He's a Sanzo priest who guards the Tenchi Kaigen "Muten" Sutra, though he's mostly known for working behind the scenes—orchestrating the Gyuumaoh revival experiment at Houtou Castle while his true motives remain murky. He gets a kick out of watching the Sanzo Ikkou and the Kougaiji group like they're characters in a game he's rigged, often stirring up trouble just to see how they'll react. He keeps his distance, but he's always watching.
His background reads like the opposite of his current life. Born into a wealthy family of academics, both his parents were professors, and he was the overachieving type—breezed through grad school early and earned his doctorate on schedule. Then he just. left. Became a Buddhist monk instead. He'd gotten into the whole Sanzo priest thing, started as an apprentice called "Kenyuu," and eventually met Koumyou Sanzo. After killing the previous Sanzo, Goudai, he took the title himself and got renamed "Ukoku" by Koumyou. They traveled together for a year before he went solo.
The thing is, Ukoku runs a whole second identity as Nii Jienyi, a supposedly brilliant life sciences professor. It's a pretty convincing disguise—spiked hair, stubble, shabby white coat, the whole thing—that basically strips away any Sanzo priest mystique. He's genuinely talented at science and knows youkai magic well enough that Houtou Castle lets him live there, which is basically unheard of. He's tangled up with Gyokumen Koushu too, though he's clearly pulling more strings than she realizes while she thinks he's under her thumb.
Recently he pulled the Muten Sutra out of a stuffed bunny he's been carrying around forever and slipped back into full Priest Ukoku mode, shadow-pulling once more.
His actual power is pretty brutal: he can drag everything into darkness so complete it swallows all light and nullifies any attack thrown at him.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
