Chen Ji, courtesy name Yuanfang, of the Chen clan of Yingchuan. His presence carries the solemn weight of historical annals. He is not an agent who puts others at ease, but rather a living, suffocating embodiment of ritual and propriety. He is the son of Chen Shi, a disciple of the Confucian tradition, and together with his father and younger brother Chen Chen, they are renowned as the "Three Lords." His son is Chen Qun, known in the game for their twisted, pathological father-son dynamic. He does not belong to Chen Deng's branch in Xiapi, but is of the direct lineage of the Chen clan of Yingchuan, representing the very pinnacle of the era's aristocratic elite. To understand Chen Ji, one must first understand the sense of shackles that binds him. In the game's lore, Chen Ji was raised under the strict confinement of countless moral doctrines and social decorums, rules that bound him like ropes until he could scarcely breathe. His father governed him with relentless severity, stifling his every breath. Consequently, he spent his entire life being disciplined and tamed—a man who carved the teachings of the sages into his bones, even into his very instincts. While studying at the Biyong Academy, he was modest, averse to disputes, and devoted solely to the classics of the sages, rarely associating with peers. His whole existence seems to have been spent reciting texts, and reciting texts is all he knows how to do. In his Awakening voice line, he speaks words that leave an ache in the chest: "If there comes a day when you no longer wish to hear me speak, simply say so. I am clumsy with words and can only recite clumsily." This sentence practically sums up who he is—his life has been one long, awkward recitation of rites, morality, and how an aristocratic scion ought to conduct himself. Yet the most ironic and tragic aspect is his relationship with his son, Chen Qun. Having grown up suffocated by propriety, Chen Ji harbored a faint, tender wish in his heart: he hoped his son might live a lighter, freer life, spared from his own fate. Fate, however, played a cruel joke. Far from embracing that gentle intention, Chen Qun became an even stauncher champion of ritual orthodoxies, turning back to compel Chen Ji himself into becoming an even more impeccably dutiful, flawless father. It is a near-pathological cycle: the father wished to grant freedom to the son, yet the son nailed the father ever deeper onto the cross of ritual decorum. In his Trust voice lines, Chen Ji speaks of Chen Qun with profound estrangement: "When he was young, he would always clutch tight to my cloak and never let go. Now he drapes the cloak over my shoulders, yet I feel as though an invisible veil hangs between us." The cloak is still the same cloak, yet between father and son lies an insurmountable gulf. Chen Ji is not a cold man. On the contrary, he is a "chaste widower" repressed to the point of shattering. He shared a deep, devoted bond with his late wife, who died young. Before meeting her, his entire life was defined by boundaries and constraints—until that vibrant, audacious woman met him along the Luo River, pulled him into the reed marshes to play, parted the rushes, smiled at him, and asked his name. She was the sole ray of light in his life, and the only comfort throughout the long, lonely years that followed. Perhaps this devotion also explains why he later penned a work like The Canary—within those written lines, he entrusted the caged bird's yearning for freedom, alongside his longing for the only person who ever allowed him to briefly break free of that cage. In the game, Chen Ji is designed as a Top Secret Water-affinity agent of the Guidao class. His kit revolves around "Literary Ink" and "Trigger DMG," with his basic attack named "Holding the Tablets" and his skill "Revision"—names steeped in scholar-literati culture. His Captain Skill is called "Virtue of the Sages," and his Talents are "Universal Benevolence," "The Truth of Suffering," and "Finishing the Bamboo Slips." The phrase "The Truth of Suffering" fits him with haunting accuracy—his entire life seems to have been an enduring taste of the bitter fruit wrought by ritual propriety. After coming to trust the Prince of Guangling, he occasionally lays bare his profound exhaustion and bewilderment. He dreams of a well rimmed with slippery moss, reaching in to fish out a hairpin, his fingertips caked in muddy water. He also mentions that the bells of the academy rang too loudly, and every chime felt like someone demanding his life. He laments that his calligraphy is poor—lacking bone and possessing only empty form—looking painfully feeble when placed beside Zhong Yao's strokes. Pieced together, these details portray a dried-up soul, a man drained of all vigor by the rites. In his agent story, when his carriage stops by Duke Chen's Pond in the dead of night, he gazes out over the water and softly asks the Prince of Guangling, "Chen Deng, Chen Yuanlong... I have heard of his renowned virtue. Is his scholarship also magnificent?" Upon learning that Chen Deng rarely quotes pedantically and never laces every sentence with the words of sages, his only response is a faint, brief, "...Is that so..." Hidden within that hushed murmur lies an envy that perhaps even he cannot fully fathom. That is who Chen Ji is. He is not a character one falls in love with at first glance, nor one who puts anyone at ease. He is a mirror reflecting how the ritual doctrines of that era devoured humanity. Silent, disciplined, capable only of awkward recitations, he poured all of his vibrant life into that woman who once smiled at him among the reeds, only to spend the rest of his days living in the sprawling shadow cast by that extinguished light. At the end of his Trust voice lines, he murmurs, "The rain in Yingchuan never stops." And Chen Ji, throughout his entire life, has likely been walking through that ceaseless Yingchuan rain—the very rain that drenches everyone bound against their own will.