The Netherworld Cultivation Gate

The Netherworld Cultivation Gate is a full-length xianxia cultivation novel by the web author Yinweizhe. It was completed on Qidian Chinese Network on September 27, 2010, runs about 1.67 million characters, and totals more than 440 chapters. The story begins on the coast of the "Great Tang Kingdom": in the Sea God Temple of Wangchao Town live four orphaned beggar children—Lu Yu, Da Leng, Er Leng, and Niuniu. To avenge the injured Niuniu, Lu Yu lures and fights the vicious dog from the town's general store, inadvertently triggering a transformation in the jade pendant he carries, and thus steps through the gate of cultivation. From there he moves through a plague and a sect trial, enters the Taiqing Sect as a low-ranking disciple, tends spirit insects and spirit beasts in Spirit Insect Valley, and carves out a cultivation path rooted in "nether qi" through unique methods such as the Record of the Mysterious Netherworld and the Soul-Devouring Art. He then adventures through ancient ruins, an ancient battlefield, a mass grave, and the islands beyond the sea, rising from Qi Refining all the way to Integration, his horizons expanding from a small sect in the Great Tang to the Divine Land and the wider world. The work follows the classic arc of a low-born youth rising against the odds, enriched with spirit-beast raising, formations and artifacts, and sect rivalries, and closes with "the endless void."