Dayu

Biodata

Background / History

During his youth, Dayu followed his father, Gun, eastward to the Central Plains and witnessed floods destroying homes and displacing families. Gun attempted to contain the waters by building dikes, but nine years of blocking the rivers failed to end the disaster. After becoming Minister of Works, Dayu studied that failure and changed the approach from blocking to dredging 9.

Dayu spent thirteen years regulating the waters, crossing mountains and rivers, sharing rough meals and sleeping outdoors with the common people. He passed his own home three times without entering. His work culminated in opening Dragon Gate Mountain and directing the rivers into the sea, ending the floods that had ravaged the Central Plains for twenty years 9.

Approximately four thousand years before the main story, Dayu united Huaxia’s scattered tribes, delineated the Nine Provinces, established his capital at Yangcheng, and founded Xia. In gratitude, the tribes supplied metal to forge the Nine Provinces Cauldron, whose inscribed map represented the realm’s unity. The people bestowed the character “Da,” meaning “great,” before his name to honor his achievements 6.

Appearance

Dayu manifests as a towering ancestral phantom whose form changes as Su Chen recounts his identity and accomplishments 6.

• Scale: Grows to over a thousand meters tall during his identification, then shrinks to ordinary human size before granting his inheritance 6 14.
• Clothing: His initial hempen clothes transform into a black-and-red imperial robe 6.
• Eyes: Described as star-like 9.
• Voice and presence: Speaks with a bell-like resonance; his majestic pressure reaches viewers through screens 6 14.

Personality

Dayu measures prosperity primarily through the survival and flourishing of ordinary people rather than territory or state authority. Upon learning that Huaxia has 1.4 billion people, he immediately asks whether floods still cause suffering. The admission that they do leaves him grieving for the common folk, not condemning his descendants 9.

Initially reserved toward later generations, Dayu comes to recognize remembrance through deeds rather than ritual alone. The courage of flood-response soldiers and disaster-relief volunteers convinces him that his aspirations endure, even among people who had forgotten his name. He openly praises modern Huaxia for surpassing the people of Xia 10 11 14.

His solemn bearing also conceals a competitive, humorous streak. Before departing, he laughs triumphantly that the Nine Provinces Cauldron appeared first, allowing him to grant Su Chen an inheritance before the other ancestors could 15.

Abilities & Skills

Flood Control and Engineering

Dayu’s defining achievement is reorganizing flood-control work around dredging and directing water toward the sea 9.

• Reviews the shortcomings of Gun’s blocking method 9.
• Cuts through mountains and constructs dikes where the terrain requires them 9.
• Opens Dragon Gate with the Mountain-Splitting Axe 35.
• Acknowledges that human strength cannot completely eradicate the destructive power of the Five Elements 9.

Ancestral Suppression

Dayu can personally intervene through his phantom, unlike the silent, statue-like ancestor phantoms previously observed around the world 16.

• Binds the attacking Haidong Awakened and dissolves their blood-condensed weapons 7.
• Strips Jin Junxian’s group of Kim Chunchu’s bloodline power and shatters their skeletons 8.
• Follows their bloodline connection to suppress Kim Chunchu’s ancestral power, affecting his awakened descendants in Haidong 9.
• Removes the awakened power of every foreign Awakened within Huaxia at the same instant 16.
• The wider suppression lifts after he returns to the cauldron 16.

Thought Projection

With a speck of light sent into Su Chen’s head, Dayu reveals Su Chen’s thoughts as images before himself and within the minds of people throughout Huaxia 10.

• Enables the nationwide display of scenes from the 1998 floods and later disaster relief 10 11.
• Can recognize that the displayed scenes are genuine rather than fabricated 11.

Absolute Inheritance

Dayu transfers ancestral power to Su Chen through a hand placed on his shoulder, connecting their bloodlines regardless of whether Su Chen originally carried his blood 14.

• Grants Su Chen greatly enhanced strength and speed, accompanied by radiant golden power 14.
• Allows Su Chen to sense Dayu’s bloodline descendants and awaken their ancestral power 19.
• Gives Su Chen authority to revoke those awakenings at any time 14 39.
• Enables complete command of the Nine Provinces Cauldron 32.
• Entrusts Su Chen with protecting the Nine Provinces in Dayu’s place 14 15.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Nine Provinces Cauldron — Huaxia’s divine artifact and Dayu’s Ancestor Symbol. Forged from metal offered by the Nine Provinces’ tribes and inscribed with their map, it symbolizes national unity and houses his remnant soul. Su Chen later uses it to annihilate Haidong’s invading fleet 6 15 32.
• Mountain-Splitting Axe — The divine artifact Dayu used to cleave Dragon Gate during his flood-control work. Su Chen manifests it through his inheritance and wields it against Haidong’s Awakened and Jin Dachang 35 36.

Relationships

• Gun — Father. His unsuccessful flood-control efforts provide the foundation for Dayu’s shift from blocking to dredging 9.
• Si Qi — Only child and successor. Dayu passes the throne to him, replacing abdication to a worthy successor with hereditary rule; Qi later has five sons 20.
• Su Chen — Chosen inheritor. Restores Dayu’s identity to Huaxia, earns his approval, and receives both his power and responsibility for protecting the Nine Provinces 6 14 15.
• Yellow Emperor and Zhuanxu — Ancestral connections cited as legend: Dayu is described as the Yellow Emperor’s great-great-grandson and a descendant of Zhuanxu 20.

Bloodline Descendants

Dayu’s bloodline survives across many surnames rather than a single royal pedigree. Su Chen explains that his descendants dispersed after Xia’s fall, intermarried, and passed their ancestry through thousands of years of migration and conflict 20.

• Associated surnames: Xia, Xiahou, Zeng, Deng, Bu, Yue, Bao, Lou, Chao, Ou, and Ouyang, among dozens of others 20.
• Notable descendants: King Goujian of Yue and the Qing naval commander Deng Shichang are identified as belonging to branches of Dayu’s lineage 20.
• Awakening safeguards: Su Chen screens candidates and retains the ability to reclaim their power, preventing the inheritance from becoming a means of oppressing fellow citizens 39.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Restoration of Huaxia’s History

• Su Chen identifies Dayu and the Nine Provinces Cauldron, overturning Huaxia’s accepted belief that its history extends back only three hundred years 6.
• Jin Junxian and Haidong’s Awakened claim Dayu as their own ancestor through the Hwandan Gogi and attempt to seize the Ancestor Symbol 6 7.
• Dayu declares himself Emperor Xia, Si Yu, and protects Huaxia. His intervention directly contradicts Haidong’s claim to him 7 8.

Recognition and Departure

• Su Chen shows Dayu modern disaster response, the Three Gorges Dam, and a naval exercise, demonstrating both the continuation of his ideals and achievements beyond ancient Xia 10 11 13.
• Dayu grants Su Chen absolute inheritance after acknowledging the courage, unity, and accomplishments of Huaxia’s descendants 14.
• Before returning to the cauldron, he reveals that other ancestors selected Su Chen from another world and burned their remnant souls to bring him there 15.
• He warns of an approaching great calamity but disappears without explaining its nature. Months later, Su Chen’s investigation has still found no clues 15 39.

Legacy Through Su Chen

• Dayu’s inheritance enables Su Chen to destroy Haidong’s fleet, awaken a million defenders, and defeat the invading forces 32 34 35 36.
• Following the victory, Dayu’s temples receive incense offerings across Huaxia, and the Great Xia dynasty is added to school textbooks 38.
• His awakened descendants help combat disasters, including a wildfire threatening a southwestern city 39.
• His ability to speak and act becomes Su Chen’s precedent for believing that Ying Zheng’s phantom can also awaken and protect his descendants 50.

Notable Quotes

“Though floodwaters fill the skies, they cannot break the levee of united hearts!” 14

“All my life, I devoted myself to the people of the Nine Provinces! Though I have passed away, my spirit shall live on through you!” 15