Demon God

Biodata

Power Progression

The documented progression distinguishes power comparable to a Demon God, being born as one, and receiving the authority of The Seven.

Nature and Origins

Birth

Demon Gods generally arise from humanity's understanding of the world. Their origins can reflect practical discoveries, perceptions of natural phenomena, or emotions such as fear 150.

• Demon Gods are born alone, already possessing strength, language, and wisdom; they do not pass through human infancy or possess innate family bonds 166.
• They are described as remaining in their prime for eternity, though they can still be killed, sealed, weakened, or corrupted 166 196 292 295.
• Divine status does not guarantee combat prowess. Guizhong and Marchosius are explicitly described as non-combat-oriented Demon Gods with comparatively weak divine power 215 216 219.
• The sea readily produces Demon Gods, including powerful Upper Demon Gods capable of unleashing repeated tsunamis 216.

Humans and Retainers

• Human protection is voluntary. Only a minority willingly become a community's deity, since protecting humans is troublesome and offers no reward 175.
• Indifference is not necessarily hostility. The Fire Fox Demon God refuses to become a village's guardian but likes human children; her supposed intention to discard them is clarified as returning them home 174 175 208.
• Worship creates strong attachments. One defeated Demon God's followers shield him with their bodies, and he asks Morax not to hurt them before his death 202.
• Divine identity creates social distance. Once Xiu Yuan and Morax reveal themselves as Demon Gods, villagers can no longer treat them with their former familiarity 179.
• Demon God Retainers are powerful elemental beings recruited to fight for Demon Gods. They include Liyue's adepti and Inazuma's tengu and oni, and their combat strength is described as second only to the gods themselves 199.

Appearance

Demon Gods have no single documented physical form: examples range from humanlike figures to enormous serpentine and ape-shaped beings 174 201 215.

• Humanlike forms: Guizhong appears as a gentle-looking woman in clothing resembling hanfu, with an initially faint divine aura 215.
• Serpentine forms: Osial manifests multiple enormous blue serpentine bodies rising from the sea 62.
• Transformations: One Demon God reveals a mountain-sized Six-Armed Black Ape form during combat 201.
• Abyss-corrupted forms: Reawakened Demon Gods have purple bodies and radiate dark-purple energy; the attackers seen outside Liyue tower like mountain peaks 292 294.

Abilities & Skills

Elemental Power

Demon Gods wield elemental power, but their elements and specializations differ.

• Terrain alteration: Barbatos can blow away mountain ranges, Morax can raise Mt. Tianheng, and Zebu can carve a vast canyon with a slash 166.
• Multiple elements: Glasya-Labolas possesses Electro, Geo, and Pyro rather than a single element 150.
• Specialized attacks: An unnamed ice-wielding Demon God uses Winter Iceberg to encase Morax in an expanding mountain of ice 196.
• Power bestowal: Xiu Yuan and Morax grant small amounts of divine power to the adepti, strengthening their elemental abilities and linking the gods to their alarm devices 198.

Divine Aura and Detection

• A released divine aura can overwhelm ordinary humans with fear 174.
• Aura intensity varies: Morax initially mistakes Guizhong for a human because her Demon God aura is so faint 215.
• Barriers can conceal a Demon God's presence. Osial's revival becomes apparent to Liyue only after the concealing barrier shatters 62.
• Amy seals a breach after escaping, deliberately preventing other imprisoned Demon Gods from following him 47.

Strength, Durability, and Limits

• Superior baseline power: Xiao is described as falling short of the strength required to fight Amy, while four adepti initially cannot subdue a Demon God without Morax's help 47 199.
• Vulnerability to specialized tactics: Ganyu accidentally kills the Six-Armed Black Ape by becoming lodged in its throat; this is treated as an exceptional accident, not proof that she can normally defeat Demon Gods 201 202 211.
• Vulnerability to mechanisms: Guizhong develops the Guizhong Ballista with sufficient power to kill a Demon God 227.
• Suppression weakens them: Thousands of years of sealing reduce the revived gods' strength, but twelve still overwhelm five coordinated Yakshas 295.
• Numbers remain decisive: Twenty-eight infected Demon Gods put even Morax at his peak under severe pressure 335.

Resentment and Karmic Debt

• Karmic debt arises from the resentment of Demon Gods suppressed beneath the earth 163 261.
• The resentment carried by Xiao becomes a major component of Xiu Yuan's accumulated karmic debt 163.
• In Xiu Yuan's ninth lifetime, intervening against certain Demon Gods attacking Liyue causes their resentment to resonate with that debt. His experiments find no corresponding resonance among attackers of the Guili Plains 218.
• The suppressed gods' resentment is ultimately identified as being directed at the Heavenly Principles, who orchestrated the war, rather than at Morax alone 261.

Abyssal Corruption

• Corrupted Demon Gods release dark-purple elemental attacks that infect anyone they strike, forcing defenders to avoid even grazing contact 295.
• They can lose their sense of pain, continuing to attack despite severe wounds 297 298.
• Their joints remain functional weaknesses: the Thousand Rock Corps destroys a Demon God's legs with concentrated explosive attacks 298.
• During one attempted baiting tactic, a Demon God's fireball kills soldiers riding another Demon God without harming that creature 298.
• Xiu Yuan later warns the Seven Archons that Abyssal infection is incurable and means certain death 335.

Known Bearers

History

Emergence and the Archon War

Demon Gods begin appearing after the Year of the Frozen Fires. The recorded timeline places Morax's birth more than 6,000 years ago and the continent-wide struggle for The Seven approximately 2,600–2,000 years ago 152.

With only seven divine seats available, Demon Gods attack rival strongholds to absorb armies and expand territory. The war later escalates through the recruitment of retainers and the destruction of defeated gods' communities 83 199 202.

Xiu Yuan interprets the war as a means of preventing the divine race from developing unchecked. He later accuses the Heavenly Principles of engineering it to select the seven strongest servants, eliminate competitors, and prepare against outside threats 166 258. The resentment of the suppressed gods supports this account: their once-peaceful lives and human attachments had been destroyed by the imposed conflict 261.

Liyue's Alliances and Victories

Not all Demon Gods remain enemies. Xiu Yuan secretly protects the grassland shared by Guizhong and Marchosius, arranging for a trustworthy outsider—Morax—to inherit that responsibility 216 218.

Morax subdues the Fire Fox Demon God and former acquaintances, drives Orobashi out of Liyue, and seals Osial and nearby gods beneath Guyun Stone Forest. Xiu Yuan reinforces that seal with most of his divine power 208. A later alliance of seven Demon Gods fails to conquer Liyue or the Guili Plains, making other gods reluctant to challenge Morax 235 241.

At the war's end, seven victors receive Gnoses from Xiu Yuan's shadow and are ordered to govern the mortal world while forbidding technological development 277 278. Guizhong and Marchosius avoid the postwar reckoning because Xiu Yuan kills and revives them as mortals 267.

Escape and Revival

Sealing does not permanently remove the defeated gods. During Xiu Yuan's fourth lifetime, Amy escapes through a damaged barrier; during his fifth, Osial begins rising from the sea beneath a barrier that conceals his presence 47 62.

In the finale, suppressed Demon Gods across the land break their seals after becoming corrupted by the Abyss. Those beneath Guyun Stone Forest pin Morax down at sea while twelve others attack Liyue's Protective Barrier 292 293 294.

The defenders inflict heavy losses at catastrophic cost. Bosacius's self-detonation kills three gods and cripples two; three further Yaksha detonations kill six more. Fifty Guizhong Ballistas bring down another attacker, while the Thousand Rock Corps sacrifices hundreds of soldiers to destroy a god's legs 296 297 298.

Xiu Yuan eventually destroys the five Demon Gods confronting Xiao, rescues Morax from twenty-eight infected gods, and eliminates the remaining attackers. He restores Liyue's barrier and establishes protective barriers over the central regions of the other six nations 335.

Trivia

• Xiu Yuan connects the gods' names to the Seventy-Two Demons of Solomon, identifying Baal as first, Barbatos as eighth, Morax as twenty-first, and Amy as fifty-eighth 47.
• Glasya-Labolas is identified as Solomon's twenty-fifth demon god and called the “King of Slaughterers.” Despite that association, Xiu Yuan explicitly states that he is not bloodthirsty by nature 150 187.