The Heavy-Armor Demon

The Heavy-Armor Demon is a long-running infinite-flow novel by the web author The Fat Man in the Wine Cup. It was serialized on Heiyan.com starting in December 2013, completed in June 2014, and ran to 693 chapters totaling more than 2.3 million characters. Set in an "atypical infinite world," the story follows the protagonist Lei Yun, whose original body is lost in a mishap. He is reborn in a demonic form—referred to in the book as the heavy-armor form of the "Fujin Mo" lineage—and becomes the avatar of the "God of Harmony." The line "On behalf of the God of Harmony alone, I punish those who defy order" recurs throughout as the book's signature refrain. At heart he is a researcher and mechanical engineer: he analyzes by first principles, tests materials by trial and error, and solves problems by handcrafting. His signature gear is heavy armor and a heavy hammer, which makes him stand out in a world where magic and technology coexist. The story advances in "volumes" as the protagonist travels through multiple scenario worlds that the author has remixed and fused, such as an arena, a mutant world, a city overrun by ghosts and monsters, vampires and a cabin in the woods, a bug paradise, and a mecha battlefield. Along the way he faces factional choices and the rules and resource calculations of the Source Space. The author assigns each world parameters such as "world compatibility" and "mystery level" to explain how the power system is diminished or enhanced under different rules—the most praised technical device in the book. Its tone is rational deduction plus black humor: the protagonist is not heartless, but he wavers repeatedly between kindness and ruthlessness, and allies and enemies alike have their own agendas, with scheming, outfoxing interplay as the main source of fun. This is an underrated gem with a high reputation among veteran infinite-flow readers, praised as "solid worldbuilding, wildly imaginative, with a technical and snarky prose style." Note that the work exists only as a web serial; no officially published print edition could be found.