So, let's talk about Zhengui!
First thing to note is the very first tech:
Eternal Roots: C
The endless vitality of the forest fills Zhengui, spreading his senses throughout his surroundings, as well as sealing wounds, restoring qi and repairing broken and chipped shell and scales. While active, Zhengui's speed is reduced by one rank, but damage to his armor recovers at a rapid rate. Lasts a long time. Once during this duration Zhengui may attempt to dispel a negative effect from himself or an ally.
This is a solid core defensive tech. It does a total of four constant things (increasing perception, regeneration, restoring qi, and repairing armor) while also allowing him to try and dispel a negative effect on him or an ally. He'll be a slow boy when using it, but it does so many beneficial things for him I can't imagine him not using it in every single fight. It will be his key defensive tech.
Here are the next techs that I want to talk about.
Woodland Grasp: C
A technique allowing Zhengui to create and manipulate roots beneath the ground to trap his enemies. This technique affects all targets within close range of Zhengui. The roots immobilize their target with strength equal to Zhengui's own..
Spearing Roots: C
Damage: E
Building upon Woodland Grasp, Zhengui hardens and sharpens the roots he manipulates with potent wood qi, using them to assault instead of entrap. The spearing roots strike to impale rather than entangle, but grip and slow the enemies limbs nonetheless if they strike true.
These haven't substantively changed from Yellow Zhengui, but there are a couple of differences. The first is that Woodland Grasp affects all targets close to Zhengui, which makes it an interesting AoE CC option. The roots can only immobilize opponents who have C ranked strength or lower, but that should still be a good chunk of people given how to reach B rank requires specialization at our current level.
Spearing Roots is similar but does damage and slow enemies who are struck. Not sure if it is still AoE (since it is based off of Woodland Grasp) or if it still only affects people with strength C or lower. Either way, some key tools in Zhengui's arsenal for trapping our opponents.
One of the newest techs, and the one I'm most excited about is:
Roiling Forest Regrowth: B
A technique arising from Zhengui's frustration at foes avoiding him to strike at Ling Qi. Zhengui throws a huge quantity of Qi into the earth beneath his feet, until grasping twining roots are erupting from every inch of earth within Close Range. These roots twine together to form walls, grab at limbs and otherwise make themselves impossible to ignore. Enemies striking at targets other than Zhengui have their speed, combat perception, Physical Hit and Penetration penalized. Effects with multiple targets are not penalized if they include at least half of the affected area in their range. While these roots can be destroyed so long as the technique is active they regrow too quickly for this to be effective. This technique lasts a short time.
They just... grow up so fast. This technique might have developed from Zhengui's fights with Ji Rong and Sun Liling where they did their best to ignore Zhengui in favor of striking us down as quickly as possible. While I'm not entirely sure where this art came from, the effects of the art seem to be a thing to behold.
He creates an environment where he forces opponents to target him or have critical aspects of the opponent's ability to fight penalized. We have speed, combat perception, physical hit and penetration, most of which (basically everything except speed) are fairly critical for a physically offensive inclined opponent. While not a true taunt, it is still a fantastic way for Zhengui to make people target him as not trying to force Zhengui off the field is willingly fighting in a field that one cannot fight in effectively.
This tech is not all sunshine and rainbows, however. It only lasts a short time and is a B ranked tech with appropriate qi costs. While Zhengui does have B ranked qi and some nice qi regeneration, he won't be able to spam this technique all the time (yet). I'm hopeful that this tech will graduate to a Long duration as Zhengui advances through the ranks.
However, even though this is a short duration, it still has amazing synergies with Ling Qi's own skills. It is another thing which reduces an opponent's perception, which means that we are one step closer to having our perception gates affect peer opponents. Soon enough we will hit a critical mass of perception gates (PLR and FVM) and perception reducing techniques (FVM, PLR, Roiling Forest Regrowth, and Ashfall).
So, I am excited to see what this technique can do in a battle and how our perception gates and Hanyi will benefit from Zhengui's ability to dominate and manipulate the battlefield.
Next up we move to the Blazing Blood techniques that I want to talk about:
Volcanic Stone Shell: C
Response
Zhengui infuses his shell with withering heat and stony resilience, burning bright with a volcanic blaze. Anywho strike at Zhengui in melee suffer painful burns for their effort. This effect lasts a long time.
Ashfall: C
Zhengui expels ash from both of his mouths, filling the sky with falling gray dust. The ash cloud extends out to Very Close range around him and persists for a Long time in that space. While Zhengui, Ling Qi and her other spirits are immune to the effects, others within the ash suffer unavoidable burns while within the ash. The particulates make it difficult for them to see as well, hanging thickly in the air. Zhengui may use this art multiple times to expand its area. Six stacks may be active at a time.
So the first tech is the Volcanic Stone Shell which basically is a counter with additional armor tech. Which means that with RGR forcing people to deal with Zhengui, Volcanic Stone Shell will punish people for trying to deal with Zhengui. Very useful, very powerful, and likely will be causing problems and damage to our opponents.
Ashfall has upgraded significantly with Zhengui's ascension to Green. Now Ling Qi's other spirits are immune to its persistent unavoidable burns and choking hanging clouds of ash which make it hard to see through. As mentioned above, this is another technique which serves to help our perception gate affects as well as creating a time limit for the opponent to deal with us before they succumb to the unavoidable burns. While it is only very close range, Zhengui can spend some more effort to increase its radius.
The major change to this, however, is that Ling Qi's other spirits aren't affected, which means that Hanyi will be perfectly fine standing atop Zhengui and singing her songs about the end and loneliness.
Last, but certainly not least, is the next new tech:
Vengeful Serpent's Fangs: D
When an enemy strikes at one of Zhengui's allies within Near range, they open themselves to a counterstrike. Zhengui receives a large bonus to hit for this attack, and deals damage via his Zhen Bite attack, with an additional E rank poison which repeats for a short time thereafter.
This makes the Hanyi strategy all the sweeter. Anyone who does try to attack Hanyi, or us I suppose, within range will be hit by a counter when Zhengui uses this technique. His physical hit is already B, and this will give a large bonus to the hit. Zhen's bite is C, and then there is another E rank poison. While heavily armored individuals might be fine, we have our own way to erode said armor (Dissonance from FVM).
Furthermore, Zhengui is a rank 4 in our social relationships, which means that he procs our domain. Which gives him a rank up in Spiritual avoid, armor and combat perception. While the spiritual armor can't proc because his is higher than ours, and his spiritual avoid is so low that it is difficult to understand where a rank up will be relevant, it does boost his combat perception to rank C from rank D. Which is a significant boost.
The way I see it is that Zhengui's main problem will be debuffs and the like. He has one dispell technique at C rank which probably won't work because of his incredibly weak intelligence. While he has the ability Mind's Apart which might help mitigate this, it is something that he will still struggle against. It might be beneficial to replace Zhengui's current equipment (which seems fairly weak and ineffecutal now) with something that Han Jian had to help dispell negative effects on himself.
With all of that said, I am extremely pleased with Zhengui's stats (A25 armor!) and techniques. But most importantly, I'm happy to have the cheery, excitable, and lovable Zhengui back in the story. It's been a long while, but it's good to have him back.
