Asking the Way Through Nine Heavens

Asking the Way Through Nine Heavens is a xianxia fantasy cultivation web novel by the author Xiaozi Wudan, first serialized on Qidian, built around the core premise of "entering the Dao through martial arts." The novel opens with the night scene at the Buddhist and Daoist holy site of Mount Zhongnan, where a green-robed Daoist, Yan Po, who has undergone thousands of years of body-snatching and re-cultivation and is on the verge of completing his golden body, holds a long conversation with a white-robed monk in order to break through the barrier at the peak of his primal spirit and enter the ranks of the immortals, thus introducing the thousand-year entanglement between "the Dao" and "immortality" in the cultivation world. The story then shifts to the Dai family: the protagonist, Dai Tianyi, has practiced inner martial arts such as Baji and Xinyi since childhood and receives a spirit ring passed down by his elders, groping his way between boxing and Daoist alchemy—Baji is like earth, Taiji like water, Xinyi like fire; as the five elements generate and support one another, he gradually advances from external martial arts into inner cultivation. As the small world within the spirit ring opens and figures of the Dao appear one after another, he presses forward through sect scheming, contests over treasures, and life-and-death trials, rising step by step from a mortal martial artist toward realms beyond the earthly immortals and face to face with the ancient true men. With traditional inner martial arts theory and Daoist alchemy as its bone and sinew, the book cross-validates "fist" and "Dao," exploring the ancient proposition that "the Dao that can be spoken is not the constant Dao." It is a fairly representative modern cultivation work on Qidian, long in length and advanced volume by volume.