Er Gen Novels in Order: Release Order vs the Timeline

The Er Gen novels in order, by release, are Renegade Immortal, Pursuit of the Truth, I Shall Seal the Heavens, A Will Eternal, A World Worth Protecting and Beyond the Timescape. Read them that way. Some of them share a universe, and fans have worked out a timeline, but the reveal one reader warns about only lands if you go by release. Below are the order, where each book is in English, and the trap.

Image: official covers from Wuxiaworld (Renegade Immortal, I Shall Seal the Heavens, A Will Eternal, Beyond the Timescape) and Webnovel (Pursuit of the Truth, A World Worth Protecting)

Er Gen Novels in Order: The Release List

Er Gen (耳根) is the pen name of Liu Yong, a former English teacher from Heilongjiang. Chinese Wikipedia lists seven novels. The first, 天逆 (Tian Ni), was an urban supernatural story that, per English Wikipedia, ran past 700,000 characters and "received little attention", so he switched to xianxia on an editor's advice. It doesn't show up in Webnovel's search for Er Gen, and the order below starts after it.

English Wikipedia backs the first four: Renegade Immortal ran on Qidian from 2009 to 2012, and Er Gen "subsequently wrote" Pursuit of the Truth, I Shall Seal the Heavens and A Will Eternal. Tencent's official manhua page for I Shall Seal the Heavens calls it his third long novel, after 仙逆 and 求魔. Chinese Wikipedia lists 三寸人间 and then 光阴之外 after those, which makes Beyond the Timescape his newest.

All six are finished in English, so you aren't waiting on anything. You are paying, or waiting, past the free stretch: Wuxiaworld's pages show "2 Free Chapters Every 23 Hrs" for all four of its Er Gen books.

Screenshot: Wuxiaworld, Beyond the Timescape series page, October 26, 2026

Er Gen Novels in Order: Release or Timeline?

Both Reddit threads we read argue about this. Some of the books share a universe. When Tencent announced its Pursuit of the Truth donghua in June 2026, its showcase line called the book "仙逆同世界观", the same world as Renegade Immortal. Fans place Pursuit of the Truth first on the timeline, even though it was written second.

Here's the catch. In an April 2025 r/noveltranslations thread, one reader laid it out: "the ending of POTT (first novel chronologically) spoils the ending of RI (first novel released, and the first you should read)." The other side has a case too. In an older thread, another reader said you can start with Pursuit of the Truth "since you don't really spoil anything from the other stories". When someone 600 chapters into Renegade Immortal asked whether to stop, the same reader framed it as a choice: read Pursuit first and "most mysteries in the ending of Renegade Immortal are answered".

That's the real difference. With the timeline, you get the answers before you see the questions. Release order lets Renegade Immortal's ending land the way it was written, then shows you the backstory one book later.

A Will Eternal is the loose piece. In 2021 one reader wrote that it's "in the same universe but it is unknown where it is in the chronological order", and recommended release order "since it is what the author intended". We read it as the one you can pick up on its own. Our A Will Eternal reading guide covers its seven books.

Why we'd still start with book one, from the reader who skipped ahead. Pursuit of the Truth Review →

Where to Read Each One Officially

Four of the six are on Wuxiaworld, licensed from Yuewen: Renegade Immortal, translated by Rex., and three Deathblade translations. As of November 4, 2026, Renegade Immortal scores 85 from 156 reviews, I Shall Seal the Heavens 82 from 235, A Will Eternal 92 from 230 and Beyond the Timescape 94 from 655, the highest-rated of the four (A Will Eternal is next at 92) and the most reviewed.

The other two are on Webnovel. As of November 4, 2026, Pursuit of the Truth has 1,481 chapters and a 4.46 rating from 460 ratings, and A World Worth Protecting, translated by Atlas Studios, has 1,455 chapters and 4.66 from 689 ratings. Its synopsis starts in 3029 CE, after a huge sword flies "from the heavens, piercing the sun", which tells you this is the one that's half science fiction.

Screenshot: Webnovel, A World Worth Protecting book page, October 26, 2026

One naming trap: Webnovel also has a separate edition of 光阴之外 called Outside of Time, listing 1,847 chapters on November 4, 2026. It's the same novel as Beyond the Timescape. One reviewer on that page complains the title should have been "Beyond Time", so if you see either name, it's the newest book. Pick one edition and stay with it, since the chapter numbers don't line up between them.

The Newest One: Beyond the Timescape

If you only came for "Er Gen's new novel", this is it. We read chapter 1, "Living", on Wuxiaworld on October 26. It opens in a ruined city under crimson rain. A boy of thirteen or fourteen watches a vulture feed on a dead dog, waits until it puts its head into the carcass, then kills it with a black iron skewer. He rubs crushed herbs into a wound that's going black, takes a leather jerkin off an old man's corpse in a medicine shop and covers the body with a curtain. Then the chapter looks up at "the half face of a broken god" in the sky. Nine days earlier its eyes opened over his region, and everything there was tainted, "even the spirit power used by cultivators". The cultivation world comes pre-wrecked.

Wuxiaworld tags it Post-apocalyptic, and Youku turned it into a 3D donghua that premiered in December 2025. Chapter 1 doesn't assume you've read anything else; it explains its own world from scratch. Our Renegade Immortal review and I Shall Seal the Heavens review cover the older books if you want to go back.

Two Er Gen books are already on screen, and we mapped where the shows sit in the novels.

Renegade Immortal Donghua Guide →

Our Take

Start with Renegade Immortal and read the Er Gen novels in order of release. The timeline order looks tidier on paper, but it hands you the answer to Renegade Immortal's ending before you've read it. Pursuit of the Truth works best second, as backstory you've earned. If you don't have room for six books of over a thousand chapters each, skip the full run and read A Will Eternal or Beyond the Timescape alone. We'd pick Beyond the Timescape, based on its first chapter and its Wuxiaworld score.

How We Checked This

On October 26, 2026 we opened the Wuxiaworld pages for Renegade Immortal, I Shall Seal the Heavens, A Will Eternal and Beyond the Timescape, and the Webnovel pages for A World Worth Protecting and Outside of Time, for status, chapter count, translator and rating. Pursuit of the Truth's Webnovel figures were checked the same day for our review. We opened all seven pages again on November 4, 2026 and updated the scores. We read Beyond the Timescape chapter 1 in full, checked Er Gen's English and Chinese Wikipedia pages and Tencent's June 2026 showcase recap on Sina, and read two r/noveltranslations threads on the order. We haven't read the other five books for this guide; our reviews of them are linked above.

Related Reading

• Renegade Immortal Review
• Pursuit of the Truth Review
• I Shall Seal the Heavens Review
• A Will Eternal Reading Guide
• Renegade Immortal Donghua Guide
• Immortality Simulator Review

References

• Wikipedia: Er Gen
• Wikipedia (Chinese): 耳根
• Wikipedia: Renegade Immortal
• Tencent Comics: 我欲封天 (I Shall Seal the Heavens manhua)
• Wuxiaworld: Renegade Immortal
• Wuxiaworld: I Shall Seal the Heavens
• Wuxiaworld: A Will Eternal
• Wuxiaworld: Beyond the Timescape
• Wuxiaworld: Beyond the Timescape chapter 1354, the final chapter
• Wuxiaworld: Beyond the Timescape chapter 1, Living
• Webnovel: Pursuit of the Truth
• Webnovel: A World Worth Protecting
• Webnovel: Outside Of Time
• Sina: 2026腾讯视频动漫年度发布｜94部作品开席
• Reddit r/noveltranslations: Er gen novel order
• Reddit r/noveltranslations: Tell me the order of er gen novels