@abe4life
Yulian Glow's Power: His power follows the Xianxia-Buddhist method of demonic trials. The stronger you become, the more you are tempted to embrace evil and the more likely you are to go astray. At the higher levels, this takes the form of a doppleganger screwing with you. The Glow made the right choice and rejected the demon entirely which purified his qi, but the process dropped him back a few stages. Most of the last few dozen chapters of that plotline have revolved around him re-growing his power. He is now about equal to where he was when he made the choice, but even with the greater skill that comes from a purified qi, it's not enough to straight-up overpower Basara who's been using the Indian-Buddhist chakra method (Sufficiently similar to Xianxia-Buddhist qi that the distinction doesn't really matter for the purposes of the story).
Desert War: The people of the desert have been killing each other over territory and honor for a very long time. The Glow has recently started a military campaign to unite the people of the desert by force, because with that long-ass history of grudges there's no other way to do it. After a lot of struggle, they are on the cusp of victory - if they beat Venersis and co here, they've essentially won the campaign. Roll end credits, all that's left is the clean up. Venersis knows this too, and in order to win he decided to be a Half-Neidermyer and use demon gates against the Glow. Whether he actually activated them with the sacrifice of his troops several chapters back or simply knew this was where the demon gates would spawn is unknown, though it's implied to be the former.
Multiverse Story: a pair of divine shitheads cast in the usual shallow, stereotypical Japanese-anime-bastardization of religion are bickering about the best method to manipulate/break humanity (and possibly other races, though that hasn't been explicitly explained) into their preferred mold. Part of that is opening(?) demon gates and allow monsters to omnomnom them. Whether or not the orcs and elves from previous chapters are in an entirely different dimension or simply in another part of the world is not explained.
Glow's Master / Chosen One: part of this bullshit testing is the presence of "Chosen Ones" to manage the process and make sure it follows the rules laid down by the divine shitheads. Yulian's Master is one of them, selected as the "Judge". What exactly that means or entails is not yet explained, only that he interacts with all the key players in this game for various and mostly unknown reasons.