Road to Mastery 4 recap

After securing relocated Earth, Jack Rust leaves Vivi and their newborn twins to train at the Black Hole Church with Brock. He survives a hostile Cathedral culture, reaches C-grade, creates a trade in healing stones, wins a world anchor, and becomes Boatman's disciple. A joint expedition with the Hand of God enters a hidden realm that proves to be an Archon's creation. Baron Longform dies after ambushing Jack and Brock, while Min Ling saves them and joins their party. Trapped in the realm's deepest trial, Jack defines his personal fist-centered Dao, claims the realm heart, becomes the Archon's heir, and emerges with five fruits and B-grade combat power. He, Brock, and Min Ling leave for Earth, but Spacewind and most of the expedition remain confined. Meanwhile, the Second Crusade captures the Church's Cathedral, and a former Animal Kingdom warden begins searching for Earth to strike Jack's family.

Previously: Jack Rust helped move Earth beyond System space and defended it from the Animal Kingdom, leaving the planet temporarily secure but isolated from the wider order. He carries an extraordinary life artifact, has ties to the Black Hole Church, and remains an outlaw in the System's view. Brock is his brorilla companion and closest cultivation ally, with a growing community of bros around him. Vivi is Jack's partner, while Margaret Rust, Edgar, Harambe, Gan Salin, and other allies help form Earth's new foundation. Former enemies have been defeated, captured, or driven away, yet the Animal Kingdom remains hostile and the planet's safety still depends heavily on Jack's strength. He has reached peak D-grade and must stabilize his cultivation before advancing. The Black Hole Church offers a route toward greater power, but following it will take him away from the people he has fought to protect.

Vivi gives birth to Jack's twins during Earth's first peaceful months after relocation. Jack nevertheless leaves with Brock and the Sage, travelling through many interspace layers to the Black Hole Church Cathedral inside a black hole. The Cathedral's crushing gravity and competitive hierarchy immediately expose how small their strength is on a universal scale. Jack becomes an outer disciple and is placed at rank 950 by the Head Envoy, gaining limited access to the Heavy Pagoda while provoking disciples who consider the placement undeserved. He defeats a C-grade will cultivator whose Truth Domain tries to exploit uncertainty in his convictions. The victory earns a Dao Stone but draws attention from her powerful husband. Dorman Whistles then arrives, heavily altered by a trapped treasure and unable to pursue his former speed-based path. Jack learns that low-ranked disciples cannot use the Cathedral teleporters, so returning to Vivi and the children now depends on both reaching C-grade and climbing above rank 800. The Heavy Pagoda may reduce the resources required for his breakthrough, and Jack promises to help Dorman if he succeeds.

Don Cranxiao, a three-fruit enforcer hired against Jack, repeatedly attacks Dorman and uses him as leverage. Jack accepts a lethal duel carrying a twenty-Dao-stone debt, then brings Dorman into his cabin with Brock. Attempts to develop conventional healing prove too slow, but Jack learns to compress life energy into healing stones. The guardian inside his artifact identifies it as the Supreme Blood, restricts his production, and hints at a stronger use. Jack discovers that he can fuse life energy permanently into his body, increasing his physical attributes outside ordinary System advancement. Two weeks of punishing tempering let him withstand the Cathedral's gravity without Dao and survive a higher Heavy Pagoda floor. When Cranxiao returns, Baron Longform appears as his cousin and protector. Jack chooses to fight immediately, overpowers Cranxiao's tyrannical domain and weapon with his enhanced body and four-armed form, and kills him under the duel terms. Longform pays the wager but openly declares Jack an enemy, while many low-ranked disciples begin treating Jack as their champion.

Jack's new body and life artifact carry him to rank 675 in the Ceaseless Murder Globe, unlocking unrestricted Cathedral teleporters and better training facilities. Rather than return home immediately, he spends twenty-two Dao Stones on his C-grade breakthrough. The process nearly tears apart his soul world and subjects him to a foundational trial of the Fist. After two external months of failure, he realizes he is not meant to reproduce an absolute ideal. He must affirm his own distinct fist path. That conviction forms his first Dao fruit and advances him to C-grade. Jack chooses the Gladiator Titan, King class and reunites with Brock and Dorman. Marcus William, a six-fruit swordsman and husband of Jack's earlier opponent, challenges him over their dispute. Jack refuses a delay, defeats Marcus despite the five-fruit gap, and wins a fifty-stone wager that Marcus partly pays through future wages. Brock remains at the Cathedral to earn status independently, while Jack finally teleports back to Earth. Elsewhere, three explorers discover a portal to an unknown hidden realm and plan to report it to competing major factions.

Jack reunites with Vivi, his infant children, and Margaret Rust, supplying Earth with healing and cultivation resources before returning to the Cathedral. During his absence, Brock manifests the Bro Code in the Ceaseless Murder Globe and earns recognition as an outer disciple. Jack uses the Fallen Genius Mirror, where visions of failed cultivators force him to acknowledge how often chance has shaped survival. He decides that danger does not change his chosen path. Further Globe victories raise him to rank 216 and stabilize his first Dao fruit. The Head Envoy then announces a joint Black Hole Church and Hand of God expedition to an upper-B-grade hidden realm, led by Spacewind, with Min Ling commanding the Church's C-grades if they separate. Jack is publicly offered a rare world anchor, valuable both to his current foundation and an eventual B-grade breakthrough, but only if he reaches the top 100 within a year. The announcement makes him a target for nearly every ambitious disciple. He rejects the chance to withdraw and accepts the deadline, while temporary rules forbid direct assaults during the competition.

Most of Jack's followers leave when the world-anchor contest puts them under pressure, but Brock, Dorman, and several others remain. Baron Longform finances a seven-fruit challenger and blocks Jack's preferred Dao Chamber bookings. Jack studies mortal lives to create Fist of Mortality, then makes a dangerous bargain with the Supreme Blood's guardian: he may produce one healing stone per day, but must repay twice the borrowed energy within two years or die. The Sage fronts the trade while Brock organizes distribution, providing enough Dao Stones to fund Jack's training and Brock's C-grade advance. Jack deepens his space comprehension, strengthens his body, and forms Space as his second fruit. At the scheduled duel, he expands the contest into a Cathedral-wide sequence carrying the world anchor as its stake. He defeats the original swordswoman, twenty-five registered challengers, and an additional veteran swordsman despite mounting exhaustion. The Head Envoy awards him the world anchor and six months of free Dao Chamber use. Jack absorbs it into his soul world, refining his Dao, improving his affinity with life, and preparing the foundation for an eventual inner world.

During the final six months before departure, Jack reaches rank 98, accumulates extensive resources, and forms a third fruit of life. He and Brock visit Earth, where Jack spends two weeks with Vivi, Abel, Eric, and his other allies before leaving without knowing when he can return. Thirty Church C-grades gather for the hidden-realm expedition under Spacewind, whose hostility toward Jack comes from jealousy over Min Ling. Boatman provides the starship. At the destination, the Church meets a Hand of God force and holds exhibition spars under a fragile agreement to cooperate. A venomous Hand prodigy deliberately maims Church opponents until Boatman orders Jack to intervene. Jack overwhelms her, prompting her A-grade master to attempt retaliation. Boatman blocks the attack and asks Jack to become his direct disciple, preventing a wider clash. In private, he makes clear that the choice is voluntary and that he will teach rather than rescue Jack from self-created danger. Jack accepts. Boatman gives him an inheritance seed and a cube of concentrated death energy to support a life-and-death foundation beneath his Fist Dao. The expedition then passes through the portal into the hidden realm.

The expedition arrives in a vast living jungle that appears to be an A-grade cultivator's inner world, with no portal remaining behind them. The B-grades head toward the core while C-grade teams spread out. Jack and Brock spare a tree dragon and share its ripe Dao fruits, then Jack begins learning the death technique Nihility from Boatman's cube. At a volcano, Brock discovers that the apparent treasure is a crystal-producing tree enslaved by a B-grade red dragon. He forms a voluntary alliance with its twig-like offspring. During the joint assault, Jack and Brock take six fruits while leaving the tree enough to survive, but Baron Longform traps them below the lava. Longform rejects compromise and attacks for revenge. The allied twigs intervene, yet Longform sacrifices lifespan and a Dao fruit for greater power, gravely injuring Brock. Jack creates Supernova from space, death, and stellar insight, leaving both himself and Longform incapacitated. When the others arrive, the Hand of God leader uses the missing treasure as a pretext to attack Church members. Min Ling breaks Jack and Brock out of a spatial cage and flees with them into deeper lava. Before escaping, Jack kills the critically weakened Longform.

Min Ling carries Jack and Brock through more than a hundred miles of lava and into the hidden realm's core temple. Jack recovers, shares the stolen fruits equally, and advances to four fruits, adding death to fist, space, and life. Min Ling reaches eight fruits, but the temple's guardians are dangerous even to B-grades. The trio catches up with the surviving B-grade expedition and is allowed into its formation on the condition that they neither fight nor retain discoveries. Spacewind and the Hand of God leader use weaker members as trap scouts and confiscate finds. A late B-grade black dragon then seals the group in battle. Spacewind forces several Church members to detonate their inner worlds against it. Jack protects Brock and Min Ling from the final shockwave with Supernova and regenerates only because the Supreme Blood's guardian intervenes, exhausting itself into slumber. After the dragon dies, the leaders imprison everyone until three patterned cubes can be solved. Jack recognizes their relationship to Boatman's Death Cube. After three months, he completes their life patterns, arranges a diversion, and opens the remaining cubes for his party. Jack, Brock, and Min Ling escape with a green bean and a wooden key while all nine surviving B-grades pursue them.

Spacewind and the Hand of God leader recover the first cube's treasure and identify Jack's party as the thieves. With ordinary exits blocked, Jack, Brock, and Min Ling flee through a forbidden shaft radiating A-grade pressure. They survive Spacewind's final attack and land in a sealed lava cavern dominated by an immense tree. A dead prisoner left evidence that a wooden key from above could activate it. Jack uses the key, and a message from Archon Green Dragon identifies the hidden realm as an inheritance site. Escape now requires Jack to decipher space-time runes and qualify to refine the Dragon Life Realm Heart. The activation severs the entire realm from the outside universe, trapping the other expedition members as well and defeating every attempted rescue. Over three years, Jack matures his fourth fruit, Brock reaches the same cultivation boundary, and Min Ling develops a ninth fruit. Jack finally resolves the spatial locks without force and enters the tree through a hidden corridor. At the realm's core, he chooses the inheritance attempt instead of an available departure. The numbered story ends with Jack transported alone before projections of the twelve old gods, while Brock and Min Ling wait outside and the sealed realm remains beyond outside help.

Jack passes Archon Green Dragon's trial by asserting a personal, fist-centered Dao, then refines and absorbs the realm heart. The inheritance raises him to five fruits, gives him control over the realm's exits, and leaves him with B-grade fighting power. He releases Brock and Min Ling, and the three head first toward Earth before planning further travel. Min Ling accepts that Jack is married and does not pursue her feelings. Jack deliberately leaves Spacewind and the rest of the expedition in Green Cultivator Town until he can safely deal with Spacewind, though he intends eventually to free those who did not attack his group. The Archon's realm can survive for millennia, and Jack is expected to return at A-grade to incorporate it into his inner world. The life-drop guardian remains asleep, Jack still owes the Supreme Blood a lethal repayment debt, and his promises to Dorman Whistles remain outstanding. Elsewhere, the Second Crusade seizes the Black Hole Church Cathedral after its guardian dies covering an evacuation. Boatman, the Sage, and other Church survivors are unaccounted for. A disgraced former Animal Kingdom warden orders a search for Earth, placing Vivi, Abel, Eric, and the relocated world in renewed danger.