Ru Shu

Ru Shu is an Eastern fantasy web novel by Duanmu Ci, a Lv.3 author on Yuewen Group's Qidian, serialized on Qidian.com from June 15, 2014. It was once halted and resumed updates in 2025; the book runs about 1.59 million characters. The work builds its power system on the framework of traditional Confucian culture, telling of a Confucian world where thought is power: poems and lyrics can manifest, calligraphy and painting can become real, and the sages built the Great Wall with sacred power to fend off attacks from monsters and barbarian tribes. The continent is divided into nine kingdoms, all upholding Confucianism and selecting officials through the imperial examinations; Confucius is revered as a sage and The Analects as the Sacred Canon. Scholars must first "open their minds" before drawing sacred power from the Great Wall and turning poems and essays into physical objects for battle and creation. The protagonist Su Lin transmigrates to Fengle County in the Kingdom of Wu on the Tianren Continent as the son of a scholar but fails to open his mind, earning the name "Su the Blockhead." He finds himself oppressed by a vicious stepmother, his family property seized, his betrothal on the verge of ruin, and even fed the Mind-Dulling Grass by his stepmother, nearly losing forever the chance to open his mind. With little time left before he turns sixteen, at the critical moment he activates the "Wordless Heavenly Book" in his mind—a volume holding Chinese poetry and prose—and opens his mind with Confucius's words "The gentleman is not a vessel," alarming the Sacred Temple. From there he rises from top of the county exam to pass the prefectural and provincial exams, wielding poetry as weapons and thought as a blade, rooting out treacherous officials at court and slaying monsters and repelling barbarians on the battlefield, walking his own "way of not being a vessel." The work incorporates Confucian classics and the writings of literati through the ages, displaying a fantasy world in which the power of thought is made concrete through such Confucian powers as "drawing a prison on the ground," "calling a stag a horse," "scattering beans into soldiers," and "dotting the eyes of a painted dragon."