Su Huilan

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Su Huilan’s father followed Master Nanke and served as his assistant. After their efforts to end the war failed, he withdrew to San Francisco’s Chinatown, drank heavily, and eventually died of depression. Su remembered him as habitually dispirited in waking life; only in dreams was he sober enough to show her fragments of his past 372 497.

Her father reproduced an unnamed Alliance genius in her dreams and instructed her to find him. He believed this man could succeed or surpass Master Nanke and bring hope to the Alliance. Because her father never organized the memories or explained the man’s identity, Su spent decades trying to understand what she had inherited 497.

His final warning—that the ark had sunk into the abyss and humanity would be abandoned—became central to her investigations. She suspected it meant the world had descended into a deeper layer of dreams. Her later journey sought answers about her father, the Alliance, and the man whose appearance he had implanted in her dreams 372 606.

Appearance

• Features: Delicate facial features, a curvaceous figure, and a slender, supple waist 308 309.
• Hair: Long black hair; wears it coiled with a classical silver hairpin while practicing yoga in her dream 309 366.
• Clothing: Appears in fitted white yoga clothes in her dream; wears sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and a white shawl in Auckland, and jungle combat boots during island exploration 309 345 400.
• Youthful appearance: Believes her youthful looks result from mental cultivation and spiritual practice; this is her own explanation, not a confirmed mechanism 496.

Personality

Su Huilan is intellectually curious and determined to discover where consciousness and mental power originate. She treats life primarily as mind rather than biological matter, and believes understanding consciousness may also explain the parasitic invasion threatening humanity 410.

She is composed and practical under pressure. She carefully evaluates traps, enemy weapons, terrain, and the balance between physical and mental combat. Her compassion does not prevent decisive violence: she rescues Qiqika because she feels responsible for bringing him into danger, but is prepared to shoot hostile islanders if returning home or humanity’s survival requires it 349 351 606.

Her confidence has limits. Qingmu’s care makes her unusually flustered, while Situ’s apparent perfection and knowledge of her dreams leave her feeling exposed. She values Qingmu’s flaws because they make him seem familiar and human rather than inscrutable 412 413 479 497.

Abilities & Skills

Mental Power and Dream Construction

Su Huilan possesses powerful mental strength and exceptionally precise control. Her personal dream is expansive, detailed, and realistic 309 345.

• Creates and sustains complex dream environments 309.
• Uses delicate control to displace an external mental field; her power is less overwhelming than Qingmu’s, but her handling is finer 429.
• Can help sustain another person’s dream, though she declines to prolong an islander’s dream once his mental power begins draining dangerously 431.
• Cannot initially detect the willow twig’s connection to the island’s mental field, despite Qingmu sensing it 455.

Fragrant Hypnosis Technique

Her signature hypnosis stimulates the brain’s olfactory center to induce a response in consciousness. Like other master-level hypnosis, it does not require the subject’s cooperation 404 405.

• Uses the relationship between smell and consciousness to draw a target into a dream 405.
• Is difficult to guard against, but does not overcome the islanders’ immunity while they remain supported by their mental field 403 405 430.
• Produces a detectable fragrance even when the mental interference fails; Qingmu suspects this alerts a sensitive tribal leader to their hiding place 404.
• Can hypnotize without fragrance: after Qingmu isolates an injured islander from the field, she puts him to sleep without her specialty 430.

Dream Interrogation

Su Huilan can manipulate a dream’s contents to lead its creator toward useful memories 430.

• Introduces a poisoned arrow into an islander’s dream, prompting memories of the antidote and its preparation 430.
• Obtains the location of the tribe and information about its river and reverse-flowing waterfall 430 431.
• Prefers guided associations to forcibly searching an entire subconscious: direct seizure is exhausting, risks resistance, and leaves an enormous volume of memories to sift through 430.
• Cannot reliably defeat specialized resistance. An enemy woman’s training prevents her from extracting much information, and Petru’s intervention saves her from a lethal attack 376.

Sacred Staff Use

Su Huilan can handle multiple Sacred Staffs and use them to access external mental power, but is not equally compatible with them 548.

• Her control over the island’s field remains limited compared with Qingmu’s and Situ’s 548.
• She proposes that a staff requires a matching configuration or compatibility, rather than mental strength alone 548.

Combat and Fieldcraft

• Marksmanship: An excellent shot with extensive knowledge of weapons, including newer equipment unfamiliar to Qingmu 384.
• Close combat: Uses a military dagger, evasive footwork, leg sweeps, and joint locks. A wounded islander’s exceptional strength still makes him difficult for her to restrain 405.
• Agility: Moves more lightly than Qingmu while matching his speed during their approach to Petru’s position 349.
• Trap handling: Identifies linked rope, net, and arrow mechanisms and rescues Qiqika without triggering their intended lethal sequence 349 351.
• Threat assessment: Calculates firing positions, avoids a gunman’s line of sight, and weighs the danger of entering an ongoing confrontation 349 351.

Academic Knowledge

• Philosophy of consciousness: Studies the origin of mind and the relationship between consciousness and life 410.
• Genetic-memory hypothesis: Argues that inherited memories may be encoded in genetic information rather than stored within the brain’s subconscious 410.
• Dream theory: Proposes layered dreams and discusses cooperation between powerful Awakened as a means of escaping a Group Dream 371.
• Spatial reasoning: Uses a leaf-and-earth model to explain how a folded space could connect an island’s surrounding sea to its central lake 417.
• Technical analysis: Recognizes the neural integration of an implanted chip and suggests its likely graphene construction may indicate technology originating beyond Earth 377.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Pistol — Carries a defensive handgun while investigating unexplained activity aboard the warship 607 609.
• Military dagger — Uses one to break an islander’s wooden bow and wound his shoulder 405.
• Swiss Army knife — Carries a multitool containing a pin and toothpick, which she produces during discussion of a subconscious-state experiment 407.
• Backpack and jungle combat boots — Field equipment used during the island expedition 400 407.
• Pine-resin torches — Lights two with Ivan’s flint before searching below deck 607.

Relationships

• Her father — Her childhood teacher and source of fragmentary Alliance memories. His unexplained instructions and final warning drive her search for the truth 372 497 606.
• Qingmu — Trusted companion and romantic interest. She initially suspects he is the man from her dreams, later confides her fears about Situ to him, and urges him to secure a scepter so he will not be at a disadvantage 373 412 431 479.
• Situ — The genius reproduced in her childhood dreams and Master Nanke’s successor. She seeks answers from him but remains frightened by his apparent perfection and unexplained knowledge 479 496 497.
• Petru — Recruits him to their cause and promises help with psychic training and Lawiye’s safety. Although she remains cautious around him, she explicitly thanks him for saving her life 366 374 376.
• Boss Coal / Crow — Qingmu’s companion and her frequent verbal sparring partner. He teases her about Qingmu and supports Ruhua, but also works alongside her in combat 434 435 459.
• Hanran — The cat she regularly carries and protects. She feels responsible for its safety and risks searching the ship’s dark compartments to retrieve it 351 609 697.
• Mei Yiqiu — Academic acquaintance whom she does not trust, despite her trust in Qingmu 313 371.
• Mrs. Larry — Fellow expedition member. Su comes to regard her severe manner as concealing kindness, a noble character, and possibly a painful secret 538.
• Ivan — Develops mutual trust with her after their conversation about his military mission and the search for a better solution to humanity’s crisis 697.
• Duwa — Powerful fellow survivor whose assessment of the ice field she supports. She nevertheless maintains some distance because they know little about one another 697.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Dream Guide and the Space Box

• Enters the game’s mirror passage and creates a dream in which she practices yoga beside a lake. Qingmu cannot enter through the same mechanism but reaches her dream by another method 308 309.
• Explores the empty Prehistoric Town with him while awaiting the Space Box’s timed shutdown. She distinguishes its computer-generated environment from a dream because it does not depend on a person’s memories or mental power 310.

South Pacific Expedition

• Organizes travel through Auckland toward Tubuai and Rapa, obtains a private plane that accommodates Boss Coal and Hanran, and hires Qiqika to guide them to Petru 345 346.
• Rescues Qiqika from Petru’s linked traps while Qingmu and Crow confront the gunman 349 351.
• Recruits Petru by explaining their opposition to alien consciousnesses and offering assistance to him and Lawiye 366.
• Investigates hostile operatives and examines the implanted chip connected to Laboratory No. 19 376 377.

Island Exploration and Rescue

• Discovers with Qingmu that the islanders resist ordinary mental interference, forcing them to rely on physical combat and other countermeasures 403 405.
• Injures her foot while using a stream to conceal their tracks. Qingmu treats the wound and carries her so they can continue without exposing their trail 412 413.
• Extracts antidote instructions from an islander’s dream, enabling treatment that saves Anderson 430 431.
• Recognizes Situ as the man from her inherited dreams, then questions him about Master Nanke and her father 479 496 497.

Warship and Altar Crisis

• Investigates apparent movement among the warship’s mummified occupants and searches for Hanran below deck. Qingmu and Situ find her, after which the group discovers Mrs. Larry, Alice, and the lifeboat are missing 606 607 609 610.
• Is knocked unconscious by the altar formation’s mental blast. With no Sacred Staff of her own, she suffers a severe impact, but her mental strength and Qingmu’s nearby protection prevent fundamental damage to her consciousness 615 616.
• Helps examine the altar’s folded space and questions whether its rising stones represent physical movement, mental influence, or a previously illusory scene 619 620.
• Joins the survivors adapting to Stasis Spacetime while they gather supplies and cremate more than three hundred bodies from the ship 645.

Separation and the Ice Field

• Travels with the remaining group after Qingmu and Situ leave to activate their respective altars. She regrets the separation as uncertainty and distrust grow among the survivors 697.
• Searches a pyramid for Hanran but must leave without the cat when the approaching mist forces the group onward 697.
• Reaches an ice field beneath seven suns, where an inverted mountain emits unusual mental fluctuations. Apart from Duwa, she has the strongest mental power among the companions present 697.

Notable Quotes

“To me, life is consciousness, it is mind!” 410

“Your flaws give me a sense of warmth and familiarity. They make me feel you’re a real person.” 479