Chapter Summaries

Xu Yanxing and the recorder escaped the research institute, leaving the Bald Man to be dragged into the darkness inside. As they headed toward the route the recorder remembered, he revealed that his name before entering the institute was Liu Ze.

• The Bald Man was dragged into the dark lobby as Xu Yanxing and the recorder fled, and Xu Yanxing saw that the darkness could not pass through the entrance.
• The recorder compared the darkness to α-150, the Longevity Old Man, which stole people’s lifespans and changed its own age unpredictably.
• Xu Yanxing and the recorder realized they were outside the ten-story institute on an island and discussed how to avoid being caught by security personnel.
• The recorder remembered arriving by boat and pointed out the route behind the building, where figures he had once mistaken for people had watched from a window.
• Xu Yanxing and the recorder cautiously headed behind the institute, and the recorder told him his former name was Liu Ze.

Jiang Qiao’s five talents fused into the incomplete SSR Evil Spirit Body, which merged with his physical form and suppressed supernatural forces. Ready to leave the villa, he learned from Tao Ji that Du Qiu had been delayed and he would need to wait another day or two.

• Jiang Qiao received the upgraded Evil Spirit Body after ninety-nine hours, following the fusion of five talents with the Shaping Rule.
• Jiang Qiao examined the talent’s description and wondered what it meant by an entity crawling out from the bottom of the Abyss.
• Jiang Qiao sensed that the Evil Spirit Body had fused completely with his physical form and suppressed supernatural forces that touched it.
• Jiang Qiao decided to leave the villa and ask Tao Ji about Du Qiu’s delay.
• Tao Ji apologized to Jiang Qiao and said a minor problem had kept Du Qiu away, asking him to wait another day or two.

Jiang Qiao returned to Gray Mist Port and found it in chaos after a deadly fog killed many people. He learned that the port and local bandit groups had secretly supplied test subjects to Medicine King City's research institute on Tongling Island, while the fog's cause remained unknown.

• Jiang Qiao recalled his recent battles and supernatural transformations as he watched Gray Mist Port struggle after a night of deadly fog.
• The fog turned docked ships into Ghost Ships and caused mysterious deaths across hotels, entertainment venues, and residential areas, bringing the port to a standstill.
• Jiang Qiao remembered how he had captured and beaten Tao Ji, who revealed that Medicine King City ran a Supernatural Research Institute on Tongling Island.
• Tao Ji told Jiang Qiao that Gray Mist Port and bandit groups on Mirror Lake supplied people to the institute as test subjects, often using the fog as cover.
• Jiang Qiao learned that the fog connected to a Supernatural place, but its cause and the identity of the killer remained unknown; even a Management Committee figure had reportedly died.

Jiang Qiao learned that Tongling Island housed a Supernatural Research Institute and decided to visit it. At the harbor, he followed Li Wei and Liu Yang, discovering that Li Wei planned to risk taking his young daughter to the island to pursue her awakening.

• Jiang Qiao decided to visit Tongling Island after learning about its research institute and remembered that the Guangming Society might still be searching for him.
• Jiang Qiao saw Li Wei and his daughter waiting at the harbor while travel to and from Gray Mist Port remained blocked after the Amber incident.
• Jiang Qiao recognized Liu Yang as Liu Yuanyuan and sensed a faint, ancient incense aura clinging to her.
• Liu Yang met Li Wei and his daughter at a teahouse, where Li Wei asked about the situation and insisted on going to Tongling Island.
• Liu Yang questioned Li Wei’s decision to take his ordinary young daughter into danger, but Li Wei said the Jade Tablet could give her a path to becoming a high-level Awakened.

Liu Yuanyuan arranged for Li Wei and Jiang Qiao to travel to Tongling Island through a nearby shipwreck, while Jiang Qiao suspected the group was hiding their true motives. A secretly recruited evil god worshipper helped them leave Gray Mist Port, and they set out in a borrowed fishing boat.

• Liu Yuanyuan told Li Wei that a shipwreck near Gray Mist Port contained a passage to Tongling Island and explained the route and dangers.
• Jiang Qiao suspected Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei had hidden knowledge and ulterior motives, and wondered what protection Liu Yuanyuan relied on.
• Liu Yuanyuan used an investigation team member she had recruited as an evil god worshipper to secure permission to leave the docks.
• The worshipper, a deputy commander in a Caomiao Village patrol camp, lent the group a fishing boat to travel toward the wreck.

Liu Yuanyuan, Li Wei, and Li Wei’s daughter reached the sunken ship, while Jiang Qiao discovered its Eighth Tier power and the gateway to Tongling Island. As the trio searched the ship for a safe route, Liu Yuanyuan sensed something watching them from a room.

• Liu Yuanyuan located the sunken ship, and Li Wei gave his daughter a Fish Cloak so she could dive safely.
• Jiang Qiao followed them underwater and saw that the ship held a gateway to Tongling Island, an Eighth Tier ghost at the helm, and supernatural power of its own.
• Liu Yuanyuan, Li Wei, and his daughter reached the dry interior of the ship and headed toward the entrance near the stern.
• Liu Yuanyuan followed a trail of footprints and checked rooms along the corridor, explaining that the ship’s evil spirits silently followed living people.
• Liu Yuanyuan stopped outside a room on the left and sensed that something inside was watching them.

Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei encountered and killed a rubber-like Evil Spirit aboard the sunken Ghost Ship, where ordinary parts of the vessel could become supernatural threats. Meanwhile, Jiang Qiao made his way toward the bridge and reached the unstable stairs to the third floor.

• Liu Yuanyuan spotted a figure reflected in a metal cup and pulled Li Wei away as a rubber-like Evil Spirit attacked from the ceiling.
• Liu Yuanyuan shot the Evil Spirit and used her shadow-like clone to erase it.
• Liu Yuanyuan explained that Supernatural Erosion could turn anything aboard the Ghost Ship into an Evil Spirit, and the group continued searching for Tongling Island's entrance.
• Jiang Qiao strolled through the ship toward the bridge, passed the peaceful second floor, and reached the swaying iron stairs to the third floor.

Jiang Qiao saw two people manifest on a wall as a Vicious Ghost’s whispers sounded behind him. The chapter then recounted two guards’ encounters with a ghost at a factory parking lot and ended as one guard considered a method for seeing ghosts.

• Jiang Qiao turned back on the stairs and saw two people embedded in the wall, a manifestation Awakened people normally could not see.
• A young night guard at a factory parking lot struck a ragged man who ignored him, then watched the man’s head fall off and fled.
• The guard’s colleague came to investigate, but the headless figure had vanished, and the colleagues later dismissed the encounter as a possible mistake.
• A few nights later, another guard working alone felt someone behind him repeatedly and grew afraid that the parking lot was haunted.
• The second guard recalled an old man’s method for seeing ghosts.

Old Zhang sought Blind Wang’s help after supernatural disturbances began in his home, and learned they were caused by a wronged soul whose coffin boards he had burned. Blind Wang explained why the ghost had targeted Old Zhang instead of the family that reused the boards, then took payment and offered a solution.

• Old Zhang recalled how strange sounds and ghostly figures had frightened his family after he burned leftover coffin boards for firewood.
• Old Zhang asked Blind Wang for help, and Blind Wang immediately identified the burned coffin boards as the cause of the haunting.
• Blind Wang explained that Old Zhang’s friend’s family was protected by the wife’s experience slaughtering pigs and her baleful energy, so the wronged soul had gone after Old Zhang instead.
• Old Zhang complained that ghosts bullied the weak, then paid Blind Wang several copper coins for advice.
• Blind Wang accepted the payment and told Old Zhang that solving the problem would be simple.

Old Zhang used Blind Wang’s paste to trap the ghosts that had haunted his family, and years later Liu Bing recalled the tale while on night watch. After seeing an upside-down corpse outside the security room, Liu Bing turned back to find someone who looked just like himself sitting inside.

• Old Zhang followed Blind Wang’s instructions and placed tofu filled with special paste among offerings to summon the ghosts.
• Old Zhang saw the ghosts eat the tofu, and the paste stuck their mouths and hands together, driving them away.
• Years later, Old Zhang told the story to elderly residents, and Liu Bing remembered it during his night shift.
• Liu Bing looked between his legs for ghosts, saw nothing, and returned to his chair.
• Liu Bing spotted an upside-down corpse outside the window, then went outside to investigate and found no one on the roof.
• Liu Bing turned back toward the security room and saw someone resembling himself sitting inside.

After Old Master Ma drove away the supposed ghost haunting the factory parking lot, the place stayed quiet for decades. When the abandoned factory was demolished, workers found two sets of bones hidden in the Security Room walls, reviving memories of the haunting.

• Liu Bing spread word of the parking lot haunting and was publicly scolded and docked pay, while rumors spread through the factory and nearby villages.
• Old Master Ma moved into the parking lot Security Room and patrolled for half a month without seeing anything strange, after which the hauntings stopped.
• More than twenty years later, former security workers returned to the abandoned factory as its buildings were being demolished.
• The men saw two sets of bones fall from the Security Room walls, and one man recalled that the ghost had seemed to be searching for a missing lower-leg bone.
• The bones were reported but treated as unidentified remains, and the former workers wondered whether Old Master Ma had suppressed the ghost.

Jiang Qiao explored the sunken ghost ship and learned that its crew had been transformed by supernatural events. He forced his way into the cockpit, where the old captain offered to let him study the ship, and Jiang Qiao challenged the captain's apparent lack of concern.

• Jiang Qiao overheard two Vicious Ghosts recount how eerie fog had brought disaster to the ship and trapped them aboard.
• Jiang Qiao reached the third-floor corridor and found a massive Body Strengthening-type Vicious Ghost blocking the way.
• Jiang Qiao seized the Vicious Ghost by the neck and threw it down the corridor.
• Jiang Qiao kicked open the cockpit door and found an old captain holding the ship's wheel.
• The old captain welcomed Jiang Qiao and said he could study the ship, while Jiang Qiao asked whether the captain feared being beaten to death.

Jiang Qiao inspected the Ghost Ship Orchid and learned that its captain was a supernatural mechanism tied to the vessel. The captain revealed that the ship’s authorization was on Tongling Island, now occupied by Medicine King City’s research institute, leaving Jiang Qiao with a route to pursue control of the Orchid.

• Jiang Qiao examined the cockpit and discovered that the Orchid’s hull had once been cracked but had already been repaired.
• The captain told Jiang Qiao the ship was called the Orchid and explained that it had moved from far offshore to a location near Mirror Lake.
• Jiang Qiao learned that the captain was part of the ship’s power system and could not be killed without destroying the Orchid.
• The captain revealed that the Orchid’s authorization was on Tongling Island and that a teleportation gate beneath the ship’s cabin led there.
• The captain identified Jiang Qiao as a Ninth Tier Peak expert who had begun stepping onto the Divinity Staircase.

Li Wei, Liu Yuanyuan, and the little girl reached Tongling Island and surveyed the empty town before the research institute, where the Jade Tablet was hidden on the Fifth Sub-level. Liu Yuanyuan explained that something had gone wrong on the island, while both he and Li Wei kept their reasons for coming secret.

• Li Wei, Liu Yuanyuan, and the little girl crossed the woods and grassland and spotted the research institute beyond the town.
• Liu Yuanyuan said the Jade Tablet was on the Fifth Sub-level and warned that breaking into the institute would be dangerous.
• Li Wei questioned why Liu Yuanyuan had come, and Liu Yuanyuan replied that something had gone wrong with Tongling Island.
• Li Wei and Liu Yuanyuan questioned each other about their knowledge and reasons for coming, but neither revealed their trump cards.
• Li Wei inspected a mobile-phone shop in the deserted town and reflected on how Top Factions protected ordinary people in their Core Areas.

Liu Yuanyuan discovered that Tongling Island’s town was a paper replica and led her companions toward the research institute, while Jiang Qiao entered the island and found an immense Abyss beneath the grassland. Near the institute, he repelled a seductive supernatural woman who turned into a torn paper garment.

• Liu Yuanyuan found a sealed computer with slime inside and realized that the town’s clothes, food, money, and other goods were made of paper.
• Liu Yuanyuan decided the town was likely a replica built for an experiment and took her companions toward the research institute before the crisis was resolved.
• Jiang Qiao arrived on Tongling Island and discovered an enormous Abyss beneath the grassland, with empty coffins hanging above it.
• Jiang Qiao crossed the deserted town and ignored a woman who repeatedly invited him into shops and offered special services.
• Jiang Qiao kicked the woman in red, sending her flying until she twisted into a tattered paper garment.

Jiang Qiao explored the empty research institute and watched Liu Yuanyuan, Li Wei, and the little girl investigate its basement while Xu Yanxing and Liu Ze wandered under an illusion. He discovered the institute’s supernatural defenses and a cactus-bodied entity near the second-floor elevator as Xu Yanxing and Liu Ze tried to escape their pursuers.

• Jiang Qiao found Liu Yuanyuan’s muddy footprints and forced his way through the supernatural barrier into the security room.
• Jiang Qiao watched surveillance footage of Liu Yuanyuan, Li Wei, and the little girl avoiding tentacled imaging equipment in the basement.
• Jiang Qiao spotted Xu Yanxing and Liu Ze wandering the second floor, along with the Bald Man’s corpse and a female-bodied, cactus-legged entity by the elevator.
• Xu Yanxing and Liu Ze fled imagined security personnel across a grassland, while Liu Ze began to suspect that their surroundings were wrong.

Jiang Qiao investigated the institute’s surveillance and went upstairs, while Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei entered Sub-level Two through a concealed passage made from a giant worm’s body. They reached a monitoring room and found a wooden door leading farther into the level.

• Jiang Qiao identified the surveillance feeds for the first floor, second floor, and Sub-level One, then headed upstairs to investigate the building’s tenth floor.
• Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei forced open the stairwell’s unusual elevator doors and found a ladder descending through a shaft made from a dead giant worm.
• Liu Yuanyuan explained that Sub-level Two was used to dispose of experimental subjects and sometimes researchers who had made mistakes.
• Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei reached an elevator car and discovered a concealed entrance designed for outside investigators to enter Sub-level Two.
• Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei entered a monitoring and communications room, where they found a wooden door leading to the main part of Sub-level Two.

Liu Yuanyuan and Li Wei became trapped in a supernatural item’s looping corridors, which she identified as a ghost domain. After demanding Li Wei contribute to their escape, she got him to reveal a purple candle that might conceal them from the evil spirits in the research facility.

• Liu Yuanyuan noticed the wooden door’s handle had vanished and warned Li Wei that the door was a self-aware supernatural item.
• Li Wei discovered the elevator had been replaced by another wooden door, and Liu Yuanyuan explained that the doors trapped them in an infinite loop.
• After opening several doors, Liu Yuanyuan concluded they had to return to the surveillance room to escape the loop.
• Liu Yuanyuan confronted Li Wei about how little he had contributed to their journey and asked him to use his abilities.
• Li Wei showed Liu Yuanyuan a purple candle that could make nearby evil spirits mistake them for their own kind, though he did not know whether it would work on a sixth-tier threat.

Jiang Qiao investigated the research institute’s empty ninth floor and found an inexplicable void above it, while his search revealed that the building’s supernatural effects could make illusions real. After his attack tore open a metal wall, strange figures from different eras appeared throughout the corridors.

• Jiang Qiao found no living researchers on the ninth floor and saw only endless darkness above its ceiling.
• Jiang Qiao returned Xu Yanxing and Liu Ze from an illusion to the research institute, where they found the dead female cactus Evil Spirit and realized it had trapped them.
• Jiang Qiao concluded that the tenth floor existed but was hidden, and sent Paper People to search the ninth floor.
• Jiang Qiao discovered that his Paper People had been destroyed and transformed into physical scraps despite the empty floor.
• Jiang Qiao unleashed Lightning Baptism and punched through a metal wall, revealing strange people in clothing from different eras wandering the corridors.

Jiang Qiao broke through the ninth floor and entered an ancient city in a Supernatural Space, discovering that the space had a different timeline from his own. After learning that the city blamed a recent massacre on a thunder-controlling Vicious Ghost, he decided to investigate.

• Jiang Qiao realized the ninth floor was merging with a Supernatural Space and that Tongling Island combined multiple such spaces.
• Jiang Qiao’s thunder swept through the merging space, killing the Vicious Ghosts who had been imitating ordinary people.
• Jiang Qiao entered the ancient city and headed for its gate, seeking to explore beyond the Supernatural Space.
• A soldier stopped Jiang Qiao and explained that the city gates were sealed because Vicious Ghosts had been active outside and had recently killed people in the street.
• Jiang Qiao realized the soldier was describing the Vicious Ghosts he had just killed, though the soldier said the massacre had happened two days earlier.
• Jiang Qiao thanked the soldier and returned toward the street to investigate the city.