Chronicle of the Demon Emperor

Chronicle of the Demon Emperor is a primordial xianxia novel by the Hunan author Xin Ru Panshi. It began serialization on Qidian Chinese Network in 2014 and was completed in April 2015, totaling approximately 2.74 million characters and 908 chapters (including an afterword). It belongs to Qidian's 'xianxia · mythological cultivation' category. The story is set against a savage primordial world in which the shaman and demon races oppose each other. The protagonist, Zhaoming, is a lowly fire-devouring demon who struggles to survive with his sworn brother, the blood demon Xiuluo, in a 'demon garden' ruled by the shaman race. The fox demon Acao, who sheltered them, dies at the hands of the shamans, becoming the knot in Zhaoming's heart and his starting point. He narrowly escapes and receives the Art of Awe-Inspiring Spirit and the Great Furnace Body Refining Method from a Pangu statue, shattering his core to refine his body in an almost self-destructive way, tempering his flesh as if it were a magical treasure. Thereafter, from fleeing the shaman island and settling at Tianji Ridge, to burning Pine and Cypress Ridge, condensing his body through heavenly tribulation, defending the city at Chigang, surviving the life-and-death ordeal of the island, and then the great battle at Tianji Ridge, the shaman-demon struggle for supremacy, listening to the Dao at Zixiao Palace, and training in the demon realm, Zhaoming grows step by step from a minor core-forming demon into a powerful figure commanding the demon race, ultimately ascending to the position of Demon Emperor and dying for the Dao to end the old order. The book blends mythological elements such as Pangu's creation, the Chaos Bell, and the stars of the celestial circuit, interweaving factional maneuvering, cultivation of the Dao, and the survival of a race, forming a demon-race coming-of-age epic of 'one general's success built on thousands of bones,' with a somber tone unlike the common smooth-sailing power-up stories.