Martial Emperor

Emperor Wu is a long-form Eastern fantasy web novel by Gao Lou Da Sha (real name Cao Yi). Serialization began on Chuangshi Chinese Network in 2013, and the complete work runs to roughly 630 chapters. Built around the twin pillars of "martial arts" and "the Heavenly Court," it tells the story of a boy from the lowest possible starting point who claws his way upward through sheer ruthlessness.

The protagonist, Yi Li, is born into the Yi clan. As a youth he cares only for idle pleasures and lets his foundation grow hopelessly weak—until upheaval strikes his family and his elder brother is crippled by the powerful. Only then does he truly grasp the weight of the truth that "strength decides everything." From that point on he sheds his playfulness and begins paying for his former negligence. In one fateful encounter he touches an ancient stone gate. On the other side lies a passage known as the Southern Heavenly Gate, through which one can enter the shattered domain of the Heavenly Court—its treasuries, canonical texts, divine weapons, and old grudges and feuds all open to him as well.

Beyond the cultivation thread, the novel unfurls a layered web of conflict among clans, royal houses, sects, and the forces of the Heavenly Court. Again and again the protagonist battles the strong as the weak, accumulating hidden cards, fighting his way up from the bottom rungs to the height of "the Heavenly Court has no master—I am its Emperor Wu." The book moves at a brisk pace with a high density of combat, a classic hot-blooded power-fantasy of the "trash-to-triumph" and "leveling-up" variety. Its ending proved controversial; many readers feel it concludes too abruptly.