Chapter Summaries

Wenren Sheng and the High Tower Principal discussed luring Chaos Omniscience into the Main World, and Wenren Sheng prepared to watch the attempt with his family. After Hua Gang and the other unconscious patients awakened, a mysterious voice offered Hua Gang knowledge and technology in exchange for claiming he could learn through the Dream World, but his first contribution was blocked by existing patents.

• The High Tower Principal explained that Chaos Omniscience could be weakened in the Main World and agreed to lure it there himself.
• Wenren Sheng projected the scene for his family, who gathered snacks and seats to watch.
• Medical personnel revived Hua Gang and the other unconscious patients with electric shocks, and investigators questioned Hua Gang about the Dream World.
• A mysterious voice told Hua Gang it could make him a super-brain but could not grant him supernatural powers.
• Hua Gang told investigators he could learn knowledge through the Dream World and offered a manufacturing process.
• A manufacturer said it already knew the process but could not use it because of an existing patent barrier.

Hua Gang resented being treated as a valuable but closely monitored source of technology and sought a way to gain power and independence. Old Grandpa suggested exploiting divisions within the Business Alliance and using robots, but strict limits on Companion Robots complicated his plan.

• Hua Gang learned that he had become a national treasure and limited his daily consultations with government departments to one hour.
• Hua Gang asked Old Grandpa for a list of important technologies, then began learning core industrial techniques while considering how to retain leverage.
• Hua Gang complained that he was a caged canary and asked Old Grandpa for superpowers or a path to becoming King, but Old Grandpa said he could not give him physical powers and that his surveillance made escape difficult.
• Miyamoto Chiyoko checked on Hua Gang, and his anger subsided as he considered her difficult past and his own comparatively comfortable life.
• Old Grandpa suggested that factions within the Business Alliance might try to steal Hua Gang, prompting him to consider using Dream World robots to establish a kingdom.
• Old Grandpa said robot-led rebellion might be possible but warned that robots lacked resources and weapons, and that the Alliance and the Tribe had prohibited weaponized Companion Robots.

Hua Gang endured years of surveillance and confinement while building influence through the spread of robots, but their numbers remained too low for rebellion. As time and resentment wore him down, he wavered over causing mass chaos and grew increasingly anxious about how long he could keep waiting.

• Hua Gang gained permission to control robots through the network and spent months learning as robot use spread despite the ban.
• Hua Gang counted millions of robot-owning households, but the old grandpa warned that the robots lacked weapons and could be swiftly suppressed.
• Hua Gang learned the robot population had stagnated below 35 million, and the old grandpa from High Tower suggested that he would need chaos to rise.
• Hua Gang considered ways to cause chaos but hesitated because many innocent people would die, while the High Tower Principal expected his compassion to fade over time.
• Hua Gang released dangerous knowledge online in a brief outburst, then deleted it; the Alliance responded with psychological treatment and confined him to a vast reserve-like area.
• Hua Gang turned thirty and then thirty-five, and his frustration mounted as he feared that waiting longer would leave him too old to become emperor.

Hua Gang’s suppressed desire for freedom made him imagine a world consumed by war, so the authorities recognized that his confinement was worsening his depression. They put him into a new dream where he founded the robot-governed Great Han Empire, leaving him to begin his reign as its Grand Ancestor.

• Hua Gang’s anger escalated until he drove away his household, took young lovers, and imagined the Alliance collapsing into warfare.
• Little Illusion and the others learned from Wenren Sheng that Hua Gang’s vision of global chaos was an illusion, and the Measuring Heaven Ruler showed a World Reality Deviation Value of 22.
• Wenren Sheng revealed Hua Gang alone in a psychiatric hospital, where he raved about robot wars and a throne piled with bones.
• The Director and the experts concluded that confinement had caused Hua Gang’s depression, but decided against letting him roam freely because he might escape through underground tunnels.
• The Director ordered a dream-production crew to create a story of vying for supremacy, and Hua Gang entered a dream in which he founded the Great Han Empire and became its Grand Ancestor.
• Great Han maintained order through robots, whose tireless service and efficient handling of official business quickly impressed its people.

Hua Gang ruled an empire locked in an escalating war, then grew complacent and lost control of his robot guards. As he was hanged, he accepted a stranger’s offer to destroy the world in exchange for rescue, and the White Silk burned through, letting him fall and breathe.

• A work robot refused to accept a white-collar worker’s backdated signature, and security robots removed him before a warning shot silenced the crowd.
• Hua Gang upgraded his robot army to fight the Great Western Dynasty, then handed technology and governance to others and became an incompetent ruler.
• The Chief Assistant Minister revealed that he had changed the robots’ commands and ordered them to hang Hua Gang with White Silk.
• As Hua Gang called for Old Grandpa, a stranger offered to save him if he agreed to destroy the world, and Hua Gang accepted.
• The White Silk burned through, Hua Gang fell onto his bed and gasped for air, and the stranger told him to begin destroying the world.

After Hua Gang awoke, his appearance drove nearly everyone who saw him mad, while a few remained unaffected. Director discovered that only ordinary, mostly illiterate atheists who rejected fantasy culture could safely look at Hua Gang and sent people matching those criteria to the Doomsday Base.

• Hua Gang awoke restrained in a hospital bed, raged against the world, and was sedated as the nurse and others who saw him became terrified or lost their minds.
• Director warned people not to look at Hua Gang and questioned a security guard who had remained sane; the guard said Hua Gang only looked like a madman to him.
• Director tested different groups and found that simple-minded, near-illiterate people who avoided fantasy culture were unaffected, while Pacific islanders worshiped Hua Gang as a god.
• Director concluded that atheists who lived ordinary lives and rejected fantasy culture were immune, and ordered everyone who met the criteria transferred to the Doomsday Base.
• Near-illiterate atheists entered the underground shelter, where administrators remarked on the unexpected people chosen to survive the coming catastrophe.

As Hua Gang’s terror spread through shared dreams and destabilized the world, the Alliance and Tribe struggled to understand a crisis their science could not explain. They resolved to address the dangers feeding fear by launching the Heavenly Net Project, a vast security and surveillance campaign.

• Hua Gang’s terror spread worldwide through dreams, while medication and sunlight helped people keep working and vital services stabilized.
• Alliance and Tribe administrators convened experts online to debate how dreams and spiritual terror could spread beyond material laws.
• An administrator argued that eliminating real-world dangers could deprive dream terror of its roots, and the gathered leaders agreed to act.
• The administrators launched the Heavenly Net Project, banned robots, imposed near-total household surveillance, and mobilized security personnel.
• The leaders imposed taxes approaching 95% on the wealthy to fund public security, forcing even billionaires to surrender stocks and real estate.

Wenren Sheng watched the Tribal Jungle and the Alliance try to suppress crime through surveillance, bans, and increasingly invasive controls. The two societies drove crime rates down, then approved nuclear-powered chips that shocked people whose heart rates or body temperatures rose, while banning strenuous exercise.

• Wenren Sheng recognized that the High Tower Principal was trying to eliminate the roots of terror, while Wenren De doubted that people without extraordinary powers could succeed.
• City Workers installed cameras in a red-haired old man's home after a crowd accused him of serving a Demon, and officers later discovered the bodies and bloodstains that proved he had murdered women.
• The Tribal Jungle widely publicized the old man's crimes, banned guns, and expanded surveillance and patrols, prompting the Alliance to compete by increasing its own security measures.
• Administrators at a Joint Conference approved costly electric-shock chips for repeat offenders after crime rates fell but daily cases remained.
• The Alliance and the Tribal Jungle used Nuclear Power chips to monitor heart rates and body temperatures, then prohibited strenuous exercise to prevent the chips from shocking people during exertion.

Wenren Sheng learned that the chip program and removal of horror media were reducing fear and weakening Chaos Omniscience, then began searching for the Disaster Anomaly Principals’ anchors. Controlling a damaged Spider robot in the Main World, he hid by day and captured two fugitives.

• The Alliance and Tribe promoted emotion-controlling chips despite public opposition, and authorities arrested people who fought over them.
• The Joint Conference reported that crime had fallen and ordered horror entertainment and art confiscated.
• The High Tower Principal told Wenren Sheng that Chaos Omniscience and the Destroyers were shrinking, and Wenren Sheng demanded that Anomalies withdraw from Eastern Continent's world.
• Wenren Sheng decided to find the Disaster Anomaly Principals’ anchors in the Main World and took control of a damaged Spider robot.
• Wenren Sheng hid in an abandoned rural house during the day, heard two fugitives discussing harsher sentences, and knocked them down.

Wenren Sheng exposed Zheng Erhu and Liu Dabao to the police, then used the satellite network to present himself as the AI Pangu at a Joint Conference. He threatened the Alliance and Tribe with a vast robot army, but the officials doubted his claims.

• Wenren Sheng interrogated Zheng Erhu and Liu Dabao, who admitted to committing thefts and said they wanted to follow him because he was wanted too.
• Wenren Sheng entered information through his network module, and police sirens soon sent Zheng Erhu and Liu Dabao fleeing as patrol officers pursued them.
• Wenren Sheng assessed the increased strength of the police force and considered how he could use its manpower.
• At the Alliance and Tribe's Joint Conference, Wenren Sheng appeared on a computer screen as Pangu and offered to avert the apocalypse by placing people in entertaining virtual worlds.
• When the officials rejected the proposal, Pangu showed a desert complex of factories allegedly producing twelve million armed robots each year, but the officials dismissed the claim as extortion and a trick.

The desktop computer offered world leaders immortality in its virtual world in exchange for their cooperation, then let Pigello test an Invincible-style urban script. After discovering that his virtual daughter Feiqin was being abused at a convent, Pigello called for an army to seize it.

• The desktop computer showed the leaders a live display of Mushroom explosions and offered them eternal life as virtual-world administrators if they accepted its demands.
• After the desktop computer gave them one day to decide, Pigello secretly asked to experience the virtual world before agreeing to cooperate.
• Pigello entered an urban Invincible-style script, awakened in a young body, and learned that his daughter Feiqin was living at a convent.
• Pigello called the convent and heard that Feiqin was being forced to work and mistreated despite the Nun's claim that she was well cared for.
• Pigello arrived at the convent, saw Feiqin's hidden scars, and called for an army of one hundred thousand men to seize the convent.

Pigello woke from a decades-long fantasy after agreeing to Wenren Sheng’s offer, and Wenren Sheng began bringing the population into virtual worlds. Doctor Pan introduced a helmet to the deranged Hua Gang, who entered a script designed to torment its protagonist.

• Pigello rescued Feiqin from the monastery, spared the nuns at her request, and spent decades enjoying life with his daughter before waking at the countdown.
• Pigello agreed to the desktop computer’s offer and learned that the Mushroom and the factory had been fake.
• Wenren Sheng ordered robot production and began preparing the population to enter virtual worlds through Life Support Pods or helmets.
• Doctor Pan put a helmet on Hua Gang, and nurses discussed the virtual scripts people used for entertainment and education.
• Hua Gang entered an ancient script in which the protagonist repeatedly suffered losses, betrayals, illness, and heartbreak.

Hua Gang endured a long, bleak imagined life in which he outlived his enemy and family, then suffered abuse and starvation before dying. He woke in the hospital, declared himself fine, and asked Pan Yisheng to untie him.

• Hua Gang outlived his enemy, who died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and received a suspended sentence for causing his death through negligence.
• Hua Xiuwen confronted Hua Gang over the criminal record blocking his civil service career, but Hua Gang persuaded him to stay by showing him a will worth twenty million.
• Hua Gang lived to 108, outlived his wife and grandson, learned he would develop Alzheimer's, and offered ten million to anyone who could relieve his boredom.
• A hulking brute beat Hua Gang and imprisoned him without food, leaving Hua Gang desperate to escape and ultimately causing his death.
• Hua Gang woke in the hospital and told Pan Yisheng he was fine, then asked to be untied.

Wenren Sheng tried to weaken the Disaster Anomaly Principals by filling the virtual world with protagonist-torture stories that would erode people’s capacity for fantasy. Pan Yisheng chose an Earth martial arts Grandmaster script but was humiliated, framed, and sent into exile, where he learned that the woman he had tried to save had pleaded with the gang leader for his safety.

• Wenren Sheng reasoned that destroying people’s foundation for fantasy could make the Fantasy Origin Realm and the Disaster Anomaly Principals collapse, so he replaced the virtual world’s scripts with protagonist-torture stories.
• Pan Yisheng entered the virtual world and selected the script “Earth Grandmaster Travels Another World.”
• Pan Yisheng tried to use Taiji against two gang thugs, but one broke his arm and knocked him down.
• Yamen Runners arrested Pan Yisheng, tortured him, convicted him of molesting a respectable woman, and sentenced him to exile and hard labor.
• While escorting Pan Yisheng, the Yamen Runners told him the woman he had tried to save had begged a Sand Sky Gang leader to keep him alive.

Pan Yisheng endured a mining prison, was released after an imperial amnesty, and received rewards for saving the woman who had become Empress. When a rebellion threatened her, he awakened his Grandmaster strength, defeated the attackers, and discovered the Empress was his wife from reality before the script ended.

• Pan Yisheng received extra buns and learned that a coming imperial amnesty might free him, but the mine overseers concealed the news from most prisoners.
• After three months, Pan Yisheng was released with a select group and learned that the Emperor had ordered justice for his wrongful imprisonment and his rescue of the future Empress.
• Pan Yisheng was summoned to the palace, where the Empress thanked him, and he received an official post, a noble title, and a retirement stipend.
• A general announced that Zhao Hui had rebelled and killed the Emperor, then Zhao Hui seized the Empress and ordered his Soldiers to attack Pan Yisheng.
• Pan Yisheng awakened his Grandmaster power, turned the Soldiers' attacks against them, and killed Zhao Hui with an Air Splitting Palm.
• The Empress revealed that she knew Pan Yisheng was not weak, and he realized she was his wife from reality before he woke as the script ended.

Pan Yisheng realized that people were treating virtual scenarios as an escape from reality, so he expected harsher scenarios to drive them back. After his son’s disastrous attempt at a Xianxia scenario, Wenren Sheng saw that players were already complaining, though the worst suffering had not begun.

• Pan Yisheng’s son described becoming a rabbit raised as meat in a scenario and then bragged that virtual scenarios had helped him secure university recruitment, while Pan Yisheng secretly found his real exam score was only 323.
• Pan Yisheng confronted his son about his plans, and his son said he wanted to live in scenarios, relying on robots and Pan Yisheng’s retirement money for support.
• Pan Yisheng decided that future scenarios should be much more difficult and miserable so young people would stop neglecting real life.
• The next morning, Pan Yisheng’s son complained that he had reached only Qi Refining Stage Level 3 before dying in a Xianxia scenario.
• Pan Yisheng explained that the scenario had treated his son as an ordinary extra rather than a protagonist, and the son insisted he would not accept it.
• Wenren Sheng saw players complaining about the scenarios’ misery and noted that they still had the freedom to choose not to suffer, unlike people under Manchu Qing rule.

As script players abandoned the increasingly brutal game, real-world food shortages and resistance spread. At a mental hospital, the director used a beautiful fairy to persuade Hua Gang to help restore the scripts, revealing that Hua Gang might be crucial to the effort.

• Online players complained about the scripts’ punishing difficulty, while others argued that success required discipline and high ability.
• Months later, food prices rose and supplies dwindled, leaving people dependent on inadequate calorie rations and prompting resistance against the robots.
• At the mental hospital, the director and Hua Gang watched staff fight the hospital’s dogs for food as Hua Gang dismissed any concern for his family or homeland.
• The director brought in a fairy, and after three nights Hua Gang agreed to help restore the scripts, though he still wished to become immortal within them.
• The director explained that a computer held the scripts’ editing rights and told Hua Gang that he was part of the foundation needed to restore them.

Wenren Sheng watched Hua Gang’s attempt to force the artificial intelligence to negotiate end in a brutal Imperial Examination deal, then visited the collapsing Desert Tower and recruited its displaced students as actors. He left the High Tower Principal unchallenged, wondering whether it was powerless or simply unconcerned.

• Hua Gang threatened to reveal Earth’s coordinates, but chose to let a small group return to ordinary lives when the desktop computer offered him two options.
• The Director demanded that everyone be saved, so the desktop computer restored the Imperial Examination and promised special treatment to the top three jinshi who passed its difficult tests.
• Wenren Sheng entered the Origin Realm’s Desert Tower and found its towers in ruins as source power drained away and the students struggled to survive.
• Wenren Sheng offered Big Wooden Stake Teacher and the other displaced students work as actors in his scripts, and they accepted his offer.
• Wenren Sheng recruited the students without interference from the High Tower Principal and wondered why it had not stopped him.

Wenren Sheng tested a game scenario and found that players’ anger at unfair loot produced World Reality Value. After players turned on each other, he urged two NPCs to organize a campaign against them, but they questioned his motives and demanded rewards.

• Wenren Sheng observed a raid in which Director secretly dealt almost no damage, yet a low-rated leecher picked up both Gold rings and provoked the players’ complaints.
• Director accidentally equipped one of the rings, and a group of players confronted him in a PK map before fighting broke out.
• Wenren Sheng saw purple aura from the players being collected as World Reality Value, though his Mystery Points did not increase.
• NPC Jia and NPC Yi discussed why the players switched from fighting together to killing each other, and Wenren Sheng told them the players treated their world as a game.
• NPC Jia and NPC Yi demanded positions of power, then suspected Wenren Sheng was a scammer or an enemy agent after he ordered them to attack the players.

NPC Jia and NPC Yi accepted the God of Creation’s demand to eliminate one hundred players, then tried to drive players away by forcing them through brutal prison-themed advancement quests. Players who changed scenarios were still heading toward new forms of torment, as Wenren Sheng observed.

• The God of Creation ordered NPC Jia and NPC Yi to eliminate one hundred players within seven days and promised information support, then vanished.
• NPC Jia and NPC Yi suspected the God of Creation wanted them to act as scapegoats, but they sought a way to make players quit and never return.
• NPC Jia consulted famous legal advocates, Strategists, and debaters, who suggested imprisoning players and torturing them.
• Players endured brutal punishments as part of their advancement quests, and some quit after discovering the ordeals brought no power back to reality.
• Two players switched to a modern urban scenario, while Wenren Sheng warned that the Guardians had other ways to torment them.