Chapter Summaries

Qin Manjiang interpreted the Opening Lines as a clue that the way out of the sea of blood lay beneath it, and he and Jian Cunxin dived toward a light below. They reached the shore, but Qin Manjiang fell unconscious and Jian Cunxin found a towering mountain of bones ahead.

• Qin Manjiang concluded that the Opening Lines pointed to crossing the sea of suffering and keeping ghosts company, and Jian Cunxin proposed that they dive beneath the sea of blood to find the shore.
• Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin plunged into the bloody water and spotted a white light shining below them.
• As Qin Manjiang neared the light and began to drown, Jian Cunxin released him and pushed him onward, but he caught her wrist and pulled her along.
• Qin Manjiang touched the light, which enveloped them and overturned the world, turning the sea of blood into red ground beneath their feet.
• Jian Cunxin found Qin Manjiang alive but unconscious and saw a towering mountain made entirely of white bones ahead.

Chen Zhiyuan emerged from the Congealed Jade Gourd and found Wen Liangsheng badly injured outside Ward Two. Using his Continuation Pen, Chen Zhiyuan learned that the apparent Wen Liangsheng was not human and fled after it revealed its deadly nature.

• Chen Zhiyuan left the Congealed Jade Gourd at Ward Six and found Wen Liangsheng at Ward Two with his left arm missing.
• Wen Liangsheng said Jian Cunxin had been possessed and bitten off his arm, then asked Chen Zhiyuan to help bandage the wound.
• Chen Zhiyuan used his Continuation Pen on Wen Liangsheng and received fragments of a future involving an ancient tomb, missing hospital staff, Nurse Liu, and a possible way to survive.
• Chen Zhiyuan realized Wen Liangsheng was not human because Jian Cunxin only ate ghosts, shoved the creature down, and ran away.

Jian Cunxin and Qin Manjiang discovered a vast underground bone field beneath Ping'an Hospital, where a headless skeleton began transforming into a blood-soaked creature. Trapped near the bone mountain as more remains started to awaken, they faced the approaching Vengeful Ghost until Qin Manjiang told Jian Cunxin to follow his footprints.

• Qin Manjiang woke in Jian Cunxin’s lap, mistook her for a ghost, and knocked her unconscious with his forehead.
• After Jian Cunxin came around, Qin Manjiang noticed that the top skeleton on the bone mountain was missing its skull.
• A skeleton began growing flesh and eyeballs, so Qin Manjiang grabbed Jian Cunxin and ran.
• Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin realized the bone mountain stayed close despite their escape attempt, while the creature approached and other skeletons began to stir.
• Qin Manjiang suppressed his fear, tightened his grip on Jian Cunxin’s wrist, and told her to follow his footprints.

Qin Manjiang used the mutilated corpse’s Z-shaped gait to guide himself and Jian Cunxin through the space, while Chen Zhiyuan fled into the Main Building with Wen Liangsheng’s pursuing body close behind. After the creature’s damaged body collapsed, Chen Zhiyuan seized Nurse Liu and threatened to kill her.

• Qin Manjiang copied the mutilated corpse’s direction, stride, and rhythm, and Jian Cunxin followed in his footsteps.
• Chen Zhiyuan ran toward the Main Building as Wen Liangsheng’s rotting blood pursued him along the concrete’s dashed lines.
• Chen Zhiyuan found Nurse Liu at the nurses’ station, and she fled upstairs when she saw the blood entering the building.
• Wen Liangsheng’s damaged body fell apart at the entrance and sank back into the filthy blood, prompting Nurse Liu to say it had to change bodies.
• Nurse Liu warned Chen Zhiyuan that outsiders had to die, but he pinned her against the wall and threatened to kill her.

Xinxin asked Lian Yan about the seven-day cycles, then discovered he was a corpse who wanted to preserve her most beautiful moment by turning her into one. After he attacked her even inside her photograph, two familiar figures briefly freed her, but she remained gravely wounded and unconscious.

• Xinxin asked Lian Yan for hints about the security key, and he said the world repeated in seven-day cycles.
• Xinxin told Lian Yan that he never blinked and seemed not to be alive, prompting him to paralyze her and declare that he would freeze her beauty as a corpse.
• Xinxin used her photograph to escape into its space, but Lian Yan picked it up and continued harming her through it.
• As Lian Yan began skinning Xinxin, two rotting corpses in the photograph swayed, and Lian Yan cried out for them not to touch her.
• Xinxin's paralysis lifted, and she saw the two familiar figures approach before they vanished; she curled up, bleeding, and gradually fell silent.

After escaping the basement, Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin were targeted by Patient One’s micropsia and found themselves shrinking as the ghost pursued them. Qin Manjiang realized the effect depended on their perspective, led Jian Cunxin toward the child, and stomped it; their bodies returned to normal, leaving them alive.

• Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin escaped the basement, but Li Daiping’s bloodied corpse fell before them.
• They saw Patient One, a nine-year-old boy with eyeballs filling his eye sockets, and realized he had become a ghost.
• As they ran toward the Main Building, the hospital seemed enormous and their bodies seemed to shrink under the boy’s micropsia.
• Qin Manjiang guessed that the distortion worked like a convex mirror and told Jian Cunxin to trust him as they ran toward the child.
• The world and their bodies changed size as they approached, and Qin Manjiang stomped the now tiny child.
• Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin returned to normal size and survived.

Qin Manjiang and his companions regrouped in Ping'an Hospital and used the remaining medicine to reveal that Nurse Liu was being forced to play a role. The chapter left Qin Manjiang asking whether the hospital was real.

• Qin Manjiang and Jian Cunxin returned to the Main Building and found Chen Zhiyuan alive, restraining Nurse Liu after hiding in the Congealed Jade Gourd.
• Jian Cunxin recounted how she and Qin Manjiang had defeated the size-changing ghost, and Qin Manjiang explained how they had turned its ability against it.
• Chen Zhiyuan shared the storyline he had written with the Continuation Pen, and Jian Cunxin summarized the clues about the hospital’s transformation and Nurse Liu’s connection to the Vengeful Ghost.
• Qin Manjiang noticed similarities between Nurse Liu and Li, then had Jian Cunxin retrieve the two remaining doses of medicine.
• After Jian Cunxin and Chen Zhiyuan gave the medicine to Qin Manjiang and Nurse Liu, Nurse Liu silently indicated that she was not Nurse Liu and had been forced to play that role, as had the patients.
• Qin Manjiang asked whether Ping'an Hospital was a real hospital.

Qin Manjiang suspected that the red pills could protect the players on the second night and might awaken their true selves, just as they awakened hidden consciousness in the hospital’s patients. As darkness fell, he prepared to test his wild conjecture.

• After taking the red pill, Nurse Liu broke down and insisted that she was not Nurse Liu and that the hospital was not a real hospital.
• Jian Cunxin briefly spoke in an eerie voice, revealing that a personality belonging to her patient had appeared inside her and contaminated her mind.
• Qin Manjiang recalled his suspicions about Nurse Liu’s role-playing and the strange Opening Lines in the basement, then considered that the players might also be playing roles without knowing it.
• Qin Manjiang proposed that taking the remaining pill might protect them during the second night and awaken their true selves, while Chen Zhiyuan and Jian Cunxin warned him about the risk.
• A cold gust swept into the lobby as the second night arrived.

Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan fled through the hospital as corpses rose from the concrete and a bloodied nurse pursued them. Qin Manjiang swallowed the red pill, a different consciousness took control, and he introduced himself to Chen Zhiyuan as Jiang Du.

• Nurse Liu warned everyone to close the doors, but a bloodied nurse broke through the concrete and emerged outside the Main Building.
• Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan fled upstairs while Jian Cunxin chased Nurse Liu, and the pursuing nurse broke into the building.
• As Qin Manjiang weakened, Chen Zhiyuan carried him through the corridor and refused to leave him behind.
• Qin Manjiang swallowed the red pill, then opened his eyes with a changed demeanor and told Chen Zhiyuan to put him down.
• The bloodied nurse abruptly veered through a wall and window, while Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan saw corpses rising across the mist-covered plaza.
• Chen Zhiyuan asked who had taken over Qin Manjiang's body, and the stranger introduced himself as Jiang Du.

Jiang Du took over Qin Manjiang’s body and persuaded Chen Zhiyuan to accompany him through Ping'an Hospital, where he hinted that he might end the Game before Qin Manjiang woke. Meanwhile, Jian Cunxin hid from a skeletal ghost on the hospital’s top floor, unable to understand why it had appeared there.

• Jiang Du told Chen Zhiyuan that he was another personality awakened by Qin Manjiang’s pill and promised to return the body when the medication wore off.
• Chen Zhiyuan explained the group’s discoveries and theories about Ping'an Hospital, then described how the Players had entered the Game.
• Jiang Du concluded that they had enough clues to try ending the Game, despite Chen Zhiyuan’s doubts, and changed the subject to Spirit Pupils.
• Jian Cunxin hid in a top-floor room after losing Nurse Liu and hearing a skeletal ghost wandering the corridor outside.

Jian Cunxin was trapped alone in a ward as a bone-cracking monster waited outside and blood began pouring from the ceiling. She realized a crucial truth about Ping'an Hospital before the blood killed her, and left Qin Manjiang a final message on her phone.

• Jian Cunxin hid in a ward while an unseen monster approached and stopped outside the door.
• Blood seeped into the room, and Jian Cunxin saw countless eyes as she recalled that every ghost in Ping'an Hospital had many eyes.
• Jian Cunxin connected the ghosts' eyes, the hospital's absence from the real world, and Nurse Liu's denial that it was a hospital, then realized what Ping'an Hospital was.
• Blood overwhelmed Jian Cunxin and suffocated her as she tried to finish a message on her phone.
• Jian Cunxin died after entering the unfinished words “Stay... a... live...” for Qin Manjiang.

Jiang Du explained that [Ping'an Hospital] could be a horror movie, where the players might survive by finding or becoming its protagonist—or by breaking the fourth wall. After learning that Chen Zhiyuan’s Continuation Pen permanently weakened his ability to think, Jiang Du urged him to stay alive and carry a message to Qin Manjiang about entering the Eye Realm.

• Jiang Du told Chen Zhiyuan that people who reached 999 Spirit Pupils left the game until ten people reached the threshold, and Chen Zhiyuan wondered whether Yang was still alive.
• Jiang Du reasoned that [Ping'an Hospital] was likely a movie, with its frightening setting and attacks shaped by horror conventions rather than consistent ghost rules.
• Jiang Du proposed three ways to survive: stick with the protagonist, take on the protagonist’s role, or break the fourth wall by confronting the audience.
• Chen Zhiyuan asked about the nurse’s corpse, and Jiang Du revealed that his Permanent Item could alter perception; Chen Zhiyuan then disclosed that his Continuation Pen showed possible future storylines at the permanent cost of his ability to think.
• Jiang Du told Chen Zhiyuan to find Qin Manjiang after the game and ask him to let Jiang Du enter the Eye Realm, adding that saving and backing up were essential in a game.

Jiang Du explained that the characters could break the Fourth Wall and led Chen Zhiyuan to Ward Two to look for a remaining pill. After distracting the corpses with Chen's phone, Jiang Du suddenly lost control of Qin Manjiang's body and told Chen to ask the patient about entering the Eye Realm.

• Jiang Du explained that the Fourth Wall could be broken if the movie's actors became aware of the camera and audience and interacted with them.
• Jiang Du reasoned that Wen Liangsheng's patient might not have taken his pill, leaving it in Ward Two, and said Nurse Liu could also help break the Fourth Wall.
• Chen Zhiyuan suggested distracting the corpses with a phone, and Jiang Du threw his lit, playing phone outside to draw them away.
• Jiang Du and Chen Zhiyuan rushed into Ward Two while the corpses chased the phone.
• Jiang Du told Chen Zhiyuan to ask the patient to enter the Eye Realm, then Qin Manjiang's body collapsed as Jiang Du lost control.

Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan searched Ping'an Hospital for medicine and found Guan She, who admitted he was trapped in the Game and killing was his way to survive. Chen Zhiyuan realized that the events unfolding matched a storyline written by the Continuation Pen.

• Qin Manjiang woke up after Jiang Du’s consciousness left his body, and Chen Zhiyuan told him what had happened.
• Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan went upstairs to find the medicine and heard violin music coming from patient number two’s ward.
• Qin Manjiang identified the violinist as Lian Yan, then used an ID badge to deduce that the man was an actor named Guan She from Rain City.
• Guan She said he had killed the patient to survive and could not escape the Game because only one person could survive.
• Qin Manjiang told Guan She that everyone in Ping'an Hospital had survived the start of each round and urged him not to despair.
• Chen Zhiyuan remembered that the scene matched a storyline written by the Continuation Pen and realized it had come true.

Qin Manjiang planned to use Chen Zhiyuan to distract Guan She while he retrieved the medicine and helped Li break the Fourth Wall. As Qin Manjiang realized Guan She was trying to seize other characters’ supernatural abilities, he heard a woman crying upstairs and rushed back to help Chen Zhiyuan.

• Qin Manjiang told Chen Zhiyuan to draw Guan She away so he could retrieve the medicine and take it to Li in the Third Ward Building.
• Chen Zhiyuan agreed to wait at the stairwell while Qin Manjiang ran downstairs, and Qin Manjiang worried that his teammate might die.
• Qin Manjiang realized that the Opening Lines could lead trapped Players to kill their companions and become permanent actors in [Ping'an Hospital].
• Qin Manjiang deduced that Guan She was Lian Yan, the villain protagonist, who wanted to kill supernatural characters and take their abilities.
• Qin Manjiang heard a woman crying upstairs, saw blood seeping through the ceiling, and ran back to help Chen Zhiyuan.

Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan escaped the Ping'an Hospital Ghost Story by interrupting its film, but the cinema revealed a vast crowd of supernatural entities before they vanished. Qin Manjiang recognized a figure resembling Li Xijiu among them, leaving the mystery unresolved as they cleared the story.

• Qin Manjiang dragged Chen Zhiyuan upstairs as the blood-covered ghost pursued them, and they barricaded themselves inside a ward.
• Guan She took control of Chen Zhiyuan and tried to convince Qin Manjiang to give up, but Chen Zhiyuan broke free by smashing his head into a wall and told Qin Manjiang he believed in him.
• Qin Manjiang realized they could stop the film by destroying its cameras and gouged out Chen Zhiyuan's eye and then his own.
• Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan awoke in a cinema, where the Ping'an Hospital film stopped and the Ghost Story Game declared it cleared.
• Qin Manjiang spotted a figure resembling Li Xijiu among the cinema's many supernatural entities before he and Chen Zhiyuan vanished in red light.

After Ping'an Hospital was cleared, Qin Manjiang and Chen Zhiyuan returned to the Eye Realm as the only survivors and received large Spirit Pupil rewards. Qin Manjiang rose to Third Seat, and the Eye Realm's next blood-red signal left the players fearing another Ghost Story was about to begin.

• In Fu City, Nie Yunzhen led a gathering where the remaining players discussed the Eye Realm and the pupil brands on their chests.
• A voice declared Ping'an Hospital cleared and transported all forty-three players into the Eye Realm.
• The Eye Realm displayed Chen Zhiyuan and Qin Manjiang's names, and the two returned as the only survivors.
• Chen Zhiyuan received 95 Spirit Pupils, bringing his total to 355, while Qin Manjiang received 150, bringing his total to 300.
• The Ten Seats Sequence placed Nie Yunzhen first, Chen Zhiyuan second, and Abyss—Qin Manjiang—third.
• The largest pupil sent out another blood-red light, alarming the players that a new Ghost Story might be starting.

A new Ghost Story, [Death as Scheduled], appeared after the third Ultimate Game was cleared, and five players were chosen to face it in seven days. Qin Manjiang avoided selection when an unknown voice turned the enormous pupil away, while Lian Yan escaped the cleared [Ping'an Hospital] and vowed to find Qin.

• The fourth Spirit Pupil revealed [Death as Scheduled], which warned that chosen players would die at midnight in seven days and gave no time limit.
• The Eye Realm selected Su Yu, Yue Chiqiu, Xia Nan, Cao Xiangrong, and Liu Jingqing as the five players for the new Ghost Story.
• The enormous spiral pupil nearly selected Qin Manjiang, but a voice in his mind told it to get lost, and it looked away.
• The countdown began at seven days, leaving the selected players time to prepare.
• Lian Yan crawled out of the remains of [Ping'an Hospital] clutching a photograph and said he would come find Mr. Qin.

Qin Manjiang learned that Qin Manyi had been chosen for Moon City’s Eye Realm, and she warned him not to go there until he became one of the final Ten Seats because he would disappear. After she left for Moon City, Chen Zhiyuan woke with more than three hundred Spirit Pupils and called Qin Manjiang to pass on a message from Jiang Du.

• Qin Manjiang spoke to the doll [I] about his doubts and asked it to lead everyone out of the Game if he could no longer continue.
• Qin Manyi showed Qin Manjiang the Moon City marking on her chest and told him she had been chosen for its Eye Realm.
• Qin Manyi urged Qin Manjiang to collect 999 Spirit Pupils, become one of the final tenth, and stay away from Moon City until then, warning that he would disappear.
• Qin Manyi left to stay in Moon City, and Qin Manjiang watched her go, recalling her warning.
• Chen Zhiyuan woke to a distorted world after exceeding 300 Spirit Pupils and remembered Jiang Du’s message for Qin Manjiang.
• Chen Zhiyuan called Qin Manjiang and arranged to meet him at Clear Pupil Bar.

As Liu Jingqing contemplated her impending death in the Ghost Story World, Nie Yunzhen called to gather Players searching for a way to save her. Qin Manjiang then invited her to the Clear Pupil Bar, and Liu Jingqing chose to go see her friends instead, leaving for the bar.

• Liu Jingqing watched a Husky and an elderly security guard chase each other through the rain, then reflected on the beauty of the world and her approaching death.
• Nie Yunzhen called Liu Jingqing to join the Players at Catface Café, where they were discussing changes in the Eye Realm and trying to find a way for Liu Jingqing to survive.
• Qin Manjiang called Liu Jingqing and invited her to the Clear Pupil Bar, saying that several friends had gathered there and that he had something important to share.
• Liu Jingqing apologized to Nie Yunzhen, ended the call, and decided that seeing Qin Manjiang and the others mattered more to her.
• Qin Manjiang texted Liu Jingqing the bar's address, Central District, Clear Pupil Bar.