Arc 9Chapters 201–225
No recap yet.
No recap yet.
Han Kang successfully endured his Nascent Soul tribulation, while Lin Mo offered to upgrade Qiongsongzi’s Nascent Soul Condensation Pill and help the Divine Firmament Sect gain another Nascent Soul cultivator. The two sects began discussing an alliance, and Qiongsongzi presented Han Kang with a gift.
After Han Kang advanced to the Nascent Soul Realm, Qiongsongzi presented a rare Ten-Thousand Tendril Azure Sun Vine, which Han Kang passed on to Lin Mo. Lin Mo returned home, then used the Treasure Gourd to purge the toxins from a Nascent Soul Condensation Pill and brought out two swords.
Lin Mo prepared to pursue the fourth ancient sword at Buddha Hand Peak in the Western Region, believing Liu Xianzong’s unusual physique could help them enter the hostile Buddhist stronghold. After arranging for the Azure Cloud Sect to continue investigating the Soul-Devouring Formations, Lin Mo departed with his companions for the Western Esoteric Buddhism.
Lin Mo and his companions reached the Central Continent and learned about its powerful sects, strict laws, and their route westward. As they prepared to travel to Kangyuan City, a man accused of stealing the Dharma Gate Sect’s Sect-Guarding Golden Alms Bowl was pursued overhead.
Lin Mo sent Luan Xiuping to investigate the thief who stole the Dharma Flower Sect’s Sect-Guarding Golden Alms Bowl, while he and his companions waited outside Kangyuan City. Luan captured the female thief and brought her to them, and Lin Mo began questioning her about the theft and her ties to Western Esoteric Buddhism.
Lin Mo fell into a heart-demon tribulation while untangling how Dantai Jingyu’s divination and the Buddhist girl’s capture related to fate. After realizing he would have met her regardless, he warned Dantai against divining for others and asked the girl to help them enter Buddha Hand Peak to address a danger to Esoteric Buddhism.
Lin Mo learned that the Nine-Nine Soul-Devouring Formation could threaten Buddha Hand Peak, but Jingxi revealed she could not enter the sacred mountain without merit. She agreed to take Lin Mo and his companions to meet its guardian, leaving them to seek another way inside and warning them how to behave near the mountain.
Lin Mo and his companions reached Sacred Heart City and flew with Jingxi to Buddha Hand Peak, where the mountain’s Buddhist light began influencing their minds. Lin Mo resisted with Vitality Essence, but Liu Xianzong ran toward the peak, and a monk declared him the reincarnation of a Buddhist disciple.
Lin Mo struggled to keep Liu Xianzong from being claimed by the Buddhist Esoteric Sect, but a half-step Spirit Transformation elder named Zonge arrived and explained that Liu Xianzong was the reincarnation of a Buddhist vajra. The chapter ended with Zonge warning that Liu Xianzong’s awakened dharma body could turn its dormant baleful forces against him unless he returned to Buddhism.
Liu Xianzong chose to stay with the Buddhists to cultivate, while Lin Mo arranged for them to exchange messages and accepted the separation. Lin Mo then asked to destroy the Nine-Nine Soul-Devouring Formation and retrieve the extraordinary treasure beneath the Sacred Mountain, and the old monk led him underground.
Lin Mo claimed the fourth Ancient Sword after it destroyed the formation beneath Buddha Hand Peak, where a śarīra relic and Wickless Lamp had been suppressing it. He realized Dantai Jingyu's divination had likely foretold Liu Xianzong's unexpected rise as the Buddha-Child, then left for Sacred Heart City with Dantai Jingyu and Luan Xiuping.
After returning to the Azure Cloud Sect, Lin Mo resumed searching for the remaining Ancient Swords through the sect and the Eight Great Households, then examined the transformed Azure Sun Vine in his Gourd Space. As he wondered whether the Spirit-Devouring Vine could gain as many vines as its neighbor, it suddenly attacked the Azure Sun Vine’s root ball.
Lin Mo watched the Spirit-Devouring Vine fuse with and subjugate the Azure Sun Vine, creating a vast formation he named the Ten-Thousand Vine Spirit-Devouring Formation. The next morning, Wu Ying and Wu Zheng visited with pills meant to help him form his Golden Core, and Lin Mo had a bold idea as he examined them.
Lin Mo proposed building a Super Spirit Field to dominate the Spirit Plant market and cut off the Tai Sui Gate Fiends’ pill supplies. He planned to place it on the border between the White Jade Domain and the Pill King Domain, where he could use it to lure the Fiends into an ambush.
Lin Mo persuaded the Wu siblings to lure Tai Sui Gate fiends into a trap at a vast new spirit field, then demonstrated his special irrigation method to transform the land. The field had been prepared, but Wu Zheng doubted it could grow spirit plants above the low grades needed to compete in the market.
Lin Mo turned barren land into a seventh-grade spirit field that produced a bumper harvest in half a month, allowing the Eight Great Households to dominate the Eastern Province’s spirit plant and pill trade. As merchants and sects gathered to seek alliances, Wei Chen of the Tai Sui Gate watched Pill King City with hostile intent.
Lin Mo hit a bottleneck before the tenth layer of Foundation Establishment and sought Dantai Jingyu’s divination to find the breakthrough opportunity. The prophecy pointed east toward the Cinnabar-and-Verdant Spirit Field, where Wei Chen and two Tai Sui Gate prodigies were plotting its destruction.
Lin Mo learned that the Eight Great Households had gained control of most of the Eastern Province’s spirit plant and pill markets, then sensed Tai Sui Gate attackers approaching the Cinnabar-and-Verdant Spirit Field. The two late Golden Core guards confronted the three black-robed intruders as Lin Mo prepared to meet them.
Three Tai Sui Gate Fiends attacked the Eight Great Households’ spirit fields, and Gu and Yin easily defeated two late Golden Core cultivators. Wei Chen’s thunder strike was met by a vast surge of Curled-Branch Swords, leaving him to ask Gu for help as the swords threatened to overwhelm them.
Lin Mo kept attacking the three Tai Sui Gate Fiends with an endless flood of Curled-Branch Swords, exhausting Gu and thwarting Yin’s attempts to destroy them. Yin concluded that their operation had failed and called for an immediate retreat before Nascent Soul cultivators arrived.
Lin Mo tried to stop three Tai Sui Gate Fiends from escaping through a spatial passage, but even his four Ancient Swords could not destroy it. The Blood-Colored Sphere in his dantian then unleashed a mysterious power that made Gu’s blood and qi run wild, collapsing the passage and leaving all three fiends exposed to Lin Mo’s sword attack.
Lin Mo killed Wei Chen and his companions, and the Spirit-Devouring Vine absorbed their special spiritual roots, granting him thunder, space, and sound spiritual roots. After storing his spirit plants, Lin Mo noticed that time around Wu Zheng had slowed dramatically.
After eliminating the Tai Sui Gate Fiends, Lin Mo discovered that time seemed to slow around him and that his dantian was transforming in an unprecedented way. He left for the Azure Cloud Sect, where a spirit plant seed formed in his dantian, then entered the Treasure Gourd to explore its space.
Lin Mo discovered the Azure Emperor's Pharmacopoeia beyond the expanded boundary of the Gourd Space and gained its contents in his Sea of Consciousness. He suspected its pages were also conveying a message he would need to comprehend for himself.
Lin Mo discovered a powerful sealing formation hidden in the Azure Emperor's Pharmacopoeia and recreated it using 4,600 Azure Sun Vine tendrils, naming it the Grass and Wood Demon-Sealing Formation. When he tried to control it, the formation rapidly drained his divine sense, threatening to leave him permanently comatose.