Xia Lun

Biodata

Feature	Details
Name	Xia Lun (夏伦)
Alias(es)	Master Danyang 50
Species/Race	Human
Gender	Male
Occupation/Role	Businessman; Investigator player; former scenario navigator and current “Pill Seeker” in Sorrow Hill City 1 36 48
Status	Alive. His terminal lung condition was cured after his first scenario, but the curse The Decay Has Come remains temporarily suppressed and may destroy his lungs within roughly five months. 35 38
First Appearance	Chapter 1, “All or Nothing”

Power Progression

Stage / Realm / Level	Chapter	Notes
Heightened Focus; Familiarity with Pain; Cold Weapon Throwing Proficient 3%	2	Heightened Focus grants extreme perception but originally had only three safe uses per day and permanently harms mental health. Familiarity with Pain makes Xia Lun unusually resistant to pain shock. 2
Firearms Use Mastery 19% → 22%; partial Reflexive Evasion memory	4	Earned 630 Memory Points after blinding the Abyssal Hand and killing the Black overseer; gained the first partial memory of Reflexive Evasion. 4
Cold Weapon Use—Swords Basic 50% → 62%; Firearms Use Mastery 22% → 26%; Mass Murderer unlocked	9	His close-quarters victory over the first mate’s faction improves his sword and firearm specializations. Mass Murderer can intimidate foes, affect spiritual entities, and may reinforce mental resilience. 9
Reflexive Evasion acquired; Swords Basic 62% → 95%; Navigation Beginner 0% → 46%	14	Spent 780 Memory Points in a lucid dream to acquire instinctive evasion, one-handed sword training, and practical sailing knowledge. 14
Comprehensive Navigation Beginner 46% → 60%	21	Improved while steering the whaling ship toward Perilous Earth Island and earned the approval of ten crew members. 21
Cold Weapon Use—Swords advances to Proficient 28%; Courtly Tournament Special Memory unlocked	23	A thousand dream duels and a changed memory outcome elevate his swordsmanship beyond the original memory source’s level. 23
Transcendent Regeneration activated and enhanced	31–34	Completing the Prayerbook of the Drowned qualifies him for the secret art. Its later enhancement gives him greater control over activation and reduces its mental and nutritional costs. 31 34
Firearms Use Mastery 26% → 28%; Swords Proficient 28% → 55%; Stealth Beginner 15%	34	His battle with Abyssal Hand sharpens force transmission through his sword, expands his evasion against tentacles and gunfire, and grants stealth experience. 34
Nonhuman Toughness; Strength 11 → 13; Constitution 10 → 11	41	Obtained after enduring fifteen Dream Entries drawn from Geliide’s torture-filled memories. It improves endurance, recovery, pain tolerance, resistance to injury, and explosiveness. 41
Enhanced Heightened Focus	46	Swordsmanship Focus merges into Heightened Focus. Safe uses rise to four per day; while wielding a sword, Xia Lun can access a weaker meditative version without a use limit. The ability can discern structural weaknesses, but its mental-health cost becomes substantially worse. 46

Background / History

Xia Lun is a reincarnator who has lived two lives. In his current life, he spent twenty-six years in Baihuan City and rose to wealth within little more than a decade amid the city’s violence and disorder. 1 36

After a water accident, Xia Lun developed an incomprehensible illness that caused suffocation and bleeding throughout his body. Medicine, surgery, supernatural remedies, and folk treatments all failed; with roughly 2,160 hours left to live, he entered the forbidden death game Investigator to seek a cure. 1

He prepared for the game with weapons, medicine, and a Voidwood Box capable of bringing physical items into scenarios. His first scenario cast him as a navigator imprisoned aboard a pirate-controlled whaling ship, with the objective of surviving six days. 1

Personality

Xia Lun is calm under extreme pressure, partly because his previous death has made mortality less frightening to him. He plans before acting, evaluates resources carefully, and usually seeks an advantage through observation, deception, and positioning rather than raw force. 1 2

He can be cold and ruthless when survival requires it. He uses intimidation, hostage leverage, political framing, and sudden violence against enemies, yet rejects indiscriminate killing and refuses to execute people merely because they may become threats. 8 19

Despite his intimidating reputation, Xia Lun recognizes that fear alone cannot sustain authority. He deliberately builds rapport through conversation, cooperation, and dry humor, earning genuine respect from the surviving pirates. 21 29

His sanity is an unresolved anomaly. The Information Panel lists it as “Calm (0/0), critical error,” and Xia Lun does not know whether that represents immunity, abnormality, or a deeper danger. 38

Abilities & Skills

Heightened Focus

A dangerous concentration skill that accelerates Xia Lun’s perception and thought processes until the world appears hyper-detailed.

• Lets him analyze trajectories, evade attacks, and make precise firearm or sword strikes under pressure. 4 29
• After merging with Swordsmanship Focus, it can reveal an opponent’s or object’s structural weakness. 46
• Has four safe activations per day; sword meditation provides a weaker, unlimited version while he is armed with a sword. 46
• Causes permanent mental-health damage, and stronger targets may take too long to analyze before the focus state ends. 46

Firearms Use

Xia Lun possesses Mastery-level marksmanship, an unusually rare level even among experienced Investigator players. 34 39

• Maintains high accuracy under rapid fire and has used guns to blind Abyssal Hand, kill the first mate, and suppress Walking Corpses. 4 8 26
• Can quick-draw quickly enough to kill one pirate and disable another before either can fire. 16
• Progress is documented at Mastery 28% following Sea Battle Royale. 34

Swordsmanship

Xia Lun specializes in mobile, one-handed short-sword combat and treats the sword as an extension of his body. 23 34

• Uses techniques including Glancing Strike, Backstab Slash, blade binding, distance control, and Listening Force—reading an opponent’s movement through contact between crossed blades. 22 31 43
• His refined force transmission allows most of his body’s strength to reach the sword tip with minimal loss. 34
• Documented at Proficient 55% after Sea Battle Royale. 34

Reflexive Evasion

A specialty that turns evasion into conditioned instinct rather than conscious reaction.

• Enables instinctive dodges against thrown weapons, falling debris, tentacle strikes, and flintlock fire. 14 34
• Improves explosive strength and endurance over time. 4
• Does not guarantee safety against concealed or point-blank gunfire. 14

Transcendent Regeneration

A secret art derived from the completed Prayerbook of the Drowned.

• Can rapidly repair severe injuries, including broken ribs and severe hand damage. 32 44
• Healing can induce extreme hunger and physical depletion. 32
• Its enhanced form allows Xia Lun to control activation and reduces its mental and nutritional burden. 34

Nonhuman Toughness

A specialty gained from reliving Geliide’s torture memories.

• Allows him to keep functioning through catastrophic injury until death is final. 41
• Greatly improves pain-shock threshold, endurance, recovery, resistance to blows, and muscular explosiveness. 41
• Raises his recorded Strength to 13 and Constitution to 11. 41

Navigation, Deception, and Leadership

Xia Lun combines practical sailing skill with social manipulation and political awareness.

• Can determine a vessel’s position and heading, pilot a ship, and take the helm under dangerous conditions. 14 21
• Used a crew vote, marked ballots, and a public execution to isolate dissenters while preserving a façade of legitimacy. 16
• In Sorrow Hill City, he invented the “Way of Sitting and Forgetting,” demonstrated the Voidwood Box to deceive cultists, and established himself as “Master Danyang.” 49 50

Recorded Attributes

Attribute	Recorded value
Strength	13 41
Constitution	11 41
Agility	16 38
Charisma	14 38
Perception	18 38
Intelligence	12 38

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Night Plume — A master-crafted Mosu steel short sword with refined balance, edge, and grip; Xia Lun can manifest it at will. 35 38
• Single-action revolver — A custom large-caliber firearm manifested with twelve special bullets. Its Death Precision trait improves accuracy when aimed at vital points. 35
• Voidwood Box — A Paradox Item that carries physical objects into scenarios, conceals them from detection, and can be summoned or dismissed outside the game. 1 38
• Underwater Breathing Potions — The only treatment that initially eased Xia Lun’s suffocation; later received additional bottles from Geliide. 1 36
• Gunpowder barrel — Manifested as an emergency explosive capable of changing a confrontation’s outcome. 35
• Willow Effigy — A willow-branch doll made by Captain Geliide and retained as a memento. 35
• Snail Statues — Four anomalous statues Xia Lun burned before entering his second scenario, wishing for a low-risk lifespan extension or a complete cure. 47

Relationships

• Captain Geliide — Initially confronted Xia Lun at gunpoint, then became his pragmatic ally aboard the whaling ship. Xia Lun provided the tactical leadership she needed to reclaim authority, while Geliide gave his killings political legitimacy. 6 9
• Abyssal Hand / “Monster” — Xia Lun’s principal foe in Sea Battle Royale. Their conflict began after Xia Lun damaged it with a collapsing mast; later evidence suggests Xia Lun’s scenario identity may once have been its occult apprentice or ally, though this remains his theory. 31 37
• The Doctor — A disturbed former ship’s doctor who repaid Xia Lun’s earlier protection by teaching him Symptom Reading, the only identified means of reading a Grimoire. 19 21
• White Line — Longtime friend, information broker, and veteran Investigator player. He supplied Xia Lun’s game card and Voidwood Box through his channels and continues to advise him on game mechanics. 39
• Geliide of Baihuan City — Director Bird’s red-haired daughter, who sought Xia Lun’s aid after believing her father had been replaced. Her appearance and family connections closely parallel Captain Geliide’s scenario counterpart. 36 42
• The Foresight Club — An occult organization associated with interlocking-triangle “Calling” rituals and possible body replacement. Xia Lun suspects it is connected to his drowning, illness, and future danger. 36 38
• Red and Green Nuo-Mask Cultists — Sorrow Hill City cultists whom Xia Lun deceives into treating him as “Master Danyang,” turning immediate enemies into informants. 49 50

Story Role / Major Arcs

Sea Battle Royale

Xia Lun enters Investigator to survive six days aboard a pirate-controlled whaling ship and find a cure for his lung disease. He retrieves his medicine during an Abyssal Hand attack, blinds the creature, and kills the Black overseer who uses him as bait. 1 2 4

After the first mate turns the survivors against him, Xia Lun forms a tense alliance with Captain Geliide. He eliminates the mutineers through an ambush, hostage tactics, swordplay, and concealed firearms, then helps Geliide regain enough legitimacy to lead the ship. 5 6 8 9

He later becomes a central organizer among the survivors, manipulates a vote against surrender, trains through dreams, and discovers that the Monster’s corpse demands are part of a plan to reduce and eventually consume the crew. 16 19 22

During the final battle, Xia Lun rejects the easy option of sacrificing trapped pirates to kill the Monster. He rescues them instead, pursues the creature alone, completes the Prayerbook of the Drowned, and obtains Transcendent Regeneration. 29 31

He clears Sea Battle Royale with an S- rating, surviving all six days, resolving the rainstorm mystery, killing Abyssal Hand, finding its treasure, and raising his Memory Manifestation Permission to 200%. 34

Courtly Tournament

Xia Lun enters the Courtly Tournament Special Memory to develop his swordsmanship. There he encounters younger versions of Geliide and Bird, destabilizing his belief that the game and reality are separate. 42

He defeats the giant Horn through superior technique, kills him after Horn attempts murder with an exposed blade, publicly exposes the corrupt referee, and forces a sanctioned death match. Completing the memory grants Swordsmanship Focus, which merges into Heightened Focus. 43 44 45 46

Sorrow Hill City

After learning that his curse remains active, Xia Lun prepares heavily for a second scenario and burns four Snail Statues to wish for a cure or lifespan extension. 38 47

He enters Sorrow Hill City as a terminally ill Pill Seeker searching for Yin Longevity Pills. Trapped behind the lifespan-draining Yin Bo Wall, he identifies the Astral Ritual as a likely escape route and chooses investigation over immediate violence. 48

When confronted by Nuo-mask cultists and Skinned Corpses, Xia Lun claims to be “Master Danyang” of the invented Way of Sitting and Forgetting. By using the Voidwood Box as proof of secret arts, he gains their submission and begins extracting information about the city, its Death Fog, and Master Man in the Flesh. 49 50

Notable Quotes

“I’m still alive!” 35

“Being nervous is meaningless. What matters is action.” 38

“Don’t think like that. Wishful thinking is dangerous.” 38