Ancient King

'' The Ancient King was the first emperor of China, a being known to be the originator of the undead element and arguably the greatest earth mage in history. He was a great sovereign and a strategist who constructed the Great Wall of China as a defence against invasions by magical beasts. It protected them from both foreign and domestic threats. He was first active 2000 years prior to the current timeline. It was believed he was an extraordinary forbidden mage. ''

NOTE: This article is about the original Ancient King as he was known for 1000+ years, for the article about the possessed mantle owner check here.

Personality
Not much is known about his personality before absorbing Zhan Kong into his mantle but he was mainly believed to be a great ruler by his decision to unify China and build the great wall. He set lofty ambitions for himself as he was not content with ruling over just china, he sought to rule the world and even conquer the entire underworld after his death.

The Great Wall of China
Considered as a masterpiece and one of the greatest legacies of the Ancient king was the construction of the 13000-mile great wall that served as a defence station during the ancient dynasty. Made with earth magic alongside some special material, the shape and thickness of the wall was made to be controlled and modified, the undead emperor implied that there were more used but knowledge of that is believed to be lost. The wall itself was extremely strong and durable, able to sustain a good amount of damage from commander and ruler level creatures in its base form.

In the past, when humans stopped relying on the protection of the totem beasts the wall was the most important line of defence protecting the central plains. There were a special group of people in the country that could inherit the power to control the great wall, over time the number of these people decreased as the territory of the country expanded further north.

A testament to this masterpiece is the fact that the wall remains standing and mostly usable even after thousands of years of use and battle.

Undead Element
It was revealed that in pursue of eternal life the Ancient King had created the undead element and became an undead himself. In comparison to the Egyptian undead which originated from a curse spell, the Chinese undead were awoken and evolved due to the heavy presence of death, their awakening was related to the Ancient Kings’ experiments thus he build his kingdom of undead and ruled over them for thousands of years.

The Dark Abyss
This was a pit of death built by the Ancient King to store his imperial mausoleum when he fell into an eternal sleep so his peace would not be disturbed. It was essentially a passage that connects from the current world to the Chinese Underworld. It was seen that extremely strong chaos, space, psychic and undead magic was used in its creation; on the outside it was a gaping hole that could appear anywhere in the world at the owner's behest which contained swarms of undead creatures. It was further surrounded by a space vortex that would swallow all those nearby. The depth felt like a few several thousand meters and the inside was divided into layers, each covered with a strong presence of death; the first layer was full of phantoms and mountains of zombies, the second layer resembled a palace. The third layer would lead you to the throne room of the Ancient King.

The only group of people allowed to enter without resistance was his descendants; the dark abyss would destroy everything and stop all living creatures from invading the tomb except his descendants.

As one of the masterpieces of the Ancient King even the god of the Undead Khufu, wanted to obtain this power as his own undead could only move within the underworld light which was scarce.

The Undead Emperor
Sometime after becoming an undead he became known as the undead Emperor due to his control over the undead in China as well as his monstrous strength. Unlike other mages that had become undead with him it appears that he alone was able to embody the durability that the demon creatures were known to possess. He was able to retain a human like appearance but his facial features were no doubt aged, as such he partially envied Khufu who was still able to look more like a living human even after death.

His consciousness lived on through his mantle and the people allowed and swallowed into the abyss were actually sacrifices to aid the kings’ full resurrection. He would corrupt and absorb the essence of the person who wears the mantle in order to gain a newer physical body as shown with fang gu and Zhan Kong. After resurrection he was to collect the underground holy spring from its respective guardians to allow him bring the great wall to life and give him the sacred soldiers of the wall. He was the true king because he possessed the ancient divine army of the wall.

After a long while the Ancient King stated to have lost interest in invading and dominating other underworlds, he had not bothered to enter his mausoleum in thousands of years and stated that his ambition to rule the world had died with his flesh. His people and the totem beasts had long been buried in the graves thus he felt the current living world no longer belonged to him. Therefore, even when he had the chance to reclaim his capital city, he chose to turn around and stay under the ground alone. The reason being that he had conquered everything long ago with him being an emperor of an entire nation and an incomparably strong mage while alive. Even totem beasts were asleep in his territory so nothing was deemed worthy of his attention. His ambition only resurfaced when he saw Khufu trying to possess his land, not willing to let this transgression pass he set off to conquer and unify the entire underworld once again.

Undead Rulers
As the undead emperor he had under his command 8 Ruler level creatures that served as his commanders:


 * Mountain Zombie (Supreme Ruler Level); commander of the army of zombies
 * Phantom Ruler
 * Nether Bone Dragon (Great Ruler Level); the commander of the army of skeletons
 * The Carnelian corpse ruler; commander of skeleton production,
 * Red Skeleton Ruler
 * Phantom Tyrant Emperor
 * Queen of the Netherworld (Great Ruler Level); commander of specters (lowest number within the kingdom but trickiest to deal with, all elemental magic was useless against it)