Zhou Tong

Zhou Tong is the feared chief of the Department for Purging Officials and the Tianhai Divine Empress's principal instrument of political repression. A gifted investigator, interrogator, and peak Star Condensation cultivator, he turns professional discipline into systematic cruelty, then preserves himself through the fall of the ruler whose will he once enforced. (Chapters 6, 217, 401–402, 621, and 682)

Biography

The Orthodox Academy's Return

The Divine Empress's favor transforms Zhou Tong's formerly unremarkable department into an institution that terrifies ministers, generals, and members of the imperial clan. He approaches repression as exacting work: during the Garden of Zhou investigation, he understands that Liang Xiaoxiao's accusation is part of a larger design yet still seeks evidence that could implicate Chen Changsheng. He personally tortures Zhexiu, intending both to force a confession and to maintain pressure on Mount Li, while his mastery of the case allows him to distinguish what the testimony proves from what powerful factions need it to prove. His loyalty is directed above all toward carrying out the Empress's will, not toward any neutral conception of justice. (Chapters 6, 186, 400–402, and 447)

When Chen Changsheng, Tang Thirty-Six, and Xuanyuan Po enter Zhou Prison to demand Zhexiu's release, Zhou Tong initially relies on his office, guards, and mental pressure to make resistance appear hopeless. He ultimately releases the prisoner because the pressure on Mount Li has already served its purpose and because the confrontation gives him a chance to examine Chen himself. The story Zhou Tong tells about a murdered elder sister is later exposed as a deliberate lie; his real objective is to test Chen's temperament and investigate whether the youth might be connected to the lost imperial heir. He covertly leaves spiritual sense in Chen's sea of consciousness, but its later destruction injures him and shows that even his most secretive surveillance can be detected and countered. (Chapters 447–452 and 494)

The Capital's Change of Rule

As the capital moves toward a decisive confrontation, Zhou Tong keeps working through the Department for Purging Officials and prepares for violence rather than waiting passively for the political struggle to settle his fate. He regards Chen Changsheng as a threat and searches for him on the night of the coup, while Chen enters the crabapple courtyard intending to avenge Zhexiu. Zhou Tong's response reveals the habits that have kept him alive through countless assassination attempts: he has studied Chen's known swords and treasures, wears concealed armor, carries counter-artifacts, and shapes his Star Domain to trap the Stainless Sword. Even after thousands of swords break the domain and mutilate him, he continues attacking until Chen's unexpected Halving Blade strike tears through his remaining defenses. (Chapters 617–623)

Defeat leaves Zhou Tong blinded in one eye, missing an arm, and dependent on Xue Xingchuan's protection. Their conversation reveals that the notorious official and the respected Divine General are twins separated by adoption, and that resentment over their unequal lives helped drive Zhou Tong toward dangerous, piecemeal cultivation and absolute dependence on the Empress's favor. He admits that the flawed Great Crimson Gown and the many plundered techniques he combined have barred him from advancing beyond Star Condensation. More immediately, the Empress's absence from his bedside confirms his fear that devotion has not made him indispensable; after briefly mourning that abandonment, he settles on the one principle that will govern his next choice: survival is enough. (Chapters 623–624)

After the Divine Empress

Still grievously wounded, Zhou Tong orders his organization into action and supports the coup against the ruler he had served for decades. Convinced that neither he nor the Empress can defeat Shang Xingzhou, he accepts the promise that he will live and decides that Xue Xingchuan must die instead; the brother who had guarded his sickbed is subsequently poisoned by him. Zhou Tong then resumes control of the Department for Purging Officials in service of the new emperor. His survival becomes political proof that Shang Xingzhou's government will protect defectors, but it also strips away the last claim that his atrocities arose from personal loyalty: he can transfer the same machinery of fear to a new master when his life depends on it. (Chapters 643, 647, 680–682, and 716)

That protection isolates Zhou Tong rather than making him secure. He can endure public humiliation at Xue Xingchuan's funeral, but Chen's promise that he will die first and growing signs of another attack drive him into the underground prison he knows best. Zhou Tong uses decoys, mechanisms, tunnels, and a secret courtyard to escape Chen and Wang Po's initial plan, yet poison and pursuit bring Mo Yu and Zhexiu to his refuge. He spends his remaining true essence on the Great Crimson Gown and escapes their first assault, but they drive him bleeding through the snow while the capital's princes refuse his pleas for rescue. Chen finally beheads him; only after his death does the new government issue a decree enumerating his crimes, completing his reversal from protected minister to expendable symbol of the previous reign's cruelty. (Chapters 686–690 and 710–724)

Appearance and personality

Zhou Tong is a slim, pale-faced man with very thin lips, dark eyes, and slender, meticulously kept hands. His great crimson official's gown becomes inseparable from his presence: witnesses liken it to a sea of blood, especially when his spiritual pressure stirs it. In battle he remains unnervingly composed even while wounded, though the injuries inflicted by Chen Changsheng leave him missing his left arm and sight in one eye. (Chapters 230, 401, 447–448, and 621–624)

His cruelty is deliberate rather than impulsive. Zhou Tong memorizes case files, follows procedures even when he expects no useful answer, and insists on preserving his interest in torture rather than becoming numb to it. The same discipline shapes his private life: he avoids sensual indulgence, writes poems and memorials, accepts no bribes, and maintains elaborate security because he knows how many people want him dead. Beneath that control lies a consuming fear of death. He will endure injury, disgrace, betrayal, and dependence on a new regime if doing so offers another chance to live. (Chapters 401–402, 621, 624, 689, and 722)

Abilities and cultivation

Zhou Tong reaches the peak of Star Condensation through talent, a secret technique learned in prison, and techniques seized while raiding the estates of his victims. His accumulated cultivation makes him one of the Imperial Court's leading experts, but it is neither coherent nor capable of further development: the Great Crimson Gown has an intrinsic flaw, and the many unrelated methods he added leave him unable to take the next step toward the Divine Domain. (Chapters 402, 618, 621, and 624)

Great Crimson Gown

The Great Crimson Gown is Zhou Tong's signature mental technique. It projects a sea of blood filled with the cries and suffering of victims into an opponent's perception, attacking the sea of consciousness and threatening to shatter the mind. At full force, even upper-level Star Condensation cultivators must defend their hearts; unusual mental states or specialized protection can resist it. Its sinister pressure also benefits from the accumulated violence of Zhou Prison, but using it demands spiritual sense and true essence, and severe poisoning prevents Zhou Tong from sustaining it for long. (Chapters 447–455, 619, and 720)

Zhou Tong can use the technique with extreme subtlety as well as overwhelming force. By consuming heartblood, he hides a strand of spiritual sense inside Chen Changsheng's sea of consciousness, where it can record what its host perceives for later retrieval or launch a destructive attack under special circumstances. The strand's annihilation sends severe pain back through Zhou Tong's own consciousness, demonstrating a direct risk to him when the intrusion is discovered. A protective measure associated with the Divine Empress's clear tea also enables Chen to withstand later manifestations that would otherwise have been far more dangerous. (Chapters 494 and 710)

Star Domain of blood

Zhou Tong's Star Domain manifests as a blood-filled world that can confine attacks and distort movement. Against Chen Changsheng, he uses a dangerous, mentally exhausting variation: he withdraws his body from the domain, compresses the sea of blood into his palm, and traps the Stainless Sword within it, placing the weapon under the pressure of his own cultivation while keeping his body beyond its edge. He can also expand his crimson-robed form into a towering magical image and continue controlling the domain while launching a close-range killing strike. (Chapters 619–621)

The domain is powerful but not perfect. Thousands of coordinated sword glows find and widen its gaps until the compressed sea breaks, and Zhou Tong's real blood strengthens its violent aura without repairing those structural weaknesses. His control can hold even an erratically moving enemy near its original position, but the technique does not make him invulnerable; overwhelming simultaneous attacks, surprise abilities outside his calculations, and accumulated injuries can breach it. (Chapters 621–622)

Interrogation and operational craft

Zhou Tong's noncombat expertise is as consequential as his cultivation. He memorizes testimony, identifies inconsistencies, separates belief from usable evidence, and uses carefully applied pain rather than indiscriminate violence. In Zhexiu's case, he severs a meridian joining the Ethereal Palace to the lower edge of the sea of consciousness and manipulates a fine needle between the eyebrows to prevent unconsciousness while intensifying pain. The text establishes the effects of these methods, but not the complete mechanics of every procedure. (Chapters 400–402 and 494)

He also builds security in layers: concealed experts, monstrous Cerberuses, arrays, decoys formed from his crimson gown, underground routes, mechanical doors, and multiple secret refuges. These precautions repeatedly delay stronger pursuers, but their effectiveness depends on secrecy and preparation. Once enemies coordinate tracking, poison, and intimate knowledge of his habits, the same instinct that sends him toward familiar ground makes his hidden prison and private courtyard predictable destinations. (Chapters 401–402, 710, and 716–720)

Power progression

Relationships

• Tianhai Divine Empress: Zhou Tong builds his authority by carrying out the Empress's most ruthless decisions and regards her as the one person whose judgment matters. Her failure to visit him after Chen's attack exposes how conditional that bond is, and his fear of dying with her ultimately leads him to aid the coup against her. (Chapters 217, 238, 400–402, 624, and 647)
• Xue Xingchuan: Xue Xingchuan is Zhou Tong's twin brother and only true friend. He protects and tends Zhou Tong after the assassination attempt, despite their long history of inequality and resentment; Zhou Tong later repays that devotion by poisoning him to secure his own survival under the new regime. (Chapters 623–624, 680–681, and 716)
• Chen Changsheng: Zhou Tong first treats Chen as a political problem and possible imperial heir, using Zhexiu's imprisonment to examine him and implant spiritual sense in his mind. Their conflict becomes openly lethal: Chen nearly kills him during the coup, later organizes the pressure that drives him from hiding, and finally beheads him on the Road of Peace. (Chapters 401, 447–452, 494, 618–623, and 710–723)
• Zhexiu: Zhou Tong tortures Zhexiu to obtain evidence against Chen and Mount Li, leaving injuries that turn the wolf youth's hatred into a sustained resolve to kill him. Zhexiu eventually tracks Zhou Tong through the underground prison and joins the poisoned attack that forces him into the open. (Chapters 400–402, 447–453, 533, and 716–720)
• Mo Yu: Mo Yu and Zhou Tong cooperate as the Empress's two chief political agents despite mutual dislike. Because each understands the other's hidden fears, Mo Yu can find his secret refuge after the coup and becomes one of the principal architects of his final punishment. (Chapters 400–401, 719–723)
• Shang Xingzhou: Zhou Tong recognizes Shang Xingzhou as a deeper strategist and accepts his promise of survival during the coup. Shang's government protects him as evidence that defectors will be spared, then abandons that protection when Zhou Tong's death becomes more politically useful than his life. (Chapters 617, 647, 667, 681–682, 686, and 724)

Items

• Six Protections Divine Armor: Zhou Tong wears the Tianhai clan's legendary flexible armor beneath his official gown as preparation against assassination. It blocks most of Chen Changsheng's massed sword assault, but the later Halving Blade strike cuts through its fastenings and the defenses layered around it. (Chapter 621)