The Beginning of Death

The Beginning of Death is a long fantasy novel by zhttty, the pioneer of the "infinite flow" genre, written after Terror Infinity. Running to roughly 1.86 million Chinese characters, it was serialized on Qidian starting in 2009 and completed in 2011, and is regarded as a prequel and companion piece to the world of Terror Infinity. The story opens with its protagonist, Pei Jiao, already dead. Because human technology makes heavy use of electromagnetic waves, EM waves accumulate continuously on Earth, and all people turn into soul bodies after death; when the waves reach a critical point, that hellish world of death will merge with the real Earth. The day of the merger is the end of the fifth sun in the Mayan prophecy: December 21, 2012. Death is only the beginning. Pei Jiao discovers that the world of souls is far vaster than he imagined: there is Fengdu and the Ox-Head and Horse-Face, fallen souls reduced to ghosts and monsters, battlefields left over from ancient hundred tribes and human civilization, and slaughter and contention unfolding in the form of "dungeon instances." With only a few years left on the countdown, he can only raise his strength frantically: tempering his will, seizing innate weapons, unlocking the gene lock, condensing his obsessions, growing step by step from a bewildered newly dead into a powerful figure who can shoulder responsibility, all to protect his loved ones and the beliefs he holds. The early part emphasizes the rules of the soul world and survival combat; the middle and later parts gradually connect to the vast system of "the primordial world, the sages, and the Human Emperor," echoing characters and foreshadowing from Terror Infinity and Infinite Dawn, and finally arrive at the theme that "humanity shall be the eternal protagonist."