Chapter Summaries

Long Leshui met Zhao Ziren in Nether Mountain and delivered the incense treasures Li Ling had sent to support Zhao’s cultivation, while learning that the Netherworld Sect and Qi Xue’s forces were preparing for conflict. Zhao warned of unusual activity near the Bottomless Cave, but the Heavenly Court and Orthodox Path armies continued marching beside it, where an unseen yin wind began to rise.

• Long Leshui met Zhao Ziren, who warned that the Netherworld Sect was coercing forces across the Pure Land as war approached.
• Long Leshui gave Zhao Ziren Enlightenment Incense, Past-Wisdom Incense, and Formless Incense, and Zhao accepted them to aid his attempt at Nascent Soul.
• Zhao Ziren identified Qi Xue as the deathless ruler of the Pure Land and warned that his awakened ghost forces were hunting and gathering near the Bottomless Cave.
• Long Leshui recognized the marked location as the Bottomless Cave after Zhao described the unusual movements there.
• The Wealth Division and Tai Sui Division armies received Venerable Xiaoyao’s warning but resumed their march along the Bottomless Cave.
• An invisible yin wind carrying the sounds of wailing ghosts began sweeping toward the marching armies.

A Soul-Losing Wind trapped the Heavenly Court’s Wealth Division and Tai Sui Division in the Bottomless Cave, where it devastated the army. Venerable Xiaoyao learned the disaster’s nature and found only about a hundred survivors after it passed.

• A vast darkness and Yin Wind surrounded the Heavenly Court’s armies, draining Divine Souls and allowing ink-black Yin Souls to attack the troops.
• Venerable Xiaoyao sensed the army was in danger and set out to investigate, but Qi Xue appeared and attacked Sea Market Ward to keep him occupied.
• Qi Xue told Venerable Xiaoyao that the army was surrounded at the Bottomless Cave, while Venerable Xiaoyao sent an Avatar toward the front and defended Sea Market Ward from falling earth and meteors.
• Heavenly Court reinforcements reported that fierce winds blocked access to the Bottomless Cave, and Venerable Xiaoyao learned the disaster was the Soul-Losing Wind, which eroded Yin Souls and Primordial Spirits.
• After the wind passed, investigators found only about a hundred survivors, who told Venerable Xiaoyao that the Wealth Division and Tai Sui Division had been wiped out.

After the Heavenly Court’s forces were defeated at the Bottomless Cave, it sent a new army that was halted by the Netherworld Sect’s Ten-Thousand-Mile Wind Capital Soul-Devouring Grand Array. The Heavenly Court asked Li Ling to travel from the North Sea and help break the array, and he set out after preparing his disciples.

• News of the Wealth Division and Tai Sui Division’s annihilation spread through Sea Market Ward, while Venerable Xiaoyao ordered his disciples to hold their position.
• The Heavenly Court assembled the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions Star Generals and other forces, then marched back to the Bottomless Cave.
• The Star Divine Generals discovered the Netherworld Sect’s grand array and withdrew after Bin Yuansheng and Fu Sima were driven back by its power.
• Bin Yuansheng explained that Qi Xue’s forces could exploit the array to threaten any attempt to bypass it, so the Heavenly Court halted and summoned reinforcements.
• After scouts determined that breaking the array required a Dharma Body expert, the Heavenly Court invited Li Ling, who prepared to leave the North Sea.

Li Ling manifested through an incense ritual and entered the Netherworld Sect’s wind array after evading Qi Xue. He reached the edge of the Bottomless Cave, where the chapter ended before he investigated the array’s foundations.

• Bin Yuansheng and Fu Sima worried that the Yin Wind would suppress the Incense Path, but Star Lord Sichen Yuan Guang and Star Lord Jiuyào Zhenhui explained that Li Ling’s methods could transcend material limits.
• Long Leshui led the Incense Accumulation Sect disciples and the Heavenly Soldiers and Generals in building an altar and performing rites to summon Li Ling.
• Li Ling manifested above the altar in a reward body, accompanied by many titles that Star Lord Jiuyào Zhenhui identified as signs of his future incarnations across timelines.
• Li Ling flew toward the Bottomless Cave to investigate the Netherworld Sect’s grand array, while Qi Xue tried to stop him with attacks of earth and stone.
• Li Ling evaded Qi Xue and entered the array unnoticed, reaching the edge of the Bottomless Cave.

Si Chen investigated the yin wind calamity and found that the Netherworld Sect controlled it through a sophisticated array. He devised a plan to use Incense Path techniques to infiltrate the array, and the first incense essence began to reach its guards.

• Si Chen examined the yin wind baleful intent, discovered how it eroded divine souls, and located several nodes of the Netherworld Sect's array.
• Si Chen returned to the Heavenly Court encampment and explained that seven key nodes had to be destroyed in sequence to prevent the array from rebuilding itself.
• After the Orthodox Path leaders discussed how long they could endure the wind, Si Chen proposed countering the calamity with an Incense Path method instead of launching a seven-pronged attack.
• The next day, Si Chen told the leaders that his disciples would use an incense array and the Heaven-Stealing Art to channel power into the Netherworld Sect's formation.
• Bo Yong used spirit incense and the Incense-Transforming Divine Ability to mimic the yin wind baleful intent and infiltrate the distant array, beginning a curse against its guards.

Li Ling used the Origin Light Star Capital Soul Devouring Grand Array to turn the Bottomless Cavern’s yin wind against the Demonic Path, devastating the Li Ling Ghost Kingdom and breaking its defenses. Qi Xue retreated under pressure from the Orthodox Path experts, leaving the Heavenly Court’s forces to advance while the Blood Sea Demon Venerable and the master of the Nether King Palace learned of the disaster.

• Li Ling infused the grand array with his dharma power, killing its guards and taking control of the yin wind.
• Qi Xue entered the altered array, discovered Li Ling’s altar, and fought off the Wind Lord of Myriad Directions and Myriad Miles and the Star Divine Generals.
• Li Ling sent the yin wind spilling into the Li Ling Ghost Kingdom, where it wiped out most of the Demonic Path forces and drove the survivors to flee.
• The Orthodox Path experts pressured Qi Xue until he withdrew, and the Star Divine Generals pursued the retreating Demonic Path cultivators.
• The Blood Sea Demon Venerable and the master of the Nether King Palace received news of the defeat and blamed Qi Xue.

After the Orthodox Path occupied the Li Ling Ghost Kingdom, Li Ling accepted responsibility for holding the region and began organizing its defenses and development. He planned a new surface Market Ward, assigned trusted cultivators to key posts, and turned the battlefield’s scattered treasures into the foundation of a growing settlement.

• Qi Xue fled after the Yin Wind weakened, and Li Ling agreed to take charge of the Li Ling Ghost Kingdom in exchange for compensation from the Heavenly Court.
• Li Ling’s disciples and the Orthodox Path’s forces began occupying the region, while Rogue Cultivators patrolled its dangerous terrain and investigated local resources.
• Li Ling ordered the royal capital moved from Origin Light Star to the surface because the nearby bottomless pit and concentrated Yin Baleful Qi made the old location dangerous.
• The Incense Accumulation Sect selected Xie Shaojing to oversee Origin Light Star and Long Leshui to lead the new surface Market Ward.
• Li Ling arranged for Rogue Cultivators from the Yang Realm to search the battlefield for lost treasures, while the sect planned to profit by providing services and building a lasting local community.

Windless Ward prospered under the Incense Accumulation Sect’s control as ruins seekers sold salvaged Heavenly Court treasures for a fortune. Li Ling prepared Long Leshui to inherit his White Bone Born of Incense method and considered arranging a nascent soul opportunity for Xie Shaojing.

• Rogue cultivators sold two salvaged Heavenly Court magic treasures at the Rare Treasures Tower for twenty million talisman currency, while Steward Xue planned to verify their origins with the Incense Accumulation Sect.
• Li Ling learned that Long Leshui had manifested the true intent of the White Bone Born of Incense Method and gave him its nascent soul formation scripture and instructions to pass it down.
• Li Ling explained that the scripture’s earlier volumes involved trials of bodily decay and inner demons, and that Long Leshui’s cultivation might bring him into conflict with the White Bone Dao Palace.
• Li Ling gave Long Leshui the incantation and dharma power to command the White Bone Guardian Deity as a hidden reserve.
• Xie Shaojing brought ghost cultivators to learn from Li Ling, who recognized them as important allies in expanding the Incense Accumulation Sect’s influence and considered arranging Xie Shaojing’s nascent soul opportunity.

Li Ling’s spirit-incense teachings gave Xie Shaojing and other ghost cultivators sudden insight, and their shared study helped Xie Shaojing reach Nascent Soul. With Li Ling’s approval, she founded the Myriad Spirits Sect, whose establishment drew powers from across the Netherworld Pure Land.

• Li Ling expounded ghost incense teachings in Windless Ward, awakening wisdom and inspiration among the spirit cultivators.
• Xie Shaojing recorded the Spirit Wisdom True Scripture, and the cultivators agreed to exchange their notes and study together.
• After months of joint study, Xie Shaojing attained Nascent Soul and proposed forming a sect to unite ghost Dao and incense cultivation.
• Li Ling approved her proposal and named the new independent sect the Myriad Spirits Sect.
• Long Leshui rejected local efforts to oppose the sect and resolved to catch up with Xie Shaojing.
• The Myriad Spirits Sect was formally established in early December, and the gathered powers reacted when its master of ceremonies announced Li Ling’s arrival.

Li Ling gave Xie Shaojing a Magic Treasure that awakened spirit bodies and used the insights it yielded to cultivate a new Dao fruit related to wisdom. Twenty years later, the Myriad Spirits Sect held entrance examinations for newly awakened ghosts in the Ten Thousand Yin Cavern.

• Li Ling presented Xie Shaojing with the high-grade Incense Cloud Gourd to support the Myriad Spirits Sect.
• Xie Shaojing opened the gourd, and its fragrance awakened yin-baleful spirit bodies into intelligent maidens, astonishing the discerning guests.
• Li Ling returned to secluded cultivation and used the fragrance of spiritual wisdom to explore the origins of intelligence and refine his avatar.
• Twenty years later, ghost wraiths gathered at the Myriad Spirits Sect for entrance examinations, where a disciple tested their intelligence and abilities.
• The disciple accepted ghosts who understood his words and those who could manifest illusory human forms, then led the gathered spirits onward.

The Myriad Spirits Sect prepared new ghost disciples for cultivation and debated whether to join the Heavenly Court’s planned Underworld administration. Elsewhere, Qi Xue ambushed Li Ling’s seemingly inert avatar, but it crumbled into dust, leaving him unsure what he had struck.

• A Myriad Spirits Sect cultivator explained how spirit incense would nourish new ghost disciples until they could form ghost bodies.
• Xie Shaojing ordered essential survival techniques taught to the recruits and considered the sect’s role in establishing the Underworld administration.
• A sect elder warned Xie Shaojing that joining the administration could end the ghost cultivators’ hopes of becoming ghost immortals and ascending to heaven.
• Qi Xue emerged from concealment beneath the Windless Ward and drove an earthen spear through Li Ling’s motionless avatar.
• The avatar dispersed into fine dust, and Qi Xue recoiled after realizing it had no underlying body.

Li Ling awakened the Wisdom Dharma Body and released an incense fragrance that spread across the Netherworld Pure Land, awakening the spiritual wisdom of ghost spirits. He declared that he would guide beings toward enlightenment and remain until the Pure Land was empty, while Qi Xue’s influence over the region’s earth veins began to collapse.

• Qi Xue ambushed Li Ling, failed to perceive him, and escaped through the earth veins using Earth Escape.
• Li Ling revealed that he had developed the Wisdom Dharma Body, advancing the Incense Path’s wisdom fragrance from the level of laws to the level of origin.
• Li Ling’s incense essence spread from the Windless Ward, awakening ghost spirits across the wilderness and alarming Long Leshui and the Myriad Spirits Sect.
• Li Ling reassured Long Leshui, manifested as a young monk, and vowed to grant all beings the capacity for awakening through incense perception.
• Li Ling’s vow reached throughout the Netherworld Pure Land, shocking powerful figures and severing Qi Xue’s connections to the earth veins of the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom.

Li Ling established his wisdom dharma body in the Netherworld Pure Land and confronted Qi Xue, whose control of the land made him a threat to Li Ling’s emerging deathless Dao Fruit. As their battle drew in allies, Qi Xue trapped Long Leshui in a burial mound, but Long Leshui broke through to the Nascent Soul Realm.

• Li Ling realized that his wisdom dharma body’s bond with the Pure Land could make it deathless, though its foundation remained vulnerable to other wills within the land.
• Qi Xue sent tremors through Windless Ward and the Myriad Spirits Sect’s territory, while Li Ling and Long Leshui used lotus incense to calm residents and revive those killed in the quake.
• Li Ling confronted Qi Xue near Ten Thousand Yin Cavern, and Xie Shaojing, Long Leshui, Star Lord Jiuyào Zhenhui, and several Star Divine Generals joined the fight.
• Qi Xue targeted Long Leshui as the weakest opponent and buried the White Bone Giant in a mound formed from the Netherworld’s earth essence.
• Long Leshui transformed into a thousand-zhang Bone Dragon and broke through to the Nascent Soul Realm.

Long Leshui advanced to the Nascent Soul Realm during his battle with Qi Xue, but the Nether King Palace Master rescued Qi Xue and fled with him to the Netherworld Soil. Li Ling planned to claim the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom and realized he might transform its territory with the Incense Path’s Conversion Power.

• Long Leshui broke through to the Nascent Soul Realm and created his own Bone Aspect Method, gaining a White Bone Dharma King Form.
• Li Ling warned Long Leshui to stay airborne because Qi Xue drew power from the earth, and Long Leshui avoided further ground-based attacks.
• The Nether King Palace Master appeared, enveloped Qi Xue in darkness, and carried him away before Li Ling and the others could stop him.
• The Nether King Palace Master brought Qi Xue to his royal city in the Netherworld Soil, where Qi Xue complained that Li Ling had stolen his foundations.
• Li Ling and his companions discussed how Qi Xue’s Deathless Dao Fruit was anchored in the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom, and Li Ling considered transforming the region with the Incense Path’s Conversion Power.

Li Ling used the Incense Accumulation Sect’s rituals to transform the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom and weaken Qi Xue’s ties to the land. After nearly a century of shifting its people’s memories and allegiance, Li Ling burned Ages Incense to make the kingdom’s inhabitants forget its former ruler, leaving Qi Xue’s fate uncertain.

• Li Ling proposed using the Ten Thousand Directions Kingdom to pressure Qi Xue, and the Heavenly Court mobilized forces to support the plan.
• Incense Accumulation Sect disciples fed wild ghosts with spirit incense, helping them develop while gradually changing the kingdom’s land and inhabitants.
• Qi Xue realized Li Ling was using the native people and the land’s fortune to replace his influence, but the Netherworld Sect could offer him little support.
• Over nearly a hundred years, Li Ling’s strategy shifted the kingdom’s karma and fortune, and most of its new generation forgot Qi Xue and the land’s former history.
• Li Ling burned Ages Incense, causing a golden book of history to appear in living beings’ minds before their memories blurred and they fell into a lingering dream.

Qi Xue and six other Demonic Path cultivators entered the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom to stop Li Ling’s reality-altering power, only to discover that his golden incense dreamscape was rewriting the world through time. The Nether King Palace Master identified the technique as the Spring and Autumn Great Dream Art, and the group realized they had to travel farther into the past to reach its source.

• Qi Xue left the Nether King Palace for the Pure Land, and the Nether King Palace Master gathered six other powerful cultivators to accompany him.
• The group entered the golden dreamscape and found that incense essence was transforming the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom and clinging to their bodies.
• At the Ten Thousand Yin Cavern, Qi Xue sensed that his origin power and deathless Dao fruit had vanished, while the Great Xie Ghost God’s attacks only revealed deeper layers of illusion.
• The cultivators passed through thirty-three layers of the dreamscape, each showing an earlier state of the landscape, until Qi Xue sensed the ghost kingdom’s earth-vein origin again.
• The Nether King Palace Master concluded that Li Ling’s Spring and Autumn Great Dream Art was shifting the dreamscape into the past and rewriting reality downstream, so the group would have to pursue its source farther upstream in time.

The Nether King Palace Master and the demonic cultivators tracked Li Ling’s incense through a dreamscape flowing backward along the River of Time, while Li Ling prepared to divide and trap them. He revealed that his incense had been burning in the present all along, and unleashed a technique that filled the dreamscape with the wills of countless beings.

• The Nether King Palace Master led the demonic cultivators deeper into the temporal dreamscape, where Qi Xue identified a meteorite pit from ten thousand years earlier.
• The Nether King Palace Master realized their bodies had become immaterial within Li Ling’s dreamscape, and Meng Chu sent out more than thirty substitute death ghosts to scout its tributaries.
• Li Ling told Star Lord Sichen Yuan Guang and Star Lord Jiuyào Zhenhui to leave and attack the Netherworld Soil while he prepared to hold the demonic cultivators back.
• Li Ling gathered the Star Divine General, Venerable Xiaoyao, Bin Yuansheng, Fu Sima, and other Orthodox Path experts to help separate the approaching intruders.
• Li Ling revealed that Ages Incense had originated in the present and was driving their projections backward through time, then invoked a power that filled the dreamscape with countless spirits.

Li Ling burned his finger to spread the Incense Path’s wisdom through the Netherworld Pure Land’s history, awakening its ghosts and clearing the karmic suffering that polluted the realm. When the demonic-path pursuers arrived, he crushed Qi Xue and began absorbing his earth-vein origin, while his wisdom dharma body took root on a lotus-shaped altar and started turning to stone.

• Li Ling’s finger-burning almsgiving illuminated the Netherworld Pure Land’s history, revealing the ghosts’ torments and awakening them to human feelings and wisdom.
• His incense power flowed backward to the era’s beginning and spread through other tributaries, kindling sparks of spiritual awakening and driving away the karmic force shrouding the broken history.
• Qi Xue, the Nether King Palace Master, Gao Xuan, Meng Chu, and the other demonic-path figures arrived, and Venerable Xiaoyao’s group split them among nearby tributaries.
• Li Ling struck Qi Xue with the power gathered from the awakened living beings and pinned his original Nether Mountain form beneath his enormous wisdom dharma body.
• Qi Xue’s status and earth-vein origin collapsed, and Li Ling’s dharma body received the origin before settling on a new lotus-shaped altar and beginning to turn to stone.

Li Ling suppressed Qi Xue in the distant past, seized the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom’s earth-vein origin, and trapped the Demonic Path cultivators in a spatial formation. As the battle turned against them, the Nether King Palace Master glimpsed a stone Buddha’s peak deathless aura behind Li Ling, and his expression changed in horror.

• Li Ling withdrew his temporal spell after suppressing Qi Xue and becoming the new master of the Pure Land through its earth-vein origin.
• The Nether King Palace Master and the Demonic Path cultivators fled the collapsing past, then realized Li Ling’s new earth immortal authority still blocked their escape.
• Memories and records of Qi Xue faded throughout the Ten-Thousand Regions Ghost Kingdom, confirming that the reversal of cause and effect had worked.
• Li Ling activated a grand array that used gravity and earth veins to restrain the Demonic Path cultivators, while Venerable Xiaoyao and the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions attacked.
• Two rogue cultivators were buried by the earth veins after failing to escape, while the Nether King Palace Master and others broke free of the pull.
• The Nether King Palace Master saw the phantom of a stone Buddha behind Li Ling and recognized its peak deathless realm aura.

Li Ling manifested his Wisdom Dharma Body as the Pure Land Great Incense Buddha and used its overwhelming power to drive off the Nether King Palace Master. The Orthodox Path captured the Great Xie Ghost God, while Gao Xuan and Meng Chu escaped using substitute death ghosts.

• The Nether King Palace Master recognized the Stone Buddha’s power and drew on his true body’s strength to retreat.
• Li Ling revealed the Pure Land Great Incense Buddha and struck the Nether King Palace Master with a torrent of palm imprints, forcing him to flee injured behind the Ghost-Faced Gate.
• Venerable Xiaoyao and the Orthodox Path experts attacked the remaining Demonic Path cultivators while Li Ling recovered.
• Gao Xuan and Meng Chu evaded capture when their substitute death ghosts exploded, injuring nearby Star Divine Generals.
• The Great Xie Ghost God surrendered and declared that he would abandon darkness and turn toward the light.