Above the Divine Kingdoms

Above the Divine Kingdom is a long-form classical xianxia web novel by Jian Yi Si Jian, serialized on Zongheng Chinese Network starting March 18, 2020, and completed on May 4, 2021. The main text comprises approximately 480 chapters totaling around 2.76 million characters. The story opens with the protagonist Ning Changjiu, who, after failing to ascend in his previous life, is reborn twelve years in the past. In that past life he was the seventh disciple of the Bukeguan sect; at twenty-eight, on the verge of ascension, he hesitated a step too long out of lingering attachment to the mortal world and was ultimately stripped of his innate spiritual root by his master, dying with his grievance unresolved. Reborn with fragments of memory and his original bone structure, he sets out once more on the path of cultivation, yet is trapped in the Ru Xuan realm by a mysterious shackle upon his person and remains unable to break through. The story begins in the royal city of Zhao: Ning Changjiu accompanies his master into the imperial capital to exorcise demons, becomes entangled in a bizarre mystery amid the demon-quelling affair, and in doing so triggers hidden memories and powers within him, while a marriage contract from his previous life binds his fate to Zhao Xiang'er, the Empress of Zhao. He subsequently joins the Yujian Tianzong sect and helps Lu Jiajia seize the position of sect master amid a struggle for power within the mountain gates, which draws him into a far larger game. The so-called "Divine Kingdom" refers to the Twelve Divine Kingdoms and the Six Primordial Gods: to conceal the world's greatest secret, they laid a thousand-year killing trap, using the vast landscape as a chessboard and mountains of bleached bones as stepping stones in their contest, with mysterious regions such as Duanjie City, the Southern Wilds, and the Buried God Grotto each fraught with peril. Ning Changjiu bears the authority of "Tai Ming" and the bloodline of the three-legged golden crow; with the aid of companions along the way, he seeks the truth of his own origins, gradually uncovers the conspiracy of the Twelve Divine Kingdoms and the Six Primordial Gods, and ultimately shatters the old order to usher in a new world. The book blends rebirth and counterattack, court intrigue, eerie anomalies, sword-fighting battles, and multi-threaded romance; fox spirits run rampant and talisman paper transforms into birds, as the gloomy atmosphere of Chinese-style strange tales interweaves with passionate duels in which "swords cleave the void." It is a representative work of the author's early style.