Doctor Gao

Doctor Gao is a senior psychologist, Gao Ru Xue’s father, and the hidden chairperson of the Ghost Stories Society. He first earns Chen Ge’s respect as a clinician willing to test unconventional explanations. His attempt to recover his dead wife later turns that discipline into mass exploitation, yet his love for his daughter eventually brings him back as a decisive ally against the Cursed Hospital.

Biography

Clinician and trusted investigator

Doctor Gao meets Chen Ge through patients whom ordinary therapy has not reached. He accompanies Chen to Wang Xin, observes the reconciliation enabled by the Pen Spirit, and later asks for help with Men Nan’s recurring nightmare. Rather than declare the supernatural impossible, he watches outcomes, compares histories, and protects vulnerable patients from reckless intervention. That measured restraint makes his early trust in Chen unusually credible. (Chapters 81–125)

The Third Sick Hall connects Doctor Gao’s clinical work to a deeper institutional past. He cross-references Wang Shenglong’s and Men Nan’s histories, supports Chen by phone, and appears to bridge medical records with police investigation. His expertise is genuine, as is his concern for Gao Ruxue, but the same access conceals how much he already knows about the abandoned hospital and its door. (Chapters 142–180, 199–212, 357–392)

Chairperson behind the morgue door

In the underground morgue, Doctor Gao reveals himself as the Ghost Stories Society’s chairperson and the architect of a blood world populated by bound cadavers. His goal is rooted in grief: he believes that absorbing suffering and exceeding Red Specter limits can preserve or restore his wife. He applies clinical understanding without ethical restraint, arranging people and pain as materials inside a system designed to produce power. (Chapters 447–455)

Chen’s invasion brings Doctor Gao into conflict with Xu Yin, Men Nan, Zhang Ya, and the spirits he has controlled. Defeat does not simplify him into a victim or erase his crimes. He uses concentrated resentment at death to transform, entrusts dangerous remnants of the society to Chen, and disappears after burdening him with Li Wan City. His final choices combine recognition of Chen’s character with continued pursuit of his own impossible reunion. (Chapters 456–483)

Greater Red Specter in Li Wan City

Doctor Gao returns behind Li Wan City’s door as a Greater Red Specter whose accumulated minds and curses have destabilized him. He can still reason tactically, suppress negative emotion, and manifest restraints powerful enough to hold the ghost-baby vessel. For a short battle he cooperates with Chen and Zhang Ya, not because their past conflict is forgiven, but because the shadow threatens every competing purpose inside the door. (Chapters 668–676)

He loses an arm and takes half the vessel’s anomalous heart before escaping. The act leaves his future uncertain while demonstrating that he still seeks power beyond his current state. His moments of recognition coexist with apparent madness, making him a dark parallel to Chen: both gather pain and spirits around themselves, but Doctor Gao tries to dominate what Chen attempts to house through consent and reciprocal obligation. (Chapters 668–676)

Demon God against the Cursed Hospital

Doctor Gao survives and crosses the black fog with a red city under his control. In the false Xin Hai, he appears as Chen’s psychiatrist and participates in the hospital’s treatment fiction, but his deeper motive remains Gao Ru Xue’s safety. When the final battle begins, he arrives in his true Demon God-scale form and restrains the director, creating an opening for Zhang Ya, the Painter, and Chen’s other allies. (Chapters 1151–1199)

His intervention does not absolve the Ghost Stories Society. It instead reveals the one attachment his ruthless logic never discarded: his daughter. Doctor Gao bears chains, curses, and an entire city to reach the force threatening her. By fighting beside Chen against a worse system of coerced happiness and erased identity, he becomes an ally without becoming harmless, redeemed, or fully reconciled with the people he once used. (Chapters 1160–1205)

Appearance and personality

As a living man, Doctor Gao presents himself as a composed, educated, middle-aged professional whose calm voice and careful observation reassure patients and colleagues. Behind the door, grief and accumulated resentment distort that controlled image into a chained, injured, increasingly monstrous spectral presence. His later arrival while dragging a red city turns the imagery of medical restraint into a visible burden of power and obsession. (Chapters 81–125, 447–457, 668–676, 1197)

He is intelligent, patient, paternal, and capable of genuine clinical empathy, but also extraordinarily manipulative. Doctor Gao treats suffering as something that can be cataloged, transferred, and weaponized, allowing love for his wife to justify harm to strangers. His relationship with Gao Ruxue exposes a boundary he will not surrender, while his dealings with Chen show respect for a rival whose methods contradict his own. (Chapters 81–125, 447–483, 1151–1205)

Skills and supernatural abilities

Clinical psychology and planning

Doctor Gao diagnoses trauma, conducts interviews, traces institutional histories, and anticipates how people will behave under pressure. These are professional skills rather than supernatural perception; early on, he does not simply see the spirits affecting his patients. As chairperson, the same knowledge supports elaborate environments that manipulate memory, guilt, and attachment. His greatest limitation is ethical rather than intellectual: he repeatedly treats people as pieces in a therapeutic design they never consented to enter. (Chapters 81–125, 142–180, 359–367, 447–455)

Door-world control and resentment

As a door-pusher and later specter, Doctor Gao controls the underground morgue’s blood world, cadavers, blood threads, and restraints. He can absorb or suppress negative emotions and transform them into structures or force. The many minds and curses he incorporates also destabilize him, while confrontations with Zhang Ya and the ghost-baby vessel cause severe physical damage. (Chapters 447–457, 668–676)

Demon God domain

By the Cursed Hospital battle, Doctor Gao can move through the black fog while dragging a red city and directly contest the hospital director. His chains and domain restrain power beyond Greater Red level. The precise sequence by which half the ghost-baby heart and his red-city journey produce Demon God status is not shown, so the demonstrated rank and effects are clearer than the transformation mechanics. (Chapters 675–676, 1151–1199)

Power progression

Relationships

• Chen Ge: Clinical collaborator, adversary, inheritor of the society’s consequences, and later battlefield ally. Their contrast centers on whether pain should be controlled or given a home. (Chapters 81–125, 447–483, 668–676, 1160–1205)
• Gao Ruxue: His daughter and the attachment that persists through every transformation. Protecting her motivates his return against the hospital. (Chapters 81–125, 343–400, 1151–1199)
• His wife: Her death drives his attempt to exceed spectral limits and underlies the morgue world’s cruelties. (Chapters 447–457)
• Zhang Ya: Overwhelms his first transformed state, later fights beside him when their interests align against the ghost-baby vessel and hospital director. (Chapters 456–457, 668–676, 1197–1205)

Items

• Third Sick Hall Patient List: Records the patient network from which several of Doctor Gao’s investigations and society connections emerge. (Chapters 142–180)
• Chains: The restraints associated with Doctor Gao’s spectral form and domain are manifestations of his power rather than a separately named artifact. (Chapters 668–676, 1197)