Chapter Summaries

Luwan explained how he used the Deep-Sea Revenants to collect and redistribute dew, then revealed that his son had founded the Black Sun Cult and gone mad. Chu Mu declined to expose Luwan and left the Governor’s Mansion, hearing the young man’s delirious prophecy as he departed.

• Luwan told Chu Mu that the Governor’s Mansion secretly collected dew through the Deep-Sea Revenants and used fear to prevent theft while distributing water fairly.
• Luwan took Chu Mu to see his bound son, who had lost his eyes and once helped his father before falling under the Black Sun’s influence.
• Luwan explained that his son had secretly built the Black Sun Cult, and that Luwan had sent its believers away by ship while sparing his own child.
• Luwan asked Chu Mu whether he would reveal the truth, but Chu Mu said he had no right to condemn him or involve himself in local politics.
• Chu Mu left the Governor’s Mansion after hearing Luwan’s son mutter about the Black Sun, a Divine Son, and betrayal.

Chu Mu returned to the spaceship with the truth about Luwan’s actions, then learned more about Garbage City from Arlan. Arlan led Chu Mu, Kafka, and Silver Wolf to a dealer who sold salvaged wreckage and illegally resold freshwater, leaving them to investigate a suspicious but well-connected merchant.

• Chu Mu told Kafka and Silver Wolf that Luwan had caused the events to save people, while keeping Luwan’s son a secret.
• Arlan visited the spaceship, and Chu Mu told him they had encountered undead at the Governor’s Mansion and received shelter from Luwan.
• Arlan explained how Luwan and his scholar father had helped turn a refugee settlement into Garbage City, whose crowded growth left it with a maze of narrow roads.
• Arlan offered to take Chu Mu and the others to a shop that bought salvaged wreckage, and Silver Wolf joined to help find parts for the spaceship.
• Arlan led the group through the city’s alleys and revealed that the shop owner illegally resold freshwater, monopolized salvaged wreckage, and evaded the Governor’s Mansion through powerful connections.

Chu Mu reunited with Sampo at a water shop on the Corporation’s Spaceport, where Sampo explained how he had been stranded there four years earlier. Sampo told Chu Mu how the Underworld had changed since its passage was sealed, leaving Chu Mu with news of Natasha, Seele, and the people they had left behind.

• Chu Mu arrived at Sampo’s shop, and Sampo broke a jar and rushed to greet him as “Big Bro.”
• Sampo said he had been transported to the Corporation’s Spaceport by a damaged device he found in the Great Dump, then beaten and exiled there.
• Silver Wolf questioned Sampo’s account, while Chu Mu and Kafka offered a possible explanation; Kafka left with Silver Wolf and Arlan so Chu Mu and Sampo could talk.
• Sampo described how Wildfire, led by Oleg, and Svarog’s robot settlement had risen to power in the Underworld after it was sealed off.
• Sampo told Chu Mu that Natasha kept her clinic open with medicinal herbs, Seele had joined Wildfire and received a scythe from him, and he still helped Natasha obtain medicine.

Chu Mu learned that the Old Director had died after keeping the Orphanage open for him, and he quietly mourned the woman who had welcomed him as a child. Afterward, he and Sampo arranged to gather spaceship wreckage, and Kafka agreed to let Sampo join them off-planet.

• Sampo told Chu Mu that the Old Director had died after an injury and illness, and that Big Sis had moved the Clinic into the Orphanage to honor her last wish of keeping a home for Chu Mu.
• Chu Mu remembered the Old Director’s kindness and the day she had welcomed him into the Orphanage.
• When Kafka and Silver Wolf returned, Chu Mu told them he had agreed with Sampo to collect nearby spaceship wreckage for useful parts.
• Sampo admitted that he wanted the wreckage to assemble a spaceship and asked to leave the planet with them, while Silver Wolf warned that he seemed dangerous.
• Kafka accepted Sampo’s proposal and asked him to gather the parts as soon as possible.

After Kafka and Silver Wolf questioned whether they should abandon Sampo, Chu Mu insisted they honor their contract, though he kept his suspicions about Sampo to himself. Kafka then comforted Chu Mu when he asked where people went after death, and he reflected that he had found a family.

• Kafka, Silver Wolf, and Chu Mu returned to their ship after settling their partnership with Sampo, while Arlan stayed behind to watch the shop.
• Kafka and Silver Wolf discussed Sampo's suspicious arrival and proposed leaving him behind, but Chu Mu said they should honor their contract.
• Chu Mu suspected Sampo was connected to Aha but chose to keep working with him, and Silver Wolf agreed to watch him rather than use a heavy machine gun.
• Kafka noticed Chu Mu was troubled and asked what was wrong.
• Chu Mu asked where people went after death, and Kafka comforted him by explaining that memories kept loved ones close.
• Chu Mu hugged Kafka and thought that he had a family now.

Luwan’s effort to control the spacecraft wreckage failed as Sampo secretly bought it all for his partnership with Chu Mu. While inspecting Sampo’s haul, Silver Wolf found an escape pod and explained how its hibernation and key-based opening worked, leaving Chu Mu wondering whether his own egg-shaped pod had truly been an escape pod.

• Luwan discovered that Sampo had outbid the Governor’s Mansion and bought all the spacecraft wreckage from the salvagers.
• Chu Mu and Silver Wolf visited Sampo’s ship to inspect his collected wreckage while Kafka stayed aboard their spacecraft.
• Silver Wolf identified a five-meter-tall conical piece of wreckage as an escape pod, and Sampo worried that someone inside might have starved.
• Chu Mu asked Silver Wolf about escape pod designs and reflected on his own past as a researcher found inside an egg-shaped pod.
• Silver Wolf explained that the pod contained a hibernation device and could only be opened by someone carrying its key.

Chu Mu and Silver Wolf opened the escape pod and found Asta, a wealthy young girl from a prominent Interastral Peace Corporation family. After bringing her back to the ship, Kafka learned about Asta and urged Chu Mu to win her over, leaving him reluctant to get involved.

• Chu Mu proposed using the escape pod's important occupant as bait, and Silver Wolf cracked its access key.
• Silver Wolf sent Sampo to inspect the opened pod, where Asta stunned him with a stun gun.
• Chu Mu persuaded Asta to leave the pod, and Silver Wolf carried her back to the ship while Sampo remained unconscious.
• Kafka befriended Asta and learned about her family, wealth, and Corporation connections.
• Kafka asked Chu Mu to use his sincerity to win Asta over, but he said they had nothing in common and asked her not to make him do it.

Chu Mu rejected Asta’s attempts to bridge the gap between their different upbringings, while Asta agreed to help Kafka’s crew leave the planet if they could not repair their ship. Arlan then reported that Sampo had been arrested and the ship impounded, prompting Kafka to go investigate.

• Chu Mu told Kafka that he and Asta came from different worlds and stopped trying to befriend her.
• Asta agreed to take Kafka and the others off the planet if they could not repair their ship, and signed a contract.
• Asta apologized to Chu Mu for shocking Sampo, but Chu Mu told her she would eventually return to her own world.
• Arlan arrived and reported that Sampo had been arrested and the ship impounded.
• Chu Mu explained that Sampo had been stunned by an electric shock, and Kafka went to investigate while Silver Wolf stayed behind.

Chu Mu and Luwan agreed to cooperate on salvaging spaceship wrecks, signing a contract that Luwan hoped would help revive Deep Blue Star's civilization. Outside the Governor's Mansion, Chu Mu noticed Sampo's apparent memory loss and watched Asta struggle to understand why her repeated apologies bothered him.

• Chu Mu and Luwan agreed that Chu Mu's group would take wreckage needed to repair their ship while Luwan's salvage fleet delivered the rest to Sampo.
• Kafka signed the contract as Chu Mu's guardian, and Luwan celebrated their agreement as a possible starting point for Deep Blue Star's revival.
• Chu Mu privately worried that the planet might be swallowed by a black hole within a year, but wished Luwan and his civilization success.
• Sampo told Chu Mu he could not remember meeting Asta or how he had reached the Governor's Mansion, prompting Chu Mu to wonder whether Sampo's memory loss was genuine or an act.
• Asta thanked Chu Mu for helping her, and Chu Mu reflected that her upbringing had made her repeated apologies seem insincere to people with different experiences.

Chu Mu and Asta watched Deep Blue Star’s total eclipse as Asta described her failed efforts to help the natives and Chu Mu condemned the IPC’s restrictions. When the Red Sun vanished, Deep-Sea Revenants appeared, while Luwan’s Eyeless Youth declared that the Divine Kingdom had descended.

• Asta told Chu Mu that the IPC had blocked her plans to provide Deep Blue Star with desalination equipment, power plants, and an information network.
• Chu Mu argued that the IPC’s charity was hypocritical because it restricted the natives’ civilization, and Asta fell silent.
• Asta watched the Black Sun cover the Red Sun, reaching totality as the land grew dark.
• A harbor whistle sounded, and people cried out that the Deep-Sea Revenants had arrived; Asta announced that the Red Sun was gone.
• Before the eclipse, Luwan visited his Eyeless Youth, who suddenly declared that the Divine Kingdom had descended and that he was being called to the Land of Bones.

A giant sea serpent carrying a rusted ship filled with undead cultists attacked Garbage City, and the cultists abducted Luwan’s son. Chu Mu, Silver Wolf, and Asta confronted the undead while Kafka tried to communicate with the serpent.

• Sampo spotted a giant sea serpent and a rusted ship packed with eyeless Black Sun Cultists approaching the harbor as the Moment of the Eclipse arrived.
• The serpent split Garbage City apart and carried the cultists to the Governor’s Mansion, where they forced their way inside to seize Luwan’s son.
• Luwan tried to hold back the cultists, but they took his son, who briefly begged his father to save him before being carried away.
• Luwan attacked the undead with a curved sword, but their worm-filled bodies kept moving even after being cut apart.
• Silver Wolf fired her heavy machine gun at the undead while Chu Mu and Asta watched, and Chu Mu realized the old report of an undead ship beneath the sea had been true.
• Silver Wolf said Kafka was trying to communicate with the serpent and learn why the cultists were pretending to be an Undead Calamity.

Silver Wolf, Kafka, Chu Mu, and Asta investigated the Swarm aboard the great ship, and Chu Mu connected the creature’s words to his Path of the Eyeless and Deep Blue Star. With Garbage City in chaos beneath the Black Sun, the group decided to travel to Skorint.

• Silver Wolf’s gunfire shredded the Black Sun Cultists, but the worms inside them formed an enormous Worm Ball.
• Kafka failed to control the giant serpent and reported that something aboard the ship had taken over its mind; she had heard it repeat “Unseeing, bones, Crown.”
• Chu Mu connected those words to his Path of the Eyeless, the Crown, and Skorint, and suspected that Aha had guided him to Deep Blue Star to obstruct his Path.
• Kafka noted that Garbage City had fallen into disorder and that the group needed to leave, while Silver Wolf joked that trouble proved they were protagonists.
• Asta proposed traveling to Skorint, and Chu Mu calculated that the journey would take about a month by Sampo’s Steamship.
• Kafka agreed they should leave as soon as possible, since the Black Sun’s dim light and spreading despair threatened the settlements.

Chu Mu learned that Luwan had abandoned his post as Governor to search for his son, and the ship departed the doomed Garbage City for Skorint. As Chu Mu connected the Black Sun Cult’s rituals to his own coronation and blindness, he suspected its followers had been imitating his past, and continued toward the capital to uncover the truth.

• Luwan told Chu Mu he was leaving to find his child, and Chu Mu let him board Sampo’s ship.
• Sampo found Chu Mu after Luwan had gone and learned that the former Governor had quit; the ship then sailed away from Garbage City.
• Chu Mu connected Luwan’s son’s vision and the Black Sun Cult’s practices to his own coronation, blindness, and Path, and suspected the cult had imitated his past.
• Chu Mu continued toward Skorint, where he expected the mystery of the coronation to become clear.
• The chapter described the steamship’s fuel and boiler arrangements, noting that the Interastral Peace Corporation had not surveyed the planet’s deep-sea resources.

As the red sun vanished and Deep Blue Star turned cold, Chu Mu learned from Luwan how the City of Bones was formed and uncovered the mystery surrounding the planet’s ancestors. Asta then proposed that the red sun had collapsed into a black hole rather than been devoured by the Black Sun.

• After Luwan fell ill from the sudden cold, Chu Mu visited him and asked why Skorint was called the City of Bones.
• Luwan explained that the Giant Whale Leader had created Deep Blue Star’s only land from his bones, and that the Interastral Peace Corporation later occupied it and built Skorint over buried ruins.
• Luwan told Chu Mu that the planet’s ancestors had been blind, and that his child had tried to prove this before becoming blind as well.
• After leaving Luwan’s cabin, Chu Mu met Asta, who said the red sun had not disappeared but had collapsed into a black hole.

Chu Mu and Asta discussed the vanished Red Sun and concluded that Skorint might hold the answers, while Chu Mu saw the sun drawing closer inside his fabricated space. As the Bosang traveled through increasingly desperate settlements, Luwan’s old junior helped its crew and sent the ship on with a new propulsion system.

• Asta theorized that the Red Sun still existed but could no longer be observed, and Chu Mu said they would seek the truth at Skorint.
• Chu Mu entered his fabricated space and saw the crimson sun closer than before, strengthening his suspicion that it was the vanished Red Sun.
• The Bosang passed the Nation of a Thousand Ships as residents fled toward larger city-states, then rescued one survivor from a nearby settlement devastated by internal strife.
• The Bosang found a third settlement under lockdown and saw smoke, while its boiler problems and worsening weather left the crew increasingly worried.
• The Bosang reached a settlement of fifty thousand people, where its female governor learned that Luwan might be dead and ordered a new propulsion system for the ship.
• Luwan hid from his old junior as the Bosang departed, remembering their shared years as scholars and their promise to meet again after civilization had been revived.

The Bosang reached an abandoned city-state where Chu Mu and the crew discovered a captive Giant Whale calf, then released it. As the calf followed their ship toward Skorint, Luwan explained Deep Blue’s enduring desire to learn why the Giant Whales betrayed them and revealed that his illness was worsening.

• The Bosang encountered an empty city-state, and Kafka found traces showing that the worms had devoured its residents and were following the giant serpent’s route toward Skorint.
• Chu Mu heard something alive and led Kafka to a netted pool, where they found a fifty-meter-long Giant Whale calf that the crew identified as a young whale.
• After the crew gathered supplies, they released the calf, but it stayed beside the Bosang instead of returning to the deep sea.
• Luwan told Chu Mu that Deep Blue’s people had risked everything to summon a Giant Whale because they wanted to know why the whales had betrayed them after Deep Blue fought to protect them.
• Luwan coughed blood and asked how long remained until Skorint; Chu Mu said seven days, and Luwan closed his eyes and said he would wait.

The Bosang pressed through deserted settlements and worsening cold toward Skorint, while Captain Sampo stopped a crew mutiny. After entering the lightless waters around the capital, Asta worried about her missing mother, and the ship finally sighted Skorint, the City of Bones.

• The Bosang passed a string of empty settlements as the Swarm's apparent path and the encroaching black clouds heightened the crew's fear.
• A sailor organized a mutiny against Captain Sampo, but Sampo caught him and dispersed the plot, leaving the ringleader swearing loyalty.
• The Bosang entered the clouds and company waters, where falling temperatures, drift ice, and Spaceport wreckage made navigation difficult.
• Asta worried about her mother, who had been at the collapsed Spaceport, while Silver Wolf lamented the loss of internet access.
• After days in the dark and freezing sea without seeing company patrols, the Bosang spotted land: Skorint, the City of Bones.

The Bosang reached Skorint, a ruined city under Corporation control, while Asta and Silver Wolf went to secure passes. Luwan gave Chu Mu his heirloom, the Key of Truth, and urged him to trust his own judgment rather than let rules dictate his choices.

• The Bosang entered Skorint, where the collapsed Space Elevator had flooded and destroyed much of the city.
• Asta went to meet the governor for crew passes, and Kafka sent Silver Wolf to accompany her while keeping watch.
• Luwan asked Chu Mu whether they had arrived, then refused to worry about the cost of treatment despite his illness.
• Luwan gave Chu Mu the Key of Truth, an heirloom said to reveal the secrets of their civilization.
• Luwan confessed that his pursuit of rationality had led him to abandon too much and urged Chu Mu to live by his own choices.

With Skorint under lockdown, Asta secured medical care for the Bosang crew, but Chu Mu learned that his blindness made artificial eyes dangerously temporary. He put off discussing his own condition to ask about Luwan, the space battle, and Asta’s mother, then voiced his wholehearted support for Asta’s path.

• Asta returned without a pass and arranged medical care and supplies for the Bosang crew while Skorint remained locked down.
• A doctor warned Kafka and Silver Wolf that Chu Mu’s Xianzhou condition meant artificial eyes would give him only ten painful days of sight and could cause further degeneration.
• Chu Mu told Kafka he wanted to see her and his friends again, but agreed to wait before considering artificial eyes.
• Asta told Chu Mu that Luwan was unwell, mercenaries were suspected of betraying the Company, and her mother’s fate remained unknown.
• Chu Mu apologized to Asta and wholeheartedly supported her path, prompting Asta to support him in turn.

After Luwan fell into a coma, Chu Mu joined Silver Wolf in hacking Skorint’s network and sneaking into a server room to find an offline copy of a report about a mercenary rebellion. They escaped when hackers triggered the servers’ self-destruct systems, as unrest in Skorint escalated into a wider rebellion.

• Chu Mu visited Luwan in the hospital cabin and left troubled by the old man's deteriorating condition.
• Silver Wolf taught Chu Mu basic hacking, then found an encrypted report about the Starport mercenary rebellion and proposed retrieving its offline original.
• Silver Wolf teleported with Chu Mu into a tower server room, where he identified a likely offline server by listening for its quieter hum.
• Silver Wolf began copying the server's data, but other hackers overloaded the network and triggered the servers' self-destruct mechanism, forcing them to flee.
• In Skorint, civilians who had lost hope of rescue began a larger rebellion.