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[illegibly]

Name: Xy
Age: 30
Contact info: assemble, lehnsherr#2773 at discord

Character: Hua Cheng (AKA San Lang)
Canon: Heaven Official's Blessing (AKA Tian Guan Ci Fu)
Canon Point: Post-Canon
CRAU, Canon AU: No
Character age: Slightly older than 800, physically early 20s, though often shapeshifts into the likeness of a teenager.

Why do you think they can settle in a horror setting if they’re under 18?:
Canon Abilities/Powers:

SPIRITUAL ENERGY
Hua Cheng has some of the highest spiritual energy (also translated as mana) in the series, and more than a lot of the gods in the story. He can pass it at will, use it to communicate telepathically, to share memories, to fly, to swap bodies with someone, or to create protective barriers. Without his spiritual energy, he fades away until he has enough of it to regain form. Sometimes if he is low on spiritual energy, he takes the physical form of a child in order to conserve it. Yes, his scimitar becomes miniature as well.

COMBAT
He is a trained warrior and fights with a special scimitar. He has been working on his grind for eight hundred years and became a Supreme by essentially surviving a free-for-all tournament against a lot of ghosts. He also famously challenged and won a fight against 33 gods (half of them he fought in combat, the other in debate.)

INTELLIGENCE & LEADERSHIP
He debated against the other half of the gods and won handily against all of them. He does a lot of the plotting and planning in the present timeline of the story, and is also generally regarded kindly as a good Ruler by the residents of Ghost City over which he presides.

IMMORTALITY... SORTA
The only way to kill a ghost of Hua Cheng's calibre is by dispersing their ashes. Hua Cheng's ashes are distilled into a ring that he gifts to Xie Lian. Also, because he is already dead, he does not require any sort of life-sustaining things, and he most certainly does not need CPR.

ENDURANCE
Even when he was a small child, people commented that he doesn't react to physical pain as strongly as might be expected.

SHAPESHIFTING & CLONING
Hua Cheng is able to shapeshift himself to essentially any other human form, and often takes on a form that he introduces as San Lang. San Lang is a little bit shorter and younger-looking than Hua Cheng, and also has two eyes which are the same color, whereas Hua Cheng has a missing right eye and was originally very sensitive about his heterochromia.

CLONING
Hua Cheng essentially sends clones of himself whenever he needs to be somewhere but doesn't really want to be there. The clones are not as powerful as he is, and require him to have power to split himself.

BLOOD RAIN
One of his nicknames is "Crimson Rain Sought Flower," and he is known this way because he can sort of summon blood from the skies. He mostly uses it as a diversion tactic or really just to wig people out. He can also turn the rain into a rain of red flower petals instead, which he usually does to keep one specific person from getting bloody.

BUTTERFLIES
He is known for having these slivers of spiritual energy called wraith butterflies, which he uses as messengers. They're super fast and the wings are sharp as blades, which he uses as a long-range weapon. Additionally, they offer soft ambient light. They represent love and purity. Relatedly, Hua Cheng can spin up butterfly silk which functions similarly to spider silk in that it is sticky and binding.

LUCK & PRECOGNITION
Hua Cheng had rotten luck all his life, but at some point his luck turned around and made a complete 180. Now he has extremely good luck, and for whatever reason, he can also will some of it away to someone. His incredible luck also gives him a sort of warning of bad things ahead in the form of strong feelings.

DARUMA DOLLS
He can turn people into these little round wooden dolls against their will. They are supposed to symbolize luck and serve as a reminder to achieve ones' goals. He usually does this to troll people.

ARTISTRY
He also spent a lot of his 800 years learning how to paint and how to sculpt and is quite adept at both. His favorite subject is the God he worships. Despite his artistic virtuoso, his penmanship is terrible.

DOMESTIC SKILLS
He proves to the villagers that he is good at both cooking and cleaning and general handiwork.

What is their greatest negative emotion towards an object, situation, or person in their past?:

(tw: extreme violence)

“ To watch with your own eyes your beloved be trampled and ridiculed yet be unable to do anything. That's the worst suffering in the world. ”

To back up a bit, Hua Cheng grew up bullied relentlessly and was the unwitting recipient of a lot of resentful spiritual energy. He was told by a priest that he would bring misfortune to anyone who went near him and would die before 18, and then he was subsequently saved by Xie Lian several times against advisors' wishes.

Due to some circumstances that involve a gruesome plague, a civil war broke out in the Kingdom and Hua Cheng immediately conscripted himself into Xie Lian's army and then died. Xie Lian, having been promoted and then demoted from Godhood, was now destitute. He met a vendor who was pawning souls trapped in lanterns as trinkets to children. Xie Lian used the last of his money to purchase these ghostly lights to give them a proper funeral. One of these ghost lights was Hua Cheng, and he was delighted and honored that Xie Lian had once again saved him in his kindness. He bargained with Xie Lian to bind him to the Earth as he had unfinished business, which was to protect his beloved (spoilers, his beloved is Xie Lian). Xie Lian suggested that his beloved might feel guilty as the reason his soul could never move on, and Hua Cheng promised that he would never find out.

Hua Cheng then spent a little time protecting Xie Lian, but as he was essentially a small orb of light, and was also hiding his identity, he couldn't do a whole lot. Once, Xie Lian was invited to a compound where there were a hundred civilians and a strange masked man who revealed that the plague that swept his Kingdom had a cure: anyone who killed, would gain immunity to the disease. As an immortal, Xie Lian could be killed again and again. Hua Cheng could do nothing in his state, and grew stronger and stronger in desperation as he watched each of the townsfolk take their turns stabbing Xie Lian. His resentment became so strong that he manifested a humanoid form, and his power was enough to kill every single person remaining at the temple.

How aware are they of this negative emotion, and how do they act on it in canon?:

Hua Cheng decided eight hundred years ago that he would grow stronger in order to protect Xie Lian. He spent a little time following Xie Lian, though he wore a mask to conceal his identity. His form again dissipated while protecting Xie Lian, but he was more than happy to do so, and since Xie Lian had tied his soul to the Earth, he knew he would someday return.

Xie Lian disappeared and fell into obscurity, and Hua Cheng spent the next eight hundred years returning to his form and becoming powerful. In seeking vengeance for those who wronged Xie Lian, he gained a name by fighting the group of gods who had once denied him a place to train. He was powerful enough to fight all of the martial gods in combat and all the scholar gods in debate. He had bet them that if he won against all of them, they would have to resign from their posts. All of them refused to do so after their losses, and so Hua Cheng burnt all their temples to the ground. Once those gods' followers rebuilt, he burnt those temples to the ground until eventually the followers started following Hua Cheng instead, who appeared to be mightier and more influential than their original gods. He was henceforth risen to the ghost/demon rank of Calamity, which is the highest rank and numbers only 4 members.

He is, as a result of his exposure to other gods, suspicious of all deities save for Xie Lian. Though he is eventually powerful enough to be offered his own ascension, he refuses and instead becomes the fearsome and capricious Ghost King.

Hua Cheng has signature silver butterflies, and at the very beginning of the novel, one of them scouts and has finally found Xie Lian after eight hundred years of searching. He is beyond elated to reunite with his God, and spends the present timeline of the novel assisting him, protecting him, and throwing down with anyone who so much as looks at him funny.

What is their greatest virtue?:

“ It is my greatest honor to die in battle for you. I am forever your most devoted believer. Trust me, Your Highness. ”

His greatest virtue is his faith and devotion. He has died (or dissipated - he can't die as a ghost) for his God several times in canon, has unerringly left flowers and offerings for him and cleaned his temples, and has loved and served him even when Xie Lian was given the nicknames "The Scrap God," and "The Laughingstock of the Three Realms." Knowing Xie Lian's true kind and sacrificial nature, Hua Cheng loves him all the more that he rises above his suffering.

He ranks Xie Lian's worth above all others, especially his own, and often gives him gifts of power, luck, or irreplaceable treasures. He goes into attack mode whenever he perceives the smallest of threats or sleights against Xie Lian, and easily forgives him even when Xie Lian mistakenly takes stock into his reputation as the Ghost King Hua Cheng.

How aware are they of their virtue, and how do they act on it in canon?:

He is so aware that he is a Xie Lian simp. He manages to hide it from absolutely no one except somehow Xie Lian himself, because he had made a promise not to clue in his beloved on his choice to stay on Earth.

In canon, he took Xie Lian's edict, "if you can't find a reason to live, live for me" on a very literal level, and has been, for the last 800 years, the only one who takes care of Xie Lian's temples and leaves him any offerings. He spent eight hundred years looking for him for the express purpose of serving him, gained power and prestige and numerous treasures for the sake of one day being able to present himself to Xie Lian as a suitable follower. Xie Lian had to sell his swords when he was penniless, and Hua Cheng collected an artillery of them to gift to Xie Lian. Hua Cheng became The Ghost King so he would never have to feel powerless to help Xie Lian again.

There is an event that happens whenever whatever entities in the realms decide that a spirit might be strong enough to become a Calamity-level demon. Existing ghosts grow restless and are drawn to Tong'lu mountain, where they all fight to the death until someone reaches the center and enters the Kiln. If the victor survives the kiln, they are essentially considered a god-level monster.

Hua Cheng not only goes to Tong'lu, kills all the other demons and becomes a calamity, but during his time in the mountain he claimed a series of caves and bid his time by painting murals of and carving thousands of statues of Xie Lian. One of them was so large that several fully-grown adults could be seated in his palm. In the moments of fighting thousands of other ghosts for his life, his priority remains firmly in his pursuit of worship.

Many of the characters are suspicious of why the Ghost King chooses to be so nice to Xie Lian, and in not knowing the full story, many of them think that Hua Cheng has some ulterior motive. In reality, Hua Cheng truly does actually just want to help Xie Lian out so that they can retire to Xie Lian's temple where he can do the sweeping, offer his handiwork, and paint pictures to put up at his altar.

Ghosts choose their own name when they become powerful enough to require a moniker, and Hua Cheng literally means "city of flowers," since flowers are a motif of Xie Lian's. Also, he has a tattoo of Xie Lian written on his forearm, but his handwriting is so bad that no one notices.

Items:

The clothes he wears, his parasol, and his scimitar.

Samples: Network | Action
Special Notes: His scimitar has an eye in the hilt and expresses emotions - they're sort of exaggerated or unfiltered versions of Hua Cheng's own emotions, because it's his eye, but let me know if his sword E'ming should be considered a separately appable character. It can't talk, but sometimes shakes.