Ross

Ross is the Pan-Universal Entertainment executive charged with turning Du Ge's Alien Star Battlefields into a profitable and sustainable program. He repeatedly changes worlds, rules, missions, rewards, and public narratives to preserve both Du Ge's appeal and the illusion that other contestants can still compete. His central contradiction is that every successful intervention makes the show more dependent on the person he is trying to control. By the final battlefield, Ross has moved from treating Du Ge as a uniquely valuable performer to briefly occupying one of his multi-skilled bodies, only to lose that body and remain at headquarters when Pan-Universal civilization falls under Du Ge's authority (Chapters 378, 432, 527, 639–640, 650–655).

Biography

Building a spectacle around King Holly

Ross enters the conflict as the general manager responsible for Du Ge's operations, under pressure to preserve a revived but fragile Resource Game. Banning Du Ge would sacrifice the contestant who restored the show's popularity, yet letting him carry water affinity between battlefields could expose flaws in Pan-Universal's supposedly impartial projection system. Ross chooses concealment through setting design: he selects a fantasy world where water magic and martial souls can explain Du Ge's powers, orders the Exploration Department to keep searching for alternatives, cuts the field from three thousand contestants to one thousand, and scatters them so Du Ge cannot easily rebuild his familiar coalition (Chapter 378).

The plan immediately reveals both Ross's practical intelligence and his willingness to gamble with incomplete information. He refuses a superpower world because another water awakening would look suspicious, but gives the Exploration Department only a month to assess a replacement universe and accepts a fantasy world whose planetary consciousness remains unexamined. When Du Ge receives Integrity inside a death-row prisoner, Ross trusts that self-preservation will make him use hidden water power before execution. Du Ge instead escapes through the world's own rules and awakens a Sea God martial soul, giving Ross the in-world explanation he needs and a legal defense against accusations of rigging (Chapters 378, 380, 388, 396).

Once Du Ge becomes dominant, Ross tries to restore opposition without removing the star attraction. He announces enormous mental-power rewards for awakening sleeping gods and triggering a war between gods and demons, and restores the normal probability of advanced skills so weaker contestants can generate dangerous combinations. The missions force other warriors to approach native powers that Du Ge is reluctant to awaken and temporarily revive ratings and casino activity. Yet Du Ge's reputation soon causes strangers to surrender at the mention of his name, convincing Ross that the problem is no longer one battlefield: Resource Game itself is becoming a management spectacle organized around Du Ge rather than a contest among Alien Star warriors (Chapters 422, 424, 431–432).

Ross responds by designing a longer commercial cycle. He supports reducing resource awards to the top three planets, asks Bas for stronger or more technologically advanced worlds, and approves Hod's proposal to recruit inhabitants of recently concluded battlefields as opponents who already hate Alien Star warriors. These decisions seek a balance between keeping Du Ge alive, manufacturing credible danger, protecting casino suspense, and preparing substitute stars before age or death removes him. Ross recognizes that his own measures could kill the company's cash cow, but proceeds because a permanently invincible Du Ge would also exhaust the audience and leave the show with no successor (Chapter 432).

Bi Xing and the illusion of escape

For the Bi Xing battlefield, Ross deliberately chooses the less understood technological civilization over a far stronger cultivation world. The absence of local magic should deny Du Ge a plausible excuse to use divine power, while interstellar travel allows the program to expand beyond one planet. Bas warns that the world has not been thoroughly observed, but Ross accepts personal responsibility and argues that uncontrolled surprises are what made Du Ge valuable in the first place. He then narrows resource rewards to three planets, assigns Du Ge the Low-key keyword rather than the unusable audience favorite Useless, and introduces two desperate new civilizations to increase pressure without yet making the contest suicidal (Chapters 448–449).

Ross reads Du Ge's apparent attempt to prolong the battlefield as the beginning of an escape plot and chooses to encourage it. He believes soul tracking makes genuine escape impossible, so allowing Du Ge to reach the Hill Civilization and experience a larger universe should create a satisfying rise before Pan-Universal recalls him. The policy loosens immediate constraints, preserves ratings, and gives the Exploration Department more time to locate later battlefields. It also exposes Ross's habitual blind spot: he treats Du Ge's challenge as a clever performance offered to the company, rather than evidence that the captive is learning the limits of his jailers (Chapters 484, 498, 508).

When Du Ge controls most of the top rankings and casino complaints return, Ross refuses another early termination because repeated cancellations would damage the program's reputation. He orders the server data opened to scrutiny and dares dissatisfied gamblers to sue, then adopts Hod's proposal to let audiences select and fund future contestants. This turns Du Ge into the fixed “great demon king” against whom customers continually cultivate challengers, creating a new revenue stream even when those challengers lose. Ross protects Qi Yuan Star's ordinary selection rules, however, because Du Ge still needs enough viable allies to avoid being destroyed by the very opposition the company manufactures (Chapter 504).

Du Ge's threat to use divine power after Bi Xing forces Ross to retreat from direct keyword assignment. He cancels the planned handicap because further manipulation could provoke the star into exposing powers the company cannot cheaply suppress, rejects a two-year shutdown to rebuild the projection system, and instead orders technical and planning workarounds. He remains convinced that Du Ge values his life too much to overturn the board, but his demand for successively perfect worlds leaves Bas almost no preparation time. Ross ends the arc still formally in command, yet dependent on Du Ge's restraint, on incomplete scans, and on subordinates whose warnings he repeatedly overrides (Chapter 510).

From ratings-first reform to resignation

The cultivation battlefield begins as the consequence Bas predicted. Powerful natives slaughter audience-funded contestants before they can develop, and the survivors hide while Du Ge alone sustains the broadcast. Ross initially treats Du Ge's disguised divine powers as a lesser problem than refund demands and collapsing participation. When Hod explains that most viewers value Du Ge's uniqueness more than competitive fairness, Ross makes the principle explicit: Pan-Universal wants ratings, not fairness. He publicly admits Du Ge's retained elemental affinities, recasts escape as the program's new central plot, welcomes attribute-bearing challengers, and orders Bas to find a multiverse suited to that story (Chapter 527).

The ratings surge validates the pivot commercially, but the operational failure deepens. The month-end top-ten announcement exposes contestants to the world's powerful natives, and Ross's rushed schedule leaves the departments unable to assess or repair the situation. Exhausted and blamed by his own managers, he accepts Gao Qiao's proposed last-place elimination rule almost automatically. Gao Qiao points out that this reflex proves Ross is no longer leading strategically. Ross concedes that his prestige and judgment have deteriorated, opens decisions to collective proposals, and promises to seek resignation from the board after the battlefield ends (Chapters 555, 557).

Du Ge then claims to be an incarnation of the Heavenly Dao and predicts Pan-Universal's reaction with humiliating accuracy. Ross searches historical civilization data for the Earthlike culture Du Ge describes and has Bai Long reminded to assert the company's control, but he cannot end the battlefield without confirming or destroying the mystery that now drives unprecedented attention. Watching Du Ge explain this bind to the audience leaves Ross feeling like the controlled party despite possessing formal recall and execution authority. His earlier confidence changes into reluctant recognition that Du Ge understands both viewers and operational incentives better than the executive assigned to manage him (Chapters 557, 567).

Ross's loss of initiative becomes explicit when Du Ge proposes allowing powerful natives to survive through Alien Star bodies. Rather than originate the next format, Ross authorizes technical changes Du Ge has effectively designed and asks that a related Simulation Field proposal be tested with the audience. He even thinks Du Ge would outperform him as general manager. Ross remains able to approve rules and direct departments, but the creative center of Resource Game has moved to its captive protagonist, while Ross increasingly serves as the administrator who turns Du Ge's actions into products (Chapter 586).

The final battlefield and loss of control

During the multiverse battlefield, Ross again chooses investment over restraint when Du Ge nearly dies in an isolated ocean. He first orders one hundred billion mental power deployed, doubles it when Adan questions whether it is enough, and instructs Gao Qiao to keep adding support if Du Ge's life deteriorates. The gamble wins board commendation after Du Ge pulls major civilizations into war, but Ross then follows the board's instruction to let events develop without further interference. His authority is now bounded from above as well as below: the star determines the rhythm, while the board decides when operational intervention is acceptable (Chapters 609, 615).

The God-Slaying Cannon exposes Du Ge's accumulated keywords and destabilizes the control program embedded in his soul. Ross refuses an immediate recall because the company needs Du Ge to open the target universe, then consults the board when twenty-one skills and multiple keywords appear. The board elevates Du Ge from entertainment asset to a possible solution for Pan-Universal's inability to retain keywords, and Ross transmits its order to keep him growing. Later, when managers realize the Sun God soul fragment has been spying inside headquarters, Ross orders the fragment extracted and sees in Soul Splitting a method for producing many multi-skilled bodies (Chapters 626, 629, 637).

Ross personally negotiates with the extracted fragment as Executive Director. He offers a hundred billion mental-power allocation, the Chaos keyword, and deployment in an accompanying universe where the fragment can supposedly compete with its main body. He also requires another soul split so one copy remains available for planning and investigation. When the fragment refuses to reveal its origin, Ross threatens it with the company's overwhelming control while respecting upper management's prohibition on destructive dissection. The exchange shows the limit of his authority clearly: Ross can design incentives, missions, and coercive conditions, but cannot override the executives who regard Du Ge's unique soul as the species' strategic hope (Chapters 639–640).

When the main Du Ge unexpectedly resists recall, Ross cannot decide whether to deploy personnel into bodies already marked as private property and must escalate the crisis to Chairman Tu Shan and Governor Jia Ge. The governor and senior leadership take command, leaving Ross to report, summon planetary managers, and arrange the return of Du Ge's associates as possible leverage. Ross contributes to the plan of repeatedly using the avatar to create bodies with twenty-one skills, but the migration strategy and allocation of those bodies now belong to the civilization's rulers rather than Resource Game management (Chapters 646, 648–649).

Ross briefly occupies the avatar's prepared body in the accompanying universe. It retains twenty-one activated skills, including those derived from the hidden Rescue keyword, but loses Chaos as its main growth engine; without Chaos-driven attribute development, Ross cannot approach the main Du Ge's strength. He leads the local coalition only temporarily before Pan-Universal recalls him and gives the body to Tu Shan for further experience. Ross is back at headquarters before Du Ge and the Heart of Cangjie overturn the company's control system. Pan-Universal civilization then submits to Du Ge, ending the corporate order that gave Ross his authority (Chapters 650–652, 655).

Authority, abilities, and limitations

Resource Game command authority

Ross can coordinate the departments that select battlefields, alter contestant numbers, announce resource distributions, set main-story rewards, change the probability of advanced skills, allocate corporate mental power, manage public explanations, and prepare later Simulation Fields. His orders reshape entire civilizations: limiting rewards to three planets intensifies starvation pressure, while mental-power missions draw contestants toward gods and demons. This is institutional power exercised through Pan-Universal's systems rather than a personal keyword or innate supernatural ability (Chapters 378, 422, 432, 449, 504, 609).

The authority has several hard limits. Technical changes depend on Gao Qiao's department and may be prohibitively expensive; new worlds depend on Bas's incomplete scans; format changes depend on Hod's planning; public viability depends on Adan, gamblers, and audience sentiment. Repeated cancellations risk the company's reputation, while legal scrutiny and accusations of rigging constrain how openly Ross can manipulate outcomes. Most importantly, the board, chairman, and governor can supersede him, forbid experiments, order possession, or redirect the entire program toward species migration (Chapters 378, 388, 432, 504, 510, 640, 642, 646).

Audience management and operational judgment

Ross specializes in converting crises into new spectacles. He reframes Du Ge's anomalous martial soul as a lawful feature of the setting, transforms divine-war stagnation into god-awakening missions, turns the escape attempt into a storyline, and changes audience frustration into a system for funding future challengers. He monitors ratings, forum discussions, casino behavior, and reputation together rather than treating any single measure as the goal. This flexibility is why Resource Game repeatedly recovers after Du Ge breaks its intended format (Chapters 388, 422–424, 432, 484, 498, 504, 527).

His weakness is overconfidence in controllable endings. Ross assumes that soul tracking guarantees Du Ge cannot escape, that an unfamiliar world can be made safe with limited reconnaissance, and that pressure can be increased gradually without destroying the performer. The accelerated schedule causes catastrophic mismatch with native powers, his reflexive acceptance of subordinates' fixes erodes his prestige, and audience dependence prevents him from using the recall authority he nominally holds. He is skilled at monetizing surprises after they occur, but repeatedly fails to distinguish a profitable deviation from a genuine loss of control (Chapters 448–449, 498, 510, 527, 555–567).

Pan-Universal mental and soul technology

Ross belongs to a civilization that survives through spiritual existence and body possession, but his personal mental-power value is never quantified. He uses corporate systems to inspect souls, assign keywords, allocate mental power, split Du Ge's fragment, project contestants, recall them, and place personnel into prepared bodies. These operations require specialists, projection equipment, the intelligent brain, and authorization; Ross directs or negotiates their use but does not personally perform their technical functions (Chapters 378, 504, 609, 626, 639–640, 646–650).

The dependence becomes decisive at the end. When Du Ge's backend commands turn gray and the intelligent brain no longer recognizes him, Ross has no independent means to recall, kill, or project through the compromised system. He can only report to higher leadership and wait for Gao Qiao's diagnosis. After the Heart of Cangjie erases the intelligent brain's data and coordinates, Pan-Universal loses the infrastructure that made Ross's operational reach possible, and Du Ge can suppress the remaining civilization directly (Chapters 646, 655).

Borrowed twenty-one-skill body

Pan-Universal personnel use the God-Slaying Cannon to activate twenty-one hidden skills in Du Ge's avatar body, remove the avatar's controlling soul, and place Ross inside. The body carries a large suite of already awakened skills, including the skill access left by the hidden Rescue keyword, giving Ross powers he did not develop personally. This is borrowed access through possession, not evidence that Ross can naturally hold multiple keywords or recreate the body himself (Chapters 649–650).

The body lacks the main Chaos keyword that powered the avatar's rapid development. Its attributes therefore grow too slowly to rival Du Ge's main body despite the large skill set, and no combat by Ross demonstrates mastery of the individual skills. Pan-Universal withdraws him and transfers the same body to Tu Shan, confirming that Ross's access is temporary and tied to the occupied vessel. By the final confrontation he is again at headquarters without that multi-skilled state (Chapters 650, 652).

Relationships

• Du Ge: Ross treats Du Ge successively as an indispensable performer, a disruptive opponent, an escape-story protagonist, a biological key to keywords, and the source of a body he can temporarily occupy. Admiration and commercial dependence repeatedly stop Ross from using harsher controls until Du Ge outgrows them altogether (Chapters 378–432, 448–527, 557–567, 609–652).
• Gao Qiao: Gao Qiao supplies the technical judgments on which Ross's authority depends and often resists demands that are unsafe or impossible. He eventually tells Ross that reflexively accepting fixes has made him a poor leader, a criticism Ross accepts before opening decisions to the wider management group (Chapters 378, 504, 510, 527, 555, 626, 640, 646).
• Hod: Hod is Ross's principal source of new formats, including resource restriction, audience-selected contestants, and revived Simulation Field champions. Their partnership helps Ross repeatedly commercialize Du Ge's disruptions, but it also underscores how much of the program's later creativity comes from Hod or Du Ge rather than Ross himself (Chapters 388, 432, 504, 527, 557, 567, 586).
• Adan: Adan tracks audience response and advises Ross on the reputational consequences of manipulating Du Ge. He helps translate Ross's decisions into announcements, questions whether threats can work when the company will not kill its star, and seeks Ross's approval for the mental-power rescue that preserves Du Ge in the final battlefield (Chapters 449, 484, 510, 527, 557, 609, 615).
• Bas: Ross repeatedly pressures Bas to find stronger worlds on shrinking schedules, often overriding warnings about incomplete reconnaissance. Their conflict produces the cultivation battlefield disaster and the unscanned multiverse risks, although Ross also depends on Bas to locate the increasingly rare settings that can accommodate Du Ge's powers (Chapters 378, 396, 432, 448–449, 484, 510, 527, 555).
• Bai Long: Bai Long supervises Du Ge at Qi Yuan Star and carries Ross's warnings and pressures to him. Ross uses Bai Long as the local enforcement arm of policies devised at headquarters, but knows that warnings without a credible willingness to kill Du Ge have diminishing force (Chapters 378, 510, 517, 527, 557, 648–649).
• Tu Shan: Tu Shan supersedes Ross when Du Ge resists recall and later takes over the twenty-one-skill body Ross briefly occupies. Their transition reflects Ross's reduced role once Resource Game operations become a civilization-wide military and migration crisis (Chapters 642, 646, 649–652).
• Jia Ge: Ross reports Du Ge's anomalies to Governor Jia Ge and carries out his orders to retrieve bodies and prepare leverage. Jia Ge ultimately controls the possession campaign and super-body strategy, placing Ross in an implementing rather than commanding position (Chapters 642, 646, 648–650).

Items

Ross has no named personal item. His reach comes from shared Pan-Universal infrastructure—monitoring screens, the intelligent brain, projection and recall systems, soul laboratories, and corporate mental-power reserves. He can authorize or coordinate these tools only while the technical departments and higher leadership support him; after the Heart of Cangjie disables the intelligent brain, none remains an independently usable possession of Ross (Chapters 378, 504, 609, 639–640, 646, 655).