Spirit Medium

Biodata

Role and Authority

The documented Spirit Medium combines supernatural authority with leadership of Rain-Praying Village. Villagers credit her with keeping them safe, but fear punishment for revealing her activities to outsiders 35 36.

• Human sacrifices: Directs the annual Temple ceremony, whose offerings are people sacrificed to those who died a century earlier 35.
• Temple contributions: Requires households to sell grain and meat to fund the Mountain God Temple and Earth God Temple. Villagers believe these payments ensure favorable weather and peaceful lives; the historical account reveals that she pockets most of the contributions 35 46.
• Tourist offerings: Develops tourism to obtain outsiders who can be sacrificed instead of villagers, temporarily appeasing the dead 46.
• Control of information: Spreads false accounts of the village’s past and receives reports from villagers when outsiders investigate 40 46.

Only Spirit Medium Ruan is explicitly identified as a holder of the title. Her mother restored peace to the village, but the supplied account does not call her a Spirit Medium 46.

Background / History

Origins and Succession

Spirit Medium Ruan is descended from Ruan Kaihuang and is the daughter of village leader Ruan Xin. After Ruan Xin removed the monk’s head, mysterious deaths resumed. He subsequently married a woman who restored peace to the village, but she died in childbirth less than two years later; their daughter survived 35 46.

The future Spirit Medium was clever from childhood and repeatedly studied the belongings her mother left behind. Ruan Xin also told her the village’s history in detail. Eleven years after her mother’s death, Ruan Xin died of heart disease, and she succeeded him as village chief, already enjoying considerable respect 46.

Exploitation of the Village

After taking power, she slandered the dead and demanded money, possessions, and grain for temple construction. Despite these measures, villagers continued to die mysteriously. To prevent the population from dwindling, she arranged for tourists to become substitute sacrifices and opened attractions during the periods when offerings were needed. The account records that village deaths stopped once tourism flourished 46.

Her suppression of the ghosts eventually took a physical toll. Bai Xiaoxiao reported that prolonged use of dark arts appeared to have caused a backlash, while Ning Qiushui observed neck sores and a smell of decay 36 41.

Appearance

Spirit Medium Ruan appears as a stout, elderly woman with a wrinkled face and a hunched posture 36 40 41.

• Leans on a dragon-headed cane during ordinary movement 36.
• Wears a Ruan Clan identity token at her thick waist 36.
• Has densely packed, blood-red sores encircling her neck, resembling a ring of wounds 36.
• Gives off an unpleasant, rotten smell also present in her residence 36 40.
• During pursuit, her features contort, her eyes become bloodshot, and she moves on all fours like a beast 42 43.

Personality

Ruan presents coercion as benevolence. She describes her ritual on Mi Lan as treatment for possible possession, despite the woman’s husband begging her to spare Mi Lan’s life. She remains cold toward his pleas and calls the resulting hollow-eyed, eerily smiling state a cure 36.

She is acquisitive, secretive, and fiercely protective of the historical book hidden beneath her bed. When Ning Qiushui steals it, she threatens grotesque torture and pursues him relentlessly. Her confidence becomes a weakness: after recovering the book, she boasts that she has never lost before realizing she has been lured onto Fangcun Pond’s platform 41 42 43.

Abilities & Skills

Dark Rituals

Ruan uses incantations and ritual gestures that visibly alter people’s behavior 36.

• Her ritual leaves Mi Lan motionless, hollow-eyed, and smiling unnaturally 36.
• Ning Qiushui attributes Luo Yan’s similar walking-corpse condition to her intervention 37 38.
• Bai Xiaoxiao considers her sinister arts too dangerous to counter with ordinary fighting skills 36.

Preservation After Decapitation

Ruan can keep victims alive after separating their heads from their bodies 40 41.

• Stores living, speaking human heads in jars inside a locked garden room 40 41.
• Severed necks are coated with a black substance; corresponding headless bodies on Back Mountain have similarly smooth, healed wounds 41 48.
• Ning Qiushui suspects she is collecting bodies to replace her deteriorating one. This remains a theory, and the historical book contains no record of such a procedure 48.
• Bai Xiaoxiao survives the process and recovers when her head and body are reunited before sunset 50.

Ghost Suppression

Ruan possesses methods capable of resisting the village’s vengeful spirits 41 43.

• Recites scriptures that cause the Skin-Shedding Female Ghost’s binding hair to burn away 43.
• Keeps ghost-suppressing talisman papers and Buddhist scriptures in her residence 40.
• Prolonged suppression appears to damage her own body 41.
• Her spoken countermeasure is interrupted when Liu Chengfeng lodges a stone in her throat, allowing the ghost to restrain her again 43.

Beastlike Pursuit

Ruan can abandon her frail gait and pursue targets at extraordinary speed 42 43.

• Discards her cane and runs fast enough to threaten Ning Qiushui and Liu Chengfeng 42.
• Accelerates further by moving on all fours, closing dozens of meters within seconds 43.
• Has limited rational judgment in this state, enabling Ning Qiushui to lure her into Fangcun Pond’s trap with the book 43.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Bone Blade — A deathly white blade coated with a sticky black substance. Ning Qiushui suspects it severed Bai Xiaoxiao’s head; it can cut the ghost woman’s otherwise indestructible hair 42 43.
• Dragon-headed cane — Her usual walking support, discarded during the chase 36 42.
• Ruan Clan token — Worn at her waist. Plaques bearing “Ruan” attract Guangchuan’s attention; removing them from the visitors’ rooms prevents encounters that night 36 38.
• Yellowed historical book — Hidden in a mechanism-operated compartment beneath her bed. Records the village’s crimes and a safe route to the Back Mountain Temple 41 44 46.
• Head-storage jars — Containers used to preserve decapitated victims in a locked room concealed among garden vegetation 40 41.

Relationships

• Ruan Xin — Father and predecessor as village chief; taught her the village’s history 46.
• Unnamed mother — Restored peace after marrying Ruan Xin; died giving birth to the future Spirit Medium 46.
• Ruan Kaihuang — Ancestor whom she praises as Guang Xiu’s killer. The recovered account instead exposes his role in turning the villagers against Guang Xiu’s family 35 44.
• Tang Jiao — Collaborator who expects the Spirit Medium’s promise and assistance to make her the sole surviving visitor 30 38.
• Bai Xiaoxiao — Captive whose severed head she preserves while the body remains at the Back Mountain Temple 41.
• Ning Qiushui and Liu Chengfeng — Opponents who steal her book and lure her to Fangcun Pond 41 42 43.
• Skin-Shedding Female Ghost — Vengeful enemy who disarms and kills her after the two men deliver her to the pond 43 44.
• The first Blood Gate’s little girl — Ning Qiushui theorizes that Ruan is the girl’s grandmother and that the girl’s mother fled the village’s supernatural danger; this connection is presented as a deduction 29.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Notable Quotes

“There. Your wife is cured.” 36

“In fact, I’ve never lost... never!!” 43