Chapter Summaries

Jin Si returned to the Cliffside Lair and resumed tending the Medicine Field and guarding the Library Pavilion, then visited Lin Wei to ask about a flood dragon blamed for a deadly flash flood. Lin Wei reported growing unrest among evil spirits and warned Jin Si that he might soon be asked to act, especially since punishing villains could benefit his cultivation.

• Jin Si told Red Clothes that he feared a powerful old Daoist with a sword and would not kill people without cause.
• Jin Si carefully weeded the Medicine Field, then went to guard the Library Pavilion and reflected on his need to study.
• Jin Si noticed his soft spines wasted strength while flying and tried to approach a white crane for advice, but it fled.
• Jin Si visited Lin Wei and asked whether she had heard that a flood dragon had caused a flash flood that killed more than forty villagers.
• Lin Wei sent a paper crane to seek information and told Jin Si that evil spirits were disrupting Azure Cloud Temple and causing unrest across the realms.
• Lin Wei warned that the mountain might soon need Jin Si's help and said punishing villains could aid his cultivation, making him consider getting involved.

Lin Wei warned Jin Si that a false Flood Dragon Crossing rumor was meant to lure him into a trap, and Jin Si decided to stay hidden. Back at his lair, Xiao Yu demonstrated her flight and returned with a white crane feather, which the three friends inspected.

• Lin Wei told Jin Si that the Flood Dragon Crossing story had appeared only recently and was likely spread to damage his reputation and lure him into the open.
• Lin Wei warned Jin Si to conceal his aura and remain at the school or Medicine King Temple, and Jin Si agreed to avoid the rivers.
• Jin Si asked Lin Wei how he had turned his Yin Spirit into a Yang Spirit and told her to bask in the sun and worry more.
• Jin Si saw injured Daoists and a gray wolf at the noticeboard but restrained himself from intervening while his own enemies were pursuing him.
• Jin Si asked Xiao Yu why she was good at flying, and she answered that it was because of her feathers.
• Xiao Yu flew to the Mountain Gate and returned with a white crane feather she had found on the ground, which Jin Si and Red Clothes examined with her.

Jin Si prepared to reach the Medicine King Temple before dawn, while a flashback showed two siblings whose parents had died in a flood caused by his tribulation. The brother agreed to train with an old man and seek revenge on Jin Si, leaving his sister terrified as the old man’s golden apparitions revealed their malice.

• Red Clothes advised Jin Si to grow fine hairs between the soft spines on his back and tail, and he tried to cultivate them while guarding the Library Pavilion.
• A girl woke to find her brother gone and ran to him at the mound where their parents and half the village lay buried.
• The brother vowed to kill the flood dragon after learning that its tribulation had caused the flood that killed their parents.
• The old man persuaded the brother that he could avenge his parents within two or three years, and the brother agreed to go with him despite his sister’s pleas.
• The old man summoned two towering golden apparitions, and the villagers knelt while the girl recognized cold malice in their eyes.
• At the beginning of the hour of the Rabbit, Jin Si prepared water and incense at the Medicine King Temple, then left for the city.

Jin Si followed his quiet routine through late autumn, then sensed danger at the Opera Garden and left before a fire broke out there. From the mountain, he watched the theater burn and wondered why no powerful beings intervened before falling asleep.

• Jin Si noticed a classmate whose gloomy appearance seemed to foretell a death in the family, then returned to his lessons.
• Jin Si continued his daily routine of studying, catching rats, watching plays, and sleeping on the mountain as late autumn made him drowsy.
• Jin Si felt uneasy at the crowded Opera Garden, saw visions of scorched faces, and left for the mountain.
• An unattended stove toppled backstage, and flames spread through the Opera Garden while the performance drowned out the warning signs.
• The steward discovered the fire, and the panicked audience surged toward the doors, crushing the attendants as they tried to open them.
• Jin Si watched the distant theater burn, wondered why no powerful being intervened, and eventually fell asleep on the mountain.

After surveying the ruins of Opera Garden’s fire, Jin Si received Lin Wei’s order to escort an accomplished cultivator to Pillowstar Mountain. He recruited Xiao Yu and Red Robe and traveled with Xiao Yu through the Spirit Realm to the Mortal Realm, leaving Red Robe behind until nightfall.

• Jin Si saw the devastation and grieving survivors at Opera Garden, then noticed that the child whose appearance had foretold mourning was absent from school.
• Lin Wei sent Jin Si a paper-crane message assigning him to escort an accomplished cultivator and warning that beings with karmic debts might interfere.
• Jin Si decided to bring Xiao Yu and Red Robe along, hoping the escort mission would earn unseen benefits.
• Jin Si, Xiao Yu, and Red Robe agreed to travel through the Spirit Realm toward the pickup location.
• Jin Si and Xiao Yu crossed into a secluded valley in the Mortal Realm, while Red Robe stayed in the Spirit Realm until nightfall.

Jin Si reached the secluded terrace where the Pillowstar Mountain Daoists and Spirit Beasts were gathered, hoping to collect them and return to school by morning. He found them hosting a tearful reunion between a woman and her younger brother, and worried that their evening meal would delay his return.

• Jin Si crossed the rugged mountains and discovered several people living in seclusion, but none were cultivators.
• Jin Si spotted the Cloud Ladder and used the Spirit Realm to reach the hidden terrace, where he found the five Daoists and their Spirit Beasts.
• A man begged his elder sister to stay, but she explained that she had to leave because cultivation in the human world was becoming difficult.
• The woman invited her brother to stay the night and cooked the bean porridge he loved while the Daoists left them alone together.
• Jin Si waited anxiously on the ridge, concerned that the delay would make him late for morning reading at school.

Jin Si watched a woman's tribulation draw uncanny creatures to the mountain terrace while the Daoists and their spirit beasts fought to protect her. Red Clothes joined the battle, and a torrential rain began as the creatures retreated.

• Jin Si, Xiao Yu, and Red Clothes sheltered in a ridge crevice while uncanny creatures climbed toward the terrace.
• The five Daoists and their Path-Guarding Spirit Beasts defended the woman, but the attackers learned their tactics and began overwhelming them.
• A gray shadow slipped past the spirit beasts, and the young martial artist killed it with his saber before joining the fight.
• Red Clothes revealed her blood-red longsword and went to the terrace after Jin Si warned her to return when it rained.
• Red Clothes slaughtered the uncanny creatures with her sword as the defense faltered, then a torrential downpour began and the creatures retreated.

During the fog after the storm, Jin Si discovered that resentful yin souls were pressuring the woman to help them and then rushed to stop a creature from attacking her. The chapter ended with the Black Flood Dragon striking the creature into the cliff.

• After the rain stopped, a young martial artist glimpsed a scaled shadow in the fog, and the Daoists identified it as the Black Flood Dragon, Pillowstar Mountain's guardian spirit beast.
• Jin Si used thunder force to hinder yin souls and uncanny creatures trying to cross the Yin-Yang Boundary Wall.
• The woman entered a gray realm and refused the resentful dignitaries' demand that she lead them out of the sea of suffering and onto the path of immortality.
• Jin Si entered the Underworld, learned the yin souls were exploiting old grievances to target the woman's breakthrough, and told Hongyi to wait for her choice.
• When Xiaoyu warned that something was coming, Jin Si returned to his body and charged through the fog as a creature lunged at the woman.
• The Daoists' protective formation briefly stopped the creature, allowing Jin Si to slam it into the cliff.

Jin Si and Xiao Yu fought a mysterious Strange Man who used powerful spells, but they stopped pursuing him after he fled into the mist. After returning to the cliff, Jin Si learned that Red Robe had settled the troubles surrounding the woman and resumed guarding her until dawn.

• Jin Si rammed the Strange Man into a cliff and fought him, while Xiao Yu wounded him and helped drive him over the edge.
• Jin Si and Xiao Yu pursued the Strange Man down the cliff until Jin Si judged the danger too great and let him escape into the mist.
• Jin Si admitted that he had charged in without thinking, and Xiao Yu reminded him that she had warned him about the threat while staying by his body.
• Red Robe returned and told Jin Si that she had settled the woman's troubles with the dead, then went to meet the world spirit before sunrise.
• Jin Si resumed patrolling the misty clearing to protect the woman as dawn approached.

A woman left the Mortal Realm with five Daoists and entered Pillowstar Mountain to begin cultivating, while Jin Si escorted her through the Spirit Realm and received a small reward when she crossed the mountain gate. Jin Si returned to the Medicine King Temple, where Daoist Jiang arranged an excuse for his absence from the Village School.

• The woman said farewell to her brother and followed the five Daoists up the Cloud Road as recluses below mistook their departure for an ascension to immortality.
• Jin Si and Xiao Yu entered the Spirit Realm during the mist tide, and the party sailed across the Mist Sea toward Pillowstar Mountain.
• Jin Si kept watch for danger as hostile cultivators and demon beasts avoided the procession, and the party reached Pillowstar Mountain safely.
• Jin Si waited while the woman climbed the stone stairs and crossed the mountain gate, then sensed a small benefit descend upon him, Xiao Yu, and Red Robe.
• Jin Si returned to the Mortal Realm and the Medicine King Temple, where Daoist Jiang gave him a letter to explain his absence from the Village School.

At school, Jin Si made a crude evil-warding peach pit and sold it to a frightened pupil for fifty coins. On his way back, he passed the burned Opera Garden, then returned to the Medicine King Temple and went to his mountain cave, where his half-flood-dragon form emerged beneath the full moon.

• Jin Si heard pupils dismiss stories of flood dragon crossings as ordinary rumors, then learned that the Opera Garden was said to be haunted after a fire.
• A frightened boy offered Jin Si fifty coins for a talisman or Peachwood Sword, and Jin Si agreed to provide an evil-warding treasure.
• Jin Si took peach pits from a nearby tree and infused one with a faint thread of spirit power.
• Jin Si sold the successful peach pit to the boy for fifty coins and walked through town, searching for what the old temple master had said he lacked.
• Jin Si passed the charred ruins of the Opera Garden and returned to the Medicine King Temple, where Daoist Jiang told him to visit the General Store the next day on Wu Day.
• Jin Si went to the mountain cave, returned to his original body, and gazed at the full moon in his half-flood-dragon form.

Jin Si learned that the creature he had fought was an Eerie, asked about warding objects, and shared the warning with Little Feather and Red Robe. After tending his Medicine Field and settling in at the library, he noticed the woman he had helped approach, apparently intending to thank him.

• Jin Si visited the General Store, where Daoist Li identified the creature as an Eerie and explained how dangerous and unpredictable they could be.
• Jin Si asked whether Eeries could be eaten, then learned where to make warding objects and discovered that a peach pit he had sold cheaply might have been worth much more.
• Jin Si told Little Feather and Red Robe what he had learned about Eeries.
• Jin Si tended the Medicine Field and went to sleep on the library roof.
• The woman he had helped arrived at the library, recognized Jin Si as the black flood dragon who had driven off the Eerie, and stood below him to offer thanks.

Jin Si continued his studies and duties as winter arrived, then intervened when a beggar and two kidnappers tried to abduct him. He freed a bound girl from their courtyard and left the kidnappers incapacitated.

• Wang Ying thanked Jin Si for saving her, and he let her browse the Library Pavilion’s books.
• Jin Si resumed his daily routine as the Opera Garden haunting worsened and pilgrims flocked to the Medicine King Temple for Peace Talismans.
• As snow began to fall, Jin Si reflected on the importance of learning and gave a copper coin to a shivering little beggar.
• The little beggar identified Jin Si to two idlers, who revealed themselves as kidnappers and tried to seize him.
• Jin Si incapacitated the two idlers and the beggar, took their valuables, and freed a bound girl from a sack in a nearby courtyard.

Jin Si rescued a freezing girl and carried her to the Medicine King Temple after feeding her noodle soup. Daoist Jiang welcomed her and gave her a warm place to sleep, while Jin Si returned to his burrow.

• Jin Si found the girl unconscious in the courtyard, sensed hazy images of her past, and carried her away after warming her with Yang Essence.
• Jin Si brought the girl to an eatery, bought her noodle soup, and asked whether she knew him, but she shook her head.
• Jin Si carried the girl over the city wall to the Medicine King Temple and knocked at the gate.
• Daoist Jiang welcomed the girl, helped her wash, and prepared clean clothes and bedding.
• The girl fell asleep in Daoist Jiang's room after he comforted her, while Jin Si went to his burrow and slept.

Jin Si received Lin Wei’s request to hunt an exotic beast that had killed over a hundred people and injured several Daoists. After reaching the mountain pass, he decided to investigate the wounded lion-like creature alone and began sneaking toward its cave.

• Jin Si left the Village School for the New Year holiday and traveled through the snow to the Medicine King Temple, where he saw a family frozen and starved to death.
• Jin Si received a letter from Lin Wei asking him to subdue an exotic beast six hundred li northeast, and he immediately set out with Little Feather.
• Daoist Jiang reassured Huang Xing that she could stay at the temple, while Huang Xing said she hoped to remain there after finding her brother.
• Jin Si found Lin Wei and six other injured Daoists at a mountain god temple, where they told him a lion-like beast had eaten over a hundred people and was hiding in a cave nearby.
• Jin Si chose not to join the Daoists in an attack and approached the cave alone while Little Feather circled overhead to draw the beast’s attention.

Jin Si set an ambush beneath the ice to attack a powerful lion, hoping the fight would bring him a benefit that advanced his growth and cultivation. As Little Feather and the Daoists drove the lion toward him, Jin Si burst from the river and sank his fangs into its abdomen, injecting venom.

• Jin Si judged the wounded lion to be about his equal and planned an ambush rather than fight it head-on.
• Jin Si discussed the plan with Lin Wei, then hid beneath the ice at a bend beside the valley road.
• Lin Wei and the other Daoists, the bear demon, and Little Feather drove the lion through the mist toward Jin Si's hiding place.
• Little Feather forced the lion onto the riverside road, where it noticed the ice breaking beneath it.
• Jin Si burst through the ice, bit the lion in the abdomen near its hind leg, and pumped venom into it.

Jin Si pursued the venom-poisoned lion into the mountains and forced it into a deadly struggle down a steep slope. As the fight continued, he sensed a faint trace of pale golden psychic power within the lion.

• Jin Si's venomous ambush and the Five-Colored Demon Bird's attack drove the lion to flee while the Daoists followed.
• The lion roared to summon help and plunged into the mountain forest, but the venom weakened its hind legs as Jin Si tracked it alone.
• Jin Si used his knowledge of the terrain to circle around a boulder and ambush the lion at the ridge, sending them tumbling down the steep slope.
• Jin Si and the lion fought viciously among rocks and trees, each biting and clawing at the other.
• Jin Si noticed a faint trace of pale golden psychic power alongside the lion's metal-affinity demonic qi.

Jin Si and the Daoists killed Lion, and Jin Si devoured much of its body before escaping into the Spirit Realm. Two powerful strangers arrived and claimed to have hunted Lion for years, then left after Lin Wei burned its remains; Jin Si later rejoined the group, and he and Xiao Yu hid away from Pillow Star Mountain until the next morning.

• Lion hurled Jin Si through the snow, but Xiao Yu's cry dazed it and Jin Si's venomous mist gave him the opening to coil around and crush it.
• Lion's Demonic Soul fled, but the Daoists attacked it with talismans and weapons until Jin Si's white mist scattered it.
• Jin Si ate most of Lion's flesh, then entered the Spirit Realm when Xiao Yu warned that someone was approaching.
• Two Yang Spirit-like strangers arrived and claimed they had hunted Lion for more than three years, but Lin Wei burned the remains and they departed.
• Jin Si secretly guarded the area, then rejoined the Daoists and hid with Xiao Yu away from Pillow Star Mountain until the next morning.

Jin Si searched the Library Pavilion for practical cultivation texts and asked Wang Ying to teach him how to fly. After she explained Cloud-Riding and Mist-Driving, he began practicing by condensing and shaping mist.

• Jin Si returned to Pillow Star Mountain, found that his medicinal herbs were not mature enough to harvest, and went to the Library Pavilion to seek something useful to study.
• Jin Si found the Transformation Art and read about yin-spirit transformations, then searched for a book about flight.
• A Daoist selected a suitable flight manual for Jin Si, who borrowed it and decided to ask Wang Ying for help understanding it.
• Jin Si traveled to Wang Ying's Cave Abode and asked her to teach him how to fly.
• Wang Ying explained that the manual taught primordial-spirit flight and began instructing Jin Si in Cloud-Riding and Mist-Driving.
• Jin Si condensed white mist and practiced gathering and shaping it.

Jin Si learned wind-riding and levitation, then remembered Wang Ying’s instruction to practice writing and went to a secluded valley to do so. In the mortal world, Daoist Jiang warned Huang Xing against donating to a river-quelling project, while the Jiang household quietly disrupted the project’s preparations.

• Jin Si decided Cloud-Riding and Mist-Driving was too slow for combat, so Wang Ying taught him wind-riding and levitation, which he practiced until he could hover steadily.
• Daoist Jiang took Huang Xing to town, where they saw people collecting donations to quell a supposed evil Flood Dragon; he led her away and said the river held no Flood Dragon.
• The Jiang household received a reply from Pillow Star Mountain and cut down willows along the river, forcing the river-quelling planners to redo their measurements; later, villagers clearing irrigation channels disrupted their work again.
• Jin Si remembered he had forgotten to practice writing, left a message at the mountain gate, and traveled to the mortal world.
• Jin Si used his claw to write the Thousand Character Classic in the snow in a secluded valley.