Shen Mu (Tomb of the Gods)

Shen Mu (Tomb of the Gods) is Chen Dong's second full-length fantasy novel after Bu Si Bu Mie (Undying and Imperishable). It began serialization on Qidian Chinese Network in May 2006 and was completed in November 2008, totaling roughly three million characters. A print edition was published by Jiuzhou Press starting in 2007 in fourteen volumes (a revised collector's edition was later issued by Writers Publishing House). The story opens in a vast graveyard called the Cemetery of Gods and Demons, where the strongest of every human generation, the top cultivators among the non-human, and the gods and demons of antiquity are buried. A plain young man, Chen Nan, resurrected from this tomb of gods after ten thousand years of death, is shaken to the core by the forest of divine and demonic gravestones. Over ten thousand years, seas have turned to mulberry fields: the Immortal Fantasy Continent and the Magic Fantasy Continent, once separated by a strait, have joined; Daoist arts and magic coexist, true qi and battle aura side by side, Eastern divine dragons dancing with Western great dragons. To unravel the secret of his own resurrection, Chen Nan travels the world seeking lost divine traces; in the western mountains of Chu he is drawn into a royal feud and meets the young Princess Chu Yu of Chu; he battles dragon knights and shoots down a sky dragon with his bow, earning the title of Wonder Worker of the Realm; finally, for the sake of a close companion, he raises havoc in the Chu capital, abducts the young princess, and flees to the lawless City of Sin. An ancient parchment scroll comes to light, the secrets of the ancient gods' war surface, and multiple factions gather to contend for them. With its grand "plot within a plot" structure linking ancient legends, the secrets of the gods, and imperishable divine relics, the book is the founding work of the "primordial war" school.