Chapter Summaries

Xu Huo discussed the water Rubik’s Cube’s spatial body with Nie Xuan, who suggested it might offer powerful protection while also posing risks. They tested Nie Xuan’s Spatial Evolution against its barrier, then talked about Temporal Evolution and Xu Huo offered to lend him the Time Tower.

• Nie Xuan explained that the water Rubik’s Cube contained an unusual spatial body that might be layered or changeable, and said Lawrence Li would likely be interested in studying it.
• Xu Huo said he wanted to solve the problem without becoming a lab rat, and Nie Xuan suggested seeking a super instrument or trying Time Power.
• Nie Xuan tested his Space Rays against the Cube’s barrier, but the barrier remained intact and crushed his Space Power.
• Xu Huo and Nie Xuan cooked a poisonous fish with antidote and discussed the Special Defense Department’s unsuccessful group Evolution attempt.
• Nie Xuan said Xu Huo was District 014’s only confirmed Temporal Evolver, and Xu Huo offered to lend him the Time Tower.

Xu Huo and Nie Xuan entered the Ruins beneath the lake to investigate its unstable folded spaces. After their equipment failed and they encountered a boundary where light and Space Power stopped, an unseen force shoved Xu Huo deeper inside.

• Nie Xuan gave Xu Huo a recorder containing information about a former Seventeenth Hospital operator who might be connected to Dr. Zhang.
• Xu Huo and Nie Xuan descended beneath the lake and reached the Ruins, where they passed human-shaped stone statues near the entrance.
• Their communications, detection equipment, lights, and robot failed as they went deeper, leaving only their lighting items usable.
• Xu Huo and Nie Xuan found a boundary that folded back their light and stopped Nie Xuan's Space Ray, so they turned to go around it.
• An almost imperceptible presence swept past them, then struck Xu Huo from behind and shoved him deeper into the Ruins despite his water Rubik's Cube barrier.

Xu Huo was separated from Nie Xuan in the Ruins’ folded space and captured three Stone Statues in the Spatial Crevice. A shifting space crushed and expelled him deeper into the Ruins, where he found dead military Players among overlapping buildings.

• Xu Huo and Nie Xuan were thrown apart when a chaotic force scrambled their items and instruments.
• Xu Huo followed Nie Xuan’s distant voice, was attacked, and pulled a Stone Statue in the Spatial Crevice out of hiding.
• Xu Huo caught two more Stone Statues and realized he had drifted into the second layer of folded space.
• A sudden spatial compression crushed Xu Huo and forced him deeper into the Ruins, where his childhood personality helped pull him free.
• Xu Huo saw overlapping buildings and several dead military Players, some still human and others turned into stone statues.

Xu Huo explored the folded spaces in the underwater Ruins, which he believed were developing into a space-type Dungeon, and searched for a way out. After six hours, he escaped and warned the military not to send anyone else into the Ruins for now.

• Xu Huo examined the Ruins’ unstable folded spaces and decided that merging them with the Seventeenth Hospital would be too risky.
• Xu Huo searched the Ruins, collected some corpses, and tried to use the water Rubik’s Cube to cross spatial passages, but found no exit.
• Nie Xuan, Jiang Qiao, Shangguan Jing, and the others waited on the lake while Xu Huo remained trapped inside.
• Six hours later, Xu Huo pierced the containment barrier and emerged with a surge of water, exhausted and hungry.
• Xu Huo handed over corpses, some of which had turned to stone, and advised the military that the Ruins were an unfinished space-type Dungeon and that no one else should enter.

Xu Huo returned from the Ruins after briefing the military, still troubled by the gaze he had sensed near the burial mounds. Back in Ting City, he reunited with Zhou Ning and Liu Jia and offered to test a time artifact that might help them evolve again.

• Xu Huo told Shangguan Jing and Nie Xuan about the Ruins, explaining that surviving and escaping the folded space required powerful protection and unusual spatial passages.
• Xu Huo returned to Ting City using the Space Teleport Artifact and wondered whether the gaze he had sensed near the burial mounds belonged to a newly born Dungeon Boss.
• Zhou Ning and Liu Jia visited Xu Huo, thanked him for his earlier gifts, and gave him special artifacts and rare Potions in return.
• Xu Huo showed Liu Jia Team Leader Ming's photo and suggested that he might be Professor Han, but Liu Jia was unsure and chose not to press him for answers.
• Xu Huo invited Zhou Ning and Liu Jia to stay and offered to test his time artifact to see whether it could help them evolve a second time.

Xu Huo shared his surplus items with his friends before the group headed to a restaurant for a meal hosted by the painted woman. The painted woman’s ordinary friends arrived with dozens of children and became frightened when they realized the gathering included prominent Players.

• Xu Huo laid out his extra items for Yuan Yao, Zhou Ning, and Liu Jia to choose from, and he gave Yuan Yao an A-class item.
• The painted woman invited her new ordinary friends to the meal, and Yuan Yao booked a private room at a members-only restaurant.
• Tan Yang, Sima Xiao Er, and Gu Yu joined the gathering, bringing more Players and associates to the restaurant.
• The painted woman’s friends arrived with dozens of children and grew uneasy when they recognized the Players at the tables.
• Liu Jia stood up to speak with the frightened guests.

Xu Huo used the painted woman’s ability to locate and kill wanted criminals hiding in Ting City, prompting the Special Defense Department to establish a public wanted list. Afterward, Gu Yu told Xu Huo she planned to move her family to a B-level District as District fusion approached.

• Liu Jia arranged for Yuan Yao to cover the children’s meal, and the group moved to a banquet hall to eat.
• Sima Xiao Er told Xu Huo that players often harmed ordinary people in Ting City and that the Special Defense Department struggled to arrest them.
• Xu Huo asked Team Leader Wu to prepare a wanted list of criminals who could be killed on sight, and the painted woman found nearly thirty of them.
• Xu Huo killed the wanted criminals he could locate and delivered their bodies to the Special Defense Department, while two escaped by entering a Dungeon.
• Xu Huo urged the Special Defense Department to publish a public wanted list, and Gu Yu showed him a B-level District she had chosen for her family.

Gu Yu told Xu Huo why she planned to leave Ting City for a safer B-level sub-district, and Xu Huo offered to lend her money and keep her house available. After the Special Defense Department announced the crimes of the murdered players, Yuan Yao asked whether Xu Huo had made the joint wormhole point leaderboard.

• Gu Yu explained that harassment and danger to her family had made life in District 014 unbearable, so she planned to settle in a B-level sub-district.
• Xu Huo offered to lend Gu Yu money and told her she could keep her Ting City house for the future.
• Yuan Yao and Liu Jia discussed why players like Gu Yu sought safer places to live, and Zhou Ning said that neither strange lands nor home were paradises.
• Tan Yang reported that the Special Defense Department had published the murdered players' crimes and photos while hinting that the Wanted Criminal List had been updated.
• Yuan Yao asked Xu Huo whether his abilities had earned him a place on the joint wormhole point leaderboard, and Xu Huo doubted that he had made it.

Xu Huo and his companions traveled to a forest near Ting City to prepare to use the Time Tower after nightfall, while they waited by demonstrating their evolved Abilities. The chapter ended with Zhou Ning showing the frightening power of her upgraded Medusa Ability.

• Xu Huo chose a densely forested area near Ting City for the Time Tower and asked Team Leader Wu to clear the area ahead of time.
• While they waited for night, Yuan Yao demonstrated Blackout, which blinded people using terminals within five hundred meters for five seconds.
• Liu Jia demonstrated Advance through the darkness, which suppressed the senses and judgment of everyone caught in its darkness except herself.
• Zhou Ning demonstrated her upgraded Middle-Aged Medusa Ability, transforming her hair into hallucination-inducing giant snakes that wrapped Yuan Yao in a cocoon.

Xu Huo helped Zhou Ning try mental support items and talked with her about her struggles before discussing Time Power with Nie Xuan. He explained that Time Power should be understood as a whole moving through time rather than as separable rays, leaving Nie Xuan to consider how this insight could affect Temporal Evolution.

• Xu Huo showed Zhou Ning his Spiritual World and gave her B- and C-grade mental support items to test as a possible aid against enemies.
• Xu Huo helped Zhou Ning work through her feelings and suggested finding something she cared about in District 014 to keep her grounded.
• Nie Xuan and Shen Xin arrived, and Xu Huo confirmed that Gu Yu and Wen Xue Lin were the only others expected.
• Xu Huo and Nie Xuan discussed whether Time Power existed as rays, and Xu Huo demonstrated its effect by making a flower bloom and fade.
• Xu Huo explained that time had no space beneath it and that a District was like a grain of sand in the current of time, prompting Nie Xuan to reconsider the direction of Temporal Evolution.

Xu Huo demonstrated Time Power to his companions, then reopened the Seventeenth Hospital and began upgrading it. The upgrade transformed the hospital on a massive scale, while its final changes remained underway.

• Xu Huo showed Gu Yu, Wen Xue Lin, and the others how Time Power affected space and explained his experience with Temporal Evolution.
• After the group failed to sense Time Power, they stayed together for a meal and went to sleep at Gu Yu's venue.
• Xu Huo entered the Seventeenth Hospital and brought out three stone statues and the special item Best Director in the Director's office.
• The statues hid in spatial rifts, tried to escape the hospital, and attacked Xu Huo before retreating when his water Rubik's Cube barrier blocked them.
• Xu Huo confirmed the Seventeenth Hospital's upgrade, which added buildings and altered its space before expanding the grounds to more than ten times their former size.

After the Seventeenth Hospital was upgraded to a C-class high-level Random Instance, Xu Huo inspected its new facilities and learned how its three rumors shaped the Dungeon. He set three completion tasks, and the game confirmed that Players only needed to complete one of them to clear it.

• The Seventeenth Hospital expanded to eight buildings around a lake, and the game announced its upgrade to a C-class high-level Random Instance.
• The game warned Xu Huo that he had to open the Dungeon regularly to maintain Gray Player status and provided its new background.
• Xu Huo identified the night-eating monster as the three stone statues, the inescapable morgue as a sealed space, and the invisible prison as a separate space reached through random portals.
• Xu Huo entered the morgue and confirmed that the only way out was to find its sole exit.
• Xu Huo submitted three tasks: solve the monster mystery, leave the morgue, or escape the invisible prison.
• The game accepted the tasks and stated that completing any one would clear the Dungeon, then asked whether Xu Huo wanted to add hints.

After upgrading the Seventeenth Hospital dungeon, Xu Huo discussed his experience with Time Power and a new offer from the Special Defense Department with Nie Xuan. He then searched for the Player called Diner, who might possess the Perfect Potion, and began reviewing the leads he had collected.

• Xu Huo warned players to distinguish their identities from their patients’ as he completed the Seventeenth Hospital’s dungeon upgrade.
• Xu Huo returned to the Space Artifacts area and spoke with Nie Xuan, who negotiated an offer of Artifacts and instruments from headquarters in exchange for Xu Huo’s help.
• Xu Huo declined to consider helping the Special Defense Department further unless it could offer a Super Artifact and a Super instrument.
• Xu Huo focused on finding Diner, a Player Dr. Wu had said possessed a Perfect Potion, and sent messages and a bounty seeking information.
• Xu Huo received nearly three hundred leads about people called Diner and brought out his other three personalities to help review them.

Xu Huo researched possible identities for the “Diner” while the group prepared a meal and traded stories about strange dungeons. By evening, Xu Huo had narrowed the search to four high-level players who called themselves “Diners,” as the group prepared for important business that night.

• Yuan Yao and the others returned from fishing, and the group cleaned fish and prepared vegetables together.
• Nie Xuan described a folk-horror dungeon where an enhanced hormone drug changed players’ bodies and made them eager to infect others.
• Xu Huo recounted the dungeon involving the Girl from Enbell, prompting the group to discuss how ordinary people suffered in dangerous dungeons.
• Nie Xuan encouraged Xu Huo to try to bring back a Super Dungeon, and Yuan Yao joked that they might be witnessing a historic moment.
• Xu Huo continued searching for the “Diner” and narrowed the candidates to four high-level players known by that name.

Xu Huo investigated four possible “diners” and focused on one connected to the Fish Feast. While he practiced with the Time Tower, intruders tried to approach and steal it, and he used its Time Power to kill two foreign Players.

• Xu Huo narrowed the diner candidates to four Players and decided to gather more information about them.
• He learned that one candidate had appeared at the Fish Feast, a gathering for which Xu Huo already had an invitation.
• Xu Huo let Zhou Ning experience the simulated Time Power while onlookers gathered outside the cordon.
• Xu Huo used a Mental Portal to eject Players who dug toward his location and warned them not to return.
• After the Special Defense Department expanded the cordon, two intruders slipped inside to steal the Time Tower.
• Xu Huo changed the Time Power affecting the intruders, causing them to develop osteoporosis and die, then handed their bodies to the Special Defense Department for identification.

The Special Defense Department and military moved to protect Xu Huo and his family after foreign Players plotted to kill him and seize the Time Tower. As Xu Huo and his companions trained in the tower, Zhou Ning’s Ability unexpectedly gained a Time Power-like effect, giving the group hope for further changes.

• Minister Ji and Director Du agreed that the military and Special Defense Department would protect Xu Huo and secretly arrest suspicious Players plotting against him.
• The military and Special Defense Department arrested or surrounded foreign infiltrators and local Players who had been bought off, uncovering long-running surveillance of Xu Huo and his family.
• Xu Huo told Nie Xuan he suspected the foreign Players had a Time Power Super Evolver, and asked him to remain while they continued training.
• After a week of training in the Time Tower, Zhou Ning discovered that her snake-like hair could stop anyone who met its eyes for two or three seconds.
• Xu Huo identified Zhou Ning’s new effect as similar to Time Power and asked Nie Xuan and the others to keep it secret from the Special Defense Department.

Xu Huo traveled to District 011 and asked to meet Huahan Werner, hoping he could explain the water Rubik's Cube. Huahan arrived at Rose Castle and demonstrated that the cube could be drawn out of Xu Huo’s chest, then returned to him, calling it a powerful defense at his current stage.

• Xu Huo prepared to leave District 014, called his family, planted mushrooms, and stored the Nuwa Stone and seed before using his Ticket to reach District 011.
• At the Ancient Castle, Xu Huo learned Dr. Deng was visiting a friend and left incoming social invitations to Mr. Dong while sending a Visit Card to the Werner family.
• The Werner family replied that Huahan Werner was away, but Huahan arrived at Rose Castle the following evening and revealed he had been nearby all along.
• Huahan examined Xu Huo’s Time Power, praised his progress, and advised that greater Evolution would help him perceive changes in time.
• Huahan used Time Power to draw the water Rubik’s Cube out of Xu Huo’s chest and make it return, then told Xu Huo it was better than any Defense Artifact at his current stage.

Xu Huo learned that the water Rubik’s Cube was a programmed instrument sealing his Space Power, and Huahan Werner advised him to evolve until he could control or remove it. After Huahan left, Xu Huo considered the favor he owed him, then woke and returned to waiting for news about the Diner.

• Xu Huo asked Huahan Werner whether the water Rubik’s Cube could be removed, and Huahan explained that forced destruction could kill him while further Evolution might let him dispel it naturally.
• Huahan told Xu Huo the instrument had no mind and would remain until damaged or its objective was complete, then offered to teach him about Time Power when he reached a breakthrough.
• Huahan encouraged Xu Huo to use the instrument’s protection to practice against powerful opponents and promised to teach him useful techniques later.
• Huahan vanished, and Xu Huo recognized that the guidance created a difficult favor to repay despite Mr. Dong’s advice to make Huahan a friend.
• Xu Huo slept, woke to the painted woman asking to go shopping, and gave her access to money in an account.
• Xu Huo went to the Study Room to await news about the Diner member from the Fish Feast whom he had targeted with several bounties.

Xu Huo bailed Dr. Deng out of the Enforcement Department after learning he had developed a Gene Potion that could slow Black Thorn Disease. He sent the potion supply to Chang Shoujie for testing and received a grateful reply, while Dr. Deng explained how a medical researchers’ gathering had ended in a brawl and arrests.

• Xu Huo contacted Shi Sanjiu for information about finding the Fish Feast and spent time pruning flowers with Mr. Dong at the Ancient Castle.
• The Enforcement Department asked Xu Huo to bail out Dr. Deng for affray and possession of contraband, but Xu Huo refused until Dr. Deng claimed he had developed a Potion for Black Thorn Disease.
• Xu Huo went to the Enforcement Department and collected the battered Dr. Deng, who admitted his potion could slow the disease and extend patients’ lives.
• Xu Huo sent Dr. Deng’s Gene Potions to Chang Shoujie for testing and included a container item for little Melissa.
• Chang Shoujie sent Xu Huo a grateful reply and a video of Melissa reading, while Dr. Deng explained that a dispute at a medical researchers’ gathering had led to a fight and their arrest.

Xu Huo warned Dr. Deng to stay cautious, approved a large budget for the Laboratory, and prepared to attend the Fish Banquet after Shi Sanjiu obtained an invitation. He left readying expensive defensive equipment, aware the private venue might give its hosts control over players.

• Xu Huo warned the injured Dr. Deng that the Werner family might target him and told him to avoid going out, while Dr. Deng asked for more Laboratory funding.
• Xu Huo told Mr. Dong to record Dr. Deng’s purchases and authorized spending up to half the Ancient Castle’s savings on the Laboratory.
• Shi Sanjiu sent Xu Huo an invitation and address for the Fish Banquet and warned that the private venue might restrict players’ abilities and exploit them.
• Xu Huo considered whether the Fish Banquet could interfere with Tickets and began preparing for the trip.
• Xu Huo bought two A-class mechanical suits, interference devices, and other equipment, while Mr. Dong complained that his spending kept draining the Ancient Castle’s funds.