Chapter Summaries

Plot and events

• Bai Xian takes Gao Ming and Zhang Mingli to a concealed room in an abandoned secondhand market, where the Savior once found the Black Box and left behind an old first-generation Game Helmet.
• The helmet is tied to people whose identities and memories were erased, apparently in pursuit of the Black Box. When Gao Ming tries to grasp their memories, an unseen force linked to Fate disperses them.
• Gao Ming hides the site and activates the helmet. Its ordinary login fails, but he forces access through the backup Administrator permissions.
• Instead of entering the expected Perfect Life game, Gao Ming arrives in a ruined, blood-red version of Xinhu Blood City. Separated from Zhang Mingli, he receives bizarre beginner tasks: bathe, watch television, or sleep.

Character developments and interactions

• Bai Xian’s recovered memories make him more expressive. He regards Zhang Mingli with gratitude and respect, having waited for the chance to help him; he also breaks down in tears while discussing the Savior.
• Gao Ming uses his growing control over dreams and Blood City to conceal the group and resist the helmet’s warnings. He senses that Fate is watching him, but believes it cannot yet harm him because it cannot locate his threads of fate.
• Zhang Mingli responds bluntly to Bai Xian’s emotional farewell and immediately enters the Game Pod. Gao Ming and Zhang work together to investigate and use the helmet, though they are separated upon entry.

Significant themes

• Memory and erasure: The Savior’s legacy, Bai Xian’s recollections, and the forgotten people’s sacrifices all show how fragile memory and identity are.
• Fate and resistance: Fate can erase people and intervene against Gao Ming, yet his altered nature makes him difficult to reach.
• Games as gateways: The old helmet is more than a game device: it grants access to a hidden layer of Xinhu, revealing a deeper and darker reality than the expected game world.

Key plot points

• Gao Ming waits in an apartment tied to the Saviors, testing a beginner task called “Sleep.” When nothing happens, he examines a system profile that cannot properly identify him; many of his abilities are unassessable.
• Using dream power and the Twin Flowers petals left by the Saviors, Gao Ming reconstructs scenes from their past in the building.
• His dream markings reveal an elderly woman, Meng Shi, still living alone in the otherwise abandoned complex. She keeps the lights on and preserves food in the hope that her family will return.
• Gao Ming questions her about the former residents and the “Building Manager.” When she struggles to remember, he enters her memories with his dream markings.
• The memories lead him to a ruined paradise containing a hidden passage and a decaying shrine with a living flower. Gao Ming realizes the Saviors had died and returned through the shrine’s power. He thanks Meng Shi and hurries off toward the discovery.

Character development and interactions

• Gao Ming is resourceful, determined, and willing to use unconventional methods to find the Saviors. Despite his frightening powers and blunt request to examine Meng Shi’s memories, he reassures her he will not harm her and thanks her afterward.
• Meng Shi is gentle and hospitable, offering Gao Ming food and shelter. Her devotion to her absent family—and her fading memories of the Saviors—reveals how long she has waited in isolation.
• Their conversation contrasts Meng Shi’s quiet hope of reunion with Gao Ming’s urgent knowledge that the city and the Saviors’ allies are in danger.

Significant themes

• Memory and fate: Rules tied to fate are erasing Meng Shi’s memories of the Saviors.
• Loneliness and enduring hope: Meng Shi keeps her home illuminated, waiting for loved ones who may never return.
• Death and resurrection: The discovery suggests that a shrine in the deep world enabled the Saviors’ return after death.
• Power and identity: Gao Ming’s profile cannot measure or identify him, hinting that he exceeds the Forbidden Game’s systems.

Key plot points and events

• Ignoring the secondhand system’s warnings, Gao Ming enters Beast Alley, a hidden map, and encounters a powerful Pigman wielding a bone cleaver. He overwhelms it with dream markings and sends it to the Execution House.
• Beyond Beast Alley, he finds Xinhu Blood City devastated: its people and souls have been slaughtered or exploited, its markets are abandoned, and the city’s former order has collapsed. The Savior’s project to bridge life and death was betrayed by outsiders; even Number Two was controlled by the Unknowable.
• Following memories preserved in the city’s markings, Gao Ming reaches a paradise containing a huge, seemingly bottomless pit and a heavily sealed forbidden zone.
• He breaks through the seals using the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s eight arms, despite realizing the attack will likely draw the attention of hostile Unspeakables.
• Inside, he finds a young man chained on an ash-covered floor beneath a wooden shrine. The Savior’s Twin Flowers petal reacts strongly, but seems to warn Gao Ming away. The man’s fate threads are entirely black.
• Gao Ming smashes the shrine and learns the prisoner’s name: Shen Luo, who claims he knew Gao Ming would return to save him.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains decisive and unconcerned with warnings, using overwhelming power to remove obstacles. He accepts the risk of revealing himself because Hanhai Blood City needs resources.
• He shows a sharper awareness of the wider conflict: Xinhu’s suffering reflects the fate of other Blood Cities, and he sees the ongoing infighting as destructive.
• Shen Luo is introduced as a mysterious, apparently helpless prisoner with a disturbing, unprecedented black fate. His connection to the Savior—and to Gao Ming—is unresolved.

Significant themes

• Betrayal and injustice: Xinhu’s idealistic efforts were met with false cooperation and destruction.
• The cost of conflict: Souls are reduced to commodities while the Blood Cities fight for power.
• Fate and mystery: Shen Luo’s all-black fate and the petal’s warning suggest a danger or destiny beyond Gao Ming’s understanding.
• Idealism versus survival: The Savior’s peaceful vision contrasts with Gao Ming’s willingness to use force to strengthen Hanhai.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming casually taunts the Pigman before overpowering it.
• He follows the Savior’s memories and reacts to the city’s devastation, linking Xinhu’s tragedy to Hanhai’s past.
• The Savior’s petal responds to Shen Luo but warns Gao Ming away; Gao Ming ignores the warning, frees the man’s face, and questions him. Shen Luo recognizes—or believes he recognizes—Gao Ming and calls him his rescuer.

Plot and key events

• Gao Ming returns to Xinhu and finds Shen Luo imprisoned in cursed chains at the Saviors’ former shrine. He suspects Shen Luo helped the other Blood Cities, but Shen Luo insists he was only trying to sell his finance course when he unknowingly met an Unspeakable plotting an attack. He tried to warn Xinhu, but nobody believed him.
• Gao Ming confirms Shen Luo is telling the truth and frees him. Breaking the seal alerts the Unspeakables who cursed Shen Luo, and three of them close in on Gao Ming.
• Shen Luo urges Gao Ming to flee, but Gao Ming confronts the attackers. He explains that exploiting Shen Luo has entangled them with his “black fate,” which has gradually brought calamity upon them.
• The three Unspeakables manifest as a grotesque beast, a woman formed from death energy, and a collapsing illusory sky. One recognizes the extraordinary mixture of life and death within Gao Ming.
• Gao Ming opens the gates to the deep world and dreamscape, revealing five Dream Ghosts and summoning the forces of Hanhai Blood City. He prepares to fight the three Unspeakables.

Character developments and interactions

• Shen Luo is revealed as sincere and loyal to Xinhu, despite being widely distrusted. His insistence that the city is home—even while it shuns him—shows his attachment and loneliness. He is grateful to Gao Ming, then alarmed to learn Gao Ming is a Dream Ghost from another Blood City.
• Gao Ming moves from suspicion to defending Shen Luo once he recognizes his honesty. He shows confidence in the power of black fate and deliberately lets the Unspeakables approach, taking the initiative rather than fleeing.
• Their exchange highlights Shen Luo’s fear and concern for Gao Ming, while Gao Ming challenges Shen Luo’s belief that people merely act reserved around him.

Significant themes

• Prejudice and isolation: Shen Luo is ignored and mistrusted even when he tries to protect his city.
• Loyalty and belonging: Despite rejection, Shen Luo considers Xinhu his home.
• Fate and consequences: The Unspeakables’ attempt to exploit Shen Luo ultimately turns black fate against them.
• Power and danger: Gao Ming’s unusual union of vitality and death, and his ability to summon Hanhai’s forces, establish him as a formidable threat—but one dealing with forces that may also affect him.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming assumes the Aging unspeakable has seen through his disguise and commits all his forces to the fight. The three unspeakables, meanwhile, have planned to divide him among themselves.
• Five Dream Ghosts emerge from a fissure between the Deep World and the dreamscape. Using Hanhai Blood City’s restored power, they can enter an unspeakable’s Shrine World through its consciousness and memories.
• Four Dream Ghosts overwhelm the Aging unspeakable, draining its stolen youth and vitality as its Shrine begins to crack. Gao Ming and Weird Wish hold the Blood Color and Illusion unspeakables in place so they cannot escape.
• Gao Ming’s Flesh-and-Blood Immortal confronts Blood Color directly. Dream’s Shrines pin the creature down, while Hanhai’s rules let the Immortal grow without limit and merge dreams with flesh. The Blood Color unspeakable is revealed to be badly outmatched.
• As the unspeakables call for help from other Blood Cities, Gao Ming remains unafraid and warns that only being cornered could drive him into the World of Delirium.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shows his habitual caution and willingness to deploy every available force. He turns the enemies’ Shrine-based powers into traps and fights with growing confidence as Hanhai’s strength manifests.
• Shen Luo, watching from the ruins, realizes that even the terrifying unspeakables can feel fear.
• The unspeakables lose their air of invulnerability: Aging is rapidly defeated, while Blood Color and Illusion panic and seek to retreat.

Character interactions

• The five Dream Ghosts attack in coordinated groups: four target Aging, while Weird Wish engages Illusion.
• Gao Ming and Weird Wish work together to keep Blood Color and Illusion from fleeing.
• Gao Ming’s Flesh-and-Blood Immortal clashes with Blood Color, using Hanhai’s dream rules and its own overwhelming physical growth to dominate it.

Significant themes

• Predators become prey: beings that once terrorized others are trapped and hunted in turn.
• Power and adaptation: Gao Ming converts knowledge of the Blood Cities’ rules into weapons.
• Fear and vulnerability: the unspeakables’ panic reveals that no power makes them invulnerable.
• Dreams as limitless force: the chapter contrasts Blood Color’s immense physical scale with the vastness and reach of Dream.

Plot and key events

• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal traps and devours three Unspeakables from different Blood Cities, overwhelming them with immense strength and regeneration. The fight lasts until the artificial Blood Sun sets.
• Gao Ming deliberately provokes the Blood Cities, hoping to draw enemies to Xinhu. Their arrival could relieve pressure on Hanhai, give Gao Yun time to strengthen the city, and provide more Unspeakables to hunt.
• After the battle, Gao Ming discusses how Hanhai’s Dream Ghosts have grown stronger by taking over the shrines of Aging and Illusion. Weird Wish has nearly doubled in strength and can now hunt Unspeakables alone.
• Gao Ming decides to investigate Xinhu Blood City, convinced it holds a major secret. He questions Shen Luo about the Saviors, but Shen Luo recalls nothing—until Gao Ming uses Dream’s ability to help unlock his memories.
• Shen Luo remembers hysterical laughter and identifies its source as “a monster,” hinting at a terrifying connection to the Saviors and Xinhu’s rulers.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains calculating and fearless, treating the attack as part of a broader strategy. He is willing to attract overwhelming enemies, relying on Delirium as a potential last resort, though even he does not know what using it might cost.
• Yan Xizhi voices concern that the conflict may never end. She avoids competing for power and follows her own path, while Gao Ming reassures her that this time the outcome will be different.
• The Dream Ghosts gain power from the captured shrines. The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal proves exceptionally formidable, while Weird Wish becomes capable of fighting Unspeakables independently.
• Shen Luo is nervous around Gao Ming and appears to see him as distant and powerful. Though he initially has no answers about the Saviors, Gao Ming’s questioning and use of Dream’s ability trigger a frightening memory.
• Gao Ming and Shen Luo have a tense, cautious exchange: Gao Ming wants information but fears Shen Luo’s connection to fate, while Shen Luo readily agrees to answer what he can.

Significant themes

• Power and escalation: Gao Ming deliberately provokes stronger enemies, believing danger can be turned into an advantage.
• Uneasy alliances and mutual deterrence: Hanhai’s many enemies are also wary of one another, limiting the chance that any one Blood City will attack alone.
• Memory, fate, and hidden truths: Shen Luo’s forgotten memories are tied to black threads of fate, and recovering them reveals a disturbing clue.
• The cost of survival: Gao Ming’s confidence in Delirium is tempered by uncertainty about whether using it would leave anyone able to return.

Plot points and events

• Shen Luo recalls that the mysterious being he once encountered was associated with a voice heard throughout Xinhu Blood City: “Returning Soul.” Recovering this memory causes him severe pain, and Gao Ming stops probing to avoid provoking the fate surrounding it.
• The secondhand system identifies Returning Soul as a talent exclusive to the Number Zero Administrator, but says Gao Ming cannot activate it because key conditions or information are missing. Gao Ming suspects the unusual Game Helmet—and the system itself—may conceal a ghostly presence.
• With Yan Xizhi and the five Dream Ghosts’ help, Gao Ming makes the system’s normally invisible panel visible and attacks it using Hanhai Blood City’s rules and the Dream Ghosts’ power.
• Gao Ming discovers the system’s true form: a tube-covered, jellyfish-like creature containing a fragment of Xinhu Blood City’s consciousness. Its creator stripped away its will, installed the fragment, and hid an unidentified black object in its hollowed-out brain. That object is missing.
• Gao Ming finds a channel marked by the Saviors’ traces and tears open the system’s panel, exposing a passage toward the Blood Sea. He realizes the system’s reach into reality and the Blood Sea comes at great cost.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shifts from treating the system as a useful tool to confronting it as a suspicious entity. He is bold, methodical, and unexpectedly reassuring toward it even while invading its memories.
• Shen Luo recovers a crucial, terrifying memory, though the strain leaves him physically incapacitated.
• The secondhand system is revealed as a vulnerable, constructed creature rather than a simple interface; Gao Ming’s attack is apparently its first experience with a hostile host.
• Yan Xizhi and the Dream Ghosts support Gao Ming’s plan, coordinating the dream markings and shrines that help restrain the system.

Significant themes

• Identity and control: The system is a composite being whose will and consciousness have been manipulated.
• Memory and hidden truth: Fate, the system’s concealed core, and the missing black object all point to secrets that must be uncovered at risk.
• Power and cost: Blood City’s rules can breach boundaries, but the system’s own cross-world reach carries a steep price.
• The uncanny nature of technology: The “system” is revealed as something ghostly and biological, blurring the line between tool, monster, and living consciousness.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming questions Shen Luo, then wisely stops when he sees the harm caused by probing further.
• The system reports on Returning Soul and searches for Gao Ming’s missing talent information, unaware he is planning to seize control of it.
• Yan Xizhi and the Dream Ghosts assist Gao Ming, while he speaks gently to the trapped system fragment even as he uses Blood City’s power to break into its core.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming uses Soul Recall to open a ghost gate and probe the Blood Sea, hoping to find traces of the Game Helmet’s former master and locate the missing Saviors.
• The Blood Sea proves perilous: a huge, unknowable presence approaches, forcing Gao Ming to retreat and close the gate.
• Gao Ming persuades the remnant of Xinhu Blood City’s will to merge with his Ghost Markings. He gains its aura, removing the city’s suppression that had prevented him from finding his subordinates.
• Unable to reach Number Two by walkie-talkie, Gao Ming uses a bloodstained chain connected to Bai Xiao to track him down. He sends the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God to search Xinhu for another unspeakable, with strict orders not to leave the city.
• Gao Ming finds Bai Xiao hiding in a senior recreation center. Bai Xiao and Number Two have been trying to contact the Saviors while surrounded by danger; Xinhu’s will has kept them alive.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shows his willingness to risk himself, even defying the system, but also demonstrates strategic restraint by retreating from the Blood Sea when the threat becomes overwhelming.
• The secondhand system is frightened and powerless against Gao Ming, who treats it less as an authority than as a companion he can pressure.
• Shen Luo explains his history of helplessness during the disaster. Gao Ming reframes his unusual black fate as a sign that he is destined to be extraordinary, which cheers him.
• Bai Xiao is revealed to have suffered catastrophic injuries and endured a desperate effort to survive and reach the Saviors.

Significant themes

• The danger of confronting the unknown: The Blood Sea holds forces beyond even a Blood City Lord’s ability to comprehend.
• Power, dependence, and trust: Gao Ming’s dealings with the system and Xinhu’s will contrast coercion with reluctant cooperation.
• Fate and identity: Gao Ming interprets Shen Luo’s strange fate as evidence of a special, potentially calamitous destiny.
• Survival and loyalty: Bai Xiao and Number Two persist in seeking the Saviors despite severe losses and constant danger.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming ignores the system’s warnings to investigate the Blood Sea, then reassures it and pressures it into cooperation.
• He negotiates with Xinhu’s remnant will, which merges with him because it has little choice.
• Gao Ming teases and then encourages Shen Luo, while Yan Xizhi observes that Shen Luo is easily flattered.
• Number Two remains silent over the walkie-talkie, reflecting his caution; Gao Ming instead follows his link to Bai Xiao.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming finds Bai Xiao badly injured at the senior activity center. The black names on Bai Xiao’s body are not curses but blessings: they belong to the First Night Watch and its members, whose legacy Bai Xiao received in the Dark Shrine.
• Bai Xiao explains that Number Two helped him learn to use that legacy. The pair survived repeated attacks together while fleeing an Unspeakable, and Number Two shared stories about the Night Watch and his own past.
• Gao Ming confirms that Hanhai Blood City has been reestablished and draws Number Two’s weakened remnant consciousness out of Bai Xiao’s mind to check on him. Number Two reveals that his original body is held by a false Number Zero at Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals and is close to dissipating. Gao Ming proposes luring Number Zero to Xinhu to rescue it, though Number Two insists their first priority is contacting the Saviors.
• Bai Xiao reveals that the Saviors’ shrine is hidden in a flowerpot. Inside its soil, Gao Ming finds a cracked black seed containing the Saviors’ faith. Since it has not responded to Number Two’s attempts to reach it, Gao Ming uses the Secondhand System’s coordinates to open a Ghost Gate onto the Blood Sea.
• Gao Ming tries to awaken the seed, but cannot call the Saviors without knowing their names. He realizes that Dream, Xinhu’s other missing master, may be connected to them. Using Dream’s true name and five shrines, he begins a ritual at the Ghost Gate.

Character development and interactions

• Bai Xiao emerges as a determined successor to the Night Watch, carrying its members’ names and medals as a source of strength. His reunion with Gao Ming is emotional, and his loyalty to Number Two is clear.
• Number Two is revealed as both a mentor and a close companion to Bai Xiao. His guardedness reflects their dangerous circumstances, while his damaged state and anger toward Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals expose his personal vulnerability.
• Gao Ming acts protectively toward Bai Xiao and takes charge of the attempt to reach the Saviors. His bold, improvisational approach unsettles Number Two, who repeatedly urges caution.
• The three share a tense but trusting exchange: Gao Ming questions Number Two’s judgment and condition, while Number Two remains wary of deception and alarmed by Gao Ming’s risky use of the Ghost Gate.

Significant themes

• Legacy and remembrance: The Night Watch’s names, medals, and the Saviors’ seed preserve the power of people who are absent or presumed lost.
• Trust forged through hardship: Bai Xiao and Number Two’s alliance grows from shared danger, while Gao Ming’s return offers them a chance to rely on someone beyond each other.
• Identity and survival: Number Two’s remnant consciousness persists despite the destruction of his original body, and the threat of impersonation makes trust precarious.
• Risk and hope: Gao Ming’s dangerous attempt to reach the Saviors—and his turn toward Dream when that effort stalls—shows how hope in this world depends on bold, uncertain action.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming uses Dream’s five shrines and dream patterns to try to summon the missing Savior from the Blood Sea. Dream resists, while something immensely powerful below the sea grabs the thread and pulls Gao Ming toward a vast, black vortex.
• As dead souls attack the thread, Gao Ming risks part of his consciousness to tell the Savior that Xinhu Blood City is under attack and its Taboo Players are being subjected to brain surgery. Number Two also lends its consciousness to the message.
• The Savior briefly responds: “We found Fate’s corpse.” The revelation suggests Fate may be dead and explains why the Savior has not returned. Before he can say more, the connection snaps, and Gao Ming and the Dream Ghosts are forced back through the Ghost Gate.
• The Secondhand System is badly damaged by the ordeal. Soon afterward, the Deep World feels brighter, and Gao Yun reports that the Unknowable of Darkness Blood City has been destroyed, weakening that city.
• The chapter ends with a new threat—or request: the kind-hearted child who rules Central Blood City turns his attention to Hanhai and asks it for a “small favor.”

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains determined and forceful, risking his consciousness and body to reach the Savior. His hatred of Dream is reinforced by Dream’s attempt to pull him into the Blood Sea, but he also shows concern for the Savior’s burden and for Xinhu’s people.
• Number Two initially warns Gao Ming not to continue, then helps deliver the message by merging its consciousness with the dream patterns. Its reaction to the Savior’s reply shows that it, too, grasps the terrifying implications.
• The Savior remains absent but reveals he has found Fate’s corpse, indicating that his absence is purposeful and tied to a major discovery.
• The Dream Ghosts help keep Gao Ming from being dragged into the sea and ultimately pull him to safety.
• Gao Yun supplies news of the Deep World’s changing balance and Central Blood City’s request.

Significant themes

• Hatred, sacrifice, and connection: Gao Ming’s hatred of Dream coexists with his willingness to endanger himself to reach an ally.
• Uncertainty about fate and reality: The claim that Fate has a corpse challenges what the characters understand about the force looming over the Deep World.
• The scale of unseen powers: The Blood Sea, Dream, the Savior, and the Blood City Lords all exert forces that can overwhelm even Gao Ming.
• Hope amid darkness: The Deep World’s subtle brightening after the Darkness Unknowable’s destruction suggests that removing a powerful evil can affect the world—and its inhabitants—beyond the immediate battlefield.

Key plot points and events

• Central Blood City asks Hanhai Blood City to buy Xinhu Blood City time while the other Blood Cities gather to attack it.
• Darkness Blood City’s Unknowable has been killed, leaving its city close to being destroyed. Central Blood City plans to enter the Blood Sea once Darkness Blood City disappears, apparently to confront Fate’s corpse.
• Gao Yun explains Central Blood City’s view that Calamity Gods fight with overwhelming madness, while Dream Ghosts can reach their greatest strength only by abandoning everything that binds them—body, memories, obsessions, and expectations. Gao Ming wonders whether they would still be themselves afterward.
• With danger approaching Xinhu, Ji Zhe reports that the Flesh-and-Blood Giant Tree’s roots are rapidly decaying. Weird Wish wants to attack, but Gao Ming stops it.
• Gao Ming sends the other Dream Ghosts back to Hanhai, then declares that he alone will hold off the nine approaching Blood Cities, using the Delirium Seeds.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming recognizes the trap in Central Blood City’s flattering request but accepts that Hanhai cannot simply abandon Xinhu without risking its own destruction. He shifts from uncertainty to a decisive, self-sacrificial plan.
• Gao Yun relays Central Blood City’s warning and its theory about the Dream Ghosts’ potential, while hinting that the city’s true plan involves entering the Blood Sea.
• Ji Zhe senses the incoming danger through the Giant Tree and voices the Dream Ghosts’ alarm at the overwhelming odds.
• Weird Wish is eager to fight and consume an Unspeakable, but obeys Gao Ming’s command to hold back.
• Gao Ming’s interactions with the group show his leadership: he softens the alliance’s bleak outlook, protects the others by sending them home, and takes the danger upon himself.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and identity: Reaching one’s full power may require abandoning the very memories and attachments that define the self.
• Fate and manipulation: Gao Ming suspects that Hanhai’s restoration and the Delirium Seeds are pieces in a larger plan.
• Loyalty amid impossible odds: Hanhai must choose between helping Xinhu and preserving itself.
• Power through commitment: The chapter ends with Gao Ming transforming a hopeless “three against ten” into a solitary stand: “one holding off nine.”

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming reveals that Xinhu Blood City has been abandoned by the Savior and is threatened by Central Blood City. He plans to use the seed of Delirium to hold off the Blood City Lords, buying time for the Savior or Central Blood City to return.
• Because entering Delirium’s dream drives everyone insane and may strip away their memories, souls, and bodies, Gao Ming orders the Dream Ghosts and most of the Execution House’s ghosts back to safety. Yan Xizhi and Ji Zhe volunteer to stay, but Gao Ming firmly refuses.
• He keeps only a few ghosts he believes he could bear to lose, including Teacher Xia. He and Xia Yang trade dry, darkly comic remarks about their companionship.
• Gao Ming frees Shen Luo, gives him a map to the Happiness Residential Complex, and sends him east, where the Savior’s former neighbors may help him.
• To prepare for the approaching Blood City Lords, Gao Ming expands the Flesh-and-Blood Domain around the passage to reality, sends blood tendrils out as scouts, disrupts the Artificial Blood Sun, and hides within the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God.
• As he waits, the Deep World grows unnaturally silent. Gao Ming senses an approaching presence so dangerous that speaking, seeing, or hearing it would harm him in different ways.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows a more protective, decisive side: despite accepting immense personal danger, he refuses to let his allies risk being driven mad or killed by Delirium. He remains calm and methodical, making extensive preparations before the threat arrives.
• Yan Xizhi and Ji Zhe demonstrate loyalty by offering to stay, while the Investigation Bureau’s chief recognizes the burden Gao Ming carries as Hanhai’s lord.
• Teacher Xia and Gao Ming share an oddly comfortable bond built on blunt, morbid humor.
• Shen Luo gratefully accepts Gao Ming’s help, though Gao Ming tells him it would be better to forget the favor.
• Number Two, reduced to a remnant consciousness, questions Gao Ming’s decisions and the fate of Shen Luo.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and protection: Gao Ming isolates himself to spare others the dangers of Delirium.
• Leadership under uncertainty: He must make consequential choices with limited support and an unknown enemy approaching.
• Madness and identity: Delirium threatens to erase the foundations of a person—memory, soul, and body.
• The unknowable: The final presence is so alien and perilous that even perceiving or describing it carries a cost.

Chapter 826 Summary

• The Blood City Lords arrive: Gao Ming senses several Blood City Lords entering Xinhu in their true forms. Their presence extinguishes the artificial blood sun, suppresses the city’s rules, and disrupts Gao Ming’s senses. Number Two warns that even fearful thoughts could become vessels for the Lords’ power.
• Gao Ming locates his enemies: While concealing his true actions, Gao Ming uses fate to search the Fog Sea and discovers seven shattered, blood-red rivers of fate. The Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s domain collapses as the Lords converge, and eight Unknowable-level powers are revealed to be approaching.
• Gao Ming unleashes Delirium: With no time to spare, he crushes Dream’s seed of Delirium. The power consumes him and shatters the five shrines from Dream, while stripping away souls, memories, strength, perceptions, and rules. It plunges everyone within Xinhu—including Dream’s true form—into indiscriminate madness. Gao Ming believes there may be two ways out: remain the last sane person, or survive until everyone else is dead, but he cannot know which will work.
• The final dream begins: As the eight beings’ fates intertwine with his, Gao Ming welcomes them into his “final dream.” The chapter then shifts to a bizarre family portrait: the narrator’s mother identifies as a poisonous mushroom, the father lives in darkness and seeks drunkenness, the grandfather claims to have seven heads, and the youngest uncle contains two arguing brothers. The family’s history includes Grandma being sent to an asylum. The narrator calls himself Doctor Gao, though he insists he is a person rather than the identity others assign him.

Character and thematic notes

Gao Ming’s determination culminates in a desperate, all-or-nothing choice: he weaponizes madness despite not knowing its consequences. The strange family passage blurs the boundary between delusion and identity, leaving unclear whether it is a fabricated dream, a transformed reality, or part of Delirium’s effect. The chapter emphasizes the terror of unknowable powers, fate, sacrifice, madness, and the uncertainty of who counts as sane.

Plot points and events

• Doctor Gao prepares his family for the day, leaving them in bizarre situations that are treated as ordinary in their community. He then rides Old Ma—a man who believes he is a horse—to work.
• Gao travels through a violent, surreal city where many residents seem numb and trapped in repetitive routines. Old Ma credits Gao’s treatment with curing his distress; the narration hints that Gao himself was once similarly lost.
• Gao arrives at a crowded courthouse, where Florist, a notorious alleged serial killer, is on trial. The court and public regard him as a monstrous, dangerous criminal.
• Prosecutors show footage of Florist violently destroying flowers. Gao, introduced as Florist’s attending physician and the sole witness, explains that Florist believed flowers were human beings. He describes Florist’s delusions, methods of approaching them, and the false motives he invented for killing them, naming thirty-nine supposed victims. The chapter ends before Gao finishes his testimony or the court reaches a verdict.

Character developments

• Doctor Gao: Appears composed and methodical amid a grotesque, chaotic world. His work as a physician gives him authority at the trial, while the suggestion that he once shared the city’s vacant condition hints at a personal history of change.
• Old Ma: A trained, horse-like figure who accepts his identity and says Gao’s treatment relieved his suffering. His devotion is evident in his effort to carry Gao to court despite physical discomfort.
• Florist: Presented publicly as a depraved killer, but Gao’s testimony reveals a delusional worldview in which flowers are people. His silence gives way to a fixed, cold gaze when he notices Gao.

Significant themes

• Distorted reality and mental illness: The city’s bizarre conditions are treated as normal, while Florist’s belief that flowers are human beings complicates the court’s simple image of him as a monster.
• Cruelty and spectacle: The courtroom’s sensational coverage, outraged crowd, and graphic evidence turn the trial into public entertainment as well as a legal proceeding.
• Treatment and transformation: Old Ma’s gratitude suggests that care can change how someone experiences themselves, while Gao’s own hinted past raises questions about his role in the city.
• Social breakdown: Violence, disorder, and numb repetition pervade daily life, suggesting a society in which extreme suffering has become routine.

Character interactions

• Gao treats his family and Old Ma with brisk familiarity, while Old Ma expresses gratitude and follows his instructions.
• Court officials and reporters react to Florist with fear and fury, treating him as a proven monster before Gao’s explanation.
• Gao addresses the court in a clinical, measured way, offering a psychological account that contrasts sharply with the crowd’s condemnation.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Doctor Gao testifies against the Florist, describing thirty-nine victims whom the Florist imagined as flowers. His account includes He Feifei, a neighbor’s narcissus whom he raped and tried to eat; Louise, a plastic flower from a television studio whom he dismembered and collected; and “Wife,” a rose he imprisoned and starved.
• The Florist’s supposed victims span people of all ages and genders. One, Fu Sheng, was nearly shredded by a lawn mower after landing where the Florist had swept. His thirty-ninth victim, Han Cuo, was boiled and consumed.
• Gao notes that twenty-three victims shared the surname Han, suggesting the Florist had begun searching for a particular person with that name.
• The courtroom erupts in outrage. The prosecution recommends death, and the judge condemns the Florist’s crimes. The Florist appears indifferent until he suddenly lunges at Gao.
• Bound and restrained, he insists that Gao used his “Delirium” and dragged him into events that everyone else has forgotten. He claims he is merely a florist who harmed flowers, not people.
• The spectators interpret his outburst as proof of madness and suggest institutionalizing him. Gao remarks that the Florist’s illness seems to have worsened.

Character developments

• Doctor Gao presents himself as the key witness and compiler of the evidence, but the Florist’s accusations hint at a hidden connection between them.
• The Florist (Ni Meng) shifts from silent, apparently emotionless defendant to furious and desperate accuser. His certainty that he only harmed flowers contrasts sharply with the testimony and public perception.
• The courtroom crowd and officials respond with escalating horror and anger, treating the Florist as a monster and then as a madman.

Significant themes

• Unreliable reality and perception: The Florist experiences people as flowers, while the court accepts a different account of events.
• Madness and sanity: The chapter leaves open whether the Florist is delusional, whether the courtroom has misunderstood something, or whether reality itself is unstable.
• Memory and concealment: His warnings that everyone will forget—and his claim that Gao has already forgotten—suggest a larger mystery beyond the crimes.
• Justice and spectacle: The public’s outrage and demand for death turn the trial into a display of collective fury.

Character interactions

• Gao’s testimony directly shapes the court’s view of the Florist and supports the prosecution’s demand for execution.
• The Florist fixates on Gao, lunges toward him, and accuses him of using “Delirium” against him.
• Security personnel overpower and restrain the Florist, while the crowd interprets his words as further evidence of insanity.

Key events

• After Doctor Gao’s accusation, the Courthouse crowd accepts that Florist is a dangerous murderer. Florist’s outburst and the public’s demand for the harshest sentence fuel the spectacle around his case.
• Florist is taken to a secure execution facility for the ultimate punishment, a process approved by judicial authorities, the Human Rights Committee, and the Ethics Oversight Group.
• Doctor Gao encounters Doctor Bu, an Ethics Oversight Group instructor, who hints that Gao’s earlier interest in the equipment may not have been coincidental.
• Florist and a woman are placed in separate pools connected by cables. The punishment begins: Florist is made to experience the woman’s severe, persistent pain as if it were his own.

Character developments and interactions

• Doctor Gao remains curious and observant, questioning the punishment’s origins and mechanics. Though he challenges Doctor Bu’s ethics, he is left with a troubling sense that “Shared Brain” matters to him for a reason he cannot recall.
• Doctor Bu explains the system with pride and a provocative manner. He reveals that the woman is pregnant with his child and says her wish to protect the fetus gives her a reason to keep living.
• Florist, formerly the target of public anger, becomes the recipient of another person’s suffering.
• The woman endures an imagined world in which every surface and contact feels covered in needles. Her pregnancy has changed her outlook: she now chooses to live for her unborn child.

Significant themes

• Justice and cruelty: A punishment intended to replace execution may be even more brutal, raising questions about whether vengeance can be called justice.
• Empathy and shared suffering: “Shared Brain” makes a criminal experience someone else’s pain, turning empathy into an imposed sentence.
• Ethics and exploitation: The institutions overseeing punishment claim moral authority, while the woman’s suffering and Doctor Bu’s response complicate that claim.
• Public spectacle and privacy: Reporters focus on exposing the criminal, while the chapter pointedly contrasts this with society’s refusal to expose victims’ circumstances.

Key plot points and events

• After the Florist’s public punishment, Doctor Gao avoids the media and studies the “shared brain” device. He remembers its ability to transmit another person’s perspective and pain, but cannot recall why it matters so much to him.
• The Florist tells Gao that the world is deluded and claims he is its only sane person. Gao dismisses the claim, but afterward cannot stop wondering whether the killer might have meant it.
• Although the Florist is imprisoned, Gao feels no relief or triumph. Troubled and uncertain, he frees Old Ma and orders him to take him to the Stomach Contents Community, where the Florist lived.
• On the way, Old Ma mentions rumors that houses in a nearby community eat people. Gao rejects them as superstition, despite the chapter’s surreal imagery of schoolchildren being driven into conformity.
• At the Florist’s apartment, Gao and a police officer inspect a grisly crime scene. Beneath a dismantled bed are rotting flower petals and human remains. The officer says the Florist slept on corpses to ward off nightmares.
• Gao questions how the officer knows about the nightmares. The officer points out diaries and words carved into the wall, as well as nightmare-themed tattoos on the Florist.

Character developments and interactions

• Doctor Gao shifts from apparent confidence in the Florist’s guilt and punishment to unease and self-doubt. He cannot remember his original interest in the shared-brain device and feels increasingly burdened after the execution.
• The Florist remains defiant, interpreting the world as mad and accusing Gao of forgetting something important. His records reveal a fixation on nightmares and an attempt to preserve their details.
• Old Ma reports strange events in the city and shows pride in his identity as a horse.
• Gao and the Florist exchange a final, tense conversation: Gao challenges the Florist’s belief that his victims were flowers, while the Florist warns that Gao—and the world—has forgotten something.
• Gao and the officer discuss the crime scene; the officer’s explanation about nightmares prompts Gao to look more closely at the Florist’s writings.

Significant themes

• Uncertainty about sanity and reality: The Florist’s accusations linger, leaving Gao unsure whether the killer was entirely deluded.
• Memory and forgetting: Gao’s lost motivation and the Florist’s efforts to record his nightmares suggest that memory may be central to the unfolding mystery.
• Pain and shared experience: The brain-sharing device connects one person’s perspective with another’s suffering, raising questions about accumulated experience and empathy.
• Conformity and concealment: The flock of children forced to bleat and grow wool suggests how social pressure can hide individuality.
• Violence beneath ordinary life: The apparently orderly city contains grotesque crimes and increasingly disturbing rumors.

Key plot points and events

• Doctor Gao learns that the Florist was diagnosed with delirium after developing increasingly vivid delusions. Gao realizes he had deliberately given the Florist the treatment that caused the condition, but cannot remember why—and begins to suspect that he, too, may once have believed the Florist’s visions were real.
• Gao asks to see the Florist’s old diaries, but a police officer says permission is needed.
• Officer Xue Se arrives and questions Gao. He uses a photograph of Gao’s horse, Old Ma, to argue that Gao may have violated Old Ma’s rights by treating him as a horse. Old Ma insists that he has always been a horse, and Xue concludes Gao likely did not make him that way.
• Xue reveals that the Florist’s diary names Bu Cunzai, a physician and Ethics Oversight Group instructor, as the person he sought. Xue suspects Bu may have aided the Florist and that the group exploited the case to build public support for extreme punishment.
• Xue asks Gao to join him in investigating Bu. Gao refuses. Xue warns that Gao’s former patients may now see him as a threat, then reveals that Gao’s soul is the same color as the Florist’s.

Character developments

• Doctor Gao becomes increasingly unsettled by gaps in his memory, especially why he chose the Florist’s treatment and what else he may have forgotten. His refusal to help Xue suggests he wants to avoid becoming entangled in the investigation.
• Officer Xue Se appears sharp, confrontational, and suspicious, but also strategically perceptive. His warning to Gao and final claim about their souls imply he suspects a deeper connection between Gao and the Florist.
• Old Ma is presented as a person with his own identity and freedom, not merely Gao’s horse, complicating Gao’s assumptions about him.

Significant themes

• Memory and self-doubt: Gao’s uncertain recollections make him question his past actions and even his own sanity.
• Identity and autonomy: The discussion of Old Ma raises the question of whether someone can choose their own identity—and what it means to impose one on them.
• Institutional corruption and morality: Xue suggests the Ethics Oversight Group may have manipulated public opinion and participated in the Florist’s crimes.
• The boundary between normality and madness: Gao’s shifting interpretation of the Florist’s visions leaves open whether the Florist was deluded—or whether Gao once saw the world similarly.

Character interactions

• Gao’s conversation with the officer establishes the Florist’s diagnosis and Gao’s troubling role in it.
• Xue tests Gao’s character through the Old Ma incident, then directly challenges him about his connection to the Florist.
• Gao and Xue clash over involvement in the investigation: Xue pressures him to cooperate, while Gao resists.
• Old Ma interrupts their exchange with his own account of himself, reinforcing the chapter’s concern with agency and identity.

Key plot points and events

• After Officer Xue asks whether horses have souls, Doctor Gao gives him pills, saying he is a devoted believer in science. Gao then rides Old Ma home, where he has offered the horse shelter.
• At home, Gao finds his family arguing. His grandfather is furious that Gao publicly identified the Florist on television, fearing the killer’s associates may retaliate. Gao watches the news report praising his actions but seems troubled that it does not show what he is looking for.
• In his private, windowless bedroom, Gao checks the room’s security and opens a locked drawer containing the Florist’s papers and Gao’s own practice copies of the Florist’s handwriting. He burns the manuscripts and destroys the ashes.
• Gao suspects he may have forged the Florist’s diary, possibly to direct suspicion toward Doctor Bu Cunzai. He wonders whether Bu’s refusal to show him the Execution Device was a motive, but thinks there must be another reason—perhaps the device’s ability to share brains.
• Gao reveals another locked drawer stocked with neural medication and sedatives that are forbidden to remove from the pharmacy.

Character developments

• Doctor Gao remains outwardly composed despite his exhaustion and his family’s alarm. His hidden manuscripts, practiced imitation of the Florist’s handwriting, and prohibited medication suggest a secretive past and possible involvement in manipulating the investigation.
• Grandfather shows deep affection and protectiveness toward Gao, worrying that public exposure has put him in danger. His anger also spills over onto the family.
• Officer Xue appears unsettled by questions of identity and the soul; Gao’s answer links identity to what a person hopes to become.
• Gao’s youngest uncle remains easygoing and ineffectual, repeatedly becoming the target of the grandfather’s kicks. Gao’s mother reacts to the television praise with quiet, childlike pleasure.

Significant themes

• Identity and aspiration: The exchange about souls suggests that who someone is may be shaped by who they strive to become.
• Truth, deception, and authorship: Gao’s possible forgery of the Florist’s diary casts doubt on the evidence and on his role in the case.
• Secrecy and confinement: Gao’s carefully secured, windowless room reflects his isolation and the secrets he keeps.
• Public recognition versus private unease: The news celebrates Gao as a hero, while he privately searches for something troubling in the coverage.
• Science, faith, and the mind: Gao’s professed faith in science sits alongside his intense interest in shared brains and the effects of neural drugs.

Character interactions

• Gao gives Xue pills and answers his questions about horses and souls.
• Gao’s grandfather scolds and protects him over the television exposure, while Gao’s uncle tries unsuccessfully to mediate.
• Gao watches the report with his family but withdraws rather than discuss his concerns.
• Alone, Gao confronts the implications of his possible forgery and his connection to Bu Cunzai and the Execution Device.

Key plot points and events

• Doctor Gao discovers hidden medication and detailed investigation records concerning the Florist and Doctor Bu Cunzai. The medication suggests the Florist may have been given sedatives and painkillers during a brain-sharing experiment.
• The records reveal that Bu once worked with Gao and held unusual beliefs about invisible “umbilical cords” connecting people. As his connections multiplied, he felt both monstrous and all-powerful; Gao had treated him, but the crucial details of that treatment are missing.
• Gao’s records describe six months of treatment that supposedly “cured” the Florist. The Florist, however, believed Gao was breaking him down and forcing him to accept a mad world. By the time of the trial, he could barely repeat phrases.
• Suspecting his own memories may have been altered through Shared Brain, Gao wonders whether he helped cause Bu’s transformation, forged the Florist’s diary, or deliberately redirected suspicion toward Bu and the Ethics Oversight Group to buy time. He burns the records without resolving the questions.
• Gao notices his clock runs backward and finds thirteen keys for only four locks, evidence of how much he has forgotten.
• The chapter ends with disturbing scenes in Gao’s family home: his father’s tattooed arm emerges from a dark room; his younger uncle, speaking in several faint voices and holding a cleaver, warns him to flee; and his grandfather counts eight heads in a mirror, alarmed that one is extra.

Character developments

• Doctor Gao becomes increasingly unsure of his own past and motives. He may have been a participant in Shared Brain and may have harmed both the Florist and Bu, but cannot trust his memories or records.
• The Florist is presented ambiguously: either a patient Gao successfully treated or the only sane person, whom Gao deliberately drove toward madness.
• Bu Cunzai emerges as a troubled figure whose eccentric beliefs and contradictory feelings may have been shaped by Gao’s treatment.
• Gao’s family members appear frighteningly altered or afflicted, while his uncle’s warning suggests he still cares about Gao.

Significant themes

• Unreliable memory and identity: Gao cannot tell what he did, what he forgot, or whether his perspective was shared.
• Sanity versus madness: The chapter repeatedly leaves open who is truly ill and whether “treatment” is healing or coercion.
• Manipulation and complicity: Gao may have falsified evidence and influenced others while concealing a larger purpose.
• Connection and suffering: Shared Brain and Bu’s umbilical-cord beliefs raise questions about whether connection brings love, power, or torment.

Character interactions

• Gao studies records of his professional relationships with the Florist and Bu, then questions whether he manipulated or harmed them.
• He checks on his father, who responds only through a tattooed arm and an empty bottle.
• His uncle confronts him with a warning to escape, and Gao recognizes the familiar concern beneath his altered speech.
• Gao sees his grandfather counting heads in the mirror, but the chapter offers no explanation for the family’s disturbing condition.