Ye Zizai

Ye Zizai is the former head of the Corpse Sect's Zhao branch. Although he presides over the branch as a Nascent Soul cultivator, the self-aware corpse puppet Luo Sha is consuming his consciousness and turning his own body into a vessel.

Biography

A branch head living under possession

Ye Zizai enters the Corpse Sect roughly four centuries before meeting Wang Lin and reaches the Nascent Soul stage during that period. His advancement does not make him free. The sect supplies bodies to powerful outsiders, and Luo Sha—the corpse puppet assigned to him—awakens, begins devouring his consciousness, and increasingly controls their shared body. Ye understands that once this process starts, it can only be resisted by someone vastly stronger than the invading soul. He also knows the sect's grim compensation: a disciple who loses a body may receive one chance to possess a prepared replacement, while failure to advance to Soul Formation can end with service as expendable force in the foreign battleground. (Chapters 95–98)

Recruiting Wang Lin and selecting Adai

When Wu Yu sends Wang Lin and Adai to the branch, Ye quickly reads the arrangement. He formally places Wang Lin beneath Wu Yu, accepts Adai as his own disciple, and gives Wang Lin a dark-blue ancestral jade that confirms his new identity. His apparent protection of Adai from Luo Sha conceals another plan: Adai is the body Ye hopes to possess after Luo Sha consumes him. Ye bargains with Luo Sha over this succession, while Luo Sha promises to preserve Ye's consciousness and help raise the chosen body to Core Formation. Ye also resists another corpse puppet's demand to consume Wu Yu until the shifting negotiations make cooperation advantageous. (Chapters 95–97)

Jue Ming Valley and disposable disciples

Before leaving for Heaven's Tower, Ye issues a branch-wide defensive order through a green command jade. He later gathers the branch's Foundation Establishment disciples for Jue Ming Valley, where soul jades let the sect monitor and control them. The stated expedition hides a culling system: weaker disciples are intended as nourishment for corpse puppets seeking qualification. With too little time to prepare Wang Lin as a vessel, Ye instead treats him as potential food and expects Luo Sha to develop Adai in exchange for Ye's help against Wu Yu. The scheme collapses when Wang Lin escapes the route laid out for him. (Chapters 98–101)

A stolen body and final destruction

Long after the Zhao branch falls from the narrative, Ye's surviving consciousness speaks from within another body and identifies himself as its former sect head. He says that the replacement prepared for him was taken by a rank-five cultivation country, leaving him still searching for recovery through possession. Centuries later, Wang Lin encounters a mummified corpse puppet and recognizes Ye within it. Its destruction returns a final instant of clarity before both puppet and remnant consciousness disappear. (Chapters 164 and 897)

Appearance and personality

Before Luo Sha's takeover is complete, Ye appears about forty years old, handsome, with star-bright eyes and skin as smooth as jade. He is calculating rather than openly cruel: he receives recruits with courtesy, explains just enough of the Corpse Sect to secure obedience, and disguises a body-selection scheme as concern for Adai. His caution is grounded in fear and accurate knowledge of his own weakness. Even as branch head, he knows that challenging Luo Sha or the greater sect directly would only hasten his erasure. (Chapters 95–97)

Abilities and cultivation

Nascent Soul cultivation and movement

Ye is a Nascent Soul cultivator who completes the journey from entry into the Corpse Sect to that realm in about four hundred years. He can teleport, project the pressure expected of Zhao's senior cultivators, and withstand the spatial wind around Heaven's Tower better than most of the country's Nascent Soul experts. The corpus does not establish a more precise Nascent Soul substage. (Chapters 95 and 98)

Yin fire and branch defenses

Ye can exhale blue Yin fire and spread it into a defensive wall. He also controls the Zhao branch's formations: cave barriers open at his command, light curtains isolate meetings, and blue flame or smoke can carry supernatural projections and communications. These effects show both personal spell use and access granted by his office rather than a single named combat art. (Chapters 95–99)

Soul jades and Corpse Sect control

As branch head, Ye uses jade-based orders and soul restraints to organize disciples. A green jade broadcasts an emergency defense command, while soul jades tied to expedition members let the sect track and punish them. His deepest expertise is institutional: he understands how corpse puppets consume hosts, how consciousness can be preserved for later possession, how replacement bodies are prepared, and how disciples are harvested to strengthen their paired corpses. That knowledge makes him an effective planner, but it never gives him control over Luo Sha. (Chapters 96–101)

Relationships

• Luo Sha: Ye's corpse puppet becomes self-aware and consumes him from within. Their bargaining over Adai preserves a temporary working arrangement, but Luo Sha holds the decisive power. (Chapters 95–98)
• Adai: Ye publicly accepts Adai as a disciple while privately choosing him as the replacement body for his own possession. (Chapters 96–101)
• Wang Lin: Ye recruits Wang Lin into the branch, gives him an identity jade, and later marks him as disposable nourishment. Wang Lin ultimately destroys the corpse puppet containing Ye's remnant. (Chapters 96–101 and 897)
• Wu Yu: Ye treats Wu Yu as a junior of the branch and initially refuses to help another puppet consume him, then uses Wu Yu as a bargaining piece in his arrangement with Luo Sha. (Chapters 95–101)

Items

• Green command jade: A sect-head token through which Ye transmits a defensive order across the Zhao branch. (Chapter 98)
• Dark-blue ancestral jade: Ye gives this identity token to Wang Lin when placing him nominally under Wu Yu. (Chapter 96)