Cheng Xin
Names: Cheng XinDr. ChengXinthe SwordholderChild#37813
First appears in Book 3: Death's End, chapter 4 (Crisis Era, Year 4 Yun Tianming)
Appearances
What you know
Book 3: Death's End
- Ch 4Cheng Xin first spoke to Tianming at a college outing at Miyun Reservoir and folded an origami boat; he thinks of her more and more.
- Ch 6At college Cheng Xin was kind to everyone, a quiet, attentive listener who included Tianming and was first to call him by given name.
- Ch 6Cheng Xin studied aerospace engineering, entered graduate studies, and went to the Academy of Spaceflight Technology in Shanghai; later her whereabouts became unknown.
- Ch 6Cheng Xin believes aerospace engineers work to improve life on Earth, not abandon the planet.
- Ch 6Cheng Xin burst in to stop Tianming's euthanasia and wept on his chest; her hair is now cut shorter, to her neck.
- Ch 6Cheng Xin tells Tianming that the euthanasia law was passed specifically for him.
- Ch 7Cheng Xin finished graduate studies as the Trisolar Crisis began and joined a design task force for next-generation Long March rocket propulsion.
- Ch 7She had lost enthusiasm for chemical rockets, seeing them as outdated, like the smokestacks of the early Industrial Age, and doubted humanity could become spacefaring with them.
- Ch 7She accepted without hesitation a post as aide to the director of the PIA's Technology Planning Center.
- Ch 7She proposed launching nuclear bombs in advance along the probe's route and detonating them behind a radiation sail to accelerate it, a new twist on nuclear pulse propulsion.
- Ch 7She often faced harassment from male colleagues who looked at her physically rather than taking her ideas seriously.
- Ch 7Cheng Xin originated the Staircase Program idea and worked harder on its feasibility study than on anything else in her career.
- Ch 7Cheng Xin was part of a task force led by Vadimov that coordinated the feasibility studies across the US, Chinese, Russian and European space agencies.
- Ch 9Cheng Xin visited the Sanya hibernation research center and realized a hibernation chamber in deep space would need heating, likely radioisotope heating, making it very heavy.
- Ch 9Cheng Xin proposed flash-freezing a person to below minus-200 °C and launching the body in a small capsule under 110 kg, since Trisolarans might be able to revive it.
- Ch 9Cheng Xin shudders at the thought of who the frozen body sent into deep space would be, though she tries to advance regardless of consequences.
- Ch 9Wade invited Cheng Xin, a lowly technical aide, to accompany him and Vadimov into the PDC session, a high honor.
- Ch 11She received the deed to star DX3906 as an anonymous gift and was overjoyed, though she could not guess the giver.
- Ch 11She suggested her dying classmate Yun Tianming as a Staircase candidate, without thinking much about him as a person.
- Ch 12Cheng Xin suspects Vadimov's leukemia was deliberately induced by radiation, timed to when the PDC began promoting euthanasia laws, so that his brain could not be used.
- Ch 12Cheng Xin fell into depression, feeling guilty for recommending Tianming, who she met in college and always wanted to protect despite him not being her type.
- Ch 12Wade refused to add her seeds, then got her to agree to be sent to the future as a PIA liaison to the Staircase Program.
- Ch 12After the craft was lost, the PIA still had Cheng Xin enter suspended animation to explain the Staircase Program to people two centuries later.
- Ch 12As her consciousness fades in the cold, she takes comfort in believing she will drift through an endless abyss for centuries, as Tianming does.
- Ch 17Cheng Xin is the only surviving legal owner of a star from the Stars Our Destination Project; she was awakened after 264 years of hibernation because of it.
- Ch 17She sold the two planets of DX3906 to the UN but kept the star, granting humanity the right to use its energy.
- Ch 17Cheng Xin was shot in the left shoulder and abdomen by Wade and lost consciousness.
- Ch 17Cheng Xin said being forced to press the deterrence button would be a fate far worse than death.
- Ch 19Cheng Xin is recovering quickly in hospital after being shot; doctors say modern medicine could have revived her unless her brain had been hit.
- Ch 19Cheng Xin can now tell the sexes apart and finds modern men's feminized appearance elegant, though not attractive to her.
- Ch 19Cheng Xin loves the culture of the new era, noticing warm serenity and optimism in place of twenty-first-century postmodern despair.
- Ch 21Cheng Xin was discharged and, after meeting Sophon, wrestled with whether to run for Swordholder, barely sleeping.
- Ch 21Cheng Xin was an abandoned baby found on a park bench and raised lovingly by her single mother, later joined by a kind stepfather.
- Ch 21Cheng Xin decides to become a Swordholder candidate, driven by being hailed as a savior, maternal instinct toward the new world, and her debt to Yun Tianming.
- Ch 21Cheng Xin owns a planet in the DX3906 system, which the public sees as qualifying her to save this world; she once served in the PIA.
- Ch 25Cheng Xin was elected half a year earlier by a joint session of the UN and the Solar System Fleet to succeed Luo Ji as Swordholder.
- Ch 25Cheng Xin received almost twice as many votes as the next candidate and was given authority over the gravitational wave deterrence system.
- Ch 25Descending to the Deterrence Center, Cheng Xin feels a heavy weight on her heart that does not lessen even when the chief of staff speaks kindly.
- Ch 27Cheng Xin, aged 29, becomes the new Swordholder, having prepared for the role all her life. She resolves not to be like Luo Ji.
- Ch 27Cheng Xin's career as Swordholder lasts only fifteen minutes from accepting the switch.
- Ch 28Cheng Xin realized her subconscious had never truly accepted that such an attack was possible; she saw herself as a protector, not a destroyer.
- Ch 28Cheng Xin treated deterrence as a game of chess, unlike Luo Ji, who felt it was a life-or-death contest.
- Ch 28Facing the end of 3.5 billion years of life, and remembering her baby, Cheng Xin screamed 'No' and threw the red switch away instead of pressing it.
- Ch 28Cheng Xin was elected the second Swordholder partly because of her subconscious unwillingness to believe the catastrophe would happen.
- Ch 29Cheng Xin was the Swordholder, and the role ceased to exist when deterrence ended an hour after the handover ceremony.
- Ch 29After deterrence ended, no one contacted Cheng Xin; she wandered aimlessly and feared facing people.
- Ch 29Cheng Xin wanted to hold AA and cry but held back, wanting to delay AA learning the truth.
- Ch 31Cheng Xin sees the crater as the ending she should have had, and is tempted to step into the lava.
- Ch 31Cheng Xin realizes she was kept alive as a safety shield: while the Swordholder lives, others have an excuse not to broadcast.
- Ch 31Her subconscious still treats the universe as a fairy tale about love; her mistake was not seeing things from the enemy's perspective.
- Ch 35Cheng Xin chose to live as an ordinary migrant in the harsh Warburton resettlement zone rather than in a comfortable big city.
- Ch 35Cheng Xin is blamed by other migrants as the failed Swordholder for not deterring Trisolaris, and she feels she deserves the abuse.
- Ch 35Cheng Xin decides she will not leave Australia, and as a public figure could not smuggle herself out anyway.
- Ch 35On learning of the ESF raids, Cheng Xin concludes Wade was right again and sets out by bike to ask the city government to contact Sophon.
- Ch 35People who recognise Cheng Xin, such as an officer and the mayor, seem to wonder why she was chosen as Swordholder.
- Ch 35Cheng Xin collapsed upon hearing Sophon's announcement and went blind, perceiving only darkness.
- Ch 35Cheng Xin refused to leave Australia and asked only that AA and Fraisse be rescued so they could live freely.
- Ch 35Cheng Xin does not see herself as the savior of the world.
- Ch 36The new Swordholder, pictured holding a baby before the UN Secretariat Building, appears like a Madonna; Chu Yan and others view her as unfit to maintain deterrence.
- Ch 37Cheng Xin is currently blind, unable to see despite open eyes, and relies on hearing to follow events around her.
- Ch 37Cheng Xin says she has no home; she left her home three centuries ago, and both her parents died before the Great Ravine.
- Ch 39Cheng Xin's blindness began as psychosomatic, caused by extreme distress, then became a detached retina and necrosis; treatment needed cloned retinas grown from her stem cells over five years.
- Ch 39Cheng Xin spent six years in hibernation after the return from Australia, so she did not age, and she now sees with extreme clarity.
- Ch 41After the broadcast, public opinion was relatively forgiving of Cheng Xin; many saw her as a victim, and she gradually faded from public consciousness.
- Ch 41Cheng Xin suffers deep depression and severe insomnia, speaks to no one, and ignores news; she sleeps only two to three hours a night without a sleep-aid machine.
- Ch 41Cheng Xin was criticized because activating the broadcast at the start of the droplet attack could have avoided the Great Resettlement disaster.
- Ch 43Cheng Xin finds Luo Ji, like Fraisse and even Wade, a source of Common Era strength she can rely on.
- Ch 45The public came to see Cheng Xin as a great woman and a new Saint Mary, embodying maternal love, despite her failure to deter.
- Ch 45Cheng Xin decided to kill herself with her last hibernation capsule, seeing it as her last responsibility to end the cult forming around her.
- Ch 45Cheng Xin abandoned her suicide for the night after Fraisse's call and thinking of AA, though she believed she would eventually swallow the capsule.
- Ch 47Cheng Xin was an aerospace engineer in the Common Era who had never been in space until this journey three centuries later.
- Ch 47She adapts to weightlessness effortlessly, feeling as though she belongs to space, and she wears sunglasses so no one recognizes her.
- Ch 47She insists on going to the meeting with Tianming even though Earth will gain nothing from the meeting if she follows Trisolaran restrictions.
- Ch 47She is preoccupied with memories of college and of Tianming.
- Ch 47Cheng Xin travels by dinghy to a Lagrangian point to meet Tianming through a sophon, expecting this could be her last sunrise and that the Trisolarans might kill her.
- Ch 47Cheng Xin treats the meeting as a mission: she must memorize everything she sees and hears, since only her brain can retain it.
- Ch 47Cheng Xin was formerly the Swordholder, threw away the red switch at the end of the Deterrence Era, and lived in Australia.
- Ch 47She recorded her conversation in the sophon-free room five times, including backwards and under drug-induced semi-hypnosis, over more than six hours, because every word might matter.
- Ch 47After the debriefing she cried in the space elevator cabin, facing Earth, with the thought 'Our star' echoing in her mind.
- Ch 48Cheng Xin retrieved the intelligence from Tianming through wits and guts; she says she met Tianming only in college.
- Ch 48Cheng Xin proposed thanking Thomas Wade for the Staircase Project, but no one seconded her.
- Ch 52Cheng Xin did not read the document because she had memorized Tianming's stories; she wondered whether Princess Dewdrop was modeled partly on her.
- Ch 54Since awakening she has studied modern science, making rapid progress, and still feels her spirit lives in the past.
- Ch 54She realizes the soap-boat shows light-speed travel through space, but remembers Tianming's safety and hides her reaction in case sophons are watching.
- Ch 56Cheng Xin regretted refusing a sophon-free room, and after the decipherment felt hope returning to her life.
- Ch 56Cheng Xin promises to compensate Jason with a new boat, and imagines the Milky Way as a vast whirlpool during the maelstrom visit.
- Ch 58Cheng Xin visits Halo Group headquarters for the first time; she never thought of the wealth as truly hers or Tianming's.
- Ch 58Cheng Xin prefers lightspeed ships to the black domain and proposes the Halo Group develop curvature propulsion building on government black domain research.
- Ch 58Cheng Xin insists on bringing stranded children aboard and feels despair at leaving the others, as in her time as Swordholder.
- Ch 58Cheng Xin refuses AA's plan to launch their shuttle immediately because people are around and would be killed.
- Ch 58Cheng Xin is president of the Halo Group and uses her authority to overrule AA's wish to launch the shuttle during the panic.
- Ch 58Cheng Xin refuses to go to Jupiter, preferring to stay on Earth with billions of others, and says she has already been through worse than death.
- Ch 62She volunteered for the simulation test and still struggles to keep composure in front of Wade, who remains a sharp corner to her.
- Ch 62She agreed to give Wade all her wealth and authority to build lightspeed ships, then entered hibernation.
- Ch 62She made it a condition that Wade must awaken her if the project could harm humanity, and that she keeps final authority.
- Ch 63Cheng Xin awakens from hibernation after 62 years, 8 months in Bunker Era Year 11, her third awakening, with little fuss from staff.
- Ch 63Cheng Xin never fully adapted to the lavish Deterrence and Broadcast eras and feels at home in the plain, Common Era-like Bunker World.
- Ch 63Cheng Xin weeps, seeing the city lights and imagining her parents waiting behind a window, for she feels at home for the first time in centuries.
- Ch 63Cheng Xin sees the Bunker World is not an ideal society, judging it a spiraling ascent in which old social ills reappear.
- Ch 63Cheng Xin, arriving at the Jovian cities in a small dinghy with Cao Bin, recalls a poem by Xu Yunuo that she read in middle school.
- Ch 64Cheng Xin was moved by 高 Way's story, felt the black hole was blinking like a message, and asked to go on to Halo City.
- Ch 65Cheng Xin is 33, having spent only about four years out of hibernation; the Federation hopes she will persuade Halo City to yield.
- Ch 65Fearing agents might detonate antimatter in fragile space cities, she demanded Wade surrender all antimatter and cease resistance, choosing 'human nature'.
- Ch 65She gave Wade a box of cigars before his execution, then smoked one herself; she was thirty-three.
- Ch 65She and AA entered hibernation again for two hundred years, to be woken early if a dark forest strike occurred.
- Ch 67Cheng Xin awakens from hibernation in Year 67 of the Bunker Era, fifty-six years after her last brief awakening.
- Ch 67Cheng Xin resolves that this will be her last hibernation, feeling regret and guilt at watching others age while she stays outside time.
- Ch 69She and AA are weak from hibernation and feel nothing matters now; she agrees to go to Pluto.
- Ch 69Four centuries ago she worked for the PIA and presented the Staircase Project to Say.
- Ch 69Cheng Xin recognizes the torch lamps as matching the design on Rousseau's tomb in the Panthéon.
- Ch 69Cheng Xin saw Starry Night four centuries earlier at New York's Museum of Modern Art, soon after starting work at the PIA.
- Ch 70Cheng Xin and AA ferry artifacts from the museum on Pluto to Halo, though they suspect the mission is meaningless.
- Ch 70Cheng Xin and AA collect artifacts for a message to future observers of the flattened Solar System; Cheng Xin wanted a Neanderthal skull.
- Ch 70Cheng Xin realizes lightspeed ships were the only right choice, and that blocking Wade at Halo City cost thirty-five years and doomed the black domain option.
- Ch 70Cheng Xin feels crushing guilt, sees her twice-made errors as pushing the world into the abyss in the name of love, and resolves to live on as punishment.
- Ch 70Cheng Xin and AA choose DX3906, the star Yun Tianming gave Cheng Xin, as Halo's destination.
- Ch 71Cheng Xin considers herself spiritually dead; her only hope was finding Yun Tianming, which now seems an impossible dream, but she keeps living out of duty.
- Ch 71Insisted on accompanying Yifan because she wants to know whether the landing relates to Yun Tianming.
- Ch 71Feels only numbness about the thirty-five years lost, which she thinks were probably due to her.
- Ch 71Cheng Xin and Yifan take hibernation capsules lasting fifteen days and lose consciousness, holding hands, as the shuttle orbits in the reduced-lightspeed zone.
- Ch 72Cheng Xin wakes after sixteen days of hibernation and comes to accept that she and Guan Yifan will spend the rest of their lives on Planet Blue.
- Ch 72Cheng Xin, letting go of Tianming, lets her growing esteem for Guan Yifan take over her heart; the two now anticipate each other's needs.
- Ch 73She wants to carry some memory of humanity into the new universe after the big bang, and begins writing a memoir, A Past Outside of Time.
- Ch 73Cheng Xin chooses to return to the great universe, offering to stay if Yifan prefers, because mini-universe refugees staying would doom the great universe.
- Ch 75Cheng Xin and Sophon spent over ten days making a sealed miniature ecosystem sphere to leave in Universe 647.
Connections
- related toYun Tianmingunrequited love; buys her a star anonymouslycollege acquaintance she cares for; he gave her a star
- partner ofYun TianmingTianming loves her; he gave her a star
- member ofPDC Strategic Intelligence Agencyworked there four centuries ago
- related toMikhail Vadimovaide to her boss
- createdStaircase Program
- friend ofMikhail Vadimov
- enemy ofThomas Wadeshoots her to eliminate her as a Swordholder competitor
- ally ofAAliaison turned company manager
- related toDX3906owns the star
- friend ofAA
- family ofCheng Xin's motheradoptive mother
- related toLuo Jiseeks to succeed him as Swordholder
- inDeterrence Center
- related toSwordholderCheng Xin was the Swordholder
- ally ofFraisseTook her and AA into his home
- friend ofFraisse
- friend ofLuo Ji
- friend ofSophon
- related toHalo GroupHer space construction company
- friend ofYun TianmingCollege acquaintance; she is going to meet him
- inLagrangian pointher dinghy meets the sophon there
- related toPlanetary Defense CouncilPDC officials escort her and debrief her
- related tospecial teamdebriefed by them after her conversation
- ally ofBi Yunfeng
- leadsHalo GroupHands control to Wade
- friend ofCao Binguide showing her the cities
- ally ofCao BinTravel together in a small dinghy
- related toHalocarries Cheng Xin and AA to Pluto
- ally ofLuo Ji
- ally ofGuan Yifantravel together to Planet Gray; Yifan comforts her and invites her to his world
- partner ofGuan Yifangrowing closeness and affection
- ally ofSophon
Key moments
- Book 3 · Ch 4Hu Wen gives Tianming money
Wen visits with Green Tempest and gives Tianming three million yuan for the idea behind it. After the Stars Our Destination Project is announced, Tianming resolves to buy Cheng Xin a star.
- Book 3 · Ch 6Tianming buys DX3906 for Cheng Xin
At UNESCO's Beijing office, Tianming purchases the star DX3906 in Cheng Xin's name anonymously. Dr. He then drives him out of the city to see it.
- Book 3 · Ch 6Euthanasia interrupted
Tianming presses 3 to end his life, but hospital staff rush in, cut off the injector and pull the needle out before any drugs enter him. Cheng Xin waits outside, then embraces him in tears.
- Book 3 · Ch 7Cheng Xin joins the PIA
Cheng Xin leaves chemical rocket design to become aide to Vadimov at the PIA, meets him and the chilly chief Wade, and sees the distrustful new staff gather.
- Book 3 · Ch 7Cheng Xin presents en-route propulsion
Mocked at first, Cheng Xin explains distributing nuclear bombs along the route to push a light sail probe; the experts take it seriously and Vadimov names it the Staircase Program.
- Book 3 · Ch 7Staircase Program voted down
Feasibility studies show the probe must be only 200 kg, and Wade reveals that the PDC rejected the program for its minimal intelligence value.
- Book 3 · Ch 7Wade proposes sending a person
Wade explodes that they will not stop and proposes sending a live hibernating human into the Trisolaran Fleet. The group sees that sophon transparency could work in the plan's favor.
- Book 3 · Ch 9Cheng Xin's hibernation research and flash-freezing proposal
After visiting Sanya, Cheng Xin reports hibernation is too heavy, then suggests launching a flash-frozen body instead of a live person, which Wade praises.
- Book 3 · Ch 9Assassination attempt on Luo Ji
After the Wallfacer Project announcement, a Wallfacer is shot outside the General Assembly; PIA staff only see the commotion.
- Book 3 · Ch 9Wade proposes sending only a brain
Facing the half-kilogram payload limit, Wade rallies his despairing team and announces a new plan: send only a brain to the Trisolarans.
- Book 3 · Ch 11Mass missile launch
Peacekeeper, Topol and Dongfeng missiles are launched into orbit from Cape Canaveral and elsewhere to supply power for accelerating the Staircase probe; Cheng Xin watches in tears.
- Book 3 · Ch 11Cheng Xin sees her star
After cloudy days, Cheng Xin and Vadimov find the faint red DX3906 with binoculars. Vadimov confides that he is the best candidate for the Staircase Program but is avoiding it.
- Book 3 · Ch 11Tianming accepts the mission
Cheng Xin asks the terminally ill Tianming to volunteer as the Staircase subject. Realizing she wants him to die, and fearing Trisolaran torture, he laughs hysterically, then accepts.
- Book 3 · Ch 12Vadimov's suspicious death
Vadimov dies in a car crash caused by leukemia-induced hemorrhages; Cheng Xin suspects deliberate irradiation to prevent his brain from being used.
- Book 3 · Ch 12Tianming refuses the oath
At the UN ceremony Tianming refuses to pledge loyalty to humanity, which proves to Wade his suitability. Joyner also refuses and dies soon after, so Tianming is chosen.
- Book 3 · Ch 12Tianming's brain removed
Cheng Xin arrives too late to see Tianming; his brain is sealed in liquid helium. She asks to send seeds, Wade refuses, and she agrees to go to the future.
- Book 3 · Ch 12Cheng Xin loses consciousness in the cold
Cheng Xin's consciousness fades in the cold. She is comforted by the thought that, like Tianming, she will drift through an endless abyss for centuries.
- Book 3 · Ch 17Cheng Xin sells the planets, keeps the star
Awakened to resolve ownership of DX3906, Cheng Xin sells its planets to the UN but retains the star, and hires AA to run her company.
- Book 3 · Ch 17Wade's ambush
Lured to ruined buildings by a faked call, Cheng Xin is shot twice by Thomas Wade, who wants to be Swordholder. Police, with AA, blow off his arm and rescue her.
- Book 3 · Ch 19Cheng Xin's recovery and cultural introduction
While recovering from Wade's attack, Cheng Xin learns how rare murder is. AA shows her a film and takes her to art shows and concerts, where Cheng Xin admires the new culture.
- Book 3 · Ch 19Trisolaran artists revealed
AA reveals that the artists behind the admired films, paintings and music are all Trisolarans, leaving Cheng Xin stunned.
- Book 3 · Ch 21Tea ceremony with Sophon
Cheng Xin and AA visit Sophon's tree house, where Sophon performs a long tea ceremony and hints that women must protect the fragile world together.
- Book 3 · Ch 21Six candidates urge Cheng Xin not to run
Six Common Era Swordholder candidates tell Cheng Xin she would likely win but is unsuited and should not compete, leaving her aware of the world's fragility.
- Book 3 · Ch 21Cheng Xin declares candidacy
After the DX3906 handover at the UN and the PDC chair's request, Cheng Xin, moved by a young mother and her baby, resolves to become a Swordholder candidate.
- Book 3 · Ch 25Deterrence authority handover
After a surface ceremony, Cheng Xin descends forty-five kilometers to the Deterrence Center, where the PDC chair and the Fleet chief of staff oversee the final handover of deterrence authority and offer to redecorate the bleak lobby to her taste.
- Book 3 · Ch 27Handover of the Swordholder switch
Luo Ji hands the gravitational wave broadcast switch to Cheng Xin in the white hall, ending his fifty-four-year tenure; no one thanks him.
- Book 3 · Ch 28Six droplets attack Earth
Early-warning systems detect six droplets approaching Earth at 25,000 km/s with about ten minutes to impact, having hidden just outside the warning zone.
- Book 3 · Ch 28Cheng Xin throws away the switch
Overwhelmed by the weight of life's history and the memory of her baby, Cheng Xin refuses to press the red switch and throws it aside as the droplets close in.
- Book 3 · Ch 29Cheng Xin emerges after deterrence ends
Cheng Xin surfaces to the empty plaza and sees the mushroom cloud where the droplet struck. The guards don't yet know what happened.
- Book 3 · Ch 29Meeting AA
AA runs to Cheng Xin with flowers and asks if the cloud is a volcano. Cheng Xin hides the truth for now.
- Book 3 · Ch 31Sophon confronts Cheng Xin at the crater
Sophon reveals Cheng Xin was kept alive as a safety shield, that Gravity was destroyed, and that Wade would have been feared. She then leaves, telling them to prepare for Australia.
- Book 3 · Ch 35Wade warns Cheng Xin
Cheng Xin visits Wade at his prison work site; he whispers that she must leave Australia before resettlement is complete, then dismisses her, leaving her terrified.
- Book 3 · Ch 35Fraisse's haka
Fraisse performs a true Māori war haka for Cheng Xin and AA and comforts Cheng Xin that her failure was not her fault.
- Book 3 · Ch 35ESF raids; Cheng Xin seeks Sophon
ESF bombers strike Australian power plants and harbors. Cheng Xin bikes to the city government and asks the mayor to contact Sophon or send her to Canberra; he refuses and advises her to stay.
- Book 3 · Ch 35Cheng Xin goes blind and rescues her friends
Cheng Xin faints on hearing the announcement and wakes blind. She speaks to Sophon by phone, asking that AA and Fraisse be evacuated, and refuses to leave herself.
- Book 3 · Ch 37Announcement of the universal broadcast
Sophon announces over the information window that Gravity broadcast Trisolaris' location. The Trisolarans flee, the droplets vanish, and the crowd in Australia erupts in cheers as the refugees prepare to return home.
- Book 3 · Ch 37Cheng Xin is told to go home
A messenger sent by the mayor tells blind Cheng Xin that everyone is returning to China and offers to take her to the provincial government. She asks to be left alone as the sun rises.
- Book 3 · Ch 39Cheng Xin's hibernation ends
Cheng Xin wakes after six years in hibernation, her retinas restored, and finds the world celebrating and rebuilt after the broadcast.
- Book 3 · Ch 41Destruction of Trisolaris seen from Earth
Fraisse wakes Cheng Xin at night to look at the sky. A star outside the Solar System flares brighter than the full moon, turns white, fades to red and goes out, confirming dark forest theory.
- Book 3 · Ch 41Public blame after the Deterrence Era
After the universal broadcast, humanity denounces the Swordholder and the selection process, though Cheng Xin is treated relatively sympathetically and fades from public attention.
- Book 3 · Ch 43Conversation of the Way of Tea
Sophon hosts Cheng Xin and Luo Ji, describes Trisolaris's destruction and dark forest attacks, and answers Luo Ji's one question: a safety notice to the universe exists.
- Book 3 · Ch 44Humanity debates safety notice proposals
After the Sophon–Cheng Xin–Luo Ji conversation is publicized, humanity floods in proposals for a safety notice, which divide into declaratory and self-mutilation camps, but none solve the problem of convincing a distant universe.
- Book 3 · Ch 45Cheng Xin's near-suicide
Cheng Xin, distressed by the cult around her, prepares to swallow her last hibernation capsule but is stopped by Fraisse's call and her thoughts of her friends.
- Book 3 · Ch 45Sophon's farewell tea
Before a vast silent crowd, Sophon holds a final tea with Cheng Xin and Luo Ji, then says her last mission is a message: Yun Tianming wants to see Cheng Xin.
- Book 3 · Ch 46Humanity learns of Yun Tianming
News of Yun Tianming's presence and his request to see Cheng Xin became public; people saw him as an angel of salvation, though doubts remained about his loyalties.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Ascent to the terminal station
Cheng Xin rides the space elevator to geosynchronous orbit, experiences weightlessness for the first time, and passes through the station's rings to Port A225.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Briefing on the Sophon-controlled dinghy
The fleet chief explains the traffic-light warning system and bomb in the dinghy; Cheng Xin accepts the risk and the dinghy departs five hours later for the Lagrangian point.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Meeting with Tianming through the sophon
Cheng Xin meets Tianming via sophon, finds him farming aboard a ship, and learns he can't speak freely. They agree he will tell her stories as coded communication, and arrange to meet at 'our star'.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Tianming tells the three fairy tales
Tianming tells 'The New Royal Painter', 'The Glutton's Sea', and 'Prince Deep Water' for about an hour while Cheng Xin memorizes them, until the sophon's countdown ends the call.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Return to Earth
The Trisolarans do not kill Cheng Xin. She returns to the terminal station, repeating Tianming's words, and a PDC official tells her they held little hope she would learn anything.
- Book 3 · Ch 47Cheng Xin's debriefing
In a sophon-free room Cheng Xin recorded her conversation five times over more than six hours, including under psychologists' guidance, then was congratulated by the special team.
- Book 3 · Ch 48First IDC meeting
In a sophon-free room, the IDC convenes to decipher Tianming's message, reviews the conversation's findings, and distributes a blue-covered document containing the three fairy tales.
- Book 3 · Ch 48Cheng Xin proposes thanking Wade
Cheng Xin credits Wade for the Staircase Project, but the room falls silent and no one supports her.
- Book 3 · Ch 52IDC fails to decipher Tianming's stories
The IDC's groups produced many conflicting interpretations of the three tales, including digitization, four-dimensional refuge and the Shoaling Interpretation, but none could be confirmed; the name He'ershingenmosiken stayed unexplained.
- Book 3 · Ch 54The soap boat experiment
AA buys a Common Era bar of soap from a museum and makes a paper boat propelled by it. Cheng Xin understands it as a hint at light-speed travel in Tianming's tale.
- Book 3 · Ch 54Silent realization of curvature propulsion
Wary of sophon surveillance, Cheng Xin and AA hide their excitement with idle chat, then silently confirm that the stories point to curvature propulsion.
- Book 3 · Ch 56Curvature propulsion message deciphered
Cheng Xin and AA secretly communicated via eyes and the snow-wave paper clue, concluding Tianming's story meant curvature propulsion. The IDC endorsed this interpretation and recognized Tianming's metaphor system.
- Book 3 · Ch 56Umbrella decoded as speed of light
The IDC recognized the umbrella as a centrifugal governor and, with bearing coordinates, interpreted it as the speed of light, with lowering it linked to the safety notice.
- Book 3 · Ch 56Expedition into the Moskstraumen
After Palermo decoded He'ershingenmosiken as Helseggen and Mosken, the group went to Mosken. They recalled Poe's maelstrom story and crossed into the Moskstraumen, where their boat was caught.
- Book 3 · Ch 56Voyage into the Moskstraumen
Jason takes Cheng Xin's group into the whirlpool, shares a flaming cod supper and talks of death; the helicopter then lifts them out and the boat is swallowed by the eye.
- Book 3 · Ch 58Photoid alarm panic
A window avalanche reports Observation Unit #1 detected a photoid; unconfirmed officially, the public panics and flees to spaceports, causing chaos and crashes.
- Book 3 · Ch 58AA selects three children
At the spaceport, Cheng Xin asks to take stranded space-camp children; AA can take only three and chooses by three puzzle questions.
- Book 3 · Ch 58Launch frenzy and Cheng Xin's refusal
Shuttles launch amid the crowd, killing many; AA prepares to launch first, but Cheng Xin refuses because people are nearby.
- Book 3 · Ch 58AA sabotages the shuttles
During the panic, Cheng Xin refuses to launch, and AA shoots holes in the tail fins of eight nearby shuttles, grounding them so nobody can flee.
- Book 3 · Ch 62Bunker Project simulation test
A hydrogen bomb detonated among asteroid stand-ins for the planets. Volunteers sheltered behind the fake Jupiter survived unharmed, and the broadcast brought cheers on Earth.
- Book 3 · Ch 62Wade asks for Cheng Xin's empire
Wade met Cheng Xin behind the Jupiter fragment, asking her to give him everything to build lightspeed ships and warning her not to repeat her past mistake.
- Book 3 · Ch 62Cheng Xin hands over Halo Group and hibernates
After Wade accepted her condition to awaken her if the project becomes dangerous, Cheng Xin transferred her authority. He became Halo Group president, and she and AA entered hibernation.
- Book 3 · Ch 63Cheng Xin awakens in Bunker Era
Cheng Xin wakes in Asia Hibernation Center #1 in a plain, low-tech world, recovers quickly, and is visited by Cao Bin, who says Thomas Wade wants her.
- Book 3 · Ch 63Tour of Space City Asia I
Cao Bin shows Cheng Xin that the city is a spinning cylinder behind Jupiter; they take a bus and elevator to the spaceport where she sees the Bunker World.
- Book 3 · Ch 63Europa flyby
Europa sweeps past Asia I at 150 km, shaking the city and pulling at Cheng Xin; eight front-row cities fire thrusters to correct their positions afterward.
- Book 3 · Ch 63Tour of Jovian cities
Cao Bin takes Cheng Xin to North America I, Europe IV, Pacific I and unusual cities, showing the variety of Bunker World life.
- Book 3 · Ch 63Arrival at the Jovian cities
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin's dinghy reaches the outer edge of the Jovian cities, which appear as a small warm refuge before Jupiter, and Cheng Xin recalls a poem.
- Book 3 · Ch 64Visit to Lightspeed II
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin enter the ruined Lightspeed II, see the flickering blue glow of the black hole, and Cao Bin tells her its story.
- Book 3 · Ch 65Passing the blockade
Cheng Xin and Cao Bin's dinghy meets the Federation blockade; envoy Blair and the president allow Cheng Xin in, hoping she will persuade Halo City to stop resisting.
- Book 3 · Ch 65Curvature propulsion demonstration
In a sophon-free lab, Wade and Bi Yunfeng use Cheng Xin's hair to demonstrate curvature propulsion, moving it two centimeters, and argue lightspeed ships are near.
- Book 3 · Ch 65Cheng Xin forces Halo City's disarmament
Shown the antimatter bullets, Cheng Xin demands Wade surrender them and stop resistance. Wade relents, the soldiers pile their bandoliers, and agents in other cities are ordered to surrender.
- Book 3 · Ch 65Aftermath and Wade's execution
The Federation reveals the captured bullets, dissolves the Halo Group, arrests its leaders and sentences Wade to death. Cheng Xin visits him; he thanks her for cigars, and is executed by laser.
- Book 3 · Ch 65Cheng Xin and AA return to hibernation
After touring a depopulated Earth, they re-enter hibernation in Asia I for two hundred years, to see the world after the dark forest strike.
- Book 3 · Ch 67Cheng Xin and AA awaken at Jupiter
Cheng Xin and AA are woken on the Halo near Jupiter in Year 67. Cao Bin tells them an attack alert has sounded, though the cities are not hiding.
- Book 3 · Ch 67Despair at the warning center
Cao Bin reveals that the dark forest strike is not a photoid and that the bunker is useless. The warning center's staff are numb with despair.
- Book 3 · Ch 69Federation requests an artifact rescue mission
Cao Bin asks Cheng Xin and AA to take Halo to Pluto to scatter museum artifacts in space and tells them Luo Ji wants to see them. They agree.
- Book 3 · Ch 69Meeting Luo Ji in the museum
Halo lands on Pluto; Cheng Xin and AA enter the monolith and meet Luo Ji, who explains the museum is humanity's tombstone and its history.
- Book 3 · Ch 69Luo Ji reveals the stone-carving tomb
Luo Ji tells Cheng Xin and AA that experts found carving words in stone the only way to preserve information for a hundred million years, and shows them the carved walls and lamps.
- Book 3 · Ch 69Choosing artifacts
In the artifact hall, Cheng Xin and AA remove frames from oil paintings to carry more, including Starry Night. Luo Ji keeps the Mona Lisa for himself.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Neptune and Saturn seen flattened
Stepping onto Pluto's surface, Cheng Xin and AA see Neptune and Saturn collapsed into giant two-dimensional rings, like a pair of eyes in the sky.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Destruction of Europe VI
Via Halo's AI, they watch footage of Europe VI: millions wait weightless, then the city and its people are flattened into a dead 1:1 drawing.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Flattened Earth and giant snowflakes
Cheng Xin, AA and Luo Ji watch the flattened Earth, whose frozen oceans form enormous snowflakes seen by telescope from fifty AU away.
- Book 3 · Ch 70The Sun is flattened
From Pluto, Luo Ji, Cheng Xin and AA watch the Sun collapse into two dimensions and die, followed by Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Uranus.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Luo Ji stays behind
Luo Ji refuses to board Halo and returns to the monolith, insisting Cheng Xin and AA depart on their mission and stay in contact.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Luo Ji reveals Halo's curvature drive
As Halo leaves Pluto, Luo Ji tells the women Halo has a lightspeed curvature engine and that they may go anywhere, explaining the secret program's history.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Luo Ji refuses to leave Pluto
Luo Ji declines to board and, using his authority over Halo, orders curvature propulsion, explaining that the black domain could be formed by lightspeed ship trails, and tells them to find the other survivors.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Solar System flattened
Pluto expands onto the plane and Luo Ji goes into the picture. The last voices fall silent as the Solar System becomes a completed two-dimensional painting.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Halo enters lightspeed
Cheng Xin and AA select DX3906 as destination, and Halo accelerates to lightspeed, leaving the red two-dimensional Solar System behind.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Arrival at Planet Blue
Halo travels 286 light-years to DX3906, follows a landing beacon to Planet Blue, and meets Guan Yifan, who has waited for them.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Guan Yifan explains the two-dimensional Solar System
Yifan tells them the collapsed Solar System is invisible and only detectable by gravity, and offers to take them to his human world.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Journey to Planet Gray aboard Hunter
After the satellite alert, Yifan and Cheng Xin leave AA, dock with Hunter and fly four days to Planet Gray. Yifan reveals dark truths about dimensional strikes and light tombs.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Discovery of the death lines
Yifan and Cheng Xin land three kilometers from five death lines left by the unknown ships. Yifan explains them as zero-lightspeed trails associated with Zero-Homers who want to reset the universe.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Yun Tianming's arrival announced
Returning to Planet Blue, Cheng Xin and Yifan learn from AA that Yun Tianming has landed with a gift for Cheng Xin, and decide to descend immediately.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Death lines rupture
As the shuttle begins descent, a time vacuum hits and the death lines rupture, spreading over the system and cutting lightspeed below twenty km/s, killing all electronics and trapping the shuttle.
- Book 3 · Ch 71Hibernation in the shuttle
Yifan restores air and swaps to manual suits, starts the slow neural computer boot, and both take hibernation pills to survive the twelve-day wait.
- Book 3 · Ch 72Awakening and exit from lightspeed
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan wake after sixteen days, decelerate out of reduced lightspeed with antimatter engines, and find themselves inside the light tomb. They land on a purple Planet Blue.
- Book 3 · Ch 72Dating the elapsed time
Radiometric dating shows about 18.9 million years have passed. Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan grieve having missed Tianming and AA, and then hold each other, surrendering to time.
- Book 3 · Ch 72Discovery of the carved message and the door
Cheng Xin insists on scanning for writing; Hunter finds fragments of giant carved words from AA and Tianming deep underground. A smart door appears, and the two walk through it hand in hand.
- Book 3 · Ch 73Entering Universe 647
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan pass through the door into a time vacuum, then emerge into the small closed world of Universe 647 and realize its topology.
- Book 3 · Ch 73Meeting Sophon the manager
Sophon greets them as manager, explains the universe is Yun Tianming's gift meant to let them survive the great universe's collapse and see the new universe.
- Book 3 · Ch 73Life and study in the mini-universe
They farm with robots, learn Trisolaran script, and study the universe's construction. Over time Yifan grows troubled and tells Cheng Xin about 'loss of mass'.
- Book 3 · Ch 73The Returners' broadcast
A supermembrane broadcast from the great universe lists 1.57 million languages, including Trisolaran and Earth. Its message says the universe is becoming open and asks mini-universes to return their mass.
- Book 3 · Ch 73Decision to return
Cheng Xin and Guan Yifan decide to return to the great universe despite Sophon's warnings, to help prevent its eternal death.
- Book 3 · Ch 75Dismantling Universe 647
Robots send all soil, floor, machinery, sky, house, sun, water and air through the door into the great universe, leaving only the ship and a few objects.
- Book 3 · Ch 75Leaving the mini-universe
Sophon leaves a message-in-a-bottle box for the next universe, Cheng Xin leaves her ecological sphere, and the three board the spaceship and exit through the door toward the habitable planet.