Chapter Summaries

Su Bai warned Qin Ge, Wan Shasha, and Zhang Yibu to remain on the bus until the game ended, then followed the Ghost Bride through the burning Ghost Village. Remembering how A Xi had entrusted him with the wish to keep living in his previous life, Su Bai wondered whether the village’s destruction would finally let her leave without regrets.

• Su Bai thanked the three players for surviving, warned them not to leave the bus while it was safe, and stepped into the Red Moon’s light.
• Su Bai walked through the burning village while conserving his strength and recalled how the Ghost Village had trapped players in a deadly wedding feast.
• Su Bai remembered that, in his previous life, A Xi had possessed him to avoid the villagers and entrusted him with her wish to keep living.
• Su Bai recalled that A Xi’s cries in the ritual fire had awakened his Vengeful Ghost Puzzle ability, allowing her to become his first puzzle piece.
• Su Bai considered the inferno a fitting end for the Ghost Village, wondered whether A Xi could leave without regrets, and caught up with her when she stopped.

Su Bai survived the destruction of the Ghost Village and added the crying Nurse to his Vengeful Ghost Puzzle after agreeing to help with her wish. He chose to return to the real world, but the voice ending the game left him with a cryptic message to pass along.

• Su Bai accepted the Ghost Bride's hand, and she vanished as A Xi's puzzle piece subtly changed and fell asleep.
• The Ghost Village disappeared, and the crying Nurse offered to treat Su Bai's wounds if he hid her; when he mentioned Hospital No. 666, she reacted strongly.
• Su Bai made a deal with the Nurse, took her into his Vengeful Ghost Puzzle, and discovered her power could help injured or ill people, including his unconscious mother.
• The game announced that Su Bai had cleared the minigame, granted him the unique trait Enhanced Puzzle Ability, and offered him a choice between staying in the Nightmare World or returning to the real world.
• Su Bai chose to return to the real world, and the game's voice told him to give someone its regards.

After escaping the Nightmare World, Su Bai returned to the hospital and discovered ghosts attacking his unconscious mother. He killed them and realized that supernatural entities might have caused her decline, then turned to the Mist Shop for a way to protect her.

• Su Bai returned to the real world after the Nightmare World game ended and learned that his mother was still in the hospital room.
• Nurse Cry warned Su Bai that something dangerous was in his mother's room, where he found an old ghost and a Creepy Infant attacking her.
• Su Bai borrowed power from a puzzle piece and killed both ghosts with a rusty short blade.
• Seeing his mother alive and breathing, Su Bai suspected that ghosts had caused her past medical crises and worried more might return.
• Su Bai used the Palm Brand on the door handle to enter the Mist Shop, hoping to find a way to protect his mother.

Su Bai connected the Mist Shop’s resting room to his mother’s hospital room, protecting her from ghosts, and turned a pair of white high heels into the shop’s first special item. After Xiao Wu fell dormant, Su Bai decided to seek another nightmare game for supplies and contacts; nearby, a graveyard transformed into a residential complex awaiting new residents.

• Su Bai connected the resting room’s door to his mother’s hospital room, making the room part of the Mist Shop and shielding it from ghosts.
• Su Bai placed the White Qipao Paper Figure’s new home in a pair of white high heels, which became a special item that made its wearer feel light as paper.
• Xiao Wu warned Su Bai not to open the shop for business yet, then fell dormant and told him to call his name if he was in danger.
• Su Bai decided to seek another nightmare game to find supplies, customers, and information about player organizations.
• Under the Red Moon, a graveyard transformed into a residential complex, and its gate opened to welcome its new residents.

Feng Ling returned to her family’s apartment in Happiness Residential Complex, where the New Residents' Guidebook warned of memory confusion and a deadly points system. She reached Apartment 602 and heard her mother chopping in the kitchen, though an uneasy feeling followed her home.

• The game announced that Happiness Residential Complex residents could not leave, might forget their identities, and had to survive for 48 hours while humans kept a points advantage.
• Feng Ling arrived at the complex on Friday, feeling excited and inexplicably apprehensive about seeing her parents.
• Feng Ling met a fashionable young man wearing a black eyepatch by the elevators, then rode the other elevator alone after he stayed behind.
• Feng Ling found a hundred-yuan note on the elevator floor and avoided picking it up because of her grandmother’s warnings.
• Feng Ling reached the sixth floor, entered Apartment 602, and heard a steady chopping sound from the kitchen.

Feng Ling recovered her memories and realized that the parents in her apartment were impostors, then fled the Happiness Residential Complex apartment after remembering she was in her second Nightmare World game. She left the apartment while the impostors told her to come back for dinner.

• Feng Ling heard her mother chopping ribs and saw her father reading a newspaper, while questioning why their habits bothered her.
• Feng Ling opened the pendant her grandmother had given her and discovered that the parents in its photograph looked nothing like the people in her apartment.
• A blood-red full moon appeared outside, and Feng Ling remembered her real past, her dead parents and grandmother, and the Nightmare World’s memory-confusion rule.
• Feng Ling recalled that she had to survive forty-eight hours in the Happiness Residential Complex to clear her second game.
• Feng Ling rushed for the apartment door, and the impostors let her leave after telling her to come back soon for dinner.

Feng Ling fled Room 602 and encountered a ghost in the stairwell before witnessing a man bury a wounded woman alive. After the woman revealed herself as a ghost and attacked Feng Ling, the young man in black rescued her and warned her to play her role well, then disappeared.

• Feng Ling avoided the mysteriously open elevator and escaped down the stairwell, where she saw a barefoot woman whose shadow showed her hanging from a rope.
• Feng Ling spotted a man burying a wounded woman beneath a tree, then rushed outside to help after he fled.
• The buried woman revealed herself as a ghost, dragged Feng Ling into the pit, and tried to strangle her.
• The young man in black pierced the ghost's neck with his sword, pulled Feng Ling free, and pinned the ghost in the pit.
• The young man in black warned Feng Ling to play her role well, then vanished into the darkness.

Feng Ling followed a cryptic note to Room 204, where she met three other players and learned that they were gathering people who noticed the lobby clock had become strange. The newest arrival introduced himself as Su Bai, whose voice seemed familiar to Feng Ling.

• Feng Ling returned to Building 3 and noticed that the lobby clock displayed 98:100.
• Feng Ling found a note directing anyone who saw the strange clock to Room 204 and decided to investigate.
• A man and a woman inside Room 204 tested Feng Ling with questions about her real life and her Nightmare World experience.
• Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie introduced themselves and let Feng Ling into their player safe house.
• Feng Ling met another newcomer, Su Bai, and felt she had heard his hoarse voice before.

Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie welcomed Feng Ling and Su Bai to Room 204 but made clear they distrusted inexperienced newcomers, while Fang Xiujie offered to analyze Feng Ling’s Trait. Su Bai concealed his true abilities and past as he joined their team, and he saw the Happiness Residential Complex as hell.

• Ning Yan gathered Feng Ling, Fang Xiujie, and Su Bai in her room and complained that newcomers were liabilities.
• Fang Xiujie explained that he and Ning Yan wanted newcomers to stay alive and avoid causing trouble, then offered to help develop their Traits.
• Feng Ling told Fang Xiujie that her Trait was called “Never put a Band-Aid on crooked,” and he began considering its healing potential.
• Ning Yan asked Su Bai to reveal his Trait, while Su Bai hid his identity and acted like a bashful, ordinary newcomer.
• Su Bai recalled entering the Nightmare World through the Mist Shop and following weak horrors to the Happiness Residential Complex, which looked like hell to him.

Su Bai reasoned that the complex’s 100:100 scoreboard represented ten human players against one hundred ghosts, and that the players’ best chance was to follow their assigned roles. After secretly eliminating dangerous spirits and rescuing Feng Ling, he rejoined Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie’s team as they prepared to explain their plan.

• Su Bai concluded that the lobby clock tracked the human and ghost scores, and that the ghosts would riot if the humans’ score fell below theirs.
• Su Bai decided that players should follow their assigned roles to keep the ghosts’ confused memories from returning, while he secretly used Black Umbrella’s power to eliminate spirits who had recovered theirs and rescue Feng Ling.
• Su Bai changed his appearance and clothes, then slipped back into the team led by Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie.
• Fang Xiujie asked Su Bai about his Trait, and Su Bai claimed it was “enhanced puzzle ability.”
• Fang Xiujie gave Su Bai and Feng Ling his real-world contact number and said he would share his research notes if they returned.
• Ning Yan complained about the team’s chances, and Fang Xiujie began explaining their plan to clear the game.

Fang Xiujie, Ning Yan, Feng Ling, and Su Bai agreed that surviving the Happiness Residential Complex meant playing their assigned roles and avoiding provoking the ghosts for forty-eight hours. After the group regrouped in Room 204 and prepared to return to their assigned homes, Su Bai hinted to Feng Ling that they might meet again ten years later.

• Fang Xiujie concluded that the players had to play along with the ghosts' house game and survive for forty-eight hours rather than fight their overwhelming numbers.
• Feng Ling told the others about escaping Room 602 and being rescued by a sword-wielding young man in black, whom Fang Xiujie suspected had killed two memory-restored ghosts.
• Ning Yan gave the group bread and explained that she would play a bad rendition of "Ode to Joy" on her violin as a signal to regroup in Room 204.
• Fang Xiujie left by the emergency stairs for Room 304, while Su Bai took the elevator, knowing he had already captured the ghost that had haunted it.
• Feng Ling asked Su Bai whether they had met before, and he replied that they might meet again ten years later if they survived.

Su Bai visited his assigned aunt in Room 402 after speaking with Feng Ling and learning she feared using the elevator. He found the apartment filled with cats and met the patchwork-clothed woman in the rocking chair, who said the cats were running out of food.

• Su Bai asked Feng Ling why players recovered their memories so quickly, then took the elevator upstairs while she chose the emergency stairs.
• Su Bai recalled saving Feng Ling from the coughing ghost and went to visit his aunt in Room 402.
• Su Bai reached the fourth floor, where cats meowed behind Room 402’s door and the resident of Room 401 pounded on the wall.
• Su Bai entered the dark apartment and saw cats watching him from throughout the room.
• Su Bai found his aunt in a rocking chair, and she said the cats had large appetites and were nearly out of food.

Su Bai visited his shadow-bodied “aunt” in Room 402 and discovered that a black kitten was trying to get his attention. He called on Black Umbrella’s power to see what the kitten wanted, leaving the corridor transformed by his altered vision.

• Su Bai brought bread into Room 402, where his faceless aunt crushed it with shadow tentacles and invited him to drink lime water.
• Su Bai refused the drink and prepared to leave, but a black cat with golden eyes tried to pull him outside and then back into the apartment.
• Su Bai realized the kitten wanted to show him something ordinary human eyes could not see and asked Black Umbrella to lend him his eyes and power.
• Su Bai opened his eyes to a dim, yellow corridor whose filthy walls were covered in bloody animal claw marks.

Su Bai used Black Umbrella’s left eye to see the hidden, bloodstained truth of Happiness Residential Complex and found the residents’ doors transformed into gravestones. He returned to Room 402 to investigate his theory about the cats, where he discovered that all the meowing came from the aunt’s body.

• Su Bai examined the fourth-floor corridor through Black Umbrella’s left eye and saw bloodstains, claw marks, and gravestone-like doors.
• Su Bai read the inscription on Room 401’s gravestone, identifying it as the grave of Lin Yongxian, and saw that the aunt’s door bore the words “May they rest here forever.”
• Su Bai recalled the aunt’s comments about starving cats and suspected they were feeding on the neighbors.
• Su Bai returned to Room 402 and saw through his left eye that the stray cats had vanished from the living room.
• Su Bai heard the overlapping meows and realized they were coming from the aunt’s body.

Su Bai confronted the shadow in Room 402 and learned that it had been formed from the memories and feelings of cats abandoned by humans. The shadow called the lost black kitten back to her, but Su Bai held it close and refused to give it up.

• Su Bai returned to Room 402 with the black kitten and noticed that a human eye bobbed in the teapot while the bread in the paper bag had become old meat.
• Su Bai questioned his aunt about the cats, and the shadow confirmed that they kept eating but never stopped feeling hungry.
• The shadow recovered her memories and explained that the cats had died after being abandoned, while their shared ashes and feelings had given rise to her.
• The shadow recalled that the black kitten had only recently arrived at the cemetery after losing its way home and beckoned it back to her.
• Su Bai stepped toward the long-handled umbrella and held the kitten close rather than returning it to the shadow.

Su Bai absorbed the writhing shadow and the dead cats in Room 402, then left with Happy, the little black cat. As he wondered why Happy had remained different from the other cats, an “Ode to Joy” from beyond the hallway window signaled an emergency gathering of Room 204's temporary team.

• Su Bai concluded that the cats in the shadow had eaten the ghostly residents of Rooms 403, 404, 405, and 406 while searching for food.
• The shadow asked Su Bai to kill her and the cats together so they would no longer suffer.
• Su Bai touched the shadow with his brand, absorbing her and the cats into the Blood-Red Bead Bracelet.
• Su Bai restored the puzzle's power to Black Umbrella and left Room 402 carrying Happy.
• Su Bai heard “Ode to Joy,” the signal for an emergency gathering of Room 204's temporary team.

Su Bai investigated the figures gathering beneath the Red Moon and sought to learn why Lin Yongxian had stayed in Room 401. After putting Lin Yongxian to sleep, he headed toward Building Two to inspect a group of players there.

• Su Bai had the black cat turn into a cord around his wrist and saw more than a hundred rigid figures gathering in the residential complex’s landscaped area beneath the Red Moon.
• Su Bai noticed what appeared to be a team of players hiding in Building Two’s lobby and decided to investigate them before joining the others.
• Su Bai knocked on Room 401 and questioned Lin Yongxian, who was confused and said he wanted to sleep in a long, rectangular box.
• Su Bai used Black Umbrella’s power to put Lin Yongxian into eternal sleep, causing him to dissolve into black mist.
• Su Bai declined Black Umbrella’s offer of a new outfit and went toward Building Two, intending to appear harmless to the players.

Su Bai left Room 401 and remained disguised as a dark-skinned student as he entered Building Two, where he overheard Lan Xingchen arguing with Qiu Man and Qiu Lei. Lan Xingchen planned to reach Building One to help the players signaling from its third floor, while the sisters feared leaving the lobby; Su Bai listened nearby without revealing himself.

• Su Bai decided not to return to the Mist Shop and kept his dark-skinned student disguise as he left Room 401.
• Su Bai walked toward the elevator on the eerily quiet fourth floor, with the little black cat transformed into a cord around his wrist.
• Lan Xingchen told Qiu Man and Qiu Lei to return to Room 101 or go to Room 303 while he tried to reach the players signaling from Building One.
• Qiu Man questioned Lan Xingchen's decision to risk himself for strangers, while Qiu Lei warned that she had heard coughing in Room 101.
• Su Bai entered Building Two carrying a black umbrella and silently eavesdropped on Lan Xingchen and the sisters.

Su Bai joined Lan Xingchen and the Qiu sisters as they prepared to cross to Building 1, where someone had signaled for help. Qiu Man confronted Lan Xingchen about his insistence on saving people, and he said he was a sinner trying to atone for his sins.

• Su Bai approached Lan Xingchen, Qiu Man, and Qiu Lei, warning them that a coughing ghost might be hiding in the building.
• Lan Xingchen gave Qiu Man the key to his supposedly safe room in Building Two and said he would go to Building 1 to investigate a distress signal.
• Qiu Man and Qiu Lei followed Lan Xingchen, and Su Bai joined them, arguing that staying in the building could be more dangerous.
• Lan Xingchen saw through Qiu Man's emotional display and said she had been making a calculated choice to go with him.
• Qiu Man asked why Lan Xingchen insisted on saving people, and he replied that he was a sinner trying to atone for his sins.

Lan Xingchen led Qiu Man, Qiu Lei, and Su Bai from Building Two toward Building 1 while Su Bai considered the game’s score and Lan Xingchen’s motives. They reached the lobby, but the Hanged Ghost appeared as a shadow and began unlocking the door for the pursuing Butcher Ghost.

• Lan Xingchen agreed to help the Qiu sisters and Su Bai, then said he would save anyone who asked, even if it cost him his life.
• Su Bai saw the score had changed to 95:100 and reasoned that ghosts killed by other ghosts did not count as lost points.
• Lan Xingchen led the group quietly along the wall toward Building 1 as ghosts watched them beneath the Red Moon.
• The Butcher Ghost followed the group, and Lan Xingchen led them into Building 1 before locking the glass door.
• Su Bai spotted the Hanged Ghost’s shadow on the lobby wall as it reached for the lock to let the Butcher Ghost inside.