Post by leeroy on Mar 10, 2020 5:56:25 GMT
Name: Shin Zhou
Bio:
-Race: Human, Immortal, Chinese.
-Age: 2,809
-Sex: Male
-Height: 5'8"
-Weight: 260 lbs
-Shoulder Width: 20.5 inches
-Arm Reach: 70 inches
-Leg Reach: 45 inches
Appearance:
Height is the only average factor of the superhuman being known as Shin Zhou. Broader and with more depth of chest than even some above average body builders, his body is a fortress of muscular fortitude. Cabling muscle bound so tightly as to be visibly banded through his flesh. A coat of skin so hardened by exposure to lethal temperature and regular beatings with wet ropes, lacerated a million times and healed over a million more. His hands are so callused they're almost stony in appearance, like a man who has driven his hands into sand so many times that he no longer feels it and must drive his hands into harder material. His thighs are enormous muscular pistons, each half as wide as he himself is, the muscles are so powerful that one can almost hear them move with his full exertion. His forearms and calves are tightly wound weapons, thinner than the upper limbs themselves, made into striking points through tight binding with leather straps and constant striking onto stone.
Despite the alarming appearance of the rest of his body, his face is the most striking. Across the entire right hand side of his face is an enormous hand shaped burn scar. The whole of the face where the hand was in contact is boiled flesh that recovered over a very long time. The right eye is totally absent, an empty socket is covered by a piece of white fabric that folds behind both ears and wraps around his forehead. The missing eye is not quite so terrible as the one eye that still remains. Perfectly circular, blood red sclera and stunning emerald green iris. A constantly shifting eye, rolling in the socket and taking in everything at all times. It could be likened to the eye of a tiger, enormous and observant, piercing straight through whatever it locks onto.
His jet black hair is lined with blue-black highlights, a messy and patchy set of wild hair that shows a complete disregard for it. It is thick, long and matted. A sticky mess of hair that dangles off his scalp and drapes over his shoulders and back.
Personality:
A fundamentally broken individual born filled with more hatred than a thousand lifetimes can process. A life lived with no recourse from his own hateful soul, a life of imperishable sorrow. He filled the void with violence. A violent life made a violent man, centuries of violence made a jaded man. He reformed himself, reduced his contact with other humans, but power draws power. Forced to face powerful opponents, even though he simply wants to no longer feel the hatred.
But the hatred burns so sweet, and when he finally succumbs it all comes out. That sinister sickness, that cruel and vile enjoyment of the destruction of others. Try as he might, reform as he will, he is still the same violent child he always was.
He's well educated, a capable conversationalist, a philosopher of sorts. The philosophy unrestrained human ability and violence being the core of his values, and the philosophy of a totally secular life in the face of either non-existent or worthless gods forms his religious core.
Abilities:
Imagine a human who doesn't need tools to survive, imagine a human who is immune to exposure and can best any beast in single combat. Imagine that man spending millenia training his body. Imagine him allowing atrophy to refine that body in incredibly specific ways to absolutely maximize the power of its movements. Imagine what that human would be able to do, and perhaps you will get a better picture of Shin as a warrior.
Natural Abilities:
-Strength: Raised by tigers then adopted by martial artists, a soul filled with a raging inferno of violence, he's a brutal expression of physical ability. There is no tool that Shin needs to perform labor, he can drive nails through boards, crank bolts into immovable security, drive stakes through stone, and strike cleanly through wood. It is noteworthy to mention that to even the most well trained human this would be nigh impossible, but for Shin it is casual.
The sheer force behind his blows makes him a terror to face on the battlefield, a single punch carrying so much force as to telescope the neck of a bull elephant in full charge. A kick carrying enough power to strike down a redwood with a single swing. His fingers having so much pressure as to explode a man's head like a grape and tear skin clean off their body. His teeth are ground almost totally flat at the back of his mouth from centuries on centuries of clenching his jaw.
His back and leg muscles are so dense and powerful as to be able to support the full weight of an oak tree with ease. He can drag ships out of the water with nothing but the chain of their anchor. And in a contest of strength he's more than capable of tearing a man clean in half, let alone simply proving his strength superior.
His neck muscles are so thick and broad that he is fully capable of supporting his own weight on his head, with a little more effort he's capable of performing a full back flip from that headstand position. So too is it impossible for him to be hung from the neck until dead, no rope has sufficient tensile strength to be brought taught enough to strangle him.
-Speed: Foot speed between burdened and unburdened is nigh indistinguishable, as no weight of arms and armor can burden him sufficiently as to hinder his movement. To test his fleetness of foot, he once had two men ten feet apart from each other and himself hold him at gun point. Both of them fired a single shot. Before the bullets passed his starting position he had disarmed both of them.
The speed of his hands and feet exceeds the speed of sound, able to strike with such speed as to generate cones of air and sonic booms. He is so quick as to react to a bullet at point blank range and catch it between his fingers. He invented the martial art of the Boxer Rebellion, designed to deflect bullets and even the playing field between an unarmed combatant and one wielding a firearm.
Stamina: Like a long distance truck with diesel filled to bursting, an airliner with no stops flying international, Shin is a well piled machine. His body generates less lactic acid than it burns, and so it isnt until the fatigue of the bones and muscles actually begins to damage them that he begins to slow down. And with his body being exposed to the totality of his force regularly, it takes an enormous amount of fatigue to wear him down.
Flexibility: Spending millennia practicing the yogic arts has given him flexibility that would not be possible normally with a body as muscular as his own. Able to turn his head and torso 170 degrees around, totally rotate his arms in their sockets, he's able to fold himself onto his legs in both directions totally flush. He is also able to raise his legs straight up over his head while standing totally upright. Every one of his fingers is able to bend totally back against his hand, even his thumb.
Reflexes and Agility: Hand in hand, his reflexes are more keen than even the sharpest in nature. Able to react to gunshots before the sound reaches his ears, catch himself at terminal velocity, readjust his body while falling like a cat, he's able to balance on just one finger in a totally vertical hand stand beneath a waterfall. It could be gauged that his reflexes are so quick that his reactions alone are faster than the eye can see.
-Durability: Subjecting flesh and bone to repeated injury strengthens it. Reducing its weakness, raising its durability. Shin spends his days driving his fists and feet into jars filled with diamond shards, lashing his body with cables studded with sapphires. His skin has been shaved with razor wire and struck with wet ropes and leather whips. At the invention of the sand blaster, he began nightly sessions where he had his skin blasted by accelerated particles. He also saturated himself daily in salted ice water and meditated in an oven whose temperature was slowly raised to several hundred degrees.
The bones, however, were much harder to harden. Bones must be broken to harden them, and so Shin had to force his bones into positions where he would break them. The best solution was to use his muscles to their absolute limit, and intentionally endanger himself. By being exposed to the absolute limits of his ability they were broken over and over again, each time harder than the last. Inevitably becoming stronger than even his profound ability could break.
Finally he trained himself to be as immovable as the mountain, and moved himself to meditate under the force of waterfalls. Standing beneath increasingly powerful flows of water, until finally he stood underneath the flow of Kaieteur Falls without being knocked from his feet. He then bought a jet liner engine and trained himself to stand against the wind of it.
His skin is impervious to small arms fire, temperature is meaningless to him, he's able to withstand the force of explosions without being rocked.
-Vertical: Beneath the flow of Kaieteur Falls he trained to jump higher as well. The resistance of dozens of tons of water smashing down on him gave him the perfect method through which to raise the strength of his legs. He jumped in place thousands of times, only pausing to eat. Beneath the falls he broke and doubled the world record. When he left he was able to casually jump in place twice his height, at his full force he was able to jump fully six times his height in place.
-Horizontal: Similarly, in the flow of air from a jet engine he leaped forward thousands of times. Only pausing to eat. In the jet of air he leaped twice the distance of the world record, and when he stepped out he was able to casually leap twelve meters from a standing position, and in full sprint he was able to leap fully a two thirds the length of a football field.
-Senses: A custom built total sensory deprivation chamber, measuring fifteen by fifteen by fifteen feet. A perfect cube of absolute silence, absolute blackness, where the sound of his own beating heart was deafening. He trained his mind to reduce the sound of his own heartbeat, his own breathing. Plugging his nose and ears he stared in the darkness until he could see a pin in absolute blackness. Covering his eye and plugging his nose, he listened in silence until he could hear through the walls and pinpoint where someone was standing by the sound of their heartbeat. Covering his eye and plugging his ears he had single milligrams of fresh spices brought in and sat there until he could identify them from across the room one by one.
He then trained his senses through over-saturation, in a room of blinding light he set up floor fans to blow confetti up and around wildly and several scraps of paper with different words on them. He stood there until he could see the exact word he was training for. In a room with speakers lining the walls playing unique tones and noises, he trained until he could hear heartbeats through the walls again. For smell he filled a room with the most potent putrid fumes and perfumes, blindfolded himself, then had to find those same spices he'd identified in the deprivation chamber.
-Prodigious Intelligence: Born a prodigy, more experienced than any human in history, Shin is a calculating and brilliant mind. Despite all of his cruelty, he is a pragmatic mind and sees himself for what he is.
Learned Abilities:
-Calculative Prediction: A genius in every way, Shin's mind is a machine of calculations, blazing through possibilities and eliminating them one by one. He's able to guess where someone is going to go by the direction of their eyes, their posture, the position of their toes in relation to the heel of their foot. He can guess where they're going to strike by the contractions of their muscles, and whether the blow is going to be pulled to set up for a bigger strike.
-Martial Perfection: Understanding fundamentally every single earthly martial art, Shin is able to piece together a person's entire fighting style through observation of their appearance. The thickness of muscles through clothing and armor, the wear and calluses on hands, the injuries that are visible on their person. Through this he's able to discern their weaknesses, their strengths. Not as a psychic ability, but instead as deductive reasoning. "He's got a scar on his left hand side and drops his left hand after jabbing. He's vulnerable to wide strikes on the left."
-Weapons Mastery: Every weapon of every type has passed through his hands, every martial art involving them is known to him in a deep and profound way. Without being familiar with the newest model, or the particular weight and balance of any weapon, he can use it as proficiently as a master who has spent their entire life dedicated to the weapon.
Paranormal Abilities:
Wire-fighter's Illusion: Those who have seen wire-fighters in stage plays or Wuxia films will be familiar with this entails. He is able to move through the air as though he were suspended by a wire that is controlled by a team of puppeteers, but instead of being at the whims of a team moving him he moves totally under his own power. He can run up and along walls, shoot upwards into the air and suspend his falls to reduce his velocity, float and walk across the surface of water.
Complex Interactions: Traveling between dimensions has left Shin in quite a state of matter. His body is made up of non-native particles to his home dimension due to spending multiple lifetimes within other worlds. This has put him in a state of unique interaction between himself and unnatural abilities. Magic, psychic powers, anomalous properties, he is able to interact with them in the same way one does with matter in similar states. Effectively allowing him to defend himself in a meaningful way against attacks that would otherwise be able to simply destroy him. Striking with force against these oncoming anomalous properties allows him to deflect or redirect them, and the anomalous nature is directly linked to the source of his own existence. If it is non-native to his existence, it is anomalous. This includes otherworldly entities, phasing out of sync with the universe, blinking, ghosts, and anything that is non-native to his world. Allowing him to trade blows with beings that are otherwise intangible or untouchable.
Weapons:
-Black Dragon's Fang: Guan Yu was said to use the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, a nearly 100lb weapon. An enormous glaive of steel with a shaft of durable wood. But it was an imitation of Shin's personal weapon, the one that was replaced by the Black Staff. This is a 240lb weapon of condensed steel, not simply beaten into shape, he spent the greater part of a century compressing the steel into an eight foot long plate of metal that had the durability of a twenty swords. A necessary method required for his use. It is eight feet long from tip to butt, the blade taking up one and a half feet, with a maximum blade width of seven inches and thickness at the curve of an inch. It is burned black from being forged, crushed and forged again. The handle is bound in red dyed leather, and the blade glistens at the edge like a shard of obsidian. It is strapped to his waist with the blade pointing straight out to the right, the handle rests on the sheathes of the Twin Jian.
-Skinflayer: An inversion of the necessities he'd taken for the Black Dragon, instead of creating a weapon that would not break so easily in his hands he created a weapon designed to break and cause more injury. Two thousand strands of steel as thin as human hair, painstakingly placed into the handle of a tool used for swatting flies. It is nineteen inches of razor sharp blades that lash and cut through skin and wrap around limbs, slicing through veins and muscles and leaving behind painful broken barbs in the wounds. It is strapped above the Black Dragon in the small of his back. It can be easily mistaken for merely flair on his armor.
-Twin Jian of the Demon: Elegant straight swords with perfectly kept edges, engraved with the seal script of Zhou. The sheathes of the swords have upward facing hooks that can lock the Black Dragon in place.
=The right blade is slightly longer, its edge is steel but the core is bronze. Incredibly flexible and light it is used to strike around defending swords and shields to lash them with the razor sharp tip. It is the primary offensive sword, faster and used to range and thrust.
=The left blade is heavier and shorter, made wholly of steel with a bronze plating. It is less flexible and has a duller edge, made primarily for chopping rather than slicing. It is a defensive tool, used to deflect and block oncoming blows.
Armor: All armor is made of well forged steel with bronze plating and elaborate carvings. Beneath the armor is a loose white robe weaved from spider's silk.
-Helm of the Eagle: A hooked beak shaped helmet with brown feathers projecting backwards away from the face, a faceplate that comes down and covers his empty eye socket and leaves his one remaining eye exposed.
-Chestplate of Tusk and Fang: A broad chestplate that connects to a loose chainmail that connects further down to plated faulds that cover his upper thighs. The distinguishing aspect of this chestplate is the pair of forward facing tusks on the raised collar, the backwards facing spines along the back, and the pattern of jaws with outward facing teeth that line the shoulders.
-Bracers of the Matted Hair: Forged coiling bronze hairs line the three channels on these bracers, these bronze hairs are lined with hooks and snag easily. They're designed to get weapons stuck in them.
-Spider Silk Robe: Spider's silk has spectacularly durable composition. Simply wearing fabric of average make, but constructed of spider silk offers a layer of protection that can surprise.
History:
The first interaction that Shin had with another human being was fifteen winters after his first thought. Abandoned in the wilderness, he was a wild child. The pure hatred leaking from him sustained him, gave him the necessary ability to survive. Found by a mother tigress, he forced himself upon her teat as a babe and strangled the infants. Her nature drove her to raise him as her own, for all of her own had been lost and causality is a human abstraction. She was a first time mother, and had little experience raising young. Eight weeks after his forceable adoption, he tasted blood for the first time. Six months later he was following her on his first hunt. Not skittish like felines, but bold like the man he was, Shin's first hunt was a total success. Instead of biting the neck of the pheasant he strangled it with his bare hands.
By eighteen months he was as strong as a young tiger of equal weight, hunting with his hands in taloned curves. Gripping, crushing and strangling his prey. His mother had weaned him and had begun to let him hunt of his own accord. It was at this time that Shin first faced difficulty, in a bold attempt he had moved on another hunter. A smaller felid, a jaguar, had crossed into his mother's hunting grounds. He was slashed and mauled, and was saved by the still attentive mother.
For a week he was stricken with fever from the infected wound, and only the grooming of the tigress kept him from falling to infection. She cleaned the wounds with her tongue, as he was her child in her eyes. The instincts of a mother run deeply.
Two years and a half years passed, he could only remember two and a half years but he was around seven years old. Despite being nothing but a child he was stronger than an average man, his fingers were crooked claws with overgrown fingernails. The tigress moved and he learned that he must hunt alone, though by this point he was more than capable of doing so.
Eight years in total inhuman isolation, a mind that desperately craved improvement, ease and spectacle. Constantly seeking new things to ease the boredom of a pointless existence. In his youth he could not connect emotionally to the species that adopted him, it was below him. It was fierce and strong, but he was smarter. Far smarter. When he looked into their eyes he saw no soul, he saw nothing of the vital essence that he felt burning within. The drive for survival drives one towards companionship, but he could find none with these things that were below him.
But then one day, in the midsummer, he saw a thing that looked so much like the reflection he cast in the water. An upright standing thing, muscular and hairless like he. A warrior of the Zhou Dynasty, serving under the royal banner. It was the very end of the Spring and Autumn period, deep into the Eastern Zhou period. The warrior was training in the mountain range that Shin inhabited, a multidisciplinary practitioner of Kalaripayattu and Shuai Jiao. He was training by fighting a declawed and defanged tiger, the very same that had fostered the young Shin.
Shin learned that day the coldness of his hateful heart. If the tigress had been captured, she was weak. He emerged from the wood and leapt upon her, the only act of mercy he ever afforded another living being. He broke her neck swiftly and painlessly, and watched her lifelessly slump to the ground.
He was adopted a second time by the martial artist of Zhou, he took to the name Shin. Zhou de Shinsheng, New Student of Zhou. A long name became a nickname, and a nickname became a permanent name.
He quickly became an asset to the throne, eager to learn, eager to do, eager to kill. The master quickly was surpassed by the student, far more capable physically than he ever was. One day he realized he would be a footnote in comparison to his pupil, and turned his blade upon himself.
Shin was sent out by the nobility to learn under foreign masters of warfare and combat, becoming an enormously well educated individual over the course of the next ten years. Though he lavished in poetry's unique nature to him, he despised its uselessness. He wanted to learn things that were of use. Language was useful, fanciful writing was not.
Well into the Warring States Period he was a warrior clad from head to toe in bronze metallurgy, as Zhou was known for its bronze armor. He chose to remain nameless on the battlefield, more a ghost of war than a true historical figure. Those who saw him passed on stories of a demon of the battlefield, a nightmare clad in a suit of bronze.
It was halfway into his fiftieth year that his abnormal lifespan became evident. Though all of his peers were exceedingly aged, he was still youthful and vigorous. A full century later, and his immortality was certain. The warring states period was a multicenturial period of warfare, and he was able to slip through the ranks multiple times over and over again to conceal his nature of an immortal.
When the warring ended, and the Qin dynasty united all of China, Shin left. He had no allegiance. He had no gods nor masters, for what god had he seen in over two and a half centuries of life?
He traveled to India, where he learned their languages, martial arts, and entered into their society during a peaceful period. He sought out kshatriya lords and warriors, and is in no small way responsible for the death of Chandragupta and the wars lead by Ashoka. When Ashoka forsake war, Shin traveled north into the Himalayas and entered into a temple of assassins.
The next few thousand years are unimportant, Shin shaped several historical events across the world in Rome, Persia, Russia, back to China, then Europe and eventually into the New World where Shin enjoyed the return to warfare with totally unfamiliar methods of fighting alongside the Spaniards.
He returned to the temple of assassins regularly through this period of time, where he was revered as a god of blood. Eventually he rejoined Chinese society during the Boxer Rebellion. He had attempted to teach them how to deflect bullets with their hands, but the limitations of the untapped human form lead them to be butchered. It wasn't until the encounter with LeeRoy that he was simply bored with existence. The first immortal that he'd ever met, and he bested him in combat through means of technology. His face was decimated, he lost an eye, and lost all of the respect of his temple of assassins.
Gods don't bleed, of course.
When they turned on him, he butchered them. Ever since he's found himself interacting with beings with unnatural abilities like his own. Two thousand four hundred years of nothingness, and then suddenly over the course of a hundred or so years he had met beings that could challenge his indisputable ability.
And honestly?
He couldn't get enough.
But then it got boring, like all things before it.
And so he returned to the mountain temple, now centuries in ruin, and retired. But retirement just doesn't like to stick.
Bio:
-Race: Human, Immortal, Chinese.
-Age: 2,809
-Sex: Male
-Height: 5'8"
-Weight: 260 lbs
-Shoulder Width: 20.5 inches
-Arm Reach: 70 inches
-Leg Reach: 45 inches
Appearance:
Height is the only average factor of the superhuman being known as Shin Zhou. Broader and with more depth of chest than even some above average body builders, his body is a fortress of muscular fortitude. Cabling muscle bound so tightly as to be visibly banded through his flesh. A coat of skin so hardened by exposure to lethal temperature and regular beatings with wet ropes, lacerated a million times and healed over a million more. His hands are so callused they're almost stony in appearance, like a man who has driven his hands into sand so many times that he no longer feels it and must drive his hands into harder material. His thighs are enormous muscular pistons, each half as wide as he himself is, the muscles are so powerful that one can almost hear them move with his full exertion. His forearms and calves are tightly wound weapons, thinner than the upper limbs themselves, made into striking points through tight binding with leather straps and constant striking onto stone.
Despite the alarming appearance of the rest of his body, his face is the most striking. Across the entire right hand side of his face is an enormous hand shaped burn scar. The whole of the face where the hand was in contact is boiled flesh that recovered over a very long time. The right eye is totally absent, an empty socket is covered by a piece of white fabric that folds behind both ears and wraps around his forehead. The missing eye is not quite so terrible as the one eye that still remains. Perfectly circular, blood red sclera and stunning emerald green iris. A constantly shifting eye, rolling in the socket and taking in everything at all times. It could be likened to the eye of a tiger, enormous and observant, piercing straight through whatever it locks onto.
His jet black hair is lined with blue-black highlights, a messy and patchy set of wild hair that shows a complete disregard for it. It is thick, long and matted. A sticky mess of hair that dangles off his scalp and drapes over his shoulders and back.
Personality:
A fundamentally broken individual born filled with more hatred than a thousand lifetimes can process. A life lived with no recourse from his own hateful soul, a life of imperishable sorrow. He filled the void with violence. A violent life made a violent man, centuries of violence made a jaded man. He reformed himself, reduced his contact with other humans, but power draws power. Forced to face powerful opponents, even though he simply wants to no longer feel the hatred.
But the hatred burns so sweet, and when he finally succumbs it all comes out. That sinister sickness, that cruel and vile enjoyment of the destruction of others. Try as he might, reform as he will, he is still the same violent child he always was.
He's well educated, a capable conversationalist, a philosopher of sorts. The philosophy unrestrained human ability and violence being the core of his values, and the philosophy of a totally secular life in the face of either non-existent or worthless gods forms his religious core.
Abilities:
Imagine a human who doesn't need tools to survive, imagine a human who is immune to exposure and can best any beast in single combat. Imagine that man spending millenia training his body. Imagine him allowing atrophy to refine that body in incredibly specific ways to absolutely maximize the power of its movements. Imagine what that human would be able to do, and perhaps you will get a better picture of Shin as a warrior.
Natural Abilities:
-Strength: Raised by tigers then adopted by martial artists, a soul filled with a raging inferno of violence, he's a brutal expression of physical ability. There is no tool that Shin needs to perform labor, he can drive nails through boards, crank bolts into immovable security, drive stakes through stone, and strike cleanly through wood. It is noteworthy to mention that to even the most well trained human this would be nigh impossible, but for Shin it is casual.
The sheer force behind his blows makes him a terror to face on the battlefield, a single punch carrying so much force as to telescope the neck of a bull elephant in full charge. A kick carrying enough power to strike down a redwood with a single swing. His fingers having so much pressure as to explode a man's head like a grape and tear skin clean off their body. His teeth are ground almost totally flat at the back of his mouth from centuries on centuries of clenching his jaw.
His back and leg muscles are so dense and powerful as to be able to support the full weight of an oak tree with ease. He can drag ships out of the water with nothing but the chain of their anchor. And in a contest of strength he's more than capable of tearing a man clean in half, let alone simply proving his strength superior.
His neck muscles are so thick and broad that he is fully capable of supporting his own weight on his head, with a little more effort he's capable of performing a full back flip from that headstand position. So too is it impossible for him to be hung from the neck until dead, no rope has sufficient tensile strength to be brought taught enough to strangle him.
-Speed: Foot speed between burdened and unburdened is nigh indistinguishable, as no weight of arms and armor can burden him sufficiently as to hinder his movement. To test his fleetness of foot, he once had two men ten feet apart from each other and himself hold him at gun point. Both of them fired a single shot. Before the bullets passed his starting position he had disarmed both of them.
The speed of his hands and feet exceeds the speed of sound, able to strike with such speed as to generate cones of air and sonic booms. He is so quick as to react to a bullet at point blank range and catch it between his fingers. He invented the martial art of the Boxer Rebellion, designed to deflect bullets and even the playing field between an unarmed combatant and one wielding a firearm.
Stamina: Like a long distance truck with diesel filled to bursting, an airliner with no stops flying international, Shin is a well piled machine. His body generates less lactic acid than it burns, and so it isnt until the fatigue of the bones and muscles actually begins to damage them that he begins to slow down. And with his body being exposed to the totality of his force regularly, it takes an enormous amount of fatigue to wear him down.
Flexibility: Spending millennia practicing the yogic arts has given him flexibility that would not be possible normally with a body as muscular as his own. Able to turn his head and torso 170 degrees around, totally rotate his arms in their sockets, he's able to fold himself onto his legs in both directions totally flush. He is also able to raise his legs straight up over his head while standing totally upright. Every one of his fingers is able to bend totally back against his hand, even his thumb.
Reflexes and Agility: Hand in hand, his reflexes are more keen than even the sharpest in nature. Able to react to gunshots before the sound reaches his ears, catch himself at terminal velocity, readjust his body while falling like a cat, he's able to balance on just one finger in a totally vertical hand stand beneath a waterfall. It could be gauged that his reflexes are so quick that his reactions alone are faster than the eye can see.
-Durability: Subjecting flesh and bone to repeated injury strengthens it. Reducing its weakness, raising its durability. Shin spends his days driving his fists and feet into jars filled with diamond shards, lashing his body with cables studded with sapphires. His skin has been shaved with razor wire and struck with wet ropes and leather whips. At the invention of the sand blaster, he began nightly sessions where he had his skin blasted by accelerated particles. He also saturated himself daily in salted ice water and meditated in an oven whose temperature was slowly raised to several hundred degrees.
The bones, however, were much harder to harden. Bones must be broken to harden them, and so Shin had to force his bones into positions where he would break them. The best solution was to use his muscles to their absolute limit, and intentionally endanger himself. By being exposed to the absolute limits of his ability they were broken over and over again, each time harder than the last. Inevitably becoming stronger than even his profound ability could break.
Finally he trained himself to be as immovable as the mountain, and moved himself to meditate under the force of waterfalls. Standing beneath increasingly powerful flows of water, until finally he stood underneath the flow of Kaieteur Falls without being knocked from his feet. He then bought a jet liner engine and trained himself to stand against the wind of it.
His skin is impervious to small arms fire, temperature is meaningless to him, he's able to withstand the force of explosions without being rocked.
-Vertical: Beneath the flow of Kaieteur Falls he trained to jump higher as well. The resistance of dozens of tons of water smashing down on him gave him the perfect method through which to raise the strength of his legs. He jumped in place thousands of times, only pausing to eat. Beneath the falls he broke and doubled the world record. When he left he was able to casually jump in place twice his height, at his full force he was able to jump fully six times his height in place.
-Horizontal: Similarly, in the flow of air from a jet engine he leaped forward thousands of times. Only pausing to eat. In the jet of air he leaped twice the distance of the world record, and when he stepped out he was able to casually leap twelve meters from a standing position, and in full sprint he was able to leap fully a two thirds the length of a football field.
-Senses: A custom built total sensory deprivation chamber, measuring fifteen by fifteen by fifteen feet. A perfect cube of absolute silence, absolute blackness, where the sound of his own beating heart was deafening. He trained his mind to reduce the sound of his own heartbeat, his own breathing. Plugging his nose and ears he stared in the darkness until he could see a pin in absolute blackness. Covering his eye and plugging his nose, he listened in silence until he could hear through the walls and pinpoint where someone was standing by the sound of their heartbeat. Covering his eye and plugging his ears he had single milligrams of fresh spices brought in and sat there until he could identify them from across the room one by one.
He then trained his senses through over-saturation, in a room of blinding light he set up floor fans to blow confetti up and around wildly and several scraps of paper with different words on them. He stood there until he could see the exact word he was training for. In a room with speakers lining the walls playing unique tones and noises, he trained until he could hear heartbeats through the walls again. For smell he filled a room with the most potent putrid fumes and perfumes, blindfolded himself, then had to find those same spices he'd identified in the deprivation chamber.
-Prodigious Intelligence: Born a prodigy, more experienced than any human in history, Shin is a calculating and brilliant mind. Despite all of his cruelty, he is a pragmatic mind and sees himself for what he is.
Learned Abilities:
-Calculative Prediction: A genius in every way, Shin's mind is a machine of calculations, blazing through possibilities and eliminating them one by one. He's able to guess where someone is going to go by the direction of their eyes, their posture, the position of their toes in relation to the heel of their foot. He can guess where they're going to strike by the contractions of their muscles, and whether the blow is going to be pulled to set up for a bigger strike.
-Martial Perfection: Understanding fundamentally every single earthly martial art, Shin is able to piece together a person's entire fighting style through observation of their appearance. The thickness of muscles through clothing and armor, the wear and calluses on hands, the injuries that are visible on their person. Through this he's able to discern their weaknesses, their strengths. Not as a psychic ability, but instead as deductive reasoning. "He's got a scar on his left hand side and drops his left hand after jabbing. He's vulnerable to wide strikes on the left."
-Weapons Mastery: Every weapon of every type has passed through his hands, every martial art involving them is known to him in a deep and profound way. Without being familiar with the newest model, or the particular weight and balance of any weapon, he can use it as proficiently as a master who has spent their entire life dedicated to the weapon.
Paranormal Abilities:
Wire-fighter's Illusion: Those who have seen wire-fighters in stage plays or Wuxia films will be familiar with this entails. He is able to move through the air as though he were suspended by a wire that is controlled by a team of puppeteers, but instead of being at the whims of a team moving him he moves totally under his own power. He can run up and along walls, shoot upwards into the air and suspend his falls to reduce his velocity, float and walk across the surface of water.
Complex Interactions: Traveling between dimensions has left Shin in quite a state of matter. His body is made up of non-native particles to his home dimension due to spending multiple lifetimes within other worlds. This has put him in a state of unique interaction between himself and unnatural abilities. Magic, psychic powers, anomalous properties, he is able to interact with them in the same way one does with matter in similar states. Effectively allowing him to defend himself in a meaningful way against attacks that would otherwise be able to simply destroy him. Striking with force against these oncoming anomalous properties allows him to deflect or redirect them, and the anomalous nature is directly linked to the source of his own existence. If it is non-native to his existence, it is anomalous. This includes otherworldly entities, phasing out of sync with the universe, blinking, ghosts, and anything that is non-native to his world. Allowing him to trade blows with beings that are otherwise intangible or untouchable.
Weapons:
-Black Dragon's Fang: Guan Yu was said to use the Green Dragon Crescent Blade, a nearly 100lb weapon. An enormous glaive of steel with a shaft of durable wood. But it was an imitation of Shin's personal weapon, the one that was replaced by the Black Staff. This is a 240lb weapon of condensed steel, not simply beaten into shape, he spent the greater part of a century compressing the steel into an eight foot long plate of metal that had the durability of a twenty swords. A necessary method required for his use. It is eight feet long from tip to butt, the blade taking up one and a half feet, with a maximum blade width of seven inches and thickness at the curve of an inch. It is burned black from being forged, crushed and forged again. The handle is bound in red dyed leather, and the blade glistens at the edge like a shard of obsidian. It is strapped to his waist with the blade pointing straight out to the right, the handle rests on the sheathes of the Twin Jian.
-Skinflayer: An inversion of the necessities he'd taken for the Black Dragon, instead of creating a weapon that would not break so easily in his hands he created a weapon designed to break and cause more injury. Two thousand strands of steel as thin as human hair, painstakingly placed into the handle of a tool used for swatting flies. It is nineteen inches of razor sharp blades that lash and cut through skin and wrap around limbs, slicing through veins and muscles and leaving behind painful broken barbs in the wounds. It is strapped above the Black Dragon in the small of his back. It can be easily mistaken for merely flair on his armor.
-Twin Jian of the Demon: Elegant straight swords with perfectly kept edges, engraved with the seal script of Zhou. The sheathes of the swords have upward facing hooks that can lock the Black Dragon in place.
=The right blade is slightly longer, its edge is steel but the core is bronze. Incredibly flexible and light it is used to strike around defending swords and shields to lash them with the razor sharp tip. It is the primary offensive sword, faster and used to range and thrust.
=The left blade is heavier and shorter, made wholly of steel with a bronze plating. It is less flexible and has a duller edge, made primarily for chopping rather than slicing. It is a defensive tool, used to deflect and block oncoming blows.
Armor: All armor is made of well forged steel with bronze plating and elaborate carvings. Beneath the armor is a loose white robe weaved from spider's silk.
-Helm of the Eagle: A hooked beak shaped helmet with brown feathers projecting backwards away from the face, a faceplate that comes down and covers his empty eye socket and leaves his one remaining eye exposed.
-Chestplate of Tusk and Fang: A broad chestplate that connects to a loose chainmail that connects further down to plated faulds that cover his upper thighs. The distinguishing aspect of this chestplate is the pair of forward facing tusks on the raised collar, the backwards facing spines along the back, and the pattern of jaws with outward facing teeth that line the shoulders.
-Bracers of the Matted Hair: Forged coiling bronze hairs line the three channels on these bracers, these bronze hairs are lined with hooks and snag easily. They're designed to get weapons stuck in them.
-Spider Silk Robe: Spider's silk has spectacularly durable composition. Simply wearing fabric of average make, but constructed of spider silk offers a layer of protection that can surprise.
History:
The first interaction that Shin had with another human being was fifteen winters after his first thought. Abandoned in the wilderness, he was a wild child. The pure hatred leaking from him sustained him, gave him the necessary ability to survive. Found by a mother tigress, he forced himself upon her teat as a babe and strangled the infants. Her nature drove her to raise him as her own, for all of her own had been lost and causality is a human abstraction. She was a first time mother, and had little experience raising young. Eight weeks after his forceable adoption, he tasted blood for the first time. Six months later he was following her on his first hunt. Not skittish like felines, but bold like the man he was, Shin's first hunt was a total success. Instead of biting the neck of the pheasant he strangled it with his bare hands.
By eighteen months he was as strong as a young tiger of equal weight, hunting with his hands in taloned curves. Gripping, crushing and strangling his prey. His mother had weaned him and had begun to let him hunt of his own accord. It was at this time that Shin first faced difficulty, in a bold attempt he had moved on another hunter. A smaller felid, a jaguar, had crossed into his mother's hunting grounds. He was slashed and mauled, and was saved by the still attentive mother.
For a week he was stricken with fever from the infected wound, and only the grooming of the tigress kept him from falling to infection. She cleaned the wounds with her tongue, as he was her child in her eyes. The instincts of a mother run deeply.
Two years and a half years passed, he could only remember two and a half years but he was around seven years old. Despite being nothing but a child he was stronger than an average man, his fingers were crooked claws with overgrown fingernails. The tigress moved and he learned that he must hunt alone, though by this point he was more than capable of doing so.
Eight years in total inhuman isolation, a mind that desperately craved improvement, ease and spectacle. Constantly seeking new things to ease the boredom of a pointless existence. In his youth he could not connect emotionally to the species that adopted him, it was below him. It was fierce and strong, but he was smarter. Far smarter. When he looked into their eyes he saw no soul, he saw nothing of the vital essence that he felt burning within. The drive for survival drives one towards companionship, but he could find none with these things that were below him.
But then one day, in the midsummer, he saw a thing that looked so much like the reflection he cast in the water. An upright standing thing, muscular and hairless like he. A warrior of the Zhou Dynasty, serving under the royal banner. It was the very end of the Spring and Autumn period, deep into the Eastern Zhou period. The warrior was training in the mountain range that Shin inhabited, a multidisciplinary practitioner of Kalaripayattu and Shuai Jiao. He was training by fighting a declawed and defanged tiger, the very same that had fostered the young Shin.
Shin learned that day the coldness of his hateful heart. If the tigress had been captured, she was weak. He emerged from the wood and leapt upon her, the only act of mercy he ever afforded another living being. He broke her neck swiftly and painlessly, and watched her lifelessly slump to the ground.
He was adopted a second time by the martial artist of Zhou, he took to the name Shin. Zhou de Shinsheng, New Student of Zhou. A long name became a nickname, and a nickname became a permanent name.
He quickly became an asset to the throne, eager to learn, eager to do, eager to kill. The master quickly was surpassed by the student, far more capable physically than he ever was. One day he realized he would be a footnote in comparison to his pupil, and turned his blade upon himself.
Shin was sent out by the nobility to learn under foreign masters of warfare and combat, becoming an enormously well educated individual over the course of the next ten years. Though he lavished in poetry's unique nature to him, he despised its uselessness. He wanted to learn things that were of use. Language was useful, fanciful writing was not.
Well into the Warring States Period he was a warrior clad from head to toe in bronze metallurgy, as Zhou was known for its bronze armor. He chose to remain nameless on the battlefield, more a ghost of war than a true historical figure. Those who saw him passed on stories of a demon of the battlefield, a nightmare clad in a suit of bronze.
It was halfway into his fiftieth year that his abnormal lifespan became evident. Though all of his peers were exceedingly aged, he was still youthful and vigorous. A full century later, and his immortality was certain. The warring states period was a multicenturial period of warfare, and he was able to slip through the ranks multiple times over and over again to conceal his nature of an immortal.
When the warring ended, and the Qin dynasty united all of China, Shin left. He had no allegiance. He had no gods nor masters, for what god had he seen in over two and a half centuries of life?
He traveled to India, where he learned their languages, martial arts, and entered into their society during a peaceful period. He sought out kshatriya lords and warriors, and is in no small way responsible for the death of Chandragupta and the wars lead by Ashoka. When Ashoka forsake war, Shin traveled north into the Himalayas and entered into a temple of assassins.
The next few thousand years are unimportant, Shin shaped several historical events across the world in Rome, Persia, Russia, back to China, then Europe and eventually into the New World where Shin enjoyed the return to warfare with totally unfamiliar methods of fighting alongside the Spaniards.
He returned to the temple of assassins regularly through this period of time, where he was revered as a god of blood. Eventually he rejoined Chinese society during the Boxer Rebellion. He had attempted to teach them how to deflect bullets with their hands, but the limitations of the untapped human form lead them to be butchered. It wasn't until the encounter with LeeRoy that he was simply bored with existence. The first immortal that he'd ever met, and he bested him in combat through means of technology. His face was decimated, he lost an eye, and lost all of the respect of his temple of assassins.
Gods don't bleed, of course.
When they turned on him, he butchered them. Ever since he's found himself interacting with beings with unnatural abilities like his own. Two thousand four hundred years of nothingness, and then suddenly over the course of a hundred or so years he had met beings that could challenge his indisputable ability.
And honestly?
He couldn't get enough.
But then it got boring, like all things before it.
And so he returned to the mountain temple, now centuries in ruin, and retired. But retirement just doesn't like to stick.