Stunning Immortal

Stunning Immortal is a fantasy web novel by Landi Meichen, serialized on Qidian from January 7, 2011 to December 10 of the same year, running 681 chapters and roughly 1.68 million characters. Rather than the familiar wish-fulfillment arc of a youth's rise to power, it places its protagonist in a declining civilization: beneath an alien sky, a human race gradually forgets its own heritage amid invasion and subjugation, and the honor, pride, and glory that for millennia sustained their gaze toward the stars and their dominion over the earth are honored by all the races of this land as the "Divine Soul." The voices of those who still remember grow ever fainter, yet their cry of "the Divine Soul is immortal" never ceases; the Martial Sect's Divine Soul Sect, devoted to "awakening the peoples of subjugated races who have forgotten their civilization," is nearly erased entirely in this climate. The story begins after the fall of the Divine Soul Sect: Bu Jingxian, orphan of the sect, is reduced to slavery and grows up under the brutal rule of the slavemaster Zheng Pi, escapes his chains through wits and courage, and enters the Northern Spirit Mountain to cultivate, inheriting the Soul Art. He passes through the upheavals of the Divine Martial Arena and the Northern Spirit Mountain and the affairs of the sect, and meets a teacher in the figure of Li Kuang, the Old Man of the Northern Spirit. Around the Seven Arts system and the mystery of the "Heavenly Spirit," the characters' relationships and ideological clashes gradually drive the story toward the rise of the Divine Soul Army, confrontation with the Zheng-Chu coalition, and the protagonist's journey in search of the source of heaven and earth; the final chapter, "The Eternal Founder," closes this arc with a rewriting of the race's fate. The work is noted for its cold, restrained narration and substantial character portrayal, with roughly 210,000 recommendations and a Qidian site rating of about 9.0, and an audio version on Ximalaya.