The Rogue Immortal

The Rogue Immortal is a long xianxia cultivation novel by web author Wang Xiaoman, formerly serialized under the alternate title The Legend of the Dragon-Tiger Talisman Immortal on 3G Bookstore. Roughly 10.72 million characters long, it was completed around 2014. The story opens with Ye Kong, a street punk in a modern city, who accidentally crosses into the Daijun world and takes over the body of a down-and-out young master from a declining clan, carrying in his mind a damaged talisman manual that works only now and then. Relying on an innate affinity for talismans and the street smarts he honed in the city, Ye Kong starts out as a despised wastrel, copying talisman papers and studying talisman arrays, and works his way through the brutal cultivation world by his wits. The work's core conceit is the talisman, written as a kind of code that can be deciphered and rewritten to alter the rules of heaven and earth. It follows him from Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, and Core Formation in the mortal realm all the way up into the immortal, divine, and exalted realms. Along the way Ye Kong meets guides such as the Five Elements Wanderer and the Yellow Springs Ancestor, becomes entangled with women including Lian Ruolan, Lu Qin, and Yi Manying, and is drawn into conflicts among the Shadow Clan, the Demon Clan, the emperors of the immortal realm, and the Fate-Chosen, finally uncovering the secret of the Fate-Chosen. The overall tone is light and humorous with a brisk pace, and the rogue protagonist's clever talisman craft gives it a distinctive anti-formulaic wish-fulfillment appeal. It is one of the more popular xianxia works of the mobile-reading era.