Ren Huang (The Human Emperor)

Renhuang (The Human Emperor) is a long-form Eastern fantasy novel by the web author Shi Bu Xing. Serialized on Qidian from March 2013, the completed work runs to roughly 2.1 million Chinese characters across 336 chapters. The story opens in the modern era, when journalist Xiao Yi, covering an archaeological excavation, is caught in a rift in time and space and falls into an unknown primeval world—an age more distant than even the era of Yan and Huang, a vast, savage land drenched in blood and violence. It is a time of unspeakable misery for the human race: surrounded by a hundred rival tribes, with immortals, gods, buddhas, and demons all counted as enemies, cities burn and battle blood flows everywhere. Carrying a broken stone mirror and the essence of a dragon egg, Xiao Yi lands among the Bloodstone Tribe of the northern wilds. Through the visualization and body-tempering art of the Great Elephant Force Formula, he rises from a sickly, ordinary frame, opening his heavenly meridians, condensing battle qi, and honing his fist intent and spear techniques, advancing step by step through the cultivation stages of blood refinement, bone tempering, soul fusion, earth splitting, and heaven opening. He forges a supreme battle soul and takes "Heaven Slayer" as his battle name, living through tribal wars, promotions through the military command structure, the legacy of a lost ancient battlefield, and a life-and-death showdown at Purgatory Peak, until at last he bears the will of the human realm under a golden battle name, confronts the great tribes of a hundred worlds, uncovers the secret history of the Heavenly Emperor's Palace on Mount Buzhou, and in the final chapter sets out on the road "back to the primeval age." Beneath the novel's spiritual creed—that the human race trusts only itself, seeking no immortals, worshipping no gods, and bowing to no buddhas—runs a bloody epic of a weak tribe fighting to survive through flesh, blood, and battle soul.