Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• As the Bus drives through a dangerous fog, Gao Ming decides to fuse with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal rather than abandon it, believing their combined power is necessary to go further.
• He drives the cursed nails into himself along with the statue. The painful, dangerous act binds their blood and bodies together, with the fusion led by Gao Ming and Gong Xi, the Immortal’s Life Aspect.
• Gao Ming regains his powers, including the Divine Heart and flesh-and-blood heart, and opens the Execution House. His transformation briefly unleashes immense power, dispersing the fog and revealing the hidden city.
• The city is filled with followers of the Future and Past Gods, many trapped in visions of their futures and drained by black threads. Gao Ming realizes they must reach an exit door before the threads overwhelm them.
• He tells Luo Dong to drive toward the door. Meanwhile, his ghostly mother searches the believers for her parents but cannot find them.

Character developments

• Gao Ming demonstrates absolute trust in the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal and accepts the curse and its risks. The fusion is not a surrender: he retains the lead and reclaims both his will and bodily power.
• Gong Xi proves fully loyal, actively tearing at his own wounds to complete the merger.
• Luo Dong remains focused on driving through danger, with Gao Ming directing him toward escape.
• Gao Ming’s parents recognize that he has grown up and no longer try to intervene.
• The female ghost remains emotionally attached to her role as Xuan Wen and is saddened when she cannot locate her parents.

Significant themes

• Trust and unity: Gao Ming’s willingness to merge with the Immortal turns a dangerous separation into shared strength.
• Agency and resistance: Though the Future God seeks control, Gao Ming chooses to absorb the curse and lead the fusion himself.
• The cost of power: Their brief surge of strength consumes their remaining lifespan and causes immense pain.
• False comfort and exploitation: The believers’ pleasant or fearful visions conceal their exploitation as sources of faith, while black threads drain them.
• Growing up and letting go: Gao Ming’s parents accept his independence, while the female ghost’s search reflects lingering attachment and loss.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming speaks to the Immortal as a trusted companion, affirming their shared past and hoping they will remain together.
• Gong Xi responds to Gao Ming’s command by helping complete the fusion; the other faces appear to permit it.
• Gao Ming directs Luo Dong to the exit and reassures the female ghost that the Future God likely would not place her parents among its followers.
• His parents remain silent as they watch him take responsibility for his choices.

Plot points

• Gao Ming promises the red-clad female ghost he will help recover her parents from the Future God, then leads the group toward the exit as a flood of black threads closes in.
• He explains that the threads are manifestations of faith—and effectively part of the Future God—rather than living creatures.
• Gao Ming gets Luo Dong, Situ An’s mother, and the others through the door. His own parents hesitate but eventually leave, while the female ghost also departs after Gao Ming renews his promise.
• Before exiting, Gao Ming uses the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s power to bind a drop of its blood to Situ An’s mother. He tells her to lead him to Situ An.
• Outside, Gao Ming discovers his parents cannot escape the Shadow World: after spending too long there, they dissolve into its shadows. They accept their fate, comfort each other, and disappear. One photograph turns to ash, while another pair of parents appears in Gao Ming’s Birthday Posthumous Photograph.
• Gao Ming vows to rescue his parents and others trapped in the Shadow World, even if he must destroy Fate and the world itself. With two hearts restored, he turns his attention to finding Situ An and leaves using clues taken from his mother’s heart.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows compassion toward the female ghost and grief over losing his parents again, but stays focused on rescuing others. His parents’ fate strengthens his resolve to challenge Fate and the Shadow World.
• Gao Ming’s parents accept their disappearance with tenderness and pride in their son. His father tries to comfort his mother and encourages Gao Ming to speak, echoing an earlier separation in their family.
• Situ An’s mother is revealed to be more than the deceased woman herself: she embodies Situ An’s kindness, guilt, humanity, and weakness. She openly calls Gao Ming the worst evil entity in the Execution House, accidentally voicing what she thinks.
• The female ghost is moved by Gao Ming’s willingness to fight a god for her, though she says little before leaving.
• Gao Ming’s connection with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal remains pragmatic and powerful: he uses its blood to protect and alter Situ An’s mother, while recognizing that it can perceive its believers’ thoughts.

Significant themes

• Family, grief, and reunion: A shared meal and a brief reunion matter deeply, even as Gao Ming’s parents are lost again.
• The reality of emotion: Memories may be fabricated by Fate, but Gao Ming insists that the feelings attached to them are real.
• Faith and divine power: The black threads reveal how gods persist and influence the world through believers’ faith.
• Determination against Fate: Gao Ming’s personal losses reinforce his broader promise to restore the dead and trapped, and to defy the forces controlling their lives.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming is confronted by monstrous versions of his parents, whose curses are tied to him by blood and threaten to spread to his heart. Seeing how the gods exploit ordinary people, he resolves to kill Fate without joining the shadow world.
• Unable to remove the Future God’s spike and weakening from its influence, Gao Ming summons the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God. He imprisons the cursed parents inside the Execution House, but collapses from pain and the loss of life force.
• Luo Dong and the female ghost help carry Gao Ming. The ghost—whose repeated role as Xuan Wen has blurred her sense of identity—believes the Future God is occupied and offers to take Gao Ming to his room.
• Behind the future door, a ten-years-older First Team Leader and Liu Yi flee through a Hanhai consumed by the shadow world. Liu Yi has stolen a divine statue’s head and refuses to return it; she believes an escape route will appear.
• In the underground garage, Student Council President Gao Yun confronts Situ An beside a headless clay sculpture and its victims. Gao Yun warns that Gao Ming is coming and urges Situ An to flee.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming grows more resolute in opposing both the gods and the shadow world, even as the spike and his own powers exact a severe physical and mental cost.
• The female ghost commits herself to Gao Ming and takes the lead in helping him reach the Future God. Her past experiences as “Xuan Wen” have begun to unsettle her identity.
• Liu Yi shows increasing independence, using power drawn from the future and refusing to submit to the shadow world’s gods. Her actions leave her and the First Team Leader hunted.
• The First Team Leader is frightened by the bleak future he has witnessed and angrily blames Liu Yi for their predicament.
• Gao Yun and Situ An remain adversaries: Gao Yun stands in Situ An’s way, while Situ An’s restraints and the nearby victims suggest the scale of the threat.

Significant themes

• Fear of the future: Hopeless futures can be more crushing than painful memories—and are a source of the Future God’s power.
• Dehumanization by divine authority: The gods treat people as resources for faith and vows, turning their supposed paradise into a human purgatory.
• Choice and allegiance: Gao Ming rejects both divine tyranny and Situ An’s alliance with the shadow world; Liu Yi likewise refuses to be anyone’s servant.
• Identity and sacrifice: The female ghost’s repeated roles blur who she is, while Gao Ming’s power comes at the cost of his body and remaining life.

Key plot points and events

• Situ An is trapped in the Underground Parking Lot, where the Future God’s headless clay body is hidden. He offers himself as a vessel, hoping to gain power to escape Gao Ming.
• Gao Yun challenges Situ An’s decision, but the Future God begins taking over him. Faith-filled threads and divine eyes emerge from Situ An as the chains binding him start to break.
• As the Future God’s influence spreads, the Death Zone’s rules turn against Gao Yun. Rather than attack Situ An directly, Gao Yun destroys his own skull, releasing the blood-red faith within him.
• Gao Yun uses Rewind, an ability that sends targets nearby back to an earlier point in time at the cost of his own life. Situ An is restored to the state he was in fifteen minutes earlier.
• A new Gao Yun, wearing the Student Council armband, appears. He hangs the sacrificed Gao Yun’s body upside down near the clay sculpture, using its faith to contaminate it in hopes of claiming the Future God’s shell.
• Situ An recognizes Gao Yun and vows to find his “true body.” His words differ from those in the previous seventeen encounters.

Character developments and interactions

• Situ An is increasingly consumed by hatred and his desire to escape Gao Ming. He willingly risks becoming the Future God’s puppet, and his transformation makes him a threat to Gao Yun.
• Gao Yun reveals the cost of his Rewind ability: each use requires a version of himself to sacrifice everything. His plan is not merely to stop Situ An, but to seize the Future God’s body and oppose Gao Ming in his own way.
• Situ An and Gao Yun exchange accusations and threats. Gao Yun questions Situ An’s fear and choices; Situ An dismisses him as unqualified, then later recognizes him and promises to hunt down his real self.
• Gao Ming remains absent but central to both men’s motives: Situ An fears him, while Gao Yun seeks the future rather than the past Gao Ming supposedly wants.

Significant themes

• Identity and selfhood: Situ An risks losing his will to the Future God, while Gao Yun’s repeated sacrifices create multiple versions of himself.
• Power and its cost: Godhood, possession, and Rewind all demand a steep price.
• Rivalry and obsession: Hatred of Gao Ming drives Situ An, while Gao Yun pursues a strategy that may bring him into conflict with both Situ An and the Future God.
• Past and future: Gao Yun frames their ambitions as opposing directions—Gao Ming seeks the past, while he intends to claim the future.

Plot points

• Gao Yun warns Situ An that Gao Ming is approaching, but Situ An unexpectedly tells Gao Yun that he should run. Gao Yun realizes Situ An has noticed something unusual about the repeated reversals.
• Situ An deduces that Gao Yun’s ability affects only one target: although each reversal erases Situ An’s memories, the chains representing his restraints are not reset. Repeatedly using the Future God’s power has weakened them.
• Situ An reveals that he deliberately kept acting despite losing his memories, trusting his own judgment each time. He also realizes Gao Yun has been helping him escape—not out of kindness, but because every reversal drains the power from the Future God’s clay sculpture, helping Gao Yun take it over.
• With nearly all his chains broken, Situ An unleashes the Future God’s power. He traps Gao Yun rather than killing him, intending to break the last chain and find Gao Yun’s true body. Gao Yun’s ability appears to require the death of a sacrificial body to trigger another reversal.
• The chapter ends as Gao Yun notices Fan Li cutting through the fleshy wall with the Dagger while holding onto Xia Yang, who is trying to crawl inside.

Character developments and interactions

• Situ An proves perceptive and resolute: despite repeated memory loss, he recognizes the pattern and remains committed to gaining freedom. He openly acknowledges the mutual exploitation between himself and Gao Yun.
• Gao Yun remains controlled and emotionally detached. He accepts that Situ An has uncovered his plan, since both men have been using the other to achieve their own goals.
• Fan Li and Xia Yang appear at the climax, creating a possible opening in the confrontation.

Significant themes

• Mutual manipulation: Gao Yun and Situ An are enemies who knowingly help each other when their interests align.
• Memory and self-trust: Situ An’s confidence in his own judgment lets him preserve a plan across reversals that erase his memories.
• Freedom at a cost: Situ An’s escape depends on exploiting the Future God’s power, while Gao Yun’s ability also seems to demand a sacrifice.
• Moral ambiguity: Situ An accuses Gao Yun and Gao Ming of sacrificing lives, challenging their claim to be morally different from him.

Key plot points and events

• In the Underground Parking Lot, Gao Yun and Situ An are relieved that the newcomers are not Gao Ming—but quickly become wary of Xia Yang, whose bloodied body is merging with the surrounding flesh.
• Xia Yang says he has come to make a “perfect work” and searches for what he calls “Mommy’s belly.” Fan Li and He Jing struggle to control him, while Xishan hangs back and watches.
• Situ An offers a temporary truce, claiming each of them can pursue his own goal. His actions betray the offer: he unleashes a sweeping attack, using the power of the Future God and the unnatural deaths stored in the garage to trigger a grotesque growth of flesh.
• The attack spreads through the parking lot, transforming bodies and surroundings into a forest of flesh. Situ An hopes to expose Gao Yun’s hidden true body, while Gao Yun and Xia Yang sense something else nearby.
• The group hears a woman crying for help and a baby crying faintly. They suspect the Future God’s intended body is about to be born.

Character developments

• Situ An confirms his calculating, distrustful nature: he seeks freedom and bargains strategically, but is willing to attack everyone to achieve his aims.
• Gao Yun remains intent on consuming the Future God’s clay sculpture, yet keeps his powerful rule-based ability secret.
• Xia Yang appears increasingly consumed by his art and madness, driven toward a mysterious “perfect work.” He also senses a deep, fated hostility between himself and Situ An.
• He Jing and Fan Li are overwhelmed by the escalating danger; He Jing pleads for cooperation, while Fan Li acts quickly to protect him.
• Xishan remains cautious and survival-focused, avoiding direct involvement.

Significant themes

• Betrayal and distrust: Situ An’s false truce shows how little the characters can rely on one another.
• Fate and alternate possibilities: Xia Yang’s sense of destined enmity hints at paths that might have unfolded differently.
• Birth and grotesque transformation: The spreading flesh and distant cries suggest that creation and birth in this world are bound up with horror.
• Power at a cost: The Future God’s influence and the victims’ stolen futures fuel the terrifying changes in the garage.

Character interactions

• Situ An probes Xia Yang by offering to free him, but Xia Yang rejects the apparent goodwill and voices his urge to kill Situ An.
• Xishan comments on the complicated connection between Xia Yang, Situ An, and Gao Ming, but is ignored.
• He Jing urges everyone to cooperate; Fan Li knocks him aside just in time as the flesh surges.
• Gao Yun and Xia Yang briefly converge in attention—not on Situ An’s attack, but on the cries coming from the parking lot’s corner.

Plot points and events

• Situ An pushes the headless Clay Sculpture beyond its limits, repeatedly rebuilding his body and drawing on the Future God’s power. He appears willing to destroy everyone—including himself—to break free.
• Xia Yang merges with the Underground Parking Lot and rushes toward the place where the Future God’s child is about to be born, intending to claim the newborn and paint the god’s image over his body.
• Situ An sends a serpent of flesh after Xia Yang, hoping to take his body as a replacement for the one Gao Ming destroyed. Meanwhile, Gao Yun remains trapped in a hand of death intent, and Fan Li, He Jing, and Xishan are caught between the competing forces.
• Gao Yun bites his tongue and dies, releasing an invisible force toward the parking lot’s deepest corner. Blood from his eighteen corpses—matching the eighteen Soul Locks on Situ An’s soul—flows into the Clay Sculpture.
• Xia Yang and Situ An discover a hidden birthing place among the flesh: Gao Yun’s followers, identifiable by their white Student Council Armbands, have formed a bed for a woman in labor. The Future God’s stolen vitality is flowing into her.
• Xia Yang realizes Gao Yun has arranged for his followers to make the parking lot a cradle and for one of them to bear the god’s child. Gao Yun speaks through the woman and declares that Situ An and Xia Yang understood his plan too late.

Character developments and interactions

• Situ An is increasingly desperate and reckless, but still schemes to seize both the Clay Sculpture’s power and Xia Yang’s body. He also hides a private red faith beneath the black faith threatening to overwhelm him.
• Xia Yang pursues the newborn with fervent, irreverent ambition, but his confidence gives way to alarm as the birth scene reveals Gao Yun’s plan.
• Gao Yun is exposed as a calculating and ruthless opponent. His apparent vulnerability conceals a long-prepared attempt to steal the Future God’s child; he accepts death as part of that plan.
• Fan Li, He Jing, and Xishan are frightened and uncertain, looking to one another for a way forward. Their shock deepens when they recognize the scale of Gao Yun’s sacrifice.
• Situ An, Xia Yang, and Gao Yun are all competing to control the Future God’s power, but Gao Yun has secretly positioned himself to take the prize first.

Significant themes

• Scheming between humans and gods: The gods treat people as pawns, while people plot to steal divine power and offspring.
• Life, death, and sacrifice: The parking lot’s transformation into a birth chamber intertwines new life with corpses, stolen vitality, and mass death.
• Desperation and extremity: Situ An’s self-destruction and Gao Yun’s calculated death show how far each is willing to go for control.
• Late understanding: The chapter’s final revelation stresses that recognizing an enemy’s plan is useless if it comes too late.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Yun, possessing the body of a woman, reveals his plan: use the Future God’s prepared divine child to gain a body of his own and escape his dependence on hosts. He claims he will bring his followers with him when he is reborn.
• Situ An, unwilling to let Gao Yun seize the Future God’s power, attacks the woman and the unborn child. Meanwhile, Xishan, He Jing, and Fan Li quietly move into position to take the child.
• Xia Yang stops Situ An by severing his own hand and using his ability to control Situ An through a highly realistic painting of him. Xia Yang explains that repeated painting lets him influence his subject.
• As the Student Council followers’ faith and the vitality of the corpses converge, the headless clay sculpture shatters and the child is born. The woman and her followers wither away in the process.
• The newborn has a head concealed in shadow and seems to belong to both the real world and the Shadow World. Fan Li grabs it and flees with Xishan and He Jing, while Situ An recognizes something about its appearance from an earlier experience outside Hanhai.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Yun shows himself to be a calculating survivor, willing to sacrifice followers for a body but insisting he will honor his promises. His alliance with Situ An is revealed as temporary and self-serving.
• Xia Yang demonstrates the disturbing extent of his artistic power and his willingness to injure himself to disrupt Situ An. He wants to see the child’s true nature, even though he considers both Gao Yun and Situ An deserving of death.
• Situ An shifts from trying to kill the child to being physically thwarted by Xia Yang, then becomes absorbed by the newborn’s resemblance to something he has seen before.
• Xishan, He Jing, and Fan Li act opportunistically: they approach while the others are distracted and seize the child, turning the birth into a race for control.

Significant themes

• Identity and embodiment: Gao Yun seeks freedom from possessing others, while the child itself blurs the boundary between human, ghost, reality, and shadow.
• Betrayal and uneasy alliances: Gao Yun and Situ An cooperate only while their interests align; each is prepared to discard the other.
• Sacrifice and exploitation: The child’s birth depends on the lives and vitality of the Student Council followers, raising the cost of attempts to seize divine power.
• Art shaping reality: Xia Yang’s paintings become powerful enough to affect the person they reproduce, unsettling the distinction between representation and reality.

Key plot points and events

• Situ An recalls Hanhai’s hidden truth: it is a cage left behind after the Blood City Lords destroyed the Shadow World, and they are waiting for a mysterious “seed” that may be connected to killing Fate.
• He tries to recruit Xia Yang, then carries him away—not out of concern, but because Xia Yang’s body is covered in paintings of Gao Ming and other dangerous figures that might be useful against Gao Ming.
• Xia Yang insists that defeating Gao Ming requires becoming him. Situ An rejects the idea and escapes before Gao Ming’s power fully returns.
• Meanwhile, Fan Li and the others stop to rest after fleeing the Underground Parking Lot. They realize Xia Yang is still behind, while Xishan continues concealing a mysterious hand he carries.
• Two Student Council members arrive with a letter bearing Gao Ming’s credentials. They lead the group toward the Future God’s room, where a door out of the “worst possible future” may now be accessible because the Future God’s clay sculpture was destroyed and Gao Ming has been reborn in the God-Child’s body.
• Near the room, the group finds corpses and scraps that resemble Gao Ming’s school uniform, raising the question of whether he has been there.

Character developments and interactions

• Situ An is pragmatic and power-focused. He sees morality as something the victor can rewrite, and treats Xia Yang as a possible weapon rather than an ally.
• Xia Yang is disillusioned with his creation but remains fixated on producing a “perfect work.” He challenges Situ An’s confidence by pointing out that he is still running from Gao Ming.
• Fan Li is cautious and protective, carrying the Headless Baby and questioning both the newcomers’ motives and Xishan’s secret.
• Xishan is exhausted but evasive, warning that the hand he hides is dangerous to look at or use.
• The Student Council members show deep loyalty to Gao Ming and cooperate with Fan Li’s group, while Fan Li avoids telling them about the deaths of their fellow members.

Significant themes

• Fate, identity, and transformation: Xia Yang suggests that Gao Ming can only be defeated by becoming him; the chapter also hints at a “seed” that could challenge Fate itself.
• Power and morality: Situ An believes power determines who is judged good or evil.
• Faith and suffering: The Student Council’s faith helps Gao Ming resist some of the Future God’s rules, while his lack of a death date is tied to an endless cycle of pain and despair.
• Secrets and uncertain futures: Xishan’s hidden hand, Hanhai’s purpose, and the corpses resembling Gao Ming all leave key questions unresolved.

Plot points and events

• As the anomaly grows more dangerous, Fan Li realizes he sees Gao Ming as a source of hope. He and the others follow a corridor filled with corpses and curses, while He Jing privately considers aligning himself with both the Bureau and Gao Ming’s group to survive.
• They encounter Wang Jie, a heavily cursed Class Thirteen student whose fingers have fused with a strange blade. He says Gao Ming brought him to the corridor after Wang Jie fought people transformed into Gao Ming’s family in a horrifying future.
• Wang Jie explains that ordinary people cannot see the Future God’s room; they must mutate to perceive it. He helps the group see the corridor’s doors as living people and leads them to a little girl who serves as the room’s threshold.
• The girl’s presence draws the group into her immaculate inner world. Inside, a grotesque heart has corrupted the otherwise spotless room. Gao Ming stands beside it, wounded and seemingly lost in a series of despairing futures.
• Fan Li approaches, carrying the baby and calling to Gao Ming. Luo Dong and a towering female ghost block the way, distrustful of outsiders. Fan Li tells them he has brought Gao Yun and the Future God’s flesh and blood.

Character developments and interactions

• Fan Li moves from gratitude toward Gao Ming to deep faith in him, and risks confronting Luo Dong and the female ghost to reach him.
• Wang Jie is revealed to be severely mutated and able to endure cursed blood. Though dangerous and initially suspicious, he helps Xishan and the others find the Future God’s room.
• He Jing becomes more pragmatic, privately planning to keep options open between the General Investigation Bureau and Gao Ming’s group.
• Gao Ming appears physically and mentally overwhelmed, absorbed in the suffering of multiple possible futures. His condition alarms his companions.
• Luo Dong and the female ghost protect Gao Ming and distrust the newcomers, creating a tense standoff even as Fan Li tries to prove his intentions.

Significant themes

• Hope amid horror: Fan Li’s faith in Gao Ming gives him confidence even in a corridor marked by death.
• Mutation and perception: The group must become altered to see the hidden structure of the Future God’s domain.
• Trust and allegiance: He Jing weighs survival against loyalty, while the defenders at the heart refuse to trust anyone easily.
• The burden of possible futures: The heart embodies futures consumed by despair, and Gao Ming seems to be confronting that suffering in search of a solution.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming enters the Future God’s heart to find and destroy the god’s own will, after earlier efforts weakened its faith and cut off its escape route. He and the god clash through a succession of imagined futures and memories.
• Gao Ming endures the god’s bleak scenarios, drawing on his past experiences of suffering and death. Eventually, he reaches a clear, incense-scented memory that seems different from the others.
• In this memory, Gao Ming can see but cannot move. He watches an old man leave offerings, then a boy who returns night after night to pray for protection from bullying and for his mother’s recovery. His wishes never come true.
• When mutated villagers attack, the old man hides the boy beneath the offering table. The boy survives the massacre of the household and eventually escapes.
• Gao Ming recognizes that he is experiencing the memories of a haunted house—not a person. The house appears to have developed consciousness over time by absorbing people’s prayers, emotions, desires, and blood.
• After the residence is abandoned and later falls into ruin, Gao Ming feels a strange impulse to lure people inside. The chapter ends before he acts.

Character developments

• Gao Ming proves exceptionally resilient: repeated exposure to imagined despair sharpens rather than breaks his will. His discovery of the house’s origins brings him closer to understanding the Future God.
• The boy is introduced as vulnerable and hopeful, repeatedly making futile wishes. His fear during the attack gives way to survival when he finally escapes alone.
• The Future God is revealed, at least in this memory, to have originated as a haunted house that gradually gained awareness from human suffering and belief.

Significant themes

• Endurance against despair: Gao Ming’s lived experience gives him an advantage over a god that creates terrible futures.
• The origins of belief and divinity: The Future God may have formed from accumulated human emotions, prayers, and suffering rather than beginning as a god.
• Hope and helplessness: The boy keeps praying even though his wishes go unanswered.
• Trauma and transformation: The violence absorbed by the house appears to shape its emerging consciousness.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming’s central interaction is a battle of wills with the Future God, fought through memories and possible futures.
• The boy treats the haunted house as an object of worship, leaving offerings and praying to it.
• The old man protects the boy by hiding him during the attack.
• The mutated villagers hesitate before the house, bow to it, and leave, suggesting fear or reverence toward it.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming remains an old, decaying residence for countless years, resisting the violent and intrusive thoughts that have begun to grow within him.
• The sole survivor of the Family Annihilation Case—the chubby boy Gao Ming once knew—returns as an old man. After a lifetime spent seeking revenge, he performs a blood sacrifice and tears down the house’s talismans, begging for divine help.
• No god appears. The old man dies beside the offering table, and his final despair intensifies the ominous thoughts within Gao Ming. His body is left undisturbed to decay in the courtyard, where flowers grow.
• Over time, rumors spread that the courtyard can curse enemies, shorten lives, and alter the future. Desperate visitors arrive seeking its power; some enemies begin dying in strange ways, strengthening belief in the house.
• Followers renovate the residence, erect a statue, and willingly become vessels for the entity they call the calamity god. The statue gradually takes on Gao Ming’s face.
• Trapped and unable to stop the transformation, Gao Ming decides to merge with and consume the Future God’s evil thoughts. This may make him the very god responsible for the horrors, but it also gives him influence over the followers.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming begins as a passive, resistant presence, trying to preserve himself against thoughts that tempt him toward cruelty and control. The old man’s death and the followers’ growing faith weaken his resistance. Facing the statue’s emergence, he chooses corruption as his only remaining means of action.
• The old survivor has spent his life pursuing revenge but reaches the end of his hope, turning to the haunted house as a last refuge. His pleas and death leave a lasting imprint on Gao Ming.
• The followers transform the house through their belief: they bring offerings, renovate it, and allow the entity’s thoughts to possess them. Their faith gives the calamity god increasing power.
• Gao Ming’s relationship with the old man is largely one-sided: the old man has trusted in the house since childhood, while Gao Ming knows he is no god and cannot answer his prayers. Later, Gao Ming and the hostile thoughts within him form a reluctant alignment over the old man’s corpse and, eventually, over the followers.

Significant themes

• Faith born of desperation: People turn to gods when justice and human help fail, and collective belief can give power to something that may not have existed as a god before.
• The cost of agency: Gao Ming can finally act only by embracing the corruption he has resisted, risking becoming the evil he hopes to control.
• Revenge and injustice: The old man’s lifelong pursuit ends without justice, exposing the pain of a world where wrongdoing can go unpunished.
• Identity and transformation: The statue’s resemblance to Gao Ming foreshadows his possible transformation into the Future God.
• Hope as a dangerous force: The visitors’ hopes fuel the house’s growing supernatural influence, even when that hope is directed toward a destructive power.

Plot and events

• Gao Ming discovers that the memory takes place in a settlement in the Shadow World, where living people endure despair and rely on faith to survive. Their belief in the Future God gives the deity power.
• Seeing how suffering shapes the world, Gao Ming questions whether merging the Shadow World with reality would truly help either side.
• He develops a different approach to fulfilling wishes: rather than answering hatred with violence, he bears people’s pain and helps them regain clarity, learn the shadows’ dangers, and grow stronger.
• The settlement’s believers split between Gao Ming’s smaller, rational faction and the Future God’s larger group, which depends on prayers and miracles. Their conflict ends in a battle that destroys the haunted house and kills many; Gao Ming’s followers take control, while the others depart with the clay sculpture.
• Gao Ming’s settlement expands into a recognized sanctuary, welcoming wanderers and even ghosts. Its people eventually build an enduring source of fire—a kind of artificial sun.
• As the city grows, Gao Ming absorbs mounting curses and karma until his will is badly damaged. Meanwhile, the Future God regains its strength through its followers. Its will returns to the city, and the memory approaches its end.

Character development

• Gao Ming shifts from trying simply to survive the memory to understanding the Shadow World through the suffering of its inhabitants. He becomes a leader who builds hope without resorting to cruelty, but the burden of others’ pain steadily wears down his will.
• The Future God is revealed as a power sustained by people’s hopes. Though its followers give them comfort, it also directs their wishes according to its own methods and grows stronger by drawing on their faith.

Themes

• Faith as survival: Belief offers people a way to endure what they cannot change, and also becomes a source of divine power.
• Hope amid despair: Gao Ming cannot repair the whole Shadow World, but he tries to create a refuge where people can keep living.
• The cost of compassion and leadership: Bearing others’ suffering helps build the sanctuary but exacts a severe personal toll.
• Competing visions of salvation: The chapter presents different ideas about whether to preserve the worlds’ separation, merge them, or shift suffering from one to the other.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming’s followers respond to his leadership by studying the shadows, accepting ghost markings, and building strength rather than competing for limited shelter.
• Their increasingly rational, self-reliant approach clashes with the Future God’s followers, who look to prayer and miracles; this divide culminates in violence and their eventual separation.
• Gao Ming’s relationship with the settlement is reciprocal: he gives people refuge and purpose, while their hopes and faith sustain the growing city—though their accumulating curses and karma burden him.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming’s will confronts the Future God, who arrives at the city with diseased refugees and ghost-merged monsters carrying a clay likeness of himself. The refugees’ god treats them as expendable and intends to replace Gao Ming.
• The Future God overwhelms Gao Ming in the Old Residence, tortures him, and finally shatters his will. The residence collapses, seemingly marking Gao Ming’s death.
• Yet the Future God cannot take control of the city. Its people resist, having been shaped by Gao Ming’s earlier efforts to foster hope and self-reliance.
• Gao Ming’s curse-laden soul blood and scattered will infiltrate the Future God, carrying the karma of the city’s people. The residents unite, attack the god, and damage his clay vessel as his power weakens.
• The Future God realizes he has lost: although Gao Ming’s soul appears destroyed, his will now lives on in the people. The chapter ends with the people fighting for their own future while the accumulated curses and karma consume the Future God.

Character developments

• Gao Ming accepts apparent death as the price of giving the city’s people agency. Rather than making them dependent on his protection, he entrusts them with hope and the power to shape what comes next.
• The Future God begins utterly confident, viewing followers as disposable and strength as proof of supremacy. His defeat reveals the weakness of a faith imposed through fear and control.
• The city’s residents transform from wary survivors into a united force willing to risk their lives to protect the hope Gao Ming helped kindle.

Significant themes

• Hope versus despair: A fragile hope can endure even in a world defined by darkness.
• Shared agency: The future cannot be dictated by a single god; people must take responsibility for shaping it.
• Faith and leadership: Faith rooted in fear makes followers expendable, while hope shared among people can outlast an individual’s apparent death.
• Sacrifice and legacy: Gao Ming’s curses and karma become part of his final strategy, and his ideals survive through those he inspired.
• Uncertainty: The future is not fixed; its unpredictability is what makes it possible to change.

Character interactions

• The Future God directly confronts and destroys Gao Ming’s will, expecting to claim the city afterward.
• The residents’ resistance frustrates the Future God and exposes his failure to understand the people he considers insignificant.
• Gao Ming’s influence connects the residents to one another: they act together, turning his scattered will and shared hope into a collective challenge to the god.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming defeats the Future God in a prolonged clash of wills within the Shadow World. The Future God’s attempt to destroy the city fails because Gao Ming’s hope and influence persist in people’s hearts. His will collapses, and his faith-filled heart merges with Gao Ming’s Divine Heart.
• Gao Ming returns to the Future God’s room, transformed by the experience. He has inherited the power to perceive the past through his left eye and see the flames of possible futures through his right.
• He senses the uncanny beings in the Changcheng Residential Complex and discovers that Situ An has escaped the Future God’s control—but remains bound to Gao Ming through the Execution House.
• Gao Ming uses the complex’s followers and nine Greater Ghosts to break the hold of the “Worst Future.” The group discovers the Future God’s decaying Old Residence, where devoted followers are physically bound to it by threads and treated as expendable tools.
• A female ghost reunites with her transformed parents. The Old Residence then crumbles, and the headless baby in Fan Li’s arms awakens.
• Gao Ming warns that the Past and Future Gods’ suppression of ghost abilities has ended, meaning the Investigators may soon be free—but escape will still be difficult. He declares that, having devoured the Future God, he is now the Anomaly Event itself.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming emerges with vastly increased power, a stronger grasp of the Shadow World, and greater certainty about his path. He chooses to guide the Future God’s followers and use their connection to the uncanny beings rather than severing it.
• The Future God loses the struggle for faith: even as he tries to erase the city, the hope he inspired through Gao Ming endures in its people.
• Situ An is revealed to have been released from the Future God’s confinement, though he does not realize he is still tied to Gao Ming’s fate.
• The female ghost is reunited with her parents, whom she finds among the followers bound to the Old Residence. Gao Ming promises to bring them back as a parting gift.
• Fan Li worries that the danger may not be over. A Student Council member calmly protects the headless baby and explains its role in the gods’ plans.
• Gao Ming leads the nine Greater Ghosts into the Execution House, while the other survivors follow him through the residential complex.

Significant themes

• Hope and faith: The Future God cannot destroy hope once it has taken root in people; belief becomes a force that outlasts its god.
• Freedom versus exploitation: The followers’ devotion is exposed as a form of bondage, as the god they trusted uses them as tools.
• Identity, memory, and fate: Gao Ming’s eyes symbolize his growing command of past and future, while his accumulated memories of death shape who he has become.
• Power and responsibility: Gao Ming inherits the Future God’s domain and influence, but now faces the consequences of becoming an anomaly powerful enough to threaten others.

Chapter summary

With the Future God’s influence fading, Gao Ming turns to settling old scores and helping those trapped in the crisis. He reassures Luo Dong that his family’s souls remain safe as long as the Future God has not drained their faith. He also tests He Jing by making him touch the Execution House’s chains. When He Jing emerges unharmed, Gao Ming frees him to return to the Jingtuo God’s service—but agrees to let him prove his loyalty by confronting Security personnel he hates.
Once the divine suppression lifts, the factions in Changcheng Residential Complex resume fighting over valuable ghost-god relics. Gao Ming ignores them, gathers the strange entities, and helps Luo Dong reunite with his family. He tells Doctor Li and Ouyang Su to stay in Building Three, treat it as home, and use any useful cursed items. Meanwhile, Security personnel led by Zhuo Jun and Yuan Hui brutally round up the Ghost Story Players trapped in Xiangshengyong Apartments. Gao Ming forces open the building and heads for its remaining Future Door.
The door explodes as Gao Ming opens it, shaking the apartments and releasing bloody filth. The First Team Leader and Liu Yi are thrown out from within. They describe a future in which Hanhai’s citizens face awakened evil gods and rampant ghosts, but are no longer controlled by Fate. Liu Yi gives Gao Ming the drained head of the Future God’s statue and says that resisting Fate must not mean becoming a new Fate herself.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts with greater authority and power, balancing mercy with accountability. He protects allies and offers He Jing a chance to prove himself, while remaining wary of Liu Yi.
• He Jing desperately claims his loyalty to Gao Ming, then volunteers to attack his former Security colleagues. He is still connected to the Jingtuo God, but Gao Ming allows him to keep that role.
• Luo Dong receives reassurance about his family, while Doctor Li and Ouyang Su appear more mutually dependent and are given refuge.
• Liu Yi remains enigmatic: she seems to have pursued her own objective behind the Future Door, but insists she will not become an instrument of Fate.
• The First Team Leader returns shaken by what he saw inside the door.
• Zhuo Jun and Yuan Hui reveal the Security forces’ ruthlessness as they suppress the surviving players.

Significant themes

The chapter emphasizes justice and the settling of debts, alongside the difference between mercy and blind trust. It also shows how alliances collapse when a shared enemy disappears, and how power can be used either to protect or exploit others. Liu Yi’s conclusion gives the central philosophical theme: resisting Fate is necessary, but those who resist must not simply replace it with a new form of control.

Plot points and events

• Liu Yi leaves the apartment complex after warning Gao Ming that the future beyond a certain door showed a world where being human meant misery. The Shadow World and its remaining eerie entities make way for her.
• The First Team Leader tries to reconcile with Gao Ming, blaming past conflict on the Jingtuo God and the General Bureau. Gao Ming rejects the idea that he or the others ever truly left Hanhai: he believes the city is a prison, its residents’ memories have been altered, and its factions may be controlled by Blood City Lords.
• Wan Jie and several Security team leaders arrive at Xiangshengyong Apartments, followed by Zhuo Jun and Yuan Hui with their forces. The two sides accuse each other of sacrificing Ghost Story Players, but He Jing reveals a group of surviving players who had been bound to a sacrificial altar.
• Zhuo Jun explains that the Jingtuo God’s trap targeted both the Ghost Story Players and Wan Jie, while the General Bureau used the operation to draw Gao Ming out. He also reveals that the General Bureau has its own Dream Ghost.
• Gao Ming lets Zhuo Jun leave to contact the Jingtuo God, but keeps the others at the apartments as potential leverage. He then opens the Execution House at full strength, intending to pull the Jingtuo God inside.

Character developments

• Gao Ming has become harder to read and more powerful after absorbing the Future God’s heart. He sees himself as having shifted from a pawn to a player, and acts with greater confidence and strategic control.
• Liu Yi appears increasingly mysterious and independent; her warning suggests she has seen a devastating possible future.
• Zhuo Jun is revealed to be pragmatic and deeply implicated in violence against former classmates. Despite being Gao Ming’s old classmate, he bargains for his own survival and exposes information about the General Bureau.
• The First Team Leader tries to mediate between Gao Ming and Wan Jie, but Gao Ming remains distrustful.

Significant themes

• Manipulation and unreliable reality: Hanhai may be a constructed prison, with altered memories and powerful forces operating behind its factions.
• Humanity and suffering: Liu Yi’s warning raises the possibility that survival in the future may come at the cost of what it means to be human.
• Power and shifting roles: Gao Ming’s new perspective lets him challenge the forces that once treated him as a pawn.
• Moral ambiguity: Accusations of sacrifice and betrayal show how opposing groups each claim innocence while committing or concealing violence.

Character interactions

• Liu Yi warns Gao Ming before leaving, while Gao Ming chooses not to stop her.
• The First Team Leader appeals to Gao Ming to explain matters to Wan Jie; Gao Ming refuses to release Wan Jie yet.
• Wan Jie’s side and Zhuo Jun’s side confront each other over the fate of the Ghost Story Players, with He Jing disputing the accusation of sacrifice.
• Gao Ming challenges Zhuo Jun over his past betrayal of their classmates, then uses him as a messenger to summon the Jingtuo God.

Plot and key events

• Gao Ming waits at Xiangshengyong Apartments, having concealed the Execution House within the anomaly event. He hopes to lure the Jingtuo God inside and learn what the General Investigation Bureau knows about Hanhai, Fate, and the Dream Ghost.
• The Jingtuo God arrives with Security personnel and releases Big Dog from a black urn. The cursed creature struggles to approach Gao Ming, apparently unwilling to infect him. Gao Ming expands the anomaly event’s reach to protect or contain it.
• The Jingtuo God proposes a bargain: the Bureau will hand over the other Anomalous and Ghost Creatures who broke into its headquarters, while Gao Ming must return Wan Jie and the Security First Team’s leader alive, along with the body created by the Future and Past Gods.
• Gao Ming challenges the Bureau’s interest in Wan Jie and hints that the Jingtuo God is one of Blood City’s thirteen candidates. He also claims another candidate is hidden inside the Bureau, rattling the Jingtuo God.
• The Jingtuo God refuses to approach any closer. As a strand of his hair disappears into the anomaly’s shadows, he senses the danger and leaves, promising that the exchange will happen before dark.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed and strategic. He uses fragments of truth and an unsupported claim about a second candidate to unsettle the Jingtuo God, while keeping his own trap hidden.
• The Jingtuo God maintains a calm, threatening manner but reveals anxiety beneath it. His caution around Gao Ming and the anomaly suggests he recognizes the danger of the situation.
• Their meeting is a guarded negotiation: the Jingtuo God tries to provoke Gao Ming with Big Dog and impose conditions, while Gao Ming probes for information and subtly shifts the balance of power.
• Big Dog’s loyalty is emphasized: despite its curses, it avoids approaching Gao Ming rather than risk harming him.

Significant themes

• Deception and information as weapons: Both men conceal their motives, and Gao Ming’s carefully chosen claims provoke a strong reaction.
• Power balanced by caution: Gao Ming’s anomaly can threaten even the Jingtuo God, but neither side is ready for open conflict.
• Loyalty amid danger: Big Dog’s refusal to pass on its curses illustrates devotion expressed through self-sacrifice.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming confronts the Jingtuo God, who tries to flee. Gao Ming reveals his interest in the contest among the thirteen Candidates and in another Candidate hidden within the General Investigation Bureau.
• Gao Ming traps part of the Jingtuo God—his shadow and a lock of hair—inside the Execution House, but lets him go to avoid exposing his full power and provoking a dangerous presence tied to the Dream Ghost.
• Gao Ming threatens to unleash Anomaly Events across Hanhai unless the Bureau delivers the people he requested.
• Big Dog, recovering after being fed remnant souls, begs Gao Ming to rescue Zhang Ding, who is being tortured by the Bureau for information.
• Big Dog describes the Bureau’s hidden horrors: a graveyard beneath its main building where dead Investigators’ obsessions are kept and fed to a Ghost; underground laboratories beneath the Mystery Analysis Institute, where Divine Corpses and anomalous curses are studied and mentally affected Investigators are used as test subjects; and a terrifying tenth building that swallowed Zhang Ding.
• Zhang Ding apparently discovered a crucial “truth” before sacrificing himself to get Big Dog and the Spirit Medium out. Gao Ming wonders whether it concerns Hanhai’s disaster or the Shadow World.
• When Gao Ming asks whether Xuan Wen escaped, Big Dog appears unable to recognize the name.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains calculating and threatening, choosing to take a piece of the Jingtuo God rather than risk a direct confrontation. He also shows concern for Zhang Ding and the others.
• The Jingtuo God’s confidence collapses into fear as Gao Ming demonstrates the reach of his power.
• Big Dog’s account shows how deeply the Bureau’s secrets have shaken him. Despite his fear, he is determined to save Zhang Ding.
• Zhang Ding is portrayed as courageous and self-sacrificing: he pushed Big Dog and the Spirit Medium out of the tenth building and stayed behind.
• Big Dog’s sudden inability to remember Xuan Wen raises the possibility of a supernatural restriction or altered memory.

Significant themes

• Institutional hypocrisy: The Bureau presents itself as a refuge, yet conceals a graveyard and cruel experiments beneath its headquarters.
• The cost of knowledge: Investigating the Bureau’s deepest secrets leads to despair and danger.
• Power, secrecy, and survival: Gao Ming weighs what he can reveal or risk as rival forces monitor him.
• Memory and identity: Big Dog’s inexplicable failure to recognize Xuan Wen hints that memories can be manipulated or erased.

Key plot points and events

• Big Dog does not remember Xuan Wen, despite Gao Ming insisting she went with him to the General Investigation Bureau. Big Dog says only he, Zhang Ding, the Spirit Medium, the Physical Education Teacher, and Gossip went; Zhang Ding and he were captured, while the others escaped.
• Worried by Xuan Wen’s disappearance, Gao Ming seals off the Anomaly Event and unleashes the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s power. The Ghost God has recovered from its injuries and grown stronger, and Gao Ming now believes he can control it.
• Gao Ming brings the people at Xiangshengyong Apartments into the Execution House, promising they will be allowed to leave after nightfall. Wan Jie willingly lowers his defenses and inhales the supernatural meat fragrance to reassure Gao Ming. The First Team Leader remains loyal to Wan Jie rather than accepting Gao Ming’s offer to join him.
• At Building Three, rival factions try to seize the cursed items and Clay Sculpture Fragments collected by Fan Li and Xishan. Wang Jie confronts his cousin Wang Chenyi, who invokes family ties while trying to claim the goods; Shen Tian also demands a share.
• Gao Ming arrives and captures the assembled leaders and elites with chains, bringing them into the Execution House. Security personnel try to protect Wang Chenyi, but the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal overwhelms the crowd.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from restraining the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal to commanding it, confident that their wills have reached a workable balance. His immediate concern, however, is finding out what happened to Xuan Wen.
• Big Dog is confused by Gao Ming’s account of Xuan Wen, deepening the mystery around her disappearance.
• Wan Jie accepts the risk of Gao Ming’s influence rather than resist him, while the First Team Leader stands by Wan Jie.
• Wang Jie openly rejects his cousin’s sudden appeal to family loyalty, revealing resentment over years of being ignored. Wang Chenyi and Shen Tian each try to exploit the crisis for the collected items.

Significant themes

• Control and monstrosity: Gao Ming’s growing command of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal blurs the line between human and monster.
• Loyalty and betrayal: Wan Jie’s trust, the First Team Leader’s allegiance, and Wang Jie’s family grievance contrast with the factions’ opportunistic behavior.
• Power and coercion: Gao Ming presents his capture of others as an “invitation,” while the supernatural force behind it leaves little room to refuse.
• Uncertainty and perception: Big Dog’s missing memory of Xuan Wen—and Wan Jie’s painful ability to see the truth—suggest that knowledge and reality may be unreliable.