Heaven-Slaying Martial God

Zhu Tian Wu Shen is a long-running Eastern fantasy novel by Jinxiu Changge (real name Yang Yunge, a native of Suzhou, Jiangsu). Serialized on platforms including Tadu Literature since 2015, the completed work comprises 916 chapters and roughly 2.28 million Chinese characters. At the outset, Xiao Rang, a top assassin of the Heavenly Dynasty, dies unexpectedly during a mission, and the ancient relic of a demonic monk he had obtained perishes with him. When he opens his eyes again, he has become the useless young master of the Xiao family on the Tianwu Continent, also named Xiao Rang, who at sixteen still cannot open his qi sea and is driven off Windhowl Cliff by Xiao Zhan at the behest of his fiancée Qin Hongwan. The demonic monk's relic parasitizes his dantian, enabling this youth, mocked by the entire city, to open his qi sea by a twist of fate and thus set foot on the path of martial cultivation. Returning from bitter training at the bottom of the cliff, he stuns everyone at the Xiao family's Hidden Dragon Contest, then ventures alone into the Juque Sect to demand an explanation from his former enemies. He befriends Fu Rouzhi, a genius girl of the outer sect, battles Lin Yexing, ranked first on the Storm Rankings, on the life-and-death platform, and after being expelled from the sect, makes his way through the imperial capital, Tianyan Academy, and the Central Continent, crossing swords with prodigies of every faction along the way. The story ultimately builds to a confrontation with the deity who seeks to refine the Tianwu Continent; Xiao Rang fuses his own body to sever the passage to the divine realm and unexpectedly returns to Earth. Built around the theme of the underdog's rise, the book moves at a brisk pace with dense action sequences and is a quintessential example of traditional power-fantasy fiction.