Chapter Summaries

Sun Hang and Professor Cao visited Zuo Jun in his hidden room inside Tianshu Tower, where Zuo Jun explained why he distrusted Sun Hang and began recounting how his power once altered the outcome of a fatal accident. Zuo Jun’s story ended with the expected van failing to appear, leaving the consequences of his intervention unexplained.

• Sun Hang and Professor Cao teleported into a sealed room built within Tianshu Tower’s load-bearing structure, where Zuo Jun lived among shelves of books.
• Zuo Jun introduced himself, said Pei Zongjun believed Sun Hang could save the world, and admitted he disliked him because he was uncontrollable.
• Zuo Jun told Sun Hang that he had mastered his ability as a child before Tianshu Tower discovered him.
• Zuo Jun recounted reversing a car accident in which a van struck a young man, then holding the man in place while anticipating the same van would appear again.
• After thirty seconds passed, the van never arrived, despite Zuo Jun’s expectation that it would.

Zuo Jun described how a man he repeatedly tried to save still died, prompting Sun Hang and Professor Cao to speculate about limits on Zuo Jun’s time reversals and the forces behind them. The conversation left Sun Hang asking whether Zuo Jun had seen an image or object shaped like three monkeys while reversing time.

• Zuo Jun told Sun Hang that a man escaped a van accident but was killed by a falling flowerpot, and that another attempt to save him ended with the cat that knocked over the pot falling instead.
• Professor Cao argued that Zuo Jun’s ability to save 197 high-risk experiments made it unlikely that the world simply corrected every altered event.
• Sun Hang speculated that Zuo Jun might be a limited-use tool of a god or an outside chess player, while Zuo Jun questioned why such a tool would have independent awareness.
• Sun Hang asked whether Zuo Jun doubted the reality of the world, and Zuo Jun said the Mainframe attributed his doubts to repeatedly reversing time.
• Sun Hang asked whether Zuo Jun had ever seen an image or object shaped like three monkeys, especially during a time reversal.

Liu Meng led soldiers to investigate a halted subway project after hearing repeated rumbling inside the mountain, but they encountered aberrations and primitive-looking spear throwers. Liu Meng was badly injured as the battle escalated, while the surviving soldiers fought on against the advancing monsters.

• Liu Meng learned that Class One had found fresh cave-ins at the abandoned subway entrance, then lost radio contact with the squad leader.
• Liu Meng and the Deputy Platoon Leader led reinforcements up the slope and encountered an aberration, which knocked Liu Meng down and killed another soldier.
• Liu Meng called for a purple Signal Flare and ordered the soldiers carrying him to turn the stretcher so he could watch the fight.
• The Deputy Platoon Leader's soldiers fired on four or five towering monsters, but their wounds healed rapidly, while primitive-looking humans attacked with bone spears.
• The Deputy Platoon Leader redirected fire toward the spear throwers, killing many, though Liu Meng suspected they were not truly dead.

Liu Meng and the patrol fought freaks whose bodies regenerated after being shot, while waiting for reinforcements and an airstrike. The freaks fled toward an old graveyard, and the soldiers realized their influence could transform corpses as a fallen soldier began mutating.

• Liu Meng saw the bullet-riddled freaks regenerate into grotesque masses and warned that ordinary bullets could not kill them.
• The Deputy Platoon Leader refused to retreat because the freaks might reach the village, and two rookies used the vehicle-mounted heavy machine gun to drive them back.
• A communications soldier reported that reinforcements would arrive within five minutes and a drone strike within three, but the freaks suddenly fled northeast.
• The Deputy Platoon Leader saw a dead soldier rise and recognized that the freaks' memetic influence could trigger corpse transformation.
• Liu Meng realized the freaks were heading toward an old earth-burial graveyard, and the Deputy Platoon Leader set the mutating soldier's body on fire.