Xie Yu

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Awakening and the Entrance Examination

Xie Yu awakens with memories of having died on Earth and of sixteen years spent growing up in an ordinary kingdom family. He considers the Earth memories his true identity, while the local memories feel like a long film he has watched. He suspects transmigration or reincarnation, but does not establish the exact mechanism 1.

The local Xie Yu had suffered a fatal headache after repeatedly taking a mind-strengthening potion and studying late into the night. Two days after adapting to his circumstances, the awakened Xie Yu takes the Kingdom Magic Apprentice Unified Entrance Examination in his place 1.

His own knowledge earns the sixty points needed to pass. The advanced questions, however, demand access to artifacts, specialist materials, and experiences beyond an ordinary family’s means. Angered by these barriers, he wins the exam paper’s affection and copies its answers, producing a perfect paper 2 3 4.

His parents interpret his conversations with objects and claim of a perfect score as symptoms of illness. Rather than fully explain himself, Xie Yu decides that apparent eccentricity can conceal both his changed personality and his unusual ability 4.

Kaiming’s Assistant

His father takes him to Doctor Kaiming in Black Pine City. The clinic’s wooden house exposes the doctor’s useless “family harmony water,” but Xie Yu helps persuade his father to accept the treatment. Impressed by his talent for deception, Kaiming returns the payment and recruits him as an assistant 6.

Xie Yu accepts the opportunity to enter mage society, while recognizing that his actual academic knowledge falls far short of his perfect-score reputation. Through Kaiming’s cloak, he learns that Kaiming abandoned further advancement in mental and soul magic rather than consume other people’s souls 7 9.

Kaiming’s Murder and Revenge

Wig Brown uses the Fate-Substitution Talisman Doll to steal Kaiming’s body, identity, and fate. After Wig puts Xie Yu to sleep and blurs his memories, the wooden house identifies the apparent Kaiming as an impostor 13.

Fry arrives to take the newly discovered perfect-score candidate to safety. Xie Yu initially considers escape sufficient, but the grief of Kaiming’s house and cane changes his mind. He stays long enough to demand Sealed Artifact 3-0771 from the impostor, then commits himself to avenging Kaiming 14 18.

After bringing the doll under his control, he orders it to kill Wig before the Brown Family can recover it at the planned funeral. He subsequently tells Yize and Fry what happened. Their investigation connects Kaiming’s intended public appointment to a Brown Family scheme involving potions and Education Bureau personnel 25 29 30.

The Perfect-Score Controversy

Yize’s review finds no demonstrable cheating, despite the inexplicable completed magic array on Xie Yu’s paper. The Education Bureau upholds the result and authorizes teachers, academy resources, and personnel support. Regional bias in the advanced questions makes Xie Yu especially important to North Plains Province 24 25.

Xie Yu chooses sealing and storing dangerous artifacts as his intended specialty. His successful handling of the Chapter of Teleportation gives officials a concrete demonstration of his unusual talent 27 33 38.

Rather than wait for attacks on his score, he proposes using a newspaper interview against the Brown Family. Yize agrees not to obstruct him and secures special protection. During the interview, Xie Yu combines verifiable events with carefully altered details, presenting Wig’s death as artifact backlash while concealing his own orders 38 39 43.

Expanding the Investigation

When the Ilia Family’s possible involvement alarms Yize, Xie Yu argues that retreat would let the Browns recover and undermine the Bureau’s investigation. He links the creation of mental health supervisor posts to the suspected exchange of benefits between the families, persuading Yize to continue removing the Browns’ provincial influence 45 46.

He later attributes information obtained from objects to a supposed ability of the Fate-Substitution Talisman Doll to read their past fates. After Fry verifies one detail, Yize accepts its usefulness. As Yize detects a powerful observer watching the hotel, Xie Yu proposes visiting Kaiming’s wooden clinic to investigate further 49.

Personality

Xie Yu is curious, experimental, and unusually comfortable treating objects as individuals. He studies their preferences, tests explanations for his ability, and revises his approach when flattery fails. Understanding Affection’s underlying rules matters to him even alongside his campaign against the nobility 4 10 42.

He is also a calculated manipulator. He uses apparent madness as cover, adapts his manner to people’s expectations, and combines flattery, pressure, reassurance, and selective disclosure. His interview impresses Yize and Fry because its misleading details are hidden among facts that can be independently verified 4 25 37 43.

His pragmatism does not erase his loyalties. Kaiming’s murder drives him to pursue revenge despite an opportunity to leave safely, and he rejects the doll’s enthusiasm for eating people. His anger at exclusionary examinations develops into open hostility toward the nobility’s influence 14 18 25 38 39.

Abilities & Skills

Affection Perception and Object Communication

Xie Yu sees text describing inanimate objects’ thoughts, personalities, and feelings toward him 1 2.

• Eligible targets: Ordinary possessions, books, buildings, potions, sealed artifacts, and independently released spells 6 23 27 33.
• Living beings excluded: People and other living things do not display Affection values 2.
• Hostility detection: Negative Affection can appear as Hostility, as with Sealed Artifact 3-0771 13.
• Individual preferences: Objects respond differently to praise, attention, warmth, cleanliness, reading, or assertiveness 4 9 12 27.
• Limits: Affection can fall sharply. Brief encounters, public scrutiny, and demanding targets can prevent him from winning an object over 4 10.

Conquest Rewards and Faith

Reaching maximum Affection can offer rewards that improve future interactions or transform the conquered target 10 23 31.

• Full Disclosure: Induces a target to share what it knows; Kaiming’s cane supplies information useful to the revenge investigation 20.
• Friend bonuses: Improve initial Affection with categories of objects. Friend of Low-Grade Sealed Artifacts adds a stackable 0.5 to future encounters’ initial Affection 27 31.
• Permanent animation: Allows sealed artifacts to convert their spirituality into human-style spellcasting 23 37.
• Permanent Growth: Lets Dali grow through consuming other Void Twists 34 35.
• Faith: Develops in permanently activated artifacts through their belief in him. It does not appear universally; the ordinary cane remains at 100 Affection without developing Faith 23 25 31.

Void Magic and Spell Analysis

Xie Yu uses spells themselves as instructors, obtaining direct feedback that would ordinarily require extensive trial and error 33.

• Corrects a Void Twist’s geometry and internal curvature through repeated casting 33.
• Produces stable twists suitable as food for Dali and the Chapter of Teleportation 33 35.
• Identifies uneven temperature and unstable flame circulation in Fry’s fireball 33.
• Can communicate with another caster’s released spells, not just his own 33.
• Cannot apply the same method to continuously maintained effects, such as flight wind, Fry’s Fire Umbrella, or Yize’s active divination 33.
• Highly refined casting drains his energy and spirituality; repeated practice also causes mental fatigue 33 35.

Object-Based Intelligence Gathering

Buildings and furnishings provide information about people who have used or passed through them 10 42 49.

• Uses objects as discreet witnesses without conventional divination or mental probing 42 49.
• Obtains observations concerning the Browns and the Ilia Family through the inn 45 46.
• Conceals this information source by having the doll pretend to communicate discoveries about objects’ pasts 49.
• Must first gain cooperation; objects can ignore him, refuse questions, or simply lack the information he wants 4 10 41.

Persuasion and Political Strategy

Xie Yu combines social perception with aggressive use of institutional interests 25 38 46.

• Recognizes that the Education Bureau needs a credible commoner genius and uses that expectation to secure support 20 34.
• Redirects the exam controversy toward the Brown Family through a carefully framed interview 38 43.
• Presses allies to act by showing how compromise could worsen their position 46.
• Delegates study to the doll, cane, and fountain pen, using their cooperation to extend his own learning 31.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Fate-Substitution Talisman Doll — Sealed Artifact 3-0771: A fate-, mind-, and soul-related artifact capable of substituting identities and fates. After permanent activation, it learns human spells, studies under Xie Yu’s orders, and helps conceal his information-gathering ability 18 23 31 49.
• Chapter of Teleportation — Sealed Artifact 3-2152: Consumes void structures and teleports Xie Yu both defensively and on command. With additional food, it can transport two or three people together 33 38 49.
• Loyal Solid-Wood Cane: Kaiming’s gemstone-inlaid cane, retained by Xie Yu. Contains a concealed compartment and helps him read 18 23 31.
• Flame Gold-Melting Potion concentrate: A fire-magic amplification concentrate stored inside the cane. Bought by Kaiming for 190 gold coins as an intended gift for Fry; it threatens catastrophic explosion if exposed to sunlight 23.
• Gentle Fountain Pen: An early object companion that assists with his examination and later studies magic texts 1 31.
• Dali: A cultivated Elegant Void Twist that accompanies him near his shoulder. It can crush or deform solid matter rather than pass harmlessly through it 35 37.

Relationships

• Parents — The local Xie Yu’s affectionate, protective parents. They mistake his ability for illness; his father defends him against ridicule and offers to seek treatment even in the capital 4 5.
• Kaiming — Employer and early guide to mage society. Though initially recruiting him as a fellow swindler, Kaiming earns the loyalty that motivates Xie Yu’s revenge 6 9 18.
• Fry — Protector and practical supporter who supplies clothing, books, accommodation, and official assistance. Xie Yu’s campaign also helps relieve Fry’s exposure to the Browns’ appointment scheme 20 24 43 45.
• Yize — Diviner, Education Bureau official, and principal protector. He endorses Xie Yu’s future despite doubts about his perfect score and gradually accepts the usefulness of his unconventional methods 24 39 49.
• Fate-Substitution Talisman Doll — Subordinate artifact whose need for reassurance gives way to devotion. It reaches maximum Faith after understanding Xie Yu’s determination to protect it 25 30.
• Kaiming’s wooden house — Reading companion and hidden witness. After Kaiming’s death, it waits for Xie Yu and memorizes visiting Browns’ conversations to report to him 12 44 45.
• Petulant Test Paper — The source of his perfect-score answers. It asks him to retrieve it when the completed paper goes on display 3.
• Wig Brown — Kaiming’s murderer and Xie Yu’s first major revenge target; killed by the doll on Xie Yu’s orders 13 29 30.
• Brown Family — Principal antagonists in the examination and appointment controversies. Xie Yu deliberately attacks their reputation rather than merely defending himself 38 43 46.