Ebb Within—The Ritual Without Shore: Spatialized VR Reconstruction of the White Snake’s Inner World Through Dual-Identity Participation

This research proposes a “Chinese Aesthetic Spatial Expression System” (CASES) for cultural heritage contexts, exploring an emotionally spatialized Virtual Reality (VR) narrative model of “Inner Imagery” and its corresponding methodology. Implemented through the VR interactive narrative work Ebb Within, developed using Unreal Engine 5, the study reinterprets The Tale of the White Snake as an emotion-driven immersive experience. It establishes a “participatory introspection” narrative mechanism, enabling users to adopt a dual identity and delve into seven fragmented inner dreamscapes of Bai Suzhen (White Snake) before her drowning. Through multimodal interactions involving emotional atmospheres, cultural rituals, and Peking Opera soundscapes, users explore the themes of obsession and redemption. The study contributes three core methodologies: a four-layer mapping model of “Inner Emotion → Imagery Space”; a five-element process for the “Embodied Interactive Translation of Cultural Symbols”; and a triple-loop pathway of “Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic” cross-modal coupling within the CASES framework. This research provides a reusable framework and practical evidence to support the development of Intangible Cultural Heritage VR (ICH-VR) experiences.