Chapter Summaries

Su Jiu saved a young man in the Spiritless Land and learned that he and Moglis were Bell People from Bell City. Meanwhile, Ning Fan and Feng Qi dealt with the Soulguiding Sect’s spirit-draining stone vein, and Ning Fan returned to the Azure Tide Sect after he could not reach Su Jiu.

• Su Jiu injured herself while rescuing the young man, then asked Moglis where they were and why there was no spiritual qi; Moglis explained that they were in the Spiritless Land.
• Su Jiu learned that the men she had defeated were thugs, then carried her Junior Granduncle as she left with Moglis and the young man.
• Ning Fan met Feng Qi at the spirit-draining stone vein and learned that they had killed or captured the Soulguiding Sect members there.
• Ning Fan and Feng Qi recalled how the Soulguiding Sect had abandoned its disciples before, and Feng Qi expected the sect to abandon the captured disciples again.
• After Ning Fan’s daily Message Talismans to Su Jiu returned unanswered, Xia Jue ordered him back to the Azure Tide Sect.
• Feng Qi explained that destroying the spirit-draining stone vein would trigger an Explosive Array and unleash magma, while Xia Jue planned to use the vein to lure a powerful enemy.

Gu Ningyun sought help from Xia Jue to hunt down the Zhu Household, but he directed her toward other powers instead. In Bell City, Zabu learned about a clean oasis, then ran into Moglis and discovered she and Samo had found it.

• Gu Ningyun presented evidence against the Zhu Household, but Xia Jue refused to have the Enforcement Hall pursue its scattered members and hinted that she could approach other Azure Realm powers.
• Xia Jue consulted Ning Hai about the Soulguiding Sect, learned its supreme elder would not intervene, and sent Dark Division members to investigate.
• Zabu's parents argued after their family failed to find the supposed treasure, so Zabu left to search for water.
• Zabu saw a notice announcing an uncontaminated oasis with enough water to supply Bell City and hurried home to tell his parents.
• Zabu collided with Moglis, told her about the oasis, and learned that she and Samo had discovered it.
• Moglis said she was rushing to find a clan doctor to treat two injured friends.

Moglis brought a physician to treat the badly injured Chu Luohen, while Su Jiu learned that the old man Gu Xingzi came from the Heavenly Secret Sect. Gu Xingzi revealed that the Spiritless Land was part of the Azure Realm, sealed off and stripped of spiritual qi by powerful people.

• Moglis told Zabu that Su Jiu had defeated the thugs threatening the Oasis, and the old man called God's Messenger hurriedly asked to see her.
• Moglis returned to Su Jiu and Chu Luohen with a physician, Samo, and the old man; Su Jiu introduced herself as a member of the Azure Tide Sect.
• The physician found Chu Luohen's internal organs severely injured and prescribed medicine, advising Su Jiu to receive treatment for her own injuries as well.
• After the physician and Moglis left, the old man identified himself as Gu Xingzi of the Heavenly Secret Sect and recognized Hongguang as his Eldest Senior Brother.
• Gu Xingzi explained that the Spiritless Land had been deliberately sealed off and drained of spiritual qi, and Su Jiu realized it was still within the Azure Realm.

Su Jiu questioned Gu Xingzi about the ancient battle that sealed the Azure Mist Continent’s land into a Spiritless Land and grew suspicious that powerful outsiders had been involved. Gu Xingzi revealed that he had waited for Su Jiu as his calculated chance to escape, while Su Jiu considered how to leave and learned that his stored pills had lost most of their spiritual qi.

• Gu Xingzi told Su Jiu that cloaked Dao Cultivators and Demonic Cultivators had sealed the land a thousand years earlier, and that he survived by using a Lifespan Pill.
• Gu Xingzi said one attacker wielded a Spirit Treasure Compass marked with the Heavenly Secret Sect’s distinctive patterns, and that every attacker had used at least a low-grade Spirit Treasure.
• Su Jiu suspected the attackers were exceptionally powerful and decided she needed to escape and report her conjecture to her sect.
• Gu Xingzi explained that a Killing Array guarded the barrier and that escapees were killed and later found near Bell City.
• Gu Xingzi admitted he had deliberately waited for Su Jiu because his calculations identified her as his opportunity to leave.
• Su Jiu proposed waiting until her injuries healed and asked about Gu Xingzi’s pills, whose spiritual qi had faded despite being stored in Jade Bottles.

Su Jiu suspected the physician was secretly harming her and investigated the sealed Spiritless Land while tending to Chu Luohen. The maps linked the desert to the former site of the Misty Immortal Sect, leaving Su Jiu uncertain what the Azure Tide Sect knew about the place.

• Su Jiu asked Gu Xingzi to bring her pills and map the barrier and suspicious locations, hoping the pills' sealed spiritual qi could help heal her injuries.
• Su Jiu refused the physician's medicine, then claimed she disliked bitter things when the physician returned; Gu Xingzi gave her a bundle of pill bottles and two maps.
• Su Jiu questioned Gu Xingzi about outsiders and the survivors of the ancient battle, suggesting some of those who established the barrier might still be there.
• After Gu Xingzi left, Su Jiu noticed that a recently watered pot of flowers had withered and concluded the physician's medicine drained vitality rather than healing.
• Su Jiu studied a map of the Azure Realm and recognized that the Spiritless Land lay near the former site of the Misty Immortal Sect, raising questions about the sect's move and the Azure Tide Sect's knowledge.

After surviving the Teleportation Array, Chu Luohen woke in the Spiritless Land and studied Su Jiu’s maps and supplies to understand their predicament. Su Jiu woke to find him conscious, and he checked her pulse.

• Su Jiu studied Gu Xingzi’s detailed map, then fell asleep from exhaustion.
• During the violent journey through the Teleportation Array, Chu Luohen shielded Su Jiu from the wind blades and lost consciousness after seeing a flash of light.
• While unconscious, Chu Luohen dreamed of a flower, a bloodied sky, a crumbling world, and Liushuang before waking with lingering dread and severe pain.
• Chu Luohen realized there was no spiritual qi nearby and found Su Jiu asleep beside maps and pills; he took a Spirit-Replenishing Pill, opened his Storage Bag, and studied their situation.
• Su Jiu woke, thanked Chu Luohen for protecting her, and he placed his fingers on her pulse.

Su Jiu recovered from her injuries in the Spiritless Land and began to suspect that the Physician had deliberately drugged her and Chu Luohen. After Gu Xingzi visited with the Physician, Su Jiu connected the plot to a possible long-term scheme involving the Heavenly Secret Sect.

• Su Jiu took pills and used her remaining spiritual qi to heal herself, then learned from the Painting Spirit that Little Gift had fallen unconscious but was recovering.
• Su Jiu summoned Little Pearl, whose true form could still be used in the Spiritless Land without relying on her master bond.
• Su Jiu told Chu Luohen what had happened after they met Moglis and Samo, but withheld what came before, prompting him to leave in frustration.
• The Physician and Gu Xingzi visited Su Jiu the next day, and the Physician brought only one bowl of medicine.
• Su Jiu noticed the Physician showed no curiosity about the medicine bottles and suspected she knew them, concluding that the drug had likely been added deliberately.
• Su Jiu wondered whether the Physician and others were targeting outsiders, and considered whether someone from the Heavenly Secret Sect had planned the scheme long ago.

Su Jiu exposed the physician’s medicinal decoction as poisonous and reasoned that the physician was the same person who had treated Gu Xingzi a thousand years earlier. Gu Xingzi realized she was likely allied with the people behind the barrier and had targeted Su Jiu and Chu Luohen as dangerous variables.

• Su Jiu questioned Gu Xingzi about his lost cultivation and divination before pouring the physician’s decoction into a flowerpot, where it made the flowers wither.
• Su Jiu pointed out that Gu Xingzi had never met the physician’s supposed family and suggested the physician and her ancestor were the same person.
• The man Su Jiu had carried back appeared, and he explained that the physician’s real patients helped her establish an identity in Bell City.
• Gu Xingzi realized the physician had acted against Su Jiu and Chu Luohen because they were variables who threatened the barrier’s creators.
• Su Jiu revealed that she had suspected the medicine because the physician was too eager to deliver it to Chu Luohen, and she dismissed Gu Xingzi as too foolish to be an accomplice.

After discussing the Barrier’s hidden agents and their plans, Su Jiu and Chu Luohen were asked to help find the missing Moglis. They went with Samo and Zabu to the City Lord’s Residence, where Moglis had disappeared from her room, leaving a large pool of blood.

• Gu Xingzi left Su Jiu feeling shaken after learning her age and cultivation, and he worried about investigating the physician and the physician’s associates.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen discussed how the Barrier’s agents might keep targeting them, then resolved to watch for nearby formations despite being under surveillance.
• Samo and Zabu arrived to ask whether Su Jiu had seen Moglis, explaining that she was missing and that her room contained a huge patch of blood.
• Samo and Zabu asked Su Jiu and Chu Luohen to help search for Moglis, and Su Jiu agreed.
• Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, Samo, and Zabu walked through the harsh, sandy city to the City Lord’s Residence, where Moglis and her parents lived.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen investigated Moglis’s disappearance after her supposed parents tried to stop the search and accused them of murder. The blood in Moglis’s room showed no signs of a struggle or a body being dragged away, leaving the couple’s story under suspicion.

• Samo and Zabu found Moglis’s mother weeping outside her quarters, while Moglis’s father prepared to leave the residence.
• Moglis’s parents insisted she was dead and tried to keep Su Jiu and Chu Luohen out of her room.
• The City Lord arrived and gave the couple money, prompting Su Jiu to question when they had discovered Moglis was missing.
• Moglis’s father claimed he had found her dead before five, but Samo’s account of being outside her door exposed a contradiction.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen entered Moglis’s room and found a contained pool of blood with no footprints or signs that a body had been dragged away.

Su Jiu determined that the blood in Moglis’s room was not human, while the City Lord’s butler admitted he had arranged for Moglis to leave but did not know where she was. Elsewhere, Mi and Yu Qing held Moglis captive as bait and planned to use her to draw Chu Luohen and Su Jiu into their scheme.

• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen examined Moglis’s room, and Su Jiu identified the blood as nonhuman.
• Samo confronted the couple, and the butler revealed he had taken money to make Moglis leave so she would not reunite with Samo.
• The butler admitted he did not know where Moglis had been taken, leaving the group without her location.
• Mi stopped Big Yellow from eating the captive Moglis because he wanted to keep her as bait.
• Mi and Yu Qing discussed drawing Chu Luohen and Su Jiu toward them and considered using Moglis’s apparent death to provoke conflict between the Azure Tide Sect and the Heavenly Secret Sect.

Moglis realized her parents had sold her for Bell Coins, while Samo learned the truth and rejected his father's plans for his marriage. Su Jiu and Chu Luohen left the City Lord's Residence as the City Lord had Moglis's parents thrown out.

• Moglis recalled how her father explained that he and her mother had sold her for two thousand Bell Coins after failing to secure a marriage arrangement with Samo.
• Moglis remembered the names Hong Ming and Yi Yun from the people who had come to take her.
• Samo learned the truth from Moglis's parents and told the City Lord that Moglis was the only woman he would marry.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen left the City Lord's Residence after the City Lord dismissed them.
• The City Lord ordered guards to throw Moglis's parents out, and they went to seek information about Su Jiu and Chu Luohen.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen learned that Gu Xingzi could only pinpoint a general direction for Moglis, while his investigation revealed that the physician had disappeared. Outside Bell City, Su Jiu explained to Samo that the desert was a sealed Spiritless Land, leaving him to confront how little he knew about the world beyond it.

• The Mog couple repeatedly fought with Zabu's parents over a fine and rumors about their children, becoming a citywide laughingstock.
• Gu Xingzi used Moglis's belongings and a Compass to search for her but could find only a general direction, and Su Jiu decided not to take him along.
• Gu Xingzi told Su Jiu that the physician lived alone and had disappeared after leaving her residence.
• Samo and Zabu waited outside Bell City, but Su Jiu told them to return because Moglis was unlikely to be in mortal danger and the matter involved cultivators.
• Su Jiu explained to Samo that cultivators used spiritual qi and that cultivators had sealed the desert a thousand years earlier, draining its spiritual qi and turning it into a Spiritless Land.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen traveled through the desert in search of Moglis and encountered a girl pursued by two sand beasts. Su Jiu killed her beast and moved to help Chu Luohen, unaware that the girl behind them showed regret.

• Su Jiu left Samo and Zabu behind and traveled into the desert with Chu Luohen, following the direction Gu Xingzi had divined.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen heard a girl calling for help and saw her fleeing from two enormous beasts.
• The girl ran toward them and identified the creatures as sand beasts, while Su Jiu and Chu Luohen remained wary of her.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen split up to fight the sand beasts, drawing them apart as they ran.
• Su Jiu killed her sand beast with a deep slash to its belly and headed toward Chu Luohen, missing the girl's look of regret.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen fought Yu Qing, who revealed herself as a powerful enemy and attacked them with a heavenly flame. They were swept into quicksand, and Yu Qing, Yi Yun, and Heart Bewilderment began arguing over their failed ambush before agreeing to hunt them down.

• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen killed the sand beast, then questioned the disguised Yu Qing about why she had come to the desert.
• Yu Qing exposed herself and attacked Su Jiu and Chu Luohen, overwhelming them with her aura and ninth-ranked heavenly flame.
• Chu Luohen used his remaining spiritual qi to shield Su Jiu, and Su Jiu halted Yu Qing’s fire dragon with a talisman long enough for them to evade it.
• The fire dragon struck the desert and triggered a quicksand pit that swept Su Jiu and Chu Luohen away.
• Yi Yun and Heart Bewilderment arrived and rebuked Yu Qing for wasting their spiritual qi and letting the pair escape.
• Heart Bewilderment told Yu Qing and Yi Yun to stop arguing and search for Su Jiu and Chu Luohen before anyone else discovered the area.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen awoke in a cave after being swept into quicksand and discussed whether the Spiritless Land might connect to other worlds. Su Jiu sensed they were in an interstitial layer of the Spiritless Land, while Chu Luohen warned her to keep her rare spatial gift quiet; they then considered the heavenly flame and the mysterious Elysium Valley senior who had used it.

• Su Jiu woke with her spiritual qi and Divine Sense restored and found Chu Luohen had awakened half an hour earlier in a cave leading to a limestone cavern.
• Su Jiu suggested the Three Thousand Worlds might be real, but Chu Luohen said there was not enough evidence to prove they were outside the Azure Realm.
• Su Jiu explained that her perception of spatial laws told her the cave was in an interstitial layer that both belonged to and did not belong to the Spiritless Land.
• Chu Luohen asked how many people knew about Su Jiu's spatial gift, then cautioned her through his concern about the dangers her talent could bring.
• Su Jiu asked about Chu Luohen's injuries from the heavenly flame, and he attributed her own resistance to her Ice Skin and Jade Bones physique.
• Chu Luohen wondered whether Elysium Valley knew that a senior from its Rear Valley had emerged.

Heart Bewilderment, Yu Qing, and Yi Yun used Moglis to search for Su Jiu and considered threatening Samo, while Yu Qing planned to repair the barrier and continue pursuing Su Jiu. Two days later, the city lord died suddenly, leaving Samo stunned and Moglis terrified by the cultivators’ power.

• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen wondered which sect seniors had helped seal the Spiritless Land and whether Ning Hai knew about their plans.
• Heart Bewilderment, Yu Qing, and Yi Yun questioned Moglis after failing to find the quicksand entrance where Su Jiu and Chu Luohen had vanished.
• Heart Bewilderment assigned Yi Yun to use Moglis to threaten Samo, while he and Yu Qing planned to repair the barrier and search for Su Jiu.
• Yu Qing insisted that Su Jiu and her companion be killed if they were found, fearing the girl’s power and wanting to open the Heaven-Connecting Path.
• Two days later, the city lord died suddenly in his bedroom, shocking Samo and terrifying Moglis.

Samo questioned Moglis's parents about who had sold her, but Yi Yun and Heart Bewilderment arrived with Moglis's ornament and demanded that he search the city for Su Jiu. The chapter ended after Heart Bewilderment burned the Butler to ashes to show he meant business.

• Samo's guards captured Moglis's parents after Zabu and his wife revealed where they were hiding.
• Samo demanded that Moglis's parents identify the people who had bought her, and he ordered the woman to draw their eyes.
• Yi Yun and Heart Bewilderment entered the City Lord's Residence and offered Samo a deal, presenting Moglis's ornament as proof they had her.
• Heart Bewilderment demanded that Samo mobilize every guard in the city to search for Su Jiu.
• Heart Bewilderment burned the Butler to ashes, terrifying everyone present.

After a month of recovery, Su Jiu entered a profound cultivation state that revealed changes in the flower within her Sea of Consciousness and awakened her Nascent Soul. She and Chu Luohen then prepared to leave their refuge, while Chu Luohen awkwardly concealed his reaction to seeing her.

• Heart Bewilderment pressured Samo with Moglis's death, and Samo agreed to cooperate.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen spent a month meditating and healing in the unknown place.
• As Su Jiu cultivated, the flower in her Sea of Consciousness regained its luster, and mist gathered around her.
• Su Jiu's Nascent Soul awakened, displayed a nine-petaled flower, and practiced the Flowing Moon and Ice Soul sword formulas.
• Chu Luohen watched Su Jiu, grew flustered when she woke, and claimed his blood qi had flowed backward.
• Su Jiu advised Chu Luohen to keep regulating his breathing, and he urged them to find a way out.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen explored a two-way space within a spatial rift and discovered a cavern containing precious stalactite marrow. Chu Luohen gave the marrow to Su Jiu and warned her not to use it before reaching the Out-of-Body stage, and they continued searching for an exit.

• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen realized the space had two sides that could each serve as the ground, confirming they were inside a spatial rift.
• Su Jiu identified the space as two-way space described in Strange Tales of Yin City, and the pair continued searching for an exit.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen entered a stalactite cavern and found spirit stalactites formed by spiritual qi.
• Chu Luohen collected over a hundred drops of stalactite marrow and gave the sealed jade bottle to Su Jiu.
• Chu Luohen warned Su Jiu to wait until the Out-of-Body stage before consuming the marrow, then continued onward without taking any for himself.