Zhao Lian Yun

Zhao Lian Yun is an otherworldly demon from Earth, the lover of Ma Hong Yun, and Spirit Affinity House's chosen fairy. Her political intelligence lets her survive Northern Plains before she can cultivate, while her refusal to abandon Ma Hong Yun wins the acknowledgement of Love Gu. She later becomes a rank-six wisdom-path Gu Immortal, but Divine Concealment prevents the tribulations needed for further advancement.

Biography

An otherworldly survivor in Northern Plains

Zhao Lian Yun enters the Gu world as a young girl with an adult transmigrator's memories and quickly learns to hide the mismatch. When Zhao tribe faces destruction during the Imperial Court contest, she presents its leader with the image of sheep choosing between tiger and wolf, steering him toward Ma tribe while disguising strategic analysis as a child's concern. Her internal impatience and external performance establish the method she uses long before acquiring Gu: understand what powerful people need to hear, then survive through their decisions. (Chapter 502)

Political collapse leaves her separated from rank and protection, and Ma Hong Yun becomes the person whose uncomplicated loyalty she can rely upon. She initially treats him as a useful fool, but repeated care turns calculation into genuine love. Frost Jade Peacock recognizes the pair as Imperial Court blessed land's owners even though Zhao Lian Yun has not begun cultivation, because she has aptitude and their love satisfies the land spirit's requirement. Giant Sun's will, however, identifies her otherworldly nature as a threat, turning recognition into pursuit. (Chapters 570 and 613–623)

After Imperial Court blessed land collapses, Zhao Lian Yun and Ma Hong Yun become prizes in conflicts among Northern Plains powers. Their weakness makes separation and sale possible, and she is eventually carried into Central Continent's factional politics. Her goal remains narrower than the institutions around her: she will accept sect backing, inheritance, and status if they create a route back to Ma Hong Yun. (Chapters 625–690, 737–777, and 949)

Divine Concealment and Spirit Affinity House's fairy

At Xu Hao and Li Jun Ying's urging, Zhao Lian Yun enters a Thieving Heaven inheritance as an otherworldly demon. She receives Divine Concealment, a rank-nine passive killer move rather than immediate immortal cultivation. It protects her from deductions based on thoughts, wills, and emotions and hides her from heaven's will; the same concealment prevents calamities and tribulations and therefore removes a normal source of dao marks. (Chapter 949)

Spirit Affinity House's anti-Feng faction treats her as a challenger to Feng Jin Huang, but Zhao Lian Yun values that contest only as leverage to rescue Ma Hong Yun. She kneels and persists until emotion and exhaustion overwhelm her. Rank-nine Love Gu leaves its resting place, stays with her while she is unconscious, and acknowledges her; under sect rules, that acknowledgement outweighs aptitude and factional preference and makes her the sect's chosen fairy. (Chapters 1191–1195 and 1221–1222)

The appointment gives Zhao Lian Yun resources and authority without giving her mastery of Love Gu. She never refines it and cannot choose when it activates, what effect it produces, or what it takes from her. Spirit Affinity House nevertheless builds the Northern Plains expedition around its current fairy, converting private devotion into a sect-level rescue operation. (Chapters 1222 and 1228–1244)

Snowy Mountain rescue and Ma Hong Yun's death

During the assault on Snowy Mountain blessed land, Zhao Lian Yun carries Immortal Gu and limited immortal essence through a phantom aperture, but remains a mortal “false immortal.” Her ordinary methods demand practice and can fail under pressure: Life Locking Silver Chain only activates on the third attempt against Zhao Da Niu and breaks with backlash. Love Gu then acts independently, healing her and enabling further progress, but takes away her voice. (Chapters 1244–1261)

She continues despite warnings because every price seems smaller than abandoning Ma Hong Yun. A later activation annihilates Zhao Pu and consumes so much lifespan that Zhao Lian Yun becomes an elderly woman; hostile methods also strip away memories until little beyond Ma Hong Yun's name remains. Love Gu's power is therefore neither a stable defense nor a free trump card. It can solve an otherwise fatal situation, fail to respond, or impose a loss that permanently changes its user. (Chapters 1261–1267)

Reverse Flow River suppresses Gu worms and leaves Zhao Lian Yun unable to use either speech methods or Love Gu when she finally reaches Ma Hong Yun. He recognizes her despite her aged body, but dies of exhaustion after protecting and carrying her through the river. Love Gu then removes Zhao Lian Yun from the river rather than reviving him. Her rescue succeeds only in reaching him, and the resulting grief converts her purpose from saving his life to recovering his soul. (Chapters 1271–1287)

Ascension, sect politics, and the surviving hope

Zhao Lian Yun later reaches rank-five peak stage and begins a true immortal ascension. Divine Concealment prevents a calamity from descending, but she still has to shatter the aperture and personally balance heaven, earth, and human qi. She forms a high-grade rank-six immortal aperture and is identified as a wisdom-path Gu Immortal; the aperture also produces Remembrance Immortal Gu, fitting her continuing fixation on Ma Hong Yun. (Chapters 1439 and 1449)

As an immortal, Zhao Lian Yun learns to manage Spirit Affinity House's factions instead of remaining Xu Hao and Li Jun Ying's tool. She recognizes that their hatred of Feng Jiu Ge can fund her growth and that her status, Divine Concealment, and Love Gu let her build influence. Her methods can be severe: she leaves a lingering punishment on the four obscenities and later commissions their pursuit, showing that the calculating survivor from Northern Plains now commands institutional force. (Chapters 1685, 2089–2094)

Divine Concealment eventually becomes the ceiling on her cultivation. Because no tribulations can find her, she cannot advance normally beyond rank six; unravelling a rank-nine killer move is beyond her own capacity. She invests time in intelligence, alliances, and other methods instead. After surviving Primordial Origin's explosion—apparently protected by Love Gu—she joins Central Continent's defense and waits for an opening against Fang Yuan, who holds Ma Hong Yun's soul. Her latest plan is still a hope rather than an achieved use of Love Gu. (Chapters 1971, 2228, and 2330–2334)

Appearance and personality

Zhao Lian Yun appears first as a small Northern Plains girl with bright dark eyes and an adult's guarded mind. Love Gu's lifespan price temporarily turns her old, with white hair, wrinkles, weakened roots, and poor sight; later scenes again describe her with youthful skin and a white dress. Her presentation at Spirit Affinity House is delicate, but her private reasoning remains blunt and strategic. (Chapters 502, 1266, and 2330)

She is pragmatic, politically perceptive, loyal, and willing to endure humiliation or bodily loss for Ma Hong Yun. Love does not make her less calculating: she uses factions that use her, cultivates allies, and can punish enemies viciously. Her central contradiction is productive rather than accidental—an unsentimental survivor organizes nearly every resource around a devotion she refuses to price rationally. (Chapters 502, 949, 1221–1222, 1261–1267, and 2091–2094)

Abilities and cultivation

Wisdom path and political judgment

Zhao Lian Yun becomes a rank-six wisdom-path Gu Immortal with a high-grade blessed land. Her strengths include assessing incentives, gathering information, and manipulating factional hostility. The story does not assign her a formal wisdom-path attainment title, and her investigative methods can fail in environments saturated with conflicting dao marks, as after Primordial Origin's qi-path explosion. (Chapters 1449, 2091, 2330, and 2331)

Divine Concealment

Divine Concealment is a rank-nine Thieving Heaven killer move that remains passively active without consuming immortal essence. It weaves protective dao marks around the soul and defeats deductions operating through thoughts, wills, or emotions; heaven's will likewise cannot locate Zhao Lian Yun to create tribulations. The benefit is extraordinary safety and privacy, while the limit is equally structural: without tribulations she gains no corresponding dao marks and eventually cannot raise her cultivation level. (Chapters 949, 1374, 1439, 2228, and 2239)

Love Gu

Love Gu is a rank-nine emotion-path Immortal Gu that acknowledges Zhao Lian Yun but is not refined by her. Its possible effects include healing, killing, escape, and protection even where ordinary Gu use is suppressed. None is reliably selectable. It may refuse to act, choose a different result than desired, and demand a changing price such as voice or lifespan; Zhao Lian Yun cannot safely plan a battle around a specific activation. (Chapters 1221–1222, 1255–1266, 1284, and 2330)

Phantom aperture and trained killer moves

Before true ascension, Spirit Affinity House equips Zhao Lian Yun with a phantom aperture, immortal essence, and Immortal Gu so she can participate in the Snowy Mountain expedition. Life Locking Silver Chain restrains a target but requires successful activation, consumes essence, and rebounds when forcibly destroyed. These are borrowed false-immortal capabilities, not evidence that she was already rank six; her genuine immortal aperture forms only in chapter 1439. (Chapters 1255, 1261–1266, 1284, and 1439)

Latest state

Zhao Lian Yun remains a rank-six wisdom-path Gu Immortal through chapter 2334. She is politically influential and possesses two rank-nine advantages, but Divine Concealment blocks her cultivation and Love Gu remains uncontrollable. Her intended attempt to take Ma Hong Yun's soul from Fang Yuan has not yet occurred at the endpoint. (Chapters 2228 and 2330–2334)

Power progression

Relationships

Ma Hong Yun

Ma Hong Yun changes from Zhao Lian Yun's useful protector into the person she loves without reservation. His simple loyalty makes genuine trust possible in a world she approaches through calculation. After his death, recovering his soul and reviving him remain the organizing goals of her cultivation and politics. (Chapters 502–570, 618–623, 1221, 1284–1287, 1449, and 2334)

Fang Yuan

Fang Yuan first threatens Zhao Lian Yun during Imperial Court's collapse and later witnesses Ma Hong Yun die in Reverse Flow River. Because he possesses Ma Hong Yun's soul, Zhao Lian Yun's private objective ultimately targets him even while she participates in Central Continent's broader war. (Chapters 618–623, 1284–1287, and 2334)

Xu Hao and Li Jun Ying

Xu Hao and Li Jun Ying sponsor Zhao Lian Yun to weaken Feng Jiu Ge's faction. She understands their manipulation and accepts it while their resources serve her own ascent, then creates distance and turns their hostility into leverage. The relationship becomes a mutual use rather than a simple patron-pawn hierarchy. (Chapters 949, 1222, 1439–1449, and 2089–2091)

Feng Jin Huang

Feng Jin Huang is Zhao Lian Yun's institutional rival for the position of Spirit Affinity House fairy. Zhao Lian Yun kneels before her while seeking help, but Love Gu's acknowledgement settles the succession question in Zhao Lian Yun's favor. Their rivalry originates in sect politics rather than Zhao Lian Yun's personal hatred. (Chapters 1191–1195 and 1221–1222)

Items

• Love Gu — the rank-nine emotion-path Immortal Gu that acknowledges Zhao Lian Yun while remaining impossible for her to refine or command reliably.