Chapter Summaries

He Ao learned the Andawei Family’s history, traced its hospital tradition to the Stone Quarryman’s rule, and examined a diluted Fountain of Youth medicine. The old Clan Leader gave him the Night Walker secret medicine formula as the chapter ended.

• The old Clan Leader showed He Ao murals describing the Fountain of Youth, the Stone Quarryman’s centuries of rule, and the wizard who defeated him.
• He Ao studied the Andawei Family’s migration maps and concluded that its hospital buildings may have been legacies of the Stone Quarryman’s worship.
• The old Clan Leader explained the Fountain of Youth’s protections and how aging Clan Leaders were tempted by it and chose exile.
• He Ao let the old Clan Leader examine a milky liquid, and the old Clan Leader identified it as diluted Fountain of Youth mixed with substances that reduced its contamination and potency.
• The old Clan Leader gave He Ao the secret medicine formula for Talent Sequence 115: Night Walker.

He Ao learned the Night Walker formula and how Dennis Text manuscripts could self-destruct, then helped the Andawei Family organize nearby Wilderness Wanderers against the Ghost Mushroom. He showed Annie why aircraft and long-range weapons were dangerous in the wilderness, leaving them facing a threat beneath a sky ruled by mutated beasts.

• The old Clan Leader explained the Linde Symbols used to make Dennis Text manuscripts self-destruct after being read, and He Ao memorized them.
• The Merk Family surrendered after Kajia's death, and the Andawei Family gave He Ao the four secret medicines extracted from Kajia.
• He Ao described Dawn City's immigration offer to nearby Wilderness Wanderers, but most chose to stay and fight the Ghost Mushroom while contributing little; he answered their fears of C-class beasts by saying, "Let it come in."
• The Wilderness Wanderers completed an encirclement around the Ghost Mushroom, and He Ao showed Annie how Night Ravens swarmed toward a grenade exploding in the sky.
• He Ao explained that Night Ravens and other mutated beasts made the wilderness sky unsafe for aircraft and artillery, while the sky above the Ghost Mushroom remained empty.

He Ao entered the Ghost Mushroom zone and launched a coordinated incendiary attack with the Andawei Family, then raced through the flames toward a C-rank mutated beast that had entered the area. Elsewhere, a massive creature appeared at the site of a destroyed city convoy and looked toward the distance.

• He Ao drove through the Ghost Mushroom zone toward its core, resisting the mushrooms’ growing temptation as he crushed them beneath his truck.
• He Ao reached the core, signaled the Andawei Family, and prepared the Incendiary Bombs for their coordinated midnight attack.
• He Ao and the Andawei Family launched Incendiary Bombs from the center and outskirts, igniting the Ghost Mushrooms and intensifying their temptation.
• He Ao escaped the core on an off-road motorcycle while the fire-avoidance ring drew flames toward him.
• After the Andawei Family signaled that a C-rank mutated beast had entered the zone, He Ao raced toward it with a Night Walker potion in a mithril test tube.
• A massive creature crushed a truck among the remains of a city convoy and turned toward the distant Ghost Mushroom zone.

He Ao killed successive Rank C Exotic Beasts while using the burning Ghost Mushroom field to lure in a larger threat. After the Andawei Family warned him that an Ultra-Large Exotic Beast was approaching, he spent ten minutes drawing the flames toward himself, and a colossal creature finally arrived.

• He Ao killed the first exotic beast with his sword, then rode off to hunt the next intruder.
• He Ao killed a horned, scaled wild horse, while the old Clan Leader and Annie discovered a footprint more than ten meters across and identified it as belonging to an Ultra-Large Exotic Beast.
• He Ao lured a lynx-like beast beside a giant rat and killed both with his sword and bayonet.
• After Annie and the old Clan Leader warned He Ao that the outer defenses were failing, he asked them to hold for ten minutes and rode into the Ghost Mushroom field to draw the flames after him.
• He Ao's motorcycle broke apart as the fire closed in, and he removed his fireproof ring and activated Stealth while a Rank C bat approached the remaining mushrooms.
• A colossal foot crushed the bat, and He Ao looked up at the enormous shadow that blocked the stars and flames.

He Ao survived the encounter with a mountain-sized Rank B Exotic Beast, then used the Night Walker ritual to advance to Rank C and gained the ability to travel through darkness. He burned the remaining Ghost Mushrooms and reunited with the girl who called him Dad.

• A mountain-sized Rank B Exotic Beast crushed a path through the flames, but He Ao used Thought Alteration to make it leave the Ghost Mushrooms alone.
• After the beast departed, He Ao drank the Night Walker potion and advanced to Rank C, gaining Night Walking and its shadow-based concealment and short-range blink.
• He Ao scattered scorched Ghost Mushroom powder over the surviving mushrooms and threw a cigarette pack into the patch.
• He Ao lit a cigarette, tossed his lighter onto the powder, and walked away as the Ghost Mushrooms burst into flames.
• A small off-road vehicle arrived, and a tearful girl ran toward He Ao and called him Dad.

He Ao took Annie through the wilderness after the Ghost Mushroom area was cleared, earning the Wilderness Wanderers’ respect and telling them about Dawn City’s Wilderness Wanderers Immigration Act. He then waited with Annie near a camp as a convoy bearing the City of Stars Emblem approached.

• He Ao watched the sunrise with Annie, then caught and grilled a White Fish for them to eat.
• He Ao drove south with Annie and arrived at a Wilderness Wanderers Camp, where the people cheered for them.
• He Ao spoke at the camp’s trading hall about the Wilderness Wanderers Immigration Act and the chance for Wanderers to obtain Dawn City and federal citizenship.
• He Ao declined the crowd’s attention and took Annie to wait in the shrubs beside the camp.
• A convoy led by an armed off-road vehicle bearing the City of Stars Emblem approached along the road.

He Ao met Roger on a wilderness trade route and brought him along to teach Annie medical and fighting skills. After returning to the Andawei Family camp to bury Shadow and collect his luggage, He Ao drove toward home, while an old man completed a mural depicting a wounded figure facing a monstrous beast.

• He Ao stopped a Nolanka Group caravan and asked for Roger, holding back an armed guard as the man deployed a mass-produced Cain Type Mecha.
• Roger met He Ao and agreed to travel with him; He Ao introduced Annie and arranged for Roger to teach her medical, nursing, and fighting skills.
• He Ao returned to the Andawei Family camp, buried Shadow, collected his luggage, and said goodbye to the old Clan Leader.
• He Ao drove into the night with Annie and Roger, telling Annie they were going home.
• An old man finished a mural showing a wounded figure standing before a giant beast amid flames and endless mushrooms.

He Ao returned to Limen City with Roger and Annie, secured a rental apartment, and used Eve’s research to locate the likely site of the Fountain of Youth. He went to All-Stars Beauty Hospital to investigate Doctor Koles and its morgue, where he frightened a security guard while asking for directions.

• He Ao passed the city’s inspections by entering with Roger and Annie, then arranged a temporary vehicle registration and traveled to the apartment Eve had found.
• He Ao rented the apartment from an elderly couple, and Annie asked whether their lives would get better as the couple left to move in with their son.
• Roger began teaching Annie and prepared to show her how to dissect a mouse while He Ao used Eve’s research to identify All-Stars Beauty Hospital as the likely site of the Fountain of Youth.
• He Ao used Super Memory to identify Doctor Koles as a possible target and went to the hospital, where the front desk told him Koles was finishing surgery.
• He Ao went down to the underground parking level to find the morgue and approached a security guard, who panicked when He Ao appeared beside him and asked how to get there.

He Ao investigated the hospital morgue, found that recently deceased bodies had no trace of souls, and encountered an eerie phenomenon linked to a powerful existence. He then questioned Dr. Koles, who revealed that he had worked on All-Stars Group’s Mars Project, which sought eternal life, and hinted that its core results had advanced his career.

• He Ao followed the security guard’s directions to the morgue and found no obvious sign of the Fountain of Youth beneath the parking lot.
• He Ao entered the morgue and discovered that bodies who had died within the past two days had no trace of souls.
• He Ao triggered and dismissed a frightening illusion in the morgue, concluding that the site was connected to an existence of angel rank or higher.
• He Ao contacted Dr. Koles and met him at a café outside the hospital to ask about the research institute.
• Koles revealed that he had joined All-Stars Group’s Mars Project about a decade earlier and said its subject was eternal life.
• Koles admitted he had never accessed the project’s core research, but had advanced his career by studying the results that others revealed.

He Ao questioned Koles about the Mars Project and learned that the Research Institute implanted silver boxes containing cultivated organs in patients, using drugs to keep them functioning and returning for repeated procedures. Koles revealed that the experiments weakened and sometimes killed patients, and the chapter left He Ao suspecting the doctor had long since gone mad.

• He Ao learned from Koles that the Mars Project had gained momentum about twenty-two years earlier and that Reed recruited Koles for his surgical skills.
• Koles recounted how Reed gave him a silver box to implant in a living person, and He Ao connected it to the box he had seen during Pete's operation.
• Koles explained that he joined the Research Institute to uncover its secrets, but Reed restricted his access to core patient data.
• Koles described how the Institute implanted boxes, supplied drugs containing immunosuppressants and stimulants, and repeatedly drew patients back despite their declining health and occasional deaths.
• He Ao saw through Super Memory that Koles's soul was abnormal, and Koles said the box contained an organ cultivated outside the human body.

Koles explained that Stars Pharmaceutical’s abandoned cloned-organ trials had killed nearly all their impoverished volunteers, and He Ao concluded the Research Institute was using patients as living incubators. After obtaining Koles’s access card, He Ao searched All-Stars Beauty Hospital and witnessed a force begin drawing a dying patient’s soul away.

• Koles told He Ao that Stars Pharmaceutical had once produced functional cloned organs, but the transplants failed rapidly and the human trials ended in patients’ deaths.
• He Ao inferred that the Research Institute’s volunteers were living petri dishes whose bodies enabled cloned organs to survive, and Koles identified a Life Potion and the Institute’s lowest-floor safe.
• He Ao asked Koles to get him a doctor’s coat and lend him an access card, then entered All-Stars Beauty Hospital to investigate its unexplained deaths.
• He Ao searched the emergency department and Intensive Care Unit but found nothing unusual, then continued to the crowded inpatient building.
• He Ao saw a dying patient’s soul begin to dissipate as a strange force pulled it away.

He Ao dismantled the soul-attracting array at All-Stars Beauty Hospital and returned to Limen City carrying five Transparent Marbles. Reed and his officers anticipated his moves and planned to use He Ao’s daughter to draw him out, but Professor Koles’s call interrupted their preparations.

• He Ao traced the soul lines to a hidden device in the hospital wall, removed its Transparent Marble core, and found four more marbles that weakened the hospital’s soul-attracting array.
• He Ao searched the underground garage and nearby sewers, found no hidden facility, returned Koles’s access card, and left the hospital with the five marbles.
• He Ao entered Limen City under Stealth, while a Thin Man spotted him and alerted the Short Fat Man, who failed to find him in the crowd.
• Reed and an officer discussed He Ao’s return and suspected he might target either Romerk or the Research Institute before Reed deduced that He Ao could be hiding his daughter at home.
• Reed ordered his forces withdrawn from Pete’s home and replaced by wider-area hidden sentries prepared to pursue the daughter with Enhancement Drug; Professor Koles then called Reed.

He Ao investigated Romerk about the demolition of Morak Park, the site later occupied by All-Stars Beauty Hospital. Romerk implicated the Senator Family and Senator Jenos, then grabbed a hidden Submachine Gun and turned on He Ao.

• Senator Jenos promoted a proposal to adjust pensions according to an elderly-specific price index, while a limping former worker condemned the rising costs of medical care.
• He Ao considered how the All-Stars Group's monopoly and high medical costs trapped Limen City residents, then went to Romerk's company headquarters.
• Romerk relaxed in his penthouse villa with his sugar babies and considered buying more All-Stars Group services and drugs.
• He Ao confronted Romerk about the Morak Park demolition project and asked who had bought the site forty years earlier.
• Romerk said the Senator Family controlled Limen City's construction projects and that Jenos's father had been senator at the time.
• Romerk pulled a hidden Submachine Gun from a clothes rack and spun around to attack He Ao.

He Ao killed Romerk and escaped the villa as Romerk’s supposed daughters discovered the body. While investigating Senator Jenos and the Fountain of Youth, He Ao uncovered the senator family’s control of Limen City construction contracts and a connection between Jenos’s father’s murder and the Morak Park project; the chapter leaves him considering the timing of Jenos’s career at Stars Pharmaceutical.

• He Ao used Romerk’s cane as a decoy, killed him with a sword, and left the villa while a blonde girl stole valuables from the corpse and raised the alarm.
• He Ao rode through a gang shootout in a taxi and reflected on how financial hardship could drive people into dangerous work.
• He Ao reviewed information about the Federation’s two-chamber parliament and learned that Jenos’s family controlled most of Limen City’s construction contracts through a bidding and subcontracting scheme.
• He Ao learned that Jenos’s father had been murdered about forty years earlier, around the time the Morak Park redevelopment stopped, and that Jenos joined Stars Pharmaceutical twenty-two years ago.

He Ao and an ally disguised themselves and moved through the streets while Research Institute Director Reed tracked them, believing they were testing his surveillance. Reed also negotiated with Professor Koles, who returned to the Institute seeking access to research data and permission to choose an assistant.

• He Ao left a taxi near the Research Institute and joined someone in a black sedan, while a disguised pair later emerged from the car and headed into a secluded alley.
• Surveillance agents reported the suspected targets' movements to Reed, who told his officer to keep watching rather than act before they reached Pete's home, which he called the "nest."
• Professor Koles met Reed and demanded access to years of research data, but Reed refused and offered to let him choose assistants from the Institute's Operating Rooms.
• Reed instructed a clerk to keep Professor Koles under close watch, while Koles went downstairs to select assistants.
• Reed learned that the suspected targets had stopped for lunch, dismissed the possibility that surveillance had picked the wrong people, and ordered his agents to keep waiting.

Reed sent Officer Zadi and a mercenary battalion to Pete's home after deciding Pete might have returned there, while Koles led a group of assistants to the Research Institute's deepest levels. Koles triggered an alarm at the sealed vault, but Zadi opened it, and Koles quietly reported that the door was open.

• Koles gathered six backup candidates while a disguised newcomer joined the group and followed them underground.
• After Reed learned that Pete had vanished from the Eyes' surveillance, he ordered Officer Zadi to take the mercenary battalion to Pete's home and told the Eyes to watch the roads near the Nest.
• Reed saw Koles lead the assistants to the fourth basement level, then enter the restricted sixth level and approach the vault.
• Koles failed biometric verification at the vault and triggered an alarm, so Zadi escorted him away before opening the vault with his own credentials.
• As the elevator rose, Koles looked at the surveillance camera and said through his earpiece, "The door's open."

Annie confided in Uncle Roger about her father Pete’s unemployment, financial hardship, and the fate that seemed to follow his lifelong efforts. Meanwhile, He Ao’s plan brought Officer Zadi to the safe, where Zadi took seven reagents and left, allowing He Ao to approach the isolated supercomputer and switch it on.

• Annie described how Pete’s age and health made it difficult for him to find steady work, and how losing his job threatened the family’s home and savings.
• Annie told Roger she had blamed Pete for neglecting the family, but still could not understand why he had been laid off after working so hard; she asked Roger not to tell Pete about her worries.
• Roger kept Annie’s confidence and reflected that Pete might have gained transcendent power after losing his job and joining organization K.
• Officer Zadi entered the safe, removed seven dark-colored reagents from the refrigerator, and left without identifying what seemed wrong to him.
• He Ao revealed how he had used Koles, Roger, Annie, and Reed’s suspicions to lure Reed away and gain access to the safe.
• He Ao inspected the network-isolated supercomputer and pressed its power switch.

Reed detained Koles after their tense discussion, while He Ao investigated the vault and discovered that Stars Pharmaceutical’s Enhancement Drug traded temporary strength for inevitable madness. The vault door opened just as He Ao concluded that the refrigerator had recently held Life Potions.

• Koles pressed Reed for access to the project’s core data, and Reed argued that ideals had to yield to reality before ordering mercenaries to restrain him.
• Reed noticed Koles had acted unusually and went down to the sixth underground level to inspect the vault.
• He Ao found that the vault computer required biometric and password verification, then examined the refrigerator’s racks and medicines.
• He Ao identified the red Enhancement Drug as a blend of supernatural powers stabilized by Fountain of Youth water and qi, but concluded it would eventually drive users mad.
• He Ao inferred that the refrigerator’s lower racks had recently held Life Potions, and the silver vault door began to open.

He Ao confronted Reed in the research institute vault and discovered that Reed had transformed into a powerful, clawed being after drinking from the Fountain of Youth. Reed invited He Ao to join the group behind the Mars Project, but the fight continued as He Ao searched for a way to defeat him.

• Reed checked the vault and its computer, then fired at a suspected hiding place as he left; He Ao appeared and slashed Reed's neck.
• Reed survived the decapitation, triggered the institute alarm, and transformed as bone claws emerged from his body and his energy surged to peak C-rank.
• Reed claimed his transformation had freed him from human weakness, while He Ao recognized the claws as resembling limbs depicted in Andawei Family murals.
• He Ao asked whether Reed had drunk from the Fountain of Youth, and Reed revealed that he could introduce He Ao to Doctor, who led the Mars Project.
• Reed distracted He Ao with an offer to join, wounded his shoulder, and attacked with a barrage of claws as He Ao studied his unusual energy circulation.
• He Ao realized Reed's body might have changed after drinking from the Fountain of Youth, then used the shadows to appear before him.

He Ao defeated Reed in the vault by using his teleportation to mislead him and striking the Energy Convergence Point he had discovered. After examining the limits of Thought Alteration and Reed’s altered body, He Ao approached the supercomputer, only to hear a metal door open behind him.

• Zadi returned to the Research Institute, ordered the doctors and patients evacuated, and went to look for Reed on Floor Negative Six.
• Reed adapted to He Ao’s attacks, but He Ao restrained him long enough to locate the Energy Convergence Point in his chest.
• He Ao used a feint to make Reed attack empty space, then stabbed through Reed’s back and killed him.
• He Ao recovered Reed’s mark and considered the limits and possible cooldown mechanics of Thought Alteration.
• He Ao examined Reed’s body, nearly collapsed from exhaustion, and walked toward the supercomputer.
• A metal door opened behind He Ao, and he checked his bracelet and realized someone had returned quickly.