Recaps

Sun Hang discussed Miki Fukada’s prospects for freedom, then went with her to the research institute after Song Yarong called him about a project involving the Flesh Taisui. Song Yarong revealed that the Insecticide Plan’s powered armor prototype kept breaking apart in flight and that she wanted to use the Flesh Taisui’s mycelium to solve the problem.

• Sun Hang told Miki Fukada she might gain more freedom if she could live for a month without using her ability, provided Tianshu Tower agreed to the proposal.
• Yang Lian woke and asked Sun Hang not to tell her sister about what had happened the previous day.
• Song Yarong summoned Sun Hang to the research institute and said her request involved the Flesh Taisui.
• Sun Hang took Miki Fukada to Engineering Workshop Three, where Song Yarong showed them the P.F.D.A. powered armor and its rocket booster.
• Song Yarong explained that the armor repeatedly disintegrated during unmanned flight tests because its joint material fatigued, and Sun Hang guessed she had tried the Flesh Taisui’s mycelium.

Song Yarong tested Sun Hang’s Tai Sui Hyphae as a material for the P.F.D.A. and found they could stay stable long enough for the assault mission. With the material problem solved, the team prepared to begin a live test of the armor’s approach and landing system.

• Song Yarong explained that her own hyphae degraded too quickly for the P.F.D.A., while Sun Hang’s hyphae might last longer after separation.
• Sun Hang placed a clump of hyphae in a monitoring box, where it remained stable for twenty-two minutes and forty seconds before turning to powder.
• Sun Hang said he could produce several tons of hyphae, and Song Yarong said each P.F.D.A. needed less than two hundred grams.
• Sun Hang questioned how the P.F.D.A. could safely stop at Chimera Seventeen, and Song Yarong described its booster release, thrusters, anchor hook, and pilot ejection system.
• Song Yarong said the hyphae breakthrough allowed the team to begin a live test at a southern-suburbs training ground within an hour, while Sun Hang declined to be the test subject.

Sun Hang and the team tested the P.F.D.A. prototype, which reached its target speed but failed during landing and severely damaged its dummy pilot. As the team considered the risks of the Insecticide Plan, Sun Hang warned that Chimera Seventeen could extract secrets even from dead infected people, leaving Song Yarong and Yang Qi in danger.

• Sun Hang used Tai Sui Hyphae to produce P.F.D.A. components with a one-hundred-percent pass rate, and the team assembled the prototype for a remote test.
• The P.F.D.A. accelerated to Mach 5 and completed its approach, but damaged braking thrusters and failed controls sent its landing airbag outside the safety zone.
• Song Yarong explained that delayed disassembly and airbag deployment contributed to the crash, while the dummy's severe trauma threatened to shrink the list of eligible pilots.
• Sun Hang asked why soldiers could not draw Chimera Seventeen's fire before the hunters advanced, and Song Yarong explained that its stress response no longer had a cooldown.
• Sun Hang warned Song Yarong that Chimera Seventeen could obtain memories from dead infected people and urged her to strengthen security around herself and Yang Qi.

Sun Hang saved Song Yarong from an engineer who suddenly became an anomaly, then investigated the engineer’s memories for the source of the corruption. His search revealed that the engineer’s daughter’s birthday was connected to the incident, and the girl’s smile was disturbingly unnatural.

• The engineer transformed into an anomaly, attacked Song Yarong, and was killed when Sun Hang destroyed his head and devoured the meme in his body.
• Song Yarong ordered the researchers and engineers to return to headquarters for examinations while security lowered its weapons.
• Sun Hang found no sign that emotion or contamination at the test site had caused the engineer’s corruption, and traced his memories to a birthday visit with his daughter.
• Sun Hang noticed the daughter had no face in the engineer’s memories and ordered the severed head brought to him.
• Sun Hang searched the engineer’s brain and saw the nine-year-old girl smiling with an eerie expression.

Sun Hang discovered that Zhao Ming’s memory of celebrating Zhao Xuan’s birthday concealed rotten flesh disguised as cake, and he found evidence that Zhao Xuan had never appeared in public. At Zhao Ming’s home, Sun Hang uncovered an infant’s remains preserved inside a wall.

• Sun Hang noticed the birthday cake in Zhao Ming’s memory was rotten flesh, which Zhao Ming ate while believing it was cake.
• Song Yarong’s records showed that Zhao Xuan had no kindergarten attendance and never attended the elementary school where Zhao Ming enrolled her.
• Sun Hang ordered Song Yarong and Tang Jing to return to the institute, then went to Zhao Ming’s residence and took command of the investigators there.
• Sun Hang found unworn children’s shoes and a dusty bedroom prepared for Zhao Xuan, despite evidence that she had never been seen by others.
• Sun Hang smashed open the wall behind the child’s bed and discovered a glass jar containing an infant’s remains in a formaldehyde-like solution.

Sun Hang discovered that Zhao Ming’s daughter had died as an infant and concluded that Chimera Seventeen had shattered Zhao Ming’s fantasy and exploited his resulting anomalization to target Song Yarong. As Sun Hang left the case behind, he began to wonder whether people’s thoughts shaped the forms of Anomalies—and how that idea related to his own wish-fulfillment ability.

• Sun Hang recovered a jar containing Zhao Xuan’s preserved infant corpse and told Song Yarong that Zhao Ming had imagined his daughter was still alive.
• Sun Hang reasoned that Zhao Ming’s belief had kept his grief buried, but someone had broken his fantasy and triggered his anomalization.
• Sun Hang suspected Chimera Seventeen had altered Zhao Ming’s memories to impersonate Zhao Xuan, then used him to attack Song Yarong and eavesdrop on P.F.D.A.
• Sun Hang warned Song Yarong that Chimera Seventeen’s actions could undermine trust among colleagues, and she decided to consult Tianshu Tower.
• Sun Hang erased the Peacekeeper’s and investigator’s memories of his warning, instructed them to document and dispose of the specimen, and left.
• Sun Hang pondered how negative emotions transformed people into Anomalies and wondered whether his wish-fulfillment ability worked in a similar way.

Sun Hang read Pei Zongjun’s confidential cases about people whose intense desires and emotions had led them to anomalize. After studying two cases, he had not yet reached the third before the email’s countdown expired.

• Sun Hang called Pei Zongjun and asked him to send real cases of ordinary people anomalizing because of emotions or malicious thoughts.
• Sun Hang read about a child trafficker in Shencheng Prison who transformed his arms into blades and killed prison staff and inmates while seeking revenge.
• Sun Hang watched footage of Anomaly Hunters subduing the prisoner and concluded that his transformation had fulfilled his desire for vengeance at the cost of his sense of self.
• Sun Hang read about a popular mukbang streamer who anomalized during a livestream, as food and malformed flesh leaked from her chest.
• Investigators found the streamer reduced to malformed digestive organs that kept eating, even consuming her own body tissue.

Sun Hang reviewed a bizarre case in which a wealthy Sam Group executive anomalized after a disastrous organ transplant, then realized that recent emotion-driven anomalizations had been deliberately caused by other anomalies. After returning home, he discussed the attack on Song Yarong with Yang Lian, who worried that her sister might be targeted next.

• Sun Hang read the Tianshu Tower report about a wealthy Korean Sam Group executive whose failed transplant and obsession preceded his anomalization into an enormous organ.
• Sun Hang learned from Pei Zongjun that 175 emotion-caused anomalizations had been confirmed, with hundreds more still under investigation.
• Sun Hang concluded that Chen Hongjuan and Zhao Ming had been deliberately pushed into anomalization by Anna and Chimera Seventeen, rather than by coincidence.
• Sun Hang left the residential area by shared bike and returned home, where Yang Lian asked about the anomaly attack on Song Yarong.
• Sun Hang told Yang Lian that Song Yarong had been the target, and Yang Lian worried that her sister could be attacked next.

After waking from a seventy-two-hour hibernation, Yang Qi learned that Chimera Seventeen was targeting her, Song Yarong, and Sun Hang because of Miki Fukada’s secret, so she stayed in a deep underground safe room. Meanwhile, Sun Hang heard an anomaly moving through the drainage pipes and prepared to protect Yang Lian as it approached.

• Yang Qi woke in a medical pod, learned she had slept for seventy-two hours, and asked Song Yarong for news about the plan and Sun Hang.
• Song Yarong told Yang Qi that Sun Hang had returned with Miki Fukada and that Chimera Seventeen had attacked her at the P.F.D.A. testing grounds.
• Song Yarong explained that Chimera Seventeen was targeting their memories, so Yang Qi, Song Yarong, and Miki Fukada remained in a deep underground safe room with Wang Xiyi.
• Yang Qi began working from the safe room while Miki Fukada complained that she was bored and wanted to see Chimera Seventeen.
• Sun Hang heard something charging through the villa’s drainage pipes, woke the exhausted Yang Lian, and wrapped her in Tai Sui Hyphae to strengthen and protect her.

Sun Hang and Yang Lian faced a horde of Anomalized civilians surrounding their villa, then discovered that a Sludge Monster had entered through the sewers. Sun Hang destroyed the crowd with his Crimson Spore, but the Sludge Monster proved immune to his attacks and closed in on him.

• Yang Lian armed herself while Sun Hang sensed many Anomaly presences approaching the villa.
• Sun Hang recognized the crowd outside as Anomalized civilians and learned that Yang Qi had seen the incident on surveillance footage before their call was cut off.
• A little boy among the Anomalies smashed his head against the window, so Sun Hang shot him and unleashed his mycelium against the crowd.
• Sun Hang used the Crimson Spore to dissolve the surrounding Anomalies, then threw Yang Lian outside after spotting sludge withdrawing from where she had stood.
• Sun Hang confronted the Sludge Monster, whose sludge resisted his filaments and toxins, and retreated as it spread a membrane toward him from every direction.

Sun Hang fought a sludge creature while helping Yang Lian escape a street overrun by Anomalizers. He realized the sludge was being controlled by a hostile Ability User rather than an Anomaly and narrowed the possible hiding places to spots with a view into his villa.

• Sun Hang escaped the sludge's spiked membrane, gave Yang Lian his hunting pistol, and ordered her to drive to the institute.
• Anomalizers blocked Yang Lian's route, so Sun Hang covered her car in Liquid Metal and told her to ram through them; she drove toward the institute.
• Sun Hang attacked the sludge with metal blades and mycelium puppets, but found no core or memetic traces inside it.
• Sun Hang concluded that an Ability User was controlling the sludge and considered the threat such a danger that he needed to find and eliminate its controller.
• Sun Hang reasoned that the controller could see into his villa and narrowed the likely hiding places to the villa district and nearby high-rises.

Sun Hang tracked the Sludge Monster’s attack to a cultist who had helped it target his home, then learned that contaminated water had caused mass Anomalization across Tianfu City. Ye Jiu took the injured cultist into custody as the city’s crisis continued.

• Sun Hang traced noises and hidden cameras to a ninth-floor apartment, where he captured a woman controlling mud after she attacked his hyphal puppet.
• Sun Hang interrogated the woman and learned she worshipped a Holy Lord connected to Chimera Seventeen and believed humanity should be eliminated or transformed.
• Ye Jiu arrived by helicopter and reported widespread civilian Anomalization across several districts of Tianfu City.
• Ye Jiu said investigators had found a memetic contaminant in the water supply, which turned people who drank it into Anomalizers.
• Sun Hang injured the cultist, handed her over to Ye Jiu for interrogation, and learned that Yang Lian had been picked up by a support unit.
• Sun Hang told Ye Jiu to handle the remaining Anomalizers in the street below.

Sun Hang stayed behind after Ye Jiu and the helicopter left, traced the neighborhood’s signal interference to a shopping center, and found a scavenger inside. He warned the scavenger that an anomalous creature might be lurking there, then demonstrated his ability to prove he was a hunter.

• Ye Jiu left Sun Hang behind with a flare gun while the helicopter returned to the institute.
• Sun Hang used Wish Fulfillment to locate the interference zone’s center at a shopping center, though the search consumed nearly a quarter of his Blue Bar.
• Sun Hang rushed to the shopping center and searched its deserted, looted floors.
• A scavenger threatened Sun Hang with a homemade crossbow and claimed to have killed someone who tried to take his belongings.
• Sun Hang told the scavenger that an anomalous creature might be inside the mall and revealed a floating metal throwing blade to prove he was an Anomaly Hunter.

Sun Hang captured a scavenger who had shot at him and learned that strange noises and rumors of disappearances centered on the mall’s underground commercial street. He brought her below to investigate and discovered that the supposed bloodstains were likely spilled drink syrup.

• Sun Hang caught the scavenger’s homemade crossbow bolt, disarmed her, and stopped her from escaping.
• The scavenger said she had heard strange sounds underground and had heard a boastful scavenger describe blood-covered streets with no bodies.
• Sun Hang learned that the scavenger had fled an abusive refugee camp after losing her family in an earthquake and survived by trading stolen goods.
• Sun Hang gave the freezing scavenger a down jacket and took her into the mall’s basement commercial street.
• Sun Hang examined the sticky stains on the floor and identified them as syrup or concentrated drink base rather than blood.

Sun Hang investigated the Underground Commercial Street with a scavenger, reasoning that a missing man had tried to monopolize its supplies before something happened to him. After finding the man’s abandoned fire axe, Sun Hang suspected he had been chased by an anomaly, but the cause remained unknown.

• Sun Hang warned the scavenger not to taste the spilled syrup and concluded that a boastful man had probably used it to frighten others away from the Underground Commercial Street.
• Sun Hang learned the man had left the scavengers’ unfinished building without returning for his bedding, and considered that he had either found a valuable treasure or met with trouble.
• Sun Hang searched the heavily rummaged shops and found signs the man had spent time watching movies and handling figurines, prompting Sun Hang to suspect he might still be hiding in the area.
• The scavenger recognized a fire axe on the street as one the man had bought from another scavenger.
• Sun Hang examined the axe, found no clear signs of a fight or lingering anomaly, and wondered whether the man had discarded it while fleeing something.

Sun Hang investigated the Underground Commercial Street’s lower level, where he found blood and evidence that someone had been dragged into an equipment room. After discovering that the missing videotape was playing in a damaged TV, he sensed a powerful strange entity underground that vanished immediately.

• Sun Hang took the scavenger down to the restricted second basement level, where they found blood and a shoe matching footprints from the shopping street.
• Sun Hang concluded that the shoe’s owner had likely been dead before something dragged his body into the equipment room, but they found no corpse or strange entity there.
• Sun Hang returned to the video store and found that the only missing videotape was a thriller called "Terror Cruise," loaded in the player.
• Sun Hang powered the damaged television with a generator to view the movie, whose plot involved looping timelines aboard an abandoned cruise ship.
• Sun Hang sensed a powerful strange entity presence underground, but it disappeared almost at once.

Sun Hang discovered that a rule-based videotape made the equipment-room Anomaly appear only at a timeline-reset scene, then brought a scavenger with him to confront it. They entered the transformed equipment room, where the scavenger spotted the dead scavenger’s figure.

• Sun Hang identified the videotape as an Anomaly whose timeline-reset scene made the equipment-room Anomaly exist, and he paused the movie at that point.
• Sun Hang unplugged the television, confirmed it kept playing, and explained that the earlier scavenger had likely been killed when the Anomaly reappeared while he tried to escape.
• Sun Hang gave the scavenger the choice to leave, stay with the videotape, or accompany him; she chose to go with him to the equipment room.
• Sun Hang reinforced the scavenger’s hand crossbow with Liquid Metal and made powerful bolts that she tested against a wall.
• Sun Hang kicked open the equipment-room door, revealing active machines covered in biological tissue and connected by writhing flesh tubes.
• The scavenger raised her crossbow and cried out that she could see the person who had been killed.

Sun Hang and the scavenger girl entered an underground machine room where an aberration had fused several people into its flesh. Sun Hang destroyed the creatures and disabled the aberration, then checked his phone after its signal returned.

• Sun Hang saw that the people fused into the aberration were still alive, and told the scavenger girl they could not be saved.
• The scavenger girl shot one of the pleading victims, triggering a cacophony that injured her hearing; Sun Hang silenced the room and defended them from attacking flesh tubes.
• The victims broke free and surrounded Sun Hang and the scavenger girl, while a faceless figure picked up the girl's crossbow and shot at Sun Hang.
• Sun Hang absorbed the bolt with his Liquid Metal and used a thunderous attack to make the surrounding figures explode.
• Sun Hang's attack damaged the aberration until its flesh shriveled and its machines began failing, then he checked his phone as its signal returned.

Sun Hang arranged for the Anomaly Research Institute to treat the scavenger girl's deafness and recognized how fear and despair could make Tianfu City's struggling residents vulnerable to emotional anomalization. After absorbing the defeated anomaly's remaining memes, he worried that a surge of new anomalies could follow if the city's worsening negative emotions went unaddressed.

• Sun Hang told Yang Qi that he had eliminated the signal-blocking anomaly and asked her to send a squad to the shopping mall entrance to collect the scavenger girl.
• Sun Hang reassured the frightened scavenger girl that the Institute would treat her ears and that she could leave afterward.
• Sun Hang recognized that the scavenger girl's fear and despair had nearly pushed her toward emotional anomalization, and he considered how many other people in Tianfu City faced the same risk.
• Sun Hang withdrew his mycelium after absorbing the anomaly's remaining memes, restoring only a small amount of his depleted Blue Bar.
• Sun Hang reflected that the secret of emotional anomalization needed to stay hidden for now, since public panic could trigger a dangerous cycle of new anomalies.

Sun Hang discovered that the videotape Anomaly had vanished from the player, apparently using its ability to erase its own existence. After leaving the scavenger girl with Jiang Yu and the institute’s team, he headed to an unfinished housing development she had told him about.

• Sun Hang found the Anomaly remains fading and vanished from the computer room as the videotape’s pause ended.
• Sun Hang discovered the videotape was missing and could not use his wish-fulfillment ability to reconstruct how it had been taken.
• The scavenger girl joined Sun Hang, and he told her not to inform the institute about the videotape Anomaly.
• Sun Hang met Jiang Yu and the institute’s team, explained the scavenger girl’s deafness, and asked Jiang Yu to accommodate her and consider recruiting her.
• Jiang Yu told Sun Hang that Yang Lian had shut herself away and that the Ability User’s interrogation had yielded no news.
• Sun Hang left the scavenger girl with Jiang Yu and traveled toward the unfinished housing development where scavengers and gangs gathered.

Sun Hang visited the scavengers’ settlement at a construction site to investigate a man killed by a paranormal creature. He learned the man’s belongings had already been divided among the residents, leaving Sun Hang to search for evidence without an obvious trail.

• Sun Hang entered Building Eleven after learning that scavengers and homeless people lived in Buildings Eleven and Thirteen.
• An old man questioned Sun Hang, and they discussed the settlement’s rules, scavenging, and the Peacekeepers’ past visits.
• Sun Hang showed the old man a portrait of the dead scavenger and asked about his belongings.
• The old man said the scavenger had been gone for over a week and that residents had divided up his belongings after he failed to return for two days.

Sun Hang obtained a scavenger’s diary and found that it contained obsessive writings about a goddess rather than useful clues. He left the building suspecting the scavenger’s anomalous belongings had already been taken away.

• Sun Hang offered supplies for information, but the little old man said he could not locate the people who had divided up the scavenger’s belongings.
• The little old man traded Sun Hang the scavenger’s diary, whose first half had been torn out and burned.
• Sun Hang read the diary and found drawings and entries devoted to a goddess, which the building’s scavengers had dismissed as nonsense.
• The little old man said the scavenger had not openly practiced religion, and Sun Hang left with the diary.
• Sun Hang reconsidered his search and suspected that anomalous items among the scavenger’s belongings had already been taken away.

Sun Hang deciphered a hidden message in the scavenger’s diary suggesting its owner had tried to escape the “goddess,” and he suspected the entity that took the videotape was still at large in Tianfu City. Meanwhile, a reconnaissance squad exploring Baikal’s Remains found signs that the city was an imperfect imitation and encountered a possible Anomaly before a tremor destroyed their drone and cut off radio contact.

• Sun Hang found pressed characters in the diary that read, “I, must, find, a, way, to, escape, the, goddess,” and wondered whether the scavenger had known about an Anomaly.
• Sun Hang ruled out Anna as the “goddess” and suspected the entity that had taken the videotape was still hiding in Tianfu City.
• The 19th Reconnaissance Squad examined Baikal’s Remains and noticed its buildings and writing resembled errors in AI-generated images.
• Maxim spotted a figure behind a window, so the squad leader sent a drone to investigate.
• A sudden tremor collapsed rubble onto the drone, and the squad leader’s attempt to contact the base failed because of severe signal interference.

After the 19th Reconnaissance Squad lost its drone and communications, Maxim entered a strange building to recover it. He found the drone but heard an anomalous creature crawling through the structure, and the window he had entered through disappeared, leaving him trapped inside.

• The captain explained that the 19th Reconnaissance Squad had no nearby drone to borrow after the 20th Reconnaissance Squad turned back for repairs.
• Maxim volunteered to enter the building and retrieve the drone after the squad discussed the risk of an anomalous creature inside.
• Maxim discovered that the building's interior was hollow and filled with tangled support structures, then spotted the drone buried in rubble on a platform below the window.
• Maxim secured himself with a rope and climbed down to the platform, where he began uncovering the drone.
• Maxim heard something crawling through the support structures, grabbed the drone, and found that the window had vanished and the rope disappeared into the wall.

Maxim was trapped inside an anomalous building, where he fought a creature before the building swallowed him. At Combat Readiness Base Four, a powerful man learned he was being asked to test the P.F.D.A. prototype and discussed the Holy Ark with his long-haired associate.

• Maxim lost contact with his squad, emptied his submachine gun at a fast-moving Anomaly, and jumped from a platform when he ran out of ammunition.
• Maxim landed on the building’s lower level, was impaled through the calf, and stabbed the Anomaly as its tongue reached into his nose toward his brain.
• Veronica and the squad discovered the window was painted onto the wall, and the captain blasted a hole in the building; Maxim’s blood-red-eyed face appeared in the opening.
• At Combat Readiness Base Four, a long-haired man told a muscular man that the institute wanted him to test the P.F.D.A. prototype.
• The muscular man asked about Sun Hang and Night Fiend, then heard that the organization had no new instructions until he came into close contact with the Holy Ark.