Weapons of the Gods (comics)

Weapons of the Gods (神兵玄奇; hanyupinyin: shén bīng xuán qí) is a Hong Kong comic book series by Wong Yuk Long which originally ran between 1996 - 2005.

A role-playing game version was published by Eos Press in 2005 and a Chinese cartoon adaptation called Shen Bing Xiao Jiang (神兵小将) was released in 2006.

The story is set during the turbulent transitional period from the Jin Dynasty to the Sixteen Kingdoms era and traces the contention of various pugilists for the divine weapon known as Heaven's Crystal (天晶).

The prelude of the tale began in AD 318, with the presentation of Heaven's Crystal by the Imperial Court to Yi Nangong, acknowledged as the pugilist master of the southern lands.

In the midst of the festivities of the occasion, his wife, Hong Dong (东方雄), was lamenting over the loss of her husband's affection to his concubine, Jade Swallow (玉燕).

A month later, a wagon driver arriving at the Beiming foundry in the north discovered the 3-year-old Tian Wen (南宫问天), nursing a baby girl with blood from his finger, at the gate.

Having gathered the survivors of Nangong clan from the cataclysm 18 years before, she returned with vengeance, with her grown-up son, Dongfang Tiexin, to her childhood home where she suffered ignominy for being born a girl.

[citation needed] Poor sales led to the writers making crossover references with another ongoing comic series - Legends of the Sons of Heaven (天子傳奇), fantasy retelling of famous Chinese emperors.