Chapter Summaries

Zhao Pengcheng remained cut off from his organization after defeating Qingmu in the Dream Corridor, while international powers fought over the suspected alien Ronald Cohen. After years in prison, Zhao was unexpectedly released and told by an elderly foreigner that they had won.

• Zhao Pengcheng left the visiting room after Qingmu was taken away unconscious, and he never saw him again.
• Zhao Pengcheng read that the United Nations had labeled Dream Foundation members suspects and that several countries sent forces to the Cook Islands to arrest Ronald Cohen, but no soldiers entered the islands.
• Zhao Pengcheng continued training his mental power in prison and worried that other powerful humans like Qingmu threatened his species.
• Zhao Pengcheng received sentence reductions, changing his suspended death sentence to life imprisonment and then to a fixed term of twenty-two years.
• In his tenth year of imprisonment, Zhao Pengcheng was released and met a spry elderly foreign man who told him, "Comrade Zhao Pengcheng, we won!"

After leaving prison, Zhao Pengcheng went to the abandoned Ruhua Bar to find Qingmu and was led inside by Bi Shenghua. He found Qingmu lying in an immaculate room, so still that he seemed like a living specimen.

• Zhao Pengcheng visited Liuying Lane after prison, reflecting on the parasitic consciousnesses’ control of society and the resistance led by Mei Yiqiu.
• Zhao Pengcheng found the derelict Ruhua Bar and knocked, but no one answered.
• Bi Shenghua arrived, questioned Zhao Pengcheng, then took him through the back entrance after he said he was looking for Qingmu.
• Zhao Pengcheng followed Bi Shenghua upstairs to Qingmu’s former studio, where he noticed the carefully arranged magazines and the old couplet.
• Bi Shenghua opened the inner room, and Zhao Pengcheng saw Qingmu lying motionless on the bed beside a lifelike stuffed crow.

Zhao Pengcheng visited Qingmu, who had lain in a coma for nearly ten years, and watched Bi Shenghua care for him with patient devotion. As Bi Shenghua carried Qingmu away, Zhao Pengcheng was left with memories of a solitary figure walking through a dark corridor.

• Zhao Pengcheng entered the room and found Bi Shenghua washing Qingmu with meticulous care.
• Zhao Pengcheng learned that Bi Shenghua had cared for Qingmu for almost ten years, mostly by herself.
• Bi Shenghua massaged Qingmu and explained that hospital doctors had taught her how.
• Bi Shenghua tried to carry Qingmu on her back, and Zhao Pengcheng helped steady him after sensing his faint heartbeat.
• Bi Shenghua carried Qingmu out, while Zhao Pengcheng watched and recalled a figure walking alone through a dark corridor.

Bi Shenghua cared for the comatose Qingmu while Zhao Pengcheng learned about her former bar and wondered whether Qingmu could wake. After helping return Qingmu indoors, Zhao Pengcheng joined Bi Shenghua for lunch, where an extra meal had been set out for the cat Hanran.

• Bi Shenghua carried Qingmu into the sunlight and told Zhao Pengcheng she hoped he would wake one day.
• Bi Shenghua revealed that she had run the bar Ruhua and said it closed after Qingmu fell into a coma; Zhao Pengcheng told her he did not think Qingmu could wake.
• Bi Shenghua asked Zhao Pengcheng to watch Qingmu while she cooked, and he stayed beside him, reading old newspapers pasted on the wall.
• Zhao Pengcheng followed the sunlight downstairs, where Hanran the old yellow cat backed away from his attempt to pet it.
• Bi Shenghua called Hanran to eat, then Zhao Pengcheng helped her carry Qingmu back inside and joined her for lunch.

Bi Shenghua poisoned Zhao Pengcheng to take revenge for what he had done to Qingmu, then imprisoned him in a freezing room. Mei Yiqiu, leader of the resistance, appeared on a screen and declared that the resistance was humanity’s hope.

• Bi Shenghua told Zhao Pengcheng about her dead crow and its friendship with her cat, then served him chicken soup.
• Bi Shenghua revealed that she knew Zhao Pengcheng had harmed Qingmu and poisoned him.
• Zhao Pengcheng woke in a locked, freezing room and discovered that he could not escape.
• Kronos appeared on a screen and called the room a purgatory of ice, while Ghost warned him not to freeze Zhao Pengcheng to death.
• Mei Yiqiu appeared and confirmed that he led the resistance, which he called humanity’s hope.

Mei Yiqiu interrogated Zhao Pengcheng in an ultralow-temperature laboratory, offering to trade his life for Qingmu and threatening to freeze his consciousness near absolute zero. An explosion interrupted them, and Zhao Pengcheng later learned that his comrade had used him to locate the resistance’s undersea base.

• Zhao Pengcheng recognized Mei Yiqiu as a renowned scientist and resistance leader who had opposed the parasitic consciousness.
• Mei Yiqiu told Zhao Pengcheng that he wanted to trade his life for Qingmu and explained how near-absolute-zero temperatures could destroy his consciousness.
• An explosion interrupted Mei Yiqiu’s interrogation, and the laboratory’s temperature remained at minus one degree Celsius.
• About twenty minutes later, Zhao Pengcheng’s comrade entered the laboratory and thanked him for his hard work.
• The comrade admitted that his group had used Zhao Pengcheng to find the resistance’s undersea base.

Zhao Pengcheng lived out decades under parasitic rule, revisited Qingmu’s sealed room, and failed to obtain a new host as mechanical life seized control of Earth. As he died in the morgue, a trench-coated man with a crow appeared from the darkness.

• Zhao Pengcheng helped Bi Shenghua return to Qingmu, then lost his standing in the Dream Society and became an ordinary hospital anesthesiologist.
• Zhao Pengcheng picked up Yu Jianguo after prison, found him work guarding the morgue, and later cremated him and scattered his ashes in his hometown.
• After Ronald Cohen died, Ronald II was born in Argentina, and years later Zhao Pengcheng visited Liuying Lane and found Qingmu’s inner room spotless.
• Ghost announced that the Internet would take control of Earth’s armed forces, and Zhao Pengcheng’s attempt to take a new host failed.
• Zhao Pengcheng died in the hospital morgue as a trench-coated man with a crow emerged from the darkness.

In the prison visiting room, Zhao Pengcheng questioned whether his long, vivid lifetime had been a dream and began to reconsider his identity and his race’s purpose. He agreed to consider cooperating with Qingmu to unravel the world’s mysteries, but the appearance of the dream’s scalpel left him wondering whether he was still dreaming.

• Zhao Pengcheng woke in the prison visiting room, young again and shackled, and struggled to determine whether his memories came from reality, time reversal, or someone else’s dream.
• Zhao Pengcheng told Qingmu he felt poisoned by human emotions, and Qingmu replied that he had woken up.
• Zhao Pengcheng questioned whether he was truly Zhao Pengcheng and reflected on individuality, his origins, and his purpose.
• Qingmu asked Zhao Pengcheng to cooperate with him in unraveling the mysteries of their world, without asking him to betray or destroy his race.
• Qingmu revealed a glowing scalpel like the one Zhao Pengcheng had held in the dream, making Zhao Pengcheng suspect he was still dreaming.

Qingmu taught Zhao Pengcheng to focus mental power and questioned him about the Dream Corridor and the Dream Society. After Zhao Pengcheng used the power Qingmu transferred through the scalpel to kill a prison guard, he returned to reality and realized he could not turn back.

• Qingmu asked Zhao Pengcheng about his species, the Lost Ancestor, and the Dream Corridor, learning that Zhao Pengcheng had been assigned a passage for a special mission.
• Qingmu offered to free Zhao Pengcheng and Yu Jianguo so Zhao Pengcheng could attend a Dream Society gathering, then asked how the Dream Corridor worked.
• Qingmu returned the scalpel to Zhao Pengcheng, and Zhao Pengcheng sensed Qingmu's concentrated mental power surge into him.
• When Zhao Pengcheng began to mention Ronald Cohen's secret base in the South Pacific, the guard drew his pistol and aimed at him.
• Zhao Pengcheng launched the scalpel into the guard's throat, and the dreamlike space peeled away as he returned to reality with Qingmu.

Qingmu thanked Bi Shenghua for staying by his side and promised they would be together after he fulfilled his mission, leaving her flustered before Boss Coal interrupted them. Boss Coal reported that he had found Hanran and that the old lady sheltering the cat seemed to be in trouble, so Qingmu and Bi Shenghua went to retrieve him.

• Qingmu reflected on Bi Shenghua and the alternate life he had seen, then sincerely thanked her and promised to stay with her.
• Bi Shenghua blushed at Qingmu’s words, while Xiao Qi teased them about the iron tree blooming.
• Boss Coal arrived at the bar, joked about catching Qingmu and Bi Shenghua together, and said he had found Hanran.
• Boss Coal told Qingmu and Bi Shenghua that an old lady had taken in Hanran but seemed to have encountered trouble.
• Bi Shenghua urged them to retrieve Hanran immediately, and she and Qingmu set off with Boss Coal.

Blind Old Woman suffered a heart attack and was taken to the hospital, where her son struggled to pay for her ICU treatment. He returned to her home to find the cat missing and suspected the strange pair he had seen outside of stealing it.

• Blind Old Woman's son argued with his sister over the hospital bill, then learned that his mother needed fifty thousand yuan upfront for ICU care.
• Blind Old Woman's son persuaded his wife to pay the hospital bill by promising to kill the cat at his mother's home and bring her the money.
• Blind Old Woman's son drove to her home and noticed an odd-looking man and woman near the door, along with a crow's call and a possible cat meow.
• Blind Old Woman's son searched the locked home, found signs that his mother had kept a cat, but could not find the animal.
• Blind Old Woman's son remembered the pair outside and hurried after them, suspecting they were cat thieves.

After being struck by a car while chasing the cat thieves, the man relived memories of his mother calling him to come and believed he had lost her. He woke from the vision in the hospital waiting room, learned that Blind Old Woman had regained consciousness, and hurried to pay for her ICU care.

• The man chased the cat thieves across an intersection and was hit by a car.
• As he lay dying, the man saw Blind Old Woman beckon to him and relived moments from their life together.
• In his vision, the man searched the hospital for his mother and found her dead in a ward after his wife had kept her out of the ICU.
• The man awoke crying in the emergency room waiting area and learned that Blind Old Woman had woken but remained in danger.
• The man took the form from the nurse and said he would pay for his mother's ICU observation.

Stone and the crew encountered enormous inverted pyramids that surrounded their submarine and disrupted magnetic detection. Ivan tried to navigate through them and then dive below them, but the objects remained; he ended the chapter asking Stone what he knew.

• Ivan ordered the crew below deck after seeing the inverted pyramids, and Stone told them the mission was over and Ivan was in command.
• Ivan ordered sonar and magnetic detection, but sonar could not detect the objects and magnetic interference prevented the crew from locating them.
• Ivan steered by periscope toward a gap, but the pyramids shifted as the submarine approached.
• Ivan dove to the submarine’s depth limit, but magnetic interference showed that the pyramids still surrounded them.
• Boris urged Ivan to ram through the objects, and Ivan instead asked Arthur Stone what he had to tell the crew.

Ivan’s submarine encountered a powerful magnetic field and a moving inverted pyramid beneath the South Pacific. After the pyramid evaded their attacks, all thirteen torpedoes turned back toward the submarine, leaving the crew trapped.

• Arthur Stone identified the strange object as a pyramid and explained that it had an identical counterpart on the opposite side of Earth from Egypt.
• Ivan ordered the submarine to make a full-speed dash through the weakest magnetic interference as glowing inverted pyramids gathered around it.
• The submarine’s sonar detected an inverted pyramid that repeatedly appeared ahead of and behind the vessel despite the crew’s evasive maneuvers.
• Ivan ordered a torpedo attack after the pyramid kept pursuing the submarine, but the target dodged the torpedo.
• Ivan had Boris fire all thirteen remaining torpedoes, but the pyramid vanished and the torpedoes reappeared heading back toward the submarine.

Ivan and Boris tried to evade thirteen returning torpedoes while the crew prepared to escape, and Arthur Stone calmed them with an unexplained aura. The torpedoes destroyed the submarine and escape capsule in a massive underwater blast that sent wreckage skyward, leaving a research vessel under threat from a tsunami.

• Ivan ordered the crew to abandon the submarine and sent Mr. Stone and the others to the escape capsule.
• Boris stayed at the helm while Ivan gave him orders to steer the submarine away from the torpedoes and make room for the capsule to ascend.
• Arthur Stone appeared behind Ivan and Boris, soothing their fear with a warm, peaceful aura.
• Ivan ordered the escape capsule to detach as all thirteen torpedo warnings became a continuous alarm.
• The torpedoes exploded at around eight hundred feet, tearing apart the submarine and flattening the escape capsule as the blast bubble rose and burst through the surface.
• A sailor aboard a nearby research vessel shouted a tsunami warning as an alarm sounded.

Blind Old Woman died peacefully after Hanran returned to her bedside, and Hanran later fell gravely ill under Qingmu’s care. As Qingmu agreed to visit Mama Yao, he decided it was time to enter her dream and investigate the sealed area of her memory.

• Blind Old Woman’s son cared for her in the hospital, and Hanran leaped onto her bed to comfort her before she died.
• Hanran grew weaker after Blind Old Woman’s death, so Qingmu kept him at his home while Crow tried to encourage him to eat.
• Hou Biao hunted assassins hired by the Dream Society while Qingmu strengthened the security company and Yao Jingjing managed its operations.
• Mama Yao recovered from her bone marrow transplant and persuaded Yao Jingjing to invite Qingmu over for a meal.
• Qingmu joined Yao Jingjing, Mama Yao, and Papa Yao for dinner, then decided to enter Mama Yao’s dream and examine her sealed memory.

Qingmu entered Mama Yao’s dream again and found the white cat guarding her hidden memories, but their mental standoff threatened her dream and consciousness. After Qingmu summoned Crow to help stabilize the encounter, Crow charmed the cat and asked it to be his girlfriend.

• Qingmu found the encrypted area in Mama Yao’s dream and drew out the white cat guarding it.
• Qingmu tried to communicate with the cat, but when he pressured it, the two unleashed expanding mental power while carefully protecting Mama Yao’s dream.
• Qingmu realized the cat might destroy itself and wipe out Mama Yao’s memories, so he stopped trying to overpower it and maintained a balance.
• Qingmu summoned Crow, who flew toward the cat and dodged its mental attack.
• Crow introduced himself as Boss Coal, praised the cat’s appearance, and asked it to be his girlfriend.

Qingmu entered a dark zone in Mama Yao’s dream while the white cat stayed behind with the crow. The crow held back the cat’s expanding psychic power as Qingmu went inside.

• The crow enlarged himself and flirted with the white cat, who rebuffed him with a psychic sword and stomped on him.
• Qingmu and the crow noticed the dark zone the white cat was guarding, and Qingmu decided to investigate it.
• The crow tried out several names for the white cat, but she rejected them all.
• Qingmu asked the crow to keep the white cat from self-detonating her psychic power or collapsing the dream, then entered the dark zone.
• The white cat’s psychic power expanded, and the crow spread his wings to contain it as Qingmu went inside.

Qingmu entered the hidden region in Mama Yao’s dream and met Cuan Yifang, an independent residual consciousness who had been waiting for someone to pass her test. She revealed that the Cuan Family guarded a key to the Awakening Sacred Land, but Qingmu still did not know what the sacred land was.

• Qingmu entered the dark region after trusting Crow to keep the white cat occupied.
• Qingmu met Cuan Yifang, who explained that the white cat guarded her and that she had been waiting for someone to reach her.
• Cuan Yifang showed Qingmu two linked pyramids filled with sand, and Qingmu recognized the image as an hourglass model of time and the Awakeners' Alliance emblem.
• Qingmu asked whether Cuan Yifang belonged to the Alliance, and she confirmed it before her residual consciousness began to weaken.
• Cuan Yifang told Qingmu that she had hidden a key guarded for generations by the Cuan Family, and identified it as the key to the Awakening Sacred Land.

Qingmu received a pyramid-shaped key from Cuan Yifang’s fading remnant and used it to open a Dream Corridor. He emerged in a vast desert and discovered the Awakeners' Alliance emblem among ancient ruins.

• Cuan Yifang’s remnant told Qingmu he was the one meant to receive the key and asked him to take Xue'er with him before she vanished.
• Qingmu found that the spinning pyramid-shaped hourglass absorbed and stored mental power, then merged it into his consciousness as the key.
• Qingmu activated the key to open a dark doorway and entered a Dream Corridor made of zero-dimensional space.
• Qingmu crossed the corridor and emerged in an endless desert, where he found ruined structures bearing the Awakeners' Alliance emblem.