Xianbao

Xianbao is an urban supernatural-powers web novel by the Qidian author "Zhu," serialized on Qidian from June 12, 2015, and completed on March 1, 2016, with 673 chapters and about 2.03 million characters. The story is set in the modern world after the ancient "severance of heaven and earth" and the dissipation of spiritual energy, when rare wonders and heavenly treasures scattered across the Ten Continents and Three Isles and the cave-heavens and blessed lands lie hidden among mortals, unrecognized by anyone. The protagonist Qi Xiang is the young owner of an antique shop in Jinling. One June afternoon he buys from a visiting peddler a tortoise shell covered in earth patina yet perfectly intact. He takes it back to his home, converted from an old temple, and cleans it; when he smokes it over the coarse incense left in the temple and rinses it with clear water, the incense smoke is absorbed entirely by the shell and the water evaporates into nothing, revealing its extraordinary nature—and his life is changed forever. With this shell, Qi Xiang can glimpse the heavenly treasures and remnants of cultivation hidden within ancient objects, and so embarks on a path of "cultivating immortality through collecting": others collect to build their collections, dabbling in porcelain, paintings and jade, while he uses the spiritual objects among his collection to breathe and cultivate, gathering treasures from all quarters, maneuvering between the antique market and cultivators, uncovering one by one the cave-heavens and blessed lands and ancient secrets scattered through the world, and ultimately setting out on the road to enlightenment. The book blends the professional pleasures of antique appraisal with a modern cultivation system; its style is relaxed and slice-of-life, with little malice or face-slapping formula, making it one of the author's representative works continuing the "appraisal + supernatural powers" vein after Zhaishi and Jianbao.