Legitimate Cultivation

Legitimate Cultivation is a long xianxia web novel by the web author Ye Henshui, serialized on Qidian and completed at roughly 2.96 million Chinese characters. The story is set in Alliance Year 666: officials of the Alliance government excavate a damaged server from a mysterious ruins site and, after cracking it, learn that humans in ancient times were the strongest life forms in the universe, able to fly through the sky, move mountains and seas, and strengthen their bodies to cross the cosmos. Though the true methods of cultivation were long lost, the Alliance, relying on humanity's unique creativity and tireless effort, managed to reconstruct various cultivation paths from the surviving data, embarking on a path of universal evolution in which martial cultivation and magical technology advance side by side, reviving the atmosphere of the ancient era. Yet this system is ultimately only an imitation, and the truth is not revealed until a soul from ancient times arrives. The protagonist Su Xian is just such a visitor from antiquity: transported to the future world, he discovers that his VIP account on a novel website from his previous life can still be logged into, and with this legitimate account and his knowledge beyond the age, he steadily grows stronger with every advantage in this bizarre world of universal evolution. The work blends science fiction with xianxia cultivation, offering passionate battles and leveling-up monster fights alongside plenty of humorous slice-of-life passages. Light and brisk in overall style, it is one of Ye Henshui's representative original works marking his transition and his best-performing book.