The Sacred King

The Sacred King is a long Eastern fantasy novel by the web author Mengru Shenji (real name Wang Zhong), serialized on Zongheng Chinese from March 2012. It runs to about 1,600 chapters and some 5.07 million characters and is complete; a print edition was published in volumes by Taibai Literature and Art Publishing House from June 2013, the first volume titled The Divine Elephant Shakes Hell. Set in Yandu City on the Fertile Continent, the story follows the youth Yang Qi, a qigong practitioner who steals the city lord's Fudragon Pill so he can flee with the woman he loves, only to learn at the meeting place that he was merely a pawn; pursuers then destroy his qigong. At his wit's end, he is struck by lightning from the sky, through which he grasps the Divine Elephant Shakes Hell Force—governing spirit with qi and condensing elephants with spirit—and sets out to retrain in the martial way. He rises from a low plane through family feuds, academy trials and plane conquests, advancing from planets and star systems to the immortal and divine realms while searching for his origins and his birth mother, and finally ascends to the position of "Sacred King." The work is known for its vast plane architecture, dense realm settings and fast-paced battles, and is one of Mengru Shenji's representative works after Buddha Is the Way, The Dragon and Snake Saga, Yang God and Eternal Life. Note that the web serial and the print volumes differ in chapter arrangement; the print edition is a selected, volume-by-volume paper version.