Zhao Household

Biodata

Territory and Holdings

Leadership and Members

Military Strength

Cultivators

Early accounts describe the Zhao Household as possessing dozens of cultivators. A later explicit breakdown gives seventeen in total 2 4 10.

Armed Forces

• Standing strength: At least ten thousand armored guards, compared with the Lin Household’s roughly four hundred before the conflict 7.
• Qiao Town expedition: Five hundred heavy cavalry, five thousand elite armored guards, and over ten thousand ordinary armored guards 18.
• Cultivator deployment: The ancestor, two Bone Refining elders, three Blood Refining elders, and six Skin Refining cultivators accompanied the campaign. Affiliated factions brought the combined cultivator force to nearly fifteen 19.
• Subordinate troops: Affiliated forces were sent into battle first as expendable assault troops. Retreat risked punishment against both the soldiers and their families 19.
• Critical weakness: Once its cultivators fell, the army could neither overcome Lin Xiye’s formation nor maintain its morale 22 23.

Rule and Conduct

• Expansion through coercion: Conquered factions that submitted to the Zhao Household eventually declined or disappeared. Its next planned targets were Qiao Town and then the Bai Household 8 33.
• Massacres: During an earlier town conquest, its forces slaughtered the mortals within a hundred li, including women, children, and the elderly 19.
• Permitted plunder: On the march to Qiao Town, the household allowed subordinate forces to burn villages, kill residents, and enslave survivors as a reward and morale boost 19.
• Retaliation doctrine: After suffering a setback, the household typically gathered its full strength to annihilate the opposing faction 18.
• Internal cohesion: Although it had internal struggles, these had not developed into the deep factional divisions seen in the Song Household 33.
• Cultivation through killing: The ancestor slaughtered dozens of cultivators to obtain Essence Blood for a Life Pill intended to support his breakthrough 21.

History

Regional Supremacy

The Zhao Household accumulated its foundations over nearly four centuries. Its Organ Refining ancestor supported its control of Zichuan City, while its cultivators and armies enforced its authority throughout the surrounding region. Challengers to its position had repeatedly been exterminated 4 18 32.

At the height of its strength, the household intended to annex Qiao Town, swiftly eliminate the Bai Household, and consolidate complete control of the region before expanding farther. Lin Xiye’s return and rapid increase in strength disrupted those plans 33.

Attempted Annexation of Qiao Town

After Lin Xiye left the Falling Rosy Clouds Sect, the Zhao Household sent its third elder to Qiao Town. He demanded the Lin Household’s submission and nine-tenths of the town’s holdings. When Lin Xiye revealed his Early-stage Bone Refining cultivation, the elder reduced the demand to seventy percent of its businesses but continued threatening extermination 6 7 8.

Lin Xiye rejected the terms, killed the third elder, and destroyed his escort of two hundred armored guards. Concerned by the expedition’s silence, the Zhao patriarch dispatched the second elder to investigate. After learning what had happened, the second elder killed a gate guard and withdrew without entering Qiao Town 8 10 12.

Defeat at Qiao Town

The household subsequently mobilized its army, ancestor, elders, and affiliated forces against the Lin Household. Zhao Renjia demanded that Lin Xiye surrender, relinquish his Immortal Ascension Token, and become a servant 18 19 20.

Lin Xiye feigned submission, injured the ancestor with five Flame Talismans, and activated the Three Talents Formation Flags. Nine Zhao cultivators died almost immediately, while the first and second elders suffered severe wounds. The ancestor consumed his Life Pill to recover, but enhanced spirit poison forced him to abandon the elders and attempt an escape 20 21.

The affiliated factions withdrew their troops and fled. Zhao cavalry attempting to rescue the ancestor were destroyed by the formation, and a heavy crossbow strike transmitted devastating force through his Earth River Shield. Lin Xiye seized the shield and killed him 22 23.

The surviving Zhao troops surrendered and were bound. The Lin Household subsequently executed the prisoners, leaving the Zhao Household’s main military strength destroyed 23 24 25.

Siege and Destruction

News of the defeat plunged Zichuan City into panic, looting, and flight. Several Zhao elders proposed scattering the lineage, but the patriarch warned that surrounding factions would intercept them. He instead sought help from the Song Household, whose patriarch owed the Zhao ancestor a favor 26.

The Zhao Household offered submission, its accumulated resources, and its territory in exchange for intervention. While awaiting help, the patriarch ordered the city held for five days and spread claims that the Lin Household would massacre its residents 27 28.

The remaining Zhao guards forced hastily conscripted residents to defend the walls, killing those who retreated. Despite substantial Lin casualties, the gates eventually fell. The Zhao patriarch invoked the Song Household’s name to stall the attackers, but Lin Xiye killed him and the remaining Zhao cultivators 30 31 32.

The Lin Household exterminated the Zhao Household and its vassals while prohibiting indiscriminate attacks on unrelated residents. Song representatives arrived only after the household’s destruction 32 35.

Treasures and Resources

• Earth River Shield: A middle-grade Spirit Nourishing Law Treasure carried by the ancestor. It survived a massive crossbow impact without damage, but could not prevent the transmitted force from crippling its wielder. Seized by Lin Xiye 23 24.
• Damaged formation flag: A Spirit Nurturing Law Treasure carried by the third elder. Lin Xiye recovered it and upgraded it into the Three Talents Formation Flags—the formation later used against the Zhao army 8 11.
• Life Pill: Refined from cultivators’ Essence Blood using purchased fire essence and a pill furnace. The ancestor intended it for advancement to Spirit Nourishing but consumed it to treat his battlefield injuries 21.
• Insect Rearing Scripture: An incomplete manual recovered from the ancestor. Its surviving first half recorded methods for nurturing and controlling poisonous insects up to the Foundation Establishment Realm 24.
• Third elder’s supplies: Ten Spirit Stone fragments and three Body Tempering Pills, taken by Lin Xiye after his death 11.
• Household treasury: Gold and silver sufficient to fill several hundred carriages, alongside medicinal herbs and Spirit Stone fragments. Its accumulated wealth exceeded the Lin Household’s by more than a hundredfold 32.

Relationships

• Lin Household — Intended subject turned destroyer and successor. The failed annexation of Qiao Town led to the Zhao Household’s extermination and the loss of Zichuan City 7 32.
• Song Household — A prospective protector approached through a past favor. Its representatives later invoked an alliance to claim the Zhao inheritance, but arrived too late to preserve the lineage 26 28 35.
• Bai, Xu, and Zhou Households — An allied bloc of independent cultivation households. Their Bone Refining ancestors and mutual support prevented easy annexation; they cooperated with Zhao orders when their core interests were unaffected 31.
• Cultivation marketplace near Qiao Town — The only other local power described as capable of contending with the Zhao Household, backed by a reclusive Organ Refining cultivator 13.

Legacy

• Lin expansion: Lin Changge estimated that the seized treasury could fund an elite force of at least fifty thousand armored guards 32.
• Cultivation resources: Lin Xiye claimed half the worldly wealth. Upgrading two Five Thunder Talismans into Talisman Treasures consumed half of the former Zhao Household’s accumulated reserves 33 38.
• Territorial settlement: The Lin Household retained Zichuan City and the captured resources, but ceded five hundred li of territory to the Song Household to avert another conflict 36 37.
• Former estate: The Zhao residence became the Lin Household’s ancestral grounds and housed its Hall of Meritorious Deeds 39.