Chapter Summaries

Yi Chen spent a month mastering his new shape-shifting weapon and preparing to take solo missions, while Chamberson warned him to watch for moon-related signs. On his way to Gentleman Hall, Yi Chen encountered a masked young man who recognized him and touched his shoulder with dangerous intent.

• Bengus gave Yi Chen his shape-shifting axe and a briefcase, and Yi Chen planned to practice with Teacher Zed before taking missions.
• Chamberson warned Yi Chen that Moon Mark, an Open Source Patient, was interested in him and advised him to seek shelter if moon-related elements appeared.
• Over the next month, Yi Chen mastered his weapon while Edmund trained with his injured hand and Julianna continued rehabilitation.
• Yi Chen decided to pursue solo missions, and Little Grape warned him that going alone could be dangerous.
• A shop exploded near Yi Chen, and a masked young man emerged holding severed limbs and advertising Imitation Meat.
• The young man recognized Yi Chen as Jin, touched his shoulder, and made Yi Chen feel that his body could explode.

Yi Chen reunited with Jin and learned that Jin had gained the Diseased Trait—Red Lotus, which let him imbue imitation meat with explosive power. Yi Chen agreed to visit Jin’s home to see how he processed the meat, while insisting that nothing else would happen.

• Yi Chen encountered Jin, whose gentleman training had become a secret program after he chose the Black Letter.
• Jin showed Yi Chen the imitation meat he had bought and promised to pay the shopkeeper for the damage caused by an explosion.
• Jin demonstrated how red threads and lotus patterns spread through a severed leg, alarming Yi Chen before Jin revealed the throw had been a fake.
• Jin explained that he had swallowed a red crystal from his father’s diseased body and gained the Diseased Trait—Red Lotus.
• Jin invited Yi Chen to his home to see how he processed the imitation meat, and Yi Chen accepted with clear limits.

Yi Chen visited Jin’s room and learned that Jin was a Human Weapon Master who made meat-based injections and weapons. Jin invited Yi Chen to seek out a dangerous mission, and they headed toward the Executioner’s Greenhouse instead of Gentleman Hall.

• Jin showed Yi Chen his foul-smelling room and the bedroom he had turned into a Refining Room for processing Imitation Meat.
• Jin revealed the emblem on his tongue and said his profession was Human Weapon Master.
• Jin prepared compressed meat cubes as temporary weapons and invited Yi Chen to join him in searching for an unusual mission.
• Yi Chen agreed to see whether they could find a suitable mission, and Jin led him away from Gentleman Hall toward the Executioner’s Greenhouse.

Jin brought Yi Chen to Keximani, the Black Letter’s underground training ground, where they asked the instructor to let Yi Chen join them for missions. After learning Yi Chen had trained under Hogney Zede, the instructor kicked him hard enough to shatter his ribs, but Yi Chen stood back up smiling.

• Jin led Yi Chen across the bridge into Keximani, where blindfolded men tended an orchard as part of their recovery from violent impulses.
• Mr. Begus let Yi Chen enter the underground facility after he signed a confidentiality agreement.
• Jin introduced Yi Chen to the instructor and explained that they wanted to form a temporary team for more difficult tasks.
• The instructor reviewed Yi Chen’s résumé and questioned him about his training under Hogney Zede.
• The instructor struck Yi Chen with a powerful kick that shattered his ribs, but Yi Chen stood up smiling, impressing her with his transformed physique.

Yi Chen and Jin received a mission to investigate the Newborn Church and a spreading Gray-Erosion in Shepherd Village, Jose Valley. Baili warned Yi Chen about Jin’s recklessness and asked him to pass along a greeting to Zede, leaving the pair to set out for the Black Eye Stronghold.

• Baili asked Yi Chen about Zede, then examined Yi Chen’s fingers and judged them barely acceptable for her collection.
• Baili gave Yi Chen a mission to investigate the Newborn Church in Shepherd Village and help stop the Gray-Erosion spreading behind a wall of maddened trees.
• Yi Chen learned that two Gentleman Squads had disappeared while crossing the tree wall, and Jin showed interest in their disappearance.
• Baili sent Jin outside and warned Yi Chen that Jin’s recklessness had seriously injured or killed previous partners, asking him to restrain her if needed.
• Yi Chen agreed to watch over Jin and promised to greet Zede for Baili before she sent them on their way.

Yi Chen prepared for a Keximani support mission and set out with Jin in a luxurious carriage toward Black Eye Stronghold. On the journey, he described his previous mission, and Jin speculated that his unusual presence might help them lure out the powerful figure behind their current investigation.

• Yi Chen told Professor Chamberson about the mission, and Chamberson warned him that Keximani assignments often involved slaughter.
• Yi Chen relayed Baili's message to Teacher Zed, who advised him to observe the violence and trust his own judgment.
• Yi Chen prepared his supplies and met Jin at the carriage gathering point outside Zion City.
• Jin and Yi Chen left for Black Eye Stronghold in Jose Valley in a well-equipped carriage.
• At Jin's request, Yi Chen described his Secret Medicine Recovery mission and his encounter with Moon Scar.
• Jin pinned Yi Chen down to investigate the scent of Open Source and suggested it might draw out the figure behind everything.

Yi Chen and Jin arrived at Black Eye Stronghold to investigate the expanding forest barrier around Shepherd Village and the Newborn Church. After learning that two Gentlemen Squads were missing, they prepared to enter the sealed zone at midnight.

• Yi Chen sensed that the plants in his body reacted to the abnormal forest in Jose Valley as the carriage arrived.
• Jin kicked a metal barricade aside, startling the stationed Gentlemen, while Little Grape praised her explosive strength.
• Yi Chen and Jin met acting commander Wilmer, who showed them the growing tree wall enclosing Shepherd Village.
• Wilmer gave Yi Chen the village rules and investigation records and asked them to search for two missing Gentlemen Squads.
• Yi Chen told Wilmer to keep the exhausted Gentlemen at the stronghold and said they would set out at midnight.

Yi Chen reviewed the stronghold’s sparse reports and Shepherd Village’s safety rules, then reached the Tree Walls with Jin. After stopping Jin from blasting through, Yi Chen used Plant Manipulation to open a passage, leaving the pair ready to enter the forest’s center.

• Yi Chen studied the stronghold’s reports, memorized the Tree Walls’ key traits, and read the rules meant to protect Shepherd Village’s residents from disease.
• Yi Chen concluded that the Newborn Church had likely caused Shepherd Village’s rapid decline by making the villagers break the rules.
• Yi Chen and Jin reached the Tree Walls, where they heard an infant crying from inside the trunks.
• Jin began preparing to blast through the wall, but Yi Chen stopped him to avoid wasting energy and alerting dangers within.
• Yi Chen put on his casting gloves and used Plant Manipulation to spread the trunks apart and create a passage.

Yi Chen and Jin explored the dark, ashing-filled forest and found a strange youngling feeding the mutated trees before Jin killed it. Deeper inside the forest, the Bishop learned that visitors had arrived and ordered Theodore to test them while their plan continued.

• Yi Chen and Jin passed through the tree walls and entered a lightless forest filled with ashing vapors, mutated trees, and spore-producing fungi.
• Yi Chen found a tumor beneath a diseased tree’s bark and discovered its roots were connected to a strange youngling buried underground.
• Jin uprooted the tree and killed the youngling with a blood-thread lotus, causing the tree to wither and die.
• The Bishop awoke in a hidden chamber and ordered Theodore to send the inferior villagers to test the visitors, warning him to proceed cautiously.
• The Bishop’s umbilical cord remained attached to his seat, drawing nourishment from beneath it where the smell of corpses lingered.

Yi Chen and Jin reached an isolated house near Shepherd Village and found an old man waiting in its attic. Yi Chen killed the old man and the Black Cat tongue creature, then learned the location of the Pathogen Core.

• Yi Chen and Jin traveled through the inner forest and found a sign for Shepherd Village beside a stone road.
• Yi Chen and Jin entered a solitary stone house and searched its empty first floor.
• Yi Chen found an old man and a Black Cat in the attic, then approached them as the rocking chair sped up.
• The old man's face opened into a tongue that launched the Black Cat at Yi Chen.
• Yi Chen pinned the Black Cat to the ceiling, pierced the old man's skull to extract memories, and destroyed his Pathogen Core.
• Jin applauded Yi Chen after the old man and the Black Cat withered into corpses.

After killing a transformed old man, Yi Chen and Jin were surrounded in a house by more than twenty diseased villagers, including a massive Pig-Head Butcher. Jin rejected Yi Chen’s plan to retreat, destroyed the building with a Compressed Meat Cube, and launched them behind the villagers to begin their counterattack.

• Yi Chen learned from the old man’s memories that Gray Fog had fused his tongue with his Black Cat, but found no information about the Newborn Church.
• Jin noticed the villagers surrounding the building and saw that their mutations supported Yi Chen’s theory that the disease involved Bio-Fusion.
• Yi Chen proposed blasting through the attic wall and fleeing, but Jin insisted they fight and planted a Compressed Meat Cube on the first floor.
• Jin activated the cube, collapsing the building and sending herself and Yi Chen flying behind the villagers.
• Yi Chen and Jin landed behind the outermost villagers as the slaughter began.

Jin and Yi Chen fought the villagers surrounding the house, discovering that they were weak Induced Diseased State Sick Ones. Jin defeated the Pig-Head Butcher and forged its remains into a chainsaw, while Yi Chen finished off the other villagers.

• Jin used the explosion to escape the villagers’ encirclement and blasted several attackers apart with explosive strikes.
• Jin left the remaining villagers to Yi Chen and leaped through the trees to fight the Pig-Head Butcher.
• Yi Chen used his hand axe, plants, and Little Grape’s vision to defeat the villagers, but found no useful information in their muddled memories.
• Jin defeated the Pig-Head Butcher and used her body-forging trait to make a weapon from its head.
• Jin pulled a long, spinning bone saw from the pig head and called it a Pig-Head Chainsaw, leaving Yi Chen stunned.

After the villagers were defeated, Yi Chen and Jin continued toward the village, where a talking chicken warned them about the village chief and the church. Yi Chen stopped Jin from killing it so he could question it.

• Theodore observed Yi Chen and Jin from the shadows, recorded their abilities, and left after the Pig-Head Butcher became Jin’s weapon.
• Yi Chen sensed that someone had been monitoring them, then asked Jin to share his attributes and occupation traits.
• A chicken darted through the forest, and Jin caught it before it could escape.
• The chicken warned that the village chief and his subordinates would capture them and take them to the church, and said it had intended to lead them to Granny.
• Jin prepared to crush the chicken, but Yi Chen restrained him with a vine and insisted on questioning it.

Yi Chen and Jin questioned the Black Chicken, Little Pei, and followed it to Granny Chicken’s hidden home beneath a giant tree. They found her underground Chicken Coop, where she welcomed them and praised Yi Chen for catching Little Pei.

• Yi Chen recognized that Jin had a psychological Forbidden Zone and decided to avoid triggering it.
• Yi Chen examined the Black Chicken and learned that Granny wanted to speak with them about the forest, village, and church.
• Jin and Yi Chen made Little Pei lead them through the forest to Granny’s hidden residence beneath a giant tree.
• Yi Chen entered the underground Chicken Coop and saw its hatchery, nourishment area, and living quarters.
• Granny Chicken introduced herself, welcomed Yi Chen, and praised him for catching Little Pei.

Yi Chen questioned Granny Chicken about the church’s role in the village’s sickness and learned how its new rules led villagers to abandon the old ones. Granny Chicken revealed that her nine-year-old niece had been beheaded before her and now lived as the Golden Feathered Chicken.

• Yi Chen learned that Granny Chicken had sent Jin next door and caught villagers in traps, while avoiding members of the church.
• Granny Chicken explained that the Newborn Church persuaded villagers to break the village’s rules on reproduction, bringing apparent miracles and then disease.
• Granny Chicken recounted how the village chief beheaded her and other holdouts, after which gray fog revived her and she made a home with the children beneath a tree.
• Yi Chen questioned why Granny Chicken stayed to fight the church, and she said the village chief had beheaded her niece in front of her.
• Granny Chicken’s eyes opened and her aura grew dangerous as the Golden Feathered Chicken revealed a young girl’s head beneath its golden feathers.

Yi Chen and Jin left Granny Chicken’s underground hideout with information about Shepherd Village and the church, and Granny Chicken asked them to bring back the village chief’s living head. They headed toward the village after Little Pei warned them about the dangers ahead, while Jin and Yi Chen sealed a grim agreement and shared an unexpected kiss.

• Granny Chicken gave Yi Chen a map and patrol details, described the church’s seal, and asked him to return the village chief’s living head in exchange for everything she had.
• Granny Chicken sent Yi Chen and Little Pei through a secret passage to the trap room, where Jin sat atop a corpse pile after killing the Sick Ones who had fallen into the traps.
• Yi Chen told Jin that Granny Chicken could help their investigation, and the three traveled through another passage back to the forest near Shepherd Village.
• Little Pei warned Yi Chen that the village chief was dangerous and that church members could fly, then sealed the surface entrance behind itself.
• Jin and Yi Chen agreed that Jin could use Yi Chen’s head as a bomb if they faced danger, and Jin kissed Yi Chen on the cheek before they continued toward the village.

Yi Chen and Jin reached Shepherd Village, where a fungal gray zone had fused the animals into the landscape and filled the air with hallucinogenic spores. As they entered together to investigate, the spores began gathering around them and stirring primitive desires.

• The village chief received a bloodstained umbilical cord from the black-robed assistant and promised to complete his mission for the church.
• Yi Chen and Jin approached Shepherd Village and found no villagers or Watchers along the way.
• Yi Chen observed that the village was shrouded in purple-red hallucinatory mist and filled with animal bodies fused together and covered in spore-producing fungi.
• Little Grape warned Yi Chen that the village was an Unnatural Gray Zone, and Yi Chen made a protective mask while Jin chose to enter without one.
• Yi Chen and Jin held hands as they entered the village, where the drifting spores gathered around them and raised their body temperatures.

Yi Chen and Jin investigated a village where spores awakened their desires and discovered that its villagers were grotesque Mother Entities that gave birth to rapidly growing Diseased. Jin killed one and gave Yi Chen two lumps of brain matter, though she found the creature's flesh useless.

• The spores drove Yi Chen and Jin toward removing each other's masks, but Jin's slap sent Yi Chen flying and broke their shared trance.
• Yi Chen and Jin changed their contact method to a ten-meter Plant Root Tendril bracelet and entered a Wooden Cabin marked with a sculpture of a woman holding a child.
• They found a Mother Entity giving birth to a malformed infant that grew into an adolescent within minutes.
• Jin stopped Yi Chen from attacking the Mother Entity, kicked apart its offspring, and let the creature drag her inside.
• Jin emerged disappointed with the Mother Entity's flesh and tossed two lumps of brain matter to Yi Chen.

Yi Chen absorbed the memories of two Sick Ones and learned how Shepherd Village’s fused offspring became villagers, scavengers, or Holy Fetuses. He and Jin encountered a huge man with a human-headed hound, who introduced himself as Kauldi, the village chief.

• Yi Chen absorbed two essences and pieced together memories of the villagers’ disease and reproduction.
• Yi Chen learned that malformed offspring were buried beneath trees, human-animal offspring could become villagers, and rare Holy Fetuses were taken to the church.
• Yi Chen deduced that the Sick Ones might reproduce in exchange for a blessing from the church.
• Fused animals on the street made strange sounds, and Jin rushed outside after catching a strong meaty odor.
• Yi Chen and Jin saw a massive man with a sack and a human-headed hound; the man introduced himself as Kauldi, village chief of Shepherd Village.

Yi Chen and Jin confronted Village Chief Kaordi and his Diseased hound in Shepherd Village. Jin attacked Kaordi while Yi Chen killed the hound, leaving the battle between Jin and the village chief underway.

• Yi Chen recognized Village Chief Kaordi as a culprit behind Shepherd Village’s disease and warned Jin to watch for traps or ambushers.
• Jin charged Kaordi, while Yi Chen intercepted the village chief’s hound and tore out several of its human faces’ eyes with a Plant Root Tendril.
• Little Grape ate the hound’s eyes, enraging it and causing it to charge at Yi Chen.
• Yi Chen activated the Silver Blade axe’s Slaughter Form and cleaved the Diseased hound in two with a red crescent slash.