Xu Yourong

Xu Yourong is the Holy Maiden of South Stream Temple, bearer of the Heavenly Phoenix bloodline, and one of the foremost cultivators of her generation. Publicly treated as an emblem of southern orthodoxy and dynastic legitimacy, she repeatedly acts according to her own judgment: healing strangers in the Garden of Zhou, defending the independence of Holy Maiden Peak, opposing schemes that reduce people to political pieces, and sharing command responsibility during the final war with the demons.

Biography

The Engagement and the Hidden Holy Maiden

Xu Yourong is born the only daughter of Xu Shiji and identified as the reincarnation of the Heavenly Phoenix. Her bloodline, rapid Purification, and early study of the Heavenly Tome Monoliths make her famous before she has appeared in public as an adult. After training at the Thirteen Divisions of Radiant Green, she is taken south to Holy Maiden Peak and designated the future Holy Maiden. The position gives her extraordinary resources, but it also turns her cultivation, marriage, and movements into matters that institutions believe they may arrange. (Chapters 2, 4, and 511)

Her childhood engagement to Chen Changsheng begins more privately. Xu Yourong sends letters to the little Daoist in Xining through the White Crane, and the two correspond until he learns of his fatal illness and stops replying. By the time Chen reaches the capital, she remembers the bond chiefly as an unwanted contract. Shuang'er's account makes her dislike the stranger described to her, yet she explicitly rejects the idea that ending the engagement requires humiliating or injuring him. Her objection is to coercion, not to his existence. (Chapters 14 and 916)

The same refusal governs her response to Qiushan Jun. Although the southern sects regard their union as ideal and admirers treat it as almost inevitable, Xu Yourong has not agreed to it; neither she nor Qiushan Jun is even informed when the southern delegation proposes the marriage in the capital. She writes from Holy Maiden Peak to assert her will and remains more interested in the Dao, books, and the monoliths than in the political meanings others attach to her. The Tianhai Divine Empress later confirms that Xu should not be forced to marry anyone. (Chapters 14, 102, and 186)

Xu Yourong enters the Garden of Zhou without announcing her identity. The concealment lets her move without the ceremonial attention surrounding the future Holy Maiden, but it also places her inside Black Robe's assassination plan: killing her would damage the human younger generation and devastate those politically and personally tied to her. At this stage she still judges Chen largely through rumor. Their real relationship begins only when two disguised cultivators, neither aware of the other's name, encounter the same catastrophe and make the same choice to save people. (Chapters 246–250)

Lady Chujian in the Garden of Zhou

Inside the Garden, Xu Yourong disguises her appearance and travels as Lady Chujian. When demon attacks scatter and wound the human cultivators, she uses Sacred Light and Natural Light to stabilize injuries, launches warning fireworks, and searches for survivors rather than protecting only her own group. She repeatedly finds patients already treated by Chen and leaves her pure true essence in their wounds; he does the same after her work. Before meeting, the two conduct a wordless collaboration through the lives they preserve, and dozens later survive because of it. (Chapters 253–255 and 356)

The rescue effort draws her into a direct battle with Nanke and the old zither player. After fighting for two days and nights, Xu Yourong undergoes a second awakening of her Heavenly Phoenix soul: true blood and body merge, fire becomes white wings, and her speed rises to an exceptional level. She uses that awakening not to secure an easy escape but to carry an unconscious Chen away. Even after poison damages her senses and the flight consumes her remaining blood, she refuses to drop him, burns more Phoenix blood, and covers him with a wing when they land. (Chapters 280–282)

Neither recognizes the other. Xu Yourong believes Chen to be Xu Sheng of the Snow Mountain Sect, while he knows her as Chujian. Their mistaken identities strip away the engagement's public grievances and let each judge the other by action. When she is almost bloodless, Chen offers his own unusual blood as treatment; when he collapses, she stands guard with the Tong Bow, spending recovered strength against the monsters instead of abandoning him. Their trust grows through alternating sleep, medical care, calculation, and the shared acceptance that neither will survive by sacrificing the other. (Chapters 282–309)

At the Mausoleum of Zhou, Xu Yourong's knowledge of the Heavenly Tomes and arrays becomes essential. She calculates the relationship among the stone pillars, recognizes that they are Heavenly Tome Monoliths, and tries to restore the Garden's collapsing balance while Chen shields her beneath the Yellow Paper Umbrella. When the calculation fails, she openly feels powerless, but she continues working with him rather than pretending certainty. The swords of the Sword Pool, including the Mountain Sea Sword, answer Chen and help them survive the demon assault and the destruction of the miniature world. (Chapters 321–344)

Xu escapes only after Chen uses the umbrella and the gathered swords to hold up the collapsing sky. She immediately reports that he remains inside and demands that the senior experts find a way to save him, then waits at the Garden's entrance for a Snow Mountain disciple whose registered name does not exist. When no Xu Sheng emerges, she grieves someone she cannot publicly identify; learning that Chen is also missing makes her mourn the boy from Xining as a separate loss. Her later discovery that both were one person transforms the Garden from an isolated bond into the foundation of her adult relationship. (Chapters 342–356)

The Bridge of Helplessness and the Capital's Coup

After becoming Holy Maiden, Xu Yourong returns to the capital in white ceremonial robes and a red cloak and issues a challenge to Chen at the Bridge of Helplessness. The contest has institutional meaning—the northern and southern churches, the Orthodox Academy, and their broken engagement all stand behind it—but she also genuinely wants to test his sword and refuses to accept a staged outcome. Using the Fated Star Plate, she calculates seventeen paths to victory and prepares with the same seriousness that Chen applies to his Intellectual Sword. (Chapters 506–512)

On the bridge, Xu uses the South Sea Sword Cry and the Sword of Great Light, filling snow and mist with interlocking sword intents. She anticipates that the temple sword remembers Chen from the Garden and plans around his ability to draw it away from her. Yet neither calculation fully captures the other's restraint: she aims only to wound his arm, while he sacrifices his chance to counterattack in order to defend. When both weapons end in his hands, she calmly concedes rather than exploit her remaining techniques. Her voice and eyes then reveal Lady Chujian's identity to him. (Chapters 512–520)

Recognition resolves the false opposition more completely than any public settlement could. Xu Yourong and Chen revisit the capital together, discuss why neither likes being arranged by fate, share the recovered monolith-stones, and reconnect the Garden with their childhood letters. She returns the umbrella on Su Li's behalf and brings his letters, while their conversations extend from sword cultivation to the Sacred Light Continent. The engagement ceases to be an obligation imposed by their elders and becomes a relationship both choose, even as each retains an independent judgment and competitive pride. (Chapters 521–535)

The coup at the Mausoleum of Books tests that new commitment against the authority that raised her. Xu Yourong wants to save Chen, but the Divine Empress orders Mo Yu to send her away to Holy Maiden Peak before the attack. The command protects Xu from the capital's bloodshed while denying her the chance to intervene in the Empress's death and Chen's confrontation with his origin. Her enforced absence leaves her aligned with Chen without requiring her to repudiate the woman she loves and respects; it also teaches her how completely a ruler's protection can become control. (Chapters 628–638, 680, and 720)

Return to South Stream Temple

As Holy Maiden, Xu Yourong delegates South Stream Temple's daily administration to Ping Xuan and Yi Chen while she enters a long seclusion aimed at the Divine threshold. Senior nuns led by Huai Ren exploit that absence, override the appointed disciples, refuse sanctuary to Xiao Zhang, and attempt to close the temple rather than let it support the Li Palace. The crisis exposes a structural weakness in Xu's authority: reverence for the Holy Maiden does not prevent older teachers from using seniority and sect custom to immobilize the students charged with carrying out her will. (Chapters 879–886)

The attempt to close the temple becomes entangled with a plot against Chen and the murder of Bie Yanghong's son. When the temple's sword array is sabotaged from within and Wuqiong Bi attacks Chen, Xu breaks out of seclusion before reaching the Divine Domain. She knows the interruption may damage her Dao heart or permanently obstruct her breakthrough, but chooses an immediate human obligation over the safest path to transcendence. She arrives through Phoenix fire with the temple sword and uses the Sword of Great Light to stop a full attack from a Divine Domain expert. (Chapters 893–897)

Xu and Chen then discover that their sword intents naturally connect. She has revised South Stream Temple's Unity Sword Art using their reversed study of the Halving Blade Style in the Garden and their later joint work at the Mausoleum of Books. The altered method is dangerous because doubt between its users can make it collapse, but their absolute trust lets opposed techniques reinforce one another. Together they repel Wuqiong Bi and are acknowledged as capable of fighting a Divine Domain expert despite neither having crossed the threshold. (Chapters 897–902)

The result restores Xu's authority without reducing the episode to a ceremonial victory. South Stream Temple remains open, the elders' attempt to withdraw it from the world fails, and the conspiracy surrounding Bie Tianxin is exposed. Xu also accepts that leaving seclusion early has cost her progress, but refuses Chen's fear that one interruption has ruined her future; she is confident in her Dao heart and knows that, as the youngest cultivator to have approached the threshold so closely, she still has time. Her leadership emerges as chosen responsibility rather than passive sanctity. (Chapters 902–917)

The Li Palace and the Northern War

Xu Yourong's next major intervention begins in White Emperor City. She tracks the Yellow Springs aura to Chusu, saves Bie Yanghong and Wuqiong Bi from him, and pursues him through the city, severing an arm with the Sword of Great Light. Her Phoenix fire and temple sword are natural counters to his corrupt art, while her speed prevents his usual escape from becoming effortless. She also reads the wider crisis quickly: Madam Mu, the demons, and beings from the Sacred Light Continent are acting together around the demi-human throne. (Chapters 989–993)

Rather than remain beside Chen at every moment, Xu works through concealed information and shared strategy. The method for opening the array that seals the White Emperor passes from Shang Xingzhou through her and Xiaode to Chen. South Stream Temple's sword array becomes the instrument with which Chen patiently breaks the Starfall Mountains' formation, while Xu later recognizes the Clear Sky Mirror fragment that joins the separated battlefields. The intervention forces the White Emperor to reveal himself and choose against Madam Mu's attempted alliance with the demons. (Chapters 999 and 1004–1040)

Back in the capital, Xu and Chen act on parallel plans to prevent their conflict with Shang Xingzhou from becoming a civil war. Xu enters the palace, tests the loyalties surrounding Emperor Yu Ren, and uses the implied possibility of imperial action to hold Shang at the Mausoleum of Books and draw the princes' attention. Chen uses the Li Palace to secure the city and purge its compromised institutions. Neither has intentionally coordinated every move, yet their understanding produces a bloodless strategic fit: one restrains the court while the other controls the streets. (Chapters 1045–1086)

When Wang Zhice blocks her from intervening in Chen's duel with Shang Xingzhou, Xu remains ready to fight even a revered figure of the old generation. She rejects the assumption that youth must simply wait for its elders to withdraw and makes clear that her respect extends only as far as the Great Dao and the lives at risk. The standoff ends through concession rather than mass killing: Shang accepts defeat, and it becomes clear that Xu's pressure on the emperor and court had struck at his political certainty before Chen ever met him in battle. (Chapters 1094–1120)

The settlement reunifies the human leadership just before the northern conflict becomes unavoidable. Xu enters the war not merely as Chen's partner but as Holy Maiden, a healer, an independent channel of battlefield intelligence, and a counterweight to factional commanders. Her earlier work in the Garden of Zhou had joined medicine to personal responsibility; the northern campaign places the same ethic against military doctrines that assign different values to ordinary soldiers, generals, princes, and religious leaders. (Chapters 1119–1120 and 1139–1140)

Xuelao and the Path Beyond

Before the main advance, Xu and Chen confront Chusu on the abandoned Elf grasslands. Chusu is dangerous to almost every expert beneath the Divine Domain, but Xu's Phoenix fire, illuminated Dao heart, and temple sword directly counter his Yellow Springs cultivation. She understands his bitter reasoning without excusing his crimes, purifies the poisonous residue after his death, and heals the corruption left in Chen's wound. The encounter also places the two at the border when the Eight Great Mountain Men openly confirm that the long human-demon war has entered its last phase. (Chapters 1121–1125)

On the northern plains, Xu conceals her identity while leading teachers and students of the Thirteen Divisions of Radiant Green from battlefield to battlefield. They search for survivors, apply Sacred Light, and distribute the stored Cinnabar Pills when ordinary treatment is insufficient. Generals try to send her back to the capital after she uses too many pills on common soldiers, arguing that the medicine should be reserved for more strategically valuable lives. Xu refuses. She declares Chen's pills hers to distribute, remains at the front, and continues gathering direct knowledge of the campaign rather than accepting reports shaped by factional interests. (Chapters 1139–1140)

Her choice is also political. Xu has already prevented her father from becoming commander-in-chief because his appointment would deepen the conflict among the court, the Li Palace, and rival armies. She stays close enough to the fighting to observe He Ming, the compromise commander, and to ensure that the capital receives an accurate picture of events. The decision leaves her exposed without the South Stream sword array, but it converts the Holy Maiden's prestige into protection for the wounded and oversight of a coalition that might otherwise fracture while marching north. (Chapter 1140)

Xu accompanies the central leadership through the siege and occupation of Xuelao City. She and Chen share the holy carriage, enter the Demon Palace after Shang Xingzhou's death, and stand at the center of a victory that could easily become indiscriminate vengeance. Her presence joins South Stream Temple to the settlement of the demon capital, while her earlier insistence on seeing the battlefield directly keeps the victory connected to those who paid for it. The war ends with the fall of Black Robe and the Demon Lord's surrender rather than the extermination of every demon civilian. (Chapters 1159–1180)

After the war, Chen decides to cross to the Sacred Light Continent. Xu does not leave beside him immediately, not because South Stream Temple detains her, but because she refuses to depend on the exceptional circumstances that allowed him to enter the Divine Domain. Remaining at Holy Maiden Peak, she completes the breakthrough by her own cultivation; the clouds part, birds gather, and the world responds. She becomes the youngest person to enter the Divine Domain under ordinary circumstances, then prepares to follow Chen on her own strength and by her own path. (Chapters 1182–1183)

Appearance and personality

Xu Yourong is renowned as an exceptional beauty, with slender brows, clear phoenix eyes, dark hair, and a calm bearing repeatedly associated with snow, pure light, or a lotus. At fifteen, her eyes are compared both to rain-washed mountain pools and to the unguarded gaze of a child. Her public Holy Maiden dress consists of white ceremonial robes, often set against a red cloak. She can also use a South Stream secret technique to make her features deliberately plain, as she does while traveling as Lady Chujian and when visiting the Orthodox Academy without attracting attention. (Chapters 14, 282, 295, 507, and 531)

Her serenity is real, but the flawless saintly image conceals a competitive, mischievous, and sometimes ruthless temperament. She dislikes losing, enjoys testing dangerous ideas, and can make hard political judgments without sentimental language. At the same time, her defining choices repeatedly favor particular lives over abstract reputation: she carries an unknown wounded cultivator while dying herself, leaves seclusion to protect Chen, spends strategic medicine on common soldiers, and refuses to let marriage or leadership be decided on her behalf. Confidence, rather than detachment, lets her acknowledge mistakes, accept costs, and continue toward the Divine threshold. (Chapters 14, 296, 518–527, 899, 1042, and 1139–1140)

Abilities and cultivation

Xu Yourong's abilities unite bloodline power, southern Orthodox arts, medicine, divination, arrays, archery, and sword cultivation. Her strength is not simply a large reserve of true essence: she learns systems quickly, calculates their interactions, and deliberately combines knowledge gained in separate crises.

Heavenly Phoenix bloodline and cultivation progression

Xu's Heavenly Phoenix blood awakens at five, two years earlier than predicted. She begins cultivation immediately, selects an exceptionally bright Fated Star, and advances through Purification and Meditation while studying the Heavenly Tome Monoliths before most cultivators her age. In a small village, she bypasses the lower stage of Ethereal Opening and enters its upper level directly. Her bloodline supplies noble true essence, powerful resistance, acute perception, Phoenix flame, and an affinity with Sacred Light, but using its true blood recklessly can leave her physically depleted and near death. (Chapters 2, 237, 280–282, and 511)

The second awakening in the Garden of Zhou merges Phoenix soul, true blood, and body to produce white wings of flame. In this state, her flight speed is among the fastest on the continent, sufficient to escape Nanke while carrying Chen despite severe wounds. The cost is proportional to the feat: burning true blood worsens poison, damages her senses, and nearly empties her body of blood. Later assessments place her divine form among the few powers able to compare with a Divine Domain expert, though transformation does not erase injury, exhaustion, or the realm boundary. (Chapters 280–296 and 705)

After years at the edge of the threshold, Xu interrupts seclusion to save Chen and temporarily gives up the safest chance to advance. She later remains half a step from the Divine through the capital struggle and northern war, relying on technique, bloodline, and cooperation rather than claiming a realm she has not reached. Only after the war does she complete the breakthrough at Holy Maiden Peak under ordinary cultivation conditions. Her final Divine Domain state is therefore the result of recovered momentum and independent realization, not a borrowed artifact or emergency transformation. (Chapters 897, 914–917, 1121, and 1183)

Sacred Light, Phoenix fire, and healing

Xu is an accomplished healer trained in Sacred Light and Natural Light. Sacred Light can stabilize wounds, purify corrupt energies, and close injuries; Natural Light allows her to treat cultivators in the field without relying entirely on medicines. In the Garden, she leaves pure true essence in patients so that treatment continues after she departs. During the northern war, she leads medical teams, combines these techniques with Cinnabar Pills, and repeatedly works at a scale where exhaustion and finite medicine become the limiting factors rather than lack of knowledge. (Chapters 253–255, 308, 356, 628–629, and 1139–1140)

Phoenix fire is both offensive and purifying. It burns through Chusu's Yellow Springs corruption, prevents his mental and concealment arts from gaining easy purchase on her illuminated Dao heart, and can cleanse poisonous residue from the ground or another person's wound. Its effectiveness is especially pronounced against blood arts, decay, and insidious Qi, making Xu Chusu's natural bane. The limitation is specificity: being an ideal counter does not make every fight effortless, and Chusu's strange techniques still let him escape once at the cost of an arm. (Chapters 989–990 and 1121–1123)

South Stream sword arts

Xu wields South Stream Temple's temple sword and is the only contemporary cultivator able to fully use the Sword of Great Light. The art has no single fixed form: light carries numerous sword intents that can imitate and answer sword techniques throughout the world. It requires knowledge broad enough to understand those techniques, divine Qi from the temple sword, and the Heavenly Phoenix's affinity with light. Its reach and adaptability make it one of the continent's Five Grand Masterstrokes, but its use consumes enormous strength and can be overcome by a sufficiently higher realm or by a response that understands the sword's internal logic. (Chapters 514–520, 897, and 1027)

Her other southern arts include South Sea Sword Cry, the Rhino Horn Finger, the Divine Finger of the Worldstream, and the Unity Sword Art. The Rhino Horn Finger concentrates exceptional speed and power into a single point, nearly reaching Chen before he can respond on the Bridge of Helplessness. The altered Unity Sword Art is more consequential: Xu reverses its normal operation so that two compatible sword intents multiply each other. It demands absolute trust and accurate mutual perception; doubt or mistiming can injure both users, while full harmony lets her and Chen contend with a Divine Domain expert. (Chapters 514–520, 897–902, and 1119)

Xu also studies the Halving Blade Style with Chen, memorizing it from the first move while he works backward from the last. She incorporates that experience into the Unity Sword Art instead of devoting herself exclusively to Zhou Dufu's supreme inheritance. This illustrates both her range and her restraint: she can learn a brutally powerful legacy, but does not allow its reputation to determine her Dao. Her latest combat development favors synthesis—light, sword intent, bloodline, and cooperation—over dependence on one unbeatable technique. (Chapters 308–344, 899, and 1119)

Divination, arrays, and archery

The Fated Star Plate, also called the Fate Compass, externalizes Xu's exceptional talent for calculation. She uses it to read pursuit, battle trajectories, formations, and hidden irregularities, producing seventeen possible victory charts before the bridge duel and detecting that the evidence surrounding Bie Tianxin's death does not fit. It does not grant omniscience: the starless laws of the Garden of Zhou can throw its lines into chaos, concealed heavenly secrets can resist it, and incomplete variables can make a formally correct deduction useless. Xu's advantage lies in knowing when to calculate and when to ask directly or revise her premise. (Chapters 282, 342, 511, 574, and 900)

Her array knowledge is broader than the plate. She recognizes the relationship among the Garden's Heavenly Tome Monoliths, understands South Stream Temple's sword array better than almost any contemporary, and helps transmit the method used to open the White Emperor's seal. Her talent may exceed Chen's in array theory, while his patience and direct connection to the South Stream sword array can make him the better practical breaker. Their work repeatedly divides along those strengths: Xu identifies structure and possibilities; Chen tests them over time and bears the immediate pressure of execution. (Chapters 342, 635, 899, and 1004–1005)

The Tong Bow is Xu's principal ranged weapon. With Wu Arrows, it delivers precise, extremely powerful shots; without arrows, she can draw the string to release hundreds or thousands of slender white attacks, cutting apart multiple dragon serpents while already wounded. The bow can also transform into a wutong tree whose roots anchor her against violent force, and its storage space later holds medicine. These functions make it an armament, defensive support, and field container, though rapid fire under severe injury consumes the little strength she has recovered. (Chapters 283, 296, 342, 1035, and 1140)

Power progression

Relationships

• Chen Changsheng: Xu's childhood correspondent, arranged fiancé, Garden companion, and chosen partner. Their relationship develops only after disguises let them judge one another by conduct; later, their independent calculations and complementary sword intents repeatedly converge without either surrendering judgment to the other.
• Tianhai Divine Empress: Xu is raised in part by the Empress and inherits her confidence, political perception, and refusal to be belittled. The Empress respects Xu's unwillingness to marry for policy, but also sends her away during the coup, making love and coercive protection inseparable in their final conflict.
• Qiushan Jun: Xu's senior brother and a person she trusts and admires. She never accepts the marriage others design for them, but does not blame him for it; their bond remains one of sect loyalty and mutual respect rather than romance.
• Mo Yu: A childhood companion who knows Xu's combative and playful nature beneath the Holy Maiden image. Mo Yu carries out the Empress's order to remove Xu from the coup, and later cooperates with her in the political preparations against Shang Xingzhou.
• Shang Xingzhou: The principal strategist opposing Chen after the coup. Xu helps force him from political supremacy without allowing their conflict to become a massacre, using pressure on the palace and princes to undermine his certainty before the decisive confrontation.
• South Stream Temple: Xu's school, institutional base, and responsibility as Holy Maiden. Her relationship with it is not passive ownership: she reforms its Unity Sword Art, resists elders who would close the temple, and repeatedly uses its medical and sword traditions in public crises.
• Nanke: A rival bearer of an exalted bloodline. Their clashes in the Garden of Zhou reveal the speed and violence of Xu's awakened Phoenix form, while Nanke's Peacock blood and demonic arts provide a recurring contrast to Xu's Sacred Light and chosen restraint.

Items

• Tong Bow: Xu Yourong's signature bow and a divine artifact associated with the Heavenly Phoenix. She wields it with Wu Arrows, uses its bowstring for mass ranged attacks, transforms it into a rooted wutong tree for defense, and stores Cinnabar Pills within it during the northern war.
• Fated Star Plate: Xu's divination plate, also called the Fate Compass. It supports battle prediction, formation analysis, and investigation, but its results depend on available stars, variables, and secrets that can be calculated.
• Mountain Sea Sword: Not Xu's personal weapon. The legendary heavy sword is one of the Sword Pool blades that answers Chen at the Mausoleum of Zhou, helping protect Xu while she is incapacitated; it is later entrusted to Xuanyuan Po.
• Yellow Paper Umbrella: Primarily Chen's defensive relic and the guide to the Sword Pool. It shelters Xu during the Garden's collapse and becomes a recurring symbol of their shared survival; Xu later returns it to Chen on Su Li's behalf.