Yu Li

Yu Li is Zhang Yang's former university lecturer, an early Emerald City distributor, and a professional-level Alchemist whose life changes when his rebirth lets him intervene before a family medical crisis destroys her career. Her Chapter 1 appearance belongs to the erased 2039 timeline; after Zhang Yang returns to 2034, Yu Li develops a new relationship with him without retaining any memory of that future. She remains a lecturer and her mother's principal caregiver before eventually joining Zhang Yang's extended household. (Chapters 1–2, 90, 206–208, 283, 554, and 856)

Biography

Lone Desert Smoke and Soaring Swords

Yu Li first appears on 8 March 2039 in the original timeline, when Zhang Yang encounters her while drunk at Tian Lun Pavilion after Lin Yu's wedding. They recognize each other before completing the encounter, and Yu Li leaves without collecting payment because she is ashamed to be seen by a former student while working as a hostess. Zhang Yang can only speculate about why she left teaching before he dies later that night. Nothing in the corpus follows Yu Li beyond that point in the original history. (Chapter 1)

Rebirth returns Zhang Yang to 16 June 2034 and resets Yu Li's circumstances along with the rest of the world. She is again his young university lecturer and has no knowledge of the erased 2039 encounter; she reprimands him for running out of class, while he privately resolves to help her avoid the future he remembers. The opening identifies her earlier course as Chinese Studies, whereas a much later chapter places her in Software Engineering, a curricular inconsistency the corpus does not reconcile. Her continuing occupation as a university lecturer is clear even though the exact subject is not. (Chapters 1–2 and 553)

Yu Li joins God's Miracle in Emerald City earlier than Zhang Yang remembers from the original history. He asks her to distribute Beginner Anti-Shadow Potions there, and she agrees only after warning that he must look for conventional employment if his gaming plan fails. She rejects the offered profit share because accepting money from her former student conflicts with her ethics as a teacher, yet still performs the distribution work; later accounting explicitly excludes her from the commissions paid to the other city distributors. This episode preserves both her concern for students and her reluctance to profit from their dependence on her. (Chapters 58, 89–90, and 109)

Her crisis becomes visible at a karaoke gathering with university colleagues. After being pressured into drinking, Yu Li realizes that Qian Hong Wen and Hou Bi Hua intend to exploit her, tries to leave, and asks Zhang Yang for help when she finds him outside. He intervenes, and she later regains enough clarity to give a statement during the police resolution. The danger is immediate, but the incident also opens the way for her to disclose the financial pressure she has been hiding. (Chapters 202–205)

Yu Li explains that her gambling father fled his debts, her mother spent years paying for both her education and those debts, and the family sold its home before her mother was diagnosed with uremia. A kidney transplant and surgery require more than two million, while Yu Li's boyfriend abandons her and demands sex as compensation for their relationship. Convinced that her body is the only asset left, she offers Zhang Yang a five-year arrangement in exchange for treatment costs; he rejects the transaction and offers the money without repayment. The narration explicitly connects this crisis to the hostess work Zhang Yang witnessed in the erased timeline. (Chapter 206)

After they drink and wake in the same bed, they determine that they did not have sex that night. Yu Li nevertheless repeats that she is prepared to become his lover if he supports her mother, while Zhang Yang continues to separate the medical help from any sexual obligation. She later kisses him and chooses to pursue the relationship. Her decision develops into an ongoing consensual intimacy only after the immediate rescue, and she remains free after her breakup rather than being bound by the five-year contract she initially proposed in desperation. (Chapters 207–208 and 254–255)

Inheritances and Territorial War

Yu Li's mother receives treatment and is discharged from the hospital, allowing Yu Li to return to God's Miracle. She chooses Alchemy as her main profession, and Zhang Yang accelerates her training with ingredients and a Beginner Mobility Potion recipe until she reaches professional level. The arrangement gives her a productive specialty rather than a front-line combat role, although scarce recipes keep several important potions outside her repertoire. Her in-game contribution consequently shifts from retail distribution to production. (Chapter 283)

She later moves with her mother into a 180-square-meter apartment in a secure neighborhood, with her high-school friend and former roommate Yan Fei Fei taking the spare room. Her mother discovers the relationship through contraceptive pills and knows that Zhang Yang financed the treatment and home, so she receives him coldly rather than treating the support as uncomplicated generosity. Yu Li does not conceal the financial imbalance from him, and her continued domestic priority is to provide her mother with stable care and housing. (Chapters 207–208 and 307)

Yu Li continues teaching as Zhang Yang's business and household expand. Years after his graduation she still works at Zhou Su University, recognizes Zhao Bin as one of her students, and has her own faculty office; that scene identifies her subject as Software Engineering. Her romantic relationship with Zhang Yang continues separately from the main household, but long gaps between visits leave her uncertain of her status and reluctant to claim the standing of a wife or girlfriend. (Chapters 553, 707, and 745)

When Zhang Yang invites her to move in, Yu Li is moved because she interprets the offer as recognition rather than a purely private affair. She postpones the move, however, because she will not leave her mother alone, telling him that the intention is sufficient. This choice preserves the central priority that shaped her earlier crisis: even after gaining financial security and a more secure relationship, she does not treat her mother's dependency as something that can simply be set aside. (Chapter 554)

The relationship remains intermittent for much of the later game. Zhang Yang may see Yu Li only once every ten days to a month, and the narration still describes her as his mistress rather than a member of his primary combat party. She does not receive an inheritance, join the core professional roster, or take on a territorial-war command role in the documented chapters. Her absence from those systems is not a decline in her stated profession; she continues as a lecturer whose limited game contribution centers on Alchemy. (Chapters 707, 709, 745, and 801)

After the fourth World Championship, the threat surrounding Zhang Yang causes Yu Li and her mother to leave China with his friends and household for Luxembourg. The later epilogue places Yu Li in the shared family home in Dubai, returning with groceries alongside Han Ying Xue, Sun Xin Yu, Chen Xue Yao, and Luo Yu Rou. It also says that Yu Li and Cheng Xue Yao are open to another child, but does not identify a child specifically as Yu Li's. Her latest status is therefore alive and integrated into the extended household, preparing with the family to return to Zhou Su City. (Chapter 856)

Appearance and personality

At roughly twenty-three or twenty-four in 2034, Yu Li is a tall, slender young woman with fair skin and long hair ordinarily arranged in a bun for class. She wears a formal suit when teaching, giving her a composed professional silhouette, and later appears in a long black dress with a narrow waist. The narrative often describes her through Zhang Yang's sexualized attention; those passages establish that he considers her notably attractive, but they do not provide stable eye color, precise height, or other fixed measurements. (Chapters 2, 207, and 254)

Yu Li is conscientious, stubborn, and intensely protective of her mother. She worries about whether former students find work, refuses a distributor's commission on ethical grounds, and continues teaching after gaining financial security. Under crisis she becomes self-sacrificing to a dangerous degree, believing that she must trade away her future to fund treatment; once supported, she remains uncomfortable with the dependence and uncertain of her place in Zhang Yang's life. Her later warmth and direct affection coexist with practical boundaries, most clearly when she declines to move in until her mother will not be left alone. (Chapters 90, 206–208, 307, 553–554, and 707)

Abilities and gameplay

Yu Li is not documented as an elite combatant. Her demonstrated strengths are professional teaching, ethical responsibility, potion distribution, and Alchemy production inside God's Miracle. The corpus gives no class, level, combat skill list, inheritance, battle mount, raid role, or late-game equipment for her, so none can be inferred from her professional Alchemy rank. (Chapters 89–90, 283, 553–554, 709, and 801)

Teaching and professional work

As a university lecturer, Yu Li monitors students' attendance and post-graduation plans, is willing to reprimand Zhang Yang for leaving class, and frames professional gaming as something that must prove it can support him. She remains employed at Zhou Su University years after his graduation and has her own office in the faculty. The text calls her an instructor of Chinese Studies at the opening but later identifies Software Engineering; because it supplies no transfer, retraining, or explanation, her exact departmental progression cannot be reconstructed. (Chapters 1–2, 90, and 553–554)

Her teaching role also imposes a practical limit on other activity. She initially treats potion selling as a favor rather than a business and refuses a cut of the revenue, preventing the lucrative Anti-Shadow Potion market from becoming her independent source of capital. Later chapters continue to place her on campus rather than in Silky Soft's professional team or Lone Desert Smoke's command structure. (Chapters 90, 109, 553, 745, and 801)

Potion distribution

Yu Li begins her documented game activity in Emerald City and accepts shipments of Beginner Anti-Shadow Potions from Zhang Yang. The potion grants one hundred Shadow Resistance and is listed at one gold each in the auction house; Yu Li's job is to place stock in her city's market, not to manufacture it or use it in battle. Sales performance is also part of her agreement with Zhang Yang, because she makes continued gaming contingent on his plan showing real prospects. (Chapters 89–90)

Distribution depends on Zhang Yang supplying the inventory and setting the price, and Yu Li declines the proposed share of proceeds. She therefore demonstrates reliability and access to Emerald City's market but not recipe ownership, independent capital, or control over the cross-city network. The later commission accounting confirms that her assistance was unpaid. (Chapters 90 and 109)

Professional-level Alchemy

After her mother's discharge, Yu Li returns to the game and devotes her time to Alchemy. Zhang Yang's financial and material support lets her raise the profession to professional level quickly; he purchases the Beginner Mobility Potion recipe, gives it to her to learn, and transfers Frozen Ice Weedings so she can craft the potion. This is the clearest documented progression of her game role: the recipe is consumed as learned professional knowledge, while continued production requires supplied ingredients. (Chapter 283)

Her mastery has explicit recipe limits. Although she once distributed finished Beginner Anti-Shadow Potions, she never obtains that recipe, and she likewise lacks the Level 3 Fire Resistance Potion recipe because both are scarce. Demand for those products has already fallen from its peak by the time her Alchemy advances, limiting the commercial cost of the gap. The corpus does not state the stats, duration, ingredient ratios, output quantity, success rate, or transmutation grade of the Mobility Potions she crafts. (Chapter 283)

Yu Li's role later contracts when Zhang Yang acquires Alchemist's Intuition and learns rare potion recipes himself. The narration says he had originally trained her to produce potions for him, but now personally makes rare formulas such as Amateur Power Potion. No later chapter grants Yu Li a higher Alchemy rank, inheritance enhancement, rare recipe portfolio, or independent workshop, so professional level and the Mobility Potion remain her latest demonstrated ceiling rather than a basis for assuming endgame mastery. (Chapters 283 and 709)

Relationships

• Zhang Yang: Her former student, distributor partner, benefactor, lover, and eventual household partner. Only Zhang Yang remembers their aborted encounter in the erased 2039 timeline; in the new timeline he funds her mother's treatment without requiring repayment, and Yu Li later chooses a consensual relationship that eventually becomes part of his extended family. (Chapters 1–2, 89–90, 206–208, 254–255, 554, and 856)
• Her mother: Yu Li's primary dependent and the reason for her most consequential choices. Yu Li seeks money for a kidney transplant, provides housing after the treatment, postpones moving in with Zhang Yang rather than leave her alone, and later travels with her to Luxembourg. (Chapters 206, 283, 307, 554, and 856)
• Yan Fei Fei: Yu Li's high-school friend and roommate, first in a rented home and later in Yu Li's larger apartment. Yu Li gives her the spare room rather than let her live alone. (Chapters 207–208 and 307)
• Han Ying Xue: One of Zhang Yang's principal partners and, by the epilogue, a member of the same extended household as Yu Li. The corpus does not show Yu Li joining Han's core game party or define a separate close relationship between them. (Chapters 801 and 856)
• Sun Xin Yu: Another of Zhang Yang's principal partners and a later member of the shared Dubai household. Yu Li's earlier decision not to move in keeps them in separate homes for much of the story, and no combat partnership is documented. (Chapters 554, 801, and 856)
• Chen Xue Yao: A later member of Zhang Yang's extended household who leaves for Luxembourg with Yu Li and appears with her in the Dubai epilogue. Both are described as open to another child, although the text does not assign a specific child to Yu Li. (Chapter 856)
• Zhao Bin: A student who knows Yu Li through the university's computing curriculum. Zhao Bin invites her to a new-semester barbecue, confirming Yu Li's continuing campus role, but their relationship is not developed beyond teacher and student. (Chapters 553–554)

Items

• Beginner Mobility Potion recipe: A recipe Zhang Yang buys and gives Yu Li to learn after she reaches professional-level Alchemy. It enables her documented potion production, but its exact recipe mechanics are not stated. (Chapter 283)
• Frozen Ice Weedings: Alchemy materials transferred by Zhang Yang so Yu Li can craft Beginner Mobility Potions. They are production inputs entrusted to her, not evidence of a permanent personal stockpile. (Chapter 283)
• Beginner Anti-Shadow Potions: Finished stock that Yu Li distributes in Emerald City for Zhang Yang. She refuses commission and never acquires the recipe herself, so the potions are temporary sales inventory rather than her own formula. (Chapters 89–90, 109, and 283)