Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming destroys the entity known as fate’s “Awakening,” sacrificing his physical body. He has not defeated fate itself, but has achieved something unprecedented by killing part of it.
• The balance of power shifts across the Mortal Worlds: Deep World monsters and ghost gods pour through the passage, fate’s corpse spreads through the Mortal World Leaves, and powerful “divine oddities” begin claiming territory or challenging the giant tree.
• Gao Ming notices another force rising: ordinary people from many Mortal World Leaves, united in resistance despite having neither supernatural rules nor great power.
• A wounded Fate Master wearing a Paper Person Mask finds Gao Ming and carries him away. He introduces himself in dreams as Lu An, a former Fate Master of Dragon-Locking Village who abandoned his past.
• Lu An guides Gao Ming through a dangerous deep dream to a hidden refuge. There, Gao Ming finds a vast gathering of Paper Person Mask-wearers from different Mortal World Leaves, all resisting fate—and feels he has been there before.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming survives as will and soul rather than a physical body. Though weakened, he retains the dream rules and uses them to enter Lu An’s memories and question him. His curiosity turns to recognition when he reaches the refuge.
• Lu An risks himself to rescue Gao Ming, despite his uncertainty about him. His memories reveal a life deliberately severed from its past and a long-standing desire to kill Lu Zang.
• Their relationship is wary but cooperative: Gao Ming probes Lu An’s motives, while Lu An insists they are not enemies and leads him to safety.

Significant themes

• Resistance to fate: The Paper Person Mask-wearers show that defiance can come from ordinary people, not only from beings powerful enough to wield rules.
• The cost and limits of victory: Gao Ming’s sacrifice damages fate but does not end it; his achievement triggers further upheaval.
• Identity and memory: Lu An has discarded his past, while Gao Ming’s unexplained familiarity with the refuge hints at a buried connection.
• Collective hope amid despair: Scattered people from countless worlds have found a way to gather and resist, like a river of stars in the dark.

Plot points and events

• Lu An brings Gao Ming into the Fate Masters’ vast home in the Deep Dream, where covered mirrors fill the rooms and a mountain of Paper Person Masks serves as a grave for the dead.
• Before the gathered Fate Masters, Lu An announces that Lu Zang is dead and Gao Ming has destroyed the Fate Giant Tree’s spiritual essence—its Awakening. He says events are progressing toward their long-term goal of cutting down the Tree.
• Gao Ming asks about the unnamed figure who first found a way to resist fate. Lu An describes him as the first to escape fate’s control and create a path for others.
• The Fate Masters explain that the Tree’s control over the mortal worlds makes ordinary resistance futile. Only the Deep World’s thirteen Blood City rules—rules the Tree does not possess—can harm it.
• They reveal that the Fate Masters became the collective masters of Void Blood City: they entered its nothingness and built a Great Tomb there, burying the lives they had usurped from mortal worlds to nurture a soul embodying their hopes.
• Gao Ming recognizes that the Paper-Masked ghosts he encountered in Void Blood City were likely counterparts of these Fate Masters from other worlds. He accepts their account and asks how they plan to use their “chance.”

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming moves from suspicion to cautious trust. His experience repeatedly dying and reconstructing a Flesh-and-Blood Immortal helps him understand why the Fate Masters believe an almost impossible opening can change fate.
• Lu An acts as guide and spokesman, showing respect for the dead and explaining the Fate Masters’ history. His admiration for the unnamed pioneer underscores how much their cause depends on that person’s discovery.
• The Fate Masters are revealed not merely as rebels but as people who have sacrificed their identities and lives for a shared chance at freedom. Their response to Gao Ming’s achievement is reverent and hopeful.
• Gao Ming questions Lu An directly, while Lu An and the other Fate Masters answer collectively, turning the meeting into an exchange between an ally who has damaged fate and a movement seeking to destroy its source.

Significant themes

• Resistance against destiny: Even a system that governs all lives may have vulnerabilities beyond its own rules.
• Sacrifice and collective hope: The Fate Masters give up names, faces, and stolen lives to create a possibility for future resistance.
• Nothingness as possibility: Void is not simply absence; denial and imagination can make room for new outcomes.
• Memory and identity: The masks and graves represent lives erased by fate, while the Fate Masters’ self-erasure shows the cost of their rebellion.

Key plot points and events

• Lu An explains that the Fate Masters’ true target is the fate giant tree’s Original Body. Destroying its scattered Leaf Veins or Mortal World Leaves is not enough: all thirteen Deep World rules must enter the tree itself to poison it.
• Their plan depends on Fate’s corpse returning and disrupting the tree’s control. As new rules and passages spread through the mortal worlds, resistance will weaken the tree’s ability to summon its numinous aura, or “Awakening.”
• Gao Ming has already achieved the plan’s hardest preliminary step by surviving two death traps and sacrificing his best past and future. The tree’s Awakening is now at its weakest, leaving it unusually passive.
• Nine Fate Masters carry powerful Talismans, which they will use to breach Fate’s defenses once the Deep World’s thirteen rules arrive. Gao Ming must then lead the Blood City Lords and deliver the rules’ poison into the tree, despite the unknown fate-based attack awaiting him inside.
• The remaining Fate Masters give their dreams to Gao Ming before disappearing into a mountain of Paper Person Masks. Their Dream Marks flow into him, expanding his Dreamscape across both the Deep World and the Endless Mortal Worlds.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming accepts the mission without hesitation, feeling he has little left to lose after Liu Yi’s death. The accumulated dreams and markings strengthen him, though he recognizes the danger of wielding such extensive dream power.
• Lu An explains the strategy and acknowledges the sacrifices behind it. His memories of past allies briefly surface as he watches Gao Ming.
• The Fate Masters shift from years of preparation to their final sacrifice, entrusting Gao Ming with their dreams and the fate of the plan. Lu An and the nine Talisman-bearers remain to carry out their specific roles.

Significant themes

• Collective sacrifice and hope: countless Fate Masters surrender their lives and dreams to make the present world better, rather than relying on an afterlife.
• Resistance to predetermined fate: weakening the tree requires living beings to resist its control and reclaim their will.
• Loss and resolve: Gao Ming’s willingness to proceed is inseparable from the people and future he has lost.
• The limits of knowledge: no one knows what the tree’s inner attack will be, making the final mission a leap into the unknown.

Key plot points and events

• Lu An removes the Fate Masters’ concealment and gives Gao Ming the power associated with dreams. They and the other nine Fate Masters return to the Yin-Yang Interstice.
• The worlds are in upheaval: most Mortal World Leaves have turned red, evil oddities are loose, and divine oddities are escaping fate’s control. The Fate Giant Tree is weakened, but it can still kill even divine beings, making it dangerous to give it time to recover.
• The Fate Masters disrupt fate by severing the golden veins linking the worlds. They board the train to the Giant Tree, joined by ordinary souls who willingly risk themselves to fight for a better future.
• Blood City Lords and other terrifying powers rally behind the train. Gao Yun, marked by Hanhai Blood City, searches for Gao Ming, whose body he can no longer sense.
• The train reaches the Fate Giant Tree. The nine Fate Masters step forward, remove their masks, and sacrifice their destinies, lifespans, and souls to power talismans capable of challenging fate.

Character developments and interactions

• Lu An acts decisively, giving Gao Ming the power of dreams and joining the effort to confront fate, though he privately worries about the danger.
• The nine Fate Masters move from preparing in secret to openly leading the assault. Their willingness to sacrifice themselves shows their resolve to let future generations live beyond fate’s control.
• Gao Yun is driven by concern for Gao Ming and joins the pursuit, relying on the spiritual pull between them.
• The Blood City Lords, especially the Lord of Void Blood City, help organize the resistance and break the world’s restraints so their forces can enter the Interstice.
• The ordinary passengers are not fearless; they choose to board because they refuse to accept endless despair. Their collective resolve inspires the larger rebellion.

Significant themes

• Defying fate: Even a force that seems eternal can be challenged when people disrupt its control and act together.
• Sacrifice and hope: The Fate Masters give up their lives for a future they may never see.
• Collective resistance: Mortals, Fate Masters, Blood City Lords, and other beings unite against a system that once seemed unbeatable.
• Life after death: The chapter’s closing declaration frames death not as the end, but as the beginning of a life freed from fate’s rule.

Key plot points and events

• The nine Fate Masters break the golden chains binding the fate giant tree and open a wound in it, creating a breach through which the forces of the mortal and Deep Worlds can attack.
• Lu An gives Gao Ming a black eyeball and orders him to destroy the tree’s remaining numinous aura. Gao Ming, now physically destroyed and marked by dreams, rushes toward the breach.
• On the train in the Yin-Yang Interstice, Lu An reveals the concealed fate ghosts hidden among passengers bearing the Lu surname. They merge into him, exposing him as a failed attempt to create a fate-less person.
• Lu An accepts his origins and chooses to help Gao Ming, despite being unable to escape the past that made him. Through the eyeball, he helps unleash the “variable” within Gao Ming.
• Inside the fate giant tree, Gao Ming finds a vast store of fortune and longevity guarded by a radiant eye that controls the fate threads. The other attackers are weakened by those threads, but fate cannot grasp Gao Ming, a fate-less person.
• Gao Ming disrupts the threads and charges toward the eye. Fate searches for someone closely connected to him and reveals Xuan Wen—the person who has repeatedly welcomed him back and accompanied him through the darkness.

Character developments

• Gao Ming embraces his role as the one who can challenge fate, though he remains unaware of Lu An’s sacrifices and preparations. His power as a “variable” begins to emerge.
• Lu An is revealed as a failed fate-less creation, made through elaborate concealment and sacrifice. He chooses to regard his connection to his creator—and his bond with Gao Ming—as his own life’s purpose.
• Xuan Wen is identified as the person most deeply tied to Gao Ming’s destiny, setting up her importance in the confrontation with fate.

Character interactions

• Lu An gives Gao Ming the black eyeball, entrusts him with the mission, and later communicates with him through it.
• The Fate Masters, Blood City forces, ghosts, and departed souls cooperate in attacking the fate giant tree, creating an opening for Gao Ming.
• Lu An’s final act of support helps Gao Ming access the disruptive variable within him.
• Fate’s connection between Gao Ming and Xuan Wen reveals a bond that persists across repeated encounters and apparent separations.

Significant themes

• Rebellion against predetermined fate: The talismans and the attackers embody the living world’s resistance to enslavement by destiny.
• Unequal fortune and suffering: The tree hoards abundance while mortals receive scraps, suggesting that suffering is built into the order of the world.
• Identity, sacrifice, and chosen purpose: Lu An cannot erase his past, but he chooses what his life means.
• Connection beyond fate: Gao Ming and Xuan Wen’s bond survives repeated deaths, rebirths, and the limits imposed by destiny.

Plot points and events

• To escape Fate, Gao Ming has severed his attachments and become Fate-less, leaving no one who can anchor him. But Xuan Wen was never part of Fate’s design, and their bond has deepened across repeated cycles.
• When Fate uses Xuan Wen’s destiny to attack him, Gao Ming counters with the Dream Rules, drawing on the dreams and Dream Marks accumulated across worlds. He launches a final assault on Fate and declares “Dream Entry!”
• Xuan Wen has lost the memory disk that preserved her memories of repeatedly bringing Gao Ming out of the Tunnel. After fleeing the Deep World with Fake Number Zero’s group, she is stranded in a Mortal World Leaf.
• A badly injured, disoriented Gao Ming arrives at Xuan Wen’s hospital. He recognizes her, says little, and collapses. Xuan Wen stays by his side as he is treated.
• The assistant reports that Gao Ming walked out of an abandoned tunnel and kept saying that “Fate is dead” and that he remembers every cycle. Xuan Wen suspects his arrival and the changed world are connected. She plans to care for him and verify what happened.
• That night, Xuan Wen falls asleep and hears Gao Ming’s voice in a vivid dream, where another Gao Ming seems to be present.

Character development and interactions

• Gao Ming has paid an immense price to oppose Fate, but his reunion with Xuan Wen reveals the attachment he could not—or would not—erase. Though he is wary and exhausted, he can lower his defenses around her.
• Xuan Wen begins by telling herself she and Gao Ming have no connection, yet seeing him immediately breaks her composure. Her concern leads her to remain at his bedside, while her caution keeps her seeking confirmation of the truth.
• Their reunion is largely wordless: Gao Ming finds refuge in Xuan Wen’s presence, and she responds with tenderness and practical care. The assistant’s account gives Xuan Wen crucial clues about his journey and what he claims to have done.

Significant themes

• Fate versus freedom: Gao Ming fights Fate with dreams, which offer escape, possibility, and dangerous freedom.
• Memory and connection: Even after Xuan Wen loses the record of their shared past, Gao Ming remembers every cycle; their bond persists beyond formal proof.
• The cost of resistance: Gao Ming’s victory has left him gravely wounded and isolated, while his attachment to Xuan Wen remains a vulnerability—and a source of comfort.
• Dreams and reality: The chapter ends on an uncertain boundary between them, suggesting the struggle may not be over.

Key plot points

• Regulator Xuan Wen dreams of Nightlight Studio, where she expects to meet Gao Ming. Her assignment from Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals is to observe the thirteen Candidates for Lord of Hanhai Blood City—especially Xia Yang—without interfering.
• Gao Ming’s arrival in Hanhai was an anomaly. Xuan Wen broke orders to investigate and found a Safe House containing messages from Gao Ming’s parents, who had repeatedly entered the Deep World seeking him.
• She also found her own Memory Disks, revealing that she had met Gao Ming through countless cycles. Though she tried to erase her memories between encounters, she repeatedly watched him die and eventually broke the rules to help him. None of her efforts changed the outcome.
• In the dream, Xuan Wen follows the familiar routine of joining Nightlight Studio, expecting to encounter Gao Ming. But he is missing: no one there recognizes his name, and his apartment is empty. She realizes something is wrong and wakes in distress.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen is presented as a disciplined Regulator whose repeated encounters with Gao Ming have made her emotionally attached and increasingly willing to defy her role. Her familiar routine gives way to panic when he vanishes from the dream.
• Gao Ming remains absent in the present scene, but his repeated struggles and deaths shape Xuan Wen’s memories. Though he loses his memories between cycles, traces of those experiences persist in his subconscious and influence his game designs.
• Xuan Wen questions Wei Dayou and Xia Yang about Gao Ming; neither knows who he is. She then asks the landlord about Gao Ming’s apartment and learns no one lives there.

Significant themes

• Cycles, memory, and loss: Xuan Wen’s repeated efforts to forget cannot erase her attachment or grief.
• Fate versus agency: Their meeting follows a predetermined pattern, yet Xuan Wen’s attempts to intervene show her resistance to that script.
• Love and suffering: She alone remembers the full extent of Gao Ming’s pain, making her devotion both intimate and tragic.
• Unreality and disruption: Gao Ming’s disappearance from a familiar dream suggests that even Xuan Wen’s last connection to him may be changing.

Key plot points and events

• Xuan Wen wakes from a nightmare at the hospital and learns that Gao Ming is conscious. His injuries are healing, but he has permanently lost an eye.
• She visits him. He says he has recovered his real name—Gao Yun—and wants to leave the name “Gao Ming” behind. Xuan Wen is unsettled by this, though she treats him carefully and keeps her deeper feelings to herself.
• After returning to her office and falling asleep, Xuan Wen enters a continuing dream in which Gao Ming does not exist. Even Nightlight Games’ manager insists that no one by that name ever worked there.
• Xuan Wen suspects someone or something has erased Gao Ming from memory. The missing memory disks containing records of their time together strengthen her suspicion.
• Determined not to let him be forgotten, she searches the dream city, revisiting places connected to their shared past. She recalls how Gao Ming endured repeated deaths without surrendering his humanity or hope.
• At last, she reaches the abandoned tunnel and finds the hidden Safe House known only to Gao Ming’s parents and herself. Inside lies a burned, deformed man clutching a bladeless knife. Xuan Wen recognizes him and cries out, “Gao Ming!”

Character development

• Xuan Wen shifts from exhausted physician to determined seeker. Her apparent emotional distance from Gao Ming in the hospital gives way to a fierce attachment and resolve to preserve his memory.
• Gao Ming/Gao Yun is physically and psychologically diminished after his ordeal: he has lost an eye, seems frightened and vulnerable, and wishes to reclaim his original identity. The dream’s final image suggests he may be suffering—or trapped—in a far worse state than Xuan Wen knew.
• The Female Assistant offers practical care and affectionate teasing, noticing Xuan Wen’s unusual concern for Gao Ming.

Significant themes

• Memory and identity: Gao Ming’s disappearance from the dream suggests that being forgotten may threaten his existence; the recovered name “Gao Yun” complicates who he is.
• Endurance and humanity: Xuan Wen remembers Gao Ming as ordinary yet extraordinarily persistent, repeatedly beginning again without giving in to despair or cruelty.
• Connection and loyalty: Xuan Wen’s bond with Gao Ming persists across dreams, places, and cycles of death.
• Reality versus dreams: The chapter blurs the boundary between waking life and dream, leaving the cause of Gao Ming’s erasure unresolved.

Character interactions

• Xuan Wen and Gao Ming share a restrained reunion: she expresses relief, while he reveals his recovered name and hesitates to reach for her, ashamed of his condition.
• The Female Assistant gently urges Xuan Wen to rest, then teases her about her special concern for Gao Ming.
• In the dream, Xuan Wen’s relationship with Gao Ming is expressed through her search: she retraces their shared locations and ultimately reaches the secret place tied to his parents and their memories.

Key plot points

• Xuan Wen finds the dream-version of Gao Ming gravely injured in his parents’ safe house. She carries him out, takes him to a hospital, and waits anxiously while he undergoes surgery. His condition stabilizes, but he remains unconscious.
• As Gao Ming recovers, Xuan Wen is jolted awake by a disturbance at the hospital. A former patient has suffered a terrifying nightmare about someone trying to kill him.
• Unable to sleep, Xuan Wen visits the real Gao Ming. Their conversation seems ordinary, but she tests him by asking whether he regretted seeing her “confession” in the safe house.
• His uncertain answer reveals that he is not the Gao Ming she knows: the safe house contained his parents’ final notes, not a confession. Xuan Wen realizes the real Gao Ming may still be trapped in the dream.
• Suspecting something has happened to him, she secretly obtains fast-acting sleeping pills.

Character developments and interactions

• Xuan Wen shifts from acting out of duty to feeling deeply protective of the dream Gao Ming. She is frightened by the possibility of losing him and becomes alert and resourceful once she detects that the man in the hospital is an impostor.
• Gao Ming appears in two different states: the dream version is gravely wounded and helpless, while the real-world version is recovering but behaves in a way that exposes him as a fake.
• Xuan Wen’s gentle care for the unconscious Gao Ming contrasts with her careful, probing conversation with the impostor. She also helps a frightened former patient after his nightmare.

Significant themes

• Identity and authenticity: A familiar person may be an imitation, and small inconsistencies can expose the deception.
• Dream and reality crossing: The two Gao Mings’ injuries and the blind-eye imagery suggest a connection between the dream and real worlds.
• Memory, repetition, and attachment: Xuan Wen’s missing records of the final cycle underline how memory shapes relationships—and how deeply she has come to care for Gao Ming.
• Fear and vulnerability: Both Gao Ming and the patient are endangered by nightmares, while Xuan Wen fears waking from the dream and losing the person she remembers.

Key plot points and events

• Xuan Wen leaves the hospital and takes powerful sleeping pills to return to a dream where Gao Ming is gravely injured. She believes his enemies may be attacking him through their shared memories and dreams.
• In the dream, she discovers that Gao Ming’s condition improves while she is with him, but worsens whenever she wakes. She stays beside him, recounts their shared past, and carries him around places tied to their history.
• Over several weeks, Gao Ming’s dream-self heals, while Xuan Wen’s health and daily life deteriorate from repeated medication use. Her family and colleagues become alarmed and have her admitted to a hospital.
• Restrained and prevented from sleeping, Xuan Wen struggles to return to the dream. She tries to explain what is happening, but her family sees it as illness; only her trusted assistant is somewhat receptive.
• Xuan Wen suspects that forces in reality are deliberately keeping her awake. Meanwhile, the reality-being “Gao Yun,” who has taken Gao Ming’s name and fate, grows stronger as the dream Gao Ming weakens without her.

Character developments

• Xuan Wen moves from calculated concern to open devotion. She recognizes that Gao Ming matters deeply to her and willingly risks her health to help him, despite her usual emotional reserve.
• Gao Ming remains unconscious in the dream, but his recovery depends on Xuan Wen’s presence. His dream-self is distinguished from the convincing but unsettling figure in reality.
• The Female Assistant remains loyal and becomes Xuan Wen’s only potential source of understanding, though she is uncertain whether to believe her.
• Xuan Wen’s family and colleagues react with worry and try to protect her, but interpret her actions as a mental-health crisis.

Significant themes

• Memory, identity, and fate: Xuan Wen’s hidden memories preserve her bond with Gao Ming, while the reality-being seems to have appropriated his identity and destiny.
• Love expressed through sacrifice: Their relationship is not simple healing; they accept one another’s wounds and serve as mutual support amid danger.
• Dream versus reality: Time spent in one world affects Gao Ming’s survival in the other, turning Xuan Wen’s sleep into a struggle between competing realities.
• Isolation and forbidden attachment: Xuan Wen’s bond with the person she once observed is intimate but constrained, leaving her increasingly alone as others misunderstand her.
• A world working against hope: The mounting obstacles suggest an unseen force is trying to keep Xuan Wen from reaching Gao Ming.

Character interactions

• Xuan Wen speaks to the unconscious Gao Ming, revisits their shared history, and patiently guides him through meaningful places.
• She tries to enlist her family and assistant’s help, but her family dismisses her explanation as illness; the assistant remains conflicted but sympathetic.
• The real-world Gao Ming visits her in the hospital, but Xuan Wen refuses to engage with him, reinforcing her suspicion that he is not the Gao Ming she knows.
• The chapter closes with Xuan Wen realizing that the deepest, most private parts of herself were always connected to Gao Ming.

Plot points and events

• Trapped in a hostile reality where no one believes her, Xuan Wen eventually gives up trying to convince others. She cooperates with treatment, accepts that Gao Ming is an illusion, and improves enough to leave the hospital early.
• Though reality offers her family, friends, and happiness, Xuan Wen returns to the hospital alone and retrieves Eternal Life Pharmaceuticals’ Dream-Insertion Device. Knowing it could permanently damage her mind, she repeatedly uses it to enter Gao Ming’s dream, determined to end the threat rather than let reality’s forces stop her.
• Xuan Wen’s full descent into the dream restores Gao Ming’s dream markings and transforms the dream-city into the blood-red Hanhai he remembers. The gouged-out eye in the sky breaks apart, and Gao Ming awakens.
• Gao Ming explains that Fate used a false version of him to attack Xuan Wen through the fate-thread connecting them, weakening Gao Ming and keeping him asleep. Xuan Wen realizes that Fate anticipated even its possible defeat: Gao Ming must destroy the dream—along with Xuan Wen and Fate’s will—to kill Fate.
• Xuan Wen urges Gao Ming to leave and fulfill his mission, despite the cost. He promises to return for her, while she remains behind as the dream and its world collapse.

Character developments

• Xuan Wen moves from confusion and isolation to deliberate self-sacrifice. She understands the danger and what Gao Ming must do, yet chooses to remain in the dream, accepting that she may never return to reality.
• Gao Ming awakens with the burden of choosing between his mission and Xuan Wen’s survival. His restraint and silence reveal how deeply the choice hurts him, even as he prepares to leave.
• Their relationship shifts from regulator and observed candidate toward profound, complicated attachment. Xuan Wen acknowledges her uncontrollable love for Gao Ming but insists he must not let it influence his decision.

Significant themes

• Love and sacrifice: Xuan Wen gives up the life and happiness she has regained to protect Gao Ming and help him confront Fate.
• Free will versus destiny: Fate manipulates their bond and tries to make even personal choices serve its plans, while Xuan Wen and Gao Ming struggle to act on their own terms.
• Reality, dreams, and belief: Xuan Wen is rewarded for conforming to reality, but ultimately rejects that safety to pursue what she believes is real and meaningful.
• The cost of victory: Defeating Fate may require Gao Ming to destroy the very dream—and the person—he wants to save.

Character interactions

• Xuan Wen comforts Gao Ming as he awakens, then calmly pieces together Fate’s strategy and explains the choice ahead.
• She tells Gao Ming not to fall in love with her and frames his leaving as a necessary act, even while revealing the depth of her own feelings.
• Gao Ming promises to find her again, but leaves the dream as it begins to break apart; Xuan Wen watches him go and accepts the separation.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming destroys Fate’s consciousness by piercing its eye with the Afterlife Butcher’s Knife. The fate threads spin out of control, freeing the Deep World’s ghosts and Calamity Gods from Fate’s manipulation.
• Fate had attacked its victims through their deepest attachments, forcing them to relive painful pasts or witness horrifying futures. Even powerful Blood City Lords were injured and traumatized.
• Severing every fate thread comes at a devastating cost: everyone connected to Gao Ming through care or destiny disappears. Though Fate’s control is broken, Gao Ming is left utterly alone.
• Doctor Gao, Chen Ge, Mad Laughter, Han Fei, and the Nether Fetus join the assault on the fate giant tree. Doctor Gao unleashes thirteen Deep World rules; a winged whale representing broken faith strikes the tree; and the Nether Fetus sacrifices his body to curse it.
• As the golden Longevity Sea and fortune clouds collapse, Gao Ming sees the true source of fate: a living, world-like heart at the center of the threads. He advances toward it, knife in hand.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming becomes a truly fate-less person, but loses everyone he loved in the process. Grief turns into a fierce resolve to destroy Fate completely; he rejects Han Fei’s attempt to heal or comfort him.
• Han Fei worries more about Gao Ming than himself after breaking free of a vision in which Mad Laughter kills everyone.
• Chen Ge endures Fate’s torment without giving in, then vows to make Fate suffer as its victims did.
• Mad Laughter teeters between sanity and madness, attacking the tree to prevent himself from losing control.
• Doctor Gao acts with ruthless purpose, believing that any means are justified if they help eliminate Fate.
• The Nether Fetus reveals that his only true attachment is to his mother, Wen Qing. Fate’s attempt to keep them apart awakens his pain, prompting him to sacrifice himself in a final curse against the tree.

Significant themes

• The cost of freedom: Gao Ming breaks Fate’s control, but pays by losing every relationship that gave his life meaning.
• Fate versus agency: Fate weaponizes personal memories and attachments, while the survivors fight to reclaim the right to choose—even at terrible cost.
• Love as vulnerability and strength: Deep bonds give Fate leverage, but they also inspire resistance, as seen in the Nether Fetus’s devotion to Wen Qing.
• Revenge and shared suffering: The survivors seek not merely to defeat Fate, but to make it answer for the pain it inflicted.

Key plot points

• Han Fei catches up with Gao Ming amid the uncontrolled Fate Threads and explains that defeating Fate’s spirit essence alone will not end it: the Fate Giant Tree can generate new spirit essence and Awakening.
• Han Fei gives Gao Ming the Black Box, an artifact from the First Ghost—destiny’s corpse. It contains two perspectives on the Deep World: its original form through destiny’s eyes and the warped world shaped under Fate’s gaze.
• Han Fei argues that Fate has become trapped in its own system of separation and control, leaving it without the support of living wills if its power is damaged. He believes the Black Box may let Gao Ming replace Fate’s perspective with destiny’s.
• Gao Ming climbs the Fate Giant Tree despite its attacks. The threads force him to relive deaths from different stages of his life, but his repeated suffering has brought him to a place no one else has reached.
• At the tree’s heart, Gao Ming opens the Black Box again and again. Its opposing forces of despair and hope spread through Fate’s heart, beginning to reshape the world—but each opening drains Gao Ming’s soul.
• As Gao Ming nears collapse, Han Fei uses his Shrine and the powers of healing and greed to create a cracked Divine Statue bearing Gao Ming’s blurred likeness.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming persists despite the threat of annihilation, treating further sacrifice as a reward after all he has endured. His identity and soul grow increasingly faint as he repeatedly opens the box.
• Han Fei shifts from pursuing and warning Gao Ming to supporting his plan. He entrusts Gao Ming with the Black Box and later tries to preserve him by creating the statue.
• The Blood City Lords, including Mad Laughter, pause their actions to watch Gao Ming’s struggle, underscoring its importance and danger.

Significant themes

• Perspective shapes reality: the Deep World’s horrors are presented as distortions produced by Fate’s way of seeing.
• Isolation and control: Fate governs beings through threads while remaining distant from them, ultimately alienating the wills it depends on.
• Hope and despair: the Black Box’s opposing forces may transform Fate’s world.
• Sacrifice and endurance: Gao Ming’s accumulated deaths give him the strength to challenge Fate, but the attempt may erase him in the process.

Plot points

• As Gao Ming bears the cost of opening the Black Box, the Deep World’s gods rally to save him. Han Fei imprints Xinhu Blood City’s patterns on Gao Ming, Chen Ge binds his memories to Central Blood City, and Doctor Gao joins his soul to Gao Ming’s, each risking their own power.
• The Thirteen Blood City Lords and other forces unite behind Gao Ming. Their rules and powers converge in him, helping him open the Black Box’s final layer even as his body and soul break down.
• The box releases destiny: an uncontrollable, universal force formed between despair and hope. It floods Fate’s world, reaches its threads, and begins returning to living beings what Fate had taken.
• Destiny uses Gao Ming’s memories to expose Fate’s true nature. Its seemingly holy tree, sea, and clouds are revealed as instruments of death and oppression.
• Across the Mortal Worlds, Fate Masters break free of Fate’s control and sever the worlds’ Leaf Veins. Living beings’ collective vow power turns against Fate, while the Deep World’s rules and pollution further weaken it.
• Gao Ming merges with destiny at Fate’s core and endures the backlash alongside it. The Fate Giant Tree’s bark finally splits with irreparable cracks.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming becomes the focal point of resistance, sacrificing his body and soul to release destiny. His memories help others see through Fate’s false image.
• Han Fei, Chen Ge, and Doctor Gao show their loyalty through direct, costly acts of support. Chen Ge’s fierce protectiveness contrasts with his usual rationality; Doctor Gao accepts a profound bond with Gao Ming.
• The Calamity Gods and Blood City Lords set aside their divisions and preserve their memories of Gao Ming, turning their power into a collective defense.
• The Fate Masters exploit Fate’s distraction to free themselves and help overturn its control; living beings’ hopes and prayers become an active force against it.

Significant themes

• Collective resistance: Fate’s power is challenged not by one hero alone, but by the combined resolve of the Deep World, Fate Masters, and ordinary lives.
• Memory and identity: Remembering Gao Ming sustains him; memory also carries truth through Fate’s threads.
• Despair and hope: Their coexistence gives rise to destiny, a force no system can fully control.
• Faith and power: The same vows Fate exploited become the power that burns its roots.
• Appearance versus truth: Fate’s splendor conceals the suffering it causes, until destiny reveals the cost behind its blessings.

Key plot points and events

• Fate is finally broken: collective vows, sacrifices, and the efforts of all living beings turn against the monstrous Fate Giant Tree. The world’s fate threads are severed, freeing people to govern their own lives.
• The mortal worlds break away from the tree, which falls into the Blood Sea. Its fall releases stolen lifespan and fortune, begins cleansing the Deep World, and restores thirteen rules Fate had suppressed.
• The Deep World changes as its accumulated suffering and resentment ease. A new moon rises, ghosts and damaged souls begin to recover, and long-oppressed pain can finally be expressed.
• Fate remains capable of rebirth, so the Lord of Time proposes erasing it completely by finding a moment when it did not exist and using that moment to restart time.
• The Blood City Lords agree to inscribe their ghost markings and rules onto Gao Ming’s consciousness fragments. With destiny’s cooperation, they use him as the fulcrum for this attempt.
• As the markings accumulate, Gao Ming awakens within destiny, regains emotion, and grows immensely powerful—while sensing that he and destiny are both fading. The chapter ends as the Thirteen Blood Cities perform a final sacrifice in his honor, and a silver dragon leaps from the River of Time into their consciousness.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shifts from nearly emotionless consciousness fragments toward renewed selfhood as the ghost markings restore his feelings. His exceptional role in resisting Fate makes him central to the plan to erase it.
• Destiny willingly gives up control rather than replacing Fate as a new ruler. It cooperates with Gao Ming and the Blood City Lords, despite knowing that the effort may consume it.
• The Lord of Time Blood City sets aside personal grievances and recognizes Gao Ming as the key to a future without Fate. The other Blood City Lords support his plan and contribute their powers.
• The living, the Deep World’s spirits, and the Blood City Lords act together: collective cooperation and sacrifice replace Fate’s imposed order.

Significant themes

• Freedom and self-determination: severing fate threads means people can hold their own lives in their hands.
• Sacrifice and collective action: defeating Fate—and attempting to prevent its return—requires many beings to contribute and risk themselves.
• Healing after oppression: the Deep World begins recovering once suffering is no longer forcibly contained or imposed.
• The danger of replacing one absolute power with another: destiny refuses to continue controlling everyone, even after taking Fate’s place.
• Memory and existence: Fate cannot simply be forgotten; it must be erased from time itself to prevent its return.

Plot points and events

• Gao Ming, Fate, and the Lord of Time Blood City combine their power with the sacrifice of the Thirteen Blood Cities to remake history. Rather than preserve people’s bodies while trapping them in new illusions, they choose a timeline in which Fate never existed.
• The old timelines, Fate’s giant tree, the Blood Sea, and much of the deep world dissolve. The mortal worlds break free of their chains, faith returns to ordinary people, and former Blood City Lords gain the freedom to choose their own lives. Illusion becomes a lasting part of the new world.
• Chen Ge sends the Calamity Gods—including the woman in his shadow—into the new timeline, believing they deserve lives free from the suffering that gave them power. They resist leaving, but he urges them to go. Han Fei likewise sends his companions ahead, staying behind to guard the river of time and promising Mad Laughter he will find him after he has healed.
• The Lord of Time disappears into the new river, and Fate’s remaining will fades. Gao Ming’s consciousness fragments remain to witness the end and beginnings that follow.
• In Jiujiang, Men Nan emerges, excitedly declaring his era has begun—but blood-red eyes and chains quickly restrain him. Doctor Gao then checks for remaining threats before carrying the departed souls and Vengeful Ghosts into the new timeline.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming and the Lord of Time: The Lord briefly desires to take Fate’s place, but seeing the burden in Gao Ming and Fate’s memories changes his mind. With Gao Ming’s consent, he helps create a future without Fate.
• Chen Ge and the Calamity Gods: Chen Ge’s authority gives way to tenderness. He tells the beings he once tried to help that loving them means allowing them to choose a life beyond their trauma. Their reluctance shows their attachment to him.
• Han Fei and Mad Laughter: Han Fei reveals himself as Mad Laughter’s healing personality. He chooses to remain behind so Mad Laughter can return to the beginning and recover.
• Doctor Gao: His careful intervention after Men Nan appears shows his determination to protect his family and prevent future dangers.

Significant themes

• Freedom from fate: A genuine new beginning requires ending predestination, not merely changing people’s circumstances.
• Healing and letting go: Love is expressed through respecting others’ choices and allowing them to move beyond suffering.
• Sacrifice and renewal: The destruction of the old order makes room for a world in which people can choose their own paths.
• Hope tempered by vigilance: The new age begins, but Men Nan’s emergence and Doctor Gao’s precautions suggest that freedom does not mean every danger has vanished.

Plot and key events

• Gao Ming’s fragmented consciousness drifts through the River of Time, watching lives resume and futures unfold after despair and Fate’s influence have been undone.
• He sees Xiang Nuan with his mother, Wen Qing, and later sees a child named Chen Ge transfer to Xicheng Private Academy. Chen Ge quietly plans his next steps, then gives his deskmate Zhang Ya a blunt, handmade love letter.
• At a hospital, Chen Ge finds a lonely young man and invites him to stay at his family’s Haunted House, where other unusual people have gathered. He continues searching for people from his past, including Men Nan.
• In an orphanage, Han Fei says his dream is to be an audience member who will always applaud one particular performer. He sees a silent, handsome figure reflected in the window.
• As time passes, the Execution House reopens within Gao Ming’s consciousness. The people once connected to him—including Xuan Wen and Liu Yi—are swept into a moment beyond Fate, while the Deep World’s remaining Ghost Markings settle onto him.
• The world reaches a happy ending for nearly everyone, but Gao Ming is left alone. The parents who once searched for him return to ordinary life, and memories of him fade.
• Years later, former classmates reunite. Gao Yun feels like a stranger among them, while Liu Yi keeps attending in hopes of finding someone she cannot identify. Both acknowledge they are waiting for the same missing person.
• Protected by the Ghost Markings, Gao Ming’s scattered consciousness slowly begins to grow more complete.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains isolated, but is not entirely forgotten: fragments of his consciousness endure, and a few people retain an inexplicable longing for him.
• Chen Ge appears practical and self-assured, checking that his new school is safe before directly confessing his feelings to Zhang Ya. He also offers a home to the abandoned young man.
• Wen Qing and Xiang Nuan share a tender reunion, with Xiang Nuan calling her “Mom” as she gives him a whale key chain.
• Han Fei expresses a compassionate, steadfast dream: to support a performer even if no one else does.
• Gao Yun and Liu Yi share a quiet sense of absence; Liu Yi’s repeated disappointment and Gao Yun’s estrangement suggest both are connected to the missing person they await.

Significant themes

• Time, loss, and memory: Lives move on, and memories blur, but traces of Gao Ming remain.
• Sacrifice and loneliness: A happy world is restored at the cost of Gao Ming’s place within it.
• Hope and rebirth: Decay gives way to new growth, and Gao Ming’s consciousness gradually reforms.
• Love as persistence: Chen Ge’s direct affection, Han Fei’s promise to keep applauding, and Liu Yi’s continued waiting all show devotion enduring through uncertainty.

Plot and events

• After repeatedly experiencing different timelines, Gao Ming awakens on an ordinary rainy night, now in a world where both forms of Fate have vanished. He has lost his original identity and connections, but his body still remembers the route to his apartment.
• Alone at home, he waits for visitors who do not come, realizing that the people who once returned to him have gone back to their own times. He opens a popular “dating game,” To Our Never-Fading Love, and discovers its deadly scenarios are drawn from secrets and experiences he shared with its nine heroines.
• After clearing the game, he is confronted by Qi Yan, the “Rainy Night Killer,” who had planned to murder him. Gao Ming recognizes and overpowers him, then restrains him in the apartment.
• Xuan Wen arrives with a birthday cake. She reveals she had hoped the game’s winner would find her and says that, without Fate, their future meetings can be freely chosen. They share a simple meal and celebrate together.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming moves from disorientation and loneliness toward cautious hope. Though unsure of his name or past, he recognizes that he can choose what comes next. His familiarity with danger allows him to defeat Qi Yan before the killer can act.
• Xuan Wen takes the initiative to reconnect with Gao Ming, bringing warmth and companionship into his isolated night. Their conversation and shared birthday celebration suggest the beginning of a relationship built on choice rather than destiny.
• Qi Yan enters as a threat but is quickly subdued, turning the anticipated attack into an almost absurd detail of Gao Ming’s quiet evening.
• Gao Ming and Xuan Wen share a gentle, intimate meal: she talks while he listens, and they mark the occasion with a cake and candlelight.

Significant themes

• Freedom from Fate: With Fate’s threads severed, relationships and encounters can now be chosen rather than predetermined.
• Identity and continuity: Gao Ming may not know his true name, yet his memories and actions preserve a sense of who he is.
• Connection after loss: The absence of his former companions leaves him lonely, but Xuan Wen’s visit offers the possibility of new bonds.
• Ordinary life as renewal: A warm room, a simple meal, and a birthday wish become meaningful signs of a fresh beginning.

Key events and revelations

• The author explains that the main story has ended, while one additional scenario must wait until copyright restrictions expire.
• The chapter clarifies the novel’s interlocking timelines and the repeating death cycle that began when Gao Yun became trapped in the Hanhai tunnel.
• Lu Zang brought an ordinary version of Gao Ming from another mortal world to Xinhu. Gao Ming’s role was to remember Gao Yun, whom Lu Zang was trying to make “fate-less” by killing everyone close to him.
• Gao Ming’s own cycle—from the Ghost Festival to his death—was eventually broken with help from the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, allowing him to escape Lu Zang’s control.
• The tunnel exists outside ordinary time, fixed at the moment Gao Ming died in Hanhai. This explains the accumulated bodies and the presence of many parents searching for their children.
• The many mortal worlds contain countless versions of the characters. The Liu Yi Gao Ming met in Xinhu came from another world: she was the wife he had once been destined to have and the woman who later died in the hospital.
• The author identifies Deep World time as the main timeline, with the other timelines unfolding alongside it. Key milestones include the creation of Hanhai Blood City, the Blood Sea, the conflict between Central and Darkness Blood Cities, Gao Ming’s escape from the loop and later rise as Lord of Hanhai Blood City, and the events involving Dan Wang, the Blood Sacrifice, the Deep Dream, and the Yin-Yang Interstice.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Yun is revealed to have several versions, with the Hanhai ghost being the most powerful. His fate is shaped by Lu Zang’s attempt to erase him from memory.
• Gao Ming begins as an inconspicuous substitute tether for Gao Yun, but breaks free of the death loop and becomes a central figure in the main timeline.
• Lu Zang manipulates events by killing Gao Yun’s loved ones and arranging for another Gao Yun to be remembered.
• Gao Ming’s parents keep searching for him across mortal worlds, while Gao Ming himself preserves Gao Yun through memory.
• Liu Yi’s connection to Gao Ming is reframed as a tragic bond from another reality, explaining his profound grief at her death.

Themes

The chapter emphasizes memory and being forgotten, fate versus agency, cycles of death, and the overlapping nature of identity across alternate worlds. It also presents love and remembrance as forces that can sustain a person—and, in Gao Ming’s case, help resist control.
The chapter closes with the author reflecting on the difficulty of completing and revising the book and offering readers New Year wishes.