Sekku-ha

The Xingxiu Sect is a martial organization associated with poison, coercive discipline, and the pursuit of secret techniques. Its power is concentrated in Ding Chunqiu, whose need for venomous creatures shapes the sect’s methods and drives its arrival in the Central Plains. The theft of a distinctive tripod by A'Zi sets off a search that draws the sect into conflict with the Beggar Clan; meanwhile, A'Zi’s refusal to return and You TanZhi’s survival expose the danger of the practices through which its master maintains his strength.

Identity and Methods

The sect is feared beyond its own territory for Ding Chunqiu’s use of deadly poison and formidable martial skill. His reputation reaches the Beggar Clan before he does: a voice in the darkness claims that only Ding and his sect could kill without leaving a trace, using that threat to demand poison snakes and insects. The demand is not merely bluster. Ding’s martial practice depends on toxic substances, making the procurement and use of venomous creatures integral to the organization’s power.

The sect’s methods also rely on intimidation. When one of its followers demands the Beggar Clan provide 200 poisonous snakes and 100 poisonous insects, he warns that refusal will bring consequences. A Beggar Clan member is then killed and concealed behind the speaker, turning the threat into an immediate demonstration of force. The exchange reveals a group that treats access to poison as an entitlement and uses fear to compel other organizations to supply it.

Ding Chunqiu and the Poisonous Art

Ding practices the Great Energy Dissolving Skill, which requires poison from venomous creatures to be applied to his palms and absorbed into his body. If he goes seven days without fresh poison, his internal energy diminishes and the accumulated poison in him begins to flare up, with potentially fatal consequences. The sect’s demand for poison and its reliance on the Divine Wood King Cauldron therefore arise from a continuing physical necessity built into its leader’s art.

The cauldron’s scent, combined with incense burned in it, attracts poisonous creatures from as far as ten li away. With it, Ding can gather the creatures he needs with little effort, deepening his command of the skill. The object is consequently more than a prized possession: it supports the practice on which his strength depends. When A'Zi steals it, the loss threatens both his technique and the means by which he sustains it.

Ding’s past treatment of a gifted disciple shows how this dependency can become a form of control. After the disciple grew accomplished in the skill and became disrespectful, Ding imprisoned him in a stone house without access to poison. The disciple’s condition worsened until he died after forty days. The incident left Ding wary of teaching the art further. His other disciples, including Zhaixingzi, were not taught the Great Energy Dissolving Skill; A'Zi instead tried to learn it by secretly listening and stealing the cauldron.

A'Zi’s Break with the Sect

A'Zi’s relationship with Xingxiu Sect is marked by flight rather than loyalty. After Xiao Feng tells her that, as the sect’s senior martial sister, she would leave the group without a leader if she did not return, she says she does not care. She has no intention of going back to Xingxiu Sea, and Xiao Feng understands that the trouble she has caused there is serious enough to make a return unsafe. Her claim to seniority has not reconciled her to the sect; it makes her absence more consequential.

Her private explanation for attacking Xiao Feng with a poison needle also connects her separation from the sect to her attachment to him. She says she meant to immobilize him so he could not leave her, not to kill him. Once she recovers, she wants to follow him and insists he must not abandon her. This disclosure does not establish that she has renounced her own ambitions, but it makes clear that she will not resume her former place under Ding’s authority.

A'Zi’s practice of a poison-based art also echoes the methods she has learned around Ding. She uses the cauldron to attract poisonous insects, feeds them with rooster blood, and has You TanZhi let them bite him while she follows a manual’s diagrams. She expects the process to be dangerous: at Xingxiu Sea, she had seen people die when her master practiced the skill, and she assumes You TanZhi might die as well. His survival surprises her. The episode shows how the sect’s knowledge persists even as A'Zi acts independently, carrying its techniques and equipment into a new, perilous experiment.

The Sect’s Pursuit and Wider Conflict

Ding’s journey east is prompted by the stolen cauldron and the failure of his disciples to recover it. He has sent numerous followers after A'Zi, including Zhaixingzi, after learning that Xiao Feng supports her and that the two have badly injured the senior disciple. The reports disappoint him. Zhaixingzi survives but loses his martial arts, and the disciples fear punishment for failing their mission. Ding postpones their punishment because he needs their help, revealing that even a feared master must account for setbacks within his own organization.

The search becomes entangled with the Beggar Clan’s internal affairs. Ding’s follower Tian LiangZi learns of a gathering at the Hall of Great Wisdom and infiltrates it alone to claim credit. The scorpion poison used against him fails to kill him because his body already contains poison; he escapes and reports back. Ding rushes to the gathering, but despite his confidence in his martial arts and poison, giant pythons immobilize him. His predicament reverses the sect’s usual posture of menace: a leader who has made poison a source of command is temporarily at the mercy of creatures and opponents he cannot control.

Ding’s arrival also shows how the sect’s conflict reaches beyond its own ranks. He asks the Beggar Clan for Xiao Feng, whom he wants to see, while the Beggar Clan’s Quan Guanqing must decide whether to resist the demand or submit. The stolen cauldron, A'Zi’s break with her master, the damaged standing of Zhaixingzi, and Ding’s pursuit all converge in this encounter. The sect’s power is therefore presented not as self-contained prestige but as a network of dependencies—on a particular object, a continual supply of poison, and the obedience of disciples and rivals alike.