Chapter Summaries

Meng Chao and Xiao Fanghua visited Li Jue's family after Li Jue stopped attending the Study Group and learned his father could not afford cultivation supplies while struggling with a poisoned leg. Li Jue had chosen to give up cultivation and work to help support his family.

• Xiao Fanghua hurried to Li Jue's tent, and Meng Chao followed her through the settlement.
• Li Jue's Father accused the Study Group's recommended Gene Serums of being a scam and refused to let Li Jue attend.
• Meng Chao defended Xiao Fanghua and confirmed that the supplies were reputable and sold at cost, with donations covering part of the expense.
• Meng Chao noticed that Li Jue's Father had a severe monster-venom infection in his leg, which had worsened because he could not afford timely treatment.
• Li Jue's Father explained that Li Jue had quit the Study Group because the family could not sustain his cultivation and he wanted to work to help pay for his father's care.

Meng Chao and Xiao Fanghua heard residents of a temporary settlement voice growing resentment toward Transcendents and the authorities after the monster attacks. The chapter ended with Xiao Fanghua describing rumors that powerful Transcendents had provoked intelligent monsters, leaving ordinary people to suffer the retaliation.

• Li Jue's Father complained that wealthy districts had strong defenses while ordinary neighborhoods and schools were left vulnerable to monsters.
• Li Jue's Father said that resentment toward Transcendents was spreading among residents of the Temporary Settlement, though he could not identify who had started it.
• Meng Chao left the tent with Xiao Fanghua, who explained that trauma and grief had fueled residents' complaints.
• Xiao Fanghua told Meng Chao that residents across the city also blamed rising cultivation-resource prices on hoarding and profiteering.
• Xiao Fanghua described a rumor that high-ranking Transcendents had provoked intelligent monsters by exterminating them, causing ordinary people to bear the retaliation.

Meng Chao heard Xiao Fanghua explain how inequality and recent monster attacks had fueled rumors that Transcendents would abandon ordinary people and exploit them. Xiao Fanghua questioned how ordinary people could survive in a future ruled by Transcendents, leaving Meng Chao to consider the widening divide between them.

• Meng Chao asked Xiao Fanghua about rumors blaming Transcendents for exploiting ordinary citizens and planning to abandon them in Another World.
• Xiao Fanghua explained that desperate residents believed the rumors after seeing Transcendents enjoy wealth and safety while ordinary people suffered casualties and deprivation.
• Xiao Fanghua described a student whose parents were divorcing after her mother began a relationship with a Transcendent, and said she could not answer the girl’s questions about protection and justice.
• Xiao Fanghua told Meng Chao that ordinary schools were producing fewer students who could enter key high schools, making it harder for poor children to become Transcendents.
• Xiao Fanghua asked how ordinary people could survive in a future world of Transcendents.

Meng Chao and Xiao Fanghua encountered a mutated zombie threatening a little girl, and Zhao Feixuan risked his life to restrain the infected woman with runes instead of killing her. Meng Chao recognized Zhao as a future Lost One, while Zhao’s wound exposed him to the Zombie Virus.

• Meng Chao and Xiao Fanghua rushed toward a commotion and found a mutated zombie emerging from a collapsed tent.
• The zombie raised her claws against a little girl, and Meng Chao aimed his pistol at her.
• Zhao Feixuan intervened, rescued the girl, and used runes to immobilize the zombie and suppress the virus.
• Meng Chao recognized Zhao Feixuan as one of Dragon City’s future most wanted Lost Ones, and Xiao Fanghua hurried to her husband.
• Zhao explained that the runes had put the zombie into suspended death, preserving a small chance of saving her, despite his own virus-exposed wound.

Meng Chao treated Zhao Feixuan’s injuries and learned why he had left Standard Firepower to build affordable defenses for ordinary neighborhoods. Zhao praised Meng Chao’s help to Fallen Star Superhumans and welcomed cooperation between their groups.

• Meng Chao treated Zhao Feixuan’s zombie-venom wounds and wondered why the Fire Seed classified him as an Elite Citizen rather than a Special Citizen.
• Zhao Feixuan introduced himself to Meng Chao and revealed that he had resigned from Standard Firepower despite its strong business prospects.
• Zhao Feixuan explained that he had left because Standard Firepower focused on wealthy communities while ordinary neighborhoods lacked money for vital defense upgrades.
• Zhao Feixuan told Meng Chao he planned to start a company serving old neighborhoods, and Meng Chao offered to connect him with Tianfu Garden.
• Zhao Feixuan thanked Meng Chao for helping Xiao Fanghua advance her cultivation and said Blue Homeland members who joined the Fallen Star Society had improved.

Meng Chao befriended Zhao Feixuan and joined Blue Homeland’s public events while seeking a way into its inner circle. Zhao Feixuan asked him to help investigate an underground warehouse filled with undeclared cultivation resources.

• Meng Chao and Zhao Feixuan bonded over their concerns about Dragon City and Earth, and Xiao Fanghua invited Meng Chao to visit their home.
• Meng Chao visited Zhao Feixuan and helped arrange joint charity work, while Superstar Resources hired Zhao’s new company, Absolute Defense, to upgrade Tianfu Garden’s defenses.
• Meng Chao attended more than a dozen Blue Homeland events but found no evidence of its inner workings, and he grew determined to protect Zhao Feixuan and the group’s members from being manipulated.
• The Survival Committee restricted stockpiling as monster attacks and hoarding disrupted Dragon City’s resource markets.
• Zhao Feixuan asked Meng Chao to help investigate a Blue Homeland member’s discovery of a massive underground warehouse stocked with undeclared cultivation resources.

Meng Chao publicized Zhao Feixuan’s evidence of resource hoarding, prompting the Fallen Star Society and Dragon City’s citizens to demand an investigation that reached Thundercloud Corporation and the Nine Super Enterprises. Lü Siya warned Meng Chao that powerful forces were using him, but he chose to keep pushing forward as the scandal widened.

• Meng Chao verified Zhao Feixuan’s evidence by anonymously posting it online, then shared it with the Fallen Star Society, whose members spread it throughout Dragon City.
• Angry citizens and Fallen Star Superhumans demanded accountability as the evidence spread, and the Survival Committee and Superhuman Tower launched an investigation that led to Thundercloud Corporation.
• Thundercloud Corporation’s vice president resigned, while the Yun Family head promised a full investigation and punishment for those responsible.
• The scandal’s investigation broadened to the Nine Super Enterprises, and Lü Siya questioned Meng Chao about his role and warned that he was being used by another force.
• Meng Chao realized the warehouse had not been discovered by chance, but continued supporting the investigation because he believed it could improve Dragon City’s future.

Meng Chao attended a Blue Homeland gathering after Zhao Feixuan invited him, hoping to learn more about the organization’s inner circle. He heard its members condemn the Nine Super Enterprises and debate Dragon City’s future before Zhao introduced him to the group’s core members.

• Meng Chao learned that the Bureau of Anomalous Beasts did not object to his friendship with Zhao Feixuan or his work with the Fallen Star Society.
• Zhao Feixuan invited Meng Chao to a Blue Homeland film event at a stronghold where Lin Chuan and Gao Ye had once appeared.
• Meng Chao arrived early and listened as Blue Homeland members criticized the Nine Super Enterprises, discussed Lei Zongchao’s declining health, and argued for a stronger military.
• Meng Chao recognized that Blue Homeland’s membership included people with varied and potentially troubling political views, making the organization’s direction complicated.
• Zhao Feixuan welcomed Meng Chao and introduced him to Blue Homeland’s core members as the Fallen Star Society’s president and an Earth culture enthusiast.

Meng Chao met Blue Homeland’s influential members, discussed Dragon City’s divisions between Transcendents and ordinary people, and watched an Earth-era film about the Wandering Earth plan. The gathering introduced Wu Haibo and the 101 Project, which was researching controllable transmigration, a project Meng Chao knew would later suffer a disastrous setback.

• Zhao Feixuan introduced Meng Chao to Blue Homeland’s strategic analysts, university instructors, and military personnel, who discussed Dragon City’s internal inequality and the dangers of expansion.
• When asked about the Survival Committee’s slogans for Transcendents, Meng Chao called them good principles but said expecting powerful Transcendents to become selfless saints was foolish.
• Zhao Feixuan invited everyone to watch an old Earth-era film about humanity’s plan to move Earth out of the Solar System, and its story prompted heated discussion about civilization and returning to Earth.
• Wu Haibo, a senior researcher in the Relic Research Institute’s 101 Project, appeared after the film and was introduced to Meng Chao.
• Meng Chao recalled that the 101 Project aimed to develop controllable transmigration technology, which would later suffer a major accident and fail to open a tunnel between the Otherworld and Earth.

Wu Haibo argued that cities could serve as civilization-preserving starships and suggested Dragon City might be a vessel of the Primordial Civilization. He claimed Earthlings’ compatibility with the Otherworld supported the idea that Dragon City’s transmigration was intentional, leaving Meng Chao to challenge how Earthlings could have built a city capable of such travel.

• Wu Haibo explained why moving an entire planet or relying on conventional starships would be impractical for interstellar travel.
• Wu Haibo proposed transforming a city into a super starship, preserving civilization while carrying it to another world.
• A strategic analyst asked whether Dragon City was a starship of the Primordial Civilization, and Wu Haibo speculated that its transmigration might have been a planned voyage.
• Wu Haibo said Dragon City’s intact arrival and Earthlings’ compatibility with the Otherworld suggested their transmigration was not random.
• Meng Chao asked how Earthlings could have given Dragon City the ability to travel through higher-dimensional space when they had built it themselves.

Wu Haibo described how a Transmigration Thruster beneath Dragon City might allow it to return to Earth, strengthening the Homeland Faction’s case for resolving Dragon City’s internal conflicts before conquering the Otherworld. At Zhao Feixuan’s home, Meng Chao endorsed their caution and described a vision of Dragon City burning, alarming Xiao Fanghua.

• Wu Haibo speculated that Primordial Civilization had buried Transmigration Thrusters beneath likely sites of future cities and said the 101 Project’s Controllable Transmigration Technology could reconnect Dragon City with Earth.
• Zhao Feixuan declared that the Homeland Faction wanted to address Dragon City’s internal problems and gain Earth’s support before advancing into the Otherworld.
• After the gathering, Zhao Feixuan invited Meng Chao and Wu Haibo to his home, where Wu Haibo asked Meng Chao’s opinion of the Homeland and Colonization Factions.
• Meng Chao said he opposed the Colonization Faction’s ideals and warned that expansion before resolving Dragon City’s conflicts could lead to catastrophe.
• Meng Chao described a nightmare vision of Dragon City consumed by fire, startling Xiao Fanghua as she carried a plate of Ghost Claw Fish.

Meng Chao considered Blue Homeland’s invitation to join its committee and weighed the possibility of helping the 101 Project while remaining wary of the organization. After attending its events, he learned that its supporters included many ordinary citizens and mid- and low-level Transcendents frustrated by the Nine Super Enterprises’ growing dominance.

• Meng Chao recalled the disastrous fate of the 101 Project and the Homeland Faction in his previous life, then considered whether his rebirth could help prevent the project’s coming accident.
• Zhao Feixuan invited Meng Chao to become Blue Homeland’s thirteenth committee member, and Wu Haibo explained the group’s case for returning to Earth rather than conquering the Otherworld.
• Meng Chao declined to commit immediately and proposed attending Blue Homeland events as an observer while allowing members of both organizations to exchange ideas.
• Zhao Feixuan introduced Meng Chao to Blue Homeland committee members and two Survival Committee councilors, who showed him that Dragon City’s leaders remained divided over its future.
• Meng Chao learned that Blue Homeland drew ordinary people who wanted peace and mid- and low-level Transcendents who objected to the Nine Super Enterprises’ growing control of opportunities and resources.

Meng Chao learned that Blue Homeland drew members from humble workers, independent experts, civil officials, researchers, and even children of the Nine Great Families, each dissatisfied with Dragon City's existing system for different reasons. The chapter ended as it began explaining how Spiritual Energy and the lawless Dark Ages had led powerful experts to have many children.

• Fallen Star Society members told Meng Chao that children from humble families were trapped in exhausting jobs that left them little time to cultivate or advance.
• Newly risen experts joined Blue Homeland because the Nine Great Families controlled resources and expected experts to submit to their system.
• Younger experts argued that scarce cultivation resources should go to promising fighters rather than aging elders who could no longer advance.
• Civil officials and researchers joined Blue Homeland because they feared a Colonization War would further elevate combat professions while diminishing their own contributions.
• Meng Chao learned that children of the Nine Great Families had joined Blue Homeland too, despite their apparent advantages, because they had too many brothers and sisters.
• The chapter traced those large families to the Dark Ages, when powerful experts controlled resources and Spiritual Energy intensified their desires to pass on their genes.

Meng Chao learned how competing interests fueled the Homeland Faction and Blue Homeland, while realizing Dragon City's internal divisions could be more dangerous than its costly war against monsters. He remained concerned about the 101 Project and searched for an Otherworld beast inside Blue Homeland, imagining how it might provoke factional violence.

• Meng Chao concluded that many Blue Homeland supporters opposed the Nine Great Families' control of war profits and opportunities, rather than opposing war itself.
• Meng Chao recognized that Dragon City's social and political contradictions were serious but not yet terminal, and that rivalry between its factions could still remain lawful.
• Meng Chao warned Wu Haibo to prioritize safety, preserve data, and train successors for the 101 Project, though he could not understand its technical principles well enough to help further.
• Meng Chao suspected that Otherworld beasts might target radical Blue Homeland members like Zhao Feixuan and turn them into puppets.
• Meng Chao considered how an Otherworld beast could exploit Dragon City's divisions by retreating strategically, stirring factional resentment, and staging assassinations to provoke violence.

Meng Chao predicted how anomalous beasts could exploit Dragon City's divisions and submitted his strategy to Ye Xiaoxing, after which the Bureau of Anomalous Beasts strengthened defenses against sabotage. As attacks and resentment grew while Blue Homeland promoted its cause, Meng Chao watched the factional debate reach even his own family.

• Meng Chao imagined an anomalous-beast plan to provoke scandals, assassinations, infrastructure attacks, and conflict between Dragon City's factions, then added it to his report for Ye Xiaoxing.
• Ye Xiaoxing said the Bureau of Anomalous Beasts took Meng Chao's report seriously, and the Bureau secretly reinforced defenses around public infrastructure.
• Dragon City's forces won victories and expanded the front, while monsters continued striking infrastructure and online complaints about Transcendents' privilege spread.
• The Bureau captured anomalous beasts whose brain implants suggested they were executors rather than planners, while Meng Chao continued monitoring Blue Homeland.
• Blue Homeland grew more active, distributing promotional material in Tianfu Garden, and Meng Chao's family shared their views on the Colonization and Homeland Factions.

Meng Chao tried to protect Blue Homeland’s Zhao Feixuan from the anomalous beasts while balancing his many responsibilities. After Gao Ye’s final plea for death, mysterious underground attacks began striking Dragon City’s infrastructure, and a skyscraper in the Binjiang Financial District started to tilt.

• Meng Chao weighed the Homeland Faction’s defensive plans against the need to strike proactively at the Otherworld’s races and watched for threats within Blue Homeland.
• Meng Chao investigated Zhao Feixuan’s circle and warned him to protect his pregnant wife, Teacher Xiao Fanghua, but could not secure her a dedicated security team.
• Gao Ye’s experimental logs grew incoherent, and his final email in November said, “I was wrong. Kill me.”
• Beginning in January, an underground organism hollowed out the ground beneath the South City Power Plant, causing Generator Unit No. 3 to collapse and triggering a citywide power-grid failure.
• A skyscraper over fifty stories tall in the Binjiang Financial District developed a visible tilt one fog-shrouded morning.

After Gao Ye’s attacks killed civilians and caused destruction, Meng Chao and Lü Siya tracked him through Dragon City’s underground passages. They fought off a virus-infected Rat Tide, then suspected the rats’ infection was more powerful than the Mutant Rabies Virus.

• Gao Ye attacked a subway train, killing more than a hundred civilians and leaving dozens missing before escaping underground.
• Meng Chao joined Ye Xiaoxing’s Hunter Squads, which tracked Gao Ye for ten days and learned that he was exhausted and nearing collapse.
• Meng Chao found signs that Gao Ye had fed in an abandoned pipeline while Lü Siya listened for movement underground.
• Meng Chao and Lü Siya spotted hundreds of spiked rats with scarlet eyes charging through the pipeline and fought them off with fire, a chain blade, and ground spikes.
• Meng Chao dissected the rats and discovered signs of a virus more powerful than the Mutant Rabies Virus.

Meng Chao and Lü Siya discovered that the Rat Tide attacking southern Dragon City was spreading a fast-acting mutated Zombie Virus. The city’s defenders contained the outbreak, but infected people escaped into the Slums, leaving the city facing a long, sleepless night.

• Ye Xiaoxing ordered Meng Chao and Lü Siya back to the surface, where they learned that a coordinated Rat Tide had erupted across southern Dragon City.
• Meng Chao spotted a man scratched by rats transform into a zombie and realized the Rat Tide was carrying a rapidly acting virus.
• Ye Xiaoxing raised the city to its highest alert as the Crimson Dragon Army, armed citizens, and Transcendents fought the zombies.
• The zombies avoided stronger opposition and slipped into communities and the Slums, prolonging the chaos.
• Meng Chao shot a zombie in the knee and handed it to soldiers, explaining to Lü Siya that its victims might still recover.

Meng Chao warned Ye Xiaoxing that the Rat Tide and zombie outbreak were cover for the anomalous beasts’ real attack, then identified the No. 20 Underground Rail Transit Line construction site as Gao Ye’s likely target. Ye sent Meng Chao and Lü Siya there to investigate, and they prepared their maneuver gear for the trip.

• Meng Chao recalled how the mutated Zombie Virus had accompanied major monster attacks and concluded that the zombies and Rat Tide were a diversion for the anomalous beasts’ true assault.
• Meng Chao warned Ye Xiaoxing, who agreed and gathered the Ninth Team to predict Gao Ye’s next target while other forces handled the zombies and guarded key facilities.
• After studying Gao Ye’s movement trail, Meng Chao asked Ye to send him and Lü Siya to the No. 20 Underground Rail Transit Line construction site, arguing that Gao Ye’s former ambitions and the under-river tunnel made it a likely target.
• Ye Xiaoxing reassigned their original search targets to other teams and ordered Meng Chao and Lü Siya to reach the construction site at top speed, with the Attack Team ready to follow if they found Gao Ye.
• Meng Chao unfolded his Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear while Lü Siya prepared her flight pack.

Meng Chao rescued armed citizens from a mutated zombie and discovered that the new virus carried Bloodpetal Flower traits. After warning Ye Xiaoxing about the danger, he hurried with Lü Siya toward the Cross-River Tunnel construction site, where he suspected a major attack was unfolding.

• Meng Chao warned a group of Enthusiastic Citizens not to attack a long-limbed zombie, but they shot it down before he could stop them.
• The zombie swelled and exploded, spraying venom at the citizens, and Meng Chao shielded them and ordered them to remove contaminated clothes and monitor one another for infection.
• Meng Chao tested the zombie remains and found that they reacted strongly to the Blood Pattern Flower Reagent.
• After the citizens showed no signs of infection, Meng Chao told Ye Xiaoxing that the new zombies were biochemical weapons with Bloodpetal Flower traits and warned against close combat and corpse mutations.
• Ye Xiaoxing agreed to warn the authorities and told Meng Chao to hurry to the Cross-River Tunnel construction site; Meng Chao gathered supplies and set out with Lü Siya.