Nightmare World

Biodata

Feature	Value
Name	Nightmare World
Original Name	噩梦世界
Type	Alternate dimension inhabited by supernatural entities and used for deadly horror games; later becomes an open battlefield 1 8 646 656
Scale	Almost as vast as the human world 36
Environment	Eternal night beneath a blood-red full moon 1 29
Inhabitants	Human players, Vengeful Ghosts, resentful spirits, monsters, and other supernatural entities; remnants of earlier native civilizations 9 114 251
Associated Factions	White Faction: initially represented by human players, with its broader scope linked to humanity in the Real World; Black Faction: supernatural entities. Resident organizations include the Nameless Society and Candlelight Society 23 60 269 362 571
Administration	An unidentified voice nicknamed the “Game Administrator” by veteran players 22 23
Relationship to the Real World	Geographically corresponding worlds separated by the Void Sea; occasional overlapping areas form temporary nightmare spaces 64 125 476
First Appearance	Described through Su Bai’s memories 1; directly entered during Route 444 Last Bus 2

Environment and Geography

• Eternal night: The Red Moon dominates the sky. During Su Bai’s ten years there, even one of the world’s most terrifying entities could not blot it out 1 29.
• Sparse illumination: Many areas have almost no light beyond the moon. Commercial Street Stop has only a battered streetlamp, a rusted stop sign, and the nearby Mist Shop 7.
• Visibility and adaptation: Without fog or other obstructions, moonlight reveals the surroundings in dark, red-tinted tones. Native supernatural beings and people accustomed to long residence can navigate this darkness more readily than newcomers, who often need lamps 109.
• Mist-covered areas: Complete fog cover is particularly associated with beginner games; Su Bai initially considers it uncommon elsewhere 7. Later explanations identify fog as a protective measure around most players’ early game scenarios, separating them from the wider world beneath the Red Moon 369.
• Real-world correspondence: Areas that players enter often correspond to their locations in reality. Su Bai expects that remaining in Honghuai City could bring him into contact with the same local supernatural threats in later games 36. Correspondence extends to terrain: plains, hills, and lakes generally occupy comparable positions in both worlds 476.
• Synchronized time: Time passes at the same rate as in the real world. Su Bai’s first game after returning to the past consumes an entire real-world night 23.
• Communication limits: Real-world phone signals do not reach the Nightmare World 24.
• Blood-saturated landscape: According to Su Bai’s understanding, successive collapses of civilization left the land and soil saturated with blood. This provides a widespread basis for blood-related mutations and creatures 251.
• Scarce vitality: Vitality is described as something the world has rapidly lost with each successive collapse of civilization. Blood Butterflies, although uncommon inside buildings, are otherwise ordinary inhabitants of the Nightmare World 555.
• Red rain: Red rain can seep into and corrode buildings. The Nightmare Academy’s structures remain comparatively serviceable because they can still withstand this damage better than many surrounding buildings 646.

Territories and Environmental Reactions

• Game scenarios are generally located at the core of a Strange Creature’s territory. Outside games, even players who remain in the Nightmare World usually wander the outskirts; these core areas are difficult to locate and enter 571.
• Strange Creatures and their territories are closely connected. A creature’s agitation can affect lights, rooms, and surrounding space as an instinctive reaction rather than a deliberately staged horror effect 532.
• Some buildings and vehicles are themselves Strange Creatures. Their flickering lights and structural tremors can be understood as equivalents of breathing and heartbeats 532.
• No permanently safe refuge is assured. Buildings, sand, and even water can undergo further mutation beneath the Red Moon, so established shelters remain temporary rather than absolutely secure 68 547.
• Mutant Plants can be more dangerous than humanoid horrors. Plants rooted beneath the Red Moon may accumulate power continuously, while wandering humanoid creatures must search for places to live 602.

Temporary Nightmare Spaces

Temporary nightmare spaces form when corresponding buildings or roads in the two worlds overlap. Entering one is distinct from being formally selected as a Nightmare World player, and ordinary people can become trapped alongside existing players 125.

• A forum account describes a hospital becoming dilapidated and blood-covered at midnight, with the Red Moon visible through its windows. The trapped player survived until morning, when a coworker opened his hiding place 123.
• Rainbow Locust No. 1 High School becomes an overlapping space containing Su Bai, three ordinary students, and three Nightmare World players 125.
• Ordinary possessions that would normally be excluded from the Nightmare World can remain available in these spaces, including schoolbags and mobile phones 130.
• In Su Bai’s previous-life recollection, occasional overlaps occurred without a full invasion that erased the boundary between the worlds before his rebirth 125.

Entry and Residency

Selection and Transport

• Selected humans receive an invitation from the Administrator, followed by a countdown and forced transport into a game. Su Bai recalls that nobody has been able to defy the voice’s commands 2.
• Before clearing their first game, newcomers are addressed as temporary residents. Successful completion makes them official residents and grants a unique Trait 2 22.
• Returning to reality does not end participation: players are brought back when their next game begins. Feng Ling is transported into her second game after falling asleep in a library 12 26.
• A deceased author proposed that selection follows encounters with inexplicable incidents in reality, sometimes without the person recognizing them. This remains a theory rather than a confirmed selection rule 12.
• Ordinary game intervals generally range from half a month to a month. Players normally hear the Administrator’s prompt when a new game begins, although a game that suppresses their memories can prevent them from remembering the announcement 325.
• The first selected players predate both Su Bai and famous veterans such as Feng Ling. Very few of those earliest players survived 159.
• Beginner scenarios provide limited protection: exceptionally terrifying, effectively unbeatable Strange Creatures are excluded, even though survival rates remain low 269.
• Compulsory entry is not entirely beyond external interference. Liu Yongzhi reports that the higher-ups connected to low-tier contracts can keep contracted players out of games or retrieve them from games, but repeated retrieval drains their life force and leaves them gravely ill 414.

Leaving and Remaining

Choice or method	Effect	Restriction
Return after clearing a game	Sends the player back to the real-world location occupied before the game began 22.	Does not prevent later compulsory games 12.
Remain after clearing a game	Sends the player to a relatively safe area of the Nightmare World 22.	Continued residence exposes the player to the Red Moon’s power, which is not entirely beneficial 5.
Voluntarily seek another game	Players beneath the Red Moon can sense the direction of an approaching game; weak roaming horrors also move toward game locations 24 29.	Few players willingly enter games they could avoid 24.
Use the Mist Shop	Su Bai’s Palm Brand opens handled doors into the shop from either world 9.	Xiao Wu must lock the real-world-linked resting-room door during games, preventing Su Bai from using it to escape into reality 24.
Remain outside scheduled games	Players who choose continued residence are described as not being forced into another game while staying there 60.	Avoiding designated scenarios does not remove the dangers of wandering creatures, mutating buildings, or unsafe shelter 60 68.
Contract-based intervention	Certain higher-ups can prevent contracted players’ entry or pull them back from a game 414.	Repeated rescues consume life force; the reported arrangement is tied to missing players taken to Qingliu City for experiments 414.
Battle-preparation choice	Before the coming battle, players are offered a temporary return to the Real World or the choice to remain and fight 646.	Returning is presented as temporary, not as permanent freedom from the Nightmare World 646.

Some players remain to absorb more Red Moon power, while others have lost their attachment to reality. Organized residents have a better chance of securing temporary shelter than solitary players, but continued residence offers no guarantee of safety 5 68.

Transport of Possessions

• Ordinary Real World items and bags normally cannot be brought into the Nightmare World 130 208.
• Bags obtained in the Nightmare World can carry tools and other possessions between worlds. This function is not restricted to rare storage items, although bags with unusually large capacity are more exceptional 208.
• Special items can be carried between worlds, including weapon items. Some scenarios also supply temporary objects needed for their missions 130 159.
• These arrangements are not universal guarantees: a player in the fabricated Honghuai City game reports that his Nightmare World backpack disappeared upon entry 333.

Games and Locations

Games impose scenario-specific rules rather than a single universal survival condition. Su Bai’s experience suggests that identifying the central “protagonist” and bringing their story to an end can sometimes clear a timed game early 13.

Game or location	Objective / rules	Notable features
Route 444 Last Bus	Fewer than ten passengers is relatively safe; reaching ten or more ends the game and traps everyone aboard 2.	A beginner scenario Su Bai considers nearly impossible for ordinary newcomers. Human players ride alongside supernatural passengers 2.
Ghost Village	Final stop of Route 444; passengers are invited to a deadly wedding feast 16 21.	The Ghost Bride is bound to the village’s repeating nightmare. Her removal does not necessarily erase the scenario: in Su Bai’s previous life, other brides continued wandering its road 21.
Happiness Residential Complex	Survive forty-eight hours while dealing with assigned identities, false families, and varying degrees of memory confusion 26 29 31.	Forms from a graveyard beneath the Red Moon. Its rules affect both humans and supernatural residents 24 33.
Mountain-route game	Find the correct route down a mountain 46.	An evil ghost posing as a “Mountain God” promises Lan Xingchen power and manipulates him into betraying veteran players 46.
Lorimaris Hotel	Contains a murder puzzle involving Lorimas and uncertainty about her supposed death 77.	Numerous wandering souls are associated with Jialan’s experiments; some appear as helpful attendants while others serve Lorimas 103.
Fog City	Its ten Eternal Lamps must, in Su Bai’s judgment, be lit within the same period to avoid unpredictable consequences 158.	Lighting only some lamps might restart the city’s time. The game ends after the opposing faction goes offline under special circumstances, exposing the city’s ruins as the fog disperses 158 204.
Mirror Apartments	Players are assigned to live in apartments where the Administrator warns there should be no mirrors 207.	The associated Mirror World contains blood ghosts that can rapidly heal by drawing on its dense blood aura 251.
Fabricated Honghuai City	Begins with suppressed memories and false ordinary lives; the Administrator warns of an approaching supernatural resurgence 325.	Su Bai initially believes his mother is healthy and his brother successful. His mother’s wontons evoke the emotion that helps him recover his memories 325.
Happy Hotel Family Special Event	Offers a week of family activities. Its underlying rules center on avoiding harm to “family” 367 423.	The hotel treats the wandering Strange Creatures it shelters as family. Its disappearance ends the event early under an announcement that it is closing for renovations 423 428.
Blood Moon Lake Villa	A two-day audition for director #￥%%’s new show. Players clear or fail together according to the director’s judgment, while outstanding actors can gain immunity 476.	Players arrive in dense lakeside fog with scripts. Su Bai considers whether the lake corresponds to one in Qingliu City 476.
Hospital No. 666 — Newborn Ward	Undergo seventy-two hours of treatment; do not let all four limbs touch the ground, consume liquids, accept medical staff’s hugs, or remain alone in the building 524.	The ward becomes an increasingly dangerous environment rather than a place where patients can safely wait out the timer 547.
Company office game	Players’ abilities are treated as “work abilities” used for company tasks 591.	Vending machines offer ability improvements, weapons, and mystery boxes advertised as capable of granting additional abilities 591 592.
Nightmare Academy	Resident base rather than merely a designated game scenario 646.	The Nameless Society fortifies the academy and converts its rooms into living, logistical, and intelligence facilities 646.
Human-Faced Forest	Center of fighting after the Nightmare World becomes a battlefield 656.	Battle-generated power fluctuations disturb surrounding creatures and can awaken powerful Remnants in the darkness 656.

Scenario Hazards

• Memory distortion: Happiness Residential Complex suppresses real memories and supplies false ones. Contradictions between an assigned life and reality can help residents recover their memories 26 49 50.
• Unchanged appearances: The complex muddles memories but does not physically alter supernatural residents. Su Bai’s assigned “aunt” remains a mass of writhing shadows 33.
• Deceptive food and drink: In Room 402, apparently ordinary tea contains a human eye, while bread becomes old meat 35.
• Persistent settings: A game can continue to exist after a major supernatural participant leaves it 21.
• Early completion: Route 444 ends ahead of schedule after the Ghost Village and Ghost Bride disappear and the Administrator declares that all hostile units have gone offline 22 23.
• Dream imprisonment: A later game constructs an apparently ideal family life and blocks suspicion with severe headaches and inaccessible memories. Strong emotional stimulation helps Su Bai break through this suppression 325.
• Environmental regeneration: Blood ghosts in the Mirror World use the surrounding blood aura to recover from Feng Ling’s fire attacks 251.
• Creature-defined rules: A setting’s underlying rules can reflect its own attachments and desires. The Happy Hotel’s protection of its resident “family” explains restrictions against injuring them 423.
• Further early endings: Fog City and the Mirror Apartments scenario end when their opposing factions go offline under special circumstances. The Happy Hotel event ends when the hotel leaves with its supernatural family 204 268 428.
• Protective fog: Early scenarios’ fog limits exposure to the wider Nightmare World. In Su Bai’s previous life, this protection disappeared two or three years after he became a player 369.

Mist Shop

• The shop has no fixed location; different people may encounter it in different places 38.
• Leaving its entrance returns a visitor to the same Nightmare World location from which they entered, rather than providing unrestricted travel 38.
• Su Bai’s strength is bound to the shop’s strength. Stocking it with special merchandise increases both 8 9.
• Its resting room can connect to his mother’s hospital room, making that room part of the shop and protecting it from approaching ghosts 24.
• The Relevant Authorities’ player forum and planned Trading Market give Su Bai another avenue for selling Nightmare World goods 68.
• Self-service sales allow players to obtain described merchandise and trade unused items with the shop, sometimes instead of surrendering those items to the Relevant Authorities 321.
• The Nameless Society establishes contact through a mysterious business card and obtains supplies from the shop, including poisonous powder that corrodes Strange Creatures and can be applied to defensive spikes 646.

Power System

Traits

Each player receives one unique Trait after surviving their first game. Initially trivial-sounding gifts can become powerful abilities through experimentation and development 5.

• The author’s “Sometimes wins at kindergarten hide-and-seek” develops into an ability to hide objects or himself 12.
• Lan Xingchen uses Taunt Shield to draw supernatural attacks toward himself and protect other players 41.
• Early descriptions emphasize abilities that enhance players’ bodies while leaving them fundamentally human. Su Bai’s Vengeful Ghost Puzzle is exceptional because borrowing a ghost’s power makes him indistinguishable from a Vengeful Ghost 43 182. Later, Su Bai explicitly tells Zhang Yibu that most veteran players are not Body Enhancers and warns him against prematurely committing to speed enhancement if he has the potential for a special ability 221.
• Ning Yan’s bread-related Trait develops into a cooking ability: eating food she prepares temporarily doubles her own strength and speed, while other people receive a smaller boost. She and Fang Xiujie retain their abilities after becoming supernatural residents 57.
• Lian Xiangyu’s “The happiness brought by good-for-nothing friends is fleeting” becomes Beastification, allowing partial animal transformations and shared enhancement with teammates. Its development increases the number of teammates he can empower from one to three 77.
• Shen Dong’er’s “Beauty is also a form of healing” develops into minor wound healing with cosmetic effects, illustrating how a player’s interpretation shapes an ability 81.
• The Relevant Authorities’ instructors demonstrate further developments: accelerated hair growth becomes hair control, while a self-isolation Trait becomes the ability to isolate an occupied building from the outside world 284.
• Once an ability has taken shape, changing its source or fundamental direction is almost impossible 400.
• Traits provide a medium through which accumulated power becomes usable abilities. Deep Dive’s research links breakthroughs to sufficient power, intense desire for an ability, and desperate physical crises 560.
• Company vending machines advertise additional abilities despite the players’ normal expectation of a single ability. The offer is presented through mystery boxes rather than as an ordinary consequence of clearing games 591 592.

Red Moon Power

The Red Moon gradually infuses humans, ghosts, buildings, and objects. Sufficient accumulation can enhance capabilities or cause mutations 5 8 14.

• Human players gain improved physiques and other capabilities simply by remaining beneath its light 5.
• The power begins as scattered droplets and can eventually become a warm current within the body; its effects are not wholly beneficial 5.
• Veteran players develop a meditation method they call “cultivation.” It gathers and circulates internal power but only slightly accelerates absorption; their research has produced no major breakthrough by Su Bai’s rebirth 14.
• Newcomers usually cannot consciously sense Red Moon power and instead experience the world’s supernatural influence as a bone-deep chill 304.
• Further ability growth requires absorbing more Red Moon power, not merely waiting for a Trait to develop naturally. Even veteran players can possess usable abilities while having very little internal power or conscious control over it 404 420.
• Practice can improve abilities, but gains are faster in the Nightmare World because the underlying power accumulates there. Feng Xuelan notices this difference while training her hardening and softening ability 537.
• Deep Dive detects the power by repeatedly pushing abilities beyond their limits. Its members research methods for sensing and controlling it, remain in the Nightmare World for extended periods, and explore unknown areas for further clues 560.
• Xie Ying offers to teach these control methods to other players. Su Bai recognizes what she describes as Meditation, while noting that the Deep Dive team does not appear in his previous-life memories 560.

Power Progression

The world supplies power through prolonged exposure and mutation rather than a universal level system. The following stages describe the general development of players’ access to that power, not a mandatory sequence for every individual 5 182 560.

Stage	Development	Limits / implications
Initial exposure	Red Moon power begins accumulating unconsciously in a human body 5.	Newcomers generally cannot sense or direct it 304.
First-game completion	The Administrator grants a unique Trait 5 22.	The initial description may appear mundane or useless 5.
Trait mutation	Interpretation, experimentation, accumulated power, or crisis turns the Trait into a usable ability 284 560.	A developed ability’s fundamental direction becomes extremely difficult to change 400.
Continued accumulation	Residence beneath the Red Moon improves physical capabilities and supports stronger ability use 5 404 537.	Power reserves can remain small even in experienced players 420.
Conscious sensing and control	Players learn to direct internal power; meditation gathers and circulates it 14 221.	Early cultivation research offers only limited acceleration of absorption 14.
Systematic experimentation	Deep Dive studies power flow through limit-testing and teaches methods of control 560.	Its research involves extended residence, human test subjects, and dangerous exploration 560.
Scenario-specific enhancement offers	Company vending machines offer improvements and advertised additional abilities 591 592.	These are exceptional scenario mechanisms, not a general leveling or reward system 543 591.

Special Items

Most objects acquire only a superficial coating of Red Moon power. A smaller number absorb it deeply enough to develop supernatural functions 8.

Method or exposure	Possible result
Natural mutation	Objects may develop effects such as drawing readers into a book’s world or writing uncertain prophecies. Mutated terrain can also become a hazard, such as supernatural quicksand 8.
Twenty years beneath the Red Moon	According to Xiao Wu’s master, an ordinary human-world product may develop a special ability. Such items often have only one use 9.
A century or longer of exposure	Su Bai believes reusable items he remembers probably underwent this much exposure. Powerful reusable items are valuable enough to provoke killings between players 9.
Mist Shop conversion	Su Bai can seal a Vengeful Ghost or resentful spirit into an ordinary object, which will most likely mutate into special merchandise 9.

• Special items have no firm bond to their owners. They can be stolen or taken by force, and possession of a powerful item can make a weak player a target 178.
• The Nameless Society owns an item on which members write their names to increase the likelihood of entering the same game together 61.
• Most items are found by searching scenarios rather than obtained from a standardized game shop or reward system 543.
• An object’s materials and storage capacity affect how much Red Moon power it can retain. Many small items consequently have short working lives or only a single use 543.
• Practical survival can depend on locally obtained tools such as kitchen knives, meat cleavers, wooden sticks, and fruit knives, especially when a player’s ability can strengthen or modify them 159 537.

Inhabitants and Factions

• White Faction: The Administrator initially uses this designation for human players and explicitly describes them as disadvantaged against supernatural entities 22 23. He later explains that selected players are only an advance party in a war between worlds; Su Bai interprets the broader White Faction as potentially encompassing all humanity 269 362.
• Black Faction: The opposing faction of supernatural entities. Ordinary humans and most newcomers are substantially weaker than its inhabitants 2 23.
• Supernatural entities: A collective term covering anomalous buildings and items as well as ghosts, spirits, and monsters beneath the Red Moon 9.
• Uncertain origins: Early proposed explanations include projections of people who died in reality, mutated dead players, and human obsessions attached to objects. No single origin accounts for every entity 9. Su Bai’s later understanding distinguishes ancient nonhuman survivors, dead humans transformed under the Red Moon, and mutated objects or other remains 251 602.
• Former players: Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie demonstrate that dead players can become supernatural residents while retaining confused memories of being human 48.
• Wraiths and mutation: Su Bai describes dead Real World humans as losing their living bodies and becoming weak, difficult-to-detect wraiths. Prolonged immersion beneath the Red Moon can eventually turn them into more developed Strange Creatures 251.
• Native humans: Human societies existed in the Nightmare World before the Red Moon appeared. A Xi was once a native human, and Jialan belongs to a civilization whose people resemble Real World humans, although their physiology may not be identical 114 251.
• Ancient nonhuman races: Long-Life Species, including merfolk such as Lorimas, survive from civilizations older than the later human societies. Some retain physical bodies, powerful abilities, and lifespans far beyond those of humans 251 260.
• Unaware wandering souls: Some inhabitants continue ordinary routines without realizing they are ghosts. Recovering that knowledge can make them savage 14.
• Fear-feeding horrors: Weak entities are drawn toward human fear and despair. Some malicious ghosts become weaker when frightened themselves 9 29.
• Common ghost abilities: Shapeshifting, shadow forms, intangibility, and blood-like bodies recur among Ghost Creatures, unlike the more individualized Traits of human players 57.
• Retained morality: Ghosts left from the later native civilization can retain memories of human-like moral standards and laws. Much older nonhuman beings need not share those assumptions 111.
• Death and obliteration: Supernatural beings understand being “killed” as complete obliteration, even if they were never alive in the ordinary sense 36.
• Remnants: Powerful beings lurk in deep darkness after the battlefield opens. Although many are irrational or indifferent, sufficiently intense battle-generated power fluctuations can awaken them 656.

Resident Organizations

Organization	Role / characteristics
Nameless Society	Formed by players who choose to remain in the Nightmare World. Feng Ling leads it, and its members regard their companions as family rather than preserving strong attachments to the Real World 60 61 646.
Candlelight Society	A substantial player organization present in the Nightmare World. Like the Nameless Society, it ordinarily avoids venturing into the deepest territorial core areas 269 571.
Deep Dive	A small research and exploration team that studies the power behind player abilities and risks entering unknown areas to understand it 560 571.
Relevant Authorities’ player teams	Real World organizations that investigate supernatural incidents, train players, and conduct field assignments. Qin Ge’s team offers structured support, training, and paid work 12 365.
Opposition Faction Alliance	Participates in the fighting centered on the Human-Faced Forest after the Nightmare World becomes a battlefield 656.
Red Moon Society	Involved in the battlefield conflict and forced to attend to disturbances spreading beyond the immediate battle line 656.

The Nameless Society’s Nightmare Academy base is fortified with defenses, including metal spikes coated with creature-corroding powder from the Mist Shop. Its members organize dormitories, a war room, an item-sorting station, and an intelligence registry, and begin growing food with shop supplies 646.

Human solidarity is not automatic. Players often remain strangers after shared games, and some exploit, rob, or deliberately torment one another. Qin Yuxuan treats the Nightmare World as an escape from real-life restraints and uses apparent weakness to lure other players into becoming his victims 193 207.

Administration and Discovery

Game Administrator

• The mocking voice announces invitations, countdowns, rules, rewards, and transfers between worlds 2 22.
• “Game Administrator” is a player-created nickname, not a confirmed identity. Even after ten years, Su Bai does not know who speaks or where the voice originates 22 23.
• Veteran players speculate that the Red Moon may be the Nightmare World’s eye or consciousness. Their analysis suggests that the games could exist for its amusement, but this is not confirmed 48.
• Some scholars in Su Bai’s previous life likewise theorize that players are performers or playthings watched by indescribable beings. These conclusions reflect their despair rather than an established explanation 182.
• The Administrator states that the White Faction cannot presently defeat the Black Faction because selected humans are only an advance party; one world must be opposed by another world 269.
• Su Bai later recalls this explanation as preparation for a war involving every human in the Real World. He questions whether the game’s creators are actually benevolent, especially after Su Xuan’s account of those responsible 362.
• The dark space in which Su Bai hears game introductions may be connected to the Rift. He makes this inference from Lorimas’s explanation of spaces between worlds and the Administrator’s reference to the Void Sea within the Rift 141.
• During preparations for battle, the Administrator offers a temporary return to reality or continued residence to fight. Players who choose to stay can be returned from unfinished games to their organization’s base 646.

Real-World Investigation

An author repeatedly failed to reveal the Nightmare World’s secrets, apparently because a special force prevented disclosure. He eventually encoded his knowledge and concealed the letter with his Trait. His death in a game ended the concealment, allowing the letter’s contents to be recovered 12.

The Relevant Authorities used the letter to investigate rumored supernatural incidents and send volunteers to those locations, hoping to recruit investigators into the Nightmare World. Qin Ge is one of those volunteers 12.

Su Bai initially believed supernatural entities existed only inside the Nightmare World. After returning to the past, he encounters ghosts in the hospital and suspects that such beings contributed to his mother’s death in his previous life 2 23.

• The Relevant Authorities establish a player forum and plan a Trading Market for goods and resources related to the Nightmare World 68.
• Their training base uses a player-created Sealed Space to permit trainees and players to discuss the Nightmare World freely without the usual restrictions on disclosure. Entry and exit remain under the isolating player’s control 284 317.
• Official player teams also respond to supernatural threats in reality. Chi Yan observes that these teams’ purpose extends beyond studying the unknown world, since traces of Nightmare World phenomena appear in the Real World 386.
• Qin Ge’s team provides organizational stability, training, and paid assignments. Zhuang Anping invites Su Bai to join and mentions possible work in Qingliu City 365.
• Liu Yongzhi’s disclosures connect missing contracted players to experiments in Qingliu City. Su Bai suspects links to monster infection and the Merfolk Tribe, but Liu Yongzhi cannot confirm those connections 414.

History and Transformation

Earlier Civilizations

Records studied by player organizations indicate that the Nightmare World once existed independently of the Real World, without the Red Moon or ubiquitous supernatural horrors. Human societies comparable to those in reality lived there 64.

Su Bai’s accumulated understanding later identifies at least two collapsed civilizations: an older civilization containing nonhuman races with long lives and unusual abilities, and a later human-like civilization in which surviving nonhumans were regarded as monsters. References to the Rune Age form part of his knowledge of this ancient history 103 251 260.

• A Xi and Jialan are associated with the later native human civilization 114 251.
• Lorimas represents a surviving nonhuman race from a more distant past 111 251.
• A being encountered in the Mirror World confirms that the Red Moon appeared later, after which a mirror absorbed enough power to become a Mirror Ghost 260.
• The precise causes and chronology of the civilizations’ collapses remain unresolved in Su Bai’s pieced-together account 251.

Becoming the Real World’s Shadow

At an unknown point, the Nightmare World began drawing closer to the Real World and increasingly copying its cities, roads, and buildings. In one recorded example, clearing a Real World mass grave to build a school caused a school to appear overnight on corresponding ghost-infested wasteland in the Nightmare World 64.

This transformation leads Su Bai to regard the Nightmare World as the Real World’s shadow beneath the Red Moon, filled with mutations and supernatural horrors. He does not consider its identification as an afterlife or hell established, despite the presence of ghosts and trapped dead inhabitants 64.

The Void Sea separates the worlds, but geographical similarities and occasional temporary overlaps show that this separation does not eliminate connections between them 125 476.

Previous-Life Battlefield

Su Bai remembers that the Nightmare Game eventually ended, but this did not free its survivors. Instead, the designated scenarios gave way to an open battlefield encompassing the whole Nightmare World. The games had functioned, in retrospect, as a beginner’s tutorial for the wider conflict 524.

Remembered stage	Event / scale
Battlefield opening	The Administrator announces 6,100 White Faction forces against 3,100,000,000 Black Faction forces 524.
Unprotected mass arrivals	More than 140,000 humans appear throughout the Nightmare World within ten minutes, without beginner missions or scenario protection 269.
Continuing influx	Hundreds of thousands, then millions and tens of millions of uninformed humans enter the world without tutorials 524.
Later faction count	Su Bai remembers a subsequent total of 5.6 billion White Faction members and 3.1 billion Black Faction members, prompting his conclusion that the White Faction may mean humanity as a whole 269.

New arrivals could appear in powerful creatures’ territories or be killed immediately by passing ghosts. Their growing numbers did not compensate for their lack of knowledge, abilities, and understanding of Red Moon power 269 524.

Surviving veteran players began protecting newcomers and contributing to a human resistance rather than simply hiding in places where they could survive individually. Su Bai often traveled alone because supernatural creatures gathered around him and other humans treated him with suspicion, although the Vengeful Ghost Puzzle sometimes aided the human camp 524.

Su Bai speculates that selecting players is an attempt to give humanity a fighting chance before the Nightmare World brings a catastrophe upon, or potentially devours, the Real World. He also suspects that the parties organizing this process have self-interested aims. These motives remain his interpretation rather than a fully confirmed account 269 362.

Current Battlefield Transition

The current timeline reaches preparations for an impending battle while player organizations are already establishing defensible bases. The Administrator offers players the choice to return temporarily to the Real World or stay and face the conflict 646.

• The Nameless Society chooses to remain together rather than abandon members who wish to stay 646.
• Members engaged in unfinished Nightmare Games reappear at the Nightmare Academy after choosing to remain 646.
• By the fighting at the Human-Faced Forest, the Nightmare World has become a battlefield involving factions and supernatural populations on a scale far beyond small game encounters 656.
• The opposing sides’ power fluctuations spread outward, agitating surrounding creatures and threatening to awaken Remnants that had remained indifferent in the deep darkness 656.

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