Zhang Peng

Zhang Peng is a fugitive connected to the Ping An Apartments case who twice enters New Century Park to murder Chen Ge. His second attack gives the mirror monster a human host, but the alliance ends when Zhang Ya destroys the possessing entity and leaves Zhang Peng for the police.

Biography

Revenge, possession, and arrest

Police identify Zhang Peng from surveillance footage as a wanted gambler with a peony tattoo on his hand. Blaming Chen Ge for exposing Ping An Apartments and helping send Juan Er to prison, he enters New Century Park with a boning knife and searches the House of Horrors for its supposedly sleeping owner. The ambush collapses when Zhang Peng cuts himself and encounters the entity hidden in the bathroom mirror. (Chapters 46–50)

The mirror monster uses Zhang Peng as its host, allowing him to escape the initial police response and later hide in the attraction's control room. He attacks Chen Ge again, but Zhang Ya's arrival terrifies the monster into abandoning its vessel before she consumes it. Chen Ge disables Zhang Peng's shoulder and calf, and Lee Zheng takes the blank, barely responsive fugitive into custody as the final suspect in the Ping An Apartments case. (Chapters 63–64)

Appearance and personality

Zhang Peng is a large adult man whose peony hand tattoo helps the police identify him. He is calculating enough to infiltrate a closed attraction and wait in ambush, but his confidence depends on controlling weaker victims; when Zhang Ya appears, both he and the creature using him are overwhelmed by panic. (Chapters 46–50, 63–64)

Skills and supernatural abilities

He is physically dangerous, carries out stealthy break-ins, and attacks with a knife. His supernatural threat is not an independent ability: the mirror monster possesses and operates through him, then leaves him helpless when it flees Zhang Ya. Nothing shows that Zhang Peng retains supernatural power after that separation. (Chapters 47–50, 63–64)

Relationships

Zhang Peng treats Chen Ge as the cause of his criminal circle's collapse and makes him the target of two murder attempts. His association with the mirror monster is purely expedient and ends in betrayal, while Zhang Ya becomes both the monster's destroyer and the force that renders Zhang Peng unable to continue fighting. Lee Zheng receives him as an injured prisoner. (Chapters 46–50, 63–64)

Items

Zhang Peng carries a roughly twenty-centimeter boning knife during both attacks. It is an ordinary weapon rather than a supernatural artifact, and it is taken out of his control when Chen Ge incapacitates him. (Chapters 47–50, 63–64)