Reverse Questioning

Reverse Questioning is a xianxia/fantasy cultivation novel by Yi Meng Jianghu, serialized on Qidian. Completed in 2012, it runs more than three hundred chapters and about 815,000 characters. The story is set on the planet Moro: Leng Yinghao, son of Leng Boming, sect master of the Thousand Daos Sect, flees with his wife Ling Su to the village of the Luo family to escape the slaughter wrought by Ling Hui, the "Heartless One," and there their son Leng Moxiao is born. More than a decade of peace is shattered by Blood Demon Zi, an elder of the Demonic Dao Sect, who massacres the village to heal his wounds; the parents die, and only Leng Moxiao survives, thanks to a mysterious dream. Tianjizi, supreme elder of the Qingyun Sect, takes him as a disciple according to a divination, and Leng Moxiao enters the sect, seeking opportunities in the Library Pavilion, the Realm of Bewilderment, and the Water Moon Grotto-Heaven, advancing step by step through the cultivation stages of Spirit Awakening, Spirit Refining, and Grain Avoidance, through many hardships and with careful calculation. The character "ni"—reversal—is the soul of the book: he refuses to accept a predetermined fate and moves from personal vengeance to questioning the Way of Heaven itself. Cultivation has nine stages, from Spirit Awakening to Illusory Cauldron, each divided into early, middle, and late phases. The prose is terse and poetic, driven by blood vengeance and centered on obsession, and it ends on the question "Of the three thousand paths of the Great Way, I dare ask, what is the Way?" It is a somber, introspective long novel among the cultivation stories of its time on Qidian.