Chapter Summaries

Plot points

• Grandma closes in on the flesh-and-blood Gao Ming and the others. Liu Yi tries to escape through a window, while Gao Ming prepares to distract Grandma.
• Painter Gao Ming emerges from Room 0715, where he has realized that the clay sculpture split Gao Ming’s past and memories into separate versions—including himself and Xia Yang. Hoping to become the “real” Gao Ming, he enters the last room to uncover its secrets.
• In the bedroom, he finds Gao Ming’s hearts trapped and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal stripped away. In Grandma’s room, he discovers and takes the clay sculpture, which is connected to the apartment building by blood-red threads.
• Touching the sculpture alerts Grandma. Painter Gao Ming cuts the threads with his paintbrush and flees downstairs, carrying the sculpture. The building’s shifting rules and looping floors begin to give way around him.
• Wan Jie sees Painter Gao Ming moving through the anomaly and follows, hoping to understand how he navigates the building.
• With Grandma drawn away, the flesh-and-blood Gao Ming, Delinquent Gao Ming, Liu Yi, and Fan Li leave Room 0715. Gao Ming stays behind to lure Grandma away from them and tells the others to reach the station.

Character developments and interactions

• Painter Gao Ming is reckless, ambitious, and increasingly convinced he could claim Gao Ming’s identity and powers. His curiosity leads him to take the clay sculpture despite the danger.
• The flesh-and-blood Gao Ming acts protectively and strategically, putting the others’ escape ahead of his own.
• Liu Yi responds quickly under pressure, attempting a direct escape through the window.
• Wan Jie shifts from trying to reunite with his team to cautiously investigating Painter Gao Ming’s unusual ability to navigate the building.
• Delinquent Gao Ming and Fan Li prepare to escape with Liu Yi, while Fan Li questions why the flesh-and-blood Gao Ming is staying behind.

Significant themes

• Identity and fragmented memory: The clay sculpture has divided Gao Ming’s past and memories into separate selves, leaving each version uncertain about who is “real.”
• Sacrifice and survival: Gao Ming risks being caught to give the others a chance to escape.
• Power and faith: The sculpture’s blood-red threads suggest that supernatural power is tied to belief, violence, and control.
• Unstable reality: The building’s shifting floors, looping corridors, and moving rooms make escape dependent on understanding—or breaking—its rules.

Plot points and events

• Fan Li agrees to leave the apartment with Flesh-and-Blood Gao Ming and the others. Liu Yi leads the group downstairs using her glowing Student Council armband, urging them to make better choices rather than wait for a supposedly “right” Gao Ming.
• Painter Gao Ming flees through the apartment complex with the clay sculpture, whose strange rules are disrupting the building and helping some trapped outsiders regain clarity. Grandmother relentlessly pursues him.
• Wan Jie watches from hiding. He recognizes the apartments’ memory-erasing rules and hesitates between waking his teammates and pursuing Gao Ming.
• Zhuo Jun emerges from a room after a fragment of a special posthumous photograph sewn into his arm restores his memory. He identifies Gao Ming as the Investigation Bureau’s greatest threat and attacks him.
• Painter Gao Ming uses the clay sculpture to block Zhuo Jun’s knife, then runs on. As his disturbing paintings enrage Grandmother, Zhuo Jun flees after him, caught between two dangers.

Character developments and interactions

• Fan Li stops searching the rooms and commits to escaping with the group, drawn to Flesh-and-Blood Gao Ming by an unexplained connection.
• Liu Yi takes charge, refuses to reveal what is in her gift box, and suggests that people can become better through their choices. Delinquent Gao Ming’s awkward question about whether she is married hints at their past closeness.
• Painter Gao Ming grows more ambitious and reckless: he cannot destroy the sculpture, so he defaces it and hopes to claim its power, while struggling to stay ahead of his pursuers.
• Wan Jie remains cautious and observant, but his indecision leaves him vulnerable as events escalate.
• Zhuo Jun recovers enough of his memories to become violently determined to kill Gao Ming, though the awakening fragment causes him severe pain.
• Grandmother becomes increasingly ferocious as Painter Gao Ming marks the sculpture.

Significant themes

• Choice and self-determination: Liu Yi argues that identity and fate can change through present choices.
• Memory and identity: The buildings erase memories and abilities, while the photograph fragment forcibly restores Zhuo Jun’s.
• Chaos and unintended consequences: The sculpture disrupts the apartments’ rules, unleashing unpredictable dangers and helping some outsiders.
• Power and obsession: Painter Gao Ming’s desire to possess the sculpture escalates even as it worsens the peril around him.

Key plot points and events

• The conflict spreads across two apartment complexes, drawing in Security personnel, Ghost Story Players, Gao Yun’s Student Council, and multiple versions of Gao Ming. The clay sculptures’ attack on Gao Ming is disrupted, while residents begin losing their memories.
• Exhausted, Painter Gao Ming pours his blood and curse into a clay sculpture, then throws it at Zhuo Jun. Grandma reacts with murderous hostility when Zhuo Jun catches it.
• Zhuo Jun decides the sculpture is too dangerous to keep and throws it aside. Wan Jie seizes the chance to grab it and calls for his scattered team to converge.
• Wan Jie’s covert signal reaches Zhou Yin, who relays his emergency order to other Security personnel. Despite her costly efforts, only three people respond, suggesting many are already incapacitated or unreachable.
• The Second Team’s leader reveals that she can suppress negative effects by sacrificing her lifespan. She warns that the apartments steal memories and that residents risk losing their identities.
• She burns an opened red gift box, described as holding secrets buried in memory. As the minute hand completes a full turn, clocks throughout the building make strange noises and residents’ figures begin appearing on their faces.

Character developments

• Painter Gao Ming makes a desperate, self-sacrificing move, using his blood and art to curse the sculpture and impede his pursuers.
• Zhuo Jun prioritizes capturing Gao Ming over holding the sculpture, choosing to use it as a distraction despite the danger.
• Wan Jie shifts from trailing the chase to taking command, using a hidden communication method to summon his team.
• Zhou Yin demonstrates intense loyalty and endurance, sacrificing blood and life force to deliver Wan Jie’s order.
• The Second Team’s leader reveals the personal cost of her protective ability: it rapidly ages her, as shown by the scars and wrinkles beneath her coverings.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: The building steadily erases residents’ memories, threatening their sense of self.
• Sacrifice and survival: Characters spend blood, stamina, and lifespan to protect others or pursue their goals.
• Secrets and hidden pasts: The gift box represents buried memories, while the clocks’ emerging figures suggest the building is exposing or reshaping what residents know about themselves.
• Dangerous power and divided priorities: The clay sculpture is both a valuable object and a perilous liability, forcing characters to choose between competing threats.

Character interactions

• Painter Gao Ming uses the sculpture to slow Zhuo Jun, but Grandma’s attachment to it makes it dangerous for anyone else to handle.
• Zhuo Jun exploits Grandma’s reaction by throwing the sculpture away from himself and Gao Ming; Wan Jie then takes it and orders his team to regroup.
• Zhou Yin and the Second Team’s leader coordinate the response, while the leader explains the memory threat and urges the group to protect one another’s secrets.

Plot points and events

• Security team members warn that sounds in the building can erase memories and set out to find Wan Jie, whose eyes may reveal a way out. The building’s residents are also beginning to move.
• In Room 0715, the ordinary Gao Ming senses that the chimes have taken something from his memory. With no way to contact his parents, he decides to leave the building and messages them to stay away.
• He packs food and water, hides his mother’s valuables, and prepares to flee. Before leaving, he opens a mysterious red gift box and finds a photograph of himself at a birthday cake, surrounded by many copies of his parents. Though frightened, he takes it with him, feeling that the figures are still his family.
• In the neighboring room, he discovers another Gao Ming beside the corpse of a third. The living Gao Ming explains that he found the body in the hallway and brought it inside rather than leave it there.
• The two exchange diaries. The ordinary Gao Ming learns that this version grew up in a loving home, was exceptionally capable, and consistently made good choices. The kind Gao Ming then carries the dead Gao Ming on his back as they continue.

Character development

• The ordinary Gao Ming is timid and unremarkable, but his concern for his parents and his decision to take the frightening photograph show his loyalty and attachment to family.
• The kind Gao Ming is compassionate and selfless: despite being afraid, he refuses to abandon a dead version of himself. His confidence in telling the ordinary Gao Ming that he may be “the most perfect one” offers him a new way to view his life.

Character interactions

• The ordinary Gao Ming tries to protect his parents by warning them not to return to the building.
• He and the kind Gao Ming compare notes and diaries, discovering they are alternate versions of the same person who made different choices.
• The ordinary Gao Ming envies the kind Gao Ming’s fortunate life, while the latter responds with reassurance rather than judgment.

Significant themes

• Identity and alternate lives: The many Gao Mings embody different outcomes shaped by choices.
• Memory and uncertainty: The chimes threaten memory, while notes and diaries serve as fragile records of identity and truth.
• Compassion amid horror: The kind Gao Ming’s care for the dead contrasts with the building’s danger.
• Self-worth and comparison: The chapter questions whether a seemingly ordinary, flawed life is less valuable than a “perfect” one.

Key events

• Kind Gao Ming carries Suicidal Gao Ming’s corpse out of the room, while Ordinary Gao Ming follows with their schoolbags.
• Kind Gao Ming shares the escape route he discovered with the other trapped Gao Mings. They leave the hidden floor—an entire level made up of Room 0715s—and reach the stairwell.
• Kind Gao Ming believes the imprisoned versions are different choices made by the same person. He plans to find a way out, then return to rescue the others.
• As the pair descend, Ordinary Gao Ming feels increasingly anxious and urges them to turn back. Kind Gao Ming instead goes to investigate screams from a nearby room.
• The screams come from Yuan Hui, their former classmate and dormmate. He emerges badly injured, with a fragment of a posthumous photograph embedded in his flesh and his ghost markings suppressed.
• Yuan Hui blames Gao Ming for his suffering and for the deaths of the two people he loved most, accusing him and other Ghost Story Players of ruining his life.

Character developments

• Kind Gao Ming shows courage, compassion, and an instinct to help others, even when doing so puts him at risk. He also remains optimistic, believing the different Gao Mings may be stronger together.
• Ordinary Gao Ming remains frightened and uncertain, but his instinctive panic suggests he may sense danger the others cannot.
• Yuan Hui appears transformed from the classmate Gao Ming remembers into a vengeful, tormented figure. The loss of his ghost markings and the fragment lodged in his wound seem to have left him both physically and emotionally devastated.

Significant themes

• Identity and possibility: The many Gao Mings represent different versions or choices of the same person.
• Compassion versus survival: Kind Gao Ming risks his own safety to help strangers, while Ordinary Gao Ming urges caution.
• Memory and resentment: Yuan Hui’s accusations suggest that shared history can be remembered very differently—and that old grievances can become destructive.
• The cost of supernatural conflict: The apartment’s “god,” the posthumous photograph, and the Ghost Story Players’ actions appear to have inflicted severe harm.

Character interactions

• Kind Gao Ming encourages the other Gao Mings by sharing what he knows and reassuring Ordinary Gao Ming.
• Ordinary Gao Ming tries to stop Kind Gao Ming from approaching Yuan Hui, but Kind Gao Ming chooses to investigate.
• Kind Gao Ming approaches Yuan Hui with concern and offers to apologize, while Yuan Hui rejects his kindness and directs his pain and anger at him.

Plot points

• Yuan Hui, consumed by hatred and a Posthumous Photograph fragment, hunts Kind Gao Ming through the apartment building, blaming him for thwarting a bargain with Situ An and Zhuo Jun.
• Yuan Hui claims the two promised to return his imprisoned wife and girlfriend, along with wealth and a powerful job, if he lured Class Thirteen to Hande Private Academy and completed a ritual.
• After Gao Ming disappears into a room, Yuan Hui breaks down doors while ranting about bullying and accusing Gao Ming of failing to stop it.
• In one room, the Security team finds what appears to be Gao Ming’s hanged corpse. The female officer tests it with her Posthumous Photograph fragment, which enters the body, apparently confirming it is Gao Ming. The team counts him as one of their three targets eliminated.
• The officers prepare to pursue Wan Jie, who is fleeing upstairs with the clay sculpture and Grandmother. Yuan Hui joins them, though he remains uneasy about the corpse.

Character developments and interactions

• Yuan Hui is shown as volatile and vengeful, but his anger stems from desperation and perceived betrayal. His hatred eases somewhat after the apparent death of Gao Ming, even as he suspects something is wrong.
• Kind Gao Ming tries to calm Yuan Hui and offers to make amends, but is forced to flee. The corpse’s identity and death are left uncertain.
• The Security officers reveal that the Jingtuo God altered their Posthumous Photograph fragments to make them pursue their targets relentlessly. The female officer questions the corpse’s authenticity, while the tall officer urges caution and identifies Wan Jie as the next target.
• Yuan Hui’s teammates challenge his reckless noise and emotional instability, but he lashes out, comparing their inaction to the bystanders who enabled his bullying.

Significant themes

• Guilt and accountability: Yuan Hui demands that Gao Ming answer for past failures, while the apparent suicide turns “reflection” into a grim, literal image.
• Victimhood and complicity: Yuan Hui argues that those who witness bullying without intervening share responsibility.
• Manipulation and obsession: Yuan Hui’s bargain and hatred have made him vulnerable to the Jingtuo God’s influence.
• Uncertainty and deception: The corpse seems to confirm Gao Ming’s death, yet its physical signs do not fully fit, keeping its identity—and the apparent victory—open to doubt.

Key plot points

• Ordinary Gao Ming finds Kind Gao Ming hiding in a wardrobe after the danger passes. The two compare diaries and realize that, despite their different pasts, both were due to attend the same school outing on July 15.
• Kind Gao Ming suspects they have returned to their high-school selves and may be in the underworld, or somewhere between life and death. He thinks the outing may be tied to whatever happened to them and could be their chance to return to the living world.
• The pair leave their apartment and descend through a confusing, shifting stairwell. On the fourth floor, Kind Gao Ming hears someone calling for help and turns back, despite Ordinary Gao Ming’s warning.
• They find a grotesque creature made of human flesh attacking three badly wounded members of the Security First Team. Their leader uses a watch-like power to stop time, but it is failing, and the team’s ghost-related abilities have been suppressed.
• The two Gaos help carry the wounded men to safety. The team leader recognizes Gao Ming—and is stunned to discover there are two of him.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming admits that his outward cheerfulness hides guilt and frustration. His compassion drives him to risk himself for the unknown caller.
• Ordinary Gao Ming tries to keep them focused on escape, but follows Kind Gao Ming when he turns back to help.
• The Security First Team leader sacrifices his own strength to protect his companions, who urge him to flee rather than die for them. His surprise at seeing two Gaos hints at a prior connection or conflict.

Significant themes

• Kindness and its cost: Kind Gao Ming’s empathy may endanger him, but he cannot ignore someone in distress.
• Shared fate amid divergent lives: Different versions of Gao Ming appear to converge on July 15 and the same outing.
• Life, death, and uncertain reality: The setting and date suggest the characters may be trapped in an afterlife or threshold between worlds.
• Powerlessness and sacrifice: With ghost abilities disabled, even experienced investigators are vulnerable and must rely on one another.

Plot points and events

• The Gao Mings and the Security First Team leader flee a crawling-armed monster. The leader uses a power-draining watch to freeze it for seven seconds, then collapses; Kind Gao Ming helps him escape with an injured officer.
• The group hides in a room, apparently protected by the apartment building’s rule that the monster will not pursue people inside. Kind Gao Ming searches for a first-aid kit, but the injuries are curses and cannot be healed.
• The First Team leader explains why his team was hunting Gao Ming: the more powerful version of Gao Ming founded the Deadwater Forum, killed K, and trapped Security teams at Lishan Hospital. The General Investigation Bureau’s Great Screening is intended to kill him.
• Ordinary Gao Ming reveals that Yuan Hui’s group has three targets. Gao Ming is one; another is Wan Jie.
• The First Team leader explains that Wan Jie has long been a source of tension within the General Bureau and may be targeted because the Jingtuo God wants his eyes. The team suspects the anomaly is being used to eliminate opponents of the Jingtuo God, but they are too injured to intervene.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming risks himself to save the First Team leader and cares for the injured, while remaining alert to possible danger. Ordinary Gao Ming shares what he knows but is increasingly hungry.
• The First Team leader, initially a hunter, accepts a temporary truce because the Gao Mings saved his team. He answers their questions honestly, though he remains wary of their conflicting memories.
• The injured Security officers’ hostility softens, but they struggle to believe Gao Ming helped them. One fears the revelation about Wan Jie is an attempt to turn the team against its allies.
• The two Gao Mings learn that they may be different versions of the same person, with one having become an exceptionally powerful enemy of the Bureau.

Significant themes

• Shifting alliances: Former enemies cooperate when survival demands it.
• Fragmented identity and memory: The Gao Mings’ limited memories suggest multiple versions of the same person.
• Institutional power struggles: The hunt for Gao Ming may be only one part of a larger conspiracy involving Wan Jie and the Jingtuo God.
• Survival under rules and limits: The group relies on the building’s strange protections, while curses and suppressed abilities leave them vulnerable.

Key plot points and events

• The First Team leader and both versions of Gao Ming agree to cooperate. The leader suspects the Jingtuo God may have manipulated the Security team by falsely blaming Gao Ming, possibly to gain control of the team and target Wan Jie.
• The group disguises the two Gaos in Security uniforms and descends from the third floor to the first. The leader warns that the building’s residents are losing their memories and may soon forget even their teammates.
• The first floor is covered in blood and evidence of violence. When two players try to break through a window, a creature outside mauls them and a curse rapidly overtakes their bodies. The leader concludes that neither the building nor the darkness outside offers an easy escape.
• Kind Gao Ming reasons that the threats may be governed by rules—or that the force behind the building is too constrained to kill everyone directly, instead fostering fear and conflict. He treats the injured players, easing their pain, and suggests that a group might overwhelm or distract the outside monster.
• Ouyang Susu, a shot-put athlete, and her husband, Doctor Li, emerge. The First Team leader tries to recruit them and the other players, but most remain distrustful or leave.
• Doctor Li reveals that the building’s expected exit has become a room with an unusual door number.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming shows compassion by tending to the wounded, while also thinking strategically about the building’s rules and possible weaknesses.
• Ordinary Gao Ming backs Kind Gao Ming’s account of their conflict with the Security team, reinforcing their shared view that they may have been wrongly targeted.
• The First Team leader shifts from hostility toward cooperation. He recognizes Gao Ming’s ability, grows suspicious of the Jingtuo God, and takes precautions to protect his men and conceal the Gaos’ identities.
• Ouyang Susu and Doctor Li approach cautiously. They recognize Gao Ming’s voice but do not expose him, apparently believing he may be working undercover among the Investigation Bureau’s people.
• Cooperation remains fragile: the leader asks the residents to join forces, but most choose not to trust him.

Significant themes

• Fear and uncertainty: With memories fading and danger present both inside and outside, the characters cannot rely on familiar identities or safe routes.
• Manipulation and mistrust: The possibility that the Jingtuo God engineered the conflict makes characters reconsider who is truly responsible.
• Rules and limits: The threats appear powerful but constrained, suggesting that understanding the anomaly’s rules may be key to survival.
• Compassion amid danger: Kind Gao Ming’s care for injured strangers contrasts with the selfishness and suspicion spreading through the building.

Plot and events

• In Xiangshengyong Apartments, Kind Gao Ming, the First Team Leader, Doctor Li, and Ouyang Susu find a concealed room at the center of the building. Its three doors are marked past, present, and future, each bearing a different ghostly image.
• The doors have openings sized for the blood-red gift boxes residents received. Some people have put their gifts inside and entered, but none have returned.
• The First Team Leader suspects the building’s clay divine statues are trying to make people surrender their most precious memories voluntarily. The gifts may represent memories or experiences too important for the statues to erase by force.
• Ordinary Gao Ming is drawn toward a broken window by something in the darkness. A scarlet tongue licks at blood outside; an unseen force pulls him back just before he leans out. He realizes the photograph in his backpack may be more than a keepsake and wonders why his parents appear in his diary’s memories but are absent from Room 0715.
• Kind Gao Ming says he did not receive a gift box and suspects that only the “real” Gao Ming did. He tells Ordinary Gao Ming to keep this secret while they search for him.
• A broadcast interrupts their discussion. A student named Gao Yun identifies himself as Student Council President of Hande Private Academy and the de facto administrator of the East District, claiming he has united Situ An’s hidden forces. He warns that survivors risk being trapped and losing their will, and urges them to listen.

Character developments and interactions

• The First Team Leader takes a wary, analytical stance, explaining the danger of the doors and their likely connection to memory.
• Kind Gao Ming tries to protect Ordinary Gao Ming, keeping him close and offering reassurance. Ordinary Gao Ming remains quiet and conceals his thoughts about the photograph and his parents.
• Ordinary Gao Ming’s near-fall suggests he is especially vulnerable to the building’s supernatural lures, but also hints that the photograph—or something connected to it—may have protective significance.
• Ouyang Susu and Doctor Li provide firsthand accounts of the building’s earlier violence and the missing people who entered the doors.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: Giving up one’s defining memories may mean losing one’s sense of self.
• Choice and manipulation: The doors may compel residents to sacrifice willingly what the statues cannot yet take by force.
• Multiple selves and family: The mystery of the different Room 0715 Gaus and the absent parents deepens the chapter’s questions about identity and memory.
• Survival and hidden power: Gao Yun’s broadcast introduces a wider struggle beyond the apartment building and offers a possible route—or new danger—for the survivors.

Key plot points and events

• The group learns that Gao Yun—a supposedly forgotten Class Thirteen student—has appeared at Hande Private Academy, erased records, and plunged the East District into chaos, forcing the Investigation Bureau to retreat.
• Gao Yun broadcasts five warnings: conceal your gift; clocks in every room mark the steady loss of memory and identity; staying in rooms brings doubling hunger; the “gods” are not invincible; and survivors can meet him at either Changcheng Residential Complex’s underground garage or Xiangshengyong Apartments’ third-floor skybridge hall.
• The broadcast cuts out when the building’s old wiring catches fire. The First Team’s leader decides to gather the Security personnel, and the group heads for the skybridge hall. He admits his memories are already fading and hopes people can help one another remember.
• They find wary survivors gathering in the cramped, cluttered hall. Rumors portray Gao Yun as a powerful Student Council President with many Anomalous allies, but nobody knows why different groups entered the anomaly through separate districts.
• Doctor Li spots Fan Li. Liu Yi, another Class Thirteen student, arrives with a covered young man. The chapter ends as bloodied Investigation Bureau officer Yuan Hui enters, dragging a corpse.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming remains curious and considerate, asking how Gao Yun compares with his complete self and comforting the First Team’s leader. He depends on the leader to decide where to go.
• Ordinary Gao Ming shares Kind Gao Ming’s uncertainty about Gao Yun and tries to identify the newcomers.
• The First Team’s leader shifts from despair to action, choosing to join the gathering and keep the group together as memories deteriorate. He remains vigilant, hiding the Gao Mings’ faces and worrying about ghosts in the corridors.
• Doctor Li sticks close to Gao Ming for protection and eagerly recognizes Fan Li.
• Fan Li and Liu Yi appear among the incoming survivors; Liu Yi is guarded and watchful, standing protectively before a covered student.
• Gao Yun remains absent in person but drives events through his urgent broadcast. His reputation inspires both hope and suspicion.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: The clock-driven loss of memory threatens to erase who the residents are and turn them into accomplices of the gods.
• Trust amid danger: Survivors assemble but remain suspicious of one another and unsure whether Gao Yun can be believed.
• Cooperation and survival: The leader’s plan to stay together contrasts with the danger of isolation and the looming threat of hunger.
• Power and vulnerability: The gods are dangerous but not all-powerful; the survivors’ survival may reflect limits on the gods, not mercy.

Plot points and events

• The Ghost Story Players recoil from Yuan Hui, who arrives dragging a battered corpse. They condemn the Investigation Bureau for its brutality, while the First Team’s leader warns them not to act rashly.
• Yuan Hui approaches Liu Yi and tries to pressure her into cooperating with the Bureau. He reveals the corpse’s face: Gao Ming’s—and claims he killed him.
• Yuan Hui presents Gao Ming’s supposed death as proof that the Ghost Story Players’ resistance is hopeless. His claim shakes the crowd, and some begin reconsidering whether to surrender.
• Zhuo Jun arrives, injured and exhausted. Yuan Hui tells him Gao Ming is dead and orders him to transfer the Posthumous Photograph Shard from his own body into the corpse.
• As Zhuo Jun painfully begins the transfer, Gao Ming appears in the stairwell, alive and bloodied. He taunts Zhuo Jun by displaying the painted image of his missing eye.
• The shard tears itself from Zhuo Jun and enters the corpse, restoring the shattered Posthumous Photograph. Zhuo Jun’s curse disappears, leaving Yuan Hui and the others confronting the unexpected return of Gao Ming.

Character developments and interactions

• Yuan Hui uses Gao Ming’s apparent corpse to intimidate Liu Yi and win over the Ghost Story Players. He enjoys his moment of authority, especially in front of Liu Yi and his rival Zhuo Jun, but Gao Ming’s appearance abruptly undermines him.
• Liu Yi remains cold and unresponsive to Yuan Hui’s offer and threats.
• Fan Li openly challenges Yuan Hui, refusing to be intimidated.
• Zhuo Jun is forced by Yuan Hui to surrender the shard. His hatred of Gao Ming is clear, but the shard’s unexpected movement leaves him powerless.
• Gao Ming returns dramatically, turning Yuan Hui’s display of triumph into a confrontation and apparently using his presence to draw the Posthumous Photograph Shard into the corpse.

Significant themes

• Manipulation and fear: Yuan Hui weaponizes Gao Ming’s apparent death to weaken the group’s resolve.
• Trust and loyalty: The players’ uncertainty contrasts with Liu Yi’s refusal to bend and Fan Li’s defiance.
• Appearances versus reality: The chapter’s central reversal reveals that the “dead” Gao Ming is not simply gone.
• Power and control: Yuan Hui’s attempt to dominate the room collapses when Gao Ming reappears and the shard moves beyond anyone’s control.

Key plot points and events

• Yuan Hui recognizes the corpse drawn by the Posthumous Photograph as belonging to Gao Ming, then is stunned when Painter Gao Ming appears alive. He loudly accuses him of being an impostor, drawing suspicion from the crowd.
• Painter Gao Ming nearly attacks Yuan Hui, but a masked Ghost Story Player interrupts. He reveals himself as Gao Yun, whose stitched-together body is only bait designed to lure the entity called Past.
• Gao Yun explains that two clay-sculpture “gods,” Past and Future, have trapped everyone in the building. Past controls memory; Future controls time. Together they strip people of memories and abilities until they lose their identities.
• Gao Yun proposes first weakening the gods by cursing them and contaminating their faith. Painter Gao Ming paints their likenesses on the wall, and the gathered Investigators and players use their abilities and hatred against the images.
• Gao Yun then outlines a plan to kill the gods’ manifestations. Past must be lured into eating Gao Yun, whose body contains the poisoned grudges of terrible pasts. Future is harder to defeat; Gao Yun argues that refusing to fear or believe in the future can keep it from directing people toward death.
• Zhuo Jun questions Gao Yun’s knowledge and motives, suspecting a trap. Gao Yun says Gao Ming contacted him before the Bureau’s Great Screening and entered the building with Student Council members. He refuses to force anyone to cooperate, but threatens to kill Zhuo Jun outside if they survive, citing Zhuo Jun’s role in tricking him onto the Death Bus.

Character developments and interactions

• Yuan Hui loses his composure when Painter Gao Ming’s appearance contradicts what he believed about Gao Ming’s death. His public accusation heightens distrust and tension.
• Painter Gao Ming remains confident and dismissive of the crowd. Though his abilities are restricted, he turns the group’s attention toward the clay gods by painting them.
• Gao Yun emerges as a grim, purposeful strategist, willing to sacrifice his bait-body and carrying deep hostility toward Zhuo Jun.
• Zhuo Jun challenges Gao Yun rather than accepting his plan at face value; their exchange reveals a prior betrayal and a lingering threat.
• Fan Li voices the group’s practical hope that the gods can be defeated, prompting Gao Yun to explain their vulnerabilities.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: The gods’ attack erodes not just people’s memories and powers, but their sense of self.
• Defiance and collective resistance: The group turns fear and resentment into a direct assault on the gods’ faith.
• Past and future: The past is portrayed as inescapable and tangible, while the future depends partly on belief and fear.
• Trust and revenge: Cooperation is necessary, but suspicion and old betrayals remain unresolved.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Yun insists the group must make Past devour him, claiming it is the only way to stop the monster from killing everyone. When the lights abruptly go out, Kind Gao Ming suspects Gao Yun has withheld his real plan.
• Past enters the hall and begins killing people around its edges, while deliberately avoiding Gao Yun at the center. Kind Gao Ming realizes that the gathered residents—not Gao Yun—are the bait.
• The survivors recognize that the monster has blocked the exits. They move toward the center, both to escape its attacks and to force it closer to Gao Yun.
• As Past grows more agitated, it attacks from above. Zhuo Jun shoves a nearby Ghost Story Player in front of it, and the player is swallowed alive as the chapter ends.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming remains wary of Gao Yun and quickly figures out his deception. Despite his fear, he urges the others toward the center as their only chance to confront Past.
• Ordinary Gao Ming is overwhelmed and would rather avoid danger, but follows Kind Gao Ming and the First Team’s leader.
• The First Team’s leader shows courage and concern for others, shielding the two Gao Mings and helping them move through the hall.
• Gao Yun appears willing to sacrifice himself, but his plan actually uses the crowd to lure Past toward him.
• Zhuo Jun chooses self-preservation over solidarity, using another player as a human shield.
• The survivors briefly set aside their conflicts and cooperate against the immediate threat; Liu Yi helps direct them toward the center.

Significant themes

• Deception and sacrifice: Gao Yun’s apparent self-sacrifice conceals a plan that puts everyone else in danger.
• Fear and moral choice: Characters respond to peril differently—some protect others, while Zhuo Jun sacrifices someone to survive.
• Cooperation under pressure: Shared danger unites the survivors, though it does not erase their selfish instincts.

Plot points and events

• The creature Past grows stronger by devouring people and feeding on their fearful memories. Its attacks leave the crowd terrified and unable to defend themselves.
• The First Team’s leader uses his power to reverse time briefly, offering himself as bait so the others can bring Gao Yun to Past. Fan Li refuses to sacrifice the covered person behind him and faces the monster directly.
• The group gets Gao Yun only partly into Past before the leader’s power runs out. The soul venom in Gao Yun’s body destabilizes the creature, which attacks indiscriminately and tries to flee.
• Liu Yi leaps onto Past and drives her dagger—wrapped in the Student Council armband—into its back, forcing the blade deep enough to trigger the venom’s full effect. Gao Yun’s voice comes from inside the monster.
• With Past weakened, the gathered outsiders attack until it collapses into black water. Liu Yi retrieves her dagger and keeps the stitched heart found on its tip.
• When a Security employee challenges her claim to the “reward,” Liu Yi threatens him with the dagger, turning his appeal to fairness against him.

Character developments and interactions

• Fan Li proves his courage and integrity by standing his ground rather than using another person as bait. The First Team’s leader risks his life to create an opening and repeatedly urges the others to hurry.
• Gao Yun is revealed as a deliberate strategist: he anticipated the crowd’s self-interest and arranged the situation despite expecting heavy casualties. Even while inside Past, he contributes to its defeat.
• Liu Yi emerges as decisive and ruthless, taking the greatest direct risk in finishing the monster. Her confrontation with the Security employee shows she has little patience for moralizing about fair shares.
• The two Gao Mings and the First Team’s leader work together to retrieve Gao Yun, while the larger crowd shifts from fearful inaction to opportunistic cooperation once Past is nearly defeated.

Significant themes

• The past as an inescapable force: Past feeds on memories and is described as a curse everyone eventually joins.
• Sacrifice and solidarity versus self-preservation: Fan Li and the First Team’s leader accept danger to protect others, while the crowd initially acts from fear and later from the prospect of reward.
• Power, manipulation, and fairness: Gao Yun exploits the group’s predictable behavior; Liu Yi’s final threat exposes how claims of fairness can become another tool in a struggle for control.

Key plot points

• Liu Yi forces a Security officer to let her pass, then leads the group to the weakened Past Door, explaining that the death of “Past” has reduced “God’s” influence over it. She suggests the door might conceal a way out.
• Old Sun opens the door with his Gift Box and enters, hoping to find his missing coworker. He vanishes almost immediately.
• When Old Sun does not return, Liu Yi recruits the First Team’s Team Leader to investigate. He enters using Liu Yi’s red Gift Box, promising to share what he discovers.
• As the group waits, the lights begin malfunctioning and the threat of “Future” seems to draw nearer.
• After twenty minutes, the Team Leader frantically knocks from inside. Doctor Li uses his own gift to open the door, and the injured-looking Team Leader collapses outside. He warns everyone to close it: the space beyond is not an exit, but a dead end.

Character developments and interactions

• Liu Yi displays ruthless confidence, threatening the Security officer with a knife. Despite her intimidating methods, she offers help to Old Sun’s companions and takes responsibility for exploring the door.
• Old Sun risks his life to search for his coworker, trusting Liu Yi’s promise to help his group.
• The First Team’s Team Leader begins wary of Liu Yi but accepts her bargain and enters the door himself. His return alive makes him the first known person to escape it, though badly shaken.
• Doctor Li acts quickly to rescue the Team Leader, while the Team Leader’s companions show concern and restrain a young player from blaming Liu Yi.
• The two Gao Mings and others wait anxiously, watching the door and the approaching danger.

Significant themes

• Risk and sacrifice: characters enter the unknown to rescue missing companions or protect others.
• Trust under pressure: Liu Yi’s promises, the Team Leader’s bargain, and the group’s cooperation are tested by fear and uncertainty.
• False hope and confinement: a door that might offer escape instead leads to a “dead end,” deepening the chapter’s sense of entrapment.

Key events

• The First Team Leader escapes the Past Door badly aged and injured. He explains that it forces visitors through painful memories; collecting those memories drains their present bodies, and anyone unable to endure the journey is trapped inside.
• With danger approaching and the young Ghost Story Player eager to search for his missing uncle, Ordinary Gao Ming volunteers to enter instead. The young man lends him a bankbook holding the tuition money his uncle gave him.
• Ordinary Gao Ming opens the door. As he is pulled inside, Kind Gao Ming—and several other versions of Gao Ming elsewhere in the building—simultaneously collapse, suggesting they share one soul.
• Ordinary Gao Ming awakens on a bus traveling through darkness, with its digital clock counting backward. All fifty-one seats are occupied by different versions of Gao Ming, including Kind Gao Ming and a dead, hanged version carrying a posthumous photo.

Character development and interactions

• The First Team Leader reveals that his harsh present grew out of an unbearable past, and that he began playing the Forbidden Game to escape it. Kind Gao Ming offers him genuine reassurance, briefly bridging their opposing allegiances.
• Kind Gao Ming stops the young player from rushing into the dangerous door and recognizes the risk Ordinary Gao Ming is taking.
• Ordinary Gao Ming, usually timid and withdrawn, chooses to act despite his fear. Kind Gao Ming sees this as evidence of courage: bravery means stepping forward while afraid.
• The young player supports Ordinary Gao Ming by lending him his uncle’s bankbook.
• Once aboard the bus, Kind Gao Ming tries to calm the gathered versions of himself, proposing that the journey may help them recover shared memories.

Significant themes

• The burden of the past: Painful memories can consume the present and imprison those who cannot face them.
• Courage and kindness: Courage is a choice made despite fear, while Kind Gao Ming’s compassion is something he deliberately became.
• Identity and unity: The many Gao Mings reflect different life choices, yet their simultaneous collapse suggests they remain parts of a single person.
• Memory and transformation: The bus journey appears poised to uncover the hidden history connecting Gao Ming’s different selves.

Key plot points and events

• Kind Gao Ming explains that their original self was attacked by “God” and confined separately; the brave Gao Ming created the chance for the different versions to reunite.
• Painter Gao Ming notices that the bus driver appears to be another Gao Ming, but the group cannot see his face or learn why he controls the bus. Ordinary Gao Ming recalls fragments of repeatedly entering a tunnel and being killed from behind, raising the possibility that the driver is the killer.
• The bus stops at “I Once Felt Warmth,” a platform resembling Gao Ming’s childhood home. Kind Gao Ming theorizes that each stop holds a painful memory they must face to reach the final destination.
• The timid Gao Ming rushes into the welcoming house. From the bus, the others see his family become monstrous; he disappears inside, and the bus moves on without him.
• The next stop, “I Once Loved Someone,” appears in the rain. Liu Yi arrives, and a silent, haggard Gao Ming seems especially affected by her presence. A beautiful woman carrying a red umbrella then appears, though this Gao Ming has no conscious memory of her.

Character developments

• Kind Gao Ming tries to keep the group calm and interprets the bus’s stops as stages in confronting their past.
• Painter Gao Ming is skeptical and pragmatic, warning the others not to trust comforting illusions. He also pushes the group to act before time runs out.
• Ordinary Gao Ming feels inferior to the other versions and begins connecting his fragmented memories to the mysterious driver.
• The timid Gao Ming chooses the apparent safety of home, but is consumed by its deceptive warmth.
• The silent Gao Ming reveals unresolved feelings—guilt, hesitation, and helplessness—when confronted with Liu Yi and the umbrella-carrying woman.

Significant themes

• Memory and trauma: The journey requires confronting painful or emotionally charged memories.
• Comfort as danger: Familiar warmth can conceal horror and trap those who surrender to it.
• Identity and fractured selves: The different Gao Mings embody distinct responses shaped by their experiences, while the driver suggests a hidden or unknown part of their shared identity.
• Time and choice: The countdown makes each stop an urgent test; missing or mishandling an opportunity may be irreversible.

Character interactions

• Kind Gao Ming defends Ordinary Gao Ming and explains the group’s circumstances.
• Painter Gao Ming challenges the others’ assumptions, investigates the driver, and urges the group to remain wary.
• The passengers watch helplessly as the timid Gao Ming enters the home and vanishes.
• Liu Yi’s arrival draws the silent Gao Ming toward the platform, while the red-umbrella woman’s look provokes intense pain despite his lack of conscious recognition.

Plot and events

• On the bus traveling through Gao Ming’s past, Most Devoted Gao Ming gets off after encountering a wounded woman he cannot remember. Unable to bear the conflict between her and another woman, he appears to take his own life on the platform.
• Painter Gao Ming argues that reaching the end means shedding burdens and says he is best suited to continue. Kind Gao Ming questions his identity and learns that Painter Gao Ming’s final diary entry depicts himself—the same subject that appears in every Gao Ming’s final entry, which also mentions taking the bus to an off-campus activity.
• The bus reaches “I Was Once Passionate and Naive,” where the passengers witness student Du Bai being bullied. Delinquent Gao Ming gets off to confront the bullies, leaving Kind Gao Ming to guide the others.
• More Gao Mings leave at successive stops. The bus eventually reaches a hospital-like location called “I Once Had Kindness.” Kind Gao Ming realizes that even kindness may have been something the complete Gao Ming had to abandon.
• Before leaving, Kind Gao Ming asks the others to make Painter Gao Ming get off with him, apparently intending to sacrifice himself to remove a potential threat.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming grows increasingly troubled by what the other versions’ sacrifices imply about the complete Gao Ming. He shifts from observer to protector, attempting to take Painter Gao Ming with him.
• Painter Gao Ming presents himself as the genuine Gao Ming, but his unsettling demeanor and Kind Gao Ming’s suspicion leave his motives unclear. He had also urged Most Devoted Gao Ming to get off.
• Most Devoted Gao Ming is defined by self-sacrifice and unresolved love; his inability to remember the woman deepens his despair.
• Delinquent Gao Ming reveals a personal code beneath his aggression: he targets bullies, not the vulnerable. He steps in to defend Du Bai and leaves the bus to fight the thugs.
• Du Bai’s grandmother has tried to protect him, but the bullies mock her and punish him for it, underscoring the family’s poverty and vulnerability.

Significant themes

• Identity and fragmentation: The many Gao Mings may be separate versions, yet their matching final diary entry points toward a shared fate.
• The cost of becoming whole: Each stop presents a quality or attachment—love, courage, kindness—that Gao Ming may have had to lose.
• Sacrifice and responsibility: Characters leave the bus to confront personal pain or protect others, even at great cost.
• Bullying and protection: Delinquent Gao Ming’s intervention contrasts with the passengers’ hesitation and highlights the impulse to defend the powerless.
• Memory and loss: Forgetting someone important is portrayed as a profound form of despair.

Key plot points and events

• Kind Gao Ming forces Painter Gao Ming off the bus at Lishan Hospital, accepting responsibility for the choice. The two vanish inside, leaving Ordinary Gao Ming wondering what happened there and why he lost his kindness.
• The bus continues through memories, shedding passengers at each stop. As the seats empty, the remaining Gao Mings become increasingly burdened by what they witness.
• At the stop marked “I once broke down and descended into madness,” Madman Gao Ming attacks the Rainy Night Killer as the killer tries to board. They fight savagely in the rain, and the bus leaves them behind.
• At “I once wanted to heal pain and illness,” a Gao Ming recognizes that two apparent prison guards are disguised prisoners. He rushes off the bus to block them from boarding, sacrificing himself and his psychology books.
• With the countdown nearly finished but the final stop still unseen, Ordinary Gao Ming feels inadequate and unsure what to do.
• Flesh-and-Blood Gao Ming tells him he is the only other living passenger and that he must continue alone. He gets off at his stop, where a doctor named Lu Zang awaits him. The bus leaves Ordinary Gao Ming as its sole passenger.

Character developments and interactions

• Kind Gao Ming acts on his belief that kindness means accepting the consequences of one’s choices, even if others blame him. He takes Painter Gao Ming with him.
• Madman Gao Ming remains silent until his memory stirs him; then he confronts the Rainy Night Killer with shocking, pain-defying ferocity.
• The would-be counselor Gao Ming protects the bus by exposing the disguised prisoners and standing in their way, though this leaves him captured.
• Ordinary Gao Ming is left increasingly isolated and doubts his courage, intelligence, and goodness. Flesh-and-Blood Gao Ming recognizes how much he has endured and encourages him to finish the journey.
• The departures reveal different Gao Mings’ defining traits and sacrifices, while Ordinary Gao Ming observes rather than intervenes.

Significant themes

• The cost of kindness and responsibility: Kindness involves bearing the consequences of good intentions, not merely wishing others well.
• Identity and self-knowledge: Each stop embodies a painful or formative memory, and each departing Gao Ming represents a part of the past.
• Memory and loss: The bus’s journey suggests that the past may have no clear endpoint; each departure is another goodbye to a former self.
• Endurance and uncertainty: Ordinary Gao Ming’s final task is to continue without knowing what awaits him, carrying the weight of what he has witnessed.