The Old Man

## Overall:

The Guardian Spirit who had a contract with the Điền's family for almost 500 years. Not much else is known about him, other than that he was an extremely powerful spirit.

### Relatives

Điền Mục: father figureĐiền Quý: that cool uncle

### Occupation

Guardian Spirit / Điền's successor mentor

## Appearances

### Debut

Half-Alive: Book 1 - EyesHalf-Dead: Book 1 - Journey to the North

## Backstory:

The Old Man used to be a historical figure. After his death, he had served as the Guardian Spirit / Partner in crime of the Điền Duke. Later, he also looked after each generations of the Điền's family as some sort of mentor. The technique to turn one into a half-alive stage was invented to allow the Điền's family successor to merge with him for a long period of time without harming their body, longevity and life.

### Prior to Half-Alive Series:

Due to Mục's parent schedule, The Old Man was also a father figure to Mục. He mostly interract with Điền Mục through the form of written words, either by writing on a piece of note or typing on a cellphone. He was the one who convinced Mục to go on a trip to the Maize Village to gather intelligence, but turned out it was all his plan to train the lad.

While being eccentric and laidback to other, he was extremely strict with Điền Mục and often pushed the lad into dangerous situation to train him on the way of Plane-Walker. Or as Mục put it himself: The Old Man would never let him die, but there was still a whole lot of space for pain and trouble before that.

### During the attack on the Maize Village:

The Old Man refrained from involving directly at the start, only giving out advices and answer some questions. After he was revealed as a vague shadow by the rice powder in chapter 2, he went away for a while, leaving Điền Mục to tend to his own problem. But as the event of book 1 unfold, he become more active in the mission. In chapter 5 he sent Tam Vĩ Ô Vân to the boy aid when Mục need an escape, guided the boy to the funeral house for weapon, and finally appeared directly for the first time in front of Vũ Thanh in chapter 10, 2/3 way into the book. He revealed himself to be an eccentric, small and fragile old man at first, but transformed into a giant skeleton at the end and was revealed to be able to easily kill the antagonist with a single attack.

## Personalities:

\_ He gave off a quite and serious vibe while interracting with Điền Mục and rarely used more words than needed.

\_ When he appeared directly before Vũ Thanh for the first time, however, he was more talkative and acted on an almost arrogant atitude. The girl later ackknowledge that this might be due to him being in the middle of pulling an act to fool the antagonist of book 1.

## Abilities:

\_ The maximum limit of The Old Man power had yet to be confirmed, and we can only estimate how strong he was. Acording to his own words, he was at the very least minor god level in term of power, as he could easily avoid Mrs Mai surveilence during the event of the Maze Village.

\_ Normal third eye couldn't detect him. He was at the Hoàng Hoa Thám school during the skirmish, but Vũ Thanh couldn't spot him even with the Yin Yang glasses temporarily open her third eye.

\_ While merging with Điền Mục, he also shared the lad weakness of being completely blind to paranormal enemies. He then used his spiritual energy in a manner similar to echolocation of a bat or a dolphin to determine where the enemy was.

## Trivia:

\_ He was a gamer at core and his favorite genre is real time strategy game, like Age of Empire for instances.

\_ He made his own booze and hide them under Điền Mục bed.

\_ He used pretty old words and still having problem with writing ABC by hands. His writing is described as "someone use the Sino-Vietnamese style to write".

\_ While being quite modern for someone his age, some of his thinking and values still dated back 500 years ago.