Dean Bai

Biodata

Power Progression

Background / History

Family and Inheritance

Bai Xiao is the only child of Bai Ling, the Federation’s most recent S-rank Awakener. Her mother conceived her using paternal genes from an anonymous gene bank, choosing the donor’s number on a whim. By the time Bai Xiao explains her family history to Wen Jing, her mother has been missing for eighty-three years 129 206 304.

Her mother left behind the Secret Treasure Gate, a law embedded in the universe’s rules, with Bai Xiao as its sole key. This inheritance attracts enemies from three of the Federation’s ten great conglomerates, particularly the Taman Family associated with Iron Curtain Security Group. Their legal family connections arose through alliances with her mother, not through Bai Xiao’s anonymous biological father 127 128 129.

These connections cut both ways: the conglomerates claim grounds to covet her inheritance, but their reliance on her mother’s name also obliges them to defend Bai Xiao in certain situations 129.

Education and Academy Leadership

Bai Xiao studied under Dean Ailin and won both the Freshman League and the regular league championships. She later left Mystic Radiance and became dean of Ocher Soil because she rejected the belief that an Awakener’s potential grade determined everything 123 124 129.

During her fifty years at Ocher Soil, the academy’s circumstances and annual league results improved. The investment came at a financial cost: expenditure exceeded income, Xie Ming struggled to secure funding, and Bai Xiao spent much of her time undertaking dangerous Ancient Wilderness expeditions 44.

Appearance

• Human form: An exquisitely beautiful, petite woman approximately 1.6 metres tall, with white hair and amber-to-golden eyes. She commonly wears simple casual clothes, though she also appears in formal academy robes 10 11 42 194 196.
• Partial transformation: Her pupils narrow into feline slits, and white fur appears on her hands during intense combat 143.
• Wilderness Body: An ordinary-sized white cat with golden eyes and a golden ring around its tail. Despite lacking conspicuous supernatural features, this form appears unusually vivid—likened to a three-dimensional creature against a two-dimensional background 205.

Personality

Bai Xiao is exuberant, informal, and openly proud of her students. She laughs loudly, celebrates Wen Jing’s achievements without maintaining a dean’s distance, and delights in being identified as a “genius” by a Wilderness Weapon. Her cheerful manner can turn sharply authoritative when dealing with condescension or threats 42 107 128 194.

Her opposition to rank-based prejudice is practical rather than merely rhetorical. She refuses to assume that E- and F-rank freshmen cannot survive, invests academy resources in developing students, and criticizes administrators who protect their existing interests instead of improving the academy 10 44 67.

She is fiercely protective but aware that her enemies can endanger others. Before accepting Wen Jing as her disciple, she hesitates over the consequences and explicitly warns her about several fully awakened A-rank enemies. Once the relationship is established, she trusts Wen Jing’s judgment even during a lethal ambush and refuses to abandon her while escape remains possible 123 124 205 206.

Her confidence does not make her infallible. Xie Ming reprimands her for awarding a Wilderness Weapon before its unusual properties are fully understood, although subsequent tests establish that she had performed the standard checks 72.

Abilities & Skills

Luck Aura

Bai Xiao’s defining ability causes coincidences to favour her and undermine her opponents 143 186.

• Passive protection: Lighting changes, damaged terrain, and interrupted movements expose enemy attacks or carry her out of danger. She cannot switch this passive effect off 143.
• Offensive opportunities: Opponents develop openings through mistimed movements, unstable energy, or unfavourable spatial conditions 186 204.
• Intuition: She experiences ominous premonitions, including similar feelings before her mother’s disappearance and the crisis surrounding Wen Jing’s Genetic Collapse 201 202.
• Limits: Supernatural Disintegration suppresses her luck along with other supernatural abilities 206.

The aura is later identified as a protagonist aura associated with humanity’s successive eras. Bai Xiao’s case demonstrates that such an aura can pass to a suitable successor and allow its former bearer to be resurrected in the future; it does not make its bearer incapable of dying 317.

Combat Mastery

Bai Xiao combines precise technique with unusually sharp combat instincts 143 205.

• Defeats opponents above her nominal rank, including the B-rank Xie Ming 58.
• Uses economical, textbook movements with almost no unnecessary motion 143.
• Adapts immediately to Wen Jing’s Inertia Manipulation during their joint battle 205.
• Can perform mental attacks, though Wen Jing is more proficient in this field 205.

Spatial Rending and Travel

Bai Xiao can tear open space with clawing movements and exploit spatial weaknesses 186 204 206.

• Splits the Shapeshifter into four pieces with three spatial cracks, aided by precisely timed coincidences 186.
• Tears into a multilayered spatial shield at a weak point exposed by Wen Jing 204.
• Travels through the Ancient Wilderness without using the academy registration centre 57.
• Uses the connection between the Secret Treasure Gate and Wen Jing’s bonded weapon to reach her during an assassination attempt 186.

Feline Wilderness Body

Her cat form produces effects beyond a conventional physical transformation 205.

• Its appearance briefly distracts even the Prophet’s otherwise emotionless death warriors 205.
• Maintains a cat-to-insect size relationship with Wen Jing’s Wilderness Body despite neither visibly growing nor shrinking 205.
• Uses its tail to gather up and carry Wen Jing during their escape 205 206.

Secret Treasure Gate

Bai Xiao is the only key to a law created by her mother, not the creator of the Gate herself 128 129.

• Other people may retrieve an item only once; Bai Xiao may take an item once every five years 136.
• Retrieved Wilderness Weapons form unusually deep bonds with their recipients. Forcibly removing an imprint injures the owner, and another wielder cannot use the weapon as effectively 128.
• Bai Xiao had obtained two high-grade Wilderness Weapons from the Gate before Wen Jing retrieved her antique glasses 128.
• Her final resistance during the Prophet’s ambush uses the Gate and forces Bai Ling’s clone to expend additional energy 304.

Equipment / Weapons / Items

• Brick-phone Wilderness Weapon — A high-grade weapon whose red button produces communications. In the Ancient Wilderness, it sometimes reveals enemy weaknesses, treasure locations, or escape routes; much of its output remains unintelligible. In the material universe, it produces static 73.
• Clear plastic-bag Wilderness Weapon — A defensive item. Placing it over Wen Jing’s insect head blocks Life Drain from affecting the covered area, but leaves the rest of her body exposed 205.
• Red-button Wilderness Weapon — A high-grade trump card that compels the three death warriors to reach for and press it, creating an opening for mental attacks. They escape its control after pressing their buttons 205 206.
• Bronze fragment, later awarded to Wen Jing — The low-grade Wilderness Weapon offered as the freshman ranking tournament’s first prize. Its ability to alter advanced artificial materials is discovered after Wen Jing receives it 65 70 72 73.
• Phantom Traveler’s door handle, later given to Wen Jing — Opens a passage when attached to a designated “door,” including an outline drawn on the ground. Bai Xiao uses it to conceal Wen Jing after the Shapeshifter’s death, then gives it to her as an escape tool 186 194 195.

Relationships

• Wen Jing — Sole formal disciple and designated first-in-line heir. Bai Xiao supports her from enrollment onward, becomes her teacher after the Freshman League, and repeatedly intervenes to protect her. Wen Jing eventually resurrects her 12 124 132 186 315.
• Xie Ming — Longstanding colleague, fellow reformist, and trusted confidant. He manages the academy’s finances, challenges her decisions when necessary, and embraces her immediately after her resurrection 44 72 129 315.
• Bai Ling — Mother and creator of the Secret Treasure Gate. The black-clad attacker who uses her mother’s Supernatural Disintegration against Bai Xiao is later identified as Bai Ling’s clone 128 206 304.
• Dean Ailin — Former teacher and close personal friend. Ailin’s conservative politics oppose Bai Xiao’s reformism, but their personal bond survives that division 129 195.
• Dean Fu / Fu Yuan — Azure Jade’s dean and initially a political neutral. Bai Xiao entrusts Wen Jing’s exchange visit to him; he later supports her retaliation after Wen Jing’s apparent disappearance 124 153 187.
• Gao Shi — Executive vice dean and leader of the academy’s conservatives. Bai Xiao criticizes his faction’s complacency and internal manoeuvring 64 67.
• Taman Family / Iron Curtain Security Group — Legally connected adversaries who covet her inheritance. She later attacks Iron Curtain’s headquarters and kills senior executives on grounds of Imperial espionage 129 187.
• The Prophet — Orchestrator of the ambush that kills Bai Xiao and Wen Jing, followed by an official declaration that they betrayed civilization 204 207.

Story Role / Major Arcs

Freshman Rescue and Wen Jing’s Enrollment

• After the attack on the incoming students’ ship, Bai Xiao insists on waiting for survivors rather than accepting that low-ranked freshmen are doomed 10.
• Wen Jing returns moments before departure. Her survival allows Bai Xiao to secure another twenty minutes of waiting, though no further survivors arrive 11.
• Bai Xiao helps Wen Jing sell her Ancient Wilderness residue and argues with Xie Ming until the sample earns twenty points 12.

Academy Competition and Apprenticeship

• Rewards Wen Jing’s Trial Tower success with access to the academy treasury 42 43.
• Announces a Wilderness Weapon as the freshman tournament’s first-place prize, disrupting existing match-fixing arrangements; Wen Jing wins it 65 70.
• Personally leads the academy’s league delegation and formally accepts Wen Jing as her disciple after the Freshman League championship 106 107 124.
• Opens the Secret Treasure Gate for Wen Jing, who retrieves high-grade information-revealing glasses 127 128.
• Tests Wen Jing after her compatibility reaches 60%, then conceals the training records to keep her true strength from Iron Curtain 143.

Frontier Mission and Retaliation

• Kills the Empire’s A-rank Awakener with Wormhole Construction, preventing future incursions deep into Federation territory. The achievement places her tenth on the Empire’s wanted list 187.
• Breaks through the Empire’s blockade, reaches Wen Jing through the Ancient Wilderness, and kills the Shapeshifter sent to assassinate her 186.
• Sends Wen Jing into hiding, then strikes at Saerjia and Iron Curtain while her military success and Dean Fu’s support make intervention politically difficult 186 187.
• Removes Wen Jing from Arbitration Bureau custody and reports that the Federation has adopted a merit system in place of rank-based evaluations 194.

The Prophet’s Ambush and Death

• Leaves the congressional assembly to aid Wen Jing after the Prophet’s representative identifies her as a future threat to civilization 203 204.
• Fights three death warriors alongside her disciple, using defensive equipment and the red-button weapon to create an escape opening 205.
• Encounters her mother’s clone beyond the Out-of-Control Zone. Supernatural Disintegration removes their powers, and a matrix photon cannon annihilates them 206 207 304.
• Makes one final use of the Secret Treasure Gate before death. The Prophet subsequently announces that teacher and disciple have been executed for betraying civilization 207 304.

Resurrection and the Real Universe

• Wen Jing restores the Dean Bai who died, rather than treating an earlier version of Bai Xiao as a replacement. Bai Xiao returns unharmed, retaining memories up to her final moments 312 315.
• Joins Xie Ming in testing the cognitive barrier surrounding humanity’s false world. Wen Jing helps them leave as the barrier dissolves, revealing the real universe and the nearby Boundary-Breaking Empire 316.
• Later participates in preparations for humanity’s delegation to the Star Alliance’s Resonance Assembly 317.

Notable Quotes

“What gives you the right to say E-rank and F-rank new students definitely can't survive? Does potential represent everything about an Awakened?” 10

“Combat strength has never been entirely about grade.” 143

“Let me be lucky one more time.” 206