The Great Wilderness

The Great Wilderness is a classical xianxia novel serialized by author Canghai Mingyue on Qidian Chinese Network in 2013. It runs about 1.02 million characters across 375 chapters (the final chapter is titled "Sovereign of the Great Wilderness") and is complete. The story is set in a bizarre and wondrous world of cultivation: the legendary City of Cangwu and the wonderland of Penglai truly exist, the ancient Fusang tree hosts the setting sun and the golden crow, humans and gods dance together, and immortals are separated from mortals by only a thin line. Cultivators stand above mortals, slave trading flourishes, and it is a world of natural selection where the Great Way is merciless. The protagonist, Chu Yanqi, was originally a "waste" of the Chu family with blocked spiritual apertures; bullied by a clansman, Chu Yunjie, and forced into a uxorilocal marriage with the Kongsang family in exchange for elixirs, he is pushed to the brink. Then a lone soul from Earth revives in his body, and this visitor from another world is a modern feng shui master skilled in geomancy and divination. Thus "robbing others' tombs to cultivate one's own immortality" becomes his path to defying fate: using the arts of reading qi, seeking dragons, and appraising stones to turn his fortunes around in the markets, he glimpses opportunity in dragon lairs and ancient tombs, then studies the lost cultivation technique of the Xuanji Dragon-Riding Formula, masters talismans, formations, alchemy, and talisman crafting, becomes entangled in conflicts between cultivation sects and the legend of the Demon Emperor, moves among the factions of Cangwu, Penglai, and Huazhou, and ultimately resolves the whole as Sovereign of the Great Wilderness—not by ascending a throne, but by institutional reforms such as abolishing the slave trade and establishing the duty of cultivators to protect mortals, opening another path for this law-of-the-jungle world. The work blends feng shui arts, tomb-raiding adventure, and xianxia cultivation, interweaving strange tales with sect battles at a brisk pace, and was a representative work of Qidian Chinese Network's "tomb-raiding cultivation" premise in its day.