Roaming the Wuxia World

Roaming the Wuxia World is a long-running infinite-worlds web novel by author “Smile, Smile,” serialized on Qidian from May 6, 2014 to its completion in February 2018, totaling roughly 3.27 million characters across 1,334 chapters (including supplementary chapters). The story opens with a modern young man, Ye Feng, reading wuxia fiction late at night; he wakes to find himself transported to the Tang dynasty, a realm where martial prowess reigns supreme, as an unremarkable outer disciple of the Iron Sword Sect in Qingzhou. His original body was dull-witted, and after six years of hard training in the sect he had not even reached full mastery of Qi Refining; the transmigrated Ye Feng, however, awakens a vastly expanded spiritual sense, making him near-photographic in memory and a fast learner. At the sect's triennial new-disciple initiation ceremony, he risks secretly studying the sect's core manual, the Iron Sword Art, and is publicly exposed by Elder Du Fenghan and made an example of—which inadvertently triggers the awakening of his personal system: the Fate Stone Compass. With the compass, Ye Feng can freely enter wuxia planes drawn from the works of Jin Yong, Gu Long, Huang Yi, and other masters, training, looting, and befriending characters in instances such as Sword Stained with Royal Blood, The Book and the Sword, The Smiling, Proud Wanderer, The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, The Legend of Chu Liuxiang, The Legend of Lu Xiaofeng, and Twin of Brothers, and can bring martial arts manuals and techniques back to the main world. The system features quests, merit, and a “save-load” mechanic; death within a plane affects the protagonist's real body, so risk and opportunity coexist. The work alternates between the main world and wuxia instances: on one side he maneuvers among the Iron Sword Sect, the Shen family of Qingzhou, and the demonic sects; on the other he rapidly accumulates martial arts through instances, building a clear realm system of three Qi Refining stages and nine acquired levels. With monster-slaying and leveling plus plane-hopping adventure as its throughline, the book moves at a brisk pace with dense payoffs, and its decisive protagonist makes it one of the more representative long works in the crossover-wuxia and infinite-worlds genres.