Chapter Summaries

Hao Ren and his companions investigated a quarry cave that opened into a collapsing other-dimensional space containing a lost ancient city built atop a colossal skull. After confirming the city was disintegrating, they entered to investigate and stabilized their passage before heading toward it.

• Heiserana reviewed the quarry accident and decided to warn the supervisor Pero rather than replace him.
• Hao Ren's group found that the cave led into an other-dimensional space, where they discovered a sand-colored ancient city built on the remains of a gigantic creature.
• Hao Ren confirmed that the space and city were steadily being destroyed by the contracting Chaos Boundary.
• Heiserana arranged for her subordinates to guard the cavern while she joined Hao Ren and the others inside for an investigation lasting no more than three days.
• After entering the Lost City, Izax warned that the passage was at risk of collapsing, and Hao Ren installed a spatial stabilizer before the group set out toward the city.

Hao Ren and his companions entered an ancient city beneath lingering Red Moon light, which Vivian recognized as connected to her own power. Protected by Hao Ren’s divine shields, they ventured deeper into the ruins, where a huge shadow briefly appeared in the dust.

• Hao Ren led the group through a breach in the city wall after Izax determined it had collapsed from the inside.
• The group entered a red-lit area where Heiserana warned that the light weakened people and could damage their sanity.
• Vivian identified the strange light as lingering light from the Red Moon and said she sensed her own aura within it.
• Hao Ren cast divine shields that protected everyone from the moonlight, despite their embarrassingly conspicuous names.
• As Heiserana and the others explored the silent city, a huge, indistinct shadow emerged from the dust and vanished.

Hao Ren's group explored a vast temple in the buried city and used the Data Terminal to restore its damaged murals. The murals revealed that Ertos, a colossal beetle-like creature, had destroyed a city-state ruled by the Old Gods, while Lily sensed a sound nearby.

• Vivian examined the city's worn cuneiform but could not translate it, and Hao Ren led the group toward a temple for better-preserved clues.
• Lorisa briefly felt as if someone was watching the group, but Lily and the others sensed no presence.
• Lily cleared the temple's ruined entrance, and the group found an unusually large number of guardian statues inside.
• The Data Terminal restored a mural depicting Ertos, a colossal creature that destroyed a city-state and killed its Old Gods rulers.
• Lily suddenly sprang up and asked whether anyone else had heard something.

Hao Ren and his companions fought their way through the awakened guardians of an ancient temple and discovered that the constructs were powered by mechanical cores vulnerable to magnetic fields. As a horde blocked the exit, Vivian prepared a lightning storm that threatened everyone nearby.

• Lily sensed danger as the temple statues awakened and attacked Hao Ren's group.
• Hao Ren's companions fought toward the passage while the Data Terminal saved the mural designs, and Lily shattered a guardian's flying stone fist.
• Lorisa revealed that the guardians could be stopped by destroying the heat-resistant cores in their chests.
• Izax punched through a guardian's chest, removed its mechanical core, and tossed it to Hao Ren.
• The Data Terminal identified the core as magnetically sensitive, and Vivian began summoning a lightning storm as the guardians blocked the exit.

Hao Ren and his companions escaped the pyramid after Vivian’s electromagnetic storm disabled its stone soldiers, but the storm awakened countless golems across the Lost Ancient City. With the statues converging on them, Hao Ren ordered the group to flee toward the Great Temple, suspecting it was not the golems’ lair.

• Vivian’s electromagnetic storm shut down the pyramid’s stone soldiers and sent strange shadows withdrawing from them.
• Lily argued with Vivian about the storm, then destroyed the last surviving stone soldier outside the pyramid.
• Izax observed that the statues seemed to act under unified command as the ground began to tremble.
• Roll spotted enormous numbers of stone golems marching toward the group from across the Lost Ancient City.
• Hao Ren decided they should escape before the golems surrounded them and directed the Data Terminal to guide them to the Great Temple.

Hao Ren and his companions fought through the stone statue soldiers toward the Great Temple, where Elizabeth identified a way to disrupt their shared control system. Vivian’s electromagnetic storm revealed a hidden presence above the city.

• Hao Ren used the Data Terminal’s aerial view to guide the group toward the Great Temple, which the stone statue soldiers avoided.
• Vivian, Hao Ren, and Heiserana attacked the statues, while Roll was knocked out of the fight and more soldiers converged on the group.
• Hao Ren saw transparent apparitions leave fallen statues and gather into a larger presence hovering above the city; Izax and the others could not see them.
• Elizabeth studied the soldiers’ movements and directed Vivian to unleash an electromagnetic storm at the hidden presence.
• Vivian’s storm immobilized the stone statue legion and revealed the concealed entity in the sky.

Hao Ren and his companions exploited the golem army’s brief paralysis to rush toward the Great Temple in the ancient city. The Data Terminal identified the city as Ertos from temple murals, and they reached the Great Temple hoping to find the rest of its history.

• Vivian’s electromagnetic storm revealed a huge jellyfish-like structure controlling the stone guards and temporarily severed its connections to them.
• Hao Ren’s attacks passed through the structure, while his missiles worsened the collapsing extradimensional space.
• Hao Ren’s group hurried through the confused golem army toward the Great Temple as the guardians rampaged through the city.
• Vivian deduced that the city had once been a capital or religious center supported by a powerful nation, and the Data Terminal identified it as Ertos from the murals.
• The Data Terminal explained that a Great Dominator defeated Ertos, whose head became the foundation for the city, and said the Great Temple might hold the murals’ missing continuation.

Hao Ren and his companions reached the Great Temple, where the berserk Giant statue soldiers stopped at the ramp, and entered the central pyramid to investigate Vivian’s lost memories. They found the temple had been systematically looted, and the chapter ended when Vivian thought she heard someone call her name.

• The Giant statue soldiers went berserk but stopped at the Great Temple’s ramp, where Hao Ren’s group took shelter.
• Hao Ren led the group into the central pyramid after Vivian noted that no stone guardian statues stood there.
• Hao Ren blasted open the magic-reinforced bronze gate, and the group explored the temple’s bare interior.
• The group discovered emptied treasuries and concluded that someone familiar with the temple had systematically looted it, likely from among the city’s inhabitants.
• Vivian heard what sounded like someone calling her name again.

Hao Ren and his companions discovered that the Great Temple’s reliefs described the Dominator’s rule over Ertos and the creation of the stone warriors. Vivian’s touch awakened a hidden chamber and a golden sarcophagus, and Hao Ren attacked whatever was inside before it could emerge.

• Lily read the reliefs, revealing that the Beast-headed Gods had made the Dominator Ertos’s chief god and forged stone warriors from the dead behemoth’s bone plates.
• Vivian touched the mask carved on the pillar, causing its reliefs to dissolve and display the warning, “Do not awaken it!”
• The Great Pyramid distorted as a hidden altar appeared, and a golden sarcophagus began to open.
• Hao Ren threw a gravity bomb into the sarcophagus and fired three shots from his service pistol.

Hao Ren’s group fought the Evil Spirit that emerged from Vivian’s sarcophagus and discovered that it wielded Level 1 Divinity. As the Great Pyramid began collapsing, Hao Ren ordered most of the group to retreat while he, Vivian, and Lily stayed to confront it.

• Hao Ren blasted the sarcophagus and platform, but the Evil Spirit survived and gathered itself from black-and-red smoke.
• The Evil Spirit appeared to Hao Ren as a faceless figure, while Vivian saw a woman with her own face.
• The Evil Spirit attacked with scarlet shockwaves, and the Data Terminal identified its power as chaotic energy possessing Level 1 Divinity.
• Hao Ren realized that the Evil Spirit’s divinity let it withstand his psionic sidearm, while attacks from Izax, Elizabeth, and Lorisa failed to stop it.
• The battle weakened the Great Pyramid until it began collapsing, so Hao Ren assigned Izax and Lorisa to cover the retreat while he, Vivian, and Lily stayed behind.

Hao Ren, Vivian, and Lily fought the divine Evil Spirit after the Great Temple collapsed, while the others withdrew to safety. Hao Ren unleashed a vast arsenal from his portable space as Vivian and Lily joined the assault, leaving the battle raging over Ertos Ancient City.

• The Great Temple collapsed, and Izax and the others escaped the ruins as the Giant statue soldiers fell silent.
• Hao Ren, Vivian, and Lily stayed behind to fight the Evil Spirit while Izax, Lorisa, Roll, and Heiserana withdrew to the second line.
• Hao Ren judged that the Evil Spirit’s divinity prevented instant death but did not make her invincible, and he decided to wear her down.
• The Evil Spirit summoned a vast sea of blood from the sky, and Hao Ren opened his portable space to deploy artillery across the battlefield.
• Vivian struck the blood vortex with lightning, and Lily transformed into a giant silver-white wolf and fired a divine-power cannon into the clouds.

Hao Ren, Vivian, and their allies defeated the weakened Evil Spirit and surveyed the devastation across Ertos. As the Stone soldiers stood motionless, the giant beast Ertos spoke to them telepathically and revealed that the group was standing on its head.

• Hao Ren and Vivian coordinated their attacks against the exhausted Evil Spirit, with Lily's Dog Cannon helping to blast it apart.
• Vivian battered the Evil Spirit while angrily condemning it for wearing her face, ruining her reputation, and sleeping in a gold coffin.
• The Evil Spirit burned to ash, and the blood sea and quicksand vortex faded as the battle ended.
• Hao Ren and the others saw the ruined city and noticed that the surviving Stone soldiers remained motionless around them.
• Ertos contacted the group telepathically, identified itself as the giant beast, and said they were standing on its head.

Ertos revealed that the ancient battle with the Great Dominator had actually been an agreement to change his destructive physical form, and he recounted how the city built from his remains later fell into rebellion and catastrophe. He left the story at the moment the Dominator tore open space and cast Ertos City into an Alternate dimension.

• Ertos told Hao Ren that the Great Dominator had destroyed his physical shell by agreement, not after a battle, and that their apparent exchange of attacks had been a conversation.
• Ertos explained that the city's residents built homes and tools from his remains while the Great Dominator lived in the temple as their nominal ruler.
• As the Dominator grew increasingly tyrannical, the Beast-headed Gods and other residents rebelled, but she vanished from the temple and let them loot it.
• After the rebellion began to disperse, the Dominator summoned a blood-red moon whose light drove the residents to slaughter one another and trapped them inside the city.
• Ertos said the surviving Beast-headed Gods nearly broke through the moonlight barrier, but the Dominator collapsed space and cast the entire city into an Alternate dimension.

Ertos explained how the Dominator cast the city into an alternate dimension and why he guarded her sleeping place. He revealed that she had left behind a gemstone, which might offer clues about her origins.

• Ertos recounted how the Dominator remained atop the Great Temple for centuries while he recovered from the red moonlight's damage, then returned to the temple and fell asleep.
• Ertos explained that he reclaimed the Stone soldiers and used them to keep outsiders from awakening the Dominator; Hao Ren's group discovered that he had stopped a World War II British army unit as well.
• Ertos said he had avoided communicating with intruders because discussing the Dominator could awaken her, and he described her as a directionless wanderer with an unstable mind.
• Ertos revealed that the Dominator had once given a gemstone to Ertos's High Priest and that it should still be sealed where it was left.

Hao Ren’s group recovered the blood crystal and fled the collapsing Lost City as Ertos separated from the city and vanished into the boundary vortex. They returned to the cave, which was also beginning to disappear, and Heiserana prepared to lead everyone out.

• Hao Ren’s machines dug out the blood crystal, and Vivian considered absorbing it after examining its power.
• The other dimension’s collapse accelerated because of the destruction caused during Hao Ren’s fight with the Evil Spirit.
• Ertos said the city had reached its end and began separating her spirit from it as Hao Ren’s group headed for the exit.
• Hao Ren, Vivian, Heiserana, Elizabeth, Roll, and the others escaped through the failing portal while Ertos drifted into the boundary vortex.
• The group returned to the Yellow Sand cave, where Heiserana saw that it was collapsing too and ordered everyone to leave.

After Ertos vanished, Hao Ren and the others discussed the Evil Spirit’s divinity and Lily proposed that Vivian and the Evil Spirits were all fragments of one incomplete being. Hao Ren then noticed that Vivian’s ability to see Evil Spirits had changed across their encounters, leaving the group with a new mystery to investigate.

• The lost space collapsed over several hours, and Ertos disappeared beneath the sands as its last witnesses returned home.
• Hao Ren told the group that the Ertos Evil Spirit had possessed genuine, high-grade divinity, and Vivian said that divinity deserved closer attention.
• Lily theorized that Vivian and all the Evil Spirits were fragments of a once-whole being, each carrying different traits.
• Vivian fell silent after Lily’s theory, while Hao Ren asked when she had first seen an Evil Spirit with her own eyes.
• Hao Ren recalled that Vivian had initially seen an Evil Spirit as a misty figure, but later saw other Evil Spirits clearly, while in Ertos she alone saw the monster’s true form.

After Vivian concluded that her connection to the Evil Spirit was growing stronger, she met its phantom alone in the basement and glimpsed scenes from the past. Meanwhile, a godlike disturbance over Earth brought figures from the Mythical Era into the present, prompting Raven 12345 to react in alarm.

• Lorisa, Nangong Sanba, and Vivian concluded that Vivian’s changing perception of the Evil Spirit reflected a strengthening connection between them.
• Hao Ren suggested that everyone rest and said he would ask Raven 12345 about the matter the next day.
• Vivian sat awake in the basement and failed to notice an Evil Spirit phantom emerge and take the form of her double.
• The Evil Spirit phantom revealed images of the Mythical Era and an ancient god-created life resembling Vivian, after which Vivian murmured, “So that’s how it is.”
• A ripple blocked the World Managers’ perception and brought figures from ancient eras into modern Earth, where people continued their routines as if nothing had changed.
• Raven 12345 noticed the blind spot and exclaimed in alarm.

Hao Ren woke to find South Suburbs and nearby districts transformed into a chaotic landscape of ancient civilizations, and he began investigating the unexplained changes. He discovered Vivian had vanished from the house without leaving a trace, and suspected her disappearance was connected to the upheaval.

• Lily woke Hao Ren and showed him the transformed streets, where ancient temples, peoples, vehicles, and creatures had appeared.
• Lily told Hao Ren that Nangong Sanba and Old King had investigated the city and a neighboring city, finding similar changes and evidence that the events were real.
• Hao Ren gathered the household and learned that Vivian was absent and had not prepared breakfast.
• Hao Ren inspected Vivian's room and found her bed unmade, with no signs of a struggle or any alarm-system response.
• Hao Ren concluded that Vivian had left on her own, while Lily wondered if she had vanished into thin air.

Hao Ren searched for the vanished Vivian but found that Earth had become a distorted landscape of scenes and beings from different eras, while communication with the divine realm was cut off. He and Lily discovered that ordinary people seemed to have been replaced by lifelike projections, and they suspected Vivian’s disappearance was connected to the planet-wide changes.

• Hao Ren found Vivian’s phone in the basement, and searches by Lily, Lorisa, and Nangong Sanba uncovered no trace of her.
• Hao Ren failed to contact Raven 12345, while the Data Terminal detected that Earth was shielded from communication with the wider universe.
• Hao Ren divided the group into investigation teams, left Roll to watch Doudou and Weak Chicken, and took Lily to investigate the South Suburbs.
• Hao Ren and Lily encountered bizarre landscapes and historical figures, including Great Qin infantry, Mongols, a desert, a pyramid, and a jungle-covered bridge.
• Hao Ren tested Old Zhao’s awareness of a nearby sphinx and realized the shopkeeper repeated his greeting like an emotionless puppet.
• Hao Ren concluded that real people had been replaced by projections and noted that modern scenes were disappearing as temporal and spatial anomalies spread.

Hao Ren and his companions investigated the worldwide appearance of real spacetime phantoms and found that the changes seemed tied to divinity and the span of Vivian’s memories. As Raven 12345 reached Hao Ren through his mental world, the group still had no explanation for the phenomenon or news of Vivian.

• Hao Ren returned home with Lily and found the mansion and its immediate surroundings untouched while Roll, Doudou, and the little weakling slept undisturbed.
• The others returned safely and reported that the phantoms were real but seemed isolated in their own spacetimes and largely unresponsive to outsiders.
• Lorisa said the changes were random, came from different eras and cultures, and showed no signs of being caused by magic.
• The Data Terminal concluded that the phantoms covered the whole Earth, the mansion formed a small safe zone, and divinity might protect people from the changes.
• Hao Ren noticed that the phantoms only represented events from Vivian’s time on Earth, leading the group to suspect a connection to her memories.
• Raven 12345 called out to Hao Ren through his mental world and asked him to respond.