Chapter Summaries

Li Chen used his new Spirit Essence Cannon to expose a spy, while a Silver-Grade Assassin followed the captured agent to Base No. 1 and attacked Li Chen. The assassin’s strike failed against Li Chen’s seemingly headless body, and he was trapped inside a sealed storehouse as Li Chen threatened him with poison gas.

• Li Chen’s Spirit Essence Cannon blasted a spy near Broad Cloud Ward’s eastern gate, and Shaman Folk warriors carried the unconscious agent away for Li Chen to interrogate.
• A Silver-Grade Assassin from Carefree Pavilion followed the group to Base No. 1 using Shadowless Step.
• The assassin attacked Li Chen with Flowing Light Sword and impaled his forehead, but Li Chen tore off his damaged head and counterattacked with his body.
• The storehouse doors sealed, and Li Chen ordered his subordinates into smaller chambers while the assassin hid from capture.
• Li Chen told the assassin he would fill the storehouse with poison gas that could enter his magic power and said the chamber’s sensory membrane monitored its contents.

Li Chen revealed that he had survived the Silver-Grade Assassin’s attack with a substitute puppet and trapped the assassin with poison, electrical threads, and coordinated attacks. After the assassin escaped the warehouse and fled into the wilderness, Li Chen caught up and killed him with the Thunder Soldier Tribulation Finger.

• The Silver-Grade Assassin realized Li Chen had lured him into an ambush, while Li Chen explained that his severed head belonged to a substitute puppet.
• Li Chen filled the warehouse with poison gas and used Thunder Spirit Hair and Static Electric Field to reveal and disrupt the assassin.
• Li Chen struck the exposed assassin with an electromagnetic launch and repeated blade attacks, but the assassin unleashed his full power and fled through the warehouse doors.
• Li Chen left puppet guards to protect the base and pursued the assassin, catching him in the wilderness with his five elements treasure body.
• Li Chen pierced the assassin between the brows with the Thunder Soldier Tribulation Finger, killing him.

Li Chen told representatives of several merchant groups that his perfected Puppet Conversion technique could now raise Qi Refining cultivators to Foundation Establishment. He explained that his own conversion had given him peak Foundation Establishment cultivation and demonstrated his mastery of transforming the essence of life.

• Helm Master Qiu hosted Li Chen at the Universal Profits Merchants' Association branch and discussed their business expansion.
• Dong Pengfei arrived and recognized that Li Chen had used Puppet Conversion to attain peak Foundation Establishment cultivation.
• Li Chen announced that he had perfected Puppet Conversion through both empirical and mental certification.
• Li Chen explained that his earlier techniques could grant combat strength but could not raise a cultivator's true realm.
• Li Chen said his mastery of life's mysteries now allowed him to help Qi Refining cultivators break through to Foundation Establishment.

Li Chen sought help promoting his Advancement Modification business and proposed expanding into Qi Refining Realm Enhancement Modifications. After Dong Pengfei warned that the expansion could undermine Broad Cloud Ward’s market, Li Chen agreed to discuss safeguards and limit his competition with local businesses.

• Li Chen offered the assembled branch heads, stewards, and clan elders a two-percent referral fee for Advancement Modification commissions, and they agreed to spread the word.
• Li Chen announced plans to offer Enhancement Modifications across several Qi Refining Realm specialties, making the local magnates worry that he would take their business.
• Dong Pengfei warned Li Chen that local modification businesses helped attract Puppet Masters and supported the Market District’s long-term development.
• Li Chen recognized the difference between exclusive Advancement Modifications and the competitive Qi Refining Realm market, and proposed taxing his business, subsidizing local guilds, and suspending operations once he had enough commissions.
• Dong Pengfei agreed that Li Chen’s proposal was a better approach but said they still needed to negotiate the specific rules, and Li Chen agreed.

Li Chen discussed opening his business and developing his Spirit Peaks, while Dong Pengfei urged him to recruit talented subordinates and build a lasting organization. Dong Pengfei introduced three wandering cultivators, and Li Chen focused on the aging Puppet Master Artisan Hua Yongshan as a potential recruit.

• Li Chen and the others settled the details of his business plans and agreed that restraint would help the Market District grow.
• Dong Pengfei advised Li Chen to recruit skilled cultivators and consider founding a sect or Aristocratic Clan.
• Li Chen reflected on his resources, recent profits, and Worker Bee Puppets’ production capacity as foundations for further development.
• Dong Pengfei presented three wandering cultivators seeking a place to settle or work, and Li Chen examined their information.
• Li Chen rejected two candidates and focused on Hua Yongshan, an elderly Puppet Master Artisan seeking a place to establish a lasting home for his family.

Li Chen chose to recruit the elderly master artisan Hua as an attendant rather than risk bringing in more ambitious cultivators, and set out rules that kept all rights to Broad Cloud Peak under his control. He opened recruitment to those serving him, freeing former Heavenly Dragon Gate disciples and welcoming several experienced workers as retainers.

• Li Chen told Dong Pengfei he would consider only Fellow Daoist Hua and asked him to arrange a meeting, offering Hua an annual salary starting at one million talisman coins.
• Li Chen explained that Broad Cloud Peak would have retainers, attendants, and employees, but no Valley Masters or vassals, because he intended to retain all rights to the blessed land.
• Li Chen announced open retainer recruitment at Base No. 1 and declared the former Heavenly Dragon Gate disciples free to leave or apply.
• Li Chen told Yu Feng and the other Golden Sun Gate disciples they could decide whether to stay after completing their Inner Court training, and promised to keep places open for them.
• Old Hong and the other five members of his group ended their employment agreements and became retainers without taking an assessment.
• Li Chen pardoned three former Heavenly Dragon Gate disciples with high-rank Puppet Master skills and put them to work.

Li Chen welcomed Hua Yongshan to Broad Cloud Ward and learned about his expertise in Qimen Dunjia, especially its Taiyi secret arts and array configurations. Hua demonstrated several strange techniques, and the chapter ended with Li Chen examining how their effects differed from ordinary spells and defenses.

• Li Chen greeted Hua Yongshan upon his arrival and escorted him into the Inner Valley.
• Li Chen asked about Hua Yongshan’s Qimen Dunjia studies, and Hua described his expertise in the Wall-Piercing Technique, Invisibility Technique, Golden Light Mantra, and Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array.
• Hua demonstrated the Wall-Piercing Technique by passing through a wall and explained its limits.
• Hua used the Invisibility Technique, which defeated Li Chen’s Fire-Observing Dharma Eye but was faintly revealed by his Truth-Piercing Eye.
• Hua demonstrated the Golden Light Mantra, whose protective golden light resisted ordinary damage and required tremendous force to break.

Hua Yongshan demonstrated how the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array could turn a small force into a powerful formation, and Li Chen entered it to test its effects. The array trapped Li Chen in an apparently endless army of illusions, leaving him to study how it distorted space.

• Li Chen and Hua Yongshan discussed how Qimen Dunjia arts and Military School formations drew on the Great Dao and concentrated a legion's strength.
• Hua Yongshan asked Li Chen to provide troops for a demonstration, and Li Chen brought him to a drill ground with more than two hundred Chang Clan Soldiers.
• Hua Yongshan formed the warrior constructs into a simplified Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array and invited Li Chen to test it.
• Li Chen entered the array and saw the troops multiply into an immense army that even his supernatural sight could not distinguish from the real soldiers.
• Li Chen tried to fly over the formation and fired Solar Divine Light from his Divine Light Cannon, but the attacks vanished before reaching their targets.
• Li Chen realized that the array distorted space to multiply the troops' apparent numbers and make its boundaries impossible to find.

Li Chen tested Hua Yongshan’s Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams Array and discovered that its distortions made real soldiers seem like an endless army. As Hua Yongshan set the Eight Trigrams in motion, the Array Soldiers grew stronger and a coordinated strike cracked Li Chen’s armor, leaving him facing a serious threat.

• Li Chen descended into the formation and used the Divine Light Cannon to destroy several Warrior Constructs, then fought the empowered Chang Clan Soldiers at close range.
• Li Chen noticed that some soldiers were false and that the real ones kept changing positions as the formation distorted time and space.
• The Array Soldiers’ repeated attacks overwhelmed Li Chen’s protective Gang Qi, though his Dragon-Scale Mimetic Armor withstood their blades and spears.
• Li Chen realized that fallen and wounded soldiers had vanished because the formation had shifted him into another trigram.
• Hua Yongshan warned that the Eight Trigrams would cycle and strengthen the Array Soldiers, while Li Chen continued fighting as the vortex of Primordial Energy grew.
• After a coordinated saber strike from a dozen Array Soldiers cleaved through his Gang Essence, Li Chen saw a crack in his mimetic armor.

Li Chen faced Hua Yongshan’s military formation in a test of strength, overwhelming it with his Five Elements Treasure Body and powerful spells. Hua Yongshan conceded, and Li Chen formally invited him to join him.

• Hua Yongshan used synchronized Warrior Constructs to attack Li Chen and announced that he would get serious.
• Li Chen disabled the Spirit Peak Blessed Land’s defense alerts and unleashed his formidable aura and five-elements spells against the formation.
• Li Chen’s fire, water, thunder, and other attacks broke through row after row of Warrior Constructs, killing or wounding nearly a hundred.
• Hua Yongshan dissolved the formation and conceded before Li Chen could destroy more of his Warrior Constructs.
• Li Chen praised Hua Yongshan’s military methods and formally invited him to join him.

Hua Yongshan agreed to join Li Chen and took on the task of compiling Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams arrays for Li Chen's Puppet Legion. After seeing Li Chen's automated production and recycling operations, Hua Yongshan became convinced of the scale of his enterprise and his decision to serve him.

• Hua Yongshan chose to join Li Chen after witnessing his abilities and learning about his forces.
• Li Chen assigned Hua Yongshan to develop array materials and programs for controlling Puppets, using the Book of the Nine Xuanmen Arrays and Rune Script Dao as references.
• Hua Yongshan praised Rune Script Dao, and Li Chen said he intended to make it open source.
• Li Chen toured Hua Yongshan through the marketplace and Base No. 1, where Hua Yongshan watched Warrior Construct remains get recycled into new Clay People and Chang Clan Soldiers.
• Hua Yongshan recognized the cost savings and potential profits of Li Chen's automated production and resolved to serve the wealthy patron.

Li Chen established a rune-making project under Hua Yongshan and introduced a Rune Script Class at the Heavenly Crafts Academy as an alternative for apprentices who could not enter the inner ranks. He offered his rune-script treatise to the Creation Sect, hoping its experts would refine and spread the discipline rather than grant him an honorary title.

• Li Chen arranged a residence for Hua Yongshan and his family on a subsidiary peak of Broad Cloud Peak.
• Li Chen appointed Hua Yongshan to supervise a rune-making project and assigned Zhou Cheng, Yun Ya, and Golden Sun Gate disciples to help develop rune script.
• Li Chen and Hua Yongshan visited Elder Xu and Principal Mo at the Heavenly Crafts Academy to propose an affiliated Rune Script Class for apprentices who could not pass the academy's entrance assessment.
• Li Chen gave Elder Xu a rune-script textbook and asked him to submit it to the Creation Sect as a treatise.
• Li Chen told Elder Xu that he sought the sect's help to improve and spread rune script, not an honorary Master Artisan title.

Li Chen explained why he no longer cared about the Honorary Master Artisan title and described his hopes for the Rune Script Dao. He then arranged for the Creation Sect academy to train apprentices at his Puppet Workshop, leaving both sides eager to support the partnership.

• Li Chen reflected that his status and wealth made the Puppet Master title unnecessary, while the Creation Sect's support could help spread his Rune Script Dao and perhaps lay the foundations for a new Dao Path.
• Li Chen explained his Rune Script Dao to Elder Xu and Principal Mo, who showed little interest until he offered to reorganize his Puppet Workshop and cooperate with the academy.
• Li Chen offered apprentices hands-on training in puppet production, repairs, modification, and manufacturing, and Elder Xu and Principal Mo gladly accepted.
• Li Chen promised the academy Origin Device components and spirit materials worth a hundred thousand, prompting the two Creation Sect representatives to resolve to repay his generosity.

A month after beginning the Gangstone Bullets project, Li Chen approved the verified design and ordered a million rounds produced so he could build a Puppet Legion. As he resumed his training with Mei Xuan, the chapter left him facing another attack in the desolate wilderness.

• Puppeteer Apprentices tested Gangstone Bullets at Broad Cloud Peak and reported that the cheaper rounds succeeded, though they were weaker than the soft dark gold version.
• Dominator archived the successful experiment, and Heavenly Rose told Li Chen that the bullets had passed verification and were ready for mass production.
• Li Chen explained that his strength lay in managing large-scale industrial production, which would let him build a Puppet Legion and become a Military Commander.
• Li Chen ordered Heavenly Rose to refine a million rounds, then closed his eyes and returned to training with Mei Xuan, who attacked him for getting distracted.

Li Chen tested his new virtual reality system by fighting Mei Xuan in a simulated world, then examined the unfinished Heavenly Dao Server intended to power a future Materialized Kingdom. He concluded that the project needed more hardware and skilled collaborators, and told Mei Xuan to study the Array Dao so she could help him.

• Mei Xuan defeated Li Chen in the simulated duel, but Li Chen summoned ten Armored Warrior Puppets and defeated her in turn.
• Li Chen and Mei Xuan ended the test, and Dominator confirmed that the virtual reality unit had passed.
• Li Chen reviewed how his neural-signal simulation worked and considered the computing and communication improvements needed for large numbers of users.
• Li Chen inspected the immature Dao Expounder, which he planned to develop into a Heavenly Dao Server for virtual reality and the Materialized Kingdom.
• Li Chen told Mei Xuan to master the fundamentals of the Array Dao within ten years so she could eventually help him.

Li Chen forced Mei Xuan into a plan to train her as an array dao craftsman and operate his virtual realm, while Hua Yongshan returned with his family and joined Li Chen’s household as a master artisan. After taking Hua Yongshan’s children as nominal disciples, Li Chen found their aptitude disappointingly limited but agreed to teach them.

• Li Chen argued that Mei Xuan’s aristocratic upbringing had left her without practical skills and ordered her to train as an array dao craftsman, despite her protests.
• A few days later, Hua Yongshan returned with his family and servants and moved into the Hua Family Manor Li Chen had built for him.
• Hua Yongshan took charge of organizing Li Chen’s Puppet Legion into battle formations and working on the rune creation plan, which interested him more than the military assignment.
• Hua Yongshan asked Li Chen to accept his children as disciples, and Li Chen agreed to teach them as nominal disciples.
• After assessing the children’s solid foundations but mediocre aptitude, Li Chen privately judged them his worst batch yet and still accepted them.

Li Chen learned that Grandmaster Dongfang had backed his Rune Script Dao proposal, bringing the Creation Sect’s support and a chance for the method to gain wider recognition. A Master Artisan named Xu Long arrived to collaborate with him, and the two cautiously began their discussions.

• Li Chen told Mei Xuan that he was preparing for future success while ensuring his ideas and Dao Lineage would endure even if he failed.
• Elder Xu informed Li Chen that Grandmaster Dongfang had promoted his proposal, and the sect planned to send Master Artisans to develop the Rune Script Dao with him.
• Li Chen realized Grandmaster Dongfang’s attention could help spread the Rune Script Dao and accepted it as an opportunity.
• On July tenth, Xu Long arrived from the Creation Sect to work with Li Chen, though both men were wary of each other for reasons tied to past events.

Li Chen explained the Rune Script Dao’s foundations to Xu Long, who revealed that Grandmaster Dongfang had noticed Li Chen and wanted to support him. With Xu Long and ten Craftsmen joining the effort, the rune creation project advanced and Li Chen began training young mountain folk in the field.

• Xu Long said Grandmaster Dongfang considered the Rune Script Dao limited and explained that he had learned of Li Chen through an application to the Heavenly Crafts Academy.
• Xu Long revealed that Grandmaster Dongfang had noticed Li Chen while he worked for Grand Artisan Qi and asked whether he regretted declining an earlier opportunity.
• Li Chen admitted he regretted misunderstanding Grandmaster Dongfang’s goodwill but said he would make the same choice again to remain a free and unfettered Wilderness Rogue Cultivator.
• Xu Long brought ten experienced Craftsmen to help Li Chen and said Grandmaster Dongfang wanted to support him without expecting anything in return.
• The added Craftsmen helped rewrite restrictions and refine rune forms, while Li Chen selected mountain children to train as future Rune Script Masters.

Over ten years on Broad Cloud Star, Li Chen expanded his market and developed artificial intelligences to manage his affairs. He tested a new battle formation that trapped and captured Jingang, then rewarded his collaborators and arranged a home and leave for Zhou Cheng and Yun Ya to marry.

• Li Chen used artificial intelligences such as Heavenly Pivot to manage the market district while expanding his rune script Dao workforce and computing resources.
• Li Chen demonstrated a battle formation that created an enclosed domain capable of trapping those within it.
• Li Chen and Heavenly Authority tested the formation against Warrior Constructs and Mechanism Automaton Wooden Soldiers, which the troops repelled and defeated.
• The formation lured Jingang inside, trapped him with walls and refined gold nets, and captured him after a prolonged struggle.
• Li Chen declared the formation successful and invited Hua Yongshan and the others to a celebratory feast.
• Li Chen gave Zhou Cheng and Yun Ya a month off, arranged for them to have a house built, and encouraged them to marry.

Li Chen reviewed the mature operation of his virtual reality and explained how he planned to replace its human operators while securing their livelihoods. Qi Maigu then announced that he had mastered Blazing Sun Divine Thunder through magic power, and demonstrated the breakthrough to Li Chen.

• Mei Xuan accused Li Chen of exploiting his workers, and Li Chen defended the wages and businesses he had given them.
• Heavenly Pivot reported that the virtual reality had run continuously for nine years, and Li Chen said he was preparing for five-star intelligence to automate its underlying arrays.
• Li Chen described his costly projects, including Qi Maigu's Blazing Sun Divine Thunder research, and connected to the virtual reality to find a thunder simulation underway.
• Qi Maigu told Li Chen that he had mastered every variation of Blazing Sun Divine Thunder and achieved mental certification of the divine ability.
• Li Chen visited Qi Maigu's mountain villa, where Qi Maigu formed a white orb of magic power and detonated Divine Thunder in the distance.