its full motives or the consequences of its plan.

Chapter summary

Plot points

• Activating [Sage of Today] sends the narrator’s perception soaring beyond the Supreme True Realm, through countless layers of “chess games,” and into the Higher Dimension—a reality beyond ordinary concepts such as time, space, and rules.
• A dazzling golden light, more powerful than [Sage of Today], turns the narrator into a beacon and begins drawing them toward its source.
• From the Higher Dimension’s past, an overwhelming gaze breaks through successive restrictions and reaches toward the future. The narrator realizes it belongs to Past Li Ping, who is using the narrator as a route across time.
• The narrator recognizes the mechanism as Past Li Ping’s one-use golden ability, [The Last Supper], which had been hidden within the shattered memory scene. Though [Sage of Today] protects the narrator, Li Ping’s gaze keeps advancing.
• The narrator glimpses Li Ping’s true form: nine colorful Class Cards joined into a flawless ring, embodying immense power and perception. Li Ping can see across past, present, and future, treating them as a play filled with possibilities.
• The chapter ends with Li Ping’s voice echoing across dimensions: “I’ve waited for this moment... for far too long.”

Character developments and interactions

• The narrator shifts from exhilaration at reaching the Higher Dimension to alarm and awe as they become an unwilling beacon for Li Ping. They briefly lose themselves in contemplating Li Ping’s power, then realize that this distraction is intentional.
• Past Li Ping is revealed as a vastly more powerful and calculating figure than the narrator understood. His golden ability appears designed to exploit the narrator’s ascent and reach the Higher Dimension’s future.
• Their interaction is indirect but decisive: Li Ping’s gaze crosses from the past toward the narrator, while the narrator’s divine ability resists and protects them.

Significant themes

• Limits of knowledge: The Higher Dimension cannot be properly imagined, observed, or described; even reaching it does not mean understanding it.
• Power and perspective: What seemed ultimate to the narrator becomes only a small layer in a larger reality, while Li Ping’s perspective makes whole timelines look like a game.
• Manipulation and agency: The narrator’s advancement becomes part of Li Ping’s plan, raising the question of whether the narrator is acting freely or serving as a tool.
• Possibility and destiny: Li Ping’s ability to perceive countless variables and fixed destinies blurs the line between choice and predetermined outcomes.

Plot points and events

• Past Li Ping’s overwhelming gaze nearly paralyzes the protagonist and brands Li Ping’s true form into his Sea of Consciousness.
• The protagonist’s abilities activate in succession: Once and for All and the Myriad Dao Furnace cannot stop the attack, but Effect Before Cause finally makes the gaze—and its effect—vanish.
• Once able to think again, the protagonist realizes that Wish Echo did activate and summon a being capable of saving him, but Past Li Ping must have prevented that being from intervening.
• He reconstructs Past Li Ping’s long con: the supposed deal was never sincere. It was meant to steer him toward using Sage of Today and Wish Echo, while earlier encounters encouraged him to trust the apparent priority of Talents over Entries.
• The protagonist identifies the scheme’s deeper purpose: Past Li Ping maneuvered him into sacrificing Golden Talent: Fusion, removing his last possible escape—using it to fuse or otherwise challenge Sage of Today at great cost.
• Recognizing that he has been outplayed, the protagonist accepts defeat and tells Past Li Ping, “I lost!”

Character developments

• The protagonist moves from panic and confusion to a rapid, clear understanding of the scheme. He admits that his loss came not from being directly controlled, but from trusting his own reasoning and being manipulated through it.
• Past Li Ping is revealed as a patient, formidable strategist whose real strength lies not only in his resources and abilities, but in plots concealed behind apparent bargains and compromises.

Significant themes

• Deception and long-term planning: Past Li Ping turns the protagonist’s assumptions and past victories into tools against him.
• Agency and manipulation: The protagonist’s choices are genuinely his own, yet the circumstances guiding those choices have been engineered.
• The limits of power: Powerful Talents and divine abilities cannot guarantee victory when an opponent controls the strategic conditions.
• Acknowledging defeat: The protagonist’s final admission recognizes Past Li Ping’s skill rather than disguising the outcome.

Character interactions

• Past Li Ping’s apparent offer of cooperation serves as bait, leading the protagonist toward the choices that eliminate his options.
• The protagonist ultimately addresses Past Li Ping directly, praising his scheme and conceding the match.

Key plot points and events

• Past Li Ping’s influence increasingly penetrates the higher-dimensional future, breaking through the protection of Chen Fan’s second use of [effect before cause] and imprinting his indistinct true form in Chen Fan’s consciousness.
• Fearing that waiting would leave him unable to act at all, Chen Fan uses his third and final protection from [effect before cause]. It drives Li Ping’s gaze and presence away, but only temporarily.
• Chen Fan considers sacrificing [rainbow talent: fifth chess player] and using [Existence from Nonexistence] to summon “Old Self” as a countermeasure. He first doubts Old Self could defeat Li Ping, then realizes he might only need to hold Li Ping off until another powerful being can break through Li Ping’s contingency.
• Chen Fan recognizes that this sudden change of judgment was not his own: Past Li Ping had influenced him to prevent him from activating [Existence from Nonexistence].
• Li Ping admits the interference and tells Chen Fan the struggle is over. Chen Fan accepts that he has lost, having exhausted all three uses of [effect before cause].

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan remains resourceful, weighing desperate options, but ultimately realizes he has been manipulated even in his final attempt to choose a strategy.
• Past Li Ping demonstrates that he can influence Chen Fan’s thoughts as well as breach his defenses. He directly reveals that he intervened to stop Chen Fan from making another sacrifice.
• Their exchange confirms the imbalance between them: Li Ping controls the situation, while Chen Fan can only acknowledge that his choices were anticipated.

Significant themes

• Manipulation and agency: Chen Fan’s apparent change of mind is itself part of Li Ping’s scheme, casting doubt on whether Chen Fan can make an independent move.
• The limits of protection: Even a powerful ability can only delay an enemy whose influence grows stronger over time.
• What truly makes a player dangerous: Chen Fan realizes that [I am the chess player], not the other abilities he relied on as “stakes,” was what made him unpredictable and kept Li Ping wary.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan realizes Past Li Ping deliberately manipulated their confrontation, pressuring him into exhausting all three uses of [effect before cause]. Without it, Chen cannot reactivate [Existence from Nonexistence].
• Past Li Ping completes his assimilation of Chen, seemingly winning and preparing to use him to influence the future.
• At the moment of defeat, a voice from within Chen’s heart asks whether he accepts this ending. Chen answers honestly that he does not—but admits he does not know what ending he would want instead.
• The voice appears to be Chen’s own, though Chen suspects it may be a version of himself from the past. It alters the situation so Chen is no longer affected by Past Li Ping.
• A tremendous swordlike “Clang” then rewrites events at the higher-dimensional level, erasing Past Li Ping’s manifested eye and imprint from Chen’s consciousness.
• The echo also strikes Past Li Ping himself: his nine-card Ring is shattered, with eight cards destroyed, and his Dharma Body is disabled. The sound proves to be an echo of a strike from the future, unleashed amid a much larger battle.

Character developments

• Chen Fan faces apparent defeat with composure, but his honest admission reveals that he is neither reconciled to losing nor clear about what he truly wants. The voice forces him to confront the possibility that he has never considered what kind of life or ending he would choose.
• Past Li Ping is exposed as a meticulous schemer who anticipated Chen’s responses and engineered his use of the last [effect before cause]. Despite his apparent victory, he is suddenly overpowered by an unknown force.
• The mysterious voice/being demonstrates the ability to change established facts and defeat Past Li Ping across dimensional boundaries. Its identity remains uncertain, though Chen suspects a past version of himself.

Character interactions

• Past Li Ping speaks to Chen as he completes the assimilation, acknowledging that their circumstances might have been reversed in another era.
• Chen accepts the logic of victory and defeat but refuses to pretend he is satisfied.
• The mysterious voice questions Chen about his acceptance of the outcome and what ending he would acknowledge, prompting an unusually candid exchange within Chen’s own heart.
• Past Li Ping recognizes the intervention and wonders whether Chen’s [wish echo] has summoned a terrifying being, but he is interrupted before he can finish.

Significant themes

• Fate, causality, and the power of choice: Li Ping’s plans seem to make defeat inevitable, until an impossible intervention changes what has already happened.
• Self-knowledge and identity: Chen’s many possible identities contrast with his lack of clarity about what he actually wants.
• The limits of scheming and power: Even Li Ping’s elaborate strategy and seemingly invincible abilities can be overturned by a force beyond his understanding.
• Hope beyond defeat: The future’s echo turns a seemingly finished loss into a new possibility, while hinting at a conflict far greater than Chen’s immediate struggle.

Key plot points and events

• A mysterious, overwhelmingly powerful being intervenes in the higher-dimensional conflict, overturning Past Li Ping’s plans. The narrator realizes the intervention was not Past Chen Fan and suspects it was connected to the purple talent Wish Echo.
• Past Li Ping reveals that he expected someone in the future to stop the summoned being—specifically Future Ning Chen. This leads the narrator to suspect that Li Ping had arranged for Ning Chen to kill Present Li Ping as part of a larger bargain, with the narrator as the real target.
• Before Li Ping can explain further, dusky green spectral flames spread across the higher-dimensional past and present. They cover half the narrator’s Dharma Body without causing harm, and seem to grant immense power.
• The narrator’s flame-touched eye sees the fire spread everywhere, while the other eye initially sees it only beginning. By closing a green-flamed hand, the narrator makes both visions match, extending the flames throughout the higher-dimensional realm.
• Sage of Today then flares, its protective power dissipates, and the narrator falls out of the higher-dimensional place—back to the Supreme True Realm, where the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens, threatens him with the Investiture of the Gods List. The narrator returns to this seemingly hopeless standoff, but now bears the green flames.

Character developments and interactions

• The narrator shifts from analyzing Li Ping’s conspiracy to discovering a strange new power. Though confused by the flames, he feels their strength and instinctively learns to affect what he sees through them.
• Past Li Ping is exposed as a ruthless, far-reaching schemer who may have used his own present self’s death to serve his plan. His disbelief turns to despair when an unforeseen force defeats his arrangements.
• Future Ning Chen is identified as the expected countermeasure against the mysterious being. The narrator suspects Ning Chen cooperated with Li Ping, though Ning Chen’s fate remains unknown and may be dire.
• The mysterious being never appears directly, but its intervention—and the “clang” associated with it—sets the events in motion and defeats Li Ping’s scheme.

Significant themes

• Scheming versus unpredictability: Li Ping’s elaborate plan seems airtight until an outside force overturns it.
• Identity, time, and causality: Past, present, and future selves—and their possible bargains—blur the line between victim and collaborator.
• Transformation and power: The green flames introduce an unexplained force that changes the narrator’s perception and may alter the balance of the coming confrontation.
• A return to danger: The narrator is cast back into a familiar crisis, but transformed enough that its outcome may no longer be predetermined.

Key plot points and events

• After the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens uses the Investiture of the Gods List to control the protagonist, the protagonist suddenly splits between their normal form and green flame.
• The green-flame side can perceive and interact with the future. At first, it shows a future in which the protagonist survives by fighting the Lord until karmic punishment strikes, but both end up badly wounded.
• The protagonist rejects this merely “more favorable” outcome and seeks a better one. A familiar, unexplained voice says, “This future... is enough.”
• The protagonist instinctively closes their green-flamed hand—not over the whole future, but over the Lord’s future defeat. That outcome takes effect immediately: the Lord’s Dharma Body shatters, his power vanishes, and the Investiture disappears.
• Karmic punishment then descends, targeting the Lord rather than the protagonist.

Character developments

• The protagonist discovers a major new ability: they can retrieve or seize specific futures, not merely glimpse them.
• Their first instinct is to seek the best possible outcome, but the voice’s intervention—and their own action—turns a less-than-ideal future into a decisive victory.
• The Lord’s apparent control over the protagonist collapses, leaving him gravely injured and unable to use the Investiture.

Significant themes

• The power of possibility: The future is not only something to foresee; it can be selected and brought into the present.
• Accepting “enough”: A workable future may be preferable to endlessly pursuing a perfect one.
• Fate and consequence: The Lord’s attempt to manipulate events through the Investiture brings a harsher karmic backlash.

Character interactions

• The protagonist and the Lord are locked in a struggle of control: the Lord uses the Investiture to subdue the protagonist, but the protagonist turns the Lord’s own future defeat into reality.
• An unidentified, familiar voice speaks directly within the protagonist’s heart, guiding—or prompting—the decisive choice.

• Plot: After using “future retrieval” to unleash karmic-law punishment, the protagonist grievously wounds the Lord of the Heavenly Court, Nine Heavens, forcing him to flee—possibly back to the present. The protagonist realizes the green-flame ability is running low, likely because targeting such a powerful enemy consumed so much of it. With the immediate threat gone, he abandons plans to hunt the other enemies, who have all concealed themselves, and instead seeks the Venerable Lord of Yin-Yang Authority.
• Character developments: The protagonist gains a startling advantage but recognizes its limits and chooses not to waste his remaining power. His enemies, having witnessed his reversal against Nine Heavens, retreat or hide. The Venerable Lord finally reveals himself, appearing as an extraordinarily gifted and composed figure whose wisdom and Dao resonance impress the protagonist.
• Interactions: The protagonist’s clash with Nine Heavens ends in a dramatic reversal: the once-dominant ruler is badly injured and disappears. The other Supreme Existences avoid the protagonist rather than risk retaliation. The chapter closes with the protagonist and the Venerable Lord facing one another across the Supreme True Realm. The Venerable Lord recites a grand entrance poem about his schemes, conflicted self-interest, and long-awaited wish, then declares, “You… really do exist!”
• Themes: Power can overturn seemingly inevitable outcomes, but extraordinary abilities carry costs. Caution and restraint matter even after victory. The ending also emphasizes the tension between scheming and genuine longing, while framing the Venerable Lord’s meeting with the protagonist as the fulfillment of a long-held desire.