Recaps

Candle Dragon told Sun Hang how Sand-Sinking Giant Worms devastated Egypt and described their encounter with one in the Taklamakan region. Sun Hang considered the possibility of traveling to Egypt and asked how Tianshu Tower could reach distant fallen regions, learning about Low Earth Orbit airdrops and their dangers.

• Candle Dragon explained that tens of thousands of enormous Sand-Sinking Giant Worms had devastated Egypt and that one in the Taklamakan region had inflicted four deaths on his expedition before the survivors escaped with a meme sample.
• Candle Dragon said the worms could regenerate, move rapidly through sand and rock, and even swallow aircraft, while Tianshu Tower later judged that they were unlikely to enter Federation territory.
• Candle Dragon recounted how the worms turned Egypt's Nile basin into desert, defeated nuclear and conventional attacks, and forced Cairo to abandon the Nile Delta, though survivors might remain in northern Africa.
• Sun Hang said they could consider Egypt later and asked how far Tianshu Tower had explored fallen regions; Candle Dragon identified the Ural Mountains and described Low Earth Orbit airdrops as a way to reach distant locations.
• Candle Dragon warned that airdrops could miss their targets because fallen regions could not be observed and that powerful Anomalies inhabited Low Earth Orbit, prompting Sun Hang to question whether those Anomalies were truly unaggressive.

Sun Hang discussed plans to reach Egypt and return safely, prompting the Mainframe to prioritize a reusable spacecraft project. He disabled the Mainframe’s monitoring and decided to visit Baikal City’s ruins to investigate the Death Aurora, then wandered Chunming City looking for somewhere to eat.

• Candle Dragon explained that past hunters had returned from distant fallen zones by reusing their drop capsules and finding launch vehicles, but Egypt’s launch facilities were likely destroyed.
• Sun Hang requested a reusable spacecraft, and the Mainframe assigned the project its highest priority and began assembling a team.
• Sun Hang learned that Pei Zongjun’s user manual had enabled the Mainframe to monitor him, so he disabled the monitoring function.
• Candle Dragon left to contact Professor Ouyang, while Sun Hang said he might visit Baikal City’s ruins to see the Death Aurora and heard that more than three hundred soldiers had died or vanished in Baikal’s Remains.
• Sun Hang wandered Chunming City and searched for a restaurant, but the upscale places were full, so he considered finding a cheap place to eat.

Sun Hang followed a trail of materialized negative emotions through Chunming City after learning that an anomaly was competing with Anna for food. He reached an office building and revealed his Hunter License to a suspicious office worker.

• Anna fed on pedestrians' negative emotions on Yongan Street and spotted another anomaly drawing the same emotions away.
• Sun Hang refused to hunt the anomaly while on vacation, but agreed to investigate after Anna threatened to create panic and form a monster from the crowd's emotions.
• Sun Hang followed the drifting haze across Yongan Street and into an office building, where the negative emotions grew denser on each higher floor.
• On the seventh floor, an office lady questioned Sun Hang about his presence and prepared to call security.
• Sun Hang showed the office lady his Hunter License, startling her by revealing that he was an Anomaly Hunter.

Sun Hang tracked a black mist to Room 1925 on the nineteenth floor, only to discover that the anomaly had used the empty unit as bait. He chased its escaping trail down the building and across Yongan Street, where his web-swinging sparked a crowd frenzy and threw local authorities into chaos.

• Sun Hang told the OL that her floor was safe and rushed upstairs when the black mist slowed.
• Sun Hang followed the mist to Room 1925, opened the door with Liquid Metal, and found the unfinished unit empty.
• Sun Hang realized Room 1925 was a decoy when the black mist fled down the building's glass exterior.
• Sun Hang cut through a window and pursued the mist with fungal filaments, using them to swing above Yongan Street.
• Bystanders mistook Sun Hang for Spiderman and chased after him, while traffic control and police called for backup and struggled to contain the crowd.

Sun Hang pursued an Anomaly into a sealed heat dissipation duct and caught it after it revealed its hidden human form. He forced the girl to dress and demanded to know whether she was human or an Anomaly.

• Sun Hang tracked the fleeing Anomaly to Heat Dissipation Pump Duct No. 7 and learned from the Mainframe that the renovated duct was sealed off from the power hub.
• Sun Hang entered the duct, followed blood and clothing scraps, and found the far end of the longest branch blocked by an intact sealing plug.
• Sun Hang sensed the Anomaly nearby, enhanced his vision, and saw distorted images across the tunnel walls.
• The Anomaly formed a naked human body and tried to run, but fungal filaments captured and dragged it back to Sun Hang.
• Sun Hang gave the girl her clothes and held a Liquid Metal flying blade near her neck as he demanded to know whether she was human or an Anomaly.

Sun Hang interrogated an anomaly inhabiting a stolen corpse and learned how it survived in Chunming City. After naming her Xue Yue, he offered to help her remain in the city with a legal identity, while Anna questioned why he did not simply eliminate her.

• Sun Hang restrained the girl and learned that she had stolen a recently deceased body from Chunming City Sixth Hospital to survive among humans.
• The girl explained that she could become intangible for a few minutes once a day and absorbed black fog because ordinary food could not satisfy her hunger.
• The Mainframe identified the corpse as Xue Yue, who had died of congenital heart disease at fifteen; Sun Hang discovered that her body had been revived and its heart repaired after the anomaly possessed it.
• Xue Yue told Sun Hang that she had wandered Chunming City without an identity, doing odd jobs and carefully feeding on black fog to avoid detection.
• Sun Hang named her Xue Yue and promised not to hand her over or dissect her, offering to help make her identity legal.
• Anna's voice reached Sun Hang from afar and asked why he did not simply erase Xue Yue.

Sun Hang tested Xue Yue’s abilities and learned that absorbing negative emotions kept her from suffering terrifying thoughts but did not make her stronger or grant her memories. He took her under his protection, had the Mainframe establish her as his younger sister, and prepared to take her to her home in Liu Su District.

• Sun Hang had Xue Yue demonstrate her strength and asked about her healing, hunger, and ability to absorb negative emotions.
• Xue Yue explained that she became extremely hungry and experienced frightening thoughts when she went without negative emotions, but could not remember those thoughts after eating.
• Sun Hang offered to provide Xue Yue with food and protection in exchange for cooperating with observational experiments, and she agreed.
• The Mainframe warned Sun Hang to stay vigilant, then generated Xue Yue’s identity card and registered Sun Hang as her guardian and brother.
• Anna repeatedly demanded that Sun Hang kill Xue Yue, while he called Xue Yue her little aunt and refused to comply.
• Xue Yue gave Sun Hang her address in Liu Su District, and he asked the Mainframe to arrange transportation there.

Sun Hang and Xue Yue escaped the Heat Dissipation Pump Duct in a hovercar, but Anna attacked them with construction cranes. Sun Hang rescued Xue Yue and brought down a tower crane, then confronted Anna about trying to kill them.

• Sun Hang summoned a driverless hovercar and Xue Yue rode in one for the first time, explaining that she usually traveled on foot to save money.
• As they left the Heat Dissipation Pump Duct, Sun Hang spotted a tower crane dropping hundreds of rebar rods and used Wish Fulfillment to accelerate and reinforce the hovercar.
• Sun Hang evaded one crane jib, but its hook pierced Xue Yue and tore apart the rear of the hovercar after Anna’s power made his defenses collapse.
• Sun Hang cut the hook, caught Xue Yue, and rapidly regenerated her with life force.
• Sun Hang used his metal control to overload and collapse the tower crane, then demanded to know whether Anna was trying to kill him.
• Anna said she had not meant to kill Mommy, only Xue Yue.

After Anna attacked Xue Yue, Sun Hang rescued her and took her toward the underground Huangdao Layer in a disguised hovercar. During the descent through a Vertical Dock, he discovered an adjacent car filled with inexplicably dense black mist and learned from Anna that its occupants were Modified Containers.

• Sun Hang revived Xue Yue, refused to hunt Anna, and arranged for the tower-crane attack to be covered up as an accident.
• Sun Hang disguised a Federation Council hovercar as a battered civilian vehicle and drove with Xue Yue toward the underground Huangdao Layer.
• Sun Hang and Xue Yue entered a Vertical Dock and began descending with a batch of vehicles.
• Xue Yue sensed dense black mist surrounding a neighboring hovercar, and Sun Hang detected negative emotions from hundreds of people despite seeing only two occupants.
• Sun Hang examined the neighboring car and found a man and a woman moving repetitively with hollow expressions, then Anna identified them as Modified Containers.

Sun Hang learned that the two undocumented passengers in a nearby hovercar were Modified Containers and suspected they were connected to the people who had kept Xue Yue as an experimental subject. As he followed the car toward Fuxing Industrial Park, he uncovered suspicious links between its owner, Lin Lun, and the circumstances that had brought Xue Yue to Liu Su District.

• Anna explained that Modified Containers were human bodies altered to store immense quantities of negative emotions, and said the two in the hovercar might be connected to Xue Yue's monstrous nature.
• Sun Hang learned the hovercar was bound for Fuxing Industrial Park and discovered its registered owner was Lin Lun, a pollutant-treatment company chairman who had developed a valuable technology after studying fine arts.
• Sun Hang followed the hovercar after it left the dock, while Anna suggested Lin Lun was involved with the Modified Containers and Xue Yue might have been deliberately released.
• Xue Yue told Sun Hang that a former supermarket employer had arranged her cheap room in Liu Su District, but the employer disappeared and the relative who collected rent had not appeared for half a year.

Sun Hang learned that Lin Lun had funded Liu Su District gangs to help maintain order, then followed two Modified Containers to Happiness Supermarket. He confronted the store’s owner and asked to buy Anomalies, leaving the owner’s response unknown.

• The Mainframe explained that Lin Lun had funded gangs to manage public order in Liu Su District, and Sun Hang concluded that Lin Lun was the local kingpin.
• Sun Hang and Xue Yue followed the two Modified Containers to an unfinished building, then watched them leave and enter Happiness Supermarket.
• Xue Yue told Sun Hang that the supermarket bought goods cheaply but paid immediately and could obtain almost anything for customers.
• Sun Hang entered Happiness Supermarket and questioned its owner, who claimed he could get anything in Liu Su District.
• Sun Hang told the owner that he wanted to buy Anomalies.

Sun Hang confronted the supermarket owner to learn how to contact Mr. Lin Lun, then forced him to reveal the fate of two missing Modified Containers. He found them undergoing an unknown procedure in a hidden basement and left the owner at his mercy.

• Sun Hang asked the supermarket owner for Mr. Lin Lun's contact information, and the owner grew alarmed when Sun Hang mentioned him.
• The owner attacked Sun Hang and shot him repeatedly, but Sun Hang survived, overpowered him, and demanded to know where the two missing young people were.
• The supermarket owner pointed out a concealed hatch, and Sun Hang opened it and dragged him into the basement.
• Sun Hang found two Modified Containers on operating tables, connected by wires to a device that sent electrical arcs through needles in their foreheads.
• The supermarket owner said he had renovated the room on Mr. Lin's instructions but did not know what the equipment was for.

Sun Hang uncovered Lin Lun’s operation involving Modified Containers and ordered Liu Su District quietly sealed off. He followed Xue Yue’s clues toward Lin Lun’s pollutant treatment company, where gang members ambushed him.

• Sun Hang cut the wires connected to two Modified Containers, and Anna absorbed their released negative emotions as they died without producing Anomalies.
• Sun Hang ordered the Mainframe to discreetly seal Liu Su District and authorized lethal force at checkpoints.
• Sun Hang learned that Xue Yue might have emerged from the sewage pipes connected to Lin Lun’s Fuxing Pollutant Treatment Company.
• Sun Hang set out with Xue Yue toward the company, and the Mainframe warned him that armed gang members were lying in wait.
• Sun Hang declined drone support and walked into the ambush, where gang members attacked him with improvised machetes and firearms.

Sun Hang defeated the Hidden Dragon Hall ambush and learned that Lin Lun had forbidden the gang from targeting several locations in Liu Su District. He decided to go after Lin Lun at Fuxing Pollutant Treatment Company, and Xue Yue learned that it might be the place where she was born and where she could meet her parents.

• Sun Hang killed the two attackers who rushed him, then shot down the gang members who raised their guns against him.
• Sun Hang picked up a jammed submachine gun, transformed it into a weapon with infinite ammunition, and incapacitated the rest of the ambushers.
• Sun Hang interrogated a wounded gang member and learned that Hidden Dragon Hall had been ordered to ambush him and avoid several locations, including Happiness Supermarket.
• Sun Hang discovered that the ambush leaders, including Hidden Dragon Hall's boss, were dead, and he asked the Mainframe to alert the authorities and monitor the gang's protected locations.
• Sun Hang learned that Lin Lun was at Fuxing Pollutant Treatment Company, whose grounds had no electronic security system, and called Xue Yue over to join him.
• Sun Hang told Xue Yue that the company might be where she was born and that she might meet her parents, startling her.

Lin Lun confronted the failure of his gang’s ambushes and killed Fei Biao for concealing what he knew about Sun Hang. Sun Hang reached the company compound, where Lin Lun admitted he had researched anomalies using human negative emotions and called Xue Yue one of his results.

• Lin Lun learned that Hidden Dragon Hall’s thirty-five men had been defeated and recognized Sun Hang as an Anomaly Hunter; he ordered Fei Biao brought in.
• Lin Lun exposed Fei Biao’s lies and plans to escape, then his secretary shot Fei Biao dead.
• Lin Lun ordered the compound gates opened and rejected his secretary’s suggestion to use a sniper against Sun Hang.
• Sun Hang entered the compound with Xue Yue and met Lin Lun, who said he had allowed events to unfold after Xue Yue led Sun Hang to the site.
• Lin Lun told Sun Hang that Xue Yue was one of his research results and explained that his work concerned collecting or destroying human negative emotions to suppress the birth of anomalies.

Lin Lun told Sun Hang how he had seen materialized negative emotions since childhood and described the girl whose accumulated suffering turned her into a thorn Anomaly. He explained how that tragedy led him to investigate the link between negative emotions and Anomalies, then took Sun Hang to his underground laboratory to show him a discovery.

• Lin Lun revealed that he was an Ability User who could control his brain and see materialized negative emotions, and Sun Hang confirmed that he could see them too.
• Lin Lun recounted how a girl he befriended by the river died after enduring abuse, became a thorn Anomaly, and killed her father.
• Lin Lun said he spent nine years studying Anomaly attack reports and concluded that negative emotions could cause humans to become Anomalies.
• Lin Lun led Sun Hang through the company building to a secured freight elevator and invited him inside to see the special discovery in the underground laboratory.

Lin Lun brought Sun Hang and Xue Yue to the Well of Desire and revealed the enormous anomalous tree he had discovered. He began recounting how he found it on the Tartar Grassland, leaving his story unfinished as he described earning the trust of a mysterious nomadic tribe.

• Lin Lun warned Sun Hang that the trip might be a trap, but Sun Hang said he believed he would survive.
• Lin Lun led Sun Hang and Xue Yue to the Well of Desire, explaining that he had built the underground facility in secret and erased the construction workers’ memories.
• Lin Lun opened an iron door and revealed a towering tree made of tangled muscle, growing in a pool of blood-red soil.
• Sun Hang explained that Lin Lun had visited the Tartar Grassland in 4710 during a business trip, and Lin Lun confirmed that he had found the tree there.
• Lin Lun recounted following a mysterious nomadic tribe across the grassland, winning its children’s trust by taking their photographs, and seeing the adults hesitate when he asked to travel with them.

Lin Lun told Sun Hang how he tracked a herding tribe to its Ancestral Land, where a flesh-and-blood sapling absorbed negative emotions. He poisoned the tribe to reach the relic, killed the surviving shaman during a confrontation, and identified the sapling as the thing he had been searching for.

• Lin Lun explained that the herders showed almost no negative emotions and that he suspected their secret lay in the Ancestral Land and its ritual.
• After learning from a child about a cave where unhappiness vanished, Lin Lun followed the tribe to the river’s source and was caught near the Ancestral Land.
• When the chieftain and shaman decided to postpone the ritual and move the sacred relic, Lin Lun poisoned the tribe’s sheep’s milk; everyone died except the old, blind shaman.
• Lin Lun persuaded the shaman to lead him into the pit, where he saw a flesh-and-blood sapling absorbing the shaman’s sorrow and regret.
• The shaman attacked Lin Lun after he said he would take the sapling, but Lin Lun kicked him into a rock wall, where he died; the sapling grew slightly larger after absorbing his negative emotions.

Lin Lun told Sun Hang how he massacred people and tortured four tribal women to save and transplant the anomalous sapling, then smuggled it into Chunming City through a sewer renovation. He claimed his research was nearly complete and revealed that Xue Yue and the Faceless Ones were among its results.

• Lin Lun said he had returned to the ancestral land and tortured four tribal women for five days until the sapling recovered, killing three and driving the survivor mad.
• Lin Lun explained that he transplanted the sapling into the survivor using culture medium made from hundreds of buried skeletons, then poisoned the broker who had arranged the women’s work.
• Lin Lun said he smuggled the transplanted sapling into Chunming City through a sewer pipe whose detection devices had been disabled for renovation.
• Mainframe judged Lin Lun valuable to human civilization despite his crimes and recommended strict, continuous surveillance rather than execution.
• Lin Lun said his goal was nearly within reach, identified Xue Yue as one result of his research, and named his human-flesh containers the Faceless Ones.

Lin Lun explained how Xue Yue became an independent “seed,” why the mother tree was withering, and how he created Faceless Ones to sustain it. Sun Hang agreed to bring Lin Lun’s research under Tianshu Tower’s control and take Xue Yue with him.

• Lin Lun showed Sun Hang a cabinet of corpses used as vessels and described how fruits possessed them, while Xue Yue had become an unusually self-sustaining seed.
• Lin Lun explained that the mother tree had stopped producing fruit and was withering, so he made Faceless Ones from mutated brain tissue to gather negative emotions for it.
• Lin Lun admitted his crimes and asked Sun Hang to preserve his research; Sun Hang read Lin Lun’s thoughts and confirmed he was telling the truth.
• Sun Hang ordered Lin Lun to report to Tianshu Tower, where his facility would become a secured laboratory under the Tower’s management.
• Lin Lun agreed that Xue Yue should live freely, and Sun Hang said he would take her with him.

Sun Hang brought Xue Yue into his plans, reassuring her that he would honor his promise and asking her to accompany him to Baikal City to absorb survivors’ negative emotions. Meanwhile, the Mainframe launched an extensive redevelopment of Liu Su District to protect and study Lin Lun’s Well of Desire, and Sun Hang was left uncertain about the future awaiting the people displaced by the project.

• Sun Hang reassured the anxious Xue Yue that he would not hand her over for research or dissect her, and she chose to follow him.
• Sun Hang told Xue Yue they were going to Baikal City to deal with Baikal’s Remains, where her ability could help absorb the survivors’ negative emotions.
• The Mainframe explained that it had mobilized Tianshu Tower’s forces and approved a plan to turn most of Liu Su District into a fortified research institute for the Well of Desire.
• Sun Hang learned that the Mainframe had used Pei Zongjun’s deciding vote to pass the redevelopment plan despite the Federation Council voting against it.
• The Mainframe said Liu Su District residents without legal identities would receive citizenship, relocation housing, and living subsidies, while Sun Hang doubted that this would end the city’s cycle of poverty and migration.
• Sun Hang’s hovercar emerged from a tunnel into the Tianshi Sector.

Sun Hang gathered Xue Yue, Wang Xiyi, Zhong Ling, and guide Yan Yu'an for a flight to Baikal City, where he hoped to investigate the dangerous Baikal's Remains. Yan Yu'an described her recent reconnaissance and a humanoid anomalous entity that had attacked her, while the group learned how difficult it was to distinguish its traces from the Remains' shifting memetic signals.

• Sun Hang arranged a private flight to Baikal City and told Xue Yue to leave the expired bread behind for a meal.
• Sun Hang met Wang Xiyi and Zhong Ling at the lift platform, and both decided to accompany him to Baikal City.
• Zhong Ling revealed that Anomalous Corpse One had been upgraded and brought more than a dozen permafrost coffins aboard the aircraft.
• Yan Yu'an introduced herself as the operation's guide and explained that the Mainframe had ordered her to obey Sun Hang.
• Yan Yu'an recounted how a thin, child-shaped anomalous entity with long arms had slashed her neck during a reconnaissance mission in Baikal's Remains.
• Yan Yu'an explained that the Remains' constantly shifting memetic signals made it difficult for reconnaissance teams to identify other anomalous entities.

Sun Hang arrived at the frontline camp near Baikal's Remains and learned why its shifting interior could not be mapped from above. He discovered that Tianshu Tower had given him the camp's highest command authority, leaving him responsible for the operation.

• Yan Yu'an explained that a shifting anti-observation membrane over Baikal's Remains blurred human vision and limited drones to low altitudes.
• Yan Yu'an revealed that the anomaly's imitation of the Siberian TV Tower had become a deep well, where more than three hundred reconnaissance personnel had disappeared.
• Sun Hang met Ganna, the camp's acting leader and General Xu's grandson-in-law, who said his team had retreated after a fissure swallowed two soldiers.
• Ganna told Sun Hang that Tianshu Tower had given him the highest command authority at the frontline camp.

Sun Hang arrived at the Baikal’s Remains frontline camp and made clear he intended to hunt anomalies rather than command its troops. He visited the battlefield psychological counseling clinic, where he and Xue Yue encountered two psychologists obscured by dense black mist.

• Sun Hang told Ganna to treat him as a hands-off tourist and said he had come to hunt for food.
• Sun Hang moved the planned Baikal’s Remains expedition to six o’clock after Ganna explained how dangerous the city became at night.
• Sun Hang sent Wang Xiyi, Zhong Ling, and Yan Yu'an to eat, then asked Yan Yu'an to bring him and Xue Yue ice cream by six.
• Ganna drove Sun Hang and Xue Yue to the field hospital, where he described frequent negative-emotion anomalizations and Sheng Jie's deadly rampage.
• Sun Hang entered the battlefield psychological counseling room and learned that a psychologist had died after a patient anomalized during treatment.
• Xue Yue asked the exhausted psychologists whether they could still hold on, while Sun Hang saw dense black mist surrounding them.

Sun Hang discovered that one of the psychologists had begun to anomalize and used Xue Yue’s ability to calm both doctors by absorbing their negative emotions. He explained that the infected psychologist’s condition was still mild and recommended treatment through the institute in Liu Su District, leaving the doctors to consider their next steps.

• Sun Hang revealed the scales and growths on a psychologist’s arm, and Ganna and Xue Yue stopped the other doctor from raising the alarm.
• Sun Hang told Xue Yue to calm both psychologists, and she absorbed their negative emotions as their heart rates fell.
• Sun Hang checked the infected psychologist with a monitoring device and found that the infection was mild and stable.
• Sun Hang explained the psychologist’s susceptible constitution and recommended follow-up care at the institute in Liu Su District.
• Ganna questioned why a research institute had been established in the slum district.