The Throne of Contracts

The Throne of Contracts is a long fantasy novel by the web author Zhui Bushi, serialized since 2014 on platforms such as Zongheng Chinese and completed at approximately 1,486 chapters. The story is set on a foreign continent where magic is the fundamental order: mages are ranked by talent and bloodline, rising from apprentice and zero-rank mage all the way to soul mage and the single leader mage, while what truly determines a mage's upper limit in combat is the "spirit" summon beast he can contract with. The protagonist, Xize, is of humble birth, the son of a servant in a mage family; his mother brings him to live as a dependent, and he is bullied throughout the household, yet he always yearns to become a respected mage. After enrolling, Xize is repeatedly marginalized on the path of contracts and cultivation, and the spirit bound to him is acknowledged across the continent as the "most useless," but with exceptional combat instinct and unyielding will he sharpens what others see as a worthless ability into the keenest blade. The novel centers on mages' struggle for control of summon beasts, interweaving the rivalry between Normanluo City and the "Wind" organization, the maneuvering among spirit clans, and a magic war that sweeps the continent, building a complete combat system including acupoint opening and soul avatars. Across more than five million words, the work unfolds the long journey of a low-born youth ascending step by step to the "Throne of Contracts"; fast-paced and dense with battle, it is a representative Chinese-authored Western fantasy serial of the mid-2010s.