Mandate of Heaven

Mandate of Heaven is a fantasy novel by Kaifang, a star author on Yuewen Group's platform. Originally titled The Immortal King of Fortune, it was serialized on Qidian starting in December 2019 and completed in April 2022, running to roughly 2.56 million Chinese characters. The story opens with Tao Ran, an unrivaled immortal king of the Qiongzhi Realm, pursuing the Nine Heavens Desire Demon across the boundless void; the two destroy each other, but his soul crosses time and space and is reborn in the body of Li Mochen, a sixteen-year-old mixed-race youth in the United States of America—one of the lesser-ranked heirs of the Wiltonstein family. He awakens gravely wounded with his divine soul damaged, facing family ostracism and poverty, and must immediately fight formidable opponents in the national high school cold-weapons combat tournament. Thereafter, drawing on his Eastern cultivation foundation and his natal treasure, he rebuilds his techniques and subdues his inner demons, rising from the arena into family feuds and underground power struggles, making allies and countless enemies along the way. He moves through a vast web of magic, magical-energy technology, firearms and arms dealing, dragon veins, and otherworldly factions, climbing ever higher in cultivation as he uncovers the truth of "heaven's mandate." Set in a fantastical version of 1970s–80s America, the novel fuses Eastern Daoist arts with Western magic and technological civilization, telling the story of one who is played by fate becoming the one who wields it, and closing with the protagonist's transcendence. The work was featured in Qidian's homepage category recommendations and has accumulated roughly 730,000 recommendation votes.