Shaking the Heavens

Hantian is an Eastern fantasy novel by the web author Yiye Qingtian. It began serialization on Zongheng Chinese in July 2014 and concluded on October 20, 2021, totaling roughly 2.276 million Chinese characters across more than 900 chapters. The story is set on the Tianyang Continent, a world where cultivation level determines one's standing. As a young child, the protagonist Yang Tian sees his family destroyed by a black-clad force led by the "Dragon Sun Emperor," and his parents vanish without a trace. He is taken in by Lin Yuan, master of the Longxing Martial Hall, and grows up in Qingshi Town. To keep the blood feud alive, he writes the names of his enemies day after day while diligently practicing the martial hall's "Blood Refining" art. Blood Refining has nine stages; by absorbing the essence of heaven and earth to fill one's qi and blood and unlock potential, Yang Tian breaks through to the third stage in under a year, far surpassing his peers. The old ring he wears, carved with a black dragon pattern—the Ancestral Dragon Ring—is the key to unraveling his origins and obtaining a supreme inheritance. Through martial hall tournaments, market trades, and trials in the Beast Mountains, Yang Tian gradually leaves Qingshi Town behind and is drawn into conflicts among ancient clans, sects, and imperial dynasties; he befriends companions such as Yun'er and Qingyuan and confronts the killers of his family. The story advances around the ancient prophecy "The Ancestral Dragon emerges, the Nine Yins appear, yin and yang in harmony, destruction without limit," unfolding layer by layer through images such as the Chaos Idol, the Great Wilderness War Drum, and sleeping war souls, and ultimately pointing toward a showdown between the protagonist and the heavenly Dao. With "the utmost power can shake the nine heavens" as its spiritual core, the work is a quintessential hot-blooded tale of a youth's revenge and rise against the odds.