Archean Mountain

Archean Mountain is the institution that turns individual cultivation talent into an organized defense of the human world. It recruits promising youths from across Great Zhou, tests them under common standards, gives the successful candidates access to humanity's accumulated Godfiend inheritance, and then sends its graduates to city passes, patrol routes, intelligence posts, and battlefields. Meng Chuan grows far beyond the mountain's original scale, but virtually every stage of that growth rests on foundations it supplies: teachers, body-refinement systems, secret arts, credits, intelligence, comrades, and a reason to convert strength into public service. (Chapters 70–136, 145–152, and 254–263)

The mountain is therefore more than a school or the residence of a few powerful Supremacies. It is at once an academy, treasury, command staff, archive, intelligence service, memorial, and intergenerational compact. Its living disciples defend cities with treasures donated by dead Godfiends; its leaders alter ancient admission rules when war requires more Creation prospects; and its memorials make institutional memory inseparable from sacrifice. After victory, Meng does not discard this structure as obsolete. He returns to Archean Mountain, repairs the shortcomings of the Godfiend system, broadens cultivation throughout the realm, and finally restores many of the teachers and comrades whose names embodied its cost. (Chapters 118–136, 263, 377–413, and 761–766)

Structure and operating principles

Strategic leadership and daily administration

Archean Mountain's highest wartime decisions belong to its Creation-realm Supremacies. Li Guan, Qin Wu, and Luo Tang evaluate threats that ordinary disciples cannot be permitted to know, decide when to awaken hidden strength, distribute high-level protectors, and balance immediate military need against humanity's long future. Their authority is strategic rather than ceremonial: an error can expose an entire region, consume a finite treasure, or eliminate the seed of a future Creation Supremacy. Their disagreements show that the leadership is a council of experienced cultivators, not a court in which every subordinate merely repeats one ruler's preference. (Chapters 133–136, 271–298, and 341–364)

The Archean Mountain Lord handles the visible institutional machinery. He presides over admission, receives reports, arranges treasures and breakthrough resources, assigns missions, and acts as the link between the Supremacies' strategy and the disciples who must carry it out. Elders, stewards, lecturers, guardians, and local commanders perform narrower functions beneath that office. The resulting hierarchy is practical: the strongest experts decide matters that concern humanity's survival, while specialized administrators keep thousands of ordinary decisions from consuming their attention. (Chapters 70–116, 145–152, and 254–263)

Archean Mountain is not identical to the Great Zhou imperial government. The court administers ordinary people, civil law, taxation, and secular territory; the sect supplies and governs the Godfiend force that makes mortal administration possible during the invasion. The two cooperate, and noble or royal families send descendants into the same selection system, but imperial status does not automatically command the mountain's Supremacies. This division lets Archean Mountain defend Great Zhou without becoming merely another ministry of the dynasty. (Chapter 254)

Recruitment and selection

The entrance examination gathers talented youths from across the realm and subjects them to common trials rather than accepting family reputation as sufficient proof. Candidates are tested in areas that expose different foundations: strength, speed, perception, will, aptitude, and performance under pressure. Success in one spectacular test cannot erase a fatal weakness in another, and the later rounds narrow a national field to roughly twenty new disciples. The process gives provincial geniuses such as Meng and Liu Qiyue a route into the same institution as candidates supported by great clans. (Chapters 70–94)

Selection is demanding because every accepted disciple consumes scarce instruction and resources, but it is not merely a tournament for present combat strength. Examiners look for the potential to construct a powerful Godfiend foundation and survive the responsibility attached to it. A candidate's chosen body, temperament, insight, and future ceiling matter alongside immediate performance. The final matriculation consequently begins a longer assessment: admission grants access to the mountain, not a guarantee that every disciple will reach the same realm or receive the same treasures. (Chapters 83–103)

War forces the institution to reconsider even ancient standards. Ordinarily, the rarest opportunities would be conserved for exceptional candidates over long periods. During the demon invasion, the mountain opens the Archean Eon Grotto-Heaven far more often than its peacetime precedent would allow because humanity urgently needs additional Creation prospects. Institutional continuity here does not mean rigidly repeating old rules; it means knowing which rules protected inheritance in peace and when survival justifies spending that inheritance. (Chapters 133–136)

Masters, disciples, and Godfiend formation

New disciples enter a master-disciple system embedded inside the larger academy. A personal master can recommend a path, answer questions, intervene during a dangerous breakthrough, and judge whether a disciple is ready for a rare opportunity. Qin Wu's instruction of Meng is the most important example: he guides without replacing Meng's own comprehension, protects the Godfiend breakthrough, and continues to connect individual development with the mountain's needs. Other disciples follow other masters and body-refinement paths, so the institution preserves variety rather than manufacturing one standardized fighter. (Chapters 95–116)

The Grotto-Heaven Pavilion supplies shared lectures and records beyond personal teaching. Its accumulated images and histories—15,283 Godfiend images are presented as part of the mountain's inheritance—allow a disciple to study how predecessors cultivated, fought, succeeded, and failed. Perfected Godfiend bodies and Black Metal Sutras demand both resources and comprehension. The perfected Lightning Devastator Body paired with a Black Metal Sutra, for example, is treated as the foundation for an unusually powerful Godfiend rather than a title bestowed by favoritism. (Chapters 103 and 106)

The Nine Mystical Caves temper different capacities before or after breakthrough. The Godfiend Blood Pool then provides the concentrated conditions required to transform a mortal foundation into a Godfiend body. Opening it requires institutional authorization and preparation; it is not a private pool a talented disciple may enter at will. When Meng undergoes the transformation, Qin Wu's personal protection and the Treasure Repository's involvement show how teaching, treasury administration, and high-level guardianship converge around a single breakthrough. (Chapters 103–116)

Deployment, intelligence, and the credit economy

Graduation means deployment. Godfiends are assigned to city passes, regional commands, patrol responsibilities, or special teams according to ability and military need. The mountain can transfer personnel when a front weakens, recall experts for a major operation, or conceal a high-value disciple's exact strength until it becomes tactically useful. Local commanders exercise battlefield judgment, but they remain part of a network able to request reinforcement and report losses. (Chapters 118–124, 145–152, and 255)

Earth Net extends that network into intelligence and counter-infiltration. Its personnel operate across Great Zhou's eighteen prefectures, investigate demon infiltrators, transmit warnings, and use alert mechanisms that allow distant sectors to react to a discovery. Intelligence does not eliminate surprise: demons exploit human collaborators, conceal identities, and attack weak points. Earth Net's value is that scattered signs can become an institutional picture instead of dying with the first observer. (Chapter 152)

Service is measured through contribution credits. Missions, battlefield accomplishments, recovered intelligence, and other public contributions produce credits that can be exchanged for techniques, pills, weapons, and cultivation opportunities. Meng's award of 513,000 credits after a major battle demonstrates that exceptional achievement can transform a cultivator's available resources, while lesser service still gives ordinary disciples a route forward. The system is neither simple wages nor charity. It translates risk and usefulness into controlled access to a finite common inheritance. (Chapter 145)

The treasury's legitimacy comes from reciprocity across generations. Its treasures were accumulated because earlier Godfiends donated gains, surrendered useful objects, or left resources to the sect after lives of service. A present disciple may purchase access with credits, but that purchase depends on gifts from predecessors and carries an expectation that today's strength will later replenish the institution. The mountain thus makes inheritance cyclical rather than allowing every rare object to disappear into one family line. (Chapter 263)

History

Ancient inheritance and the three-sect order

Archean Mountain predates the crisis that defines Meng's life. Its name and deepest traditions descend from Patriarch Archean Eon, while its accumulated Godfiend paths preserve the work of countless later cultivators. By the demon-invasion era, it stands with Black Sand Grotto-Heaven and Two World Island as one of humanity's three great sects. Each controls different inheritances, territories, and experts, but all face an enemy that intends to conquer the entire human world. (Chapters 70–73 and 133–136)

The three-sect arrangement is cooperative without being perfectly unified. Leaders protect their own disciples and treasured lands, compare future prospects, and bargain over deployments. Strategic secrecy can produce suspicion, especially when one sect appears to gain an inheritance or conceal a powerful expert. Yet no sect can defend humanity alone, so intelligence, battlefield responsibility, and major operations cross institutional borders. Archean Mountain's significance lies partly in being a durable node in that larger order rather than the only surviving tradition. (Chapters 270–298 and 341–396)

The later Eon Sea inheritance reveals that the institutional past is more complicated than a single uninterrupted line. Ancient techniques and cornerstone treasures had been divided among successor powers, and important portions remained outside Archean Mountain's direct possession. Meng's discovery does not make the mountain's earlier claims fraudulent; it shows that human inheritance survived through fragmentation, secrecy, and separate custodians. Recovering that history changes what Archean Mountain can preserve for the future. (Chapters 377–396)

The national examination

Meng and Liu Qiyue reach Archean City among candidates whose backgrounds span provincial clans, established Godfiend families, and royal connections. The examination removes the protection of local reputation. Candidates must demonstrate what they can actually do before the mountain's observers, and the successive rounds expose both raw gifts and the discipline required to use them. Friendships and rivalries formed in these trials later matter on real battlefields because the surviving candidates become part of the same small generation of disciples. (Chapters 70–94)

The tests also introduce the mountain's institutional temperament. It values genius, but it evaluates genius through repeatable standards and experienced judgment. Spectators may focus on rankings, while the examiners ask which body a candidate can cultivate, whether a strength is stable, and how far an unusual performance can develop. The final group is small because the mountain is investing in people expected to stand between whole cities and demon armies. (Chapters 78–94)

Admission changes Meng's horizon. He is no longer simply a gifted youth avenging family loss or protecting one prefecture. The mountain places him inside a historical struggle, beside peers such as Yan Jin, and beneath teachers who understand both the promise and the cost of his choices. That transition from local prodigy to institutional disciple is one of Archean Mountain's central functions throughout the novel. (Chapters 91–103)

Forging a new generation

The first period on the mountain is devoted to choosing foundations rather than chasing superficial rank. Disciples encounter perfected Godfiend bodies, Black Metal Sutras, lectures, images, and tempering grounds whose demands make shortcuts dangerous. Meng's cultivation of the perfected Lightning Devastator Body distinguishes him, but the institution does not reduce everyone to his model. Liu Qiyue develops through her phoenix-related gifts, Yan Jin follows his own sword path, and Xue Feng embodies the strength and burden of an older disciple generation. (Chapters 95–116)

The Godfiend Blood Pool breakthrough is both personal climax and institutional procedure. The Treasure Repository must open and prepare the resource; a qualified expert must guard the transformation; the disciple must supply the body, insight, and will that no institution can provide on command. Qin Wu's presence protects Meng without turning the breakthrough into an effortless grant. Archean Mountain works best when collective infrastructure makes individual achievement possible without erasing individual responsibility. (Chapters 112–116)

Once disciples succeed, the mountain does not keep them in safety until they reach their theoretical peak. The demon war has already consumed generations. Training is compressed, real combat arrives early, and the distinction between student and defender narrows. This pressure explains both the remarkable maturity of the generation and the number of names that later appear on the mountain's memorials. (Chapters 116–124)

Deployment and the culture of sacrifice

Before graduating Godfiends depart, Archean Mountain records them together. The image is not merely celebratory; it may become one of the last records of people assigned to different fronts. They are sent to city passes because the sect's purpose is measured in protected populations, not in how many powerful cultivators remain near headquarters. (Chapter 118)

The Memento Wall and Scarlet Blood Cliff give loss a permanent place in institutional life. Names of dead Godfiends are carved into the mountain, and the Mountain Lord personally participates in preserving them. The memorial does not hide that the system spends lives. Instead, it forces later disciples and leaders to encounter the people whose service created their present safety and treasury. (Chapter 124)

That culture shapes surviving disciples. Meng, Liu Qiyue, King True Martial, Xue Feng, and others fight as individuals with different loyalties and regrets, but they also understand themselves as members of a line of defenders. Archean Mountain can demand extraordinary risk because it offers more than orders: it supplies a shared history in which sacrifice is remembered, resources are passed on, and unfinished duties become the work of the living. (Chapters 118–136 and 270–364)

Wartime expansion of the inheritance

The Archean Eon Grotto-Heaven represents the opposite side of the memorials: the mountain's most carefully conserved hope. In ordinary conditions, its opening is separated by immense spans of time. Before the invasion it had been opened only once in six thousand years, but during approximately eight hundred years of war it is opened five times to increase the chance of producing Creation-realm experts. (Chapters 133–136)

This decision spends irreplaceable opportunity on uncertain candidates. The leaders must compare immediate battlefield losses against the possibility that conserving everything will leave no human civilization able to inherit it. Access remains selective because opening the grotto is not useful if given to someone unable to benefit, yet wartime need broadens the acceptable risk. The episode captures Archean Mountain's role as custodian: preservation sometimes requires refusing use, and sometimes requires using what can never be restored. (Chapters 133–136)

The candidates who enter carry the hopes of more than one master or clan. Their success could alter deployments across the whole realm; their failure consumes a chance humanity cannot easily replace. This pressure explains why the Supremacies monitor young disciples so closely and why rare opportunities are tied to service and future potential rather than private wealth. (Chapters 133–145)

A distributed war machine

As Meng begins receiving battlefield dossiers, Archean Mountain becomes visible as a system rather than a landscape. Reports summarize demon movements, human casualties, confirmed contributions, and changes in strategic priority. Credits follow verified achievement, including the 513,000 awarded for one of Meng's major victories. Information and reward move back toward the center while trained personnel and treasures move outward. (Chapters 145–152)

Earth Net supplies the connective tissue. Its dispersed agents watch eighteen prefectures, investigate suspicious people, and trigger warnings when demon infiltration is discovered. Patrollers and city-pass Godfiends act on that intelligence. No single cultivator sees the entire invasion, so the mountain's advantage is its ability to combine partial reports and redirect strength before local disaster becomes regional collapse. (Chapter 152)

The system remains vulnerable. Strong demons can conceal themselves, collaborators can betray human positions, and every transfer leaves another place weaker. Leaders therefore preserve reserve forces and hide some capabilities. Individual brilliance matters most when it arrives through this network at the right time; without dossiers, transport, replacement commands, and local cooperation, even a powerful Godfiend can spend strength on the wrong battlefield. (Chapters 152, 255, and 270–298)

Total mobilization

When the invasion worsens, ordinary deployment is no longer enough. Archean Mountain recalls personnel, changes city-pass assignments, awakens sleeping strength, and prepares headquarters for direct threat. The leaders must decide which secrets can remain hidden and which accumulated resources must finally be committed. The mountain becomes both the command point for the war and a target whose fall would destroy techniques, leaders, and morale at once. (Chapters 271–298)

The mobilization reveals the depth beneath the visible disciple roster. Older Godfiends, guardians, treasures, and cornerstone techniques exist because earlier generations anticipated crises beyond normal patrol warfare. Yet every hidden measure has limits. Awakening a protector early or activating a treasure can shorten its useful life, and concentrating experts at the mountain can expose cities. Strategy is therefore a management of irreversible losses rather than a succession of unlimited trump cards. (Chapters 283–309)

Meng's growing role changes the balance between disciple and institution. He receives responsibilities once reserved for senior figures, returns to the mountain at decisive moments, and becomes someone its leaders must plan around rather than merely assign. Even then, his effectiveness depends on the comrades, intelligence, and sacrifices coordinated through Archean Mountain. His rise does not make the organization irrelevant; it makes him one of its central strategic assets and eventually its most transformative heir. (Chapters 298–364)

The Eon Sea inheritance

Meng's encounter with the old Eon Sea Sect opens a history that Archean Mountain alone did not possess. He learns how inheritances were divided and gains access to techniques and cornerstone treasures preserved outside the mountain's immediate line. Passing the Heart Sea Palace and Battle God Pagoda tests causes the Guardian to recognize him as Eon Sea Sect's new sect master and entrust the entire surviving institution to him, with the obligation that its lineage not be allowed to disappear. (Chapters 377–390)

He does not treat that authority as permission to turn the inheritance into private wealth or found a competing personal sect. After selecting a small portion suitable for his family, he summons Archean Mountain to receive the three cornerstone buildings and the remaining treasures. This transfer reunites practical custody while preserving the Eon Sea Sect's distinct history and Meng's responsibility to keep its lineage from ceasing to exist. Meng acts as steward connecting two branches of the older Archean Eon Sect rather than pretending one branch never separated from the other. (Chapters 389–390)

The recovery also clarifies why Archean Mountain's treasury and archives are never truly complete. Human civilization has survived repeated disasters by scattering its foundations. The mountain's strength comes not from owning everything but from being capable of evaluating recovered inheritance, protecting it, teaching it responsibly, and deploying its benefits where the war requires. (Chapters 389–405)

Turning the war and clearing the human world

As humanity gains the initiative, Archean Mountain shifts from endurance toward coordinated offense. New king-level power, improved intelligence, and cross-sect operations let defenders attack demon positions that once seemed permanent. Meng and Liu Qiyue's conferred status reflects both personal achievement and a change in the scale of missions they can undertake for the institution. (Chapters 405–412)

The world-clearing operation in Chapter 413 demonstrates that victory is not one duel at headquarters. Vast numbers of demon monarchs remain dispersed through the human world, and approximately a million must be found and eliminated. Archean Mountain's intelligence, transport, regional command, and alliance network make the sweep possible, while supreme combatants provide the force to finish targets once located. (Chapter 413)

This operation fulfills the mountain's original public mission. Cities are not safe merely because a demon emperor loses a battle; ordinary people are safe when the distributed occupation and infiltration system is dismantled. The same organization that once sent new graduates to hold isolated passes can now coordinate a campaign across the whole human world. (Chapters 405–413)

Reform, prosperity, and restoration

By the final era, Meng has crossed far beyond the realms that Archean Mountain was originally designed to produce. His response is institutional reform. Looking down from the mountain, he creates formulations that repair shortcomings in the Godfiend system and prepares a more perfected route for later cultivators. Cultivation spreads more widely, and the realm produces many more Godfiends than the war generation could sustain. (Chapter 761)

Broader access changes the mountain from an emergency bottleneck into the center of a flourishing tradition. Its old selection principles, techniques, and memorial ethic remain valuable, but scarcity no longer has to define every decision. Meng's reforms repay the institution by making its purpose—strong humans capable of protecting their world—less dependent on rare birth, desperate war openings, or a tiny class of chosen disciples. (Chapters 761–766)

His later resurrections complete the emotional debt. Li Guan, Luo Tang, King True Martial, Xue Feng, Fairy Meng, and other teachers, fellow disciples, and defenders return, including people remembered on Scarlet Blood Cliff. Resurrection does not erase their sacrifice or make the memorial meaningless. It demonstrates how far the inheritance they defended allowed their successor to travel, and it lets the institution's future include the people who paid for it. (Chapter 766)

Membership and authority

Archean Mountain's relevant membership is better understood by function than as one fixed roster. Its population changes across a long war, and rank does not always correspond to daily office.

The table does not imply that every king-level Godfiend permanently teaches on the mountain or that every disciple remains at headquarters. Archean Mountain is deliberately distributed. A member may spend most of a lifetime at a city pass while still drawing authority, resources, and identity from the sect. Conversely, allies from another sect can participate in a common operation without becoming Archean Mountain disciples. (Chapters 118–152 and 270–413)

Major operations

City-pass defense

City passes are the daily measure of the mountain's success. Graduates are sent where demon armies threaten populated regions, and local commanders combine formations, ordinary soldiers, and Godfiend intervention. Reinforcement decisions account for travel time and the risk of exposing another pass. The mountain's central leadership rarely fights every battle personally; it ensures that enough trained strength exists throughout the realm for cities to survive until decisive help can arrive. (Chapters 118–124 and 145–152)

Counter-infiltration

Earth Net and Patrollers address enemies who cannot be met in open formations. Agents investigate human collaborators, concealed demon monarchs, and suspicious movements; alerts allow neighboring sectors to close routes or mobilize. This work is less glorious than a king-level duel but essential to preventing assassinations and internal collapse. (Chapter 152)

Emergency mobilization

During the war's worst phases, Archean Mountain transfers experts, awakens reserves, activates treasures, and exposes closely guarded methods. Headquarters becomes an active fortress and command center. The operation tests whether centuries of stored inheritance can be converted into survival before the demons destroy the people for whom it was preserved. (Chapters 271–322 and 341–364)

Inheritance recovery and world clearing

Meng's Eon Sea recovery adds old cornerstone resources to the common cause, while the later world-clearing campaign applies the full intelligence and combat network against dispersed demon monarchs. Together they show the mountain operating in both temporal directions: recovering the past and making the present world safe enough to have a future. (Chapters 377–413)

Resources and capabilities

These resources work as a system. A candidate selected through national examinations studies records, tempers a foundation, receives authorization for a breakthrough, performs missions, earns credits, and later uses or replenishes the treasury. Earth Net directs that trained strength toward real need, while the memorials preserve the human meaning of the cycle. No single cave, technique, or treasure explains Archean Mountain's endurance. (Chapters 70–152 and 254–263)

External relationships

Great Zhou

Archean Mountain protects Great Zhou but does not replace its court. Secular officials govern mortal society, while the sect directs Godfiends and supernatural defense. Royal families may have great influence and send gifted descendants, yet they remain subject to the mountain's cultivation judgments once inside its system. The arrangement creates mutual dependence: the court supplies an organized population and resources, and the mountain prevents demon conquest from making civil government impossible. (Chapter 254)

Black Sand Grotto-Heaven and Two World Island

The other two great sects are peers in humanity's defense. They exchange intelligence, divide fronts, and cooperate against threats no one sect can contain. They also protect distinct inheritances and may disagree about candidates, risks, or resource distribution. Archean Mountain's leaders must therefore practice diplomacy alongside strategy. Alliance does not erase separate command or turn all Godfiends into members of one organization. (Chapters 270–298 and 341–396)

Eon Sea Sect

Eon Sea Sect is the separate branch created when the older Archean Eon Sect split. After its tests recognize Meng as sect master, he accepts responsibility for its survival and transfers its cornerstone buildings and most of its treasury to Archean Mountain so they can serve humanity in the war. This makes him a bridge between two successor traditions, not evidence that Eon Sea Sect was always a hidden department of Archean Mountain. (Chapters 377–390)

The demons

The demons are the institution's defining enemy during the central era. Their invasion determines admission urgency, city-pass deployment, intelligence priorities, treasury spending, and memorial culture. They attack not only with armies but through infiltration, collaborators, and targeted strikes against future prospects. Archean Mountain's breadth exists because defeating that enemy requires more than the strongest cultivator winning one battle. (Chapters 118–152 and 270–413)

Status, identity, and legacy

Archean Mountain survives the war and enters a prosperous era with its fundamental purpose intact. Its late status is not merely that the buildings remain occupied. The Godfiend system is repaired, cultivation becomes accessible to far more people, and the realm produces defenders without relying on the same desperate consumption of rare opportunities. The institution that once rationed survival can finally cultivate abundance. (Chapters 761–766)

Its identity rests on three linked obligations: talent must be trained, strength must protect people, and inheritance must pass forward. National examinations prevent great potential from remaining trapped in one locality; the credit and treasury system turns service into renewed capability; the memorials ensure that later prosperity remembers its cost. Leaders are judged not only by personal realm but by how well they preserve this chain. (Chapters 70–152 and 254–263)

Meng is Archean Mountain's greatest product and ultimately one of its greatest benefactors, but the relationship is reciprocal. The mountain gives him the structure through which grief becomes disciplined service and individual insight becomes world-changing power. He returns knowledge, security, reform, and eventually life itself to its people. That circular exchange is why Archean Mountain has the narrative weight of a central character: it is the organized memory of humanity teaching each generation how to survive for the next. (Chapters 377–413 and 761–766)