Ren Pingsheng

She’s an effortless chameleon since she’s able to blend in as a normal person without raising suspicion to anyone that isn’t paying close attention. The reason it was so difficult to pin the murders on her is that she was good at posing as a regular college professor. It’s a mask that’s easy to maintain even when she shows Wanshu the true nature of her crimes. Ren makes for a great manipulator because of this since she makes others question whether or not she could be capable of such violence. It makes it harder with the reporter Bai Qi to report this stuff to the police.

And all those crimes are not something she has any remorse about. She does things rather calmly and rationally. Well, as rationally as you can be about serial murder. Ren thinks nothing of eliminating Wanshu’s rivals through killing. In fact, she only killed people to find some kind of purpose in her life. When she found Wanshu’s stories, she decided to fit her crimes to what she believed were Wanshu’s desires. She also has photos of her previous murders placed in a room for her to enjoy later.

She shows a slight need for stimulation by the way she seems to enjoy murder with how she keeps photos of it. And the way she makes some kills shows how sadistic she can be about it. She makes a pretty big event about torturing Wanshu’s bully Huang Qian by nailing her hands to a desk. Even further, she decides to frame Wanshu’s friend Rujin for the crime and traumatizes her further by showing the corpse in front of her. Her game of cat and mouse with Bai is also something that is done purely for amusement. She knows that Bai suspects her and that she has no way of definitively proving it. And she holds that over her like a game.

Her lack of empathy shows itself through how she treats Wanshu. Despite talking about how much she loves her, she has no qualms about hurting her when she doesn’t behave how she wants. The main reason she kidnapped her is that she didn’t like the ending of her story about a serial killer (who she saw as her stand-in) being killed in the end before she could do more for her. She talks of love, but she makes her a prisoner until she writes something she likes. In addition, she’s willing to frame Rujin to throw the cops and Bai off of her and Wanshu’s scent.

Ren also has some delusions of grandeur considering how she views herself. She tends to see her murders as for a higher purpose like getting rid of terrible people or those who cause trouble for Wanshu. She projects herself onto the killer Paisaike as Wanshu’s savior and has an explosive rage when Wanshu attempts to stop the murders when she realizes that her story may be connected to them. Ren threatens to harm her for trying to get Pansteki killed, seeing it as a slight against her.