Deception and Divine Pretense

Deception and Divine Pretense is a long fantasy novel by web author Feifeiyu, serialized on Zongheng Chinese Network from December 13, 2010, to December 16, 2011, at about 1.47 million characters in five volumes. It shares a worldview with the author's earlier Gu Ling Jing Guai, and the author admits in the afterword that the true protagonist of this series is actually Lord Bajie. At the start, modern young man Hu Wei wakes up on an unfamiliar mountainside, with an old-fashioned town below. Through a series of mishaps, he is mistaken by a bald cult for a so-called Descended Venerable, and his identity is displaced; by chance he also frees from underground an unscrupulous demon who claims to be Bajie and looks like a Calabash Brother, whom the Great Luo Sect had suppressed. Man and demon thus form a strange master-disciple pair. Set in an otherworld where gu sorcery runs rampant, the novel unfolds around living and dead gu, peerless horrors, and refining gu treasures, interwoven with open and secret struggles between cults and prominent families. It proceeds through volumes called The God Descends to Earth, Gu Ling Jing Guai, Walking with Song, and Earth-Shaking, from a mountain town all the way to the conflicts of the Northern Tang royal house and the descent of heavenly demons, ending in a final battle. The narration is mainly bantering and teasing, using misunderstanding, trickery, and mistaken identity to create laughs and suspense; it is the lighter, breezier entry in Feifeiyu's gu sorcery series.