Hunting the Heavens

Hunting the Heavens is a xianxia cultivation novel by the web author Jinxi Hexi. Completed at over nine hundred chapters, it opens with the line "When the sage does not die, great robbers never cease." The story begins in the Luoyun Mountains: Zhou Jijun, a boy just turned ten who was born without spiritual roots and is deemed incapable of ever practicing martial arts, bids his father farewell and journeys alone ten thousand li from Yangzhou to Yunzhou. He seeks the legendary Dragon Slayer, the man who slew the last dragon in the world, hoping to learn the art of dragon slaying and so win back his mother, taken from him by family intrigue. With a will verging on self-destruction, the boy crosses snow peaks, strips off his clothes to braid a rope and climb the Tianzhuan Cliff, scrubs himself with snow, and smears himself with dragon-whale oil against the cold—only to be met atop the mountain by the old man's icy words: "Kill it." He kneels in the snow, kowtows, and begs with his life, only to be told to leap from the cliff; and that leap is the beginning of his turning fate. Thereafter Zhou Jijun enters the Seven Provinces, where jianghu, sects, and dynasties intertwine, and amid trials of martial arts, sorcery, and the schemes of human hearts he climbs painfully up from a "worthless cripple" despised by all, fighting masters of every faction, sworn enemies, and even legendary gods and sages. With "defying heaven to change one's fate and hunting down all the immortals and gods" as its spiritual core, the novel braids a boy's lone courage, family vengeance and gratitude, and a vast mythic canvas into a story that advances layer by layer and closes with the grand finale, "No Sage Under Heaven."