Xu Xi

Biodata

Background

Xu Xi died at his desk after working overtime in his original world. He then transmigrated and awoke in an unfamiliar room inside the God Hunt Game 1.

After clearing his first instance, he entered the Player Space and learned that its golden staircase had 999 steps. Reaching the top would allow a player to leave the game and make one wish 9.

Appearance

Xu Xi is a young man with a scrawny build. The Burly Man at the Mountain Inn thinks he looks young enough to be a student 43.

In the Shen Residence, he wears a dark blue long gown while assuming the role of the Third Young Master 139 155.

Personality

Xu Xi tends to keep a low profile and speaks little around strangers because of social anxiety. His quietness and reliance on knowledge from previous deaths are often mistaken for the composure of a calculating expert 11 12 17.

He is frightened by death and initially struggles with the trauma of repeated revivals. After his second death in the birthday instance, he briefly lashes out and wrecks the apartment before regaining his composure 3 4. He remains cautious about the unknown limits of his ability, but becomes willing to risk death to test a rule when necessary 21 28.

Although he often follows capable teammates’ lead, Xu Xi is not a pushover. He calls out the short-haired woman for taking credit for his discovery and later confronts the two men who test him at the inn 33 42. He considers himself an ordinary person rather than a genius and hopes to improve through experience 28 38.

Repeated deaths gradually change his attitude. After Mountain Inn, he worries that becoming accustomed to dying could be dangerous if his rollbacks are limited. By the end of Soul-Crying Street, he decides he has been too conservative and resolves to use the ability more actively 54 96.

Xu Xi can be considerate despite his growing pragmatism: he thanks an injured black cat and carries it with him, and is troubled when he cannot save other cats. In Taotie’s Nest, however, he uses torture to extract information from a hostile tenant 87 91 199.

Power Progression

Abilities & Skills

Death Rollback

After dying, Xu Xi returns to an earlier point with memories of the failed attempt. He calls the ability death rollback and uses what he learns to avoid dangers and solve instance rules 4 28.

• Return points: In his first instance, each death returned him to the beginning. In his second, he returned to later points associated with decisions leading to his death 15 20 28.
• Applications: He used prior attempts to obtain enough joss paper for the Ghostly Shadows, deal with the old woman, and negotiate a way out of the tunnel 15 19 26.
• Limits: Xu Xi cannot choose his save point and does not know whether the ability has a fixed number of uses 9 28.
• Cost: Death remains painful and frightening. He died eight times in his first instance and six times in his second 9 20 28.
• Deliberate use: He increasingly uses death to restart unfavorable situations, including killing himself after becoming trapped in Taotie’s Nest’s stairwell 48 96 199.
• Unusual resets: In Greed, he returned to an earlier moment after being cured of poisoning, and later returned to the clinic door after being drained of blood by a dried corpse 69 76 77.
• Potential vulnerability: Xu Xi worries that mental contamination might persist through a rollback, leaving the ability unable to undo its effects 189.

Clue Analysis

Xu Xi compares clues across attempts and tests possible rules, revising his deductions when new evidence contradicts them.

• In the birthday instance, he viewed hidden scenes from Tong Binbin’s height without directly turning around, then connected the repeated weakness to hunger 7 8.
• At the Mountain Inn, he noticed a wound on the Burly Man’s wrist and wondered whether it was connected to his mutation 47.
• In Survivor, he connected a Blue Entity to a victim dossier and considered whether the victim’s wish was central to clearing the instance 129 130.
• In Rules of Burial, photographs revealed black mist over the well and supernatural effects constrained by the ancestral hall’s lanterns 147 157.

Items

• Patterned wedding candy — Removes negative statuses from the user 28.
• White wedding candy — Heals physical injuries, including severe injuries 28.
• Spirit money — Special currency used in instances; Xu Xi brought back two notes worth 20 yuan in total 28.
• Backpack — Used to cover the young man’s head during Xu Xi’s cellar ambush 49.
• Fruit knife — Obtained in Soul-Crying Street. Carrying it improves physical abilities and reaction speed, and it can damage certain corporeal ghostly creatures 88 96.
• Mobile phone — Listed among his items after Survivor; he has also used a phone to photograph supernatural clues 139 147.
• Time-Reversing Sand — An hourglass that restores matter, energy and living beings within a limited area to their states one minute earlier. Its sand dims with each use until the item is destroyed 139.
• Cognitive Overwrite Mirror — A crystal lens that briefly distorts or overwrites a target’s cognition. Stronger intelligence and will weaken its effect, and it can be used once every 24 hours 139.
• Misfortune-Sealing Piggy Bank — Temporarily stores negative statuses affecting its holder. It can hold up to three, cracking with each use until it shatters 139.
• Mind-Cleansing Drink — Listed among his items after Looping Flight 189.
• Axe — An offensive item taken from a hostile tenant in Taotie’s Nest 197.

Relationships

• Tan Xingyun — Teammate and driver during the highway instance. Xu Xi considered him calm, bold and attentive to the group’s opinions 11 28.
• Xu Xiuman — Highway teammate whom Xu Xi regarded as a careful thinker who noticed details 11 28.
• Li Kang — Highway teammate who came to trust Xu Xi’s judgment. Xu Xi considered him reliable and cooperative 17 24 28.
• High-Ponytail Woman — Xu Xi’s investigation partner at the Mountain Inn. She offered to lure the White Humanoid in his place, and he later helped her escape into a barred room. She lent him a protective necklace when he went out to retrieve a phone 33 40 49 51.
• Short-Haired Woman with Glasses — An inn teammate who took credit for a clue Xu Xi had found. She was later killed by the White Humanoid; Ji Yang theorized that Xu Xi had deliberately provoked it, but admitted he had no proof 32 33 36.
• Refined Man and Burly Man — Inn teammates whose attempt to test Xu Xi led to a confrontation. Xu Xi later worked with them to investigate Room 101 and its hidden passage 42 44.
• Ji Yang — A streamer who followed and analyzed Xu Xi’s instances, praising his potential while also offering speculative interpretations of his actions 29 36.
• Tall, Thin Man — A fellow player in Greed who helped Xu Xi when he was poisoned and investigated Awang’s story and Gao Zhuang’s clinic with him 69 76.
• Itanu — A fellow player in Looping Flight. He and Xu Xi reached the pilot together and helped persuade him to land the plane 174 188.
• Hang Ze — A teammate in Rules of Burial. Xu Xi considered the earring-wearing young man unusually troublesome after an encounter left him stuck in a death loop; Hang Ze credited Xu Xi with carrying the team through the instance 165 166.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Birthday Deathiversary

Xu Xi’s first instance takes place in an apartment set for Tong Binbin’s ninth birthday. After deaths involving a falling ceiling fan, decapitation and recurring weakness, he investigates the family’s history and the apartment’s death rules 2 3 6.

He discovers Dad Tong’s corpse and sees a vision of Tong Binbin chopping meat while complaining of hunger. Suspecting that the child starved, Xu Xi brings the corpse and a pot of meat to the birthday table, lights the candles and eats cake. The family’s figures appear, and the instance clears 8 9.

Highway Terror

In his second instance, Xu Xi travels with Tan Xingyun, Xu Xiuman and Li Kang. Using knowledge from failed attempts, he helps the group pass Ghostly Shadows with spirit money and persuades a dangerous old woman to leave with joss paper and incense 11 17 19.

At a tunnel, Xu Xi bargains with a fake Li Kang for a car he suspects can leave safely. The group adds its offerings and uses its original car as collateral, then escapes in the acquired vehicle 26. Xu Xi’s apparently effortless clears make him famous online, though viewers do not know about his rollbacks 17 28.

Mountain Inn

Xu Xi enters his third instance early and joins four other players at a mountain inn 29. After a fatal encounter with a candle-attracted humanoid, he rolls back, extinguishes his teammate’s candle and warns the others 35 36.

The group investigates the inn’s missing guests and a hidden passage beneath a wardrobe. The passage proves to be a trap, and the players capture a young man who identifies himself as Yang Wu 37 44 45.

After the Burly Man mutates, the young man leads the survivors toward a cellar. He later reveals that he injected the Burly Man with a toxin and used a powder to draw an evolved humanoid. Following another death and rollback, Xu Xi ambushes him and escapes with the High-Ponytail Woman into a room secured by an iron grate 47 49.

Xu Xi uses powder from the room to distract the evolved creature and goes to retrieve a phone while the High-Ponytail Woman assists him. He clears the instance, prompting Ji Yang to replay the events for an audience of a million viewers. Ji Yang interprets several of Xu Xi’s actions as a calculated scheme against the other players, though viewers’ interpretations remain speculative 51 52 53.

Greed

Xu Xi enters a village instance with five other players and investigates alongside the talkative young man in a baseball cap and, later, the tall, thin man. The players hear accounts of villagers whose wishes for wealth or a harvest preceded gruesome deaths 55 59 69.

At Village Chief Zhu’s house, Xu Xi is poisoned. A patterned wedding candy fails to help, while a white candy heals him; he then finds himself back at the moment he picked up his chopsticks 69.

Xu Xi and the tall, thin man speak with Awang and investigate Gao Zhuang’s clinic, finding evidence that Gao had mixed cyanide medication into prescriptions. A dried corpse attacks Xu Xi at the door, draining his blood and sending him back to the moment before he opened it. He ultimately clears the instance and returns to the Player Space 76 79 80.

Soul-Crying Street

Xu Xi navigates a series of dangerous street loops that gradually reveal several connected stories. After an injured black cat warns him of an approaching car, he rolls back, saves it and accepts its bell. He gives the bell to a bleeding young woman, who in turn gives him a fruit knife 87 88.

He repeatedly restarts to overcome the loops, at one point returning for milk tea despite being defeated by a boy connected to the story. He eventually uses rollback to locate and collect the fragments needed to clear the instance, bringing the fruit knife back with him 94 95 96.

Survivor

In the island competition, Xu Xi tests whether withdrawing and leaving by boat can provide an escape. After learning that the boat is expected to return, he kills himself to roll back and instead enters the camp with the other players 102.

He explores the camp and gains passage past Blue Entities by presenting himself as a visitor. One entity later leads him to a dossier identifying her as an islander falsely recorded as a spy. Xu Xi tests a theory by returning to the Dungeon and triggering the corpse-like man’s revival, but the man kills him and the remaining players in that attempt 123 129.

Xu Xi also borrows the shaman’s phone, unsuccessfully tests a call to the Anomaly Management Bureau and plans to use the phone for livestreaming. After clearing his sixth instance, he reaches floor 498 132 137.

Rules of Burial

At the Shen Residence, Xu Xi investigates an ancient well and learns from the steward that it is connected to a debt owed by the Shen Family and to Master Shen’s death. Questions and attempts to cross certain boundaries result in repeated deaths and rollbacks 147.

After encountering a watery shadow, he finds the residence transformed into a quiet, dawn-like state and follows Xueke, the late Sixth Young Master’s dog, toward the well. In another attempt, he takes the Eldest Young Miss’s place keeping vigil in the ancestral hall and uses photographs to investigate its supernatural contents 154 157.

Seventh Concubine removes the well’s seal, Xueke retrieves a booklet, and Xu Xi burns the Shen Family Clan Genealogy. He tells the steward that he is no longer a member of the family and leaves through the gates, clearing the instance 166.

Looping Flight

Xu Xi’s hints about the flight number, time and an old news story lead Ji Yang to speculate that the plane is connected to a crash more than twenty years earlier 174.

Xu Xi and Itanu pass through a dark restroom into a ruined cockpit, where they find a pilot blaming himself for the crash. They explain that the airline’s unsafe aircraft caused the disaster and urge him to save the surviving passengers. The pilot lands the plane and vanishes, allowing them to clear the instance 188.

The clear raises Xu Xi from floor 588 to 692. Online players marvel that he has cleared eight instances in eleven days and speculate about how quickly he might reach floor 999 189 191.

Taotie’s Nest

Xu Xi enters a solo instance in a building inhabited by dangerous tenants. He takes an axe from a burly man and interrogates him, then searches for a way to the sixth floor. A looping stairwell and a floor that begins swallowing him force him to kill himself and restart 192 197 199.

He investigates Room 502 and its white-dressed occupant, whose dolls suggest an interest in skinning. He also learns that the old landlady was the diary’s original owner and considers whether changing skins is connected to her becoming the landlord and to the building’s exit 199 201 204.