You TanZhi

You TanZhi’s story traces a revenge-seeking young man’s unintentional rise into a dangerous martial force. The son of You Ju, he blames Xiao Feng for his family’s deaths and tries to attack him with quicklime, but the encounter leaves him alive and in possession of the Yijin Jing. Later, A'Zi has him fitted with an iron mask and uses him as a test subject for poisonous creatures. An accidental discovery of the manual’s illustrated postures, followed by his survival of the frost silkworm’s poison, gives him extraordinary internal power without comparable martial skill. By the time he confronts Ding Chunqiu’s enemies, that imbalance has made him both formidable and easy to misread.

Identity and Grievance

You TanZhi identifies himself as a member of the You family of JuXian Manor and as the nephew of the You brothers. He tells Xiao Feng that his father, You Ju, and his uncle died after the confrontation at the manor. Xiao Feng answers that the brothers had died by suicide after losing their shield, while acknowledging that he had been forced to fight when the heroes surrounded him. You TanZhi does not accept this account as a reason to abandon vengeance: he calls Xiao Feng his enemy and says he has failed to avenge his parents.

His grievance is sharpened by Xiao Feng’s changed public position. When Xiao Feng spares him, You TanZhi interprets the decision as contempt rather than mercy, reasoning that a man now holding high office in the Liao Empire considers killing him beneath notice. Yet he takes some satisfaction in having located his enemy. The encounter thus leaves him with a continuing aim—revenge—and a practical obstacle: Xiao Feng is now harder to approach than before.

The Manual and the Iron Mask

The first major reversal in You TanZhi’s fortunes comes when he discovers an oilcloth-wrapped book in the vegetation where Xiao Feng had unknowingly dropped it. He recognizes that Xiao Feng had carried it personally and assumes it must be valuable, though its writing is unreadable to him. Rather than return it, he keeps it as a small act of retaliation. The book is the Yijin Jing, and his possession of it will eventually matter more than the grievance that prompted him to take it.

In Nanjing, You TanZhi is captured and fitted with an iron mask on A'Zi’s instructions. The blacksmith makes the mask from two joined sections, enclosing his head so that it cannot be removed. The attendants responsible for the procedure act on A'Zi’s plan to conceal his identity from Xiao Feng; You TanZhi, however, believes the mask is Xiao Feng’s doing and does not realize A'Zi’s purpose. A'Zi has him summoned to Beginning Fortune Palace after learning Xiao Feng will be away, inspects the result with satisfaction, and rewards the blacksmith. You TanZhi responds to her apparent warmth with a fascinated attachment, unaware of the calculation behind her treatment of him.

Poison, Posture, and Survival

A'Zi takes You TanZhi to a deserted valley and continues the poison experiments she had learned in Xingxiu School. Using the Divine Wood King Cauldron to attract poisonous creatures, she feeds them rooster blood and then lets them bite him, using the resulting blood for her own practice. A green spider and then a large scorpion are among the creatures involved. A'Zi expects him to die, as the people used in similar experiments by her master had died, but You TanZhi survives. After three months, the poisonous insects near Nanjing have become too weak for her purposes, forcing them to range farther afield.

The Yijin Jing begins to protect him through an accidental chain of events. During an episode of intense itching, the book falls from his clothing and opens. Tears and saliva soak its pages, revealing an illustration of a monk in an unusual posture. As You TanZhi contorts himself while trying to endure the sensation, his body falls into a position resembling the drawing; maintaining it makes his breathing easier and the discomfort more bearable. He then follows the pictured posture. The discovery is not the result of deliberate study: pain, exhaustion, and the accidentally revealed diagram bring his body into alignment with the manual.

A'Zi resumes the experiments the next morning, and You TanZhi continues using the drawings to counter the poisons. The repeated tests take them beyond the outskirts of Nanjing as local insects grow scarce. His survival contrasts with A'Zi’s expectation that he will die, but he does not understand the skill he is developing or the protection it gives him. What begins as a stolen book kept for revenge becomes, through bodily trial rather than conscious instruction, the means by which he endures her practices.

The Frost Silkworm and New Power

You TanZhi eventually returns to Nanjing carrying a gourd and reports that he has caught the frost silkworm. A'Zi is delighted and orders it kept in a clay urn. Although it is midsummer, the creature makes the palace progressively colder, until even the tea and drinking vessels freeze. A'Zi tests poisonous snakes and insects against it; they die while the silkworm feeds on them. After ten days, she orders You TanZhi to put his hand into the urn so the silkworm can feed on his blood.

The silkworm’s poison freezes his body, but the manual’s circulation method changes the outcome. You TanZhi uses the method he has learned, which neutralizes the poison’s harmful effects while the silkworm draws blood and the cold poison enters him. He has learned only one method, not the complete practice needed to expel the poison gradually; nevertheless, the poison remains in his body, where it combines with the internal energy cultivated through the manual. A'Zi believes him dead and orders him buried. An attendant instead leaves his body in a brook, and the water eventually carries him free of the ice. The mistaken disposal, rather than a deliberate rescue, allows him to recover consciousness and escape.

Afterward, You TanZhi practices the illustrated postures while carrying the silkworm, finding that they let him activate it and move with increasing ease. Over the following months, his hands and feet become nimbler, and his leaps and running speed improve. When a hungry wolf attacks, he strikes it with an untrained palm and kills it. He mistakenly attributes the force to the spirit of the dead silkworm. The account explains instead that the Yijin Jing’s internal energy, combined with the silkworm’s absorbed yin poison, has produced an exceptionally powerful cold force. The result is a striking divide: his internal power is deep, but his actual martial technique remains weak.

Conflict with Ding Chunqiu and Narrative Role

That disparity becomes important when You TanZhi encounters Ding Chunqiu amid the wider conflict involving the Beggar Society and Xingxiu School. Ding orders him to check whether the fallen beggars are alive. You TanZhi finds that they are already dead, but the examination exposes him to the poison Ding has used to kill them. The poison does not harm him because his continuing practice of the Yijin Jing and the frost-silkworm poison within him have made him resistant. Ding recognizes the resistance but mistakenly suspects a protective object or antidote; he does not understand its actual source. You TanZhi, wary after seeing Ding kill the beggars, declines to remain with him and leaves.

Later, You TanZhi fights alongside Ding against the Murong family, Shaolin monks, and the Eight Friends of Hangu. Ding’s recent instruction has given him several palm techniques, but his skill remains inferior to that of ordinary fighters. His cold internal force nevertheless makes his attacks dangerous: when GongYe Gan strikes him, the contact exposes GongYe Gan to the frost poison. You TanZhi’s power also leaves Fan BaiLing and GongYe Gan shivering, while Ding’s own attacks disable other opponents. The narrative distinguishes the two sources of danger rather than treating You TanZhi as a master: Ding supplies technique and tactical direction, while You TanZhi’s accumulated cold force supplies the extraordinary effect.

You TanZhi’s arc is built from misrecognition and unintended consequences. He takes the Yijin Jing to inconvenience Xiao Feng, practices its postures because they help him withstand A'Zi’s poisons, and survives the frost silkworm through an incomplete method he does not fully comprehend. Others, too, misunderstand him: A'Zi treats him as expendable, Ding misidentifies the source of his resistance, and You TanZhi himself mistakes his new power for the silkworm’s spirit. The former target of revenge therefore becomes a dangerous combatant almost by accident, with real force but little understanding of how it works or how to govern it.