Fang Rui

Biodata

Background

Fang Rui wrote novels in the real world and spent much of her time indoors working. She died suddenly after staying up too late. Her lingering regret was that she had never properly explored the world 2 11.

In the Uninhabited Village instance, she receives the identity of a struggling novelist visiting the village for inspiration. She calls the assignment accurate and explicitly confirms that she really does write novels 2.

Appearance

• Glasses: Introduced as a girl wearing glasses 2.
• Poor physical conditioning: A homebody who rarely exercised; fleeing the village monsters leaves her deathly pale and physically overwhelmed 4.

Personality

Fang Rui is practical and usually composed under pressure. She supports conserving the group's strength rather than exhausting themselves, and stops Lu Jiancheng from diving after Ji Xun when he would be unable to help. Her trust in Ji Xun rests on his repeated efforts to save them, rather than his unsettling appearance 6 9.

Her imagination is balanced by caution about evidence. She can propose disturbing supernatural explanations, but warns against treating the mistress's husbands’ similar obituaries as proof of wrongdoing. She also recognizes that conflicting game objectives could give players reasons to betray one another 12 15 46.

Zhao Fu's death breaks her composure. After realizing that he was fatally wounded protecting her, she cries beside him and offers to deliver a message to his daughter. She considers both his desire to provide for his family and the hurt caused by his absence from his daughter's life 10.

She occasionally answers Tang Cha's nervous remarks with dry humor, including comparing his unusual luck to finding half a worm in an apple 4.

Abilities & Skills

Investigation and Evidence Organization

• Keeps a notebook of clues, unresolved questions, and hypotheses, and leads group reviews of the evidence 7 8 40 49.
• Detects attempted concealment: she notices replastered walls and a repainted wardrobe, then identifies darkened blood showing through the red paint 6 7.
• Directs information gathering toward useful witnesses. In the village, she recommends questioning elderly residents and children, and sends Tang Cha to speak with the elders 7 8.
• Remembers real-world criminal reporting, identifying Xu Xingfa as a robber and murderer sentenced to death two years earlier for killing thirteen people 48.

Fiction-Based Reasoning

• Applies a novelist's approach to murder mysteries: establish the killer first, then work backward through the details. This leads her to question whether the maid's apparently accidental death belongs to the same murder plan 40.
• Offers alternative explanations when ordinary assumptions fail. From Chen Xin's torn back and changed identity, she proposes that something entered his body—a theory Ji Xun considers their most reasonable explanation 12.
• Distinguishes hypotheses from established facts, particularly when investigating Katherine's marriages and her husbands’ deaths 46.

Visual and Documentary Analysis

• Notices the contrast between the mistress's subdued black clothing and the master's celebratory appearance 39.
• Recognizes the recovered gemstone as resembling an earring in the owners’ photograph, and interprets the maid's hidden lingerie as evidence of a possible lover inside the mansion 41.
• Identifies marriage contracts and separates the two bearing Katherine's signature 42.
• Recognizes the mistress's disguises in five portraits and proposes searching newspapers for weddings and funerals, uncovering her husbands’ obituaries 46.

Equipment / Items

• Notebook and pen — Used to record evidence, organize questions, and incorporate teammates’ discoveries during investigations 8 40 49.
• Glasses — Worn at her introduction 2.

Relationships

• Ji Xun — Trusted teammate and protector. He specifically seeks her imaginative perspective on the village mystery; she follows his caution about the mansion's food. He considers her more reliable than the average player 9 12 37 41.
• Tang Cha — Teammate whose social strengths she uses during investigations. He calls her the team's “brains,” while she helps keep his fear and impulsiveness in check 4 8 49.
• Lu Jiancheng — Fellow village survivor and recurring teammate. She prevents his futile attempt to enter the river and later shares a mansion room with him, Ji Xun, and Tang Cha for safety 9 40.
• Zhao Fu — Teammate who dies after protecting her from a scorpion. She addresses him as “Uncle Zhao” and is deeply distressed by his sacrifice 10.
• Xin Xin — Village teammate who embraces and comforts her while she mourns Zhao Fu 10.
• Gu Rui — Veteran player who allies with her team in the mansion. Despite her being the instance's only woman, he does not underestimate her 45.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Uninhabited Village

• Helps investigate the supposedly empty house and reconstruct the village's history from conflicting testimony and physical evidence 6 7 8.
• Survives the riverbank attack, during which Zhao Fu receives the fatal sting while defending her 10.
• Contributes to the body-replacement theory and participates in the group's ambush of a Man-Snake 12.
• Asks Grandpa Jin where the remaining real villagers can be found, correctly suspecting that they appear only at night. The group discovers the graveyard, completes the main quest, and escapes aboard the bus 14.

Headquarters Base

• Separates from the village group after exchanging contact details and discusses the danger of players receiving conflicting objectives 15.
• Correctly suggests that Ji Xun's sudden disappearance may mean he has entered another instance. She later reunites with him, Tang Cha, and Lu Jiancheng for their next run 37 39.

Thinking Forest Mansion / Witch Forest

• Questions why the bus stop names the location Birdsong Forest while the system calls it Witch Forest 39.
• Shares a room with her three teammates and avoids the cook's meals with them, instead eating hunted pheasants and wild fruit 40 41 42.
• Helps investigate the affair, concealed marriages, portraits, and obituaries that complicate the household's apparent history 41 42 44 45 46.
• During the nighttime investigation, interrupts Gu Rui before he can explain their findings to Deng Tianyu 47.
• By the fourth day, organizes the four murder suspects and the outstanding questions: the mistress's hidden marital history, the players’ nighttime unconsciousness, the gemstone in the armor, and the master's cause of death. The mansion mystery remains unresolved in the provided material 48 49.