Zhang Wei's Questionnaire

Shanghai, China

Zhang Wei lives in Shanghai due to its dense population and fast-paced lifestyle, which allows him to blend in and conduct his occult activities without drawing attention. The city's rich history and numerous old districts provide him with access to ancient artifacts and hidden knowledge. But over all of that, he was just a regular office worker that had to make money and that was the city to do it.

Zhang Wei resides in a cramped, dimly lit apartment in an older high-rise building in Shanghai's bustling Jing'an District. The building, with its faded facade and narrow hallways, is a relic of the city's rapid urban development. Inside his apartment, the walls are lined with bookshelves crammed with ancient scrolls, occult books, and mysterious artifacts. The small living space is cluttered with ritualistic items, jars of strange substances, and candles of various sizes.

The apartment has minimal furniture: a single worn-out couch, a small wooden table covered in alchemical equipment, and a narrow bed pushed against the wall. The windows are heavily curtained, blocking out most natural light, and the air is thick with the scent of incense and old paper. Despite the clutter, Zhang Wei keeps his workspace meticulously organized, with his tools and texts always within arm's reach.

Zhang Wei earns his living through a monotonous office job at a large multinational corporation in Shanghai. His role involves data entry and administrative tasks, requiring long hours of staring at a computer screen and managing spreadsheets. The job, though dull and unfulfilling, provides a steady paycheck that covers his basic living expenses. 

Most of Zhang Wei's income is carefully allocated towards his secret necromantic pursuits. He spends a significant portion of his salary on acquiring ancient texts, rare occult artifacts, and ritualistic materials from black market dealers and obscure online sources. These items are often expensive and hard to come by, requiring him to meticulously budget his expenses and sometimes resort to frugal living to afford his dark hobbies. In addition to these purchases, he invests in high-quality incense, candles, and other ceremonial items necessary for his necromantic rituals.

Despite his meager salary, Zhang Wei also saves a small amount each month, anticipating the need for larger, more significant investments in the future—perhaps a particularly rare artifact or a costly, forbidden tome. His apartment, though cluttered with his collections, is sparsely furnished, reflecting his minimalistic lifestyle. Zhang Wei avoids unnecessary luxuries, focusing his spending almost entirely on advancing his knowledge and capabilities in necromancy. His obsession with the dark arts leaves little room for indulgence in the more mundane pleasures of life, as every yuan he earns is another step closer to mastering the secrets of life and death.

Zhang Wei's ambition is to uncover and expose the hidden truths of life and death, believing that a shadowy global conspiracy has kept humanity in ignorance for millennia. He is convinced that powerful secret societies, government entities, and ancient cults have conspired to conceal the true nature of existence and the afterlife. Zhang Wei aims to harness the powers of necromancy not only to gain control over life and death but to reveal and dismantle these hidden power structures. His ultimate goal is to become a dark prophet, exposing the conspiracies and leading a revolution against those who have kept the world in darkness.

Driven by his belief in a world-spanning conspiracy, Zhang Wei is willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve his goals. He spends countless hours poring over forbidden texts, conducting secret rituals, and making contact with other like-minded individuals who share his vision. His home is a fortress of knowledge, where he meticulously plots his next moves, always looking for the next clue or piece of the puzzle that will bring him closer to the truth.

Despite his fanatical drive, Zhang Wei has a deep-seated fear of death. This fear manifests in his cautious approach to his necromantic practices; he is meticulous in his preparations and avoids unnecessary risks. However, his fear does not extend to others. Zhang Wei is willing to manipulate, deceive, and even kill if it means advancing his cause. He justifies these actions as necessary sacrifices in the larger battle against the global conspiracy. Each life taken, each soul manipulated, is a step closer to his ultimate goal of unmasking the hidden puppeteers of the world.

Zhang Wei's fear of death makes him highly protective of his own life. He employs various protective measures, both mundane and supernatural, to safeguard himself from harm. He constantly seeks out new rituals and spells to ward off danger, viewing each new necromantic power as a shield against his own mortality. However, his fear also drives him to the brink of madness, as he grapples with the irony of his quest for necromantic power and his terror of the very death he seeks to control.

The most defining event of Zhang Wei's life occurred on an unremarkable Tuesday afternoon at his office. He was in the middle of another monotonous day, mindlessly inputting data into spreadsheets. The fluorescent lights above hummed dully, and the rhythmic clatter of keyboards filled the room. It was the kind of day that blurred into all the others, seemingly devoid of significance. However, something snapped in Zhang Wei as he reached for his mug of lukewarm coffee.

As he stared into the murky depths of his cup, he suddenly became acutely aware of the sheer repetitiveness and insignificance of his existence. The mundane routine of waking up, commuting to work, staring at a screen, and going home to sleep began to feel like an endless loop, a Sisyphean cycle with no purpose or escape. In that moment, he felt a profound sense of emptiness and futility, as if he was trapped in a never-ending labyrinth of mediocrity.

This mundane epiphany sparked a drastic change in Zhang Wei. He began to question everything about his life and the world around him. The realization that his existence was nothing more than a series of meaningless routines ignited a deep-seated desire to seek something greater, something hidden beneath the surface of everyday life. He started to notice patterns and connections in the ordinary events around him, interpreting them as signs of a deeper, concealed reality.

This moment of clarity pushed Zhang Wei to delve into the occult and the forbidden arts of necromancy. He became obsessed with the idea that there were hidden truths and powers that could break the cycle of mundanity. The defining event was not traumatic in the conventional sense, but it shattered his perception of reality and set him on a path of dark discovery. The coffee cup, once a symbol of his dreary existence, became a catalyst for his transformation into a seeker of forbidden knowledge and an aspiring necromancer determined to uncover and expose the hidden machinations of the world.

Liang Chen works in the same office as Zhang Wei and is the closest person to him, though their relationship is far from deep friendship. Liang is a middle-aged man with a jovial demeanor and a penchant for office gossip. He often strikes up conversations with Zhang Wei during lunch breaks and occasionally invites him out for drinks after work. Despite Zhang Wei being a bit nuts and anti social at times, he sometimes finds himself confiding in Liang about his frustrations with their mundane jobs.

Professor Liu Min was Zhang Wei's lecturer during his university years, where he studied history and archaeology before drifting into his office job. A respected academic in the field of Chinese antiquities, Liu Min recognized Zhang Wei's potential and passion for ancient history. They maintained sporadic contact after Zhang Wei graduated, with Liu occasionally inviting him to lectures or academic gatherings.

Lin Xia is a young woman in her mid-20s who lives in the apartment across the hall from Zhang Wei. Outgoing and social, she often throws small gatherings and parties, which Zhang Wei finds incredibly annoying due to the noise and disruption. Lin Xia initially thought of Zhang Wei as a reclusive and eccentric individual, suspecting him of being a "nut job" because of his odd hours and mysterious behavior. Despite their differences, Lin Xia occasionally attempts polite conversation, mostly out of neighborly obligation, but finds Zhang Wei's curt and aloof responses off-putting. Zhang Wei, on his part, sees her as a bothersome presence, interrupting his concentration and the solemn quiet he prefers.