Ever Night

Ever Night is a long-form Eastern fantasy novel by Mao Ni, serialized on Qidian from August 15, 2011, to April 30, 2014, totaling roughly 3.75 million Chinese characters. In 2022, Writers Publishing House released it as Ever Night (Complete in Ten Volumes). The story unfolds in a fictional world protected by Haotian: legend has it that every thousand years the King of the Underworld descends and the world falls into Ever Night. When the family of a Xuanwei General of the Tang Dynasty is massacred, the boy Ning Que barely escapes and scrapes by with a baby girl he found, Sang Sang, rising step by step from a common frontier soldier to the capital city of Chang'an. He gains entry to the Academy, the world's highest institution of cultivation, becomes a disciple of the Master and the Academy's Thirteenth Gentleman, and inherits the mantle of a Divine Talisman Master. As he uncovers the old case and takes revenge on his family's killers, he is drawn into the vast maelstrom of the Son of the Underworld and the legend of Ever Night. The first half chronicles the youth's revenge and ascent in cultivation; the second half follows Ning Que and the Academy's company as they strive to turn the tide while the nation teeters on the brink, culminating in a direct confrontation with Heaven as embodied by Haotian. Built around the Academy and the Tang Empire as its core images, and rewriting master-disciple bonds and duty to home and country through the archetypes of Confucius and his disciples, the novel injects freedom, faith, love, and the spirit of striving against impossible odds into a fantasy framework. It is regarded as one of the most canonical works of the Eastern fantasy genre, won the gold award at the first Online Literature Biennial Awards, and was adapted into a television series of the same name.