The Path to the Immortal Estate

This is a long xianxia cultivation novel by Yunhe Zhenren, serialized on Qidian from February 2012. Completed, it runs to roughly 1,300 chapters and more than 4.2 million characters, and was adapted into the browser game Drifting Immortal Destiny. Told in the ordinary-man vein, it follows Shi Chuan, a boy from a remote village of mediocre talent who is determined to pursue the Dao and contend with heaven itself. By chance he obtains a ruined "immortal estate" that can turn broken swords, worthless treasures, and raw stone waste into costly refining materials; freed from the grip of scarce resources, he makes his way through artifact refining and spells. The story unfolds through sect intrigues, explorations of hidden realms, and conflicts with the spirit clans, from the hardscrabble survival of a low-ranked cultivator to the vaster star-domain chapters of the "Nine-Star Ancient God" and the "Divine Emperor Domain," weaving together bloodline awakening, artifact forging, realm breakthroughs, and struggles for power—a trajectory of unceasing upward striving. The prose is plain and grounded, stressing the step-by-step logic of spell systems and cultivation detail; it is a slow-burning traditional cultivation epic.