Chapter Summaries

Lin Ke killed a Stone Monster and fought a Mountain Monster impersonating Shi Yi, using the battle to sharpen his physical arts and develop Daoist intent. Just as he moved to kill the Mountain Monster, a beam of golden light enveloped it and someone called for him to wait.

• Lin Ke questioned the Stone Monster about its intelligence and lord, then killed it with the Golden Toad Swallows the Sun Art.
• Lin Ke suspected Shi Yi had entered the Dao Heir Trial to target him, then confronted the approaching Mountain Monster.
• Lin Ke and the Mountain Monster exchanged blows, and Lin Ke used the fight to practice his physical arts and pursue Daoist intent.
• The Mountain Monster broke away from the close-quarters fight and activated the Golden Light Mantra, while Lin Ke accused it of being a fake Shi Yi.
• Lin Ke attacked the Mountain Monster again after deciding to draw out its hidden mastermind, but a thick shaft of golden light surrounded it as someone shouted for him to wait.

Lin Ke fought Daoist Zhi He, who had been manipulating the fake Shi Yi, and recognized him as a practitioner of the Heavenly Dao Branch. As Zhi He summoned black wind, Lin Ke unleashed the Azure Sun Demon-Slaying Sword Art, leaving their battle poised to escalate.

• Lin Ke questioned Daoist Zhi He, who introduced himself and attacked with his Grass Ruyi after learning Lin Ke was a rogue cultivator.
• Lin Ke caught Zhi He's roots with the Green Python Strangling Art and repeatedly chopped at them with his fire-infused hand strike.
• Daoist Zhi He ordered the fake Shi Yi to attack Lin Ke and summoned dark wind from his Glazed Glass Bottle.
• Lin Ke identified Zhi He as a follower of the Heavenly Dao Branch and wondered why he was impersonating Shi Yi.
• Lin Ke formed sword intent and used Azure Sun Demon-Slaying to strike at Zhi He's Jade Ruyi.

Lin Ke defeated Daoist Zhi He, exposed his disguise and discovered he had fallen into the Demonic Dao. Daoist Zhi He revealed that he sought revenge on his father for selling him and his sister and murdering their mother.

• Lin Ke countered Daoist Zhi He's wind and ice attacks with Azure Sun Sword Intent, then shattered his golden core despite the Samadhi True Fire.
• Lin Ke chased down Daoist Zhi He, beat him, and forced him to reveal that he was a plump young man in disguise.
• Lin Ke recognized Daoist Zhi He as the Yaochi Saintess's younger brother and told him to call him Chen An.
• Lin Ke identified the demonic aura within Daoist Zhi He, whose Daoist intent transformed into demonic aura.
• Daoist Zhi He explained that his father had sold him and his sister to the Daoist School and secretly murdered his mother, and vowed to avenge her.

Lin Ke and Daoist Zhi He discussed the Demonic Dao and discovered that Shi Yi’s Enlightener, possibly Lin Xuanji’s Fortune-Teller, was behind the trouble. They joined Daipan above the secret realm to observe the fighting while Daoist Zhi He began revealing what he knew about Lin Xuanji.

• Lin Ke agreed that Daoist Zhi He’s father deserved to die and learned that Zhi He’s sister had given him his Demonic Cultivation Art.
• Daoist Zhi He told Lin Ke that someone connected to Lin Xuanji was behind Shi Yi, and Lin Ke identified Shi Yi’s Enlightener as the likely culprit.
• Daoist Zhi He admitted that he had made enemies in Shi Yi’s name while clearing his own path to becoming Dao Heir.
• Lin Ke met Daipan, the fake Shi Yi, and agreed to watch the secret realm’s fighting with Daoist Zhi He from a concealing Spirit-Transforming Cloud.
• Daoist Zhi He began explaining that Lin Xuanji had reached the late stage of the gentleman realm and had twenty-three doppelgangers.

Lin Ke learned that Lin Xuanji had many doppelgangers and suspected they were behind several strange incidents. Daoist Zhi He realized he might have awakened Shi Yi under Lin Xuanji’s influence, then declared that he was no longer himself.

• Daoist Zhi He told Lin Ke that Lin Xuanji had twenty-three doppelgangers and had committed terrible crimes, including killing his mother.
• Lin Ke connected Lin Xuanji’s doppelgangers to past incidents involving demons and spirits and worried that someone had been watching him.
• Daoist Zhi He explained that he had found and destroyed a recently made Lin Xuanji doppelganger after tracking him in the North Pole Jueyi Domain.
• Daoist Zhi He realized that Lin Xuanji might have guided him to Shi Yi and that he himself had awakened Shi Yi.
• A demonic aura erupted from Daoist Zhi He as he knelt on the cloud and said he was no longer himself.

Daoist Zhi He revealed that he was Feng He and Lin Ke’s brother, Lin Zhi, whose hidden soul had spent years plotting against Lin Xuanji. Lin Zhi warned that Lin Xuanji planned to overthrow Great Wei by destroying the Daoist and Buddhist Schools’ next generations, then asked Lin Ke to kill him before Lin Xuanji could use him.

• Daoist Zhi He revealed that he was Feng He and Lin Ke’s brother, Lin Zhi, sharing a body with Feng He as two souls in one fetus.
• Lin Ke pursued Shi Yi and watched him overpower a Daoist School disciple with brute strength.
• Lin Zhi explained that he had hidden from Lin Xuanji and had conspired with Feng He to seek revenge.
• Lin Zhi told Lin Ke that Lin Xuanji planned to overthrow Great Wei by slaughtering the Daoist School’s Dao Heir Trial participants and targeting the Buddhist School’s heirs as well.
• Lin Zhi said Lin Xuanji would find and kill him, then asked Lin Ke to kill him first.

Lin Zhi revealed that Lin Xuanji had arranged unnatural deaths for his children, but Lin Ke urged him to defy fate and promised to change the outcome for the Daoist School disciples in the trial. Lin Ke leaped from the Spirit-Transforming Cloud to intervene in Shi Yi’s fight, leaving them locked in combat.

• Lin Zhi explained that he had divined how every one of Lin Xuanji’s children met an unnatural death, and that Lin Ke surviving past sixteen was a variable in their fates.
• Lin Zhi said he feared being unable to defy fate, but Lin Ke urged him to resist Lin Xuanji’s plans rather than accept death.
• Lin Ke proposed saving the exhausted Daoist School disciple and helping Lin Zhi break the deadly fate Lin Xuanji had woven for the trial’s participants.
• Lin Ke jumped from the Spirit-Transforming Cloud and challenged Shi Yi, telling him to escape Lin Xuanji’s cage of fate.

Lin Ke confronted Shi Yi, who revealed that he had become a demon monster by making the hollow left by mined ore his heart. Shi Yi’s power began tearing out human hearts, killing the wounded Daoist School youth as Lin Ke faced the attack.

• Lin Ke fought Shi Yi and urged him to resist Lin Xuanji, but Shi Yi pretended not to understand and tried to raise an alarm.
• Shi Yi transformed into a mountain, revealing the cave in his body as his heart and explaining how human excavation and cruelty shaped his demonic path.
• The Second Realm stone monster agreed with Shi Yi, while the wounded Daoist School youth took a position behind Lin Ke.
• Lin Ke challenged Shi Yi’s grievance, arguing that the Sage Emperor and the Sages had protected the ten thousand races and that Shi Yi’s suffering served his cultivation.
• Shi Yi roared at Lin Ke and unleashed a force that pulled the Daoist School youth’s heart from his chest, killing him.

Lin Ke battled Shi Yi, a fourth-realm Mountain Monster who had cultivated the Demonic Path, as Shi Yi revealed his alliance with the Jie Race and launched an attack on the Secret Realm. The Jie Ritualist took over a fifth-realm Daoist and unleashed monsters against the human cultivators, while Daoist Zhi He confronted Shi Yi about his master, Daipan.

• Lin Ke resisted the pull of Shi Yi’s cave and killed a second-realm Stone Monster before Shi Yi attacked him with a demonic phantom mountain range.
• Lin Ke and Shi Yi’s sword intents clashed, drawing cultivators’ attention as Stone Monsters appeared throughout the forest.
• Shi Yi announced a rebellion against the Human Race, and his Wooden Hairpin possessed the fifth-realm Daoist overseeing the Secret Realm.
• The possessed Daoist became the Jie Ritualist, who unleashed Ferocious Beasts and declared the Secret Realm would become a passage for the Jie Race’s invasion of the Divine Land.
• Shi Yi said he followed whoever had awakened him, and Daoist Zhi He asked whether he would follow his master, Daipan.

Daoist Zhi He emerged from the fusion of Feng He and Lin Zhi and prepared to fight the fifth-realm Jie cultivator, while Lin Ke confronted Shi Yi. Lin Ke rallied the Daoist School’s heavenly prodigies to battle the ferocious beasts, then clashed with Shi Yi again with neither gaining ground.

• Daoist Zhi He told Lin Ke that he and Feng He had become one, then offered to handle the fifth-realm enemy in the sky.
• Lin Ke used his sword and verses to kill more than a hundred ferocious beasts and drew several hundred heavenly prodigies to follow him.
• Lin Ke identified himself as the preselected Dao Heir and asked the heavenly prodigies to keep his sword intent and Confucian thought secret.
• The heavenly prodigies accepted Lin Ke’s request and fought the surrounding beasts, allowing him to focus on Shi Yi.
• Lin Ke charged Shi Yi, and their next collision ended with both still standing and their intents evenly matched.

Lin Ke fought Shi Yi while probing his insecurities and testing the Nine-Twist Fallen Dragon Intent against Shi Yi’s hidden penetrating force. As the battle continued and Daoist Zhi He gained the upper hand against the Jie Race expert, Lin Ke abandoned his protective technique to refine his intent in direct combat with Shi Yi.

• Lin Ke attacked Shi Yi with varied Martial Path techniques and taunted him about his defensive strengths, his loyalty to Lin Xuanji, and his motives.
• Shi Yi grew furious at Lin Ke’s verbal barrage and invoked Confucius while demanding that he stop talking.
• The Daoist School’s Heavenly Prodigies fought off Ferocious Beasts as Daoist Zhi He used the Glazed Glass Bottle and Lin Zhi’s whip intent to pressure the Jie Race expert.
• Shi Yi struck through Lin Ke’s Ode to the Humble Abode with a hidden penetrating force, but Lin Ke twisted aside using the Nine-Twist Fallen Dragon Intent.
• Lin Ke dropped his protective technique and began fighting Shi Yi using the Nine-Twist Fallen Dragon Intent as his core.

Shi Yi unleashed a Confucian Tongue-and-Sword attack that interrupted Lin Ke's attempt to perfect his movement intent, but Lin Ke answered with a poem that manifested a great sun and stopped the stone chisel. Lin Ke's doppelganger also triggered a vast crimson sky over Jiangyang Prefecture, and the chapter ended with the chisel halted just short of Lin Ke's brow.

• As Lin Ke honed his nine-twist fallen dragon intent under Shi Yi's attacks, Shi Yi's true body launched a stone chisel and empowered it with poems and other Confucian writings.
• Shi Yi's attack broke through Lin Ke's Ode to the Humble Abode protection and interrupted his breakthrough, drawing the attention of other heavenly prodigies and two watchers overhead.
• Lin Ke opened his eyes as a round, bloodred sun appeared behind his head.
• Lin Ke's doppelganger, disguised as a loach fisherman near Azureglow Mountain, projected a picture frame that turned the sky crimson across ten thousand li and drew inquiries from Confucian thinkers.
• Lin Ke recited a frontier poem, forming a great sun, tumbleweed, geese, a lone plume, and a river from literary qi.
• Lin Ke completed the poem, and the stone chisel stopped half a centimeter from his brow.

Lin Ke used four poems about the sun to overpower Shi Yi and expose his true body. Shi Yi was subdued, leaving Lin Ke poised to capture him and learn his connection to Lin Xuanji.

• Lin Ke's first poem produced the Ten-Thousand-Li Chant Manifestation, but it failed to stop Shi Yi's attack.
• Lin Ke recited more poems, creating a rising sun and dawn Manifestations that clashed with Shi Yi's power.
• Shi Yi tried to counterattack with poetry, but Lin Ke summoned another sun Manifestation and restrained him with fiery petals.
• Lin Ke's four sun poems melted Shi Yi's Demonic Aura and outer mountain body, revealing a half-mined lump of iron ore as his true body.

Lin Ke defeated Shi Yi with four great-sun poems, then intercepted a drop of Jie blood after striking the Jie expert. With Daoist Zhi He losing ground against the late fifth-realm Jie High Priest and poetry no longer an option, Lin Ke turned to dealing with the Ferocious Beasts.

• Lin Ke stopped Shi Yi's heart with his great-sun poems, collected it, and realized the manifestations were still gathering power in the sky.
• The Jie expert attacked Lin Ke with an enormous hand, but Lin Ke's sword strike wounded him and gave Daoist Zhi He an opening.
• Lin Ke drank several bottles of pills, rose despite his injuries, and intercepted the Jie blood before it returned to the Jie expert.
• Lin Ke saw Daoist Zhi He falling behind as the Jie expert's strength grew, and concluded that poetry could not overcome the gap.
• Lin Ke decided to deal with the Ferocious Beasts first.

Lin Ke reasoned that the Jie Race’s power combined physical and soul force, and that the race’s expert controlled the secret realm’s ferocious beasts. Unable to break the realm’s restriction by force, Lin Ke used the Reformer School’s abilities to study Jie power while Daoist Zhi He and the heavenly prodigies continued fighting.

• Lin Ke decided the heavenly prodigies could handle the ferocious beasts while he focused on the Jie expert controlling them.
• Lin Ke analyzed the character “Jie” and concluded that the Jie Race followed a narrow, forceful martial path tied to the body and possibly souls.
• Lin Ke flew to the secret realm’s original exit and discovered a restriction made from fused soul power and the power of flesh and blood.
• Lin Ke found that his ordinary power could not break the restriction, which required power at the fifth realm or higher.
• Lin Ke used Essence-taking and Induction to study the Jie Race’s power while Daoist Zhi He fought the Jie expert and the heavenly prodigies slew ferocious beasts.

Lin Ke tried to understand the fifth-realm barrier by reciting Zhu Xi's poem, while a Jie Race expert attacked him before he could finish. As Lin Ke struggled to gather enough literary qi for the final lines, the Heavenly Prodigies took turns delaying the attacker.

• Lin Ke found that he could not fully analyze the barrier without first breaking it, so he began reciting a poem about a square pond.
• The Heavenly Prodigies heard Lin Ke's verses and praised them as literary qi filled the Secret Realm.
• The Jie Race expert blasted Daoist Zhi He into a mountain and reached for Lin Ke as Lin Ke struggled to replenish his literary qi.
• The Sword Cultivator Heavenly Prodigy and the drowsy Daoist youth each delayed the Jie Race expert's attack, but both were driven back.
• A Heavenly Prodigy who cultivated the Confucian Path and the Daoist path declared that the Human Prodigies had mistaken themselves for Heavenly Prodigies until they met Lin Ke.

Lin Ke used “Reflections on Reading” to replenish the Daoist School’s Heavenly Prodigies, break the Secret Realm’s restrictions, and reveal his righteous Confucian thought. He exposed the Jie Tribesman to Weiyang City’s lord, who joined Daoist Zhi He in attacking the intruder.

• Lin Ke recited “Reflections on Reading,” using its manifestation to restrain the Jie expert and flood the Secret Realm with literary qi.
• The Daoist School’s Heavenly Prodigies recovered their strength, and Lin Ke transformed his power of reform into Jie power to break the restrictions.
• Lin Ke’s righteous Confucian thought spread beyond the Secret Realm, and he warned Weiyang City’s lord that a Jie Tribesman had appeared in the Dao Heir Trial.
• Weiyang City’s lord arrived on a white lion, recognized the Jie expert, and joined Daoist Zhi He in attacking him with a golden dragon formed from a wooden fish.
• The Jie expert was driven onto the defensive but kept his eyes fixed on Lin Ke.

Lin Ke entered enlightenment after learning Jie Power and broke through from the Third Realm to the Fourth Realm as a Scholar. Meanwhile, Kemi and Daoist Zhi He captured the Jie Race expert’s soul and freed True Person Yubu, who credited Lin Ke with helping foil the Jie Race’s scheme.

• Lin Ke’s poem sparked blood renewal as he entered enlightenment, and the Daoist School’s Heavenly Prodigies realized he was approaching the Fourth Realm.
• Kemi struck the Jie Race expert and, with Daoist Zhi He’s help, extracted and sealed his soul.
• The original body’s owner, True Person Yubu, returned to life and thanked Lin Ke for helping stop the Jie Race’s scheme.
• Kemi noticed Lin Ke’s blood merging with his soul, and Daoist Zhi He defended the unusual process.
• Lin Ke’s aura surged as he broke through to the Fourth Realm, becoming a Scholar.

After Lin Ke helped win the battle, he secured the Dao Heir title and went into hiding with Daoist Zhi He to search for Lin Xuanji’s Doppelganger. He then learned that he could skip the earlier literary examinations and proceed directly to the Bookman Examination.

• Lin Ke credited the victory to everyone and promised to request rewards for the other Heavenly Prodigies.
• Lin Ke declined City Lord Kemi’s offer to return to the capital, explaining that Daoist Zhi He was a covert agent of the Great Wilderness Council.
• Lin Ke competed in the arena matches in Weiyang City and claimed the title of Dao Heir.
• Lin Ke went into hiding with Daoist Zhi He to seek Lin Xuanji’s Doppelganger.
• A Rites Department representative told Lin Ke that thirty candidates could receive Literary Qi rewards from the earlier examinations and sit the Bookman Examination directly.

Lin Ke learned he could advance directly to the Literary Examination, then continued reading in search of the true heart needed to form a literary heart. After Xi He reported on the Newspaper Office’s need for trained journalists, Lin Ke realized Great Wilderness University needed practical teachers and considered becoming one himself.

• A Rites Department official told Lin Ke he could receive a place directly in the Literary Examination, while places in the other examinations would be allocated to give candidates more chances.
• Lin Xiaoya told Lin Ke she was nearing the secret treasure level and read beside him as he searched books for insight into his true heart.
• Lin Ke continued reading but gained no understanding of how to form a literary heart.
• Xi He reported that matters concerning the Great Wilderness Council had been handled and described the Newspaper Office’s plans to promote terminals.
• Xi He suggested that Great Wilderness University establish a journalism program because reporters’ abilities varied widely.
• Lin Ke realized Great Wilderness University lacked teachers for practical courses and thought that he could teach.