Chapter Summaries

The narrator investigated a surge of ghosts at the police station and realized that a hospital blackout had likely caused deaths whose spirits were gathering there. A brief flash revealed slaughtered officers, the cane-carrying old man, and a Reaper, and the narrator concluded that the ghosts could no longer reach the Underworld.

• The narrator spotted a cane-carrying ghost entering the crowded police station and asked Nantian to find out what had happened to the rescued young woman.
• The narrator recognized that several arriving ghosts wore hospital gowns and connected their deaths to the blackout and failed hospital equipment.
• The narrator used a clogged-bathroom excuse to enter the station corridor as the sinister aura grew more turbulent.
• A policewoman was dragged through a wall by a ghost, and the narrator followed a trail of blood into the dark corridor.
• The narrator tried to reason with the ghosts, then saw the officers' bodies, the cane-carrying old man, and a Reaper when the emergency light flashed.
• The narrator realized that the ghosts had gathered because they could no longer get to the Underworld.

Lin Qi escaped the police station after the trapped ghosts killed people, then reunited with Liu Miao outside. As the ghosts demanded passage to the underworld, a new ghost rose from a corpse and decapitated the old man leading them.

• Lin Qi destroyed a ghost that lunged at him, but a crowd entering the station panicked when the lights went out and the ghosts attacked them.
• Lin Qi fled through the lobby as the ghosts chased survivors outside and their yin energy grew more dangerous.
• Liu Miao burned a ghost to ashes and told Lin Qi that nobody in the district could leave because something had gone wrong.
• The ghosts repeated that they wanted to go to the underworld, and the grim reaper dissipated after another ghost threw him down.
• A ghost rose from a corpse, seized the old man, and tore off his head.

After escaping the police station, Liu Miao joined the narrator, the Skinny Man, and Nantian to discuss the anomalous space and the missing Greenleaf members. Liu Miao learned that Gu Mo, Nangong Yao, and Wu Ling had been found, then proposed demonstrating his ability at a place he had planned to visit.

• The ghosts in the police station crumbled into yin energy, leaving a child's fading cry as Liu Miao and the narrator escaped.
• The narrator introduced the Skinny Man and Nantian to Liu Miao, and they moved to a park to talk.
• Liu Miao explained that he and the chief had entered the anomalous space to investigate it, then asked whether Nangong had been found.
• The narrator confirmed that Gu Mo, Nangong Yao, and Wu Ling had all been found, and Liu Miao reacted with relief.
• Nantian said five years had passed in the real world, and Liu Miao suggested several possible explanations for the anomalous space and their lost memories.
• Nantian questioned why Liu Miao trusted them, and Liu Miao said he trusted the chief and recognized Nantian from a photo; he then offered to demonstrate his ability at a place he planned to visit.

Liu Miao explained that a portal had drawn Yangshan District into another dimension, and the group considered using other portals to escape. They identified several possible portals in People's Celebration City, but the narrator doubted the route was safe and wondered whether Ye Qing had returned as a ghost.

• Liu Miao said he and Ye Qing had investigated a suspected portal before Liu Miao lost part of his memory and woke in Yangshan District.
• Liu Miao concluded that sealing the portal would not restore Yangshan District because the real world had forgotten the district and its residents.
• Liu Miao proposed that Ye Qing might have returned to the real world through another portal, but the narrator warned that other dimensions were dangerous and unpredictable.
• Liu Miao said the boss had found a portal after noticing an unusual number of ghosts in People's Celebration City.
• The narrator counted the known ghosts and suggested that the package might also have been a ghost from the future, meaning there could be three portals.
• The narrator wondered whether Ye Qing had died in the future world and escaped to the office as a ghost.

After reuniting with Liu Miao, the group discussed how he might have died and how they could escape the otherworld, then followed him through the neighborhood toward its entrance. Nantian recognized their destination as possibly Chengxin Garden.

• Liu Miao agreed that he might have died on the road, while the narrator explained that his ability could destroy the otherworld’s entrances and exits.
• Nantian defended his role in bringing the group there, and Liu Miao reassured him that Greenleaf had kept him uninformed to protect him.
• Liu Miao led the narrator, Nantian, and the skinny man through a park and a residential community, where residents offered them a place to sleep.
• Nantian recognized the direction they were heading and asked whether the thing they sought was in Chengxin Garden.

Liu Miao explained Greenleaf’s investigation into a suspicious blank spot in Lantian Residential Complex, next to Chengxin Garden, and discussed what they knew about separate spaces. The group reached the complex, where they hoped to investigate what might have changed after Yangshan District became a separate space.

• Liu Miao said Greenleaf’s software had identified Buildings 13 and 14 in Lantian Residential Complex as the only blank spot in the pattern of ghost activity around People's Celebration City.
• Liu Miao described reports of hauntings in nearby Buildings 15 and 11 and explained how Ye Qing and the others had systematically investigated the area.
• Liu Miao told the narrator that Master Xuanqing and other senior paranormal investigators had discovered gateways to separate spaces long ago, though their nature remained unclear.
• The narrator asked whether Liu Miao had entered separate spaces, and Liu Miao said he and his colleagues had entered different ones but had never seen the entrance near their office open.
• Liu Miao said the entrance in Lantian Residential Complex might require a specific trigger and that he had hurried there because Yangshan District’s transformation could have changed it.
• Liu Miao led the group through an iron gate and pointed out Lantian Residential Complex.

Liu Miao led the narrator and their companions to the suspicious apartment in Building 13 and picked its gate lock. They investigated the building before knocking on the fifth-floor apartment, where Mr. Cheng opened the door and invited them inside.

• Liu Miao showed the group Buildings 13 and 14 and picked the iron gate lock to Building 13.
• Liu Miao led the group through the dark stairwell, and the narrator noticed a roof hatch that appeared not to have been opened in a long time.
• Liu Miao knocked on the suspicious fifth-floor apartment door, and the group heard a cane and a bottle moving inside.
• Mr. Cheng opened the door with a cane in hand, confirmed his identity, and invited the group inside.

Liu Miao questioned Cheng Jiu about the strange events and the other dimension, but a burst of static interrupted their conversation and the narrator was pulled into a black hole. The narrator arrived in a war-scarred field, where the body they inhabited healed a broken leg and began moving through the unfamiliar place.

• Liu Miao confronted Mr. Cheng about the day's events, and Cheng Jiu said the place was beyond saving and that the answers they sought were in a room.
• Liu Miao identified the man as Cheng Jiu and questioned him about his family and identity.
• Cheng Jiu admitted he had come from another dimension and had been trapped in the room since arriving with a broken leg.
• As Cheng Jiu began to explain the other dimension, electrical static erupted from the bedroom and the narrator's body collapsed.
• A black hole pulled the narrator into another place, where a young man's hand healed the body’s broken leg.
• The narrator found themself in a barren field as the young man wondered if it was a new colony and started moving.

The narrator witnessed several scenes from Cheng Jiu’s past, learning that Cheng Jiu had once ruled an alternate territory and later sought its entrance after growing weaker. In another scene, Cheng Jiu presided over public executions decided by a poll and a daily keyword, while the narrator remained unsure of the rules behind his rule.

• The narrator recalled that Yangshan District might involve repeated events or travel through different points in time as Mr. Cheng walked toward the fields.
• The scene shifted to April 12, 2038, where Cheng Jiu dropped a glass cup from his apartment balcony and watched a broadcast identify it as the day's keyword.
• In a shabby room, a weakened Cheng Jiu searched for the alternate-space entrance, ignored a middle-aged man's call to work, and grew angry as he remembered his former life as king.
• A later scene showed Cheng Jiu looking over a packed plaza as the crowd chanted for him and the TV announced poll results tied to the keyword "remote control."
• Cheng Jiu ordered executions, and the crowd celebrated when Xue Ze remained on a burning frame and the broadcast accused him of killing his mother; Xue Shijun received a reward and a chance at pardon.

Cheng Jiu’s memories revealed how he had ruled his old territory and how he gradually built a new life around the little girl he rescued. The chapter ended with Cheng Jiu agreeing to have a child with the woman who had grown up beside him.

• Cheng Jiu remembered ruling his territory as the Eternal King, where he judged killings through a daily guessing game and execution.
• Cheng Jiu rejected the little girl’s candy, while growing anxious about his dwindling followers and the arrival of another ghost in his territory.
• Cheng Jiu sensed a murder scene, entered a house, and destroyed a female ghost in a wedding dress who had been frightening the little girl.
• The girl’s parents were dead, so she stayed with Cheng Jiu, asked to attend school, and grew up sharing her news and worries with him.
• The grown woman asked Cheng Jiu to have a child so neither of them would be left alone, and Cheng Jiu agreed.

Cheng Jiu relived the disappearance and murder of Xiaoning before waking from the vision in a hospital in a dark, deserted city. As he explored, he heard a man humming in a lit room at the end of a corridor.

• Cheng Jiu watched a black hole appear and pull Xiaoning away, then remembered how he had arrived in this world.
• Cheng Jiu dreamed that a ghost tortured and killed Xiaoning while demanding to know where the black hole was, then woke sobbing.
• The narrator woke alone in a dark hospital ward and remembered falling into another dimension with Fatty and Nantian.
• The narrator found that the hospital patients and everyone in the city had vanished, while their belongings remained behind.
• The narrator descended the stairwell and heard a man humming near a faint light at the far end of the fourth-floor corridor.

The narrator explored a sealed-off hospital and its surrounding streets while searching for the Skinny Guy, Nan Tian, and Liu Miao. After finding no way out, the narrator returned to the inpatient building, where Doctor Luo noticed them from a window.

• The narrator spotted Doctor Luo reading a patient's file in the doctors' office and quietly left without being seen.
• The narrator searched the vast hospital, climbed a tree, and discovered construction barriers and a tunnel blocking escape.
• The narrator found the hospital entrance sealed and encountered closed shops and a dead-end road among old residential buildings.
• The narrator retraced their steps into the hospital and followed its wall back to the inpatient building.
• Doctor Luo leaned out of a window, asked how the narrator had gotten in, and said he had not seen them before.

The narrator met Cheng Lin, a neurosurgeon trapped in Yangshan District, and learned that its inhabitants repeatedly died and revived in a cycle lasting just over twenty-five hours. After a ghostly nurse passed the room, the narrator questioned whether a ghost had devised the plan to bring Yangshan’s people back.

• The narrator went to Room 414 and met Dr. Luo, who revealed that his name was Cheng Lin and identified himself as a neurosurgeon.
• Cheng Lin suspected the narrator had been captured and explained that Yangshan District lacked resources and its inhabitants repeatedly died and revived.
• Cheng Lin described a theory that returning everyone who belonged to Yangshan District would restore the flow of time, though he mocked the idea and did not identify its source.
• A ghostly nurse paced past the doorway, and Cheng Lin said she appeared once a day and soon left.
• The narrator asked Cheng Lin whether a ghost had come up with the theory.

Cheng Lin explained how Yangshan District had been trapped in a five-year death loop and how a group at the University of Finance and Economics had taken control by bringing outsiders in through packages. The narrator suspected the future ghost was inside the guarded university and wondered whether dying in Yangshan would make them return to life.

• Cheng Lin described how Yangshan District lost utilities and communications, became isolated, and descended into chaos after residents discovered they could not escape.
• Cheng Lin explained that living things repeatedly returned after death, while nonliving objects reset on a roughly twenty-five-hour cycle and consumed resources did not replenish.
• Cheng Lin said a group at the University of Finance and Economics used shipping labels to bring people from outside into Yangshan, claiming the packages could help change conditions.
• Cheng Lin revealed that the university group controlled access, had supplies and replenishing ammunition, and killed him when he tried to resist.
• The narrator concluded that the ghost was likely inside the university but doubted they could get in or survive death as an outsider.

The narrator explored the university hospital with Cheng Lin, hoping to find clues about the ghosts and the university of finance and economics. Cheng Lin led the narrator out of the maze-like hospital, where numerous ghosts gathered, and the chapter ended as child ghosts activated the hospital screen and PA system.

• The narrator asked Cheng Lin about an unfamiliar energy bar produced in 2032, but Cheng Lin said he did not know where it came from.
• Cheng Lin led the narrator through the temporary clinic, where the narrator sensed ghosts in an office and corridor.
• The narrator saw a row of people at the fifth-floor windows and learned from Cheng Lin that many ghosts were trapped in the hospital with the living.
• The narrator and Cheng Lin reached the outpatient lobby, where several child ghosts appeared on the escalator.
• The child ghosts made the display show a distorted cartoon pig and caused the PA system to play eerie music before rushing up to the second floor.

After leaving the hospital, the narrator headed toward the University of Finance and Economics while wondering why the children’s ghosts had watched him. Along the way, he spotted more little ghosts hiding in a children’s clothing store.

• The narrator saw a ring of little ghosts watching him from the hospital roof, then they vanished as Cheng Lin gave him directions east to the University of Finance and Economics.
• The narrator said goodbye to Cheng Lin and walked toward a distant clock tower, which he suspected was part of the university.
• Tired and hungry, the narrator inspected the energy bar Cheng Lin had given him but decided not to eat it because he did not trust its origin.
• The narrator sensed yin energy in a closed children’s clothing store and realized little ghosts were inside the clothes hanging on its walls.
• The little ghosts turned toward the narrator, grinned and giggled, then vanished; he turned away before abruptly looking back.

The narrator encountered child ghosts near the university and learned that a dangerous ghost had trapped them in the district. The ghosts’ absent boss had gone to deal with it, and the narrator offered to investigate and destroy the threat.

• The narrator avoided the university entrance and found child ghosts gathered in a convenience store.
• The narrator asked Huang An how the children had ended up there, and Huang An said they used to play there but could no longer leave.
• A child in a suit explained that a ghost had discarded the place and that their boss had forbidden them from going near the university.
• The narrator learned that the boss had been missing for a long time and suspected that multiple future ghosts and entrances had caused the district’s transformation.
• The narrator offered to go to the university and destroy the dangerous ghost, while the child ghosts watched from the crowded store.

The narrator tried to recruit the child ghosts to help stop the anomaly in Yangshan District, but they hesitated until Nantian arrived with Lili and pointed them toward the ghost behind the crisis. Skinny also reached them, though he arrived in rough shape after riding a ghost-provided bicycle.

• The narrator explained his predicament to the child ghosts and asked them to help him kill the ghost causing the danger.
• Nantian arrived carrying Lili, who reunited with the other child ghosts and drew them into excited admiration of the celebrity.
• Nantian told the narrator that a ghost hiding at Finance University had caused the situation and that Lili could help them sneak in.
• Lili and the other girls eagerly volunteered to help, while some of the boys grumbled about their behavior.
• Skinny arrived on a battered bicycle with two ghosts aboard, and the bicycle vanished beneath him, making him fall onto his butt.

The narrator, Nan Tian, and the thin man entered Economics University with help from Lily and three little ghosts, hoping to find a way out. The narrator passed the entrance checks and was sent to fill out a courier form while staff investigated his fabricated identity.

• Lily used illusions to prepare the group to enter Economics University, and the narrator decided Nan Tian could come along.
• The group set off at dawn with one little ghost accompanying each of them, while Lily concealed Nan Tian and the thin man.
• The narrator found people gathered lifelessly around the university entrance, then used the guard booth to open the gate.
• The narrator pretended he had come to fill out a courier form, and the little ghost in the suit made the young man lead him into the campus.
• Staff questioned the narrator, but the little ghost made them accept a fabricated identity and send him to fill out the form while they checked university records.

The narrator watched a girl being forced by her family to fill out a delivery form, then submitted a fake form and entered the school building. Inside, desperate people filled out forms amid indifference and violence, and the chapter ended as the girl’s family arrived.

• The narrator avoided using the Delivery Ghost’s power to contact Wu Ling and convinced a staff member that he knew someone from the Finance University.
• A girl’s parents and grandmother beat and berated her for withholding information, while the staff member treated the abuse as a family matter.
• The staff member told the girl’s family to give her room, and the narrator submitted a form with random contact information before receiving a receipt.
• The narrator entered the building and saw people frantically filling out forms, praying, or waiting passively.
• A fight broke out among people filling out forms, one man smashed another’s skull with a chair, and the crowd ignored the killing.
• The narrator heard familiar shouting and saw the girl’s family enter the building.