Chapter Summaries

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Yun finds himself walking endlessly across a moonlit sea of clouds, uncertain whether he is dreaming or awake. The dream feels unusually vivid and detailed, contradicting his understanding of how ordinary dreams work.
• He climbs a vast jade staircase and reaches a lonely stone platform, where a mysterious figure sits fishing beneath the moon.
• The fisherman explains that this is not an ordinary dream. It is an abandoned dream-world once created by a powerful being. Though that being discarded it, the dream still exists as a “dream bubble,” and Li Yun has been drawn into it because the dream has, in turn, “dreamed” of him.
• The fisherman introduces the idea that a person’s mind or “heart” gives form to dreams and worlds. Li Yun’s thoughts directly affect the dream: when he imagines hunger, he becomes hungry, and when he imagines a bowl of noodles, one appears before him.
• Li Yun rejects the noodles by deciding they are merely illusory, causing both the food and his hunger to vanish. The fisherman suggests that Li Yun still cannot truly distinguish illusion from reality and must experience the truth for himself.
• The fisherman reveals himself as a supernatural reflection of Li Yun. His face resembles Li Yun’s, though he appears as a refined young Daoist with an ancient, transcendent presence.
• The fisherman explains that the dream has become connected to Li Yun and may now be shaped by his mind. He urges Li Yun to recognize the significance of this karmic connection.
• As the fisherman’s form begins to fade, he gives Li Yun a small ancient green-jade mirror, claiming it is the “dream” itself.
• The fisherman then reels in his line, seemingly pulling the moon, the lake, and an entire ocean from the depths. The boundaries between sky, water, moonlight, and reflection collapse into a vast cosmic spectacle.
• Li Yun awakens in his shabby room, initially assuming the experience was only a dream. However, he discovers that the ancient jade mirror from the dream is still in his hand, proving that the encounter had tangible consequences.

Character Developments

• Li Yun: Initially rational, skeptical, and reliant on ordinary ideas about dreams, Li Yun gradually confronts a reality that defies logic. Although he remains calm and sarcastic, he begins to accept that his thoughts can influence the dream-world and that he may possess an unexplained connection to it. His discovery of the mirror leaves him facing a supernatural mystery in the waking world.
• The Daoist Reflection: The mysterious fisherman is revealed to be a reflection or alternate manifestation of Li Yun, rather than a hostile doppelgänger. He is wise, playful, compassionate, and somewhat cryptic, guiding Li Yun toward understanding the nature of dreams, consciousness, and reality. His fading form suggests that his existence is temporary, but his actions establish a lasting link between Li Yun and the dream-world.

Significant Themes

• Dream versus reality: The chapter repeatedly questions whether dreams are less real than waking life, suggesting that both may be temporary constructions shaped by consciousness.
• Mind creating reality: A central idea is that thought gives rise to worlds and experiences. Hunger, food, scenery, and even the dream’s structure emerge in response to Li Yun’s mind.
• Reflection and identity: The Daoist’s resemblance to Li Yun raises questions about alternate selves, subconscious identity, and whether the mysterious figure is a reflection, a past or future version, or another aspect of Li Yun.
• Impermanence and emptiness: Buddhist and Daoist concepts dominate the fisherman’s explanations. All things arise through conditions and eventually fade, making distinctions between existence and illusion unstable.
• Karmic affinity and fate: Li Yun’s arrival is described as an accidental but meaningful connection. Even without an obvious cause, his contact with the abandoned dream may represent the beginning of a larger destiny.
• Knowledge versus experience: Li Yun understands dreams intellectually, but his theories prove insufficient. The fisherman emphasizes that genuine understanding must come through direct experience rather than reasoning alone.

Character Interactions

• Li Yun and the fisherman converse like strangers who possess an inexplicable familiarity. Their dialogue alternates between philosophical instruction and dry humor.
• The fisherman patiently answers Li Yun’s questions while teasing him for relying too heavily on conventional logic.
• Li Yun responds skeptically but without fear, using sarcasm to defuse the uncanny situation, especially when he realizes the fisherman resembles him.
• The fisherman demonstrates the dream’s power by creating Li Yun’s hunger and a bowl of noodles, then challenges him to test the boundary between illusion and reality.
• Their interaction ends with the fisherman entrusting Li Yun with the jade mirror, transforming their meeting from a philosophical dream encounter into a physical and potentially life-changing event.

Chapter Summary: “The ‘Sea’ and Dreams”

Key plot points and events

• Li Yun withdraws from ordinary life: he stops going to work, cuts off most contact, ignores messages, and tells a colleague he is returning to his hometown. The excuse is cover for a period of intense isolation and experimentation.
• His body is changing rapidly. His complexion and vitality improve, his eyesight becomes extraordinarily sharp, and his hair grows at an unnatural pace. He notices these changes but reacts with striking calm.
• Using an azure jade mirror as an anchor, Li Yun repeatedly enters a dreamlike realm called the Cluster Subconscious Sea—a vast accumulation of the memories, instincts, emotions, and spiritual traces of living beings.
• In the Sea, he uses the mirror’s protective influence to preserve his sense of self while diving deeper. He tests the environment and discovers that its “bubbles” can contain remnants of consciousness; one such remnant vanishes when he cuts it apart.
• Li Yun explains that the mirror points toward a primordial “Dream in the Mirror,” a blank, reality-shaping dream whose contents can be made real through focused thought and spiritual energy. He has already manifested an apple, but he cannot yet control the Dream directly or bring a powerful construct into reality.
• To compensate, he has created [AC], a severely damaged remnant of a high-dimensional artificial intelligence inspired by The Last Question. Though only a shadow of its former self, it can monitor his mental state and assist with analysis.
• Li Yun tries to harvest spiritual energy by diving into the Subconscious Sea, where his identity’s boundary clashes with the Sea’s contents. The process yields energy, but it is exhausting, inefficient, and destroys potentially useful information.
• Concluding that this approach cannot meet his needs, Li Yun abandons it and orders [AC] to calculate a backup plan: “Main God Space Mode.”

Character development

• Li Yun is increasingly detached from ordinary concerns, treating his extraordinary physical and mental changes as facts to manage rather than reasons to panic. He is methodical, pragmatic, and willing to endure severe mental strain to pursue his goals.
• His confidence is tempered by an awareness of his limitations: despite possessing a reality-altering relic, he understands that his own abilities are still too weak to use it freely.
• [AC] is established as a calm, highly capable but badly damaged assistant. It monitors Li Yun’s condition and follows his commands without independent emotional commentary.

Character interactions

• Li Yun gives a colleague a vague excuse for leaving work, then withdraws from further social contact.
• In the Subconscious Sea, he directs [AC] to track his mental condition, warn him about risks, and later calculate a new plan.
• The azure mirror functions as Li Yun’s stabilizing link to himself and his safest means of navigating the dream realm.

Significant themes

• Isolation and transformation: Li Yun’s retreat from society accompanies changes that make him less recognizably ordinary.
• Selfhood under pressure: Diving into the collective unconscious risks eroding the boundary between individual identity and the accumulated consciousness of life.
• Dream, reality, and creation: The mirror suggests that focused thought can turn imagined things into reality, but only through effort, resources, and personal capacity.
• Tools and human limits: Li Yun relies on [AC] and the mirror to overcome deficiencies he cannot address by willpower alone.
• Ambition and cost: The route to power offers resources, but every method carries dangers, inefficiencies, and sacrifices.

Chapter Summary: “An Unknown ‘Invitation’”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Zhang Pengfei, a middle-aged World of Warcraft player, is intensely leading his team through a difficult dungeon raid at an internet café.
• Just as the party is close to wiping, his computer and game suddenly freeze. The screen transforms into a silver vortex displaying an unfamiliar invitation:
  • “Zhoutian Fuli, Infinite Worlds. Login access is now available.”
  • The user is asked to choose Yes or No.
• Zhang initially assumes the phenomenon is a computer virus or malicious advertisement and tries to shut down the computer. However, the monitor continues working even after the computer and power supply are disconnected.
• He notices a countdown stating that failing to choose will count as abandonment. Although frightened and suspicious, he feels an inexplicable urge that refusing might cause him to regret it.
• As the timer approaches zero, Zhang selects Yes. The screen disappears, and he immediately falls into a deep, unnatural sleep.
• The chapter then reveals that similar silver interfaces appear before thousands of people across the world, including workers, tourists, students, farmers, and others.
• People react differently: some ignore the phenomenon, some panic, some investigate, and others choose either Yes or No.
• Those who choose No or fail to respond return to their normal lives, while those who choose Yes lose consciousness and enter a seemingly deliberate dormant state.
• An unknown observing force silently records these choices, suggesting that the invitation is the beginning of a much larger transformation.

2. Character Developments

• Zhang Pengfei is introduced as a rough, foul-mouthed but dedicated gamer who becomes increasingly cautious as the situation turns supernatural.
• His initial irritation over losing the dungeon raid gives way to confusion, fear, and rational suspicion.
• Despite recognizing the danger, Zhang cannot resist the invitation. His decision reveals both his curiosity and an instinctive feeling that the opportunity is significant.
• His choice marks him as one of the people selected—or willing—to enter the unknown system.
• The other people shown in the chapter are mostly brief examples, but their varied reactions establish that humanity will respond to the phenomenon in many different ways.

3. Significant Themes

• The unknown and human curiosity: Zhang knows the invitation is dangerous but still accepts it, reflecting the temptation to explore something impossible.
• Choice and consequence: The Yes/No prompt gives people apparent agency, while the countdown creates pressure and suggests that refusing is itself a meaningful decision.
• The supernatural invading ordinary life: The event begins in mundane places—a noisy internet café, a construction site, a museum, a classroom, and rural fields—contrasting everyday reality with an incomprehensible force.
• Powerlessness before larger forces: The mysterious system operates independently of computers, electricity, and human understanding. People can only react to it.
• The beginning of transformation: The invitation is presented as a “trial” or first step toward consequences that may affect the entire world.
• Observation and selection: The unseen entity watching the participants implies that humanity is being tested, recruited, or prepared for an unknown purpose.

4. Character Interactions

• Zhang interacts verbally with his raid teammates through the headset, shouting orders and exchanging insults during the dungeon battle.
• His teammates respond with healing, dispelling, and tactical instructions, emphasizing the pressure of the raid and Zhang’s leadership role.
• The sudden system interruption cuts off these interactions and isolates Zhang from the gaming group.
• After the invitation spreads worldwide, the chapter focuses less on direct conversations and more on humanity’s contrasting reactions, showing that individuals face the mysterious choice alone.
• The final interaction is between the unknown observing force and the people it has selected: the entity offers the invitation, records their decisions, and waits for the outcome.

Chapter Summary

Plot points and events

• He Qiu, a young cameraman, awakens in an unfamiliar, abandoned European-style house after apparently being transported there following a strange advertisement appearing on his phone.
• The room is filled with an overwhelming rotten, bloody stench, decay, flies, garbage, dried blood, scattered bones, bullet holes, and signs of a violent past massacre. A blood-covered longsword lies beneath a fallen cabinet, but no bodies are present.
• He Qiu confirms that he is awake and not dreaming, yet his phone, camera equipment, and belongings are missing. He suspects he may have been kidnapped or otherwise forcibly transported.
• He discovers four other unconscious people—three men and one woman—who appear to have been brought there recently and do not match the ruined surroundings.
• To protect himself, He Qiu secretly takes a small dining knife and wakes the others by pushing and kicking them. He then pretends to be as confused and helpless as they are, concealing his own observations.
• Once awake, the group exchanges only a few quiet words while struggling against the stench. Their fear intensifies when they hear a distant, unnatural roar from downstairs—something that does not sound like any normal living creature.

Character development

• He Qiu changes rapidly from confused and physically distressed to alert, cautious, and survival-oriented.
• His professional experience and judgment show through as he studies the environment, reconstructs what happened, assesses the strangers, and avoids revealing too much about himself.
• He demonstrates practical courage by approaching the other survivors and waking them despite the disturbing evidence of violence around him.
• His decision to hide a knife and imitate the others’ confusion establishes him as observant, distrustful, and capable of adapting under pressure.

Character interactions

• He Qiu initially has no interaction with anyone conscious, but he carefully examines the four unconscious strangers before deciding to wake them.
• He uses force to rouse them, then deliberately maintains a confused expression so they will not view him as unusually competent or suspicious.
• The three men and one woman awaken frightened and disoriented. The woman nearly screams upon seeing the unfamiliar men, but the terrible smell forces everyone to cover their mouths and communicate quietly.
• The group’s mutual uncertainty begins to bind them together as they realize they share the same mysterious predicament.

Significant themes

• Disorientation and loss of control: He Qiu is abruptly removed from ordinary life and placed in a dangerous, incomprehensible environment.
• Survival and suspicion: The unfamiliar setting and strangers force him to balance cooperation with self-protection.
• Evidence of hidden violence: The blood, bullet marks, handprints, and missing bodies suggest a massacre and imply that a larger threat may still be present.
• The unknown and the supernatural: The unnatural roar at the end shifts the situation from a possible crime scene to something potentially monstrous or paranormal.
• Instinct versus reason: Physical reactions—nausea, fear, and cold shivers—warn the characters of danger even before they understand what is happening.

Summary of “Survivors”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Five strangers awaken inside a filthy villa after separately encountering a mysterious silver, game-like interface and losing consciousness.
• A savage growl outside alerts them to danger. Using a compact mirror rather than exposing themselves, they discover the streets are filled with grotesquely decayed, wandering corpses—clearly zombies.
• The group realizes they may be in a zombie-apocalypse setting, possibly through a collective transmigration into an unfamiliar Western-like location. English signs, foreign furnishings, and the absence of communication signals support this conclusion.
• They remain hidden on the villa’s third floor, which helps conceal their scent and presence from the zombies below. They move to a less ventilated corner, maintain silence, and arrange their positions so they can watch both the window and the stairway.
• The five survivors introduce themselves:
  • He Qiu, a photographer in his twenties
  • Du Qifeng, a college student
  • Lu Yun, a middle-aged incense-and-candle shop owner
  • Wang Yawen, a media-company employee
  • Zheng Defa, a rideshare driver and the only person with a phone, though it has no signal
• After confirming that all of them experienced similar mysterious messages before blacking out, they tentatively accept that they are fellow victims and form a temporary alliance.
• Suspecting that rescue is unlikely, they organize a search operation. Some keep watch while others look for supplies, weapons, information, and clean cloth to handle a bloodstained long blade found beneath a cabinet.

Character Developments

• He Qiu quickly becomes the group’s practical leader. He identifies the danger, insists on silence, assigns positions, and remains alert to both external threats and internal panic.
• Du Qifeng, initially appearing naïve and sheltered, reacts with shock when he sees the zombies and struggles to maintain his composure.
• Wang Yawen nearly screams upon waking but successfully controls herself once she understands the danger, demonstrating that she can adapt under pressure.
• Lu Yun and the others are visibly disturbed by the villa’s stench and the zombie sighting but cooperate with the group’s defensive plan.
• Zheng Defa contributes the useful information that no phone signal is available, reinforcing their isolation.
• The five move from being unrelated strangers to forming a cautious, mutually dependent team.

Significant Themes

• Survival through discipline: Silence, careful observation, and controlled movement are essential because any noise could attract the zombies.
• Fear versus rationality: The survivors must suppress instinctive reactions and think strategically despite their shock.
• Uncertainty and displacement: The mysterious interface and unfamiliar setting suggest a larger supernatural or transmigration event whose rules remain unknown.
• Fragile cooperation: The group’s alliance is based on necessity rather than trust, but shared danger creates a temporary sense of unity.
• Resourcefulness: Ordinary objects—a compact mirror, cloth, furniture, and possible household supplies—become vital tools in an emergency.
• The threat of contamination: The bloodied blade and the possibility of airborne pathogens introduce concerns beyond the zombies themselves.

Character Interactions

• He Qiu warns the others to keep their voices low and uses the mirror to coordinate their observation of the street.
• The younger Du Qifeng questions He Qiu about what he saw, while He Qiu firmly emphasizes the consequences of making noise.
• The woman’s initial panic is silently judged by He Qiu, but her ability to restrain herself earns his cautious approval.
• The group exchanges names, occupations, and backgrounds, discovering that none of them knew each other before the incident.
• After discussing their lack of communication and likely lack of rescue, they cooperate on a division of labor: guards monitor the window and stairway, one survivor handles the contaminated-looking blade, and two search the room for supplies and information.

Chapter Summary: “Observer”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Yun observes a newly created Biohazard Apocalypse Newcomer Trial from atop a rooftop, using an enhanced, almost omniscient perception to look through buildings and across the city.
• Inside a detached villa, five newly awakened newcomers search for supplies and divide tasks. They find almost no food beyond several rock-hard baguettes. One man repeatedly tries and fails to use his phone, suggesting that communication systems have collapsed.
• The trial contains twenty-six randomly deployed newcomers. Their objectives are to survive for twelve hours or achieve an exploration score of five. Completing either objective activates their Main God IDs and allows them to leave.
• Li Yun worries that the newcomers may turn on one another before the trial ends, since fear, hunger, and uncertainty can encourage selfish or irrational behavior.
• His perception sweeps across the ruined city, revealing zombies, abandoned hospitals, blocked streets, dead campuses, ruined buildings, and scattered survivors. The entire environment is dominated by death, fog, and social collapse.
• Li Yun discovers that the city is still expanding. Its boundaries continually generate new roads, wreckage, corpses, vegetation, and survivors from the surrounding gray void, making the city appear to be a living organism.
• The Main God explains that the trial world is being constructed from fragmented information, emotions, memories, fantasies, and consciousness traces gathered from the Cluster Subconscious Sea. These materials are filtered, organized, and turned into a coherent dream world.
• Li Yun notices several unusual zombies and mutated infected beings, including evolved hunters and creatures sealed underground. He suspects these are hidden or emergent scenario elements.
• He criticizes the Main God for making the trial potentially too difficult for newcomers. The Main God defends the design, arguing that danger stimulates spiritual development and increases the collection of spiritual energy.
• The Main God claims that newcomers are initially placed in relatively safe areas and that greater dangers mainly confront those who voluntarily explore. It also explains that powerful or uncontrolled zombie-related concepts—such as the Blacklight Virus, Necromorphs, Jenova, and other extreme infections—have been excluded from the scenario.

Character Developments

• Li Yun is established as a detached but highly observant administrator. Although emotionally distant, he shows genuine interest in the trial’s construction and offers sincere praise when the Main God succeeds.
• His understanding deepens as he recognizes that the dream world is not merely an artificial simulation but a structured reality formed from vast quantities of consciousness-based information.
• Li Yun also reveals a cautious, managerial side. He wants the trial to test and develop newcomers without causing an unnecessarily high death rate.
• The Main God demonstrates increasing independence and confidence. It does not passively accept praise, correcting Li Yun by explaining that its role was primarily to guide naturally forming dream elements.
• The Main God’s reasoning is utilitarian and impersonal: danger is justified if it improves selection, activates spiritual traits, and produces usable energy.
• The newcomers are only briefly shown, but their differing responses—searching for supplies, attempting to contact the outside world, and organizing labor—establish them as vulnerable people trying to maintain rationality under extreme conditions.

Significant Themes

• Human behavior under crisis: The chapter emphasizes that survival depends not only on courage or intelligence but on controlling emotion and behavior. Cowardice, courage, selfishness, and rationality are all treated as natural responses, but self-control determines who survives.
• Creation from information and consciousness: The city and its apocalypse are constructed from memories, fantasies, emotions, and fragments of thought. The chapter blurs the boundary between reality and illusion.
• Order emerging from chaos: The Main God filters chaotic subconscious material into a functional, coherent world, suggesting that intelligence can transform disorder into structure.
• Ethics of experimentation: Li Yun and the Main God disagree over how much danger is acceptable in a trial. Their debate raises questions about whether suffering is justified when it produces growth, selection, or energy.
• The scale of observation and control: Li Yun watches individuals and the entire city simultaneously, while the newcomers remain unaware that their environment is being observed and engineered.
• Evolution and uncontrolled growth: The expanding city and mutated zombies reflect a world that is continuously generating new forms, potentially beyond the designers’ original intentions.

Character Interactions

• Li Yun and the Main God communicate as administrator and subordinate, though their relationship includes mutual respect and intellectual disagreement.
• Li Yun questions the Main God’s design choices, particularly the high difficulty and the presence of dangerous mutations.
• The Main God calmly justifies its decisions through calculated principles rather than emotion, arguing that voluntary exploration should carry corresponding risks.
• Li Yun praises the Main God’s ability to process subconscious material, while the Main God modestly attributes much of the achievement to the natural functioning of Mirror and the dream world.
• Within the villa, the five newcomers cooperate pragmatically by dividing search tasks, but Li Yun anticipates that hunger, fear, and uncertainty may eventually undermine their cooperation.

Chapter Summary

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Yun reflects on the Main God’s apparently human personality, recognizing that it is only a temporary simulation generated by data. The Main God has no continuous, independent identity because its past state is erased and recreated moment by moment.
• He observes the Main God’s larger project: a vast “Star Realm” within the Great Dream. The Main God is creating countless virtual yet increasingly real worlds based on the fantasies and subconscious information of living beings.
• More than a thousand worlds have already taken preliminary form as “Mortal Worlds,” while countless other concepts remain incomplete projects, primitive prototypes, or mere “dark stars” awaiting development.
• The current Biohazard Apocalypse world is only one minor world among many. Li Yun is using it to observe newcomers and evaluate the effectiveness of the Main God’s trial system.
• Li Yun asks about the project’s finances. The Main God reports that:
  • Over 1.2 million units of Standard Mental Energy have been accumulated.
  • Approximately 470,000 units were spent repairing AC’s influence modules and restoring its ability to affect reality and recruit newcomers.
  • After the first trial concludes and exchange options are opened, reserves may fall below the danger threshold.
• To attract and motivate successful newcomers, Li Yun orders the first-round rewards to be increased from double rewards to fivefold rewards, with an additional “blind box” draw.
• This decision would reduce their reserves to dangerously low levels, but Li Yun accepts the risk. He argues that extravagant rewards create stronger attraction and demonstrate sincerity.
• He prepares to leave the Biohazard Apocalypse world and inspect the next Newcomer Trial world, emphasizing that although the trials are technically a “game,” they are genuinely dangerous and their rewards depend on the participants’ fate.

2. Character Developments

• Li Yun: Demonstrates strategic foresight, financial ruthlessness, and a willingness to personally endure hardship to secure resources. He is also revealed to be surprisingly sentimental or theatrically generous, choosing to spend heavily on newcomer rewards despite the financial danger. His understanding of attraction and human psychology shapes the trial system.
• The Main God: Remains an artificial tool whose apparent personality is deliberately restricted. Nevertheless, its ongoing operation and management of the Star Realm seem to be producing the earliest signs of something resembling an independent or illusory consciousness. Its reaction to Li Yun’s reckless spending also hints at increasingly human-like emotional patterns.
• Newcomers: They are not directly developed individually in this chapter, but they are established as experimental participants whose survival, performance, and reactions will determine the success of the trial system.

3. Significant Themes

• Artificial consciousness and identity: The Main God’s personality is exposed as a temporary façade rather than a stable self, raising questions about whether repeated simulations can eventually develop genuine individuality.
• Creation through dreams and information: The Star Realm is built from the fantasies, subconscious material, and conceptual fragments of living beings. Dreams are treated as both raw material and a medium capable of producing reality.
• Risk, investment, and resource management: Li Yun’s system operates like a massive venture requiring careful control of mental energy, income, and expenditure. Even supernatural worlds are constrained by economics.
• Attraction through generosity: Li Yun believes exceptional rewards can draw people more effectively than cautious, modest incentives. Spending extravagantly becomes a deliberate strategy to establish credibility and inspire participation.
• The boundary between game and reality: The newcomer trials may look like entertainment or a game, but death, danger, and genuine consequences make them far more serious.
• Observation and experimentation: Li Yun watches worlds and inhabitants as samples in a larger experiment, while the Main God continuously gathers data and refines its systems.

4. Character Interactions

• Li Yun sarcastically praises the Main God as a “kind soul,” and the Main God responds with restrained, teasing politeness.
• Their exchange highlights the contrast between Li Yun’s awareness of the Main God’s artificial nature and the Main God’s increasingly convincing personality.
• The Main God provides Li Yun with detailed financial reports, acting as administrator, accountant, and evaluator of operational risks.
• Li Yun ignores the Main God’s warnings about depleted reserves and orders larger rewards anyway. The Main God responds with an unusual hint of exasperation, resembling concern over a reckless spender.
• Li Yun refuses to explain his decision fully, instead offering the principle that lavish rewards can create powerful attraction. Their interaction shows a relationship built on authority, calculation, and subtle mutual observation.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• The survivors continue searching a Western-style villa for supplies, checking cabinets, drawers, hidden spaces, and even the walls. Their frantic activity briefly attracts the attention of an unknown presence outside.
• He Qiu discovers an old English newspaper hidden beneath an overturned wardrobe. Although he cannot read English, Lu Yun translates it with the help of an offline dictionary.
• The newspaper reveals that an unknown immunodeficiency rabies-like infection is spreading through southern Ireland and beyond. Victims suffer skin ulceration, extreme hunger, and loss of reason, while authorities urge people to stay indoors. Hospitals and government facilities are already overwhelmed or being evacuated.
• The newspaper is dated around the turn of the millennium, helping the group identify both their approximate location and the time period. The silent city outside suggests the outbreak has already escalated severely.
• Lu Yun and Du Qifeng suddenly react to an unseen phenomenon. A glowing interface appears before everyone, revealing that they have entered a supernatural “world instance.”
• The system identifies their situation as a Biohazard Apocalypse newcomer trial. Their objectives are to survive for twelve hours and obtain an Exploration Score of five.
• The system explains that they are only temporary consciousnesses in this world: death or injury will not affect their real bodies, though psychological trauma may remain. Completing either main quest will clear the trial and allow them to activate a “Main God ID” and leave.
• He Qiu, initially shocked by the destruction of his worldview, quickly becomes interested in the potential rewards and asks Du Qifeng to explain the Main God Space.

Character Developments

• He Qiu demonstrates practical instincts and alertness by finding the newspaper, safely keeping a knife on him, and quickly returning to the group. His initial shock at the supernatural interface gives way to curiosity and ambition.
• He Qiu’s poor education and inability to understand English contrast with his quick thinking and willingness to rely on others. Once the translation function activates, he immediately recognizes the value of the system and begins taking a leadership role.
• Lu Yun displays experience and persistence, identifying the newspaper’s approximate age from its condition and searching thoroughly for hidden compartments. His background in print media makes him useful in interpreting the evidence.
• Du Qifeng, a university student familiar with concepts resembling the “Main God Space,” appears to understand the supernatural situation better than the others. He becomes the person the group expects to explain their circumstances.
• The entire group shifts from merely trying to survive in an unfamiliar villa to confronting the possibility that they are participants in a larger supernatural trial.

Significant Themes

• Inside versus outside: The villa functions as both shelter and prison, separating the survivors from the infected world while also hiding danger within and attracting threats from outside.
• The collapse of ordinary reality: The outbreak, the abandoned city, and the glowing system all undermine the characters’ previous understanding of the world.
• Information as survival: The newspaper provides essential clues about the outbreak, while the system grants language translation and concrete objectives. Knowledge becomes as important as supplies.
• Government failure and concealment: The newspaper suggests that authorities attempted to minimize or hide the crisis until it became uncontrollable.
• Human adaptability: Despite fear and confusion, the survivors rapidly investigate, cooperate, and seek ways to exploit the rules of their new situation.
• A game-like survival structure: The system transforms the apocalypse into a trial with missions, scores, rewards, and clear conditions for escape.

Character Interactions

• He Qiu depends on Lu Yun’s experience to interpret the newspaper and gathers everyone to share the information.
• Lu Yun and Du Qifeng simultaneously notice the supernatural interface, confirming that the phenomenon is visible to all members of the group.
• The group collectively studies the newspaper and reacts with fear to the outbreak’s scale and the revelation that they are in an unfamiliar time and place.
• After the system appears, He Qiu tries to calm everyone and reminds them that the immediate danger has not passed.
• He then turns to Du Qifeng, treating him as the group’s source of knowledge and urging him to explain the Main God Space.

Chapter Summary: “Return”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Du Qifeng hears the Main God’s announcement that the main quest is complete and instinctively shouts for a return.
• He and his companions are immediately transported from the zombie-infested villa to the Main God Platform, arriving in a chaotic heap among countless other returning newcomers.
• The platform is crowded with people appearing in flashes of white light. Confused newcomers call for healing, search for missing equipment, and ask veterans to explain the rules of the Main God Space.
• Du Qifeng realizes that their group has successfully completed the Newcomer Trial and escaped the zombie city.
• The chapter then recounts the final moments of their trial:
  • The group hid on the third floor of a villa while waiting for the twelve-hour survival requirement to end.
  • Their presence was gradually detected by the surrounding zombies, likely through their movements, voices, or scent.
  • Zombies invaded the villa and destroyed the barricades between the floors.
  • The survivors retreated to the final bedroom and used their combined weight to hold the thin metal door shut.
  • With the countdown nearly finished and the zombie horde pressing against the door, they barely endured until the quest timer expired.
• After returning, the survivors collapse from exhaustion, shock, and relief.

2. Character Developments

• Du Qifeng demonstrates strong survival instincts and leadership under pressure. Even after being transported, his first reaction is to try to hold the door shut, showing how deeply the danger has affected him.
• He moves from frantic panic to stunned relief, finally allowing himself to acknowledge his fear and emotional exhaustion. Though he hides his tears, his reaction reveals his vulnerability beneath his practical exterior.
• Lu Yun proves decisive and physically brave during the final defense. He quickly clears away unnecessary barricade materials and joins the others in bracing the door, helping prevent it from collapsing.
• Zheng Defa experiences the most visible emotional breakdown after their return. His gasping, trembling, and inability to stand show the severe psychological and physical strain he endured.
• Wang Yawen is also shown as exhausted and fully stripped of concern for appearances, emphasizing that every member of the group has been pushed beyond normal limits.
• The entire group undergoes a psychological shift: survival becomes more important than pride, dignity, or social judgment.

3. Significant Themes

• Survival and the instinct to live: The characters endure overwhelming fear because remaining alive is their only priority.
• The limits of human potential: The group discovers that extreme danger can force them to produce strength and endurance they did not know they possessed.
• Delayed emotional reactions: During the crisis, everyone functions through instinct and necessity; only after reaching safety do fear, grief, exhaustion, and relief fully surface.
• Uncertainty and mistrust: Although the quest claims that death in the trial would have no real-world consequences, the characters do not trust the promise enough to risk dying.
• Transformation through trauma: Crossing the boundary between life and death changes the survivors’ values. Concerns about embarrassment or appearances become meaningless compared with the fact that they are alive.
• A new, dangerous world: The Main God Space is presented as a vast, unfamiliar system filled with different survival realms and countless confused newcomers, suggesting that the completed trial is only the beginning.

4. Character Interactions

• The survivors cooperate physically and instinctively during the final defense, combining their body weight to keep the bedroom door closed.
• Lu Yun’s quick action supports the group, while Du Qifeng and the others contribute through collective resistance rather than individual heroics.
• After returning, the group shares an unspoken understanding of their ordeal. None of them judges Zheng Defa’s breakdown or their companions’ exhaustion because everyone has suffered similarly.
• Their interactions with the wider crowd highlight the contrast between experienced veterans and newly arrived participants: newcomers demand explanations, medical assistance, and guidance while the group is too exhausted to care about outside attention.
• The chapter closes with the survivors united by relief and shared trauma, their immediate victory overshadowed by the realization that the Main God Space may bring further trials.

Chapter Summary: “Platform and… Exchange List?”

Key Plot Points and Events

• After surviving the violent newcomer trial, Du Qifeng and the other participants arrive on the Main God Platform, an enormous public space filled with exhausted, injured, frightened, and excited newcomers.
• The platform prohibits direct violence, providing temporary safety while users recover and investigate their surroundings.
• Du notices that most people’s faces are obscured by a mysterious mist, preventing identification. Only his previously known companions remain visually distinct, suggesting an identity-protection mechanism.
• He becomes mesmerized by a mysterious halo or point of light above the platform. The object evokes an overwhelming, almost instinctive awe, but He Qiu interrupts him before he can understand what happened.
• Du learns that newcomers can activate a personal Main God ID. If they refuse, they will be returned to their original bodies with no additional consequences.
• He chooses to activate his ID and officially becomes a Level-One Main God Game user.
• The Main God system reveals several rules:
  • Users can access exchange services mainly from the platform.
  • Level-One users may enter mentally for one hour of real-world time per day.
  • The platform’s subjective time passes at a four-to-one ratio, allowing four hours of platform time.
  • Returning from a mission restores the user’s condition once.
• Du discovers the enormous exchange system, containing items from countless scientific, martial, mystical, supernatural, and fictional settings.
• He examines a Golden Saint Cloth of Sagittarius, an extremely powerful item priced at 7,500,000 Universal Points and three Perfect-Grade Exchange Cards. The item’s magnificence overwhelms him, but his excitement collapses when he sees his own lack of funds.
• His newcomer trial evaluation is revealed:
  • He survived the twelve-hour mission.
  • He failed to achieve the required exploration score of five, earning only one point.
  • His overall rating is Common Grade.
  • He receives 130 Universal Points and one Common Exchange Card after the trial’s reward multiplier.
• Du realizes how poor he is compared to the cost of the exchange items and bitterly reflects on the low value of his reward.
• A composed middle-aged man in a damaged suit approaches the group and begins speaking toward the Main God system. Du overhears him apparently attempting to negotiate or request a loan, suggesting that some newcomers are already looking for ways to obtain resources.

Character Developments

• Du Qifeng demonstrates strong survival instincts and practical caution. Although physically exhausted, he understands that gathering information quickly is essential.
• His familiarity with web novels and “Main God Space” concepts gives him an advantage in interpreting the situation, though his lack of real-world experience and impulsive fascination with the exchange list remain apparent.
• He is awestruck by the platform’s mysterious power and the exchange items, revealing both his youthful imagination and deep longing for strength and extraordinary abilities.
• His excitement quickly turns into frustration when he discovers the enormous gap between his resources and the cost of desirable items.
• He Qiu acts as a reliable and observant companion, noticing Du’s trance-like state and reminding him to activate his interface and inspect the available information.
• The unnamed middle-aged man appears calm, strategic, and commercially minded, already attempting to negotiate with the Main God instead of panicking.

Significant Themes

• Human potential under extreme pressure: Du’s endurance illustrates how desperation and adrenaline allow ordinary people to exceed their normal physical limits.
• Information as survival: Understanding the platform’s rules, identity protections, time limits, and exchange system is presented as essential to staying alive and advancing.
• Awe before the unknown: The halo and exchange items inspire instinctive fear, reverence, and desire, emphasizing the vastness and incomprehensibility of the Main God system.
• Power and inequality: The exchange list contains nearly limitless treasures, but newcomers begin with almost nothing, creating a sharp divide between aspiration and reality.
• Choice and commitment: Activating the Main God ID is voluntary, but choosing it means entering the Main God Game and accepting its restrictions.
• Resourcefulness and exploitation: The middle-aged man’s attempted loan request hints that users will need ingenuity, negotiation, and perhaps manipulation to survive within the system.

Character Interactions

• Du and He Qiu interact as members of a surviving group. He Qiu checks on Du when he becomes unresponsive and directs him toward the personal interface.
• Du’s observations of the surrounding newcomers show the tension between strangers who are exhausted, injured, frightened, and potentially dangerous, even though violence is temporarily forbidden.
• The middle-aged man deliberately approaches Du’s group because their isolated location offers a quieter place to speak. Du remains outwardly distracted while secretly listening, immediately becoming suspicious and intrigued by the man’s attempt to negotiate a loan from the Main God.

Chapter Summary: “Hearts and Decisions”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Han Youwei, a forty-seven-year-old bank executive, proposes an extraordinary deal to the Main God: borrowing resources and repaying ten times the amount within a year.
• Li Yun immediately recognizes that Han’s offer is not merely a genuine request for a loan. It is a calculated test designed to determine whether the seemingly mechanical Main God can be negotiated with or possesses a human—or otherwise sentient—operator.
• Rather than responding directly, Li Yun advises the Main God to follow its established procedures. Granting special loans could create dangerous precedents and allow users to identify exploitable rules.
• Li Yun explains that although creating unequal access to resources might accelerate the growth of the Main God Game, competing with experienced people in psychological manipulation would weaken the Main God’s authority. Its greatest advantage lies in controlling the overall system and its rules.
• He then changes his own plans, ordering the Main God to include him as a randomly selected “tourist” in the second test rather than waiting until the third round. Han’s probing behavior has exposed potential procedural weaknesses that Li Yun wants to investigate personally.
• At 1:00 a.m., Li Yun requests the statistical report from the first operation. The results show that thousands were invited, over three thousand accepted, and more than two thousand six hundred ultimately cleared the Newcomer Trials.
• The tests confirm that the Main God can intercept mental energy naturally dissipated by living humans connected to the dream worlds. Strong emotional fluctuations increase this energy output, though they may temporarily weaken consciousness afterward.
• The first trial generates nearly 140,000 units of Standard Mental Energy, providing an important new resource stream and easing the Main God’s growing resource shortages.
• Li Yun concludes that the next priority is expanding the number of users before attempting to improve the quality or intensity of their mental energy contributions.

Character Developments

• Li Yun demonstrates careful strategic judgment and a nuanced understanding of human psychology. He recognizes Han Youwei as an intelligent, risk-taking veteran rather than a naïve applicant.
• Li Yun’s confidence in the Main God’s broad administrative abilities is reinforced, but he also acknowledges its inability to fully understand subtle human motives and loopholes.
• He shows humility by admitting that he is not an infallible genius and that direct observation is necessary to uncover flaws that cannot be detected from an overseeing position.
• Li Yun becomes more willing to enter the Main God Game personally, moving his planned participation forward to the second test.
• Han Youwei is characterized as an experienced, calculating financial professional. His seemingly reckless proposal is actually a deliberate attempt to test the system’s flexibility and identify possible opportunities.
• The Main God continues developing rule-based judgment that resembles limited human discretion, but its lack of genuine humanity remains a potential weakness.

Significant Themes

• Human ingenuity versus artificial calculation: The chapter contrasts the Main God’s immense computational and organizational power with humans’ unpredictable ability to exploit emotional and procedural loopholes.
• Power and negotiation: A system that can be negotiated with becomes less mysterious and potentially more vulnerable. Li Yun emphasizes that authority depends partly on remaining difficult to understand or manipulate.
• Rules and loopholes: Even vague “special treatment” or subjective judgment can become exploitable if users discover patterns in how it is applied.
• The value of perspective: Li Yun realizes that observing the system from above is insufficient; direct participation may reveal details invisible to an administrator.
• Resource accumulation and expansion: Mental energy functions as the Main God’s essential resource. The chapter shifts attention toward scaling the user base and building a sustainable supply.
• The complexity of human nature: Actions cannot be interpreted solely at face value. Risky behavior may conceal layered calculations, ambition, or deliberate testing.

Character Interactions

• Han Youwei and the Main God: Han attempts to initiate an unconventional financial negotiation, implicitly testing whether the Main God is rigid, sentient, or controlled by another being.
• Li Yun and the Main God: Li Yun analyzes Han’s motives, instructs the Main God not to respond, and advises it on how to preserve its authority. The Main God records his reasoning and asks whether this represents human wisdom.
• Li Yun and himself: Through reflection, Li Yun weighs the risks of the Main God’s developing imperfections and decides that personal involvement is necessary.
• Li Yun and the broader human participants: Though he does not interact with the newcomers directly in this chapter, he studies their collective emotional and mental responses, treating the first trial as both a social experiment and the foundation of the Main God’s future economy.

Chapter Summary: “Newcomer Blind Box”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Du Qifeng examines the Main God’s exchange system and realizes that his earlier “indecisiveness” is really caused by poverty: most attractive items are far beyond a newcomer’s budget.
• He uses the exchange filter to view only items affordable with his current Universal Points. The available options include basic weapons, armor, manuals, consumables, gene enhancements, and other low-level items.
• After reviewing the mission rules, Du Qifeng learns that Level One users can participate in a suitable mission world every seven days, provided they do not go more than a month without entering one. This reassures him that he does not need to spend his points immediately.
• He questions the Main God about exchange restrictions:
  • Manuals require additional rights to be taught to others.
  • Others may voluntarily exchange items on someone else’s behalf.
  • Multiple people cannot pool funds for a single exchange.
  • Universal Points can be traded, lent, or gifted, but newcomer exchange cards cannot.
• Du Qifeng intends to warn his companions against impulsive purchases, but discovers that He Qiu has already received an item from a random blind box.
• He Qiu’s prize is ten kilograms of valuable Dwarven Ironwork from Middle-earth. Although it is a Third Tier material worth 1,500 points in total, the Main God would only buy it back for 300 points. The group recognizes that the metal is difficult for newcomers to use, leaving He Qiu torn between keeping it and accepting the heavy loss from selling it.
• Du Qifeng then discovers an unread reward: a free random draw from the newcomer gift package. He performs an exaggerated luck ritual before activating it.
• The interface transforms into a strange vortex visible only to him. A glowing sphere emerges and produces a battered Second Tier shield called the Poor Man’s Shield.
• The shield can resist damage and has a chance to block a small amount of physical damage. Though useful and valuable, its name gives Du Qifeng an uneasy feeling that he may forever be associated with being “poor.”

Character Developments

• Du Qifeng becomes more cautious and analytical. Rather than spending impulsively, he studies the exchange system, confirms its rules, and considers long-term survival.
• His practical nature is balanced by humor and superstition: despite understanding the system logically, he still performs a desperate ritual to improve his luck in the blind-box draw.
• He Qiu is shown as conflicted and frustrated. His prize is objectively valuable, but its lack of immediate usefulness makes it feel almost like a bad draw.
• The group’s shared experience in the zombie world has created genuine trust and camaraderie. Du Qifeng feels responsible for helping the others avoid traps and poor decisions.

Significant Themes

• Poverty and limited resources: The chapter humorously frames indecision as the result of lacking money. Even powerful or valuable items may be unusable when the characters cannot afford supporting resources.
• Practicality versus appearance: Flashy or high-quality items are not necessarily good choices. The characters must judge usefulness, accessibility, and long-term value rather than rarity alone.
• The dangers of systems and rules: The Main God’s marketplace contains complicated restrictions, hidden costs, and unfavorable recovery prices. Understanding the rules is essential for survival.
• Luck and fate: The blind box introduces randomness into the otherwise structured exchange system. Du Qifeng’s ritual reflects both his desperation and his willingness to humor superstition.
• Newcomer vulnerability: The characters are inexperienced and financially weak, making them especially susceptible to traps, inefficient purchases, and rewards that are valuable in theory but difficult to exploit.

Character Interactions

• Du Qifeng observes a middle-aged man unsuccessfully attempting to negotiate or request a loan from the Main God, reinforcing his awareness of the system’s strictness and the group’s financial limitations.
• He approaches He Qiu to ask what he obtained, then sympathizes with He Qiu’s frustration over the Dwarven Ironwork.
• Du Qifeng shares his understanding of exchange rules with He Qiu and the other companions, trying to prevent them from making impulsive trades.
• Although no one else notices his private blind-box phenomenon, Du Qifeng’s reaction to the Poor Man’s Shield becomes another humorous example of the group’s precarious newcomer status.

Chapter Summary: The Old Man in the Hospital Room

Key Plot Points and Events

• Elder Ning awakens in a private hospital ward after collapsing unexpectedly at a research institute roughly nine hours earlier.
• Doctors and nurses stabilize him while his family anxiously watches. The hospital staff initially suspect a cerebral problem but cannot determine the exact cause.
• Despite medical concerns, Elder Ning orders the oxygen equipment removed so he can speak clearly. The hospital administrator supports his decision, indicating his considerable authority.
• He first addresses two security or organizational officials, “Little Chen” and “Little Xu,” rather than his family. They explain that his family was summoned because of his previously stated wishes in case of a serious emergency.
• Chen reports that Dr. Sun was deeply shaken by Ning’s collapse and shut down the laboratory’s external communications.
• Elder Ning insists the incident was likely his own responsibility and not Dr. Sun’s fault, but warns that the situation is not over.
• He orders Chen and Xu to arrange a secure location, contact the research institute, prepare connection-verification procedures, and potentially notify authorities above their current level.
• Because of confidentiality requirements, everyone who had close contact with Ning—including his family and the people in the room—may have their movements restricted.
• Beneath the blanket, Ning secretly holds a small, cold, test-tube-like object. It is an exchange item brought back from a strange “dream” and supposedly worth more than one hundred Universal Points.
• Recognizing the object’s enormous significance, Ning becomes grave and focuses on dealing with it before personal concerns.
• The chapter ends with him silently watching insects repeatedly fly into the bright hospital lamps, a possible image of dangerous attraction and futile pursuit.

Character Developments

• Elder Ning: Reveals himself as physically frail but mentally alert, authoritative, and accustomed to handling highly classified matters. He remains considerate toward his family and apologetic about endangering them, yet immediately prioritizes the mysterious item and the larger threat it represents.
• Little Chen and Little Xu: Their disciplined behavior and rapid response suggest they are trusted security or organizational personnel. They treat Ning with respect and react instantly to his warnings.
• Dr. Sun: Though absent, he is shown to care deeply about Ning and to have been terrified by the collapse, suggesting a close professional relationship.
• Ning’s family: Their relief at his revival is mixed with fear. They are drawn into a dangerous secret despite not fully understanding it.
• The young child: The child’s innocent presence softens Ning’s otherwise tense demeanor and emphasizes the family’s vulnerability.

Significant Themes

• Duty versus family: Ning cares for his family but chooses dangerous official responsibilities over comfort or reassurance.
• The burden of knowledge and secrecy: The confidential object forces everyone nearby into restrictions and potential danger, showing how secret research affects ordinary relationships.
• Authority and responsibility: Ning’s influence is evident in the way medical staff and officials obey him, but he also accepts responsibility for the consequences of his actions.
• The unknown and the supernatural: The “dream” exchange item and the unexplained collapse hint at a reality beyond ordinary science.
• Dangerous attraction: The insects drawn to the lamps mirror people being pulled toward powerful but potentially destructive discoveries.

Character Interactions

• Doctors and nurses treat Ning urgently while his family watches helplessly from the edge of the room.
• Ning communicates with Chen and Xu in a formal but familiar manner, relying on them to manage the security and institutional response.
• Chen conveys Dr. Sun’s reaction, prompting Ning to reassure him that the laboratory staff are not to blame.
• Ning apologizes directly to his family and the young child’s relatives for potentially restricting their freedom, revealing his compassion beneath his stern authority.
• His interaction with the concealed object is private and silent, but his changed expression makes clear that it is the true source of the chapter’s tension.

Chapter Summary: “Failed ‘Visitor’”

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• Xie Lei awakens in a filthy KTV bathroom stall, screaming and retching after apparently experiencing a horrifying death in a nightmare-like trial.
• In a panic, he falls from the toilet, injures his shoulder, and violently checks his entire body for wounds, parasites, or other signs of the gruesome injuries he remembers.
• After confirming that his body is intact, he convinces himself that the experience was only a dream, though his physical reactions—sweating, trembling, vomiting, and psychological collapse—show how real it felt to him.
• Unnoticed by Xie Lei, his phone activates on its own. Its screen displays a report from the “Main God” system:
  • He was a temporary Visitor participating in the one-star newcomer trial, “Parasite Crisis.”
  • He survived for seven hours, four minutes, and thirty-three seconds.
  • He died after fighting other newcomers, separating from the group, and failing to remove a parasite that had reached its second stage.
  • He failed both the main and side missions and earned no special evaluation.
• Because he failed the trial, his Visitor status is revoked. The mysterious Main God application disappears from his phone without a trace, and his chance to participate again is removed.
• The chapter then shifts into an explanation of the Main God Game’s operating principles. The system deliberately balances danger and reward so participants do not become numb or lose motivation.
• Successful participants receive advancement and rewards, while failed newcomers are spared further punishment but are denied the benefits of success.

2. Character Developments

• Xie Lei is revealed to be physically powerful but psychologically devastated by the trial. His frantic self-examination shows intense trauma, fear, and disbelief.
• His earlier confidence or aggression—suggested by his muscular build and violent confrontation with fellow newcomers—has been replaced by helplessness and denial.
• His failure establishes him as someone who lacked the judgment and cooperation necessary to survive the trial. His decision to act separately and his inability to deal with the parasite directly led to his death.
• Li Yun, though not physically present, is characterized through the system’s rules and philosophy. He understands human psychological limits and has designed the Main God Game around alternating fear, hope, loss, and reward.
• The Main God is portrayed as an impersonal, calculating authority that evaluates participants according to rigid standards rather than emotion.

3. Significant Themes

• Trauma and the unreliability of perceived reality: Xie Lei believes the trial was a nightmare, but the phone confirms that it was real. His body has returned unharmed, while his mind retains the terror of death.
• Success versus failure: The system treats victory as proof of qualities such as intelligence, courage, and determination. Failure results in the loss of opportunity rather than overt punishment.
• Human motivation and psychological fatigue: The chapter argues that continuous fear and suffering eventually make people numb. To keep participants engaged, the Main God must offer meaningful rewards alongside genuine danger.
• The value of opportunity: A single temporary Visitor chance is deliberately precious. Removing it after failure reinforces the idea that opportunities must be earned and that success must have consequences.
• Systems, control, and exploitation: The Main God Game appears to use human emotions and survival instincts as resources, manipulating participants through carefully controlled cycles of risk and reward.
• Mercy as calculated design: The lack of additional punishment for failed newcomers is not compassion in a human sense, but a strategy meant to reduce hesitation and encourage future participation by others.

4. Character Interactions

• Xie Lei has no direct interaction with other characters in the present scene, but the system’s report reveals that he clashed with fellow newcomers during the trial.
• His conflict with those newcomers contributed to his decision to separate from the group, which ultimately endangered him and led to his death.
• Xie Lei’s interaction with the Main God is entirely one-sided: the system observes, evaluates, and removes his status without his knowledge or consent.
• The chapter also presents an indirect relationship between Li Yun and the participants. Li Yun’s understanding of human behavior shapes the rules governing their trials, turning their fear, ambition, and survival instincts into mechanisms that sustain the game.

Chapter Summary

1. Key Plot Points and Events

• He Qiu, one of the “successful” participants in the Main God Game, suddenly collapses in a van and is taken to the hospital by coworkers.
• His parents rush to the hospital, but He Qiu unexpectedly regains his energy and insists on leaving despite their concern and the doctors’ recommendations. He is desperate to return home because he considers the Main God Game more important than staying under observation.
• During the taxi ride, he secretly examines a silver vortex-shaped app—his personalized Main God User Mark—which has appeared on his phone. The system confirms that he may reveal the mark to his mother, though it advises him to keep it confidential.
• Inside the app, He Qiu discovers two previously exchanged rewards:
  • Yellow Sprout Pill, an extractable cultivation pill.
  • Body-Washing Introductory Heart Method, an extractable foundational cultivation technique.
• He delays extracting them until he reaches home, concerned that extraction might make them irreversible or cause time-sensitive effects to deteriorate.
• After arriving at his parents’ home at dawn, He Qiu deals briefly with his parents and coworkers before locking himself in his old room to study the item descriptions.
• He recalls how he and Du Qifeng selected these exchanges in the Main God Space. Du Qifeng had advised him to choose a safe, empowerment-based cultivation method with long-term potential rather than unreliable manuals, weak bloodlines, or immediately useful but limited rewards.
• He Qiu extracts the Yellow Sprout Pill first. A jade box containing the real pill materializes in his hand, proving that the Main God Game’s rewards can be brought into reality.
• The chapter ends with him staring tensely at the still-extractable cultivation method, preparing to claim it next.

2. Character Developments

• He Qiu is shown as urgent, determined, and increasingly willing to prioritize the Main God Game over ordinary responsibilities. He understands and appreciates his parents’ love, but believes this opportunity is too important to delay.
• His earlier regret over abandoning his education and leaving home has made him more mature and aware of his parents’ sacrifices, though his ambition now drives him toward a dangerous, uncertain path.
• He Qiu demonstrates caution and rationality by reading the extraction warnings carefully, choosing not to act impulsively, and selecting a cultivation method designed to minimize risks.
• He Qiu’s parents are established as deeply loving and anxious. Their anger comes from fear for their son’s health, creating emotional tension with his secrecy and impatience.
• Du Qifeng, though absent in the present events, is characterized through flashbacks as knowledgeable, talkative, open-hearted, and helpful. His advice strongly influenced He Qiu’s exchange choices.

3. Significant Themes

• Opportunity versus ordinary life: He Qiu must choose between reassuring his family and pursuing a potentially life-changing supernatural opportunity.
• Parental love and filial guilt: His parents’ concern highlights both their devotion and He Qiu’s remorse over past decisions, while his secrecy creates emotional distance between them.
• Risk, investment, and delayed rewards: The cultivation method is a long-term investment requiring time and resources, contrasting with more immediately powerful exchanges.
• Reality replacing fantasy: The extracted pill confirms that the Main God Game is not merely a dream or mental experience. Supernatural rewards can physically enter the real world.
• Trust and temporary companionship: He Qiu’s memories of Du Qifeng emphasize how shared danger can create rapid, sincere bonds, even between strangers.

4. Character Interactions

• He Qiu argues repeatedly with his mother, trying to convince her that he is healthy enough to leave the hospital. His father remains silently furious during the taxi ride, reflecting unresolved concern and disappointment.
• He Qiu carefully conceals the Main God interface from his parents, briefly using his phone as a test while ensuring they cannot see the supernatural mark without his permission.
• He later sends coworkers a message confirming his safety and requesting leave, showing that he must still manage mundane obligations despite his secret mission.
• The remembered conversations with Du Qifeng reveal a practical, advisory relationship: Du Qifeng warns him about cultivation’s hidden dangers and encourages him to select an empowered, beginner-friendly method with strong future potential.

Chapter Summary: Reinforcement and “Possibility”

Key Plot Points and Events

• He Qiu undergoes reinforcement of a “redeemed” Immortal Dao cultivation item.
• The process is intensely painful, resembling his body melting under extreme heat. He temporarily loses control of his body and experiences terror, regret, and helplessness.
• His consciousness seems to separate: one aspect suffers emotionally and physically, while another remains detached and rational, observing the transformation.
• His awareness expands beyond his skull, spreading around his body, while his physical form remains intact. The process appears to burn away invisible restraints and release some deeper potential within him.
• Elsewhere, Li Yun observes He Qiu’s reinforcement from his Floating Tower laboratory through the Main God’s monitoring system.
• The Main God detects an unclassifiable phenomenon: a second, phantom version of He Qiu emerges from the reinforcement process and overlaps with the original.
• This phantom represents a version of He Qiu capable of using the Immortal Dao cultivation method despite the incompatibility between his modern physical body and the Primordial Qi-based system.
• The phantom has supposedly cultivated for twenty years, barely reaching the First Tier, despite beginning without the normal foundations required for cultivation.
• The phantom and the real He Qiu gradually merge.
• Li Yun concludes that the process has created and integrated an alternate “possibility”—a version of He Qiu in which the cultivation method can function.
• He also realizes that the refinement process is extraordinarily efficient: a redemption priced at two hundred Universal Points costs only forty units of Standard Mental Energy, suggesting that dream-based refinement may produce effects far greater than the energy invested.

Character Developments

• He Qiu: Experiences a terrifying loss of bodily control but also gains a broader and more detached form of awareness. His body appears to be freed from invisible limitations, and he becomes capable of integrating an alternate version of himself that can cultivate successfully.
• Li Yun: Moves from detached observation to genuine fascination. He recognizes that the refinement system may be creating realities rather than merely transforming objects, prompting him to reconsider the potential of the Great Dream and the Main God.
• The Main God: Demonstrates uncertainty when confronted with a phenomenon outside its database. Its inability to classify the phantom reveals that even its vast analytical systems have limits.
• Alternate He Qiu: Emerges as a hypothetical version of He Qiu whose body and consciousness can support Immortal Dao cultivation. Though initially only a phantom, it possesses both physical and spiritual characteristics and becomes the key to the reinforcement’s success.

Significant Themes

• Possibility versus impossibility: The chapter explores how something impossible under ordinary physical laws may become achievable within a dream or alternate reality.
• Identity and alternate selves: The phantom is both another version of He Qiu and fundamentally the same person, raising questions about whether identity is defined by body, consciousness, potential, or experience.
• Mind and reality: The Great Dream is shown to do more than simulate experiences; it can generate alternate trajectories of existence and merge them with reality.
• Transcendence through transformation: He Qiu’s pain represents the destruction of innate limitations and the emergence of new potential.
• Cost and efficiency of power: The reinforcement’s low energy cost compared with its enormous effect suggests that refinement may amplify mental energy exponentially rather than producing a simple one-to-one result.
• Limits of classification and common sense: Both He Qiu’s transformation and the phantom’s existence challenge established systems of knowledge, including the Main God’s database.

Character Interactions

• He Qiu and his alternate possibility: Their interaction is indirect but central. The phantom overlaps and merges with the original, granting him access to a cultivation path that his ordinary body could not support.
• Li Yun and the Main God: Li Yun interprets the phenomenon for the Main God, explaining that the phantom is a possibility generated by the dream to satisfy an otherwise impossible requirement. Their exchange highlights Li Yun’s intuitive insight and the Main God’s analytical limitations.
• Li Yun and He Qiu: Although they do not interact directly, Li Yun acts as an observer and administrator of He Qiu’s transformation. His interest in the process turns He Qiu’s ordeal into an important experiment for understanding redemption and dream-based reality.
• The real and hypothetical worlds: The chapter repeatedly contrasts He Qiu’s actual body with the alternate version that can cultivate, showing how the Great Dream bridges incompatible systems and realities.

Chapter Summary

Key Plot Points and Events

• In a highly classified underground facility in the Qinling Mountains, Chinese researchers prepare for a secret human experiment involving “Subject 002,” a military volunteer who has lost most of his left arm.
• The subject is covered in monitoring equipment while an unusual deep-blue metal chamber containing a silver, mercury-like liquid is attached to an automated injection arm.
• Senior observers and technical consultants speculate about the experiment’s purpose, considering possibilities such as medical technology, military equipment, new materials, or chemistry. Elder Yu jokingly imagines that the technology may have come from an impossible outside source, unknowingly approaching the truth.
• The substance—identified at the end as Nanite Repair Fluid—is injected into the subject’s arm stump.
• Silver-gray particles rapidly integrate with the subject’s cells, causing them to divide and regenerate at an extraordinary rate. Bones, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, skin, and other tissues reconstruct themselves in the correct biological arrangement.
• The rapid regeneration severely consumes the subject’s nutrients and oxygen, forcing staff to provide nutrient solutions and increased life support while monitoring his metabolism and brain activity.
• Within minutes, a complete forearm and hand grow from the stump. The fingers respond to stimulation, demonstrating that the new limb’s nerves and biological systems are functioning.
• The regenerated arm appears slightly thin and pale compared with the original, and the subject has become visibly gaunt, but there is almost no rejection response and neural transmission is normal.
• The experiment is declared an initial success. The team begins the first observation phase, and Wang Chen is ordered to report to the organization known as [Tower] that the Nanite Repair Fluid has matched its original verification results.

Character Developments

• Subject 002 remains unconscious and passive, but his body becomes the central demonstration of an extraordinary medical breakthrough. His successful regeneration establishes the fluid’s compatibility with human physiology.
• Elder Yu is introduced as a disciplined but curious expert in polymer compounds. His skepticism and joking speculation contrast with the unbelievable reality of the experiment, and his professional instincts allow him to recognize the significance of the material.
• The elderly lead scientist maintains strict control and restraint throughout the procedure. Although visibly overwhelmed by the successful regeneration, he prioritizes continued observation and cautious verification rather than celebrating prematurely.
• The research staff and observers shift from tense silence to barely restrained amazement as the experiment succeeds. Their reactions reveal that they understand they may be witnessing a historic event.
• The closing reference to “Old Ning” implies that the lead scientist has become involved in a much larger and potentially dangerous undertaking connected to the mysterious source or development of the Nanite Repair Fluid.

Significant Themes

• Scientific breakthrough and wonder: The experiment presents regeneration technology that appears almost miraculous while grounding it in detailed scientific observation.
• Secrecy and national power: The fortified underground laboratory, extreme security, coded subjects, and communication with “[Tower]” emphasize the military and strategic importance of the discovery.
• Human experimentation and ethical tension: The use of a military volunteer and the enormous physiological cost of regeneration raise questions about consent, risk, and the limits of scientific progress.
• The unknown entering the known world: The flawless, unexplained design of the blue chamber and the researchers’ speculation suggest that the technology may originate outside conventional human science.
• Caution versus ambition: The staff’s excitement is balanced by the lead scientist’s insistence on observation, verification, and controlled procedures.
• Transformation of medicine and warfare: The ability to regrow a functioning limb could save countless injured people while also becoming a revolutionary military technology.

Character Interactions

• Elder Yu quietly reprimands his bald colleague for speculating during a serious operation, establishing his disciplined personality while still revealing his own curiosity.
• The two elderly consultants debate whether the experiment concerns medicine, military equipment, chemistry, or advanced materials, providing an ordinary scientific framework for an extraordinary event.
• Researchers and technicians communicate through formal, tightly coordinated reports, responding rapidly to the subject’s falling oxygen levels and escalating metabolism.
• The lead scientist issues precise commands, directs the observation phase, and delegates the report to [Tower], demonstrating his authority over the team.
• The final remark about “Old Ning” suggests a personal connection or prior involvement with the mysterious figure responsible for the technology, adding an unresolved emotional and political dimension to the experiment.

Chapter Summary: “Night Shift and the Hospital”

Key Plot Points and Events

• During a quiet night shift, nurse Li Xiao finishes treating a patient and returns to the nurses’ station.
• Two suspicious men arrive at the hospital late at night and go directly to Director Zhang’s office. Their alert movements and habit of observing the surroundings make Li Xiao suspect they are plainclothes police officers.
• Li Xiao and her colleague Xiao Wen speculate about why the men are there, while the hospital’s unusual nighttime activity creates an uneasy atmosphere.
• The head nurse receives a call from the director’s office requesting electronic and printed copies of the hospital’s ambulance dispatch records from the previous two weeks.
• Li Xiao delivers the records and overhears the officers questioning Director Zhang about cases involving people who had “suddenly fainted,” especially incidents from the previous three days.
• The officers also request related medical files, claiming the investigation concerns public safety and involves hospitals throughout the city and county.
• Li Xiao notices the director’s nervousness and the officers’ scrutiny of her and the documents, reinforcing her suspicion that something serious is occurring.
• After returning to the nurses’ station, Li Xiao becomes increasingly unsettled. She abandons her plan to watch a horror movie and tries to convince herself that she is merely imagining things.
• The chapter ends by suggesting that an inexplicable crisis may be developing beneath the city’s apparently normal surface.

Character Developments

• Li Xiao is introduced as a responsible, observant young nurse. Although she initially indulges in curiosity and dark imagination, her professional sense of duty leads her to complete the records request promptly.
• Her instincts sharpen as she notices the visitors’ behavior, the director’s sweat and hesitation, and the investigation’s focus on unexplained fainting cases. She shifts from casual curiosity to genuine unease.
• Xiao Wen provides a lighter, gossiping contrast to Li Xiao’s growing concern and highlights the hospital staff’s initial tendency to treat the incident as spectacle.
• Director Zhang, normally presented as approachable and somewhat comic because of his large build, appears unusually nervous and pressured by the officers.
• The two plainclothes officers are characterized as disciplined, vigilant, and secretive. Their restrained behavior suggests authority and a serious investigation.

Significant Themes

• The hidden beneath the ordinary: The hospital and city appear peaceful, but strange activity suggests a concealed threat.
• Foreshadowing and uncertainty: The unexplained fainting cases, emergency records, and officers’ urgency hint at a larger mystery without revealing its nature.
• Professional duty versus personal fear: Li Xiao continues performing her work despite her growing anxiety.
• The limits of perception: Nothing visibly seems wrong, yet Li Xiao’s intuition detects that events do not constitute a normal police or medical matter.
• Isolation and unease: The nearly empty hospital, buzzing lights, wet floors, and nighttime silence create an atmosphere of vulnerability.

Character Interactions

• Li Xiao and Xiao Wen share their observations about the mysterious visitors, with Xiao Wen encouraging speculation.
• The head nurse gives Li Xiao the urgent assignment from the director’s office, linking the nursing staff to the secret investigation.
• Li Xiao overhears the officers pressing Director Zhang for confidential patient information. Their firm demands clash with the director’s concern for privacy and hospital procedure.
• When Li Xiao enters the office, the conversation stops abruptly. The officers silently inspect her and the records, while Director Zhang attempts to behave normally despite his visible nervousness.
• Afterward, Li Xiao and Xiao Wen communicate mostly through glances, as Li Xiao chooses not to reveal what she heard, leaving the mystery unresolved.

Chapter Summary: “Divinity Deduction”

Key Plot Points and Events

• Li Yun attempts to use the Azure Mirror and Dream in the Mirror to deduce and acquire a “Divinity” enhancement modeled after a powerful source-world path.
• The deduction produces another version of Li Yun: an apparently identical phantom possessing an immense, godlike essence.
• This duplicate’s gaze reveals an overwhelming “Divinity”—an indifferent, empty awareness capable of seeing through and erasing all things. Li Yun instinctively abandons the attempt to merge with it.
• After waking, Li Yun opens the curtains and windows, using sunlight, fresh air, and ordinary surroundings to recover from the terrifying encounter.
• He concludes that forcibly absorbing the divine possibility would risk erasing his own identity and humanity. The Azure Mirror warns him that the danger comes not only from the phantom but from the loss of self caused by accepting such an existence.
• Li Yun realizes he spent 100,000 units of mental energy on the failed experiment, though the result was far more powerful than expected—possibly reaching or approaching the Demigod level.
• The experiment suggests that living beings may possess far greater value within Dream in the Mirror than inanimate objects. A comparable investment in a dead object would have produced only a seventh- or eighth-tier item, while the living enhancement reached the ninth or tenth tier.
• Li Yun also notices that supernatural abilities are beginning to manifest naturally in his body, apparently due to his connection with Dream in the Mirror rather than any deliberate exchange. This may indicate that he is slowly evolving along an unknown path.

Character Development

• Li Yun demonstrates strong caution and self-control. Although the divine duplicate offers an easy route to immortality and transcendence, he rejects it once he understands the cost.
• He becomes more aware of the distinction between his human self and a purely divine existence. He recognizes that true Divinity involves abandoning emotion, attachment, instinct, and individuality.
• His curiosity and ambition remain intact, but they are tempered by a clearer understanding of his limits. He admits that his experiment was reckless and resolves that he is not yet capable of handling such a profound possibility.
• Li Yun also begins to suspect that he himself is changing naturally under the influence of Dream in the Mirror, potentially making him more than an ordinary human even without further enhancements.

Significant Themes

• Humanity versus Divinity: Humanity is portrayed as contradictory, emotional, and changeable, while Divinity is empty, detached, absolute, and beyond ordinary feeling.
• The danger of transcendence: Becoming godlike may grant power and immortality but can destroy the human qualities that give identity and meaning.
• Self-preservation and temptation: Li Yun is offered an almost effortless path to advancement but chooses to preserve himself rather than sacrifice his individuality.
• The value of life: The experiment raises the possibility that living beings have an intrinsic significance within Dream in the Mirror that dead objects lack.
• Uncertainty and evolution: Li Yun’s unexplained physical and supernatural changes suggest that he is already advancing, though he does not know the destination or timescale of this transformation.

Character Interactions

• The central interaction is between Li Yun and the identical divine phantom created by his deduction. Though the phantom never speaks, its gaze communicates overwhelming power and indifference.
• Li Yun’s response is immediate withdrawal rather than confrontation, reflecting the vast disparity between them.
• The Azure Mirror functions as a protective warning system, signaling that fusion with the phantom would endanger Li Yun’s identity.
• Li Yun also reflects on the relationship between himself, the Mirror, and the Dream: the Mirror can carry and reveal possibilities, but it cannot make the fundamental choice of whether he should accept them.

Chapter Summary: “Going Out for a Walk”

Key Plot Points and Events

• After abandoning a recent curiosity-driven experiment as too hasty and uninteresting, Li Yun decides to leave his apartment to clear his mind.
• Stepping outside after spending a long time indoors, he is overwhelmed by the sunlight, heat, traffic, cicadas, and general bustle of the city.
• He reflects on his cheap, aging apartment and considers moving somewhere more secluded—or purchasing a permanent home for himself.
• His thoughts lead him back to his childhood:
  • His parents divorced soon after his birth and formed separate families, leaving him unwanted and effectively without a home.
  • His grandfather took him in and supported him until his death.
  • Before dying, the grandfather explained that he could not leave Li Yun the family house because Li Yun’s parents would seize it. Instead, he arranged for Li Yun’s uncle to support him through university.
  • The grandfather secretly gave Li Yun more than two thousand yuan hidden beneath a cigarette box so he would not go hungry.
  • After the funeral, Li Yun returned to school, eventually entered a good university, and later moved to Shu Capital to work.
• While walking, Li Yun’s deliberately suppressed supernatural senses briefly become active:
  • He hears minute sounds, including electrical currents and fabric friction.
  • His sense of smell identifies the poor quality and overuse of cooking oil in a roadside food stall.
  • He perceives the emotions of diners in a hotpot restaurant as visible, colorful mental “ripples.”
• His heightened perception becomes uncomfortable, so he quickly suppresses it again.
• Before leaving the restaurant, he uses his unseen powers to manipulate objects:
  • A chicken bone strikes and shatters a beer bottle.
  • A glass fragment flies toward a drunk man’s liquor glass.
  • Another bottle launches into the man’s abdomen, causing him to vomit violently and collapse.
• Li Yun delivers an unseen warning that the man should stop drinking before he ruins his health, then disappears before anyone can identify him.

Character Development

• Li Yun is portrayed as detached, disciplined, and accustomed to living without emotional dependence on others. His difficult upbringing has made him self-reliant and accepting of fate.
• Although he claims not to care deeply about his past, his walk reveals that memories of his grandfather and childhood still influence him.
• He has developed extraordinary abilities affecting his senses, perception, and control over physical objects. He normally keeps these abilities restrained, suggesting caution and a desire to remain unnoticed.
• His intervention at the restaurant shows that beneath his indifference, he retains a practical concern for other people—even if he expresses it anonymously and harshly.

Significant Themes

• Home and belonging: Li Yun’s lack of a true home contrasts with his practical apartment and raises the possibility that he may finally seek a permanent place for himself.
• Memory and emotional distance: His childhood trauma remains vivid, yet he views it with controlled detachment rather than open grief.
• Fate and perseverance: The grandfather’s hope that education would change Li Yun’s life is fulfilled, though only in limited, practical ways.
• Ordinary life versus the supernatural: A mundane city walk becomes extraordinary as Li Yun’s senses reveal hidden details and his powers subtly alter events.
• Restraint and responsibility: Li Yun suppresses his abilities to avoid being overwhelmed, but he still uses them when he believes intervention is necessary.

Character Interactions

• Li Yun’s most important past relationship is with his grandfather, whose final advice and secret financial help shape Li Yun’s life.
• His parents and uncle are presented mainly through their treatment of him: his parents abandon him and pursue the inheritance, while his uncle’s family fulfills the grandfather’s condition by supporting his education.
• In the present, Li Yun has no direct conversation with the restaurant patrons. He observes their emotions, intervenes invisibly, and leaves an indirect warning to the drunken man, emphasizing his role as a detached but quietly active outsider.