Chapter Summaries

Wang Quan explored the Underworld, disguising himself as Killing Intent as he traveled through its shifting landscape and encountered its strange inhabitants. When his connection to the stone path weakened, he followed it back toward the Five-Colored Altar at the foot of Riverside Mountain.

• The black-robed figure explained to Big Fish that he had pretended not to notice a powerful Underworld walker, then erased Big Fish's memories and sent him off to hunt for merit.
• Wang Quan ran through the Underworld, endured ridicule from ghosts for his appearance, and eventually turned into Killing Intent to travel unnoticed.
• Wang Quan observed Centipede Spirits carrying passengers, enormous birds bearing palaces, and cultivators harvesting materials from a sleeping giant.
• Wang Quan questioned human cultivators about why some Underworld beings had flesh and blood, but they feared him and could not answer.
• Wang Quan sensed his connection to the stone path weakening and chose to follow it back toward the Five-Colored Altar rather than return to an arbitrary place in the Present World.
• Wang Quan noticed that while much of the Underworld's terrain shifted, the areas around certain landmarks remained fixed.

Wang Quan entered an Underworld city after speaking Dao Language, which caused flowers to appear and made a skeletal goat mistake him for a powerful ghost-god-blooded master. The goat brought him to Prince Eye-Seizer’s residence for a feast, where the gatekeeper welcomed him as the Flower-Scatter Daoist.

• Wang Quan joined the queue at the city gate, where the skeletal goat invited him to a feast after noticing the Goat Horn Lamp he carried.
• Wang Quan spoke Dao Language, causing space to warp and flowers to appear, and the goat began treating him as its master.
• The goat carried Wang Quan into the city and explained that Prince Eye-Seizer shared the bloodline of ghost-god masters and spoke Dao Language.
• The goat brought Wang Quan to the prince’s residence, where guests surrendered pieces of their flesh to enter the banquet.
• The gatekeeper welcomed Wang Quan and asked his name, and Wang Quan told him to call him the Flower-Scatter Daoist.

Wang Quan attended Prince Eye-Seizer’s banquet in the Underworld, where fine food and wine increased his foundations. After watching the hosts feast on human cultivators, he dismissed their delicacies as servants’ food and asked about amusing places nearby, leaving Prince Eye-Seizer embarrassed by the city’s poverty.

• Wang Quan entered the Underworld residence and studied the flower petals scattered before him.
• Wang Quan drank Eye-Seizer fine wine and ate dishes that strengthened his foundations.
• Prince Eye-Seizer arrived and asked Wang Quan why he had come to the city.
• The Underworld beings skinned and prepared captured human cultivators while Wang Quan continued feasting.
• Prince Eye-Seizer offered Wang Quan cooked eyeballs, but Wang Quan refused and called the food fit for servants.
• Wang Quan asked Prince Eye-Seizer about amusing places nearby, and Prince Eye-Seizer said the remote city had no magnificent scenery.

Wang Quan lectured Prince Eye-Seizer and the feast’s guests on a cultivation method, gaining Dharma Power as many Underworld beings vanished. After Wang Quan left, Prince Eye-Seizer ordered the remaining guests driven out so they would not benefit from his next visit.

• Prince Eye-Seizer asked Wang Quan to explain cultivation, and Wang Quan read its Household’s method and mastered it almost immediately.
• Wang Quan expounded the Dharma in Dao Language, granting the listeners insights and improving his own cultivation.
• As the golden lotuses and heavenly flowers appeared, many Underworld beings vanished and Wang Quan gained more than a hundred strands of Dharma Power.
• Prince Eye-Seizer praised Wang Quan’s lecture and exchanged contact information with him before Wang Quan departed.
• Prince Eye-Seizer ordered the remaining guests driven out and resolved not to invite them when Flower-Scatter Daoist returned.

Wang Quan traveled through the Underworld, received a brass courtyard from an Underworld bride, and learned that [Route Runners] smuggled living cultivators into the realm. At the Riverside Mountain beacon, he found a way onto the Five-Colored Altar’s path to the Present World as Underworld beings scrambled to follow him.

• Wang Quan helped an old cultivator at an Underworld wedding by giving him kidneys, then received a palm-sized brass courtyard from the bride.
• Wang Quan left the old cultivator with over a hundred pairs of kidneys, while the bride secretly planned to lure more old cultivators down and harvest them.
• Wang Quan rode inside a giant centipede and learned that [Route Runners] smuggled cultivators and spirit monsters into the Underworld to seek work and riches.
• Wang Quan reached the Riverside Mountain beacon and watched Underworld beings try to touch the Five-Colored Altar’s light, which let some briefly enter the Present World.
• Wang Quan stepped onto a stone path to the Present World, prompting Underworld beings to rush after him, while a giant ate one of them.

Wang Quan cultivated in the Underworld while searching for Foundation Establishment spells and waiting for contact from Drowning Water headquarters. He received an invitation to join the Far Western Land and began studying its route, eager to go.

• Wang Quan returned from the Underworld to the Present World and continued Dharma Refining while studying Daoist Scriptures with Ying Jiaren.
• Wang Quan spent more than three months teaching Prince Eye-Seizer's cultivation method in different Underworld cities, where some old and weak beings dissolved into Dharma Power.
• Wang Quan found no Foundation Establishment spells in the Lower Court and learned that neither the old cultivators nor the major Lineages knew the location of Drowning Water headquarters.
• Wang Quan received a message inviting him to join the Far Western Land within three years and warning that refusal would bring consequences for him and his descendants.
• Wang Quan decided to go to the Far Western Land and used his identity token to reveal its route map.

Wang Quan studied the route to the Far Western Land and prepared to leave, settling his affairs with Ying Jiaren, Qian Xiuyue, and the Round-Faced Daoist Nun. After more than ten days, he formally said farewell to the Drowning Dao Lower Court and set out through the Second-Layer World.

• Wang Quan searched the Second-Layer Inner Landscape for information about the long route and learned that its stops might support lower courts along the way.
• Wang Quan gave Ying Jiaren a copy of his route map and told her to contact him as Flower-Scatter Daoist after she entered the Second-Layer Inner Landscape.
• Wang Quan told Qian Xiuyue he was leaving and advised her to keep developing the Sunlight Alliance and accumulating Foundation Establishment Spirit Light.
• Wang Quan reassured Qian Xiuyue that she and her lineage could remain influential even if she did not go to the Far Western Land.
• The Round-Faced Daoist Nun advised Wang Quan to flee danger and hide in secluded cultivation if necessary.
• Wang Quan bade farewell to the Drowning Dao Lower Court and entered the Second-Layer World to travel toward the Far Western Land.

Wang Quan traveled through the Second-Layer World and helped Su Mali fight the evils inhabiting a flesh-covered manor. After they destroyed the manor and its Door Gods, Su Mali introduced herself and invited Wang Quan to travel with her to the Far Western Land.

• Wang Quan followed the Dao beacon map across the Second-Layer World, using the People-Crossing Scripture to destroy evil along the way.
• Wang Quan reached an abandoned manor under attack by grotesque flesh and joined the golden-lit cultivator inside in reciting the People-Crossing Scripture.
• Wang Quan fought the manor’s gate-face evil with Thunderfire and the People-Crossing Scripture while the hidden cultivator attacked it with golden light.
• Wang Quan and the cultivator defeated the gate-face evil and another gate-face, each of which left behind a Door God painting.
• Wang Quan watched the flesh-covered manor vanish into ruins, then met Su Mali of the Great Sun Way, who asked him to travel with her to the Far Western Land.

Wang Quan and Su Mali tried to turn a ruined manor in the Second-Layer World into a safe zone, then rebuilt its counterpart in the Real World to investigate the surrounding devastation. Wang Quan learned from a group of spirit monsters that rebellion and famine had left a thousand miles scorched and driven the survivors to the brink.

• Su Mali told Wang Quan that her identity token had kept her waiting for a temporary companion, and she explained that her Door Gods Paintings could guard a residence in the Underworld.
• Wang Quan and Su Mali rebuilt the ruined manor with paper figures and spirit creatures, but darkness consumed it before it could become a safe zone.
• Wang Quan and Su Mali descended into the Real World, buried the bones around the manor, and rebuilt it while searching for clues to its destruction.
• Wang Quan surveyed the surrounding land and found only bones, abandoned villages, and red-eyed spirit monsters for hundreds of miles.
• Wang Quan questioned a group of normal spirit monsters, and a weasel spirit explained that rebellion, famine, and warfare had killed the people and left the region desolate.

Wang Quan built and stocked a fortified manor, gathering more than a thousand spirit monsters to maintain it and giving them a way to survive together. The manor manifested as a safe zone in the second-layer world, where Wang Quan and Su Mali left it behind, assured it would endure for at least a hundred years.

• Wang Quan transported spirit monsters into his Foundation Establishment Dao Platform and gathered more than a thousand of them.
• Wang Quan established a manor with farmland, ritual prayers that accelerated crops and herbs, production shops, and walls reinforced by earth veins and drowning water.
• Wang Quan taught the spirit monsters daily worship rituals and urged them to unite and defend the manor; they promised to guard it.
• Wang Quan and Su Mali entered the second-layer world, where the manor appeared as a safe zone and a little favor descended upon them.
• Su Mali said the safe zone could last at least a hundred years, and Wang Quan agreed before they set off.

Wang Quan and Su Mali traveled between waypoints, clearing evil creatures and rebuilding an abandoned village. After settling more than a hundred survivors there, they wondered whether the widespread devastation was deliberate and decided to seek answers in the Second-Layer Inner Landscape.

• A beam of white light strengthened the safe zone Wang Quan and Su Mali had just left, and Dao Script sank into its buildings before their identity tokens trembled without revealing any information.
• Wang Quan and Su Mali traveled together, recited the [People-Crossing Scripture] to earn Yin Virtue, and cleared the evil creatures from an abandoned village.
• Wang Quan repaired the village and connected it to the earth veins while Su Mali found more than a hundred starving survivors within ten thousand li.
• Wang Quan healed the survivors and taught them cultivation and martial methods, while he and Su Mali helped them prepare to rebuild and left them resources.
• A white light strengthened the new safe zone, and Wang Quan and Su Mali discussed the desolate waypoints before deciding to ask about them in the Second-Layer Inner Landscape.

Wang Quan and Su Mali restored ten safe zones while traveling through devastated regions, then entered the Underworld to take a shortcut. Wang Quan used his standing and protection tokens to preach and gain the Underworld beings’ favor, while Su Mali hoped he would secure a token for her too.

• Su Mali asked cultivators why vast regions were empty, then lamented that ordinary people and spirit monsters had died without cause.
• Wang Quan and Su Mali established ten safe zones over more than a month by searching for survivors and repairing ruins.
• Su Mali recalled being nearly cooked by Underworld beings, but Wang Quan assured her that his connections would protect her.
• In the Underworld, Wang Quan preached as the Flower-Scatter Daoist, earning tokens, cultivation methods, and invitations from powerful beings.
• Wang Quan led Su Mali away by a rope, and she asked him to get her an Underworld token the next time they reached a city.

Wang Quan traveled through the Underworld and the Real World toward the Far Western Land, meeting and parting with a series of companions along the way. He continued his journey alone after resisting several male cultivators’ invitations to study and cultivate together.

• Wang Quan and Su Mali crossed the Underworld in a dozen or so days, emerged on a snowy mountain far from where they had entered, and parted ways.
• Wang Quan set up an anomaly exclusion zone while waiting, then met Fierce Tiger Daoist and traveled with him before they separated.
• Wang Quan traveled with a female cultivator from the Gilded Gold Dao, then reached a city with a teleportation vortex and parted from her.
• Wang Quan met Niu Dali, who urged him to study the Daoist Scriptures together and praised the advice he had received from Ma Qingqiu.
• Wang Quan continued toward the Far Western Land, rejected several male cultivators’ invitations, and resisted their arguments by thinking of Ying Jiaren and other female cultivators.

After a year of travel, Wang Quan reached the last stop before the Far Western Land and reunited with Ma Qingqiu and other cultivators bound for the same destination. The group prepared to travel onward as a team, but left its leadership undecided while some cultivators gathered to study Daoist scriptures.

• Wang Quan arrived at the enormous teleportation city and found Ma Qingqiu, Niu Dali, Su Mali, Fierce Tiger Daoist, and other cultivators waiting there.
• Ma Qingqiu and Wang Quan compared how long they had delayed Foundation Establishment and traveling to the Far Western Land.
• A puppet told the cultivators they would be treated as a small team, warned them to raise their clearance, and announced they would soon be sent to an outpost.
• Ma Qingqiu proposed serving as the team's liaison because he belonged to the Orthodox Mystic Sects, but other cultivators rejected choosing a leader before seeing everyone's abilities.
• A female cultivator suggested studying Daoist scriptures to help the group get acquainted, while Wang Quan declined to join; those interested entered her expanded tent as the others introduced themselves nearby.

Wang Quan joined a group of cultivators preparing to enter the Far Western Land, where his identity token was upgraded and granted him clearance based on his previous work and early arrival. He ended the chapter with level-three clearance and planned to recruit subordinates, strengthen himself, and establish a foothold.

• Wang Quan and the other cultivators exchanged identities and formed a small group, crafting magical artifacts to communicate across a million li.
• Wang Quan entered a teleportation array with the other Dao Seal Cultivators and arrived in a crude city surrounded by strange skies and dangers.
• A puppet warned the cultivators not to resist their token upgrades, then shattered as golden light transformed their identity tokens.
• Wang Quan's token granted him level-two clearance and privileges to issue compulsory missions and requisition cultivators and other subordinates.
• Wang Quan's token credited him for creating safe zones and arriving early, raising his Far West clearance to level three.

Wang Quan investigated the barren Far Western Land and discovered that the city was a safe but clearance-restricted cultivation center surrounded by a terrifying Second-Layer World. The cultivators agreed to improve the land and sky before bringing over cannon fodder, since the soil could not grow food.

• Wang Quan received level three clearance and joined the other cultivators in investigating the city and seeking Foundation Establishment methods and spells.
• Wang Quan surveyed the outskirts and found that the land was barren, its shallow soil unable to support crops, and its earth veins sustained the city walls.
• Wang Quan entered the Second-Layer World with his Yang Spirit, fought evil creatures attached to buildings, and withdrew after sensing hundreds of thousands of powerful enemies.
• Wang Quan returned to the base and learned that the city offered free Foundation Establishment methods and spells, while its halls, supplies, meals, and construction benefits depended on clearance.
• A female cultivator urged the group not to bring over cannon fodder until they had modified the land and sky enough to grow food.

Wang Quan and the other cultivators debated how to develop the city, then visited the Mission Hall to inspect ways to earn access points. He decided that expanding into the Second-Layer World would require refined sunlight and began searching for suitable Foundation Establishment methods.

• The cultivators argued over how to improve farmland and divide its produce, while Wang Quan stayed uninterested in the debate.
• Wang Quan and a female cultivator sent their Yang Spirits to nod along and led dozens of cultivators to the Mission Hall.
• Wang Quan examined the missions and learned that raising his access level required a hundred thousand points, then considered using refined sunlight to clear Evil and reflect buildings into the Second-Layer World.
• Wang Quan and the other cultivators went to the Transmission Hall, where he filtered the available methods down to the Wu Earth Exposition Method and the Thick Earth Exposition Method.

Wang Quan mastered thirty-six Foundation Establishment spells and used [Foundation Establishment Spirit Soil Art] to strengthen an Earth Vein, discovering it worked ten times more efficiently than its Qi Refining counterpart. As he kept working without rest, other cultivators marveled at his pace, until someone tried to plant a tree and was warned the Earth Veins needed more time to nurture the land.

• Wang Quan searched for spells related to Earth Veins and mastered all thirty-six Foundation Establishment spells, which required their Qi Refining versions as prerequisites.
• Wang Quan tested [Foundation Establishment Spirit Soil Art] and found its spirit soil strengthened an Earth Vein ten times as efficiently as soil gathered with [Spirit Soil Art].
• Wang Quan used his Primordial Spirit to continuously gather spirit soil, observing the growing Earth Vein nourish and solidify the surrounding land.
• Ma Qingqiu and other cultivators wondered how Wang Quan could keep casting without resting to recover his Dharma Power.
• After several hours, cultivators warned Fellow Daoist Flower-Scatter not to plant a tree because the land lacked enough vitality.

Wang Quan performed a lengthy ritual to plant a Five Elements Fruit Tree in the fragile land, with a cultivator molding earth into incense to help him. The tree took root and began strengthening the earth veins, accelerating the land-reclamation project.

• Wang Quan brought out a Five Elements Tree, and the cultivators agreed to let him try planting it ahead of schedule.
• Wang Quan set up the Five-Colored Earth Altar and began worship, but his Sandalwood Incense burned away at an abnormal rate.
• A female cultivator used the Earth-to-Incense Molding Art to create incense from earth and ease the burden on Wang Quan.
• Wang Quan completed his worship, cast seventy-two spells, and planted the Five Elements Fruit Tree with Foundation Establishment Spirit Soil.
• The tree took root and nourished the fragile land, leading a cultivator to say the reclamation project could advance more than ten times faster.

Wang Quan planted three thousand Five Elements Fruit Trees to strengthen the earth veins, then used his authority to locate and invite cultivators from his homeland. The chapter leaves Officiant, Dream, Si Xiaohong, and their companions still trapped in a deadly battle with a strange wind, while the fighters around them schemed to push them to the front.

• Wang Quan and the other cultivators planted three thousand Five Elements Fruit Trees, making the earth veins more stable and the forces beneath the earth less violent.
• Wang Quan rejected farming between the trees and told the cultivators to expand farmland outside while he went to recruit Foundation Establishment Cultivators.
• A red-copper puppet explained that Wang Quan's level-three authority let him teleport at least one hundred Orthodox Cultivators or ten thousand martial artists or spirit monsters at a time.
• Wang Quan gave the puppet several hundred names, and it located 122 people whose leaders had lower authority than his; Wang Quan ordered it to send invitations.
• Officiant, Dream, Si Xiaohong, and other cultivators continued suffering losses against a strange wind while the Dao Seal cultivators refused to help.
• A New-Method Cultivator accused Officiant and the others of slacking, and the Orthodox cultivators at the front demanded that they be sent forward to fight.