Dan Zhu

Dan Zhu is a long-form Eastern fantasy by the web novelist Zeidao Sanchi (real name Zheng Hui). Serialized on Qidian.com from April 2011, the completed novel runs to roughly 680,000 Chinese characters and received an A-level contract. The story follows the young Xie Danzhu, who as an infant was abandoned on the banks of the Fengxi River and taken in by the Xie family of Shitian Town, in whose back garden a twin-trunked dragon-claw locust tree has grown since time immemorial. At fifteen, having suffered a childhood fright that damaged his three souls and seven spirits, he is judged unfit for cultivation and can only enter the spiritual-artifact workshop on Zixia Mountain as an apprentice craftsman, carving wood and inscribing talismans day after day. A dragon-claw locust sapling he carries with him and a purple-eyed snow fox that escapes from the mountain sect become his turning point: the little fox takes the form of his young sister Xie Qinglan and gives him a "dharma-formula pill" that helps him break through the limits of his aptitude. From there, Xie Danzhu rises from a discarded outer-sect boy to a cultivator of the Seven Glories Mountain: he witnesses the ways of the world at the Fulang Mountain market, fights for treasures on the shores of Silver Flood Dragon Lake, faces grave peril in the Yin Spirit Realm, and is drawn into the intrigues of sect and mortal world alike by escorting Beigong Ziyan and rescuing Ye Weiyang. Built around the "Seven Stages of Soul Refining and Three Stages of Soul Condensation," the work constructs layer upon layer of realms—the Mortal World, the Yin Spirit Realm, Blue Frost, and Haotian—weaving together the beauty of classical artifacts, the spirituality of plants and trees, and the tempering of a young man's character. The book concludes with Xie Danzhu's search for his origins and his departure with Liuyu on a broader journey. Steady in pace and lucid in style, it marks a rare turn to fantasy by Zeidao Sanchi, an author known for historical fiction.