Sword Dao: The Sole God

Sword Dao: The Sole God is an Eastern fantasy novel by Liudao Chenlun, serialized on Qidian from October 15, 2012, to January 12, 2016, totaling about 7.35 million characters and more than 2,400 chapters. The story follows Chu Mu, a young sword master on Earth who is surrounded and killed, only to be reborn in the body of a boy of the same name on the Ancient Sword Continent. The boy was the lowest-ranked outer disciple of the Qingfeng Sword Sect, with meager cultivation and constantly bullied by fellow disciples; Chu Mu, relying on a lifetime of honing basic swordsmanship and extraordinary comprehension, rises from outer disciple, makes his name at the Qingfeng Sword Tournament, then enters the Dakun Sword Academy for the "Battle of the Top Hundred," extending his reach from the Eastern Sword Domain to the Central Main Sword Domain and the Inner and Outer Sea Sword Domains, challenging sword prodigies everywhere. The book builds a fairly complete sword dao system: sword weapons fall into more than ten categories including long sword, thin sword, and broad sword; swordsmanship has five realms (Observing the Sword, Seeing the Sword, Hearing the Sword, Touching the Sword, Intent Sword); the sword dao has five realms (Sword Momentum, Sword Intent, Sword Soul, Sword Spirit, Sword God); and there are more than twenty sword dao inheritances such as Destruction, Slaughter, and Limit. The tone is "a swordsman should have an edge," centered on a pure pursuit of the sword dao with very little romance—a long serial power-fantasy driven by realm breakthroughs and clashes between prodigies.