Ghostmother

Ghostmother is the sentient banesoul first seen as a girl in a white dress and later known by the stolen name Gongsun Wan'er. She is the soul incarnation of the original Ghostmother's severed arm, not the deceased Spirit Stream disciple whose body she possesses, and she eventually becomes the dominant consciousness of Ghostmother's reunited celestial body.

Biography

Awakening and a stolen life

The girl in white begins as one of the mindless banesouls drawn to Bai Xiaochun's experimental medicine in the Fallen Sword World. Winning and swallowing one of his pills awakens intelligence within her, after which she singles him out as "sweetie," pursues him, and consumes life force from other cultivators. Protective jade pendants prevent her from approaching Bai Xiaochun, but the collapsing world becomes the Nine Serenities Ghost Domain, where the other banesouls prostrate themselves and she advances into a sentient banespirit. Later revelations establish that she is the soul incarnation of the original Ghostmother's severed arm and that the medicine restored faculties and memories that had lain dormant inside the fallen sword. (Chapters 148–167 and 947–948)

Before leaving that ghost domain, she takes the dead or emptied Gongsun Wan'er as a puppet and promises to show Bai Xiaochun her "new dress." The young disciple subsequently returns to the Spirit Stream Sect in Gongsun Wan'er's body, while the original woman's unresolved soul lamp and her brother's search conceal what actually happened. The possessor watches Bai Xiaochun from within sect ranks, and his Heaven-Dao aura reacts to her attention. What looks at the time like a changed survivor is therefore the banespirit using a dead disciple's appearance and social place to move unnoticed in the living world. (Chapters 167–218)

Her concealed life gives her freedom to study both Bai Xiaochun and the unfamiliar world. She fights effectively during the sect wars, regards other powerful entities with scorn or curiosity, and keeps provoking Bai Xiaochun's instinctive sense of danger without revealing herself. The later account of her purpose clarifies this prolonged attention: she detects traces of the Gravekeeper on Bai Xiaochun, believes following him will lead her to the only being who can open the world and let her return home, and sometimes protects him because his continued survival serves that goal. Her attachment to "sweetie" mixes instrumental need with the bond formed at her awakening. (Chapters 218–341 and 835–837)

Within the River-Defying Sect she secretly feeds on corpses, removing flesh, blood, and death aura so thoroughly that Nascent Soul patriarchs cannot identify the intruder. She then jokes with Bai Xiaochun while he covers himself in anti-ghost talismans, preserving the disguise even as he unknowingly describes her. Selection as the sect's second hostage gives her a route upstream without requiring force. She goes to the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect beside Bai Xiaochun, shows no fear of the escorting deva, and separates from the group to find her own sustenance and advancement. (Chapters 324–380)

The search for the Worldgate

In the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect, she advances independently to Sky Quarter Rainbow and the top ranks of the Superstar trials. Trial records reproduce her late-Core Formation frigid qi, a regenerating ice hand, a bone sword drawn from her own body, and an authority before which ordinary vengeful souls refuse to attack. Bai Xiaochun defeats only a recorded statue of her, not Ghostmother herself; she watches with amusement and continues calling him "sweetie." Her success provides status and access while keeping her true nature concealed, but she later disappears from ordinary sect contact rather than settling permanently into her borrowed institutional identity. (Chapters 428–440)

Her movements toward the Wildlands remain deliberately obscure to Bai Xiaochun. By the time he searches for her from World City, transmission messages no longer reach her. The corpus later establishes that she has allied with Daoist Heavenspan, who also wants to escape the Heavenspan Realm, and that both hope to force the Gravekeeper to open a path. Her decision is not loyalty to the Celestial: she wants to reach the world beyond while remaining independent of her true body, and the alliance supplies access to world-level power she cannot wield on her own. (Chapters 529–552 and 835–837)

When she reappears near Mount Amity, she impersonates Bai Xiaochun to draw out the real man and the Gravekeeper whose trace he carries. She drains thousands of Giant Ghost Legion soldiers, uses the reanimated Lei Shan as a servant, and fights Zhou Zimo, then known as Mistress Red-Dust. Zhou Zimo's blood-powered seal can trap and injure her, but Ghostmother survives bodily destruction by becoming a red streak and replenishes herself through stolen life force. Although she could kill Bai Xiaochun, she restrains her deadliest measures because frightening and pursuing him is a means of reaching her actual target rather than an end in itself. (Chapters 818–834)

The strategy succeeds when the Gravekeeper appears. Ghostmother reveals that Bai Xiaochun has been her trail to him, summons Wildlands souls, and uses Ghost Harmonization and transformations that exceed ordinary demigod power to demand an opened Worldgate. Her indestructible soul resists several heaven-and-earth magics, but the Gravekeeper remains stronger; Daoist Heavenspan intervenes to prevent her destruction. Their alliance cannot win decisively, and the Gravekeeper's Five Yin Organs magic seriously injures her. Forced to flee, she loses the direct confrontation and must pursue a second plan for escaping the world. (Chapters 834–846)

The Deadmire and the dominant soul

The second plan requires Ghostmother to enter the Deadmire, where her original celestial self has been sealed for countless years. She and Daoist Heavenspan exploit a supposed apprenticeship trial to reach the Lizard Bone Galleon, using Hou Xiaomei's body to hide Ghostmother's aura from the true self. Once exposed, the soulclone refuses the original Ghostmother's claim that she should simply return as an arm. She declares that she will consume the true body, become the new Ghostmother, and then use the restored galleon to go home. Their shared origin makes the contest one of identity and control, not two unrelated cultivators competing for a treasure. (Chapters 944–948)

The true Ghostmother initially has roughly eighty percent control of their shared soul against the clone's twenty percent. Daoist Heavenspan's world projection suppresses the outsider, allowing the clone to raise her share until the struggle becomes even, but the true self has prepared for betrayal and turns the trap around. The clone is ultimately consumed, yet the resulting Ghostmother receives her memories, restored arm, face, and full celestial power. Because the clone's perspective remains within the fusion, the person who emerges carries forward the girl in white's history even when the true self temporarily controls the united body. (Chapters 948–952)

During the fusion, Hou Xiaomei's soul is also pulled toward destruction. Bai Xiaochun's oath to become Ghostmother's future enemy if she harms Xiaomei makes the newly restored celestial reconsider the cost. She returns Xiaomei's soul, takes her as an apprentice because her constitution suits Ghostmother's techniques, and promises the Gravekeeper's protection will extend to the other cultivators stranded aboard. This is a consequential limit on her predation: she chooses future security and a new teacher-student bond over consuming an available soul, then keeps Xiaomei and Big Fatty Zhang alive while leaving the Heavenspan Realm. (Chapters 951–953)

Restored Ghostmother repudiates her bargain with Daoist Heavenspan rather than taking him beyond the world. She reactivates the galleon's full lizard form, opens a vortex, and returns to the wider world with her captives and dependents. The corpus does not narrate the journey in detail, but she later arrives in the Eternal Immortal Domains, enters the Vile-Emperor Dynasty, and is appointed celestial ruler of its third immortal domain. Her initial desire to go home is thus fulfilled, though it places her inside another emperor's hierarchy rather than beyond all external control. (Chapters 952–953 and 1017–1036)

When Bai Xiaochun later attacks, Ghostmother relies on the Vile-Emperor-enhanced galleon, her celestial cultivation, and caution developed through earlier defeats. He separates her from the ship, severs her left arm, and awakens the clone consciousness within it. The revived girl remembers regretting her earlier fusion and immediately allies with Bai Xiaochun; she captures the true self, pours back into the celestial body, and takes dominant control. From this point onward, the Ghostmother called Gongsun Wan'er is specifically the former girl in white governing the reunited body, while the original Spirit Stream disciple remains a distinct deceased person. (Chapters 1041–1054)

Celestial, ally, and family

Taken toward Saint-Emperor City as Bai Xiaochun's captive, Ghostmother watches him resist Gu Tianjun, the celestial whose sword originally severed the arm from which she arose. His willingness to defend possession of the prisoner rather than yield to a stronger official changes her assessment of him; she recognizes both his fear and his resolve. Although sealed, she explains archaean influence to the Heavenspan newcomers. By the time Bai Xiaochun undergoes celestial tribulation, she is back in Vile-Emperor City and has resumed military authority with her clone identity dominant; the supplied scenes do not detail the terms of that return. (Chapters 1053–1074)

Service under the Vile-Emperor repeatedly places her against Bai Xiaochun. She leads an army into the northern prefectures and pressures territory held by his people, yet their clashes end in compromise rather than a renewed attempt to consume one another. Her independent judgment becomes clearer during the Murknine crisis: occupied with a cultivation breakthrough, she first sends demigods, then shares her discoveries with Bai Xiaochun and enters the crater beside him. Their combined ghost and life-preserving powers eradicate the contaminating spiderweb threat, and mutual survival turns an old pursuit into a functional partnership. (Chapters 1074–1140)

As a late Celestial Realm expert, she joins expeditions against the damaged sovereign clone and cooperates with other celestials despite distrust between dynasties. Her prior encounter with the entity gives her knowledge but no immunity; she and Bai Xiaochun still treat the clone as a danger whose exact condition cannot be accepted solely on the emperors' word. Later, when Bai Xiaochun is absent, she joins Zhou Zimo, Song Junwan, Hou Xiaomei, the Grand Heavenmaster, and others in handling Arch-Emperor Dynasty affairs. This administrative role shows that her place among the Heavenspan survivors grows beyond battlefield alliance. (Chapters 1141–1253)

Her relationship with Bai Xiaochun also becomes intimate. Song Junwan and Zhou Zimo initially exclude her, but Hou Xiaomei, now both her apprentice and one of Bai Xiaochun's partners, argues that including her master will benefit the family. Ghostmother participates in the children's care, gathers with the other women when danger threatens, and spends Bai Xiaochun's respite from cultivation with his family and friends. The text establishes the partnership and household membership but does not narrate a formal marriage ceremony or identify a child of her own, so neither should be inferred. (Chapters 1218–1285)

During the Mortal Renegade crisis, Ghostmother helps maintain Arch-Emperor City while Bai Xiaochun fights beyond it. She and the other surviving experts endure the apparent loss of the Eternal Immortal Domains, then return when Bai Xiaochun restores them from time and space. In the peaceful world that follows, she remains one of the partners who shares his life; the epilogue says she leaves with his family and friends for an unknown location and later joins the others in strictly containing his restless behavior. Her final condition is alive and familial, not a captive soul or imperial subordinate. (Chapters 1285–1315)

Appearance and personality

Her earliest form is a young girl in a white dress whose long black hair covers half of her face. After taking Gongsun Wan'er's body, she appears as a pretty young woman with long black hair and a habitual slight smile. Fusion with the true Ghostmother produces a fully restored celestial body with fair skin, entrancing eyes, and spectacular beauty; after the clone regains dominance, she continues using that adult body and the name Gongsun Wan'er. These appearances belong to one continuing soulclone, but the human body and later celestial body are distinct vessels. (Chapters 148, 167, 275, 952, and 1048–1054)

Ghostmother is predatory, patient, and fond of unsettling play. Hunger for souls and life force frequently underlies her choices, while her affectionate "sweetie" for Bai Xiaochun mixes menace, memory, fascination, and eventually intimacy. She can sustain years-long deception, alter alliances when they cease serving her, and retreat when a stronger opponent exposes a genuine limit. She also honors selected commitments: sparing and teaching Hou Xiaomei, protecting people aboard her ship, cooperating against common threats, and eventually sharing government and family responsibilities. (Chapters 148–1315)

Abilities and cultivation

Ghostmother's powers arise from an unusual continuity: a celestial's severed arm becomes a banesoul, awakens as an independent consciousness, possesses a human corpse, and eventually gains dominant control of the restored celestial body. Her early banespirit capabilities, borrowed-body techniques, and late Celestial Realm Daoist magics are therefore stages of one identity, not abilities the original Gongsun Wan'er possessed.

Banesoul nature, possession, and soul control

As a banesoul, she initially lacks consciousness and memory. Bai Xiaochun's medicine awakens sentience, after which she can command or overawe other banesouls, survive without a living body, and possess the emptied corpse of Gongsun Wan'er. The possession reproduces the woman's outward identity well enough to pass within her sect, but the source does not establish that it gives Ghostmother all of the original disciple's memories or learned techniques. Anti-banesoul jade pendants repel her early form, showing that her intangibility is not immunity to specialized soul defenses. (Chapters 148–167 and 947–948)

Her soul remains extraordinarily difficult to destroy. Bodily dismemberment, blood seals, and explosive attacks can injure or confine her, yet she can abandon a damaged shape, become mist or light, and reconstruct herself after consuming more energy. She describes herself as an unkillable soul during the Gravekeeper battle, but this is a combat claim rather than proof of absolute invulnerability: the Gravekeeper's world-backed magic seriously weakens her, the true Ghostmother consumes her, and separation of the celestial body's left arm later isolates the clone consciousness again. (Chapters 820–846, 948–952, and 1047–1049)

Possession and soul fusion remain central after she reaches celestial power. She can enter another body as black mist, contest control with a related soul, and target an opponent's divine soul while bypassing flesh. The clone first loses a fusion contest to the true Ghostmother, then wins when Bai Xiaochun awakens her separately and helps subdue the weakened true self. These victories require circumstance and assistance; the corpus explicitly gives the first contest unequal control percentages and never presents possession as automatic against any target. (Chapters 947–952 and 1047–1049)

Life-force consumption and ghost servants

Ghostmother feeds by inhaling or drawing out a target's soul, blood, cultivation, and life force, leaving a withered or skeletal corpse. Early feeding awakens and strengthens her; later she uses speed, black rings, hair, red light, or large-area suction to drain many people at once. Consumed power can restore her after injury and increase her immediate aura, but her repeated statements about hunger show that the benefit is not necessarily permanent or self-sustaining. Specialized seals, sufficient distance, world power, and stronger cultivation can interrupt or resist the process. (Chapters 148–167, 345–346, and 818–834)

She also controls dead or ghostly servants. Lei Shan is captured, skinned, strengthened, and used as a durable combat puppet; the Lizard Bone Galleon's flag spirits and accumulated ghosts answer its master in war. At celestial level, Ghost Gate opens a vortex that releases endless evil ghosts, Ghost Dao forces them to consume and augment one another into a ghost king, and Ghost Mirroring multiplies that king. These creatures can attack, restrain, or screen her, but Bai Xiaochun's superior late cultivation smashes the mirrored kings and breaks the resulting prison. (Chapters 167, 818–834, 952–953, and 1047)

Frigid qi, bone sword, and bodily transformations

While living as Gongsun Wan'er, Ghostmother displays late-Core Formation frigid qi with exceptionally fine control. She creates multi-colored ice flowers, a self-repairing hand that grows from hundreds to thousands of meters, barriers that obstruct frigid-shadow movement, and large ice structures. Her recorded trial image can be damaged and defeated by concentrated physical force, so the trial demonstrates technique rather than the full survivability of her true soul. The source shows the effects but does not explain whether this frigid qi came from the stolen body, the fallen sword, or her own recovered inheritance. (Chapters 428–438)

She can pull a spine-like bone sword from her body, generating the sound of screaming souls and destructive darkness. Later she wields the vast rusted sword that once contained the Fallen Sword World, which the true Ghostmother identifies as Gu Tianjun's sword. The chronology suggests that the soulclone claimed it after awakening, but the corpus does not equate every early bone-blade manifestation with that enormous external weapon. Against the Gravekeeper she temporarily assumes the fallen sword's form, yet cannot maintain it after his rain and sword magics weaken her. (Chapters 436–438, 835–837, and 947–948)

Her body can change far beyond ordinary disguise. She assumes Bai Xiaochun's appearance to lure him out, turns into black smoke, red light, mouths, and enormous ghost faces, and uses these states for speed, evasion, consumption, or attack. Such transformations do not erase tactical limits: Zhou Zimo's life-essence blood formation traps her, the Gravekeeper can disperse her soul constructs, and exhausting exchanges reduce how long she can sustain a chosen form. The mechanisms connecting these forms are not fully explained beyond their basis in her ghostly soul. (Chapters 818–846 and 947–952)

Ghost Harmonization and world-level conflict

Ghost Harmonization destabilizes divine souls through sound and can concentrate its effect against a chosen opponent. Ghostmother uses it while forcing the Gravekeeper to respond, and its scale and nature lead other experts to identify it as archaean divine magic. She supplements it by summoning vast numbers of Wildlands souls and forming an enormous consuming ghost. The designation describes the technique's level, not her cultivation realm at that moment; she remains below Archaean and needs Daoist Heavenspan's intervention when the Gravekeeper turns the world's natural laws against her. (Chapters 834–846)

The confrontation demonstrates both her scale and her counters. She consumes a world-sized wind vortex, resists destruction by dispersing and reforming, and contests rain, lightning, and sword manifestations. However, the Gravekeeper's Five Yin Organs magic, backed by his authority within the Heavenspan Realm, seriously injures her and forces retreat. Because she originates outside that world, its projection and laws suppress her more effectively than a native opponent. Her alliance with Daoist Heavenspan offsets that disadvantage temporarily but never makes her his subordinate or guarantees escape. (Chapters 835–846 and 947–952)

Celestial ghost Dao

After reunion with the original Ghostmother, she possesses a Daoseed and genuine Celestial Realm cultivation, later reaching the late Celestial Realm. Her Ghost Gate series opens passages for ghost armies, combines them into giant entities, mirrors those entities, and converts their destruction into a gate that imprisons a target. Bone Miasma summons buried remains, pulverizes them into corrosive poison, and makes the miasma corporeal for Miasma Burial. These arts can confine or corrode opponents across a large battlefield, but Bai Xiaochun's regeneration and superior quasi-celestial power repeatedly break their effects. (Chapters 1036–1049 and 1236)

Ghost Dao Soul Magic uses the will contained in her Daoseed to make living beings across Vile-Emperor territory reach with their left hands, drawing a target toward her before her translucent hand attacks the divine soul directly. It bypasses ordinary fleshly durability, but Bai Xiaochun's independent Will lets him move against the imposed control and sever the activating arm. This representative failure shows both the technique's enormous territorial scale and its vulnerability when a target can resist its mind-and-body compulsion long enough to interrupt contact. (Chapters 1047–1048)

Her later ghost techniques include gates of hell, black smoke filled with innumerable vicious ghosts, large-area seals, and attacks effective against the Murknine contamination and the damaged sovereign clone. The exact named progression of every late technique is not given, nor does the corpus show her reaching Archaean. Her latest explicit state is late Celestial Realm; governing, expeditionary combat, and survival through the Mortal Renegade crisis demonstrate continued mastery, while the epilogue leaves any further cultivation advancement unknown. (Chapters 1133–1155, 1236, and 1251–1315)

Lizard Bone Galleon

The Lizard Bone Galleon is Ghostmother's primary equipment and must be distinguished from her innate abilities. It travels between worlds using known coordinates, houses internal decks and murals, controls three ghost-face flags, projects flame and black light, and transforms from a visible ship into the larger skeletal lizard hidden beneath the Deadmire. The Vile-Emperor later strengthens it with flesh, blood, and a defensive membrane capable of resisting the Greatsword of the North. (Chapters 856–864, 947–953, and 1036–1048)

Direct control of the galleon greatly raises Ghostmother's battle position, while separation from it makes capture possible. One flag spirit escapes her authority, and the vessel can be sealed or stolen when another consciousness from the same soul lineage takes the helm. Bai Xiaochun exploits both limitations: he lures Ghostmother off the ship, seals it as a Live Forever Lamp, then awakens the clone to commandeer it. The galleon's interworld travel and destructive functions are therefore item-derived and depend on command rather than proving equivalent innate range. (Chapters 952–953 and 1041–1049)

Power progression

Relationships

• Bai Xiaochun: His medicine awakens her, his connection to the Gravekeeper makes him her long-term trail, and his later intervention restores her independent consciousness. Menacing fascination develops into alliance, partnership, shared government, and family life.
• Gongsun Wan'er: The original Spirit Stream disciple dies in the Fallen Sword World, after which Ghostmother uses her emptied corpse as a puppet and possessed body. She is a distinct person, not Ghostmother's earlier human life.
• Hou Xiaomei: Initially used to conceal Ghostmother's approach to the Deadmire, Xiaomei is spared, accepted as her apprentice, protected aboard the galleon, and later helps integrate her master into Bai Xiaochun's household.
• Gravekeeper: The world guardian she follows Bai Xiaochun to find; he blocks her escape, defeats her attempt to force the Worldgate, and maneuvers her toward fusion with her true self.
• Daoist Heavenspan: A temporary ally in the effort to leave the Heavenspan Realm. She uses his world authority against the true Ghostmother, then breaks their agreement once her celestial body is restored.
• Zhou Zimo: As Mistress Red-Dust, she seals and nearly destroys Ghostmother's assumed body; both later become Bai Xiaochun's partners and members of the same household.
• Vile-Emperor: He receives Ghostmother into his dynasty, grants her territorial command, and enhances her galleon, but her later cooperation with Bai Xiaochun places her among the Arch-Emperor Dynasty's leadership.
• Gu Tianjun: His ancient attack severed the original Ghostmother's arm and indirectly created the soulclone; after she becomes Bai Xiaochun's captive, his attempt to seize her helps change her view of Bai Xiaochun.

Items

• Lizard Bone Galleon: Ghostmother's interworld vessel, fortress, source of ghost servants, and principal battlefield advantage; control passes between the true self and the severed-arm soulclone during their struggle for dominance.