General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Psych-Hunter (心宅猎人)

Psych-Hunter (心宅猎人; also known as Haunted Houses Handbook) is a 2020 Chinese streaming television drama, a Republican-era mystery with supernatural elements, adapted from the suspense novel Xiong Zhai Bi Ji (凶宅笔记) by the author Er Shi San (贰十三). It ran for 36 episodes on iQiyi from 23 November to 16 December 2020, directed by Li Zelu and starring Hou Minghao, Liu Dongqin, and Zhu Xudan.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	心宅猎人 / Xin Zhai Lie Ren; English title Psych-Hunter, also known as Haunted Houses Handbook¹
Source	Adapted from the novel Xiong Zhai Bi Ji (凶宅笔记) by Er Shi San²
Broadcast	iQiyi, 23 November to 16 December 2020, 36 episodes of about 45 minutes¹^•³
Main cast	Hou Minghao as Jiang Shuo, Liu Dongqin as Qin Yiheng, Zhu Xudan as Yuan Muqing¹
Setting	Republican-era city of Changshanzhou; the "mind house" (心宅), a materialized inner world entered through hypnosis⁴
Central mystery	Jiang Shuo, the only survivor of a case in which seven people disappeared, hunts the murderer "Six Fingers"²
Production	Directed by Li Zelu; executive producers Feng Xiaogang and Wang Xiaohui; companies iQiyi, Yung Pictures, Huayi Brothers, and Mayla Media¹^•⁵

Spoilers

Premise

The story follows Jiang Shuo (江烁), a housing agent who, with his friend Qin Yiheng (秦一恒), buys notorious "haunted houses", houses in which someone died violently, cleanses them, and resells them at a profit.⁶ Jiang Shuo is an amnesiac and the only survivor of a case in which seven people disappeared in Changshanzhou a year earlier; the only clue to the case is hidden in his lost memories.²

After a mysterious figure known as "Six Fingers" (六指) draws the two men into a deadly game, they team up with the policewoman Yuan Muqing (元慕青) to solve a chain of cases and confront the force behind them.¹^•² In the first episode, Qin Yiheng, chief physician of the psychology department at Renji Hospital and son of a merchant who vanished a year earlier, receives a letter from Six Fingers saying the clue to his father lies with Jiang Shuo; Jiang Shuo, framed and imprisoned, hypnotizes a guard to escape and finds memorial tablets of serial-murder victims topped by one bearing his own name.⁷

Cast and characters

Hou Minghao as Jiang Shuo, an amnesiac housing agent who masters mind-reading; the character is voiced by Ling Fei.¹^•¹⁰
Liu Dongqin as Qin Yiheng, a psychiatrist searching for his missing father.¹^•²
Zhu Xudan as Yuan Muqing, a policewoman described in Chinese coverage as a warlord's daughter with a dual personality.¹^•¹¹
Supporting roles include Xiao Xu as Bai Kai, captain of the Changshanzhou police station, and Zong Fengyan as Yuan Zhen.¹^•⁷

The mind house device

The drama's signature device is the mind house (心宅): a person's thoughts given physical form, a dreamlike, shifting space without fixed boundaries that the protagonists enter through hypnosis or mind-reading to find clues. As Jiang Shuo explains in the series, "what one thinks by day, one dreams by night."⁴ The iQiyi episode synopsis describes it as the hypnotized person's subconscious inner world; the investigators do not physically enter it but extract clues from what the subject describes.⁷

Because each person's mind house is subjective, the same event appears differently in different people's spaces, and the protagonists must judge which details are true and which are partial. In one case, a carpenter's mind house shows his daughter's murder not as it happened but as three villains in grotesque costume dancing around an altar, an imagined scene filling what he cannot bear to remember.⁴ This subjectivity gives the cases multiple angles of interpretation, and the clues found in mind houses are more direct than physical-evidence deduction, which keeps the plot fast-moving.⁴

Structure and adaptation

The series works as a unit drama: roughly every two or three episodes close one small case, while the cases chain together into the overarching Six Fingers investigation.⁸ Compared with the novel, the adaptation is extensive. It keeps the haunted-house theme and the characters of Jiang Shuo and Qin Yiheng, but greatly reduces the original's horror and supernatural phenomena, and moves the setting from the present day to the Republican era. The change lets Jiang Shuo's fantastical mind-reading skill pair with Qin Yiheng's scientific psychological analysis in a way the producers considered more acceptable to viewers.⁴ Producer Zhang Yunke said in an interview that, because of regulatory constraints, the television version retained only the character relationships of the novel, whose overall structure she considered well suited to an interactive drama.⁹

The tone is deliberately lighter than the dark, brooding style of hit 2020 suspense dramas such as The Bad Kids and The Long Night: the cases carry heavy truths, but the series aims for brighter color, legend-like flair, and humor, targeting young viewers.⁴

Production and release

The drama was announced with its cast on 13 November 2020, its premiere date confirmed on 18 November, and it began streaming exclusively on iQiyi on 23 November 2020, with a final trailer and character posters released that day.¹² Filming took place in Shanghai.¹ Huayi Brothers' December 2020 share-placement document lists the series among its completed web dramas under the former title Zhan Di Shao Nian (战地少年, "Battlefield Youth").¹³ A Chinese drama database lists an alternate broadcast date of 3 April 2021 and credits the novelist Er Shi San as screenwriter, which conflicts with the 23 November 2020 premiere and the credited screenwriters Xie Xuanchi, Zhang Beisi, and Hu Xingming; the premiere date and named screenwriters are corroborated by multiple other sources.¹⁴^•¹

Reception

Audience scores vary by platform: iQiyi's own page gives the series 6.9 out of 10,⁷ IMDb lists 8.4/10 from 104 votes,¹⁵ and iQiyi's international site shows 9.3.⁶ A Douban reviewer rated it a competent suspense drama, praising the mind-house premise and Hou Minghao's dual role in the final episodes while cautioning that veteran mystery fans should not expect too much of the plotting.⁸ Industry coverage grouped it with the wave of 2020 suspense web dramas, noting that its novel mind-house concept and unusual cases made it stand out among similar series.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles My to So

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?