Chapter Summaries

Plot points

• Mu Changkang, a young Qi Refining cultivator from the Northern Land of Sin, arrives in impoverished Blackstone Town. Though he appears modest, he has built an extraordinary foundation and enjoyed a run of seemingly impossible luck.
• His master, an ancient remnant soul, explains that Mu bears Heaven’s Mandate—the source of his repeated good fortune. The master has sensed an old incarnation nearby, supposedly a Golden Core perfection cultivator who could protect Mu as he advances toward Foundation Establishment.
• Before Mu can find the incarnation, a solemn boy in Daoist robes appears and says he has waited for him. Mu feels his Heaven’s Mandate being torn away; the stranger then kills him instantly, annihilating his soul.
• As Mu dies, the Daoist boy reveals that killing him required the Rewind power of the Supreme Limitless Dharma Seal. Mu’s life ends as a “golden millet dream,” despite the promise of a grand cultivation destiny.

Character developments and interactions

• Mu Changkang moves from confident ambition to terror and despair, discovering that his luck and apparent destiny offer no protection against a force beyond his understanding.
• The remnant-soul master encourages Mu with promises of protection and a glorious future, but cannot save him when the Daoist boy attacks.
• The Daoist-robed boy is presented as an overwhelmingly powerful, wary figure. His private remark suggests Mu’s Heaven’s Mandate made him unusually difficult to kill, and that the victory came at a cost.
• The encounter is brief and one-sided: the boy’s words and action overwhelm both Mu and his master before either can respond.

Significant themes

• Fate versus power: Heaven’s Mandate appears to guarantee fortune, yet can be seized or overcome.
• The fragility of destiny: Mu’s extraordinary rise and promised future vanish without warning.
• Illusion and impermanence: His “golden millet dream” frames his successful life as a fleeting fantasy.
• Subversion of the chosen-one story: The chapter introduces a seemingly destined hero only to destroy him abruptly, hinting at a larger and more dangerous conflict.

Key plot points and events

• The protagonist receives the Golden Heaven’s Mandate Trial Card after completing a mission to heal the wounds of stolen destiny and thwart Heaven and Earth’s scheme.
• Activating it creates a temporary golden talent. Its power triggers I Am the Chess Player, cracking the talent, while Once and for All activates Wish Echo. A familiar voice begins to speak, but its words are withheld.
• In the Dream Realm, Chen Qingyan transfers the title and fortune of the Immortal Palace to the protagonist’s other self, completing Dao unification with the four-direction fortune.
• Chen Qingyan says only the western fortune remains. The protagonist asks whether he dares “overturn the chessboard,” then heads for the Western Buddhist Land.
• The Buddhist Land is nearly destroyed, and the Buddha Ancestor is nowhere to be found. Its dispersing western fortune gathers around the protagonist, completing the Dream Realm unification mission and awarding a fruit position.
• The Dream Realm and Eastern Domain dissolve into nothingness, revealing their nature as realities suspended between illusion and actuality. Miraculous visions spread across the Supreme True Realm, myriad worlds, and the World Sea, turning into reality and granting widespread blessings.
• Those visions form the phantom of an immense fruit position. Chen Qingyan begins dissolving into it, apparently supplying what it needs to become real.
• Before the transformation is complete, the protagonist’s Dream Realm other self—and the other self fighting a Dao Master Beyond the World—begin to perish. The apparent cause is that the protagonist’s true body has died.

Character developments and interactions

• The protagonist shifts from anxious uncertainty to decisive action, using the golden talent and confronting Chen Qingyan with the possibility of overturning the larger scheme.
• Chen Qingyan moves from guiding the protagonist through Dao unification to apparently sacrificing himself to complete the vast fruit position. His usual impassivity gives way to warmth and admiration.
• The two exchange a cryptic challenge: Chen Qingyan urges the final unification, while the protagonist questions whether he will overturn the board and proceeds to act independently.

Significant themes

• Fate, strategy, and defiance: The chessboard imagery frames the struggle against Heaven and Earth’s designs, with the protagonist seemingly preparing to break from the expected plan.
• Illusion becoming reality: The Dream Realm’s collapse reveals that its apparent world was a liminal construct; its visions then become tangible across existence.
• Sacrifice and transformation: Chen Qingyan’s dissolution appears tied to the creation of a greater fruit position.
• Interdependence of selves: The other selves’ sudden deaths expose their connection to the protagonist’s true body—and turn the chapter’s cosmic breakthrough into a looming personal catastrophe.

Key plot points and events

• In the True-False Supreme Realm, a mysterious hand begins stripping away the protagonist’s cultivation, memories, karma, and even traces of their existence.
• The attacker appears: a strange remnant spirit calling himself Chen, also known as the Thieving Immortal. He uses the life-bound ability Star Thief to steal the protagonist’s identity and rewrite others’ memories of them.
• The protagonist is left with only a fading wisp of true spirit. The Buddha Ancestor appears, then transforms into Lin Feng, who explains that he arranged the theft as a way to keep the protagonist from being consumed by the Dream Master’s karma.
• Lin Feng reveals that the world is a game of pieces and players. He believes the protagonist cannot inherit the Dream Master’s legacy and proposes they preserve their spirit, reincarnate in a later era, and try again.
• The protagonist refuses to cling to life. Having met someone important, they willingly destroy their remaining spirit and die without regrets.

Character developments

• The protagonist faces their apparent erasure but ultimately asserts agency over their fate, choosing a meaningful death over survival and postponement.
• Lin Feng is revealed as a caring but calculating protector. His schemes are intended to shield the protagonist from the Dream Master, though the protagonist questions whether they are merely another piece in his plans.
• Chen / the Thieving Immortal is introduced as a powerful, eccentric figure whose playful behavior contrasts with his terrifying ability to steal existence.

Significant themes

• Agency versus manipulation: The protagonist has been caught in others’ designs, yet makes a final choice of their own.
• Identity and erasure: Star Thief attacks not only the protagonist’s body and memories but also their place in other people’s minds.
• Love, connection, and meaning: A meeting with an unnamed person gives the protagonist a reason to reject mere survival.
• Protection and trust: Lin Feng’s actions are morally complicated, but the protagonist chooses to trust that he never meant them harm.

Character interactions

• Chen taunts and appraises the protagonist while stealing their existence, but is repeatedly reprimanded by an unseen Lin Feng.
• Lin Feng explains his plan and offers the protagonist a future through reincarnation.
• The protagonist challenges Lin Feng’s view of them as a potential game piece. Lin Feng insists they are not a piece, but “my young one.”
• The protagonist’s final declaration and self-chosen death leave Lin Feng stunned.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan is stunned when the ninth simulation ends abruptly. The simulated version of himself chose Liberation by Violence and died, despite seemingly having time and power to keep fighting.
• The simulation report lists his clone’s extraordinary final cultivation, talents, and accumulated treasures, but Chen Fan ignores the rewards and focuses on the unexplained death.
• Selecting the life-experience option, Chen Fan expects to review the simulation. Instead, he finds himself in a void with the clone’s fading remnant.
• The clone greets him with relief, embraces him, and asks him to “say hello to him.” When Chen Fan asks who he means, the clone only says he will find out.
• [Once and for All] and [I Am the Chess Player] resonate. As purple light engulfs the space, the clone says he has forgotten the beginning, middle, and end—but vows to overturn the “heaven-spanning chessboard.” He then disappears, and Chen Fan is swallowed by the light.

Character developments

• Chen Fan shifts from anger and disbelief to urgent curiosity, determined to uncover why his clone chose death and whom he encountered.
• The simulated clone appears calm, relieved, and certain that events have reached a meaningful turning point. His parting words suggest that, despite forgetting his history, he retains a resolve to challenge some vast design.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: The “chessboard” suggests that the characters’ lives may be controlled by a larger power, while the clone’s vow asserts the will to resist.
• Memory and identity: The clone claims to have forgotten every stage of his life, yet still recognizes Chen Fan and preserves his rebellious purpose.
• Connection across selves: The clone’s embrace and message imply a bond between the two versions that may extend beyond ordinary simulation boundaries.

Character interactions

• Chen Fan tries to confront the clone about his choice and the mysterious person involved, but the clone offers only a cryptic promise that Chen Fan will understand later.
• Their brief reunion is intimate and emotional: the clone embraces Chen Fan before vanishing, leaving him with an unresolved message and a sudden, unexplained power resonance.

Key events

• After Chen Fan’s “other self” disappears, the Mysterious Dao Master discovers that it was only an incarnation. A command left behind by Chen Fan binds him: once Chen Fan dies, he must attack his allies and then kill himself.
• When Chen Fan’s death triggers the command, the Mysterious Dao Master attacks the Incumbent Dao Master, badly wounding him. Unable to control his own body, he uses his final moments of clarity to explain the situation, then destroys his own Great Dao and accepts karmic punishment rather than continue harming his allies.
• As he dies, the Mysterious Dao Master reflects on the sacrifices he made across ages to avoid attracting the Supreme Dao Immortal Venerable’s attention and prepare for that being’s return. He acknowledges Chen Fan with admiration and leaves without revealing his true name.
• The Lord of the Immortal Palace recognizes that Chen Fan’s death and altered appearance point to Lin Feng and the Star Thief’s life-bound ability. He continues sacrificing himself to bring the Dream Master’s second legacy into the world, believing it is the only remaining chance.
• Just as the Lord of the Immortal Palace is about to merge with a fruit-position phantom and complete it at the cost of his own existence, an impossible phantom appears: Chen Qingyan. Though rejected by Heaven and Earth and lacking cultivation, he advances into the Supreme True Realm. The chapter ends with a voice challenging him: “Do you dare overturn the chessboard!”

Character developments and interactions

• Mysterious Dao Master: Revealed as a long-lived strategist who repeatedly severed his own path and memories to survive and carry out his plans. The forced attack leaves him horrified and powerless, but he chooses self-destruction to protect his allies’ remaining arrangements. He regards Chen Fan as the person he admires most.
• Lord of the Immortal Palace: Recognizes Lin Feng’s involvement but remains committed to completing the Dream Master’s legacy, even at the cost of his own life. His sacrifice is interrupted by Chen Qingyan’s arrival.
• Chen Qingyan: Appears as an unprecedented exception to the laws rejecting him. His steady, determined approach suggests he intends to defy the established order, though his exact plan is still unknown.
• Chen Fan and Lin Feng: Chen Fan’s death activates the Mysterious Dao Master’s binding command, while the Lord of the Immortal Palace identifies Lin Feng as the remaining player in the conflict and suspects he plans to turn the Half-Immortals’ methods against them.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: The Mysterious Dao Master cannot escape the command’s fixed outcome, but chooses how to meet it.
• Sacrifice and the cost of long-term schemes: Multiple characters accept—or are driven toward—their own destruction to preserve a chance of success.
• Chess and power: The characters see history as a game controlled by competing planners; Chen Qingyan’s arrival raises the possibility of overturning that game itself.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan unexpectedly awakens in a grim mine in the Northern Land of Sin, apparently inhabiting the circumstances of his ninth Simulated Clone, who is a mine slave. Overseers order Gao Qiming to watch him.
• His [I Am the Chess Player] talent reacts to the world, declaring that Chen Fan must live because no one has witnessed his fall. It seems to make him physically real there, but fractures under the strain.
• Further revelations identify [Intent on Past and Present] as a third divine ability left by Chen Fan before a battle, alongside [Fishing Platform] and [Treasure-Borrowing Method]. It can manifest a legendary person from the caster’s memories, but costs every memory of that person.
• Chen Fan realizes the ninth Clone’s [Wish Echo] may have summoned him as the most suitable response—and begins to suspect that the simulated worlds and their events were real, not mere illusions.
• The Chess Player talent shatters after explaining that the ability requires a legendary figure Chen Fan understands better than anyone. With only one chance, Chen Fan searches his memories. [Heaven Rewards Diligence] helps him think of himself, including his past Clones.
• [Once and For All] suddenly releases sealed memories. Chen Fan remembers the legendary Clone known as the one who once “beat Heaven by half a stone.”

Character developments

• Chen Fan moves from confusion and disbelief toward grasping that his past simulations may represent genuine events in parallel worlds.
• He recognizes that his own accumulated memories—and those of his Simulated Clones—may make him the best person to invoke through [Intent on Past and Present].
• The recovered memory of the “half a stone” Clone sets up a potentially decisive next step.

Significant themes

• Reality and identity: The boundary between simulated experience and lived reality becomes uncertain.
• Memory as power and sacrifice: Chen Fan’s memories may enable a miraculous manifestation, but using the ability carries a devastating cost.
• Self-understanding and legacy: The person Chen Fan knows best may be another version of himself, shaped by the Clones’ shared experiences.
• Fate and defiance: The Chess Player talent insists Chen Fan must live, while the chapter hints that someone may be able to overturn the “game.”

Character interactions

• Mine overseers bark orders at Chen Fan and assign Gao Qiming to keep watch; Gao responds deferentially.
• Chen Fan’s interaction with the mysterious powers in his Sea of Consciousness drives the chapter: his talents and divine abilities reveal clues, protect him, and unlock the memory that may change his situation.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan returns as a brief, seemingly unreal presence: a lingering soul or reflection carrying the memories and legacy of past Chen Fans. Though rejected by the world, karmic law, and the Supreme Immortal, he chooses to press forward.
• He identifies himself with every version of Chen Fan, united by a shared purpose and an inherited will. He calls out to Chen Qingyan, asking whether he dares to overturn the chessboard.
• Chen Fan senses that an extraordinary power—described as “[Effect before cause]”—is sustaining his existence, though imperfectly and only for a short time.
• The Blazing Sun Heavenly Venerable attacks, convinced Chen Fan is dead and the figure before him is an impostor. His immensely powerful talisman disappears before reaching Chen Fan.
• Chen Qingyan has stopped the attack. Recognizing the returning figure as Chen Fan despite knowing the original is dead, he meets his gaze and answers with joyful conviction: “Why would I not dare!!!”

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan: Accepts his uncertain, temporary existence without letting it diminish his identity. He becomes the embodiment of the lives, memories, and defiance passed down by his predecessors.
• Chen Qingyan: His long-held grief and grievances give way to overwhelming joy when he recognizes Chen Fan. Their shared understanding is affirmed through eye contact and their exchange about overturning the chessboard.
• Blazing Sun Heavenly Venerable: Confused by the apparent contradiction between Chen Fan’s death and his return, he responds with suspicion and violence. Chen Qingyan intervenes before his attack can land.

Significant themes

• Legacy and identity: Chen Fan remains himself through shared memories, purpose, and will—even across different lives and forms.
• Defiance and choice: Facing erasure and uncertainty, Chen Fan continues not out of obligation but by choice.
• Hope amid loss: Chen Qingyan’s answer suggests that their bond and shared struggle endure despite Chen Fan’s death.
• Cause, effect, and limits: The power enabling Chen Fan’s return exceeds ordinary laws, but its flaw makes his presence fleeting.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan (Daoist name Changming) faces two supreme enemies: the Incumbent Dao Master, who controls the present, and the Future Dao Master, who has crossed the River of Time to erase him. The Future Dao Master questions how Chen Fan can exist when his death and the Heavenly Dao’s victory were supposed to be fixed.
• Their attacks overwhelm the limits of the Supreme True Realm, but Changming uses the damaged Spacetime Token to dissolve them. He declares that he seeks neither past lives nor future ones—only to live this life fully.
• Remembering his nine incarnations, Changming calls to his “friends.” When the token’s power runs out and the Dao Masters’ next attack is about to kill him, he stands his ground and waits.
• Voices answer from across the Myriad Worlds. The spirits and remnants of those connected to his many lives—some dying, some already departing—respond “Yes.” Their combined will dissolves the attack.
• United with the legacy of all nine lives and everyone who carried the name Chen Fan, Changming begins an extraordinary ascension. He reclaims and surpasses successive cultivation stages, ultimately forming a genuine Great Dao and becoming a Spirit Transformation Dao Master despite his mortal body.

Character developments

• Changming/Chen Fan transforms from an apparently powerless mortal facing certain death into the embodiment of nine lifetimes of struggle and resolve. He refuses to yield to fate and accepts the danger of pursuing life through death.
• The Future Dao Master is revealed as a desperate force willing to overturn spacetime to eliminate Changming, whom it sees as an impossible variable.
• The voices answering Changming show that the people and spirits tied to his past lives remain connected to him; their final support turns his solitary stand into a collective triumph.

Significant themes

• Defying fate: A supposedly fixed outcome can be overturned by unwavering will.
• Identity across lifetimes: Changming is not only one person, but the accumulated selves and legacy of nine incarnations.
• Solidarity and remembrance: The bonds formed across lives become real power when others answer his call.
• Life through death: Changming’s ascent requires him to press toward the brink of death rather than retreat.
• Choosing the present: His declaration that he seeks only to live this life fully contrasts with the enemies’ efforts to control past, present, and future.

Character interactions

• The Future Dao Master challenges Changming’s right to exist and questions how he can overturn the established order; Changming answers with his declaration of identity and purpose.
• Changming addresses his unseen “friends” not as a plea but as an invitation he trusts they will answer.
• The returning voices unite behind him, and their response defeats the Dao Masters’ attack and enables his final ascent.

Key plot points and events

• The protagonist completes the fusion of the Dao-Burying Fruit Position and the Golden Heaven’s Mandate, becoming a Spirit Transformation Dao Master ahead of the expected cosmic calamity. He establishes his Dao with a poem and takes the title Changming.
• Changming confronts the Future Dao Master and the Incumbent Dao Master. They acknowledge him as a history-defying variable, but insist that his existence must be erased.
• The Future Dao Master attempts to unleash four Great Daos, but karmic law punishes the manifestation. The Incumbent Dao Master attacks with the Great Dao of Destruction, while the Mysterious Dao Master’s ancient Dao Artifact bell traps Changming and halts time, enabling a combined assault.
• Changming survives by entering the true-false supreme realm, then strikes back, shattering one of the Future Dao Master’s Great Daos and wounding the Incumbent Dao Master. He appears to have gained the upper hand.
• Just as Changming prepares to press his advantage, a greater being emerges from the Northern Land of Sin and annihilates him. This Supreme Existence absorbs the wounded Incumbent Dao Master, leaving three Great Daos—destruction, order, and death—towering over the worlds.

Character developments and interactions

• Changming rises from an impossible anomaly to a supreme Dao Master, confident in his power and determined to overturn the cosmic game. His apparent victory reveals, however, that he has misjudged the scale of the forces opposing him.
• The Future Dao Master recognizes Changming’s significance and admires his Dao title, but remains committed to erasing him. Karmic punishment and the loss of a Great Dao leave the Future Dao Master gravely weakened.
• The Incumbent Dao Master cooperates with the Future Dao Master in a coordinated attack, but is ultimately overwhelmed and absorbed by the arriving Supreme Existence.
• The Mysterious Dao Master, though absent, intervenes through the Dao Artifact bell, demonstrating the lingering influence of past powers.
• The arriving Supreme Existence dismisses Changming as a defiant variable and eliminates him effortlessly, overturning the battle’s apparent outcome.

Significant themes

• Defiance versus destiny: Changming’s rise disrupts the established past, present, and future, yet the forces of cosmic order move to erase him.
• The limits of power: Even becoming a Dao Master and surviving a joint assault cannot guarantee victory against a still higher existence.
• Cosmic manipulation: The battle is part of a game played by powerful “chess players”; its outcome may determine whether the existing order continues.
• Karma and sacrifice: Karmic law punishes the Future Dao Master while seemingly favoring Changming, but that protection proves temporary and does not prevent his destruction.

Key plot points and events

• Changming’s apparent death was a deception: his [True-False Supreme Realm] preserved a wisp of his true spirit after the Incumbent Dao Master’s devastating strike.
• The Incumbent Dao Master Changming had been fighting was only a decoy. The real one had been hidden in the Northern Land of Sin.
• Changming revived through his life-and-death Dao power and struck the Future Dao Master, cracking one of its Great Daos—but failed to destroy it, partly because he lacked a suitable Dao Artifact.
• The Future Dao Master revealed that it had deliberately taken Changming’s blow to forge a karmic bond and anchor a future in which Changming would certainly die. At the Dao Master level, its declaration was effectively an unalterable truth.
• Rather than despair, Changming laughed, called the battle “spectacular,” and devoured the World Sea’s dangerous power to restore himself to full strength.

Character developments and interactions

• Changming proves resourceful and defiant: even near death, he exploits his abilities, waits for an opening, and turns an apparent death sentence into a chance to recover. He relishes the struggle rather than focusing only on its outcome.
• The Future Dao Master is confident in its ability to control fate and expects Changming to panic or make a desperate final move. Changming’s response unsettles it.
• The Incumbent Dao Master is revealed to have manipulated the confrontation through a decoy while the true self remained hidden. It continues attacking, but is left stunned by Changming’s recovery.
• Changming’s exchanges with the Future Dao Master frame the scene as a clash between its certainty about the ending and his insistence on embracing the battle itself.

Significant themes

• Appearance versus reality: Changming’s death and the Incumbent Dao Master’s identity were both false appearances.
• Fate versus agency: The Future Dao Master claims to have fixed Changming’s death, but Changming refuses to let that prediction define his experience.
• Rebirth through peril: Changming survives by drawing on powers and forces—life after death and the World Sea—that should be beyond safe use.
• The value of the struggle: Changming finds exhilaration in the process, even when the promised outcome is his defeat.

Key plot points

• Changming casts aside all restraint and pushes Ascension to its limit, instantly restoring his shattered body to peak strength.
• Though surrounded by the Future Dao Master and the Incumbent Dao Master, he refuses to give in. The Future Dao Master recognizes his resolve and praises him, lamenting that Changming was born in an age where the outcome is already fixed.
• The final clash begins. The Future Dao Master knows he is destined to die because Changming’s true-false supreme realm will preserve an afterimage of him, but attacks without restraint anyway.
• The Future Dao Master suppresses Changming with an ancient bronze bell, while karmic punishment closes in. The Incumbent Dao Master then joins the assault, combining the authorities of destruction, order, and death into a nearly unsurvivable strike.
• Unable to evade, Changming draws on the World Sea. Using the Heavenly Formation, the Supreme True Realm, the myriad worlds, and the Treasure-Borrowing Method, he shapes the sea’s waters into a phantom Heaven-and-Earth Sword—a counterstroke he had been preparing since he used the World Sea to recover.
• The sword meets the combined attack. The Supreme True Realm takes heavy damage and Changming suffers backlash, but the battle reaches an extraordinary peak, with destruction rippling through the myriad worlds.

Character developments and interactions

• Changming demonstrates relentless defiance and strategic foresight: even while facing certain death, he has prepared a way to answer the Dao Masters’ overwhelming force.
• The Future Dao Master shifts from surprise to exhilaration and genuine respect. He tells Changming that later generations will remember his name and Dao title, and that in another era he might have stood alongside the legendary Mysterious Dao Master.
• The Incumbent Dao Master reveals the full danger of his restored strength, turning the fight into a true two-against-one execution attempt.

Significant themes

• Fixed fate versus variable action: the outcome of the larger future may be anchored, but the combatants still choose how they meet it.
• Respect amid mortal conflict: the Future Dao Master honors Changming even as he helps try to kill him.
• Brilliance constrained by circumstance: Changming’s potential is immense, yet his era and the fixed endgame limit what he can achieve.
• Preparation and defiance: Changming’s World Sea sword shows that apparent recovery was part of a larger plan, and that even a hopeless position can be answered through ingenuity.

Key plot points

• The battle’s aftermath appears to favor the restored Incumbent Dao Master: he is the only one standing, while the narrator and the Future Dao Master seem to have vanished. Nearly a quarter of the myriad worlds have been destroyed.
• Just as the Incumbent Dao Master prepares to resume his plans, his Great Dao is suddenly severed. The narrator reappears, calls him a mere chess piece, and kills him.
• The scene reveals how the reversal happened. In the Northern Land of Sin, Chen Fan had been waiting in an avatar when the Simulated Clone’s voice spoke to him. The Clone explains that overturning the “Heaven-Piercing Chessboard” requires standing outside it, beyond the fate of its pieces.
• The Clone takes control of the avatar. Chen Fan realizes the Clone is not a simulated phantom but the genuine will of the being who could “beat Heaven by half a move,” and that the avatar-creating divine ability made this hidden maneuver possible.
• The Clone arrives on the battlefield, destroys the remnant image recorded by the True-False Supreme Realm, and defeats the Incumbent Dao Master. The Fruit Position in the Supreme True Realm begins to become real—but before it can fully form, an overwhelming gaze makes the realm and all the myriad worlds seem fragile and doomed.
• The chapter ends with the supreme powerhouses recognizing the presence behind that gaze: the Immortal.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan shifts from confident observer to bewildered witness: even he cannot understand the Simulated Clone’s methods, and he loses control of the avatar when the Clone takes it over.
• The Simulated Clone is revealed as an independent, genuine will—not merely a copy—and as the hidden strategist who can act outside the chessboard of fate.
• The Incumbent Dao Master, initially triumphant and contemptuous, discovers that his apparent victory was only temporary. The Clone destroys his Great Dao and kills him.
• Chen Fan and the Clone interact primarily through the Clone’s voice in Chen Fan’s consciousness; the Clone explains the principle behind the victory, then acts through Chen Fan’s avatar.
• The narrator’s apparent defeat gives way to a sudden counterattack, but that victory is immediately overshadowed by the Immortal’s arrival.

Significant themes

• Appearance versus reality: The apparent victor is only a piece, while the supposedly absent player has been present all along.
• Agency and fate: True power comes from standing outside the system that governs the chessboard and its pieces.
• Identity and independence: The Simulated Clone proves to be more than a fabricated duplicate, complicating the boundary between original and copy.
• The limits of victory: Even a decisive triumph and the imminent formation of a supreme Fruit Position cannot protect the worlds from a greater power.

Key plot points and events

• The narrator was once an expendable duplicate of Chen Fan, created to explore possible futures and ultimately sacrificed for his original self. He waited for a chance to escape that role.
• Through the awakened talent [I Am the Chess Player], he glimpsed a powerful being in the Future with the ability [Effect Before Cause]. This entity used his talent as an anchor to interfere with events and gradually became able to alter established facts.
• The Future-based chess player secretly guided the ninth-simulation duplicate into the Northern Land of Sin, away from the three other great chess players, creating an opening for the narrator’s spirit to return.
• The narrator reunited with another Chen Fan, but only one could remain: either the narrator would take his existence and the other would die, or the narrator would abandon his chance and disappear. The other Chen Fan accepted death without regret, saying that having seen the narrator was enough.
• Their meeting solidified the narrator’s resolve: “I will win!”
• With the Future chess player’s help, the narrator used his original self’s [I Am the Chess Player] talent as a medium to anchor himself in reality. He then stayed hidden, using his original self and a figure summoned from memory as cover.
• He manipulated events to draw the Future Dao Master and the restored Incumbent Dao Master into the open. The supposed memory-born “Chen Fan” was actually another pawn, whom the narrator empowered with Golden Heaven’s Mandate and divine abilities until he became the Dao Master Changming.
• Changming knowingly—or at least willingly—advanced toward the shared goal and died calmly. With the obstacles removed, the narrator emerged from hiding, dismissed the Dao Masters’ schemes, and began following the path he had secured for himself.

Character developments

• The narrator transforms from an expendable pawn into a calculating player. His reunion with another Chen Fan turns bewilderment and longing into unwavering determination.
• The other Chen Fan accepts that he must die, meeting his end with excitement rather than fear or regret. His sacrifice helps awaken the narrator’s resolve.
• The Future chess player is revealed as an outside manipulator whose influence grows through the narrator’s talent, though their ultimate goal remains unclear.
• The original Chen Fan and Changming are used as pieces in the narrator’s plan. Changming’s rise and death show how completely the narrator can shape another person’s path.

Significant themes

• Predestination versus agency: The narrator’s path seems predetermined, but he seeks to seize control of how he reaches its outcome.
• Sacrifice and identity: Multiple versions of Chen Fan share a sense of self and purpose, yet one version’s survival may require another’s death.
• The value of lived experience: Even within a simulation, the narrator insists that what he experienced was real to him.
• Being a pawn versus being a player: The narrator escapes his original role by manipulating others and the rules of the game—though he continues to use pawns himself.
• Brilliance despite a tragic ending: Changming’s acceptance of his role echoes the belief that a life can be worthwhile even if it ends in death.

Key plot points and events

• The Supreme Immortal’s gaze descends, erasing the nearly completed fruit position formed from the Eastern Domain and Dream Realm.
• Heaven and Earth has accelerated the Immeasurable Kalpa, which was due five hundred years later. The early calamity gives the Supreme Immortal a chance to intervene, while the Mysterious Dao Master’s faction sacrifices its entire northern Blazing Sun Province—including its fortune and history—to summon the gaze.
• A mysterious player from the future says the Blazing Sun Sacred Land has been uprooted, a great enemy destroyed, and five hundred years gained. They tell the protagonist to rest and plan for what comes next.
• The protagonist refuses to simply accept the outcome. Declaring that they exist in the present and have already seized the future, they appeal to an unseen ancient being to act once more.
• The Only Player system issues a mission to unify the Dream Realm, with a fruit position as its reward. The protagonist asks for immense luck to sway the draw; the unseen being intervenes with the power of “effect before cause,” fixing the outcome with the words, “Senior, what extraordinary luck!”

Character developments

• The protagonist shows defiance and independent resolve, refusing to be merely a piece in the plans of greater powers. Even with a broken body and the fruit position erased, they keep pursuing a chance to turn events around.
• The future chess player’s message reveals that their intervention has limits and that the destruction of the Blazing Sun Sacred Land was a costly compromise.
• The unseen ancient being proves willing to risk death to help the protagonist, though its identity and motives remain unclear.

Significant themes

• Fate, probability, and agency: The protagonist tries to seize control of the future rather than accept the outcome arranged by powerful forces.
• Sacrifice and compromise: Heaven and Earth, the Supreme Immortal, and the future player all pay heavy costs to advance their plans.
• Power and resistance: Though vastly outmatched, the protagonist’s choices force higher powers to expend resources and leave room for a reversal.

Character interactions

• The Supreme Immortal and Heaven and Earth act in opposition to the Dream Master’s fruit position, each shaping the timing and cost of the conflict.
• The future chess player communicates with the protagonist, explaining the achieved objective and urging them to prepare for the future.
• The protagonist reaches out to an unseen being, which answers their plea for luck and appears to secure the draw’s outcome.

Summary

• Cause-Reversal and Heaven’s Mandate: The ancient voice of the Dao overturns the already-set draw result, revealing the protagonist’s power as Cause-Reversal: both cause and effect can be changed. An immense tide of fortune from across the Myriad Worlds transforms the protagonist’s temporary Heaven’s Mandate into a permanent talent, ultimately raising it to rainbow rank.
• The weight of fate: The protagonist experiences countless lives and destinies—from ordinary mortals to powerful cultivators—and nearly loses their sense of self in the process. They endure by resolving to keep striving, despite lacking the protections and foresight available to greater players in the cosmic “game of chess.”
• The Heaven-Reaching Stairway: Phantoms of beings from many ages appear: all had resisted fate and pursued their own Dao. Their wills form a stairway that the protagonist climbs. They come to understand that Heaven’s Mandate embodies not only their own legacy and the convictions of their nine lifetimes, but also the accumulated resolve of countless ordinary beings.
• Lin Feng’s challenge: At the stairway’s end, Senior Lin Feng asks whether the protagonist wants to attain the Dao—and whether they can be sure they, rather than the Dream Master, will ultimately succeed. The protagonist answers, “Does that matter?” Lin Feng accepts this outlook, calls them a fellow Daoist, and lets them continue. The system then confirms the successful draw of the Fruit Position.
• Confrontation with the Dream Master: The protagonist reaches the Dream Master, a being who can be any living creature yet surpasses all beings. Asked whether they are the Dream Master or whether the Dream Master will return, the protagonist again says the outcome does not matter. What matters is that they share a road and a goal. They invite the Dream Master to join them in overturning the cosmic chessboard. The Dream Master accepts with a simple, relieved “Yes.”

Character development and themes

The protagonist moves from struggling alone against overwhelming forces to recognizing their place in a collective legacy of resistance. Their rainbow Heaven’s Mandate symbolizes this shift: personal resolve becomes the resolve of countless beings. The chapter emphasizes free will against fate, perseverance, and the idea that identity or victory matters less than pursuing a shared ideal. Lin Feng’s response and the Dream Master’s acceptance both affirm the protagonist’s refusal to be defined by who began the journey or who ultimately claims the prize.

Plot points and events

• A mysterious chess player from the Future has intervened in the past, using cause-reversal to alter events. The karmic laws respond by gathering a catastrophic punishment over him.
• As the final game of fate unfolds, Chen Fan appears to vanish into an immense sea of fortune. The future chess player and a few other Supreme Existences notice his disappearance.
• A sigh from within the fortune disperses the gathering punishment. The power resembles the Dream Master’s authority, but its scale is far beyond what the Dream Master—still only a Half-Immortal—should command.
• Chen Fan emerges, surrounded by fortune and carrying a dazzling fruit position, even though he has not yet fully attained it. Behind him, the complete Supreme True Realm appears, encompassing the Dream Realm and the myriad worlds.
• The future chess player begins to call him the Dream Master, but Chen Fan declares, “Not the Dream Master, but Changming!” He is one step from realizing his Dao and reaching the Other Shore.
• The chapter ends as a devastating, world-ending gaze descends again, setting up the final confrontation.

Character developments

• Chen Fan has moved beyond the identity and limits of the Dream Master. His command over fortune and the fruit-position’s authority reveal a new, nearly complete power, and he advances with unwavering resolve toward his ultimate destiny.
• The future chess player is exposed and vulnerable: his time-altering actions have brought karmic punishment, and Chen Fan’s emergence leaves him visibly stunned.
• The unseen force behind the destructive gaze remains active and powerful, willing to pay an immense price to bring about the end.

Character interactions

• The future chess player confronts the consequence of his meddling with the past as karmic law targets him.
• Chen Fan’s emergence interrupts that judgment and astonishes the witnesses.
• When the chess player identifies him as the Dream Master, Chen Fan corrects him, asserting his true identity as Changming.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: The characters struggle against ordained outcomes, but Chen Fan continues forward even when the road appears fixed.
• The cost of altering time: Interference with the past triggers the supreme laws’ punishment.
• Transformation and self-definition: Chen Fan rejects an old title and claims a new identity as he approaches the Other Shore.
• Power beyond limits: Chen Fan wields authority before fully attaining its fruit position, suggesting that conviction and realization can exceed established rules.

Key plot points and events

• Chen Fan faces the return of the Supreme Immortal’s gaze—not a projection, but a real intervention from a higher dimension. The Immortal’s attack is meant to erase Chen Fan from the River of Time.
• Chen Fan has become powerful enough to wield the Dream Master’s authority, making his wishes reality. His power has even erased a devastating karmic punishment, suggesting he may be approaching the level of an Immortal.
• The true cost of the Supreme Immortal’s intervention is revealed: the old future. Chen Fan’s actions, aided by a Chess Player from the future, created a new future and caused the old one to collapse. Its accumulated lives and karma now surge against him, with Heaven and Earth helping turn the conflict into a final endgame.
• Chen Fan is offered a way to survive: abandon his attempt to attain the Dao. Doing so would preserve the old future and make the new one vanish.
• He refuses. Declaring, “I dare… to slay an Immortal!” he presses forward, uses the True-False Supreme Realm and colored heaven’s mandate to seize and refine his fruit position, and commits fully to attaining the Dao.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan moves from a brilliant strategist who once had his plans undone by a mere projection to someone capable of confronting forces beyond karma. Despite the enormous risk, he remains unwavering.
• The Supreme Immortal escalates from indirect influence to direct intervention, apparently sacrificing the old future to stop Chen Fan.
• Heaven and Earth, another Heaven-Throughing Chess Player, helps intensify the conflict by turning the old future’s karma against Chen Fan.
• Chen Fan’s companions and fellow travelers appear in his resolve: he sees them, along with the present and everything he values, reflected in the Immortal’s gaze.

Significant themes

• Fate versus choice: Chen Fan can choose safety by surrendering his ambition, but his refusal suggests his path was never truly in doubt.
• The cost of changing the future: Replacing a destined future brings its accumulated consequences crashing down on the person who changed it.
• Resolve against overwhelming power: Chen Fan challenges an Immortal despite the apparent impossibility of victory.
• The present as a decisive threshold: By attaining the Dao now, Chen Fan could become the embodiment of the present—making him far harder to erase.

Plot points and events

• At the end of the fruit position’s evolution, Chen Fan understands the Dream Master’s true nature: not one individual, but the fruit position itself—the embodiment of every possibility and every soul that refuses to surrender.
• The Dream Master’s plan was to make the person willing to overturn the predetermined “chessboard” and pursue a chance of survival their successor. In this way, the Dream Master becomes the “Savior,” the variable that cannot be erased and the “one that escapes” the Great Dao’s design.
• Chen Fan attains the humanity supreme fruit position, [Escape One]. Its authority turns unlikely coincidences, opportunities, and powers toward his favor, breathing life into otherwise deadlocked situations.
• Across the Supreme True Realm, heavenly phenomena appear and converge. A completed Golden Timed Mission grants Chen Fan a Half-Immortal Artifact. Since it has no fixed form, his desire shapes it into a colossal sword, which he names Dawn. Holding it, he feels he holds the future—and vows not to let it go.
• The Simulator cannot observe what happens next because of its limited authorization and a break in higher-dimensional information. Chen Fan is pulled back to the true-false supreme realm, but knows his attainment was real: he had shared another version of himself’s trials and success, and the experience is engraved in his soul. A burst of golden light then erupts within his consciousness.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan moves from confusion about the Dream Master and the cosmic chess game to full understanding, attaining the Dream Master’s ultimate path and embracing responsibility for the future.
• The Dream Master is revealed as an all-encompassing principle rather than a person, leaving Chen Fan their final legacy and counsel: keep moving forward.
• The Supreme Immortal, who enabled Chen Fan’s glimpse of the truth, is understood to have acted deliberately, though the full reason is not detailed.
• Chen Fan’s earlier encounter with Chen Qingyan, who recognized him as the prophesied Savior, gains new meaning.
• The Simulator both aids Chen Fan through its mission reward and limits his knowledge by failing to follow events beyond its level.

Significant themes

• Hope amid inevitability: Even within a seemingly fixed cosmic order, a single possibility can remain.
• Perseverance and self-determination: The Savior is whoever dares to uphold collapsing heavens and keep advancing through repeated despair.
• Legacy and identity: The Dream Master is the accumulated resolve of countless beings, and Chen Fan becomes their inheritor.
• Shaping the future: Chen Fan’s will gives the formless artifact the shape of a sword, symbolizing his determination to take hold of what comes next.

Chapter summary

• Chen Fan unlocks the colored talent [Fifth Black Hand]. It is powered by the simulated clone who attained the Dao and escaped the Simulator’s constraints. The talent makes Chen Fan a hidden player on the same level as the world’s Supreme Existences, with the clone secretly arranging “fortuitous encounters” for him.
• The talent also grants three major protections: it guides Chen Fan toward survival in otherwise certain-death situations, lets his purple heaven’s mandate regenerate endlessly under its colored protection, and gives him extraordinary luck—as long as the clone permits it.
• The new fortune immediately restores Chen Fan’s shattered purple heaven’s mandate and its life-bound divine ability. Delighted, he credits his powerful new backer: himself.
• Chen chooses his ninth-simulation reward. He gives up the simulated Golden Core Middle Stage cultivation and takes the Nascent Soul True Lord realm retained from the seventh simulation, judging it a greater increase in power and a way to upgrade the Simulator to LV4. He preserves the ninth simulation’s valuable items and resources—including unused rewards from killing a Spirit Transformation Dao Master—for later.
• To avoid raising simulation energy too quickly, he assigns the Nascent Soul reward to an “other self” in the false world. That self rapidly advances to Nascent Soul Early Stage, gains a lifespan of five hundred years, and acquires a Dao-burying fruit position.
• Chen discovers, however, that he cannot synchronize with or access the fruit position. The “other self” is therefore only a false True Lord: he has the outward cultivation and Great Dao, but none of the fruit position’s authority or true mystique. Chen briefly wonders why he could synchronize a Foundation Establishment life-bound ability but not a Nascent Soul fruit position, then sets the question aside as the Simulator’s next notification begins.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan shifts from astonishment to exhilaration and confidence, now convinced that his attained self is supporting him and that the simulations reflect real experiences. His joy at the restored mandate and his choice of cultivation reward show both his trust in that backing and his pragmatic focus on future advancement.
• The Dao-attained clone becomes an active, protective presence behind Chen’s fortunes. Though absent from direct conversation, his tacit permission enables the colored heaven’s mandate and its restorative power; Chen responds with affectionate gratitude.
• Chen and his “other self” interact indirectly through the reward system: Chen transfers the Nascent Soul cultivation to that counterpart, but the inability to synchronize the fruit position exposes a limit to how fully their powers can be shared.

Significant themes

• Self-reliance transformed into self-protection: Chen’s strongest “backer” is another version of himself.
• Fate, survival, and agency: the escaped “one” promises a path out of even seemingly unavoidable death, while the Fifth Black Hand elevates Chen from pawn to player.
• Power versus legitimacy: possessing the appearance and cultivation of a True Lord does not confer the authority of a genuine fruit position.
• The reality of simulation: Chen sees his past simulated attainment not as data but as lived experience, blurring the boundary between simulation and reality.

Key events

• The Simulator upgrades to LV.4 after Chen Fan reaches Nascent Soul True Lord.
• The upgrade unlocks Rainbow talents, expands each talent draw to twelve choices, improves the odds of Golden talents, and lets Chen Fan select three rewards per simulation—effectively inheriting everything.
• A special Future simulation is forcibly unlocked. Its clone will be placed at a time and location chosen by the system, then severed from Chen Fan and given independent consciousness. The simulation warns that the past is fixed, the present has become singular, and only the future remains uncertain.
• Chen Fan suspects his ascended “other self” is secretly influencing the Simulator and forcing the new feature open. He connects this being’s power to the Dream Master’s authority to make things go as desired, amplified by the Half-Immortal Artifact Dawn.
• Excited by the new options, Chen Fan contacts his other self in the Secret Realm to select another heaven-and-earth wonder and prepare to simulate again.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Fan becomes increasingly convinced that his other self has transcended the Simulator’s limits and is now manipulating its decisions from behind the scenes.
• Though wary of the mysterious interference, Chen Fan is fascinated by the chance to explore the future and eager to exploit the Simulator’s upgraded rewards.
• Chen Fan reaches out directly to his other self, continuing their unusual connection across the Secret Realm.

Significant themes

• Destiny versus uncertainty: the past and present are fixed, but the future still offers possibilities.
• Power and agency: the other self appears able to influence even the system that once governed Chen Fan.
• Escaping consequences: severing the simulated clone from its host may sidestep the karmic dangers of probing the future.
• Ambition and opportunity: new abilities prompt Chen Fan to act immediately and pursue further gains.