Chapter Summaries

Ao Ding studied cultivation methods under Sun Chen and used his enhanced True Person's Eye to forge the Cloud Aspect Primordial Truth Mirror for analyzing cultivation methods. He chose three foundational methods for the artifact, while Sun Chen assigned him to consider why killing required less effort than controlling natural phenomena.

• Sun Chen taught Ao Ding the distinctions between orthodox, left-hand, and heterodox paths while imparting cultivation scriptures and explaining other traditions.
• Ao Ding and Sun Chen established that the True Person's Eye could perceive natural laws, comprehend Three Heavens Great Grotto True Seals, and identify flaws in cultivation.
• Ao Ding continued his intensive studies because he wanted to protect himself without jeopardizing Sun Chen's Liberation by Violence.
• Ao Ding refined the Three-Qi Heavenly Crystal Stone, inscribed thirteen hundred true seals, and attached his divided consciousness to create the Cloud Aspect Primordial Truth Mirror.
• Ao Ding chose the Golden Light Method, the Northern Yin Netherworld Hell Method, and the Immortal Nest Nine Palaces Scripture to support the Mystical Perfection Formula's analysis and organization of cultivation methods.
• Sun Chen supplied freshly copied cultivation texts and asked Ao Ding to explain why True Persons considered killing simpler than summoning wind and rain.

Ao Ding used the Mystical Perfection Formula to process cultivation methods and scriptures, then applied his insight to answer Sun Chen’s question about why curses that kill living beings are harder than spells that manipulate nature. He demonstrated his explanation with a wooden storehouse and boxes, leaving Sun Chen eager to hear more.

• Ao Ding entered three cultivation methods into the Primordial Truth Mirror, which translated their seals and formed a Perfection Formula array linked to his spirit.
• Ao Ding expanded the formula with additional methods and curses, then mastered twelve new Daoist arts overnight while working on Sun Chen’s homework.
• Ao Ding made a wooden spear and arrived late to meet Sun Chen, who realized he had solved the question about killing curses.
• Ao Ding explained that ordinary cultivators saw living beings as independent worlds that resisted curses, making them harder to affect than primal qi.
• Ao Ding built a wooden storehouse and palm-sized wooden boxes to demonstrate his explanation, and Sun Chen urged him to continue.

Ao Ding demonstrated how a True Person could use his True Person's Eye and a new spear technique to breach another cultivator's defenses, then challenged Sun Chen's view of the greater world and living beings. Sun Chen warned him not to pursue those ideas yet, and as the full moon arrived, Ao Ding heard wolves and realized the enemies had come.

• Ao Ding used the True Person's Eye to open a wooden box from afar and explained how an unlocking spell could disrupt a cultivator's body.
• Ao Ding showed Sun Chen a spear combining true seals that could breach defenses and unleash damaging spells.
• Sun Chen praised Ao Ding's spellcraft but corrected his explanation of why True Persons could manipulate living beings and nature.
• Ao Ding argued that the greater world and living beings came from the same source, prompting Sun Chen to stop him from pursuing the idea.
• Sun Chen sent Ao Ding back to cultivate, and Ao Ding began making spell implements to help protect himself during the Liberation by Violence.
• On the night of the full moon, wolf howls woke Ao Ding, and he realized the enemies had arrived.

As Sun Chen battled seven demon kings in the Immortal Tomb, Ao Ding prepared to seal them inside and considered wiping out the ghost wolves outside. After recognizing the wolves that had ruined his chance to arrive with an Innate Dao Body, Ao Ding decided to attack them.

• Sun Chen gave Ao Ding the Qianling Mountain-Calming Pearl and the Water-Moon Robe, then confronted the Nethermoon Wolf King and six other demon ghosts as they broke into the Immortal Tomb.
• Sun Chen fought the demon kings with the golden dragon and his spiritual arts while Ao Ding activated the restrictions and lowered the Dragon-Severing Stone, sealing the tomb.
• Ao Ding inspected the wolves with the Primordial Truth Mirror and confirmed his curse-bearing wooden spears could target wolves as canines.
• Ao Ding recognized the wolf souls as the pack that had disrupted his initial shaping six years earlier, then pointed a wooden spear at them and declared, “Die.”

Ao Ding used a curse on the attacking wolf ghosts, first draining their spiritual power with showers of golden light and then unleashing an uncontrolled hell curse that turned them into stewed meat. The wolves fled in panic as Oil Cauldron Hell spread across the magical domain, while Ao Ding was left exhausted and unable to stop it.

• Ao Ding used Light-Splitting Shadow-Misplacement to divide the Golden Spear Curse into showers of tiny attacks that drained the wolf ghosts’ spiritual power.
• Demon generals emerged from the black mist and drove the wolves to keep attacking the immortal estate, despite the golden rain and the deaths of their comrades.
• After his wooden spears began crumbling and his power ran low, Ao Ding threw out Quenched Feather Golden Paper and unleashed the hell curse he called “Fragrant meat stew.”
• The curse transformed wolf ghosts into pots of stewed meat, and the demon generals realized Ao Ding’s magic seemed to come from a ghost king of the underworld.
• The wolf ghosts fled as Oil Cauldron Hell multiplied, but Ao Ding had exhausted his magical power and could no longer control the spreading curse.

Sun Chen revealed the spirits of his past lives and destroyed most of the demons, while the Wolf King escaped into Ao Ding’s trap and was killed. After Sun Chen departed into reincarnation, Ao Ding inherited his curse and faced the still-open passage to the Nine Netherworlds, where a new ghost appeared.

• Sun Chen summoned two manifestations cultivated in his past lives, and the woman destroyed five of the seven demon ghosts while the Wolf King fled badly wounded.
• The Wolf King reached the Dragon-Severing Stone, where Ao Ding’s Golden Spear Cave Lock summoned a golden dragon that killed him.
• Ao Ding sensed Sun Chen’s powers vanish and realized the wolf curse had transferred to his hand.
• Ao Ding discovered that Oil Cauldron Hell was still drawing ghost qi through the open netherworld passage, while the aroma of its wolf-ghost stews risked attracting dangerous beings.
• A scarlet ghost appeared beyond the passage, and Ao Ding considered using it to seal the opening.

Ao Ding sealed a leaking passage between the Netherworld and the human world, then began refining the ghostly feast in the Oil Cauldron Hell into Netherworld Wolf-Soul Pearls. After Sun Chen appeared in a dream to reveal his successful reincarnation and counsel Ao Ding, Ao Ding completed the funeral rites and considered advancing his Northern Yin cultivation.

• The Red-Horned Ghost entered the human world through a passage and ate Ao Ding’s ghost-path Spirit Cuisine until Ao Ding confronted him and sent him back with stew as a reward for sealing the passage.
• Ao Ding sealed the passage with the Azure Jade Golden Dragon Banner and began refining the meat in hundreds of thousands of oil cauldrons into Netherworld Wolf-Soul Pearls.
• Ao Ding held vigil and chanted scriptures for Sun Chen, who appeared in a dream to say he had reincarnated on Cangluan Continent and instruct Ao Ding to guide him in his next life without taking him to the Pure Tenuity Sect.
• After Sun Chen’s reincarnation released the contract spell, Ao Ding strengthened barriers around the Oil Cauldron Hell and completed forty-nine days of rites.
• Ao Ding reviewed his Golden Light Method and Northern Yin Dharma Gate cultivation, sensing that advancing the Hell Method could bring him a great fortuitous opportunity.

Ao Ding studied the Northern Yin Hell Iron Writ and advanced his hell methods by enduring the suffering of several hells. After encountering the Green-Eyed Ghost at the passage between worlds, he made a contract to sell his ghost-soul meat stew in the netherworld, leaving both sides satisfied with the arrangement.

• Ao Ding examined the Northern Yin Hell Iron Writ, manifested several hells in his jade wheel, and endured their torments to advance his cultivation.
• The Green-Eyed Ghost sensed Ao Ding’s hell methods at the passage, mistook him for a powerful Northern Yin cultivator, and cautiously explained that ghost-made food could nourish and purify ghosts.
• Ao Ding offered to sell his meat stew and teach Northern Yin secret arts in exchange for netherworld goods, and the Green-Eyed Ghost agreed to help.
• Ao Ding and the Green-Eyed Ghost signed a contract, exchanged food, and agreed to guard the passage and establish a Ghost Gate requiring both their permission to cross.
• The Green-Eyed Ghost sent the Red-Horned Ghost to find a stall in a nearby ghost city, and Hell Eatery opened in the netherworld.

Ao Ding’s fragrant meat stew eatery prospered in the underworld, and the Yin Virtue from helping ghosts began advancing his Northern Yin cultivation. He and the Green-Eyed Ghost expanded their plans from food sales to cross-world trading and cosmetics for ghosts, while Ao Ding continued clearing the ghost domain.

• Ao Ding watched the Green-Eyed Ghost sell the stew at a profit and sent more stock after all seventy pots sold quickly.
• As Ao Ding practiced the Northern Yin path, he formed the Nine Netherworlds Burning Refinement Boiling-Form Cauldron and suspected the accumulating Yin Virtue was aiding his cultivation.
• The Green-Eyed Ghost proposed hiring hungry ghosts and building a larger eatery, and Ao Ding agreed while sending another three hundred pots.
• Ao Ding and the Green-Eyed Ghost kept their thirty-seventy arrangement and began planning to trade pure-yang goods and cultivation methods between the yin and yang worlds.
• After ghosts complained about repetitive meals, the Green-Eyed Ghost described their need for spices and cosmetics that could conceal appearances damaged by their deaths.
• Ao Ding agreed to help develop varied food and cosmetics for underworld ghosts, starting another enterprise with the Green-Eyed Ghost.

After three years on Qianling Mountain, Ao Ding reaches the Profound Gang Upper Realm, prepares to pursue a breakthrough through the Golden Light Method, and gathers his belongings before leaving. He says farewell to Green-Eyed Ghost and begins a new journey down the mountain.

• Ao Ding consumes the Jade True Golden Bud, advances his True Heaven Golden Gang, and discovers that his Primordial Truth Mirror spirit-offshoot has divided into three children representing his desires, morality, and rationality.
• Ao Ding and the three children determine that he can cultivate a Glazed Immortal Body through the Five Qi Returning to the Origin Formula and plan how to enter the Jade Tower Realm using both the Golden Light Method and Northern Yin Dharma.
• Ao Ding and Green-Eyed Ghost discuss fox ghosts searching near the Mountain Villa and the difficulty of finding skilled ghost monsters for their businesses.
• After another half year of cultivation, Ao Ding packs his scriptures, Dharma Artifacts, wealth, and the Fragrant Meat Stew recipe, then descends Qianling Mountain.
• Green-Eyed Ghost gives Ao Ding a jade bracelet that can let them communicate across realms, and Ao Ding bids him farewell before setting out.

Ao Ding traveled from Xiling City toward the Seven Spirits Sect, using the Qingji relay stations and sharing his plans to visit True Persons and old acquaintances. He reached the sect’s western gate, where someone confronted him and swung a punch at his face.

• Ao Ding feasted in Xiling City and planned to visit the Seven Spirits Sect, True Persons, and several households and sites connected to Sun Chen.
• Ao Ding toured the city and bought gifts for people at the Seven Spirits Sect.
• Ao Ding traveled with a Qingji team, then used the House-Building Technique to create wooden shelters at one of their relay stations.
• Ao Ding crossed into the Seven Spirits Sect’s territory, gave the Qingji medicinal pills and Greenwood House-Building Talismans, and entered through the western gate.
• A person shouted at Ao Ding for returning and sent a punch toward his face.

Ao Ding returned to the Seven Spirits Sect, reunited with the kitchen garden staff, and left them and his old acquaintances gifts. After learning that Wang Weilong and Deputy Sect Master Wu were reacting to his return, Ao Ding avoided the inner court and departed the sect, though he remained ready to fight anyone who pursued him.

• Ao Ding revealed his Mystic Gang Realm cultivation to an outer court disciple, then shrank him and hid him in his sleeve to keep his return quiet.
• Ao Ding reunited with Auntie Wang and the kitchen garden staff, gave them gifts and pills, and asked Auntie Wang to deliver bundles to Wang He and Luo Qiushui.
• Wang Weilong ordered Fang Cheng to send Wang He to the rear mountain and summon Luo Qiushui, while Deputy Sect Master Wu told Wu Linglong to inform Wang He that Ao Ding had returned.
• Ao Ding visited the kitchen garden workers, then crossed the outer court and left through the east gate without entering the inner court.
• Ao Ding sensed that Sect Master Wang had been watching him and decided to avoid trouble inside the sect, but warned that he would show no mercy if anyone pursued him beyond its territory.

Wang Weilong stopped Wang He from pursuing Ao Ding and persuaded him to accept spirit medicines instead. At the eastern gate, Luo Qiushui tried to keep Wu Linglong from chasing Ao Ding, defeated him easily, and then hurried after Wang Weilong as he left the sect.

• Wang Weilong confronted Wang He over his scheme to seize Sun Chen's legacy through Ao Ding and urged him to preserve the Seven Spirits Sect's favor with Ao Ding.
• Wang Weilong gave Wang He two thousand-year-old spirit medicines, then resumed watching Ao Ding and Deputy Sect Master Wu's party.
• Luo Qiushui met Wu Linglong at the eastern gate and warned him not to pursue Ao Ding, but Wu refused to obey his uncle's orders.
• Luo Qiushui neutralized Wu Linglong's punch and trapped his sword in a sea of clouds, proving he could not match her, much less Ao Ding.
• Wu Linglong left in a daze, and Luo Qiushui spotted Wang Weilong departing and hurried after him.

Ao Ding left the Seven Spirits Sect after Wang Weilong explained how the sect had used trials to temper him and revealed its bitter divide over the flawed Seven Luminaries Scripture. As Ao Ding traveled on and began cultivating the Five Qis Returning to the Origin Glazed Art, Luo Qiushui chose to study the scripture, and the chapter ended when Ao Ding rescued a woman who had jumped into a river.

• Wang Weilong told Ao Ding that he had arranged the outer court’s troubles as a trial and explained the Seven Spirits Sect’s failing scripture and Sun Chen’s past.
• Wang Weilong escorted Ao Ding out, while Luo Qiushui declared that she wanted to cultivate the Seven Luminaries Scripture to reach the Jade Tower Realm; Wang Weilong agreed to let her read it under his guard.
• Ao Ding continued toward the Country of Xuanjia, avoided visiting a ghostly residence, and decided to travel through populated areas while practicing Sun Chen’s Hundred Curses Gathering Fortune Ritual.
• Ao Ding began the Five Qis Returning to the Origin Glazed Art and formed his first Five Elements Dao Seed in his kidneys.
• Inside the Primordial Truth Mirror, the red boy imagined an art for collecting True Person talents, and the blue boy wondered whether Ao Ding’s True Person’s Eye might conflict with his own true nature.
• Ao Ding rescued a woman who had thrown herself into a river, and the blue boy sensed an opportunity.

Ao Ding rescued Ning Zhi from drowning and promised to investigate the disappearance of her child. After helping the water ghost, he pulled up the iron chain that had suppressed a demon in the river, revealing what it bound.

• Ning Zhi leaped into the river, but Ao Ding swept her back to shore and listened as she explained that her lover Huang Lang had vanished and her family claimed her baby was a burned plant root.
• Ao Ding promised to investigate whether Ning Zhi's child had survived and learned that the water ghost had been searching for a replacement for years without harming anyone.
• Ao Ding tried to deliver the water ghost but found that a ward beneath the river blocked his rite.
• The water ghost hauled up part of an iron chain marked with the Golden Court Sect's Taiwei Qiantian True Seal, and Ning Zhi recalled that a ritual master had ordered it forged to stop floods about a hundred and fifty years earlier.
• Ao Ding deciphered the seal, recited its incantation, and pulled the chain from the river, revealing a bound creature that looked like a snake.

Ao Ding helped a water ghost pass into the netherworld and investigated why Ning Zhi had given birth to a strange, plant-like object. He concluded that Huang Lang was a spirit who had lost his cultivation and returned to his original form, then led Ning Zhi’s father and brother toward Phoenix Mountain to find him.

• Ao Ding discovered that the black snake spirit was already dead, then used a talisman formation and food offerings to deliver the water ghost to the netherworld.
• The water ghost’s belongings included a spell that brought Ao Ding a small gain in fortune and a glimpse of a book-shaped Dharma Artifact.
• Ao Ding accompanied Ning Zhi home, where her family explained that they had not killed her child and showed him the charred, plant-like remains.
• After examining Ning Zhi and the remains, Ao Ding concluded that Huang Lang was a plant spirit who had spent his vital essence and reverted to his original form.
• Ao Ding sensed Huang Lang’s true qi on Phoenix Mountain, and Ning Zhi’s father and brother agreed to accompany him there.

Ao Ding uncovered the fate of Ning Zhi’s spirit lover, Huang Lang, and arranged for the two to meet briefly after death. Ning Zhi began cultivating with Ao Ding’s guidance, while he left with a spell Huang Lang had entrusted to her.

• Ao Ding led the Ning family to Huang Lang’s grave, where they found the Polygonatum Immortal’s rotted remains, and Father Ning recognized him as the yellow-clad immortal boy from his childhood.
• Ning Zhi explained that she had once saved the wounded plant by tying its branches with a red cord, which spirits had mistaken for a marriage pledge.
• Ao Ding summoned Green-Eyed Ghost, who arranged for Huang Lang and the water ghost to return from the underworld for two hours; Huang Lang explained how their romance began, and he and Ning Zhi said goodbye.
• Green-Eyed Ghost warned that Ning Zhi must not take her own life to reunite with Huang Lang, and Ao Ding passed the warning on when he returned to the Ning Household.
• Ning Zhi asked Ao Ding to teach her cultivation, and he gave her the Hundred Herbs Calamity-Transcending Scripture; she soon resumed treating townsfolk.
• Ning Zhi gave Ao Ding Huang Lang’s Life-Preserving, Illness-Dispelling, Calamity-Resolving Spell, and Ao Ding departed.

Ao Ding visited a shabby human cultivators’ spirit market seeking materials for his Collection of a Thousand Spells, but found only cheap goods and encountered cultivation theories that clashed with the teachings Sun Chen had given him. Leaving with his Dao heart strengthened, he continued toward the Mystic Jia Kingdom, where Blue Child expected him to reach full mastery of the Profound Gang Upper Realm after bathing in its spiritual pool.

• Ao Ding asked his three spirit offshoots to organize their curses and used Sun Chen’s Spirit-Seeking Secret Art to locate a spirit market.
• Ao Ding entered a small market of wooden huts, where he found only low-grade goods and no suitable materials for his Dharma Artifact.
• A stallholder explained the Seven Grades of Qi Seeds and grades of true Gang, but Ao Ding rejected the ranking system as contrary to the principle that cultivation energy should suit one’s nature.
• Ao Ding left the market resolved not to lose his lofty ambition, and his Dao heart stirred as his cultivation advanced.
• Blue Child recorded Ao Ding’s progress and predicted he would reach full mastery of the Profound Gang Upper Realm after bathing in the Mystic Jia Kingdom’s spiritual pool.

Ao Ding traveled toward the Country of Xuanjia, rescued a Mysterious Fox from a demon wolf, and studied the Golden Court Sect’s restrictions at the Xuanjia Immortal Tree. He advanced his House-Building Technique and entered the Mysterious Jia Spiritual Treasury, then began developing a spell that could make an enemy explode from excess spiritual energy.

• Ao Ding summoned Qingji for information about the Spirit Market, then continued his journey and spotted a Mysterious Fox worshipping the moon near a way station.
• Ao Ding killed a demon wolf from the Nethermoon Wolf Court after it attacked the Mysterious Fox, and the fox returned to Third Aunt Bai, who considered whether their household could help Ao Ding enter an immortal sect.
• Ao Ding examined He Wenchang and the other two Guardian-of-the-Kingdom Consorts, then spent twelve days studying the Xuanjia Immortal Tree’s Golden Court Sect restrictions.
• Ao Ding advanced his House-Building Technique to the third grade, formed a spirit terrace, and gained access to the Mysterious Jia Spiritual Treasury.
• Ao Ding replenished his magical power in the spring, completed the second step of the Five Qis Returning to the Origin Glazed Art, and conceived the Fireworks Spell.
• Ao Ding told the three children to decipher the Golden Court secret registers and design a spell that could cause a target to explode from an excess of spiritual energy.

Ao Ding tested the Wedding Garment Art, accepted the Flatbread Spell as payment for slaying a boar spirit, and hosted a feast for the villagers. He met Liu Zhongnan, a cultivator who had wandered back from the underworld, and continued toward Lingcheng County after they exchanged spells and parted ways.

• Ao Ding tested the Wedding Garment Art on a boar spirit, and the spirit exploded after absorbing too much spiritual energy.
• Ao Ding collected the Flatbread Spell from a village chief in exchange for killing the boar spirit, then adapted it into a Steamed Bun Spell and prepared a feast.
• Ao Ding and the villagers shared a lively meal, during which he reflected on the mortal world.
• Liu Zhongnan arrived from a road of the dead, explained that he had visited his ghost friend in the underworld, and thanked Ao Ding for helping him return to the human world.
• Liu Zhongnan gave Ao Ding the Flying Head Sword Spell and described the Six Sects, then headed south to confront a great disaster while Ao Ding continued toward Lingcheng County.