Chapter Summaries

Su Jiu exposed Jiao Zhu’s betrayal and learned that Water Snake had manipulated her into helping kill the Merfolk King and capture the Azure Tide Sect cultivators. Water Snake demanded Su Jiu’s death, but Su Jiu revealed that she and Jiao Zhu were bound by a contract; after Su Jiu wounded Jiao Zhu, Water Snake suffered the same wound and transformed, while Jiao Zhu tried to protect her family and Chu Luohen.

• Su Jiu confronted Jiao Zhu at the city gate, where Shrimp and Crab Soldiers revealed the ambush, and Jiao Zhu admitted she had helped bring about the Merfolk King’s death and planned to capture Chu Luohen.
• Jiao Zhen and the Merfolk Queen arrived, and Water Snake revealed that her group had arranged events to capture the Azure Tide Sect cultivators.
• Water Snake took Jiao Zhu hostage and demanded that Jiao Zhen kill Su Jiu, but Su Jiu questioned whether Water Snake could harm Jiao Zhu without suffering the same injury.
• Su Jiu struck Jiao Zhu with an Ice Spike, and an identical wound appeared on Water Snake, who transformed into her true form.
• Jiao Zhu stepped in front of Water Snake and warned her not to harm the Merfolk Queen, Jiao Zhen, or Chu Luohen, while Water Snake said the contract protected only Chu Luohen.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen fought through the battle to reach the Black Water Snake, whose power and demonic qi threatened them despite their improved cultivation. As they prepared to attack her from both sides, Su Jiu drew the snake’s attention with a feint, leaving the outcome of their strike unresolved.

• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen joined the merfolk battle, while Jiao Zhen charged toward Jiao Zhu and pleaded with them to spare the Black Water Snake.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen fought through the Shrimp and Crab Soldiers, with Chu Luohen urging Su Jiu to kill the snake and fulfill her contract.
• The Black Water Snake discovered that Su Jiu and Chu Luohen had both reached Nascent Soul Great Perfection, then mocked Jiao Zhu for her confidence in the snake’s strength.
• The Black Water Snake attacked Su Jiu with black demonic qi, but Su Jiu dodged while Chu Luohen’s Scarless Sword gathered golden light and grew stronger.
• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen took positions around the Black Water Snake, and Su Jiu tricked her into focusing on an empty attack.

Su Jiu and Chu Luohen defeated and restrained the wounded Black Water Snake, while Jiao Zhu betrayed Jiao Zhen after wavering under her sister’s appeal. The queen struggled with what to do as both sisters fell unconscious.

• Jiao Zhen found Jiao Zhu and tried to bring her to safety, urging her to abandon the Black Water Snake and return to their family.
• Jiao Zhu began to waver, but the Black Water Snake manipulated her with accusations about her family and the merfolk she had killed.
• The Black Water Snake urged Jiao Zhu to kill Jiao Zhen, and Jiao Zhu attacked her sister while Jiao Zhen carried her away.
• Su Jiu was struck by the injuries Jiao Zhen suffered, but she and Chu Luohen used ice and sword intent to trap and gravely wound the Black Water Snake.
• Jiao Zhen and Jiao Zhu both fell unconscious, Chu Luohen confined the snake with his domain and a fifth-tier formation, and Su Jiu spat blood.

Su Jiu recovered from her injuries and visited the prison with Chu Luohen and Qi Song, where Jiao Zhu revealed her resentment toward the Merfolk Queen and her feelings for Chu Luohen. The group learned that the curse-breaking art was incomplete, then opened the prison’s final door to reach the Black Water Snake.

• Qi Song told the Merfolk Queen that Jiao Zhen had lost her cultivation and had only twenty years left to live.
• Su Jiu continued healing, then went with Chu Luohen to the prison, where Qi Song described Jiao Zhen’s condition.
• Jiao Zhu confessed that she had worked with the water snake and tried to kill Jiao Zhen, then asked Chu Luohen whether he would love her as a human; he rejected her.
• Su Jiu learned that Qi Song had found only half of the curse-breaking art and suspected that someone had deliberately misled them.
• Su Jiu used the Queen’s key to open the prison’s final iron door, where the Black Water Snake was held.

Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, and Qi Song searched the merfolk’s inner prison for the Black Water Snake, using Qi Song’s Divining Stick to find the way. They found the bound snake, and Su Jiu made clear that it would not be released and should focus on staying alive.

• Su Jiu and Chu Luohen entered the inner prison and searched its passages for the Black Water Snake.
• At a crossroads, Qi Song used his Divining Stick, which pointed them toward one of the passages with its red end.
• The Divining Stick tapped Qi Song after he complained about its temperament, then rubbed against Su Jiu’s sleeve.
• Following the Divining Stick, the group found the Black Water Snake bound and unable to use its demonic qi.
• The Black Water Snake asked what it would take to be freed, and Su Jiu told it that release was impossible and it should consider how to survive.

Su Jiu interrogated the Black Water Snake about her ties to the plot against them and learned that a hidden Master had used curse script to empower the snake and transform the Shrimp and Crab Soldiers. She left the snake confronting the possibility that her allies had treated her as a disposable pawn.

• Su Jiu told the Black Water Snake she could survive if she answered questions, then asked about Hong Ming and learned that Azure Shadow had introduced him.
• The Black Water Snake revealed that she took orders from an unnamed Master, who had enlightened her and enabled her unstable cultivation.
• The snake explained that curse script created the Everlasting Flower and gave the Shrimp and Crab Soldiers partial transformations, which decayed without replenishment.
• The snake said Azure Shadow had brought a formidable practitioner of Curse Arts to establish the Everlasting Flower in the crystal grove.
• Su Jiu suggested that the snake’s contact had abandoned her and that her superiors had never trusted her, leaving the snake shaken by the possibility that she was only a tool.

Su Jiu and her companions discovered that the Merfolk Queen and Jiao Zhu had staged their earlier reconciliation to lower their guard, and that the queen intended to sacrifice Jiao Zhen while helping Jiao Zhu. As battle approached, Jiao Zhu revealed the Scepter of Tears, a sacred artifact that Qi Song warned could overwhelm them.

• The Merfolk Queen and Jiao Zhu blocked Su Jiu and her companions from leaving, and Jiao Zhu declared that they would be sent on their final journey.
• Su Jiu and Qi Song realized the mother-daughter quarrel had been staged, while Jiao Zhu admitted the queen's grief and her slap had been genuine.
• Jiao Zhu explained that the queen had chosen her as the Merfolk Tribe's heir and sacrificed Jiao Zhen, then proposed dissolving her contract with the water snake.
• Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, and Qi Song prepared for battle as the water snake tried to persuade Jiao Zhu to release it.
• Jiao Zhu activated the Scepter of Tears, and Qi Song warned Su Jiu and Chu Luohen that the sacred artifact could defeat opponents in a higher realm.

Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, and Qi Song tried to stop Jiao Zhu from using the Scepter of Tears, while Su Jiu persuaded the Queen to abandon her plan to self-detonate. The Queen was bound, and the others attacked Jiao Zhu as the scepter neared full power.

• Jiao Zhu raised the Scepter of Tears against Su Jiu and used it to gather water spiritual qi.
• Su Jiu and her companions failed to damage the sacred scepter, so they changed their target to Jiao Zhu.
• The Queen tried to self-detonate, but Su Jiu convinced her to live and help keep Jiao Zhu from harming the Merfolk Tribe.
• Su Jiu bound the Queen and charged at Jiao Zhu with Chu Luohen and Qi Song.
• Jiao Zhu fought back with other Magic Treasures, but Su Jiu's Ice Spikes and her companions' Sword Qi left her badly wounded.

Su Jiu and her allies struggled to stop Jiao Zhu after the Scepter of Tears unleashed its power and the prison negated their attacks and domains. Qi Song revealed a scroll of sealed spatial laws that could give them one brief opportunity to subdue her.

• Su Jiu struck at Jiao Zhu’s vital point, triggering the Scepter of Tears to protect her and release all the spiritual qi it had absorbed.
• Jiao Zhu went berserk and fired the Scepter at Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, and Qi Song, while its beams damaged the prison and severed Qi Song’s vines.
• Su Jiu’s Thousand-Mile Ice Seal failed against Jiao Zhu and the Scepter, and Su Jiu and Chu Luohen discovered they could not deploy their domains inside the prison.
• The Queen admitted that Jiao Zhu had chosen the prison because it nullified spatial laws and could counter Chu Luohen’s Snowfall Domain.
• Qi Song told Su Jiu he had a scroll containing sealed spatial laws that could let them use their domains briefly, and asked her and Chu Luohen to capture Jiao Zhu as soon as he activated it.

Su Jiu pried the Merfolk King's Heart from Jiao Zhu's Scepter, then destroyed it to stop Jiao Zhu from making it explode. The ruined heart transformed into a spatial whirlpool that pulled Su Jiu inside, and Chu Luohen and Qi Song followed her.

• Su Jiu used the Scroll's Snowfall Domain to subdue Jiao Zhu and remove the Merfolk King's Heart from the Scepter.
• Jiao Zhu used her lingering connection to the heart to make it swell and threaten to explode, while the Merfolk Queen, Qi Song, and Chu Luohen urged Su Jiu to let go.
• Su Jiu pierced the swelling Merfolk King's Heart with an Ice Spike, destroying it and dealing Jiao Zhu a devastating blow.
• The gray stone shrank, released spatial power, and vanished as a whirlpool appeared and swept Su Jiu inside.
• Chu Luohen and Qi Song jumped into the whirlpool after Su Jiu.

After Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, and Qi Song vanished into a whirlpool, Jiao Zhu pressed the queen to sacrifice her elder sister for a replacement scepter, but learned that no one could recreate the Scepter of Tears. When the queen and Jiao Zhu returned to the Palace, they found it occupied by strangers, including a man bearing a black dragon totem.

• Su Jiu, Chu Luohen, and Qi Song were dragged into a whirlpool that vanished immediately afterward.
• Jiao Zhu demanded that the queen use her elder sister’s heart to make a new scepter, but the queen explained that only a long-lost Artifact Refining Sect Grandmaster could create the Scepter of Tears.
• The queen left Jiao Zhu, who recognized that she had pursued power through her own selfish desires and felt no regret.
• The queen and Jiao Zhu sensed several people inside the Palace and found an unfamiliar man waiting there.
• The man invited the queen and Jiao Zhu inside, and the queen recognized the black dragon totem on his shoulder as belonging to a place in the Azure Realm.

Xia Jue, revealed as the Jade-Scepter Young Master and Hall Master of the Enforcement Hall, confronted the Merfolk Queen about the missing Black Water Snake and Su Jiu. The queen claimed Su Jiu had helped capture the snake, while Jiao Zhu collapsed under her injuries and Xia Jue’s pressure.

• The Merfolk Queen and Jiao Zhu entered the palace and recognized the visitors as members of the Azure Tide Sect’s Enforcement Hall.
• Jiao Zhu and the queen were stunned to learn that the white-robed Xia Jue was the Jade-Scepter Young Master.
• Xia Jue revealed his jade flute and asked the queen where the Black Water Snake had gone.
• The queen realized Xia Jue was really trying to learn where Su Jiu and the others had gone, but she claimed Su Jiu had helped capture the snake.
• Jiao Zhu passed out from her injuries and the pressure Xia Jue exerted.

The Queen revealed Jiao Zhu and the Black Water Snake’s role in Su Jiu’s injury, then gave Feng Qi the prison key after Xia Jue agreed to spare Jiao Zhu. Xia Jue killed the Black Water Snake and searched for the spatial route to Su Jiu, while Jiao Zhu suffered a fatal backlash and the imprisoned monsters discussed the coming Demon-Subduing Land crisis.

• Feng Qi pressured the Queen into recounting Jiao Zhu’s plans, and Xia Jue realized Su Jiu had been the hidden target all along.
• The Queen gave Feng Qi the prison key in exchange for Xia Jue sparing Jiao Zhu.
• Xia Jue used the key and a secret incantation to open the Black Water Snake’s cell, then burned her to ash with the Northern Dark Heavenly Flame.
• Feng Qi told Xia Jue that the spatial node was faint, and the Nine-Tour Bird offered to help find it, but Xia Jue left without releasing it.
• Imprisoned monsters discussed the approaching Demon-Subduing Land crisis and whether it might let them escape.
• Jiao Zhu suffered a severe backlash when her contract with the dead Black Water Snake broke, and the Queen wondered how Xia Jue had learned the cell-unlocking incantation.

After the spatial rift separated Su Jiu from Chu Luohen and Qi Song, she was badly injured and fell unconscious in a flower garden. A warmhearted young woman found her and carried her away for treatment, with Lou Sheng following.

• The queen watched over her unconscious elder daughter after Jiao Zhu died and learned that the Enforcement Hall had taken the key away.
• Su Jiu was grievously injured when the changing space broke her contract with Jiao Zhen, then lost consciousness as her treasures began healing her.
• In Hundred Flowers Valley’s Hidden Flower Garden, a young woman and Lou Sheng gathered medicinal flowers while discussing the coming Grand Tournament.
• The young woman spotted Su Jiu unconscious among the flowers and was astonished by her beauty.
• After checking Su Jiu’s pulse, the young woman carried her away to treat her injuries, and Lou Sheng followed while warning her to be careful.

Ye Wanqing brought an unconscious, beautiful cultivator back to her sect and discovered that the woman’s sealed sea of consciousness prevented treatment. Her master determined the stranger was an exceptionally powerful young cultivator whose divine sense had been damaged, leaving the sect to wait for her to recover.

• Ye Wanqing returned to the mountain gate carrying an unconscious woman and told her master she had brought back a fairy who might become her wife.
• Ye Wanqing hurried to her room with the woman while her master and Lou Sheng followed to find out whom she had brought back.
• Two female cultivators gossiped about Ye Wanqing’s habit of rescuing people and about another woman who seemed jealous of her.
• Ye Wanqing checked Su Jiu and found her meridians and dantian normal, but her sea of consciousness tightly sealed.
• Ye Wanqing’s master determined the woman was about forty years old, cultivated beyond his nascent soul late stage, and had suffered damage to her divine sense.
• Ye Wanqing’s master said they could only wait for the woman to recover on her own, then left worried that Ye Wanqing had brought trouble back again.

Su Jiu explored her consciousness while recovering in an unknown place rich in spiritual qi, then woke after a month. Ye Wanqing went to visit her newly awakened eldest senior brother, Chong Mo, leaving Su Jiu’s room just before Su Jiu opened her eyes.

• Su Jiu found the book in her consciousness reduced to a fading page bearing Zheng Qilong’s name, then returned to Little Pearl and the Spirit-Cleansing Pool Water.
• Little Pearl told Su Jiu that the dense spiritual qi and trace of innate origin qi had revived Little Gift’s flower bud, though its seal still kept it asleep.
• After a month of caring for Su Jiu, Ye Wanqing learned from Lou Sheng that Chong Mo had awakened and went to visit him.
• Lou Sheng noticed Chong Mo and Ouyang Yanyu standing close together, while Ye Wanqing greeted them cheerfully.
• Chong Mo scolded Ye Wanqing for her behavior and demanded to check her cultivation ahead of the Sect Grand Tournament.
• As Ye Wanqing turned the corner toward Chong Mo’s courtyard, Su Jiu opened her eyes.

Su Jiu awoke in a sect that called itself the Azure Tide Sect, though its people did not recognize her or her Ice Veil Peak. Suspecting she was in a different Azure Realm, she sought an audience with the sect leader and encountered Chong Mo and Ouyang Yanyu near the main hall.

• Chong Mo told Ye Wanqing he would personally oversee her training for the next month, while Lou Sheng noticed Ouyang Yanyu’s displeasure.
• Su Jiu recovered enough to leave her room, and news of the beautiful fairy in the South Courtyard spread through the sect.
• Ye Wanqing and Lou Sheng met Su Jiu, who introduced herself as a disciple of Ice Veil Peak in the Azure Tide Sect; the local disciples said they had never heard of her peak.
• Su Jiu examined the familiar sect layout and concluded that she might be in a different version of the Azure Realm, then asked Ye Wanqing to take her to the sect leader.
• As Su Jiu, Ye Wanqing, and Lou Sheng approached the main hall, they ran into Chong Mo and Ouyang Yanyu.

Su Jiu asked True Lord Pinglan how she could return to her world, and he pointed her toward the Hongsheng Heavenly Road. The others realized she came from another world, while Ye Wanqing was left unsettled by Chong Mo’s closeness with Ouyang Yanyu.

• Lou Sheng challenged Chong Mo for walking beside Ouyang Yanyu, but Chong Mo defended his choice and left with her.
• Su Jiu noticed True Lord Pinglan’s reaction when she mentioned Ice Veil Peak and concluded he knew something about her situation.
• Su Jiu thanked Ye Wanqing for saving her and asked True Lord Pinglan how she could return to her world.
• True Lord Pinglan said she could not return now, but advised her to try the Hongsheng Heavenly Road in seven years.
• Ouyang Yanyu asked whether Su Jiu came from another world and whether her world was also called the Azure Realm.

Su Jiu learned that the Azure Realm was severed into two worlds and that the Dustless Continent’s cultivators had stalled because they possessed only the first half of the Five Elements Cultivation Method. She gave True Lord Pinglan a complete copy and provided Ye Wanqing with a cultivation method suited to her spirit roots.

• True Lord Pinglan revealed that the Hongsheng Heavenly Road led toward the other Azure Realm, and that the Azure Realm had been split ten thousand years earlier.
• Su Jiu and True Lord Pinglan discussed possible reasons for the split, the Heavenly Dao, and the Dustless Continent’s dwindling resources and incomplete cultivation methods.
• True Lord Pinglan explained that he and other cultivators practiced only the first half of the Five Elements Cultivation Method, which had limited their progress.
• Su Jiu gave True Lord Pinglan a complete copy of the Five Elements Cultivation Method.
• Ye Wanqing asked Su Jiu for a cultivation method, and Su Jiu gave her one suited to her water and wood spirit roots.

Su Jiu gave Ye Wanqing the Water-Wood Cultivation Method and revealed her ice spiritual root, earning permission to stay at Ice Veil Peak while she searched for her missing companions. She decided to wait for the sect tournament to seek information and trained there as the tournament approached.

• Su Jiu warned Ye Wanqing that she had to abandon the Five Elements Cultivation Method before practicing the Water-Wood Cultivation Method, then gave her the manual.
• True Lord Pinglan learned that Su Jiu belonged to Ice Veil Peak, and she demonstrated Qi-to-Form Transformation with an ice flower.
• Su Jiu explained that destroying an enemy's sacred artifact had brought her to this world and said she needed to find her two missing companions.
• True Lord Pinglan persuaded Su Jiu to stay until the inter-sect tournament in two months, and he arranged for Ice Veil Peak to be prepared for her.
• Su Jiu practiced the Snow-Surpassing Sword Formula at Ice Veil Peak while junior disciples watched from afar and suffered when they tried to imitate it.
• True Lord Pinglan scolded Ye Wanqing and Lou Sheng for neglecting tournament preparations, and Lou Sheng led Ye Wanqing away.