Tang Zhixue

Biodata

Power Progression

Personal rank and individual skill proficiency are tracked separately: Tang remains First Tier even after several skills reach Master 46 49.

Background / History

Family and Arrival

Ten years before his arrival in the survival world, Tang Zhixue and his older brother, Tang Zhiming, watched a mudslide engulf their parents. Their later separation leaves Tang determined not to lose his last remaining family member 14.

Tang collapses while listening to a livestream and awakens in a dilapidated wooden shack. A three-page book provides personal information, regional chat, and a friends list. Through chat, he learns that his region contains one thousand displaced people scattered across environments ranging from forests to deserts and oceans 1.

His first kill is a snake that attacks the doorway: the door severs its head, and he finishes it with a stool. He subsequently discovers that his two talents can support both food production and martial training. A Vine Hound Beast’s attack reveals that Vitality Absorption works through bodily contact, while absorbing the resulting Plant Vitality heals his injured calf 1 2 4 5.

Shelter and Spring Festival

After his shack becomes a Shelter, Tang begins trading surplus food and unwanted monster remains. He builds a fire, installs an indoor hearth, and adds ventilation rather than risk carbon monoxide poisoning 6 8.

During the Spring Festival event, he installs portraits of Yuchi Gong and Qin Qiong and receives First-Tier Door God Protection. The protection does not solve the subsequent Year Wraith encounter. Instead, Tang notices the creature’s baby-like true body inside its illusory mouth, pulls it free, and shakes out New Year’s Money. He later receives the temporary Guarding the Year skill 10 11 13 15.

Silent White Fog and Resource Production

The Silent White Fog threatens both Tang and his crops. When his Shelter’s temporary purification expires, nearby special plants become corrupted and attack him. He responds by renewing the Pure Heaven and Earth Divine Mantra, gathering erosion-resistant Clear Spirit Wood, and seeking protected growing space 19 20 21.

A Planting Box obtained from Fang Yunxi supplies renewable soil, while the newly unlocked Dream Space lets him train during sleep. His improved archery makes hunting Rotting Living Corpses practical, yielding Supply Cards containing resources such as water and potatoes 23 25 27.

Tang also trades Jade Flower seeds, which can produce energy crystals needed by Shelters. Beyond the immediate profit, he hopes plants grown in other survivors’ environments might yield metal-attribute crystals useful for forging 30.

Forging and Stronger Defenses

A Junweng apparition blocks Tang’s activities outside the Shelter. After ordinary arrows fail, he destroys it with the Big Dipper Ghost-Slaying Incantation and obtains the Balanced Pocket Watch. The system warns that destroying one apparition only reduces his chance of encountering Junweng again that day 33 34.

Tang’s experiments connect crafting with purification. Reciting the mantra while forging produces Purification Golden-Pattern Iron, which he uses against a bloated-corpse creature attacking his Shelter. He later applies the same principle to oil lamps and hide tanning 38 46.

He strengthens the entrance with a fused second-tier Clear Spirit Tree and leaves cooked offerings for Biting Spring Granny, eventually receiving a Building Card that installs a Modern Toilet. By Chapter 50, his Shelter has reached level three and contains a lighting plant. He then sets out to gather wood for weapon grips and scabbards, testing whether completing actual weapons is necessary to advance his stalled forging proficiency 41 47 49 50.

Appearance

Tang initially awakens in coarse burlap clothing and straw sandals; prolonged training later reduces his body fat and develops his muscles 1 25.

• His early clothing has no pockets, complicating the transport of Supply Cards and other small items 22.
• For expeditions, he carries a back basket, with a quiver fastened at his waist 27.

Personality

Tang is cautious without being passive. He checks unfamiliar objects before handling them, avoids answering the Year Wraith when speech might trigger a rule, and brings a sample of unfamiliar stream water back to his Shelter for identification before using the source. When trapped or injured, however, he fights rather than surrender 4 13 21 35.

He is industrious and experimental. His first reaction to Plant Vitality is to recognize its farming potential, and he repeatedly tests whether abilities can be combined with ordinary work. These experiments lead to sleep training, purification-infused metal, improved tanning, and forging-assisted martial cultivation 2 18 38 45 46.

His ambition is economic rather than political: he wants to possess things everyone needs, not rule over others. He bargains carefully and keeps some methods private, but also shares survival advice, explains the mantra to other survivors, and thanks Luo Hongcai with food for providing it 6 13 23 46.

Tang frequently jokes, complains, and swears under pressure. Even after declaring that he will never use another Martial Arts Fruit, he immediately begins planning how to make the next training session more effective 40 41.

Abilities & Skills

Vitality Absorption

Extracts vitality from living plants, producing Plant Vitality that can support farming, recovery, and training 2 5.

• Growth and mutation: Accelerates plant growth and can induce mutations, though the mutation rate is low 2 16.
• Recovery: Restores stamina and rapidly heals his calf wound 5.
• Contact defense: Works through contact with his body, not just his hands; allows him to drain the Vine Hound Beast through its binding vines 4.
• Costs: Consumes stamina and mental energy. Early on, sleep is his only known means of restoring mental energy 6.
• Limits: Only works on living plants. Excessive draining leaves plants withered and unsuitable as sturdy tool material; accelerated growth also depletes soil fertility 7 17.

Diligence Makes Up for Lack of Talent

Ensures gains from focused practice and repetition without regression. It can also record knowledge from completed manuals, although reading alone does not successfully register every craft 4 6 24 31.

• Dream Space: Automatically activates during sleep when supplied with energy; one energy point sustains ten minutes of training 18.
• Energy supply: A Wood Spiritual Energy Crystal provides 50 points, enough for 500 minutes 18.
• Configurable practice: Can recreate terrain, targets, equipment, and beast carcasses 25 32.
• Real benefits: Dream training improves actual skill proficiency and physical condition 25.
• Crafting limitation: Repeated dream forging improves Blazing Tiger Fist but leaves Basic Forging at 15/100. Tang suspects that the craft requires completing real items; this remains a hypothesis 43 49 50.

Blazing Tiger Fist

A twelve-movement Body Tempering martial art that develops the skin, flesh, tendons, and bones 4.

• Requires coordinated breathing despite its simple movements 5.
• Combines with forging through its force-generating methods, making bodily tempering much more efficient 37.
• Provides usable movements in close combat, but does not automatically supply practical fighting experience 40.
• Improves further through sparring with the Martial Arts Clone 41.

Linked Pearl Archery

A rapid-fire archery skill that becomes Tang’s principal ranged combat method 11 25 27.

• Reaches approximately one arrow per second during Dream Space practice 25.
• Allows him to kill five Rotting Living Corpses with five rapidly fired arrows 27.
• Uses precision shots against vulnerable eyes and mouths to finish a fighting mutant tiger and boar 28.
• Does not grant Tang energy arrows; that ability is displayed by the Martial Arts Clone, to his surprise 40.

Pure Heaven and Earth Divine Mantra

Disperses dark energy, attacks evil entities, and purifies surrounding spiritual energy 20.

• Clears the Silent White Fog, enabling exploration and resource gathering 19 27.
• Grants the Shelter temporary Purification; the documented duration increases from one hour to six hours with proficiency 20 24.
• At Master, reveals clear and turbid qi within one meter while he recites with closed eyes 42.
• Can impart purification properties during forging, lamp use, and tanning 38 46.
• Does not repel the Year Wraith, and an ordinary recitation initially fails to end the bloated-corpse creature’s erosion of the Shelter 13 38.

Big Dipper Ghost-Slaying Incantation

A ritual attack used to destroy Junweng 34.

• Tang improvises an altar using seven burning bamboo tubes arranged like the Northern Dipper, plus clean water and seven grains of rice 34.
• The successful attack occurs on his ninth recitation 34.
• Destroying the encountered apparition does not prevent another Junweng encounter 34.

Guarding the Year

A temporary Spring Festival reward that suspends Tang’s own time for one breath 15.

• Prevents damage during the pause, but also prevents him from moving or acting.
• Usable once per day.
• Expires after seven days 15.

Crafting and Survival Skills

• Prey Processing: Reaches Proficient through dream practice; used to butcher mutant beasts and preserve their hides 32 35.
• Basic Forging: Produces Golden-Pattern Iron and works alongside Blazing Tiger Fist training 37 38 46.
• Bow and Arrow Crafting: Recorded from a manual but remains uninitiated in Chapter 49 31 49.
• Practical construction: Makes fire by the fire-plow method, builds a ventilated hearth, and weaves a crude carrying basket 8 27.
• Plant propagation: Hand-pollinates Purple Cloud Grass, collects seeds, and grows Clear Spirit Trees from branches 15 39 41.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Balanced Pocket Watch — Second Tier: Suppresses stronger beings within ten meters to Tang’s strength, provided they do not exceed Second Tier. Weaker beings are unaffected. Also functions as a clock 34 35.
• Wooden Bow and arrows — First Tier: His established ranged weapon; carried with a waist-mounted quiver 25 27.
• Iron Axe: Used for logging and close-range defense against Rotting Living Corpses 21 27.
• Hunting Knife — First Tier: Carbon-steel knife with an 18-centimeter blade and serrated spine, used for processing game 31 35.
• Planting Box — First Tier: Provides twelve square meters of growing space and self-renewing soil; purchased from Fang Yunxi for ten pieces of charcoal 23.
• Forging Furnace and Cloudfire Stones: Equipment and fuel installed in his expanded workshop 31.
• Purification Golden-Pattern Iron: Mantra-infused metal whose light destroys the bloated-corpse creature 38.
• Martial Arts Fruit: Creates a relentlessly hostile training clone. Its attacks cause pain without wounds, but the session can exhaust Tang’s stamina 40 41.
• Clear Radiance Oil Lamp: An oil lamp transformed through the mantra’s influence 46.
• Spirit-Patterned Hides — First Tier: His treated tiger hide has a weak purification effect; the thick boar hide resists piercing and cutting 46.

Relationships

• Tang Zhiming — Older brother and last remaining family member. Tang fears losing him after their unexpected separation and remembers his soy sauce noodles during the clone’s attack 14 40.
• Fang Yunxi — Friend, trading partner, and fellow monster hunter. They compare encounters, exchange the Planting Box, and discuss oil lamps and Shelter upgrades 23 35 47 50.
• Xu Shi — Regional chat acquaintance who teaches Tang how to search for water. Later thanks him for sharing information about surviving the black mist 5 14.
• Luo Hongcai — Source of the Pure Heaven and Earth Divine Mantra. Tang helps him understand its recitation and later sends ten White Melons in gratitude 13 46.
• Wen Yue — Fellow survivor who explains that Door God portraits attach without glue; later joins discussions about Shelter energy 10 30 50.
• Biting Spring Granny — Benevolent event spirit to whom Tang leaves qualifying cooked food. Her Building Card supplies his Shelter with a Modern Toilet 41 47.
• Junweng — Recurring hostile apparition. Tang destroys an encounter through ritual, but later finds Junweng outside again among Giant View Weird corpses 34 47.

Notable Quotes

“Sure enough, when talent falls short, diligent practice is the only way!” 25

“Door God brothers, I'm counting entirely on you two to keep me safe tonight. I'll get you a roomier door later.” 10