The Tribulation of Immortals and Gods

The Tribulation of Immortals and Gods is a long Eastern fantasy novel by the web author Sleeping Dragon, serialized on Zongheng Chinese from November 24, 2011, and completed on December 31, 2012, totaling about 2.15 million characters and more than 800 chapters. The story begins in the Dragon Soaring Empire of the Divine Martial Continent: Tianfan is the seventh prince of the reigning dynasty, born into wealth yet unable to cultivate, and is treated coldly and slighted in a royal family that prizes martial strength; what he truly longs for is the free and easy life of an ordinary household. On the way to pay respects to their ancestors, the young prince and his party encounter a dangerous turn, and Tianfan thereby forms a bond with a divine dragon, receives an ancient inheritance, and sets out on a path of cultivation completely different from his former life. The novel opens with the question "What is an immortal? What is a god?": the ancient immortals and gods have vanished, why the immortal and demonic beings who were supposed to live forever have disappeared, and why the world-creating sacred artifact, the Gate of Gods and Demons, has been sealed—these unresolved mysteries form the main suspense of the book. As his cultivation rises, Tianfan's footsteps expand from the imperial court and sect all the way to a wider world, from a minor disciple of the Taifu Sect to a powerhouse roaming the heavens, passing through battles, bonds of loyalty, and trials of life and death, until at last he traces the relics of immortals and gods back to events a million years ago and gradually unveils an ancient secret that shakes heaven and earth. The work is divided into seven volumes—"Inheritance of the God," "Zombie Storm," "Four Sects Martial Meet," "Blood Battle Under Heaven," "Gods and Demons Fight Heaven," "Holy War of the Heavens," and "All Realms Return to the Origin"—and builds a cultivation system from foundation building to returning to immortality, along with a worldview in which the three realms of immortals, gods, and demons have lain silent for ages. It is one of the more widely circulated early mobile-era Eastern fantasy works.