Forest of Crimson Dreams

Forest of Crimson Dreams is a Western fantasy novel by the web author Hu Xue. It began serialization on Qidian in 2010 and was completed in March 2011, totaling about 650,000 characters in 168 chapters. A traditional Chinese print edition was produced and distributed by Shuopin Culture Co., Ltd. The story is set in a "canopy world": the entire world is supported by towering giant trees, people's cities are built on the canopies, and the higher the altitude, the higher one's status. The red-scaled tung at nearly 1,000 meters, Yellow Eucalyptus Town at 2,000 meters, and Saint Poplar City, whose canopy spans ten thousand rings, form the main geographical coordinates of this world. Canopy platforms built from parasitic vines, the ecological crisis of light fruit parasitized by dodder, and the profession of "tree doctors" who specially tend the giant trees together sketch out a self-consistent law of forest survival: marriages value marrying into a higher tree, commoners suffer "altitude sickness," and nobles who descend to lower trees get "oxygen intoxication." The protagonist Bevis is a transmigrator who grew up in the Red-scaled Tung Orphanage, self-mockingly lazy yet always pushed forward by fate. By chance he obtains a crimson-diamond-grade dream pet, and together with childhood companions such as Skaru he faces a series of trials—the brutal admissions assessment of the Blazing Sun Academy, the Fate Judgment training camp, and missions at the Imprisoned Spirit Beast Park—struggling to survive amid the threat of emerald-grade magical beasts and class barriers. With fantasy adventure as its skeleton and a large dose of black humor and witty dialogue woven in, the story tells of a small figure rising from orphan to legend in the giant-tree forest, and also portrays the myriad faces of this rigid world.