Shadow Fiend

Biodata

Power Progression

Appearance

• Liquid manifestation: Resembles thick black sludge or asphalt, pouring from shadows before enveloping its victims 2 8.
• Humanoid form: Can gather into a human outline with a featureless black face 5 9 10.
• Multiple limbs: During the attack on Su Wu’s assailant, more than a dozen pairs of arms and legs sprout from its body and wrap around the victim 45.
• Associated odor: Its approach is accompanied by a dead-rat, corpse, or rotting-flesh stench that can become overpowering immediately before an attack 2 4 8.

Abilities & Skills

Shadow Manifestation

• Emerges from shadows cast by people, furniture, and other objects; it does not simply rise from the floor 2.
• Attacks can be triggered by small light sources, including a phone screen 5.
• A high-powered flashlight can direct its appearance toward distant shadows. An ordinary flashlight scatters light too broadly and risks exposing its wielder first 9.
• Complete darkness prevents it from manifesting to kill. Su Wu successfully interrupts its approach by extinguishing a hallway light before the warning stench intensifies 4 45.
• The delay between a faint warning odor and an attack is inconsistent: it may last five minutes or longer, or only an instant 4.

Envelopment and Dismemberment

• Its black substance adheres to skin, flesh, and bones, then pulls the victim apart 2.
• Can plug a victim’s mouth before they scream and reduce their body to scattered fragments 5.
• Su Wu infers that it kills one person per manifestation and selects whoever is closest to the relevant shadows. This conclusion follows its killing of a woman without immediately attacking him 5.

Rapid Pursuit and Reconstitution

• Re-forms into a humanoid outline after being torn open and can cross several paces almost immediately 9.
• Remains fast enough to pursue Su Wu even while the Imperial Bell makes its movements stutter 10.
• Can dissolve at one location and reappear in shadows surrounding its target 10.

Suppression and Territorial Limits

• Imperial Bell: Its ringing arrests or disrupts the fiend’s movement. Continuous ringing keeps it approximately two meters from Su Wu during an escape 10.
• Gang Cave: The skeletal hand summoned by this human-bone flute can tear an opening through the fiend, creating an escape route. The fiend can subsequently re-form, so this is not a demonstrated killing method 5 9.
• Ordinary boundary: In one simulation, pursuit stops at the alley entrance; shadows outside the complex do not produce another attack 8.
• Temporary extension: When streetlights go out before the red lanterns rise, the fiend can pursue Su Wu beyond its previously observed boundary. Faint daylight still casts shadows during this interval, so it is not complete darkness 10.
• Red-lantern onset: The pursuing Shadow Fiend vanishes when the lanterns rise and their crimson light appears 10.

Background / History

Future-Life Simulations

Su Wu initially mistakes the killer for something emerging from beneath the floor. A subsequent simulated death reveals black liquid pouring from his own shadow and those of nearby furnishings. He realizes that his future self’s boarded windows and unlit room are precautions against the creature 2.

The Gang Cave provides his first means of breaking through it, but its summoned skeletal hand absorbs part of the fiend and becomes another lethal threat. Adding the Imperial Bell allows Su Wu to hold back the resulting black hand and leave the apartment complex 5 6 8.

In a later attempt, the skeletal arm attaches beneath Su Wu’s ribs and tears material from the Shadow Fiend. The resulting Corpse Buddha Ghost Hand becomes a simulator reward. Successfully escaping the fiend’s scenario and reaching a safe house contributes to Su Wu’s B+ simulation rating 9 13.

Altered Awakening Schedule

The original simulated diary records murders on the sixteenth and the upstairs couple’s deaths on the eighteenth. Later simulations move those events earlier. Su Wu eventually identifies his replacement of the hallway’s sound-activated light as the intervention that advanced the fiend’s awakening 11 16.

The deaths of three Building 3 residents confirm that the predicted resurgence is beginning in reality. Su Wu’s repeated simulations establish 21:37 as the time when the upstairs couple will die, marking the fiend’s encroachment into his building 24 41.

Peaceful Garden Outbreak

Wang Xiaogang sends a warning video before the fiend envelops him. An officially verified account subsequently instructs residents to seal their homes and extinguish all light sources, presenting the threat as an unidentified substance transmitted through light 44.

Su Wu cuts every breaker in Building 6 to protect residents who still have lights on. When a burly neighbor tries to force him to scout outside, Su Wu uses his hidden third hand to shine a high-powered flashlight at the attacker. The Shadow Fiend emerges from the resulting shadows and kills the man. Su Wu then uses the Imperial Bell to escape the alley 45.

Relationships

• Su Wu — Repeated prey who learns its attack conditions through simulated deaths, develops an escape method, and ultimately redirects an attack against another person 2 8 45.
• Corpse Buddha Ghost Hand — Formed by combining the entity inside the copper-wrapped bone relic with part of the Shadow Fiend. Frequent use can cause the Shadow Fiend to appear at a random location within fifty li of the host and approach them; greater compatibility lowers that probability 13 34.
• Lantern Fiend / Eye Fiend — Its city-scale territory is much broader than the Shadow Fiend’s. Unlike the lantern threat’s random killings, the Shadow Fiend’s attacks can be avoided by maintaining complete darkness within Peaceful Garden 9 45.