Chapter Summaries

Wen Xishu escaped his nightmare with Nicole’s singing and concluded that the abandoned town’s inhabitants were trapped in distorted dreams. He reentered the dream world and headed toward a brightly lit art museum at the town’s center, suspecting it held the truth.

• Wen Xishu shattered a sinister statue and fought off a mangled girl and crawling fragments as his vision’s number fell to 8.
• Nicole’s singing raised Wen Xishu’s number and helped him wake; he found the rest of the team in the ruined town.
• Wen Xishu explained that the number measured dream distortion and theorized that someone had trapped the town’s inhabitants in dreams to evade the Balance Curse.
• Wen Xishu told the team to protect Nicole while she sang at intervals, then closed his eyes and returned to the dream.
• Wen Xishu spotted a brightly lit art museum at the center of town, saw his number drop as he looked at it, and set off toward it.

Wen Xishu survived the Painter’s lethal dream, awakened him by confronting him with the truth about the town, and recruited him to join the effort against the Balance Curse. The chapter ended with Painter agreeing to leave the dream and become an SSS-rank hero on Wen Xishu’s team.

• Wen Xishu entered the museum and was forced to face paintings that transformed into deadly monsters as the dream’s logic collapsed.
• Wen Xishu discovered that Nightmare Absolution kept him alive in the dream, then used Limit Break Kick to destroy the monsters and increase his proficiency.
• Wen Xishu reached the Painter and chose to tell him that the people and happiness in his dream were illusions, while everyone in town had already died from the Balance Curse.
• Painter mourned the townspeople and admitted that he had trapped himself in the dream because he could not bear his loss.
• Wen Xishu invited Painter to join him and pursue revenge against the curse, and Painter accepted as an SSS-rank hero.

Wen Xishu recruited Enzo, a painter whose revelations exposed Libra’s role in the balance curse and suggested it could become a weapon of worldwide death. The group prepared to return to the Balance Tavern and gather allies to destroy the curse’s formation eye, but Wen Xishu’s new recruit pushed his population over quota.

• Wen Xishu woke from the dream, led his companions to the town center, and recruited the awakened painter Enzo.
• Enzo told Wen Xishu that Libra created the balance curse as an expanding experiment and that Scorpio had foretold the commander’s arrival.
• Wen Xishu connected Libra’s power to the creation and destruction of factions and resolved to find and destroy the curse’s formation eye.
• Wen Xishu thanked Enzo and set out with his companions to return to the Balance Tavern and unite others affected by the curse.
• Wen Xishu realized that recruiting Enzo had raised his population from 4/4 to 5/4, exceeding his quota.

Wen Xishu weighed the cost of increasing the party limit against targeted recruitment, then led his team into stage four, the Land of Division. Enzo drew a lifelike Scorpio who revealed the stage’s combat objective and hinted that Wen Xishu would gain a major boost.

• Wen Xishu spent 150,000 Tavern Coins to raise the party limit to five, reassured the team, and ordered everyone to prioritize staying alive in stage four.
• Wen Xishu and his companions entered a vast area filled with Black Houses and Red Houses, with the Compass pointing them away from the Red Houses.
• Enzo drew Scorpio, and the lifelike drawing advised Wen Xishu to defeat the Inferior Demon King, hear its final words, and then face the stronger Finished Demon King in the next stage.
• Scorpio told Wen Xishu that the stage was focused on combat, warned him against taking lethal damage in a certain area, and said the stage would greatly strengthen him.
• Enzo realized that drawing Scorpio had cost him no stamina and concluded that being on Wen Xishu’s team had made him stronger, while Wen Xishu mistook his excitement for a reaction to card evolution.

At a Constellation meeting, Pisces pushed for the Bunker’s people to be eliminated, while Sagittarius stayed silent about his ties to them. In a residential complex, Wen Xishu and Enzo faced a boy whose deaths caused him to multiply endlessly, and Wen Xishu began to suspect the source of his power lay outside the complex.

• Taurus and Aries convened the Constellations, where Leo blamed Sagittarius for failing to kill the Boundary-Crosser and the others debated how to handle the Bunker’s people.
• Pisces urged the Constellations to kill Bunker residents and gain more authority, while Scorpio defended the people in his custody and Sagittarius kept his alliance with them secret.
• Wen Xishu and Enzo entered a dangerous residential complex, where cut weeds regrew and the Compass warned them of deadly danger ahead.
• A boy with clustered pupils attacked Wen Xishu and Enzo, then split into more boys whenever he was killed, multiplying until their numbers overwhelmed the complex.
• Enzo created a maze for them to hide in, and Wen Xishu concluded that they needed to find the source of the boy’s infinite splitting power.

Wen Xishu and Enzo traced the endless splitting in the city to a hidden laboratory and found the First-Generation Test Subject sustaining it. Wen Xishu chose to kill the exhausted boy by touching his strange heart, which began to crack, and asked who had connected him to it.

• Wen Xishu realized Libra's power was linking the city's life and death to the little boy, replacing the city's factions with loyal forces through endless splitting.
• Wen Xishu and Enzo resisted the growing crowds of Split Bodies, and Wen Xishu deduced that they needed to seal them rather than kill them.
• Enzo used the Energy Core to create Prison in the Painting and drew in the Split Bodies, allowing Wen Xishu to follow the Compass to a hidden pit.
• Wen Xishu and Enzo entered a blood-filled laboratory and found the First-Generation Test Subject suspended from vessels and connected to a strange heart.
• Wen Xishu rejected the option to recruit the boy and touched his heart; cracks appeared as the boy realized Wen Xishu could kill him.
• Wen Xishu asked who had turned the boy into this and connected him to the heart.

Wen Xishu defeated Nero, learned that Libra had used him to develop a curse and was preparing a more powerful test subject, then unlocked three routes for the next stage. Despite the danger, Wen Xishu chose the Scorpio Route to confront the source of the curse and end it.

• Wen Xishu pressured the dying Nero into revealing how Libra used his regenerative powers and the Heart of Division to create deaths through new births.
• Nero explained that Aries had given Libra the Heart of Division to aid a different, more powerful test subject, and begged Wen Xishu to kill that person and end the curse.
• Wen Xishu destroyed the Heart of Division, absorbed its Tower Power, and Nero died as the Split Bodies vanished.
• Wen Xishu returned to the Balance Tavern, unlocked a hidden storyline, and received the Pathfinder, Curse Ender, and Libra Path route choices.
• Wen Xishu rejected the Libra Path despite its powerful rewards and chose the Scorpio Route to confront Libra's perfect test subject.

Wen Xishu led his companions toward the source of the curse, then entered the Fifth Stage alone and found himself bound by its rules to act as a little girl named Nini’s father. After learning that his arrival had erased her previous father under the city’s cruel balance rules, he promised to defeat the force governing them so no one would lose their family again.

• Wen Xishu chose to confront the curse’s source instead of escaping, and Colonel Devin evolved from a C-rank card into an A+ card.
• Wen Xishu equipped his companions with upgraded gear and sent the squad into the Fifth Stage, where he found himself separated from them in a peaceful city marked by the Golden Scales.
• Nini called Wen Xishu her new daddy, and the stage’s guidance warned him to play the child’s father or be forcibly replaced.
• Nini took Wen Xishu home and gave him a diary from her previous father, A Lai, explaining that the Scales of Life and Death replaced people to maintain balance and that outsiders’ arrivals could cause someone to disappear.
• Nini cried over A Lai’s disappearance and feared she had caused him to leave, while Wen Xishu realized his arrival had erased him.
• Wen Xishu comforted Nini, promised to set the city’s rules right, and vowed to defeat its governing force so no one would lose their family again.

Wen Xishu gathered strength from the people resisting Balance City’s rules and confronted the Balance Will atop Balance Tower. After surviving its power through Upside Down, he used Sagittarius’s Godslaying Arrow to destroy the incarnation and the Golden Scales, leaving the city’s fate to its people.

• Wen Xishu promised Nini he would return, then accepted the role of hero and received the city’s memories and hopes.
• Nicole refused to replace her disabled husband and comforted him by sharing how the curse had taken her family.
• Enzo used his paintings to help his students remember and mourn those they had lost, but the Balance Will replaced the children and devastated him.
• Wen Xishu reached Balance Tower, where the Balance Will revealed its plan to replace people and offered him a chance to rule the city together.
• The Balance Will twice erased Wen Xishu, but Upside Down restored him and increased his power; Wen Xishu touched the Sagittarius-marked die to his enemy and summoned Starfall.
• Sagittarius fired a Godslaying Arrow that destroyed the Balance Will’s incarnation, its regeneration, and the Golden Scales, collapsing Balance Tower.

Wen Xishu helped break the Balance Curse in the World of Obsessions, then returned from the Strange Tower with new strength and an ultra-rare Rune. He wondered what awaited him back at the Bunker after spending several days away.

• The collapse of the golden scales broke the curse, allowing Enzo, Nicole, Cavintim, Elsa, Borg, Colonel Devin, and the others to remember their lost loved ones as individuals.
• Sagittarius explained that Wen Xishu had defeated a powerful enemy by exploiting the Balance Will’s failed attempts to erase him, and said his own arrow had grown stronger through the will of many souls.
• Sagittarius told Wen Xishu that the World of Obsessions had not changed reality, but Wen Xishu resolved to return someday and left after promising Nini he would meet her again when she became a hero.
• The Guide congratulated Wen Xishu on perfectly clearing the fiftieth floor, and Wen Xishu checked his improved status, refunded Tower Power, and evolved Limit Break Kick into Limit Break Kick Modified.
• Wen Xishu received the Fully Customizable Ultimate Finishing Move Rune, considered saving it for a more suitable Sequence, and worried about what had happened at the Bunker during his absence.

After returning to the Bunker, Wen Xishu learned that Yin Ze’s extreme theories had inspired a controversial teaching movement at the Tower of Deception Academy, then discussed his recent journey and future plans with Albert. Albert proposed a Sequence Trade Fair to help Wen Xishu find a suitable Sequence, and they decided to organize one.

• The Academy Spirit told Wen Xishu that Yin Ze had been teaching students to use Desire Tower methods to win over strange entities, creating a bizarre reputation for the academy.
• Wen Xishu agreed to let Yin Ze’s classes continue for now and went to meet Albert at the Garden Forbidden Grounds.
• Wen Xishu recounted his recent journey, and Albert praised his growth and discussed the Custom Finisher rune and Sagittarius’s assistance.
• Wen Xishu considered entering the Slaughter Tower alone to find a combat Sequence, and Albert explained that permanently killing a monster could yield one.
• Albert proposed a Bunker Sequence Trade Fair, and Wen Xishu agreed to help organize it.

Albert and Wen Xishu organized a trading fair with help from William Hockner, and Wen Xishu visited its crowded market after it opened. There, Jiang Xue told him about meeting a mind-reading stranger called Virgo, leaving Wen Xishu suspiciously interested as he continued browsing for useful items.

• William Hockner funded and organized the trading fair, while Albert and Wen Xishu helped establish its market and auction plans.
• The market opened at Three Towers Academy, where Wen Xishu encountered Jiang Xue trying to trade for eerie sequence 306: Needle in the Haystack.
• Wen Xishu learned that Jiang Xue had transferred from the Tower of Desire Academy to the Tower of Deception Academy and then to the Strange Tower.
• Jiang Xue explained that she wanted Needle in the Haystack because she had met Virgo, who seemed able to read her thoughts and invited her to go along.
• Wen Xishu encouraged the stall owner to sell the sequence to Jiang Xue and asked her to remember every detail if she met Virgo again.
• Wen Xishu left Jiang Xue and continued browsing the market for items that might suit him.

Wen Xishu browsed the Strange Tower market and bought two sequences: shadow doppelganger and avenger's burden. After finishing the market, he decided to climb a tower before visiting the other markets.

• Wen Xishu examined eerie sequences and heard the stallholders' stories, but passed on poor imitation and unimpeachable expression.
• A pair of conjoined siblings described meeting Gemini on the Strange Tower's eleventh floor and explained how he offered them shadow doppelganger.
• Wen Xishu bought shadow doppelganger from the siblings for a generous amount of merit points.
• Wen Xishu encountered sequence 159, avenger's burden, and bought it after deciding its drawback would not affect him.
• Wen Xishu retorted to the stallholder's tactless remark by pointing out that the sequence had cost the man his family, then decided to climb a tower.

Wen Xishu entered the Fierce Ghost Bar challenge on floor 52, raising its difficulty to that of floor 64, and found himself among five strangers trapped inside a bar on the Ghost Festival. When the first visitor knocked, the group had to decide whether it was human or ghost, but the rules left the consequences of disagreement and mistaken judgment unclear.

• Wen Xishu chose the Madman's Dice option from end to beginning and raised the challenge difficulty to match floor 64.
• Wen Xishu entered the bar Safe Haven and met Chen Ming, Zhang Qiang, Old Zhou, Xiao Ya, A Fei, and Li Wei.
• Wen Xishu warned Li Wei not to leave and explained that the group might be in danger outside on the Ghost Festival.
• The gramophone announced that the group must decide whether the first visitor to the bar was human or ghost, and that unanimous votes would determine whether the visitor died or the door opened.
• Wen Xishu pointed out that the rules did not explain what would happen if the group disagreed, just as someone knocked on the door.

Wen Xishu’s vote split forced a water ghost into Haven Bar, where it began taking Xiao Ya’s face as a replacement. As Xiao Ya recovered memories implicating Zhang Qiang, a ghostly girl called to her from outside, and Xiao Ya insisted they let the girl in.

• Zhang Qiang admitted that he had exposed his dockside informant, while the person outside claimed to still be alive and accused Zhang Qiang of being the informant.
• Wen Xishu, Chen Ming, and A Fei voted to let the visitor in, while Xiao Ya, Old Zhou, Li Wei, and Zhang Qiang voted against it; the gramophone announced that a divided vote would forcibly admit the visitor.
• A faceless, water-soaked ghost entered Haven Bar and sat in a corner, then began growing an eye identical to Xiao Ya’s.
• Wen Xishu concluded that the corporeal ghost was seeking a replacement and had targeted Xiao Ya, prompting Zhang Qiang and Li Wei to blame him for the danger.
• Xiao Ya recovered memories and accused Zhang Qiang of leaving the dockside visitor outside while he was still alive, and A Fei accessed the exterior surveillance cameras.
• A horrifying girl called to Xiao Ya from outside, and Xiao Ya demanded that the others open the door and let her in.

Wen Xishu helped Xiao Ya face her guilt over Tongtong’s death and prevented her from letting the ghost inside, allowing Tongtong’s resentment to ease and earning Ren Ya’s favor. The group survived another round, but a new knock sounded before they could rest.

• Zhang Qiang aimed his gun at Xiao Ya as she insisted Tongtong was not a ghost, while Wen Xishu warned him against killing her.
• Wen Xishu learned that Xiao Ya had caused Tongtong’s death by secretly adjusting her pain pump, and he stopped Xiao Ya from drinking the blue wine.
• Wen Xishu gave Xiao Ya the Red Wine and urged her to apologize to Tongtong without opening the door.
• Xiao Ya apologized and refused to let Tongtong inside; Tongtong’s appearance shifted between a frightening ghost and a healthy girl before she forgave Xiao Ya and said goodbye.
• Wen Xishu drank the Red Wine and received Ren Ya’s favor and five Virgo favor points, then the gramophone announced that the group had survived the round.
• Someone knocked on the door again, and Wen Xishu looked excited as the others grew anxious.

Wen Xishu uncovered Li Wei’s crimes against Wang Hai and chose to let Wang Hai into the bar, despite the danger of the vote. Wang Hai entered and confronted Li Wei, ready to take revenge.

• Wen Xishu questioned the gaunt man outside, who identified himself as a debt collector and accused Li Wei of betraying him.
• Li Wei and Zhang Qiang drank red wine to vote against letting the visitor in, while Wen Xishu learned from a vengeful spirit that killing four innocent people would doom everyone.
• Wen Xishu forced Li Wei near the spirit and learned that Li Wei had robbed and murdered Wang Hai after exploiting him and others during the apocalypse.
• Wen Xishu and Xiao Ya drank blue wine and revealed Li Wei’s crimes, persuading the others to vote to let Wang Hai in.
• Wang Hai entered the bar, glared at Li Wei, and declared that it was time for him to pay his debt.

After Li Wei was killed by the vengeful spirits, Wen Xishu explained how ghosts could settle their grievances, but the group’s next mistaken vote let an innocent girl in and strengthened the ghosts’ advantage. The gramophone warned that four vengeful spirits would kill everyone, while Wen Xishu searched for a reliable way to identify ghosts as another knock sounded.

• Wang Hai, transformed into a ghost, let the wronged souls inside him tear Li Wei apart, then vanished after Li Wei died.
• Wen Xishu theorized that ghosts disappeared once their grievances were exposed and settled, and urged Zhang Qiang to reveal his past, but Zhang Qiang refused and threatened the others with his gun.
• A Human-Head Centipede knocked at the door, and Wen Xishu led the group to vote that the visitor was a ghost; after the vote, it became a frightened human girl.
• The gramophone announced that a fourth vengeful spirit would kill everyone, and the girl in red sent A Fei into a hallucination before Wen Xishu pulled him to safety.
• Xiao Ya warned that Zhang Qiang would die soon, and another knock sounded as Wen Xishu tried to find a way to distinguish ghosts from humans.

Wen Xishu survived the round in which his dead parents appeared, then tried to uncover the pasts of the remaining players before the Water Ghost assimilated Xiao Ya. When A Fei’s turn began, a girl’s disturbing images appeared on his laptop, and Wen Xishu pressured him to confess as the knocking started again.

• Wen Xishu recognized the figures at the door as his dead parents and persuaded the others to treat them as ghosts.
• Wen Xishu and the others drank the Red Wine, resisting the ghosts’ accusations until they left after cursing him.
• Wen Xishu warned Zhang Qiang to reveal what he had done at the Wharf, but Zhang Qiang refused and Xiao Ya’s hatred intensified.
• The next knocking began, and A Fei realized that the visitor had come for him.
• A Fei’s laptop showed disturbing scenes involving a girl, and Wen Xishu shut it before demanding that A Fei explain what happened between them.
• A Fei broke down and agreed to confess, but the knocking returned and his laptop opened by itself.

Wen Xishu used the female ghost’s surveillance ability to uncover the others’ pasts, survived Zhang Qiang’s attempt to shoot him, and forced everyone to drink the red wine. After the Gramophone announced a new rule, Wen Xishu turned to deal with Zhang Qiang as the Water Ghost appeared beside him.

• A Fei confessed that he had spied on a female streamer and failed to help her before she killed herself, while the female ghost’s footage showed a future in which Xiao Ya strangled him.
• Wen Xishu provoked the ghost and rewound the laptop footage, using its surveillance ability to reveal Zhang Qiang’s and Old Zhou’s pasts, though Chen Ming’s footage turned red.
• Zhang Qiang shot at Wen Xishu, but the bullet did not come out because Wen Xishu’s Phoenix Gloves had disabled the gun.
• Wen Xishu made Zhang Qiang and the others drink the red wine, and the female ghost warned A Fei before leaving.
• The Gramophone announced that powerful monsters’ abilities could be used through persuasion, deception, or other means, and Wen Xishu confronted Zhang Qiang as the Water Ghost appeared.