Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming reads an investigation file explaining how the birthday-wish anomaly, Weird Wish, spread from an unidentified residential complex in the Old District to South City. The Investigation Bureau reacted too late, partly because it was focused on the Ghost Story Players.
• Weird Wish formed from people’s midnight wishes and grew harder to contain. Since destroying it might require killing everyone who had wished, Wang Jie’s uncle secretly chose to sustain it rather than eliminate it.
• After Gao Ming left Hanhai, Weird Wish’s power surged, seemingly as though someone who had escaped their fate had shifted that burden onto it. The change intensified conflict within the Wang Family and South City.
• To strengthen the ghost, Wang Jie’s uncle gathered curses and divine statues from the Shadow World, sacrificing most of a team of more than 300 people. A lingering consciousness from Hanhai’s Blood City also made Weird Wish a wish, helping it complete its transformation.
• Wang Jie asks Gao Ming whether his uncle or he is more ruthless. Gao Ming does not answer. Wang Jie takes him to his uncle’s heavily guarded “factory,” intending to expose what happens there.
• The factory houses refugees in small rooms and makes them offer wishes every night. The chapter ends with Wang Jie claiming the process leaves them mentally ruined.

Character developments and interactions

• Wang Jie’s uncle emerges as a calculating, power-driven figure: he hides the truth, sacrifices subordinates, and sustains a dangerous ghost to protect his position and the Wang Family.
• Old Master Wang knew about the plan and tolerated it because he wanted the Dream Ghost’s power to safeguard the family.
• Wang Jie openly challenges his uncle’s legitimacy and steers Gao Ming toward evidence of his cruelty, though he also admits his own ruthlessness.
• Gao Ming listens to the accusations but gives Wang Jie no judgment, instead asking how soon they will arrive. He and Wang Jie enter the factory with the First Team Leader.

Significant themes

• Power and moral compromise: leaders justify atrocities as necessary for survival or family protection.
• Wishes turned into horror: human longing and hope create a ghost that cannot be cleanly destroyed.
• Fate and displacement: Gao Ming’s escape from Hanhai appears linked to Weird Wish’s sudden growth.
• Betrayal and rivalry: former classmates and family members maneuver against one another as the crisis destabilizes South City.
• False happiness and exploitation: a toy factory decorated like a cheerful workplace conceals the coercion and suffering of its refugee residents.

Key plot points and events

• Wang Jie brings Gao Ming to his family’s factory, intending to expose his uncle’s hypocrisy. He confronts his cousin Wang Qi, mocking his failed reputation and hinting that Wang Qi’s wish to the Dream Ghost may have driven the family’s dangerous dealings.
• Wang Qi threatens them at gunpoint, and strange tattoos on his body begin to writhe as if he is about to transform. The factory manager, Little Qu, arrives, and Wang Qi restrains himself.
• Little Qu invites Gao Ming to meet the entity known as Wish—the Dream Ghost called Weird Wish by outsiders. He leads them to the factory’s Wish House, where children with nearly white eyes make strange wishes among sweets and discarded wrappers.
• Little Qu claims the children volunteer and explains that Wish may appear when a wish is made at midnight. Gao Ming distrusts him and challenges the factory’s treatment of the children, calling them Hanhai’s hope.
• The factory’s staff secretly record the encounter and transmit it to Wang Jie’s uncle, who is watching from the South City Investigation Branch. The uncle admits he cannot communicate with or control Wish, which is an unpredictable source of severe pollution.

Character developments and interactions

• Wang Jie openly vents years of resentment toward his relatives, deliberately provoking Wang Qi and exposing the family’s internal divisions.
• Wang Qi is volatile and physically altered, but retains enough self-control to hold back. His reaction to Gao Ming’s words suggests he recognizes a danger that the others may not.
• Gao Ming refuses to accept Little Qu’s reassuring account and directly challenges the adults’ use of the children.
• Little Qu presents himself as courteous and cooperative, yet his team’s covert surveillance and carefully staged hospitality suggest he is managing the visitors rather than helping them.
• Wang Jie’s uncle appears powerful and calculating, but is privately unable to influence the very entity he has paid dearly to approach.

Significant themes

• Hypocrisy and family resentment: Wang Jie’s attacks strip away the family’s respectable image and reveal deep bitterness among the cousins.
• Manipulation disguised as consent: Little Qu insists the children volunteer, while Gao Ming doubts that claim; the children’s altered, trance-like state makes their “choices” questionable.
• Powerlessness before the supernatural: The uncle’s resources and schemes cannot control Wish, while the factory’s apparent cooperation masks fear and uncertainty.
• Children as hope and victims: Gao Ming frames the children as Hanhai’s future, contrasting their importance with the adults’ exploitation of them.

Key plot points and events

• Wang Jie’s uncle fears that the Dream Ghost, Weird Wish, may be beyond the Investigation Bureau’s control. Though aides suggest killing Wang Jie to protect their position, the uncle hesitates because Wang Jie is his nephew—and because Gao Ming’s abilities are unclear.
• At the Wish House, Gao Ming investigates the preserved cakes and questions the manager about the children who made wishes. The manager claims they were sent away to recover, but Gao Ming distrusts him.
• Gao Ming lights eighteen candles on a half-eaten cake before midnight, breaking the ritual rules the staff believe are necessary to summon Wish.
• The Wish House transforms into a decayed apartment-like setting, alarming the staff and the Bureau officials monitoring them.
• Gao Ming makes his wish: “I wish Mom and Dad could stay with me forever.” After he blows out the candles, time seems to stop across South City. Everyone who has ever wished at midnight senses the summoning.
• Weird Wish emerges as a vast, unstable mass shaped by the wishes of many people. Unlike its usual formless state, it continues changing until two blood-red, middle-aged figures—a man and a woman—stand before Gao Ming.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shows confidence and disregard for established rules, successfully triggering the phenomenon with an old cake. His wish reveals a deeply personal longing for his parents.
• Wang Jie’s uncle appears powerful but increasingly uneasy. His hesitation reflects both family ties and fear of what Gao Ming might do.
• The factory manager and staff shift from condescension toward alarm as Gao Ming’s actions cause a genuine supernatural mutation.
• The First Team Leader becomes a witness to the transformation and recognizes its resemblance to the apartments he and Gao Ming recently visited.

Significant themes

• Longing and grief: Gao Ming’s wish centers on keeping his parents with him, suggesting love, loss, and fear of separation.
• Ambition and betrayal: Wang Jie’s uncle is surrounded by rivals, including relatives willing to destroy him for power.
• Rules versus power: Gao Ming’s success challenges the Bureau’s carefully controlled procedures.
• Wishes and their cost: Weird Wish embodies the accumulated desires of countless people, hinting that personal hopes may feed something dangerous.

Character interactions

• Wang Jie quietly taunts his uncle’s surveillance and apparent hostility, while the uncle’s aides debate whether to eliminate him.
• Gao Ming challenges the factory manager’s account of what happens to the children and ignores staff instructions.
• The First Team Leader questions Gao Ming’s findings and reacts with shock as the setting changes.
• Bureau officials watch Gao Ming’s actions remotely, arguing about whether to intervene, as his wish summons Weird Wish into a new, more human form.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming recognizes the Dream Ghost known as Weird Wish as the anomaly born from his repeated wish that his parents could stay with him forever. Though its parents’ faces are not truly his parents, Gao Ming understands that their fates are bound together.
• The South City Investigation Branch, which spent hundreds of lives cultivating Weird Wish, reacts with alarm when Gao Ming calls the entity family. Wang Jie’s uncle orders forces to converge on the Wish Factory.
• Gao Ming opens the Execution House in his chest and reveals his sealed memories to Weird Wish, showing that they share a connection forged through death and wishes. He warns the Ghost that entering the house would cost it its freedom.
• Weird Wish’s mother-form enters the Execution House, while its father-form remains outside. The two halves can still share what they experience.
• Gao Ming asks Weird Wish to help him reestablish Blood City and promises that doing so could bring freedom and rebirth to Hanhai’s inhabitants. Weird Wish finally replies, “Your wish has already come true.”
• The father-form withdraws, ending the immediate disturbance; the mother-form stays inside Gao Ming. The factory returns to normal, and the sleepwalking children fall asleep.
• Gao Ming’s team realizes the encounter has gone better than expected, though Wang Jie warns that powerful people may still try to stop Gao Ming from leaving.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming confronts the unintended consequence of a childhood wish and treats the terrifying Dream Ghost as a relative rather than an enemy. He seeks cooperation, but approaches it as a conversation, not a command.
• Weird Wish shows an unexpected, almost parental attachment to Gao Ming. Its initially cold presence grows more human during their encounter, and one part willingly enters Gao Ming’s Execution House.
• Wang Jie’s uncle becomes visibly threatened by Gao Ming’s influence over the Dream Ghost and responds by mobilizing the branch.
• Wang Jie recognizes Gao Ming’s success and taunts the unseen observers who had invested in controlling Weird Wish, while the First Team Leader struggles to understand Gao Ming’s joking explanation.

Significant themes

• Wishes and consequences: Gao Ming’s repeated wish became a powerful anomaly, illustrating how desire can outgrow its original intent.
• Death, memory, and identity: Gao Ming’s deaths created the Execution House, while repeated wishes created Weird Wish; both are bound to their shared past.
• Family and belonging: Weird Wish’s bond with Gao Ming complicates the boundary between monster and family.
• Freedom and rebirth: Gao Ming’s plan to restore Blood City frames collective rebirth as a path to freedom, though Weird Wish’s cryptic reply leaves the meaning of his fulfilled wish uncertain.

Key plot points and events

• After Gao Ming leaves the Wish Factory, Wang Jie’s uncle sends armed investigators and cursed vehicles to intercept him. Gao refuses to be detained, and the crowd is too intimidated by his presence to stop him.
• Gao and the First Team Leader travel through Hanhai’s major sick districts. Gao has met with Dream Ghosts and reached agreements with Greater Ghosts, preparing to represent both the Ghost Story Players and the sick districts in negotiations.
• They arrive at the General Investigation Bureau’s apparently pristine New City, which is sealed under an unprecedented state of alert.
• Jingtuo God welcomes Gao and says the Bureau Chief has been waiting for him. Gao proposes a partnership concerning Hanhai’s fate.
• Jingtuo leads Gao through a hidden underwater entrance, where Bai Xiao and Gao’s former roommate Zhuo Jun—now two of only five investigators to reach Stage Nine after Ghost God modifications—join them.
• On the descent, the scenery shifts from ordinary seawater to black fog and grotesque corpses. Jingtuo reveals that Hanhai is an artificial falsehood, while the Shadow World is the true grave, and that the Bureau stands between truth and falsehood.
• Gao enters the Bureau’s secret underground fortress, passing disturbing laboratories. The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God reacts violently to a powerful presence ahead.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows growing confidence and influence: rather than back down from the attempted interception, he calmly proceeds to the Bureau. He now carries the weight of alliances with the major sick districts, though he remains wary of the Bureau.
• The First Team Leader supports Gao and accompanies him, masking his concern with casual behavior even as the Bureau’s extraordinary security response unsettles him.
• Jingtuo God, previously an adversary, greets Gao deferentially and openly shares crucial information, signaling a shift toward cooperation.
• Bai Xiao and Zhuo Jun reappear with greatly enhanced status and power, underscoring how much they—and the world around Gao—have changed.
• Wang Jie watches the attempted ambush with satisfaction, while his uncle’s forces fail to challenge Gao directly.

Significant themes

• Alliance over internal conflict: Gao seeks cooperation despite his grievances with the Bureau, recognizing that Hanhai cannot survive factional fighting.
• The hidden nature of reality: The contrast between the sunlit New City and the black-fog world beneath it exposes the city’s artificial, fragile order.
• Power and intimidation: Gao’s growing strength changes how others treat him, while the Bureau’s defensive measures reveal its fear and the scale of what it protects.
• Uneasy transformation: Ghost God modifications give investigators immense power, but the Bureau’s laboratories and the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s alarm hint at the cost and danger of that power.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming and First Team Leader Wan Jie are led to the hidden heart of the Hanhai General Investigation Bureau. Its countless clerks are linked by blood vessels and are not truly human.
• The Bureau Chief is revealed as a collective entity: five officials who make decisions together, thousands of connected workers, and an immense flesh-and-blood body beneath them.
• The Chief admits that Zhang Ding previously broke into the Bureau and lost his head during the encounter, though the officials insist they were justified in defending themselves.
• The Chief explains the entity’s origin. After Hanhai was massacred and made a forbidden zone, Xinhu’s Saviors tried to transform it into a place where humans and ghosts could coexist. The deaths and hopes of its people became an obsession that fused with a fragment of a corpse buried in Hanhai.
• That fragment escaped into the Bureau and grew powerful. The Saviors nurtured it as a possible hope for the city and shaped the Bureau after Xinhu’s institution. The chapter ends as the Chief reveals that events changed when Xinhu’s unspeakables entered a deeper layer of the world.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains wary and investigative, probing the Bureau’s true nature and connecting the corpse fragment to Hanhai’s erased history. His power lets him perceive the entity’s causal threads and see its body clearly.
• Wan Jie is unsettled by the workers’ ghostly aura but continues to accompany Gao Ming.
• Jingtuo God, previously arrogant, shows deference in the Bureau Chief’s presence and explains its unusual structure.
• The five officials display distinct temperaments and govern by majority vote. The elderly Chief is candid about the Bureau’s past, while the boy is openly hostile and the maternal woman offers a gentler account.
• The Bureau Chief and Gao Ming engage in a tense but measured exchange: Gao Ming seeks answers, while the Chief defends the Bureau’s motives and explains its origins.

Significant themes

• Collective identity: The Chief is simultaneously five people, thousands of linked workers, and one vast body.
• Hope and unintended consequences: The Saviors’ ideal of human–ghost coexistence gave life to a powerful entity, but its future became uncertain.
• Ambiguous morality: The Bureau may be frightening and responsible for Zhang Ding’s injury, yet it sees itself as protecting Hanhai.
• Buried history: The corpse fragment hints at the forgotten master of Hanhai Blood City and a past deliberately erased.

Chapter summary

• The five leaders of Hanhai’s General Investigation Bureau explain that after the Saviors left, the other Blood City Lords took control of Hanhai, imposed strict rules, and turned it into a prison. The leaders have only pretended to cooperate; they secretly oppose the Blood City Lords, who could replace them with someone like Situ An if they became inconvenient.
• To prove their opposition, the five leaders cut themselves and reveal a hidden Dream Ghost they have been nurturing inside their bodies—something the Blood City Lords have forbidden. Gao Ming accepts this as evidence of their sincerity.
• The leaders say Hanhai’s people and ghosts have grown stronger while Gao Ming was away, but Hanhai still lacks the power to resist. They had planned to wait until they could gather nine Dream Ghosts before making a move.
• Gao Ming rejects passive resistance. He argues that Hanhai’s underlying problem is the destruction of its blood city, and that the city must be rebuilt to restore its ghosts’ strength.
• The old man outlines the immense requirements: a large enough population, collective will strong enough to withstand the Deep World, and an Unspeakable-level ghost willing to be sacrificed as the new city’s foundation. Hanhai’s weakened Dream Ghosts cannot provide that sacrifice, leaving the plan seemingly impossible.
• Gao Ming reveals a possible way forward: he has a route to Xinhu in the real world that could let both human and ghost wills leave Hanhai. The revelation shocks the five leaders and opens a new possibility beyond their confinement.

Character developments and interactions

Gao Ming arrives prepared for conflict and demands proof of the leaders’ loyalties. Once convinced, he challenges their cautious plan and presents himself as a force for radical change. The old man is knowledgeable and pragmatic but resigned to Hanhai’s limitations; the boy is enthusiastic about Gao Ming’s proposal, while the middle-aged man favors building strength and acting later. Their exchange reveals shared opposition to the Blood City Lords, but disagreement over how much risk to take.

Significant themes

• Oppression and resistance: Hanhai’s inhabitants are controlled and manipulated, yet secretly seek a way to rebel.
• Hope versus resignation: The leaders’ survival strategy contrasts with Gao Ming’s insistence on changing the system at its root.
• Sacrifice and impossible choices: Rebuilding the blood city may demand an extraordinary sacrifice that Hanhai seems unable to provide.
• Collective will and escape: Gao Ming’s route to Xinhu offers a chance for humans and ghosts to break out of Hanhai’s isolation.

Key events

• Gao Ming reveals that he became a Dream Ghost beyond Hanhai, where shrines, accumulated emotions, and nightmares can help ghosts grow stronger.
• The General Investigation Bureau discusses exploiting the Blood Cities’ conflict to enter Xinhu Blood City. With Hanhai isolated and threatened, its leaders see Xinhu’s resources as a possible route to rebuilding Hanhai.
• The vote is initially tied. Gao Ming then calls on Hanhai’s Ghost Creatures and allies, making clear that he will not let the Bureau trap him again. The Middle-Aged Woman changes her vote, giving the proposal a majority.
• Gao Ming agrees to provide fifty places in the first group traveling to Xinhu, but refuses to reveal the passage’s location or how to open it.
• He asks the Bureau to hand over Wan Jie, a former Xinhu Security Department commander, for his planned campaign against Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals. The Bureau agrees, despite having promised someone else to guard Wan Jie.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from negotiating as an outsider to asserting power: he trusts the Bureau little, but offers cooperation and promises to help Number Two find the Saviors’ shrine in Xinhu.
• Number Two is distressed to learn how dire Hanhai’s situation has become. He accepts that he has little choice but hopes Gao Ming will protect living people from being sacrificed.
• The Bureau’s leaders are divided between urgency and caution. The youngest boy strongly favors the plan; the old man warns that even five Dream Ghosts may be no match for an unspeakable. The Middle-Aged Woman recognizes that the Bureau no longer controls Hanhai and votes pragmatically.
• Jingtuo God remains quiet and carries out the Bureau’s orders, including escorting Gao Ming.
• Gao Ming’s show of force makes the Bureau recognize that cooperation is safer than opposition.

Significant themes

• Power and consent: The Bureau holds a vote, but Gao Ming’s overwhelming leverage shapes its outcome.
• Survival and uneasy alliances: Hanhai and Xinhu are both endangered, creating a possible partnership between former adversaries.
• Trust and betrayal: Gao Ming remembers the Bureau’s past attempt to trap him, while Number Two remains wary of what survival might cost.
• Sacrifice versus protection: Number Two’s central concern is that entering reality must not mean sacrificing human souls.
• Opportunity amid crisis: The Blood Cities’ conflict may offer Hanhai a chance to rebuild, but the plan carries enormous risk.

Plot points and events

• The General Investigation Bureau escorts Gao Ming to its underground laboratory, where its leaders reveal their true nature and several hidden secrets. Gao Ming nevertheless senses that another Dream Ghost is concealed in Hope New City.
• Gao Ming rescues Wan Jie, a blind and helpless former captain. When Jingtuo God claims not to know what happened to Wan Jie’s eyes, Gao Ming abruptly drags him into the Execution House and searches his memories. He finds no answers and releases him.
• Back on the surface, Bai Xiao secretly gives Gao Ming a coded strip of human skin. Decoded with the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s blood, it reveals that the Bureau contains three Blood City inheritors, each supported by one of its Dream Ghosts. One is linked to Jingtuo God; another was linked to the now-eliminated Situ An; the third lives in Hope New City.
• Wan Jie agrees to return to Xinhu and expose Number Zero when the opportunity arises, though he doubts his own usefulness.
• Gao Ming returns to the Old District. Unable to reach a home mentioned in a clue because black fog is spreading, he visits Lishan Hospital, once Situ An’s base. There, he opens the Execution House and draws the hospital district’s monsters inside to test how much power he can safely use in Hanhai.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming grows more wary of the Bureau despite its apparent cooperation. His sudden memory search of Jingtuo God shows how quickly he will use force when he suspects someone is withholding information.
• Wan Jie is physically broken and has lost his eyes, but he still agrees to help Gao Ming oppose Number Zero.
• Bai Xiao quietly aids Gao Ming without openly acknowledging their connection.
• Wei Dayou remains cautious and comfortable in the Old District, contrasting with Gao Ming’s willingness to confront danger and pursue the “real world.”
• Jingtuo God is startled and angered by Gao Ming’s attack, while the Bureau Chief’s intervention comes too late to prevent it.

Significant themes

• Trust and concealed loyalties: The Bureau’s openness masks further secrets, and its Dream Ghosts back competing inheritors.
• Power and its limits: Gao Ming’s experiment at Lishan Hospital is an attempt to measure the Execution House’s reach without provoking disaster.
• Survival versus risk: Wei Dayou chooses safety, while Gao Ming accepts escalating danger in pursuit of answers and power.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming expands the Execution House by absorbing Lishan Hospital and its ghosts, curses, and souls. The Sick District vanishes, while its inhabitants and memories become part of the Execution House.
• Three days later, Gao Ming gathers a large force in Hanhai: investigators, Student Council members, self-rescue groups, Ghost Story Players, and black-robed ghosts. He opens the Execution House as a refuge and route for their departure.
• Jingtuo God leads one hundred investigators, though they are wary of the Ghost Story Players and Gao Ming’s unconventional allies. Everyone ultimately enters the Execution House, entrusting their lives to Gao Ming.
• Gao Ming and a convoy of Xinhu investigators leave for Dream’s Main Shrine. Wan Jie brings fifty-seven of the 427 people who once served under him; he accepts that the dead may still help protect Xinhu if their bodies are occupied by ghosts.
• Gao Ming sends the Xinhu investigators through the shrine’s forced-return procedure, intending to return to Hanhai later and rebuild Blood City. He deliberately avoids consuming the shrine, fearing it would alert the power watching over Hanhai.
• Gao Ming returns to the other Main Shrine, where Zhang Ding is waiting. His arrival triggers reactions from the “living dead” in nutrient pods, and some begin to open their eyes.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts as organizer and protector, gathering disparate factions and taking responsibility for their survival. He also shows strategic restraint by not swallowing the Main Shrine.
• Jingtuo God is eager for the power and status of becoming a dream ghost, but distrusts the Ghost Story Players and their association with Sick District ghosts.
• Wan Jie continues to carry guilt over his fallen subordinates, while Gao Ming promises vengeance. Wan Jie’s response shows his loyalty to the people who followed him.
• The First Team Leader is eager to retaliate against Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, revealing the group’s lingering anger and resolve.
• Zhang Ding has guarded the shrine alone and is relieved to learn that Gao Ming brought back his son and the neighbors. The awakening figures suggest their reunion may have wider consequences.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and trust: The assembled groups stake their lives on Gao Ming and commit to an uncertain future.
• Transformation through loss: The Execution House turns a place of horror—and the dead within it—into a home and a source of strength.
• Unity among unlikely allies: Investigators, ghosts, and Ghost Story Players cooperate despite suspicion and conflicting motives.
• Hope amid death: The dead may still serve a protective purpose, while the final image of figures awakening hints at new possibilities.
• Strategy and restraint: Gao Ming’s larger plan requires him to resist immediate power in order to avoid drawing the attention of a greater threat.

The chapter presents the premise of a supernatural horror story: “meme contamination” is spreading through the human world, forcing people to obey bizarre rules or risk losing their sanity and being trapped in deadly, spirit-haunted scenarios.
Jiang Jin, a low-ranking police officer affected by the contamination, stands apart from other survivors. Rather than merely follow each scenario’s rules, he can rewrite them. As he overcomes successive horrors, he begins uncovering the truth behind the Reincarnation System.
The dangers include a ghost haunting a pool, a curse spread through videotapes, an old woman trapped in a repeating cycle of horror films, and a murderous curse hidden in a haunted house. These threats establish the story’s central conflict: people struggling to survive supernatural games governed by strange rules.
Key themes: fear and survival, the power of rules, and the possibility of resisting or reshaping a seemingly uncontrollable system.
Character interactions and development: Jiang Jin is positioned in contrast to the frightened reincarnators around him. His unusual ability makes him a potential force for change, though the chapter summary does not describe specific encounters or further character development.

Key events

• Gao Ming and fifty-eight others awaken from the Dream-Insertion Devices aboard a ship, though hundreds of people in the Nutrient Pod remain unconscious—and many can never return because their souls are gone.
• Number Two urges Gao Ming to keep the Execution House closed and leave for Hanjiang, warning that bringing Hanhai’s ghosts into reality could attract dangerous attention.
• Gao Ming refuses to hide. He proposes hunting the unknowable imprisoned in Number Two’s shrine, both to aid the Dream Ghosts and to rescue Number Two’s original body.
• Number Two warns that the plan is nearly impossible and that rival Blood City Lords may soon seize Xinhu’s Blood City, opening the way into the real world.
• Number Two offers to guide Gao Ming to Huang Ying, a trusted ally of the Saviors who may know how to help. Gao Ming agrees, provided he first deals with the awakened survivors and those who cannot return.
• Wan Jie and other Investigation Bureau personnel awaken. Wan Jie has lost his pupils, and the survivors instinctively gather to protect him. Gao Ming promises justice for the dead and considers using their bodies to help the ghosts in his Execution House.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming demonstrates boldness and resolve, choosing direct confrontation over concealment. He also treats Number Two as an ally, speaking of their shared cause as “our” fight.
• Number Two remains cautious and pessimistic, but his growing trust in Gao Ming leads him to reveal Huang Ying’s whereabouts and offer help.
• Wan Jie and the First Team Leader are reunited in a painful moment. The Team Leader’s loyalty and grief underscore how deeply the survivors respected Wan Jie.
• The awakened Investigation Bureau personnel protect Wan Jie instinctively, revealing their solidarity and devotion.

Significant themes

• Justice and responsibility: Gao Ming vows to honor the dead and take on the consequences of using their bodies.
• Hope versus pragmatism: Number Two emphasizes the overwhelming danger, while Gao Ming insists that retreat will not solve the larger threat.
• Trust and solidarity: Gao Ming’s inclusive language begins to ease Number Two’s long-standing isolation.
• The cost of survival: The awakened survivors return maimed and changed, while many others are irretrievably lost.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming divides the survivors into two groups. Zhang Ding will lead a ship carrying ghosts in living bodies toward Hanjiang, drawing Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ attention; Gao Ming and the others will head for Xinhu to find Huang Ying. He gives Zhang Ding contact information and additional private instructions.
• Gao Ming and the First Team Leader travel to the Molten Fire Waste Treatment Plant, where they meet Brother Bug. Gao Ming asks for tens of thousands of Forbidden Game headsets, far more than Brother Bug can supply. Brother Bug reveals that the equipment may be stored in Perfect Life’s “Life Tomb,” whose location only Huang Ying knows.
• Number Two says Gao Ming can locate Huang Ying by entering Perfect Life and using dates carved into a wardrobe in the Death Building. Gao Ming follows the instructions, and Huang Ying appears—wounded, corrupted by curses and darkness, and visibly hostile when he recognizes Gao Ming.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows himself to be a careful strategist, assigning separate missions and keeping some instructions private. He remains focused on gathering equipment and locating Huang Ying.
• Zhang Ding accepts responsibility for the decoy mission, while the Security personnel come to accept the necessity of placing ghosts in the bodies.
• Brother Bug is optimistic about the group’s prospects and cooperates with Gao Ming, despite being unable to meet his request for headsets.
• Wan Jie remains silent and withdrawn after leaving the ship.
• Number Two guides Gao Ming through Perfect Life, revealing knowledge of Huang Ying’s past meeting dates with the Saviors.
• Huang Ying’s apparent deterioration—and his immediate murderous suspicion of Gao Ming—sets up a tense confrontation.

Significant themes

• Strategic sacrifice and deception: The two-group plan uses the ship and ghost-inhabited bodies as a distraction.
• Life, death, and preservation: The chapter explores ghosts entering living bodies and the failed promise of uploading consciousness into Perfect Life.
• Collaboration amid danger: Formerly isolated groups coordinate against Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, while threats remain too dangerous to discuss openly.
• Corruption and dwindling time: Huang Ying’s cursed, shadow-covered body suggests the cost of resisting the forces surrounding the characters.

Plot points

• Gao Ming meets the injured Huang Ying, a key ally of the Saviors, who initially mistakes him for a threat. Number Two confirms Gao Ming’s identity, and Huang Ying apologizes.
• Huang Ying has been cursed by an Unspeakable from Darkness Blood City. Gao Ming uses the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s power to purge the curse, though it leaves Huang Ying bound to a potentially dangerous influence.
• Huang Ying explains that Unspeakables from several Blood Cities conspired against Xinhu. An Unspeakable from Darkness Blood City now guards the passage between the Forbidden Game and the Deep World, blocking access to Xinhu Blood City.
• Gao Ming proposes killing and devouring the Unspeakable rather than avoiding it. Huang Ying reveals that it is invisible and intangible, but its power depends on several Shrines placed along the passage. He found four locations before escaping; three were decoys, and the real Shrine is likely midway between reality and the Deep World.
• Gao Ming decides to make the Shrine their first target, hoping to strengthen his forces and open a route forward.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows boldness, pragmatism, and growing ambition: he treats the Unspeakable as an opportunity to power up, and is ready to bring his Dream Ghost forces to overwhelm it. His cure also demonstrates the coercive, risky side of his power.
• Huang Ying proves far more capable than his ordinary appearance suggests. Though cautious and badly wounded, he is experienced, resourceful, and willing to share intelligence once trust is established.
• Number Two acts as the bridge between the two men, confirming Gao Ming’s identity and contributing knowledge about Darkness Blood City’s ghosts.
• Gao Ming and Huang Ying move from suspicion to cooperation, though Huang Ying remains wary of Gao Ming’s methods.

Significant themes

• Power as both salvation and danger: Gao Ming’s curse heals Huang Ying but may also make him a follower.
• Cooperation and strategic force: Gao Ming favors gathering allies and attacking collectively rather than confronting threats alone.
• Hidden threats and hard-won knowledge: The Unspeakable cannot be confronted directly; understanding its Shrines is the key to exposing and defeating it.
• Opportunity amid conflict: The wider war among Blood Cities creates a chance for Gao Ming’s group to strike an isolated enemy.

Key plot points and events

• Number Two warns Gao Ming that the Unspeakable may sense them discussing it. Destroying its Shrine will be difficult: even a remnant could allow it to return, and the Shrine may move if threatened.
• Gao Ming asks Huang Ying for access to the sealed gaming pods in the Life Tomb, which he needs to bring his people into Xinhu’s Blood City through Perfect Life. Huang Ying agrees, promising the pods and his help once Gao opens the passage to the Deep World.
• Gao Ming asks what the Savior went to do. Huang Ying’s fading memories suggest the Savior entered the Blood Sea to find “himself.”
• Gao Ming recruits Wan Jie and the First Team Leader for the mission, then leads them through the Death Building and Hatred’s Wardrobe to meet Huang Ying.
• As the passage shifts, Huang Ying guides the group through the ruined, inverted city that once served as Perfect Life’s transfer station. They descend into near-total darkness, tied together with a makeshift rope, until they reach the Shrine.
• Touching the Shrine’s door triggers a mental voice: “Have you seen the darkness in the deepest depths?”

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains decisive despite the danger and shows growing familiarity with Dream Ghost abilities, which he believes can help him seize control of the Shrine. He also begins to trust Wan Jie’s knowledge and experience enough to include him.
• Huang Ying is revealed as a steadfast, self-sacrificing former top Player. Though Xinhu brands him a criminal, he has continued guarding the Life Tomb and carrying the hopes of the dead Players. He and Gao Ming form an agreement based on mutual trust.
• Number Two supports Gao Ming while emphasizing the risks and urgency.
• Wan Jie contributes valuable knowledge about Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals and the Forbidden Game; the First Team Leader has little to add.

Significant themes

• Duty and integrity: Huang Ying accepts disgrace rather than abandon what he believes is right.
• Trust and shared responsibility: Gao Ming’s mission depends on cooperation with people whose motives and histories are not fully known.
• Memory and identity: The Savior’s fading recollection and search for “himself” raise questions about selfhood.
• The peril of confronting the unknown: The shifting passage, oppressive darkness, and Shrine’s direct mental contact establish the threat awaiting the group.

Plot and events

• As the shrine opens, its darkness begins swallowing people’s awareness. Huang Ying warns that the “ghost in the darkness” is coming, and Gao Ming responds by activating the Blood City Ghost Markings.
• The dead of Hanhai surge into the shrine with the three Dream Ghosts, attacking the Unspeakable’s divine statue and entering its dream.
• The action abruptly shifts into the shrine’s world: Gao Ming is now Li Sansi, a debt-ridden advertising director being beaten by a gang-connected producer for making a terrible ad. The producer forces him to sign debt contracts and threatens to sell his organs.
• After the gang leaves, Li’s three remaining crew members emerge from hiding. They argue over wages and whether to sell the studio’s equipment—or Li himself.
• Gao Ming absorbs Li’s memories and realizes the city is controlled by powerful organizations that run essential services and exploit debtors. Li has mortgaged his home to three gangs, and faces organ harvesting if he cannot pay interest within a week.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming/Li Sansi: Gao Ming regains his focus after the shrine’s dream disorients him. Though injured and burdened with Li’s debts, he insists he is not dead and begins assessing the situation.
• Jia Youzhi: The lazy prop handler panics about unpaid wages but is too apathetic to leave the crew.
• Ding Xiang: The actress is deeply worried about her own debt and considers selling studio equipment to recover money.
• Wu Wei: The tough camera operator bluntly suggests selling Li to pay the crew, reflecting the crew’s desperate, self-interested outlook.
• The crew’s exchanges reveal little loyalty: they worry about wages and survival even while Li is being threatened.

Significant themes

• Darkness and hidden malice: The shrine exposes people’s selfish, cruel thoughts, which they voice openly.
• Debt and exploitation: Gang-controlled institutions turn financial hardship into a threat of violence and organ harvesting.
• Abrupt shifts in reality: The invasion of the shrine becomes a nightmarish, ordinary-looking world where Gao Ming must navigate Li’s personal crisis as part of the larger assault on the Unspeakable.

Chapter summary

• Gao Ming, newly awake in a city ruled by gangs and desperate for cash, learns that even his organs could be sold to settle debts. He reflects on the danger of hunting an Unspeakable: Dream Ghost must stay within the city’s rules, and its host’s memories and personality can betray it.
• His crew—Jia Youzhi, Wu Wei, and Ding Xiang—quarrels over selling studio equipment. An emergency alert from the government council and local gangs offers a reward for reporting suspicious outsiders or people who seem to have been replaced. Gao Ming suspects the messages signal the Unspeakable’s counterattack and fears the gangs may have ways to detect him.
• Gao Ming realizes he is especially vulnerable: his host, Li Sansi, owes money to several gangs, and a gang boss may soon come to collect. He redirects the crew from selling the camera to finding a richer target.
• Ding Xiang identifies Bu Ming, a wealthy, notorious actor who deceived Wu Wei and has recently taken up with a rich, possessive woman. She knows of a hotel where he has a private arrangement. Gao Ming decides the crew will stake the place out that night and find a way to get his money.

Character developments and interactions

Gao Ming shifts from anxious improvisation to forceful leadership, using blunt, provocative appeals to redirect the crew toward his plan. Wu Wei’s anger at her ex remains intense, while Ding Xiang demonstrates practical knowledge and a willingness to pursue the opportunity. Jia Youzhi and the others remain argumentative and opportunistic, though they ultimately respond to Gao Ming’s promise of wages and a target with money.

Significant themes

The chapter emphasizes survival in a corrupt, profit-driven society where people and even body parts are treated as commodities. It also develops the tension between concealment and exposure: Gao Ming must hide his identity while government and gang authorities search for people who may have been replaced.

Plot points

• On a stormy night, Gao Ming and three companions stake out the Grand Duke Hotel to confront actor Bu Ming and demand compensation for harm to Wu Wei and lost work. Their plan is blocked by hotel security, who are backed by the Prosperity Gang.
• Gao Ming uses an IOU bearing Black Mastiff’s seal to gain entry alone, telling the others to wait for his “good news.” He carries a miniature camera meant for the planned extortion.
• The ordinary elevators skip the Fourth Floor and require a key card. Gao Ming heads toward Black Mastiff, but a server notices him, so he improvises and claims he has a profitable filming idea.
• When a fight breaks out between the Prosperity Gang and Black Mastiff’s men, Gao Ming uses the chaos to steal a guard’s key card and enter a hidden elevator to the Fourth Floor.
• Near Bu Ming’s room, Gao Ming sees a familiar-looking man pulled back into another room. He overhears the man arguing with Black Mastiff about receiving too little medicine, which the man says his younger brother needs.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming proves resourceful and composed, adapting quickly when his original plan fails. He uses his IOU, improvises a cover story, and exploits the gang dispute to reach the restricted floor.
• Jia Youzhi is eager to join the scheme but retreats when he recognizes the Prosperity Gang’s power.
• Ding Xiang supplies Bu Ming’s room number and reveals that her past work gave her connections at the hotel.
• Black Mastiff appears to be involved in supplying medicine and is preoccupied with trouble downstairs; the chapter hints at a personal connection between him and the man in Room 4003.
• The group’s joking, scheming camaraderie contrasts with Gao Ming’s increasingly risky solo infiltration.

Significant themes

• Corruption and inequality: The lavish hotel shines beside the impoverished slums, while wealth and status conceal exploitation.
• Power and decline: The Prosperity Gang’s weakening grip has made the district tense and volatile.
• Improvisation and survival: Gao Ming navigates danger by turning setbacks and conflict to his advantage.
• Hidden vulnerability: The overheard plea about medicine and a sick brother suggests that even powerful or familiar figures may be caught in desperate personal circumstances.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming overhears Black Mastiff arguing with a woman over a dwindling supply of medicine. When she threatens to expose their relationship, he kills her and calls for cleaners to dispose of the body.
• Gao retrieves a hidden Security Camera. Its footage of the killing is blurry, but still gives him evidence.
• He goes to Room 4017 to collect a debt from Bu Ming. A drugged woman lets him in, and Gao discovers Bu Ming dead in the bathroom, tied to a chair.
• The woman, armed with a suppressed gun, forces Gao into the bedroom, where a young waiter’s tortured body lies. She orders him to drink from a bottle containing an unknown drug.
• Gao uses a mirror to track her movements, disarms her after she shoots and grazes him, and turns the gun on her.
• The woman identifies herself as the daughter of Yuan Qing, head of Wansheng, and claims the hotel is hers. She threatens Gao, then offers to make him her “dog.” The chapter ends as she quietly harbors murderous intent.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains cautious and observant, gathering evidence without exposing himself. Though physically weakened by Li Sansi’s body, he acts decisively and uses the woman’s impaired state to survive.
• Black Mastiff is shown as violent and desperate, dependent on the scarce medicine and capable of murder when threatened.
• The woman is introduced as privileged, heavily drugged, and cruel. She treats others as disposable and assumes her status will protect her; even after being disarmed, she remains threatening.

Character interactions

• Black Mastiff’s argument with the woman escalates from a dispute over medicine and blackmail to murder.
• Gao approaches the woman under the pretext of collecting Bu Ming’s debt, but their encounter becomes a standoff. She threatens and coerces him; he outmaneuvers her and takes her gun.
• The woman attempts to intimidate Gao with her family’s power and recruit him into her service, while Gao refuses to trust her.

Significant themes

• Power and impunity: Wealth and connections let the powerful treat violence as a problem that can be concealed or outsourced.
• Drug dependence and scarcity: The medicine controls people’s behavior and fuels conflict.
• Survival through caution and resourcefulness: Gao relies on observation, evidence, and timing rather than strength.
• Dehumanization and violence: Victims are treated as disposable, and threats of murder are routine.

Plot points

• Gao Ming rejects the woman’s offer to become her “dog” and shoots her, then cleans the scene to hide his involvement.
• He discovers a concealed room, 4018, filled with surveillance equipment and compromising files. He takes selected documents and drives, erases the recordings—including footage of himself—and destroys the equipment.
• To misdirect suspicion, he plants items Black Mastiff used in the woman’s room.
• Gao Ming escapes through the ongoing Wansheng Gang–Takekawa Society brawl, then tells Jia Youzhi and Ding Xiang that he never reached the supposed fourth floor and was injured in the fight.
• Back at the studio, the group secures the building before midnight, when the city becomes dangerously chaotic.
• While the others sleep, Gao Ming edits his footage to frame Black Mastiff for the woman’s murder, intending to provoke a gang war and weaken his many creditors.
• As he prepares to carry out this malicious plan, black threads spread through his body and seem to increase his strength.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming proves ruthless, resourceful, and increasingly calculating: he kills to prevent exposure, destroys evidence, lies to his companions, and manufactures evidence against Black Mastiff. He also notices that evil intentions appear to strengthen him.
• Ding Xiang insists the informant’s information could not have been wrong, while Jia Youzhi watches Gao Ming closely but accepts his story. Wu Wei is disappointed by the failed mission and later notices Gao Ming’s backpack.
• Gao Ming’s dealings with the woman turn from a rejected coercive offer to murder. His planned framing of Black Mastiff could ignite conflict between the gangs.

Significant themes

• Evidence and manipulation: Surveillance, stolen records, and edited footage become tools for hiding crimes and directing blame.
• Moral corruption and power: Gao Ming’s willingness to commit wrongdoing may be rewarded with physical strength, suggesting the Dark Shrine’s world operates by disturbing rules.
• Deception and survival: Gao Ming maintains a timid persona while secretly acting with calculated violence.
• A hostile, changing world: Midnight brings dangers that even gang members fear, hinting at a larger supernatural threat beyond the gang conflict.