Chapter Summaries

Qingmu, Su Huilan, and Petru crossed a trap-filled jungle and spotted a group of islanders roasting something in a valley. As they wondered whether the meat was human, Petru also realized the island was not the one he had visited before.

• Petru led Qingmu and Su Huilan carefully through the jungle, where they found more traps likely set for people.
• Boss Coal warned Qingmu that four or five people were in the valley ahead.
• Petru guided the group to a concealed cliff with a view of the island's central lake, where Qingmu and Su Huilan sensed the immense, steady mental energy of a Tapu.
• Petru concluded that the island was larger and different from the one he had visited previously, despite the lake's similar shape.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan saw several islanders gathered around a fire and suspected they were roasting human flesh.

Qingmu, Su Huilan, and Petru spotted a modern Pathfinder apparently captured by island tribespeople and planned to investigate while Petru provided cover. As Qingmu and Su Huilan sneaked through the valley, they discovered the tribespeople were immune to mental interference, and a passing leader became suspicious of their hiding place.

• Qingmu and Su Huilan agreed to rescue the Pathfinder, while Petru stayed behind with Hanran to provide cover and monitor the crow, Boss Coal.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan found signs of habitation and fighting in the valley and proceeded cautiously.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan hid as five tribespeople passed, and Qingmu noticed their mental power was strong and difficult to control.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan tried to hypnotize the tribespeople but found them immune to mental interference.
• The tribespeople's leader stopped, sniffed, and turned suspiciously toward the bushes where Qingmu and Su Huilan were hiding.

Qingmu and Su Huilan followed the savages toward their camp after gunfire disrupted their pursuit, only to find the hostage and Boss Coal missing and five savages dead. As the survivors swore revenge, Petru killed their leader with a shot from the distant mountain.

• Qingmu and Su Huilan prepared to confront five savages, but gunshots from ahead and the mountain made the savages scatter and regroup.
• The savage leader sent one of his men to alert others, then led the remaining four toward the valley as Qingmu and Su Huilan followed.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan found five dead savages by the fire, while the hostage and Boss Coal were nowhere to be seen.
• A female savage mourned one of the dead and urged the survivors to seek revenge.
• Petru shot the savage leader from the distant mountain, killing him before the others heard the gunshot.

Qingmu and Su Huilan subdued the remaining islanders without killing them, while Petru watched from the cliff. Petru and Hanran were left watching the pair after the fight.

• Qingmu and Su Huilan charged the savages while Petru shot and killed another one.
• The female savage attacked Qingmu with a spear, but he disarmed her and knocked her unconscious with his slipper.
• Su Huilan broke the male savage’s bow with her dagger, wounded him, and brought him down.
• Qingmu kicked the resisting male savage unconscious while Su Huilan held him.
• Petru cursed at the pair’s fighting skills, and Hanran missed the dried fish in Qingmu’s bag.

Qingmu deduced how a captive native woman escaped and identified the likely rescuer while he and Su Huilan waited for the tribe to respond. Meanwhile, Petru misread Su Huilan’s glance and asked Hanran how he could see so far without binoculars.

• Qingmu explained that sleep and unconsciousness let the subconscious sort memories and run simulations through dreams.
• Su Huilan worried that the unconscious natives’ tribe would send reinforcements, but Qingmu welcomed the chance to draw their attention away from the escapees.
• Qingmu examined the footprints, blood, and cut vine, deducing that a small woman had been tied up and that a militarily trained companion had helped her escape.
• Su Huilan laughed at Qingmu’s detective claims, then stopped when she remembered Petru was watching from the mountain.
• Petru assumed Su Huilan had glared because she feared he had seen her laughing, and he swore not to offend her.
• Petru asked Hanran how he could see the scene from far away without binoculars.

Qingmu and Su Huilan investigated the traces left by two fleeing islanders and tried to learn how to reach their subconscious through physical stimulation. Su Huilan’s experiment worked, and Qingmu entered the female islander’s newly formed dream, where he found a vast lake containing the sea.

• Qingmu and Su Huilan confirmed that a woman and a large man had fled along the valley toward a stream, and decided to pursue them together while Boss Coal tracked them.
• Su Huilan explained that wartime experiments had used physical stimulation to induce a subconscious state, and Qingmu agreed to try the method on the unconscious islanders.
• Su Huilan used a toothpick and pin to stimulate the female islander at several points while Qingmu watched for mental fluctuations.
• Qingmu sensed the woman’s subconscious emerge and entered her dream, where he saw a vast lake with the sea inside it.

Qingmu and Su Huilan entered the female savage’s dream and witnessed her hair grow monstrously, drag her beneath the water, and trigger a nightmare. Qingmu prevented the dream from collapsing and pulled her to the island, but the scene reset, leaving her terrified beside the lake as the islanders approached.

• Qingmu and Su Huilan examined the vast dream space, where the female savage appeared as a young girl washing her hair beside a lake containing a sea and an island.
• The girl on the island broke from mirroring the girl’s movements, and hair in both parts of the dream began growing wildly across the water and island.
• The hair dragged the girl beneath the lake as armed islanders, led by a man wearing three differently colored feathers, rushed down the mountain.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan used their mental power to keep the dream from collapsing, and Qingmu pulled the girl onto the island.
• The dream reset, leaving the soaked girl frightened on the shore as the feathered man and other islanders pointed toward the lake.

Qingmu and Su Huilan studied Tafiti’s dream and reasoned that the islands might be linked by a wormhole activated by fog. The dream ended with Tafiti stranded and captured by another tribe, leaving Qingmu thinking of the vulnerable girls he had encountered in Masuba.

• Su Huilan doubted Petru’s honesty, while Qingmu argued that Petru might still have had reason to describe the island truthfully.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan theorized that lakes and fog connected isolated islands through a wormhole and decided to keep observing the dream.
• Tafiti heard a man call to her, jumped into the lake, and found herself in a boundless sea instead of reaching the other island.
• After Tafiti turned back, the dream sea became a lake again, and she returned exhausted to shore.
• A group of savages from another tribe surrounded Tafiti, assaulted her, and prepared a bonfire as she looked toward the lake in despair.
• Qingmu thought of Yu Meiren and the vulnerable girls in Masuba who lacked anyone powerful enough to rescue them.

Qingmu and Su Huilan watched Tafiti’s dream reveal a battle, a reunion, and a vision of two opposing pyramids rising above the lake. Su Huilan explained her theory of genetic memory and said she was searching for the origin of consciousness, which she believed could reveal the truth behind the parasitic consciousness and humanity’s predicament.

• Fog spread across the island as the lake turned into a hot spring, and Tafiti’s people arrived to rescue her from the roasting frame.
• Tafiti’s people and the island savages fought until the fog cleared, leaving the feathered chief as the lone survivor, and he freed Tafiti.
• Tafiti and the feathered chief joined a celebration where an old man summoned a rainbow bridge and two opposing pyramids above the lake.
• Qingmu questioned whether the dream’s pyramid scene had been witnessed in reality, and Su Huilan suggested it came from genetic memory.
• Su Huilan explained that she believed inherited memories were encoded in genetic information and said she sought the origin of consciousness to understand the parasitic invasion and humanity’s predicament.

Qingmu and Su Huilan interpreted Tafiti’s dream as a tribal wedding ritual that awakened genetic memories, then decided to pursue the fleeing strangers. Petru stayed behind to guard the unconscious people, but Hanran confronted him with a vision of an enormous white cat.

• Qingmu wondered whether the island’s powerful mental energy could help him unlock his sealed memories, while Su Huilan warned that it might strengthen islanders as well.
• Su Huilan theorized that a powerful shaman used a wedding ritual and a scepter to awaken the tribe’s genetic memories of pyramids through a shared dream.
• The dream shifted to Tafiti’s memory of modern people fleeing islanders, and a gunshot shattered the dream space.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan followed the footprints to pursue the fugitives, leaving the unconscious man and woman for Petru to watch.
• Su Huilan covered Tafiti before leaving, and Petru complained that she distrusted him.
• Hanran appeared to Petru as an enormous white cat, overwhelming him with its mental pressure.

Qingmu and Su Huilan followed the fugitives’ tracks through the forest and used the stream to evade the pursuing islanders. After Su Huilan cut her foot on a shell arrowhead, Qingmu treated the wound while she tried to hint at the romance in a film.

• Qingmu deduced that the fugitives had entered the stream and might have doubled back, and that one of them was badly injured.
• Qingmu and Su Huilan removed their shoes and waded through the stream to hide their tracks as the islanders’ cries grew closer.
• Su Huilan cut her foot on a shell arrowhead, and Qingmu carried her to the bank and retrieved the sharp object from the water.
• Qingmu cleaned and bandaged Su Huilan’s wound, while she compared him to the blockhead hero of It Happened One Night.
• Qingmu asked Su Huilan what film she meant after she hinted that the hero eventually caught on.

Qingmu carried the injured Su Huilan through the jungle to avoid leaving footprints, then followed Crow toward a cave where an injured man and a woman were hiding. Back in Wuzhong, Bi Shenghua prepared New Year decorations for Qingmu’s studio, including a couplet about awaiting his return.

• Qingmu carried Su Huilan through the stream and along the bank while they avoided the pursuing island savages.
• Crow returned and told Qingmu that Petru was safe and that the injured man and woman were hiding in a nearby cave.
• Qingmu followed Crow toward the cave, then set Su Huilan down to check whether she could walk.
• Bi Shenghua pasted a couplet on Qingmu’s studio door and painted a soy-braised pork knuckle on a blank sheet of red paper.

Qingmu and Su Huilan found Alice and the poisoned Anderson in a cave, where Su Huilan treated him and learned that Alice had survived the destruction of the Discovery. Alice recounted the ship’s attack and escape into the fog, but she did not know whether the other lifeboats had survived.

• Qingmu and Su Huilan found Alice beside the poisoned Anderson, and Su Huilan treated his wound and gave him medicine.
• Alice told Qingmu and Su Huilan that she had been an assistant aboard the Discovery and that Mrs. Larry was still held by the island’s people.
• Alice recalled that the Discovery had apparently passed through a wormhole or higher-dimensional space, changing the season from winter to summer.
• After Robbins ordered the ship toward Tubuai Island, the Discovery was attacked, split apart, and struck by a helicopter-launched projectile.
• Alice escaped in a lifeboat with Anderson and others when fog covered the sea, but she did not know the fate of the remaining boats.

Alice recounted how savages attacked the survivors on the island, killing Pardik and taking Mrs. Larry, before she and Anderson escaped in the lifeboat. As they fled, mountains appeared all around them, revealing that the sea was actually a vast lake.

• Alice described how Anderson and two sailors left to search for food and water while she stayed with Mrs. Larry and the badly injured Pardik.
• Savages attacked, killed Pardik, and captured Mrs. Larry while Alice hid in a rock crevice and watched.
• Anderson returned to find Alice traumatized and temporarily blind, and the survivors argued over whether to rescue Mrs. Larry or leave.
• Alice urged the group to escape, and they buried Pardik's remains before rowing away from the island.
• Mountains emerged around the lifeboat, revealing that the boundless sea was a great lake.

After the Discovery sank, Alice and Anderson found themselves trapped in a lake at the center of the island and tried to escape, but the savages attacked them. Alice was captured and tied to a tree beside a fire, facing an unknown fate as a crow watched her.

• Anderson realized that Alice and the two sailors were still on the island, in the lake they had seen from a hilltop, and Alice feared they would never escape.
• Anderson persuaded the others to hide their lifeboat and build a raft to reach the coast, insisting they could keep trying to find a way out.
• Before they finished the raft, the savages attacked, scattered the group, and forced Alice to flee through the jungle alone.
• Alice ran until she fainted, then woke tied with thorny vines to a tree near a bonfire where the savages had roasted a person.
• Alice considered biting off her tongue to avoid her feared fate, while a crow landed on a nearby branch and watched her.

After Su Huilan treated Anderson, she and Qingmu discussed the island’s strange connection between its lake and the sea. They developed a theory about a closed, distorted space but remained unsure how the islanders perceived it or whether they were the same species as humans.

• Anderson woke briefly and, seeing Qingmu and Su Huilan, believed Alice and he had been saved by angels.
• Su Huilan told Qingmu that Anderson’s upas tree poisoning was damaging his nervous system and heart, and that only the right medicine on Rapa Island might save him.
• Qingmu explained that fog had accompanied every known arrival on the island and that attempts to sail away without it had returned Alice’s group to the central lake.
• Su Huilan used a leaf and a mound of earth to illustrate her theory that the island and lake formed a closed, distorted space linked to the outside world through a wormhole.
• Qingmu questioned how Tafiti could dream of the sea and lake as one, and Su Huilan suggested that the islanders might perceive the world differently or lack the outsiders’ assumptions about oceans and islands.

Qingmu promised Alice that the group would save Anderson and Mrs. Larry, then proposed finding an antidote to Anderson’s poison by learning from the island’s savages. After gunfire sounded in the forest, he set out with Boss Coal to help Petru and capture savages alive.

• Qingmu lit a fire in the cave while Su Huilan tended to the poisoned Anderson, who believed he would die without an antidote.
• Qingmu promised Alice that the group would leave no one behind, including Mrs. Larry, and said they would try to save Anderson.
• Qingmu suggested that an antidote to the savages’ poison might grow near its source, and that the savages themselves knew how to find it.
• Gunfire sounded in the mountain forest, and Su Huilan worried that Petru had become engaged in a firefight.
• Qingmu told Su Huilan to guard the others, then left with Boss Coal to help Petru and capture a couple of savages alive.

Qingmu coordinated with Petru to draw the savages into the open and capture one alive. After Petru killed several attackers, Qingmu subdued one and faced the last surviving savage, who trembled as he brandished a spear.

• Qingmu sent Crow to tell Petru to scatter the savages and warned him to avoid an old man carrying a hooked scepter.
• Crow found Petru concealed on high ground and spotted Hanran perched in a tall red tree; Qingmu told Petru to shoot the savages and leave two alive.
• Petru killed three savages and wounded another, drawing more howls and signals from the surrounding woods.
• Qingmu snuck up on one of the remaining savages and pinned him down while Petru shot an archer who tried to attack.
• Qingmu knocked his captive unconscious and stood facing the last savage, who held a spear and trembled.

Qingmu tracked the poisoned tribesman to a tree and found a white plant whose sap seemed to lessen the poison’s effects, giving Anderson a better chance of survival. He returned to the cave with the plants, but Petru and Boss Coal were still missing.

• Qingmu shot a fleeing tribesman with poisoned arrows, captured him alive, and carried him back to the cave.
• After hearing an explosion and noticing Crow was missing, Qingmu left Su Huilan with the captive and went to look for Petru and Boss Coal.
• Qingmu found the poisoned tribesman dead beneath a reddish-brown tree and recognized its sap as the poison.
• Qingmu tested white plants growing beside the tree and saw their sap reduce the blackness around the tribesman’s wound.
• Qingmu gathered the plants and hurried back to the cave, where Petru and Boss Coal had still not returned.

Su Huilan hypnotized herself so Qingmu could enter her dream and sense Boss Coal, who had not returned. She became absorbed in a memory of meeting Qingmu at Ruhua Bar, and the chapter ended with Qingmu revealing that he had already counted to three and entered her dream.

• With Boss Coal and Hanran still missing after dark, Qingmu asked Su Huilan to let him enter her dream so he could sense Boss Coal.
• Su Huilan agreed to hypnotize herself, but asked Qingmu to wait until he had counted to three before entering.
• Su Huilan's initial dream placed her in a dim bar, where she remembered her first encounter with Qingmu at Ruhua Bar.
• Su Huilan delayed changing the dream because she enjoyed the scene and wanted to hear Qingmu repeat, “Miss, one hundred and fifty.”
• Qingmu appeared beside Su Huilan and told her he had already counted to three.