Qi Zai

He teaches that Qi clan cultivates qi path primarily and descends from Qi Xiang, one of the Heaven Surveying Five Xiangs. He is taking Qi He to the current generation Ni Xiang because a Qi clan elder died around Yi Tian Mountain and the clan wants that Ni Xiang’s help to deduce the truth. ^{ch. 1035}

He explains that Ni Ren refined chosen Immortal Gu into Ni clan descendants’ bloodlines so others could not take them away, and that mortals could use those Gu at a high price. He is in charge of Rotten Mud Mountain’s Ni clan branch and plans to let Qi He handle that village. ^{ch. 1036}

At Rotten Mud Mountain they find the Ni clan village already slaughtered. He judges it a Gu Immortal’s man-made disaster rather than the mountain’s mud monster beast tide, gathers pale green grudge qi with a Qi clan method, and forms a mudman monster from that qi to question about the killer. ^{ch. 1036 ch. 1037}

He holds only a low grade blessed land, so he saves his Immortal Gu for crucial moments, though his main reason for withholding them is that using one would tell an enemy what he owns. ^{ch. 1041}

Suspecting Fang Yuan, the rank six Gu Immortal who fled the Rotten Mud Mountain slaughter, of being a rival Xiang clan’s spy, and unwilling to let the matter go with the Qi clan’s thousand-year bet at stake, he chases him through many rounds of battle, working an attrition strategy to drain his immortal essence. The chase carries both into the Five Regional Mountain Range’s white-gold region, an imitation of Central Continent’s saint regional wall; he presses on despite the repulsion it exerts on a Southern Border cultivator, unwilling to let Fang Yuan escape. He is badly hurt in the exchange and Fang Yuan, helped by his lower cultivation level, escapes him there, so he turns back for where he left his grand-niece Qi He. The one waiting for him is not her: a flying sword pierces his forehead before he can react, and only as he dies does the killer turn back into Fang Yuan’s own face. ^{ch. 1042}

He had been deceived the whole time: Fang Yuan let himself be wounded and chased on purpose so that the disguise power familiar face, worn as Qi He’s face, could close the distance needed for the concealment killer move dark assassination, a strike too fast to react to but effective only within a hundred steps. After he dies, Fang Yuan draws his soul from the corpse for a soul search, and places the corpse itself into his own immortal aperture to claim the qi path dao marks left behind. ^{ch. 1043}