Chapter Summaries

After Li Chen became a Grandmaster, he urged the Puppet Masters to treat the century-long ceasefire as preparation for a new kind of war fought through trade, talent, and ideas. He began outlining how cultivation modernization would transform the Puppet Dao and its industries.

• Li Chen was elevated to Grandmaster and recognized as the new representative of the underworld factions after True Person Miaobao's death.
• The Puppet Masters convened in the Heavenly Net Network to celebrate Li Chen's elevation and discuss the peace treaty and the future of the Central Sea.
• Li Chen rejected treating the treaty as lasting peace, calling it a short ceasefire and urging continued military preparation alongside competition in marketplaces and academies.
• Li Chen called on the Puppet Masters to use trade and preaching the Dao to acquire the Immortal Alliance's treasures and talent while preparing for its counterattack.
• Li Chen explained how cultivation modernization would reshape blessed lands and workshops, drawing on changes he had tested at Chess Mountain.

Great Benefit City opened as merchants from Heavenly Dragon City established the Heavenly Reach Money House, connecting the new port to a modern, cross-faction banking system. The chapter ended with merchants discovering that Talisman Coins had lost value against spirit stones.

• Great Benefit City quickly grew into a busy port with four markets, and a Flying Boat from Heavenly Dragon City arrived carrying cargo and workers.
• Managers from the Myriad Heavens Marketplace discussed the city’s reliance on manual labor and the plan to introduce intelligent technology.
• Workers transported instruments and devices to establish a merchants' association, a trading exchange, research institutes, the Heavenly Crafts Academy, and a modern money house.
• The Myriad Heavens Marketplace Great Benefit Branch opened the Heavenly Reach Money House and began receiving merchants who needed to deposit funds and settle transactions there.
• Merchants found that one Talisman Coin now exchanged for only about eighty percent of a spirit stone, while a hundred spirit stones could buy more than a hundred and twenty Talisman Coins.

Great Benefit City introduced a floating exchange rate and virtual currency system that shifted wealth and trade under the control of powerful institutions. More than a decade after surviving the Rune Beast rampage, Hou Tao arrived in the city seeking new investment opportunities, and he told a money house manager he planned to enter its commodity exchanges.

• A merchant protested that the new exchange rate gave him fewer spirit stones, but the money house employee explained that the Great Powers had approved the new system.
• Merchants and financial managers discussed how the currency reforms would draw wealth from rogue cultivators and help fund reforms and the Immortal Alliance's reparations.
• The chapter explained that Hou Tao had prospered in business in Nine Ridges City but traveled to Great Benefit City because he saw greater investment potential there.
• Hou Tao registered at the Heavenly Reach Money House as a silver-tier honored guest and told the manager he had come to join the commodity exchanges for heavenly treasures.

Hou Tao sought a huge loan and leveraged trading access to invest in the Heavenly Reach Exchange, hoping to gain the power he believed wealth alone could not provide. After explaining his motives to Hua Lin, he revealed that he had come to Great Benefit City for cloudthunder crystal.

• Hou Tao applied to the Heavenly Reach Money House for at least five hundred million talisman coins and trading leverage, and the manager promised a decision by mid-September.
• After leaving the money house, Hou Tao rested at a teahouse, where Hua Lin worried that borrowing and trading with leverage could cost them hundreds of millions.
• Hou Tao explained that he had raised Hua Lin, his old comrade’s orphaned nephew, and intended him to become his heir.
• Hou Tao told Hua Lin that wealth meant little without true strength, recalling the rune beast attack that had left him feeling helpless.
• Hou Tao set aside further explanation and told Hua Lin that he had come for cloudthunder crystal.

Hou Tao explained to Hua Lin how cloudthunder crystal and energy stones powered new technologies and why the Puppet Dao sought to control the mineral trade through Great Benefit City. Hua Lin remained uneasy that Hou Tao’s attempt to profit from the Great Powers’ plans might make him their target.

• Hua Lin recalled that cloudthunder crystal stored and released thunder essence efficiently, while Hou Tao explained how energy stones served as batteries for electric motors and electromagnetic devices.
• Hou Tao told Hua Lin that Great Benefit City’s trade deals were designed to secure profits and give the Puppet Dao control over cloudthunder crystal and related industries.
• Hou Tao predicted that cloudthunder crystal prices would stay low as the Immortal Alliance sold the mineral under the peace agreement.
• Hua Lin questioned whether Hou Tao could safely compete for scraps while relying on outdated information, and feared the Great Powers might be targeting him.

Hou Tao lost heavily betting against rising cloudthunder crystal prices on the Heavenly Reach Exchange, until Hua Lin convinced him to stop before risking everything. After Hou Tao settled his accounts and withdrew, the price plunged, leaving him laughing through tears.

• Hou Tao sold more than fifty million Talisman Coins’ worth of cloudthunder crystal contracts, expecting prices to fall.
• Cloudthunder crystal prices surged, and Hou Tao increased his stake rather than closing his contracts.
• As prices climbed above twenty thousand Talisman Coins, Hou Tao lost most of his capital and became fixated on winning it back.
• Hua Lin begged Hou Tao to accept the loss and reminded him that his ore vein and businesses could help him recover.
• Hou Tao decided to settle his accounts and stop gambling, preserving his remaining assets despite taking on debt.
• On the day Hou Tao withdrew, cloudthunder crystal prices plunged below eight thousand, and he laughed with tears in his eyes.

Hou Tao and Hua Lin watched the cloudthunder crystal price crash, then saw the Heavenly Reach Money House brutally suppress a violent gambler. After learning how many desperate traders had died, Hou Tao discovered the price had rebounded to a new high.

• Hua Lin regretted persuading Hou Tao to abandon his cloudthunder crystal contracts, while Hou Tao tried to accept the loss and take him out for a stroll.
• A late Core Formation Cultivator attacked the Heavenly Reach Money House, but Nascent Soul Cultivators killed him before he could damage it further.
• Hou Tao learned that more than a dozen people had attacked the money house after losing money, including a Nascent Soul Cultivator who was hunted down and killed.
• Hou Tao and Hua Lin returned to the inn and found that a Foundation Establishment Cultivator had killed himself after losing money on cloudthunder crystal.
• Hou Tao checked the exchange and discovered that cloudthunder crystal had rebounded to a new high of more than thirty thousand talisman coins.

Hou Tao realized that withdrawing from the cloudthunder crystal wager had saved him from ruin, while Mei Xuan questioned Li Chen about the Heavenly Reach Money House and its effects on the cultivation world. Li Chen described it as an experiment in transforming cultivation society and said its future remained uncertain, but the path forward began with taking the first step.

• Hou Tao saw cloudthunder crystal prices soar and realized that honoring his wager and walking away had spared him catastrophic losses and debt.
• Mei Xuan asked Li Chen why he had created the Heavenly Reach Money House despite opposing profit-driven capital, and warned that its system would eventually involve every cultivator.
• Li Chen explained how cultivation society had evolved from solitary cultivators to sects and clans, and argued that shared interests could create new organizations that crossed sect and Dao Path boundaries.
• Mei Xuan reconsidered the possibility that the Heavenly Reach Money House could foster cooperation between the Immortal Alliance and the Puppet Dao, while recognizing that their partnership depended on exploiting those below them.
• Li Chen admitted he did not know where the Myriad Heavens or its Dao Paths would lead, but said the road lay beneath their feet and that the money house was an experiment to transform cultivation and strengthen Materialized Heaven.

Mei Xuan watched the Heavenly Reach Money House’s rapid expansion reshape the cultivation world, driving rogue cultivators and declining factions into organized labor. Li Chen argued that production gave ordinary cultivators’ skills practical value, while puppet masters began pushing for more technically sophisticated innovations.

• The Heavenly Reach Money House grew beyond the Myriad Heavens Marketplace in wealth and strength through the backing of the Puppet Dao and the Immortal Alliance.
• As industries spread, rogue cultivators and weakened factions lost access to resources, and many cultivators entered workshops, production yards, and other work organized by the two sides.
• Li Chen told Mei Xuan that most cultivators would never attain immortality, but production could make their cultivation useful and help create lasting wealth for future generations.
• Rogue cultivators increasingly sought work, while cultivators’ divine abilities and spells were optimized for crafts such as smelting ore, felling trees, and mining spirit veins.
• Li Chen and other high-ranking puppet masters began secretly driving innovations that required greater technical sophistication.

Li Chen discussed expanding the Puppet Dao’s energy options with Yu Bao, who presented batteries and energy stones made from cloudthunder crystal. The chapter ended with confirmation that Cloud Province and the Eastern Victory Continent held enough reserves to supply the planned reforms.

• Li Chen told Yu Bao and the others that supernatural powers could draw on different energy sources, and that the Puppet Dao needed alternatives to spirit peak blessed lands.
• Li Chen explained that the Puppet Dao’s growing numbers of Mechanism Puppets and manufacturing machines had caused energy shortages.
• Yu Bao presented an artificial thunder crystal battery with over ninety percent storage efficiency and a thunder essence energy stone powerful enough to fuel a standard two-star Battle Puppet.
• Li Chen said he would show the products to the other Grandmasters so the Elders' Council could establish shared standards for the Puppet Dao.
• Li Chen reported that surveys had found sufficient cloudthunder crystal reserves in Cloud Province and the Eastern Victory Continent, prompting Yu Bao to welcome the news.

Li Chen presented cloudthunder crystal products to the Elders' Council, which approved them as a low-cost energy source for mass-produced Mechanism Puppets. As mining and trade spread, the Immortal Alliance watched Earthly Immortal Continent cultivators sell the ore cheaply to the Puppet Masters, turning the resource boom into another form of postwar plunder.

• Li Chen brought cloudthunder crystal products before the Elders' Council, where Lin Danran explained their uses, limitations, and potential for artificial production.
• The Elders' Council agreed that cloudthunder crystal, artificial thunder crystals, and thunder essence energy stones could ease spirit stone shortages, prompting an energy reform for low-rank Mechanism Puppets.
• Large cloudthunder crystal mines and processing plants opened across Cloud Province and other regions, while new standards drove raw ore prices down.
• Great Powers manipulated the market, bought ore at low prices, and profited as cultivators across the Earthly Immortal Continent expanded mining and speculation.
• The Immortal Alliance recognized that its cultivators were selling strategic resources cheaply to the Puppet Masters, but accepted the trade as the cost of reforming its own Dao Paths after defeat.

Su Qing traveled from the Evergreen Gate to Cloud Province to study the Puppet Dao at the Guangyun Cultivation Academy, where he encountered a radically open system of cultivation education. The chapter left him questioning the academy’s reforms and wondering what loyalty its students could have.

• Su Qing’s elder saw him off as he left for Cloud Province under the Immortal Alliance’s exchange program.
• After traveling for just over a month, Su Qing arrived at the Cloud Province Continent and was identified by academy staff using his records.
• Su Qing rode to the Guangyun Cultivation Academy and saw its vast, city-like grounds.
• An administrative elder gave Su Qing a Jade Slip recording Li Chen’s speech advocating sect reform and the spread of Dao through academies.
• Su Qing heard fellow students marvel that the academy openly taught secret techniques from many sects and traditions.
• Su Qing reflected on the academy’s reforms and questioned what loyalty its students could have.

Su Qing settled into the Guangyun Cultivation Academy, where he and other outer Dao disciples began studying the Puppet Dao. A lesson on Yan Shi’s creation of a lifelike automaton turned into a shocking dissection demonstration, leaving Su Qing unexpectedly eager to try it himself.

• Li Chen’s Guangyun Academy expanded into the Guangyun Cultivation Academy, offering instruction in many cultivation paths while focusing on the Puppet Dao’s hundred crafts.
• Su Qing and the other Earthly Immortal Continent cultivators selected courses and settled into academy life over the following months.
• Su Qing and his classmates recited the Tale of Yan Shi during a Puppet Dao history lesson, though many struggled to stay awake.
• The lecturer brought in a lifelike simulated human puppet and began dissecting it, prompting one student to attack with sword qi before the lecturer explained what it was.
• The students examined the puppet and learned it had an artificial mind core instead of a brain, while Su Qing watched with shock and growing eagerness to try dissection himself.

Li Chen’s research team used the Myriad Heavens Grand Formation to observe a time-stop effect without relying on the Book of Years, marking a breakthrough in controlling Temporal Dao through magic arrays. The team returned to their experiments, eager to develop time-based divine abilities and spells.

• Li Chen oversaw the Myriad Heavens Grand Formation as sixteen Core Formation cultivators helped investigate microscopic matter and the Temporal Dao.
• A Grand Artisan told Li Chen that the researchers had observed a time-stop effect within the array.
• Li Chen examined the transmitted data and confirmed that all matter in the array had briefly frozen in place.
• The Grand Artisan credited the breakthrough to Temporal Dao Spiritual Root Bearers sent by the Immortal Alliance as war reparations.
• Li Chen rewarded the Spiritual Root Bearers and planned to train them in the Puppet Dao, while requiring the researchers to resume their work without time off.

Ten years after the Blazing Nest peace talks, Li Chen tested a grand formation that could freeze a localized region of space and time, successfully developing the Time Weapon. He turned its power toward microscopic experiments, where it helped reveal details of matter’s creation and destruction in a minor universe.

• In 100163 of the New Calendar, Li Chen watched as Heavenly Pivot activated the formation beneath the Deer Terrace and froze a battered Flying Boat in midair.
• Li Chen declared that they had finally cracked the Time Weapon and ordered its magic array model recorded for the Puppet Masters while its development into a Magical Treasure began.
• Li Chen placed a mirror-shaped Time Mirror beside a particle-collision experiment in a secret Grotto-Heaven and used it to observe a microscopic minor universe.
• Li Chen’s Puppet Masters repeatedly activated the Time Mirror during experiments, capturing previously unseen details of matter annihilating and forming.
• Li Chen confirmed that the Time Mirror could aid research into the mysteries of the Myriad Heavens Universe, including the origins and transformations of spiritual energy.

Li Chen used the Time Mirror to record and analyze microscopic changes, then his researchers completed a study of how spiritual energy formed spirit stones. Their findings revealed that spirit particles existed beyond the Planck scale, and Li Chen manifested a spirit stone.

• Li Chen upgraded the Time Mirror into a semiautomatic tool for recording and analyzing material structures and changes in spiritual essence.
• Shen Longcheng proposed improving the Time Mirror and securing rare materials through rental arrangements, and Li Chen agreed.
• Li Chen shared the Time Mirror’s technical documentation on the Dao Debate Platform, attracting Puppet Dao Masters interested in temporal research and cooperation.
• At the end of year 163, Li Chen’s mortal Grand Artisans completed an analysis of how spiritual energy entered and left spirit stones.
• Li Chen learned that spirit particles extended beyond the Planck scale, reconsidered what counted as an instant, and conjured a spirit stone.

Li Chen advanced his Void Creation law so he could create spiritual materials and reshape matter into powerful new substances. After making a new protective material, he decided to upgrade Han Li, Xiao Die, and Xiao Ying.

• Li Chen conjured a spirit stone with his Root Dao Art, explaining that creating it consumed his magic power under the law of mass-energy conservation.
• Li Chen revealed that his evolved law could create most materials up to the nucleation tier, earning him the Creator Dao fruit.
• Li Chen reshaped the skin of his puppet body into spherical carbon crystal twelve, a new spirit-repelling material with strength rivaling an eight-star battle puppet.
• Li Chen considered creating multiple nine-star incarnations but decided that this material would be of little use for his own future body.
• Li Chen summoned Han Li to upgrade her celestial person body and planned to improve Xiao Die and Xiao Ying into nine-star combatants.

Li Chen upgraded Han Li and the Puppet Sisters with nine-star materials while exploring the limits of his modification abilities and longing to obtain Three Pure Ones from One Breath. He forged weapons capable of piercing Primordial Spirit Dharma Bodies, gave them to his forces, and presented Han Li with a Flying Sword that she initially preferred to replace with her new firearms.

• Li Chen upgraded Han Li’s skin to nine-star grade and began modifying Xiao Die and Xiao Ying, while considering how Three Pure Ones from One Breath could let him duplicate his power and increase his production capacity.
• Li Chen transformed treasured material into galaxy iron and forged a Flying Sword infused with his magic power, designed to pierce energy barriers and Primordial Spirit Dharma Bodies.
• Li Chen empowered weapons for more than a hundred Sword Guard Puppet Dolls, giving them the ability to breach Primordial Spirit Dharma Bodies.
• Li Chen offered Han Li his newly forged Flying Sword, but she first showed him the firearm Magical Treasures she now used.
• Han Li accepted the Flying Sword after Li Chen explained its power.

Li Chen continued refining his mechanical body and reasoning about the Heavenly Ghost Dharma Body, while rune script masters developed a shared imaginary-number space for inexpensive storage and transport. After the system drew attention on the Dao Debate Platform, Li Chen chose not to take it over, and Mei Xuan planned to negotiate an investment.

• Li Chen continued cultivating his mechanical body and concluded that attaching his consciousness to neutron star matter could give him a near-indestructible Dao Fruit.
• Rune script masters from Guangyuan Academy demonstrated a shared imaginary-number space that enabled cultivators to store and transfer goods at low cost.
• The grand artisans registered their system and published it on the Dao Debate Platform, where it sparked lively discussion.
• Li Chen noticed the system and decided to let its creators retain control rather than compete with them.
• Mei Xuan offered to negotiate with the creators and seek a stake in the system if a purchase was not possible.

Li Chen and his allies founded the Origin Prosperity Commercial Alliance and unveiled a public imaginary number storage system that offered affordable, portable storage to Puppet Masters. The demonstration and rules established how the service worked and how unclaimed goods would eventually support junior cultivators through Trial Tower rewards.

• The Grand Artisans agreed to cooperate with Materialized Heaven, which supplied expertise and funding for their imaginary number spatial technology.
• Li Chen and his allies established the Origin Prosperity Commercial Alliance and completed a commercial magic array with nine hundred and fifty million cubic units of storage.
• At the unveiling, the Alliance demonstrated storing and retrieving Puppets and supplies through a portal even while a magic array sealed ordinary void-based abilities.
• The Alliance explained that living creatures resisted storage and presented the limitation as a safety feature.
• The Alliance announced lease protections for renters and said unclaimed goods would become rewards in Trial Towers through the Low-Rank Cultivator Fortuitous Encounter Grand Prize.