Crazed Demon Cave

From the air the ground is flat yellow soil broken by a huge cave. The rim is circular and spans hundreds of kilometers. Inside sits a thick rainforest of yellow and green, with desolate beasts and featherless red birds. The first layer is humid. The second is a hot land of burning rocks piled from elephant-sized masses down to pebbles. The third is white fog over cloud bamboo on the same scale as the first-layer rainforest, and Fog City appears in that fog as a tall silent city of markets and moving figures. The sixth layer holds a small valley. ^{ch. 1174} On the third last layer, rocks, soil, and grass give off bright lights of many colors, the light of quasi-rank nine immortal materials. ^{ch. 1188}

The cave has nine layers. On the first layer, grey monkeys chase through the trees, a desolate beast tree python hunts them, and demonic sound drives beasts into mutual slaughter. Fog City in the third layer’s fog forms from gathered vengeful souls that died as Gu Immortals. Not Immortal leads Fang Yuan past the upper layers to a small valley in the sixth layer, where Pang Shan rests. Even the Three Crazed Demon Eccentrics who live here do not enter the bottom three layers casually. ^{ch. 1174}

Demonic sound runs through the cave. Ordinary methods cannot block it. Living beings go berserk, fight to the death, and mutilate themselves when it sounds. ^{ch. 1174} Life forms here, including Gu worms and plants, lose market value: their dao marks are completely chaotic, so corpses cannot be sold in treasure yellow heaven, and Gu Immortals inside cannot connect to it at all. ^{ch. 1174 ch. 1175} The deeper the layer, the stronger the sound. ^{ch. 1176} Routes change when the sounds grow more frequent, because chaotic dao marks rewrite terrain as well as minds. ^{ch. 1188}

The third last layer is a land of dense dao marks where rocks, soil, and grass shine with the light of quasi-rank nine immortal materials, yet the marks are chaotic and unusable, and each step faces battlefield-like pressure from conflicting paths. ^{ch. 1188} When Fang Yuan leaves after the Crazed Demon Agreement he judges the third last layer no problem for him, confident enough that he could run freely in its dao mark landscape, while the bottom and second last layers he has not seen and cannot assess. ^{ch. 1189}

Three Gu Immortals have lived in the cave for hundreds of years without bothering with the outside world. They call themselves the Three Crazed Demon Eccentrics. ^{ch. 1174} Named members include Not Immortal, who meets Fang Yuan on the first layer; Pang Shan, a huge immortal resting in a sixth-layer valley; and Secret Schemer, a wisdom path Gu Immortal met when the Crazed Demon Agreement is set on the third last layer. ^{ch. 1174 ch. 1189} They want to pass the dao mark obstacles, reach the formation’s core, and control derivation Gu so the formation works for them, and they recruit outside strength because hundreds of years of progress have not been enough. ^{ch. 1176} Related force detail sits on Three Crazed Demon Eccentrics.

Fang Yuan enters first as Chu Du’s messenger. ^{ch. 1173 ch. 1174} He later returns to sign the Crazed Demon Agreement and join the search for Limitless Demon Venerable’s later-year achievement, the secret of eternal life. ^{ch. 1176 ch. 1188} Not Immortal states the same priority in plain terms: beside eternal life, fame and other worldly affairs do not last. After the agreement Fang Yuan still leaves the cave. Derivation Gu is at the bottom layer with the Three Crazed Demon Eccentrics guarding it, so he judges he cannot act alone, and he plans to return only after raising his cultivation. ^{ch. 1189} Related pact detail sits on Crazed Demon Agreement.

Chu Du states what the fierce-area label hides: Limitless Demon Venerable specially created the cave in his later years to pursue the secrets of eternal life, refined the legendary derivation Gu, hid inside, and ran experiments and refinements on it, hoping for a breakthrough. Not Immortal’s will confirms that Limitless stayed here in his later years, that derivation Gu sits at the deepest layer, and that a huge super Gu formation surrounds it. ^{ch. 1176}

Limitless cultivated rule path. The Three Crazed Demon Eccentrics estimate that he meant to use derivation Gu to derive new dao marks and take those marks as clues toward eternal life, not to remake humanity the way Ren Zu did. The demonic sounds are that super Gu formation’s result, and Chu Du calls the cave physical proof of the estimate. By that estimate, driving living beings crazy is only a side effect of the formation. The true work is to scramble living beings’ dao marks and produce brand new ones, which the formation then pulls to the deepest layer. Historical records do not settle whether Limitless succeeded; he went missing, and success or failure is unknown. ^{ch. 1176}

Under Spectral Soul’s pursuit, with heaven path dao marks wrecking his methods, Fang Yuan chooses Crazed Demon Cave as the place to run. He judges that at the lower levels his sovereign immortal body can move between layers quickly while pursuers are stopped or slowed, and he turns Dragon Palace north toward the cave. ^{ch. 2032}

Years later Fang Yuan returns ready to fight venerables, loots the upper layers, and presses unhindered toward the deep layers. He names the bright dao-mark landscape of the third last layer as the seventh: every rock and soil piece is quasi-rank nine material with chaotic marks. ^{ch. 2154 ch. 1188} Immortal materials from the first six layers stay chaotic and untradable; seventh-layer dao marks Fang Yuan obtains through Thieves Den become pure rank nine immortal materials. ^{ch. 2169} The eighth layer holds great worlds that fuel the Crazed Demon formation; the ninth is a smaller void where that formation orbits, producing truthful floating ice as derivation gains toward eternal life. ^{ch. 2187 ch. 2189} Looking back after the fight, Fang Yuan judges that he became a refinement path venerable and took the greatest gains, killing Paradise Earth and repelling Giant Sun Immortal Venerable and Star Constellation Immortal Venerable. ^{ch. 2224}

Fang Yuan judges that the formation of truthful floating ice in the ninth layer is the foundation for building the whole of Crazed Demon Cave, and that Book Mountain and Primordial Domain are cores Heavenly Court took out of that formation. ^{ch. 2187} Limitless Demon Venerable set the Crazed Demon formation; it reaches rank nine, and the expedition becomes a contest to seize its derivation results toward eternal life. ^{ch. 2189 ch. 2192} Derivation Gu sits as the formation’s core: Limitless obtained that legendary Gu and used it in the Crazed Demon formation, and after the cave battle Star Constellation Immortal Venerable recovers it from truthful floating ice to build her own human path derivation formation. ^{ch. 2274}

Heavenly Court infiltrates the Crazed Demon formation deeply enough to remove Book Mountain and Primordial Domain as cores, so it already knows the derivation’s state. Not Immortal says Star Constellation Immortal Venerable can be considered half the formation’s owner: she activates and accelerates the formation without disrupting its derivation, so Limitless Demon Venerable’s arrangements do not trigger. If she unifies the eighth-layer great worlds and holds the fuel and clues for derivation, grasp over the formation can rise further, and the text raises the possibility that the Crazed Demon formation might even change owners. ^{ch. 2190} Star Constellation later states she already controls half the formation, keeps Heavenly Court immortals on truthful floating ice pieces, and pushes derivation toward one final ice piece that would carry the carved truth of eternal life if Limitless’ arrangements succeed. ^{ch. 2195} Limitless dies and the Crazed Demon formation is destroyed in the later contest, ending his retaliation method over the site. ^{ch. 2209}