Inner and Outer Worlds

Inner and Outer Worlds is a long web novel by the author Pokemon (formerly writing under the pen names Bianhuasha and Winter Snowflake). It began serialization on Qidian in January 2018 under the "native fantasy" category, runs over eight hundred chapters and about three million characters, and is complete. The novel builds an original world in which an "inner world" and an "outer world" run parallel and interwoven, using an "infinite + descent" premise: atop the real world are layered countless "inner world" instances of varied forms, where genres such as the supernatural, xuanhuan, xianxia, martial arts, science fiction, war, and myth take turns appearing, and participants must enter these inner worlds to complete objectives and gain resources and power. The protagonist, Yan Luo, is a "heartless one who has lost emotion": he can sense and absorb the intense emotions released by others and fuse different emotions into "persona masks," each corresponding to a different ability and way of responding. Centered on the core mechanic of "breaking through the human limit," each character in the book possesses an absurd yet vivid "limit" and "fate talent," such as Lucky Explosion, Restart, Black Coffin Seal, and Eye of Fantasy, giving rise to an ensemble story that is both hot-blooded and tinged with neurotic humor. The book's pacing is driven mainly by combat and instance progression, and the "heartless one" premise conveniently avoids extensive romance writing; the style is brisk and packed with ideas, and readers regard it as one of the representative works combining the descent and infinite genres.