Liu Changdie

Liu Changdie is a gifted formation master who believes he has returned to life with memories of a previous future. Those memories are real to him, but they come from a fragment of the Heaven Expanding Profound Talisman’s power of deduction, not from reincarnation. His plans repeatedly diverge from what he expects, and the gap between memory and lived consequence forces him to confront his opportunism. After grief over the people his imagined past could not protect, he becomes more generous and careful with others’ trust. Eventually, as Daoist Master Yuanbian, he reaches Purple Mansion but remains confined to a severed Stored Metal lineage. He remains a valuable formation expert and an ally to the Li family, though his actual path has narrowed.

Biography

A future remembered as a former life

When Liu first meets Li Xuanfeng through Xiao Yongling, he uses details from his predictive memories to claim that he has met Li Chejing before. He has not: the memories present a forecasted future as recollection, and his asserted familiarity is not a real past relationship. Liu believes he has lived more than seventy years before beginning again, but this is not actual reincarnation. The memories came from a remnant connected to the Heaven Expanding Profound Talisman, whose active predictive power is later removed. (Chapters 132–133, 663)

Liu is skilled enough to make that foreknowledge useful. He introduces himself through Xiao Yongling, approaches the Li family at a moment of growth, and presents a large formation project at a discount. His knowledge of future events helps him claim an intimacy with people he has not actually met, including Li Chejing. Li Tongya accepts the plan and assigns Liu and Li Xuanxuan to oversee the Sun Rite Profound Light Formation. Liu spends months building its platforms around Lijing and Meichi, then incorporates the White Feather Purple Flags into the defenses. His work benefits the family, while his hope of earning a lasting place among them serves his own ambitions. (Chapters 133–136)

Lu Jiangxian retrieves the active predictive remnant from Liu during their first encounter, leaving the memories it generated intact. Liu does not realize that the source has been removed. He therefore continues to trust a forecast that can no longer update itself as the world changes. The talisman was designed as a contingency involving Wanlin Heaven and its imprisoned Order, making Liu’s apparent second life part of a larger plan beyond his knowledge. (Chapters 133, 1567–1568)

Formation work and the erosion of certainty

Liu continues to use his remembered opportunities to build a reputation and seek advancement. He repairs Earth-Locked Huaqian Formation and hopes that the Li family will admit him as a guest elder in exchange for his work. When that appointment is refused, they still pay him with Spirit Eye Perception, a technique he values for his travels. Liu leaves to pursue opportunities in the unsettled north, with useful training but no secure household position. (Chapters 278–281, 283)

At Yi Mountain City, Liu’s memories contrast the second-layer cultivator he recalls being with his present peak Qi cultivation. During a beast assault, he goes down to maintain the city’s great formation while the defenders hold the walls. The actual history is already departing from what he remembers: Li Tongya survives events Liu expected to unfold differently, and Li Qinghong remains alive. These differences erode Liu’s confidence in his forecast and make the present relationships he forms more important than the past he imagines. (Chapters 352, 375, 458–460)

The divergences leave Liu less certain of his foreknowledge and more dependent on relationships formed in the present. He later carries a letter from Xuanfeng, surveys the veins around Qingdu and builds the Green Ox River Embrace Formation. His warm familiarity with Li Yuanjiao, however, rests partly on memories Yuanjiao does not share. Liu feels old affection, while Yuanjiao is meeting him anew. (Chapters 459–460, 642)

Repayment, grief and the people left behind

When Liu hears that Yuanjiao has apparently died, he returns from the Eastern Sea as a Foundation cultivator. He arrives distraught and mourns at the grave. Seeking to repay the family rather than profit from the relationship, he offers to build a Foundation formation at a steep discount, supplies Pure Essence Spirit Water for the formation and offers his remaining portion for the family’s perception training. The water is a rare material of the Pit Water system, and he also trains the clan’s formation masters. At Mount Qingdu he completes the Heaven-Guarding Formation of Five Waters, a major defense that he builds with significant resources of his own. He refuses further payment, regarding the work as repayment for Yuanjiao’s kindness. (Chapters 642–644, 647, 649, 661)

Liu also asks Li Xijun about the household, then visits Yuqing, a woman who was his wife in the predictive memories he mistakes for a former life. In actual events, Yuqing is Master Hu’s concubine and does not recognize Liu as her husband. Their daughter exists only in those memories. Seeing Yuqing’s fear and learning of her miscarriage forces Liu to face the harm in treating an imagined family as expendable while pursuing more prestigious matches. He flees in shame, falls into the lake, and later leaves to seek a way to quiet his inner demons. The pain of the encounter changes his conduct: he becomes more wary of taking benefits at other people’s expense. (Chapters 661–663)

Yuanbian and the price of a severed path

After long wandering in the southern seas, Liu attains Purple Mansion and takes the Dao title Yuanbian. The long lifespan associated with this realm gives him time to pursue his craft, but not a return to the family he remembers. Chapter 1477 is his first actual meeting with Li Ximing: Liu recognizes him from predictive memories and responds with tears, while Ximing initially doubts that the unfamiliar cultivator could be someone he knows. Liu vouches for Fuxun and helps bring the two cultivators into a useful alliance. (Chapters 1477–1479, 1480)

Liu explains that he cultivated the sixth-grade Dao Profound Continuance Divine Scripture and entered the Purple Mansion through Treasury Beam Silver. What he once thought a precious inheritance proves to be a dead end: the lineage is severed, and its single divine ability offers no continuation to a higher rank. He suspects that the inheritance was bait. His Purple Mansion breakthrough came at a severe cost: the lineage is severed, and his single divine ability offers no path to a higher rank. (Chapters 1480–1481, 1568)

As a senior, Liu is careful to balance old debts with present obligations. His mediation helps Ximing obtain Radiant Fire and refine a pill for Fuxun; he contributes Wondrous Wisdom Tendril to compensate for materials Ximing supplies. During later exchanges, he introduces Qingyan and offers formation expertise. He also accompanies Ximing to the Eastern Sea residence, where Treasury Beam Silver helps accelerate the condensation of an Under-Neck Feather. When An Zheyan is dying, Liu asks Ximing to let him go without prolonging his suffering, leaves a jade box for An Siwei and urges that Zheyan be buried at Mount Yuting. His earlier guilt has become a more deliberate concern for fair exchange and human dignity. (Chapters 1487, 1495–1496, 1516, 1522–1523)

Reading the seals beneath the Feather Transformation Pool

At Zhen Tao Residence, Liu uses Stored Metal to reveal the Feather Transformation Pool’s hidden anchor and the spirit artifact beneath it. He recognizes the formation flags’ resemblance to the White Feather Purple Flags and explains that Stored Metal lets him observe and retrieve embedded treasures, not break formations. The discovery turns his formation knowledge into a way to read the residence’s inheritance and its old connections. (Chapters 1554–1555)

Liu links the formation’s Douxuan style and Water Wall Pearl to the Mifann inheritance, then suspects a history connecting Wan Huaqian, Chi Wei, and Li Encheng. His resentment colors the theory, and Ximing judges it partly convincing but not fully objective. Even so, Liu cautions that removing the valuable artifact at the pool’s base would ruin its recurring resource. He offers to study the formation for decades before considering a subtler adjustment. (Chapter 1555)

A sea guardian and a careful mentor

One calculated future ends with Liu dying at the hands of Victory White Hall. By Chapter 1730, he remains alive on Qunyi Island, spends little time in seclusion, and stays within its formation after an unnatural storm. His calculations uncover clues that the dragons secretly protect him. Ximing had asked Liu to guard Quewan, and he continues to honor that charge while assessing the danger around the island. (Chapters 1605, 1730)

Liu’s care extends to mentorship. Impressed by Quewan’s clear Dao conduct, he unseals the Wondrous Scroll of Divided Spirit and Variant Body and explains what it can do. The method can preserve a life or avert calamity, while reincarnation requires deep Dao conduct and suitable treasures, carries a low chance of success, and may leave consequences; he presents it as a last resort. When a letter from home arrives, a report of a demon king outside briefly alarms him, but he recognizes Fuxun by the golden pendant. (Chapter 1730)

Appearance and personality

As a young cultivator, Liu wears a refined fox-fur cloak and looks youthful despite his years. In Purple Mansion, he appears middle-aged, with a white fur cloak, jeweled belt and three silver markings at his brow. His elegant dress and composed manner suit a formation master accustomed to study and careful observation. (Chapters 132, 146, 1477)

Liu begins ambitious, self-interested and socially awkward around people he believes he has known before. He is willing to spend generously when he expects future advantage, but his grief over Yuanjiao and his encounter with Yuqing expose the cost of treating others as pieces in a remembered plan. He grows more cautious and more willing to give without imposing a debt. His love of fine comforts remains, but he is troubled by unfair bargains and takes responsibility when his choices burden others. (Chapters 133, 279, 661–663, 1495, 1522)

Abilities and cultivation

Formation mastery

Liu is an accomplished formation master whose work ranges from mountain defenses and city arrays to the analysis of ancient seals. He organizes large construction projects, reads terrain and spiritual veins, repairs damaged formations, and can identify key anchors through his divine ability. His expertise allows him to assess long-term consequences: at the Feather Transformation Pool, he rejects a destructive shortcut because it would ruin the source of its resources. The technique requires time, materials and suitable conditions; Liu does not claim that every complex formation can be altered immediately. (Chapters 134–136, 278–281, 352, 647, 1554–1555)

Heaven-Guarding Formation of Five Waters

At Mount Qingdu, Liu arranges five kinds of Water Virtue spirit water across ten platforms. When activated, the formation draws on the lake and mountain’s water veins to raise five defensive layers, which he says can withstand cultivators up to the middle stage of Foundation Establishment. Pristine Water creates Morning Mist that blocks spiritual-sense probing; Xijun’s talisman-enhanced perception sees through it. Serpent Stream summons armed water creatures that hide in the mist and attack intruders, while Pure Essence lightens and strengthens allies. Grounded weighs down flight and steadily increases its mana drain, an effect Liu amplifies with rare Water Mansion spirit water carrying properties of Inferior Water. Finally, Layered Flow surrounds the mountain with a dense, steady mass of water as a defensive shell. The demonstration shows the formation’s prepared, terrain-dependent defenses; Liu’s boast about surpassing local Foundation formation masters is his own claim. (Chapters 647–649, 661)

Treasury Beam Silver

Liu’s Purple Mansion cultivation follows the Stored Metal Dao, whose Treasury Beam Silver divine ability lets him observe concealed treasures and retrieve things held within Stored Metal. At Zhen Tao Residence he makes the pool transparent and reveals its hidden anchors, artifacts and flags. He explicitly distinguishes observation and retrieval from breaking formations: the Unified-Stored Interlocking Seal conceals much of Stored Metal’s mystic, so his ability cannot generally dismantle a formation. His path is constrained by the severed lineage, with no established continuation beyond this divine ability. (Chapters 1480–1481, 1554–1555)

Spirit Eye Perception and spirit-water craft

Liu takes the Profound Scenery Spiritual Oath and receives Spirit Eye Perception from the Li family. He searches for Pure Essence Spirit Water over more than a decade in pursuit of the materials needed to master the perception technique; the water is a resource, not the technique itself. Spirit Eye Perception lets him assess earth veins and spiritual-energy distributions, while his formation experience turns those readings into defenses such as the Green Ox River Embrace and Heaven-Guarding Formation of Five Waters. (Chapters 281, 458–460, 647–649, 661)

Power progression

Relationships

• Li Xuanfeng: One of Liu’s first Li family contacts. Liu’s initial claim of remembered acquaintance concerns Chejing, not Xuanfeng; their own connection grows through formation work and later visits. (Chapters 132–133, 278–281, 663)
• Li Xuanxuan: A collaborator on the Sun Rite Profound Light Formation and one of the people Liu turns to for help with later projects. (Chapters 134–136, 642–649)
• Li Yuanjiao: A friend whose apparent death brings Liu back from the Eastern Sea. Liu repays the kindness he received by contributing formations and spiritual water to the family. (Chapters 642–649)
• Yuqing: A woman who was Liu’s wife only in the predictive memories he mistakes for a former life. In the actual history, she is Master Hu’s concubine and does not recognize him. Their encounter forces Liu to reconsider his treatment of people. (Chapters 661–663)
• Li Ximing: A younger cultivator whom Liu recognizes from his predictive memories at their first actual meeting in Chapter 1477. They exchange materials and technical help while balancing their respective obligations to Fuxun and the Li family. (Chapters 1477–1481, 1487–1496, 1522–1523)
• Fuxun: Liu’s southern benefactor and trusted friend. Liu vouches for him to Ximing and helps arrange their cooperation. (Chapters 1477–1479, 1487–1516)
• Li Quewan: A junior Liu protects on Qunyi Island at Ximing’s request. His guidance on an ancient scroll helps her understand what its divided-spirit and variant-body method can and cannot do. (Chapters 1626–1627, 1730)

Items

Liu’s work depends on formation flags, arrays, cultivation texts and spirit water used as material. The White Feather Purple Flags contribute to the Sun Rite Profound Light Formation, while the family’s Pure Essence Spirit Water supports his Five Waters defense. He also cultivates the Dao Profound Continuance Divine Scripture and Treasury Beam Silver. These tools and inheritances support his craft but do not remove the limits of his severed lineage. (Chapters 136, 647–649, 661, 1480–1481)