Chapter Summaries

Huai Shi grew suspicious of a man named Quinn after meeting him at Fire City, and Andrea confirmed that danger was approaching when spiders swarmed the train. Quinn infiltrated the train, but the spiders he sent into the carriages found themselves facing a flock of waiting Crows.

• Huai Shi patrolled the train and later recalled that the middle-aged man he met at Fire City seemed suspicious, so he woke Andrea to stay alert.
• Quinn identified the train as belonging to the Ivory Tower and ordered a preliminary probe after consulting with the Doctor and the Colonel.
• Andrea sensed danger as spiders covered the train, spat venom, and were burned to ash by her protective heat barrier.
• Quinn used Shazhou's Veil to evade Andrea's flames and infiltrated the train as spiders poured through its air-conditioning ducts.
• The spiders rushed toward the passengers, only to find countless Crows waiting among the luggage racks.

Huai Shi and Andrea unleashed the Candle-Bearing Crows against Harry Quinn’s spider tide, restoring order aboard the train. Quinn’s attack on Andrea failed, and as his wound spread with abyssal venom, he lunged at Huai Shi, believing him to be the easiest target.

• Huai Shi opened the Dream Cage, releasing the Candle-Bearing Crows, which swept through the train and devoured Quinn’s invading spiders.
• Quinn endured the pain transmitted through his spider constructs and used a cry to trigger an attack, but Yuan Yuan’s greatsword struck empty air and she guarded the carriage entrance.
• Andrea identified the spider-tide tactic as Harry Quinn’s and warned Huai Shi that Quinn was a dangerous French Fencing Association grandmaster.
• Quinn attacked Andrea, but Huai Shi summoned the Burial Sanctuary and sent the Candle-Bearing Crows after him.
• The crows wounded Quinn, and abyssal venom spread through his arm; he severed it, then lunged at Huai Shi, whom he judged to be the weakest target.

Huai Shi and his allies fought Harry Quinn and the troupe’s Roman-mask performers before Andrea recognized the attackers as members of the Ivy League. The battle stalled as Andrea and the Doctor traded academic insults, and Huai Shi joined in when the rivals mocked Abyssal Ecology.

• Huai Shi used his summoned fighters and swordsmanship to wound Harry Quinn, but Harry escaped decapitation by switching places with a masked officer.
• The troupe’s seven officers attacked Huai Shi, while Red Glove, Van Helsing, and Shao Siming fought them; Andrea then burned most of the enemies with a plasma torrent.
• Andrea identified the survivors as Doctor, Colonel, Pantalone, and Harry Quinn, and recognized them as Ivy League rivals from ancient Roman mask-play lineages.
• Doctor and Andrea argued over their institutions’ academic rivalries, insulting each other’s research and disciplines.
• When the Doctor’s side mocked Abyssal Ecology, Huai Shi pulled Beelzebub from his bag and threatened the Ivy League.

Huai Shi’s group survived an attack by Pantalone’s troupe, but the attackers escaped and Pantalone ordered a new assault on Twilight Land. When the train later reached an empty station, the students found warnings telling them to stay aboard and wait for dusk.

• Pantalone threatened to destroy the train with a diamond bomb, but Raymond swallowed it with his flail while Huai Shi’s shot critically wounded Pantalone as he escaped.
• Pantalone ordered his allies to organize a third wave of reinforcements to prevent the Ivory Tower from taking Twilight Land.
• Kelly Christian finished a monster drawing, and a huge pair of pupils opened amid the flames nearby.
• After roughly forty hours of travel, Huai Shi and the students arrived at an abandoned station in Twilight Land and could not contact the district.
• Andrea stopped Huai Shi from leaving the train, and the group read warnings to stay aboard, draw the curtains, maintain heat and lighting, and wait for dusk.

Huai Shi and his team waited inside their armored train at the deserted station, following the instructions of Grandmaster Mikhail Ivanovich Zaitsev while they tried to contact Iron Crystal Seat. When a monstrous face appeared on a monitor and began freezing Huai Shi, he unleashed a Calamity Miracle and struck with Brilliant Light.

• Andrea ordered the train sealed, its suspended armor deployed, and the Depth Balancing Instrument kept running while the students sheltered in Raymond's vehicle.
• Andrea confirmed that the station monument bore Grandmaster Mikhail Ivanovich Zaitsev's work and instructed everyone to follow his directions and wait for dusk.
• After five hours passed without the sunlight changing, Huai Shi realized the local day-night cycle was abnormal.
• A huge, eyeless-faced creature appeared on a monitor and fixed its gaze on Huai Shi, freezing him and causing his body to deteriorate.
• Huai Shi's dormant Holy Mark activated, and he unleashed the opening of "Symphony No. 5" before striking with Brilliant Light.

Huai Shi emerged from a terrifying vision of Teaching Assistant Kondra and waited with Andrea and Raymond until dusk brought Twilight Land to life. August Mueller rescued them by air, and as they fled the rotating city, they learned the station had been assimilated by hell and could not be destroyed.

• Huai Shi broke free of his hour-long daze, verified his identity to Raymond and Andrea, and told them he had seen Teaching Assistant Kondra as a monster.
• Andrea and Raymond explained that Kondra had managed the temporary station, while Huai Shi used his legion to reassure them that the students were safe and playing King's Game.
• At dusk, August Mueller contacted the Tuna, arrived with an iron crate of umbrellas, and ordered the station's sunshade dismantled so the group could evacuate.
• August's crew attached the Tuna to a colossal ornithopter, and Huai Shi saw that Twilight Land consisted of rotating rings of ruined city and machinery crawling with infernal mutants.
• August's team destroyed the station as they departed, but it promptly reappeared with Kondra standing at its entrance, leading August to conclude that hell had assimilated it.

Huai Shi and the others flew through hell’s twilight and survived a barrage of alchemical artillery with the Grandmaster’s intervention. They reached the Iron Crystal Seat, a submarine-like mobile base, and Andrea took Huai Shi to meet the Grandmaster.

• August told Huai Shi that he and Kondra had encountered assimilation, and that August had been fortunate to survive.
• Huai Shi watched aberrations hunt during twilight and learned from August that more dangerous things lurked in the sky.
• A tower’s defenses opened fire on the ornithopter, but the Grandmaster’s miracle dissolved the shells before they could hit.
• Huai Shi saw that the Iron Crystal Seat was a massive submarine surrounded by alchemical matrices that created a deadly, low-gravity zone.
• Andrea assigned Raymond to manage supplies and Martin to settle the students, then told Huai Shi to accompany her to meet the Grandmaster.
• Huai Shi entered the Iron Crystal Seat’s bridge with Andrea.

Huai Shi attended a briefing aboard the Iron Crystal Seat, where its leaders discussed rival Ivy League forces and the ownerless Eternal Frozen Furnace Core. The Grandmaster, Mikhail Ivanovich Zaitsev, revealed himself as the statue Huai Shi had been leaning on and voiced his despair about the meaninglessness of their efforts.

• August told the middle-aged man that rising assimilation had forced the reinforcements to abandon the station, and Andrea introduced Huai Shi to the Iron Crystal Seat's leaders.
• Andrea reported the Ivy League situation, and the Chief Clerk and Chief Engineer explained that the Iron Crystal Seat had attacked the rival group's forward position after it requested negotiations.
• The scholar representative identified the Twilight Land as the Eternal Frozen Furnace Core, an ownerless industrial Hell, and the leaders considered competing with the Ivy League to claim it.
• The leaders turned to Huai Shi for his opinion, but the steel statue behind him spoke and asked him to move off its foot.
• Andrea identified the statue as Mikhail Ivanovich Zaitsev, the Grandmaster, who lamented that life and their efforts had no meaning.

After Grandmaster appointed Huai Shi to oversee Iron Crystal Seat during the exploration, Huai Shi learned that the appointment was procedurally improper. Rather than panic, he grew eager to take charge and immediately began to investigate the situation.

• Chief Engineer and the others forced Grandmaster to take medicine, easing his depression and restoring his more mechanical, authoritative state.
• Grandmaster named Huai Shi responsible for Iron Crystal Seat's affairs during the exploration, and the other officials accepted the appointment.
• Huai Shi tried to refuse and asked what the job entailed, but Grandmaster left him to handle everything except technical problems.
• August explained that Grandmaster's appointment and the authority it gave Huai Shi were against procedure.
• Huai Shi became excited by the appointment's irregularity and insisted on starting work at once.

Huai Shi observed a field lesson that demonstrated how sunlight and darkness killed living creatures in Twilight Land, then took up his new responsibilities at Iron Crystal Seat. He found the base already ran smoothly without his intervention, leaving him wondering why his expected struggle for power never happened.

• An experimental scholar showed students that sunlight caused living creatures to combust and that an emergency umbrella could block it for only fifteen minutes and forty-one seconds.
• The scholar released night into an isolation chamber, where it drained a giant beast's heat and petrified it from within before sunlight evaporated the darkness.
• The scholar warned students about Twilight Land's lethal conditions and sent them to practical training in their assigned groups.
• Huai Shi walked through Iron Crystal Seat and realized he was responsible for the base's operations and the lives of its nine hundred and forty-one occupants.
• The department heads transferred their access and reported their work to Huai Shi, while Iron Crystal Seat's existing systems continued to function efficiently.
• Huai Shi told Little Nineteen that it felt as if he had skipped hundreds of thousands of words because no one challenged his authority.

Huai Shi managed Iron Crystal Seat’s operations well while struggling with suspicious impulses to seize power. A discovery of a secondary control device in Twilight Land offered hope of affecting the hell’s day-and-night curse, but signs of an Ivy League summoning suggested reinforcements were on the way.

• Huai Shi made decisions that kept Iron Crystal Seat’s operations improving, earning the confidence of the department heads while frightening Lin Shijiu with his teacher’s apparent schemes.
• Yuan Yuan told Huai Shi that the rescue party had found the missing Exploration Team and that Andrea wanted him at a meeting.
• The team’s tests revealed a massive device that the scholars suspected could control Twilight Land’s internal parameters.
• Andrea and the scholars concluded that the device might help them address the curse of day and night, so Huai Shi ordered them to secure it.
• The communications chief reported that an Exploration Team’s alarm analysis showed the Ivy League had conducted a large-scale summoning to call for reinforcements.

Huai Shi volunteered to oversee recruiting Hell legions and managing the Hell Swarm for the Iron Crystal Seat. After the leaders agreed, he prepared to summon contracted swarms, accompanied by the ship’s strange mosaic creature named Wolfdog.

• The communications chief reported that the Ivy League branch was likely recruiting local legions and Hell Swarms to bolster its forces.
• Huai Shi offered to manage legion recruitment and the Hell Swarm, citing his experience, lineage, Abyssal connections, and authority as the principal’s secretary.
• The Iron Crystal Seat’s leaders accepted Huai Shi’s proposal, and the crew cleared a site for a large summoning ritual.
• Huai Shi headed to the Alchemy Matrix with several iron cases, accompanied by the mosaic creature called Wolfdog and Peace the cat.

Huai Shi summoned Hell Swarms to reinforce the Iron Crystal Seat, but the Sea of Titans’ Horn of Thunder blocked several potential allies from responding. He recruited three swarms and began another summon using the Sword of Virtue.

• Huai Shi’s summons to Fire Pupil Settlement, Mountain of Thunder, and Hidden Shrine failed, while the Sediment Otter explained that the Horn of Thunder barred unaffiliated swarms from entering.
• Huai Shi concluded that the Ivy League had used the Horn of Thunder to restrict his options and chose to summon factions willing to defy or ignore the Sea of Titans.
• Huai Shi hired twenty gargoyles from Darkness Fortress for three months in exchange for Ivory Tower building them a castle within a year.
• Huai Shi recruited more than eighty Snake People Undead Army soldiers and over eight hundred Abyssal Rat People, bringing three Hell Swarms into the Iron Crystal Seat’s camp.
• Huai Shi placed the Sword of Virtue on the summoning matrix and began another ritual.

Huai Shi secured five Legal Department enforcers from Kitten by negotiating a paid transfer and redirected the funds toward Iron Crystal Seat benefits. As the summoned gargoyles, Snake People Undead Army, and Rat People Legion gathered to settle their contracts, the rats demanded more money, while the snake elder noticed Huai Shi cast five shadows.

• Huai Shi negotiated with Kitten to summon five Legal Department workers and arranged to use part of his licensing fees as payment.
• Huai Shi gave Lin Shijiu the invoices for reimbursement and told Lin Zhongxiaowu to distribute extra funds as welfare subsidies and compensation for deceased members’ families.
• Lin Shijiu told Huai Shi that the summoned groups were fighting over contract terms, so he went to meet them.
• The snake elder requested separate lodging, food, and water for the Snake People Undead Army, then held back further demands after sensing something unsettling about Huai Shi.
• The snake elder noticed that Huai Shi had five shadows as the Rat People Legion accused him of offering less than the Ivy League and demanded more pay.

Huai Shi turned Yaleke’s attempted strike into a binding deal, killed the ratman leader, and forced more than eight hundred ratmen into lifelong service to the Ivory Tower. After confronting the Venerable Elder over trust and loyalty, Huai Shi hosted a banquet and declared that the war was about to begin.

• Yaleke led the ratmen in a strike and demanded higher pay, leave, and better conditions from Huai Shi.
• Huai Shi lured Yaleke into accepting four hundred Origin Essence Crystals in exchange for the ratmen’s lives, then used the Legal Department’s shadows to restrain and kill him when he tried to take the payment without honoring the deal.
• The Crow Tide weakened the ratmen, and the Venerable Elder and Chaolu suppressed their revolt; Huai Shi declared the survivors slave soldiers bound to the Iron Crystal Seat.
• The Venerable Elder challenged Huai Shi for manipulating the mercenaries, and Huai Shi argued that sincerity and loyalty had to be mutual before offering him a bowl of soup.
• Huai Shi served the assembled forces a banquet, toasted their friendship, then drew his sword and announced that it was time for war.

Huai Shi rallied the Hell Swarms and led them into the night to seize a Sub-control Center before the Ivy League could act. Meanwhile, Michel mobilized a legion against the Ivory Tower, while Pantalone stayed behind to manage the camp.

• Huai Shi prepared lanterns and a truck, then persuaded the Venerable Elder and the gargoyle leader to join his immediate mission to reinforce an isolated Exploration Team and capture a Sub-control Center.
• Andrea gave Huai Shi a remote control for long-range strike support, and he departed with the Swarms while the Iron Crystal Seat prepared for a possible Ivy League attack.
• Pantalone awoke after three days in the hospital, and Michel assigned him to oversee the camp and its investors while Michel and the colonel left to lead the forces.
• The colonel reported that twelve Swarms, totaling more than four thousand Hell Creatures, were ready, and Michel declared that they would settle the score with the Ivory Tower.

Huai Shi and Raymond raced toward the refinery where an Abyssal Swarm had attacked the Exploration Team, using Raymond’s transformed truck to smash through the ruined city. They reached the battle, where Huai Shi emerged from the truck and vomited before the waiting formation.

• Huai Shi and Raymond spotted the burning refinery and saw a gigantic jellyfish destroy its smokestacks as an Abyssal Swarm descended.
• Huai Shi found that the Ivy League had blocked signals from the Exploration Team and told Raymond to speed up.
• Raymond activated the truck’s boosters and drove it through buildings and across broken roads toward the refinery.
• Raymond revealed his Gordium power, and the truck charged through the burning rain and Hell Swarm to reach the battle in four minutes.
• Huai Shi climbed out before the waiting formation, greeted them, and vomited.

Huai Shi led his forces into battle against the Minotaur warriors of the White Mane Settlement while his toxic power transformed the battlefield. After defeating the Minotaur force, he was caught off guard by a sudden attack from above.

• Huai Shi recovered from vomiting, killed the nearby mutated creatures, and faced the approaching Minotaur warriors.
• Huai Shi released the Burial Sanctuary and deployed the Snake People Undead Army and Abyssal ratmen against the Minotaurs.
• The gargoyles struck the Minotaur formation with javelins, and the Undead Army routed the remaining warriors.
• The Minotaur leader charged Huai Shi behind a great shield, but Huai Shi pierced him with the Sword of Virtue.
• Huai Shi ordered his forces to search for the Exploration Team, then looked up as a metal object fell from the sky and an ambush began.

Huai Shi confronted the Colonel as the Ivory League’s forces attacked the refinery and threatened the trapped Exploration Team. With both sides poised to fight and the sub-control center at risk, Huai Shi asked the Colonel what day it was.

• A sniper tried to kill Huai Shi with Damocles, but the darkness destroyed the falling blades and ghosts wounded the attacker.
• Huai Shi met the Colonel, who used heavy arrows to block his approach and said the Exploration Team was losing underground.
• An ultra-heavy engineering Chimera tore apart the refinery’s defenses and exposed the sub-control device.
• The Colonel offered to return Huai Shi’s people if he waited, but Huai Shi refused to surrender and threatened to kill him.
• The Colonel deployed Minotaur Heavy Warriors, shamans, and centaur cavalry as Huai Shi decided against calling in fire support and asked what day it was.

Huai Shi’s Black Cats revealed War and transformed his army with a powerful battle enhancement, allowing his forces to assault the Minotaur formation. The battle reached a stalemate, and the Venerable Elder led the Undead Army in a charge against the centaurs.

• The colonel fired repeatedly at a Black Cat, but it vanished and reappeared among many cats that revealed themselves as War.
• Huai Shi’s Black Cat activated War’s enhancement, driving the ratmen into a blood-fueled frenzy and strengthening the rest of his forces.
• Huai Shi ordered his troops to bring him victory, and the ratmen and gargoyles charged the Minotaur formation.
• The gargoyles broke several gaps in the Minotaur defenses, while the ratmen fought them in a costly melee.
• After the Undead Army’s volleys failed to harm the Minotaurs significantly, the Venerable Elder redirected his charge toward the centaur company and ordered Chaolu to carry the banner.