When did the romance of the gods begin to spread?

The Romance of the Gods was originally a popular entertainment literature in China, which was written by Chen (perhaps) in the Ming Dynasty (there is also a story about Lu Xixing, a Taoist priest in the Ming Dynasty, and there are more than ten quotations from the Taoist classic Huang Tingjing in the Romance of the Gods). The original works can be traced back to the Southern Song Dynasty's Wang Wufa Bai Hua, the Romance of Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and the Travel Notes of the Eight Immortals in Kunlun. They are based on ancient magical fairy tales and refer to ancient books and folklore.