Chapter Summaries

Lin Chen and Su Mu learned how the Evolution Virus created the intelligent Brain in a Vat that took over Yun Cang City and tormented its survivors. After Li Nuowei led them to the underground base, Lin Chen suspected the account concealed something and questioned how Li Nuowei had survived.

• Li Nuowei explained that researchers injected the Evolution Virus into the brains of the recently dead as part of the Brain in a Vat experiment, and the mutated brains gained intelligence and control over people.
• The Brain in a Vat infiltrated the city's law enforcement and defense forces, took control of Yun Cang City, and turned it into a hunting ground.
• Li Nuowei led Lin Chen and Su Mu through a hidden elevator to an underground survivor base, where they saw about three hundred people with enlarged brains and numb expressions.
• Li Nuowei described how the Brain in a Vat used altered relatives and visions of a world consumed by fire to drive survivors into fear, despair, and madness.
• The captain said he and the Demolition Expert planned to infiltrate the monster's nest, while Li Nuowei urged Lin Chen and Su Mu to report the threat to civilization's leaders.
• After Li Nuowei left them to rest, Lin Chen told Su Mu that one part of his story troubled him: how Li Nuowei had survived.

Lin Chen and Su Mu questioned Li Nuowei’s account and concluded that Yun Cang City might be suffering from multiple supernatural disasters. They chose to investigate further, but Su Mu’s Micro Drones discovered a mysterious underground space beneath the Survivor Base that blocked their signals.

• Lin Chen pointed out contradictions in Li Nuowei’s story, including how he knew so much about the Brain in a Vat yet had survived untouched.
• Lin Chen reasoned that Li Nuowei and others were urging them to leave despite it seeming advantageous for the Brain in a Vat to keep them there, and he connected the mystery to his dream and the warning text message.
• Lin Chen and Su Mu considered whether Yun Cang City had suffered multiple disasters, and Lin Chen decided to continue investigating despite the danger.
• Su Mu sent Micro Drones through a crack in the wall to scout the Survivor Base and found no obvious abnormalities in its corridors or rooms.
• Su Mu detected that some Micro Drones had vanished and concluded that a mysterious underground space beneath the Survivor Base was blocking electronic signals.

Lin Chen and Su Mu entered a signal-blocking underground passage that distorted their senses and filled them with growing negative emotions. After Lin Chen uncovered disturbing murals, Su Mu was drawn into a vision of twelve indescribable beings, but human voices declared that they were human, not monsters, and that the world belonged to them.

• Lin Chen and Su Mu used optical camouflage to reach a hidden entrance, and Lin Chen set a twelve-hour deadline before a nuclear strike would be activated if contact was lost.
• The pair descended into a light-swallowing passage with yielding, flesh-like walls and heard whispers that steadily intensified their fear and agitation.
• Lin Chen suggested their route might be misleading and scraped away the wall, exposing strange living tissue covered in pictographic murals.
• Lin Chen and Su Mu found images depicting a burning city, cruel rituals, and human brains merging in a laboratory.
• Su Mu fell into a vision of twelve immense, distorted figures, but a chorus declared, "We are human," and rejected the monsters.

After being swept from the other-dimensional wilderness, Su Mu awoke in his room in Yun Cang City as it had been months earlier, stripped of his Black Technology equipment. His parents took him to a Crematorium for an unexplained Coming-of-Age Ceremony, where he realized something was controlling him.

• Su Mu found himself back in his room, without his armor, weapons, or backpack, and heard his mother call him to prepare for his Coming-of-Age Ceremony.
• Su Mu saw the calendar dated August 25 and found Yun Cang City intact, despite believing it was impossible for time to have been reversed.
• Su Mu learned that Lin Chen had gone ahead to perform ancestral worship and followed his parents toward a Crematorium.
• Su Mu noticed the Crematorium was eerily silent and decayed, then entered a windowless room with his parents and a statue.
• Su Mu's parents filled the room with fragrant smoke, and he watched helplessly as they brought out gasoline and announced his Coming-of-Age Ceremony.