Immortal Bell

Immortal Bell is a long xianxia cultivation novel by the web author Zichai Hen (real name Gao Minghui). It began serialization on Qidian on October 15, 2010, and was completed on April 14, 2011; the book runs about 1.128 million Chinese characters in 345 chapters. The protagonist, Liu Qingyun, is a lowly clerk in Ye County whose life ambition is nothing more than a stable life that is "close to home and pays enough"—this petty-official mentality is the source of the book's worldly flavor. Later, he buys a purple copper bell at the Su family pawnshop and finds a lead in the immortal script formula appended to the Gazetteer of Linzhou, which reads, "Lightning circles the Northern Dipper, the pivot star shines over the wilds," and thus sets out on the path of cultivation, transforming step by step from a worldly clerk into a cultivator. The work's most distinctive feature is that it blends the author's forte for historical writing with the xianxia genre: the novel opens much like a historical novel, written with a steady, grounded touch, and the protagonist gains innate spiritual power through the immortal bell but does not understand the formulas, so he is constrained at every turn; the early sections are full of a sense of crisis, with strategy, magical combat, and character relationships showing the skill of a seasoned author, and the layered foreshadowing often produces moments of sudden clarity. Cultivators in the book are not aloof and superior; ordinary people can threaten low-level cultivators, so the power of organizations and worldly forces is magnified, and the plot accordingly diverges from common formulas. At the same time, romance and a large cast of female characters occupy a considerable share, with light, humorous "officialdom-style" banter alternating with cultivation adventure. The book follows Liu Qingyun's growth and free wandering among the three realms and is regarded by many readers as one of the representative works of "cultivation-style bureaucratic comedy" and xianxia harem fiction.