Chapter Summaries

Gaoxin outmaneuvered Leicester and Great White Shark by convincing Li Fengqing and Mandala to stand with him, leaving the two traitors isolated. After discovering that Gaoxin had used his Free Agent identity to pass verification, Great White Shark and Leicester decided they could become Free Agents too.

• Leicester accused Gaoxin of being an Azure Emperor Player, but Gaoxin summoned a Sub-Elephant Angel and let Leicester destroy it without triggering a war.
• Mandala backed Gaoxin, and Li Fengqing chose to trust him and unite with Gaoxin and Mandala against Leicester and Great White Shark.
• Gaoxin said they would vote for Azure Emperor Hegemony to target the traitors, while Li Fengqing confirmed that his faction would not change.
• Great White Shark took Leicester aside and explained that Gaoxin had avoided triggering a war by using his Free Agent identity.
• Great White Shark and Leicester realized they could become Free Agents themselves, avoiding membership in the Black Empire as long as the hegemony was not black.

Great White Shark and Leicester started a new war to keep the White Hegemony in place and preserve Taishui’s free-agent status, but Gaoxin turned Leicester’s defector trick against him. Leicester was badly wounded and forced to unleash his remaining cards against Gaoxin.

• Great White Shark explained that Leicester and he could keep the White Hegemony by declaring war before the Peace Phase lasted ten minutes, and asked Leicester to become Lord of the Empire.
• Leicester declared war between the White and Azure Empires, then he and Great White Shark started another war in the Black Emperor Main City.
• Gaoxin attacked Leicester’s Latent Dragon Archangel, redirected his assault past the retreating robot, and severely injured Leicester.
• Leicester changed his Soul Component to Black and tried to make Gaoxin trigger the system’s instant kill, but Gaoxin’s attacks left him grievously wounded instead.
• Gaoxin continued his assault as Leicester fled and switched identities, then Leicester summoned his second Latent Dragon Card and all five True Elephant Cards to surround Gaoxin.

Gaoxin’s deception of Mandala was exposed, turning their alliance into a deadly fight as Phoenix, Xiwena, and Ark arrived to protect him. Mandala deployed a Power Angel, but Gaoxin answered with an Energy Angel and struck back, ending the chapter with the two enemies facing off.

• Leicester escaped Gaoxin’s attack and revealed that Taishui was a Black Emperor Player, prompting Mandala to realize Gaoxin had deceived him about his faction.
• Mandala confronted Gaoxin over his refusal to join the Evil Dragon Empire, then turned against him and summoned a third Latent Dragon to attack.
• Phoenix, Xiwena, and Ark arrived with a powerful formation of angels, forcing Great White Shark and Leicester to retreat toward the passage entrance.
• Gaoxin told Xiwena he intended to go to the Death Hills, while Mandala declared that he would not survive the game.
• Mandala summoned a Power Angel and ordered it to kill Gaoxin, who countered with an Energy Angel and knocked the Power Angel back with a punch.

Ark unveiled a new Bio-energy variation, Death-bestowing Nature, and badly wounded Mandala during the battle. As the factions’ alliances became clear, Mandala retreated with Great White Shark, leaving Gaoxin and his allies facing the coming conflict with the Evil Dragon Empire.

• Mandala unleashed an overclocked attack alongside his Power Angel, but Ark intervened and took the brunt of the blow while injecting Mandala with a destructive Bio-energy.
• Ark’s Death-bestowing Nature made Mandala’s body attack itself, and Ark severed one of Mandala’s arms as the battle continued.
• Great White Shark could not aid Mandala because he was fighting Phoenix and Li Fengqing, while Xiwena’s dragons overwhelmed Leicester’s forces and Gaoxin and the Seraph pressured Mandala’s Power Angel.
• Phoenix explained that he and Li Fengqing supported Gaoxin because his refusal to join a nation was preferable to him joining the Evil Dragon Empire.
• Gaoxin told Xiwena that they would become enemies outside the game but promised not to kill her; Xiwena chose to protect him anyway.
• Mandala gave up trying to recruit Phoenix and Xiwena, then left with Great White Shark after challenging Gaoxin, Ark, Xiwena, and Phoenix to survive the game.

Gaoxin and Ark’s coordinated attack nearly killed Mandala, but Mandala and Great White Shark escaped while Leicester died covering their retreat. Mandala later described their dual-sword coordination as an insurmountable problem, while Gaoxin returned from the passage after drawing two cards.

• Mandala ordered a retreat, but Gaoxin attacked Great White Shark and then redirected his strike toward Mandala, who was trapped by Gaoxin and Ark’s perfectly coordinated sword techniques.
• Power Angel saved Mandala at the cost of severe damage, and Great White Shark joined Mandala and Leicester as they tried to flee through the passage.
• Mandala and Great White Shark abandoned Leicester and recalled their cards; Leicester died to Archangel’s attack, while his two Power Angels fought until Gaoxin and the others destroyed them.
• Gaoxin pursued Mandala and Great White Shark into the passage but quickly returned after drawing two cards, leaving them startled and relieved.
• Mandala told Great White Shark that Taishui and Ark’s coordination felt like an impossible mathematical problem, and said even Themis had been unable to decipher their minds.

Gaoxin and Ark discovered that their extraordinary coordination could greatly expand their combat awareness, and Ark drew a True Dragon Card. They planned to use it against Mandala and Great White Shark, but the pair evaded them, leaving Gaoxin’s group searching the strongholds.

• Gaoxin reflected that his coordination with Ark had multiplied their awareness and combat opportunities beyond what either could achieve alone.
• Ark revealed that he had drawn a True Dragon Card, and he offered it to Gaoxin in exchange for joining forces again.
• Gaoxin decided to pursue the ultimate Easter egg and use Ark’s card to target Mandala and Great White Shark before they could draw a True Dragon Card.
• Ark entered the nearby stronghold but found no one inside, so Gaoxin split the group to search the connected strongholds.
• Gaoxin realized Mandala and Great White Shark had concealed themselves and moved between strongholds, and he ordered his group to guard the areas and keep searching.

Gaoxin and Ark forced Mandala and Great White Shark out of hiding with Dominion Angel, but Mandala threatened to trigger the Apostle’s challenge and kill everyone unless they were spared. Gaoxin agreed to let them live under his orders and sent them into a neighboring stronghold for the truce negotiations, leaving their trust in him uncertain.

• Gaoxin and Ark found Mandala and Great White Shark hiding beneath the lava lake and used Dominion Angel to devastate the area and cripple Power Angel.
• Mandala threatened to attack the Apostle, Beelzebub, and trigger a challenge that would endanger everyone unless Gaoxin spared him.
• Phoenix confirmed that the Apostle’s challenge could be triggered by enough combined energy output, and Mandala used the threat to demand a truce and a chance to live.
• Gaoxin agreed to spare Mandala and Great White Shark if they obeyed him, then had them enter a truce and stay in the neighboring Right Wing stronghold.
• Phoenix warned that Great White Shark could become Lord of the Empire and use the Truce Phase to purge their group, while Gaoxin explained why he had isolated the two and said their trust would determine what happened next.

Great White Shark and Mandala decided to gamble on forcing a purge rather than trust Gaoxin to spare them, hoping to recruit a third voter and seize control. Their plan unraveled when Li Fengqing voted against Great White Shark and Taishui was not present as a target.

• Great White Shark and Mandala reasoned that negotiations could stall their purge, so they planned to resist the Apostle and activate the Ultimate Challenge if their attack failed.
• As the Truce Phase began, Great White Shark and Mandala entered the neighboring city and confronted Gaoxin, Ark, and Li Fengqing.
• Great White Shark and Mandala tried to persuade Li Fengqing to vote with them by warning that Taishui could bring war to Tangren City.
• Li Fengqing agreed to start the purge but secretly voted for Great White Shark and fled.
• Great White Shark and Mandala tried to vote for Taishui, then realized he was not present and could not be targeted.

Great White Shark and Mandala discovered that Taishui and Ark had left decoys behind, while Li Fengqing escaped the main city and became untargetable. Trapped by the Eliminate Traitor Vote, Great White Shark revealed Tiger Whale’s faction to Gaoxin before Mandala voted to execute him.

• Great White Shark realized Taishui and Ark were controlling decoy bodies, but Li Fengqing escaped through the main gate after voting for him.
• Great White Shark and Mandala found themselves trapped with no eligible targets, and Great White Shark voted for Mandala to create a possible tie.
• Great White Shark begged Taishui to fight him and revealed Tiger Whale’s allies and the shifting leadership of Haiwang Port to Gaoxin.
• Gaoxin refused to save Great White Shark, explaining that he no longer trusted him to keep his word.
• Great White Shark tried to charge toward Gaoxin and self-destruct, but Mandala voted against him and the anti-traitor judgment executed him.

Gaoxin explained how he had anticipated Mandala and Great White Shark’s plans and used his control of negotiation authority to keep them trapped in a prolonged Truce Phase. Mandala realized he had become a source of cards for Gaoxin’s group, while Gaoxin and Ark intended to challenge the Apostle.

• Gaoxin revealed that he had guarded the right-side passage and had expected Mandala to resist during the Truce Phase.
• Mandala asked whether killing Great White Shark would have secured his survival, and Gaoxin confirmed that he would have spared him.
• Gaoxin explained that he and Ark planned to challenge the Apostle and would use the Truce Phase to gather cards before ending negotiations.
• Mandala realized that Gaoxin could prolong negotiations and exploit him as a card-drawing tool, with his cards ultimately going to Gaoxin’s group.
• Gaoxin described how he had planned for Mandala and Great White Shark to be trapped whichever route they chose, and Mandala could not answer his reasoning.
• Gaoxin told Mandala that his assumption that challenging the Apostle meant certain death had already doomed him.

Mandala accepted his death and allied with Gaoxin, offering to use his forbidden Glorious Flash to wound the Apostles and clear the way for Gaoxin and Ark. After waiting until he obtained a Dragon King Card, Mandala began charging and detonated his full power against Beelzebub as the battle began.

• Mandala abandoned his resistance and agreed to help Gaoxin fight the Apostles with Glorious Flash, a fatal technique fueled by all his energy.
• Gaoxin and the others planned to shelter in the Azure Empire’s strongholds after negotiations, while waiting for another Dragon King Card to appear.
• On the eighteenth card-drawing round, Mandala drew a True Dragon Card that became a Dragon King Card and summoned Solomon as its Dominion Angel.
• Mandala began charging Glorious Flash, and Gaoxin left the main city while the others concluded negotiations and fled into the strongholds.
• Beelzebub descended to collect Mandala’s cards, but Mandala detonated his accumulated energy and engulfed the Apostle in the blast.

Gaoxin and Ark joined Mandala, Solomon, and Deborah in a perfectly coordinated assault that shattered Beelzebub’s defenses and destroyed a large portion of his mechanical intelligence modules. As Solomon and Deborah took over the fight, Gaoxin and Ark held back while the Apostles tried to finish Beelzebub before reinforcements arrived.

• Gaoxin and Ark summoned Solomon and Deborah to protect them from Mandala’s Glorious Flash as Beelzebub’s body and defenses took heavy damage.
• Gaoxin and Ark struck Beelzebub’s unstable energy barrier with their combined sword techniques, magnifying its weakness.
• Solomon and Deborah followed up, shattering Beelzebub’s field and destroying his fly head along with roughly one-seventh of his mechanical intelligence modules.
• The other Apostles arrived as projections and recognized that Mandala, Gaoxin, Ark, Solomon, and Deborah had coordinated the attack to create and exploit the opening.
• Solomon and Deborah pressed their advantage against Beelzebub while Gaoxin and Ark stayed back, aiming to defeat him before Laguer could join the fight.

Gaoxin and Ark helped Solomon and Deborah gain an early advantage over Beelzebub, but Beelzebub entered deathmatch mode and began drawing enormous energy from the Infinite Energy Hub Network. With Solomon forced to protect several players, Gaoxin decided to take command, leaving the battle’s outcome uncertain.

• Gaoxin and Ark’s coordinated attack, aided by Mandala’s sacrifice, gave Solomon and Deborah an opening to suppress Beelzebub.
• Beelzebub fled to the small base and attacked Phoenix, Xiwena, and Li Fengqing, but Gaoxin summoned four Sub-dragons and Solomon rescued them.
• Deborah revealed that Beelzebub had entered deathmatch mode, allowing him to use any means necessary, and warned that the arena could be destroyed.
• Beelzebub entered overload and drew power from the Infinite Energy Hub Network, forcing Solomon to defend the group while Deborah protected Ark.
• After realizing the extra players had made victory harder, Gaoxin and Ark exchanged a determined glance, and Gaoxin ordered Solomon to follow his commands.

Gaoxin coordinated with Ark, Solomon, and Deborah to shatter Beelzebub’s defenses, though Beelzebub’s gravitational counterattack killed Gaoxin before Solomon revived him. As Deborah fought Beelzebub in Nanite Swarm form, Solomon and Gaoxin worked out a strategy for their next coordinated attack.

• Gaoxin arranged for Solomon and Deborah to attack Beelzebub after he and Ark exposed an opening, while the Apostles continued protecting the other teammates.
• Deborah used Gravity Collapse to disrupt Beelzebub, allowing Gaoxin and Ark to shatter his defenses before Solomon and Deborah destroyed his cybernetic modules.
• Beelzebub counterattacked with a gravitational distortion that killed Gaoxin, but Solomon rescued him and helped restore his body.
• Deborah fought Beelzebub in Nanite Swarm form, and Solomon explained that the form gave the Apostles powerful microscopic combat abilities.
• Gaoxin confirmed that Solomon and Deborah could create disruptions for him and Ark to magnify, and Solomon devised a strategy for their next attack.

Gaoxin and Ark helped Solomon and Deborah break through Beelzebub’s defenses, but Themis took over Laguer’s body and entered the battle. Gaoxin seized control of Themis’s Nanite Swarm and struck back with a new microscopic power, leaving the Apostles astonished by his ability.

• Gaoxin and Ark disrupted Beelzebub’s force field with coordinated sword attacks, while the Apostles marveled at their intuition and synchronization.
• Themis took over Laguer’s Dominion Angel body and joined Beelzebub, combining their force fields to withstand Solomon and Deborah’s attacks.
• Gaoxin called Phoenix, Xiwena, Li Fengqing, and his summoned angels into the fight; their combined attack created an opening that Gaoxin and Ark exploited to shatter Themis’s defense.
• Themis recognized Gaoxin and Ark’s synchronization as evidence of a higher-dimensional connection, but Gaoxin and the others attacked him and Solomon absorbed his scattered fragments.
• Themis’s Nanite Swarm destroyed Gaoxin’s body while he regenerated, but Gaoxin lured the swarm into connecting with his nerves and took control of it.
• Gaoxin used the Nanite Swarm to strike Themis, then joined Solomon and Deborah in defeating him as the Apostles wondered whether Gaoxin had gained a new exclusive module called Microscopic Power.

Gaoxin and his allies fought Themis, disrupting his Nanite Swarm matrices and leaving him badly weakened, while Ark survived a devastating attack and broke through to Lesser Elephant. Themis ended the battle and warned that the island could face disaster if Gaoxin learned to wield an Apostle’s power alongside his Radiation User abilities.

• Gaoxin suppressed and absorbed much of Themis’s Nanite Swarm, preventing it from forming powerful matrices as his allies attacked.
• Themis’s swarm formed a high-energy matrix around Ark, destroying his battle body and knocking him unconscious, but Gaoxin rescued him.
• After Gaoxin repaired him, Ark awakened, broke through to Lesser Elephant, and struck Themis with his stronger Spine Severing Sword Bone.
• Solomon and the others reduced Themis to a ruined body, and Themis called an end to the battle.
• Themis explained that precise matrix construction required Apostle thought and warned Gaoxin that combining it with Radiation User power could bring disaster to the island.

Gaoxin and Ark defeated Beelzebub’s weakened Dominion Angel without Combat Cards, earning the chance for Gaoxin to claim a Dragon King Card as his reward. Solomon created a Dragon King Card bearing his own name, though it could summon him for only ten minutes a day and required Gaoxin to supply his energy and repairs.

• Solomon told Gaoxin that Themis had left the Matrix Construction Method as a reward, but Gaoxin chose to pursue a Combat Card instead.
• Gaoxin and Ark fought Beelzebub without assistance and used their synchronized combat awareness to suppress and destroy the angel’s intelligent-mechanical modules.
• After the battle, Gaoxin rejected Xiwena’s offer to secure Yamaguchi Village and declared that he would take it himself.
• Gaoxin demanded a Dragon King Card from Solomon, who agreed to become its fighter and explained its time limit and maintenance requirements.
• Solomon created the Dragon King Card · Solomon, which contained a folded Dominion Angel body and could summon him from within three hundred thousand kilometers of Earth.

Gaoxin learned that Xia Heng might be Human Singularity 011, whose memories and sanity had been damaged by folded-space experiments, and realized Xia Heng was a God-like Being. The group finished the Redemption Game with Dragon King Cards, and Gaoxin left with a vast reward that could help him build a faction.

• Phoenix explained that folded-space technology could be exchanged through the Silver Tower, while Solomon described how folding living subjects’ spaces caused memory loss and mental damage.
• Solomon identified the Human Singularity used in the experiment as 011, leading Gaoxin to suspect that Xia Heng was the subject and to reconsider his mysterious past and extraordinary cybernetic talent.
• Gaoxin asked about Themis’s promised lesson, but Beelzebub insisted they finish the game before discussing rewards.
• The five players waited until they each had a True Dragon Card, exchanged cards to obtain Dragon King Cards, and Ark claimed the last land to end the game.
• Gaoxin received 110 million Redemption Vouchers and a Dragon King Card, then considered how the reward could support a large faction.

Gaoxin and his companions compared their game rewards and Combat Cards, while Phoenix explained how Milan and Quantum Ghost could withstand targeted-kill beams only for a limited time. Ark gave Gaoxin his Sub-dragon Card, and Gaoxin left for the Death Hills as Xiwena headed to Seahorse to consult her father.

• Gaoxin disclosed that he had earned 110 million Redemption Vouchers in tips, and Phoenix contrasted Tangren City’s prosperous system with Yamaguchi Village’s exploitation.
• Phoenix told Gaoxin that Milan could withstand targeted-kill beams for a long time but would eventually succumb to their inexhaustible energy, and Gaoxin realized Quantum Ghost could evade them temporarily.
• Beelzebub explained that Ark received a Sub-dragon Card because his higher level lowered his evaluation, while Gaoxin received a Dragon King Card for surpassing greater odds.
• Ark offered Gaoxin his Sub-dragon Card, and Gaoxin accepted it while promising to return it if Ark ever asked.
• Gaoxin left for the Death Hills after arranging to keep in touch with Ark, and Xiwena went to Seahorse to ask her father about the family’s response to Gaoxin rejecting all factions.

With Gaoxin still absent and the safe house nearly out of money, Luo Yan organized the Redemption Squad to earn vouchers through games. Dongfang Yi’s team won twice, and his breakthrough in the second game left him newly confident.

• Gaoshu trained with Near-Death Compensation, but Luo Yan said the squad had spent all its Redemption Vouchers on modules, repairs, and irradiated beast meat.
• Luo Yan decided to enter the Redemption Game alone, while Dongfang Yi formed a five-person Wolf Level team with Li Shande, Sun Chuan, Jiang Yuan, and Liu Xu.
• Luo Yan and Dongfang Yi led their groups into the matching queue, leaving the others to remain in the safe house and train.
• Dongfang Yi’s team returned from its first game with 4,500 vouchers in total after defeating weaker Wolf Level opponents and collecting survival rewards.
• Dongfang Yi led the team into a second game, defeated a powerful team after breaking through to True Wolf Level, and earned 50,000 vouchers himself.