Gao Ming

Biodata

Feature	Details
Name	Gao Ming (高命)
Alias(es)	Doctor Gao — his preferred form of address when treating Yan Hua 32
Gender	Male
Species/Race	Human; Xuan Wen claims that he died in the tunnel and received another chance to live, but he cannot confirm her account 7 13
Occupation/Role	Former psychological counselor at Henshan Maximum-Security Prison; horror-game designer; acting leader of Investigation Team One 3 4 36
Affiliation	Nightlight Game Studio, as a longtime collaborator; Joint Bureau of Anomalous Disaster Investigation, Lishan Investigation Office 4 24 36
Residence	Fourth floor of Building 4, Lijing Apartments, Hanhai 29
Status	Alive; unable to open his left eye after an encounter with the Blood Pool 50
First Appearance	Chapter 1, “An ordinary, unremarkable, cozy night” 1

Power Progression

Gao Ming’s documented progression consists of supernatural bonds and their developing applications, rather than a named personal cultivation realm. The Bureau’s numbered levels classify anomaly events, not his strength 14 15.

Stage / Realm / Level	Chapter	Notes
New “parent” / household key	2	Receives a memorial photograph naming him the family’s new parent and granting the key to its home. Its message gives him authority to help or torment family members and a duty to bring others into the games.
First chain: Zhao Xi’s bond	14	Embracing Zhao Xi draws his memories, despair, and shadows onto Gao Ming’s arm. Gao Ming refuses to seize the possible power at the cost of Zhao Xi’s disappearance; Zhao Xi subsequently chooses to become part of him.
Ghost Parents’ summoning trigger	16 17	Discovers that looking at the family memorial photograph while calling home can bring out Ghost Dad and Ghost Mom. By the following chapter, he regards their cake deliveries as a usable means of protection.
Chain-based protection	22	Zhao Xi’s memory-bound chain manifests and protects Gao Ming when shadows attack him as he helps Xuan Wen.
Offensive chain application	29	Uses the chain to strangle the fused parents created by shared fear, destroying the monster and absorbing its remains.
Direct manifestation of Zhao Xi	44	Summons Zhao Xi through the memorial portrait and bloodied chain to restrain the transformed Bai Xiao.

Background / History

Gao Ming worked as a psychological counselor at Henshan Maximum-Security Prison. He used game design to release the pressure of dealing with serious offenders, incorporating crimes, urban legends, and imagined horrors into his work. His original ambition was to turn his ideas into finished games that would introduce players worldwide to Chinese-style suspense 3 5.

He entered the gaming industry through Wei Dayou, who had requested innovative proposals online. Gao Ming’s submission won an award for creative newcomer game design; Wei disclosed its true authorship, and the organizers credited Gao Ming. He subsequently collaborated with Nightlight Game Studio for several years 4.

After leaving the prison, Gao Ming intended to become a full-time game designer. Instead, a bus journey during the Ghost Festival left him stranded in an inexplicably empty vehicle inside a tunnel. He later found that official records listed all buses as suspended during the storm. His memories of the tunnel remain incomplete, while Xuan Wen claims that she found him there among bodies and brought him home 1 3 4 7.

Appearance

• Raincoat and backpack: Frequently travels through Hanhai’s persistent rain carrying his memorial portraits in a backpack 4 24 31.
• Black chain on his arm: Zhao Xi’s bond resembles writhing veins or a living chain; Gao Ming sometimes conceals it beneath his sleeve 14 29.
• Black Ring: Wears the Bureau-issued device identifying him as an investigator and, later, acting team leader 24 36.
• Left-eye injury: Clutches his left eye after escaping the Blood Pool and can no longer open it 50.

Personality

Gao Ming approaches horror through observation, testing, and worst-case planning. Rather than assume appearances or survival instructions are reliable, he looks for contradictions and tests them directly. His composure is unusual enough to prompt a police background check, but it is not an absence of fear: the Ghost Parents’ phone call terrifies him, and his confrontation with Yan Hua leaves him soaked in cold sweat 3 10 12 16 32.

His gentleness can conceal calculated violence. He uses hospitality to drug and restrain Qi Yan, deliberately attacks Wan Qiu’s bullies, and invokes Yan Hua’s most painful memories to interrupt her aggression. He is openly partial to those he considers his own, valuing their protection over procedural restraint 2 31 33.

That partiality also produces genuine care. He embraces Zhao Xi instead of merely offering reassurance, declines to exploit Xuan Wen’s vulnerable condition, and accepts that Wan Qiu living an ordinary life would be preferable to unlocking his potential through torture. His goal increasingly becomes changing the tragedies he once designed rather than allowing them to follow their original scripts 14 20 34.

Abilities & Skills

Psychological Counseling and Hypnosis

Gao Ming is a certified counselor with years of experience dealing with dangerous offenders 7 13.

• Reads behavior and microexpressions; recognizes that Bai Xiao’s welcome is sincere 30.
• Uses rhythmic, hypnotic speech and knowledge of Yan Hua’s trauma to influence her 31 32.
• Applies positive psychological suggestion and hypnosis techniques to himself during Phobia 27.
• Warns that his success with Zhao Xi depended on extensive analysis and years of acquaintance, not a universally repeatable method 14.

Game Design and Scenario Knowledge

His familiarity with his own designs lets him identify emerging scenarios, anticipate their mechanics, and recognize the people associated with them 11 21 31.

• Identifies Zhao Xi’s phone as the central obstacle in The Only Family and tests whether its apparent neighbors are fabrications 11 12.
• Recognizes the office escape game and its pressure to make players kill a possessed person 21.
• Uses Bureau searches to locate criminals from his designs, intending to stop the irredeemable and intervene before others become killers 31.
• Reworks firsthand supernatural experiences into games intended to prepare players for similar dangers 17 18.

His archived work contains 126 designs, divided into six danger categories 4:

Category	Designs	Defining danger
Criminal	36	Human perpetrators; deduction and evidence follow ordinary logic 4.
Rumor	25	Murder cases with largely false supernatural stories; humans remain the principal danger 4.
Omen	5	Curses and anomalies begin undermining the world’s logic 4.
Ghostly words	25	Actual ghosts appear 4.
Strange tale	31	Changed rules make an entire area unsafe; the phenomenon can expand 4.
Uncontrolled strange tale	4	Deliberately hopeless scenarios that he especially wants to prevent from becoming real 4.

Passage into Emerging Games

Xuan Wen identifies Gao Ming as the passage through which an emerging supernatural game can be entered early 7.

• Her method requires a recently deceased person’s haunted home, a memorial portrait as a ticket, and Gao Ming 7.
• He tests it by reenacting Zhao Xi’s emotional state before a mirror, entering the overlapping world of the apartment building 8 9.
• The blank portrait used as a ticket is consumed 15.
• This is not established as freely controlled reality creation. Xuan Wen says his games manifested because of the tunnel incident and warns that reproducing the effect may require returning there 15.
• Games can also engulf him without deliberate activation, as happens at Nightlight Studio 21.

Memorial Portraits and Supernatural Bonds

Gao Ming treats the portraits as links to people in the Shadow World, each potentially possessing its own activation conditions 16 17.

• Ghost Parents: Can emerge through the family-photo-and-phone-call trigger. Their manifestation is dangerous to Gao Ming himself, though hanging up can interrupt it 16.
• Zhao Xi: His chain carries memories, suffering, and obsession; it provides protection, can restrain enemies, and enables Zhao Xi’s manifestation 14 22 29 44.
• Possible ability inheritance: Gao Ming senses that taking full possession of Zhao Xi’s chain might grant Zhao Xi’s abilities, but could erase him. He does not take that route 14.
• Storytelling theory: He proposes sharing Zhao Xi’s experiences through a game so that players’ emotional responses might help resolve his obsession. This remains a proposed mechanism 15.

Fear Control and Improvised Combat

• Overcomes Phobia’s initial fear effects, then deliberately lowers his defenses to reach endangered investigators in deeper shadows 27 29.
• Attacks a fear-born monster decisively to demonstrate that it can be resisted and interrupt the group’s panic 29.
• Uses drugs, restraints, a vase, a chain, and environmental opportunities rather than a formal combat discipline 2 13 29.
• During Bai Xiao’s attack, relies on instinct and Zhao Xi’s assistance rather than combat training 44.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Memorial portraits — Includes photographs connected to the Ghost Parents, Qi Yan, Zhao Xi, and Teacher Yao. Gao Ming carries them to investigate their triggers and possible uses 2 14 16.
• Zhao Xi’s chain — A supernatural bond formed from memories and suffering; initially understood as more of a shackle than a weapon 14 22.
• Personal Black Ring — Bureau identification device containing response protocols and previous owners’ records; also receives emergency alerts and tracks his official role 24 35 36.
• Bai Xiao’s Black Ring — Retrieved from a wound in Bai Xiao’s abdomen. Its recordings preserve warnings about Sishui Apartments 44.
• Protective charms — Obtained from Uncle Wu. One is revealed to contain fragments of a family photograph and is burned by a paper effigy 41 46.
• Additional talismans and consecrated rice — Given before the journey toward the hidden shrine; the rice may help preserve sanity if he is forced to eat sacrificial flesh 47.
• Fire Axe, borrowed — Temporarily takes Zhu Miaomiao’s axe during confrontations; it is not established as his personal weapon 35 37.

Relationships

• His parents — Cherishes memories of their ordinary family life in Xinhu, but fears that the voices calling him may have been impersonators 16.
• Ghost Dad and Ghost Mom — Possessive imitations who initially imprison him through repeated birthday dinners; later become a dangerous source of supernatural protection 1 16 17.
• Xuan Wen — A killer heroine he designed and an uneasy supernatural partner. Her claimed marriage and wedding portrait do not match his memories; their practical cooperation gradually develops into greater trust 7 17 20 24.
• Zhao Xi — Former neighbor and chosen family member. Gao Ming accepts his memories and suffering, while Zhao Xi willingly becomes part of him and protects him in later encounters 13 14 44 50.
• Teacher Yao — Helps save Gao Ming during the balcony fall. His disappearance leaves a portrait revealing that he had sought renewed life in the Shadow World despite terminal illness 13 14 15.
• Wei Dayou — Longtime collaborator who ensured Gao Ming received credit for his award-winning design; remains loyal but repeatedly misunderstands his warnings 4 6 21.
• Qin Tian — Investigator who survives Zhao Xi’s anomaly with him and recommends him to the Bureau. His later death precedes Gao Ming taking his place in Team One 14 23 24.
• Zhu Miaomiao — Investigator and frequent field partner. Gao Ming rescues her during Phobia, earns her trust, and later relies on her support in Sishui Apartments 29 32 44.
• Bai Xiao — Team One’s leader, who welcomes Gao Ming on Qin Tian’s recommendation. Gao Ming later confronts his corrupted form and recovers his recorded warnings 30 44.
• Chen Yuntian — Lishan’s office director; recruits Gao Ming into Team One and appoints him acting leader after its devastating losses 24 36.
• Yan Hua — Potential future killer whom Gao Ming approaches through counseling and promises concerning Yan Ling. She joins his planned rescue operation and receives a Black Ring 31 32 35 36.
• Wan Qiu — Bullied child whom Gao Ming rescues, shelters, and recruits while trying to avert the tragic future of his game counterpart 33 34 36.
• Gong Xi — Sishui rental agent whom Gao Ming helps protect; becomes the group’s guide in exchange for protection for his grandmother 45 46 47.
• Uncle Wu — Guarded informant and supplier of protective items who reveals the massacre’s history and the hidden shrine’s location 40 46 47.
• Situ An — Suspected adversary linked to the cultivation of Sishui’s supernatural entities. Gao Ming feels inexplicable hostility toward him before meeting him 43 46 47.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Birthday Game and the Rainy Night Killer

• Endures repeated arrivals of monstrous “parents” during a birthday scenario, drugs and restrains them, and believes reaching eighteen candles will clear the game 1.
• Subdues Qi Yan after inviting him inside. Qi Yan’s reaction confirms that another person can see the apparitions; Ghost Mom subsequently leaves him alive but mentally devastated 2.
• Receives the first memorial photographs and begins investigating the relationship between his designs and the broader supernatural crisis 2 3.

Destroying Designs and Meeting Xuan Wen

• Retrieves and burns unfinished proposals, then presses Nightlight to delete his stored work and remove Xuan Wen’s dating-game route 4 5.
• Meets a real woman matching Xuan Wen and learns of a wedding portrait he cannot remember taking 5 7.
• Accepts her proposal to trigger emerging games early rather than wait for them to fully merge with Hanhai 7 8.

*The Only Family*

• Exposes the neighbors in Zhao Xi’s video call as fabrications by opening an apparently occupied apartment and finding it abandoned 12.
• Risks a fatal fall to separate Zhao Xi from his phone, then destroys the phone and returns to offer him genuine family 13 14.
• Forms his first chain and begins considering games as memorials that could help the dead without exposing players to actual anomalies 14 15.

Nightlight’s Horror-Romance Game

• Helps turn the studio’s conventional romance project into To Our Love That Will Eventually Die, a punishing horror-survival game released for free public testing 17 18.
• Studies how player attention and emotion anchor Xuan Wen in reality while destabilizing her condition 19 20.
• Fails to prevent an office-game massacre carried out by a human before the ghost awakens. He then suspects the unidentified killer may be among Nightlight’s employees 22 23.

Bureau Service and Rebuilding Team One

• Joins the Bureau and responds to the Minlong Street alert before his allotted preparation period ends 24.
• Escapes Phobia with Zhu Miaomiao; eight of the ten investigators remain lost in the shadows. He resolves to create a refuge for the living there 29 30.
• Intervenes in Yan Hua’s and Wan Qiu’s lives, then becomes acting leader of the depleted Team One less than forty-eight hours after joining 31 32 33 36.

Sishui Apartments and the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal

• Investigates suspected deliberate feeding of the anomaly and gives his companions the choice to withdraw before a mission he estimates has a death risk exceeding ninety percent 35 39 40.
• Faces the Spirit Medium’s claim that he previously participated in the Immortal’s ritual, followed by Bai Xiao’s violent transformation 43 44.
• Learns that the Shadow World has its own society and rules, and follows Gong Xi toward the hidden shrine while seeking to prevent Situ An from acquiring the two powerful hearts 46 47.
• At the Blood Pool, glimpses forgotten memories at the cost of his left eye. Zhao Xi pulls him free; the contents of those memories are not disclosed in the provided passage 50.

Notable Quotes

“A Psychopathic Killer is most frightening before his identity is established, because anyone around you could be that killer. But once you identify him, he's nothing more than a psychologically impaired beast.” 3

“I'll let everyone know what you've endured. I'll be your real family.” 14

“If nothing works, you can just live an ordinary life as an ordinary person. That's pretty good too.” 34

“The Shadow World can invade reality through games. We can use games to invade the shadows, too.” 36

Trivia

• His latest prison mental-health assessment records a danger score beyond the testing device’s limit 3.
• Li Lin later reports that Gao Ming’s psychological state changed on the day of Xinhu’s first anomaly six months earlier. Gao Ming deletes the request for his cooperation, leaving the connection unresolved 36.
• He jokes that his partly colored memorial photograph should qualify as a rare card 3.
• The Flesh-and-Blood Immortal was not one of his original game creations: he learned its ritual from an old book bought at a street stall 36.