Chapter Summaries

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.

Wen Ya and Yao Yu attended the P.F.D.A. test, where they encountered Sun Hang, a Fifth-Rank Hunter whose presence made Wen Ya wary. The test was nearly ready to begin, and Wen Ya told Yao Yu to keep an eye on Sun Hang.

• Wen Ya mocked the organization’s plan to help him contact the Holy Ark, but Yao Yu warned that he would need the organization’s help to survive it.
• Yao Yu and Wen Ya arrived at the P.F.D.A. testing grounds and learned that Song Yarong was absent because she was coordinating the Insecticide Plan.
• Wen Ya sensed a dangerous aura from Sun Hang, and Yao Yu identified him as a Fifth-Rank Hunter with a secretive record and notable achievements.
• An engineer told Sun Hang that the P.F.D.A. Live Test Unit One was 95% assembled and needed only its Tai Sui Hyphae components installed before testing.
• Wen Ya sensed Sun Hang’s dangerous aura again and told Yao Yu to keep an eye on him.

Wen Ya and Yao Yu investigated Sun Hang’s unusual abilities and the attention he had drawn from Tianshu Tower before Sun Hang helped reinforce the P.F.D.A. Wen Ya piloted the armor in a high-speed test that ended in a successful landing.

• Wen Ya admitted that Sun Hang made him feel uncomfortable, and Yao Yu suggested a cornered creature might attack a stronger opponent when it had nowhere to retreat.
• Yao Yu explained that Sun Hang had destroyed the Anomaly Tai Sui, whose hyphae he now used, and revealed that Tianshu Tower had questioned Yao Yu’s investigation into him.
• Sun Hang made custom reinforcement components from Tai Sui Hyphae, and technicians installed them on the P.F.D.A.
• Wen Ya donned the seven-ton armor and launched across the artificial plain, reaching nearly Mach 5 before its thrusters detached and explosive jets slowed it.
• The armor broke apart for landing, and Wen Ya bounced inside inflated airbags until the researchers confirmed that he had landed safely and the experiment had succeeded.

Sun Hang confronted Wen Ya after sensing that he and Yao Yu were hiding something, and pressed him about the Holy Ark while effortlessly evading Wen Ya’s strongest attacks. Wen Ya revealed that the Holy Ark was connected to Chimera Seventeen, then collapsed from the Sixth Threshold’s backlash before a black shadow engulfed him and restored his strength.

• Sun Hang appeared beside Wen Ya, read his thoughts, and asked what the Holy Ark was.
• Wen Ya entered the Sixth Threshold and attacked Sun Hang, but Sun Hang dodged every strike without being harmed.
• Sun Hang explained that Yao Yu’s Anomaly Equipment had shielded his thoughts and suspected the hunters were concealing a secret.
• Wen Ya’s power faded, and Sun Hang knocked him down and demanded answers about the Holy Ark.
• Wen Ya identified the Holy Ark with Chimera Seventeen, but Sun Hang questioned why he had treated the codename as a secret.
• A black shadow rose behind Wen Ya and devoured him, after which his strength returned and he sensed a breakthrough.

Wen Ya awakened the Seventh Threshold and attacked Sun Hang, but Sun Hang killed him after revealing that the apparent target was a mycelial puppet. The Federation discovered that Wen Ya and his missing supervisor, Yao Yu, might belong to an infiltrating Cult Organization, leaving Sun Hang and the others to investigate its aims while securing the testing grounds.

• Wen Ya entered the Seventh Threshold, lost control, and smashed the head of the apparent Sun Hang, only to discover it was a mycelial puppet.
• Sun Hang killed Wen Ya by tearing out and crushing his heart, then absorbed the remaining Anomaly Meme from the corpse.
• Yang Qi and Song Yarong confirmed that Wen Ya's infection had exceeded the danger threshold, while Yang Qi ordered a search for the missing Yao Yu and sealed the testing grounds.
• Sun Hang told the group that Wen Ya had called Chimera Seventeen the Holy Ark and mentioned an organization, prompting Yang Qi to suspect Cult Organization infiltration within the Federation.
• Yang Qi and Song Yarong discussed the Cult Organization's hierarchy and possible objectives, and Yang Qi told Sun Hang to secure the scene until they caught Yao Yu.

Yao Yu discovered that Sun Hang had killed Wen Ya and fled the test site into Lihua Mountain to escape both the Federation and the Cult Organization. Sun Hang learned that Yao Yu had abandoned his SUV and was climbing the mountain, prompting a search.

• Yao Yu slipped out of the celebration and used a claim about retrieving heart medication to pass the inner checkpoint.
• Yao Yu watched footage of Sun Hang killing Wen Ya and, after briefly considering suicide, decided he had to survive and flee.
• Yao Yu drove toward Lihua Mountain and escaped on foot up its southern slope.
• Yang Qi told Sun Hang that the Field Operations Department had found Yao Yu’s SUV and asked him to join the search.