Chapter Summaries

Wang Quan returned to the Mortal World after sensing danger, while a group of [Madmen] arrived in the Fourth-Layer World to investigate the death of their advance force. He prepared a mass offering to restore [Shift Stars and Transpose the Dipper], leaving the new invaders searching for him.

• Wang Quan explained that the Flower-Scatter Daoist's starlight had annihilated the Madmen members and their souls, then told Ruo Jinghong and the others to expand the safe zone and retreat to the Third-Layer World if necessary.
• A group of [Madmen] arrived on a lotus platform, learned that their advance force had been killed, and set out to investigate despite their senior brother's warnings.
• The senior brother instructed his companions to circle the place where the advance force had died and avoid acting rashly if they met an enemy.
• Wang Quan summoned spirit monsters and cultivators in the Mortal World, brought out the Five-Colored Altar, and prepared them to worship the weakened structure of [Shift Stars and Transpose the Dipper].
• Wang Quan taught the gathered worshippers a scripture and told each of them to offer one stick of incense.

Wang Quan worked to restore [Shift Stars and Transpose the Dipper] while Ruo Jinghong and the cultivators confronted the Madmen who demanded the killer. Black Cloak was captured and steamed, but a hidden life-saving divine ability transported him to a coffin in the mortal world, from which he set out again.

• Wang Quan had cultivators replenish [Shift Stars and Transpose the Dipper] and told Ruo Jinghong to stall the Madmen while it recovered.
• Black Cloak and the other Dao Seal Cultivators left the underground palace to confront the Madmen, who claimed the Heavenly World protected the natives and demanded gratitude.
• Mei Niang insulted the Madmen girl, and Black Cloak challenged her to fight.
• The Madmen girl trapped Black Cloak in a steamer, where bamboo splints sealed his cultivation and he fell asleep.
• A life-saving divine ability carried Black Cloak's Golden Core and soul to an underground palace, and he emerged from his coffin to head back toward the Fourth-Layer World.

The humans deduced how the Madmen members’ strange treasures worked and captured several of them, but Wang Quan remained uneasy. He entered the Third Layer and saw Ruo Jinghong’s group fleeing as a youth on a lotus dais demanded the return of his companions.

• The Madmen girl repeatedly trapped and steamed Golden Core Black Cloak, but Ruo Jinghong gave him magic treasure blanks that let him counter the steamer and capture her.
• Golden Core Black Cloak imprisoned the Madmen girl in a birdcage and handed her over to Mei Niang.
• Mei Niang returned to Wang Quan with the captured girl, while other cultivators brought in more imprisoned Madmen members.
• Wang Quan remained uneasy despite the cultivators’ claims that the Madmen were easy to suppress, and he went to the Third Layer.
• Wang Quan saw Ruo Jinghong and the others flee as a lotus dais pressed through a rift, and the youth on it demanded that they return his companions.

Wang Quan confronted the young senior brother who had captured several Dao Seal Golden Cores and discovered a way into the Third-Layer World. As they tested each other over tea, the young senior brother claimed he was simply stronger than Wang Quan.

• Ruo Jinghong reported that the young senior brother had overwhelmed the cultivators and captured many of them, so Wang Quan chose to face him in the Fourth-Layer World.
• The young senior brother closed the fissure after Wang Quan entered, confident he could reach the Third-Layer World after capturing him.
• Wang Quan explained that his Legend Rating made his name and deeds appear in others' minds, and the young senior brother said he had met hundreds of immortals without encountering anyone with one.
• The young senior brother secretly added a glossy green liquid to Wang Quan's tea, and Wang Quan drank it, spraying dark green smoke from his seven orifices.
• Wang Quan questioned how the young senior brother could defeat them without a Dao Seal, and the young senior brother said he was stronger than Wang Quan before using his stomach and intestines to strangle Wang Quan's divine ability.

Wang Quan and the young senior brother of the Madmen each loaded a cup of tea with nine deadly techniques, then drank them to settle their fight. Wang Quan was badly burned as the ninth secret art consumed his Dharma Power and cultivation, leaving his fate uncertain.

• The young senior brother of the Madmen hid a lethal secret art in Wang Quan's tea, and Wang Quan countered by placing Divine Abilities in the teapot.
• Wang Quan and the young senior brother kept adding techniques until each cup held nine, including three immortal secret arts in the young senior brother's cup.
• The two men exchanged cups and drank, causing their techniques to erupt inside each other's bodies.
• Wang Quan expelled the first secret art's power, but later attacks repeatedly damaged him while the young senior brother suppressed Wang Quan's Divine Abilities.
• The young senior brother turned the tea table into an ash-collecting box and taunted Wang Quan as the ninth secret art ignited his Dharma Power and cultivation, scattering gray-white ash.

Wang Quan killed the young senior brother with nine cycling Divine Abilities, then discovered his cultivation resembled methods from the Great Unification Era. After the box vanished, Wang Quan found a black envelope hidden in the smoke.

• The young senior brother realized Wang Quan was studying his cultivation while fighting and asked about the Divine Ability that killed him.
• Wang Quan explained how he combined nine Divine Abilities with Reincarnation, and the young senior brother revealed that immortals used humans to eliminate promising cultivators before dying into starlight.
• Wang Quan recognized similarities between the young senior brother's cultivation realms and the methods taught by the [Taboo Emperor], while questioning why immortals practiced them.
• Ruo Jinghong and the others approached as Wang Quan's burned body recovered and the remaining ashes disappeared.
• Wang Quan crushed the empty box, then discovered a small black envelope hidden in the smoke in his palm.

Wang Quan read a dying Madmen member’s message, learning that immortals harvested humans as medicine and that the member served Time Madmen under the formidable Snow-Treading Madmen. After gathering intelligence from captured Madmen, Wang Quan decided to lead his companions in a surprise attack on their base to strengthen himself and Stone City.

• Wang Quan read the message describing the Immortal World, its human-harvesting practices, and the Madmen followers of Time Madmen and Snow-Treading Madmen.
• Mei Niang and the others returned with captured Madmen, and their captives revealed their headquarters and circumstances during interrogation.
• Wang Quan told the captives that their senior brother had died, and Mei Niang accidentally killed a grieving young man before resurrecting him.
• A girl in a birdcage blamed Snow-Treading Madmen for her senior brother’s death and gave Wang Quan detailed intelligence about the Madmen base.
• Wang Quan rejected the suggestion to involve the Dao Court and chose to lead a surprise attack himself, aiming to refine a Divine Ability, build up Stone City, and temper his companions.

Wang Quan and the Stone City cultivators created the Stone Diagram, a formation that let them revive in the city and grow stronger by defeating enemies. They set off for the Fourth Layer to confront their foes, while a Stone City warrior vowed to escape the city’s practice of using corpses after death.

• Ruo Jinghong urged the Dao Seal Golden Cores to act against their enemies, and the group followed Wang Quan back to Stone City.
• Wang Quan led a citywide ritual, using incense, fabrics, swords, and the cultivators’ power to create and embed the Stone Diagram throughout Stone City.
• Wang Quan explained that Stone City’s fighters could summon the diagram outside Historical Fragments, revive there if they died, and absorb the essence of enemies they killed.
• Wang Quan gathered ox horns and elephant tusks, then led the cultivators toward the Fourth Layer.
• A Stone City warrior lamented that the dead were turned into zombies and vowed to have his remains burned to ash.

Wang Quan led twelve teams through the Fourth-Layer World using the Shifting Stars Divine Ability to attack a Madmen Organization base. Snow-Treading Madmen sensed their arrival just as starlight descended from the sky.

• Wang Quan divided the cultivators into twelve teams and instructed them to strike the waypoint with coordinated attacks.
• Wang Quan used the Shifting Stars Divine Ability to carry the cultivators through darkness toward a cracked, lifeless great star.
• Mei Niang slapped a grieving female cultivator and reassured her that the group would remember her if she died.
• Snow-Treading Madmen recalled the losses his teams had suffered to mysterious evils and revived great medicines in the Fourth-Layer World.
• Snow-Treading Madmen sensed killing intent from above, and the Madmen seeds emerged from their enclosures feeling that a powerful enemy was approaching.
• Snow-Treading Madmen and the Madmen seeds watched starlight pour down from the heavens.

Wang Quan and the Human Race launched a coordinated assault on the Madmen base, striking it with eighteen waves of Divine Abilities. Wang Quan and his allies searched the devastated area for survivors, killing everyone they found as the attack continued.

• The Madmen candidates mistook the people descending through the starlight for precious herbs and prepared to harvest them.
• Wang Quan appeared beneath the starlight with eighteen banners as Ruo Jinghong recited his account of Wang Quan calling the Human Race to war.
• The first wave of more than ten thousand Divine Abilities destroyed the Madmen’s curtains and devastated the base, while its candidates and followers struggled to survive.
• Ruo Jinghong recited the effects of successive horn blasts as each new wave struck, expanding the devastation across a thousand-li area.
• Wang Quan used Eyes Emitting Dipper Light to search the area while his allies encircled it and killed survivors, including a cultivator who claimed to be on their side.

Wang Quan confronted Snow-Treading Madmen in the ruined thousand-li expanse, revealing that their deaths were tied to the completion of a treasure. As they closed in on each other, both prepared their attacks, leaving the battle about to begin.

• Wang Quan restored the slaughtering Divine Abilities into a horn, but it sank into the earth because Snow-Treading Madmen had survived.
• Snow-Treading Madmen emerged from the snow-filled pit, and Wang Quan explained that one of them had to die for the treasure to be completed.
• Snow-Treading Madmen unleashed a gigantic snowflake that spread across the battlefield as he and Wang Quan exchanged taunts about their worlds and cultivation.
• Wang Quan used Vertical Eye to inspect True Person Snowtreader and declared that an unrefined Greater Divine Ability would be enough to kill her.
• As they came within ten li of each other, Snow-Treading Madmen called for a blade and sent the great snowflake dragon lunging forward.

Wang Quan defeated Snow-Treading Madmen by using the dream-killing Divine Ability [Drunk, I knew not the sky lay in the water; a boatful of lucid dreams weighed upon the river of stars]. Snow-Treading Madmen became the one who would control the Divine Ability and the [War Horn] for Wang Quan, while his final defiance faded on the river of stars.

• Snow-Treading Madmen transformed the snowflake dragon into the Ice Soul Snow Dragon Saber and attacked Wang Quan with Left Saber-Autumn Swallow.
• Wang Quan rushed along the saber, broke the golden patterns with his finger, and reached Snow-Treading Madmen at the hilt.
• Wang Quan patted Snow-Treading Madmen's head, revealing the river of stars and a black-canopied boat that drew him aboard.
• Wang Quan explained that Snow-Treading Madmen's realms and saber patterns were incomplete, and identified Left Saber-Autumn Swallow as one of Zuo Qiuyan's many arts.
• Snow-Treading Madmen saw his corpse and learned that Wang Quan had killed him in a dream before his saber strike began.
• Wang Quan assigned Snow-Treading Madmen control of the dream-killing Divine Ability and the [War Horn], and Snow-Treading Madmen wept as the river carried away his unwillingness.

Wang Quan fused a new mass-slaughter divine ability into his Purple Mansion, trapping Snow-Treading Madmen inside it. When Wang Quan and the cultivators examined Snow-Treading Madmen’s memories, a mysterious three-headed being appeared and challenged them.

• Snow-Treading Madmen was drawn into Wang Quan’s Purple Mansion, where he vowed to cultivate until Wang Quan died and then drank himself into a dream of killing him.
• Wang Quan told Ruo Jinghong and the others that Snow-Treading Madmen could no longer trouble them, then offered them a copy of his memories.
• The cultivators examined Snow-Treading Madmen’s memories and recognized that the world he had lived in was false.
• A three-headed being appeared in the memories, told the cultivators to stop watching, and refused to share Snow-Treading Madmen’s secret arts.
• Ruo Jinghong summoned a Memory Strongman with her Five-Colored Altar, but the being quickly smashed it apart, prompting the cultivators to ask her how to make more.

Ruo Jinghong, Wang Quan, and the others uncovered Snow-Treading Madmen’s secret cultivation methods and studied the memories while the three-headed, six-armed being watched helplessly. Back in Stone City, they encountered evils heading to attack a Land of Evil, and Mei Niang recruited them as her hawks and hounds.

• Ruo Jinghong, Mei Niang, and the other cultivators overwhelmed the three-headed, six-armed being, broke into the palace, and watched Snow-Treading Madmen’s memories and secret cultivation teachings.
• The cultivators experimented with the revealed realms, while some dug them out to study and considered using martial artists to cultivate them for harvesting.
• The three-headed, six-armed being threatened Wang Quan, but Wang Quan ignored him and studied divine ability fragments until the battlefield stabilized.
• Wang Quan and the others returned to Stone City and found evils preparing to enter the underground passage and destroy a Land of Evil.
• Wang Quan offered to join the evils in battle, then admitted they would kill them; Mei Niang offered the evils a way to live if they served her.
• The evils transformed into hawks and hounds and claimed they had been Mei Niang’s hawks and hounds all along.

Wang Quan helped establish a new, faster cultivation method for producing high-quality bodily materials before turning his attention to opening a safe zone in the Third Layer of the Underworld. After preparing with twelve Ghost Gods and their uncanny helpers, he performed a ritual and descended with them.

• Cultivators in the underground palace studied Wang Quan's new cultivation system and asked the All-Under-Heaven Dao Court to make it faster to cultivate.
• Researchers developed and disseminated revised martial cultivation realms that let ordinary people produce golden blood and golden flesh in about a year each.
• Wang Quan left the Fourth-Layer World and summoned twelve Ghost Gods to prepare for entering the Third Layer of the Underworld.
• The Ghost Gods brought uncanny ghosts and monsters to deal with dangers, and they discussed contingencies with Wang Quan before he performed a ritual.
• Wang Quan sensed the Third Layer of the Underworld respond with joy, and a Ghost God linked the group's wrists with a chain for communication.
• Wang Quan and the Ghost Gods unleashed their methods together, shattering the world around them and vanishing into the Third Layer.

Wang Quan and the twelve Ghost Gods reached the Third Layer of the Underworld, where they found a bright, seemingly revived world and strengthened their connection to it and the Second Layer. While exploring, they discovered a tiger tormenting a human-faced dog ghost, which pointed them out to the tiger as a legendary human.

• In the Second Layer, more than a hundred Ghost Gods sacrificed themselves to build an altar and began a ritual to support their companions in the Third Layer.
• Wang Quan and the twelve Ghost Gods found themselves beneath blue skies and bright sunshine in the Third Layer, and Wang Quan sacrificed to strengthen his connection to it.
• The Ghost Gods used their descendants as offerings to contact the Second Layer, but established only a faint connection and received no response to their signal beacons.
• Wang Quan and the Ghost Gods investigated their surroundings with their powers, then followed their scouts toward signs of intelligent life.
• Wang Quan spotted a tiger demon chasing a human-faced dog ghost, which urged Brother Tiger to catch the human in the clouds.

Wang Quan questioned a tiger demon about how it came to the Underworld and learned that a mysterious woman’s arrival had triggered the Heavenly Upheaval. After trading him golden lungs, Wang Quan rode with the tiger demon toward its tribe, while the ghost creature realized the black cloud’s occupants had eaten its brains and taken its memories.

• Wang Quan offered the tiger demon golden lungs in exchange for answers, rejecting its offer of a tiger penis.
• The tiger demon explained that a bloodied woman had fallen from a giant ring during a battle, carrying the monsters into the Underworld.
• The ghost creature said the world had changed from a gray, barren place during the Heavenly Upheaval, and that the tiger clan had penned up the Ghost Gods’ weaker descendants.
• The tiger demon described how a Ghost God had jumped into an iron pot after seeing its clan ancestor’s statue, then accepted Wang Quan’s lungs and invited him to the tribe.
• Wang Quan rode the tiger demon toward its tribe, while the ghost creature stayed behind and was grabbed by a hand from the black cloud.
• The ghost creature grew and lost twelve brains, then realized the cloud’s occupants had taken its memories and were heading toward the tiger demons.

Wang Quan traveled with Tigerish Vigor to the tiger tribe, learning about its powerful ancestor, Mother Tiger. After Tigerish Vigor found his childhood sweetheart with his closest brother, Wang Quan comforted him and continued toward the chief, while the tribe’s tigers eagerly offered to trade with him.

• One of the twelve Ghost Gods persuaded the others to follow Wang Quan into the tiger demons’ territory.
• Tigerish Vigor told Wang Quan that the tribe’s ancestor, Mother Tiger, had empowered the tigers and could descend to protect them.
• Wang Quan and the Ghost Gods reached the tribe and felt Mother Tiger’s presence through her statue.
• Tigerish Vigor found his childhood sweetheart with his closest brother and wept, while Wang Quan tried to console him.
• Tigerish Vigor’s childhood sweetheart led Wang Quan toward the chief as tiger demons crowded around and offered trades.
• Wang Quan promised the tiger demons he would trade with them after speaking to their chief.

Wang Quan met White Tiger Number Thirteen, learned about a powerful being from the Great Unification Era who had been driven from her world, and heard that his namesake once ruled the Heavenly Demon Era. White Tiger Number Thirteen said the tiger clan had declined but still carried the Heavenly Demon's bloodline, leaving Wang Quan curious about the ancient eras and their powers.

• The tigress led Wang Quan to meet White Tiger Number Thirteen, who said his clan had come from another world and expected to return when that world expelled the woman who had descended there.
• Wang Quan offered White Tiger Number Thirteen golden viscera in exchange for information about the woman, and the patriarch described her as the first and last [Heaven] of the Great Unification Era.
• White Tiger Number Thirteen warned Wang Quan that the woman had been hunted by taboo beings and advised him to kneel and avoid provoking her if they met.
• White Tiger Number Thirteen told Wang Quan that the tiger clan rose to prominence under Heavenly Demon Tiger-Wang Quan, whose name matched Wang Quan's.
• White Tiger Number Thirteen recounted that Heavenly Demon Tiger-Wang Quan had risen from humble origins to become an era's hegemon, and said the tiger clan still carried his bloodline and hoped another Heavenly Demon would arise.

Wang Quan secured the White Tiger chieftain’s permission to establish a safe zone and began trading his regenerating organs for the tiger demons’ goods. As the tiger demons eagerly harvested his organs, one kidney sprouted legs and ran off, prompting a tiger demon to chase it.

• The White Tiger chieftain told Wang Quan he could establish a safe zone and offered his name as protection if the tiger demons gave him trouble.
• Wang Quan told the twelve Ghost Gods that the Third Layer of the Underworld might want to revive and urged them to prepare materials for the safe zone.
• Tigerish Vigor accepted living with Childhood Sweetheart Tiger and Brother Tiger and proposed a celebratory feast.
• Tigerish Vigor and the other two tiger demons offered wine and bones in exchange for Wang Quan’s internal organs, and he let them take whatever they wanted.
• Other tiger demons joined the trade, bringing goods and harvesting Wang Quan’s repeatedly regenerating organs.
• A kidney wriggled free, sprouted legs, and ran away, so a tiger demon chased it.