Chapter Summaries

Sun Hang inspected the rapidly built Tianshu Tower Comprehensive Talent Training Base and worried that its students might soon face a deadly battle. He then learned from Yang Qi that she was at his home with Zhong Ling, supposedly taking a break from work to eat ramen.

• Sun Hang visited the New Capital District, where the Tianfu City Management Committee had repurchased a stalled development and begun turning it into the Tianshu Tower Comprehensive Talent Training Base.
• Sun Hang found that a fortified construction site had risen rapidly and watched heavy trucks pass through its guarded entrance.
• Sun Hang wondered whether the base could open by September and worried that Chimera Seventeen might turn the students' first semester into a deadly battle.
• Yang Qi video-called Sun Hang from his home, where Zhong Ling appeared in an apron, and said she had decided to take a break from work and eat ramen.

Sun Hang returned home to find the others discussing Professor Deng Yi’s murder-suicide and arranging for Yang Lian and Ye Xuan to stay at his villa for safety. Wang Xiyi then arrived under observation, devoured Sun Hang’s ramen, and revealed a huge appetite that prompted Yang Qi to order vastly increased supplies.

• Sun Hang drove back from the Talent Training Base construction site at reckless speed while Yang Qi warned him over a video call.
• Yang Lian and Ye Xuan showed Sun Hang evidence that Professor Deng Yi had shot Professor Fan Peinan before killing herself, and they discussed the investigation’s findings and possible motives.
• Yang Qi told Sun Hang that Yang Lian and Ye Xuan would move into the villa because Chimera Seventeen might target them for revenge.
• Wang Xiyi arrived at the villa in an armored combat suit after Tianshu Tower and the Old Director decided she would stay near Sun Hang while under observation.
• Wang Xiyi ate Sun Hang’s ramen and explained that her body needed over seventy times a normal person’s daily energy, so Yang Qi ordered greatly increased supplies and a portable cold storage unit.

Wang Xiyi adjusted to her dragon body, demonstrated her Dragon Flame, and joined the others as they discussed Chimera Seventeen’s possible revenge. After dinner, Zhong Ling asked Wang Xiyi whether she and Sun Hang had been romantically involved, then revealed she had dreamed that she and Sun Hang were together with another person present.

• Yang Qi explained that Wang Xiyi would need to rely on nutrition bars, and Sun Hang asked whether she could absorb energy from sources such as lava.
• Wang Xiyi accidentally broke a chair with her tail, discovered Zhong Ling had used her treasured aged liquor as cooking wine, and briefly ignited blue Dragon Flame while drinking the last drops.
• Wang Xiyi and the others discussed Chimera Seventeen’s revenge and worried it might target officials or Sun Hang, while Sun Hang wondered whether it was connected to his sealed memories.
• Wang Xiyi boiled frozen dumplings with her hand and Dragon Flame, and Sun Hang suggested grilling meat with Dragon Flame sometime.
• Sun Hang introduced Wang Xiyi to Zhong Ling as Night Fiend and Puppet Master, and Zhong Ling asked whether Wang Xiyi and Sun Hang had been involved before describing a dream about them and another person.

Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi discovered that their flames could combine into a powerful new spark, and Yang Qi planned to test the technique the next day. That night, Wang Xiyi joined Sun Hang in his bedroom, intent on continuing the dream that had been interrupted.

• Wang Xiyi and Zhong Ling told Sun Hang that they had shared the same intimate dream on the night he absorbed Tumi, and Wang Xiyi suspected others had dreamed similarly.
• Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi combined their blue flames into a blazing white spark that nearly set the house on fire, and Yang Qi arranged a test at the city testing grounds.
• Song Yarong accidentally corroded her workbench after sneezing, while Yang Lian and Ye Xuan returned to the overheated residence and learned about the new flame technique.
• Sun Hang and Yang Lian joked about fighting Chimera Seventeen before Yang Qi sent everyone to bed.
• Wang Xiyi followed Sun Hang into his bedroom and said she wanted to make up for the interrupted dream.

Sun Hang and the others discovered that newly uncovered tunnels beneath the Talent Training Base contained traces of Anomaly Meme fragments. They abandoned their planned visit to the testing ground and investigated the site, where Wang Xiyi ruled out Chimera Seventeen as the source.

• Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi woke together, and Yang Lian caught them leaving the same room before the group gathered for breakfast.
• A message reported that workers had found a network of tunnels fifty meters underground at the Talent Training Base, along with residual Anomaly Meme fragments.
• Yang Lian and Yang Qi considered whether Chimera Seventeen had lived underground, but Yang Qi redirected the group to inspect the construction site.
• Sun Hang drove the group to the site while Wang Xiyi flew alongside, and they examined the tunnels with the construction manager.
• Sun Hang asked Wang Xiyi whether the tunnel fragments came from Chimera Seventeen, and she shook her head.

Yang Qi’s team investigated tunnels beneath a Tianfu City construction site and found old, unidentified meme fragments in numerous narrow side passages. Sun Hang crawled into Entrance Number Thirteen and called the others over after finding something.

• Yang Qi’s team identified the tunnels’ meme fragments as belonging to an unknown anomaly, and Candle Dragon suggested following the passages.
• Yang Qi assigned Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi to lead, ordered the construction workers evacuated, and sent the soldiers to establish a security perimeter.
• The team entered the main tunnel and found that its meme fragments had remained on the rock walls for at least several decades.
• Yang Qi numbered the many narrow side passages while Yang Lian and Ye Xuan measured them, and archaeological snake drones began surveying several entrances.
• Candle Dragon compared the tunnels to the blood vessels of an ancient behemoth, but the team found no evidence confirming the idea.
• Sun Hang crawled into Entrance Number Thirteen and beckoned the others after finding something.

Yang Qi's team investigated a cross-marked cave and discovered deformed skeletons chained inside the surrounding caves, suggesting the tunnels had once served as a cult dungeon. The team found that Cave Number Thirteen connected two points in the main tunnel and bore an inverted cross at its far exit, leading Sun Hang to suspect it was an escape tunnel.

• Sun Hang found a cross carved into Cave Number Thirteen, and Yang Qi scraped away dirt to reveal dark red staining that she identified as dye.
• Yang Qi's drone found a deformed humanlike skeleton chained to the wall in Cave Number One, and the team considered whether the caves had held infected prisoners.
• Yang Qi's records showed the area had been wasteland ninety years earlier, while drone surveys found similar skeletons in the other caves; analysis dated one skeleton to roughly 120 to 140 years ago.
• Yang Qi sent Yang Lian back to the surface with bone samples, while Ye Xuan chose to stay and Sun Hang gave her Tai Sui's Meme for emergencies.
• Yang Qi's drone traveled nearly three kilometers through Cave Number Thirteen and emerged back into the main tunnel at an exit marked with an inverted cross.
• Sun Hang proposed that Cave Number Thirteen had been an escape tunnel connecting the dungeon to the main passage.

Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi fought two armor-bound Anomalies in the underground tunnel, and Sun Hang absorbed one suit’s memories of the facility in use. They rejoined the others holding hands, while Candle Dragon identified the armor as modern imitation and the group remained uncertain about the ruin’s history.

• Sun Hang sensed an Anomaly ahead and went with Wang Xiyi to investigate two suits of Lamellar Armor that rose from the remains inside them.
• Sun Hang destroyed one suit and absorbed its memes, gaining memories of black-robed people inspecting cage-sealed caves while armored guards stood in the tunnel; Wang Xiyi melted the other suit.
• Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi teased each other about their relationship, then he took her hand and led her back to the group.
• Yang Qi examined the armor fragments and noted that they resembled a Han Dynasty pattern, while Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi admitted they had burned the bodies.
• Candle Dragon said the armor was modern industrial imitation, like the fake antique armor sold in Chunming City markets.

Candle Dragon learned from Professor Du that the armor plates came from the Phoenix Factory, a forgery ring whose fakes had turned into anomalous objects, and the group suspected its secret base lay in Tianfu City. As they pressed deeper into the underground ruin, they found an anomalous Everburning Lamp depicting a tortured infected person, and new records connected the Phoenix Factory to Christianity and the cross-shaped carvings in Cave Thirteen.

• Candle Dragon called Professor Du, who identified the armor plates by the Phoenix Factory’s distinctive marks and explained that the ring’s forged artifacts had become anomalous objects after its disappearance.
• Yang Qi and Sun Hang suspected the Phoenix Factory had operated as a cult and might have used a Tianfu City ruin as a base, while Candle Dragon urged the group to continue exploring rather than wait for the full records.
• Sun Hang detected an anomalous Everburning Lamp embedded in the tunnel wall, and the group recognized that its kneeling figure appeared to depict an infected person being tortured.
• Candle Dragon received interrogation records showing that six arrested members of the Phoenix Factory had all followed Christianity, linking the group to the cross-shaped carvings in Cave Thirteen.

Sun Hang and the others investigated the Everburning Lamp after its flame went out, discovering its lampstand was shaped like a human with tentacles. A crawling figure emerged from the tunnel and proved to resemble the figurine, and Zhong Ling identified it as an infected person who had not fully become strange.

• The Everburning Lamp went out just after Sun Hang snapped his fingers, and he examined it for signs of what had happened.
• Sun Hang pulled the lamp from the wall and found its human figurine had tentacle-like limbs, while the lamp itself held no oil and appeared crudely made.
• Candle Dragon inspected the lamp and said it was not imitating any particular antique.
• Ye Xuan heard a sob from deeper in the tunnel, and a deformed corpse crawled toward the group.
• The group noticed the corpse matched the human figurine on the lamp, and Zhong Ling said it was an infected person who had not completely become strange.

Yang Qi and the others found a severely mutated infected woman in the underground tunnel who seemed fixated on the Everburning Lamp. With a mysterious call urging them deeper, Sun Hang gave her the lamp, and it changed in her hands.

• Yang Qi suggested taking the infected woman to the institute, while Sun Hang questioned whether researchers would treat her humanely.
• The infected woman collapsed but kept reaching for the Everburning Lamp, and Wang Xiyi stopped Yang Qi from approaching her.
• Sun Hang tested whether the woman could understand him, but she reached for the lamp instead of nodding.
• Yang Qi said a field team would need at least twenty-five minutes to arrive, while Wang Xiyi and Candle Dragon felt an urgent call coming from deeper in the tunnel.
• Sun Hang decided they could not wait and tossed the Everburning Lamp to the infected woman, who seized it and caused it to change.

Sun Hang and the others helped an infected woman restore a Crystalline Body to her chest, triggering the growth of a new anomaly that Sun Hang destroyed. The woman regained the ability to speak but warned that a man deeper in the tunnel was about to wake, then led the group toward him.

• The infected woman placed the Crystalline Body in her chest, and her wounds began healing as her mutations receded.
• A new anomaly burst from the woman's abdomen and lunged at Yang Qi, but Sun Hang's fungal hand crushed it, and he devoured its memes.
• Yang Qi discovered that the woman was aging hundreds of times faster than normal, and the woman managed to thank Sun Hang and the others.
• The woman warned that a man in the tunnel was about to wake, then ran ahead and urged the group to follow her.
• Sun Hang bound the exhausted Yang Qi to his back with fungal threads and carried her after the woman.

Sun Hang and the others reached a hall of anomalous soldier figures, where he defeated the crowned mummy on the Bone Throne and took the Crystalline Body from its chest. After Wang Xiyi reacted to the crystal and Sun Hang began testing its apparent ability to create anomalies, the group considered whether Phoenix Factory had used it to transform replicas on a delayed or remotely controlled trigger.

• The infected woman led Sun Hang and the others to an underground hall filled with terracotta soldier figures, horses, and ballistae.
• A voice called the infected woman a traitor and fired a ballista bolt that pinned her to the ground, while Yang Qi said she could still be saved.
• Sun Hang unleashed his aura, forced the soldier figures to kneel, and pulled a glowing Crystalline Body from the mummy seated on the Bone Throne.
• Wang Xiyi’s scales spread when she approached the Crystalline Body, then receded after she leaped away from it.
• Sun Hang tested the Crystalline Body with Candle Dragon’s stainless steel fork, but nothing happened, and Candle Dragon suggested Phoenix Factory’s replicas might have been activated by a preset or remote trigger.

Sun Hang discovered that the red square crystal could create weak anomalies while an object was being manufactured, and that it needed the Bone Throne to maintain its strength. After securing the throne and its terracotta guards, Sun Hang learned that Phoenix Factory had operated under a cultural relic restoration company registered by Shang Dalin and Val Chudla.

• Sun Hang used the red square crystal while reshaping a fork into a spoon, creating an anomaly that made anyone who ate with it increasingly hungry.
• Sun Hang decided to keep the crystal, then found its aura weakened away from the Bone Throne and recovered when he placed it back on the throne.
• Tianfu City Anomaly Research Institute agents arrived, and Ye Jiu charged Sun Hang but was brought down by the Bone Throne's influence.
• Sun Hang ordered the terracotta soldiers to guard the Bone Throne, and they rose and formed a defensive line around it.
• Candle Dragon read Professor Du's file and revealed that Phoenix Factory's cover company was Chang'an Phoenix Cultural Relics Restoration Company, registered by Shang Dalin and Val Chudla.

Ye Jiu discussed the Field Operations Department’s severe staffing shortage with Sun Hang, who proposed recruiting displaced young people from refugee camps. At Refugee Resettlement Camp No. 6, a pale-haired woman questioned a boy’s faith in gods and Buddhas, leaving him pondering whether they cared about mortal lives.

• Ye Jiu described the Field Operations Department’s dwindling ranks and his difficulty recruiting enough field agents.
• Sun Hang suggested recruiting young people from refugee resettlement camps and training them at the upcoming Talent Training Base.
• At Refugee Resettlement Camp No. 6, a middle-aged woman retrieved a Guanyin statue from ruins and urged her children to pray for her unconscious husband.
• While his mother and siblings prayed, the oldest boy searched the ruins for useful supplies and told a pale-haired woman that he did not believe in gods and Buddhas.
• The woman asked why gods and Buddhas should bless mortals, and the boy repeated her question about what mortal lives and deaths meant to them.

Sun Hang and Ye Jiu investigated Val Chudla’s past and learned that he was the wanted American thief Logus Jude La, who had traveled with Shang Dalin to Tianfu. Shang Hongxiu’s testimony revealed how Shang Dalin abducted women for his underground palace, while Jude La’s fate after their violent argument remained uncertain.

• A boy saw a mysterious woman atop some ruins before his mother struck him and made him kowtow to Guanyin Bodhisattva.
• Sun Hang asked Ye Jiu to report intelligence about the recruitment drive and Val Chudla.
• Ye Jiu identified Val Chudla as Logus Jude La, an American who had robbed the Vatican treasury and disappeared after a car accident.
• Ye Jiu said Shang Hongxiu was Shang Dalin’s distant cousin and wife, and that Shang Dalin had abducted and assaulted her.
• Shang Hongxiu recounted that Shang Dalin stabbed Jude La after a fight, then took her to the underground palace and claimed to be the true Pope.
• Ye Jiu explained that Shang Dalin gathered sixteen women as his so-called imperial consorts, some coerced and others devoted to him.

Ye Jiu briefed Sun Hang on Shang Dalin’s underground palace and the red cube crystal, then challenged Sun Hang’s proposal to recruit minors as reservists for dangerous Anomaly missions. Sun Hang insisted he would submit the plan in a week and appointed himself and Ye Jiu to lead and train the recruits.

• Ye Jiu explained that Shang Dalin’s infection accelerated, giving him abnormal strength and driving him to turn the underground palace into a tomb where at least 130 people died as test subjects.
• Ye Jiu told Sun Hang that Shang Dalin made the imprisoned women into living burial goods whose crystallized hearts were sealed in the Everburning Lamp.
• Ye Jiu reported that Kasim Borgia knew nothing about the red cube crystal and that researchers had only classified it as an object-type Anomaly, prompting Sun Hang to question whether it could be Rule-type.
• Ye Jiu objected that Sun Hang’s conscription proposal would expose minors to missions with high fatality rates, but Sun Hang argued that he had not promised a high death toll.
• Sun Hang proposed that he and Ye Jiu personally lead and train the recruits, then kicked Ye Jiu out of the office and told him to learn how to train them before the proposal was submitted in a week.

Sun Hang began testing his approved recruitment plan at No. 6 Temporary Settlement Camp, where he revealed that successful trainees and their families would receive Class B Talent Treatment. The offer caught the attention of a boy’s reluctant mother, leaving the camp’s recruitment drive poised to begin in earnest.

• Sun Hang learned that Tianshu Tower and the Federation Council had approved his recruitment proposal and urged him to start recruiting.
• Sun Hang and Wang Xiyi arrived with Ye Jiu at No. 6 Temporary Settlement Camp to test the recruitment plan, while Sun Hang told Ye Jiu he hoped to mass-produce Anomaly Equipment and build a force trained from scratch.
• A Field Operations Department operative announced reserve recruitment to the camp residents and explained that training could carry a 10% to 15% mortality rate.
• A boy volunteered to enlist, but his mother grabbed him and scolded him for risking his life and abandoning his family.
• Sun Hang announced that graduates and their families would receive Class B Talent Treatment, including a monthly allowance, a large residence, and extra living supplies.
• The boy’s mother stopped striking him and asked Sun Hang what the benefits included.

Sun Hang recruited a strangely unflinching boy into the dangerous training program and tested his reactions by putting a gun in his hands. After learning about the boy’s neglectful family and his question about gods, Sun Hang asked him to describe the real god he claimed to have seen.

• Sun Hang promised trainees pay, safety measures, and death compensation, prompting the boy’s mother to send him forward to enlist.
• Sun Hang took the boy backstage, tested him with a pistol, and watched him attack when told to react and later fire a live round at Sun Hang.
• Sun Hang learned the boy was nearly fifteen, had once ranked first in class, and had been sent to vocational school to support his younger siblings.
• The boy agreed to sever his legal ties with his family and asked Sun Hang whether gods existed, recounting his father’s death during the evacuation.
• The boy said he thought he had seen a real god, and Sun Hang asked him what it looked like.

Sun Hang learned that Anna Demoshina had drained Ling Xiao’s emotions and recruited him as the training base’s first trainee. As recruitment fell short and a terminally ill former archer applied, Sun Hang ordered Yang Lian to arrange for Jiang Yu to become an infected so he could save her.

• Sun Hang used Memory Reading to identify Anna Demoshina as the glowing woman Ling Xiao had seen, and realized she had devoured the boy’s emotions.
• Sun Hang warned Ling Xiao that Anna was a dangerous anomaly, returned his pistol, and recruited him as the training base’s first trainee.
• Ye Jiu and Yang Lian told Sun Hang that only eight applicants met the age requirements, with many older applicants seeking compensation for their families.
• Yang Lian showed Sun Hang the application of Jiang Yu, a twenty-six-year-old former archery athlete with terminal stomach cancer, and warned that training could kill her.
• Sun Hang told Yang Lian to ask whether Jiang Yu would rather die of cancer or become a healthy infected, then urged her to arrange an incident that would let him save Jiang Yu.