Zong Yan

Zong Yan is the reigning Peng Demon Emperor, a Golden-Winged Great Peng who rules the Bird Clan through bloodline prestige, the Peng inheritance, and elite Demon Emperor subordinates. His earlier murder of rival claimant Fang Chong creates Hei Yu, Fang Chong's surviving son, as both a personal enemy and a future succession threat. Zong Yan's attempt to erase that threat drives his principal arc from ruthless confidence into fear, failed alliances, retreat, and death.

Zong Yan is not Zong Jue. Zong Jue is a separate, younger Golden-Winged Great Peng whom Zong Yan treats as a possible future Peng Demon Emperor; Zong Jue's report about Hei Yu alerts Zong Yan to the survivor, but Zong Jue opposes the ensuing persecution and tries to save Bai Xin.

Biography

A throne secured through murder

Zong Yan occupies one of the Demon Realm's three great hereditary offices. As Peng Demon Emperor, he rules both the Peng Clan and the wider Bird Clan, backed by the Inherited Golden Crown and a race whose members recognize the holder's political authority. His position makes him one of the few lower-realm figures considered stronger than a level-eight Blood Dragon. Yet the office is a title passed between generations, not proof that Zong Yan is invincible, and his conduct reveals how much personal insecurity lies beneath its institutional power. (Chapters 379–387)

Before the main pursuit, Zong Yan competes with Dark Electric Great Peng Fang Chong for the throne. He admits that Fang Chong is slightly stronger and uses Fang Chong's love for an Eagle woman to create an opening, then kills the badly injured rival. Fang Chong spends his remaining strength opening a passage to the mortal realm and sending away his infant son. Zong Yan wins the crown, but the child's escape leaves his victory incomplete: the source of his authority becomes inseparable from fear that Fang Chong's bloodline will return. (Chapter 412)

Zong Jue later mentions a newly ascended variation divine beast whose speed, inherited Peng techniques, defense, and growth are all exceptional. Zong Yan recognizes the description and secretly issues a death warrant against Hei Yu. He does not explain the family connection to Zong Jue; instead he uses Bird Clan authority to exterminate the Bai family that sheltered Hei Yu and to pursue the survivor under the name “Xiao Hei.” His motive is not abstract clan welfare but preventing Fang Chong's son from challenging him after both ascend to the Divine Realm. (Chapters 399–408, 412)

Bai Xin as bait and the failed refining array

When Zong Jue tries to return Bai Xin to Hei Yu's family, Zong Yan's enforcers Bai Feng and Ao Ku intercept them. Zong Yan treats Zong Jue's defiance as disobedience by a favored potential successor: he warns that shared Golden-Winged Great Peng blood will protect Zong Jue only once, then threatens to kill him if he again obstructs the campaign. The exchange makes their identities and positions distinct. Zong Jue is a politically subordinate clansman with his own loyalties, while Zong Yan is the sovereign coercing him. (Chapters 404–408)

Zong Yan orders Bai Xin's public execution at Yellow Lion Mountain because Qin Yu's group values her and can be drawn into a prepared battlefield. The plan uses a hostage, the Profound Golden Illusion Array, and the Sealing Element Refining Flames Array rather than a straightforward duel. After Bai Feng dies and Qin Yu's party disappears into a transformed mansion, Zong Yan has the mountain itself refined with Extremely Silent Heavenly Flames. The arrays devastate the terrain but cannot expose Qin Yu inside Jiang Lan's Realm, turning Zong Yan's overwhelming territorial machinery into a prolonged and fruitless siege. (Chapters 408–414)

The failure does not change his objective. Zong Yan continues searching for decades and tells Ao Ku and Liu Tu that Hei Yu must die because a level-five variation beast already possesses frightening speed, defense, inherited abilities, and an unprecedented cultivation rate. He expects the Peng inheritance to protect him in the lower realm, but he fears that it cannot be taken into the Divine Realm and that Hei Yu will eventually surpass him there. His persecution therefore intensifies as evidence of Hei Yu's survival exposes the temporary nature of Zong Yan's advantage. (Chapters 412–416)

Alliance, public punishment, and Flowing Mist defeat

Zong Yan allies with Emperor Yu and Mystic Emperor because their enemies are brothers: they want Qin Yu dead, while he wants Hei Yu dead. The partnership adds imperial awareness, formations, and multiple level-eight subordinates to Zong Yan's Bird Clan network. At the celebration after the Cyan Emperor's Divine Tribulation, Zong Yan nevertheless attacks prematurely when Hei Yu appears. Qin Yu hides his brothers in Jiang Lan's Realm, and the Cyan Emperor immobilizes Zong Yan's entire group and strikes each of them publicly for violating his announced peace. (Chapters 414–425)

The humiliation exposes a decisive limit. Zong Yan's exceptional speed cannot help when a stronger expert controls the surrounding space, and his political title cannot compel the Cyan Emperor. Even so, he joins Emperor Yu's plan to inspect planets whose rulers changed during Qin Yu's disappearances. They trace the group to Flowing Mist Star and attack with Zong Yan, Emperor Yu, Mystic Emperor, Ao Ku, and Liu Tu together, hoping that numbers and surprise will eliminate the three brothers before their growth makes another attempt impossible. (Chapters 423–429)

The Flowing Mist assault reverses the balance permanently. Qin Yu is stronger than expected, while Wu Lan kills Emperor Yu and Liu Tu and destroys one of Ao Ku's two true bodies. Zong Yan recognizes that he cannot defeat Wu Lan and escapes rather than continue the alliance. He refuses Mystic Emperor's demand for help avenging her husband and abandons the active pursuit, deciding that early ascension and dependence on senior Golden-Winged Great Pengs in the Divine Realm may offer safety from Hei Yu. His pride survives, but it now serves retreat rather than domination. (Chapters 429–430)

Evasion, final duel, and death

For more than three thousand years, Zong Yan suppresses his anger, trains toward level nine Demon Emperor, and avoids renewed conflict. When Mystic Emperor warns that Qin Yu has returned far stronger, he insists that his speed still makes him impossible to kill, yet he leaves Black Crow Star and hides on a nearby uninhabited planet. The contradiction marks his final development: the emperor who once killed “like drinking water” no longer trusts his palace, subordinates, or inherited status to shield him from the consequences of Fang Chong's murder. (Chapters 468–470)

Hei Yu, Qin Yu, and Hou Fei find him. Zong Yan initially blocks Hei Yu with the Inherited Golden Crown and uses superior speed to disengage, confirming that he remains a dangerous level-eight Golden-Winged Great Peng rather than a powerless fugitive. Qin Yu's control of space removes that advantage and prevents escape. Offered a direct duel with Hei Yu, Zong Yan accepts because the alternative is death at Qin Yu's hands and because he believes the crown's ultimate power may still defeat Fang Chong's son. (Chapters 470–471)

The duel ends the conflict created by his succession crime. Zong Yan's inherited defense and agility prolong the fight, but he cannot escape Qin Yu's confined space, and Hei Yu's fury produces a crushing variation of the Heaven Startling Single Stick Strike through the Cloud Piercing Spear. Hei Yu pulverizes him and explicitly identifies the death as vengeance for both parents. Zong Yan becomes the first Peng Demon Emperor recorded as killed rather than ascending, while the threatened bloodline survives and the Bird Clan must choose a successor without immediately possessing its inherited crown. (Chapters 471–472)

Appearance and personality

Zong Yan is usually presented through imperial bearing, sharp attention, golden radiance, and the golden crown that marks his office. In combat, golden material covers his hands as he uses the crown's power, while his speed turns his movement into elegant arcs and nearly untrackable blurs. His composure deteriorates when spatial control suppresses that movement: sweat, panic, and repeated escape attempts replace the detached authority he displays before subordinates. (Chapters 403–414, 423–430, 470–472)

He is imperious, ruthless, suspicious, and strategically patient, but increasingly fearful of consequences he cannot command. Zong Yan is willing to exploit love, exterminate a family, stage an execution, and spend decades hunting one target. He can also assess danger realistically, as when he abandons Mystic Emperor's revenge after Wu Lan's intervention. That realism never becomes remorse; it is self-preservation shaped by the recognition that Hei Yu's growth and Qin Yu's allies have made his old methods unsafe. (Chapters 403–430, 468–472)

Abilities and cultivation

Zong Yan is a level-eight Demon Emperor and a Golden-Winged Great Peng, one of the Bird Clan's peak super divine beasts. His personal advantages are speed, agility, Demon Awareness, and the amplification of the Peng Clan's inherited crown. His wider threat also comes from sovereign command over planets, intelligence networks, arrays, and elite subordinates. Those institutional assets should not be mistaken for techniques he personally casts.

Speed, agility, and Demon Emperor cultivation

Zong Yan's defining natural ability is speed. He can cross a mile almost instantly, use Greater Teleportation across interplanetary distances, evade level-nine-caliber opponents through rapid changes of direction, and create dense fields of afterimages in close combat. Even much later, Qin Yu judges his raw speed superior without spatial suppression. Speed lets Zong Yan choose distance and escape many stronger attacks, but it does not overcome barriers to teleportation, superior prediction, or direct control of the space through which he moves. (Chapters 423–430, 468–471, 473)

As a level-eight Demon Emperor, Zong Yan possesses broad Demon Awareness, dense energy, and the physical qualities of a Golden-Winged Great Peng. He can scan refined matter for a transformed immortal mansion, survive exchanges with Hei Yu and Hou Fei, and block divine-weapon strikes with crown-reinforced hands. He is still below level nine when his final conflict begins, and his cultivation alone cannot defeat Wu Lan, the Cyan Emperor, or the later Qin Yu. The hierarchy is demonstrated directly rather than inferred from titles. (Chapters 413–430, 468–471)

Inherited Golden Crown

The Inherited Golden Crown is the Peng Demon Emperor's office-bearing treasure and can amplify Zong Yan's speed to a frightening degree while coating his hands in a powerful golden defense. Its overall might exceeds ordinary divine artifacts, and with its ultimate activation Zong Yan believes he can contest Hei Yu directly. Its emphasis is not unlimited attack: Zong Yan admits that his offensive power is weaker than his speed, while Hei Yu can push the crown's defense to its limit with a single spear exchange. (Chapters 386–387, 425, 470–472)

The crown also has political and mechanical restrictions. It belongs to the Peng Clan, passes between successive emperors, can be bound only by the appropriate bloodline, and must remain in the lower realm rather than accompany its holder into the Divine Realm. This limit is central to Zong Yan's fear: a treasure that secures his current reign cannot guarantee superiority after ascension. After his death, loss of the crown threatens the entire Bird Clan's standing more seriously than the loss of Zong Yan himself. (Chapters 387, 412, 425, 472)

Imperial command, arrays, and limits

Zong Yan commands level-eight enforcers, intelligence agents across Bird Clan territory, and formations staffed by multiple Demon Emperors. He uses that network to hunt Hei Yu, police the Imperial City, stage Bai Xin's execution, and refine Yellow Lion Mountain. These are consequences of rulership and delegation. Bai Feng, Ao Ku, Liu Tu, and sixteen array operators perform much of the actual surveillance, hostage control, and formation work, so their abilities should not be converted into personal spells for Zong Yan. (Chapters 403–416)

Jiang Lan's Realm defeats his search and refining campaign by placing Qin Yu's group beyond his accessible space. The Cyan Emperor later immobilizes him despite his speed, Wu Lan's intervention forces him to abandon a five-expert assault, and Qin Yu's spatial control reduces his final movement by dozens of times. Together these defeats define the boundary of Zong Yan's power: he dominates ordinary Bird Clan institutions and open movement, but specialized spatial artifacts and experts with superior control can nullify both his empire and his signature advantage. (Chapters 408–430, 470–471)

Power progression

Relationships

• Hei Yu: Hei Yu is the surviving son of Fang Chong, Zong Yan's murdered rival. Zong Yan tries to eliminate him before his variation bloodline and rapid growth can threaten the throne; Hei Yu ultimately kills him to avenge both parents.
• Zong Jue: Zong Jue is a separate younger Golden-Winged Great Peng and possible successor, not an alias for Zong Yan. His favorable report alerts Zong Yan to Hei Yu, but he opposes the death warrant, protects Bai Xin, and earns Zong Yan's threat for defiance.
• Bai Feng: Bai Feng is Zong Yan's principal strategist and one of three level-eight enforcers alongside Ao Ku and Liu Tu. He relies on them for surveillance, hostage operations, pursuit, and formation warfare; their deaths or injuries dismantle much of his practical power.
• Emperor Yu: Emperor Yu and Mystic Emperor ally with Zong Yan because all three fear Qin Yu's brothers. Their cooperation leads to public punishment by the Cyan Emperor and the disastrous Flowing Mist assault in which Emperor Yu dies.
• Fang Chong: The Dark Electric Great Peng is Zong Yan's stronger rival for the imperial title and Hei Yu's father. Zong Yan exploits Fang Chong's attachment to his wife, kills him, and spends the rest of his life trying to prevent the surviving child from reversing that victory.
• Cyan Emperor: Zong Yan disregards the Cyan Emperor's ban on fighting at the post-tribulation celebration. The Cyan Emperor immobilizes and strikes him publicly, proving that Zong Yan's speed and office do not place him above all lower-realm experts.

Items

• No separately generated notable item is assigned to Zong Yan in the reconciled item manifest. The Peng Clan's inherited crown is nevertheless central to his office and combat limits and is described in the abilities section.