Zhang Sheng’an — Divine Throne of Primordial Blood

Zhang Sheng’an, known as Treebow, is a prominent Three Mountains Region candidate who becomes the leader of Team Soaring at the Hidden Dragon Institute. His skill as a mobile archer and his Cursed Tree Demon Bow support his early reputation, but his belief in Bloodline Nobility Clan superiority repeatedly turns competition into predation and ultimately leads him into a fatal conflict with Su Chen. (Chapters 119, 204–205, and 220–222)

Biography

Prestige built on bloodline hierarchy

Before the Three Mountains Region examination, Zhang Sheng’an is already counted with Ji Hanyan, Zhong Ding, and Jin Ling’er among the four candidates considered certain to reach the top ten. Other contestants treat him as a serious benchmark: even the formidable Wang Doushan doubts that he could defeat Zhang while healthy, and Jin Ling’er initially regards provoking Zhang and Zhong together as especially dangerous. Zhang enters the Hidden Dragon Institute with that standing intact and gathers many of the region’s strongest students into Team Soaring. His failure to recruit Ji Hanyan—who bluntly calls him too weak to be her teammate—is a rare public limit on his influence, but it does not dislodge him as the team’s organizer. (Chapters 119, 133, 146, and 204)

Zhang’s leadership rests on a rigid social conviction rather than simple school rivalry. He argues that Bloodline Nobility Clan descendants should keep bloodline-less cultivators at a distance, treats Shi Kaihuang’s attempt to break bloodline restrictions as an offense, and pressures Jin Ling’er to abandon her friendship with Su Chen. That ideology helps explain why Team Soaring seizes a Giant Adamantine Ape that Wang Doushan’s team had nearly subdued: Zhang wants the living beast for Jin Ling’er, but assumes that his group’s rank entitles it to take another team’s work. Su Chen responds indirectly, using medicine to prevent Team Soaring from encountering prey and letting ridicule spread through the expedition camp. Zhang correctly suspects him but lacks proof, and his refusal to return the ape turns a robbery into a sustained struggle over pride and authority. (Chapters 203–210)

A pursuit that ends in death

Team Soaring’s fortunes collapse after an unknown party coats its members with Stone Soul Medicine and uses them to draw an enraged Clay Giant away from its lair. When the Clay Giant pursues them, Zhang does not merely seek help: he leads it directly into Su Chen’s party and tries to force the danger onto them. The people he endangers respond as enemies, and Zhang becomes the principal target because they recognize that he deliberately tried to drag them down with him. His ability to flee and fight at range carries him farther than his companions, but it also leaves him alone with Su Chen in a long pursuit through terrain that initially favors his plant techniques. (Chapters 213, 219–220, and 223)

Zhang uses arrows, animated roots and leaves, talismans, medicine, protective artifacts, and a substitution statue to preserve distance. He wounds Su Chen and nearly kills him with a special physical arrow, yet becomes unsettled when Su Chen hides within an expanding bank of fog rather than continuing the direct chase. Su Chen waits until Zhang lowers his bow, disrupts his consciousness as he tries to aim, and forces the decisive arrow to miss. Zhang then spends his last flying treasure, the Red Earth Gauze, to escape, but Su Chen’s amplified Flame-Winged Divine Hawk overwhelms its barrier and burns him to death. The bow and surviving contents of his Origin Ring are recovered afterward, while his clan’s investigation fails to obtain proof that can securely assign responsibility for his death. (Chapters 220–223, 227–228, and 239)

Zhang’s death does not erase the earlier consequences of his conduct. A later discussion recalls that he, Guan Shanying, and others admitted to abusing Qiu Tang to death in front of Yue Longsha merely for the thrill. This revelation confirms that his cruelty toward Su Chen’s party was not an isolated choice made under pressure: the same combination of status, contempt, and appetite for domination had already produced lethal violence against a weaker victim. (Chapter 373)

Appearance and personality

Zhang Sheng’an is taller than Zhong Ding and is introduced during the Falling Eagle Mountain conflict in spotless, expensive-looking clothes. His refined and lofty appearance remains orderly even after days of frustration, though his expression openly reflects humiliation and anger. The corpus does not give a stable description of his face, hair, age, or build beyond these comparisons. (Chapters 204 and 210)

He is proud, socially calculating, perceptive about immediate threats, and capable of organizing talented peers. Those strengths are compromised by class contempt and a pronounced double standard: he mocks and exploits people beneath his position but restrains himself around students whose bloodlines or connections might make retaliation dangerous. He can recognize Su Chen’s sabotage without evidence and quickly identify the range limit of an opposing attack, yet his limited battle experience makes him anxious when an opponent breaks the rhythm he expects. His final battle therefore exposes the difference between tactical quickness and emotional discipline. (Chapters 204, 210, and 220–222)

Abilities and cultivation

Zhang Sheng’an is a Qi Drawing Realm archer whose “Treebow” style combines mobile long-range attacks with control of nearby plant life. The corpus does not identify his bloodline by name, explain how he learned his clan techniques, or show formal progression after entering the Hidden Dragon Institute. His most complete demonstration occurs during his fatal pursuit by Su Chen. (Chapters 205 and 220–222)

Mobile archery and forest control

Zhang can fire accurately while retreating at speed, using a pursuer’s forward movement to shorten the effective travel time of his arrows while keeping himself outside the enemy’s range. His clan’s Windborne Steps and Grade Nine Gentle Breeze Boots make his body light and fast, and the forest strengthens his control options: a touch can cause roots and branches to bind a target, while fallen leaves become sharp projectiles. His favored sequence confines an opponent with vegetation and follows with a powerful ranged shot. Fire burns through the plant traps, however, and an opponent faster than Windborne Steps can steadily collapse the distance on which his style depends. (Chapter 220)

Cursed Tree Demon Bow

The Cursed Tree Demon Bow converts the anguish and hatred of a Tree Demon into arrows that attack both body and consciousness. Zhang’s Souldeath Arrow carries concentrated killing force, while repeated Anguish Arrows can pressure defenses and assault the target’s mind. He can also release spectre-like anguished spirits whose cries cause dizziness and obstruct movement. The bow is powerful enough to shatter Su Chen’s Heartguard Mirror, but Three Suns Medicine repels its spirits, physical and magical defenses can absorb individual arrows, and Zhang needs distance and time to exploit it fully. The bow itself exposes an additional limitation after his death: anyone holding it can be drawn into an illusion realm. Su Chen finds no surviving suppressive object and can only speculate that Zhang once possessed one, because Zhang remains vulnerable to Soul Eye and Soul-Fixation rather than demonstrating innate soul resistance. (Chapters 220–223)

Equipment-supported survival

Zhang supplements his personal techniques with barriers, Origin Energy Talismans, Fog Medicine, healing medicine, a tiger-image defensive ring, a protective necklace, a substitution statue, a devastating single-use arrow, and the Red Earth Gauze. This inventory lets him answer many different situations and repeatedly reset an unfavorable pursuit. It is not limitless progression: the tools are consumed or broken one after another, fog benefits Su Chen more than Zhang, the substitution effect only restores distance temporarily, and the Gauze prevents Zhang from attacking while it flies. His latest and final state is death after its barrier fails against the Flame-Winged Divine Hawk. (Chapters 220–223)

Relationships

Su Chen: Zhang treats Su Chen’s lack of a bloodline and discipleship under Shi Kaihuang as reasons to keep him socially subordinate. The seizure of the Giant Adamantine Ape begins their open conflict; Zhang’s attempt to draw the Clay Giant into Su Chen’s party makes retreat or compromise impossible, and Su Chen pursues and kills him. (Chapters 203–204 and 210–223)
Jin Ling’er: Zhang recruits Jin Ling’er into Team Soaring and seeks a controllable Giant Adamantine Ape to strengthen her. At the same time, he pressures her to abandon Su Chen and treats her friendships as something his bloodline hierarchy should regulate. Her silence does not mean full agreement, and she later carries guilt over the chain of events that led to Zhang’s death. (Chapters 203–204, 210, and 234)
Wang Doushan: Wang initially regards Zhang as an opponent he probably cannot defeat while healthy. Zhang later takes the Giant Adamantine Ape from Wang’s team by force, and Wang joins the party that fights Team Soaring after Zhang brings the Clay Giant down on them. (Chapters 133, 203–204, and 219–227)
Ji Hanyan: Ji Hanyan is one of the few Three Mountains candidates whose reputation clearly exceeds Zhang’s. She refuses to join Team Soaring because she considers him too weak, and Su Chen later uses her ability to defeat him easily as an example of why no Qi Drawing cultivator possesses absolute strength. (Chapters 119, 204–205)

Items

Cursed Tree Demon Bow: Zhang’s signature Origin Tool creates anguish-based arrows and hostile spirits but can also pull its wielder into illusions. Su Chen recovers it from Zhang’s remains after his death. (Chapters 220–223)
Red Earth Gauze: A low-grade flying treasure with its own barrier. It grants temporary flight but prevents Zhang from attacking while airborne; its defense is destroyed by the Flame-Winged Divine Hawk. (Chapter 222)
Origin Ring: Recovered after Zhang’s death with three thousand Origin Stones inside. The other protective treasures he carried had been consumed or destroyed during the battle. (Chapter 223)