Controlling Fate

Controlling Fate is a long cultivation novel by the web novelist Gu Zhenren, serialized on Qidian from November 2010. It runs about 1.4 million characters and is divided into three volumes: "Light Song of the Toad Moon," "The Long River of Fate," and "Grasping Heaven and Fate." The novel states its core premise at the outset: what is called "luck" is in fact the "Five Movements and Six Qi"—the Five Movements being metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, and the Six Qi being wind, fire, heat, dampness, dryness, and cold. Ordinary cultivators can only determine fate by the ten Heavenly Stems and qi by the twelve Earthly Branches, thereby calculating and suppressing fortune, but they cannot truly control destiny. The protagonist, Hu Tian, is a transmigrator with memories of a previous life. Of humble birth and ordinary talent, he is an outer-sect disciple of the Yuanxiang Sect on the Pan Gu Star and relies on an incomplete set of "Heng Ha Thunderbolt Fists." Resolute in will and determined to attain immortality, he acts steadily and decisively without dawdling, and is therefore chosen by the sect to serve as an undercover agent in the hostile Myriad Beasts Sect. By chance, in the Toad Gu Immortal Temple he obtains two wonders: the "Three-Legged Golden Toad of Heaven-Sent Fortune," which can ingest and expel luck and alter destiny, bringing its owner good fortune and sudden blessings, and the "Heaven-Connecting Mirror," which links to the Void Market of the Heavens and allows trade in goods, secret manuals, and rare treasures between different worlds. With these two trump cards, Hu Tian refines the bloodlines of exotic beasts, cultivates various innate divine powers, and through stacked resources breeds astonishingly powerful Dao soldiers, builds void ships to roam the star sea, covers heaven and earth with formation maps, suppresses the heroes of the heavens, and finally builds the Genesis Ark to cross to the other shore and reach the supreme Dao fruit. The cultivation realms run from Qi Refining, Foundation Building, Kaiguang, Peiyuan, Golden Core, Heartbeat, Lingji, Nascent Soul, Out-of-Body, Divided Spirit, Fusion, Tribulation Crossing, to Mahayana, a complete and splendidly conceived system.