Lord of Merit

Lord of Merit is an urban supernatural novel written by the web novelist Huanggu Tiandi and serialized on platforms such as Qidian Chinese Network and 17K Novel Network. The full text runs about 1.8 million characters (platform statistics range from 1.8 million to more than 2.3 million, with about 700-plus chapters), and it was completed in November 2017. The story begins when the protagonist, Du Yu, is taking the college entrance examination. A "space divine insect" descends from the sky and recognizes him as its master; this insect ranks among the top ten on the universe's divine insect list and has the ability to control space and create wormholes. With the wormholes, Du Yu can freely travel to various parts of the universe, and at the same time he receives from the divine insect the True Formula of Merit. The entire cultivation system is centered on "merit": punishing evil and promoting good earns human merit; harmonizing the five qi and restoring ecology earns earth merit; blue seas and clear skies and the advancement of civilization earn heavenly merit. From this unfolds a dual-track path of "technology plus cultivation": Du Yu founds a technology company, befriends talented people, spreads technology, and revitalizes China; he takes part in projects such as developing the northwest, harnessing the Yellow River, sewage treatment, and seawater desalination, and further advances frontier breakthroughs such as space colonization and controlled nuclear fusion, triggering a new round of global technological revolution and elevating Earth's civilization from a "native" one to a member of the cosmic alliance. The story's vision also gradually expands from the modern city to the interstellar configuration of the "361 continents of the star sea," and amid the contention of various forces, the protagonist ultimately accumulates immeasurable merit and becomes the "Lord of Merit." The work combines urban entrepreneurship, technological development, and extraordinary cultivation, and is one of the representative works of the composite genre of "technological cultivation."