Deceiving Heaven to Become a God

Deceiving Heaven to Become a God is a modern cultivation web novel by Zhongchang, serialized on Zongheng Chinese from March 2013 and completed in nine volumes. The story is set in a multidimensional world ruled by the Divine Race: humans on the surface survive in the gap between a technological society and the cultivation world, while the Divine Race feeds on souls and treats humanity as a tool for producing "food"; the residual souls discarded by the Divine Race form what are called "ghosts." Humanity and the ghost race, unwilling to endure slavery, join forces in rebellion, sparking a human-divine war that lasts over a hundred years. More than twenty years after the war subsides, the world believes the calamity has passed, yet the great demon "Heavenly Demon," who once brought bloodshed and terror to the world, reappears, and the youth Li Ming is the reincarnation of the Heavenly Demon's true body. An ordinary student at Flame School nearly expelled for academic problems, he harbors the bloodline of an ancient Asura; in the course of challenging Lin Yu, the pinnacle of the human Luo, and bitterly practicing methods such as the Eight Gates of Escape Scroll and the Asura Scroll, he gradually discovers the truth of his origins and is drawn into a new catastrophe as divine and demonic spirits descend upon a new generation of cultivators. The book unfolds across nine volumes—"Sunset in the West," "Dawn Approaches," "The Fierce Battle," "Setting Out on the Journey," "Storms of the Tang Sect," "The Far Shore of the Sea of Suffering," "The Doomsday Era," "The Gluttonous Intestine," and "The World Tree"—blending cultivation systems such as the Eight Gates of Escape and the power of chaos, spreading from school, Spirit Village, and the ruins of the ancient Heavenly Court all the way to the collapse of order in the immortal realm, and closing with "The Eternal Beginning and End."