Beast-Taming Ranger

Beast-Taming Ranger is a game-competition online novel by Yi Nian Hongchen, serialized on platforms such as Tadou Literature starting August 31, 2015, and completed on May 13, 2016. It runs to 848 chapters and about 2.7564 million characters and has not yet been published in print. The story unfolds along two narrative lines, one real and one virtual. After a failed undercover mission in which he personally ends the life of a close comrade-in-arms, SWAT officer Shi Haoyu, bearing a deep-seated hatred, takes on another assignment under the alias "Lone Wolf Shadow" and enters the vast holographic virtual game "World of Divine Ruin." In the game he takes up the profession of demon-hunting celestial master, centered on beast taming and the sealing of demonic beasts, progressing from career development and first boss kills to sect secrets, factional confrontations, and cross-server wars, steadily accumulating strength and connections; in reality, he continues to track the criminal syndicate and works to rescue his comrade's relatives. The growth arc in the virtual world and the undercover revenge arc in reality intertwine to form the book's central tension. The work blends three elements—undercover operations, revenge, and online-game competition—and its game setting emphasizes a self-created skill system and sect system supported by holographic technology, making it a fairly typical male-oriented virtual online-game novel of the mid-2010s. The game's numerical values and setting logic have sparked discussion among some readers.