Martial God

Martial God is the breakout work of web novelist Cangtian Baihe. Serialized on Qidian.com from December 2009, it spans roughly 4.79 million Chinese characters and over 1,300 chapters; upon completion, Taibai Literature and Art Publishing House released it in 12 print volumes. The story begins with He Yiming, the sixth young master of the He family estate. From childhood he trains in the metal-element art Hundun Jin on the mountain, reaching its fifth level at nine—then stalls for four years, turning from a prized prodigy into a mediocre youth in others' eyes. A chance encounter with a strange radiance in a lake rewrites his constitution: any combat technique he sees, he instantly masters; any new art he takes up, he clears its advancement barriers at once. With this bottleneck-free cultivation talent, he builds a foundation in his family's postnatal Five Elements manuals, practices metal, water, wood, fire, and earth arts, and ascends step by step toward the innate realm—passing through Baishantian, Yixiantian, Three Flowers Gathered Atop, Five Qi Returning to Origin, and other stages—until he reaches the realm of the True God. Along the way he leaves Taicang County and the northwest, becoming entangled in feuds among factions such as Tianchi Mountain, Lingxiao Treasure Hall, the Five Elements Sect, the Ten-Thousand-Zhang Glazed Cave, the Seven-Colored Ice Palace, and the Yellow Springs Gate. He also befriends the alien liquid-metal robot Bai Ling Ba, and the spirit beasts Treasure Pig and Thunder and Lightning; he forges his own path in alchemy and smithing, and wields divine weapons—the Light-Transformed Five Elements Ring, the Nine Dragons Furnace, the Aurora Sword—in battles across the land. The book advances by the plainest logic: train martial arts, grow stronger, reach the top—a quintessential Eastern fantasy of survival in the simplest, most direct way, in the name of martial arts.