Chapter Summaries

Shen Xiaorong faced the ghosts of the Shen family’s victims, whose memories revealed the cruelty and bloodshed caused by his reincarnations. After destroying the ghosts, he tried to recruit the narrator as a partner, but suddenly turned to dust and vanished.

• Shen Xiaorong relived Shen Youkang’s murder and struck Shen Youkang’s ghost with his cane, making it disappear.
• The ghosts of Shen family members appeared, and Shen Xiaorong remembered how each had died.
• Shen Xiaorong begged the ghosts to forgive him, and a baby girl approached him as if asking to be held.
• The baby and the ghosts attacked Shen Xiaorong, who pierced the baby with his cane and made the spirits fade away.
• Shen Xiaorong urged the narrator to accept his offer, but his body turned to dust and vanished.

After Shen Xiaorong’s death, Shen Rong examined Bai An’s paintings and learned that Shen Xiaorong had orchestrated the extinction of his bloodline. Shen Rong planned to confront Ye Qing, but as he fell asleep, a strange voice and fireworks stirred him awake.

• Shen Rong called Wu Ling to ask why Ye Qing had killed Shen Xiaorong, and Wu Ling shared Bai An’s paintings depicting Shen Xiaorong’s life.
• Shen Rong recognized the baby girl in the paintings as Shen Xiaorong’s twin sister and the watching eyes as ghosts from the Shen family.
• Wu Ling reported that every traceable Shen family blood relative had died before 2008, leading Shen Rong to conclude that Shen Xiaorong had sought revenge on the whole family.
• Shen Rong decided to visit Workers and Peasants Sixth Village the next day to question Ye Qing and continue searching for the ghosts who had come from the underworld.
• As Shen Rong slept, he heard an unfamiliar young man talking about fireworks and woke when they began bursting.

A ghostly observer watched Brother Xiong and his friends joke around during a livestream as they tried different background effects. When Blade activated an unsettling bedroom effect, a red-nailed hand reached out from beneath the bed.

• The observer recognized Brother Xiong as an amateur streamer and watched him entertain his viewers with a fireworks effect.
• Brother Xiong invited Dahai to try a background effect, and Dahai hilariously used the tiled wall in a bathroom.
• Blade claimed he had professional equipment and eventually set up his phone in front of a projection screen.
• Blade selected a dark bedroom effect, and the lights in its background began flickering.
• A red-nailed hand emerged from beneath the bed in the effect, scraped the floor, and left claw marks.

Dadao’s staged ghost effect turned into a real haunting, and he vanished from the livestream while Brother Xiong and their friends tried to reach him. The chapter ended with Brother Xiong calling the police and giving them Dadao’s account details so they could investigate.

• Dadao pretended to be frightened by a female ghost effect, but the narrator saw sinister energy when the ghost’s head fell off.
• Dadao noticed something off-screen just before Brother Xiong switched to a street effect, then went silent as the group continued playing.
• When Brother Xiong switched back to Dadao’s feed, the screen was black and filled with sinister energy, and Dadao did not respond to calls or messages.
• Brother Xiong grew worried and asked the group where Dadao lived; Dahai drove to the Anjiang residential complex while Brother Xiong called the police.
• Brother Xiong told the emergency operator that Dadao might be in danger and gave them his livestream account name for investigation.

Brother Xiong and the livestream viewers watched Dadao get killed by a headless female ghost, then realized the ghost had followed the stream to Brother Xiong’s phone. The chapter ended as the ghost bent over Brother Xiong, who was still on the floor.

• Brother Xiong called Dadao’s phone, and the screen lit up to reveal blood covering the camera as someone picked it up.
• A bloodied woman carried the phone through the apartment, where Dadao hid by the bed and watched her approach.
• Dadao screamed as his head bent backward and came off, and the narrator saw the headless female ghost’s shoulder reflected in a wedding photo.
• Brother Xiong told Dahai that Dadao was dead, while Dahai tried to persuade the security guard to check the apartment.
• The livestream appeared on Brother Xiong’s phone and showed a bedroom behind him, so he threw the phone against the wall.
• The narrator saw the female ghost standing behind Brother Xiong as she lowered her gaze and bent toward him.

The narrator witnessed the female ghost kill Brother Xiong and Da Dao, then saw their ghosts join her in killing a livestreamer. The dream ended at daylight, leaving the narrator troubled by what the collapse of the underworld meant for the ghosts.

• The female ghost’s head fell into Brother Xiong’s lap, and she and Da Dao killed him by the door.
• The narrator wondered how the female ghost could kill Da Dao despite her weak yin energy and connected the strange events to the collapsed underworld.
• Brother Xiong’s soul watched a stranger livestream a horror effect featuring the female ghost, and Da Dao summoned him to work.
• Brother Xiong and Da Dao held the streamer while the female ghost tore off his head.
• The narrator woke in daylight.

Lin Qi investigated the vanished livestream and learned from Wu Ling that its users and app might have come from a future world through a signal error. Wu Ling then reported that the factory held no ghosts and that Song Xian and her sons had arrived there.

• Lin Qi found Brother Xiong's livestream had disappeared online and told Wu Ling about it.
• Lin Qi saw Song Xian and her sons leaving with two urns, then told his coworkers about the livestream ghost and the danger of taking the ashes to the factory.
• Director Mao said Song Xian and her sons planned to scatter the ashes outside the factory, while Lin Qi messaged Wu Ling and received no answer from Ye Qing.
• Wu Ling told Lin Qi that Nangong could find the livestreamers' online traces but not their real-world identities, and suggested the app and game had come from the future through a signal error.
• Wu Ling told Lin Qi that she was outside the factory, where Liu Miao had confirmed all the ghosts had disappeared, and that she could see Song Xian's car.

The narrator dreamed through Song Xian’s childhood, witnessing her parents’ deaths, her flight with her uncle, and the uncle’s later disappearance. The dream ended with the narrator seeing a strange fossil-like beast’s head in the wooden box and hearing that it was found beneath the sea.

• Wu Ling told the narrator that Song Xian had realized her parents were gone and asked the narrator to note dates and locations if the future appeared in another dream.
• The narrator fell asleep and entered a dream in which soldiers killed Song Xian’s parents while she hid in a vat.
• A neighboring man rescued Song Xian and hid her in a cellar, where she asked why the gods had not saved her family.
• The man carried Song Xian and her parents’ bodies by boat, then cremated the bodies and kept their ashes in urns.
• The man later disappeared, leaving Song Xian alone with the urns and the wooden box.
• The narrator saw a tiny fossil-like beast’s head inside the box and heard that an ancestor had found it in an undersea cave.

After witnessing the demon’s severed head disappear in a vision, the narrator learned that Song Xian had died and that the wooden box containing the head had been opened. The police identified the human head inside as an ancient artifact, leaving the demon’s head and its whereabouts unresolved.

• The narrator woke from a painful vision of a ghost killing a demon and told Skinny that Song Xian must have died.
• Director Mao confirmed that Song Xian had collapsed and died after her parents’ ashes were taken away.
• The narrator told Wu Ling about Song Xian’s death and the demon’s head, while Wu Ling planned to verify the vision with Liu Zhiguo and Liu Zhijun.
• Chen Xiaoqiu told the group that the Liu brothers had opened the wooden box and found a human head inside.
• The police dated the head to eight hundred to a thousand years ago, and the narrator gave a statement about the box before Chen Yihan explained that its contents had likely been switched long ago.

Sun Hongbin told investigators about rumors surrounding the purple girls’ bathroom at his school and described hearing a female student crying inside it one evening. He entered the bathroom to check on her, but the chapter ended before he revealed what he found.

• Sun Hongbin explained that students spread conflicting ghost stories about a girl who supposedly hanged herself in the fourth-floor girls’ bathroom.
• Sun Hongbin said an older teacher attributed the bathroom’s purple walls to a contractor using the wrong paint.
• Sun Hongbin described staying late after a weekly test to answer questions from students on Tuesday evening.
• Sun Hongbin said he heard a girl crying inside the purple bathroom as he passed it on his way out.
• Sun Hongbin entered the bathroom after the crying girl did not answer him.

Mr. Sun asked the investigators to examine reports of faint crying in the school’s women’s restroom. They found a Walkman playing a recording, but details about its use and placement left the investigators unsure whether the case was fully explained.

• Mr. Sun described hearing unexplained crying in the women’s restroom after school and said students and teachers had reported similar experiences.
• On December 3, the investigators discussed whether someone had hidden a playback device in the school.
• On December 5, the investigators found a Walkman playing a crying recording in the restroom’s last stall and considered it a student prank.
• The investigators noticed dust on top of the toilet tanks, which suggested the Walkman had not been operated by hand each day as they expected.
• On December 10, the investigators reviewed the cassette and learned that both sides contained the crying, with long silent sections at the beginning and end.
• The investigators concluded there was no evidence of a ghost or yin energy for now, while leaving the case unresolved.

After Sun Hongbin died in a car accident, Xu Chen and Qi Junjie revealed that they had staged the bathroom ghost prank and asked for help investigating his death. Hao Jiajun finally spoke up, insisting the prank began with Xu Chen and Xiaojun scaring him, and that the culprit was not a woman.

• Xu Chen and Qi Junjie confirmed that their classmates had staged the crying prank and that the school had punished them.
• Xu Chen and Qi Junjie told the investigators that Sun Hongbin had died after suddenly stepping backward into traffic, apparently after seeing something near the school bathroom window.
• Xu Chen and Qi Junjie said Hao Jiajun had been acting strangely since the accident and gave the investigators reason to contact him.
• The investigators found no yin energy on Xu Chen or Qi Junjie and arranged to question Hao Jiajun.
• Hao Jiajun initially stayed silent, then denied that a woman had killed Sun Hongbin and said Xu Chen and Xiaojun had been the ones to scare him first.

A student recounted how he and Xu Chen and Xiaojun planted a Walkman in the girls’ bathroom as a prank, where a strange girl helped him hide it. He later saw the girl at a fourth-floor window before Mr. Sun was struck by a car, and agreed to identify her from old student records.

• The student explained that Xu Chen and Xiaojun had planned to scare Mr. Sun with a Walkman playing ghostly sounds.
• While searching for a place to hide the Walkman, the student met an unfamiliar girl outside the girls’ bathroom, and she helped him place it atop the toilet cistern.
• The group activated the Walkman twice, and Mr. Sun eventually found it and reported the prank to the school.
• After Mr. Sun took the students for milk tea, he stared toward the classroom building, stepped into the path of a car, and was dragged under it.
• The student saw the girl smiling from a small fourth-floor bathroom window and realized her dark-blue uniform with yellow stripes did not match the uniforms he knew.
• The interviewer said they would check past student lists, and the student agreed to identify the girl.

Greenleaf investigated the purple restroom and confronted the schoolgirl ghost who had frightened Sun Hongbin. She explained how she had died and remained at the school, but insisted that she could not be reincarnated as Wu Ling prepared to try anyway.

• Wu Ling and Ye Qing inspected the fourth-floor girls' restroom and saw the schoolgirl appear near the stairwell.
• Wu Ling confronted the girl about Sun Hongbin's death, and she admitted that she had scared him out of boredom.
• The girl said she had graduated in 1952, died after an untreated illness, and returned to her old school after realizing she was dead.
• The girl claimed that years of failed attempts to help or exorcise her had convinced her that she could not be reincarnated.
• Wu Ling took something out, apparently preparing to help the girl despite her certainty.

Wu Ling, Liu Miao, and Ye Qing temporarily sealed the purple bathroom’s female ghost inside a wall after learning how her accidental killing had begun. The chapter then shifted into a first-person vision of a punished student who spotted a girl in an old-fashioned school uniform.

• Wu Ling, Liu Miao, and Ye Qing chased the ghost through the school, but she escaped their attempt to kill her.
• The ghost admitted that she had accidentally caused Hu Guangsheng’s death in 1968 and said she would stop deliberately frightening people.
• Wu Ling used a talisman to seal the ghost inside the bathroom wall, and Greenleaf arranged for Qiu Ming to inspect and reinforce the seal each year.
• The narrator was transported into an old classroom and saw a student being punished for copying lines.
• The student turned toward a breeze and glimpsed a girl in an old-fashioned school uniform.

Hu Guangsheng was chased through the school by a female ghost who pretended to help his broken arm, then revealed her gruesome face and tongue until he fainted. The narrator’s soul was pulled into darkness, where a girl struggled to move in a cramped space before the narrator received a few fragments of consciousness.

• Hu Guangsheng fled from the legless girl, fell on the stairs, and broke his arm.
• The girl approached Hu Guangsheng’s wound, and he flung her away, revealing her gruesome face.
• The female ghost chased Hu Guangsheng into a room and entered despite his attempts to lock the door.
• The ghost told Hu Guangsheng she would end his pain by killing him, showed him her severed tongue, and caused him to faint.
• The ghost left the room, and the narrator’s soul was pulled into a dark, cramped space where a girl struggled to move.

A girl became trapped beneath junk in a school storage room after her prank backfired, and the narrator watched her deteriorate in the silent, empty campus. When people arrived decades later to survey the room, the girl realized she had died and become a ghost.

• The girl secretly entered the school to rig a prank on a classmate, but slipped on a marble and was buried beneath the junk she had piled up.
• Trapped in the dark with a badly hurt ankle, the girl cried, struggled, and gradually weakened while the narrator watched helplessly.
• The narrator inferred that the girl had died in the 1950s and reconsidered what had happened to the school.
• People dressed in 1980s fashion forced open the room, but passed through the girl and found it empty.
• The girl stood up without pain and realized she had become a ghost long ago.

The girl explored the renovated school as a ghost, uncovering a photograph and a notebook that brought back memories of teacher Zhang Jifen. Later, she staged a hanging in a girls' bathroom to frighten students, and the chapter ended as a teacher rushed in but saw nothing.

• The girl discovered that she could pass through objects when she concentrated and wandered around the empty school.
• She searched the teachers' office, found an old class photograph and a notebook bearing Zhang Jifen's name, and recalled the admired teacher.
• The girl remembered that she had once wanted to prank Zhang Jifen and grew wistful about the life she had lost.
• Much later, the girl tied a rope around her neck in a girls' bathroom and posed as a hanging student.
• Students found the girl and screamed in terror when her body slid and jerked; she then removed the rope and floated upward.
• A teacher ran into the bathroom after hearing the students, but could not see the girl.

A ghost girl pranked Cheng Xinxin by appearing to her in increasingly terrifying forms, causing her to faint. At the hospital, Cheng Xinxin’s parents and teachers discussed the incident but could not explain it or find any record of a suicide at the school.

• The ghost girl watched students spread embellished rumors about a girl who had supposedly hanged herself in the bathroom.
• The girl targeted Cheng Xinxin, who had been telling classmates a dramatic story about the bathroom ghost, and threw a scrap of paper to get her attention.
• Cheng Xinxin saw the girl’s decomposed face and screamed, while teachers and classmates could see nothing; the teachers eventually took her to an empty classroom.
• The ghost girl appeared again, conjured a rope around her neck, and made Cheng Xinxin faint before following her to the hospital.
• Cheng Xinxin’s teachers and parents discussed what had happened, but the teacher insisted there had never been a suicide or hanging on campus.

The narrator watched a female ghost terrorize Cheng Xinxin until Cheng Xinxin died by suicide in a temple restroom. A mysterious young man in a wide-sleeved robe appeared above the stall and looked at the narrator.

• Cheng Xinxin’s parents took her to a psychiatrist, but she insisted she had seen a ghost and later saw the female ghost outside her bedroom window.
• Cheng Xinxin visited a temple with her parents, where the female ghost followed her despite the incense and Buddha statue.
• The female ghost confronted Cheng Xinxin in a restroom stall and tightened her hair around Cheng Xinxin’s neck.
• After the ghost released her, Cheng Xinxin used her belt to hang herself from the stall’s coat hook, and the narrator chose not to stop the ghost.
• A young man in a wide-sleeved robe appeared above the stall, smiled at the female ghost, and glanced at the narrator.