Chapter Summaries

Dai Xun led Rogue Cultivators toward Xunfeng Valley to lure out the Undead and clear a path for the Daoist Sect’s main force. When the Undead sprang a trap around the Silverglow Ore, a Flying Boat appeared to reinforce the humans before exploding amid the chaos.

• Dai Xun coordinated the fighting and urged the Rogue Cultivators to advance toward Xunfeng Valley, leading the charge with several Daoist Sect disciples.
• The cultivators spotted exposed Silverglow Ore and surged toward it, but hundreds upon thousands of Undead erupted from underground and surrounded them.
• Dai Xun told the cultivators to stay together, but the sudden attack trapped most of them while the quicker ones fled.
• A low-flying cloud carried in a Flying Boat, and more than a dozen human figures emerged to reinforce the collapsing human formation.
• Undead attacked the Flying Boat until it detonated in midair, filling the sky with spiritual energy, white light, and a massive blast.

After the Flying Boat’s destruction, the Daoist Sect’s mission team escaped toward Xunfeng Valley while Hou Niao and the other cannon fodder were left to face the Undead. Hou Niao seemed to fall to his death, but Xiang Anshi watched him switch bodies and escape beneath the sand.

• The Daoist Sect’s chosen cultivators, including Han Tiangang, Huai Liangyou, Lou Yue, and Dai Xun, used the blinding light to approach Xunfeng Valley and burrow underground.
• Xiang Anshi concealed himself inside a cloud and moved it toward Xunfeng Valley, while Hou Niao remained among the cannon fodder.
• The Undead overwhelmed the remaining cultivators, and Hou Niao fled toward Xunfeng Valley with two wounded companions as they were pursued.
• The Undead killed Hou Niao’s two companions and struck Hou Niao with a barrage of attacks, sending him plunging toward the sand.
• Xiang Anshi saw Hou Niao switch places with a corpse on impact and vanish beneath the sand before the Undead could discover the deception.

Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi attacked the statues in Xunfeng Valley to help the Daoist cultivators sabotage the formation, but discovered the statues were linked and nearly impervious. As more than a hundred Undead, including Eyeless Monsters, closed in, the three Daoists emerged to destroy the formation themselves.

• Han Tiangang, Huai Liangyou, and Lou Yue fought through the Undead underground and broke into Xunfeng Valley, where they saw Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi battling the Undead near twelve ancient statues.
• Huai Liangyou and Lou Yue identified the pair as powerful True Disciples, and Han Tiangang ordered them to target the statues.
• Hou Niao persuaded Xiang Anshi to attack first and draw the Undead's attention so the Daoist cultivators could sabotage the formation with less pressure.
• Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi struck an outer statue with a sword and a Thousand-Thread Drill, but barely damaged it because all twelve statues were bound together by a mysterious power.
• More than a hundred Undead, including Eyeless Monsters, descended on Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi as they prepared to keep fighting.

Han Tiangang, Huai Liangyou, and Lou Yue tested the twelve stone statues in Xunfeng Valley, discovering that the formation worked through wind but not yet finding its eye. Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi struggled to keep the Undead at bay while Hou Niao led them toward another statue to search for a weakness.

• Lou Yue used the Zhouxing Pearl to determine that the statues' formation was not connected through earth or underground.
• Huai Liangyou tried to uproot a statue with an Earth Qiu Dragon, but the wood-element probe also failed.
• Han Tiangang used a Wind Granny to reveal that the statues amplified wind in sequence, then began searching for the formation's wind eye.
• Huai Liangyou and Lou Yue went to hold off the Undead while Han Tiangang searched, as the enemy surrounded the human cultivators in three groups.
• Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi stayed together, keeping the Undead at a measured distance as Hou Niao urged Xiang Anshi to follow him to another statue.

Han Tiangang unleashed the Guo Sect’s Clear-Sky Tribulation Thunder against the twelve stone statues, drawing more undead into the battle and endangering everyone in Xunfeng Valley. As the statues shrank and resisted the lightning, Hou Niao spotted an opportunity and told Xiang Anshi to hold on for another quarter of an hour.

• Han Tiangang used Star Pellet Leaping Thunder to probe the connections between the twelve stone statues, then prepared his Thunder Disc for a stronger attack.
• Huai Liangyou and Lou Yue gathered the Daoists in Xunfeng Valley to prepare for a retreat as Han Tiangang began channeling thunder.
• Han Tiangang unleashed Clear-Sky Tribulation Thunder across the valley, striking the statues, the undead, Hou Niao, and Xiang Anshi.
• The thunder had little effect on the undead, and its conspicuous power drew more of them into the valley as they attacked the humans in a frenzy.
• Hou Niao realized the statues were shrinking to resist the thunder and told Xiang Anshi to hold on for another quarter of an hour.
• After the statues shrank to ordinary human size, Hou Niao recognized that his opportunity had arrived and evaded lunging undead.

Han Tiangang’s Clear-Sky Thunderclap lost its stone statue targets, and its leftover tribulation aura turned against him. As Han Tiangang prepared to face an Upper Realm Tribulation, the undead halted their attacks and watched the sky.

• Han Tiangang realized the Heavenly Dao had judged its punishment of the stone statues sufficient, but he delayed withdrawing the Thunder Disc when he sensed a change in the lightning.
• All twelve stone statues vanished from Han Tiangang’s sight and perception, and the lightning shifted its target to him.
• Xiang Anshi urged everyone to leave, but Hou Niao told him to wait while Huai Liangyou and Lou Yue gathered their fellow disciples to charge out.
• Han Tiangang withdrew the Thunder Disc, but the lightning aura remained and formed tribulation clouds that targeted him.
• Huai Liangyou and Lou Yue guessed Han Tiangang had collected the stone statues, while the undead stopped attacking and looked toward the tribulation clouds.

Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi escaped Xunfeng Valley while Han Tiangang stayed behind to undergo Heavenly Tribulation. After splitting up to fight the Undead pursuing them, Hou Niao slaughtered his pursuers in the Binxu Desert and left the battle wounded but stronger.

• Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi slipped away from Xunfeng Valley as the other human cultivators fled, leaving Han Tiangang alone to face his tribulation.
• After flying a dozen li, Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi heard the tribulation clouds erupt as Han Tiangang began his transcendence.
• Hou Niao and Xiang Anshi fought the Undead pursuing them, then separated and promised to meet again in Loulan New City.
• Hou Niao lured dozens of Undead, including four Eyeless Monsters, hundreds of li across the desert before turning to attack.
• Several days later, Hou Niao had killed every Undead pursuing him and deepened his sword momentum, though he remained wounded above the Binxu Desert.

Hou Niao reflected on the mission, the Twelve Stone Statues he had taken into his Purple Mansion's Soul Realm, and Constellation Han’s unexpected ascent. After returning to Loulan New City, he tried to avoid public credit for the victory as Yu Zhengxing pressed him about the mission and Han Tiangang’s sacrifice.

• Hou Niao recalled that he had collected the Twelve Stone Statues after using an Ancient Thunder Talisman to interrupt Constellation Han’s Clear-Sky Thunder.
• Hou Niao returned to Loulan New City several days later and told Bai Qingqian he was safe.
• Yu Zhengxing praised Hou Niao’s contribution to wiping out the Undead's Stone Statue Formation and said he would request special merit for him.
• Hou Niao argued that the victory belonged to everyone involved and that he could not claim credit after so many cultivators had died.
• Yu Zhengxing mentioned Han Tiangang’s sacrifice, and Hou Niao described the battle and urged Yu Zhengxing not to publicize his own role.

Hou Niao left Loulan New City after Yu Zhengxing warned him to avoid suspicion, then brought Xiangfei Bamboo to the Chu Sect, where Yuan True Person accepted her as a nominal disciple. He and Bai Qingqian continued toward the Yaoguang Mountains by carriage, taking time for a journey focused on the two of them.

• Yu Zhengxing warned Hou Niao that repeated incidents around him would invite blame regardless of evidence, then told him to leave Loulan New City.
• Bai Qingqian told Hou Niao that Xiang Anshi and his two junior sisters had already departed, and Hou Niao prepared to leave with her and Xiangfei Bamboo.
• Hou Niao insisted on taking Xiangfei Bamboo to the Chu Sect before traveling onward, and Yuan True Person accepted her as a nominal disciple on Danyang Mountain.
• Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian hired a long-distance mail carriage toward the Yaoguang Mountains, choosing a slower journey together.
• Bai Qingqian reflected that her cultivation prospects were limited and wanted to cherish the time she could spend with Hou Niao.

Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian traveled north at an unhurried pace, enjoying ordinary life and learning about Shangyu’s unusual cultivation tradition. They decided to stay longer in the kingdom and visit its famous flower capital, Year-End City.

• Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian traveled through the Northern Borderlands slowly, taking time to rest and enjoy the journey.
• Hou Niao explained Shangyu’s Tianxin Pavilion, its role in selecting Constellation True Disciples, and the legends surrounding its powerful Infant Transformation patriarch.
• Bai Qingqian asked to spend more time in Shangyu, and Hou Niao agreed to accompany her.
• Hou Niao asked Uncle Zhang about Shangyu’s most famous destination, and the driver recommended Year-End City.
• Uncle Zhang showed Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian a Strange Stone Orchid growing from a roadside rock and explained its significance as Shangyu’s national flower.

Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian explored Year-End City, enjoying its flower-filled towns while noticing the many powerful, courteous cultivators gathered there. Hou Niao explained that they were likely True Disciples seeking attention because two Zodiac positions were vacant, but promised Bai Qingqian that he would avoid the matter and focus on their trip together.

• Bai Qingqian admired Shangyu's scenery and Strange Stone Orchids as she and Hou Niao entered Year-End City.
• Uncle Zhang explained the Nine Towns of Sui Mo and their celebrated flowers, so Hou Niao proposed visiting all nine before choosing where to stay.
• Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian spent a day in each town and observed that many cultivators were gathered there, most of them exceptionally powerful and peaceful.
• Bai Qingqian grew uneasy about the cultivators, and Hou Niao suggested they were True Disciples seeking notice because two of the Twelve Zodiac Signs' positions were vacant.
• Hou Niao reassured Bai Qingqian that he would not seek attention and asked whether she wanted to leave Shangyu.

Bai Qingqian and Hou Niao settled on Horseshoe Town after noticing its unusually abundant, vigorous Strange Stone Orchids, and went searching for a courtyard to rent. There, Hou Niao recognized the blind Gu Sou and revealed his uneven progress with the Five Elements at the old man’s prompting.

• Bai Qingqian concluded that Horseshoe Town had more and stronger Strange Stone Orchids than the other Nine Towns of Sui Mo, and she and Hou Niao decided to stay there.
• Bai Qingqian searched for a courtyard to rent while Hou Niao accompanied her through Horseshoe Town.
• Hou Niao spotted an old acquaintance in a neglected flower workshop and brought Bai Qingqian into the alley to meet him.
• Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian bowed to the silent old man, whom Hou Niao identified as Gu Sou, and waited for his response.
• Gu Sou accused Hou Niao of showing off, and Hou Niao manifested a five-colored fan of Five Elements power, with yellow and blue stronger than the other colors.

Hou Niao received Gu Sou’s guidance on cultivating the Five Elements Mystic Light and accepted his courtyard in Year-End City. Gu Sou urged him to begin developing all five elements and left him wondering about the old man’s identity and the meaning behind his gift.

• Gu Sou criticized Hou Niao’s uneven Five Elements cultivation and advised him to develop all five elements as a unified whole.
• Hou Niao realized he should begin cultivating metal, wood, and fire now rather than wait for the remaining pearls.
• Gu Sou explained that yin and yang could guide the Five Elements Mystic Light beyond its initial limits, hinting at a level where cultivator and universe became one.
• Gu Sou gave Hou Niao his courtyard and pointed out that Strange Stone Orchids would not grow there.
• Hou Niao accepted the courtyard and promised to try to fill it with Strange Stone Orchids, while considering Gu Sou’s mysterious ties to Tianxin Pavilion.

Gu Sou asked Hou Niao to secretly help Tianxin Pavilion repay its kindness, giving him a magical rag that changed his appearance and aura. Hou Niao prepared to meet Qiu Shi in disguise, while insisting he would earn his True Disciple position without anyone’s help.

• Hou Niao agreed to find Tianxin Pavilion cultivator Qiu Shi and follow his instructions on Gu Sou’s behalf.
• Gu Sou warned Hou Niao that Shanmen’s recognizable methods would expose him and gave him a magical cloth to disguise his appearance and techniques.
• After Gu Sou left, Hou Niao and Bai Qingqian discussed their unexpected involvement and tried the cloth, which transformed Hou Niao into a donkey-faced figure and then gave Bai Qingqian the face of a fairy maiden.
• Bai Qingqian admired how naturally the cloth concealed both appearance and aura, though it required the wearer to return to their original form before choosing another face.
• Hou Niao said he would keep his identity hidden while helping Tianxin Pavilion and declared that he would win his True Disciple position on his own.

Hou Niao assumed the identity of Hao Ren, a dead Tianxin Pavilion disciple, and met Daoist Qiu Shi, who explained the sect’s plan to use him as a strength benchmark for aspiring successors. Hou Niao agreed to do everything he could to stop the True Disciples who reached that test.

• Hou Niao arrived at Tianxin Pavilion in disguise after Bai Qingqian made him choose an ugly human appearance.
• Daoist Qiu Shi welcomed Hou Niao and told him he would become a junior disciple who obeyed his orders.
• Qiu Shi gave Hou Niao the identity of Hao Ren, a Heavenly Connection disciple who had returned from years of travel, and explained that the real Hao Ren had died decades earlier.
• Qiu Shi explained that Tianxin Pavilion would make candidates face a minimum strength threshold before considering them as successors.
• Hou Niao asked whether the sect wanted particular candidates to pass, but Qiu Shi told him to do his best without favoring anyone.
• Hou Niao agreed to stop the candidates who reached his test, while Qiu Shi estimated that only a few dozen would make it that far.

Hou Niao learned that Tianxin Pavilion planned to assess the continent’s True Disciples through combat and had recruited him as an outsider to help judge them. He accepted the role and gained permission to use the pavilion’s library while awaiting the event.

• Hou Niao reasoned that Tianxin Pavilion had resorted to combat because it could not offer a standard for judging cultivators that the continent’s traditions would accept.
• Daoist Qiushi told Hou Niao he would act as hired muscle, could use any techniques he knew, and would be summoned in about half a month.
• Hou Niao asked to read Tianxin Pavilion’s books, and Daoist Qiushi granted him the same library access as the pavilion’s disciples, excluding cultivation methods and techniques.
• Daoist Qiushi explained that Hou Niao would be one of three assessors, alongside the pavilion’s two most outstanding Natural Realm disciples.
• Hou Niao departed through the rain, and Daoist Qiushi sensed that his harmony with nature suggested hidden strength.

Hou Niao investigated why Strange Stone Orchids withered in his courtyard and concluded that a conflict between Wood Element power and a force he suspected was reincarnation accelerated their lives. He connected the phenomenon to Jinxiu cultivators’ Purple Mansions and resolved to focus on mastering Wood Element power, as Gu Sou had likely intended.

• Hou Niao reassured Bai Qingqian that he would stay in Year-End City as a blade-testing stone and would be safe despite not using his Flying Sword.
• Hou Niao observed Strange Stone Orchids wither in successive trials, first one at a time and then in groups, while Bai Qingqian watched.
• Hou Niao explained that the orchids’ lives were being accelerated by a conflict between Wood Element power and a Great Dao he suspected was reincarnation.
• Hou Niao reasoned that orchids resist reincarnation differently through the Wood, Water, and Earth Elements, and that gathering them disrupted how each plant mobilized those powers.
• Hou Niao linked the orchids to the orchid-like plants reflected in Jinxiu cultivators’ Purple Mansions, but chose to focus on learning how Wood Element power resisted reincarnation.

Hou Niao arrived at the Yinling Town Office to report for duty and discovered that its Quanzhen Sect cultivators were treating injuries from Demon Bee stings. When Qian Chong abused him while he applied medicine, Hou Niao knocked him unconscious with a slap and continued the treatment.

• Hou Niao returned his Sword Talisman to the Red Scarf leader, traded barbs with him, and walked through Fang Family Fort toward the Town Office.
• A gate attendant directed Hou Niao to the Yinling Town Office, where he found no staff at the entrance and entered the building.
• Yao He mistook Hou Niao for a new junior brother and recruited him to apply Ice Lip Balm to the injured Qian Chong.
• Qian Chong complained about Hou Niao's rough treatment and threatened him, so Hou Niao slapped him unconscious and finished spreading the medicine.
• Yao He led Hou Niao toward the next room to tend to six more injured cultivators.

Tianxin Pavilion faced pressure from hundreds of True Disciples demanding a transparent way to fill two vacant Constellation True Disciple positions. Daoist Qiu Shi proposed Hao Ren as their opponent, making the dispute hinge on whether anyone could defeat him in the Orchid Fragrance Small World.

• The nineteen strongest True Disciples demanded that Tianxin Pavilion either let them choose the top two candidates or present a convincing condition of its own.
• Gu Daozi, Lou Yue, Cheng Kun, and Huai Liangyou doubted Tianxin Pavilion's ability to stop them, while other prominent True Disciples supported the challenge.
• Daoist Qiu Shi asked the gathered True Disciples to wait ten to twenty years for Tianxin Pavilion's decision, but they refused to leave.
• Daoist Qiu Shi introduced Hao Ren, a Heavenly Connection Natural Realm cultivator, as master of the grotto-heaven and offered him as their opponent in the Orchid Fragrance Small World.
• Daoist Qiu Shi said that if no one defeated Hao Ren, the True Disciples should return home; if someone did, Tianxin Pavilion would work with them on a mutually acceptable solution.

Hou Niao appeared as Hao Ren, Tianxin Pavilion’s chosen cultivator for a contest against nineteen True Disciples in the Orchid Small World. After the challengers confirmed that Hao Ren was not a current Constellation True Disciple, they accepted the contest, and Wei Gu, Tan Xiao, and Yan Baiyi competed to go first.

• Hou Niao introduced himself as Hao Ren, a good man who enjoyed helping others.
• Daoist Qiushi assured the True Disciples that Hao Ren was a Golden Core Upper Cultivator with no prior advantage in the Orchid Small World.
• The nineteen True Disciples debated Tianxin Pavilion’s proposal and asked Daoist Qiushi to swear that Hao Ren was not connected to a current Constellation True Disciple.
• Daoist Qiushi swore the requested oaths, and all nineteen agreed to compete against Hao Ren in the Orchid Small World.
• Daoist Qiushi opened the Small World with a Strange Stone Orchid, and Hao Ren entered to await his opponents.
• Wei Gu, Tan Xiao, and Yan Baiyi argued over who would enter first, so Daoist Qiushi proposed drawing lots.