War Emperor

War Emperor is an Eastern fantasy novel by web author Aotian Wuhen, serialized on 17K Novel Network (17k Chinese Web) from November 22, 2010. The book is complete, with a main text of over seven million characters, and long ranked among the site's most popular works. The story is set in a fantasy world called the Continent of Qiao. The protagonist, Xie Aoyu, is born a so-called "freak" who cannot cultivate battle qi and is regarded by his family and the world as a typical loser. In an accident he obtains a mysterious divine elixir, and his constitution and fate are transformed; he later acquires the supreme divine weapon, the Heaven King Blade, and advances rapidly in blade technique and battle qi. Unlike conventional power-type protagonists, Xie Aoyu is exceptionally gifted in combat insight, gradually creating his own time battle techniques and space battle techniques and weaving his understanding of rules into martial arts. As his strength grows, his stage expands from family and sect to the nations of the continent and ancient great clans, until he finally confronts the strife of a hundred races. The cultivation system in the book is clearly tiered, from elementary, intermediate, and advanced to Spirit, Cloud, Earth, Rainbow, Supreme Sage, Heaven King, Ten Kings, Battle King, Quasi-War Emperor, and War Emperor, and further to Mystic Venerable, Longevity, Heaven-Piercing, and True God; weapons are likewise graded as ordinary, fine, supreme, sub-sage, sage, Heaven King, Quasi-War Emperor, War Emperor, Heaven-Piercing, and True God, with "War Emperor" a landmark high tier in this system. The book's promotional tagline is "A tyrant's wrath leaves a thousand li of blood; a blade madman howls at the sky and all ages submit," and it follows the traditional fast-paced, battle-dense, strongly satisfying power-up route. Around the protagonist gather many female characters and companions of varied personalities, interwoven with family grudges, racial wars, and factional rivalry. The protagonist's travels across the continent under the alias "Qin Ziao" mark an important turning point in the book.