An Zheyan

An Zheyan is a former head of the An Family who becomes a long-serving retainer of the Li Family after losing his household and his gifted son An Jingming. His knowledge of underground resources helps his new patrons expand, while his changing relationships expose both the cruelty of his earlier rule and the lasting consequences of his failures. He eventually leaves leadership to his surviving son An Siwei. (Chapters 99–119, 213–224, 477–478, 1326, and 1523)

Biography

Alliances and the Ebony Ore Mine

An Zheyan initially acts as a local cultivator concerned with his family's resources and advantage. Alongside Lu Sisi, he attacks Ji Dengqi, with Li Tongya joining the battle and helping secure the outcome. Their cooperation does not create a lasting equality. When Zheyan's vein-searching knowledge reveals an Ebony Ore deposit near the Li and Lu territories, he expects the An Family's discovery and mining work to earn it a substantial share. He and Lu Sisi consider eliminating Tongya rather than admitting another claimant, but recognize that the Li Family's connections make that course dangerous. (Chapters 99–101 and 117–119)

At the negotiation, Zheyan insists on his proposed share and joins Lu Sisi in challenging Tongya when the latter demands half the profits. Tongya's swordsmanship defeats both men, forcing them to accept his terms. Zheyan immediately adopts a respectful manner and helps restore the appearance of friendly cooperation. The incident establishes a pattern in his conduct: he presses his advantage when he believes he can, then yields readily once a stronger opponent makes the balance of power unmistakable. (Chapter 119)

Jingming’s Warnings and the Fall of Mount Huazhong

Zheyan's household combines luxury and brutality. He severely punishes servants over food and rules through fear, yet treats Jingming with an affection almost no one else receives. His son's cultivation becomes the family's hope, but also draws the danger that Jingming understands more clearly than his father. Caught between the Yu and Li Families, Jingming proposes surrendering Mount Huazhong and forming a protective alliance. Zheyan refuses to give up the ancestral spirit fields. Instead, he follows a more complicated plan to set the rival families against one another, approaching Tongya with warnings about Yu Mugao. (Chapters 176–179)

His indiscretion defeats the precautions meant to protect his son. After Zheyan boasts while drinking, Jingming's advancement becomes known; the Yu Family attacks before the An household can secure its future. Jingming sends his father through a hidden escape route while facing the attackers himself. Stripped of family and authority, Zheyan hides with an ordinary couple and initially considers killing them to conceal his flight. Their care breaks through his old expectations of submission. He eventually reaches the Li Family, admits his helplessness and gives up the An legacies in return for shelter, accepting the dependence he had resisted when Jingming first advised compromise. (Chapters 204, 213–214, 221, and 223–224)

A New Household and an Incomplete Reform

Life among the Lis gives Zheyan relationships that are not built entirely on fear. He befriends guards, shares stories and gradually learns to accept ordinary food and companionship. He marries Li Feiruo, whose forceful temperament helps restrain him, and works alongside Chen Donghe and Tian Youdao. When Tongya attains Foundation Establishment, Zheyan confronts the gulf between their fortunes and becomes still more respectful. His account of the An ancestors' decline also supplies a warning about the dangers of competing household lineages. (Chapters 230 and 259)

The return to his ancestral territory shows how incomplete his reform remains. With Li support, he persuades his old relatives to submit, only to see an elder choose suicide rather than accept the household's loss of independence. His hatred of An Zheyu later erupts into prolonged torture and the consumption of his enemy's flesh. Tongya intervenes and tells him that Feiruo is pregnant, forcing him to confront the possibility of another life beyond revenge. The new household eventually produces two sons and a daughter with spiritual orifices, and his concern for them increasingly draws him into practical service. (Chapters 262–264, 273–274, and 370)

Defense and the Wealth Beneath the Lake

Zheyan becomes useful through vigilance and experience as much as through cultivation. He helps investigate threats, captures a rogue cultivator, assists formation work and defends his sons against devil cultivators. The fight with Zhang Huaide sharply qualifies his confidence in realm superiority: despite being two heavenly layers higher, he is overpowered by the enemy's stronger arts and needs Shamoli's support. Tian Youdao's death then turns his concern into anger, and he attacks another devil cultivator before helping tend the wounded. (Chapters 336–337, 386, 422–424, and 440–442)

His resource surveys strengthen the Li Family's position around the lake. Working with Li Wushao and the guards, he identifies valuable ore and water veins and reports their yields. Later, he carries a Six-Stone Cloud Plate to the defeated Yu household as a burial offering for Yu Muxian, enjoying a moment of retaliation against an old enemy. The pleasure does not survive his visit to the couple who once sheltered him: he finds their house ruined and their murdered remains inside. Their deaths leave him bitter rather than triumphant. His old grievance against Yu Mugao does find an outlet when the latter's severed head is shown to the elders, but neither victory repairs the losses that shaped his service. (Chapters 467, 477–478, 629–631, and 639)

The Northern Disaster

In the northern conflict, Zheyan's impulse to help brings another disastrous failure. He leads cultivators to support Li Yuexiang, whose bloodline attracts a Buddhist hunter. His account of the attack connects his intentions to the deaths that follow, including the loss of An Siming. Returning to the family, he confesses responsibility and asks to be executed, remembering how his earlier recklessness had helped bring about Jingming's death. His grief is intensified by the belief that he has again harmed both his own child and the people he serves. (Chapters 745 and 885)

The family imposes desert service and material fines rather than death. He survives with an eye lost, while An Siwei continues to bear the household's responsibilities. The punishment preserves his place among the Lis, but it does not remove his conviction that poor judgment can destroy the very people he means to protect. (Chapters 887 and 908)

Old Age and the Last Warnings

Zheyan's decades of service earn him continued protection. After Li Ximing attains Purple Mansion, he restores Zheyan's severed limbs, allowing the old retainer to move with all four limbs again. Age nevertheless changes his duties and appearance. During a sudden border attack, he escapes and reaches An Siwei and Li Minggong to report the danger. He still participates in family affairs and occasionally acts against threats, but leadership increasingly belongs to his son. (Chapters 1047, 1088–1089, 1201, 1326, and 1438)

By extreme old age, spirit herbs sustain a body with little essence, qi or spirit remaining, and his thoughts become confused. Holding Siwei's hands, he repeats the warnings Jingming once gave him: abandon drinking and indulgence, avoid revenge, and have children. Siwei answers through tears. Ximing considers briefly prolonging his life, but Liu Changdie asks that he be allowed to go. Zheyan’s head droops as he dies, and Changdie urges burial at Mount Yuting. The former patriarch who once rejected his son’s advice leaves those same words as his final inheritance. (Chapters 1522–1523)

Appearance and personality

Zheyan is bald, with a substantial frame and, in his earlier years, stubble and a fleshy face. He wears a leather hat during his visits to Tongya. Later, his beard and eyebrows turn white; restored limbs improve his mobility without concealing the wrinkles and frailty of age. (Chapters 99, 176–178, 477, and 1088)

His earlier appetite and authority are accompanied by extreme cruelty, yet his devotion to Jingming reveals an exception to that rule. Dispossession, ordinary kindness and a new family soften him without making the change complete. Revenge can still overwhelm his judgment, and loyal attempts to help can end in disaster. In old age, remorse and concern for descendants become more prominent than the pleasures and status he once guarded. (Chapters 176–177, 221, 230, 273, 630, 885, and 1523)

Abilities and cultivation

Guardian of the Courtly Path

The An ancestral cultivation method allows rapid condensation of the Embryonic Breathing chakras, helping practitioners enter Qi Cultivation. Progress becomes slower afterward, and the method slightly reduces lifespan while improving the effects of jade dharma artifacts. It also carries a decisive hierarchical weakness: practitioners are suppressed by the superior Aged Courtly Path Sutra even when their own cultivation is higher. Zheyan transmits these distinctions when he gives the legacy to the Li Family. (Chapter 224)

His confirmed cultivation rises from the fifth through the ninth heavenly layers of Qi Cultivation. A later retrospective identifies him as one of the Li clan's Foundation Establishment Dharma Protectors and says he had a shallow Immortal Foundation; it gives neither his breakthrough date nor substage. The final-attempt account in chapter 1522 belongs to Liu Changdie's previous-life recollection, while the chapter 1523 death scene states no realm. Ximing's earlier comparison of Zheyan's innate ability with Li Wen's marks Foundation as unlikely, not impossible. (Chapters 178, 230, 305, 422, 467, 1083, 1326, 1522, and 1523)

Earthly Court Detection Technique

The An Family's vein-searching art uses hand seals and examination of the earth to locate underground resources. Zheyan uses it to find the Ebony Ore deposit and later supplies the method to his new patrons. His surveys expand to ore and water veins beneath the lake and along its shores, turning inherited knowledge into practical value for a much larger household. (Chapters 117–119, 224, and 477–478)

Finding a vein does not make its resources immediately available. Zheyan distinguishes estimated reserves from workable annual extraction, including ore difficult enough to require Qi cultivators to mine it personally. Cooperation with Li Wushao, the Hooked Serpent and the Jade Court Guards connects his detection work to excavation and protection. (Chapters 469 and 477–478)

Combat and Retainer Duties

Zheyan fights with spells and an ebony pole, and can seal the cultivation of a weaker rogue. His service includes patrols, escorts and coordination of guards, but his battle record demonstrates the limits of numerical realm advantage. Tongya defeats him alongside Lu Sisi, and Zhang Huaide's superior devil arts overpower his eighth-layer mana despite the latter's sixth-layer cultivation. Shamoli's thunder provides necessary support in that encounter. (Chapters 100, 119, 336–337, and 422–423)

Power progression

Relationships

• An Jingming: His gifted son and the hope of the first An household. Jingming's advice, death and final warnings govern much of Zheyan's later remorse. (Chapters 176–177, 213–214, and 1523)
• Li Feiruo: His later wife, whose strong temperament steadies his renewed household and encourages diligent cultivation. (Chapters 259 and 467)
• An Siming and An Siwei: Sons of his later household. Siming dies in the northern disaster; Siwei becomes its principal leader and cares for his declining father. (Chapters 422, 885, 1326, and 1523)
• Li Tongya: A rival turned superior patron who shelters him, learns his ancestral history and restrains his revenge. (Chapters 119, 230, and 273)
• Li Ximing: His daughter's husband and a senior patron who restores his severed limbs and remembers his gentler years of service. (Chapters 520, 1088, and 1523)
• Chen Donghe, Tian Youdao and Li Wushao: Companions in the Li Family's work. Their shared duties extend his attachments beyond his own lineage. (Chapters 259, 423, and 630)
• Yu Mugao and An Zheyu: Enemies connected to the destruction and usurpation of his first household. His revenge against them brings satisfaction mixed with renewed cruelty and grief. (Chapters 214, 264, 273, and 639)

Items

• Ebony pole: A combat artifact used when he challenges Tongya alongside Lu Sisi. (Chapter 119)
• Six-Stone Cloud Plate: Entrusted to him for delivery as a burial offering for Yu Muxian. This is temporary custody rather than personal ownership. (Chapters 629–630)