Lord of the Underworld

Lord of the Underworld is an Eastern fantasy novel that Xilou Yaoyue began serializing on Qidian in 2014 and completed on March 11, 2015. It runs 491 chapters and about 1.42 million characters and is regarded as a follow-up to the author's previous work Taigu Shenmo Jue, though it tells a completely new and independent story. The novel centers on the premise of the "millennium reincarnation": a legend circulates in the world that the gates of hell open once every thousand years, and from them walks a heroic spirit reborn into the human world, called a "Soul Slayer"—harvesters of souls and bywords for death. A peerless prodigy falls under mysterious circumstances, and his remnant soul is tempered in hell for 967 years; when the Soul-Sealing Gate of Hell opens again, he is reborn into the body of Chen Yang, young master of the Chen family in Jiangning City, Chu State, in the Eastern Victory Divine Continent. Reborn, Chen Yang is only sixteen and has cultivation of merely the first heaven of the Body Tempering realm, with mediocre aptitude, leaving his position as young master precarious; at the same time, he secretly inherits the Soul Slayer legacy, gaining the power to devour and annihilate souls—a secret he must let no one know. To reach the Spirit Gathering realm before turning eighteen and escape his fate, Chen Yang starts by selecting techniques and martial skills from the family's Wuji Pavilion, and goes on to establish his authority at the clan assembly, fight over the Two Realms Mountain, weather the upheaval at the Divine and Demonic Holy Land, and finally win fame throughout eastern Chu, gradually uncovering the truth of his past life and the ultimate mission of the Soul Slayers. The novel's martial system has nine great realms—Body Tempering, Spirit Condensation, Embryonic Breathing, Spirit Gathering, Spirit Sea, Life and Death, Reincarnation, Peerless and Divine Transformation—each with ten heavens, and the whole work concludes with the title "Lord of the Underworld."