Chapter Summaries

The Protoss and part of humanity prepared to evacuate the Kopru Star Sector ahead of the Dark Sun’s eruption, while the Empire completed its Space Rift. The Mother Planet teleported successfully to Kopru, and Gaia appeared before A Jun in person.

• The Protoss leaders agreed to begin their orderly evacuation in three days, while a small number of Protoss and Tal'darim chose to remain behind.
• Mengsk urged humanity’s Stubborn Faction to reject evacuation, while Reno rallied the Wise Faction and the Empire arranged ships to transport them.
• A Jun’s forces built a temporary base and nearly completed the Space Rift near the Dark Sun.
• A Jun and Sandora ordered the Mother Planet’s teleportation, and Gaia reported that the transfer had succeeded.
• Gaia appeared in person on the Empire Admiral bridge, and A Jun greeted her awkwardly.

A Jun and his companions arrived at the Empire’s long-dormant homeworld, where Gaia explained the artificial planet’s systems and the group reached its Command Headquarters. With the homeworld ready to activate the Arbitration Mechanism and defend itself from incoming asteroids, A Jun and Sandora began considering how to use the ancient relic against the Fallen Apostles.

• Qian Qian excitedly explored the homeworld and urged A Jun to build a three-bedroom, one-living-room house there for everyone.
• Gaia explained that the homeworld was an artificial Capital Star with adjustable gravity, a planetary shield, and a controlled ecosystem.
• The group arrived at the shifting, pyramid-like Command Headquarters, where A Jun learned that Gaia had no body and was fused with the planet as data.
• Gaia confirmed that the homeworld’s lost data had been restored and that the Arbitration Mechanism could be activated at any time.
• As Alaya and the others prepared for Deployment of their Glory Form, A Jun and Sandora considered using the homeworld’s defenses and technology against the Fallen Apostles.

The Empire activated the World Arbitration Organization and sealed the Kopru Star Sector into a closed universe to contain the Dark Sun’s Abyss Energy. After releasing the barriers that had restrained the energy, A Jun ordered the World Arbitration Organization to begin Hot Start.

• Sandora explained that Pandora, Gaia, and Alaya had merged their spirits into the World Arbitration Organization’s shared consciousness.
• The Empire completed the evacuation of most Protoss and human refugees, and A Jun ordered a full lockdown of the Kopru Star Sector despite knowing that people were still trying to escape.
• Ding Dang transformed Kopru into a closed universe, cutting it off from the rest of the universe and trapping the Abyss Energy inside.
• A Jun ordered Qian Qian to stop the time distortion and Ding Dang to restore the speed of light and Quantum Effect, allowing the Abyss Energy to spread through the sealed region.
• After Abyss radiation began turning Protoss into monsters, A Jun ordered Pandora, Gaia, and Alaya to begin Hot Start.

The Empire used the World Arbitration Organization to erase and recreate the Kopru Star Sector, leaving the newborn universe to develop over the coming decades. The Empire withdrew while keeping Gaia there for safety, and Lilina planned to turn the stranded Kopru survivors toward worship of the Shilin Apostles.

• The Arbitration Mechanism deleted the Kopru Star Sector’s information until only the Void remained, then the narrator ordered it to create a singularity.
• Ding Dang arrived during the artificial Genesis, distracted the narrator, and provoked Qian Qian and Sandora’s jealousy before the Big Bang’s flash filled the Command Hall.
• The Information Fountain began rebuilding Kopru as a replica of the old star sector, a process expected to take at least seventy years.
• The Empire Fleet withdrew and left Gaia in the newborn universe, while the World Arbitration Organization recuperated and the Empire kept monitoring outposts behind.
• Lilina proposed using faith, miracles, and the refugees’ long isolation to establish the Shilin Apostles as gods across Kopru and make the star sector a buffer for Gaia.
• The Empire Fleet approached a small star system where Reno and the others were waiting to meet the survivors.

The narrator visited New Colony, where Raynor and Zeratul were rebuilding human and Protoss life together on Ai Er-Tassani, then gave Zeratul carefully limited Imperial technology before the Imperial party departed. The narrator returned home with Lilina, leaving the refugees to develop under plans that would draw both races into the Empire’s influence.

• The narrator met Raynor at the spaceport and learned that he had quit drinking and that Kerrigan was recovering and cooking at home.
• Raynor and Zeratul explained that the human and Protoss refugees were adapting to New Colony, whose capital they had named Ai Er-Tassani.
• Raynor described how human opinion of the Empire varied, while Zeratul said the two races depended on each other to survive and rebuild.
• Raynor accepted half of the seeds the narrator had brought, and Zeratul and Raynor declined the rest because they wanted to preserve their incentive to develop.
• The narrator gave Zeratul Imperial technology and a sealed crystal that he was to destroy if he could not decipher the first technology within fifty years.
• The Imperial party left New Colony and returned home, where Lilina jumped in fright after meeting Anweina emerging from the carpet.

After returning from the expedition, Chen Jun and Sandora inspected Shadow City and encountered Silvia with Accelerator, the Misaka Sisters, and the lost Sylvanas. The chapter ended with Silvia belatedly realizing that Sylvanas had pointed ears, while the search for the lost Jaina remained underway.

• Ding Dang woke Chen Jun with a bite, and his sneeze sent her flying into the weeds.
• Lin Xue discussed the Monarch-class ship’s interference with her prophecies and admitted she had tried to watch over Chen Jun’s group.
• Chen Jun and Sandora inspected Shadow City and discussed Tawell’s dangerous experiment and the need to strengthen the Empire.
• Chen Jun encountered Silvia walking with Accelerator, Last Order, Misaka 10031, and Sylvanas, who had gotten lost while trying to use a navigation device.
• Chen Jun arranged for Sylvanas to return to the Azeroth district and ordered patrols to search for Jaina, who had lost the device’s signal.
• Silvia noticed only after their walk that Sylvanas had pointed ears, leaving Chen Jun and Sandora exasperated.

Chen Jun and Sandora investigated a report that a Raven had unexpectedly encountered Silvia, whose fragile mental state made contact with her soul clone dangerous. Their search uncovered scattered spatial anomalies across Shadow City, and Bubble announced a major discovery as they began analyzing them.

• Chen Jun learned that Silvia had encountered someone identical to herself, and Siweisi identified the stranger as Raven 068.
• Raven 068 reported that a brief spatial imbalance had placed her directly in front of Silvia despite the Ravens’ orders to avoid her.
• Chen Jun and Sandora rushed to Shadow City's Control Center after realizing the encounter might signal a loss of control over the city's space.
• Siweisi reported that scans found no damage to the city's boundaries but revealed scattered, previously overlooked abnormalities.
• Chen Jun and Sandora found Bubble connected to all thirty-three Shilin Mainframes, where she announced a major discovery.

After Bubble reported more than a hundred information-related anomalies in Shadow City, she concluded that the cause was unknown but promised tighter monitoring. Little Pao Pao then led the group to an abandoned alley, where Sandora noticed something troubling about the place and Qian Qian’s earlier visit.

• Bubble explained that Shadow City’s anomalies appeared to be information alterations, but she could not identify their source.
• The narrator and Sandora left Shadow Space and joined the others for lunch, where Little Pao Pao tried to communicate that something was wrong.
• Older Sister interpreted Little Pao Pao’s request, and the group followed her toward a place she wanted them to see.
• Little Pao Pao’s copied memories guided the group to a hidden, abandoned alley near a shopping mall.
• Sandora questioned Qian Qian about why she had not followed Little Pao Pao into the alley during their earlier visit.

A Jun and the others discovered that a strange alley reversed their sense of left and right, and Ding Dang identified the anomaly as contamination from chaotic information outside the world. Their investigation revealed abnormal information points across K City and similar incidents throughout the country, which ordinary people could not perceive; the source remained unknown as the group began improving the Shilin Mainframe's ability to analyze them.

• A Jun, Sandora, and the others found that left and right were reversed inside an alley, and Older Sister proposed that the space itself had inverted the concepts.
• Ding Dang concluded that the alley might have been contaminated by chaotic information from outside the world.
• The group deployed information probes across K City, and the next morning the Shilin Mainframe identified numerous anomalies, including inverted spaces and backward-flowing drains.
• Sandora explained that Shadow City's earlier anomaly likely came from copied information contaminated by the warped outer world, and Bubble's new filtering mechanism addressed it.
• Lin Xue reported that similar incidents had occurred across the country and that ordinary people could not perceive or remember them.
• Sandora proposed strengthening the Shilin Mainframe to analyze abnormal information in real time while Ding Dang monitored the world's information pathways.

Anweina noticed a citywide dusk anomaly that residents could not perceive, and the group discovered that a World Shard from a destroyed world was merging with reality. Lin Xue and Bubble warned that the city and possibly Earth could be lost to the distortion, so Lilina proposed entering the shard through a passage at the World Tree Temple to separate it from the real world.

• Anweina woke her master after noticing dim dusk light and Thin Spiritual Energy, then demonstrated her maid skill by firing undead holy-light X-rays from her eyes.
• Viska's probes showed that only the city was affected, with normal sunlight and starlight replaced by dusk light as they entered its atmosphere.
• The master and Qian Qian found that pedestrians perceived the abnormal sky as normal, and Qian Qian's Time Stop revealed zebra-striped bands where the two skies overlapped.
• Lin Xue warned that the city could disappear from the Prime Material Plane, while Bubble identified a World Shard from a destroyed world as the source of the growing distortion.
• Lilina explained that the Goddess had been misdirected when investigating the shard and said the group must enter it through a passage Ding Dang was preparing at the World Tree Temple.

The narrator’s team entered a World Shard that appeared to be an ordinary city, only to learn that its inhabitants were preserved memories of a destroyed world. They traced signs of new information to a school and began investigating the site while sending data back to Shadow City.

• Ding Dang opened a passage into the World Shard and warned the team that the fragile shard could affect the real world if damaged.
• The team arrived in a normal-looking city where pedestrians ignored Seven Trillion and behaved like blank, unresponsive figures.
• Ding Dang explained that the city and its people were memories left behind by the destroyed world, and the team deployed probes to map the area.
• Older Sister spotted unusual information activity near the city center, and the team teleported to a school as its likely source.
• The team entered the school, observed guards reacting to a television full of static, and sent their collected data to Shadow City for analysis.

A Jun and his companions encountered Hu Wen and Ling Yin, two members of the Awakened who had retained awareness in the frozen World Shard. The pair led them through a shifting, dangerous school building to meet their captain, leaving the group on the threshold of a new discovery.

• Lilina spotted a classroom where ghosts reenacted a lesson, along with Hu Wen and Ling Yin, who appeared aware and able to interact with the students.
• Hu Wen and Ling Yin questioned A Jun and Lilina, then welcomed the group after learning they were awakened newcomers.
• Hu Wen and Ling Yin guided A Jun, Older Sister, Qian Qian, and Lin Xue through a mutating teaching building marked with the Awakened’s warnings.
• A Jun stopped Lin Xue from approaching a dangerous door, and Lin Xue hinted that the building held important secrets she had seen in the future.
• Hu Wen and Ling Yin brought the group to an Activity Room, where a golden-ponytailed girl in paint-splattered work clothes sat facing the entrance.

Chen Jun and his companions reunited with Artemis, the leader of Olympus on Earth and captain of the Awakened in Death World. Artemis explained that both versions of her were real projections linked across worlds, then asked how the group had reached Death World.

• Chen Jun recognized Artemis as the girl who had vanished under the Esper Team's watch, while Artemis and the newcomers concealed their familiarity from Hu Wen and Ling Yin.
• Artemis sent Ling Yin to guide the group to the Chemistry Department Activity Room and ordered Hu Wen to recall the others; Hu Wen privately remarked that Artemis was acting unusually.
• Ling Yin led the group through the distorted building, then fled after Qian Qian asked whether Hu Wen was her boyfriend.
• Chen Jun's group set up in the Activity Room and started eating hot pot, and Artemis repeatedly opened the door before joining them.
• Artemis confirmed she was both the girl Chen Jun had seen on Earth and the leader of the Awakened in Death World, whose Earth projection controlled Olympus.
• Artemis described the information link between the worlds and asked how Chen Jun's group had arrived in Death World.

The group learned about the Death World and Artemis’s struggle to keep its Awakened students from becoming ghosts, then connected the world’s missing dusk to its collision with their own. As a chaotic nightmare began twisting the school building apart, Artemis calmly took a burning book and suggested they read while it continued.

• Artemis explained that the world had become a dead city after a flash in the sky, and that fewer than twenty Awakened students remained from the hundreds who had gathered around her.
• The group described the World Shard’s uncertain nature and their limited ability to save it, but Older Sister promised they would help Artemis.
• Artemis recounted the rules she had learned to protect the Awakened, including avoiding sleep and staying near special rooms.
• The sky abruptly changed from day to night, and Artemis explained that the world’s day-and-night cycle followed strange rules; the group realized its dusk had appeared in their own world.
• A mournful sound and tremors struck as the school building twisted apart, leaving the group frightened while Artemis walked to the bonfire and retrieved a burning book.

After the old building's mutation, Artemis guided the newcomers through its shifting corridors, where Qian Qian rescued her from a deadly collapse. The group reunited with the Awakened survivors and joined their bonfire gathering, while the narrator resolved to help them.

• The group waited through the mutation by playing StarCraft II, then Artemis explained the building's shifting rules and marked the Chemistry Department Activity Room.
• Artemis led the group through warped passages, where a moving mass smashed through a door and Qian Qian used Time Stop to save her before collapsing the passage behind them.
• Artemis guided the group to the Activity Room, where roughly twenty Awakened survivors welcomed the newcomers.
• Hu Wen helped prepare a bonfire gathering outside the old building, where the Awakened celebrated beside the seemingly unaware dormitory students.
• Lilina asked whether they could help the Awakened, and the narrator confidently promised that they could.

As the World Shard rapidly evaporated and its leaking information contaminated other worlds, the narrator and Lilina traveled to its edge to help find a way to stop it. They set up a tracing spell, then considered approaching the advancing White Mist.

• Survey data revealed that the World Shard had no stable outer boundary and was evaporating while contaminating similar worlds, including A Certain Magical Index.
• The narrator learned that Artemis and her companions might have only fifteen days before the World Shard shrank to a single city block, and that conventional methods could not preserve its ghostly inhabitants.
• The narrator drove Seven Trillion toward the World Shard's edge while Lilina, still drunk, caused trouble before using divine power to sober herself.
• At the edge, Lilina created a magic circle to trace the route of the World Shard's information evaporation, after initially mistaking chocolate beans for Seeds of Life.
• The White Mist advanced and consumed the rest of a truck, prompting the narrator to consider going closer.

Chen and Lilina entered the Shattered Borderlands to investigate the White Mist, where they encountered a powerful golden stranger who turned out to be Ilson, one of Ding Dang’s squadmates. Ilson’s sister Monina arrived, introduced herself as a Dark God Race member, and revealed a disturbing power beneath her calm exterior.

• Chen reassured Lilina that Sandora had confirmed the Shattered Borderlands were safe enough to explore, and they drove Seven Trillion into the White Mist.
• They saw a humanoid shadow dissipate, and Lilina accidentally fired Seven Trillion’s Photon Cannons at something ahead.
• Lilina suppressed the unknown target’s communications, but a golden attacker struck Seven Trillion’s shield and then crashed into it while shouting that they were allies.
• Chen and Lilina recognized the blond man as Sacred Guardian Ilson, a member of Ding Dang’s squad, and learned he was searching for his captain.
• Monina Poison Feather kicked Ilson into a rune wall, apologized for her brother, and thanked Chen for helping Ding Dang before identifying herself as a Dark God Race Saint and Dark Blade Ranger.

The narrator met Monina and Ilson, God Race siblings recruited by Ding Dang to help with the World Shard, and learned that their combat skills did not make them experts on its mutation. Their investigation confirmed the shard was exposed to the Void and rapidly evaporating, and Monina altered the group’s perception of the siblings before they met Artemis.

• Monina revealed that she was a Dark God Race Blade Ranger and introduced Ilson as her Light God Race brother, a Garrison Officer.
• Ding Dang press-ganged Monina and Ilson into helping the narrator’s group, though the siblings admitted they could offer little technical insight into the World Shard.
• Monina explained that the shard’s World Barrier had vanished and that its evaporation might be natural rather than connected to the Fallen Apostles.
• The group found that the White Mist had consumed more of the shard, suggesting Artemis and the others had fewer than fifteen days left.
• Monina altered the locals’ worldview so they accepted her and Ilson as natural presences, and Artemis led the group toward the old building.

Monina and Ilson joined the Empire's Passerby Party for lunch, and Monina revealed that their seemingly incompetent captain, Ding Dang, was a rare naturally born god with ties to the highest-ranking deities. Ling Yin then summoned the group to the cafeteria, where they endured an uncomfortable meal among ghost students and returned painfully full.

• Monina cooked a lavish meal and explained that Ding Dang's five-person squad consisted of her, Ilson, a Dragon God girl, and a Light God uncle, each with an unusual role.
• Monina revealed that Ding Dang was born from vines in the Highest Life Goddess's palace, had a Divine Office mark from birth, and was beloved by the supreme gods despite her poor grades.
• Older Sister and Lin Xue said Ding Dang's status mattered less to them than her friendship and favorite candy, and Monina and Ilson understood why she liked spending time with the group.
• Ling Yin arrived and invited the group to lunch, so they left the Activity Room and joined Hu Wen and the other Awakened in the cafeteria.
• Hu Wen pointed out Lin, an Awakened companion who had hypnotized herself into the past, sitting beside her boyfriend, who had become a ghost.
• The group forced themselves to eat in the cafeteria, then returned to the Activity Room stuffed while Lin Xue claimed a Different Dimension explained how she avoided the meal's effects.

Lilina’s Divine Magic Array traced the World Shard’s first anomaly to the Old Gymnasium, where the group discovered that its hidden circular shadows led to another world. They found the real world visible in the sky and stepped into a shadow that opened onto a platform among the stars, leaving the destination unexplained.

• Lilina’s alarm revealed information flowing through the Divine Magic Arrays, and the group used the rune map to locate the World Shard’s first anomaly at the Old Gymnasium.
• The group saw an inverted image of their real world in the sky, and Monina warned that erosion between the worlds was advancing.
• Artemis and the others entered the supposedly forgotten gymnasium, where they realized that the world had made its existence easy to overlook.
• Lin Xue stepped into a circular shadow and returned, explaining that the shadows were holes through which another world could be seen.
• Ilson led the group into the largest shadow, revealing a vast stone platform surrounded by planets and stars.
• A Jun and Lilina briefly stepped out of the shadow and back in, then asked what the mysterious place was.