Chapter Summaries

Hao Ren and the others discovered that the giant pilots’ brains had mutated into brain monsters, possibly explaining similar creatures elsewhere. When Hao Ren showed the imprisoned Giant Brain the giants’ scans, he learned that it had escaped.

• Hao Ren and his companions examined four giant pilots’ corpses and found that their brains showed signs of turning into brain monsters.
• The Data Terminal ruled out parasitism and concluded that the giants’ brain tissue had mutated, possibly around the time they attacked Aeolus.
• Nangong Sanba and Hao Ren connected the giants’ mutation to brain monsters found on Earth and Horleta, suggesting the mutation had affected giants across the universe.
• Hao Ren brought the Data Terminal to show the Giant Brain images of the giants, but the creature did not respond.
• The Data Terminal checked the containment tube and announced that the Giant Brain had escaped.

Hao Ren discovered that the brain monster had escaped by transmitting its consciousness while the laboratory systems were weakened during Eva’s rampage. After leaving Io, he returned to Nathatone with the Sirens, who began repairing their city and received a record of their lost history and language.

• The Data Terminal told Hao Ren that the brain monster’s consciousness had vanished, and they determined it had escaped during the security disruption caused by Eva’s rampage.
• Lily and Vivian visited the laboratory, and Hao Ren stored the brain monster’s soulless body in a containment case to show Raven 12345.
• Hao Ren left Io after installing a teleportation gate, but he warned the Sirens that returning to settle there would be dangerous while the Dream Plane remained unstable.
• The Siren Queen, Shaqila, and Soma admitted they wanted to return to Io, but the Siren Queen agreed to focus on restoring Nathatone and restarting its Great Shield Wall.
• Hao Ren gave the Siren Queen a data disk containing the Sirens’ history and written language, and she thanked him on behalf of her people.

After returning home, Hao Ren caught up on reports and checked on Doudou’s Demon Hunter training. Nangong Sanba presented her with miniature equipment, but Doudou tried to eat it, leaving her training plan in need of revision.

• Hao Ren and the others returned home, found Elizabeth keeping the household in order, and rested before resuming their usual routines.
• Hao Ren worked on his reports while Lily wondered why she was the only one paying rent, and Hao Ren explained that her rent had been converted into giant bones.
• Nangong Sanba told Hao Ren that Doudou had learned most of Rune of Leta and demonstrated her holy flame, which he used to light a cigar.
• Vivian took Doudou to the kitchen to light the stove, then Nangong Sanba presented her with custom miniature Demon Hunter training gear.
• Doudou tried to eat the wooden equipment, so Hao Ren stopped her and questioned Nangong Sanba’s choice of materials.

Hao Ren brought Raven 12345 samples from Aio, including a mutated Giant Brain and the remains of one of the giants, for her to examine. Raven 12345 concluded that the giants’ near-perfect bodies suggested an exceptionally close connection to the Primordial Seed, leaving Hao Ren to wonder whether they were another form of the Firstborn.

• Doudou continued her weapons training by chewing on the equipment, so Nangong Sanba decided to get her a proper set.
• Hao Ren left for Raven 12345’s territory after asking Lily to walk the cat if he was delayed.
• Raven 12345 took Hao Ren to her vast storage vault and examined the Giant Brain and a giant’s remains from Aio.
• Raven 12345 explained that the giants’ flawless bodies and powerful mutations suggested they had received a divine gift and were closely related to the Primordial Seed.
• Hao Ren proposed that the giants might be another form of the Firstborn, and Raven 12345 left the possibility open.

Hao Ren discussed the Giants, a divine scroll fragment, and the Sirens’ possible return to the Dream Plane with Raven 12345. Raven revealed that the Dream Plane’s Creation Goddess might belong to the Xiling or Star Domain Pantheon, while a fragment’s analysis and Raven’s attempt to assess Hao Ren left the mystery unresolved.

• Raven 12345 said the Giants were directly created by the Creation Goddess rather than born from the Primordial Seed, and examined a divinity-bearing scroll fragment Hao Ren had found.
• Raven agreed that returning the Sirens to the Dream Plane was too risky while it was becoming turbulent.
• Hao Ren asked whether the Creation Goddess was a True God from a known pantheon, and Raven said the Data Network could only narrow her origin to the Xiling or Star Domain Pantheon.
• Raven fed Hao Ren noodles, then privately studied the scroll fragment and used a crystal prism to assess him, but the prism displayed only his enormous face.
• Hao Ren walked home through the South Suburbs, sneezed, and concluded he had forgotten nothing.

Hao Ren received a broadcast from Santu Su IV, where an inspector had captured an anger spirit and sought help analyzing it. After confirming that he had experience capturing one, Hao Ren arranged a visit to meet the other inspector and discuss their research.

• Hao Ren forgot Lily's steamed buns and tried to make up for it by giving her chocolate, which she could not eat.
• Hao Ren learned that Izax had taken Elizabeth to repair Old Madam Zhao's refrigerator, while Nangong Sanba had gone into the city to meet two Demon Hunters.
• The Data Terminal informed Hao Ren that an inspector on Santu Su IV had captured an anger spirit and was seeking help studying it.
• Hao Ren sent a D-level encrypted reply offering assistance, and the inspector welcomed him to visit.
• Hao Ren decided to travel to Santu Su IV with his team and considered bringing local specialties.

Hao Ren learned about Santu Su IV and traveled there with his companions to investigate a second angry spirit. They arrived at Suha Satellite Station, where the Station Chief repeatedly tried to sell them souvenirs, and continued toward the planet.

• Hao Ren read about Santu Su IV, its ancient civilizations, and the nearby Suha Satellite Station.
• Lily, Nangong May, Roll, and Nangong Sanba decided to join Hao Ren, while Vivian stayed home and Izax declined.
• Hao Ren and his companions traveled to Santu Su IV aboard a spaceship the next morning.
• The group reached Suha Satellite Station, a vast ancient structure covered in powerful broadcasting antennas.
• The Station Chief repeatedly offered Hao Ren a souvenir package and mentioned complaints about the station's antenna radiation.
• Hao Ren ended the call and had the spaceship accelerate toward Santu Su IV.

Hao Ren and his companions arrived on Santu? Su IV to meet a fellow inspector, only to be escorted by dragons to their hidden kingdom. There, Dragon Queen Galazhor revealed that she was the inspector and asked Hao Ren whether he had brought sauce-braised pork knuckle.

• Hao Ren brought Lily, Nangong May, Roll, and Nangong Sanba to the wilderness coordinate supplied by the inspector.
• Several dragons flew toward the group and ordered them to follow.
• The dragons carried Hao Ren and his companions to the hidden Dragon Kingdom inside Gleaming Stone Peak.
• Dragon Queen Galazhor dismissed the other dragons and revealed that she was an inspector.
• Galazhor dropped her imposing pose and asked Hao Ren for sauce-braised pork knuckle.

Hao Ren and his companions visited Galadriel, the Dragon Queen and fellow inspector, and learned how she became an inspector while sharing food and stories. Galadriel checked on the angry spirit trapped at Thunder Mountain, and the group met her unusually named cat.

• Galadriel welcomed Hao Ren and his companions to her palace and ate the Earth snacks he had brought.
• Galadriel told Hao Ren how she met the Goddess, bit her, and later became an inspector.
• Galadriel explained that inspectors came from many backgrounds and that the Xiling Pantheon's territory spanned countless worlds.
• Nangong May reminded Galadriel to check on the angry spirit, and Galadriel confirmed that it remained trapped in Thunder Mountain's core region.
• Hao Ren's talkative Data Terminal tried to befriend Galadriel's formal terminal, which repeatedly rejected it.
• Galadriel introduced her big yellow cat, simply named Cat, while Lily hid behind Hao Ren.

Galadriel took Hao Ren and his companions on a tour of her kingdom before flying them to Thunder Mountain. She revealed that the supposed mountain was an ancient fusion generator, where she had trapped the Wrath Spirit.

• Roll and the big yellow cat met, and Cat Girl concluded that the yellow cat was too stupid to fear dragons.
• Galadriel transformed into a Golden Dragon, ordered the palace sealed, and carried the group into the air.
• Galadriel showed the group her kingdom inside Glowstone Mountain and explained that its clouds concealed dragon eggs, not a treasure hoard.
• Galadriel flew the group toward Thunder Mountain and described how she had caught the Wrath Spirit near the gravitational balance point between Santu Su IV and Suha Satellite Station.
• Galadriel revealed that Thunder Mountain was a still-running fusion generator left by the previous civilization.

Hao Ren and Galadriel traveled into Thunder Mountain’s dangerous reactor core, where they found a second wrath spirit preserved inside a magnetic field. Hao Ren went to retrieve the device that could communicate with it, leaving the group and their Data Terminals together.

• Galadriel led Hao Ren and the others past Quel'Thar’s mage outpost and into Thunder Mountain’s inner layer.
• Galadriel explained that she had hired the Fialli Consortium to repair the reactor core and described the lethal hazards inside the mountain.
• Galadriel brought the group to the reactor hall and showed them the wrath spirit contained by Magic Stones.
• The Data Terminal judged the spirit to be in better condition than the one they had captured, though Galadriel said her attempts to analyze it had failed.
• Hao Ren said his specialized communication device was aboard his spaceship and went to retrieve it.

Hao Ren and Galadriel investigated how to make sense of the wrath spirit’s chaotic memories, and the Data Terminal found a way to organize them without decoding them. The group prepared to begin reading Sample One.

• Hao Ren installed and tested the new analyzer, and Galadriel guided a wrath spirit into it with the Magic Stones.
• The analyzer produced a stream of apparently meaningless symbols and images, but Galadriel noticed repeated markers and sequences.
• Galadriel suggested that the wrath spirit’s memories might be disordered and non-linear, and Hao Ren theorized that the Firstborn had destroyed their organizational structure along with their self-awareness.
• The Data Terminal tried a new method of indexing the memories, organizing the information without relying on a timeline.
• The Data Terminal announced that the new approach was working and that they could begin reading Sample One.

Hao Ren secured Galadriel’s equipment for analyzing the wrath spirit and joined the Nangong siblings at a dragon banquet before returning to the Dream Plane investigation. Galadriel warned that the Dream Plane’s accelerating merger with the Outer World might not be natural, and the Data Terminal interrupted Hao Ren with news from the spaceship laboratory.

• Hao Ren told Galadriel he needed to help Nangong May and Nangong Sanba find their parents, and Galadriel invited them to a banquet before they left.
• Galadriel hosted Hao Ren and his companions at a vast plaza beneath Glowstone Mountain, where the dragons feasted on roasted meat.
• Galadriel asked Hao Ren about his responsibility for the Dream Plane and cautioned him to watch for unexpected revelations.
• Hao Ren described the stable passage between the Dream Plane and the Outer World, and Galadriel concluded that their recent merging process seemed accelerated and unnatural.
• The Data Terminal announced that news had arrived from the spaceship laboratory before Hao Ren could finish speculating about the Wall of Reality.

Hao Ren and the others searched the Wraith’s memories for Nangong Sanba and Nangong May’s parents, identifying them in a memory of a battle from a century earlier. The stars seen after the couple vanished did not match anything in this universe, suggesting the Wraith may have taken them to the Dream Plane.

• The Data Terminal asked Nangong Sanba to let an Autonomous Mechanical Unit extract his memories so the system could identify his parents in the Wraith’s vast memory bank.
• The system found a blurry image of Nangong Sanba and Nangong May’s parents, and May confirmed their identities.
• The group watched the Wraith’s memory of the couple fighting before interference obscured the scene and a starry sky appeared.
• The Data Terminal searched the Sovereign Hub’s celestial records but found no match for the stars, suggesting the memory might show a location outside this universe.
• The Data Terminal proposed that the Wraith had taken the couple to the Dream Plane and began searching the distant regions mapped by its proliferation probes.

Hao Ren used the Angry Spirit’s memories and his probe network to locate a star region that might be connected to the disappearance of Nangong May’s parents, but the region had no celestial bodies and contained only ashes. He took his companions aboard the Giant Turtle Rock Platform to investigate, where the station’s latest report identified the ashes as remnants of a sun.

• Hao Ren’s drones matched the Angry Spirit’s remembered stars to an empty region where a massive explosion had left a cloud of ashes.
• Nangong May feared her parents might have been sent into space, and Hao Ren decided to investigate the region in person.
• Hao Ren returned to Earth and told Vivian and the Nangong siblings about the discovery, then planned to leave the next day.
• Izax and Elizabeth volunteered to join the search, and Hao Ren brought the household aboard the Giant Turtle Rock Platform.
• The ship reached a drone relay station near the target region and received a report that the ashes were from a sun.

Hao Ren and his companions searched the empty remains of a dead star system for the planet where the Nangong couple had been sent. A probe discovered that the planet had been transformed into a wandering world driven by engines, and calculations placed it near the coordinates they sought a century earlier.

• The Data Terminal found only the ashes of a dead star at the location indicated by the wrath spirit’s memories, with the system’s planets missing.
• Hao Ren’s group traveled to the stellar remains and confirmed that no planetary debris could be found.
• A probe delivered an unfamiliar component, then detected a planet being propelled through space by enormous engines.
• The Giant Turtle Rock Platform caught up with the wandering planet and observed its extensive artificial modifications.
• The Data Terminal calculated that the planet had been near the sought coordinates a hundred years earlier, and Lily suggested the Nangong couple were on its surface.

Hao Ren and his companions explored a lifeless wandering planet propelled through space by enormous engines, hoping to find Nangong May’s mother and Nangong Sanba’s father. After confirming that the thrusters were the likeliest place for survivors, they drove toward them and encountered vast structures beneath the snow.

• Hao Ren’s group surveyed the wandering planet and found frozen oceans, a magnetic shield, and more than 160 enormous thruster nozzles, with only some still operating.
• Hao Ren left Elizabeth, Cat, and Fish aboard the ship while he, Vivian, Izax, and the others teleported to the surface; the Data Terminal remained in orbit to provide support.
• Nangong May and Nangong Sanba considered whether their parents could have survived the harsh conditions, and Izax pointed out that the active thrusters were the planet’s only warm region.
• Hao Ren drove the group across the ice fields toward the thrusters, where enormous pipes and steel supports rose from the snow and spread across the land.

Hao Ren and the others explored a ruined planet whose enormous engines created isolated habitable zones, finding an abandoned city but no sign of the Nangong siblings’ parents. They concluded that the planet’s failed escape had begun moving only a hundred years ago and continued their search.

• Hao Ren, Lily, and Vivian crossed the frozen planet and observed that its engines generated limited rings of warmth and wind.
• Hao Ren and the others found a ruined city near an active engine and discovered no signs of life there.
• Hao Ren judged that the city had been abandoned for at least ten thousand years and suspected the inhabitants had fled an apocalypse caused by the Firstborn or brain monsters.
• Lily pointed out that the planet had only started moving a hundred years earlier, and Hao Ren agreed that something had delayed its escape.
• The Nangong siblings found no evidence their parents had lived in the city but remained hopeful and decided to search the planet’s other habitable regions.

Hao Ren and his companions explored the automated machinery surrounding a massive plasma engine and encountered a robot that identified them as citizens. It guided them to a clean inspection facility, where a human figure suddenly appeared on a wall screen.

• Hao Ren followed an automated transport vehicle into a vast factory city where machines and vehicles operated without anyone present.
• Hao Ren’s group explored the factories and found that even the control room was empty and automated.
• A patrol robot detected the group, checked their health, and ordered them to follow it to an inspection station.
• Hao Ren and his companions followed the robot to a bright, orderly hall filled with small service robots.
• A human figure appeared on a screen in the wall as the group approached the far door.

Hao Ren and his companions discovered that survivors lived in a shelter beneath the seemingly deserted planet and descended dozens of kilometers underground. The elevator opened onto an enormous, illuminated city inside a cavern, leaving them stunned by the shelter’s scale.

• A stern middle-aged man appeared on a wall screen, directed Hao Ren’s group toward a shelter, and said a civil affairs investigator would ask about them.
• Vivian and Hao Ren reasoned that the survivors’ presence was puzzling and wondered whether Nangong May’s parents might be in the shelter.
• The group noticed the man had shown no surprise at May’s sea-serpent tail or Lily’s ears and tail, then rode a deep underground elevator while staying alert.
• Nangong Sanba tested the area outside the elevator with rune paper before the group cautiously stepped out.
• Hao Ren’s group found a vast city beneath a rocky cavern, and Vivian briefly lost herself in thought about the cavern.