The Ninth Summit
The Ninth Summit begins as the least conventional branch of Freezing Sky Clan and becomes the emotional model by which Su Ming understands home. Its master, Tian Xie Zi, recruits disciples whose origins and temperaments do not fit a uniform school: a withdrawn Shaman lord, an elegant plant cultivator with divided selves, a Rune-born dreamer, and a young Berserker living beneath sealed memories. Rather than make them copies of himself, Tian Xie Zi pushes each toward a different realization of Creation. (Chapters 203–264)
The branch’s importance is not measured by an uninterrupted headquarters. The original mountain is lost, its members are scattered across regions and worlds, and its mature incarnation is later destroyed with its aeon. What persists is a set of obligations. The eldest protects in silence, the second risks himself to restore the eldest, Hu Zi guards an empty mountain for those who may return, Su Ming crosses worlds to find them, and Tian Xie Zi ultimately follows his youngest disciple into disappearance. The Ninth Summit becomes a sect because others gather around that bond, but it matters first as a family whose members repeatedly rebuild one another. (Chapters 519–747, 1135–1206, and 1478–1481)
Founding within Freezing Sky
A marginal mountain with unusual authority
The original Ninth Summit stands within Freezing Sky Clan, but its habits distinguish it from the institution around it. Tian Xie Zi possesses a status plate carrying authority equivalent to the Clan Master, yet he uses rank unpredictably and often presents himself as an eccentric old man in changing robes. Outsiders can mistake the branch’s small size and disorder for weakness. Its four principal disciples, however, include cultivators whose origins reach into Nine Li, the Rune surrounding Yin Death Region, Berserker history, and powers far outside South Morning. (Chapters 203–229)
Tian Xie Zi recruits through judgment rather than a public standard. He tells new disciples contradictory stories, tests whether they will accept his peculiar reasoning, and refuses to give them a finished doctrine to reproduce. His larger principle is that borrowing another people’s Arts without transforming them produces no true path. Even his own Creation teaching is presented through questions, moods, and experiences intended to clear thought rather than through a complete manual. (Chapters 215–264)
The summit therefore lacks the regularity expected of a conventional school. Eldest Senior Brother spends long periods in isolation. Second Senior Brother cultivates plants and beauty while concealing more dangerous depth. Hu Zi drinks and sleeps because dreams and Runes are intrinsic to his path. Su Ming arrives as the apparently most ordinary disciple but carries a Berserker Mark and history neither he nor his new family fully understands. Difference is not tolerated as an exception; it is the method through which the lineage grows. (Chapters 219–272)
Su Ming’s arrival and the experience of home
Su Ming reaches the Ninth Summit after a life shaped by Dark Mountain, loss, and uncertainty about his own identity. Tian Xie Zi recognizes unusual promise without demanding an immediate explanation. The senior brothers treat the newcomer through their own temperaments: indirect protection, teasing assistance, companionship, and practical gifts. Their behavior gives Su Ming something cultivation institutions have rarely offered him—a place whose warmth does not depend on proving that his remembered past is true. (Chapters 203–264)
The branch’s affection is expressed through action more often than declaration. Eldest Senior Brother monitors danger with divine sense and dispatches Shaman Souls. Second Senior Brother intervenes through graceful schemes and cultivated plants. Hu Zi invites Su Ming into drinking, dreaming, and unguarded fraternity. Tian Xie Zi’s lessons can be absurd or frightening, but they are tailored to the disciple rather than the master’s prestige. These practices establish the household pattern that later survives without the mountain. (Chapters 219–321)
Creation and individual paths
Tian Xie Zi’s doctrine
Creation is the lineage’s shared foundation, not a single standardized technique. Tian Xie Zi teaches that a cultivator must clear the mind, encounter contradictions, and transform what is learned into something personally true. His Change of Heart Art places convictions under pressure through successive changes. Its goal is not emotional emptiness but an internal root capable of surviving altered appearances, techniques, and worlds. (Chapters 253–264, 920, and 1333–1350)
The Art’s vulnerability is demonstrated by its creator. Old Man Extermination interferes during Tian Xie Zi’s ninth change, introducing doubt about whether the earlier ideals can be fused. Tian Xie Zi refuses Su Ming’s superior force as an answer because the crisis concerns his own Dao. He must confront the person who planted the doubt and determine the truth himself, even if that choice ends in death. The doctrine therefore binds master and disciple without allowing one to complete another’s realization. (Chapters 1333–1350)
Four expressions of Creation
Eldest Senior Brother interprets an instruction to clear his mind through isolation, joining silence and sound in the Sound of Creation. His cultivation becomes inseparable from protection: Shaman Souls watch the mountain, his Nine Li authority shields his juniors, and the headless Xing Gan form later turns fighting spirit into resistance against imposed identity. The exact combat mechanics of Sound of Creation remain less fully demonstrated than its philosophical role. (Chapters 219–272, 650–695)
Second Senior Brother’s path emphasizes plants, beauty, layered identity, and the Hands of Creation. His elegance is not superficial decoration but a way of imposing living order on hostile environments. When Eldest Senior Brother is petrified, he disperses himself to cast the Great Heavenly Phantom Art, accepting the risk of becoming a mindless Phantom so that the family’s protector can return. Creation is demonstrated through restoration at personal cost. (Chapters 219–272 and 727–747)
Hu Zi is revealed as a spirit born from the enormous Rune surrounding Yin Death Region whom Tian Xie Zi extracted and gave human form. Dreams, sleep, alcohol, and Rune understanding form a coherent path despite appearing undisciplined. He creates dream spaces, guards his brothers, and preserves the mountain during their absence. The narrative does not explain Tian Xie Zi’s original transformation method fully, so Hu Zi’s existence should not be generalized into a repeatable recruitment practice. (Chapters 219–272, 540, 1088, and 1171)
Su Ming’s Picture Creation develops alongside his Berserker cultivation, memories, and repeated confrontation with false worlds. He calls himself the most ordinary disciple even after his reach exceeds the early scale of the lineage. What connects him to the Ninth Summit is not comparative rank but the lesson that a clear heart can choose whom to keep when destiny and illusion make identity uncertain. (Chapters 253–264, 920–932, and 1350–1477)
Dispersal and rescue
Calamity and the missing master
The calamities affecting South Morning destroy the possibility of ordinary sect continuity. Tian Xie Zi disappears, Su Ming is displaced, and the senior brothers search through a landscape transformed by invasion and catastrophe. Eldest Senior Brother leaves isolation and accumulates wounds while seeking his family. Hu Zi remains connected to the summit as home rather than abandoning it for a more prestigious lineage. Separation turns the branch’s early affection into a long operational purpose. (Chapters 519–542)
Di Tian captures Eldest Senior Brother and attempts to turn him into a clone. The assault is especially severe because it aims to convert the family’s protector into an instrument against them. Eldest Senior Brother breaks control through an ancestral return: he cuts off his own head, rejects the imposed identity, manifests the Xing Gan body, and summons the Axe of Execution. His resistance preserves agency but leaves him vulnerable to petrification. (Chapters 650–695)
Restoring him requires the entire surviving household. Su Ming obtains pure Nine Li blood and defends the ritual. Second Senior Brother disperses himself through the Great Heavenly Phantom Art. Hu Zi guards the eldest disciple’s fading consciousness. The process could destroy or empty multiple brothers if interrupted. Its success is therefore not a feat attributable to a single savior; it is the Ninth Summit functioning as a network in which each person supplies something the others cannot. (Chapters 727–747)
Searching beyond Yin Death Region
The brothers’ efforts do not end after immediate reunion. Tian Xie Zi remains missing, and Su Ming’s path leads into the Barren Lands of Divine Essence. Memories, objects, testimonies, and the master’s fifth stone become clues across worlds. Su Ming introduces himself through the extraordinary identities of his brothers while calling himself ordinary, using the lineage as the most truthful account of who he is even when its members are absent. (Chapters 819–932 and 1023–1032)
The three senior brothers eventually leave Yin Death Region only by accepting the Dark Dawn’s Ghost Brand and serving an ancient will. Their campaigns are coerced payment for passage and the search, not uncomplicated political loyalty. Eldest Senior Brother sends the others through different routes suited to their cultivation, allowing separation to become a strategy. Hu Zi and Second Senior Brother complain about his authority, yet continue because locating Su Ming and Tian Xie Zi remains the shared objective. (Chapters 1049, 1135, and 1164–1176)
The rebuilt Ninth Summit
Reunion in True Morning Dao World
Su Ming reunites with his senior brothers after more than a thousand years. Time has changed their power, bodies, and burdens without dissolving the roles through which they know one another. Eldest Senior Brother carries a river of souls and murderous aura. Second Senior Brother has deepened the Phantom path. Hu Zi has endured hardship while retaining his irreverence and loyalty. They accept Su Ming’s ambition to take Arid Triad with remarkably little hesitation because their trust concerns the brother making the proposal rather than its apparent scale. (Chapters 1135–1176)
Their reunion allows the Ninth Summit to become an actual expanding sect. Displaced cultivators gather around Su Ming’s Ecang clone and the senior brothers. The organization provides a name and home amid True Morning Dao World’s instability, turning a private lineage into a community capable of accepting members who never knew the original South Morning mountain. (Chapters 1176–1206)
Mature leadership
Leadership is distributed rather than reduced to Su Ming’s strength. Eldest Senior Brother refuses the position of first Sect Master but serves as Great Sect Master responsible for punishment. Second Senior Brother accepts administrative authority. Hu Zi contributes Runes, dreams, defense, and the household spirit that prevents expansion from erasing the branch’s origins. Su Ming supplies the widest strategic reach while continuing to leave on missions that would make exclusive personal government impossible. (Chapters 1180–1206)
This structure is only partially documented. The narrative identifies several titles and shows recruitment, discipline, protection, and conflict, but does not provide a complete constitution, census, succession procedure, or full hierarchy. “Rebuilt Ninth Summit” therefore describes an expanding sect organized around the brothers’ authority without implying a bureaucratic design the story never supplies. (Chapters 1180–1206)
The conflict with New Dao Sect also establishes limits. Three yellow-robed cultivators upset the local balance and heavily injure Eldest Senior Brother. The rebuilt sect’s name and powerful founders do not make every member safe. Its continued survival depends on alliances, judgment, and the brothers’ willingness to answer threats rather than on an invulnerable territorial formation. (Chapters 1204–1206)
Tian Xie Zi’s return and final teaching
Su Ming eventually learns that Tian Xie Zi survives among the four Apostles associated with Old Man Extermination. Their reunion confirms that the old master has not simply become a subordinate. He remains proud of Su Ming, affectionate toward the senior brothers, and determined to settle the interrupted Change of Heart through his own confrontation. His messages are specific to each disciple, proving that years and cosmic distance have not transformed his teaching into generic sect doctrine. (Chapters 1305–1350)
In Ancient Zang, a figure identical to Tian Xie Zi again accompanies Su Ming. The relationship between this figure and the earlier master remains metaphysically uncertain, as do several familiar identities in that reality. Su Ming nevertheless recognizes the bond of his heart. The old man waits outside the royal capital and offers a final choice: turn back, cease distinguishing truth from falsehood, and live beside the people Su Ming longs to restore, or continue toward a truth that may consume him. (Chapters 1378–1391 and 1412–1472)
Su Ming refuses the comforting alternative. Tian Xie Zi accepts that refusal and teaches that destiny may determine who enters a life, but a person chooses whom to keep. This respect completes the Ninth Summit’s method. The master advises and exposes the cost; he does not claim ownership of the disciple’s path. (Chapters 1472–1477)
Destruction, restoration, and legacy
The dying aeon destroys the rebuilt Ninth Summit with most of Su Ming’s family. Ancient Zang offers resemblances and recurring titles, but Su Ming refuses to treat similarity as proof that the lost people have already returned. He searches deeper cycles for compatible marks: fighting spirit for Eldest Senior Brother, other defining traces for the family, and souls that can be rebuilt into genuine continuity rather than comforting substitution. (Chapters 1373–1458 and 1478–1480)
The three senior brothers awaken together in the restored world. Eldest Senior Brother’s first concern is the absent youngest disciple, reversing the protection that defined his earlier role. Su Ming has given his brothers a future but removed himself from it. Tian Xie Zi responds differently: when Su Ming disappears into the vortex of life and death, the master becomes corporeal beside it and enters after him, choosing companionship over safety. (Chapter 1481)
The ending leaves the Ninth Summit both restored and incomplete. Its surviving senior brothers have bodies, memories, and one another, but Su Ming and Tian Xie Zi vanish beyond confirmed reach. That uncertainty does not negate the lineage. Across mountains, worlds, false realities, and death, its members continually recognize one another by the choices that defined them. Its central inheritance is therefore not a supreme technique or territory. It is the conviction that cultivation can preserve individuality while chosen family gives that individuality a place to return. Their mountain survives most powerfully as a promise of recognition. (Chapters 1478–1481)