Chapter Summaries

Wu Shang and the Kings connected the Great Reckoning, the Origin Ancient Artifact, and the dark storms of the Boundary Sea to a possible terror on the far shore, then agreed on Wu Shang’s proposed course. Meanwhile, Di Yi’s attempt to use True Understanding in the Land of the Heavens met fierce resistance and unleashed terrifying rules and Dao arts.

• Wu Shang told the Kings that the ancient Emperor’s Fall might have been tied to a hidden force on the far shore of the Boundary Sea and the Origin Ancient Artifact.
• The Red King and the other Kings considered whether the artifact was a cultivation vessel that harvested Kings, while Yu Tuo reflected on his origins.
• The Kings agreed to follow Wu Shang’s proposal and discussed how to send their message, with Chi Wuxia as a possible intermediary despite having been sent away.
• Di Yi used True Understanding to trace the source of the Land of the Heavens but found that its intertwined trajectories blocked him.
• Di Yi tried to seize information, causing terrifying rules and Dao arts to surge through the Land of the Heavens.

Di Yi broke beyond the Myriad Heavens into the Sea of the Heavens, where he absorbed mysterious substances to heal his maimed body and strengthen his second Tree Body. The city’s sentries mistook him for a Dark Creature and sounded the War Bell, while Di Yi’s Tree Body took the form of the supposedly lost Myriad Tribulations Reincarnation Lotus.

• Di Yi escaped the Heavens’ order and explored the Sea of the Heavens, discovering that it contained a vast realm beyond the Myriad Heavens.
• Di Yi absorbed the Sea of the Heavens’ special substances to mend his damaged body and investigate a more precise way to heal himself.
• The city’s sentries recognized Di Yi as a Dark Creature and a source of pollution, then began a blood sacrifice to sound the War Bell and send a warning.
• A creature near Area Sixty-One awoke when the War Bell sounded and set out to relay its toll.
• Di Yi nourished his second Tree Body with the special substances, manifesting a lotus with seventy-three leaves that the sentries identified as the lost Myriad Tribulations Reincarnation Lotus.

Di Yi confronted the Three Artifacts as his strange lotus threatened to draw on the Daos of The Heavens, and the artifacts recognized signs of a forgotten Emperor. They discovered that two Eternal Sacrifices had helped guide him back, leaving them to wonder who he was and what he had endured.

• The strange lotus revealed the Daos and histories of The Heavens, alarming its inhabitants with the possibility that the Dark Calamity Land could exploit what it learned.
• The Three Artifacts arrived, stopped the blood sacrifice, extinguished the burning earth, and stabilized the collapsing city.
• Di Yi and the Three Artifacts exchanged information through an invisible contest, and the artifacts suspected that he was a powerful Emperor from the distant past.
• The Three Artifacts debated whether Di Yi had returned from oblivion and used their powers to investigate his identity.
• The woman discovered that Di Yi bore two kinds of votive power, and the artifacts recognized them as two Eternal Sacrifices capable of guiding a fallen Emperor home.
• The Three Artifacts wondered whether Di Yi had saved the Myriad Heavens twice, and one of them concluded that he knew who Di Yi was.

Di Yi encountered the Three Artifacts' spirits in The Heavens, restored the damage caused by his arrival, and witnessed a ruined future version of The Heavens being reflected into the present. After explaining that he had come to investigate the ominousness connected to his Black Blood, he left, leaving the spirits to wonder whether he had overcome darkening.

• The Three Artifacts' spirits debated whether Di Yi could be investigated or restored, then resolved to negotiate with him or abandon Area Sixty-One if necessary.
• A fragment of a devastated future The Heavens appeared, and its supreme beings used Reflecting Past and Present to restore it; Di Yi recognized a familiar thread connected to a Bear Child.
• Di Yi stopped expanding his second Tree Body and used the Three Talents Reincarnation Formation to restore the damaged land and revive those killed in the upheaval.
• The Three Artifacts' spirits asked Di Yi about his purpose and departure, and he said he had come to examine The Heavens and its connection to the Black Blood before leaving immediately.
• The Three Artifacts' spirits speculated that Di Yi might have recovered from darkening, but his departure erased every trace of his presence.

Di Yi returned to the Special Land with his body restored, spared the Kings, and reunited Chi Wuxia with the Red King. Shi then explained that the Kings had partly understood the Reincarnation Road, but its design was not about breaking the King realm and becoming Emperor.

• Di Yi returned from The Heavens with a newly reconstructed body, and the Kings felt the full might of an Emperor.
• The Golden Hou brought Chi Wuxia back, and Di Yi encouraged her to reunite with the Red King instead of pleading for mercy.
• Chi Wuxia embraced her father, while the Kings realized Di Yi had spared them and owed her for their reprieve.
• Wu Shang asked Shi about the Special Land and the Reincarnation Road, and Shi revealed that the road did not concern breaking the King realm and becoming Emperor.

Shi explained that the Reincarnation Road embodied the cycle of life and death, not a shortcut to becoming Emperor, and that beings carried the legacies of those who came before within their bloodlines and cultivation. He revealed that the Kings could use the road to live another life in a higher world with their memories and inheritances, leaving them eager but wary of the price and dangers.

• Shi told Wu Shang that the Reincarnation Road had nothing to do with breaking the King realm and becoming Emperor, but manifested the cycle of life and death.
• Shi explained that bloodlines, cultivation gateways, and insights reflected the legacies of past living beings and other things, while the individual remained themself.
• Shi asked the Kings to consider their regrets and revealed that the road could send them to another heaven and earth to live a new life with their memories and inheritances.
• The Red King and the other Kings grew excited when Shi said the Reincarnation Road held powerful substances of the Dao, but they questioned its dangers and Shi's motives.
• Shi said he would guide the Kings in exchange for a portion of those substances, paid with the scarce talisman paper he had left, and the Kings asked about Sacrificial Talismans.

Shi explained the dangers and purpose of the Reincarnation Road, while the Kings declined to enter it themselves and proposed sending other beings instead. When Shi learned the scale of their world’s cultivation population, he suspected he had reached a different Myriad Heavens and realized the discovery could greatly benefit him.

• Shi told the Kings that talisman paper protected travelers on the Reincarnation Road, while entering without it risked being reduced to material for a new life; he added that Di Yi could enter without it because he was an Emperor.
• Wu Shang and the other Kings discussed Shi’s offer, suspected he had ulterior motives, and decided not to risk leaving their world during the approaching Great Reckoning.
• Golden Hou criticized the Kings for dwelling on the past and future, and Wu Shang asked Chi Wuxia why she seemed unchanged by the Special Land; Chi Wuxia recalled seeing a self from a true history in which she should not have existed.
• Chi Wuxia suggested that the Kings send beings from their world into the Reincarnation Road instead of going themselves, and Shi agreed to negotiate revised terms.
• Wu Shang estimated that their world contained at least five hundred thousand beings in the human Dao path-proving domain, stunning Shi, who suspected he had arrived in another Myriad Heavens and thought he had struck it rich.

Shi recalled how he had entered Reincarnation Road after the destruction of his world, spent ages trying to restore it, and eventually believed all life had vanished. Di Yi explained that Shi came from another Myriad Heavens, and his analogy of the Boundary Sea as one galaxy left the Kings stunned by the possibility of a far greater universe.

• Shi remembered entering Reincarnation Road to create reincarnation after his enemies destroyed worlds across the Boundary Sea, then severing the road and fleeing through time while his true body burned.
• Shi sheltered surviving Kings, but they later volunteered to test reincarnation; after they left, he guided incomprehensible lifeforms and gradually gained authority over Reincarnation Road.
• Shi learned that incomprehensible lifeforms could not obtain the Dao's substance or rebirth talisman papers, so he created an inspection passage to disguise some as living spirits.
• Shi watched incomprehensible lifeforms dwindle until none remained, then awoke when Reincarnation Road began operating again and living beings appeared.
• Di Yi told the Kings that Shi came from other Myriad Heavens and compared the Boundary Sea to a galaxy within a much larger universe, leaving the Kings stunned.

Di Yi's account of worlds beyond the Boundary Sea unsettled the Kings and Shi, while the Golden Hou pushed for a visit to the Reincarnation Road. Di Yi agreed to the visit and invited Chi Wuxia and the Kings to accompany him under Shi's guidance.

• The Kings reconsidered their understanding of heaven and earth after learning from Di Yi that other Boundary Seas and Myriad Heavens existed.
• Shi asked whether these Myriad Heavens existed because of Di Yi, and Di Yi denied it.
• The Golden Hou demanded a look at the Dao substance and talisman paper associated with the Reincarnation Road.
• The Golden Hou falsely claimed that Di Yi intended to seize everything there, alarming Shi despite Di Yi's denial.
• Di Yi agreed to inspect the Reincarnation Road, and Shi welcomed him as a guest.
• Di Yi invited the others to join them, and the hesitant Kings followed after Chi Wuxia stepped forward.

Shi explained the Yellow Springs Road’s role in guiding souls toward rebirth or cycling, while Di Yi and the others crossed it and entered the freezing Underworld. The Kings began testing the clash between their yang nature and the realm’s extreme yin, which Shi said could reveal secrets about the worlds.

• Shi showed the Kings how souls lost their awareness on the Yellow Springs Road and explained that souls who believed themselves alive could be reborn, while others became fragments in a cycle.
• Di Yi and Shi debated whether rebirth or cycling was better, and Shi defended living beings’ hope of reuniting with those they had lost.
• The Golden Hou complained about the Soul Song, prompting Di Yi to lift the group off the road and speed them through its vortex.
• The group entered a dark, frozen world, where the Golden Hou swung between extreme cold and heat until Di Yi sent it away to undergo tempering.
• Shi explained that the Underworld’s deathly yin clashed with the Kings’ yang nature and urged them to experience it for insight; the Kings began, then reacted in alarm.

Shi and Di Yi explained that the Kings’ cultivation was limited by the laws and manifestations of their own realm, and that studying other worlds could broaden their paths. The Kings connected this insight to Taking Oneself as the Seed and ordered renewed scrutiny of the opposing realm’s practitioners and their own resident clans.

• The Kings endured the Underworld’s freezing cold and burning heat as Shi explained that their Yang Spirits clashed with its laws.
• Shi described how different worlds manifested laws and Daos differently, and Di Yi clarified that the Kings needed to absorb and create laws from other worlds to broaden their cultivation.
• The Kings connected the lesson to the Immortal Domain, the Red King’s Divine Embryo, and the idea of three thousand Great Daos manifesting in three thousand ways.
• An Undying King warned that Taking Oneself as the Seed resembled the path toward breaking the King Realm, prompting the Red King to keep troops at the Border Wasteland and investigate its practitioners.
• Wu Shang urged special attention to clans that had settled in their realm, and the Kings feared they might have secretly copied much of its laws and King imprints.

Wu Shang and the Kings discussed how to monitor the defectors without provoking them, then followed Shi into Reincarnation Road to excavate its Great Void Soil. Their digging revealed that the land might be part of a vast tomb, leaving the Kings horrified by what they could be uncovering.

• Wu Shang rejected special measures against the defectors and agreed with the Red King that they should watch Gu and the Fearless Lion for clues about their plans.
• Shi explained that Reincarnation Road lay within a layer of earth and asked Wu Shang and the Kings to help expand it by digging.
• Wu Shang led the Kings across the frozen land to an invisible boundary, where a force in the darkness frightened him before they began excavating.
• The Kings found that digging produced a fixed amount of soil, and synchronized efforts revealed enormous floating continents in the void.
• Wu Shang, the Red King, and the other Kings suspected the continents formed a tomb passage and that their excavation was breaking open a grave.

Shi explained that the excavated scenery of Reincarnation Road reflected how each observer understood it, while Di Yi’s excavation revealed a starry route that resisted his True Understanding. The Kings learned that Shi had spent seventy-three epochs expanding the road under its restrictions, and he led them toward the True Land of Reincarnation Road to fulfill their agreement.

• Shi told the Kings that the glaciers and frozen earth they saw were an illusion shaped by their understanding of Reincarnation Road.
• Di Yi excavated the Great Void and revealed a starry road of shattered planets, but his True Understanding could not penetrate it.
• Shi guided Di Yi and the Kings to the Terrain Rift Zone, where Wu Shang asked why excavation yielded only a fixed amount of soil.
• Shi explained that the world’s orders restricted excavation and that he had spent seventy-three epochs building the road, prompting the Kings to admire his perseverance.
• Shi told the Kings to stop digging and follow him to see the end of Reincarnation Road as an ancient road formed across the Great Void.

Shi led the Kings and Chi Wuxia along the Reincarnation Road into a barren realm, where they discovered a vast millstone grinding the corpses of countless strange beings. As Shi confronted an unknown presence obstructing the road, the Reincarnation Road's will descended and declared that it would kill the obstruction.

• Shi guided the group down the Reincarnation Road and across a luminous passage that could accommodate the living.
• Chi Wuxia nearly fell from the passage after the darkness drew her toward its edge, but Di Yi pulled her back as Shi explained its danger.
• The group crossed into a barren realm and spotted an enormous millstone surrounded by a sea of corpses and skeletons.
• Shi, Di Yi, the Kings, and Chi Wuxia approached the millstone and saw corpses being fed into it and ground apart.
• Di Yi recognized lingering mental obsessions in the remains and concluded that the deaths had been unnatural.
• Shi rebuked an unknown presence, and the Reincarnation Road's will filled the realm with power and announced its intent to kill the obstruction.

Shi fought the forces emerging through mysterious patterns at the end of Reincarnation Road and discovered that they came from a realm associated with the Netherworld. After destroying its monsters and weapons, he sent their liberated soul-lights back through the passage, while the Kings watched.

• Shi attacked and instantly destroyed the first expeditionary force and its mysterious patterns, overwhelming the Kings with his strength.
• A new passage opened, revealing a death-filled realm of halls, pits, and creatures that called itself the Netherworld.
• Shi recognized the second force as monsters assembled from parts of different beings, condemned their creators, and attacked.
• The monsters wielded stone weapons that threatened the soul, but Shi destroyed them, their weapons, and the patterns with a powerful strike.
• Shi gathered the monsters' soul-lights and scattered them throughout the realm beyond the patterns.

Shi devastated the Netherworld, but its mutilated lifeform summoned Slaughter Puppets made from False Emperor corpses. Shi equipped the Kings with Exotic Constructed State armor and led them into battle against the Netherworld’s forces.

• Shi attacked the Netherworld and destroyed its palaces, creatures, and black land, but the lifeform survived and began to summon something from the sky.
• The lifeform revealed the Netherworld’s Slaughter Puppets, which were pieced-together False Emperor corpses, and merged with one of them.
• Shi asked the Kings to help fight, then covered them in armor made from Great Void Soil and mother metals that could channel his power.
• Shi explained that the armor’s Mental Map would coordinate the Kings and told them to target an opponent and beat them to death.
• Shi and the armored Kings charged into the black-soil universe, turning it into a battlefield.

Di Yi and Chi Wuxia examined the Millstone and learned that it purified corpses and limbs as part of a stolen Reincarnation Road’s process of reincarnation. They reached an Ancient Road beyond the Millstone’s blood lake, where Di Yi hinted Chi Wuxia could help him seek their world’s Reincarnation Road.

• Chi Wuxia worried about the Kings taken away by Shi, but Di Yi said the ending had been decided long ago and led her down through the Corpse Mountain and Blood Sea.
• Di Yi and Chi Wuxia approached the Millstone and saw corpses and severed limbs ground into bloody sludge that flowed into a vast lake.
• Di Yi explained that the Millstone purified the dead and that reincarnation involved “gu cultivation,” while the Reincarnation Road remained a primordial order that could not truly be altered.
• Di Yi told Chi Wuxia that even she could find their world’s Reincarnation Road with a stepping stone such as the Netherworld, and privately hoped she could guide him to it.
• Di Yi and Chi Wuxia stepped onto an Ancient Road beyond the lake and wondered whether it was the Other Shore.

Di Yi and Chi Wuxia reached the Land of Reincarnation, where Di Yi revealed a beautiful pure land covered in traces of those who had passed through it. Chi Wuxia saw a vanished figure who seemed to be an Emperor and felt she somehow knew him, leaving Di Yi unable to verify what she had witnessed.

• Di Yi led Chi Wuxia through the darkness to the end of the Reincarnation Road and illuminated the place with his Dao.
• Chi Wuxia saw that the Land of Reincarnation was a radiant world of mountains, Chaos Qi, and traces left by past visitors.
• Di Yi explained that life could arise from the extreme of death and that the Land of Reincarnation was not necessarily a place of horror.
• Chi Wuxia studied the traces and considered whether those who had come there might become powerful after reincarnating.
• Chi Wuxia saw an imposing figure who seemed to be an Emperor, but the trace disappeared before Di Yi could find it.
• Chi Wuxia described the figure to Di Yi and admitted that she felt an inexplicable familiarity with him.

Chi Wuxia struggled to understand why she had seen an unknown future figure, while Di Yi reassured her that even a life within an ancient history could hold meaning. After considering the unknown Emperor and his own incomplete body, Di Yi formed a plan and turned his attention to the Six Rootless Vortices on the Reincarnation Road.

• Chi Wuxia wondered whether her experience at the Place Where Infinite Ancient Histories Overlap had changed her past or future, but Di Yi found no trace of what had happened.
• Di Yi told Chi Wuxia that her unexpected meeting with him was meaningful, even if she could offer nothing to an Emperor.
• Di Yi considered whether the figure Chi Wuxia had seen was another future Emperor and reflected that an Emperor's view of time could conceal unknown histories.
• Di Yi pondered how to heal his incomplete body and recalled the cauldron, the Willow Tree, and his sword as possible ways to trace his power's source.
• Di Yi examined the Reincarnation Road, crossed to the Six Rootless Vortices, and identified what he saw as the Substance of the Dao.

Di Yi was forced off the Reincarnation Road after refusing its offerings, then struggled through chaos and broken histories to escape eternal exile. He arrived in an unknown place and heard a warning to leave before a great calamity came.

• Di Yi examined the six rootless vortices, briefly glimpsed a profound truth, and wondered whether the experience reflected a barrier in his heart.
• The vortices offered him purple qi, the essence of an Ancestor Beast, the True Dragon’s name, and Emperor Light, but Di Yi rejected them all.
• The vortices merged into a passage, and a stream of time and history seized Di Yi and carried him into a chaotic realm.
• Di Yi tried to return using Golden Hou, Chi Wuxia, the Kings, and Shi as beacons, but the Reincarnation Road shook and obscured his bearings.
• Di Yi fought the road’s pull through chaos and shattered histories until it diverted him into an unknown place, where a voice warned him to leave before a great calamity.