Mo Li

Mo Li digs the unconscious Peng Da out of the sand before he can be buried alive, then leads the survivors toward the nearest oasis on foot. When desert wolves and golden scorpions surround them without attacking each other first, Mo Li tries to force a breakout and fails, resigning himself and Peng Da to the beast groups until a passing air current scatters the wolves and saves them both. ^{ch. 1972}

Returning to Sand Wolf City, Mo Li finds it burned and full of corpses; he digs his wife’s body out of the wreckage of their home while the inner city, where his Gu Immortal seed son was being heavily nurtured, has become a single huge crater left by a mountain-sized beast’s footprint. Gu Immortals flying overhead name the culprit a beast that harmed Mo clan and vow to hunt it; Mo Li, spurred on by Peng Da’s reminder that he still has purpose, gathers the surviving caravan members to follow the beast’s trail, and when the group turns back at lethal dark qi from the distant fight, he presses on alone until a stray hurricane sweeps him and Peng Da away together. ^{ch. 2015}

The hurricane drops Mo Li and Peng Da elsewhere in Western Desert; a sudden quicksand whirlpool that their Gu worms cannot resist pulls them down into a hidden dry well. Starlight inside the well passes over Mo Li and enters Peng Da instead, and Peng Da identifies it as Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable’s true inheritance, which will not respond to Mo Li because he is not an otherworldly demon. Mo Li coaches Peng Da through practising the inheritance’s mortal Gu for several days, but when Peng Da’s first attempt at its killer move fails and leaves him coughing blood, Mo Li pierces his chest, destroys his heart with his bare hand, and captures his soul, declaring the Thieving Heaven true inheritance his own. ^{ch. 2016}

Mo Li fights his way back to the site of the immortal battle that destroyed Sand Wolf City, only to find Heavenly Court’s Nine Spiritual Fairy and Red Heart Traveler have already subdued the beast, Qing Chou, and moved on with it toward Central Continent. Kneeling in the ruined battlefield, he swears to kill the beast himself; when Peng Da’s soul mocks him for it, Mo Li tortures the soul with his Gu worms until it reveals the name and rough meaning of electric circuit Gu, one of the Thieving Heaven inheritance’s Gu worms. ^{ch. 2019}

Scavenging Sand Heap blessed land after it is exposed by a qi tide, Mo Li ambushes a group of rival Gu Masters fighting over a piece of wisdom bead grass, striking down the one he fears most while the man is distracted, then activating the killer move Golden-Red Armor against the rest. About a hundred armor pieces assemble along electric circuits into a suit that shrugs off their attacks, and Mo Li kills most of the group by collision before finishing the survivors with electric arrows fired from his palms. The armor is his greatest achievement since killing Peng Da and seizing his Thieving Heaven true inheritance, briefly pushing his battle strength above an ordinary rank five Gu Master’s, though it empties him within tens of breaths and would have lasted only half as long without Peng Da’s soul cooperating; Peng Da helps because his soul would vanish if Mo Li dies, in exchange for Mo Li’s promise to one day help revive him. ^{ch. 2129}

Mo Li digs up a sealed mortal, Wang Xiao Er, from inside a buried flying rock while scavenging the battlefield Gu Immortals have already picked over. He beats Wang Xiao Er for information, and when Peng Da’s soul intervenes to remind him of the man he used to be, Mo Li rejects the appeal outright, telling the soul that people change. The blessed land’s pig-head land spirit then reveals that its true condition for a new master is not merely taking a beating but doing so with an unbroken spirit, and Mo Li, seeing a chance to own a blessed land of his own, starts competing for the role. ^{ch. 2130}

Mo Li lets Wang Xiao Er, Peng Da’s soul, and finally a group of Gu Immortals beat him nearly to death chasing the land spirit’s approval, exposing his most vital area to prove his resolve. Before the attacking Gu Immortals can finish him off, three cloaked Gu Immortals of the hidden Yi clan intervene and take him away, while a Gu Immortal named Shi Kang, who endured a longer beating first, ends up winning ownership of the blessed land instead. ^{ch. 2131}

With Yi clan’s help, Mo Li survives his tribulation and becomes a rank six Gu Immortal in Western Desert. Yi clan’s Zhou Yi Kou explains that their ancestor was saved by Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable long ago and that the clan has stayed hidden ever since out of debt to him; recognising Mo Li as the venerable’s inheritor, Yi clan helped him ascend so that they might one day follow Thieving Heaven Demon Venerable again should he revive, and Mo Li, deeply moved, thanks them as comrades. ^{ch. 2289}