Chapter Summaries

Plot

Gao Ming investigates the village hidden in the Yin-Yang Interstice and discovers cracked spirit tablets bearing Lu Zang’s name. He suspects Lu helped Situ An escape the fate-link tying prisoners of the Execution House to Gao Ming’s cycles of death and rebirth.
By invading the clan elder’s memories, Gao Ming learns the village is called Dragon-Locking Village. Its founders were descendants of a being called a “dragon,” and the village once housed three clans—Fu, Lu, and Shou. The Fu and Shou lines disappeared, leaving the Lu clan, whose ancestors tried and failed to break free of the Fate Giant Tree. Some who abandoned the village became dangerous.
Gao Ming reveals a monstrous dragon centipede formed from his dream-wounds and uses it to demolish the village’s protective landscape and dig beneath it. At the bottom, he finds the being imprisoned by the Fate Giant Tree: the former Heaven’s Will, known as Variable.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming confirms his suspicion that Lu Zang is implicated in past conspiracies and admits to harboring murderous intent toward him. He also recognizes the villagers as fellow opponents of fate, but pursues the truth with ruthless force, even at personal risk.
• Lu Zang is revealed to have originated in Dragon-Locking Village, linking him to its history of resisting fate.
• The clan elder and villagers are initially guarded and strange; the elder’s memories expose the village’s origins and purpose. The villagers are left helpless as Gao Ming tears through their surroundings.
• The Fate Giant Tree still watches Gao Ming and sends supernatural beings after him, but cannot yet attack him directly.

Themes

• Defiance of fate: The village and its ancestors sought freedom from the Fate Giant Tree, though their attempts often failed or led to danger.
• Dreams as freedom and power: Gao Ming sees dreams as a realm where even the weak may transcend fate, and uses them as a force capable of breaking physical and supernatural restraints.
• Destruction as revelation: Gao Ming’s violent dismantling of the village exposes what its chains concealed—and offers the possibility of change.
• Ambiguous rebellion: Escaping fate may bring liberation, but those who break free can become as dangerous as the power they oppose.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming frees the variable imprisoned beneath Dragon-Locking Village by having the nightmare Dragon Centipede smash the earth-vein chains. The variable vanishes, but its release transforms Gao Ming, the centipede, and the villagers.
• Gao Ming discovers he now possesses both rules and variables. His dream and Grotesque powers have strengthened, while the restrictions that previously limited him have broken. The fate giant tree’s hold over the “divine oddities” weakens, and its control over the mortal worlds begins to fracture.
• As Dragon-Locking Village collapses, Gao Ming evacuates most of its people into the Execution House. He rescues the clan elder, who directs him to a well hidden at the village entrance.
• Gao Ming jumps down the well and uses his Dream Ghost ability to enter the dreams of the Endless Mortal Worlds. Of thirteen possible exits, the Bladeless Butcher’s Knife guides him to the thirteenth.
• He emerges in an abandoned tunnel wearing a damaged Hate Mountain Prison uniform, apparently injured in a traffic accident. Outside, a couple are burning paper offerings and leaving fruit. Gao Ming realizes he has entered the Mortal World.

Character developments

• Gao Ming commits to releasing the variable despite the unknown risks. He emerges more powerful and, uniquely, able to wield both rules and variables. He also shows decisive concern for the villagers by evacuating them.
• The clan elder remains devoted to his ancestors’ spirit tablets, but is not hostile to Gao Ming; he guides him toward the village’s escape route.
• The villagers lose their scars and seem freed from accumulated calamity and karma. Their new dragon patterns mark their transformation, while some recognize the Dragon Centipede as a dragon.

Significant themes

• Fate versus free will: The fate giant tree suppresses variables to deny people control over their destinies; freeing one challenges that system.
• Power and cost: Variables can break established rules, but the bones beneath the village suggest that becoming one may exact a terrible price.
• Transformation and liberation: The variable’s release changes Gao Ming, the Dragon Centipede, and the villagers, while weakening the fate tree’s influence.
• Dreams as passage: Gao Ming’s dream abilities let him cross the boundary between the Yin-Yang Interstice and the Mortal World.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming directs the Dragon Centipede to destroy the chains and later orders it to attack the divine oddities.
• He gathers the villagers into the Execution House, whose ghostly occupants frighten them, and has nightmare creatures protect the elderly villagers during the ancestral hall’s collapse.
• The clan elder communicates with gestures, showing Gao Ming the well; Gao Ming carries him to it before entering the passage himself.

Plot points

• Gao Ming emerges from an abandoned tunnel, bloodied, as a couple mourns their daughter Liu Yi. When the woman asks if he knows her, memories of Liu Yi trigger new wounds on Gao Ming—an attack he suspects comes from the Fate Giant Tree.
• He tells the couple that Liu Yi is alive in another city. The revelation worsens his injuries, suggesting that speaking about people and connections in this world gives Fate more ways to affect him.
• The couple gives him basic first aid and takes him to hospital. They explain that Liu Yi and her classmates died in a Bus accident years earlier; they recognize Gao Ming as resembling a student named Gao Yun, whose parents later disappeared.
• Gao Ming calls Gao Yun’s elderly grandmother. She mistakes him for her missing grandson and describes years of searching for him and waiting for him to return. Gao Ming refuses to answer to Gao Yun’s name and hangs up when his wounds begin bleeding again.
• He concludes that this is not his home, and that Fate has been watching him. Finding his true home may also reveal his true name to the Fate Giant Tree.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains composed despite severe injuries and refuses to assume another person’s identity. He becomes more alert to Fate’s method: using memories and emotional ties to influence him.
• The mourning couple move from fear and suspicion to practical kindness, arranging first aid and transport. The father shares the history of the Bus accident and helps Gao Ming contact the grandmother.
• The grandmother is revealed as lonely and devoted, still hoping her missing grandson will return. Her mistaken recognition creates an emotional connection Gao Ming deliberately does not accept.

Significant themes

• Identity and belonging: Gao Ming insists that he is not Gao Yun and that this world is not his home.
• Fate versus free will: Fate appears to impose injuries and exploit personal connections, while Gao Ming resists being drawn into its design.
• The cost of attachment and truth: Speaking about people in this world seems to deepen Fate’s hold over him, making ordinary acts of recognition dangerous.
• Grief and enduring hope: The couple’s mourning and the grandmother’s years of waiting show how loss shapes those left behind.

Plot points and events

• Ignoring a call from the Old Lady, Gao Ming leaves the hospital and reflects on how the mortal worlds form “leaf veins” of the fate giant tree—and how he might help sever them.
• In Xinhu, he is drawn to a familiar apartment complex and encounters his childhood friend Gao Yun’s grandmother, now elderly and lonely. Though he knows he should avoid becoming involved, the many past versions of himself within his heart urge him to follow her.
• Inside her apartment, Gao Ming recognizes a sinister ritual arrangement resembling one he encountered in the Past-Future God’s residential complex. He recalls that a supposedly protective ritual had once cursed another version of himself.
• In the bedroom, the Old Lady performs a ritual over a heart studded with blades. A supernatural presence speaks through her, declaring Gao Ming fated to be a lonely, childless sufferer and attempting to bind him to the fate giant tree.
• Gao Ming recognizes the possessing voice as Lu Zang’s—the “great immortal” who had manipulated his family and tormented another version of him. He draws the butcher’s knife, enraged by the possibility that Lu Zang has harmed his loved ones across many mortal worlds.

Character development and interactions

• Gao Ming struggles between keeping his distance and responding to the grief and pleas of his past selves. His discovery turns uncertainty about his past into a personal confrontation with Lu Zang.
• The Old Lady is revealed as both a lonely, devoted grandmother and a victim or instrument of a ritual. Her hope that her daughter and grandson will return contrasts with the sinister force speaking through her.
• Lu Zang emerges as a hidden architect of Gao Ming’s suffering, apparently using ritual and fate to shape him into a pawn or keep him under control.
• Gao Ming’s brief, silent encounter with the Old Lady becomes a direct confrontation when Lu Zang speaks through her, turning familial tenderness into horror and fury.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: Lu Zang tries to impose a predetermined destiny on Gao Ming, who resists being drawn back into the fate giant tree’s control.
• Repeating suffering across worlds: Similar versions of Gao Ming and his family appear to have endured parallel forms of manipulation.
• Memory, grief, and attachment: Gao Ming’s concern for the Old Lady—and the voices of his past selves—pull him toward a past he would rather avoid.
• Care twisted into harm: The grandmother’s protective rituals were manipulated into a curse, blurring love, fear, and exploitation.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming confronts the old woman possessed by Lu Zang and cuts down the shadow inhabiting her. Lu Zang admits he manipulated Gao Ming as a pawn and had hoped to control the Blood Cities and eventually challenge the fate giant tree.
• Lu Zang warns that fate will discover Gao Ming’s true name, but Gao Ming imprisons the shadow head in the Execution House, where the dead and vengeful spirits can torment it.
• Realizing the mortal world is beginning to reject him for using Deep World power, Gao Ming decides he has roughly one day and night to act without permanently damaging it. He searches for Lu Zang and a way to sever fate’s hold.
• Following clues from nightmares and the Paper Person Eyeball, he reaches a hidden, run-down house in Xinhu. Inside, he finds a room containing a black offering table and three damaged Paper Person Masks.

Character developments

• Gao Ming moves from guilt over the suffering of his family—whom he believes he ruined—to a defiant determination to use his remaining time on his own terms. He refuses to be controlled by fate or Lu Zang.
• Lu Zang is revealed as a calculating schemer who used Gao Ming to pursue power, though his true identity is only strongly implied by his connection to the name Fake Number Zero.

Significant themes

• The cost of changing fate: attempts to alter destiny bring suffering, often transferred to relatives or associates.
• Revenge and moral judgment: Gao Ming rejects the label of “evil spirits,” framing their violence as a response to injustice.
• Freedom versus manipulation: despite having been used as a pawn, Gao Ming claims ownership of his remaining life.
• Hidden truth and awakening: a covert faction is exposing people to anomalies, planting doubts that may gradually change their fates.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming and Lu Zang exchange accusations: Lu Zang blames Gao Ming for ruining his plans, while Gao Ming silences him by imprisoning his shadow.
• Gao Ming’s memories of his family intensify his guilt, but his inner resolve shifts toward acting independently.
• The dead within the Execution House become active allies, helping him search the mortal-world dreamscapes for Lu Zang and a way to break fate’s influence.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming discovers a Paper Person Mask in a room whose connection to Void Blood City is unclear. The mask resembles those worn by ghosts in the city’s Great Tomb.
• After briefly seeing human eyes through its eyeholes, Gao Ming puts on the mask. It fits him perfectly and weakens Fate’s scrutiny.
• Wearing it reveals threads binding nearly everyone to Fate, while a message hidden inside the mask provides a plan for destroying the Fate Giant Tree.
• The plan calls for someone to evade Fate, enter the Deep World through the Deep Dream, retrieve Fate’s corpse from the Blood Sea, and bring it back to the Endless Mortal Worlds.
• Once Fate reacts, the person must draw out an unknown entity concealed within the Giant Tree. That being cannot be killed by ordinary means; its existence must be erased by repeatedly changing lives Fate had already determined.

Character developments

• Gao Ming recognizes the mask as a reflection of his own past: he once felt as fragile and powerless as paper, but repeated deaths have made him stronger.
• He realizes the mask may have been intended for him and that he may be the person Fate most wants to eliminate.
• His powers and understanding of Fate grow, though he remains uncertain who left the message and what the hidden entity is.

Significant themes

• Free will versus Fate: People are bound like puppets, and true freedom requires destroying the source of those threads.
• Sacrifice and collective liberation: The message rejects one person claiming destiny for themselves; it seeks freedom for all.
• Death as a means of resistance: The strategy demands suffering, loss, and even the use of one’s will, memories, and soul as bait.
• Fragility transformed into strength: Gao Ming’s comparison of himself to thin paper reflects how repeated hardship has changed him.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming interacts mainly with the mask, treating it as both an unsettling object and a channel for a hidden message.
• The unknown author communicates with him indirectly through the mask, leaving instructions that appear tailored to his situation.
• Fate is presented as an opposing force that watches, controls, and will relentlessly target whoever brings its corpse back.

Key plot points and events

• After the Paper Person Masks reveal that something from the Fate Giant Tree has arrived in the mortal world, their hideout is destroyed. Gao Ming concludes that the visitor has located him.
• The Masks’ clues suggest that the Fate Giant Tree can be killed. Rather than hide, Gao Ming decides to use himself as bait and study how fate attacks. He sees the apparently anomaly-free mortal world as a fair testing ground.
• Gao Ming releases the ghosts in his Execution House to search for threats. The next morning, one reports that Liu Yi has emerged from the same tunnel as Gao Ming.
• Gao Ming follows her and finds that a couple who helped him earlier are her parents. Liu Yi has returned injured and deeply traumatized, describing a world of ghosts and despair. Gao Ming watches their reunion without revealing himself.
• As Liu Yi’s condition improves, ghosts in Gao Ming’s Execution House disappear and the enormous Nightmare Dragon Centipede overhead becomes less real. Gao Ming realizes that the anomalies—and possibly he himself—may be erased if Liu Yi fully recovers. He recognizes this as fate’s attack and braces for a direct confrontation.

Character developments

• Gao Ming shifts from caution to deliberate confrontation: he intends to learn how the Fate Giant Tree works, even at personal risk. Liu Yi’s sudden appearance unsettles him because of their shared past.
• Liu Yi is shown as physically injured and psychologically shattered, unable to explain what she experienced. Her recovery appears linked to the fading of anomalies.
• Liu Yi’s parents are overwhelmed with joy at her return, then distressed by her condition and determined to help her.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: Gao Ming attempts to turn fate’s attack into an opportunity to understand and resist it.
• The fragility of reality: Liu Yi’s recovery seems capable of making the supernatural world disappear, as if anomalies are errors to be corrected.
• Love and vulnerability: Gao Ming and Liu Yi’s history of relying on one another makes her involvement especially painful and raises the possibility that fate is exploiting their bond.
• Resistance through disruption: The Paper Person Masks’ faction seeks to expose anomalies and create variables that challenge the Fate Giant Tree.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming receives clues from the Paper Person Masks’ remnants and uses them to shape his plan.
• Gao Ming watches Liu Yi reunite with her parents but chooses not to interrupt.
• He reflects on his former bond with Liu Yi as her apparent recovery begins threatening his ghosts and the Dragon Centipede.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming realizes fate has drawn him into a direct contest: he must reach Liu Yi, but the fate giant tree has made her immune to nearly all his powers and is erasing their shared past.
• He finds Liu Yi at Xinhu Mental Health Hospital, where her condition appears to have improved. Her parents have spent everything they can to secure her treatment.
• Liu Yi recognizes Gao Ming and insists that the world they experienced together was real. Doctor Bai, who believes she is still delusional, tries to end their conversation and take her back inside.
• Gao Ming asks Liu Yi who she is, prompting her to recount their past: his coma and recovery, their life together, his disappearance, and the later ghost disaster in Xinhu. She says a device developed by Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ Number Zero Administrator trapped her and others before malfunctioning.
• Gao Ming recognizes that the administrator—Lu Zang—was likely being used by the fate giant tree. Liu Yi ends by asking Gao Ming whether she has truly gone mad.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is shaken by fate’s power to erase him from Liu Yi’s life, but he remains focused on reaching her. His question helps him identify which Liu Yi he is speaking to.
• Liu Yi is frail and confused, yet her emotional response to Gao Ming reveals that their bond remains strong. Despite others dismissing her account, she risks telling him what she remembers.
• Liu Yi’s parents are caring and hopeful about her treatment, though they interpret her distress as illness.
• Doctor Bai is confident in his diagnosis and prioritizes controlling Liu Yi’s contact with others, preventing her from speaking freely with Gao Ming.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: Gao Ming’s attempt to reach Liu Yi challenges a force that can alter people’s memories and restore events to “normal.”
• Memory and identity: Liu Yi’s account of their shared life becomes a test of whether their relationship—and the world they experienced—can be trusted.
• Isolation and disbelief: Liu Yi is surrounded by people trying to help her, yet none accept her version of events.
• Love and recognition: Her immediate recognition of Gao Ming suggests their connection persists even as fate tries to erase it.

Character interactions

• Liu Yi’s mother welcomes Gao Ming and encourages the former classmates to talk, while Doctor Bai objects and attempts to separate them.
• Liu Yi grabs Gao Ming’s arm and pleads for him to confirm that their experiences were real.
• Gao Ming listens, helps her reconstruct their shared history, and faces her final question without yet giving a direct answer.

Key plot points and events

• Liu Yi, recovering in the hospital, recognizes Gao Ming and insists that their shared past was real. Her parents and the medical staff see her attachment to him as a relapse and pull her away.
• Gao Ming understands that the fate giant tree is using Liu Yi as a conduit to locate his true name. Avoiding her risks letting fate erase him; approaching her strengthens the connection and helps fate reclaim him.
• As Gao Ming confirms Liu Yi’s memories, fate threads bind them and his wounds worsen. An unseen force suppresses nearly all his abilities, leaving him feeling helpless.
• Believing Liu Yi may be the conduit—and that severing it could offer a way out—Gao Ming returns to her room at midnight. He embraces her and tries to bring himself to kill her, but cannot.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is forced to confront feelings he thought repeated deaths had erased. Liu Yi embodies the ordinary happiness and life he lost, and his attempt to kill her reveals that he still has a deeply human self beneath his practiced indifference.
• Liu Yi remains emotionally attached to Gao Ming despite her parents’ efforts to separate them. Her memories and trust in him make her both a source of comfort and a danger to him.
• Liu Yi’s parents and the hospital staff act protectively, believing Gao Ming is worsening her condition, though Gao Ming sees them as people whose actions are controlled by fate.

Significant themes

• Fate versus agency: Gao Ming understands the trap but cannot escape its consequences or even identify the force restraining him.
• Connection as both salvation and danger: Liu Yi’s bond with Gao Ming preserves a link to his past, while also allowing fate to track him.
• Memory, regret, and lost happiness: Their remembered life together represents the future Gao Ming might have had.
• The persistence of humanity: Despite his deaths and emotional defenses, Gao Ming cannot kill Liu Yi; his heart’s sobbing reveals that he still feels.

Character interactions

• Liu Yi clings to Gao Ming and asks him to confirm her memories; he validates her, despite knowing that doing so strengthens fate’s hold.
• Her parents and the doctor intervene, separating them and treating Gao Ming as a threat to her recovery.
• Alone with Liu Yi, Gao Ming recalls their intimate past and attempts to end the connection by killing her, but his embrace falters before he can act.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming realizes that killing Liu Yi would sever his connection to her, but it would also destroy the part of himself that still loves and remembers her. He cannot bring himself to do it, even though their bond may let Fate discover his true name.
• He leaves Liu Yi’s hospital room and heads outside, where distance from her gradually restores his powers and the spirits bound to him.
• Gao Ming enters the nightmare dragon centipede, hoping to use the mysterious variable it seized beneath Dragon-Locking Village to change Liu Yi’s fate. He unleashes the creature against the Mortal World Leaf, provoking Fate’s defenses.
• Fate’s leaf veins and two divine oddities try to stop the centipede. It tears through the veins, kills one opponent, drives the other away, and attacks the mortal world again.
• Liu Yi, who has been awake and heard Gao Ming’s confession, leaves her ward unseen. She takes a fruit knife but does not yet act; instead, she reflects on what she knows about Gao Ming and why he has been trying to kill her.

Character developments

• Gao Ming is forced to confront the limits of his resolve: he is prepared to die fighting Fate, but cannot sacrifice Liu Yi. He chooses a dangerous alternative, using the dragon centipede to challenge the fate assigned to her.
• Liu Yi confirms that her experiences were real and reveals how closely she has followed Gao Ming since his accident. Though she understands his motives and considers the knife, she rejects the idea of dying for love as foolish and irrational.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming and Liu Yi share a quiet, painful farewell in the ward: each knows the other’s thoughts, but neither can resolve the conflict between their bond and the threat of Fate.
• Liu Yi remembers watching over Gao Ming, visiting his workplaces, and giving him a kitten and a game helmet as signs that she understood more than he realized.
• The dragon centipede clashes with Fate’s defenses and divine oddities, while Liu Yi moves through the hospital unnoticed by its staff and patients.

Significant themes

• Love versus survival: Gao Ming cannot kill Liu Yi, while Liu Yi refuses to treat self-sacrifice as proof of love.
• The cost of identity and power: Gao Ming’s repeated deaths have changed him, but his attachment to Liu Yi reveals the self he cannot erase.
• Hidden understanding and isolation: Both know more than they have said, yet their mutual care cannot free them from the danger Fate has created.
• Fate and resistance: Gao Ming turns to an unknown variable and the dragon centipede in a desperate attempt to alter what seems predetermined.

Key plot points and events

• Liu Yi’s devotion to Gao Ming has led her to investigate his past and follow the dangerous path connected to him, despite fear and pressure from others.
• As the nightmare dragon centipede attacks the Mortal World, Fate gathers its threads into a figure resembling Gao Ming. The clash presents the centipede—and Gao Ming’s will within it—as monstrous, while Fate appears like a righteous protector.
• In a hospital restroom, Liu Yi confronts a choice: accept the safety and ordinary life offered by her family, or remain connected to Gao Ming and the perilous forces surrounding him.
• Hearing her mother outside, Liu Yi recalls their close bond and wonders whether she can bear to return to family life at the cost of abandoning Gao Ming.
• She asks her mother to let her sleep there for a while, grips a knife, and appears to make a consequential choice. Her mother stays beside the door rather than forcing her to explain or come out.

Character developments

• Liu Yi is shown as determined and courageous, but deeply torn between her love for Gao Ming and her longing for the security of home. She recognizes that her love has become entangled with Gao Ming’s suffering and fate.
• Liu Yi’s mother responds with patience and compassion. Rather than demand answers, she reassures Liu Yi that there is time and offers quiet companionship.
• Gao Ming is absent from the hospital scene, but remains central to Liu Yi’s memories and choices. In the supernatural conflict, his will is associated with the centipede, which Fate’s apparently heroic form opposes.

Significant themes

• Love and sacrifice: Liu Yi’s love gives her a view into Gao Ming’s world, but also binds her to its dangers.
• Family and belonging: The familiar comfort of her mother’s voice and memories of home compete with Liu Yi’s connection to Gao Ming.
• Fate versus choice: Liu Yi suspects her meeting with Gao Ming was destined, yet she must still decide what to do.
• Appearances and moral ambiguity: Fate looks like a savior and Gao Ming’s force like a monster, raising doubts about whether appearances reveal the truth.
• Understanding and acceptance: Liu Yi’s mother cannot fully understand her struggle, but offers support without judgment.

Character interactions

• Liu Yi speaks through the locked restroom door with her mother, who recognizes her distress and gently offers to wait with her.
• Liu Yi reflects on how her mother comforted her through childhood conflicts, contrasting that unconditional care with the dangerous, unfamiliar world she encountered through Gao Ming.

Plot points

• Gao Ming’s Dragon Centipede attacks the blurred figure, a powerful force tied to the fate giant tree. The figure’s attention turns toward the hospital, where Liu Yi dies.
• Her death disrupts the prayers and fate binding the mortal world. Gao Ming gains the chance to fight back, but learns the figure cannot be killed by ordinary means.
• Desperate, Gao Ming merges himself with the Dragon Centipede, trapping the figure inside. He then destroys the Centipede, apparently killing the figure at the cost of immense injury.
• The victory damages the fate giant tree: some roots wither, and two spreading “black patches” begin to alter the Mortal World Leaves. Gao Ming realizes the tree can be harmed.
• Back at the hospital, Gao Ming finds Liu Yi dead. Her mother blames herself, while Gao discovers Liu Yi’s final note in a bathroom stall: “If I’d known this would be the last time we saw each other, I should have dressed a little prettier today.”
• The last fate thread connecting Liu Yi to Gao Ming breaks. Though this prevents the fate tree from using her to find and erase him, Gao feels only grief as dawn rises.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming sacrifices his body and risks becoming a monster to defeat the blurred figure. The victory strengthens his resolve against the fate giant tree, but Liu Yi’s death leaves him devastated and feeling as though part of himself is gone.
• Liu Yi remains considerate even in her final moments, disguising her pain in a lighthearted note so others will not worry.
• Liu Yi’s mother is overwhelmed by guilt, clinging to the fruit bag and believing she could have prevented her daughter’s death.
• Gao’s connection with Liu Yi is expressed through the fate threads: as they snap, he loses both the means by which the tree could reach him and a bond he deeply mourns.

Significant themes

• Fate versus free will: The fate giant tree treats lives as controllable possessions, while Gao argues that each person should have their own fate.
• Sacrifice and resistance: Gao’s costly victory proves the seemingly invincible system can be wounded.
• Grief and irreversible separation: Breaking the fate bond saves Gao from the tree’s reach but cannot undo Liu Yi’s death.
• Quiet kindness: Liu Yi’s gentle final note and her mother’s fruit evoke ordinary care amid supernatural violence.

Key plot points and events

• The Fate Giant Tree cannot discover Gao Ming’s true name, so it targets him through people whose fates are closely connected to his. Gao concludes that everyone tied to him is in danger until the tree is destroyed.
• After the Afterlife Butcher’s Knife detects a lingering trace of fate, Gao follows it through a tunnel that connects mortal worlds. The trail coincides with the knife’s pursuit of Fake Number Zero, suggesting fate may be luring him.
• Gao enters an unfamiliar world where every dream is a nightmare. Fate’s intended destinies have been secretly altered, and people are exploited as offerings by those who usurp fate.
• He encounters a murderous driver controlled by a Ghost Infant and a murdered woman whose life was violently diverted from the happy future fate had arranged. Gao kills the infant and imprisons the woman in his dreamscape to learn about the world.
• Gao sees an immense city and coffin-like palaces near Hate Mountain. He suspects an “Evil Oddity” has grown beside the immortal mountains, gaining power through cruelty while avoiding direct confrontation with the Fate Giant Tree.
• The threads connecting Gao to Situ An flare again. Situ An, whom Lu Zang rescued from the Deep World, has become a public figure in this world and may be the conduit fate uses to expose or kill Gao.
• A mysterious man performing a funeral rite reveals that he altered people’s destinies—and claims they should be grateful.

Character developments

• Gao Ming accepts that his connections put others at risk and becomes more resolved to destroy the Fate Giant Tree. Though fate may be baiting him, he chooses to pursue it rather than wait for more people to die.
• Situ An reappears as a central link in Gao’s tangled fate, setting up a dangerous confrontation.
• The memorial-rite man emerges as a powerful, unsettling figure who openly admits to changing destinies.

Significant themes

• Fate versus free will: People’s lives can be rewritten, but the power to resist or manipulate fate comes at a terrible cost.
• Connections as vulnerability: Gao’s ties to others can be used to reach him, making attachment both meaningful and dangerous.
• Exploitation and hidden corruption: A world that appears prosperous conceals nightmares, murder, and people treated as fuel for destiny-changing schemes.
• The horror of altered lives: The murdered woman’s fate shows the human cost of tampering with the life fate had prescribed.

Character interactions

• Gao confronts the controlled driver, kills the Ghost Infant, and captures the red-dressed woman to access her memories.
• His connection to Situ An becomes active again, apparently drawing him into another conflict.
• The chapter ends with the mysterious man addressing Gao and defending his role in changing people’s destinies.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming confronts Lu Zang, who admits that he once altered Gao Ming’s fate but claims the act required enormous sacrifices. Lu Zang says he has fused with the mortal world and that every child born there could carry his identity, making him difficult to destroy.
• Lu Zang reveals the cost of severing Gao Ming’s link to Fate: Gao Ming and his parents repeatedly suffered death and calamity, while many of his relatives were turned into posthumous photographs or emptied of their identities. Gao Ming attacks anyway, and Lu Zang’s body is destroyed, though his threat to the world remains.
• The fate giant tree uses Situ An as a medium to search for Gao Ming’s true name. Gao Ming decides to kill Situ An and unleashes Dan Wang, filling the mortal world with nightmares and transforming both its landscape and inhabitants.
• As Gao Ming follows the fate threads toward Situ An, he pauses at a dilapidated orphanage. There he recognizes a scarred child in a wheelchair: Number Two, who greets him as “Dad.”

Character developments

• Gao Ming is increasingly ruthless and resolute. He refuses to be deterred by the collateral suffering tied to Lu Zang’s past actions and uses his most destructive power without hesitation.
• Lu Zang is exposed as a self-serving manipulator. Though he may once have opposed Fate for others, he has since sacrificed humanity and countless lives to claim power.
• Situ An becomes the immediate target through whom Fate is trying to uncover Gao Ming’s true name.
• Number Two reappears as a wounded, isolated child, creating an unexpectedly personal pause in Gao Ming’s pursuit.

Significant themes

• The cost of changing fate: Attempts to escape or rewrite destiny exact devastating prices from families and entire communities.
• Identity and selfhood: Fate can be stolen, manipulated, or erased; Lu Zang’s claim that newborns could all be him makes identity itself uncertain.
• Corruption and moral compromise: A supposed struggle against Fate can become another form of exploitation when power is pursued at any cost.
• Nightmares as resistance: Gao Ming turns the world’s own horror against it, but acknowledges that he too may eventually succumb to madness.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming and Lu Zang’s meeting is hostile: Lu Zang tries to justify his actions, but Gao Ming dismisses his claims and attacks.
• Fate reaches for Gao Ming through Situ An, making Situ An both an adversary and a conduit for the larger force.
• Gao Ming’s encounter with Number Two sharply contrasts with his violence elsewhere: the child’s hopeful “Dad?” introduces a tender, unresolved connection amid the approaching catastrophe.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming finds Number Two living as a scarred child in the Delusion World. He tries to restore the boy’s memories and repeat the ritual that once gave him Blood City markings, but Number Two stops him.
• Number Two remembers the suffering of his past life—being exploited by Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals, tortured, and ultimately burned—and refuses to grow up or recover those memories. Gao Ming respects his choice.
• Number Two says Xia Yang, whom he calls Mr. Oil Painting, works in the hospital hospice ward and wants to stay in the Delusion World. Gao Ming takes the painting and goes to find him.
• Before leaving, Gao Ming gives Number Two a piece of his own skin bearing the Blood City mark. The boy treats it as a treasured gift and returns to class smiling.
• Gao Ming uses the Grotesque Rules to search the city, intending this time to destroy his enemies rather than merely delay them. He seeks Xia Yang’s knowledge of Lu Zang, also known as Fake Number Zero.
• Gao Ming finds Xia Yang painting a dying patient. Xia Yang claims his paintings can save people and alter their fate; his body is covered with images resembling Lu Zang. He offers to paint one for Gao Ming.

Character development and interactions

• Number Two chooses childhood and safety over confronting his traumatic past. Though he rejects Gao Ming’s attempt to restore his memories, he still wants his father’s care and is delighted by the Blood City-marked skin.
• Gao Ming shows restraint by accepting Number Two’s decision, while continuing to protect him through a personal gift. He is also more purposeful and powerful, using the Grotesque Rules to pursue a decisive fight.
• Xia Yang has adapted to the Delusion World and is devoted to his unusual work in the hospice ward. His teasing address of Gao Ming as “Dad” recalls their former family dynamic, which Gao Ming finds painful.
• Gao Ming and Xia Yang exchange barbs, but their interaction turns toward cooperation when Xia Yang offers to use his art to change Gao Ming’s fate.

Significant themes

• Choice and identity: Number Two has the right to reject his former self and choose the life he wants now.
• Trauma and care: Gao Ming cannot erase Number Two’s suffering, but he can respect his wishes and offer affection.
• Fate and change: Xia Yang’s paintings suggest that destiny can be altered, while Gao Ming’s resolve to improve the Mortal World points to the possibility of change through action.
• Family and belonging: Both Number Two and Xia Yang continue to relate to Gao Ming as a father, revealing how strongly their former bonds persist in the Delusion World.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming confronts Xia Yang about the strange figures he has drawn on his body. Xia Yang reveals that beneath layers of his own skin he has recorded beings and events connected to the Delusion World, including Xu Huan’s deaths, the Illusory Blood City, and a silver dragon associated with the River of Time.
• Xia Yang explains that pieces of the eight Unknowables Gao Ming once trapped in Delusion remained there and became part of its Grotesques. Xia Yang discovered these remnants and incorporated them into his drawings.
• Gao Ming asks about Lu Zang, whom he previously sent into the world inside a child’s mind. Xia Yang recalls a ruined inner world of threadless, devouring flesh—similar to the Mortal World Leaf controlled by Lu Zang—and offers Gao Ming a piece of skin depicting Lu Zang’s life.
• The skin reveals Lu Zang’s history: born deformed and marked for an early death, he survived through his parents’ sacrifice. As an adult, he chose the tablet of a disgraced fate-usurper, escaped Dragon-Locking Village, and went on to manipulate, imprison, and kill people in pursuit of changing fate.
• Lu Zang’s aim is to sever people’s fate threads entirely. Gao Ming realizes that he and others, including Situ An, may be Lu Zang’s creations. When Lu Zang’s image begins to distort and part of the city grows unreal, Gao Ming rushes toward it, determined to destroy Lu Zang’s and Situ An’s souls before his own sanity fails.
• Teacher Xia watches Gao Ming leave and reflects that one man makes a world rot while the other drives a world mad. Xia Yang ends by revealing that his innermost drawings are all of Gao Ming.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains focused on stopping Lu Zang and now understands more about the scale of his schemes. His control over the Grotesque Rules does not protect him from Delusion’s growing effect on his sanity.
• Xia Yang is shown as deeply and willingly transformed by the Delusion World. His grotesque skin layers contain knowledge others could not find, and he seems to regard the world—and Gao Ming—with intense, intimate devotion.
• Lu Zang emerges as a ruthless, long-lived fate usurper with no moral limits or apparent personal attachments. His history clarifies that he treats people as tools in his effort to escape fate.
• Teacher Xia provides a detached but uneasy perspective on the conflict, questioning which of the two destructive men is truly evil.

Significant themes

• Fate versus freedom: Lu Zang’s pursuit of severing fate threads drives his experiments, but his methods make him a manipulator of others.
• Madness and corruption: Delusion reshapes both its world and its inhabitants; Gao Ming’s growing instability mirrors the city’s loss of reality.
• Identity and transformation: Xia Yang’s layered skin turns the body into a record of memory and obsession, while the Grotesques themselves absorb traces of the Unknowables.
• Moral ambiguity: The chapter contrasts Lu Zang’s world of rot with Gao Ming’s world of madness without offering an easy judgment of who is worse.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming questions Xia Yang and tries to stop him from peeling away more skin, but ultimately accepts the skin that may help locate Lu Zang.
• Xia Yang treats Gao Ming with playful familiarity—calling him “Dad”—while providing crucial information and presenting his skin as a gift.
• Teacher Xia watches both men from the hospital window and frames their conflict as a contest between different forms of destruction.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming arrives in Xinhu searching for Situ An and Lu Zang, knowing the fate giant tree is pushing events forward and he has little time.
• He stops restraining Dan Wang and deliberately restores the Hanhai ghost markings by combining dream and grotesque rules. This risks trapping him permanently in the Delusion World, but lets him unleash its madness before Lu Zang can prepare.
• The city and its people mutate as the Delusion World spreads. Gao Ming’s memories and sense of self begin to fracture, leaving him focused on killing Situ An and Lu Zang.
• Dan Wang’s influence exposes their locations. Gao Ming recognizes the Execution House’s aura and pursues Situ An to the aquarium.
• Gao Ming dives into the tank wearing a strange four-faced, eight-armed suit and follows the aura downward, despite the crushing pressure and the difficulty of distinguishing people from fish.
• Xia Yang follows with Number Two, who can see the mortal world beyond the Delusion World through the skin Gao Ming gave him. Number Two perceives that Lu Zang has buried the remains of a “divine oddity” in the ruined world.

Character developments

• Gao Ming embraces madness as a weapon, sacrificing his sanity and memories to force Lu Zang into a confrontation. His remaining purpose is vengeance.
• Number Two increasingly recalls his past and becomes Gao Ming’s anchor. The Normal Tattoo skin protects his perception and represents Gao Ming’s last connection to sanity.
• Xia Yang remains beside Number Two and helps him follow Gao Ming, while recognizing the importance of the boy’s role.
• Lu Zang is revealed as a calculated fugitive who has prepared strange defenses and hidden something powerful in the ruined mortal world.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming’s gift of the skin to Number Two is reframed as more than protection: Number Two may be the person who can help Gao Ming find himself again.
• Xia Yang tells Number Two that he is Gao Ming’s sole anchor and urges him not to lose his sanity.
• Gao Ming calls out Situ An and pursues him, while Xia Yang and Number Two trail behind.

Significant themes

• Sanity versus power: Gao Ming knowingly destroys his mental stability to wield Dan Wang fully.
• Identity and memory: As his past and sense of self disintegrate, Gao Ming is reduced to a single consuming goal.
• Life and cruelty: Number Two questions why the supposedly life-oriented mortal worlds can feel harsher than the death-centered deep world.
• Seeing and concealment: Lu Zang tries to hide by muddying the world, but Gao Ming’s ability to perceive rules and traces still exposes him.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming unleashes Dan Wang to accelerate Lu Zang’s mutation, pouring his memories into it. The power overwhelms his mind: his many dead selves become hostile voices, and he begins treating them as strangers. His fixation on killing Lu Zang and Situ An is the only thing briefly holding his fractured consciousness together.
• Xia Yang brings Number Two to the aquarium entrance but refuses to go farther. Number Two recognizes the danger of Dan Wang and uses what remains of Gao Ming’s sanity to follow events inside.
• In the real world, Gao Ming merges with the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God and is wrapped in the Mortal World Leaf. Lu Zang sends black-robed fate cultivators and artificially created fate ghosts against him. The attackers are controlled by fate threads, but many go mad near Gao Ming; he fights through them, following their threads toward their master.
• In the Delusion World, Gao Ming descends into the aquarium’s dark tank, cutting through ropes and attacking the creatures guarding its depths. He reaches a huge, mutated ocean sunfish bearing red houses and images of Situ An. Though the monster appears to retain its sanity, Gao Ming attacks it.
• Meanwhile, the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God reaches Situ An in an old building. Situ An is chained underground, almost entirely transformed into a monster, and connected to the fate ghosts by gray threads.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming becomes dangerously unmoored from reality. His fury gives him temporary focus, but Dan Wang’s power threatens to turn him and the Delusion World into an uncontrollable disaster.
• Number Two acts as an observer and anchor, recognizing Dan Wang’s effects and repeatedly using Gao Ming’s remaining sanity to see what is happening.
• Xia Yang stays outside the aquarium, wary of entering the spreading danger.
• Lu Zang deploys fate cultivators and controlled ghosts to stop Gao Ming, revealing his willingness to treat people as tools in his bid to control fate.
• Situ An has become physically monstrous yet seems to retain his sanity. Gao Ming confronts a fish-shaped manifestation of him in the Delusion World, while the real Situ An is found chained and connected to the fate network.

Significant themes

• Power and loss of self: Dan Wang grants overwhelming force at the cost of Gao Ming’s sanity and identity.
• Control versus freedom: Lu Zang’s fate threads turn people into instruments, while Gao Ming’s rampage challenges that system.
• Monstrosity and denial: Lu Zang’s muddy-water metaphor mocks his claim to elevate others while hiding his own ugliness; Situ An’s bodily transformation likewise contrasts with his preserved mind.
• Destruction as resistance: Gao Ming’s willingness to embrace madness makes his assault both a bid for liberation and a danger to everyone around him.

Key plot points and events

• In the aquarium, Gao Ming attacks the enormous, parasite-ridden sunfish—an embodiment of Situ An—chopping it apart. He believes Situ An is only an accomplice and that Lu Zang is the real enemy.
• In the nightmare, the Eight-Armed Ghost God attacks Situ An while black-robed fate practitioners defend him. Their fate ghosts and techniques are destroyed amid a battle that turns the city itself into flesh and death.
• Number Two realizes Lu Zang is not among the black-robed figures: he has merged with this part of the Mortal World and exists as the threadlike parasites inside the fish. Lu Zang is using Situ An and the Blood Cities to study the Deep World’s thirteen poisons and enslave everyone there.
• The parasites swarm Gao Ming and invade his body through gaps in his diving suit. As his mind fragments and his memories and reason fade, he climbs toward the surface.
• Gao Ming tears open his suit, deliberately letting the parasites enter him so Lu Zang will be trapped in his body. He demands fire, and Xia Yang burns him using his own skin and memories of the eight Unknowables as fuel.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming becomes increasingly consumed by madness and vengeance, but his fractured selves unite around one purpose: killing Lu Zang. He knowingly sacrifices his body in an attempt to draw the enemy out.
• Number Two acts as Gao Ming’s lookout and tries to rescue him, recognizing the true nature of Lu Zang’s threat. He hesitates to use his “Awakening” at the end, unable to bear seeing what is happening.
• Xia Yang remains irreverent and thrill-seeking, but ultimately understands Gao Ming’s plan and takes decisive action by setting him alight.
• Situ An is revealed as a target and instrument of Lu Zang, protected by fate practitioners whose fates are tied to him. The Eight-Armed Ghost God attacks him in the nightmare.
• The chapter contrasts Gao Ming’s grim resolve with Number Two’s concern and Xia Yang’s apparent carelessness, which gives way to a brutal act of help.

Significant themes

• Fate and freedom: Fate practitioners can progress toward usurping fate, while “fate-less” people escape its control at the cost of destiny-based abilities.
• Identity and fragmentation: Gao Ming’s many selves clash, yet converge on a shared purpose; the parasitized sunfish likewise remains itself while becoming something alien.
• Sacrifice and vengeance: Gao Ming willingly endures horrific bodily invasion to make himself a trap for Lu Zang.
• Corruption and hidden threats: The apparent monster is not the deepest danger; the parasites within it reveal Lu Zang’s concealed presence and reach.

Plot points and events

• Number Two recognizes the Aquarium as a trap Gao Ming created to draw out and imprison Lu Zang, who had merged with the Mortal World and hidden within its fates.
• Gao Ming’s body is overrun by Lu Zang’s gray threads. To destroy the parasites, he burns himself alive, using his own body as bait and fuel. Xia Yang gathers materials to intensify the fire, while Number Two reconstructs Gao Ming’s plan.
• The fire eventually burns away the diving suit, Gao Ming’s flesh, and the gray threads. Number Two confirms the parasites are gone, but Gao Ming appears to die.
• Xia Yang chooses to remain within Delusion and stabs himself; Number Two, reluctant to endure further cycles of suffering, also takes his own life. Their lingering thoughts help shatter the Delusion World.
• The destruction spreads beyond Delusion: Fate’s leaf veins break, Lu Zang’s hold over the Mortal World collapses, and its grotesque and rotting rules are nearly destroyed.
• Gao Ming survives as a barely remaining will, eventually awakening in the Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God’s body. He has defeated Lu Zang and Situ An, escaped his death trap, and severed his fate threads—but is left with only a wisp of soul.
• The Fate Giant Tree is weakening, and more beings are slipping free of its control, opening the possibility that people can resist their assigned destinies.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming proves willing to sacrifice his body and life to destroy Lu Zang. His plan is deliberate, not an impulsive act, and his resolve remains firm despite extreme pain.
• Number Two pieces together Gao Ming’s strategy and helps verify that Lu Zang’s parasites have been destroyed. He is weary of repeatedly suffering through Delusion and chooses to end his existence there.
• Xia Yang stays practical and clear-headed amid the chaos, feeding the flames to help Gao Ming. His devotion to his own artistic ideal culminates in sacrificing himself as fuel.
• Number Two and Xia Yang watch over Gao Ming, then make separate choices about whether to continue existing within Delusion. Their final acts and lingering thoughts contribute to its collapse.

Significant themes

• Sacrifice and resolve: Gao Ming accepts the destruction of his body to eliminate a threat that cannot otherwise be reached.
• Fate versus free will: The collapse of Lu Zang’s control and the weakening of the Fate Giant Tree create room for resistance.
• The cost of power: Delusion can overturn rules and defeat powerful forces, but it is uncontrollable and devastating to its user and those connected to it.
• Death and persistence: Though Gao Ming’s body is destroyed, his will survives, suggesting that identity and purpose can outlast physical form.