Asking the Way of Mortals

Asking the Way of Mortals is a long classical xianxia novel by the web author o Huakai Wuyue o. It was serialized on Qidian and completed in 2014, running about 775,000 Chinese characters across 274 chapters. Its worldview rests on a cold premise—"the Heavenly Dao cannot be forced, mortals cannot cultivate immortality"—and follows a transmigrated ordinary man trying to win back a sliver of possibility on the path of cultivation. The protagonist, Lü Yan, is born to a small-town family and is an ordinary youth until a strange affair at the river and a mysterious water-monster incident draw him in; he then obtains a stone talisman by the riverside, and the gears of fate begin to turn. He joins the Qingfeng Sect, practises arts such as the Earth-Covering Seal and the Green Lotus Sword Art, and grows step by step through the secret of the Black Water Pearl, open and covert strife among sects, attacks by demonic cults, and secret-realm trials, finding his own way within the "Heavenly Realm" cultivation system. The book interweaves the bonds of master and disciple, the clash of good and evil, and the mortal's struggle against fate, writing both of pure cultivation and of the warmth and coldness of human ties. It is a relatively plain work in the "mortal-flow" xianxia vein, focused on the arc of growth.