Luofu

Luofu is a full-length classical xianxia novel by the web author Wu Zui (real name Wang Hui). It began serialization on Zongheng Chinese on December 1, 2009, and was completed in January 2011, totaling about 2.43 million characters. It is Wu Zui's representative work marking his shift from esports fiction to xianxia. The novel opens in a human world ravaged by years of famine and strewn with the dead. The boy Luo Bei and the girl Su Xinyue beg together for survival; Su Xinyue, because of her unusual physique, is taken to Kunlun by an immortal, while the mediocre Luo Bei is abandoned in the wilderness. By chance, he becomes the sole disciple of Yuan Tianyi, the master of the mysterious single-lineage sect Luofu, who uses a heaven-defying secret art to remake his body and teaches him the Luofu supreme art, the Wondrous Thought Heaven Longevity Sutra. After Yuan Tianyi detects the schemes of Kunlun's leader Huang Wushen, he sends Luo Bei to Mount Shu to cultivate in the world, ordering him not to reveal his identity as a Luofu heir and requiring him to master his natal sword essence before returning. Yuan Tianyi then goes alone to Kunlun to challenge Huang Wushen, is ambushed, and disappears. At Mount Shu, Luo Bei's focus on Luofu techniques causes him to falter in cultivation assessments and suffer contempt and provocation, yet he remains true to himself, befriends Cai Shu and Lin Hang, and is drawn ever deeper into sect conflicts through trials at Danxia Mountain and overseas. The novel uses the rise and fall of the Luofu lineage as a thread to sketch the power struggles among the Kunlun and Mount Shu Daoist schools and demons, and through Luo Bei's cultivation journey explores the themes of "with what heart does one cultivate the Dao, and who controls one's fate." It is regarded as Wu Zui's foundational work in his transition to xianxia.