Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming and the Testers enter a room filled with photographs and scratches that preserve the Dream Owner’s memories. The room’s separated sights, sounds, smells, and sensations reveal the boy’s prolonged abuse and suffering.
• The memories show that the family collapsed after Younger Sister disappeared and Mom became a monster. Dad repeatedly sacrificed himself to appease the entity behind the door, but eventually vanished, leaving the boy alone and consumed by guilt.
• The boy’s suffering was also a trap: he endured it to make the entity lower its guard, then used his Maternal Grandfather’s belongings to turn himself into a cage for it. Yet the entity’s influence had already corrupted him, making him resemble the “filthy thing” he meant to contain.
• A family portrait ends the room’s visions. Its cheerful front contrasts with the pulsing black veins and foul blood on its back. Gao Ming realizes that the “fish” fed to the Maternal Grandfather—and later to Mom—came from behind the door and brought corruption.
• Bai Huang takes the portrait and rushes toward the Manor’s final room. Gao Ming gives Xu Deyi the key but heads into the woods to retrieve his repaired rag doll, intent on letting the child go home. Zhi Ge leads the remaining Testers back to the Manor, where Bai Huang is seen heading toward the upper floors.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming absorbs the boy’s memories through the pain, recognizing parallels with his own repeated experiences of dying. The experience seems to bring him closer to recovering his own memories. He also shows compassion for the boy, acknowledging the painful, self-sacrificing choice he made.
• Bai Huang grows curious about Gao Ming, takes the portrait, and moves decisively toward the final room. Her actions alarm Xu Deyi, who urges the others to follow her.
• Xu Deyi remains frightened and dependent on the group, but receives Gao Ming’s key as Gao Ming leaves.
• Zhi Ge distrusts the increasingly erratic group and sarcastically complains about his fellow Testers before leading them back inside.

Significant themes

• Pain as both memory and remedy: Suffering unlocks the boy’s past and seems to help Gao Ming recover his own, though it also threatens to overwhelm them.
• Sacrifice and guilt: The boy’s family members make desperate sacrifices to preserve the family, while the boy bears guilt for the disaster and ultimately sacrifices himself to contain the entity.
• Corruption through appeasement: Feeding the entity may seem to protect loved ones, but it spreads its influence and transforms those who resist it into something like itself.
• The cost of resisting evil: The boy’s plan succeeds only through extreme suffering—and even then, the entity’s corruption leaves its mark.

Plot points and events

• In Pine Forest, Gao Ming finds the little girl’s hiding place empty, then meets the enormous Cloth Doll. He asks her to help stop the evil behind the door; she wants revenge, but agrees so long as she can punish it without harming innocents. Gao Ming believes the nightmare will end by dawn.
• Inside the Manor, Zhi Ge and the others face mounting dangers: the rifle is missing, the former Mountaineers have become Corpse Ghosts, the snowman is still loose, and the House Owner may be hiding inside one of the Testers. Zhi Ge also notices signs that someone has been moving through the first-floor bathroom and recalls the House Owner seemed desperate to escape Room 2009.
• Bai Huang deliberately lures the woman in red from the fourth floor by spreading fish from East Lake and displaying a family photograph. The ghost, who had been holding herself back, becomes increasingly crazed and breaks through the iron railing.
• Bai Huang draws the ghost away from the Manor so Zhi Ge and Xu Deyi can reach the fourth floor and open the final Hidden Room. Zhi Ge rushes upstairs as the passage lies exposed.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming recruits the Cloth Doll as an ally, balancing her desire for vengeance with a warning not to harm innocents.
• The Cloth Doll reveals intense hatred born of past suffering, but accepts cooperation toward a shared goal.
• Bai Huang takes decisive personal risk, using herself as bait and overruling Zhi Ge’s objections.
• Zhi Ge remains observant despite his fear, noticing unexplained clues and trying to protect the group’s remaining advantage. He and Xu Deyi are too focused on the ghost to catch Bai Huang’s signals.
• The woman in red appears to have restrained herself through a promise to her family; the fish and photograph overwhelm that resolve and provoke her attack.

Significant themes

• Vengeance versus protection: The Cloth Doll seeks retribution, while Gao Ming insists that innocents must remain safe.
• Family and restraint: The woman in red’s attachment to her husband and children has kept her from escaping, even after her humanity has largely disappeared.
• Sacrifice and cooperation: Bai Huang risks herself to give the others a chance to complete the ritual.
• Uncertainty and hidden danger: The House Owner’s strange behavior and the Manor’s many unresolved threats leave the characters unsure whom—or what—they can trust.

Key plot points and events

• Xu Deyi is forced to lead the group onto the Manor’s fourth floor. Its doorless rooms are filled with disturbing signs of fish-like corruption: hair, scales, bones, lake water, and aquatic weeds.
• In Room 4009, the group reads the Dream Owner’s mother’s writings. She describes how her family ate cursed flesh taken from ghosts behind a door, became ill and obsessed, and lost family members who entered it. She warns that the door is taboo and that the family’s tragedy may be inescapable.
• The room’s “fourth room” is concealed behind a curtain: an ordinary wooden door. Xu Deyi uses the dark key marked “hatred” to open it, revealing a winter landscape facing East Lake.
• Opening the door unleashes wind and snow, while the rooms around them seem to fill with frantic, human-faced fish. Zhi Ge finds a warning that opening the door requires offerings of life, memories, and obsession—the elements represented by the first three rooms. The group has already begun the ritual.
• Zhi Ge realizes East Lake is the final door and that its fish are the ghosts whose flesh the family consumed. He spots Bai Huang fleeing the woman in red, Gao Ming riding a giant Cloth Doll, and Qian Jin carrying the Hunting Rifle and a headless corpse. He infers that the Manor’s owner possessed Qian Jin to deceive the Mountaineer Corpse Ghosts, then rushes out, believing he knows the escape route.

Character developments and interactions

• Xu Deyi remains reluctant and easily unsettled, but he investigates and records clues despite his fear. His confusion contrasts with Zhi Ge’s sudden insight.
• Zhi Ge takes charge throughout, pushing Xu Deyi forward and interpreting the clues. Once he understands the ritual and the danger, he abandons the others’ immediate task and runs to act.
• Rao Rao quietly responds to the snowfall, noticing that the flakes look blood-tinged and directing attention to East Lake.
• The group’s exchanges mix fear, bickering, and gallows humor: Xu Deyi worries about explaining the strange door to Gao Ming, while Zhi Ge scolds him for tempting fate and later jokes at his own expense before rushing off.

Significant themes

• Inherited tragedy and fatalism: The mother believes her family is trapped in a cycle of illness, obsession, and loss tied to the door.
• Temptation and forbidden knowledge: The door promises answers but brings danger and demands a price.
• Corruption and consumption: Eating the ghosts’ flesh links the family’s sickness to violence and curses; the human-faced fish make that hidden history physically visible.
• Memory, identity, and sacrifice: The door’s required offerings—life, memories, and obsession—frame entry as a threat to the self as well as the body.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming and the Cloth Doll Younger Sister race toward East Lake, where they believe the nightmare’s real door is located. They hope to free her brother and the Testers, while the house owner and Bai Huang pursue different goals.
• At the lake, they spot Qian Jin—now possessed by the house owner—escaping in a boat. He has taken the corpse, one of three offerings needed to open the door, and is using a Living Person Sail, Dreamcatcher, and an oar marked “Forgetting.”
• The Cloth Doll fears the creatures beneath the ice and hesitates to follow. Before they can act, Bai Huang and the monstrous Mad Mother arrive.
• Bai Huang explains that the Letter, Family Portrait, and corpse represent obsession, memory, and the Dream Owner’s lost life. Together, they can awaken the Dream Owner and open the door. The house owner took the corpse to escape alone, leaving everyone else trapped.
• Bai Huang reveals that the house owner is a filthy entity that escaped from behind the door and can open it by its own means. If it reaches the real world, it may take the Tester’s place undetected.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows strategic confidence, explaining the likely motives of the others and urging the Cloth Doll to keep moving. She distrusts him, sensing violence in him, but follows his lead.
• The Cloth Doll’s fear of East Lake—and her deep attachment to her mother—comes into conflict. Seeing Mad Mother’s gentle reaction to her makes the reunion especially painful.
• Bai Huang is badly wounded but remains determined to escape her nightmare. She acknowledges Gao Ming’s insight while revealing the danger of the house owner’s plan.
• Qian Jin’s body is now under the house owner’s control, making him the vehicle for the entity’s escape.

Significant themes

• Different forms of escape: Gao Ming, Bai Huang, and the house owner each seek a different way out, with conflicting consequences for others.
• Memory, obsession, and identity: The three offerings embody what makes a person whole, while the house owner’s attempt to replace a Tester threatens the boundary between self and impostor.
• Fear and family bonds: The Cloth Doll’s terror of the lake and heartbreak at seeing her transformed mother reveal how love and fear can coexist.
• Dreams and reality: Gao Ming begins to question whether his own coma experiences were truly only dreams.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming sides with Bai Huang against the homeowner, who is possessing Qian Jin, because he wants to reach the deeper nightmare.
• Bai Huang and Gao Ming chase Qian Jin across East Lake’s unstable ice. Ghostly “fish” crowd beneath them, and parts of the ice are dangerously thin.
• Qian Jin uses fluid from a head kept in his leather pouch to empower his oar. The substance—apparently the Dream Owner’s blood and tears—lets him break the ice with ease.
• As the pursuers close in, Qian Jin heads toward the lake’s pitch-black center. He threatens them with his Hunting Rifle, but Bai Huang points out that he can shoot only one of them and may have little ammunition left.
• Qian Jin offers to guide Bai Huang into the deeper nightmare and help her survive, describing a realm under black fog with thirteen Blood Cities built from the dead. Bai Huang refuses to trust him.
• The chapter ends with Gao Ming shaken by Qian Jin’s description. The mention of the thirteen Blood Cities seems to activate something buried in Gao Ming’s mind.

Character developments

• Gao Ming knowingly accepts extreme danger, driven by curiosity about the deeper nightmare. He is also unsettled by how fiercely Bai Huang pursues her goal.
• Bai Huang shows exceptional courage, resolve, and tactical composure. Her search for her children—and her determination to reach the deeper nightmare—outweighs fear and Qian Jin’s promises.
• Qian Jin/the homeowner reveals a ruthless streak: he intends to exploit the head in his pouch and later inflict a painful death on its owner. Yet as his escape falters, he shifts from threats to bargaining.

Significant themes

• Obsession as both strength and danger: Bai Huang’s devotion drives her forward, while the homeowner condemns people’s attachments as shackles that turn them into monsters.
• Trust and deception: Qian Jin offers knowledge and protection, but his history of manipulation makes his offer unconvincing.
• Curiosity versus survival: Gao Ming and Bai Huang pursue forbidden knowledge despite the very real possibility of dying on the ice.
• Memory and nightmare: “Forgetting” is tied to the oar’s power, while the deeper nightmare is presented as a vast, rule-bound world shaped by accumulated despair and death.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming and Bai Huang form a reluctant alliance, with Bai Huang leading the pursuit and Gao Ming following despite the danger.
• Bai Huang confronts Qian Jin strategically, using the rifle’s limits and their proximity to undermine his threat.
• Qian Jin tries to divide or persuade them by offering Bai Huang a safe passage into the deeper nightmare, but she rejects his assurances.
• Gao Ming listens closely to Qian Jin’s description; its details provoke an unexplained reaction in him.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming hesitates over Qian Jin’s claim that the Dream Owner is also a ghost, but joins Bai Huang in attacking the possessed Qian Jin. Their aim is to seize the homeowner’s remaining soul rather than trust him.
• Qian Jin shoots Bai Huang with a powerful round, badly wounding her. Her attack nevertheless gives Gao Ming time to tackle Qian Jin before he can fire again.
• Gao Ming and Qian Jin fight aboard a small boat as something stirs beneath East Lake’s ice. Qian Jin warns that the homeowner needs him trapped and that the lake may kill them all, but Gao Ming refuses to let go of the rifle.
• The struggle sends both men into the lake, where the cold, a powerful downward pull, and an approaching presence threaten to drag them under. The boat capsizes, along with the headless corpse aboard.
• Bai Huang, still alive, urges Gao Ming to put a letter and group photo into the Dream Owner’s head, restoring his memories and obsession. The photo falls into the lake, and something begins changing beneath the surface.
• During the struggle, Gao Ming’s pocket is torn, releasing two flesh-and-blood seeds. One is caught, but the other follows the Giant Tree’s call into the depths of the lake, where it takes root.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming chooses decisive violence over negotiation, showing both resolve and a willingness to risk death. His struggle with Qian Jin is a contest of strength and determination, but the seeds’ escape reveals that he has overlooked a danger of his own.
• Bai Huang acts boldly despite the mortal cost. She sacrifices her chance to stop Qian Jin, then uses her remaining strength to guide Gao Ming and throw him the photo.
• Qian Jin / the Dream Owner becomes increasingly furious and desperate as Gao Ming attacks. Through Qian Jin, the homeowner claims that he is no less monstrous than the ghost he is fighting and that he needs to remain trapped.
• The conflict shifts from an attempted negotiation to an all-out fight. Bai Huang and Gao Ming cooperate through timing and sacrifice, while Qian Jin and Gao Ming cling to the rifle and each other in a struggle that puts everyone in danger.

Significant themes

• Trust and uncertainty: Gao Ming must act without knowing whether the homeowner’s claims are true.
• Obsession and identity: Bai Huang’s plan suggests restoring the Dream Owner’s memories may change the situation, while Qian Jin’s warning blurs the line between victim and monster.
• Sacrifice and survival: Bai Huang accepts grave danger to create an opening and help Gao Ming.
• Uncontrolled consequences: The seeds’ attraction to East Lake suggests that even a tactical victory could unleash a new threat from the nightmare’s depths.

Key plot points and events

• Qian Jin discovers Gao Ming’s Flesh-and-Blood Seed and realizes Gao Ming is like him. He panics and tries to escape.
• Gao Ming brings out the Dream Owner’s shriveled head. Together with the corpse, group photograph, and letters, it completes the offerings needed to restore the Dream Owner within the nightmare.
• The House Owner, speaking through Qian Jin, reveals that the Dream Owner was imprisoned by being made to take the House Owner’s place in a human body. The Dream Owner is the true, inhuman ghost, and is now waking.
• The lake turns violent: the ice cracks, the snow turns bloody, and a vast fish-like monster with the Dream Owner’s face attacks. It drags Qian Jin underwater.
• Gao Ming tries to flee with the gravely injured Bai Huang, but the monster pursues them and traps them beneath the ice. Gao Ming abandons escape and follows the Seed’s call into the lake’s depths.
• There, he finds a Blood Gate beneath a rapidly growing Giant Tree. The Tree’s roots entwine with the Gate’s vein-like roots, apparently trying to open it and connect different nightmares.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains determined under extreme danger. He risks himself to carry Bai Huang, then chooses to descend into the darkness when escape seems impossible, trusting the Seed.
• Qian Jin shifts from threatening Gao Ming to desperate self-preservation. His escape attempt ends when the Dream Owner’s monster catches him.
• Bai Huang, badly injured, clings to life and urges Gao Ming to keep moving, invoking Bai Xiao and Bai Qiao to keep him awake.
• The Dream Owner is revealed as a monstrous, obsession-driven force that has regained its presence in the nightmare.

Character interactions

• Qian Jin exposes Gao Ming’s secret, while the House Owner uses Qian Jin’s body to explain the history of the two entities.
• Bai Huang calls for Qian Jin’s death, fearing the group will otherwise be implicated in the Dream Owner’s release.
• Gao Ming tries to save Bai Huang and questions why the Dream Owner attacked them despite their supposed agreement; she explains that the ritual is incomplete.

Significant themes

• Obsession and identity: The completed offerings restore the Dream Owner, whose remaining fixation appears to drive its actions.
• Trapped dreams and helplessness: Gao Ming experiences a nightmare-like struggle to escape, but cannot wake or reach safety.
• Transformation and connection: The Seed’s growth and the Tree’s effort to join with the Blood Gate suggest that nightmares may be linked or opened into one another.

Key plot points and events

• The Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree feeds on the despair trapped in East Lake, growing powerful enough to reach and force open the Blood Gate at the lake’s bottom.
• With the gate no longer under his control, the Dream Owner loses power and begins to regain his humanity. The Giant Tree defeats him and consumes the spirits imprisoned in the lake, shattering the lake’s ice and rising above the surrounding mountains.
• The tree produces a single pulsing, heart-like fruit for Gao Ming. The Dream Owner’s younger brother warns him that eating it will bind him to the gate and its curse, but Gao Ming eats it anyway.
• The fruit triggers a vivid memory: Gao Ming recalls being on the crashed bus not as a teacher but as someone making a game—and seeing his own corpses embedded in the tunnel walls. He realizes the experience was real, not a dream.
• The fruit greatly enhances Gao Ming’s healing and power. Blood-colored veins appear on his arms, leading him to suspect that he carries one of the thirteen Blood Cities said to exist in the deeper world.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming is unsettled by how powerful the seeds he carries are, and wonders about his forgotten past. Despite the younger brother’s warning, he accepts the fruit, recovering a significant memory and gaining new strength.
• The Dream Owner abandons Gao Ming to try to defend the Blood Gate. Once it is taken, he weakens and hesitates as his humanity and memories return, leaving him vulnerable to the tree.
• The younger brother appears drained and impaled among the branches. Though defeated, he warns Gao Ming that the fruit will curse and bind him.
• The Testers watch from the shore, unable to understand the scale of events unfolding in the nightmare.

Significant themes

• Power and its price: The fruit grants Gao Ming immense abilities but may permanently connect him to the gate and its curse.
• Memory and identity: Gao Ming’s recovered vision challenges his understanding of his past and hints at a more disturbing identity.
• Humanity as weakness and return: The Dream Owner’s regained memories restore his humanity but make him less able to fight.
• Escalating supernatural forces: The Giant Tree and the Blood Gate reveal powers far beyond what the Testers—and Gao Ming—believed possible.

Plot points

• Gao Ming and the Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree take control of the Dream Owner’s door, giving Gao Ming a chance to use the stable Manor nightmare as a hidden base and explore deeper nightmares beyond Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ surveillance.
• Gao Ming plans to rescue the severely injured Bai Huang and considers assembling a trusted team.
• He interrogates the ghost inhabiting Qian Jin’s ruined body. The ghost reveals that Qian Jin’s soul is hidden inside a backyard snowman, and that nightmares marked with a butterfly are more likely to contain passages to another world.
• Gao Ming seals the ghost inside the Giant Tree, then helps the Dream Owner reunite with his mother and younger sister. He asks the Dream Owner to pretend the ritual succeeded and let the other Testers leave, concealing what really happened.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows compassion toward the Dream Owner’s family, but also demonstrates a growing menace and ruthlessness. Since eating the blood-red fruit, he senses that he is changing and recovering a “true self.”
• The Dream Owner distrusts Gao Ming’s assurances and calls him a hypocrite, yet cooperates because protecting his family matters more to him than who controls the nightmare. His reunion with his mother and sister brings back his smile.
• Qian Jin’s possessing ghost shifts from defiance to pleading once Gao Ming threatens it. It offers its knowledge in exchange for survival.
• Gao Ming’s thoughts turn to his own missing parents. Seeing the Dream Owner’s happy family strengthens his belief that his parents are trapped somewhere in the nightmares—and his resolve to find them.

Significant themes

• Trust and deception: The Dream Owner’s past betrayal makes him skeptical even of someone who appears to help him.
• Power and moral ambiguity: Gao Ming protects others while taking control of their nightmare and threatening his captive.
• Family and memory: Love for family endures despite trauma and forgotten memories, driving both the Dream Owner and Gao Ming forward.
• Transformation and identity: Gao Ming’s growing affinity with nightmare forces raises questions about what he is becoming—and who he truly was.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• After Gao Ming takes control of the nightmare, the Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree becomes its new master. The Dream Owner’s mother and younger sister return to their original, less monstrous forms. The Dream Owner explains that he had transformed them to protect them from the House Owner, and says the red clothing reflects the terrifying ghosts beyond the door.
• Gao Ming delays reporting the truth to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, arranging for the group to blame the disaster on the House Owner opening the door. He has the Dream Owner tell Qian Jin this revised account.
• Qian Jin finds the other testers and guides them across the lake toward the door beneath the Giant Tree. Gao Ming coordinates with the tree to keep them safe and make the door passable.
• Qian Jin sends Gao Ming and the critically injured Bai Huang through first, planning to leave last. Gao Ming hears the Walkie-Talkie begin to speak as he crosses, but wakes before hearing its message.
• The testers awaken in a hospital ward. Qian Jin remains trapped in the nightmare, prompting Zhi Ge to accuse Tang Qing and Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals of withholding crucial information.
• In a debriefing, Gao Ming learns that the door is real but invisible to ordinary people, and that opening one has often caused disappearances or madness. Tang Qing reveals the nightmare’s manor corresponds to an actual abandoned resort, where a family was massacred. He ends by saying his older sister wants to meet Gao Ming.

Character developments

• Gao Ming consolidates control over the nightmare and shows careful strategic thinking, concealing what happened to buy time. He also recognizes Qian Jin’s loyalty and considers him a possible future ally.
• Qian Jin proves brave and dependable by leading the group to safety and choosing to stay behind until everyone else is through. His decision leaves him trapped.
• Zhi Ge becomes openly furious with Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals after learning Qian Jin was stranded, challenging Tang Qing directly.
• Tang Qing maintains a reassuring façade but reveals the company knew about the risks of doors and deliberately withheld that knowledge to secure the testers’ participation.
• Bai Huang survives the escape but remains unconscious and in critical condition.

Significant themes

• Hidden truths and manipulation: Gao Ming and the company both shape what others are told, though for different purposes.
• Loyalty and sacrifice: Qian Jin puts the group’s safety ahead of his own.
• The cost of knowledge: Doors offer a way out but are tied to disappearance, madness, and deadly mysteries.
• Power and control: The nightmare’s changing master reshapes its inhabitants and environment, while the real-world company seeks access to the same secrets.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming questions the Dream Owner about his family’s monstrous forms and learns about the horrors beyond the door.
• The Dream Owner gives Qian Jin a false account that helps conceal Gao Ming’s role in the nightmare’s transformation.
• Qian Jin earns the other testers’ trust by revealing secrets and personally guiding them to the exit.
• Zhi Ge confronts Tang Qing over Qian Jin’s fate, while Tang Qing refuses to accept blame and promises to try to wake him.
• During the debrief, Gao Ming presses Tang Qing about the door; Tang Qing shares classified details, then introduces the prospect of meeting his older sister.

Key plot points and events

• Tang Qing tells Gao Ming that his sister, Tang Ling—the founder of the Demon City Asylum and a former Level Five laboratory worker—will visit him. He admits Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals can track Gao Ming through his contract and has access to his personal information.
• Tang Qing questions whether Gao Ming caused disturbances in two nightmares. Gao denies it; Tang Qing accepts his answer for now and offers to cover for him if he later remembers anything.
• Gao returns home and, for the first time, tells Liu Yi everything about his work as a Tester and his search for his lost memories. They talk through the night.
• Liu Yi asks whether Gao loved anyone else in his nightmares. He mentions Xuan Wen, who seemed to save him there and is now his attending physician. Liu Yi is uneasy but promises to help him recover his memories.
• As Liu Yi sleeps, Gao reflects that his growing bond with her is making him feel more connected to ordinary life. He also senses that something from beyond the “door” is affecting reality.
• Gao tests the Walkie-Talkie he received from Number Two. On its final channel, a man named Wang Ping’an calls him “Older Brother,” insists Gao promised to find him, and describes his lonely life. Gao listens without correcting his apparent mistaken identity.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming becomes more open with Liu Yi, sharing his secrets and accepting her support. His attachment to her strengthens even as he remains drawn toward the mysteries beyond the door.
• Liu Yi shows vulnerability beneath her usual capable, guarded manner. Her jealousy about Xuan Wen gives way to a sincere offer to stand by Gao and help uncover his past.
• Tang Qing is more candid and informal with Gao, largely because of his devotion to his sister. He remains suspicious of Gao’s role in the nightmare anomalies but offers him help.
• Wang Ping’an seems isolated and childlike despite his weathered voice. His urgent, trusting address suggests a significant connection to the Walkie-Talkie’s former owner.

Significant themes

• Truth and trust: Gao’s honesty deepens his relationship with Liu Yi, while Tang Qing’s disclosures expose the surveillance and secrecy surrounding the company.
• Memory and identity: Gao’s lost memories and Wang Ping’an’s mistaken recognition raise questions about who Gao was and whom others believe him to be.
• Reality and the supernatural: The door, Gao’s altered condition, and the Walkie-Talkie’s sudden activity suggest that forces from nightmares are reaching into the waking world.
• Attachment and isolation: Gao is becoming more rooted in life through Liu Yi, while Wang Ping’an’s plea highlights the loneliness and confinement on the other side of the connection.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming listens to an elderly man over a blood-marked walkie-talkie. The man believes his brother promised they could always contact each other, but he can no longer remember his brother’s name and fears his memories are being erased.
• Gao Ming suspects the man’s condition may be linked to a horrific taboo incident in Xinhu that reportedly led more than a million people to undergo brain surgery.
• The man identifies himself as Wang Ping’an and says he lives near Xinhu Zoo, but has been confined to the Sunshine Charity Nursing Home. Gao Ming promises to visit.
• The walkie-talkie falls silent at sunrise, prompting Gao Ming to wonder whether it works only at night—and whether Wang Ping’an may be a ghost.
• Gao Ming goes to the nursing home. Staff obstruct his visit, describing Wang as a troublesome, mentally unwell resident who has repeatedly tried to escape. They eventually let Gao through after noticing his communicator from Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals.
• On the sixth floor, Gao finds Wang’s room beside the Dean’s Office. Wang appears timid and childlike, but Gao notices his collection of toys and equipment—and that he is carefully holding the walkie-talkie.
• Gao enters Wang’s room and asks to speak privately with him.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming moves from cautious listening to active involvement, offering to help Wang find his brother. His suspicions deepen as nursing-home staff resist his visit.
• Wang Ping’an is distressed by his fading memories of his brother but shows signs of greater awareness than his timid demeanor suggests. His apparent innocence may conceal resourcefulness.
• The nursing-home staff portray Wang as unstable and difficult, while their evasiveness and surveillance measures make Gao suspect they may be hiding something.
• Gao treats Wang gently over the walkie-talkie, then tries to reassure him in person, though Wang is visibly afraid of living people.

Significant themes

• Memory and loss: Wang’s memories of his brother are disappearing selectively, suggesting deliberate interference rather than ordinary forgetfulness.
• Trust and deception: Wang’s faith in his brother contrasts with Gao’s growing awareness of a larger conspiracy.
• Confinement and control: Wang’s repeated escapes and the nursing home’s restrictions raise questions about whether his care is protective or coercive.
• Appearances versus reality: Wang seems confused and helpless, yet his concealed equipment hints that he is more capable than staff—or Gao—might first assume.

Key plot points and events

• At a nursing home, Gao Ming speaks with Wang Ping’an, an elderly man who carries a pristine, strangely inscribed Walkie-Talkie. Wang insists the voice that contacted him was Gao Ming’s and believes Gao Ming was sent by his long-lost older brother.
• Wang remembers that his brother helped save the city and went to Hanhai, a place he helped build. Hearing the name triggers a powerful reaction in Gao Ming: memories and mental restraints seem to break, and red marks appear across his body.
• Wang describes Hanhai as both a cage and a window, a place formed from despair but filled with hope, where two worlds would merge. This contrasts with Gao Ming’s own fragmentary memories of Hanhai as a place of death and fear.
• Wang says his brother later left to find Hanhai’s “true savior” and bring him back before people forgot him, but never returned and was nearly lost himself.
• Wang mentions two past visitors: actor Bai Xian and Huang Ying, a missing former tycoon now infamous for alleged human experimentation, theft, and links to criminal organizations. Wang insists both were kind, revealing a gap between his trusting view and public accounts.
• Gao Ming promises to respond if Wang contacts him on the Walkie-Talkie, accepting what he sees as his responsibility to Wang’s brother.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from cautious questioning to personal investment as Hanhai awakens something in him. He suspects he came from that city and takes Wang’s stories seriously, despite how they might sound to outsiders.
• Wang Ping’an remains childlike and forgetful, but his memories offer clues about Hanhai, his brother, and people connected to the city. He is eager for companionship and fears forgetting his brother.
• Their conversation becomes a bond of trust: Gao Ming reassures Wang, listens patiently, and agrees to help him remember. Wang asks Gao Ming to visit and remind him daily that he has a brother.

Significant themes

• Memory and forgetting: Wang’s fading recollections and his brother’s search to prevent someone from being forgotten drive the mystery.
• Conflicting realities and perspectives: Hanhai is remembered as both hopeful and terrifying; Wang’s judgments of people also conflict with public opinion.
• Identity and hidden pasts: Gao Ming’s intense response suggests a buried connection to Hanhai, while Huang Ying’s unexplained disappearance raises further questions.
• Responsibility and compassion: Gao Ming chooses to honor the brother’s presumed duty and offers Wang care and companionship.

Key plot points

• After speaking with Wang Ping’an at the nursing home, Gao Ming promises to find the old man’s brother. A staff member mistakes Gao Ming for an Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals employee and says Wang has signed a Voluntary Donation Form—something Gao Ming believes Wang would never do.
• At home, Gao Ming finds Tang Ling waiting with his cat, Fortune. She says she used her Level Five clearance to investigate him and discovered that his records were altered, even though the public account of his coma and recovery was a cover story.
• Tang Ling explains that Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals subjected Gao Ming to forbidden experiments while he was unconscious. His recovery was unexpected, and the nightmare he experienced apparently exceeded the company’s control. His attending physician, Xuan Wen, destroyed his original records and altered the files of twelve other patients.
• Tang Ling warns that the company could imprison and experiment on Gao Ming if it learns he is beyond its control. Xuan Wen has not yet submitted his information, for reasons unknown.
• Gao Ming asks why Tang Ling considers them allies. She denies betraying the company, saying its senior management betrayed their original agreement. She cannot explain further because something implanted in her could alert the higher-ups.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts decisively after the nursing-home visit and remains strikingly calm despite Tang Ling’s warnings about his fate. His attention shifts toward uncovering what was done to him and why.
• Tang Ling emerges as confident, calculating, and well-informed. She offers Gao Ming information and a possible alliance, but keeps important details secret.
• Wang Ping’an appears vulnerable and childlike; the suspected donation agreement raises concern that someone may be exploiting or manipulating him.
• Xuan Wen is revealed as a pivotal, ambiguous figure: she altered patient records and concealed Gao Ming’s information, but her motives are unknown.
• Tang Ling and Gao Ming test one another in conversation. She probes and warns him; he questions her loyalty rather than simply accepting her claims.

Significant themes

• Institutional secrecy and exploitation: Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals disguises experiments as treatment and may treat people as disposable research subjects.
• Uncertain truth and altered records: Gao Ming’s identity and past are obscured, leaving him dependent on fragmented evidence.
• Trust under pressure: Tang Ling may be an ally, but her secrets and guarded motives make trust difficult.
• Unexpected survival and loss of control: Gao Ming’s awakening—and the nightmare behind it—seems to have disrupted forces that believed they could control him.

Plot and events

• Tang Ling visits Gao Ming to push him toward investigating his attending physician, Xuan Wen, but offers few details. She reveals that a hidden group in Xinhu opposes the forces Gao Ming is pursuing and says he must prove he can survive a “deep nightmare” before he can meet them or inherit Number Two’s legacy.
• After Tang Ling leaves, the apartment’s surveillance camera and appliances suddenly resume functioning. Gao Ming finds a flyer recruiting heavy-machinery operators for the Molten Smart Waste Treatment Plant and suspects it may lead him to Huang Ying.
• Gao Ming travels to the plant, where he notices a strange burning-plastic smell and discovers a vast, heavily automated facility. Guards quickly intercept him and take him to a security office.
• A bearded employee questions him, warns him about fatal accidents and unidentified bodies found in the garbage, and contacts someone after seeing the flyer. A tattoo-covered, heavyset man arrives, takes the flyer, then returns to question Gao Ming about his name and his Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals communicator.

Character development and interactions

• Gao Ming remains wary and determined. He presses Tang Ling for answers, considers how to demonstrate his capability, and approaches the plant despite its danger. He is also cautious when Bai Huang calls, unsure whether the company is monitoring them.
• Tang Ling is guarded but gives Gao Ming a direction: become strong enough to survive deep nightmares. Her encounter with him suggests she is testing his resolve and judging whether he is fit to take on Number Two’s responsibilities.
• Bai Huang contacts Gao Ming and insists she did not betray him to Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals; her priority is finding her child. Gao Ming responds cautiously but agrees to visit her.
• The plant’s staff treat the flyer as significant. The bearded man is suspicious and protective of the facility, while the tattooed man’s questions about Gao Ming’s communicator suggest the plant’s connection to the wider conflict.

Significant themes

• Trust and hidden allegiances: Gao Ming cannot be sure who is friend or foe, even among apparent allies.
• Testing and inheritance: He must prove himself before he can take over Number Two’s legacy or gain access to the people resisting from the shadows.
• Danger beneath ordinary appearances: A routine job flyer leads to a secretive facility with mysterious deaths, unusual security, and possible ties to the nightmare world.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming is brought before three men at a waste-processing plant in Molten Fire. Though wary, he explains that he came with a recruitment ad seeking answers.
• The men verify his history: Gao was harmed by Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, but his treatment records are missing. He later returned to the company to undergo brain-domain experiments and survived a nightmare experiment.
• The men reveal their identities: Cao Hu, a former brain-domain research specialist, and Guan Li and Zhang Zhan, former security personnel for the company. They became enemies of Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals after discovering files about a taboo incident from ten years earlier.
• When Gao asks about “Brother Bug” and Huang Ying, the mood turns tense. Zhang redirects the conversation and offers to show Gao their hidden refuge.
• Cao disables surveillance as the group crosses the garbage valley and enters a heavily secured passage. Beneath the waste heaps, they find Fu Family Village, a remarkably intact settlement connected by strange machinery and cables.
• Cao explains that the village predates the waste plant, has no traceable clan records, and is off-limits without permission. It may be the ancestral home of Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ founder, whose surname was Fu. The village’s buildings and inhabitants are dangerous.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains suspicious and alert, quietly assessing escape routes. His experiences with Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals have made him distrustful, even when the others appear sympathetic.
• Cao Hu is introduced as a powerful, technically gifted former company specialist who helps establish Gao’s background and guide him through the hidden refuge.
• Guan Li and Zhang Zhan are revealed as former company security operatives and formidable modified “New Humans.” Their hostility toward the company gives way to guarded concern once they learn Gao is also a victim.

Significant themes

• Exploitation and betrayal: Former insiders have turned against Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals after uncovering its secrets.
• Trust and suspicion: Gao may have found allies, but he refuses to trust them easily, and the group’s reaction to Huang Ying suggests concealed tensions.
• Hidden histories and erased identities: Fu Family Village and its missing clan records hint at a past deliberately obscured.
• The uncanny beneath the ordinary: A village, strange talismans, distorted light, and dangerous unseen residents lie hidden beneath an industrial garbage site.

Character interactions

• Gao challenges the men’s authority and questions their motives; they respond by investigating his history before deciding to trust him.
• Cao, Guan, and Zhang bond with Gao over their shared experience as victims or castoffs of Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, while warning him about the dangers of the experiments.
• Gao’s question about Huang Ying disrupts the group’s tentative welcome, prompting Zhang to change the subject.
• Cao and Zhang guide Gao into Fu Family Village but emphasize that he must follow their rules and not enter the village proper without permission.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming arrives with Old Cao and the others at a sinister village hidden beneath a valley of garbage, where ghostly offerings and strange noises suggest the place is hostile to the living.
• A dangerous, disabled butcher escorts them to the Fu family ancestral hall, where they meet Brother Bug, a scarred man who seems to relish his own pain.
• Brother Bug demands to know who gave Gao Ming the Recruitment Ad. When Gao Ming refuses—or cannot—answer, Brother Bug orders Old Cao and Zhang Zhan to use a crude Dream-Reading Device on him.
• The device painfully stirs Gao Ming’s fragmented memories. He recalls glimpses of a Ghost Festival car crash, a corpse-filled tunnel, and flesh-and-blood seeds feeding on shadows and negative emotions. His mind appears to contain many conflicting personalities or the lingering obsessions of numerous dead people.
• At ten percent, the device breaks. Gao Ming briefly sees the Thirteen Boundless Blood Cities, including a vast tomb bearing his name.
• The device’s failure also disturbs the village’s pipes and ancestral tablets. Old Cao suspects Gao Ming’s arrival may be connected to Huang Ying, but Brother Bug angrily stops him from saying more.
• Brother Bug concludes that Gao Ming probably is not affiliated with Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, whose high-security experiments involved casting people’s consciousness into nightmares. He takes Gao Ming to meet the “old ghosts” who have been asking to see him, promising to show him the hidden, ugly side of Xinhu.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed despite the torture-like test and Brother Bug’s threatening presence. The test confirms that his memories are severely fragmented and hints at an extraordinary, possibly many-layered identity.
• Brother Bug is revealed as a volatile pain-seeker with authority in the village. Though intimidating, he becomes curious about Gao Ming and decides to take him to the old ghosts.
• Old Cao and Zhang Zhan show concern about the device’s dangerous side effects; Zhang Zhan quietly urges Gao Ming to cooperate. Old Cao’s attempt to discuss Huang Ying is cut off by Brother Bug.
• The butcher serves as a silent, ominous guide, reinforcing the village’s sense of danger.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: Gao Ming’s recovered memories are fragmented, while his mind seems to hold more than one person’s experiences or obsessions.
• Pain, trauma, and survival: Brother Bug embraces suffering, while Gao Ming endures the device’s torment without breaking.
• The hidden beneath the surface: The village and the promised “other side” of Xinhu suggest that respectable appearances conceal a grotesque reality.
• Human experimentation and exploitation: Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ nightmare experiments and the improvised device both treat human consciousness as something to be probed at great risk.

Key plot points and events

• Brother Bug writes Gao Ming’s name onto a spirit tablet in the Fu Family Ancestral Hall, linking their fates. He says the ritual may protect Gao Ming, though it could also claim his future.
• The pair enter old Nutrient Pods and connect to Perfect Life. Gao Ming awakens in a vast, ruined building surrounded by black fog—the Death Building.
• Brother Bug explains that this world is not a game but the other side of reality. Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals caused the original disaster by exploring the human brain and opening a path into another world. Xinhu’s people sacrificed themselves to defeat the released threat, but the company stole their victory, forced witnesses through brain surgery, and suppressed those who resisted.
• The former ideal world of Perfect Life has broken into fragments. Huang Ying, a symbol of resistance and hope, is missing; Brother Bug says he will return if Gao Ming helps reclaim fragments from the company.
• Brother Bug reveals that someone inside Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals is concealing and altering Gao Ming’s records. He urges Gao Ming to reach clearance level five, promising the resistance will support him.
• They take the elevator to the Death Building’s Reception Hall, a rare remaining Exchange in Perfect Life, where survivors gather discreetly.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains skeptical about fate and questions whether the Brain-Domain Space is real. His questions gradually stir memories and loosen something in his mind. He is also recognized as a hero and an unusually valuable experimental subject.
• Brother Bug becomes more forthcoming, sharing the buried history of Xinhu and the resistance’s hopes. Though still self-injuring under pressure, he shows greater restraint and speaks with admiration about Huang Ying.
• Huang Ying, though absent, is presented as the resistance’s central figure and last hope. Brother Bug advises that Gao Ming cannot seek him out directly; recovering game fragments will draw him back.
• The interaction between Gao Ming and Brother Bug shifts from guarded uncertainty to a practical alliance: Brother Bug offers guidance and support, while Gao Ming becomes a potential means of reaching Huang Ying and challenging the company.

Significant themes

• Suppressed truth and institutional guilt: Survivors themselves are evidence of the company’s crimes.
• Memory and control: Witnesses were silenced, and an unknown force continues to make people forget.
• Hope amid ruin: Huang Ying and the lost ideal of Perfect Life represent the possibility of resistance and renewal.
• Fate, sacrifice, and agency: The spirit-tablet ritual raises questions about whether Gao Ming’s path is destined or still his to shape.

Key plot points and events

• Brother Bug introduces Gao Ming to several traumatized players and merchants in the Death Building: Xia Bing, a former forensic pathologist reduced to living in a jar; the vegetarian tavern owner, once known as Braised Pork, who was tortured by Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals; and the Information Exchange Center’s powerful, withdrawn manager, who possesses the rare talent Ghost Speech.
• He explains that the players’ anger is aimed at Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, and that the Death Building has become their home and a vital part of their lives.
• At the center of the hall, Brother Bug shows Gao Ming the peeling wardrobe that serves as the Death Building’s core. Sacrificing objects recovered from nightmares can open a path into deeper nightmares, strengthen the building against the black fog, and grant authority over it.
• Despite Brother Bug’s warning that Gao Ming has not completed a deep-nightmare test, Gao Ming eagerly asks to make a sacrifice. He puts his flesh-and-blood seed inside the wardrobe and closes the doors.
• The surrounding offerings’ negative energy immediately begins flowing into the wardrobe—though the scene suggests something may be competing with the Death Building for it.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shows a rare burst of anticipation. Driven by a desire to revisit his nightmare and recover lost memories, he takes a gamble with the seed.
• Brother Bug acts as Gao Ming’s guide and advocate, explaining the building’s rules and the histories of its residents while recognizing Gao Ming’s potential.
• The other players are revealed as deeply damaged but still capable of kindness and attachment. The Information Exchange Center manager’s silence and menacing presence hint at how trauma has changed him.

Significant themes

• Trauma and survival: The players carry lasting physical and psychological scars from corporate abuse.
• Community amid despair: The Death Building provides refuge and belonging to people whose former lives have been destroyed.
• Memory and risk: Gao Ming’s search for lost memories draws him toward dangerous supernatural forces.
• Resistance and corruption: The building’s offerings and defenses reflect its struggle against the black fog and the legacy of those who rebelled against its rules.

Character interactions

• Brother Bug patiently introduces Gao Ming to the residents and explains their pasts, hoping to prevent him from misjudging them.
• The manager briefly acknowledges them with a chilling glance, while nearby players watch Gao Ming with suspicion and irritation.
• Brother Bug warns Gao Ming about the limits of his experience but ultimately hands him a knife and instructs him in the sacrifice ritual.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming feeds the wardrobe his blood, triggering a powerful reaction that surprises Brother Bug: the offering seems to awaken before Gao Ming’s blood even reaches it.
• His blood reshapes the wardrobe’s butterfly patterns, revealing the phantom of a four-faced, eight-armed ghost god. Gao Ming recognizes its name as the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal.
• Gao Ming and the phantom pull the wardrobe open together. Flesh-and-blood roots surge out, threatening the floor and its occupants.
• As Gao Ming touches the roots, memories of his repeated deaths and the souls within him surface. He realizes he may be carrying many ghosts from the deep world inside his body.
• The roots begin spreading through the building and reaching into the black fog. A faint blade mark on the wardrobe appears to restrain them: they avoid harming the building and players, instead helping repair the structure and push back the fog.

Character developments

• Gao Ming discovers that his blood and whatever is within him are more powerful than the forces represented by the wardrobe’s patterns. He senses that recovering his memories could release the ghosts inside him, potentially endangering Xinhu—and cost him the peaceful life he now has.
• Brother Bug shifts from wary confidence to alarm and regret as Gao Ming’s experiment unleashes something he cannot control. He eventually lowers his concealed dagger when the roots prove less destructive than expected.

Character interactions

• Brother Bug explains the wardrobe’s connection to an evil god and tries to manage the ritual, but Gao Ming acts on his own, biting his wrist and using his blood.
• The other players and merchants gather, arm themselves, and prepare to fight the unknown threat rather than flee.
• Gao Ming’s blood, the ghost-god phantom, and the flesh-and-blood roots converge, linking him more deeply to the forces within the wardrobe.

Significant themes

• Memory, identity, and repeated death: Gao Ming’s body appears to embody the hope and accumulated experience of countless deaths.
• The danger of truth: Recovering his memories may bring catastrophe, forcing Gao Ming to weigh revelation against the life and relationships he values.
• Power and restraint: A terrifying force can become useful when constrained; the roots both threaten the building and help it survive.
• The boundary between nightmare and reality: Gao Ming’s hidden connection to the deep world may eventually bring its ghosts into the peaceful world of Xinhu.