Chapter Summaries

Saintess Xue Yi used the Goddess’s responses to challenge the temple’s control and propose that ordinary men serve as Saintesses. The Divine Envoy rejected the apparent divine approval, and the ceremony ended in a confrontation between the temple and the Players.

• The Goddess closed her eyes to confirm that she still needed Saintesses, but did not respond when Xue Yi asked whether she needed children born to Saintesses.
• As believers began questioning the Saintesses’ role, the Divine Envoy defended the Goddess Cult and tried to interrupt Xue Yi’s questions.
• Xue Yi announced that she wanted to hand the Saintesses’ duties to people better suited to communicate with the Goddess.
• Two Players brought a young man with parents from different districts onto the altar, and the Goddess closed her eyes when Xue Yi asked whether she would accept his service.
• The Divine Envoy accused Xue Yi of faking a divine sign, and the temple and local Players surrounded the altar as the ceremony descended into chaos.

The Divine Envoys and Saintesses accused each other of deceiving the faithful, and a player exposed the Envoys’ abuse before attacking them. As the temple erupted into fighting and the Goddess remained silent, the Divine Envoys opened eye-carved gemstones and called for her to kill the rebels.

• The Goddess statue appeared to punish Xue Yi with a gaze, strengthening the Divine Envoys’ claims against the Saintesses.
• A woman player accused the Divine Envoys of impersonating the Goddess and forcing Saintesses to bear children, then attacked the Envoy on the central altar.
• Other players revealed themselves and surrounded the altar, while the faithful knelt and prayed amid the fighting.
• Xu Huo watched the unresponsive Goddess statue as the battle reached a stalemate and the Divine Envoys produced transparent gemstones carved with eyes.
• The central Divine Envoy raised his gemstone and called on the Goddess to kill the traitors, and the carved eye opened.

The Goddess statue unleashed a citywide mental attack that pulled nearly every Player into the Dungeon after the Saintesses killed a Divine Envoy. Left behind, Xue Yi challenged the Goddess Cult’s reproductive rules, while another Divine Envoy argued that the cult protected dual-sex people and the district from outsiders.

• Players attacked the Divine Envoys and seized two gemstones, gaining the upper hand over the temple faction.
• The captive Saintess impaled herself on a Divine Envoy’s blade, and the other Saintesses killed him with his own knife.
• Worshippers mourned that the Goddess had abandoned them as the temple battle became secondary to their cries.
• The Goddess statue’s eyes opened and unleashed a mental shock that incapacitated people across the city and transported surviving Players into the Dungeon.
• Xue Yi accused the Divine Envoys of forcing Saintesses to bear children and persecuting healthy children, and called for dual-sex people to disappear.
• A Divine Envoy defended the Goddess Cult as necessary to protect dual-sex descendants and keep the district safe from outsiders.

Saintess Xue Yi and the other Saintesses rebelled against the Divine Envoy and chose death rather than accept the Goddess Cult’s control. Xu Huo intervened at the last moment, stopped the violence, and confronted the Divine Envoy.

• Xue Yi denounced the Divine Envoy’s treatment of hermaphrodites and charged at him, but his protective device repelled her as Players entered Holy Land City.
• After the Goddess failed to answer Xue Yi’s plea, a pregnant Saintess declared that she and her descendants would not live in humiliation and killed herself.
• More than twenty Saintesses took their own lives on the central altar, prompting others to follow, while the Players struggled to stop them.
• Xue Yi removed her veil and robes and prepared to kill herself, but Xu Huo stopped time and appeared on the central altar.
• Xu Huo disabled the surrounding Players, killed a Divine Envoy, and forced the Players from the Temple into the square.
• Xu Huo ordered the Divine Envoy beside him to remove the device hiding his appearance so they could speak face-to-face.

Xu Huo challenged the Goddess by killing her followers and exposing the monstrous form hidden beneath her statue. The believers rejected what they saw as an illusion, while Blondie rallied the Outer District Players to attack the Dungeon.

• A Hai woke amid the chaos and saw Saintesses fighting players and one dead beside him.
• Xu Huo taunted the Divine Envoy, demanded that someone summon the Goddess, and killed players around the altars.
• Xu Huo questioned Xue Yi about reaching the Goddess and argued that she was too weak to confront him.
• Xu Huo struck the Goddess statue with a Space Ray blade, revealing a humanoid creature covered in eyes beneath its appearance.
• The believers accused Xu Huo of creating an illusion and attacked him, but he threw them out of the temple.
• Blondie gathered the Outer District Players and proposed tearing the Dungeon apart together.

Players argued over whether to destroy the Dungeon by killing the believers or razing Holy Land City, while Xu Huo asked how the proposed plan would work. The local Players raised spatial barriers around the temple and square, and heavy thuds sounded from inside the temple.

• Blondie proposed dealing with the Dungeon from outside, but an elderly local Player rejected the plan and argued that stranded Players should be considered.
• An A-class Player dismissed the local Players, and Blondie urged Xu Huo to demonstrate his time-based item; Xu Huo said he was interested in seeing the Goddess and asked how they planned to demolish the Dungeon.
• An A-class Player revealed a powerful item that could cover Holy Land City and suggested killing its inhabitants to erase the believers and the Dungeon.
• Blondie and other Players objected to massacring the city, while Xu Huo questioned why the A-class Player needed their cooperation if he already had a way to destroy the Dungeon and the city.
• The elderly local Player and his companions raised three spatial barriers around the streets, square, and temple as local Players evacuated believers and watched Xu Huo and the A-class Player.
• The A-class Player complained that the barriers made it harder to destroy the Dungeon, and heavy thuds came from inside the temple.

Xu Huo killed the players who entered the temple, then forced the locals to bargain by demonstrating that their defenses could not stop him. He took the Divine Envoy’s living eye and agreed to leave with the promised items, while A Hai pleaded for the Saintess and the people.

• Xu Huo killed more than thirty players at the altar and broke through the temple barrier to confront the crowd.
• Xu Huo offered to spare the local players if they let him kill only the stranded players, but the old man instead offered mental Artifacts and information about a place where mental power gathered.
• Xu Huo accepted the offer, then demanded compensation and took the living eye from the Divine Envoy after the old man tried to attack him with it.
• Xu Huo killed the Divine Envoy and stopped the old man’s followers from retaliating.
• A Hai grabbed Xu Huo’s leg and begged him not to hurt Saintess Xue Yi or the local people.
• Xu Huo told A Hai that he would take the items as agreed and leave, leaving everyone else’s fate to them.

Xu Huo took the Goddess’s tokens from Saintess Xue Yi and proposed having the believers tear down the Goddess Hall to destroy the Goddess Cult. The believers and Sub-district players resisted, and when the battle began, Xu Huo kicked the Goddess statue away, triggering a spiritual attack that forced players across the city to flee.

• An Outer District player questioned the old man’s account, so the old man gave Xu Huo a recorder, which Xu Huo confirmed was genuine.
• Xu Huo sent Saintess Xue Yi to retrieve the Dungeon items and explained that the Goddess Cult and its believers were key to the Dungeon’s creation.
• Saintess Xue Yi returned with three boxes of the Goddess’s tokens, and Xu Huo said the believers should tear down the Goddess Hall themselves.
• The believers refused to destroy the hall and rallied to protect the Goddess, while the Sub-district players prepared to fight the Dungeon-clearing players.
• The A-class player started the battle, and Xu Huo kicked the Goddess statue out of the hall, causing its eyes to unleash spiritual attacks that drove players to flee the city.
• As Xu Huo escaped the spiritual attack, he complained that the Goddess was repaying his help with betrayal.

Xu Huo realized the instance encompassed Holy Land City and possibly the entire Sub-district, then joined a group of players heading to the Holy Land Temple. There, the players discovered that people Xu Huo had apparently killed were alive inside, leading them to suspect the battle had been an illusion and that he had used them as cannon fodder.

• Xu Huo entered the instance when he stepped onto the street and learned that players could not leave Holy Land City through the surrounding fog.
• Xu Huo concluded that the instance covered the whole Sub-district, while players speculated that it had changed and begun swallowing people at random.
• Xu Huo traveled with Zhong Zhi and other players toward the Holy Land Temple, gathering twenty-three people along the way.
• At the temple, Blondie told Zhong Zhi that players who should have died were alive inside, and the group saw them confronting one another.
• The players concluded that Xu Huo had staged the apparent killings with an illusion and drawn them out as cannon fodder, though they remained unsure who he was working for.

Xu Huo and the others entered the temple to clear the fourteen-day dungeon and found faint, uneven concentrations of mental force that could disable monitoring devices. As the group settled into shelters, players began fighting over limited space, and a Ticket player was hurled into a Goddess statue.

• Xu Huo reminded the players that clearing the dungeon was their priority, and Zhong Zhi led his group into the temple.
• The group learned that stranded players remembered staying in the temple for more than ten days but had failed to clear the dungeon, so they prepared shelters and anti-interference gear.
• Xu Huo detected scattered concentrations of mental force and watched one destroy an anti-interference monitoring device.
• Xu Huo entered Cabin in the Storm while players from several groups fought over space inside the temple.
• A stranded player punched a Ticket player's shield, sending him into a Goddess statue and apparently breaking his arm and ribs.

After the Goddess statue’s cloth was removed, its gaze killed several players before the temple players covered it again. Xu Huo discovered that players were disappearing through a temple wall and suspected the Dungeon’s mental interference was worsening, then searched the Temple of Inquiry for whoever was hiding there.

• The player with the Ticket tore away the cloth covering the Goddess statue, and its opened eyes killed him and several nearby players.
• A temple player used his powers to cover the statue again, then warned the others that the temple held many such statues and retreated behind the doors with his companions.
• Players wondered whether anyone had survived the Dungeon before them, while Xu Huo rested and considered the statue’s indiscriminate attacks.
• A player left the side hall, entered another temple, and vanished into a wall behind the Goddess statue; Xu Huo searched the temple but found no trace of him.
• Xu Huo returned to the side hall and found that several players and their items had disappeared, then went to the Temple of Inquiry and used his Spiritual World to search its walls.

Xu Huo confronted the Goddess of the Temple of Inquiry, who revealed that she was an evolved plant and explained her history with Little Sprout. She sensed another plant seed within him, and Xu Huo took out the mental Super Artifact he had recovered from Dou Shengnan’s eye.

• The Goddess trapped Xu Huo in a mental landscape of blood and corpses, but he destroyed the giant eye and escaped the illusion with the Big Mushroom Cloud.
• The Goddess appeared and told Xu Huo she sensed one of her kind in him, clarifying that it was a seed rather than a Stone.
• The Goddess explained that she had begun as a seed planted by Little Sprout and had spread across most of the Sub-district after learning from its people.
• The Goddess said the temple’s eyes had been cut from her and that the eye in Xu Huo’s box had been made into an Artifact.
• Xu Huo took out the mental Super Artifact he had dug out of Dou Shengnan’s eye after the Goddess identified the presence within him as a seed made into an Artifact.

Xu Huo traded the Super Artifact for a seed and asked the Goddess to teach him about spiritual power and protect A Hai. As Xu Huo studied in the Temple of Inquiry, Players across the temple suffered heavy losses, and Blondie feared he would die after his arm grew more eyes.

• The Goddess removed the seed from the Super Artifact, and Xu Huo stored it in a flowerpot after she planted it in soil.
• Xu Huo asked the Goddess how spiritual power could persist outside its original body, and she explained that spirits could not exist forever after the body perished.
• Xu Huo asked the Goddess to look after A Hai, and she agreed to teach Xu Huo how spiritual power could be condensed.
• Xu Huo remained in the Temple of Inquiry for several days, while more than half the Players who had entered it died.
• Blondie lamented that Players had betrayed him and watched the number of living eyes on his arm increase from five to ten.

Xu Huo found blondie trapped in the temple’s mental interference and restored his access to the Personal Panel by opening his Spiritual World. After learning how the players had been affected, he confronted an A-class player and used a hidden Goddess statue against him, leaving the man overwhelmed by crawling eyeballs.

• Xu Huo entered blondie’s view through a rift in the Spiritual World and restored blondie’s Personal Panel.
• Blondie told Xu Huo that players had been killing one another to transfer the eyes on their arms, while others died from the instance’s mental interference.
• An A-class player recognized Xu Huo and attacked him, but Xu Huo matched his punch and held his ground.
• Xu Huo pointed out that the instance was not closed, and blondie realized they would not be trapped in the temple if they failed to clear it.
• Xu Huo led the A-class player toward a temple, used the command “Stop” to halt him, and pulled a hidden Goddess statue from the wall.
• The Goddess statue’s eyes burst open, and swarms of eyeballs overwhelmed the A-class player and weakened his interference items.

Xu Huo left Holy Land City after killing an A-class Player with the Goddess’s help and reflecting on his developing mental abilities. On a crowded train to B37-008 District, he intimidated a group of Cannibal Players, then tried to study the Goddess’s handwritten evolution notes before heading to the restaurant.

• An A-class Player was overwhelmed and killed by eyes growing from the walls, and Xu Huo concluded the Goddess had singled him out because he carried an explosive artifact.
• Xu Huo tested his improved mental control, gave blondie directions to hide in the temple, and thanked the Goddess before leaving.
• On the train to B37-008 District, Xu Huo realized his presence had become so faint that other Players kept bumping into him.
• Xu Huo moved beside the Cannibal Players and used his Space Power to make them withdraw and give up their seats.
• Xu Huo struggled to read the Goddess’s handwritten evolution knowledge, put away the booklet, and decided to visit the restaurant.

Xu Huo heard Players in the dining car discuss a deadly contest between the top two Players on the B-class wormhole point joint leaderboard. A storyteller claimed that Most Love Minmin challenged Cold Knife Cold Arrow Cold Heart after discovering she had sabotaged his efforts to claim first place and was involved with his childhood sweetheart.

• Xu Huo joined a table of Cannibal Players, and a woman at the table sarcastically questioned his manners.
• Xu Huo overheard Players discussing a fight to the death between second-ranked Most Love Minmin and top-ranked Cold Knife Cold Arrow Cold Heart.
• A Player told the dining car that Most Love Minmin had pursued his childhood sweetheart for decades, believing he needed to become a leaderboard's top Player to win her over.
• The storyteller claimed Most Love Minmin discovered his sweetheart and Cold Knife Cold Arrow Cold Heart were together, and that Cold Knife Cold Arrow Cold Heart had repeatedly sabotaged him to keep her first-place ranking.

Xu Huo considered the limits of genetic modification and the hidden powers within the game while traveling by train. When a Player attacked him in Car 7, Xu Huo trapped him with Space Ray blades and demanded to know why he had tried to kill him.

• A boasting Player told the train passengers that the two A-class fighters had a long history of rivalry and that one Minmin came from an old family and could control Space Power from birth.
• Players debated whether Super Evolution could be inherited or produced through genetic modification, while Xu Huo thought about Stellar Group's experiments and the Magician's absence.
• A tattooed Player encouraged Xu Huo not to dwell on his troubles, and Xu Huo said he was preparing to take revenge on his enemies.
• After returning to the crowded Car 7, Xu Huo was attacked, but Carousel briefly stopped time and revealed the attacker.
• Xu Huo used mental power, Space Power, and tangents to trap the attacker in a barrage of Space Ray blades, then demanded an explanation; the Player denied attacking him.

Xu Huo fought and killed a player who repeatedly escaped his attacks, then questioned the other player caught with him. The surviving player described the terrifying power of advanced Super Evolvers.

• Xu Huo trapped two fleeing players in his carriage and fought the attacker, who vanished after being cut in half.
• Xu Huo used the eye lantern to intensify mental interference and killed the attacker when he tried to escape again.
• Xu Huo restrained the second player, who said he had run because he feared Mental Evolvers and had no connection to the attacker.
• Xu Huo collected the dead player's items, found no clues to his escape ability, and asked the survivor about Mental Evolvers.
• The survivor described a Super Evolver who controlled an entire city's residents and nearly caused the country to be wiped out.

Xu Huo discovered that someone had posted a private bounty targeting Mental Evolvers aboard trains passing through B37, and that he had been one of its targets. After the bomber was killed before revealing the bounty’s location, the tattooed man offered to sell the dead Player’s belongings instead.

• A Player warned Xu Huo about violent Mental Evolvers, and Xu Huo found a note identifying him as a B-class Mental Evolver.
• An explosion rocked the train, and the tattooed man and other Players captured the attacker.
• Under the effects of a Potion, the attacker revealed that he had tried to kill Xu Huo and a Player in Carriage Eleven for a private bounty targeting Mental Evolvers on trains passing through B37.
• The tattooed man killed the attacker before he could reveal which sub-district held the bounty’s reward.
• The tattooed man offered to sell the attacker’s belongings so interested Players could seek the bounty information without questioning him.

Xu Huo and Yong An were moved to the first carriage after players discovered a bounty targeting B-level Mental Evolvers. After a day of calm, another group of bounty hunters attacked Yong An, and their poison threatened players throughout the train.

• Players debated whether Xu Huo and Yong An should be moved to another carriage, and Xu Huo agreed they should go to the first carriage.
• Xu Huo and Yong An traveled there under the tattooed man's escort, and Yong An said he was going to watch the rankings tournament.
• Nie Xuan told Xu Huo that the Ghastly Sound Knights had vanished from District 008 and that Dou Shengnan had been forced to leave after pursuing an unclear goal.
• Just before lights-out, several new players boarded and one attacked Yong An, who used his Ability to freeze the carriage's players and escaped into the second carriage.
• A female attacker blew black powder across the carriages, and the poison quickly burned the skin of the tattooed man, his companions, and other players.