This chapter opens with a flashback to the beginning of the chapter, where the narrator explains that he has just returned from the battlefield, and that he is in the middle of a battle against a beast. The narrator tells the reader that the beast is a ninth-grader in the bone- forging realm, which is the highest level of cultivation for a person. He explains that the second-grader's cultivation is more about transcending the realm than it is about cultivating the ability to transcend the physical world.