Yang Ge

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Before transmigrating, Yang Ge had parents, an older sister, a younger brother, loyal friends, substantial savings, and a three-bedroom apartment in a provincial capital. He had been with his girlfriend for six years and was approaching marriage. Transmigration separated him from that entire life, leaving him without local family, property, or a recognized past 2.

His body became seventeen or eighteen years younger, and its accumulated strains and old injuries disappeared. He initially suspected these changes were a side effect of passing through a spacetime tunnel 6.

An old fisherman rescued him from the Bian River, while Shopkeeper Liu gave him work and helped arrange household registration. Yang Ge repaid the fisherman with food, wheat, firewood, and offers of medical help. By his first documented visit, he said he no longer wanted to die, although he still did not know how to live 1.

He later rented a dilapidated courtyard and adopted Little Yellow. Renovating the property occupied him through the summer and gradually restored some vitality to him. He eventually expanded into the rear courtyard, planning a vegetable garden, chicken enclosure, and workshop 5 11 26.

Appearance

Yang Ge is tall and straight-backed; prolonged outdoor work darkens his skin markedly during his first summer in Great Wei 1 11 41.

• Rejuvenated body: Physically seventeen or eighteen years younger than before transmigration; his exact age is not stated 6.
• Summer complexion: Described as charcoal-black after repeated sunburns while renovating his courtyard 11.
• Official disguise: Wears a demonic half-mask with an embroidered official robe when confronting the Five Ghosts 31.
• Grain-company disguise: Layers a Nine of Coins mask over his half-mask and uses a cloth cap 50.

Personality

Yang Ge’s early withdrawal stems from homesickness rather than ambition or dissatisfaction with his former life. He can sit staring outside for hours and fears that his parents will be unable to find him even after death. He initially wants an uneventful existence, resisting both court service and involvement in martial-world grudges 7 10.

He is deeply grateful and protective toward those who offer him kindness. His care for the fisherman and Little Yellow contrasts with his willingness to risk his own life. He also helps strangers: he pays for a destitute man to bury two bodies and asks him to live on and help someone else when able 1 6 22.

His aversion to trouble does not extend to accepting cruelty. He refuses money taken from his soldiers, rejects tribute from grain firms, and defends an innocent servant girl despite threats from assassins. His principles can also become frightening anger: after a night of killings, he maims and tortures captured attackers until Shen Fa intervenes 20 41 42 47.

Yang Ge understands manipulation and worldly conventions without automatically accepting them. His exchanges with Shen Fa mix suspicion, blunt insults, dry humor, and genuine gratitude. Martial training eventually becomes his greatest hobby, overtaking courtyard renovation 7 20 35 38.

Abilities & Skills

Lesser Grandmaster Physique

His constitution combines immense physical strength with unusually favorable conditions for cultivation 6.

• Superhuman strength: Can casually toss a stone millstone weighing nearly two hundred jin and use a similarly heavy bluestone strip to tamp down earth 6 26.
• Open, resilient meridians: Allows force to follow his intent rapidly, supporting abrupt changes between attacks without a corresponding loss of power 32.
• Continuous cultivation: Can circulate Inner Qi through the greater celestial circuit while waiting tables or teaching, without needing to stop and meditate 43.
• Limits: Talent does not supply combat experience. Shen Fa warns that bypassing the process of training can leave him powerful but insufficiently tempered 35.

Wild Wind Leg

Also called the Eighteen Routes of Chaotic Wind Kicks, this internal martial art provides his initial foundation and principal kicking techniques 6 8.

• Movement and combinations: Links snapping, chopping, sweeping, and whipping kicks; generated winds can sustain him briefly in midair and permit unusual attack angles 19.
• Wind-Catching Shadow-Seizing: Stacks successive kicks into a concentrated finishing blow 19.
• Wind Sweeps Away the Clouds: He executes this killing move without the expected momentum buildup during his fight with Liu Meng 32.
• Limits: Its strongest moves consume substantial energy and strain the body. Before entering Qi Sea, their force-stacking requirements sharply restrict repeated use 19.
• Mastery: By his own assessment, he understands roughly eighty percent of the art; the remainder requires time and actual combat rather than talent alone 46.

Snowfall Palm and Snowfall Formula

Snowfall Palm shares a lineage with Wild Wind Leg and complements its kicks. It emphasizes intricate movement and the combination of hard and soft force 35 46.

• Frost Slays a Hundred Grasses: His first demonstrated killing move sends multiple attackers flying backward with surging palm force 38.
• Internal cultivation: The accompanying Snowfall Formula emphasizes control over Inner Qi, fitting his need to refine power rather than accelerate its growth 46.
• Limits: His progress with the palm technique is slow because he struggles with its underlying yin-yang, five-elements, taiji, and eight-trigrams concepts 46.
• Unattained potential: Phantom-like movement and palm force divided hundreds or thousands of ways are described as full-mastery capabilities, not abilities he has already achieved 46.

Frost-Defying Saber

The Eighteen Routes Frost-Defying Saber uses direct attacks and emphasizes true intent and killing aura 46.

• Early breakthrough: Using a narrow elm-wood practice saber, he unexpectedly cuts a waist-thick ironwood post from roughly a foot away 46.
• Limits: He cannot immediately reproduce the strike and struggles to understand the manual’s pure killing intent 46.
• Field use: During his grain-company operation, he defeats Ling Guan in a brief exchange with a Willow-Leaf Saber 50.

Combat Training and Command

Yang Ge develops his own fighting awareness while training his banner for practical operations 43.

• Three-man teams: Assigns battlefield control, frontal attack, and ranged harassment to separate members 43.
• Scenario drills: Practices open-field battles, alley fights, night engagements, uneven numbers, and larger formations 43.
• Intelligence preparation: Studies closed patrol and arrest files and trains men through real assignments rather than discussion alone 18 24 43.
• Recognized weakness: Initially lacks execution and awareness appropriate to his realm. Repeated sparring against coordinated guards helps address this gap 43.

Renovation and Innkeeping

• Construction: Transforms a crumbling courtyard into a well-kept home, including grinding ordinary stone paving smooth with a millstone 11 12.
• Heavy labor: Demolishes and levels the rear courtyard in a single day using his strength and fully developed Inner Force 26.
• Food business: Introduces copper-pot mutton at the Welcome Inn, attracting prosperous customers. The mutton itself breaks even; drinks and side dishes provide the profit 44.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Gold Buddha necklace and Casio Big Mudmaster watch: Belongings recovered from the river and returned by the fisherman 1.
• Firewood axe: Used against the intruder later identified as Ding Man; its bloodied state helps confirm the attacker’s identity 4 9.
• Short-hafted broad battle-axe: Requested for the river operation so it could serve as a hammer and its broad head as a shield 13.
• Ghostly Walls: Gunpowder pellets containing sensory-irritating powders, with an effective range of five feet. Fang Ke warns against using them on Qi Sea experts, who could turn the contents back on him 13.
• Banner Commander waist token: Presented by Shen Fa when pressing him to accept responsibility for the rescued ship guards 17.
• Koi Narrow-Sleeved Uniform and Bronze-Pattern Ox-Tail Saber: Delivered by Fang Ke after his appointment 20.
• Demonic half-mask and Nine of Coins mask: Conceal his identity during confrontations and the grain-company operation 31 50.
• Willow-Leaf Saber: Carried during his raid on Everlasting Peace’s warehouse 50.

Relationships

• Shopkeeper Liu — Employer, benefactor, and fatherly supporter. Helps secure his registration, encourages him through homesickness, and explicitly treats him as family 1 10 28.
• Old fisherman — Rescuer and recipient of Yang Ge’s sustained care. Returns his recovered belongings and asks whether he still wants to die 1.
• Little Yellow — Adopted dog and household companion. Yang Ge treats him as family and refers to himself as his father 5 6 22.
• Shen Fa — Superior, recruiter, and martial adviser. Draws Yang Ge into official service through pressure and obligation, but also protects him and offers sincere guidance 7 17 35 42.
• Fang Ke — Junior Banner Officer and operational assistant. Their relationship includes friction over money and expediency, alongside growing trust and respect 18 20 38 40.
• Jiang Kui — First martial benefactor. Gives him Wild Wind Leg and later thanks him for helping his sworn brothers 2 44.
• Liu Meng — Adversary from the Five Ghosts of Yan Yun. Fights Yang Ge over his connection to Wild Wind Leg and is defeated through Yang Ge’s brute strength 31 32 33 34.
• Lei Heng — Overwhelmingly stronger opponent who injures Yang Ge, leaves him a manual, and entrusts him with a message for Jiang Kui 33 34 35.
• Liu Mang — Shopkeeper Liu’s son and prospective martial-school partner. Yang Ge makes his cooperation conditional on the elder Liu’s approval 12.
• Wang Dali — Fellow inn worker who repeatedly urges him to pursue martial advancement; Yang Ge largely ignores the pressure 2 11.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Jiang Kui’s Manual

Jiang Kui recognizes Yang Ge’s exceptional body while being served at the Welcome Inn and rewards him with a martial manual. Yang Ge correctly anticipates that the donor’s reputation and enemies will make the gift dangerous. He drives off a thief, then witnesses that man’s public execution—a spectacle that leaves him shaken 2 3 4 9.

Entry into the Embroidered Uniform Guard

Yang Ge reluctantly agrees to work for Shen Fa as a privately paid hire rather than a registered official. A supposed spy-catching mission then places him in the struggle between Great Wei, the Tartars, the emperor, and the great clans. During the assault on the Xie family’s ships, his call for surrender spares the guards; Shen Fa later says it saved over a thousand lives when their families are included 7 12 14 15 17.

Pressed to vouch for those men, Yang Ge becomes Banner Commander of an independent unit directly under Shen Fa. He imposes discipline, has recruits work as river towmen to remain inconspicuous, and builds the banner to fifty-one members, including himself 17 18 20.

Conflict with the Five Ghosts

After Liu Meng confronts him near his home, Yang Ge breaks through to Qi Sea and mobilizes his banner. He defeats Liu Meng by turning their exhausted contest of leg techniques into a close-quarters struggle. Lei Heng then defeats him almost instantly, but leaves a manual and a message rather than killing him. Jiang Kui later explains that his brothers spared Yang Ge after recognizing their deceased fourth brother’s signature technique 29 30 31 32 33 44.

The County-Office Attack

Yang Ge defeats outlaws at the county offices and encounters a one-eyed swordsman guarding a servant girl. The swordsman kills himself after asking Yang Ge to protect her. When three attackers return to eliminate the witness, Yang Ge refuses to surrender her, captures them, and tortures them for answers. Shen Fa takes over before his anger escalates further; Yang Ge rejects the suggested promotion afterward 38 39 41 42.

Grain-Company Conflict

Rising grain prices expose a network of stockpiling, inflated sales, predatory property purchases, and official payoffs. Yang Ge refuses his share of the tribute despite Fang Ke’s warning that doing so may endanger the banner 46 47.

Disguised as Nine of Coins and calling himself Zhang Mazi, he confronts Everlasting Peace’s Road Pavilion steward, Ling Guan. He demands 3,808 jin, 8 liang, and 6 qian of millet every three days for three months, leaves with five carts, and directs his challenge toward the Wang family. He announces that Abundant Prosperity and Rich Harvest will also be made to provide grain 50.

Notable Quotes

“I have no family left. I can't let him lose his family too.” 6

“But which way is forward?” 10

“But as long as I have a single breath left, no one is touching so much as a hair on that girl!” 41