Across the Meta Realm

Across the Meta Realm is a fantasy novel of the otherworld-continent genre by web author Xie Yang. It was serialized on Qidian.com from 2009 and completed in August 2011, comprising 482 chapters and roughly 1.02 million Chinese characters. The story opens with a teenage boy, Lin Han, who is chased down after stepping in to stop a molester; while fleeing, he is killed in a car accident. When he opens his eyes again, he has arrived in a strange world called the Meta Realm Continent and taken over the body of a fifteen-year-old boy who shares his name. In the Meta Realm Continent, whether a person is born with a meta spirit determines two entirely different social classes: ordinary people without a meta spirit can never attain high status, while those with one can cultivate to become meta masters and even higher-tier powerhouses. People of the Meta Realm normally awaken their meta spirit and begin cultivation at the age of five, yet Lin Han only awakens his after transmigrating—starting a full ten years late. Even more unexpectedly, he possesses two cultivation traits the world regards as mutually exclusive: a meta spirit and a meta soul. Relying on his dual-system constitution and the insight of his past-life memories, Lin Han starts from the very bottom, studies at the Tianxing Meta Master Academy, enters a perilous underground world for trials, and is drawn into conflicts among the academy, the sects, and the empire. He ascends step by step through the ranks of meta being, meta warrior, meta master, grand meta master, true meta, and heavenly meta, all the way to meta ancestor, meta sage, meta emperor, and meta sovereign. The book follows "the growth chronicle of a generation's meta sovereign" as its main thread, weaving in the dual-system cultivation framework, meta spirit pearl grades, exotic and ferocious beasts, and divine-demonic tribulations, and closes with Lin Han awakening the power of a realm lord and fighting his climactic battle to stand atop a realm. It is a fast-paced, densely rewarding traditional progression fantasy.