Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Director Li and Tang Qing discuss the forbidden Xinhu incident, which led nearly a million people to undergo memory-erasing Cerebral Surgery. They suspect Gao Ming may have entered a “middle-layer nightmare” before: he survived catastrophic injuries, months in a coma, and treatment with their experimental technology.
• As darkness swallows the building, Gao Ming is attacked by its ghosts. Unlike in earlier tests, victims’ consciousnesses do not simply leave the nightmare.
• One-Eyed Fool braves the shadows to reach his sister, distracting the ghosts and helping her wake. When she opens her eyes, the building shifts into a shadow-covered version of its former appearance: once a warm family home, now revealed to be threaded with unseen dangers and haunted by the ghosts embedded in her.
• The girl reunites with her brother but warns him—and Gao Ming—that the house is a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Gao Ming senses that the place is connected to something important he lost.
• Gao Ming tries to leave, but the house returns him inside and attaches threads to his body. The girl explains that touching anything deepens one’s connection to the nightmare until it assimilates them.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains fearless and determined, even as the nightmare attacks him. His unusual survival history makes him a subject of intense interest to Director Li and Tang Qing.
• One-Eyed Fool shows fierce devotion, risking himself to reach his sister. His arrival helps her awaken, though the nightmare’s threads are beginning to bind him too.
• The girl wakes and reveals a more perceptive, mature side than her appearance suggests. She is tender toward her brother but speaks with despair about her captivity and distrust of the family that imprisoned her.
• Tang Qing and Director Li shift from treating Gao Ming as an ordinary test subject to viewing him as potentially exceptional, with Tang ordered to prioritize his protection.

Significant themes

• Memory, trauma, and hidden history: The taboo incident and mass memory erasure suggest that buried horrors continue to shape the present.
• Entrapment and assimilation: The nightmare makes escape increasingly difficult by turning contact into binding threads.
• Family and loyalty: The girl’s brother’s devotion gives her a brief moment of comfort amid the nightmare.
• The corruption of safety: The home’s welcoming past contrasts sharply with the suffering beneath it; even the supposed “angel” was no source of rescue.

Chapter Summary: “Seeds That Gave Off the Scent of Meat”

Key plot points and events

• The little girl explains how nightmares work: a shallow dream recreates real memories; a middle dream is shaped by a person’s deepest fears; and a deep dream is an irreversible descent into another world.
• Each nightmare has two doors: an escape door, found in the shallow dream, and a release door, found deeper within. In this nightmare, Gao Ming could have escaped by playing the games the girl’s brother wanted, but his actions have drawn them into the middle layer.
• The girl warns that she is growing sleepy and may soon fall further into her nightmare. Gao Ming wonders whether he once entered a deep dream while near death—and how he could have returned.
• Xu Deyi emerges from hiding and realizes the Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals test was a deception: the testers were already inside the nightmare, with no real contact person. The girl condemns the company as exploiters and the testers as accomplices.
• Gao Ming asks the girl to examine his belongings for clues about his unusual connection to nightmares. She explains that these items were created by his will and that ordinary objects from reality cannot affect a nightmare.
• Three seeds fall from his backpack and remain real within the nightmare. They absorb shadow and fear; one cracks open and sends blood-vessel-like roots into the floor.

Character developments and interactions

• The girl remains compassionate despite her trauma, patiently explaining nightmares and trying to avoid harming Gao Ming. She is also protective of her brother and resents Gao Ming for bringing him into the middle dream.
• Gao Ming stays composed under threat and focuses on investigating his apparent connection to nightmares. The seeds’ survival gives him a potentially crucial clue.
• Xu Deyi shifts from hiding to confronting the implications of the test, though the girl dismisses his regret as too late.
• The brother remains physically close to his sister, reinforcing her protectiveness and their dependence on each other.

Significant themes

• Trauma made real: nightmares arise from memories and despair, and accumulated suffering can turn illusion into an actual realm.
• Entrapment and choice: escape depends on understanding a nightmare’s rules, while deeper descent may mean permanent separation from reality.
• Exploitation and responsibility: the pharmaceutical company manipulates the testers, but the girl also challenges their complicity.
• The boundary between reality and nightmare: Gao Ming’s belongings appear imaginary—until the mysterious seeds defy the rules, hinting at a deeper power or connection.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming’s flesh-and-blood seed grows inside the little girl’s nightmare, feeding on its shadows and the characters’ fear and despair. Because the nightmare binds anything that touches its surroundings to the building, the plant becomes deeply rooted in it.
• The plant’s branches reach for the girl and draw out the trauma at the heart of her nightmare: the vengeful ghost of her abusive adoptive father, along with visions of his family. The plant consumes them, weakening the nightmare and freeing the building’s objects from their oppressive hold.
• The plant produces two fruits, each marked by imagery from the nightmare. Gao Ming gives them to Xu Deyi and One-Eyed Fool, warning that they will benefit from eating them but may also connect them to the plant.
• As the plant threatens to drain the nightmare completely and pull the girl into a deeper one, she directs the others to an escape route: a window in her room on the third floor. Xu Deyi leads Gao Ming and One-Eyed Fool out. The two who ate the fruits emerge noticeably stronger in the nightmare.

Character developments

• The little girl moves from hopelessness to a brief sense of hope when she realizes the seed can consume her nightmare. She willingly faces the plant and helps expose the trauma that has imprisoned her, but becomes entangled with the plant and stays behind.
• Gao Ming sees the seed’s unexpected power and feels it communicating with him, strengthening his sense of connection to it. Despite wanting to investigate the deeper nightmare, thoughts of home, Liu Yi, and his hungry cat make him pause and leave.
• One-Eyed Fool is protective of his sister but initially does not understand why the plant is attacking her. He remains reluctant to leave her behind.
• Xu Deyi takes decisive action, getting the others to the exit and honoring the girl’s trust by promising not to reveal what happened.

Significant themes

• Trauma and fear: The adoptive father’s ghost embodies the lasting power of abuse and painful memories.
• Hope through destruction: The plant offers the possibility of release, but its rescue is violent and dangerous.
• The cost of power: The fruits strengthen those who eat them while binding them to the mysterious plant.
• Human connection and ordinary life: Gao Ming’s concern for the people and small responsibilities waiting at home pulls him away from dangerous curiosity.

Character interactions

• The girl’s brother tries to shield her, while she reassures him and chooses to face the plant herself.
• Gao Ming explains the plant’s danger and distributes its fruits; Xu Deyi and One-Eyed Fool accept them.
• The girl gives the group directions to escape and entrusts them with her secret.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming and Xu Deyi wake after escaping the nightmare, which turns out to have been a brain-domain game test conducted on a bus. Gao Ming recovers unusually quickly, while Xu Deyi remains dazed.
• Tang Qing welcomes them as closed-beta players for Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals and explains that the other testers are being treated—and will be made to forget the test.
• Gao Ming sees a tank containing a human brain, which Tang Qing claims belonged to a donated death-row inmate. Gao Ming suspects it may instead be the brain of the girl from the nightmare.
• Tang Qing warns the men not to reveal anything about the facility, citing penalties and forced cerebral surgery in the contract they signed without carefully reading it. Their clearance lets them join trials of level three and below.
• Xu Deyi is furious to learn he has been paid only two thousand after nearly dying. Tang Qing says the company’s system judged that to be his value.
• The One-Eyed Fool—the girl’s comatose older brother—is revealed to have awakened. Tang Qing says the boy fell into a coma after a fire killed his sister, and that the company placed his consciousness in the chef’s cerebral domain to save him.
• Gao Ming spots footage of a classified laboratory containing people in nutrient pods submerged in darkness. One of them is Wan Jie, a researcher who was the first to enter a “deep dream” and send information back, but has not awakened for a long time.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed and alert after the ordeal. He distrusts Tang Qing, challenges the company’s claims, and is deeply concerned about the children and the people being used in experiments.
• Xu Deyi wakes confused, then turns angry when he sees his low reward.
• Tang Qing presents the company’s program as beneficial while enforcing secrecy and dismissing the testers’ complaints. His explanations do little to ease Gao Ming’s suspicions.
• The One-Eyed Fool has regained consciousness, suggesting that the cerebral-domain treatment may have helped him, though his identity and past remain troubling.
• Wan Jie is introduced as a long-term participant in a highly classified experiment and a possible link to the people and events Gao Ming encountered in the nightmare.

Significant themes

• Corporate secrecy and exploitation: Testers sign sweeping contracts, are threatened with punishment, and are treated as resources whose worth is calculated by a system.
• Uncertainty about reality and memory: The company can place consciousness in cerebral domains and erase memories, leaving the true nature of the experiments unclear.
• The cost of scientific progress: Tang Qing invokes humanity’s future, while the chapter raises the possibility that vulnerable people—including a child—are being used without consent.
• Recognition and unresolved connections: Gao Ming’s reaction to Wan Jie suggests that the nightmare may have exposed a real connection between his past or experiences and the laboratory’s experiments.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming meets Director Li, who explains that entering a level-five laboratory requires surviving ten middle nightmares or escaping one deep nightmare. Li seems impressed by Gao Ming’s composure and ambition.
• Tang Qing warns Gao Ming that Li had his emotions removed during an experiment and is devoted to the company, then takes Gao Ming to see the restrained One-Eyed Fool.
• Gao Ming secretly promises the fool he can help him reunite with his sister, who is trapped in a deep nightmare. The fool eagerly agrees to follow Gao Ming’s instructions.
• Gao Ming asks about joining a deep-nightmare test, but Tang Qing refuses to arrange one and offers to find a middle-nightmare test instead. He suggests Gao Ming, the fool, and the reluctant Xu Deyi could test together.
• Once their car leaves the laboratory’s signal-blocked area, Gao Ming receives Liu Yi’s worried messages. He tells her he is safe and returns home.
• At his apartment, Liu Yi opens the door before he can unlock it, welcoming him with warmth and light.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains focused on entering a deep nightmare to reach the fool’s sister, despite the risks. He also feels increasingly torn between the nightmare world and his growing attachment to life at home.
• Director Li reveals a cold, company-centered outlook, while showing unusual interest in Gao Ming’s potential.
• Tang Qing acts protectively, urging Gao Ming to rest and warning him against rushing into a deep nightmare.
• One-Eyed Fool, usually agitated and hostile in the real world, becomes calm and hopeful when Gao Ming mentions his sister.
• Liu Yi’s urgent concern underscores her closeness to Gao Ming, while Gao Ming’s hesitation before replying suggests he is withholding the truth.

Significant themes

• The pull between reality and nightmares: Gao Ming wonders where his true self belongs and fears that choosing one world would leave only an empty shell in the other.
• Connection and responsibility: His promise to help the fool reflects his growing sense of obligation to those trapped in nightmares.
• Risk versus caution: Gao Ming pursues danger for a personal reason, while Tang Qing tries to keep him safe.
• Home and belonging: The apartment’s familiar comforts and Liu Yi’s welcome increasingly feel like home to Gao Ming.

Character interactions

• Director Li questions Gao Ming and recognizes his unusual composure; Tang Qing then warns Gao Ming to keep his distance from Li.
• Gao Ming offers the fool hope by promising to help him see his sister, creating a private bond between them.
• Tang Qing and Gao Ming clash gently over the danger of deep nightmares, with Tang Qing advocating caution.
• Gao Ming reassures Liu Yi by phone but conceals what he is really pursuing; her warm welcome at home reinforces their emotional connection.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming returns home and gives Liu Yi the money he earned from his new job at Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals. He reassures her that he has done nothing illegal, but keeps the brain-domain game and its dangers secret.
• At home with Liu Yi and their cat, Fortune, Gao Ming finds that the family’s ordinary routine eases some of his lingering distress. Exhausted by the game’s strain on his willpower, he falls asleep soon after dinner.
• In a vivid dream, he sees a city of flesh and blood, a monstrous tree bearing the anguished faces of people he believes he has killed, and a four-faced, eight-armed Ghost God whose faces resemble his own. The Ghost God tells him that memories are hidden in the flesh and blood and urges him to remember before time runs out.
• Gao Ming wakes in a sweat. Recalling earlier disturbing marks on his reflection, he wonders whether he is losing touch with reality—or whether nightmares and reality are connected.
• Unable to sleep, he searches online and finds a small livestream of a man trying traditional methods to see ghosts in an abandoned hotel. After several methods fail, the streamer appears to see something, warns viewers that one of them may be next if he does not survive the night, and is abruptly dragged out of sight. The stream ends, but Gao Ming continues to hear the eerie footsteps and looks toward the long-empty apartment next door.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming tries to protect Liu Yi from his dangerous new work by withholding information, while his dream and the livestream deepen his uncertainty about what is real.
• Liu Yi shifts from anger to relief and concern when Gao Ming returns. Her affection and quiet care restore a sense of warmth and normalcy to the home.
• Fortune provides a small, comforting presence, curling up beside Gao Ming as he sleeps.
• The livestreamer’s warning creates an unsettling connection between his apparent danger and the viewers, including Gao Ming.

Significant themes

• Home and ordinary comfort: Family life offers temporary relief from fear and emotional strain.
• Reality versus nightmare: The dream, Gao Ming’s reflection, and the livestream blur the boundary between the supernatural and the everyday.
• Guilt and identity: The tree’s accusing faces and the Ghost God’s resemblance to Gao Ming suggest buried memories, responsibility, and a fractured sense of self.
• Secrets and danger: Gao Ming conceals the truth to protect Liu Yi, while the livestream hints that supernatural threats may reach beyond the screen.

Key plot points and events

• During the night, Gao Ming hears footsteps approach Liu Yi’s apartment and seems to sense an unseen presence. Fortune reacts too, but Gao Ming finds nothing.
• Worried that memories of his nightmares are fading, Gao Ming asks Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ Tang Qing to arrange another test. Tang advises him to wait until he has recovered; Gao Ming suspects he will need help from the more mysterious Director Li to access deeper nightmares.
• Gao Ming receives a call from a number flagged as dangerous. The caller sends him to the Ninth Sense Experience Hall in Xinhu’s Smart City District, which may be connected to his earlier interview with New Century Amusement Park.
• He travels there with Fortune. The experience hall is concealed in a dark, ominous section of a crowded high-rise, with its windows covered and one revealing only a concrete wall.
• A strange woman greets him. Though beautiful, she appears unnaturally assembled: her mouth does not move when she speaks, her voice seems to come from her stomach, and stitching circles her neck. Gao Ming shows her the caller’s number.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is torn between enjoying his peaceful life with Liu Yi and urgently seeking nightmare experiences before his memories disappear. He remains curious and willing to approach danger.
• Tang Qing appears exhausted and sympathetic but is constrained by his job and access limits.
• Fortune is alert to the unexplained presence in the apartment and accompanies Gao Ming on his trip.
• The strange woman is introduced as unsettling and possibly supernatural.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: Gao Ming fears that losing his nightmare memories will mean losing access to his past.
• The boundary between ordinary life and horror: An unexplained presence intrudes on a peaceful home, while a bizarre venue lurks inside a bustling city.
• Technology and control: Xinhu’s Smart Brain is powerful but restricted, hinting at unease over advanced systems and who controls them.
• Attraction mixed with danger: The experience hall seems to suit Gao Ming precisely, despite its threatening appearance.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming reassures Liu Yi after she wakes, then searches the apartment while she returns to sleep.
• He presses Tang Qing to arrange another nightmare test; Tang urges patience and promises to help later.
• An unknown caller directs Gao Ming to the experience hall.
• At the hall, Gao Ming explains his arrival to the strange woman and shows her the suspicious phone number.

Plot and events

• Gao Ming arrives at a shop seeking an interview with the Ninth Sense Experience Hall. The shop assistant recognizes him as someone like her former boss, who also kept a cat, and escorts him to the fourteenth floor of a rival attraction: the Demon City Asylum, an extreme-horror escape room.
• She explains that the interview task is to find and bring out a timid, sensitive “real madman” who was mistakenly left among the asylum’s staff by her boss.
• After the visitors complete admission procedures, a scarred nurse warns them that several patients have recently died in unexplained, inhuman ways. She tells them not to wander or trust strangers, then leaves behind a “Metal Brain Treatment Device.”
• The corridor’s exit vanishes, trapping Gao Ming and the other visitors. They realize the haunted-house scenario has begun.
• Gao Ming meets several visitors: friends Cao and Jiajia, and college roommates An Yuan and Jie. An Yuan and Jie have tried the escape room before and explain that it has an outer “body” section and a more important “soul” section. Reaching the latter requires finding medicine that enables entry into dreams.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming stays observant and skeptical, questioning why an interview has brought him to a competitor’s attraction. He learns he must locate the hidden maniac, though the nurse’s warning suggests a genuine danger beyond the staged horror.
• The shop assistant shifts from distracted to alert when she sees Gao Ming’s information. She is guarded and impatient, uncomfortable in crowds, and appears distinctly unnatural: her cigarette smoke carries a red tint, and her eyes conceal a vivid color.
• The nurse initially presents the asylum’s procedures, then delivers a chilling warning before disappearing, leaving the group isolated.
• Cao and Jiajia reveal a strained friendship dynamic: Cao accompanies Jiajia to horror attractions whenever her relationships fail, while Jiajia claims she has given up on love.
• An Yuan and Jie introduce themselves with playful banter. An Yuan is determined to clear the attraction after failing before; Jie shares information about its structure and rumored connection to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals.

Significant themes

• The boundary between performance and reality: The “madman” may be a real person inside a haunted attraction, while the asylum’s supposedly fictional deaths may also be genuine.
• Distrust and uncertainty: The nurse warns visitors not to trust what they are told, and the maze’s shifting layout undermines their sense of safety.
• Insanity and the self: The attraction’s “body” and “soul” sections frame its horror as a process of psychological breakdown, with the dream-entry medicine hinting at deeper, internal threats.

Chapter Summary

• Gao Ming’s unease: When An Yuan mentions an unusual dream-inducing drug associated with Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, Gao Ming becomes tense, hinting at the company’s importance to his past. Other visitors mistake his exhausted appearance for inexperience and mock him for joining the escape room.
• The first deception: A panicked “doctor” warns that patients have escaped and urges the group to follow him. An Yuan spots clues that he is actually a disguised patient. A frightening, unseen creature approaches, and the lights go out.
• A second false guide: When the lights return, a handsome doctor named Meng Qiu offers to lead visitors to safety. Jiajia and two other players follow him and disappear with him. Paper Folding uses a mirror to argue that Meng is the monster that frightened the disguised patient away and cannot cross the barrier.
• The real nurse appears: A scarred nurse arrives and reveals that no doctor named Meng works there—the creature has escaped. The group follows her, but another alarm and attack soon scatter everyone into nearby wards.
• The cliffhanger: An Yuan, Gao Ming, and Old Cao end up together in Ward 7003. As the nurse is pursued by a huge monster outside, Gao Ming notices a pair of eyes beneath a hospital bed.

Character Developments and Interactions

• Gao Ming stays observant and emotionally composed, questioning the authenticity of the haunted-house scares rather than reacting like the other visitors. His curiosity about Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals suggests a personal connection to the company.
• An Yuan proves perceptive and protective: he recognizes the first “doctor” as a patient in disguise and tries to stop Jiajia from following the second doctor.
• Old Cao defends visitors’ right to enjoy the attraction, then panics when Jiajia disappears. His remark about handsome men being dangerous provides a comic reaction to the scare.
• Paper Folding, an experienced escape-room player, explains the clues and offers guidance. Jie also tries to help Gao Ming, suggesting he follow his choices, but the group is soon split up.
• Jiajia and the other visitors are drawn in by Meng Qiu’s reassuring manner and appearance, showing how effectively the attraction manipulates trust.

Significant Themes

• Appearance versus reality: Both apparent rescuers are deceptive, while the real nurse looks frightening but provides genuine help.
• Fear and trust: The visitors must judge whom to believe amid panic, misleading clues, and sudden separation.
• Isolation and survival: The attraction repeatedly divides the group, leaving individuals vulnerable.
• Hidden connections: Gao Ming’s reaction to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals foreshadows that the escape-room scenario may connect to larger events in his life.

Key plot points

• Donggua, a recent dance graduate, begins her first solo shift as a contorted patient NPC at the Demon City Asylum haunted house.
• Gao Ming startles the staff by inspecting beneath a bed, but Donggua’s planned scare sends him fleeing. She pursues him through the asylum, yet can’t catch up.
• When Gao Ming strays beyond the usual exploration area, central control tells Donggua to start her difficult side quest and guide him into a solo storyline.
• Donggua warns Gao Ming that the asylum’s director and head nurse are conspiring, and explains the “Tragic Life Plan”: the director allegedly uses nightmares and despair to create a soul suited to hold something.
• She reveals that the plot centers on a black box, whose contents can be retrieved only by someone who has reached profound despair. She offers to lead Gao Ming to the director’s office if he proves himself brave, innocent, and desperate.

Character developments and interactions

• Donggua starts anxious to impress as a new performer, but grows frustrated when her scare fails to stop Gao Ming. His calm questions and knowledge of a camera blind spot unsettle her, briefly breaking her performance and making her more self-conscious.
• Gao Ming is unusually composed and observant for a first-time visitor. Rather than simply follow the scare, he focuses on investigating the asylum and treats Donggua’s scripted revelations as clues.
• An Yuan and Old Cao are frightened by Donggua’s initial jump scare; Old Cao runs, while Gao Ming becomes the focus of her pursuit and quest.

Significant themes

• Performance versus reality: Donggua is acting in a haunted house, but Gao Ming’s reactions and questions make the scripted encounter feel unexpectedly real.
• Fear and control: Donggua tries to direct visitors through terror, yet Gao Ming’s composure and awareness repeatedly disrupt her control.
• Despair and identity: The asylum’s plot hinges on manipulating memories, twisting souls, and manufacturing a person capable of enduring the deepest despair—ideas that resonate more personally with Gao Ming than Donggua realizes.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming accepts Donggua’s challenge: retrieve the head nurse’s keys from Room Zero, then enter the restroom alone and confess his innocence to the mirror. Donggua warns that taking the keys will turn the asylum’s doctors and patients against him.
• Following the red lights, Gao Ming reaches a hidden second-floor corridor that is inaccessible to the other visitors and even the pursuing monsters.
• The corridor contains medical records about children with unusual illnesses and badly damaged toys. At its end is not a hospital room but a classroom with thirty-one miniature desks, each bearing a child’s posthumous photograph.
• Gao Ming enters the classroom despite the keys left in the door. The children’s voices and apparitions surround him, calling themselves imprisoned, despairing, and a “bridge to another world.” They urge him to find a black box that can belong only to the most despairing person.
• A distinct male voice comes from the drawer of desk Number Two. Gao Ming finds nothing inside, but suspects the haunted-house owner is trying to reveal a hidden truth.
• He notices that the classroom inscriptions, toys, and medical references connect to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, suggesting the company was involved in serious crimes that were later concealed.
• Donggua returns after staff in the control room tell her Gao Ming has entered a restricted area. She takes the keys and tries to pull him out as monsters approach, but finds him absorbed in the children’s photographs.

Character development and interactions

• Gao Ming remains calm in the face of frightening apparitions and pursuers. Rather than simply completing the challenge, he follows his curiosity and investigates the classroom’s clues, connecting them to the company that helped him wake from his nightmare.
• Donggua shifts from teasing guide to anxious caretaker. She is unsettled by both the restricted area and Gao Ming’s apparent connection with the dead children.
• The children’s spirits address Gao Ming as if testing his resolve, kindness, and despair. Their message frames him as someone who may be linked to the black box and their fate.
• Donggua tries to hurry Gao Ming away, while he questions her about Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals and continues to study the children’s photographs. She cannot tell whether he is deeply immersed in the story or simply pursuing a different mystery.

Significant themes

• Institutional cover-ups and buried wrongdoing: The clues imply that Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals may have committed grave abuses involving children, while the truth was suppressed.
• Despair, hope, and survival: The black box is presented as a source of hope reserved for the most despairing person, and the children challenge Gao Ming’s emotional and moral character.
• The boundary between fiction and reality: Gao Ming’s bodily overlap with a child and his apparent communion with the photographs suggest that the haunted house’s staged horrors may connect to something beyond its performance.
• Children’s suffering and lost innocence: The damaged toys, medical files, and posthumous portraits create a portrait of childhood marked by violence and neglect.

Key plot points

• Donggua, frightened despite her experience as a haunted-house actor, leads Gao Ming out of a hidden corridor and takes him to a staff-only restroom on the second floor for the next test.
• The restroom is dark, damp, and unsettling. Gao Ming expects questions to appear on the mirror, but instead hears a voice and sees his reflection smiling unnaturally.
• The reflection asks whether Gao Ming accepts fear, would bear despair to save thirty other children, and approves of sacrificing a few to save a city. Gao Ming says fear can be nourishing, is willing to help innocent people, but refuses to decide that others should die.
• Suspecting something is wrong, Gao Ming tears the mirror from the wall and discovers its wiring is broken. The voice is coming from elsewhere, not the mirror.
• The unseen speaker asks him to guess what is behind a door. Gao Ming realizes this may not be part of the haunted-house script and wonders whether he has found the target for his interview.

Character developments and interactions

• Donggua becomes visibly unnerved and stays close to Gao Ming, but continues to act responsibly: she checks with central control and escorts him to a safer, unused restroom.
• Gao Ming remains composed and curious in the face of apparent horror. He readily accepts the reflection as another version of himself, then shifts from playing along to investigating when he spots inconsistencies.
• Gao Ming and the reflection engage in a tense exchange about fear, sacrifice, and responsibility. Gao Ming’s answers reveal both his unusual fascination with fear and his refusal to impose death on others.
• Gao Ming and the unseen presence enter a new, uncertain confrontation when the voice continues after the mirror is removed.

Significant themes

• Fear and identity: Gao Ming recognizes frightening, destructive versions of himself as part of who he is rather than denying them.
• Moral responsibility and sacrifice: The chapter questions whether saving many justifies sacrificing a few, emphasizing Gao Ming’s belief that he can choose only for himself.
• Reality versus performance: What begins as a staged haunted-house test may be a genuine encounter, as the scripted setup breaks down.
• Control and suffering: The reflection’s story of children whose lives were planned for them introduces the idea of people being manipulated into despair for someone else’s purpose.

Key plot points and events

• In the bathroom, Gao Ming hears a hidden voice calling itself the “Toilet Doctor.” Asked what lies behind a door, he describes a place that feels like both a city and a grave, populated by people—or perhaps ghosts.
• The voice realizes Gao Ming has been inside the haunted house and urgently tells him to find medicine that lets him enter dreams: the speaker is trapped in one and has made an important discovery. Gao Ming locates the voice in a stall, but finds only discarded objects and a broken radio.
• Donggua arrives and improvises a story that the helpful doctor has been murdered, redirecting Gao Ming toward the director’s office. She warns that the other visitors, misled by the nurse, are heading there and must not get the black box.
• Gao Ming pieces together the asylum’s setup: the visitors are orphans raised under the director’s tragic script and have returned as adults to sacrifice themselves to open the box. Different factions are manipulating them, while Gao Ming is largely on his own.
• To keep the visitors from choosing the correct route, Gao Ming dresses as a doctor and prepares to scare them away from the director’s office. As he handles the costume props, disturbing memories and a sense of familiarity with torture instruments surface.
• The chapter ends as Paper Folding, An Yuan, and the others rush toward two corridors amid alarms, shrieks, and apparitions emerging from the walls.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains observant and composed, but his strange memories become more apparent. He recognizes that he may be unusually suited to the role of a doctor and seems to associate torture tools with a forgotten past.
• Donggua acts as Gao Ming’s guide, following instructions from central control while improvising explanations to move the plot along. Her confidence in Gao Ming grows when she sees him in costume.
• The Toilet Doctor shifts from teasing Gao Ming to alarm when he learns Gao Ming has entered the haunted house, suggesting a deeper connection between them and the mystery.
• Paper Folding and An Yuan lead the other visitors toward the asylum’s final choice, unaware that Gao Ming is trying to divert them.

Significant themes

• Reality and nightmare: The door represents both a boundary and a passage, while Gao Ming’s memories blur the distinction between a living city and a grave.
• Manipulation and choice: Visitors are steered by competing factions, and even their apparent decisions may be part of the director’s design.
• Identity and buried memory: Gao Ming’s instinctive ease with the doctor’s role and torture implements hints at a disturbing identity or history he cannot fully recall.
• Fear as performance: Gao Ming must become more frightening than the haunted house’s monster to control the visitors’ path.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming questions the Toilet Doctor, who presses him to answer instinctively and then reacts sharply to his revelation that he has been behind the door.
• Donggua reassures Gao Ming, explains the immediate danger, and directs him to disguise himself to divert the other visitors.
• Gao Ming and Donggua share a brief moment of banter over his unsettlingly convincing “doctor” persona.
• The visitors’ group, led by Paper Folding and An Yuan, rushes into the branching corridors as Gao Ming prepares to confront them.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Paper Folding, an experienced visitor seeking a route into the Soul Region, leads his group through a corridor he believes is safe. They charge toward Gao Ming without slowing down.
• The group crashes into Gao Ming, knocking him into a prop cabinet. The impact spills artificial blood, costumes, torture props, and patients’ keepsakes into the corridor. Paper Folding accidentally crushes a small nightlight, plunging Gao Ming into darkness.
• Surrounded by the bloodied objects, Gao Ming begins recovering fragments of memory: warmth, love, kindness, family, and a determination to remember who he is. He recalls that “Gao Ming” was not his true name and declares, “Perhaps you can call me Doctor Gao.”
• In a frightening frenzy, Gao Ming climbs along the corridor wall and pursues the visitors. Paper Folding and the group flee in panic and barricade themselves in a room.
• Gao Ming repeatedly slams into the door, venting pent-up emotion. Donggua grabs his arm and manages to stop him just before he hits her. Gao Ming then agrees to leave with her, and they race back across the vast haunted house.

Character developments

• Gao Ming experiences a powerful return of memory and identity. The objects and darkness trigger recollections of his past—or possibly future—and awaken a volatile mixture of grief, anger, and resolve. He adopts the name Doctor Gao and becomes terrifyingly aggressive, though he still stops himself from harming Donggua.
• Donggua moves from stunned rookie performer to someone willing to intervene directly. Despite her fear, she takes hold of Gao Ming’s arm and guides him away.
• Paper Folding begins as a confident, determined guide but loses control of the group when Gao Ming’s unexpected appearance terrifies everyone.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: Fragments of the past help Gao Ming reclaim a sense of self, while the distinction between past and future remains uncertain.
• Trauma and emotional release: Gao Ming’s violence reflects emotions accumulated since waking from a nightmare, and the chapter emphasizes how difficult that suffering is for others to understand.
• Kindness and restraint: Even in his rage, Gao Ming stops before striking Donggua, suggesting that compassion remains within him.
• Illusion versus reality: A staged haunted-house attraction becomes genuinely frightening when the performers and visitors can no longer distinguish acting from real danger.

Character interactions

• Paper Folding’s group collides with Gao Ming and inadvertently triggers his memories by destroying the nightlight and scattering meaningful props.
• Gao Ming’s terrifying pursuit turns the visitors’ confidence into panic.
• Donggua confronts Gao Ming at the barricaded door, restrains him, and successfully redirects him back toward the original route.

Plot points and events

• After Gao Ming scares the tourists away, he and Donggua head to the Dean’s Office. Donggua stays close to him, both frightened by his behavior and concerned he might get hurt.
• Gao Ming discovers thirty numbered clay figures of children in a bookcase. Removing the figure marked “2” opens a hidden stairway, its steps stained with blood and inscribed with the children’s names.
• While Donggua searches for clues and opens a safe, alarms bring the asylum’s staff and monsters running. She gives Gao Ming a black metal box and urges him to escape.
• Gao Ming rejects the box as the Black Box he seeks and enters the previously unopened second-floor area. Donggua follows.
• The pair find a strange, brain-like room containing an experimental chamber and three boxes, each paired with a bottle of liquid. The instructions offer three choices: black liquid leads to a despairing nightmare with a 50% chance of finding the Black Box; white liquid leads to a beautiful dream with a 5% chance; red liquid leads into the owner’s nightmare and promises to reveal the truth. Gao Ming hesitates over the red option.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains focused and unsettlingly composed, ignoring Donggua’s hints and refusing to settle for the staged Black Box. His familiarity with the experimental equipment suggests a real connection to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ brain-domain testing.
• Donggua shifts from performer to anxious guide. She tries to steer Gao Ming toward the intended escape, follows Central Control’s orders, and ultimately follows him into the dangerous, unfamiliar area.
• Their dynamic is tense: Donggua tries to protect and direct Gao Ming, while he acts independently and draws her into a deeper mystery.

Significant themes

• Appearance versus reality: The asylum’s staged horror gives way to a room that feels genuinely alive and frightening.
• Choice, risk, and despair: The three substances offer sharply different paths, each with uncertain consequences.
• Truth and hidden connections: The secret room links the asylum to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, suggesting its horrors may be more than a haunted-house performance.

Chapter summary

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming must choose between three dream-inducing potions: black for despair, white for an unknown dream, and red for truth. He chooses and drinks the red potion, then enters the black test cube.
• The dream initially resembles the haunted house, but its details reveal a far more disturbing version of the setting: living-looking brain patterns, pulsing blood vessels, and glasslike walls containing suffering children and mutated beings.
• Gao Ming follows a route from a previous encounter to a restroom, where he finds the Toilet Doctor hiding in a stall.
• The Toilet Doctor reveals that the haunted house is connected to a forbidden history in Xinhu: the game Perfect Life once created a passage to the world behind the door, blurring dreams, reality, and life and death. After contact with a mysterious being was lost, a catastrophe followed, the passage was destroyed, and more than a million people underwent Cerebral Surgery.
• The Toilet Doctor says his boss is investigating what has gone wrong in Xinhu. The boss’s preferred solution is brutally simple: kill until the Endless Night Sky is stained red and Blood City collapses.

Character developments

• Gao Ming chooses truth over recovering his lost memories, showing that uncovering what happened matters more to him than revisiting his despair. Though he seemed immune to fear before entering the dream, the dream setting immediately makes him anxious and alert.
• Donggua is overwhelmed: she tries to summon help while central control struggles with disturbances elsewhere and discovers the potions have been tampered with. She cannot stop Gao Ming from drinking the red potion.
• The Toilet Doctor remains comically attached to his toilet, but proves to be a source of major intelligence. He is frightened by the dream and resentful of being sent to gather information.

Character interactions

• Donggua urgently tries to manage the situation and warn Gao Ming, but he acts before she can stop him.
• Gao Ming reunites with the Toilet Doctor, who draws him aside and shares guarded information about Xinhu, Perfect Life, and the world behind the door.
• Their exchange also introduces the Toilet Doctor’s unseen boss: cautious in gathering information, but savage in how he intends to solve problems.

Significant themes

• Truth versus memory: Gao Ming chooses to pursue the truth rather than recover memories through despair.
• Dreams and reality: The dream exposes a hidden, more horrifying version of the haunted house and connects to a game that allegedly blurred the boundaries between dreams, life, and death.
• Forbidden knowledge and institutional control: Xinhu’s past was suppressed through bans, secrecy, and mass surgery.
• Violence as a solution: The boss’s “kill” approach foreshadows a ruthless conflict and raises questions about whether violence can contain supernatural threats.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming questions the Toilet Doctor, who reveals that the founder of Demon City Asylum once worked for Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals and left the company the year of a forbidden outbreak. The asylum may have been built to screen for people capable of confronting nightmares.
• The Toilet Doctor refuses to accompany Gao Ming farther into the hospital, so Gao Ming continues alone.
• As the dream-hospital grows increasingly grotesque, Gao Ming pushes through the flesh-lined corridors and enters a heart-shaped department.
• Inside is a classroom with thirty-one desks, where a blood-filled radio transceiver speaks to him. Its speaker identifies himself as the former core Smart Brain of Smart City—and a child whose brain was removed and incorporated into it.
• The child explains that Xinhu’s “unspeakable being” entered the Deep World, after which the people he had saved destroyed his legacy. A researcher secretly preserved part of the child’s consciousness.
• The founder of Demon City Asylum is training people to travel through nightmares and investigate the Deep World. The real Black Box is not in Xinhu.
• Gao Ming mentions his own coma and apparent experience of another world, suggesting a personal connection to the mysteries under discussion.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains determined and resourceful, pushing deeper into the nightmare despite its dangers. He is curious about the Deep World and offers sincere help to the voice in the transceiver.
• The Toilet Doctor shows fierce loyalty to his absent boss but is reluctant to leave his hiding place. His knowledge provides clues, though he cannot explain the asylum’s full purpose.
• The child/Smart Brain emerges as a calm, sardonic witness to Xinhu’s history. He reveals that he was exploited and sealed away, and that his present goal is to discover what happened in the Deep World.
• Their conversation shifts from Gao Ming seeking information about the asylum to a more personal exchange about the child’s identity, Xinhu’s past, and Gao Ming’s own coma.

Significant themes

• Memory, betrayal, and erased legacies: People destroyed what the mysterious being left behind, while the child’s consciousness survived only through a researcher’s betrayal.
• Human exploitation by technology: The child’s brain was turned into part of a city’s Smart Brain.
• Fear as a path to discovery: The asylum uses nightmares to identify and train people capable of entering deeper, unknown realms.
• Uncertain identity and reality: The child questions whether he is human or machine, while Gao Ming’s coma hints that his own experiences may connect to the Deep World.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming recounts a hazy nightmare filled with death, rain, and uncertainty about whether the people he cared about were alive. Number Two compares it to the Deep World, suggesting Gao Ming reached the edge of a nightmare but chose reality.
• Number Two offers to help Gao Ming enter other dreams if he carries the walkie-talkie against his chest. In exchange, Gao Ming agrees to seek out Number Two’s brain, sealed in an Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals laboratory.
• Number Two identifies the current dream as Tang Ling’s nightmare and reveals that she founded Demon City Asylum. He advises Gao Ming to turn to her if needed and reminds him to take the Toilet Doctor.
• As the dream collapses, Gao Ming tries to escape with the Toilet Doctor but is dragged back and awakens in the test pod. Staff claim the experience was caused by a rare hidden story branch and an equipment malfunction.
• Gao Ming defends the new employee Donggua, refuses compensation, and keeps the walkie-talkie and murder-reporting newspapers that have followed him out of the dream.
• Back on the Seventh Floor, Gao Ming gives the newspapers to the female clerk, reporting that the person she asked him to find was trapped in the dream but did not emerge. She is pleased, saying she may have gained another helper.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows cautious trust and resolve: he accepts Number Two’s bargain despite suspecting a hidden cost, motivated by his need for answers. He also demonstrates compassion by protecting Donggua from being blamed.
• Number Two reveals substantial knowledge and hints at a powerful, exhausted past. His identity remains unclear, and his offer binds him and Gao Ming to a future objective.
• Donggua is scapegoated by her coworkers, but Gao Ming’s defense gives her someone to rely on.
• The female clerk appears to have plans involving the person Gao Ming sought; her reaction suggests the newspapers or the missing person will help her recruit someone.
• Gao Ming’s exchanges with Number Two, the staff, Donggua, and the clerk establish a pattern: he pursues answers while forming uneasy alliances.

Significant themes

• Reality and nightmare blur: Gao Ming’s dream experiences leave physical objects behind, making the boundary between the two uncertain.
• Deals and conditional trust: Gao Ming accepts Number Two’s help without fully trusting him, emphasizing that cooperation can coexist with suspicion.
• Institutional concealment and blame: The staff hide the true circumstances of the incident and shift responsibility onto a newcomer.
• Compassion amid fear: Gao Ming chooses to defend Donggua rather than exploit the staff’s fear or demand compensation.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming finishes his interview at the Ninth Sense Experience Hall. The clerk says the boss is away, asks him to complete psychological-limit forms, and tells him to keep the bloodstained newspapers with him. She hints that he’ll receive professional training later and offers a private lesson, but Gao Ming declines.
• As the elevator closes, Gao Ming sees the clerk apparently undoing the stitches on her neck and handling her own head, deepening the mystery around her and the haunted house.
• On the train home, Gao Ming reflects on his nightmare, his possible connection to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, and how the Old District seems constrained despite the promised technological boom. He studies the newspapers, which describe old murders linked to toilets and reinforce his questions about the Toilet Doctor.
• Gao Ming realizes he left his cat, Fortune, at the asylum. The staff reassure him that an employee has already brought the cat home.
• At home, he finds Donggua, a ghost from his solo route, delivering Fortune. Liu Yi sees Donggua’s unsettling pose and Gao Ming’s bloodied appearance, then reproaches him for staying out and forgetting the cat.
• Gao Ming explains that he went for a job interview, shows Liu Yi the recruitment forms, and offers to cook while bringing out flowers and groceries he bought for her.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains drawn toward the mystery of his nightmare, but his journey home reminds him that he has a loving home and must not neglect it. He also shows consideration for Liu Yi through his gifts and offer to cook.
• The clerk remains enigmatic and seems to enjoy the prospect of future trouble; her apparent ability to detach or manipulate her head suggests she may be more than human.
• Donggua is revealed as the ghost assigned to Gao Ming’s solo route. Despite her frightening contortions, she is shy and embarrassed when seen outside the haunted house.
• Liu Yi shows her concern through her frustration: she has been waiting for Gao Ming, cooking for him, and worrying after finding him gone.

Significant themes

• Mystery and obsession: Gao Ming’s recovered memories pull him back toward the nightmare and its links to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals.
• The value of ordinary happiness: His thoughts emphasize that he should cherish the love and security he already has rather than constantly returning to darkness.
• A world held back: The contrast between the Smart City District’s technological promise and the grim, constrained reality suggests unseen forces are shaping society.
• The uncanny beside the everyday: Supernatural horrors coexist with domestic routines—cooking, flowers, groceries, and caring for a cat.

Character interactions

• The clerk gives Gao Ming guarded instructions and cryptic encouragement, while he politely avoids pressing her for answers.
• Gao Ming’s concern about Fortune connects him with the asylum staff, who reassure him that the cat is safe.
• Donggua’s awkward, grotesque greeting collides with Liu Yi’s arrival from the kitchen, creating an uncomfortable misunderstanding.
• Liu Yi scolds Gao Ming, while he tries to reassure her through an explanation and thoughtful gestures, restoring some warmth to their home.

Plot and events

• Gao Ming returns home bloodied after an incident at a haunted house. Liu Yi scolds him for risking his health so soon after leaving the hospital, then learns the new employee Donggua brought his cat Fortune over and explains what happened. Gao Ming reassured Donggua instead of blaming her, and Liu Yi lets her stay for dinner.
• Over dinner and later that night, Gao Ming and Liu Yi discuss work, financial pressure, and the unresolved dispute with the property developer whose boss has fled. Liu Yi hints at a promise they made before Gao Ming brought students back from Hanjiang, but he misses the point and asks about Hanjiang instead.
• Gao Ming cleans and waterproofs a walkie-talkie, keeping it against his chest. He searches online for clues about Xinhu and receives word from Tang Qing that another Brain-Domain Test will start the next morning. He plans to return to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals and seek access to the laboratory where Wan Jie is.
• Liu Yi tries to share a tender moment with Gao Ming, but the walkie-talkie gets in the way. She gives up, and they fall asleep. Gao Ming later hears eerie footsteps approaching his bedside. He cannot find the strange Ghost-Sighting Livestream Room online and suspects its streamer was taken by a ghost.
• After sleeping past his alarm, Gao Ming rushes to the Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals laboratory around noon.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains focused on his investigations and work, even at home. He is considerate toward Donggua and attentive to Liu Yi’s injury, but his preoccupation makes him oblivious to her emotional hints.
• Liu Yi shows deep concern for Gao Ming and sympathy for Donggua, while also revealing stress over work, debt, and their housing situation. Her playful frustration at Gao Ming’s distraction underscores her wish for closeness and for him to remember their promise.
• Donggua is embarrassed by her first-day mistake and grateful that Gao Ming defended her. She is shy during dinner and leaves quickly.
• Fortune provides a quiet domestic presence; Liu Yi strokes the cat as she watches Gao Ming.

Significant themes

• The chapter contrasts supernatural danger and everyday hardship: frightening hauntings coexist with job insecurity, debt, and housing disputes.
• Care and intimacy are present but easily disrupted by Gao Ming’s fixation on the mysteries around him.
• Gao Ming’s insistence on keeping the walkie-talkie close suggests that the supernatural threat—and his preparations for it—are closing in.