Chapter Summaries

Yi Chen spent a month enduring punishment beneath the Ladder of Sin while waiting for the right moment to escape. Elsewhere, At’s Smiling Face Clubs spread across the Old World, and William found him in one in Luo. Mitte to discuss their promised cooperation.

• Yi Chen recalled how he had accepted the World Prison’s offer to join the Interplanar Consciousness Projection experiment instead of facing execution.
• Yi Chen stayed beneath the Ladder of Sin for a month, obeyed his assigned tasks, and earned the monks’ approval as he waited for an opportunity.
• The Fear Circus collected fear across the Old World, while At’s Clown House rose in the rankings and the monks searched for it.
• At’s Smiling Face Clubs spread through towns across the Old World, drawing visitors who had dreamed about the clubs.
• At visited the Smiling Face Club in Luo. Mitte and discovered that the hooded monk waiting there was William Berens, who invited him to discuss their cooperation after a joint performance.

Yi Chen freed Nash from Princess Angelica’s mental trap, then hid with him inside the prison while the Monastery searched the upper levels. After ten days of searching without finding them, Princess prepared to search below, while Yi Chen waited in the sewers for the right moment to descend.

• Nash accepted death during an illusion of drowning, which loosened the chain implanted in his head and allowed Yi Chen to pull it free.
• Yi Chen and Nash reunited, merged together, and decided to keep waiting until they could head directly to the prison’s lowest level.
• Princess Angelica learned that Yi Chen and Nash were missing, then joined Mother Liya in searching the Monastery of Suffering.
• Princess found the chain and Yi Chen’s discarded Prosthetic Device, learned that he knew the upper levels, and ordered a comprehensive search.
• After ten days without finding Yi Chen, Princess planned one final search before joining the lower levels’ search.
• Yi Chen remained concealed as an Absolute Corpse in the deepest part of the sinners’ sewer, waiting for an opportunity.

Princess and Mother Liya searched the Excrement Processing Room, where Liya found a prison guard’s iron chain but no sign of Yi Chen. After Princess opened the passage to the Mid-level Stairway, Yi Chen emerged from the waste and headed there disguised by Nash, who was unexpectedly taken along by the arriving Executioner Asimov.

• Mother Liya searched the cesspool and pulled out a ten-centimeter section of a missing prison guard’s iron chain, while finding no trace of Yi Chen.
• Princess suspected someone had pushed the guard into the pool and left to join the search for Yi Chen below.
• Yi Chen emerged from the waste after Princess opened the passage, and he and Nash discussed Liya’s motives and planned to reach the sealed lowest level, Endless.
• Yi Chen asked Nash to disguise him and approach the stairway guards, planning to force their way through if the disguise failed.
• The guards mistook Nash for an important monk and called him Lord Executioner, but Fyodor Sergeyevich Asimov arrived behind him and was revealed to be the Executioner they meant.
• Asimov took Nash along as his subordinate to help search for Yi Chen, and they proceeded toward the Mid-level Stairway.

Asimov helped Yi Chen reach the Grief level and showed him the way toward the Forbidden Zone, where Yi Chen hoped to find a sealed group leader and reclaim his concept of death. Yi Chen cut Asimov and escaped into the Lower-level Stairway, leaving Princess and the Great Prison Monks outside its entrance.

• Asimov recognized Yi Chen from Zion, deduced his connection to William and his quest to regain his concept of death, and agreed to guide him deeper into the prison.
• Asimov warned Yi Chen that the Lower-level Stairway was a warden-designed Forbidden Zone with no exit and inmates who could attack without restraint.
• Asimov led Yi Chen through Pain and into Grief, where sinners were tormented inside a Consciousness Space through Nerve Chains.
• Asimov told Yi Chen to cut off his arm and sever a prisoner's chain to cover their escape, but Yi Chen swiftly severed Asimov's Scalpel Chain and escaped with the prisoner.
• The alarm sounded, and Princess and the Great Prison Monks found the entrance to the Lower-level Stairway exposed, but they could not enter without the warden's authorization.
• Princess wept over Yi Chen's descent and said she would grant his wish to die by the Lowest Level.

Yi Chen entered the Void, discovered that the angels tied to the Sin Monument rebuilt themselves when slain, and met the imprisoned former chief physician Laikate Pound. After Yi Chen asked how to reach the level below, Pound grew serious.

• Yi Chen found a dead Sick One whose opened skull was connected by a Kite String to a hostile angel, then beheaded the angel in its spiritual form.
• The angel rapidly reformed, so Yi Chen retreated beyond the corpse's alert range and watched it drift away.
• Laikate Pound emerged from behind a pillar and introduced himself as a prisoner who had spent more than fifty-one years in the monastery.
• Yi Chen attacked Pound, but Pound blocked the blow with his tooth-reinforced neck and explained that he had experimented on patients at the Dental Hall.
• Yi Chen asked Pound how to get below, and Pound's expression turned solemn.

Yi Chen followed Doctor Pound through the Void, learning how the warden’s Root of Sin punished and controlled its prisoners. Pound’s deception brought the Eighteen Sins together, but Yi Chen revealed his power and demanded they choose whether to oppose him or help break the seal to the Endless.

• Doctor Pound explained that the threaded steel Root of Sin fed on pain and could transform prisoners into Sin Monuments, Kite Strings, and Sin Angels.
• Pound led Yi Chen through the unchanging Void, and they avoided the Sin Monuments scattered along the way.
• At the supposed entrance, Yi Chen exposed Pound’s plan to gather the sinners around him, and the Eighteen Sins emerged from behind the pillars.
• Pound revealed that the Eighteen Sins hoped Yi Chen’s unusual teeth could help them escape, but refused to help him open the seal.
• Yi Chen unleashed his concealed Death Aura and gave the eighteen sinners three seconds to choose whether to fight him or help break the warden’s seal.

Yi Chen won the sinners’ support and led them to the place where the stairs to the deepest level had once stood. He used his deathly power to corrode the sealed floor, and a sleeping head in Endless opened its eyes.

• Yi Chen drew eleven sinners to his side while Doctor Pound remained among the six opposing him, then severed Doctor Pound’s head and marked his neck with the Death Mark instead of killing him.
• Yi Chen cut the shackles from the other seventeen sinners and led them to the traces of the erased stairs, with Doctor Pound rejoining them by picking up his head.
• Yi Chen told the sinners he would try to tear open the warden’s seal and expected them to help as circumstances required.
• Yi Chen cut off his own head and poured black liquid from his neck, corroding the gray floor into a widening pool.
• A head sleeping in the prison called Endless opened its eyes after sensing Yi Chen’s Death Aura.

The Warden discovered that an intruder had breached the prison’s deepest passage and mobilized the Great Prison Monks to stop him. Yi Chen escaped into the white mist below, but after reaching a stone prison, he still had not found the Former Commander of the Death Plague Knights.

• The Warden felt the disturbance intensify, abandoned his bath, and learned that someone had opened the seal to the Endless Stairway.
• The Warden ordered the Great Prison Monks to pursue the intruder and the monastery to seal itself under the highest lockdown.
• Yi Chen opened a passage before the Eighteen Sins, and white mist rising from its depths rapidly stripped flesh from his arm and the head he carried.
• Doctor Pound and the other criminals fled as the Warden’s chains approached, while Yi Chen jumped into the passage below.
• Yi Chen allowed the white mist to consume his flesh and Nash’s, then landed in a stone prison where he could find only a passage extending forward or backward.

Yi Chen reasoned that the Lowest Level, Endless, had become a land of the dead and that reaching its depths required dying. After he and Nash killed themselves and were carried below, they found a white skeleton pinned to the walls, watching them from its eye sockets.

• Yi Chen and Nash endured the white mist in skeletal forms while Yi Chen searched for a way through Endless.
• Yi Chen concluded that Endless had become an uncontrolled realm of the dead and that ordinary walking could not take them deeper.
• Yi Chen decapitated Nash, then killed himself, and the white mist carried their corpses away.
• Yi Chen and Nash awoke on stairs descending through a hexagonal shaft, with their bodies restored in the thinner mist.
• Yi Chen and Nash reached the deepest place, where a white skeleton was nailed to the six walls and watched them from its hollow eyes.

Yi Chen freed the Original Commander of Death Plague Knight's troupe by resonating with death to break the holy-nail seals, but the resurrected White Person killed him. Nash attacked the White Person in a frenzy, then stopped when he was told not to disturb Yi Chen's “digging deeper.”

• Yi Chen determined the order in which the Original Commander's body had been sealed and began removing the holy nails, enduring agony that pierced his soul.
• When brute force failed, Yi Chen focused on the skeletal arm and resonated with its death, cracking the holy nail and discovering how to free the other body parts.
• Yi Chen shattered every seal, and the Original Commander reconstructed himself as the White Person, who thanked Yi Chen before decapitating him and splitting his brain.
• Nash erupted into a frenzy and struck the White Person with the Hundred-Headed Hunter, but white death broke his weapons and body as he kept attacking.
• The White Person told Nash not to disturb Yi Chen's “digging deeper,” and Nash stopped attacking and backed away.

Yi Chen drifted through the Black Sea as only a head, followed the White Death to a skeleton island, and descended into its abyss to pursue an understanding of death. Meanwhile, William prepared a large-scale performance against the blood people and received a modified Death Plague treatment to restore his former death abilities.

• Yi Chen’s white-bone neck covering protected his head from the Black Sea and pulled him toward a white skeleton island.
• Yi Chen connected himself to a skeleton body, reached the island’s central abyss, and began climbing down as his makeshift body repeatedly cracked and was repaired.
• William returned to the theater after six days away and told Thirteen he was preparing a large-scale performance for ten days later.
• William told Thirteen that he planned to confront the blood people before World Infection ended and ordered False Moon to stop accepting viewers without revealing the plan.
• William visited Regan’s laboratory, where Regan injected him with modified Death Plague Mist Bacteria to manifest a new Death Plague condition within The Gestalt One’s system.

William created a new mask in the Tenth Abyss and prepared to attack the bloodfolk at the Abyssal Skin Factory. At Cancer Palace, Tobias Nielsen intercepted him and escorted him to meet the Venerable Lord, who was interested in his possessions and colleague Art Kramer.

• William traveled to the deepest level of the Tenth Abyss, where he condensed a new mask and declined the Abyssal lord's offer to restore his eye.
• William told Regan he planned to attack the bloodfolk within ten days and went alone to Cancer Palace to invite Jin to stay at the theater.
• Tobias Nielsen and more than thirty Tumor Knights intercepted William at Pus Lake and questioned him about missing moon-watchers and the Smiling Face Club.
• Tobias told William that the Venerable Lord wanted to meet him and that his friend was waiting; William agreed to go with him and undergo an examination.

William met the Supreme Lord of the Cancer Palace and demonstrated the concept of evil contained in his storybook. The Supreme Lord accepted the threat as real and invited William onto her bed, leaving their meeting poised to continue.

• William rode with Elder Nelson into the Cancer Palace, claimed he knew nothing of Aite’s Smiling Face Club, and learned that Jin was with the Supreme Lord.
• After passing through the palace’s living corridors, William entered the bedchamber and sensed the Supreme Lord’s hostility as Jin massaged her tumor-like body.
• The Supreme Lord questioned William about Yi, and William explained that he and Yi had split apart while fighting a threat from beyond the realm.
• William opened his storybook and revealed the evil woman, whom the Supreme Lord’s shockwave transformed into rotting mud along with the book’s tumors.
• The Supreme Lord acknowledged the book’s dangerous potential and invited William to get on the bed.

William met the Lord of the Cancer Palace to gauge her stance on his alliance with Atai and the coming conflict with the Bloodfolk. The Lord let him leave after warning him about a dangerous Bloodfolk Marquis and the risks of losing himself in his disguises, and William returned ready to build his stage.

• William climbed onto the Lord's tumor-like bed and explained his cooperation with Atai, his missing right eye, and his need to stop the Bloodfolk before World Infection was completed.
• The Lord examined William's eye and concluded that his partnership with Atai depended on their shared appreciation and that the Smiling Face Club had received his support.
• The Lord said Jin would remain in the Cancer Palace instead of joining William at the Skin Factory, then warned him about an unusual Bloodfolk Marquis and the dangers of an overly perfect disguise and absolute egoism.
• The bed swallowed William and expelled him from the Cancer Palace into Pus Lake, where he cleaned himself and restored his appearance.
• William concluded that the Lord did not hate Atai and that her attitude would help him avoid a full pursuit by the Tumor Knights, then decided to begin constructing the stage.

Yi Chen reached the bottom of Skull Island and met Balon Casas, the White Death, whose consciousness had fused with the Endless Prison. Balon explained that death could not restore Yi Chen’s damaged concept, but that Yi Chen no longer needed flesh because the deaths of the world could bear his thoughts.

• Yi Chen descended through Skull Island’s abyss, replacing his fragile skeletal body with bones from the island until he reached its flooded floor.
• Yi Chen met Balon Casas, who questioned his origins and learned about the evil Yi Chen had fought on Lung Mountain.
• Balon explained that outsiders had damaged his brain, that Xiadaite’s treatment had stabilized him, and that he had killed her before the Endless Prison became a patch for his mind.
• Balon told Yi Chen that death could not recover his lost concept and that he could use bones for a humanoid form while the deaths of the world bore his thoughts.
• Yi Chen understood Balon’s advice and bowed deeply to him.

Nash waited in the Endless Prison until Yi Chen returned from the deeper realm of death and formed a Lung of the Dead from the purple lung. Yi Chen prepared to confront the bloodfolk at the Abyssal Skin Factory before returning to his original world, while Balong warned him of the danger and offered refuge.

• Balong Kasasi questioned Nash and began teaching him about death as Nash waited for Yi Chen in the Endless Prison.
• Yi Chen returned through the Black Liquid, and Nash gave him the purple lung he had kept safe.
• Yi Chen crushed the purple lung and transformed it into a Lung of the Dead that became an inherent part of his body.
• Yi Chen asked Balong to leave with him, but Balong refused because his consciousness had merged with the Endless Prison and his departure could destabilize it.
• Yi Chen told Balong he planned to confront the bloodfolk at the Abyssal Skin Factory before returning to his original world.
• Balong warned Yi Chen about the bloodfolk and their potentially undying Plague Lord, and offered him refuge if the fight went badly.

Yi Chen emerged from the opening and delivered Barron’s message to the Warden, who agreed to let Barron manage the Endless Prison and accepted his carved flower for Xiadaite’s tombstone. The Warden cleared Yi Chen to leave for a retrial, and Yi Chen followed him out of the prison.

• Liddy Moses and Angelica detected something emerging from the opening, but white mist destroyed the finger chains around it.
• Yi Chen emerged, and Angelica tried to attack him before the Warden intervened and stopped her.
• Yi Chen gave the Warden Barron’s proposal to help manage the Endless Prison and the bone flower intended for Xiadaite’s tombstone.
• The Warden accepted Barron’s proposal, sent him a message of relief, and said he would visit him soon.
• The Warden told Yi Chen he did not need to serve time and promised to preside over a retrial.
• Yi Chen followed the Warden out, while Pound cried out in frustration that he had not yet gotten on the bus.

The warden cleared Yi Chen of involuntary manslaughter but offered him a dangerous chance to atone for his remaining crimes by assimilating a unique chain. Yi Chen brought Nash to the monastery’s special plantation, where they found the chain growing from a metal tree among drained corpses.

• The warden used the victim priest’s sins to clear Yi Chen of involuntary manslaughter, then offered him release if he assimilated a dangerous unique chain.
• Yi Chen accepted the warden’s offer and decided Nash should attempt to assimilate the chain while he assisted.
• Princess Angelica and Asimov accompanied Yi Chen and the warden to the monastery’s special plantation.
• Princess Angelica opened the thorn-sealed gate, revealing a barren plot and a metal tree covered in blades and impaled, drained corpses.

Yi Chen let the Prison Warden and the others leave before facing the ravenous iron chains alone. After repeatedly dying and migrating into hanging corpses, he traced the chains underground and discovered they had grown from the corpse of a god who had invaded the Old World.

• Yi Chen identified the iron chains as a thinking, evolving organism that had learned to develop eyes and vision by absorbing Sick Ones.
• The Prison Warden sealed Yi Chen inside the compound with a thorny seal and a holy nail, then left with Princess and Asimov.
• After the Prison Warden left, the iron chains attacked Yi Chen, but he used Dead Person Makeup and Death Migration to revive through corpses whenever they killed him.
• Yi Chen studied the chains as they cut him, concluded their true main body lay deep underground, and used the chaos of the chains crushing their trophies to slip below the sand.
• Yi Chen followed the main root to its source and found the corpse of a god killed during the invasion of the Old World, realizing the chains had inherited its divinity.

William and Ater prepared to enlist the Skin Factory’s Plague Lord in their upcoming performance, while a hidden visitor reached the factory’s gate. The visitor was revealed as Skin Apostle Leslie Lovecodd.

• The Warden learned that Ater had killed eight exiled Skin Apostles and promised to act against him within ten days.
• Ater delivered the eight captured skins to William, who suppressed them and asked Ater to help negotiate with the Skin Factory’s Plague Lord.
• Ater agreed to accompany William to the Skin Factory after demanding a chance to be alone with Lorien as his reward.
• Leslie Lovecodd crossed the Bloodfolk’s guarded river and opened the Stitched Gate, where the factory welcomed the Skin Apostle home.