Asking the Mirror

Asking the Mirror is a long classical xianxia novel by the web novelist Weight-Loss Expert (real name Zhang Ning, a native of Heze, Shandong, and a member of the China Writers Association and a contracted author of Zongheng Chinese Network). Serialization began on Zongheng Chinese Network in 2010; the novel runs to about 5.17 million characters, is complete, and was selected for the 2016 list of outstanding original online literature recommended by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. The novel follows the cultivation journey of its protagonist, Yu Ci: abducted in childhood into the heterodox sect Shuangxian Jiao, he endures years of oppression and hardship, escapes at fourteen when the sect falls into turmoil, and thereafter travels the world as an unaffiliated cultivator. By chance he joins the Lichen Sect and receives guidance from the Daoist Yuzhou; after his master's death he ventures out alone once more. Armed with a bronze mirror, a mastery of talismanic arts and sword techniques, and an exceptional mind for strategy, he maneuvers among the great sects and the forces of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, plunging into hidden realms and contending for opportunities, gradually touching on deeper secrets—the laws of the true world, the order of the gods—and drawing ever closer to the question he truly wants to ask: what is immortality, really? The work opens with its guiding motif: "I have a mirror that reflects heaven, earth, and rivers; I have a sword that cleaves through the realm of ghosts and men; I have a city seated among the clouds of the nine heavens; I have a heart that laughs at the wasted years on the road to immortality." It depicts the various states of mind and desires of cultivators in pursuit of immortality. With extraordinarily meticulous elaboration of techniques, realm divisions, and sect ecology, the author builds a fantasy world with complete characters and clear cause and effect; the prose is dense and classically elegant, excelling in combat descriptions and group portraits, with a slow pace and extremely high density of worldbuilding. It is one of the most frequently cited representative works of "worldbuilding-driven" xianxia.