Chapter Summaries

Sun Hang devoured Crimson Spore strain Number Seventeen, gaining crimson hyphae and spores without any detectable change to his meme. As he left Tianshu Tower for Tianfu City with Ling Xiao and Miki Fukada, Yuri received an order from Pei Zongjun forbidding further analysis of Sun Hang’s Gluttonous Meme.

• Yuri explained that Crimson Spore strains fused when nourishment was plentiful, while weaker strains sacrificed themselves when resources were scarce, and Sun Hang chose Number Seventeen to devour.
• Sun Hang consumed the mature Crimson Spore strain as it began killing Seedbed Number Seventeen, leaving only a skeleton in the sealed chamber.
• Researchers found no change in Sun Hang’s meme, though crimson hyphae and powdery spores emerged from his fingertips, and Yuri questioned whether their understanding of anomalies was wrong.
• Pei Zongjun texted Yuri that in-depth analysis of Sun Hang’s meme was prohibited, leaving Yuri wondering what secret the order protected.
• Sun Hang boarded a transport aircraft with Ling Xiao and Miki Fukada, who challenged his trust in Ling Xiao and revealed that she could see no openings on Sun Hang.

Sun Hang transformed Miki Fukada’s appearance to help conceal her identity, then rushed to the cockpit after Anna threatened the plane. With both pilots unconscious, he took control of the descending aircraft as it neared Shu Province’s Terminator Line, but Flying Anomalies appeared behind it.

• Sun Hang changed Miki Fukada’s face, voice, and figure, and she admired her new appearance.
• Anna threatened to make the plane crash, so Sun Hang gave Miki Fukada and Ling Xiao parachutes and went to the cockpit.
• Sun Hang found both pilots unconscious and took the controls as the plane descended toward mountains near the Terminator Line.
• Ground Control Tower Dong Yao guided Sun Hang as he manually pulled the plane out of its descent.
• Flying Anomalies appeared behind the plane, and Sun Hang noticed the unconscious copilot as he wondered whether he could fly after all.

Sun Hang piloted the transport plane through Eternal Night as C-13, Twin Balloons, sent a swarm of flesh offspring after it. After Federation fighters destroyed the swarm and escorted the plane, Sun Hang learned that the enormous anomaly had entered human airspace and wondered how the authorities would respond.

• Sun Hang used a Cobra maneuver to evade the fast-flying flesh masses, but a lightning strike from his Sarira destroyed one before it could breach the transport plane.
• Wei Yuan’s fighter unit arrived and used linked electrical shields and a huge electric net to eliminate the rest of the swarm.
• Sun Hang told Wei Yuan that he was flying the plane despite having never flown before, and Wei Yuan confirmed the transport’s passengers were safe.
• Wei Yuan identified the attacker as C-13, Twin Balloons, and sent Sun Hang its file after explaining that the anomaly’s main body was in low Earth orbit above Shu Province.
• Sun Hang read that Twin Balloons was a colossal, usually passive anomaly that defended itself by launching offspring, and wondered how the Federation would handle its incursion.

Sun Hang returned to the heavily fortified Tianfu City institute after Twin Balloons attacked his transport plane, then learned the countdown had shortened to thirty-five days. At the medical department, he used his ability to restore the gravely injured Spirit Exorcist’s body, leaving the surgeon stunned.

• Twin Balloons retreated beyond surveillance range, and Sun Hang landed safely in Tianfu City with two unconscious pilots.
• Yang Lian told Sun Hang that the institute had become a military fortress, reinforcements had caused trouble, and Chimera Seventeen’s incubation had accelerated, leaving thirty-five days.
• Sun Hang learned that the Spirit Exorcist was near death after an encounter with wandering anomalies and asked Yang Lian to take him to the medical department.
• The surgeon warned Sun Hang that the Spirit Exorcist might not survive forty-eight hours and would otherwise need to be reduced to a brain in a vat.
• Sun Hang placed his palm against the medical pod and regrew the Spirit Exorcist’s limbs, organs, and other damaged tissue.

Sun Hang restored the Spirit Exorcist’s body and discussed the looming threat of Chimera Seventeen with Yang Lian. He then visited Song Yarong, learned the Insecticide Plan was concentrating forces in Tianfu City, and arranged for the disguised Miki Fukada to stay under his protection.

• Sun Hang used a new ability to regrow the Spirit Exorcist’s original necrotic tissue, though she remained unconscious and had little time to rehabilitate before the battle.
• Yang Lian questioned Sun Hang’s healing ability and warned that Chimera Seventeen could become one of the most destructive known Anomalies after hatching.
• Sun Hang found Song Yarong overwhelmed by paper reports and learned that Chimera Seventeen had not yet attacked while the project prepared for its hatching.
• Sun Hang introduced Miki Fukada as Tang Jing and, after Song Yarong recognized her importance to a secret step in the plan, agreed to keep her close.
• Song Yarong told Sun Hang that hunters and elite units had been gathered in Tianfu City, leaving other settlements temporarily abandoned amid rising Anomaly casualties.
• Song Yarong put Sun Hang on standby in the city, and he offered to bring her food prepared by someone at his home.

Sun Hang learned that Zhong Ling was away on patrol, while Patrol Team Twenty-Six arrived at Sentry Post 307 and its inspection turned into an armed confrontation. The Puppet Master intervened to stop the fighting, and the Sergeant Major agreed to cooperate with the inspection while taking responsibility for his soldiers’ actions.

• Song Yarong teased Sun Hang about trying to win her over, and Sun Hang learned Zhong Ling would not return that night because she was patrolling outlying sentry posts.
• Patrol Team Twenty-Six arrived at Sentry Post 307, where the Sergeant Major refused its inspection after yesterday’s patrol had reportedly punished the post in retaliation for an extortion attempt.
• The Black Robe Hunter forced his way into the post and attacked the Sergeant Major, prompting the soldiers to open fire.
• An Anomaly Remains blocked the bullets and severed the Black Robe Hunter’s arm, saving the Sergeant Major.
• The Puppet Master arrived with two Anomaly Remains, blamed both the post and the Hunter for their actions, and ordered the soldiers not to fire.
• The Sergeant Major agreed to let the patrol inspect the post and asked the officer to say he had ordered his men to fire.

Zhong Ling confronted the Black Robe Hunter as his infection worsened and he transformed, then fought back against the soldiers and her puppets. After the Hunter overwhelmed the sentry post and put Zhong Ling at a disadvantage, the Anomaly Research Institute dispatched Sun Hang to support her.

• Zhong Ling sent two anomalous corpses to block the Black Robe Hunter as he denounced ordinary people and declared Hunters humanity’s future.
• The Black Robe Hunter’s infection progression surged, his Hunter bracelet alarmed, and he tore it off and crushed it.
• The sergeant major ordered the soldiers to open fire, but the Hunter’s metallic wings deflected bullets and his feathers killed and wounded soldiers and severed the sergeant major’s ankle.
• Zhong Ling’s anomalous corpses intercepted the Hunter’s feather attacks, but he flew out of their reach and threatened to kill the soldiers and torture her.
• Song Yarong learned that the Hunter, identified as Hawk, had completely anomalized and that Zhong Ling was at a disadvantage.
• Sun Hang rushed out of the office carrying his instant noodles, and Song Yarong told Patrol Convoy 26 that reinforcements were coming immediately.

Sun Hang arrived at Outpost 307 and destroyed the Black Robe Hunter by crashing into him, ending the attack and saving the surviving soldiers. Afterward, he reunited with Zhong Ling and asked if they could go home for dinner.

• The sergeant major ordered the lieutenant to evacuate the soldiers while he stayed behind to cover their retreat, but the lieutenant ran to take the anti-aircraft vehicle himself.
• A sonic boom announced Sun Hang’s arrival, and the Black Robe Hunter vanished, leaving scattered metal feathers and remains.
• Sun Hang introduced himself as Tianfu City Anomaly Hunter 0420 and revealed that he had killed the Hunter by crashing into him.
• The lieutenant organized the evacuation and casualty response while Zhong Ling wiped blood from Sun Hang’s face.
• Sun Hang stopped Zhong Ling from wiping his face, washed with bottled water, and let her continue cleaning him as Anomalous Corpse One watched him warily.
• Sun Hang asked Zhong Ling to take him home for dinner, saying he preferred her cooking to instant noodles.

Sun Hang brought Miki Fukada to his home, where they discussed her ability and his unusual identity while arranging to test her sight on Chimera Seventeen. Yang Lian returned and joined them for dinner, unaware of Miki’s classified role, as Sun Hang warmed her boxed lunch with his power.

• Zhong Ling told Sun Hang to take a boxed lunch from the refrigerator, and he sent one by drone to the research institute.
• Sun Hang and Miki Fukada discussed his missing memories and records, his meme infection, and her inability to see openings on him consistently.
• Miki Fukada asked Sun Hang to take her somewhere she could directly see Chimera Seventeen so she could test her ability, and he agreed to discuss it later.
• Yang Lian returned home and was surprised to find Miki Fukada staying there; Sun Hang told her Miki’s presence was classified.
• Yang Lian questioned Sun Hang about his relationship with Miki, then accepted his claim that the matter was serious business.
• Sun Hang melted the lard on Yang Lian’s cold boxed lunch with blue sparks from his fingertips.

Yang Lian broke down under the pressure of the Insecticide Plan and her guilt, then spent the night with Sun Hang after confessing she did not want to die with regrets. The next morning, Sun Hang found her recovering and faced Miki Fukada’s teasing about their relationship.

• Miki Fukada accused Sun Hang and Yang Lian of being more than professional colleagues, while Sun Hang explained that Tianfu City’s martial law had shut down its nightlife and warned Miki not to sneak out.
• Yang Lian invited Sun Hang into her dark room, spoke about living in her sister’s shadow, and admitted she was exhausted and afraid the Insecticide Plan would fail.
• Yang Lian described her guilt over the people affected by her work and said she wanted to experience intimacy with someone she knew before she died.
• Sun Hang and Yang Lian spent the night together, and Sun Hang later used his life force to help her recover from her injuries.
• The next morning, Sun Hang asked for leave on Yang Lian’s behalf, and Miki Fukada teased him about what had happened before suggesting Yang Lian had treated intimacy as a job duty.

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.