Chapter Summaries

A parasitic outbreak consumed the passengers on Zhang Chen’s flight while he slept, and he descended into economy class to destroy the creatures. After absorbing them, Zhang Chen was overwhelmed by their negative emotions and rose again with glowing red eyes.

• The mother and a parasite transformed in the cabin, spreading the infestation as passengers were attacked and the bloodied doctor was killed by a woman with a blade.
• Zhang Chen arrived at Shuangliu Airport, noticed a faint ghostly presence near a restroom, then boarded a flight to the Imperial Capital and fell asleep.
• Zhang Chen woke to find the first-class passengers barricading the stairs against parasitic monsters below, and he crushed a tentacle before clearing the barricade.
• Zhang Chen descended into economy class and absorbed the Parasitic Creatures with a tide of blood, but their negative emotions overwhelmed him.
• A passenger approached Zhang Chen as a supposed savior, but Zhang Chen killed him when he touched his shoulder and then rose with glowing red eyes.

Zhang Chen reached Liqiao Town after slaughtering everyone in the plane’s first-class cabin and absorbing their bodies, then struggled with guilt and his loss of control. He met a young woman at a noodle shop, whose story about her father’s killing and her dream of being saved by a god caught his attention.

• Soldiers secured the landed airliner, found paranormal readings and a bloodless first-class cabin, and rescued the pilots with seven soldiers injured.
• Zhang Chen remembered killing the first-class passengers, including a little girl, and absorbing their bodies before fleeing the plane.
• Zhang Chen lied to Lian Yuxin that he had changed flights, then questioned whether he could control himself or continue heart tempering.
• Zhang Chen wandered to a noodle shop in Liqiao Town, where a cashier and her mother noticed his strange presence.
• Zhang Chen asked the cashier what someone who never wanted to kill might do after killing, and she told him her father had been executed for intentional homicide.
• The young woman said she and her mother came from Dujiang City and had dreamed of being saved by a god, prompting Zhang Chen to ask about gods.

Zhang Chen met Zi Qian before traveling with Lian Yuxin to the Imperial Capital Jailer Headquarters, where he learned about the Floating City and the rules for reaching it. At the Forbidden City, Old Wu assessed Zhang Chen and warned that the prison realm assessment could cost him his life.

• Zhang Chen exchanged contact information with Zi Qian, thanked her for answering his questions, and left the noodle shop.
• Zhang Chen reflected on the people he had killed and hoped the prison realm trial would help him understand his true heart.
• Lian Yuxin told Zhang Chen that Shen Hou had arranged a room for him and might speak with him, and she explained the dangers of his absorbed Blood Demons.
• Lian Yuxin showed Zhang Chen the Floating City in the sky and gave him a temporary pass to reach the headquarters.
• Lian Yuxin led Zhang Chen through the Forbidden City to meet Old Wu, who judged his internal power impure and warned that he might die in the assessment.

Zhang Chen arrived at Shen Hou Mansion in the Floating City, where Lian Yuxin showed him around and explained the city’s layout and prison envoy hierarchy. Shen Hou examined Zhang Chen’s ghostly transformation, and his reaction to its unusual purity left the chapter on a tense note.

• Elder Wu teleported Zhang Chen and Lian Yuxin directly into Shen Hou Mansion’s back garden in the Floating City.
• Lian Yuxin showed Zhang Chen his guest room and explained that he might need to prepare for at least ten days before entering the prison realm.
• Lian Yuxin took Zhang Chen to the mansion’s model of the Floating City and described its districts, the Judgment Tower, and the prison wardens.
• Shen Hou returned early, punished Lian Yuxin by making her prepare the evening meal, and took Zhang Chen to a training chamber.
• Shen Hou offered Zhang Chen a long-term stay and help stabilizing his negative emotions in exchange for studying his transformation and collecting liquid ghostly qi.
• Zhang Chen activated his ghostly transformation under Shen Hou’s scrutiny, and the sight of the pure ghostly qi made Shen Hou sweat.

Zhang Chen let the Divine Marquis extract pure ghostly energy and received help stabilizing his emotions, then asked Lian Yuxin about heart refinement. He learned that passing required changing a horror movie’s plot and surviving until its ending, and Lian Yuxin began describing her own test.

• Zhang Chen allowed the Divine Marquis to extract pure ghostly energy and learned his ghostification had changed.
• The Divine Marquis offered Zhang Chen another question and began a seven-day treatment to stabilize his emotions.
• Zhang Chen learned that Lian Yuxin visited Huang Ce’s grave each night, then asked her about heart refinement.
• Lian Yuxin explained that heart refinement placed jailers in horror scenarios based on human stories, where they had to alter the plot and survive until the end.
• Lian Yuxin revealed that her heart-refinement scenario had been the psychological horror film Identity.

Lian Yuxin recounted how her Trial of the Heart in the world of Identity turned into a deadly encounter with Verook, and warned Zhang Chen not to underestimate the horror films he would face. After Shen Hou sealed Zhang Chen’s negative emotions for a week, Zhang Chen prepared to enter Hellspace for his own trial.

• Lian Yuxin explained that after becoming the primary consciousness in the psychiatric hospital, she discovered the patients were subjected to cruel experiments that created multiple consciousnesses.
• Lian Yuxin revealed that Verook, one of the Twelve Apostles of Ling, had been tortured in the hospital and could appear as a ghost while his original body was still alive.
• Lian Yuxin described how Verook dragged and tortured her through the dark hospital until police arrived, leaving her severely traumatized even after she survived the film.
• Zhang Chen told Lian Yuxin that Shen Hou would stabilize his stray thoughts for a week and let him ask one question, and she advised him to review horror films before his trial.
• Seven days later, Shen Hou sealed Zhang Chen’s negative emotions and told Lian Yuxin to take him to Hellspace’s entrance.
• Zhang Chen grew more eager to see Hellspace after Lian Yuxin said Hell Envoys entered it during the Hell Eye stage and that it offered plenty of fun things.

Zhang Chen followed Lian Yuxin through the Judgment Tower’s hidden passage into the Prison Realm, where she introduced him to Spirit City and explained the Jailer system. They reached the cathedral where his Mind Tempering examination would take place, after spotting another candidate entering.

• Lian Yuxin took Zhang Chen through the Judgment Tower and presented their pass at the entrance to the Prison Realm.
• Zhang Chen and Lian Yuxin crossed into Spirit City, the Prison Realm’s central hub for Jailers.
• As they walked, Lian Yuxin explained the Jailer examination, the choice between living in the Prison Realm or returning to the human world, and the use of Ghost Crystals as currency.
• Lian Yuxin led Zhang Chen to the cathedral where Mind Tempering took place and noticed a middle-aged First-level Jailer entering ahead of them.

Zhang Chen entered Blackheart Church to undergo heart refinement, where the Underworld offered him three horror-film scenarios because of his mixed abilities. He chose 1408 for a challenge, while eleven powerful prison agents watched his assessment from Spirit City.

• Lian Yuxin brought Zhang Chen to Blackheart Church, where caretaker Uncle Chen explained the heart refinement trial.
• Jiang Dongliang entered the trial pit and died almost immediately after the black liquid submerged him.
• Zhang Chen entered the pit, and a strand of silk drew his consciousness into a dark space where the Underworld presented him with three scenario choices.
• Zhang Chen weighed The Ghost Inside, 1408, and Infection, then chose 1408 rather than the easiest or most dangerous option.
• Elder Wu and ten other prison agents observed Zhang Chen's live assessment and approved of his choice.

Zhang Chen arrived at a haunted inn while playing Mike Anslin in "1408" and expected a harmless night, but the spirits attacked him after he fell asleep. He escaped the room and survived a hanging, only to collapse as the Black woman crawled toward him.

• Zhang Chen checked into the inn's top-floor room after hearing its ghost stories and settled in for the night.
• A ghostly woman and five malformed children appeared in the room, and Zhang Chen injured his leg while fighting them off.
• A Black woman with maggots in her eyes attacked Zhang Chen, and he smashed through the door to escape.
• Zhang Chen's injured leg gave way at the stairwell, and a rope appeared around his neck and nearly hanged him.
• Zhang Chen freed himself from the rope but collapsed on the floor as the Black woman crawled toward him.

After surviving the haunted inn, Zhang Chen uncovered the Black maid’s tragic history and escaped at daybreak. He began preparing for the dangers of '1408' by arranging to obtain police records about its former guests.

• The landlady woke Zhang Chen from his terrifying illusion, while she and the innkeeper discussed keeping him alive to attract guests for their grandson to feed on.
• Zhang Chen searched his room, found a hidden compartment behind the headboard, and discovered the bones of five children along with a letter.
• At daybreak, Zhang Chen left the inn and recalled from the letter how the innkeepers murdered the Black maid’s daughters and eventually killed her.
• Zhang Chen decided to avoid the hotel containing room 1408 and seek police records about the people who had died there.
• Zhang Chen contacted a publishing-house friend, who offered to ask his cousin at the police station for help in exchange for lunch.

Zhang Chen, posing as Mike Anslin, gathered police records and clues about the Dolphin Hotel before planning to check into Room 1408 the following night. The officer’s account suggested that the hotel’s dangers might extend beyond the infamous room.

• Zhang Chen reunited with Sam and met Sam’s cousin, NYPD officer Braga Robert, who agreed to obtain police files about the Dolphin Hotel.
• Braga Robert arranged to give Zhang Chen the documents that evening and warned him that Room 1408 was linked to fifty-six deaths.
• At a book signing, Zhang Chen met Braga Robert at a bar, received the files, and asked what else he knew about the hotel.
• Braga Robert described a colleague who had investigated a murder at the Dolphin Hotel, then abruptly resigned in a dazed state a week after the case was solved.
• Zhang Chen paid Braga Robert to investigate what had occupied the hotel’s land before its construction and arranged to meet him again at noon the next day.
• Zhang Chen left with the documents, suspecting that the entire Dolphin Hotel—not just Room 1408—was dangerous.

Zhang Chen studied the records of Room 1408’s fifty-six deaths and discovered that Annie Darlings had survived her encounter but remained in a mental institution. After following the movie’s events to obtain the room’s invitation and meeting Robert for more records, he learned that the Dolphin Hotel’s land had a disturbing history, which he began investigating.

• Zhang Chen reviewed the victims’ files and found that Annie Darlings had survived an overdose after Harper Pataki’s death but had remained mentally ill in an institution.
• Zhang Chen decided to visit Annie the next afternoon, then followed the movie’s plot by surfing, getting swept underwater, and collecting the anonymous Room 1408 invitation from his mailbox.
• Zhang Chen met Robert, who secretly handed him records about the property before the Dolphin Hotel was built.
• Zhang Chen read that the property’s former owner, Von Kurman, had become wealthy, while residents left his properties and Kurman’s wife and children later starved to death.
• Zhang Chen began reading old residents’ testimonies about the property, whose accounts differed from one another.

Zhang Chen read nine accounts of strange experiences at the Kullman properties and was struck by the final witness’s detailed account of a murder and an apparent demonic possession. The witness escaped Kullman’s house after hearing her husband’s voice urge her to protect their unborn child.

• Zhang Chen noticed that the ninth witness’s statement filled both sides of a page, unlike the brief accounts before it.
• The witness said her husband saw Mr. Kullman strangle his wife and two grandsons, but police found nothing, and the family later seemed lifeless.
• Her husband developed severe insomnia and eventually disappeared, while the witness heard his cries for help coming from Kullman’s house.
• The witness entered Kullman’s home and found her husband lying in a candlelit rune array as a strange creature entered his body.
• Her husband rose with a demon inside him, but his soul’s voice warned her to flee and protect their child, so she escaped to a crowded bar.

Zhang Chen visited Stan Mental Hospital to learn about Anne Dalins, a survivor of Room 1408, and received permission to see her in the severe ward. He learned she might be possessed and was led toward a dilapidated building where she was held.

• Zhang Chen drove to Stan Mental Hospital to investigate Anne Dalins and the possibility that Feng Kurman was connected to Room 1408.
• Zhang Chen registered as Dalins's nephew, and a nurse warned him that the severe ward was feared by staff because of a white-haired woman seen wandering there at night.
• Dr. Smith recognized Zhang Chen as horror novelist Mike Anslin and agreed to authorize his visit to Dalins.
• Dr. Smith said Dalins had resisted treatment for years, reacted strongly to crosses and Bible passages, and became aggressive after four in the afternoon.
• Dr. Smith gave Zhang Chen a silver cross and a stamped visitation application, and Eileen led him toward the dilapidated severe ward.

Zhang Chen entered the intensive care building to visit Anne Dallins, whose room was guarded by a security guard and surrounded by rumors of danger. After finding Anne injured, starving, and desperate to escape, he offered to consider helping her if she answered his questions, hoping to learn more about 1408.

• Catherine escorted Zhang Chen to the intensive care building and told him that staff had increasingly requested transfers from it.
• An older nurse and the Fat Security Guard led Zhang Chen to Anne Dallins's room on the fifth floor, where another patient warned that Anne was dead and that Zhang Chen would die too.
• Zhang Chen entered Anne's dark, bloodstained room and found her with white hair, numerous wounds, and sharpened teeth.
• Anne asked Zhang Chen for food, and he gave her the Fat Security Guard's doughnuts.
• Anne asked Zhang Chen to take her out, and he said he would consider it if she answered his questions.

Zhang Chen coaxed Deslin into describing the hotel room she shared with Haber Pataki, uncovering details that matched room 1408 before the White Old Woman attacked. He escaped the locked room as Deslin assaulted Jimmy, and the intensive-care patients’ doors burst open.

• Zhang Chen asked Deslin to tell stories about the rooms she had lived in, then steered her toward Haber Pataki and the room they shared.
• The iron door locked itself as the room grew cold and flooded with icy water, and Zhang Chen paid Jimmy to stand by with the key.
• Deslin described the room’s furnishings and paintings, then recounted seeing one Pataki strangle another and being injected with powder.
• Deslin realized Zhang Chen had no intention of taking her out and crawled toward him, so he called for Jimmy to open the door.
• Zhang Chen escaped, but Deslin pinned Jimmy down and gouged out his eyes as Zhang Chen ran downstairs.
• The doors throughout the intensive-care building flew open, releasing its patients.

Zhang Chen escaped Stan Mental Hospital with Officer Robert after the patients were released and the transformed Deslin attacked them. He persuaded Robert to take him to the Dolphin Hotel, where he planned to enter Room 1408 that night before explaining what he knew.

• A gaunt patient suffocated the nurse on the second floor while Zhang Chen fled downstairs from Jimmy and the pursuing White Shadow.
• Zhang Chen fought his way past patients on the third floor but was knocked down and surrounded on the second floor.
• Zhang Chen began to see a cave before five gunshots from Officer Robert brought him back, and Robert helped him escape the immediate attackers.
• Zhang Chen and Robert fled the hospital by police car as the White Shadow killed officers inside the building.
• Zhang Chen convinced Robert to take him to the Dolphin Hotel and avoid acting against it until he returned from Room 1408 the next day.

Zhang Chen followed the events of the movie to gain entry to Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel, while investigating its possible connection to Mr. Kullman and the hotel's strange phenomena. After noticing a spatial loop in the corridor and encountering the woman with the stroller, he opened Room 1408.

• Zhang Chen called the Dolphin Hotel to reserve Room 1408, then arranged with his friend Sam to use legal means to stay there.
• Sixty-eight armed officers searched Stan Mental Hospital but found no survivors or the white-haired monster Robert had described.
• Zhang Chen checked in at the Dolphin Hotel as Mike Anslin and noticed the woman in White Clothes with a stroller and a male attendant.
• Gerald Olin tried to dissuade Zhang Chen from staying in Room 1408, showed him records of fifty-six deaths there, and gave him the room's old key.
• Gerald Olin told Zhang Chen that a cleaning woman had gouged out her eyes in Room 1408, then left him on the fourteenth floor.
• Zhang Chen experienced a spatial loop while reading the death records, encountered the woman in White Clothes, and opened the door to Room 1408.

Zhang Chen searched Room 1408, found an antique key hidden inside the painting, and faced supernatural attacks after the room’s countdown began early. As blood filled the room, he hesitated at the door with the key in hand and let himself drown.

• Zhang Chen noticed the painting had changed, found a Bible and a clock, then saw his own face in the bathroom mirror.
• Zhang Chen tore open the painting and found an antique bronze key, then searched the room for more clues.
• Zhang Chen damaged the wallpaper, triggering the countdown and a vision of a bloody hand strangling him.
• Zhang Chen fought and destroyed a Rotten Corpse Monster that crawled from the bathtub.
• Zhang Chen found the room flooding with blood and hesitated over whether to use the antique key before allowing the rising blood to cover him.

Room 1408 trapped Zhang Chen in five-minute loops that forced him to relive Xiao Lan and Wang Yizhi’s deaths, deepening his guilt until he nearly hanged himself. A memory of Wang Yizhi promising she would not die left him hanging in the noose, speaking her words faintly.

• Zhang Chen relived the island and Blood Demon incident with Xiao Lan, then woke in Room 1408 after only five minutes had passed.
• Room 1408 repeatedly reset the tragedy, and Zhang Chen discovered that each loop strengthened his guilt and negative emotions.
• On the seventh cycle, Zhang Chen saved Xiao Lan, but she became black smoke and Wang Yizhi’s severed head appeared before him.
• Zhang Chen watched memories of his relationship with Wang Yizhi before transparent tentacles swallowed his head in the illusion.
• In Room 1408, Zhang Chen walked to a hemp noose and put his head through it.
• Zhang Chen remembered Wang Yizhi reassuring him that she would not die, and he whispered her words while hanging in the noose.