Yan Xiao

Biodata

Background / History

Yan Xiao was an ordinary surgeon before entering the Ghost Story Game. Two years before recounting his past to Qin Manjiang, he made a mistake during a relatively straightforward operation and caused a patient’s death. Seven days later, a man calling himself the Doctor contacted him by phone and offered to revive the patient. Despite knowing that survival was medically impossible, Yan Xiao believed him—and the patient apparently returned to life. Yan Xiao never met this Doctor in person 470 940.

He formerly worked as an attending surgeon at Fu City Central Hospital and shared an alma mater with Xia Nan. He eventually resigned because his circumstances no longer allowed him to continue hospital work, though he continued treating patients at his clinic 714 920.

Yan Xiao’s attachment to the past also involved his deceased family, particularly his father. Qin Manjiang later challenged his hope that reusing his father’s remains could truly bring him back. By the confrontation in the false world, the real Yan Xiao had accepted that his family was dead and regarded their artificial replacements as a desecration 978 1091.

Appearance

• Build and hair: Tall, with short hair 66 313.
• Expression: Usually unsmiling, with a cold or impassive demeanor 194 313.
• Clothing: Wears a white medical coat at his clinic and during some meetings 984.
• Mask: Wears a white mask during his escape with Qin Manjiang from the Clear Pupil Bar 340.

Personality

Yan Xiao’s defining trait is an extreme attachment to life. Repeated experiences of being fatally injured without dying have severely distorted his mental state: he desperately wants to survive and finds other people’s deaths almost equally intolerable. If someone has even a breath remaining, he will attempt to save them. His reaction to Chen Yu’s apparent death exposes the frightening side of this fixation, while his opposition to her willingness to sacrifice others shows that he does not accept survival at any cost 56 69 538.

He is quiet rather than deliberately aloof. He rarely initiates conversation, but answers questions directly and attends ordinary social invitations. His rescues come without demands for gratitude or repayment; he sometimes does not even remember whom he has saved. This makes him reassuring to Qin Manjiang but difficult for others to read. Xu Yi observes that Yan Xiao has saved more people than Yang, yet receives far less recognition because of his cold manner 194 341.

His restraint can give way to intense anger when life or the memory of the dead is violated. He acknowledges his responsibility for trusting Yi Lianhai with Xu Yi’s body, and later turns violently against those maintaining the false world containing imitations of his family 984 1090 1091.

Abilities & Skills

Cursed Scalpel

Yan Xiao’s exclusive Permanent Item suspends death after its blade pierces the recipient’s heart 56 67.

• Duration: Prevents death for thirty minutes, even under otherwise fatal mutilation 56 67.
• Regeneration: Restores severe bodily damage; Qin Manjiang’s replacement flesh reproduces even his existing scars 540.
• Multiple recipients: Yan Xiao uses it on several companions during the same crisis 70 135.
• Restoration from transformation: Returns his rain-soaked paper body to flesh and blood during the opera Ghost Story 134.
• Authorized use: Other people require his authorization to use it. He lends it to Qin Manjiang, and Xinxin uses it to save him 67 134.
• Pain remains: It does not suppress sensation. Recipients still experience the pain of their injuries 56 67.
• Limited revival: Yan Xiao states that it can work on people who have not been dead long. It is not established as unrestricted resurrection; Chen Yu’s heartless decoy does not respond 526 536.
• Side effects: Repeated use is associated with severe psychological harm. Medicine supplied by the mysterious Doctor suppresses the scalpel’s side effects 56 349.

Surgery and Emergency Medicine

• Performs surgery on Qin Manjiang after finding that his thyroid and trachea have been bitten through 798.
• Administers adrenaline and stabilizes Chen Zhiyuan after the Continuation Pen nearly kills him 408.
• Identifies the false Qin Manjiang because the impostor’s neck bandaging does not match his own technique 340.

Close-Quarters Combat

Yan Xiao fights with the precision of an assassin despite his medical profession 132.

• Uses rapid footwork, dodges, rolls, and economical scalpel strikes to cut down superhumanly strong paper figures 132.
• Passes through the initial fighting without injury, repeatedly slitting opponents’ throats 132.
• Remains limited by stamina; against continuously emerging enemies, he falls behind the protected Xinxin to rest and handle stragglers 132.

Investigation and Rule Exploitation

• Recognizes Chen Yu’s apparent corpse as a decoy after discovering its missing heart 66 536.
• Helps infer that the island’s town exists inside a ghost’s dream, using forgotten details and illogical events as evidence 66.
• Forces the entity possessing Chen Yu to confront its face through his phone’s front camera, exposing and restraining it 69.
• Identifies Yu Zeming by questioning Little Chongyang Temple’s Daoists and connecting Zhao Fengchuan’s patronage to the Qiao Family Village incident 466.

Equipment / Items

• Side-effect-suppressing medicine — Supplied by the mysterious Doctor; helps Yan Xiao endure the Cursed Scalpel’s effects 349.
• Severed finger — Taken from Chen Yu’s decoy corpse and given to Qin Manjiang to help Yan Xiao locate him in the mist 526 536.
• Mobile phone — Used to expose the monster possessing Chen Yu through its front camera 69.
• Flashlight — Used while exploring the underground tomb and inspecting its coffin 123.
• Yellow-Skinned Notebook — Entrusted to him privately by Qin Manjiang; later serves as a means of verifying Shen Hai’s account 1050.
• Automatic rifle and off-road vehicle — Used against the false world’s supporters and the approaching humanoid monsters during his final intervention 1090 1091.

Relationships

• Qin Manjiang — Trusted ally and confidant. Qin shares his origins, identity crisis, and fears with Yan Xiao; Yan Xiao recognizes that the conversation resembles a farewell. Their mutual trust remains decisive during the false-world confrontation 341 1090.
• Yan Lie — Biological older brother. Their relationship is strained enough that Yan Xiao refuses to visit headquarters because he does not want to see him, though Yan Lie continues passing him investigative information 194 454.
• Xu Yi — Fellow player whom Yan Xiao has saved. Xu Yi remembers the debt even when Yan Xiao does not. Yan Xiao knows his past and later entrusts his body to the Doctor in the hope of revival 194 318 940.
• Zhong Xueran — Fellow player whom he rescues from Old Town. His handling of Xu Yi’s remains shatters her hopes of resurrection, but they subsequently share a desire for revenge against Yi Lianhai 785 984.
• Shen Hai — Investigative partner and rescue recipient. Shen Hai is uncomfortable with owing Yan Xiao a favor when Yan Xiao treats the rescue as unremarkable; their exchanges often involve dry insults 123 451 466.
• Chen Zhiyuan — Entrusts Yan Xiao with recording the Continuation Pen’s revelations. Yan Xiao treats him when the item nearly kills him and later confronts Bai Yang over the harm done to him 408 1061.
• Chen Yu — Former collaborator. Her apparent death provokes an extreme reaction, but Yan Xiao later opposes her willingness to kill others to remain in the dream world 526 536 538.
• Yi Lianhai / the mysterious Doctor — Initially a source of apparent resurrection and essential medicine. Yan Xiao grows suspicious of his experiments, then learns that Xu Yi’s supposed revival instead produced Yi Yu in Xu Yi’s corpse 349 940 984.
• Xia Nan — Fellow alumnus who recognizes his former hospital position. Their meeting at the Clear Pupil Bar develops into an unusually easy conversation for Yan Xiao 714.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Butterfly Island

• After examining Chen Yu’s apparent remains, Yan Xiao discovers the missing heart and concludes that she is still alive. He and Qin Manjiang combine their theories about the town being a dream and Chen Yu serving as the ghost’s viewpoint 66.
• He lends Qin Manjiang his scalpel, trusting him to hold off the monsters while Yan Xiao pursues a way to end the dream 67.
• Yan Xiao forces Chen Yu to face her image on his phone, exposing the possessing monster. He later uses the scalpel on himself and Chen Yu so they can survive the giant monster’s attack 69 70.

Southern Branch Troupe and the Opera Ghost Story

• Exploring beneath the troupe with Shen Hai, Yan Xiao severs a withered hand that has grabbed his companion. Inside the coffin, they discover emaciated but living people begging to be killed 123.
• He fights the paper figures with his scalpel until torrential rain causes his own body to revert to paper 132 133.
• Xinxin restores him with his authorized scalpel. He immediately saves her from an emerging black limb, then runs to rescue the others, granting them another thirty minutes of life 134 135.

Wedding Dress and the Survival Bargain

• During the storm, Yan Xiao records the possible future dictated by Chen Zhiyuan through the Continuation Pen, preserving information that Chen subsequently forgets 408.
• Seeking to keep every Fu City player alive, he contacts a middle-aged businessman. The requested price is the Spirit Pupils of every player in the city 308.
• At Qin Manjiang’s request, he drives into Old Town to retrieve Xu Yi and Zhong Xueran, taking Xu Yi’s rigid body away in his car 313 785.
• He also receives the critically injured Qin Manjiang for surgery after the attack on his throat 798.

Qin Manjiang’s Impostor and Their Agreement

• Yan Xiao recognizes that the Qin Manjiang meeting the players at the Clear Pupil Bar is an impostor because of his neck bandaging. Waiting outside the bar, he finds the real Qin and drives him away from several watchers 340.
• During their riverside conversation, Qin Manjiang confides in him without reservation. Yan Xiao promises not to let the people he has met die and points to Qin’s doll as evidence of another possibility 341.
• Their subsequent agreement to destroy the Eye Realm rests on Yan Xiao’s assurance that he can keep everyone alive 470.

Exposure of the Doctor

• At Qiao Family Village, Yan Xiao suspects the Doctor’s involvement. A phone call confirms that the man had experimented with whether a dead Spirit Pupil could create a Ghost Story 349.
• Yan Xiao’s condition deteriorates: his reflection flickers, he requires increasing amounts of sleep, and parts of his body intermittently disappear 408 450.
• He helps identify Yu Zeming as Zhong Xueran’s attacker, linking him to Zhao Fengchuan and the earlier village incident 466.
• When questioned about the Doctor, Yan Xiao reveals the surgical death that first led him to trust the man and admits handing over Xu Yi’s body 940.
• After learning that Yi Yu is a newborn soul occupying Xu Yi’s corpse—not the resurrected Xu Yi—he accepts blame for trusting the wrong person and agrees that he wants revenge on Yi Lianhai 978 984.

The Dead World and the False World

• Shen Hai brings him Qin Manjiang’s explanation of the Eye Realm. Yan Xiao questions the factions’ apparent objectives, and the two conclude that the world and its timeline have stopped while powerful outsiders seek the dead Creator’s legacy 1050.
• The false world contains a different Yan Xiao: a firefighter with a living family. Terrified of losing that life, this counterpart disguises himself and enters the compound holding Truth, intending to kill her 1064 1074.
• The counterpart begins transforming into a yellow-eyed monstrosity. Looking into a mirror reverses aspects of that transformation but makes his facial features disappear instead 1078 1084.
• The real Yan Xiao rejects the false family as an insult to the dead. He turns his rifle on the people preserving the world, clearing the way for Qin Manjiang’s group 1090 1091.
• He then drives an off-road vehicle into the humanoid monsters to cover his companions’ escape, despite their attempts to stop him 1091.

Notable Quotes

“Pierce the heart, and you won't die for thirty minutes. But all sensation remains normal.” 67

“It was never the flowers that were beautiful. It was life.” 538

“In this game, I won't let the people I've met die.” 341