Are All Mortals Mere Ants Before the Immortals? Then I'll Defy Heaven and Slay the Nine Heavens

Li Xuan, a young man from a border town, joins the army at sixteen. His talent is nothing special, but he has an unyielding spirit from another world. In a world where martial arts reign supreme and the bloodlines of strange beasts can devour heaven and earth, he finds a black stone amid a mountain of corpses. By chance, he fuses it with the essence blood of an ancient Black Tortoise, creates the Mountain and Sea Breathing Method, and forges the Mystic Yellow Battle Body. From a lowly border soldier to a commander who slays barbarian generals on the battlefield, from a rising star in the dynasty to a favorite at the imperial court, Li Xuan carves out a bloody path with his blade, through battlefields and the halls of government.

Yet when he reaches the highest ranks and touches the pinnacle of power, he discovers in horror that the barbarian invasion of the northern frontier, the scheming of the empire’s great clans, and even the rise and fall of dynasties are all watched over by pairs of cold eyes from the heavens above. The immortal sects look down on the mortal world, dismiss martial arts as an incomplete path, and regard all living beings as fuel. They turn heaven and earth into a furnace to refine every living soul!

Should he bow and compromise, trading his broken martial body for eternal life in an immortal sect?

Or clench his fists and use this “incomplete” mortal martial path to deliver, for the billions of ordinary people behind him, a defiant punch against the lofty immortals and gods!

The awakening of strange-beast bloodlines from the Classic of Mountains and Seas meets the resurgence of traditional martial arts, as dynastic wars intertwine with the struggle between immortals and mortals. This is not one person’s path to godhood, but a tragic charge by a people and an era, who stake flesh and blood and faith in a battle against Heaven’s will.