Chapter Summaries

The narrator discovered a Death Note and used it to kill influencer Liu Mingwei and judge Wang Yaoqing, declaring that he would cleanse a corrupt society. After his killings sparked an online frenzy, an unknown caller challenged him as a “false god,” and the narrator welcomed the game.

• The narrator found a black notebook, met Ryuk, and wrote Liu Mingwei’s name, causing the influencer to die during a livestream.
• The narrator wrote that judge Wang Yaoqing would die of a heart attack at a sauna, and Wang died as predicted three days later.
• The narrator sent the message “Judgment has finally come” from a burner phone, intensifying public speculation and panic.
• An unknown caller reached the narrator on the burner phone and called him a “false god,” and the narrator accepted the challenge.

After an anonymous caller challenged him as a “false god,” the narrator tested the Death Note by forcing property developer Zhang Hongfu to confess and die in public. The caller recognized the staged clues, and the narrator concluded that his bait had drawn the investigator closer.

• The narrator suspected that the caller belonged to an extraordinary investigation and decided to test the Death Note’s rules and the caller’s knowledge.
• The narrator wrote that Zhang Hongfu would paint “I am guilty” on his office window and jump from his company’s headquarters at ten the next morning.
• Zhang Hongfu followed the written instructions and died in front of a crowd, sending the internet into an uproar.
• The anonymous caller praised the spectacle but pointed out its flaws, including Zhang Hongfu’s recently upgraded security system.
• The narrator decided that the flaws had been planted as bait and believed the investigator had taken it.

The narrator chose Qian Hui, a food company quality officer, as bait and used the Death Note to force him to confess to concealing contaminated children’s formula before killing himself in public. An unknown caller revealed knowledge of the narrator’s target list, confirming that someone was watching and warning that the people he had angered could crush him.

• The narrator studied the unknown observer’s clues and decided to target Qian Hui over the company’s contaminated children’s formula.
• The narrator wrote Qian Hui’s name in the Death Note and ordered him to drink the tainted formula, confess the cover-up, and cut open his abdomen.
• Qian Hui carried out the act in the company’s square, publicly naming those involved as horrified bystanders recorded him.
• Videos of Qian Hui’s death spread online and ignited public fury.
• An unknown caller identified the third person on the narrator’s list as Food and Drug Administration deputy director Liu Jianming and warned the narrator to be careful.
• The narrator realized the caller was confirming knowledge of his list and concluded that the bait had drawn a dangerous observer.

After the caller warned him not to target government officials, the narrator chose Zhao Kun as a test case to probe the forces protecting him. Zhao Kun died as arranged, and the caller threatened that a mousetrap would snap the narrator’s neck as their confrontation escalated.

• Ryuk mocked the caller’s warning about Liu Jianming, while the narrator decided not to target the official yet.
• The narrator selected Zhao Kun, a gambling and underground finance boss rumored to be connected to Liu Jianming’s circle, as a test target.
• The narrator wrote Zhao Kun’s death into the Death Note, including a blood-written code name linked to his protector.
• A forum post reported that Zhao Kun had died in a VIP room at Golden Splendor, but the news was quickly suppressed.
• The caller phoned the narrator and warned that his curiosity had gone too far, then threatened him with a mousetrap.

The narrator chose an ordinary, crude death for Li Cui'e to disrupt Ryuk's pursuit and test his reaction. Ryuk quickly recognized the tactic as an attempt to interfere with his tracking, leaving the narrator humiliated and determined to stage a more compelling next act.

• The narrator dismissed Ryuk's warning about Liu Jianming and searched for a target outside the forbidden zone.
• The narrator wrote that Li Cui'e would die in an apparent accident when a falling window struck her on the way to work.
• News reported Li Cui'e's death as an accident, drawing little attention or discussion of the Judge.
• Ryuk called the narrator's performance crude and identified it as an immature attempt to interfere with his tracking frequency.
• After Ryuk suggested the narrator was scared, the narrator resolved to make the next act more impressive.

After Ryuk mocked his previous attempt, the narrator targeted public-interest lawyer Zhou Yixuan, forcing him to confess to corruption and kill himself during a live awards ceremony. The burner-phone caller praised the performance but corrected a deliberately false account detail, revealing access to confidential information and raising the stakes of their game.

• Ryuk laughed at the narrator for being called immature, and the narrator chose Zhou Yixuan as a target to answer the criticism with a more dramatic act.
• The narrator wrote that Zhou would confess to exploiting small businesses and strike himself dead with his trophy during a live awards broadcast.
• At the ceremony, Zhou confessed to embezzlement and collusion before repeatedly hitting his head with the trophy, and the broadcast ended after the information had aired.
• At two in the morning, the burner-phone caller said the first three digits of the Cayman Islands account number were wrong and complimented the performance's dramatic tension.
• The narrator realized he had planted the incorrect account number as bait and that the caller's correction revealed access to the real financial details.

After her anonymous message criticized her account-number mistake as “homework,” the narrator targeted Sun Ming, a corrupt official linked to Zhou Yixuan’s financial network and Judge Wang Yaoqing. Sun Ming sent incriminating files to media outlets and oversight agencies before killing himself, and the narrator’s deliberate email-list error made her hidden mentor reveal that they were inside the organizations handling the evidence.

• The narrator chose Sun Ming, a Development and Reform Commission division chief connected to Wang Yaoqing and Zhou Yixuan, as her next target.
• She wrote that Sun Ming would send encrypted files exposing judicial manipulation and illicit payments before cutting his own throat at three the next afternoon.
• At three, Sun Ming emailed the documents to media outlets, oversight agencies, and the father of Wang Yaoqing’s victim, then killed himself with a paper knife.
• The evidence sparked public outrage and forced the authorities to respond as the narrator watched the fallout with Ryuk.
• An hour later, the mentor called to angrily criticize an email address on the list, and the narrator realized she had deliberately exposed that the mentor was inside the organizations receiving the files.

The narrator used Qian Huifang’s death and a staged display of false property addresses and a bogus safe combination to provoke the hidden mentor who had objected to the evidence being compromised. The mentor called to warn that the narrator’s recklessness would ruin their progress, leaving the narrator convinced that the caller had personally checked the false details.

• Ryuk mocked the mentor’s anger, while the narrator inferred that the hidden forces needed evidence to meet legal standards and were likely inside government agencies.
• The narrator chose Liu Jianming’s wife, Qian Huifang, as a target and wrote her death to expose supposed overseas property addresses and a safe combination.
• Qian Huifang died in a beauty club treatment room, with addresses and numbers written in lipstick across a mirror, fueling public outrage against Liu Jianming.
• After waiting through the day and night, the narrator received a call from the mentor, who said the addresses were wrong and the safe combination was missing a digit.
• The narrator realized the mentor had checked the details and took his warning about ruining their progress as a sign of the hidden fish’s outline.

The narrator chose Zhao Tingting, Liu Jianming’s daughter, as his next target and used the Death Note to make her die publicly overseas. The furious tracker demanded that he stop within twenty-four hours, and the narrator welcomed the threat as a chance to confront his mentor.

• The narrator inferred that the tracker was protecting a controlled purge and decided to disrupt it with a target who could hurt multiple sides.
• He wrote Zhao Tingting’s name in the Death Note, directing her to die by suicide in a university square while publicly accusing her father, Liu Jianming.
• News of Zhao Tingting’s death and her accusation spread rapidly online, drawing international attention to Liu Jianming.
• The tracker called the narrator, demanded that he stop everything within twenty-four hours, and threatened to drag him out himself.
• The narrator smiled and said he would wait for his mentor.

After the electronic voice gave him twenty-four hours to stop, the narrator chose Qian Wei as a domestic target to disguise his continued actions. The voice saw through the ruse and told him the countdown continued, leaving him determined to confront his Mentor when time ran out.

• Ryuk mocked the electronic voice’s threat as the narrator resolved not to stop and planned a domestic killing as a smokescreen.
• The narrator selected Qian Wei, a distant relative of Qian Huifang with ties to Liu Jianming’s network, and wrote that he would die in an apparent air-conditioning-unit accident.
• News reported Qian Wei’s death as an accident while public attention remained focused on Zhao Tingting’s death overseas.
• As the countdown neared its final hour, the electronic voice revealed a concealed payment Qian Wei had received from Qian Huifang and said the narrator’s cooling-off period had been effective.
• The voice told the narrator to keep going because the countdown continued, and the narrator resolved to meet his Mentor when it ended.

The narrator defied his mentor’s warning by targeting Wu Guoqiang, a suspected confidential courier, and arranged for him to reveal a classified code before dying. The code, SRO-7, provoked a furious call that exposed the mentor’s genuine voice and fear, leaving the narrator convinced he had found a weakness.

• Ryuk questioned the mentor’s warning, and the narrator realized the mentor was trying to intimidate him into staying quiet.
• The narrator deduced that Wu Guoqiang might be a secret courier for Liu Jianming’s mysterious boss and wrote a death condition that would make him reveal his recipient unit’s code.
• At two o’clock the next afternoon, Wu Guoqiang lost his voice, suffocated, and traced SRO-7 on his car window before dying.
• The code leaked to a few insiders, and half an hour later the mentor called in a rage, briefly revealing his unaltered voice as he threatened the narrator.
• The narrator concluded that SRO-7 had frightened the mentor and silently celebrated finding a way to make him afraid.

After a call about the SRO-7 code leak exposed the Mentor’s fear, the narrator framed Zhang Zhiyuan as an internal traitor to draw out the Mentor’s response. The Mentor saw through the forged confession but accepted the cleanup, leaving the narrator determined to continue their contest.

• The narrator heard a middle-aged man roar in fear over the exposure of SRO-7 and suspected the voice belonged to the Mentor.
• The narrator chose Zhang Zhiyuan as a scapegoat and wrote a false suicide note blaming him for leaks, corruption, and courier Wu Guoqiang’s murder.
• Zhang Zhiyuan died in his office, and a scheduled email of the fabricated suicide note prompted a lockdown at the municipal police bureau.
• The Mentor called that night, identified the note’s outdated encryption, and said the cleanup had earned a passing grade.
• The narrator realized the Mentor had seen through the deception but accepted it, and vowed that their game had only begun.

After Ryuk judged his previous murder scheme as merely passing, the narrator targeted Li Mingyu and engineered a flawless, publicly witnessed suicide that exposed the prosecutor’s corruption. Ryuk conceded the performance was flawless but accused the narrator of defiling the national emblem, leaving their struggle over the rules unresolved.

• Ryuk mocked the narrator’s passing grade, and the narrator decided to exploit Ryuk’s obsession with rules through an unassailable killing.
• The narrator identified Li Mingyu as a corrupt prosecutor whose wife had received illicit funds connected to Liu Jianming’s case.
• The narrator wrote Li Mingyu’s death to occur at a press conference, where he would confess his crimes and shoot himself with his registered service pistol.
• At the Provincial Procuratorate press conference, Li Mingyu recited the disciplinary regulations, confessed to taking bribes, disclosed the overseas account, and shot himself in front of cameras.
• Ryuk verified that every detail matched the narrator’s instructions and called the performance flawless, but condemned him for defiling the national emblem.

After Ryuk accused the narrator of defiling the national emblem, the narrator targeted Zhou Huaian, a senior official implicated in the corruption surrounding Li Mingyu’s case. Zhou publicly confessed and died under the notebook’s command, but Mentor called to point out a flaw in the details.

• Ryuk laughed at the accusation of defiling the national emblem, while the narrator realized Mentor had become personally hostile.
• The narrator chose Zhou Huaian as the next target and wrote that Zhou would expose his own corruption during a meeting the next morning.
• At the emergency task force meeting, Zhou stabbed his ears with pens while confessing to taking illicit payments and directing Li Mingyu to suppress the investigation.
• News of Zhou’s death spread, and Ryuk watched the narrator in silence with awe rather than mockery.
• Mentor called and said the meeting minutes contained a fluorescent agent phased out three years earlier, then warned the narrator to pay attention to details.

After the fluorescent-agent correction exposed the system’s obsession with details, the narrator chose law professor Zheng Guodong as his next target and forced him to confess publicly before dying. The mentor dismissed the evidence because its cloud password was outdated, and the narrator calmly promised to pay attention next time.

• The narrator laughed at the mentor’s correction about the meeting paper’s fluorescent-agent content and decided to choose a symbolic target whose death would expose corruption.
• The narrator wrote Zheng Guodong’s name in the notebook and prescribed a public confession and cardiac arrest during a lecture at the university auditorium.
• At the lecture, Zheng refuted his own argument, confessed to helping Zhou Huaian’s family launder money, and disclosed evidence details before collapsing and dying.
• The mentor called and said the cloud provider’s upgraded encryption had made the supplied password invalid, then told the narrator to keep up with technological changes.
• The narrator called the mentor pathetic, addressed him as his mentor, and said he would pay attention next time.

After Zheng Guodong’s death unleashed public chaos, the narrator exploited the distraction to target Prophet, a hidden algorithm designer whose life was bound to the Pandora trading system. The narrator’s plan triggered a worldwide market crash and left the mentor unable to cross-check the event, though the mentor acknowledged that technological iteration was effective.

• The narrator concluded that the mentor depended on existing technology and could be outpaced by system updates.
• The narrator chose Prophet, a codename for an algorithm designer whose Pandora system shaped financial markets and public opinion.
• The narrator wrote that Pandora would collapse at the New York Stock Exchange opening, causing synchronized flash crashes and broadcasting a cryptic error message.
• At nine the next morning, seventeen major markets crashed and public information screens displayed “Truth_Is_Too_Expensive_to_Compute.”
• Ryuk watched the market collapse in shock as the narrator received a call from the mentor.
• The mentor admitted that it could not cross-check the event and called iteration effective before the call cut off.

After the Mentor called his previous judgment “effective,” the narrator targeted the Gatekeeper with a supernatural death designed to defy explanation. The Gatekeeper vanished during a thirteen-second collapse of physical laws, and the Mentor’s next call ended in absolute silence, leaving the narrator unsure whether he was still there.

• The narrator chose the Gatekeeper, whose existence was tied to the Gate of the Void, as his next target.
• The narrator wrote a death for the Gatekeeper involving chaotic physical constants during a lunar eclipse and a cryptic final inscription.
• At the eclipse’s peak, the observatory’s physical laws collapsed for thirteen seconds, and the Gatekeeper disappeared, leaving the inscription behind.
• Photos of the inscription and the strange event spread, while Ryuk withdrew into the shadows and avoided looking at the narrator.
• At dawn, the narrator answered a distorted call from the Mentor, heard a faint breath after three minutes of silence, and then lost the connection.

After the Gatekeeper vanished from their connection, the narrator chose cybersecurity expert Shao Guoping as the next target and used the Death Note to expose his crimes and kill him during a national emergency drill. About an hour later, an encrypted packet marked [SRO-7] appeared briefly online, signaling that the vanished presence had returned.

• The narrator lowered the silent phone and concluded that his connection with the Gatekeeper had been severed, while Ryuk remained withdrawn.
• The narrator selected Shao Guoping, a cybersecurity expert who had helped Zhou Huaian, Zheng Guodong, and others move stolen funds, as his next target.
• The narrator wrote that Shao Guoping would expose his bribery records and secret technical workarounds during a cybersecurity drill before dying in a server-room meltdown.
• At the National Cybersecurity Center, Shao Guoping's records and code were broadcast across the screens, and the core server room melted down, killing him.
• An obscure database node briefly uploaded an encrypted packet identified as [SRO-7], and the narrator recognized it as a signal from the returned presence.

The narrator answered Mentor’s encrypted SRO-7 data packet by using the Death Note to kill Katherine Rain, the analyst known as Metis, and cripple Insight Seer’s software worldwide. Mentor responded by calling the resulting volatility controllable, leaving the narrator determined to keep iterating until Mentor’s predictions failed.

• The narrator found Insight Seer Ltd. and wrote Katherine Rain’s death into the Death Note, causing her to receive a massive surge of electronic communications and die during a global video briefing.
• Katherine Rain shrieked and died during the briefing, while Insight Seer’s analysis software crashed worldwide with the error code [0xINFINITE_LOOP].
• The narrator and Ryuk waited for a response to the attack, and a burner phone displayed Mentor’s message: [Peak volatility: 3.7 sigma. Spillover range: controllable.].
• The narrator interpreted the message as Mentor trying to fit the attack into his model and vowed to keep iterating until the volatility exceeded Mentor’s control.

The Judge chose retired teacher Chen Jing as an apparently accidental victim to disrupt the Morning Star Foundation’s financial briefing and expose its money laundering. The resulting death confounded Mentor’s predictive model, which classified the Judge’s volatility as incalculable.

• The Judge interpreted Mentor’s 3.7-sigma assessment and planned an unpredictable death to push his model beyond its limits.
• The Judge wrote Chen Jing’s death as a construction-site accident timed to disrupt the Morning Star Foundation’s monthly financial briefing.
• Falling bricks killed Chen Jing as she walked to an orphanage, and the Foundation canceled its briefing amid the ensuing uproar.
• Investigative media outlets used the confusion to obtain internal transaction records that exposed cracks in the Foundation’s accounts.
• Mentor’s model failed to assess the event and raised the monitoring level to Omega, ultimately reporting the Judge’s volatility as incalculable.