Zhang Ya

Zhang Ya is the Red Specter bound to Chen Ge’s shadow and the person closest to him. Her violent death leaves her with extraordinary resentment, but the bond formed through her cursed love letter gradually gives that power a purpose beyond revenge. She grows from a feared school haunting into a Demon God who protects the House of Horrors and chooses a future with Chen Ge.

Biography

Betrayal at the dance studio

Zhang Ya is a gifted ballet student whose success isolates her from five roommates. After their group earns a place in a higher-level competition, jealousy and social pressure make her vulnerable to a trap inside the school’s arts building. An adult man enters the dance studio with help from one of the girls and tries to force himself into Zhang Ya’s life; she rejects him and runs rather than accept the coercion. (Chapters 52–59)

The first official account treats Zhang Ya’s fall from the fourth floor as suicide, supported by classmates who describe her as unstable and claim they left her alone. The mirror in the abandoned studio shows a different sequence: the girls remain involved, the man corners her, and the fall follows her attempt to escape. What appears publicly as self-destruction is therefore the end of a coordinated betrayal whose participants protect themselves with a shared story. (Chapters 58–61)

Chen Ge’s later investigation identifies Zhu Xiu as the man responsible and shows that Zhang Ya’s suffering did not end with the fall. Her red dancing shoes, blood-soaked uniform, and overwhelming resentment become the signs of a Red Specter, while her inability to testify leaves Chen Ge as the person capable of bringing the concealed crime back into the open. When he exposes Zhu Xiu within the Ghost Stories Society, Zhang Ya takes the killer’s soul and closes the grievance that first bound her to the school. (Chapters 233–245)

The protector in Chen Ge’s shadow

The cursed love letter first makes Zhang Ya’s interest in Chen Ge dangerous and conditional. She warns him about Wang Qi, but when the mirror monster and Zhang Peng corner him inside the House of Horrors, she answers only after he accepts the demand attached to her help. Her black hair destroys the monster, incapacitates the killer, and establishes a relationship in which she protects Chen Ge by her own judgment rather than because he can reliably command her. (Chapters 44–64)

That independence becomes decisive in the Third Sick Hall. Summoned with the White Valentine’s Candy, Zhang Ya tears through thin monsters, pursues one beyond Men Nan’s blood door, breaks back into the damaged world after being expelled, and subdues the old director. Chen Ge’s presence prevents a clash with Men Nan’s second persona, but it does not soften her treatment of enemies; the experience teaches him that her loyalty is real while her cruelty remains an inseparable part of the protector he has accepted. (Chapters 150–184)

After Chen Ge resolves her death, he refuses a reward that would confine Zhang Ya to a complete school scenario. Free to remain with him, she follows him through the society’s rooms, consumes its blood raven, and later overwhelms two Red Specters created from a member’s sons. Chen Ge must identify Xu Yin and Chen Yalin as friends to keep them outside her indiscriminate feeding, showing that his influence guides her priorities without turning her into an obedient employee. (Chapters 242–279)

Her next awakening occurs when Doctor Gao reaches for Chen Ge’s heart inside the underground morgue’s blood world. One command—“Let go”—halts the surrounding dead before her hair tears into the chairperson’s defenses and fused cadavers. She again saves Chen Ge, consumes power from the defeated world, and returns to sleep. Each rescue deepens their reliance: Chen Ge survives because she comes, while Zhang Ya’s repeated growth is tied to the enemies she devours while protecting him. (Chapters 452–457)

Li Wan City and the School of the Afterlife

At Li Wan City, the shadow blocks Chen Ge from reaching Zhang Ya and exploits the delay to attack Xu Yin and the other employees. Chen Ge burns the cursed love letter rather than preserve her old pain as a permanent anchor, offering himself as the new object of her obsession and asking her to remain as his shadow. The choice lets her break through the interference, rescue Xu Yin, and fight beside Doctor Gao against the shadow despite the danger of its curses. (Chapters 670–674)

The battle reveals how far Zhang Ya’s power has expanded. Her black hair carries binding, gluttony, heart-connectivity, and other properties associated with Red Specters close to Chen Ge; she can restrain enemies, consume their power, and shield him at the same time. She takes half of the ghost-baby vessel’s anomalous heart, but the victory leaves her cursed and injured, forcing another long hibernation rather than granting an immediate, effortless advance. (Chapters 675–677)

During the School of the Afterlife conflict, Chang Wenyu regards dormant Zhang Ya as both a weapon and a danger, while the Painter and the school consciousness struggle over the institution’s accumulated despair. Zhang Ya awakens when the contest closes around Chen Ge. Instead of accepting either claimant’s design, she consumes the school’s black blood and consciousness, overwhelms the forces trying to control the outcome, and creates the opening through which Chen Ge and his employees escape. (Chapters 829–906)

Her ascent to Demon God is inseparable from the bond others identify as her only weakness. Chang Wenyu believes attachment to Chen Ge can be exploited, yet that same attachment gives Zhang Ya a reason to resist the school’s efforts to absorb or direct her. By choosing Chen Ge over institutional power and devouring the consciousness meant to dominate the school, she converts vulnerability into the motive that carries her beyond the Top Red Specter threshold. (Chapters 845–878, 902–906)

Demon God, false happiness, and a chosen future

The Ghost Fetus later attacks through Chen Ge’s memories and Xiang Nuan’s body, attempting to replace the life Chen has built with an idealized family. Zhang Ya’s return helps him reject that fiction and lets her confront the enormous Past assembled from its suffering. After the Ghost Fetus sacrifices itself to protect Wen Qing and its consciousness dissipates, Zhang Ya kills and consumes the weakened faceless doctor who came to reclaim it for the Cursed Hospital. (Chapters 1047–1050, 1104–1110)

The Cursed Hospital uses a subtler prison. In its false Xin Hai, Zhang Ya appears to be a living haunted-house owner whose relationship with Chen Ge could become an ordinary romance. She is shy, playful, and attached to the constructed life, yet recurring dreams and inconsistencies make separation feel wrong to both of them. Their affection survives even when their histories and powers are rewritten, revealing that the bond is not merely a command created by the love letter. (Chapters 1182–1195)

When their memories return, Zhang Ya resumes her Demon God form and joins Doctor Gao, the Painter, and Chen Ge’s father against the hospital director. Her black hair pierces the director’s hidden heart and helps prevent his union with the black fog. Victory frees Chen Ge’s parents and destroys the system that tried to turn pain into a perfect, compulsory illusion, after which Zhang Ya remains beside Chen Ge rather than returning to an isolated door world. (Chapters 1196–1206)

Chen Ge introduces Zhang Ya to his parents as the woman he loves, and her terrifying form initially leaves them speechless. Learning what she endured changes their concern into acceptance. At New Century Park, Chen later offers her a wedding ring and repeats the promise that they will remain like one another’s shadows; Zhang Ya answers aloud that she will marry him. Their final walk toward sunrise gives the former school haunting a future chosen with a living family. (Chapters 1210–1211)

Appearance and personality

In life, Zhang Ya is a tall, striking young woman trained in ballet. As a Specter she retains an unblemished, pale face framed by long black hair, but her school uniform and dancing shoes become saturated with red. Her later dress appears woven from blood-red threads and gains black patterns as her power develops; at Demon God level, resentment and despair take on material form around her without erasing her beauty. (Chapters 56–61, 176, 243, 674–676, 1211)

Zhang Ya is quiet, possessive, and ruthless toward anything she judges a threat. She rarely explains herself, prefers decisive violence to negotiation, and can regard defeated spirits as food or human enemies as material for macabre keepsakes. Around Chen Ge, however, small gestures reveal embarrassment, reliance, protectiveness, and eventually tenderness. The false Xin Hai and her meeting with his parents show that the withdrawn student still exists alongside the terrifying Demon God. (Chapters 64, 176–184, 243–245, 275–277, 1182–1195, 1210–1211)

Skills and supernatural abilities

Spectral form, shadow, and domain

Zhang Ya can reside inside Chen Ge’s shadow, emerge from it without a conventional doorway, and spread her presence across a large supernatural environment. After Chen burns the cursed love letter, he becomes her new anchor, strengthening their heart-level connection while also making their separation a potential weakness. At her highest demonstrated state, her red domain and pressure overwhelm lesser spirits and remain formidable even among Demon Gods. (Chapters 58, 64, 242–245, 670–676, 902–906, 1109, 1211)

Her manifestation is not unlimited. Strong interference can prevent Chen Ge from reaching her, large meals and major wounds force extended sleep, and the Ghost Fetus’s curse injures her even after she wins half of its vessel’s heart. Dormancy repeatedly leaves the House of Horrors without its strongest protector, while her possessive reactions can endanger anyone she interprets as competing for Chen Ge’s attachment. (Chapters 278–279, 400, 670–677, 787, 829–878)

Black hair, binding, and gluttony

Zhang Ya’s black hair functions as restraint, blade, shield, transport, and feeding mechanism. It floods corridors, tears apart bodies, blocks blood vessels and curses, drags targets through buildings, and encloses Chen Ge against attacks. Binding is identified as her own defining property, while gluttony lets her consume ghosts, hearts, black blood, and whole supernatural structures, converting defeated threats into persistent increases in power. (Chapters 175–184, 242–245, 275–277, 452–457, 675–676, 902–904)

Her feeding also lets her display properties associated with other Red Specters, including heart-connectivity and effects resembling pain or sharpness. The precise rule is not fully explained: the shadow speculates about what she has absorbed, while Chen Ge suspects her connection to allied Red Specters matters. What is demonstrated is broader—consumption can strengthen her, suppress or convert defeated spirits, and give her attacks specialized effects beyond brute force. (Chapters 275–278, 452–457, 675–676)

Memory, souls, and emotional connection

At Western Jiujiang Private Academy, Zhang Ya uses the dance-studio mirror to replay the events surrounding her death. The reconstruction communicates what she cannot narrate directly, but its incomplete view initially leaves the killer’s identity uncertain. Her later handling of Zhu Xiu and the ruined-faced society member shows a second soul-related power: she can trap defeated human consciousnesses inside dolls, boxes, or similar keepsakes, although the underlying mechanism is never stated. (Chapters 58–61, 233–245, 277)

Heart-connectivity allows Zhang Ya to sense Chen Ge’s inner calls and emotional state once their bond deepens. It supports her rescues and makes the two difficult to separate, but it is not flawless telepathy: the shadow can block communication, and Chen Ge does not always know whether she is awake or willing to appear. Their final relationship therefore rests on repeated choices and mutual attachment, not on an infallible summoning technique. (Chapters 238–245, 400, 670–675, 1182–1211)

Demon God force

After consuming the School of the Afterlife’s consciousness and black blood, Zhang Ya can contend with beings who shape red cities and large door worlds. She battles the Ghost Fetus’s Past, consumes the faceless doctor after his defeat, attacks the Cursed Hospital director’s hidden heart with other Demon Gods, and manifests pressure that stuns an entire underground city of spirits. Even so, victories over peer-level enemies occur through allies, timing, and exposed weaknesses rather than proof that no Demon God can resist her. (Chapters 902–906, 1104–1110, 1205–1206, 1211)

Power progression

Relationships

• Chen Ge: Begins as the target of her cursed affection, becomes her chosen anchor and closest partner, and ultimately asks her to marry him. He tempers her indiscriminate violence without controlling her identity. (Chapters 44–64, 242–279, 670–676, 1182–1211)
• Xu Yin: Fellow protector of Chen Ge. Zhang Ya initially treats him as possible prey, spares him when Chen identifies him as a friend, and later rescues him from the shadow. (Chapters 275–277, 670–676)
• Doctor Gao: Adversary in the underground morgue, temporary ally against the ghost-baby vessel and shadow, and fellow Demon God in the final hospital battle. (Chapters 452–457, 670–676, 1197–1206)
• Chang Wenyu: Tries to exploit Zhang Ya’s attachment and power during the School of the Afterlife conflict, only for Zhang Ya to reject her design and consume the school consciousness. (Chapters 829–906)
• Painter: Competing power in the school’s final struggle and later a powerful ally against the Cursed Hospital director. His confirmed rank remains Top Red Specter. (Chapters 875–906, 1197–1206)
• Ghost Fetus: Attacks Chen Ge’s identity and shadow through Xiang Nuan and the Past. Zhang Ya contests its strongest creation, but the Ghost Fetus ultimately sacrifices itself for Wen Qing and its consciousness dissipates rather than being consumed by her. (Chapters 1047–1050, 1104–1110)

Items

• Cursed Love Letter: Zhang Ya’s original medium and the beginning of her bond with Chen Ge; he burns it when he offers himself as her new anchor. (Chapters 13, 44, 51–64, 670–672)
• Wedding Ring: Chen Ge places it on Zhang Ya’s finger when he asks her to marry him at New Century Park. (Chapter 1211)