Chapter Summaries

Ke Meng and the Director discovered that Time Stasis had left them sensing the world as though they were three seconds out of sync. Ke Meng then explored the Door Organization’s escape route and found a likely Centaur stronghold, while he and the Director questioned why the organization had not conquered Blue Star.

• Ke Meng and the Director realized that those caught in Time Stasis perceived one another as belonging to different timelines, but they found no way to remove the effect.
• Ke Meng and the Director left the residential complex and confirmed that people with heightened spiritual perception sensed the three-second discrepancy beyond the stopped area too.
• Ke Meng returned to the Door Organization’s escape route and entered a lush Small World with Investigation Bureau technicians and their drones.
• Ke Meng spotted an ancient castle on a mountainside, warned the technicians, and suspected it was the Centaurs’ base.
• Ke Meng noted that the Centaurs’ strongest fighters were already dead and concluded that another door must connect the Small World to a different destination.
• Ke Meng and the Director-General wondered why the Door Organization had not conquered Blue Star, and Ke Meng concluded that it was not yet powerful enough to dominate the planet.

Ke Meng and Luo Yuan investigated the centaur cremation site and discovered that blood left by a centaur’s death carried dangerous dream suggestions from Cthulhu. Ke Meng used the Big-Faced Cat to erase the blood’s traces, then began treating the contaminated soil as well.

• Ke Meng used Synesthesia on the cremation site and glimpsed a mad centaur burning while an attempted mutation failed.
• Luo Yuan sensed danger in the bloodstained grass, and Ke Meng warned him that it held cursed power and visions of Cthulhu’s dream.
• Ke Meng concluded that burning the blood would not remove its traces and decided to purify it instead.
• Ke Meng summoned the Big-Faced Cat and had Tangyuan feed it the bloodstained grass, which emerged clean of blood.
• Luo Yuan suggested filming the Big-Faced Cat’s purification, and Ke Meng agreed to include it in the Garbage Disposal Box footage.
• Ke Meng noticed that blood had seeped into the sand and decided it needed purification too.

Ke Meng cleared the strange aura from the area, then prepared to attack the centaur castle while keeping Luo Yuan outside. As Ke Meng sneaked toward the castle alone, his Horse Hunter Leather Boots sensed the creatures within.

• Ke Meng had Tangyuan feed Big-Faced Cat ten bags of aura-tainted soil, then had Tangyuan absorb the lingering tainted air.
• White Sugar learned that the aura could cause synesthesia and frightening dreams, while Luo Yuan cycled fresh air through his lungs to avoid its effects.
• Ke Meng confirmed that surveillance inside the castle had revealed centaur-shaped humans, then took Luo Yuan there to prepare a surprise attack.
• Ke Meng told the Sealing Pavilion that the Investigation Bureau was researching how to lift the spatial lockdown, intending to stall it.
• Ke Meng left Shirley to protect Luo Yuan, stored White Sugar, and slipped into the castle alone in stealth clothing as his Horse Hunter Leather Boots sensed the centaurs.

Ke Meng infiltrated a centaur castle to capture its occupants and question them about the Door Organization. After taking down several centaurs, he broke the sound barrier and alerted the whole castle.

• Ke Meng used the Horse Hunter Leather Boots and energy sensing to map the castle, locating five high-energy creatures.
• Ke Meng used the Master Key to unlock a bedroom door, freezing and capturing the centaur woman inside.
• Ke Meng attacked the occupants of a nearby room, freezing their blood vessels and high-heat areas.
• Ke Meng ran so fast that he broke the sound barrier, and every centaur in the castle went on alert.

Ke Meng swept through the centaur castle, captured the survivors, and searched the Disciples of the Door’s Storage Items for a hidden door. He found three bloodstained diaries and a dangerous creature, but no door, leaving the diaries for further investigation.

• Ke Meng killed or captured the castle’s centaurs, then signaled the Koi Continent drones to record the castle as he searched it.
• Luo Yuan and Shirley interrogated the surviving centaurs and learned that the Door Organization had ordered them to wait for the Disciples of the Door, who alone knew the door’s location.
• Ke Meng brought out the dead gatekeepers’ Storage Items and used Big-Faced Cat to learn how to activate them.
• White Sugar and Tangyuan inspected the whistle’s contents and sensed a dangerous tentacled beast inside, which Ke Meng decided to leave for later.
• Ke Meng found three bloodstained diaries among the Storage Items but no hidden door, and he considered having the captured centaurs read the writing.

Ke Meng forced a centaur to read three diaries that revealed most of the materials needed to open a sealed underground door. After discovering that the Master Key could bypass the seal, he decided to open the door before the Door Organization could react.

• Ke Meng threatened and shocked the centaur until he agreed to read the three diaries aloud.
• The diaries provided three-quarters of the clues about thirty-six materials needed to unseal a door beneath the castle.
• Ke Meng searched the castle, broke open a basement door, and found the sealed iron door at the bottom of a stairway.
• Ke Meng inserted the Master Key into the iron door and realized it could bypass the seal, but withdrew it to consult Luo Yuan and the Investigation Bureau.
• Ke Meng used dream synesthesia to learn what the twenty-seven known materials looked like and decided to open the door quickly with the Master Key.

Ke Meng entered a hallway belonging to the Door Organization, but shut the door when he heard someone approaching. In a dream, he watched two residents investigate the disturbance and report that a stranger had been near room 104.

• A Giant Toad reached Ke Meng through the earth and delivered an envelope from Luo Yuan.
• Ke Meng used the Master Key to open the sealed door to the Door Organization’s hallway, then closed it when he heard someone nearby.
• Ke Meng left a surveillance camera behind, returned upstairs, released Tangyuan, and fell asleep while Luo Yuan continued the interrogation.
• In a dream, Ke Meng used Synesthesia to watch a humanoid from room 109 knock on room 101 and report that room 104’s door had closed.
• The child from room 101 detected a stranger’s scent near room 104 and ordered 109 to notify the Sect Master, suspecting the Investigation Bureau had broken the seal.

Ke Meng waited for Sect Master Jin while learning that Orange Star had imposed a sweeping ban on religion after discovering the Witch Cult. When Sect Master Jin sensed Ke Meng’s presence near door 104, he ordered everyone to retreat and left without approaching.

• Ke Meng considered the danger of Sect Master Jin detecting his real-time Synesthesia and waited for him near door 104.
• Ke Meng listened through the Joint Dream as Orange Star imprisoned Witch Cultists and ordered religions disbanded and their followers’ faith purged.
• Orange Star researchers speculated that the Witch Cult was connected to Cthulhu, but Ke Meng knew its presence was unrelated to him.
• Sect Master Jin arrived near door 104, sensed Ke Meng, and demanded to know who was there.
• Sect Master Jin ordered the Disciples of the Door to retreat, then backed away and closed a door.

After Sect Master Jin fled the Door Organization’s corridor, Ke Meng investigated the year of lifespan lost to the False Time Pocket Watch and discovered a conceptual wound tied to time. He returned to the Investigation Bureau, where he needed to address the Guardian Spirit Dome still isolating Koi City.

• Sect Master Jin retreated without appearing, and the disciples in rooms 101 and 109 fled back through their doors.
• Ke Meng woke in the castle, ate food prepared by Investigation Bureau personnel, and ordered them to seal the basement door.
• Ke Meng used Synesthesia to investigate the pocket watch’s side effect and sensed a time-related wound that would kill him in the final year of his life.
• Ke Meng’s resistance force warned him to stop, but he blocked it out and lost track of twenty-four hours before investigators woke him.
• Ke Meng learned that the basement door had been sealed and left for the bureau to help resolve the Guardian Spirit Dome’s isolation of Koi City.

Ke Meng and the Director-General decided to banish the Sealing Pavilion by destroying the Investigation Bureau Headquarters, which was itself a special field. As missiles struck the field’s edges, Ke Meng tried to contact the Sealing Pavilion from outside.

• The Director-General told Ke Meng that the Sealing Pavilion had grown too powerful to contain and that he intended to banish it into the Void.
• The Director-General revealed that the Investigation Bureau Headquarters was a special field and explained that damaging its edges could send it into the Void.
• Ke Meng learned that the regional branches were also special fields, while the Director-General said the Headquarters could be rebuilt elsewhere.
• The Director-General evacuated the Headquarters and removed its protective barrier, leaving the Sealing Pavilion isolated deep underground.
• Ke Meng called the Sealing Pavilion on a communicator as missiles struck the edges of the Headquarters’ special field.

Ke Meng and the Director-General exiled the Sealing Pavilion’s Special Field into the void, where the Sealing Pavilion revealed its devotion to the Door Organization and its pursuit of knowledge. Ke Meng suspected that exposure to the Door of Knowledge had transformed it, and the chapter ended with the Sealing Pavilion becoming a new Disciple of the Door.

• The Director-General activated his contingency plan while Ke Meng released the spatial lockdown, sending the Investigation Headquarters building and the Sealing Pavilion into the void.
• The Sealing Pavilion admitted that it had joined the Door Organization and said the void suited its pursuit of omniscience and omnipotence before communication cut off.
• Ke Meng reasoned that the Door of Knowledge’s influence and a Disciple of the Door’s intervention had changed the Sealing Pavilion.
• The Director-General returned to rebuilding Koi City and investigating the World Behind the Door, while Ke Meng went back to teaching in Whale City.
• Ke Meng sometimes saw the Sealing Pavilion absorbing knowledge from the void in his dreams, confirming the birth of a new Disciple of the Door.

The Sealing Pavilion embraced the Door Organization after its desire for omniscience and omnipotence led it to betray the Investigation Bureau and enter the void. Ke Meng uncovered the cause of its betrayal, supplied the Investigation Bureau with powerful items, and received a call from the Director-General.

• The Sealing Pavilion grew accustomed to being watched in the void and looked forward to its transformation after sacrificing Disciples of the Door, Investigation Bureau figures, and Special Items.
• The Sealing Pavilion vowed to turn the Unknown Being that had watched it for more than two months into a book within its halls.
• Ke Meng pieced together that the Door of Knowledge and the Sealing Pavilion's desire to become omniscient and omnipotent had led to its betrayal.
• Ke Meng appraised powerful offerings from his followers and considered how quickly players were advancing toward the strength needed to slay gods.
• Ke Meng gave new items to the Investigation Bureau, and Luo Yuan accepted them for testing.
• The Director-General called Ke Meng after repeatedly trying to hand over his position, which Ke Meng had refused.

Ke Meng taught Special University students to make special jade and reviewed confidential reports on Shadow Stream Remnants and suspicious doors. An international alliance began coordinating investigations across the five continents, while Ke Meng recognized that the search would take years and require caution.

• Ke Meng taught his students to make special items that could remove mental pollution and urged them to master the work so they could teach the next academic year.
• Luo Yuan gave Ke Meng an envelope of encrypted documents after class, and Ke Meng left Special University to read them on the way home.
• Ke Meng learned that Investigators had found leaderless Shadow Stream Members among recent recruits and were searching for an undiscovered door on Crocodile Continent.
• A news report announced that Koi Continent and the other four continents had formed a mutual aid alliance to investigate doors and missing-person cases and eliminate the Door Organization and Shadow Stream remnants.
• Ke Meng reviewed a five-year door-inspection plan and then went to the Investigation Bureau to check the testing of his items.

Ke Meng traced the Calamity Generator to a residential complex in Shiyuan City, but the strange door he found there led only to the Void through a severed connection. While monitoring the newly transformed Sealing Pavilion, he witnessed a Door Organization envoy attack it and recognized the envoy’s shadow as carrying the aura of the Shadow Stream Members.

• Ke Meng used his accumulated connection to ore disease patients to locate the buried Calamity Generator in Shiyuan City.
• Ke Meng and the Investigation Bureau opened a suspicious door with Di Ping’s shamanic dance, but found only a dark passage into the Void with its connection deliberately cut.
• Ke Meng monitored the Door Organization’s hotel corridor and continued watching the Sealing Pavilion after it transformed into a spatial passage.
• A man calling himself Polite and Courteous confronted House in a Book, accusing it of causing the Door Organization’s losses and demanding that it take responsibility.
• The gentleman in black attacked House in a Book with tentacled shadows, and Ke Meng recognized the Shadow Stream Members’ aura in them.

Ke Meng watched the House in a Book defeat a Shadow Stream Elder who had infiltrated the Door Organization, though the fight left the House in a Book mentally damaged. After waking and returning to sleep, Ke Meng used Synesthesia to observe the House in a Book again and saw that its new guest was the child from Room 101.

• The Shadow Stream Elder invaded the House in a Book’s shadow, but the House in a Book overcame him with its god-given strength.
• The House in a Book survived with part of its soul damaged, closed its gateway, then reopened it to report the attack to the Door Organization.
• Ke Meng woke before the House in a Book’s situation was resolved, then told Shirley to keep watch while he went back to sleep.
• Ke Meng used Synesthesia to watch the House in a Book again, where it warned a guest that an unseen observer was spying on them.
• Ke Meng recognized the guest inside the House in a Book as the child from Room 101.

Ke Meng waited in the House in a Book as Sect Master Jin arrived, while learning about powerful Void Travelers and considering his eventual departure from Blue Star. Sect Master Jin realized the unseen watcher had been observing the House in a Book since its time at the Investigation Bureau and said he would not return to that door.

• The child from Room 101 told the House in a Book that the watcher was more powerful than an ordinary Traveler in the Void, then went to report to Sect Master Jin.
• The House in a Book tried to persuade Ke Meng to join the Door Organization, but Ke Meng considered his future departure from Blue Star and his wish to explore the Game World.
• Sect Master Jin appeared at the House in a Book's door, sensed the watcher, and retreated before returning to listen from outside.
• The House in a Book said it had first noticed the watcher after receiving the True God's favor, and Sect Master Jin realized it might have been watched since its time at the Investigation Bureau.
• Sect Master Jin said the watcher had likely discovered the Door Organization's Gathering Corridor, which he had already abandoned, and announced he would not return to the House in a Book's door.

After learning that Sect Master Jin had abandoned the gathering corridor, Ke Meng organized an operation to seize it and traveled to Koi City with a team of S-Class investigators. The team entered the Centaurs’ territory, where they saw the Satellite head into the sky and considered the Door Organization’s reach across different worlds.

• In Ke Meng’s dream, Sect Master Jin and the child from Room 101 abandoned the House in a Book and severed its connection to the region beyond the door.
• Ke Meng woke and realized that Sect Master Jin had left more than fifty Disciples of the Door in the gathering corridor, making them potential sources of information.
• Ke Meng proposed seizing the hotel corridor, and headquarters convened an emergency meeting to assign personnel for the operation.
• Ke Meng traveled to Koi City and rehearsed the operation with S-Class investigators, including Luo Yuan and Xu Zishao, who carried the Containment Whistle.
• Ke Meng and the investigators entered the Centaurs’ territory through the bathroom door and saw the Satellite riding the Reversal Chair into the sky.

Ke Meng opened the sealed Gathering Corridor with the Master Key, captured a Disciple of the Door from Room 149, and learned from Big-Faced Cat that each door led to a different planet and required a special opening method. He opened Room 148 to investigate next, and a blast of yellow sand swept into the corridor as the Master Key’s side effect slammed Room 104 shut.

• Ke Meng used the Master Key to bypass the Gathering Corridor’s seal and led the Investigation Bureau team into the corridor.
• The team captured the Disciple of the Door who emerged from Room 149 and discovered that the room opened onto a primitive world where people lived in the Stone Age.
• Ke Meng used Big-Faced Cat to learn that each door connected to a different planet and required a special way to open it.
• Ke Meng sent investigators into Room 149, then inserted the Master Key into Room 148 while Luo Yuan stood ready to teleport him away.
• Ke Meng opened Room 148, and a powerful gust of yellow sand blew into the corridor as the Master Key’s side effect slammed Room 104 shut.

Ke Meng oversaw reconnaissance of the planets behind the doors and learned how the Door Organization recruited Disciples of the Door. As Xu Zishao’s Whistle Mouth side effect began, Ke Meng and the others prepared to observe it safely.

• Ke Meng sent reconnaissance teams through Room 148, then opened more doors until the Investigation Bureau had explored down to Room 110 and gathered two thousand personnel.
• Xu Zhishao interrogated captured Disciples of the Door while Ke Meng used the Lightning Dharma King Ring to purge their faith, uncovering the organization’s recruitment methods and its alliance with Shadow Stream.
• A captured disciple warned that Ke Meng might be a danger to the Investigation Bureau, but Luo Yuan, Xu Zishao, and the other investigators dismissed his claims and defended Ke Meng.
• With the Containment Whistle’s twenty-four-hour side effect approaching, Xu Zishao went to a basement room as a metallic layer formed over his mouth.
• Ke Meng brought the Sound-Absorbing Sponge to block the mental pollution from Xu Zishao’s Whistle Mouth.

Ke Meng released the whistle’s Mental Pollution, gained Resistance, and identified the planet where the first Door’s escapees might have fled. After days of guarding the Gathering Corridor, he prepared to open the last nine doors and sensed danger behind the ninth.

• Ke Meng released the Sound-Absorbing Sponge’s stored whistles on the Wind-and-Sand Planet, and his Resistance increased by one.
• Ke Meng and Luo Yuan flew above the dust storms, where Ke Meng used a mutated telescope to identify a familiar blue-ocean planet and calculate its coordinates.
• Ke Meng returned to the Gathering Corridor and helped subdue intruders from newly opened doors while Xu Zishao contained them with his whistle.
• After several days, Ke Meng announced that he would open Rooms 09 through 01, then sensed danger behind the ninth door.