Chapter Summaries

Plot and events

• Xuan Wen treats the child patient, whose gaming headset and cables have become fused with his body. She warns that his addiction has made him accept the Shadow World’s horrors as normal and dulled his humanity.
• Rather than abruptly taking away his game, she installs a game made by Gao Ming that presents reality more accurately. The boy is frightened by this unfamiliar perspective, but Xuan Wen carefully reconnects the cables and blood vessels so he survives.
• Su Mo watches, increasingly impressed by Xuan Wen’s medical skill. He also remains unnerved by the resentful woman’s shoe-owner lurking behind him.
• Xuan Wen receives a call from Gao Ming, who is preparing to come to Lishan Hospital. She reports that Investigation Bureau teams are inside and says she has three mutated patients and Su Mo with her. Gao Ming urges her to stay hidden.
• After the call, Xuan Wen broods over her complicated feelings about Gao Ming and the trust he has placed in her. When Su Mo asks whether Gao Ming is her husband, she emphatically denies any relationship, insisting he will never fall in love with her.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen shows both clinical skill and an unconventional, forceful approach to care. Gao Ming’s call unsettles her more than the dangerous patients do, revealing feelings and doubts she struggles to control.
• The child patient shifts from vicious confidence to confusion and fear when his distorted sense of reality is challenged. His headset remains attached, so recovery is incomplete.
• Su Mo moves from astonishment at Xuan Wen’s treatment to curiosity about her connection with Gao Ming. His question exposes her emotional vulnerability.
• Gao Ming, though heard only over the phone, demonstrates concern by warning Xuan Wen not to confront the Investigation Bureau directly. Their easy coordination suggests deep trust, even as Xuan Wen insists they are not romantically involved.

Significant themes

• Distorted reality and humanity: The Shadow World can make the abnormal seem ordinary, eroding people’s empathy and sense of self.
• Addiction and control: The boy’s gaming has made him a puppet of his altered perceptions; Xuan Wen tries to redirect him rather than simply strip away his coping mechanism.
• Care through force: Xuan Wen’s treatment is unsettling and coercive, blurring the line between healing and control.
• Trust and unacknowledged emotion: Gao Ming and Xuan Wen rely on one another, while Xuan Wen’s denial hints at feelings she cannot—or will not—admit.

Key plot points and events

• Xuan Wen takes the group away from the storage room before the Investigation Bureau arrives, intending to build their strength before confronting them.
• As night approaches, they explore the hospital’s most dangerous floor, where patients are more severely mutated and threats increase after dark.
• The Insomnia Patient, nicknamed Mister One, leads them to a sealed, distorted ward called the First Intensive Care Unit to meet another patient.
• The patient, a young man with his eyelids cut off, says he is afraid to sleep because ghosts appear whenever he closes his eyes. Xuan Wen gives him a sleep mask and persuades him to lie down so she can observe what he experiences.
• As the patient begins to drift off, he says the ward and its occupants appear in his mind. The door bursts open, and pale eyes appear in its gaps, suggesting that the ghosts he fears may be manifesting in the room.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen remains composed and practical, treating the encounter as a serious investigation. She reassures the frightened patient and takes a direct, hands-on approach to examining his condition.
• Su Mo follows the group but remains out of his depth, privately unnerved by Xuan Wen’s intensity.
• Mister One vouches for the new doctor and helps persuade the patient to cooperate.
• The eyelidless patient is revealed as deeply traumatized and sleep-deprived. His fear escalates as he believes the ghosts have heard him and are now nearby.

Significant themes

• Fear and perception: The chapter blurs the boundary between hallucination and reality as the patient’s imagined ghosts appear to take shape.
• Survival amid corruption: The group navigates a hospital where nightfall brings greater danger and patients retain varying degrees of humanity.
• Control and vulnerability: Xuan Wen’s calm contrasts with the patient’s terror, while his self-mutilation shows the desperate lengths he has taken to avoid sleep.

Plot points and events

• The chapter opens with a frightened narrator recalling their parents’ mysterious disappearance. They describe shadowy, coffin-like shapes in the house and say the police suspect them of killing their parents, though they insist they know what happened.
• At Lishan Hospital, a sleeping patient’s nightmare takes over the Critical Care Ward. His fears emerge as ghosts: a giant, anguished woman’s face calling “Chen Meng,” and his skeletal father growing out of a wall.
• As the nightmare destabilizes the ward, Xuan Wen realizes its fine threads may represent the patient’s strained nerves and reason. The Insomniac gives the patient medicine, disrupting the nightmare and helping him wake.
• The patient panics about the ghosts that appear whenever he sleeps. Xuan Wen questions him to connect the nightmare to his real experiences and uncover the cause of his condition.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen takes a probing, clinical approach, insisting that the patient must confront painful memories to be treated. She also recognizes that his nightmare-making power is unusually dangerous.
• The patient reveals he was once a reasonably attractive but little-known actor. He arranged for a friend to stalk and spy on him to attract attention, and enjoyed feeling watched. After the friend died in a car accident, the sensation persisted and turned into terror.
• The Insomniac acts decisively by administering medicine during the nightmare, helping to interrupt its hold on the patient.
• Su Mo and the other patients shelter near or under the bed as the ward is overwhelmed by the patient’s horrors.

Significant themes

• Fear becoming reality: The patient’s imagined threats manifest as physical horrors, blurring the boundary between dreams and waking life.
• The cost of attention: A staged feeling of being watched becomes an inescapable paranoia after the friend’s death.
• Trauma and buried memories: Xuan Wen treats the nightmare as a distorted reconstruction of the patient’s past, suggesting that recovery requires confronting its source.
• Uncertainty and unreliable perception: The opening narrator’s account of their parents’ disappearance echoes the chapter’s central question of whether terrifying visions reflect reality, delusion, or something supernatural.
  The chapter ends as the patient begins describing how his parents’ behavior changed and how he came to suspect that something had taken them over.

Key plot points and events

• Xuan Wen interviews a hospitalized man who says the dead have been watching him since his life began unraveling six months ago. He describes discovering that a close friend had secretly filmed and obsessively watched him.
• The man cannot clearly separate nightmares from reality. In his dreams, his friend became a spider and chased him; he eventually restrained, killed, and buried her. His parents also appeared in strange forms: his mother became boneless and transformed into things that saved him, while his father became a skeletal house he had to find to end the nightmares.
• Xuan Wen cuts one of the strange threads in the room, which causes the man to convulse. She suspects the threads symbolize his nerves and emotions, and that his dreams and memories have become entangled with reality.
• Research reveals that Actor Chen Meng was implicated in a murder case six months earlier: his parents were convicted as the killers, while he was accused of concealing what he knew. Xuan Wen suspects he was the real murderer and that his parents took the blame, though Chen Meng insists they disappeared.
• Chen Meng traces the onset of his confusion to a visit to Lishan Hospital. He says he accidentally entered its supposedly abandoned Rear Building and received treatment from a doctor there. He recalls Situ An and a counselor from Hate Mountain Prison being present.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen remains skeptical and probing. Rather than accepting Chen Meng’s account, she tests his memories against records and gradually revises her theory about his parents.
• Chen Meng is distressed, defensive, and unreliable even to himself. He insists he is the victim, but his gaps in memory and the murder case cast suspicion on him.
• Su Mo listens to the interview and finds Chen Meng’s dream-world difficult to comprehend.
• The chapter also reveals the disturbing relationship between Chen Meng and his friend: he considered her a best friend, while she treated him as an object of fixation. Xuan Wen challenges his self-presentation and asks whether he had other similarly close friendships.

Significant themes

• Uncertainty between dreams and reality: Chen Meng’s memories, nightmares, and possible crimes blur together.
• Guilt and unreliable memory: His denial may reflect self-deception rather than deliberate lying.
• Obsession and control: His friend’s surveillance and possessiveness echo the binding threads in his dreams.
• Hidden responsibility: The revelation that his parents may have taken the blame raises questions about who truly bears responsibility.
• The hospital’s mystery: Chen Meng’s account of treatment in the abandoned Rear Building introduces a possible connection between his decline and the hospital’s unexplained history.

Plot points

• Xuan Wen questions Chen Meng, a patient whose worsening condition leaves him unable to distinguish nightmares from reality. He recalls that a young counselor from Hate Mountain Prison once visited the hospital and suggests that treatment sessions were recorded.
• Warned by the Insomniac that armed, dangerous intruders are hunting patients, the group follows Chen Meng into Lishan Hospital’s rear building to find the records.
• In the counseling room, Xuan Wen discovers that most recent recordings have been deleted. The remaining footage shows patients being deliberately guided into the rear building.
• She concludes that the rear building was selecting people to become “seeds” for the shadow world, making it a foothold for that world’s invasion of reality.
• A recording of Chen Meng’s earlier counseling session reveals that he repeatedly dreamed of killing and burying his friend. The session is interrupted by a young man in a Hate Mountain Prison uniform. Xuan Wen recognizes him as Gao Ming.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen stays focused on finding the young counselor rather than investigating Situ An. She quickly interprets the recordings and recognizes Gao Ming.
• Chen Meng is frightened but cooperates, leaving Critical Care for the first time in days and leading the group through the hospital. The footage shows he was once healthier and more composed.
• The Insomniac warns the others about the intruders and helps persuade Chen Meng to move.
• Xuan Wen and Chen Meng have a tense, practical exchange: she cuts off his explanations to get to the recordings, while he remains unsure of her motives and ability to help.

Significant themes

• Reality and delusion: Chen Meng cannot tell dreams from waking life, and his disturbing memories may be more than ordinary nightmares.
• Institutional deception and exploitation: The rear building’s treatment process appears to have targeted patients for a larger supernatural purpose.
• Truth hidden in records: The surviving footage exposes the hospital’s role and connects Gao Ming to the mystery.
• Fate and convergence: The chapter’s clues bring Xuan Wen and Gao Ming’s past actions into direct contact.

Plot points

• Xuan Wen reviews six-month-old surveillance footage showing Gao Ming entering Lishan Hospital as a doctor, not a patient. She suspects the Shadow World may have selected him then.
• In the recording, Gao arrives to collect medication for a prison after a riot. He interrupts a consultation with Chen Meng, who reports insomnia and disturbing dreams.
• Gao confronts Chen Meng with the possibility that his dream reflects a real murder: killing his best friend, running her over, dismembering her, and burying her at a construction site. Chen angrily denies it.
• The hospital doctor takes Chen away for treatment. When he returns, Chen is dressed as a patient and seems strangely vacant; he is told to collect medication and complete admission paperwork.
• While Gao waits alone, darkness appears to consume his shadow. He briefly falls asleep. The doctor’s cryptic question—whether a madman is simply someone dreaming while awake—leaves Gao unsettled about whether he has truly awakened.
• Back in the present, Xuan Wen silently studies Gao’s face, searching the footage for clues.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming appears perceptive and blunt, drawing on his experience with death-row inmates to challenge Chen’s account. Yet the footage also suggests he may have been vulnerable to a supernatural influence.
• Chen Meng shifts from impatient and controlled to furious when accused, then returns from treatment subdued and seemingly diminished.
• The doctor presents a calm, reassuring manner but speaks in unsettling riddles, casting doubt on the boundary between dreams and waking life.
• Xuan Wen becomes serious and intensely focused, treating the footage as evidence about Gao’s connection to the Shadow World.

Significant themes

• Dreams and reality: Dreams may distort experience while still revealing hidden truths.
• Sanity and perception: The chapter questions whether waking life is any more reliable than a dream.
• Hidden guilt and denial: Chen’s dreams may expose truths he refuses to face.
• Supernatural intrusion: The living darkness around Gao hints that the Shadow World may already be reaching into ordinary reality.

Plot points and events

• Xuan Wen reviews a recording while wrestling with conflicting memories: the Shadow World says she is a murderous ghost who fell in love with Gao Ming because he created her, while Gao Ming’s account suggests she is simply herself. Though she planned to threaten him, she instinctively hid her knife, fixed her hair, and carried him from the tunnel.
• In the recording, Gao Ming meets Lu Zang, a counselor at Lishan Hospital. Lu says Gao’s psychological assessment was troubling and that his work documenting death-row inmates’ nightmares may be affecting him.
• Lu offers to test Gao, but Gao refuses and asks for his medication. Lu questions why Gao chose a chair in the shadows and asks what he dreamed about.
• Gao says he dreamed that all the games he had made became real—but insists it was not a nightmare. Lu is intrigued by the answer.
• A doctor arrives with medication, followed by Situ An, vice president of the Charity Association. Situ takes his usual seat in the shadows. Chen Meng then appears with more medicine.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen is increasingly uncertain about her identity and memories. Her actions toward Gao Ming feel instinctive and familiar, strengthening her emotional attachment even as she questions whether it is genuine.
• Gao Ming remains composed and skeptical of concerns about his mental health. He recognizes Lu’s counseling techniques and maintains that his games merely document inmates’ inner worlds.
• Lu Zang is warm and perceptive but probes Gao carefully, suggesting that the horrors Gao studies may be influencing him. His response to Gao’s dream hints at unusual interest.
• Situ An enters with quiet authority and a familiar claim to the shadowed chair.
• Xuan pauses the recording to study the people in it, noting that even apparently minor figures may have become powerful ghosts.

Significant themes

• Memory, identity, and truth: Xuan must decide whether to trust the world’s implanted memories or Gao Ming.
• The boundary between fiction and reality: Gao’s dream that his games have become real echoes the possibility that his creations, nightmares, and waking world are connected.
• Psychological influence and hidden danger: Lu suggests that confronting others’ horrors can expose a person to those horrors in return.
• Shadows and concealed motives: The repeated choice of seats in shadow hints at hidden connections and unseen threats.

Key plot points

• After receiving treatment at Lishan Hospital, Chen Meng is profoundly changed: dazed, compliant, and unnaturally devoted to Situ An. Lu Zang calls him part of their “family,” and Situ An warmly welcomes him.
• Gao Ming recognizes that something is wrong and tries to leave with the medicine cart. Doctor Lu blocks him, while Lu Zang directs him into the inner room to collect his prescription.
• Once Gao Ming and Chen Meng are gone, Lu Zang closes the curtains. The Counseling Room transforms into a grotesque, nightmarish place, revealing its true nature. Situ An appears accustomed to its horrors.
• Situ An tells Lu Zang that the Home in Xinhu has been discovered and asks whether their plan should begin sooner. Lu Zang advises waiting six months and argues that the apparent boundary between humans and ghosts may be reversed: perhaps the Shadow World’s inhabitants were once human, while reality has been occupied by ghosts.
• Situ An says he controls the Hanhai Charity Federation and counts everyone it has saved as his own contribution. He asks whether there are other Heads of the Family in Hanhai. Lu Zang confirms that every dead god has a corresponding Head of the Family.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Meng has been psychologically altered by treatment, becoming submissive and fawning toward Situ An—an alarming contrast with his former pride and sensitivity.
• Gao Ming remains wary and observant. His attempt to leave is thwarted, and Lu Zang’s decision to keep his identity vague around Situ An suggests he may have a special role.
• Situ An is charming and reassuring with Chen Meng, but privately works with Lu Zang on a larger plan involving saved people as “tribute.” His confidence is tempered by unease about other Heads of the Family.
• Lu Zang moves easily between a welcoming public manner and a monstrous private appearance. He challenges Situ An’s assumptions about reality, then claims he was joking, leaving the truth uncertain.
• Doctor Lu acts as the barrier between Gao Ming and the exit, reinforcing the hospital’s control over its patients.

Significant themes

• Identity and reality: The chapter questions whether humans and ghosts are what they seem, and whether the Shadow World or ordinary reality is the true world.
• Treatment as control: Chen Meng’s transformation suggests that “help” may erase personality and create obedience.
• Survival and power: The conflict between worlds is framed as a struggle over which side survives—and therefore gets to define itself as human.
• Uncertainty and deception: Lu Zang’s disturbing theory may be truth or manipulation, while the hospital’s pleasant façade conceals its horror.

Key plot points and events

• Situ An learns that the Shadow World contains dead gods and that every Family Head could become a vessel when the Shadow World merges with reality. Lu Zang warns that choosing which god to aid matters; Situ An heads off to meet Chen Meng, a new member of the family.
• In the hospital’s hidden room, Gao Ming destroys a clay statue of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal and refuses to take the medicine. He tries to escape, convinced that the people claiming to be counselors are deceiving him.
• Lu Zang explains that Gao Ming’s apparent reality is a dream scripted by an unknown force he calls Fate. He says Gao Ming is a “flaw” in Fate’s design and may be in danger, and asks him to cooperate.
• Gao Ming refuses to commit, so Lu Zang proposes a bet: one day, everyone will call him Gao Ming, even though that is not his current name. Lu Zang says this will happen when Gao Ming wakes from the dream.
• Xuan Wen watches the recording and realizes that Gao Ming’s name and past may have changed: everyone now treats “Gao Ming” as the name he has always had.

Character developments and interactions

• Situ An reveals fierce ambition and a willingness to consider controlling or eliminating potential rivals, but learns that the Shadow World’s plans cannot be stopped by killing individual candidates.
• Lu Zang acts as a recruiter and guide, patiently trying to convince Gao Ming that his world is false. He also offers a cryptic prediction rather than forcing Gao Ming to join him.
• Gao Ming remains skeptical and grounded in his own perceptions, unaware of the terrifying supernatural surroundings that others can see. His refusal to trust Lu Zang contrasts with Lu Zang’s belief that he is crucial to opposing Fate.
• Xuan Wen shifts from watching the recording to recognizing its personal significance, reacting with shock and fear at evidence that Gao Ming’s identity has been rewritten.

Significant themes

• Reality and perception: Characters may inhabit radically different versions of the same world.
• Fate versus free will: Lu Zang claims that lives are scripted, yet “flaws” such as Gao Ming may disrupt that design.
• Identity and memory: A person’s name and past may be altered so completely that even they accept the change.
• Power and survival: The possible rebirth of dead gods makes the choice of whom to serve a matter of existential importance.

Plot points

• Xuan Wen watches a recording of Gao Ming’s earlier conversation with Lu Zang. Lu reveals that Gao Ming’s name—and perhaps his fate—has changed, and that he is one of several people with “loopholes” in Fate.
• Lu asks Gao Ming to protect such people from having their souls destroyed and to seek an eyeball hidden in the hospital that can distinguish dreams from reality. If Situ An has not been accepted by it, Gao Ming should try putting it in his own socket.
• Lu explains a way out of the Shadow World: find its boundary, which in Lishan Hospital takes the form of a pill. The needed pills are supposedly hidden in wards on the Seventh Floor.
• The recording ends. As the Counseling Room transforms and danger approaches, Xuan Wen searches its inner room and discovers shelves filled with god statues, including a damaged Flesh-and-Blood Immortal statue.
• With the route behind them blocked, Xuan Wen leads the others toward the Seventh Floor, claiming she knows how to escape. The hospital grows increasingly monstrous as they climb.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming accepts Lu Zang’s dangerous bet despite not understanding the situation. He is unsettled by the encounter but agrees to leave and seek the pill.
• Lu Zang presents himself not as Gao Ming’s helper but as someone using Gao Ming and Situ An as weapons against Fate. He believes Gao Ming may return if he survives.
• Doctor Lu questions why Lu Zang would let Gao Ming go, particularly after the statue was damaged; Lu Zang suggests the dead god within it may have chosen Gao Ming.
• Xuan Wen moves from stunned observer to decisive leader. She recognizes the statue from Gao Ming’s past, takes it with her, and guides the group toward the Seventh Floor.
• Mister One and the patients, along with Su Mo, flee as the danger closes in and follow Xuan Wen’s lead.

Significant themes

• Fate and agency: People who can slip Fate’s control may be crucial to defeating it.
• Reality and dreams: Names, memories, and the Shadow World’s boundaries may be unstable or altered.
• Manipulation and purpose: Lu Zang’s apparent help is driven by his larger goal, not personal concern.
• Transformation and survival: The hospital’s physical corruption forces the group to adapt quickly and trust Xuan Wen’s direction.

Chapter summary

• Key events: As night falls, Lishan Hospital’s rear building rapidly transforms into a nightmare-like shadow of the brightly lit front building. Xuan Wen leads Su Mo and several ghost patients to the Seventh Floor’s inpatient department, where they must search for an unspecified medicine believed to wake them from the dream and return them to reality. In Ward 7001, they find a suffering figure hidden beneath a blanket and decline to disturb it. Ward 7002 contains a floor of shed human skin and a shape that suddenly charges at them, forcing Xuan Wen to shut and lock the door. In Ward 7003, she discovers a room covered in calculations about whether the world exists and attempts to reconstruct nightmares. Its unusual map shows every city but Hanhai, which is replaced by ocean.
• Character developments: Xuan Wen takes firm command, using her influence to direct the group and pressing on despite the dangers. She is cautious and increasingly concerned about the hospital’s connection to Gao Ming and his past escape. Su Mo remains compassionate, worrying about his friends even while fleeing. The child patient with the gaming headset shows signs of behavioral change after Xuan Wen installed a game in his brain, though he is far from normal. Chen Meng appears unsettled by the inpatient ward, as if its layout is familiar to him.
• Character interactions: Xuan Wen directs the group to search wards while warning them not to disturb patients. Mister One objects that they cannot simply enter, suggesting he knows the department’s dangers. The group follows Xuan Wen’s lead, withdraws from the skin-filled ward when it becomes threatening, and continues searching.
• Significant themes: The chapter blurs the boundary between reality, dreams, and nightmares. The hospital’s grotesque transformations suggest that its “treatment” has inflicted extreme suffering. The calculations and map introduce a deeper question about whether the world—and even Hanhai—truly exists, while the medicine hunt forces the characters to confront uncertainty and danger.

Key plot points

• Xuan Wen finds a map in Lishan Hospital that omits Hanhai, casting doubt on the reality of the city and her life there. She wonders whether its residents are trapped in a nightmare or controlled by Fate.
• The hospital may be searching for people who have escaped Fate’s control. Xuan Wen suspects the missing patient in Room 7003 uncovered something and disappeared.
• Behind the map, she discovers intricate divine patterns forming a blood-red city, along with a hidden stash of medication. She takes both the map and the pills.
• Across the hospital, Gao Ming enters Lishan Hospital. Xia Yang warns him that its rules differ from Hanhai’s and that the place holds secrets connected to the Shadow World and Situ An.
• An announcement warns Ghost Story Players that Investigation Bureau security officers are killing people inside. The warning’s broadcaster is killed, and a security officer confronts Gao Ming, recognizing him as Qian Junran, a special-class capture target.
• Unable to contact Xuan Wen, Gao Ming rushes to find her. As the officer attacks with a long-haired female ghost, a huge blood-red, flesh-like force overwhelms them both.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen becomes increasingly unsettled by the possibility that her memories and home are fabricated, but acts decisively by taking the map and medicine.
• Gao Ming shows fierce loyalty to Xuan Wen, recalling that she repeatedly saved him in past memories of death. He charges forward despite being unarmed.
• Xia Yang offers to help explore the hospital, while hinting at his artistic fascination with using ghosts and the human body as materials.
• Gao Ming and Xuan Wen’s special connection is severed, leaving their whereabouts unknown to each other.
• The security officer’s attack reveals the Investigation Bureau’s use of ghosts embedded in its personnel.

Significant themes

• Reality and illusion: Hanhai’s absence from the map undermines the characters’ sense of what is real.
• Fate and freedom: The hospital is linked to people who may have escaped Fate’s control.
• Memory and loyalty: Gao Ming’s past experiences bind him to Xuan Wen, even if she does not remember them.
• Danger and uncertainty: The hospital’s unfamiliar rules and sudden violence make it a place where ordinary expectations—and communication—fail.

Key plot points and events

• After defeating several Security officers, Gao Ming questions one about the woman in his wedding photograph. The officer says the team leader took her to Ghost-Tattoo’s room, where she was turned into blood plasma and tattooed onto people.
• Xia Yang urges Gao Ming to rescue Xuan Wen, warning that the Investigation Bureau is concentrating its forces on Lishan Hospital. He offers to help, though Gao Ming suspects he is using the situation to regain his freedom.
• A Security squad ambushes Gao Ming with coordinated gunfire and ghost-powered weapons. Their leader says the team leader has gone to the Rear Building and that the squad kills everyone inside anomaly events.
• The apparent Gao Ming is revealed to be an image painted on the wall using the Psychological Insight Mask. Xia Yang has been controlling the illusion, and the squad’s bullets struck only the false image.
• Freed from concealment, Xia Yang confronts the Security officers and threatens to strip their skin and paint new ghost markings onto them.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains focused on finding the woman in the photograph and learns she may be in Ghost-Tattoo’s room. He accepts that the Investigation Bureau is a formidable enemy, but does not readily trust Xia Yang’s offer.
• Xia Yang exploits Gao Ming’s concern for Xuan Wen to argue that he is needed. He then reveals his cunning and power by deceiving the Security squad, and openly embraces the chance to act freely.
• The Security officers demonstrate disciplined teamwork and confidence, but their ambush fails when Xia Yang’s illusion deceives them. Their leader provides information about the team leader’s location and the squad’s indiscriminate killings.
• Gong Xi continues to fight alongside Gao Ming, using the flesh-and-blood environment created by his merger with the Grudge House to shield them from the initial attack.

Significant themes

• Deception and perception: The squad mistakes an image for Gao Ming, showing how appearances can be weaponized.
• Violence and dehumanization: The Security officers kill indiscriminately, while their victims—and even the officers themselves—are threatened with grotesque bodily transformation.
• Freedom and self-interest: Xia Yang presents himself as an ally, but his eagerness to escape confinement leaves his motives uncertain.
• Power and institutional threat: The Investigation Bureau’s trained, coordinated forces pose a serious danger, even within a supernatural anomaly.

Key plot points and events

• In a parallel confrontation, Xia Yang faces armed Security personnel inside a painting. He believes they cannot harm him from outside it, so he must kill them before they discover a way to reach him.
• Gao Ming escapes through a window into the abandoned garden and approaches Lishan Hospital’s rear building, which feels strangely familiar and provokes the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God and his buried death memories.
• He meets Yang Yu, a deformed, frightened man from a poor family who warns that the rear building is a separate, dangerous world: people who enter searching for missing relatives never return.
• Yang Yu says a woman was taken inside and mentions that people have recently gathered at the Fourth-Floor Counseling Room, where something important is stored. Gao Ming gives him medical supplies and enters the building to find Xuan Wen.
• The hospital’s objects appear transformed by flesh and blood. A crowd of disembodied shoes pursues Gao Ming, but he seems instinctively to know the corridors and reaches the Psychotherapy Counseling Room.
• Inside, Gao Ming finds signs that others—likely Security personnel—have already searched the room and possibly destroyed divine-statue fragments. After sitting near the bookcase, he hears an unfamiliar man ask, “Are you awake now?”

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains focused on finding Xuan Wen, but the rear building’s unexplained familiarity suggests a forgotten connection to the hospital. His instincts guide him through danger even when his conscious memory does not.
• Yang Yu is timid and wary, but helps Gao Ming despite his fear. His concern for his hungry siblings and his injured back hint at a brutal family life.
• Xia Yang is presented as calm and confident in his advantage inside the painting, though his survival depends on acting before Security finds a way to attack him.

Significant themes

• Unreliable memory and hidden past: Gao Ming recognizes the hospital without recalling why, while his death memories may obscure or connect to earlier experiences.
• The boundary between worlds: The painting and the hospital’s front and rear buildings each operate under different rules, raising questions about what can cross those boundaries.
• Humanity amid horror: Gao Ming helps Yang Yu even though the man looks monstrous, showing compassion in a world where appearances are deceptive.
• Exploitation of the supernatural: Security treats ghosts and divine objects as resources, contrasting with the fear and reverence of others.
• Entrapment and pursuit: The rear building traps those who enter, and the pursuing shoes make the hospital feel like an active, hostile force.

Character interactions

• Xia Yang confronts the Security team in a deadly contest of power and timing.
• Gao Ming questions Yang Yu about the missing woman and the hospital; Yang Yu warns him, points him toward the Counseling Room, and receives medical supplies in return.
• Alone in the Counseling Room, Gao Ming uncovers traces of earlier visitors and ends the chapter confronted by a mysterious voice.

Plot points

• Gao Ming wakes in Lishan Hospital’s Counseling Room after a disturbing episode in which the building appeared overtaken by anomalies. Everything now looks normal, leaving him unsure whether he experienced an illusion or sleep.
• In the door’s glass, he sees a version of himself from the past: wearing his Hate Mountain Prison uniform and carrying a slip of paper. Gao Ming follows this reflection through the hospital, which seems to show events from more than six months earlier.
• The reflection leads him to the Seventh Floor’s inpatient wards. In room 7001, Gao Ming meets a male patient admitted that day, February 18, who says he hopes to leave after his final bottle of medication.
• The date confirms that Gao Ming is witnessing a point before he was dismissed from the prison and later boarded the Hearse during the Ghost Festival. He suspects his visit to Lishan Hospital may be connected to the death loop that trapped him.
• In room 7002, he sees a frightened young woman who begs a doctor to continue her treatment and promises not to run away. Gao Ming and his reflected past self both withdraw to avoid frightening her further. The chapter ends as he turns toward room 7003, following the increasingly eerie missing-person announcement.

Character development and interactions

• Gao Ming stays alert and investigates rather than dismissing the strange experience. He recognizes his reflection’s behavior as his own and wonders what his past self was searching for.
• He treats the patients gently: he offers the man in room 7001 a kind wish and avoids upsetting the distressed woman in room 7002.
• The male patient responds calmly to Gao Ming’s questions but appears troubled, stroking the air above his IV arm as if imagining severe swelling. The young woman’s panic suggests a recent traumatic experience.

Themes

• Memory, time, and identity: Gao Ming follows an earlier version of himself and begins uncovering a missing piece of his personal timeline.
• Reality and perception: The hospital shifts from an anomalous nightmare to an ordinary setting, while reflections reveal a past that Gao Ming cannot otherwise access.
• Searching and loss: The nameless missing-person broadcast endlessly searches for someone, echoing Gao Ming’s own search for his past and the source of his fate.
• Vulnerability and care: The patients’ distress contrasts with Gao Ming’s professional instinct to approach them cautiously and compassionately.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming enters Room 7003, where a restrained patient calling himself Question Mark is carving symbols into the wall. He believes the hospital is a dream and is trying to find a flaw in its design that will let him wake.
• Gao Ming explains that he comes from more than six months in the future and identifies his present-day self in a reflection on the floor. Question Mark tests his claims and finds that Gao Ming’s account matches his predictions.
• Question Mark theorizes that dying could break the dream’s control over Gao Ming, since the dream supposedly guarantees his survival for the next six months.
• He also asks Gao Ming to retrieve medicine from a room at the end of the corridor, claiming the pills are needed to leave the hospital and promising to help Gao Ming wake up.
• Before Gao Ming decides whether to trust him, his reflection starts down the corridor. Gao Ming follows, wondering what choice he made on this same journey six months earlier.
• As he proceeds, the imprisoned patients watch him, and a mysterious doctor appears to unlock the ward doors. The increasingly dangerous patients begin reaching into the corridor, turning the supposed route to medicine into an apparent trap.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming is cautious about trusting Question Mark but accepts the possibility that his past self once cooperated with him. His future knowledge makes him both a guide to the mystery and a person confronting his own forgotten decisions.
• Question Mark emerges as an intense, calculating researcher. Though he speaks of waking from a dream, he also has a personal goal: escaping the hospital. He tries to enlist Gao Ming by offering a bargain.
• The two Gao Mings—the present self and the future self reflected on the floor—act as separate figures, with the reflection seemingly leading the way.
• The patients and mysterious doctor shift the scene from investigation to immediate danger: the doctor appears to release the ward’s inmates, while the patients focus on Gao Ming.

Significant themes

• Dreams, reality, and control: The hospital may be an artificial world, and the characters seek a flaw that could free them from its rules.
• Fate and paradox: Gao Ming’s future knowledge challenges the supposed certainty of his survival and raises questions about whether the past can change.
• Trust and manipulation: Question Mark’s offer may be helpful, self-serving, or a trap; Gao Ming must decide whether to rely on him.
• Confronting the past: The central mystery is not only what lies at the corridor’s end, but what Gao Ming chose and endured there six months earlier.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming races through Lishan Hospital’s Seventh Floor, pursued by the patients and horrors that once killed him. The corridor’s reflective tiles blur past and present, letting him experience his own former ordeal.
• A nurse attacks his past self with a syringe. Though present-day Gao Ming dodges, he feels the medicine’s pain as his reflection falls and is struck.
• The doctor in a white coat appears and leads Gao Ming to a room at the corridor’s end. It contains an offering table, pills, grotesque statues, and walls covered in patients’ posthumous photographs.
• The room reveals itself as a sacrificial ritual: the medicine was made from Gao Ming’s own flesh and blood, and his past self was meant to be the offering. As the ritual closes in, the Birthday Posthumous Photograph against Gao Ming’s chest begins losing its color, suggesting his life may be tied to his past self’s survival.
• Unable to remember how he escaped the room originally, Gao Ming realizes he cannot wait for rescue. He smashes the floor, cracking his reflection and seemingly reaching through time.
• His injured left eye reveals a new reflection: a masked version of himself, hardened by countless deaths and radiating a powerful, ruthless aura.

Character developments

• Gao Ming confronts the terror of his former self’s near-death and the limits of his uncertain memories. Instead of surrendering, he resolves to save himself across past and future.
• The masked Gao Ming appears as a darker, formidable manifestation shaped by repeated deaths, hinting at an important connection to Gao Ming’s survival.

Character interactions

• Present Gao Ming and his past self mirror each other’s movements and share physical pain, binding their fates together.
• The white-coated doctor guides Gao Ming to the ritual chamber but does not explain his role.
• The patients, grotesque gods, and figures in the posthumous photographs collectively threaten and summon Gao Ming as the intended sacrifice.
• The newly revealed masked self appears to the present Gao Ming through the tiles, setting up a confrontation or intervention.

Significant themes

• Past and present intertwined: The reflective tiles make time porous, leaving Gao Ming unsure whether he is dreaming or reliving reality.
• Self-rescue and survival: Gao Ming rejects helplessness and decides to save himself when no one else appears.
• Death and identity: Repeated deaths have changed him, producing a version of himself that is powerful but unsettling.
• Sacrifice and the body: The ritual’s medicine, made from Gao Ming’s flesh and blood, frames his body as both victim and offering.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming links hands with his past self through a chain, allowing the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal to emerge from the past version of his body. The revelation is that the Immortal chose Gao Ming long ago; it is the reason he can escape repeated deaths and fate’s control.
• The Immortal slaughters the patients and monsters in the hospital room. When the final patient falls, the ticking stops, and the past Gao Ming has survived an ordeal that seemed impossible.
• As the past and present begin to merge, Gao Ming meets Lu Zang, a doctor who says he treated him six months earlier. Lu claims the events are part of dreams, not ordinary reality, and that he helped set a larger plan in motion.
• Lu explains that Gao Ming and others are “loopholes in fate” because Class Thirteen survived a bus crash in which they were meant to die. Their survival keeps the bus trapped in a repeating tunnel cycle. The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s choice of Gao Ming further disrupted that cycle.
• Lu says anomalies are spreading through Hanhai as a vast dream nears collapse and more people try to wake. Gao Ming suspects Lu is the person who has repeatedly killed him in the tunnel, but Lu is genuinely surprised to hear of the killer.

Character developments

• Gao Ming gains a clearer understanding of his connection to the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, though the merging of past and present leaves him unsure what is real. His suspicion and anger toward Lu grow.
• Lu Zang presents himself as a fellow enemy of fate and a planner who has watched possible futures. His reaction to Gao Ming’s accusation complicates the suspicion that he is the tunnel killer.
• The past Gao Ming survives the hospital’s massacre, showing that the connection between the two versions can alter what once seemed inevitable.

Themes and interactions

• Fate versus agency: Gao Ming’s repeated self-rescue and survival challenge a future in which he was meant to die.
• Dreams and reality: Lu frames the bus, the hospital, and apparent reality as layers of dreams, leaving Gao Ming—and the reader—uncertain of what is real.
• Connection across time: Gao Ming and his past self communicate and act through the Immortal and the chain.
• Trust and uncertainty: Gao Ming confronts Lu as a possible perpetrator, but Lu’s confusion suggests the truth about the tunnel’s killer remains unresolved.

Plot points

• Lu Zang tells Gao Ming that someone else killed him in the tunnel. He says he cannot leave the Shadow World except where it has deeply merged with reality, and suspects other supernatural forces may have entered the tunnel.
• Lu Zang outlines three ways Gao Ming could escape Hanhai’s dream: gain the cooperation of at least ten rule-controlling Dream Ghosts; let the Shadow World consume the city; or challenge Fate by changing the destinies of half the population and awakening the city.
• He urges Gao Ming to take control of his own destiny, then tries to remind him of a wager—but the broadcast drowns out his unfinished warning. Lu Zang flees into a hospital ward as something appears to hunt him.
• The dream collapses, and Gao Ming wakes in the Counseling Room, surrounded by grotesque supernatural activity. He concludes that Hanhai itself may be a dream and that monsters and other anomalies could be loopholes in its apparent reality.
• Embracing this new perspective, Gao Ming decides to defy Fate and walks fearlessly toward the ghost breaking into the room.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains suspicious of Lu Zang, questions his motives and proposed solutions, and refuses to accept the role of someone else’s pawn. The dream unsettles his view of reality, but ultimately strengthens his resolve to act on his own terms.
• Lu Zang presents himself as an ally who recruits people Fate cannot fully control. He explains the stakes and possible escape routes, but his evasiveness—and the cut-off warning about the wager—leave his intentions uncertain.
• Their exchange is marked by distrust: Gao Ming mocks Lu Zang as a villain, while Lu Zang insists he means no harm and that Gao Ming must fight for his own fate.

Significant themes

• Free will versus predestination: Gao Ming is urged to challenge Fate rather than submit to it.
• Reality and perception: The dream’s loopholes lead Gao Ming to wonder whether his waking world is also a dream.
• The cost of escape: Two routes risk mass destruction or shattered memories; the third demands changing countless lives.
• Self-determination: Gao Ming rejects being used as a sacrifice and chooses to confront the forces shaping his world.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming uses the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God to absorb a bloodied monster, confirming that flesh-based anomalies are vulnerable to it.
• He concludes that Lishan Hospital’s Rear Building has long been altered into a passage to the shadow world, and that Situ An deliberately led him there because something inside could threaten him.
• Searching the Seventh Floor, Gao Ming finds Room 7001 drenched in blood. Its patient appears to have died before Gao entered the building, and Gao suspects his dreams of the past have been incomplete.
• In Room 7002, he finds a dead woman whose body repeatedly heals and grows stronger, though her will seems broken.
• Room 7003 has been violently cleared of the writings left by its patient, “Question Mark.” Gao retrieves a hidden map from beneath the bed, just as he remembers doing in his dream.
• The map carries a disturbing warning: “Live in the dream. Whatever you do, don’t wake up! There is no hope in the world beyond the dream!” It also marks five hospital exits; three are crossed out, while the underground morgue is marked with a red question mark.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed and observant, but the warning unsettles his assumptions. Rather than accepting either Lu Zang’s apparent push toward waking or Question Mark’s warning against it, he becomes more curious about what lies beyond the dream.
• The monster is subdued and absorbed by Gao Ming’s Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God.
• Question Mark’s absence is felt through his hidden message and map: his promise in the dream to help Gao Ming wake now contrasts sharply with his warning to stay asleep.
• Gao Ming finds evidence of the Investigation Bureau’s presence and suspects its people deliberately removed Question Mark’s writings, raising doubts about what they are trying to conceal.

Significant themes

• Conflicting versions of reality: The dream and waking world each appear dangerous, and neither can yet be trusted.
• Manipulation and hidden motives: Lu Zang, Situ An, the Investigation Bureau, Fate, and the shadow world all seem to pursue their own ends.
• Normality and abnormality: In a world where everything is strange, Gao Ming reflects that normal people and thoughts may be treated as the real anomalies.
• Uncertainty and choice: Gao Ming has no clear guide to the safest path, and the marked underground morgue hints at a possible next destination.