Recaps

Xu Zhi resisted the Cup ritual’s influence, strengthened her Familiars, and ventured into Midnight to seek a way to control her conflicting paths. She reached the City Center, where a moonlike projection offered powerful energy, and moved into the front rank of Aberrations as it drew closer to the ground.

• Xu Zhi survived the Brocade City ritual, learned it was intended to create an Archbishop of Wrath, and resisted the Cup’s influence despite being drawn onto its path.
• Xu Zhi returned to Cloud City, recruited the Fourth Branch researchers, and brought their equipment and an intelligent Aberration back to Zhong Lingfan.
• Xu Zhi advanced through a dangerous dream trial, then entered Midnight seeking help but escaped wounded after a Cup believer tried to lure her away from Moth.
• Yu Shenwei healed Xu Zhi with her blood, while the Human Skin she brought back became part of a cloak that could hide her from Aberrations and Fanatics.
• Little Aberration reached level 30 and gave Xu Zhi branches, allowing her to craft the Midnight Ghost cloak and prepare for the City Center.
• Xu Zhi crossed into the City Center, where dense Black Fog eased her Cup restlessness and she discovered Aberrations gathering around a plaza.
• When the Game Console went into maintenance, Xu Zhi stayed in the City Center and absorbed energy from a moonlike projection that appeared above the plaza.
• Over several days, Xu Zhi watched the moon sink closer and its energy grow stronger, then slipped into the foremost circle of Aberrations before Midnight.

Xu Zhi consumed the moon fragment, transformed Little Aberration into the Cup’s Archbishop of Wrath, and gained [Authority] as the Cup turned its attention toward her. She lured three Archbishops into Cloud City, defeated Ye Yan and Sloth, and left Lust at large while the Narrator investigated the strange nature of their foundations.

• Xu Zhi swallowed the moon fragment, sacrificed [Cup], and had Little Aberration eat the crimson scrap before it sealed the rift and grew into a great tree.
• Xu Zhi woke with a stronger body and learned that Little Aberration had become the Cup Attribute’s Archbishop of Wrath, making them targets of the Cup and the beings in Midnight.
• Xu Zhi unlocked [Authority], moved the survivor base to Cloud City’s center, and arranged a deal that would lure the Archbishops there in exchange for Federation resources.
• The Federation sent a ten-person team into Cloud City, where Xu Zhi followed them and revealed herself as three Cup Archbishops and their followers attacked.
• Xu Zhi fought Ye Yan and the Archbishops, then used [Moth] and [Lamp] energy to corrupt Ye Yan’s blood-red staircase and kill him.
• Xu Zhi killed Sloth by severing her head and limbs and crushing her heart, but Lust escaped.
• Xu Zhi sent Lin Zizhen and the surviving Federation members out of Cloud City, kept Sloth’s remains, and planned to collect the Federation’s remaining payment in a week.
• The Narrator warned Xu Zhi that the Archbishops’ foundations seemed unreal and that the Cup’s supreme being might be behind a fog of deception, while Xu Zhi refused to take on the role of a world-saving hero.

Xu Zhi uncovered the threat posed by the Cup’s revival, negotiated with the Federation, and entered Midnight to retrieve the Black Cat’s remains. As the believers began their sacrifice ritual and the world’s supernatural paths proved cut off, Xu Zhi stayed in Cloud City to oppose the coming danger, while the Narrator began to reveal her hidden past.

• Xu Zhi learned that Ye Yan and the other Archbishops had defective foundations created by the reviving Cup supreme being, then captured Lust and fed him to Little Aberration.
• Xu Zhi told Zhong Lingfan and Shen Jinwen about her control over Cloud City, negotiated a paid pass deal with the Federation, and made Lin Zizhen her subordinate.
• Xu Zhi entered Midnight, dug up the Black Cat’s remains, and escaped through the guarded Rift after discovering that its barrier reverted anything touching it to its state ten seconds earlier.
• Xu Zhi attempted the ritual to advance using the Black Cat’s remains, but every road in the white forest ended at a bottomless Cliff, revealing that the world’s supernatural paths had been severed.
• Xu Zhi and Zhong Lingfan investigated the believers’ formation as Xu Zhi studied [Authority], while her own cat defeated the Black Cat and began absorbing its power.
• Believers activated one of thirteen ritual points by sacrificing Transcendent hearts and their own lives, causing crimson light, spreading nightmares, and [Cup]-attribute energy to replace the extraordinary energy in the air.
• Xu Zhi saw the crimson pillar, suspected the sacrifice had begun in Midnight, and stayed in Cloud City to disrupt the Cup’s plan and protect its residents.
• The Narrator decided to tell Xu Zhi the truth about her past and asked whether she remembered how it had appeared.

Xu Zhi faced the entity as it brought Midnight and the Black Sun down on the Federation, then survived the world’s destruction and escaped its prison. She lost the Game Console and its Narrator, but emerged with the power to fight the Archbishop and began turning Little Aberration against him.

• The Narrator told Xu Zhi to prepare to recover the emotions she had rejected, while Zhong Lingfan revealed that her new Contract ability let Xu Zhi’s blade sever supernatural connections.
• Xu Zhi destroyed the blood eyes appearing in Cloud City, but the supreme being marked her with [Cup]-attribute energy and brought Midnight closer to the world.
• The being descended through the rift, and the Federation’s nuclear strike wounded it as Midnight’s backlash and the formation drained the Federation’s people and energy.
• Xu Zhi learned that the Federation was a prison built to contain the being and that the [Observer] watched it, then fused with her Familiars as the Black Sun fell.
• The Black Sun swallowed Xu Zhi, who absorbed the warehouse cores through the explosion until [Lamp] and the Game Console kept her alive and her dormant fragment fused with [Authority].
• Xu Zhi discovered that the being was an Archbishop, while Zhong Lingfan and the others died to preserve [Severing] in her blade and the Game Console returned its power to her before vanishing.
• Xu Zhi fought the Archbishop with her blade, used her Familiar tattoos as extra eyes, and activated the [Authority] energy she had planted in him so Little Aberration could root through his body.