Chapter Summaries

The mysterious healer explained how the Mercury Beings’ record of the Black Calamities would trigger their spread through the Rift Void and eventually into the Abyss. Though he could not change the established past, Mo Ling offered to try healing its root cause himself.

• The dying Mercury Being recorded the Black Calamities’ history and coordinates on a circuit board before collapsing into mercury.
• The mysterious healer told Mo Ling that the record board would lead the Mercury Beings to observe Black Calamity Planet, awakening the Black Calamities and setting off a chain of fear and destruction.
• Mo Ling realized that the Black Calamities became a disaster because other races feared and watched them, and that the record board was the root cause.
• The mysterious healer said his Root Cause Healing Method could not undo the past because the consequences were too great.
• Mo Ling looked at the record board and offered to try healing it himself.

Mo Ling hesitated to erase the record board because doing so would prevent the disasters on the Hua Sheng Islands but also erase the Red Spirit Flower and his memories with Xi. Elder Ladi recounted a past Root Cause Healing Method dilemma and left Mo Ling to decide what he would do.

• Mo Ling asked Elder Ladi whether erasing the record board would prevent the disasters, and learned that it would also undo the events that brought him together with Xi.
• Elder Ladi told Mo Ling that he was not yet ready to bear the cost of the Root Cause Healing Method.
• Elder Ladi described a Thought Plague that began with a scientist's method for preventing a floating island from collapsing.
• Elder Ladi and his companions discovered that erasing the plague's source would make the island collapse, while allowing the plague to spread would destroy its population.
• Elder Ladi recalled how his companions argued over whether to intervene, then asked Mo Ling what he would choose.

Mo Ling chose to erase the Thought Plague’s source and save the collapsing sky island, taking responsibility for both the disease and the people. Elder Ladi revealed that he had made the same choice in the past, though his memories left open whether the Black Calamity should be eliminated or addressed another way.

• Mo Ling chose to make the scientist forget the method that caused the Thought Plague and to cure the sky island’s collapse.
• Mo Ling argued that a healer’s duty should not be defined by restrictions, and Elder Ladi revealed that he had once made the same choice.
• Elder Ladi’s memories showed how he had used his healing powers to help patients and communities beyond the limits of medical treatment.
• The memories revealed that the Black Calamity had been used to attack the Hua Sheng Islands and that the elders had used the Root Cause Healing Method to find its source.
• Ladi questioned whether the Black Calamity was truly a disease that needed to be eliminated, and he kept searching for a way to cure it while saving the people.

Mo Ling and Ladi discussed how to control the black calamity by shaping it through observation, and Ladi created a newborn observer with a detailed template. The chapter left them preparing to forge a surgical scalpel from the black calamity.

• Ladi asked Mo Ling what the black calamity was, and Mo Ling compared it to mud that could be molded into different forms.
• Ladi proposed turning the black calamity into tools for healing, and Mo Ling warned that precise control would be difficult because healers' thoughts were clouded by memories of its attacks.
• Ladi explained that detailed settings and pure thoughts could shape the black calamity, and he theorized that the mastermind had used templates to spread its forms among healers.
• Ladi pulled a section of his spine from his simulated body and shaped it into a mass of flesh to create a pure thought with his prepared settings.
• Ladi added a sonar-like means of observation to the new creation and invited Mo Ling to forge a surgical scalpel.

Ladi brought Mo Ling to the Black Earth planet and transformed its writhing ground into a giant scalpel capable of cutting through space to find the cause behind the Hua Sheng Islands’ suffering. They reached a Rift Void filled with hollow stones, where the mastermind welcomed them to a place called the library, and Ladi confronted the Eternal Thirsters.

• Ladi took Mo Ling from the Silver Spaceship to the black planet, where the Black Earth continued writhing beneath the surface.
• After Mo Ling briefly shut off his perception, Ladi shaped the Black Earth into an enormous scalpel and made it fly.
• Ladi explained that the scalpel could cut through obstacles and travel through space to find those behind the illness affecting the Hua Sheng Islands.
• The scalpel carried Ladi and Mo Ling through fissures in space to a Rift Void packed with hollow, straw-like stones that fixed probing gazes on them.
• A familiar mad voice welcomed them to the library, and Ladi demanded to know what the Eternal Thirsters were doing.

Mo Ling recognized the beings confronting him and Ladi as Eternal Thirsters, creatures who invaded civilizations to extract knowledge from living minds. The Thirsters projected their origins and growing hunger for knowledge, ending as they realized that destruction alone could no longer reveal what they sought.

• Mo Ling recognized the Eternal Thirsters and connected them to the memory-stealing attacks on the healers.
• Ladi accused the Thirsters of stealing knowledge, but they insisted that extracting thoughts was exploration, like mining.
• The Thirsters projected their history, explaining that they were intelligent deep-sea creatures who first discovered knowledge by watching a starfish's tentacle get bitten off.
• The Thirsters began unlocking questions throughout their world and found that knowledge was interconnected, allowing discoveries to spread.
• As gentle interactions stopped working and destruction eventually failed, the Thirsters realized they needed a more powerful way to interact.

The Eternal Thirsters learned that other races would neither freely share nor fully exchange their knowledge, so they turned to conquest and devouring. After recounting their history to Ladi, they asked whether the healers of the Hua Sheng Islands would share or exchange all their knowledge, leaving him unable to agree.

• The Eternal Thirsters modified their bodies to read knowledge from other creatures' brains and tried to obtain knowledge through conversation and exchange.
• An intelligent species imprisoned the Eternal Thirsters and withheld knowledge, prompting them to conclude that conquest was the only way to acquire everything.
• The Eternal Thirsters secretly strengthened themselves, escaped prison, destroyed their captors, and began invading other races to devour their knowledge.
• After an avenger from the Lobster Clan nearly wiped them out with a Relic, the Eternal Thirsters survived using a False Death Relic and hid in a rift in the Abyss Fourth Layer.
• The Eternal Thirsters recounted their history to Ladi and asked whether the healers would share or exchange all their knowledge, and Ladi realized the Elder Council would refuse.

Ladi attacked the Eternal Thirsters with a surgical knife empowered by healing, but they repeatedly deciphered and countered his methods. After he destroyed their hollow stones, Ladi realized the disease remained and that the stones had been a deception, just as the void began to writhe.

• Ladi confronted the Eternal Thirsters about invading the Hua Sheng Islands and their actions against healers, then attacked them with his surgical knife.
• The Eternal Thirsters repaired their shattered stones after analyzing how Ladi used spatial cuts and the Root Cause Healing Method.
• The Eternal Thirsters evaded Ladi’s later attacks by sensing Space Ripples and explained how they avoided the spatial rifts.
• Ladi created paired spatial rifts to misdirect and strike the stones, then annihilated the fragments.
• Mo Ling asked whether the Eternal Thirsters had been destroyed, and Ladi realized the disease had not recovered and the stones were not its cause.
• The deep void began to writhe as Ladi recognized that the Eternal Thirsters had deceived them.

Ladi sent Mo Ling through a passage to find the source of the Eternal Thirsters' illness, but Mo Ling emerged in an immense library. There, he found a healer explaining to a Straw Creature that its endless thirst for knowledge was a trait of its kind rather than a disease.

• The Eternal Thirsters sent endless straw spiders against Ladi, who weakened as he destroyed them.
• Ladi opened a passage to the Eternal Thirsters' main bodies and shoved Mo Ling through it to find the illness's deepest cause.
• Mo Ling arrived in a vast circular library and found a healer and a Straw Creature speaking at a reading table.
• The Straw Creature asked the healer to cure its unbearable desire to acquire knowledge.
• The healer argued that the Eternal Thirsters' shared thirst for knowledge was a trait, not an illness, and compared it to other creatures' desires.
• The Straw Creature challenged the healer's explanation, and the healer said humans enjoyed reading just as they did.

The healer cured the Straw Creature’s desire for knowledge, causing it to die while lamenting all it had learned but never experienced. Afterward, Mo Ling revealed he had come to avenge his friends, and the healer’s strange body suggested he had been connected to the Straw Creature.

• The healer treated the Straw Creature, whose body shriveled as its desires faded, and told it that curing its disease would kill it.
• The Straw Creature reflected on the knowledge and experiences it had missed, then recited its identity and purpose as its body dissolved into question-mark-shaped dust.
• The healer watched the Straw Creature disappear, while Mo Ling sat silently across from him in the library.
• The healer asked whether Mo Ling had come for revenge, and Mo Ling said he had come for his friends among the healers on the Hua Sheng Islands.
• The healer stood, revealing a body covered in Chaos Elixirs and hollow tentacles, leading Mo Ling to suspect he was allied with or controlled by the Straw Creature.

Mo Ling learned that the librarian was an independent Eternal Thirster created to organize the collective’s knowledge, and that the Eternal Thirster had sought healing to end its endless hunger and atone for destroying other races. As the librarian began to die, he entrusted the unanswered questions about guilt and forgiveness to Mo Ling and asked him to leave them with humans.

• Mo Ling questioned the healer, who identified himself as the librarian and an Eternal Thirster separate from the collective consciousness.
• The librarian explained that the Eternal Thirsters’ disordered knowledge could confuse the collective, so he had been created to organize its library.
• The librarian said that absorbing other races’ histories made the Eternal Thirster feel empathy and guilt, though its hunger for knowledge repeatedly drove it to destroy them.
• The librarian explained that the Eternal Thirster had sought healing power to use it for the first time, but healing removed the hunger that gave the race its reason to exist.
• The librarian said the Eternal Thirster had planned to die as an avenger, but left him questions about whether a villain could atone and whether victims should forgive.
• As the librarian crumbled into smoke and dust, he told Mo Ling to leave those questions with humans because they liked reading.

Mo Ling escaped the collapsing scalpel after Ladi confirmed the Eternal Thirster had been destroyed, but he saw a vast Pipeline Fortress form around the library and travel into the void. Back in the Healing Space, Mo Ling and Ladi reunited with Xi and the other healers and prepared to leave and clear the Black Calamities from the island.

• The healer gave Mo Ling the Root Cause Healing Method book before his body dispersed, then sent Mo Ling out of the library.
• Ladi told Mo Ling that the Eternal Thirster was dead and hurried him through a passage as the scalpel collapsed.
• Mo Ling saw a huge fortress of pipes form around the library and move through the void before he and Ladi escaped to the Black Earth.
• Mo Ling and Ladi found Xi and the other healers, who woke as they arrived and asked about the elders and the Black Calamities.
• Ladi explained what had happened and said they needed to leave the Healing Space and clear the Black Calamities from the island.

Li Luo used Pain Transfer Tablets to restore the elders, who then organized the healers to clear the Black Calamity and rescue trapped creatures. Li Luo agreed to wait on the Hua Sheng Islands until the beacon and its signal could be checked, while the healers began compressing the maze into floating discs that absorbed the Black Calamity.

• Li Luo transferred the elders' wounds from their bodies to the ground with Pain Transfer Tablets, restoring even bodies reduced to bones.
• The elders revived, thanked Li Luo and the Cube, and assigned the healers tasks to clear the Black Calamity, guide chaotic healing energy, and rescue creatures trapped in the maze.
• An elder told Li Luo that clearing the other islands and sorting the spilled elixirs would delay checking the beacon, so Li Luo agreed to stay until the signal recovered.
• The healers learned to control the Black Calamity and compressed the maze walls into floating black discs that attracted and absorbed it.

Li Luo recovered from the crisis on Central Island and fell asleep after reading Cube’s account of Pipeline Fortress’s connection to Eternal Thirster. Mo Ling reflected on whether events were being forced along a predetermined chain, then entered Xi’s Healing Space and saw an unfamiliar healer in a mirror.

• As the beacon returned to normal, Li Luo drank cola from Cube and read that Eternal Thirster’s Library had become Pipeline Fortress.
• Li Luo grew troubled by the fortress’s hidden origins and fell asleep beside the beacon.
• Mo Ling watched over Li Luo and wondered whether his unease had prevented him from teleporting the record board and preserved the chain of events leading to the black calamity.
• Mo Ling followed the healers’ lights into a daze and found himself in Xi’s Healing Space.
• Mo Ling asked Xi why he was considered a healer, and Xi showed him a mirror in which an unfamiliar healer appeared.

Li Luo dreamed of Doctor Liu defending an infirmary from Annular Tumors while wounded and nearly out of ammunition. He discovered that a Relic could transfer his injuries to the creatures and used it to keep them away from the civilians evacuating nearby.

• Doctor Liu treated a badly injured soldier, who thanked him and returned to fight in the sea of fire.
• Doctor Liu found his own wrist festering as Annular Tumors circled around the flames toward the buildings sheltering evacuating civilians.
• Doctor Liu discovered that the supposed painkillers were a Relic called Pain Transfer Tablets and used one to transfer his wrist wound to an Annular Tumor.
• With his ammunition running low, Doctor Liu cut his arm and transferred the wound to the approaching Annular Tumors, making them fall into the flames.

Doctor Liu used the Pain Transfer Tablet to redirect his injuries onto the Annular Tumors, eventually stepping into the sea of fire and transferring its burns as well. As his teammates and Captain helped him endure the agony, he kept fighting to protect everything behind them.

• Doctor Liu struggled to transfer enough wounds to stop the Annular Tumors from spreading, while exhaustion and pain distorted his senses.
• Doctor Liu swallowed pills and stepped into the sea of fire, discovering that he could transfer burns to the Annular Tumors.
• Doctor Liu repeatedly injured himself to transfer the pain and destroy the advancing Annular Tumors, even as the flames burned him again and again.
• Doctor Liu's teammates appeared and held him upright, helping him continue transferring his wounds.
• Captain embraced Doctor Liu and comforted him as Doctor Liu cried about being forced to fight.
• Captain told Doctor Liu they fought for everything behind them: their homes, peace, life, and humanity.

Li Luo woke after sleeping for three days and searched for records of the Pain Transfer Tablet, finding none. Researching the Annular Tumor led her to an old battle whose mysteries resembled her vivid dream, leaving her wondering how the dream connected to the Relic and what happened to Doctor Liu.

• Xi helped Li Luo wake and explained that she had been dormant for three days, while Cube chased a headless rabbit made from a Black Calamity aggregation.
• Li Luo remembered her dream about the Pain Transfer Tablet and searched for information, but found no records of the Relic.
• Li Luo searched for the Annular Tumor and found an account of its invasion during the early Great Cataclysm, when a Patrol Team held it back with a wall of fire until reinforcements arrived.
• Li Luo noticed that the account left unanswered how the Patrol Team created and sustained the fire wall, and why the disaster caused no civilian deaths despite wiping out the Patrol Team.
• Li Luo suspected her dream depicted the real battle and wondered why the Pain Transfer Tablet had shown it, whether Doctor Liu survived, and what had happened to him.

After the Hua Sheng Islands’ signal returned to normal, Li Luo prepared to leave for Pipeline Fortress with a letter proposing cooperation between healers and humans. Testing the beacon’s restored functions, she deployed a white airship with eight pairs of fin-like wings.

• Xi told Li Luo that the black calamities on some islands still needed investigation, while Central Island’s calamity had mostly been handled.
• Mo Ling used a black rabbit inside the Cube to collect trash, then returned with it to Li Luo.
• Li Luo confirmed that the beacon signal was normal and told Xi she planned to return to Pipeline Fortress before possibly descending to the Fifth Layer.
• Xi declared that he would lift restrictions on healers leaving the islands if he became an elder, and Elder Ladi urged him to keep that promise.
• Ladi gave Li Luo a letter proposing cooperation between healers and humans for delivery to the Administrator of Pipeline Fortress.
• Li Luo tested the beacon, activated its launch function, and deployed a white airship in an open area.

Li Luo left the two healers aboard an autonomous airship, which unexpectedly swooped back so they could exchange farewells. The airship then passed over Hundred Flowers Island, where the Red Spirit Flowers argued over it and one became convinced Li Luo was smiling at it.

• Li Luo boarded the airship without saying goodbye, but secretly watched the healers through a porthole as it took off.
• The airship rerouted around turbulence, plunged through the clouds, and stopped near the healers, who waved and called goodbye to Li Luo.
• The airship shot away again, and Li Luo released Little Purple to secure herself before another sudden jolt.
• The airship slowed over Hundred Flowers Island, where the Red Spirit Flowers argued about whether it was a missile or an airship.
• A Red Spirit Flower spotted Li Luo at the porthole and imagined she was smiling at it and wanted to take it in as a subordinate.

Li Luo returned to Pipeline Fortress after leaving the Hua Sheng Islands and submitted her report. She learned that the Pain Transfer Tablet had no origin details in the Database, leaving its history uncertain.

• Li Luo traveled through chaotic currents, while Cube protected the airship from floating debris and Mo Ling entertained himself by making the Black Rabbit sort and chase stones.
• The airship reached Pipeline Fortress sooner than Li Luo expected, and a staff member escorted her to a lounge to report her experiences.
• Li Luo asked why the fortress’s Electronic Screens were covered in pipes, and the staff member explained that the modifications improved transmission and storage and prevented device failures in some areas.
• Li Luo transferred her report and gave the staff member Elder Ladi’s letter, then asked why the Pain Transfer Tablet had no Database records.
• The staff member found that the Tablet had no recorded intake date and had been donated by a hunter when Pipeline Fortress was first established.
• The staff member said she had recommended the Tablet because its healing function suited Li Luo’s trip to the Hua Sheng Islands, not because she knew its history.