Mortal Renegade

Mortal Renegade is the sovereign antagonist whose attempt to extinguish every world makes him the final enemy of Bai Xiaochun and the Eternal Immortal Domains. He was born Zhou Fan, created a separate clone that cultivated as the Mortal Daoist, and took the name Mortal Renegade only after that clone merged back into his true self. He is therefore not identical to the later reptilian clone that replaced the Vile-Emperor, and Daoist Heavenspan is his disciple rather than another incarnation. His death further reveals that Holy Extermination had made him a Dao puppet, placing his extermination campaign within a still older conflict. (Chapters 1233, 1239–1246, 1257–1258, 1278–1291, and 1305)

Biography

Famine, brotherhood, and the Valley of Extermination

Zhou Fan begins as the elder of two orphaned brothers during a famine caused by white locusts. Although only thirteen or fourteen, emaciated, wounded, and hungry, he has become ruthless enough to frighten adults when competing for food. That brutality is initially directed toward keeping his sick younger brother Zhou Chen alive: he carries him, gives him most of their food, and returns from a dangerous theft with a blood-soaked bun. By then an old Daoist has rescued Zhou Chen, leaving Zhou Fan to believe that his only remaining relative has died or disappeared. (Chapter 1239)

Years later, Zhou Fan leads the Black Locust Dynasty through the Lower Three Heavens. Its forces consume victims and add their power to his cultivation, bringing him into prolonged war with Zhou Chen, who has become a famous cultivator. Cornered outside the Valley of Extermination, the injured Zhou Fan refuses Zhou Chen's offer to guarantee his safety and formally severs their family relationship. He walks into corrosive black clouds that strip away his flesh and locusts, sustained only by an unexplained obsession as he approaches an ancient battleship hidden in the valley. (Chapter 1240)

The consequences of that choice emerge through two different continuities. Zhou Chen rises to the Higher Three Heavens, takes the name Worldly Daoist, and meets an elder fellow apprentice called Mortal Daoist. Mortal Daoist is later revealed to have been a clone created by Zhou Fan, not simply another alias used by Zhou Fan in the same body. After Zhou Fan emerges from the valley with an army of devilish specters, true self and clone merge. The combined cultivator breaks through to the Sovereign Realm without the Immortal World's approval, drops the Zhou surname and the “Daoist” portion of the clone's name, and declares himself Mortal Renegade, Devil Imperator. (Chapter 1241)

The valley's role remains deliberately uncertain for most of the story. When the Worldly Daoist's surviving will later investigates it through Bai Xiaochun, he discovers a corpse older than the starry sky whose aura surpasses a sovereign and whose Dao is the same selfish, apocalyptic extermination practiced by Mortal Renegade. He suspects Zhou Fan touched the corpse and inherited its fortune, but cannot decide whether his brother remained himself, became the corpse's successor, or carried a Dao reborn through karma. The final battle identifies the gray-robed Holy Extermination associated with that ship and calls Mortal Renegade his acquired Dao puppet, clarifying control without explaining the precise method or moment by which Zhou Fan was changed. (Chapters 1245–1246 and 1305)

Sovereign rebellion and the death of the Immortal World

Once sovereign, Mortal Renegade openly defines his goal. He believes that eradicating every living being and world will cast the starry sky into darkness, cause a unique Eternal Flower to bloom from the accumulated desolation, and allow him to transcend the Sovereign Realm by consuming it. He refuses the Worldly Daoist's request to leave the Immortal World because destroying it is part of that path. Even if the legend proves false, he insists that total extermination still accords with his chosen Dao, making destruction an end in itself as well as a means of advancement. (Chapter 1241)

His remaining emotional ties become obstacles he consciously removes. Both brothers had loved the Immortal Imperatrix, but she married the Worldly Daoist. Mortal Renegade kills her with a black spike that destroys her life force beyond the Worldly Daoist's power to reverse. He then admits that she and his younger brother are the two people who hinder his pursuit of the great Dao. After the defeated Worldly Daoist understands that confession as a death sentence, Mortal Renegade uses an immense invisible blade to behead him and reduce both bodies to ash, finally acknowledging and then eliminating the family bond he had denied at the valley. (Chapter 1241)

Mortal Renegade exterminates the Immortal World and leads his devilish specters onward until 1,080,000 worlds and their peoples have been destroyed. The Eternal Flower does bloom, but its spirit resists being absorbed. Bai Xiaochun initially reconstructs the ancient counterattack from incomplete memories, while the Saint-Emperor later supplies the surviving tradition: the Eternal Mother created three Eternal Sons, whose bloodlines became three sovereign-level sealing strips after they sacrificed themselves against the Enemy from Beyond. Those seals leave Mortal Renegade's colossal body suspended above the surviving Eternal Immortal Domains rather than ending the threat. (Chapters 1241–1242 and 1259)

The sealed sovereign and his later clones

The dormant giant remains Mortal Renegade's true body, but more than one later reptilian extension exists. A chunk knocked from the sovereign when the damaged fan arrives grows into a crimson, flesh-and-blood clone by devouring life force. The Saint-Emperor and apparent Vile-Emperor injure it, their subordinates reduce it to a small lizard, and Bai Xiaochun takes it away. The Vile-Emperor impostor exposed much later is another lizard clone: the Saint-Emperor realizes that the impostor's kinship with the creature from the fallen flesh explains why he deliberately freed it during the earlier battle. Neither is the Mortal Daoist clone, who merged with Zhou Fan before the name Mortal Renegade existed. (Chapters 1149–1156, 1241, and 1257)

The impostor clone kills and skins the actual Vile-Emperor, replaces him, suppresses his bloodline, and rules under his appearance for years. When Bai Xiaochun tears away that skin, the reptilian body is exposed. Black light from Mortal Renegade's forehead then heals and strengthens the clone despite the true body's continued sleep, and a small sovereign projection forms behind it. The clone uses black locusts that consume hosts' flesh, blood, and cultivation to multiply, but Bai Xiaochun and the Saint-Emperor contain them. It finally converts its flesh and blood into a black spike before Bai Xiaochun destroys its remaining will. These acts belong directly to the clone, not to Mortal Renegade's conscious true body, although their aura, techniques, and the empowerment from his forehead establish their connection. (Chapters 1257–1258)

The clone's death coincides with Mortal Renegade beginning to stir. Its long suppression of the Vile bloodline has already broken the left-shoulder sealing strip, while the Saint strip remains at eighty percent strength and the Arch strip at only twenty percent. Bai Xiaochun and the Saint-Emperor enter the surviving strips through the sovereign's body to repair them with their bloodlines. Inside, they encounter figures generated by Mortal Renegade's divine sense and remnants of consciousness he assimilated to fuel his extermination of worlds. Bai Xiaochun completes the Arch strip and binds the sovereign still, but the Saint-Emperor does not complete his own repair. (Chapters 1259–1266)

The repaired strip prevents immediate movement, not the continuing decay created by the other two failures. Mortal Renegade's shoulders crack and shed flesh as meteorites, awakening devilish specters made from the vengeful souls of exterminated peoples and spreading corrosive, life-devouring zones across the Eternal Immortal Domains. The disaster also weakens the restored light on his forehead, shortening the expected reprieve. Thus the sovereign remains physically inactive, but his accumulated victims and deteriorating body continue the pressure of his campaign while Bai Xiaochun searches for a way to oppose him at the level of Dao. (Chapters 1267–1269)

Daoist Heavenspan and the collapse of the final seal

Mortal Renegade remains motionless for roughly twenty years while Bai Xiaochun develops an independent sovereign path. During that interval, Daoist Heavenspan appears in front of the sealed giant's forehead as a separate cultivator who has accepted Mortal Renegade's Dao. Mortal Renegade functions like a world whose will can grant approval, enabling his apprentice to become an archaean stronger than the impostor Vile-Emperor and eventually a half-sovereign. The projected faces and nirvanic extermination techniques Daoist Heavenspan wields come from his master's Dao, but his personal ambitions, decisions, and body remain his own. (Chapters 1277–1279 and 1284–1287)

Because Mortal Renegade cannot personally stop the defensive preparations while sealed, Daoist Heavenspan acts in his place. He attacks the formation around the giant, uses the Dao of nirvanic extermination to overpower opposition, and causes Bai Xiaochun's repaired sealing strip to collapse upward from the dantian. Mortal Renegade can release only a small portion of divine sense while asleep, limiting the power behind the projections, but that assistance is enough to turn his apprentice into the immediate instrument of his awakening. Even so, the narrative explicitly says that Daoist Heavenspan's actions are mostly controlled by his own Dao rather than depicting him as a clone or possessed shell. (Chapters 1278–1289)

Daoist Heavenspan burns his flesh, blood, life force, soul, and inherited Dao to create a full Nirvanic Extermination Projection and escape toward Mortal Renegade's true body. Song Que stops him by invoking the opposing legacy of the Worldly Daoist, and Daoist Heavenspan burns to ash before reaching safety. His death does not merge him into Mortal Renegade or transfer his identity; it ends the disciple's independent life. The damage he has already inflicted continues, however, and the last effective sealing strip collapses. Mortal Renegade's eyes open for the first time since his ancient sealing, and his cracked, statue-like body begins to move. (Chapters 1290–1292)

A war of opposed Daos and final erasure

Mortal Renegade awakens with an aura that weighs upon all life and immediately reaches for the Eternal Immortal Domains. His voice itself carries the Dao of extermination, while Bai Xiaochun answers with the Dao of radiance and light developed as its opposite. Each initially controls half of the starry sky. Mortal Renegade's much older experience and existing power leave Bai Xiaochun at a disadvantage, but Bai can block the first hand strike, defend the Eternal world, and prevent its ruins from being absorbed toward Mortal Renegade's desired Eternal breakthrough. (Chapters 1291–1294)

Bai Xiaochun uses the hourglass that belonged to Mortal Renegade's old master, reincarnation Sutras, and time shifts to delay the stronger sovereign and seed the extinguished worlds with new radiance. Both sides deploy Dao clones across the 1,080,000 ruins: Mortal Renegade's versions spread his extermination, while Bai's attempt to reignite the lost worlds. Those Dao manifestations are battlefield extensions of sovereign will, distinct from both the ancient Mortal Daoist clone and the lizard that replaced the Vile-Emperor. Bai's Waterswamp Kingdom also wounds Mortal Renegade's true form; the lizard had encountered it earlier, but its destroyed will had not transmitted detailed knowledge back to the sleeping original. (Chapters 1295–1302)

In the final direct battle, Mortal Renegade acknowledges Bai Xiaochun's strength and earns the advantage only after both expend most of their Dao clones and power. His purpose does not change: victory would let him consume the Eternal Immortal Domains and use the Essence of the Eternal to reach the Eternal Realm. Bai instead resonates with that Essence and directs a mysterious energy through the Finger of Allheaven. The attacks erase Mortal Renegade's defenses, kill his remaining Dao clones, and progressively destroy his body even though using them also consumes Bai's life force. (Chapters 1302–1305)

The third finger erases Mortal Renegade from his legs to his head. At the end, his eyes become clear in the same way Zhou Fan's had looked as a protective boy, and he addresses Bai as “little brother” while warning him to kill Holy Extermination. The moment suggests the re-emergence of Zhou Fan's own awareness, but the text does not explain how much agency he retained before then. His body and identity are erased forever; only afterward does gray smoke from his third eye form Holy Extermination, who says he acquired a Dao puppet to absorb the first three attacks. Holy Extermination is therefore a separate older will released by Mortal Renegade's death, not the survival or resurrection of Mortal Renegade himself. (Chapter 1305)

Appearance and personality

As a starving adolescent, Zhou Fan is emaciated and injured, with snow on his shoulders, new wounds across his face, and blood from his abdomen. His eyes can show excitement and warmth when bringing food to Zhou Chen, then despair when he finds the boy gone. As an adult Black Locust leader, he is a handsome, middle-aged man in a black robe with long black hair, violet eyes, blood on his face, a caved-in chest, and a broken leg. After becoming sovereign, his robe seems to consume nearby light and his presence lacks life force. His sealed true body is an enormous, hulking, statue-like giant covered in rock and rubble, with eyes compared first to suns and later to black holes. (Chapters 1239–1241 and 1257–1259, 1277, and 1291–1294)

Zhou Fan's childhood ruthlessness coexists with sacrifice and tenderness toward his brother. After the valley and the merger, Mortal Renegade is cold, obsessive, and willing to destroy every personal attachment in service to an utterly selfish Dao. He does not merely accept extermination as a cost; he says it remains true to his Dao even if the Eternal Flower is a myth. He can still recognize strength, granting Bai Xiaochun respect in their final battle, and his last clear-eyed warning indicates that some trace of the protective elder brother endured or returned. Because Holy Extermination's control is only fully revealed at death, the division between Zhou Fan's chosen cruelty and the influence of the Dao puppet remains unresolved. (Chapters 1239–1241, 1246, 1303, and 1305)

Abilities and cultivation

Mortal Renegade is a sovereign whose power comes from a Dao of nirvanic extermination rather than the approval of an ordinary world. His abilities operate at the scale of worlds and the starry sky, but they are constrained by bloodline seals, the opposition of another sovereign Dao, and the fact that he never completes his intended breakthrough into the Eternal Realm. The late revelation of Holy Extermination's Dao puppet complicates the origin of those powers without changing which effects Mortal Renegade personally demonstrates. (Chapters 1241, 1259–1269, 1277–1279, and 1291–1305)

Unapproved sovereign cultivation and nirvanic extermination

Mortal Renegade reaches the Sovereign Realm after Zhou Fan merges with the Mortal Daoist clone, even though the Immortal World's will refuses him approval. The source does not describe the breakthrough method, and Bai Xiaochun later treats it as the central mystery that inspires him to seek a sovereign path independent of world approval. At this level Mortal Renegade possesses sovereign will, can compete for control of the starry sky, and acts as a world unto himself whose approval can raise an apprentice toward sovereign power. (Chapters 1241, 1277–1279, and 1284–1287)

His Dao converts life and creation into darkness, death, and ruins. It supports the destruction of 1,080,000 worlds, suppresses life force through his mere aura, makes his voice capable of carrying exterminating force, and allows him to absorb devastated worlds toward a higher breakthrough. Projected faces derived from this Dao wither their surroundings, while a Finger of Extermination attacks Bai Xiaochun and all of his distant Dao clones together. The narrative establishes these effects but does not provide a single activation rule or energy cost for the overall Dao. Its decisive counter is Bai's opposite Dao of radiance, which restores light to extinguished worlds and gradually drives away Mortal Renegade's darkness. (Chapters 1241–1242, 1277–1279, and 1283–1302)

Clones, projections, and granted approval

Several extensions appear and should not be merged. The Mortal Daoist was a cultivated clone of Zhou Fan that became an archaean, lived as the Worldly Daoist's fellow apprentice, and later merged permanently with the true self. In the Eternal era, one later flesh clone grows from a fallen piece of the sovereign and is captured by Bai Xiaochun, while a separate reptilian clone has already killed and replaced the Vile-Emperor. The impostor can wield Mortal Renegade's aura and magical item, release his locusts, and receive healing from the sealed true body's forehead. Bai Xiaochun destroys that impostor's will, and no identity continuity with the original Vile-Emperor survives its exposure. (Chapters 1149–1156, 1241, and 1256–1258)

During the sovereign battle, Mortal Renegade also creates Dao clones that fight across the 1,080,000 ruined worlds. These are distributed manifestations of his Dao rather than separately developed people, and they perish as Bai's radiance spreads or when the Finger of Allheaven damages their source. Daoist Heavenspan belongs to none of these categories. He receives Mortal Renegade's approval and inherited Dao as an apprentice, allowing him to use projected faces and a Nirvanic Extermination Projection, but he retains his own motives and dies as himself. Mortal Renegade's sleep limits how much divine sense he can lend the disciple. (Chapters 1278–1290 and 1292–1305)

Locusts, devilish specters, and assimilated consciousness

The Black Locust forces associated with Zhou Fan consume victims and add their power to his cultivation. Their later black locusts infect nearby cultivators, absorb flesh, blood, and cultivation, then reproduce. The lizard clone releases a particularly fast form capable of bypassing many natural laws of the Eternal Immortal Domains, although Bai Xiaochun's altered gravity and time slow them enough for the Saint-Emperor to destroy them. The source calls the locusts Mortal Renegade's divine ability but does not explain whether he originally created them, inherited them in the valley, or simply controls them. (Chapters 1240–1241 and 1257–1258)

His devilish specters are vengeful souls from exterminated populations sullied by his aura and incorporated into his army. He also assimilates remnants of individual consciousness, sealing them inside himself to fuel world extermination. Within his body, divine-sense copies of past figures attack intruders according to the roles assigned to them; the Immortal Imperatrix encountered there is not the resurrected woman. The dormant sovereign's crumbling flesh can carry specters into the Eternal Immortal Domains, where they corrode land, consume entrants, and drain life force. These stored forces extend his threat during sealing but can be destroyed individually and do not free his main body without broader seal failure. (Chapters 1260–1269)

Sovereign combat, resilience, and defeat

Awake, Mortal Renegade can move a hand large enough to seize the Eternal Immortal Domains, turn part of the starry sky into a pill-furnace-like enclosure, create world-scale darkness, and use an ancient curse whose corrosive force attacks the space around him. His third eye emits layered black defenses strong enough to withstand an ordinary full-force sovereign attack. He also deploys numerous Dao clones, natural-law attacks, and the Finger of Extermination while simultaneously contesting Bai's control over the starry sky. His exact connection to the black trident and spike used by the lizard clone is established through ownership and shared aura, but the true body is not shown personally wielding either during the final battle. (Chapters 1256–1258 and 1292–1305)

His resilience is vast but finite. Three Eternal bloodline strips keep him dormant until bloodline decay and outside sabotage undo them. Bai's time and reincarnation techniques delay rather than defeat him, while the Waterswamp Kingdom inflicts a meaningful wound and the spread of radiance destroys his Dao clones. Even after exhausting combat, he survives two Finger of Allheaven strikes, but each erases defenses, flesh, and extensions. The third destroys Mortal Renegade completely. He never absorbs the Eternal Flower or reaches the Eternal Realm, and the Holy Extermination released afterward is another entity rather than a final transformation in Mortal Renegade's cultivation. (Chapters 1259–1269 and 1291–1305)

Relationships

• Bai Xiaochun: Bai learns Mortal Renegade's history through the Worldly Daoist's memories and builds a sovereign Dao as the direct opposite of extermination. Mortal Renegade sees him as both the protector blocking access to the Eternal Flower and, eventually, a worthy opponent. Bai erases him with the third Finger of Allheaven, after which the dying Zhou Fan addresses him as “little brother” while warning him about Holy Extermination. The address reflects Zhou Fan's returning memory rather than a literal blood relationship between Bai and Mortal Renegade. (Chapters 1239–1246 and 1283–1305)

• Worldly Daoist / Zhou Chen: Zhou Fan keeps his sick younger brother alive during famine, but believes him lost after the old Daoist takes him away. When they meet again as cultivators, Zhou Fan refuses reconciliation, while Zhou Chen continues to plead with and grieve for him. Mortal Renegade later acknowledges Zhou Chen as one of two emotional obstacles to his Dao and kills him after destroying the Immortal World. (Chapters 1239–1241)

• Mortal Daoist clone: This elder apprentice of the original Immortal Imperator is a clone Zhou Fan created before entering the later sovereign war. He develops separately, reaches the Archaean Realm, befriends the Worldly Daoist, and competes with him for the Immortal Imperatrix's love. His merger with Zhou Fan produces the continuity that takes the name Mortal Renegade; he is neither the later lizard clone nor a surviving companion after that event. (Chapter 1241)

• Immortal Imperatrix: Mortal Daoist and the Worldly Daoist both love their master's daughter, who chooses the latter as her partner. Mortal Renegade regards her as one of the personal bonds hindering his Dao and kills her with a black spike. Later copies within his body are divine-sense constructions or assimilated remnants, not evidence that he successfully resurrected her. (Chapters 1241 and 1262–1264)

• Daoist Heavenspan: Mortal Renegade accepts Daoist Heavenspan as a personal apprentice and grants the approval needed for him to become a half-sovereign. Daoist Heavenspan inherits the Dao of nirvanic extermination and acts against the final seal while his master sleeps, but remains an independently motivated disciple rather than a clone. He dies burning his inherited Dao in an unsuccessful attempt to reach Mortal Renegade's body. (Chapters 1278–1290)

• Vile-Emperor clone: This reptilian clone kills and replaces the actual Vile-Emperor, suppresses the Vile bloodline, and carries Mortal Renegade's aura and techniques while operating under the imperial disguise. It is distinct from the flesh clone grown out of the piece knocked from Mortal Renegade, which the impostor helps free. The sealed true body heals the impostor once its identity is exposed; Bai Xiaochun then destroys it, and the resulting disturbance helps bring Mortal Renegade closer to awakening. (Chapters 1149–1156 and 1256–1259)

• Holy Extermination: The corpse and Dao in the Valley of Extermination first make it unclear whether Mortal Renegade is a successor, reincarnation, or altered version of another being. At Mortal Renegade's death, Holy Extermination emerges separately from his third eye and describes him as a Dao puppet acquired to absorb Bai's first three finger strikes. Mortal Renegade's clear-eyed warning opposes Holy Extermination at the last moment, but the corpus does not explain the earlier limits of the older being's control over him. (Chapters 1245–1246 and 1305)