Tianming
A 12 or 13-year-old kid who's generally bright and playful, though he can be mischievous and protective of his friends. He's got a crush on Gao Yue, a girl raised by the Mohists, though he finds her older sister Duanmu Rong pretty intimidating—says her face is stiff as a board. He looks up to Ge Nie like a father and dreams of becoming a swordsman as skilled as him. He and Xiang ShaoYu have an ongoing rivalry, but he's got an easy, playful dynamic with Master Ban.
Tianming's most defining trait is probably his obsession with food—he loses it if anyone touches or ruins his meal. Beyond that, his loyalty, bravery, and genuine innocence stand out. What really drives him though is this deep belief that his father will come back one day, pushing him to become one of the world's greatest swordsmen.
Background
His childhood was rough. His real parents, both swordspeople, were killed when he was young, so he was taken in by an elderly family. A fire destroyed that home too, leaving him to fend for himself on the streets. About a month before the series starts, Ge Nie found him and brought him in. It later comes out that Tianming had been living with a Yin and Yang curse for years, which caused bouts of insanity—something that motivated Ge Nie to search for a way to cure him.
Training
Before the series began, Tianming picked up some martial skills on his own. His formal training starts in Season 3 under Manager Ding, who teaches him a knife technique called the Knife of Dismembering Cows. Ironically, despite wanting to learn sword work, Tianming got talked into learning the knife skill through the promise of Manager Ding's legendary cooking—the deal was he had to master the technique first. He managed to beat eight opponents with it, though he couldn't handle someone wielding an Anti-War Weapon.
People tend to assume Tianming isn't very sharp, but he's actually pretty clever. His lack of education just makes him seem less intelligent than he really is.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
