Twin Swords

Twin Swords is a virtual-reality online-game novel by Xia Xie, serialized on Qidian from April to December 2010, about 1.01 million characters and 293 chapters, now complete. The story is set in the not-too-distant future: Earth has been developed by humanity to the point of near uninhabitability, and the federal government finds the habitable planet M and begins phased emigration. To relieve boredom on the long journey and to use game data to evaluate each person’s abilities and assign posts on the new planet, the authorities launch a highly realistic xianxia simulation game, Twin Swords. The game fuses the worldviews and magical-treasure settings of the Xuan-Yuan Sword and Chinese Paladin series, hence the name “Twin Swords.” The protagonist, Tang Hua, is an ordinary employee handling obscure business; he is somewhat roguish and sharp-tongued but loyal and principled at heart. When registering, he is given a hard time by an AI girl NPC and has to enter the game under the name “Eastern Eggplant.” In the starter village he stirs up a string of absurd incidents—“man versus chicken,” the “rooster boss,” and the “measuring-rod trial”—and with the help of companions like Mo Jing and Sun Ming barely reaches level 10, completes the heaven-and-earth prayer, and selects his root constitution. After leaving the village he joins Mount Shu and is drawn into a series of events: rescuing Penglai, killing and stealing mobs, breaking through the seven formations, scheming in the auction house, and even tribulation and seeking the Dao. The book uses the game world to mirror real-life survival logic; its anti-formula setup of minor characters and experts, dense dialogue-based humor, and layer upon layer of reversals form Xia Xie’s signature “sleazy” style.