Zhao Xi

Biodata

Feature	Value
Name	Zhao Xi (赵喜) 8
Alias(es)	Brother Zhao; Old Zhao 7 8
Species/Race	Human in life; malevolent ghost after death 20
Gender	Male 8
Affiliation	Gao Ming’s chosen family 14 15
Occupation/Role	Former harbor-district porter and family provider; supernatural protector of Gao Ming 8 44 50
Residence	Room 2507, Building Two, Lijing Apartments 9 11
Status	Deceased; remains connected to Gao Ming through a memorial portrait and black chain 14 44 50
First Appearance	Recalled posthumously by Gao Ming 6

Power Progression

Stage / Realm / Level	Chapter	Notes
Reanimated ghost	8 9	Returns within the apartment-building anomaly with a mangled body. His supernatural powers originate from the unknown world rather than abilities he possessed in life 20.
Bonded to Gao Ming	14	After his phone is destroyed and Gao Ming embraces him, his memories and despair form a black chain linking them. His portrait records his willingness to become part of Gao Ming so that his suffering can be known.
Manifestation through the portrait	44	Gao Ming’s blood travels along the chain onto the memorial portrait, allowing Zhao Xi to crawl out and physically restrain Bai Xiao.

Background / History

Zhao Xi was an abandoned infant found beside a rubbish heap by the woman who became his adoptive mother. He never attended school, wore tattered clothes, and endured bullying from courtyard children and his adoptive mother’s second son without fighting back 8.

As an adult, he worked as a porter in the harbor district, supporting the household and paying his younger brother’s and sister’s school fees. He never married or established a family of his own. After his younger brother was imprisoned, he also cared for his adoptive mother and pregnant sister-in-law 8.

Heavy manual labor damaged his health. He injured his leg while saving Fang Shuqi, subsequently lost the use of it, and was dismissed from his factory job. His disability, poor health, and lack of education made finding further work difficult 8 11.

At home, unemployment brought criticism rather than support. His longing for acceptance made him conceal his distress behind cheerfulness, while his phone became the confidant he lacked in his family. Increasing isolation and self-loathing culminated in his suicide from Room 2507, three days before Gao Ming and Xuan Wen visited the apartment 6 8 12.

Appearance

Zhao Xi’s ghost retains the injuries of his fatal fall: a deformed face, broken and elongated neck, twisted limbs, and shattered bones protruding through his skin 9 42.

• Crawling movement: His face scrapes the floor as he moves on distorted limbs 10.
• Rotating neck: He can twist his broken neck through 180 degrees to look upward while lying facedown 13.
• Opening body: His corpse can split open like a gigantic mouth and wrap around another person 12 13.
• Wounded hands: His callused, injured fingers remain recognizable when he emerges from his memorial portrait 14 44.

Personality

In life, Zhao Xi was honest, hardworking, frugal, and generous. He greeted neighbors warmly and helped whenever he could, becoming known as one of the kindest residents of Lijing Apartments. Even children who had bullied him eventually addressed him respectfully as Brother Zhao 7 8.

His optimism was largely a protective disguise. Afraid of being abandoned again, he tolerated exploitation and avoided expressing resentment. His phone preserved both his desire for ordinary family happiness and the darker wishes he could not voice 8 12 14.

As a ghost, he initially appears numb and violent, trying to make Gao Ming share his fatal fall. Nevertheless, Gao Ming’s offer of family makes him stop crawling for the first time. After the phone’s destruction and Gao Ming’s embrace, confusion and pain replace his cold numbness, and he chooses to leave rather than drag Gao Ming to his death 13 14.

Abilities & Skills

Resistance to Physical Damage

Gao Ming identifies Zhao Xi as capable of surviving a fall from a building and being immune to ordinary physical damage 22.

• Knife attacks shown in the phone’s fabricated videos fail to stop his corpse 12.
• During an actual confrontation, Bai Xiao’s bone cleaver cannot inflict meaningful harm on him 44.
• Limit: Bai Xiao’s bite removes flesh from Zhao Xi’s shoulder, leaves a wound that cannot heal, and allows strange black writing to enter his body 44.

Bodily Envelopment and Control

Zhao Xi can spread his ruined body around a target and interfere with their movements 12 13.

• In the phone’s illusion, he envelops Huang Mingming and forces him toward a window 12.
• He directly controls Gao Ming’s body while attempting to push him from the balcony 13.
• Against Bai Xiao, he clings tightly despite repeated attacks; his blood adheres between their bodies as he attempts to pass on his accumulated pain and oppression 44.

Phone-Linked Illusions

The apartment anomaly uses Zhao Xi’s phone to present convincing videos of neighbors being pursued and killed. These scenes reflect his suppressed hostility and suffering rather than verified murders 11 12 14.

• The residents in the group call are fabrications; investigating an allegedly occupied apartment reveals that it is empty and long-abandoned 12.
• Destroying the phone erases its recordings and the violent fantasies it contains 14.
• Gao Ming warns that allowing the ghost story to merge fully with reality could make the depicted tragedies happen 13.

Memory-Bound Chain

Zhao Xi’s memories, regrets, and obsessions become chainlike black blood vessels linking his wrist to Gao Ming’s 14 20.

• Protection: The chain shields Gao Ming when the Shadow World’s shadows attack him 22.
• Restraint: Gao Ming uses it to bind the corrupted Bai Xiao 44.
• Summoning: Blood applied through the chain to Zhao Xi’s portrait enables his physical manifestation 44.
• Unresolved transfer: Gao Ming senses that fully grasping the chain could grant him Zhao Xi’s abilities but might cause Zhao Xi to disappear. He refuses to take that risk 14.
• Possible release condition: Gao Ming interprets the portrait as suggesting that public understanding of Zhao Xi’s suffering could help resolve his obsession and unlock his ability; this remains a theory 15.

Equipment / Items

• Phone — An old, off-brand handset with a yellowed casing and no lock-screen password. It stores recordings of his family and conversations with himself, then becomes central to the haunting. It is shattered after falling five floors 9 12 14.
• Black-and-white memorial portrait — Left behind when the apartment’s shadows recede. It depicts Gao Ming preventing Zhao Xi’s fall, with chains binding their arms. Its creases and cracks converge on those chains, which appear to move 14 15.

Relationships

• Gao Ming — Former neighbor and confidant who becomes his chosen family. Gao Ming acknowledges his mistreatment, risks his life to interrupt the haunting, and promises to make his suffering known. Zhao Xi later protects him in combat and rescues him from the Blood Pool 13 14 44 50.
• Zhao Yuanyuan — Adoptive mother who found him as an infant. Zhao Xi remained grateful to her, but her preference for her biological son and criticism after his disability contributed to his despair 8 9 13.
• Younger brother and sister — Adoptive siblings whose education he financed. After his brother’s imprisonment, he continued supporting the household 8.
• Li Li — His younger brother’s wife. He cared for her during pregnancy, but she treated him primarily as a source of money and did not welcome him after he became disabled 8 9 12 13.
• Fang Shuqi — Neighbor whom Zhao Xi saved at the cost of his leg’s function 11.
• Xiao Qiu — Neighbor identified as the apparent source of rumors about Zhao Xi and Li Li 11.
• Huang Mingming — In the fabricated video call, admits to falsely accusing Zhao Xi of stealing port cargo 12.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Lijing Apartments Haunting

• Xuan Wen rents Zhao Xi’s former apartment and uses his recent death, belongings, and emotional circumstances to trigger the developing ghost story early 6 7 8.
• Gao Ming recognizes parallels with The Only Family, although that game’s original protagonist was gloomy and lazy rather than honest and hardworking like Zhao Xi 11.
• Gao Ming destroys the phone, returns through the balcony, and embraces Zhao Xi. Zhao Xi leaves the building, dispersing its shadows and ending the immediate anomaly 14.
• The Investigation Bureau classifies the event as Level 3; this is an event threat rating, not a stated personal rank for Zhao Xi 15.
• Gao Ming proposes adapting Zhao Xi’s experiences into a game as a memorial, hoping players’ emotional responses could help him without exposing them to supernatural danger 15.

Sishui Apartments

• Summoned during Bai Xiao’s attack, Zhao Xi restrains the corrupted investigator long enough for Gao Ming and Zhu Miaomiao to counterattack, but suffers a supernatural bite wound 44.
• Gao Ming carries him onward through the apartment complex 44 47.
• Zhao Xi pulls Gao Ming out of the Blood Pool after the entity within it takes Gao Ming’s left eye 50.