Immortal Palace

Immortal Palace is a xianxia cultivation novel by Da Yan (real name Tang Yong), a platinum author on Qidian. It launched on Qidian in March 2019, concluded in December 2021, and runs to about 9.67 million characters over more than 2,300 chapters. At the opening of the story, the protagonist Ye Tong fails in his ascension on Earth and accidentally crosses into the Star World, landing in Hanshan City, where he becomes a lowly herb boy at the Zhenyao Shop. By chance he obtains the supreme treasure the Book of Life and Death, which changes his fate and sets him on the path of cultivation and travel. The work builds on a triple core premise—the Heaven Book Investiture of the Gods, the Earth Book Classic of Mountains and Seas, and the Human Book Book of Life and Death—and proposes the world concept that 'above the nine heavens lies the Immortal Palace': the mortal world is only the first heaven, the Star World, and above it lie higher levels such as the Ye family immortal mountain. The cultivation system begins with the eighteen stages of Qi Refining (divided into nine stages of Heaven and nine stages of Innate) and extends all the way to realms such as Condensing the Nascent Soul. Ye Tong's footsteps cross the five continents of Dongmu, Nan Yao, Xichen, Beili, and Zhongzhu, navigating the power struggles of four nations—the Tianlan Empire, the Cangqiong Empire, the Luoyan Empire, and others—as well as three sects (Fengshan Sect, Wanxia Sect, Falan Sect), two halls (Shengyuan Hall, Qianyin Hall), and eight great families, encountering and contending with figures such as Princess Mu Qianlan of Tianlan and Qiu Mo of Falan Sect. The novel continues Da Yan's trademark 'documentable setting' approach, laying out cultivation techniques and texts, faction genealogies, and continental maps in dense, complete detail; it also represents an attempt to transition into xianxia and is regarded as a large-scale work marking his shift from antique urban fiction to fantasy cultivation.