The Alchemical Path to Immortality

The Alchemical Path to Immortality is a long xianxia and modern cultivation novel by Yinweizhe, serialized on Qidian from October 2008 and completed in July 2009, totaling 656 chapters and about 2.19 million words. The story is set in an age when the alchemical cultivation lineage has fallen into decline: a thousand years earlier, the Kongtong lineage, renowned throughout the cultivation world, grew strong by founding its sect on pill refinement, but as rare natural treasures grew scarcer, the spiritual energy on Earth became polluted, and spiritual roots were cut off en masse, the way of alchemical cultivation came close to extinction. Liu Xin, the newest sect master of Kongtong, must single-handedly sustain the sect's tradition at a young age; he opens a martial arts school, works as a courier, carefully budgets his disciples' meals, and even writes cultivation novels for income, scurrying about the steel-and-concrete modern city for a single alchemy furnace and a single spiritual herb. By chance, he gathers rare materials such as ghost-face mushrooms, amber ganoderma, and ten-thousand-year jade milk from caves and bamboo seas, refines the Ningsui Pill and the Zaohua Pill, advances his cultivation from Foundation Establishment to Huamai, takes on disciples such as Li Ying and Gao Dazhuang, rebuilds Kongtong's foundation, recovers sect treasures including the Xuanxin Nine-Dragon Cauldron, and makes a name for himself at the Tianshan discourse. The story then expands from the city to the spirit-demon realm, the immortal realm, the underworld, and even the stage of primordial mythology; alchemy is at once a means of livelihood, a weapon in battle, and a key to breaking through realms, and it concludes with the "Alchemy Realm." The book is on the whole light and brisk, with appeal in both sect management and lethal combat.