Qiushan Jun

Qiushan Jun is the eldest disciple of the Mount Li Sword Sect, heir of the Qiushan clan, and the true-dragon-blooded prodigy long presented as the south's ideal husband for Xu Yourong. His reputation for near-perfect conduct initially makes him Chen Changsheng's romantic and generational rival, but his own choices repeatedly reject the political ambitions built around that rivalry. He instead becomes a hidden defender of other cultivators, a frontier commander, and eventually a researcher seeking a future for the defeated Demon race.

Biography

The Fiancé Expected by the South

Qiushan Jun first exists in the capital chiefly as a name with enormous political weight. His clan and the Longevity Sect are treated as potential threats to anyone who obstructs his presumed marriage to Xu Yourong, while candidates at the Grand Examination regard victory as diminished if he does not attend. His true-dragon blood, position at the head of the Divine Kingdom's Seven Laws, and early fame make the proposed match appear to unite the south's best young man with its future Holy Maiden. That public image turns Chen's old marriage contract into a confrontation between institutions before Qiushan himself has taken any action. (Chapters 2, 4, 56, and 153)

Later events overturn the assumption that Qiushan directed the marriage proposal. When the southern elders traveled to the capital, he was carrying out a secret mission ordered by the Five Saints and did not know that either Mount Li or his father intended to propose in his name. He consequently missed both the Grand Examination and the chance to study the Heavenly Tomes, not because he feared comparison with Chen, but because the human world had entrusted the recovery of the Garden of Zhou's key to the cultivator considered unequaled within Ethereal Opening. (Chapters 246 and 404)

Encircled by several demon experts of his own realm, Qiushan Jun seized the key and disrupted plans that Black Robe had prepared for the outer Garden. Desperate combat awakened his true dragon blood a second time and drove him directly into Star Condensation, making him the youngest known cultivator to possess a Star Domain. The breakthrough confirmed the legend attached to his name, but its cause also established the pattern beneath that legend: his greatest advances come while he is accepting danger on behalf of others rather than competing for acclaim. (Chapters 246, 248, and 404)

The Garden of Zhou

While Qiushan Jun remains outside the Garden, his supposed engagement continues to shape how its cultivators understand Chen and Xu Yourong. Xu knows that her senior brother loves her deeply, yet remembers that his care was so considerate that it never made her uncomfortable; she regards him as a beloved and respected senior rather than the husband chosen for her by others. As Chen's actions gradually displace Qiushan in the public imagination, the contrast emerges between a rivalry constructed by spectators and Qiushan's own restrained affection, which never becomes a claim over Xu's choice. (Chapters 250, 273, and 311)

Black Robe's interference with the Garden's rainbow worsens the wounds from Qiushan Jun's earlier mission. Even so, Qiushan spends a full night and day pouring true essence and the Qi of his blood into the passage so that the trapped cultivators, including Xu, can escape. He then enters Sword Rest, a recovery art taught to him by Su Li: consciousness and hearing remain intact, but every reserve of energy must be devoted to mending the body and clearing the Dao heart. The technique promises recovery after forty-nine days, yet makes even moving a finger dangerous while it is underway. (Chapter 404)

Unable to act, Qiushan Jun hears that Liang Xiaoxiao has died and that Qi Jian has returned badly injured. The accusations surrounding their fates do not satisfy him, and the voices gathering at Mount Li reveal an attempt by Xiao Songgong, the Longevity Sect, and his own clan to seize control of the sect. He wakes before Sword Rest is complete, sacrificing the recovery his earlier self-expenditure was meant to secure, because remaining safely unconscious would let others turn the Garden's casualties into a weapon against his fellow disciples. (Chapters 404–411)

His father invokes filial duty and reveals how thoroughly he has arranged Qiushan's path: entry into Mount Li, an encounter with Su Li, political inheritance of the southern sects, and the proposal to Xu Yourong. Qiushan refuses both the rebellion and the future prepared through coercion. Rather than attack his father, he drives the Dragonscale Sword through his own abdomen and makes his life the price of continuing the scheme. His father yields and orders the conspirators struck down. Only afterward is it revealed that the clan head had mistaken his son's perfection for hypocrisy and prepared dirty foundations for ambitions Qiushan did not possess; recognizing a “true hero,” he resolves to protect that hero through equally controlling means. (Chapters 413–415)

Mount Li and the South

After the snowfall at the Bridge of Helplessness, Qiushan Jun conceals his identity as Luo Bu and spends five years fighting demons in the northern wastelands. He rises to become a great general at Sloping Cliff, yet accepts command of a remote horse farm as a form of self-imposed exile rather than using his clan or sect to recover public prominence. The choice answers the pressure surrounding his name: instead of allowing “Qiushan Jun” to remain an instrument of marriage and southern politics, he performs useful work where almost no one knows who he is. (Chapters 790–795, 838, and 893)

At Sloping Cliff Horse Farm, the disguised Qiushan treats the badly wounded Chen without asking for a useful identity in return. His medicines hasten Chen's recovery, while the farm's orderly administration, defensive arrays, and carefully raised Dragonhorses reveal a commander whose breadth extends beyond sword cultivation. The two men admire each other, discuss strategy and family pressure, and speak frankly about the women they love without realizing that they are the famous rivals at the center of the same engagement. Their later discovery makes ordinary friendship too awkward, but it also replaces inherited hostility with firsthand respect. (Chapters 790–795, 838, and 911)

Qiushan openly resumes his identity in Wenshui when Chen needs access to the Tang clan's power to rescue Tang Thirty-Six. He accepts Chen's accusation that the Tang Second Master poisoned his brother and then shouts that the man is colluding with demons, deliberately spending the credibility accumulated over twenty years so that the world will believe this one charge. By bringing together the Yellow Paper Umbrella held by Chen and a sword left to him by Su Li, he invokes the Tang Old Master's old promise and wins Chen the two hours of Wenshui's cooperation needed to act. (Chapters 838–840)

At Holy Maiden Peak, Qiushan again protects Chen without demanding either friendship or recognition. He follows the evidence behind Bie Tianxin's murder, sends more than ten explanatory drawings to Bie Yanghong, and thereby helps expose the Great Western Continent's trap before it can destroy Chen. He refuses his junior brothers' praise and instead blames his initial dislike of Bie Tianxin for making him insufficiently vigilant to save the victim. This response marks how his perfection has matured: no longer merely a reputation managed by family, it becomes a demanding personal standard applied even to an enemy's death. (Chapters 893–894 and 910–911)

The Northern War

When Xu Yourong moves against Shang Xingzhou, Qiushan Jun issues no instructions because everyone at Mount Li already knows that he will support her even if she overturns the world. During the northern campaign, he remains behind to guard Mount Li while his brothers divide between the front and the capital. His contribution is therefore structural rather than a sequence of battlefield victories: the sect can send swords north because its most trusted eldest disciple holds the mountain, and Dragonhorses he personally raised at Sloping Cliff help keep the black-armored cavalry from collapsing when the earth erupts beneath them. (Chapters 1072, 1086, and 1138)

His continued bond with his father also affects the war despite their unresolved conflict. Qiushan insists that the clan head bring the Dragonscale Sword, placing a high-ranked divine artifact in the supply convoy that later comes under demon attack. This is neither reconciliation nor submission: the same weapon once used to defeat his father's coercion is entrusted to that father for a human campaign. The decision shows Qiushan separating personal grievance from collective need, while preserving the uneasy pattern in which father and son protect each other through plans neither fully accepts. (Chapters 413–415 and 1157)

After Xuelao City falls, Qiushan reads Grand Scholar Tungus's research for only three days before leaving Mount Li despite his father's pleas. He secretly finds two Mountain Men by the Northern Sea and plainly asks to live beside them until they die naturally, after which—with their consent—he intends to use Tungus's notes and study their bodies for a solution to the demons' declining fertility. His final undertaking redirects a life shaped by war against demons toward preserving their future. There he also encounters Nanke, whose worsening illness he greets with an offer to play a newly learned sword song. (Chapter 1183)

Appearance and personality

Qiushan Jun is exceptionally handsome and appears younger than the immense reputation built around him. Before he is twenty, his bearing is already described as so perfect that observers forget his age. During his years as Luo Bu, a snow-streaked full beard, messy hair, dirty clothes, and military dress conceal his identity; when Qi Jian finally persuades him to shave, even his proud father is struck anew by his appearance. His relaxed later image often includes a small wine pot, plain food roasted by a stream, and clothes moving in the mountain wind. (Chapters 404, 790, 838, 893, and 911)

His defining quality is trustworthiness expressed through action. Duties placed in his hands make others feel lighter, and he is warm, capable, and unusually free of possessiveness toward Xu Yourong. Beneath that ease lies severe resolve: he spends blood to save strangers, wounds himself rather than surrender a principle, and is willing to consume his reputation for a single necessary accusation. He is also self-critical enough to treat Bie Tianxin's death as his own failure of attention. His humor, appetite, and fondness for beginning sentences with “Ah” keep this moral seriousness from becoming solemn posturing. (Chapters 404, 413–415, 838–839, 893–894, and 911)

Abilities and cultivation

Qiushan Jun is a Star Condensation expert whose talent made him the uncontested strongest cultivator of the Ethereal Opening realm before he was twenty. He learns cultivation methods with almost no obstacle, and his unusually broad meridians permit an extreme rate of true-essence output when sufficient starlight is available. He is the personal disciple of Mount Li's Sect Master, received a month of direct sword instruction from Su Li, and combined that inheritance with five years of practical warfare against the demons. (Chapters 246, 379, 397, 404, 511–512, and 838)

True Dragon blood

The true Dragon blood in Qiushan Jun is described as a rarity seen perhaps once in a thousand years. Its early awakening transforms both his prospects and his family: his father abandons a dissolute life to study and cultivate so that he will not obstruct his son, while the wider world treats Qiushan as the natural draconic counterpart to Xu Yourong's Heavenly Phoenix blood. In cultivation, the bloodline manifests as extraordinary aptitude, meridians whose output limit can nearly be disregarded, and an affinity between desperation and further awakening. (Chapters 379, 404, 413, and 415)

Its clearest demonstrated advance occurs during the mission for the Garden's key. Surrounded by demon experts, Qiushan's blood awakens a second time and provides the unprecedented energy needed to cross directly into Star Condensation. The result is not merely increased force: acquiring a Star Domain before twenty changes the strategic balance of the Garden operation and makes him the youngest cultivator known to have reached that realm. The same reserves then let him sustain the damaged rainbow with true essence and blood Qi for a night and day, although doing so leaves him near death. (Chapters 246 and 404)

The bloodline does not erase cultivation boundaries or physical cost. Sword Rest becomes necessary precisely because Qiushan's body cannot ignore the injuries and essence-blood expenditure accumulated around the Garden. Much later, a comparison imagines the power he and Xu might possess after third awakenings, indicating that this further stage is still conditional rather than achieved; Chen is also judged stronger than him beneath the Divine Domain. His latest confirmed level therefore remains below the Divine, with exceptional potential that the narrative does not convert into invulnerability. (Chapters 404, 1093, and 1114)

Mount Li swordsmanship and Sword Rest

Qiushan's sword foundation comes from Mount Li's orthodox tradition, the Sect Master's personal teaching, and Su Li's one-month instruction. Su Li regards him as a successor capable of carrying Mount Li through crisis, while later cultivators continue to use Qiushan as the standard against which Chen's sword attainments are measured. His sword is distinguished less by named spectacular techniques than by correctness, speed, and control: the self-directed thrust at Mount Li is fast enough to evade intervention and accurate enough to pass fully through his abdomen without touching an organ. (Chapters 397, 413, 423–424, 838, and 928)

Sword Rest is his most explicitly described secret technique. Su Li teaches it as a way to commit all true essence and essence blood to suppressing injuries, repairing the body, and clearing the Dao heart. The practitioner appears comatose but remains able to hear, creating a useful awareness of the surroundings at the price of total paralysis; spending even enough energy to move one finger can release every suppressed wound. Forty-nine uninterrupted days should restore Qiushan after the Garden, but the technique cannot protect him from choosing to wake early, so its limitation is ultimately his own sense of duty. (Chapter 404)

His applied sword ability joins cultivation to judgment. He survives an encirclement of peer-level demon experts, then spends five years in direct northern warfare and becomes a general rather than remaining a sheltered sect prodigy. At Mount Li, he uses the sword against himself because a lethal attack on his father would destroy the principle he is defending; in Wenshui, the sword Su Li leaves him functions as proof and political leverage when fitted back into the umbrella. These uses show that his sword path is governed by purpose and restraint as much as destructive power. (Chapters 404, 413–414, 838–839)

Command, medicine, and investigation

As Luo Bu, Qiushan demonstrates expertise beyond personal combat. He compounds a seventeen-ingredient medicine that rapidly improves Chen's severe injuries, arranges the remote horse farm so its apparently casual layout forms an effective defense, and manages soldiers who trust his authority. The Dragonhorses he raises there later remain calm during a catastrophic disruption that throws a black-armored cavalry formation into disorder. These skills turn his broad intelligence into durable military capacity rather than a claim that he can personally win every confrontation. (Chapters 790–795 and 1086)

Qiushan also treats observation and public trust as usable instruments. In Wenshui he understands that an accusation must be heard continent-wide and consciously risks the reputation that makes belief possible. At Holy Maiden Peak, he reconstructs a complicated assassination scheme in more than ten drawings and sends them to Bie Yanghong, enabling stronger combatants to act on the truth. His later regret over missing the danger to Bie Tianxin identifies the method's limit: correct reasoning still depends on taking an apparently unsympathetic victim seriously soon enough. (Chapters 839 and 893–911)

Power progression

Relationships

• Xu Yourong: Qiushan loves his junior sister deeply, but his care never pressures her into accepting the marriage designed by their elders. He supports her political choices without requiring explanation and protects Chen partly because respecting her judgment is inseparable from respecting her. (Chapters 311, 413, 894, and 1072)
• Chen Changsheng: Public expectation casts them as rivals before they meet. Their anonymous friendship at Sloping Cliff gives each direct evidence of the other's character; although Qiushan later says they cannot be friends, he trusts Chen in Wenshui and repeatedly acts to keep him alive. (Chapters 790–795, 839, and 893–916)
• Qiushan clan head: His father genuinely loves him but attempts to manufacture his future through secret arrangements, coercive politics, and violence. Qiushan's self-wounding refusal breaks the Mount Li coup, yet later entrusting him with the Dragonscale Sword shows that moral opposition has not eliminated filial concern. (Chapters 413–415 and 1157)
• Gou Hanshi: Gou is his closest junior brother and Mount Li's strategist. He understands Qiushan's decisions without orders, can tease him about the awkwardness surrounding Chen, and helps translate his values into the sect's actions when Qiushan remains behind. (Chapters 911, 1072, and 1138)
• Su Li: Su Li teaches him for one month, entrusts him with Sword Rest, regards him as a true successor, and leaves him a sword before departing the continent. Qiushan respects the inheritance without surrendering judgment to its source, including openly rejecting Su Li's decision to separate Qi Jian and Zhexiu. (Chapters 397, 404, 423–424, 839, and 926)
• Qi Jian: Qiushan and Gou Hanshi cherish their youngest junior, and her injured return helps drive him out of Sword Rest during the Mount Li crisis. He later accepts concern for her relationship with Zhexiu while disagreeing with Su Li's prohibition. (Chapters 358, 404–413, and 926)
• Bie Yanghong: Qiushan sends Bie Yanghong the drawings that reveal the scheme surrounding his son's death. The intervention redirects a grieving Divine Domain expert away from killing Chen, though Qiushan continues to fault himself for not recognizing the threat soon enough to save Bie Tianxin. (Chapters 910–911)

Items

• Yellow Paper Umbrella: Qiushan temporarily takes the umbrella from Chen in Wenshui and carries it before the Tang Old Master. Reuniting it with the sword left to him by Su Li lets him invoke an old promise on Chen's behalf; he leaves the umbrella behind rather than claiming ownership. (Chapters 838–839)
• Su Li's sword: Su Li leaves this unnamed sword to Qiushan before departing the continent. Qiushan carries it to Wenshui and fits it into the Yellow Paper Umbrella's handle, using the joined relics as proof that both of Su Li's chosen successors are present. (Chapter 839)
• Dragonscale Sword: Qiushan wields this high-ranked divine artifact during the Mount Li coup, using its precision to wound himself without piercing an organ. Years later, he insists that his father carry it into the northern campaign, making the sword a link between their confrontation and their continuing concern for one another. (Chapters 413–414 and 1157)