Zhan Qisheng

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Origin and You Si

Zhan Qisheng’s origin lies in Xingtian’s final battle with the Yellow Emperor. Facing death, Xingtian transforms the Qi Axe into an immortal embryo, entrusting it with the Zhan Tribe’s survival and the hope that it will follow its own heart. Du Yu discovers this connection when Zhan Qisheng becomes too dizzy to enter the legend, sensing another version of himself nearby 277.

In his youth, Zhan Qisheng wanders without knowing where he came from or where he belongs. Qinglian and Peach Blossom save him from starvation or freezing, but later disappear while he is staying with them. Blaming himself for failing to protect them, he allows their villagers to bind and burn him despite possessing the power to retaliate 425 426.

You Si rescues him during a Demon Beast’s attack. He copies her Time Spell and follows her through the wilderness, eventually asking to learn cultivation. When she expresses her wish that everyone should have the right to choose their own fate, he vows to fulfill it in repayment for her rescue 426 427.

The Bureau and Yingning

After cultivating into a True Immortal, Zhan Qisheng helps He Suoyi establish the Legend Management Bureau and build its equipment. He becomes its original Operator, entering legends to preserve their prescribed outcomes 15 77 111.

About a thousand years before Du Yu’s bureau work, he retrieves Yingning from a lake in the Qing era and brings her into the Song era. Bound to a jade pendant, she can accompany his journeys through time. Their companionship develops into mutual affection, and she becomes the person to whom he confesses his distress over bureau missions 77.

His breaking point follows the legends of Jingwei and Kuafu. He forces Jingwei to drown and become a seabird, then deceives Kuafu into running for nine days and nights until his death. Convinced that the bureau’s promise to save living beings cannot justify such sacrifices, he severs his connection and resigns nine hundred years before Du Yu becomes an Operator 6 77.

Immediately afterward, he saves the woodcutter Du Nanshan from Kuafu’s newly formed peach grove, despite Yingning warning that the man’s descendants will become Supreme Pivots. He then parts from Yingning rather than expose her to his intended campaign of giving people control over their lives. The bureau publicly reports that he died in an accident and that his soul dispersed 77 78.

Appearance

Zhan Qisheng is repeatedly recognized as an exceptionally handsome man, usually dressed in black 75 81 111.

• Eyes: Fathomless or unfathomable, often accompanying a cold expression 15 75 225.
• Usual clothing: Black robes or black clothing; his attire resembles You Si’s 71 77 315.
• Modern clothing: Wears a trench coat during the bus confrontation 229.
• Build: Tall, with powerful arms exposed when his sleeves are torn during battle 229 311.

Personality

Zhan Qisheng is reserved, blunt, and uncomfortable with unfamiliar social situations. He dismisses Yingning’s attempts to make him smile, struggles to address the stronghold’s bandits, and reacts awkwardly when asked to explain childbirth to Izanagi and Izanami 77 82 148.

His cold manner conceals deep compassion and guilt. He refuses to retaliate against the villagers who intend to burn him, grieves over Jingwei and Kuafu, and rejects the idea that strength grants a right to kill. Personal choice becomes his central principle, rooted in his promise to You Si 77 425 426 427.

He does not always live up to that principle. During the attack on the Zhang Family Stronghold, he admits that his actions contradict his beliefs but insists he cannot withdraw. His attachment to Yingning also leads him to make decisions for her while withholding his own feelings; during the later battle, she wishes he would simply ask what she wants 76 311.

His loyalty can become self-destructive. Even badly wounded, he tries to continue fighting, and Yingning must persuade him that staying alive is necessary to repay what he owes her 311.

Abilities & Skills

Great Dao of Time

Time cultivation is Zhan Qisheng’s specialty. He states that his constitution prevents him from comprehending the five elements and allows him to grasp only the Great Dao of Time 77.

• Travel through past and future: Retrieves a childhood sandal, alters a man’s past to produce an old scar, and brings back fruit from the future 82.
• Immediate spell copying: Learns You Si’s Time Spell by observing her cast it 426.
• Movement reversal: Uses “Great Dao of Time! Reverse the course!” to force Cavendish backward through his recent movements and return him to his earlier seated position 132.
• Timing limit: Can precisely target only a two-hour period rather than an exact instant; frequent travel can leave him dizzy and uncertain of his arrival time 82.
• Passenger limit: Can travel with objects but cannot take Qu Xi with him. Yingning accompanies him while bound to a jade pendant 77 225.
• Duplicate-self interference: Proximity to another version of himself can cause such severe dizziness that he cannot cast his Time Spell 277.

Wind and Offensive Techniques

Zhan Qisheng uses gales, wind blades, and large tornadoes despite describing his cultivation as time-based rather than Five-Element cultivation 76 77 132.

• Tornadoes: Sweep up furniture, weapons, flooring, and walls; serve both as wide-area attacks and barriers 76 132 309.
• Wind blades: Launch cutting projectiles. Against Cavendish, they destroy clothing but fail to penetrate his red-scaled skin 79 132.
• Defensive gales: Deflect Cavendish’s cane and repel his claw attack 132.
• Reverse Wind: Identified as his signature technique; You Si’s version is ten times stronger 314.
• Reversed Flowing Fire: Sets several Black Monks ablaze while he protects Sage 309.
• Winter Flowers in Summer: Produces ice-crystal lotuses that enter the red thread spirit’s body and release wood-aspected spiritual energy, forcing her to protect her heart meridians 285.

Legend Access and Communications

His Time Spell enables entry into legends, while his knowledge of bureau systems allows him to interfere with their monitoring 6 77 81.

• Feed severance: Cuts off his own bureau connection and later blocks Du Yu’s transmission 6 15 81.
• Cross-Time Telepathy: Teaches the technique to Yingning and detects its use during the stronghold confrontation 76 77.
• Remote contact: Receives Du Yu’s voice transmission while traveling through a desert 111.

Equipment Design

Zhan Qisheng designs equipment that incorporates his Time Spells 111 485.

• Original bureau machinery: Built with He Suoyi from hard diamonds rich in spiritual energy 111.
• Replacement equipment: Requires suitable diamonds to be gathered and shaped before he imbues them with Time Spells; sourcing the materials is the principal obstacle 111.
• Legend-entry and observation mechanism: Draws plans for a device allowing others to enter and observe legends using his power, so they can intervene if he disappears or becomes trapped. He Suoyi agrees to build it 485.

Other Demonstrated Skills

• Flight: Travels independently through the air; Du Yu later uses his power to continue flying toward Great Dark Heaven 111 148 387.
• Object-Controlling Art: Effortlessly levitates and maneuvers the Golden Flood Dragon Scissors, which Du Yu and Jin Jianglang cannot lift by strength alone 258.
• Treatment: Treats Xu Xian after Bai Suzhen returns with the Lingzhi Herb, restoring him to human form 170.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Jade pendant: Worn at his waist and serves as Yingning’s vessel during their early travels. It allows her to remain with him across time 77.
• Qi Axe: The spiritually rooted weapon from which Xingtian creates his immortal embryo; it is his origin, not a documented weapon he later carries 277.
• Legend mechanism plans: Designs for an entry-and-observation device intended to provide a means of rescuing him from legends 485.

Relationships

• Yingning — His romantic attachment and emotional anchor. Their separation leaves her waiting for five thousand years; after their reunion, he tries to understand her happiness and hopes for forgiveness. She later stops his bleeding and insists that he survive to repay her 77 79 81 311.
• Du Yu — Initially an opponent whom he threatens and attempts to recruit; later a friend who obtains his pardon, brings him back to the bureau, and protects his soul from Black Impermanence 15 111 371.
• You Si — His rescuer and early teacher. Her wish for universal freedom of choice becomes a commitment he adopts as repayment for saving his life 426 427.
• He Suoyi — Bureau co-founder and equipment collaborator. Later recruits him to kill Zhang Jian in exchange for seeing Yingning and erasing his bureau record 77 80 111 485.
• Dong Qianqiu — His bureau contact during the Kuafu mission. Their argument precedes his resignation; she later orders his emergency recall near Nüwa 77 323.
• Zhang Jian — Initially an assassination target. Zhan Qisheng subsequently helps Du Yu reorganize the stronghold and warns that He Suoyi may exploit Zhang Jian’s planned identity exchange 75 82 90.
• Sage — Du Yu’s future self. Zhan Qisheng initially respects the disappearance Sage has arranged for Du Yu, then fights to protect him against the Black Monks. Sage regards Zhan Qisheng as the person most like himself 225 309 311.
• Black Impermanence / Fan Wujiao — Holds a bitter grudge over Su Xiaoxiao’s death. Zhan Qisheng had promised to help him but left for the urgent Kuafu mission without hearing the request, creating a misunderstanding that later endangers Du Yu 352 371.
• Lady Houtu — Hostile toward him and offers to destroy his cultivation for Yingning’s sake. Zhan Qisheng warns Yingning not to meet her 80 169.
• Xingtian — Creates and names him, entrusting him with the Zhan Tribe’s remaining lineage and the duty to oppose injustice 277.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Notable Quotes

“I... am merely a passing traveler in everyone’s lives, along the thousand-year river of time.” 75

“You keep claiming you want to save all living beings, so why are my hands always drenched in blood?!” 77

“Ridiculous. Yingning has a mind of her own. She’s not an object.” 81

Trivia

• Xingtian names him Qisheng with the wish that he will win every battle. His accompanying declaration—“to quell the turmoil, you must fight and prevail”—also explains the coded message associated with Zhan Qisheng’s earlier intervention in Da Yi’s legend 6 277.
• Pockmarked Zhang is deliberately ill-fitting: Xiao Qi immediately questions why such a handsome man would have that name, and Zhan Qisheng later corrects it upon returning to the bureau 81 111.
• His uncertain travel timing appears from his first copied Time Spell: he reaches You Si’s destination an hour before she does 426.