Chapter Summaries

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.

Sun Hang brought Xue Yue to a counseling room to test whether she could help people affected by negative emotions, and Ganna learned that her ability had been cultivated by a research institution. When a severely transformed soldier arrived, Sun Hang judged that his consciousness could not be restored and had the psychologists question him about what he had seen.

• Sun Hang explained that Xue Yue was the first Ability User cultivated to absorb negative emotions, and Ganna realized such Ability Users might be mass-produced.
• Sun Hang stayed to observe the counseling room as the psychologists prepared to receive their next client.
• A soldier entered under a dense black mist, triggering the Anomaly Meme monitoring equipment.
• Sun Hang told Ganna that the soldier's consciousness had been irreversibly eroded, but asked the psychologists to speak with him before he was neutralized.
• The soldier muttered that he had seen a woman in a city, and the psychologists found that he had recently returned from a reconnaissance mission in Baikal's Remains.
• Sun Hang noticed that the soldier's flesh was already beginning to mutate beneath his uniform.

Sun Hang investigated a soldier transforming into an aberration after he reported seeing his dead mother in Baikal's Remains. The soldier’s testimony raised questions about whether the vision was a hallucination or something supernatural, and Sun Hang pressed him for more as the chapter ended.

• The soldier transformed during a psychological consultation, and Sun Hang ordered Ganna and the psychologists to stay behind while he entered the room from another door.
• Sun Hang cut back the aberration’s spreading tentacles and approached it, then asked where it had seen someone.
• The soldier said he had seen his mother in Baikal's Remains, and the psychologists revealed that she had died of pancreatic cancer when he was six.
• The soldier described seeing his mother suffering from a bleeding lump, though he had never been told the specific cause of her death.
• Sun Hang questioned whether the figure was truly the soldier’s mother, and the soldier insisted it was before one of its tentacles struck the one-way glass.

Sun Hang questioned whether Baikal's Remains connected to an underworld after examining an Anomalized soldier who claimed to have seen his dead mother there. He concluded the soldier's vision was likely a manifestation of his own negative emotions, then destroyed the spreading Anomaly with Dragon Flame.

• Sun Hang asked Ganna whether the soldier had truly seen his dead mother in Baikal's Remains, but the helmet-camera footage showed no humanoid Anomaly.
• Sun Hang examined the soldier's memories and found only a shadow made of negative emotions, which ordinary people and cameras could not see.
• The soldier's body and the consultation room became covered in rapidly spreading black fuzz, making containment of the Anomaly impractical.
• Sun Hang burned away the black fuzz and the soldier's remains with carefully controlled Dragon Flame.
• The sprinklers activated after the flames vanished, and Sun Hang washed his hands as armed guards entered the consultation room.

Sun Hang gathered the group and their equipment to travel to Baikal's Remains, while Xue Yue tried ice cream for the first time. Just as they were about to leave, Fisherman ran over and called for them to wait.

• Sun Hang drove Xue Yue to the camp entrance, where Yan Yu'an waited with two ice creams.
• Xue Yue accepted a towering stack of ice cream, and Yan Yu'an dismantled it onto a tray so she could eat it.
• Sun Hang gathered Zhong Ling, Yan Yu'an, Xue Yue, and Wang Xiyi to head for Baikal's Remains, with a truck carrying permafrost coffins following them.
• Wang Xiyi planned to follow from the air, and Sun Hang warned her not to fly above the membrane.
• Fisherman ran over and shouted for the group to wait just as Sun Hang was about to set off.

Sun Hang arrived at the Baikal frontline camp and set out with the Fisherman and his companions for Baikal's Remains, treating the dangerous night expedition like a vacation. As the sun set, they watched the city's buildings begin to shift and prepared to enter its moving maze.

• The Fisherman recognized Sun Hang and learned that the operation report credited him alone with killing Chimera Seventeen.
• Sun Hang explained he had come to Baikal City on vacation, and the Fisherman joined the group despite warning him about Baikal's Remains after dark.
• Sun Hang and the others left the camp with Wang Xiyi flying overhead and a truck carrying permafrost coffins of anomalous corpses.
• The group reached Baikal's Remains at dusk, where Wang Xiyi pointed out a tower moving across the landscape.
• Yan Yu'an warned that the buildings would move faster after full darkness and that the shifting city would make finding an exit difficult.