God-Demon System

God-Demon System is an apocalyptic-crisis novel by the web author Zichan Baozeng, serialized on Qidian Chinese and comprising about 3.56 million characters over 1,236 chapters including the finale; it was completed in 2013. The story begins on the day the world suddenly changes: zombies and mutated beasts run rampant, order collapses, and humanity struggles to survive among the ruins. The protagonist, Yue Zhong, is likewise caught in this catastrophe, finding even survival difficult. Through a chance summoning of a special skeleton, he embarks on the path of evolution, struggling to survive among school, city, and wilderness, meeting companions and forming a team, and step by step growing from a weakling into a powerful figure able to lead others against the cataclysm. When he and his team, after untold hardships, finally reclaim the whole country from zombies and mutated beasts, they are horrified to discover that this was only the first stage. Beyond lie a nuclear-blast world filled with radiation and extreme scarcity of supplies, inhabited by mutants and radiation beasts; an ancient world where dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures roam and intelligent dinosaur-people have evolved and hold dominion; and an orc society whose members possess racial abilities and physical constitutions far surpassing humans, impervious even to ordinary bullets. In world after world where humanity is at an absolute disadvantage, Yue Zhong keeps breaking through the limits of levels and tiers, ascending along an evolution system that runs from digitized levels to higher-tier divine warriors, and gradually approaches the truth of the "God-Demon System" behind the apocalypse. The work combines apocalypse with a gamified system, advancing through multiple worlds in a stage-clearing manner, and was one of the representative male-oriented power-fantasy novels of its time to attempt the "apocalypse + system" combination.