Situ An

Biodata

Feature	Value
Name	Situ An (司徒安)
Gender	Male
Species/Race	Originally human; later survives as a soul and develops a monstrous body covered in Blood City Ghost Markings 193 938.
Affiliation	East District Investigation Bureau; Hanhai Charity Federation; Hanhai Chamber of Commerce; Shadow World household; Lu Zang’s Candidates 185 215 819.
Occupation/Role	East District bureau director/acting bureau chief; vice president of the Hanhai Charity Federation; leading Chamber of Commerce figure; founder and principal of Hande Private Academy; Head of the Family 51 118 124 125 185 216.
Former Occupation	Caregiver 275.
Status	Last shown chained underground in a Mortal World, unable to withstand the backlash of his Blood City Ghost Markings 938.
First Appearance	Identified by name as the Charity Federation’s vice president 43; first appears in person at Sishui Apartments 51.

Power Progression

Situ An’s development consists of supernatural mergers, rule control, and changes of vessel rather than a documented sequence of personal cultivation ranks.

Stage / Realm / Level	Chapter	Notes
Merger with the Vengeful Ghost	56	Accepts the consciousness of the killer torturing him, becoming one with it to survive. Their wills subsequently clash over harming Gao Ming’s Flesh-and-Blood Heart 60.
Survival as intertwined vicious souls	60 61	His body is killed by Zhu Miaomiao, but his two intertwined souls continue pursuing the Divine Heart. His soul can still wield a Killing Talisman.
Partial control of Hande’s rules	157 162	The Office Building follows his rules and is the only campus building he controls completely. Xia Yang’s paintings destabilize that control.
Occupation of Doctor Lu’s shell	162 163 181	Acts through a body resembling the dead Doctor Lu; his consciousness within that body is later explicitly identified.
Soul confined in the Execution House	193	The Ghost God consumes his flesh and blood, leaving his soul and consciousness chained inside Gao Ming’s heart.
Future God’s vessel	424	Offers his body as a shrine. Faith-filled threads and divine eyes emerge, and the power begins breaking his restraints. Gao Yun’s Rewind restores him to his state fifteen minutes earlier.
Full release of borrowed divine power	425 426	Exploits repeated reversals because his chains are not reset. Accumulated black faith strengthens his aura; eyes open across his body, and he drives explosive flesh growth through the Underground Parking Lot.
Escape from the Future God’s control	429 435	Leaves the complex as a soul, but remains bound to Gao Ming through the Execution House. Freedom of movement does not sever that connection.
Blood City Ghost Markings and backlash	938	Reappears with a body covered in Deep World ghost markings. Unable to endure their backlash, he becomes hideously monstrous except for his eyes.

Background / History

Early life and public career

Situ An grew up in Hanhai and once worked as a caregiver. Photographs preserved in the passage to his home show him accepting thanks from patients’ families; his younger image appears handsome, resolute, and righteous. Farther along, the passage contains victims and discarded possessions, recording the people and parts of his former life he abandoned 219 275.

He rose to become an exceptionally wealthy philanthropist and influential businessman. His public standing concealed a network built over more than twenty years, reaching powerful figures, investigators, charitable institutions, and supernatural collaborators throughout Hanhai 56 185 188.

Lu Zang and the Candidates

Situ An was a Candidate selected by Lu Zang, who erased his birth and past and took him into other Mortal Worlds. Rather than destroy or collect alternate versions of himself, Situ An established indirect communication with them through coded clues across different tributaries of fate 819.

Recordings from Lishan Hospital show him working with Lu Zang, welcoming the psychologically altered Chen Meng into their “family,” and counting people saved by the Charity Federation as his contributions. Lu Zang explains that every dead god has a corresponding Family Head, who could become its vessel when the worlds merge 248 249.

Their cooperation did not amount to submission. Hospital memories later reveal that Situ An repeatedly tried to kill Lu Zang through institutional rules, patients’ deaths, and even deliberate attempts to drive himself insane. Every attempt failed, but his persistence earned Lu Zang’s respect 819.

Appearance

• Public appearance: Tall, impeccably dressed, and accustomed to authority, with a firm, sharp gaze 51.
• Younger appearance: Handsome, with resolute eyes and an outwardly righteous bearing in his caregiver photograph 275.
• Deteriorating academy body: Tubes pierce his body and large patches of skin rot away, yet he remains upright and composed 184.
• Future God transformation: Eyes appear on his cheek and within wounds across his back and arms; each eye later reflects a different future 424 425 426.
• Later Mortal World form: His body becomes a hideous monster under the backlash of Blood City Ghost Markings, with only his eyes retaining their previous appearance 938.

Personality

Situ An combines exceptional patience with an insatiable desire for power. He can conceal his nature for decades, cultivate intensely loyal followers, and tailor his methods of control to individual weaknesses. His intelligence, emotional awareness, memory, and ability to carry out plans are repeatedly emphasized 188.

He habitually presents exploitation as protection. He claims that sacrificing Hande’s students will save Hanhai and create a better world, while treating living residents as bargaining chips for the Shadow World. The narration describes him as a beneficiary of existing rules who secretly wants to become their maker 184 185.

His cynicism is rooted partly in humiliation: praise from a powerful man made him feel that his work—and ultimately his life—had no genuine significance. He comes to regard humans and ghosts as equally worthless. Yan Xizhi’s persistent goodness particularly unsettles him because it exposes the ugliness of his own choices without yielding to his worldview 56 192.

Defeat does not make him surrender. He adapts to chains piercing his soul, bargains under torture, and searches for opportunities whenever his captors speak to him. His confidence in his own judgment is strong enough to sustain a plan through repeated memory-erasing reversals 193 203 425.

Abilities & Skills

Intelligence and manipulation

• Exceptional memory: Recalls Class Thirteen’s files and deduces that Gao Ming killed Doctor Lu from Gao Ming’s reaction to his borrowed body 184.
• Personalized control: Builds loyalty through charisma while exploiting different people’s vulnerabilities 188.
• Brainwashing: Claims the moral high ground to disguise brutality as necessary sacrifice 185.
• Institutional infiltration: Has Doctor Lu replace the incorruptible Jiang Chan with a ghost rather than attempt ordinary coercion 203.
• Contingency planning: Prepares false homes, inheritance offers, and a posthumous broadcast to preserve influence after his apparent death 203 219 223.

School rules and sacrificial systems

Situ An turns Hande Private Academy into an altar connecting reality with the Shadow World, using its occupants to obtain power 177 182.

• Exercises complete control over the Office Building, but only partial control over the academy’s wider rules 162 193.
• Uses “Human Bricks” and living rootlets that exchange youth, health, lifespan, happiness, kindness, and love for the school’s needs 176 177.
• Converts rule-breaking students into experimental subjects and stockpiles twisted children in the School Hospital’s warehouse 181.
• Cannot independently create a Greater Ghost through those experiments; relies on Shadow World gifts and sacrifices to concentrate children’s resentment 181.
• Plans to offer everyone inside the school to the Shadow World and forcibly pull part of it into reality 182.

Soul survival and possession

• Survives by merging with the Vengeful Ghost’s consciousness 56.
• Continues acting after Zhu Miaomiao destroys his body 60 61.
• Occupies Doctor Lu’s shell within Hande Private Academy 163 181.
• After escaping as a soul, requires a host to move freely outside an anomaly for an extended period 429.
• Remains tied to Gao Ming after leaving the Execution House; Gao Ming’s death would draw him into another reincarnation cycle 435.

Borrowed power of the Future God

• Uses divine power to weaken and break the chains restraining his soul 424 425.
• Produces widespread flesh growth, turning the Underground Parking Lot into a forest of mutated flesh 425 426.
• Manifests numerous eyes reflecting possible futures 426.
• Risks losing his own will to the Future God’s possession 424.
• Loses some borrowed abilities as Gao Yun corrodes and takes over the god’s clay sculpture 428.

Cross-world coordination

• Leaves coded records that alternate Situ Ans can recognize and decipher without meeting him 819.
• Coordinates versions of himself across diverging timelines and Mortal Worlds 819.
• Uses apparent obedience to Fate’s script as cover; some versions kill themselves to protect the network’s secrets 819.
• Continues resisting through other versions even after Hanhai’s Situ An fails 819.

Reputation and remembrance

• Designs his final-message broadcast to convert public sympathy into belief after death 219.
• Studies shrines and extreme obsession as possible routes to becoming a terrifying ghost 219.
• Claims that he cannot be completely erased while someone remembers or believes in him; the statement is his own explanation, not a demonstrated immunity 220.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Bone cleaver — Used to kill an investigator during his first in-person appearance 51.
• Boning knives and Killing Talismans — Conceals talisman-bearing blades; uses one talisman to kill Yan Hua and reserves two for Gao Ming 60.
• Black wristband — Identified by the Spirit Medium alongside the aura of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal 43.
• Black-and-White Posthumous Photograph — Records his inheritance of the household’s fate and leadership from his child. Accepting it means accepting its rules and the duty to trigger anomalies welcoming the Shadow World 215 216.
• Teachers’ posthumous photographs — Obtains the photographs of every teacher at Hande Private Academy 193.
• Hanhai City Model — A major asset recording anomaly triggers and rewards. Its recovered form maps shadow-covered areas and ghosts; Xia Yang says only Gao Ming and Situ An appear able to control it 223 224.
• Incomplete Blood Gate — Repurposed as a vault and placed along the apparent route to his legacy 223.
• Hidden home at Lishan Hospital — Contains collected patients and serves as a passage to the Shadow World; its entrance holds his fate, sins, and accumulated legacy 215 260.
• Saber later carried by Bai Xiao — Gao Ming identifies Situ An as its source 305.

Relationships

• Gao Ming — Principal enemy and eventual jailer. Gao Ming’s death memories provoke intense hatred toward him; imprisoning Situ An releases those memories from their tormenting cycle. Situ An both admires Gao Ming and repeatedly attempts to manipulate him 51 184 193 203.
• Lu Zang — Recruiter, guide, and adversary. Erases Situ An’s past and introduces him to other Mortal Worlds; Situ An repeatedly attempts to kill him 249 429 819.
• Doctor Lu — Highly valued subordinate from the Shadow World whose loyalty remains firm. Carries out modifications and replacements for Situ An; his shell later houses Situ An’s consciousness 181 188 203 224.
• Qing Ge — Deferential subordinate and important ally, eliminated by Gao Ming before the academy confrontation 51 86.
• Zhuo Jun — Promoted by Situ An to director of the Queen Investigation Office after its previous personnel are wiped out 125.
• Jiang Chan — Originally an upright official whom Situ An has replaced with a ghost. The replacement knows important details about his home and household inheritance 203 215 216.
• He Yi — Security chief entrusted with guarding the path home; later seeks to claim Situ An’s legacy for himself 203 218.
• Situ Xin — Adopted daughter and academy survivor. Situ An sews her eyes shut; she interprets the injury as special love and remains devoted to him 118.
• Biological son — Treated as a tool, transformed into a Greater Ghost, and abandoned as a shield during Situ An’s escape. The child destroys his own heart to conceal crucial memories from Gao Ming 187 188 193.
• His child’s mother — Dies after childbirth; her body becomes the flesh-and-blood Grudge House that shelters their son 188.
• His mother — Continues waiting for him and refusing evidence of his death. Later tends the chains around him inside the Execution House 278 285 327.
• Yan Xizhi — Dispossessed principal and ideological opponent. Situ An cannot change her soul, and her rescue of the Human Bricks visibly shakes his composure 184 191 192.
• Gao Yun — Enemy who nevertheless exploits a temporary alignment of interests: Situ An breaks his chains while Gao Yun drains the Future God’s sculpture through repeated reversals 425.
• Xia Yang — Fellow captive, torturer, and later potential weapon. An unrevised future made them great adversaries; Situ An eventually carries him away for the useful paintings covering his soul 193 194 429.
• Future God — Accepts Situ An as a vessel, lending power while threatening to consume his identity 424 425.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Sishui Apartments

Situ An spends twenty years preparing the worship of the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal and seeking its primary consciousness. The Charity Federation’s aid network provides access to residents, while the apartments become the site of recurring horrors and ghost-raising schemes 43 47 60 61.

He offers investigators meat with a purported fifty-percent chance of gaining ghost-killing power. He later admits it is poison that strengthens and corrupts them, deliberately preparing them as weapons to seize the murderer’s Flesh-and-Blood Heart 51 53.

After merging with the Vengeful Ghost, he turns the investigators against Gao Ming and kills the Spirit Medium. Zhu Miaomiao subsequently kills his body, but his souls continue attacking during the Divine Heart ritual 56 60 61.

The altered course later described by the Spirit Medium leaves him doubtful that the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal exists and directing attention toward arrangements elsewhere in the East District 72.

Hande Private Academy

As principal, Situ An orders investigators to assume assigned campus roles. Ding Yuan exposes the school’s mismatched records, experiments on adopted orphans, and planned merger with a cultivated death zone 124 125.

The discovery of Human Bricks reveals that the academy consumes its students’ lives and emotions. When threatened, Situ An releases his experimental children, summons an unknown Shadow World entity, and attempts a final mass sacrifice 176 177 181 182 187.

He abandons his biological son to delay Gao Ming and flees under Bureau protection. Yan Xizhi’s return undermines his authority, allowing Gao Ming to seize him. The Ghost God devours his body and confines his soul in the Execution House 187 189 192 193.

Captivity and the posthumous legacy

Situ An uses selective disclosures about Hanjiang, Xinhu, and Hanhai’s unclaimed shadow city to make himself valuable. He warns that the General Bureau, Dream Murmur, and Shadow World agents will seek him or his remains 194 195.

His prerecorded broadcast blames the Bureau for atrocities and offers his hidden home to a successor. The contingency wins public sympathy while baiting would-be inheritors into accepting his enemies and obligations 203 219 220.

His importance to the authorities extends beyond reputation: Wang Jie’s uncle identifies him as a controlled link between the worlds, installed by powerful General Bureau figures to regulate and study the invasion 211.

Future God and escape

Situ An offers himself to the Future God to escape Gao Ming. Gao Yun repeatedly reverses his state, but Situ An discovers that his restraints retain damage between resets. He exploits that discrepancy, unleashes the borrowed power, and eventually flees with Xia Yang 424 425 429.

Gao Ming later confirms that the escape has not freed Situ An from their Execution House connection. Xia Yang reports that Situ An took him to Lu Zang, who possessed a way out of Hanhai 435 642.

Mortal Worlds and renewed pursuit

Gao Ming’s hospital investigation uncovers the network of alternate Situ Ans and deciphers a route toward Situ An in Xinhu Blood City 819.

Lu Zang subsequently rescues Situ An from the Deep World and sends him into the Endless Mortal Worlds. Fate attempts to use his connection with Gao Ming to uncover Gao Ming’s true name or kill him 933 937.

Gao Ming tracks him through the Delusion World. Situ An is found chained beneath an old building, transformed by ghost-marking backlash and connected to fate ghosts through gray threads; nine divine-tablet-bearing figures stand nearby 938 939.

Notable Quotes

“I didn't create despair. It was already there.” 56

“As long as there's still a breath left in me, I'll never give up. I'll use every means possible to fight back.” 203

“As long as someone remembers me, as long as someone still believes in me, I won't be completely killed.” 220

“Future God, I agree to all your demands. I'm willing to become your believer. Come! Make my body your shrine!” 424

Trivia

• His posthumous photograph did not originally depict him; its portrait changed after he became the new Head of the Family 216.
• The eighteen chains restraining him bear the names of people he tortured to death 425.
• His public rehabilitation lasts well beyond the broadcast: displaced residents later remember his tenure as the East District’s prosperous period, unaware that he had been its greatest menace 670.
• A corpse puppet speaking as Situ An reveals information about Gao Ming’s identity and the interlocking loops, but Gao Ming cannot determine whether it is truly Situ An or a deception controlled by the Future God 401.