In Year 208, New Life Village #5 expels Luo Ji because his presence attracts jeering crowds, reporters, and the anger of other hibernators who see him as the man who gave humanity hope and then failed it. The neighborhood committee director finds him living in filth, surrounded by alcohol, cigarettes, and Snow Project displays, and coldly delivers the decision. That night Luo Ji leaves anyway, taking a travel bag and a short-handled shovel.

Trying to avoid attention, Luo Ji walks out through the rain, hitches a ride with a hibernator family, and is thrown out when they recognize him. A later bus also ejects him after another passenger identifies him; when someone mocks the shovel, Luo Ji says he is digging his own grave, and he means it. He continues on foot to the old cemetery, finds the graves of Yang Dong and Ye Wenjie, and digs a shallow grave beside them through the night until exhaustion and fever overcome him.

After a dream of Zhuang Yan, Xia Xia, and mirrored tombstones, Luo Ji wakes at dawn trembling and near collapse. Seeing an ant on Ye Wenjie’s gravestone, he apologizes to all life on Earth, then takes out a pistol linked to a vital-sign monitor. He addresses Trisolaris and reveals that if his heart stops, the cradle system maintaining 3,614 Snow Project bombs in solar orbit will fail, the bombs will detonate, and the resulting dust clouds will make the Sun broadcast Trisolaris’s coordinates along with Earth’s to the galaxy.

With the pistol held to his chest, Luo Ji demands three concessions in exchange for his continued life: the droplet must stop its transmissions toward the Sun, the nine incoming droplets must turn away and emit visible light so humanity can verify it, and the Trisolaran fleet must change course from the Solar System. The sophons appear as three mirrored spheres, first ordering him to stop and then accepting each demand after tense delays. When Luo Ji lowers the gun, Trisolaris admits that it already knew the universe was a dark forest and confesses that contempt made it overlook the meaning of Luo Ji’s work on the Snow Project.

In the final exchange, Luo Ji says future negotiations, improved transmission systems, and broader cooperation belong to others, not to him. Trisolaris notes that strategy is where it failed and asks whether he can get home safely, since two civilizations now depend on his survival. Luo Ji thanks Trisolaris for letting both sides live, the sophon vanishes, and he leaves the cemetery at sunrise, having finally completed the Wallfacer mission.