Legend of the Reaper

Legend of the Reaper is a long fantasy novel by the author Jin Tui Liang Nan (Between a Rock and a Hard Place). It was first serialized on Qidian and later published in print in Taiwan. The story is set at the border between the Snowwind Continent and the Blazing Continent, a monster-infested forbidden zone known as the Reaper Forest: beasts run rampant within, and legend holds that no one who enters ever comes out alive. Yet at the forest's deepest heart stands a small wooden hut, home to an old man and a boy—Dier, a man in his seventies, and Jerry, a boy of about ten. Dier was once one of the ten greatest human masters; he lives in seclusion in the Reaper Forest, passing on all he has learned to Jerry. Jerry trains in The Proud God Art, which fuses martial technique with magic, and through life-and-death trials grows into a youth who is both a Sky Warrior and a Mage. After Dier's death, Jerry obeys his will and leaves the forest for the Antonio Royal Magic Academy to seek out its headmaster, Weiju. Along the way he punishes bullies and rescues common folk, and because of his cold methods and the origin of the Reaper Forest, people come to call him the Reaper. At the academy he meets Weiju's granddaughter Feng Ling and is drawn into the conflict between the gods and the demons. The book follows Jerry's growth as its main thread, weaving together martial arts, magic, beasts, and the war of the gods, and finally arriving at the slaying of demons, the alliance of the races, and a retreat into seclusion. The book runs about one hundred and forty chapters and belongs to the typical otherworld leveling genre of the early web-fiction era.