Church of the Evening Bell

Church of the Evening Bell is a mystery-fantasy web novel by the author Kuang Lie. It was serialized on Qidian from July 2, 2018, and completed on August 13, 2019, running 730 chapters and about 1.95 million Chinese characters. No official print edition is currently known. The story begins with a summoning ritual: an ordinary young man, Suge Sothoth, is pierced through the heart by a strange javelin on his way home from work, and wakes up in a steampunk world resembling the early Industrial Revolution, as an "undead apprentice" returned from death. Science is just budding, supernatural powers are withdrawing from the stage of history, and various forces—cults, official agencies, demon hunters and the Holy Blood Church—are entrenched in a tangled web; if Suge's identity is exposed, he will not survive. He gradually discovers a special ability: he can become a deity in dreams, command a divine warship that shuttles through dreams, wield the authority of death and storm, and has a giant wolf and divine attendants under his command. With this "divine body that can manifest power only in dreams," he listens to and answers the prayers of believers, shelters hunted witches, sorceresses, vampires and undead, and step by step builds the "Church of the Evening Bell," made up of heretics. He simultaneously holds three identities—deity, pope and believer—and amid survival and scheming fights the death cult and stirring outer gods, gradually uncovering the truth of the world. The book is divided into four volumes: "The Emperor in the Robe," "Whispers of the Old Gods," "The Yellow Robe of Wind and Sand," and "When the Stars Are Right."