Immortal Pride

Immortal Pride is a long fantasy cultivation (xianxia) novel by the web novelist Wu Wai Jiang Shan, serialized on Qidian from 2010 and completed in 2011, totaling roughly 3.81 million Chinese characters. The story unfolds in a vast cultivation world called the "Six Domains of the Azure Vault," where three thousand heterodox paths, eight hundred side schools, and orthodox sects stand side by side, and cultivators strive from Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, and Nascent Soul all the way to Returning to Void and Tribulation Transcendence in pursuit of ascension. The protagonist, Yu Zecheng, comes from the Black Tiger Hall, a martial underworld faction in the coastal city of Linhai in Tang State, Yanzhou, in the southern reaches of heaven, and begins in the streets and alleys of the mortal world before chance sets him on the immortal path. He breaks into the ruins of the Immortal Qin, explores ancient cave dwellings, and finally joins the Xuanyuan Sword Sect, where he masters the art of the sword-dove transformation and the Ten-Formula Immortal Codex; with the might of a single sword he makes his name across the six domains—"one sword in hand, ten thousand bow their heads, proud to look down upon heaven and earth." Yet what readers praise most is not merely the thrill of monster-slaying and leveling up, but the loyalty and difficult choices of the master-disciple bond carried in the line "Burning this broken body to repay my master's grace, our kind are all the heartless ones." The book is distinguished by its worldbuilding: the author weaves the three teachings and nine streams, food, clothing, shelter, and transport, and all the three hundred sixty trades into the cultivation system, constructing a detailed, tangible cultivation society, and it is regarded as the foundational work of his "Immortal Qin system." Character development and sect relationships are also solid, with both fervor and desolation, making it a strikingly styled early example of fantasy cultivation fiction.