The Chronicle of Draconic Ascension

Tai Xu Hua Long Pian is a long-form xianxia novel by Liuyue Guanzhu, serialized on Qidian from August 19, 2019, completed at 2.33 million Chinese characters. The protagonist, Zhuang Ming, was originally the thirteenth disciple of Bai Shengjun at Jusheng Mountain. A catastrophe in a forbidden zone shatters his dantian and strips him of his cultivation, forcing him back to the mortal world; an accident along the way leaves him crippled in both legs. In a cave he chances upon a senior's legacy, the Taixu Qingqi Hualong Pian. The key to this art lies not in refining the human body but in using one's own qi to nurture, day and night, a true dragon body, and ultimately transferring the three hun and seven po souls into the dragon to resume the path to immortality. The first half of the story unfolds around Huai'an: Zhuang Ming operates businesses as a merchant, maneuvering with wit and wealth among the Song family of Xuancheng, the Prince of Chen, and other powers, seizing treasures and accumulating resources while secretly raising his dragon through its transformations from hatchling to cloud serpent to jiao. The stage then shifts from worldly power struggles to contests among sects, dynasties, and immortals and gods. As the Heavenly Gate reopens and the myriad realms reconnect, an old case gradually surfaces: the Lord of the Northern Domain who usurped the heavenly dao and styled himself the Heavenly Emperor. Zhuang Ming joins forces with his master Bai Shengjun, the strategist Liu Yuexuan, and others to lay their plans, and ultimately contends with the Heavenly Emperor on the scale of the myriad realms. The book is distinguished by its narrative transition from mortal to immortal, weaving political intrigue with xianxia combat, and stands as one of the author's more ambitious works in the genre.