Global Sword Competition

Global Sword Competition is a wuxia online-game novel by Wangluo Heixia ("Network Black Knight"). It began serialization on Qidian Chinese Network in April 2011 and was completed in March 2012, running to more than three million characters in 1,269 chapters (plus a completion note). The story takes place in the virtual wuxia online game Jianghu: the protagonist Chen Kaixin (game ID "Kaixin") spends three years striving to reach the game's top tier, "One Emperor, Two Queens, Three Kings, Seven Marquises," but on the eve of the "Global Sword Competition at Mount Hua" tournament he is gotten drunk, his character repeatedly killed back to the beginner stage, and he loses any chance at the top. Utterly dispirited, he quits the game. After a stormy night, he dreams for three years and returns to his student days, to the moment the game first opened. Carrying his memories of the future, he dons the helmet and re-enters Jianghu, starting as an outer disciple of the Murong clan. With foreknowledge, he beats everyone to quests and secret manuals, practices Murong martial arts such as "Douzhuan Xingyi" and "Canhe Finger," and step by step builds his strength, forming comrades-in-arms and confidantes bound in life and death, earning the name "Blue-Robed Gentleman's Sword" and maneuvering against factions such as "Yipin Tang," walking once more toward the summit he missed in his previous life. The work blends the martial-arts settings of Jin Yong, Gu Long, Liang Yusheng, Wen Rui'an, and Huang Yi into a single game world, constructing internal-energy realms such as Chujing, Zaohua, and Shengsi, and an attribute system of arm strength, agility, constitution, comprehension, and will—one of the most frequently cited representative works of the wuxia online-game genre.