Chapter Summaries

Su Mo returned to the Imperial Palace after saving the unborn child in Prince Ying's Princess Consort's womb, and the Human Emperor's return restored order across the Nine Heavens. After tending to the child and sharing a quiet meal with Prince Ying and his wife, Su Mo went to the spirit sea, where the Great Calamity asked how his pill refining was going.

• Su Mo reassured Prince Ying and his wife that the unborn child was safe, and the Void Beast nuzzled him and the child.
• Su Mo's return awakened national fortune, allowing the Hundred Ghosts to punish rebellious vassal princes and settle karmic debts.
• Su Mo returned to the Imperial Palace with Prince Ying and his wife, ate the thin noodles Prince Ying's Princess Consort had prepared, and checked on the child.
• Su Mo sensed that the unborn child was well and had gained cultivation power, then returned to his Sleeping Palace and entered the spirit sea.
• The Great Calamity pulled Su Mo onto the Rocking Chair beside her and asked how his pill refining was going.

The Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden revealed that they had found only emptiness at the end of the Long Corridor, despite feeling a deep familiarity with it, and suspected the encounter was tied to their lost memories. They urged Su Mo to leave the conflict behind, but he remained unable to let go and ended by asking Hui Kong’s corpse what feeling was.

• The Great Calamity told Su Mo that he and the Mysterious Maiden had only pretended to restore some cultivation outside the Demon Realm to avenge him, and that summoning the Ghost Guard did not require cultivation.
• The Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden explained that the end of the Long Corridor held nothing, yet felt profoundly familiar and might be connected to their lost memories.
• Su Mo connected their discovery to the Divine Race’s passage through the World Barrier and the Confucian Sage’s Stone Steles bearing the words “Heavenly Cataclysm.”
• The Mysterious Maiden told Su Mo that she and the Nether Maiden thought the matter too dangerous for him and advised him to take those he cared about to the Underworld or Spirit Realm.
• Su Mo considered the Ninth Realm, Luo Yin’s unspoken knowledge, and his inability to relinquish the Human Emperor’s position, then decided to wait until the Flowers of the Other Shore bloomed.
• Su Mo sat beside Hui Kong’s corpse at the riverbank and asked whether Hui Kong knew what feeling was.

Su Mo reunited with Dao Hua and questioned what feeling meant after learning Cheng An'an had feelings for him. He remained unable to understand the many bonds and emotions in his life, leaving Dao Hua speechless.

• Dao Hua visited Su Mo in the Imperial Garden with stolen Green Bamboo Wine, and Su Mo welcomed him warmly.
• Su Mo noticed Dao Hua had reached Spirit Transformation, and the two drank wine together.
• Dao Hua told Su Mo that Cheng An'an had feelings for him, though she remained in seclusion trying to break through.
• Su Mo admitted he did not understand feeling and asked Dao Hua how love, friendship, family ties, fear, and hatred arose.
• Su Mo reflected on the many complicated bonds in his life, while Dao Hua could offer no answer.

Luo Yin told Su Mo that the Confucian Sage Remnant Soul had warned of an approaching Heavenly Cataclysm that he could barely hold back, but neither he nor Su Mo knew what it was. The chapter then showed a child secretly feeding herbs to a large snake that had become his protector.

• Luo Yin told Su Mo that the Confucian Sage Remnant Soul had called the coming omen the Heavenly Cataclysm and said he was nearly unable to hold it back.
• Su Mo tried to calculate what the Heavenly Cataclysm was but found no answers, while Luo Yin stayed beside him despite intending to leave.
• In the forest, a child fed herbs to a large snake while his grandfather continued gathering herbs nearby.
• The child remembered that a white-robed, white-haired man had once made the snake vegetarian, and that the snake had since protected him from other beasts.
• As the child and his grandfather headed home, the child secretly bid farewell to the snake, which slipped away into hiding.

A little boy and his grandfather found their village burning beneath a blood-red mist, and the mist turned the grandfather into a murderous creature. After seeing the mist spread and drive another village into slaughter, the boy asked the great serpent to take him to the Human Emperor.

• The old man and the child reached a hilltop and saw their village engulfed in red mist and flames.
• The old man returned from the village with blood-red eyes and attacked the child, but the great serpent rescued him.
• The child saw bloody gashes on the old man's chest as the serpent carried him away, then asked why his grandfather had changed.
• The serpent and the child watched red mist engulf another village, driving its inhabitants to madness and violence.
• The serpent scratched “Mist” and “White-Clad One” into the ground, and the child asked to find the Human Emperor.
• The great serpent carried the child toward the Imperial City as the red mist swept over the place they had left.

Su Mo felt a persistent foreboding that the Heavenly Cataclysm Luo Yin had warned about was approaching, though his powers detected no signs of it. After Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden considered possible explanations, they urged him to set aside his burden and leave for another realm.

• Su Mo visited Prince Ying's Princess Consort in the Imperial Garden, reassured her that court affairs were troubling him, and left to attend to them.
• Back in his Sleeping Palace, Su Mo sensed an ominous danger but found no unusual activity through his national fortune power or Soul Incense Volume.
• Su Mo entered the Spirit Sea and asked Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden what they knew about the Heavenly Cataclysm.
• Great Calamity proposed that the cataclysm had not arrived, lay outside the Ninth Realm, or could evade his powers without causing deaths; Su Mo ruled out the second possibility.
• Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden urged Su Mo to rest and suggested he leave for the First Realm or the Second Realm.

Su Mo struggled with his growing unease about the Heavenly Cataclysm and ordered the court to monitor events throughout the Nine Heavens. As the officials carried out his decrees, an enormous spirit serpent carrying a little boy headed toward the Imperial City.

• The Great Calamity teased the Mysterious Maiden about winning Su Mo over, then suggested they become sisters and claimed the senior-wife position.
• Su Mo left the Spirit Sea and wondered aloud what the Heavenly Cataclysm was, addressing his unseen master.
• Su Mo summoned the civil and military officials and asked whether they had heard of unusual events in the Nine Heavens.
• Su Mo ordered Liang Yi to appoint three hundred observers and Xu An to dispatch three thousand scouts carrying Divine Feather Birds to report regularly.
• Su Mo watched the officials leave, still uneasy because National Fortune Power had revealed nothing unusual.
• An enormous spirit serpent carried a little boy toward the Imperial City.

A wounded giant snake carried a dying boy toward the Human Emperor to warn him that red mist was killing people. After the snake leaped from a cliff to escape the mist and the boy died, it continued onward with his body, determined to keep its promise.

• The giant snake carried the exhausted boy toward the Human Emperor while red mist spread behind them and swallowed their pursuers.
• The boy asked whether they had arrived as the snake reached a cliff with the red mist closing in behind them.
• The giant snake wrapped itself around the boy and leaped off the cliff, shielding him as they crashed below.
• The snake woke to find the boy dead, nuzzled him, and placed his body on its back.
• As the red mist began descending beneath the cliff, the wounded snake continued toward the Human Emperor carrying the boy.

A wounded snake carrying a dead boy alerted a Human Emperor scout to poisonous Red Mist, prompting an urgent report to Su Mo. As Su Mo’s unease grew and he considered leaving, a report revealed that hundreds of his scouts had vanished, and Luo Yin asked to accompany him.

• A great snake carried the dead boy toward safety, but a Foundation Establishment scout stopped it and asked whether it could understand him.
• The snake wrote “Mist” and “Poison” in the dirt, and the scout sent an urgent report through a Divine Feather Bird.
• Su Mo struggled with growing unease as Luo Yin played the zither and recognized that he was considering leaving.
• Luo Yin told Su Mo to rest if he was tired, while Su Mo admitted that the people of the world had disappointed him.
• Courtiers reported that contact had been lost with six hundred scouts and that an urgent report had arrived, and Luo Yin asked Su Mo to let her go with him.

Su Mo arrived at Broken Cliff, found the great snake dying beside the boy it had tried to protect, and healed the snake before taking it and the boy’s corpse into his Spirit Sea. He failed to stop the Red Mist from spreading and entered a city engulfed by it, where a mother exposed to the mist shut herself away from her children as she began to transform.

• The scout showed Su Mo the Red Mist at Broken Cliff, where the wounded great snake guarded the dead boy and had written a warning to run.
• Su Mo remembered how he had once awakened the great snake’s intelligence, healed its wounds, and took it and the boy’s corpse into his Spirit Sea.
• Su Mo used the Confucian Dao True Words to try to seal the Red Mist, but the mist quickly broke free and continued spreading.
• Su Mo and Luo Yin entered a city swallowed by the Red Mist, where people wailed and chaos filled the streets.
• A woman told Huanhuan and Xixi to stay inside, but after Red Mist entered through a window and began changing her, she locked herself in the kitchen and fell silent after a sound of flesh being pierced.

Su Mo and Luo Yin encountered a city swallowed by red mist, where people had lost their reason but remained alive, and raced to evacuate those still beyond its reach. At the Ends of the Earth, an old man in a Confucian robe remembered why he had shattered the Divine Realm and severed the Ninth Realm from the outside, and named the Longevity Stele as the key to the Heavenly Cataclysm.

• Su Mo and Luo Yin arrived at a house where two children were crying for their mother, and Su Mo sent them away before finding their mother dead in the kitchen.
• Su Mo and Luo Yin entered the red mist, where Su Mo found that its victims were alive but had lost their reason, and his Confucian Dao Rules could not stop the mist.
• Luo Yin urged Su Mo to rescue people who had not yet been reached by the red mist, and Su Mo used national fortune power to evacuate city after city.
• People across the world learned that the Great Calamity, the Heavenly Cataclysm, had arrived as Su Mo and Luo Yin continued evacuating those near the mist’s edge.
• At the Ends of the Earth, an old man in a Confucian robe recalled that he had shattered the Divine Realm and severed the Ninth Realm from the outside because something was in the Divine Realm near the Ninth Realm, then lamented the Longevity Stele.

As the red mist spread across the Nine Heavens, Su Mo struggled to evacuate people while the Void Beast and cultivators from across the world joined the effort. The chapter leaves Su Mo watching the united cultivators work to save mortals as he remembered the Eternal Lamps in the Divine Realm.

• Su Mo continued moving people away from the red mist with Luo Yin at his side, while the Void Beast swallowed the mist and expelled it beyond the realm to slow its spread.
• Prince Ying and his pregnant Princess Consort arrived to help evacuate people using the National Fortune Token, despite Su Mo's concern for her.
• Dao Twelve, his wife, Dao Hua, the Dao Sect, and the Demon Sect joined the rescue effort, and Cheng Hongye told Su Mo that An'an remained in Spirit Transformation.
• The Holy Sect's First Elder arrived, promised to explain something about Baixue if they survived, and used his sleeve to evacuate an entire city.
• Cultivators and rogue fighters from across the Nine Heavens gathered to save powerless mortals, and Su Mo watched them as the Eternal Lamps in the Divine Realm came to mind.

As the red mist overwhelmed the Ninth Realm, cultivators sacrificed themselves to save others while a little girl’s defiant song gave the survivors a brief reason to keep going. Su Mo continued evacuating mortals until the national fortune ran dry, leaving him unable to save more as the mist covered nearly a third of the Nine Heavens.

• A swordsman severed his mist-tainted arm and returned to the fight, while an old monk carried a cursed child into the red mist and killed himself to prevent the child from escaping it.
• A little girl sang a changed nursery rhyme about resisting the heavenly tribulation, and a Dao Sect cultivator and others joined her; Su Mo heard them and was moved.
• As the red mist spread and cultivators fell, Prince Ying and his wife and the Void Beast returned to Su Mo, who sent Prince Ying and his wife back to the Imperial City.
• Su Mo continued relocating mortals with national fortune power, but after moving tens of millions of people, he exhausted it and could no longer evacuate even one city.
• The red mist continued spreading across the Nine Heavens, covering roughly thirty percent of the land while Su Mo and the remaining cultivators could do nothing to stop it.

As the red mist consumed the Ninth Realm, Su Mo struggled to choose between letting it spread and using Heaven-Severing to stop it at the cost of countless lives. The people understood his dilemma and began sacrificing themselves to spare him from making that choice.

• The Holy Sect's First Elder challenged Su Mo's efforts to move people away from the red mist, and Su Mo remembered he had been trying to clear an empty stretch of forbidden land.
• Su Mo revealed that he intended to sever heaven and halt the red mist, but the First Elder and the people realized the technique could kill tens of millions and that Su Mo might not succeed.
• An elderly woman walked into the red mist, blessing Su Mo and urging him to let his heart be at peace.
• A teacher and his wife followed the elderly woman's example, and people across the Ninth Realm began taking their own lives or entering the red mist to ease Su Mo's burden.

As the Red Mist threatened the Ninth Heaven, people across the realm willingly gave up their lives to spare Su Mo from choosing whom to kill and to help him sever heaven with a clearer conscience. Their sacrifices filled Su Mo with their hopes, while an outlaw also came to understand righteousness and urged the emperor to sever heaven.

• The old fruit grower realized that Su Mo cherished the people as dearly as he cherished his orchard, then drank poison and wished for the emperor's peace of mind.
• A teacher sent his students home, but they recited their teacher's lessons on righteousness, declared they would share Su Mo's burden, and died together in a fire.
• Countless people gave their lives along the Red Mist, and streams of soul incense carrying their hopes flew toward Su Mo as crimson light filled his eyes.
• People throughout the Nine Heavens bowed toward the voices of those sacrificing themselves and prayed for peace beneath heaven.
• An outlaw recognized the blood debts on his hands, poured out tea as an act of remorse, cast down his saber, and cried, “May our emperor sever heaven!”

As people across the Red Mist accepted Su Mo’s decision and begged him to sever heaven, Su Mo wept before agreeing. He summoned the National Fortune of the Nine Heavens into a golden sword, sacrificing his power and status as Human Emperor to act.

• People who could not take their own lives, including a disabled man, a butcher, soldiers, and a little girl, called on Su Mo to sever heaven.
• The cries spread across the Red Mist, assuring Su Mo that the people understood and would not blame him.
• Su Mo wept for the people and finally answered, “All right.”
• The surviving cultivators of the Nine Heavens departed, leaving Su Mo alone in the sky.
• Su Mo gathered the National Fortune of the Nine Heavens into a massive golden sword.
• Dao Twelve realized that Su Mo’s sacrifice would leave the Nine Heavens without National Fortune and end his reign as Human Emperor.

Su Mo wielded the Nine Heavens’ national fortune to sever the Ninth Realm, carrying out the people’s plea despite the agony of sacrificing them and the National Dragon. His strike split the realm in two, leaving a heavenly barrier and the wish that his heart might find peace.

• Dao Twelve explained that Su Mo intended to use his position as Human Emperor to secure the Nine Heavens a chance of survival, and the people accepted his choice without blame.
• The Holy Sect’s First Elder declared that Su Mo would remain the Nine Heavens’ only Human Emperor even if its national fortune vanished.
• The National Dragon appeared before Su Mo, comforted him, then tore itself apart and poured its golden starlight into the National Fortune Sword.
• The people prepared for death in their own ways and called on Su Mo to sever the heavens.
• Su Mo roared and swung the National Fortune Sword, splitting the Ninth Realm and erasing countless people.

Su Mo’s Heaven-Severing sword stopped the calamity but killed countless people and cost him his National Fortune Power, leaving him overwhelmed by the grief he sensed through their Soul Incense. When Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden found him, Su Mo insisted the crisis was not over because countless subjects of the Nine Heavens remained beyond the barrier.

• Su Mo’s sword split the Red Mist and formed a World Barrier, but countless living beings died and his National Fortune Power shattered.
• The survivors mourned as Su Mo sat alone in the void, aged by the cost of his decision, while Luo Yin was told to leave him alone.
• In the darkness, Su Mo realized through Soul Incense that the dead had feared death and wanted to keep living, deepening his grief.
• Great Calamity and the Mysterious Maiden came to Su Mo, and Great Calamity comforted him in the rain.
• Su Mo told them the crisis was not over because countless subjects of the Nine Heavens remained beyond the heavenly barrier.

Su Mo crossed the Heaven and Earth Barrier with Great Calamity and Mysterious Maiden to investigate the Red Mist and the mindless people trapped within it. He realized the victims were caught between life and death by the power of the Heavenly Dao, then sent his Flower of the Other Shore Clone into the mist to experience its effects, where it begged him to kill it.

• Great Calamity agreed to accompany Su Mo to the Other Side of the Barrier, despite Mysterious Maiden warning that his vitality was nearly exhausted.
• Su Mo, Great Calamity, and Mysterious Maiden crossed into the Red Mist and found a city full of mindless people, whom Su Mo restrained with the Power of Rules.
• Su Mo touched a little girl and removed the red light from her eyes, then sensed the power of the Heavenly Dao within her and concluded that the victims were trapped between life and death by an Eternal Life Technique.
• Su Mo summoned his Flower of the Other Shore Clone and sent it into the Red Mist without its protective Divine Power.
• The clone's eyes turned ashen, and it transmitted one plea to Su Mo: "Kill me..."

Su Mo discovered that the Red Mist shattered the Divine Souls of those trapped within it, leaving them in endless pain despite the Heavenly Dao’s gift of eternal life. Unable to save them, he began freeing them with his sword, and their lingering thoughts became Soul Incense that entered his body.

• Su Mo learned through his Flower of the Other Shore clone that the Red Mist’s victims suffered as their Divine Souls shattered, and that he could not cure them.
• Su Mo killed the Little Girl by severing her connection to the power of everlasting life, and her lingering thought thanked him before dissipating.
• Su Mo walked into the maddened crowd and began killing them with his sword, freeing their souls and absorbing their Soul Incense.
• As the victims’ Soul Incense entered Su Mo, it revealed the attachments they had carried in life, including one person whose treasured object was a teapot.