Chapter Summaries

Qi Si and the others split up to investigate the Ancestral Hall and Village History Museum after the Tattooed Woman began melting from eating the mucus. At the museum, Qi Si found that Granny Su and A-Xi had died before the god arrived, while the village history revealed Granny Su had killed and eaten A-Xi during the famine before taking her own life.

• Yang Yundong covered Allen's face, then divided the players between the Ancestral Hall and the Village History Museum as the Tattooed Woman's condition worsened.
• Zhao Feng joined Yang Yundong and Zhu Ling's group, while Qi Si, Zhu Ling, and Zhang Licai headed to the Village History Museum.
• Qi Si found a household register showing Granny Su and Su Xi had died on the same day, before the village's later deaths stopped being recorded.
• Qi Si questioned how Granny Su could be sinless yet connected to God Meat, and wondered who had returned her and A-Xi to the human world.
• Zhu Ling read that during the famine Granny Su, starving and delirious, threw A-Xi into a cooking pot, then jumped into a well; the god's body fell into the village the next day.

Zhu Ling and the others read how Su Village’s greed over the God Meat eventually transformed all its villagers, then realized Granny Su’s people wanted the travelers’ flesh rather than money. The village chronicle offered no cure or explanation for their appetite, so Qi Si led the group back to Granny Su’s house to continue searching for clues.

• Su Village’s chief and elders invented divine permission to sell God Meat to outsiders, and the villagers grew wealthy as the legend spread.
• The God’s wounds healed more slowly, some villagers transformed, and eventually the villagers passed off the transformed villagers’ corpses as God Meat until everyone had changed.
• Zhang Licai blamed the villagers’ greed, while Qi Si and Zhu Ling discussed how desire could lead people to ruin.
• Zhu Ling read that the transformed villagers hid from sunlight, and Qi Si pointed out that Granny Su had not been paid, prompting the group to realize the villagers wanted their flesh.
• The group found no explanation for why the villagers wanted their flesh, and Qi Si led them back to Granny Su’s house.

Qi Si and the other players returned to Granny Su’s house, where they found evidence that the villagers had marked them for death and discussed searching the Ancestral Hall. The Travel Guide changed at the end, warning them not to stay in the house in pairs and never to enter the Ancestral Hall alone.

• Qi Si found Lu Keliang’s body reduced to a clean skeleton and took a bath while Zhou Yilin left him fresh clothes containing a mysterious black-marked slip of paper.
• Yang Yundong returned with the worsening Tattooed Woman and reported that the locked Ancestral Hall would open in the morning.
• Qi Si questioned Granny Su about A-Xi wanting meat, but she denied that her grandson ate it and refused to explain further.
• Zhou Yilin showed the players an Atonement ledger listing their assumed names, with Lu Keliang, Wu Heng, Zhu Dafu, and Allen newly crossed out.
• Yang Yundong divided the God Meat among the players and urged them to search the Ancestral Hall together the next morning.
• Qi Si saw that the Travel Guide’s verses had been replaced with warnings not to stay in the house in pairs and never to enter the Ancestral Hall alone.

Qi Si repelled the Starved Ghost by playing recorded village verses, then used the Pocket Watch of Fate to escape when the ghosts attacked again and gained a clue about their lingering resentment. In the morning, he found Yang Yundong gravely injured and suspected Zhu Ling had altered the players’ clues, while Zhou Yilin’s motives remained unclear.

• Qi Si drove a spike into the Starved Ghost’s hand, played A-Xi’s recordings to repel the ghosts, and completed the mandatory side quest.
• Qi Si provoked the returning ghosts, activated the Pocket Watch of Fate to rewind one minute, and received a clue connecting the Starved Ghosts to the villagers and ancestral halls.
• Zhu Ling reassured Zhou Yilin while privately revealing that she had urged her to stay at the residence so Yang Yundong might die and Zhu Ling could gain control of the group.
• Qi Si found that the Tattooed Woman’s body had dissolved into slime and discovered Yang Yundong alive but badly wounded after the ghosts attacked him.
• Qi Si told Yang Yundong that someone with an item could have changed a stroke in the Travel Guide, suggesting that his clue had been altered.

After discovering that someone had altered the lodging clue and caused Yang Yundong’s severe injuries, Qi Si tried to secure an alliance with him before the players visited Su Village’s Ancestral Hall. Inside, Qi Si recognized evidence linking the memorial tablets and the villagers’ transformation, while he and Zhou Yilin quietly positioned themselves by the exit.

• Yang Yundong showed the players that their Travel Guides contained different lodging clues, and the group suspected someone had altered his guide.
• Qi Si proposed working with Yang Yundong and presented him with a choice between several strategies for surviving the instance, but Yang Yundong condemned players who killed others for their own benefit.
• The six players followed the map to the Ancestral Hall, where Zhu Ling pointed out signs that its location and construction were meant to suppress something.
• Qi Si opened the Ancestral Hall’s door, and the players found rows of Su family tablets, human bite marks on a meat bucket, and faces arranged across the ceiling.
• Qi Si noticed that every tablet recorded a death in the year the villagers began transforming, then moved beside the exit as Zhou Yilin cautiously made room for him.

After the Ancestral Hall trapped four players and demanded meat, Qi Si’s manipulation helped turn Zhao Feng and Zhu Ling against Yang Yundong, who was killed to satisfy the ghosts. The surviving players returned to pay their respects, while Qi Si hinted that his allegiance might not be with the players.

• Qi Si confronted Zhou Yilin outside the sealed Ancestral Hall about changing his clue, and she admitted she had acted to oppose Zhu Ling.
• Inside the hall, Zhu Ling concluded that someone had to die to trigger the exit, while the ghosts demanded meat and Zhao Feng secretly prepared to kill Yang Yundong.
• The system refreshed the rule requiring one adult’s worth of meat, and Zhao Feng emerged with Zhu Ling after Yang Yundong had been killed and eaten by the ghosts.
• Qi Si recognized that Yang Yundong had chosen to die for the others and helped turn the dying man toward the sunlight before he passed away.
• Zhu Ling urged the survivors to pay their respects and search for clues, and the players returned to the Ancestral Hall.

Qi Si confronted Granny Su with his theory about the Ancestral Hall and pressured her into revealing Su Village’s history. Granny Su’s story ended with a Black-Robed Taoist promising to restore her and A-Xi to life if they followed his instructions.

• Qi Si took an ancestral tablet from the Ancestral Hall and returned to Granny Su’s house with Zhao Feng.
• Qi Si accused the villagers of having their mutated souls suppressed in the Ancestral Hall and threatened to tear down its talisman unless Granny Su told him the truth.
• Granny Su explained that she and A-Xi had witnessed Su Village’s rise through selling God Meat and its later mass mutation.
• A Black-Robed Taoist taught the villagers to rebuild the Ancestral Hall as a place of suppression and told them to gather human flesh to complete the Evil God’s corpse.
• The Black-Robed Taoist drew Granny Su and A-Xi’s ghosts from the well and promised them new life if they obeyed him.

Qi Si killed Zhao Feng, concealed the crime, and then confessed to Zhang Licai while forcing him to choose a side in the growing conflict among the players. He left Zhang Licai holding a blade to his throat and warned that he would destroy the dungeon’s key clues if he died.

• Qi Si realized the dungeon’s core rule was that villagers could not personally kill people, then killed Zhao Feng and hid his body while framing Chang Xu.
• Zhu Ling and Zhou Yilin left the Ancestral Hall, and Zhang Licai took Yang Yundong’s Pu Saber before returning to Granny Su’s courtyard.
• Zhang Licai discovered Zhao Feng’s corpse, and Qi Si pretended to be shocked as Zhu Ling accused him of murder.
• After the players ate Granny Su’s God Meat, Qi Si spat his portion out and invited Zhang Licai to share his room.
• Qi Si confessed to killing Zhao Feng and explained the rivalries among himself, Zhou Yilin, and Zhu Ling, demanding that Zhang Licai choose a faction.
• Qi Si put a blade in Zhang Licai’s hand and warned him that if he died, he would destroy the clues needed to clear the dungeon.

Zhou Yilin revealed her control over Zhu Ling and joined Qi Si and Zhang Licai in a scheme to manage the other players. Qi Si left them behind and dragged Zhu Ling into West Village, where he rejected the ordinary path to clearing the instance and sought a bargain with an unseen presence as night fell.

• Zhou Yilin used a thread to control Zhu Ling and taunted her over her past betrayal of Sariel.
• Qi Si told Zhang Licai that the Minimum Death Quota would force players to kill one another, while Zhou Yilin staged a plea for help outside the room.
• Zhang Licai knocked Zhu Ling unconscious, and Qi Si ordered him to fetch a rope while Zhou Yilin pretended Zhu Ling had forced her to alter his Travel Guide.
• Qi Si proposed taking Zhang Licai to the Ancestral Hall, but Zhou Yilin persuaded him to let her leave with Zhang Licai instead.
• After Zhou Yilin and Zhang Licai left, Qi Si dragged Zhu Ling toward West Village and spoke to an unseen presence about trading an extra price for something valuable.
• Qi Si listened to his Pocket Watch in the fog until its hour hand marked sunset.

Qi Si followed a trail of golden light to the God’s corpse beneath the Golden Giant Tree and realized it needed sin, not human flesh and blood. He approached the corpse and asked whether the sin on his soul was enough.

• Zhang Licai and Zhou Yilin left the Ancestral Hall and discussed whether Chang Xu could be trusted.
• At night, villagers surrounded Qi Si and demanded meat, but he invoked the rule that they could not kill people with their own hands and redirected them toward the unconscious Zhu Ling.
• Qi Si continued into the western part of Su Village, followed golden lights, and found the wounded God’s corpse beside a golden river.
• Qi Si reasoned that the God needed the sin committed by ghosts and players, rather than their flesh and blood.
• Qi Si took the corpse’s skeletal hand and asked the Evil God whether the sin on his soul was enough.

Qi Si traded his sins to the Evil God for power, triggering divine punishment and clearing the Carnivore instance. As the game ended, he watched the dawn break and wondered whether even someone like him could stand in the sunlight.

• Qi Si learned that the Rules prevented the Evil God from giving answers directly, so he traded his sins for the being’s most valuable offering and accepted a path that would bring calamity to the world.
• At Granny Su’s house, Zhou Yilin realized Chang Xu had misled the players and took a hatchet, but she and Zhang Licai began melting under divine punishment.
• Qi Si watched Zhou Yilin, Zhang Licai, Zhu Ling, and the people of Su Village dissolve into pools of mucus after the instance’s ending came early.
• The system declared that all rules and lore had been solved, cleared the Carnivore team survival instance, and recorded the True End, “Pragmatism Principle.”
• As the instance prepared to transport him out, Qi Si rested beside the God’s corpse, watched the red sun rise, and smiled at the sunlight.

Qi Si completed the Carnivore instance with an S-grade evaluation and received 8,500 reward points, bringing his total to 13,000. He also obtained a recorder and an Evil God Finger Bone, whose disappointing effect left him furious at the Evil God.

• The Evil God raised Qi Si’s evaluation to S grade, and the settlement awarded points for clearing the true end, decrypting the worldview, surviving alone, and unlocking achievements.
• Qi Si wondered whether Chang Xu had survived Rose Manor and considered the risks of meeting him again over the Pocket Watch of Fate.
• Qi Si speculated that the Eerie Game’s reward system encouraged player slaughter and escape, then saw his points total rise to 13,000.
• The system stored the Ghost Driver’s Tape Recorder as a carryable item and awarded Qi Si the Evil God Finger Bone for perfectly clearing Carnivore.
• Qi Si learned that the bound finger bone made meat taste like vegetarian food and angrily accused the Evil God of thinking it was funny.

The closure of the Carnivore instance exposed the cost of the Federation’s past response to supernatural threats, while Qi Si investigated a possible link between the instance and the real world. He asked Jin Yusheng to look into Su Village and Granny Su as he considered the growing power of the authorities and other factions.

• Players at the Ruins of Sunset learned that the Carnivore novice instance had been permanently closed and speculated that the same unnamed player who cleared Rose Manor had cleared it.
• Yang Yundong reported what he knew about Carnivore to Shao Qingmin, but refused to describe Chang Xu and questioned why the Federation had sent soldiers to die despite knowing the site was haunted.
• Qi Si woke from a nightmare, read a book whose afterword mentioned Su Village and Granny Su, and found no reliable information about them online.
• Qi Si called Jin Yusheng and asked him to investigate whether Su Village and Granny Su had really existed.
• Qi Si suspected that officials and civilian factions knew about the Eerie Game and considered how his ability to bring game items into reality might help him gain leverage.
• Qi Si used the Evil God Finger Bone on his instant noodles, then painstakingly picked out the beef bits.

Qi Si struggled with his new appetite and gave a meat-filled pancake to a stray dog. At an Eerie Investigation Bureau briefing, Mu Dongxu warned that the Eerie Game was threatening reality, while Chang Xu ignored the meeting to eat.

• Qi Si went to a breakfast shop, where the proprietress ignored his request for an egg pancake without meat and gave him an egg-stuffed pancake instead.
• Qi Si threw the pancake into a trash can for a hungry black dog and left without eating it.
• Mu Dongxu reported rising Eerie Invasion incidents and warned that players were becoming less willing to explore new instances.
• Mu Dongxu said a prophecy had revealed a Gate that could connect the Eerie Game to reality and bring an unprecedented disaster.
• Mu Dongxu called out Chang Xu for eating a chicken leg during the briefing, and Chang Xu defended himself by citing his contract and dinner break.
• Mu Dongxu threatened to halve Chang Xu's meal allowance if he brought food into the assembly hall again.

Qi Si searched the forums for information about the Eerie Game and revisited the story of how his first homeroom teacher, Yao Cheng, had uttered “Eerie Game” before dying. He read Zhao Feng’s post accusing the still-living Chang Xu of betraying and killing him, then ended the day playing a simple phone game.

• Qi Si recalled that Yao Cheng had convulsed and died during class after trying to say four words that Qi Si now recognized as “Eerie Game.”
• Public Security Bureau officers visited Qi Si for a routine check-in, and he later searched forum posts about game items, Identity Cards, and features available to Official Players.
• Qi Si found Zhao Feng’s post accusing Chang Xu of using his alias to deceive him, force him to kill someone, and then kill him in the Carnivore dungeon.
• Qi Si enjoyed the forum’s divided reactions to Zhao Feng’s post and learned that other players believed Chang Xu had earned a TE in Rose Manor and might soon become an Official Player.
• After leaving the forums, Qi Si noticed that nearly everyone in his contacts was dead, opened Happy Match, and played until he grew sleepy.

Qi Si entered the solo-puzzle instance Dialectical Game, where his items and game interface were sealed. He woke in a medical room and found a record stating that a patient named Qi Si had fallen into a vegetative state after his soul possibly escaped.

• Qi Si experienced a nightmare about a woman he had helped die, then woke beneath a monstrous golden tree as the next instance began.
• Qi Si recalled a God-level NPC’s promise that the puzzle would provide symbols and revelations, and stepped through a mirror into the instance.
• The game identified the instance as Dialectical Game, a solo puzzle that sealed all his items.
• Qi Si woke on an operating table in a clean medical room, wearing a gown marked with the number 9, with no game interface or custom wristband.
• Qi Si searched a drawer and found medical records describing a patient named Qi Si who developed soul weightlessness and later became comatose, possibly because his soul had escaped.

Qi Si discovered that he was Clone No. 9, created to cultivate the soul of the original Qi Si, and met the researchers who were observing him. The chapter ended when he recognized the director and greeted them with “Long time no see.”

• Qi Si read the records and learned that the original Qi Si had died three years earlier, while Clone No. 9 was being observed for signs of a soul.
• Qi Si found eight empty numbered tanks and inferred that his predecessors had been destroyed as failed clones.
• When researchers entered, Qi Si pretended to be dead, then cooperated as they restrained and examined him.
• The researchers wheeled Qi Si through a corridor and discussed his resemblance to the Origin, while noting that he still had no soul.
• Qi Si struggled to look at the director, recognized them, and laughed before greeting them with “Long time no see.”

Qi Si questioned whether he was in an Eerie Game instance or the real world as a clone, then searched for a way to escape the Research Institute. The chapter ended when Jin Yusheng entered the office and addressed him as Subject 9.

• Qi Si challenged Jin Yusheng about the cloning experiments and tested whether the people around him reacted to the words "Eerie Game."
• Jin Yusheng said Qi Si had died in an instance and that the clones carried his memories, leaving Qi Si uncertain whether he was in a game or the real world.
• Qi Si assessed his situation and concluded he needed to escape before he was destroyed in three days.
• A nurse restrained Qi Si and gave him nutrients through an IV, eliminating his hoped-for chance to use a meal to escape.
• Researchers wheeled Qi Si through the facility, allowing him to study the route and spot a room filled with surveillance monitors.
• Jin Yusheng entered the office, sat behind the desk, and greeted Qi Si as Subject 9.

Qi Si used verbal tactics to question Jin Yusheng about the Research Institute and the cloning experiments, then challenged him to explain why a clone with Qi Si’s memories and identity could not be Qi Si. Jin Yusheng showed him his reflection, leaving Qi Si confronted with a familiar face that looked unmistakably inhuman.

• Qi Si provoked Jin Yusheng into explaining that he had used the game’s points to create clones in hopes of bringing Qi Si back to life.
• Jin Yusheng described how Qi Si had been unconscious when an invitation pulled him into the game, and how earlier clones had tried to escape or attack him.
• Qi Si questioned the three-day limit for observing clones and learned Jin Yusheng believed keeping him longer would raise medical and security costs.
• Jin Yusheng tested Qi Si, then said his intelligence and other traits closely matched those of the original Qi Si.
• Qi Si argued that his memories and thoughts made him Qi Si, and Jin Yusheng showed him a mirror revealing his corpse-like appearance.

Qi Si confronted Jin Yusheng about regretting his wish to revive him, then concluded that he was likely a clone in reality rather than inside an instance. He used what he knew of the original Qi Si’s crimes to shake Jin Yusheng’s faith in him and suggested ending the revival wish, leaving Jin Yusheng wavering.

• Qi Si questioned Jin Yusheng about how the Eerie Game judged souls, and Jin Yusheng admitted he trusted its judgment and could not change his wish to revive Qi Si.
• Back in the Observation Room, Qi Si weighed the evidence that he was a clone and concluded that his memories, thoughts, and choices could still make him Qi Si.
• Qi Si summoned Jin Yusheng and argued that making the revival wish harder might make the Eerie Game stop pursuing it.
• Qi Si revealed that he had started the summer-camp fire and saved Jin Yusheng only to use him, then claimed he had also caused Jin Yusheng’s parents’ deaths and later misfortunes.
• Jin Yusheng challenged Qi Si’s credibility as a clone, but Qi Si argued that Jin Yusheng already knew reviving the original Qi Si would do more harm than good and said he would end the farce.