Chapter Summaries

Meng Jihe experienced layered hallucinations in which Qin Yiguan was killed and he nearly escaped, but the men in black revealed they had manipulated his perceptions with CPH4 and programmed lights. They intended to use the false memories to locate 001, leaving Meng Jihe trapped and horrified.

• In Meng Jihe’s hallucination, Qin Yiguan killed two guards with black pythons before a burly man used an unstoppable stone and scattered projectiles to fatally wound him.
• Meng Jihe heard that the leader had been killed and realized the prison scene had changed, then took the chance to escape.
• Meng Jihe found his smart device, deleted Qin Yiguan’s contact and Source Matter transfer records, and resolved not to endanger him.
• Applause revealed that Meng Jihe was still immersed in the green liquid, and one of the men in black held his device.
• The men in black explained that CPH4 and specially programmed lights had created two layers of hallucination to make Meng Jihe believe he had escaped and to help them find 001.

Meng Jihe died after a black-clad man pushed his brain and body beyond their limits, while Qin Yiguan reached the room where he had been held and discovered his remains arranged as a living chemical bond diagram. Qin Yiguan recognized Boss Meng’s face in the horrific display.

• A man in black told Meng Jihe that his body was failing and that he had less than twenty seconds to live.
• The Nutrient Pod announced that Meng Jihe’s brain had reached its limit, and screams sounded from inside the cell before it fell silent.
• Rong Qian told Qin Yiguan that Boss Meng was being held at the Metaverse Experimental Zone and warned that he might not be alive.
• Qin Yiguan found two Information Management Bureau members cut into geometric pieces and saw no sign of Meng Jihe in the room.
• Rong Qian pulled down a curtain to reveal Meng Jihe’s organs, brain, and facial features arranged across the wall as a living chemical bond diagram.

Qin Yiguan discovered that Meng Jihe had been transformed into a living geometric structure and injected himself with the remaining black-market drug to test its effects. He then experienced abrupt shifts between scenes and woke at 8:00 a.m. in the Dog Gang, unsure where the missing time had gone.

• Qin Yiguan found Meng Jihe alive but transformed into a geometric structure covering a wall, and realized Meng's ability might be involved.
• Qin Yiguan found a syringe of the blue drug, injected its remaining trace, and briefly saw changes in his consciousness matrix.
• Rong Qian identified the dead men in black as members of the Equipment Bureau and suspected the Praise Gene Company had made the drug.
• Qin Yiguan lost consciousness and later found himself in the Geometry Design Building with Meng's structure brought back, but he could not remember traveling there.
• Qin Yiguan declared he would kill those responsible and demanded that Meng be restored, then abruptly found himself in the Dog Gang's hall with Chen Fazheng.
• Qin Yiguan realized his alarm had gone off at 8:00 a.m. and wondered where the day's missing time had gone.

Qin Yiguan learned that Boss Meng had less than twelve hours to live and went to Dr. House for an unexpected consultation. At the clinic, he discovered that Dr. House could easily destroy combat robots, while Dr. House hinted that he knew more about Qin Yiguan’s condition than he let on.

• Qin Yiguan woke in his dark bedroom, avoided a lethal trap set by Black Calamity, and tried to make sense of his fragmented memories of the Metaverse.
• Rong Qian messaged Qin Yiguan that doctors had given Boss Meng less than twelve hours to live.
• Dr. House summoned Qin Yiguan for an impromptu consultation, and Qin Yiguan headed to the clinic with questions of his own.
• Qin Yiguan passed residents discussing Rust City girls hired to serve Half-Humans in the Central District.
• At Dr. House’s clinic, Qin Yiguan found two combat robots smashed apart and realized Dr. House was exceptionally strong.
• Dr. House offered Qin Yiguan candy and implied that he knew more about Qin Yiguan’s condition than Qin Yiguan did.

Qin Yiguan recounted his experiences in the Experimental Zone to Dr. House, who became fascinated by how his mental conditions shaped his abilities in the metaverse. Dr. House speculated that the metaverse might be a battlefield against alien digital life and suggested Qin Yiguan could exist in both reality and the virtual world, then revealed that he had spoken with another of Qin Yiguan’s personalities: the Boundless One.

• Dr. House showed Qin Yiguan a nine linked rings puzzle and asked him to describe what happened in the Experimental Zone.
• Qin Yiguan told Dr. House about his unusual metaverse entry, abilities, and the Research Society members he had killed.
• Dr. House praised Qin Yiguan’s abilities, said he would create a private research project, and offered to help him develop them.
• Dr. House speculated that advanced alien civilizations might be digital life-forms and that the metaverse could become a battlefield for defending Earth.
• Dr. House suggested Qin Yiguan might be a digital life-form connected to both reality and the virtual world, then revealed that another personality called the Boundless One had spoken with him.

Qin Yiguan described his memory gaps in the Experimental Zone, and Dr. House identified them as Time Lag Syndrome, sharing the story of Song Miao, the woman he loved who vanished while running ahead of time. Dr. House asked Yiguan to tell Song Miao he had been waiting for her if he ever met her in the river of time.

• You Minglan entered and teased Dr. House, while Yiguan explained that his Box Syndrome let him gain infinite combat power in his box world when he knew enough.
• Yiguan told Dr. House that he had flickered between places in the Experimental Zone and could not remember what happened during the gaps.
• Dr. House identified Yiguan's condition as Time Lag Syndrome and explained that it caused periods of lost memory while the person continued acting normally.
• Dr. House recounted how Song Miao's Time Lag Syndrome made her experience time at extreme speeds until she disappeared while running ahead of time.
• Dr. House crushed the nine-linked rings and asked Yiguan to tell Song Miao that he had been waiting for her if Yiguan met her in the river of time.

Qin Yiguan took Serotonin to enter the Metaverse and save Boss Meng, but learned that a blue drug had triggered his hidden Time Lag Syndrome. He realized the condition had made him run at fifteen times the speed of sound and caused him to move between distant locations without remembering it.

• Qin Yiguan returned to his apartment, learned from Taotie Clam that Jiu Zhengxuan had reportedly died in the Experimental Zone, and dismissed the news because he believed Jiu Zhengxuan might have survived.
• Unable to sleep as Boss Meng’s deadline approached, Qin Yiguan swallowed the Serotonin pill Dr. House had prescribed and finally fell asleep.
• Qin Yiguan entered the Experimental Zone with seven and a half hours left to save Boss Meng and received a video from Baixiaosheng showing him running six point twelve kilometers in 1.2 seconds.
• Qin Yiguan discovered the video had been recorded five hours earlier and realized he had unknowingly run from the Geometry Design Tower to the Dog Gang, a distance of nine thousand kilometers.
• Remembering Dr. House’s account of Song Miao’s Time Lag Syndrome, Qin Yiguan concluded that the blue drug had activated the condition twice, causing his unexplained movements.

Qin Yiguan injected Jingye Meinan’s Black Drug and activated his Time Lag Syndrome, letting him move while the world seemed frozen. He raced to Zanyin Group, where Chen Mudou had just replied to an old request for help investigating the company.

• Qin Yiguan demanded Black Drug from Chen Fazheng, then caught Jingye Meinan preparing to inject a dose he had obtained from a woman.
• Qin Yiguan scolded Jingye Meinan about the drug, seized the syringe, and injected a third of it himself.
• Qin Yiguan’s Time Lag Syndrome reached a temporary development level of 10%, and he discovered he could control it as the world slowed around him.
• Qin Yiguan ran through the frozen Dog Gang hall, leaving Jingye Meinan’s lunge empty-handed and his floral shirt shredded.
• Chen Mudou noticed Qin Yiguan’s six-hour-old request to investigate Zanyin Group and replied, then Qin Yiguan appeared in her office and told her he could handle the matter himself.

Qin Yiguan investigated Zanyin Group’s basement and discovered that its apparently beneficial children’s medication concealed a hallucinatory effect and a hidden ward full of abnormal patients. He abducted Luo Sijie and demanded an explanation, with Boss Meng’s life running out.

• Qin Yiguan searched Zanyin Group’s 400 floors and then inspected the production lines on the first basement level, finding that the blue drug appeared to boost children’s immunity while syncing their real and virtual bodies.
• Qin Yiguan noticed the drug’s packaging used Chen Mudou’s rejected bear-playing-baseball design, then heard Dr. House’s implanted Consciousness Alarm Bell warn him that the drug could cause hallucinations.
• Qin Yiguan saw the basement transform into a hidden medical ward filled with severely abnormal patients and realized Zanyin was concealing something.
• Luo Sijie ordered Luo Ming to keep the first basement level out of every report, then vanished from his office.
• Qin Yiguan held Luo Sijie by the collar on the first basement level and demanded an explanation for the patients.

Qin Yiguan confronted Luo Sijie in the Zanyin Group’s basement, where Luo explained that he was treating people whose physical disabilities had left them unable to function normally in the Metaverse. Qin then recognized an unconscious burn victim in a sterile chamber as Jiu Zhengxuan and learned that Luo expected Praise Gene’s technology to restore him.

• Qin Yiguan questioned Luo Sijie about his connection to the Metaverse Government, while Luo calmed the strange patients surrounding them.
• Luo Sijie explained that the patients’ physical disabilities had affected their brains, leaving them looking or sounding monstrous in the Metaverse.
• Luo Sijie said he had gathered the patients over five years to treat them, despite the Metaverse Government’s attempts to shut down his work.
• Qin Yiguan connected Luo Sijie’s explanation to Xiao Ning’s experience of the Metaverse and considered whether Luo was telling the truth.
• Luo Sijie told Qin Yiguan that a severely burned man in a glass chamber had been injured in the Research Society’s flying fortress crash.
• Qin Yiguan recognized the unconscious man as Jiu Zhengxuan, and Luo Sijie reassured him that Praise Gene’s technology could restore him.

Qin Yiguan learned that Boss Meng’s chemical-bond transformation might be caused by a CPH4 overdose, and Luo Sijie needed time and knowledge of the drug’s manufacture to reverse it. A new assassination mission targeting the Zanyin Group’s chief executive led Qin Yiguan to suspect the missions were designed to force decent people into evil acts.

• Luo Sijie explained that his nephew Luo Canlie’s missing corpus callosum left his brain hemispheres unable to coordinate, and Luo Canlie tried to defend his uncle from Qin Yiguan.
• Luo Sijie said he would continue his work and claimed the top leader of the B5 and B6 Sectors was helping him.
• Qin Yiguan showed Luo Sijie an image of Boss Meng, and Luo Sijie identified the chemical-bond pattern as CPH4 and said an overdose had likely caused the transformation.
• Luo Sijie explained that CPH4 was a brain-enhancing substance and said criminals harvested it from three-month-old fetuses, while Qin Yiguan realized Boss Meng had only five hours and thirty minutes left.
• Chen Fazheng messaged Qin Yiguan about a two-million assassination offer targeting the Zanyin Group’s chief executive, and Qin Yiguan questioned why recent missions forced decent people into evil acts.

Qin Yiguan followed the trail of CPH4 to a warehouse in the True City of the World, where a drug-induced hallucination made him believe women were being tortured for the substance. After recognizing the scene as a virtual endurance contest, he realized the real production operation might be taking Rust City girls to Central City.

• Qin Yiguan injected more of Jingye Meinan's drug to activate Time Lag Syndrome and rushed after the Dog Gang underlings.
• He searched the True City of the World and found a warehouse that appeared to hold pregnant women being tortured to extract CPH4.
• The sound of a ring broke the hallucination, revealing a ten-thousand-person endurance contest in the warehouse.
• Qin Yiguan realized virtual bodies could not produce CPH4 and recalled mechanical puppets taking Rust City's girls to Central City.
• Qin Yiguan concluded that the organization was using Castoff girls from Rust City to produce CPH4 and grew furious.

Qin Yiguan returned to reality and raced to save Xiao Ning, only to find mechanical puppets abducting her and overwhelm him. As he lay battered, a mysterious black figure appeared and introduced itself as Number Four, the Boundless One.

• Rong Qian warned Qin Yiguan that President Meng was deteriorating, and Qin Yiguan returned to his real body determined to save him.
• Qin Yiguan learned that mechanical puppets had taken hundreds of girls and found Xiao Ning's home empty, with her wheelchair and crushed energy block left behind.
• Qin Yiguan heard Xiao Ning calling for help, found three puppet robots dragging her away, and attacked them.
• The puppets badly injured Qin Yiguan as he tried to protect Xiao Ning, who reached out and called him her brother.
• A black figure appeared holding Xiao Ning's hand, approached Qin Yiguan, and introduced itself as Number Four, the Boundless One.

Qin Yiguan imagined the Boundless One granting him immense strength, then realized the battle and Xiao Ning’s death had been a hallucination caused by CPH4. After learning that the mechanical puppets had headed east, he prepared to pursue them.

• Qin Yiguan absorbed the Boundless One’s black light in his vision and gained strength enough to destroy three mechanical puppets.
• Qin Yiguan sent the Boundless One into a puppet, but another puppet fired a steel spike that appeared to pierce Xiao Ning’s heart.
• Qin Yiguan heard the nine-linked-ring puzzle’s third ring come undone and realized he was at Xiao Ning’s home, where she was alive in her wheelchair.
• Qin Yiguan asked Xiao Ning about the mechanical puppets, and she said they had hesitated before leaving and gone east.
• Xiao Ning told Qin Yiguan she had seen black threads controlling the puppets and extending eastward, perhaps a hundred kilometers, and he thanked her for the information.

After realizing that his rush toward the Zanyin Group’s real-world facility had been a CPH4 hallucination, Qin Yiguan connected his vision to Luo Sijie’s secret first basement level. He returned to the Zanyin Group, convinced that Luo Sijie had lied about a real-world base.

• Qin Yiguan ran across the wasteland and saw a pretty girl standing alone, but he warned her and kept going.
• He found a half-finished Zanyin Group building and slipped past its mechanical guards into a basement where unconscious girls were being used to produce CPH4.
• Qin Yiguan heard the fourth iron ring and the apparent real-world facility dissolved into Bilin City in the Metaverse’s Experimental Zone.
• He realized that CPH4 had left him standing outside the building for hours, while his hallucination had simulated a possible real-world facility.
• Qin Yiguan remembered Luo Sijie saying that the first basement level was not group property and that he managed it personally, and concluded that it referred to a secret real-world base.
• Qin Yiguan turned back toward the Zanyin Group, furious that Luo Sijie had deceived him.

Luo Ming shot his uncle Luo Sijie and revealed that he had created the addictive drug CPH4 to make Zanyin Group more powerful. Qin Yiguan arrived and identified himself as a member of the Gang Luo Ming had hired to kill Luo Sijie.

• Luo Ming shot Luo Sijie in the arm and accused him of neglecting Zanyin Group’s future.
• Luo Sijie told Luo Ming he had planned to hand him full control of Zanyin Group the following month.
• Luo Ming admitted he had developed addictive CPH4 as a new product to secure Zanyin’s dominance.
• Luo Ming attacked Xiao Lie, striking his head against a window and leaving him unconscious.
• Luo Ming said he had hired a killer from the Underworld to murder Luo Sijie and planned to frame the Gang.
• Qin Yiguan entered the basement and revealed he belonged to the Gang Luo Ming had hired.

Qin Yiguan learned Luo Ming was behind the Zanyin Building’s CHP4 operation, killed him, and discovered a new enemy had arrived to protect the drug supply. Wu Jing confronted Qin Yiguan in the cockroach-infested basement and warned that people would blame him if CHP4 production stopped.

• Qin Yiguan exposed Luo Ming’s secret CHP4 factory and learned Luo Ming had hired the Gang to kill Luo Sijie and frame them for the crime.
• After confirming that no assassin had taken the job, Qin Yiguan admitted he had killed the person in charge of the Zanyin Group, prompting Luo Ming to shoot at him.
• Qin Yiguan used his syndromes to break Luo Ming’s arm, demand the CHP4 antidote, and crush Luo Ming’s neck despite Luo Sijie’s plea to spare his nephew.
• Cockroaches poured from Luo Ming’s corpse and spread throughout the basement as patients panicked and Luo Sijie writhed with his broken arm.
• Wu Jing, the new director of the Equipment Management Bureau in sector B5, entered amid swarms of insects and accused Qin Yiguan of killing his partner and endangering CHP4 supplies.

Qin Yiguan confronted Wu Jing, a Longevity Society remnant whose Formication enhancement made him perceive hordes of giant insects. After Dr. House dispelled most of the hallucinations and Luo Sijie treated Qin Yiguan’s poisoning, Qin killed Wu Jing over an old grudge involving a Nutrient Pod.

• Qin Yiguan recognized Wu Jing as a Group 60 remnant and heard him explain his Formication condition and claim that no illness-enhanced ability could match his.
• Wu Jing’s hallucinations made giant beetles, scorpions, and a centipede appear to attack Qin Yiguan and threaten the Zanyin building.
• Dr. House removed Wu Jing’s illusion, revealing a real stag beetle, which Qin Yiguan overpowered with his strength enhancement.
• Luo Sijie pulled a poisonous bullet ant off Qin Yiguan and injected him with medicine, easing his symptoms.
• Qin Yiguan impaled Wu Jing with a broken insect pincer over the denial of a Nutrient Pod, and Wu Jing died confused about the accusation.

Luo Sijie discovered that APOE4 could suppress CPH4 and began searching for patients with senile dementia, but Lu Zun killed him before he could make an antidote. Qin Yiguan identified Lu Zun as the leader behind the Longevity Society and accused him of seeking immortality through a 100% Fusion Rate.

• Luo Sijie explained Xiao Lie’s split-brain syndrome and found the northern location of Luo Ming’s drug base and its CPH4 manufacturing process.
• Luo Sijie concluded that APOE4 could suppress CPH4 and sought a patient with senile dementia to help develop an antidote.
• A dark stone pierced Luo Sijie’s chest and killed him as Xiao Lie watched.
• Lu Zun entered the hall, and Qin Yiguan recognized him as the supreme commander of sectors B5 and B6.
• Qin Yiguan accused Lu Zun of using his authority to build the Longevity Society and pursue a 100% Fusion Rate; Lu Zun’s panel showed a Fusion Rate of 96% and the Reality Enhancement Absolute Hit.

Qin Yiguan endured Lu Zun’s deadly attack and saw an elaborate illusion in which Jiang Mingshu rescued him and fought Lu Zun. After the illusion faded, Qin Yiguan connected its clues and identified Xiao Lie, also known as Luo Canlie, as the Brain Dark Zone Awakener behind everything.

• Jiu Zhengxuan escaped the germ isolation chamber and defended his father while Lu Zun attacked Qin Yiguan with a handkerchief and a syringe.
• Qin Yiguan ran from Lu Zun’s Absolute Hit and saw a girl and a Metaverse ranking display before his heart wound forced him to slow down.
• Chen Mudou arrived at Praise Gene’s first basement level, where Qin Yiguan saw an illusion of Jiang Mingshu catching him and battling Lu Zun.
• After Dr. House’s sixth chime, the illusion disappeared, revealing that Luo Sijie was alive and Chen Mudou had truly arrived.
• Qin Yiguan assembled clues from the six illusion layers and accused Xiao Lie, or Luo Canlie, of being the Brain Dark Zone Awakener behind the events.