Chapter Summaries

After recovering, the narrator trained at Qingyang Temple while Grandmaster brought a traumatized orphan back to the mountain. Grandmaster explained that the Tang Family was rebuilding the organization to serve powerful people, then gave the narrator a mission to eliminate its scattered members before they could be recruited.

• Grandmaster brought the orphaned, mute little girl to Qingyang Temple after her father and older brother died.
• The narrator trained for nearly a month as winter approached, while Grandmaster sent Zhang Rong and the others down the mountain on errands.
• Grandmaster told the narrator that the Tang Family had recruited members of the organization and was searching for its remaining people.
• Grandmaster explained that the Tang Family intended to use the organization to serve powerful people, not to harm people indiscriminately for profit.
• Grandmaster ordered the narrator to follow a list and kill the identified stragglers before the Tang Family found them.
• The narrator questioned whether they could defeat the Tang Family, and Grandmaster said they had to fight on without knowing the outcome.

Chen Mo volunteered to act as bait in a plan to capture three criminal groups and let himself be abducted. After his kidnappers mistook him for someone else and questioned him, he broke free and killed the five men guarding the captives, then waited for their boss.

• Zhang Rong assigned Chen Mo to lead the charge in a dangerous plan to take down the criminal groups, and Chen Mo agreed.
• Chen Mo abducted Yang Wei from his apartment, hid him under the bed, and waited on the couch to be taken instead.
• Two kidnappers drugged Chen Mo and brought him to a house where several other captives were held.
• The guards suspected Chen Mo was not Yang Wei, took him out of the room, and questioned him when their boss failed to answer his phone.
• Chen Mo admitted he was not Yang Wei, cut one guard's throat with a hidden razor, and killed the other four.
• Chen Mo took a knife downstairs and waited by the door for the boss to return.

The narrator killed the gang leader who had captured him, then joined Zhang Rong and the others in confronting Huang Zhennan, the man who had hired the gang. Huang Zhennan was spared and given a treatment prescription for his son, but the group left him with a knife and a warning to reform.

• The narrator stabbed the gang leader, called Xiang Yifeng to clean up the scene, and escaped to meet Zhuge Ming.
• Zhuge Ming told the narrator that Zhang Rong and the others had gone to abduct Huang Zhennan, who had hired the gang.
• Zhang Rong brought Huang Zhennan to an unfinished building and let the narrator question him.
• The narrator gave Huang Zhennan a prescription for his son and warned him that the group would be watching him.
• The narrator taught Huang Zhennan passages from the Three Character Classic, then the group left him with a knife.

After completing their remaining missions, Chen Mo and his companions were nearly killed by an explosion at Xiang Yifeng’s apartment. Chen Mo’s master warned that someone had betrayed them and sent them to Boss Lei at 133 Hongshi Road, leaving them fleeing while fearing the traitor was one of their own.

• Chen Mo and his companions celebrated completing their missions, then headed back to Xiang Yifeng’s apartment.
• Chen Mo smelled rotten eggs and pulled Zhang Rong away just before a bomb triggered an explosion that engulfed the apartment in flames.
• Zhang Rong suspected someone had rigged an ignition device, while the group found that Xiang Yifeng was not answering his phone.
• Chen Mo’s master warned him that someone had sold them out and that the police were coming to arrest them, then directed them to Boss Lei at 133 Hongshi Road.
• Chen Mo, Zhang Rong, and the others escaped by taxi, fearing the betrayal came from one of the ten people involved and that they faced capital charges.

After their group was attacked and forced to flee, Boss Lei took them to a remote mountain village and supplied them with food and necessities. They set off to hide there, and Zhang Rong wondered who had betrayed them.

• Boss Lei told the group that Xiang Yifeng and the others had been attacked and that they all needed to go into hiding, then collected their phones.
• Boss Lei drove the five men to an abandoned village in the mountains and gave them emergency supplies.
• The group carried the supplies up the mountain while the narrator tried to comfort the others by explaining how much loss he had endured.
• After walking for over an hour, the group stopped to rest and eat, and Zhang Rong asked who had sold them out.

Chen Mo argued that the Tang Family had likely coerced an important Qingyang Temple disciple with a wife and children, rather than Xiang Yifeng’s group betraying them. After the group reached an abandoned village and settled into a ruined house, rhythmic knocking came from outside in the darkness.

• Zhang Rong rejected the idea that Xiang Yifeng had betrayed them, and Chen Mo warned that suspecting the other group could be an enemy tactic to sow discord.
• Chen Mo reasoned that the traitor was likely a married Qingyang Temple disciple with an important position who had been threatened through his family, and Zhang Rong agreed the theory could help identify him.
• The five disciples continued to an abandoned village and found a small, damaged house to shelter in.
• They covered the windows with windproof fabric, propped the fallen door in place, and prepared to sleep by candlelight.
• After Zhang Rong blew out the candle, rhythmic knocking sounded from outside, and the group sat up in alarm as the knocks continued.

The narrator and his companions settled into a deserted mountain village, where a strange figure knocked on their door at night. They caught a child who claimed to live in a distant village and had come looking for food, but he denied being the one who knocked the previous night.

• Zhang Rong stopped the group from chasing a small figure after the first night’s knocking and suspected it was an animal spirit.
• The group repaired their shelter, built a stove, and gathered wild vegetables and fish to prepare for a longer stay.
• When the knocking returned the following night, the narrator and the others chased down and pinned a child to the ground.
• Zhang Rong treated the child’s forehead wound, and the child said his name was Gou Dan and that he lived in a distant village.
• The child said he had come out to find food, then denied being responsible for the previous night’s knocking.

Chen Mo and Zhang Rong discovered that the child who had appeared near their shelter lived in a distant, impoverished village and brought him home. After the child returned to them again at night despite claiming he had visited during the day, the group remained unsure why he could not find them.

• The child said an animal had knocked on the shelter the previous night, and Zhang Rong gave him compressed biscuits.
• Chen Mo and Zhang Rong walked with the child for an hour and a half to his village, where they told him to visit during the day and keep their presence secret.
• Chen Mo and Zhang Rong returned to the Abandoned Village and told Zhuge Ming and the others about the remote settlement.
• The group hunted a pheasant and saved some food for the child, but he did not arrive during the day.
• The child knocked on their door in the latter half of the night and said he had looked for them during the day.
• Zhang Rong warmed chicken soup for the child and promised to stay home the next day so he could find them.

Zhang Rong and the narrator learned that Goudan’s parents had been killed in the village, then discovered that he saw their room as it had been before they arrived. The chapter ended with Goudan pointing out a tree where the group found only a lightning-scarred stump.

• Zhang Rong and the narrator walked Goudan home and learned that his parents had been killed by villagers and that he lived with his sister and many younger children.
• Zhang Rong told Goudan to visit during the day, but he returned after midnight, saying he had come earlier and found nobody there.
• Goudan described seeing discarded belongings that the group had removed from their room, though the objects were no longer there.
• Goudan said the house looked older at night and that a tree stood nearby during the day.
• The narrator took Goudan to the tree's location, where they found a stump bearing scorch marks.

Chen Mo and the others discovered that Gou Dan’s daytime world belonged to a different time and space, possibly many years in the past, and investigated his village. The chapter ended after Gou Dan revealed that different men visited his sister at night.

• Chen Mo concluded that Gou Dan saw a past time and space during the day while the group remained in their own present.
• The group suspected Gou Dan’s village was cut off from the outside world and decided to investigate it with him.
• Chen Mo went to Gou Dan’s home and heard intimate sounds from inside, then returned without speaking to his sister.
• Chen Mo guessed that Gou Dan’s sister sent him out at night to keep him from seeing the men who visited her.
• Gou Dan confirmed that his sister sent him out because uncles came to see her, and said they were not always the same uncle.

Chen Mo and the others watched a village vanish as dawn broke, taking Gou Dan with it. They returned to their abandoned hideout shaken, and Chen Mo realized Gou Dan had lived decades in the past and should already be dead in their era.

• Zhang Rong proposed that dawn would reveal whether the village shared their spacetime, and Chen Mo agreed while privately doubting that seeing it would prove anything.
• Chen Mo and the others noticed that the village’s largest house had become impossible to see, though Gou Dan’s home and its lights remained visible.
• As dawn approached, Gou Dan became frightened, then ran into the village after the lights in his home went out.
• The village buildings, farmland, and Gou Dan disappeared as daylight spread, leaving only a stretch of wasteland.
• Chen Mo and the others fled back to their hideout, where Chen Mo concluded that Gou Dan had been someone from decades earlier and was already dead in their era.

Chen Mo and the others concluded that Gou Dan came from decades in the past, after which Zhang Rong recounted a similar tale of people separated by different space-times. Chen Mo used divination to investigate the abandoned village and found a clue pointing to the villagers’ buried bodies southeast of it.

• Zhang Rong told Chen Mo and the others how his Grandmaster once visited Zhu Family Village, where daytime and nighttime belonged to space-times more than ten years apart.
• Zhang Rong said Gou Dan was likely dead and proposed feeding him when he visited, while Zhuge Ming worried that other people from Gou Dan’s village might follow him.
• Chen Mo and the others salted food and prepared for the coming snow.
• Chen Mo cast a hexagram and learned that the abandoned village’s people were in a tomb to the southeast, which he interpreted as their bodies being buried.
• Chen Mo found an unusually lush grove less than a kilometer southeast of the village and began to understand the clue.

Chen Mo and the others uncovered a mass grave in the deserted village and suspected its inhabitants had been poisoned, possibly by people from Gou Dan’s village. When Gou Dan returned that night with bruises, the group learned he feared what would happen if he stayed away from his own time and realized they could not take him with them.

• Chen Mo’s group dug in the woods until Zhuge Ming uncovered human bones in a pit, revealing that dozens of villagers had been buried there.
• Chen Mo concluded that someone had poisoned and killed the villagers, and Zhuge Ming suggested Gou Dan’s village might have been responsible.
• The group reburied the bones, performed a simple rite, and arranged to take turns keeping watch at night.
• Gou Dan returned after one in the morning with bruises and told Zhang Rong that men in his village had beaten him.
• Chen Mo asked why Gou Dan had run away at dawn, and Gou Dan said he had felt that something bad would happen if he did not return.
• Chen Mo and the others realized Gou Dan could not leave his own time, since he had likely died decades earlier in their timeline.

Gou Dan told Chen Mo and the others how the villagers abused his sister, Shen Zhiyi, and the group debated whether they could help them escape. Chen Mo proposed killing the village’s young and able-bodied adults, but footsteps nearby interrupted them.

• Gou Dan explained that the villagers had killed his parents, confined Shen Zhiyi, starved both siblings, and forced her to wash clothes and bear children.
• Zhang Rong and Zhuge Ming argued about rescuing the siblings, and Zhang Rong stopped Zhuge Ming from proposing to kill the villagers.
• Chen Mo reasoned that Gou Dan and Shen Zhiyi might be able to escape during the day in their own time and space.
• Chen Mo proposed that they kill all the young and able-bodied adults in the village at night.
• Chen Mo and Zhang Rong heard footsteps nearby, drew their blades, and called out to whoever was there.

Chen Mo and Zhang Rong planned to rescue Shen Zhiyi and Gou Dan while avoiding unjustified violence. Chen Mo secretly reached Shen Zhiyi and told her he had come to get her and her brother out of the village.

• Zhuge Ming and two senior brothers joined Chen Mo and Zhang Rong, and they debated whether they could fight the village men without proof of their crimes.
• Chen Mo proposed entering the village to rescue the siblings and using the villagers’ response to determine whether force was justified.
• Zhang Rong agreed to delay the rescue until the next night, when they could return prepared, and asked Zhuge Ming and the others to watch Gou Dan.
• Chen Mo and Zhang Rong crept toward Gou Dan’s home, and Zhang Rong sent Chen Mo inside alone so Shen Zhiyi would not be startled.
• Chen Mo entered Shen Zhiyi’s room, reassured her, and explained that he knew Gou Dan and had come to rescue them both.

The narrator and Zhang Rong persuaded Shen Zhiyi to accept their help escaping the village and learned that her family had once moved into the already-built village before another group killed them. Shen Zhiyi revealed that several members of her family had guns, leaving the narrator and Zhang Rong with more questions about the village’s past.

• The narrator fed Shen Zhiyi pork jerky and reassured her that he and Zhang Rong could protect her and her little brother.
• When the narrator and Zhang Rong pretended to leave, Shen Zhiyi begged them to stay and agreed to try to escape with them the following night.
• Shen Zhiyi told them that the village had more than ten able-bodied men and that no one lived in its largest house.
• Shen Zhiyi explained that her family had moved into the village before another group arrived, killed her family, and left only her and her little brother alive.
• Shen Zhiyi said that fifteen people had belonged to her family and that her father, Second Uncle, and cousin had all carried guns.

The narrator and Zhang Rong returned from Shen Zhiyi’s village and prepared to help her and Gou Dan escape, while Zhuge Ming suspected Shen Zhiyi’s family might have killed the village’s original residents. When the group returned after midnight, the village had not appeared, leaving the rescue uncertain.

• The narrator and Zhang Rong left Shen Zhiyi behind as dawn erased the village, and Gou Dan ran back into it before they rejoined Zhuge Ming and the others.
• On the way back, Zhuge Ming suggested Shen Zhiyi’s family may have killed the village’s original residents, while Zhang Rong urged the group to focus on rescuing the siblings.
• After resting, Zhang Rong made arrows, and the group packed half their remaining food to bring to Shen Zhiyi and Gou Dan.
• The group went to the village after midnight in the rain, but found only wasteland and waited for it to appear.
• As one o’clock approached and the village remained absent, the group feared they would not be able to rescue the siblings that night.

Chen Mo and the others dug into the buried village, suspecting it had vanished because it was already destroyed in B Space-Time. They uncovered giant statues of Judge Cui and a Fox Immortal, leaving them unsure whether the big house had been a sanctuary or temple.

• When the village failed to appear, Chen Mo began digging in the enormous pit despite Zhang Rong's warning that the villagers were dead.
• Chen Mo explained that he suspected the village had collapsed on the night Shen Zhiyi had waited for them, leaving it absent from B Space-Time.
• Chen Mo revealed that he was digging above the village's largest house because no one had ever lived in it and he suspected something inside had frightened the villagers.
• The ground collapsed beneath Zhang Rong, exposing two enormous statues and a carved stone pillar.
• Chen Mo and the others uncovered the statues' heads and recognized Judge Cui and a fox-headed figure, prompting them to wonder whether the house had been a sanctuary or a Fox Immortal Temple.

Chen Mo and his companions discovered that Judge Cui’s statue might have guided the village’s ghosts onward, and they prepared to leave the buried village. After lightning struck them and transported them into the large house in Shen Zhiyi’s time and space, Zhang Rong wondered whether heaven had sent them back to save the siblings before the ground collapsed.

• Zhuge Ming explained that Judge Cui had almost no dedicated temples, while Zhang Rong suggested the village’s statues might have been built by its original inhabitants.
• Chen Mo decided they could not dig up the buried village, and he and the others bowed to Judge Cui before climbing out of the pit.
• Lightning repeatedly struck the group as they climbed, so Chen Mo and the others begged Judge Cui for protection.
• After a bolt struck Judge Cui’s head, Chen Mo and his companions found themselves inside the large house with intact statues of Judge Cui and the Fox Immortal.
• Chen Mo realized they had returned to Shen Zhiyi’s time and space, and Zhang Rong suggested they might have been sent back to rescue Shen Zhiyi and Gou Dan before the collapse.

The narrator and Zhang Rong returned to the village to rescue Shen Zhiyi and Gou Dan, only to find the siblings badly beaten and the villagers waiting to stop them. After Zhang Rong carried Shen Zhiyi out, the narrator killed the villagers’ leader, and the others charged.

• The narrator, Zhang Rong, and their companions reached Gou Dan’s house and found Shen Zhiyi and Gou Dan injured.
• Zhang Rong reassured Shen Zhiyi, then carried her out when she was too frightened to leave on her own.
• The group walked openly through the village with Shen Zhiyi and Gou Dan.
• A village leader confronted them and forbade them from taking the siblings away.
• The narrator fought the leader and stabbed him in the neck with a dagger.
• The villagers charged at the group, and the narrator shouted for Zhuge Ming and the others to kill.