The Fall of the Gods

Synopsis: Tao Xiaoshu dies, and Black and White Impermanence hook his soul and bring him to the underworld, where he joins the countless ghosts on the road to the Yellow Springs. He thinks he'll be reincarnated like everyone else, but halfway there, Black and White Impermanence abandon him and dump him by the banks of the River of Forgetfulness, which faces the underworld across a river... under an old locust tree.

A ghost king actually lives inside the old locust tree... and chases after him, calling him "Baby"? Then, to his dismay, he discovers that he's really become a little kid...

No way! He's a grown man! He wants to be reincarnated into a good family. He doesn't want to be anyone's "Baby"!

But as time passes, he realizes that this ancient ghost king really does seem to care about him. So he starts getting all shy and awkward, shy and awkward...

Fine, he can be a little kid... But why are they also telling him he's a tree, a little peach tree? He lived for 18 years before anyone told him he wasn't human?

For the sake of his healthy growth, the King of Hell kindly sends him several buckets of fresh manure, which becomes the nightmare of his tree life and scares him straight back to the human world.

Back in the human world, a man who's lived for over two thousand years suddenly appears, crying and claiming to be his older brother...

Tao Xiaoshu thinks this world is too fantastical. He's a committed atheist, so why did the world change after he died?

The Great Emperor of Fengdu from the ghost realm, the foxes of Tushan... They all start showing up.

This story features a powerful top × an innocent, shy bottom. The top dotes on the bottom, chasing after him to spoil him. In this story, the young bottom and the other characters all act like children because of their limited brain capacity: they love crying, throwing tantrums, and threatening to hang themselves.

The protagonist spends the early chapters being cute and moving the plot along, then awakens his powers later and becomes strong enough to stun all three realms.

The setting is the Age of Declining Magic, when the spiritual energy of heaven and earth is about to run dry and even gods and demons struggle to survive.

Tao Xiaoshu's nickname, Tongtong, comes from the verse: "A thousand doors and ten thousand homes greet the dawn; new peach charms replace the old."

Since the author enjoys manga and anime, the character descriptions in this novel lean toward a manga style, and even the angst comes with sweetness.

Completed romance novels: The Prince, I Am Not into Men (a paternalistic prince and a young county magistrate disguised as a man); Reborn as a Taoist Woman Farming (a beautiful immortal husband and a female Taoist protagonist, with a female-dominant setting).

New works seeking readers: My Promotion in the Mortal Realm as a God and I Specialize in the Evil God Path. Please add them to your reading lists!

Theme: Hold fast to your convictions in an age of declining magic.