Chapter Summaries

Gu Qing went with his roommates to set up a mixer on the athletic field, where he spotted a starving oversized rat but left it alive as one of his informants. When the girls arrived, he noticed the petite girl at the back had the tag “[Feces]” floating above her head.

• Chen Zijie, Qian Duole, and Gao Fei tried to make Gu Qing look worse before the four roommates headed out to prepare for the mixer.
• Gu Qing, Chen Zijie, and Qian Duole bought snacks and drinks, and Chen Zijie spent fifty yuan on a small chocolate cake.
• Gu Qing spotted a large black rat whose thoughts revealed it was hungry, but he left it alive because the school's rats served as his informants.
• The four roommates decorated the athletic field with picnic blankets, snacks, drinks, and string lights.
• Gao Fei's girlfriend arrived with five freshmen, and Gu Qing saw the tag “[Feces]” above the petite girl at the back.

Gu Qing noticed the strange [Feces] label above Huang Xiaoyue, a cute twin-tailed freshman, and agreed to add her on WeChat so he could investigate it. During a picnic truth-or-dare game, the bottle finally pointed to Huang Xiaoyue, and Gu Qing chose truth.

• Gu Qing saw that Huang Xiaoyue alone among Gao Fei's girlfriend's friends had a [Feces] label above her head.
• Chen Zijie and Qian Duole picked which girls they liked, while Gu Qing said he was only there to make up the numbers.
• Huang Xiaoyue hurried ahead, sat beside Gu Qing, introduced herself, and asked to add him on WeChat.
• Gu Qing added Huang Xiaoyue and saw that her profile picture was Lazy Sheep with a poop-shaped hairstyle, then accepted friend requests from the other girls.
• Gao Fei's girlfriend suggested truth or dare, and the girls repeatedly chose Gu Qing for questions before the bottle pointed to Huang Xiaoyue.
• Huang Xiaoyue asked Gu Qing whether he chose truth or dare, and he picked truth.

At a university mixer, Gu Qing gave Huang Xiaoyue a fabricated home address while recalling his ex-girlfriend, Bai Ningyu. Lin Xiao’s ex-boyfriend Zhao Yu disrupted the gathering with insults, then grew angry again and enlisted teammates to bother her group.

• Huang Xiaoyue asked Gu Qing for his address and family details, and he gave her a made-up address in Jiangbei County.
• Chen Zijie and Lin Xiao fed each other cake during truth or dare, prompting Gu Qing to remember his relationship with Bai Ningyu.
• Zhao Yu arrived, accused Lin Xiao of moving on too quickly, and insulted her after she said their breakup made her choices none of his business.
• Chen Zijie stood up to defend Lin Xiao, but Gu Qing stopped him from fighting, and the group resumed the game.
• Zhao Yu saw Lin Xiao chatting happily again and recruited several soccer teammates to practice near the picnic mat.

Gu Qing kicked a soccer ball with enough force to knock down the university team's star goalkeeper, exposing his extraordinary strength. Chen Zijie felt embarrassed when Lin Xiao rushed to comfort the goalkeeper, but Gu Qing concluded he had helped his roommate avoid a bad relationship.

• The soccer team repeatedly kicked the ball toward Chen Zijie's picnic, and Chen Zijie finally confronted them about it.
• Gu Qing took the ball from Chen Zijie and kicked it toward the ponytailed goalkeeper, warning him to catch it.
• The ball struck the goalkeeper with tremendous force and knocked him onto his back, stunning the players and onlookers.
• Lin Xiao ran to the injured goalkeeper, Yu, and tearfully hugged him after he managed to sit up.
• Gao Fei comforted Chen Zijie and offered to have Xu Xinyi introduce him to someone else.
• Gu Qing realized his powerful kick had embarrassed Chen Zijie, but decided he had helped his roommate avoid Lin Xiao.

After the mixer, Gu Qing walked Huang Xiaoyue back to her dorm while remaining wary of her suggestive advances. Xia Shuran saw them together and, encouraged by her roommate, decided to message Gu Qing about her feelings.

• Gu Qing agreed to walk around campus with Huang Xiaoyue and looked at his family photo with her.
• Huang Xiaoyue told Gu Qing that two people had gone missing on campus and asked him to walk her back to the girls' dorm.
• Huang Xiaoyue invited Gu Qing to a private cinema, but he gave a noncommittal reply and left.
• Xia Shuran saw Gu Qing with Huang Xiaoyue and felt upset, though she told her roommate they were only friends.
• Xia Shuran followed her roommate's advice and opened her WeChat chat with Gu Qing to send him a message.

Xia Shuran made cookies for Gu Qing and kept her feelings to herself, while Gu Qing focused on training and set a goal to gain knotted muscles by Tuesday. The next afternoon, Xia Shuran pushed herself through martial arts practice, driven by jealousy and a fear of losing Gu Qing’s attention.

• Xia Shuran invited Gu Qing to practice martial arts and nearly confessed to him, but instead offered to make him cookies.
• Gu Qing suspected Xia Shuran had wanted to confess, but felt relieved when she did not because he was focused on improving his attributes.
• Gu Qing studied with Yang Yuntong and played basketball with Gao Fei, gaining learning ability and physical constitution.
• Xia Shuran gave Gu Qing five flavors of homemade cookies before they practiced martial arts, and he chose chocolate as his favorite.
• Gu Qing noted that he needed seventeen more points of physical constitution to gain knotted muscles and aimed to reach the goal by Tuesday.
• The next afternoon, Xia Shuran insisted on continuing to train despite exhaustion because Gu Qing had walked another girl to her dorm.

Gu Qing spent the previous evening practicing martial arts with Xia Shuran and the next morning playing basketball with Gao Fei, pushing his progress toward the knotted muscles attribute to 92 points. He invited Xia Shuran to practice earlier that afternoon, but she replied that she had class at two.

• Gu Qing ended four hours of martial arts practice with Xia Shuran, then massaged her legs before escorting her back to the women's dorm.
• Gu Qing persuaded Gao Fei to skip class and play basketball with him for five hours the next morning.
• Gu Qing gained five points from playing basketball with Gao Fei, bringing his progress toward knotted muscles to 92 out of 100.
• Gao Fei collapsed from exhaustion and vowed he never wanted to play basketball again.
• Gu Qing messaged Xia Shuran to ask whether she could practice martial arts at two, and she replied that she had class then.

Gu Qing trained martial arts with Xia Shuran until his accumulated physical constitution reached 100 and he obtained Knotted Muscles. His body then underwent a dramatic transformation, leaving him alone in his dorm bathroom with bulging, sharply defined muscles and torn clothes.

• Gu Qing met Xia Shuran at the sports field, accepted the food and drinks she brought, and began training with her.
• After four hours of practice, Gu Qing and Xia Shuran rested, ate, and resumed training at seven thirty.
• Xia Shuran collapsed from exhaustion, but Gu Qing helped her up so they could practice for ten more minutes.
• Gu Qing received Knotted Muscles when his accumulated physical constitution reached 100, and his muscles began rapidly expanding.
• Gu Qing hurried back to his dorm and locked himself in the bathroom as his muscles burst through his clothes.

After gaining the ability to activate Knotted Muscles, Gu Qing tested his new strength and durability. He uprooted a towering tree and emerged uninjured after tumbling down a rocky slope.

• Gu Qing discovered that Knotted Muscles was an active skill and switched it off to return his body to normal.
• Gu Qing’s roommates questioned his torn clothes and changed appearance, but he brushed off their questions.
• Gu Qing exchanged goodnight messages with Xia Shuran, then studied with Yang Yuntong the next morning.
• Gu Qing went to the wooded park, activated Knotted Muscles, and uprooted a twenty-meter-tall tree.
• Gu Qing rolled down a rocky cliff to test his durability and stood up without a scratch.

Gu Qing tested his strengthened body, then began spending nights with Zhou Yuan to pursue the Immune to All Poisons attribute. As they reached Zhou Yuan’s rental, a strange rat followed them, while several figures at a secluded villa announced that they had found someone.

• Gu Qing jumped from a twenty-meter cliff and confirmed that he was unharmed.
• Gu Qing stopped martial arts practice with Xia Shuran after he could no longer gain attributes from her tag, then told her he would be busy for a while.
• Gu Qing arranged to join Zhou Yuan at his rental and planned to conduct experiments with him nightly to gain Immune to All Poisons.
• Gu Qing left the dorm, met Zhou Yuan, and traveled with him to the rental while a strange rat secretly followed them.
• At a secluded villa, several muscular figures said they had found him.

Three killers came to abduct Zhou Yuan, but Gu Qing confronted them at the rental and swiftly knocked down their muscular leader. The other two killers remained inside, and the fight was still unfolding.

• Three members of the killer group were ordered to bring Zhou Yuan back and kill Gu Qing.
• Gu Qing heard a pistol being cocked, spotted three killers approaching, and told Zhou Yuan to hide.
• Zhou Yuan hid and called the public security department while Gu Qing waited with the door open.
• The three killers entered and demanded to know where Zhou Yuan was, but Gu Qing said they posed no threat to him.
• The tank-top killer mutated and attacked Gu Qing, who kicked him into a wall and left him silent.

Gu Qing survived the assassins’ gunfire unharmed, killed the two attackers as they tried to escape, and found their accomplice already dead. As police arrived, he learned through a rat in the air-conditioning pipe that the mission had failed and everyone was dead.

• The bespectacled man and the middle-aged man shot Gu Qing repeatedly, but the bullets bounced off his face, and they mistook him for an Awakened sent by the Night Court.
• Gu Qing asked what the Night Court and Awakened were, then stopped the two fleeing assassins by piercing their thighs with chopsticks.
• The two assassins shot themselves dead, and Gu Qing discovered that the tank-top man had also died from his kick.
• Police sirens approached, and Gu Qing told Zhou Yuan to leave the bedroom after dealing with the assassins.
• A rat squeaked from an air-conditioning pipe, and Gu Qing saw the message that the mission had failed and all were dead before killing the rat with a chopstick.

After Gu Qing killed three rat-worshipping attackers, Lin Tianyang explained the hidden supernatural world and why they had targeted Zhou Yuan. Gu Qing learned what an Awakened was, but the source and nature of his own powers remained unclear.

• Gu Qing told the public security officers that he had killed one attacker, while the other two had shot themselves, and then spoke privately with Lin Tianyang.
• Lin Tianyang asked whether Gu Qing was an Awakened, and Gu Qing added him on WeChat after saying he did not know what that meant.
• Lin Tianyang explained that monsters granted powers to human followers and identified the dead attackers as worshippers of the rat-related monster called the Source of Plague.
• Lin Tianyang said the attackers had targeted Zhou Yuan because his Universal Antitoxin Vaccine research might reduce the bodily harm caused by their powers.
• Lin Tianyang explained that Awakened people generated supernatural powers themselves, unlike people who gained powers through contact with supernatural things.

Lin Tianyang explained the supernatural world and invited Gu Qing to join the Night Court, while warning him that the monster’s followers had infiltrated his university. After Zhou Yuan was taken away for protection, Gu Qing returned to campus and wondered whether his Label Ability made him an Awakened rather than a Paranormal Contact.

• Lin Tianyang explained the difference between living and nonliving Supernatural Items and compared Awakened with Paranormal Contacts.
• Lin Tianyang invited Gu Qing to join the Night Court, and Gu Qing asked for a few days to consider the offer.
• Lin Tianyang warned Gu Qing that the monster’s followers might be at his university and that abnormal rats could act as their eyes and ears.
• Lin Tianyang and his partner took Zhou Yuan away for protection and possible recruitment, leaving Gu Qing unable to farm attributes from him for now.
• Gu Qing returned to Haicheng University and suspected that his strength meant he was an Awakened, perhaps an exceptionally powerful one.

Gu Qing learned that his growth far outpaced other supernatural beings and began killing abnormal rats suspected of aiding a monster. A mysterious woman watched him from the shadows, decided his supernatural power would help her evolve, and continued stalking him after he returned to his dorm.

• Gu Qing wondered whether Bai Ningyu had become an Awakened and hoped she would have a better life.
• Gu Qing spotted a fat rat whose thoughts revealed that it wanted to eat humans, then killed it with a thrown rock.
• A woman watched Gu Qing from a university rooftop and resolved to devour the supernatural power inside him.
• Gu Qing sensed he was being watched on his way back to the dorm, but saw nothing on the rooftop he checked.
• Gu Qing joined Gao Fei, Qian Duole, and Chen Zijie for barbecue, then felt watched again and searched outside from the balcony.
• The woman clung to a nearby dormitory building and confirmed that Gu Qing could sense her, deciding he would become nourishment for her evolution.

Gu Qing persuaded Yang Yuntong to study with him for three days so he could build his learning ability. After studying intensely together, he gained the exceptional comprehension attribute.

• Gu Qing asked Yang Yuntong to study with him for three days and offered her a deluxe Yiyang Junyuan album set and meals in return.
• Gu Qing and Yang Yuntong studied together for eight hours on Thursday, raising his progress toward exceptional comprehension to 78/100.
• Gu Qing studied with Yang Yuntong for fifteen hours on Friday, bringing his progress to 93/100.
• Gu Qing brought Yang Yuntong to the library before dawn on Saturday and studied with her until his accumulated learning ability reached 100.
• Gu Qing obtained the exceptional comprehension attribute, which greatly enhanced his learning ability.

Gu Qing tested his exceptional comprehension by scoring 138 on a Gaokao mathematics paper and decided to visit his family and former teacher. After Huang Xiaoyue sent him provocative photos and invited herself on a date and home with him, he resisted the temptation and declined.

• Gu Qing and Yang Yuntong left the library for lunch, and Gu Qing thanked her for studying with him before saying he was done.
• Gu Qing reviewed high school mathematics and scored 138 on a past Gaokao paper, impressing himself with his exceptional comprehension.
• Gu Qing decided to visit his parents and younger sister and catch up with Liu Zhiyi to gain abilities from her [Beast Taming King] tag.
• Huang Xiaoyue sent Gu Qing photos of herself in stockings and invited him to touch them and meet up.
• Gu Qing suppressed his desire, exchanged flirtatious messages with Huang Xiaoyue, declined her invitation to go home with him, and continued toward the university gates.

Gu Qing returned home with cookies from Xia Shuran and sat down to eat the meal his parents had saved for him. The chapter ended with him home for the evening, while his younger sister remained in her room.

• Xia Shuran gave Gu Qing a bag of cookies and said her father had asked her to come home, so they walked to the campus gate together.
• Xia Shuran stayed with Gu Qing until his bus arrived, then booked a Didi after he left.
• Gu Qing reached home and glimpsed Liu Zhiyi training pets at the Pokémon Pet Store across the street.
• Wen Wanyi reheated food she had saved for Gu Qing, and Gu Mingbo urged him to eat the chicken drumstick.
• Gu Qing sat down to eat and asked, “What’s this?”

Gu Qing went with Gu Yao to the pet store, where a woman and her relatives attacked Liu Zhiyi and began destroying the shop. Gu Qing discovered that a shadowy monster in a tree was controlling the women through threads and draining their energy.

• Wen Wanyi and Gu Mingbo tried the cookies Gu Qing brought home, while Gu Yao teased him about having a girlfriend.
• Gu Qing and Gu Yao left for the pet store, where they saw Auntie Zhang arguing with the residential complex's security guard.
• Auntie Zhang barged into the pet store and accused Liu Zhiyi of seducing her husband, then called her daughter-in-law and daughter to join her.
• The two younger women arrived, abused Liu Zhiyi, and began smashing items in the store while Gu Qing contacted the public security department.
• Gu Qing spotted threads linking the three women to a shifting black humanoid in a tree, which drew energy from them.

Gu Qing spotted a supernatural shadow controlling threads and contacted Lin Tianyang of the Night Court for help. While guarding Liu Zhiyi and Gu Yao, he failed to stop a thread from attaching itself to Gu Yao, leaving her in danger.

• Gu Qing confirmed that Gu Yao could not see the shadow on the banyan tree and called Lin Tianyang to report the suspected supernatural incident.
• Gu Qing tried to record the shadow and the threads above three crazed women, but neither appeared on his phone; he sent Lin Tianyang a video of the women and waited for the Night Court.
• Gu Qing noticed a new thread moving toward the pet shop and used Lightning-Fast Reflexes to pull Gu Yao out of its path.
• The thread vanished, then reappeared attached above Gu Yao's head, and Gu Qing could see but could not touch it.
• Gu Yao demanded to know why Gu Qing was waving his hand over her head.