Chapter Summaries

After Klaus was taken to the Medical Room to recover, Lu Yuan considered the Grey Covenant’s hidden strength and its reasons for targeting him. The interrogation of two captured members yielded a disturbing memory of an enormous head floating in darkness, though Leike could not identify it.

• Glock reported that Leike had captured two Third Order Grey Covenant members after encountering a suspected Fourth Order member in the Pipe Network, while Klaus rested in the Medical Room.
• Lu Yuan considered the Grey Covenant’s possible goals, its knowledge of Klaus’s injuries, and the possibility of an insider as the Earl’s messenger delivered special Potions for Klaus.
• The Earl’s messenger said the Earl had found a lead on the source of the Deep Green Potion but had no good plan for dealing with the Grey Covenant.
• Glock sent Lu Yuan and Leike to interrogate the captives, and Lu Yuan’s Gray-White Text identified both as contaminated Believer Transcendents.
• When the captives refused to speak, Leike used a worm to read one man’s memories and learned that the Grey Covenant members had seen an enormous head speaking in darkness.

Lu Yuan discovered a new Worm of Knowledge inside a severed limb taken from the Sea of Knowledge and contracted it. He and Klaus concluded that the Grey Covenant planned to use the limb to contact the Copper Wall, then prepared to investigate the Pipe Network Layer with Leike.

• Leike showed Lu Yuan and Glock a severed limb from the Sea of Knowledge, and Lu Yuan recognized its lingering aura and the Worm of Knowledge stirring inside it.
• Lu Yuan's Worm of Knowledge coaxed a tiny companion from the limb, and Lu Yuan contracted the new worm so it could survive.
• Lu Yuan suspected the Grey Covenant meant to use the limb to contact the Copper Wall and reported the clues to Klaus.
• Klaus agreed to send Lu Yuan and Leike into the Pipe Network Layer, while arranging for another Fourth Order to follow.
• Klaus gave Leike a green crystal containing something he had planted in the Grey Covenant members, revealing that he had prepared a way to track or affect them.

Klaus revealed that he had marked Grey Covenant members, but Leike and Lu Yuan learned that the Bronze Pillars were rising and the ancient Inscriptions were spreading through the Pipe Network. Lu Yuan continued deeper alone as the Inscriptions grew active and the gray-gold aura intensified.

• Klaus told Leike that he could use the Green Crystal to locate marked Grey Covenant members, and Leike and Lu Yuan discussed another hostile Fourth Order in the Pipe Network.
• A Night Watcher reported that the Bronze Pillars had begun emerging from the walls, so Leike and Lu Yuan went to inspect one and confirmed it was still rising.
• Leike ordered the Night Watchers to track the pillar's growth while he and Lu Yuan headed deeper into the Pipe Network.
• Lu Yuan and Leike found that ancient Inscriptions had spread farther than before and were moving; Lu Yuan gave Leike a Silver Shard to lessen the suppression.
• As the suppression weakened Leike's abilities, he fell behind and Lu Yuan advanced alone, sensing a dense gray-gold aura filling the passage.

Lu Yuan reached the damaged Copper Wall and discovered its seal was loosening, but Leike’s consciousness was pulled away by an external force. In a mist-shrouded memory of the Grey Covenant’s interrogation room, Leike faced the Person on the Wall, which told him to grant his wish.

• Lu Yuan followed the Gray-Gold aura through the distorted Pipe Network and found the damaged Copper Wall, where inscriptions were spreading and the seal was loosening.
• Lu Yuan saw a warning about the incomplete special existence behind the wall and immediately turned back.
• Lu Yuan found Leike frozen and unresponsive, learned that an external force had drawn away his consciousness, and carried him away from the Copper Wall.
• Leike awoke on a small Rock Platform surrounded by Gray Mist, unable to use his Eerie power, and recognized the scene as the interrogation room from the Grey Covenant’s memory.
• The Person on the Wall appeared above Leike and repeated, “Grant your wish,” speaking directly inside his mind.

Leike tested the Person on the Wall’s wish-granting power and learned that it was bound by rules and equivalent exchange. After he wished to leave without violating his faith, it showed him a border town devastated by an Insect Tide and a child who survived by consuming the insects, leaving him to stagger into the wasteland.

• Leike wished for the Empire’s enemies to be eliminated, but the Person on the Wall said he could not afford the price.
• Leike wished to reach the Seventh Order, and the Person on the Wall said the rules did not permit it.
• Leike wished to leave without violating his faith, and the Person on the Wall showed him a remote Empire outpost under attack by an Insect Tide.
• The Night Watcher tried to protect the townspeople, but the endless insects overwhelmed him and devoured the people fleeing the town.
• One child fought back by eating the insects, survived the swarm, and crawled toward the wasteland to report what had happened.

Leike resisted the Person on the Wall’s attempt to exploit his childhood memories, but remained trapped on a Rock Platform in the Gray Mist. Lu Yuan entered Leike’s displaced consciousness with the Worm of Knowledge and called out to find him.

• The Person on the Wall showed Leike the childhood memory of his transformation and tried to twist his final wish, but Leike’s resolve held firm.
• Leike refused to submit to contamination, and the Person on the Wall withdrew into the Gray Mist, leaving him stranded.
• Lu Yuan carried the unconscious Leike away from the Copper Wall and found that an external force had drawn Leike’s consciousness elsewhere.
• The Worm of Knowledge formed a bridge to Leike’s consciousness and reassured Lu Yuan that the Key would let him return.
• Lu Yuan used the Worm of Knowledge to enter the Gray Mist, called for Leike, and saw something move below.

Lu Yuan entered the Gray Mist realm to reach Leike, but the Person on the Wall granted Leike the Right of Wish-Stating and sent him back to the Pipe Network. Leike found Lu Yuan’s consciousness still trapped, called Klaus for help, and the Person on the Wall appeared before Lu Yuan.

• Lu Yuan discovered that Time Bestower could not be used in the Gray Mist realm and that his connection to the Worm of Knowledge was faint.
• Leike heard Lu Yuan calling, tried to jump between Fragment Platforms, and was blocked by an invisible barrier.
• The Person on the Wall told Leike that his price had been paid and granted him the Right of Wish-Stating.
• Leike fell through the Gray Mist, glimpsed a deep Rift with carved steps and human figures, and then returned to the Pipe Network passage.
• Leike found Lu Yuan motionless with his consciousness elsewhere, contacted Klaus through a Communication Crystal, and asked him to come.
• The Gray Mist parted before Lu Yuan, and the gigantic face of the Person on the Wall appeared at eye level.

Lu Yuan encountered the Person on the Wall in the Gray Mist, learned it was bound by rules and expected him to seek it out, then returned to Leike. They discovered that details of the entity’s wishes could not be spoken aloud, and Leike warned that many people in Bronze City might have been drawn into its Stone Wall.

• Lu Yuan faced the Person on the Wall, which said it knew of the Key’s authority but could not touch something else on him or force him.
• The Person on the Wall said it was waiting for Lu Yuan to seek it out of his own accord, then vanished into the Gray Mist.
• Lu Yuan returned to his body and told Leike about the gigantic face and its apparent dealings with Grey Covenant believers.
• Lu Yuan and Leike found that attempts to describe the details of wishes made to the Person on the Wall were erased from their speech.
• Leike said he had seen many people on the Stone Wall’s steps, suggesting that people in Bronze City had been drawn into it, as Klaus approached.

Lu Yuan, Leike, and Klaus connected the Person on the Wall to the Grey Covenant and suspected the Tower of Erudition was its hidden contact point. As the Copper Wall’s deterioration threatened Bronze City, Lu Yuan concluded they needed to eliminate the Grey Covenant before descending into The Abyss.

• Klaus arrived with Glock and two Night Watchers, confirmed Lu Yuan and Leike were not contaminated, and heard their accounts of the Person on the Wall and the sealed information they could not reveal.
• Lu Yuan reasoned that the Grey Covenant’s two Third Orders had acted independently, possibly at the Person on the Wall’s prompting, and warned that reading its memories could let it locate someone.
• Klaus, Lu Yuan, and Leike independently identified the Tower of Erudition as a possible hidden contact point, but Klaus ordered them not to act on the unproven suspicion.
• Lu Yuan reported that the Copper Wall’s cracks and spreading inscriptions had worsened, and proposed that the Person on the Wall was trying to release the Root or that something in The Abyss was weakening the seal.
• Lu Yuan warned that a collapse of Bronze City’s defenses could bring the Ghouls back and urged the group to deal with the Grey Covenant before descending into The Abyss.

Klaus and Lu Yuan inspected the worsening Copper Wall and learned that the Bronze Pillars were rising faster, then returned to the Branch to plan a descent and deal with the Grey Covenant. The meeting revealed that the Grey Covenant might have as many as six Fourth Orders, while Margaret was also a Fourth Order who could be mobilized.

• Klaus and Lu Yuan approached the Copper Wall, where bulges, cracks, falling inscriptions, and a flickering gray light showed that the wall was worsening; Lu Yuan copied four groups of inscriptions for Bolen.
• At a Bronze Pillar monitoring point, a Night Watcher reported that the pillars were rising at increasing and uneven rates.
• Klaus convened the Branch's leaders and said they needed to handle the Grey Covenant before descending to investigate what lay below the Copper Wall.
• Lu Yuan listed the Grey Covenant's known Fourth Orders, and Leike reported encountering another powerful, unidentified Fourth Order in the Pipe Network.
• Klaus assessed the forces they could mobilize and called on Margaret, who agreed without hesitation, revealing that she was a Fourth Order.

Lu Yuan and Klaus planned an ambush against the Grey Covenant, seeking allies and preparing to exploit Jie and Nine’s injuries before the Copper Wall deteriorated further. Klaus then led Lu Yuan to meet the Guardian, whose presence weighed more heavily on the air as they climbed the Clock Tower.

• Klaus revealed that Margaret was a Fourth Order Transcendent and outlined potential support from the church, the Earl’s Mansion, the Guardian, and the Night Watchers.
• Lu Yuan proposed tracking Jie and Nine, separating them, and attacking while they were still injured; Klaus assigned preparations for the operation.
• Klaus warned Lu Yuan not to reveal the Tower of Erudition’s deduction, and Lu Yuan told him the Person on the Wall had said Lu Yuan would seek it out one day.
• Klaus explained that Bronze City’s inscriptions restrained both Eerie and Guardians, and said the Grey Covenant’s injuries gave the Night Watchers only a limited window to act.
• Klaus and Lu Yuan left the Branch and climbed toward the Guardian in the Clock Tower, where the air grew increasingly heavy.

Lu Yuan and Klaus gathered support from Guardian, the Church, and the Earl’s Mansion for a planned strike against the Grey Covenant. As their allies assembled at the Branch, Klaus explained that finding the Grey Covenant’s hideout would require using the Tracking Crystal only once they were ready to attack.

• Klaus reported the Grey Covenant’s strength and secured Guardian’s agreement to join the fight.
• Klaus sent Lu Yuan to ask the Church for help while he negotiated with the Earl’s Mansion.
• Agnes brought Lu Yuan to Archbishop Adrian, who agreed to support the operation.
• Lu Yuan and Adrian returned to the Branch, where the assembled allies prepared for the attack.
• Klaus explained that the Tracking Crystal could locate Jie and Nine, but activating it would alert them, so the group would rely on its passive signal before using it.

Klaus led a team to locate and surround the Grey Covenant’s hideout in the Inner City. Inside the workshop, the Covenant continued a ritual around an unhatched Seed, unaware that the Night Watchers had found them.

• Klaus outlined the assault plan, assigned the Church and Earl’s Mansion to support the operation, and said the Guardian could strike once as a final safeguard.
• Lu Yuan told Leike he suspected the Wooden Men were connected to the Person on the Wall and asked him to help obtain a sample during the mission.
• The team traveled through the Outer City, and Klaus activated the Tracking Crystal, which pointed to a sealed stone building near the Tower of Erudition.
• Inside the abandoned workshop, J, Jie, Nine, and Q guarded five wooden constructs and an unhatched Seed while they prepared a ritual.
• J questioned why the Seed had not reacted as the ritual’s pattern calibration neared completion, while Jie’s injuries continued to weaken her.

J and the injured Jie and Nine tried to escape their workshop after Klaus tracked them down, while Klaus’s forces surrounded the building. Adrian’s blessing blocked Bronze City’s Inscription and Jie’s mental attack, leaving J to assess their failed defenses and move.

• Green light appeared on Jie and Nine, revealing that Klaus had marked them, so J ordered a breakout and gathered the ritual materials.
• Klaus surrounded the workshop with Leike, Lu Yuan, Margaret, the Earl’s attendant, and two hooded figures, then Adrian blessed the group with golden light.
• Margaret revealed her power as an Eerie Transcendence contracted to a Deep Sea entity, while Klaus formed a Bone Sword from his Bone Ring.
• Jie activated Bronze City’s Inscription to suppress Klaus’s side, but Adrian’s blessing blocked the suppression.
• Jie unleashed a Mental Erosion Wave, but the blessing protected Lu Yuan, and J prepared to act after both of her opening moves failed.

Margaret and the Night Watchers’ group attacked J, Nine, Jie, and Q in the Workshop Ruins. As the battle spread across the insect-covered ground, Q was seized by a Pale Figure that resisted his corrosion, while a second Night Watcher prepared to strike.

• Margaret drained moisture from the area and forced J to abandon his ranged attack and charge at her in Black Armor Membrane.
• Klaus and Attendant attacked Nine, who blocked their strikes until Jie transformed and drew Attendant away from him.
• Two Hooded Night Watchers used Leike’s Insect Tide to circle behind J, but Q formed from black liquid and blocked their path.
• One Hooded Night Watcher released a Pale Figure from his chest, and it seized Q with claws that resisted corrosion and pinned his liquid core.
• The second Hooded Night Watcher transformed his arms into rows of blade-teeth and brought them down toward Q.

J and Margaret fought at close range as Margaret’s extraction began drawing blood from him, while Leike and Q tried to rescue one of the Wooden Men. One Wooden Man reached beyond the Insect Tide, but Q’s escape left him badly damaged and the others moved to stop him.

• Margaret drained moisture from J’s Black Armor Membrane, but the dehydration hardened its remains into a shell that let him contaminate her Water Membrane with concentrated paste.
• J and Margaret exchanged close-range blows until Margaret began extracting blood from inside J’s body, forcing him to retreat.
• Leike used the weakened black-water wrapping to send a Wooden Man through the Insect Tide toward the edge of the battlefield.
• Q burst free from the Two Hooded Figures and lashed the Insect Tide passage, interrupting the transfer after one Wooden Man had already reached beyond its outer edge.
• J resealed the wrapping while the Two Hooded Figures moved toward Q, preventing the remaining Wooden Men from being taken away.

Lu Yuan discovered that the Wooden Man was the transformed body of a man whose infection connected him to an immense world of trees, and he carried it toward the Guardian. A mysterious Tower of Erudition student caught up with Lu Yuan and revealed that he could counter Time Bestower.

• Lu Yuan inspected the Wooden Man and lost Sanity as he saw how a man drank dark green liquid, became lignified, and connected to an endless world of trees.
• Lu Yuan concluded that the Grey Covenant was using the infected to summon something from that world, then wrapped the Wooden Man in his coat and ran toward the Guardian.
• Inside the Workshop Ruins, J watched Margaret drain him while Q, Nine, and Jie were overwhelmed by their opponents.
• Lu Yuan used Time Bestower to accelerate away from an approaching presence, but Stasis failed when the pursuer interfered with it.
• A young Tower of Erudition student caught up to Lu Yuan and remarked on his ability to carry Time Bestower.

Lu Yuan was nearly attacked by K, but the Guardian intervened and overwhelmed him after discovering that Bronze City's Inscription had helped K resist the Guardian's domain. Just as the Guardian was about to kill K, a beam from the Sea of Knowledge took K away.

• K reached for Lu Yuan and the Wooden Man, but an eyeball from the Guardian's aura appeared behind Lu Yuan and stopped him.
• The Guardian froze the battlefield, seized K's wrist, and disintegrated his body, but K reformed several meters away with Bronze City's Inscription helping him escape the domain.
• The Guardian confronted K about borrowing the power of Bronze City's Inscription and then immobilized him completely with his pitch-black aura.
• A beam of light from the Sea of Knowledge struck K and made his body, aura, and presence vanish from the Guardian's grasp.
• The Guardian watched the light fade toward the Tower of Erudition and said that it had gotten involved.

After the battle at the Workshop Ruins, Arthur Heinz faced Klaus over his secret cooperation with the Person on the Wall. Klaus heard Arthur's reasons for the Fishing Plan and ordered an investigation while preparing for a dive into the Sea of Knowledge.

• The Guardian withdrew his domain, and the Insect Tide contracted to reveal Klaus's defeated opponents, including Nine, J, and Q.
• The attendant killed Jie, while Klaus signaled Margaret and the Two Hooded Figures to spare their remaining captives.
• Adrian watched the Seed and warned that The Center's old fossils would find it interesting before Arthur Heinz arrived with Vice Dean Kame.
• Klaus confronted Arthur Heinz about cooperating with the Person on the Wall, and Kame defended the plan before Klaus struck him aside.
• Arthur explained that the Fishing Plan was intended to obtain a means of reinforcing the breached northeastern border, where Eerie things had overwhelmed Withered City.
• Klaus put away his Bone Sword, ordered an investigation, and told Arthur to gather people for a dive the next morning.

After the battle, Klaus kept the Grey Covenant captives alive because he suspected they were sacrifices in the Person on the Wall’s plan, then took Lu Yuan to show the Guardian the Wooden Man. The Guardian’s failing control over his Transcendence worsened as he examined it, and he reacted with alarm.

• Adrian placed a life-sustaining blessing on Nine, and Margaret imprisoned Nine, J, and Q in separate cells at the Branch.
• Klaus explained that he had kept the Grey Covenant members alive to avoid completing a possible sacrifice and to exchange them with the Empire, while Jie had been killed to deter others.
• Klaus told Lu Yuan that the Tower of Erudition had been under suspicion and that the Vice Dean would be interrogated over his dishonesty.
• Lu Yuan described his vision of a vast tree-filled world and an enormous presence, so Klaus took him to the Clock Tower to show the Wooden Man to the Guardian.
• The Guardian, leaking uncontrolled black aura, examined the Wooden Man and asked where it had come from.