Recaps

The players discovered that their Silent Follower teammate and a sightseeing assistant had died in a town room, and Li Boli concluded both apparent suicides were murders. Hu Xuan sensed a power connected to the assistants and urged the group to explore the town, leaving them to face an unsettling trial with their teammate dead.

• Hu Xuan used the Newborn to affect Qin Chaoge, then claimed she was pregnant with their child, stunning the group.
• Qin Chaoge led the players to the room next door and revealed that the Silent Follower and a sightseeing assistant were dead.
• Qin Chaoge said the Silent Follower had already been dead when she arrived and admitted killing the assistant, but Li Boli identified flaws showing both deaths had been staged as suicides.
• Cheng Shi realized the Silent Follower's death had not triggered a Destiny's Choice, suggesting it was an accident within the trial.
• Ji Ran questioned why the town assigned each traveler a sightseeing assistant, and Hu Xuan sensed the assistants carried a power linked to Birth.
• Hu Xuan proposed exploring the town and touched the Silent Follower's corpse, causing her belly to grow larger as she spoke of life's continuation.

Cheng Shi questioned his sightseeing assistant Shaman about Yuanmu Town, but she fled after he rejected her advances. Qin Chaoge then recruited him to investigate the town and revealed she had killed her own assistant; they headed for the Traveler's Agency to request a replacement.

• Cheng Shi played Truth or Dare with Shaman and learned she was a sightseeing assistant who claimed Yuanmu Town had no enchanting scenery, only enchanting people.
• Shaman tried to guide Cheng Shi's hand over her body, but he pulled away, causing her to flee in tears.
• Qin Chaoge confronted Cheng Shi at his room and punched him through the inn wall after he jokingly beckoned her to come closer.
• Qin Chaoge asked Cheng Shi to team up and investigate because the believers of Destiny were asleep and the believer of Existence had disappeared.
• Cheng Shi and Qin Chaoge set out for the Traveler's Agency to request a new sightseeing assistant, and Qin Chaoge said she had killed hers after the assistant tried to get handsy with her.

Cheng Shi and Qin Chaoge learned that Yuanmu Town required travelers to leave behind a child conceived through a ritual, then continued to the Travelers' Affairs Bureau. There, Qin Chaoge revealed her talent for reading people, while Cheng Shi remained wary of Shaman and grew more interested in his teammate.

• Qin Chaoge learned that travelers had to leave a child for Yuanmu Town through a ritual with their sightseeing assistant, and Cheng Shi learned that the town needed outsiders to replenish its population.
• Cheng Shi and Qin Chaoge encountered Hu Xuan muttering about someone stealing the authority of Birth, and Cheng Shi recognized that she was contemplating stealing authority.
• At the Travelers' Affairs Bureau, Shaman tried to stop Cheng Shi from choosing another assistant, but he walked past her and left her in tears.
• Qin Chaoge explained that her Singer talent, Portrait in Melody, let her study people through their bodily rhythms, and Cheng Shi realized she had been assessing others throughout their journey.
• When Cheng Shi asked whether she had made a portrait of him, Qin Chaoge said she could simply look at him, and he decided she might become a good partner.

After being arrested for assaulting a tour assistant, Cheng Shi listened to fellow prisoners describe Yuanmu Town’s Birth ritual and noticed that travelers seemed unable to remember their pasts. Qin Chaoge and the Hunter joined him in the dungeon, where the Hunter said she knew about the ritual.

• Cheng Shi was arrested for accidentally assaulting a tour assistant and sentenced to three days in prison.
• Cheng Shi heard prisoners explain that travelers could perform the Birth ritual only once and only with a tour assistant.
• Cheng Shi suspected the Birth ritual was connected to Hu Xuan and Eternal Day, then noticed prisoners could not remember their own pasts.
• Qin Chaoge was locked in the adjoining cell after being sentenced to five days for malicious harassment.
• The Hunter appeared in the dungeon, and Qin Chaoge joked that she had been caught looking for a duck.

Cheng Shi, Qin Chaoge, and Li Boli exchanged intelligence at the Traveler Affairs Bureau, where Li Boli revealed that Yuanmu Town’s Blood Moon drove residents to suicide. Her findings raised doubts about whether the townspeople truly followed Eternal Day and how the sun and Blood Moon were connected to the gods.

• Li Boli revealed herself as a Wind Tamer Ranger and explained that she had entered the Bureau to investigate the town’s power institutions.
• Cheng Shi shared his observations with Li Boli, who decided he was a trustworthy teammate; Qin Chaoge offered no separate intelligence.
• Li Boli said she had encountered the Life Sage and helped her give birth to a Newborn, then identified Cheng Shi as a Blood-Swapping Priest.
• Li Boli showed them a child’s drawing of a suicide beneath a Blood Moon and explained that the townspeople called those driven to suicide by the moon’s influence Blasphemers.
• Li Boli connected the town’s prophecy and murderous intent to Filth and Decay, and questioned whether Eternal Day considered the residents its followers.
• Cheng Shi wondered how the sun and Blood Moon gods had made Yuanmu Town the site of their conflict while Qin Chaoge remained silent about the town’s history.

Cheng Shi escaped the dungeon and set out to examine the Silent Believer’s corpse at the Eternal Church, while Li Boli and Qin Chaoge secretly waited nearby to see if he would come. Li Boli revealed that she had inferred Cheng Shi’s intention from his gaze, and Qin Chaoge pressed her about their cooperation.

• Cheng Shi and Li Boli planned to escape after nightfall and investigate the town, while Qin Chaoge pretended to sleep.
• Li Boli transformed into a breeze and left the dungeon, then Qin Chaoge broke out and followed her, revealing her strength.
• After the other prisoners escaped, Cheng Shi obtained help picking his cell lock and decided to investigate the Silent Believer’s corpse at the Eternal Church.
• Li Boli and Qin Chaoge waited on a rooftop near the Travelers' Affairs Bureau, where Li Boli explained that Cheng Shi’s gaze had revealed his desire to examine the corpse.
• Qin Chaoge questioned Li Boli about her secrets and their teamwork, but Li Boli stopped her when Cheng Shi arrived.

Cheng Shi broke into the Eternal Church to question the dead about the murders, but discovered that Memory of the Departed made corpses answer according to their own habits. He left without learning who killed his silent teammate and realized he had wasted two sacrifices.

• Cheng Shi entered the Eternal Church and found about a dozen bodies awaiting purification, most of them stabbed through the heart.
• Cheng Shi used Memory of the Departed on his silent teammate’s corpse, but it did not answer his questions.
• Cheng Shi questioned a bearded man’s corpse, which answered with complaints and foul-mouthed verbal tics.
• Cheng Shi realized the corpses’ answers reflected their habits in life, and that his teammate’s corpse had already lost its effect.
• Cheng Shi lamented that he had failed to find the murderer and had wasted two sacrifices.

Cheng Shi used Memory of the Departed to confirm that Li Boli had killed the sightseeing assistant, then deduced how she had hidden her involvement. He tested Li Boli and Qin Chaoge with the lie-detecting finger bone and concluded that one of them had killed his teammate.

• Qin Chaoge and Li Boli listened from the rooftop, and Li Boli realized Qin Chaoge had not killed the sightseeing assistant.
• Cheng Shi asked the dead assistant whether her killer had short braids, and Qin Chaoge and Li Boli answered yes together.
• Cheng Shi deduced that Li Boli had killed the assistant and used Qin Chaoge’s accusation to start searching for her own teammate’s killer.
• Li Boli admitted that she had entered the dead believer’s room and killed the assistant after being caught there.
• Cheng Shi asked Li Boli and Qin Chaoge whether either had killed his teammate, and Qin Chaoge’s answer registered as a lie.

Cheng Shi, Qin Chaoge, and Li Boli followed a flock of Night Ravens through Yuanmu Town and discovered a series of staged suicides. At the shrine of Eternal Day, they found a murdered believer, while Li Boli reported that thirteen people in seven nearby households had also been killed.

• Li Boli told Cheng Shi that Ji Ran was at the inn and Hu Xuan was investigating south of town, so the three decided to explore Yuanmu Town together.
• Qin Chaoge sang in the streets, drawing a flock of Night Ravens into the sky, and the three chased them.
• Qin Chaoge used the Wulun Herdsman's Hunt Song to speed up Cheng Shi, while she and Li Boli raced ahead.
• The three followed the Night Ravens to a house and found a middle-aged man kneeling dead before a shrine to Eternal Day, with a dagger in his chest.
• Cheng Shi used Memory of the Departed, and the corpse recited a hymn to Eternal Day; Li Boli said the killer had followed the Night Ravens and that thirteen people in seven nearby households had died by staged suicide.

After a night of investigating, Cheng Shi, Qin Chaoge, and Li Boli uncovered that a player was staging the fable’s murders and returned to the dungeon as dawn approached. Hu Xuan then asked Li Boli to bring Cheng Shi to help deliver a baby, giving him a chance to investigate whether the Life Sage was the murderer.

• Cheng Shi and his teammates followed the night crows’ trail, found more blasphemers, and concluded that a stealthy player was carrying out the fable’s staged suicides.
• The three returned toward the dungeon, where Cheng Shi joked about selling daggers and worried about repaying his sacrificial-offering debt.
• Li Boli received a request from Hu Xuan to find Cheng Shi and help her deliver a baby.
• Cheng Shi agreed to go, hoping to determine whether the Life Sage was the murderer, and Li Boli ambiguously reassured him that they were still teammates.

Cheng Shi and the others found Hu Xuan in a private residence, where her enormous pregnant belly left them stunned. As dawn approached, Cheng Shi agreed to help deliver her child, and Hu Xuan began explaining how her experiments had led to the pregnancy and the imminent birth.

• Li Boli led Cheng Shi and Qin Chaoge to Hu Xuan's hiding place, where they found her attached to a gigantic belly and learned that she needed help delivering a child before dawn.
• Qin Chaoge and Li Boli left Cheng Shi alone with Hu Xuan, and he took out his delivery saw and agreed to proceed after asking for a deposit.
• Hu Xuan explained that she had exchanged pregnancies with her assistant, then exchanged children with townspeople while investigating the connection between Eternal Day and Birth.
• After being pursued, Hu Xuan hid in an empty residence and repeatedly performed the granting ritual on herself to study the two forces.
• Hu Xuan's experiments caused her belly to grow enormously and the two Birth auras within her to merge; she sensed His gaze and realized her child was about to be born.

Hu Xuan used the Blood Moon and Cheng Shi’s power to give birth to a Newborn who had stolen a trace of Eternal Day’s authority and become a new Life Sage. The Newborn prepared to undergo repeated rebirths in pursuit of godhood and promised to lead Cheng Shi and the others to the answer that night.

• Cheng Shi realized Hu Xuan planned to use Filth and Decay’s power during the shift from night to day to accelerate the Newborn’s birth, and Hu Xuan asked him to provide it.
• Cheng Shi demanded the final payment, and Hu Xuan promised the newborn would guide him to the answer to clearing the trial.
• Cheng Shi struck Hu Xuan with the charged Ring of Bone Servant Lele'er, triggering an explosion that brought the Newborn into the world.
• The Newborn revealed herself as another Hu Xuan, erased the compulsion to reproduce from the air, and offered to transform Cheng Shi, but he refused.
• Hu Xuan found her dead former self beneath the ruins, wished her well, and began gestating herself again as Qin Chaoge called her a madwoman.
• Hu Xuan told Cheng Shi and the others to wait half a day and promised to take them to the answer that night, saying she had found His location.

Cheng Shi left Hu Xuan to investigate Yuanmu Town, where he learned that the High Priest had pardoned the escaped prisoners and ordered every sightseeing assistant to conceive a child. The chapter left Cheng Shi following Shaman to her home after she asked him for help.

• Cheng Shi learned that Hu Xuan had given Li Boli her insights from the Birth process in exchange for cooperation, then left with Qin Chaoge and Li Boli to investigate.
• Hu Xuan watched the Eternal Day dim and her belly swell as she murmured about recovering what was lost and reuniting with someone.
• In Yuanmu Town, a vegetable seller told Cheng Shi that the High Priest had pardoned the escaped travelers and warned them not to go outside during the Blood Moon.
• Li Boli went to investigate the pardon while Cheng Shi and Qin Chaoge went to Yuanmu Bar, where Qin Chaoge joined a drinking contest.
• Cheng Shi found his former cellmate at the bar, but Shaman approached him first and asked for help conceiving a child under the High Priest's order.
• Cheng Shi asked Shaman where she lived and followed her out of the bar, while Qin Chaoge turned around and found him gone.

Cheng Shi investigated Shaman's background and grew suspicious of her despite her convincing reactions. He knocked her unconscious, searched her home, and wounded her shoulder with a thrown scalpel before leaving Qin Chaoge to check on her.

• Shaman explained that her mother had died after being punished for blasphemy, leaving Shaman to keep the family home.
• Cheng Shi searched Shaman's courtyard and room, then tore her dress to check for concealed items and demanded to know who she really was.
• After Shaman's confused and distressed reaction seemed genuine, Cheng Shi asked whether she meant him harm, knocked her unconscious, and poured Strange Dream Powder into her nostrils.
• Cheng Shi searched the room and found nothing, then met Qin Chaoge outside the courtyard as she urged him to kill Shaman.
• Cheng Shi threw his scalpel into the room, striking Shaman's shoulder, and Qin Chaoge entered to see whether he had really killed her.
• Cheng Shi left the courtyard after taunting Qin Chaoge.

Cheng Shi and Li Boli uncovered how Yuanmu Town controlled its population and used Hu Xuan’s power to reveal a Void Gate at the Eternal Church. They entered the trial’s apparent Destiny node, but Ji Ran disappeared from the inn before they could follow.

• Li Boli found records showing that Yuanmu Town’s population and traveler numbers stayed tightly controlled, and she and Cheng Shi realized the town had almost no elderly residents because blasphemers were killed before old age.
• Hu Xuan explained that she had inherited her mother’s power and led Cheng Shi, Li Boli, and Qin Chaoge to the Eternal Church to find the answer.
• Hu Xuan used the power of new life to let the group perceive a multicolored Void Gate, which Cheng Shi recognized as the trial’s Destiny node.
• Cheng Shi, Li Boli, and Qin Chaoge considered how difficult the trial would have been without Hu Xuan’s power, then Li Boli revealed that Ji Ran had disappeared from the inn.

Ji Ran ambushed Li Boli and fought the group outside the church, then used his Destiny power to escape through the Void Gate. Cheng Shi followed him inside while Qin Chaoge stayed behind to recover.

• Ji Ran attacked Li Boli from the church roof, wounded her, and used his Dice of Destiny to press the fight.
• Li Boli used her time-reversing arrows to counter Ji Ran, who changed targets and charged at Cheng Shi.
• Cheng Shi rushed Ji Ran while wounding himself to unleash decay, but Ji Ran exchanged his fate with Qin Chaoge's and made the attacks hit her instead.
• Ji Ran taunted the others and entered the Void Gate, prompting Li Boli to pursue him.
• Qin Chaoge told Cheng Shi to follow Li Boli rather than heal her, and Cheng Shi entered the void after them.

Cheng Shi explored a blood-red church in the void, discovered that the town’s dead were dumped in a mass grave, and found the injured Ranger and Warrior facing a wounded black-robed puppet. He began healing Li Boli without breaking the standoff as he moved toward the door the puppet guarded.

• Cheng Shi entered the ruined church and found a visitor’s guide that suggested the church was the entrance to Yuanmu Town.
• Cheng Shi opened the left door and discovered a cavern filled with the corpses of Yuanmu Town’s residents and travelers.
• Cheng Shi opened the right door and found Ji Ran and Li Boli confronting a wounded black-robed puppet.
• Cheng Shi noticed the puppet showed no Decay power and inferred it was not human.
• Cheng Shi carefully healed Li Boli while moving past the standoff toward the door guarded by the puppet.

Cheng Shi exposed the black-robed figure’s suspected schemes in Yuanmu Town and attacked Ji Ran with a surprise lightning strike, helping Li Boli pin him down. The black-robed figure unleashed a bloodlust that forced everyone in the room to fight their own urge to kill themselves, and Qin Chaoge arrived as they struggled to survive.

• Cheng Shi accused the black-robed figure of abducting travelers, manipulating the night crows, and using Yuanmu Town to pursue a hidden purpose behind the door.
• The black-robed figure released a swarm of night crows, and Cheng Shi endured their attack before turning his lightning strike on Ji Ran.
• Ji Ran exchanged his fate with the black-robed figure to evade the fatal strike, but Li Boli seized his moment of weakness and pinned him down with two wind arrows.
• Cheng Shi’s lightning struck the black-robed figure and incinerated the night crows, but the figure unleashed red radiance that compelled all four fighters to stab themselves.
• Qin Chaoge staggered into the room, giving Cheng Shi, Li Boli, and Ji Ran hope as they struggled against the bloodlust.

Cheng Shi and Li Boli survived Qin Chaoge and Ji Ran’s betrayal through the power of Birth, then prepared to confront them again. Cheng Shi discovered the black-robed figure was a flesh puppet trapped by an obsession and considered using its restart word.

• Qin Chaoge freed Ji Ran from the scarlet radiance, left Cheng Shi and Li Boli behind, and opened the door with him.
• The power of Birth revived Cheng Shi and healed Li Boli, and the two laughed together before preparing for the next battle.
• Cheng Shi and Li Boli found the black-robed figure trapped in a self-mutilating loop and realized he was a flesh puppet acting on an obsession.
• Cheng Shi explained that a restart word could temporarily reset a puppet’s rules, then moved to test the idea despite Li Boli’s warning.

Cheng Shi and Li Boli entered the void in search of the answer, but Cheng Shi was nearly lost in a strange passage until a familiar figure called him back. He recognized his rescuer and warned that they should not be there.

• Cheng Shi guessed that the black-robed puppet held the final secret, but his attempts to activate it with names and phrases failed.
• Li Boli questioned Cheng Shi about how much he knew, then chose to trust him; the Ranger laughed at his failed attempts.
• Cheng Shi and the Ranger opened the door into the void, with Cheng Shi bringing the black-robed man along as a possible key.
• As Cheng Shi fell through a barrier between reality and the void, his memories replayed and he feared he was about to die.
• A familiar voice called to Cheng Shi, allowing him to break through the barrier and return to the void, where he told the figure, "You... shouldn't be here."

Cheng Shi met a battered older version of himself, who described injuries and dangers from his own path through the coming era. Their conversation ended with Cheng Shi asking whether the ranger who had been with him was still alive.

• Cheng Shi recognized the newcomer as another version of himself, who said he had entered through an opening in Memory's Archive.
• Great Cheng Shi joked about his tattooed scar, then explained that Herobas, Qin Xin, the Death Amusement Ring, and Galiusha had left him with serious injuries.
• Great Cheng Shi warned Cheng Shi to avoid Herobas, Qin Xin, and Galiusha, then briefly lost control of his killing intent before calming himself.
• Cheng Shi said Su Yida, an unobserved Master of Trickery, had opened the gap, and Great Cheng Shi reacted with unusual interest.
• Cheng Shi asked Great Cheng Shi whether the ranger who had been with him was still alive.

Cheng Shi questioned Great Cheng Shi about Yuanmu Town and the secrets beneath the void, then watched a memory revealing the town’s history of divine blessings, mass slaughter, and repeated population cycles. The memory ended with Glachor becoming the first Divine Envoy and accepting the task of protecting Yuanmu Town through staged divine punishments.

• Cheng Shi explained his theory that Yuanmu Town’s puppet had sought to seize the Blood Moon of Slaughter’s authority, and he asked Great Cheng Shi what lay beneath the void.
• Great Cheng Shi showed Cheng Shi a memory of a child born into a happy family in Yuanmu Town, where a huge sun later appeared and granted the townspeople vitality, beauty, and unrestricted reproduction.
• The town’s population grew until a Blood Moon drove its residents to slaughter one another, and the child survived the massacre alongside a few other residents.
• The surviving townspeople discovered that the Blood Moon’s slaughter returned whenever the population passed a threshold, but they refused to abandon the sun’s blessing or leave town.
• The concerned residents created the Divine Punishment Plan to control the population, and the child became the first Divine Envoy, killing his friend Xilinjie as part of the plan.

Cheng Shi watched a memory reveal how Yuanmu Town’s Divine Envoy and a traveling bard shaped the town’s strange survival, but he rejected the story as too crude to be Destiny’s design. Great Cheng Shi uncovered the real answer in Nothingness: the sun and Blood Moon were the eyes of a colossal decaying corpse, and its changing gaze brought night to Yuanmu Town.

• Cheng Shi watched the memory show how the Divine Envoy used a bard’s ritual to restore the town’s population after a curse made its residents unable to reproduce.
• Cheng Shi argued that the Divine Envoy had survived by turning himself into a puppet and questioned the memory’s explanations for Eternal Day and the Blood Moon.
• Great Cheng Shi praised Cheng Shi’s doubts and revealed the starry sky hidden beneath the Nothingness.
• Cheng Shi saw that Eternal Day and the Blood Moon were the eyes of a colossal corpse bound across the universe.
• The corpse closed its right eye and opened its left, making the sun vanish and night descend upon Yuanmu Town.

Great Cheng Shi revealed that the colossal corpse was connected to Zainjil’s secret God-Stealing Experiment, which used an apparatus called the Dagger of Stars to seize divine authority. He explained the experiment’s origins, but the chapter left Cheng Shi facing the mystery of what had happened to it.

• Great Cheng Shi brought Cheng Shi through the void’s disguise and showed him the Blood Moon of Slaughter, identifying the place as the Dagger of Stars.
• Great Cheng Shi corrected Cheng Shi’s belief that Zainjil had stolen Truth’s divine nature and described Zainjil as a genius who sought to make a god.
• Great Cheng Shi explained how Zainjil planned to capture divine nature as opposing forces struggled for authority, before it dissipated or returned to a deity.
• Great Cheng Shi revealed that Zainjil’s God-Stealing Experiment targeted Birth, Filth, and Decay, using the Dagger of Stars to cut into their stores of authority.

Great Cheng Shi revealed that Zainjil had moved Yuanmu Town into the void and used its residents’ faith to weaken the clash between Birth and Filth and Decay. The experiment failed when Eternal Day gained consciousness and briefly became an Envoy before vanishing, while Cheng Shi learned what a divine pillar recorded.

• Great Cheng Shi explained that Zainjil had transported Yuanmu Town into the void and built an experiment around its residents’ faith in Eternal Day and the travelers’ fear of Filth and Decay.
• Cheng Shi realized that the town’s rituals, curses, and the Divine Envoy’s actions had all been manipulated to balance the false gods’ faith and siphon off their authority.
• Great Cheng Shi told Cheng Shi that Zainjil’s experiment had failed because the false gods gained consciousness under the faith of the townspeople.
• Great Cheng Shi explained that Eternal Day had briefly become an Envoy before disappearing, according to a record on the divine pillar of Birth.
• Great Cheng Shi described a divine pillar as a flesh-and-blood record of species that had gone completely extinct.