Chapter Summaries

Yu Sheng welcomed Marlene and her Clockwork Maid, Maris, to No. 66 Wutong Road so they could discuss Eileen’s unusual condition. Marlene confirmed that Eileen was their sister, though something had gone wrong, leaving the nature of Eileen’s connection to the oil painting unresolved.

• Yu Sheng, Eileen, Huli, and Luna waited for Marlene to arrive at No. 66 Wutong Road.
• Marlene arrived with Maris, and Huli returned Marlene’s detached hand and glove.
• Eileen met Marlene nervously and followed Yu Sheng as he brought the visitors into the house.
• Marlene discovered Eileen had multiple duplicate bodies, two groups of them, and a satellite.
• Yu Sheng explained that Eileen’s essence might still be bound to her oil painting, and Marlene said Eileen was their sister but that something had gone wrong.

Yu Sheng and Miss Marlene discussed Eileen’s identity and her lost connection to the Alice Garden network, learning that restoring her body would require reconnecting her to it. Afterward, Miss Marlene confirmed Eileen was an Alice doll with only half certainty, leaving Yu Sheng to wonder what the other possibility was.

• Eileen excitedly welcomed Miss Marlene as a sister and showed her the oil painting containing the Plush Toy Bear.
• Miss Marlene explained that the Garden was an Alice Matrix Network accessed through an Alice Key, and Eileen had likely forgotten hers.
• Miss Marlene said the Alice Mother and other Ancient Holy Spirits had severed most contact with the Garden while working at the observable universe’s boundary.
• Miss Marlene explained that Alice dolls used Doll Printing Rooms to remake their bodies, but Eileen would need to reconnect to the Garden first.
• Huli comforted Eileen while Yu Sheng took Miss Marlene upstairs to ask about deep-space travel and privately questioned whether Eileen was truly an Alice doll.
• Miss Marlene said she was only about half certain Eileen was an Alice doll, and described the other possibility as terrifying darkness.

Yu Sheng learned that the darkness inside Eileen might come from the Omen Goddess and identified her as resembling an Alice doll who had gone missing 3,700 years ago. After investigating the room where he found Eileen, he returned downstairs with Marlene, who saw Eileen enthusiastically discussing wind-up keys with Maris.

• Yu Sheng asked Marlene about the Omen Goddess, and she found no information in the Matrix Network but sent out a wider inquiry.
• Marlene showed Yu Sheng three missing Alice dolls named Eileen, and he recognized the third as the doll he had seen in an illusion of the temple ruins.
• Marlene said that Eileen had been missing for 3,700 years, and Yu Sheng wondered whether she had spent that time sealed in the oil painting.
• Yu Sheng showed Marlene the strange room where he had found Eileen and warned her not to touch its unstable mirror.
• Eileen tried to reach the wind-up key on Maris and learned that Alice dolls had vital keys, then asked Yu Sheng to drill a hole in her back.
• Marlene heard Eileen's rambling plans and asked Yu Sheng whether Eileen was always like that; he said it was one of her milder episodes.

Marlin left after telling Yu Sheng she would search the Alice dolls’ network for information about Eileen and the Ominous Wandering Star. Back in Fairy Tale Town, Little Red Riding Hood and Yun Qingzi found that Snake Princess had been secretly stealing food, and she accidentally revealed her new transformation technique.

• Marlin told Yu Sheng that the Garden network held little trace of Eileen and that she would keep investigating through the Alice dolls’ network.
• Yu Sheng pointed out that Eileen had stayed with him after reconnecting with her sisters, prompting her to wonder where she wanted to go before she quickly cheered up again.
• Rapunzel reported missing food and a broken kettle to Little Red Riding Hood, who asked the Mermaid to alert Yun Qingzi.
• Yun Qingzi led Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel to a hidden grove, where they found Snake Princess hiding after raiding the town’s kitchen.
• Snake Princess emerged in the wrong form, then transformed into a human upper body with a serpentine lower half and explained that she was still learning the technique.

Yu Sheng discovered that Snake Princess had followed Xuan Che into Fairy Tale Town and settled in with the children after recovering from her insanity. He confirmed she had permission to visit, gave her door access, and left the valley with a lively new resident.

• Yu Sheng arrived in Fairy Tale Town and found Snake Princess playing with the children while Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel explained that she had secretly followed Xuan Che through the door and stolen supplies for a woodland cave.
• Yun Qingzi said Snake Princess had a pure nature, and Little Red Riding Hood explained that she had contacted Thousand Peaks Spirit Mountain about the missing demon.
• Snake Princess told Yu Sheng that Yuan He knew where she was and had allowed her to stay for two days, which Yu Sheng confirmed by messaging him.
• Yu Sheng told Snake Princess to follow the valley's rules and offered her door access through the blood-bestowal ritual, which she mistook for an attempt to make her drink blood.
• Yu Sheng completed the ritual by touching Snake Princess's forehead, and she rolled around in exaggerated alarm before realizing it did not hurt.

Yu Sheng watched Snake Princess settle into Fairy Tale Town and fail her driving test, while Marlene searched the deep layers of the Garden Network for dangerous hidden data. The search brought Marlene to the network’s guarded depths, where a sweeper appeared again.

• Snake Princess wandered around Fairy Tale Town, nibbled seedlings, and made a nest in King's cat tree before King knocked her down.
• Yu Sheng learned that Little Red Riding Hood had failed Subject Two twice after falling into the ditch again.
• Marlene and Maris connected to the Garden node and searched for information about Eileen, the omen, and related anomalies.
• Marlene descended into the Garden Network’s deeper layers, where sweepers patrolled for awakened zombie databases.
• A sweeper scanned Marlene and left, and Maris tried to sell her an upgrade before another sweeper appeared.

Marlene followed a mysterious thread through the Garden Network and touched a memory trace from the ancient Tower. She saw a golden-haired Alice doll charge at a scarlet presence with a frying pan before the vision knocked her unconscious.

• Marlene discovered a black thread wrapped around her wrist, and Maris confirmed that her connection and mental entity were normal.
• Marlene realized the scavenger program was scanning the thread but not expelling it, suggesting someone had exempted its signature from the program.
• Marlene followed the thread deep into the Garden Network despite Maris's warnings about over-limit diving.
• Marlene found a fading trace in the network and reached into it, receiving memories of the Tower and a golden-haired Alice doll among fleeing investigators and Spirit Realm Detectives.
• Marlene saw the golden-haired doll reject a deal from the scarlet gaze and attack the top of the Tower with a frying pan before Marlene lost consciousness.

Marlene recovered from her dive into the Garden Network and reviewed damaged records of Eileen and a strange shadow, deciding to show them to Mr. Yu. At Fairy Tale Town, Eileen went on with her carefree routine while Little Red Riding Hood struggled to practice parking for her driving test.

• Marlene woke beside Maryse after the Alice Tree's emergency systems activated, and Maryse explained that she had stopped Marlene from facing a lethal threat.
• Marlene recalled seeing a tower, Eileen, and a huge shadow in the Garden Network, then examined corrupted records and decided to show them to Mr. Yu.
• Maryse asked Marlene to buy her a new Cooperative Processor, and Marlene opened the Starry Express Overseas Edition app.
• At Fairy Tale Town, Yu Sheng and Huli watched Eileen play with doll-headed children and discussed how childlike she was.
• Little Red Riding Hood failed to park Engineer Sun's car, secretly lifted its rear wheels into the space, and admitted that the second driving test was her biggest obstacle.

Yu Sheng received Marlin’s recovered footage of Eileen charging toward an enemy at a mysterious tower and recognized the tower in an old Border Communication post. The post described a place reached from the Dark Alley, leaving Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood with evidence that the tower still held someone trapped inside.

• Marlin sent Yu Sheng damaged footage from the Garden Network showing Eileen confronting an outside enemy and rushing toward a mysterious tower.
• Little Red Riding Hood recognized the tower’s broken stairways and relief-covered walls from a photograph she had bookmarked on Border Communication.
• Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood found the post, whose author said they had entered the tower through an unexplained fork in the Dark Alley while fleeing from the entity called the Cat.
• The post’s author reported that most photographs were obscured by shadows or threadlike marks and suspected part of them remained trapped in the tower.

Yu Sheng learned how the dangerous Dark Alley worked and investigated a report about a mysterious tower. He decided to find the post’s author, then discussed whether Eileen should learn the truth about the Omen Goddess, suggesting the mystery had been pursuing them.

• Little Red Riding Hood explained the Dark Alley’s branching paths, dangerous cats, traps, and cat food that could guide explorers to safety.
• Yu Sheng found that a poster who had encountered a mysterious tower described bone-deep chills and recurring nightmares, and decided to locate him.
• Little Red Riding Hood agreed to contact the poster and seek Captain Song’s help if he did not respond, then returned to practicing driving.
• Huli woke and asked whether Eileen should learn about the Omen Goddess if they found evidence, and Yu Sheng wondered whether the truth would help her.
• Yu Sheng told Huli that the Omen Goddess mystery seemed to be pursuing them rather than being something they had chosen to investigate.

Yu Sheng and Huli discussed how the Omen Goddess’s information seemed to be awakening and decided to take the initiative despite the risk of accelerating it. Meanwhile, Eileen experienced a vision of a dying world and her own emergence as a deity, but forgot it after waking and returned to Yu Sheng with the Ominous Wandering Star.

• Yu Sheng told Huli that clues about the Omen Goddess seemed alive and were closing in on Eileen, and Huli warned that investigating could accelerate information contamination.
• Yu Sheng argued that the Omen Goddess was already pursuing them, so they should investigate rather than remain passive.
• Yu Sheng and Huli watched Snake Princess, Rapunzel, and Mermaid cause a chaotic commotion over the King's dried fish.
• Eileen saw the Ominous Wandering Star’s reflection split into a toothy smile and experienced a vision of a collapsing world, where countless people prayed to her as she became a newborn deity.
• Eileen jolted awake, ran toward the castle calling for Yu Sheng, then forgot the vision and happily showed him the wear-resistant stone ball.

Yu Sheng showed Eileen the recovered memory of a blonde doll fighting near a mysterious tower, and Eileen accepted the possibility that the doll had been her past self. The tower’s footage raised questions about a vast being that might be the Dark Angel, while Baili Qing warned the Special Operations Bureau not to awaken the dangerous truth about Yu Sheng or Eileen.

• Eileen happily showed Yu Sheng and Huli her stone ball, and Yu Sheng wondered whether the Ominous Wandering Star had briefly buzzed.
• Yu Sheng told Eileen about the recovered memory Marilyn had found, and Eileen eagerly examined the footage with him by the river.
• Yu Sheng confirmed that the blonde doll in the memory and the broken doll he had seen in a mirror were Eileen, and Eileen discussed how they might put her old body back together.
• The footage showed a colossal shadow beyond the tower’s dome, and Yu Sheng considered whether it could be the Dark Angel before Eileen declared she wanted to go home and watch TV.
• Song Cheng told Baili Qing that the Alice envoy wanted help investigating the tower and that the footage appeared to come from the Classical Era.
• Baili Qing agreed to assist with the investigation and warned Song Cheng that Yu Sheng and Eileen were dangerous if they learned what they truly were.

Yu Sheng, Little Red Riding Hood, and the King entered Dark Alley to investigate the Otherworld and recreate the circumstances described in Sun Chen’s old report about the Weird Tower. They began surveying the alley and planned to seek a dangerous route through its crossroads, but the tower had not yet appeared.

• Little Red Riding Hood told Yu Sheng that the original poster was an Independent Investigator named Sun Chen, though she had not yet contacted him.
• Little Red Riding Hood brought the King as backup, and the cat explained how it could communicate with and intimidate Dark Alley’s physical cats.
• Yu Sheng, Little Red Riding Hood, and the King registered at the Special Operations Bureau node and entered Dark Alley by following the wall’s instructions.
• The King summoned an adventurer party, while Little Red Riding Hood outlined a plan to inspect the alley and reproduce the process that had led Sun Chen to the tower space.
• Little Red Riding Hood said they would use the wolf or a prophecy spell to identify the dangerous route, and teased Yu Sheng about his habit of using teleportation gates.

Yu Sheng’s party entered a dangerous Old Bookstore in the Dark Alley, where the King and Little Red Riding Hood explained its risks and the kinds of clues it might hold. Yu Sheng opened a dusty book and found the words, “There isn't enough mass,” as a hollow howl seemed to come from beyond the Otherworld.

• The party reached a brightly lit Old Bookstore, which Little Red Riding Hood warned could contain useful clues, traps, or mentally contaminating books.
• Yu Sheng cut his palm through a small door, marked the bookstore’s exterior with bloody handprints and a message, then wiped his hand with a fox tail pulled through another door.
• Yu Sheng entered the bookstore and noticed shelves of old books, heaps of rotting knowledge, and a note repeating the words “read books.”
• Little Red Riding Hood warned Yu Sheng not to touch the contaminating black liquid, and the King revealed that she had once touched it and scored eight points on a science exam.
• The King and Little Red Riding Hood explained that intact books could contain clues about safe exits, the Crossroads, or the Shattered Tower, but would not predict the future apart from weather.
• Yu Sheng opened a dusty gray book and read the words, “There isn't enough mass.”

Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood discovered that every book in the Old Bookstore had become filled with the words “Insufficient mass,” and Yu Sheng suspected the Dark Alley was reacting to information connected with Eileen. When the Young Swordsman cut through a wall marked by strange patterns, the Old Bookstore began collapsing, and Yu Sheng glimpsed gray fog and black threads beyond the hole before it vanished.

• Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood found that every page in the Old Bookstore’s books repeated “Insufficient mass,” a change absent from known records.
• Yu Sheng wondered whether the Dark Alley’s changes were connected to Marlene finding Eileen’s record on the Garden Network and to information resonating around them.
• The Stalker found strange, regular patterns seeping through a wall, and Yu Sheng proposed breaking through to see what lay beyond it.
• The Young Swordsman pierced the wall with the Muramasa Blade after his party encouraged him, then began tearing it apart.
• The Old Bookstore shook as books and crawling letters spilled everywhere, and Little Red Riding Hood led the others outside while warning that the level’s reality was collapsing.
• Yu Sheng saw gray fog and black threads beyond the hole, but the opening vanished before he could inspect it further.

Yu Sheng, Little Red Riding Hood, and King entered a distorted layer of the Dark Alley after the Old Bookstore collapsed, where every shop was closed and all three routes at the Crossroads appeared to be safe exits. When black cat entities surrounded them, King summoned a crowd of Grand Magi and prepared an attack.

• Yu Sheng escaped the Old Bookstore as its entrance slammed shut, then told Little Red Riding Hood that he had seen fog and web-like strands beyond a hole that vanished.
• Little Red Riding Hood pointed out that the Dark Alley had changed, and the group realized they had entered a strange in-between layer with no open shops or normal entities.
• King advised them to head for the Crossroads, and Little Red Riding Hood found that all three roads were safe exits rather than routes deeper into the alley.
• King detected something in the shadows, and numerous black cat entities emerged around the group and urged them to leave.
• King confronted the black cats, then made the adventurer party vanish and summoned Grand Magi to prepare a Blazing Sun Flame.

Yu Sheng, Little Red Riding Hood, and the King learned that spider silk may have invaded the Dark Alley and caused its recent changes, so they decided to leave and report their findings. Back home, Eileen waited for Yu Sheng until she fell asleep dreaming of his return.

• The King negotiated with the black cats and learned that strange things had crawled into the Dark Alley throughout the area.
• The King inferred that the spider silk Yu Sheng had seen may have caused the alley’s changes and that the Dark Alley was trying to drive them out.
• The King said the Shattered Tower and the source of the spider silk were likely part of the same invasion, which may have begun when someone noticed it three years earlier.
• Little Red Riding Hood decided they should leave the Dark Alley, investigate the person who made the old post, and report the abnormalities to the Special Operations Bureau.
• At home, Huli knitted a scarf from her shed fur for Yu Sheng while Eileen complained that he had not brought her along.
• Eileen teased Luna, then fell asleep on the sofa while dreaming of Yu Sheng coming home.

After returning from the Dark Alley, Yu Sheng told Huli and Eileen about its connection to the Omen Goddess and planned to revisit it with Eileen. Eileen left the implications of her past unresolved, and Yu Sheng went to sleep beside her.

• Huli gathered the sleeping Eileens around the house and tucked them into boxes before Yu Sheng returned.
• Huli welcomed Yu Sheng home, served him stew, and heard his account of the Dark Alley and its connection to the Omen Goddess.
• Yu Sheng found Eileen in a box, freed her, and said he would bring her on his next trip to the Dark Alley.
• Yu Sheng asked what Eileen planned to do about her possible connection to the Omen Goddess, but she told him she had no answers and asked him to decide later.
• Eileen asked Yu Sheng to get her out of the blanket she had wrapped herself in, then argued that they should take things as they came.
• Yu Sheng moved Eileen to the edge of the bed, claimed the middle, and fell asleep amid her protests.

Yu Sheng tried to connect with the Ominous Wandering Star, then learned that the Spirit Realm Detective Sun Chen had checked himself into Quiet Forest Sanatorium, a treatment and containment facility located in an Otherworld. Little Red Riding Hood explained that the sanatorium’s rules governed its patients, leaving Yu Sheng to wonder what made the facility so unusual.

• Eileen headbutted Yu Sheng awake, and he recalled a chaotic dream that ended with the Old Bookstore collapsing amid scarlet light and spider-like apparitions.
• Yu Sheng tried to connect with the Ominous Wandering Star but could not see inside it or understand its hollow howling.
• Yu Sheng read Little Red Riding Hood’s messages and replied after learning she had found the Spirit Realm Detective Sun Chen.
• Yu Sheng shared breakfast with Huli and Little Red Riding Hood, who said Sun Chen had voluntarily entered Quiet Forest Sanatorium several months earlier.
• Little Red Riding Hood explained that Quiet Forest Sanatorium was a Special Operations Bureau treatment and containment facility in an Otherworld, where patients were affected only by the sanatorium’s rules.

Yu Sheng met Baili Qing to discuss investigating Sun Chen at Quiet Forest Sanatorium, but she also showed him footage and archival evidence about the Shattered Weird Tower. The chapter left Yu Sheng learning that the footage depicted an ancient Crossroads disaster involving an Othergod and an unidentified powerful figure.

• Yu Sheng and Little Red Riding Hood concluded that Sun Chen might be hiding from the tower's influence inside Quiet Forest Sanatorium, and Yu Sheng went to ask Baili Qing for help.
• Baili Qing said she would issue Yu Sheng a special investigation permit and notify the sanatorium to cooperate.
• Baili Qing showed Yu Sheng footage of the Shattered Weird Tower and identified the evacuees as a Crossroads exploration team from the Classical Era, when magic and other extraordinary beings were widespread.
• Baili Qing explained that the Crossroads had suffered severe historical resets and that most records of the Classical Era had been erased.
• Baili Qing read an archival report describing an Othergod's arrival, the destruction of the Boundary Bridge, and an unidentified powerful individual who stayed behind to cover the exploration team's retreat.
• Yu Sheng realized the report most likely described the same event shown in the footage Malin had found on the Garden network.