Peerless Desolate God

Peerless Desolate God is an Eastern fantasy novel by web author Ling Yan, roughly 1.6 million Chinese characters long, 455 chapters in total, and completed on web platforms. The title comes from the novel's core setting, the "Three Desolations": at the dawn of heaven and earth, the world was divided into three desolations—before the desolation, all beings were benighted; at its beginning, all beings saw light; at its end, all beings fell into death and ruin—and the flow of the world's fortunes unfolds from this. The protagonist, Yan Yang, was born into a family as its young master, but because his meridians are frail and he cannot break through, he is regarded by his clan as a waste and long bullied and mocked by peers. Unwilling to sink into obscurity, he sets out alone onto vast ice mountains to seek fortune, and on the brink of death unexpectedly obtains a supreme treasure, from which a road to heaven opens before him. Yet his family is outlawed, his beloved leaves, and his sworn brother betrays him; blow after blow only forges his resolute character and firm Dao heart. On a continent crowded with racial factions and rising heroes, Yan Yang relies on the legacy he obtained and his own resilience to keep breaking through realms and dueling the powerful of all sides, step by step advancing on the road to trampling the heavens, until he stands firm and reigns among the mighty and reclaims all he has lost. The work follows the classic route of a worthless youth rising from adversity, opening on a snowfield and beginning with family humiliation, advancing through fortuitous encounters, martial technique training, family strife, and continental conquest; with brisk pacing and dense payoffs, it is one of the more representative long works in mid-2010s Chinese web fantasy.