A Gui

A Gui is Zuo Mo's childhood attendant and protector. After losing his memories, he meets her again as a silent, badly wounded stranger whose instinctive devotion survives both damaged senses and a shattered soul. Her sacrifices give Zuo Mo a personal reason to seek healing materials and his own past; the eventual recovery of that past reveals that her mysterious power comes from the Undying Shen Punishment imposed upon her, not from an ordinary cultivation inheritance.

Biography

The nameless guardian of Golden Crow City

A Gui first enters the story unidentified, pulled unconscious from a river after apparently escaping the yao blockade of Sky Moon Jie. Her loose hair, torn white robe, bare bruised legs, poisoned body, and scab-covered face make the extent of her ordeal visible, while layers of older hidden wounds show that the latest injury is only one part of a longer history. Once awake, she says nothing and remains near Zuo Mo. When hostile cultivators threaten him, however, she drifts through their formation without recognizable ling power, leaves roughly one hundred enemies dead, and returns to his side. Neither Zuo Mo nor Pu Yao can identify the method, and Pu's early explanation that it may be a life-shortening secret technique remains an informed guess rather than a settled account. (Chapters 237–238, 260)

Her attachment becomes decisive when Clear Sky Old Forefather brings a blood-fed sword tide down on Golden Crow City. A Gui initially appears behind the enemy, but abandons that opening to shield Zuo Mo and the people below. She feeds her own blood into purple fire, holds a vast burning disk against the falling sword fragments, and continues after wounds burst across her body. Zuo Mo sees joy and longing in her eyes and hears the fragment of an old promise about not forgetting even in death; after her defense breaks, he catches her and uses his remaining Sonic Lightning Walnuts to clear a path through the attack. Her choice saves him, but destroys what remains of her channels and conscious faculties. (Chapters 300–302)

When she wakes, her cultivation seems gone, her eyes are empty, her channels are broken, and her life is barely detectable. Pu concludes that a soul-thought she left in the five-element glass bead inside Zuo Mo is the reason any thread of her survives. Zuo Mo uses the Adversity Overcoming Scripture to stabilize that thread, begins looking for a Water Cloud Embryo to nourish her damaged soul, and names the unidentified woman “A Gui.” The rescue therefore changes the direction of both lives: her active guardianship becomes an apparently helpless dependence, while saving her and discovering their connection become explicit long-term purposes for Zuo Mo. (Chapters 302, 309, 325)

A broken soul that would not let go

A Gui travels with Zuo Mo in a puppet-like state, usually sitting or walking beside him and showing only small signs of awareness. She follows him outside battle, looks toward him or objects connected to him, and gradually reacts more often, while the Little Ones become comfortable resting and playing on her once her threatening presence weakens. Zuo Mo refuses to treat this passivity as absence: he keeps speaking to her, regards the debt of her sacrifice as one he could repay with his life, and rejects medicines powerful enough to endanger her fragile body even when they might promise a faster cure. (Chapters 320–321, 340, 397, 447, 484, 521)

The search for a Water Cloud Embryo brings A Gui, Zuo Mo, Wei Sheng, and Zong Ru among the Mist People. When ice chains restrain the party, purple power returns to A Gui's eyes; she breaks her bonds and disables an opponent so quickly that Zuo Mo recognizes her power as shen power distinct from his own. His examination finds it dark, cold, and able to consume life, with even brief contact threatening to extinguish his mind. Yet the same power is also sustaining her ruined body. This makes simple removal unsafe and corrects the earlier assumption that her condition can be understood as an ordinary self-harming spell. (Chapters 529–532)

After Ding Zhen strikes Zuo Mo and drives him into a restricted region, A Gui takes a blow rather than let him be separated from her, then carries his paralyzed body through a desert for days. Her extraordinary power only appears when danger triggers it; at other times her physical strength is described as ordinary, so the journey exhausts her. Even so, she walks day and night, rests only briefly, refuses to set him down, and adjusts the way she holds him when he speaks. The sequence demonstrates that damage to her speech, hearing, and outward expression has not erased either comprehension or her governing choice to protect him. (Chapters 536, 538, 540–541)

Memory, punishment, and life within death

In Bu Zhou City, a mysterious old man studies A Gui with pity, tenderness, and guilt and identifies the purple chains within her as the Undying Shen Punishment. He describes it as the cruellest shen punishment and warns that the structure forming in her soul may be the legendary Undying Shen Seal: a possible route to “life in death,” but one whose formation and dangers are unknown. Wei has already established that A Gui willingly swore the punishment upon herself—the absence of hate flames rules out an unwilling victim—but the complete circumstances and motive remain unrecovered. The story later identifies the old man as her grandfather, explaining his concern without filling that gap. (Chapters 679, 717, and 831)

A Gui's contact with malicious ghosts reveals how the punishment works in practice. Her purple fire burns them down to pure yin or death-derived power, which she can absorb; against a more experienced ghost soldier she initially struggles, then learns from its methods and overcomes it. As the absorbed power strengthens her, her scars fade and the purple flame in her eyes grows gentler. She and the Black Gold Seal Soldier then reach an ancient sacrificial altar holding grey bone armor saturated with yin energy. The armor subsequently fits itself around her; Zuo Mo names the true shen-device raiment Undying Ghost, giving physical form and protection to the power that had previously remained inside her broken body. (Chapters 726–731, 737, and 755)

The Reverse Shadow Soul Silkgrass Zuo Mo obtains restores fragments of his own childhood rather than instantly curing A Gui. In those memories she is the young attendant “Gui Gui,” trained to become strong enough to protect her Young Master. When hunters pursue them, she carries him until both collapse, refuses his pleas to escape alone, and asks whether he will forget her; his answer that he will not forget even in death echoes the sensation that accompanied her Golden Crow City sacrifice. Recognizing her at last, Zuo Mo reverses their childhood roles and promises that it is now his turn to protect her. (Chapters 736–737)

Reconstructing King's Forbidden Firmament finally gives those fragments a setting both of them recognize. Inside its reproduced city, A Gui awakens enough to call Zuo Mo “Young Master,” wipe away his tears, speak, and smile with her old bashfulness; the narration says she has broken free of the punishment's restrictions and now possesses astounding power. This is her first clear restoration of expression and self-command, not the later awakening from the shen-wood coffin. It does not remove the punishment itself, whose chains return as an active source of power in the battle to come. (Chapters 810–812)

Choosing the same battlefield

During the confrontation with Tian Huan's Chief Elder, A Gui follows Zuo Mo into a battle beyond normal armies. Although she has already broken free of the punishment's behavioral restrictions, its power and chains remain. When Zuo Mo burns himself for power, she calls him “Young Master” and deliberately snaps and manifests those chains so she can continue beside him even if both die. They fuse with Undying Ghost while her purple fire darkens the space around her. This is neither a painless breakthrough nor a clean cure: it is a conscious acceptance of the punishment's most dangerous power in order to keep the promise that defines her. (Chapters 812, 835, 839, and 842)

The fused armor, chains, and twin bone daggers let A Gui cut through lesser shen glyphs and preserve most of her strength while the other attackers are depleted. Chief Elder's Grinding Blue Light nevertheless stops her, consumes the armor's protective grey mist, and cracks the bone plates; her purple flame cannot destroy its shen glyph. A different grey presence then travels along her chains, ignores the blue light, and erases the glyph, creating part of the opening Zuo Mo needs to win. She falls unconscious with the grey presence thick around her, and Zuo Mo seals her in stopped time rather than abandon her as the region collapses. (Chapters 843, 847–850)

Ten years later, Shi arranges a soul substitution in which a willing ghost-fire woman takes A Gui's place within the Undying Shen Punishment. The purple chains withdraw, the scars on A Gui's face disappear, and her body begins recovering in a shen-wood coffin. Her subsequent awakening is a return from the unconscious preservation that followed the Chief Elder battle, not her first restoration of self-command: she runs to Zuo Mo, calls him Young Master, cries in his arms, and then shows the same capacity for embarrassment seen in Chapter 812. She remains at his side through the final campaign, answers him in conversation, and appears among Mo Cloud Sea's pseudo god-level experts. (Chapters 880–881, 891–892, 907, and 915)

Appearance and personality

A Gui is first seen with loose hair, a torn white robe, bare bruised feet, and a face covered in crusted scabs; her body also bears severe current and accumulated older injuries. She later wears a mask, but it is destroyed during her defense of Golden Crow City. While her soul is damaged, her eyes are empty or grey-white and her face almost completely wooden. Her long black hair remains conspicuous, and her small frame makes the prolonged act of carrying Zuo Mo physically difficult. Absorbing yin and death power gradually fades her scars and restores smooth skin; by the final battle she wears grey crystal-like bone armor, bears a purple chain mark on her forehead, and has purple fire dense in her eyes. After the punishment is transferred, her scars vanish and healthy colour returns. (Chapters 237–238, 260, 300, 536, 551, 731, 835, 880)

Her most consistent trait is loyalty expressed through action. As a child she trains because she believes she must protect Zuo Mo, refuses to flee without him, and persists beyond exhaustion; as an adult, the same commitment survives separation from their shared past, damaged senses, and an almost absent soul. She is stubborn about physical proximity, repeatedly interposes herself between him and danger, and ultimately accepts the full cost of the Undying Shen Punishment rather than leave him to die alone. Her apparent coldness through much of the story is therefore a medical and spiritual condition, not reliable evidence of an emotionless personality. Once restored, she can sob, feel embarrassment, worry silently, and answer Zuo Mo with calm understanding. (Chapters 300–302, 536–540, 736, 839, 891, 907)

Abilities and cultivation

• Undying shen power: A Gui's purple power freezes or overwhelms ordinary opponents, corrodes bodies, burns malicious ghosts, and consumes life and death-derived energies. It can manifest as fire, a close-range palm strike, and extraordinary movement. Her exact cultivation rank is never stated, and early comparisons to ningmai or jindan are conjectures made before the power is understood. (Chapters 260, 530, 532, 724, and 726–727)

• Undying Shen Punishment: The power is inseparable for most of the story from a self-sworn punishment represented by purple chains. It subjects A Gui to prolonged pain and death, damages or seals her faculties, and consumes life even while keeping her ruined body alive. Absorbing death power strengthens her and may form an Undying Shen Seal, described only as a legendary chance to find life inside death. The process is dangerous, poorly understood even by experts, and is finally resolved through soul substitution rather than ordinary cultivation. (Chapters 532, 679, 717, 726–727, 839, and 880)

• Instinctive combat and adaptation: Even when largely unresponsive, A Gui detects danger to Zuo Mo and releases shen power reflexively. She can move soundlessly, appear behind opponents, endure impacts, and learn from an enemy's technique during battle. This instinct has limits: activation is inconsistent outside immediate danger, her ordinary physical strength can be modest, and the ghost soldier's experience initially offsets her superior power. (Chapters 260, 530, 536, 724, 727)

• Undying Ghost raiment: The grey bone armor is a true shen-device raiment saturated with pure yin energy. It merges with the environment well enough to make A Gui difficult to perceive or lock onto, produces defensive grey mist, and equips her with paired bone daggers joined to extendable chains. After the punishment chains fuse with it, the assembly can channel purple fire, yin energy, and the grey power that erases a major shen glyph. It is not invulnerable: Grinding Blue Light exhausts its mist, halts A Gui's charge, and cracks the armor, while purple flame alone fails against that glyph. (Chapters 731, 737, 755, 823, 835, 848, and 850)

Power progression

Relationships

• Zuo Mo: A Gui is assigned in childhood to protect him and addresses him as Young Master. Her refusal to abandon him produces their promise not to forget one another, while a soul-thought she left in his body later preserves her last thread of life; her Golden Crow City sacrifice then drives his searches for a cure and his origins. Once he remembers her, protection becomes reciprocal. They survive the final war together, and the last chapter identifies their planned wedding. (Chapters 302, 325, 536, 736–737, 839–850, 891, 915)

• Her grandfather: The unnamed old man recognizes her punishment, gives Zuo Mo soul-healing advice and materials, and later aids Mo Cloud Sea after Gongsun Cha approaches him. His mixture of tenderness and guilt establishes a close family connection, but the complete history of her family and the circumstances that led her to swear the punishment remain undisclosed. (Chapters 679, 717, and 831)

• Black Gold Seal Soldier: He calls her “Sister A Gui,” accompanies her into the yin-filled caverns, yields captured ghost soldiers so she can absorb their power, and fights beside her near the altar where Undying Ghost is found. Their partnership is both affectionate and practical, pairing his appetite and blunt force with the death power that restores her. (Chapters 730–731, 736, 791)

• The Little Ones: Zuo Mo's small companions initially watch A Gui cautiously, but after her sacrifice they play on and rest against her, providing quiet companionship during her damaged state. Silly Bird also helps guard her when the group faces danger. Their comfort around her tracks the gradual reduction of the threatening aura that once terrified other cultivators. (Chapters 309, 320, 521–522)

Items

• Undying Ghost: A grey bone shen-device raiment found at an ancient sacrificial altar. It fits A Gui as though made for her, draws on pure yin energy, and later merges with the chains of the Undying Shen Punishment. Its paired bone daggers and extendable chains become her principal equipment in the battle against Tian Huan's Chief Elder. (Chapters 731, 737, 835, 848–850)

• Associated recovery materials: Zuo Mo seeks a Water Cloud Embryo and Reverse Shadow Soul Silkgrass because of A Gui's damaged soul. The Water Cloud Embryo search exposes the nature of her shen power, while Zuo Mo's own use of the silkgrass restores the memories that identify her. The cited scenes do not show either object simply curing A Gui; her eventual release from the punishment instead comes through Shi's soul-substitution ritual. (Chapters 302, 529–532, 717, 736, 880)

• Angel Device Raiment: A Gui briefly tests this raiment during a demonstration. It turns black around her shen power and makes her nearly disappear when she remains still, but the scene presents it as a temporary trial rather than her owned or regular equipment. (Chapter 718)