Chapter Summaries

Tai Yu attended Ran Ming’s charity banquet on Vita Island and won a Battlefield Recorder at auction for two million. As they discussed the veteran and the ongoing Extraterritorial Species threat, another guest arrived demanding Tai Yu’s untouched Fruit Tree Essence.

• Ran Ming took Tai Yu to the banquet restaurant in Green Demon Street and explained its history as the site of Shan Long High Priest’s battle against the King of Life Absorption.
• Ran Ming arranged for Tai Yu to join the charity auction online, and Tai Yu won the seventh lot, a Battlefield Recorder, for two million.
• Ran Ming told Tai Yu that the recorder contained the final battle of veteran Kui Wang, prompting them to discuss the continuing Extraterritorial Species incursions.
• Ran Ming and Tai Yu talked about Sky Abyss History of All Nations at War, and Pi Teng noted Ran Ming’s interest in Tai Yu’s photocopy edition.
• Tai Yu refused the green Fruit Tree Essence and asked for water, and a booming voice called out to claim the drink instead.

Tai Yu met Veteran Mutual Aid Society members Kuler and Gong Zhou at the banquet, then greeted their leader, Sheng Wu, who had returned to Star Ring City to recover. Ran Ming began connecting Tai Yu and Sheng Wu through Tai Yu’s Qiong Yin Publishing House book, and Sheng Wu asked which edition it was.

• Ran Ming introduced Kuler and Gong Zhou as representatives of the Veteran Mutual Aid Society.
• Kuler greeted Tai Yu as a lifesaving patron and invited him to play Star Road together.
• Tai Yu recognized Gong Zhou’s injuries as consequences of breaking through the Law Deployment Absolute Barrier and identified his Spine Boundary Pattern practice.
• Sheng Wu arrived in a giant wheelchair, and Ran Ming introduced him as the Veteran Mutual Aid Society’s head and a former Star Gate infrastructure chief.
• Ran Ming told Sheng Wu that Tai Yu was a Wei Clan Disciple with a photocopy of a Qiong Yin Publishing House book, and Sheng Wu asked whether it was Tian Yuan Qiong Yin or Han Guang Qiong Yin.

At a welcome banquet, Sheng Wu recounted his experiences beyond the You-1337 Star Gate and said he planned to return to the Han Guang Star System to visit his family’s graves. Tai Yu recognized the name Zhong He as the same person he knew, though more than a hundred years separated their stories.

• Tai Yu discussed an old Qiong Yin Publishing House edition with Sheng Wu and Ran Ming, and agreed to scan it for Ran Ming.
• At the banquet, Sheng Wu described the Isolated Star System, the Exploration Team, the Inner Universe Ruins, the Pan Demon Remains, and his confrontation with Shan Long High Priest.
• Tai Yu considered why Sheng Wu was openly sharing information about events beyond the You-1337 Star Gate.
• Sheng Wu said he intended to return to the Han Guang Star System to pay respects at the graves of his grandfather, parents, and Teacher Zhong He.
• Tai Yu asked about Zhong He, and Kulong explained that he meant General Zhong He, who had died more than a hundred years earlier.

Tai Yu spoke with Gong Zhou about Extraterritorial Species, his future in the Pantheon system, and his cultivation before Ran Ming drove him home. Ran Ming invited him to the Veteran Meetup and revealed that the local Meridian Opening Worms had been sent to Ji Xiu Laboratory, leaving Tai Yu considering how he might help Xin Rui’s family.

• Tai Yu used the Battlefield Recorder to discuss the Red Silicon Star System’s Extraterritorial Species with Gong Zhou, and the two grew more familiar.
• Gong Zhou told Tai Yu that auxiliary workers had little room to advance without becoming Celestials, and Tai Yu joked with him about being a service worker and coach.
• Ran Ming told Tai Yu that General Zhong He might have possessed Great Monarch-level strength and invited him to seek Sheng Wu’s advice at the Veteran Meetup.
• Ran Ming said the local Meridian Opening Worms had been contaminated and were at Ji Xiu Laboratory for attempted restoration, prompting Tai Yu to consider involving Ran Ming in Xin Rui’s family dispute.
• Ran Ming asked Tai Yu to send him a copy of Sky Abyss History of All Nations at War, and Pi Teng arranged to pick Tai Yu up for the Veteran Meetup and exchanged contact information with him.

Tai Yu investigated the distortion in Azar’s sketch and separated out a blurry, faceless figure while the Brilliant Left Eye watched him. Meanwhile, Ran Ming sought advice about Tai Yu’s background and brought the question to Sheng Wu, who offered to ask Farul directly.

• Tai Yu entered a Quiet Room and compared his Psychic Map sketch of Azar with a photograph from the Black Inspector’s files.
• Tai Yu removed an element from the sketch’s distortion, revealing a blurry, faceless humanoid outline that he hesitated to complete.
• Ran Ming and Pi Teng discussed whether Tai Yu was approaching them by choice or because someone else was directing him.
• Ran Ming redirected the car to the Military Academy to consult Sheng Wu, Gong Zhou, and others about Tai Yu.
• Gong Zhou said Tai Yu understood Extraterritorial Species combat logic and knew Tianyuan and the Han Guang System unusually well.
• Sheng Wu offered to ask Farul about Tai Yu and asked Ran Ming whether he had Farul’s contact information.

Tai Yu warned Ming Fan that Azar and Pi Teng might have foreign elements mixed into their Form and Spirit Frameworks, and she contacted her superiors to investigate. After falling asleep, Tai Yu dreamed that he was communicating with the Great Existence through the First Awareness Society.

• Tai Yu told Ming Fan that he had separated a strange outline from Azar and recommended monitoring people who had been in contact with him.
• Ming Fan explained the complicated relationship between Great Lord Lu Ande and the great Lord of Dawn, and said Lu Ande's faction could be a temporary collaborator.
• Tai Yu demonstrated that Pi Teng also contained a similar outline and warned that Ran Ming had been in prolonged contact with him.
• Ming Fan arranged to report the findings while Tai Yu went to sleep before the Veteran Meetup.
• Tai Yu dreamed he was reading Sky Abyss History of All Nations at War while communicating with the Great Existence through the First Awareness Society.

Tai Yu gained a fifty-page manuscript from his dream reading session, then attended a public Veteran Meetup at the Military Academy, where Gong Zhou taught him the Spine Boundary Pattern. The chapter ended with Tai Yu questioning whether the veterans’ living conditions were divided into different tiers.

• Tai Yu woke with a fifty-page scanned manuscript from the dream reading session, covering the opening of the Dark Mei War of the Gods through Mei’s death and the birth of the Six Heavens God Calamity.
• Ming Fan told Tai Yu that she had video-called Rui Bi and accidentally included him in the shot, and Tai Yu remarked on her efforts to pressure Xin Rui.
• Tai Yu traveled to the Military Academy for the Veteran Meetup while the organizers explained the event’s public broadcast and procedures.
• Gong Zhou took Tai Yu around the Military Academy and taught him the key points of the Spine Boundary Pattern as Tai Yu asked about its applications.
• Tai Yu noticed the polished floor and asked Gong Zhou whether the veterans’ living conditions came in different tiers.

Tai Yu proposed using the Twenty-Seven Intentions to communicate more directly with Gong Zhou, who agreed to the trial after Tai Yu offered another donation. They went to find test subjects and entered an empty section of the Military Academy, which Gong Zhou identified as the Isolation Zone.

• Gong Zhou explained that people with severe physical or mental distortions were confined and were very difficult to treat.
• Tai Yu offered to use the Twenty-Seven Intentions, a mind-linking method from the Hanguang lineage, to communicate with Gong Zhou.
• Gong Zhou agreed to try the method if Tai Yu donated another two million.
• Tai Yu suggested testing the method on former Spine Boundary Pattern practitioners in the confinement circle, and Gong Zhou agreed to take him there.
• Tai Yu noticed the academy buildings were empty, and Gong Zhou told him they had entered the Isolation Zone.

Gong Zhou took Tai Yu into the academy’s heavily guarded Isolation Zone, where Tai Yu saw aberrant personnel being held under harsh conditions. Gong Zhou led him deeper toward a recently damaged corridor, leaving the meaning and severity of an aberrant berserk state unclear.

• Gong Zhou led Tai Yu through multiple security checkpoints to the underground Isolation Zone, where armed academy personnel guarded the area.
• Tai Yu inferred that the Isolation Zone was deliberately placed far from the academy’s main buildings and Prayer Hall, and Gong Zhou admitted that the academy lacked a national divine artifact and could not properly treat everyone.
• Tai Yu chose to enter the Isolation Zone directly, and Gong Zhou took him through increasingly hot corridors to a makeshift ward holding more than a hundred aberrant personnel.
• Gong Zhou explained that the patients in the ward were in the best condition and that most would become irreversibly berserk within half an hour of leaving the Standard Array’s influence.
• Gong Zhou led Tai Yu farther into a corridor where personnel cleaned up shredded flesh, scales, and dark blue bodily fluid after a recent destructive incident.

Tai Yu toured the Isolation Zone with Gong Zhou and learned that its aberrated veterans were also treated as experimental subjects. After discussing possible causes of aberration, Tai Yu proposed beginning trials with people from the Strengthening Blessing Zone and prepared to explain his approach.

• Gong Zhou showed Tai Yu the Single Rooms and explained that the Isolation Zone held the Military Academy's most severely aberrated personnel.
• Tai Yu examined the residents and learned that veterans across Star Ring City's Military Academies could eventually suffer similar conditions.
• Gong Zhou described the lack of clear experimental progress and relayed a Great Monarch's theory that aberration involved dissolution and reconstitution amid environmental changes.
• Tai Yu reasoned that changes to the Central Star Region's rules could undermine old cultivation methods, while Gong Zhou watched him coldly.
• Tai Yu proposed using eligible people from the Strengthening Blessing Zone for preliminary trials and asked whether he should pay before explaining his plan.

Tai Yu began his Sanctuary experiment at the Military Academy, gathering Gong Zhou and other people connected to the Spine Boundary Pattern into a collective Mental Side practice. As the participants’ thoughts merged through the framework, Gong Zhou was overwhelmed by the chaos and suffering in his comrades’ minds and feared he would go insane if he remained immersed.

• Tai Yu and Gong Zhou discussed the experiment, and Tai Yu introduced the collective Configuration he called the Sanctuary.
• Gong Zhou said that some eligible participants could no longer control their thoughts, but Tai Yu insisted he could guide them.
• Gong Zhou and the other participants entered the Sanctuary framework and began gathering their thoughts into a combined force in the Mental Ocean.
• Gong Zhou’s question about doing without the Sky Abyss Spirit Network triggered a flood of battlefield memories, emotions, instincts, and information from the participants.
• Gong Zhou sensed his comrades’ despair, devotion, and fractured minds, then realized that remaining immersed in the torrent might drive him insane.

Gong Zhou was swept into the Sanctuary’s chaotic consciousness space, where Tai Yu guided him toward a more ordered level. Gong Zhou became the first student-layer participant to reach the Gestalt, while Tai Yu explained the hierarchy he had created for the experiment.

• Gong Zhou heard Tai Yu argue that order was necessary amid the participants’ chaotic thoughts and instincts.
• Tai Yu urged everyone to start over and led Gong Zhou out of the demonic tide toward a higher level.
• Gong Zhou followed Tai Yu and briefly stood on a broad level above the surging shadows and currents.
• Gong Zhou returned to the Strengthening Blessing Zone, where Tai Yu told him he was the first student-layer participant to reach the Gestalt.
• Tai Yu showed Gong Zhou the Gestalt projection and described its five levels, and Sheng Wu remarked that Tai Yu had thought of everything.

Tai Yu explained that Gestalt could contain and filter the Sanctuary’s corrupted currents by restoring boundaries, and Old Sha and two others entered it as intact spiritual projections. Gong Zhou realized people were still trapped beyond the boundary and prepared to use the Spine Boundary Pattern to bring them across.

• Tai Yu told Sheng Wu that the Sanctuary’s information exchange had collapsed into distorted currents and that Gestalt could fence off those still capable of thought.
• Old Sha’s spiritual projection entered Gestalt, followed by two other non-aberrant personnel, while their physical bodies began to calm.
• Gong Zhou sensed meaningful voices within the currents beyond Gestalt’s boundary, including someone calling for help.
• Tai Yu suggested that Gong Zhou use the Spine Boundary Pattern to pull the trapped people across the boundary.

Tai Yu and Sheng Wu discussed Gong Zhou’s attempt to rescue people using the Spine Boundary Pattern and the mismatch between the Standard Array’s blessing power and the companions’ combined force. Their investigation left open whether the Original Paradigm, the inherited system, or both had gone astray.

• Gong Zhou rallied his companions to use the Spine Boundary Pattern to pull people from the foul tidal sea, causing the Strengthening Blessing Zone to flicker and waver.
• Sheng Wu and Tai Yu discussed how the treatment might save people through the Student Layer and mutual aid, though some people would still die.
• Tai Yu suggested that Gong Zhou and his companions’ combined force operated at a different frequency from the Gestalt’s Blessing Power, worsening the structure’s turbulence.
• Sheng Wu confirmed that the zone used a Standard Array, and Tai Yu questioned why it did not resonate with the Original Paradigm.
• Sheng Wu recalled Teacher Zhong He saying that their era had gone astray at its root, and repeated the Great Lord’s view that truth could be sought through dreams.

Tai Yu and Sheng Wu discussed revising the experiment after another aberrant was stabilized, while Tai Yu planned the next stage and extended his leave. Ran Ming then asked Tai Yu to advise him about an unusual incident on You Chong Star involving Tuoyuan City.

• Gong Zhou and the others salvaged another aberrant, whose Mental Layer stabilized and whose body improved through the Gestalt, Sanctuary, and Spine Boundary Pattern.
• Tai Yu explained that the experiment’s next stage, Great Comprehension, would strengthen participants’ mental connection and guide contact with the Great Existence through relays in the Place of Slumber.
• Tai Yu asked Senior Informant Lady Ming Fan to extend his leave and bring him clothes, and she agreed.
• Ran Ming praised Tai Yu’s understanding of the Tianyuan-Han Guang System and said an unusual company incident had occurred on You Chong Star.
• Ran Ming told Tai Yu that the abnormal individual had visited Tuoyuan City before dying and asked him to help assess the incident.

Ran Ming told Sheng Wu and the others that Azar had identified the First Awareness Society as an illegal organization originating in the Han Guang Star System. Tai Yu linked the group to the Dream Net project, and the chapter ended with Sheng Wu explaining that the original Dream Net was destroyed with the Eunuch Lord.

• Ran Ming explained that Azar had named the First Awareness Society as Feng Yan’s illegal organization and said it originated in the Han Guang Star System.
• Sheng Wu said he vaguely recognized the name and messaged Great Lord Lu Ande to ask about it.
• Tai Yu asked whether Materialization Imprint Plates were still in use and said their inventor had belonged to the First Awareness Society.
• Tai Yu connected the Dream Net to the Dream Divine Abomination, and Sheng Wu explained that Great Monarch Rong Jing had led the project to link the Han Guang Star System with the Sky Abyss Spirit Network.
• Tai Yu said the First Awareness Society had opposed the Eunuch Lord’s control of the Dream Net project.
• Sheng Wu said the Dream Net was destroyed along with the Eunuch Lord, and later imitations were smaller before the network shut down after the Calamity Era.

At a boisterous gathering, Ran Ming questioned Tai Yu about the First Awareness Society and the Dream Divine Abomination. Tai Yu warned that the Society’s revelation threatened Great Lord Lu Ande’s position and left the key question of whether Lu Ande was still the person he had been in the Calamity Era.

• The guests’ debate about the Calamity Era grew into a chaotic drinking party, while Tai Yu listened and made occasional sketches.
• Ran Ming left Sheng Wu and approached Tai Yu to ask about the First Awareness Society, but Tai Yu said he knew little about it and had dealt with the Dream Divine Abomination.
• Tai Yu told Ran Ming that Azar’s disclosure of the Society’s name was meant to cause trouble for Great Lord Lu Ande and could threaten his military funding and survival in the Central Star Region.
• Tai Yu judged that the Society was probably an old acquaintance of Lu Ande and asked whether Lu Ande now was still the same person he had been at the end of the Calamity Era.
• Sheng Wu joined them, and Tai Yu joked that Lu Ande had merely been half a head; when Ran Ming asked how Tai Yu knew so much, Tai Yu credited his interests and access to Ceremonial Ancient Script and dreams.

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ming Fan brings clothes for Tai Yu, hinting that they are aware of the situation at the "Military Academy."
• Ran Ming visits, accompanied by Pi Teng, and expresses interest in Tai Yu's experiment.
• Tai Yu and Ran Ming tour the "Military Academy," observing the effects of the "Pantheon" on the veterans.
• They reach the new Experimental Zone, where Tai Yu explains his experiment to Ran Ming.

Character Developments

• Tai Yu demonstrates his professional expertise and understanding of the "Boundary" between reality and illusion.
• Ran Ming shows curiosity and investment interest in Tai Yu's experiment but struggles to understand its complexities.
• Ming Fan displays her efficiency and subtlety in conveying information to Tai Yu.

Significant Themes

• The blurring line between reality and illusion, and the consequences of manipulating this boundary.
• The struggle to understand and control complex systems, as seen through Tai Yu's experiment and Ran Ming's attempts to grasp it.
• The role of professionals and their ability to navigate intricate situations, as exemplified by Tai Yu.

Character Interactions

• Tai Yu and Ming Fan exchange a glance, signaling their shared understanding of the situation.
• Tai Yu and Ran Ming engage in a conversation that reveals Tai Yu's expertise and Ran Ming's limited understanding.
• Tai Yu and Pi Teng interact briefly, with Pi Teng supporting Ran Ming when he stumbles.

Ran Ming and Pi Teng discussed Tai Yu’s unusual approach to boundaries and Dreamland System power, while Ran Ming worried about the connections gathering around him. After Pi Teng fell asleep at work, a hidden group used his dream to classify him as the Strategic Fulcrum and assign the Secret Mine project team to contact him.

• Ran Ming asked Pi Teng to analyze Tai Yu, and Pi Teng concluded that Tai Yu’s strict rules were experimental conditions for blurring boundaries with Dreamland System power.
• Ran Ming suspected Tai Yu’s methods resembled the First Awareness Society and told Pi Teng to watch it more closely while ending the daily reports on Tai Yu.
• Ran Ming reviewed the growing network of people and groups connected to him and lamented that he could not take the initiative because of his responsibilities.
• Pi Teng stayed at his office after Ran Ming went home and fell asleep from exhaustion.
• In his dream, Pi Teng reviewed the day and recommended further contact with a suspected out-of-control target.
• A hidden group assigned the Secret Mine project team to take over under the codename Mentor Sixty-Six, began signal matching, and ordered temporary memory clearing of the Strategic Fulcrum.

During Joint Reading, Tai Yu’s Dreamscape revealed the truth of Bai Jiao’s life and the purpose of his connection to the Great Existence. Tai Yu learned the ritual for turning a Void Soul Spirit into a Yin Lord Evil God, while nearly half his vacation had passed.

• Tai Yu continued his experiment and used his brief periods of sleep for Joint Reading with the Great Existence.
• The pendant’s Orange Fire traces stirred fear in Bai Jiao and briefly awakened his awareness.
• Bai Jiao examined his life and realized he had been a Fulcrum in a constructed Dreamscape, used to convert power from the Place of Slumber and the Sin Dream Kingdom from uncontrollable to controllable.
• Bai Jiao’s life Dreamscape vanished, leaving behind information about how a Void Soul Spirit could become a Yin Lord Evil God and remain active in the Abyssal Spirit Net.
• Tai Yu learned the ritual involving Ore, dangerous materials, a Secret Mine Scenery, the pendant, and Orange Fire, then checked the time and found it was 2:00 on Day 1 of Week 34, Year 1305 of the New Century.