ANG XIAO’S UNDERWORLD PLAN

The World These Events Take Place In Before anything else, a reader unfamiliar with this story needs to understand the fundamental structure of the world Ang Xiao operates in. The Sea of Light (Guanghai) is a vast cultivation world where practitioners advance through successive realms by mastering increasingly profound principles of reality. The progression runs roughly from Qi Refining through Foundation Building, Golden Core, and upward. At the absolute pinnacle sits the Nascent Soul stage, which transforms a cultivator into a Dao Lord — an effectively immortal being of godlike power who resides on a divine construct called the Other Shore, a seven-layered sacred mountain suspended above the mortal world. The Other Shore was created by the story's central antagonist, the First Saint (Chu Sheng), who stands at its seventh and highest layer. There are exactly six Dao Lord slots on the Other Shore, all currently occupied. The six Dao Lords are: * The First Saint himself, at the peak * The Sword Lord, master of Destiny * Cang Hao, master of Fate, ruler of the Dao Court * The World Honored One, a Buddhist monk who is the weakest and most recently ascended Dao Lord, master of Cause and Effect * The Dao Lord of Magic Power, a close friend of a legendary ancient figure named Si Chong * The Dao Lord of Magic Arts Below the Dao Lords, the highest achievable rank is Great True Lord of the Heavenly Ascension Realm — a cultivator who has proven a fundamental principle of reality called …