Chapter Summaries

Yi Chen and Moonscar Lorien woke in a deluxe orphanage room and learned the schedule and Points rules governing the gambling game. They set out for the canteen after a broadcast warned that late arrivals would be sent to the sewers.

• The Duke reflected that Yi Chen and the Sick One had survived the opening challenge with few injuries and considered selling a walkthrough of the game.
• Yi Chen’s memories revealed how Director Cao had tormented him at the orphanage and how he had planned to escape and return to kill her.
• Yi Chen woke from a nightmare and apologized to Moonscar Lorien for losing control of his emotions.
• Yi Chen read the orphanage rules and learned that students needed 100 Points to graduate, while Moonscar proposed searching for a way to leave early.
• A broadcast ordered the children to reach the canteen within fifteen minutes, so Moonscar carefully put away his book and prepared to go with Yi Chen.

Yi Chen and Yuehen reached the canteen, where the Postman made them roll dice before they were served a dangerous biological meal. When another boy’s egg hatched after he cut it incorrectly, it transformed him into a grotesque creature that turned its attention toward Yi Chen and Yuehen.

• Yi Chen led Yuehen through the corridors to the canteen before their fifteen-minute deadline.
• The Postman had Yi Chen and Yuehen roll dice, and both rolled fours, prompting the canteen to prepare their meals according to the result.
• The head chef served the orphans Live Eggs and instructed them to cut along the surface veins, avoid the inner membrane, and finish within thirty minutes.
• Lorien began eating his egg, while Yi Chen studied its veins and started cutting along an optimal route.
• A boy behind Yi Chen and Yuehen vomited, cut his egg outside a vein, and triggered its hatching.
• The hatchling entered the boy’s mouth, transformed him into a grotesque mass of flesh, and drew its many gazes toward Yi Chen and Yuehen.

Yi Chen and Yuehen survived the orphanage’s first day of the gambling match, gaining rewards from lunch and attending their assigned classes. The day ended with them rolling the highest difficulty below disaster for the evening Talent Class.

• The head chef crushed the Monstrous Larva before it could attack Yi Chen, and Yi Chen recognized him as Li Hong from his past.
• Yi Chen ate the remaining larva and gained a spinal enhancement that also changed his real body, while Yuehen exchanged his larva for three Points.
• Yi Chen checked the Small Store for a hand axe, and Yuehen spent his Points on novels about the moon.
• Yi Chen and Yuehen drew low numbers for Knowledge Class and attended an ordinary Chinese-language lesson; Yuehen became absorbed in the novels afterward.
• Yi Chen and Yuehen rolled five and six for the evening Talent Class, drawing the highest difficulty below disaster.

Yi Chen and Moon Scar entered the Art Hall, where a trap forced the students to cling to chains above a pit of spikes. Teacher Fang appeared to teach the class, and her presence brought back Yi Chen’s memories of the teacher who had stalked him at the orphanage.

• A postman warned Yi Chen and Moon Scar that dying in the course would end their journey and affect their original bodies.
• Yi Chen and Moon Scar reached the Art Hall and used masks to filter its miasma.
• The floor vanished beneath the students, and Yi Chen and Moon Scar grabbed chains while some students fell onto spikes below.
• Teacher Fang emerged from the miasma and introduced herself as the instructor for the talent class.
• Yi Chen recognized Teacher Fang’s resemblance to the art teacher from his past, who had followed him after class, and felt that same disturbing presence again.

Yi Chen and the other students endured Teacher Fang’s dangerous dance class, where mannequins punished mistakes by assimilating their bodies. After surviving the first phase, Yi Chen partnered with Lorien and told him to prepare to carry out their plan against Teacher Fang.

• Teacher Fang assigned each student a Humanoid Mannequin dance partner, and Yi Chen recognized that she might find him familiar despite their denial of having met.
• As Teacher Fang’s music grew faster and more disturbing, Lorien and other students fell out of rhythm and were partially assimilated, while many students were transformed into mannequins and taken away.
• Yi Chen kept pace with the increasingly grotesque dance, drawing the attention of several girls when the first phase ended.
• Teacher Fang announced an improvisational partner-dance phase, and Yi Chen rejected the girls who approached him before meeting Lorien in the center of the hall.
• Yi Chen told Lorien to prepare to execute their plan and asked him to help kill Teacher Fang, despite Lorien’s plasticized hands.

Yi Chen and Moonscar Lorien completed the final dance in art class, and Teacher Fang tried to keep Yi Chen with her. Lorien secretly supplied Yi Chen with a flaming hand axe, and Yi Chen struck Teacher Fang, officially starting the Desperate Gambling Match against her complete form, The Gestalt One, Fang Qiong.

• Yi Chen told Moonscar Lorien he planned to advance their special-clearance plan and attack a teacher during art class.
• Lorien and Yi Chen danced flawlessly through the final phase, leaving them as the last two dancers in the hall.
• Teacher Fang praised them and offered to keep Yi Chen behind, while threads from her fingers restrained him.
• Lorien pretended to trip over a flaming hand axe and sent it flying toward Yi Chen.
• Yi Chen caught the axe and chopped Teacher Fang in the skull, revealing the hall's flesh-and-chain interior and triggering the match against The Gestalt One, Fang Qiong.

During the Desperate Gambling Match, Yi Chen’s violent attempt to kill Teacher Fang failed, and she trapped him and Moonscar Lorien in agonizing chains. As the pain nearly destroyed Yi Chen, memories of Teacher Zed taught him to accept it, and he opened his eyes with renewed focus.

• Duke Garryson examined Yi Chen’s obscured memories and used a stolen Atonement Chain, which failed to bind Lorien but wrapped around Yi Chen’s body.
• Yi Chen began the Desperate Gambling Match by killing Teacher Fang, then broke his axe against the metal chains in her body while trying to strike again.
• Teacher Fang restrained Yi Chen and Lorien with chains and pierced their navels with spiked Atonement Chains, causing Lorien to pass out and begin suffering irreversible destruction.
• As spikes grew from Yi Chen’s flesh and threatened to scatter his consciousness, he entered a borderland and recalled Teacher Zed teaching him to accept pain as nourishment.
• Yi Chen emerged from the memory with focused eyes and looked at Teacher Fang with sincere gratitude.

Yi Chen endured Teacher Fang’s torture until his Physique grew and he gained control of the Thorned Iron Chain, while Lorien appeared to die. With Lorien’s help, Yi Chen broke free and confronted Teacher Fang, ending the chapter by smashing her face with a headbutt.

• Lorien’s body burst apart from the Suffering Energy, and Teacher Fang tried to pull the chain from Yi Chen before he seized it and drew it farther into himself.
• Yi Chen’s Physique increased, and plants inside his body fused with the Thorned Iron Chain as he gained strength and resisted Teacher Fang.
• Lorien appeared behind Teacher Fang, tore out her heart, and questioned whether the chains were the source of her life.
• Yi Chen mastered the chain inside his body, broke his restraints, and fell beside Lorien as chains and needles began moving beneath his skin.
• Teacher Fang attacked with chains, and Yi Chen charged her, using a matching chain to pull them together before headbutting her face.

Yi Chen and Lorien destroyed Teacher Fang's core, ending the Art Hall lockdown and earning a real-world chain reward. They returned to the dormitory before bedtime, where the Night Shift Teacher checked them and left, while Lorien stayed awake to read.

• Yi Chen restrained Teacher Fang while Moon Eyes removed her metal spine, but the spine counterattacked and pierced Lorien.
• Yi Chen broke the spine and drank its metallic marrow, healing his injuries and strengthening the chains in his body.
• The gambling match confirmed Teacher Fang's death, lifted the Art Hall lockdown, and awarded each participant 20 Points and the Chain of the Monastery of Suffering.
• Yi Chen carried the injured Lorien back to the dormitory, where they rolled matching threes and made it inside before bedtime.
• The Night Shift Teacher inspected them and left after deciding they were asleep, while Lorien finished stitching his wounds and read by a moonlight lamp he carved into the wall.

Duke destroyed three monks from the Monastery of Suffering who came to claim Yi Chen after sensing his acceptance of the Thorn Chain. After a dream of torment, Yi Chen woke with his perception increased and his chains formed a butterfly, then agreed to continue the gamble with Moontrace.

• Three monks from the Monastery of Suffering found Duke and demanded to meet Yi Chen, whom they considered a new member.
• Duke used Forced Transaction to disassemble the monks and exchange their remains for treasure, sending the monastery a rain of jewelry.
• The Grand Priest learned that the new recipient was connected to Duke and chose to ignore the matter.
• Yi Chen dreamed of crawling through thorns before a mysterious man drove a special needle into his crown, then woke at six with chains arranged like a butterfly.
• Moontrace said he had stayed awake reading and noted Yi Chen's increasingly unusual constitution, and Yi Chen agreed to continue their gamble.

Yi Chen and Lorien entered a deadly dodgeball class after the orphanage’s Chaos Value increased, and Yi Chen caught Teacher Pang’s lethal throw. He claimed the right to take over as pitcher.

• Yi Chen and Lorien found iron chains in their breakfast and signs of decay spreading through the orphanage corridor.
• The postman warned that killing Teacher Fang had raised the Chaos Value, increasing their dice rolls and the chance of dangerous events.
• Pang Guishan began dodgeball training and confirmed that anyone who caught the ball could replace him as pitcher.
• Pang Guishan’s first throws killed or eliminated many students, while Yi Chen waited for his chance to catch one.
• Yi Chen caught Pang Guishan’s ball with the aid of his iron chains and announced that it was his turn to throw.

Yi Chen used a rigged dodgeball match to lure Pang Guishan into position, then had Moon Scar kill and dismantle him before the game officially began. Pang Guishan’s death made the gymnasium more chaotic and gave future Roll Dice results a +2 bonus.

• Yi Chen caught Pang Guishan’s lethal ball and accepted his challenge to pitch.
• Yi Chen spun and threw a chain ball wide, distracting Pang Guishan while Lorien and Moon Scar moved behind him.
• Moon Scar ripped out Pang Guishan’s Internal Stones heart and severed his tendons, then Yi Chen crushed the heart and killed him.
• The match awarded everyone eight Points, while Pang Guishan received no additional rewards.
• Pang Guishan’s death shook and tilted the gymnasium, exposed rotting flesh across its surfaces, and added a +2 bonus to future Roll Dice results.

After Yi Chen confessed to killing Fang Qiong and Pang Guishan, he and Moon Scar fought the orphanage Security Office alongside Chef Li and the kitchen workers. They wiped out the Security Office, and Yi Chen left after thanking Chef Li, with the orphanage still in chaos.

• Yi Chen told Chef Li about the true orphanage and promised to recreate him and the others someday.
• Security guards surrounded Yi Chen and Moon Scar, and Yi Chen admitted that they had killed Pang Guishan and Fang Qiong.
• Chef Li killed the squad captain, while Moon Scar and Yi Chen took down the rest of the guards.
• Yi Chen declared war on the orphanage, but the other orphans refused to join him.
• Chef Li and the kitchen workers helped Yi Chen and Moon Scar defeat the reinforcements, wiping out the Security Office and earning twenty Points.
• Chef Li gave Yi Chen and Moon Scar meatballs that restored their strength, and Yi Chen bowed to him before leaving.

Yi Chen and Lorien activated Disaster Mode in the gambling match and descended toward Black Mountain Orphanage’s experimental area to confront Director Cao. The chapter ended as they entered the elevator, where a hair-covered attendant operated the descent with her hair.

• Yi Chen and Lorien decided to seek out Director Cao rather than cause random trouble in the Orphanage.
• A postman appeared at the elevator and offered them dice that could only roll four, five, or six; both rolled sixes.
• The gambling match activated Disaster Mode, maximizing the scene’s Chaos Value and requiring them to kill the area’s person in charge to gain control and Points.
• Yi Chen warned Lorien that Director Cao was a terrifying inhuman beneficiary of a Black Mountain Kindergarten project and offered to transfer his Points if they faced certain death.
• Lorien refused to discuss leaving and shoved Yi Chen into the elevator, where they saw that the attendant’s face contained a hole filled with endlessly growing black hair.
• The attendant used her hair to operate the elevator, carrying Yi Chen and Lorien down to the Orphanage’s experimental area.

Yi Chen reached Director Cao’s office alone and faced the orphanage’s history of experiments and its goal of human completion. Meanwhile, Lorien descended to the underground arena, freed the elevator attendant from her submissive conditioning, and was challenged to fight Director Cao’s selected subjects.

• Yi Chen recalled how Director Cao had turned unqualified orphans into experimental subjects while grooming him as her successor.
• Yi Chen discovered Lorien had not left the elevator with him and arrived alone at Director Cao’s private office.
• Lorien explained that Yi Chen needed to face his unresolved past alone, then examined the elevator attendant’s brain and hair with a scalpel.
• The elevator attendant chose to leave with Lorien, and they entered an arena where Director Cao and the orphanage’s leaders awaited them.
• Director Cao sent ten caged monsters into the arena and challenged Lorien to survive testing her Qualified Subjects.

Yi Chen discovered that the Orphanage’s Newborn Greenhouse held babies created through in-vitro fertilization, including him, and Director Cao repeatedly appeared as he tried to kill her. The recovered memory revealed that Director Cao had raised him as her own exceptional child after his third escape attempt, and that his father had been a highly dangerous criminal.

• Little Grape told Yi Chen that Yue Hen had followed the elevator girl to a deeper area, and Yi Chen chose to continue alone.
• Yi Chen opened a door into the Newborn Greenhouse and found newborns whose records listed their fathers but not their mothers.
• Director Cao explained that she had used her own DNA and DNA from other Orphanage women to create the babies, while Yi Chen repeatedly killed her returning bodies.
• Yi Chen’s buried memory resurfaced: during his third escape attempt, Director Cao killed the guards who had cornered him and brought him to the greenhouse.
• Director Cao showed Yi Chen his birth record, explained that his father was a dangerous criminal executed by the Orphanage, and called Yi Chen her most perfect child.

The chapter revealed Yi Chen’s fourth escape attempt from the Black Mountain Orphanage, ending with his apparent suicide and Director Cao’s grief. His corpse was smuggled out of the Orphanage, and Yi Chen reappeared alive in the city, disguised in Dead Person Makeup.

• Yi Chen reviewed his fourth escape attempt as the Duke watched the memory awaken the Death Attribute.
• At ten years old, Yi Chen killed the guards in the monitoring room, escaped the Orphanage, and climbed its wall into an uninhabited zone.
• Director Cao caught up with Yi Chen on the highway, and he shot himself rather than be taken back.
• Director Cao’s attempts to revive Yi Chen failed, and the Orphanage workers placed his body in an underground corpse pit.
• A worker smuggled Yi Chen’s corpse out in a delivery truck, but the body disappeared before it reached its destination.
• Yi Chen emerged in the city alive, changed into discarded clothes, and joined the crowd in disguise.

Lorien defeated Director Cao’s ten experimental monsters in the gamble arena, then Yi Chen arrived and took over the fight against Director Cao. After Lorien used an Exit Pass, he woke in his original body and saw that Yi Chen’s self-inflicted brain wound had transformed his intellect and begun activating his death-related attributes.

• Lorien used Moon Descent to turn the battle around, and his transformed elevator lady helped him kill Director Cao’s ten experimental subjects.
• Director Cao prepared to attack Lorien, but Yi Chen crashed through the arena ceiling and asked Lorien to leave her to him.
• Lorien used an Exit Pass and vanished from the arena, leaving Yi Chen to face Director Cao as the last opponent.
• Lorien awoke in his original body and found Yi Chen’s neural solution blackened around a bullet-shaped wound in his brain.
• Lorien saw that Yi Chen’s Intellect had increased to 6 and that his death-related attributes would manifest at the next status stage.

After Moonscar received a path toward becoming a Root of Disease, Yi Chen defeated Director Cao and ended the fictional orphanage wager. He returned to his body badly injured, with his Death Memory awakened and his Plant trait transformed into powerful Suffering Iron Chains.

• The Duke praised Moonscar’s potential, gave him novels, and showed Lorien the ancient Old World and a path for his development.
• Yi Chen thanked Director Cao before killing her, earning victory in the Underground Arena and destroying Research Institute No. 1.
• Yi Chen thanked the masked audience for attending his Final Performance, then used the Exit Pass to leave as the wager vanished.
• Yi Chen emerged from the Duke’s navel passage with his injuries transferred and his body half-dead and half-alive, then put on the Gentleman's Attire for support.
• Yi Chen’s inspection showed that his Plant trait had become a Rare-quality Suffering Iron Chain, strengthening his body and allowing him to convert pain into energy.

Yi Chen learned that the iron chain he had absorbed came from the Monastery of Suffering and bought the Box of the Mad, a relic suited to his attributes. As he prepared to leave the sealed world, he asked the Duke whether he had ever seen skin resembling the Yellow Robe.

• Yi Chen learned that the iron chain came from the Monastery of Suffering, and the Duke warned him that its owners might pursue him.
• Yi Chen spent 1,600 trading points to purchase the Box of the Mad and read its description of the virus and Mad Ones behind the relic.
• The Duke warned Yi Chen not to manipulate the cube during his return and to flee if he encountered a brain-like creature drifting through the air.
• Yi Chen thanked the Duke, who urged him and his companion to return before he went back to the depths.
• Yi Chen asked the Duke whether he had ever seen skin resembling the Yellow Robe.