Phantasmal Tree and Big Brother's System

The Phantasmal Tree is the cosmological structure that connects the Towers, 《Chaos》, the Great Lands, the 《Abyss》, Panopticon, and the First Nightmare. Big Brother's System is the cultivation order distributed through that structure: lower worlds are made into Towers, their inhabitants are refined as Products, survivors rise through increasingly powerful societies, and exceptional Masters are drawn through the Time Waterfall toward Transcendence. Big Brother is not a single eternal deity standing outside the process. It is an office occupied by successive transcendent beings who manage the same order from Panopticon. (Chapters 8–11, 89, 108, and 242–248)

The two concepts cannot be separated cleanly. The Tree provides the routes, levels, and worlds through which cultivation operates; the System turns those worlds into a pipeline whose suffering is justified as development. At the same time, the supplied corpus repeatedly warns against treating the visible Tree as all reality. The First Nightmare is described both as the origin and home of every Tower and as a world where the System's irrationality is not visibly symbolized. After Jaehwan destroys the Tree, he awakens in an ordinary modern life whose status—original world, deeper layer, therapeutic reality, or another shared story—remains deliberately unresolved. (Chapters 249–266)

Structure and operating principles

The Tree as a world map

The Phantasmal Tree is described through organic layers rather than a conventional universe chart. Towers are Roots extending toward lower worlds and supporting the cultivation structure. Chaos lies on the Trunk, where souls from broken Towers and other lower routes gather. Above it, travelers encounter the Great Lands, the Abyss, and the Branches; Fruit can fall from the Branches and provide passage or power connected to the upper reaches. The corpus confirms movement and long-distance Links among these regions without giving one exact placement for every society. At the far end is the Nest and Panopticon, reached through the Time Waterfall; the First Nightmare stands in a more difficult relation to the whole structure, simultaneously described as summit, origin, and home. (Chapters 8–11, 36–38, 62, 87–104, and 238–250)

These terms record relative position and function, not a fully measured physical botany. Travelers move through Towers, narrow doors, Fruits, Palace gates, Sites, and dimensional passages rather than walking up an ordinary trunk. A link can operate between Trunk and Branches, as Catastrophe's contract with Jaehwan demonstrates. The Great Forest preserves Clothes shed by Gestalt, while Panopticon's environment manipulates space and time at a scale ordinary regional maps cannot express. The corpus supports a connected hierarchy but does not provide reliable distances, a complete list of Branches, or one diagram resolving every metaphor. (Chapters 87–98, 167, 193–220, and 242–249)

Cultivation rather than education

The System calls its lower subjects Products because Towers are cultivation facilities, not impartial tests intended for the climbers' benefit. Game Masters administer scenarios, ranks, items, skills, and data while contracted cultivators or buyers profit from successful outcomes. Beastrein offers Jaehwan a place in the “Main Game” only after the Tutorial has refined him into an unusually valuable survivor. His explanations reveal that apparent heroism, regression, and advancement can all be components of a market whose administrators regard worlds as material. (Chapters 3–10)

Cultivation continues beyond the Tower under different vocabulary. Adaptation lets inhabitants use the System's Settings and Parts; gods gather Followers and World Power; Vicegerents accept another being's world through a Link; Towers and competitive institutions accelerate growth. Exceptional Awakened Ones can form Unique Worlds that resist ordinary Settings, but even rebellion can be redirected into the larger pipeline. Mulack Armelt reaches Panopticon precisely because his attempt to end cultivation makes him strong enough to become its manager. (Chapters 30–79, 89–109, 155–175, and 242–248)

The process therefore selects for both power and endurance while repeatedly hollowing out purpose. The Time Waterfall extends experience until motives, relationships, and even distinctions among selves erode. Those who reach Transcendence can regard ordinary existences as insects and their former convictions as immature. The active Big Brother inherits the authority to optimize the System, but the office's perspective makes preservation of order more important than the particular people the order claims to serve. (Chapters 238–250)

Links, Clothes, World Power, and agreement

The System works through relationships as much as through numerical strength. Links connect gods and Vicegerents, manifestations and distant bodies, institutions and sources of power. Clothes are the influences, relationships, and System-shaped versions that distinguish one existence from another. World Power grows through the reality a person or god sustains and through Followers who accept that world. Settings impose rules when sufficient authority or plausibility supports them. These mechanisms make reality social: belief can empower a world, but imposed agreement can also turn a population into fuel. (Chapters 39–41, 94–98, 155–175, and 198–236)

Gestalt, Deus, and Catastrophe reach different conclusions about Clothes. Gestalt sheds them and risks self-erasure; Deus treats them as fortresses to be perfected; Catastrophe treats them as contagion and turns forgotten souls into Followers. Their incompatible solutions lead toward the first Only One World experiment. Later, Maiad van Declan reproduces the same mistake on a smaller scale by using the Three Divine Artifacts to make submission appear voluntary while drawing every linked world into one center. (Chapters 198–206 and 229–236)

Jaehwan's counter-model also depends on others, but not through compulsory uniformity. Gorgon's people and his companions freely send World Power, letting Destruction oppose Maiad's imposed reality. His Clothes help him in Panopticon because they remain versions of Jaehwan that choose to act, not disposable copies whose differences must be erased. The distinction is central to the story's treatment of the System: shared reality is not automatically oppression, but a world made “one” by removing every alternative reproduces cultivation's original violence. (Chapters 226–250)

Origin and historical development

The Ancient Three Gods and Only One World

The System's remembered origin begins with three beings born as human souls who became the Ancient Three Gods. Their worlds and Followers produced conflicts among gods, and they sought an order capable of ending those wars. Deus proposed using their knowledge of Clothes and combined World Power to control an unknown System. Catastrophe supported the attempt despite preferring a world in which all beings became their Followers. Gestalt objected that the power was not understood. The later recovered record corrects the simplified legend that the three simply fought one another: Deus and Catastrophe proceeded despite Gestalt's warning. (Chapters 204–206, 232–234, and 242)

Their resonance opened the sky and drew in darkness associated with the Time Waterfall. Deus and the prototype Deus Ex Machina entered that darkness and returned transformed beyond ordinary existence. Transcendent Deus declared the former conflict meaningless, tore Gestalt apart, and drove Catastrophe from the Abyss. Plausibility Destruction was added to the great machine after this transformation. The intended peace thus became the first form of Big Brother and the imposed cultivation order that outlived its creators' alliance. (Chapters 234 and 242–247)

Deus later appears in Panopticon as an inactive armored soul stored in a vast tank. This evidence separates three things that later history often blends: the historical Ancient God, the transcendent predecessor who served as Big Brother, and the derivative Deus Ex Machina reconstructed and wielded by others. The System preserves Parts and powers from its managers even after their independent tenure ends. (Chapters 242–248)

Dream Demons, Towers, and the Fortress of Regret

Dream Demons turn lower worlds into cultivated Towers. Mulack, one of the Great Thirteen Masters, creates the Fortress of Regret before reaching that rank. Beastrein purchases and administers it as the Tower of Nightmares that summons Jaehwan's Earth. The Stone of Regression is not part of Beastrein's manual; Mulack's unusual regression scenario makes the Tower commercially influential while also producing a route by which most Walkers abandon the present timeline. (Chapters 1–8)

Mulack later judges Tower-making to be a sin. He leaves hidden graffiti beyond the normal scenario, identifying Towers as Roots and pointing anyone who sees through the fabrication toward the First Nightmare. The message does not undo the Tower's casualties, but it creates a route for a rebel Product. Jaehwan follows it only after rejecting Beastrein's offer, abandoning the System's numerical definition of him, and breaking through the Tower rather than accepting another official floor. (Chapters 4–11)

The first Abyss Expedition

Nine hundred years before Jaehwan reaches Chaos, Mulack enters through the Narrow Door, accepts the incomplete Awakened One Chunghuh, and forms the first Abyss Expedition. His declared goal is not merely obtaining Fruit but ending cultivation. The expedition reaches the upper Tree far enough for a Fruit to fall, yet Great Lands House Heads take it after the group's return. Mulack disappears after saying that he both failed and did not fail. (Chapters 36–38, 52–62)

The expedition's incomplete history survives through Sirwen Armelt, Eight Gates of Hell, and the Record of the Abyss. Jaehwan receives Mulack's fragmented memories and uses them as a guide through Awakening, Catastrophe, the Metaverse, and the Abyss. The gaps matter: the record contains one person's interrupted perspective, not the System's complete manual. Only after Gestalt's Eye reconnects the Clothes and memories can Jaehwan recover more of Mulack's route and anti-cultivation purpose. (Chapters 69–85, 104–148, and 198–208)

Metaverse and the manufacture of gods

The Metaverse shows cultivation reproduced as entertainment, hierarchy, and belief economy. Gods require tickets and Followers; those who cannot continue can become Dolls; floors are worlds whose inhabitants sustain the structure. The Driver offers a route upward while using the Tower and its dead as fuel. Jaehwan's campaign frees captives, rejects the ninth floor's rule that every passenger must kill the others, and finally destroys the Metaverse's Links rather than accept an ending reached through the Driver's prescribed path. (Chapters 109–175)

The collapse is not consequence-free. Jaehwan carries the histories of destroyed floors, and restoration does not erase every death or exploitation. The operation nevertheless demonstrates that a major System-like institution can be broken when its participants withdraw belief and its supporting Links are severed. It becomes a practical precursor to the larger attack on Big Brother rather than merely an isolated dungeon victory. (Chapters 155–181)

The Rift's replacement System

The Rift begins as an organization opposed to Big Brother, founded by Maiad, Nameless, and Buddha. Its Great Disappearance Simulation deliberately manufactures trauma to force Awakening. Over time, inability to reach the visible eye in the sky changes the goal from destroying the System to replacing it. Maiad stages Revolution Day by making the star associated with Big Brother fall, while knowing the real manager has not been killed. The performance makes conquest look like liberation and prepares the Abyss to accept a new order. (Chapters 196–229)

Only One World combines Plausibility Destruction, Time Infection, Cognitive Dissonance, and Maiad's Mountain of Corpses, Sea of Blood. Links are severed, Vicegerents are infected, perception is distorted, and World Power flows toward one center. Jaehwan defeats it with freely offered power from Chaos. Maiad's failure reveals that opposition to Big Brother is not enough: an alternative built by erasing consent and difference remains a System of cultivation under another owner. (Chapters 231–237)

Mulack's Transcendence and succession

Mulack reaches the Time Waterfall after his expedition and survives a duration that radically changes his scale of judgment. At Panopticon he is the active Big Brother, not a disguised stranger using Mulack's name. He describes a succession in which Masters are drawn toward the First Nightmare, broken by the Waterfall, recovered into tanks, and used as predecessors or resources. Jaehwan is offered the office of the 1,131st Big Brother, establishing that Mulack is one manager in a line rather than the creator of every part of the System. (Chapters 242–248)

Mulack argues that the existing order is optimized, stable, and filled with lives whose choices would also be destroyed by reckless liberation. His defense is not wholly false: worlds and relationships do exist inside the System. The contradiction lies in the manager's willingness to treat those existences as administrable insects and to reproduce the pipeline that creates his successor. His original desire for a good world survives, but Transcendence changes preservation into a justification for imposed hierarchy. (Chapters 243–250)

Big Brother and Panopticon

Office rather than singular identity

The title therefore should not be used as though Deus, Mulack, the eye in the sky, and Panopticon are one biological person. The eye represents observation or presence; Panopticon is the administrative environment; the office passes through managers; and stored predecessors retain Parts or memories without all remaining active rulers. (Chapters 215–224 and 242–249)

Observation and administration

Panopticon contains screens, tanks, stored souls, Parts, and mechanisms through which the active Big Brother controls the surrounding space and time. Mulack can attack with distorted space, vary local time, awaken predecessors for barriers, and replace damaged limbs with their Parts. These capabilities make the facility itself part of the office's power rather than a neutral palace. (Chapters 244–248)

The dependency is also a weakness. Jaehwan's accumulated Destruction and the action of his Clothes break armaments and erase most of the screens. Once Panopticon's resources fail, Mulack's bodily replacement and borrowed arsenal cease to be inexhaustible. The Void Sword then extinguishes his exposed soul. The System's manager is transcendent, but his ability to administer countless worlds still rests on destructible infrastructure and preserved predecessors. (Chapters 248–250)

Little Brother and delegated service

Lower cultivation is not administered through Big Brother's personal attention to every Tower. Official Cultivators work through Little Brother, and local Game Masters, Lords, floor leaders, gods, and institutions enforce their own parts of the hierarchy. Beastrein hopes enough service will let him petition for independence and godhood. This creates an incentive structure in which exploited administrators reproduce exploitation because compliance appears to offer escape from their own low rank. (Chapters 5–8, 89, 108, and 239)

The corpus does not provide a complete organizational chart for Little Brother or identify every link between Panopticon and local rulers. It establishes a distributed order, not omniscient direct control. That distinction helps explain why Towers contain unplanned items, why institutions compete, and why regional rebellions can succeed without immediately destroying the whole Tree. (Chapters 1–11 and 89–175)

Opposition and alternatives

Catastrophe opposes Big Brother from confinement in Chaos, lending Jaehwan the Void Sword through a dangerous contract. Their aid is not liberation without cost: Forgotten One power erodes memory and can turn a soul into Catastrophe's Follower. Gestalt's legacy offers another route through Naked, Clothes Shedding, and Cognitive Dissonance, but radical shedding risks erasing the self. Maiad's Rift organizes mass resistance, yet its final method reproduces compulsory unity. Every major opponent therefore carries a version of the danger it fights. (Chapters 87–98, 163–220, and 226–237)

Jaehwan's Destruction attacks Settings, Links, Towers, and worlds, so it too can erase what others live inside. His development is not a simple progression toward greater destructive force. He learns to accept followers who choose him, to carry the histories of worlds he breaks, and to recognize that no single person's imagination can fill reality. Teacher's final lesson in the First Nightmare makes this explicit: a world cannot be defeated or established alone; others must be invited to share it. (Chapters 77–98, 155–196, and 251–266)

Collapse and unresolved aftermath

Jaehwan refuses the Big Brother throne and drives his Stab through Panopticon and the System. The Phantasmal Tree collapses, Fruit falls into Chaos, and the cultivation structure that linked its levels is destroyed. Mulack dies, the stored administrative order is devastated, and Jaehwan experiences himself as a child watching the lonely Tree fall. The narrative presents this as a genuine destruction without claiming that every person, memory, or possible world inside the structure is neatly restored. (Chapters 245–250)

The First Nightmare follows. Jaehwan lives in a modern world without Skills, Settings, immortality, or an obvious Tower, while his earlier journey is classified as delusion. He eventually writes the story of the man who did not regress, allowing forgotten companions and worlds to exist for readers even when proof is unavailable. The epilogue's crack in Sirwen's Tower suggests contact, and the Revision returns Jaehwan to Stab and escape, but neither device establishes one simple hierarchy in which all prior events were “only fiction.” (Chapters 251–266)

The System's final legacy is therefore a question rather than a successor regime. Big Brother offered safety through optimized hierarchy; Maiad offered unity through replacement; Jaehwan chose destruction but learned that reality requires other people. The Tree falls, yet the act of telling and sharing worlds continues. Within the supplied corpus, that continuation is the closest thing to an alternative operating principle: connection without a manager who decides that only one world is allowed to be real. (Chapters 249–266)