Giant Ghost King

The Giant Ghost King is a Wildlands sovereign whose ruthless political caution, inherited Giant Ghost Incantation, and evolving bond with Bai Xiaochun carry him from the throne of Giant Ghost City to a senior role in the restored Arch-Emperor Dynasty.

Biography

The Decay Period and the Giant Ghost City Rebellion

Before he appears in person, the Giant Ghost King is known across the Wildlands as one of its four heavenly kings, one of only five demigods, and the ruler of a territory whose officials invoke his name as protection. His authority is nevertheless under pressure from three great necromancer clans that have become a rival faction within his domain. When the renegade Bai Hao attracts attention by attacking his own clan, the king orders Duke Deathcrier to bring him to Giant Ghost City. He is not yet interested in Bai Hao as a person; he wants a disposable outsider whose treatment will expose the Bai Clan's intentions. (Chapters 513–623)

The king's caution conceals a specific vulnerability. The inherited technique he cultivates periodically enters a decay phase in which his cultivation drops, and wood-type souls suppress it even further. Once Bai Hao's interrogations confirm that the great clans know this secret and intend to rebel, the king chooses not to strike first. He continues presenting an apparently indecisive front, uses a clone to draw out the disloyal dukes, marquises, and clan patriarchs, and treats the uprising as a test that will identify every enemy at once. The plan succeeds politically, but the rebels' wood-element formation genuinely weakens him and forces his true body into a state where he cannot simply end the revolt. (Chapters 630–646)

Bai Xiaochun, still disguised as Bai Hao, discovers the king's weakened true body and drags him out of the city while alternately threatening, humiliating, and protecting him. The king initially endures because he has no better option, even accepting a restrictive spell, but Bai Xiaochun's refusal to surrender him gradually changes the calculation. When Bai releases him to face the Cai Clan patriarch directly, the king gives up one of his three drops of soul blood and his crimson spear so that Bai can deliver a temporary, overwhelming attack. That gift leaves the king aged and nearly insensible, turning an alliance formed by necessity into a mutual debt grounded in real risk. (Chapters 647–661)

The Giant Ghost King recovers in five days but pretends to remain unconscious long enough to see whether Bai will still protect him. Bai does, and the king reveals his restored demigod power at the decisive moment, kills the Cai Clan patriarch, and captures the other rebel patriarchs. He considers punishing or severing ties with Bai, yet the rescue and Bai's brazen appeal soften his usual ruthlessness. He gives Bai the metal-type deva soul he needs, takes him back to Giant Ghost City, and makes him majordomo. By the rebellion's end, the king has recovered his throne and identified his traitors, but he has also acquired a subordinate whose loyalty he values in a way he did not anticipate when he first selected a pawn. (Chapters 662–668)

Patronage, Family, and the Threat Beyond the Wildlands

Back in power, the Giant Ghost King refuses to exterminate the three clans wholesale. He uses Bai to strip away their reserves and weaken their ability to rebel, tolerates his majordomo's excesses, and eventually grants him the substantive office of inspections commissioner. Their relationship remains transactional and combative: the king exploits Bai's appetite for status, Bai pushes the limits of royal favor, and both understand that the other is capable of manipulation. Even so, the king comes to see that Bai is attention-seeking rather than treacherous and begins treating him with an indulgence that differs from his colder handling of ordinary officials. (Chapters 675–684)

The king's next priority is ending the flaw in the Giant Ghost Incantation. He has collected four elemental fruits from the Ghost King Orchid and needs the fifth to complete the set, so he secretly uses a restrictive spell to send Bai into the Necromancer Kettle as his agent. He secures the fruit, but his method leaves Bai surrounded by hostile chosen and produces a diplomatic crisis when Bai retaliates by abducting them. The king negotiates with the other heavenly kings, accepts the political consequences, and uses the completed set to remove the five-elements weakness and future decay periods. His strategic objective succeeds, but Bai's anger forces him to confront the human cost of treating a proven loyalist as an expendable instrument. (Chapters 685–711)

Partly from guilt and partly from calculation, the king offers Bai the hand of his only daughter, Zhou Zimo, who is also known as Mistress Red-Dust. Neither prospective partner welcomes his unilateral matchmaking, and Zhou Zimo's independence repeatedly defeats his attempts to manage the arrangement from afar. Nevertheless, he publicly backs Bai against the nobility of Arch-Emperor City, urges his daughter to intervene when Bai is trapped, and offers Bai refuge when the inspections commission makes him powerful enemies. The relationship thus develops into an unstable form of family patronage: the king calls on Bai as a useful agent, but also accepts political exposure to protect him when that service brings danger. (Chapters 711–785)

His protection of Zhou Zimo reveals the more personal limit of his political detachment. When he discovers that an unknown soul has trapped his daughter, he mobilizes Giant Ghost City's full reserve power and attacks immediately. Against Gongsun Wan'er, his ordinary demigod attacks are absorbed, so he risks Giant Ghost World Extermination to overload and immobilize her while secretly calling the other heavenly kings and the Grand Heavenmaster. He spends much of his own power to create their opening and then shields Zhou Zimo when the Celestial arrives. The battle confirms both his willingness to pay a severe price for his daughter and his ability to turn an apparently failed attack into part of a coordinated plan. (Chapters 826–848)

The Heavenspan War and Exile

When war finally erupts between the Wildlanders and the forces of Heavenspan, the Giant Ghost King commands the Giant Ghost Legion against the very eastern sects Bai Xiaochun considers home. He fights the demigod patriarch of the Starry Sky Dao Polarity Sect despite wounds that include a spear driven through his body, while enemies deliberately target Zhou Zimo to distract him. Bai intervenes and forces the demigods apart, ending the battle before either side destroys the people he loves. The king is displeased by the interruption but ultimately accepts the truce, and his largely intact army later contrasts with the ruin suffered elsewhere because Bai stopped the conflict around Giant Ghost City. (Chapters 989–1019)

The Heavenspan Realm's destruction strips the Giant Ghost King of the city, armies, and status that once defined him. Teleported into the Eternal Immortal Domains, he becomes the first familiar survivor Bai encounters. Instead of waiting helplessly, the two use captured command medallions to devise a signal for other survivors, separately defeat local demigod preceptors, and then join forces against Ghostmother's battleship. The king's giant-ghost assault and moonflower support cannot overcome the combined enemy force on their own, and the backlash from attacking the vessel badly wounds him. That failure forces the former sovereign to accept how much smaller his power is within the new world's hierarchy and to rely openly on Bai and Gongsun Wan'er. (Chapters 1033–1048)

Their seizure of Ghostmother's vessel brings them to Saint-Emperor City, where the Giant Ghost King receives Godsifter Prefecture rather than an independent kingdom. He is awed by the Eternal Immortal Domains' world treasure and the Saint-Emperor's distant power, yet Bai's presence gives him enough familiarity to navigate the humiliating transition. After a final quarrel over stolen heavenly dragonfish, the two separate for their assigned territories with genuine emotion. The king ends this phase as a recognized preceptor under another emperor: alive and responsible for displaced Heavenspan cultivators, but no longer able to rely on the unquestioned sovereignty he possessed in Giant Ghost City. (Chapters 1048–1059)

Mistysea and the New Arch-Emperor Dynasty

Godsifter Prefecture is poor, sparsely populated, and vulnerable to the surrounding Saint-Emperor administration. The Giant Ghost King tries to gather Heavenspan survivors there, but the ruling celestial disperses them and later strips him of his preceptor title to test whether Bai will defend him. Bai's intervention restores the office, after which the king and Grand Heavenmaster accept a dangerous northern campaign as an opportunity rather than a punishment. They mobilize the survivor army, seize Mistysea Prefecture after Bai breaks the enemy's will, and turn their political and administrative experience toward building an autonomous refuge whose growing strength earns respect from neighboring territories. (Chapters 1065–1118)

Maintaining that refuge requires the Giant Ghost King to work within limits he cannot overcome by force. He and the Grand Heavenmaster struggle to establish relations across the Vile-Emperor border, monitor the destructive gray mist advancing from Murknine, and keep Mistysea organized while Bai investigates threats beyond their cultivation. When greater upheaval makes the prefecture indefensible, they suppress their despair and execute the evacuation, moving its population into Bai's greatsword rather than sacrificing it to preserve territory. After Bai's long absence, the king survives with the other Heavenspan leaders and is among the familiar faces who welcome him back to found an independent Arch-Emperor Dynasty. (Chapters 1126–1213)

Within the new dynasty, the king becomes both an elder statesman and an intensely protective grandfather. He takes special interest in Zhou Zimo's son, Bai Dabao, worries that future heirs could threaten the boy's standing, and drives his cultivation recklessly toward a Celestial breakthrough for the power to protect him. The tribulation would have killed him without aid from the Grand Heavenmaster, Gongsun Wan'er, and Bai Xiaochun, but he survives and becomes one of the dynasty's celestials. He then shares responsibility for national affairs and border defense, although his new level remains insufficient when the Vile-Emperor captures him to force a confrontation with Bai. (Chapters 1219–1258)

Rescued unconscious but unharmed, the Giant Ghost King awakens to the approaching Mortal Renegade and refuses evacuation along with Bai's other family and allies. He prepares to fight to the death, spends the long crisis praying with the Eternal Immortal Domains for Bai's success, and survives the restoration of the starry sky. In the later age, he does not reclaim his old independent throne. Instead, he and the Grand Heavenmaster assist the grown Bai Dabao after Dabao becomes the new Arch-Emperor, completing his shift from territorial king to family elder and institutional guardian of the dynasty that succeeded the Wildlands. (Chapters 1269–1313)

Appearance and personality

At full strength, the Giant Ghost King is tall and sturdily built, with black hair, stern features, a royal crown, and a violet robe embroidered with a serpentine dragon. His eyes carry a penetrating gleam that makes others feel as though he can read their thoughts. During the nadir of his decay period he becomes withered and wrinkled, his hair turns white, and his aura nearly disappears; when his power returns, his youth and imposing physique return with it. His cultivated giant-ghost form is a supernatural transformation rather than his ordinary appearance. (Chapters 640–664, 829)

He is proud, calculating, and deeply conscious of royal dignity. He can use subordinates as pieces in a political test, conceal recovery to examine another person's loyalty, and restrain revenge when preserving weakened clans is more useful than destroying them. Those traits coexist with genuine reciprocity: Bai's courage can soften his ruthlessness, threats to Zhou Zimo override his caution, and his concern for Bai Dabao drives him to risk a fatal tribulation. He also has a vain, mischievous side, enjoying flattery, romantic intrigue, and the opportunity to call Bai his son-in-law even after losing the throne that once reinforced their hierarchy. (Chapters 616–668, 675–711, 1034–1058, 1222)

Abilities and cultivation

The Giant Ghost King begins as a demigod whose inherited Giant Ghost Incantation grants immense destructive power, physical transformation, ghost manifestations, and a limited means of controlling power derived from the same art. He later removes its elemental decay flaw and eventually survives a Celestial tribulation. The corpus explains several major applications in detail, but it does not give a complete training history, ordinary activation sequence, or catalogue of every technique passed between Giant Ghost Kings.

Giant Ghost Incantation and the decay flaw

The Giant Ghost Incantation was created by the first Giant Ghost King from incomplete records originating beyond the heavens and was transmitted orally through successive holders of the title. Its incompleteness produces a periodic decay phase in which the user's cultivation rapidly falls; concentrated wood-type soul power accelerates that suppression, reducing the ninth king from demigod toward the Nascent Soul level during the rebellion. This is a true counter rather than a rumor, although the king anticipates it and uses the vulnerability to lure out his enemies. Outside the decay period, he can recover from the suppressed state and restore both his demigod cultivation and youthful body. (Chapters 640–646, 662–664, 829)

The Ghost King Orchid's elemental fruits provide a permanent answer to that specific flaw. Having already collected four, he sends Bai Xiaochun to obtain the fifth so that the set represents all five elements. The king states that the completed set will let him switch among the elements at will and end the potentially fatal decay period. He later declares the weakness removed; no subsequent decay is shown. Gongsun Wan'er nevertheless identifies the Giant Ghost Incantation itself as an incomplete form related to Ghostform Lifedraining, so eliminating the five-elements flaw does not establish that the inherited art became a complete version of its extraterrestrial source technique. (Chapters 685–687, 702–707, 829)

Giant-ghost form and World Extermination

When forced to use his trump card against Gongsun Wan'er, the king stamps down and expands through successive stages to a height of 15,000 meters. His skin turns green, tusks and curved horns emerge, and a vortex around him absorbs the surrounding energy of heaven and earth. The transformation culminates in Giant Ghost World Extermination, activated by raising both hands to form a black sun filled with destructive power. The technique can threaten an enormous area, but the narrative does not define its ordinary range because the king concentrates it on a single exceptional target rather than allowing it to strike the land. (Chapters 829–830)

He feeds black smoke and his own transformed mass into the sun, enlarging it while his body shrinks back toward normal size. Against Gongsun Wan'er, the attack cannot destroy an entity that consumes incoming power, but it overloads her, strips away successive bodies, and slows her blood-sea form enough to hold her in place. The expenditure leaves the king pale, severely drained, and vulnerable to the enemy's counterattack. This demonstrated limit is crucial: World Extermination is devastating but not inexhaustible, and its best result in that battle is to create an opening for allied demigods rather than secure victory by itself. (Chapters 830–833)

Ghost hands, control, and demigod authority

At demigod level, the Giant Ghost King bends the surrounding world to his will. He manifests an enormous ghost hand that locks down an area, calls lightning powerful enough to destroy devas, nullifies a deva patriarch's technique with one extended hand, and can contest the Underworld River's pull long enough to seize a released deva soul. These effects are demonstrated, but their individual incantations, costs, and maximum ranges are not consistently stated. His strength is not absolute: coordinated demigods can injure him, Ghostmother's subordinates overwhelm him in numbers, and Gongsun Wan'er's absorption turns his first ghost hand into nourishment. (Chapters 641, 664, 829, 996–1004, 1041–1046)

The first Giant Ghost King also devised a control method tied to the incantation's power. After Gongsun Wan'er absorbs the black sun, the ninth king points at her and uses the undigested portion of his cultivation power to muddle her thoughts and slow her attacks. He had earlier given a related technique to Zhou Zimo under the claim that it would help her break through, and it influenced her thinking; the corpus presents this as manipulation, not as unrestricted mind control. Its demonstrated condition is a target carrying compatible or absorbed Giant Ghost power, and there is no evidence that he can impose the effect freely on anyone. (Chapters 778, 802, 830–832)

Soul blood and Celestial advancement

The king possesses only three drops of soul blood, each formed from his own essence and precious enough that giving one away is an extraordinary sacrifice. He opens his forehead to release a golden drop into Bai Xiaochun, temporarily raising Bai's cultivation and transmitting insight into deva natural law and demigod magical law. The ordinary promised effect is power half a step into the Demigod Realm; Bai briefly produces a full demigod aura and one attack only because his clones amplify the borrowed power, an outcome that astonishes even the king. The effect is temporary, does not heal existing injuries, and visibly ages and weakens the donor. (Chapters 660–662)

Much later, the Giant Ghost King reaches the threshold of the Celestial Realm because fear for his grandson drives unusually rapid, reckless cultivation. His Celestial Tribulation is explicitly too strong for him to survive unaided. The Grand Heavenmaster and Gongsun Wan'er intervene, and Bai Xiaochun uses the Sutra of the Future to transfer the tribulation's harmful effects to himself, allowing the king to pass. At his latest named level, the king can negate the rot around fallen stones and join the dynasty's celestial-level border response, but the Vile-Emperor can still capture him with ease. (Chapters 1222–1223, 1251–1258)

Strategy and command

His most consistent non-innate strength is strategic judgment. He exposes a rebellion by presenting weakness, tests Bai's loyalty while concealing his recovery, uses World Extermination to immobilize an enemy he cannot kill, and summons allies before revealing the last stage of his plan. He is also an experienced territorial administrator who can mobilize Giant Ghost City's armies, perform soulsearches for intelligence, negotiate from a weaker political position, and build Mistysea Prefecture with the Grand Heavenmaster. These successes do not make him infallible: Bai repeatedly creates consequences he failed to predict, and the higher powers of the Eternal Immortal Domains sharply constrain his plans. (Chapters 616–668, 829–832, 1034–1046, 1109–1148)

Power progression

Relationships

• Bai Xiaochun: The king first recruits Bai's assumed identity, Bai Hao, as a disposable political probe. Their ordeal during the Giant Ghost City rebellion creates mutual debt: Bai saves and humiliates him, while the king entrusts Bai with soul blood and later rewards his loyalty. Patronage develops into friendship and family connection through Zhou Zimo, and each repeatedly risks political standing or personal safety to rescue the other.
• Zhou Zimo: His only daughter is independent enough to reject his matchmaking and ignore his attempts to direct her, but threats to her produce his least guarded reactions. He mobilizes all of Giant Ghost City's reserves to save her and later pushes toward the Celestial Realm to protect her son.
• Grand Heavenmaster: Once the dominant political administrator above the four heavenly kings, the Grand Heavenmaster becomes the king's closest governing partner after the Heavenspan Realm falls. They lead armies into Mistysea, administer the refugee territory and Arch-Emperor Dynasty, and later assist Bai Dabao together.
• Duke Deathcrier: The king considers Duke Deathcrier the one senior subordinate he can fully trust during the Giant Ghost City rebellion. He uses the duke for sensitive missions, including retrieving Bai Hao, monitoring threats, and accompanying major deployments.
• Gongsun Wan'er: He initially fights her as the foreign soul threatening Zhou Zimo and discovers that her Ghostform Lifedraining art is related to his inherited incantation. After the Heavenspan collapse, necessity makes them allies aboard Ghostmother's captured vessel and later fellow senior figures in the Arch-Emperor Dynasty.
• Bai Dabao: The king's grandson becomes the focus of his later ambitions. Fear that the imperial heir might be threatened drives him to become a celestial, and he eventually helps Dabao govern as the new Arch-Emperor.

Items

• Giant Ghost Soul Blood: The king has only three drops of this demigod essence. During the escape from Giant Ghost City, he voluntarily extracts one from his forehead and gives it to Bai Xiaochun, temporarily granting borrowed cultivation power and higher-realm insight at the cost of leaving the king aged, weakened, and near unconsciousness. (Chapters 660–661)