The protagonist journeys through the nine realms of cultivation: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Deification, Spirit Division, Void Refinement, Integration, and the Great Dao, finally ascending to immortality.
This book gradually reveals the geography, customs, families, sects, and government offices of the Human Realm, the Earth Realm (Demon Realm), the Underworld, the Demon Realm, the Heavenly Realm, the Divine Realm, and the Immortal Realm.
It explores the many arts of cultivation, including alchemy (immortal herbs and pill recipes), talismans, artifact refining (divine weapons and magical treasures), formations (the Five Elements, the Eight Trigrams, and the stars), beast taming, puppetry, ghost exorcism, meridian diagnosis, divination, and more.
It incorporates figures and stories from ancient mythology and draws on changes throughout ancient history to recount how the immortals created the world and how power changed hands in the Heavenly Court. These tales include the Battle of the North Sea between Kunpeng and Xiangliu, the battle in the Earth Realm between Dijun and Haotian, the battle between Heaven and Earth between Haotian and the Eastern Emperor, the battle between the Western Buddha and the Seven Sons of the Central Origin, the war between the West and the East, and the Western Heaven War between the reborn Buddha and the Three Sages (Lady Nüxi, the Dao Ancestor Wuwei, and the Stone God), among others.
The protagonist, Li Shi, begins without a spiritual root. He studies the twelve internal organs, the twelve meridians, the eight extraordinary meridians, and more than a thousand acupuncture points in depth, rising from a martial artist through the Grandmaster and Great Grandmaster ranks, ultimately reaching the Martial Saint realm.
He then begins body tempering with skin refinement, followed by muscle, meridian, sinew, and bone refinement, achieving the Vajra realm. At last, he opens the Five Elements spiritual root.
Starting again with Qi Refining, he establishes the foundation of the nine palaces in the central meridian, forms the Eight Essences (qi, blood, sinews, bones, marrow, organs, viscera, and meridians) into a core, and condenses the essence of the three souls and six spirits to reach the Nascent Soul realm.
