Demon Lord

The Demon Lord is the old ruler of Xuelao City, the father of Nanke and the Young Demon Lord, and the demon sovereign whose reign lasts roughly one thousand years. He is the middle-aged scholar who hunts Chen Changsheng at Mount Han and later in the snowy mountains. References after Chapter 782 to the unqualified title “Demon Lord” generally designate his successor and are not part of this character's biography.

Biography

A Thousand-Year Sovereign

The Demon Lord's reign stretches back to the age of Emperor Taizong, when demon armies repeatedly threatened the human world. After an advance through Tianliang County placed Luoyang in danger, Taizong met him at Fallen Willow Plains and bought a withdrawal with wealth, resources, and a white rhinoceros horn. The ruler's military strength made him a continental threat, but Zhou Dufu later defeated him outside Xuelao City and inflicted wounds that never truly healed, ending the image of his invincibility without ending his rule. (Chapters 150, 188, 193, and 768–769)

For the following millennium, he remains the fixed center of demon power. He oversees Xuelao City, stabilizes its competing great powers, and helps his realm endure a crushing defeat by the combined human and demi-human armies. His authority also holds together two mutually hostile subordinates: Black Robe, the military advisor responsible for strategy and governance, and the Demon Commander, the army's foremost martial power. The arrangement preserves the state, but their rivalry is useful to him as well, preventing either subordinate from becoming secure enough to challenge the throne. (Chapters 29, 267, 354, and 769)

His rule is sustained by personal force as much as institutions. During the struggle outside the Garden of Zhou, the shadow of his will suppresses the surrounding space while Demon Generals and armies exhaust Su Li; the Council of Elders waits for the sovereign's pressure to produce a decisive result. Yet even his closest servants cannot always read his intentions, and he cannot fully read Black Robe's. The balance that protects him from a single rival consequently leaves the regime dependent on his prestige, a weakness that becomes decisive once injury makes that prestige vulnerable. (Chapters 267, 277, 352, and 768–769)

Mount Han and the Rebellion

The Demon Lord finally leaves Xuelao City after a thousand years because his ancient wounds are worsening and Chen Changsheng's sacred blood offers a possible cure. Disguised as a middle-aged scholar, he enters Mount Han against Black Robe's advice, breaks through the Heavenstone array, and pursues Chen with no interest in lesser opponents. He speaks courteously and promises to dine slowly, but the scholarly manners only sharpen the threat: he blocks Chen's spatial escape, overwhelms the Yellow Paper Umbrella with a distant flick, and treats eating a living youth as a sovereign entitlement. (Chapters 567–569 and 574)

Wang Zhice intervenes before the Demon Lord can take Chen. Their conversation shows both the ruler's confidence and his restraint: he recognizes an opponent dangerous enough to cost precious time, accepts Wang's argument that saving Chen is worth letting him withdraw, and departs rather than risk encirclement by other supreme experts. His retreat is not safety. On the snowy plains, the White Emperor has calculated his route and waits for him; their battle heavily injures both, and the damage the Demon Lord suffers there later helps make rebellion possible. (Chapters 568–570, 634, and 694)

Black Robe and the Demon Commander exploit that weakness and join forces around the Demon Lord's youngest son. They overthrow their ruler and cast him into the abyss, while the son takes the throne and later proves to have been the rebellion's true driver rather than its puppet. Nanke remains loyal to her father: she risks annihilation, uses the true body of the Peacock to break through successive barriers, and rescues him. Her success saves his life, but neither the abyss nor flight reverses his decline; by the time he resurfaces, his strength is less than one-fifth of its peak and death is close. (Chapters 739, 765, 768–769, and 773)

The Last Hunt and Succession

The Cinnabar Pills reveal Chen's hiding place and confirm that he has found a way to use his blood without poisoning recipients. The Demon Lord follows the clue into the snowy mountains, kills neither Chen nor his companions immediately, and instead argues that Chen should offer himself voluntarily: restored by the blood, he would return north, fight the usurpers for centuries, and thereby suspend the demon invasion. The proposal turns his hunger for survival and restoration into an alleged benefit for humanity, but Chen rejects the premise that saving unnamed multitudes obliges him to surrender a specific life—his own. (Chapters 768–770)

When negotiation fails, the Demon Lord demonstrates how much power remains in his ruined body. He uses a zither song to scatter Chen's sword arrays, catches the monolith wielded by Hai Di, shatters Hai Di's bones through rapid vibration, and sends him into a distant mountain. He then casts the Black Frost Dragon out of the sky, arrests several Heavenly Tome Monoliths by reproducing a star chart, and destroys most of Chen's three thousand-sword assault. Chen and Su Li's stored sword intent wound him, but he still interrupts Chen's attempt to burn himself to death and prepares to seize the blood he needs. (Chapters 771–776)

The apparently unconscious young array master beside him is actually his youngest son. Using the Astral Executioner, the successor slips past the old ruler's protective monolith and marks him for a strike of light from beyond the stars; he then stabs his father's abdomen, breaks his fingers, and removes the concealed Heavenly Demon Horn that might have enabled a counterattack. The trap succeeds because Chen occupies the Demon Lord's full attention, but also because the successor knows that surviving the abyss once means no lesser measure can guarantee his father's death. (Chapters 777–780)

In his final conversation, the Demon Lord does not deny the betrayal. He questions whether his son is prepared for the remote beings alerted by the Astral Executioner, hears the younger ruler's plan to conquer and strengthen the continent before they can arrive, and recognizes the same confidence and ambition that had defined his own reign. He admits that his thousand-year-old body should have left the world earlier and that clinging to power instead of yielding to the young was his greatest error. Reassured that his aspirations can pass to a descendant, he accepts the succession, closes his eyes beside his children, and dies. (Chapters 781–782)

Appearance and personality

The Demon Lord normally appears as a middle-aged scholar. His face is veiled by living darkness, golden inscriptions, and shifting landscapes that move from desert to sea with small changes in his expression; the scenery is vivid but contains no people. His true face, exposed when Su Li's sword intent cleaves the veil, has sharply rising brows and cold, hawkish eyes. His blood is gold rather than the green associated with ordinary demons, and the final astral strike strips away the landscapes and rapidly reveals his age. (Chapters 568, 768, and 775–778)

He is learned, controlled, cruel, and intensely sovereign in bearing. He recognizes lines from the Daoist Canon, remembers ancient star-chart principles, and conducts threats as measured philosophical arguments. His praise for worthy techniques can be genuine, but it comes from the height of a ruler assessing juniors, while lives beneath his concern are treated as expendable. Pride does not make him reckless in every circumstance: he withdraws before Wang Zhice when time becomes the decisive resource, yet his refusal to relinquish life or authority ultimately makes him pursue Chen despite Black Robe's warning and resist succession long after his body has begun to fail. (Chapters 568–569, 768–770, 772–775, and 781)

His family reveals a more complicated capacity for affection. He protects Nanke during battle and speaks gently to Zhizhi for the sake of an old friendship with her father, but his ambitions repeatedly outweigh tenderness. He values Nanke's talent until disappointment turns his attention elsewhere, and at death he barely acknowledges the daughter who rescued him. By contrast, once his youngest son proves capable of defeating him and carrying forward the imperial project, his suspicion changes into praise, satisfaction, and relief. Love, in his final judgment, follows demonstrated strength and fitness to rule. (Chapters 768, 772, 778, and 781–783)

Abilities and cultivation

The Demon Lord is a Divine Domain expert described as the most powerful and talented monarch in Xuelao City's history. His peak belongs among the great figures of the millennium, and he remains formidable after Zhou Dufu's blow, one thousand years of unhealed damage, the White Emperor's attack, the rebellion, and the abyss. Those accumulated injuries are his defining limitation: at the final battle he possesses less than one-fifth of his former strength, coughs as though an echo were sounding through a deep valley, and can still defeat Hai Di and Zhizhi with casual movements, but must seek Chen's blood because his body is close to collapse. (Chapters 568–570, 768–769, and 772–773)

Domain pressure and spatial control

His Qi can alter an entire battlefield before he touches an opponent. At Mount Han, a distant finger sends force through the Heavenstone defenses, freezes Chen's hand in place, and strikes hard enough to punch him into a cliff through the Yellow Paper Umbrella. At close range, his presence interferes with spatial artifacts and prevents Chen from entering the Garden of Zhou; he can also move through a mountain array while hundreds of Heavenstones follow like trinkets. The technique is not absolute, since time spent breaking the full array leaves him exposed to converging experts, but against a weaker cultivator it removes escape before combat begins. (Chapters 567–570 and 773)

Perception and manipulation of principles

The Demon Lord's sight penetrates minute physical and energetic changes. He detects a tiny deviation in flying sparks, infers that warped space conceals a Heavenly Tome Monolith, and responds before Chen's hidden attack can arrive. A glance makes Hai Di's broken monolith shrink, while his hand and voice induce tens of thousands of vibrations that destroy the demon general's bones without first tearing the flesh. His awareness also lets him identify the principles of artifacts and techniques, although carefully concealed attacks can bypass it: the Astral Executioner reaches him only because his linked monolith reacts in his place and then yields to the older divine object. (Chapters 772, 774, and 777)

Zither arts and demon techniques

An ancient zither turns music into a wide-area weapon. Individual notes collide with sword Qi as tangible forces, while his completed autumn melody scatters a dragon of three thousand swords, cracking weaker blades before they can release their techniques. He ultimately sacrifices the instrument and snaps every string to produce chaotic notes powerful enough to break the formation outright. His most tyrannical demon technique instead manifests as a descending sheet of darkness capable of swallowing Chen's suicidal fusion of sword arts; it demands enough focus that the disguised successor can strike from below while the Demon Lord is suppressing Chen in the sky. (Chapters 771 and 774–777)

Heavenly Tome knowledge

The Demon Lord once entered the Garden of Zhou and removed a Heavenly Tome Monolith, carrying it for centuries as a small stone seal. Long study makes the object an autonomous defense linked to his life and allows him to use its immense weight without being crushed by it. When Chen attacks with four other monoliths, the Demon Lord reconstructs an ordering of the stars learned at the Mausoleum of Books and uses the seal to pacify their violent Qis in a balanced star chart. This mastery stops Chen's strongest artifacts, but the Astral Executioner is a higher-order counter: the seal recognizes it, gives way, and leaves its master exposed. (Chapters 551, 568, and 773–778)

Power progression

Relationships

• Young Demon Lord: His youngest son engineers the rebellion, takes the throne, and later constructs the only trap capable of guaranteeing his father's death. The old ruler ultimately judges the plan excellent, accepts that his refusal to pass on power caused the betrayal, and recognizes his son as the heir to his continental ambitions. (Chapters 739, 768–769, and 778–782)
• Nanke: Nanke is his daughter and loyal rescuer, enduring the abyss to save him and protecting him during his last pursuit of Chen. He once proudly displayed her Surpassing Bird blood and shields her in battle, but his final attention goes to her brother; her realization that he never intended her to rule becomes the source of her last grievance against both father and successor. (Chapters 324, 765, 769, 772, and 782–783)
• Chen Changsheng: Chen's sacred blood offers a cure for the Demon Lord's chronic injuries. The ruler hunts him twice, first by overwhelming him at Mount Han and later by tracing the Cinnabar Pills, but Chen's willingness to destroy his own body denies the easy victory. Their final battle exhausts the ruler's attention and creates the opening his son needs. (Chapters 567–574 and 768–780)
• Black Robe: Black Robe serves as military advisor and helps the demon realm recover, but even the Demon Lord cannot fully discern the advisor's motives. The ruler deliberately balances Black Robe against the Demon Commander; the two eventually unite behind his youngest son, overthrow him, and cast him into the abyss. (Chapters 29, 267, 769, and 773)
• White Emperor: The White Emperor intercepts him after Mount Han and fights him on the snowy plains. Both suffer grave injuries, but the damage to the Demon Lord directly enables the subsequent rebellion, making the demi-human sovereign's intervention decisive even though it does not kill him. (Chapters 570, 694, and 773)
• Wang Zhice: Wang Zhice once led allied forces across the snowy plains against him and later appears at Mount Han to preserve Chen's life. The Demon Lord respects his intelligence and strength enough to negotiate, then abandons the hunt when Wang makes delay more costly than retreat. (Chapters 568–569 and 768)
• Su Li: The Demon Lord uses his shadow and armies to restrict Su Li outside Xuelao City, participating in Black Robe's effort to exhaust the swordsman. Years later, the last sword intent stored in Su Li's letter cleaves open the landscapes masking the Demon Lord's face and draws golden blood, though the ruler catches and destroys it. (Chapters 270–277 and 775–776)

Items

• Heavenly Tome Monolith / stone seal: A monolith taken from the Garden of Zhou and reduced to a seal worn at his waist. It restrains spatial artifacts, recognizes threats, acts independently to defend his life, and anchors his star-chart suppression of Chen's monoliths. The Astral Executioner causes it to yield rather than defend him, opening the path to his death. (Chapters 551, 568, and 773–778)
• Ancient zither: His principal visible weapon in the final battle. Its notes intercept swords and spread across the battlefield; he destroys the instrument itself to release a denser storm of sound when Chen conceals the Heavenly Tome Monoliths inside a larger sword attack. (Chapters 771 and 774)
• Heavenly Demon Horn: A concealed life-saving divine object shaped like a goat-horn comb. Its possession contradicts the story that it left Xuelao City with his younger sister; his son finds it in his hand, breaks his fingers, and takes it before it can enable a final counterattack. (Chapter 778)
• Heavenly Net: A damaged ancient hunting net associated first with an earlier Demon Lord and later described as this ruler's weapon. By the time he appears personally at Mount Han, it is in Great Zhou hands, so it belongs to his history and reputation rather than his active final arsenal. (Chapters 31 and 567)