Chapter Summaries

A vengeful young man activated the Ghostly Spirit Painting Scroll by flaunting his affection with A Lian, causing the Mythic Tier boss to abduct 249 players. Qin Feng learned what had happened as he prepared to set off.

• A hooded young man brought the broken A Lian out of a mirror and embraced her near the Ghostly Spirit Painting Scroll.
• Players recognized the young man as Mountain City Ning Caichen and tried to flee as he activated the boss.
• The scroll's laughter immobilized players within ten kilometers and drew 249 of them inside.
• Nearby players panicked when they saw people disappear, while Qin Feng received Late Night, Light Rain's report about the activation.

Qin Feng learned how the Ghostly Spirit Painting Scroll had been activated and explained its dangerous two-arena mechanics to Gui Ling as they headed to Mountain City Ruins. The boss began hunting players while more than two hundred were trapped inside, and Qin Feng and Gui Ling arrived to confront it.

• A burned player known as Mountain City Ning Caichen enraged the Ghostly Spirit Painting Scroll after discovering that his beloved mirror had been shattered, and the boss absorbed him and other players.
• Qin Feng told Late Night, Light Rain to evacuate nearby players, especially those closest to people trapped inside the scroll, because the boss would hunt them.
• Qin Feng explained the inner and outer arenas to Gui Ling and instructed her to kill herself and return if she was pulled inside before him.
• Qin Feng and Gui Ling traveled through the Teleportation Array to Mountain City Ruins as the scroll's avatar appeared and began attacking nearby players.

The Resentful Painting Spirit’s avatar killed players outside the painting scroll to gain extra lives, while the trapped players inside happily watched its dance for experience. Qin Feng and Gui Ling flew toward the abandoned mine, as the players inside remained unaware that the boss’s attacks on their loved ones were growing stronger.

• The Resentful Painting Spirit’s avatar killed Meow Meow Wants Hotpot, causing her name to vanish from her teammates’ friend lists and confirming that she had died for real.
• The avatar ignored the rest of Meow Meow Wants Hotpot’s teammates, absorbed her life, and gained another life for the boss inside the painting scroll.
• Qin Feng and Gui Ling teleported to the Mountain City Ruins, mounted Osilio, and flew toward the abandoned mine.
• More than two hundred trapped players watched the painting spirit dance and gained experience, then chose to keep the music playing and watch another dance.
• Meow Meow Wants Hotpot’s boyfriend chose to watch the dance, unaware that the boss’s avatar outside was growing more dangerous with each performance.

Qin Feng entered the Resentful Painting Spirit’s Scroll Space and warned the trapped Players that its dances traded their loved ones’ lives for experience and would eventually turn them into Puppets. The Players gathered behind him as the boss threatened Gui Ling, while Qin Feng prepared to kill it and anticipated the consequences of its next life.

• The Resentful Painting Spirit began its second dance, and the Players continued gaining experience while its avatar killed their loved ones outside.
• Qin Feng entered the Scroll Space, dismissed the experience as worthless, and ordered everyone to refuse the next dance.
• When a female Player challenged him, Qin Feng killed her with a Shadow Blade and explained that the dances accelerated the deaths of loved ones and could trap Players as Puppets.
• More than two hundred Players gathered behind Qin Feng, though some remained resentful and unconvinced.
• The boss threatened to kill Gui Ling, and Qin Feng considered how its next life would take the form of one of the Players it had killed.

Qin Feng identified Mountain City Ning Caichen and considered how to learn a useful skill from the NPC bound inside his shattered mirror. After the players chose to fight, Qin Feng killed the Mythic-Tier Resentful Painting Spirit with two slashes before it could finish appearing.

• Qin Feng used Shadow Perception to discover that Mountain City Ning Caichen carried a shattered, soul-bound mirror containing a White-Clad Woman who could teach a skill but might eventually consume her owner's soul.
• Qin Feng considered offering to repair the mirror to learn the NPC's passive skill, then decided to deal with the Mythic-Tier Ghostly Spirit Painting Scroll first.
• After the boss's dance ended, the players chose to fight it rather than keep watching or sacrifice half their lifespan to leave.
• The Resentful Painting Spirit appeared behind Qin Feng and attacked, but Qin Feng turned invisible with Meld into Darkness and struck it twice.
• Qin Feng's second slash dealt 109.918 billion damage, and the Resentful Painting Spirit vanished before it had fully appeared, leaving the players bewildered.

Qin Feng instantly destroyed the Resentful Painting Spirit’s first life, but the Mythic boss revived in the form of a player’s loved one and threatened those trapped in the Inner Field. Qin Feng exposed the hidden revival mechanic by having Gui Ling strike the boss’s Outer Field avatar, then Gui Ling escaped its counterattack.

• Qin Feng dealt enough damage to kill the Resentful Painting Spirit’s first life, but the boss revived and revealed that each new life would take the form of a loved one.
• The boss appeared as Meow Meow, the Braided Young Man’s loved one, and frightened the players by threatening to kill their loved ones outside the Inner Field.
• Qin Feng told the panicking players that several people outside had already died, while the boss claimed its hidden main body could not be found.
• The boss’s Outer Field avatar attacked Gui Ling, but the Abyss Puppet made her invisible and Qin Feng’s prepared plan let her locate and pierce its weak point with the Yellow Springs Chain Blade.
• The wound forced the Resentful Painting Spirit’s Inner Field body to bleed and reveal itself, while Gui Ling escaped the avatar’s area attack by flying away on Osilio.

Qin Feng and Gui Ling defeated the Mythic Tier Ghostly Spirit Painting Scroll by coordinating attacks between its Inner Field and Outer Field, then Qin Feng recovered the Illusory Dream Stone. Back at the abandoned mine, Qin Feng and Gui Ling approached the players confronting Little Monster by the South River.

• The Resentful Painting Spirit’s avatar failed to kill Gui Ling, allowing Qin Feng to strike its true form and take another life.
• Qin Feng and Gui Ling repeatedly coordinated attacks to defeat the boss’s lives while the Inner Field players watched.
• Qin Feng killed the boss’s final life, earning a global Mythic boss-slaying notification and teleporting the other Inner Field players back to the abandoned mine.
• Qin Feng collected the boss’s loot and found an Illusory Dream Stone inside a tower before the Inner Field collapsed.
• Qin Feng returned to the mine, where players angrily surrounded Little Monster by the South River over the deaths of their loved ones.
• Qin Feng revealed himself with Gui Ling and walked toward the crowd.

Qin Feng negotiated with Little Monster by the South River to learn a skill from the White-Clad Woman in exchange for repairing her broken mirror. After Little Monster agreed and enabled the skill, Qin Feng and Gui Ling opened the skill-learning interface.

• The Stars Guild leader thanked Qin Feng for saving his younger brother and offered his help in return.
• Qin Feng approached Little Monster by the South River and offered to restore the broken mirror in exchange for a skill lesson from the White-Clad Woman.
• Little Monster agreed to let Qin Feng and Gui Ling learn the skill before Qin Feng repaired the mirror.
• Little Monster summoned the shattered White-Clad Woman from the mirror and enabled Qin Feng and Gui Ling to learn her skill.

Qin Feng evolved Illusory Favor to Ancient Grade and improved his Agility and Constitution training skills, then accepted a Legendary Ring Ascension Scroll from Gui Ling. He sent Little Monster by the South River back to the city and planned to ask the Star Guild to help locate the shifting ruin where he could repair a mirror and possibly find another Ancient God Slate.

• Qin Feng learned Illusory Favor and evolved it to Ancient Grade, gaining powerful mental-skill resistance and temporary immunity.
• Qin Feng evolved Agility Training and Constitution Training to Ancient Grade, raising his Constitution, Health, Agility, and flight speed.
• Gui Ling gave Qin Feng a Ring Ascension Scroll she had earned twice from a ruin, and Qin Feng planned to apply it to Ulrich's Ring of Extreme Cold.
• Qin Feng accepted Gui Ling's reward and sent Little Monster by the South River back to the city, honoring his promise to help repair the mirror.
• Qin Feng decided to ask the Star Guild to search the Mountain City Ruins for the shifting location where the mirror could be repaired and another slate of the Illusory Dream God Lutas might be found.

Qin Feng prepared to explore the Illusory Dream Well by arranging a search in Mountain City and gathering equipment and resources. After farming demons near New York City, he received news that Stars had found the well.

• Qin Feng told Stars' bearded guild leader how to find the moving Illusory Dream Well and explained its rewards.
• Qin Feng had One-Armed Dwarf · Big Hammer lower the level requirement of a Mythic-Tier ring, then delivered it to Sarah in Coconut Country.
• Qin Feng bought Hell Fruit from Demon Beast Tamer · Madman Nuke and saved it for future skill rerolls.
• Qin Feng used Queen K to activate the Lone Wolf Operation Order's speed effect and flew to a cemetery near New York City to farm undead skeleton demons.
• After Qin Feng farmed for an hour and a half, Stars' bearded guild leader reported that they had found the Illusory Dream Well.

Qin Feng prepared for the Illusory Dream Well by stealing Fairy Yuan’s attributes and boosting his Spirit, then entered the well and passed its illusion-filled floors. On the tenth floor, he encountered six Demons guarding an Ancient God Slate.

• Qin Feng obtained a fivefold buff-duration effect, then stole 10,000 points from each of Fairy Yuan’s attributes for 50 minutes.
• Qin Feng raised his Spirit to 34,898 with support players and potions before traveling to Mountain City Ruins.
• Qin Feng jumped into the Illusory Dream Well, passed its visual and auditory illusion trials, and collected equipment, Illusory Dream Fragments, and other items along the way.
• Qin Feng reached the tenth floor, where six Demons guarded an Ancient God Slate.

Qin Feng defeated the Illusory Dream Well’s fused Demon boss and obtained the Illusory Dream God's Cursed Slate. He began choosing which equipment to curse while still in the challenge.

• Qin Feng resisted an illusion that made six Diamond Tier Demon bosses appear to be Platinum Tier bosses and killed them with his Shadow Clones.
• Qin Feng noticed Greedy Eye could not examine the Demon corpses and waited as they fused into a single humanoid boss.
• Qin Feng used Shadow Perception to overcome the fused boss’s light-refraction trick and killed it with another volley of Shadow Blades.
• Qin Feng gained over thirty-six thousand Evolution Points from the six Diamond Tier bosses.
• Qin Feng obtained the Illusory Dream God's Cursed Slate and opened his equipment window to choose an item to curse.

Qin Feng kept a curse on Uthos's Nine-Faced Helm, massively boosting its base attributes and his skill range while disabling its elemental-immunity effects. He entered the Illusory Dream Well's eleventh floor, where ten gates offered one-way choices of deeper floors, up to the twentieth.

• Qin Feng examined the Ancient God Slate effects on his equipment and attached Lutas's Curse to Uthos's Nine-Faced Helm.
• Qin Feng kept the curse despite losing the helm's special effects, gaining greatly increased attributes, hit adjustment, and skill range.
• Qin Feng passed through the gate to the Illusory Dream Well's eleventh floor and found himself in a vast, empty expanse of space.
• Qin Feng saw ten enormous starry gates marked for floors eleven through twenty and learned he could choose only one, with deeper floors offering greater difficulty and rewards.

Qin Feng learned about the twentieth-floor challenge’s restrictions and prepared to meet its mental-attribute threshold. He flew toward the gate determined to attempt the challenge, despite the risk of losing his Illusory Dream Well rewards.

• Qin Feng decided the consequences of failure were acceptable and flew toward the twentieth-floor gate.
• Lingche appeared and explained that the twentieth floor was restricted to civilizations in their first year and required a high mental attribute.
• Lingche calculated that a level 40 challenger needed 80,000 mental attribute points, and Qin Feng realized his mental resistance could help him meet the threshold.
• Qin Feng changed into agility-focused equipment, raising his effective mental attribute through his abilities and resistance to 182,100 points.
• Qin Feng asked about the level 100 requirement, and Lingche said it was 500,000 mental attribute points.

Qin Feng learned that clearing the Illusory Dream Well’s challenges from the sixteenth floor onward granted a Minor Authority of the Illusory Dream God, which he could absorb without its restrictions because he already held the Authority of Judgment. He reached the twentieth-floor gate and discovered that more than forty million challengers had failed its challenge, leaving their reclaimed rewards for whoever finally succeeded.

• Lingche explained that Qin Feng could absorb an Eldritch God’s Servant Imprint while retaining its effects and removing its restrictions.
• Qin Feng chose to attempt the twentieth-floor challenge despite Lingche warning that a lower floor would offer a better chance of success.
• Qin Feng flew for over three hours through the vast starry space and reached the twentieth-floor gate.
• Qin Feng read the gate’s records and learned that over forty million challengers had attempted the challenge and none had passed.
• Qin Feng discovered that whoever passed would receive all the rewards reclaimed from the failed challengers.

Qin Feng learned the Illusory Dream Well’s twentieth-floor challenge rules and entered the challenge to memorize the Illusory Dream God Afterimage’s patterns. He faced a butterfly-winged afterimage and saw its complex three-dimensional patterns.

• Qin Feng read that clearing the challenge would grant access to a vast prize pool and a God-Chosen Slate, while failure would temporarily reduce his Mental Attribute.
• Lingche explained that Qin Feng had to memorize the afterimage’s patterns, find its identical counterpart in a changing labyrinth, and destroy it with an item found there before time ran out.
• Qin Feng entered the starry gate and appeared before a ten-meter-tall, butterfly-winged Illusory Dream God Afterimage.
• Qin Feng saw complex three-dimensional patterns outlining the afterimage’s body.

Qin Feng entered a vast White Jade Maze on the 20th Floor of Illusory Dream Well, where memory interference threatened to erase the 160 patterns he needed to match. He began searching for the correct afterimage and used the Blade of Judgment to recover his fading memories, but the maze’s scale and strict time limit left the challenge’s completion uncertain.

• Qin Feng memorized the 160 flowing three-dimensional patterns on the Illusory Dream God's afterimage using structures he had learned from the Ancient God Language.
• The afterimage vanished, revealing a vast White Jade Maze filled with hundreds of thousands of similar Illusory Dream God afterimages, and a mental skill began interfering with Qin Feng's memory.
• Qin Feng used Shadow Perception to search the maze, found a Barrier-Breaking Blade in a room, and confirmed that the maze walls blocked passage through them.
• When his memories of the patterns began fading, Qin Feng revealed that he had copied all 160 patterns into the Judgment Grounds at a cost of over 1,200 divinity.
• Qin Feng used the Blade of Judgment to compare the maze's afterimages with his stored patterns, while worrying that the challenge's limited time would not be enough.

Qin Feng explored the White Jade Maze, resisting its hallucinations and memory interference while collecting Barrier-Breaking Blades and extending his challenge time. After spotting a third blade spawn at an exact interval, he realized something about the maze’s timing had changed.

• Qin Feng used Shadow Perception to search the maze for the Illusory Dream God’s matching afterimage, then summoned Osilio and confirmed that the maze’s mental influence caused hallucinations.
• Qin Feng mapped the maze and discovered five pink Magic Arrays, then collected a second Barrier-Breaking Blade and had Gray Chicken touch a pink orb to extend the challenge time.
• Qin Feng found another pink orb and used Gray Chicken to activate it, extending the challenge again.
• Qin Feng recognized the maze’s memory interference as another mental test and relied on the patterns he had copied in the Judgment Grounds.
• After more than twenty minutes, Qin Feng detected a third Barrier-Breaking Blade spawning exactly 21 minutes and 57 seconds into the challenge and realized the timing was significant.

Qin Feng deduced the hidden rules of the White Jade Maze challenge and prepared to use its six Barrier-Breaking Blades to reveal and destroy the real Illusory Dream God target. He began the final stage with limited time remaining and increasing mental pressure.

• Qin Feng tested an Illusory Dream God Afterimage, learned it was immune to ordinary attacks, and discovered he could lure it by attacking and then hiding.
• Qin Feng stopped touching pink orbs and tracked the Barrier-Breaking Blades as they appeared at ten-minute intervals.
• After the sixth blade appeared and no seventh followed, Qin Feng deduced that five afterimages had to be killed on the five magic circles to assemble and reveal the real target.
• Qin Feng planned to lure five selected afterimages onto the circles, using the blades only after all six had appeared and extending the challenge with pink orbs as he traveled.
• As the maze's mental pressure increased, Qin Feng committed to carrying out his plan despite uncertainty about whether his deductions were correct.

Shaowei watched the Illusory Dream Well’s twentieth-floor challenge, suspecting that Qin Feng of the Blue Star Civilization was the challenger and hoping his success would help her exiled Aunt Yuan return. Qin Feng completed the White Jade Maze and defeated its final guardian, discovering a strange insect compound eye that might be an Ancient God’s Authority as Lingche sensed him surrounded by power from the Universe’s Primordial Origin.

• Shaowei stayed in the Illusory Dream Temple to watch the challenge, believing the Blue Star genius might be able to pass and help the Blue Star Civilization ascend.
• Qin Feng lured five Illusory Dream God Afterimages to the maze’s Magic Arrays and used the Barrier-Breaking Blade to lock their patterns in place.
• The patterns converged into a gigantic humanoid butterfly, whose mental attack briefly disoriented Qin Feng before Illusory Favor protected him.
• Qin Feng reached the maze’s center and destroyed the butterfly with the Barrier-Breaking Blade, causing a white jade table and basin to appear.
• Qin Feng found a beautiful insect compound eye in the basin and wondered whether it was an Ancient God’s Authority like the Eye of Judgment.
• Lingche sensed Qin Feng being surrounded by an irresistible power from the Primordial Origin of the Universe.