Supreme Immortal Emperor

Supreme Immortal Emperor is a wuxia/xianxia web novel by the author Ants Climb Trees, serialized on Zongheng Chinese Network from March 2016 to October 2018, with over 3.6 million characters in total. Set in a world of cultivation, the story revolves around the concept of the "Supreme" and builds a cultivation system that integrates the five elements and yin-yang. The protagonist, Luo Tian, is an orphan from childhood who makes a living gathering herbs; while out gathering herbs, he reveals a special talent and thereby enters a cultivation academy, formally setting out on the path of cultivation. He takes a master, practices the Art of Returning All Things to the Origin, and through tempering his sinews and bones and cleansing his marrow and meridians achieves an innate pure body, while also studying the way of alchemy. As war breaks out between humans and demons, he is drawn into the conflicts between dynasties and sects, breaking through realms again and again amid battlefields, auctions, deep-mountain training, and demon-beast attacks. With the central theme "All things have spirit; I am the spirit of all things," the book links reincarnation and cause and effect through images such as the misty sky-sea and the blooming of the other shore flower, depicting the protagonist undergoing lightning tribulations, opposing the heavenly dao, and, in the deduction of the five elements and yin-yang, asking "What is the Supreme: the root of the taiji, the beginning of all things." In the end, amid eighty-one lightning tribulations, he exhausts the energy of the five-element primordial stones and completes the ultimate test. The work combines cultivation leveling with philosophical reflection, forming the narrative spine of "gathering the two qi of yin and yang, deducing the taiji heavenly dao."