BEIJING — “The Journey of Flower” is a novel that has never been sold in bookstores. It was first published on a literature website in 2009, but its story, a martial arts fantasy, is now one of China’s most successful brands.

Since the rights to the novel were sold about four years ago, the tale — about a god and goddess fated to kill each other and who fall in love in the afterlife — has been spun off into a franchise that includes a video game, a coming movie and a hit television series that has become the first drama in China to pass 20 billion views online.

The journey of that novel, from obscurity to mainstream cultural status, resembles one that many internet-only creations are now taking here as a voracious appetite for intellectual property has sent producers foraging on the web.

“IP” — intellectual property, or original copyrighted material that can be bought and adapted for other formats — is one of the hottest buzzwords in China. As the country’s fast-growing film, television and video game industries vie for audiences, entertainment companies in search of quality homegrown content are snapping up IPs left and right.