NovelPantheon

Zhou Jie

Green Core cultivatorformer Foundation Establishment Dao Childhost to a discarnate soul

Zhou Jie is the Black Sieve Sect Dao Child initially sent to delay Meng Hao until senior pursuers can teleport to him. Their duel reveals both his combat skill and personal honor. His later possession by a returned discarnate ancestor turns him from an opponent into someone Meng Hao covertly tries to save.

Biography

Pursuit through the Tri-Black Incense Burner

The Black Sieve Sect sends Zhou Jie with more than ten late Foundation Establishment disciples because the restrictions of its Tri-Black Incense Burner make a Core Formation pursuit unreliable. His assignment is not necessarily to defeat Meng Hao: he must keep him in one place long enough for the burner to lock onto the teleportation ripples and deliver senior cultivators. Zhou Jie concentrates on the ritual while his companions attack, but Meng Hao kills all of them before the smoke can finish congealing. (Chapters 200–201)

Forced to fight personally, Zhou Jie quickly notices that Meng Hao's spiritual power behaves unlike ordinary qi: remnants of it remain rejected by Heaven and Earth instead of dispersing. Although afraid, he also recognizes Meng Hao as equal in standing to the Southern Domain's Dao Children. Their opening Spiritual Sense clash favors Meng Hao, so Zhou Jie shifts through smoke weapons, concentric restraints, Green Smoke Exterminating the East Pass, and the complete Great Black Clouds Palm. (Chapters 201–202)

The duel escalates through the Black Sieve Five Exterminations and Zhou Jie's Heaven Splitting Sword Formation. Rather than preserve an easy escape, he destroys his own retreat and commits to resolving the contest directly. His forbidden Immortal Subjugation finally invites numerous discarnate spirits into his body to lend power. The increase is immense, but surrendering the body gives those spirits control and makes the technique self-destructive. Meng Hao counters with the Eighth Demon Sealing Hex, expelling and immobilizing the invading souls instead of killing Zhou Jie. (Chapters 202–204)

Defeated and saved by the same opponent, Zhou Jie bows. He promises that if he wins their next battle, he will spare Meng Hao's life. The vow recasts their relationship as honorable rivalry rather than the Black Sieve Sect's original execution order. (Chapters 204–205)

Possession and alchemical intervention

Five years later, Zhou Jie joins the Black Sieve delegation that escorts visiting alchemists, but his expression and behavior no longer resemble the proud cultivator Meng Hao fought. He suddenly erupts into madness, throws back five Core Formation cultivators, and begs Meng Hao to kill him. Patriarch Violet Sieve suppresses him before he can regain control. (Chapters 245–249)

Meng Hao's Demon Sealing Jade reveals the cause: one of the Black Sieve Sect's discarnate ancestors occupies Zhou Jie's body as a parasite. It cannot consume the original soul without causing the host body to decay, so possessor and host normally exist in a forced balance. Injury has disrupted that balance, allowing Zhou Jie's original consciousness to surface in brief, agonized intervals. His demand for death is therefore resistance, not simple insanity. (Chapters 249–257)

Disguised as Grandmaster Fang Mu, Meng Hao agrees to make individualized Soul Refining Pills for the sect's thirteen affected Conclave disciples. Zhou Jie receives one of these treatments. The pills restore the damaged balance and preserve the host body, while Meng Hao secretly incorporates Demon Sealer blood whose will can exterminate a discarnate soul. That hidden safeguard gives him leverage over the possessors but does not prove that Zhou Jie's original consciousness has permanently regained control. (Chapters 257–258)

Core Formation and later gatherings

Zhou Jie subsequently gains enlightenment at the ancient Dao Geyser and breaks through into Core Formation, forming a Green Core. The event astonishes the Southern Domain and sets off a rush of Foundation Establishment cultivators seeking the same opportunity. (Chapters 263–264)

He represents the Black Sieve Sect at Pill Demon's Violet Furnace promotion trial. He watches Fang Mu without visible surprise and senses something strangely familiar in Pill Demon's aura, observations that may reflect Zhou Jie, the possessor, or their unstable coexistence. He later joins the gathered Chosen at the Rebirth Cave and is pulled into the ancient corpse's internal domain. His last direct scene shows him advancing through that dangerous region with the other Southern Domain cultivators. (Chapters 278–298)

Appearance and personality

Zhou Jie is tall, slender, handsome, dark-haired, and thin-lipped. In the first duel he appears cold and mission-focused, yet his decisions show perception, courage, pride, and a strong concept of fair combat. Destroying his retreat and honoring the enemy who saves him distinguish his own temperament from sect orders.

After possession he becomes pale, taciturn, and at times violently unstable. Those traits should not be read as a simple personality change. His original consciousness is trapped beneath a parasitic will; when it emerges, his repeated plea for death shows both unbearable suffering and refusal to surrender himself completely.

Abilities and cultivation

  • Green Core cultivation: Enlightenment at the Dao Geyser allows Zhou Jie to cross from the great circle of Foundation Establishment into Core Formation with a Green Core. The breakthrough raises his realm but the supplied scenes do not show a full post-breakthrough battle.
  • Spiritual Sense: At Foundation Establishment he can engage Meng Hao in a direct, invisible consciousness clash and analyze the abnormal behavior of Meng Hao's spiritual power. He loses the contest but demonstrates fast battlefield judgment.
  • Smoke-joss-stick arts: A blue joss stick creates smoke blades, phantom weapon-bearers, and concentric binding rings. Burning larger portions powers Green Smoke Exterminating the East Pass, an explosive wave strong enough to break Meng Hao's lightning defense and force him back. The item is consumptive; each escalation burns away more of the stick.
  • Great Black Clouds Palm: Zhou Jie knows the complete Black Sieve Sect version. Twenty-six hand-images converge into a black-cloud palm, making it deeper and more powerful than the incomplete form Meng Hao had learned.
  • Black Sieve Five Exterminations: A sequence of sect attacks used as the duel escalates. The technique provides repeated killing force rather than a single smoke manifestation.
  • Heaven Splitting Sword Formation: Five colored swords combine into a formation-based offensive. Its coordinated structure increases pressure beyond using the blades separately.
  • Immortal Subjugation: A forbidden method that invites discarnate spirits into Zhou Jie's body and borrows their combined force. Its benefit is immediate battle power; its critical limit is loss of bodily autonomy. Meng Hao's Eighth Hex can target the inhabiting spirits and force them out.
  • Possessed-body resistance: Zhou Jie's original soul can struggle against an injured possessor and briefly surface. The Soul Refining Pill restores balance rather than cleanly removing the ancestor, so his latest internal state remains unresolved.

Relationships

  • Meng Hao: Victorious rival and covert lifesaver. Meng Hao first expels the spirits summoned by Immortal Subjugation, then later preserves Zhou Jie's host body and plants a possible means to destroy its possessor.
  • Patriarch Violet Sieve: Sect patriarch who suppresses Zhou Jie's rebellion, conceals the ancestor-possession system, and arranges Fang Mu's treatment.
  • Black Sieve discarnate ancestor: The unnamed parasitic consciousness occupying his body. Its injury creates the struggle mistaken publicly for dementia and hallucination.
  • Han Bei and Xu Qing: Other Black Sieve Conclave disciples subjected to related possession and treated in the same Soul Refining program.

Items

  • Tri-Black Incense Burner: A sect teleportation artifact Zhou Jie operates during the pursuit. It needs time to congeal smoke and accurately follow spatial ripples, cannot safely carry Core Formation interference, and can be used only once per month.
  • Blue joss stick: A consumable combat focus that turns smoke into weapons, restraints, and explosive extermination waves.
  • Five colored swords: Components of his Heaven Splitting Sword Formation.
  • Soul Refining Pill: An individualized pill made by Meng Hao to repair the damaged host-possessor balance; it also carries Demon Sealer blood as a hidden threat to the occupying soul.