Recaps

Qingmu and the others split up in the fog to search for the remaining altars, uncertain whether they would meet again. Qingmu reached the Sangqi Tribe’s altar and discovered five suns in the sky, leading him to question what activating the altars would bring to humanity.

• Qingmu proposed splitting up so the group could follow the Sacred Staffs to the altars without all risking the Spacetime Deep Well at once.
• Situ assigned Qingmu and himself to search for the Manti Stone Tribe and Sangqi Tribe altars, while Duwa, Petru, and Mrs. Larry led searches for the Altar of Ice.
• Su Huilan parted from Qingmu and followed Duwa, while Alice joined Petru and Mrs. Larry and Ivan stayed with the others.
• Qingmu arrived at the place where he had first entered Ramla and saw five suns, which he suspected were connected to the activated altars.
• Qingmu considered the danger that restoring Gaia’s consciousness could disrupt human civilization, then reached the unchanged Sangqi Tribe altar with Crow.

Qingmu descended the altar and felt an inexplicable sense of coming home as he considered the five suns and the nature of the strange space. A vision of an ancient garden burned away, leaving him with the living willow twig and the thought that he might know how to get home.

• Qingmu noticed that one of the five suns had moved to the center of the other four and considered whether the suns belonged to a mental world, dream, or hallucination.
• Qingmu recalled feeling the same sense of familiarity at the altar during his previous visit and slowly continued down the steps.
• Crow agreed that the feeling was like coming home as Qingmu envisioned an ancient garden, a willow, a fruit tree, and people raising silkworms.
• Qingmu's vision turned into a fire that consumed the garden and left him amid scorched ruins before the scene vanished.
• Qingmu took out the sprouting willow twig and said he might know how to get home, while Crow clutched his hair.

At the Altar of Wood, Qingmu recalled fragments of his past and hesitated to activate the altar, though doing so might be the way home. Meanwhile, Bi Shenghua considered how to preserve the old willow in the restored Mulberry Garden and discovered a new willow seedling.

• Qingmu examined the altar’s carved symbols while Crow pointed out shapes resembling a tree and a bird beneath the stones.
• Qingmu and Crow could not remember how they had first reached Liuying Lane, but Qingmu recalled dying in a fire and feeling at home beneath a willow tree.
• Qingmu worried that activating the Altar of Wood might be a mistake and wondered whether Situ had activated the Altar of Stone.
• Crow insisted that activating the altar was right because it would help them get home.
• Bi Shenghua considered how to restore the Mulberry Garden while preserving its old willow, then spotted a willow seedling beside her feet.

Qingmu realized the Altar of Wood mirrored the Mulberry Garden in Wuzhong and used the willow twig to guide its activation. As the Soul of Wood awakened, its roots reached the garden, where new growth filled the grounds before Bi Shenghua’s eyes.

• Qingmu recognized that the altar’s layout matched the Mulberry Garden and reasoned that activating it could open a passage home.
• Qingmu placed the willow twig at the altar’s dry lake, and Bi Shenghua later saw the willow sapling sprout leaves as greenery spread throughout the garden.
• Qingmu inserted the Soul of Wood into the altar and watched it grow into a vast tree whose roots reached toward a familiar garden.
• Bi Shenghua watched fresh shoots cover the Mulberry Garden as the wind rippled the lake.

Qingmu used the Soul of Wood to form a spacetime bubble that could shelter him and Crow from the approaching Spacetime Stasis Zone. As they watched the world outside race through cycles of time, Qingmu and Crow considered whether the Swordfish’s hangar bubble and the missing half of the Soul of Fire were connected, ending with Crow suspecting someone had been hidden in the hangar.

• Qingmu explained that the willow cutting could eventually open a passage home and that time would pass slowly inside the Spacetime Stasis Zone.
• Crow suggested the Swordfish’s hangar bubble might have been deliberately made, and Qingmu agreed that spacetime bubbles could be crafted.
• Qingmu pulled out the Soul of Wood, sensed the altar’s overlapping spatial layer, and gathered its fragments into a new spacetime bubble.
• The Stasis Zone’s shadow covered the altar, while Qingmu and Crow watched the trees outside wither and flourish at tremendous speed.
• Qingmu proposed that Ronald Cohen had taken the Soul of Fire only after leaving the Stasis Zone, and Crow wondered whether its other half and someone else had been hidden in the hangar.

Qingmu and Crow examined the clues surrounding the hangar, the Sacred Staffs, and Ronald Cohen, suspecting that Ivan, Petru, and Alice might be connected to a hidden plan. Qingmu then grew the willow into a tree resembling the one in Liuying Lane, shattered their spacetime bubble, and stepped through its branches with Crow, leaving their fate unknown.

• Qingmu reasoned that someone might have collected spacetime fragments and created the preserved hangar, and he suspected Duwa, Petru, Ivan, and possibly Ronald Cohen.
• Crow suggested that Ronald might still be alive because his body had never been found, and Qingmu recalled that Ivan and Petru had carried the bodies.
• Qingmu considered whether the cremated Swordfish crew might have formed a collective consciousness and wondered whether Alice was involved.
• Crow mentioned going home, prompting Qingmu to think of the old street and its mulberry tree.
• Qingmu used the Soul of Wood to grow the willow twig into a tree like the one in Liuying Lane, then shattered the spacetime bubble.
• Qingmu swept aside the willow branches and entered with Crow as the tree withered away inside the still spacetime.

Bi Shenghua watched the Mulberry Garden’s ancient trees revive and change while the man she loved remained absent, as Hu Xing and Yao Jingjing each married. On Lunar New Year’s Eve, she found the man had finally returned, and they reunited beneath the snow.

• Mulberry Garden’s saplings suddenly turned green, and Bi Shenghua revised the construction plans to protect them while Hu Xing wondered how the miracle happened.
• Hu Xing told Bi Shenghua she was marrying Shi Dazhuang, and their wedding took place during the National Day holiday as the grove grew into a sizable stand of ancient Sang trees.
• The old willow deteriorated as the Sang grove flourished, then shed its bark and branches and began growing mulberry leaves; Bi Shenghua realized it had become a mulberry tree.
• Yao Jingjing and Hou Biao married at the end of the year, and Bi Shenghua quietly left their wedding to return to the Sang Garden.
• On Lunar New Year’s Eve, Bi Shenghua wrapped the old Sang tree against the snow, and the long-absent man appeared with an umbrella and told her he was back.

Qingmu returned to Bi Shenghua’s home after five years away and spent Lunar New Year’s Eve sharing dinner and wine with her and Crow. He declined to contact their friends right away, choosing to stay with Bi Shenghua for a few days, while Crow’s drunken antics ended the evening in laughter.

• Qingmu revisited his room and recalled how much had changed during his five years away.
• Bi Shenghua served Qingmu and Crow a New Year’s Eve dinner and told Qingmu about their friends and Huang Ziqiang’s gifts.
• Qingmu told Bi Shenghua he wanted to spend the next few days with her before notifying everyone that he had returned.
• Crow drank several cups of wine, insulted Bi Shenghua, and then pretended he could not remember what had happened.

Qingmu revisited the Mulberry Garden with Bi Shenghua, recalling fragments of his past as he considered returning to Ramla to complete his mission. Memories of old Liuying Lane and the war came back in flashes, and the chapter left him confronting the recollection of Liu Huaian and a mysterious gate marked “LBNL 19.”

• Qingmu told Bi Shenghua that he might have to return to Ramla, but first wanted to visit places connected to his returning memories.
• Bi Shenghua explained how the old willow tree had become Sang, and showed Qingmu where the old Liuying Lane street had been.
• A match flame triggered Qingmu’s memories of his youth with Bi Shenghua, a photographer, and the devastation of war.
• Bi Shenghua guided Qingmu through the former street, and Qingmu remembered Liu Huaian jumping from the old supply and marketing cooperative and asking whether the children were doing well.
• Qingmu recalled telling Liu Huaian that the money had been sent, then glimpsed a guarded metal gate marked “LBNL 19.”

Qingmu recalled a mysterious visit to Lawrence Laboratory No. 19, then recovered a vivid memory of escaping the fire at the Liu family's wool mill. The memory ended with a crow appearing in the snowy landscape and teasing Qingmu and Bi Shenghua.

• Qingmu remembered passing security at Lawrence Laboratory No. 19 and seeing a person undergoing surgery before the memory cut off.
• Bi Shenghua told Qingmu about the old farmers' market, the former internet café, and the wool mill fire that occurred on the day she was born.
• Qingmu pictured the wool mill and remembered being trapped inside when the fire broke out after the Liu family cut down the mulberry tree.
• Qingmu remembered falling over the severed mulberry root as he fled, then seeing a green bud sprout from it before the flames consumed him.
• A crow flew out of the shattered memory and landed on Qingmu's head, teasing him and Bi Shenghua as they walked.

Qingmu reunited with Yao Jingjing and Hou Biao, then learned that Ramesses, a red-haired guardian of the Egyptian Holy Land, had helped them and might know more about the Awakened. Qingmu concluded that Ramesses was searching for the white cat Ruxue and resolved to find him.

• Yao Jingjing and Hou Biao visited Bi Shenghua, where Qingmu thanked Hou Biao for helping him.
• Yao Jingjing told Qingmu about meeting Ramesses, who had guided her and Hou Biao through a dream and spoken of divine power and an approaching battle.
• Qingmu wondered whether Hou Biao's lost memories and his own past were connected to damaged consciousness or parasitic forces.
• Qingmu reasoned that Ramesses was connected to Yao Jingjing's family because he was searching for the cat from her great-grandmother's world of consciousness.
• Qingmu identified Ruxue as the likely cat Ramesses sought, leaving Yao Jingjing wondering whether her great-grandmother's cat had come from Egypt.

Qingmu reunited with his friends in Wuzhong and discussed going to Cairo to find Ramesses and bring Hanran back. He learned that Meimei’s dream cabin might connect to the Holy Land, but left its secrets unexplored, reassuring her that he had fought alongside her father.

• Qingmu told Yao Jingjing that he planned to find Ramesses in Cairo after checking on Professor Mei and the situation in Wuzhong.
• Bi Shenghua returned, and Crow teased her until she chased him around the room with vegetables.
• Hu Xing, Shi Dazhuang, Xia Tian, and Meimei arrived, and Qingmu reunited with them.
• Meimei asked Qingmu whether he had seen her father, and he entered her dream to find a moonlit island and a cabin connected to the Holy Land.
• Qingmu chose not to explore the cabin and told Meimei that her father was an extraordinary man who had fought beside him.

Qingmu visited Mei Yiqiu to ask about Ramla, the Gaia Consciousness, and the altars, but the professor spoke cryptically about mirrors and seemed consumed by his smoking and illness. After Qingmu left with Mei Ziqing, Mei Yiqiu revealed he had kept the pills and addressed a message to Mr. Sang.

• Mei Yiqiu coughed violently and resisted taking medicine, so Qingmu took his pipe away and asked him about the risks surrounding Ramla and the Holy Land.
• Mei Yiqiu warned that Earth was about to change and spoke of a coded message about mirrors and a world inside them.
• Qingmu and Mei Ziqing left the office, and Mei Ziqing explained that Mei Yiqiu had become fixated on the Mirror World.
• Mei Yiqiu watched Qingmu and Mei Ziqing on surveillance footage, revealed two pills in his palm, and wished Mr. Sang good luck.

Qingmu returned to Mei Laboratory to investigate Ghost and learned that someone had entered Old Yu’s dreams disguised as him, giving instructions about the server room and Bian Ziyuan. In the basement, Qingmu found a different Ghost, who greeted him and appeared to be Internet.

• Qingmu grew suspicious of Mei Ziqing’s calm reaction and decided to visit Ghost in the abandoned server room.
• Mei Ziqing summoned Old Yu, who recognized Qingmu and asked whether Zhao Pengcheng would return too.
• Old Yu told Qingmu that a figure resembling him had visited his dreams four or five times, instructing him to maintain the server room, lay cables, and help Bian Ziyuan open locks.
• Old Yu led Qingmu to the basement, where they cleared the dust and powered up the old servers.
• Qingmu entered the computer dream world, recognized that the waiting Ghost was not the one he knew, and asked whether it was Internet.

Qingmu met Saladin in a vast dreamscape and learned that Saladin had transferred his consciousness onto a computer network. Saladin described their past work together on the Soul Laboratory, and Qingmu recognized it as possibly Laboratory No. 19 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

• Qingmu entered a star-filled dreamscape and asked the strange face whether it was the Internet.
• The face became Saladin, and Qingmu recognized him despite being unable to recall their shared past clearly.
• Saladin said he and Qingmu had founded the Soul Laboratory to study mental energy and consciousness transfer.
• Saladin claimed that he had transferred his consciousness to the network in the 1970s, making him the Internet.
• Qingmu connected the Soul Laboratory to Laboratory No. 19 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and asked if they were the same.

Saladin explained how he survived the destruction of Laboratory No. 19 by living across computer networks and later helped expand the internet. He revealed that he had called Qingmu “Sangni,” and Qingmu asked why Saladin was developing chips for human bodies despite already ruling the internet.

• Saladin blamed Qingmu for destroying Laboratory No. 19 and said that the laboratory’s destruction had given him a chance at eternal life.
• Saladin said he had survived in old mainframes and the growing computer network, eventually regaining control over information and secretly assisting the Department of Energy in establishing Laboratory No. 19.
• Saladin described helping Bill leave Harvard and build a computer company, and said he had also encountered Jobs as the internet expanded.
• Saladin called Qingmu “Sangni” and tried to recall his Chinese name, while Qingmu redirected the conversation.
• Qingmu asked Saladin why he was developing chips for human bodies when he already ruled the internet.

Saladin explained why he continued the human microchip project and how he tracked down Qingmu through police records. Qingmu realized Saladin had manipulated Liu Huaian into setting the wool mill fire to kill him.

• Saladin said Qingmu had originally proposed human microchips and described his interest in using them to control people and investigate Qingmu’s past.
• Saladin explained that he eventually understood Qingmu’s work had focused on mental power fields and consciousness parasitism rather than chips or networks.
• Saladin said he identified Qingmu through police case files and interrogation recordings, including investigations by Shi Dazhuang.
• Qingmu inferred that Saladin had caused Liu Huaian’s schizophrenia and arranged the wool mill fire to kill him.

Qingmu relived how he was detained in the United States, deported to Vietnam, and wandered across Southeast Asia while searching for home. Following a faint scent to a mountain temple in Masuba, he met a woman who accused him of killing Kitano and destroying her family’s dreamscape.

• Qingmu remembered a policeman questioning him and an immigration officer returning his clothes and walking stick before he was deported.
• Qingmu was sent to Vietnam as Saigon fell, then worked and traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Yangon.
• Qingmu followed a faint scent north through Mianyue and reached a temple in the mountains near Masuba.
• A woman at the temple told Qingmu he had killed Kitano, sealed off the True Martial Dreamscape, and left only her and her daughter alive.

Qingmu fled Masuba after witnessing the woman’s self-immolation, where her daughter Duwa treated him and quieted his hatred. He saved the orphaned caravan boy Wu Suotun, but Wu poisoned and robbed him in the mountains, leaving Qingmu close to death as he hallucinated fire and felt dew fall on him.

• The woman confessed that she and Kitano had caused the Sang family’s ruin, then burned herself and pleaded with Qingmu to spare her daughter.
• Qingmu fled into Masuba, where Duwa treated him and told him his anger had been extinguished; she left him dry rations before departing.
• Qingmu rescued Wu Suotun, the lone survivor of a caravan ambush, and the two left Masuba together.
• Lost in the Northern Myanmar mountains, Qingmu ate poisonous mushrooms and learned that Wu Suotun had taken an antidote.
• Wu Suotun admitted he had poisoned Qingmu to claim his supplies, then robbed him and left; Qingmu remained behind, hallucinating a great fire as his consciousness faded.

Qingmu traveled north with Enkun after Enkun saved him from mushroom poisoning, and the two survived a tiger attack before parting at Kuaziba. Following a familiar scent east, Qingmu eventually reached Yangcheng, where Liu Daqing recruited him to go to Wuzhong and work at a woolen mill.

• Enkun treated Qingmu's mushroom poisoning and explained that he searched for missing people from his settlement while gathering herbs.
• Enkun shielded Qingmu from a tiger at Guaizi Ridge, and Qingmu used his stick to daze the animal so Enkun could kill it.
• Qingmu and Enkun crossed the Nangou River, then parted near Kuaziba after Enkun gave Qingmu food and urged him to head east.
• Qingmu found a hidden cave with a rusty iron-barred gate but remembered nothing, then traveled through several provinces to Yangcheng.
• Liu Daqing returned to recruit workers for a woolen mill in Wuzhong, and Qingmu went with him.

Qingmu recalled his past at the Daqing Woolen Mill as he confronted Saladin about the fire and the destruction of Laboratory No. 19. Saladin explained his fear of Qingmu and revealed that the laboratory had been moved and renamed the Shinbu Universe Research Center, which Qingmu linked to Kitano Masatake.

• Qingmu remembered working at the Daqing Woolen Mill and watching the Liu Family cut down Old Bi’s mulberry tree before a fire broke out that night.
• Qingmu asked Saladin why he had ordered Liu Huaian to set the fire despite knowing Qingmu had lost his memory, and Saladin admitted he feared Qingmu’s power and violent instability.
• Saladin said he had left Liu Huaian alive so his actions could signal whether Qingmu had survived, and revealed that many Laboratory No. 19 staff members had also survived.
• Saladin disclosed that he had destroyed Laboratory No. 19 and moved its research to evade government investigators, claiming he had erased their data and killed those who knew too much.
• Saladin told Qingmu the relocated laboratory was now called the Shinbu Universe Research Center, and Qingmu asked whether Kitano Masatake was his new partner.

Qingmu questioned Saladin about his partnership with Kitano Masatake, and Saladin revealed the Kitano Family’s role in the Second Space Joint Project. The chapter left Qingmu wondering how the project’s “Second Space” related to the Third Space Foundation and its mysterious history.

• Saladin told Qingmu that his memories suggested he had once been parasitized by another consciousness, which may have contributed to his madness and amnesia.
• Saladin explained that he had lived alone within the Internet for fifty years and was no longer afraid of Qingmu because he controlled the world’s thermonuclear weapons and existed across connected devices and space technology.
• Saladin proposed that he and Qingmu work together again, explaining that his partnership with the Kitano Family was based on mutual exploitation.
• Saladin revealed that the Kitano Family and he were collaborating on the Second Space Joint Project, which involved technologies including his human-body chips and consciousness transfer.
• Qingmu recalled Mei Yiqiu’s Third Space Foundation and wondered what the Second Space meant and how it connected to the Third Space.

Saladin explained the Awakeners' Alliance's layered-space concepts and said he planned to use Nanke's Multilayer Dream Entropy Equilibrium Theory to avert the universe's heat death. Qingmu challenged the danger of drawing humanity into a shared dream and asked about Saladin's cooperation with Kitano Masatake, but Saladin withheld his collaborator's identity and offered to reveal more if Qingmu agreed to work with him.

• Saladin told Qingmu he knew Qingmu belonged to the Awakeners' Alliance and described how the organization used dreams and Dream Corridors to communicate.
• Saladin explained the First, Second, and Third Spaces, Zero Space, and Nanke's concept of Original Space.
• Saladin said he hoped to expand a symmetrical dream universe and feed it information to keep the universe at low entropy and prevent heat death.
• Qingmu questioned whether the theory was true and warned that humanity might be pulled into a shared dream, but Saladin dismissed the risk.
• Qingmu asked how far Saladin's cooperation with Kitano Masatake had gone, and Saladin refused to name his collaborator unless Qingmu agreed to work with him.

Qingmu agreed to cooperate with Saladin to pursue the hidden player behind the events shaping the world, while warning him not to endanger humanity. Saladin offered him access to all information on the Internet and revealed that Ronald Cohen had returned.

• Saladin asked Qingmu to join forces with him, explaining that he needed Qingmu’s mental power to understand spirit and describing why he preferred working with him.
• Qingmu considered Saladin’s past actions and his own suspicions that a hidden player was manipulating events, then decided cooperation could help expose that player.
• Saladin reassured Qingmu that the Kitano Clan’s Second Space Joint Project would not harm them, and Qingmu warned that he would destroy Saladin and the Internet if they threatened humanity.
• Qingmu asked what he would gain from cooperating, and Saladin offered him access to all information on the Internet.
• Saladin revealed that Ronald Cohen had returned.

Martha married Huang Liang after he overcame his hesitation and proposed with roses he had dyed half gold and half red. Their wedding ended with Huang Liang accepting Martha’s devotion despite his painful past and the dangers ahead.

• Martha remembered waiting three years for Huang Liang to propose while Mr. Wolf’s worsening health repeatedly interrupted him.
• Huang Liang secretly dyed roses half gold and half red, then proposed to Martha beside Mr. Wolf’s bedside.
• Mr. Wolf urged Martha to accept Huang Liang, and Martha agreed after hearing his plea.
• Martha visited the ailing Mr. Wolf for his blessing before entering the church for her wedding.
• Huang Liang asked Martha if she would regret marrying him, and she assured him that being together was happiness.
• Huang Liang noticed an approving old woman in the church and slipped the ring onto Martha’s finger.