Chapter Summaries

Wenren Sheng watched ordinary people battle a giant Mutated Beast and observed its intelligence growing as the fight continued. The beast charged the command post, but a risky sniper shot killed it before it could become an Anomaly.

• Wenren Sheng observed the ambushers lure the giant Mutated Beast back and forth while they wounded it with ordinary weapons.
• The Hummer Bro noticed the beast’s intelligence improving, and Prophet Crow cawed six times as Rocket Man prepared to target the ambushers.
• The giant Mutated Beast charged the command post, crushing two tanks and killing their crews as the defenders called for support.
• Little Illusion told Wenren Sheng that a special bullet could either kill the beast or turn it into an Anomaly, and Wenren Sheng inferred that the crow’s prediction favored the safer outcome.
• A command-post sniper shot the beast in its right eye, causing chaotic changes before it collapsed and died.

Wenren Sheng intervened when players attacked and robbed the people who had killed a mutated giant beast, using his Supreme-tier VIP status to revoke one player's status. He watched the wounded survivors crawl into the beast's blood pool and transform as the players left.

• After the ambushers and intruders divided the giant beast's meat, players arrived and demanded eighty percent of the loot.
• When Hanks refused to give up most of the meat, the big saber wielder bisected him, and the players cut down others before agreeing to take only one in ten.
• Wenren Sheng appeared and questioned the players' decision to prey on weaker people, while Little Illusion watched with snacks.
• Eric Cohen attacked Wenren Sheng, and the Puppet Man announced that Eric's player status had been revoked; a bullet then killed Eric.
• Wenren Sheng let the remaining players leave, and the wounded survivors who crawled into the giant beast's blood pool grew tentacles in place of their legs.

After the Slaughter Land, the newly transformed Tentacle People gathered in a wasteland bar and began organizing around their rights and future. Major Lola arrived to recruit them, promising strength and a brighter future as he sought manpower to rebuild Eagle Fort.

• Wenren Sheng reflected that Prophet Crow's foresight had accurately predicted the deaths, then left the Slaughter Land with his companions.
• The Tentacle People gathered in a bar, where Ma En learned that they could not use banks or shop online and mocked the bartender's hope of becoming a player.
• Kruse called for the Tentacle People to unite and protect their property, while Ma En challenged him and was knocked down before accepting his help.
• Major Lola entered the bar and urged the Tentacle People to drive out their enemies and rebuild Miken, stirring the crowd to cheer.
• Major Lola privately planned to use the Tentacle People to rebuild Eagle Fort and promised them a safe path to grow stronger through hard work.

Wenren Sheng and Little Illusion visited a wasteland crater where revived corpses rapidly improved at Chinese chess, leading Wenren Sheng to consider the Game Emulator’s factions and its relationship with Chaos Omniscience. Little Illusion chose to join the Mutated Beasts and tried several forms before Wenren Sheng turned her into a lark.

• Wenren Sheng followed Little Illusion to a crater filled with shattered Petri dishes, implanted subjects, and artificial Class One Strange Seed crystals.
• Little Illusion poked the corpses, which rose and began playing Chinese chess while ignoring her and Wenren Sheng.
• Wenren Sheng watched the corpses rapidly develop from novice players into grandmasters and concluded that the Game Emulator was selecting among six factions, including observers.
• Little Illusion chose the Mutated Beasts because she wanted to experience turning into a dog, then transformed into several animals.
• Wenren Sheng turned Little Illusion into a lark, and she questioned Prophet Crow about its name after mistaking its call for a duck’s.

After returning to the Miken Wasteland, Wenren Sheng helped Little Illusion develop her growing Mutated Beast group and form an alliance with the Tentacle People. The alliance came under pressure when an armed faction of Tentacle People arrived to recruit them as soldiers, and Little Illusion went to confront them.

• Wenren Sheng returned to the Miken Wasteland and found Little Illusion leading Mutated Beasts while Prophet Crow and Tall Guy filmed a teeth-blasting stunt.
• Little Illusion asked Wenren Sheng to help her, and he planned for the herbivorous Mutated Beasts to grow larger and increase their food supply.
• Over six months, Little Illusion's group grew to several hundred after Wenren Sheng arranged an alliance with the Tentacle People, who farmed efficiently.
• A Tentacle Person warned Little Illusion that an armed group had arrived to subdue their people and make them soldiers.
• A Huge Tentacle Person urged the peaceful Tentacle People to join his faction for protection, but some resisted because they did not want to fight or risk dying again.
• Little Illusion flew out to confront the armed Tentacle People.

Wenren Sheng watched new factions rise across the Miken Wasteland, including the Star Slingers, who were trying to replicate a Space Fortress. The chapter left the Star Slingers seeking the missing component: love, which they planned to obtain from the Eastern Continent.

• Huge Tentacle Person attacked the Tentacle People, but Matron reflected the bullets and drove his group away.
• News reached Wenren Sheng that New Eagle Fortress, the Rebuilders Alliance, the Pioneers, and the Star Slingers had formed across the wasteland.
• Wenren Sheng learned that the Star Slingers planned to spread information and contamination through solar broadcasts, so he decided to watch them closely.
• At the Star Slingers' aerospace base, the bun-haired girl asked the scientists about replicating a Space Fortress, and the chief scientist said they lacked love.
• The bun-haired girl ordered the chief scientist to obtain love from the Eastern Continent at any cost.

Bai Yunzi learned from Snake Woman that Wenren Sheng could only be killed if he entered danger in his true form, so she recruited Su Luanyue to provoke men into taking such risks. Su Luanyue agreed to help after Bai Yunzi erased the ghost that had haunted her for years.

• Bai Yunzi asked Snake Woman why she had not killed Wenren Sheng directly, and Snake Woman explained that he avoided danger in his true form and that killing him inside a script world only woke him.
• Bai Yunzi visited Su Luanyue at Black Mountain Hospital, where Su Luanyue had been living with the ghost of a man who had died by suicide and become obsessed with her.
• Bai Yunzi waved her hand and made the ghost disappear, shocking Su Luanyue.
• Bai Yunzi offered Su Luanyue power in exchange for using her instincts to provoke men into entering dangerous places in their true forms to win a goddess's favor.
• Su Luanyue agreed to help, and Bai Yunzi left her a business card with only an email address.

Wenren Sheng discovered that a psychic influence was making Mutated Beasts fight over imagined females, and he helped Little Illusion address the disturbance. He spread customized imprints among the beasts and cleared their minds, leaving them focused on grass, sunshine, and roughhousing.

• Wenren Sheng learned that Mutated Beasts were fighting because a beautiful female voice in their minds urged them to compete for her.
• A Tentacle Person proposed castrating his companion, prompting the Mutated Beasts to flee.
• Wenren Sheng told Little Illusion about the psychic influence, and she asked him to help clear her subordinates’ minds.
• Wenren Sheng used the Heaven and Earth Interconnection Art to spread customized imprints through the Mutated Beasts.
• Wenren Sheng removed the beasts’ excess thoughts, leaving them with minds full of grass, sunshine, and roughhousing.

Wenren Sheng joined Little Illusion at a wasteland beauty pageant where a giant tentacled host painted contestants’ visions of the Camellia Goddess. A painting linked to the Star Slingers led him to suspect the pageant was part of the simulator’s broader designs, and he challenged the woman who appeared in the image about the meaning of derivatives.

• Wenren Sheng settled Little Illusion’s underlings, then investigated the growing popularity of broadcasts about the most beautiful woman.
• Little Illusion took Wenren Sheng and several Tentacle People to the All McKen beauty pageant at a farm in former Miken.
• Big Tentacle Vincent revealed his enormous form and used tentacles to read contestants’ minds and paint their visions of the Goddess.
• Wenren Sheng noticed an Old Man’s painting showed a galaxy and a woman with two men, and recognized the Old Man as a researcher associated with the Star Slingers.
• Wenren Sheng concluded that the pageant might connect to the simulator’s plans and the Star Slingers’ attempt to imitate the Space Fortress.
• A woman in a painting questioned Wenren Sheng about her beauty, and he criticized her hollow interior and challenged her knowledge of derivatives.

Wenren Sheng sold spiritually imprinted tea to a woman who had been projected into the competitors’ minds as their Goddess, then realized the contest was part of an effort to create love. The chief scientist revealed that the organizers planned to build a story around a chosen protagonist, and Vincent’s mist sent the crowd into a dream as they began executing the plan.

• Wenren Sheng persuaded the woman to buy unsold tea from his plantations on Ice Star, using the sale to pass along tea infused with spiritual imprints.
• After the competition ended, the organizers judged the paintings by how sincerely each contestant loved his imagined Goddess.
• Wenren Sheng rejected the paintings he saw and concluded that genuine love required a lasting life together, not lust or sacrifice alone.
• The chief scientist told the bun-haired girl that the organizers needed to package a story around a protagonist to gather source power and create love.
• The chief scientist clapped, and Vincent released mist that made the crowd collapse into a dream as the organizers began executing their story.

A simulation tablet showed Little Illusion a possible future in which Wenren Sheng mistook its chosen form for a mushroom and cooked it into soup. Little Illusion confronted Wenren Sheng, and he connected the tablet to reports of a powerful but potentially misleading precognition ability.

• The chief scientist demonstrated the simulation tablet, which generated possible life stories for several people, including one in which Kasser attacked Wenren Sheng and died.
• The tablet failed to identify the lark until the bun-haired girl helped it, then simulated Huanhuan’s future as a round, white mushroom that Wenren Sheng cooked into soup.
• Huanhuan flew off to confront the ordinary-looking man from the simulation and found Wenren Sheng.
• Huanhuan transformed into a mushroom-like form and asked Wenren Sheng why he would cook it; he explained that it looked like food.
• Huanhuan told Wenren Sheng that the tablet simulated lives, and he recalled reports of similar future-predicting abilities whose purpose and accuracy remained uncertain.

Wenren Sheng examined the Game Emulator and saw how it could predict lives, though it could not simulate his own. After leaving something on the tablet, he watched the bun-haired girl and the chief scientist search for someone capable of finding true love, and they found a promising man whose name he had forgotten.

• Wenren Sheng used Illusion Arts to take the iPad and discovered that the Game Emulator could not predict his future until he infused it with source power.
• Wenren Sheng read a simulation of Crow Jiajia’s life, then returned the iPad after leaving something on it.
• Wenren Sheng left the beauty pageant and decided to watch whether the bun-haired girl and the chief scientist could find someone suitable.
• The bun-haired girl and the chief scientist found a man whose simulated life showed he and a woman were willing to die for each other, but they did not know his name.

Dafflin, an amnesiac wandering the wasteland, encountered Anty Melt and her children, Layton and Phil, after killing two men who threatened them. Anty recognized Dafflin and invited him to stay, while Phil and Layton ate sandwiches made from the dead men.

• Dafflin killed a Blackhide who tried to take his painting, then left with the portrait of a woman whose name he could not remember.
• Dafflin heard Anty Melt settling a quarrel between Layton and Phil outside an abandoned building.
• Dafflin killed two men who planned to enslave the children and take Anty for themselves.
• Phil chopped up and ate the two men, and Dafflin turned back to meet the children and Anty.
• Anty recognized Dafflin, told him her name, and invited him to stay with her and the children.
• Anty served pork burger sandwiches, but Dafflin declined his portion while Phil and Layton ate.

Dafflin learned that Anty and the children survived by scavenging and relying on a phone that predicted deadly futures, including his own death if he stayed. He rejected Anty's warning and chose to remain, while she prepared to evacuate with the children.

• Dafflin discovered that Anty’s children saw dead people as livestock and learned that the family survived by scavenging and growing vegetables.
• After Phil asked whether Dafflin was the person Anty had been waiting for, he changed into a young, handsome athlete and asked Anty to stay with him.
• Anty showed Dafflin the phone’s prophecy that a Mutated Beast would kill him and the family if he remained.
• Dafflin suspected the phone manipulated people’s choices but insisted he could defeat the beast.
• Anty told Phil and Layton to gather their younger brother and leave, while Dafflin resolved to prove himself by staying.

Dafflin helped Anty and the children reach a shelter, where an alarm warned that a Rampage Beast was approaching. After passing a screening, he entered the orderly shelter while the truck was directed to a garage.

• Dafflin pushed Anty’s heavily loaded truck toward a shelter about a hundred kilometers away.
• Anty paid the armed guard to let the group through the shelter’s gate.
• The shelter broadcast an alarm that a Rampage Beast was approaching from fifty kilometers away.
• An armed guard used a talking Geiger counter to screen Dafflin and learned he was a B Low-Rank Otherworldly User.
• Dafflin entered the shelter and followed Anty’s truck toward a garage.

Dafflin saw a future in which a Tyrant Dragon attacked the shelter and killed him, then used Anty's phone to learn that he should find a man who could defeat it. His first attempt to lure the dinosaur ended in his death, and he returned to the same moment in the Illusion Simulation.

• A Tyrant Dragon attacked the shelter, and Dafflin ran out to draw it away from Anty and her family.
• The Tyrant Dragon killed Dafflin, but Anty's car rammed the beast as he died.
• Dafflin realized he was experiencing an Illusion Simulation and asked Anty for her phone, which showed that a mysterious man could kill the Tyrant Dragon.
• Dafflin and Anty split up, and Dafflin tried to lure the Tyrant Dragon by running in zigzags.
• The Tyrant Dragon caught Dafflin and stomped him flat, returning him to the simulated conversation with Anty.

Dafflin repeatedly died while trying to escape the Tyrant Dragon, eventually using a crow and a repaired car to get away. Instead of continuing toward Wenren Sheng, he turned back to fight the Tyrant Dragon as Wenren Sheng and Little Illusion watched from afar.

• Dafflin discovered that he had to survive long enough for a crow to arrive, then tried using the bird to guide him away from the pursuing Tyrant Dragon.
• After several failed attempts, Dafflin prepared a car carefully, picked up the crow, and escaped the Tyrant Dragon's pursuit.
• Dafflin decided to stop and challenge the Tyrant Dragon himself, using his Strange Seed and the combat tricks he had learned.
• Wenren Sheng watched Dafflin through Illusion Art and discussed his chances with Little Illusion, who began singing at his request.

After countless simulations, Dafflin found a way to kill a Tyrant Dragon, but arrived too late to save Anty and the shelter’s inhabitants. When his attempts ran out, he fled toward Crow and the man at the Wilderness Hotel, only for an Earth Dragon to swallow his car; Dafflin escaped, but nearly everyone with him died.

• Dafflin discovered the Tyrant Dragon’s weakness and killed one, then found three Tyrant Dragons feasting outside the shelter where Anty and others had been killed.
• Dafflin repeatedly restarted the simulation, growing stronger and learning to escape from a Tyrant Dragon’s stomach, but three Tyrant Dragons killed him when he tried to save Anty.
• After reaching the limit on his simulation attempts, Dafflin drove his companions toward Crow and the man at the Wilderness Hotel while four Tyrant Dragons pursued them.
• The man at the hotel stopped the four Tyrant Dragons, but an Earth Dragon rose beneath Dafflin’s car and swallowed it and its passengers.
• Dafflin escaped the Earth Dragon, but three of his four companions died, leaving him standing before the dragon’s corpse.

Dafflin relived the disaster in an illusion created by Wenren Sheng, avoided the Earth Dragon, and settled with Anty and their children. Years later, the phone simulator warned that sending their grown children to a shelter would end in tragedy, while a future without that choice still ended with Anty dying and Dafflin regretting his decisions.

• After Anty died in the original events, Dafflin asked White Hair how to return to the past, and White Hair directed him to the Wilderness Hotel.
• Dafflin begged Wenren Sheng to let him live with the people he loved, and Wenren Sheng had Little Illusion recreate events without the Earth Dragon appearing.
• Dafflin avoided the Earth Dragon, reached the hotel with Anty and the others, and accepted Wenren Sheng’s offer to stay in exchange for cleaning.
• Dafflin and Anty married, raised three children, and later struggled to find safe work for their adult children.
• Anty’s phone simulator predicted that a Tyrant Dragon would destroy a shelter and kill two children, while a later peaceful future ended with Anty dying and Dafflin wishing he had found her a Strange Seed.

Dafflin used a simulator to search for a way to live forever with his dead wife, but the visions ended when he woke in the real world. Convinced he could take control of the virtual world by becoming a hacker, he set out to study computer science.

• Dafflin repeatedly simulated ways to gain immortality and bring his wife back, but every attempt ended in failure.
• In a later simulation, Dafflin encountered Cthulhu and learned that his world was virtual and had multiple layers before he woke from the vision.
• Wenren Sheng recognized the influence of Chaos Omniscience and made the strange eyes growing across Dafflin's body disappear.
• Dafflin grieved that his wife was still dead, then connected the simulation and Hacker Beer to the idea of hacking the virtual world.
• Dafflin went to a nearby settlement to study, attending lessons with children and struggling with elementary-school arithmetic.