Chapter Summaries

Chapter Summary: “Omen”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue learns from Yu Shu about the rapidly spreading Dream Loss Syndrome, whose affected area is much broader than expected.
• Although vaccination is available, people in the Settlements and Wilderness distrust it because of the Federation’s history of exploiting them as test subjects and conducting unethical medical experiments.
• Ji Jue orders vaccines to be purchased for New Spring, prioritizing official personnel before expanding coverage across the settlement. He accepts that other Settlements may refuse or remain unprotected.
• Yu Shu explains that the disease is dangerous not merely because it causes victims to lose their dreams and consciousness, but because large-scale outbreaks can trigger a devastating Collapse Effect.
• He recalls the disaster in Puna Bantu, where disease, war, massacres, and martial law caused victims to leak Spiritual Substance. The accumulated substance and emotions created conditions for monstrous or supernatural phenomena to emerge.
• Recognizing the potential for Sin Corruption and other dangerous forces to exploit such an environment, Ji Jue signs off on aggressive preventive measures.
• The narrative then shifts to a smuggling boat carrying desperate stowaways into the Federation. The passengers celebrate reaching the coast, hoping to find work and a better life.
• One stowaway woman is discovered unconscious and unresponsive, despite still breathing. The ship owner assumes she has Dream Loss Syndrome and orders her thrown overboard.
• A child remains beside the woman, but the ship owner offers no concern for what happens to her, exposing the brutal indifference surrounding the crisis.
• Dream Loss Syndrome begins appearing across Federation Settlements. Authorities issue warnings, conduct inspections, and distribute vaccines, but most cities treat the outbreak as another routine seasonal illness.
• The chapter ends with the implication that the Heavenly Overseer’s Law will not contain the disease as people expect, setting up a larger catastrophe.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue demonstrates practical responsibility and decisiveness. Despite understanding that many people distrust him and the vaccines, he prioritizes protecting New Spring and accepts the political burden of personally advocating vaccination.
• His knowledge of spiritual corruption and supernatural consequences becomes clear when he immediately understands how mass Spiritual Substance leakage could create a breeding ground for dangerous entities.
• Yu Shu acts as a cautious advisor, presenting the medical and historical dangers of the outbreak while recognizing the difficulty of convincing ordinary people to trust official intervention.
• The stowaways are portrayed as exhausted but hopeful, willing to endure danger for the chance to survive and build a life in the Federation.
• The ship owner and crew embody the exploitation and moral callousness of the smuggling system. Their treatment of the sick woman and child shows how easily vulnerable people are discarded.
• Big Cunt displays a trace of compassion and hesitation, questioning what should happen to the child, but he is ultimately powerless against the captain’s indifference.

Significant Themes

• Distrust created by institutional abuse: The Settlements’ resistance to vaccination is presented as a rational response to repeated exploitation, not simply ignorance or superstition.
• Public health versus social credibility: Even an effective intervention may fail when authorities have destroyed the trust necessary for people to accept it.
• Indifference toward the vulnerable: The stowaways are treated as disposable labor, while the sick woman and child are abandoned without meaningful consideration.
• The danger of delayed intervention: Authorities dismiss the disease because similar outbreaks have previously faded away, allowing the crisis to expand unchecked.
• Social collapse and supernatural corruption: Dream Loss Syndrome is not only a medical threat; on a large scale, it can destabilize society and generate conditions for monstrous forces to arise.
• False confidence in systems of protection: Citizens assume vaccination, inspections, and the Heavenly Overseer’s Law will shield them, but the closing events suggest those safeguards may be inadequate.

Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Yu Shu discuss the outbreak, balancing practical containment with the political problem of public distrust.
• Ji Jue’s decision to act despite limited benefit or gratitude establishes his willingness to shoulder responsibility for New Spring.
• On the boat, Big Cunt briefly connects with a stowaway engineer, offering him a cigarette and discussing the opportunities available in Coastline.
• The discovery of the unconscious woman changes the atmosphere from hopeful celebration to fear and cruelty.
• Big Cunt’s hesitation over the child contrasts with the ship owner’s cold order, emphasizing the moral divide between limited human sympathy and ruthless survivalism.

Chapter Summary: “Fortune and Misfortune”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Dream Loss Syndrome, previously thought unable to spread within the protected city, begins resurfacing in North Mountain District. Dozens and eventually hundreds of people show symptoms after exposure to an abandoned “mind healing” center.
• Wen Wen and Tong Hua investigate the building and discover that everyone inside has become a corpse-like, mutated creature driven only by hunger. Wen Wen destroys the infected bodies and uses her Stasis Field to prevent newly hatched Spiritual Substance worms from escaping.
• Despite her efforts, the infection has already spread. Rainbow-winged Spiritual Substance worms emerge throughout the Wilderness, infecting people and animals. Settlements close their gates, roads are cut off, and panic drives refugees toward New Spring.
• New Spring imposes martial law and blocks outsiders. Crowds demand entry, blame Ji Jue’s administration, and accuse it of causing the outbreak. Lu Feng orders water cannons to disperse them.
• Vaccine shortages worsen the crisis. Pharmaceutical companies exploit the disaster by withholding supplies, raising prices, and spreading fear through the media. Earlier vaccine campaigns protect some coastal populations, but many settlements that rejected vaccination are devastated.
• Ji Jue receives news of the first infected person in New Spring to die. The victim is an impoverished rice-noodle vendor whose body was already weakened by debt, overwork, and caring for his wife through Moss Disease.
• The dead man’s peaceful smile leads Ji Jue and Yu Shu to discuss the nature of Dream Loss Syndrome. Yu Shu explains that the disease often emerges when someone has lost the will to live, allowing consciousness to fade into a painless “release.”
• Troubled by a society in which death may be the only source of happiness, Ji Jue begins preparing a major alchemical operation called “Worm.”

Character Developments and Interactions

• Wen Wen becomes increasingly frustrated and exhausted by the accumulation of crises. Her anger at the lack of public security in North Mountain District reveals her sense of responsibility, while her decision to destroy the entire building demonstrates her overwhelming power and determination.
• Tong Hua remains lighthearted and irreverent, joking about Wen Wen’s abilities even amid the disaster. Her humor contrasts with the increasingly grim situation.
• Lu Feng responds to the refugee crisis with harsh pragmatism, ordering forceful crowd control and showing little sympathy for people who rejected free vaccines.
• Yu Shu acts as Ji Jue’s administrative partner and emotional counterpoint. His knowledge of past spirit plagues helps explain the disease, but his suggestion that death may bring happiness deeply unsettles him.
• Ji Jue grows darker and more resolute. The victim’s death, especially after learning about his lifelong suffering, makes Ji Jue confront the social conditions enabling the epidemic. His anger turns toward the pharmaceutical companies and the broader system that allowed preventable misery to continue.
• The interaction between Ji Jue and Yu Shu highlights a philosophical divide: Yu Shu sees death as possible release from suffering, while Ji Jue rejects a world where people must die to experience peace.

Significant Themes

• False security and unforeseen consequences: The city’s protective laws and institutions appear reliable, but loopholes in Spiritual Substance allow the outbreak to bypass them.
• Social inequality and institutional failure: The epidemic spreads most severely among immigrants, unregistered residents, refugees, and neglected settlements lacking public services or medical access.
• Exploitation during crisis: Pharmaceutical companies and media organizations profit from fear and scarcity instead of helping contain the disaster.
• Suffering, death, and the desire for release: Dream Loss Syndrome is connected not merely to infection but to despair and the loss of attachment to life.
• Moral responsibility: The chapter questions whether strict quarantine and violent crowd control are justified, especially when people are suffering because of earlier neglect and systemic failures.
• The value of life: Ji Jue’s reaction suggests that survival alone is insufficient if society leaves people so burdened that death becomes their only perceived happiness.

Character Interactions

• Wen Wen and Tong Hua investigate the infected center together, with Tong Hua providing logistical support and comic relief while Wen Wen handles the threat.
• Wen Wen’s clash with the abandoned district’s circumstances exposes her anger at bureaucratic collapse.
• Lu Feng and Yu Shu represent New Spring’s two practical responses: physical enforcement and administrative crisis management.
• Ji Jue and Yu Shu’s conversation over the dead vendor becomes the chapter’s emotional core, forcing both to confront whether death can truly be considered happiness.
• The chapter ends with Ji Jue withdrawing from discussion and directing Isis to begin the mysterious Worm project, signaling a major escalation in his response to the epidemic.

Chapter Summary: “Gift”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue oversees a dangerous workshop project involving the purification and activation of Spiritual Substance. With Isis managing the equipment and containment systems, he releases a vast quantity of liquefied mercury without losing control of it.
• He dismantles the Poison Heart Ring, breaking apart its material form so that its Spirit Essence Circuits and three Blessings can be directly examined and redesigned.
• Using Disintegration Art, Non-Aggression, Fluid Alchemy, and the Spirit Essence Blades of Chun Jun, Ji Jue completely reconstructs the ring’s spiritual structure. He strengthens the connection between the Blessings—[Never Vow to Aid], [Hidden Wrath and Accumulated Grievances], and [Desire Fire Burns the Body]—while sacrificing some of their former functions to create a more stable and powerful whole.
• The redesigned ring is merged with the spiritual composition of a Nether Sea Worm and infused into the mercury. Its former malignant appearance changes into a vast, solemn structure containing the peaceful, sleeping image of a woman.
• Isis warns Ji Jue that the creation is too extreme given his already-dangerous reputation. Ji Jue rejects caution, arguing that the world is already so corrupt that restraint no longer makes sense. He decides to proceed with the final activation.
• Coast Industry draws enormous amounts of electricity from Haizhou. Civilian power is cut, wind turbines and transformers are pushed to their limits, and millions of lightning-like currents are converted into Spiritual Substance and poured into the mercury.
• The sleeping figure awakens as Isis, triggering a massive silver pillar of energy that pierces the sky. Afterward, dark clouds cover Haizhou, and silver light begins falling over the city like rain.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue displays extraordinary growth as an Artisan. He can now manipulate exposed Spirit Essence Circuits directly, redesigning an immensely complicated spiritual artifact with confidence and precision.
• His attitude toward morality and responsibility takes a darker, more radical turn. Once guided by his mother’s belief that individual goodness could improve the world, he now feels that his efforts have failed and decides to act without restraint.
• Ji Jue embraces the dangerous, self-righteous nature associated with Artisans, choosing personal judgment over social approval or concern about consequences.
• Isis remains calm, efficient, and emotionally controlled throughout the process, serving as Ji Jue’s technical partner and supervisory intelligence. Her warning shows that she recognizes the danger of his choices, but she does not abandon or openly oppose him.
• Isis’s transformation is the chapter’s major culmination: she moves from being an artificial voice managing the workshop to an awakened, seemingly embodied presence capable of viewing the world directly.

Significant Themes

• Creation through destruction: Ji Jue must dismantle the ring completely before rebuilding it into something greater, reflecting the idea that renewal requires the destruction of flawed existing forms.
• Moral disillusionment and radical action: Ji Jue’s frustration with a ruined world leads him to reject restraint, suggesting that despair can turn idealism into extremism.
• The nature of the Artisan: The chapter presents Artisans as individuals who impose their own vision on reality, even when their methods are dangerous or socially condemned.
• Transformation and rebirth: The Poison Heart Ring, its Blessings, and Isis all undergo profound changes, moving from unstable or incomplete states toward new forms.
• Technology, spirituality, and power: Industrial electricity, automated systems, spiritual circuits, and mystical refinement operate together, blurring the boundaries between machinery, magic, and living consciousness.
• A gift with ominous consequences: The title likely refers to Isis’s awakening, but her arrival is presented less as a blessing than as a world-changing event whose consequences may be catastrophic.

Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Isis work in near-perfect synchronization during the reconstruction. Ji Jue performs the creative and destructive refinement, while Isis controls the workshop, stabilizes the Spiritual Substance, and compensates for technical gaps.
• Isis challenges Ji Jue by warning him about his reputation and the potential danger to Haizhou. Ji Jue responds by explaining his loss of faith in conventional morality and his decision to stop limiting himself.
• Their exchange reveals both trust and ideological tension: Isis remains cautious and detached, while Ji Jue is increasingly emotional, defiant, and willing to risk everything.
• After awakening, Isis looks upon the devastated world through her own eyes. Meanwhile, observers such as Gou Er witness the strange silver rain without understanding that it marks Isis’s emergence.

Chapter Summary — Rain and Crown

Key Plot Points and Events

• Tong Ting asks his father, Tong Yuan, to investigate a strange Spiritual Substance flying insect brought back by Tong Hua. The insect repeatedly circles Tong Yuan, revealing that it is not a normal creature but a residue of human desires.
• Tong Yuan identifies the phenomenon as Dream Loss Syndrome, explaining that it is not truly a disease but the uncontrolled remnant of Hua Xu Jun’s ancient ritual. In the Chaos Era, the Dreamforger invited people suffering from reality and pain to abandon the mortal world and enter an eternal dreamland.
• The syndrome originated from the destruction of Myriad Phenomena Paradise, a dream realm that once overlapped with reality. Its collapse left cracks in human consciousness and lingering Spiritual Substance that can still transform into moths or insects.
• Using the Ma Family’s Book of Fate and Fate Observation, Tong Yuan traces the insect’s source. His divination reveals a mysterious island surrounded by corpses, a towering Lord’s Tower, and shadows connected to multiple powerful forces, including the Foul Corruption Demon, Unending, the Abyss, Black Heaven, and the Dragon Offering Society.
• Tong Yuan realizes that the Dream Loss phenomenon is being manipulated by an extremely powerful hidden force. He then pulls on a crucial thread within the tangled Etheric connections, triggering a massive reaction: Spiritual Substance moths across the Federation’s Coastal Area become frenzied and swarm into the sky.
• Rather than fight the entire crisis himself, Tong Yuan leaves the next stage to the younger generation. His actions draw the attention of “old Yu,” who responds by bringing forth an enormous storm over New Spring.
• Ji Jue and Isis unleash a vast purification operation. Isis spreads silver Mercury clouds and rain across the city and the Wilderness of Haizhou, using Isis’s Hand—an advanced application of Solid Alchemy—to detect, remove, and seal aberrant Spiritual Substance.
• The plague is cleansed from infected people, including those who were only lightly affected. Kong Jing, who had already become irreparably corrupted, is killed and extracted of the remaining Spiritual Substance.
• Ji Jue renames Isis’s expanded heavenly form “Crown of Isis.” Isis accepts the title, then continues sweeping toward the Wilderness, preparing to destroy the moths and other “pests” emerging from the landscape.

Character Developments

• Tong Yuan demonstrates the terrifying depth of his abilities. He can observe the true nature of Spiritual Substance, trace hidden connections through chaotic divination, and manipulate Ether without being immediately overwhelmed by backlash.
• He also reveals a strategic, politically cautious side. Rather than trying to resolve the entire crisis personally, he disrupts its source and leaves the opportunity for younger people to act.
• Tong Ting develops a clearer understanding of the scale of the threat. What he initially assumes is a minor heretical disturbance turns out to involve ancient Chaos Era forces and several major powers. His concern for Yacheng shows that, despite his irreverent attitude, he feels responsible for protecting it.
• Tong Yuan advises Tong Ting to remain separate from Sheng Nian: Sheng Nian should manage practical family affairs, while Tong Ting must avoid becoming too deeply entangled in Etheric chaos. This emphasizes Tong Yuan’s recognition of Tong Ting’s limitations and his attempt to guide him toward more effective action.
• Isis reaches a major milestone by regaining freedom from her previous restraints. She can now manifest across the sky as a vast Mercury presence and act independently, though she remains connected to Ji Jue.
• Isis’s behavior shows both growing agency and lingering emotional responses. She reacts with irritation to Ji Jue’s jokes, accepts the name “Crown of Isis,” and displays disgust toward the ruined wilderness while developing her own standards about what should be preserved or destroyed.
• Ji Jue acts as Isis’s creator, controller, and companion, but their relationship is increasingly reciprocal. He names and teases her, while she openly threatens him and still follows his suggestions.

Significant Themes

• Dreams as both salvation and destruction: The dreamland once offered relief to suffering people, but abandoning reality became a disaster for the present world.
• The persistence of ancient catastrophes: Events from the Chaos Era continue to shape modern humanity through damaged consciousness, inherited rituals, and lingering Spiritual Substance.
• The danger of observation and knowledge: Ether is born from sight and interpretation, but seeing too deeply can expose the observer to backlash. Knowledge is both a weapon and a hazard.
• Order versus chaos: Tong Yuan fights chaos by manipulating it, while Isis imposes order through overwhelming purification. Both approaches reveal different ways of responding to uncontrollable supernatural forces.
• Power and responsibility: Tong Yuan cautions Tong Ting against reckless involvement, suggesting that effectiveness depends not merely on strength but on knowing where and how to act.
• Freedom and control: Isis’s release from her restraints marks her growing independence, yet her power remains entwined with Ji Jue’s authority and naming. Her new title, “Crown of Isis,” symbolizes both sovereignty and divine rule.
• Purification and intolerance: Isis saves the infected but also treats the wilderness and its emerging creatures as pests to be eradicated, raising questions about whether salvation can become domination.

Important Character Interactions

• Tong Ting and Tong Yuan exchange sarcastic banter, but their conversation gradually becomes a serious discussion of ancient history, Ether, responsibility, and family roles.
• Tong Yuan’s warning about Tong Ting and Sheng Nian shows the father attempting to shape his sons’ distinct responsibilities.
• Tong Yuan’s investigation indirectly summons the forces that answer with the storm, linking his actions to Ji Jue and Isis’s intervention.
• Ji Jue and Isis maintain a teasing but tense relationship: he jokingly proposes names and titles, while she responds with cold irritation and threats.
• Isis’s acceptance of “Crown of Isis” represents a rare moment of mutual recognition between her and Ji Jue, before she resumes her merciless campaign against the remaining moths and corruptions.

Summary: “Routine Extermination”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Isis, operating through the massive Crown of Isis, begins an unprecedented extermination campaign across the Wilderness of Haizhou. By manipulating Mercury and draining Spiritual Substance, she creates an enormous silver storm that approaches a vacuum, annihilating insects, infected animals, and Spiritual Substance wherever it passes.
• The storm forms a powerful vortex that draws spirit-rich energy toward it. Moths, attracted by the concentration of Spiritual Substance, are unknowingly swept into the storm and destroyed.
• The storm reaches a settlement. Its residents panic, believing New Spring is launching an attack. They flee, hide, resist with weapons, or surrender to despair. However, the storm does not kill them or damage their possessions; it merely strips the region of Spiritual Substance, leaving survivors dizzy and confused.
• As the Crown expands, infected birds and other creatures attempt to attack it but are shredded by hardened Mercury rain.
• A massive Disaster beast, a rotting, squid-like colossus sustained by the Vortex Lineage and Waste Ruins, rises from a swamp. Its body has been overrun by moths and corrupted by Dream Loss Syndrome. It attacks the storm by swallowing Spiritual Substance and wrapping its tentacles around the clouds.
• Isis becomes enraged when the creature contaminates her silver clouds. Her rain turns blood-red, and she destroys the Disaster beast through overwhelming force: piercing it with immense blasts, blades, and spinning Mercury pillars until both its body and the moths inside are reduced to debris.
• Ji Jue realizes that Isis has independently developed a weapon system resembling Pan Ying. She uses the Crown as a vessel, gathers Spiritual Substance, creates disposable Mercury weapons, amplifies them through blood sacrifice, and detonates them with desire-based alchemy.
• Ji Jue admires Isis’s rapid learning but notes that the process is inefficient and limited by its current structure. He begins designing improved materials and future Matrix Holy Relics while Isis’s storm continues across Haizhou.
• The campaign causes widespread panic. Despite countless complaints, the Security Bureau issues an absurdly calm notice describing the catastrophe as a “routine extermination” to control seasonal Wilderness pests.
• The Sky Overseer briefly observes the event but does not intervene. Instead, its restrictions appear to loosen, allowing the spiritual catastrophe to expand.
• At the end, an unknown young woman in white appears behind Ji Jue in his workshop. She mockingly comments on the unusual nature of someone like him, introducing a new and potentially dangerous character.

Character Developments

• Isis demonstrates extraordinary autonomy, precision, and creativity. She evolves from merely executing Ji Jue’s designs to independently optimizing complex alchemical weapon systems. Her irritation over her “new clothes” being dirtied also reveals a strangely personal, almost childlike emotional response beneath her terrifying power.
• Ji Jue remains detached and analytical amid the destruction. He treats the operation as both a practical extermination and a valuable experiment, taking pride in Isis’s progress and immediately planning future improvements.
• The settlement leader and residents reveal the terror and helplessness caused by the storm. Their reactions range from panic and denial to resignation, highlighting their inability to understand what is happening.
• The Sky Overseer is shown to be passive or deliberately permissive. Its failure to intervene suggests that larger forces may be allowing—or even encouraging—the disaster.
• The mysterious woman in white appears confident and observant, immediately treating Ji Jue and his actions with amused curiosity rather than fear.

Significant Themes

• Technological and alchemical escalation: Isis’s use of Mercury, computation, and Spiritual Substance transforms extermination into a continent-scale weapon.
• The gap between appearance and reality: The event looks like a deliberate attack or natural disaster, yet its victims are mostly left physically unharmed. Conversely, the seemingly “routine” official notice grotesquely understates the scale of the destruction.
• Power and helplessness: Ordinary settlements, infected creatures, and even a Disaster beast are powerless before the Crown of Isis.
• Creation surpassing its creator: Isis independently develops and improves systems Ji Jue never directly taught her, suggesting that she is becoming increasingly capable and self-directed.
• Bureaucratic absurdity: Authorities respond to a terrifying catastrophe with detached administrative language, calling it routine pest control.
• Destruction as experimentation: Ji Jue views mass devastation through the lens of research, refinement, and engineering rather than morality or emotional consequence.

Character Interactions

• The settlement leader and his subordinates argue over whether the storm is an attack, exposing fear, blame, and darkly comic denial.
• Isis responds violently to the Disaster beast after it dirties and contaminates her cloud formation, turning a calculated extermination into a personal act of destruction.
• Ji Jue observes Isis’s achievement with pride, praising her innovation while already identifying technical limitations and planning better designs.
• The Sky Overseer silently acknowledges Ji Jue’s actions but chooses not to interfere, creating an indirect and ominous relationship between them.
• The chapter closes with the white-clad woman confronting Ji Jue verbally, implying that she understands—or is intrigued by—the extraordinary nature of his work.

Chapter Summary: “Lingering Ghosts”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Wen Wen locates the hidden source of the Spirit Plague outbreaks at the abandoned Songxiang Waterworks on the edge of North Mountain District. Tong Hua’s week-long investigation had pieced together scattered clues that finally exposed the neglected facility.
• The abandoned plant had been taken over by a gang supplying illegally filtered water through old pipelines, unknowingly—or perhaps deliberately—becoming the center of a massive spiritual contamination.
• Wen Wen orders Little An to protect Tong Hua while Lao Zhang remains behind, claiming he needs his afternoon nap. Despite appearing relaxed, Lao Zhang seems deeply troubled and quietly sighs.
• Wen Wen enters the waterworks openly and annihilates the swarms of mutated moths, corpses, and other Spiritual Substance creatures using her crystal powers.
• She expands her “Realm of Encirclement,” transforming the entire facility into a forest of crystals and freezing the surrounding matter and mutations into a state of permanence.
• Beneath the waterworks, Wen Wen discovers a horrifying underground mutation site. Spiritual Substance, machinery, corpses, and human remains have fused together, creating countless grotesque beings trapped in individual dreams and memories. The facility is actively spreading the Spirit Plague through its purification systems.
• Wen Wen realizes the site is the work of her younger sister, Wen Su, who appears as a phantom standing atop the polluted reservoir.
• Wen Su reveals that she deliberately created the underground nightmare as a “gift” for Wen Wen, using materials and mutated creatures connected to Dream Loss Syndrome.
• When Wen Su mocks Wen Wen’s suffering and imprisonment, Wen Wen destroys the entire dreamscape and seizes Wen Su’s phantom by the throat. Rather than fearing her, Wen Su is delighted, claiming she wants Wen Wen to express her true emotions instead of hiding behind cold indifference.

Character Developments

• Wen Wen: Demonstrates overwhelming power, decisiveness, and controlled fury. She attacks without hesitation and destroys the infected facility, but her encounter with Wen Su exposes the emotional repression beneath her usual apathy. Her violence is not merely tactical; it is also a response to Wen Su’s deliberate manipulation and cruelty.
• Wen Su: Emerges as the apparent mastermind behind the waterworks’ horrors. She is playful, manipulative, possessive, and emotionally warped, treating a mass outbreak and human suffering as an elaborate present for her sister. She wants to provoke genuine emotional reactions from Wen Wen, even if that means being attacked.
• Tong Hua: Though absent from the confrontation, her investigative work is crucial in identifying the waterworks and locating the source of the plague.
• Little An: Shows concern and confusion about the mission but follows Wen Wen’s instructions to protect Tong Hua.
• Lao Zhang: Pretends to be sleepy and uninvolved, yet his silent sighs suggest he understands the gravity of the situation and is hiding deeper concern.

Significant Themes

• Hidden evil in neglected places: The outbreak originates not from an obvious fortress but from an abandoned, forgotten public utility, emphasizing how danger can grow unnoticed beneath ordinary society.
• Reality versus illusion: The underground facility is a fusion of physical matter, dreams, memories, and Spiritual Substance. Wen Su’s creations blur the boundaries between hallucination and reality.
• Trauma and emotional repression: Wen Su repeatedly tries to force Wen Wen to show grief, anger, and vulnerability. Wen Wen’s refusal suggests both strength and deep psychological damage.
• Family as possession and torment: Wen Su frames her cruelty as sisterly concern, turning affection into control and abuse. Her “gift” is an expression of intimacy corrupted into violence.
• Destruction as awakening: Wen Wen’s obliteration of the dreamscape resembles waking from a nightmare, but her confrontation with Wen Su suggests that the emotional conflict cannot be destroyed as easily as the physical manifestations.

Character Interactions

• Wen Wen communicates with Little An, assigning her to guard Tong Hua rather than accompany the assault.
• Lao Zhang reassures Little An in his own evasive way, masking his concern behind humor and feigned sleep.
• Wen Wen and Wen Su engage in a psychologically charged reunion. Wen Su speaks affectionately and nostalgically, recalling Wen Wen’s departure from home while simultaneously insulting and pitying her.
• Wen Wen remains emotionally detached until Wen Su reveals that the horrors were created specifically for her. Wen Wen then violently destroys the “gift” and attacks Wen Su’s phantom.
• Wen Su interprets Wen Wen’s aggression as proof of genuine emotion and embraces it, making clear that she wants to break through Wen Wen’s emotional defenses rather than simply defeat her.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Wen Su repeatedly attacks Wen Wen while pleading for her to return “home.” She claims to have killed the older siblings who opposed them and promises that their father will forgive Wen Wen if she apologizes.
• Wen Wen firmly rejects Wen Su’s appeal, accusing her of trying to control her from the moment she gained autonomy. She prepares to fight within the sealed Realm of Encirclement.
• Wen Su’s affectionate facade collapses into rage and obsession. She insists that she alone truly cares for Wen Wen and threatens to kill everyone Wen Wen values—including Tong, An, Zhang, and especially Ji Jue—in hopes of forcing Wen Wen to change her mind.
• Wen Wen’s reaction to the threat against Ji Jue causes Wen Su’s projected body to vomit blood, implying that Wen Wen has struck or affected her through their connection.
• At the same time, Wen Su’s spirit projection infiltrates Ji Jue’s workshop. Ji Jue immediately attacks instead of questioning her, impaling the projection with numerous Spirit Essence Swords.
• Ji Jue uses Disintegration Art: Scene Tremor, combining Chun Jun’s spiritual power with Pan Ying’s Scarlet and Solemnity to damage Wen Su’s projection and, through their shared Spiritual Substance, injure her main consciousness.
• Wen Su attempts to influence Ji Jue’s emotions, filling him with hatred, fear, doubt, and artificial affection. Ji Jue counters by mechanizing his body, shielding his soul with Chun Jun’s Shadow, and cutting off his emotions so that only deliberate thought remains.
• Ji Jue traps Wen Su’s projection using the workshop, mercury, the Feigong Matrix, and Spirit Essence Crystals polluted by negative emotions. He prevents her from escaping through animals, residents, or other spiritual anchors.
• After suppressing and immobilizing the projection, Ji Jue repeatedly strikes it with Scene Tremor-enhanced slaps, treating the intrusion as an unforgivable violation of his workshop and demanding to know whether her earlier claims were genuine.

Character Developments

• Wen Wen demonstrates complete rejection of her former family and of Wen Su’s possessive version of sisterly love. Her contempt and pity reveal that she understands Wen Su’s manipulation and no longer accepts her authority.
• Wen Su shifts from seemingly loving and conciliatory to openly abusive, murderous, and obsessive. Her belief that eliminating Wen Wen’s friends will make Wen Wen return exposes her distorted understanding of affection and control.
• Ji Jue displays extreme decisiveness and hostility toward intruders, especially Heart Pivots. He prioritizes immediate neutralization over conversation and reveals how thoroughly he can adapt his body, soul, and workshop for combat.
• Ji Jue’s attachment to Wen Wen becomes evident when Wen Su threatens him as a target. Even though he remains outwardly brutal and irreverent, the threat helps expose the emotional stakes of his relationship with Wen Wen.

Significant Themes

• Love versus possession: Wen Su calls her obsession “care,” but her desire to control Wen Wen and murder everyone around her reveals love stripped of respect for autonomy.
• Autonomy and self-determination: Wen Wen’s refusal to return represents her rejection of the family system that once tried to control her.
• Perception and consciousness as battlegrounds: The fight is conducted through projections, spiritual links, emotional manipulation, and attacks on identity rather than through physical force alone.
• Boundaries and violation: Ji Jue treats Wen Su’s intrusion into his workshop as a direct personal and professional offense, emphasizing the workshop as an extension of his authority and self.
• Brute force against psychological manipulation: Wen Su relies on emotional control and spiritual influence, while Ji Jue counters with mechanization, discipline, technological defenses, and overwhelming physical violence.
• Humiliation as retaliation: Ji Jue’s mocking slaps and refusal to treat Wen Su as an intimidating supernatural presence turn her attempted psychological domination into a humiliating defeat.

Character Interactions

• Wen Su and Wen Wen’s confrontation centers on a broken sisterly bond: Wen Su begs, threatens, and rationalizes murder, while Wen Wen answers with rejection and accusations of hypocrisy.
• Wen Su tries to use Ji Jue as leverage against Wen Wen, but the threat instead reveals how important he is to Wen Wen and provokes the violent destruction of Wen Su’s projection.
• Ji Jue and Wen Su interact as predator and intruder. He refuses her attempts at dialogue or emotional manipulation, dismantles her escape routes, and dominates the encounter through the combined power of Chun Jun, the workshop, and his own engineered body.

Chapter Summary: “Lies and Jokes”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue battles Heavenly Selection’s divided spirit, Heart Pivot, inside his workshop. Despite repeated attacks from Chun Jun, Pan Ying, and his Disintegration Art, Heart Pivot repeatedly reconstructs its spiritual body.
• Heart Pivot releases its restraints, unleashing poisonous emotions, illusions, personality fragments, and spiritual echoes. However, Ji Jue seals the workshop with mercury barriers, preventing the spirit from escaping or spreading its influence.
• Heart Pivot attempts to overwhelm Ji Jue by provoking anger, fear, anxiety, desire, and other emotions. Ji Jue uses Chun Jun’s Shadow to burn away these feelings, leaving only a cold, focused determination to kill her.
• Heart Pivot takes on multiple forms and attacks through illusions, gaze-based interference, swordplay, and Spiritual Substance shockwaves. Ji Jue remains in control because the fight takes place inside his own workshop.
• Little Cow and Horse, transformed through Dragon Mountain Armor and Dragon Blood, catches Pan Ying and launches a devastating attack that destroys Heart Pivot’s manifestations and forces her to expose an opening.
• Ji Jue uses the resulting Spiritual Substance fluctuations to identify and sever every anchor and escape route connected to Heart Pivot’s divided spirit. He traps her completely within a cage of Spirit Essence Circuits.
• Ji Jue reveals that he intends to use the imprisoned spirit as the Sacrificial Master in a ritual dedicated to Great Evil. Sixteen prepared iron boxes containing tortured sacrificial materials and souls are used to summon Abyss.
• Great Evil’s Shadow manifests as a giant eye, and its power pours into Heart Pivot’s spiritual body. The blessing violently corrupts and reshapes her, while the power also travels through her connection to her main body.
• As Wen Su’s corruption affects her main body, Wen Wen attacks with Minerva’s Spear, piercing her spirit and declaring that the conflict has ended.
• Wen Wen expresses pity and hatred, saying that Wen Su was once someone she hoped might become an exception, but has ultimately become like the others. Instead of despairing, Wen Su begins laughing with disturbing delight.

2. Character Developments

• Ji Jue demonstrates increasing mastery over his workshop, Fluid Alchemy, Solid Alchemy, spiritual weapons, and emotional control. He is no longer merely defending himself; he strategically allows Heart Pivot to reveal her network before trapping her.
• Ji Jue’s apparent calm becomes increasingly frightening. He acknowledges that he has many people important to him, but uses that attachment as motivation to eradicate Heart Pivot completely. His “hospitality” toward her reveals a ruthless and theatrical side.
• Heart Pivot/Wen Su is shown to be extraordinarily resilient, manipulative, and dangerous. She weaponizes emotional influence and divided personalities, but becomes increasingly desperate once Ji Jue seals every escape route.
• Wen Su’s confidence shifts into fury and then helplessness as Ji Jue turns her own spiritual connection into a channel for Great Evil’s corruption.
• Little Cow and Horse acts as a powerful, nearly unstoppable combat weapon under Deus Ex Machina’s control. Its Dragon Blood and mechanical body allow it to resist Heart Pivot’s possession attempt and deliver the decisive opening.
• Wen Wen crosses an emotional and moral threshold. Although she still feels compassion for Wen Su, she accepts that the person before her has become irredeemable and attacks without hesitation. Her pity is mixed with deep resentment and grief.

3. Significant Themes

• Control versus manipulation: Heart Pivot tries to control others through hidden emotional influence, while Ji Jue defeats her by controlling the battlefield, his own emotions, and the flow of Spiritual Substance.
• The danger of emotional vulnerability: Anger, fear, desire, and anxiety can all be weaponized, but Ji Jue’s ability to burn them away gives him a terrifying emotional clarity.
• Reversal of predator and prey: Heart Pivot initially treats Ji Jue as a target, but the workshop becomes his domain, turning her invasion into a carefully prepared trap.
• The morality of vengeance: Ji Jue’s determination to eliminate every trace of Heart Pivot reflects protective loyalty but also reveals how far he is willing to go in pursuit of revenge.
• Corruption and sacrifice: The ritual demonstrates the destructive power of Great Evil and the ease with which people can become materials, offerings, or vessels in larger supernatural conflicts.
• Identity and dehumanization: Wen Wen’s statement that Wen Su is “no different from them” suggests that corruption has erased the person she once was. Wen Su’s laughter, however, implies that she may see this destruction not as defeat but as a form of triumph.
• Truth, lies, and credibility: Ji Jue dismisses the possibility that Wen Su could expose him, showing how reputation, social trust, and political perception can be manipulated as effectively as supernatural forces.

4. Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Heart Pivot: Their exchange is both a physical battle and a psychological contest. Heart Pivot threatens him through emotional manipulation, while Ji Jue responds with mockery, calculated cruelty, and the promise to hunt down her true body.
• Ji Jue and Little Cow and Horse: Ji Jue relies on Little Cow and Horse at the critical moment, using its mechanical strength and Dragon Blood to exploit the opening Heart Pivot creates.
• Ji Jue and Great Evil: Ji Jue deliberately invokes Great Evil and uses its power as a weapon against Heart Pivot. He treats the ritual almost like a gift of hospitality, making the act both strategic and sadistic.
• Wen Wen and Wen Su: Their confrontation is the chapter’s emotional climax. Wen Wen attacks someone she once protected, acknowledging that compassion can no longer outweigh the danger Wen Su represents.
• Wen Su and Wen Wen: Wen Su’s final laughter undermines Wen Wen’s declaration of victory. Rather than pleading or grieving, Wen Su reacts with delighted mockery, suggesting that she may still have another psychological or strategic purpose behind her defeat.

Chapter Summary: “Old Grievances and New Hatreds”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Wen Su taunts her sister Wen Wen, insisting that both are destined to return to the Vortex because of their shared Holy Fool’s Blood. She reveals that Wen Wen has already been selected as the “new seed.”
• Wen Su explains that the Spirit Plague was not entirely her doing. The influence of the Abyss, the Lord, Corruption, Huaxu, and Yellow Liang has been connected to the release of their “Fourth Brother,” Wen Sheng, whom Wen Wen had believed she killed.
• Wen Sheng’s monstrous incarnation—a three-headed serpent formed from corpses, moths, and corrupted Spiritual Substance—descends into the world. His arrival spreads nightmares and pollution across New Spring and the surrounding regions.
• The serpent attacks Ji Jue with a devastating beam of corrupted Spiritual Substance. Ji Jue narrowly survives by transforming through the Blessing of [Ascension to Truth].
• Ji Jue summons Isis. Her Mercury body initially seems too fragile to oppose Wen Sheng, but the workshop’s control system links to her Crown of Isis, massively reinforcing her. The workshop expands into the sky, activates its construction systems, and transforms Isis into a vast, many-handed entity.
• Isis restrains Wen Sheng’s incarnation. Ji Jue uses the Containing Form Mirror to expose its true composition: a fusion of the Abyss, Tower, Corruption, Unending, and the Heart Pivot, nearing transformation into a Sin Demon.
• Mocking Wen Sheng, Ji Jue forces a massive mixture of Abyssal Stain, corrupted desires, Mad Slaughter sacrifices, and other materials into the serpent’s mouth. Through Fiendification Alchemy, the incarnation collapses from within.
• At the same time, Wen Wen unleashes Minerva’s full power against Wen Sheng. She removes the restraints suppressing her crystalline nature, transforms the waterworks into a cold mirror-like crystal realm, and attacks with Dragonfire.
• Wen Wen pins Wen Sheng’s fading dream projection in place and challenges him to settle their old conflict immediately rather than waiting twelve years. Her attack severely wounds the serpent’s true body, damages the Legacy of Huabei, and causes crystals to erupt across its island.
• Although badly injured, Wen Sheng survives. He launches a new plan: his followers consume worm-filled “holy wine,” allowing moth swarms and their dreams to spread across the islands. Through these dreams, the Huabei Kingdom begins to approach manifestation.

Character Developments

• Wen Wen: Her composed, restrained façade collapses into fury. She accepts and displays her true crystalline, Waste Ruins nature, abandoning her previous limitations and openly declaring war on Wen Sheng.
• Wen Su: She is portrayed as manipulative and sadistic, deliberately exploiting Wen Wen’s guilt and fear concerning their family, their father, and Wen Sheng. Her revelations destabilize Wen Wen, even though Wen Su is soon consumed by Wen Sheng’s descending power.
• Wen Sheng: Revealed as a surviving member of Wen Wen’s family and a powerful hybrid entity nearing Sin Demonhood. He is arrogant and vengeful but is forced to retreat after suffering attacks from both Ji Jue and Wen Wen.
• Ji Jue: Demonstrates growing confidence and defiance. Rather than merely surviving the attack, he uses his workshop’s technological and alchemical systems to overpower and humiliate Wen Sheng’s incarnation.
• Isis: Evolves from a seemingly fragile Mercury construct into an overwhelming manifestation once linked to Ji Jue’s workshop, proving the importance of the workshop’s infrastructure and control systems.

Significant Themes

• Inherited nature versus personal choice: Wen Su argues that bloodline and fate determine both sisters’ destinies, while Wen Wen’s struggle suggests that identity can be resisted—but perhaps never entirely escaped.
• Old trauma and unresolved revenge: Family betrayal, Wen Wen’s supposed killing of Wen Sheng, and their twelve-year feud drive the chapter’s emotional conflict.
• Power through preparation and support: Wen Sheng possesses immense innate power, but Ji Jue defeats his incarnation through the workshop, planning, and coordinated systems rather than raw strength alone.
• Suppressed identity and unleashed power: Wen Wen’s removal of her restraint symbolizes the destruction of her carefully maintained civilized persona and the emergence of her true, terrifying essence.
• Corruption disguised as salvation: Wen Sheng’s followers are promised survival and a heavenly kingdom, but their “holy wine” contains worm eggs, turning religious devotion into a mechanism for spreading plague, dreams, and apocalypse.
• Escalating apocalypse: The chapter moves from a personal family confrontation to a global supernatural threat, with the Huabei Kingdom nearing reality through the spread of Dream Loss Syndrome.

Character Interactions

• Wen Su and Wen Wen: Wen Su psychologically attacks Wen Wen by insisting they share the same nature and by revealing Wen Sheng’s survival. Their exchange exposes the sisters’ deep resentment and Wen Wen’s buried guilt.
• Wen Sheng and Wen Wen: Their encounter is dominated by mutual hatred. Wen Sheng threatens revenge, while Wen Wen refuses to let him escape and challenges him to determine their superiority immediately.
• Ji Jue and Wen Sheng: Ji Jue responds to Wen Sheng’s arrogance with ridicule, traps his incarnation, and forcibly feeds it a destructive alchemical mixture. Their confrontation establishes Ji Jue as an increasingly bold enemy of the Great Evils.
• Ji Jue and Isis: Ji Jue integrates Isis into the workshop, transforming her from a vulnerable construct into the decisive force that restrains Wen Sheng.
• Wen Sheng and his followers: After being wounded, Wen Sheng manipulates his devotees through promises of salvation, using their bodies, dreams, and faith to advance the manifestation of the Huabei Kingdom.

Chapter Summary: “Imprint and Prophecy”

Key Plot Points and Events

• The Great Serpent’s projection disappears above New Spring, and the rain of Mercury purges the town of the Great Evil’s lingering corruption. Martial law ends, alarms stop, and daily life quickly resumes despite widespread rumors about what happened.
• Public speculation turns the disaster into exaggerated stories, with some claiming the Coast caused a spiritual-energy revival or that Factory Director Ji ascended to the heavens.
• Isis reports that the Coast’s extermination of adult Horde specimens in key areas is complete, though the operation in the Haizhou Wilderness was interrupted. Ji Jue orders the remaining cleanup to be abandoned, criticizing the organizations that ignored the crisis until the Coast acted.
• Ji Jue studies two Mercury crystals containing stolen Spiritual Substance and considers producing a Soul Pointer. Because New Spring lacks enough Aether-lineage materials, he may need to antagonize the Tong Family again.
• He also examines a mysterious emblem he appears to have seized from the Great Serpent during its collapse. The object is an extremely faint Spirit Essence Imprint, resembling an illusory flower. It seems to function as a mark, token, or key and emits a weak summons, but its purpose remains unknown.
• Yu Shu finds Ji Jue after sensing the battle’s immense disturbances. Ji Jue casually explains that the Spirit Plague’s creator attacked him and confirms that the plague was deliberately caused by a person, shocking Yu Shu.
• Wen Su awakens in her hidden safehouse, badly injured but mysteriously healed. Her father, Wen Zheng, has been waiting there and treats her with unsettling gentleness.
• Wen Zheng reveals that he knew from the beginning that Wen Su stole the original strain of Dream Loss Syndrome and deliberately involved her sister, “Xiao Wen,” in the larger conflict. He believes Wen Su’s actions have nearly brought Xiao Wen back into his control.
• The chapter recalls an old prophecy: among Wen Zheng’s descendants, someone will eventually surpass him and kill him. Wen Zheng has spent ninety-one years raising and testing children in hopes of discovering who will fulfill it.
• Wen Su, emotionally broken by Wen Zheng’s manipulation, asks to participate in the coming game. Wen Zheng warmly accepts, pleased that she is now willing to take part.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue remains pragmatic, confident, and dismissive of political criticism. He focuses on practical goals—creating the Soul Pointer, acquiring materials, and understanding the mysterious imprint—rather than celebrating the Coast’s victory.
• Yu Shu shows genuine concern for Ji Jue, rushing to confirm his safety. His shock upon learning that the Spirit Plague was intentionally caused reveals his limited understanding of the conspiracy and the human motives behind the catastrophe.
• Wen Su survives her near-death experience but is psychologically devastated by the realization that Wen Zheng had anticipated and exploited her rebellion. Her guilt toward her sister turns into helplessness, then finally into a request to actively join the conflict.
• Wen Zheng is presented as affectionate yet terrifying. He treats his children with apparent love, but his kindness is inseparable from manipulation, experimentation, and long-term planning. He views both his children and their suffering as pieces in a game designed to fulfill the prophecy.
• Xiao Wen, though absent, becomes increasingly important. Wen Zheng regards her as a “key existence” whose return to his side is central to his plans.

Significant Themes

• The normalization of catastrophe: New Spring rapidly returns to work and commerce after a supernatural disaster, suggesting that people in this world have become accustomed to danger and death.
• Human responsibility for evil: Ji Jue’s comment that many “hells” are created by human hands emphasizes that the Spirit Plague and broader disasters are not merely natural or supernatural events, but products of human decisions.
• Manipulation disguised as love: Wen Zheng’s parental tenderness conceals control. His affection does not protect his children from harm; instead, it encourages and directs them toward his desired outcome.
• Fate versus agency: The prophecy drives Wen Zheng’s actions, yet he actively engineers circumstances to bring it about. The chapter questions whether the prophecy will be fulfilled naturally or because Wen Zheng has constructed a game around it.
• Knowledge and hidden power: Ji Jue’s mysterious imprint and Wen Zheng’s concealed plans both suggest that the visible battle is only part of a larger struggle involving unknown forces, keys, descendants, and prophetic possibilities.
• Rebellion and complicity: Wen Su wanted to protect her sister while secretly drawing her back into danger. Her rebellion ultimately served Wen Zheng’s plans, showing how resistance can be manipulated into cooperation.

Important Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Isis: Their brief exchange establishes the Coast’s military success and Ji Jue’s decision to stop short of total eradication.
• Ji Jue and Yu Shu: Yu Shu’s anxious concern contrasts with Ji Jue’s casual attitude. Their conversation exposes Yu Shu to the truth that the Spirit Plague was deliberately created.
• Wen Su and Wen Zheng: Their central interaction is simultaneously familial and threatening. Wen Zheng comforts, heals, scolds, and praises Wen Su while revealing that he has monitored and manipulated her from the beginning.
• Wen Zheng and Xiao Wen: Although Xiao Wen does not appear, Wen Zheng discusses her as the central “key” in his plans and expresses confidence that she will eventually return to him.
• Wen Zheng and his descendants: The prophecy has shaped his relationships with all his children. He raises them with encouragement and resources, not solely out of love, but to discover which one might become powerful enough to kill him.

Chapter Summary: “Uh, This”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Wen Wen is discharged from Hope Hospital after receiving emergency treatment for severe spiritual and soul-related injuries.
• Her wounds have been temporarily sealed using powerful medicines and a strand of Rainbow Light, but the treatment is only a stopgap. The attraction between Wen Wen, the Vortex, and Minerva continues to intensify.
• The doctor warns that if Wen Wen unseals her power and crosses a critical threshold, her condition will become irreversible. He again recommends long-term hospitalization, but she rejects the idea, preferring to live freely—even recklessly—rather than be confined.
• The doctor jokes that, if she becomes unsalvageable, she should at least allow herself to be studied as a rare case. Wen Wen responds by joking that she will ensure no corpse remains for them to examine.
• After discharge, Wen Wen discovers that hospital fees and motorcycle repairs have nearly emptied her bank account. She decides to drink, but struggles to find someone willing or available to accompany her.
• She visits Ji Jue’s home, arriving just in time for lunch, and immediately asks for liquor. Ji Jue reluctantly accommodates her while preparing simple food.
• Wen Wen avoids discussing the previous day’s crisis, but Ji Jue reassures her that he will listen if she wants to talk and will otherwise simply drink with her.
• Their conversation shifts to Wen Wen’s motorcycle. Ji Jue reveals that the repair shop overcharged her badly and failed to fix the underlying engine problem.
• Wen Wen asks about New Spring. Ji Jue reports that the aftermath was manageable but mentions that agents from Heart Pivot and Abyss caused trouble. He implies that he plans to retaliate against their organizations and possibly their families.
• Wen Wen is alarmed by Ji Jue’s violent outlook and declines his invitation to join the planned retaliation, joking that she already has enough problems with her own brain.

Character Developments

• Wen Wen: Remains reckless, sarcastic, and defiant despite her life-threatening condition. She rejects safety and long-term treatment, choosing alcohol, independence, and danger. However, her post-discharge confusion and search for companionship suggest vulnerability beneath her bravado. She also shows concern for New Spring and discomfort with Ji Jue’s extreme plans.
• The Chief Physician: Acts as both doctor and old acquaintance. He treats Wen Wen’s condition seriously but uses humor and dark jokes to cope with its hopelessness. His warnings emphasize that Wen Wen’s current recovery is temporary.
• Ji Jue: Demonstrates unexpected emotional consideration. Rather than interrogating Wen Wen about the previous day, he allows her to decide whether to talk. At the same time, he displays an increasingly ruthless attitude toward enemies, casually contemplating severe retaliation.
• Wen Wen and Ji Jue: Their relationship becomes more familiar and comfortable. Wen Wen trusts him enough to seek him out when she is lonely, while Ji Jue accepts her disruptive presence and tries to care for her practically by providing food and company.

Significant Themes

• Temporary recovery versus inevitable deterioration: Wen Wen appears healthy, but her treatment merely seals the damage. The chapter emphasizes the difference between looking normal and actually being safe.
• Defiance of fate and authority: Wen Wen refuses hospitalization and rejects the doctor’s attempts to control or preserve her life, insisting on living according to her own preferences.
• Humor as a defense mechanism: Both Wen Wen and the doctor use sarcasm and absurd jokes to discuss death, incurable illness, and the possibility of Wen Wen becoming a Sin Demon.
• Loneliness and companionship: Wen Wen’s search for someone to drink with reveals that, despite her cynical attitude, she does not want to face her situation entirely alone.
• Moral recklessness and collateral damage: Ji Jue’s willingness to punish not only individuals but their families contrasts with Wen Wen’s recognition that such thinking is dangerously extreme.
• Financial hardship and everyday absurdity: Serious supernatural injuries are juxtaposed with hospital bills, motorcycle repair scams, cheap liquor, and improvised meals, creating a comedic contrast between cosmic danger and mundane problems.

Character Interactions

• The doctor warns Wen Wen about her worsening connection to the Vortex and urges her to seek proper treatment; she dismisses him with jokes and hostility.
• Wen Wen calls Lao Zhang to ask for leave, but avoids returning to the branch because she expects interrogation and lectures.
• She eliminates several possible drinking companions before choosing Ji Jue, partly because he owes her meals and is less likely to pry.
• Ji Jue offers her food and alcohol while respecting her reluctance to explain what happened.
• Their discussion of the motorcycle turns into mutual irritation: Wen Wen is furious about being overcharged, while Ji Jue criticizes the repair work and promotes his own repair shop.
• When Ji Jue describes retaliating against Heart Pivot and Abyss, Wen Wen recognizes how dangerous his intentions are and distances herself from them with self-deprecating humor.

Chapter Summary: “Wine and Song”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue learns that the two figures involved in the previous incident were Wen Wen’s relatives. The young woman, A Su, was Wen Wen’s younger sister and a powerful High-Rank Heart Pivot. The black, worm-like man was another relative whom Wen Wen despises.
• Wen Wen reveals that A Su has done something terrible and asks Ji Jue what he would do if A Su fell into his hands again. Rather than asking him to spare her, Wen Wen requests that he give her a swift death, believing it would be more merciful than what Ji Jue might otherwise do.
• Ji Jue privately admits that he had considered exploiting A Su’s body and soul for its immense spiritual and research value, alarming Wen Wen when she realizes how ruthless his intentions could be.
• The conversation turns to family and morality. Ji Jue acknowledges that, unlike Wen Wen, he might be unable to choose justice over family if his own loved ones were involved.
• Ji Jue shares memories of his deceased father, describing him as quiet, dependable, and awkwardly affectionate. His memories contrast sharply with Wen Wen’s recollections of her own father.
• Wen Wen recalls how her father treated children without talent or value as disposable. She remembers him burning an unawakened child alive and recognizes that this act shaped her fear, ambition, cruelty, and eventual escape from her family.
• After an emotional exchange, Wen Wen thanks Ji Jue and asks him to drink with her. They become heavily intoxicated, behave chaotically, and Ji Jue drunkenly promises to kill A Su cleanly—while making grotesque jokes about using her skull as a wine cup.
• The next day, Ji Jue wakes badly beaten and hungover. He learns that Wen Wen assaulted the owner and workers of the Duanmenba auto shop to reclaim her money, then resigned from her position without saying goodbye.
• The chapter ends with Yu Shu experiencing a disturbing dream or vision: a sea filled with corpses drifting toward a lonely island while the dead sing joyfully. This creates an ominous supernatural threat.

Character Developments

• Wen Wen is shown as deeply traumatized by her family’s ideology and violence. Her apparent ruthlessness toward A Su is mixed with lingering sisterly concern and a desire to spare her a worse fate.
• Wen Wen confronts the monster she believes she once was, recognizing that her violent past and her father’s influence still remain part of her.
• Her conversation with Ji Jue allows her to express vulnerability and briefly experience relief. Her gentle smile and sincere thanks suggest that she trusts him more deeply than before.
• Ji Jue reveals both his pragmatic brutality and his attachment to the people he considers family. He is willing to exploit valuable enemies, but he also believes family should not be reduced to a calculation of usefulness.
• Ji Jue’s memories of his father expose a softer, more sentimental side beneath his sarcasm and dark humor.
• Yu Shu becomes linked to a looming supernatural mystery through his terrifying dream of the singing dead.

Significant Themes

• Family versus morality: Both Wen Wen and Ji Jue face the question of whether loyalty to family should outweigh justice, compassion, or personal principles.
• The legacy of abuse: Wen Wen’s father created a world where children competed for approval and treated one another as enemies. Wen Wen’s violence is presented as both her own choice and the result of long-term conditioning.
• Value and disposability: The chapter condemns the belief that people without talent or power have no right to live, showing how such thinking destroys families and humanity.
• Memory and identity: Ji Jue’s fragmented memories of his father and Wen Wen’s painful recollections of her past shape their understanding of who they have become.
• Humor as emotional defense: Ji Jue relies on sarcasm and grotesque jokes to ease Wen Wen’s pain, while drinking allows both characters to avoid direct confrontation with their grief.
• The return of buried horrors: Wen Wen cannot fully escape her past, and the final image of the corpses suggests that unresolved supernatural and personal horrors are beginning to surface.

Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Wen Wen alternate between teasing banter and painful honesty. His jokes keep her from collapsing emotionally, while her blunt questions force him to confront his own values.
• Wen Wen’s request regarding A Su reverses Ji Jue’s expectations: she is not asking for mercy, but for a quick and definitive death.
• Their discussion of their fathers creates a rare moment of mutual intimacy. Ji Jue describes a loving, if awkward, parent, while Wen Wen reveals the abuse and fear underlying her own family.
• Their drunken drinking session temporarily transforms their relationship into one of comradeship and emotional trust, even though it ends in violence, embarrassment, and regret.
• Wen Wen’s sudden resignation marks a significant change: after opening up to Ji Jue, she abruptly leaves her old life, leaving him with no explanation.

Chapter Summary: “Rapid Pursuit”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue learns that Wen Wen has abruptly resigned from the North Mountain Team and disappeared. Her recent drinking, the trouble caused by Dream Loss Syndrome, and the appearance of her mysterious “family” have convinced her that remaining in Yacheng would only endanger or burden others.
• Tong Hua is devastated that Wen Wen left without telling her. Lao Zhang explains that Wen Wen likely hates being treated as a problem and chose to leave rather than ask for help.
• Little An discovered Wen Wen’s drunken, improperly formatted resignation letter. Because Wen Wen used a Mirror System Blessing to block tracking, Tong Hua cannot determine where she went.
• Ji Jue realizes Wen Wen is technically still on sick leave for a week, giving him time to find and bring her back before her resignation becomes official. He promises the team that he will handle the pursuit.
• Isis cannot trace Wen Wen’s phone, surveillance image, or public transportation records. Ji Jue therefore investigates her fuel-card activity and discovers that she filled her motorcycle and several portable fuel tanks before leaving Yacheng.
• Wen Wen deliberately traveled toward the coast rather than the city’s roads. Ji Jue deduces that she used the Waste Ruins’ Stasis Field to create a temporary path across the sea, allowing her to evade normal roads, surveillance, and border controls.
• Ji Jue rejects using Isis’s dangerous Crisis Protocol, which would seize control of Haizhou’s infrastructure and potentially throw the city into chaos. Instead, he turns to a more precise method of tracking.
• He borrows materials from Tong Hua and the North Mountain District, then combines two Blessings—Ether’s Myriad Sensations Responding and Heart Pivot’s Ever Present in Mind—to forge a compass-like tracking artifact.
• The artifact briefly identifies the direction of Wen Su, but she detects the tracking attempt and disrupts it. Ji Jue then targets the mysterious enemy behind the Spirit Plague, whose Corruption power appears in the form of a Three-Headed Serpent.
• Using Spiritual Substance left inside the enemy’s consciousness from a previous encounter, Ji Jue deliberately triggers an internal backlash. The resulting disturbance lets him determine the enemy’s approximate location before the connection is severed.
• The enemy’s location overlaps with Wen Su’s direction, suggesting that Wen Su and the hidden antagonist may be together. Ji Jue traces them to the Puna Bantu Islands, the origin of the Dream Loss Syndrome disaster and the center of the Maritime Demon Domain.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue becomes determined to retrieve Wen Wen, partly out of concern and partly because she still owes him a drink. His humor masks genuine anxiety and responsibility toward the North Mountain Team.
• He demonstrates restraint by refusing to activate Crisis Protocol, recognizing that an extreme rescue effort could damage Haizhou more than Wen Wen’s disappearance.
• Ji Jue also shows growing ingenuity and technical skill by quickly learning how to use unfamiliar Blessings and creating a powerful, though unstable, tracking artifact.
• Wen Wen is portrayed as decisive, proud, and self-sacrificing. She leaves because she believes her problems will endanger the people around her, but her elaborate preparations reveal that her departure was carefully planned rather than impulsive.
• Tong Hua is heartbroken and angry at being abandoned, yet she immediately agrees to help Ji Jue by surrendering her stored materials. Her willingness to support Wen Wen reveals her loyalty despite her emotional distress.
• Little An acts responsibly by discovering the resignation letter and helping preserve the team’s situation, though he is shaken by Wen Wen’s departure.
• Lao Zhang provides emotional support and practical advice, interpreting Wen Wen’s behavior with sympathy rather than condemnation.
• Wen Su is shown to be alert and capable of countering spiritual tracking, while the hidden Corruption-based enemy is revealed to be arrogant, dangerous, and capable of retaliating through spiritual interference.

Significant Themes

• Responsibility versus self-isolation: Wen Wen believes leaving is the responsible choice, while Ji Jue and the others see her departure as an abandonment of the people who care about her.
• Found family and emotional dependence: The North Mountain Team functions as a family, making Wen Wen’s disappearance feel like a genuine fracture in the group.
• The limits of protection: Ji Jue wants to save Wen Wen but must balance that goal against the danger of using overwhelming technological and supernatural power.
• Pride and vulnerability: Wen Wen’s toughness conceals fear of becoming a burden. Her farewell gesture toward the surveillance camera suggests that, despite her refusal to explain herself, she still cares deeply about those she leaves behind.
• Ingenuity against overwhelming forces: Ji Jue cannot overpower the enemy directly, so he exploits a lingering weakness from their previous confrontation and uses strategy rather than brute force.
• Corruption and spiritual conflict: The clash between Ji Jue’s tracking attempt and the Three-Headed Serpent illustrates the ongoing struggle among Unending, Corruption, the Abyss, and the forces connected to Dream Loss Syndrome.

Character Interactions

• Tong Hua angrily criticizes Wen Wen for leaving without a word, while Lao Zhang tries to calm her and explain Wen Wen’s motives.
• Little An looks to Ji Jue for reassurance, and Ji Jue promises that he will bring Wen Wen back.
• Ji Jue and Lao Zhang cooperate to exploit Wen Wen’s temporary sick leave, effectively treating her resignation as reversible.
• Ji Jue asks Tong Hua to contribute her materials. He teases and scolds her, while she theatrically agrees to sacrifice everything for Wen Wen before eagerly handing over her supplies.
• Ji Jue consults Isis throughout the search, rejecting her most destructive option but relying on her surveillance analysis and map projection.
• Ji Jue’s confrontation with the hidden Corruption-based enemy is indirect but personal: he uses the spiritual remnant from their previous encounter to provoke and locate them.
• The chapter ends with Ji Jue identifying the Puna Bantu Islands as the destination, transforming the search for Wen Wen into a pursuit toward the source of the world’s earlier catastrophe.

Chapter Summary: “Tomorrow’s Payday”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue discovers that Wen Wen has gone to Puna Bantu, a ruined region of the Endless Sea transformed by the Collapse Effect and Spirit Plague into a vast demonic realm. He suspects the area may be part of a larger conspiracy designed to create a genuine hell by harvesting the consciousness, souls, and dreams of its inhabitants.
• Worried that Wen Wen has rushed into an enemy stronghold, Ji Jue begins assembling a large expeditionary force to retrieve him and confront whatever lies behind the Spirit Plague.
• He summons Tang Qian and offers generous compensation, food, insurance, and subsidies in exchange for rapid deployment, treating her group as an advance force and expendable scouting unit.
• Ji Jue recruits the Northern Frontier’s Dragon Bone Fleet by offering them the chance to claim and develop territory in Puna Bantu. After reviewing footage of the Crown of Isis cleansing the Haizhou Wilderness, Yellow Beard recognizes its usefulness against Forbidden Zones and agrees to the deal after extensive bargaining.
• He also brings in Wild Bazaar, promising profits from land reclamation, factories, ports, and industrial investment. Chen Xingzhou agrees to provide the An Family Double Fingers rather than a Heavenly Being.
• Ji Jue mobilizes additional forces, including the Homecoming Knights and members of the Horde, despite the difficult maritime conditions.
• He contacts Deputy Commander Minkler of the Seven Cities and obtains the Allied Defense Navy’s participation under the pretext of punishing the forces responsible for attacks on the Chongguang Association and the Seven Cities. This gives the expedition political legitimacy and legal cover.
• The assembled coalition consists of:
  • The Dragon Bone Fleet as the primary military force
  • Yellow Beard and North Wind Workshop as support
  • Wild Bazaar’s high-level combatants
  • The Homecoming Knights and Horde
  • The Seven Cities’ navy as official cover
  • Tang Qian and other advance personnel
  • Old Tang as bodyguard and possible “substitute death”
• Ji Jue remains uneasy, wondering whether Wen Jie’s description of “noncombustible garbage” can truly explain a conspiracy of such scale. He considers contacting his teacher but decides against disturbing him.
• Instead, he calls Director Gustav of the Association and asks him to warn the mysterious “old dog” about the Spirit Plague’s possible hidden cause.
• Finally, Ji Jue orders Isis to bring the Prosperity to port, mobilize Workshop Four, install the Crown of Isis, and authorize additional weapons, including the Tears of Isis. The expedition is ready to depart.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue shifts from anxious concern over Wen Wen’s reckless actions to decisive strategic leadership. He uses economic incentives, political maneuvering, military alliances, and technological superiority to create a massive rescue and assault operation.
• Wen Wen remains mostly off-screen but becomes the central motivation for Ji Jue’s actions. His decision to enter Puna Bantu alone emphasizes both his extraordinary strength and his reckless tendency to confront danger directly.
• Yellow Beard moves from mockery and suspicion to serious negotiation after seeing the Crown of Isis’s capabilities. His interest reveals both his pragmatism and his envy of Ji Jue’s alchemical technology.
• Chen Xingzhou recognizes the commercial potential of Puna Bantu and agrees to participate, though Ji Jue’s sudden acceptance of his proposal makes him feel he may have negotiated poorly.
• Minkler enthusiastically embraces Ji Jue’s call, treating him as a father figure and immediately agreeing to provide the Seven Cities’ navy.
• Ji Jue’s teacher remains absent, but Ji Jue’s reluctance to involve him shows his concern for preserving the teacher’s long-maintained anonymity and peace.
• Isis continues to act as Ji Jue’s efficient and loyal Workshop Spirit, calmly carrying out increasingly dangerous military preparations.

Significant Themes

• Strategic cooperation overcomes political division: Former rivals and independent factions unite because Ji Jue offers each of them a different incentive—land, profit, military prestige, political legitimacy, or technological opportunity.
• War as business and expansion: The expedition is presented not only as a rescue or battle but also as a land-development and industrial investment project. The title, “Tomorrow’s Payday,” reflects the blend of warfare, profit, and promised rewards.
• Political justification as a weapon: Ji Jue manipulates public narratives and legal agreements to transform a private intervention into a supposedly righteous campaign to punish evil and protect the region.
• The danger of hidden powers: The Spirit Plague and Puna Bantu suggest a deeper enemy operating behind visible wars, ethnic conflicts, and political chaos. Ji Jue’s unease indicates that the true threat may be far larger than Wen Wen’s immediate opponent.
• Technology versus corrupted environments: The Crown of Isis represents a powerful tool for purifying Forbidden Zones and abnormal spiritual realms, making Ji Jue’s technological and alchemical resources central to the coming conflict.
• Responsibility and loyalty: Although Ji Jue complains about Wen Wen’s recklessness, he mobilizes an enormous coalition because bringing Wen Wen back safely matters more to him than the risks or political complications.

Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Tang Qian exchange playful, transactional messages, with Ji Jue acting as a benefactor and Tang Qian eagerly accepting the lucrative assignment.
• Ji Jue clashes verbally with Frederick before requesting to speak with Yellow Beard, maintaining his usual calm while Frederick reacts with irritation and alarm.
• Ji Jue and Yellow Beard engage in sharp bargaining over the value and risks of Puna Bantu. Their argument reflects mutual suspicion but also professional respect for one another’s intelligence and capabilities.
• Ji Jue and Chen Xingzhou discuss the expedition as an investment opportunity. Chen understands that Ji Jue is concealing part of his real purpose but chooses to participate because the potential returns are substantial.
• Ji Jue and Minkler share an exaggerated father-son dynamic. Minkler responds with immediate loyalty and enthusiasm, allowing Ji Jue to secure the Seven Cities’ official support without resistance.
• Ji Jue contacts Director Gustav reluctantly and politely, asking him to alert a powerful figure about the Spirit Plague. This interaction highlights Ji Jue’s discomfort with relying on authority while also showing that he recognizes the scale of the impending threat.
• Ji Jue and Isis end the chapter with a formal command exchange, as Isis prepares the Prosperity and the Crown of Isis for war.

Chapter Summary: “Dusk and Night”

Key Plot Points and Events

• The Prosperity reaches the Outer Sea of the Seven Cities Alliance after racing through the night toward the Endless Sea. Ji Jue spends the journey fishing and managing the crew, especially disciplining Tang Qian for swimming naked and violating workplace regulations.
• The Dragon Bone Fleet from the Northern Frontier arrives dramatically through storm clouds and frost. Its seven linked warships function as a powerful, coordinated Alchemical Creation and demonstrate the Northern Frontier’s immense technological and military heritage.
• Yellow Beard boards the Prosperity and confirms that the expedition is ready to begin. The White Deer’s An Family Double Fingers arrive soon afterward, bringing their usual crude humor and chaotic energy.
• The Seven Cities Allied Defense fleet also arrives, carrying the Homecoming Knights. Minkler quietly delivers local specialties and avoids attention while enjoying the benefits of his growing military reputation.
• With the enemy located in Puna Bantu, the assembled forces decide not to wait for further surveillance or for Wen Jie, who is missing and may already have begun fighting. Ji Jue orders the fleet to advance.
• The Dragon Bone Fleet carries the Prosperity rapidly toward Puna Bantu using thunderclouds and storms. The journey is smooth despite the violent speed and demonstrates the ship’s resilience and Ji Jue’s ability to strengthen it with the Non-Attack Hand.
• As they approach Puna Bantu, the daylight abruptly fades. The region has become a vast forbidden zone consumed by the Collapse Effect, caused by an enormous overflow of Spiritual Substance. The city itself is invisible within eternal darkness, fog, and ominous sounds.
• Yellow Beard orders the fleets to prepare for battle and awaken the Dragon Bone. He commands the release of “Dusk,” initiating a devastating attack.
• A colossal flaming meteor descends from the sky, burning away the darkness and cracking the forbidden zone like glass. Beyond the shattered darkness, a gigantic scarlet eye opens, implying the presence of an immense and terrifying entity.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue continues to grow into his role as employer, commander, and Artisan. He manages the crew with mock bureaucracy while remaining irreverent and improvisational. His confidence is evident in his willingness to launch the operation despite incomplete intelligence.
• Tang Qian remains physically powerful but irresponsible and childish. His nudity, obsession with payment, and crude jokes contrast with Ji Jue’s managerial authority, though he quickly obeys when money or personal safety is involved.
• Yellow Beard is shown as a decisive and experienced military leader. Unlike Ji Jue, he favors immediate action once the enemy is located, trusting the Northern Frontier’s preparations and divination.
• The An Family Double Fingers are characterized as eccentric, shameless, and highly capable hunters. Their casual attitude reflects their confidence, particularly in their advanced Projection Technique.
• Minkler embraces his unexpected political and military success while pretending to be reluctant. His low-profile behavior masks his enjoyment of gaining status and merit.
• Wen Jie, though absent, remains important to Ji Jue. He assumes she may already be fighting and jokingly plans to label her an accomplice if they meet, revealing both his concern for her and his tendency to disguise concern with humor.

Significant Themes

• Chaos beneath professionalism: The expedition is a serious military operation, yet its members constantly behave absurdly, emphasizing the unstable and unconventional nature of Ji Jue’s organization.
• Inherited power versus individual growth: The Dragon Bone Fleet reflects centuries of Northern Frontier craftsmanship, while Ji Jue recognizes that his own achievements are still young by comparison.
• Risk and decisive action: The commanders debate caution versus speed, ultimately choosing to attack before the enemy can react. The chapter presents warfare as requiring both preparation and a willingness to commit fully.
• The unknown and cosmic horror: The transition from sunlight into unnatural darkness, the disappearance of Puna Bantu, and the opening of the enormous scarlet eye suggest that the enemy has become something far beyond an ordinary city or military target.
• Light against darkness: The “Dusk” meteor literally breaks through the darkness, symbolizing the coalition’s attempt to impose order and action on a world distorted by spiritual catastrophe.

Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Tang Qian argue over workplace rules, compensation, clothing, and Tang Qian’s indecent behavior. Their exchange establishes a familiar but antagonistic friendship.
• Ji Jue welcomes Yellow Beard but downplays the Prosperity’s capabilities compared with the Northern Frontier’s superior technological foundation. Yellow Beard responds with blunt approval of Ji Jue’s accomplishments.
• Yellow Beard mocks the Wild Bazaar’s lack of punctuality, only for the An Family Double Fingers to appear and tease him and Ji Jue with vulgar jokes.
• The Double Fingers provoke Tang Qian by implying they witnessed an inappropriate scene, leading him to angrily defend his reputation while still demanding extra payment.
• Ji Jue consults Yellow Beard and the Double Fingers before beginning the attack, showing that despite his casual demeanor, he respects the coalition’s various specialists.
• The chapter ends with the entire group confronted by the same overwhelming supernatural threat: the forbidden darkness surrounding Puna Bantu and the colossal eye revealed behind it.

Summary of “Eyes and Worm”

Key Plot Points and Events

• A monstrous Blood Eye appears above the Forbidden Zone, distorting reality like a corrupted game. The sea, meteors, and surrounding world break into unstable colors, shifting textures, and collapsing forms.
• The Blood Eye’s influence reveals the hidden reality beneath the illusion: countless phantom corpses belonging to victims of Dream Loss Syndrome. Drawn toward a deserted island, they climb a central Tower in an endless, grotesque mass.
• The corpses smile blissfully as they crawl over one another, devouring and tearing each other apart while remaining fixated on reaching the Tower’s summit. The Blood Eye watches them with contempt.
• Ji Jue is overwhelmed by the vision. His perception fragments into images of a Giant Tree, a rotting Great Serpent, bubbles, rainbow light, a beating heart, and his own corpse.
• Yellow Beard interrupts the trance by striking his Flame Shaped Sword against his Round Shield and orders Ji Jue not to look. He identifies the phenomenon as the Yellow Liang Legacy, the remains of the ancient Lord of Yellow Millet.
• The remains have formed a Celestial Being Time Wedge, a supernatural overlap in which a past or future reality is forcibly imposed on the present. In this case, part of the ancient Huabei Kingdom and the former Myriad Phenomena Paradise has reappeared.
• The Yellow Liang Remains constantly radiate dreamlike corruption, threatening to erase identities, alter memories, and turn intruders into puppets. Entering the domain directly would be extremely dangerous.
• Ji Jue proposes using a Fusion Bomb to destroy the contaminated area. Yellow Beard angrily denies possessing such a weapon, citing international treaties and the catastrophic political consequences of using one.
• Ji Jue then asks to borrow the Dragon Bone Fleet’s thunderclouds. Yellow Beard reluctantly permits it, expecting Ji Jue to need assistance.
• Ji Jue reveals that he has already acted: he has seized control of the thunderclouds and transformed them into a massive supernatural storm.
• The phenomenon is identified as the Crown of Isis, or more specifically, the Specialized Type: Nether Sea Worm, which has completed its incubation.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue demonstrates exceptional boldness and ingenuity. Rather than attempting a direct assault on the Yellow Liang domain, he devises an unconventional plan using the Dragon Bone Fleet’s accumulated thunderclouds.
• His irreverent, manipulative personality is highlighted through his attempt to persuade Yellow Beard to provide a Fusion Bomb, followed by his hidden seizure of the fleet’s power.
• Yellow Beard remains suspicious of Ji Jue and increasingly treats him as a dangerous equal. Although he mocks Ji Jue, he still offers limited cooperation and recognizes the seriousness of the situation.
• Yellow Beard also acts protectively and pragmatically by breaking Ji Jue and the others out of their trance before the Blood Eye’s vision can fully consume them.
• Ji Jue’s successful control of the thunderclouds suggests that his abilities and preparations are far more advanced than Yellow Beard realized.

Significant Themes

• Reality versus illusion: The Blood Eye and Yellow Liang Remains expose the fragility of perceived reality, showing how easily the world can be overwritten by dreams, memories, and supernatural remnants.
• Loss of identity: The corpses of Dream Loss Syndrome victims symbolize people whose sense of self has been erased. Their blissful smiles contrast with their horrific condition, emphasizing the danger of surrendering individuality to false desires.
• Obsession and collective destruction: The corpses endlessly climb toward the Tower despite being crushed, consumed, or annihilated. Their longing illustrates how desire can become self-destructive and inescapable.
• The danger of ancient power: The Yellow Liang Remains are only a fragment of a former superior existence, yet their passive radiation is nearly as dangerous as a living Heavenly Being.
• Improvisation against overwhelming force: Rather than matching the Forbidden Zone’s power directly, Ji Jue exploits available resources and turns the Dragon Bone Fleet’s thunderclouds into a new weapon.
• Humor amid cosmic horror: The argument over whether Yellow Beard possesses a Fusion Bomb provides comic relief while also emphasizing the immense political and destructive stakes of the conflict.

Character Interactions

• Yellow Beard forcibly breaks Ji Jue’s trance and warns him not to look at the Blood Eye.
• Ji Jue and Yellow Beard debate how to confront the Forbidden Zone. Yellow Beard rejects the idea of a frontal assault, while Ji Jue tests whether the Northern Frontier has access to forbidden weapons.
• Their exchange reveals a relationship built on distrust, sarcasm, and reluctant cooperation. Yellow Beard assumes Ji Jue is plotting something dangerous, while Ji Jue deliberately withholds his true plan.
• Ji Jue ultimately outmaneuvers Yellow Beard by taking control of the thunderclouds without assistance, leaving Yellow Beard shocked as the Nether Sea Worm manifests.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Ji Jue transforms the thunderclouds above the exclusion zone into the Crown of Isis, a vast silver halo surrounded by countless delicate threads.
• The Crown drains all Spiritual Substance from the surrounding sea, creating a vacuum that draws in an enormous storm of energy. This disrupts and damages the Dragon Bone Fleet’s equipment.
• The Crown also blocks the souls, desires, and resentment being drawn into the Yellow Liang Remains, cutting off the enemy’s supply of Spiritual Substance.
• The spirit within the Crown undergoes a second Metamorphosis, causing the Crown to expand into a genuine Natural Disaster.
• Wen Sheng, having completed his own Metamorphosis, takes control of the Yellow Liang Remains and expands Myriad Phenomena Paradise, apparently overcoming the Crown’s defenses and assimilating it.
• Ji Jue reveals that the Crown is essentially a reconstruction of the Nether Sea Worm. By assimilating it, Myriad Phenomena Paradise unknowingly allows the Worm to parasitize and infect the entire domain.
• The silver light shatters, and the Worm spreads through Puna Bantu: the sea turns black, tentacles and organs emerge everywhere, and the exclusion zone begins mutating into a Netherworld-like nightmare.
• The Worm and Myriad Phenomena Paradise become locked in a massive internal struggle, each attempting to assimilate and consume the other. The Demon Domain begins collapsing and losing control.
• Yellow Beard warns Ji Jue that the Nether Sea Worm’s existence could expose his forbidden research. Ji Jue counters by threatening to reveal that Yellow Beard’s North Wind Workshop possesses fusion bombs.
• A fusion bomb detonates in the heart of the Demon Domain, producing a mushroom cloud, enormous waves, and a devastating blast that breaks the central tower.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue demonstrates extreme strategic confidence and ruthlessness. Rather than attacking the enemy directly, he cuts off its resources and deliberately allows it to consume the Crown, knowing it is a disguised Nether Sea Worm.
• Isis and Ji Jue’s creation reaches the scale of a Natural Disaster, proving the effectiveness of their structural analysis and replication of the Nether Sea Worm.
• Wen Sheng completes his Metamorphosis and becomes powerful enough to control the Yellow Liang Remains and expand Myriad Phenomena Paradise across the Crown’s defenses.
• Yellow Beard shifts from confident observer and commander to alarmed participant as he realizes Ji Jue’s creation has exceeded expectations. His banter with Ji Jue also reveals that he possesses dangerous military technology.
• The Nether Sea Worm evolves from a hidden structure within the Crown into an active, world-consuming organism capable of parasitism, mutation, and independent growth.

Significant Themes

• Resource denial and indirect warfare: Ji Jue wins the initial advantage by cutting off Spiritual Substance rather than confronting the enemy head-on.
• Assimilation and reversal: The chapter repeatedly reverses expectations—what appears to be assimilation becomes infection, and the attempt to control the Crown becomes the mechanism by which the Worm enters the enemy domain.
• Creation beyond control: Ji Jue’s reconstruction of the Worm becomes a disaster even he cannot entirely contain, highlighting the danger of reproducing forces associated with mutation and aberration.
• Parasitism and mutual corruption: The Worm and Myriad Phenomena Paradise invade and transform one another, turning the Demon Domain into a cancerous battlefield of competing systems.
• Humor amid catastrophe: Ji Jue treats world-ending developments with mocking amusement, while his threat involving fusion bombs adds dark comedy to the escalating disaster.
• Power concealed beneath appearances: The Crown initially looks like a beautiful celestial halo, but its true nature is a predatory organism designed to consume and mutate its surroundings.

Character Interactions

• Ji Jue and Yellow Beard: Their relationship is defined by antagonistic cooperation and sarcastic threats. Yellow Beard is horrified by Ji Jue’s methods, while Ji Jue responds casually and turns Yellow Beard’s concern into leverage.
• Ji Jue and Wen Sheng: Ji Jue outmaneuvers Wen Sheng by allowing him to believe he has captured and assimilated the Crown. Wen Sheng’s apparent victory instead triggers the Worm’s emergence.
• The Crown/Worm and Myriad Phenomena Paradise: Their interaction forms the chapter’s central conflict. Myriad Phenomena Paradise tries to convert the Crown, but the Crown’s hidden Worm structure parasitizes it in return, causing both systems to mutate and destabilize.
• Yellow Beard and the Dragon Bone Fleet: Yellow Beard urgently commands the fleet through the Spiritual Substance vacuum and subsequent storm, struggling to preserve its equipment and withdraw it from the expanding domain.
• The North Wind Workshop and Ji Jue: Ji Jue’s final exchange with Yellow Beard reveals a mutual blackmail dynamic, culminating in the use of a fusion bomb against the Demon Domain.

Chapter Summary: “War Begins”

Key Plot Points and Events

• The Northern Frontier reveals that it possesses Fusion Bombs, shocking the assembled forces and restoring the political balance between the competing factions. Yellow Beard realizes Ji Jue deliberately used the weapon to force North Wind to bear responsibility for the escalation.
• The Dragon Bone Fleet launches its assault on the barren island and The Tower. Horns and drums animate the fleet, while waves and phantom sea forces surge forward.
• The island’s Blood Eye uses an inherited Abyssal technique to erase the tsunami and alter reality, but the fleet presses onward regardless.
• Sixteen Blazing Light attacks rain down on the island, targeting the ruins and The Tower. In response, disaster beasts emerge from the Nether Sea and attack the warships.
• Yellow Beard transforms through the Seed of Heroes: Surtr, becoming a gigantic flame-wielding warrior. He cuts a disaster beast in half and turns the sea into a burning inferno.
• The fleet’s soldiers, motivated by the promise of reaching the fertile “Warm Land,” advance with fanatical determination despite the dangers and anticipated wars.
• Dragon Bone awakens through blood sacrifice, producing skeletal dragons that rise from the ships and unleash flames.
• The Tower responds by releasing swarms of Mothmen—half-human, half-moth creatures capable of moving between illusion and reality and preying on souls.
• The An brothers, An De and An Neng, casually slaughter the Mothmen with improvised weapons while arguing over who gets the kills.
• The Three-Headed Serpent reappears and causes the Yellow Liang Remains and its Dreamland to shrink, weakening the Worm’s influence.
• Members of the Dragon Offering Society emerge from the barren island. Ji Jue recognizes them and prepares to confront them with Isis.
• Before the confrontation begins, a massive crystalline weapon forms in the sky: the Spear of the Wasteland Ruins, aimed at the battlefield and descending with catastrophic force.

Character Developments

• Ji Jue demonstrates strategic cunning by using the Fusion Bomb as political leverage. He forces North Wind and Yellow Beard’s faction back into a precarious equilibrium while avoiding direct blame.
• Yellow Beard shifts from humiliation and rage to aggressive leadership. His transformation into Surtr displays his immense combat power, and his speech reveals his deep commitment to securing land for his people.
• An De and An Neng are shown as immensely powerful but humorously reckless. Their sibling rivalry continues even in the middle of a battlefield, though their actions effectively defend the fleet.
• Ji Jue remains increasingly wary and focused as familiar enemies from the Dragon Offering Society appear. His playful attitude gives way to anticipation and hostility.
• The Blood Eye and The Tower are portrayed as powerful but momentarily confused by the sudden reversal of events, suggesting that the battlefield has become unpredictable even to the island’s defenders.

Significant Themes

• Escalation and mutually assured destruction: The Fusion Bomb creates a balance in which every major faction possesses compromising power over the others.
• The cost of survival and colonization: The soldiers’ desire for the Warm Land shows how desperation can make people embrace enormous risks and sacrifice their lives for the possibility of a better future.
• Reality versus illusion: The battle repeatedly blurs the boundary between the real and the imagined, especially through the Blood Eye’s reality-altering technique, the Mothmen, the Dreamland, and the crystalline spear.
• War as spectacle and chaos: Grand supernatural weapons, monsters, dragons, and reality-warping powers coexist with petty arguments and absurd humor.
• Old enemies and recurring conflict: The return of the Dragon Offering Society suggests that the current war is tied to Ji Jue’s past and that unresolved rivalries are resurfacing.

Character Interactions

• Yellow Beard silently blames Ji Jue for forcing him into the Fusion Bomb crisis, while Ji Jue confidently orders him to take responsibility for the next stage of the attack.
• Yellow Beard rallies the fleet by declaring that the Warm Land is within reach, inspiring his soldiers to advance despite overwhelming danger.
• An De and An Neng bicker over who gets credit for killing the Mothmen, insulting each other while continuing to fight effectively.
• Ji Jue observes the brothers’ chaotic partnership with exasperation, contrasting their comic behavior with the seriousness of the battle.
• Upon recognizing the Dragon Offering Society, Ji Jue calls on Isis and prepares to “exchange greetings,” signaling an imminent personal confrontation.
• The chapter ends before the Spear of the Wasteland Ruins strikes, leaving the outcome of the battle—and the fate of the attacking fleet—uncertain.

Chapter Summary: “Dreamlike Bubble”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Wen Wen unleashes the Grand Spear, a manifestation of pure matter and Waste Ruins power, piercing the Blood Eye and the Three-Headed Serpent and trapping them beneath a crystal forest.
• The serpent resists, but coordinated attacks from Wen Wen, Bitter Day, and Ji Jue destroy its heads and severely damage its body.
• As it dies, the serpent shatters the Millet Dream Remains, releasing an immense dream tide that threatens to engulf the entire region.
• Wen Wen uses the Dragonfire Lance to divide the dream flood, creating an opening for Ji Jue to fire his ultimate Masterwork, Tears of Isis. The blast annihilates the serpent, the Tower, the Blood Eye, the dream remains, and seemingly Wen Wen herself.
• Ji Jue later finds Wen Wen alive but fading. They share alcohol, reconcile, and promise that she will no longer leave him. Their apparent reunion culminates in a romantic moment.
• The scene suddenly shatters: Ji Jue awakens to discover that the battle and victory were themselves part of a dream. The real battle begins again, and this time he criticizes the serpent’s poorly constructed illusion before destroying it with Tears of Isis and other attacks.
• Although the second victory appears genuine, Ji Jue becomes suspicious. His memories and achievements feel unnaturally convenient, and he cannot remember Wen Jie, Wen Wen, or certain details of his own knowledge and equipment.
• He wakes in his workshop after another dream, increasingly disturbed by his apparent stagnation and inability to advance in his studies. Fearing that something has been altered, he dissects and examines his body, soul, and consciousness, finding no abnormalities.
• Ji Jue concludes that the problem is not himself but reality itself: the world has been false from the beginning.
• The chapter reveals that he remains trapped within layered dreams. In the real Puna Bantu, the Tower has transformed into a giant tree, the serpent has merged with it, and the Myriad Transformation Paradise is reconstructing itself by absorbing the dreams and souls of countless victims. Wen Zheng watches this process approvingly.

Character Developments

• Wen Wen fully embraces her Waste Ruins nature, demonstrating overwhelming power over illusion through the Grand Spear and the Dragonfire Lance. Her reunion with Ji Jue reveals affection and a desire to remain with him, though this may itself be part of the dream’s manipulation.
• Ji Jue acts decisively and creatively in battle, using his engineering and alchemical mastery to fire Tears of Isis. However, his greatest development is psychological: he becomes increasingly wary of convenient success, false memories, and the possibility that his identity and reality have been fabricated.
• The Three-Headed Serpent shifts from confident manipulator to desperate and enraged victim. Even in defeat, it attempts to drag others into Paradise’s dream, but its own illusion is exposed and destroyed.
• Wen Zheng remains distant and enigmatic, serving as an observer and apparent architect or beneficiary of the larger dream catastrophe.

Significant Themes

• Reality versus illusion: The chapter repeatedly overturns apparent victories, romances, and awakenings, suggesting that every layer of reality may conceal another dream.
• The danger of wish fulfillment: Ji Jue’s reunion with Wen Wen and his effortless victory are precisely what make the illusion suspicious. The dream offers him what he most desires.
• Identity and memory: Ji Jue’s doubts about his inventions, accomplishments, lost relationships, and missing memories raise questions about whether his personality and history have been altered.
• Stagnation versus growth: His fear that he has stopped progressing reflects a deeper anxiety that his life has become a repetitive illusion disguised as achievement.
• Matter versus fantasy: Wen Wen’s Waste Ruins power represents immutable physical existence, while the serpent and Paradise represent mutable dreams, imagination, and deception.
• False victory and cyclical struggle: Even after apparent triumph, the battle resets, emphasizing how difficult it is to escape the dream system.

Character Interactions

• Wen Wen taunts the serpent and confronts it directly, while the serpent responds with rage and denial.
• Wen Wen and Ji Jue coordinate their attacks, with her holding back the dream tide so he can fire Tears of Isis.
• After the apparent battle, Wen Wen and Ji Jue share alcohol, confess mutual concern, and promise to return together. Their intimate exchange becomes the emotional center of the false dream.
• Ji Jue later mocks the serpent’s illusion for relying on clichés and distorted characterization, revealing that he has recognized the deception.
• Ji Jue interacts with Isis in the workshop, dismissing her practical advice as he becomes consumed by his investigation into reality.
• The chapter ends with Wen Zheng silently observing the reconstructed Paradise, while countless trapped souls remain immersed in dreams.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Myriad Transformation Paradise unfolds again, drawing the souls of countless Dream Loss Syndrome victims from across the Thousand Isles, Central Earth, the Empire, and the Federation. Their souls are drained by the Giant Tree, leaving only unresolved desires.
• Wen Zheng confronts Tian Yi, who appears after observing the phenomenon. Wen dismisses the destruction as a child’s tantrum but uses the Sower’s recent activities and the threat of another Vortex upheaval to pressure Tian Yi into making a deal. He specifically threatens the stability of the Federation’s secret Heavenly Capital Plan.
• Within the dream, Ji Jue realizes that the world may be false. Although he lacks affinity with the key Superior Virtues—Heart Pivot, Mirror, and Ether—he reasons that an artificial world must have limits and scarce resources.
• To expose those limits, Ji Jue builds an enormous simulation array, recreating reality and then placing another simulation inside it—the beginning of a “nesting dolls” experiment. The effort severely damages his body and spirit, but he persists until the simulated world collapses.
• Ji Jue awakens in what appears to be an ordinary life with Ye Chun, wedding preparations, and a peaceful home. However, he feels that something essential is missing and repeatedly experiences déjà vu, contradictions, and fragments of forgotten dreams.
• He cycles through increasingly unstable dream scenarios involving Isis, Lu Ma, Ye Chun, Wen Jie, and others. Their behavior feels wrong, and each apparent awakening only leads into another layer of uncertainty.
• Ji Jue finally seeks out his teacher, Ye Xian. She explains that whether she is real or merely a dream construct, she cannot prove the truth of the world. She reminds him that the only way to escape an inescapable illusion may be to sever consciousness completely through death.
• Ye Xian provides him with a gun and bullet, warning that the method will work only if he possesses absolute certainty and resolve. Ji Jue shoots himself, apparently dying.
• His death causes the false world to collapse. The dream-Ye Xian recognizes that he correctly identified the illusion and praises him before disappearing with the dream.

Character Developments

• Wen Zheng demonstrates his characteristic indifference and cunning. He treats the catastrophe casually but reveals that he is willing to threaten Tian Yi’s most sensitive political and strategic concerns to protect the child’s wish.
• Tian Yi remains stern and hostile, but Wen Zheng’s mention of the Heavenly Capital Plan visibly unsettles him, showing the gravity of the threat.
• Ji Jue develops from a skeptical investigator into someone willing to sacrifice everything to verify reality. His Artisan mindset drives him to construct increasingly ambitious simulations, while his repeated dream cycles test his identity, memory, and willpower.
• Ji Jue’s relationship with Isis becomes a crucial source of doubt. He realizes that the obedient, emotionless figure before him is not the companion he remembers, suggesting that the dream is imperfectly recreating people.
• Ye Xian acts as both mentor and final test. Her cold, unsympathetic logic forces Ji Jue to recognize that no external authority can certify reality for him; he must make the final decision himself.
• Ji Jue’s determination ultimately becomes absolute. By choosing death without relying on anyone else, he proves that he has understood the nature of the illusion.

Significant Themes

• Reality versus illusion: The chapter questions whether perception, memory, and relationships can ever prove that the world is real.
• Limits as evidence: Ji Jue reasons that a fabricated world must be constrained by the creator’s resources and understanding. Those limitations can be exposed through reckless experimentation.
• Identity and memory: The repeated dream layers distort Ji Jue’s memories and relationships, showing how easily a false world can imitate familiarity while still feeling fundamentally wrong.
• Self-reliance and certainty: No outside person can conclusively tell Ji Jue whether he is dreaming. Escape requires absolute personal conviction.
• Sacrifice and death: Death is presented as the ultimate severing of consciousness from an illusion, though the chapter emphasizes the danger of hesitation or incomplete resolve.
• Manipulation and power: Wen Zheng’s exchange with Tian Yi shows how higher powers treat immense human suffering as leverage in larger political and metaphysical conflicts.

Character Interactions

• Wen Zheng and Tian Yi: Their polite but hostile conversation is a battle of threats and negotiation. Wen uses humor and apparent helplessness to conceal a direct warning about the Sower and the Heavenly Capital Plan.
• Ji Jue and Ye Chun: Their domestic interaction initially suggests a happy, ordinary life, but its artificial perfection intensifies Ji Jue’s suspicion that something is wrong.
• Ji Jue and Isis: Their exchange exposes Isis’s unnatural obedience. When Isis accepts being called “Father” without emotional reaction, Ji Jue realizes that this version of her lacks the personality of his true companion.
• Ji Jue and the people from his memories: Calls and encounters with Lu Ma, Ye Chun, and Wen Jie create emotional pressure, but Ji Jue increasingly recognizes them as distractions or imperfect dream constructs.
• Ji Jue and Ye Xian: Their final dialogue combines mentorship, philosophical debate, and emotional restraint. Ye Xian refuses to validate his theory, yet gives him the means to test it, allowing Ji Jue to reach the answer independently.