The Saint

The Saint is a long Western-style fantasy novel by the web novelist Odinban Xuwei. It was serialized on Qidian Chinese Network starting in November 2006 and completed in March 2008, totaling about 770,000 to 780,000 characters. The story takes place in a city ruled by greed, power struggles, and gangs: Flan Fryer was once a young prosecutor who held fast to his conscience and believed in law and justice, only to discover that the world he lived in was far from a place where justice always prevailed. His persistence brought him framing and death, yet he rose again from death: when he woke, he was a resurrected living corpse, returning to the city in another form and under another identity. Thereafter, Flan, with rational and calm means, climbed upward and seized power and resources with one hand while settling scores with those who had persecuted him with the other; readers regard the work as a "fantasy version of The Count of Monte Cristo," and influences from classic literature such as Les Misérables and Hamlet are also visible. Running through the book is the tension between revenge and redemption: when a person pursues the justice in his heart through dark means, is he also becoming what he once hated? His entangled relationship with Peggy, loving and fighting each other, and his emotional line with his original wife Anwen are equally gripping. The novel's style is ornate and elegant, strong in psychological and detailed description, with a heavy tragic flavor, and it is a frequently mentioned representative work in Chinese web fantasy.