Chapter Summaries

In year 140, Li Chen modified the Flat Hill Aquatic Race’s generals, raising Materialized Heaven’s high-rank combat power and expanding his command of the Dao of Life. With ten Nascent Soul-level experts under his command, he prepared to create the Twelve Zodiac Divine Generals to balance the former demon kingdom’s retainers and guard Materialized Heaven.

• Li Chen completed King Demon Dragon’s enhancement surgery, advised him to follow his prescribed recovery regimen, and scheduled General Hundred Teeth for modification.
• Li Chen tailored transformations for the Flat Hill Aquatic Race’s demon generals, using the Nine Great Secret Arts and other techniques to advance his study of the Dao of Life.
• Li Chen turned King Golden Armor and King Silver Armor into kun-blood warriors, transformed King Iron Armor into a spirit body and turtle-shell warship, and gave White Bone Madam a synthetic body and the White Bone Umbrella.
• Li Chen armored Madam Snake, King Giant Claw, and General Hundred Teeth, bringing his roster to ten Nascent Soul-level experts besides Xiao Die and Xiao Ying.
• Li Chen planned to create the Twelve Zodiac Divine Generals with artificial primordial spirits and the Deification Method to balance his forces and guard Materialized Heaven.

Li Chen explained to Mei Xuan how he had preserved cultural influence in Great Qian as a contingency against Yue Dongyang and the others. He summoned and invested the Twelve Zodiac Gods in Materialized Heaven, where they became powerful allies.

• Li Chen told Mei Xuan that Yue Dongyang and the others were suppressing the divinities and cultural memes he had established in Great Qian.
• Li Chen explained that he had exposed his identity to draw attention away from the hidden Young Emperor and had left Grand Preceptor Hu's image among the people as a lasting foothold.
• Li Chen said the Twelve Zodiac Signs were his most successful contingency because folk beliefs were widespread and easier for him to control.
• Li Chen erected an altar in Materialized Heaven and summoned twelve divinities nurtured by worship and incense in Great Qian.
• Li Chen infused the twelve divinities with magic power and Great Qian fortune, invested them as gods, and brought them under Materialized Heaven.
• Li Chen discovered that the Twelve Zodiac Gods each possessed strength at half-step Nascent Soul or above and expected them to become a fighting force.

Li Chen explained the nature and power of deities to Hua Wucuo while presenting the Twelve Zodiac Guardian Gods and equipping them with Divine Armor. He ordered them to create subordinate warriors only from Spirit Human Flesh Bodies, insisting that divine power and combat strength must serve the protection of his Ideal Heavenly Kingdom rather than private interests.

• Hua Wucuo visited Li Chen to learn about the deities, and Li Chen shared texts and discussed the divine path with him.
• Li Chen explained that most Great Qian deities had modest strength, while his Twelve Zodiac Guardian Gods gained power from incense, formations, and sacred spirit power.
• The Twelve Zodiac Guardian Gods took physical form wearing Divine Armor reforged from seized Magical Treasures, which Hua Wucuo recognized as surpassing high-rank War Armor.
• Li Chen granted the guardian gods partial access to the Sacred Spirit Grand Formation and taught them techniques so they could develop subordinate Zodiac Holy Warriors from Spirit Human Flesh Bodies.
• Li Chen told Hua Wucuo that power was a tool, but that neither his subjects nor his own abilities should serve private ends; powerful beings existed to protect his Ideal Heavenly Kingdom.

Li Chen explained his vision of an abundant Ideal Heavenly Kingdom whose people would share cultivation and whose ideals would survive even if he died. Meanwhile, two men infiltrated a Puppet Dao warehouse to inspect a shipment bound for the materialized heaven, and Fellow Daoist Huo prepared a mysterious talisman.

• Li Chen told Hua Wucuo that cultivation resources and power should not remain privileges, and that the Ideal Heavenly Kingdom would make advancement universal.
• Li Chen said his ideas had spread through disciples, allies, craftsmen, and the wider community, giving Hua Wucuo confidence that his vision might come true.
• Fellow Daoist Yuan led Fellow Daoist Huo into a guarded supply warehouse after accepting a Spirit Dew Pill as payment.
• Fellow Daoist Yuan warned Huo that the sealed shipment could not be tampered with and left the warehouse.
• Fellow Daoist Huo revealed an aged talisman bearing strange incantations.

An Immortal Alliance agent infiltrated a supply channel to Materialized Heaven by exploiting a subcontractor and was instructed to use grand void spirit iron to deepen the connection. Meanwhile, Li Chen’s refitted Golden Light City attacked the Aurora Sect’s headquarters at Zaiyao Peak, leaving its defenders under fierce assault.

• The cultivator surnamed Huo secretly injected a Great Power’s Edict Talisman into a chest of goods bound for Materialized Heaven.
• Elder Qi ordered the cultivator surnamed Huo to use another hundred jin of grand void spirit iron to build trust with the people in the supply channel.
• Elder Qi told Fang Weiqi that the Immortal Alliance had made progress locating Materialized Heaven and proposed exploiting conflicts within the Puppet Dao.
• Li Chen’s refitted Golden Light City bombarded Zaiyao Peak, breaking through the Aurora Sect’s outer Protective Grand Formation.
• Steel-Feathered Crane Battle Puppets attacked the mountain, killing exposed disciples and forcing the survivors to fight back from cover.

Golden Light City overwhelmed the Aurora Sect by descending close to Zaiyao Peak and bombarding its defenses until the defenders fled. Its victory spread panic through the Spell Dao and further convinced the Creation Sect of the importance of spirit-repelling treasured materials.

• Golden Light City descended toward Zaiyao Peak, and an Immortal Alliance sword cultivator failed to damage its iron-armored hull.
• Golden Light City brought its puppets and cannons within close range and devastated the Aurora Sect's defenses through a day and night of fighting.
• Heavenly Hero Divine Cranes and Seven-Star Battle Puppets routed the exhausted defenders, forcing the Aurora Sect to abandon Zaiyao Peak.
• Golden Light City occupied Zaiyao Peak, its 116 subordinate spirit peak blessed lands, and their market districts.
• The victory shook the Puppet Dao and Spell Dao, as Spell Dao forces lost confidence and increasingly called for infiltration and assassination instead of large-scale battles.

Lin Yuanji celebrated the opening of Cloud-Raising Immortal City's Imperial Road before sword cultivators attacked the ceremony and killed several people. After learning that the southern mines had also been raided and the River-Crossing Bridge destroyed, he contacted his sect to demand funds.

• Lin Yuanji opened a thirty-thousand-li Imperial Road, and Puppet Masters and visitors celebrated with a String-Puppet Theater performance.
• Two sword cultivators attacked Lin Yuanji and the assembled cultivators, killing more than a dozen people before fleeing.
• Lin Yuanji struck the attackers with beams of divine light, but they escaped most of the blast by crossing into the void.
• Lin Yuanji ended the celebration and returned to the Sky City, where he learned that the southern mines had been attacked and the River-Crossing Bridge destroyed.
• Lin Yuanji blamed the Immortal Alliance and contacted his sect to demand money.

As Immortal Alliance attacks disrupted the Puppet Dao’s supply lines and forward positions, Puppet Dao Masters gathered to discuss the mounting losses and possible responses. The assembly ended with renowned Poison Dao masters urging a scorched-earth campaign, while Shen Longcheng regarded their proposal gravely.

• Huang Zhonglü, Liang Shi, Master Jin, and the other Sea Eye City guardians observed rising losses from Immortal Alliance attacks and discussed the enemy’s sabotage tactics.
• Shen Longcheng and Wu Fangdao briefed nearly a hundred Puppet Dao Masters on the halted advance, damaged positions, and heavy equipment losses.
• Shen Longcheng agreed to send three hundred five-star units and twenty Six-Star Battle Puppets or mechanical Battle Armor units to reinforce the front.
• Several Puppet Dao Masters argued that reinforcements were insufficient and proposed poisoning, burning, and destroying enemy territory.
• The Poison King and fellow masters Ge Long, Wu Hai, and You Xin backed the scorched-earth strategy, and Shen Longcheng looked gravely at the proposal.

Puppet Master leaders debated whether to use ruthless tactics against the Immortal Alliance, but Shen Longcheng’s faction favored limited warfare while the Poison King and his allies secretly entered the conflict. A month later, their covert operations coincided with a fast-spreading plague that stunned Shen Longcheng.

• The Poison King urged the Puppet Masters to sabotage the Immortal Alliance through poisoned lands, counterfeit talisman coins, and corrupted cultivation manuals, but Shen Longcheng and Wu Fangdao argued that such tactics would undermine the Puppet Dao’s purpose and escalate the war.
• The assembly favored consolidating existing gains rather than provoking the Immortal Alliance, while the Poison King, Ge Long, and their allies secretly planned to join the war and obtain specimens and materials.
• A Blue-Robed Cultivator reported the Poison King’s private meeting to Shen Longcheng, who said the sect would not support them but would claim the spoils if they succeeded.
• Shen Longcheng explained that the sect avoided total war until the timing was right and stressed the importance of claiming righteousness.
• Supplies reached the Central Sea as the Poison King and his allies secretly began their own operations there.
• More than a month later, a rapidly spreading plague produced major effects in the war and astonished Shen Longcheng.

Fang Xu returned to Shanglin Peak and showed Elder Xiong evidence of a deadly plague spreading through cities and villages. Elder Xiong recognized its symptoms as Boiling Blood Fever, or a related variant.

• Fang Xu and his fellow disciples passed Shanglin Peak's strict health inspection and entered the sect grounds.
• Elder Xiong asked Fang Xu to report what he had learned about conditions across the regions.
• Fang Xu showed Elder Xiong a jade slip recording crimson vapor and people dying with ulcerated skin and blood mist rising from their bodies.
• Elder Xiong stopped the recording and identified the plague as Boiling Blood Fever.

Fang Xu learned from Elder Xiong that boiling blood fever was a deadly Puppet Dao plague and that the sect was isolating cities while searching for a cure. Meanwhile, Puppet Masters harvested the corpses and crimson miasma left by the outbreak to create materials for poison corpses and battle puppets.

• Fang Xu asked Elder Xiong about boiling blood fever, and Elder Xiong explained its origins, dangers, and the difficulty of countering seasonal plagues.
• Fang Xu asked how the sect would respond, and Elder Xiong said the cities would be isolated while Medicine Dao and Pill Dao experts sought a cure.
• Several Puppet Masters surveyed a plague-stricken city and celebrated the deaths caused by boiling blood fever.
• A Puppet Master collected the crimson poison miasma in a Crimson Gourd Treasure while another used Draw Silk, Rejoin Meridians to raise and gather corpses.
• The Puppet Masters packed the remains into a minor grotto-heaven, intending to use the bones and other materials to refine poison corpses and battle puppets.

The Poison King and Shen Longcheng realized that the Immortal Alliance’s unusually weak resistance concealed an unknown scheme, though the Puppet Dao could not discover where its missing experts had gone. In the rear, Xia Ziyi returned to Cloud Province and was summoned to meet the other elders.

• Ge Long reported fresh spoils, but the Poison King dismissed them and warned that the Immortal Alliance’s response to their epidemics was suspiciously weak.
• Ge Long and the Poison King concluded that the Alliance’s Nascent Soul Experts and Primordial Spirit Great Powers seemed to have vanished.
• Shen Longcheng questioned a subordinate, who confirmed that many rear-area cities lacked their expected experts but could not trace their whereabouts.
• Shen Longcheng feared that advancing the vanguard could lead to its annihilation, since the Puppet Dao could not divine whether the missing experts were hiding nearby.
• Xia Ziyi emerged from a teleportation array in Cloud Province, where an attendant escorted him toward the elders waiting on the peak.

Xia Ziyi reported the plague’s devastating spread to Cloud Province’s Immortal Alliance cultivators and learned that infected people had already been found there. Later, Fang Weiqi visited him with news about Li Bai, leaving Xia Ziyi eager to learn where he was.

• Xia Ziyi told Cloud Province’s cultivators that the plague had ravaged populations across multiple provinces and was beginning to affect Qi Refining cultivators.
• The elders revealed that infected people had been found in Cloud Province and explained how traveling merchants and rogue cultivators carried the latent infection between regions.
• Xia Ziyi reflected on his rise to Late Core Formation and the danger the war and plague posed to his homeland.
• Fang Weiqi arrived in person and asked Xia Ziyi whether he remembered Li Bai.
• Fang Weiqi said they had news of Li Bai, and Xia Ziyi eagerly asked where he was.

Fang Weiqi told Xia Ziyi that the man who had changed his life was Li Chen, a powerful Puppet Dao figure and the Immortal Alliance’s target. He revealed that the alliance needed Xia Ziyi’s karmic connection to locate Li Chen, leaving Xia to face the responsibility of helping with the coming assault.

• Fang Weiqi sent the attendants away and listened as Xia Ziyi described his gratitude and uncertainty about facing the man who had helped him thirty years earlier.
• Fang Weiqi revealed that the man was Li Chen, a primordial-spirit Great Power of the Puppet Dao, and recounted his role in the conflict.
• Fang Weiqi explained that the Immortal Alliance had secretly gathered forces to attack Li Chen’s Sky City, but the resulting shortages had left the alliance vulnerable to the Puppet Dao’s attacks.
• Fang Weiqi told Xia Ziyi that the alliance had prepared ways into Materialized Heaven but needed someone with a karmic connection to Li Chen to locate his future whereabouts.
• Xia Ziyi understood that Fang Weiqi had nurtured him as part of plans begun thirty years earlier, and accepted that his duties as an Immortal Alliance cultivator weighed on him.

Li Chen’s Materialized Heaven came under a sudden, coordinated attack, and a Primordial Spirit Great Power struck his primordial spirit from afar. He declared a level one alert as the domain began evacuating its inhabitants and locking down.

• Heavenly Pivot detected hostile intruders at a Materialized Heaven supply center, then warned Li Chen that large numbers of unidentified life-forms had entered.
• Li Chen sensed hundreds of Core Formation presences and more than a dozen Nascent Soul presences appearing suddenly before an enemy force struck his primordial spirit.
• Li Chen ordered Heavenly Pivot to activate a level one alert after recognizing that a Primordial Spirit Great Power had attacked him.
• Alarms sounded across Materialized Heaven and Equal Heaven, and Hua Wucuo followed the evacuation instructions toward a shelter.

Immortal Alliance cultivators infiltrated Materialized Heaven but were quickly detected and attacked by its puppet defenses. Xia Ziyi, Fang Weiqi, and their companions surveyed a vast modern city, which the elders dismissed as an ant nest lacking spiritual energy.

• Immortal Alliance cultivators found their arrival at Supply Warehouse 103 detected, and the sword cultivator destroyed a nearby sensing device before Clay People Puppets attacked.
• A group of Core Formation Experts destroyed an outpost alarm, realized Li Chen's network was monitoring them, and set out to find his base or join the others.
• Xia Ziyi, Fang Weiqi, and other Immortal Alliance experts emerged from a logistics center after destroying puppets and flew above the city.
• The group saw the enormous modern metropolis built for Materialized Heaven's citizens and their Spirit Human Puppets.
• Several Immortal Alliance elders called the city a cramped ant nest because it lacked spiritual energy.

Li Chen recovered from a surprise attack and discovered the Immortal Alliance had sent a vast force to trap the Giant Kun. With communications cut off and Primordial Spirit Great Powers still hidden, he took control of the Giant Kun and prepared to clear the field.

• Mei Xuan saw Li Chen injured on the crystal wall, and he warned her to stay in the underground dharma-ending zone.
• Li Chen used the Giant Kun to inspect the void and identified the Heavenly Dao Four Swords and the Twelve Golden Immortals Formation trapping it.
• Heavenly Pivot told Li Chen that all outside communications had been cut off, so Li Chen ordered it to attack the infiltrators.
• Li Chen linked with the Giant Kun and Heavenly Pivot, then detected nearly a hundred false nascent souls, three hundred core formation cultivators, and over ten thousand false core formation cultivators.
• Li Chen chose to clear the field, and mechanized weapons and defensive mechanisms activated throughout Deer Terrace.

Li Chen’s forces used coordinated missiles, aircraft, artillery, and Combat Puppets to wipe out most Immortal Alliance experts in the wilderness, though he held back around cities to avoid collateral damage. Fang Weiqi and about fifty Half-Step Nascent Soul cultivators then gathered and traveled to the central region of the Azure Billow Immortal Abode.

• Three Late Core Formation Immortal Alliance cultivators were killed by a Strategic Nuclear Missile’s coordinated barrage of specialized submunitions.
• Thunderhawk Fighters and missiles destroyed a group of Half-Step Core Formation experts advancing toward a city.
• A powerful Sword Cultivator repelled aircraft, missiles, and Combat Puppets before artillery and Kun Blood Warriors overwhelmed and killed him.
• Li Chen saw that nearly every Immortal Alliance expert in the wilderness had been annihilated in less than half a quarter of an hour.
• Fang Weiqi and about fifty Half-Step Nascent Soul cultivators ignited their Divine Talismans, traversed the void, and reached the central region of the Azure Billow Immortal Abode.

Fang Weiqi led the Immortal Alliance’s intruders through Li Chen’s steel-built Azure Billow Immortal Abode, using Xia Ziyi’s karmic connection to guide them toward Li Chen. They broke through a force of Kun Blood Warriors and insectoid warriors and charged toward the valley behind the mountain.

• Fang Weiqi and the surviving Immortal Alliance experts arrived in the Azure Billow Immortal Abode, where they found the others had been scattered by the void’s power.
• The invaders recognized the stronghold’s grand void spirit iron construction and saw that their attacks could not damage its floor.
• Fang Weiqi asked Xia Ziyi to choose a direction, and Xia Ziyi led the group through the gate toward the main nest behind the mountain.
• More than a hundred Kun Blood Warriors and over a hundred insectoid warriors confronted the invaders.
• Fang Weiqi ordered some allies to hold off the warriors while the rest charged toward the deep valley, as three experts bound the puppets with spirit-essence nets.

Fang Weiqi and the Immortal Alliance cultivators fought through a swarm of Golden Fleas, discovering that mechanical insects disguised among the ordinary ones could withstand their spells and tear through flesh and magic treasures. Fang Weiqi and the survivors reached the Back Mountain Main Nest, where Li Chen’s puppet guards attacked them.

• Luo Ji identified the approaching swarm as Golden Fleas, ancient insects that devoured flesh and seized divine souls.
• The cultivators attacked the swarm, but mechanical Golden Fleas hidden among the ordinary insects survived their spells and used vibrating saws and Micro Dimensional Slash to wound them.
• Several cultivators held off the swarm so Fang Weiqi, Xia Ziyi, and the others could charge onward, while those left behind were devoured.
• The Golden Fleas pursued the survivors and detonated miniature Blazing Thunder, causing more cultivators to fall behind.
• Fang Weiqi and the remaining cultivators passed through the sealed entrance of the Back Mountain Main Nest using their distorted-void technique.
• Inside the underground hall, Imperial Guard Corps puppet dolls modeled as maidens attacked the intruders with blades of gang edge.