Supreme Road

Biodata

Geography and Cities

The nine cities are separated by considerable distances. Each holds its own secrets, with opportunities generally becoming more formidable farther along the route 67 90.

Rules and Entry

• Forward travel only: Once committed to the trial, participants must pass through all nine cities and cannot retreat. A light curtain at Blood Phoenix City communicates the rules and offers a final chance to turn back 58 59.
• Supreme entry restriction: Supremes other than the nine city lords are prohibited from entering 58.
• Enforcement: Attempting to turn back brings pursuit by the route’s guardians, including the Supremes of the City Lord’s Manors 70.
• Native inhabitants are also restricted: They cannot retreat and normally remain at assigned stations. Reinforcements for a troubled city must come from preceding cities or the final city 85.
• Limited official intervention: City lords are supposed to guard the rules rather than interfere in ordinary struggles between participants 59.
• No reliable protection from status: Ao Hui warns that membership in the Martial Spirit Academy offers little protection against rivals seeking to become Supremes 57.

Ao Hui considers Heaven Transformation Realm cultivators well suited to the route. He suggests that completing it could allow exceptional talents to enter the Three Supreme Trials, but presents this as a possibility rather than a guaranteed reward 57.

Authorities and Inhabitants

City Lords

• The lords of the first eight cities are Fifth Grade Supremes; the Ninth City’s lord is a Sixth Grade Supreme and the route’s ruler 59.
• Their authority rests on recognition by most major factions of the Martial Dao Continent 59.
• Guards who participate in the route’s ordinary conflicts risk severe punishment. The Fourth City’s guards fear that their involvement will also implicate the city lord’s son, Xiang Xuan 94.

Native Inhabitants

• Native communities become numerous from the Second City onward and control important resources, including the Heavenly Evolution Stone Forest 68.
• Their shared interests unite them across cities, although travel restrictions and delays in communication complicate coordinated pursuit 84 85.
• In Spirit Gathering City, they issue Residence Orders and expel visitors once their allotted time expires 85.
• Relations with visiting prodigies depend on a fragile balance: some natives offer conveniences, while resource monopolies and hostile treatment provoke resentment. Serious fighting has broken out before 85.
• By the Fourth City arc, natives are described as the strongest local influence apart from the City Lord’s Manor 92.

External Outposts

• Martial Spirit Academy: Maintains an outpost used by higher-level students training on the route. Its Blood Phoenix City students provide intelligence, banquet invitations, and promises of support in outside disputes 58 59.
• Martial Realm: Maintains an outpost from which the Martial Dao Continent’s Ancestral Spirit Stones are distributed 58.

Resources and Hazards

Phoenix Remains

Blood Phoenix City’s recorded legend describes an injured Phoenix attacked by covetous cultivators. It abandoned rebirth through nirvana and died together with its attackers. Yan Qin confirms the central account, though the Phoenix Clan’s circumstances remain unexplained 59 60.

• A Blood Pool in the Fallen Phoenix Mountain Range contains valuable Phoenix blood and vital essence 60 64.
• Blood-fiend suppression makes access difficult; Yan Qin invites cultivators with strength comparable to Heaven Fusion Peak or sufficient blood energy 61.
• The blood essence contains demonic intent, which can provoke uncontrolled violence among those absorbing it 64.
• Wen Qingxuan refines Phoenix blood after encountering a Golden Sacred Phoenix, gaining golden-crimson Phoenix Feathers and improved control of Nirvana Fire 66 67.

Mystic Stones

• Mystic Stones can conceal Spirit Artifact embryos, pills, or naturally formed treasures, but expensive stones may contain only spiritual energy or another empty stone 69 70 81.
• Yun Mo uncovers a naturally formed spirit sword with its own spirit array and potential for further growth 81.
• Escaping treasures lead Yun Mo and Lin Jing toward the natives’ restricted grounds, exposing interference with the stone-gambling opportunities 81 82 92.
• The Heavenly Evolution Divine Stone taken from the Second City eventually reveals a law-born Stone Book after Lin Diao accelerates its development 84 98.

Spiritual Veins

• Spirit Gathering City’s Heaven and Earth Spiritual Veins, together with advanced spirit-gathering arrays, supply the energy used to condense Supreme Spirit Liquid 85 86.
• The veins suddenly run wild, destroy protective arrays, and injure native inhabitants. The city’s strongest natives cannot fully regain control, allowing outsiders to seize veins 86.
• A guarded storehouse contains bundled spiritual veins, Supreme Spirit Liquid, pills, and Quasi-Divine Artifacts 88.

Ambush Organizations

• These groups intercept and kill travelers between cities, taking their resources instead of seeking opportunities themselves 67.
• City lords tolerate them as another method of undertaking the trial. Within cities, the groups conceal themselves and keep a low profile 67.
• One group traps Yun Mo, Wen Qingxuan, and Lin Jing in Tang He’s fourth-grade Ghostly Soul Baleful Spirit Array; Lin Jing breaks it with talismans 67 68.

Story Role and History

Yun Mo’s Expedition

Corruption and Purge

The Fourth City confrontation exposes collusion between native inhabitants and officials supposedly responsible for impartial enforcement. Spectators dispute accusations that Yun Mo’s group broke the rules, with eyewitnesses identifying the natives and manor personnel as the instigators of the gate ambush 94 95.

The Ninth City’s lord had watched Lin Jing’s journey alongside Lin Diao and understood the misconduct occurring along the route. After Xiang Ji’s death, he anticipates a thorough cleansing and prepares to notify the continent’s major factions 97.

During the year following Yun Mo’s return, those factions investigate and discover corruption in almost every City Lord’s Manor, as well as among native inhabitants. They carry out a ruthless purge that revitalizes the Supreme Road 99.

Trivia

• The author identifies the Supreme Road arc as an original transitional storyline created for the fanfiction and acknowledges that many readers disliked it 71 80.