Zhang Cheng

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Early Cultivation

Zhang Cheng once secluded himself in the mountains to cultivate, but something went wrong during the process. By the time he emerged, his parents had already been dead for years. He recounts this experience when Zhou Yi considers returning home to visit his own parents’ graves 40.

Ministry of Works

By Zhou Yi’s arrival, Zhang Cheng is an established Ministry of Works clerk whom colleagues greet readily and Demon-Slaying Commandants bow to respectfully. He is the ministry’s only openly acknowledged upper-third-grade expert, receives its highest salary, and is treated with reverence even by Chief Clerk Chen 17 18 24.

Assigned to work with Zhou Yi, he explains the departments, restricted areas, and ledger system. He lends the newcomer two strings of coins for lodging, then leaves him to classify and transcribe the records while pretending to sleep. After checking the finished work, he establishes their arrangement: Zhou Yi copies, and Zhang Cheng proofreads 17.

He also introduces Zhou Yi to the ministry’s lucrative benefits. Defective pills and inferior demon meat can be sold through a trusted merchant; through this connection, Zhou Yi receives three hundred taels per pill. Zhang Cheng warns him not to sell indiscriminately or question the arrangement’s legal technicalities too deeply 20 22.

Demons and White Cloud Temple

When Zhou Yi notices something wrong with the courtesan Bright Moon, Zhang Cheng confirms that the bureau already knows. He distinguishes the legal treatment of demons who have harmed no one from the practical protection enjoyed by those with powerful patrons 21.

The nine-tailed fox’s disturbance in Luo Capital provokes a rare display of anger. Zhang Cheng condemns the powerful figures who stood aside while someone bullied the capital, then mutters about leaving the city despite his attachment to the Spring Breeze Pavilion 31.

After Zhou Yi’s battle with the Fox Immortal, Zhang Cheng shares spirit tea taken from White Cloud Temple while its elders are occupied outside North City. The elders later retaliate with curses that leave him with an aching back. He recovers and resumes his usual carefree routine 33 37 39.

Appearance

• Elderly exterior: Appears at least seventy and moves with an exaggeratedly frail, tottering manner 17.
• Red, bulbous nose: Accompanied by a persistent smell of liquor 17.
• Unkempt clothing: Wears wrinkled clerical robes of uncertain cleanliness 17.
• Uncertain apparent age: Zhou Yi suspects either deliberate disguise or genuine old age; neither explanation is confirmed 17.

Personality

Zhang Cheng is convivial, teasing, and thoroughly indulgent. He drinks at work, naps through assignments, frequents the Spring Breeze Pavilion, and increasingly neglects his duties after Zhou Yi takes over the copying. His irreverence extends to accepting a gifted pill while joking that the younger clerk is already bribing his superior 17 20 24.

His frivolous manner conceals practical judgment and generosity. He helps Zhou Yi find his footing, explains institutional dangers, and provides valuable protection for his journey home. When discussing cultivation, he becomes notably serious: he insists that cultivating the heart and temperament cannot be rushed 20 38 40.

His enjoyment of pleasure coexists with bitterness and regret. He sings about frustrated heroic ambitions and reacts angrily to the capital’s defenders refusing to act. Zhou Yi eventually interprets his attachment to tea as an expression of loneliness and remembrance, rather than merely taste 21 29 31.

Abilities & Skills

Martial Arts

• Second-grade cultivation: Practices Martial Dao alongside Daoist arts 37 38.
• Physical strength: Shatters a ten-foot ornamental rockery with one punch after Zhou Yi questions whether he is overexerting himself at his age 22.
• Stance training: Offers to teach Zhou Yi a method that he claims can ensure a lifespan of one hundred years; the promised instruction has not materialized by their later conversation 18 21.

Spirit Refining and Daoist Arts

• Daylight-roaming Yin Spirit: His Yin Spirit can travel by day, though it remains below True Person Changchun’s Yang Spirit 37.
• Powerful aura: His anger creates an oppressive atmosphere throughout the office; the narration notes that an upper-third-grade expert’s unconsciously released aura can affect the surroundings 31.
• Recognized strength: Zhou Yi initially judges him to be an upper-third-grade Spirit Refining expert no weaker than Fahai 16.
• Unconfirmed lineage: His magical aura suggests an orthodox Daoist background to Zhou Yi, but no specific sect is identified 17.

Cultivation Instruction

• Scripture-based guidance: Recommends copying and reciting twelve orthodox Daoist scriptures to cultivate the heart, restrain anger, and understand the Yin Spirit 24 38.
• Essence, energy, and spirit: Explains that understanding the scriptures alone is insufficient to condense a Yin Spirit without bodily vitality and energy to nourish the soul 38.
• Sword training: Supplies the first volume of the Great Qian Sword Scripture in exchange for ten ten-jin jars of Beast Drunk. Promises the second volume if Zhou Yi perfects the first and reaches seventh-grade Martial Dao within ten years 39 40.
• Limits of knowledge: Admits limited familiarity with the Hundred Schools, explaining only that their heart cultivation can culminate in Yin Spirit condensation, which they call “Establishing Destiny” 44.

Calligraphy, Tea, and Opera

• Calligraphy: Combines free-flowing elegance with the upright precision of the Palace Pavilion Style. Zhou Yi imitates his handwriting and later sells scripture manuscripts written in this style 24 26 27.
• Uneven work habits: His ledger writing begins gracefully but deteriorates into nearly unreadable scrawls toward the end of the day 17.
• Tea preparation: Brews tea with natural, unforced movements and recognizes Refreshing Spring water by its scent 21 27.
• Opera performance: His singing of the Luo Capital opera Youthful Journey rivals that of renowned pleasure-house performers 34.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Wine gourd — Carries it at work and drinks before settling down to rest 17.
• Storage Dharma Artifact — Produces a previously unseen purple teapot set from storage 27.
• Handwritten Daoist scriptures — Twelve orthodox texts used in his own Yin Spirit studies and lent to Zhou Yi 24 26 38.
• Sword Scripture notebook — Contains illustrated meridians, sword-technique explanations, and personal annotations; dated Jingtai Year Thirty-Two, Jichou Month 39.
• Drunken Spring Return — Treasured spirit tea from White Cloud Temple’s mother trees that nourishes the soul and consciousness 21.
• Beast Drunk recipe — Provides the recipe as part of his sword-manual bargain with Zhou Yi; the liquor requires at least Body Refining cultivation to drink safely 39.
• Thunder Talismans — Gives Zhou Yi a stack for his journey. They require no magical power and activate when smeared with blood qi 40.

Relationships

• Zhou Yi — Junior colleague, drinking companion, and informal student. Zhang Cheng provides financial help, cultivation texts, sword instruction, and travel protection while continuing to regard him as a vulnerable former executioner rather than recognizing his concealed strength 17 24 38 40.
• Chief Clerk Chen Shao — Superior in the Ministry of Works. Chen criticizes his drinking but treats him respectfully because of his cultivation and importance to the office 16 24.
• Qingmei — Spring Breeze Pavilion woman with whom he becomes infatuated, contributing to increasingly late arrivals at work 22.
• White Cloud Temple elders — Targets of his tea theft. They retaliate with curses, which he resents rather than accepting that he should pay for the tea 33 37.
• Parents — Died while he was secluded in the mountains; their loss informs his sympathy for Zhou Yi’s wish to tend his family graves 40.

Notable Quotes

“A book must be copied to be truly read. Copying it once beats reading it ten times!” 24

“There are no shortcuts to cultivating the heart and tempering the nature.” 38

“The dead are gone, but the living must carry on. Mourn them, and make peace with what has happened.” 40

Trivia

• Zhou Yi jokingly compares him to a legendary hidden “sweeping monk,” then revises the description to a “bookkeeping monk.” This is a comparison, not an established Buddhist affiliation 16.
• His favorite saying pairs wine with lifting the spirits and bolstering courage, and tea with nurturing one’s disposition and cultivating the self 26.