Chapter Summaries

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming justifies his plan to enter the Forbidden Zone, arguing that powerful factions and the Night Watch exploited ordinary people and left them with no good choices. He wants to use the danger to understand the differences between natives and outsiders, develop targeted drugs, and improve his Disguise.
• He tells his three subordinates that they will go in together. Ding Xiang and Jia Youzhi volunteer to support him, with Jia offering to remain outside and help the others escape.
• News arrives that Wansheng and the Takekawa Society have escalated their conflict. A factory explosion has contaminated two streets with pharmaceutical waste, and people sent in to investigate have disappeared. Wansheng continues attacking rather than negotiate, while the Night Watch largely waits for the factions to exhaust themselves.
• Gao Ming and his companions enter Crescent Street disguised as Mercy Society rescuers. The streets appear intact and eerily empty, despite the reported explosion and the area’s former bustle.
• Gao Ming suspects that a Forbidden Zone has already formed and wonders whether it can distort living people’s perceptions. He concludes that the city’s residents have learned to use drugs to accelerate malice: instead of killing those affected, this process turns them into inhuman monsters.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming frames his actions as a response to systemic cruelty, but his plan also reflects his determination to use the Forbidden Zone for his own research. He is pleased by his subordinates’ loyalty.
• Jia Youzhi regrets learning how their current situation came about and longs for his former, easier life. Despite his fear, he commits himself to Gao Ming.
• Ding Xiang openly pledges to stay with Gao Ming and proposes acting as their lookout outside the Forbidden Zone.
• Wu Wei and Jia Youzhi understand Gao Ming’s motives, though they recognize that entering the zone is dangerous.
• The team’s debate over who should remain outside shows their loyalty and willingness to protect one another.

Significant themes

• Happiness through comparison: Jia’s view of his life changes once he learns how precarious their present circumstances are.
• Exploitation and injustice: Ordinary people are made to bear the cost of a city’s chaos while powerful groups preserve their privileges.
• Human malice and corruption: The chapter suggests that people have turned cruelty into a tool, using drugs and human experimentation to cultivate and unleash evil.
• Loyalty amid danger: Gao Ming’s subordinates choose to stand by him despite the risks.
• Escalating consequences: The gang conflict threatens not only its participants but the wider district, while institutional inaction leaves residents exposed.

Plot points

• Gao Ming and the Mercy Society arrive at the Pharmaceutical Factory, where the intact buildings are eerily empty. Signs of recent activity include cigarette butts, children’s footprints, and scattered bottles of a new Takekawa Society drug called Afterglow.
• Gao Ming touches the drug and experiences a memory—or vision—of a child named Afterglow, who lives inside the factory and longs for attention from his busy parents.
• In the vision, Afterglow plays with other children near the factory gates, watched over by the elderly gatekeeper, Grandpa Li.
• His mother, Zero Three One, discovers that the drug’s experimental records bear her child’s name. She realizes Afterglow is not merely named after the medicine: he is intended to be its medicinal catalyst. She decides to take him away.
• At home, she finds Afterglow wearing an unfamiliar, filthy red garment and behaving strangely. The chapter ends as she questions where he has been.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming investigates the abandoned factory cautiously, examining the drug rather than treating it as ordinary medicine.
• Ding Xiang tries to keep a bottle of Afterglow, while Wu Wei warns her not to touch anything; their exchange highlights the danger and temptation of the drug.
• Zero Three One shifts from fear and dependence on her husband to determined maternal protectiveness after learning the truth about her child.
• Black Man-Bear, the drug supervisor and Afterglow’s father, appears cruel and emotionally hollow. He dismisses Zero Three One’s concern and treats her like a subordinate.
• Grandpa Li is a kind, watchful presence in Afterglow’s confined childhood, though his poor eyesight and smoking suggest he may not be able to protect the boy.
• Afterglow’s wish for parental affection contrasts with his parents’ neglect and the factory’s exploitation of him.

Significant themes

• Exploitation and dehumanization: The factory reduces workers—and ultimately a child—to resources for drug production.
• Parental neglect and protection: Afterglow is starved of attention, while his mother’s discovery prompts her to risk challenging the system.
• Corruption of innocence: The story presents newborn children as “untainted” and therefore valuable to a brutal society.
• Uneasy mystery: The empty factory, wet footprints, and Afterglow’s strange red garment hint that something dangerous has happened to the child.

Key plot points and events

• Afterglow returns wearing filthy clothes and bearing strangulation marks, saying his friends in the dormitory pulled him from a pool and taught him how to get more affection from his parents. He remains cheerful and does not explain the marks.
• Alarmed, Zero Three One burns his red garment, packs their belongings, and takes him away, claiming Black Man-Bear wants to see him. She rejects Afterglow’s question about waiting for his father.
• Old Li warns that Afterglow was meant to remain at the factory and that leaving could get him killed. He reveals the boy has already seen the other children, but Zero Three One refuses to listen.
• Mother and son flee to a small rented room in the Eleventh District. Zero Three One tells Afterglow to stay inside and keeps watch overnight.
• After hearing children outside asking to come in, she stays awake through the night. The next day, she ties Afterglow to herself while she sleeps. At lunch, he divides his food for his “friends”; when she forbids him from sharing it, he says they are already inside.

Character developments and interactions

• Zero Three One shifts from uncertainty about the factory and Black Man-Bear to decisive, protective action after realizing Afterglow is intended to become medicine. Her fear grows as the children seem to follow them.
• Afterglow remains trusting, considerate, and obedient, but his innocence makes him vulnerable: he treats the strange children as friends and assumes they are welcome.
• Old Li shows affection for Afterglow and concern for Zero Three One, yet his warning is fatalistic; he believes he cannot change the situation.
• The mother-son bond is central: Zero Three One tries to protect Afterglow, while he continues to think of others—even the unseen children—before himself.

Significant themes

• Parental love versus exploitation: Zero Three One rejects the factory’s plan to use her child as medicine.
• Innocence and vulnerability: Afterglow’s kindness and trust leave him unable to recognize danger.
• Fear and the uncanny: The unseen children appear to cross the boundary between outside and inside, making the refuge feel unsafe.
• Powerlessness and fate: Old Li’s resignation suggests this cycle may have happened before, while Zero Three One’s escape is a desperate attempt to resist it.

Plot points and events

• Zero Three One panics when Afterglow says his strange “friends” are behind her, convinced they are linked to the Takekawa Society. She takes him from their apartment and repeatedly relocates, keeping him close and trying to protect him.
• When their food runs out, Zero Three One leaves Afterglow alone to buy supplies. On her return, Takekawa Society pursuers corner her and demand to know where she hid the “new drug.” She insists Afterglow is her child, not a drug, and resists until the pursuers seize her and carry her away.
• Alone, Afterglow waits for his mother while the unseen children continue speaking to him. He has begun to see the city’s inhabitants as grotesque, root-infested beings feeding on people’s dark emotions.
• The voices tell him that children are made into medicine for adults and that Zero Three One’s serial number reflects her role as a “mother chamber.” Their claims push Afterglow into despair; he begs the children—whom he calls “Honest Light”—to stop.

Character developments

• Zero Three One becomes increasingly fearful and protective, but her determination to shield Afterglow cannot prevent her capture.
• Afterglow tries to hide his frightening perceptions to spare his mother worry. Left alone, he is overwhelmed by the voices and begins to doubt whether her care is genuine.

Character interactions

• Mother and son share a tender but strained bond: Zero Three One tries to reassure and protect Afterglow, while he longs for her return and worries she has abandoned him.
• The pursuers treat Afterglow as a drug rather than a child, and attack Zero Three One when she refuses to reveal his location.
• The unseen children torment Afterglow with claims about the Takekawa Society and his mother, exploiting his loneliness and fear.

Significant themes

• Parental love under coercion: Zero Three One’s actions suggest genuine care, but the world around them makes that love seem suspect.
• Exploitation and dehumanization: Children are described as raw materials for medicine, while adults’ pursuit of power strips away their humanity.
• Innocence amid corruption: Afterglow’s childlike need for friendship and safety contrasts with the city’s pervasive grotesquerie and malice.
• Fear and psychological isolation: His visions and the voices leave him increasingly alone, even as his mother struggles to protect him.

Chapter Summary

• Afterglow’s crisis: Haunted by the memories of children whose blood was used to make the Takekawa Society’s medicine, five-year-old Afterglow collapses under their demands that he flee the city. They explain that adults are feeding him Old Medicine and that he, too, is being raised as medicine. Afterglow rejects them, clinging to the hope that his mother will return.
• His mother’s capture: Three days after Afterglow escapes to a rental apartment, the Society finds him. He learns that his mother, Zero Three One, endured three days of drugs and torture before they located him—though he suspects she may never have betrayed his hiding place. Black Man-Bear retrieves him gently and treats him with apparent care.
• Black Man-Bear’s deception—or compassion: Black Man-Bear tells Afterglow that his mother is mentally ill and shows him edited surveillance footage portraying her as unstable. He asks whether Afterglow has seen the bloodied children, noticing the boy’s subtle reaction. Back at the Society’s plant, he spends more time with Afterglow and appears to offer the affection and security the child lacks.
• The choice: Black Man-Bear later brings Afterglow to the hospital, where Zero Three One is found near death. The doctor says she needs a transplant and that Afterglow is her only compatible donor. Faced with the choice of letting her die or donating his organs, Afterglow agrees to save her. The other children’s memories suggest this is a familiar trap: many children before him made the same choice.
• The transformation: After a week of injections and forced feeding, Afterglow is placed in a large container, and the Society plants a new kind of black Fate Flower on his body.

Character Developments and Relationships

Afterglow shifts from frightened denial toward a painful, self-sacrificing decision: despite the children’s warnings, he chooses his mother. His attachment to her remains powerful even after learning she may have treated him as something to sell. Black Man-Bear presents himself as a gentle, protective father figure, though the children insist he is manipulating Afterglow. Zero Three One remains absent and helpless, while her earlier endurance complicates Afterglow’s belief that she simply abandoned him.

Significant Themes

The chapter explores exploitation disguised as care, the vulnerability of children, and the conflict between comforting illusions and brutal truth. It also questions whether an act of love can be freely chosen when a child is placed under unbearable pressure. The children’s shared memories suggest that the Society’s system repeats itself, turning innocence into medicine—and sacrifice into another part of the process.

Key plot points

• Afterglow is kept in a glass tank and forced to nourish the Takekawa Society’s Fate Flowers. The Society extracts his blood and grows the flowers in his body to produce medicine.
• Black Man-Bear tells Afterglow that his mother is nearby and will free him when she wakes. Afterglow clings to this promise, unaware that the Society plans to drain him dry and pass his heart to another child used as medicine.
• Wansheng’s explosives breach the Pharmaceutical Factory, shattering Afterglow’s tank. He crawls through the factory searching for his mother and discovers other children imprisoned in tanks, also being used to make medicine.
• He finds public displays describing and depicting the punishment of Mother Room Zero Three One. The revelation destroys his hope and causes the Fate Flowers on him to wither.
• Afterglow loses control: he merges with the city, spreads malice, and draws the other children toward him through their shared memories and the medicinal fluid.
• In the present, Gao Ming’s medicine bottle bursts when his blood touches the medicinal fluid. He experiences Afterglow’s memories and realizes the Society makes medicine from children’s bodies.

Character developments and interactions

• Afterglow shifts from a frightened child sustained by hope for his mother into a monstrous, uncontrolled force after learning what happened to her.
• Black Man-Bear briefly expresses pride in Afterglow, but remains complicit in the exploitation, leaving him trapped and destined to be consumed.
• Gao Ming gains a deeper understanding of the factory and Forbidden Zone by connecting with the children’s memories through blood and medicine.
• The trapped children are linked through the medicinal fluid: their suffering and memories converge, and they gather around Afterglow as his emotions overwhelm him.

Significant themes

• Exploitation and inherited suffering: Children are turned into medicine, and their hearts are intended to become ingredients for future victims.
• Hope used as control: Afterglow endures because he believes he may reunite with his mother, while the Society exploits that hope.
• Corruption and lost innocence: The Fate Flowers depend on positive emotion, but confronting cruelty destroys Afterglow’s purity and transforms him.
• Shared trauma and memory: The children’s experiences travel through blood and medicine, binding their suffering together.
• The origins of horror: Gao Ming concludes that Honest Light may have been the first child to lose control, with Afterglow’s transformation contributing to the Old Pharmaceutical Factory becoming a Forbidden Zone.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming’s fingertip wound continues to bleed after contact with Afterglow’s medicine. The blood behaves strangely, seeming to lead him deeper into the pharmaceutical factory.
• Although the factory appears abandoned, signs of a frantic evacuation remain. Gao Ming follows the blood’s pull inside, despite Jia Youzhi and Ding Xiang urging him to retreat.
• In the production workshop, the group finds graphic images documenting the torture of worker Zero Three One, apparently displayed as a warning to employees.
• Behind the machinery are numerous patients used in the Takekawa Society’s human experiments. They are still alive but lost to their cravings, endlessly consuming and injecting medicine that has become poison since Afterglow’s loss of control.
• Gao Ming reasons that the forbidden zone may distinguish victims from perpetrators, and refuses to leave. He then follows the blood toward the staff apartments.
• At the apartment gate, they find the gatekeeper Old Li’s body. He died by suicide, but his face suggests relief rather than fear.
• The apartment building appears to reveal two overlapping realities: an ordinary interior and a horrific vision of workers’ corpses tangled in roots. Gao Ming sees himself climbing normal stairs, while his companions see him walking over bodies and being surrounded by corpses.
• The chapter ends with Jia Youzhi calling for Gao Ming to come back as he continues toward something only he can perceive.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains determined and analytical in the face of danger. He interprets the patients’ condition as evidence that the forbidden zone may target the guilty rather than kill indiscriminately, and he is drawn toward Afterglow by the blood’s apparent connection to him.
• Jia Youzhi and Ding Xiang shift from criticizing Gao Ming’s risk-taking to depending on him for safety. Their fear grows as the factory’s horrors give way to the apartment’s supernatural distortions.
• Wu Wei and Ding Xiang are shaken by the torture images, which make the human cost of the Takekawa Society’s cruelty impossible to ignore.
• Gao Ming’s companions see danger closing around him even when he believes he is moving through an ordinary space, creating a widening gap between his perception and theirs.

Significant themes

• Institutional cruelty and complicity: The Takekawa Society’s experiments and public punishment reveal systematic abuse, not isolated wrongdoing.
• Medicine turned into poison: A treatment that once suppressed malice becomes harmful after Afterglow loses control, showing how corruption can invert something meant to heal.
• Victims versus perpetrators: Gao Ming’s belief that the forbidden zone can distinguish the two raises the possibility that it operates by a moral logic.
• Unreliable reality and perception: The apartment’s shifting appearances suggest that the forbidden zone exposes a hidden layer of horror beneath the city’s apparent normality.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming’s perception fractures between two realities: the dark city’s corpse-filled world and Li Sansi’s memories. The Forbidden Zone acts like another opening in a camera obscura, revealing a hidden world whose reality is uncertain.
• The Pharmaceutical Factory’s dead workers and corpses emerge from the apparent emptiness of the Forbidden Zone. Gao Ming follows them to a room where he finds Afterglow, a child surrounded by roots and submerged bodies.
• Gao Ming realizes the factory’s “medicine” is made from children. He risks cutting through his Blood City Tattoo so Afterglow’s Blood Threads can reach his heart and establish communication.
• Afterglow explains that children with pure souls are used to nourish the Fate Flower, whose extracted substance can suppress darkness. The factory’s treatments and food feed the children and the flower.
• Afterglow reveals that the Fate Flower lets its “medicines” perceive another overlapping world. Neither world can be clearly distinguished as real or false.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming moves from confusion and sensory disorientation to deliberate action. He gambles on connecting with Afterglow, believing their shared nature as “medicine” may allow them to communicate.
• Afterglow first appears silent and inscrutable, then speaks through their connection. Though emotionally restrained, Afterglow shares knowledge of the Fate Flower and the children’s role in the factory’s scheme.
• Jia Youzhi and Ding Xiang enter the Apartment Building to rescue Gao Ming. Jia desperately calls out to him, while the group considers striking him to break what they believe is possession. They see him surrounded by corpses but unharmed, apparently about to stab himself.

Significant themes

• Perception and reality: Like a camera obscura, the city filters and inverts what people see; the two overlapping worlds may both be real and unreal.
• Exploitation and sacrifice: Children are treated as medicinal ingredients and raised to nourish a flower.
• Darkness and light: The city’s master pursues absolute darkness, while the Fate Flower—formed from discarded parts of its soul—offers a means to suppress it.
• Connection through shared suffering: Gao Ming and Afterglow can communicate because both are “medicine,” and Gao Ming accepts physical danger to reach the child.

Plot points

• Afterglow explains that the medicinal fluid comes from Fate Flowers and has been injecting it into Gao Ming because his body attracts the flowers and the memories left in the darkness.
• As the medicine floods Gao Ming, his memories and Li Sansi’s merge more deeply. Gao Ming begins to experience both the Shrine world and Li Sansi’s world as equally real, while his soul takes on the aura of a native of the city.
• Afterglow warns that its consciousness is fading and describes three possible ways to cure the city: kill its master in the Forbidden Zone World, eliminate every gang in Gang World, or find and become the “most absolute darkness.”
• Gao Ming leaves Afterglow and discovers that the medicine has not erased Li Sansi’s malice. Instead, it has withdrawn and concealed itself, making Gao Ming suspect that Li Sansi’s evil is deeper or stranger than he had realized.
• Concerned that the Dark Shrine’s master could identify him, Gao Ming decides to stay hidden and operate in the gang city. He exits the forbidden zone and reunites with Jia Youzhi and his other subordinates.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming gains a stronger connection to Li Sansi and becomes harder to distinguish from a native of the Shrine world. At the same time, he grows more suspicious of Li Sansi’s hidden malice and even questions whether his three subordinates are real.
• Afterglow shows both a child’s bluntness and a maturity shaped by suffering. Despite its fading consciousness, it answers Gao Ming’s questions and offers guidance, but cannot explain everything. Gao Ming promises to save Afterglow and the others; the child remains skeptical of adults’ promises.
• Gao Ming and Jia Youzhi reunite after Gao Ming’s escape. Jia Youzhi reacts with astonishment and relief, while Gao Ming answers with his usual dry, teasing manner. Gao Ming now sees his subordinates in two contradictory forms.

Significant themes

• Identity and memory: The medicine blurs the boundary between Gao Ming and Li Sansi, and between observer and participant.
• Hidden evil: Malice may not disappear when suppressed; it can retreat out of sight, perhaps even from the person who carries it.
• Trust and uncertainty: Gao Ming doubts Li Sansi’s past, his subordinates’ reality, and Afterglow’s proposed solutions.
• Hope amid darkness: Afterglow’s image of a seed buried in darkness suggests that hope can persist even in a city overwhelmed by pain and decay.

Key events

• Gao Ming’s medicine-induced mutation lets him see both the ordinary city and the Forbidden Zone at once. In the latter, he perceives strange “true forms” that reveal hidden aspects of people and their relationships.
• He sees Jia Youzhi as a powerless shadow, Ding Xiang wrapped in layers of skin and bleeding clothes, and Wu Wei carrying a patterned snail shell whose designs resemble Li Sansi’s face.
• Gao Ming reflects on his bonds with his three subordinates and wonders whether they would mourn him. Ding Xiang and Jia Youzhi brush off the question, while Wu Wei sincerely says she would.
• With the medicinal liquid temporarily replacing the Meat Fragrance in his soul, Gao Ming leads the group out of the Forbidden Zone. His recent drug exposure allows him to enter and leave it freely.
• Outside, they emerge into a chaotic battle near the Takekawa Society’s New Medicine Manufacturing Plant: buildings burn, gangs clash, and patients’ malice has run out of control.
• Takekawa Society leader Black Leech mistakes the group for people connected to Councilor Ci Mei. He forces them to carry pharmaceutical equipment from the burning factory and shoots the Mercy Society driver in the ear to compel them.
• Black Leech blames Black Man-Bear for ruining his efforts to cultivate new Fate Flowers. His gang has also lost contact with Black Xiao, while he fears a Night Watch raid.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming’s altered perception makes him increasingly aware that people have hidden, symbolic forms and bonds he cannot fully explain. He also recognizes that, despite his unusual vision, he cannot see his own form.
• His casual question about whether his companions would grieve for him reveals his attachment to them. Wu Wei’s thoughtful answer distinguishes her sincere loyalty from the others’ reflexive reassurances.
• Jia Youzhi, Ding Xiang, and Wu Wei each appear in the Forbidden Zone as distorted reflections of their personalities or connections—especially Ding Xiang’s entanglement with Li Sansi and the shell Wu Wei carries.
• Black Leech’s cruelty and desperation establish him as a threat: he uses violence to make outsiders risk their lives retrieving equipment.

Significant themes

• Hidden selves and perception: The Forbidden Zone’s visions expose traits and relationships concealed beneath people’s ordinary appearances.
• Bonds and loyalty: Gao Ming’s concern for his companions contrasts with Wu Wei’s dependable sincerity.
• Danger beyond the supernatural: The city outside the Forbidden Zone is no less hellish, with gang violence, fire, and human exploitation.
• Uncertainty and conflict: Gao Ming and the Shrine’s master are both acting without knowing the other’s abilities, while Black Leech’s faction faces growing threats and internal failures.

Plot points and events

• Black Leech worries that the Night Watch is a greater threat to the Takekawa Society than rival gang Wansheng. He also suspects Black Mastiff did not kill Yuan Qing’s daughter.
• Jia Youzhi overhears the Takekawa Society discussing the Night Watch. When the gang realizes the Mercy Society members may have heard them, Black Leech orders his men to kill them and dump their bodies in the Forbidden Zone.
• Jia warns Gao Ming and the others. While trapped in a burning building, Gao proposes starting their own gang and taking the Takekawa Society’s drug-making equipment. Ding Xiang and Wu Wei focus on escaping and doubt his plan.
• Gao pretends to plead helplessly about the fire, then ambushes Black Leech, takes him hostage, and forces him into the truck carrying the equipment.
• Once they are moving, Gao reveals that the Takekawa Society is doomed if the Night Watch gets involved—and confesses that he killed Yuan Qing’s daughter. He shoots Black Leech and drives the truck at the gang members.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from apparent slacker and frightened captive to a resourceful, ruthless operator. He uses the gang’s underestimation of him to seize control, then kills Black Leech without negotiation.
• Black Leech is cautious and perceptive about the Night Watch and the mystery surrounding Yuan Qing’s daughter, but his composure and attempts to recruit Gao fail once the truth is revealed.
• Jia Youzhi risks warning Gao and the others after overhearing the gang’s plan.
• Ding Xiang and Wu Wei respond pragmatically to the danger, urging escape; Wu Wei bluntly challenges Gao’s judgment.
• Gao’s interactions with Black Leech turn from hostage-taking and guarded negotiation to a shocking confession and execution.

Significant themes

• Deception and underestimation: Gao’s harmless, nervous appearance conceals his strength and intentions.
• Violence and moral ambiguity: The Takekawa Society plans to murder witnesses, while Gao responds with robbery and lethal force.
• Power and survival: In this world, ordinary people and gangs alike face danger, and control belongs to whoever can act decisively.
• Escalating conflict: Gao’s confession implicates him in the central killing and suggests a direct confrontation with the Takekawa Society and possibly the Night Watch.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming kills Black Leech, tricks the Takekawa Society’s men into the Forbidden Zone, then escapes the burning factory with his group disguised as Society members.
• They smuggle the factory’s valuable pharmaceutical equipment into the slums, splitting it among several routes with help from Black Crow and the disfigured woman.
• Black Crow warns Gao Ming that the Night Watch is preparing to act. The Municipal Council Hall—based in the Thirteenth District—backs the Takekawa Society, and the Night Watch’s campaign may have been manipulated into a trap.
• Black Crow suspects the city’s rulers are targeting outsiders, especially Travelers, and says a purge is imminent. He gives Gao Ming a new contact number and urges him to stay cautious.
• Gao Ming resolves to keep his group hidden and build strength, while anticipating that the Dark Shrine’s master may soon move against them. Two other Dream Ghosts, Weird Wish and Yan Xizhi, are also unaccounted for.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming proves resourceful and ruthless, turning the Takekawa Society’s own tactics against them and securing valuable equipment. He remains cautious despite his success, trusting Black Crow while recognizing the growing political threat.
• Black Crow acts as Gao Ming’s informant, risking a warning despite being unable to speak freely. Their trust is strong, though Black Crow advises against meeting in person.
• The disfigured woman understands the equipment’s value but is suspicious of Gao Ming’s trust in Black Crow. His awkward smile puts her off, and she focuses on escorting the cargo.
• Gao Ming’s subordinates, including Wu Wei, are astonished by his unexpectedly bold tactics and help carry out the escape.

Significant themes

• Hidden power struggles: The conflict among gangs and the Night Watch may be a distraction engineered by a more powerful, unseen force.
• Outsiders under threat: Travelers’ presence appears to have changed the city’s rulers’ attitude toward them, raising the prospect of a purge.
• Cunning and survival: Disguise, misdirection, and restraint help Gao Ming’s group survive in a city where open strength can make them targets.
• The unseen hunter: The chapter’s title captures the possibility that the Night Watch, while pursuing its own goals, is itself being hunted.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming warns Black Crow that danger is closing in and advises him to abandon the Night Watch’s corrupt hierarchy without abandoning its original principles. He urges Black Crow to gather trusted allies and operate underground as a “true night watchman.”
• Black Crow accepts Gao Ming’s advice and gives him an address. Gao Ming travels into the slums with the Disfigured Nurse to meet him.
• They visit a concealed hideout where Black Crow has recruited and equipped many Dogmen. The Nurse explains that the Dogmen have been altered to erase malice—and much of their independent thought—making them obedient tools.
• The hideout also contains a clandestine drug workshop staffed by slum refugees. Black Crow reveals that Night Watch officers Owl and Judgment are investigating Old Dog’s death and the fate of his estate.
• Gao Ming recommends using the workshop as a decoy and moving the stolen pharmaceutical equipment out of the slums to the old Takekawa Society factory in the Forbidden Zone, creating another fallback location.
• Gao Ming prepares a “gift” for Black Crow: a possible way to avoid detection by the city’s Native Residents.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows strategic foresight, persuading Black Crow to preserve the Night Watch’s ideals while preparing for a purge. He also takes precautions to protect the stolen equipment and his allies.
• Black Crow shifts from suspicion toward cooperation. He has already committed resources to building a hidden force, and his meeting with Gao Ming confirms how precarious his position has become.
• The Disfigured Nurse remains blunt and wary of Gao Ming, but guides him through the hideout and explains its operations and the slum-dwellers’ transformations.
• Gao Ming and the Nurse trade barbs during the journey; her distrust contrasts with his curiosity about her past and reputation for kindness.

Significant themes

• Principle versus corruption: Gao Ming argues that the Night Watch’s original purpose can survive even if its institution has been corrupted.
• Survival through compromise: In the slums, people are modified into tools or monsters, raising questions about how identity and malice relate.
• Secrecy and contingency: Hidden operations, decoys, and multiple escape routes reflect the need to survive in a hostile city.
• Dehumanization: The Dogmen’s obedience and lack of inner light illustrate the cost of “removing” malice by stripping away selfhood.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming explains that the Dark Shrine reflects its master’s inner self. Though the shrine’s ruler embodies darkness and cruelty, traces of compassion and light remain in the city. He argues that the group’s best chance is to expose contradictions within the master rather than confront it directly.
• Gao Ming urges Black Crow to stop focusing on gang wars and investigate the first Night Watchman: find what he left behind, learn who he was, and discover whether he is still alive. Gao Ming also suggests the Night Watch’s rules may have been altered and could be a source of power rather than mere restrictions.
• Gao Ming gives Black Crow some of his blood as medicine. It triggers a violent reaction: Black Crow’s malice tries to escape his body. After drinking the rest, he recovers, and the malice in his heart turns entirely blood-red, becoming more manageable.
• Comparing Black Crow’s reaction with his own, Gao Ming realizes the malice in Li Sansi’s heart has changed only partly despite his exposure to medicine and Fate Flowers. He suspects something is deeply unusual about Li Sansi.
• Gao Ming recalls that Li Sansi’s memories contain nothing about his family, and attempts to imagine them cause physical discomfort. He wonders whether traumatic events were erased or deliberately concealed.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts as a mentor to Black Crow, sharing his understanding of the shrine and assigning him a larger purpose. Black Crow’s response shows he is willing to accept responsibility.
• Black Crow trusts Gao Ming enough to take the blood and endure its effects. He gains some control over his malice and becomes clearer-headed.
• Gao Ming’s confidence is unsettled by the mystery surrounding Li Sansi. His own identity and memories may be less straightforward than he believed.

Significant themes

• Contradiction within darkness: The shrine’s master contains both cruelty and buried traces of humanity; those contradictions may offer a way to defeat it.
• Memory and identity: Li Sansi’s missing family memories suggest that personal history can be hidden, lost, or manipulated.
• Power and responsibility: The Night Watch’s rules may enable action, and Black Crow is encouraged to become more than a participant in gang conflict.
• Malice and transformation: Gao Ming’s blood changes Black Crow’s malice, but its different effect on Li Sansi raises the possibility that Gao Ming himself is connected to a deeper mystery.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming worries that his memories are merging with Li Sansi’s so deeply that he may lose his sense of being an outsider. Black Crow confirms that Gao Ming now seems distracted and increasingly like Li Sansi.
• Gao Ming questions whether his three subordinates are real. Black Crow’s investigation supports their existence, though he has never met them.
• Jia Youzhi calls with news that the driver who accompanied the group into the Forbidden Zone has died. After being injured by Black Leech, the driver was shot during a clash between Wansheng and the Takekawa Society. Gao Ming tells the others to remain at the Mercy Society’s meeting place.
• Instead of investigating the driver’s death, Gao Ming goes to Li Sansi’s home in the Minghua Residential Complex. Residents there confront and insult him over the debts and trouble he has brought to the building.
• A neighbor’s hostility triggers Gao Ming’s suspicion that much of Li Sansi’s past has been hidden or erased. He wonders whether he truly disregards everyone else or whether his world has narrowed to his three subordinates. The chapter ends with him threatening the neighbor while reaching for his gun.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is increasingly unsettled by the blending of his identity with Li Sansi’s. He notices gaps in Li Sansi’s memories and grows more accustomed to intimidation and violence.
• Black Crow openly shares his observations and confirms that he has investigated Gao Ming, while admitting he cannot verify whether he has met the three subordinates.
• Jia Youzhi and Ding Xiang report the driver’s death; Ding Xiang remains composed as she explains what happened.
• Li Sansi’s neighbors reveal how despised he was, treating him with contempt because of his debts and the disruption caused by collectors.

Significant themes

• Identity and memory: Gao Ming fears that adopting Li Sansi’s memories and persona may eventually erase his original self.
• Isolation and perception: His uncertainty about the three subordinates—and his thought that they may be the only people in his world—raises questions about what is real and whom he cares about.
• Home as refuge and concealment: The residential complex offers security, but its closed apartments also suggest hidden lives and secrets.
• Social humiliation and power: Li Sansi’s neighbors demean him, while Gao Ming responds by asserting his newfound gang status and threatening force.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming presses Black Crow about changes in his behavior and the reality of his subordinates; Black Crow answers candidly but cautiously.
• Jia Youzhi and Ding Xiang inform Gao Ming of the driver’s death, and he directs them to stay at the Mercy Society’s base.
• At the residential complex, an old man mocks Li Sansi, and a furious neighbor confronts Gao Ming over the debts and damage associated with him. Gao Ming reacts with menace, exposing his growing willingness to use violence.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming confronts Fat Li, the property-management worker who has been harassing Li Sansi. He points his black gun at her, questions her about Li Sansi’s life, and learns that Li Sansi seems to live alone and has no close friends or known family.
• Gao Ming nearly shoots Fat Li, reflecting on how readily violence has begun to feel like a solution. He lets her go, though she immediately tries to summon the debt collectors.
• He returns to apartment 41413, where he finds the hallway covered in debt threats and insults. The keyhole is clogged with gum, and the door has been painted red on the outside.
• Inside, the apartment is darkly furnished and unusually tidy, but smells faintly rotten. Gao Ming searches the kitchen, bathroom, and master bedroom and finds no sign that anyone else has lived there.
• A second bedroom—absent from Li Sansi’s memories—is locked. Gao Ming breaks in and discovers its window has been bricked up, and that the room contains photo-developing equipment and photographs covering the walls.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming uses intimidation to get information from Fat Li, but his hesitation to shoot her shows growing unease about his reliance on lethal force. Fat Li shifts from defiant bullying to apparent politeness, then returns to hostility once he leaves.
• Gao Ming’s investigation of the apartment becomes increasingly personal and unsettling: he notices that Li Sansi’s memories omit an entire room, raising doubts about what he knows of the man whose life he is inhabiting.

Significant themes

• Violence and moral change: Gao Ming questions whether killing has become too easy an answer.
• Isolation and hidden lives: Li Sansi is perceived as solitary, and his home conceals a room missing from his memories.
• Malice and oppressive surroundings: The painted door, debt graffiti, and disturbing elevator advertisements make the residential complex feel hostile and threatening.
• Memory and identity: The locked bedroom’s absence from Li Sansi’s recollections suggests that memory may be incomplete or unreliable.

Plot points

• Gao Ming enters the Darkroom and discovers that Li Sansi’s forgotten memories seem to survive in photographs.
• The earliest images reveal Li Sansi as a sensitive, neglected child beside his stern father, a lawyer and legal scholar who opposed the death penalty.
• After Li Sansi’s mother is murdered, his father argues for sparing the killer. The murder becomes Li Sansi’s first defining association with death.
• His father later marries Xia. Photographs suggest Li Sansi was injured and unhappy in the new household, though he cannot recall how he was hurt.
• A later family portrait records a strange reunion: Li Sansi holds his dead mother’s framed photograph while an elderly couple hang dead in a nearby building.
• Li Sansi’s father eventually gives him a camera instead of steering him toward law. Li Sansi becomes devoted to photographing his younger brother.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming uses Li Sansi’s memories to interpret the photographs, gradually uncovering the childhood experiences missing from Li Sansi’s conscious recollections.
• Li Sansi’s father is principled and opposed to capital punishment, but his position after his wife’s murder leaves a lasting wound in his son. Later, he appears to favor the younger child and embraces the photographs as evidence of family harmony.
• Li Sansi grows from a curious, vulnerable boy into a withdrawn observer. Behind the camera, he can watch his brother without confronting his own feelings.
• Aunt Xia seems uneasy when Li Sansi approaches the baby with his camera, in contrast to the father’s approval.
• The younger brother receives the family’s affection and becomes Li Sansi’s favorite subject. Li Sansi insists he is not jealous, though the contrast between the brothers hints at complicated feelings.

Significant themes

• Memory and forgetting: Photographs preserve moments that Li Sansi’s mind has lost, but they reveal only fragments.
• Photography and distance: The camera lets Li Sansi observe living people as if they were already lifeless, shielding him from emotion.
• Death, justice, and revenge: His father’s opposition to the death penalty clashes with Li Sansi’s trauma after his mother’s murder.
• Family and hidden harm: Images of apparent harmony coexist with signs of neglect, violence, and unresolved grief.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming studies Li Sansi’s photo wall, which traces the boy’s life and reveals his family’s growing distress.
• Early photos show Li Sansi lovingly photographing his baby brother. Aunt Xia, exhausted and increasingly troubled by frightening premonitions, begins to fear the child and grows hostile toward Li Sansi.
• The family’s circumstances worsen: the baby is often crying, the adults look unhappy, and Li Sansi is taken to meet relatives and acquaintances marked by death, illness, and personal hardship.
• Li Sansi is eventually placed with a sewer-repair worker and the worker’s disabled wife. Their home is a damp, filthy half-basement, and Li Sansi’s body becomes increasingly covered in wounds.
• A series of photos shows the worker feeding nearly all of a cake to his wife, then leaving at night with her wheelchair. Their destination is unknown. The final image shows wheelchair tracks leading to the underground water network and Li Sansi’s reflection amid the sewage.

Character developments and interactions

• Li Sansi remains a quiet observer, using his camera to document the people around him. Though repeatedly hurt and neglected, he appears not to harm his baby brother.
• Aunt Xia shifts from caregiver to fearful, hostile presence. Her anxiety and disturbing suspicions culminate in an angry confrontation with Li Sansi.
• Li Sansi’s father is largely absent, campaigning to abolish the death penalty, while the family’s troubles deepen.
• The sewer worker is taciturn and overworked. His awkward pose for Li Sansi’s camera and his nighttime departure with his wife suggest a momentous, but unexplained, decision.
• The worker’s wife is severely disabled and increasingly losing control of her nerves. Her pain sometimes erupts as violence, while her husband’s insistence on feeding her cake hints at a complicated mix of care, grief, and release.

Significant themes

• Fear and premonition: Fear comes from anticipating what might happen, whether or not the feared event is real.
• Suffering and neglect: Li Sansi moves through homes and relationships shaped by illness, violence, loss, and abandonment.
• The camera as witness: The photographs preserve moments others may overlook, while their gaps leave key events and motives uncertain.
• Darkness and ambiguity: The chapter’s increasingly bleak images culminate in the unseen depths of the sewer, leaving the worker’s departure—and Li Sansi’s future—unresolved.

Key plot points and events

• In the darkroom, Gao Ming studies photographs documenting Li Sansi’s life after his adoptive parents disappeared.
• Li Sansi is sent back to his birth family, where his former room has been renovated and his place in the household erased. His father, Aunt Xia, and younger brother appear happier without him.
• Li Sansi is then sent to live with his paternal aunt, who has a hereditary mental illness. The photographs offer little detail of his time there, but one self-portrait suggests an uncanny connection between Li Sansi and Gao Ming.
• A later photograph shows a child’s severed limb in the sewage near the Underground Water Network, foreshadowing tragedy.
• The sixth row shows Li Sansi entering the tunnels, apparently pursued or observed by someone. Inside, he finds discarded belongings and the murderer who killed his mother—the same madman his father had protected.
• In the final photograph, Li Sansi restrains the murderer with a rope as the darkness and rising sewage engulf him.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming becomes increasingly disturbed by the photographs and wonders whether he could somehow be the person photographing Li Sansi, despite knowing their identities are distinct.
• Li Sansi is isolated by his birth family and drawn into the Underground Water Network. By the final image, he is calm and seemingly intent on confronting his mother’s killer.
• Aunt Xia appears fearful of Li Sansi, perhaps suspecting him in his adoptive parents’ disappearance. Without him, she and his younger son seem content.
• Li Sansi’s father continues to protect the madman responsible for his wife’s death.
• The photographs suggest indirect encounters between Li Sansi, his family, his aunt, and the murderer, while the unknown photographer’s presence remains unresolved.

Significant themes

• Isolation and rejection: Li Sansi is treated as an unwanted presence, and his family attempts to erase his history from their home.
• Memory and identity: Photographs preserve fragmented moments, while Gao Ming’s merged memories blur the boundary between himself and Li Sansi.
• Fear becoming reality: The child’s limb turns ominous anticipation into pain and despair.
• Darkness and buried truth: The Underground Water Network represents both a literal hidden place and the secrets surrounding Li Sansi’s family and past.

Key plot points

• After studying Li Sansi’s photographs, Gao Ming wonders who followed Li into the underground water network. He considers several possibilities, including Li’s brother, aunt, adoptive father, or Li himself, but cannot find Li’s camera or determine how Li escaped.
• The final photograph depicts the city’s pitch-black sewage reservoir, the Deep Pool. Gao Ming suspects Li’s missing memories may be hidden in the camera or somewhere in the underground network.
• Debt collectors arrive, demanding payment and claiming their company bought Li’s debt. Gao Ming opens the door, startling them.
• When the collectors threaten him, Gao Ming draws the Unnumbered Black Gun and fires into a ceiling light. The shot makes them back down.
• Gao Ming learns that the debt is entangled with the Takekawa Society and Wansheng, making it a dangerous liability. He offers to pay or surrender the apartment—but first demands that the collectors find out how much Li borrowed and where the money went.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from troubled investigator to forceful negotiator. Leaving the darkroom clears his head, and he uses the gun to control the confrontation. He also reveals skepticism toward both the collectors and the people behind Li’s debt.
• The debt collectors, led by an afro-haired thug, arrive expecting an easy intimidation. Their bravado collapses after Gao Ming’s warning shot, and the leader becomes cautious and conciliatory.
• Gao Ming’s brief, sharp mockery of the leader’s two-cigarette habit suggests he is still affected by the disturbing photographs and Li’s mindset.

Significant themes

• Perception and memory: The chapter questions whether photographs capture reality more truthfully than human sight, while Gao Ming struggles to separate Li’s memories from his own.
• Hidden truths and missing evidence: The absent camera, unknown photographer, and lost account of Li’s escape keep the underground network’s mystery unresolved.
• Debt and exploitation: Li’s unexplained borrowing appears connected to powerful, dangerous groups, and the collectors may have been duped into buying the debt.
• Darkness and moral contrast: The city contains both predatory organizations and foolish opportunists, while Gao Ming navigates between them.