Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• After the Security Fourth Team leaves the Lishan Investigators behind, Chen Yuntian warns Bai Xiao that people may prove worse than ghosts and urges him to hold on to what matters. Bai Xiao thanks him, then watches the Security team depart.
• Led by the Pathfinding Old Man, the Fourth Team enters a haunted elevator. The old man uses incense, spirit money, fire, and Bone Dice to burn and guide the elevator’s ghosts, then follows a childlike spirit’s die upstairs.
• Gao Ming and Xia Yang enter the elevator after them. Xia Yang condemns the old man’s cruelty and hints at the fate he intends for him. An image of residents being burned appears in the elevator, and the old man’s jade carving—bearing his own name—develops a mysterious crack.
• On the eleventh floor, the Fourth Team encounters a lantern-lit ghost market. The old man realizes its stalls and residents are part of Xia Yang’s painted illusion, but the corridor regenerates and fills with apparitions—including genuine ghosts from Sishui Apartments. Xia Yang reveals himself and attacks, trapping the team.
• While Xia Yang holds the Security team at bay, Gao Ming retrieves a large bag of toys, returns to the elevator, and takes out A Fang’s Color Posthumous Photograph.

Character developments and interactions

• Chen Yuntian shows concern for Bai Xiao, offering both protection and a warning about human cruelty. Bai Xiao accepts his support but remains alert to the departing team.
• The Pathfinding Old Man is ruthless and confident in his supernatural methods, but the crack in his jade carving suggests he may be vulnerable or under threat.
• Xia Yang shifts from being a pursuer to an ambusher, using his painting ability to trap the Fourth Team and openly threatening its leader.
• Gao Ming acts cautiously and strategically, taking advantage of Xia Yang’s attack to pursue his own objective.

Significant themes

• Human selfishness and brutality can rival—or exceed—the horrors of ghosts.
• Powerful people and institutions may cooperate only when it suits them; the Security team abandons the Investigators, while Gao Ming’s group exploits the resulting conflict.
• Supernatural appearances can be deceptive: the ghost market is painted, yet real ghosts hide within it.
• The chapter builds suspense around the old man’s unexplained cracked jade and Gao Ming’s next move with A Fang’s photograph.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming reaches apartment 1601 to find A Fang, a child from a Blood City Posthumous Photograph, and promises to take him to his birth parents.
• A Fang opens the door, but warns that his mother is already behind Gao Ming. A towering, knife-wielding madwoman attacks, forcing Gao Ming to defend himself.
• Gao Ming explains that A Fang was born at Lishan Hospital, taken by Situ An, and raised among ghosts. He opens the Execution House so A Fang can see the male and female doctors who are his biological parents.
• A Fang responds by retrieving a huge schoolbag full of building blocks. The blocks assemble into miniature versions of haunted houses across Hanhai, releasing the ghosts inside.
• Gao Ming realizes A Fang has an unusual power: he can combine separate haunted houses, potentially turning them into a vast death zone. Though A Fang seems childlike rather than malicious, the forces surrounding him are extremely dangerous.
• Gao Ming lets the doctors leave the Execution House and tells them it is their turn to prove themselves to their son.

Character developments

• Gao Ming approaches A Fang carefully and tries to fulfill his promise, but quickly recognizes that the child may be a major supernatural threat.
• A Fang appears innocent and wary of strangers, yet commands an enormous collection of haunted houses and powerful ghosts.
• The female doctor is overwhelmed at seeing her son, while the male doctor struggles to express affection despite his frightening appearance.
• The madwoman acts as A Fang’s guardian and immediately attacks Gao Ming, underscoring the danger around the child.

Significant themes

• Innocence and danger: A Fang’s gentle, childlike manner contrasts sharply with the destructive power he commands.
• Family and recognition: A Fang has no memory of his birth parents, while they yearn to connect with him despite their monstrous condition.
• Accumulated horrors: The chapter suggests that haunted places can interact and grow more dangerous when brought together.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming tries to gain A Fang’s trust by explaining his origins and introducing him to his biological parents.
• A Fang remains suspicious and asks what the many ghosts and haunted houses around him mean for the adults’ claims.
• The parents see their son again, but the reunion is uncertain: he does not recognize them, and they must now show him who they are.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming brings A Fang together with the two ghostly doctors who are his birth parents. They approach him carrying the cradle they prepared before his birth, while the female doctor softly sings the lullaby A Fang vaguely remembers.
• Though A Fang has been searching for his parents, he feels uncertain and shy in their presence. The doctors press on despite the danger and the injuries they suffer from the supernatural forces around him.
• A Fang instinctively calls the female doctor “Mom.” The moment breaks an unseen force that had kept them apart—but A Fang immediately experiences terrible pain.
• Black, stone-marked arms burst from beneath his pajamas and nearly attack the doctors. Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God pull them clear.
• A vision reveals that A Fang contains not a Shadow World ghost, but a fragment of the Shadow World’s will.

Character developments and interactions

• A Fang moves from wary distance to a tentative recognition of his mother, drawn by the lullaby, cradle, and warmth he senses in his parents. His first word to her brings both emotional reunion and sudden danger.
• The doctors show a powerful maternal and paternal devotion. Though they are terrifying ghosts and badly wounded, they risk everything to reach their child.
• Gao Ming protects the doctors when A Fang’s hidden power erupts and recognizes the significance of what is inside him.
• The red-clad madwoman initially guards A Fang, threatening the doctors, but does not prevent their approach.

Significant themes

• Parenthood and love: The chapter frames becoming a parent as a second birth, suggesting that children both receive love and teach it.
• Fate versus choice: A Fang’s reunion with his parents seems forbidden by fate, but his calling the doctor “Mom” disrupts that arrangement.
• Identity and hidden power: A Fang is more than a child caught between worlds; he carries a remnant of the dead Shadow World within him.
• The cost of love: The doctors’ reunion with their son is tender but dangerous, with their devotion exposing them to severe injury and A Fang’s awakening power.

Key plot points and events

• A Fang’s Death Zone erupts into a vision of the Shadow World. Twelve pairs of scarlet eyes appear among twelve bloodred cities, frightening the world’s consciousness into retreating back into A Fang.
• A Fang urgently warns that the twelve must not find him and tells Gao Ming to “wake up.” He gathers his toys and runs through the haunted houses; his doctors follow, but Gao Ming is left behind.
• Gao Ming concludes that Hanhai may be a lifelike dream and that waking fully may be necessary to gain the world consciousness’s recognition. He wonders whether the dream has a deeper purpose, then focuses on changing people’s fates to challenge Fate.
• An inferno breaks out in Sishui Apartments. The Team Four Leader, badly burned, flees Xia Yang, whose supernatural portrait has trapped and injured him. The old man has set himself on fire to alter his appearance and escape the trap.
• Gao Ming intervenes when the Team Four Leader runs toward Bai Xiao and the Investigators, apparently hoping to use them as a shield. Bai Xiao attacks Xia Yang with Gao Ming’s blade, wounding him despite lacking Ghost Markings.

Character developments and interactions

• A Fang briefly appears transformed by fear, speaking like an old man and revealing that something powerful is hiding inside him. His warnings echo Lu Zang’s instructions about waking from the dream.
• Gao Ming becomes more convinced that Hanhai is an artificial dream shaped by Fate. He feels increasing urgency to act and uses his connection to those bound to his fate to track people.
• Xia Yang is shown in an unusually vulnerable state: his portrait trap injures the Team Four Leader, but the old man’s countermeasure leaves Xia Yang in pursuit and under attack.
• Bai Xiao defies the Team Four Leader’s apparent plan to sacrifice the Investigators. Acting on Gao Ming’s signal, he strikes Xia Yang with the blade, raising questions about the weapon—or Bai Xiao himself.
• Chen Yuntian recognizes the danger and orders a retreat, contrasting with Bai Xiao’s decision to fight. Gao Ming backs Bai Xiao’s intervention, helping the Team Four Leader escape.

Significant themes

• Dream and awakening: The chapter strengthens the possibility that Hanhai is a dream and suggests that awakening may expose its true reality.
• Fate and agency: Gao Ming seeks to change enough people’s fates to kill Fate, while the crisis shows how easily people can be treated as expendable.
• Hidden powers and identity: A Fang’s altered consciousness and Bai Xiao’s unexpected ability both hint at forces not yet understood.
• Death and survival: The Shadow World’s dead consciousness, the terrifying twelve cities, and the characters’ willingness to endure or inflict harm all underscore the cost of survival.

Plot and events

• Bai Xiao charges into the burning area to fight Xia Yang. Chen Yuntian remembers that Bai Xiao showed the same defiance during their first anomaly event, when he and his sister were the building’s only survivors.
• Chen orders his investigators to support Bai Xiao. Though ordinary and poorly equipped to fight ghosts, they rush into the flames rather than abandon him.
• Xia Yang—injured and restricted by the self-portrait he possesses—avoids Bai Xiao’s attacks. Warned by Gao Ming that the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God has detected a divine corpse and that other Security teams are approaching, Xia Yang escapes by letting the portrait burn.
• Bai Xiao does not pursue him. Team Four’s leader collapses and is treated; Security Teams Two and Eight arrive, secure the area, and transport him for care.
• With the mission target gone, the group goes to Hande Private Academy, now being used by the Investigation Bureau to treat patients. After Chen and Bai Xiao file their report, Security personnel confine them.
• Wan Jie visits and questions Bai Xiao about his saber, which he suspects is tied to a secret. He offers to let Bai Xiao join the Security Department if he gives up the weapon; otherwise, the Bureau will investigate him and the saber.
• The Jingtuo God arrives with investigators, interrupting the standoff and challenging Wan Jie over his conduct and authority.

Character developments and interactions

• Bai Xiao remains fearless and resolute: he confronts Xia Yang despite knowing the danger, and refuses to surrender his saber under pressure.
• Chen Yuntian shows trust in Bai Xiao by sending his team into the fire to support him. His choice affirms his respect for investigators’ courage.
• The investigators act with solidarity, risking their lives despite lacking the tools or abilities to fight supernatural threats.
• Xia Yang appears cautious and strategic, choosing escape over a prolonged fight once the threat of reinforcements grows.
• Wan Jie is perceptive and commanding. He claims to respect investigators, but treats Bai Xiao’s saber—and his hidden past—as matters to control, using a conditional offer to pressure him.
• The Jingtuo God directly confronts Wan Jie, suggesting broader conflict within the Security Department. His arrival brings several familiar figures, including Zhuo Jun, Yuan Hui, and Fu Huo.

Significant themes

• Courage and solidarity: Ordinary investigators risk themselves for one another even when they seem powerless.
• Who truly belongs in Hanhai: Chen’s reflection frames the living as having the right to stand their ground, while ghosts are the ones who should fear them.
• Power and exploitation: Investigators are often treated as disposable, despite their essential role in gathering intelligence and confronting danger.
• Secrecy and control: Bai Xiao’s saber connects him to a concealed past, while Wan Jie’s offer makes clear that joining the Security Department may require surrendering independence.
• Institutional conflict: The dispute between Wan Jie and the Jingtuo God hints at competing authority and accountability within the Bureau.

Plot points and events

• Wan Jie leaves the hospital after warning that anomaly events are spreading across the city. He says he wants to stop his team members from dying needlessly, not compete for power, and invites Bai Xiao to seek him out.
• The Jingtuo God and Zhuo Jun try to recruit Bai Xiao into a new defensive force in the East District. Bai Xiao distrusts them, especially after learning Zhuo Jun and Yuan Hui may have killed classmates from Class Thirteen to prove their loyalty.
• Chen Yuntian advises Bai Xiao to go with the Jingtuo God, believing it is the safest option against the Security Department. Bai Xiao is taken overnight to a hidden facility beneath the Mystery Analysis Institute in North Harbor.
• Bai Xiao is placed in the Third-Stage Ghost Marking Test with nine other investigators. The test involves entering a decaying village house where divine spirit flesh is rumored to be hidden. The other candidates have committed serious crimes; passing could erase those crimes and allow their families to move to North Harbor New City.
• As Bai Xiao enters the house, the Jingtuo God and analysts monitor the candidates. The test is described as deliberately brutal, with a previous survival rate of only seven percent.

Character developments and interactions

• Wan Jie appears composed and pragmatic, portraying himself and his colleagues as tools of higher powers while revealing a personal concern for his team.
• Bai Xiao remains wary and keeps his blade ready. He rejects Zhuo Jun’s recruitment pitch and questions how anyone could trust people who harmed their own classmates.
• The Jingtuo God sees promise in Bai Xiao and offers him protection and opportunity, but subjects him to a lethal test.
• Zhuo Jun presents himself as an enemy of ghost-story players, though his brutal actions undermine his claim to be trustworthy. Chen Yuntian, by contrast, quietly sends Bai Xiao away to protect him.
• The test candidates quickly show their desperation and violence: one investigator reveals the test’s rewards while eyeing another candidate as a target.

Significant themes

• People used as weapons: Wan Jie’s “knife” metaphor reflects how institutions treat investigators as expendable tools.
• Compromised morality: In a collapsing society, authorities and investigators alike commit atrocities while claiming necessity.
• Power through survival: Access to safety, status, and absolution is offered in exchange for surviving a deadly ordeal.
• Uncertainty and surveillance: Bai Xiao enters a test whose rules and dangers remain unclear, while unseen observers judge his every move.

Key events

• The Ghost Markings Test takes place in a dangerous, underground old house on Hanhai’s distant outskirts, where unnatural objects and odd-numbered furnishings create an ominous atmosphere.
• The Investigators find clues suggesting the former owner paid off enormous debts and may have made offerings—or sacrifices—to a ghost.
• Participant Number Four vanishes without a sound. Number Seven reveals a large wardrobe in the master bedroom sealed with a warning: “Never open it.”
• The group gathers around the wardrobe, debating whether Number Four is inside and whether opening it will trigger the anomaly. Suspicion spreads, with Number Two accusing injured Number Nine and blade-carrying Bai Xiao of seeming out of place.
• Bai Xiao refuses to join the group’s plotting and searches the house’s exterior, reasoning that it resembles a shrine containing a human head.
• When he returns, the house is dark and silent, the temperature has fallen, and everyone else has disappeared. Bai Xiao cautiously approaches the master bedroom, wondering whether the wardrobe was opened.

Character developments and interactions

• Bai Xiao remains wary and independent, prioritizing investigation over alliances. He distrusts the other Investigators’ infighting and prepares to face whatever awaits.
• Number Two takes a suspicious, analytical role, proposing that the wardrobe may be a decoy and encouraging the group to exclude Bai Xiao and Number Nine.
• Number Nine, injured and mentally affected by the anomaly, tries to redirect suspicion toward Bai Xiao and later proposes that they team up.
• The other Investigators exchange clues but become increasingly fearful and distrustful as Number Four’s disappearance and the falling temperature raise the stakes.

Significant themes

• Fear of the unknown: The Investigators sense danger but cannot identify its source or rules.
• Distrust and survival: Even experienced allies turn against one another under pressure.
• The danger of forbidden knowledge: The sealed wardrobe and its warning become the house’s central mystery, leaving the chapter on a suspenseful cliffhanger.

Key plot points and events

• Bai Xiao finds the master bedroom apparently undisturbed, but the wardrobe and its warning note exert a dangerous pull on him. As he resists opening it, the house grows increasingly hostile: black spots spread across the walls, doors slam, unseen forces attack, and strange phenomena erupt throughout the rooms.
• Bai Xiao realizes that the disappearances are linked to the escalating danger and suspects the missing investigators were sacrificed. The house seems to be controlled by an unknown presence that can turn nearly every object into a threat.
• Trapped and facing attacks from all sides, Bai Xiao concludes that the disturbances are meant to force him to open the wardrobe. He breaks the seal and confronts the malice within.
• The wardrobe contains the transformed investigators, who blame Bai Xiao for surviving and accuse him of abandoning them. Their shared resentment has twisted them into monsters, while their malice spreads through the house as black spots.
• Bai Xiao fights them with a blade made for killing ghosts. He destroys their bodies, but their malice persists. During the battle, he is drawn fully inside the wardrobe, which proves far larger than it appeared and contains a dark passage filled with corpses and discarded investigator uniforms.
• The chapter ends with the suggestion that the Institute’s repeated ghost-marking tests were feeding the sinister entity in the wardrobe.

Character developments and interactions

• Bai Xiao shows intense self-control and a willingness to face death rather than flee. He recognizes that the investigators’ accusations come from their own bitterness, not from any reliable account of his actions. He fights directly and ruthlessly, aiming to end their suffering and reach the entity behind the haunting.
• The trapped investigators have lost their individual identities and become bound together by resentment. They confront Bai Xiao with accusations and try to keep him from escaping, embodying the destructive force of their collective malice.
• The blade’s makers, Doctor Lu and Situ An, are mentioned as having forged it for Qing Ge, emphasizing its exceptional sharpness and ghost-killing purpose. Bai Xiao wields it with a bolder, more direct style than Qing Ge.

Significant themes

• Malice as a supernatural force: resentment does not simply corrupt the investigators; it becomes a physical presence that spreads and attacks.
• Survival and blame: the investigators direct their anger at the one who survived, revealing how fear and guilt can distort responsibility.
• Courage and sacrifice: Bai Xiao accepts the risk of death, hoping his actions can destroy a powerful evil.
• Institutional exploitation: the closing revelation hints that the Institute may have repeatedly sacrificed investigators to strengthen the entity it was meant to study.

Plot points and events

• Disillusioned by the Investigation Bureau’s treatment of mentally corrupted investigators as disposable test subjects, Bai Xiao is overwhelmed by anger and despair inside the Old Residence’s wardrobe, where investigators’ bones lie.
• The malice controlling the residence attacks his mind and body, urging him to kill the surviving “Number Nine,” a frightened investigator hiding in a kitchen cabinet.
• Bai Xiao resists the temptation. Rather than attack the survivor, he uses the malice he can control to smash open the living-room door and shouts for Number Nine to run.
• Number Nine tries to close the door again, but his body begins to wither beyond the residence. The escaping malice gathers around Bai Xiao, leaving his will and the dead investigators’ lingering consciousness to struggle over it.
• The Jingtuo God reveals the test’s true nature: the wardrobe contained flesh cut from the Divine Corpse, saturated with malice. Passing required enduring that malice without losing oneself—and choosing kindness at the height of it.
• The supposed Number Nine was actually a Mystery Analyst, corrupted by contact with the Divine Corpse and secretly acting as the mole. He used numbers taken from corpses to disguise himself. Bai Xiao, not the White-Ring Analyst, was the real Number Nine.

Character developments and interactions

• Bai Xiao moves from near-total loss of faith in the Bureau to a decisive act of compassion. Though the dead investigators’ accusations and the malice nearly overwhelm him, he refuses to sacrifice another person to save himself.
• Number Nine / the Mystery Analyst is exposed as a manipulative, corrupted figure who tries to provoke Bai Xiao into violence and later attempts to shut the exit. His cruelty contrasts sharply with Bai Xiao’s restraint.
• The dead investigators’ presence intensifies Bai Xiao’s guilt and torment, while the Jingtuo God observes and later explains the test’s hidden rules.

Significant themes

• Institutional betrayal: The Bureau’s treatment of investigators as expendable erodes Bai Xiao’s loyalty.
• Malice versus moral choice: The test does not reward mere survival; it tests whether a person can retain their humanity under extreme pressure.
• Human nature and responsibility: Number Nine insists that everyone is evil, but Bai Xiao’s choice challenges that claim.
• Deception and hidden identity: The false numbering system and secret mole show how suspicion helped turn the Old Residence increasingly hostile.

Key events

• Bai Xiao survives the third-stage test, fusing with a piece of the Divine Corpse’s flesh and gaining Ghost Markings while retaining control of himself. The Jingtuo God congratulates him but says he must pass a fourth-stage test to obtain the complete markings and greater power.
• Security personnel extract Bai Xiao from the haunted wardrobe. Zhuo Jun points out that Bai Xiao survived only after killing the investigators controlled by the malice, challenging the claim that he was simply lucky. The Jingtuo God orders Bai Xiao examined and then sent to the second-stage Ghost Markings test, despite his unconsciousness.
• A sudden wave of anomalies strikes Hanhai: incidents triple, including four consecutive level-three events. Strange clay statues spread throughout the Old City District, infecting people with warped faith; worship of one faceless statue erases memories until victims become faceless monsters.
• The Jingtuo God demands that Wan Jie return from Lame Bay Village, where he is pursuing K’s killer, to deal with the crisis.
• Gao Ming slips past Security and returns to the Old District. Using the Blood Gate, he gathers his allies and representatives of several forces at Zhang Ding’s home. A Student Council–uniformed high school student, resembling Hande Private Academy’s Student Council President, is introduced as a new guest.

Character developments and interactions

• Bai Xiao endures the test’s torment and emerges with dangerous new power, but condemns the analysts for sacrificing investigators to create a “shrine” for the Divine Corpse. He collapses immediately afterward, still gripping his blade.
• The Jingtuo God treats Bai Xiao as both a scientific curiosity and a potential weapon, prioritizing the urgent staffing needs of Security. He grows threatening when Wan Jie is unavailable during the citywide crisis.
• Zhuo Jun defends Bai Xiao against jealous Security personnel, emphasizing the brutal feat that enabled him to survive.
• Gao Ming appears to have consolidated enough power to command a coalition of supernatural allies and human representatives. Their gathering shows the breadth of his influence, while his casual “menopause” remark dismisses Xia Yang’s murderous fixation.

Significant themes

• Power built through sacrifice: Security’s pursuit of strength relies on dangerous tests and the deaths of investigators.
• The cost of transformation: Bai Xiao gains power without losing himself, but the fusion leaves him physically devastated and marked by malice.
• Faith as a means of corruption and control: The clay statues spread beliefs that strip people of memory and identity.
• Competing centers of authority: The Jingtuo God’s crisis response and Gao Ming’s growing coalition suggest an increasingly divided struggle for control.

Summary

Plot points and events

• A Student Council member visits Gao Ming on behalf of its president, Gao Yun, and asks whether Gao Ming would willingly remain trapped in the tunnel if that meant Gao Yun could escape. After a long pause, Gao Ming agrees.
• The messenger gives Gao Ming an old, bloodstained phone. It contains videos and a way to contact Gao Yun, though it could also reveal Gao Ming’s location. Its wallpaper is Xia Yang’s grim drawing of Class Thirteen dead in their classroom.
• Gao Yun’s videos explain that, after leaving Hande Private Academy, he built a new Student Council in the East District. Its rules have spread through neighborhoods and a school, but unlike most strange-tale rules, they are intended to help people who follow them survive.
• Gao Yun wants Gao Ming to stay out of the East District so their forces do not clash and allow the Investigation Bureau to benefit. In exchange, he shares information about Hanhai and demonstrates his gift: an energy of collective will that can strengthen rules, make false rules real, and help him resist Fate.
• Gao Yun believes the altered fates of people who survived when they should have died can help him break Fate’s control and provide power for the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal and Zhang Ding to become Dream Ghosts.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming accepts Gao Yun’s test without protest and agrees to yield the East District, showing both his willingness to sacrifice and his recognition of Gao Yun’s influence. He receives useful intelligence, but the phone also leaves him exposed to surveillance.
• Gao Yun emerges as a strategic, increasingly powerful leader. Though once a pawn of Situ An, he seized control of Situ An’s hidden resources and has built a broad organization while keeping his actions concealed.
• The Student Council messenger behaves mechanically, delivering Gao Yun’s question and gift without personal warmth.
• Gao Ming and Gao Yun do not meet directly; their relationship is mediated by the messenger and the videos. Their arrangement is cautious cooperation built around avoiding conflict.

Hanhai’s situation and themes

• The city is divided among several unstable regions: the heavily defended North Harbor; the increasingly corrupted East District; the even more dangerous Old City, where Gao Ming is active; the well-organized West Harbor; and the pragmatic South Harbor, which will shelter almost anyone useful.
• Collective will and rules are presented as forces that can protect people as well as enable supernatural invasion.
• Fate and altered destiny remain central: surviving against one’s supposed fate may create the power to resist it.
• The chapter also highlights power, compromise, and uneasy alliances: Gao Yun expands through calculated control, while Gao Ming must trade influence and accept risk to avoid a larger conflict.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming and Zhang Ding discuss Gao Yun’s video, which suggests that becoming a Dream Ghost requires drawing on ordinary citizens’ collective will. Zhang Ding believes helping water ghosts regain their sanity has already strengthened him.
• The group debates whether to involve ordinary people in confronting anomalies. The Spirit Medium fears the risks, while others argue that people deserve the truth and the chance to choose how to face it.
• Gao Ming decides they should focus on entering anomaly events, gathering people’s emotions and will, and recruiting those with exceptional resolve. He assigns the group tasks and says he will write new “scripts” to help produce another Dream Ghost.
• Gao Ming orders the capture of violent, murderous people from his list, directing that they be sent to his Execution House rather than allowed to thrive in the Shadow World.
• In a separate scene, teacher Liu Jiaru visits her student Xiao Guo’s home after noticing bruises. Xiao Guo says her parents have become obsessed with mirrors. Their deserted, unnerving apartment and the mother’s unsettling behavior suggest something is seriously wrong.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming emerges as a pragmatic organizer: he wants to alter the grim future he has seen by protecting potential victims, recruiting the unusually resilient, and punishing dangerous killers.
• Zhang Ding connects his growing power to the trust and cooperation of his neighbors, and takes pride in articulating the group’s purpose.
• The Spirit Medium remains wary of disrupting the natural order and fears that waking from the dream may lead to something worse. The Blind Man, Xuan Wen, Wei Dayou, Bai Qiao, and Xia Yang counter with arguments for confronting the coming disaster and giving people agency.
• Liu Jiaru acts on concern for Xiao Guo rather than dismissing the child’s injuries. Xiao Guo is frightened and reluctant to return home, but eventually reveals the troubling change in her parents.
• The chapter ends with Liu meeting Xiao Guo’s mother, who opens the bedroom door with her back turned, leaving the nature of the danger unresolved.

Significant themes

• Collective will versus Fate: The group believes ordinary people’s choices and shared emotions may provide power to resist Fate.
• Agency and truth: Several characters argue that people deserve the chance to know about anomalies and make their own choices, even when the truth is frightening.
• Protection versus risk: The group disagrees over whether involving civilians is necessary preparation or reckless endangerment.
• A hidden catastrophe: The contrast between Gao Ming’s plans and Xiao Guo’s disturbing home visit underscores that anomalies are already affecting ordinary lives.

Plot points and events

• Teacher Liu visits Xiao Guo’s home and finds her mother behaving unnaturally: she keeps her back turned and moves through the apartment without looking.
• Xiao Guo’s father appears, shuts the door, and the apartment turns cold and oppressive. The parents trap Teacher Liu and insist she stay for a meal.
• They drag her to a vanity mirror, where her reflection has no face. As she is forced to keep looking, features begin forming on the reflection—and she realizes the couple intend to make her another member of their family.
• Xiao Guo smashes the mirror with a cleaver, disrupting the parents’ hold long enough for Teacher Liu to escape.
• Xiao Guo stays behind, clinging to her mother. When she looks directly at her mother, Xiao Guo’s own features begin to blur, revealing why she habitually keeps her head lowered.
• Teacher Liu escapes the apartment but finds the courtyard exit replaced by a wall. A man catches her, claiming he only wanted directions. Others arrive, all connected by tasks from the Deadwater Forum.

Character developments and interactions

• Teacher Liu (Liu Jiaru) begins as a concerned, protective teacher. Though terrified, she challenges the parents, calls the police, and tries to protect Xiao Guo. She eventually escapes, but the supernatural danger remains unresolved.
• Xiao Guo initially appears frightened and withdrawn, but acts decisively by warning Teacher Liu and breaking the mirror. Her choice to stay behind suggests a painful attachment—or obligation—to her parents, despite their menace.
• Xiao Guo’s parents present themselves as polite and grateful, then reveal a predatory, physically unnatural nature. They work together to restrain Teacher Liu and force her to look into the mirror.
• Teacher Liu’s attempt to rescue Xiao Guo becomes a brief alliance: Xiao Guo saves her, but then separates from her to confront her mother.

Significant themes

• The danger of looking: The title’s warning is literal; mirrors and faces are tied to the chapter’s supernatural threat.
• Appearance versus reality: The parents’ courteous manners conceal monstrous intentions, while Xiao Guo’s lowered gaze hides the disturbing effect of seeing faces.
• Protection and sacrifice: Teacher Liu risks herself to save Xiao Guo, and Xiao Guo in turn creates the chance for Teacher Liu to escape.
• Trapped reality: The sealed apartment and vanished courtyard gate suggest that ordinary spaces can become inescapable, while the Deadwater Forum’s task system hints at a wider supernatural network.

Key plot points and events

• Ms. Liu, shaken after encountering a terrifying anomaly, is surrounded by a group led by Fan Li. He identifies himself as an auxiliary police officer and explains that they are Ghost Story Players—survivors of supernatural incidents who work together to help others.
• Fan Li introduces the group, whose members have survived different anomalies: Sister Zhang cared for supernatural children; university students Bai Shu and Youyou escaped a haunted library; and the bickering, recently divorced Li Chengcai and Ouyang Susu survived another ghost encounter.
• Gao Ming, who helps at his family’s kindergarten, reassures Ms. Liu that fear is normal. The group’s humorous squabbling helps convince her they are people, not ghosts.
• Ms. Liu explains that a student is trapped inside an apartment building with his parents, who stood with their backs turned. She fears that looking at their faceless appearance would cause her own face to disappear.
• Fan Li connects the phenomenon to other recent incidents near Lishan Hospital, apparently involving a faceless clay statue. He leads the group toward the building despite Bai Shu’s warning that many anomalies have appeared across the district.

Character developments and interactions

• Fan Li emerges as a calm, capable leader who inspires trust. Though only an auxiliary officer, he is driven by justice and a desire to save people; the narration hints he may become a great savior in the future.
• Ms. Liu moves from panic and suspicion to trusting the group, then urges them to help the trapped student.
• The Ghost Story Players reveal both their experience and their varied personalities. Li Chengcai and Ouyang Susu’s comic, combative relationship contrasts with the danger around them, while Bai Shu and Youyou remain close and visibly affected by their past ordeal.
• The group’s banter and shared history build camaraderie, while Fan Li’s decision to proceed reflects his concern for the endangered child.

Significant themes

• Solidarity and mutual aid: Survivors use hard-won experience to protect others.
• Courage despite fear: The characters remain anxious but act because people need help.
• Hope and justice: Fan Li’s leadership suggests that an ordinary person can become a source of hope.
• The expanding supernatural threat: The rising number of incidents hints that the city’s anomalies are intensifying.

Chapter Summary: “Residents’ Committee”

• Mission and setup: Fan Li’s team enters the Dazhai Power Supply Family Compound, where a released faceless god has corrupted residents and turned loved ones into monsters. Their objective is to find and destroy the faceless clay idol, believed to be linked to the Residents’ Committee. The player count fluctuates as more players arrive—and at least one dies.
• Exploring Xiao Guo’s home: Teacher Liu leads the group to her student Xiao Guo’s apartment. Fan Li takes point through the dark stairwell, drawing on his unusual strength and exceptionally high “shadow soul” attribute. Inside, the apartment is wrecked, and the group finds signs that Xiao Guo and his mother are missing.
• The mirror and the call: Teacher Liu says Xiao Guo’s mother seemed to transform after looking in the bedroom mirror. Though it appears ordinary to the others, Teacher Liu sees her reflection grin when she reaches toward it. An old red landline then rings. A woman claiming to represent the Residents’ Committee invites Xiao Guo’s mother—and then the supposed teacher—to an activity in the fourth-floor room of Building Seven.
• The team’s decision: Bai Shu suspects the faceless idol is in the activity room and sees the call as a chance to reach it. Fan Li cautions that the Committee may contain many corrupted residents, making a direct attack too risky. He proposes first locating other survivors and learning more about the compound. The team agrees to proceed carefully; Gao Ming, a newcomer, says he will follow their lead.

Character developments and interactions

Fan Li emerges as cautious but determined: his past helplessness as an auxiliary police officer drives him to take control and grow stronger, though he avoids reckless confrontation. Bai Shu is resourceful, improvising during the phone call, while also showing excitement about pursuing the mission. Teacher Liu remains frightened but contributes crucial firsthand knowledge. Ouyang Susu and Li Chengcai bicker as usual yet instinctively stay together in danger. Gao Ming is reserved and defers to the more experienced players.

Significant themes

The chapter contrasts fear and action, emphasizing that survival requires both courage and restraint. It also develops the horror of familiar domestic spaces becoming unsafe, and suggests that corruption can turn community and family relationships into instruments of menace.

Key plot points and events

• Fan Li leads the team through the apartment building to search for Xiao Guo and his parents. He assigns Gao Ming and Youyou to stay behind, with Bai Shu and Li covering the stairwell.
• Fan Li and Li find a badly injured, bound man amid torn clothes on the stairs. He is alive but too weak to speak; he points toward an apartment on the seventh floor.
• Youyou discovers the home-surveillance system and reviews footage of Xiao Guo’s mother. The recording shows that, after a late-night argument with her husband, she sat before a mirror, dressed up, and gradually became unnaturally beautiful—while her reflection appeared increasingly distorted.
• As the footage cuts out, events begin repeating in real life: a grotesque figure emerges from the bedroom mirror and threatens Youyou. Gao Ming attacks, smashing the mirror with his fists and then a rice cooker. The blow seems to drive the ghost away, though the chapter ends with Youyou surprised that it worked.
• The mirror appears to be consuming Xiao Guo’s mother. Despite being trapped, she struggles to warn her son to flee.
• On the seventh floor, Fan Li and Li also encounter a family standing motionless with their backs to the doorway, adding to the building’s growing mystery.

Character developments

• Gao Ming acts decisively under pressure, protecting Youyou despite being a newcomer. His unexpected use of the rice cooker suggests he can improvise against supernatural threats.
• Youyou is frightened but curious enough to investigate the surveillance footage. Her discovery reveals the danger before it fully manifests.
• Fan Li remains cautious and organized, prioritizing the group’s safety while searching for clues.
• Xiao Guo’s mother shifts from a warm, well-liked neighbor into a victim of the mirror’s influence—or a creature linked to it—yet her desperate attempt to warn her son suggests some humanity remains.
• Ouyang Susu challenges Li’s condescending attitude, showing her impatience with his posturing.

Significant themes

• Mirrors and distorted identity: The mirror transforms appearances and seems to entrap or consume people.
• The uncanny overlap of recording and reality: The events missing from the surveillance footage unfold in front of Youyou.
• Survival through teamwork and improvisation: The group divides tasks, watches for danger, and relies on quick action.
• Appearances concealing horror: Xiao Guo’s mother’s efforts to beautify herself contrast with the monstrous reflection and the violence unfolding around her.

Character interactions

• Li tries to reassure Gao Ming, while Ouyang Susu rebukes him; Fan Li interrupts their argument to organize the search.
• Fan Li assigns Gao Ming and Youyou to remain behind while he and the others investigate.
• Gao Ming saves Youyou when the mirror figure attacks, using the rice cooker to strike it.
• Fan Li and Li work together to free the injured man and follow his warning toward the seventh-floor apartment.
• Xiao Guo’s mother appears to direct a final warning toward her son as the mirror closes around her.

Key plot points and events

• After the Faceless Clay Idol’s female ghost vanishes from Gao Ming’s mirror, Gao Ming warns that the idol may be watching through mirrors in its believers’ rooms.
• Youyou and the others flee the building, leaving Gao Ming behind. He quickly recovers from his apparent collapse and heads upstairs to find Fan Li.
• On the stairwell, Gao Ming finds Ouyang Susu and Li frozen in place, protecting each other’s eyes from a ghost girl whose face they must not see.
• The ghost curses Li and attacks Susu. Susu tries to draw it away, then hurls herself and the ghost against a wall; Li, already suffering from the curse, calls for help.
• Their desperate devotion produces powerful “willpower energy,” which the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God absorbs. Gao Ming recognizes the energy and captures the ghost girl with a chain, sealing her inside the Execution House.
• With the couple safe, Gao Ming continues toward Fan Li’s room.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming appears exhausted and frightened after the mirror encounter, but his recovery reveals that he was at least partly acting. He remains focused on rescuing Fan Li and proves resourceful by trapping the ghost.
• Youyou, Bai Shu, and the others prioritize escape over helping Gao Ming or searching for Fan Li, reflecting the group’s fragile cooperation under danger.
• Ouyang Susu and Li show deep, reciprocal love: each risks herself to protect the other, despite their earlier marital conflict. Their loyalty persists even when fear, pain, and the curse overwhelm them.
• Gao Ming intervenes only after the couple’s actions generate the energy he is seeking, then saves them and presses on.

Significant themes

• Self-preservation versus loyalty: Most players flee when danger offers no immediate reward, while Susu and Li refuse to abandon each other.
• Love as strength: Their devotion generates a force that can be absorbed by the Ghost God, suggesting that human emotions have supernatural power.
• Rules and sacrifice: Survival depends on understanding the ghost’s rules—especially not looking at its face—and on accepting risk to protect others.
• Human nature under pressure: The chapter contrasts opportunistic flight with courage rooted in personal bonds.

Key events

• Gao Ming reaches the Seventh Floor and finds the family transformed into faceless, shadowy figures. Their missing facial features let them invade people’s minds and consume their memories.
• Gao Ming withstands their attack by confronting them with his memories of death, but the ghosts turn on Fan Li.
• Fan Li fights back with a bloodied knife and his monstrous, ghostlike mouth. The family overwhelms him and drags him toward a mirror containing a faceless version of himself, which begins stealing his memories and emotions.
• As Fan Li struggles to preserve his identity, his immense will awakens a strong response from the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God. Gao Ming opens the Execution House, chains the ghosts, and feeds Fan Li’s will to the entity. It binds Fan Li’s fate to Gao Ming’s and sends the family into the Execution House.
• The mirror shatters, ending the immediate danger. Gao Ming returns to the sixth floor, then goes back upstairs with Ouyang Susu. They find Fan Li unconscious but alive; he wakes with little memory of what happened.

Character developments

• Gao Ming demonstrates unusual resistance to the ghosts’ memory-eating power and continues using the Execution House to contain supernatural threats. He sees Fan Li’s will as evidence that the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s transformation may be progressing.
• Fan Li reveals both a fierce sense of justice and extraordinary endurance. His drive comes partly from his modest beginnings and desire to earn recognition as a full police officer. His ghostlike appearance reflects how far he has changed, but he remains determined to protect others and resist injustice.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God becomes more animated after absorbing Fan Li’s will, suggesting it may be moving toward becoming a Dream Ghost.

Themes

• Humanity amid horror: People may become frightening in appearance, yet what matters is whether they retain their humanity.
• Willpower and sacrifice: Fan Li’s persistence allows him to resist the mirror’s attack and makes his will valuable to the supernatural entity.
• Memory and identity: The ghosts’ power to erase memories threatens not just survival but a person’s sense of self.
• Moral compromise: Fan Li feels compelled to justify killing the ghosts, while Gao Ming’s actions show survival may require making difficult bargains.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming’s resistance distracts the family long enough for Fan Li to fight back.
• Fan Li’s struggle draws the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s interest; Gao Ming then uses the Execution House to save him and capture the family.
• Ouyang Susu and Gao Ming find and care for Fan Li after the fight, while Brother Li’s concern for Fan Li prompts them to check the Seventh Floor.

Plot points and events

• Fan Li returns from a confrontation with a ghost, apparently having absorbed or “eaten” the four ghosts who had been with him. He admits that using his power makes him lose control.
• The group tends to the badly injured Wu You, who reveals that the residential complex’s residents have become monsters after members of the Residents’ Committee began worshipping a clay idol.
• Wu You asks them to find his mother, who went with Grandma Li to see the idol—possibly hoping it could restore his face.
• He explains the danger: avoid looking at residents’ faces or in mirrors; a back-turned ghost may appear in the halls. The idol steals faces and targets “good” people, while sparing those with worse sins.
• Gao Ming suspects the idol feeds on the will or faith of the living. Fan Li proposes searching Grandma Li’s apartment and destroying the idol if they find it.
• The group reunites with Teacher Liu, who had been hidden in a neighboring apartment, and takes her with them. They then set out for Building Seven, aiming to reach Grandma Li’s second-floor apartment without alerting the Residents’ Committee activity room on the fourth floor.

Character developments and interactions

• Wu You is revealed as a deeply self-loathing survivor who believes his disfigurement and bad actions made him unworthy of help. His main hope is to save his mother. Despite seeing himself as disposable, he offers to serve as bait.
• Fan Li shows both the danger of his power and his compassion: although newly stronger and bearing an unsettling scent of meat, he refuses to abandon Wu You and carries him onward.
• Ouyang Susu focuses on practical survival questions and challenges Li’s bluntness when he tells Wu You that his mother is probably lost.
• Gao Ming interprets the idol’s motives and reassures Teacher Liu that the group will protect her.
• The group’s instinct to protect others—even when endangered themselves—is highlighted as a defining strength.

Significant themes

• Kindness and predation: The idol’s preference for “good people” turns virtue into a vulnerability, while wrongdoing offers a twisted form of protection.
• Self-worth and redemption: Wu You sees himself as beyond saving, but Fan Li encourages him to seize the present and begin again.
• Solidarity amid horror: Ordinary acts of care—treating injuries, protecting a frightened teacher, and refusing to leave Wu You behind—offer hope in the devastated complex.

Key plot points and events

• The group enters the residential complex after midnight to find and destroy the clay sculpture believed to be causing the supernatural disturbances.
• Fan Li assigns Bai Shu and Li to search Grandma Li’s apartment while he guards the stairs. Ouyang Susu waits by the entrance, and the others keep watch.
• A mournful “ghostly melody” echoes through the stairwell. Sister Zhang recognizes it from an earlier Anomaly Event and explains that such songs are used to summon or guide souls.
• Grandma Li’s apartment is filled with paper figures bearing residents’ photographs and names, suggesting they were marked as sacrifices. Bai Shu also finds children’s clothes covered in cuts and punctures, and a grotesque doll made from the clothes with Grandma Li’s posthumous photograph attached.
• Li finds a stone pedestal surrounded by rice and burned joss paper, indicating the clay sculpture may once have been worshipped there—but the sculpture itself is missing. The paper figures seem to shift as Bai Shu and Li leave.
• The melody begins to possess Sister Zhang, who hums along and heads upstairs despite the others trying to restrain her. With the sculpture still missing, the group follows.
• On the third floor, they discover a kindergarten. Fan Li looks inside and sees an opera-costumed woman singing a story about a benefactor who was sealed inside a clay sculpture and had his face erased to conceal the crime.

Character developments and interactions

• Fan Li remains protective and decisive, taking the dangerous role of guarding the stairs and then leading the group upstairs when the plan fails.
• Bai Shu and Li work together to search Grandma Li’s apartment, uncovering evidence of ritual activity but not finding the sculpture.
• Youyou worries about the risks of the plan and whether Gao Ming can be trusted with an important role; Bai Shu reassures her.
• Sister Zhang draws on her past experience with ghostly melodies, but the song ultimately overcomes her and leads her upstairs.
• Ouyang Susu tries to hold Sister Zhang back, but cannot stop her.

Significant themes

• Manipulation and possession: The song exerts control over Sister Zhang, while the paper figures appear to move on their own.
• Ritual, sacrifice, and concealment: Grandma Li’s apartment suggests residents and children were prepared as offerings; the song’s story points to a hidden killing.
• Erased identity and suppressed truth: The benefactor’s face was destroyed to hide wrongdoing, echoed by the chapter’s title.
• Moral complexity: Sister Zhang remembers her former employer as morally compromised yet capable of mercy, resisting a simple judgment of her.