Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• A corpse puppet, apparently either the real Situ An or controlled by the Future God, taunts Gao Ming and reveals that he was one of thirteen Candidates vying to become Blood City’s master—but unlike the others, he was an accident, brought in to help evade Fate.
• The puppet claims Gao Ming’s name and memories may be artificial, and that his parents may not exist as he remembers them. Gao Ming is shaken when it alleges his parents are trapped somewhere, repeatedly trying and failing to stop the events surrounding him.
• Situ An describes Lu Zang’s plan as a system of interlocking loops: Gao Ming, Gao Yun, and the undispersed will of the Shadow World are among them. The true beginning must be hidden.
• Gao Ming realizes that his parents appeared at a fixed point each time he began again: on his first night home, bringing birthday gifts. As his past selves died, more pairs of parents appeared, apparently searching for him and becoming caught in the Shadow World.
• He connects this mystery to his Birthday Posthumous Photograph, which showed many black-and-white versions of his parents surrounding his full-color self. He wonders whether they have been beside him all along.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains outwardly composed, but the possibility that his parents are trapped—and that they may be the hidden key to his repeated beginnings—finally pierces his calm.
• Rather than rejecting uncertainty about his identity, he insists that being himself matters more than whether “Gao Ming” is his real name.
• The corpse puppet appears consumed by resentment and revenge, though Gao Ming remains unsure whether its revelations are truthful or part of the Future God’s manipulation.

Significant themes

• Identity and memory: Gao Ming questions whether his name, past, and family are genuine.
• Cycles and sacrifice: Each reset may leave behind parents who continue searching for a child who has died in another loop.
• Fate versus agency: Lu Zang’s hidden loops are meant to deceive Fate, but one broken link could destroy everything.
• Family and persistence: The parents’ repeated attempts to find Gao Ming suggest love that endures across deaths and timelines.

Character interactions

• The corpse puppet provokes Gao Ming with personal insults and revelations, trying to unsettle him and exploit his love for his parents.
• Gao Ming listens without interrupting, weighing the puppet’s claims against what he knows from Lu Zang and his own accumulated memories.
• Lu Zang’s past choices loom over the exchange: he selected Gao Ming and built the loops, but apparently withheld their deepest secrets.

Key plot points and events

• The corpse puppet tells Gao Ming that his parents have vanished from reality and may be trapped in the shadow world. It claims they are inside Building Three, where reality and the shadow world overlap, and urges him to find them—but warns him to “guess whether they really are your family.”
• The puppet shatters, leaving scraps bearing Situ An’s handwriting. Xuan Wen warns Gao Ming not to trust its message.
• Xuan Wen urges Gao Ming to stay on their floor and search for a room hiding the future, then heads upstairs alone to avoid becoming more deeply entangled in the Future God’s plans.
• Gao Ming follows, declaring that he will save his parents at any cost. He believes the Xuan Wen beside him may be the daughter of a couple in disguise, transformed by the Future God at the cost of her parents.
• Gao Ming reveals his larger purpose: he intends to seize powers that can affect Fate, become one of Hanhai’s new masters, and ultimately break the city’s prison.
• As he and Xuan Wen climb, the clocks race forward and the building changes rapidly.
• The scene shifts to Room 1801, where Wang Jie finds a middle-aged couple at his door. They claim to be Gao Ming’s parents and say he never came home after school. Their arrival—and similar knocks across the building—raises the question of whether they are truly who they claim to be.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming stays focused despite the possibility that the corpse puppet’s claim is a trap. He uses his understanding of Xuan Wen’s hidden identity and grief to connect with her through their shared desire to save their parents.
• Xuan Wen struggles between concern for Gao Ming and fear of the Future God’s influence. She tries to protect him by sending him away, but he refuses to leave her behind.
• Wang Jie is wary, hiding a sharpened knife and questioning the couple through the intercom. His memories have grown unreliable after prolonged exposure to the building’s distorted future.
• The supposed parents arrive with a rain-soaked cake and a plausible explanation, but their identity remains uncertain.

Significant themes

• Identity and family: The chapter makes family recognition uncertain, turning the question “Are they your family?” into a potential threat.
• Grief and connection: Gao Ming and Xuan Wen bond through shared loss and the hope of rescuing their parents, rather than through simple trust or affection.
• Fate and resistance: Gao Ming sees Hanhai as a prison shaped by Fate and is willing to sacrifice anything to gain the power to challenge it.
• Manipulation and uncertain futures: The Future God and the building’s changing time blur truth, memory, and desire, making every apparent reunion suspect.

Plot points

• Xishan, trapped in a dangerous building, is distracted by memories of an older woman he loves and a pair of purple underwear. A knock interrupts him: Gao Ming’s parents arrive, carrying a birthday cake and looking for their missing son.
• Xishan warns them about the building’s dangers and prepares to leave with them, relying on his instinct to stay close to his roommates. The couple ignore his warning not to use the elevator and pull him inside with them.
• Elsewhere, Ouyang Susu runs into the dark emergency stairwell despite Doctor Li and the others trying to restrain her. Xia Yang warns that she has been bewitched by the Future God, but Doctor Li follows her and suddenly finds himself separated from the group.
• Doctor Li enters an unfamiliar apartment where Susu acts as if they are home with their baby. Though he recognizes the scene as an illusion, it begins to feel plausible; dark threads spread through Susu’s eyes, and she turns hostile when he tries to take the baby away.
• As Doctor Li searches for a weapon, someone knocks and asks whether he has seen a missing schoolboy. He opens the door, leaving the chapter on a cliffhanger.

Character developments and interactions

• Xishan appears confident and sociable, but beneath that persona he is disoriented and dependent on Gao Ming and Wang Jie for safety. His attraction to an older neighbor is revealed through his fixation on the underwear.
• Gao Ming’s parents are polite but intensely worried. Their arrival draws Xishan out of his room, though their disregard of his warnings raises suspicion.
• Doctor Li remains determined to save Susu, even when he knows the family scene is false. His fear and helplessness give way to resolve, but Susu’s transformation makes him an apparent threat to her.
• Ouyang Susu is caught in the Future God’s illusion, embracing an imagined domestic life and becoming frighteningly aggressive when Doctor Li challenges it.
• Xia Yang recognizes the danger and tries to prevent the others—especially Fan Li—from pursuing Susu.

Significant themes

• Illusion versus reality: Susu’s imagined home and baby blur into something emotionally convincing, while Xishan’s fading memories leave him unable to understand his own situation.
• Fear, attachment, and survival: Characters risk danger because of love, worry, or dependence on one another.
• Domestic happiness turned sinister: The apartment, baby, and family life offer comfort on the surface but conceal a supernatural trap.
• Warnings and peril: The characters know the building has strict dangers, yet concern and confusion repeatedly lead them toward them.

Plot points

• During an Anomaly Event, Doctor Li is visited by a middle-aged couple searching for their missing son, Gao Ming. Li recognizes the name and says he last saw Gao Ming on the first floor.
• Li’s wife, Ouyang Susu, has been overtaken by the entity called Future and is caring for their deceased unborn child as though it were alive. The baby appears frightened of Gao Ming’s parents. Before shutting herself away, Ouyang warns Li about the building’s dangers: red corridor doors, unsafe elevators, silent entry into unfamiliar rooms, and lighting incense when encountering a posthumous photograph.
• Li accompanies the couple through the building. Its corridors shift, and the clocks in its rooms show different times, suggesting each room may follow its own temporal rules.
• The couple’s frantic search leads them to violate the warnings. They call loudly for Gao Ming and knock over an incense burner in a room containing an old woman’s posthumous photograph. Ash or cremated remains spill over Li, and the photograph’s expression turns stern.
• Li begins to suspect the couple may be drawing curses toward Gao Ming—or may be more dangerous than they appear.
• Elsewhere, Luo Dong, gravely wounded and carrying a family photograph, continues searching for his son. He has witnessed his wife’s death and his daughter’s soul being destroyed, while his son fled in madness. Still mentally clear and determined, Luo reaches another door and senses something behind it calling to him.

Character developments and interactions

• Doctor Li is torn between remaining with his possessed wife and seeking a way to save her. He decides that destroying Future’s clay sculpture may be necessary, and joins the searchers because staying could leave him trapped or corrupted.
• Ouyang Susu is increasingly controlled by the ghost child: her affection for it unnerves Li, and she shuts him out once she has delivered her warnings.
• Gao Ming’s parents are consumed by worry and ignore supernatural precautions, intensifying Li’s distrust of them.
• Luo Dong remains resolute despite devastating losses and physical suffering; his search for his son drives him onward.

Significant themes

• Family devotion amid horror: Li’s concern for Susu and Luo Dong’s determination to find his son persist despite overwhelming danger.
• The cost of attachment: Love and desperation can motivate survival, but may also lead characters to break rules and invite catastrophe.
• Unreliable appearances and shifting reality: The parents seem ordinary, yet unsettle Li; the building’s changing corridors and inconsistent clocks make reality itself uncertain.
• Curses and fate: The chapter raises the possibility that misfortune is being gathered around Gao Ming, while ending with Luo Dong drawn toward an unknown presence.

Luo Dong follows an inexplicable pull into a hidden room in the Changcheng Residential Complex, where every clock appears to represent a person’s life. When he touches one clock, threads of fate wrap around him and pull him inside just as someone opens the room’s door. He experiences the memories of a desperate couple whose child vanished during the outbreak of anomalies. As a father himself, Luo Dong feels their grief as his own.
He emerges in a run-down, unfamiliar apartment building. There, he spots a younger Gao Ming in a school uniform, carrying a schoolbag and an empty gift box. Gao Ming visits the same room twice, entering both times—yet the second visitor appears identical to the first. Luo Dong suspects the clock may contain memories connected to Gao Ming, possibly his parents’ memories, and wonders whether they entered an anomaly to search for him.
The room’s door is marked July 16, a date that seems significant to its owner. When Luo Dong knocks, a middle-aged man in a raincoat answers. The room feels deeply wrong, and the sound of someone chopping meat comes from inside.
Character developments and interactions: Luo Dong’s loyalty to Gao Ming remains strong, but his own parental empathy draws him into the couple’s pain and sharpens his suspicions about Gao Ming’s past. He watches the younger Gao Ming from hiding, then cautiously approaches the room’s occupant.
Themes: The chapter explores fate and time as forces that bind people together, the anguish of parents losing a child, and the instability of memory and identity. The repeated Gao Ming and the unsettling apartment suggest that the past—or its memories—may be repeating or distorted.

Plot points and events

• Luo Dong explores the apartment of a middle-aged man and finds disturbing evidence that it was used to cut up, store, transport, and dispose of meat. Its soundproofing suggests the occupant wanted to conceal what happened.
• The man warns Luo Dong to hide from footsteps and never let a boy in a school uniform see him, insisting that the boy “isn’t human.”
• Luo Dong stays instead of leaving, explains that Gao Ming once saved his family, and refuses to believe Gao Ming could be evil.
• The man reveals that he is Gao Ming’s father. He says the figures in the stairwell are not truly Gao Ming and invites Luo Dong inside.
• Gao Ming’s father recounts his son’s troubled past: after a high-school outing, Gao Ming changed, suffered nightmares, and repeatedly spoke of Gao Yun, a student who did not exist in his class diary. His parents tried to support him, eventually wishing only for him to have a peaceful, ordinary life.
• Gao Ming seemed to recover after university, but strange events followed him. On the Ghost Festival, his parents called him repeatedly; although someone answered, none of the callers were speaking to Gao Ming. They went to his apartment to find him.

Character developments and interactions

• Luo Dong acts on his gratitude and trust in Gao Ming, taking a risk to confront Gao Ming’s father rather than flee. His own regret over neglecting his family helps him empathize with the father.
• Gao Ming’s father shifts from guarded warning to cautious openness. His tender memories and regret reveal a loving parent who still hopes to understand and help his son.
• Their conversation establishes mutual sympathy: Luo Dong defends Gao Ming, while the father acknowledges that Gao Ming is fortunate to have such a friend and shares what he knows.

Significant themes

• The value of ordinary family life: Gao Ming’s parents abandon ambitions for his success and long only for a peaceful life together.
• Parental love, regret, and helplessness: They try to ease their son’s suffering without forcing him to discuss it, yet remain unable to reach him.
• Identity and the supernatural: The warning that the schoolboy is not human, the false versions of Gao Ming, and the mysterious Gao Yun blur the line between person and apparition.
• Empathy and loyalty: Luo Dong’s faith in Gao Ming bridges suspicion and allows the family’s story to emerge.

Chapter Summary

• Gao Ming’s parents’ search: Luo Dong learns that Gao Ming’s parents came looking for their missing son after phone calls with someone who increasingly sounded like Gao Ming—but still seemed subtly wrong. Their search led them into a strange, shifting world filled with ominous shadows.
• The taxi and the story: On the way to Gao Ming’s apartment, the parents’ taxi driver recounted Hanhai murders in disturbing detail. The father realized the driver was not taking them where they needed to go and suspected it was connected to the killings. He told a story in which a couple killed a murderous night-shift driver; afterward, he himself drove through the night, encountering other strange passengers.
• Gao Ming is still missing—or is he? The parents eventually reached the apartment but found no sign of Gao Ming, and the father believes something misled and trapped them there. Just as he discusses this with Luo Dong, someone knocks.
• A familiar but unsettling arrival: The father sends Luo Dong to hide, then opens the door to a Gao Ming in a school uniform, apparently returning from a school outing. This version says he dreamed of being killed in the apartment and of his precious gift being destroyed. He enters carrying a strange Gift Box and backpack, then drinks from the red pitcher despite his father offering water from the white one.

Character Developments and Interactions

• Luo Dong is disturbed by the possibility that an unknown presence is imitating Gao Ming. Though moved by the parents’ devotion, he stays guarded and avoids asking too many questions about the father’s violent, possibly supernatural journey.
• Gao Ming’s father is determined to find his son and acts calmly despite the bizarre circumstances. He hides Luo Dong, then welcomes the school-uniformed Gao Ming as though this return is familiar. His insistence that things are unsafe outside contrasts with the eerie normality of the family exchange.
• The arriving Gao Ming behaves like a child returning home, but his dream eerily predicts dangers in the apartment. His attachment to the Gift Box appears especially intense. His choice of the red pitcher over the white one adds to the scene’s unease.

Significant Themes

• Identity and imitation: The phone calls and the arriving Gao Ming raise doubts about whether the person who appears to be someone is truly that person.
• Stories becoming reality: The taxi driver’s tales of murders prove true, and the father’s retaliatory story blurs the line between fiction and events.
• Parental devotion: Gao Ming’s parents willingly enter a dangerous, uncanny world to search for their child.
• Foreboding and repetition: Gao Ming’s dream foreshadows familiar dangers, while his apparently unchanged school-age appearance suggests he may be trapped in a recurring moment.

Plot points

• Gao Ming searches frantically for an important item he believes he left in a tunnel, but cannot remember what it is.
• At dinner, he recalls a supposed dream in which he dies after eating. He eventually eats, only for both him and the middle-aged man to become weak from drugged food.
• The man reveals that Gao Ming’s earlier “dream” was actually the experience of a previous version of him. He ate the drugged food too so Gao Ming would trust him.
• Gao Ming’s mother appears with a knife and rope. When she hesitates at the familiar face, Gao Ming tries to escape, but Luo Dong intervenes and helps restrain him. The impostor’s face shifts into grotesque expressions.
• The family explains that the captured Gao Ming is a ghostly counterfeit. Their bedroom is already packed with other false G a o Mings, and the kitchen is full as well.
• The parents believe the impostors know where the real Gao Ming is. They want to investigate the tunnel, where every counterfeit claims to have left something important.
• Because new impostors appear whenever the family leaves the apartment, they ask Luo Dong to retrace Gao Ming’s route and find the tunnel. The father offers to lure away the next impostor and gives Luo Dong a raincoat that may repel ghosts.

Character developments and interactions

• Luo Dong moves from hidden observer to active participant: he exposes and restrains the counterfeit, then agrees to investigate despite his doubts.
• The middle-aged man and Gao Ming’s mother are revealed as hardened, exhausted parents who have repeatedly captured and contained ghostly versions of their son. The father takes a risk to earn an impostor’s trust; the mother hesitates briefly when confronting a familiar face but acts decisively.
• The counterfeit Gao Ming is initially confused and wary, then becomes physically helpless and tries to flee. His insistence that he is Gao Ming underscores how convincing—and unsettling—the copies have become.
• The parents and Luo Dong cooperate pragmatically, though the situation leaves Luo Dong aware that he may be entering a dangerous trap.

Significant themes

• Identity and imitation: The many copies blur the distinction between the real Gao Ming and the ghosts that resemble him.
• Memory and repetition: Each counterfeit recalls the same missing object and seems to reenact events from earlier versions.
• Family and desperate protection: The parents’ grim methods are driven by their determination to recover their real son and preserve the idea of “home.”
• Trust under uncertainty: Characters must rely on one another while questioning what is real, remembered, or deceptive.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming’s father gives Luo Dong his protective raincoat, revealing that the faces and hair inside belong to people murdered by the deranged driver. They will protect Luo if he means them no harm.
• The two men agree to delay exposing the newest Gao Ming, buying Luo time to pursue the real one. Luo asks Gao Ming’s father to protect his family if he fails; the father promises to treat Luo’s child as his own and later rescue him.
• The father gives Luo a schoolbag containing Gao Ming’s diary and an unopened envelope intended for the real Gao Ming. The diaries suggest the false Gaus’ memories stop at a high-school outing, pointing Luo toward an abandoned tunnel between Hanhai and Xinhu.
• Luo hides as the newest Gao Ming returns home and behaves like a convincing son. He then follows the diary’s clues, crossing a fog-shrouded city full of anomalies.
• Despite danger, Luo escapes the city and reaches the tunnel. He suspects the memory world may belong to Gao Ming or his parents and hopes destroying it could free those trapped there.
• As Luo drives into the freezing, unnerving tunnel, something slaps the car window. He sees no one outside.

Character developments

• Luo Dong moves past fear and commits himself to the mission, driven by his desire to save Gao Ming, himself, and his family. His resourcefulness and courage let him cross the dangerous city.
• Gao Ming’s father shows fierce parental devotion, willingly risking himself to help his child and extending that care to Luo’s family.
• The newest Gao Ming appears increasingly natural in his role, making the threat of replacement more unsettling.

Character interactions

• Luo and Gao Ming’s father bond through their shared concern for their children. They make a mutual pledge to protect each other’s families.
• The father equips Luo with the raincoat, diary, and sealed letter, placing his trust in him; Luo accepts the dangerous responsibility.

Significant themes

• Parenthood and sacrifice: Both men risk themselves to protect their children.
• Memory, identity, and replacement: The false Gaus’ incomplete memories and the convincing new impostor blur the line between real and fabricated lives.
• Trust and connection: Luo’s arrival links past, present, and future, while Gao Ming’s faith in him sustains his mission.
• Courage amid uncertainty: Luo presses on despite a world where reality itself may depend on memory and belief.

Key plot points and events

• In the Tunnel, Luo Dong discovers a wrecked Bus surrounded by corpses resembling Gao Ming. Some are reviving, their wounds healing as they try to crawl free.
• The call drawing Luo Dong grows strongest near the Bus, leading him to suspect the real Gao Ming may be trapped there.
• Another Gao Ming emerges from the wall, restores his appearance, and tries to imitate the real one. He vows to merge with and consume him, but memories of a crash and the deaths of his class destabilize him.
• The imitation notices Luo Dong, alerting the other corpses. As they revive and pursue him—including corpses falling from the Tunnel ceiling—Luo Dong races for the Bus.
• Luo Dong reaches the Bus, seals its doors and windows, and is surrounded by the dead Gao Mings. Convinced the Bus may contain the original template behind their creation, he considers trying to start it.

Character developments

• Luo Dong is overwhelmed by the Tunnel’s horrors but keeps moving, guided by the mysterious call and his determination to survive. Unseen hands—apparently connected to his family—seem to help propel him forward. He clings to the envelope from Gao Ming’s parents.
• The imitation Gao Ming can heal and deliberately copy Gao Ming’s mannerisms, but his borrowed identity is unstable. Memories of the crash and the class’s deaths trigger confusion and expose the black threads within him.

Character interactions

• The imitation Gao Ming’s appearance and recognition of Luo Dong awaken the Tunnel’s other corpses, which converge on him.
• Luo Dong’s connection to Gao Ming’s family is suggested by the envelope he carries and the unseen hands aiding him.
• The bodies and black threads suggest a link between the Tunnel’s copies and a force that is creating or sustaining them.

Significant themes

• Identity and imitation: The monster tries to become Gao Ming by copying his appearance and consuming his memories.
• Fate and entanglement: Luo Dong senses that his destiny is bound to Gao Ming’s, while the black threads evoke curses and manipulation by Fate.
• Fear and perseverance: Faced with overwhelming terror, Luo Dong survives by trusting the call and pressing onward.
• The human cost of horror: The many different deaths embodied by the Gao Ming corpses hint at a horrifying future or repeated fate.

Plot and events

• Trapped in a tunnel as corpse-like copies of Gao Ming close in, Luo Dong drives the battered Bus through them, convinced that their attempts to stop him mean he is heading the right way.
• He reaches a shrine connected to the tunnel by enormous, living blood vessels. When its clay sculpture turns intangible, blood from the tunnel flows into it, making it solid enough for the Bus to hit.
• Beneath the sculpture, Luo Dong finds a nailed, four-faced, eight-armed figure: the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal. He carries it out of the shrine. The clocks across Changcheng Residential Complex briefly stop, and the Bus begins reverting to its former appearance.
• Luo Dong deduces that the Bus holds Gao Ming’s memories and that the tunnel’s corpses are imperfect copies made from the Immortal. The clay sculpture begins repairing itself, so he flees with the statue.
• With no response from the statue, Luo Dong opens the letter meant for the “real Gao Ming.” It contains a family photograph and a key. The note tells Gao Ming not to search for his parents, names him the new Head of the Family, and warns him to keep the Home Gate key safe.
• The photograph and letter awaken the statue’s life aspect. When Luo Dong tries to remove the nails, his fingers begin to wither and black threads threaten to enter him, so he cuts away the affected flesh and leaves the rest to Gao Ming. As he drives on, blood on the floor gives off a meaty scent, and translucent red figures appear in the Bus.

Character development and interactions

• Luo Dong shifts from panic to desperate resolve. Despite his reluctance to harm the dead, he rams the pursuing corpses and the shrine sculpture, then risks himself to retrieve the Immortal. He uses quick judgment to escape the nails’ corruption, though he cannot fully understand what he has uncovered.
• Gao Ming, absent in person, becomes the focus of the mystery. The sealed statue appears to be him, and the letter and photograph stir his dormant will.
• Luo Dong’s connection with Gao Ming is expressed through his effort to deliver the letter and his attempt to free the statue. The statue remains unresponsive until the family keepsakes reach it.

Significant themes

• Survival and sacrifice: Luo Dong repeatedly risks injury to keep moving and preserve a chance of reaching the real Gao Ming.
• Memory and identity: The Bus holds Gao Ming’s memories, while the corpse-copies have incomplete memories and imperfect identities.
• Family and inheritance: Gao Ming’s parents’ message makes him Head of the Family and entrusts him with the Home Gate key, while also forbidding him to return.
• The uncertain boundary between life and death: The statue’s awakening, the shifting Bus, and the emerging red figures suggest that memory, bodies, and supernatural life are intertwined.

Key plot points and events

• As blood spills from the Flesh-and-Blood Statue, strange passengers materialize on Luo Dong’s bus—including hospital patients, faceless residents, and the anxious Old Auntie searching for her child.
• The passengers paint a Blood City pattern with their soul blood, breaking the bus’s rules and revealing an exit from the tunnel. Luo Dong drives the bus through it.
• A god’s black threads emerge from Gao Ming’s corpse, but the Flesh-and-Blood Statue’s death aspect activates a trap: Gao Ming’s flesh-and-blood doubles become prisons that briefly contain the threads. The bus escapes while the god is trapped.
• Luo Dong races toward Gao Ming’s parents’ apartment. The Flesh-and-Blood Statue senses Gao Ming’s original body, and the Flesh-and-Blood Heart and Divine Heart draw closer.
• Meanwhile, Gao Ming’s parents appear in Building Three, claiming to search for him while deliberately gathering curses and soul venom. Their actions reveal that they are trying to kill him, not save him.
• When they suspect Gao Ming’s friends of hiding or killing him, the couple turns on them. Fan Li carries the badly injured Xia Yang and leads the group toward the underground parking lot, hoping to draw the parents into danger.

Character developments and interactions

• Luo Dong pushes through fear and pressure, successfully getting the bus out of the tunnel and continuing toward Gao Ming’s home.
• The passengers work together, using their soul blood to create the pattern that enables the escape.
• Gao Ming’s parents become increasingly unstable and threatening; their supposed love for their son is exposed as part of a curse aimed at killing him.
• Fan Li recognizes the danger and takes charge of the escape, deliberately leading the parents away from Gao Ming.
• He Jing realizes the parents’ true intent and joins Fan Li’s flight. Xia Yang, though barely able to move, is carried by Fan Li.

Significant themes

• Love turned into harm: Gao Ming’s parents use the language of devotion while actively cursing and hunting him.
• Fate, sacrifice, and succession: Gao Ming has prepared others, including Luo Dong, to continue resisting fate if he falls.
• Collective resistance: The passengers’ cooperation and the Statue’s contingency plan create a brief chance to escape an overwhelming god.
• The burden of protection: Fan Li risks drawing danger onto himself and his companions to keep Gao Ming from confronting his parents.

Plot points and events

• Xia Yang urges He Jing to stop Fan Li from using himself as bait, but He Jing follows Gao Ming’s instruction to support Fan Li. When Xia Yang interferes, Fan Li grabs him and warns him not to endanger the group.
• A bloody smell leads the group to an elevator containing several curse-ridden versions of Gao Ming’s “parents,” who are weaving black threads into talismans. A frightened young man in a school uniform is trapped among them, claiming he knows where Gao Ming is.
• Fan Li charges into the elevator and pulls the young man free. Despite the stranger’s warning that the basement has become a terrifying Communal Morgue, Fan Li insists on heading there to draw the parents away.
• Fan Li’s resolve is driven by the belief that Gao Ming cannot bring himself to harm his monstrous parents. He wants to help Gao Ming face that weakness and sees their bond as mutual support rather than one-sided pity.
• The parents do not follow the group underground. The rescued student, Xishan, explains that he is Gao Ming’s friend and a member of Class Thirteen. He secretly checks that he still has a gift hidden in his pocket, then grows uneasy under Fan Li and He Jing’s suspicious scrutiny.

Character developments

• Fan Li shifts from acting on instinct to thinking through Gao Ming’s emotional situation. His reckless bravery becomes an expression of loyalty and a determination to become Gao Ming’s equal.
• Xia Yang is shown as frightened and self-preserving, but not malicious; his attempt to stop Fan Li comes from fear that the plan will get everyone killed.
• He Jing remains obedient to Gao Ming’s instructions, even when he privately seems concerned.
• Xishan is introduced as a nervous but resourceful Class Thirteen student. His hidden “gift” suggests he is concealing something, though the chapter does not explain what.

Character interactions

• Fan Li clashes with Xia Yang over his interference, while He Jing refuses to challenge Fan Li because Gao Ming told him to follow Fan Li’s lead.
• Fan Li rescues Xishan from the elevator’s tangled monsters, then ignores Xishan’s warnings and drags him toward the basement.
• Xishan’s connection to Gao Ming and Class Thirteen makes Fan Li and He Jing immediately wary of him.

Significant themes

• Loyalty and mutual salvation: Fan Li believes genuine support means helping Gao Ming confront painful challenges, not merely pitying him.
• Courage versus self-preservation: Fan Li runs toward danger, while Xia Yang and Xishan react with fear.
• The emotional cost of family: Gao Ming’s parents are transformed into monsters, but Fan Li suspects Gao Ming’s attachment to them will make them difficult to fight.
• Distrust and secrecy: The group’s suspicion of Class Thirteen, along with Xishan’s concealed item, underscores the uncertainty surrounding allies and their motives.

Plot and events

• Xishan explains that Gao Ming’s mutated parents are gathering resentment from across the building, possibly to contaminate something. He suspects they are baiting Gao Ming into killing them, creating a trap meant to make him regret his actions.
• Fan Li wonders whether Gao Ming’s real parents might be mixed among the impostors, which would make the trap especially cruel.
• A headless, unnaturally beautiful corpse with a huge mouth on her abdomen attacks Fan Li from the Underground Parking Lot. Fan Li wounds her, and she flees back inside.
• Xishan says the parking lot is a forbidden zone where corpses have been transformed into “mothers,” and claims the Future God’s physical body is gestating inside one of them. He says both the Past God and Future God must be killed within a limited time, or the surviving one will eventually allow the other to return.
• While the others talk, Xia Yang secretly paints the corpse onto his own body using his blood. When he finishes, a baby cries from beyond the door—audible only to him.

Character developments and interactions

• Xishan presents himself as knowledgeable, drawing on information he learned through his connection to Wang Jie. He warns the group about the parking lot and reinforces the possibility that Gao Ming is being manipulated.
• Fan Li is thoughtful but vigilant: he considers how the trap might target Gao Ming, then reacts quickly to the corpse’s ambush. He becomes frustrated with Xia Yang for failing to warn him.
• Xia Yang appears increasingly uncanny and absorbed in his art. He ignores Fan Li’s anger and uses his unusual ability to copy the corpse, seemingly healing as he paints. He alone hears the baby’s cry and responds with quiet excitement.
• He Jing accepts Xishan’s warning as plausible, while Fan Li and Xishan try to keep the group focused and avoid conflict.

Significant themes

• Manipulation and moral traps: Gao Ming may be pushed toward choices that damage him regardless of what he does.
• The unknown future: The Future God is linked to birth, possibility, and something not yet realized, making it less predictable than the Past God.
• Creation and contamination: Xia Yang’s art does more than depict what he sees; it may connect him to the supernatural forces around him.
• Appearance versus horror: The corpse’s idealized beauty contrasts with her monstrous body and predatory nature.

Key plot points and events

• Xia Yang becomes fascinated by the corpse of the Future God’s pregnant host and crawls through a Safety Door into the Underground Garage, hoping to see and paint her head.
• Fan Li follows him and finds the garage transformed into a grotesque, living landscape of flesh, blood vessels, faces, and growing limbs. Xia Yang says the Future God’s will is temporarily absent, creating an opportunity, and asks Fan Li to help locate Future.
• In Building Three, Gao Ming and “Xuan Wen” hide in a Storage Room while his parents call from outside. “Xuan Wen” warns him not to answer: the voices are not truly his parents, and responding would bring lasting curses.
• Defying the Future God’s intended role, “Xuan Wen” leads Gao Ming away by a dangerous, circuitous route and into a room filled with clocks, suggesting the Future he seeks may be hidden there.

Character developments and interactions

• Xia Yang remains cheerfully unconcerned with danger or others’ safety; his morbid artistic obsession drives him into the transformed garage.
• Fan Li is exasperated by Xia Yang but follows to protect him. He is stunned by the garage’s monstrous vitality.
• “Xuan Wen” begins to resist the Future God’s control. Though assigned to torment Gao Ming, her time with him has made her reluctant to betray him. She has long played roles of lover and girlfriend to exploit others’ hopes for affection, but now struggles to separate the role from her own feelings.
• Gao Ming trusts “Xuan Wen” enough to listen as she warns him and guides him, though he initially prepares to answer the voices he believes are his parents.

Significant themes

• Identity and role-playing: “Xuan Wen” is trapped between the persona she performs and the person she might become.
• Love, longing, and manipulation: The Future God exploits her desire for affection, turning it into a tool for spreading suffering; Gao Ming’s sincere devotion unsettles that pattern.
• Family as both refuge and bondage: The chapter frames family ties as potentially comforting but also a source of inescapable curses.
• Life entangled with death: The garage’s grotesque abundance of growth presents the Future God’s vision as a disturbing fusion of vitality and decay.

Plot points

• “Xuan Wen” reveals that the Future God has hidden countless possible futures in the clocks. It seeks a future where Fate has been killed so it can return to life, and it has singled out Gao Ming as the key to that possibility.
• The God has distorted Gao Ming’s senses and turned his parents’ curses against him. He must choose one clock without knowing what awaits if he chooses incorrectly.
• As the disguised woman’s borrowed appearance breaks down, Gao Ming’s parents—or curse-formed versions of them—batter at the hidden room’s door, demanding that he come home.
• Gao Ming refuses to leave the woman behind. He chooses an inconspicuous clock and pulls her through it with him, escaping just before the room is overrun.
• They arrive in a place Gao Ming recognizes: the apartment he once rented, at the apparent beginning of the cycle of deaths and futures. He hears a call drawing nearer, knocks on the door, and is welcomed inside by a middle-aged couple who seem to be his parents. The chapter ends when the man notices the terrifying female ghost with Gao Ming.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains focused despite the God’s interference. He has long known the woman is not truly Xuan Wen, but neither condemns her nor abandons her. His choice to save her shows compassion and trust in his own judgment.
• “Xuan Wen” loses the appearance and voice she had been using, revealing her frightening true form. She warns Gao Ming and urges him to leave her behind, but he saves her anyway. She is shaken by his acceptance of her as she is.
• Gao Ming and his parents are connected through the threatening voices outside the room and the apparently warm welcome at the apartment door. Their relationship may be sincere, simulated, or part of the future’s mystery.

Significant themes

• Fate, choice, and cyclical time: The clocks hold competing futures, while Gao Ming’s life seems to repeat death until its end loops back to its beginning.
• Appearance versus acceptance: Gao Ming sees through the woman’s disguise and treats her with the same regard after it falls away.
• Home and belonging: The journey leads Gao Ming back to a familiar home and an ordinary parental greeting, set against the horror surrounding it.
• Compassion amid uncertainty: Gao Ming risks his one chance to choose a future rather than leave someone vulnerable behind.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming returns to his family’s rental home with a severely disfigured female ghost, whom the Future God has forced to play his “lover.”
• His father struggles to respond to the unexpected visitor and to Gao Ming’s unusual behavior. Gao Ming declines his father’s familiar offer to take his clothes, choosing to wash them himself.
• When his father asks whether the woman is his girlfriend, Gao Ming calls her a friend and says she has helped him greatly.
• His parents talk in the kitchen about how to welcome the guest, showing their usual warmth and concern. His mother initially freezes at the sight of the woman, whose damaged face exposes her brain, but soon takes her hand and sympathizes with her.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is guarded, knowing he must not let his affection for his parents weaken his resolve against the Future God. Still, seeing them brings back tender memories and makes him wonder whether they are truly his parents or another cruel imitation.
• His father appears stern and bewildered, but his kindness shows through: he tries to accommodate the guest and worries about how she will be received.
• His mother moves from cheerful anticipation to shock, then responds with compassion rather than rejection.
• The female ghost is shy and self-conscious about her shattered appearance, but Gao Ming’s description of her as a friend affirms their bond.

Significant themes

• Family love amid uncertainty: Familiar domestic routines evoke comfort even when Gao Ming cannot trust what he sees.
• Authenticity and deception: The chapter questions whether the parents are real or fabrications created by the Future God.
• Compassion beyond appearances: Gao Ming’s mother responds to the ghost’s suffering, while the household tries to welcome her despite the shock.
• Normality against the grotesque: Warm family life unfolds alongside the disturbing reality of the visitor’s ruined body.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming and his father navigate an awkward reunion, with the father trying to resume parental routines and Gao Ming remaining reserved.
• Gao Ming introduces the ghost as a friend, prompting his father’s uneasy questions and practical concern.
• The parents quietly discuss how to prepare for the visitor, revealing both their affection for Gao Ming and their anxiety about the situation.
• Gao Ming’s mother ultimately takes the ghost’s hand and offers sympathy, turning a moment of horror into one of unexpected kindness.

Summary

• Gao Ming brings a disfigured female ghost home after the Future God’s abuse has destroyed her former life. Once a hopeful, cherished daughter, she was forced to impersonate people’s lovers and watch everything she wanted destroyed. Though she longs to be someone Gao Ming can love, she believes that is impossible.
• Gao Ming’s mother welcomes her with unexpected kindness. Rather than reject the ghost, she takes her hand and invites her to dinner, then warns Gao Ming that if he has chosen to bring her home, he must treat her responsibly and never bully her. The ghost is deeply moved, briefly seeing her own mother in Gao Ming’s.
• Dinner becomes a quiet test of identity. Gao Ming serves rice as he normally would at home, but his parents watch for signs that he is truly their son. The father’s discreetly placed broccoli—the food Gao Ming used to hate—adds to their uncertainty. Gao Ming, too, is trying to determine whether these people are really his parents.
• The parents recount their journey through the changed world, including encounters with possessed travelers and other dangers. Their casual account conceals how close they came to dying.
• Gao Ming pieces together what happened to his parents. They came to Hanhai searching for him and became trapped in the shadow world on Ghost Festival night. Across his repeated deaths and restarts, they too seem to have searched for him repeatedly; some versions may have become the parental figures in his Birthday Posthumous Photograph. Gao Ming wonders whether the photograph is incomplete and whether parts of his parents remain trapped.
• Gao Ming reflects on his progress after the death zone: his past selves have reconciled, his will has exceeded human limits, and he may advance further if the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal can defeat the vessel prepared by the clay-sculpture brothers.
• The family gathering is interrupted by a violent, unnatural sound from the bedroom—the room where Gao Ming tied up the fathers and mothers who had come home one after another. The chapter ends on this ominous note.

Character developments and interactions

Gao Ming’s mother shows compassion toward the ghost while holding Gao Ming accountable, echoing her role as a caring but firm parent. The ghost’s defenses soften as she encounters genuine domestic warmth, though her longing for love remains painful. Gao Ming and his parents behave like a family at the table, but all three sides remain wary and quietly test one another’s identities.

Significant themes

• Family, care, and responsibility: Ordinary gestures—sharing food, offering a place at the table—carry powerful meaning amid horror.
• Identity and uncertainty: Gao Ming must distinguish his real parents from the figures and voices created by the shadow world.
• Love and trauma: The ghost’s desire for affection survives despite profound abuse, while the chapter suggests that tenderness may help restore a sense of belonging.
• The uncanny within the domestic: A warm family dinner is shadowed by supernatural danger and unresolved mysteries.

Key plot points

• A strange returning Fate Dart alerts Gao Ming and his parents, who try to keep him away from the bedroom.
• When the bedroom door opens, it reveals many bound, increasingly monstrous versions of Gao Ming. The family is disturbed, but not frightened; only the female ghost is shocked.
• Gao Ming kills one of the lunging copies with a vase, then forces broccoli—apparently the only poisoned dish—into another copy’s mouth. The remaining copies lose their human appearance and become corpse-like creatures.
• Gao Ming tells his parents that the dead versions of himself have come together and finally found a way home. Using his treasured Birthday Posthumous Photograph, he reconnects with his parents and explains that multiple versions of them and him have been searching for one another across worlds.
• As Gao Ming senses something close, Luo Dong announces that he has brought back what the monsters left in the Tunnel. The bedroom door breaks, and the creatures attack.
• Gao Ming leads his parents downstairs. They trust him, and his mother brings the female ghost along.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from cautious politeness to decisive action. His memories have merged across versions of himself, and he openly acknowledges his parents and his longing to reunite with them.
• His parents initially act evasive, apparently testing or concealing something from Gao Ming. Once he identifies himself and explains what happened, they respond emotionally and choose to trust him.
• The female ghost begins by seeing the household as warm and loving, but the bedroom full of bound Gao Mings shatters that impression. Gao’s mother nevertheless includes her in the escape.
• Luo Dong’s arrival coincides with the attack and escalates the danger.

Significant themes

• Family and reunion: Across many versions and two worlds, Gao Ming and his parents have continued searching for one another.
• Identity and multiplicity: The monstrous copies embody Gao Ming’s many past selves, while his merged memories let him claim a shared identity.
• Trust amid danger: After a chapter of mutual suspicion, the family ultimately acts together.
• The uncanny within the domestic: A seemingly ordinary family meal and home conceal a horrifying bedroom—and a family dynamic stranger than the ghost’s expectations.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming’s parents and Luo Dong reunite in the fog-shrouded city. Luo has driven a battered, blood-covered bus out of the tunnel, rescuing Gao Ming and the others from pursuing monsters.
• Gao Ming boards with his parents and a female ghost. The bus also carries the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal idol, which Luo risked his life to retrieve. The souls of other prisoners apparently sacrificed themselves to help the bus escape.
• Gao Ming questions Situ An’s mother and concludes that Situ An escaped the Execution House. He suspects Situ An had arranged for the Past and Future God sculptures to be collected and may have engineered the wider conflict to turn the General Investigation Bureau against Gao Ming and his Ghost Story Players.
• As monsters close in, Luo drives into the fog without knowing where the road leads. Gao Ming approaches the idol and touches it; its four faces open their eyes, and the heart nailed into its chest begins to beat.

Character developments and interactions

• Luo Dong has survived an ordeal in the tunnel and fulfilled Gao Ming’s parents’ trust in him. Seeing the real Gao Ming again brings him near tears and restores his sense of security.
• Gao Ming is reunited with his family but remains focused on the larger danger. He refuses to absolve Situ An on behalf of his victims and warns Situ An’s mother that their souls are now bound: if Gao Ming dies, Situ An’s soul will be destroyed too.
• Situ An’s mother remains silent and shaken as Gao Ming confronts her with her son’s escape and crimes.
• Gao Ming’s parents welcome him aboard and reassure Luo that he is the real Gao Ming.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and survival: The bus’s escape is marked by the suffering and sacrifice of those trapped inside the idol.
• Justice and accountability: Gao Ming insists that neither he nor Situ An’s mother can forgive Situ An for his victims.
• Manipulation and uncertainty: Even from prison—or beyond death—Situ An may be shaping events, making him a threat whose plans are difficult to discern.
• Fate and transformation: The journey shifts from the road into the past toward an unknown future, while Gao Ming’s contact with the idol hints at a new possibility: freeing the heart nailed within it.