Di Yi

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Di Yi came from a self-contained world of desolation and death, leaving it to seek a way to heal himself. His memories retained fragments of “common knowledge,” but much of his personal past remained inaccessible. He did not consciously know his name until “Di Yi” emerged instinctively when Stone Village's chief asked him 5 7 23 40.

Upon reaching Stone Village, he could not understand the villagers' speech, although they could understand him. A bone fragment carrying racial inheritance allowed him to learn their language almost instantly. He then stayed in the village, studying writing, everyday conventions, and the surrounding world's geography while joining its morning exercises 5 6 10.

The awakening of his Sea of Potential suggested that his current condition was a remnant of something much greater. Di Yi felt that his original spiritual world might once have approached the scale of all space and time before an upheaval emptied it. This remained his own conviction rather than a recovered account of his past; he chose to concentrate on rebuilding and healing instead 23.

Appearance

• Youthful appearance: The Rain Clan retainer underestimated him partly because he looked young; his actual age is not established 30.
• Handsome, commanding bearing: Huo Yun'e considered him exceptionally handsome, while Elder Gu thought he carried the bearing of someone long accustomed to a lofty position 37 40.
• Naturally immaculate: Rain and wind avoided him, and dust could not cling to his body 6 7 50.
• Divine Radiance: After the medicinal bath, a faint natural glow covered his skin. The patriarch felt as though he were looking upon an entire world, while the Golden Hou perceived him as merging with heaven and earth 24.

Personality

Di Yi is approachable and curious despite his overwhelming physical power. He readily asks about subjects he does not understand, from cultivation terminology to ordinary life, and openly admits that his knowledge is limited. At the Heaven Mending Pavilion, he sought instruction rather than status and was satisfied to study without a dedicated teacher 10 24 41.

He values hospitality and repays kindness. Fond of Stone Village's rustic life, he offered its people an enormous haul of beasts and promised to help its departing youths if they faced mortal danger. He also recognized that a medicinal treatment harmless to him could kill ordinary children and intended to warn the patriarch against recreating it for them 17 21 24.

His easygoing manner does not make him compliant. He rejected Huo Yun'e's attempt to attach him to the Fire Kingdom through a shared technique and warned the Rain Clan retainer before answering violence with lethal force. His desire for belonging initially made him reluctant to fight people who shared his form, but it did not prevent him from defending himself 30 40.

Abilities & Skills

Physical Strength and Durability

Di Yi possessed extraordinary bodily power before learning to cultivate. Shi Yunshan recalled that his early feats involved no visible runes or Precious Techniques 21.

• Destroyed a mountainside and killed a hidden Five-Colored Great Insect with a borrowed bow and one arrow 11.
• Sent a twenty-meter beast flying into a mountain through a collision while moving against a fleeing beast tide 13.
• Killed a Blood Moving cultivator with a punch whose remaining force collapsed a small hill 30.
• Destroyed the Cloud-Rushing Town City Lord's Fierce Tiger manifestation and Bone Beads with one punch 33.
• Endured boiling medicinal liquid and attacks from beast-essence manifestations without pain; he experienced the attacks as a comfortable massage 20 21.

True Understanding

An instinct arising from his Sea of Potential, True Understanding deduces and simulates the underlying truth of phenomena. Di Yi distinguished it from stealing the divinity contained in beast blood 22.

• Reconstructed the Barbarian Bull and Yayu Precious Techniques from manifestations within the medicinal bath 22.
• Analyzed the great black cauldron and used its imagery to rebuild his Sea of Potential 22 23.
• Learned techniques by observing their operation, including the Rain Path and the Divine Vine's Void Crossing 34 47 49.
• Limits: Understanding a technique's principle does not automatically provide all its required runes. He grasped the Nine Heavens of the Rain Path's essence but obtained only its first three heavens before the Golden Hou ended the battle 34.
• Limits: A barrier prevented him from fully understanding the origins of the ten techniques awakened from his former spiritual world 43.

Sea of Potential

Also called the sea of consciousness or boundless sea, this spiritual world embodies knowledge, experience, and perception. Its magnitude governs communion with nature and the outside world 22.

• Can be reshaped and nurtured through True Understanding, even from a depleted state 23.
• Houses the reconstructed images of mountains, rivers, celestial bodies, and living creatures 23.
• Receives essence supplied by his Cave Heavens, supporting his recovery 42 43.
• Preserves dormant remnants of former knowledge, including ten powerful techniques that may offer clues to his past 43.

Ten Cave Heavens

Di Yi's Cave Heavens connect him to the external world and the boundless void, refining essence to replenish his body and Sea of Potential 42 43.

• Opened four in one breakthrough before the development culminated in ten 42 43.
• Contain ten light spheres or true spirits associated with techniques he judged no weaker than the Primordial Vermilion Bird Precious Technique 43.
• Drew nascent energy and wisps of immortal qi into his Sea of Potential, improving the relief of his injuries 43.
• Limits: Available cultivation records did not explain how to advance with ten Cave Heavens without wasting their additional potential 43.

Precious Techniques

Di Yi's physical strength and rune-based attack power do not progress identically. His early combat experimentation showed that ordinary Precious Techniques depended on cultivation and Divine Radiance rather than his exceptional bodily strength 33.

Perception and Resistance to Obscuration

• Heard voices beyond the firmament despite intervening barriers and laws disrupting space-time, although he could not understand their language 7.
• Saw candidates through the Primordial Battlefield's runic barrier without a Precious Technique or visible spiritual heavenly eye 38.
• Saw the Elder Paranormal when the Golden Hou could not 44.
• Could not be perceived by Stone Village's strange stone or the Pavilion's Divine Vine. The vine attributed this to his vastly higher level of life and imperceptible Dao and principles 8 45 46.

These feats did not give him unrestricted tracking ability: the Elder Paranormal's evasions across the vast Pavilion exceeded what his current rune attainments could handle 44.

Dustless Protection

Rain, wind, and dust are unable to touch Di Yi. This protection also rejected the Hundred Herb Garden's intangible suppressive field, which the narration classified as “dust” 6 7 50.

• Entered the garden without suffering its suppression of Divine Radiance and runes 50.
• The Golden Hou lacked this protection and could no longer project those powers outside its body while within the field 50.

Injuries and Black Blood

• Suffers hidden ailments that cultivation has gradually begun to repair 22 23 43.
• Refused Tao Ye's request for blood to revive the Pavilion's Sacrificial Spirit because his blood contained dangerous Black Blood 45.
• Prioritizes restoring his Sea of Potential and healing himself over following the world's cultivation sequence exactly 43.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Shi Yunshan's bow — borrowed: Used to kill the Five-Colored Great Insect; not established as Di Yi's personal weapon 11.
• Stone Village's ancestral black cauldron — communal: Carved with mountains, rivers, celestial bodies, creatures, and ancient rites. Its medicinal bath enabled his first cultivation breakthrough and spiritual reconstruction 19 22 23 24.
• Processed beast materials: Stone Village agreed to process and store his haul until he returned with a storage treasure, keeping urgently needed materials as payment 17.
• Pavilion scriptures and restricted-ground access: Granted upon admission, despite receiving no assigned instructor 41.
• Spiritual medicines: The Golden Hou gathered vigorous plants and piled them at his feet in the Hundred Herb Garden 50.

Relationships

• Golden Hou — Voluntary companion, not a beast Di Yi claims to have tamed. It followed him after being spared, accompanied his travels, and fought beside him. Di Yi later sought a way to help it acquire speech 15 16 25 37 50.
• Stone Village patriarch — Host and source of early knowledge. Prepared his medicinal bath, confirmed his Blood Moving attainment, and entrusted the village's youths to his escort 5 19 24.
• Shi Yunshan — Hunting companion who explained the Great Wilderness's beasts and introduced him to cultivation terminology 10 11 12.
• Shi Yunfeng — Shi Yunshan's son; one of the youths Di Yi led beyond the Great Wilderness 25 27.
• Elder Gu — Initially mistook him for a powerful Fire Kingdom figure supporting younger siblings; subsequently admitted him to the Heaven Mending Pavilion 37 38 39 41.
• Huo Yun'e — Fire Kingdom princess who sought to connect him to her kingdom through the Vermilion Bird technique. Di Yi rejected that claim, while she remained interested in approaching him 39 40.
• Tao Ye — Senior Pavilion figure who coordinated the response to the Elder Paranormal and brought Di Yi to the Divine Vine 44 45.
• Divine Vine — Pavilion Sacrificial Spirit that recognized his exceptional level of life. Di Yi promised to retrieve the ghost's sword and intervene in the coming calamity; he also learned its Void Crossing technique 46 47 49.
• Lie Wan'er and Cheng Ji — Disciples he offered to protect from the Elder Paranormal 44.
• Elder Paranormal — Elusive ghost whose disturbances frustrated Di Yi's efforts to cultivate peacefully. Di Yi undertook to recover its sword from the Hundred Broken Mountains 44 46 47.
• Yu Qing and the Rain Clan — Enemies following the retainer's attempt to seize the Golden Hou. Their retaliation led to the City Lord's death and the Golden Hou's destruction of Yu Qing's group 30 33 34.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Stone Village and the Great Wilderness

• Witnessed the Willow Tree's disastrous descent during a storm and caught the village's departing stone Sacrificial Spirit. Before releasing it, he requested a written statement that its departure had nothing to do with him 7 8 9.
• Joined the hunters to investigate his physical limits, encountered battling primordial remnants, and returned with the Golden Hou and a vast quantity of prey 10 11 12 15.
• Discovered through the ancestral cauldron's medicinal bath that cultivation could help heal him. This gave him a concrete reason to seek scriptures outside the Great Wilderness 23 24.
• Departed with more than a dozen village youths and allowed the insistent Golden Hou to accompany them 25.

Cloud-Rushing Town Conflict

• Investigated cultivation factions, then refused a wealthy retainer's offer to purchase the Golden Hou. The attempted seizure ended with the retainer and his attackers dead 29 30.
• Faced retaliation from the Rain Clan and town authorities, tested his newly acquired techniques, and killed the City Lord directly when those techniques proved inadequate 31 32 33.
• Used the ensuing battle to study the Rain Path before the Golden Hou killed Yu Qing's group. The town's Sacrificial Spirit accepted his explanation and promised to resolve the matter 34 35.

Heaven Mending Pavilion

• Sought admission to study cultivation, despite elders believing him too powerful for them to teach. His perception and Vermilion Bird technique complicated attempts to establish his identity 37 38 40 41.
• Studied the Pavilion's scriptures and advanced to ten Cave Heavens 42 43.
• Tried to confront the Elder Paranormal directly, but the ghost instead spread its disturbances among other disciples. Di Yi sought the Sacrificial Spirit's help after recognizing that he could not guard everyone 44 45.
• Learned of a future calamity affecting the Eight Regions and promised to intervene if it occurred 46 47.

Hundred Broken Mountains and Hundred Herb Garden

• Entered the Hundred Broken Mountains with the Golden Hou to retrieve the Elder Paranormal's sword 47.
• Traveled to the Hundred Herb Garden using the Void Crossing technique learned from the Divine Vine 49.
• Learned that the Spirit-Connecting Divine Flower could enlighten primitive life. Hoping it might help the Golden Hou speak, he headed toward its reported location beside the Undying Spring 50.

Notable Quotes

“My understanding of cultivation is a blank sheet of paper. I only know some rudimentary blood moving cultivation. I am not as powerful as you imagine.” 41

“He isn't my battle beast. He simply wants to follow me.” 37

“Nothing in this world is unavoidable. I cultivate at the Heaven Mending Pavilion, and now that I know about this, I'll resolve it.” 47

Trivia

• Yu Qing assumed “Di Yi” could not be his real name because no one in the Stone Kingdom had dared use Di, meaning “emperor,” as a surname. Huo Yun'e privately read the name as suggesting that becoming an emperor was “easy” 30 39.
• When seeking admission to the Pavilion, Di Yi said everything he had recently learned about the world covered three months at most 41.
• He regarded a few decades as “a mere flick of the fingers,” though the passages do not establish his actual age 47.