Chapter Summaries

Sun Tiangang took his wife and son, Sun Hao, to Nagoya Port Aquarium, where the boy repeatedly heard sea creatures warn him to leave. On a free submarine tour, Sun Hao spotted mermaids feeding in the deep sea, and his father saw the terrifying scene for himself.

• Sun Tiangang's family met a strangely stiff office worker outside the aquarium, and the photo he took showed distorted figures and a sinister face reflected in the building.
• A Great White Shark approached Sun Hao in the underwater passage, and Sun Hao said it warned him to leave; other sea creatures also urged him to go as the family toured the aquarium.
• Sun Tiangang took his family aboard a free submarine tour, and they descended to a depth of five hundred meters.
• Sun Hao pointed out mermaids near a coral reef, and Sun Tiangang saw three savage creatures eating a Whale Shark.

Sun Tiangang and the other passengers aboard a stranded submarine were attacked by rapidly spreading flesh-born scales and a mermaid, while Jia Xin followed the Bagua disk into a scale-covered chamber. Jia Xin’s attempt to cut through the chamber wall revealed that the entire room was embedded in a vast, writhing mass of flesh.

• Sun Tiangang saw mermaids through the submarine telescope, then grew uneasy when the surrounding sea emptied and the submarine suddenly stopped near the surface.
• A fish scale infected a passenger, and the infection spread through blood as more scales erupted from people’s bodies.
• A mermaid appeared and charged at Sun Hao, while Sun Tiangang threw himself in front of his son.
• Jia Xin entered the Deep Sea Pavilion control center disguised as a staff member and followed the Bagua disk up a stairway.
• Jia Xin entered a room covered in living scales, where a woman confronted him and sealed the entrance behind him.
• Jia Xin slashed the scale-covered wall with the Roaming Dragon Sword and discovered a vast, writhing cavity of flesh beneath it.

Jia Xin escaped the giant fish monster and joined Xiao Bai in defeating the sea beast that had swallowed the Nagoya Port Aquarium. They rescued the trapped survivors, while people at the harbor mistook Jia Xin and Xiao Bai for the Sea God.

• After Xiao Bai confirmed that the civilians had been rescued, Jia Xin cut open the giant fish monster from within and was swept into the sea.
• A young survivor told drivers on Nagoya's cross-sea bridge that the aquarium had sunk, as a giant white snake emerged from the water and expelled an old submarine and egg sacs containing people.
• Jia Xin confronted the giant sea beast and ordered Xiao Bai to kill it without harming civilians.
• Jia Xin pierced the sea beast's skull, and Xiao Bai entered its cranial cavity and poisoned the woman controlling it, destroying the beast.
• Harbor onlookers worshipped Jia Xin as the Sea God, and firefighters rescued Sun Hao and his parents from the submarine.

At Nagoya University Hospital, Lu Sheng told Zhang Chen that the organization’s boss had once sacrificed Kyoto and revealed that he and Shuten Doji were among the six founding elders who survived. Meanwhile, the organization’s core ordered Shi Qi Meiqing not to issue a wanted order for Jia Xin and to show his recording to Susanoo.

• Shi Qi Meiqing reported that Jia Xin had killed Ama at Nagoya Port and that the aquarium system had collapsed, then showed the footage to the organization’s boss.
• The boss refused to issue a wanted order for Jia Xin and instructed Shi Qi Meiqing to bring the video to Susanoo within two days.
• Zhang Chen and Lu Sheng discussed Jia Xin’s public actions and went to the hospital rooftop to talk privately about Kyoto.
• Lu Sheng explained that the boss caused the Great Tianming Fire in 1788, killing mortals and ghosts across Kyoto, and that only six yokai, including Lu Sheng and Shuten Doji, survived.
• Lu Sheng said the boss later sacrificed more than three hundred thousand people in Kyoto during the Kinmon Incident, then revealed the burn scars covering his torso.

Lu Sheng told Zhang Chen how the boss used living sacrifices and the 1864 Kinmon Incident to create a vast brain that drained all life from Kyoto. After Zhang Chen left the rooftop, Lu Sheng encountered a threatening presence, while Zhang Chen devoured a woman in the elevator as the hospital plunged into darkness.

• Lu Sheng explained that Shuten Doji turned three towns into Human Farms and supplied the boss with living sacrifices.
• Lu Sheng described how the boss’s ritual during the Kinmon Incident fused a million brains and drained the life from the Kyoto region.
• Lu Sheng agreed to take Zhang Chen to Kyoto the next day to search for Shuten Doji, then noticed a barrier object had shifted and rushed after Zhang Chen.
• A pale hand grabbed Lu Sheng from behind in the darkened nineteenth-floor corridor and addressed him as Nue.
• Zhang Chen rode the elevator toward floor -1, thought about meeting the Huaxia Country prison officials, and swallowed the woman who asked him for her key.
• The elevator lost power, and Nagoya University Hospital fell into darkness and silence.

During the hospital blackout, Zhang Chen confronted Heichuan Jun, a high-level VIP whose mechanical body could absorb people and evade death. After destroying one body, Zhang Chen followed Heichuan Jun’s broadcast to the finance office, where he found another version of him waiting to talk.

• Chong Ying and Jia Xin faced The Custodian and swarms of safe-headed monsters outside the dormitory while Little White was sent to search the hospital.
• Zhang Chen escaped the stalled elevator and entered the third-floor corridor, where Heichuan Jun absorbed a doctor and a nurse.
• Zhang Chen restrained Heichuan Jun and drove his skeletal arm through his chest, but the body proved to be an ordinary patient while a black cylinder escaped underground.
• Heichuan Jun used the hospital broadcast to praise Zhang Chen and invite him to the fifth-floor dean’s office, while revealing that his flaw was connected to The Custodian.
• Zhang Chen identified five locations shielded from his spiritual senses and chose the finance office instead of the dean’s office.
• Zhang Chen found Heichuan Jun studying account books in the finance office, and Heichuan Jun shut the door and invited him to sit.

Zhang Chen fought Heichuan Jun in the hospital and discovered that Heichuan Jun could control matter and absorb what he touched. Little White appeared to help, but Heichuan Jun survived Zhang Chen’s Black Coffin and vanished into the lobby darkness, closing in for another attack.

• Heichuan Jun offered to help Zhang Chen escape in exchange for help obtaining The Custodian’s greed, but Zhang Chen refused and attacked him.
• Heichuan Jun stopped Zhang Chen’s massive jaws and tore them apart, then absorbed his flesh and blood.
• Heichuan Jun used his control ability to attack Zhang Chen with the hospital’s steel bars and collapsing walls, forcing Zhang Chen to escape as blood and hide in a storage room.
• Little White appeared in the corridor and agreed to their old routine; he turned into a tiny white snake and concealed himself as Zhang Chen went to the lobby.
• Zhang Chen trapped Heichuan Jun in a Black Coffin, but Heichuan Jun absorbed its energy, changed his aura, and vanished into the darkness.
• Heichuan Jun approached Zhang Chen from behind, and Zhang Chen transformed his left arm into a bone blade and struck toward the danger.

Zhang Chen used Ziwu’s time ability to devour Heichuan Jun, but Heichuan Jun returned and attacked while Zhang Chen was immobilized. Little White Snake damaged Heichuan Jun’s black cylinder and helped drive him away, and Zhang Chen then headed toward the hospital’s nineteenth floor to assist amid two terrifying auras.

• Zhang Chen escaped Heichuan Jun’s control and froze time, then devoured Heichuan Jun and one of the black cylinders on his spine.
• After Zhang Chen was immobilized by repaying borrowed time, Heichuan Jun reappeared and prepared to tear him apart.
• Little White Snake ambushed Heichuan Jun, cut through his metal arms, and damaged a black cylinder before escaping his grasp.
• Zhang Chen recovered and wounded Heichuan Jun with Mental Power Threads, forcing Heichuan Jun to retreat into the ground.
• Little White Snake went to help Jia Xin and Chong Ying, while Zhang Chen stepped to the nineteenth floor to investigate the two powerful auras.

Zhang Chen attacked Shuten Doji on the hospital rooftop, but Shuten Doji seized him and broke his neck before Lu Sheng drove the demon away. Meanwhile, Jia Xin and Chong Ying prepared to escape the creatures surrounding them after Little White reported that Zhang Chen’s fight had been settled.

• Zhang Chen climbed through a fear-filled stairwell and found Lu Sheng facing Shuten Doji on the rooftop.
• Zhang Chen used Bone Blood to transform his right arm and slashed Shuten Doji, but a voice from within him disrupted the attack and the hospital split apart.
• Shuten Doji infected Zhang Chen with fear, lifted him by the throat, and broke his neck, leaving his regenerative body unable to heal.
• Lu Sheng used Mirror Flower, Water Moon, and Fire Slash to strike Shuten Doji, who vanished after his wrist was scorched.
• At the auditorium, Jia Xin and Chong Ying hid from The Custodian’s safe-headed clones until Little White arrived and said Zhang Chen’s fight was over.
• Jia Xin planned their escape as Chong Ying faced the creatures and began her Phantom Butterfly liberation.

At Yoshioka Small Clinic, the eccentric doctor drove away a businessman before rescuing him from a ghost outside his car. A female ghost sought treatment for her ruined eye, but Lu Sheng arrived carrying the near-dead Zhang Chen and asked the doctor to treat his friend.

• Yoshioka prescribed medicine to the businessman and ordered him to leave as the clinic closed to ordinary patients.
• The businessman saw a mud-covered woman outside the clinic, became trapped in a mud pit, and was nearly strangled by a ghost in his car.
• Yoshioka invited the ghost inside, where she cleaned herself and explained that a Shikigami had damaged her eye after she killed an Onmyoji.
• Yoshioka examined the ghost's eye and told her it was beyond repair because she had waited too long for treatment.
• Lu Sheng arrived carrying the nearly lifeless Zhang Chen and asked the ghost to let Yoshioka treat his friend, promising he could cure her eye.

Lu Sheng brought the gravely injured Zhang Chen to Doctor Yoshioka, who repaired his body but left him to face the fear Shuten Doji had planted in his soul. Zhang Chen awoke inside a distorted memory of his middle school days, where he had no Hellwarden powers and Wang Yizhi was missing.

• Lu Sheng rushed Zhang Chen into Doctor Yoshioka’s clinic, then left with Jia Xin to set up a barrier while Chong Ying and Little White waited.
• Doctor Yoshioka repaired Zhang Chen’s neck and injected him with Blood Demon essence blood, restoring his circulation and bringing him back from the brink of death.
• Yoshioka discovered the white Soul Stone in Zhang Chen’s chest and stopped probing it when its defensive tongue attacked him.
• Yoshioka left Zhang Chen alone to confront the fear in his body, believing outside help would not overcome the obstacle Shuten Doji had created.
• Zhang Chen woke in a familiar middle school classroom, realized he had returned to the past without his powers, and found that Tan Fei did not know Wang Yizhi.
• Teacher Lu Ba caught Zhang Chen whispering and ordered him to come to her office.

Zhang Chen relived his confrontation with Lu Ba in a school where he had died and returned to the past, only to find the events repeating with strange changes. He discovered an identical version of himself in his classroom and hid as it followed Lu Ba toward the office.

• Zhang Chen followed Lu Ba to the empty office, where she transformed and bit his neck before he stabbed her with a steel bar and collapsed.
• An unknown figure opened the office door, took the steel bar, and drove it into their own head, after which Zhang Chen woke back in the classroom.
• Zhang Chen returned to Lu Ba’s office, smashed her with a stool, and watched her dissolve into dust as another pencil broke beside two already broken pencils.
• Zhang Chen found the steel bar missing and fled when Lu Ba began reforming; he discovered the other school classrooms were empty.
• Zhang Chen saw an identical version of himself in his classroom, hid from Lu Ba, and watched the double leave with her before it looked toward him.

Zhang Chen tried to understand and escape the school loop, but killing another version of himself did not break it. After he impaled himself, he woke in his classroom with most of his memories gone.

• Zhang Chen hid in an empty classroom and reasoned that he was still trapped in a loop where versions of himself repeatedly appeared and died.
• He watched the homeroom teacher take another Zhang Chen into the office, then followed and killed that version with a broken steel rod.
• Zhang Chen hid the corpse in the girls' restroom and found stalls filled with rotting corpses of himself, each with a hole in its head.
• Believing suicide might end the loop, Zhang Chen pulled the steel rod from the corpse and thrust it through his own head.
• Zhang Chen woke in his classroom to Tan Fei warning him that Lu Ba was coming, with his memories of the events largely missing.

Shuten Doji confronted Heichuan Jun after the failed attempt to capture Zhang Chen, while Heichuan Jun secretly planned to absorb Zhang Chen’s Gluttony. At the clinic, Zhang Chen remained trapped in fear and near death as Lu Sheng chose to give him one hour to resist on his own.

• Shuten Doji seized Heichuan Jun, blamed him for ruining the operation, and removed the fear suppressing one of his personalities.
• Heichuan Jun explained that Zhang Chen had been protected by a cultivator and Lu Sheng, then promised to help locate Lu Sheng while secretly plotting to absorb Zhang Chen’s Gluttony.
• Shuten Doji left Heichuan Jun in charge of searching for Lu Sheng and warned him against another failure.
• At the clinic, the doctor told Lu Sheng that Zhang Chen might die within an hour and offered to remove Shuten Doji’s fear.
• Lu Sheng refused to save Zhang Chen by removing the fear, and the doctor used eighty-one gold needles to stimulate Zhang Chen’s body.
• Chong Ying worried outside the ward, while Jia Xin identified the doctor as the renowned physician Takeda Masayoshi and urged her to wait.

Zhang Chen endured millions of repetitions of Shuten Doji’s loop and, while still lucid in an early cycle, hid a warm corpse beneath the bones in the restroom’s lowest stall. In the 7,913,285th loop, his failing body reached the corpse, while a blood-red light suddenly appeared in the clinic lobby.

• Zhang Chen considered suicide as a way to escape the loop, but decided first to leave a safeguard for his future self and hid his own corpse beneath the bones in the women’s restroom.
• After killing himself and restarting the cycle millions of times, Zhang Chen reached the restroom with a failing body and a clouded mind.
• A fall fractured Zhang Chen’s skull and briefly restored his clarity, prompting him to descend the overlapping restroom floors instead of ending his life.
• Zhang Chen reached the lowest stall, uncovered a warm, complete corpse beneath the decayed bones, and touched it with his last strength.
• As Chong Ying and the others waited in the clinic lobby, a blood-red light shot into the sky and stunned everyone present.

Zhang Chen escaped Shuten Doji’s endless fear cycle by using Bone Blood to push his consciousness beyond the cycle’s limits, then reunited with his companions. As Lu Sheng prepared to investigate the Hell Envoys gathering in Japan, Jia Xin recognized Doctor Takeda Masayoshi and asked him to help.

• Zhang Chen’s body regenerated as Bone Blood restored him, and Lu Sheng explained that he had survived the fear cycle by exceeding its limits.
• Zhang Chen described the cycle to Lu Sheng and Jia Xin, who warned that breaking its rules could have created deeper loops.
• Lu Sheng said he had endured a five-layer cycle with his Nurarihyon constitution and explained that Shuten Doji’s attack tested their resistance to fear.
• Lu Sheng sent the group to rest and announced that he would investigate the Hell Envoys gathering in Japan while Zhang Chen went to check on Chong Ying.
• Jia Xin identified the doctor as Takeda Masayoshi, recounted his history, and asked him to assist their group.

Zhao Mu returned to the Shangri-La Hotel after settling the leadership dispute over the Japan operation, while European and American forces prepared their own deployments. The chapter left the European Union’s lone representative due to arrive at the American carrier shortly before the invasion of Japan.

• Zhuge Feixuan worried that Zhao Mu might lose the leadership contest and force Huaxia Country to abandon much of its plan.
• Zhao Mu returned exhausted, signaled that he had won, and went upstairs to sleep after Zhuge Feixuan kissed him and slapped him for his teasing.
• The Pope ordered Father Andersen to lead the Vatican Special Bureau’s Section 13 to Japan, but Father Andersen said he could handle the matter alone.
• General Armstrong briefed the American Jailer Ministers on their plan to land at Sendai at noon with 127 Jailer Eyes.
• Lucy reported that the European Union would send only one person, and Armstrong questioned the decision as the representative’s arrival approached.

Alexander V. Andersen warned the American delegation not to dissolve the alliance, while Zhao Mu’s Huaxia team traveled toward Japan and Zhang Chen prepared to meet them in Osaka. Zhang Chen left the clinic alone with Jia Xin’s Forbidden Bell, intending to return before nightfall.

• Andersen appeared in the American war room, destroyed the telephone, and warned Armstrong’s delegation to keep the alliance intact; Armstrong ordered Lucy to investigate him and set the alliance issue aside.
• Zhao Mu woke during the drive to the airport and discussed America’s likely plans, Europe’s lack of a confirmed team, and meeting Zhang Chen in Japan.
• Zhang Chen checked on the exhausted Chong Ying, then agreed with Divine Marquis to meet the Huaxia Jailer Ministers at Kansai Airport and travel alone.
• Jia Xin introduced Doctor Takeda Masayoshi as an ally and lent Zhang Chen the Qingyun Sect’s Forbidden Bell to warn him of danger.
• Zhang Chen thanked Jia Xin and left the clinic for Osaka, planning to return before nightfall.

Zhang Chen traveled toward Osaka while avoiding the artificial humans monitoring Japan’s transportation hubs, but the Forbidden Bell rang as he boarded the Shinkansen. Elsewhere, Judas investigated a contaminated believer in Nagasaki and exposed the corruption in an old woman’s home, where she then vanished.

• Zhang Chen discussed Liu Nuo, his altered body, and the plan to strengthen his soul with Little Mouth, who said Nekomata was still living as usual.
• Zhang Chen disguised himself as an ordinary traveler and noticed that artificial humans heavily guarded Nagoya Station as Prison Envoys arrived across the country.
• The Forbidden Bell rang as Zhang Chen boarded the Shinkansen, and he continued onto the train despite sensing the artificial humans watching it.
• Judas, a priest from the Vatican’s Thirteenth Department, detected a contaminated believer in Nagasaki and entered an old woman’s room.
• Judas lowered his silver cross into the tea, which turned into foul black liquid, and the old woman vanished.

Zhang Chen encountered a Blood Realm creature that spread through the Shinkansen and attacked its passengers, then fought back by draining its blood. At the Nagasaki residence, Father killed an old woman who served another being she called her Lord.

• Zhang Chen used a Flesh and Blood Tentacle to control a middle-aged woman and scout the Shinkansen’s rear carriages.
• A ceiling-spanning monster swallowed the woman, and Zhang Chen severed their connection before it could locate him.
• The creature spread through Zhang Chen’s carriage, draining passengers and searching for his flesh and blood.
• On Little Mouth’s advice, Zhang Chen waited for a vein to touch him, then used Blood Realm Descends to drain the creature and force it to reveal itself.
• At the Nagasaki residence, Father impaled the old woman with gunblades after she attacked him with black scissors.
• The old woman died claiming that her Lord would kill Father, who realized another evil being was impersonating the Lord.