Zhou Xuzi

Zhou Xuzi is the former god emperor of the Eternal Heaven God Realm, a ruler celebrated for compassion and service before his betrayal of Yun Che and Jasmine transforms him into one of their most consequential enemies. His fear of the Evil Infant leads him to strike a savior after the crimson calamity has ended. The resulting persecution destroys the peace Yun Che meant to choose, while Zhou Xuzi’s refusal to question the righteousness of his own action carries his son, realm, and lineage into ruin.

Biography

Guardian of Eternal Heaven

Zhou Xuzi inherits the Eternal Heaven god-emperor power through the founding bloodline rather than through one of the realm’s Guardian offices. By the time he appears publicly, he is a level-ten Divine Master and the ruler of the Eastern Divine Region’s most publicly revered king realm. His ordinary gray clothes, gentle manner, and lack of ostentatious pressure contrast with that station. Other realm kings stand before him not merely because of strength, but because generations of Eternal Heaven rulers have made protection, arbitration, and sacrifice the foundation of their authority. Zhou Xuzi sincerely regards himself as custodian of that tradition. (Chapters 1148–1152, 1350, and 1513)

The approaching crimson calamity gives that ideal a practical test. After the Eternal Heaven Pearl detects danger beyond the eastern Wall of Primal Chaos, Zhou Xuzi organizes the Profound God Convention to identify a generation capable of surviving the coming disaster. He allows the Pearl’s rules to govern the competition, accepts Yun Che’s disputed methods when they do not violate those rules, and places the convention under Qu Hui’s strict judgment. The subsequent opening of “Three Millennia in Eternal Heaven” excludes his own disciples even though the accelerated realm is the greatest opportunity the king realm can offer. That choice costs Eternal Heaven enormous stored power and resources, but it is meant to strengthen the wider Eastern Divine Region rather than his bloodline. (Chapters 1152–1160, 1243–1258, and 1271–1284)

Yun Che repeatedly challenges Zhou Xuzi’s expectations during the convention. Zhou initially sees a lower-realm participant whose cultivation and behavior threaten the ceremony’s dignity, then accepts the evidence of Yun Che’s strength and potential. He protects the fairness of Yun Che’s matches, witnesses his victories over the Eastern Region’s God Children, and regrets that circumstances keep him from entering the three-thousand-year cultivation period. Zhou’s regard is genuine enough that his crown prince later waits personally to receive Yun Che. That sincere recognition makes the betrayal to come more consequential: Zhou does not strike an unknown heretic, but someone he knows has repeatedly served the world. (Chapters 1157–1169, 1190–1214, 1243–1284, and 1513)

Crimson calamity and the fatal betrayal

When the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor approaches the Wall of Primal Chaos, Zhou Xuzi joins the other rulers in preparing for a threat no king realm can defeat. He consults ancient records, convenes the strongest powers, and accepts Yun Che as the only person able to communicate with Jie Yuan. His desire is to preserve the Primal Chaos rather than gain personal advantage, and he is willing to stake Eternal Heaven’s forces and reputation on the plan. Yun Che ultimately persuades Jie Yuan to leave with the returning devil gods, while Jasmine uses the Evil Infant’s power to close the remaining crimson passage. (Chapters 1436–1467 and 1482–1508)

Zhou then breaks the promise that no one will attack Jasmine. The moment her power is depleted, he strikes her from behind and sends her outside the Wall of Primal Chaos. He believes that eliminating the Evil Infant removes the last danger to the world, and the surrounding rulers praise his decisiveness. For Yun Che, however, the act is treachery against one of the two people who actually saved them. Zhou’s immediate willingness to turn on Yun Che once his darkness profound energy is exposed compounds that betrayal. He joins the god emperors who pursue Yun Che, attacks Mu Xuanyin while she shields him, and helps create the crisis in which she dies and the apparent Blue Pole Star is destroyed. (Chapters 1513–1532)

The contradiction between Zhou’s compassion and action is not simple indifference. He shows guilt, offers atonement when forced to confront what Yun Che has lost, and continues to think of himself as a protector rather than a conqueror. Yet he accepts no standard by which the Evil Infant or a devil person can remain in the world, even when Jasmine’s deed has saved that world. Because he treats the doctrine itself as heavenly law, regret never becomes reconsideration. He can lament the cost of breaking his word while still calling the betrayal necessary, preserving his self-image at the expense of the people he wronged. (Chapters 1517–1527, 1621, 1723, and 1879)

Zhou Qingchen and the collapse of restraint

Zhou Qingchen is the child born after his mother cripples her own profound veins to overcome the damage that had kept her from bearing a child. Zhou Xuzi’s attachment to him is therefore exceptional even among his descendants. He delays full transfer of the god-emperor inheritance, carefully prepares Qingchen as crown prince, and values the young man’s compassion as much as his talent. When an expedition into the God Realm of Absolute Beginning ends with Qingchen transformed into a devil person, Zhou’s doctrine turns inward. He cannot publicly tolerate the darkness in his son, but neither can he destroy him or expose the truth. (Chapters 1513, 1611, 1620–1621, and 1638)

That conflict drives Zhou to enter the edge of the Northern Divine Region in secret and bargain with Chi Wuyao, the ruler he has condemned as the foremost devil. He accepts secrecy, danger, and humiliation because he believes she can reverse Qingchen’s transformation. The meeting is a trap. Yun Che appears with Qingchen and kills the crown prince before Zhou can save him, turning the love Zhou once used to justify compassion into consuming hatred. Honorable Tai Yu forces Zhou to retreat rather than die beside his son, but Zhou emerges from the loss aged, isolated, and fixed on killing Yun Che with his own hands. (Chapters 1645–1656 and 1704–1705)

Qingchen’s death strips away Zhou’s remaining ability to separate defense from vengeance. He responds to Yun Che’s coronation as Devil Master by mobilizing Eternal Heaven’s strength against the northern invasion and clings to annihilation as the only answer to darkness. Chi Wuyao confronts him with the chain of consequence he refuses to accept: his betrayal created the enemy now destroying his world, while his claim to act only for peace hides fear of acknowledging that guilt. Her attack cannot quickly defeat him, but her words destabilize his power and judgment because they touch the conflict he has spent years suppressing. (Chapters 1704–1723)

Fall of the Eternal Heaven God Realm

Yun Che’s forces exploit Zhou’s deployment and invade the Eternal Heaven God Realm itself. Guardians, elders, descendants, and disciples die while Zhou is away, and Honorable Tai Yu falls defending the ancestral realm. Zhou returns too late to change the outcome. Faced with the destruction of his home and the loss of the Eternal Heaven Pearl, he chooses to preserve the remaining Guardians and bloodline rather than lead a futile last stand. The decision is strategically rational, but it leaves the protector of the Eastern Region dependent on asylum from Long Bai and branded by many former admirers as the man whose choices brought the calamity upon them. (Chapters 1718–1731)

Chi Wuyao deliberately allows Zhou to escape. Without his knowledge, she leaves a thread of her devil soul in him, gaining access to what he sees, hears, and thinks. Zhou believes that the Dragon God Realm offers the last power capable of avenging Eternal Heaven, but his very presence has become an intelligence channel for his enemy. He nevertheless holds to the alliance and joins Long Bai’s assault on the Ten Directions Deep Sea Realm. His hatred is now inseparable from grief: every remnant of Eternal Heaven that falls deepens his need to see Yun Che destroyed, even though preserving those remnants had been the stated reason for retreat. (Chapters 1730–1731, 1825–1842, and 1964)

During the final war, Zhou fights Caizhi while six surviving Guardians support him. His tens of thousands of years of accumulated level-ten power and control of spatial distortion keep him from falling to her first attacks, but the Guardians die and the coalition collapses after Long Bai’s defeat. Zhou is ultimately captured rather than killed. By the time he is brought before Yun Che, his limbs have been severed, his body mutilated, and his cultivation destroyed. Yun Che refuses to grant him a quick death because death would end the punishment attached to Jasmine, Mu Xuanyin, and the ruin that followed the betrayal. (Chapters 1840–1842, 1859, and 1863)

Imprisonment beneath Emperor Yun City

Zhou is confined in a dark chamber beneath Emperor Yun City. His bones are crushed, his profound veins severed, and his profound energy completely dispersed; external wisps of power keep him alive against his will. He still curses Yun Che and insists that striking Jasmine was necessary, defining the entire catastrophe as the work of a devil he failed to kill soon enough. Yun Che instead forces him to confront a world in which Blue Pole Star survived and the man he persecuted is about to become emperor over every divine region. The revelation destroys Zhou’s last belief that his betrayal at least prevented a worse future. (Chapter 1879)

Even then, Zhou does not reach an uncomplicated admission of fault. He shifts between denial, hatred, pleading, and horror while Yun Che names him as the cause of Eternal Heaven’s end. Yun Che also reveals that Zhou Qingfeng remains alive under the same threat: if Zhou dies, so does the surviving son. That condition turns continued life into both torment and the last act by which Zhou can protect a descendant. By the latest confirmed account he remains alive and imprisoned, stripped of power and office, while Chi Wuyao later identifies him as the opposite of a ruler who can openly admit the interest guiding his choices. (Chapters 1879, 1962, and 1964)

Appearance and personality

Zhou Xuzi first appears as an elderly man in a simple gray robe. He has an ordinary, gentle face and an amiable smile, releases no obvious profound pressure, and could pass unnoticed in a mortal street. That complete absence of outward magnificence is itself read as proof of a cultivation and temperament refined back to a natural state. Loss changes him visibly: Qingchen’s death makes him appear thousands of years older, while his final captivity leaves him emaciated, blood-caked, disfigured, and barely recognizable as the former god emperor. (Chapters 1148–1149, 1704, 1859, and 1879)

He is patient, ceremonious, and capable of genuine self-sacrifice for a collective good. He also possesses a rigid moral certainty that makes darkness an offense independent of conduct. That certainty permits him to betray a promise, condemn a savior, and pursue Yun Che while still experiencing himself as compassionate. He feels guilt intensely, but often uses suffering and prospective atonement to preserve the belief that his underlying judgment remains pure. His love for Qingchen exposes both his humanity and the double standard inside that doctrine: he will secretly bargain with devils to save his son, yet continues to call darkness intolerable in everyone else. (Chapters 1152–1155, 1513–1527, 1620–1656, 1723, and 1879)

Abilities and cultivation

Eternal Heaven god-emperor inheritance

The Eternal Heaven ruler’s power is a bloodline succession distinct from the Guardian inheritances. Zhou receives it as a direct descendant of the Eternal Heaven Ancestor and reaches the tenth level of the Divine Master Realm, the formal peak of the known divine cultivation ladder. The inheritance gives him the profound foundation expected of a god emperor, but it does not grant the full temporal authority of the Eternal Heaven Pearl. The artifact has its own spirit and stores finite divine power; its greatest time-altering feat exhausts that reserve, and Zhou cannot simply reproduce it through personal cultivation. (Chapters 1271–1284, 1350, 1513, and 1728)

At full strength, Zhou can fight other level-ten Divine Masters and produce clashes that devastate the surrounding world. His accumulated cultivation lets him resist younger peak experts through depth and control even when their immediate force is comparable. His principal weapon is a horsetail whisk, through which he releases white Eternal Heaven divine power and redirects or twists attacks and space. Against Caizhi, he uses that control to distort the path of Heavenly Star Lamentation rather than meeting its full power directly. (Chapters 1659, 1721–1723, and 1840–1842)

Barriers, formations, and battlefield control

Zhou’s power is repeatedly used to control danger rather than only attack. He seals the battlefield between Mu Xuanyin and Luo Guxie together with Xia Qingyue, contains shockwaves that would destroy the surrounding Snow Song Realm, and coordinates Eternal Heaven’s dimensional formations and deployments. These acts combine cultivation with the king realm’s accumulated artifacts and formations; they should not be mistaken for innate command of every spatial or temporal effect associated with Eternal Heaven. (Chapters 1152–1155, 1271–1284, and 1421–1428)

His defenses have limits against specialized powers and combined attacks. Chi Wuyao’s devil soul can overwhelm both his profound power and spiritual defenses, Mu Xuanyin’s sacrifice can temporarily seal and pierce him, and the final coalition war exhausts the protection supplied by his Guardians. He is extremely difficult for another god emperor to defeat quickly, but he is not immune to soul interference, spatial disruption, bloodline power, or accumulated injury. (Chapters 1530–1531, 1650–1656, 1722–1723, and 1840–1859)

Soul discipline and concealed vulnerability

Zhou cultivates emotional control for tens of thousands of years and usually maintains calm under political pressure, humiliation, or battle. That discipline enables long planning and keeps his divine power stable under ordinary strain. It is not invulnerability. Qingchen’s corruption and death disorder his aura, Chi Wuyao’s accusations make his attacks chaotic, and the loss of Tai Yu and the Guardians deprives him of the relationships that anchored his judgment. His strongest emotional attachments are therefore both a source of compassion and a counter to the detached certainty he presents publicly. (Chapters 1613–1621, 1653–1656, 1704–1705, and 1723–1731)

After Zhou escapes the Eastern Divine Region, Chi Wuyao’s Nirvana Devil Soul leaves a hidden thread within his soul. It does not give Zhou an ability; it silently compromises him, allowing Chi Wuyao to share his senses and thoughts without his awareness. His formal cultivation cannot detect or remove it, demonstrating a decisive limitation against her primordial soul power. The thread later explains how the Northern coalition prepares for movements that Zhou believes remain secret. (Chapter 1964)

Latest state

Zhou’s cultivation no longer remains accessible. His defeat leaves his limbs destroyed, bones crushed, profound veins severed, and accumulated profound energy dispersed. The forces keeping him alive belong to his captors rather than to regeneration or a surviving Eternal Heaven technique. In his latest state he cannot stand, fight, or escape an ordinary chain; the level-ten cultivation and god-emperor inheritance that once made him a ruler exist only as a lost state. (Chapters 1859 and 1879)

Power progression

Relationships

• Yun Che: Zhou first recognizes Yun Che as the convention’s extraordinary lower-realm competitor and later depends on him to resolve the crimson calamity. His betrayal of Jasmine and pursuit of Yun Che turn gratitude into the central revenge conflict. Yun Che kills Qingchen, destroys Eternal Heaven, and preserves Zhou in captivity so that neither can escape the consequences of the other’s choices. (Chapters 1157–1284, 1436–1532, 1650–1656, 1718–1731, and 1879)

• Jasmine: Zhou accepts that the Evil Infant closes the crimson passage and saves the God Realm, then ambushes Jasmine while she is depleted because he regards her continued existence as an unacceptable threat. He continues to describe the strike as protection even after the act becomes the starting point of Eternal Heaven’s destruction. (Chapters 1505–1520, 1806, and 1879)

• Zhou Qingchen: Qingchen is the child Zhou most loves and the heir shaped to continue Eternal Heaven’s compassionate ideal. When the prince is transformed into a devil person, Zhou secretly violates his public doctrine to seek a cure. Yun Che’s killing of Qingchen breaks Zhou’s restraint and makes revenge the central purpose of his remaining life. (Chapters 1513, 1611–1656, and 1704–1705)

• Chi Wuyao: Zhou has opposed the Devil Queen for at least ten thousand years and once pursued her into the Northern Divine Region. She later uses his love for Qingchen to lure him into a trap, defeats his moral certainty through both argument and loss, and turns his escape into an unwitting source of intelligence through her soul thread. (Chapters 1621, 1650–1656, 1722–1731, and 1964)

• Honorable Tai Yu: Tai Yu is Zhou’s chief Guardian, companion of tens of thousands of years, and the person able to force him away from a suicidal attempt to reach Qingchen. His death defending Eternal Heaven removes Zhou’s closest counselor and leaves the former god emperor increasingly isolated. (Chapters 1350, 1613–1621, 1653–1656, and 1721–1727)

• Long Bai: After Eternal Heaven falls, Zhou accepts the Dragon Monarch’s protection and joins the Western Divine Region coalition as the only force he believes can defeat Yun Che. The alliance preserves him long enough to reach the final war but cannot restore his realm or prevent his capture. (Chapters 1730–1731 and 1825–1859)

• Xia Qingyue: Zhou treats the Moon God Emperor as a fellow guardian of the Eastern Divine Region and works beside her during the crimson crisis. He never understands the full purpose behind her later choices, including the deception that preserves Blue Pole Star, and her actions ultimately deny his betrayal the result he believed he had secured. (Chapters 1421–1457, 1505–1532, and 1913)

Items

• Eternal Heaven Pearl: The Heavenly Profound Treasure is the foundation of Zhou’s realm and authorizes its greatest cultivation project. Zhou serves as its holder and ruler, but the Pearl Spirit retains its own will. Yun Che’s conquest separates it from Zhou and turns the loss into proof that Eternal Heaven’s ancestral order has ended. (Chapters 1147–1155, 1271–1284, and 1727–1731)
• Horsetail whisk: Zhou channels and redirects Eternal Heaven divine power through a white whisk during god-emperor battles, including his defense against Caizhi in the final war. (Chapters 1530 and 1840–1842)