Jiao Xiuyuan

Jiao Xiuyuan is the proprietor of Thousand Mile Hall, an intelligence broker whose theatrical obsession with profit hides one of the cultivation world's most resilient distributed networks. The merchant encountered by Li Fan is a continuing identity expressed through many bodies; individual wooden puppets, later branch-grown incarnations, and speculative origin theories must not be mistaken for separate confirmed versions of Jiao or for proof of where his original body resides.

Biography

Thousand Mile Hall broker

Jiao first enters Li Fan's plans through a recommendation from He Zhenghao, who knows him as a source of cheap defective Concealing Form Talismans. At Thousand Mile Hall, the dark-faced shopkeeper performs every bargain as a threatened disaster: he complains about losing deals, changes prices as soon as a customer appears, and accepts private intelligence work when merchandise alone cannot satisfy him. Li Fan hires him to investigate Sikong Yi, and Jiao delivers useful intelligence despite trying to renegotiate the fee. Their relationship begins with mutual suspicion, but both recognize that contracts, information, and controlled concealment can be more valuable than personal warmth. (Chapters 70–78)

The Cloud Water Heavenly Palace reveals why Jiao can take risks without exposing his central self. A body bearing his appearance is decapitated during a trial, then dries into yellow wood; another cultivator explains that Jiao routinely sends puppets wherever danger might be real. The lost body does not constitute the merchant's death, nor is it introduced as an independent clone-character with its own motives. Jiao turns the expedition into saleable intelligence, excavates and trades Minor Medicine King Cauldrons in later cycles, and continues serving Li Fan through an expanding web of disposable presence. His exaggerated cowardice is therefore also sound risk management: he can seek opportunity while keeping the location and cultivation of his originating self hidden. (Chapters 80–92 and 112–145)

Spirit Mist market manipulation

When the destruction of a Spirit Mist Grass source produces scarcity, Jiao sees a commercial event large enough to justify mobilizing his network. He and Li Fan formalize their cooperation through a contract, stockpile or position themselves around the affected market, and use thousands of puppet outlets to spread the news. The same distributed bodies that gather intelligence now accelerate belief, demand, and price across distant regions. Jiao's motive is openly profit, but the operation also shows disciplined infrastructure beneath the comedy: identical storefront representatives, rapid communications, and a reputation for privileged information let a local rumor become a cultivation-world bubble. (Chapters 190–194 and 212–216)

Success makes Jiao less willing to heed Li Fan's warning to exit. When the market turns, the many variables and simultaneous decisions overload the computational support behind his omnipresence. His lower-quality Dao Transformation Stone cracks, portions of the puppet network fail, and he closes less important branches while recovering from the loss. The collapse does not end Thousand Mile Hall, but it exposes two limits that bargaining normally conceals. Jiao's greed can override his caution when profit appears exceptional, and his consciousness cannot coordinate an unlimited number of bodies unaided. His resilience comes from reducing the network and rebuilding it, not from being literally invulnerable or present everywhere without cost. (Chapters 212–223)

Long-running intelligence alliance

Across later cycles, Li Fan repeatedly returns to Jiao for needs that official Alliance channels cannot safely meet. Jiao lends or sells specialized puppet bodies for exploration, tracks ancient ruins and sleepers, trades intelligence concerning the Five Elders Association, and promotes rare commodities such as Heavenly Spirit Flowers and Longevity Pills. He also notices impossible accounting discrepancies when people vanish from both memory and the Tianxuan Mirror, preserving his observations rather than dismissing a modest loss. Each mystery is potentially inventory, and each replaceable proxy widens his reach. This continuity makes him a confidant-like partner to Li Fan, although neither man stops concealing motives or testing what the other truly knows. (Chapters 263–266, 453–623, and 1020–1031)

The late corpus adds identity evidence without making every implication certain. A Jiao body in chapter 1299 absorbs immortal spiritual energy through a tree-like form, but that does not by itself establish him as Ruomu. Later, the real merchant falls asleep under Li Fan's world-spanning illusion formation while Li Fan questions an induced version of him. Inside that illusion, branches generate multiple Jiao incarnations, and he tentatively recalls being an unusually long-lived infant from beyond the High Wall pursued by a Dust Abyss mechanism. Because the recollection is elicited and interrupted inside an illusion, it is best treated as a significant self-report rather than a fully independent origin confirmation. It does establish that the merchant regards incarnation and evasion as central to his survival, while his waking original body and formal realm remain unresolved. (Chapters 1299 and 1389–1391)

Appearance and personality

The familiar Jiao Xiuyuan is a dark-skinned man with stubble and a somewhat wretched or furtive merchant's appearance. His expressions change quickly from rage at a bad debt to an ingratiating smile for a customer, and he can produce an air of rustic honesty when closing a sale. Those details describe the bodies seen operating Thousand Mile Hall, most of which sound like wood when struck and reveal wooden material when destroyed. The corpus does not provide a verified separate portrait of his original body, so the shopkeeper form should not be assumed to be his natural anatomy. (Chapters 74–82 and 1389–1390)

Jiao is greedy, theatrical, shrewd, risk-averse, contract-minded, and extraordinarily curious about anything that can become a business. He respects an agreement after haggling, but market excitement can make him ignore warnings he would accept in a physical crisis. His cowardice is selective rather than absolute: proxies let him inspect deadly opportunities, and even impending annihilation excites him when the information seems unprecedented. Repeated losses bruise his pride and resources without ending his enterprise. Late questions about his origin likewise yield first to commercial instinct; once the illusion returns him to a chance to corner Minor Medicine King Cauldrons, enormous future profit immediately displaces the crucial memory he feels he has lost. (Chapters 74–92, 145, 190–223, and 1390)

Abilities and cultivation

Jiao's exact post-calamity cultivation realm is never directly confirmed in chronological sequence. Observers speculate about extremely high cultivation, but his original body stays hidden and most feats occur through proxies or in an induced illusion. The source therefore supports no formal progression table; his demonstrated systems and their limits are described without inventing realm milestones.

Ten Thousand Puppets Dao

Jiao's defining path distributes his attention through large numbers of lifelike wooden bodies. They conduct retail business, gather intelligence, spread market news, and enter ruins while preserving continuity with the merchant directing them. A destroyed proxy can reveal wood or self-destruct to protect the consciousness attached to it, so decapitation of one body does not kill Jiao. These puppets are operational embodiments rather than independently developed characters, yet they are also not proof that the visible shopkeeper is his original body. The network's scale depends on mental and computational support: simultaneous market stress can overwhelm coordination, and Jiao responds by abandoning low-value branches. The method remains active throughout the later corpus. (Chapters 80–92, 190–223, and 538–591)

Divine Transformation Dao

Jiao recovers the Divine Transformation Dao from the tomb of an ancient Tai Yan Sect disciple and pairs it with a Dao Transformation Stone. The method lets his consciousness merge with the stone's calculation power, handling variables and coordinating more puppet decisions than his unaided mind could sustain. It is therefore an enabling system for the Ten Thousand Puppets Dao rather than a publicly confirmed realm promotion. The Spirit Mist crash demonstrates its hard limit: exceptional concurrent strain cracks the lower-quality stone and disrupts the network. Jiao seeks replacement computation and continues operating after contraction, but the corpus does not state that the damaged stone becomes perfect again or that calculation makes his attention infinite. (Chapters 212–216)

Branch-grown incarnations

During Li Fan's induced interrogation inside the Illusory Xuanhuang Formation, a captured Jiao is replaced by another identical figure grown from a withered branch, followed by enough simultaneous bodies to exceed the three-eyed mechanism's binding limit. Jiao calls this a small clone technique and later connects his instinct to produce countless incarnations with evading an ancient pursuer. These bodies visually differ in origin from the earlier crafted wooden puppets, so the scene should not silently collapse both mechanisms into one. It also occurs within an illusion imposed on the sleeping real merchant: the mechanical pursuer's response manifests in reality, but the precise clone display and recovered memories are mediated evidence. The latest state therefore confirms a meaningful incarnation tradition while leaving its waking-world limits and relationship to his ordinary merchant puppets partly unresolved. (Chapters 1389–1391)

Thousand Mile Hall intelligence network

Jiao combines bodies, informants, commercial records, and rapid distribution into a practical information technique. He can investigate guarded cultivators, identify ruins and rare goods, propagate a market narrative through many branches, and detect when ordinary records have been unnaturally erased. The network's outputs repeatedly redirect Li Fan toward Sikong Yi, Medicine King Sect relics, ancient sleepers, and institutional secrets. It is neither omniscience nor guaranteed truth: difficult investigations cost more time and outside help, erased causes can remain beyond him, and his own profit motive shapes what he notices and how he presents it. Its latest use continues the same merchant logic even amid immortal-level upheaval—unexplained information becomes something to verify, preserve, and eventually trade. (Chapters 74–92, 112–145, 263–266, 538–623, and 1020–1031)

Relationships

• Li Fan: Their relationship grows from an anonymous intelligence purchase into a long-running exchange of information, rare goods, contracts, and dangerous favors. Each treats the other as useful and unusually capable while withholding decisive secrets; Jiao becomes confidant-like without becoming fully trusted.
• He Zhenghao: He Zhenghao's recommendation sends Li Fan to Thousand Mile Hall for cheap talismans and establishes Jiao's reputation as a connected but unreliable-looking bargain merchant.
• Sikong Yi: Jiao investigates Sikong Yi for Li Fan and discovers Baili Chen's role in the target's movements. He is an intelligence broker in their connection, not the eventual owner of Sikong Yi's inheritance.
• Liu Ruchen: Jiao's excavation and speculation in Minor Medicine King Cauldrons repeatedly intersects with the ancient Medicine King Sect's return, though the sect master and the merchant do not form a stable personal alliance in the covered material.

Items

• Tianxuan Mirror: Jiao uses the Alliance treasure's market, records, and communication environment as commercial infrastructure, while Thousand Mile Hall also competes by selling cheaper or less reliable goods outside its protected exchange. He neither owns nor privately holds the Tianxuan Mirror. Its later failure to remember vanished debtors is evidence Jiao investigates, not custody transferred to him. (Chapters 70–78, 190–194, and 1031)
• Sun Stealing Token: Jiao never receives ownership or custody of this token in the covered events. His intelligence about Sikong Yi and Baili Chen helps Li Fan kill them and obtain it, making Jiao an indirect link in its history rather than its bearer. (Chapters 78 and 88–91)
• Dao Transformation Stone: Jiao fuses or connects his calculation work to a lower-quality stone through the Divine Transformation Dao. It serves as computational support for the puppet network until the Spirit Mist crash overloads and cracks it; the damaged aid is not shown passing to another owner. (Chapters 212–216)
• Minor Medicine King Cauldrons: Jiao excavates, stocks, sells, and speculates on these small cauldrons across different cycles. Individual examples leave his custody when sold to buyers such as Li Fan, while a late illusory scenario has him withdraw a promised sale after learning they may become keys to the returning Medicine King True Cauldron. (Chapters 112–114, 263–264, and 1390)
• Wooden puppet bodies: Jiao operates these as remote embodiments for trade, intelligence, and hazardous exploration and can loan or sell specialized bodies. They are expendable tools carrying his directed presence, not proof that every wooden body is his original self or a separately autonomous Jiao Xiuyuan. (Chapters 80–92 and 538–623)