Gate of the Mystic Realm

Gate of the Mystic Realm is the third full-length fantasy cultivation novel by the web novelist Wang Yu, following A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality and The Demonic Heaven Record. Serialization began on Qidian Chinese in December 2015; the book runs to about 3.4 million characters and is a completed VIP signed work. The story begins in a remote fishing village in the state of Qi on the Eastern Continent. The youth Shi Mu, orphaned from childhood, with thick brows and big eyes, lives only for martial arts. By chance he gains a wondrous encounter—a divine object falling from the sky and alien blood entering his body—and his body undergoes strange changes while his understanding opens up; yet because he possesses the wasted stone-monkey meridians, his cultivation talent is constrained, and he is regarded as among the worst in innate constitution. After accidentally killing the young master of the Jin family, he joins the Black Demon Sect and sets out on the martial path: he takes part in the war between humans and the barbarians, enters the Gate of Warriors, obtains the three-headed fierce python, has the curse on his body lifted, and takes the spirit pet Caier; then, pursued jointly by the Tongtian Immortal Sect and the Heavenly Demon Sect, he travels far to the Western He Continent, where after trials he obtains the essence blood of the white ape at Lingtian Peak, and is then, together with Liu An, forced by the True Man Huang Long into the Death Spirit Realm. In the Death Spirit Realm, Shi Mu forms a master-servant pact with the pink skeleton Yan Luo and meets many fellow cultivators along the way; after returning to the Eastern Continent and gradually completing his cultivation, he rises from a disciple of the Black Demon Sect to ever wider worlds, becoming entangled in sect conflicts, bloodline awakenings, and wars across the three realms, until at last he gathers allies, opposes the tyranny of the Heavenly Court, and confronts the struggle with the ancient mighty being Di Qun. The book takes as its core image the story of a youth who walks out of the Eastern Continent, a pink skeleton bound to him in life and death, and a resolve to become the strongest, and it is seen as Wang Yu's attempt at a transition beyond the mortal-stream formula.