Chehou Yuan

Chehou Yuan is the former Craftsman God, creator of the Bewitching God Temple, and author of the formation and artifact inheritance that enables Qin Yu to become his successor. His lifelong attempt to transcend the limits of artifact crafting culminates in the Fix Elemental Pearl and, through Lin Meng's intervention, his elevation to Exalted Celestial.

Biography

An inheritance built for an absent successor

Chehou Yuan first appears as a recorded image hidden inside the Bewitching God Temple. He designates whoever discovers the image as the sole potential successor, but deliberately makes possession of the inheritance depend on ability rather than discovery alone. His message introduces the Divine Realm's cultivation hierarchy, spatial and temporal laws, and artifact grades, preparing a lower-realm candidate for dangers far beyond the temple. The confidence with which he describes his craft contrasts with his then-limited cultivation as a High Level Heavenly Deity. (Chapters 456–457)

The same recording explains why Chehou Yuan abandoned his established position. As the only Heavenly Deity he knows capable of crafting Acquired Grandmist Spiritual Treasures, he has already produced a first-rate treasure, yet regards even that achievement as incomplete. He leaves for the lower realms to seek unconventional materials for an Exalted Celestial's Spiritual Treasure and accepts a premonition that success may shatter his soul. The temple is therefore both a bequest and contingency plan: his life's accumulated work must survive even if his final experiment kills him. (Chapter 457)

Chehou Yuan structures that legacy with unusual care. The Bewitching God Temple separates immediate rewards from locked palaces, while Uncle Fu enforces thresholds for physical power, flame control, and formation knowledge. The Divine Spear Waning Snow, the temple core, materials, crafting records, and Array Path Nine Hundred Scrolls collectively transmit a discipline rather than a storehouse of valuables. Later recordings even withhold advanced formation classifications until Qin Yu has built enough foundation to use them safely. (Chapters 458–486, 507)

Qin Yu's rise validates the design while extending it beyond Chehou Yuan's own method. The scrolls underpin Qin Yu's formation experiments, his compression of arrays into the Formation Array Universe, and his emergence as the new Craftsman God. Chehou Yuan remains absent throughout that development, but his standards continue to govern it through Uncle Fu and delayed messages. The result is genuine succession rather than imitation: Qin Yu preserves Chehou Yuan's authorship while finding faster and cosmologically different routes to first-rate Grandmist Spiritual Treasures. (Chapters 493–600)

Return as Godking and completion of the great experiment

Chehou Yuan finally returns to the Divine Realm as a cyan-bearded elder whose warmer manner initially prevents old friends from recognizing him. Uncle Fu recognizes his creator at once. Chehou Yuan has attained Godking during his travels through lower-realm cosmic spaces, so the usual sign of a new Godking appeared outside the Divine Realm. At Purple Mystic Mansion he treats Qin Yu as a peer despite Qin Yu's insistence on honoring him as a benefactor, and he is astonished by how completely his successor has surpassed the expected scale of success. (Chapter 674)

His travels produced the Fix Elemental Pearl, an artifact assembled from materials gathered across millions of Mortal Realm spaces. Creating it required Chehou Yuan to fuse his soul into the pearl, so it recognizes no separate refinement process and cannot be transferred without killing him. It can smash treasures with the mass of its enormous internal cosmic space and lets Chehou Yuan retreat inside even when external time is stopped. Yet that interior has no usable spatial law, and Chehou Yuan concedes that defense and escape do not make him the equal of an Exalted Celestial in a direct contest. (Chapters 675–676)

Selection as the new Exalted Celestial

When the higher power behind Exalted Celestial Mountain stops the Divine Realm and summons every Godking, Chehou Yuan is brought with the rest despite having taken no part in the lethal struggle for the three seal portions. The Blue Sky, Back Earth, and All People Seals reunite as the Living World Seal, which names Chehou Yuan as the most qualified candidate. Its light subjects him to time acceleration of at least one hundred million times, giving him the subjective ages needed to complete the temporal laws and emerge as an Exalted Celestial. (Chapters 678–679)

The choice is later revealed as Lin Meng's deliberate compensation, not a reward mechanically earned by holding the seals. Chehou Yuan's process for making the Fix Elemental Pearl resembled the creation of a cosmos, but ordinary lower-realm materials could only imitate Grandmist Spiritual Energy; the result remained a model without its own spatial or temporal laws. Lin Meng judges that Chehou Yuan might have become a cosmos creator had he devoted that genius to cultivation instead of artifacts, elevates him in recognition of that missed path, and summons him into the Exalted Celestial hierarchy. (Chapters 679–680)

Appearance and personality

Chehou Yuan's recorded image shows a handsome, apparently middle-aged man with white at his temples, a deep gaze, and an outwardly cold expression. When he returns in person, he appears as a rosy, cyan-bearded elder in a light cyan gown. Old acquaintances find him more approachable than the aloof Craftsman God they remember, suggesting that completing his dangerous experiment softened the single-minded severity of his earlier life.

His dominant traits are intellectual pride, patience, and uncompromising dedication. He openly claims superiority to Exalted Celestials in artifact technique, but builds careful tests so that an inheritor earns rather than merely receives his knowledge. Completion brings humor and humility alongside pride: he enjoys revealing the Fix Elemental Pearl, acknowledges its combat limits, and accepts Qin Yu's independent accomplishments instead of treating a successor's success as a threat. (Chapters 456–457, 507, 674–676)

Abilities and cultivation

Artifact crafting and formation arrays

Chehou Yuan can create Heavenly Divine Artifacts and Acquired Grandmist Spiritual Treasures, including a first-rate treasure, while still a High Level Heavenly Deity. His artifact method integrates materials, flame control, carving, medicine, and formations rather than relying on rare substance alone. He classifies formations into eight levels and is the only recorded craftsman to reach levels seven and eight, where increasing complexity reverses toward simplicity. His limit is material and cosmological: without true Grandmist Spiritual Energy, even his greatest construction cannot become a complete cosmos. (Chapters 457, 484–485, 507, 675, 680)

Fix Elemental Pearl

The soul-bound Fix Elemental Pearl combines offense, refuge, and a partial cosmic model. Chehou Yuan can enter its enormous star-filled interior by intention and bring consenting companions, while an opponent cannot enter independently. He can then drive the pearl outward as an exceptionally fast smashing weapon capable of breaking a first-rate Grandmist Spiritual Treasure. Because his soul is fused into it, forced separation would kill him; because its interior lacks spatial and temporal laws, it remains a sealed cosmic space rather than a self-governing world. (Chapters 675–676, 680)

Cultivation progression and Exalted Celestial law

Chehou Yuan begins the inheritance record as a High Level Heavenly Deity and becomes a Godking while crafting across a lower-realm cosmos, demonstrating complete spatial-law comprehension. The Living World Seal's extreme time acceleration later lets him complete the temporal laws and become an Exalted Celestial. The elevation grants rank above Godkings, but the narrative does not demonstrate a catalog of new combat techniques; his clearest post-elevation actions are recognizing the hierarchy above him, accepting the Floating Feathers Exalted Celestial as senior, and answering Lin Meng's summons. (Chapters 456, 674–676, 678–680)

Power progression

Relationships

• Qin Yu: Inheritor and successor as Craftsman God. Chehou Yuan's tests make Qin Yu's growth possible, while Qin Yu develops the legacy through methods its creator never anticipated.
• Uncle Fu: Sentient housekeeper created by Chehou Yuan and entrusted with administering the temple, its restrictions, and the transition to a qualified new master.
• Lin Meng: Cosmos creator and master after Chehou Yuan's elevation. Lin Meng selects him as compensation for genius that approached cosmos creation through the wrong medium.

Items

• Bewitching God Temple: Chehou Yuan's controllable inheritance complex, divided into palaces and protected by tests that transfer it only to a sufficiently capable successor.
• Divine Spear Waning Snow: His prized high-quality Heavenly Divine Artifact, crafted with Body Break and Devouring Soul effects and left for Qin Yu.
• Array Path Nine Hundred Scrolls: His foundational formation treatise, supplemented by delayed higher-level classifications and inherited through the temple.
• Living World Seal: The reunited three-part Exalted Celestial treasure selects and envelops Chehou Yuan, accelerating his comprehension until he completes the temporal laws.
• Spiritual Treasure Origin Cauldron: The Exalted Celestial Mountain's treasure focus, not a cauldron created by Chehou Yuan. It stands beneath the reunited seal during his selection and departs beyond the Divine Realm afterward.
• Grandmist Golden Banner: Revealed only after Chehou Yuan's elevation, when Lin Meng explains the still-higher Grandmist Controllers. Chehou Yuan neither owns nor uses the banner in the supplied corpus.