history

Xie Lian is the former prince of the kingdom of Xian Le, who then became the patron god of Xian Le, following which he broke the rules by leaving heaven to try to help his country as it struggled on its last legs. This endeavor not only resulted in him getting to watch his kingdom get ravaged by war and disease, he was also punished by getting kicked out of heaven with a cursed shackle around his neck that blocked him from using any of his spiritual powers.

Also his people blamed him for their country's fall, because if God himself shows up to help and all you get out of it is your entire family dying of facepox/drought/war, then that must mean you were praying to the wrong god, right?

So Xie Lian wanders the earth as a luckless hobo for 800 years (picking up a second curse shackle while he's at it), until one day he finally gets to return to heaven again! Only with his entire country now 800-years dead and all his shrines long-since destroyed, he doesn't actually have any followers to worship him. Which in god terms means he's dirt-poor and out of work (since granting prayers is kind of the main job for gods). So boss god Jun Wu, being a kind caring father figure, has his helpful secretary give Xie Lian a job to work on: There's a mystery creature killing brides on Mount Yujun, and the locals are freaking out over all the botched weddings!

Upon finally arriving at the foot of Mount Yujun (after tripping on a cloud, crash-landing, having to bandage himself up and then walk for a few days), Xie Lian picks up a couple volunteer sidekicks from heaven, gets a good look around the place, and decides the best way to catch this demon is to become a bride himself. Dressed up in the full wedding ensemble and riding a bridal sedan, his little entourage gets separated by a monster attack--soon enough he finds himself sitting alone in the sedan, and before long a mysterious young man in red appears to silently lead him on a romantic walk through the woods...straight to the enemy base. His guide disappears before he can get a good look at the guy, but that's fine because he spends the rest of the night fighting the boss of this arc, which is a legless female ghost with a yandere crush on General Pei Ming (a god she'd had a fling with before he ascended). Eventually she gets arrested by Pei Ming's great^24 grandnephew Pei Su, while Xie Lian finds a young ghost who clearly came from Xian Le because the kid's got facepox scars, but he accidentally scares the kid away.....

With that Totally Successful job under his very tight belt, Xie Lian went back to heaven, only to realize that after 800 years as a hobo he's totally out of the loop and can't at all keep up with the local god discord chat. One day he thinks out loud, "If I don't have any shrines to myself, why don't I just build one?" And while the whole chat is struck speechless by how Absolutely Terrible that sounds, he heads down to earth! Lands in some little village in the middle of nowhere! And settles down in the abandoned old house at the edge of town, naming it Puji Shrine after the water chestnuts the friendly locals gave him to eat. He heads out to the city to get some materials for his new shrine, and hitchhikes back on an old oxcart - on which is a handsome young teen dressed all in red, who makes for a wonderful conversation partner and also decides to live with him in his "shrine" with the excuse that he got kicked out of the house. Everything goes great!

Until one day Xie Lian learns that trouble's afoot in the Gobi Desert! More specifically, the part of the Gobi Desert that used to belong to the long-destroyed kingdom of Ban Yue. He and his new friend San Lang (plus his two sidekicks from before, who showed up and decided San Lang is Suspicious), all head out to the desert, and after some trials and tribulations involving sandstorms, poisonous scorpion-tailed snakes, and a caravan of poor merchant mortals who didn't deserve any of this, they learn that Ban Yue is full of the hungry ghosts of old Ban Yue soldiers! And all the disappearing caravans have been disappearing because the ghosts ate them! Also Pei Su was the one luring all these travelers to their deaths because he has a crush on a ghost whose name is coincidentally also Ban Yue and who was in trouble with all the other Ban Yue ghosts (not named Ban Yue). Surprise! This time it's the Windmaster Shi Qingxuan who shows up to arrest him, and Xie Lian (who had a totally romantic encounter with San Lang in a pit full of snakes and ghosts and corpses during that adventure) gets to go home with a Ban Yue in a jar. Once home, he and San Lang share the revelation that San Lang is actually the Infamous Notorious God-Killing Blood-Rain-Making Demon Lord Hua Cheng, also known as the yakuza boss mayor of Ghost City. Then they have dinner together! Another good day.

Following this is the trial of Pei Su, which is mostly important because after Pei Su gets suspended from heaven Papa Jun Wu pulls Xie Lian off to the side and says "Hey, so the Earthmaster's gone missing in Ghost City and I know the mayor's kind of your friend? So if you're not comfortable taking this job it's fine--" But Xie Lian's like "I'll do it!!" and runs off there with Shi Qingxuan, who gets separated from him almost immediately upon arrival. He then finds the facepox ghost from before, but loses him too, and ends up wandering into a casino, where Hua Cheng decides to give him a very intimate lesson on the Proper Way to Roll Dice (also known as "I just want an excuse to hold your hand"). The crowd goes wild! Lang Qianqiu, another god who's really bad at staying undercover and got turned into a casino prize, gets set free! Hua Cheng wins a secondhand kiss half-eaten mantou! They then have a romantic dinner date at Hua Cheng's mansion, where he's given a free luck boost, a pair of dice, and also the kid gets found for him. He names the kid Lang Ying, and Hua Cheng has a servant take Lang Ying to get properly washed up. Their date then gets interrupted when Hua Cheng has to go deal with some pressing work...so Xie Lian takes this chance to go exploring the manor. He finds a secret passage! Gets caught! And is then given a nice comfy guest room to stay in for the night. As soon as he's alone, Shi Qingxuan shows up in an ill-fitting sexy dress and the two of them run off to explore that secret passage, which turns out to involve a lot of dice-rolling and random teleporty doors. They get chased by wildmen and giant killer worms, but eventually! They make it to the Earthmaster, Ming Yi! Who Shi Qingxuan declares is his Very Best Friend despite Ming Yi's vehement protests against having any sort of relation with the madman in the ragged muddy remains of an ill-fitting sexy dress, but he's too beat-up to actually do anything about it.

They then accidentally find themselves in Hua Cheng's armory, with Hua Cheng and Lang Ying. Hua Cheng reveals that Ming Yi had actually been working as his flunky all this time and was therefore a Traitorous Spy; with peaceful negotiation seeming unlikely at this point, Shi Qingxuan decides to use his wind powers so they can escape through the roof. But Lang Qianqiu, with great timing as always, chooses this very moment to burst in through the roof and start fighting THE ENEMY! Xie Lian picks up a random sword to try to stop both of them from murdering each other, ties everyone together with his fancy magic scarf, sets a very small fire in the corner of the room, and has the Windmaster fly them all out of there--except all the wind causes the fire to grow a lot bigger than he expected, and he finds himself looking down at a manor in flames and feeling really bad about everything as they all escape to heaven.

Back in heaven! Lang Qianqiu accuses Xie Lian of being the man who murdered his entire family back before he became a god, based entirely on that bit of swordplay he got to see back at Hua Cheng's flaming manor! Xie Lian takes the blame without bothering to explain himself, and gets put on house arrest--for maybe a few hours before Hua Cheng shows up to kidnap him. The two end up running through a series of underground tunnels, where they run into Xie Lian's cousin Qi Rong (now a demon himself) and Lang Qianqiu, who's here for REVENGE. Qi Rong reveals that Xie Lian was not in fact the murderer of the Lang family - that honor goes to Qi Rong and the last descendant of the Xian Le bloodline - and then proceeds to get beaten, maimed and boiled because nobody likes Qi Rong. Sadly killing a demon's body won't actually permakill the demon, so Lang Qianqiu decides to focus his revenge on that first and get back to Xie Lian later (he still stabbed the guy's dad, if no one else). He also gives Xie Lian back the sword he'd left behind back when all the murders happened. With all that solved, Xie Lian gets out of house arrest and, after getting Shi Qingxuan to babysit Lang Ying and Ban Yue for him, he goes to visit his parents' mausoleum--only to find that Qi Rong had possessed a random hapless mortal and desecrated their graves. Xie Lian almost beats him to death, but Qi Rong's mortal body happens to have a small son, whose crying pulls him back to his senses in time. He then takes Qi Rong and his son Gu Zi back home with him, gets Lang Ying back too, and lives peacefully at Puji Shrine for a while.

The next thing to happen after this is Shi Qingxuan inviting Xie Lian to the annual Mid-Autumn Festival, the important highlights of which are 1. Everyone gets to watch a play reenacting Xie Lian and San Lang's lovey dovey desert adventure, and 2. Xie Lian wins the Most Popular God contest because Hua Cheng lit an insane amount of lanterns for him back down on earth (The lanterns are supposed to be lit by their followers for this festival). After that fun event, Xie Lian goes back to earth himself, where he realizes they're running low on both groceries and money! So he takes the kids (not Qi Rong) out to the big city to try to earn some money. Luckily he chances upon a rich man looking for someone to exorcise the ghost that murdered his concubine, because he's afraid it'll come after his pregnant wife next. So Xie Lian dresses himself up as a pregnant lady, settles down in a nice comfy room, and attracts the ghost--a haunted fetus! It turns out to be a particularly difficult enemy to defeat, and he ends up holding his breath underwater in a freezing lake thinking to himself, "If I let the ghost baby crawl into me like it wants to, I can just stab this sword down my throat to defeat it! Problem solved!" But before he can actually do that, Hua Cheng shows up and kisses him gives him Underwater CPR. As a dead man he doesn't need to breathe, after all, so he can just fill himself with fresh air and be an extra air tank. Sadly Xie Lian doesn't react very well to this, instead completely losing his mind once they're on land and trying to run away and all the ruckus causes monsters to show up and see Hua Cheng and go "oh wow you caught yourself a girl!!" (Also Hua Cheng captures the baby for him.)

After calming down, Hua Cheng then carries him back to his rebuilt manor (they washed up back at Ghost City somehow) to try to help with the long rusty nail imbedded in his foot because dear lord xie lian please take better care of yourself--and then they go on a nice romantic date in the city. Once they've finished with their street food dinner, Xie Lian goes back to heaven with the ghost baby and its ghost mom in tow, hoping to find the father which had created such an angry ghost baby and bring him to justice. But Ghost Mom Lan Chang refuses to name the actual father, instead accusing Xie Lian...which is then proven factually impossible because Jun Wu has a sword that can tell if you're a virgin or not. (Jun Wu has a very large sword collection.) They also prove, though, that Xie Lian has both held hands and kissed someone before, to Xie Lian's great mortification. Unable to get a proper answer out of her (the baby won't talk at all), the prisoners get locked away for the time being, and Xie Lian goes back home.