Chapter Summaries

Lin Yi entered the Head Teacher’s office to report two cafeteria employees’ numbers and discovered that the office was an independent space with something outside trying to get in. After the Head Teacher had him copy the numbers, an icy aura and white fog suddenly filled the room as he tried to leave.

• Lin Yi resisted the Head Teacher’s invitation until fog outside seemed to approach, and she pulled him into the office despite the painful cold of her grip.
• Lin Yi realized the office’s interior was an independent space, then heard someone outside pounding on the door and learned the Head Teacher had lured him in as a catch.
• Lin Yi reported the numbers Chef-0391 and Chef-0154, and the Head Teacher made him write them again.
• The Head Teacher asked Lin Yi what color the writing was; he concealed its distorted green gleam and said it was blue.
• As Lin Yi turned to leave, an icy aura surged from the Head Teacher and white fog appeared inside the office.

Lin Yi learned that his unusually high spiritual sensitivity meant he could not survive by blindly following rules and that the company should never have admitted him to the Campus. The Head Teacher explained the danger of Green Skin and left Lin Yi with questions about why he had been admitted and what contamination had done to her.

• The Head Teacher restrained a hostile change in herself and warned Lin Yi not to turn away or open the office door.
• She explained that Green Skin could not normally harm anyone with a Student ID, then realized Lin Yi had encountered it before receiving his ID and questioned how that was possible.
• After examining Lin Yi’s file, the Head Teacher concluded that someone with his extreme spiritual sensitivity should never have been admitted and suspected the company’s higher-ups had tampered with the Campus.
• The Head Teacher told Lin Yi that he needed to think through the logic behind rules rather than obey them blindly, because those rules might not apply to someone like him.
• She said Green Skin could result from contaminated Blue Apron Chefs, warned that its origins remained uncertain, and urged Lin Yi to avoid it or seek help from the physical education department.

The Head Teacher explained the dangers around the school and asked Lin Yi to keep confirming her identity while she removed her uniform. She revealed that she was losing the anchors that held her identity together and warned Lin Yi this would likely be their last meeting.

• The Head Teacher told Lin Yi how to avoid Green Skins, survive Abnormal Weather, and seek shelter in the Gymnasium or use a desk as an Anchor.
• The Head Teacher made Lin Yi watch her and ask who she was every minute while she changed, warning him to leave if she could no longer answer correctly.
• Lin Yi described the creature that had entered his classroom, and the Head Teacher realized some had slipped past her efforts to stop them.
• The Head Teacher warned Lin Yi away from the Dorm Supervisor's Office when possible and explained that Anchors could help resist dangerous forces.
• The Head Teacher admitted she needed Lin Yi to stabilize her Cognition as she lost her identity's Anchor, and said this would probably be the last time he saw her.

Lin Yi escaped the Head Teacher’s office as she fought off contamination, then returned to Group B Class 2. The Head Teacher prepared to leave with the Security Guard, carrying a green envelope and handing the contaminated food to the Blue Apron Chef.

• The Head Teacher warned Lin Yi about a dictionary in the cabinet, then told him to keep asking her identity until she lost control or ordered him to run.
• The Head Teacher’s identity faltered as she removed her clothes and badge, and Lin Yi fled when she told him to go.
• Lin Yi suspected the tomato meat sauce pasta in the office trash had physically contaminated the Head Teacher, then returned to the classroom as mist gathered outside.
• The Head Teacher regained some control, packed her uniform and badge, and waited with a green envelope and the contaminated trash bag.
• The Blue Apron Chef arrived with a meal container and apologized that the Cafeteria had also failed; the Head Teacher gave the Security Guard the envelope and Chef’s numbered sheet.
• The Blue Apron Chef took the trash bag and praised the Head Teacher’s sacrifice as she followed the Security Guard into the fog.

Lin Yi and Wei Liang left the classroom after Xu Shunkang warned that the fog was thickening, then walked toward the Dormitory. Lin Yi discovered that the Dormitory occupied an independent space and saw its enormous, terrifying building at the end of the road.

• Lin Yi noticed that three classmates with crazed expressions had become vacant-eyed, while he and Wei Liang discussed waiting until they returned to the Dormitory before thinking through their situation.
• Xu Shunkang warned the class at 20:15 to leave for the Dormitory before the fog worsened, and Lin Yi and Wei Liang packed up and followed the earlier-arriving Experience Students out.
• A girl in a Lolita Uniform asked Lin Yi and Wei Liang to carry her luggage, but Lin Yi refused and Wei Liang complimented her stockings before leaving too.
• Lin Yi and Wei Liang walked through the fog toward the Dormitory, and Lin Yi noticed that the Teaching Building disappeared as they entered the Dormitory building's section.
• Lin Yi saw a vast, ominous building looming at the end of the road and realized it was the Dormitory building.

Lin Yi and Wei Liang encountered supernatural fog and a road that stretched and twisted as they headed for the Dormitory Building. Lin Yi used the streetlamp numbers and his Student ID to navigate the distortion, then led Wei Liang toward the final lamppost marking their destination.

• Lin Yi noticed the fog and heard the scraping footsteps of abnormal students following them beyond the streetlights.
• A single streetlamp appeared as the road changed, and Wei Liang began to panic and grow unnaturally cold.
• Lin Yi recognized that the ground was stretching, told Wei Liang to grip his Student ID, and used the Campus Map to identify the lamppost sequence for the Dormitory Building.
• Lin Yi followed the lamppost marked Dormitory Building-095 through the twisting space and found Dormitory Building-096 among the displaced poles.
• Lin Yi charged toward the final lamppost with Wei Liang as Wei Liang's condition worsened.

Lin Yi forced his way through warped space and abnormal weather, carrying Wei Liang to the Dormitory Building-096 streetlamp pole. They reached the Dormitory Building with time apparently barely passing, where Lin Yi saw a warning that the building was one of the school’s most dangerous areas.

• Lin Yi clung to his identity and the Dormitory Building-096 streetlamp pole as he struggled through distorted space with Wei Liang, resisting the fog and sinister sounds.
• Lin Yi ignored Mao Feiyang’s apparent voice and reached the pole, causing the broken world to snap back to normal around him and Wei Liang.
• Lin Yi checked his watch and found it was 20:51, only eight minutes after they had set out, while Wei Liang recovered from his icy, corpse-like state.
• Lin Yi reasoned that numbered streetlamps marked the route through the campus when abnormal weather warped the roads, but he kept his deduction to himself.
• Wei Liang led Lin Yi through the crowd toward the Dormitory Building’s notice board before the elevators opened at 21:00.
• Lin Yi read that elevator use was restricted to listed hours and that the Dormitory Building was one of the school’s most dangerous areas.

Lin Yi and Wei Liang reached the Dormitory Building, where Lin Yi read rules warning that the building was dangerous despite the safety of individual dorm rooms. As they entered at 21:00, Lin Yi noticed the elevators seemed to return empty only seconds after carrying students away.

• Lin Yi read the Dormitory Building notice and collected a copy of its rules from the racks.
• Lin Yi studied the rules, which warned about anomalous rooms, distorted corridors, dangerous darkness, and strict conduct around Dorm Supervisors and other callers.
• Lin Yi asked Wei Liang to return to the dorm with him, and Wei Liang insisted on accompanying him despite Lin Yi's concern that something might happen.
• As thunder rolled and Fog spread outside, some students turned back toward the Teaching Building to spend the night in their classrooms.
• At 21:00, Lin Yi and Wei Liang entered the Dormitory Building with the crowd, and Lin Yi saw an elevator reopen seconds after students boarded it, now empty.

Lin Yi rode a dormitory elevator that behaved impossibly, skipping floors and carrying passengers into strange corridors. After a student left on the twentieth floor, he became trapped in a supernatural hallway and was overwhelmed by a monstrous presence.

• Lin Yi noticed that passengers vanished from each elevator after its doors closed, then boarded Elevator-23 with Wei Liang and eight others.
• The elevator climbed for far longer than expected, stopped at the eighteenth floor without stopping at the selected floors, and a book-reading girl got out before rushing back as the doors closed.
• Lin Yi saw faint wisps of fog around the girl's feet, then watched the elevator stop on the eleventh and twentieth floors as passengers left.
• On the twentieth floor, the student who had cursed the girl walked around a corner that was not there and fled from an unseen pursuer.
• The student struck an icy wall, saw an incomprehensible room number, and was consumed by terrifying visions and information until he could only cry out.

Lin Yi and Wei Liang reached the fourteenth floor, where Lin Yi realized Wei Liang was showing signs of contamination and narrowly avoided inviting something from an abnormal dorm room. After following the rule for a right-angle turn, Lin Yi found that the hallway and everything ahead had vanished.

• Lin Yi and Wei Liang left the elevator and entered the fourteenth-floor hallway, where Wei Liang appeared cold and exhaled ice crystals.
• Lin Yi suspected Wei Liang was contaminated and hoped a hot shower might help, but Wei Liang urgently told him to say he would not take him to the dorm.
• Lin Yi repeated Wei Liang's refusal, and the sinister wind around them receded as Lin Yi realized his earlier offer might have counted as an invitation to something in an abnormal room.
• Lin Yi led Wei Liang past the dorm rooms while repeating his identity and destination to stay grounded.
• Lin Yi encountered a right-angle turn, followed the instruction to turn around and deny it, and then saw that the hallway ahead had disappeared.

Lin Yi was pulled into a strange world where he stood on a cliff above an upright-seeming ocean, and his belief that he was in the dormitory building began to fail. As an ancient voice threatened to overwhelm him, the Security Guard appeared with the Ancient Bronze Lamp and drove the darkness away.

• Lin Yi stepped backward from the blank expanse and found himself standing on a steep, moss-covered cliff in an unknown world beneath a black sun.
• Lin Yi recognized the place from his earlier vision in the Gymnasium and realized gravity was pulling him off the cliff.
• Lin Yi used his willpower to imagine the dormitory corridor and briefly weaken gravity, but the sea wind and ancient screams began eroding his belief.
• The Security Guard appeared above Lin Yi with the Ancient Bronze Lamp, whose yellow light banished the darkness, eerie sound, and sea wind.

Lin Yi and Wei Liang reached Room 1414 after escaping the distorted world outside, with Wei Liang narrowly evading a swarm of strange creatures before entering. Inside, Lin Yi found the dormitory rules and began reading a special-circumstances version that suggested the supposedly safest place had exceptions.

• Lin Yi used his will to restore his perception, found Room 1414, and brought Wei Liang to its door.
• Lin Yi swiped his Student ID quickly and entered the dormitory; Wei Liang faced a swarm of shadowy creatures before unlocking the door and following him inside.
• A Security Guard examined a footprint on the cliff while Lin Yi checked the normal-looking dormitory and noticed the rules posted on the door.
• Wei Liang quickly checked the time and rules, gathered supplies, and went to take a hot shower.
• Lin Yi read seven dormitory rules, then discovered a special-circumstances version for residents who could not sleep after lights-out.

Lin Yi analyzed the dormitory rules, focusing on lights out and theorizing that light might anchor buildings to a normal layer. As he and Wei Liang prepared for the night, Tian Bufan returned and immediately asked whether Wei Liang had already showered.

• Lin Yi compared the dormitory rules and concluded that students should return before 22:00, wash up, and be in bed before midnight.
• Lin Yi noticed that the rules repeatedly distinguished between buildings before and after lights out, and wondered whether light anchored them to a normal layer.
• As Tian Bufan and the others failed to return, Lin Yi grew anxious; Wei Liang finished showering and showed Lin Yi how he washed his hair without closing his eyes.
• Wei Liang warned Lin Yi to remove useful items before putting clothes in the washing machine, which only looked like a real machine.
• Tian Bufan entered the room, and Lin Yi greeted him happily; Tian Bufan frowned when he saw Wei Liang drying his hair and asked whether he had showered.

Lin Yi realized that the mist in the Dormitory shower could distort layers and make him feel watched by something outside the window, which nearly compelled him to open it. After returning to the room, he saw Wei Shan and Kuai Hongji had arrived, but Mao Feiyang was still missing, and he discovered moss on his shoes.

• Tian Bufan showed Wei Liang a note that caused a strange consciousness to stir in him, then began a hurried conversation while Lin Yi showered.
• Lin Yi sensed something watching him from the shower window and concluded that the mist could affect layers, then resisted an urge to open the window that seemed to control him.
• Lin Yi finished showering and found Wei Shan and Kuai Hongji back in the Dormitory, while only twelve minutes remained before the corridor lost power and Mao Feiyang's return became unlikely.
• Wei Liang explained that the Dormitory laundry chute collected students' daily clothes and shoes, and Lin Yi noticed a large patch of moss stuck to his sneakers.

Lin Yi discovered moss from the eerie Cliff on his shoe and, with Tian Bufan, examined his fading memories and the Campus’s layered nature. The chapter ended with Tian Bufan explaining how dense fog could push the Campus into an abnormal state, his intense fascination unsettling Lin Yi.

• Lin Yi found strange moss from the dark world on his shoe and put the shoe in the washing machine.
• Tian Bufan pointed out that Lin Yi was forgetting Mao Feiyang and could no longer remember why he had come to the university; Wei Liang supplied the answer about Lin Yi’s grandmother, then became frightened and went to bed.
• Lin Yi asked Tian Bufan why he seemed to know so much, and Tian Bufan promised to explain on the fifth night if they met again without trouble.
• Lin Yi proposed that S City University occupied a different Layer from the outside world and cited the School Gate and Student Rules as evidence.
• Tian Bufan used threads to explain how fog could lower the Campus’s Layer past a threshold into an abnormal state, revealing a disturbing fascination with the phenomenon.

Tian Bufan explained to Lin Yi how the campus’s descending layers overwrite cognition and why students with high inspiration must understand the rules behind their fluctuations. He then distinguished ordinary mountain fog from fog seeping in from another layer and began discussing how to leave campus.

• Tian Bufan told Lin Yi that information capable of breaking a person’s mind could not be safely conveyed through ordinary words, and that the campus’s apparent distortions overwrote people’s cognition rather than overturning it.
• Tian Bufan explained that the Student Rules offered ordinary students basic protection, while Lin Yi and the others needed to understand how the campus’s layer fluctuated because their higher inspiration exposed them to greater danger.
• Lin Yi struggled to explain that he had entered campus only to raise thirty thousand yuan for Grandmother’s medical expenses, and Tian Bufan accepted his answer before returning to the discussion.
• Tian Bufan asked whether the fog that lowered the campus’s layer was the same as mountain fog, and Lin Yi reasoned that fog inside the Gymnasium or Dormitory Building came from another layer.
• Tian Bufan said he could not yet distinguish the two kinds of fog and warned that learning the answer without reaching it through one’s own reasoning could damage cognition.
• Tian Bufan introduced the final issue he wanted to discuss: how to leave the campus.

Tian Bufan explained why the Student Rules might not offer a safe way to leave the Campus and warned Lin Yi to avoid the University Gate until they understood the Campus’s layers. They then discussed the Art Students, whose different appearances and colors marked different kinds of contamination, but the most dangerous group remained unexplained.

• Tian Bufan reasoned that the Student Rules’ exit route depended on finding the Head Teacher or Dorm Supervisor, and that boarding a bus without confirming it was blue could be dangerous.
• Wei Liang admitted that he had avoided the School Doctor because the Gym Teacher had warned him never to go there.
• Tian Bufan told Lin Yi to avoid the University Gate and described completing the seven-day experience or finding a hidden way out as their two possible escape routes.
• Wei Shan returned from the Bathroom with bloodstained clothes, claimed he had only suffered a nosebleed, and traded insults with Kuai Hongji.
• Tian Bufan explained that his class contained Athlete Students, Experience Students, and three kinds of strange students, including Art Students marked by yellow and green clothing.
• Tian Bufan said blue and green represented different directions of contamination, and that the vacant-eyed students who were not their classmates were the most dangerous group.

Lin Yi learned how Tian Bufan had gathered information about the Campus’s layers, identities, and pathways, then compared what Tian Bufan witnessed during the classroom battle with his own encounter with a sculpture. Tian Bufan deduced that mobile sculptures were abnormal units housed in the Art Building who invaded other buildings when the Campus’s layers fluctuated.

• Tian Bufan explained that he had questioned the Athlete Students and planned to investigate pathways between buildings, layers, and student identities before risking a transformation.
• Tian Bufan told Lin Yi that his class’s Athlete Students had fought alongside normal Art Students against abnormal Art Students and other hostile beings during the blackout.
• Tian Bufan revealed that a full-body sculpture had entered his classroom, leading Lin Yi to connect it to the plaster-like substance he had found in a keyhole.
• Lin Yi described his encounter with blood, tomato sauce, and plaster, and Tian Bufan showed interest in the transformations.
• Tian Bufan reasoned that sculptures were mobile abnormal units kept in the Art Building who could invade other buildings when the Campus’s layers fluctuated.

Tian Bufan explained how abnormal students and sculptures might form a reversible transformation pathway, while Lin Yi realized his own cognition had been overwritten. After Tian Bufan spotted an inhuman figure outside the window, he and Lin Yi continued investigating the Campus’s layers and the effects of light, ending as Lin Yi began discussing the streetlamp pole.

• Tian Bufan outlined a transformation pathway from normal Art Students to abnormal Art Students, inhuman classmates, and sculptures, and suggested reversing it might allow safe travel between layers.
• Tian Bufan concluded that the teachers and students appearing in fog were abnormal Art Teachers and abnormal Art Students.
• After Tian Bufan asked when Lin Yi had accepted the Campus’s abnormalities, Lin Yi rewrote the crossed-out claim that tomatoes were hearts and felt no discomfort.
• Tian Bufan told Lin Yi that an inhuman-looking figure had peered through the window, and they considered how the Dormitory’s layer might change after lights-out.
• Lin Yi and Tian Bufan discussed how daylight might drive abnormal students from the classroom around dawn, then turned to the streetlamp issue and the Campus’s layers.

Lin Yi and Tian Bufan compared their theories about how streetlamps and buildings changed when the campus layer dropped, while debating whether another world existed beneath the campus. They ended by noting that the Teaching Building might conceal additional floors and that its forbidden elevators could reveal its secrets.

• Lin Yi explained that streetlamps shifted into numerical order as the campus layer dropped, and Tian Bufan demonstrated how the campus map unfolded and distorted.
• Tian Bufan questioned whether the layer drop transported people to another world or merely changed the campus’s form; Lin Yi mentioned stepping on moss, and Tian Bufan said he had glimpsed a possibly related place.
• Tian Bufan withheld his secrets until Lin Yi showed enough adaptability, then wondered how the people who wrote the rules had built roads and streetlamps across layers.
• Lin Yi reviewed evidence that the Head Teacher received meals from the Security Guard and Chefs, while Tian Bufan noted that the Security Guard’s appearance during normal weather remained uncertain.
• Lin Yi described seeing Building D through the fog, and Tian Bufan suggested that it and the Art Building were hidden structures revealed by the layer drop.
• Tian Bufan theorized that the Teaching Building could unfold to reveal more floors and suggested that taking its forbidden elevator might expose its secrets.