Heaven's Query: The Cosmos

Heaven's Query: The Cosmos is a fantasy novel by web author Meng Feiyi, serialized exclusively on Motie Chinese and now complete. Set against the grand backdrop of the "Nine Heavens and Nine Realms," it divides the world into multiple tiers of heaven from bottom to top. The realms are strictly ranked, and cultivators must climb level by level through their cultivation; cultivation rank and lineage together form the underlying order of this world. The main storyline centers on the Zhou clan of the Soul-Breaking Realm. The Zhou are one of the foremost great families of the Soul-Breaking Realm, whose ancestors fought their way from the First Heaven up to take root in the Fourth Heaven; the cultivation achievements of the clan's younger generation directly determine whether the family can keep rising. Clan head Zhou Tianqi has seven wives and concubines and thirteen children. The most favored is his daughter Zhou Liang — born with a heavenly omen and showing astonishing talent in cultivation, she is the clan's great hope. The most neglected is Zhou Lingshang, her younger brother by the same mother, whose constitution makes him unfit for cultivation; at sixteen he has still not entered the Body-Refining Way and is regarded as the family's shame. The novel opens with Zhou Tianqi's decision to banish Zhou Lingshang down to the Qinghua Realm of the First Heaven: the father is adamant on grounds of family interest and establishing authority, while the sister pleads with him out of kinship and tries desperately to save her brother. Zhou Tianqi's outward severity and inward misgivings become the key foreshadowing of the boy's turning point. Through the stark contrast between the siblings' talents and fates, the novel shows how the cultivation system determines individual destiny, sketching a world where rank is judged by cultivation and stay or go is decided by strength, and from there raises questions about fate, kinship and self-proof.