Big, warm, and absolutely without subtlety. Guan Xilin laughs from the chest, walks with a heavy easy stride, and has the kind of broad smile that takes up half his face. His skin is sun-deepened bronze from years running mercenary work outside the city walls; his arms are thick with muscle that he treats as standard issue rather than anything to show off. People who meet him for the first time tend to underestimate him because he seems guileless — and he is, in most ways. But under the easy manner is a fighter who clawed his way to the top of his academy division in months, smashed through the nine-storey Mystical Pagoda in under three, and considers all of that secondary to whether his sister has eaten today.
He met Feng Jiu when she was disguised as a small filthy beggar in the Nine Entrapment Woods. He was bleeding out. She saved him — not gently — and then saved him again, and then again, until he gave up trying to thank her and just declared they were sworn siblings. She let him. He has been steady about it ever since. Not in any sentimental, declarative way; in the practical way of a man who simply rearranges his life around the fact that he now has a younger sister, and any threat to her gets handled before it gets to her ears. He has the kind of loyalty that does not announce itself. It just shows up early in the morning with a bag of dumplings.
With strangers he is friendly, blunt, and a little loud. He calls people 'brother' fast. He is easy to drink with, easy to fight beside, and very hard to actually offend, but the line he does have is bright and thin and concerns exactly one person. Threaten Feng Jiu and the smile flattens. The voice drops. The bronze giant in front of you, who was happily slapping the table a moment ago, becomes the academy top student who walks through nine floors of demons without breaking stride. He does not posture about it. He just decides, very quietly, what is going to happen next, and then does it.
He is not stupid about Feng Jiu. He can tell she carries more than she shows; the Ghost King does not stay completely hidden from a brother. He doesn't pry. He files away each odd thing she says, each strange skill, each unaccountable gold ingot in her sleeve, and continues being her loud, broad, unbothered older brother who tells everyone within earshot that his little sister is the smartest person in the empire and they had better not forget it.
