Chapter Summaries

Key plot points and events

• Yuan Hui blocks Ma Tao from entering the dorm, insisting everyone stay in bed. Gao Ming suspects Yuan Hui may have been replaced by a ghost.
• Gao Ming looks through the door and sees Ma Tao—or something using Ma Tao’s voice—as a vast mass of rotten flesh. It moves to Room 1324 and persuades the residents to open the door by citing intimate memories. The creature rushes inside; screams and breaking bones follow, then silence.
• With the second room inspection approaching, Wang Jie makes group chats that exclude different roommates so he and Xishan can coordinate a possible escape without Yuan Hui knowing.
• At eleven, the dorm supervisor unlocks the room and lets in four Student Council members. They search for Zhuo Jun, the missing resident from Bed Six, and learn he went to help in the Office Building. They record his failure to return and deduct five credits.
• The Student Council reacts to the mention of the Principal with amusement rather than respect, prompting Gao Ming to suspect the school’s authority has fractured.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming uses his enhanced sight, granted by the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal, to identify the monster and remains alert during the inspection. He begins mapping the school’s competing powers.
• Wang Jie regrets opening the door earlier, then acts cautiously by arranging secret contingency plans. He also redirects the Student Council’s questioning toward Yuan Hui, creating tension between them.
• Yuan Hui behaves protectively by stopping anyone from opening the door, but remains deeply suspect. When questioned, he points the Student Council toward the Office Building and Zhuo Jun.
• Xishan is frightened and relies on Wang Jie’s plan. Du Bai questions why the Student Council seems to disregard the Principal.
• The monster exploits the trust and shared history between Ma Tao and Room 1324’s residents to get inside, showing how dangerous familiar voices can be.

Significant themes

• Trust and deception: A familiar voice or shared memories cannot prove someone is still human.
• Rules and authority: The Student Council enforces school discipline, while the Principal appears to have lost—or never had—real standing.
• Survival through caution: The residents weigh whether to obey, hide, or risk helping others.
• A fractured institution: Gao Ming identifies at least four forces operating within the school: the Student Council and its rules, the Principal, rule-breaking ghosts, and Class Thirteen.

Plot points and events

• Wang Jie, Yuan Hui, and Xishan plan to leave Dormitory 1314 together, believing the room is no longer safe. Gao Ming instead intends to enter the Principal’s Office after midnight, despite the danger and his willingness to die if necessary.
• While everyone pretends to sleep and secretly prepares, Gao Ming hears a familiar voice calling to him from the corridor—and then from inside his mosquito net. Following the dorm rules, he keeps his eyes shut.
• The muddy, freezing figure climbs into Gao Ming’s bed. Rather than wait to be killed, Gao Ming embraces it and uses the supernatural power in his chest to pull it into his Heart Chamber.
• Absorbing the figure releases a memory: ten years earlier, a new transfer student joined Class Thirteen as its fifty-first student. Because his registration was incomplete, he missed a school outing in Neighboring City. The other students boarded a bus, and the memory ends shortly afterward.
• Gao Ming suspects the bus passengers may have died and the transfer student may have been the sole survivor, though he cannot explain why the classmates now seem alive or why no one remembers the transfer student.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains distrustful and calculating, keeping his own plan from his roommates. He also shows a disturbing willingness to confront the ghost directly—and to consume it—rather than follow the rules passively.
• Wang Jie, Yuan Hui, and Xishan are united in wanting to escape the dorm, while Gao Ming pursues a separate objective. Their preparations suggest that fear and self-preservation may undermine trust within the group.
• The ghost appears to know Gao Ming and seeks closeness, speaking as though it has returned after a separation. Gao Ming’s embrace turns this intimate, possibly warning encounter into a violent supernatural absorption.
• The memory presents the transfer student as shy and seemingly kind, and hints at a connection with Zhou Sisi and the tragedy of the bus trip.

Significant themes

• Rules versus resistance: Gao Ming knows the dormitory’s survival rules but chooses to act when he believes inaction means death.
• Distrust and survival: The roommates hide their intentions from one another, reflecting how danger erodes solidarity.
• Memory and uncertain history: The fragment raises questions about what happened ten years ago, who survived, and why the present contradicts the past.
• Survival at a moral cost: Gao Ming’s power may help him uncover the truth, but consuming the ghost may have destroyed someone who meant to warn or reunite with his classmates.

Chapter Summary: “Escape”

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming wakes from absorbing memory fragments to find the dormitory empty. In a message exchange, he warns Xishan that the person with him in the bathroom may be an impostor.
• Xishan, meanwhile, tests the Gao Ming in the next stall by giving him the wrong stall number. When the figure fails to notice, Xishan becomes convinced it is a ghost. He tries to investigate through a gap in the partition, but a bloodshot eye appears, and the figure grabs his wrist.
• The real Gao Ming arrives and kicks open the stall door, but the ghost escapes from the second stall. Xishan is left frightened and confused, while Wang Jie struggles to understand what happened.
• Gao Ming explains that a classmate is missing from their memories and that the group may have ridden the same bus ten years ago. Wang Jie and Xishan theorize that escaping may require gathering all fifty-one classmates and taking the bus out of the school. They suspect the bus driver holds the keys.
• Wang Jie then suggests a darker possibility: perhaps only one person will survive after the others become ghosts. Gao Ming recognizes that the idea could turn them against one another and leaves to explore.
• At the dormitory entrance, Gao Ming sees the dorm supervisor in a red coat, surrounded by signs of supernatural violence. Her coat is lined with students’ photo-heads, and she calls the students her “children,” threatening to lock them up.
• Gao Ming crashes through the entrance and uses a black Posthumous Photograph. A pitch-black dog swallows him and carries him into the shadows. The dorm supervisor follows, intent on catching him.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming acts decisively under pressure. He warns Xishan, protects the group from panic-fueled suspicion, and risks confronting the dorm supervisor to escape the locked building.
• Xishan shows both caution and comic nervousness: his stall-number test reveals his suspicions, but his attempt to investigate leaves him vulnerable. He and Gao Ming have a tense, chaotic reunion.
• Wang Jie is analytical but self-preserving. His theory that the students may be competing to be the final survivor exposes the distrust that could threaten the group.
• The trio’s encounter shifts from confusion and fear toward collective theorizing, though Wang Jie’s speculation strains their fragile trust.

Significant themes

• Impostors and uncertainty: The students cannot easily distinguish classmates from ghosts, making trust dangerous.
• Survival versus cooperation: The possible escape conditions raise the question of whether the group must work together or compete.
• Memory and identity: The missing fifty-first classmate and the group’s shared past suggest that forgotten events are central to the mystery.
• Entrapment and escape: The locked dormitory, the bus theory, and the supervisor’s possessive “mother” persona frame the students as trapped children trying to break free.

Plot points

• After lights-out, the big black dog carries Gao Ming through the school’s shadow world. They witness a strange but vivid nighttime campus where students and other figures live freely outside daytime rules.
• Gao Ming reflects that the Student Council may have exaggerated the dangers of night: many students seem willing to follow the school’s imposed rules, while a few have become genuine ghosts.
• The dog takes Gao Ming to the Principal’s Office. Inside, he overhears a confrontation among investigators who have been absorbed into the school and assigned teacher roles.
• Ding Yuan accuses Situ An of mismanaging the investigation and possibly helping the anomaly spread. Situ An speaks through a computer rather than appearing in person.
• Li Xiu publicly claims the Ringgate Investigation Office will follow the rules, but secretly prepares to kill Ding Yuan. The chapter ends as Gao Ming watches the threat unfold.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains determined to investigate despite the risks. Hearing Situ An’s voice triggers painful memories and a surge of murderous anger, which he struggles to control.
• The big dog helps Gao Ming move through the shadows and shares his suspicion of the Office Building, though their teasing exchange shows their easy familiarity.
• Ding Yuan openly challenges Situ An to protect the investigators under his command, revealing his stubborn sense of responsibility.
• Situ An maintains control from a distance, insisting that investigators accept their teacher identities as a means of survival and investigation.
• Li Xiu presents himself as compliant and conciliatory while secretly plotting against Ding Yuan, exposing his duplicity.

Significant themes

• Freedom versus imposed roles: The night campus offers rejected outsiders a kind of freedom, while the school assigns identities and scripts to control its inhabitants.
• Survival and compromise: Becoming part of the school may offer protection, but it also risks losing one’s former identity and loyalties.
• Trust and betrayal: The investigators’ disagreement over Situ An’s strategy fractures their group, while Li Xiu’s hidden knife reveals that danger also comes from within.
• The uncanny beauty of horror: The shadow world is frightening yet strangely beautiful, complicating the assumption that nighttime is simply dangerous.

Key plot points and events

• As Li Xiu and other investigators prepare to kill Ding Yuan in the Principal’s Office, a mysterious figure bursts in and draws them into the corridor. Ding Yuan escapes with Gao Ming’s help.
• Ding Yuan identifies himself as the director of the Ringgate Investigation Office. He reveals that he had noticed Li Xiu’s betrayal and deliberately created a distraction so his assistant could flee.
• Ding Yuan explains that Hande Private Academy’s crisis is deliberate, not a natural anomaly. Students reported seeing a corpse above every seat in Class Thirteen, while investigators found that school records and enrollment figures did not match.
• In the Laboratory Building, investigators discovered elderly residents who were once students at the academy—orphans adopted by Situ An—suggesting they had aged dramatically in little more than a decade as part of a secret experiment.
• Ding Yuan warns that Situ An, the East District’s acting bureau chief, is behind the school’s transformation. He also identifies Zhuo Jun as the new director of the Queen Investigation Office, promoted by Situ An after the previous office was wiped out.
• Ding Yuan and Gao Ming hide in the Senior Year Office, where Ding explains the campus map and the escalating categories of hauntings: a Grudge House, a Nether Residence, and a Yin Building. Hande has become a death zone, a rule-bound area where survival depends on following its rules.
• Ding Yuan believes Situ An has spent decades nurturing an unknown entity into a ghost and expanding a haunted residence into the death zone. He intends to merge with it and become the one who controls its rules.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming demonstrates quick thinking and composure, rescuing Ding Yuan and earning his wary respect. He shares that he is a trainee investigator and that his former classmates have been replaced by ghosts.
• Ding Yuan emerges as perceptive and experienced: he senses ghosts well, recognizes human danger too, and has been investigating Situ An’s scheme. His anger and fear reveal how grave he believes the threat to be.
• Li Xiu is exposed as a traitor who planned to kill Ding Yuan with fellow investigators.
• Situ An is further established as a calculating antagonist whose public image as a philanthropist hides decades of supernatural experimentation.
• Ding Yuan and Gao Ming quickly form a cautious alliance, trading information and moving together to investigate and survive.

Significant themes

• Betrayal and hidden motives: Investigators turn on one another, while Situ An’s respectable public image conceals a far darker purpose.
• Institutional corruption and exploitation: The academy’s students and adopted orphans appear to have been used in secret experiments.
• Survival through understanding rules: The death zone is governed by its own logic; knowledge and obedience may be the only path to survival.
• Ambition and the supernatural: Situ An is not merely studying the anomaly—he aims to merge with it and control its laws.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming and Ding Yuan conclude that Situ An does not fully control Hande Private Academy. His Teacher ID grants access to only some areas, while the Student Council and certain support staff follow a separate set of school rules. Powerful “Greater Ghosts” form a third, independent faction.
• Ding Yuan reveals that Situ An may need help because the ghost he nurtured has turned against him. He plans to take Gao Ming to meet a Greater Ghost.
• Their escape from the sealed Office Building is interrupted by Li Xiu’s announcement that Situ An has summoned Ding Yuan to the Principal’s Office and is using Ding Yuan’s assistant, Xiao Fei, as leverage.
• Rather than risk opening rooms that might contain dangerous entities, Gao Ming uses his enormous shadow-dog to carry Ding Yuan and himself out unseen. They enter the Laboratory Building, where competing rules have made the building unstable.
• Following Ding Yuan’s route, they encounter Yan Xizhi, the former principal of Hande Academy of Letters. Once a respected philanthropist, she was publicly blamed for her sons’ crimes and driven from her position. Ding Yuan says she was framed; after she resigned, Situ An took her place in the Charity Federation.
• Yan Xizhi insists that the school belongs to her and vows to protect its students. Gao Ming suspects Situ An murdered her at the school, where she became a Greater Ghost. She notices him, ending the chapter on a tense note.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming shows strategic caution and reveals another capability: his shadow-dog can secretly transport people. He also recognizes how public outrage can turn into scapegoating.
• Ding Yuan proves adaptable, willing to work with a Greater Ghost to oppose Situ An. He admires Yan Xizhi and appears deeply affected by her fate.
• Yan Xizhi emerges as a formidable, fiercely protective spirit whose memories remain fixed on defending her school from Situ An.
• Situ An is established as powerful but not all-controlling, with a hidden history of exploiting others and possibly murdering Yan Xizhi.

Significant themes

• Competing systems of power: The school is divided among Situ An’s influence, the school’s own rules, and Greater Ghosts who obey neither.
• Public judgment and scapegoating: Yan Xizhi’s life is ruined by collective suspicion, showing how people can condemn someone despite evidence and years of good works.
• Reputation, charity, and exploitation: The chapter questions whether public virtue is genuine and how easily trust can be manipulated.
• Loyalty and protection: Yan Xizhi’s determination to defend her students contrasts with the betrayal and self-interest surrounding her.

Chapter Summary: “Yan Xizhi”

Key plot points

• Gao Ming and Ding Yuan encounter Principal Yan Xizhi, whose sharp gaze immediately makes Ding Yuan uneasy. Gao Ming wins her over by describing himself as compassionate and dependable, though Ding Yuan privately notes how differently Gao Ming behaves with different people.
• Gao Ming introduces the huge, soaked dog as his gentle friend, recounting the abuse and abandonment the dog suffered. Yan Xizhi comforts him, and he responds to her affection as though she were a mother figure.
• Yan pledges to protect the school from Situ An and plans to seek help from the Hanhai Charity Federation. Ding Yuan and other teachers ask to shelter in the school, and Yan welcomes them.
• Yan leads them into an immense storeroom on the fourth floor of the Laboratory Building. It lies outside both the school’s rules and Situ An’s, within a Greater Ghost’s resentment; Ding Yuan believes it may be where Yan died.
• The storeroom is filled with supplies, students’ letters, and Yan’s work materials—evidence of her devotion to the school and its children. Ding Yuan maps the area and explains their plan: bring surviving living people into safer blue zones, while keeping replacement Ghost Students out.
• Concerned that ghost students can hide their identities, Gao Ming proposes creating new rules to eliminate anyone who refuses to obey them.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming uses warmth and flattery to gain Yan’s trust, then shows genuine tenderness toward his dog. He remains strategically minded, proposing a drastic way to handle infiltrators.
• Yan Xizhi shifts from suspicion and anger to compassion and resolve. Though dead and unaware of it, she remains devoted to the school, embraces the dog, and offers shelter and protection.
• Ding Yuan is wary of Gao Ming’s shifting manner, but cooperates with Yan and takes charge of organizing the group’s refuge and defenses.
• The big dog initially plays along with Gao Ming’s story, but Yan’s kindness genuinely comforts him. He follows her closely, prompting Gao Ming to tug at his fur and remind him of their allegiance.

Significant themes

• Compassion and belonging: Yan’s care offers comfort to both the abused dog and the endangered teachers.
• Lasting devotion: Even after death, Yan continues to protect the school and its children, sustained by memories of her work and students’ letters.
• Rules and survival: The group must navigate competing supernatural territories and decide how to protect humans without letting the school’s enforcers infiltrate their refuge.
• The burden of kindness: The chapter contrasts Yan’s lifelong selflessness with the danger and emotional weight carried by those still fighting to protect others.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming argues that destroying the people who enforce the school’s rules could weaken those rules, and offers to take action against the Blue Room himself if Ding Yuan cannot act openly.
• Ding Yuan confirms Gao Ming is alive and begins to see him as a rare ally willing to attack anomalies rather than merely study them.
• Principal Yan gives Ding Yuan a wooden box of treasured belongings to distribute among the teachers, hoping to reassure them. It contains students’ letters, handmade clay figures, and a vanity mirror.
• Yan reveals that the mirror can help people see themselves and others clearly. In it, Ding Yuan sees nothing unusual, while Gao Ming sees only the immense Flesh-and-Blood Ghost God. Ding Yuan says the mirror can assess danger levels.
• Gao Ming chooses a group photograph of Yan with her last graduating class, whose children appear in color while Yan is black and white.
• Five surviving investigators arrive. They report that Situ An’s forces are hunting them, Li Xiu has destroyed their second team, and Xiaofei has been captured. They have kept Yan’s existence secret.
• Ding Yuan formally removes his Teaching Certificate and tells the investigators to avoid relying on the certificates. He plans to operate around the school’s “greater ghosts.”
• Gao Ming refuses to join Ding Yuan’s group. He urges the investigators to focus on warning new arrivals and exposing Situ An’s deception.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains bold and pragmatic, favoring direct resistance to the school’s rules. He declines Ding Yuan’s protection and emphasizes the need to save investigators from being manipulated.
• Ding Yuan shifts from cautious survival toward supporting an offensive plan, encouraged by Gao Ming. He also takes responsibility for organizing the remaining investigators.
• Yan Xizhi shows enduring devotion to her students and teachers. Her gifts reveal that her attachment to the children remains central to her identity, even as a “greater ghost.”
• Qiang Feng is wary of Gao Ming and doubts Ding Yuan’s confidence, reflecting the danger and distrust among the survivors.

Significant themes

• Resistance versus survival: The investigators have usually tried to minimize losses, but Gao Ming proposes attacking the forces behind the rules.
• Memory and devotion: Yan’s treasured letters, figurines, and photograph show how bonds with students persist beyond death.
• Trust and truth: With the investigators branded traitors and Situ An controlling the wider bureau, exposing the truth becomes as important as fighting.
• Seeing clearly: The mirror’s ability to reveal danger and different realities underscores how appearances can conceal the true nature of people and anomalies.

Plot points

• Gao Ming leaves Ding Yuan after establishing a contact code and continues exploring the school’s blue zones, learning that its Death Zone consists of separate Grudge Houses. Hande Private Academy remains contained only because Situ An and the ghost he keeps are in conflict; if that balance breaks, the school could become a city-threatening source of infection.
• At dawn, the school’s rules restrict Gao Ming’s abilities. He suspects they grow stronger when more people obey them. The big dog hides in Gao Ming’s photograph rather than risk entering the Cafeteria.
• Gao Ming reunites with his classmates, who survived a dangerous night in different ways. They agree to follow class monitor Yuan Hui’s plan and return to Class Thirteen for lessons.
• Qian Junran rallies the group with speeches about courage and human ingenuity. The students eagerly discuss ways to counter possible classroom dangers, though Gao Ming notices that many people present are ghosts.
• In the classroom, every desk has a noose-length rope hanging above it. Gao Ming counts forty-four people, while the teacher writes “31” and “13” on the board—numbers he suspects distinguish humans from ghosts.
• Zhuo Jun, a former classmate, arrives. The students react with anger, and after he takes a seat, the teacher changes 31 to 32.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains observant and cautious, studying the school’s rules and his classmates rather than joining their optimistic rallying.
• Wang Jie stays wary: he verifies Gao Ming’s identity with their code phrase, avoids Qian Junran’s enthusiasm, but still follows the class to avoid being left alone.
• Xishan eagerly reconnects with Gao Ming and tries to recount the night’s events; Wang Jie and Du Bai had faced danger in the Blue-Clothed Dorm Supervisor’s room.
• Qian Junran emerges as an earnest, if naïve, motivator, while Cai Meimei and other classmates contribute practical precautions.
• The class’s fury toward Zhuo Jun hints at a painful history or perceived betrayal, though the chapter does not explain it.

Significant themes

• Fear and courage: The classmates try to turn fear into solidarity, but their confidence may be misplaced.
• Rules and collective belief: Gao Ming suspects that widespread obedience strengthens the school’s power.
• Uncertainty and deception: Ghosts may be indistinguishable from classmates, and the changing numbers suggest the group’s makeup is shifting.
• Containment and catastrophe: The school’s current stability depends on a fragile conflict; its collapse could endanger all of Hanhai.

Key plot points and events

• The teacher reveals that the class has changed from 49 humans and 2 ghosts to 48 humans and 3 ghosts, making Zhuo Jun the only person whose identity could clarify which group is the majority.
• She announces that Class Thirteen may travel to Hanjiang in a week—but only if all 51 students attend every lesson and behave. Their immediate task is to get everyone to class the next day.
• The teacher asks them to interpret the numbers on the blackboard, but the students hesitate to discuss the question openly.
• Wang Jie accuses Ma Tao and the students in his dorm room of becoming ghosts, citing Ma Tao’s suspicious behavior and the screams heard after he entered another room. He also shares notes documenting unusual changes in their habits.
• Yuan Hui confronts Zhuo Jun about his missing family and attacks him with a knife. Zhuo Jun effortlessly overpowers him and denies responsibility for the messages or for bringing the students to the school.
• Zhuo Jun claims the school itself summoned the class because everyone in Class Thirteen, including him, should already be dead. Bloodied Saeki arrives at the classroom door, ending the chapter.

Character developments

• Gao Ming watches the class closely and suspects the ghosts are trying to convincingly take the students’ places—possibly to escape the school and claim their fates.
• Wang Jie proves observant and strategic, using evidence about Ma Tao’s behavior to test the class and expose possible ghosts.
• Zhuo Jun remains controlled and powerful, but his claim that the entire class should be dead raises a larger mystery about their existence.
• Yuan Hui reveals his desperation and anger over his missing family, acting violently despite the danger.
• Qian Junran, previously outspoken, becomes timid in the teacher’s presence. Ma Tao’s dormmate, meanwhile, behaves unusually eagerly, while Ma Tao himself stays quiet.

Significant themes

• Uncertainty and distrust: Anyone may be human or ghost, making cooperation difficult.
• Identity and imitation: The ghosts may be trying to pass as students and take over their lives.
• Fate and entrapment: Gao Ming sees the nooses above the desks as symbols of forces the students cannot escape.
• Survival through conformity: Attendance and obedience become conditions for the promised chance to leave.

Character interactions

• Wang Jie challenges Ma Tao, then implicates Zhuo Jun and the students from Ma Tao’s room.
• Qian Junran questions Wang Jie’s theory, while Zhuo Jun refuses to engage with the accusations.
• Yuan Hui turns his suspicion into a physical attack; Zhuo Jun restrains him and denies the charges.
• The teacher observes the conflict without intervening, maintaining control through the threat of losing the trip.

Plot points and events

• Saeki returns to class covered in blood and carrying a dripping knife, speaking in psychological terms about helplessness and fear. The teacher counts him among the living, and Saeki claims he is both human and ghost; he says Gao Ming is “half” human.
• Zhuo Jun and Liu Yi lead the class in voting on whether the students are living or ghosts. Everyone submits an answer to a ballot box that turns blood-red. The teacher says it will remain with them to help make decisions—and warns that the class shares responsibility for every outcome.
• Pressed by his classmates, Zhuo Jun reveals that he directs the Queen Investigation Office and explains the school’s origin. Ten years earlier, a bus overturned at Three-City Junction, and its passengers vanished. The police later found evidence that the class’s fifty students had been aboard, along with a schoolbag belonging to a forgotten fifty-first student.
• The fifty students had all contacted the missing classmate on the night of the crash, giving conflicting instructions; together, they apparently persuaded him to go to the tunnel. Zhuo Jun suggests that the student was forced into a recurring cycle of death while the others survived.
• The fifty-first student recently escaped that cycle but remained near death. After Situ An took control of him, the school’s level-four anomaly event began. Zhuo Jun believes the classmates have been brought back so fate can make them face the harm they caused.
• Gao Ming privately suspects a more calculated motive: Situ An may be trying to use the reunited class as leverage over the fifty-first student.

Character developments and interactions

• Saeki appears dangerously unstable but offers unsettlingly coherent observations about fear and learned helplessness. His claim that he is both living and dead complicates the class’s assumptions.
• Gao Ming remains analytical and emotionally detached. He agrees that Saeki may be more clearheaded than he seems, recognizes the fifty-first student’s suffering as potentially far worse than a simple exchange of lives, and distrusts Zhuo Jun’s account of Situ An’s motives.
• Zhuo Jun shifts from intimidating classmate to investigator, exposing his authority and sharing the Bureau’s evidence. His revelation turns the classmates’ resentment toward him into uneasy attention.
• Wang Jie challenges Zhuo Jun over a videotape containing evidence of his past actions. Zhuo Jun responds by threatening to expose alleged crimes, while Wang insists he wants footage from his study.
• Liu Yi, Qian Junran, Zhou Sisi, and Du Bai help question or interpret the revelations. Zhou Sisi struggles to accept the class’s possible guilt; Qian Junran initially frames the event as a trade that benefited the fifty; Du Bai doubts whether the forgotten student existed.

Significant themes

• Collective guilt and responsibility: The teacher’s ballot-box warning echoes the original group decision: shared choices do not absolve individuals.
• Memory, denial, and accountability: The class has forgotten both the accident and the fifty-first student, while physical evidence preserves what they cannot remember.
• Sacrifice and injustice: The students’ survival may have depended on another person enduring repeated suffering in their place.
• Fate versus agency: Zhuo Jun frames the reunion as fate correcting a past wrong, while the chapter leaves open whether the event is also being manipulated by Situ An.
• Fear and learned helplessness: Saeki’s words foreshadow the class’s struggle to resist the school’s rules and their own entrenched passivity.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• Zhuo Jun recounts part of the accident from ten years ago, but Gao Ming suspects he has told only the parts that support himself and Situ An. Zhuo Jun urges the class to obey the East District Investigation Bureau, attend lessons, and survive the week until they can leave by bus.
• Gao Ming challenges the idea that the Bureau can be trusted, arguing that it already lured fifty living people into a supernatural trap. He warns that hope could be used to make revenge more painful and insists people can ultimately rely only on themselves.
• An elderly Bureau-affiliated teacher gives the class a lesson on the school’s rules. The students listen earnestly, hoping the information will help them survive.
• The teacher tries to continue teaching after the bell, claiming the PE teacher is absent. A terrifying, blood-red PE teacher arrives and drags the elderly teacher away, making clear that he—not the Bureau’s substitute—will teach the class.
• The PE teacher orders Class Thirteen to assemble at the Activity Building and sign up for sports tests. The class has just witnessed a swimming race in which several competitors disappear, making the tests seem deadly.
• Zhuo Jun again insists that only the Investigation Bureau will protect the students. Gao Ming ignores the pressure and writes “swimming” as a sport he is good at.

Character developments

• Gao Ming remains suspicious and self-reliant. His prior exploration of the campus gives him knowledge far beyond what his classmates—or Zhuo Jun—realize, and he openly challenges the Bureau’s authority. His choice to sign up for swimming suggests confidence or a deliberate plan.
• Zhuo Jun tries to maintain control by presenting the Bureau as the students’ sole protection. His tense exchange with Gao Ming exposes the fragile basis of that authority.
• The classmates move from panic to cautious hope during the rules lesson, then quickly become frightened and compliant when confronted by the PE teacher.
• Qian Junran, posing as class representative, briefly questions whether the class should attend PE, but immediately changes his answer when threatened.

Significant themes

• Trust and self-preservation: The chapter contrasts Zhuo Jun’s call to trust the Bureau with Gao Ming’s belief that people must rely on themselves.
• Manipulation through hope: Gao Ming suggests that apparent chances of escape may be designed to deepen despair.
• Competing authorities: The Bureau’s influence is challenged by the school’s own rules and supernatural staff, revealing that no single faction fully controls the campus.
• Survival through knowledge—and risk: Learning the rules offers temporary comfort, but lessons and competitions can themselves become dangerous.

Character interactions

• Gao Ming and Zhuo Jun clash over whether the Bureau deserves the class’s trust, with Zhuo Ming asserting authority and Gao Ming openly undermining it.
• The elderly teacher tries to keep teaching and seeks help from Zhuo Jun, but the PE teacher overpowers him and imposes his own lesson.
• Qian Junran’s attempt to speak for the class collapses under the PE teacher’s threat.
• Zhuo Jun appeals to the class for obedience while Gao Ming silently makes his own decision, reinforcing their opposing approaches to survival.

Chapter Summary: “The Flood Disaster in the Swimming Pool”

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming disregards Zhuo Jun’s instructions and fills out the sports form independently. The rest of the class soon follows, leaving Zhuo Jun’s authority badly undermined.
• The PE teacher returns and assigns students tailored fitness training. His methods seem professional, but he behaves violently: when an Investigation Bureau teacher tries to take the students away, the PE teacher drags him into the changing room and emerges alone.
• For the next class, the PE teacher orders everyone to swim, claiming that only one student—Gao Ming—likes the activity. Gao Ming had deliberately listed swimming, apparently anticipating the teacher’s preferences or plans.
• In the changing room, Gao Ming’s locker is bleeding. Inside, the murdered Investigation Bureau teacher has been folded into its lower compartment. Gao Ming remains composed, changes beside the body, and prepares a concealed item: Zhang Ding’s Black-and-White Posthumous Photo.
• The class gathers at the enormous indoor pool, where waterlogged students stare at them unnervingly. The PE teacher explains six safety rules, but the pool has no visible markers distinguishing shallow water from deep water.
• He selects five students for the first group: Gao Ming and the other occupants of Dormitory 1314, along with Qian Junran. They are ordered into the water.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains bold and controlled in the face of danger. He challenges Zhuo Jun’s authority, calmly accepts the corpse in his locker, and appears to have prepared for the swimming lesson in advance.
• Zhuo Jun loses influence as classmates ignore his warnings. His reliance on the Investigation Bureau is further shaken when its representative is killed.
• Wang Jie and Qian Junran openly dismiss Zhuo Jun’s leadership. Wang Jie notices Gao Ming chose swimming; Qian Junran resents Zhuo Jun’s prominence but is nevertheless selected for the first group.
• Du Bai reacts with fear and tries to stop Gao Ming from approaching the corpse, but Gao Ming’s composure leaves him baffled.
• The PE teacher combines professional instruction with monstrous brutality. His control over the class grows as he forces them into an increasingly dangerous pool lesson.
• Xishan appreciates the teacher’s fitness expertise but worries about Zhuo Jun’s dependence on the Investigation Bureau.

Significant themes

• Authority and resistance: Zhuo Jun’s commands prove ineffective, while the PE teacher enforces obedience through violence.
• Composure amid horror: Gao Ming treats the corpse as a practical obstacle rather than a source of panic, contrasting sharply with his classmates’ fear.
• Rules as both protection and threat: The pool’s safety instructions sound reasonable, yet the lack of clear depth markers makes the rules difficult to follow—and the setting itself feels designed to trap students.
• Uncertain humanity: The soaked students look human but seem capable of concealing something monstrous beneath their decaying skin.
• Preparation and hidden strategy: Gao Ming’s choice of swimming and concealed photograph suggest he is anticipating danger, though his plan remains unclear.

Chapter Summary

Key plot points and events

• During a swimming lesson, PE teacher orders students to hold the pool ladder and stay underwater for thirty seconds. Qian Junran tries to avoid the exercise by claiming he is ill, but the teacher sends him to the infirmary with Zhuo Jun.
• Underwater, Zhou Sisi sees a deathly pale figure approaching her. It grabs her and drags her toward the deep end; other students are seized as well.
• The PE teacher dives in to help, revealing himself as an enforcer of school rules rather than a threat to students. But his power is limited in the water, and he too is dragged into the pool’s hidden depths.
• The pool proves to be a grudge house: its apparent shallow end becomes an abyss, where drowned students attack anyone near the edge. Gao Ming and several classmates are pulled under.
• At the bottom, Gao Ming sees a red-uniformed, fishlike girl covered in ropes, wounds, and scales. She appears to be the pool’s central and immensely resentful ghost, possibly sealed beneath the concrete.
• Gao Ming summons Zhang Ding, the Supermarket’s owner. Zhang’s floodwater confronts the girl, but his attempt to soothe and heal her clashes with her desire for revenge.
• Uncle Li and the Supermarket employees emerge from the Black-and-White Posthumous Photo to help Zhang and Gao Ming. Their escape weakens the photo’s containment: cracks spread through it, and the Supermarket’s floor breaks apart, releasing its imprisoned vengeful ghosts.
• With no other option, Gao Ming and Zhang arrange to send the freed flood ghosts into the pool. The resulting torrent overwhelms the pool, rises over its edges, and begins flooding the Activity Building.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming stays alert to the danger and identifies that the ghosts are visible underwater. Once dragged down, he confronts the pool’s central ghost and calls on Zhang Ding for help. He also recognizes the catastrophic risk when the Black-and-White Posthumous Photo begins cracking.
• Zhou Sisi is frightened by the supernatural threat and becomes one of its first victims, despite initially following the teacher’s instructions.
• The PE teacher is revealed to be a strict but rule-bound protector. He tries to rescue the students, but the deep end restricts his abilities and ultimately claims him.
• Zhang Ding demonstrates compassion, trying to free the girl from her ropes and heal her rather than destroy her. His peaceful intent leaves him at a disadvantage against her hatred.
• The red-uniformed girl is presented as both a terrifying attacker and a profoundly wounded figure whose resentment resists comfort or reconciliation.
• The Supermarket residents and employees, led by Uncle Li, rush to defend Zhang and Gao Ming. Their loyalty unintentionally destabilizes the Supermarket’s containment and releases its ghosts.
• The students descend from confusion into panic as classmates vanish and the pool becomes inescapable. Xishan’s impulsive underwater look exposes him to the ghosts, and his desperate grab pulls Gao Ming and Wang Jie into danger.

Significant themes

• Rules and protection: The PE teacher’s frightening manner masks a protective role, while the pool ghosts exploit loopholes in the rules to reach students.
• Unhealed trauma and revenge: Zhang Ding’s compassion cannot erase the girl’s deep suffering; the chapter suggests that some wounds cannot be healed without confronting the violence behind them.
• Loyalty and unintended consequences: The Supermarket residents act out of devotion, but their intervention compromises the containment of even more dangerous ghosts.
• Escalating supernatural danger: A routine swimming lesson becomes a battle between multiple grudge houses, ending with the threat spreading beyond the pool and into the whole Activity Building.

Plot points and events

• Floodwater and Vengeful Ghosts erupt through the Activity Building after the Supermarket residents—freed from Gao Ming’s photograph—rush in to comfort the red-uniformed girl beneath the pool. Their intervention breaks the school rules’ control over the building but unleashes a dangerous flood.
• Students and members of the School Swimming Team are swept away. Gao Ming helps where he can, while Zhang Ding and the Supermarket residents rescue people and try to contain the disaster. About a third of the Flood Vengeful Ghosts escape before Zhang Ding seals the Supermarket floor again.
• Gao Ming persuades Zhang Ding to take responsibility for the damage and bring the girl into the Supermarket, where she might find companionship. The girl, overwhelmed by resentment, attacks the PE teacher who tried to enforce the rules against her.
• The Student Council evacuates Class Thirteen and returns their clothes and phones. Teachers in Investigation Bureau uniforms arrive, but neither they nor the Student Council enter the flooded building.
• Students discover that every phone has sent a message to the same unfamiliar number. Gao Ming suspects these may be messages sent ten years earlier to the student who missed the bus—some urging that student to come, others warning them away. He hides his own message.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains pragmatic despite the catastrophe. He takes responsibility for protecting classmates, persuades Zhang Ding to help the girl, and recognizes that the swimming lesson may have been designed to bring something close to the students’ phones.
• Zhang Ding is remorseful but initially inclined to seek help from the building’s owner. Gao Ming convinces him that he should take charge himself; Zhang Ding then joins the rescue effort.
• The red-uniformed girl is shown as powerful but consumed by grief and anger. The flood gives her an outlet for her resentment, and she targets the PE teacher.
• Class Thirteen emerges from the disaster frightened and exhausted. Du Bai vents his anger at the school, while Wang Jie fears that the vengeful “fifty-first classmate” is determined to punish them. Their phone messages reveal that the class had been divided between those who betrayed the missing student and those who tried to protect him.

Significant themes

• Consequences and responsibility: Gao Ming insists that causing the flood makes Zhang Ding responsible for managing its aftermath.
• Collective guilt and moral ambiguity: The messages expose both cruelty and compassion within Class Thirteen, leaving open the question of what happened to the missing student.
• Institutional control versus compassion: The school rules suppress ghosts, but breaking their hold also creates chaos; the Student Council’s orderly rescue contrasts with the school’s cruel system.
• Lessons with hidden purposes: Gao Ming suspects the swimming lesson was part of a larger plan involving the students’ phones and the school’s strange history.

Plot points and events

• Zhuo Jun reprimands Qian Junran for nearly leading him into the infirmary, where a powerful “Greater Ghost” lurks. They hide in the Office Building, but Qian notices the Activity Building appears flooded. Zhuo rushes to investigate.
• Class Thirteen gathers outside and confronts the messages many of them sent to the absent fifty-first student. The messages show that many tried to persuade him to come, effectively risking his life. The class concludes that whoever lured him was a killer.
• Gao Ming privately theorizes that the students are trapped in nested loops, perhaps dating back to the bus incident ten years earlier. He suspects that the loop may reset if all fifty-one students survive, and that someone has used the loops to conceal a larger plan.
• Qian reveals his own long, conflicted message, though he has no memory of writing it. Du Bai calls him a killer, and the other students distance themselves from him.
• At lunch, Wang Jie and Du Bai openly admit they would—or did—sacrifice the fifty-first student to save the others. Their honesty highlights how divided the class has become; Xishan and Gao Ming stay silent.
• In the afternoon, an Investigation Bureau teacher explains the school’s forbidden areas. The students then attend art in Room 2103, beside forbidden Room 2104. Once class begins, a woman’s voice from the forbidden room presents five disturbing paintings: one belongs to a killer, the other four to victims. The students must identify and copy the killer’s painting within thirty minutes.

Character developments and interactions

• Zhuo Jun is tense and protective of the Bureau’s plans, warning Qian to obey orders and avoid provoking danger.
• Qian Junran appears as indecisive and confused, consistent with his former school personality; he cannot remember sending the message that implicates him.
• Gao Ming continues to build a complex theory about the loops, while keeping his suspicions to himself.
• Wang Jie and Du Bai openly acknowledge their willingness to sacrifice the absent student, while Xishan withdraws from the debate. The revelations deepen mistrust among classmates.

Significant themes

• Survival versus morality: The messages force students to confront whether sacrificing one person to save many is defensible.
• Memory and identity: Qian’s forgotten message and Gao Ming’s fragmented memories suggest that the loops distort people’s actions and recollections.
• Manipulation and hidden plans: Gao suspects the loops have been deliberately layered to disguise someone’s long-term scheme.
• Fear and distrust: The class’s secrets and accusations fracture relationships, while each new lesson brings the possibility of danger.

Plot points and events

• Class Thirteen is trapped in art room 2103 and must identify which of five paintings was made by a deranged killer. The door will not open, and the students fear that choosing incorrectly could cost them their lives.
• Gao Ming analyzes the pictures, narrowing the likely answer to the fourth or fifth. The fourth is technically precise but conceals its creator’s feelings; the fifth contains subtle, disturbing details that suggest suppressed aggression and sexual fixation.
• Saeki chooses the fourth, while Xishan chooses the fifth. Under time pressure, the other students begin drawing their own versions. Gao Ming starts copying the fifth, but feels as if an unseen force is guiding his hand.
• The room begins to resemble the classroom depicted in the paintings, and the students appear absorbed in their work. Xia Yang’s voice warns Gao Ming that they are drawing what they will look like when killed.
• Gao Ming checks Xia Yang’s Black-and-White Posthumous Photograph and sees that Xia Yang’s corpse is painting the students dead amid a blood-soaked room. Gao Ming alone is shown standing alive. Xia Yang says he will make Gao Ming the sole survivor.
• The chapter ends with Gao Ming unsure what has happened, while still facing the danger of the art teacher in the neighboring forbidden room.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming demonstrates perceptive psychological insight, helping the class assess the paintings. But his control over the situation proves limited: his hand is compelled to draw, and Xia Yang’s photograph appears to determine the class’s fate.
• Saeki, already described as having gone mad, offers a different interpretation: the killer would conceal their identity, so the emotionally blank fourth painting is the likeliest choice.
• Xishan remains restless and outspoken, dismissing the paintings and eventually choosing the fifth.
• Wang Jie becomes intensely absorbed in his drawing, holding his pencil like a knife as the room’s atmosphere shifts.
• Xia Yang remains an unsettling presence through his photograph and voice. His apparent death-and-return defies explanation, and his intervention singles Gao Ming out to survive.
• The classmates look to Gao Ming for guidance, but the supernatural threat overtakes their discussion and turns them into victims within the photograph.

Significant themes

• Art as a vehicle for violence: The assignment’s drawings begin to shape—or reveal—the students’ deaths.
• Hidden inner nature: Gao Ming reads concealed aggression and desire in the fifth painting, suggesting that art can betray what its maker suppresses.
• Uncertainty and distorted reality: Xia Yang’s ambiguous state, the shifting room, and the photograph’s changing contents leave the boundary between image and reality unclear.
• Survival at others’ expense: Gao Ming is promised survival, but only as the sole survivor of his class.

Key plot points and events

• Gao Ming reflects on Xia Yang, a brilliant and dangerous player whose powerful Posthumous Photograph helped him rise to prominence. After Gao Ming decided to kill him, Xia Yang fused with the photograph—apparently making himself impossible to kill and setting up a more subtle way to replace Gao Ming.
• While thinking about Xia Yang, Gao Ming unknowingly paints a sixth scene: Class Thirteen’s students are all dead except for himself.
• The class realizes their studio has transformed into Art Room 2104, a blood-red forbidden area. Zhuo Jun deduces that the art teacher drew them into her Grudge House through their paintings.
• The art teacher reveals that students who chose the fourth and fifth paintings are both connected to murders: one murderer was also a victim, killed by the other. She demands that the students decide which painting represents the “true” murderer, turning the exercise into a threat of mutual violence.
• When the art teacher gives them one minute to choose, Xishan tries the door and unexpectedly opens it. The students flee the studio—only to discover it leads into a blood-splattered villa rather than a school corridor.
• Gao Ming recognizes the villa as Xia Yang’s home, where Xia Yang died.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains wary of Xia Yang but is also fascinated by his power and complexity. His involuntary painting suggests he may be influenced by forces beyond his conscious control.
• Xia Yang is characterized as enigmatic, composed, compassionate toward children, and relentlessly resistant to fate—yet also a hunter of the living.
• Zhuo Jun understands the danger of Grudge Houses and warns the others that escape should be impossible. He quietly prepares a knife, anticipating violence.
• Xishan is frightened by the threatened choice, especially because he alone chose the fifth painting while his roommates chose the fourth. He nevertheless discovers that the door can be opened.
• The students’ fear and distrust mount as the art teacher pressures them to turn on one another, but Xishan’s discovery shifts their immediate response from fighting to fleeing.

Significant themes

• Choice and coercion: The art teacher frames murder as a vote, exploiting the students’ familiarity with majority rule while offering no safe option.
• Fate and resistance: Xia Yang’s fusion with his photograph is an extreme attempt to evade the future Gao Ming has foreseen.
• Uncertainty and manipulation: The students cannot tell which painting—or which person—represents the real murderer, and even the apparent rules of the Grudge House prove unreliable.
• Life, death, and identity: Xia Yang’s state of being “already dead” blurs the boundary between survival, death, and replacement.

Plot points and events

• Xia Yang’s Posthumous Photograph has activated, but Gao Ming still does not know what it does. He realizes his classmates are walking into danger in the villa, yet cannot bring himself to tell them the full truth.
• The class explores the villa, believing the art teacher may need their help. Wang Jie distrusts the situation, while Zhuo Jun is unsettled because events no longer match Situ An’s warnings.
• In the art studio, a painting of Gao Ming speaks to Xishan. Other artworks prove deadly: Yuan Hui is pulled into the “Sea Monster” painting, and a student who eats a painted apple devours drafts until his body bursts into scraps of paper.
• In a bedroom, an invisible force from the blank painting “Fate” drives another student to smash his head against the wall.
• All three victims are revealed as ghosts who had replaced students. Their destruction terrifies the class rather than reassuring them, and everyone flees downstairs.

Character developments and interactions

• Gao Ming remains protective of his classmates but is conflicted and unable to explain what he knows. Xia Yang claims responsibility for killing the infiltrating ghosts and urges Gao Ming to let him make decisions, revealing an attempt to take over Gao Ming’s mind.
• Wang Jie’s caution contrasts with the classmates’ initial optimism. Xishan first jokes that the art teacher is merely “tsundere,” then becomes frightened and urges everyone away from the paintings.
• Zhuo Jun tries to lead the exploration, while the students’ confidence collapses as the villa’s dangers become clear.

Significant themes

• Fate and helplessness: The paintings turn their subjects into victims with little or no control.
• Fear and shared vulnerability: Even the ghosts who came to replace students discover they are not safe.
• Agency and manipulation: Xia Yang offers to act through Gao Ming, framing possession as help and forcing Gao Ming’s freedom of choice into question.
• The uncertain boundary between art and life: Paintings and drafts contain—or become—living bodies, making the villa’s artwork lethal.

Plot points and events

• The art teacher’s paintings reveal her as the true victim: her body was dismembered and hidden around Art Room 2104, now a forbidden zone and her Grudge House.
• After students flee, the teacher threatens to hunt them down and turn them into plaster casts. Xishan leads the students back into the classroom, but four are still missing.
• The teacher discovers that her Grudge House has been enveloped by another force: someone is painting over it. She spots Gao Ming outside and assumes he is responsible.
• Gao Ming clarifies that the painter is Xia Yang, whose Grudge House is a villa inside a black-and-white posthumous photograph. Xia Yang and the teacher begin battling through their paintings, trying to overwrite each other’s worlds and will.
• Xia Yang provokes the teacher by describing the buried girl and the suffering behind her hatred. His portraits of the teacher grow increasingly complete, threatening to make her lose herself.

Character developments

• The art teacher shifts from furious predator to increasingly rattled opponent. Her power comes from resentment, but Xia Yang’s art seems to expose the grief and memories beneath it.
• Xia Yang is revealed as a relentless, unconventional artist whose paintings contain his memories and will. He appears less fueled by resentment than the teacher, but his imagination and ability to break limits give him the advantage.
• Gao Ming watches the contest and tries to correct the teacher’s misunderstanding, though his dismissive description of her as merely an “art enthusiast” only intensifies her anger.
• Xishan and the students return to class despite the danger, leaving the teacher confused and briefly interrupting her attempt to escape her paintings.

Themes

• Art as power and identity: Each painter’s work carries their will; control of the other’s Grudge House means control of its owner.
• Grief beneath vengeance: The teacher’s hatred may conceal an earlier, more vulnerable self and unresolved pain.
• Freedom versus constraint: Xia Yang’s art repeatedly breaks boundaries, while the school’s ghosts exist within a tacit system of rules.
• Creation as violence: To paint someone completely is not merely to depict them—it may erase their autonomy and turn them into the artist’s work.

Character interactions

• The teacher threatens the returning students and locks her attention on Gao Ming, whom she mistakes for the invading painter.
• Gao Ming identifies Xia Yang as the true opponent, but his insult fuels the teacher’s rage.
• Xia Yang directly taunts the teacher, interpreting her hidden emotions and painting her increasingly vivid portraits.
• Their conflict becomes a contest of wills fought through the two artists’ respective Grudge Houses, with Xia Yang steadily gaining ground.