Imperial God Art

Imperial God Art is an Eastern fantasy web novel by Qingqing Zimo, serialized and completed on Qidian, totaling about 3.25 million Chinese characters. The story takes place on the Central Continent, where people cultivate body and spirit with mysterious power, deduce fate and fortune, open their fate palaces, and strive to break the shackles of destiny and reach the ultimate path. The Mysterious Power Realm is only the starting point for tempering blood and physique; only by entering the Fate Palace Realm does one count as a true cultivator. The protagonist, Shen Jian, comes from the Shen family of the Central Continent's imperial city. He begins cultivating at nine and reaches the ninth level of mysterious power at ten, breaking through nine realms in a single year, and is for a time regarded as a talent unmatched in his family. Yet for more than four years afterward he makes no progress, and as the age limit of fifteen approaches he still cannot break into the Fate Palace Realm. By family rule, those who fail to reach it by fifteen are sent to manage business at branch offices, reduced from young masters to outer relatives and expelled from the household. Meanwhile, more painful still, his young cousin Linglong is sold by the principal wife under the name of marriage into the Bai family as a child bride, and what the Bai family covets is precisely her body of absolute yin. Just as he is trapped, Shen Jian accidentally obtains a mysterious pendant, through which he senses the attributes of the five elements and eight gods, retrains in arts better suited to him, and rapidly breaks through. He then befriends Bai Sheng of the Bai family, gradually uncovers the truth of his sister's sale, grows through family crises and turmoil in the imperial city, survives power struggles and life-and-death trials, and ultimately breaks through to the Immortal Venerable Realm, leading many experts into the Third World to rescue the sealed ancestral gods of the four divine beasts and the great powers of the human race, where a new adventure unfolds. With the passionate refrain "I would contend for the throne—who dares challenge me," the book tells of a youth oppressed by fate who rises against the current and reclaims command of his own destiny.