Recaps

Ye Lin raised his willpower to suppress the Perfected One Prototype’s side effects, but the system capped the attribute at 80 and refused to explain why. Unable to eliminate the remaining effects, he prepared to exchange abilities and committed to the first path, staking his survival on a dangerous fighting style.

• Ye Lin calculated the high cost of raising attributes and gradually increased his willpower, finding that the Perfected One Prototype’s side effects faded as his mental power became easier to control.
• The system announced that Ye Lin’s willpower had reached its upper limit at 80, despite his belief that the limit was 90.
• Ye Lin queried the system about raising his willpower further, but the system refunded his points and refused to answer a question about System Exchange.
• Ye Lin accepted that he could not fully remove the side effects, though they had weakened enough for him to use his mental power.
• After choosing the first path, Ye Lin narrowed his list of S-Rank abilities from thirty-nine to nine and prepared to exchange, knowing the path would stake his life on every battle.

Ye Lin weighed S-Rank abilities for a combat system built around draining his health, bursting with power, and recovering through life steal. He ruled out abilities that risked mental collapse and hesitated over Power of Destruction, ending with Heavenly Tribulation and Immortal Sin as his remaining alternatives.

• Ye Lin outlined a four-part combat system that would trade falling health for greater damage and recovery.
• Ye Lin considered combining Heavenly Demon Disintegration with Demon Seed, but set it aside because its permanent attribute loss could worsen his mental-collapse danger.
• Ye Lin examined Soul Burning Ritual and its potential synergy with Divine Descent, then rejected it because it also risked mental collapse.
• Ye Lin assessed Power of Destruction as a cheap, destructive opener whose bodily cost could be limited, but hesitated over spending his points on it.
• Ye Lin considered his remaining options, Heavenly Tribulation and Immortal Sin, and recognized that both had problems.

Ye Lin considered exchanging for Heavenly Tribulation as part of a near-death combat setup, and Li Tianyang realized how it could combine with Ye Lin’s other abilities. Li Tianyang then remembered a cheap exchange that might protect Ye Lin from Heavenly Tribulation and let him absorb its thunder.

• Ye Lin explained to Li Tianyang that he was considering Heavenly Tribulation and wondered whether Deathmatch would make it target him when he was near death.
• Li Tianyang questioned whether Ye Lin could survive long enough for Heavenly Tribulation to form, so Ye Lin demonstrated Star God Demon and explained his planned combination.
• Li Tianyang understood that Star God Demon and Deathmatch could let Ye Lin endure Heavenly Tribulation while growing stronger as he neared death.
• Ye Lin admitted that he could not yet complete the setup because stronger near-death abilities and life-steal abilities were too expensive or limited.
• Li Tianyang recalled an exchange that could protect against Heavenly Tribulation and might absorb its thunder to strengthen Ye Lin.

Ye Lin and Li Tianyang discussed combining Heavenly Tribulation with a Grudge Casket to produce Heavenly Crystals and with a Thunder-Answering Ring to store lightning. Ye Lin decided to prioritize Heavenly Tribulation and recovery potions, but Li Tianyang was startled when Ye Lin mentioned Immortal Sin.

• Li Tianyang explained that a Grudge Casket contained a difficult-to-purify remnant soul that could yield a Heavenly Crystal when destroyed by Heavenly Thunder.
• Ye Lin realized the Grudge Casket and Heavenly Tribulation could provide a cheap way to obtain Heavenly Crystals and potentially farm exchange points.
• Li Tianyang offered Ye Lin his remaining points, but Ye Lin refused and considered whether the system encouraged combining seemingly useless items.
• Li Tianyang showed Ye Lin a Thunder-Answering Ring that could store Heavenly Thunder, and they discussed its potential as a battle trump card.
• Ye Lin told Li Tianyang to spend his remaining points on Recovery Potions, postponed buying the ring, and chose Heavenly Tribulation over Immortal Sin for the next round.
• Li Tianyang froze and asked what Immortal Sin was when Ye Lin brought it up.

Ye Lin discovered an ominous S-Rank ability, Immortal Sin, that only he could see and weighed its power against its unknown dangers. The chapter left him undecided between exchanging for Immortal Sin and choosing Heavenly Tribulation.

• Li Tianyang told Ye Lin that his exchange panel showed only Heavenly Tribulation, revealing that he could not see Immortal Sin.
• Ye Lin wrote down Immortal Sin’s description, including the Sin of Greed’s matter absorption, healing, particle torrent, and warnings about irreversible risks.
• Li Tianyang questioned Ye Lin about the ability and warned that its many dangers might bring terrible consequences.
• Ye Lin considered Immortal Sin’s offensive, defensive, and healing potential, along with the possibility of collecting all seven sins.
• Ye Lin compared the unknown risks of Immortal Sin with Heavenly Tribulation and remained uncertain which ability to exchange for.

Ye Lin and Li Tianyang decided to postpone exchanging for Immortal Sin, and Li Tianyang went to Huang Liang’s room to try sending a message to Earth. Ye Lin acquired Power of Destruction and Heavenly Tribulation, then nearly died when he tested Power of Destruction and amplified Blood Shadow Splitting.

• Ye Lin and Li Tianyang decided Immortal Sin was too risky for the Fengdu Instance and too expensive to exchange for now.
• Ye Lin let Li Tianyang enter Huang Liang’s room to use the machine and send a message to Earth with the secret code.
• Ye Lin exchanged 180 points and an S-Rank rating for Power of Destruction, then exchanged 270 points and an S-Rank rating for Heavenly Tribulation.
• Ye Lin activated Power of Destruction and unleashed a punch that flooded the Death Exam Space with destructive force, injuring him in the process.
• Ye Lin amplified Blood Shadow Splitting with Power of Destruction and fired it at a wall, triggering a massive explosion that battered him with its shock waves.
• Ye Lin activated star god demon and used Star Flash to evade the ricocheting destruction before his own attack could kill him.

After mastering the dangerous limits of the Power of Destruction, Ye Lin tested his strength against Li Tianyang in the Simulation Space and killed him instantly with a single attack. Li Tianyang returned to the Death Exam Space confused and struggled to believe what had happened.

• Ye Lin recovered under the repair beam and learned he could use the Power of Destruction for several seconds before his body began to collapse.
• Ye Lin considered how his new strength might help against the Echo Demon, but reminded himself that powerful Third Tier enemies could still outmatch him.
• Li Tianyang arrived with the Communicator's core components, and Ye Lin invited him to practice combat in the Simulation Space.
• Li Tianyang challenged Ye Lin to a spar and unleashed his Golden Light Mantra, Thunder Art, Blood Burning, and Demon-Slaying Ritual Sword.
• Ye Lin used the Power of Destruction and Mental Shock, killing Li Tianyang instantly and destroying part of the simulated building.
• Li Tianyang returned to the Death Exam Space bewildered, and Ye Lin told him he had probably been kicked out because he died.

Ye Lin repeatedly defeated Li Tianyang in simulated battles, while Li Tianyang kept testing himself to understand what Ye Lin had endured against stronger monsters. Li Tianyang ended by reminding Ye Lin that he was no longer fighting alone, and they prepared to enter the next round.

• Li Tianyang asked Ye Lin to fight again without using the Power of Destruction and explained that he had devised a way to counter Blood Shadow Impact by predicting Ye Lin’s landing point.
• Ye Lin used Blood Shadow Splitting to attack independently of his body and instantly defeated Li Tianyang despite his Heavenly Thunder trap.
• Li Tianyang repeatedly challenged Ye Lin, but Ye Lin defeated him across six battles using abilities including Mental Storm, Psychokinesis, Star Flash, and Demon Speed.
• After the battles, Li Tianyang admitted he had kept going because he wanted to understand how hard Ye Lin’s past fights against monsters had been.
• Ye Lin remembered He Zheng, An Ke, and the others who had sacrificed themselves for him as Li Tianyang told him he was no longer fighting alone.
• Li Tianyang invited Ye Lin to proceed to the next round.

Ye Lin and Li Tianyang spent nearly all their points on supplies before activating the Fengdu Ruins Makeup Examination, which would not protect them with the Death Exam rules. They arrived in an ordinary modern apartment, where Li Tianyang recognized the place as his home after returning to the country.

• Ye Lin and Li Tianyang exchanged their remaining points for potions and a Grudge Casket, then prepared to enter the special instance.
• Ye Lin activated the key, and the system warned that the scenario's difficulty would be fixed and that the Death Exam rules would not protect them.
• The system identified the destination as Fengdu Ruins, and Ye Lin realized the instance might already have been destroyed before they were teleported.
• Ye Lin woke in a modern apartment and found the quiet, daytime surroundings unlike the haunted ruins he had expected.
• Li Tianyang woke and recognized the apartment as the home he had lived in after returning to the country.

Ye Lin and Li Tianyang found themselves in a version of Li Tianyang’s former apartment building inside the ruins of Fengdu, where the system announced a dangerous free-mode examination and ordered them to find a Soul-Returning Pearl. As their protection counted down, they heard other doors open and realized other examinees were present.

• Li Tianyang recognized the apartment as the one his family had rented for him in Tianfu, and Ye Lin drew his sword in case they were trapped in an illusion.
• Ye Lin spotted the system’s protective barrier covering the building and concluded that the apartment was not an illusion; he and Li Tianyang considered whether they were in reality or a parallel world.
• Ye Lin asked Li Tianyang to compare the surroundings with his memories and headed for the door while Li Tianyang used cinnabar to test the space.
• The system identified the area as the ruins of Fengdu, set a seven-day deadline to obtain a Soul-Returning Pearl, warned them to avoid an unknown entity and conceal information about the Death Exam Space, and announced that Ye Lin’s protection would expire in ten minutes.
• Ye Lin and Li Tianyang suspected the unknown entity might be the Great Emperor of Northern Yin, then heard two doors open and realized other examinees had entered the examination.

Ye Lin and Li Tianyang emerged to find two other teams gathered outside, leaving them to face an uneasy introduction and a comparison of strengths. The chapter ended with Mike and Yaya Yuna’s teams looking to Ye Lin and Li Tianyang to introduce themselves.

• Ye Lin heard other people outside and opened the door, finding two teams waiting in the corridor.
• Mike introduced himself as captain of the Bounty Hunter Team and described his enhancements, while treating his two teammates as helpers.
• Yaya Yuna introduced the Kanagawa Team, naming Tatsumoto Toichi and Tian Gonghai and listing their Grade B enhancements.
• Mike assessed the Kanagawa Team as a serious match, and both teams turned their attention to Ye Lin and Li Tianyang.

Li Tianyang revealed his Grade A ability during the Fengdu examination, while Ye Lin concealed his strength to avoid drawing attention in free mode. Yuna began sharing a past paranormal exam as the teams discussed what they might face.

• Li Tianyang introduced himself as a Grade B celestial master with a Grade A ability, and briefly showed his Spirit Coffin to prove it.
• Yuna praised Li Tianyang, while Mike grew wary and the two Chinese participants behind him appeared hostile.
• Ye Lin introduced himself as a Grade B fighter with a tyrant bloodline, and Li Tianyang questioned why he was hiding his strength.
• Ye Lin told Li Tianyang through their communication channel that he could kill everyone in free mode, so they should avoid attention and let the others scout ahead.
• Mike proposed that the teams discuss the exam objective and share information from past exams.
• Yuna described a previous paranormal exam in a villa, where the participants found a mutilated woman's corpse and had to identify her killer before the third night.

Yuna and Tian Gonghai recounted how their team investigated a corpse murder during the Fengdu Death Exam, only to reach the brink of panic without finding the culprit. When Yuna was caught cutting open the corpse’s belly, Mike concluded that she was the murderer.

• Jason Chen challenged Yuna’s team for failing to narrow down the suspects by checking their abilities and physiques, but Tian Gonghai explained that the corpse had been lowered through a cut in the second-floor floor.
• Tian Gonghai said ghosts appeared outside the villa on the second night, and fear and suspicion led the two teams to fight before Yuna stopped anyone from being killed.
• Li Tianyang asked whether they had examined the corpse’s wounds, and Tian Gonghai said they planned to do so on the third day.
• Tian Gonghai revealed that Yuna had secretly cut open the corpse’s belly and fled after someone caught her.
• Mike accused Yuna of being the murderer because she seemed too weak to hang the corpse and had been eating it.

Ye Lin reconstructed how Yuna escaped an examination in which the ghost framed her, then learned that the examination’s question had been issued to the ghost rather than the participants. The group turned to Mike, who began sharing details of an examination called Origin of Ghosts.

• Mike reacted warily to Yuna, and Ye Lin deduced that she had realized the corpse was not female and that she was the woman destined to die.
• Ye Lin explained that Yuna fled because clues in her room could make the others suspect her, and she confirmed Tian Gonghai and Long Bentengyi helped her escape.
• Yuna revealed that the examination’s question had been issued to the ghost, not to the participants, and said the system had never given them a question.
• Li Tianyang thanked Yuna for sharing her account, while Ye Lin wondered whether the ghost had been imitating the system.
• Yuna asked Mike to share an examination, and Mike said he had taken one called Origin of Ghosts.

Mike described his third exam, in which his team searched an abandoned research institute for the origin of ghosts while another team followed Purifiers to the Land of Sealing. His account revealed that the institute’s disturbing experiments concealed a deeper secret, which he had not yet explained.

• Mike explained that humanity’s war against ghosts had driven the Purifiers toward the Land of Sealing, while his weaker team was tasked with investigating the origin of ghosts at a distant research institute.
• Mike warned that limited-use Communicators had mattered greatly, since the two teams struggled to contact each other and his group had nearly been wiped out.
• Mike said the institute’s records showed humanity had once failed to conquer the Land of Sealing, triggering the Ghost Calamity Era, but the stronger team ignored his attempts to warn them.
• Mike described finding animal and human corpses in the institute, many of them mating, and Li Tianyang wondered whether the researchers were studying how souls formed.
• Mike revealed that the corpses had been confined by sex and that a hidden chamber held a researcher’s file and final words, which exposed humanity’s hardest-to-accept truth.

Mike explained how killing the last ghost caused the strongest Purifier to transform into one, triggering a worldwide catastrophe in which Purifiers became Vengeful Ghosts. Ye Lin then described his own examination involving a planet-sized ghost, while Li Tianyang began explaining how their group survived.

• Mike recounted research records showing that many organisms could change sex, usually with the strongest individual changing first, and said he warned the other team that the same process might apply to ghosts.
• Mike revealed that after the other team killed the last ghost, the strongest Purifier transformed into a ghost, and Yang Anna described a world overrun by Vengeful Ghosts that assimilated the Purifiers.
• Mike asked Ye Lin and Li Tianyang's group to share their information, and Ye Lin described an examination in which a planet-sized ghost could imitate the system and fabricate information.
• Yang Anna and Jason Chen challenged Ye Lin's account and questioned how someone with only Grade B strength could survive such an examination.
• Li Tianyang stepped between Ye Lin and the others, explaining that people in the examination could become ghosts by killing themselves and beginning to describe how their group escaped.

Li Tianyang shared information about the previous Examination with Yuna’s team while Mike tried to claim leadership of the group. When the countdown ended, the system began the Reunion Examination and ordered the Examinees to discover what had happened in the world within seven days.

• Li Tianyang explained the dangers of The Mysterious and Subtle, and Yuna thanked him for sharing what he knew.
• Mike praised Li Tianyang and Ye Lin, then nominated himself to lead the teams and demanded they follow his commands.
• Yuna described the mesh outside her team’s windows and showed Mike her modified Bone Wind Chime, which detected faint energy fluctuations.
• Ye Lin said he would rather wait for the system prompt than decide who should lead.
• The system announced the Reunion Examination, set its first round as a completion challenge to discover what had happened in the world, and warned that anyone who failed to complete a round within seven days would be erased.

Ye Lin and Li Tianyang analyzed the Examination questions and concluded that the clues were likely outside the Safe Zone. After the group descended to the building’s lobby, Ye Lin sensed danger beyond the doors and warned Li Tianyang to be ready to run.

• Ye Lin and Li Tianyang discussed the questions, the seven-day time limit, and why searching the building might be unwise.
• Mike suggested that the group leave the building and question local officials or wealthy businessmen about what had happened to the world.
• Yuna noticed a faint foul smell after the barrier vanished, and the group drew their weapons and cautiously descended the stairs.
• The group reached the dark ground-floor lobby without encountering danger, though the smell still lingered inside the building.
• Ye Lin agreed to question locals but warned Li Tianyang that danger might await outside and told him to be ready to run.

Ye Lin and the others discovered that the city sounds outside the building were a deception and that they had emerged inside a heavily militarized containment zone. As the Military launched a full assault, the group fled under fire, and Ye Lin realized he might have to reveal his trump card to save Li Tianyang.

• Ye Lin recognized that the bright, barren landscape outside was a containment zone surrounded by towering walls, soldiers, helicopters, and searchlights.
• Alarms announced a breach, and Ye Lin led the group out as soldiers fired rockets at them.
• Yuna used Toichi's hypnotic ability to disrupt an attack helicopter while Tatsumoto Toichi carried her away from the building.
• A rocket blast knocked Jason Chen down, but Mike pulled him to safety with his whip as a second bombardment approached.
• Mike saw soldiers, tanks, and fighter jets closing in, while Ye Lin considered revealing his trump card to save Li Tianyang.