Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming examines Patient 7003’s map of Lishan Hospital. Its blacked-out wards and a message from Question Mark raise questions about their escape six months earlier and Question Mark’s apparent break from Lu Zang’s plans.
• He destroys a watchful Paper Butterfly curse and leaves the ward, hoping to find a lead on Xuan Wen.
• Three wounded Investigation Bureau Security officers attack him. Their coordinated abilities include blood-thread control, identifying weaknesses, and physical protection.
• Gao Ming unleashes the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, whose eight arms overwhelm the officers. The Immortal turns their own blood-based powers against them, devours their ghost markings, and brutally attacks their souls.
• Drawn onward by the Immortal, Gao Ming reaches a room he recognizes, lined with black-and-white posthumous photographs. The ghosts there last saw him six months ago.
• He finds the offering bowl empty and its divine statue smashed, and concludes that the room needs a new god.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains focused on uncovering the past and finding Xuan Wen, but fights with striking confidence, relying on the Immortal rather than avoiding danger.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal has grown more powerful and ferocious since Gao Ming awakened from the past’s dream. It may have absorbed memories from Gao Ming’s former self, though those memories remain unclear.
• Question Mark becomes more mysterious: the map suggests he escaped the hospital and may have acted independently of Lu Zang.
• Gao Ming’s encounter with the Security team is a one-sided clash between their practiced teamwork and the Immortal’s overwhelming, predatory force. His greeting to the photograph ghosts contrasts their six-month separation with his own sense that only minutes have passed.

Significant themes

• Uncertain memory and identity: Gao Ming cannot recall how he escaped or what happened between him and Question Mark.
• Fate versus agency: Question Mark may have escaped Lu Zang’s control, while Gao Ming’s actions continue to challenge the plan surrounding him.
• Escalating violence and transformation: The Immortal’s increasing frenzy makes Gao Ming’s power more effective but also more disturbing.
• Uneven time and return: Gao Ming experiences the hospital as continuous, while the ghosts have endured six months without him.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal tear down the Black-and-White Posthumous Photos covering the walls, intending to gather the people the Shadow World has chosen as possible “loopholes” in fate.
• The photos—and the souls of Lishan Hospital’s patients within them—are sent to the Execution House. There, the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal consumes pieces of the Divine Statues and transforms, treating the Shadow World’s gods as food rather than allies.
• Using the patients as sacrificial material, the Immortal forges a new torture instrument in the Flesh-and-Blood Furnace. Gao Ming helps pull it from the flames, and the process visibly alters his body and fate.
• The completed weapon is a massive guillotine wrapped in chains and decorated with ghost faces. Its sides bear the words “destiny” and “fortune”; its base is formed from the patients’ bodies.
• The Immortal’s power grows dramatically, while the weapon’s emergence alarms Red Raincoat and affects Gao Ming himself.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming declares his intention to awaken all of Hanhai to reality, not just save one person. He actively helps summon the guillotine, despite the intense physical and spiritual cost.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal reveals his hunger for divine power and his willingness to turn patients—and the Shadow World’s chosen candidates—into tools. His transformation makes him seem even more like a savage god.
• Situ An, chained in the Execution House, watches the events with controlled anger and grief. He sees the altar and its power as something that should have been his, but remains focused on escaping and exacting revenge.
• Red Raincoat, usually indifferent, senses the guillotine’s threat and adopts a defensive stance.
• The patients whose photographs are sacrificed fear Situ An but also take grim satisfaction in seeing him imprisoned; that satisfaction soon gives way to dread at what the Immortal’s power may mean for them.

Significant themes

• Fate and resistance: The patients are described as potential loopholes in fate, and Gao Ming seeks to use them to change the city’s destiny.
• Sacrifice and exploitation: The patients’ hopes and souls become fuel for a weapon, raising the cost of challenging the Shadow World.
• Family, grief, and revenge: Situ An calls the dead his family and vows to avenge them, while Gao Ming’s broader mission treats the city’s people as bound together.
• Corruption of the divine: The Immortal’s consumption of the statues and creation of a grotesque guillotine blur the line between godhood, monstrosity, and violence.

Chapter Summary

• Gao Ming’s transformation: After he and the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God consume the patients and madmen, their power grows sharply. A new torture device appears—an instrument meant to attack Fate, not merely restrain it. Gao Ming’s body begins merging with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s, sharpening his senses and binding their fates together.
• The Investigation Bureau arrives: A squad of mechanical security officers enters the room, led by K, who holds Gao Ming responsible for killing three members of Security Team Seven. K threatens to mutilate him, while Gao Ming mocks the Bureau’s claim to be on the side of good.
• Gao Ming faces a cyborg officer: One of the officers attacks with superhuman speed and strength. Much of his body is mechanical, and he claims that past torture made him resistant to curses, pain, and mental attacks. He credits his team leader with rescuing him and insists that nothing frightens him.
• Gao Ming turns the man’s heart against him: Gao Ming suggests that the Bureau—or even the team leader—may have caused the officer’s suffering. Using the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s power, he hears the man’s heart and invades it with blood-soaked chains. The officer struggles to fight back, but his heart withers into petals. Gao Ming gains another chain as K rushes in too late to save him.

Character Developments and Interactions

• Gao Ming grows more powerful and physically intertwined with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal. Rather than retreating from this transformation, he accepts it and tests his abilities against the Bureau.
• K is furious over his team’s losses and acts aggressively, but Gao Ming’s taunts and the officer’s sudden defeat unsettle the confrontation.
• The cyborg officer presents himself as fearless and invulnerable, yet Gao Ming targets the trauma and doubt beneath his hardened exterior.
• Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal are increasingly inseparable: their bodies, power, and fates are merging.

Significant Themes

• Defying Fate: The new torture device represents an attempt to punish Fate itself, a force portrayed as controlling reality and reducing ordinary people to puppets.
• Transformation through suffering: Gao Ming’s unnatural fusion brings both danger and strength, while the officer’s suffering has shaped him into a weapon for the Bureau.
• Fear and control: The officer claims to have overcome fear, but Gao Ming exposes how vulnerable he remains through his heart and memories.
• Moral ambiguity: The Bureau’s agents behave brutally, complicating its claim to represent justice.

Plot points and events

• K confronts Gao Ming in the hospital, accusing him of being a Ghost Story Player and announcing Hanhai Security’s mission to kill them all. Gao Ming reveals that he deliberately caused a commotion to draw K away from pursuing Xuan Wen.
• K invokes the power of the corpse he calls a god. Ghost markings and scars across his body transform into a terrifying array of skeletal arms, which close around Gao Ming.
• Gao Ming answers with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s power. The room turns into living flesh, and soul-laden chains burst through the skeletal hands, shattering them and attacking K.
• While the two powers clash, Gao Ming studies K’s weapon. He deduces that K’s sheath—not merely the blade—is crucial: it was made from a divine being’s corpse, and its stench appears to limit the reach of K’s skeletal hands. The chapter ends before the fight is resolved.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming is calm, calculating, and openly pleased that K took the bait. He quickly identifies the likely source and limitation of K’s power, while his own connection to the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal grows more urgent.
• K is furious and fanatically committed to killing Ghost Story Players. His grotesque transformation reveals that he has returned from a deeper region of the Forbidden Game carrying a corpse he believes is a god. His power is formidable, but it has a discernible constraint.
• The security officers are wary of Gao Ming and monitor the operation through their Blood Rings. They fear K’s power even though they have seen it before, and they show little concern for their dead colleague.
• Gao Ming and K taunt and assess one another: K frames Gao Ming as a threat to the city, while Gao Ming questions the Investigation Bureau’s priorities and analyzes K’s weapon and combat technique.

Significant themes

• Power and the cost of control: K wields something beyond ordinary human limits, while Gao Ming’s chains are driven by the hatred of the souls they contain.
• Faith and interpretation: K calls the horrifying corpse a god, suggesting that the supernatural may be understood—or misread—through belief.
• Observation as a weapon: Gao Ming’s careful attention lets him discover a weakness before K can reveal his own trump card.
• Surveillance and mistrust: The officers’ actions are recorded and scrutinized, showing that even Hanhai Security fears its own empowered agents.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming identifies the weakness of K’s Ghost Markings: each use consumes power from the Divine Corpse behind them. K’s team and nearby Security personnel realize Gao Ming knows far more than he should.
• Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God pull against K’s bone-finger cage with chains inhabited by the souls of dead patients. The souls attack K’s Ghost Markings, weakening his hold.
• K tries to awaken the Divine Corpse by striking his scabbard, which opens blood-red eyes. Gao Ming recognizes that K is preparing another ability and binds his arms before he can complete it.
• Gao Ming’s Execution House and Fate’s Guillotine emerge. The wronged hospital dead seize the chains, helping drag K into the Execution House.
• Bound beneath the guillotine, K glimpses a reversed world in which ghosts live openly in sunlight while diseased humans hide in the shadows. The blade falls, severing his fate and stripping away his Ghost Markings.
• The markings gather into the phantom of a long-dead, thousand-handed god. The chains were binding this deity through K, not K alone. Gao Ming’s Ghost God recognizes it and appears eager to claim it.

Character developments

• Gao Ming displays tactical patience and ruthlessness, quickly interrupting K’s attempt to use his hidden ability. He also reveals that he sees himself as challenging fate, not merely defeating an opponent.
• K shifts from a confident hunter to a helpless captive. As he is overwhelmed, he recognizes the crushing powerlessness of those treated as expendable—an insight prompted by memories of fodder being cut for livestock.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God actively helps Gao Ming fight and shows a new, greedy interest in the ancient deity revealed at the chapter’s end.

Significant themes

• Fate and resistance: The chapter asks whether people can resist an imposed destiny, even as K experiences his struggle as futile.
• Power and sacrifice: K’s abilities consume the Divine Corpse’s power, while Gao Ming turns the suffering of the dead into strength.
• The unseen perspective of the powerless: K’s childhood memory of cut grass makes him understand how living people and ghosts may be treated as mere “food.”
• Reality and nightmare: K’s vision suggests that the world he knows may be inverted, leaving the chapter’s true nature of reality uncertain.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming taunts K with his knowledge of the Ghost Markings and counters each move before K can finish preparing his hidden ability.
• The souls of the hospital dead join Gao Ming’s attack, binding themselves to the chains and helping overwhelm K.
• K is dragged before Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God; after K’s markings are stripped away, the two gods face one another, setting up a new confrontation.

Key plot points

• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God defeats and beheads the Thousand-Handed White Bone apparition, a ram-masked monster that had been trying to resurrect itself through K. It consumes the apparition’s hidden severed finger, gaining a trace of divinity and growing stronger.
• The Fate Executioner’s blade bears new blood-red markings after the kill. Its damaged sheath and blade are fed into the Flesh-and-Blood Furnace, which produces a white Boning Knife with an unclosing eye in its handle.
• Gao Ming keeps the surviving Security personnel from escaping and has the Ghost God strip their ghost markings to make new chains. He orders one captured officer spared for questioning.
• The officer reveals that the Security team gained their markings during training in a Forbidden Game in Xinhu. Its deeper layers are filled with ghosts and humanity’s darkest emotions, and may connect to the Shadow World and the depths of the mind. The game is now run by Xinhu’s Investigation Bureau, led by a formidable woman surnamed Li.
• Gao Ming ends by asking how to enter the Forbidden Game.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming is both intrigued by the slain god’s remains and troubled by watching people die, though he remains pragmatic and focused on uncovering the hospital’s secrets and finding more god-corpses.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God displays growing power and satisfaction after consuming the severed finger, then turns the defeated weapon into another instrument of torture.
• Red Raincoat reacts to the execution with unexpected animation, while Situ An stays silent.
• The captured Security officer is terrified by the Execution House and cooperates, providing Gao Ming with information about Xinhu and the Forbidden Game. Other officers attempt to flee or protect their records, but Gao Ming’s side prevents them from escaping.

Significant themes

• The monstrous nature of “gods”: Shadow World deities embody extreme sins, and even their remnants can be consumed for power.
• Power through death and transformation: Ghosts, markings, weapons, and corpses are converted into strength or new tools.
• Hidden worlds and human darkness: The Forbidden Game’s deep layers expose the worst of human nature and may overlap with the Shadow World.
• Fear and control: The Execution House’s spectacle breaks the captive’s resistance, while Gao Ming’s questions point toward a wider, increasingly unstable world.

Key plot points and events

• A security officer explains that entering the Forbidden Game requires a discontinued gaming pod, access to former players in Xinhu, and permission to pass the Smart City’s identity checks. Investigation Bureau access is tightly restricted.
• Gao Ming considers whether the Forbidden Game’s “deep world” might be the reality people awaken into if ordinary life is a dream. Before he can investigate further, the security officer begins bleeding from every opening and dies. Gao Ming realizes the Blood Ring killed him for revealing forbidden information.
• Gao Ming concludes that the Bureau’s leadership may be compromised and decides to capture other security officers alive to obtain game access and information.
• He summons Big Dog, who warns that the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal may eventually take over Gao Ming’s body. Gao Ming accepts the risk, believing he needs the ghost god’s power and would help fulfill its wish if he survives.
• Gao Ming and Big Dog see the Ghost Story Players, including Xia Yang, fighting in the Front Building. The two buildings appear separated by darkness, and Gao Ming worries that the Rear Building may trap or consume those inside.
• They investigate the sixth floor, where security officers have been attacked by awakening anomalies. Blood, torn uniforms, and a fragment of a Red Ring mark the corridor.
• At the operating room, the door opens as Gao Ming approaches. A trembling curtain blocks the room’s interior, and an unseen man calmly asks for a hemostat.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming grows more suspicious of the Investigation Bureau and remains willing to rely on dangerous supernatural power. He is cautious around the unknown threat in the hospital, despite his confidence.
• Big Dog shows concern for Gao Ming and warns him that ghost gods always demand a price. Its cheerful, teasing personality contrasts with its genuine fear for him.
• The security officer becomes a victim of the Blood Ring’s secrecy-enforcement mechanism after discussing restricted information.
• Xia Yang is separated from Gao Ming in the Front Building but is shown to be capable of fighting his way through danger independently.

Significant themes

• Reality and illusion: Gao Ming questions whether ordinary life is a dream and the Forbidden Game’s world is reality.
• Institutional corruption and control: The Investigation Bureau may contain good people, yet its leaders and methods—including the lethal Blood Rings—suggest a deeply compromised organization.
• Power at a cost: Big Dog’s warning highlights the danger of Gao Ming’s fusion with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal.
• Entrapment and the unknown: The buildings’ separation, the growing anomalies, and the mysterious operating room reinforce the sense that the hospital is a predatory, inescapable place.

Key plot points and events

• In Lishan Hospital’s operating room, Gao Ming is ordered to pass surgical tools through a spotless curtain. The requests come from different voices and arms, which vary in age and appearance.
• The “doctor” asks for a blood bag. Gao Ming opens a wooden box and finds bloodstained Investigation Bureau uniforms instead of the expected security staff. An arm in an Investigation Bureau uniform grabs him, and the voices behind the curtain reveal they intend to use him as the next blood bag.
• Gao Ming’s soul-engraved chains bind the creature, and he drags it out from behind the curtain. Big Dog swallows Gao Ming and dodges a sudden attack of scalpels.
• The curtain is torn away, exposing a horrific mass of stitched-together bodies and severed limbs. Two mutated doctors—one fused with surgical blades, the other with threadlike hands—are embedded in it. Patients’ bodies and souls have been cut apart and reassembled.
• The doctors unleash their Grudge House, filling the room with shadows and resentment. As Gao Ming observes them, he notices they repeatedly say “correction.”

Character developments

• Gao Ming shifts from cautious cooperation to direct resistance when the hospital’s creatures try to make him a victim. His growing strength, chains, and willingness to fight demonstrate his increasing confidence and power.
• Big Dog protects Gao Ming by swallowing him and evading the doctors’ attack, though the grotesque scene frightens him.
• The two doctors are revealed as deeply mutated and hostile figures, committed to forcibly altering patients.
• Lu Zang’s ideology is explained: driven by his hatred of Fate, he believes transforming people into anomalies will change how they see the world and turn enemies into allies.

Significant themes

• Forced transformation: The operating room embodies the hospital’s goal of changing the normal into the abnormal, without regard for patients’ bodies or souls.
• Obsession and extremism: Lu Zang’s desire to oppose Fate has become so consuming that he justifies cruelty as a way to “help” people awaken.
• Predator and prey reversed: Gao Ming turns the creature’s attempt to capture him against it, dragging the supposed doctor into the open.
• “Correction” as treatment: The doctors’ repeated word hints that their grotesque surgeries may be attempts to fix or remake patients according to their own standards.

Character interactions

• The unseen doctors initially treat Gao Ming as a tool, issuing impatient orders through the curtain; their eagerness turns openly predatory when they identify him as a blood bag.
• Gao Ming counters their grasp by binding and pulling the mutated security guard into view.
• Big Dog acts as Gao Ming’s protector, while Gao Ming uses the brief safety of Big Dog’s escape to study the doctors and their operating room.

Key plot points and events

• Big Dog carries Gao Ming through the sealed operating-room Grudge House while the blade-covered male doctor pursues it. The room’s two opposing powers—cutting and stitching—allow the doctors to injure, heal, and transform their victims.
• A security officer is absorbed into the doctors’ mountain of stitched flesh. His body and mind are overwhelmed by the patients’ twisted souls, turning him into another monster.
• Gao Ming sends the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God after the female doctor, reasoning that her healing could prolong the male doctor’s survival. The Ghost God’s flesh-controlling power resists her threads and begins transforming the monsters inside her body of stitched flesh.
• The male doctor switches targets and wounds the Ghost God repeatedly. Gao Ming, however, has been waiting for the female doctor’s creation to become saturated with the Ghost God’s blood.
• The Ghost God unleashes his own Grudge House, turning the operating room into flesh and blood. He tears into the mountain of flesh and discovers a strange heart containing a baby’s cradle.
• The cradle holds a black-and-white posthumous photograph depicting the male doctor operating on the female doctor and removing a newborn. The baby’s face is blurred, and the photograph’s back is obscured by shadow.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed despite the apparent disadvantage, coordinating with the Ghost God and using Big Dog’s perspective to identify an opening. He relies on patience and tactical understanding rather than rushing into battle.
• Big Dog is frightened and frustrated, struggling as the room’s shrinking shadows weaken its abilities. It considers using its own Grudge House to help, but Gao Ming directs it to create an opening instead.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God shows both overwhelming power and strategic coordination with Gao Ming. Though the male doctor’s attacks leave him badly wounded, he uses his blood to infiltrate and take over the female doctor’s flesh-built monster.
• The doctors reveal themselves as complementary threats: the female doctor stitches and heals, while the male doctor cuts. Their transformations turn patients into living components of the operating-room monster.
• The security officer suffers a horrifying loss of bodily and mental control, becoming part of the monster despite retaining awareness during the transformation.

Significant themes

• Bodily violation and forced transformation: The doctors reshape people into monsters, stripping away normal flesh and assembling the deranged.
• Control, identity, and suffering: The security officer’s retained awareness makes his transformation especially cruel; the patients’ thoughts and bodies are absorbed into a collective horror.
• Adaptation and tactical cooperation: Gao Ming and the Ghost God exploit the doctors’ opposing abilities, turning the enemy’s own creation into a vulnerability.
• Unresolved birth and hidden history: The cradle and cursed photograph suggest that the Greater Ghost’s power is tied to a disturbing event involving the doctors and a newborn.

Plot points

• Gao Ming and Big Dog approach the cradle at the heart of the operating room’s mountain of flesh. The male and female doctors abandon their fixation on “correction” and attack fiercely to protect it.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal battles the doctors in a brutal stalemate, binding himself to the mass of flesh so his blood can reach the cradle. During the fight, Gao Ming and Big Dog use cracks between overlapping grudge houses to get closer.
• Big Dog throws Gao Ming into a wound created by the Immortal. Following the chains the Immortal has laid out, Gao Ming reaches the cradle while Big Dog holds off the pursuing monsters.
• The female doctor seals the cradle in a blood cocoon. Gao Ming uses the One-Eyed Boning Knife to cut through it, frees the cradle, and drives the knife into the black-and-white posthumous photograph.
• Both doctors react as though their own hearts have been pierced. Gao Ming binds the cradle and photograph with soul-forged chains and pulls them toward the Execution House’s guillotine. As the male doctor charges, Gao Ming orders him to stop.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming stays focused and composed under pressure, coordinating his actions with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal and trusting Big Dog to carry out the plan. He risks himself to seize the cradle, despite the knife’s apparent cost—several strands of his hair turn white.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal has grown more savage as its death and karmic aspects strengthen. Yet Gong Xi, its human aspect, remains vulnerable to pain, and Gao Ming is determined to keep that humanity from breaking.
• Big Dog grumbles about the Immortal’s brutality but follows Gao Ming’s instructions, ultimately sacrificing his own safety to get Gao Ming within reach of the cradle.
• The doctors’ fierce, seemingly parental defense of the cradle suggests that their attachment to it may be genuine—or may have been exploited by Situ An and Lu Zang.

Significant themes

• Life and death intertwined: The operating room and posthumous photograph frame birth, death, and the supernatural as inseparable.
• Humanity amid monstrous change: The Immortal’s struggle between its human and increasingly powerful ghostly aspects reflects the danger of losing compassion and restraint.
• Love as vulnerability: The doctors’ apparent parental devotion gives them strength but may also be a weakness others have manipulated.
• Trust and sacrifice: Gao Ming’s plan depends on coordination, and Big Dog’s protection helps make its risky final step possible.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming subdues the two doctors who run Lishan Hospital’s operating room, but their apparent distress and remaining humanity make him hesitate to kill them.
• Searching the cradle, he finds a photograph of their son, A Fang, playing in Situ An’s office. Situ An’s note claims he will raise the boy as his own and keep him separate from the Shadow World.
• Gao Ming suspects Situ An has deceived the doctors and that A Fang’s fate is tied to the shadows. Big Dog explains that the child was likely born as a seed of the Shadow World, making an ordinary life impossible.
• Gao Ming promises to help the doctors find A Fang, asking in return that one of them live inside his heart. During the struggle, both doctors tumble into the Execution House, where they will now be bound to Gao Ming.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God absorbs the collapsing mountain of stitched monsters and retreats to recover from its injuries. Gao Ming then approaches the doctors peacefully and asks whether they know where “home” is.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shows compassion and restraint: he seeks the hospital’s secrets but chooses to spare the doctors and genuinely offers to reunite them with their child. He remains suspicious of Situ An.
• The two doctors reveal lingering attachment and humanity beneath their obsessions. Their desperate, conflicting attempts to protect each other end with both trapped in Gao Ming’s Execution House.
• Situ An is further exposed as untrustworthy: his promise to raise A Fang may conceal an intention to turn the boy into a ghost.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God wins ground by consuming the monster-mass but is severely wounded and needs time to heal.

Significant themes

• Hope and humanity amid horror: Gao Ming’s mercy contrasts with the grotesque setting and the doctors’ monstrous forms.
• Fate versus choice: A Fang’s apparent connection to the Shadow World raises doubts about whether his future can be changed.
• Love and self-sacrifice: The doctors’ instinct to protect one another persists despite their obsession and physical transformation.
• Deception and trust: Situ An’s reassuring note conflicts with Gao Ming’s understanding of his actions.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming confronts the doctors, questions them about Situ An and A Fang, and offers them a chance to be reunited with their child.
• The doctors initially resist, then turn toward each other in a desperate attempt to stop the mountain from falling; both end up inside the Execution House.
• Big Dog warns Gao Ming about A Fang’s connection to the Shadow World.
• Gao Ming removes his mask and asks the doctors for information about the hospital’s “home.”

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming tries to communicate with two doctors in the Execution House. They mistake his intentions, but he eventually shows them Xuan Wen’s wedding photograph and asks whether they have seen her. The female doctor reveals a persistent wound and gives him an empty medicine bottle prescribed by Gastroenterology.
• Gao Ming realizes Xuan Wen may have injured the doctor while gathering the living’s will through the game. He also notices Xuan Wen’s warning mark near the operating-room entrance and leaves to follow the clue.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God refuses to leave the operating room without its blood-covered operating table. It swallows the table into the Execution House, where it merges with the building.
• Once its crusted blood comes off, the table reveals a map of Hanhai formed from ominous patterns. The map is a citywide cursed object: veins carry the blood of deformed monsters into buildings, potentially causing illness and violence. The Ghost God strengthens the curse by dripping its heart’s blood onto it.
• Gao Ming decides the table has already been taken and cannot be dealt with now. He retrieves the Ghost God into his chest and heads with Big Dog to Gastroenterology, prioritizing his search for Xuan Wen over the Investigation Bureau’s security personnel.
• In the East District Investigation Bureau, Jingtuo God reviews evidence that Situ An kept a Greater Ghost and a child in the building. Surveillance shows A Fang, a four-year-old boy, fleeing through a stairwell strewn with bodies. Investigators say he was used as live bait for the ghost; unlike the others, he survived, and analysts believe the Grudge Houses’ resentment has concentrated in him.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming persists despite being misunderstood and remains focused on finding Xuan Wen. He chooses her lead over helping the Investigation Bureau’s people.
• Big Dog stays wary of Gao Ming, though he accompanies him. He recognizes the operating table’s danger and reacts with alarm to the citywide curse.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God behaves almost childishly in clinging to the table, then proves powerful and purposeful by absorbing it and binding it to the Execution House.
• Jingtuo God is furious at the discovery that Situ An used the Bureau’s building to raise ghosts and turns his attention to A Fang’s identity and connection to Situ An.
• The doctors initially fear Gao Ming, but the female doctor eventually communicates with him through gestures and provides the clue that points him toward Gastroenterology.

Significant themes

• Corruption spreading through a city: The operating table embodies a curse capable of turning ordinary buildings into sites of disease and violence.
• Sacrifice and exploitation: Deformed patients and A Fang were used as bait or sacrifices by those seeking power.
• Trust and misunderstanding: Gao Ming’s actions are repeatedly misread, while gestures, images, and clues allow communication to break through.
• Loyalty and priorities: Gao Ming’s choice to pursue Xuan Wen over the Bureau’s personnel highlights his personal allegiance amid a larger crisis.

Key plot points and events

• Jingtuo God orders the search for the missing boy, suspecting that Situ An had kept him near a Greater Ghost to hide the truth about him. He then goes to meet Wan Jie, a senior Security officer.
• Wan Jie reveals that a Ghost God’s soul has been destroyed and that the paired Blood Rings of Security personnel have shattered—evidence that K and most of the Seventh and Ninth Security Teams were killed. K had taken them to Lishan Hospital to pursue Ghost Story Players.
• Wan Jie questions why the Investigation Bureau allowed danger to grow at a hospital owned by Situ An. Jingtuo God warns him that neither of them gets to decide who is human or a monster; Wan Jie retorts that distorted truths can lead to an uprising.
• Meanwhile, Gao Ming and Big Dog move through the increasingly distorted hospital. Gao sees Ghost Story Players fighting and killing in the Front Building, while some flee into the Rear Building.
• Gao resolves to establish rules for Ghost Story Players after leaving the hospital, determined not to repeat Xia Yang’s selfish approach. Big Dog finds the Gastroenterology department, and they descend to a lobby where every previously sealed department has opened.

Character developments and interactions

• Jingtuo God remains pragmatic and politically cautious, ordering a cover-up of evidence in the stairwell and avoiding a direct confrontation with Wan Jie.
• Wan Jie emerges as controlled but forceful, grieving the loss of his teams and openly challenging the Bureau’s handling of Situ An and the hospital.
• Gao Ming shows growing responsibility: despite his own danger, he considers how to keep future Ghost Story Players from harming others.
• Big Dog is blunt and practical, helping Gao navigate the hospital and questioning his impulse to save people.
• Jingtuo God and Wan Jie clash over accountability, authority, and who has the right to label someone a monster. Gao Ming and Big Dog share a more personal contrast: Gao thinks beyond survival, while Big Dog urges him to face his limits.

Significant themes

• Power without restraint breeds destruction: Ghost Story Players turn the Front Building into a slaughterhouse as they abandon rules and indulge their ambitions.
• Institutional secrecy and accountability: The Bureau’s decisions around Situ An and Lishan Hospital are questioned, while evidence is quietly concealed.
• Humanity and monstrosity: The chapter challenges who gets to define the boundary between the two.
• Breaking from past mistakes: Gao intends to create rules and protect ordinary people rather than pursue personal gain at their expense.

Key events

• Gao Ming and Big Dog explore Lishan Hospital’s Rear Building, now filled with patients and staff who are largely residents of the shadow world.
• Big Dog explains that shadows are like the lingering emotions of a dead world—especially sadness, despair, and pain. He can merge with them because his own emotions resemble theirs, a fact that frightens him.
• He distinguishes real-world patients, whose instability and mutations reflect their disturbed minds, from shadow-world natives, who are accustomed to the anomalies. The natives’ bodies have been hollowed out by shadows and are effectively shells.
• Big Dog swallows a patient to get himself and Gao Ming into the Gastroenterology department. They meet a female doctor whose lower body is fused with the desk and whose soul appears trapped in a computer.
• The doctor directs patients among four rooms. Three contain Greater Ghosts acting as doctors in Grudge Houses, offering grotesque objects as medicine. They refuse to treat Gao Ming and Big Dog but behave politely, as though bound by rules.
• The pair follow the doctor’s instructions to the first room. Its door opens onto a tunnel of writhing flesh resembling an intestinal tract.

Character developments and interactions

• Big Dog reveals more about his traumatic childhood and why he fears the possibility that the shadow world suffered in a similar way. His knowledge makes him a cautious guide, though he uses a crude shortcut to get into the department.
• Gao Ming probes Big Dog about the nature of shadows and helps investigate the hospital’s strange setup. He remains willing to enter the unknown, opening the final door despite its disturbing appearance.
• The doctors and patients follow routines that make the shadow hospital feel disturbingly ordinary. The three Greater Ghost doctors’ refusal to treat the visitors suggests that they obey specific rules rather than acting purely on instinct.

Significant themes

• Emotion as a force: Shadows embody the grief and suffering left behind by a dead world.
• Assimilation and loss of humanity: The shadow world gradually absorbs people, leaving many residents as hollowed-out shells.
• Normality amid horror: Mutations, cursed treatments, and supernatural doctors are treated as everyday hospital procedure.
• Rules and uncertainty: Even dangerous supernatural beings may be constrained by systems whose logic is not yet clear.

Plot and events

• Gao Ming and Big Dog enter a passage resembling a living intestine, following a crude map that marks a small house. The entrance closes behind them, leaving no visible way back.
• Objects embedded in the fleshy walls reveal Situ An’s past: first his caregiver uniform and photographs of him being thanked, then personal belongings and increasingly disturbing relics.
• A sequence of nine rag dolls shows a doll becoming human piece by piece, culminating in a child Gao Ming recognizes as Situ An’s biological son. The child calls for his father, but Situ An abandoned him.
• The passage exposes Situ An’s cruelty: he exploited and murdered people from the vulnerable to the powerful, turning victims into corpses and damaged souls embedded in the walls.
• Gao Ming recognizes the intestine’s resemblance to the tunnel he saw after the Ghost Festival bus crash. He suspects both places represent buried pasts, shaped by sacrifices: Situ An used others, while Gao Ming used versions of himself from across his past.
• As Gao Ming and Big Dog press deeper, they hear innocent-sounding laughter and wonder whether Situ An’s home—and perhaps Gao Ming’s own family and past—lies at the end.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed in the disturbing passage and connects its imagery to his own experience. He becomes increasingly focused on uncovering Situ An’s deepest secret and questions what lies at the end of his own tunnel.
• Big Dog is fearful and repeatedly warns Gao Ming not to proceed, but follows him. It offers an interpretation of the embedded objects as remnants of Situ An’s former life and conscience.
• Situ An, though absent, is revealed as a ruthless figure who discarded his humanity and even abandoned his son.
• Gao Ming and Big Dog’s contrasting reactions—Gao Ming’s familiarity and resolve versus Big Dog’s dread—shape their progress through the passage.

Significant themes

• The cost of breaking fate: Gao Ming speculates that a special sacrifice is needed to create a new beginning.
• Lost humanity and moral corruption: The passage suggests Situ An surrendered his conscience and humanity through his choices.
• Memory as a physical landscape: Both the intestine and Gao Ming’s tunnel embody painful pasts, populated by those sacrificed or lost.
• Abandonment and exploitation: Situ An’s victims, including his own son, are portrayed as remnants he used and left behind.

Plot points

• Gao Ming and Big Dog travel through the grotesque Intestine, where comforting voices distract Gao Ming. Big Dog warns him, but the two become separated: Gao Ming finds only a small plastic toy dog where Big Dog had been.
• Gao Ming regains focus and realizes he may have reached Situ An’s Home. The monstrous surroundings abruptly transform into a bright, ordinary apartment courtyard.
• A timid little boy spills soda on Gao Ming and leads him to Situ An’s apartment. A middle-aged woman confirms it is Situ An’s home and invites Gao Ming inside to wait for him.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming is drawn toward the voices’ suggestion of home, but recognizes the danger after losing Big Dog. In the strangely normal courtyard, he remains wary, though he accepts the woman’s invitation.
• Big Dog acts protectively, trying to stop Gao Ming from following the voices, but is trapped by the Intestine.
• The little boy is shy and easily intimidated by Gao Ming, yet helps guide him to Situ An’s door.
• The middle-aged woman treats the boy affectionately and welcomes Gao Ming with apparent warmth and trust.

Significant themes

• Comfort as a trap: Familiar, loving voices can lure Gao Ming away from safety.
• Uncanny normality: The peaceful courtyard and welcoming household feel unsettling precisely because they contrast so sharply with the horror that came before.
• Home and belonging: Gao Ming’s longing for home is stirred by the voices, while his arrival at Situ An’s apparently ordinary home raises questions about what “Home” really means.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming explores what appears to be Situ An’s ordinary home: a cheap clock, a worn dining table, snacks, calligraphy, and the smell of a home-cooked meal. The familiar setting unsettles him because it seems to conceal no danger.
• A middle-aged woman cooks and tries to call Situ An on an old landline when he fails to come home. As she calls repeatedly, Gao Ming hears the ringing as if it were coming from inside his own heart.
• The scene shifts to the flesh-walled passages. Gao Ming, seemingly entranced, ignores Big Dog’s warnings and follows blindfolded ghost children—former Orphanage “Seeds” inhabited by Shadows—deeper into the structure.
• A rotting, fat monster leads Gao Ming to an offering table made from a wounded ghost god. The building’s horrors gather against him as he climbs toward the darkness.
• Big Dog, desperate to stop Gao Ming, unleashes his Grudge House, the Dog Kennel, which swallows light and strips away sight and hearing. The flesh walls crush his power and tear at him.
• Big Dog’s effort forces the walls apart, but at great cost: a frail, blind, deaf man emerges from his mouth. Though unable to see or hear, he senses Gao Ming’s heartbeat, runs after him, and grabs him, demanding that he come away.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming is drawn into the familiar home and then seems unable to perceive Big Dog or the danger around him. His attraction to the scene suggests that its domestic warmth is tied to powerful memories and vulnerabilities.
• Big Dog reveals how much Gao Ming matters to him. Having been treated as a freak and isolated throughout his life, he regards Gao Ming as his only friend—someone who accepts him without pity or contempt. He risks himself to rescue him.
• The man from the Dog Kennel emerges from hiding for the first time, driven by his bond with Gao Ming. Though blind and deaf, he follows Gao Ming by sensing his heartbeat and physically intervenes.
• The middle-aged woman appears as a caring figure in the home, preparing food and worrying when Situ An does not answer. Her familiar gestures heighten the contrast between domestic comfort and the surrounding horror.
• The ghost children and the fat monster act as guides drawing Gao Ming farther into the flesh-walled maze, while Big Dog struggles against the environment to reach him.

Significant themes

• Home and memory: The chapter questions whether home is a refuge preserved in memory or a place that can also conceal danger and pain.
• Friendship and recognition: Big Dog’s loyalty grows from being treated as a person rather than a monster. His actions show the value of acceptance in a life marked by isolation.
• Sacrifice and connection: Big Dog endures severe injury to save Gao Ming, while the hidden man risks leaving his shelter to follow him.
• The pull of the past: The ordinary sights, smells, and sounds of home exert a powerful, almost hypnotic hold on Gao Ming, suggesting that memory can draw someone toward danger as readily as it offers comfort.

Plot points and events

• While waiting for Situ An, his mother repeatedly calls him and prepares dinner. Gao Ming knows Situ An cannot return: he is inside Gao Ming’s heart.
• Suspicious of the home’s warmth, Gao Ming searches for evidence of the horrors tied to Situ An. He finds a box of unusual, handmade-looking toys, which Situ An’s mother says he played with as a child.
• The mother invites Gao Ming to eat and sets aside food for her son. Drawn in by the familiar meal and memories, Gao Ming nearly slips into the role of Situ An at the table.
• A remark that Situ An “used to” love her cooking reveals to Gao Ming that she knows her son will not come home. He realizes her kindness may be a way to keep him in the home.
• A knock interrupts the meal. Gao Ming opens the door to find Xuan Wen, who appears not to recognize him. He greets her as if they are strangers and asks whether she, too, is entering the home.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains alert despite the comforting setting, interpreting its details for danger. His longing and memories make him vulnerable to the mother’s hospitality, but he catches the implication in her words and resists staying.
• Situ An’s mother appears loving and anxious, repeatedly waiting for her son and caring for Gao Ming. Her subtle slip suggests she understands Situ An will not return, complicating her warmth with possible intent.
• Xuan Wen arrives unexpectedly and keeps her distance, seemingly unaware of Gao Ming. Their restrained, unfamiliar exchange leaves their connection unresolved.
• Gao Ming and Situ An’s mother share a quiet, uneasy meal scene: she treats him like a guest—or perhaps like her son—while he silently tests her sincerity.

Significant themes

• Comfort as a trap: A loving home and a shared meal can feel safe while concealing danger.
• Memory and identity: The familiar apartment draws Gao Ming toward the past and toward occupying Situ An’s place.
• Absence and waiting: Situ An’s mother’s hope contrasts with Gao Ming’s certainty that he will never return.
• Unresolved connections: Xuan Wen’s apparent failure to recognize Gao Ming raises questions about their relationship and the nature of the encounter.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming returns to Situ An’s home with a plastic toy dog, realizing it is probably Big Dog transformed into a toy. The other toys may be ghosts Situ An has collected, suggesting that the seemingly ordinary residents of “Home” may not be what they appear.
• Xuan Wen has a small wound on her neck, hinting that something happened to her in the hospital or inside the home. She acts as though nothing is wrong, and she and Gao Ming quietly maintain the appearance of normality.
• Xuan Wen examines black-and-white photographs of Situ An and his mother with the Middle-Aged Woman. The mother insists that Situ An used to appear in color, while Xuan Wen gently but deliberately challenges her memories and asks why the mother herself is black-and-white.
• The mother rejects the questions, insisting that Situ An is still alive and will come home. She repeatedly calls his phone and says she is waiting for him with a hot meal.
• Xuan Wen suggests that the mother may actually be in Lishan Hospital rather than at home. A plate breaks, and Gao Ming spots blood-like threads inside a split apple. He edges toward the exit as the home’s illusion seems to waver.
• A familiar ringtone begins in the hallway. The mother recognizes it, but realizes it is not coming from the phone she is holding.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming stays composed and observant, concealing his suspicions while deducing that the home may be an illusion shaped by Situ An’s mother’s wishes. He believes that undermining her certainty may reveal the reality beneath it.
• Xuan Wen appears to be probing and treating the mother rather than simply surviving the house. Her warm, reassuring manner masks carefully directed questions designed to unsettle the woman’s beliefs.
• The Middle-Aged Woman clings to the conviction that Situ An is her living son and will return. The photographs and Xuan Wen’s questions trouble her, but she repeatedly avoids confronting their implications.
• Gao Ming and Xuan Wen cooperate without openly discussing their suspicions: she leads the conversation, while he watches for signs that the illusion is breaking.

Significant themes

• Illusion versus reality: The home’s comforting domestic scenes may conceal a much darker truth.
• Memory and denial: The mother’s conviction that Situ An is alive appears to sustain her version of home, even as contradictory evidence accumulates.
• Psychological influence: Xuan Wen uses compassion and suggestion to challenge the mother’s beliefs.
• Home, grief, and longing: The mother’s insistence on a light, a meal, and a son’s return suggests that the imagined home is built around her desire to keep Situ An close.

Plot points and events

• The middle-aged woman hears what she believes is her son Situ An’s ringtone outside her door and rushes into the corridor with Xuan Wen. They find nobody.
• Although she wants to search further, the woman refuses to leave the apartment building, saying she promised Situ An she would wait at home. She asks Xuan Wen to tell him to eat well and call her.
• Xuan Wen escorts her back, then meets Gao Ming outside. She reveals that she entered the place with Investigation Bureau personnel but became trapped there.
• Xuan Wen suspects the cozy apartment is an illusion concealing a nightmare of flesh and blood—and that the woman may be an imagined version of Situ An’s deceased mother.
• Gao Ming and Xuan Wen discuss taking over Situ An’s home, a Shadow World domain. Xuan Wen believes the woman is central to it, and that her emotional state affects the world.
• Through Xuan Wen’s mirror, they see the building and its surroundings as intestines and flesh. The mirror also reveals a frail blind man with injured ears clinging to Gao Ming, though the man is invisible to the naked eye.

Character developments and interactions

• The woman’s hope of seeing her son gives way to anxiety and disappointment. Her loyalty to Situ An—and her reluctance to trouble him—keeps her from leaving the building.
• Xuan Wen shows compassion by accompanying the woman, but privately remains calculating. She believes exposing Situ An’s crimes might destabilize his mother, though she doubts the woman will help them.
• Gao Ming trusts Xuan Wen despite his own reputation as a serial killer; she, in turn, drops her public façade around him and shares her findings.
• Xuan Wen notices and remembers how the woman’s emotions and movements affect the surrounding world.

Significant themes

• Hope and disappointment: The apparent promise of a reunion makes the woman’s failure to find her son more painful.
• Love, denial, and complicity: A mother’s affection may coexist with awareness—or deliberate refusal to face—the monster her son has become.
• Illusion versus reality: A warm, ordinary home masks a grotesque body-horror landscape.
• Innocence and morality: Xuan Wen argues that no one in this world, including herself and Gao Ming, is truly innocent.
• Home and belonging: Xuan Wen suggests that a home depends on family, making Situ An’s mother the key to his domain.