Investiture of Immortals

Investiture of Immortals is a long classical xianxia novel by the web author June Temple Master, serialized on Qidian Chinese from April 13, 2016, and completed on June 25, 2017, totaling about 2.06 million characters in 921 chapters. The story opens when heaven and earth have just been established and the great Dao is without order. The immortals jointly establish the Investiture of the Gods to set the order of heaven and earth, founding the Nine Heavens Celestial Court and the Netherworld Prefecture and enfeoffing the gods of all heavens. Qingyuan, a Daoist boy under the Zixiao sect who tends the fire and refines elixirs, happens one day to look through the Register of Immortal Roots and discovers that he is thin in fortune and destiny and has no immortal root. Devoted to seeking the Dao, he leaves the immortal realm for the mortal world. He settles in the human world, first teaching in a small mountain village, pondering methods of becoming an immortal without success; later, when a mountain demon attacks the village, he steps forward and, through a series of events, forms a bond with an earth dragon and activates the first of the nine tiers of the Jade Tower, the Qi Refining Tower, thus setting out on the path of cultivation. Thereafter he passes step by step through duels, demon-slaying, and worldly trials, advancing from Daoist to Adept to True Man and ever higher, holding to his own quiet path of seeking the Dao amid chaotic times and the human heart. The book's distinctive feature is its "fresh furnace" investiture setting: it contains no Hongjun, Three Pure Ones, Jiang Ziya, Yang Jian, Nezha, or other traditional investiture figures, but borrows the names of the Investiture of the Gods, the celestial court, and the netherworld to rebuild a self-consistent immortal order, with almost entirely original characters. The prose leans classical and the pacing is slow-burning, emphasizing the Dao heart and cultivation, and veteran readers regard it as one of the more "immortal-flavored" works in Qidian xianxia.