Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming takes control of the aftermath of the Future God’s defeat. Shen Tian quickly abandons his earlier aggression, while Wang Chenyi responds with careful diplomacy; both offer friendship and allegiance.
• Gao Ming gives Shen Tian’s group two boxes of cursed items and the Future God’s wall clock. He also uses the named Soul Locks and the Flesh-and-Blood Furnace to bind those present to obey him, though he deliberately stops the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal from fully transforming them.
• Wang Chenyi offers to bring Gao Ming to Security personnel still at Building One. By evening, everyone involved in the General Investigation Bureau’s Great Screening has entered the Execution House, leaving Gao Ming with control over the event’s survivors.
• The Jingtuo God returns with sealed buses and delivers a message: the black fog is spreading toward Hanhai, and the General Investigation Bureau wants Gao Ming’s help exploring it. As a gesture meant to encourage cooperation, they present Zhang Ding’s nearly dried-out head, altered with the eye of their Dream Ghost. The eye is intended to push Zhang Ding toward becoming a Dream Ghost, though it also serves as an implicit show of the Bureau’s power.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts with calm authority, rewarding potential allies while making clear that betrayal will have consequences. He resists turning everyone into followers of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, showing that his ambitions are not simply to spread its influence.
• Shen Tian rapidly shifts from hostility to public loyalty, flattering Gao Ming and aligning himself with the most powerful figure in the room.
• Wang Chenyi proves politically astute: he hides his wariness, offers a formal friendship, and helps Gao Ming reach the remaining Security personnel to improve his own chances of survival.
• The Jingtuo God presents the Bureau’s proposal as an equal partnership, but its modification of Zhang Ding reveals the coercive edge beneath that offer.
• Zhang Ding becomes a bargaining piece between Gao Ming and the Bureau: the implanted Dream Ghost eye may give him new power, but it also signals the Bureau’s interference.

Significant themes

• Power reshapes loyalty: people who seemed hostile quickly become allies when Gao Ming gains the upper hand.
• Generosity as leverage: Gao Ming’s gifts unsettle others and strengthen his influence as much as threats might.
• Alliance and coercion: both Gao Ming and the Bureau seek cooperation, but each uses power to secure it.
• Control versus transformation: Gao Ming can compel obedience and halt mutation, yet chooses not to make everyone an immortal’s believer.
• An expanding danger: the spreading black fog shifts the conflict beyond the anomaly event and makes cooperation increasingly urgent.

Plot points and events

• Zhang Ding’s absorbed soul power and negative emotions are trapped in his left eye, leaving him physically and mentally near collapse. The Jingtuo God identifies it as the General Investigation Bureau’s Dream Ghost eye.
• The Jingtuo God reveals that the Bureau has studied Gao Ming as a rare person whose will may withstand the black fog. It wants him to retrieve Information Recorder No. 0003 from Xiao’an Town, which may explain why the fog spread out of control.
• To persuade him, the Bureau shows that Gao Ming’s friends—including other founders of the Deadwater Forum—are trapped in the town. Xuan Wen is absent from its records, suggesting the Bureau has never detected her.
• Mutated Investigators emerge from a bus, and Gao Ming lets the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God devour them. Their implanted divine flesh strengthens the ghost and brightens Gao Ming’s Blood City tattoo.
• Gao Ming releases the Bureau’s Security personnel but keeps the anomaly event sealed as a place to cultivate supernatural horrors. He puts Zhang Ding’s head in the Future God’s shrine, unable to safely remove the eye.
• Gao Ming summons the survivors and asks some to accompany him into the black fog. He warns that ghost markings may run wild there, but also hints they could find and claim abandoned supernatural items.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains distrustful of the Bureau, but agrees to enter the fog for his trapped friends and the recorder. He also sees the mission as a chance to test his growing power.
• The Jingtuo God presents the Bureau’s cooperation as necessary to save Hanhai, while making clear it expects Gao Ming to retrieve the recorder. He also demands the release of people the Bureau captured.
• Zhang Ding is helpless and deteriorating; Gao Ming tries to save him, but the Dream Ghost eye resists interference and draws on Zhang Ding’s soul to repair itself.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God grows stronger by consuming the mutated Investigators and shows rare satisfaction.
• Shen Tian and Situ Cheng, along with the other survivors, react warily to Gao Ming’s request, underscoring the danger of the journey.

Significant themes

• Cooperation under distrust: Gao Ming and the Bureau share an urgent goal, but both have altered or exploited the other’s people.
• Power and its cost: Strengthening supernatural beings may help Gao Ming survive, yet it risks further loss of control and damage to those tied to them.
• Uncertainty and hidden knowledge: The Bureau’s ignorance of Xuan Wen and the unexplained spread of the black fog suggest that its understanding—and control—of events is limited.

• Plot and events: The narrator was out of town for a meeting and encountered a minor problem with a connecting flight on the return trip. As a result, they expect not to finish the day’s update and announce a day off.
• Character development: The narrator comes across as responsible, explaining the delay and apologizing rather than leaving readers without notice.
• Themes: Everyday setbacks, work commitments, and communicating honestly when plans change.
• Character interactions: The narrator addresses readers warmly as “brothers and sisters,” apologizes to them, and asks for their understanding.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming recruits Shen Tian, Situ Cheng, and their followers into his cause by having them swallow his and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal’s blood. This binds them to the Ghost God and lets them visualize it.
• He explains that the General Investigation Bureau contains multiple Dream Ghosts and is abandoning Hanhai. He orders his new allies to spread statues of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal through local anomaly events and worship them there.
• Shen Tian and Situ Cheng must also gather trusted subordinates and accompany Gao Ming into the black fog near Xiao’an Town. Though uneasy, they have little choice but to comply.
• Gao Ming evacuates the Xiangshengyong Apartments, sending the living out and storing the dead and uncanny entities in the Execution House.
• Worried that Xuan Wen is gradually being erased from existence, Gao Ming retrieves the keepsakes she left him.
• At Hande Private Academy, he finds that the Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree—formed through Phobia and his old classmate Ji Zhe—has grown enormously. The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal cannot yet devour it and needs more Divine Corpses to become complete.
• Ji Zhe contacts Gao Ming through the old class group chat. Gao Ming replies that he wants to take his old classmate somewhere “nice.”

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming consolidates control over rival leaders while revealing his broader plan. His fear for Xuan Wen also becomes clearer, and he turns his attention to the growing threat connected to Ji Zhe.
• Shen Tian quickly presents himself as Gao Ming’s loyal supporter, though his eagerness also reflects pragmatism and self-preservation.
• Situ Cheng distances himself from Situ An and agrees to cooperate, despite recognizing the danger.
• Luo Dong, now reunited with his family, openly supports Gao Ming and helps carry out his plans.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal is eager to consume the giant tree but admits, through its reaction, that it is not yet powerful enough.
• Ji Zhe appears to retain awareness within the tree and directly addresses Gao Ming, setting up their next encounter.

Significant themes

• Power through risk and submission: In a collapsing city, survival and influence come from accepting dangerous bargains.
• Control versus autonomy: Gao Ming’s allies cooperate, but their new bond leaves their lives—and choices—largely in his hands.
• Institutional abandonment: The General Investigation Bureau’s claims of protecting Hanhai contrast with its retreat and self-interest.
• Memory and erasure: Xuan Wen’s disappearing belongings suggest that people can be erased from reality, making memory and keepsakes fragile forms of resistance.
• Fear as a force: Hanhai’s growing terror feeds the giant tree, turning collective emotion into a physical threat.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal realize the Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree is an unprecedented threat: it has no conventional death zone, but Phobia’s spread across Hanhai’s East District effectively gives it one.
• Gao Ming contacts Ji Zhe through the old class group chat. Though Ji Zhe’s body appears dead and has fused with the tree, he remains active in the chat and speaks as if nothing is unusual.
• Deep beneath the Grand Auditorium, Gao Ming gives Ji Zhe a drop of the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s blood. The tree responds with renewed growth, and Ji Zhe eagerly asks for more.
• Gao Ming discovers that the tree has grown three “seeds of fear” inside Ji Zhe—one in his brain, one in his belly, and one in his neck. Ji Zhe says he created them by imagining that the tree needed seeds to reproduce, demonstrating that his imagination can alter the tree.
• Gao Ming plans to investigate the black fog in Xiao’an Town and eventually return to the tunnel where his class once had an accident. Ji Zhe offers to reach him by extending the tree’s roots, though Gao Ming remains focused on finding Yan Xizhi.
• At Hande Private Academy’s Principal’s Office, Gao Ming finds Yan Xizhi badly wounded, with black fog leaking from her injuries. She reveals that she entered the fog after it appeared on the East District’s outskirts.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts cautiously, testing whether Ji Zhe or parts of the tree can be taken beyond the city. He also seeks answers about the black fog and assistance from Yan Xizhi.
• Ji Zhe remains recognizable as Gao Ming’s old friend despite being fused with the giant tree. His imagination has become powerful enough to reshape the tree, and he intends to master his abilities and help Gao Ming.
• Yan Xizhi is revealed to be severely injured despite having become a Dream Ghost, suggesting that the black fog poses a danger even to powerful supernatural beings.
• Xishan and the former classmates react uneasily to Ji Zhe’s grotesque condition and messages; Xishan alone continues engaging with him.

Significant themes

• Imagination shaping reality: Ji Zhe’s beliefs and ideas can physically alter the giant tree.
• Friendship amid transformation: Gao Ming still treats Ji Zhe as an old friend, even though Ji Zhe’s body and nature have radically changed.
• Uncertain boundaries between life and death: Ji Zhe appears dead yet communicates, while the tree, ghosts, and humans overlap in unsettling ways.
• The unknown threat of the black fog: Its origin and effects remain unclear, but Yan Xizhi’s wounds suggest it can injure even a Dream Ghost.

Key plot points and events

• Principal Yan Xizhi reveals that the black fog is sentient, possibly a gathering of souls or a manifestation of a will. It distorts the world, calls people with familiar voices, and gradually “dilutes” bodies, souls, and minds until they become part of it.
• Yan warns Gao Ming that a powerful, unspeakable being may notice and kill anyone who speaks of it. She was injured after entering the fog and trying to leave Hanhai.
• Her survival advice is counterintuitive: willingly let the fog in, appear ordinary, and do not resist or display unusual power. She begins to say the fog is “Fate’s…” but is overwhelmed before finishing. Her final warning is that time is running out and Gao Ming must find a new Blood City.
• Gao Ming leaves for Xiao’an Town carrying three seeds of the Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree. He reflects that the current disaster has begun earlier than in his remembered timelines, and that even his memories and the sky may be false.
• At a station near Xiao’an Town, Jingtuo God and Investigation Bureau Security personnel wait for Gao Ming. The fog has advanced to within roughly six hundred meters.
• Jingtuo God’s hands are badly damaged, and strange Ghost Markings are emerging on his body. When a Security officer notices them, the man’s eyes bleed and he collapses.
• Jingtuo questions Wan Jie, whose sight can penetrate about thirty meters into the fog, and promises freedom and help lifting the group’s curses—though Wan Jie distrusts him.
• Jingtuo and his Ghost Markings turn toward Hanhai as a bus arrives. Gao Ming is driving it, with passengers aboard.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming gains urgent intelligence about the fog but loses the possibility of having Yan as an immediate ally. He remains focused on rescuing his friends and finding the Blood City, while increasingly questioning the reliability of his memories and reality.
• Yan Xizhi is revealed to have ventured into the fog and suffered serious injuries. Despite her condition and inability to speak freely, she protects Gao Ming and gives him survival guidance.
• Jingtuo God appears physically and possibly supernaturally altered; his emerging Ghost Markings suggest he has acquired or awakened a new power. His calm promises to Wan Jie contrast with the danger and coercion surrounding him.
• Wan Jie remains wary of Jingtuo’s offer and is positioned as a valuable guide because of his limited ability to see through the fog.
• Gao Ming’s arrival reunites the two plotlines: he comes to the station where Jingtuo’s group is preparing to confront the advancing fog.

Significant themes

• The cost of resistance and power: In the fog, strength can attract greater threats; survival may require submission and concealment.
• Erosion of identity and reality: The fog absorbs people, distorts familiar voices, and makes even memory and the sky seem unreliable.
• Secrecy and forbidden knowledge: Some truths cannot be spoken without drawing the attention of lethal forces.
• Distrust and coercion: Jingtuo’s promise to free Wan Jie is met with suspicion, reflecting the fragile alliances formed under pressure.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming arrives near Hanhai’s black fog in the eerie Bus, joining Jingtuo God’s Security team as they set out for Xiao’an Town to find Information Recorder No. 0003.
• Jingtuo God leads the group by the light of a Lone Lamp, which appears to be fueled by people. The team enters the fog, where the surroundings initially seem ordinary, though the lamp gradually dims.
• Wan Jie, restrained on a cart, hints that he and Jingtuo God may both be treated as expendable sacrifices. He also warns that someone is waiting ahead; the team spots a figure waving from the fog but continues without approaching it.
• After a slow, disorienting journey, they reach Xiao’an Station. Gao Ming leaves part of his group there to establish a small camp around a repaired Shrine, using burning portraits to sustain its flames.
• Gao Ming then joins Jingtuo God’s party, bringing Wan Jie’s cart. He says the Bus passengers will serve as his escape route and refers to them as his “other classmates.”

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed and prepared. He has chosen his companions carefully based on what he learned in past deaths, and he has set up a fallback camp before entering deeper into danger.
• Jingtuo God is wary and disciplined, keeping the group close to the lamp and relying on his memorized map. His tension contrasts with Gao Ming’s calm, and Wan Jie’s remarks suggest a shared past and mutual suspicion.
• Wan Jie provokes Jingtuo God and hints at the expendable nature of their mission. His sudden warning draws attention to a figure in the fog, though he claims he had merely looked back.
• The masked Bus passengers follow Gao Ming’s instructions, establishing and guarding the station camp. One passenger’s voice seems familiar to Jingtuo God, raising suspicion about the man’s identity.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and exploitation: The lamp’s apparent human fuel and Wan Jie’s comments suggest that people may be treated as resources by those in power.
• Uncertainty and perception: The fog looks harmless, yet distorts the journey and conceals threats; familiar surroundings cannot be trusted.
• Preparation and survival: Jingtuo God relies on maps and procedure, while Gao Ming uses prior knowledge, carefully selected allies, and contingency plans.
• Trust and hidden identities: The uneasy exchange between Gao Ming, Jingtuo God, and Wan Jie—and the masked passenger’s familiar voice—underscores how little anyone knows about those around them.

Key plot points and events

• Jingtuo God, Gao Ming, Wan Jie, and Investigation Bureau Security personnel enter Xiao’an Town, where the black fog is much thicker than around its outskirts.
• The team learns that the town’s residents vanished after the fog arrived. Ordinary people appear to be drawn into it, and no one who has entered has been seen returning.
• While searching for the last signal from Information Recorder No. 0003, the group spots vehicles and apparent people near the Xiao’an Hotel.
• As they leave a nearby building, one Security officer disappears without warning. Jingtuo God decides the team should head for the hotel.
• There they meet a bus driver, a teacher, and several students, who say they came from outside Hanhai and stopped after losing their way in the fog. They treat the investigators as ordinary police and expect rescue.

Character developments and interactions

• Jingtuo God takes charge, balancing caution with the need to investigate the apparent survivors and locate the missing recorder.
• Gao Ming remains skeptical of the Investigation Bureau, openly mocking its claim that it is protecting ordinary citizens, though he briefly apologizes for assuming the worst.
• Wan Jie presses Jingtuo God to approach the hotel, suggesting the newcomers may know something about the recorder.
• The Security personnel grow increasingly frightened, especially after one of their own vanishes. They stay close to Jingtuo God for safety.
• Wei Tian, the bus driver, and Teacher Li appear calm and trusting, unaware—or seemingly unaware—of how dangerous their surroundings are. Their ordinary conversation sharply contrasts with the investigators’ fear.

Significant themes

• The uncanny and the familiar: The newcomers behave as if the world is normal, making their apparent innocence unsettling.
• Uncertainty and perception: The team cannot tell whether the people in the fog are truly alive.
• Institutional distrust: Gao Ming’s hostility toward the Investigation Bureau contrasts with its stated mission to protect the public.
• Survival and sacrifice: Entering the fog may be an attempt to save others, but it exposes the team to disappearance and unknown dangers.

Plot points

• Gao Ming, Jingtuo God, and the Security members meet driver Wei Tian, Teacher Li, and students from Xinhu No. 1 High School, who say they came from outside Hanhai. They appear unaware of ghosts, suggesting Hanhai may be isolated from a normal world beyond it.
• Wei Tian identifies the route they took: a tunnel near Xinhu, Hanjiang, and Hanhai that passes Hate Mountain Prison. Jingtuo God warns the newcomers that escaped prisoners may be nearby, using the threat to make them take the danger seriously.
• Teacher Li gathers the students, then discovers five are missing. She asks the Investigators for help; Gao Ming agrees to search the hotel and asks to bring students along.
• The black fog reacts when Gao Ming steps beyond the lamp’s light. He suppresses his Blood City Tattoo, and the fog settles. He suspects it targets Hanhai’s inhabitants and may be preventing them from leaving.
• On the bus, Gao Ming learns the class has fifty-one students, not fifty: forty-five are present, five are missing, and one stayed home sick. The repeated connection to “Class Thirteen” unsettles him.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming stays observant and guarded, recording details and probing the newcomers’ story. His willingness to enter the hotel shows concern for the missing students, while his control of his markings reveals the danger he poses or attracts.
• Jingtuo God remains suspicious and blunt, while the Security members balance caution with limited compassion.
• Teacher Li is frightened but protective and determined to recover her students. She refuses to send them into danger, even as Gao Ming proceeds with his plan.
• Wei Tian is confident and casual, treating the fog as a natural phenomenon. The newcomers’ ordinary reactions reinforce how little they know of Hanhai’s supernatural reality.

Significant themes

• Isolation and uncertainty: The outsiders’ account raises the possibility that Hanhai is a sealed-off zone surrounded by a normal world.
• Protection versus containment: Gao Ming wonders whether the fog exists to protect outsiders—or to ensure the people inside Hanhai are trapped and destroyed.
• Trust and survival: The Investigators must decide how much to help strangers while remaining wary of hidden threats.
• Recurring patterns: The class’s name and unusual student count hint that the situation may connect to something Gao Ming has encountered before.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming questions the students on the bus about an absent classmate also named Gao Ming. The students describe him as a solitary, high-achieving transfer student with a mysterious past and a connection to the banned horror game, the Forbidden Game.
• Their discussion of the game turns to the strange conditions around them: black fog, an empty town, missing people, and unfamiliar investigators. The students wonder whether they have entered the game’s world.
• The idea unsettles Gao Ming too. He recalls a map from Lishan Hospital that showed no Hanhai, and suspects the fog may be changing outsiders’ memories so they accept the city and the roles Fate has written for them.
• Gao Ming believes exposing his supernatural power could provoke the fog or attract dangerous beings. Still, he remains focused on killing Fate and reaching the “real world.”
• He tells the students that five classmates have vanished inside a hotel and asks for volunteers to help search. The bespectacled student eagerly agrees, treating Gao Ming as a quest-giving character.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains guarded but gains a troubling new suspicion about Hanhai’s reality and the fog’s influence. His resolve to oppose Fate does not waver.
• The freckled girl is knowledgeable about the Forbidden Game and defends its appeal against the dismissive Li Wen, revealing that she may have played it herself.
• Li Wen, a skeptical top student, dismisses players as escapists but becomes intrigued by the unfolding situation.
• The bespectacled student is polite and responsible, and is the first to volunteer for Gao Ming’s search.
• The students’ speculation shifts their view of Gao Ming: they begin to see him less as a fellow person and more as a possible NPC in a game.

Significant themes

• Reality and illusion: Hanhai’s existence is questioned, while the fog may be reshaping visitors’ memories.
• Fate and agency: Gao Ming rejects the roles Fate assigns and holds to his goal despite the uncertainty.
• Escapism and belief: The argument over the Forbidden Game reflects competing views of whether its promise of another reality is foolish or meaningful.
• Fear mixed with excitement: The students respond to danger through the familiar lens of games and stories, even as the situation becomes more alarming.

Key plot points and events

• Several students volunteer to accompany Gao Ming to investigate the hotel where missing students may be, despite his warning that the danger is real and could be worse than an ordinary killer.
• Gao Ming selects top student Li Wen, Class Monitor Chen Jing, freckled student Shentu Que, and PE Representative Liu Wu. Their teacher, Mr. Li, objects to sending children into danger, but Gao Ming argues that shielding them will not prepare them for the threats ahead.
• Nearby, a drunk man named Guo walks into the black fog to relieve himself and vanishes without a sound. His companion sees a thin shape disappear too and flees back to the headlights, shaken by the unseen threat.
• The Jingtuo God and Security personnel finish searching the roadside area and prepare to leave. Rui tries to persuade the Jingtuo God to help him get back to Xinhu, unaware of the strange looks from the Security team.
• The chapter reveals that a human-oil lamp can burn for only two hours, after which someone must be secretly rendered into oil.
• Gao Ming describes himself as a “Ghost Story Player,” explaining that players can grow stronger through anomaly events and develop five attributes: fierce heart, strong body, shadow soul, obsession, and brainpower.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed and pragmatic, warning the students honestly while insisting that facing danger may be necessary for survival. His mysterious, game-like description of his role captures the students’ attention.
• Li Wen, Chen Jing, Shentu Que, and Liu Wu show varying degrees of courage and curiosity. Li Wen frames the mission as a way to take control and gain knowledge; Chen Jing focuses on whether people can learn to fight ghosts; Shentu Que is especially bold.
• Mr. Li tries to protect his students and challenges Gao Ming’s authority, creating a clash between conventional adult protection and Gao Ming’s harsher survival logic.
• Guo’s companion goes from casual irritation to terror after Guo disappears, demonstrating how little control people have once they enter the fog.
• Rui focuses on his work and escape, oblivious to the danger and suspicion surrounding him.

Significant themes

• The cost of survival: People may need to risk themselves to learn how to endure the supernatural threats.
• The unknown as a source of terror: Guo’s silent disappearance is frightening precisely because no one sees what took him.
• Game logic versus reality: The students interpret Gao Ming’s explanation as a game-like system, while he stresses that death is real.
• Power through experience: Gao Ming presents encounters with anomalies as a means of gaining strength, but this growth comes at a potentially fatal price.

Plot points and events

• Ms. Li agrees to stay on the school bus while Wei Tian, Gao Ming, and several students enter the Xiao’an Hotel to search for five missing classmates. Gao Ming warns that even if they return, she should check carefully before opening the bus door.
• The group takes the elevator to the seventh floor, where the missing students were last seen. The dark, fog-filled corridor intensifies their fear and uncertainty.
• Near room 7001, an old telephone rings. Gao Ming answers but hears nothing. When Shentu Que picks up, she claims the caller is a missing classmate who warns that Gao Ming—and the whole city—are ghosts, and urges her to escape.
• Shentu Que then sees figures moving in the fog outside the corridor window and becomes increasingly distressed, hearing a phone ring even when it is silent. Black fog appears to enter her eyes.
• She tells the others that she and Gao Ming once encountered a Forbidden Game called Perfect Life, whose opening words match what she heard on the phone. She believes they have entered its deeper layers and are trapped in a death game.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains decisive and skeptical, leading the group forward despite the danger. He presses Shentu Que for details and recognizes the risk of speaking certain truths aloud.
• Wei Tian takes responsibility for the students and tries to protect them, but the hotel’s oppressive atmosphere makes him regret coming inside.
• Shentu Que shifts from fearful witness to apparently influenced or possessed participant. Her panic and fragmented behavior suggest the hotel’s fog—or the game—is affecting her mind.
• Chen Jing and the other students are frightened but follow Gao Ming and attempt to help Shentu Que.

Character interactions

• Wei Tian and Gao Ming coordinate the search and give Ms. Li strict instructions before leaving the bus.
• The students cling to one another in the corridor, relying on each other to keep moving.
• Shentu Que’s warning creates suspicion toward Gao Ming, while his questioning suggests he doubts that she has told the whole story.
• Chen Jing and Li Wen try to calm or restrain Shentu Que, but her fear spreads to the group.

Significant themes

• Fear of the unknown: The corridor is terrifying because danger could emerge from anywhere, and even the characters’ imaginations become threatening.
• Uncertainty about reality and identity: The warning that the city’s inhabitants may be ghosts blurs the boundary between ordinary life and the game.
• Contagion and loss of control: Shentu Que’s apparent exposure to the black fog suggests that supernatural influence can spread through perception and speech.
• Dangerous knowledge: Gao Ming’s reaction implies that naming or openly discussing the truth may itself carry consequences.

Key plot points and events

• Wei Tian confronts Gao Ming for restraining Shentu Que, but Gao eventually lets the students decide for themselves whether to learn the truth.
• Shentu Que reveals that answering the phone awakened information about five attributes—fierce heart, strong body, shadow soul, obsession, and brainpower. Gao recognizes these as Xia Yang’s proposed criteria for Ghost Story Players, raising the possibility that their ideas and the outsiders’ arrival were planned by “Fate.”
• Gao speculates that Hanhai’s residents may be ghosts while the outsiders are the only truly living people. He also wonders whether Class Thirteen were an earlier group of outsiders, targeted by the General Investigation Bureau and chosen by Lu Zang to oppose Fate.
• Water dripping leads the group to an open bathroom, where Chen Jing reaches for a submerged schoolbag and is pulled into the bathtub as if it were bottomless.
• Gao saves Chen by choking him, betting that the mysterious force wants the outsiders alive. The force releases Chen, who emerges coughing up filthy water, while Gao retrieves the bag.
• Shentu Que identifies it as Huang Ge’s schoolbag. Chen then reveals that the voice in the water gave him a quest: face what is in his heart and kill someone. He looks at Gao.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from trying to shield the students to respecting their choice. He continues piecing together the mystery, while testing whether the force in the fog is protecting—or recruiting—the outsiders.
• Chen Jing becomes more trusting of Gao after being rescued, but his new quest creates an ominous tension between them.
• Shentu Que shares her awakened attributes and identifies Huang Ge’s bag, helping connect the supernatural clues to the missing students.
• Wei Tian initially challenges Gao’s authority, reflecting the group’s demand for honesty and agency.

Significant themes

• Fate and manipulation: The outsiders’ abilities, the Ghost Story Player system, and Hanhai itself may have been arranged in advance.
• Life, death, and identity: Gao questions whether he and the people of Hanhai are truly alive, while the bathtub blurs the line between drowning and being transported elsewhere.
• Agency and coercion: The students insist on choosing to face the truth, even as supernatural voices impose dangerous quests.
• Protection through violence: Gao saves Chen by nearly killing him, suggesting that survival in this world may require terrible choices.

Key plot points

• Chen Jing reveals an inner voice urging him to kill Mr. Gao, while Shentu Que admits her own voice has told her that the others are ghosts and encouraged her to hurt them. Both are also being summoned toward a place in the hotel, with the promise of rewards.
• Gao Ming suspects these voices come from outside Hanhai and reflect the city’s treatment of its people as disposable captives. He has Shentu Que lead him to the place she feels drawn to.
• In the hotel’s storage room, Shentu Que and Chen Jing see a terrifying vision: an injured old woman surrounded by clay figures and deformed creatures, while their voices urge them to kill her. Gao Ming recognizes the figure as the Spirit Medium from Sishui Apartments, though he cannot initially see her.
• Gao Ming uses his supernatural sight to view the room’s past and future. He witnesses the Spirit Medium performing a disastrous divination, hiding a bundle beneath the bed, and apparently sensing his presence.
• After the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal warns that something extremely dangerous is approaching, Gao Ming retrieves the talisman-covered bundle and orders everyone to flee the hotel.

Character developments

• Chen Jing is disturbed by the violent impulse inside him but remains honest and seeks permission to warn the other students.
• Shentu Que confesses her concealed instructions and begins to confront the possibility that people she harmed in the Forbidden Game were real citizens of another world.
• Gao Ming grows more openly hostile toward Fate and risks using his powers to uncover the truth. He prioritizes the group’s escape once a greater threat appears.
• The Spirit Medium is revealed to have foreseen danger through divination and left behind something important before succumbing to the black fog.

Significant themes

• Manipulation and moral responsibility: The voices push people toward violence, but the characters must still reckon with their choices.
• The humanity of the “other”: Shentu Que’s doubts challenge the assumption that victims in the Forbidden Game were merely game figures.
• Captivity and exploitation: Gao Ming sees Hanhai’s citizens as livestock, condemned by a system that rewards outsiders for harming them.
• Knowledge at a cost: Gao Ming’s ability to see across time reveals the hidden bundle but also exposes him to an approaching danger.

Character interactions

• Chen Jing trusts Gao Ming enough to disclose his violent urges and asks whether he may warn the students.
• Shentu Que confesses to Gao Ming and leads him to the storage room, where he takes charge despite her and Chen Jing’s fear.
• Gao Ming’s vision connects him with the Spirit Medium across time; she appears to notice him, but leaves her message concealed rather than speaking it aloud.

Plot points

• Gao Ming rushes the students onto the Coach after sensing the Black Fog’s danger. Wei Tian is caught by it before Gao Ming pulls him aboard; his legs are left numb and covered in moving black-and-red handprints.
• The Coach is struck and surrounded by the Fog. As the students panic, Gao Ming struggles to suppress the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal stirring inside him.
• Wei Tian’s injury worsens. Rejecting the idea of waiting helplessly, he asks to be let outside so the others can observe the creatures and keep the Coach safe. He is swallowed by the Fog, after which the Coach steadies and the threat appears to withdraw.
• Gao Ming reads the Spirit Medium’s fading message: the exit through the Black Fog now has two routes—one narrow fissure to True Reality and one broad road to certain death. They have one chance to choose correctly and must use Coin Divination.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts quickly to protect the group, saves Wei Tian from being pulled away, and uses his willpower to contain the Ghost God within him. He remains wary of the Fog’s intentions and focuses on the message rather than the students’ argument.
• Wei Tian shows responsibility and courage, first helping others board and later sacrificing himself to protect them and learn about the threat. Despite trusting Chen Jing and Shentu Que, he still distrusts Gao Ming, whom he suspects may be a ghost.
• The students reveal conflicting instincts under pressure: some scapegoat the unfortunate, while others object to abandoning Wei Tian. Teacher Li rebukes those who urged cruelty, and Chen Jing attempts to restore order.
• Wei Tian’s final actions bring the group’s attention together, but his death leaves them facing the next decision without him.

Significant themes

• Self-preservation versus solidarity: fear drives some students to blame or abandon others, while Wei Tian chooses to protect the group.
• Character revealed by crisis: the Coach becomes a miniature society in which people’s deeper values emerge under danger.
• Fate and choice: the Spirit Medium describes the unexpected appearance of two roads, making the group’s next decision potentially decisive.

Plot points and events

• The Spirit Medium vanishes after sacrificing blood and parts of herself into three copper coins—marked with an eye, bloodied limbs, and a heart—to evade the presence in the black fog. Her final clues point to two paths: true death and the True Reality.
• Gao Ming considers whether Hanhai is a prison shaped by powerful beings from those two worlds, with its people trapped in Fate’s design. Though staying in Hanhai as a false god might be safer, he rejects that option and resolves to keep moving forward, even if it means dying again.
• Gao Ming asks Teacher Li for the bus key so he can lead her and Class Thirteen through the fog. She hesitates, but the students—especially Chen Jing, who recounts how Gao Ming helped him—begin to trust him. Gao Ming warns them not to rely on imagined shelters or respawns, but to make their own courage their refuge.
• Teacher Li admits she cannot drive, so Gao Ming takes the wheel. Unable to find the town’s exit by ordinary means, he follows the call of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal sculpture he left at his camp.
• The bus reaches the Main Road and Gao Ming’s camp, where another battered, graffiti-covered coach waits beside masked passengers, crumbling clay figures, and a shrine-fed campfire. Gao Ming notes the ominous choice implied by the two buses and two roads.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows renewed resolve, refusing to become the kind of hypocritical divine spirit he despises. He takes responsibility for the students while remaining honest that his camp may not be safe.
• Teacher Li is wary of entrusting the group to Gao Ming, influenced by Wei Tian’s final words, but eventually lets him take the wheel after revealing she cannot drive.
• Chen Jing tactfully supports Gao Ming by sharing how Gao Ming saved him, while omitting details that might undermine him. His account also introduces the students to the possibility that they are inside a Forbidden Game.
• The students begin to regard Gao Ming as a guide, though some interpret his camp as a game-like shelter or respawn point—an assumption he firmly rejects.

Significant themes

• Choice and perseverance: Gao Ming chooses uncertainty and continued struggle over safety gained by surrendering to Fate.
• Hope passed through sacrifice: He feels responsible for the hopes entrusted to him by his past selves, who died to help him continue.
• Illusions versus reality: The Spirit Medium’s two roads and the students’ “respawn point” assumptions highlight the danger of mistaking comforting beliefs for truth.
• Trust and responsibility: Gao Ming must earn the group’s confidence while guiding them through danger without promising protection he cannot guarantee.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming and Teacher Li’s students arrive at a mysterious camp built around a blood-red coach, whose masked passengers radiate a terrifying, deathly presence.
• Teacher Li worries that Gao Ming may be dangerous and urges him to leave. When she steps onto the strange coach, she is overwhelmed by supernatural cold; Gao Ming pulls her back and warns that entering it could kill her.
• Gao Ming transfers the camp’s clay sculptures to his coach, then brings the brazier and a supply of posthumous photographs onto the school bus. The photographs must be burned to keep the fire alive, and the firelight repels the surrounding black fog.
• Gao Ming drives the students along the Main Road toward the tunnel at Hanhai’s edge. He believes it contains a crack leading to true reality and has been preparing to reach it.
• The journey through the fog reveals a grotesque landscape of enormous, unnatural shapes and distorted terrain. As they near the city boundary, Gao Ming struggles against an internal force urging him to turn back.
• The chapter ends with the group approaching the tunnel and facing a choice: take a mountain path or continue along the Main Road through the tunnel toward the junction of three cities.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is revealed as focused and determined, pursuing the truth beyond Hanhai despite the fog’s supernatural resistance and his own fear. His past experience with repeated deaths and journeys through the tunnel gives him confidence navigating the route.
• Teacher Li remains wary of Gao Ming but is forced to rely on him. Her encounter with the coach’s passengers and the disturbing photographs exposes her to the danger surrounding them.
• The students react in varied ways—some pray, some communicate discreetly, and others watch the strange landscape—while remaining dependent on Gao Ming’s protection.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming tries to reassure Teacher Li that he is their only help, but she continues to question his intentions and hopes to find rescuers.
• He demonstrates the coach’s danger by warning Teacher Li away and physically guiding her out when she is overwhelmed.
• Gao Ming gives Teacher Li responsibility for feeding the brazier with posthumous photographs, implicating her in the group’s survival.
• The students seek comfort and connection among themselves as Gao Ming leads them deeper into the fog.

Significant themes

• Trust under pressure: Teacher Li and the students must depend on Gao Ming even as they fear him and his supernatural companions.
• The cost of seeking truth: Gao Ming’s pursuit of the boundary beyond Hanhai requires confronting both external horrors and an instinctive force resisting escape.
• Fragile survival and uneasy protection: The fire and photographs offer temporary safety, but their continued survival depends on disturbing, death-linked resources.
• Reality and the unknown: The warped landscape and suspected “crack” challenge the characters’ understanding of what is real and what lies beyond their world.

Plot points and events

• After escaping the Past-Future God’s death zone, Gao Ming realizes that Fate has altered his memories and that Hanhai’s residents are being kept within a predetermined future. He drives a school bus toward a tunnel that may offer the first real way out of the city.
• The road out of Hanhai proves deceptive: the bus enters a black-fog world filled with immense, ghostly beings. A towering tree-like creature attacks the bus with a bloodied arm and branches made of human faces.
• The passengers rely on a campfire fueled by black-and-white posthumous photographs to keep the creatures at bay. As the bus moves farther from Xiao’an Town, the fire consumes the remaining photos, heightening the danger.
• Gao Ming resists the overwhelming pressure of the figures in the fog and restrains the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, who is provoked into challenging them.
• The bus reaches the tunnel entrance. Gao Ming spots a damaged electric scooter beside it—a possible clue or deliberate sign. The chapter ends before he can investigate.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming presses forward despite recognizing that the beings ahead may be far stronger than any he has faced. He stays composed for the students, directs them to remain in the firelight, and struggles to control the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal.
• Teacher Li tries to reassure the frightened children while privately fearing that the photographs will run out before they reach safety. She and Gao Ming coordinate to keep the group alive.
• Fu Ping, an anxious and shy student, worries about her grandmother waiting for her at the station. Teacher Li comforts her.
• Wei Jiu’s curiosity leads him close to the window, where he sees the moving “branches”; Chen Jing pulls him back and warns the group of the danger.
• Gao Ming’s instructions—to stay within the firelight and watch the unlit rear seats—show his effort to protect the passengers as the threat closes in.

Significant themes

• Predetermined fate versus freedom: Gao Ming’s attempt to leave Hanhai challenges the possibility that its residents’ lives are controlled.
• Memory and deception: The apparently ordinary road out of the city may be an illusion, reflecting how unreliable Gao Ming’s memories—and Hanhai’s reality—are.
• Fragile protection amid overwhelming danger: The small campfire and dwindling photographs offer only temporary safety against vast, ancient forces.
• Courage and responsibility: Gao Ming continues forward while bearing the danger himself, and Teacher Li shields her students from fear as best she can.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming drives Class Thirteen’s school bus into the Tunnel, a place where he has died repeatedly. Unlike before, he now controls the journey and intends to confront the unseen murderer who has killed him there.
• As the bus travels, the temperature plunges and the students huddle around a brazier. Gao Ming ignores their fear, recognizing signs that they are approaching the site of his past deaths.
• Water droplets begin moving upward, and Gao Ming feels what seems to be a human face embedded in the Tunnel wall. Using the Shrine’s flames to illuminate the fog, he reveals countless corpses—each one a different version of himself.
• Touching one corpse triggers a memory of Gao Ming telling his doctor that the killers and murders he invented for ghost-story games had become real. The doctor was later killed, and Gao Ming reflects that he has since settled accounts with people who caused him suffering.
• The Tunnel murderer’s footsteps return. Gao Ming prepares a signal by burning Divine Statue fragments and his coat in the Shrine, igniting blood-red flames.
• Ghosts Gao Ming recruited from dangerous Anomaly Events arrive in a second vehicle. Led by a Greater Ghost carrying a spirit tablet, with Cai Meimei among them, they force their way into the Tunnel to help him confront the killer.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is no longer the helpless victim he was in earlier encounters. He knows the Tunnel’s patterns, accepts the sight of his many corpses without flinching, and has assembled powerful allies for this confrontation.
• Cai Meimei has become a formidable Greater Ghost after being filled with Substitute Ghosts from Hande Private Academy.
• Class Thirteen’s students and Teacher Li remain frightened and vulnerable, relying on the brazier for warmth and protection. Their reactions emphasize how accustomed Gao Ming has become to the horrors around him.
• Xuan Wen is absent, but Gao Ming’s memories of her and their rides together reveal an emotional connection that still weighs on him.

Significant themes

• Memory, death, and repetition: The Tunnel embodies Gao Ming’s repeated deaths, while the rising water and recurring footsteps make the past feel physically present.
• Agency and changed fate: Gao Ming returns to a familiar scene of death, but now drives the bus and acts on knowledge gained from previous lives.
• Alliances against horror: Gao Ming’s plan depends on the ghosts he has gathered, suggesting that the search for truth is shared by beings beyond the living.
• The past shaping the present: His memories of Xuan Wen, his game designs, and past betrayals all inform the person he has become.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming recalls how Xuan Wen repeatedly carried him to safety after his deaths, contrasting their past closeness with her current absence.
• He interacts with the corpses of his former selves, touching one and reliving a memory connected to Doctor Lu.
• He watches Teacher Li and the students shelter around the brazier, but focuses instead on the approaching murderer.
• Gao Ming’s blood-red fire serves as a prearranged signal to his recruited ghosts, bringing them and Cai Meimei into the Tunnel to join the confrontation.

Plot points

• Gao Ming gathers the ghosts from earlier anomalies and prepares to confront the murderer who has repeatedly killed him. He leaves his classmates safely aboard the Coach, which is protected by forces gathered from across the East District.
• In the Tunnel, Gao Ming challenges the murderer’s claim that fate has fixed every outcome. He suspects the murderer’s repeated killings may serve a purpose beyond hatred.
• The murderer uses a rule-bound power to blur Gao Ming’s memories and erase his sense of self. Gao Ming counters by releasing and merging his will with the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, while the Execution House blocks the Fog Sea.
• Gao Ming attacks the murderer, but the killer strikes from behind, apparently killing him. Gao Yun intervenes with his Rewind ability, resetting events by one second at great personal cost.
• Gao Ming turns just enough to see the murderer’s face: it is identical to his own.

Character developments

• Gao Ming has grown from a helpless victim into a formidable opponent. His power, army of ghosts, and willingness to confront the murderer show that he is no longer simply being crushed by the cycle.
• Gao Yun again risks himself to save Gao Ming. Using Rewind draws karmic ties back onto him, suggesting the rescue has serious consequences.
• The murderer is revealed as more than an unseen executioner: his hesitation and insistence that the ending is predetermined hint that Gao Ming’s growing strength has made him wary.

Themes

• Fate versus agency: Gao Ming questions whether repeated cycles are truly ordained, or whether his choices can alter them.
• Identity and repetition: The murderer’s promise to kill Gao Ming at every point in his existence—and the revelation of their identical faces—makes the cycle deeply personal.
• Memory and selfhood: The murderer’s attack on Gao Ming’s memories shows that identity itself is vulnerable.
• Sacrifice and connection: Gao Yun’s intervention demonstrates the cost of helping someone resist their supposed destiny.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming protects his former classmates by keeping them on the Coach while he confronts the threat.
• He directly challenges the murderer, demanding to know why he has been killed so many times.
• Gao Yun and Fan Li’s concealed intervention disrupts the murder attempt, giving Gao Ming a brief chance to glimpse his attacker.