Shield Strike

Shield Strike is a long fantasy novel by the web writer Jiu Heng, serialized on Qidian and completed around 2011; it was one of the earlier works to become popular along the "playing the pig to eat the tiger" and "invincible protagonist" lines. The protagonist has been through nine nirvanas and nine rebirths, accumulating over the long years networks and allies throughout the Federation; a hundred years later he is reborn once more from the flames, returning to this other world in the guise of a seemingly harmless ordinary young man. To secure a position at the Eastern Military Academy, he applies to be the academy's combat instructor, and from then on, while "keeping a low profile" teaching on campus, he is drawn into the open and hidden struggles among the various factions. The disciples and subordinates he once trained and groomed now, a hundred years later, hold high positions—academy principal, security department official, even leading figures in their fields; as these connections are revealed layer by layer, they form the book's core appeal of "identity revealed." The "shield strike" of the title points to the work's emphasis on defense and on using defense as attack, and the protagonist's fighting style and hidden strength are built around this. The book moves at a relaxed, exhilarating pace, with dense fight scenes interspersed with the protagonist's elusive interactions with several female characters; it is a typical long male-oriented power-fantasy novel.