Pulling the Demon

Pulling the Demon is a classical mystery xianxia novel by the web novelist Bing Lin Shen Xia, following A Record of the Dead. Serialized on Qidian, it runs to roughly 3.62 million Chinese characters and over 1,100 completed chapters. The novel opens in Yelin Town: the youth Mu Xingqiu and his companions protect their childhood friend Fangfang, and what seems an ordinary village conflict draws out clues to a lurking "demon seed." Once a demon seed invades a body, the infected person is regarded as a mortal enemy by the Daoist sects—and Mu Xingqiu is precisely marked by the Daoists as someone to be watched. Thereafter, Mu Xingqiu and other youths who have likewise suffered demon-seed invasion join the Daoist order and train at Pangshan and elsewhere. The author has built a system all his own for this world: nine great Daoist lineages, nine levels of cultivation, eighteen branches of study, plus standard-issue ritual implements such as swords, mirrors, seals, and bells; thought-heart illusion arts and the long-extinct yet lingering Thought-Heart Branch; and the shadow of the elusive Yishi Jun and an invading demon race. Cultivators must at all times guard the "Daoist heart"; once their state of mind falters, demonic thoughts arise and the unseen demon seed follows. Thus the book's core conflict is not merely the clash of good and evil but a long tug-of-war between the Daoist and his own inner demon. The book writes xianxia in a spare, cold, plain modern style, with layer upon layer of reversals and dense suspense: kindly townsfolk, unfathomable Daoists, allies and enemies each scheming, interweaving into a web. Beyond the protagonist, supporting figures such as Qin Lingshuang (Fangfang), Zuo Liuying, Yang Qingyin, Baldy, and Xiao Hao each have their own faces. The title "Pulling the Demon" means both drawing out the demon outside the body and pulling out the demon within the heart; the refrain "the Daoist fire never dies" is both the cultivators' slogan and the answer at the heart of the whole worldview.