Zhe Tian (Covering the Heavens)

Zhe Tian is a long classical xianxia novel by Chen Dong, serialized on Qidian.com from October 2010 and completed in May 2013, totaling roughly 6.36 million Chinese characters. The story opens in the cold depths of the cosmos, where nine colossal dragon corpses drag a bronze coffin, captured by a space probe—this is the "nine dragons bearing a coffin" phenomenon that runs through the entire book. Ye Fan, a young man from Earth, is gathered with his college classmates on Mount Tai when they are carried off Earth along with the bronze coffin and plunged into a cultivation world known as the Big Dipper Star Domain. Ye Fan is judged to possess the rare Ancient Sacred Body, yet for that very reason he is regarded as a "waste body," and he must start out in a chaotic era surrounded by powerful clans, holy lands, demon tribes, and ancient creatures. He ventures into forbidden ancient lands, learns source arts, battles the holy lands and great families, and treads the ancient starry road, befriending companions such as Pang Bo and Ji Ziyue along the way while repeatedly confronting the crushing weight of lifespan and destiny. The novel's main threads are cultivation, treasure-seizing, and the contest for the path to emperorship; it depicts the fierce rivalries of the cultivation world's prodigies and their obsession with immortality. In the end, Ye Fan attains the Dao through sheer power, achieves the fruit of the Heavenly Emperor, reorganizes the Heavenly Court, sweeps the forbidden zones, and ends the dark turmoil. "Climb the heavenly road, walk singing, a snap of the fingers covers the heavens" is the line readers most often cite as the essence of its spirit.